Simple thoughts of the past few days

If  you ever ask, “Why do our brains work the way they do?” just try to deduce what functions our brain evolved to be good at over the past 200,000 years.  Why do we have trouble processing large numbers?  Because when we were hunting and gathering, our social units were very small.  Why do we always seek out human interaction?  Because we would have been made extinct by predators if we did not seek protection through numbers.

The blowback over the AIG bonuses is unnecessary and embarassing.  The information was public long before the controversy.   The amount involved is around %.1 of the total spent bailing out (funding AIG’s counterparties) the company;  though the principle is morally reprehensible, it is not a huge economic problem.  The greater problem is that our executives (Geithner and the White House) feel politically constrained against nationalization, a byproduct of our slavish devotion to neoliberalism and Randian moral codes.

Our country has discounted the future; in the process, we have made it harder to maintain our global pre-eminence.  Why invest in education when we could lower our tax bill by a few hundred dollars per year?  Why invest in infrastructure when that will raise our tax bill?  Why invest in high-speed rail and dense housing when that means smaller cars?  Global warming must be a hoax because I don’t feel it.  I can eat pounds of red meat and consume spoonfuls of high-fructose corn syrup today because I don’t feel the negative effects tomorrow; those come decades in the future, too far away to worry about.

The possession of small amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized.

It is important to fight counterinsurgencies, but we must also be prepared for future large-scale wars.  Just as we mistook two mild recessions for the end of economic crises, we should not mistake the last 18 years for the end of war.  Rather, we are pushing and moving around the next great war, just like our financial system smoothed returns for years by pushing all the risk so that it would blow up at once.

Nonetheless, our defense procurement is bloated.  Our armanent is prepared for the next big war.  It is just our officer corps and general staff which risks not being prepared.

The Scandinavian social model – flexible labor markets, moderate inequality, universal healthcare, strong primary and secondary education supported at the federal level, funding and maintenance of high-quality infrastructure (including high-speed rail), and training for laid off workers – is close to ideal.  There is a difference between socialism and care for the social being.  We should strive for the latter.

We need stricter limits on assault weapons.

If you think you know what you are talking about, you probably do not.

News is noise: it is best to learn about our world by letting time sort the noise from the substance.  24 hour cable  news < blogs < newspapers/nightly news televsion < weekly publications < monthly publications < academic journals < books.

Our society’s chief problem is that we are undereducated, and this fact does not bother us.