Condemned to Repeat It

Western Civ

11/26/2021

I was recently reading a review of a new book which focused on how the concept of “civilization” was central to the efforts to reconstruct Europe in the aftermath of World War II. It’s a plausible and interesting thesis for the exploration of this aspect of modern European history. I was struck, however, by the comment of one of the reviewers that the modern idea of “civilization” was problematic; since it is often associated with arrogance and an artificial distinction between the “civilized” and the “uncivilized,” to the derogation of the latter. As someone who has spent some time studying overseas European empires (Spain, Portugal, England, France, Netherlands, Russia) and their spin-offs (US, Japan), I have to acknowledge that there is plenty of historical evidence to support this view. Still, I am wary of throwing the “civilization” baby out with the “abuse of power” bathwater.

A similar problem has arisen in the course offerings of many universities, where “Western Civ” courses, have been receding lately, usually in favor of “world history” courses. This is a reflection in the relative decline of the importance of Europe in US culture, evidenced by a geopolitical “pivot to Asia,” an increase in students who look to Latin America, Africa, or various parts of Asia for their cultural heritage, and a recognition (guilt?) that several centuries of triumphalist European civilizational claims is more than enough.

At SF State, Western Civ is only offered as an introductory survey course, on a par with World History or US History. This special status for a non-“home” region is rooted in a tradition of US pedagogy that privileges Europe. Comparable courses covering China or East Asia, Islam, or Africa are all upper-division courses. I can’t justify this special status, so I don’t offer the course any more.

In the early 20C, within a world-view of the “American Century,” with the US being seen as the “Rome” to Europe’s “Greece,” such a course made more sense. If History asks “How did we get here?” and the “we” were white Americans predominantly Christian and of European descent, then “Western Civ” offered a plausible answer. Sweeping aside the presence and contributions of cultures from the ancient Middle East, India, and Egypt enabled us to put the Parthenon on an altar (as it were). Forgetting that Jesus and his Apostles were Semitic sanitized a European Christianity. Downplaying the fact that the writings of Classical Greece were reintroduced to Europe only because medieval Islamic cultures preserved them draws a neat, if inaccurate, line around the “Continent” (actually a large peninsula on the northwestern corner of Afro-Eurasia).

And that’s only the foundations. By the time we get to the “modern” (i.e., since ~1500) era, a Euro-centric focus enabled a characterization in which Europeans were the active force in history to which everyone else just responded or submitted. Inventions, conquests, and economic growth all fell into place. The antecedents of Modernity are elegantly found in 1-2-3 combination: the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. Europe’s calamitous early 20C is presented as a temporary interruption in Western “progress,” with the torch carried on by the US through the late 20C.

These are all important developments and are included in my Modern World History Survey, Europeans play a larger role than their numbers alone would dictate. More recent versions of Western Civ in the past several decades have expanded the scope of historical forces and individuals who affected/contributed to European culture, including recognizing the impact of European empires on their subjects (and vice-versa).

All well-and-good in terms of the evolution of historical course offerings. More broadly, there is much to be said for ridding ourselves of claims of moral superiority (aka Eurocentrism or the US version) when the evidence shows Europeans’ good fortune in terms of geography (access to coal, continental topology, climate) seems to be the critical difference. There’s no question but that Europeans used the term “civilization” to demarcate their own culture from those of other (lesser/barbarian) groups.

But it’s another matter to dispose of the idea of civilization itself as the first-mentioned reviewer seemed to think was an appropriate consequence of this ‘re-think.’ The European flavor of “civilization” has to bear the burden of having leveraged unprecedented (technological and material) power to the (unprecedented) detriment of other groups. However, I rather doubt that they (we?) are any worse in a moral sense than any other “civilization” (e.g., Chinese, Hindu, Mayan) or groups of humans whose social organization did not last as long or encompass as many people or cultural components. Even if we were much more impactful.

Similarly, without taking on the question of whether the human move from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists (another way of defining “civilization”) was a good move morally or otherwise (paleo diet, anyone?), I’m not sure there’s much point in criticizing “civilization” as a general human social form as seems to be implicit in the reviewer’s reference. Establishing a culture implies some degree of social cohesion which, per se, leads to a world-view built on “us and them.” Denigration of the “other” seems to be a pretty consistent human response, historically speaking: “My gods (music, food, laws, football team) are better than yours.” Again, modern Europeans saw themselves as “civilized” and others as “barbarians; but so did the Chinese and the ancient Greeks, among others.

Indeed, as we look at Europe after WWII, it’s hard to see an alternative to “civilization” as an organizing principle. There was challenge enough in finding food and housing, in establishing some form of social order, in ratcheting down the oppressive psychic stresses of the War (and the immediately preceding Great Depression and less immediately preceding First World War). “Civilization,” at least at a generic level, seemed like a necessary predicate to living and, in its many attractive attributes (social cohesion, music, cafes, improved standards of living), more than desirable.

So, there is much to be said for “civilization,” both generally and in the particular case of 20C Europe. That particular versions had considerable shortcomings shows a need for cultural improvement (something civilizations can be good at), but is not a basis for going back to foraging and nomadry.

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Going Postal

11/19/2021

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Call me usmail. (really sorry to all you Moby Dick fans for that one, but I couldn’t resist).

Our mail slot is in our garage. I recently had it moved so that its only about three feet from our garbage/recycling bins. It’s quite efficient that way, since fully 90% of what we receive goes directly out (usually unopened) and much of the rest contains extra packaging or extraneous material (official disclaimers and notices, etc.).

As I was working on last week’s posting on Fragility and Sclerosis, it struck me that the U.S. Mail was as fine an example as we are likely to find of a deeply embedded institution that is unable to/not allowed to change. This applies to both the US Postal Service as well as the general process of using dead trees and lots of labor to move information from one place to another.

I cannot speak based on any sort of scientific survey of residential communications/information patterns, but in one reasonably tech-savvy, economically well-off household, using the US mail is pretty much of a waste of time and money. Almost all our bills are sent electronically and paid directly from the bank. Financial statements, ditto. We get a smattering of catalogs (cringe) and the bulk of the mail is bulk mail. A bit over half consists of requests for donations, about 20% (seasonally-adjusted) is from various political organizations (again seeking money), and there is some straight commercial mail including real estate agents and stores which we went to twice about a dozen years ago. Occasionally, there is something worth looking at from the government or some investment deal. Magazines and newspapers are mostly on-line. Once in a blue moon, there is an actual piece of correspondence from another human being!

From whatever source, much of the mail is driven by mailing lists that are, to put it mildly, uncurated. We still get mail for the woman who lived here before we bought the house (1994). When my dad died a few years ago, we forwarded his mail to our house here and he is a regular recipient of charitable and political requests. I am offended both in my general sense of order and efficiency and especially in environmental terms. There is part of me that would like to cut all these off, but I can’t build up the resolve to spend 10-15 minutes chasing down the right spot (website or customer service agent) to terminate the flow from each of these.

I have a particular problem with the mass mail from groups (either charitable or political) whose goals I support. It’s a rare month we don’t get a dozen fancy brochures addressed to members of the “Leadership Council” or some-such. I like these groups. I support their cause. I just wish they wouldn’t waste my donated money in this way. The environmental groups particularly should know better. They could probably boost their support by making “You’ll get 50% less mail” as a benefit of donations at a higher level. (By the same token, I am delighted that the various Republican groups my dad supported are still throwing their money after him!)

The whole thing reminds me of King Canute.

At the macro, USPS, level, the continuation of daily residential mail delivery shows the power of the relevant labor unions and the inability of Congress to get out of the way of rational economies. Package delivery or express services excepted, I can’t think of anything we get that couldn’t wait a few days for delivery. Once a week would probably do it. And even if we try to gradually lower the workload so that no USPS worker gets fired, we could easily start with dividing up the current residential routes into a MWF delivery group and a TTS delivery group.

Historically speaking, there is much to be said for the role of the postal service in weaving the country together. From the days of Benj. Franklin as the (pre-independence) Postmaster General to the Pony Express, the mail is the stuff of national myth. There’s even a (not bad) sci-fi novel by David Brin in which a postman helps the restoration of a post-apocalyptic USA (made into a bad movie starring Kevin Costner).

Overall, it’s a large national service run by the government; reasonably effective considering the constraints under which it operates. That’s enough for some notoriety on its own. Even in this electronic and ‘Amazoned’ age, it’s hard to see the USPS withering away entirely; but some change would be good, for both the organization and major users alike. It is thus a fine example of the sclerosis of the modern age: too tangled up by political management, captured by unions on one side and boxed in by private competitors’ lobbying efforts on the other, and therefore unable to recast itself in light of changing demographics and technologies. If GM is ready to ditch the internal combustion engine, then we can see that substantial change is possible, if only Congress can get out of the way. Perhaps we could even start with ending discount rates for bulk mail.

Perhaps the romance of the slogan (“Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet…”) and the mythology of the role of paper in national formation will prevail, despite the mounting costs (eventually to be borne by taxpayers). More likely, inertia will triumph. Unlike other fields of government inaction, this will not cause the end of the world; but it would make living a little simpler.

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Fragility and Sclerosis

11/12/2021

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Between global supply chain snafus and teetering democracies, we don’t need much more evidence of the fragility of modern society. The power of the modernist narrative, including a deeply embedded belief in human progress (at least in material/technological terms), has obscured the precarious nature of human societies. This overconfidence is paralleled by a lack of widespread energy/passion for change (“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”). The combination of fragility and social and political sclerosis is particularly problematic.

By fragility I mean something different than risk or danger. I mean 1) the volatility of risk, the cascading implications of systemic breaks and the height of the cliffs along the edges of which modern society is dancing, and 2) the ease and speed with which “normal” can turn into chaos.

Problems in the global supply chain have gotten a lot of media attention lately and they sharply illustrate the interconnected nature of modern systems. Global competition has sharpened performance and productivity in many industries. “Just-in-time” inventory management has reduced the carrying costs of dozens of industries. However, as with other manifestations of short-term thinking, such ruthless efficiency can be effective only if nothing goes wrong. And, when a ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal for a week, or labor issues (not enough truck drivers) slow down delivery times for the imported goods on which the British depend, things can spin out of control easily and turn into hoarding, price spikes and the like.

Democracy as a political art form is similarly fragile. There’s an interesting argument that its success from the 18-20C was due to changing socio-economic conditions rather than philosophical superiority or moral worth. What has been clear is that as a mode of socio-political organization, it depends on a level of social cohesion that is hard to achieve and requires constant maintenance. The Trumpian lust for power, manifested in the January 6 Insurrection is only the most dramatic evidence in a country where democratic politics has gone stale.

Beyond plausible theories of climate change and accelerating human disasters, environmentalists are justly concerned with human impacts on nature in terms of species extinction. In addition, industrialized agriculture limits the range of our sources of food, thus putting food supplies at risk, which climate change and ordinary disease can easily tip over into crisis (enjoy your Cavendish bananas now, and don’t be surprised if they cost $2 a piece in a few years if they are available).

The fact that “advanced countries have been growing “fat-and-happy” for a few hundred years and even the widespread human poverty of the 20C had become significantly abated made it hard to see (and hard to care about) Where the risks were. Overconfidence in technology, the accessibility of the vast torrents of the “information age,” and the general “march of progress” has led us to a certain smugness: an illusion of knowledge and expertise, which may be the only clothes our 21C “emperor” is wearing. All of this uneasily reminiscent of Europe on the eve of WWI or the US between the end of the Cold War and 9/11.

A few months ago, I wrote about the complexity of modern society and about the price of short-term thinking. The interconnection of so many aspects of our lives (or, at least, our increased awareness of that interconnection) makes it hard to understand the apparently distant ramifications of, e.g., supply chain disruption or climate effects. Short-term thinking and over-simplification make it easy for us to claim surprise when problems snowball.

Institutional sclerosis is another aspect of modern societal fragility. By institutions I mean not just formal organizations, like Congress or the Red Cross or your local public schools, but also the embedded sets of rules and practices by which our society operates, from “driving on the left” (in most countries) to tipping in restaurants to the way academic disciplinary boundaries drive university structures and the very way we help young people understand the world. Thomas Jefferson called for rewriting the Constitution every generation; but we haven’t had any meaningful change in ours since the Civil War. Deeply embedded bureaucracies and governance structures slow the pace of institutional changes precisely when we need more dexterity.

From a historical perspective, the huge (revolutionary) changes in social organization and mentality which began in the 18C constructed a modern society, rules and practices were established and were institutionalized, i.e., they were made difficult to change. From one perspective this was an unsurprising reaction to the extent of change that had gone on—a desire to catch our collective breaths by locking in what had been done and giving us security that we knew the new rules of the road. From another perspective, such institutionalization, including the difficulty of amending the Constitution, political parties, and other extra-market practices and organizations have made adapting to incremental change more difficult. What Schumpeter called the ”creative destruction” of capitalism has actually made the corporate sector more agile than the public sector.

To the extent we think of ourselves (proudly) as modern, it can be disorienting to imagine a life lived under different mindset. This is one reason I like to read science fiction—to get my brain out of its 20C rut. This is not a posting in which to propose substantive solutions, but it it does call for an awareness that we are mentally stuck in many ways and that the incremental change of the world will require larger and more radical reframings as an eventual response.

The essence of modernity is change—increasingly accelerating change. We have, to a large extent, papered over our struggling adaptation to this change with our vastly increased wealth/standard of living. Indeed, some portion of that apparent wealth has come from extracting resources for consumption instead of ensuring resilience and long-term stability (think deferring maintenance enables increasing short-term profits or deferring taxes). When we don’t build in resilience or some “cushion,” fragility results. When we defer maintenance on our institutions, they become stuck and outdated, and increasingly unable to resolve issues. Unsurprisingly, when a fragile society is managed by sclerotic institutions, there is reason for concern. This is what we face now.

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America as an Empire

11/5/2021

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In one of my classes recently, I gave students the assignment of writing a short (800-1000 word) research paper on “America as an Empire.” This is not a search for new information or interpretations of this well-covered topic, but an exercise in looking at a couple of books and articles and constructing an argument (pro or con) on this issue. Most did pretty well, even if there were few efforts at showing the negative.

I might have guessed as much after a situation a couple of years ago in which my colleague Trevor Getz and I were asked to debate this topic before a high school history club (just to give them the (enjoyable?) experience of watching a couple of historians argue with each other and demonstrating that history was far more than the simple narratives most high school history texts offer).

In that debate, I drew the “short straw,” and argued that the US was not an empire. It’s a tough case and depends mostly on semantics and the difference between the US experience and that of the “classic” empires of conquest and territorial expansion (e.g. Rome, Mongols, Spain, Portugal, England, France, etc.). With the exception of the notable but relatively insignificant seizure of the Spanish possessions (Philippines, Cuba, and a few other islands) at the end of the 19C, and the less visible but more extensive and brutal ejecting of indigenous peoples across the continent from the 16C through 20C, the US has not set up a network of overseas colonies in the European style.

Rather, since the US only developed the ability to project power across long distances at the end of the 19C and Europeans had already begun losing faith in their “new imperialism” model by that time, the nature of imperialism globally since then has been of the “informal” variety. Instead of running up flags and establishing local governments directed from metropolitan capitals (London, Paris, Washington), “informal” empires save much of the cost of administration and military defense in favor of the exercise of economic and cultural power by imperial governments, companies, banks, and other institutions.

From the home country (the “metropole”) this sort of operation looks a lot less like an empire than the old-style European model. This shift also fit the US self-image of being anti-imperialist (we did throw off the British yoke back in the 18C, after all) and our national mythology of less government and being the global champion of “freedom.”

In the first part of the 19C, the British led a campaign to open up national/imperial economies, under the battle cry of “free trade.” It was a fitting effort by what was becoming the dominant global economy to ensure that all markets were open to British intervention; a self-serving ideology of “freedom.” So, too, the US in the 20C opposed European (& Japanese) imperialism (see, e.g., Wilson’s efforts at the post-WWI Peace Conference and Roosevelt’s parallel effort as WWII was winding up). In both cases, “openness” meant opportunity for the merchants and financiers and the religious and other cultural entrepreneurs of the rising global power to establish themselves to the disadvantage of local and imperial competitors.

The “home” empires of the US and Russia consisted of seizing and incorporating land and indigenous peoples into an expanding metropole. This was larger in scope but along the same lines as what England did to Wales/Scotland/Ireland or Paris did to Aquitaine and Burgundy in earlier centuries.

The “new style” of empire, pioneered by the British in Latin America in the early 19C (and, arguably, in India even earlier) eschewed formal control. Funding, trade contracts, an occasional gunship, and a comment or two from an “advisor” to the local elites would suffice. These empires were not “state-to-state,” but “society/economy-to-society/economy.” Barclay’s Bank presaged Coca-Cola as the vehicle of power and profit. Commercial and cultural empires also avoided messy issues of national coherence and whether to include large colonial populations into the metropolitan polity (only white “Frenchmen” from Algeria could vote in France’s elections, even if Algeria had been formally part of France since 1830; and no one could contemplate hundreds of millions of Indians voting for Gladstone or Disraeli or Churchill). Companies viewed governmental empires as only occasionally useful tools.

By the mid-20C, military technology reduced the need to hold (and need to defend!) vast swaths of distant territories at considerable cost. A few air force and navy bases would do the job. Companies and non-governmental organizations could be paid (sometimes even openly) to advance the interests of the distant power center: the IMF could manage the budgets of entire countries, local groups could be subsidized to promote “democratic” values?

Perspectives from “colonized” peoples were not so different from one style to another. Geopolitical power is pretty hard to disguise after a while. It’s clear when you’re not even running your own country, despite the presence of local parties and Western-certified elections. Similarly, for Americans overseas, expat colonies, widespread use of English, Holiday Inn’s in Tibet and McDonald’s franchises in Java made it seem an “all-American” world, regardless of whose flag was flying.

It's good to remember all this, even in an age when US world-wide dominance is waning. There is no inherent reason China should not be a bigger global power than the US. They are 3-1/2 times more populous after all. Furthermore, the track record of prior hegemons shows that incumbents, sooner-or-later, get too fat-and-happy to stay at the top of their game. Finally, no one should confuse any of this with what is “right” or other morality claims/self-justifications.

So, other than the sharp variance from the Spanish/British model, the case for the US being an imperial power is pretty strong, regardless of our self-proclaimed ideology/mythology. We still project an awful lot of power around the world—from aircraft carriers to Facebook to financial infrastructure. It’s far from the whole story of the US in the world, but this power does polarize the perspectives of both the subjects of that power and our own.

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Existentialism

10/29/2021

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This is NOT about Sartre, or Kierkegaard, or any number of other Euro philosophers who wrestled with issues of the meaning of human existence (except incidentally and tangentially).

It is about what some people do when they feel their existence is at stake.

I have been struck by the juxtaposition of the stance of two large slices of the human race who perceive such a threat, both of which I have discussed from time to time in this series.

* There are those—in the US and elsewhere—who feel that their world is crumbling: that the components and structures by which they define themselves are going away. This group encompasses those who have traditionally held significant power in society, often based on race, gender, or economic status, as well as those who may lack any such significant power, but still feel their identity is tied up with the societal and epistemological status quo.
* There are those—in the US and elsewhere—whose world is crumbling: that the current levels and momentum of human disruption of the planetary environment will lead to the deaths of large swaths of humans, as well as other species over the next decades or century.

The first group is not (uniquely) physically at risk; but their conception of who they are and how they fit into the world is being pressured by societal changes, including demographics, unfamiliar language and semantics, new social values, and competition for power/wealth/status. The acceleration of change—a hallmark of modernity for the past 250 years—is bewildering and unsettling.

The second group is (although not uniquely) physically at risk. Many in this group understand, at least in broad terms, the threat to the planet and the species. They accept the premises of science and generally have confidence in the processes and methods by which a dismal forecast might be proffered. Some in this group, for a wide variety of reasons, are unaware of the probable outcome of humanity’s current course; sometimes due to lack of education or current information, sometimes (which includes much of the first group) because of nescience (i.e., intentional ignorance or the closed mindedness of denial).

Many in the first group are marshaling their considerable resources, including physical demonstrations and political engagement, to hold back the tide of social change. They seem to be ready to dispose of the nominally bedrock norms of behavior, including respect for law, fairness, due process and the essential social glue of democratic societies. They are “all in.” Within their worldview, this makes sense. The Constitution (the social contract) is not a suicide pact. Lesser norms must be sacrificed to preserve survival. In a particular and tightly-framed way, I admire their clarity of thought and their willingness to take action to preserve themselves (even as I disagree with most of their premises and fears).

Of the second group, at least those who are aware and are in a political and financial position to take more than cursory or minimal actions in response, only a few seem to have the same “fire in the belly.” Most of them, even as they recognize the risk and proclaim their rationalism and their humanism, do little…or nothing.

Those in the first group misperceive (in my view) the nature and extent of the risk they face; calling it existential. But, having done so, they act drastically, and, arguably, “improperly,” “illegally” (with due citations to the ideas of Jefferson and the practice of Lincoln), and “wrongly.” But at least they act to defend themselves and the world as they perceive it.

Most in the (aware portion of) second group perceives (accurately in my view) the nature and extent of the risk they (we!) face, calling it existential. But, having done so, act incrementally, in accordance with political niceties and legal standards in the hope that it will all work out or, at least, that the damage will be limited to others or that they will be dead (by natural causes) before things get brutally bad.

I’m not sure exactly how to conclude this discussion of two groups; but I am struck by their intimate parallels. It would be a fine thing if both groups were to change their stances. History, however, doesn’t give us lots of encouraging examples in this regard. Indeed, of such impasses, revolutions are made.

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Monopoly Game

10/22/2021

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There’s much brewing in Washington these days about “Big Tech.” Are Amazon, Google, and Facebook (yes, the perennials: Microsoft and Apple are there, too) mistreating consumers or competitors? Should the government, either by new legislation, or enforcement actions taken by the DoJ, Federal Trade Commission, FCC or other agency, rein them in?

Having worked for that old champion monopolist—AT&T—some years back, I am wary of the effectiveness of such actions, government is always going to play “catch-up” in trying to manage rapidly changing industries. But beyond the particulars of antitrust law, it’s important to understand the broad history of regulation and what it’s for.

Speaking broadly and roughly, the theory of antitrust, developed at the end of the 19C is a counterpart to a much longer theory of monopolies and government regulation of powerful businesses. Formal, legal monopolies were set up by the State as a means of coopting private businessmen to engage in an enterprise which the State could nominally control but wasn’t very good at managing. The English East India Company, for example, was set up in the 17C to trade between England and the Far East and they were granted a monopoly on this trade, i.e., the EIC was the only legal importer of spices, etc. back into England. In return, the State took a (often substantial) cut of the action. In addition, certain “natural monopolies” e.g., ferry boats or bridges were authorized or regulated as necessary enterprises whose unbridled market power could gouge the ordinary citizenry. This last type eventually evolved into our modern regulation of utilities, such as transportation, power and water companies and, until recently, communications companies (especially my former employer).

Modern antitrust grew in response to the creation of cartels and other forms of business combination (sometimes structured as a “trust”). While grounded in economic theories of distortion of markets (e.g. monopolization or price-fixing) and enacted to meet public outcries against abusive practices, to me the essence of anti-trust has always been about power.

The State is conceived as the fundamental crystallization of society and its power structure. The standard definition of a State is an entity which plausibly claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a society. But it’s power goes well beyond physical coercion (armies, police) to encompass the supreme authority in a society. Unlike normal policing, or concerns with domestic unrest/terrorism, with antitrust the State is recognizing that power works in ways beyond physical force and it wants to ensure that it keeps all its competitors in the power game under its control.

In this way, antitrust works in conjunction with traditional regulation of railroads (late 19C under the Interstate Commerce Commission), banks, and utilities. The mother of all anti-trust cases was against Standard Oil, the Rockefeller vehicle for dominating the oil and gas industry. In 1911, the Supreme Court found that Standard Oil had violated the Sherman Act (1890) and the courts ordered it split into seven different major companies (some of which subsequently recombined).

The break-up of AT&T (1982) was a similar situation, complicated by the existence of regulatory structures and the beginnings of rapidly changing telecommunications technology. It, too, was broken up into seven major companies (one of which hired me in 1983), all of which eventually recombined into the new AT&T and Verizon. Most antitrust cases are not of this magnitude and significance. Price fixing among auction houses, while a glamorous story at the time, only affected the small group of people who are in the market for a Picasso painting.
The same cannot be said of today’s Big Tech companies. Their behavior affects billions every day and, more importantly, the uncertainty over the evolution of the advertising, retail, entertainment, and media industries in which they operate makes their potential market power scary. Their high profitability make them juicy targets from a PR perspective. However, as with every aspect of governmental intervention into society, its political, bureaucratic and procedural constraints make regulating private companies difficult. This is especially so for Big Tech since their products and markets are evolving rapidly. It’s challenging to know clearly what kind of products and practices are problematic since by the time the legal and administrative processes take their course, the market will have moved on, with new services and new competitors. (Imagine spending a lot of time and effort to control AOL or Yahoo!).

So, what’s really going on? Some of the governmental effort is grandstanding: how much fun it is to watch Mark Zuckerberg being raked over the coals in a Congressional hearing. Some is signaling/deterrence (“Don’t take any more aggressive steps in your markets, Google, or we will really come down hard on you.”). And some use antitrust mechanisms to beat up on companies for being too big and amassing too much effective power, even if there is no clear antitrust violation going on. As you might suspect, these three modes usually bleed into one another. Companies also use antitrust laws to go after competitors and suppliers when they can’t win in the market; it’s relatively cheap to do so, generates good PR, and you might get lucky; but it’s also pretty difficult to sympathize with either side in the various battles of the corporate giants, whether it’s MCI vs. ATT, high-tech patent battles, or Apple vs. Microsoft.

None of this is to say that Big Tech is innocent of wrongdoing and exploitation of market power. While corporations are not charities, fat profits make for arrogance and blindness in how corporate actions affect suppliers, competitors, and customers. It’s easy to rationalize abusive behavior when your business model increases margins.

Still, at bottom, much of the regulatory/Antitrust game is about big government making sure nobody else in society gets uppity and forgets who is really in charge.

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Me First

10/15/2021

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Me First

Two of the central premises of our modern world over the past 300 years have been economic growth/capitalism and democracy. Each can be seen as part of the historical dialectic which posits change from the prior (ancien) regime: stasis and monarchy/oligarchy, respectively. Each positioned itself has a positive change (aka “progress”) and with some plausibility. As you know from my earlier postings, it’s hard to argue against democracy, either theoretically or, in the long term, as to its practical benefits. Economic growth, too, yoked to technology and higher living standards has carried the day (at least until recently when Nature/climate has begun to submit its bill for damages deferred).

However laudable these twin touchstones might be from a generic, human/global perspective, their implementation have been tainted by a sense that noble aspirations have been appropriated by elites along the way. These groups, who were relatively advantaged at the time, have maintained or expanded their disproportionate exercise of the benefits of capitalism and democracy. One can characterize their posture as: “Yes, but me first.”

Their ability to preserve economic and political power, respectively, have been enhanced by the fact that these are mutually reinforcing.

Their economic argument is relatively easy to see; captured in the well-known theory of “trickle-down” economics. “Let me (the merchant/lawyer etc.) get rich by reducing the governments burdens on me, and benefits will—in due course—arrive on the doorstep of the not-so-well-off.” Repeatedly demolished over the past century, both as to its theoretical underpinnings and the historical record (most lately by Paul Krugman), “trickle-down” retains a political vitality explainable only by a combination of disingenuity and naivete hidden under a rubric of anti-governmental “liberalism.” As I have noted previously, there’s plenty of reason to be wary of gratuitous government involvement which has repeatedly demonstrated that it is no panacea for all of the world’s ills. Some classic “liberals” have advanced their views based on such concerns and some solid philosophical points. However, it’s hard to believe that many (less philosophical) advocates of lower government burdens are not more mindful of their personal benefits than the common weal. Noble policies with disproportionate effects have been a frequent result.

In fact, as shown by many economic historians (most recently Thomas Piketty), economic inequality has increased over time (generally as a result of governmental policies). In fact, the principal means by which inequality has been reduced have been wars and other catastrophes or the economic disruption of new factors of production over which neither the state nor society has had much control.

This is true both on a domestic basis and globally. The implicit rationale of imperialism was economic aggrandizement of metropoles (and their elites), relegating any incidental benefits (if that) for the peripheries. Comparable “charitable” stances were taken by elites in most “advanced” countries over the past few centuries, spurred either by guilt or fear of revolt.

The push for democracy has also featured more arguments by and benefits for elites (as against a monarch or smaller elite) than attention to the power of the mass of people. Magna Carta (1215) often cited as an essential text of the Western (especially English) democratic tradition, was pretty much all about the Barons who negotiated with King John. Again, there was no thought at the time that distributing political power to ordinary folks was a good or likely plan. It was only later, as a wider group developed the economic foundation to challenge the embedded political power of their time (17-18C), that it became a useful precedent, this time used against an aristocracy now fully embedded in the political/economic/cultural power structure of that age.

Even then, in the heyday of revolution, the dispersion of political power was incremental. Indeed, it is striking to compare the broad political structures of ancient Athens with those of the US Constitution; neither had room for women, slaves, or foreigners (i.e., most folks) and the US system usually also excluded free white males who had little or no property. The entire premise of the Electoral College is that the election of the President cannot be entrusted to ordinary citizens; they should rely on their more knowledgeable (well-off) colleagues to make the choice.

Britain, France, and the US—the leading “liberal” states of the 19C, all sharply restricted voting power. In various forms and methods, the ancien regime—traditional elites—persisted in power. For all its good PR, mass democracy is pretty much of a 20C phenomenon (and it is still very much a work-in-progress).

As with the economic angle, the arguments for slowing down democracy have been advanced by those with some power—intellectual elites, generals, the “rich”—to provide enough cover for their continued domination of their societies. However, in a sense, the history of democracy (at least in the last two hundred years) can be seen as aligning with the economic “trickle-down” model. Once we moved past the “divine right” theory of kingship, monarchies could only be a function of the structure of human power. Traditional arguments against democracy—the ignorance and volatility of the mob—that had been in place since Plato, were tempered by increasing literacy and the insertion of mediating representatives into the governmental structure.

The pace of these changes and the continuation of political inequality testify that, at least in this context, “trickle-down” takes generations. This is not surprising in terms of the pace of human social change generally, but it makes it even more difficult to see the economic version as anything other than propaganda designed to placate the bulk of society sufficiently to avoid more disruptive (not to say revolutionary) demands. One might say that the design of modern society, particularly the rise of the “middle class,” which could claim some degree of economic power and at least the form of political power, has evolved consistent with the needs/interests of elites to retain most of their own.

Overall, it’s hard to discern the specific causes of the dispersal of economic and political power. How much was taken? How much was ceded? Are there any coherent actors or just rough rubrics and groupings? Social scientists propose neat explanatory models. Historians insist that the variety of human situations (different societies, different eras, different mentalités) is too vast and complex to fit into a single story.

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The Pace of Science

10/8/2021

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The journal Science reported in September that footprints in New Mexico are believed to be well over 20,000 years old, providing evidence that humans were in the Western Hemisphere several millennia earlier than previously thought; a significant revision of the conventional anthropological story of globalization. In reading the coverage of this development in the Times, however, I was struck more by the nature and process of the discovery of these footprints than their implications for understanding human evolution. The article noted that the footprints had first been discovered in 2009. Beneath the article, the Times included some links to earlier stories on related topics, including one from March, 2018 entitled “Earliest Known Human Footprints in North American Found on Canadian Island,” reporting on a discovery of footprints from 13,000 years ago.

So, even though the 23,000-year-old New Mexico evidence had been known since 2009, the 2018 Times reported the 13,000-year-old footprints as the oldest on the continent.

This tells us some important things about the nature of science and highlights some of our current difficulties with interpreting scientific findings. As I noted last year, “science” is not a “thing;” there is no single organization, nor an official spokesperson like the President of the United States. Science is a process of thinking about and trying to understand the natural world (including humans and their societies). Lots of people are part of millions of projects to figure things out. Science (i.e., the mass of those people, over time) aspires to “truth,” but, unlike most religions, does not claim to have done more than ‘the best job we can’ at getting close to it.

A twelve-year lag from discovery to publication isn’t all that unusual in science. After all, when dealing with events from thousands of years ago, what’s a decade? Part of the time is taken up with confirmation, verification, theorizing, contextualization, and all that’s before ploughing through the formal publication process, with its own hurdles and delays. History isn’t all that different. Normally, it’s no big deal.

The pandemic has fundamentally changed how we see this process, however. Not only is each small step along the way immediately publicized, but our anxiety over the impact of COVID has led us, as a global society, to expect/demand instantaneous results and alignment. The ordinary, incremental, and conservative/prudent course taken by researchers, Big Pharma, and the FDA/CDC/NIH can come across as bureaucratic and uncaring. I mean: “What’s with this Pfizer booster shot? The Administration (self-proclaimed champions of “science” says: go! (even before the test results are in)). Pfizer says: go!, then it’s a while until the FDA Advisory committee says: go! Then the FDA has to “make it official.” Then the CDC has to tweak and the answer to fit into an implementation plan. Then we all need to hear the benediction from Dr. Fauci. The “normal” scientific process values methods that produce a high degree of confidence in its results; it doesn’t aim at a binary yes/no, go/no go decision; it would rather be right (i.e. highly confident), than fast.

But this looks weird under the media spotlight amplified by global anxieties. What we have seen over the past 18 months is pretty miraculous on several levels and we should all be grateful. The science that normally plods along, unseen by more than a few hundred people, is now ”BREAKING NEWS.” The folks that do the work should perhaps be cut some slack at being slightly discombobulated by all the attention and the expectations of not only miracles, but immediate and definitive miracles to boot.

Nor should we be surprised when “Science” changes “it’s” mind. We learn. We learn methodically. We then adapt to new learnings (hopefully). We all remember when we were scrubbing down boxes of soy milk from the market and dousing cantaloupes in a mild detergent rinse. We learned that COVID is basically an air-borne disease and adjusted. When the next curve ball comes at us, we shouldn’t be surprised. None of this means that “Science” was wrong, since it never claimed to be “right.” It only claimed to give us its best thinking at the time.

This lack of certainty inherent in the scientific process unfortunately creates an opening for those who, for various reasons, either want to attack “Science” or who think that since, it’s not perfect, anybody can do it and come up with their own explanations that are just as good. This is a breeding ground for anti-Vaxxers, anti-masketeers, and (my recent favorite) a woman apparently suing a hospital in Bakersfield to require them to give Ivermectin (an antiparasitic drug) to her ICU-bound, COVID-inflicted husband, despite a total absence of “scientific” evidence of effectiveness.

We are seeing the same set of reactions to the science of climate change, to even more dire results. There, as with COVID, the projections of scientists may prove to be incorrect. In the 18 and 19C, most intellectual elites thought that there was an invisible “aether” through which many physical phenomena operated, most doctors that “bleeding” of patients was a great therapeutic regimen. All those smart guys were wrong, or at least we no longer think their answers make sense. As I have said in other contexts, science, like democracy, is about humility and our collective ability/willingness to allow for the possibility of error. So, while there is no room for smugness, neither is there room for burying our collective head in the sand. Intelligent people operate on the basis of the best information/ideas/theories that they have available. In terms of climate, it’s only prudent to take significant action immediately.

In terms of the anthropological peopling of the Western Hemisphere, there’s no great rush to confirm that the New Mexico footprints are 23,000 years old. If the 2018 Times report omitted the 2009 discovery of those footprints, we can all live with that. The stakes are lower. Most of the time, if scientists take twelve years to publish their startling data and insights, that’s OK; it’s just science at work.

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Names and Places

10/1/2021

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I imagine several of you have been fortunate to have traveled to Beijing; but it’s not likely any of you have been to Peking. The difference is the change in the English translation of the Chinese word which was instituted by Mao Zedong (aka Mao Tse-Tung) in the aftermath of the Chinese Communist victory in their civil war in 1949. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the government insisted on the usage, at which point the “Beijing” moniker became more-or-less standard.

The practice of not using the “home” language name for a country or city and using instead a different version from the language of the (foreign) speaker has struck me as culturally significant. I suspect it has something to do with Western imperialistic attitudes or even a broader arrogance towards foreigners.

The situation is complicated (as in our first example) by the use of non-Roman alphabetic or other character sets (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Russian, Arabic, Greek) which then must be transcribed/transliterated into a Roman alphabetic form.

Other examples of countries insisting on using the home language spelling include India’s shift from Bombay to Mumbai (1995) and Calcutta to Kolkata (2001), Burma became Myanmar and Rangoon became Yangon in 1989. In both cases, these were delayed reactions to decolonization and the withdrawal of the influence of the British who ran both countries until the mid-20C.

My point here is about language. The British had a protectorate in what they called Swaziland from 1906 to 1968, it took another fifty years for the Swazi’s to change their country’s name to Eswatini (2018). More substantive name changes (e.g., Gold Coast to Ghana in 1957, Upper Volta to Burkina Faso in 1984) which often speak to a post-imperial identity, raise a similar but broader point. By the same token, this is different than just a matter of translating from a foreign language. Milk (Eng.) = lait (Fr.) = leche (Sp.) If two French speakers were discussing Wisconsin’s principal agricultural product, they would speak of “lait.” A bi-lingual discussion could use either one or both terms and if two English speakers were talking about French cows, they would speak of “milk” (except if they were ordering some concoction at Starbucks).

It seems to me that proper names are different, however. The practice is all over the map (so to speak). Why do English speakers use “Germany” (and French speakers “Allemagne”), not Deutschland? Is the capital of Italy best referred to as “Rome” or “Roma”? (I guess if we’re not in Roma, we don’t do as the Romans do!) The French take the Chunnel to Londres, not London.

Norge, Sverige, Suomi: These three Scandinavian countries have lots of etymological history with continental Europeans, so it’s no wonder that the latter had developed their own names for these countries despite the usage of the natives. I suspect that we could map cultural dominance over time by the common global usage of names of other places.

But, I’m more concerned with how most folks don’t seem to respect other’s choices as to names. There’s no particular reason to use “lait” in Wisconsin (especially given the predominance of Germanic language immigrants). In this case, English speakers derived “ from the Germanic “milch.” Regardless, there is an etymology for “milk,” just as there is for “blue” or “curry.” I guess I don’t understand why there is an etymology for “Roma” or “España.” Why should foreigners get to choose the name of a place in my country (or vice-versa)?

There’s an interesting parallel with the current controversies/confusion about respecting others’ choice of names and personal pronouns; which is, in my view, a matter of respecting an individual’s choices for how they want to be seen in society. The issue of names comes up pretty frequently in an academic environment (such as SF State) where we have students and employees from many heritages and students from a plethora of countries where (amazingly enough) they don’t speak English. It seems problematic to expect them to adopt “English” names just to “fit in.” Why should a Korean girl born “Shin-hye” be expected to be called “Susie” or some-such? “Rabindranath” does not equal “Robby,” any more than we would expect Andrea Bocelli to go by “Andy.” To be sure, names should be a matter of personal choice and a foreign student should be free to choose “Susie” if she wishes. At the same time, I am wary of situations where such students choose an English name out of embarrassment at seeing an instructor struggle to pronounce their actual name in a language with which the instructor is unfamiliar. It’s not too hard to make an effort; even if we come from the dominant language/culture on the planet.

It’s but another small step to the more fraught issue of gender identity. I think the same principle applies—the owner chooses—but personal pronouns are deeply embedded in our language and their recent proliferation across a multitude of gender identifications raises a bunch of challenges: remembering, new terms/new modes of self-identification, pace of social change, and generosity of spirit in dealing with others that I won’t dive into here. Our society is in flux and our language is flexing with it.

This set of issues illustrates some of the themes I have talked about over the past year, such as globalization and the complexity and dynamism of modernity. From a historical perspective, you may wonder what it was like adjust to the novel calendar adopted by the French Revolutionaries in 1793 or to be a female voting advocate in 1910. These were the commonplaces of historical change. You may be off to visit the biggest city in Italia or India, or talking to someone who’s name you have to consciously pronounce or referring to someone who looks like a “normal guy” who asks to be referred to as “they.” This is our version of social change. The phrase: “Gay Paris” no longer has the currency it once had; but perhaps we can at least revive the 'Paris' part to rhyme with hairy, rather than Harris.

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The Big (ger) Picture

9/24/2021

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So, my longtime history buddy, Trevor Getz has commented on this morning's posting. I'm using this reposting to encourage folks to comment on my postings and take a look at others' comments (click on the comments link below each posting).

Trev and I have sparred over the years about the role of Europe in the modern world and I'm glad we're continuing to do so. He is correct in pointing out the perils of summarizing 500 years of history in 500 words. I also confess to being a Europeanist, which means it's easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that "it's all about Europe." I agree with him that:

Europe didn't exist in a vacuum and its culture has always incorporated contributions (both material and ideological) from other parts of the world. So, it can be misleading to summarily refer to "European" culture.
We need to be extremely wary of inferring European moral superiority or 'pride of historical place' from the vast power Europeans applied to the modern world, especially since much of that history demonstrates European brutality, exploitation, and disregard for other peoples.

I've noted elsewhere that the 19/20C might well be anomalous in terms of 'Western" preeminence when taking a broader historical view. Still, from our spot here in the early 21C, the "West" has had the greatest effect on creating the modern world.

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