Left-Right Scraps

This is just some shit that I forgot to work into the previous two posts somewhere, abridged over, if you will. Those posts have proved less engaging than talking about a historic left and right that possibly never has and never will exist. 

These scraps tickle my brain to irritation though, so here you fucking are: 

"Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" ~ Disgraced Former Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison

A big conservatory sentiment that is both regressive and mainstream among the right, is the idea that if an industry exists that creates jobs, it has basically crossed the threshold of two-big-to-fail.

There are probably some artifact "company towns" still existing in the wealthy educated industrialized r-something democratic nations of the world, perhaps none larger than the city of Toyota in Nagoya, Japan. And I as an individual am not sensitive really to department of labour unemployment statistics. I will confess I can't fathom news headlines that read "$56bn project will create 1500 jobs in Palookaville, Anywhere." I do not know whether to be pleased or outraged by such a headline.

It took way too long for the gears in my head to click however, why for example Jordan Peterson since becoming an employee of The Daily Wire, spends so much time on "climate alarmism" to the point of upping his production values while lowering his relevance, I mean the regressive left almost doesn't bother with him anymore, and they were bothering with him while he was in a coma.

Near as I can guess, climate change is perceived as an existential threat in a very different way by the regressive right, than by both the productive left, and counterproductive/regressive left. It is seen as a threat to some kind of perceived social contract that says something like: You are allowed to live so long as you go out and find a job. So long as someone pays you to do something, you exist.

The regressive right's opposition to even acknowledging that something has to change I think is born of an anti-enterprise spirit that by definition renders this faction of the right regressive.

Suppose for a second that there were no issues with climate change. None whatsoever. We could find, extract, refine and burn oil without having to worry about icecaps melting and vast swathes of productive land becoming arid deserts. But someone was just inventing small personal aircraft made from bamboo and powered by hydrogen with feasible fuel cells that were cheap and safe to run, and could even remotely haul cargo and goods.

Absent a problem, this would be technological progress (maybe) in so far as it would be better than a bunch of people driving road trains on no sleep, and people having to go to airports to cram into middle seats for long haul flights. 

A traditional right I posit would simply try and foresee the unintended consequences - maybe the visual and noise pollution of congesting the skies with personal aircraft in numbers approaching that of cars, or as may still be the case with electric vehicles, pointing out the massive ecological footprint of getting the rare earth minerals and the trade off between the lifespan of e-vehicles.

Certainly, there is much technological progress that is an illusion, but I don't wish to digress too far from the point that the regressive right is anti-enterprise. 

Upon someone estimating that the sea is overfished, or the forrests are overlogged etc. I notice that the effort to conserve jobs often takes precedence over the effort to conserve industries. There is of course, a major part of this equation, being the demand side, that likely is independent of political leaning or manifestation.

No doubt it is argued by the regressive right that people neither wish to eat less fish, nor pay more for their fish, therefore, overfishing should continue to employ the 10,000 commercial fishermen until fish stocks collapse. Rather than resolving that to preserve the fishing industry, less fishing licenses will be issued and perhaps a full half of the people will have to embrace enterprise and endeavour to change careers. 

This isn't just saying "learn to code" because, as we should all now be aware, those coding enthusiasts have written code that can learn to code for you. One thing I appreciate about Mexico, is that Mexico is a country where if you lose your job at the plant or the mill, it is extremely viable for you to support your family by opening a food stand. In Australia, you would probably need to have $50k~$180k to open a food truck, in Mexico to become a hotdog vendor we are probably talking hundreds of dollars in start up capital.

Granted, Mexico is no paradise, but it is filled with entrepreneurs. 

I myself have been keeping one eye on AI art, as a potential existential threat to something I want to do. Thus far, because it is a potential post in itself, I mostly feel AI art is garbage-in-garbage-out:

By which I don't even mean that the figure in the above AI generated image is either missing an arm, or about to fall off her seat. I mean AI is being largely embraced by careerists, people who want to be artists, rather than vocationalists who want to do art. I don't think tell-tale mistakes that only a machine would make because it doesn't comprehend what it is trying to do, will last, those will be learned away, the big tell remains how generic the art is, everyone's AI art looks in some significant way, the same, even with multiple projects, like everyone is printing zine's in helvettica now. Because writing text prompts into something that spits out fully rendered composite images for you can only be fun for so long.

What it does promise to do, is liberate me from the need to put energy and effort into horrible art-job drudgery, here is a really long talk titled "Concept Art is Dead" from 5 years ago, basically asserting that if you are an artist working for a game development company, forget doing anything creative it is ll about churning out joyless photo-bashed concept art for the next installment in the Call of Duty franchise. Generic art for generic projects. I couldn't do that job, what I could do is get paid $50 an hour to get AI to shit out generic art for generic video games.

I suspect what makes me not-regressive right in disposition, is that I've never had a concept artist job, nor have I bought a house in an area proximate to my work and had a bunch of kids that depend on my salary. The thought of being nobody for a while until I figure out the next thing to do is not a terrifying prospect for me. But I can understand it being terrifying for most people.

It is likely analogous among the regressive right, to the misguided belief by the original classical economists that recessions would end by firms lowering their prices and workers lowering their wages (and landlords lowering their rents) etc. until the market clears again. Keynes pointed out firms don't lower their prices, workers don't negotiate for lower wages, landlords don't read about an economic downturn and think they better ease the squeeze on their tenants. 

All these corrective actions seem antithetical to progress. 

An ideal conservatism, to me, might look at overfishing, and sort of combine it with a UNESCO heritage vibe, to say "we need less fishing, lets regulate for more traditional, less productive fishing." Because there are likely unintended consequences to losing from the culture, people who make their living by going out to sea. Fishing is part of human identity, from every coast and island of the world. It is a living heritage that deserves to be preserved. 

It would to me, be a matter of regulating for example, that fishing boats have to be wind powered, with a diesel engine solely for emergency use. You know, just a continued exploration of the same principle as specifying tuna has to be line caught not net caught and shit like that. Consumers be damned, they can pay a premium for sustainable fishing practices.

"Maybe Cheapness Is A Sense"

I'm sure I'd written about this before, certainly in my post "Polarization by analogy" that Identity Politics are very cheap. It really should be a red flag for anyone who thinks that things need to change - for example, real wages have been largely stagnant since the mid 70s, since the early 90s left-wing parties like Tony Blair's "New Labour" and Bill Clinton's Democrats adopt in essence the same economic policies as the Reagan-Thatcher era better known as neo-liberalism, carrying through the dot-com bubble of the 2000s, through to the Global Financial Crisis, and yet, between 2014~2016 the left wind parties, who treat an increase in minimum wage, or regulating employment contracts, protecting gig-workers etc. like pulling teeth, embrace identity politics. 

I think it is because unintended consequences aside, identity politics and in a dark reflection of the regressive right pandering to single-issue voters over abortion rights. The culture wars in general are really cheap compared to tackling socio-economic issues. 

Possibly, like Cersei Lannister not apprehending the consequences of allowing their in-world religion to revive it's militant arm, career politicians and bureaucrats did not apprehend that creating a few cheap cosmetic positions and departments to hand out on the basis of identity politics, might then attempt to function in some way. 

At some point, I think the regressive left will, moreso than the right, have to answer for dedicating so much oxygen to identity lip-service.

Embracing the Paralegal

This is a bit of a story, but I think it is in many ways a reasonable candidate for the story of the left losing its way. 

British-US Citizen Jon Oliver ran a story some years ago on his comedy-news program "Last Week Tonight" ran a story on chicken farming. You can click through and watch the segment, but in a swift recap, there are a lot of chicken farmers in the US going bankrupt because of predatory corporate practices.

Almost like a corporate version of the cuckoo, farmers sign deals where they are responsible for all the aspects of farming chickens that cost money (sheds, feed, equipment, utilities etc) and their supplier owns everything that makes money (the chickens and the eggs they lay).

Furthermore, the piece establishes that attempts to regulate this practice such that chicken farmers aren't fated to go broke, or go into debt and commit suicide, can't find the political will among elected legislators.

The silver ligning, came in the form of a paralegal remedy - namely activists pressuring large consumers of chicken products like McDonalds, KFC, Chick Filet, Popeyes or whatever, to essentially adopt "fair trade" chicken branding. Appealing to corporate greed.

End of recap, now, based on other stories Jon Oliver has run, I don't trust his coverage to be, shall we say, true. The situation, as described by Oliver's show, has the potential to meet a criteria outlined by Prof. Timothy Snyder, "The situation is this [our elected representatives cannot legislate to protect us] it's unbearable, therefore we rebel [by targeting corporations with activism]"

This story, doesn't translate however to what I feel is fairly characterized as a left-wing movement, in the context of "#metoo" a movement that was initially intended to have the limits of women voicing there experiences of sexual harassment and assault, so victims of such abuses did not feel alone, and to raise consciousness in the population in general as to how frequently that was occurring.

Original intent aside, in some manifestation, #metoo became a paralegal movement, particularly in the media industry, where person's usually men, were named and then their employers would terminate their employment. 

I would describe, however frequently or infrequently this occured, and regardless of guilt or innocence, a paralegal process, because people were getting fired not out of an interest in justice, but brand equity. I cannot exclude that corporations were not so much contacting HR and asking "how many complaints have been lodged against Harvey?" but consulting accounts who were saying "Harvey brings in $1.2m in revenue, we pay him $600k salary per year, and we estimate the damage to our brand from the press coverage of this allegation to be $1m and an additional $1m in PR and advertising to restore our reputation. The cheapest option is just to cut the turd loose."

It may not even have been predicted, by anyone who ever shared a #metoo experience, that corporations would go into damage control quickly and forcibly, and that it might feel like justice.

Of course, with or without an investigation, and barring some neurological/psychological issue, the only people who often know the truth of an event, are the assaulted and their assailant. Even in a court of law, the standard would be "beyond reasonable doubt" for criminal offenses.

Our legal system I think we can describe, for all it's floors, as being based around the heuristic "serious allegations should be taken seriously" and I recognize the limitations of resources and competence that impede reaching high legal standards. I would not be surprised if in the act of reporting a crime, our legal system fails to take a serious allegation seriously.

This however, is a much better heuristic than "believe women" or "believe victims" I'm sure it's best arguments refer to studies that show how statistically rare it is for a woman to make a false allegation of sexual assualt or rape. I suspect the error made by people willing to embrace paralegal activism are making is thinking that just because the amount of people who steal cars or stick up liquor stores at gunpoint are statistically rare, perhaps close to absent in demographics like 30 year old women, it would be naive to assume that legalizing or otherwise endorsing the practice of stealing cars and holding up liquor stores at gunpoint would not, in short order, result in people doing just that.

What is perhaps noteworthy, are in all the forms of cancel culture, which are paralegal practices, of which I think there is enough credible testimony to suggest it is a tactic that exists among, if not exclusively so, the regressive left. We can also state the right has regressed in this polarized age, because the dismantling of legal avenues is a great example of Chesterton's Fence. 

You have to literally not understand why courts demand evidence, discovery, an adversarial trial presided over by a judge who represents the law to a jury drawn from the community who deliberate as to whether the state has made its case on a preponderance of evidence, or for criminal charges beyond reasonable doubt.

No matter how many criminals are hopping the fence of our judicial systems, those judicial systems did not fucking build themselves. The right should only allow the dismantling of due process and presumption of innocence, when the left can demonstrate they understand why these things exist in the first place, and I would assert, that anyone who understands why due process and presumption of innocence exist, would not call for their destruction.

Bringing us back to cheapness. I'm sympathetic to Fran Lebowitz' theory that #metoo only came about when it did, because the movie industry has declined to decrepit. That it also explains why #metoo has done little for hotel maids and fastfood employees earning minimum wage, and often subjected to tyrant shift managers.