Her Hair, her Eyes
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As the Sun walks away,
it scratches the sky,
making it mimic your hair
before the night does arrive …
… or maybe the yellow star just walks away
in its eternal trip to the other side
whenever we see the moon shine
on the brilliance of your emerald eyes …
… those eyes …
the ones I see in my visions
of a sweet morning,
as if you were resting
just by my side.
In my mind I breathe you,
filling my cells with the life of you,
flirting with them, waking them up
at the light of your sight.
Kissing our time together
my illusions become real
and surrounded by your embrace
touching my mind and my dreams
I can ascend to your heart
and be carried away by your streams.
Unlike the previous post where I cheered for Robert Frank’s book The Darwin Economy, I want to be a bit more critical about the book this time.
Before I begin, I want to say that I still cheer for this book, and it is one I ardently, enthusiastically, and wholeheartedly recommend. If I had the chance I would buy lots of them and give them as gifts to my friends, neighbors, legislators, governor … you name it. One of the greatest things about reading this book is that it becomes one of those events which invite you to revise your thinking on a rational basis. And I never cease to marvel at the depths of Frank’s views on the economy. It certainly has stimulated me to revise my own ideological views about how the economy works, and which solutions should be adopted to make this world a better place. As a matter of fact, there are many areas in the book I will use for my Ethics course this semester (most of the students in my course are from Business Management).
That does not mean that I agree with all of the examples he uses in the book, nor do I agree with the way he portrays many aspects of what is a deontological view of Ethics. Frank seems to promote a teleogical or consequentialist view of Ethics, while I use a deontological approach.
What is the Book About?
Before discussing what the book says, let me clarify what the book is not about. When I showed the book to several on my friends in Facebook and Google+, some raised concerns about the subject. They warned me of the possibility that I might fall into social darwinism. Of course, whoever has read my educational material about what Ethics is and is not, knows that I would never fall into it. Although I always begin the course explaining from a biological level how evolution made us have a moral sense, I strongly warn my students that Neodarwinism, as it is proposed today, only describes a whole process by which living beings reproduce, speciate, and change over time. It does not intend to prescribe ethically what we should and should not do as rational moral beings. As we shall see soon, Frank does not turn Darwinism’s description of biological processes into an ethical advice.
Originally, The Darwin Economy was going to be called The Libertarian Welfare State, which gives you an idea of what it is about. Given that Frank was told that such a title would never sell in Europe, he changed its name to The Darwin Economy. It was also written as a reaction to the almost inane (I would say “insane”) “dialogue” that seems to permeate all of political discourse in the United States. Of course, most of us know Adam Smith as being the father of the science of economics as we know it today, yet Frank predicts that in a hundred years from now, the majority of serious and learned economists would name Charles Darwin as the parent of their discipline. Contrary to some misconceptions, Smith showed that, sometimes, if you let selfish people act in the marketplace, the “invisible hand” of the market will lead to good outcomes for society. Frank points out that Smith would not recognize his own views if he ever read the proposals made by extreme libertarians today, who think that government should do nothing and that a free unregulated market will always lead to good outcomes.
Smith’s skepticism about a universal goodness out of selfish people stems from the fact that many business owners can join together and conspire to oppress the people, in which case, the government should intervene to prevent such conspiracies against the public. However, one question we could ask is: When does the invisible hand fail? Frank finds the answer in Charles Darwin’s own work. What drives biological descent with modification is precisely competition among individuals and groups. Both the cheetah and the gazelle compete for survival by trying to be faster than the other. The fastest member of each species tends to survive and reproduce, passing those genes along. When that happens, individual and group interests are in harmony, since the prevalence of fast gazelles and fast cheetahs do actually benefit their respective groups as a whole. In this case, we have “invisible hand”-like results.
However, Darwin also noticed that individual and group interests diverge. This is the case with the bull elk (as you can see in the cover of the book). Members of the species are polygenous, meaning that they take more than one mate if they can, to be able to reproduce. Their male antlers are not really meant to defend themselves against other predators, but to win some fights with other males; whoever wins, will end up with as much as 100 females maximum. So, whoever has the biggest antlers will end up with their mates and pass the genes along. Yet, in this case, there is a problem. If males with heavy antlers prevail, then such feature becomes a disadvantage from the group’s point of view, because they can end up being eaten by predators if chased in dense wooded areas. In this case, individual and group interests diverge. Such cases do happen in the economy, and when they do, the “invisible hand” of the market breaks down.
Bull elk are pretty much stuck with the situation, since their intelligence is not complex enough to make rational decisions about what to do with their antlers. They are pretty much stuck with natural selection. Yet, Frank does not suggest that we ought to be stuck with natural selection, not even market selection for that matter (which is what social Darwinism would suggest). Instead, he points out that we, humans, as intelligent beings who actually can make rational decisions, we should collectively establish a mandate which benefits the group.
He uses the example of hockey players. If you let players have the choice of not wearing helmets, all of them end up not wearing it. This is not because they ignore the fact that helmet protects them (there is no cognitive error in the process), quite the opposite, they know that playing without helmets could increase the chance of being hurt during the game. Yet, given the immediacy of seeing better, hearing better, and intimidating the opponents better …. they are not too worried about a more abstract concern of harm. Yet, if you ask them if they should be a mandate to wear helmets, they would all favor it. Why is there a discrepancy?
If there is no mandate, the individual interest to win prevails, leading other players to do the same, since they are also thriving for their individual interest to win. Yet, when they all do it, the result is that not one individual is in any advantageous position, yet everyone is worse off, since all of them are unprotected. Hence, individual and group interests diverge. A rule mandating helmets and prescribing a penalty for those who do not want to wear it, would make all players wear helmets, everyone would be in equal footing, and they end up better than if there were no mandate.
This is what happens with the construction of ever more expensive houses for the middle class, even when there is no increase in salary in real terms over the years, leading huge problems. Those at the top earned more throughout the years, buying far more mansions, and spending considerably in them, even when they are no happier than before for doing so. This consumerist behavior “trickles down” to those below. As a result, the middle class competed for more and more expensive houses even when they had no real income growth. This apparently benefited them individually, especially regarding status, but not as a group. This inevitably leaves the middle class worse off.
[Note: I highly recommend Robert Frank's analysis on this very interesting subject in his book Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class.]
Frank suggests that a progressive consumption tax will discourage this sort of behavior, among others which create harmful activities such as carbon dioxide emissions which create global warming, while, at the same time, leading governments to have money to invest on roads, bridges, and other infrastructure and services people actually need.
Again, his whole argument makes a LOT of sense, and, in a way, I am completely surprised that this has not led to further policies for scrapping the income tax and payroll tax, and phasing in some of these progressive consumption taxes. In another sense, I am not surprised, since many people in the United States are actually misled regarding how taxes and economic prosperity are related. You need government to take care of bridges, dams, roads, and even the army. As Frank argues, if there were no taxes, there would not be an army, without an army you couldn’t defend yourself against other countries which have armies, and if conquered by another nation you will end up paying mandatory taxes to that country. Also, he shows in the book how lowering taxes has helped terrorist causes. Many people are not aware that because of irresponsible tax cut policies, a lot of funds were cut to keep nuclear missiles in Russia (the former Soviet Union) guarded. This means that terrorists may have far less barriers to reach them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mushroom cloud metaphor that George W. Bush talked about when launching the failed Iraq War in 2003 will be realized in some way any time soon.
Again, I enthusiastically recommend Frank’s book as being one of those bright lights which challenge people of all along the political spectrum to re-evaluate our own positions on the economy and politics. None of what I will say in these series will ever change that. In fact, I thank him for changing my mind about a lot of things.
Frank’s Ethical Position of the Discussion
Yet, there is a little difference I have with him regarding his approach to the issue of ethics. I confess that I have still to read his book What Price the Moral High Ground?, which seems very interesting. I want to react to Frank’s notion of ethics as he is pondering about the issue presenting Ronald Coase’s contribution to the discussion on what should be the relationship between the economy and the state regarding cases where the traditional ethical framework of perpetrator and victim seems inappropriate. Surprise, surprise! As a deontologist, I fully agree with Coase!
Frank alludes to the famous debate between the consequentialists (teleological ethicists) and the deontologists (deontological ethicists). I happen to be the latter, Frank seems to hold a consequentialist approach. Yet, he recognizes the following:
Consequentialists and deontologists have been at each other’s throats for millenia. Nothing I say here could possibly settle the issues that divide them. But because I will advocate policy claims that follow from Coase’s consequentialist framework, it’s important to emphasize that the two frameworks are less squarely in conflict than may often appear (pp. 94-95).
In many areas of ethical discussions, there seems to be a “battle” between deontologists and consequentialists, but I don’t want to give that impression in this case. Ronald Coase’s views actually does make a lot of sense to me, but reasons very different from Frank’s views. The purpose of my next blog post is to ponder about a deontological solution to some of the problems raised by Coase’s framework.
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A Brief Exposition of the Evolution of the Cosmos
And Elohim said: “Let there be light”, and there was light.
~ Gen. 1:3
None of what science says about the universe is final, strictly speaking. It formulates a theoretical body which tries to account for the phenomena that scientists see in the universe. There are many cosmological proposals today, but the one which prevails in the minds of most cosmologists and astrophysicists is the Theory of the Great Explosion (aka the Big Bang Theory). This theory is not perfect, though, but most scientists think that it is the way the universe began to exist and the theory which best accounts for what we see in the universe.
There are many mysteries about the original grand explosion. For example, the explosion originated a high degree of order (almost contrary to common sense), and, since then, the average degree of disorder in the universe started increasing. Other mysteries involve some constants embedded in everything that exist. These constants did not have to exist the way they did … but they are there! For example, the specific degree of strong nuclear force in atoms, the value of the weak nuclear force, the ratio of the degree between the forces of gravity on the one hand and electromagnetism on the other, the number of space-time dimensions, and so on.
Some theists see this as a “pointer” (not proof) to God’s existence, that is, that God created the universe in such a way as to make it creative and viable for emergent order and carbon-based life. Others of a more naturalistic tendency suggest the hypothesis that there are multiple universe which originate with different constants, and different properties. Yet, apparently, by sheer chance, these had all the right constants for a creative universe such as ours, and we happen to live here. It is no different from the fact that most star systems out there do not seem to be suitable for life … but the more planets are in the universe, the more probable that there are the right conditions for life to come to be in some star system … and we happen to be in one of those planets. The theistic argument and the multiple-universe hypothesis are metaphysical at this stage, because none of them can be confirmed or refuted at this point.
But, according to the Theory of the Great Explosion, there were primordial universal structures that let energy become subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons. Lose individual protons are by definition hydrogen, and became atoms once electrons were formed and orbited around them. Perhaps there were small amounts of helium at the beginning too. This gave rise to the first hydrogen molecules, and these condensed into the first stars in the universe. For billions of years, these stars formed galaxies, these galaxies formed clusters, and these clusters form superclusters. We are in a hierarchical universe ever evolving into more complex structures. To give you an idea of what we are talking about, let me show you this picture.
Source: Peebles, P. G. E. (1980). The Large Scale Structure of the Universe. Princeton University Press.
This is a picture of one small segment of the universe as it appears in one of the Earth’s horizons. You might think that each dot here is a star. No … each dot is a galaxy. Which means, within each dot there are millions of stars and planets. We can see, though, that these galaxies are concentrated in some sectors than others, revealing a more complex structures. This is one dimension of the way the universe is creative.
As Rev. Michael Dowd has pointed out frequently, creativity is nothing more than creating something which has not existed before. The way the universe creates is in a nested way (much like Russian nesting dolls), where the parts become a whole new entity, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Ken Wilber, a philosopher, has coined a name for these whole entities: “holons“. Holons are made up in a nested way from other holons, and they themselves form part of a yet greater holon. The universe is organized in such a manner.
But, what do we mean when we say that the whole is more than the sum of its parts? If you look at a clock, or a TV, or a stove, you will notice that these are not creative units … they are the result of interacting pieces that in themselves play no other role or function. In this sense, clocks and TVs are nothing but the sum of their parts. On the other hand, the universe is not like a clock or a TV, a water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Yet, the result is a new molecule whose properties cannot be explained merely by adding up hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The way these atoms interact with each other make the water molecule a whole new unit. In a temperature between 0⁰C and 100⁰C, hydrogen and oxygen in their natural state are flammable gases (each in a different way), but water is liquid and helps us put out fires. In the same way, galaxies are more than a mere addition of stars, clusters are also more than mere addition of galaxies, and superclusters are more than a mere addition of superclusters.
Formation of our World
There is another important dimension of creativity which we have not addressed yet. The Great Explosion originated mostly hydrogen molecules. Yet, we know that there are many substances beside this: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so on. How did they originate. George Gamow, one of the pioneers of the Big Bang view of the cosmos thought that they were created by the original explosion itself: the explosion was so great, that it forced nuclear fusion among hydrogen atoms to form other elements. Yet, this is not a viable option in light of what we have seen in the universe.
We now know, thanks to a Big Bang foe called Fred Hoyle, that these elements originated inside stars. The astrophysicists actually have shown that this is what happens, precisely because they are able to measure the amounts of elements they find in different sorts of stars, novas, supernovas, and other celestial phenomena.
(Click on Image to see Larger Version of this Image. License: CC-BY-SA-3.0)
This image summarizes well the process of creation of elements, which scientists call stellar nucleosynthesis, which, since then, has been incorporated to the Theory of the Great Explosion. Stars are in a plasma state, that is, they are made up of a gas of electrically charged particles. They usually begin as being an accumulation of hydrogen atoms, which are mostly loose protons because of the high degree of temperature. Also due to the heat, these protons, along with neutrons, form helium inside blue and yellow stars through a process called nuclear fusion. In this process, two atomic nuclei fuse together to form a yet more complex element, releasing energy in the process. Today, most of the sun is made up of hydrogen particles and they are fusing together to form helium. Within the next five billion years, these helium particles will fuse into carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, until there is a point where the sun will increase in size and its light will turn red. This will be the Red Giant stage of our sun.
On the other hand, other stars much bigger than our sun turn to a shade of blue. These are Blue-White stars, where hydrogen fuels run quickly, in which case one possibility is that they will become Super-Red Giants, or the other Blue Giants. In both cases they will produce not only carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, but also sodium, potassium, aluminum and others, thanks in part to the star’s huge force of gravity. Finally, in the fusion process, when enough iron (Fe) is produced, then the star eventually collapses to form a white dwarf, a black hole, or could explode into a supernova. It is in this explosion that the rest of the heavy elements come to be, among them copper, zinc, silver, mercury, and lead.
The Origins of Our Solar System and the Earth
As you might suspect, our Solar System did not arise from just one star formation, but instead from a series of star-formations and supernova explosions. This explains the size of the sun, as well as the prevalence of all sorts of elements and compounds that make the planets, dwarf planets, asteroids and comets be what they are.
Apparently our Solar System is the result of a cloud created by a supernova explosion which rotated in a sort of disk. Hydrogen would concentrate in the center creating a proto-star which would later become the Sun. The rest of the material, through collisions among various left-over matter from the previous star, and which persisted within the cloud itself, became the planets, comets, asteroids, satellites and dwarf planets. How do they look in terms of proportional size? The following NASA illustration gives you an idea.
Let me give you an additional perspective on the size of our Solar System. The following is a beautiful untouched image of Saturn creating a solar eclipse before Cassini Satellite. Earth appears in this picture… I’ll let you guess where it is (you can click on the image to see larger version).
If you can’t see it yet, let me help you. Earth is right here!
As we can see, our whole existence is the result of creative stardust. You, your family, your friends, all animals and plants, all organisms, all minerals that exist on the Earth … all of it is stardust. That is where we come from.
We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins star-stuff pondering the stars. ~ Carl Sagan
Mysticism and the Cosmos
This, for me, has been one of my doors to open and explore a mystical view of the universe, and why science is a key to true spirituality. Science does so in two ways:
- Contrary to what many people think, science is inherently humble. Scientific theories are never really final, they are all subject to change as more phenomena is discovered or need explanation. Yes, many scientists themselves could be arrogant and try to tell people how to make their theories a world-view, yet other scientists may not share the same opinion … which leads them to test theories and debate, until evidence provides the final say on these theories. In the beginning of the twentieth century we thought the whole of the universe was the Milky Way… thanks to Edwin Hubble we know that it is much bigger than that. Previously, scientists thought that the theory of spontaneous generation was correct, only to be overthrown experimentally by Francesco Redi and Louis Pasteur. … It is a humble discipline, and it gives us a story that keeps changing as time goes by. Inspired by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, the biologist, Connie Barlow, a religious naturalist, calls it the “Story of the Changing Story“, and she adds: “There cannot be any fundamentalism when it comes to the Story of the Changing Story”.
- It shows us that us, humans, are not really separated from the rest of creation. We are part of creation, we literally emerged from it. Science has revealed nothing less that our stars are our ancestors. All living beings are our brothers and sisters. We are all family.
From this perspective, we can actually connect spiritually with everything that exists, and we should develop a mystical union with the cosmos. From a theistic standpoint, this is a union with one manifestation of God’s own creation. For me, this is a very inspiring vision of the universe.
Some Thoughts
The prodigal son left home with an inheritance that he foolishly squandered on a profligate life. Destitute and ashamed, he returned to his father’s house asking only to be treated as a servant, since he clearly deserved no more. To his surprise and gratitude, he was received with love and forgiveness as one reborn to a new and more sustaining way of life. … Our conception of ourselves as set apart from the rest of nature is a bit like the prodigal son leaving home with an enormous inheritance. The repeated collapse of past civilizations and uncertain fate of our own is like squandering our inheritance on a profligate life. Before we become truly destitute and ashamed, perhaps it is time to return home to a conception of ourselves as thoroughly a part of nature. Perhaps this can lead to a more sustaining way of life in the future than in the past.
~ David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone.
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What is Evolutionary Christianity?
I am an evolutionary Christian, which means many things, among them the following:
- I consider both faith and science as paths to truth and God. There is a revelation of faith so far as it provides the existential meaning for the reality of the world, but I also consider science to be divine revelation. As Catholic, I do believe in St Thomas Aquinas’ statement that a misunderstanding of creation leads to a misunderstanding of the Creator. As it has always been held by Catholicism and many Christian denominations reason and faith are both paths to God. A faith which rejects science is not worth having. In this sense, I do agree with Carl Sagan who said “Science is, at least in part, informed worship”. I worship God in the Church, in nature, in science, in philosophy, and try to worship Him in everything I do and write (not always successfully). From this standpoint, the whole religion vs. science debate makes little sense to me.
- I do not see God and creation to be static, but always evolving in some way. In this sense, I reject much of the idea of “perfection” as it was understood by Hellenistic philosophers, and whose doctrine were integrated to the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. Not that all of Hellenistic philosophy should be rejected, many of them must be kept in Christianity, but the particular notion of “perfection” as conceived by Parmenides and Plato are no longer adequate to be understood in the realm of matters-of-fact (as David Hume understood the term).
- I do believe in a Trinitarian God, but Who is not divorced from its creation. I am a panentheist (notice that I didn’t say “pantheist”), which means that I believe that God is ontologically different from His creation, but is not separate from it, but He is integrated to creation (He is immanent to it), but is more than creation (He is transcendent). This is perfectly consistent with the Pauline statement that in the Lord we live, we move and have our being (Acts 17:28). in God we find our ultimate reason for being.
- I do not see divine revelation as dictation of divine words in tablets of stone (metaphorically speaking). Although many Christians believe that, such belief is actually contrary to Scripture itself. Truth is always the same, but the way God gradually reveals Himself, and the way we have understood such revelation, how ever imperfectly, has changed over time.
- I think of the Bible, Christianity, and all world religions as forming part of what Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry have called “The Great Story” of the cosmos, of the universe. In this sense, the Bible should be placed within an evolving story, and its texts should be placed in a historical context, but without dismissing all of its important contributions with which it reveals the life-giving reality of God.
This is a very short summary of where I come from, although my thoughts on these issues are pretty much more complex, but this is my position thus far. These are the premises of what I am going to discuss in these series on the Bible from an evolutionary standpoint. Today and always, I will thank God for evolution in the broadest sense of the word, because He made the cosmos in such a way that life emerged out of it gradually, to the point of evolving an ever emerging consciousness … until we, each one of us, became the universe being conscious of itself.
The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have. ~ Edward O. Wilson
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins–star-stuff pondering the stars. ~ Carl Sagan
I am the eye with which the Universe beholds itself and knows it is divine. ~ Percy Shelley
From Simplest Societies to More Complex Societies
Many people ask why did I add to this discussion a reference to Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, on the gradual decline of violence. Other people (the vast majority) responded with great disbelief. Here is a conference about the matter if you don’t have access to the book, but want far more detail than I offered in my earlier blog post.
Yet, the trend to non-violent societies worldwide (not just in Christian countries) is evident. This does not mean at all that violence, rape, slavery, and other evil aspects of humanity have disappeared, but it does mean that they have been reduced significantly throughout history. Part of the reason why this peace is taking place and increasing is the fact that our societies keep growing towards complexity.
Gradual complexity is not only a trait of societies, but of all of evolutionary process. Although we cannot say that blind-guided evolution is not progressive in the sense that it will always lead to something “better”, it does have an arrow in the sense that it is directed towards increased gradual complexity. I recommend you the book Evolution’s Arrow, by John Stewart, if you wish to investigate more on the matter. Again, this complexification of reality is not only a trait of living beings, but of all of the universe (the “nested reality” which Michael Dowd talked about in the video in the earlier section). A side effect of a complex and diverse society is precisely the process of peace which Pinker talks about.
No religion is exception to this rule of complexification. These blog series are all about how this happened, and how we can understand the Bible (a complex object) as the result of an evolutionary process.
Three Sorts of Stories which the Bible Tells
When people open their Bible, it is evidently telling us a story … from Genesis to Revelation. The story is not always consistent, some parts of it are beautiful, some sublime, some horrifying, some make you think, and some are contradictory. Yet, traditionally people read it from beginning to end as if it is a single logically-linear argument.
Yet, I want to distinguish three sorts of stories which Bible tells us in different ways:
- The Literal Story: It is as basic as to read the Bible and understand the events as they happen.
- The Different Meanings of Passages: Regardless of whether the Bible is taken literally or not, it must be interpreted. This is the sort of reading heavily interpreted by religions as such. I will not discuss that here.
- The Story Behind the Literal Stories
The last one is the focus of these series, especially regarding the way the Bible came to be over time.
In order to understand what this distinction is about, I want to use a specific biblical passage which has been both admired and rejected by believers and non-believers respectively. By the way, the underline you will see is an important emphasis, not accidental.
It happened some time later that Elohim put Abraham to the test. ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ he called. ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Elohim said, ‘Take your son, your only son, your beloved Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, where you are to offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall point out to you.’
Early next morning, Abraham saddled his donkey and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He chopped wood for the burnt offering and started on his journey to the place which Elohim had indicated to him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Then Abraham said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there; we shall worship and then come back to you.’
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, loaded it on Isaac, and carried in his own hands the fire and the knife. Then the two of them set out together. Isaac spoke to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’ he said. ‘Yes my son,’ he replied. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham replied, ‘My son, Elohim Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.’ And the two of them went on together.
When they arrived at the place which Elohim had indicated to him, Abraham built an altar there, and arranged the wood. Then he bound his son and put him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.
But the messenger of Yahweh called to him from heaven. ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ he said. ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not raise your hand against the boy,’ the messenger said. ‘Do not harm him, for now I know you fear Elohim You have not refused your own beloved son. Then looking up, Abraham saw a ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place for his son. Abraham called this place ‘Yahweh provides’ (Yahweh yir’eh), and hence the saying today: ‘On the mountain Yahweh provides.’
The messenger of Yahweh called Abraham a second time from the heaven. ‘I swear by my own self, Yahweh declares, that because you have done this, because you have not refused me your own son, I will shower blessings on you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will gain possession of the gates of their enemies. All nations on Earth will bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed my command.’ (Gen 22:1-18).
This is a story which has been inspired by believers, and upsetting to unbelievers. It reflects how far Abraham was able to go to obey God. The first sort of reading (I talked about earlier) is the literal story as it is told in the Bible. It is enough to read it to understand its literal meaning.
Many religions or religious denominations interpret this story in very different ways, and here we can see the second sort of reading I discussed above: the meaning interpretation. Some believers think that this passage means that we should follow God unconditionally, no matter if whatever He requests can be at first sight completely reprehensible. Other believers see in it Abraham’s faith that God, in the sense that he knew that in the end God was going to fulfill His promise of having descendants through Isaac, so He knew God would spare him in the end.
Another form of interpretation comes from a humanist-antireligious standpoint, like the one Richard Dawkins expressed in The God Delusion:
God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed-for son. Abraham built an altar, put firewood upon it, and trussed Isaac up on top of the wood. His murdering knife was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan: God was only joking after all, ‘tempting’ Abraham, and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of Nuremberg defence: ‘I was only obeying orders.’ Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions. (p. 242).
Dawkins will be Dawkins, but, from an ethical standpoint, he is right if the text is taken verbatim at face value.
Yet, there is also a third aspect, the third sort of reading, which is the one I am focused on. The reader may have noticed that I purposely underlined a part of the story. For reasons I will explain in my later posts, the original story comes from what Bible scholars have called the Elohist tradition, a tradition which was developed apparently in the northern Kingdom of Israel, by a group of priests proceeding from Shilo, one of the most sacred places in Ancient Israel. If you haven’t heard of Shilo, then don’t worry, it is almost never mentioned in Bible school nor Catechism. However, it was important, because it was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided long before Jerusalem was built by King David (Josh. 18:1; 1 Sam 4:3-5). We know that the story comes from the Elohist tradition because it uses extensively the word “Elohim” to refer to God.
Yet, look at the underlined section. One thing that strikes us is that instead of solely calling God “Elohim”, this section uses the name “Yahweh”. Also it talks about a messenger (an angel) of Yahweh appearing all of the sudden to substitute Isaac for a goat for the sacrifice. Yet, there is one characteristic of Elohist tradition which calls the attention of scholars. First, we must point out that where the underlined passage ends, it begins by God saying that Abraham has not refused his son. Another thing that happens is that in the rest of the Elohist tradition, Isaac never appears once again later. Finally, nowhere in the Elohist tradition does God say that his descendants will come from Isaac.
This led most Bible scholars to the following conclusion: the original Elohist story did actually involve a sacrifice of Isaac to God. In other words, apparently Abraham did kill Isaac. This should not surprise anyone who knows about the Middle East at the time, before 700 B.C. Human sacrifice, especially children, was a common practice if it was “required by the deity”.
But something happened to the story. It was edited by a later author. Who was he? We don’t know. Why was it edited? For one simple reason … because much later, especially after several religious reforms in Israel, forms of human sacrifice were increasingly rejected by Israelites. Contrary to what many detractors say, the story as we have it in the Hebrew Bible is not a story to legitimize human sacrifice. It is a story illustrating God as someone rejecting human sacrifice … all forms of human sacrifice.
The moral sense of the Ancient Israelites evolved in the process. THAT is God’s Word which many religious and non-religious are not able to find in the Bible if they do not place the origins of the Bible and its content in an evolutionary context.
In my next post, I will make a brief exposition of contemporary Neo-Darwinism and how it can help us understand this process of the edition of the Bible better.
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Forgotten Observations Made by Karl Marx
One of the names which arise the terror in the hearts of millions of conservatives is “Karl Marx”. Yep! The one and only! Marx is the greatest economist of the nineteenth century. Yet, the word “Marxism” is enough to stop any serious conversation about him … and I underscore the word “serious”. He was wrong in many things, especially his vocation for predicting the future of humanity, and his willingness to ignore some anthropological realities he actually acknowledged as being natural for all humans, except regarding humanity’s hypothetical life in his version of socialism and communism. Yet, that does not mean he was not a genius in making a very deep and thorough analysis on capitalism, including its virtues and difficulties. Many people who say have read his work, but actually never have, say that all of his work is just B.S. I can count Jim Cramer of Mad Money as being one of them Yet, this so-called “expert” has ruined many lives with his TV “advice”, especially when the stock market went downhill (Jon Stewart of the Daily Show is my hero for this reason: see Interview 1, 2, and 3.)
Marx’s opus magnum, Capital, is one of the most thorough and insightful works you will ever read on capitalism. In fact, if you compare Marx’s work to Smith’s, Marx was pretty much closer to what happens in capitalism. On the other hand, contrary to what some people believe, Marx’s analysis of capitalism rests heavily on the works of Smith and David Ricardo.
This is because Marx would observe everything under a holistic or integral standpoint. He inherited a great part of Hegel’s legacy, especially his dialectical view of things. Hegel said that you should see the world as it is shown to you, then begin your analysis from the simplest concept which all things share, then look for its negation, then look how these concepts are harmoniously included in a greater concept, then such concept would also imply its negation, which would lead to a greater concept which include them, and so on … until you reach the whole of reality. Marx used this sort of approach but with two basic differences:
- Hegel focused on the growth and evolution of collective thought (which he called “spirit”), and would make the economy the physical realization of the spirit. Marx saw that Hegel’s way of thinking was “upside down”, and that we need to straighten right side up: since humans are basically animals struggling for scarce resources, the primary focus of humanity will be the economy, and collective thinking is the result or reflection of this economic process.
- Hegel conceived oppositions within reality as being harmonious. Marx conceived the oppositions in the capitalist mode of production as essentially non-conciliatory. No matter how much you try to reconcile two opposing dynamics or class relations within capitalism, they will never be reconciled.
From this perspective, Capital will show capitalism as a logical chain organic relations and tense relations, and not a harmonious whole. He was in the complete disposition to grant every single supposition made by the great economists Smith and Ricardo. Yet, the intention of his work was to show that even in their own terms, capitalism, through these series of tensions, would eventually collapse.
As a result, Capital dedicates a lot of thought to analyzing these oppositions understood within a whole capitalist dynamic. I will not work on Capital in this blog, but I will just mention one of the particular oppositions he discusses, and see how this relates to today’s reality. You can have an introductory but very good analysis of Capital watching David Harvey’s videos on volume one, it is freely accessible on the net. For now, I will focus on one particular opposition: Money vs. Capital.
Throughout his work, Marx uncovers the reason behind the use of money. Money, in the end, is the way with which we exchange commodities, which he elaborates in Chapters 3 and 4 of the first volume. We don’t exchange oranges for TVs, nor chairs for tables. Usually the exchange of commodities is made through money. Capital is money, but it is a specific sort of money. For him, capital is that money which is aimed at producing more money, hence to more capital. If you store money in a safe and leave it there for 10 years, that money was not capital. Yet, if you take that money and invest it in the stock market, then it becomes capital. This leads to opposite and tense relations between two opposing forms of exchange of commodities:
- Commodity-Money-Commodity (C-M-C): This process leads to no increase in value, since commodity is exchanged for money, which is then exchanged another commodity. If I sell a small radio for $12.99, and then with that money I buy a book, there is no added value to the process. This is not capital reproducing itself, but just money exchange. The sole end of the whole process is another commodity.
- Money-Commodity-Money (M-C-M): This is a different process, because its aim is not another commodity, but money itself. Money is an end in itself. This is what capitalism is all about … money! So, a businessman has some money, with it buys some commodities, for the purpose of creating more money. Then money used this way is capital.
As we all know, the second process is better described as M-C-M’, which means that there was an increase in money (∆M), where ∆M = M’-M. How was this money reproduced? We discover, using Adam Smith’s own analysis with Marxian modifications, that one of the commodities bought by the capitalist is the labor force of the proletariat in exchange for the salary (nominal labor price). The proletariat itself, through the working process, will create more value, which means that the money will increase at the end of the process. Added value leads to increase in money as a result of the production process (aka ∆M) which is the surplus value, freely appropriated by the capitalist. This accounts for the phenomenon of hoarding, which defines capitalism as a system of accumulation of wealth.
Let’s look a bit thoroughly at this part of Capital, because, within it, there is a very important criticism to another economist called Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), who was made famous by a formulation known as Say’s Law. Say correctly saw that every purchase is a sale, and every sale is a purchase. Say’s Law states that at the end of the day, the market should level out and there would be no increase of wealth: at the very end of the day supply and demand are equal. A bad businessman, he stated, does not hoard, since he or she needs to spend his or her profits in the marketplace. Many people in the nineteenth century held this to be true, but Marx explicitly refuted it (many people actually miss footnote #11 in Chapter 4 where he quotes Say).
Yet, the focus many people place to the M-C-M’ process in Capital makes them ignore Marx’s discussion of the C-M-C process in Chapter 3 of Capital. C-M-C is still an important part of the capitalist system. Although this process is not distinctive of capitalism (or a bourgeois category), it is an important component, since Say’s Law could be regarded as valid in this process, but Marx will refute this view as well:
- C-M: There must be an exchange between money and a commodity in order to be able to buy another commodity. In an amusing passage, Marx says that commodities love money, but “the course of true love never does run smooth”. The price of the commodity is partially dependent on prices in the marketplace. So, any independent seller will, in fact, be ultimately dependent in the market.
- M-C: Money will be exchanged by the commodity. Marx makes the observation that those who have money in their hands, and only those people, can buy commodities. To what extent? Well … to the extent that for whatever reason, if too many individuals do not want to exchange their money for a commodity, the circulation of commodities ceases to be.
It is here where Marx explicitly mentions Say’s Law as a dogma of faith held by many economists. Marx recognized that every sale is a purchase and every purchase is a sale … BUT no one needs to purchase just because he or she just sold. You can hold on to the money and not buy absolutely anything with it for a while. So, the C-M-C process is not one process, but two processes in tension with each other, forming a dialectical unity. When a lot of people decide, for whatever reason, to hold on to money and not exchange it for commodities, then there is a fatal crisis in the capitalist system, because the circulation of money stops. Say’s Law basically predicts that the market should level down, that crises are only apparent crises, that there cannot be any generalized crisis in the capitalist system. Many economists held on to this view for a long time. Yet, as Marx points out, there can be a crisis if money holders stop circulation.
Despite this strong an accurate criticism, Marx’s observation was largely ignored by other economists, maybe because they regarded Marx as an eccentric radical. Say’s Law was still believed by economists in general, until John Maynard Keynes came along in the 1930′s.
John Maynard Keynes
In the 1930′s, Keynes writings became generally important mostly due to the Great Depression. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an intuitive Keynesian, and later Keynes proved Roosevelt’s approach was the right path. Keynes proved Marx correct, even though he would never mention the “M-word” in his works to associate this criticism with Marx’s views. Instead he used his own term: “the liquidity trap“, which is the fact that in periods of perceived crises, many people decide to hold on to their money and purchase as little as they can in the marketplace. This would subsequently lead to a shrinking of the market, more layoffs, more people holding on to their money, and so on … leading to the market’s downfall.
Contrary to the Tea Party’s thinking about Keynes … he was not a Marxist. Actually Marx would reject Keynesian solutions, given that Marx wanted to end capitalism, while Keynes wanted to use a sort of socialism to save capitalism. Whether he read Marx or not is up to debate, although many people really suspect that he did. Yet, he was also part of those economists who refused to say the “M-word” explicitly for fear of being accused as communist, Marxist or anything of the sort. Today, of course, the Tea-partiers will accuse you of being a Marxist if you so much imply that government should spend some money in better toilets in the U.S. Capitol, but that is another story.
Yet, for Keynes the situation is clear. For economists, national income includes the variables of consumption, investment, and government spending. The question is: which of these three variables would lead a nation out of recession or depression? Keynes pointed out that consumers would never lead the way, precisely because of the “liquidity trap”. People will hold on to their money as much as they can in a time of crisis, where there is little opportunity for jobs and the risk of being victim of debt becomes a real problem.
For Keynes, private enterprise will not invest either. As we have seen with Adam Smith, you can only create jobs in relation to the size of the market, and Keynes knew that very well. If the market is in crisis and is shrinking, then the only choice of the private sector is to layoff many of its employees, which would worsen the situation since it contributes to the market’s downfall.
Hence, there is only one variable in this equation which can turn things around, and that is government spending. Government has the ability and the motive to do so. Some attribute the end of the Great Depression to the New Deal, others to the United States’ participation in World War II. In either case, it was government spending which saved the day in the end.
Yet, there is a reality regarding government spending in times of crisis: it needs to tax.
The (Mis)Use of Tax Holidays in the Midst of a Recession
Yet, apparently all of the “no-brainer” proposal made by Keynes in his works is rejected by many politicians today in the U.S. and Europe. Instead of giving government greater powers to spend on creating markets, provide for the poor, and so on, the suggestion which is prevalent in many industrialized countries is to cut back government “spending”, increase tax subsidies and extend tax holidays. Yet, as we saw in Part 1 of these series where we used Adam Smith as our main reference, that will not work. If I pay less taxes than last year, but my market size keeps shrinking, the only place the extra-money is going to go is my pocket. The problem with reducing taxes in the midst of a recession with no strings attached is that it makes the wealthy be more wealthy. This is the reason why “trickle-down economy” does not work.
Some Thoughts on Taxes and the Recession
However, I do grant the right-wing some criticism to tax policy. For example, one of the characteristics of taxing is that it diverts resources from whatever it taxed. The reason for this relies on the fact that people in general will avoid paying taxes on whatever it is taxed on. This will not always be this way. Taxing on profits won’t stop a capitalist from profiting if the tax rate is still competitive enough in relation to other cities, states, or countries. However, it can prevent job creation, if job creation itself is taxed. This is the problem of the great mistake of the payroll tax (especially PAYG), which actually prevents job creation by forcing employers to pay taxes directly related to employing a worker. That is the last thing we need during recession.
Income tax is another bad idea for the same reason, especially a component which is the savings tax. Why in the universe do we want prevent people and corporations from saving money in banks when we need to create incentives to save money and, thus, have capital to invest?
What about taxing stuff which is harmful? It has been shown that taxing cigarettes and alcohol actually does persuade many people not to do both, because it would increase their cost. What about progressive taxes on housing as a way to persuade people not to buy expensive houses? As it has been shown, part of the housing crisis is due to the fact that people in the middle class had a tendency to buy more expensive houses because other people were buying more expensive houses. This tendency actually does “trickle down”. The liberalization of the housing market is what got us into trouble in the first-place. In a time like this, ordinary poor and middle class people could actually benefit from having a non-expensive house which they can pay little or no taxes on, while those who do have money will pay more as they want bigger houses and mansions. If rich people want to spend on expensive housing, they will have to pay taxes, and those taxes can indeed help government achieve what it wants regarding recovering the economy.
However, as pointed out in an article, tax-exemptions on corporations and the wealthy has led to lack of government funds to actually invest in things we need to finance. Starving the government in order to pay debt is a wrong approach. Many highways in the U.S. need urgent repair. Some states have let them erode to gravel, while others are using gravel instead of asphalt to keep the road “in shape” (cheaper … right?!) Robert Frank, the economist, states that if a repair costs 6 million, it may well be that, if the problem is not solved, it may cost $30 million two years from now. If this is the case, then starving the government to pay debts will make government end up with more debt.
If you do not believe me, believe our Republican Puerto Rican government, whose policies on starving the government left about 20,000 people unemployed (“government is the problem”) in order to pay the public debt. Yet, such government measures had two very bad effects: it shrunk the market, which led to more layoffs in the private sector; and the public debt rose from about $50 billion in 2009 to more than $65 billion at the end of 2011.
The shrink-government-to-incentivize-private-sector approach to the economy failed miserably during these years. As many economists, like Francisco Catalá Oliveras, have pointed out, the problem of government size has little to do with the systemic problem of the economy in Puerto Rico. Yes, government size was great in relation to the private sector, but not necessarily to the size of the population. Ireland prospered immensely having relatively the same government size as Puerto Rico’s in proportion to its population, yet the size of the private sector was double of the size of Puerto Rico’s. The problem may not have been that the government is too big, but that the private sector is too small. Ironically, after the implementation of a Republican program in Puerto Rico to shrink the government “to create more private enterprises”, ended up by having the effect of making the private sector much smaller!
On the other hand, Latin America is becoming increasingly a prosperous continent, mostly because it is made up of countries which have had a more Keynesian approach to the problem. Of course, Venezuela is socialistic, but more Marxist in its approach to the economy. Although it is doubtful that the economy has “prospered” on this basis, it has made a lot of investment in infrastructure and government services which might come in handy in a future with or without Chávez. Similar countries such as Bolivia have taken these initiatives, which have led to an economic growth, the same in Ecuador. There is hot debate on whether these approaches will lead to further prosperity, given their aggressive approach towards capitalism itself. Yet, there can be no doubt at all that the Keynesian approach made by countries like Brazil and Argentina has paid off big time! Argentina fell into a very deep recession with the implementation of the same neoliberal policies which, right now, are going to be implemented in many European countries. The Kirschners, who hold on to Peronist ideals, approached the economy from a Keynesian philosophy, and its economy is now growing. Brazil’s philosophy is socialist, but more a democratic-socialism these days, business friendly, while simultaneously regulating its economy, especially in relation to its national resources. Today, it is becoming an economic super-power.
On the other hand, the United States is stalled thanks, in part, to a President who is not aggressive enough with the financial sector, and a Republican Congress which is not willing to compromise much because it wants the President to fail. Its systemic corrupt government is not making things better either. European countries are taking the bitter pill of starving the government in order to pay debts, but Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, are doing worse after taking such measures. Will the neoliberal measures work to save the European Union?
For what is worth, if any incentives are to be offered, it is recommended to look for those which do not depend on tax, and depend greatly on government investment. People underestimate how important it is to keep the infrastructure working: roads, electricity, water, investing in buildings, the environment, and so on … these are all factors which make opportunities to invest attractive, and would save corporations lots of money in relation with a scenario where these things are non-functional.
The high costs of health-care in the U.S. will need massive government investment, especially from the federal government, either through public option or government-run universal health care. In 2001 it was reported that about 50% of U.S. bankruptcies were related to health care costs, in 2007 it was 62%, making it the leading cause of bankruptcies (see this report, this one, and this one). A serious public option (not a watered down version that we have today) or universal health care would actually reduce government spending on health care (not increase it) as well as health-care costs. This can create incentives to private industry in two ways: making employers pay one third to half (perhaps even less) of what they spend today on health care for their employees, and stimulating a policy of preventive medicine which could increase their employees’ health making them more productive. Simultaneously, the relatively cheap cost of health care would make government spend less on it, and more on other things which need to be addressed.
Of course, for preventive health care approach, there needs to be government intervention in the food industry, which could lead to lower costs in health care for both government and private health care facilities. I will let Elizabeth Kucinich (a woman I consider a goddess, with whom I am totally in love with –platonically speaking–) explain this to you. (BTW … This video shows how tax subsidies keep killing us :-S)
One dollar taxed on harmful behavior is one less dollar taxed in useful activities.
So, let’s tax the right things. The tax policies must be rebuilt from the bottom up, since much of it is not helping the economy, but not-taxing is not an option. Yes, I am proposing “social engineering” … yet everything we do collectively is social engineering, if it is not government, it will be businesses and corporations who will do it … and, as I have said before, corporations do not think about your welfare … nor do they have the structural means to think about you. Government does! In democratic societies, we should assume the responsibility to tell government through various means (not just elections) to adopt the best tax policies to benefit all of us. Better let social engineering by democratic governments shape us, than entities and businesses which will socially engineer to exploit society without government restraint!
References
Catalá, F. (2007). Elogio de la imperfección. PR: Ediciones Callejón.
Frank, R. H. (2011). The Darwin economy: liberty, competition, and the common good. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Keynes, J. M. (2010). Essays in biography. Palgrave Macmillan.
Marx, K. (2002). El capital. (8 vols.). P. Scaron (Trans.). México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. [El capital. (8 vols.). V. Romano-García (Trans.). Madrid: Ediciones Akal].
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American Corporations are not Loyal to the United States
The United States is a very strange country. It is apparently one of the few countries (or perhaps the only country) in the world where people defends an economic system on the basis that it is the “national way of life”. If you don’t defend laizze-faire capitalism, then you are not a patriot. Usually, countries try to adopt the most efficient economic systems and adapt according to their reality of their internal and external markets. Not the United States! This even reaches the level of being detrimental to Americans in general. Individualism is one of those national myths which many Americans try to stick with, and one basis to reject taxes: ”It is my money! … Mine! Mine! Mine!” Yet, this clearly goes against the direct benefit of the people who subscribe this statement.
In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.
“I’d rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill,” said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman’s Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood (Etter, 2010).
On the other hand, the American right-wing has an irrational love for Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market”, a fetish which, as we have seen in our previous post, would make Smith pale. There is an unfounded belief that markets always lead to a better society as a whole, a bold belief which Adam Smith, as a good ethicist, never held in his lifetime.
Yet, as many of the patriotic Americans show a commitment to the laizze-faire capitalism, American corporations never ever show their loyalty to the United States, especially its people. Unnoticed by the news (especially corporate news in general) is the fact that corporations consistently betray the United States. For instance, during World War II, American companies invested heavely in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy when these regimes were in power. One prominent business man is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush, had very profitable deals with Hitler at the time. Corporations like Coca-Cola, IBM, among others did so too. The situation is no different today. BP has made deals with Iran’s government (here is the TIME report). General Electric, Halliburton, Conoco-Phillips may have operations in Syria, Iran, and Lybia (see the 60 Minutes report here). In 2010, about 300 American corporations were approved by the U.S. government to make business deals with Iran (see New York Times report here).
While this is happening, many American corporations keep closing doors in the mainland to move overseas. Many people in the conservative spectrum of U.S. politics rightfully denounce these moves as being detrimental to the American people. Yet, they consistently keep electing the sort of government which is willing to grant all sorts of freedoms to the same U.S. corporations which keep trading with the enemy and are willing to go overseas leaving Americans out of work.
Capitalism may have the uncompromisiing loyalty of the American people, but capitalism has no such uncompromising loyalty to Americans in any way. Why is this the case? As Napoleon Bonaparte once said in 1815:
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.
At the end of the day, corporations in general are about the bottom line, how much money can they deliver to their shareholders at the end of any given quarter …. that’s it. Their loyalty is to the shareholders, not the American people. Many on the right accuse Chomsky on being unpatriotic when he says that privatization does not mean that you give a public institution to some nice person, but means to give a public institution to an entity totally unaccountable to the people. Since he is an anarchist, such accusations hardly keep him awake at nights. Yes, usually private institutions can do things efficiently, but, people always miss the point about what is this efficiency about: corporations are efficient in order to create wealth for its shareholders, they are not efficient to create wealth for the people. I have to keep reminding people that corporations are legally bound to place their shareholders interests above everything else, even the public good. Unrestricted corporate activity will do no good to the American people.
So, if this is the case, then why the heck should Americans be uncompromisingly loyal to American corporations? If they lay off people, as we have said in our previous post, it is because of a shrinking market, or an enhanced technology, or the bottom line. If they move overseas, it only means one thing, they would profit more overseas than in the mainland. If they trade with the enemy, it is because they find such opportunities profitable. It is all about money … not about you!
Tax Exemption in Puerto Rico, our Experience
As a Puerto Rican, I have studied the economic experience of Puerto Rico under U.S.’s rule, especially after World War II. After the war, our governor Rexford Guy Tugwell (one of President Roosevelt’s great advisors) engaged in a program whose sponsor was Teodoro Moscoso, a businessman who looked for a way to use Puerto Rico’s position as territory in relation to the Internal Revenue Code in order to attract U.S. capital. The basic mechanism to carry out this ambitious program to industrialize Puerto Rico was using tax exemptions. Any U.S. subsidiary or corporation established in Puerto Rico would enjoy tax exempt profits under Section 931 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. This was the beginning of a radical move of the government to stir the Puerto Rican economy away from agriculture and more to an industrial and urban way of life. This kept progressing during successive administrations until 1976, when additional incentives were created, such as tax exemption on repatriation of profits to the U.S. mainland. This was Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code.
For many years, Puerto Rico was placed at the very top of the list of countries which attracted U.S. capital overseas. Yet, that is no longer the case. As I pointed out elsewhere, Section 936 was eliminated due to global concerns. The world changed. Why was the U.S. so rich during all of these years. Very simple! Although I know this subject is controversial, the New Deal, Roosevelt’s Keynesian approach to the U.S. economy, paid off. Also, the U.S. involvement with World War II paid off enormously, and government injected a great deal of capital to the economy, which made it recover. U.S. investments world-wide were mostly involved with extracting natural resources from other countries. Europe in general was destroyed during World War II, so was Japan and China. India was still poor mostly because of all the years under Brittish subordination. For all practical purposes, in the democratic-capitalist block, the United States was the sole player in the world with its own prosperity.
For that same reason, Puerto Rico also prospered, it experienced exponential economic growth, but not economic development (the reason for this last statement will be explained in detail in a future blog post). For all practical purposes, corporations had all the reason in the world to establish themselves there, not elsewhere. Puerto Rican labor force was (and still is) of the highest quality, and it was also cheap. The infrastructure was one of the best, because, during World War II, the local and the federal governments invested heavily on roads, electricity, water supply, among others. The local government also provided buildings to fascilitate production in Puerto Rico, as well as a national bank (Banco Gubernamental de Fomento) which invested heavily on attracting capital and providing financial support for these companies.
Yet, in the 1980s there was an air of change. Already the U.S. Congress was making statements about the fact that tax-exempt corporations working under Section 936 were not producing the amount of jobs projected by its partisans. Quite the opposite, the economy of Puerto Rico seemed to stall, while U.S. corporations evaded billions of dollars in taxes using U.S. territories. This is the decade when the term “corporate welfare” was widely used in Congress for years to come. Again, the failure to create jobs did not stop these corporations from investing in Puerto Rico. Up to 1993, Puerto Rico still was at the very top of the list of countries which attracted U.S. capital. This began to fail in 1995, when President Clinton approved the elimination of Section 936′s tax benefits.
Why was it eliminated? In part, it was because after the collapse of the communist block, corporations wanted to invest heavily world-wide without any sort of restriction, and countries involved in free trade agreements would resent Puerto Rico having all the advantage in a new globalized market. Europe was no longer in ruins, but became an economic power enough to rival the U.S. dollar. Japan was another economic superpower, whose Yen also rivaled the U.S. dollar. Free trade agreements were being signed all over the place, in Asia, and America. This would make many industrialized countries participate in free trade agreements in order to let corporations freely invest in new countries, sometimes with tax exempt status. More markets were created around the world than ever before, as countries started to compete with each other as tax havens for corporations to evade tax payments to their respective governments.
As a result, U.S. corporations started leaving Puerto Rico to establish themselves on countries like Ireland, which became an economic super-power in Europe, and Singapore which became another big economic powerhouse in Asia. Under the current circumstances, corporate tax subsidies don’t work anymore. Puerto Rico kept choosing the strategy of corporate tax subsidies, with no beneficial results in any way, and major political parties keep adopting these non-sensical policies despite repeated statements made by reputed and serious economists that this is the wrong path to take (see Collins, et al., 2006, which is a study made by economists from the Brookings Institution and the Center for the New Economy). Even the renowned independentista economist, Francisco Catalá Oliveras, has repeatedly recommended to tax those foreign corporations which are going to leave anyway. This is a no-brainer! If, no matter which program of tax subsidies you give them, these corporations will leave soon anyway, why the heck not tax them?! There is no loss in this specific scenario, and Puerto Ricans would have everything to gain. Needless to say, the Puerto Rican government did not revoke their tax subsidies and refuse to tax them.
Unfortunately, in the early nineties, the amount of capital proceeding from 936 corporations added up to $13 billion, in 2001, it was reduced to $1 billion. In the new neo-liberal fever, Puerto Rico also sold its public phone company, which used to produce lots of revenue for the government. It privatized its own health care system and implemented an HMO-like model, which greatly increased health care costs. It partially privatized the water company, driving its costs higher. It is no surprise that under the tax subsidies model, and the sour pill that our governor, Luis Fortuño made us take (i.e. following his Republican conviction that government was the problem and that about 20,000 employees should be fired), Puerto Rico’s debt increased to a new record high of $65 billion. It is trying to keep up the system unsustainably using non-recurring funds (mostly coming from loans) to finance recurring operations. The financial services which grade credit are primarily concerned about the value of government bonds in the long run, especially those regarding the University of Puerto Rico and pension funds. In November 2011, Wasmer, Shroeder & Company, strongly advised its investors to watch out for Puerto Rican bonds in a report whose title speaks a thousand words: ”Puerto Rico: Greece of the West?” A lot of our loss of capital which Pueto Rico could tax without any sort of loss is diverted to the Cayman Islands … the joke is on us, Puerto Ricans!
Since the Puerto Rican government granted corporate tax exemptions, government is still unable to address many of the problems it had effectively, especially roads, electricity, water supply. The average tax contribution of foreign companies to the Puerto Rican government is about 4%. In Ireland it is 12.5%, while in Singapore the average is about 10%. Even with its meltdown, Ireland is still in a much better economic shape than Puerto Rico at the present moment. There was a contraction of Singaporean economy by a 0.8% in 2008, but it recovered, showing a 14.5% growth of its GDP (2010), even when we are still not out of world-wide recession. Isn’t it interesting that most of the time, countries which have mixed economies and tax the rich usually have much better services, goods and jobs, than those which do not? Some of these successful countries are: Singapore itself, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, and Norway. These also happen to be among the least corrupt governments in the world, and many of them happen to be social-democratic governments.
I ask … what the heck is the basis to say that taxing corporations would drive down the economy?
Singapore’s Use of Tax Subsidies
The signficant difference between Singapore and Puerto Rico becomes apparent when you realize that the latter has relied its economy almost completely on tax exemptions without creating a single job in recent years, except part-time jobs with lower wages. Yet Puerto Rico has an extremely low labor force rate (which, in 2011 fell below 40%, one of the lowest in the world). Again, does tax exemption create jobs?
Singapore is another sort of country. Yes, it is ruled by an authoritarian government which tries to control its ethnic diversity and the economy. Yet, its authoritarianism is not the main explanation for why it has been so successful over the years. The vast majority of authoritarian governments around the world are doing worse off than Singapore. What is its secret?
Simply speaking, they do not rely exclusively on tax exemption to foreign corporations. Yes, they do use tax subsidies to attract foreign capital, but they don’t give those tax subsidies forever, and not to whoever appears at its doorsteps. Many countries in the world which compete as tax havens, usualy make the mistake of extending tax holidays for big foreign corporations, a strategy which usually does not lead to better improvement of their populations. The competition among countries make them give more tax benefits and provide other incentives in detriment of their own people. Yet Singapore is another story. If you own a company which wants to take advantage of Singapore’s tax subsidies program, your plan better lead to job creation and the general economy’s improvement. No program which benefits you as business man is unconditional in Singapore. Yes, tax subsidies are increasing in Singapore as it is lowering its tax rate on foreign corporations, yet this is also being planned as a bigger progressive tax policy, where rich people actually have to pay more.
Contrast the Republican (especially Tea Party) way of thinking with President Lee Kwan Yew. President Lee tells the story of when representatives of a German company were concerned that after several calculations, they would find more profitable to leave Singapore to another country, that they would love for Singapore to lower further its tax requirements and extend them. President Lee talked to his advisors on the matter, and in the next meeting, he looked at the documents with the proper research and said: ”You are right. Singapore apparently is too expensive for you, and you would find it profitable to invest elsewhere. However, I will not lower taxes for your benefit. May I help you with your luggage?”
On the other hand, instead of relying on tax subsidies, what Singapore has done is to diversify every aspect of the economy. Even if it doesn’t have lots of natural resources, they have agriculture, producing good of all kinds, inviting young company matrices to be established in Singapore, it has an air line, a governmental universal health care system (one of the best in the world), high quality roads, electricity, and water utilities, it has not abolished assistance to the poor (even though poverty level in Singapore is significantly lower than other countries in Asia), with low unemployment rate (2.2%), low cost housing, and so on. It relies basically on exports, which is one of the highest in all of Asia. Needless to say that it is one of the most environmentally friendly countries in the world. They intensively train their labor force for new jobs available in the market place as the economy and world reality keep diversifying and changing. I may add that it has also a very aggressive savings program (sometimes to 40% of earnings), which continually nourishes the economy. This is the key to Singapore’s economic success …. not total reliability on tax subsidies which are, after all, only temporary and conditional.
We are in a Different World, Tax Exempt Status Should Not be the Norm
No longer is tax exemption one of the top criteria corporations use to establish themselves in any place in the world. Yes, it was a strong force for many years, but not not now. The opening of the global market has made multinational corporations to multitask production in key countries in the world, although this situation keeps changing over time. Tax subsidies are no longer the main path to attract corporations in the United States, except in some specific cases. Usually many of the companies asking to establish themselves anywhere in the U.S. are either companies providing goods and services which would provide them anyway without any tax-exempt status, or could be companies providing products to consume, which would also provide them anyway without tax-exempt status. WalMart has been one of those megastores which have lobbied extensively in state governments, and even municipal governments, for tax subsidies. Once a WalMart is established somewhere in a commercial strategic zone, it destroys the competition which is usually made up of tax-paying smaller or medium-sized stores. This inevitably leads to low wages, the prevalence of part-time jobs, no funds for fire departments, for police, for public education, and so on. In other words, those cities and states end up being worse than before. The same thing happens with other mega-stores which compete with others such as WalMart.
Usually, the norm is that if a corporation plans to move to another state or overseas, will do so regarless of whether it is given tax-exempt status or not. Usually tax subsidies are the result of lobbying by corporations, which basically means that a legalized bribery is in order to support or oppose certain government policies. Lawrence Lessig, in a very thorough and well-researched book about problem of corporate lobbying and how it is destroying democracy, makes the point very clear that the reason why many decent politicians are so easily corrupted within the system, it is because the system itself is corrupt. The book is called Republic, Lost, and I highly recommend its reading.
For all practical purposes, governors and Congressmembers are dedicating themselves almost fully to raising funds, much of which come from people associated with the corporate sector. Even when a candidate may know for sure that tax exemptions will not create jobs, he or she will favor it to pay back a corporate favor (often without being conscious of doing so).
The evidence has shown consistently that tax reduction as general policy leads to a worse state of affairs. There is no evidence at all that a general policy of lower taxes make states or the U.S. as a whole any better. As one of the millions of examples I can show in this blog, I want to use the one manifest evidence about how lowering taxes lowered quality of life, while many corporations and rich people were made richer. In 1978 a referendum was carried out, the people of the State of California approved Proposition 13, which basically limits taxes on “real property”, which led to lower tax rates for California. What was the inevitable outcome? The effects of Proposition 13 is described extensively in Peter Schrag’s Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future.
This is a non-partisan thorough analysis on the degrading economy of California ever since Proposition 13 was passed. Shrag sums up his conclusions:
Californiaś schools, which, thirty years ago, has been among the most generously funded in the nation, are now in the bottom quarter among the states in virtually every major indicator–in their physical condition, in public funding, in test scores–closer in most of them to Mississipi than to New York or Connecticut or New Jersey. . . . Its once celebrated freeway system is now rated as among the most dilapidated road networks in the country. Many of its public libraries operate on reduced hours, and some have closed altogether. The state’s social beneefits, once among the nation’s most generous, have been cut, and cut again, and then cut again. And what had once been a tuition-free college and university system, while still among the world’s great public educational institutions, struggles for funds and charges as much as every other state university system, and in some cases more (Shrag, 1999, p. 8).
The right-wing is obsessed against taxes, because it leads to government waste. The lesson of the famous “Bridge to Nowhere” is an iconic and symbolic illustration that this indeed occurs. And much of the right-wing in 1978 advocated for Proposition 13 on the same basis. The lesson to be learned here, though, is that when you cut taxes to eliminate government waste, you also cut taxes which eliminate valuable government programs, especially those which help to create more jobs and better address the needs of the population. Yes, many people abuse government programs, but as the economist Robert H. Frank points out, the problem is not whether these programs are abused by the people or the government (sometimes they are), the real issue is that eliminating these programs would create far more costly problems for government in the long run. The starve-states-to-pay-debts policy is bad for this specific reason.
More evidence that cutting tax on corporations does not necessarily lead to more jobs is the evidence gathered by the non-profit organization GoodJobsFirst.org, which tracks the effect of government subsidies for U.S. corps (download the PDF version here). I also highly recommend Greg LeRoy’s The Great American JobsScam, an excellent book on how corporations in general manipulate the public into thinking that lowering taxes will create jobs, and shows ample evidence that they do not.
Why should anyone feel any patriotic duty to a system which, set completely free, is actively working against the American people? Why should market fundamentalism equate the “American way of life”?
If you didn’t understand anything I have argued here, I leave you again with Bill Maher to explain it to you in a way you will understand:
Some Thoughts on Ireland
We all know that during most of its history in the twentieth century, Ireland had a systemic economic problem. Yet, after a consensus made by the private sector, the public sector, and workers, everyone sacrificed a bit of their own interests to make Ireland work. The result was a booming economy. It even became a country with higher GDP per capita than the UK.
Yet, it made one crucial mistake, mostly due to the side effects of uncared boom economy: it deregulated the banking system, and assumed the neoliberal position that losses in the market should be adopted by the government, which non-surprisingly led to its current collapse in the market. Privatize profits, socialize losses.
This is an important observation to make, since the rise of Ireland’s economy is the product of intensive cooperation between different sectors of society. As Charles Darwin discovered in his life time, and as scientists who favor the idea of group selection point out, cooperative societies will usually survive better than non-cooperating societies. Unfortunately the formulae being applied to Ireland in this recent Irish economic recession has nothing to do with cooperation. Basically because of the right-wing leadership in the European Union, Ireland is now required to adopt neoliberal measures, including tax subsidies and government cut on social programs in order for it to pay its debt. The fact that Ireland is tied to the ever declining Euro makes matters worse.
I think that Ireland should ignore the European Union’s request, and create a new national consensus to deal with the problem without cutting taxes, nor by eliminating social benefits. I agree with Paul Krugman that the measures taken by Iceland are the way to go (see also his article “The Path not Taken” and “Eating the Irish“.
References
Collado Schwarz, A. (2009). Soberanías exitosas: seis modelos para el desarrollo económico de Puerto Rico. PR: La Voz del Centro.
Collins, S. M., Bosworth, B. P., Soto-Class, M. A. (2006). The economy of Puerto Rico: restoring growth. Washington, D.C. & PR: The Center for the New Economy and Brookings Institution Press.
Dietz, J. L. (2007). Historia económica de Puerto Rico. PR: Ediciones Huracán. (There is an English version available: Economic history of Puerto Rico: institutional change and capitalist development. US: Princeton University Press.
Etter, L. (2010, July 17). Economic crisis forces local governments to let asphalt roads return to gravel. WSJ.com. Accessed in: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704913304575370950363737746.html.
Irizarry Mora, E. (2011). Economía de Puerto Rico. México: McGraw-Hill.
LeRoy, G. (2005). The great American jobsscam: corporate tax dodging and the myth of job creation. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Shrag, P. (1999). Paradise lost: California’s experience, America’s future. CA: University of California Press.
Lessig, L. (2011). Republic, lost: how money corrupts Congress – and a plan to stop it. NY: Twelve.
It often surprises me to watch presidential candidates debate about how to deal with several problems occurring today in the United States. I am not an American, and I don’t vote for the U.S. presidency. However, through social networking in Facebook and Google+, and what I read in the news daily, it seems that Americans are looking for a good candidate for the presidency.
The right-wing is now divided between the more intelligent conservatives and the Tea Party. I agree with the economist Robert H. Frank when he said that if you use Venn diagrams you will be able to see that the set of issues the Tea Party is angry about and the set of issues the Tea Party is confused about intersect perfectly in one whole circle. When they describe Obama as being a socialist bordering on Nazism and Marxism, they are not really thinking. The fact that Nazi means national-socialism does not mean that the sort of socialism that socialists in general are asking for involve concentration camps. Tea Partiers forget how many Marxists and Communists were persecuted by the Nazi regime, and how Hitler expressed his hate for them in Mein Kampf. Needless to say that not all socialists are Marxists. There are anarcho-syndicalists or libertarian socialists, which involve socialism comprised of free federation of communities of workes without the existence of a state. There are also socialist-democrats (and I count myself as one of them) who essentially advocate for a mixed economy where the free market should have its own place, but regulated by the government, while the government would assume the responsibility of certain essential goods.
Yet, Obama is none of these things. Supposedly, he is a liberal (pro-capitalist, but centrist), although I agree with Bill Maher that he is not even liberal. This means that Tea Party and other people in the right have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. If Obama were a socialist a la Soviet Union, he would have socialized all banks and private enterprises at this stage of his command. He hasn’t. He has only carried out a bad Keynesian approach, which is different from a Marxist approach. Marx wanted to abolish capitalism. Keynes wanted the government to intervene to save capitalism. Much of what Obama has done has been to temporarily assume the shares of some companies and bail out others which are “too big to fail”. I don’t think that this was a good approach to companies responsible for the economic downfall, but ever since Bush, this has been the tendency of the federal government (and most industrialized governments thus far).
On the other hand, for many liberals and progressives, Obama’s term has been an abysmal failure. Progressives elected him because he did talk about change in Washington, D.C., no more business as usual. He wasted a lot of valuable time trying to be “conciliatory” to an anti-conciliatory right-wing, especially when Congress was dominated by the Democratic Party. Before the 2008 elections, I knew he would also be a failure in terms of human rights. Before he was elected president, he voted for FISA. He promised to end the Iraq war and he did, but after three wasted years spending money on it, increasing the national debt exponentially. He promised to close Guantanamo … that never happened. He promised that his administration would be crystal clear regarding Iraq and government affairs in general, yet, the year 2011 is an all-time record of secrecy and censorship regarding freedom of expression (see the statement made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation). To make matters worse, still in the midst of a recession (with a timid sort of recovery), as we speak the President is preparing U.S. forces in the Ormuz Straight in an apparent plan to attack Iran. Suppose the U.S. win, will it stay in the same way that the U.S. stayed in Iraq, draining the U.S. economy and needlessly increase its debt? Obama has also been the president who has most enforced anti-immigration laws (more than Bush or any other Republican administration ever has), especially Hispanic illegal immigrants. And last, but not least, he signed the damnable National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 recently (December 2011) which opens the door to violations of human rights against American citizens. In almost all accounts, from a progressive and even liberal standpoints, Obama’s administration has been significantly worse than Bush’s.
Both the right and the left are looking for new options, and the U.S. is paying close attention to Republican presidential candidates, given that the Democrats are pretty much stuck with Obama. What completely amazes me among all the candidates is the apparent blindness regarding taxes. Even Rick Santorum, a candidate I certainly do not respect (politically at least), stated that for job creation, we need to reduce corporate manufacturing rates to zero percent, and I know of other Republican candidates who would perfectly agree with that plan.
This is insanity!
Since when tax-exemption in any industry has been key for job creation?
Let’s Read Adam Smith Again!
Republicans and conservatives in general are supposedly followers of Adam Smith. I’m a socialist, but I can really, really appreciate Smith’s invisible hand doctrine. There are some forms of selfishness which benefit the public by creating innovation at low cost. If selfish people enter in the business world, in an environment of competition, the market will make sure that the public will have the best quality product at the lowest market price possible. This is perhaps one of the greatest insights in the history of political economy. Yet Smith himself was a lot wiser than his supposed disciples. Not always would the market benefit the public. We should take into account these passages from The Wealth of Nations:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. (p. 111)
To widen the market, and to narrow the competitiion, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can only serve to enable dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, as absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ough always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it (pp. 213-214).
Yet, for some reason many people on the right, especially those of the Tea Party, readily ignore Smith’s advice. Smith’s position is not that the government should not participate in the economy …. period. On the contrary, when things are unequal, and certain people “of the same trade” conspire and oppress the public, the role of government is precisely to set the laws and regulations in order to prevent that from happening. Smith’s advice that government should not intervene with the economy has more to do with the fact that many people of “the same trade” will seek to go to government so that a certain bill is passed, so that a new law will benefit corporations in detriment of the public. In such cases, government should just stay out of the way, not legislate such policies, and let the “invisible hand” of the market rule.
However, there are some other aspects about Adam Smith’s doctrine which are usually overlooked by many of his supposed fans when they propose tax exemptions as the way of creating jobs. In the third chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Smith talks extensively about division of labor. This chapter is very illuminating.
As we all know, Smith held that the wealth of nations is basically the product of three components:
- Rent of Land
- Salary
- Benefits
Rent of the land involves the sort of payment for facilities that you need for production (although in The Wealth of Nations Smith uses the term “land” in a broad sense, Smith uses examples of agriculture to convey his point). Salary is the nominal labor price which you pay your workers, while the benefits involve the profit component. Note that Smith did not dismiss taxes. Smith recommended that taxes should be established on luxury, as well as on the rent of land, not over benefits. (See an excellent brief summary on his views on taxes here). Actually, he elaborated extensively (about one third of his work) on how governments should tax. Certainly he, an ethicist, would have never subscribed to the slogan that “all tax is theft”. Yet, I want to differ from Smith regardding the idea that profit should not be taxed, and suppose tax on benefits to use Smith’s own theory to get to the point I want to make.
Notice that, though taxes themselves can serve to regulate the economy (e.g. taxes on luxury), nowhere in Smith’s analysis taxes (or lack of them) play any role whatsoever in creating jobs. That is because in the third chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Smith reveals the most fundamental aspect of job creation …. the size of the market (pp. 10-11, 21-25). When I explain Adam Smith to my students, I always say: “I wish that there were massive sales of philosophy books all over the world, so that we see the fruits of such industry of thinking and rationality. Yet, since the market of the Twilight series is much greater (yuck!), I guarantee you that the number of workers producing Twilight products is greater than those producing philosophy books (grumpy face)”. Since the Twilight market is a lot greater than the Husserl market, then the number of employees needed for the Twilight market will be a lot greater than the Husserl market.
Of course, taxes should not be so high as to strangle an industry. Taxes which require a hundred percent of profits would make any industry fail miserably. Yet, with more moderate taxes, let’s suppose 15% or 30% or so, an industry might persist (depending on the circumstances). Yet, once a right tax rate has been required by the state and the federal government, then the question is whether reducing it will create jobs. The answer is no, for reasons given by Smith himself in that third chapter. I will use a more “down to earth” analogy.
Let’s say that I want to create a business selling toasters in Puerto Rico. I do a market analysis and I find that in order to satisfy the effective demand (the number of people who want my products and can pay for them), I will need to hire 500 workers. I hire these workers, and the production process and sales lead to a net profit of $1,000,000.00 this year (without taxes). Suppose that I need to pay 15% taxes on profit. Then that means, that at the end of the day I will end up with $850,000.00.
Now, what would happen if the government, for whatever reason, wants to lower taxes to provide economic incentives (supposing that my market size remains the same)? Does it create more jobs? Not really. If my market research still shows that all I need is 500 workers, then hiring more workers than that will not give me an economic advantage over my rivals. As Adam Smith pointed out, the quality of production depends greatly on the ratio between those workers who are actually producing and those who are not (p. 8). If I hire more workers than I actually need, then that would be a disadvantage in the market.
On the other hand, it is perfectly conceivable that I could use that money to increase my workers’ salary. Yet, that would not be creating jobs, would it? All I am doing is keeping the same number of employees, but I would be paying them more. On the other hand, due to the competition in the market, if my rivals are not increasing their worker’s salaries, then that would mean that increasing my workers’ salaries would be another disadvantage in the marketplace.
So, what did the tax reduction accomplish? Making me richer … and that’s it. Let’s say that politicians wanted to reduce the tax rate from 15% to 5%, then I would end up with $950,000.00 profit. In other words, I would end up with $100,000.00 more without creating a single more job in the process!
Conclusion for Part 1
What we have seen here is just the beginning of how the right-wing (especially the radicals of the Tea Party) completely misunderstand basic economic concepts and how the economy works. Lower tax rates on corporations, taken on principle and completely decontextualizing the proposal, can be an incentive for industry but in detriment of the public. There is simply no way that a general policy of tax exemption will create jobs, simply because taxes (or lack of them) have no relationship at all with job creation. This is because job creation is directly related to market size (supply & effective demand), not to tax rates.
In other words, the key to creating more jobs is to create a market, and, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, only government has the means, the motive, and the power to create those markets, and turn things around …. even if that means more government spending and debt! The problem with the federal government today is that it has made little effort in creating these markets through the component of effective demand, spent too much money bailing out corporations which are “too big to fail”, and spent trillions of dollars in a war everyone knew would not be won in the end. I’m sad to say that both Bush and Obama have contributed to this crisis.
This is not all I have to say about the subject, it is only the beginning. I want to talk in later posts about the role of tax exemption in the globalized world, and in the U.S. For now, I leave you with some final thoughts by Bill Maher.
References
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. US: The Pennsylvania State University. (It can be downloaded here for free in its entirety in PDF Format).
“Religions Never Change”
“Religions never change”, said a dear friend and adopted sister of mine when I posted something about using the best aspects of religious practice for peace. I know what she meant. Religions have been used very often to manipulate people, to make them act unethically, even engaging wars in the name of God. She, as a pacifist, rejects all of that. As a matter of fact, she has been heavily influenced by the so-called “New Atheists” (Richard Dawkins in particular and his book The God Delusion).
It is not a surprise that the renowned biologist and militant atheist P. Z. Myers stated that if you want children to reject Christianity completely, you have to do one thing: make them read the Bible.
Yes, there are wonderful stories there, but much of the content leaves much to be desired. Yet, children usually do not read these passages. I remember when I was teaching Humanities, I was about to talk about the Hebrew society, and was naming my students the best Bible translations (to Spanish) available to them. Then I described some inconsistencies in the Bible, while a dear student of mine was looking at me with disbelief. One of the inconsistencies I pointed out was that after David killed Goliath of Gath by cutting his head off (1 Sam. 17:40-54), but later, Goliath appeared alive and well just to be killed by Elhanan son of Jair (2 Sam. 21:29). She shouted with surprise: ”I have NEVER heard of David cutting Goliath’s head off!”
Of course she was surprised! She was never taught that very gruesome part of the Bible. She was taught that David killed Goliath by throwing a stone at his forehead. Bible school didn’t tell her about the beheading. Yet, as I eventually showed her at the end of the class with the Bible in hand, that is not exactly what the Bible says:
Putting his hand in his bag, [David] took out a stone, slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead; the stone penetrated his forehead and he fell face downwards on the ground. Thus David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; he hit the Philistine and killed him, though he had no sword in his hand. David ran and stood over the Philistine, seized his sword, pulled it from the scabbard, despatched him and cut off his head. (1 Sam. 17: 49-51).
She was surprised once again, because no one told her that part of Goliath’s death.
[Note: If you have a King James Version translation in English or a Reina-Valera translation in Spanish, the passage 2 Sam 21:29 has been changed purposely to hide the contradiction. Yet the rest of the Bible translations show the real translation, that Goliath appears much later.]
In the Christian right, there is much emphasis on how violent the Q’uran is, and how, because of it, all (or at least most) Muslims are violent. Yet, they (convenientely) forget how violent the Bible is.
Yahweh Elohim can be said to be slow to anger and rich in mercy (Ps. 145:8), yet you have to look at many of the passages in the Pentateuch and Minor Prophets to see that His anger sparks at the slightest provocation, and, sometimes, no provocation. Take this incident, for instance:
They transported the ark of Elohim on a new cart and brought it out of Abinadab’s house which is on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drove the cart, Uzzah walked alongside the ark of God and Ahio went in front. David and the whole House of Israel danced before Yahweh with all their might, singing to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals. When they came to Nancon’s threshing-floor, Uzzah reached his hand out to the ark of God and steadied it, as the oxen were making it tilt. This roused Yahweh’s anger against Uzzah, and for this crime Elohim struck him down on the spot, and there he died beside the ark of God. (2 Sam 6:3-7).
We can understand why David was a bit pissed at Yahweh for doing that (2 Sam. 6:8). Any person who reads this passage, whether believer or not, will have the impression that Yahweh’s penalty doesn’t quite fit the “crime” … if it can be called a “crime” in any sense.
Yahweh is also not short of promoting genocide. For example, Yahweh commanded the annihilation of the Midianites (Num. 31:1).
The Isaelites took the Midianite women and their little ones captive and carried off all their cattle, all their flocks and all their goods as booty. They set fire to the towns where they lived and to all their encampments. Then, taking all their booty, everything they had captured, human and animal, they brought the captives, spoil and booty to Moses, the priest Eleazar and the whole communityof Israelites at the camp on the Plains of Moab, near the Jordan by Jericho.
Moses, the priest Eleazar and all the leaders of the community went out of the camp to meet them. Moses was enraged with the officers of the army, the commanders of the thousands and commanders of the hundreds who had come back from this military expedition. He said, ‘Why have you spared the life of all the women? They were the very ones who, on Balaam’s advice, caused the Israelites to be unfaithful to Yahweh in the affair at Peor: hence the plague which struck Yahweh’s community. So kill all the male children and kill all the women who have ever slept with a man; but spare the lives of the young girls who have never slept with a man, and keep them for yourselves. (Num. 31:9-18)
In other words, kill all children and married women … and, by the way, you may keep the young virgins to rape them. There are other passages which actually suggest to kill babies or rip a pregnant woman’s womb apart, especially when they are the enemy (2 Kings 6:12; Is. 13:16; Hos. 14:1, Neh. 3:10; Ps. 137:9). There are other examples of genocide, such as the command to kill the Amalekites. Samuel told Saul to ”… crush Amalek; put him under the curse of destruction with all that he possesses. Do not spare him, but kill [every] man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam. 15:2-3). Yahweh also consents to slavery, sometimes more humane slavery for ones, but worse slave treatment for others (Ex. 21:2-11,20-21; Lev. 25:44-46).
My, my, my! These are the passages which are forgotten when many believers present the Bible as the story of “God’s love throughout history”! These are the passages not taught in Bible school. Yet, they are definitely there. According to the scholar Raymund Schwager, the Hebrew Bible alone (the Old Testament with the exception of the Deuterocanonical books),
contains six hundred passages that explicitly talk about nations, kings, or individuals attacking, destroying, and killing others. … Aside from the approximately one thousand verses in which Yahweh himself appears as the direct executioner of violent punishments, and the many texts in which the Lord delivers the criminal to the punisher’s sword, in over one hundred other passages Yahweh expressly gives the command to kill people (Schwager, 2000, pp. 47, 60).
According to Matthew White, supposedly there are 1.2 million deaths from mass killing in the Bible (excluding the half million dead due to the war between Judah and Israel in 2 Chron. 13 for considering it implausible). I have to add the fact that many of the battles told in the Hebrew Bible did not actually take place, but I’ll explain it in a future blog post in these series.
Yet Religions have Changed …
One of the things I had to tell my friend and sister when she stated that “religions don’t change” is that the fact that religions have changed refutes her arguments. If you don’t believe me, believe Steven Pinker. He is not exactly an ardent defender of religion. He is quite the opposite, an ardent critic of religion, especially in the most harmful aspects of it in relation to public policy. He is also an advocate for the hypothesis of what in neuroscience has been called “the God module”, a module which enable many people to believe in God, life after death or a world beyond our own.
Yet, recently he published a book I wholeheartedly recommend called, The Better Angels of our Nature.
The main argument of his book will seem very strange in light of the many battles, wars, and terrorist acts which occur every day … He thinks that violence in the world has declined. Yes! No kidding! Violence in the world has really declined! Even violence in religion has declined, and Pinker, as critic of religion he is, is honest enough to recognize its decline … which confirms his point! After talking about all of the unethical parts of the Bible, he then says:
If you think that by reviewing the literal content of the Hebrew Bible I am trying to impugn the billions of people who revere it today, then you are missing the point. The overwhelming majority of observant Jews and Christians are, needless to say, thoroughly decent people who do not sanction genocide, rape, slavery, or stoning people for frivolous infractions. Their revenrence for the Bible is purely talismanic. In recent millenia and centuries the Bible has been spin-doctored, allegorized, superseded by less violent texts (the Talmud among Jews and the New Testament among Christians), or discreetly ignored. And that is the point. Sensibilities toward violence have changed so much that religious people today compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality, while getting their actual morality from more modern principles (Pinker, 2011, pp. 11-12).
Much later, when he talks about more objectionable material from the New Testament (although less violent than the Old Testament), and the most unethical attitudes from early Christians (especially after Christianity was adopted as official religion by the Roman Empire) he states:
Once again, the point of this discussion is not to accuse Christians of endorsing torture and persecution. Of course most devout Christians today are thoroughly tolerant and humane people. Even those who thunder from televised pulpits do not call for burning heretics alive or hoisting Jews on the strappado. The question is why they don’t, given that their beliefs imply that it would serve the greater good. The answer is that people in the West today compartmentalize their religious ideology. When they affirm their faith in houses of worship, they profess beliefs that have barely changed in two thousand years. But when it comes to their actions, they respect modern norms of nonviolence and toleration, a benevolent hypocrisy for which we should all be grateful (Pinker, 2011, p. 17).
The only aspect where I part from Pinker’s company has to do with the statement that Christianity has “barely” changed its doctrine. Quite the contrary, as Hans Küng has pointed out in his work on Judaism, Christianity and Islam, although some of their paradigmatic core principles are preserved for millenia, the ever-changing historical reality of Christians (Jews and Muslims) and interactions among themselves have made them adopt a variety of philosophical and theological standpoints. In Christianity the Bible was not seen the same way by everyone during its Neo-Platonic stage, nor its Aristotelian stage, not even during the Protestant Reformation or the Counter-Reformation, not even today.
The part about the “benevolent hypocrisy” should not be taken to be an ill-willed criticism against Christians. After all, we are all hypocrites in one level or another, as many cognitive scientists know very well. Yet, in many cases it cannot be said that this is because “readers ignore passages”. Many theologians were perfectly aware of such passages, yet provided rational philosophical and theological basis to confront them or deal with them. Unfortunately, not many believers read these theologians.
What these Series are About
Yet, why is the Bible the way it is? Why are there hateful passages? In fact, why are there contradictions in the Bible? How can we understand these contradictions? Didn’t anyone notice that these passages were there? Militant atheists love to laugh at these passages to embarrass Christians in the process. Yet, such behavior contributes little to the conversation.
I want to explore the Bible from a very unusual standpoint, from an evolutionary standpoint. Yes, mostly from a Darwinian standpoint. The degree of violence we find in the Bible (and antiquity in general) will be described more accurately as the result of biological evolutionary processes. The eventual process of change in religion (in many cases for the better) can be understood as the way cultural evolution interacts with biological evolution in order to benefit greater and greater groups of humans. Contrary to what has been stated, religion has been a great force of group cohesion, yet it is not the only one.
In my next blog post, I will present a brief summary of current Darwinian evolution, especially the parts regarding our present discussion.
On a side note, I was always dissatisfied with official Catholic theology on revelation. Although the theology worked on and elaborated in the Second Vatican Council is a great advance, it is not enough. I hope that much of the reflections I have to offer will serve, in the end, a scientific and philosophical basis for a more adequate unerstanding of the Bible, and what do we mean when we say that it is God’s Word.
References
The New Jerusalem Bible. (1989). NY: Doubleday.
Pinker, S. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. US: Viking.
Schwager, R. (2000). Must there be scapegoats? Violence and redemption in the Bible NY: Crossroad.
White, M. (2011). The great big books of horrible things. The definitive chronicle of history’s 100 worst atrocities. NY: Norton.
Aunque soy miembro del Movimiento Unión Soberanista (MUS), este artículo representa mi punto de vista, no necesariamente los del MUS.
Propuestas Absurdas …
Imaginemos un gobierno que legisle en Puerto Rico para votar por algo totalmente descabellado (ya estamos en ese tipo de gobierno, pero sigan leyendo … ). Por ejemplo, el gobierno convoca al pueblo a un referéndum en torno al Bentley que se compró la modelo Maripily recientemente. Usted vota “Sí”, si usted opina que Maripily debería quedarse con su Bentley; “No” si usted opina que ella debería cambiarlo por un Toyota Yaris. En nuestra fantasía, podemos imaginar que dicho proyecto de ley pasa por el Senado, la Cámara de Representantes y es firmada por el gobernador. El referéndum se llevaría a cabo justo en el momento de las elecciones, cuyo proceso conllevaría un costo adicional de $10 millones a $20 millones. ¿Qué pensaríamos todos?
Pensaríamos que lo más probable nuestra legislatura y el gobernador deberían ser internados en Capestrano. No obstante, imaginemos que estos distinguidos y honorables funcionarios nos dicen que “en una democracia, el pueblo tiene el derecho a expresarse”. Es más, nos dice también “no desprecies nunca el poder del voto, porque el voto es tu derecho“. Para todos los que amamos los ideales democráticos, estas frases nos apelan emocionalmente. Ciertamente, debemos valorar nuestro derecho a votar por nuestros líderes, nuestro futuro y el de nuestros hijos y nietos. Sin embargo, aun con toda esta apelación emocional, vemos con claridad que un voto en un referéndum en torno al Bentley de Maripily no merece un gasto de $10 a $20 millones, ni tampoco el esfuerzo de los funcionarios de colegio, ni tan siquiera el esfuerzo de la viejita de 90 años que en cada elección se suele levantar bien tempranito en la mañana para ir a votar. Estaríamos plenamente justificados al pensar que ese tipo de referéndum sería una pérdida miserable de tiempo y de dinero.
Reflexionemos al respecto. ¿Por qué sería una pédida? La contestación es tan sencilla como racional: porque ese tipo de referéndum no tendría consecuencias políticas de ningún tipo. ¡¿Qué rayos le importa al público si Maripily se compró un Bentley o no?! (¡¿Escuchaste Vocero?!)
El plebiscito propuesto por el Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP) y modificado y adoptado por el Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) es menos absurdo que eso, pero aun así absurdo en muchos sentidos. Una vez más, surge la pregunta de si debemos participar o no en el plebiscito propuesto. Mi respuesta es que no, porque, como en el caso del referéndum del Bentley de Maripily, no tendría efecto político alguno.
Un Plebiscito Claramente Amañado … 1998
Mucha gente que favorece el plebiscito se ha hecho de oídos sordos a los planteamientos que ahora hace el ex-gobernador Pedro Rosselló. No es exactamente mi gobernador favorito (bastante lejos de eso), pero tiene la razón cuando está en lo correcto. Bajo su gobierno se llevaron a cabo dos plebiscitos criollos: el de 1993 y el de 1998. Él resalta claramente el plebiscito del 98 como un ejemplo de un error que no se debe volverse a cometer. Dicha consulta presentaba varias opciones, cuyas definiciones fueron impuestas a la “trágala” por el PNP, definiendo las opciones como le daba la gana, y se le dio más fondos a la estadidad que a las demás opciones. Se diseñó el plebiscito para perjudicar al Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) al establecer una separación entre la opción del territorio y la de la libre asociación. A ese problema se le añade el hecho de que Puerto Rico acababa de pasar por el estrago de un huracán ese mismo año.
El PPD, maestros de la indefinición, pero a la vez políticamente astutos, decidieron vaciar su rechazo al plebiscito y a las políticas de Rosselló en la opción de “Ninguna de las Anteriores”. La ligera mayoría de los votantes, disgustados con esta consulta, votaron por “Ninguna de las Anteriores” (50.3%). En aquella época el PIP participó bajo el razonamiento de “no dejar a los estadistas correr solos”, además de utilizar los trillados argumentos de “un voto más es mejor que un voto menos”, “esto es un momento propicio para educar sobre la independencia”, etc. La mayoría del independentismo le dio la espalda al PIP, por lo que el resultado para la independencia fue un mísero 2.5%, el primero de varios cantazos que recibiría el PIP en el ámbito electoral desde entonces. Ante el resultado de la opción de estadidad (46.5%), el estadoísmo estuvo en total negación en torno a los resultados, alegando que había ganado la estadidad por un 94.1%. A fin de cuentas, fue el PPD (y gracias a ellos, la colonia) el que ganó en el proceso. Ni la estadidad, ni la independencia (sin hablar de la libre asociación – 0.3%) adelantaron un centímetro a su causa.
Sin embargo, en Puerto Rico ocurre un proceso mucho más profundo con este acercamiento al status. En esta práctica efímera de estos plebiscitos criollos, o esfuerzos de crear plebiscitos amañados mediante legislación federal (léase – Proyecto Fernós Murray o el Proyecto Young), el Congreso de Estados Unidos siempre ha concluído de la siguiente manera: resuelvan primero el conflicto entre ustedes y después vengan a nosotros para discutir el status. Esta es una excusa barata del Congreso de los Estados Unidos para atender lo que es su responsabilidad desde 1898. Sin embargo, tampoco debemos desoír lo que tienen que decir. A menos que no haya un proceso unitario para resolver el problema del status, no habrá un resultado político efectivo para su resolución, y tampoco el Congreso nos hará caso. Esta es la razón principal para rechazar estos plebiscitos criollos.
El PIP Propone su Estrategia y el PNP la Adopta
Si hubo algo positivo que hizo el PIP durante el término de Aníbal Acevedo Vilá fue proponer algo que fue inmediatamente aceptado por los tres partidos políticos: un referéndum para exigirle al gobierno de Estados Unidos que resolviera el asunto lo más pronto posible, y la elección de un mecanismo procesal para ello. El pueblo podría elegir la Asamblea Constitucional de Status de entre las opcione ofrecidas como un mecanismo procesal. Tras la aprobación unánime de los miembros de los tres partidos políticos en la legislatura, y después de reiteradas promesas de Acevedo Vilá para respaldar dicho proyecto de status, el gobernador determinó no firmarlo. Ahora Aníbal dice que “está arrepentido” de no haber respaldado ese consenso tripartita.
Una cosa que a mí siempre me llama la atención es que los gobernadores siempre se arrepienten demasiado tarde de lo que no hicieron y que claramente (¡se caía de la mata!) pudieron haber hecho. Una vez más, el PPD, especialmente sus líderes, son maestros del inmovilismo.
Ante la derrota del PIP en el año 2008 (2.0%), especialmente con un candidato del calibre de Edwin Irizarry Mora (quien, en mi opinión, hubiera sido un excelentísimo gobernador de Puerto Rico), ese partido empezó a hacer denuevo una “reevaluación” de sí mismo. Uno de los resultados de esa reevaluación aparentemente incluyó la molestia de muchos sectores del independentismo a la tendencia del PIP a participar en los plebiscitos criollos. De hecho, el mismo Rubén Berríos Martínez, con su boca de comer, en el programa radial Fuego Cruzado, había dicho que ya se había acabado el favorecimiento a los plebiscitos criollos porque no daban ningún resultado.
¡Cuánta sorpresa no sería del independentismo en general cuando no fue sino el mismo PIP que planteó la necesidad de … (¡adivinen!) … un plebiscito criollo! Este plebiscito fue adoptado por el PNP y rechazado por el PPD. ¿Cuál será la estrategia del PPD ante el plebiscito? Solamente Dios lo sabe. Al menos el MUS no irá al plebiscito. ¡Buena decisión! El PIP y el PNP irán al plebiscito. Los muy queridos amigos de Alianza Pro-Libre Asociación Soberana (ALAS) también participarán (estrategia que considero totalmente equivocada).
La razón de por qué el PIP y ALAS estarán detrás de este plebiscito se debe a que el pueblo responderá a dos preguntas. La primera esencialmente pregunta si Puerto Rico desea continuar bajo la cláusula territorial o no. La segunda, pregunta en torno a si queremos ser un estado, o una república independiente, o ser un “Estado Libre Asociado Soberano”. En el caso de ambas organizaciones, el favorecimiento a este plebiscito yace en la primera pregunta. Si los puertorriqueños en general rechazan el coloniaje, entonces ya ni Estados Unidos ni el PPD pueden alegar que es nuestro deseo continuar con el presente status quo. Como el movimiento pro-estadidad, el independentismo y el libre-asociacionismo son mayoría absoluta sobre la opción de la colonia, el resultado inevitable es el de un claro rechazo de parte de la mayoría de los puertorriqueños al presente coloniaje.
En el caso particular del PIP, no en el de ALAS, también hay otro interés y es que ante la derrota aplastante del PIP en las elecciones, el PIP quiere ser relevante para la discusión del status, sino, muere como partido político. El problema es que la muerte del PIP está sellada a nivel electoral. Antes, el PIP tenía que convencer a los independentistas, incluyendo a los de otras organizaciones que votaran por este. Sin embargo, ante el quebrantamiento de la palabra del PIP de no volver a participar en plebiscitos criollos, y ante el hecho de que ninguna otra organización independentista (incluyendo a aquellas que tradicionalmente han estado del lado del PIP en las elecciones) está en la disposición de participar en este plebiscito, auguro que los votos para el PIP en el 2012 van a ser menos que los del 2008. Ante la inscripción del MUS y del Partido del Pueblo Trabajador (PPT), se le restarán votos al PIP. Lo siento por el querido amigo Juan Dalmau, quien es una persona inteligente, talentosa, con mucha voluntad para ayudar a nuestro pueblo, pero con esta actitud pipiola, no volverá a inscribirse el partido y, a mi juicio, pasará a la historia.
Las razones del PNP son otras, y he aquí por qué el supuesto “claro” mandato de rechazar a la colonia no será tan claro. El plebiscito está diseñado para perjudicar al PPD al crear una división entre sus miembros. Por un lado, una buena parte de los populares rechaza el coloniaje (o todavía creen el mito de que no somos colonia), por lo que nunca votarían por el coloniaje en la primera pregunta del plebiscito. Por otro lado, la mayoría del PPD no está clara en torno a lo que quiere decir “Estado Libre Asociado Soberano”: ¿es el ELA con más poderes? ¿Es libre asociación soberana como lo reconoce el Derecho Internacional? ¿Perderíamos la ciudadanía americana? Por supuesto, ALAS asumiría el liderato de esa opción, por lo que le tocaría a ellos explicarla. Sin embargo, el pánico que sienten muchos miembros del liderato popular a la palabra “soberanía” los hará irse en contra de esa opción y dirigirán sus esfuerzos contra cualquier discusión de un Puerto Rico soberano. Como resultado, el plebiscito intenta debilitar al PPD.
Más aún, esto se celebraría durante las elecciones, un momento clave para el PNP ante el evidente fracaso de la administración Fortuño y el estado de desesperación del país a causa del desempleo y el aumento vertiginoso de la criminalidad. Al menos parte del liderato del PNP piensa que al abogar por la estadidad y a hacer campaña a su favor, el PNP podrá evadir el tema del fracaso de Fortuño para concentrarse en las “bondades de la estadidad”. De esta manera, ante un PNP fortalecido con esta estrategia y un PPD debilitado por la división, haría que el PNP ganara las próximas elecciones del 2012.
¿Por qué Falla la Propuesta?
La pregunta de muchos que favorecen este proceso es ¿por qué no participar? Mi pregunta a ellos es: ¿Por qué participar?
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El plebiscito propuesto no es un proceso serio de status. El PNP lo ha garantizado más allá de toda duda.
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Al igual que en 1998, el pueblo no se encuentra en un ambiente de discusión seria de estos asuntos, ya que está abrumado por el colapso económico de Puerto Rico. El argumento de “educar al pueblo” en una época electoral se cae, ya que los puertorriqueños van a estar más concentrados en los candidatos a la gobernación y a la legislatura que al problema del status.
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Un plebiscito junto a las elecciones confundirán al pueblo. (Nota: Por favor, no me vengan a decir que “el pueblo sabe más que esto” y que “estoy subestimando la sabiduría del pueblo”. Mi experiencia me dice que esto no es así. Si hubiera solamente un planteamiento en el referéndum, no tendría mucho problema en este aspecto. Sin embargo, de aquí a las elecciones, las campañas políticas confundirán al pueblo de una manera espectacular: haran campaña para la abstención, para participar, para votar por esto, para no votar por aquello, para mezclar la estadidad con Fortuño, para acusar a los estadolibristas de estadistas de closet, etc. En un plebiscito sencillito como el de 1998, no hubo manera de desligar ese plebiscito con la situación del país, prácticamente convirtiéndose en un plebiscito “administración Rosselló ‘sí’ o ‘no’”. ¿Cón qué base se va a alegar que el pueblo no hará lo mismo en el plebiscito propuesto? Lo más probable es que, al igual que 1998, los resultados no tendrán nada que ver con la preferencia de status y mucho que ver con el estado de ánimo de los votantes en relación con Fortuño y su administración. También, mi experiencia como funcionario de colegio es que todo ese proceso también será confuso para mucha gente que desea votar. Ahora con las nuevas máquinas de conteo de votos –EN LAS QUE YO NO CONFÍO– será más confuso todavía para los que no están acostumbrados a ese sistema.)
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El mero hecho de que el plebiscito va a estar amañado por el circo local hará que Estados Unidos ignore por completo los resultados. Si el PPD va a una abstención o a una campaña de daño a la papeleta, o a votar en blanco, entonces el Congreso no interpretará los resultados como un “claro” rechazo al coloniaje.
- Se crearán nuevas divisiones en el pueblo de Puerto Rico.
Noten que no me importa que se lleve a cabo un plebiscito que, aunque criollo, tenga valor estratégico. Estoy de acuerdo con muchos que aunque desde un punto de vista moral no se debería ofrecer a un pueblo el coloniaje como opción, yo no tendría ningún problema si tuviera algún efecto político para la descolonización. El problema es que el plebiscito propuesto ahora, como está diseñado, tendrá poca o ninguna consecuencia política para la descolonización y mucho menos para la independencia de Puerto Rico. Las razones que acabo de señalar deben ser suficientes para descartar cualquier participación en esa farsa. En ese sentido, esta consulta no sería distinta al referéndum en torno al Bentley de Maripily. Será una pérdida de tiempo y de dinero.
En tal caso, lo que procede es el boicot.
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In my dreams would I have imagined that I would read a book like this, especially during my research regarding applications of Darwinism to social. I know that in some tangential way, Darwin’s theory of evolution was related to the way we create economic systems. Darwinian natural selection has to do with the competition among individuals and groups for scarce resources. Humanity’s economic systems have to do with the distribution of scarce wealth. Also, we have to look at the fact that we inherit much of our behaviors from our ancestral animal behaviors regarding scarce resources. Yet, economic systems are conventional and, in a way, unrelated to nature.
Yet, there is a challenge being made by Robert H. Frank in his new book, The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good. He predicts something rather odd: in a hundred years from now, if you ask professional economists who do they consider the father of their own discipline, instead of Adam Smith, most of them would say “Charles Darwin”.
Charles Darwin??!!!
Yeah, Charles Darwin!
Before you place Frank in a psychiatric facility (at least in your imagination), he invites us to take a look at the way Darwin describes natural selection processes. He reminds us of Darwin’s initial development of multilevel group selection, and how individual interests relate to group interests. For example, how did the gazelle accomplish its current average speed? Classic Darwinian natural selection would tell us that it is the result of species warfare. Nature selects gazelles who have the ability to escape predators using fast speed. In this case, through reproduction, the fastest gazelles pass on genes that will benefit the group. In this case, individual interests and group interests agree completely, since the group on average is better able to escape predators.
The same happens at the economic level. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of the market works perfectly in this case, because the competition among individuals or among companies benefit both individuals and groups.
Yet, there are other scenarios. The cover of Frank’s book tells us all about it. Consider the bull elk. They have antlers which function as weapons in order to compete with other males for female. The winner, gets to pass on genes. So, from the point of view of the interest of the individual bull elk, the bigger the antlers, the better! This leads to the prevalence of larger and larger antlers. Yet, the process cannot continue ad infinitum. Having very big antlers is a disadvantage from a group standpoint: large antlers increase the risk of getting stuck among tree branches in densely wooded areas, hence the risk of being eaten by wolves. If those genes are passed along, they would compromise the group. In this case, individual and group interests diverge.
The same thing happens with the economy. Too much competition among individuals or corporations can lead to the sort of negative externality which can be a real problem, even a threat, to the group. In this case, when too much competition happens, and the interests of the individuals and groups diverge, Smith’s “invisible hand” breaks down.
Frank even adds another imaginary, amusing, but interesting statement. If bull elk were to be asked in a referendum whether to reduce their antlers by half, they would overwhelmingly favor it! Of course, such experiment cannot be carried out with actual bull elk, but we can do so with humans. We don’t have antlers, of course, but we are often found in competition, sometimes too much competition. Frank gives the example of an actual experiment being carried out with hockey players. Thomas Schelling, an economist, has pointed out the fact that when hockey players are individually given the choice of using their helmets or not, they usually tend not to wear helmets, yet, when they are asked to vote to implement a rule for the group to wear them or not, they invariably vote in favor of wearing helmets. Why is that? If you make individuals choose whether or not to wear helmets, they will choose not to, because not wearing a helmet increases a player’s advantage. Maybe he can see or hear better than players who are wearing helmets. As a result, those players who use to wear helmets will now choose not to, to gain that advantage. At the end of the day, no one will wear helmets, and everyone would end up having equal advantage. The downside of not wearing helmets, though, is that everyone is at risk of serious head injury. Everyone is worse off. This is similar to the bull elk having horns too big, there is excessive competition. So, when hockey players are asked whether to implement a rule requiring everyone to wear helmets, they will vote in its favor. A simple nod or loose agreement among players is not enough, they need a collective mandate.
The same thing happens to states. During the Cold War there was a huge amount of waste due to the arms race. In this sense, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were incredibly wasteful. In order to control that, they couldn’t control that race just with winks among their representatives and diplomats, but rather by signing treaties to slow the pace of competition or to disarm very harmful weapons. The treaty would include checking on each other’s facilities in order to be certain that this would be carried out. That’s how they could use enough money for education, health care, utilities, and so on, without spending it most or all on the arms race.
Frank argues persuasively that, contrary to what many progressives think, many of the ills of the economy are not produced by the prevalence of monopolies and oligopolies, but rather by too much competition. Libertarians are usually right when they say that government is wasteful. Yet, excessive competition can be incredibly wasteful too, in ways that are many times more harmful than government. Just one example (of the many offered in the book) when rich people celebrate parties for children’s birthdays. Here another element creeps in the competition process, the degree in which people spend on those kinds of parties is not based on absolute position, but on relative position. As a result, if you are a millionaire who celebrates their fifteen years-old birthday with a $5 million party, perhaps your neighbor will want to do it better and spend $6.5 million party for his fifteen-years old. This process will go on indefinitely leading to big waste of money. This is not a hypothetical situation, this really happens! At the end of the day, the children will be just as special, nobody is happier no matter how much money has been spent, so the money is … wasted … literally!
In these cases, Frank does not suggest that we forbid $5 million parties, but rather establish a steep progressive consumption tax that will persuade rich people not to spend too much. The state or federal income obtained through this consumption tax will serve for roads, bridges, security, firefighting, police, and so on. This will benefit both the rich and the poor. Frank argues that if you are a smart rich man, you would love to live in a place with those sorts of rules and laws.
Of course, libertarians and people of the Tea Party will say that all tax is theft, that we should diminish the government. Interesting thought, but, as Frank points out, we need to tax something. If we don’t tax, there can’t be a state, if there is no state then another country will invade … and you’ll end up paying taxes to that country.
Frank shows that in many cases, taxes are a unintrusive way to stir corporations and businesses away from the sort of harmful behavior which arises due to too much competition. The problem that we have now is that we are usually taxing the wrong thing: the payroll tax or the savings tax. Yet, we don’t tax harmful behavior enough. We usually penalize them, but don’t tax them.
The author of The Darwin Economy uses this Darwinian framework to evaluate the economy. Unlike bull elks or gazelles, who can’t communicate and cannot act in ways which are against their nature, we can make better choices. Darwin helps us evaluate these competitive dynamics that occur even in the economy, lets us evaluate the problem, while simultaneously helping economists point out possible ways of solving these problems. Within this framework, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” insight is just a special case of a broader and more general understanding of competition. There are criticisms to both progressives and libertarians alike.
He applies this reasoning to lots of cases: such as pollution control, employees competition for better salary and safety, housing, alcohol, among many other aspects o the economy. It is also an invitation to many in the right wing to really think about how taxes can be beneficial for society as a whole when done the right way. Tax should not be a forbidden subject, especially in the United States. Let’s scap taxes to all useful activities, and tax to discourage activities, especially those which can cause harm to others: noise, carbon dioxide, road congestion, etc. Have a progressive consumption tax, not an income tax.
This is a fascinating book and I highy recommend it. For me, it has been very illuminating.
Video – Part I
Video – Part II
