SZCZBlog

Today marks thirty-nine years that I’ve been alive on this planet. I count myself as politically “aware” for the past twenty years, and politically “active” for the past ten years. I like to think that I’ve made helped make the world a better place now than it was when I arrived. I’ve helped with a few successes, some of which are included on my website. And yet, despite it all, I feel like the treadmill is moving faster than we can run. I feel like the work we’re doing to improve things, to change the world, to save the world, isn’t enough. I feel like time is running out, and that I have an obligation to do more, especially since “It’s not clear to me how that will effectively lead to changes during the few years we’ve got left to deal with carbon. Climate science enforces a certain brute realism. It makes it harder to follow one’s heart.”.

That’s a quote from Bill McKibben, writer and activist on climate change issues. He’s talking about the pressing issue of climate change, which if we don’t change things widely and (relatively) quickly, Earth will more and more resemble Venus, and that’s not a good thing. 200-degree (Fahrenheit) days will be common; the livable planet we all share and take for granted will be no more (what’s left of society will have to dig underground like moles). But overcoming that issue of stopping our own inertia seems an intractable problem. Even in the face of certain doom and increasing evidence, we seem to be doing little more at the societal level than moving the proverbial deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic. We’re heading to disaster, and arguably we (or some of us) _can see it coming_. We should be doing something to stop this, change course, slow it down, buy some time at least. But we’re not.

Most of my political activism in the past decade has been devoted to media (the politics of U.S. media, activism on media, and producing critical media in radio, print, web, and television), with a side helping on political economy (focusing on the model known as participatory economics). I’m increasingly thinking that I should switch matters: focus on political economy, downplay my work on media. We’ve arguably made progress on media issues, and things have changed considerably regarding media (e.g., this week, Fox threatened to pull its broadcast channel off the air and move it to table). But in my humble opinion, we haven’t made as much progress regarding political economy, particularly vision and structural issues, as we need.

Luckily, things are ripe though for progress on this score, given the calamities we face, the repulsive problems of markets and corporations, (helping to cultivate things like Occupy Wall Street), the wider awareness of all of these things, and the reduced absence of a taboo of discussing or considering structural issues of our society (at least less of a taboo). But we need to think, and talk, and act, and quickly. And I’d like to do what I can to help, in what spare time I can muster.

I’ve got a blog. I’ve had a blog for a while now, but I haven’t done much with it. I need to change that, in the time I have left — to write, to share thoughts, to challenge taboos, to set a positive example, as I’ve tried to do. I’ve been tempted to follow the lead of Glenn Greenwald, who has turned a passion for words and ideas into a font of progressive action. Ideas can hold power, and can change the world. Defeatism can be defeated. I’ve been fortunate enough to see this and be a part of this on media issues in my decade of work on this score. I have to admit: I sometimes can’t help but gloat at the Tribune’s current predicament, particularly since it’s arguable that I played a critical role in helping to shape it. So, on this, my 39th birthday, I’m publicly making the commitment and diving in. I hope, and plan, to blog daily — particularly on issues of political economy (especially on participatory economics).

This might not go anywhere. This might be just another lapsed promise. I’m afraid that it will be just another grand hope that went unfulfilled. Or it might be the start of something big and world-saving, the thing that historians will point to milennia from now and say “that’s where the effort to save the world began”. The only way to know is to get to work.

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the United States has jolted out of complacency wider public discourse on the issue of climate change. The near-universal concern seems to now be that, wow, we should really do something about climate change. The near-universal understanding, however, is that we probably won’t — at least certainly not to the degree that is needed to address the matter in any substantive way. Sure, we might mention the matter in passing at an election-night speech, but we very like won’t launch a massive-scale retooling of the economy like that done to put humans on the moon or build an atomic bomb. Our unwillingness / inability to act is sometimes displayed to humorous effect, most notably by the Onion.

But seriously, why not? Given that most Americans have finally seen the abstract and abstruse phenomenon of climate change made breathtakingly tangible, what’s keeping us from acting? Some analysts have pointed out, quite rightly, the forces aligned in favor of the political and economic status quo — particularly those of the fossil fuel industries, which profit mightily from the sale of fuels that have been implicated in a warming planet. Those industries use their profits to lobby and to buy advertisements that fall on the range of truthfulness from arguably misleading to outright lying. Winning change often means defeating one or more entrenched, seemingly intractable lobbies, but if that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. In fact, I’ve been fortunate to play a hand in times in the defeat of such lobbies. For example, I’ve seen this firsthand in the efforts over lower-power FM radio in 2010 (which will finally come to long-promised fruition in 2013). In fact, I found it shocking how fast progress could be made once evil lobbies are out of the way. Once the National Association of Broadcasters had finally seen their clock cleaned by longtime grassroots efforts that spent more than a decade on the matter, the issue sped its way through the requisite legal bodies and was signed into law in a matter of weeks.

And it won’t just be the fossil fuel lobbies that need to have their clock cleaned on the issue of climate change, it’ll be the gamut of industries that rely on those industries, from automobiles to airlines and many besides. And that includes the commercial media in the United States, which haven’t devoted a fraction of the energy or effort on climate change as they have on other whose biggest advertisers include (guess who!) the fossil fuel industries and their friends.

This is one way how climate change dovetails with the media reform movement. The media reform movement has fought for, and won victories on, fighting media ownership concentration, increasing the number of local media outlets, and placing certain positive programming requirements like children’s broadcasting. But I think we need to dream bigger. One modest proposal in order to tackle the media problem and bring to bear its attention on the climate crisis and other issues, we need to:

• Immediately suspend the licenses of all commercial network broadcasters.
• Place all of those licenses under the control of locally responsive media, like Pacifica outlets, and responsible college and independent broadcasters, and responsible public access cablecasters.
• Nationalize the profits of those licensees to provide an initial funding base for those media outlets.
• Provide a longer-term independent non-profit funding base by establishing a TV licensing system in the United States and by establishing an excise tax on the sales of all TV sets.

Though many people might expect this proposal to be tantamount to a government takeover of the airwaves, I believe it’s more accurately framed as a popular reclamation of the airwaves from corporate control. That corporate control is, it can be persuasively argued, what got us into this climate predicament — given the reliance on fossil fuels for advertising dollars, and the successful defense of the status quo for the most part by incumbent media (which are corporations) and their fanged lobbies. But we have to attack that status quo with renewed vigor: as everyone saw vividly with Hurricane Sandy, the fight is not just about popular reclamation, as noble a goal as that is, it’s now about survival.

What I just proposed might be deemed by well-nigh everyone (including myself) as not being highly realistic, to which I respond “No kidding”. I could have proposed here something a bit more radical, like abolishing the markets which fuel corporations altogether and replacing them with a participatory economy. At least I didn’t call for that, though I suppose the case for that can be persuasively argued for that too.

But if we don’t tackle the problem of media and climate change, and the corporations / markets that connect the two, the day will come soon (probably much sooner than any of us expect) when Hurricane Sandy will be a modest occurrence compared to what awaits us. Consider this: Sixteen nuclear power plants found themselves in the path that Hurricane Sandy took along the eastern United States. Hurricane Sandy could well have wrecked any or some of them, not necessarily by direct means but indirectly by fomenting the kind of outside power outages that ultimately did in Fukushima Daiichi. What happened there first could well be what happens to us next, and unless we want that to happen, we better get to work on that count, and be sure to include in media reclamation efforts.

Update I: For a sense of how bad it could get, read this article by Chris Hedges, “Stand Still for the Apocalypse“.
Update II: Opportunism can go both ways, as John Anderson at DIYMedia.net reminds us.

From May 2012 through August 2012, my family and I had earned, through a number of solid performances (including a number of wins) playing Team Trivia, a berth in the 2012 Team Trivia National Championship, held on the afternoon of August 18, 2012, with a top prize of $10,000. We could include up to six people in our team, and did we ever: we had a strong team, one with a chance to take the championship, but having played in games like this my whole life, I knew that you never know.

Teams were told at the outset that, with a prize pool of more than $21,000 at stake, the questions would be harder than usual. Great, I thought (seriously). I like hard questions, as would my teammates, and that would hopefully improve our chances to win.

Our team (“Pops and Mommers”) assembled at Burke’s Public House on Broadway, just before the start of the match. In the first half, we didn’t fare very well — we only got three of the first nine questions in the first half correct, though we were “in the ballpark” on three other questions (Steve Kerr, Ronald Reagan, Mad Men’s maypole) but our point wagering was sensibly maxed for the questions we knew and we finished with 15 points. Our saving grace in the first half was that we nearly swept the halftime question on famous bands’ first #1 hits (getting 4 out of 5 possible for 8 points total) and we nearly swept a bonus first-half question on celebrities’ real names (getting 14 points out of 15 possible, the most of any team, only missing Chris Angel). Despite our lackluster first half, we fared far better than I thought or hoped: The top score nationally at the time was 38 points, our halftime score was 35 points, first place in Chicago and third place in the country.

Then the second half, where the point values were doubled. There we fared better — we got five of nine second-half questions correct (Angus, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, the World Wildlife Fund, “silent”, and Oingo Boingo). We had a respectful performance in the second-half bonus question on countries with the world’s tallest mountains which included a gotcha that wrong answered would have point values deducted (we responded with six answers, getting five right and one wrong, net plus-eight points). However, we were beside ourselves when in the category Games, we responded with “20″ rather than the correct “24″ to the question “How many points are on a backgammon board?”, losing the chance to earn another six points.

Even so, we were able to build our point total to 65 points, putting us both first in Chicago and first in the whole country, with a four point over the second-place team. Hot diggity — if we can get the final question correct and wager enough, we would win the national championship and $10,000. But if we were wrong, we would lose whatever we would wager.

When I surveyed the list of questions thus far, I noted aloud “You know, there hasn’t been a movie question yet.” The final question was: “Name two of the five movies which were nominated for all of the following: the 2012 Academy Award for Best Picture, the 2012 Golden Globe for Best Picture, and the 2012 Critics Choice Movie Award for Drama”.

In short order, we were able to figure out a number of contending films: The Artist, The Help, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Descendants, Hugo, Moneyball, Warhorse. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was out. The Artist, which swept the Oscars but which was a comedy, was out. The Descendants was in — nominated for a lot, critically acclaimed, and a drama. So of the remaining films, which should we pick. At that point, we heard:

“The Tree of Life?”

This resonated with us. Terence Malick routinely gets nominated for awards, and his movie even won the freaking Palme d’Or at Cannes. Plus, time was running out — we had to make a choice and so we did: The Arist, and The Tree of Life, for 17 points (which we determined to give us an unreachable 82 points and the championship).

Shortly after we had submitted our final answer, the list of correct films was announced:

Moneyball
Warhorse
The Descendants
The Help
Hugo

Ouch. Heartbreaking. Not only did we miss the correct answer, we chose the only incorrect answer in a set where any other answer we could have chosen would have been correct. Instead of 82 points, a national championship, and $10,000, we finished with 48 points and fourth place in Chicago, resulting in a $75 gift certificate to Burke’s Public House which we spent that day on a lot of food. We walked home, morose, shocked, vowing to come back next year. Why not? After all, we showed we could compete and come as close as anyone could to winning the championship without actually winning the championship.

The bridge-burning op-ed by Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith has spurred a great deal of commentary. But this blog post in particular piqued my interest. Some choice quotes:

“This is not how capitalism is supposed to work.  This is not “creative destruction” – Schumpeter’s vision of entrepreneurs disrupting inefficient systems and profiting from making them better – this is simply the enrichment of a few smart, lucky men at the expense of everyone else.

Theoretically, investment banks help allocate capital towards its most efficient use.  They help governments and companies raise money, they help with mergers and acquisitions, and they create securities which should distribute risks or at least give clients more choices about the risks they take.  But in reality, up to 80% of M&A destroys value, opaque securities have created endemic risks in our society, and there are astounding conflicts of interests between clients and investment bankers – the very same bank that is floating your company’s shares has a long term relationship with the hedge funds who are purchasing the stock.  Who is the bank really serving?

It’s not clear what has caused this system or how to get out of it. It’s not just because corporate boards want to use the “top tier” firms to avoid potential litigation: the Big Four audit firms have an oligopoly which they don’t seem to be abusing to the same degree.  Has capitalism changed somehow?  Has America simply stopped creating real wealth in other areas of society so the only thing to do now is to constantly shuffle it around in Manhattan?

I have three things to say:

(1) Regarding “this is not how capitalism is supposed to work” that instead of “Schumpeter’s vision of entrepreneurs disrupting inefficient systems and profiting from making them better”, were left with “the enrichment of a few smart, lucky men at the expense of everyone else”. Maybe it’s not how capitalism is supposed to work in some idealized sense, but it’s pretty evident that this is how it does work. The main economic allocator in capitalism, markets, are competitive realms, so while one can compete on honest grounds to profit, it’s also possible (and arguably easier and far more common) to compete on dishonest grounds to profit (the elaboration of which sounds like the topic of its own blog post). Given that context, the rational response is to behave like a monster, seeking everything for oneself and nothing for anyone else, undercutting your opponents before they undercut you. And the most honed institutional form of that kill-or-be-killed ethos is the limited-liability corporation, like Goldman Sachs.

(2) “It’s not clear what has caused this system”. On the contrary, I think it is clear — the result of selective pressures stemming from the sacrosanct status of markets. As mentioned above, markets tend to select those institutions like corporations that thrive in competitive realms. But the “winners” from that competitive realm can’t behave nicely in internal operations, lest they get undercut by opponents in the market who don’t behave like that. That’s why markets also select for not only for psychopaths as institutions but those people who exhibit psychopathic behavior who also thrive in competitive realms. And when profit streams done by legitimate means dry up, those institutions (and the people in them) take on more extreme measures in order to get their profit fix.

(3) “It’s not clear how to get out of it.” I actually agree with part of this statement, but just one part. I think we know what the “it” in “how to get out of it” is — get rid of markets and replace them with a more sane allocation system (I recommend the participatory planning system of participatory economics) — so I disagree in that sense. But I would agree somewhat in that we don’t know the full details of the how part — what tactics to deploy in what combination to achieve “it”. I have recommended various specific tactics, but they are all predicated on the idea of building awareness in one capacity or another and ultimately convincing enough minds so that we reach what recent research has found to be a minimum 10% threshold to achieving critical mass for an idea to take hold in a society. It could be a magic bullet, but it could (and likely would) also be a variety of approaches working separately or in tandem to help build that threshold.