Fascism In America

                                                                                                written 30 June 2018

                                                                                                published 7 July 2018

            My father's generation put their lives on the line in World War II to defeat fascism, defined by Italian dictator Mussolini as "state powers used for corporate profits."  It is sad to see that while America won that war, we seem to have lost in the long run. 

            From a holistic perspective, the capitalist system of exclusive gain is contrary to nature, thus inevitably fails.  Fascism is the darkest side of capitalism, and some American industrialists helped the Nazi powers, despite the totalitarian racism, because of the profit to be made.  After the war, the CIA helped Nazi's escape to South America because we wanted their networks in eastern Europe to spy for us against communist Russia.

            Throughout US history, the Supreme Court judges have been mostly corporate lawyers, which explains the persistent rise of corporate power over workers, leading to unfettered corporate money in politics, while restraining political funding by unions.  The insane fiction of corporate personhood is part of this process.

            Previous administrations have occasionally used political power to enrich their friends, but sought to keep these financial transactions out of the public eye, knowing they look bad, and are often illegal.  The Trump administration doesn't even pretend to care how it looks, or if laws are broken.  The stage is being set for an American Emperor, where the law is what he says it is.  Contrary to his campaign promise to "drain the swamp in Washington", he is on a swamp breeding program.

            This is the first president to retain control of his economic investments while in office.  He said he was giving financial control to his family, but they are part of his While House team.  He frequently travels to his Mar Lago hotel, enriching himself with each trip.  In a blatant "pay to play" episode this May, he threatened trade sanctions against the Chinese company ZTE, then reversed himself after the Chinese loaned his hotel development in Indonesia $500M.

             Trump's appointments to head government agencies are fraught with conflicts of interest.  He appointed Ajit Pai, a former executive for Verizon, to head the FCC.  Pai has regulated the end of net neutrality, which will allow his former company to choose whose messages get to the public by charging higher rates for faster service.  Pai is currently working to end the Lifeline subsidy program, which helps poor people afford web access, enhancing the digital divide, leaving more Americans behind.

            Betsy DeVos, a lifelong advocate of using taxpayer money to fund private and religious schools, is Secretary of Education.  She has repealed efforts to make school loan repayment easier, even when schools go bankrupt, allowing for-profit schools to rip off their students.  She is working to limit consumer protection against school loan providers, and protects abusive school loan collection firms.  When appointed, DeVos listed more than 100 financial conflicts of interest, including investments in school loan collection agencies and for-profit schools.

            Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is opposed to the mission of the EPA.  A staunch climate denier, he has received campaign funds from the fossil fuel industry for years.  He is against government regulation of any kind, preferring industry self-regulation.  Since EPA regulations were put in place because industries refuse to regulate themselves, putting profits over people, Pruitt's actions are total betrayal of the American public.  A 2018 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that Pruitt's EPA had adopted a pro-business agenda unlike that of any previous administration.  Pruitt has been so flamboyant that he is the focus of 12 investigations into spending habits, conflicts of interest, extreme secrecy, and poor management practices.  Even some conservative Republicans are calling for his resignation.

            Previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have included some self-serving, incompetent, and corrupt individuals.  In the Trump administration, unrestrained greed and self-promotion are the name of the game, and his appointees have risen to the challenge.  This is America today, where being rich or famous is all that counts.  Competence, critical thinking, and moral code are not necessary or valued.  It is understandable why the wealthy approve this situation.  It is less clear why a portion of the non-billionaire class supports this kleptocracy.

Planetary Overshoot

                                                                                                written 25 June 2018

                                                                                                published 30 June 2018

             It is insane to believe that unlimited growth is possible on a finite planet.  Humans are now so numerous and consumptive, that we consume the annual production of the planet every 8 months.  We need 1.5 planets to keep going as we are, which is planetary overshoot.   

            It may be difficult to understand how we can exceed planetary capacity.  When financial capital is invested well, it generates interest as an annual return.  Spending only the interest is sustainable because the capital remains intact, to generate more interest the next year.  In the short term, it is possible to consume more than your annual interest income by spending some of your capital.  This leads to a smaller interest income the next year, requiring even more capital consumption to stay even.  This unsustainable consumption pattern eventually exhausts your entire capital, leaving you bankrupt.         Living systems have similar sustainability limits.  If a herd of 100 beef cows gives birth to 100 calves every year, it is sustainable to slaughter 100 cows a year.  It is possible to slaughter more cows per year, but the breeding herd starts to diminish, producing fewer calves every year, and eventually there are no more cows.  The productive capacity of the herd has been exceeded and system collapse is the result.

            When trees are harvested faster than the rate of growth, timberland productivity declines.  When fish are caught faster than they grow, the fisheries decline.  If the topsoil lost during cultivation is greater than the amount of topsoil produced each year, the soil becomes sterile and unproductive.  Our ever-growing economy of consumption extracts value faster than nature can replenish.  The planet is bountiful, but eventually the system will collapse.

            Our culture tells us that the price of things includes all the costs, so if we can afford it, we think the planet can afford it.  This is capitalist fiction.  The destruction of natural resources happens out of sight, and the warning signs go unheeded.  The huge oceanic gyres of plastic trash occur far from land.  Coral dies unnoticed underwater.  The people who actually fish know the fishing industry is declining, while the rest of us just notice when prices go up, or some varieties fall off the menu.  Nobody notices the water table dropping until the well suddenly runs dry.

            This is just the human impact.  When ecosystems are destroyed, all species that depend on that system die.  In 2000, it was estimated that human cropland and pasture occupy 1/3 of ice-free land area on Earth.  If we add logging and forest management, the least productive half of land is left for other species.

            And even that tragedy is an incomplete picture, for human consumption is not distributed equally.  If all 7.5 billion humans consumed like Americans, it would take the productivity of five planets to support us all.  Long before this happens, some part of the system will surely collapse.  If we can agree that everyone, including other species, have a right to life on this planet, we need to make some changes.

            Annie Leonard's "Story Of Stuff Project" has been examining the details of our economy for decades.  99% of all natural resources extracted ends up as garbage in 6 months.  This means that our consumptive economy is only 1% efficient!  That is like setting the house on fire to cook dinner.  We can do better than that.

            In order to give basic material comfort to every human, and leave half the planet viable for other species, we need to reduce consumption and increase our efficiency of production.  We are learning that stuff doesn't make us happy.  The growth in storage lockers is proof that we have more than we need, and it costs to keep that extra stuff.  If we cut consumption by a half, and increase efficiency of production to 5%, everyone could thrive.  

            A friend said that he is reluctant to give up some of what he has.  I asked if he would rather give up some stuff voluntarily, or have it all lost to system collapse, as that seems to be our choice.  Nature knows how to deal with ecological overshoot.  Unsustainable consumption is, well, unsustainable.

Design In Nature

                                                                                                written 16 June 2018

                                                                                                published 23 June 2018

           My high school biology class looked in detail at a stinging nettle, which uses a toxic irritant as a defense against being eaten.  The surface is covered with small spines, and anything brushing against these spines can be injected with the irritant.  It's a wonderful defense strategy for a plant, which cannot move to evade attack, and the details fascinated me enough that I remember them over a half-century later.

            Each spine is made of a brittle crystalline material, hollow up the center, but closed with an off-center knob at the tip.  When an animal presses against the tip of the spine, the knob shears off, leaving a surgically sharp point, which can penetrate the animal's skin.  The pressure that shears the tip also compresses the spine into the body of the plant, pressurizing a flexible sack of toxic juice at the base of the spine.  When the tip shears, and injects the animal, the pressurized toxin races up the hollow spine into the body of the animal.  This irritating chemical is what gives the nettle a sting.

            The simplicity of the design, and the elegance of the features, all working with minimum effort, using the force of the predator to power the defensive reaction, left me in awe.  I had been building things for years at that age, and could appreciate good design and craftsmanship.  That a plant could execute such a design gave me pause to consider the wonder of natural design.  The relatively recent field of bio-mimicry examines biological systems for inspiration in technological advances.

            The idea of design intention in nature is contrary to materialist science, which postulates a world of dead matter, evolving through meaningless accidental mutations. At the other extreme, Intelligent Design, an anti-evolution variation of Creationism, is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible and assumes God created everything in the relatively recent past.  Both seem inadequate.

            An example of ongoing evolution is insects developing resistance to the insecticides used to control them.  In addition to becoming resistant, one species of grasshopper placed a metabolized variation of the insecticide into the foam it builds around its egg case, creating a toxic barrier against predation by other insects.  Materialist science would say that many grasshoppers died before a random mutation induced resistance, but this doesn't explain how a simple insect seemed to be aware of the function of the toxic material, and applied it for its own benefit.

            In a previous article, I talked about the concept of randomness, which implies a lack of pattern, or meaning, in a process.  The only accurate statement an observer can make is that there "appears" to be no pattern, rather than the system "has" no pattern. Darwinian evolutionary theory declares that evolution is random, without purpose, so the proposal that there is meaning in evolution is a challenge, but there are rigorous, peer reviewed experiments that support this challenge.

            In the late 80s, a team of researchers, led by the British biologist John Cairn, experimented on bacteria that lived only on lactose.  They disabled the gene that fabricated the enzyme which metabolized lactose, fundamental to cell function.  They put these disabled bacteria in a lactose environment, to see what would happen.  Classic mechanistic biology suggests that evolution can come only from mutation during cell division, but cell division takes energy.  The disabled bacteria couldn't access any of the energy in their surroundings, so they should have died, but the experimenters found thriving colonies of cells.  Further investigation showed there had been a specific repair to the disabled gene for lactose metabolism.

            Cairns submitted these results to the British science journal Nature, which was reluctant to publish such a revolutionary result, but Cairns was a respected biologist in England, and the article was published.  The US journal Science wrote scathing reviews, calling it a step backward for science.  Subsequent replication of the experiment by other researchers confirmed the results, and biological theory had to evolve.  Even at the single cell level, meaningful evolution takes place.  There is immanent, purposeful intelligence in nature.