...and on a less encouraging note: The real reason for new elections in the UK

 

🇬🇧 THE REAL REASON SUNAK CALLED AN EARLY ELECTION IN JULY - ANDREW BRIDGEN MP pic.twitter.com/WVsPkeQHrq

— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) May 23, 2024

How Denmark Became the Most Trusting Country

The Denmark secret: how it became the world’s most trusting country – and why that matters

There are real benefits to a society where people feel safe enough to leave their babies and bikes on the street. How have the Danes achieved this level of faith in their fellow citizens?
by Zoe Williams
 

[Excerpt:]

Over the years, Denmark has emerged as the good faith capital of the world. Nearly 74% of Danes believe “most people can be trusted” – more than any other nationality. On wider metrics, such as social trust (trusting a stranger) and civic trust (trusting authority), Denmark also scores highest in the world, with the other Nordic countries close behind.

The political scientist Gert Tinggaard Svendsen argues that trust accounts for 25% of Denmark’s otherwise inexplicable wealth. By his reckoning, a quarter of that wealth comes from physical capital (means of production and infrastructure), half comes from human capital (the population’s level of education and innovation), and the unexplained final quarter is trust: they don’t sue one another, they don’t waste money on burglar alarms, businesses often make binding verbal agreements without sweating the contract. People who hold power in Danish institutions – the government, police, judiciary, health services – are trusted to be acting in society’s best interests, and there is very little corruption.


Even the Danish official website calls it “the land of trust”, using unattended cloakrooms at the opera as an example. A better one I saw is the Red Cross charity shop in Copenhagen, which has a QR code on the door. If the shop’s closed, you can download the app, let yourself in, choose what you want and leave the money on the counter.

Yoga Dog

 

Yoga lover 😂

pic.twitter.com/ctKCSRjdb0

— The Best (@ThebestFigen) May 20, 2024

Israel has impunity

 

John Mearsheimer with an important truism confirmed again recently with the killing of the Western aid workers and American doctors and nurses trapped in hospitals by Israel: "If I visited Israel and I was killed, would there be any accountability? There wouldn't be. The Israelis… pic.twitter.com/4vdXz2IzRb

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) May 19, 2024

Why renewables may be cheaper but don't dominate new power generation

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The quotes below are from The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet by Brett Christophers. The short version of his detailed examination of why renewables are remain in disfavor, despite producing electricity more inexpensively than conventional sources, is that renewables are not as profitable, even for large-scale utilities generating electricity. And profit guides business decisions....decisively.

Part of the reason renewables have higher costs and lower profits is that they consume more land--whether solar PV or wind, the footprint of a renewables installation is far larger than a conventional power plant or an oil well, at least above ground. Another partial explanation is that the cheapest land for these installations is often far from the eventual consumers of the electricity. Extending grid connections to remote locations is not cheap. So even though a solar panel may cost less than drilling for oil, connecting that panel to the grid may boost the cost of delivered electricity to the point it becomes less profitable. The pipeline and refinery infrastructure for conventional energy sources is already built.

The costs for renewables are primarily at their initial installation, too, requiring financing, or massive injections of equity upfront. "Market-izing" electrical generation with spot markets makes financiers nervous since prices can fall below zero for that electricity if markets have their way.

Incidentally, it's worth mentioning that hydrocarbons remain heavily subsidized to achieve their lower costs / higher profitability. For example, in the US, those with oil income can claim the depletion allowance, and write off a portion of their income as not taxable. The IMF says "Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of GDP in 2022, reflecting a $2 trillion increase since 2020 due to government support from surging energy prices." Subsidies for renewables are not insignificant, but faced with the enormous multi-trillion-dollar subsidies for petroleum, the renewables struggle to compete.

You may notice in the examples below that low oil prices make petroleum projects less profitable, and encourage renewable development. The key to understanding this is that any such project must be "bankable" - and lenders carefully calculate projected profits based on the price the product will receive. Higher initial costs and lower or uncertain returns, make renewables something bankers view with skepticism.

From the book [p.215]: Consider, for instance, the recent experience of Equinor, the Norwegian state-controlled oil and gas giant. All the while [French oil company] Total was finalizing its plans for its money-spinning hydrocarbon projects in Africa and South America, Equinor, alongside partners Eni and SSE, was itself finalizing plans for the development of the first phase of Dogger Bank in the North Sea, in which it owns a 40 percent stake and which will be one of the world's largest offshore wind farms when operational. In June 2021, Equinor revised downwards its expected rate of return on offshore wind projects - from between 6 and 10 percent to between just 4 and 8 percent. But a study carried out by experts suggested that even this was too optimistic in the case specifically of the Dogger Bank project, calculating the expected IRR to be just 3.6 percent and equating to a payback period of a minimum of seventeen years.

No wonder that when, the following year, Equinor approached BP - another European oil company that had said in the recent past that it would move into lower-emissions activities but which has found such ambition to be fundamentally incompatible with the profit motive - about joining it in competing for new wind power rights off the coast of California, the response was negative. BP, reported Jenny Strasburg in early 2023, had increasingly become 'disappointed in the returns from some of [its own] renewable investments,' and was therefore planning to 'dial back elements of [its] high-profile push into renewable energy.' Offshore wind returns of 4 to 8 percent? No thank you.....

[p.216]...In a world awash in hydrocarbon profits, what chance for renewables and their wafer-thin profit margins?

For a brief window of time during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, expected returns on oil and gas declined to the extent they became comparable to expected returns on renewables. As environmentalists saw it, at least, it appeared to be one of the few silver linings to the spread of the virus. With oil prices languishing at under $25 per barrel in March 2020, the expected IRR on oil projects dipped to below 10 percent, making wind and solar projects newly competitive with such projects on paper - which they would remain, analysts suggested, even at an oil price of $35 per barrel. But, of course, hydrocarbon prices did not remain in the doldrums for long. As soon as they recovered, the window of opportunity for renewables seemingly slammed shut.

That the profitability of oil and gas has generally been far higher than that of renewables explains why, in the 1980s and 1990s, the oil and gas majors unceremoniously shuttered their first ventures in the renewables space--piecemeal, exploratory, and never more than tentative- almost as soon as they had launched them: these were business decisions, first and foremost. The same comparative calculus equally explains why the same companies are shifting to clean energy at no more than a snail's pace today, and why such 'climate-friendly' investments as they are in fact making - BP, for its part, has mentioned hydrogen, biogas, and electric vehicle charging networks, in each of which returns are expected to be above 10 percent- increasingly are not in renewable power generation at all.

If anyone were still under the impression at this stage of the climate crisis that the oil majors would ever sacrifice profitability at the altar of climate, then the following recent statement by Shell's CEO Wael Sawan in response to a question about whether he considered renewables' lower returns acceptable for his company, will have rudely disabused them of such a notion:

I think on low carbon, let me be, I think, categorical in this. We will drive for strong returns in any business we go into. We cannot justfy [p217] going for a low return. Our shareholders deserve to see us going after strong returns. If we cannot achieve the double-digit returns in a business, we need to question very hard whether we should continue in that business. Absolutely, we want to continue to go for lower and lower and lower carbon, but it has to be profitable.

Sawan's predecessor as CEO had staked his reputation on transforming Shell from an oil and gas company into a climate-friendlier power-generation company, all the while the US hydrocarbon majors stuck defiantly with hydrocarbons. Sawan was now responding to the market's unambiguous assessment of the two divergent strategies.'Five years ago, when Shell embarked on a low-carbon push, its market capitalization was about $40 billion less than that of Exxon Mobil Corp. Now', noted one journalist, 'the difference is more than $200 billion.'

....
[from me, not the book]:
The subsidies for renewables are peanuts when compared to the subsidies petroleum receives. Governments are often criticized for "picking winners," but the picking has already happened. The problems that remain in converting to renewables are daunting because of the sunk costs and political inertia reinforced by those who might lose out if a different winner were picked.

Mention how governments' superstructure for the economy remains biased toward what are ultimately more expensive solutions--after all, what's more expensive than an uninhabitable planet?--some say "But if we take that advice, the stock market would suffer, and my 401K would be in the tank."

This is an indication of "Midas disease"--something far more widespread than COVID. It's mistaking the symbols of wealth for actual wealth. Alfred North Whitehead calls it the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It's like going to a restaurant and devouring the paper menu. Neither sensible nor nourishing.

What good would all those symbols of wealth do, whether dollars or stocks and bonds, if there's nothing to purchase?

Marketing Professor Galloway Gets It Half Right

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Here's NYU Marketing Professor Scott Galloway's TED talk about how the US is destroying young people's futures. His big question: "Do we love our kids?" ... is transparently manipulative marketing, even if he's a little self-deprecating about it.

On the plus side, the video has some interesting statistics, especially about the direction of the country in general, but it's based on an understanding that is pretty shallow overall. His talk has some rather glaring omissions, too, but let's look at that after the video...

First, remember this is a marketing professor. One needs to go no further than politics to understand the limitations of marketing.

"The Republican party needs better marketing" one member of Sacramento's Republican Central Committee declared. I'd say the Democrats would agree that marketing was of paramount importance too. So...Team Blue agrees with Team Red about some pretty fundamental stuff, and, as I'll demonstrate, relies on marketing to conceal the rot underneath public policy decisions both made and avoided.

Does marketing work? It's effective enough that people praise the Obama years as "scandal-free"--especially compared to the bad, bad Trump years. Yet to believe that "scandal-free" comment, one has to overlook the marketing-omitted fact that Obama didn't prosecute the war crimes of Bush 43, and even promoted the people who authorized torture.

The huge subprime mortgage economic scandal Obama inherited resulted in 8 - 10 million foreclosures thanks to fraudulent behavior from Wall Street, but none of the criminals went to jail. Obama's Justice Department was positively supine before its Wall Street masters. I'd suggest that without Obama's malfeasance, Donald Trump is inconceivable...unless you want to believe the marketing.

One of the biggest (marketing-concealed) scandals is how much Obama embraced the Republican agenda. "Obamacare" was first proposed by Richard Nixon, codified by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and prototyped by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts before Obama, who had but didn't use the votes to implement the "public option," made it his signature legislation. But marketing concealed its shortcomings and permitted the continuing awfulness of US healthcare while persuading lots of folks Obama was just an innocent, scandal-free president.

So..."If it weren't for lies there wouldn't be any politics." said Will Rogers. Amen, brother Will.

Marketing itself is often deceptive. It's smoke and mirrors, bullshit and manipulation...it's the lipstick on the pig. That might be unethical enough in and of itself, but the bigger problem is that the marketers start to believe their own bullshit. 

Professor Galloway tears up toward the end of his talk. He's either a terrific actor, or very sincere. Yet he's also obviously misguided in several ways that align perfectly with the anti-government, anti-humanity movements he decries.

One example: He touts term limits as a solution to bad governance. We've tried that in California. The result is a revolving door of politicians running for a variety of offices. They are termed out as soon as they learn one job and must move on to the next. Who's really in charge? Unelected staff who actually know the job. Term limits haven't improved anything, and they were originally passed as a way to get rid of a person of color (Willie Brown) too smart to be defeated otherwise. It is both non-working and (bonus!) racist. It solves nothing.

Marketing! Gotta love it!

Another example: Professor Galloway wants to means test Social Security. This is a bad idea for several reasons. First, means-tested safety net programs are easier to reduce or terminate. Means-tested welfare used to be AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children). Thanks to Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich welfare is now TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families). Of those needing public assistance, 76% got AFDC, but only 26% get TANF. That's right, the "party of the poor" marketing for Democrats is just deception.

Incidentally, studies say better welfare cuts crime. But that's not convincing to public policy makers who guide their decisions by marketing. Between 1982 and 2017 US population grew by 42%, while police spending grew 187%. It would be cheaper and more effective crime prevention to have generous welfare, but according to Galloway that's not worth a mention. Here, the marketing is in the omissions.

And speaking of crime and marketing, Hollywood's "copaganda" has convinced the public that policing solves and prevents crime. All those police procedurals get their man. Perry Mason solves the most intricate murders, etc. The truth: in California, police clear an average of 15% of crimes. Less than half of murders (40%) are solved. Police suck at crime solving. 

Yet the US incarcerates at five times the world average. Seven times more than Canada and France, per-capita, yet Canadian and French crime rates are actually lower than US crime. One difference between the US and those other two countries that might matter: The US has more than a half million medical bankruptcies a year, and the single-payer countries have none. Again, no mention of this from our marketing professor.

Galloway also believes that Social Security is robbing a younger generation to pay its benefits. This is a common misconception, but again, completely untrue despite the marketing to the contrary.

For the monopoly creator of dollars--government--to need dollars from the public to fund its programs, dollars would have to grow on billionaires. That's obviously not so. Federal fiscal policy is not "tax & spend," that's just marketing. Ask yourself where taxpayers would get the dollars to pay the taxes if the government didn't spend them first.

So the actual sequence of federal fiscal events is "spend first, then retrieve some dollars in taxes." The initial spending occurs without any tax revenue. Beardsley Ruml, chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, wrote about this in 1945: Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete (pdf). Taxes do not provision federal programs, they create the demand for dollars which are otherwise useless pieces of paper.

And what do we call the dollars that are spent, but not retrieved in taxes--you know, the ones in your wallet? Answer #1: The dollar financial assets of the population. Answer #2: National debt. Both answers describe the same thing. This is analogous to your bank account. It's your asset, but to the bank, it's a liability, a debt. It's the money the bank owes you. This isn't exotic economics, it's double-entry bookkeeping.

And yes, you can march down to the bank and demand it reduce its debt just because you hate the word "debt," but it would do that by reducing the size of your account. Not very sensible. Most of the "deficit scolds" have cutting social safety nets as their real agenda, however, marketing conceals it. Cutting those safety nets when, according to the Federal Reserve, 40% of the population can't handle a $400 emergency, and 65% of seniors have only Social Security to fund their retirement is a recipe for even more people becoming poorer.

Incidentally, both Team Blue and Team Red agree that national debt should diminish. Team Blue wants to raise taxes, while Team Red wants to cut spending. All the marketing is directed toward that debate. Here's what Noam Chomsky says:"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

These rather obvious facts about savings and debt mean no one is being "deprived" by a higher tax burden to pay for Social Security. Even if you doubted that taxes for revenue are obsolete, just lifting the ceiling on income taxable for FICA would fully fund even more generous benefits.

Correctly describing federal fiscal policy demonstrates that national debt is simply a reflection of private savings. All the "ain't it awful" talk about how youth is deprived, or debt is a "burden" is just marketing bullshit.

Finally, another cause for complaint from Galloway is half-baked. He's correct in citing the massive increase in tuition (and financialization of elite institutions' endowments), but he omits a critical fact: Since 1972, federal support for higher education has diminished 55%. States have cut higher education even more--Oklahoma reports a 37% cut in just the last decade. Gosh! I wonder why tuition is so high, and student debt is second only to mortgage debt in the US economy. Graduating educated people as debt peons is a mechanism of control. Thanks marketing!

As Brandolini's law states...it takes orders of magnitude more energy to debunk the bullshit than to create it in the first place. (Heavens to Betsy! Just look at all these words!) Meanwhile, there is a name for Galloway and his like: "useful idiots."

Why the US South veered rightward

 

The spread of Walmart in the 1980s shattered Southern politics, that’s *purely* a trade and antitrust story. The civil rights movement is not why the South went to the right.

Also West Virginia was never Republican. The story of civil rights delivering the south to the right… https://t.co/duhf6caqPS

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) May 15, 2024

FedWire: The US Govt Securities Settlement System

 

Lazy Thinking and Politics

Quotes from Noam Chomsky (cited by Caitlin Johnstone):

“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

How to discuss climate change

 

Buggy Biological Software

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Those familiar with computer software also know that it's almost inevitable that it has some bugs. For example, unless a programmer catches it, some process can divide by zero--producing an undefined result and halting the program. Another condition called a "memory leak" occurs when a program consumes more and more memory without limit and crashes the computer.

These bugs produce undesired results. Perhaps less obviously, living beings also have a kind of "software." For example, when you stand up, your heart automatically starts beating harder, raising your blood pressure--otherwise, you'd faint. Most people know how it feels to get up too fast for that particular bit of biological programming to prevent feeling dizzy.

One variety of biological bugs is called "Supernormal Stimuli." These exist even in animals. For example, a peahen is attracted to larger peacock tails. Some zoologists wondered whether there was a limit to that  attraction and built peacock models larger than any real bird could be. The peahens preferred them.

Stuart McMillan has a wonderful cartoon collection of such Supernormal Stimuli

 

(Here is the rest of the comic) 

Deirdre Barret has also written a book about this: Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose in which she examines how such unlimited appetites distort healthy behavior.

McMillan points out things like the "seven deadly sins" (pride, wrath, greed, envy, gluttony, sloth, lust) are probably examples of this buggy software. I'd add that virtually any obsessive thought can enter the Supernormal realm, even when they are "noble" ideas like justice, indignation, safety, payback, or even truth. Yes, even truth told without taking present circumstances into account can be damaging.

One can expect virtually any train of thought that takes no account of present reality is buggy software in action. Like the buggy computer software, the Supernormal Stimuli also halt sensible thinking. They may indeed be the reason common sense is so uncommon.

So...the next time you're obsessed with righteous indignation or any of the other obsessions to which flesh is heir, file a trouble ticket with yourself. It's what good software developers do.