How To Solve The Big Tech Problem Without Violating Anyone's Rights (Updated Re-Post)

"Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco" is often bandied about these days.  And while that has a kernel of truth to it (a kernel the size of a cornfield, in fact), it is also used by authoritarian zealots with a very illiberal (and ageist) agenda.  Mandatory age verification, censorship, repealing Section 230, and other related illiberal restrictions would open up the door to many unintended consequences to privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and liberties in general.  Even those adults who don't support youth rights will eventually experience these consequences sooner or later.  Kafka, meet trap.  Pandora, meet box.  Albatross, meet neck.  And of course, baby, meet bathwater. 

And none of these things will actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma".  But here are some things that will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:

1. First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising, and ban data brokers too.
2. Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see.  Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant. 
3. Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves.  For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default.  And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
4. Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
5. If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA).  That is, a "Kids Code" would be fine as long as it is properly written and doesn't result in censorship or mandatory age verification. 

The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech.  That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit.  They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done.  (Plays world's smallest violin) That would of course be tantamount to throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

For another, related collective action problem, what about the emerging idea of phone-free schools?  Fine, but to be fair, how about phone-free workplaces for all ages as well?  In both cases, it should ONLY apply while "on the clock", which for school would be best defined as being from the opening bell to the final bell of the day, as well as during any after-school detention time.  And of course, in both cases, there would have to be medical exemptions for students and employees who need such devices for real-time medical monitoring (glucose for diabetes, for example).  Surely productivity would increase so much as a result that we could easily shorten the standard workweek to 30-32 hours per week (8 hours for 4 days, or 6 hours for 5 days) with no loss in profits?  But that would make too much sense.

Other good ideas we would endorse are a voluntary smartphone buyback program (similar to gun buybacks), and perhaps even paying people to voluntarily delete or deactivate their social media accounts for a time. That would accomplish far more than any realistic mandatory measures would.

Another possible idea is simply to slow down by design the pace of these social media platforms.  Much like #OneClickSafer mentioned above, adding a little bit of friction to an otherwise frictionless system can help tame the very real dark side of that system.  I mean, would you willingly drive on a frictionless surface (such as ice)?  Of course you wouldn't.

Note that internet connection speeds are more than ten times faster (!) today on average than in 2010.  That leaves a LOT of room for adding back friction!

And finally, the idea of banning certain questionable design features (infinite scroll, autoplay, etc.) may be controversial in terms of whether such features are protected by the First Amendment, but we believe that those features per se are not automatically protected, unless the ban is deliberately  abused to censor specific content.  If such bans are truly content-neutal, we are fine with that. 

We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend.  But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots.  These measures that we endorse will actually make both sides quite angry indeed.  But truly that's a feature, not a bug.

Big Tech can go EFF off!

Why The WHO Pandemic Treaty Needs Serious Revision Before It Can Be Signed

(Updated from the 2023 version)

The current draft of the WHO pandemic treaty is very close to being finalized now.  And while the "fact checkers" vociferously deny that the treaty will sign over America's hard-won national sovereignty to the WHO in the event of a future global health emergency, there is still good reason for all nations, and especially the USA, to refuse to sign, ratify, OR accede to it until serious revisions are made.  

First, the constitutionally questionable practice of it possibly even going into effect without the Senate's "advice and consent" (as is typically required to ratify international treaties), let alone the utterly specious notion that treaties can even supersede the Constitution itself, is enough to give anyone a severe case of the heebie-jeebies, or at least any serious student of history that gives a crap about the Constitution.  That alone is bad enough. 

But the most important problem of all, is what the treaty, by omission, does NOT require of its signatories.  The following is what we believe any such treaty absolutely MUST require explicitly, in light of the three year "free" trial of authoritarianism (and often totalitarianism) from 2020-2023:

To be prohibited in any circumstances:

• All lockdowns, in theory or practice, must be strictly prohibited. 
• All mask mandates outside of a healthcare setting must be strictly prohibited.
• All forced business closures must be strictly prohibited unless fully compensated by, and entirely at the expense of, whatever government imposed such closures.
• All forced school closures lasting more than ten (10) consecutive school days must be strictly prohibited. 
• All vaccine mandates, passports or coercion, in theory or practice, must be strictly prohibited for any vaccine that 1) has been on the market for less than ten (10) years and/or 2) has not been conclusively proven to be truly safe and effective.
• Launching or marketing any sort of vaccine, or anything that identifies as such, without the proper safety and effectiveness testing and/or without following GMP, shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Any attempt to censor alternative viewpoints shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Any attempt to officially deny or censor a known effective treatment or prophylaxis shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Any attempt to abolish cash shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Social credit scoring shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Microchipping by force or coercion of any kind shall be strictly prohibited. 

To be strongly discouraged overall:

• Blanket mask mandates in healthcare settings shall be strongly discouraged. 
• School closures of any kind shall be strongly discouraged.
• Business closures of any kind shall be strongly discouraged. 
• Vaccine mandates, passports, or coercion of any kind shall be strongly discouraged regardless of the vaccine or how supposedly safe it is.
• Mandatory quarantine of exposed individuals without symptoms shall be strongly discouraged for any disease for which the body of research evidence does not support (i.e. influenza and coronaviruses).
• Gathering restrictions or any other restrictions on freedom of association shall be strongly discouraged. 
• Travel bans and restrictions shall be strongly discouraged. 
• Mass testing with PCR shall be strongly discouraged in most circumstances. 
• Central bank digital currency (CBDC) shall be strongly discouraged (and shall be prohibited if it replaces cash entirely).
• Digital ID shall be strongly discouraged. 

To be encouraged:

• Informed consent
• Bodily autonomy 
• Human rights
• Civil rights and liberties 
• Free speech
• Public health (as it was originally founded)
• Early treatment and prophylaxis 
• Nutrition 
• Holistic view of health
• National sovereignty 

Definitions:

• "Lockdown" shall be defined as any mandatory "stay home", "shelter in place", or equivalent order lasting more than 24 consecutive hours, for all or part of the population, for any reason.  Any nighttime curfew order lasting more than three (3) consecutive nights would also meet this definition as well.  These must be off the table.
• "Mask mandate" shall be defined as any attempt to force or coerce anyone to cover all or any part of one's face for the purposes of disease control, or any penalties for not complying for same.
• "Vaccine mandate" shall be defined as any attempt to force or coerce any person to receive anything that identifies as a vaccine.
• "Vaccine passport" shall be defined as any identifier bestowed on a person that gives certain privileges conditional on having received anything that identifies as a vaccine.
• All other definitions have their usual meaning, and apply in theory or practice.

That should be the FLOOR for any such treaty, NOT the ceiling, as even that may be too much leeway. Then, and ONLY then, should the USA agree to any sort of WHO pandemic treaty, ever.

If there was ever a hill to die on, this is it.  Because once that Rubicon is crossed, there is NO going back.

(Mic drop)

Degrowth Is A Nonstarter And Won't Work. Here's What Will Instead. (Re-Post)

From ecological overshoot to all of its attendant crises, including climate change, resource depletion, pollution, and mass extinction, along with the current global energy crisis, the idea of "degrowth" (i.e. a deliberate and planned shrinking of the economy) may seem like an appealing alternative in some circles.  However, not only is it a political nonstarter, but the level of central planning and austerity required would ultimately do more harm than good, get us permanently stuck in a bad place, and we would still end up destroying the Earth in the end (albeit a bit more slowly, compared to business as usual).  It would "flatten the curve", of course, but really just drag it out and prolong the pain without solving the problem.  In other words, it would basically be like Covid lockdown, only permanently, though hopefully minus all of the antisocial distancing and ocean-killing masks.  And we saw what a disaster that was, with the Global South faring the very worst in terms of collateral damage.

And that's before we get into the sort of extremely high and confiscatory tax rates (on both income and wealth) that would be required on not only the rich, but also on the middle class and working class, and even the working poor of the Global North.  Which the oligarchs would so artfully dodge with ease of course, leaving the rest of us holding the bag.  Though to be fair, not all degrowthers necessarily agree with that idea, and many prefer Pigouvian taxes on pollution and resource depletion (most notably carbon taxes), and perhaps also taxing advertising revenue as well, instead of income and wealth.

(For a flavor of a possible worst-case scenario, see Susan Cooper's dystopian novel Mandrake.  Then add hell AND high water to the mix.  Just lovely!)

Some excellent articles casting doubt on degrowth can be found here and here, truly food for thought indeed.

Of course, we clearly need to end our inane and insane addiction to growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell (as Edward Abbey famously said) which ultimately kills its host.  We need an economy that is no longer dependent on growth and can still provide prosperity for all with or without growth.  We need to stop obsessing over the fundamentally flawed metric of GDP, which really ultimately stands for God Damn Profits nowadays.  Rent-seeking, usury, artificial scarcity, cronyism, speculation, and other forms of parasitism and economic manipulation from the top down are the ultimate reasons why our current economic system is so hooked on growth for the sake of growth.

As the futurist Walter Ignatius Baltzley noted back in 2015, the only way to end this system of cannibalism (sorry, "capitalism") is to give it the ONE thing that it absolutely cannot survive:  ABUNDANCE.  That's right, capitalism needs scarcity to function, which is why it has to create so much artificial scarcity nowadays to prop itself up.  Capitalism will thus fatally overdose on capital, in other words.  Abundance is of course the polar opposite of the sort of eco-austerity of degrowth.  With enough abundance, we can humanely euthanize this dreadfully toxic system for good, and easily transition to post-capitalism, and ultimately a post-growth and post-carbon economy. 

For example, Baltzley in another article applies this idea directly to Big Oil.  How do you win a tug-of-war against a much stronger opponent?  By simply letting go of the rope, and letting them fall on their butt.  Thus, as crazy as it sounds, get out of the way and simply give the fossil fuel fat cats what they say they want so much.  Yes, you read that right.  Let 'em "drill, baby, drill", and "frack, baby, frack"!  The government can even buy their oil (and natural gas) at a premium and then turn around and re-sell it at a loss.  The resulting massive surplus of cheap energy would flood the market, bringing down the cost of living in general, and by doing so....will also bring down the cost of renewable energy alternatives like wind and solar that will ultimately replace fossil fuels, while oil and natural gas become less profitable over time.  In the very short run, it would be quite a boon for Big Oil, but in the long run it would be giving them the very rope with which to hang themselves.  (Fortunately for us, Big Oil is extremely shortsighted.)

Yes, it's quite the Hail Mary pass indeed.  But when both Plan A and Plan B have been ruled out as impractical and/or politically impossible, and time is running out, that ultimately leaves us with Plan C.

So what are we waiting for?  Prime that pump, and prime it good!  Let Big Oil and the oligarchs enjoy their utterly foolish pride before the fall.  Remember, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Oh, by the way, wanna hear a joke?  Peak Oil.  That's the joke.  Yes, oil production will inevitably peak at some point.  Duh!  And hopefully demand will peak before supply does.  But we still have more than enough to deep-fry the planet many times over.

Quite frankly, the biggest supply constraint of all right now is NOT geology, but rather geopolitics, as Europe is currently learning the hard way with Russia weaponizing its natural gas against them. And the aforementioned plan would solve that as well.  Canada alone could supply more than enough (liquefied) natural gas to Europe to be free from Russian energy dominance, but they won't, because they never developed the export facilities to do so in time.  That leaves the USA to fill in the gap, of course.

So what exactly will post-capitalism ultimately look like when the dust finally settles?  The TSAP doesn't claim to know the details.  But eventually it will very likely organically evolve into something like mutualism or a gift economy to one degree or another, as well as a "steady-state economy" of course. While a pure gift economy may not necessarily work at scale, a hybrid gift/exchange economy could be better.  Whatever it is, it has to develop organically.

One thing is absolutely certain, though:  if we are to create an economy that no longer has to "grow or die", we must first phase out and eventually abolish usury entirely.  That means that interest and all other kinds of fees for the mere use of money will need to be officially capped at ZERO, period.  (Or at least when the borrower is a natural person, as opposed to an organization or institution.)  To avoid seizing up the financial markets and crashing the economy, set a "sinking lid" at, say, 10% APR, and then gradually lower the cap each year until zero is eventually reached.  Usury has ultimately led to the "financialization" of the economy, inflation, worsening inequality, and just about every other social problem that has a name.  There is a reason why it used to be considered such a sin.  So let's make it history.

Oh, and by the way:  unless the population also shrinks as well at least as fast as the economy does, degrowth is, ipso facto, fundamentally an exercise in futility.  That is true both from an economic perspective as well as an ecological perspective.

FINAL THOUGHT:  We may have been a tad too harsh on some of the degrowth advocates, particularly Jason Hickel, by lumping them all together.  While our roadmaps for how to get there may diverge, the TSAP's ultimate goals for post-capitalism at least seem to be more or less the same as Hickel's (though that's not necessarily true of some of the other degrowth advocates out there).  Ditto for Charles Eisenstein and Kate Raworth as well to one degree or another.

See here as well.

The (Partial) Solution To "Limbic Capitalism"

"Limbic capitalism" is the term of art given to the phenomenon by which Big Business deliberately engineers addiction to various products and services to encourage more consumption, and therefore more profit.  It is an externality-generating practice that is ultimately a collective action problem at base.  We currently see it in practically everything from Big Tobacco to Big Tech to Big Media to Big Food to Big Booze to Big Pharma to Big Oil to Big Casino and so on, all the way up to and including Wall Street, the world's largest casino of all.  And of course, the only true and complete solution to end limbic capitalism for good is to end capitalism itself completely.

After all, it's all part of the same general addiction at base:  i.e. growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host. 

That said, partial solutions can still be worthwhile, and we should not let the Nirvana Fallacy paralyze us in that regard.  Ending capitalism itself completely is a lot easier said than done, or at the very least is NOT a particularly quick process.  Thus, in the meantime, one "low-hanging fruit" measure to take is to pass a broad law that makes it categorically illegal to deliberately, and for no legitimate purpose, design a product or service to be more addictive than it would otherwise be.  That would of course include wilfully adding any gratuitous and questionable additives or features that cannot otherwise be legitimately justified.  That would of course include a wide range of troublesome food additives, and of course practically all tobacco additives a fortiori, but also the more subtle things such as curated "addictive feeds", "infinite scroll", and "frictionless sharing" on social media, and various blatantly gambling-like features built into some MMO video games as well.

Some things are of course naturally or inherently addictive (to one degree or another) in themselves, granted.  And humans are wired to seek such things out, thanks in part to our evolutionary baggage.  But there is NO justifiable or redeeming reason at all to deliberately make such things MORE addictive than they would otherwise be, for the sake of filthy lucre.

Of course, at the same time, we would also still be wise to heed Lysander Spooner's famous and timeless maxim:  vices are not crimes.  We ignore such a crucial distinction at our peril, as history has shown.

Objections To Universal Basic Income Debunked (Updated Re-Post)

Back in 2017, there was an article in The Week by Damon Linker titled, "The Spiritual Ruin of a Universal Basic Income".  He basically argues that it is a Very Bad Idea for the left to pursue the idea of a UBI because 1) it fails to address (and perhaps even intensifies) the psychological and spiritual consequences of joblessness, which are (in his view) distinct from and worse than the economic consequences, 2) most people couldn't handle joblessness even with a basic income, and would thus become depressed and purposeless and give themselves over to video games, porn, and/or drug addiction, and 3) the left should not concede that automation (and the resulting job losses) is in any way inevitable.  Because reasons, obviously. 

And all of these things are in fact false.  (Or to be exceedingly charitable, highly subjective at best.)

First, only a person of relative privilege could possibly see the economic consequences of joblessness as somehow entirely separate from, and less significant than, the (admittedly real) psychological and spiritual consequences of same.  The former can indeed cause or contribute to the latter in a big way, and it is very difficult to disentangle them.  Material poverty and desperation are in fact well-known to be objectively harmful to the mind, body, and spirit, and only meaningful work (as opposed to work for the sake of work) can really be said to be beneficial to same.  And when the economic consequences are resolved via a UBI, the remaining noneconomic consequences of unemployment would in fact become that much easier to tackle in practice.  Think about it. 

(Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, hello!  Only when the lower rungs of basic physiological and security needs are satisfied (which UBI does) is it even possible to even partially achieve the higher rungs.)

Second, there is NO logical reason why a UBI and the sort of New Deal 2.0 jobs program that Linker advocates would be mutually exclusive.  The TSAP, in fact, advocates exactly that combination, with both a UBI and a scaled-up Job Corps style program for everyone who wants one (even if not quite a guarantee).  We also advocate shortening the workweek as well, which would spread the remaining work among more workers, thus more jobs.  (The vaunted 40 hour workweek is literally a relic of 1938, and even then was almost going to be set as low as 30 hours.)  Thus, the noneconomic consequences of joblessness can also be adequately dealt with as well, and in any case, one can always choose to do volunteer work (and there most likely will still be plenty of that available) to get the same ostensible psychological and spiritual benefits as paid work.  So that is NOT a valid reason for the left to abandon the idea of UBI, anymore than it would be a reason to abandon the idea of a social safety net in general.

(Actually, John Maynard Keynes, along with many other futurists, predicted that with the increases in productivity due to technology, the average workweek would eventually shrink to 15 hours by the end of the 20th century.  Of course, that didn't happen, since the oligarchs took nearly all the fruits of the productivity gains since the early 1970s, thanks to neoliberalism.)

Third, the idea that UBI will cause most people or even a particularly large chunk of the population to become lazy and/or self-destructive is NOT borne out by the facts.  Numerous experiments with UBI and related schemes have been conducted in diverse cultures and locations in the past half-century, and the overwhelming weight of the evidence to date strongly suggests that this will NOT occur.  If anything, one notable effect is an increase in entrepreneurship due to a decreased fear of failure and more time and money to invest in their goals. Students and new mothers will likely work fewer hours than before since they are no longer forced by dint of economic necessity (the effect on hours worked is likely negligible for everyone else), but is that really such a bad thing?  Of course not.

No serious proposal for UBI has advocated one large enough to "live large" on that alone.  (The most common proposals, including the TSAP's, rarely exceed $1000/month per adult and $500/month per child under 18.)  Thus, there will still be plenty of incentive to work, since unlike traditional means-tested welfare programs, there is no penalty for earning more money than some arbitrary threshold.

In any case, with or without UBI, workers will work, and shirkers will shirk regardless.  Employers may (at first) not be pleased about having to pay somewhat higher wages than before to attract and retain quality employees, but them's the breaks for solving collective action problems.  In other words, it would now have to be entirely by mutual consent, not desperation or coercion.  And ultimately, even the employers themselves will benefit in the long run as well, as Henry Ford famously noted long ago.

(If we really want to incentivize work in the event of a labor shortage, we can, in addition to UBI, expand and convert the EITC to a simpler "reverse payroll tax" that automatically tops up workers' paychecks by matching dollar for dollar up to a point.  Such carrots would work far better than sticks in the long run.)

(And to all of the truly horrible and insufferable bosses out there, well, hear that?  That's the sound of me playing the world's smallest violin for you.  So go swallow your pride (and greed, envy, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and lust, while you're at it), before it swallows you whole.  And at the same time, to all of the users, welchers, leeches, dregs, and ne'er-do-wells, there's the door.  Don't let it hit you on the way out!)

Nor is there any credible evidence that substance abuse would significantly increase either as a result of UBI, and it may even decrease.  But just to drive the point home even further, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman argues that even if 90% of the population sat around smoking weed and playing video games instead of working, a UBI would still be better on balance than not having one, as everyone would be free to pursue their passions, and the remaining 10% would innovatively create new wealth.  Not that he thinks that 90% would actually do that, of course, and nor do we, but the point was well-made nonetheless.  One can also point to the Rat Park studies as well.  It is amazing how addiction of any kind diminishes or even disappears when rats (or people) are not treated like caged animals in the aptly-named "rat race"!

(Some cynics will inevitably bring up the infamous Universe 25 "mouse utopia" experiments, but that would really be a gross disanalogy, since a gilded cage is still a cage regardless. And in any case, at the end of the day, rats and mice are not people.)

And finally, a real pragmatist would realize that automation really is inevitable in the long run.  Contrary to what the neo-Luddites like to argue, fighting against it will NOT stop it, only delay it a bit.  The best that we genuine progressives can do is admit that fact and do whatever we can to ensure that the fruits of this automation will benefit all of humanity, and not just the oligarchs at the top.  To do so, we must take the power back from the oligarchs.  And a crucial step to that goal is a Universal Basic Income, so We the People can actually have some bargaining power, no longer dependent on our employers for survivial.  No longer would anyone have to be at the mercy of the all too often merciless.  Whether we get this one right will basically be the difference between a futuristic pragmatic utopia or protopia (as Buckminster Fuller envisioned) or a horrifying technocratic dystopia straight out of 1984, Brave New World, or [insert other dystopian novel here].  So let's choose the right side of history!

After all, as the late, great Buckminster Fuller--the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century, famously said all the way back in 1970:

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Thus, on balance, a Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all is a good idea regardless.  A win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.  And the only real arguments against it are selfish, patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic ones, which really means there are NO good arguments against it in a free and civilized society.  So what are we waiting for?

For more information and a much deeper dive into this topic, see the TSAP's "Why UBI?" page.

P.S.  I realized that the above arguments are largely utilitarian or consequentialist in nature, which still leave the reader wondering about nonconsequentialist or deontological arguments.  For the latter, Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative can also be said to apply to UBI:  "Always treat humanity as an end in itself, and never solely as a means", as well as his principle of universalizability.  Or as Robert Reich says, "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better."  And let's not forget the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others, what you would have others do unto you", per Jesus Christ, plus the more subtle Silver Rule "Do NOT do unto others, what you would NOT have others do unto you," per Confucius, as well.  Thus, even when ignoring all utilitarian arguments, the case for UBI still exceeds any case against it.

(See also some recent articles that directly or indirectly mention the concept of UBI, here and here.)

And regardless, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. 

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  And in case anyone brings up the "original intent" of the Founding Fathers of the USA, keep in mind that one of them, Thomas Paine, actually advocated for some flavor of what we would now call UBI, what he called a "demogrant".  So UBI is actually well within the envelope of the Founders' idea of limited government, and truly transcends the usual left-right political spectrum.  Such disparate thinkers from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Milton Friedman to Charles Murray to Nina Turner to Andrew Yang to Ellen Brown to Rodger Malcolm Mitchell to even (however briefly) Hillary Clinton have all gone on the record supporting some flavor of UBI, as has the entire libertarian-leaning red state of Alaska since the 1970s.

"Catch And Release" Is A Truly Dumb Policy That Makes Zero Sense

"Catch and release" of criminals is literally one of the very dumbest policies in all of recorded history, right up there with "defund the police" and similar half-baked ideas.  And the results of such no-accountability de facto tacit decriminalization of crimes big and small have sadly been predictable.

Only the most dyed-in-the-wool, super left-brained (and hare-brained), out-of-touch, ivory-tower academics and their acolytes could possibly think that such a real-life, literal "get out of jail free card" is somehow a good idea on balance.  People can argue "root cause theory" till they are blue in the face, but that does NOT somehow negate the non-root causes that clearly need to be tackled as well.  It's NOT an either/or situation, and clearly most of the root causes of crime are much harder and slower to solve.  Forest, meet trees.  And map, meet territory. 

Also, as much as we loathe victimless crime laws, per the late, great Peter McWilliams, author of Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do:  The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Society, that does NOT somehow imply a lax attitude towards real crimes (whether big or small, violent or not) that objectively harm (or unduly endanger) the person or property of nonconsenting others, or that otherwise violate the civil or human rights of others.  In other words, "Get tough on REAL crime" should really be the appropriate slogan here, something even the Libertarian Party has long agreed with.

(That is precisely where we at the TSAP decidedly part ways with the late criminologist James Q. Wilson, the main proponent of the "broken windows" theory, who we otherwise at least partially agree with.  In any case, the "broken windows" theory was ultimately inspired by the late sociologist Jane Jacobs.)

The TSAP has long compiled a list of promising ideas called "Smart On Crime", that should be food for thought indeed.  And guess what it does NOT include?  Catch and release, defund the police, or anything of the sort.  Focused deterrence actually does work, and these latest silly "new" (old) fads only monkeywrench and vitiate such a proven crime-fighting strategy. 

The one major city that bucked the disastrous trend recently was Dallas, Texas.  And not only did they NOT defund the police, they actually increased the use of smart policing tactics to target violent and serious crime.  And whaddya know, it worked.  So let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater now!

There is a strong inverse correlation between police numbers and crime.  Gee, who woulda thunk it?  In other news, water is wet, and the sun rises in the east.

And while the "deterrence" effect (whether general or specific) of incarceration is fairly weak, the "incapacitation" effect on crime is still fairly strong nonetheless, as Wilson famously noted long ago.  Meanwhile, it has long been known that the swiftness and certainty of punishment is far more important than severity is for effective deterrence.

And yes, the age-old correlation between poverty and crime, and also inequality and crime, is just as strong today as it has ever been.  Marcus Aurelius was right about that, both back then and now: "poverty is the mother of crime," and inequality is not far behind.  In the long run, any solutions that don't address poverty and inequality are simply not real solutions.  We certainly need a much better social welfare state, UBI, etc. among other things, to tackle that.  And of course, we must continue getting the lead out as well to further take a bite out of crime.

For example, street gangs (yes, even in today's flavor of Gangland Chicago) can be at least temporarily extirpated from an area by going RICO on them, that is, applying that law to them and vigorously enforcing it.  Many states, including Illinois, have their very own RICO laws as well, so they can do so even without any federal help.  However, such gangs will ultimately return and rise again if we don't also stamp out the conditions that cause such gangs in the first place.

That said, once again, it is not only root (or distal) causes that we should tackle, but also branch (or proximal) causes as well, as in practice the latter causes often get in the way of actually solving the former.  It's not either-or, and we can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Upstream AND downstream are the both important.  So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  The term "anarcho-tyranny" comes to mind.  While that term was (unfortunately) apparently coined, or at least popularized, by an infamous white supremacist guy back in the 1990s, and while I really don't like to willingly use the lingo of bigots of any kind, there is nonetheless no more suitable term than that for the current sorry state of affairs.  So, let's reclaim it for ourselves so the racists don't have exclusive use of such a useful term.  In Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, keep in mind that there was a "vast amount of criminality" that was openly tolerated by the dictatorship, ironically enough, so anarchy and tyranny are NOT mutually exclusive like many may think.  Dictatorships, tyrannies, and oligarchies can and do indeed exist without the rule of law.  It is a mutually-reinforcing textbook example of "Problem, Reaction, Solution".  And clearly, tyranny is always whimsical in practice. 

A "Job Guarantee", Without The Guarantee?

The TSAP has once endorsed the MMT idea of a Job Guarantee (JG), which is exactly what it sounds like.  Of course, we also supported Universal Basic Income (UBI) with NO strings attached as well for years now, but still maintained that a JG would be good in addition to that.  However, we no longer support that idea anymore.  JG, in all of its flavors, has far too many conceptual, logistical, and ontological problems to be workable at scale, as Rodger Malcolm Mitchell notes in his article, and several others.

So what do we at the TSAP support instead of JG?  Well, we clearly support UBI, hands down.  But beyond that, we support a scaled-up version of something like Job Corps, and which is basically a Job Guarantee but without the "guarantee" part.  That is, simply a jobs program, both for finding and creating jobs as needed, and one that provides only useful work rather than the Sisyphean make-work boondoggles that would inevitably occur in a true JG program.  Otherwise, it is guaranteed to fail.

Hindsight Is Literally 2020

Hindsight is quite literally 2020.

Four years ago (roughly) today, the world lost its marbles and began to shut down.  And as we have noted before, it was effectively all for naught.  In the end, the lockdowns, masks, and jabs did more harm than good on balance. 

From the ever-insightful Dr. Steve Kirsch's recent Substack article last year, in a nutshell:

"Special mention for the fact that the entire pandemic was completely unnecessary. 3 supplements work better than vaccines and are safe and cheap. All the lockdowns, masking, vaccines, mandates, social distancing, etc. were all unnecessary. And even though this is now known, nobody will pay attention since it will make them look bad.

"Uptake of vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc were significantly associated with the reduced risk of infection and severity of COVID-19 (OR: 0.006 (95% CI: 0.03–0.11) (p = 0.004)) and (OR: 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.22) (p = 0.005))... this study was conducted before the start of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Bangladesh."

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/23/5029

That's over 150x decreased risk just from taking these 3 dirt-cheap supplements that everyone has known to be safe + effective for decades! And it was all pre-vax, it was for the original Wuhan strain that was most dangerous!"

Read that again, and again, and again and let it sink in.  Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc.  Those three things alone would have largely defanged and declawed this overall already relatively humdrum virus to begin with, which was basically a classic super-flu at worst, and never an existential threat.

And especially for Vitamin D, but the others too, this was confirmed time and again.  And again and again.

Oh, and one of the other thing that we at the TSAP have long advocated, the humble xylitol nasal spray, has also been confirmed yet again as prophylaxis.

It gets even worse still for the powers that be, apparently, when one also notes that the standard of care for patients with post-viral pneumonia was abruptly changed worldwide, at or before the beginning of the pandemic.  And not for the better, either. The change was to no longer give antibiotics for pneumonia if Covid was thought to be the cause, even though it was very likely that many if not most of such deaths were from secondary bacterial infections.  And antibiotics would have been given had they not been inexplicably removed from the protocols, and thus deliberately withheld from patients for political reasons.  A good chunk of excess deaths could thus easily be attributed to that alone.  

Just #3tablets of azithromycin or doxycycline would often have been enough to save their lives.

What should have been done?  "Letting it rip", that is, "adopting the flu strategy", ultimately would have in fact been the least-worst alternative in the long run, all things considered.  That is precisely what a properly right-brain dominant person would have advocated from the get-go, at least if they were properly informed and NOT bombarded 24/7 with fearporn news media.

Looks like "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be renamed "Melbourne Syndrome" because #SwedenGotItRight.  The verdict is in.  In terms of cumulative all-cause excess mortality, Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns and masks and such, actually came out as one of the best in Europe, and not very different from their much stricter neighbors in the long run.  Ditto for other countries and US states that largely ignored the plandemic, but did similarly or better than their stricter neighbors.  Lockdowns, masks, and jab mandates were thus worse than useless.

On March 12, 2020, interestingly enough, the band The Killers released the song "Caution".  The song, while not about the virus, is nonetheless basically about the theme of "throwing caution to the wind".  And in hindsight, that is ironically pretty much what should have been done in regards to the virus, at least for the vast majority of the population who was at relatively low risk overall, whose resulting "herd immunity" would have thus ultimately protected those who were truly vulnerable to the virus.  Lockdowns, on the other hand, merely dragged things out and ultimately put the genuinely vulnerable at greater risk.  The science of epidemiology and public health didn't really change, but the politics sure did.

And failing that, once those who were genuinely fooled (including myself somewhat as well, regrettably) had wised up early on, the second least-worst policy would have been to, as the same song says, "go straight from zero to the Fourth of July" in terms of reopening and ending all restrictions at once.  That's right, ALL at once, all the way back to 2019 normal, period, and don't look back. 

But instead, the unholy "public health" trinity of collective action problems, prevention paradox, and precautionary principle had all been turned on their heads and weaponized against We the People.  Benjamin Franklin spins in his grave.

Moral of the story:  NEVER give up any rights "temporarily", that you are not willing to say goodbye to forever.  Or at the very least, you will not get them back without a fight. 

Indeed, hindsight is 2020, in more ways than one.

How To Escape A Stagflationary Quagmire

What happens when the FERAL Reserve uses raising interest rates in an attempt to quash inflation?  You guessed it:  STAGFLATION. That is, a combination of economic stagnation (or even recession, if they keep raising it "until something breaks") and persistently high inflation.  But if the only tool that have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail to them.  And a quagmire thus results when tight monetary policy is kept in place well beyond its (very short) shelf life.

Contrary to Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism (who literally coined the term "neoliberalism" himself, along with the term "stagflation"), who claimed that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon", it is more accurately described as being (almost) always and everywhere a supply-side problem of goods and services, as Rodger Malcolm Mitchell notes.  And the only way to cure it is to cure the shortages, which counterintuitively often requires increasing (and better targeting) federal spending to incentivize production of scarce goods and services, especially energy.  There is clearly an extremely strong correlation (almost perfect, in fact) between energy prices (especially oil) and the general price level (CPI) of goods and services overall.  While there is, contrary to popular opinion, very little to no correlation between inflation and federal deficit spending, or even the general money supply itself.  (The general money supply consists of deficit spending of new money into existence plus banks lending new money into existence, though the latter is of course inflationary albeit only due to interest.)

(And let's not forget greedflation as well!)

At best, as a "break glass in case of emergency" measure, raising interest rates, especially to above the inflation rate, has a weak, very short-term benefit on fighting inflation, followed by a longer-term exacerbation and prolonging of inflation that seems to be unrelated but is in fact caused by it.  After all, hiking interest rates is effectively a blunt and regressive tax that increases costs across the board, which are then passed onto the consumer in the form of...higher prices.  And so on.  That is, MORE INFLATION, in a vicious cycle like a yo-yo.  The "cure" is in fact far worse than the disease, like applying leeches to cure anemia, as Mitchell would put it.

The plandemic-induced supply-chain issues have been resolved, and even the global geopolitical issues would should by now have less effect in the domestic oil and gas powerhouse that is the USA.  Oil and gas prices are now down significantly stateside.  The money supply and federal spending have shrank since then as well.  And yet inflation, though much lower than its 9% peak in 2022, remains stubbornly above than 3% today.  Could it be that keeping interest rates well above the current inflation rate is actually not only part of the problem, but now THE problem?

BINGO.  So the FERAL Reserve would be wise to end Quantitative Tightening and cut interest rates yesterday from the current 5.25% to 3%, then to below 3% very shortly thereafter (within days or weeks).  Then when inflation falls, cut it again to below the new inflation rate, and so on. All the way to zero if necessary.  Failing that, the only thing that would end this quagmire is a severe enough recession to kill demand across the board, which will clearly do more harm than good.  History certainly bears that out.

(It explains not only today's quagmire, but also the 1970s and 1980s in the USA and a fortiori in Canada.  And it even at least partially explains the phenomenon of "chronic inflation" in various Latin American countries in the 1990s and beyond.)

Then, Congress must increase, not decrease, federal spending to cure the stagnation part, which is the other half of the stagflation.  Yesterday. 

And while we are at it, we should also phase out the scam known as "fractional reserve banking" (or more accurately, "fractional capital lending") by increasing the reserve requirement for private banks from the current 0% to 10% immediately, as it was before March 15, 2020, then very gradually raising it all the way to 100% over a number of years.  (The only reason to do it gradually is to prevent markets from suddenly seizing up and causing a financial crisis.)  And also either break up, nationalize, or tax heavily any banks that are "too big to fail" as well.

So what are we waiting for?

P.S.  This argument does NOT apply to "creeping inflation" (i.e. consistently below 3%), as that level of inflation is easily controlled and adjusted for, promotes economic growth, and is actually beneficial on balance.  Such low to moderate inflation is far better tolerated than risking even a small amount of deflation (negative inflation), which, at best, is VERY difficult to control and can all too easily become a vicious cycle and downward spiral into a full-blown depression or long-term "stagpression".  In contrast, inflation only becomes net harmful on balance when it greatly exceeds 3%.  Again, history bears this out.

A Better Than Nordic-Style Social Welfare State With Less Than Florida Taxes

A friendly reminder to all readers:  contrary to popular opinion, it is entirely possible to have a better than Nordic-style social welfare state with less than Florida taxes.  Why?  (You really may want to sit down before reading any further.)

Because federal taxes do NOT fund federal spending, that's why!  Not the individual income tax, not the corporate income tax, not FICA, not the various excises, duties, and tariffs, not estate or gift taxes, nor any other federal tax for that matter.  It is all a Big Lie illusion to prop up the oligarchy, especially the big banks, via artificial scarcity of dollars.  As Rodger Malcolm Mitchell famously notes, and echoed by Dr. Joseph M. Firestone, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, that is, being the issuer of it's own currency, it by definition has infinite money.  Any money they receive, through taxes or otherwise, is effectively like bringing coals to Newcastle, in that it disappears into infinity (thus de facto destroyed).  And whenever they spend money on anything, they create each dollar on an ad hoc basis to pay as they go.  

Switching to what Dr. Firestone calls "Overt Congressional Financing (OCF)" is LONG overdue.  On August 15, 1971, the gold standard effectively ended for good, but the method of Congressional financing remains more or less stuck in the past.

Meanwhile, the so-called "National Debt" (TM) is also an illusion, in that it consists of Treasury securities that are only spuriously linked to federal spending due to arcane and archaic rules left over from the now-defunct gold standard that ended over half a century ago.  Each T-security is effectively equivalent to a CD savings account for those who choose to invest in them.  Additionally, the idea that money can only be created with interest or other "strings" attached to it is yet another part of the Big Lie as well.

(It could literally be paid off in one fell swoop at zero cost to anyone, in fact.  And it's technically not even "borrowing" at all.  Infinite money, remember?)

Ditto for the Social Security, Medicare, and other federal "trust funds", which are literally nothing more than accounting gimmicks based on artificial scarcity.  They could fund all of that and more by simply creating the money on an ad hoc basis.

As for inflation, that is generally caused by shortages of goods and services, NOT by printing too much money.  It is ultimately a supply-side problem that requires supply-side solutions, including (counterintuitively) more federal spending targeted to incentivize more production of scarce goods and services.  Thus, rationing dollars via austerity measures and/or raising interest rates to fight inflation and/or recession is like applying leeches to cure anemia.  It is a fundamental category mistake that does far more harm than good on balance.

Of course, the oligarchs want to condition We the People to accept mere crumbs from the tables of the rich.  That way they can keep widening the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots, givng the oligarchs more power to lord it over us all.

Bottom line: all of these gimmicks are completely artificial, contrived, and designed to deceive us all.  The ONLY purposes of taxes in a Monetarily Sovereign government that issues it's own currency (like the federal government, but not (yet) state and local governments) are 1) to control and regulate the economy by encouraging or discouraging various behaviors and activities, 2) to (crudely) fight inflation, 3) to create demand for the currency, and 4) to prop up and give credence to the Big Lie.  But the supposed need to raise revenue is NOT one of them at all.

Thus, with the stroke of a pen, Congress can very easily square the circle of a better than Nordic-style social welfare state with less than Florida taxes.  They gave the FERAL Reserve its power in 1913, and they can just as easily take it away today if they chose to.  But of course, their oligarch masters would NOT want that at all!  Most Congresscritters save for a tiny few, are of course bought and paid for by the big money interests.  Thus we need to throw the bums out!

So what are we waiting for? PAGING DR. FIRESTONE!  NEEDED IN WASHINGTON, DC, STAT!

Politics In One Lesson

There is, in fact, an eternal law of nature that at once explains just about everything, and even makes politics possible to finally understand. It is called The Law of Eristic Escalation:

Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos

By that, it pertains to any arbitrary or coercive imposition of order, which at least in the long run, actually causes disorder (chaos) to escalate.  Fenderson's Amendment further adds that "the tighter the order in question is maintained, the longer the consequent chaos takes to escalate, BUT the more it does when it does."  Finally, the Thudthwacker Addendum still further adds that this relationship is nonlinear, thus rendering the resulting escalation of chaos completely unpredictable in terms of the original imposition of order.

We see the real world consequences of this in everything from Prohibition to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs to zero tolerance policies to Covid lockdowns to sexual repression and so much more.  And especially in the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age in the USA.  Any short-term benefits that these arbitrary and coercive impositions of order may provide is entirely outweighed when they inevitably backfire in the long run.  For example, Miron and Tetelbaum (2009), Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), and Males (1986) illustrate this very nicely in the case of the 21 drinking age.

(This same logic applies to practically every "victimless crime" law, and pretty much every other form of government overreach, as well as various excessive socio-cultural repressions of all kinds.)

Perhaps that is why most bans on various things have historically had a track record that is quite lackluster at best.  Ironically, bans tend to give more power to the very things that they seek to ban.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, you finally understand politics.

P.S.  The Dutch seem to understand this better.  They even have a proverb:  "when you permit, you control", which is the antithesis of the American proverb, "when you permit, you promote".  Carl Jung would also likely have a field day with that as well.

Two Kinds Of Identity Politics

We often hear the term "identity politics" bandied about as a negative thing.  Certainly, the flavor we have seen in recent years, sometimes called by the nebulous catchall terms "woke" on the left and "based" on the right, has proven to be quite toxic.  At best, it tends to be a distraction from other issues.  Even Bernie Sanders has, years ago, criticized it, and rightly so, and predictably caught very much flak for that.  And both of the two corporate duopoly parties in the USA are guilty of their own brands of toxic identity politics, as their versions of "left" and "right" are really both two wings of the same bird.

But did you know that there are TWO kinds of identity politics?  According to Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, the two flavors are 1) "common humanity identity politics", and 2) "common enemy identity politics".  And they are exactly what they sound like. The latter is the toxic and low-vibration kind we have seen in recent years, while the former is essentially what propelled the Civil Rights Movement, most notably Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., along with some other mass movements.  That is, the former is the high road, while the latter is the low road.

Truly, there is really only one race:  the HUMAN race.  And we must never forget that, for we forget our common humanity at our own peril. 

Contrary to common enemy identity politics, life is NOT a zero-sum game.  Or at least, it certainly does not HAVE to be.  It is NOT inherently or automatically necessary for someone to lose for another person to win.  A positive-sum, win-win, mutually-beneficial world is certainly possible, and it even happens now to some extent in some cases.  But following such a virulent toxic ideology only guarantees that we all fall into a net NEGATIVE-sum game where we ALL lose to one degree or other, in a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Much like how Buckminster Fuller once noted that war and scarcity are really NOT inevitable in themselves, but rather a result of a self-fulfilling prophecy when men believe they are inevitable. 

As the band Seether once put it more poetically, "nothing grows in the desert when you covet the drought". Probably the best analogy there is for that.

Choose the common humanity version.  It will never let you down when done properly.  Because the only real common enemies in politics are oligarchy, tyranny, and ochlocracy.  That is, the three "bad forms of government" per Aristotle, the latter of which is "mob rule" or "tyranny of the majority", merely the other side of the very same evil coin as oligarchy and tyranny of the minority.  All three of which, interestingly enough, are effectively promoted by the toxic, common enemy version of identity politics.  And Big Tech of course enables and literally profits from it all.  Currently, there are really only two sides:  oligarchy versus humanity.  All the rest of politics is a mere sideshow.  We must not let wokeness, hate, tribalism, and all of their attendant infighting distract us from that.  In other words, choose humanity. 

How To Defuse The QUADRILLION Dollar Derivatives Bubble (Part Deux)

Last year we discussed the QUADRILLION dollar derivatives bubble and the risks that come with it.  Well, guess what?  That bubble is still there, just WAITING to pop, and thus drag down the rest of the economy with it as well due to is massive size and interconnectedness.  And it has only grown dramatically since the last major financial crisis and Great Recession in 2007-2009.  

Ellen Brown recently wrote another excellent article about what to do about it.  She notes how this dangerous derivatives bubble was no accident, but came into being via deliberate deregulation that specially privileged derivatives.  Repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 was only the start.  In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) not only removed derivatives from any sort of federal oversight, but it also declared them be legally enforceable, a privilege that NO other bets have ever historically enjoyed.  (Let's face it, derivatives are literally nothing more than glorified bets.)  Then in 2005, the Bankruptcy Act gave derivatives extra special "safe harbor" protections as well.  And after the Great Financial Crisis, a crisis in large part caused by wanton derivatives speculation, what law was passed to pretend to tame this out of control casino? You guessed it:  the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, a band-aid which only further entrenched the fundamental derivatives problem that was left to fester. 

That is, fully legalized and unregulated gambling with other people's money on a truly gargantuan scale by the ultra-rich, using very questionable and opaque financial instruments, all backed by special privilege and protection of the law, is still very much a thing, alas.  And like any casino, the house (the oligarchy) always wins.  Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.  Heads, they win, tails, We the People lose.

Talk about moral hazard! 

Clearly, repealing Gramm-Leach-Bliley (the 1999 law that repealed Glass-Steagall, thus reinstating the latter), repealing the CFMA especially, repealing the "safe harbor" protections in the Bankruptcy Act, and repealing Dodd-Frank should be the absolute highest priorities to defuse this massive ticking time bomb.  No doubt about that.  That is, we must regulate derivatives at LEAST as stringently as they were in the 20th century, if not more so.  Additionally, a modest financial transactions tax (say, 0.1% on all transactions) would also be a good idea as well.  The latter can alternatively be achieved by raising and expanding the current SEC Fee to include ALL financial instruments equally, including derivatives.

We should also jettison the largely inaccurate term "hedge fund" from our collective vocabulary as well.  They should really be called "speculation funds", since that is what they really are in practice.

Oh, and to the FERAL Reserve:  CUT INTEREST RATES YESTERDAY!  And stop Quantitative Tightening yesterday as well.  It is really playing with fire in the worst way right now.  KNOCK IT OFF.

The aforementioned items would be enough to defuse it in the near term, while the following items would be to clean up the damage and/or prevent it from happening again in the future:

• Ban the practice of "quote stuffing" and other practices of deliberate market manipulation.
• Ban stock buybacks by corporations.
• Going forward, ban any and all types of new and exotic derivatives that are not completely transparent.  Opaque derivatives based on sketchy underlying fundamentals should be considered fraud, plain and simple. 
• Absolutely NO more bailouts OR "bail-ins" of the banks ever again, period (but of course depositors should still be made whole per the FDIC, with no apologies to any ultra-purist libertarians or paleoconservatives).
• Implement "Quantitative Easing For (We The) People" (that is, with direct payments to individuals, not banks) as needed.
• Phase out the practice of "fractional reserve banking" by very gradually raising the reserve ratio requirement until it reaches 100%.
• Fully nationalize the largely privately-owned FERAL Reserve to make it truly FEDERAL for once.  And established state and local public banks as well, like North Dakota currently has.
• And last but not least, all banks that are "too big to fail" are really too big to exist, and should thus be either forcibly broken up, taxed heavily, or nationalized as public utilities.  YESTERDAY!

In the meantime, we all need to brace ourselves for a possible financial crisis and recession in the future.  It is highly unlikely that Congress will act in time, as they are largely bought and paid for by Wall Street and the big banks (who also largely own the FERAL Reserve as well).  But don't fall for the idea that we should withdraw all of our money now, as that would literally be a self-fulfilling prophecy (causing a bank run).  The FDIC guarantees the first $250,000 per depositor per bank, so unless you have more than that (and didn't put it in multiple banks like you should have), it does not make sense to do so.

So what are we waiting for?

Last Chance To Avoid Recession

Inflation is now effectively beaten.  Not only has it cooled significantly, but now the specter of deflation has recently been raised, and has already been seen in the prices of durable goods falling a bit recently.  Oil is also down as well, which has of course led to a recent drop in gasoline prices.  And this is in spite of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which otherwise would have raised oil prices, ceteris paribus, due to the resulting geopolitical instability and uncertainty. 

Deflation may sound like a good thing, especially after such a high inflationary episode, but if it persists, it can turn into a downward economic spiral that is far worse than inflation (think the Great Depression, or Japan's three decades of rolling deflation from the early 1990s until very recently).  It also amplifies the sting of debt, and with debt of all kinds at such stratospheric levels today, America needs that like a hole in the head.  Once such a spiral begins and sets in, it is very, very difficult to extricate from.  Not even QE can seem to end it (though giving such "helicopter money" directly to We the People might work). And deflation is, at best, very difficult to control.

So the FERAL Reserve really needs to cut interest significantly, and pause QT, yesterday, before they create a problem that is practically impossible to dislodge. And if that doesn't work, prepare to not only restart QE, but also implement "QE for the people" as well. say you weren't warned.

In other words, this is the LAST CHANCE to avoid recession or worse.  And there is always a lag of at least two quarters, so if they wait until the recession begins before they begin cutting rates, it would be too late, and would be like "pushing on a string".

That said, looks like the Fed decided to stop hiking interest rates, and signaled at least three interest rate cuts in 2024.  So now is the best time to put your money in a CD account to lock in the current rates.  But who knows when they will cut rates?

How To Solve The Big Tech Problem Without Violating Anyone's Rights

"Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco" is often bandied about these days.  And while that has a kernel of truth to it (a kernel the size of a cornfield, in fact), it is also used by authoritarian zealots with a very illiberal (and ageist) agenda.  Mandatory age verification, censorship, repealing Section 230, and other related illiberal restrictions would open up the door to many unintended consequences to privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and liberties in general.  Even those adults who don't support youth rights will eventually experience these consequences sooner or later.  Kafka, meet trap.  Pandora, meet box.  Albatross, meet neck.

And none of these things will actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma".  But here are some things that will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:

1. First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising.
2. Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see.  Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant. 
3. Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves.  For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default.  And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
4. Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
5. If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA).

The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech.  That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit.  They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done.  (Plays world's smallest violin)

For another, related collective action problem, what about the emerging idea of phone-free schools?  Fine, but to be fair, how about phone-free workplaces for all ages as well?  In both cases, it should ONLY apply while "on the clock", which for school would be best defined as being from the opening bell to the final bell of the day, as well as during any after-school detention time.  And of course, in both cases, there would have to be medical exemptions for students and employees who need such devices for real-time medical monitoring (glucose for diabetes, for example).  Surely productivity would increase so much as a result that we could easily shorten the standard workweek to 30-32 hours per week (8 hours for 4 days, or 6 hours for 5 days) with no loss in profits? 

We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend.  But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots.  These measures will actually make both sides quite angry indeed.  But truly that's a feature, not a bug.

Big Tech can go EFF off!

State Of The Planet Address 2024

It is now 2024, and this year the TSAP will not waste any time giving our annual State of the Planet Address as we do every year.  Yes, we know it is a bit of a downer to say the least.  So sit down, take off your rose-colored glasses, and read on:

Our planet is in grave danger, and has been for quite some time now.  We face several serious long term problems:  climate change, deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, overharvesting, energy crises, and of course pollution of many kinds.  Polar ice caps are melting.  Rainforests have been shrinking by 50 acres per minute.  Numerous species are going extinct every year.  Soil is eroding rapidly.  Food shortages have occurred in several countries in recent years.  Weather has been getting crazier each year thanks to climate change.  We have had numerous and often record-breaking wildfires, floods followed by long periods of drought, and a "storm of the century" at least once a year for the past several years.   And it is only getting worse every year.  In fact, 2023 is now officially the hottest year on record.  Look no further than the three record-breaking storms in the past 20 years:  Katrina (2005, highest storm surge), Sandy (2012, largest diameter), and then Harvey (2017, a 1000-year flood, and overall worst hurricane on record), followed by Irma and Maria which devastated Puerto Rico, for a taste of the not-too-distant future.  And that was before Hurricane Michael devastated a rather large chunk of Florida.  And the wild weather continues to this day, with up to six-foot (!) snowfalls in parts of Upstate New York just over a year ago, record wildfires in Canada last summer, and record rainfall in parts of the Northeast USA last year as well.

None of this is an accident of course.  These problems are man-made, and their solutions must also begin and end with humans.  We cannot afford to sit idly by any longer, lest we face hell and high water in the not-too-distant future.  Our unsustainable scorched-earth policy towards the planet has to end.  Yesterday.

While we do not invoke the precautionary principle for all issues, we unequivocally do for the issue of climate change and any other environmental issues of comparable magnitude.  In fact, for something as dire as climate change, as of 2015 we now support a strong "no regrets" approach.  With no apologies to hardcore libertarians or paleoconservatives, in fact. We are not fazed one bit by the naysayers' pseudoscience as it does not really "debunk" the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The only serious debate is about how fast it will happen, and when the tipping point (or points) will occur. It is not a matter of if, but when. And the less precarious position is to assume it is a real and urgent problem. We need to reduce CO2 emissions to the point where the CO2 concentration is at or below 350 ppm, ASAP.  And it is currently at an unsustainably high level of 400+ ppm, and growing rapidly every year.

Given the latest IPCC report, which is truly nothing short of horrifying, the general consensus among climate scientists is that we have only at most 12 years left (now more like 11) to act radically before truly catastrophic climate change is a foregone conclusion.  And 2030 will be here before we know it.  

Now THAT is a national emergency!  And a global one, in fact.  Thus, a full-steam-ahead, Green New Deal 2.0 is LONG overdue.  We have already squandered over a whole decade since Copenhagen, and we cannot afford to squander even one more day, let alone another decade.

Solving the problem of climate change will also help to solve the other ecological crises we are facing, for they all ultimately have the same root causes, not least of which is our insatiable addiction to dirty energy.  However, there is a right way to solve it, and several wrong ways.  Technology is important, but it won't be decisive on its own (economics geeks may recall Jevons Paradox).  The real problem is the paradigm that our society has been following, and that system is based on wetiko, the parasite of the mind and cancer of the soul.  It often seems that the only difference between capitalism and cannibalism is the spelling.

The TSAP endorses the ideas embodied in Steve Stoft's new book Carbonomics, most notably a tax-and-dividend system that would tax carbon (i.e. fossil fuels) at the source, and give all Americans an equal share of the revenue generated from this tax.  (Note that our proposal to tax natural resources and pay out an Alaska-like citizen's dividend already includes this.)  Yes, prices for various things would undoubtedly rise due to this tax, all else being equal, but the dividend will allow Americans to pay for this increase. The average American would in fact break even, but those who (directly or indirectly) use less energy than average will effectively pay less tax, while the energy hogs will effectively be taxed more, as they should be. Thus it is certainly not a regressive tax, and may even be mildly progressive. This is both the simplest and most equitable way to reduce carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution, not to mention waste of dwindling non-renewable resources. The real challenge is getting the feds to accept something that won't directly benefit them (in the short term).  Carbonomics also includes other good ideas, such as improving how fuel economy standards are done, and crafting a better verison of the Kyoto treaty.   

In addition to the ideas in Carbonomics, we also support several other measures to help us end our addiction to fossil fuels once and for all.  While our Great American Phase-Out plan would have phased out all fossil fuels by 2030 at the latest, via alternative energy, efficiency, and conservation, we unfortunately now see that as too ambitious in light of the disastrous "Net Zero" rollouts in the UK and Germany recently.  Another good idea to further the development of alternative energy would be the use of feed-in tariffs for renewable power sources. 

(We are now very behind schedule, so perhaps the best we could hope for is a phaseout by 2050, which may be too late.)

Of course, it is not enough to stop emitting carbon dioxide, we also need to remove the current excess levels of it from the atmosphere as well, as that stuff can otherwise linger for centuries and continue wreaking havoc on the climate.  We support ending net deforestation completely, planting a LOT more trees, and putting carbon back in the ground through carbon sequestration. One method is known as biochar, a type of charcoal made from plants that remove carbon dioxide from the air, that is subsequently buried. This is also an ancient method of soil fertilization and conservation, originally called terra preta.  It also helps preserve biodiversity.  Another crucial method would be regenerative organic farming, which also turns the soil into an effective carbon sink as well.  And we will most likely also need to employ higher-tech methods of sucking carbon out of the air as well.

We've said this before, and we'll say it again.  Our ultimate goal is 100% renewable energy by 2050, and as close as possible to that by 2030-2040, but we need to hedge our bets.  We can phase out fossil fuels, or we can phase out nuclear power, but we can't do both at the same time--and fossil fuels need to be phased out first, and quickly.  Nuclear is doing a pretty good job of phasing itself out as it is.  So let's not get rid of it prematurely.  

LENR (low energy nuclear reactors) and fusion power are also worth considering.

But the biggest elephant in the room (make that the elephant in the Volkswagen) is overpopulation.  It does not make for pleasant dinner conversation, but it must be addressed or else all other causes become lost causes in the long run. We absolutely need to have fewer kids, or nature will reduce our population for us, and the latter will NOT be pleasant to say the least. The TSAP believes in voluntarily reducing the total fertility rate (TFR) to 1.5-1.9 children per woman to do so, but let us be clear that we do NOT support draconian and/or coercive measures of population control (like China has used).  We believe that more liberty is the answer, not less.  In fact, the two most effective means of reducing the birthrate are poverty reduction and female empowerment.

Fortunately, America's TFR has recently dropped to a record low of about 1.6-1.7 with no indication of rising back above replacement rate in the near term.  And with the massive social and economic fallout from the pandemic and especially the lockdowns, the TFR may even drop further.  But clearly we cannot keep growing and growing, that's for sure (in fact, we need to shrink). And our insatiable addiction to economic growth (despite being decoupled from well-being) is also every bit as harmful as overpopulation as well, if not more so.  Growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell,  is clearly one of the most asinine obsessions our nation (and world) has ever had.  We clearly need to transition to a steady-state economy, most likely following a period of what Naomi Klein calls "selective degrowth" as well.  And to do that, we need a radical paradigm shift to happen yesterday.  Put another way, we need to leave room for Nature, lest Nature not leave room for us.  We have been warned, decades ago in fact.  Unfortunately, such warnings have largely fallen of deaf ears until very recently.

(NOTE:  The novel experimental gene therapies that self-identify as "vaccines" may be behind the drop in birthrates from 2021 to 2022, and if that is not reversible, is NOT really good news.  Time will tell.)

Yesterday is the time to jettison the Twin Big Lies that "everybody must work for a living" and "everybody must procreate".  Because doing so is the sine qua non of any realist plan to avert ecological catastrophe.

Last but not least, the TSAP now believes that as long as men remain in charge, we are all merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Let's face it, it ain't gonna be us fellas who will save the world, as the past 7000 years or so have shown.  We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it peace.  We devoured and suffocated our own empire, and our proverbial 15 minutes of fame is almost up.  Only when women finally take over and reclaim their rightful position as the new leaders of the free world--and they will--will there be any real permanent solution.

Bottom line: we need to take the environment much more seriously than we do now.  We ignore it at our own peril.  And while the current administration in DC clearly doesn't care, We the People must act nonetheless.  With no apologies to the deniosaurs or Big Oil, Big Gas, or Dirty Coal.

Oh, by the way, wanna hear a joke?  Peak Oil.  Not saying it won't happen, of course--it will eventually peak and decline at some point--but climate change kinda supersedes it.  While conventional oil most likely has already peaked, there is more than enough total oil (including unconventional) to deep-fry the Earth--and most of which needs to stay in the ground if we wish to avoid catastrophic climate change.  Fossil fuels are, after all, what Buckminster Fuller referred to as our planet's "energy savings account", which we need to wean ourselves off of and save just in case of a planetary emergency--and he first said this in 1941!

So quibble all you want, but the truth must be faced head-on.  Hindsight is 2020, and we have a planet to save.  So let's roll!

UPDATE:  We never thought we would ever have to say this, but the TSAP does NOT support a "climate lockdown" or any other type of lockdown for that matter.  It is at best a category error, and would do far more harm than good in the long run.  And of course it flies in the face of the basic principles of anything remotely resembling a free society.  So take that off the table now!

It should also go without saying, but we at the TSAP DO NOT support the WEF "Great Reset", social credit scoring, or a cashless society (aka CBDC) either.  Those are a totalitarian's dream come true, and our worst nightmare come true for the rest of us.  We believe that the answer is MORE liberty and democracy, not less.

Let the planetary healing begin!