Summary:
Jekyll2020-05-28T06:23:51+00:00https://protesilaos.com//Protesilaos Stavrou: Political writingsProtesilaos StavrouComment on resisting techno-digital dystopia2020-05-21T00:00:00+00:002020-05-21T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/comment-anti-techno-dystopiaI was asked for my opinion on the challenges raised by potentially
repressive technologies. The idea is how can one protect themselves
from the seemingly omnipotent state, especially in light of the
technological means at its disposal.
The following is my initial take on the subject. I am sharing it with
the proviso that I do not consider it a comprehensive analysis and may
still elaborate further in some future essay.
I think we need to frame dystopia that is powered by digital technology
as yet another form of
Topics:
Protesilaos Stavrou considers the following as important:
Jekyll2020-05-28T06:23:51+00:00https://protesilaos.com//Protesilaos Stavrou: Political writingsProtesilaos StavrouComment on resisting techno-digital dystopia2020-05-21T00:00:00+00:002020-05-21T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/comment-anti-techno-dystopia<p>I was asked for my opinion on the challenges raised by potentially
repressive technologies. The idea is how can one protect themselves
from the seemingly omnipotent state, especially in light of the
technological means at its disposal.</p>
<p>The following is my initial take on the subject. I am sharing it with
the proviso that I do not consider it a comprehensive analysis and may
still elaborate further in some future essay.</p>
<hr />
<p>I think we need to frame dystopia that is powered by digital technology
as yet another form of tyranny. This is not to trivialise it—if
“trivialising” can ever apply to <em>tyranny</em>—, nor to downplay its
potential for destruction or otherwise equate it ideologically with
other totalitarian regimes. By understanding it as a tyranny, we
provide ourselves with an already well-understood conceptual framework
to reason about it.</p>
<p>Every tyranny consists in the control of the vast majority of people by
a small group of individuals. It is always a minority that wields power
within the confines of the given polity’s scope of sovereignty or reach.</p>
<p>For a minority to rule over the majority, it obviously requires access
to critical resources but, more importantly, it must have a comparative
advantage of coordination relative to the subjects of its will.</p>
<p>The minority has to act as a unit, while the majority remains divided
and unorganised. The principle of “divide and conquer” is a constant in
all hitherto existing statecraft. The state of technology or the
prevailing conditions in general may only alter the specifics on the
implementation front.</p>
<p>That principle captures the irreducible factor of the case, which
constitutes the relative strength of the tyrants over the oppressed.
Disorganised people are vulnerable, exploitable, and can more easily be
forced into supporting the regime or otherwise acquiescing to its
stratagems.</p>
<p>Couched in those terms, tyranny is both (i) an immediately recognisable
architecture of supreme political authority, and (ii) a widespread
mindset that is characterised by inertness, indifference, helplessness,
and fatalism. To resist oppression one must not merely guard against
the legal-institutional, economic, technological, or such readily
discernible establishment. They must also overcome the centripetal
forces generated by the people’s inability to act.</p>
<p>History tells us that a group which functions as a unit can exert
greater power than that of its constituent elements in isolation. It
acquires an emergent property, germane to the concerted action as such.
Tyranny governs through the unity of its members, but also by mastering
the reign of fear. Terror spreads like a virus, especially when those
being terrorised remain exposed by virtue of their forced/induced turn
towards short-term-focused egocentrism.</p>
<p>What else is contagious though is courage and the duty to express
opposition to injustice. If the oppressors can gain an advantage by
cooperating among themselves, then so can an opposing force that starts
out as small in scale. It cuts both ways.</p>
<p>The resistance does not need to be carried out by a majority of people
at once. Indeed it never is possible to arrive at that eventuality
without going through intermediate phases. There must initially be a
fairly tightly-controlled collective that is self-governed and guided by
agreement of spirit and a clear sense of purpose. This agent of reform
is enough to help spread courage, so that the majority may eventually
agree to contribute towards enacting regime change.</p>
<p>The members of the resistance must stand united, in solidarity to each
other. The starting point is to undermine that inter-personal
comparative advantage of the oppressors by means of grassroots action.
Remember that part of tyranny’s power is contingent on the inertness of
the majority. This is where activism must focus its immediate
attention: to show the alternatives in concrete terms, to build networks
of exchange and genuine support.</p>
<p>While it is clear that one can contribute incrementally to global shifts
by means of localised action, it also is the case that one may
appreciate the universal truth by discerning an instance of it. As
such, activism must promote cases of freedom-respecting and
freedom-enhancing media or practices as tangible examples of modes of
possible inter-subjective experience: they offer a hint as to what a
freed world could look like.</p>
<p>At any rate, a critical mass is required. Coordination and cooperation
will always be part of the solution to the problem. Everything else
will follow from there. The technological means will vary, as will the
figures and the ideocentric parameters or whatever other contributing
factor to such a state of affairs.</p>
<p>To my mind, techno-digital dystopia can be reduced to “dystopia”, which
in turn implies tyranny. By claiming as much, I wish to stress the
importance of the human qua social animal side of things: how concerted
action is essential to the cause.</p>
<p>It is crucial to understand that no amount of freedom-friendly
technology is ever enough to render one immune to the vicissitudes of
the establishment’s machinations. Nature and history tell us that there
is safety in numbers. It is naive, indeed self-defeating, to believe
that one can effectively fend off aggression while remaining strictly
limited to their individuality.</p>
<p>To this end, all calls for apolitical escapism, those that present
individualism as its own telos, must be interpreted as impediments to
the possible creation of an antipode to the status quo. Such times call
for collective efforts and an appreciation of the longer-term dimension
of the pro-liberty struggle; liberty as experienced by each person
(subjective) and as enabled by one’s milieu (inter-subjective).</p>
<p>Finally, I think we are not in a generalised dystopia right now, at
least not in my part of the world. Regardless, we must always be wary
of the establishment’s potential: it does have the means and the
propensity to proceed down that path. To think that some constitution
or court of law will single-handedly upset the repressive turn is to
remain oblivious to the lessons of history, including those of the near
past and, in parts of the world, of the present. No institutional
arrangement can defend itself. It is always people who may safeguard
the prevailing values that can otherwise be codified in statutes and
other rules.</p>Protesilaos StavrouWhat I think about the most effective response to technologically-capable tyranny.Comment on elections in general2020-05-10T00:00:00+00:002020-05-10T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/comment-elections<p>In a private exchange I was asked for my opinion on the act of voting.
The following is my basic idea about the subject. Some parts have been
edited in the interest of privacy. Note that I am posting this with the
proviso that I do not consider it a comprehensive take on the matter and
may still elaborate on it in some future essay.</p>
<hr />
<p>I have never voted. I am not against it per se. It just seems to me
that elections cannot deliver auto-nomy (self-government), because the
“constitutional subject”, the people, is nothing more than an
abstraction.</p>
<p>Party politics are an integral part of representative democracy, which
in turn is a facet of a system of centralisation of authority. When the
nation-state started taking form, this centralisation meant that
everything would be decided by a handful of people in the country’s
capital: even in an ideal parliamentarian system we are still talking
about a tiny minority who has disproportionate power over the rest of
society. Now that telecommunications, travel, and other technologies
remove logistical constraints that held true in previous eras,
centralisation happens at the continental/supra-national level (EU in my
case).</p>
<p>These are different kinds of gigantism. Elections offer a sense of
participation, but the real power lies elsewhere. Think, if you will,
of the virtual omnipotence of the European Central Bank. No-one voted
for them. No parliamentarian who speaks for “the people” can scrutinise
the ECB, and so on.</p>
<p>Also see my <a href="https://protesilaos.com/politics/2020-05-01-internationalism-localism/">Crises, transnationalism, and the
demi-state</a>
and make sure to follow all links from there.</p>
<p>And then there is the practical problem that elections are never fair.
There are inequalities in funding and “air time” on the media. While I
do not know whether this is true for your country, in Greece and Cyprus
(and the UK and several other countries I know of) the media are
platforms that are controlled by an economic elite. Again, a handful of
people. Same with the main social networks, whose algorithms influence
who sees what.</p>
<p>The core challenge is that power is at some centre. That makes it
easier to be abused.</p>
<p>Elections are an excellent tool in a system where the members have equal
opportunities to speak their mind; a system of true pluralism and
genuine participation. And this can only happen by going to the smaller
scale of the local community.</p>
<p>If you must vote, go for people with good ideas and honest intentions.
At any rate, the act of sending a parliamentarian to a 4/5 year-term
service in some far away place (literally and figuratively) will never
grant any real auto-nomy to your quotidian life. Connect this to the
aforementioned notion of intersubjective freedom.<sup id="fnref:NoteIntersubjectiveFreedom" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:NoteIntersubjectiveFreedom" class="footnote">1</a></sup></p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:NoteIntersubjectiveFreedom" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Basically this is a reference to my
thinking against the decontextualised human, a deep-seated
presumption of our world that I have repeatedly wrestled with, such
as in my recent book <a href="https://protesilaos.com/hubris">On Hubris</a>.
The gist is that one cannot be free in a strict individualistic
sense for as long as there are phenomena that necessarily involved
multiple agents. Concretely: you live in a political environment
outside your control and even if you alone are free in some sense,
there still is no freedom at the collective level, which in turn
limits the scope of your choices in one way or another. <a href="#fnref:NoteIntersubjectiveFreedom" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">[^]</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Protesilaos StavrouWhat I think about elections in modern democracies.Crises, transnationalism, and the demi-state2020-05-01T00:00:00+00:002020-05-01T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/internationalism-localism<p>In an April 29, 2019 article titled <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/covid19-exposes-inadequate-nternational-system-by-joschka-fischer-2020-04">The Virus that Changed the
World</a>,
Joschka Fischer highlights the shortcomings of the international
institutional architecture, while pointing at the supposedly pressing
need to rekindle the spirit of transnationalism. As the author puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While nation-states will remain indispensable in providing good
governance and contributing to global efforts, the principle of
nationalism will only exacerbate future systemic crises. The pandemic
must be followed by a new age of international cooperation and a
strengthening of multilateral institutions. This applies to Europe,
in particular.</p>
<p>Now more than ever, we need to reclaim the spirit of 1945. We need
the twenty-first century’s two superpowers, America and China, to set
the example, by burying their rivalry and uniting all of humankind
around a collective response to the current crisis, and to those that
await us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While I agree that nationalism, made manifest through the centuries as
nation-statism (more on that later), is too limited in scope and cannot
cope with the challenges of a global magnitude, I am not convinced that
<em>more centralisation</em> of power at the international centre is the
solution to our problems.</p>
<p>Fundamentally, the <em>crises</em> we are facing, be it the pandemic, climate
change and ecological calamities, the Great Recession of the past decade
and the coming Greater Depression, can be understood as epiphenomena of
increased inter-connectedness, else inter-dependence. Rather than
distributed systems that can remain robust to a range of shocks, the
human world is becoming ever-more monolith-like and fragile as a result.</p>
<p>The fact that our hospitals did not have even the basics in sufficient
stock is due to the neoliberal ideology that underpins the world’s
legal-institutional order: the belief that global trade is sufficient to
deliver production on demand and everything should be outsourced. So
the hospital in country A becomes dependent on the supplier in country B
and, therefore, is exposed to whatever shocks may emanate from the
prevailing conditions in that country. A crisis in one area becomes
generalised by means of the sheer mechanics of the system.</p>
<p>More inter-dependence will only exacerbate the systemic nature of the
crises and will further amplify their invidious effects. This is an
insight that us Europeans should have learnt from the peak of the
eurocrisis: a single currency area connects local economies in such a
way that a persistent downturn in one part is enough to pose an
existential threat to the common currency itself through a cascading
effect of widespread failures and bankruptcies, as well as
self-fulfilling prophecies in market expectations for identifying the
next weakest link in the chain.</p>
<p>In practical terms, Fischer’s thesis can only hold true as an immediate
reaction to the challenges of the pandemic: the system cannot be
refashioned in one stroke amid the crisis and, therefore, no country can
reliably act unilaterally in the meantime. Over the longer-term though
the genuine solution is to scrutinise and ultimately dismiss as
pathogenic the dogma that centralisation is a necessary blessing.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the false dichotomy between nationalism and
internationalism. None of the two is appropriate, while they do not
stand in direct opposition to each other. Nationalism was the first
step towards the rapid acceleration of inter-connectedness within and
then across borders, hence the <em>inter</em> national world order.</p>
<p>The nation-state is the apparatus that consolidated power at the
country’s capital, effectively establishing a technocracy with <em>elements
of</em> democratic custom and majoritarian decision-making. It is the
mechanism that pampered and reinforced the familiar two-tier system of
the capitalist power edifice, where a rentier class of platform owners
(I call them “platformarchs”) exists in symbiotic relationship with—or
as a de facto extension of—state structures, while the rest of society
copes with precarity and the vicissitudes of the business cycle
(i.e. they are handed generous bail-outs and privileges, while we get
grinding austerity and radical uncertainty).</p>
<p>In essence, nation-statism created a new class of corporate overlords
that are best understood collectively as <strong>the demi-state</strong>. I define
it thus: the social class comprising private interests that are enabled,
supported, protected, or otherwise sustained by the state’s acts of
sovereignty, which controls the entry points, critical infrastructure,
or other requisite factors of economic conduct, and which, inter alia,
provides state-like functions in domains or fields of endeavour outside
the narrow confines of profit-oriented production and consumption in
exchange for a legally-sanctioned oligopolistic privilege in the markets
it operates in.</p>
<p>Think of how cashless transactions that involve <em>private money</em> in the
form of inter-bank payment systems allow the government to track market
activity by being integrated with the handful of bankers/operators in
this particular area of specialisation. Or how tech giants are becoming
increasingly intertwined with surveillance corps (“security agencies”)
and partake in tacit foreign policy or even internal affairs through
cyber means.</p>
<p>The demi-state is the pinnacle of the capitalist system and the most
vicious monstrosity the nation-state ever established. This is why
there needs to be a distinction, albeit analytical and academic in
spirit, between nationalism and nation-statism. The former is a
romantic/idealist notion that never developed into a form of governance.
At its core, it is about being cognisant and supportive of one’s
cultural identity. Whereas the nation-state expanded on that idea by
interpreting three distinct magnitudes as consubstantial: the nation,
the state, the homeland. For the nation-state, these three are the same
thing to which we often read commentary along the lines of “America
should do this” or “the Germans want that”: it conflates the citizens
with the country, the land with the state, the government with the
people, reifying the resulting aggregate as an exalted transhuman entity
(also read my essay <a href="https://protesilaos.com/politics/2019-06-14-secularised-theology-statecraft/">Against the secularised theology of
statecraft</a>).</p>
<p>Couched in those terms, national sovereignty is hypostatised as the
supreme political authority of a power elite in the nation’s command
centre. The lofty ideal of “we the people” is, in the nation-statist
worldview, realised as “we the few pretending to serve the people” or
even “us the chosen ones who embody the spirit of the nation”. It is
this very disconnect, indeed absurdity, that has allowed the once
disparate national demi-states to extend beyond their borders and draw
linkages between them. Or, to put it differently, the oligarchies
decided that inter-connectedness would forward their agenda and so they
pressed ahead without concern for side-effects that are always felt the
most by those who survive in precarious conditions.</p>
<p>As for the attitude of being pro-nation, nationalism properly so-called,
this is always exploited by the nation-statists whenever they want to
protect their interests. Sometimes as outright racism. Others as a
moral imperative. Think of how it is a ‘national duty’ to bail out some
mega corporation—‘our’ companies—or to send people’s children to die in
a far away land in pursuit of the master’s imperialistic mania.</p>
<p>Again to bring an example that us European are well aware of: the
creation of the euro. An elitist initiative which established the most
undemocratic institution that could ever exist in an ostensibly
democratic legal-institutional arrangement: the European Central Bank.
As explained in my ~4000-word essay from 2017-04-02 on <a href="https://protesilaos.com/ecb-independence-review/">ECB
independence: concept, scope, and
implications</a>, this
entity is practically immune to scrutiny. No body, no institution, be
it national or supranational, can place conditions on the ECB or hold it
accountable for its shortcomings using objective criteria. Moreover, no
authority has the power to redistribute resources upwardly across the
euro area. None except the ECB, which is blithely channelling resources
to the privileged few, guaranteeing virtually limitless demand for the
assets of corporate elites, effectively shielding them from the forces
of the market, creating an uneven playing field, and putting them in a
position of strength from where they can plunder the forlorn with
impunity.</p>
<p>To this end, the dichotomy between nationalism and internationalism must
be re-framed in order to correspond to the actuality of things: it is a
continuum that maps differences in degree. The internationalist mindset
is the same as that of nation-statism without being limited to the
borders of a single nation. Put differently, it is nation-statism freed
from technical managerial constraints: faster travel, better
telecommunications, and all the technological means of escaping physical
limitations of yester year that kept logistics confined to a smaller
scale.</p>
<p>The case of the EU notwithstanding, we can already get a glimpse of the
technocratic features of such a superstructure by recalling the
observation that disproportionately powerful institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund or the World Health Organisation are
practically unaccountable. Or how the United Nations is but a glorified
bureaucratic shadow play of rules-based global affairs that essentially
obfuscates the fact that not all nation-states are made equal (a point
that Joschka Fischer concedes). Or how the internationalist demi-state
concentrates ever more power in its hands, while paying little-to-no
taxes by leveraging a network of preferential jurisdictions that enable
tax base erosion and fiscal engineering. And, lest we forget, how all
this is expressed as an ever expanding chasm of inequality and an uneven
distribution of resources between countries and among social classes.</p>
<p>“Transnationalism” is a term that attempts to bestow a sense of
righteousness and enlightenment on the nation-statism and
internationalism that brought the world to where it currently is. The
transnationalist will complain about the evils of nationalism and will
lament the rise of ‘populism’ while conveniently ignoring the fact that
it is the “spirit of 1945”, as Fischer puts it, that established the
first iteration of what later became the EU and that defined the
international architecture we are all familiar with. No populist
bugaboo ever contributed to the inter-dependence of the world. The
notion that some malevolent nationalists are undermining all the good
things that the international order offers is flatly incorrect (also see
my essay on <a href="https://protesilaos.com/politics/2019-08-29-populism-shadow-play/">The shadow play of
“populism”</a>).</p>
<p>Alas, we have been indoctrinated into the belief that we must never
challenge the dominant narrative, for we run the risk of being labelled
a ‘nationalist’ or some of the other more sinister labels associated
with that term. We are, in other words, brainwashed into seeing the
world in binary terms, where you must either be a transnationalist or
you are some nationalist scum. Good versus bad. No nuances. No
possible permutations in between the extremes. This is a pernicious
folly and the telltale sign of a humanity that has failed to internalise
the scientific ethos, the attitude of questioning, the spirit of being
tolerant by virtue of recognising one’s overall ignorance, the need for
researching things and not accepting claims ex cathedra; the mark of a
world that is moving full speed into a new Dark Age of false certainty
<a href="https://protesilaos.com/hubris">and hubris</a>.</p>
<p>The answer to the crises does have a philosophical facet, in that it
requires us to think of complexity as such and to remain aporetic in the
face of the establishment’s hypocrisy and conventional wisdom. More
concretely though, what we need is to disinvest and decisively downsize
our operations: not just average me and you, but the insatiable
billionaires of this world—especially them!</p>
<p>Inter-dependence is unsustainable for humans and the rest of the planet.
We need to become increasingly <em>autarkic</em> at the local community level.
Learn to cultivate our own land while relying on polyculture and
sustainable methods, produce our own sourdough bread away from the mild
poison that is industrial loaf, stand in solidarity with our fellow
people in our immediate surroundings, gain a sense of responsibility
towards respecting and safeguarding the ecosystems we are immersed in.</p>
<p>In short, we must shift from the arrangements of global inter-dependence
and personal irresponsibility to a network of largely independent
micro-centres of local participatory government and personal
empowerment. This presupposes a thoroughgoing review of the principles
that underpin the current paradigm of production-consumption-ownership
and a direct opposition to the uncivilised moneyman of the capitalist
regime.</p>
<p>Joschka Fischer just echoes what many decision-makers and influencers
like him have failed to realise or otherwise admit: that their vaunted
beliefs are the root cause of the crises, not the much-touted panacea
they envision.</p>Protesilaos StavrouThe concentration of power is the root cause of the crises. Transnationalism is part of that problem.On crisis and statecraft2020-04-01T00:00:00+00:002020-04-01T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/statecraft-crisis<p>The polity can be understood as a system of rules. An architecture that
consists of tacit and explicit codes that govern, regulate, frame, or
otherwise influence the behaviour and expected role of their subjects.
The polity is a superstructure of rules with a global or local scope:
those that apply to particular cases and those that perform a
foundational function of delineating the scope of other rules.</p>
<p>Humans institute their polity in pursuit of a set of ends. The midpoint
or common denominator of all rules within each given scope is the
scenario, narrative, idea, phenomenon that compels, determines, or
informs the process of polity-institution in its totality or in parts
thereof.</p>
<p>This object of reference has to be interpreted as external to the
process of institution. It has to be independent of the conventions
that establish the polity. Otherwise it could simply be ruled out of
existence.</p>
<p>Such an immanent external alterity can be typically understood as the
need to live in peace and security, to afford a comfortable life, ensure
the continuation of the species and the given culture, and so on. Rules
do not exist in the absence of such a counter-force to human convention.
The polity as a whole or in its parts is neither a-contextual nor
decontextualisable. There is no such thing as a polity in abstract.</p>
<p>Couched in those terms, a crisis may be assessed as a challenge to the
established guiding narrative and the secondary narratives derived
therefrom. It calls for a grand review: to appreciate anew the way the
polity is designed, be it in its general form or particular facets
thereof. A crisis triggers a process of re-institution.</p>
<p>For statecraft—the art of governance and state-formation or
state-institution—a crisis does not necessarily entail a net loss of
some sort. It rather offers a turning point, a unique opportunity to
re-imagine and re-draw rules that were theretofore perceived as
sacrosanct.</p>
<p>A state apparatus can use a crisis as a pretext for concentrating power
at the political centre, the top of the hierarchy. It can use it as a
means or excuse to pass reforms that would otherwise seem
disproportionate and tyrannical.</p>
<p>Evaluations on the qualitative features of rules are always contingent
on their midpoint: how severe the object of reference—the external
alterity—is thought to be and what must subsequently be done to cope
with it.</p>
<p>A crisis forces one to think in terms of “whatever it takes”. For
statecraft this can manifest as a sacrifice of a once cherished value to
the altars of greed and ambition.</p>
<p>We saw how the 9/11 attacks forever refashioned politics in the USA and
much of the world in an attempt to prepare against this ever-present
terrorist alterity. How states found it expedient to introduce blanket
surveillance as the new normal and how a growing industry of
data-mining, with few oligopolistic interests at its top, emerged from
that milieu.</p>
<p>In a similar fashion, we witnessed how central banks introduced
so-called “unconventional” monetary policies, such as Quantitative
Easing, and made them an integral part of their day-to-day operations.
At the outset of the recent economic crisis, central banks had to
struggle against several constraints before implementing such measures.
Currently, in the face of the pandemic and with the world still
recovering from the chilling effects of the last economic calamity,
central banks expand their QE and related operations as a first reaction
to the evolving phenomena. Contrary to what was the norm in the last
decade, it is now expected of them to pursue such a course of action
and, one might imagine, it will soon be asked of them to go even
further.</p>
<p>A crisis redraws boundaries. Shrewd statecraft operators can take
advantage of the newly-formed normality to consolidate their gains,
moulding the polity in their image.</p>
<p>It would not be surprising to look back at the history of the pandemic,
and the ensuing coronacrisis in the economy, as the point in time when
monumental changes started taking place, ranging from global trade, the
equilibrium of power between the world’s superpowers, to the very
relationship between government and citizens in hitherto self-described
“liberal democracies”.</p>
<p>While all of the aforementioned can be considered in mere technical
terms, as yet another analysis of political phenomena at-large, there
exists a more practical insight: in a world defined by its great
injustices in income distribution, a world plagued by imperialism and
the pernicious ideology of incessant year-to-year economic growth, is
there anything to guarantee that the powers involved in statecraft will
<em>not</em> abuse the present crisis?</p>Protesilaos StavrouAnalysis of the midpoint of rules and how a crisis refashions the polity.More ECB QE will not stop the Coronacrisis2020-03-21T00:00:00+00:002020-03-21T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/ecb-qe-coronacrisis<p>On March 19, 2020 the European Central Bank announced a new round of
asset purchases (Quantitative Easing or QE) that are specifically
intended as a response to the economic downturn caused by the
coronavirus pandemic. From <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2020/html/ecb.blog200319~11f421e25e.en.html">the
announcement</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] the ECB’s Governing Council announced on Wednesday a new Pandemic
Emergency Purchase Programme with an envelope of €750 billion until
the end of the year, in addition to the €120 billion we decided on 12
March. Together this amounts to 7.3% of euro area GDP.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>We are making available up to €3 trillion in liquidity through our
refinancing operations, including at the lowest interest rate we have
ever offered, -0.75%. Offering funds below our deposit facility rate
allows us to amplify the stimulus from negative rates and channel it
directly to those who can benefit most. European banking supervisors
have also freed up an estimated €120 billion of extra bank capital,
which can support considerable lending capacity by euro area banks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While the ECB’s response signals an eagerness to cope with the unique
challenges the euro area faces, it suffers from a fundamental flaw in
its approach to crisis management: it seeks to stem an insolvency crisis
by means of expanded liquidity. This is the same misreading of the
situation that (i) amplified the euro crisis during the previous ~10
years, and (ii) forced the ECB to engage in de facto fiscal policy that
evidently fails in its stated end of boosting inflation to the desired
levels.</p>
<p>To remind ourselves: QE is deemed necessary to fill in a void that is
left behind by the concerted cuts in aggregate demand imposed by euro
area Member States (simultaneous austerity). When spending collapses,
the pressure on longer-term inflation rates is downward. Such a trend
discourages investments, as persistent disinflation or outright
deflation will entail losses while creating an environment of
uncertainty and low expectations (i.e. more potential losses).
Meanwhile, the ECB is mandated to preserve price stability, which the
institution itself has quantified as a rate that is <em>below but close to
2% over the medium-term</em>. I have analysed this latter notion, and its
concomitant issues, in my ~4000-word essay from 2017-04-02 on <a href="https://protesilaos.com/ecb-independence-review/">ECB
independence: concept, scope, and
implications</a>.</p>
<p>The idea of QE is to provide sufficient capital to large corporations,
typically financial institutions, <em>in the hope</em> that the money will
trickle down to the real economy. Such a phenomenon should eventually
be reflected in the inflation rate which, despite the trillions in asset
purchases, <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/html/index.en.html">remains persistently
below</a> the ECB’s
medium-term target.</p>
<p>QE cannot guarantee an upward inflationary trend, <em>ceteris paribus</em>,
because asset holders find it expedient to use their newfound resources
to invest in luxury goods instead of directing funds to households and
businesses. The new trillions never reach the real economy: they are
used in speculative endeavours that are not tracked by the Harmonised
Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), such as lucrative contracts for
footballers (prices in the European football industry have been
exorbitant in recent years), yachts, paintings of dubious aesthetic
value that are auctioned for ridiculous sums, etc.</p>
<p>Put differently, QE offers nothing but the impression of a return to
normality. It actually aggrandises debts and increases systemic risk,
whose extent will only be fully revealed in the next financial crisis.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that the euro area never fully recovered from
the previous crisis. The feeble positive signs where just a reflection
of heightened ECB activism, rather than an indication of strong
fundamentals. To use pertinent medical language, if you live off of
supplements, you are dealing with an underlying health issue.</p>
<p>More QE means more of the same package of measures that has clearly
failed to boost aggregate demand and put inflation rates in line with
the ECB target. In an insolvency crisis no amount of liquidity will
suffice to arrest the downfall and bring things back on track.</p>
<p>What is now needed is an altogether new mindset that will break free
from the ideological constraints that have prevented European
policy-makers from rational policy action. We need a genuinely
unconventional response from the ECB and the Member States (coordinated
via the Eurogroup, European Council, etc.). The core objective should
be to monetise sovereign debts, allow governments to engage in
large-scale expansionary fiscal policy that is commensurate with the
debt monetisation scheme, and set price controls for practically all
consumer goods.</p>
<p>The goal is to channel resources directly to the real economy at a time
when economic activity has effectively stalled (the other option would
be “helicopter money”). Households should witness a tangible difference
in their purchasing power which, in turn, will send aggregate demand on
an upward trajectory.</p>
<p>It is of paramount importance to tackle the coronacrisis at its root,
otherwise the recession will transmogrify into an economic meltdown of
colossal proportions.</p>
<p>A blueprint for such drastic measures has already been offered by Mario
Draghi’s policy initiative following his famous “whatever it takes [to
save the euro]”: the Outright Monetary Transactions. OMT was a debt
monetisation plan linked to a programme of the European Stability
Mechanism. In principle, Member States can use Enhanced Cooperation to
employ EU institutions, such as the ECB, in the pursuit of policy
initiatives that are outside the remit of the European Treaties though
aligned with them. In effect, it is possible to circumvent any legal
constraint on debt monetisation in order to save both the average
European citizen and the EU/Euro architecture. This is with the proviso
that policy-makers rise to the challenge of this unique historical
occasion.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a legal obstacle to survival. The challenge
we Europeans have always been confronted with is to find ways of
escaping from the shackles of pernicious ideology. It is ideological
narrow-mindedness that guided policy-makers to blithely exacerbate the
eurocrisis by imposing grinding austerity amid a general collapse in
aggregate demand. It is ideology that keeps the ECB captive in this
role-playing game of trying to help the real economy while actually
sponsoring the speculative bonanza of unscrupulous investors.</p>
<p>Unlike the timing of the eurocrisis, the coronacrisis comes at a point
where our economies and the welfare state have already been devastated
by years of misguided austerity. Those in power must be immediately
challenged to reconsider their mindset, emancipate themselves from the
path-dependency of their past policy initiatives, and act in the
longer-term interest of Europe at-large. Else I fear we will suffer
much—MUCH—more than we already have.</p>Protesilaos StavrouThe European Central Bank cannot stop the impending economic crisis by means of liquidity. We need debt monetisation.On trust, global inter-dependence, and sustainability2020-03-17T00:00:00+00:002020-03-17T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/trust-interdependence-sustainability<p>The pandemic has highlighted two truths about politics that are
otherwise easy to overlook, underestimate, or altogether ignore:</p>
<ol>
<li>Political organisation rests on trust. Without it we have no
institutions, no law and order, no money, no morality, nothing.</li>
<li>Our lives on this planet are intrinsically inter-linked.
Isolationism is an illusion, as you are never truly sheltered from
externalities.</li>
</ol>
<p>We know at least since the time of Thucydides (see the <em>Milean
Dialogue</em>) or Plato (refer to Book II of the <em>Republic</em> on the Ring of
Gyges, etc.) that the human animal is contained and rendered moral by an
equilibrium of power. What we experience as peace and prosperity is a
state where no person or group thereof is preponderant. Otherwise we
default to the state of nature where everyone is left to fend for
themselves and their immediate loved ones.</p>
<p>The state of nature, which results in the Hobbesian war of all against
all (<em>bellum omnium contra omnes</em>), tells us something fundamental about
the lack of trust: that humans are predatory towards their kind when
their inter-subjective institutions implode (<em>homo homini lupus est</em>).</p>
<p>Institutions are at the risk of collapsing when a crisis hits. This can
come in the form of a sustained economic recession, [civil] war, famine,
a pandemic, and so on. What can arrest the downfall is either a remedy
to the exogenous source of tension, where applicable, or a more just
distribution of resources in an attempt to ease fears and appease the
passions.</p>
<p>Our world has yet to recover from the financial calamity that struck at
the end of the last decade. We have gone through years of grinding
austerity that have put us all on the edge, while undermining the
viability of critical infrastructure, including public health services.</p>
<p>We live in a world which, according to the 2019 <em>Global Wealth Report</em>
<a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html">of Credit
Swiss</a>,
is defined by its staggering inequality metrics:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The bottom half of wealth holders collectively accounted for less than
1% of total global wealth in mid-2019, while the richest 10% own 82%
of global wealth and the top 1% alone own 45%.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We cannot trust in the authorities to cater to our longer-term needs
when the measures to cope with this pandemic are, as with the sovereign
debt crisis and concomitant financial meltdown, not addressing the
egregious injustice at the core of the global world order. People are
told to live in isolation and remain under- or outright un- employed
until further notice even though the precarious economic conditions of
most of us do not permit for such a “luxury”.</p>
<p>There is no shortage of resources. The problem consists in their
distribution. Yet we pretend as if we have suddenly depleted all of our
stock and are on the verge of collapse. Ideological obsessions, such as
conformity with neoliberal guidelines for “fiscal responsibility”, must
be recognised as impediments to a genuine, lasting solution to the
impending downfall. It would be a cardinal sin to have decision-makers
report “positive numbers” on the fiscal front while leaving people to
perish.</p>
<p>Pragmatism and a sense of urgency are in order. Our world must rectify
its excesses, <a href="https://protesilaos.com/hubris">its underlying hubris</a>.
This eventually requires a rethink of the axiom that incessant, amoral
growth is a necessary blessing and that the profiteers know better.</p>
<p>We must also scrutinise the growing isolationist tendencies across the
planet. In a globalised system, where capital can flow virtually
unencumbered from one nation to another, any serious action to improve
the distribution of burdens must come in the form of a concerted effort
between states. No country can do this on its own: the economic elite
is shrewd enough to siphon its profits through some shady tax avoidance
scheme—they are doing it anyway.</p>
<p>Our inter-connectedness is also of a natural sort. We share the same
habitat. There is no “planet B”. Global phenomena such as climate
change or this pandemic recognise no border controls or whatever feeble
wall we may build for our selves to satisfy our delusions. Our shared
humanity, our common presence as part of this planet’s ecosystem, forces
us to think in terms of sustainability for the system at-large. It is a
pernicious folly to pursue some isolationist agenda while thinking that
the calamity will somehow spare us.</p>
<p>Though border checks may be a necessary measure to temporarily adapt to
the realities of the virus, the longer-term objective must be to
formulate policies with a cross-border scope. And such programmes must
have a clear emphasis on their humanitarian or even ecological
character. To save lives, to preserve life, to empower communities in
the face of monumental transitions.</p>
<p>Capitalism has gone too far into toxic territory. It has reached a
point where it generates—or greatly exacerbates—one crisis after another
in quick succession. There is no reason to believe that things will
magically solve themselves while the power elite continues to enjoy its
massively privileged status.</p>
<p>Only fools will see the challenge of the present as a mere health issue.
Policies are woven together. Our reality is a continuum that extends to
every aspect of life. We cannot have effective health systems for all
when our governments operate in servitude to some chimera called
“austerity”, which is but a euphemism for promoting the interests of the
oligopolies that control this world.</p>Protesilaos StavrouThoughts on the general features of the politics to cope with the pandemic and its associated issues.I signed the Public Domain Manifesto2020-01-10T00:00:00+00:002020-01-10T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/manifesto-public-domain<p>All my works, whether they are writings or programs, are provided under
terms that respect your freedom.<sup id="fnref:Copying" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:Copying" class="footnote">1</a></sup> The rights of end recipients
to use, modify, share each work or its derivatives are prerequisites of
decentralised and interpersonal creativity; of culture at-large.</p>
<p>I believe that many of the problems in our economy or politics in
general spring from the misinterpretation of intellectual property and
its consequent weaponisation by oligopolistic interests. The logic of
exclusivity and the concomitant practice of artificial scarcity force
people towards becoming individualistic, which ultimately benefits the
establishment that wants us weak and divided. Cooperation is
discouraged so that corporations can further increase their profits,
typically to the detriment of society and the planet.</p>
<p>With these in mind, I decided to sign the <a href="https://publicdomainmanifesto.org/manifesto/#en">Public Domain
Manifesto</a>. It is a
step in the right direction. I encourage you to study and support it.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:Copying" role="doc-endnote">
<p>My writings are distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, while my programs are available
under the GNU General Public License version 3. <a href="#fnref:Copying" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">[^]</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Protesilaos StavrouNote on the signing of the Public Domain Manifesto.The untenable capitalist case against billionaires2019-12-30T00:00:00+00:002019-12-30T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/capitalism-case-billionaires<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/14/the-historical-case-for-abolishing-billionaires">the historical case for abolishing
billionaires</a>,
Linsey McGoey formulates a capitalist argument against inequality and
billionaires, by alluding to the relevant views of intellectuals of yore
such as Adam Smith. While I appreciate any effort that undermines the
conservative narratives, and am aligned with McGoey’s underlying values,
I am not convinced this approach can be effective.</p>
<p>The fundamental problem is the very notion of a capitalist critique of
billionaires. I hold that, upon closer inspection, it leads us to the
untenable position of a “capitalist critique of capitalism”, because it
ignores the political dynamics at play.</p>
<p>The quintessential institution of capitalism—the <em>conditio sine qua non</em>
of this system—is property rights. No rich person, no billionaire can
ever exist without the legal framework that supports and protects
<em>claims</em> on tangible or intangible goods. By “legal framework” we mean
more than a mere corpus of legislation, as it implies the presence of a
state apparatus with the capacity to both promulgate such laws and, most
importantly, enforce them by means of supreme political authority
(sovereignty). Enforcement encompasses the use of force, which spans
everything from security forces, to courts, and prison systems.</p>
<p>This is why the notion of an unfettered free market is essentially
impossible. Either you have an <em>instituted</em> free market, which includes
at minimum the baseline of property rights and concomitant institutions,
or you have the rule of the jungle. By the same token, I find the idea
of “anarcho-capitalism” to not only be a <em>contradictio in terminis</em>, in
that capitalism presupposes an <em>archy</em>, but also a fundamental
misunderstanding of how property rights can be maintained over the long
term <em>without the use of force</em> or the permanent threat thereof.</p>
<p>Once we couch capitalist economics in terms of their underlying
politics, it no longer makes sense to argue along the lines of an
idealised free market, as if that were an objective benchmark by which
to compare degrees of capitalism. We can go straight to the moral point
of whether we want <em>some</em> individuals to hold far more power than
others. The argument thus switches from economic criteria to power
relations between people.</p>
<p>The shift in focus is necessary to avoid the pitfalls of the capitalist
thinking on such magnitudes as so-called “efficient markets”. How can
you curtail a billionaire’s power without hindering their presence in
the markets they partake in? How can the polity, for instance, break
the billionaire status of Mark Zuckerberg while keeping Facebook in
tact? The short answer is that this is not possible and that
corporations will have to be radically refashioned as well. Which then
means that we will have to tear apart the fabric of legal persons to the
effect that one corporation cannot own others and, furthermore, that a
real person’s ownership of corporations can only be limited in scope.</p>
<p>This line of reasoning means that we are no longer thinking in terms of
efficient markets per se. Our goal is to contain the power of the
economic elite, so that we can avoid injustices in our daily life but
also the degredation of democracy into plutocracy. To that end, we
would be willing to forgo some ‘efficiency’, though I disagree with such
narrow economistic concepts for understanding the complexity of the real
world, in favour of the greater good of preserving social peace and
abolishing the control of human by human.</p>
<p>I repeat: why bother with the whole capitalist or free market mindset if
your objective is to ultimately oppose it? Why try to be a false friend
and in the process frame your thinking by categories you do not
recognise or indeed approve of as the midpoint of any debate on the
matter?</p>
<p>Moving on, I would suggest that capitalism presupposes inequality and
indeed an economic elite because it has always been the system whereby
all state interventions are aligned with the interests of capital owners
(yes, capitalism is a form of interventionism, the litanies of naive
neoliberals notwithstanding). In practice, “capital owners” are reduced
to a select few that not only hold capital, but actually control the
very access to the industry at hand. I call them “platformarchs”. They
are in charge of the <em>platforms</em> on which all other economic activity
can be based on. The platforms consist of critical infrastructure
and/or key intellectual property. Platformarchs are not mere market
actors but enablers of the markets they participate in. Think of how
Facebook and Google are the platform controllers of the advertising
business online.</p>
<p>Platformarchs exist in a symbiotic relationship with the state, both
because their power is an extension of the legal-institutional
architecture, but also due to the fact that the state finds it expedient
to maintain only a handful of major actors in any given industry. A
two-tier system of oligopolies framed by <em>complementary</em> market forces
(i.e. the capitalist order), makes the exercise of governance much
easier than having to wield power over a largely diverse, heteroclite,
heterogeneous whole.</p>
<p>Against this backdrop, the phenomenon of an economic elite amassing the
majority of the world’s wealth is not an irregularity but an expected
outcome. It also explains why the right wing forces, broadly
understood, have no trouble swinging from the <a href="https://protesilaos.com/politics/2019-04-23-far-right-new-right/">political centre to the
far
right</a>,
given the right circumstances. The very design of the establishment
rests on the uneven distribution of resources which, at scale, produces
billionaires. It follows that a capitalist case against this
concatenation of phenomena cannot actually be inherently <em>capitalist</em>.</p>
<p>Social democrats have always dreamt of managing capitalism in some
supposedly humane way. And we have ample evidence to show that this
task is futile, since social democracy shares the exact same gigantist
principles as those of explicitly pro-capitalist forces, namely, that an
omnipotent state will ultimately be in charge of people’s lives and that
everything will be controlled at the political centre. I already
formulated an argument along those lines in yesterday’s article on the
shortcomings of <a href="https://protesilaos.com/politics/2019-12-29-communism-technocracy/">technocratic
communism</a>,
so please read that as well.</p>
<p>To press on the point of social democracy being gigantist, consider the
typical scenario of “guaranteeing jobs”. The state will go to great
lengths to ensure that a given capital owner, say, an industrialist
keeps their business activities within the national borders. The
government will come up with all sorts of so-called “incentives” to
entice the industrialist, such as indirect payments, favourable
treatment, and even implicit state guarantees that result in outright
bail-outs in times of a major crisis. Just think about the spurious
argument of “too big to fail” in light of “protecting jobs” and you
already have a social democratic, ostensibly “broad-based” as the
bureaucrats like to call it, recipe for preserving oligopolies.</p>
<p>The abolition of billionaires cannot be separated from the opposition to
inequality at-large. It can never be formulated in terms of the
constructs it seeks to undo, nor can it be predicated on values it does
not share. It must rather be defined counter to them: a revolutionary
power impulse that emanates from an outright anti-capitalist view of the
world.</p>Protesilaos StavrouThere is no real value to a so-called "capitalist" thesis against inequality.Technocratic communism is not the answer2019-12-29T00:00:00+00:002019-12-29T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/communism-technocracy<p>I read with great interest the December 27, 2019 <em>Project Syndicate</em>
column of Yanis Varoufakis, titled <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/imagining-a-world-without-capitalism-by-yanis-varoufakis-2019-12">Imagining a World Without
Capitalism</a>.
While I think that Varoufakis’ heart is in the right place, and his
critique of capitalism as essentially anti-market is spot on, I cannot
subscribe to his technocratic outlook.</p>
<p>What Varoufakis outlines as an alternative to the established order is
yet another form of gigantism. It requires a massive, omnipotent state
apparatus that would need to have access to vast amounts of data in
order to perform the function of ironing out inequalities between
people. The notion of a central bank overseeing everyone’s income
implies that there must be commensurate checks in place: a counter-party
treasury, a government, a legislature… A super-state, much like the
USA, Russia, China, and, increasingly, the EU.</p>
<p>What historical communism proved, what past and modern capitalism
confirms, and what leftists in the mould of Varoufakis blithely ignore,
is that the concentration of power is a source of mischief, abuse,
corruption, no matter the initial motives for gathering all ultimate
authority in a single locus.</p>
<p>Historical communism was enacted as yet another highly-stratified
imperium rather than a distributed network of communes. It turned into
a totalitarian regime exactly because the only way to control every
aspect of life, in the name of the much-vaunted communal good, is to
create a robust hierarchy, with supreme authority trusted at the top.</p>
<p>Whether it is party apparatchiks, professional central bankers, or
ostensibly enlightened scientists in charge of managing everyone’s life,
the underlying assumption is that gigantism is not bad per se. It just
is a matter of changing the policies, not the state architecture. This
is why today’s leftists offer no sustainable solution to the problems of
our world. They see the epiphenomena while ignoring the underlying
mechanics of institutionalised power. Should they get things their way,
history will just repeat itself.</p>
<p>In the capitalist system we witness the symbiotic relationship between
the state and the capital owners who control critical infrastructure;
“platformarchs” as I call them. This type of plutocracy maintains a
two-tier system that has nothing to do with the idealised free market of
competing agents over a level-playing field that is taught in economics
textbooks. Platformarchs hold disproportionate power, which they use to
mould politics/law in their interests, to undermine their potential
competition, and to consolidate their {oligo,mono}-polistic status. The
“free market” only exists in the half spaces left unoccupied by
platformarchs; the spaces where concentrated power is not [yet] focused
in.</p>
<p>This is not a decadent form of some true capitalism, a far cry from some
supposed golden age of free markets. No, this is a necessary result of
the concentration of power: the intertwined agendas of economic and
political interests, the control over resources and its weaponisation as
an instrument for preserving the status quo. Those who have power seek
to keep it and expand it. Not controlling some aspect of life can
potentially lead to the undoing of the entire edifice. It is why a
hierarchical system always has the tendency for absolutism (and why
modern representative democracies are, in fact, oligarchies).</p>
<p>Gigantism cannot be turned into some kind of benevolent totalitarianism.
That would require a technocratic elite that consists of purely
altruistic beings who only care about the common good, assuming there is
such a one-size-fits-all good to begin with. We cannot expect such an
exalted, omniscient class to come to the fore—and to always be there in
the long term—when it is highly unlikely to ever meet a single human who
is perfectly non-egoistic. Put bluntly, it is naive to expect people in
power to consistently behave unlike their nature and their role.</p>
<p>The other major problem of gigantism is that it can only be instituted
in opposition to organic societies; “organic” in the sense of naturally
exhibiting solidarity between their members. Organic societies are
families and small communities. The opposite of what an empire is all
about. Gigantism cannot be communitarian because it would then have to
deny itself of the power over those communities.</p>
<p>When we think about alternatives we should always prefer the theory that
makes the fewer assumptions about human nature. Do not base your ideas
on the presence of the perfect moral agent. Your endeavour is bound to
fail miserably. Instead work with the knowledge we have about the
imperfect people we all are. Take it as a given that there will be
competing forces, recognise that corruption and power go hand-in-hand,
and do not expect the human kind to behave much differently than other
pack animals (the idea that humans are higher beings is <a href="https://protesilaos.com/hubris/">another hubris
of ours</a>, a form of anthropocentrism).</p>
<p>I hold that the opposition to capitalism must also assume the form of a
radical departure from gigantism. That is the constant, the historical
midpoint. Whereas capitalism is just its current emanation, with
actualised communism being another one. We must turn our attention to
organic societies, local communities that are allowed to be
self-governed, without interference from some bureaucrat who purports to
know better while operating aloof from the fray of local quotidian life.</p>
<p>Corruption at the community level is far smaller in scope than the abuse
of power at the gigantist centre. It also is easier to spot and address
in a timely manner, given that at the local scale people can practice
genuine, participative democracy, while having full access to the
information that concerns <em>their</em> public good.</p>
<p>We should not entertain a romantic view of humanity. Forget about the
chimera of the selfless technocrats who take care of all of our needs
while we blithely go on with our frivolous lifestyle. But also dismiss
the equally baseless belief in “the people” as an integral whole that
expresses a singular will; a will that the career reformist claims to
grasp and express in its fullest, purest way. These magnitudes of
people, nation, etc. are artificial constructs. Expedient
abstractions, whose treatment as actual beings all too often facilitates
gigantism’s quest for total control: to weaken people, to place them in
precarious conditions, divide them and disempower them by means of
displacement, solitude, and detachment from their natural and cultural
milieu.</p>
<p>Let us remain realistic, cynical: expect the worst and plan accordingly.
To go down the path of mainstream leftists is to throw to the wind
everything that history and everyday experience teaches us.</p>Protesilaos StavrouMainstream leftists have not realised that gigantism is bad in itself.Notes on the “Joe Rogan Experience” episode #13932019-12-07T00:00:00+00:002019-12-07T00:00:00+00:00https://protesilaos.com/politics/notes-joe-rogan-1393<p>I watched with great interest the entirety of the <em>Joe Rogan Experience</em>
episode that features James Wilks and Chris Kresser talking about the
documentary <em>The Gamechangers</em>. That is episode
<a href="http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/james-wilks-chris-kresser-gamechangers-debate">#1393</a>.
In this post I want to share some thoughts and observations with regard
to what I feel is an inconclusive debate.</p>
<p>In terms of appearances, James is the clear winner of the debate. He
was more prepared, had references for all his arguments and, most
importantly, found Chris to be downright wrong on a number of issues.</p>
<p>Chris’ own credibility started to fall apart when he admitted to not
know a particular research method: how to read a “forest plot”. This
made him look like a charlatan, which allowed James to attack him on a
personal level throughout the show.</p>
<p>When it comes to finding the truth though, we are ultimately interested
in the objective findings, not whether one side won over another in an
argument. Did we get a <em>definitive</em> answer? Or are we still unaware of
a host of things that call for further research?</p>
<p>Despite reigning supreme in the debate, James failed to prove the crux
of his claim that meat is bad for you. There can be inferences made out
of the available evidence, which may allow one to reach tentative
conclusions. “Tentative” is the key word. In the face of uncertainty
it is irresponsible to claim to know the truth with such unflinching
confidence.</p>
<p>The fact that James presents cutting-edge research does not, in and of
itself, mean that a definitive answer has been provided. It just proves
that we are in a process of searching for the truth; a process that will
continue for several years to come; a process that might need to be
reviewed in the future just as all such research programmes hitherto
have been subject to further evaluation.</p>
<p>The point is to stress the importance of remaining dubitative and
inquisitive.</p>
<p>I am yet to be convinced that James’ argument against industry-funded
research works in his favour. Yes, the establishment will do whatever
it takes to forward its stratagems, making them appear as objective
science. But why would this not also apply to the rising vegan
industry? Are there no powerful interests there, who have a clear
agenda?</p>
<p>It seems to me as a new small-scale, ecosystem-conscious farmer that
uses no pesticides and chemicals, and who only employs polyculture and
similar nature-aligned techniques, that there are oligopolistic
interests on both sides of the argument. Whether we are talking about
the omnivore industry or the vegan industry we are dealing with
corporations that follow the exact same capitalist principles. Their
telos is gigantism in that they all have incentives to maximise profit
for shareholders and to dominate their industry in pursuit of that end.
None of them has in mind the well-being of local communities or indeed
the ecosystem at-large.</p>
<p>Speaking from my experience in the field of economics, specifically with
regard to the economic crisis in the euro area, the numerous allusions
to authority that James made do not amount to anything more than an
appeal to the orthodoxy. Any heterodox view will of course not enjoy
the prestige of being represented at head of an Ivy League institution,
international organisations, etc. This does not mean that the
mainstream is correct just because it has the appeal of being
infallible. It just tells us which group is currently more influential
for reasons that are external to the theses themselves (social status,
exposure, etc.).</p>
<p>As a philosopher, I am concerned by the insistence on the micro scale of
nutrients. I find it reductionist, potentially narrowing the
scientist’s field of view, the scope of their inquiry. Is a fruit, a
vegetable, a piece of meat just the sum of its nutrients? Or are there
any emergent phenomena that can only be revealed by the interplay of
those micro elements in their specific combinations? Has the relevant
science ever considered the possibility that the human organism evolved
over the millennia to understand different constitutions of nutrients in
their given proportions as carrying a specific meaning which triggers
certain chains of events in the body?</p>
<p>What I mean by this <em>speculation</em> is that there may be an emergent
reality that goes unnoticed or understudied, due to the focus on the
micro foundations. Emergent phenomena cannot be understood by looking
at the elements in isolation: you need to check the system they
comprise—to study it as such.</p>
<p>My speculation, a hypothesis for further research if you will, basically
amounts to this: <em>does the human organism understand meat as meat,
vegetables as vegetables, fruits as fruits, etc. and react to them on a
case-by-case basis? Furthermore, do such possible triggers adapt to
combinations of these categories of food?</em> Because if they do, then the
emphasis on nutrients and the concomitant claims of taking supplements
or whatever hyper-processed equivalent would seem to not be beneficial
for our longer term health. Can we rule out the possibility that
nutritionism, the reductionist emphasis on nutrients, favours the vested
interests that produce supplements and, by extension, the vegan industry
as a whole?</p>
<p>Take the case of fake meat for instance. I am referring to products
that vegans consume that are made out of intensively processed soy beans
yet are made to taste like meat. Has there been any conclusive research
on the way the human organism reacts to the consumption of such
products? When eating fake meat, does the body understand it as meat,
as soy, or as an unknown? And what would possible misunderstandings or
false positives mean for one’s overall health over the longer term? I
do not think there can be any definite research on the matter, given the
relatively short time span such products have been in circulation.
Meaning that any claims on their much-touted benefits are based, at
least in part, on nothing but faith.</p>
<p>I do not purport to be an expert. I am just pointing at the fact that
James never offered any compelling evidence to support his main thesis
that meat is bad for you. He won the debate based on Chris’ evident
shortcomings and on the fact that he alluded to authority, conflating
the orthodoxy with the objective truth.</p>
<p>What I take from all this is that with all said and done we remain
uncertain. Meaning that we need to be calm and not draw far-reaching
conclusions based on the <em>imperfect information</em> we currently have at
our disposal.</p>
<p>If you want my personal opinion on meat consumption, I as a non-expert
who claims no authority, think that it is bad for you for the mere fact
that those animals are maltreated and malnourished. The same line of
reasoning, however, applies to the vegetables you eat, which are filled
with pesticides and chemicals, and which are produced in large monocrops
that destroy the ecosystem (e.g. threatening the survival of bees,
eroding the soil…). The same goes for the air you breath, especially in
the big cities. And so on.</p>
<p>We have piles of evidence on the egregious abuses of capitalist
interests in the food industry (capitalist interest in general). The
vegan corporations have no plan to upset this order. Their ambition is
to just place themselves in charge. Now I understand this is not the
topic of the debate, but it is all too convenient to focus on the false
narrative of “bad meat industry versus good vegans” while ignoring the
social, political, economic factors that contribute to the destruction
of nature.</p>Protesilaos StavrouComments on the need for further research following the debate between James Wilks and Chris Kresser about "The Gamechangers" documentary.