Sunday, December 31, 2017

The Privilege of Reading

I am privileged. I am white. I am male. I have the time and the ability to read. I've always read, but with each passing year I seem to read more, and more diversely.

It's a privilege to read. I am not constantly worrying about how I will pay for the basics of life - housing, food, health care. I am not worrying about how I will get to work since my car won't start or there is no nearby bus stop to get me there. I'm not seriously concerned about my health or that of those closest to me. I am not employed doing work that adds nothing to my life but a paycheck from which I scrimp by. Yes, in my past I have had to worry about all of those things. But even so I am white and male.

 I learned to read when I was small and I still have my vision - even corrected after cataract surgery two years ago. This ability to read and to explore fantasy or facts at my own pace and interest is a gift granted to me by a society that urged literacy and by parents and a school system that believed in the power of literacy. And since my mind is still hungry for wisdom, I search for it through the writings/thoughts of others who have been brave enough to offer their ideas up for others to consider.

For the past five years I have started keeping a ledger of books that I read each year. 2017 saw me complete 31 books, 7 of which were fiction. There were numerous others that I started and didn't finish. The complete list follows. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me
Bernie Sanders - Our Revolution
Andrew Bacevich - Washington Rules
Michael Connolly - The Burning Room (fiction)
David Duchovny - Bucky Fucking Dent (fiction)
Melvin McLeod - Mindful Politics
Chalmers Johnson - Dismantling the Empire
Jane Mayer - Dark Money
Tom Gallagher - The Primary Route: How the 99% Take on the MIC
Sheldon Whitehouse - Captured: the Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy
N.A. Swanberg - Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist
Thomas Mullen - The Last Town on Earth (fiction)
Mary Robinson - Everybody Matters
Kate Raworth - Doughnut Economics
Norman Thomas - The Choices
Michael Harrington - Toward a Democratic Left
Terry Gibbs - Why the Dalai Lama is a Socialist: Buddhism and the compassionate society
Thomas Shapiro - Toxic Inequality
J. Tom Webb - From Corporate Globalization to Global Cooperation
Clair Brown - Buddhist Economics
Naomi Klein - No Is Not Enough
Margaret Wheatley - Who Do We Choose to Be? 
Peter Frase - FOur Futures: Life After Capitalism
Stewart Lansley - A Sharing Economy
Chris Pavone - The Accident (fiction)
Chalmers Johnson - Nemesis: the Last Days of American Republic
John Le Carre - The Night Manager (fiction)
John Grisham - The Chamber (fiction)
Ron Forisamo - American Oligarchy
David Ignatius - A Body of Lies (fiction)
Jeffrey Sachs - Building the New American Economy

Some of these have found their way into this blog but many have not. I picked up four more new books of the new book shelf at MSU Library last week, three of which I have begun and my family added to the pile at christmas with a fresh pile. And I will finish within a week an important work I stumbled upon on the used book sale at the public library "The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon" by Mary Kaldor and Shannon Beebe that I'm pretty certain will make the blog in the coming weeks.

I share this because ideas matter. There is no doubt that who I am and what I think about the world and how I choose to engage with it are different than at the end of 2016 in no small part because of the collective influence of these books I have read. Of course I am shaped by many other things, including all the non-book material I also read.

But the end of this year has me reflecting on just what a privilege it is to read as a way to shape who we become. Margaret Wheatley's book above speaks to that unfinished part of our own individual development that we shape by our choices. Choices that include what we read. I also recognize that each reader brings to the material they read their own constructs about the world and their place in it, that shapes what they absorb from that reading. It has been my intention in this blog over the years of sharing my privilege of reading with others who may find something in it that affirms "Who We Choose to Be?" as Wheatley's title nicely articulates. And more grandly to keep ideas alive so as in the words of Milton Friedman, 

"Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. 

I know what the reading list looks like as I begin 2018 tomorrow, but I am sure that when I compile it in 365 days, there will be many surprises and I will be further shaped by what I read. And that is a real privilege for which I am forever grateful. May we share ideas that may bring about more  Peace and Justice in 2018!!!

The Possibilities Are There!!!

Love and Peace,

Terry - a Possibilitator

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

You Can Bank On It

It is pretty difficult to make a non-partisan argument around the recent tax code changes adopted by the Republican Party which owns the government from top to bottom. For it is entirely a partisan idea and decision. Not that the Democratic Party has been the beacon of progressive tax reform.

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Ron Formisano, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Kentucky indicts the entire 'political class' with our current dilemma. In his new, but seldom read book, American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class (University of Illinois Press, 2017), he unleashes the muckraking style of the last era of robber barons by famed journalists Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, C. Wright Mills, etc. Through 210 pages of lucid prose supported by another 60 pages of detailed footnotes, Formisano lays bare the corruption endemic to the political class and how its capture of our American Society has established a fully formed oligarchy. For more on the 'capture'  component see also Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's Captured I reviewed earlier this year.

Formisano doesn't just pick on the elected officials and the jurists but the corporate heads, higher education administrators, and even the heads of nonprofits. Of course the grease in the system is money and wealth. The increasing gap between the bottom and top has been expedited by the political class which has no real ongoing connection to the middle and lower classes. Even more telling for Formisano is the capture of the economy by the financial sector. This is a growing concern even for conservative institutions like the International Monetary Forum which noted in a recent report cited by Forisamo that "excessive financialization of the U.S. economy reduces GDP growth by 2% every year...a massive drag in the economy -- some $320 billion per year." (p.194)

And the gap between the rich and the rest of us grows as well as Bloomberg reported today "World's Wealthiest Became $1 Trillion Richer in 2017"





Page after page demonstrates how even persons entering government or nonprofits with good public intentions get absorbed into the political class. The sharing of board members, the lobbyist favors, inside relational contracting, shared vacations and junkets all corrupt any pretension of democratic principle. He notes that while both Trump and Sanders spoke to the idea of corruption of power,  Trump of course has blatantly turned over the executive branch to these same members of the oligarchy. While the book does read in the style of Tarbell, Steffens, Mills, Sinclair, and more recently recently deceased political scientist Chalmers Johnson, he does not offer us any roads out of this mess.



One direction from a recent book, which likewise probably has equally few readers, is offered by K. Sabeel Rahman. In his recent Democracy Against Domination, Rahman, a former Rhodes Scholar who studied economics, political theory and law at Harvard and Oxford  teaches law at Brooklyn Law School. Rahman's style is more turgid and aimed primarily  at other academics I suspect but his argument is fresh and worth pondering.

"This progressive economic vision suggests a radically different approach to financial regulation.  The book argues that our prevailing approach to TBTF [too big to fail] finance relies too heavily on a faith in insulated, neutral, top-down regulation by experts, despite the risks of industry lobbying or the complexities of trying to manage the modern financial system.  Instead, the book suggests that a better approach would place stricter, structural limits on TBTF financial firms, whether by “breaking up the banks” or by regulating finance as a kind of public utility.  Drawing on the latest thinking in economics and law, the book suggests how we need to revamp our financial stability regime."

He sees the failure of leaving the regulating the economy and the corporate sector to 'experts', for which I assume he would include himself, and calls for a much deeper and vibrant model of democracy. I believe his argument on this particular failure is well done - this attack on the "let the experts rule". He shows the underbelly of this flawed approach, but not as poignantly as Sen. Whitehouse did in his book. But his reasoned call for a deeper democracy to address the domination of the 'political class' as Forisamo names it is stronger than what  either Whitehouse or Forisamo offers.


Still I failed to see a systemic plan of specific options to address the flaws. Here's where I would point to the Austrian Economist Christian Felber's remedies he laid out in his 2016 Change Everything: Creating an Economy for the Common Good that I shared in 2016. While the piling  evidence makes crystal clear to anyone wanting to look at it that our economic system as run by the' 'plutocracy' Formisano shines his piercing light on is cascading us towards a twin abyss of increasing inequality and climate destabilization.

Sunrise Movement

While the path out of this is a bit murky, the recent tax law disaster is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. One promising approach before us in 2018 is following the lead of the youth led Sunrise Movement. One of their suggested strategies is to approach candidates for office at all levels and ask them to pledge not to accept money from the oil, gas, and coal lobbies. I would add the financial industry.

It is our youth who will have to lead us out of this mess as they are the ones that will be forced to live with the worst of what we have sown.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Outrageous!!!

"Outrageous -  Grossly offensive to decency or morality" (American Heritage College Dictionary) 4th ed. 2002, p.989.



Outrageous



This appears to be the appropriate word to describe the tax system bludgeoning recently performed by Republicans (Democrats and Independents were given little time to read, let alone participate in the development of the proposals). To suggest that what greatly reduces taxes for the wealthiest among us in far higher mounts than for the bulk of us is tax "reform", clearly indicates that those who support its adoption are either tools or stooges for the wealthy and powerful. This clearly fills the wealthiest's already well-filled pockets. This so they can use the money to gain even more control over our government that shapes the rules we live by.

This wholesale sellout of our democracy by those elected shows that they really don't represent the bulk of US citizens. The stench of the process by which both houses of Congress worked largely behind closed doors, with little to no public hearings, underlines their lack of interest in democracy. Once elected to join this prestigious club, they are by and large set for a life without economic need, and therefore need to care zilch for those who aren't so fortunate.

That the sprinkling of some small favors to those in the middle and below have expiration dates set for after these sycophants leave office, makes the stench even more offensive. One doesn't need a college degree to recognize that the promise of a faster growing economy and the trickle down benefits promised to those hoping for some crumbs off the table, are a myth. For thirty plus years of this vacuous economic myth being hoisted on us, we see no significant economic growth, while that which did occur has driven us to the highest level of inequality in our history. The robber barons must be jealous.

Nothing shows this failure of supply-side, trickle-down, "voodoo economics" like the numbers. This report, nicely summarized by Sam Pizzigati  here, is just out from noted economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman who study inequality, shows the lie of who benefits from this chicanery. Please share this will all who doubt, especially Republican legislators!!



The demise of the estate tax itself they aim for clearly only benefits the wealthiest 0.2 percent. That's right. The current estate tax does not impact any of the 99.8 per cent of us.

Of course these same legislators waive their concern with exploding the deficit now which all the studies forecast. Deficits only come into play for them when they want to starve a program that helps others. Their bottom line is a total dismantling of government, drowning it in the bathtub after they have starved it of funds to support the public good. Perhaps the most irritating aspect of this despicable act is that the majority of these bullies cloak themselves in a Christian conservative cloak, that is belied by their actions that support unfettered war (oh to be sure money for military will only go up as the recent ante-up passed by both houses exceeded even the Trump administration's request) and enrichment of their wealthy supporters.

This is a dark time in our history. May those of us who recognize the greed unleashed with this administration and Congress, endeavor to unwind it in the weeks and months ahead. Let every elected official that represents you, know how you feel. For now we still have elections. If we don't act, soon, don't be surprised if those too are taken away.

For a little uplift if you've read this depressingly far, click on this brilliant ten minute talk that opened a recent public policy institute for Quakers. We should gather hope from the fire and faith of this young leader

Saturday, November 25, 2017

From the Beginning

It was five years ago today I transferred my meanderings since the mid 90s into this blog. 246 blog entries preceded this one with another dozen or so that never got past the draft stage. Probably many of the 246 should have stayed as drafts. So the occasion caused me to go back and look at what I must have been thinking then. Surprisingly, I believe it's still pertinent.(see below)

The number of visits to my blog is slightly north of 75,000 or an average of 300 per entry. But the vast majority of entries are way under that average. The blog entry that received the most views has been the one I did in May of 2016 that received almost 2,000 reads - For What It's Worth that delved into the role of sports in our culture. But I believe all these numbers are inflated by Russian hackers. While the MUSE has not visited as often in 2017, I'll continue to share some interesting insights and possibilities as I come across them in case they can help you make sense of your own place in this quickly changing time. Thanks to all those folks who pass on a supportive note or a challenging question now and then. This all helps me think out loud, which is really what this blog allows me to do.

Post-Thanksgiving Hunches November 25, 2012


What is possible in a world that changes at amazing speed? From the cells in our body to decisions made in hallowed halls of government to the shift of winds and just the smallest chance of who you meet when, the future is highly uncertain.These young people pictured above I saw last summer in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso have all kinds of possibilities when they slide out of the womb, pre-wired. But simply because of where they are born, grow up and live, those possibilities are quite different from my own.

That being stated it is also clear that despite the constraints of poverty and  access to  fewer opportunities, they can be loved and cherished by their kin and neighbors as much if not more than those raised in more affluent surroundings. They may well learn more easily than I how we humans are dependent upon the natural world and intrinsically part of it. They may better appreciate and savor the power of relationships to sustain and to develop our possibilities. 

But what does it say of our time, that despite the vast storehouses of knowledge acquired and passed on, despite our great riches, we see more people fighting for the basics to survive, while some are so wealthy they spend more on a meal than the entire annual food budget for others? If we were starting for scratch, would we construct a system that grows the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, while simultaneously unraveling the ecosystems that sustain life? I don't think so. Yet the evidence for growing inequality and ecological decline is stunning. Just as stunning is the paucity of discussion, let alone action, to address the system rules that are accelerating the growing disparity of opportunity for both current and future generations.

Having an idea that something is 'possible' is the first and necessary step towards making it happen. If we convince ourselves that something is not possible, we all but guarantee that prophecy. Each of us, regardless of where, is born with great possibility that can be fed, nurtured, awakened to or 'enabled' by the family, the environment, and the social-political-economic systems that we create. A just world should not only allow each person to develop their capabilities (Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate), but it should strive to create the conditions that enable that development,  not at the expense of others or the natural world that provides life's essentials, or the possibility of future generations to develop their own capabilities.

If we were to design a system to do that from scratch, what might it look like? It certainly wouldn't be the one that have driven us to an 'inequality cliff'. This feeble blog will be attempting to share 'hunches' of how we might recalibrate our fundamental human systems (social, political, economic) to move us all closer to a human family where everyone gets a fair chance to develop their capabilities while living in balance with our natural world and the ecosystems that sustain us. These are simply meant as reasonable 'possibilities' - not guaranteed, not certain, but possible. I will borrow rapaciously from others I bump into along the journey -- those that shed a new light or provide a different angle or perspective, that might have us see a possibility previously blind to us. The recent understandings pervading the sciences of the 'emergent' properties of so much we cannot yet fathom in this complex universe, might offer us some humility that much more is possible than we have been led to believe.

I sense very deeply, incredible possibilities to become a better human family than we have been to date. As Martin Luther King, Jr. noted: "The arc of the moral universe is long,but it bends towards justice." I believe in that possibility, but our current dominant (social, political, and economic) systems need some changing if we plan to get there. Let's consider the possibilities.


Sunday, November 19, 2017

A Sinkhole That Is Pulling Us All Down

While most local papers probably did not splash the news on their front page or headline their evening news last week, our largely bought Congress just gave the Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) a sizable raise in thanks for their contributions and lobbying pursuits. President Trump's initial budget request for the Pentagon was for a sizable $54 billion increase for the military last February. This proposed hike to $668 billion, while sizable by any measuring stick, was not enough for our Congressional members (with rare exception). This past week in their rush to show their true patriotism (cough, cough) they upped the ante by a most generous $32 billion taking it to an even $700 billion.  Of course, they will now all be able to tout how they are strong on defense as they hit the campaign trail. But put this in the perspective of the new budget proposal as the National Priority Project just did and your eyes might water as we invest in permanent war.

Image result for bumper sticker pentagon bake sale

Of course, when they dream this stuff up they aren't thinking of budget balancing or deficits or least of all the robbery of our treasury so that we can't rebuild our infrastructure, care for our veterans or seniors, provide better education and health care and develop our communities with renewable energy and other green technologies that make living in the future better for everyone. Never mind either that those types of investments in real human security produce way more jobs per $1 billion dollar of investment than does equal money spent on the military.

But perhaps this isn't enough reason to balk at suggestions from MIC lobbyists to throw more money into weapon systems.For any willing to follow any of the many who shine the light on military waste and corruption there is plenty more reason to plug the leaks of our tax dollars into their coffers. William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and one of those who have toiled for years to follow the money in the MIC showed in a post last week how some of this game is played. In this piece he lays out the influence peddling in the nuclear weapons arena as just one example. To get your blood pressure up a little more read any of his earlier works or reports to see how corrupt the system is.

Center for International Policy



Or from a slightly different angle take a look at a report last week from the dedicated folks at the Project on Government Oversight. This highlights how even when we empty our purses for the Pentagon,  requesting how those dollars are performing is a bit too much to ask. The fact that the Pentagon has escaped any complete audit for decades might give you a hint. A few of those crazy (yes bipartisan members) have asked that such an audit be required before we hand over any more money.

Image result for project on government oversight

The almost total capture of the Congress by the myth of more military spending means a more secure world should be easy to show. 16 years of war in Afghanistan and thousand of American lives lost, which are dwarfed on the losses sustained by the Afghan people, have made the country and its people no better off. Trillions of dollars for regime change in Iraq (or was it weapons of mass destruction - seems like we did the mass destruction with our relentless bombing)  in Iraq destroyed the country.

Yet, each budget cycle the relentless, and may I suggest stupid, belief that only adding more force will solve the problem is a pompous American belief. You don't need to believe me. Read what military people themselves say. Three I look to are Andrew Bacevich, William Astore, and Danny Sjursen.

Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr.jpgImage result for william astoreImage result for danny sjursen

But let me suggest the sinkhole of military spending is about to take an exponential leap based upon recent actions by the MIC in partnership with their key friends in Congress. A report in last week's trade publication for all things military, Defense News, gives a glimpse of what's to come - "Congress to MDA: Prepare for Spaced-Base Missile Attacks" . Yes, that's right - Congress is calling the shots on this, not the Pentagon. Earlier this year I saw hints of this when I noticed a new piece of legislation co-sponsored by my own Senator Gary Peters. A recent addition to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Peters and his conservative colleagues propose and elaborate on a space based military presence in their S.1196 "Advancing America's Missile Defense Act of 2017".

It's clear to this reader that the authors of this bill drink from the "technological optimism" fountain. Those that drink from this fountain believe that whatever ails us, there is a technological solution. And not only are they sure of its success, they are unencumbered by consideration of any 'unintended consequences' or what economists refer to externalities. Neither of course do they consider, to borrow another economics phrase, 'lost opportunity costs'. There can be little doubt that these grand plans come from the many millions the MIC invests in lobbying. For an excellent consideration of concerns with 'technological optimism' read economist Robert Costanza's provocative look at the future through various lenses in "Four Visions of the Century Ahead: Will it be Stark Trek, Ecotopia, Big Government of Mad Max" written on the eve of this century.

This bill has no price tag of course. But once we are shown that we can't live without it, to oppose it will mean you are 'soft on defense'. The F-35 boondoggle, perhaps the Pentagon's largest cost overrun of all time (and the planes are still not fully operational) has parts of it built in moire than 400 of the 435 Congressional districts. That's not accidental. If a Congress person argues to cut funding for a failed program, the threat to local jobs has them rethink that originally prudent consideration. The MIC knows this.

That notion is alive as a perfect example in my own beloved state of Michigan. Here all but one member of the Michigan delegation signed on to a letter to the Pentagon to select Ft. Custer, near Battle Creek in southwestern Michigan as home to a new Ground Based Missile Defense System. Battle Creek area like many in Michigan can use a hand, and Ft. Custer is underutilized. But this proposed $3.2+ billion project was not requested by the Pentagon. A Union of Concerned Scientists report highlighted other problems with the addition of a third ground based missile defense site (existing sites are located in Alaska and California). Number one being that the likelihood of it working is questionable. Oh, and two, the Pentagon hasn't asked for additional sites.

This is a textbook example of how MIC works. First ingredient is fear. You absolutely need to be afraid of some possibility to occur for which the weapon system must be developed and deployed.. Since the West coast already has two of these sites, of questionable effectiveness - to perhaps save us from missiles launched from N. Korea, China, Russia or Pakistan, now we need protection from the Iranians, who no doubt think that if they launch a nuclear missile (they don't have), they could possible take out all of our missiles scattered around the world, many on moving submarines. Once the fear is established then you need Congress to bring home the bacon, or pork. So the race is on to see who can win the prize.

Now as a Congressional member it may seem like a worthy effort to secure the missile system for your backyard, but a wise soul might entertain some second thoughts. If you really want to bring jobs to your community there are a few problems with this. The major component of the system is, you guessed it, missiles. These are made by our friends at Boeing. So they won't be built here. Then there is the concern that money invested in military doesn't produce  near as many jobs for dollar of investment as does education, health care, infrastructure or green technologies. All of which would make the world a bit better off. And all of which become lost opportunity costs if the money is diverted to these weapons systems. But then, there is the fact that the chances of these expensive systems actually working in a real event are slim. Seems like a high-risk, low profit investment.

And we really haven't even discussed perhaps the biggest elephant in the room - outright military waste. The Pentagon did a study over five years and found $125 Billion in waste. It tried to hide the report but it was just last December by the Washington Post. One can only wonder how much additional waste might be identified with an audit of all of its operations including more than 800 military bases scattered around the world.

I don't believe in simply criticizing without offering alternatives, or in my parlance "possibilities". So here is one such possibility. At the end of the Cold War there was an expected 'peace dividend' that we never received. There was talk and consideration for a brief time of something called "economic conversion". The idea was to convert existing facilities to non-military community development opportunities so as not to disrupt the closure of a facility on a local community. The emphasis was also on decent employment for those who would otherwise lose jobs from the closure. Base closure has become almost impossible, largely because of the impact on the community and no civilian  reinvestment in the community. Legislators fight fiercely to protect their community regardless of the overall benefit to the country.

Providing economic conversion funds that are managed locally by communities will relieve the Congress of fighting for programs none of us need and do not make us safer. We should reduce funding for the military and shift it towards conversion that builds stronger communities with emphasis on green technologies, enhanced education and health care, and other local infrastructure improvements. All of which create more jobs. That's where we'll find real security. Now we need to elect members of Congress who can look beyond the paid lobbyists and seek out real alternatives to war and militarism. Otherwise we'll all be sliding into that sinkhole.



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Sunday, October 22, 2017

PIctures worth thousands of words

The use of whiteboard presentations, especially for short presentations  seems very useful in getting the gyst of a speaker's intent. Even more so than Powerpoint presentations. I first stumbled on one a few years ago when Sir Kenneth Robinson condense a longer speech into an 11 minute whiteboard presentation that was just brilliant!! When I shared it through this blog I had many many people email me their similar positive experience. Changing Paradigms is a classic eye-opener and thoughtful look at education. 

RSA 21st century enlightenment

This was rolled on on a website from RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce)  whose stated mission is
 " to enrich society through ideas and action." 

Their Animates series does exactly that. Changing Paradigms by Sir Kenneth Robinson was first crafted as video that runs just over 11 minutes. You can see how it is both "full of ideas" and the use of the whiteboard, you get the feeling of action.

RSA has also created a series of "Shorts" for those of us with less time to commit to learning. So Sir Ken Robinson's longer talk summarized in "Changing Paradigm" gets even more succinct in the RSA Short, "Finding Your Element" in less than 3 minutes.

I have fallen out of the practice of revisiting the RSA Animate's website, but drifted back there the other day. Here are three really good shorts. It's not to say the others are equally good, but I looked at these but not all of others.

Kate Raworth, whose recent Doughnut Economics is a widely read and acclaimed look at our economic system and some practical/sustainable alternatives has an RSA Short, entitled , "Kate Raworth on Growth" which preceded her more lengthy book. In less than 3 and a half minutes she deftly explains the problem with a focus on economic growth, so dominant in mindsets of our elected officials and too many economists.

In a not too dissimilar vein the "What is a Universal Basic Income?" the animation makes a very quick and clear explanation of this idea of growing interest around the world and which I have blogged about earlier, in slightly more than 2 minutes. 

Akin to Sir Kenneth Robinson's work John Lloyd's "On Knowledge" is a very brief but thoughtful look at how and what we value as knowledge and how it affects our lives. 

The most offering uploaded about a week ago is three plus minute synopsis of Simon Sinek's thoughtful look at "Intensity vs. Consistency"

All of these animates are based on longer talks that are available as videos on the site. Most of which have not been made into the whiteboard animates summarized here.

Nonetheless, you might want to visit this site once in awhile to be stimulated to think about the world a little differently. Keeping ideas alive.... the possibilities are endless.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Guns, More Guns - Will We Ever Have Enough?

We were away in Britain when news of the horrific massacre in Las Vegas occurred. We were actually approached on the street in the small Cornish town of Fowey by an older fellow who overheard us chatting and noted our North American accent. He wanted us to try and explain to him how it is that Americans are so crazy about guns. The impromptu conversation also digressed into Trump, Teresa May, health care…

I think our reply to his initial query was less than sufficient. However, the following day British journalist Gary Younge who lives in the US and also does a column for The Nation, penned a penetrating response to that same question in The Guardian. It was so good I referred other Brits to it in subsequent discussions we had there before we came home a few days ago. It deserves much wider review.

But I don't need to tell any reader of this blog that we are bathing in a culture of violence. Younge talks about gun violence but he also notes the larger culture of violence as manifested in American exceptionalism. We returned home to see that the U.S. Senate had approved a military spending budget of a record $700 billion. As a culture we throw money at the military (not the veterans who have served) without regard for what we buy. Of course the powerful interests, especially the weapons makers and hawks will be the first to scream when an impoverished person grabs a little extra benefit for themselves or  their family, but not a whisper when it's the Goliath doing the thievery of the public purse.

Fortunately, there are a few dedicated organizations that try to help us see the waste and fraud, not to mention the foolish expenditures that come from military spending. In just the past week we see the Project on Government Oversight reporting on the $20-40 billion waste on the F-35. Or even more dramatic the many holes of waste shared by William Hartung in his piece last week for TomDispatch. Also on Tom Dispatch we hear from military veterans Danny Sjursen and Andrew Bacevich each making visible more tales of military fiascoes. 

Yet, if one was to follow our elected senators and representatives public comments or the mainstream media we would rarely ever hear a mention of such public ripoffs. Instead, we see a  military spending bill loaded with perks for each state and district, brazen enough to request items the Pentagon hasn't even asked for. The ground based missile defense system expansion and new satellite war toys are among the latest boondoggles our elected leaders are trying to bring to their home states and districts.

It's not good policy. But it is a reward to the many contributions the military industrial complex has showered on the Senate and the House members, not to mention the millions spent on lobbying them once they get elected. Without a strong citizen outcry, this game will continue with the rules concocted by those with the power and money. Time to get vocal. As the old chant from the 1950's urged, "Better Active Than Radioactive."

Call your Washington Reps and tell them to cut the military waste and boondoggles and use the money to help our neighbors who are hurting from climate catastrophes, poverty, and savage inequality.


Tuesday, August 22, 2017

A Farewell to Arms? Surely You Jest!

As I arrived home last night after a meeting and having been serenaded on the way first, by the end of Mr. Trump’s Afghanistan speechand then by NPR’s commentators, I realized that I was more disheartened by the phalanx of commentators than by Trump’s final words. An additional irony for me was the reflection that here is yet another Trump campaign promise that goes to the wayside, while his loyal supporters still genuflect at his persona. I believe he was the candidate who said he would not send our men and women overseas to fight a winless war, especially in Afghanistan. What a crazy world.

But back to my initial disheartenment – the NPR commentators. How disappointing that there was no one there to challenge the ever present military approach to conflict. It is as if there is no alternative. Every voice I heard, I could have missed one, addressed the military measures as if no others existed. Outside military personnel like Gen. David Petraeus was given voice, but not a voice to be heard that might challenge the notion of American military power as the only tool that could possibly resolve the quagmire we have nurtured for decades.

That someone who so brazenly brags about draining the swamp could both so totally surround himself with military minds and then cave in to their call for more military deployments and spending, is hard to swallow. Surely we have failed to heed the words of the former general and commander-in-chief, Dwight Eisenhower who warned us of the takeover of the military-industrial-complex.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

 Almost the entire Congress is in their embrace, fed by their political contributions and the fear that they might be called “unpatriotic” if they fail to support every military expenditure or use proposed – especially if it might bring a bit of that greasy bacon to their own state or district. Each member of Michigan’s delegation to Congress, Democrat and Republican has signed on for support of an additional ground-based missile defense system to be located at Ft. Custer near Battle Creek. This is a system not requested by the Pentagon but driven by a Congress that believes that investments in technology are the best way to handle conflict. This Star Wars type of system already in place on the West Coast, is not even certain to work if those ‘crazy’ North Koreans should attack us.

The House recently passed a Pentagon budget beyond what Mr. Trump and his military minds have requested, and the Senate Armed Services Committee (our own Sen. Gary Peters is a new member) has passed their version that tops even that at nearly $700 billion for 2018. Analyst William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy, has written recently that the real military spending exceeds $1 Trillion per year. Both President Obama and Mr. Trump want to spend an additional $1 trillion on upgrading our nuclear weapons. Weapons we should be working to rid ourselves and the other nuclear powers from having.

While Sen. Peters and others in the Michigan delegation might try to sell the Ft. Custer idea as an economic boon – the project would reportedly spend more than $3 billion – a sizable hunk of that goes to our friends at Boeing to build the missiles. Surely Battle Creek deserves some economic stimulus, but how about some investments that improve the local infrastructure and benefit everyone – upgrade health care, highways, Internet service, education, or renewable energy production. If we didn’t spend our money on military mayhem  and waste $125 billion by Pentagon’s own glance, we could surely improve the lives in Battle Creek and other communities.

We rely on the media to help us find our way in an increasing complex world. Limiting our view of the world as a military one with an insatiable appetite does none of us any favors. Saner voices, like Eisenhower’s have been calling for alternatives to violence for decades. Those voices are increasingly needing to be heard and heeded if the world we bequeath to our children and grandchildren is to be a livable one. There are alternatives to violence and we must push vigorously to pursue them. The media should help us explore those possibilities before it is too late.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

A Prohibition Whose Time is Now

On July 7th, the UN passed the Nuclear Prohibition Treaty. A treaty the US will not join any time soon, just as it hasn’t joined many other global agreements including:

·         Convention on Cluster Munitions
·         Ottawa Treaty (Mine ban)
·         International Criminal Court
·         Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (Signed, but withdrew in 2002)

As one might expect this UN action by the majority of civilized states goes largely ignored by the press and politicians in the U.S. With President Obama pushing to spend $1 trillion to upgrade our nuclear weapons capacity when we should be reducing it, is the epitome of insanity. Mr. Trump and his hawkish team is likely to up the ante even more given his first budget that asked for an additional $54 billion for military war chest. One of our liberal(?) Senators is a proud co-sponsor of new legislation that will take missile defense systems, literally into the stratosphere – both operationally and financially.

 from the National Priorities Project - go to their site to see the answer

The House passed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018 before they left for recess two weeks ago upping Mr. Trump’s $54 billion military spending increase by an additional $29 billion. The Senate Armed Services has upped that by an additional $2 billion in what looks like a bidding war to see who’s the most patriotic hawk. There is so much money floating around the Pentagon and associated departments and private contractors that no one even knows where all the cash is. The F-35 is a classic case of a boondoggle that keeps getting more and more expensive and still isn’t in the air. But Pentagon waste is accepted. There is no audit of the Pentagon. As Eisenhower warned, the Military-Industrial-Complex will gobble up money and power from the citizenry, with almost no one challenging the fiscal restraint (Sen. Warren? Sen. Sanders?). Of course, the combined robbing of funds from programs for human well-being and diplomacy and foreign assistance are rarely discussed. And the beat goes on. [see the People's Budget from the Progressive Caucus for an alternative - hint the lowest of three budgets from the graphic above]

That’s why small steps like the Nuclear Prohibition Treaty help put the military juggernaut in the spotlight. A terrific explanation of the treaty and the U.S. position was published in the Washington Post on Monday is an important read “The U.N. Just Passed a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. That Actually Matters.” By Nina Tannenwald,  director of the International Relations Program at Brown University and the author of “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons.”


Without growing and sustained pressure from citizens, Congress will not stand up to the military-industrial-complex, they become part of it. To learn more visit:

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Not Capitalism- But What Else?

What follows are excerpts from two books I've recently finished. The first I pulled from my own bookshelf long ago purchased at a used book sale, but never read. It was referenced in something I read earlier this year. The book was written in 1969 and I was reading it simultaneously while I was reading another book written the same year. I blogged about them bother earlier here, but I was only part way through this one. While each excerpt can stand pretty much on its own, the result of the whole picture is more important to this feeble mind. thought that connects these two disparate

The unity of thought that connects these two disparate books is what I found remarkable as I read them simultaneously. The excerpts might not show that as clearly as reading either or both tomes would. Each is worth a read and maybe these excerpts will whet an appetite or two to try them. They have much to say about our own time and possible paths forward. The spirit of both of these writers is embedded in a commitment to democracy with a small 'd'. There isn't even a smattering of arrogance in their writing but of the possibilities for a better world if we would only reflect on what we truly value as a human family on a finite planet.

Toward a Democratic Left: A Radical Program for a New Majority

Excerpts from Michael Harrington’s Toward a Democratic Left: A Radical Program for a New Majority (1969)

The military-industrial complex bases itself on a permanent war economy and a huge military establishment. This enormous vested interest in annihilation, Eisenhower feared, could subvert the democratic process in matters of war and peace. (p. 77)

In his Farewell Address, President Eisenhower had been particularly alarmed by the possibility that the military-industrial complex would come to control education. He was concerned about ‘the prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment’ and the possibility that ‘public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific, technological elite.’ In part Eisenhower’s fears have been justified. As Clark Kerr testified – perhaps too candidly from the point of view of his own career – in The Uses of the University, Federal grants and big business needs are playing an increasing role in determining the shape and quality of higher education in America. But now with the social-industrial complex, the danger becomes more pervasive, for it extends to the kindergarten and the Job Corps camp as well as to the graduate seminar. There are those … who would make the knowledge industry the servant of the educators. But there seem to be many more who follow the jubilant philosophy expressed in the Wall Street Journal articles: that schools shall now be designed to fit machines rather than the other way around. (pp. 88-9)

Washington has a role to play at every part of this process [research and development]. Since it would be political suicide to admit that the state is thus accommodating itself to the goals of the corporations, the exact opposite is proclaimed. This is done by defining the society’s purpose so as to make it identical with that of the big firms. It is therefore a national article of faith that any increase in the Gross National Product is good even when it takes the form of carcinogenic cigarettes or noisome automobiles. This creed provides ample justification for Federal support of just about anything the private sector desires, but it does so in the name of the nation rather than of business. (p. 104)

The abolition of poverty and racism, the reconstruction of urban life, and all the rest simply do not make economic sense within the corporate calculus. And therefore these very fine and educated people will unwittingly perpetuate the very chaos which offends their sensibilities. (p. 110)

As I noted earlier, the [Automation] Commission replied to the president that, if all productivity gains from 1965 to 1985 were taken in the form of leisure, the nation could choose between a twenty-two-hour week, a twenty-seven-week year, or retirement at thirty-eight years of age. (p. 113)

[Here Harrington offers a possible approach]
The President shall be obliged to make to the nation a periodic Report on the Future. The report shall project the basic choices and different futures before the country and estimate both the economic and social costs of alternative programs. It shall specify which groups stand to make particular gains from the various courses of action. The report shall state a Social Consumption Criterion which will clearly measure the impact of every department of public expenditure on the social standard of living. In particular, it shall explain exactly how the major areas of spending are contributing toward the abolition of poverty and racial discrimination. 
     The report shall be presented to a Joint Congressional Committee on the Future, which shall hold public hearings on it. Staff funds will be provided to any significant group of legislators, whether they are on the committee or not, so that they can write a substitute report or propose major amendments to the President’s draft. The House and Senate will then debate, and vote on, the general economic and social orientation of the American government during the next period. (I am deliberately vague about the time span. Whether it should be gear to a four year Presidential political cycle or to a period determined by economic considerations hardly need to be settled now. The important point is that the report’s horizon be set in the middle distance where historic options begin to take shape. (pp. 114-5)

Examples abound in Washington of academic debates over statistics which are the façade of group conflict. The AFL-CIO definitions of unemployment usually yield higher percentages than the department of Labor, which in turn, takes a grimmer view of joblessness than does the National Association of Manufacturers. The scholars involved in this fight are not dishonest, but they do have special angles of vision. (As I wrote in The Other America, in 1959 Fortune magazine and I used the same income figures and they were happy about how many Americans were rich and I was outraged about the number who were poor.) (p. 116)

Above all the democratic Left must incarnate a vision of the future. America’s unplanned planning has been rigorously guided by commercial priorities. Unless there is a conscious movement in a new direction, this society will continue publicly to fund its catastrophes, though in the next period it will do so more in the name of social industrialism than in that of Adam Smith. (p. 130)

The United States could be building a full-fledged meritocracy in which intellectual ability and competitive drive determine a person’s social and economic position. If that is the case, then there is a grim future in store for the winners and the losers. Those who achieve will do so by turning their brains into a salable commodity.  Those who fall behind – and they will be disproportionately recruited from the black and white poor, though no fault of their own – will have greater feelings of resentment and inferiority than those at the bottom of past societies. Their Humiliating plight will be theoretically a consequence of their innate deficiencies and not of the structure of the economy. In fact, as Chapter 3 showed, their educational and cultural deficiencies will have been cruelly imposed on them by the white and well-off. But the hurt will be done so discreetly that even the victims will think it is their fault.
     The most immediate tactic for countering these tendencies is to raise the intelligence of the entire society. What is called intelligence is, in any case, to a considerable degree, a social product. At the most brutal level, starvation during a child’s early years will physically affect his brain and maim him for life, a savaging of the human spirit which was documented  in Mississippi as recently as 1967 and which certainly persists to this moment. Providing a decent diet for everyone in the society would among other things, put an end to this tragedy. More subtly, increasing levels of health and the standard of living and widening the range of experience have already made the IQs of middle-class schools higher than those of the slums. Thus, one consequence of programs for full employment and decent housing will be to make people, and particularly those who are now systematically denied the decencies of life, smarter. (p. 145)

India provides and even better example of the profitable uses of American generosity. This particular case grows out of the fact that there is money to be made in the starvation market. Forbes magazine – which advertises itself as a ‘capitalist tool’ – headlined the cover story on the March 1, 1966 issue ‘Feeding the World’s Hungry Millions: How it Will Mean Billions for U.S. Business.’ The American oil companies, Forbes said in its article, had got the message and were embarking on fertilizer production. Then there came this frank and revealing anecdote: ‘For a long time, India insisted that it handle all the distribution of fertilizer product in that country by U.S. companies and that it also set the price. Standard of Indiana understandably refused to accept these conditions. AID put food shipments to India on a month-to-month basis until the Indian government let Standard of India market its fertilizer at its own price.’ And so it was that, in the 1967 AID proposals, the request for $50 million for fertilizer for India was a ‘tied’ grant and the stated goal of encouraging private enterprise – which is to say American oil corporations – in this area. (pp. 170-1)

It is not just, as has been seen, that these grants are often an indirect and subtle subsidy to American businessmen. More than that, the hungry of the globe have been paying larger and larger tribute each year in order to be helped. The UN Economic Survey of the world during 1965 put the matter quite succinctly. In that year the self-help efforts of the Third World resulted in an increase in saving (that is to say, of the surplus they were able to deduct from their meager and sometimes starving, consumption) of 6 percent. But at the same time there was an outflow to the advanced countries in interest and profit that went up by 10 percent. As a result, the UN concluded, the developing countries were sending back more than half the funds they receive! (p. 172-3)

The oil industry, then, acts according to the classic Leninist scenario. It profiteers in the Third World, supports local reaction, opposes democratic and modernizing movements and sometimes is able to treat the United States as if it were a hired plant security guard. At almost every point the result has been to make American foreign policy more reactionary. If the country’s international actions were dedicated toward the creation of a world in which the gap between the rich and poor nations would be reduced, the oil industry would suffer. The resultant misery of various millionaires would be real, but it would not overturn the American economy. The catch is, of course, political. Oil is tremendously powerful in Washington, and therefore any hope of a truly democratic foreign policy would require the death of its domestic influence. (p. 195)

In his farewell message President Eisenhower had said of the ‘immense military establishment,’ which was ‘new in the American experience,’ that its ‘total influence – economic, political even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of Federal Government.’ If America were to embark on a genuinely democratic foreign policy and seek to create  a new world in which the gap between the rich and poor nations would be abolished, this vested interest in death would be threatened. For an emphasis on international construction, massive investments in men and money in the Third World, and disarmament would reverse the priorities which have prevailed in the postwar period. (p. 201)

A vast increase in war spending, on the other hand, is almost always accompanied by an end to social innovation. The emotion of patriotism unites the entire nation, and class differences are submerged in the common effort. In the case of a shooting conflict, the military obligingly dispenses with competitive principles and adopts uneconomic methods like cost-plus contracts (when it is necessary in a conservative cause, or in fighting a war, America is always ready to turn its back on the myths of the market economy, bust such idealism is almost never applied to truly idealistic projects). (p. 201)

For these, and many other reasons the American Congress will enthusiastically vote $50, $60, or even $70 billion for defense while it haggles over a less than $2 billion appropriation for fighting poverty. And it is dangerous to think that, as peace begins to break out, it would be simple enough to transfer funds from the work of destruction to that of construction, The socialization of death is, thus far at least, much more generally popular than the socialization of life. A shift of money from Defense to, say Health Education and Welfare would demand a basic turn toward the democratic Left within society. (p. 201-2)

To begin with, the basic infrastructural needs of the poor nations – roads, education, cheap mass housing, etc. – are simply not profitable investments. Indeed, no one is really interested in building decent homes for the poverty stricken within the United States, and smart money would shun such an undertaking overseas even more so. As T.C. Blair has written, ‘…the criterion of profitability when applied to Africa too often leads to high monetary receipts but low real social benefits. Investors channel money into profitable export produce and minerals and avoid investment in ‘unprofitable’ homebuilding, school construction and low cost food protein production. Profitable external economies are created with a consequent stagnation of the domestic economy. Investment in the production of goods with high utility for low-income African consumers continually lags behind other investment sectors.’ This analysis fit Latin America perfectly. (p. 225)

So there is no easy road out of underdevelopment, and one must talk pragmatically about some sort of international mixed economy. Yet there is a crucial point which can be rather simply put: the Third World cannot put its faith in Adam Smith or any of his heirs, for the market mechanism is a cause of, rather than a solution to, its poverty. Understanding this fact will require that the United States get over some of its favorite prejudices. (p. 228)

For however it is done in a technical sense, the substance of every one of these ideas is the same: that the richest lands in history voluntarily surrender some of the advantages which they built into the very structure of the world economy and that money must be transferred from rich to poor rather than, as now, the other way around. This does not mean that the wealthy nations are supposed to opt for poverty in order to fulfill a moral obligation to the less fortunate of the globe. It simply means that these affluent countries will enrich themselves at a somewhat slower rate and without pushing the majority of the world’s population more deeply into misery. This can be done. There are sober and intelligent proposals which have already demonstrated the possibility of creating a new world by changing the present injustice of aid and trade. So the crucial question is not technical but political. (p. 239-40)

But there was, and is, another form of anti-communism. It sought some alternative to communism and the status quo, for it recognized the right and necessity of revolution but struggled that it might be democratic, not totalitarian. The views of Galbraith and Robert Kennedy, discussed at length earlier, are obviously in this tradition. Indeed, this attitude regularly provided the official rhetoric for American involvement in the Cold War itself. ‘The seeds of totalitarian regimes’ Harry Truman said in 1947, ‘are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life ahead has died.’ (p.243)

The United States and the Soviet Union, having brought mankind to the brink of nuclear holocaust, could simply walk away from the Cold War, retreat into their separate self-interests and respect each other’s injustices. Or the United States could take the lead in a gigantic international effort for the reconstruction of the world. There are economic arguments for such a course and they should be stated. But ultimately if this is to be done it will happen because the deep-running force of American idealism bursts the channels in which the generals and executives have confined it and takes its own direction. That is the politics of hope. (p. 245)

When there was hope, people joined together for militant action which proclaimed their dignity. This was the way of the original revolutionists, of the Abolitionists, the populists, the trade-unionists, the civil-right activists and all the others who constitute the living tradition of the American Left. But when fear predominates, as today, this very same independence of spirit drives a man to defend his own equality by attacking his neighbor’s. (p.278)


There is no consensus possible with such men as long as they hold to their institutional values. The Left must therefore attack their power democratically and nonviolently and thereby widen the areas in which people organizing themselves politically are stronger than money. For when a free society avoids conflict, that is not an act of civic prudence but a surrender to the manipulative elites which work behind the façade of unanimity. (p.283)

Why the Dalai Lama is a Socialist

From Terry Gibbs, Why the Dalai Lama is a Socialist.

[Gibbs shows in this tome how the fundamental values of socialism and Buddhism are aligned using his deep experience in both traditions. ]

Resolving those contradictions, according to Marx, requires a solid understanding of how economic systems (or ‘modes of production’ in Marxist lingo) have functioned throughout history and how the related institutional structures give rise to particular social relations. Marx’s work in many ways laid the ground for the concept of structural violence, although the term wasn’t coined until the late 1960’s by peace activist and academic Johan Galtung. The approach Marx developed to understand the mechanics of particular economic systems demonstrates how economic structures throughout history have embodied particular forms of violence and suffering and how those structures have benefited some social groups or classes and disadvantaged others.

Gary Leech argues that ‘structural violence manifests itself in many ways, but its common theme is the deprivation of peoples’ basic needs as a result of existing social structures. Those basic needs include food, healthcare and other resources essential for achieving a healthy existence and fullest human development possible. Such inequality is rooted in the oppression of one group by another.’  Galtung notes that without a specific individual ‘perpetrator’, structural violence can be much more insidious than direct physical violence. ‘There may not be any person who directly harms another person in the structure. The violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances. Resources are unevenly distributed. … Above all the power over the distribution of resources is unevenly distributed.’ (p. 62)

But it is not only the indigenous peoples’ way of knowing that have systematically marginalized in our education systems in capitalist societies. And it is not only Canada’s indigenous peoples who are being channeled into business and professional studies – these are issues for youth throughout the world. Responsible parents do not encourage their children to study philosophy, especially responsible parents from the global South. Obviously students have to figure out how to earn a living in our world, but the areas where this is possible under capitalism have become narrower and narrower and an individual’s value is largely determined by their capacity to generate income and profit in the market. Naturally then, many parents want their children to become business people, doctors or lawyers as opposed to philosophers, artists or musicians. As a society, we are making these kinds of choices about what is important, about values we want to cultivate, and about what kind of world we want to live in.

As a socialist lens makes clear, in many ways, and for many years now, our approach to higher education suggests we cannot afford to have an education system that does not feed practically into the capitalist economy. The belief that a university should be a place in our society in which we have space to nurture the well-rounded human being has almost become a quaint notion. In our current era of corporate globalization, being able to respond to respond to the demands of the ‘market’ is the key job of administrators, and marketing the university’s ‘brand’ is the most important role of the development office. Educators increasingly need to prove themselves as ‘sustainable’ within this context and students need to strategically choose the appropriate professions. This state of affairs does not mean that everyone has made this shift willingly or that nothing good happens at universities anymore. I am speaking here about a general trend. The education system is an important space in which societies should be able to engage in critical discussions about their priorities and directions. (p. 78-9)

All of this consumerism might not be so problematic if we were actually fulfilled by it and were not harming ourselves, others and the planet. As I noted previously, the problem is not that we consumer per se, but rather that those of us with sufficient wealth are engaged in rampant consumerism which, as Marxists remind us, requires a production system, that by necessity, cannot be bothered with questions related to the environment or the rights of living beings. It is not that powerholders in the capitalist system enjoy causing suffering to others and nature, it’s just the logic of capital accumulation requires those consequences of their profit-making remain secondary considerations. Therefore, a ‘right view’ requires a questioning of the logic of the growth model and a serious critique of consumerism. (p. 100-1)