Bernie Sanders

[Polish_Silver]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

A person who is wealthy and respected with whom I disagree.

Respect would not be part of my definition. Power or privilege would . Take the EU commission. No one even knows who is on it, so "respect" is out
the window. Power and privilege, they have.

[dcarrigg]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

This sucker's over 100 years old now, but probably still as prescient as ever.

[Woodsman]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

This sucker's over 100 years old now, but probably still as prescient as ever.

Iron law of oligarchy; democracy ever devolving to oligarchy. With outcomes such as ...

U.S. Abandons Case Against Countrywide's Mozilo

[Polish_Silver]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

This sucker's over 100 years old now, but probably still as prescient as ever.

That looks like a very interesting book. The problems he described were not present (or much smaller) in itinerant hunter gatherer
societies, where there was no generational transmission of property or privilege.

[Woodsman]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

That looks like a very interesting book. The problems he described were not present (or much smaller) in itinerant hunter gatherer
societies, where there was no generational transmission of property or privilege.

There's a classic article to that point by Jared Diamond I know you'll appreciate:

Jared Diamond, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race," Discover Magazine, May 1987, pp. 64-66. The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race By Jared Diamond University of California at Los Angeles Medical School To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We're better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape? For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It's a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it's nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive. From the progressivist perspective on which I was brought up, to ask "Why did almost all our hunter-gatherer ancestors adopt agriculture?" is silly. Of course they adopted it because agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep. How many milliseconds do you think it would take them to appreciate the advantages of agriculture? The progressivist party line sometimes even goes so far as to credit agriculture with the remarkable flowering of art that has taken place over the past few thousand years. Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had. Thus it was agriculture that enabled us to build the Parthenon and compose the B-minor Mass. While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?" While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s. So the lives of at least the surviving hunter-gatherers aren't nasty and brutish, even though farmes have pushed them into some of the world's worst real estate. But modern hunter-gatherer societies that have rubbed shoulders with farming societies for thousands of years don't tell us about conditions before the agricultural revolution. The progressivist view is really making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive people improved when they switched from gathering to farming. Archaeologists can date that switch by distinguishing remains of wild plants and animals from those of domesticated ones in prehistoric garbage dumps. How can one deduce the health of the prehistoric garbage makers, and thereby directly test the progressivist view? That question has become answerable only in recent years, in part through the newly emerging techniques of paleopathology, the study of signs of disease in the remains of ancient peoples. In some lucky situations, the paleopathologist has almost as much material to study as a pathologist today. For example, archaeologists in the Chilean deserts found well preserved mummies whose medical conditions at time of death could be determined by autopsy (Discover, October). And feces of long-dead Indians who lived in dry caves in Nevada remain sufficiently well preserved to be examined for hookworm and other parasites. Usually the only human remains available for study are skeletons, but they permit a surprising number of deductions. To begin with, a skeleton reveals its owner's sex, weight, and approximate age. In the few cases where there are many skeletons, one can construct mortality tables like the ones life insurance companies use to calculate expected life span and risk of death at any given age. Paleopathologists can also calculate growth rates by measuring bones of people of different ages, examine teeth for enamel defects (signs of childhood malnutrition), and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases. One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors. Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. "Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive." The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly growing numbers. "I don't think most hunger-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity," says Mark Cohen of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, co-editor with Armelagos, of one of the seminal books in the field, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. "When I first started making that argument ten years ago, not many people agreed with me. Now it's become a respectable, albeit controversial, side of the debate." There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the findings that agriculture was bad for health. First, hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early fanners obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition, (today just three high-carbohydrate plants -- wheat, rice, and corn -- provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential to life.) Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops, farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Finally, the mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. (Some archaeologists think it was the crowding, rather than agriculture, that promoted disease, but this is a chicken-and-egg argument, because crowding encourages agriculture and vice versa.) Epidemics couldn't take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearnce of large cities. Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing elite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B. C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A. D. 1000, the elite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease. Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a global scale today. To people in rich countries like the U. S., it sounds ridiculous to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. But Americans are an elite, dependent on oil and minerals that must often be imported from countries with poorer health and nutrition. If one could choose between being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice? Farming may have encouraged inequality between the sexes, as well. Freed from the need to transport their babies during a nomadic existence, and under pressure to produce more hands to till the fields, farming women tended to have more frequent pregnancies than their hunter-gatherer counterparts -- with consequent drains on their health. Among the Chilean mummies for example, more women than men had bone lesions from infectious disease. Women in agricultural societies were sometimes made beasts of burden. In New Guinea farming communities today I often see women staggering under loads of vegetables and firewood while the men walk empty-handed. Once while on a field trip there studying birds, I offered to pay some villagers to carry supplies from an airstrip to my mountain camp. The heaviest item was a 110-pound bag of rice, which I lashed to a pole and assigned to a team of four men to shoulder together. When I eventually caught up with the villagers, the men were carrying light loads, while one small woman weighing less than the bag of rice was bent under it, supporting its weight by a cord across her temples. As for the claim that agriculture encouraged the flowering of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter-gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers. The whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor seems to me misguided. Gorillas have had ample free time to build their own Parthenon, had they wanted to. While post-agricultural technological advances did make new art forms possible and preservation of art easier, great paintings and sculptures were already being produced by hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago, and were still being produced as recently as the last century by such hunter-gatherers as some Eskimos and the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Thus with the advent of agriculture and elite became better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls. One answer boils down to the adage "Might makes right." Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter-gatherers are rarely over on person per ten square miles, while farmers average 100 times that.) Partly, this is because a field planted entirely in edible crops lets one feed far more mouths than a forest with scattered edible plants. Partly, too, it's because nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a mother must carry her toddler until it's old enough to keep up with the adults. Because farm women don't have that burden, they can and often do bear a child every two years. As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It's not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn't want. At this point it's instructive to recall the common complaint that archaeology is a luxury, concerned with the remote past, and offering no lessons for the present. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture's glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us?

[Woodsman]

Re: Mills

WM, have your read the Mills book and did you think it was good? I have to agree with the idea that ... the bureaucracy is more self serving than before.

Excerpts in HS and once as an undergrad about a 100 years ago when I was far more primed for his vision of radical, egalitarian democracy than I am today.

But in terms of his description of how our world works and the dynamics of power following WWII, he did it first and probably best. As far back as 1956 when he published "The Power Elite" Mills has it figured out and gives the org chart, so in answer to your questions I say yes, it was good.

Mills' power elites see the world through a metaphysics of war and recognize each other as belonging to a separate and self-perpetuating class, superior to the rest of us and whose power rests in the centralization of their authority. For Mills, this new class represents their own interests exclusively, most of which are organized around the maintenance of a permanent war economy and a manipulative social and political order so to better manage the ebb and flow of human action.

Does that sound about right to you? How close does HRC fit the description of a power elite?

Hillary Clinton's takeover of the Democratic National Committee is underway.

On Thursday, Brandon Davis, the former national political director for the Services Employees International Union, came in as the new chief of staff – and was introduced at an all-staff meeting by Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook.

DNC CEO Amy Dacey, a longtime Clinton ally, will expand her role to include more general election responsibilities, according to a Democratic official with ties to the DNC and Clinton. Jen O'Malley Dillon, a former deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama's re-election efforts, will continue planning for the general election and serve in a senior advising role.

And more Clinton staffers are set to move over to the DNC.

[jk]

Re: Mills

Excerpts in HS and once as an undergrad about a 100 years ago when I was far more primed for his vision of radical, egalitarian democracy than I am today.

But in terms of his description of how our world works and the dynamics of power following WWII, he did it first and probably best. As far back as 1956 when he published "The Power Elite" Mills has it figured out and gives the org chart, so in answer to your questions I say yes, it was good.

Mills' power elites see the world through a metaphysics of war and recognize each other as belonging to a separate and self-perpetuating class, superior to the rest of us and whose power rests in the centralization of their authority. For Mills, this new class represents their own interests exclusively, most of which are organized around the maintenance of a permanent war economy and a manipulative social and political order so to better manage the ebb and flow of human action.

Does that sound about right to you? How close does HRC fit the description of a power elite?

this sounds like oglesby's description of the "cowboy" elite. the "yankee" elite are more interested in finance both domestic and global. hrc manages to straddle both.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

There's a classic article to that point by Jared Diamond I know you'll appreciate:

I have read the JD article many times. Three interesting notes:

1) He seems to have changed his mind, coming over to the mainstream view of "progress" , ie that human prehistory was filled with privation and violence,
which helps him get along with Harvard types, like Pinker.

2) The JD article is largely plaguiarized from a relatively unknown author (Sallins, sullins?). However, I believe JD's article is largely correct, based on my reading of ancient mythology (Gilgamesh, Genesis, Pandora) , accounts of explorers (Bligh) , analysis of human sexual physiology and behavior.

3) The standard of living barely budged in europe from 1200 to 1800. What improvement there was, was caused mainly be improved trade lowering
the cost of imports, thereby raising real wages. Productivity barely budged. ( See Phelps, Mass Flourishing). After 1800, standards of living rose rapidly.

[santafe2]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

3) The standard of living barely budged in europe from 1200 to 1800. What improvement there was, was caused mainly be improved trade lowering
the cost of imports, thereby raising real wages. Productivity barely budged. ( See Phelps, Mass Flourishing). After 1800, standards of living rose rapidly.

This analysis is incorrect and ignores the Renaissance, the rise of the mercantile class, the bankers and the European geographic discoveries of the 1600s. Productivity changed massively from 1500-1650. The author is analyzing aggregate standards. Not unlike today, this was a period of massive change, (relative of course). Those that did not embrace the change or have the capacity to change were crushed. The 1800s and after are all about nearly free energy. That time is ending and a new era is beginning. Like the early mercantile period, I'm not sure it's going to work out well for a lot of folks.

[Polish_Silver]

Merchants

This analysis is incorrect and ignores the Renaissance, the rise of the mercantile class, the bankers and the European geographic discoveries of the 1600s. Productivity changed massively from 1500-1650. The author is analyzing aggregate standards. Not unlike today, this was a period of massive change, (relative of course). Those that did not embrace the change or have the capacity to change were crushed. The 1800s and after are all about nearly free energy. That time is ending and a new era is beginning. Like the early mercantile period, I'm not sure it's going to work out well for a lot of folks.

How did the Renaissance affect productivity ?

It was the Mercantile class and geographic discoveries that lowered the cost of trade.

What data says labor productivity increased from 1500-1650?

Since most people were farmers during this period, what matters most is agricultural productivity.

Phelp's data says it barely budged during this period, judging by the bushels a man could harvest in one day, etc.
It could be that better methods were offset by higher population density, causing people to work less fertile land.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Merchants

You all need to read two books:

Three Voyages of Drake, As Recorded in Contemporary Accounts, Edited by J. D. Upcott, B.A., Assistant Master at Eton College, Ginn and Company Ltd. Queen Square, London, W.C.1.

English Seamen in the XVIth Century by James Anthony Froude, London: George G. Harrup & Co. Ltd., 39-41 Parker St. Kingsway. (The lectures printed in this volume were delivered at Oxford in the Easter Terms of 1893 and 1894).

What you will discover is the transition from piracy to the defeat of the Spanish Armada by English seamen. IMHO it is the rise of the use of the sea as a means to improve the lot of many; who discovered the freedom engendered from the use of sail power to travel and thus to trade. Add the book publishing that spreads the concept of adventure right down to the common people; that is the driving force for the increase in the economies of many nations; not just the British.

Yes the merchants are an important input to the whole; but you must take account of the freedoms associated with the ability to sail ..... anywhere and do trade. Without the seamen, there would never have been merchants.

[santafe2]

Re: Merchants

You all need to read two books:

Three Voyages of Drake, As Recorded in Contemporary Accounts, Edited by J. D. Upcott, B.A., Assistant Master at Eton College, Ginn and Company Ltd. Queen Square, London, W.C.1.

English Seamen in the XVIth Century by James Anthony Froude, London: George G. Harrup & Co. Ltd., 39-41 Parker St. Kingsway. (The lectures printed in this volume were delivered at Oxford in the Easter Terms of 1893 and 1894).

What you will discover is the transition from piracy to the defeat of the Spanish Armada by English seamen. IMHO it is the rise of the use of the sea as a means to improve the lot of many; who discovered the freedom engendered from the use of sail power to travel and thus to trade. Add the book publishing that spreads the concept of adventure right down to the common people; that is the driving force for the increase in the economies of many nations; not just the British.

Yes the merchants are an important input to the whole; but you must take account of the freedoms associated with the ability to sail ..... anywhere and do trade. Without the seamen, there would never have been merchants.

Those are good points Chris and this is the main reason that as the European economy expanded during that period, economic power shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard.

[lektrode]

Re: Merchants

Those are good points Chris and this is the main reason that as the European economy expanded during that period, economic power shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard.

and just imagine what'll happen when 'the new silk road' gets paved/railroaded/seaported

meanwhile, the nka UFSA (united fascist states of amerika) devolves into 3rd-whirled status..

[Woodsman]

Re: Merchants

and just imagine what'll happen when 'the new silk road' gets paved/railroaded/seaported

meanwhile, the nka UFSA (united fascist states of amerika) devolves into 3rd-whirled status..

You callin' Chicago and its politics third-word? Oh, now you're really being politically incorrect. Truthful, but definitely not PC.

And you know who else is hitting on the truth? The Donald. Dig it:

And you know when she raises this money, every time she raises this money, she is making deals. They’re saying, ‘Can I be the ambassador to this? Can I do that? Make sure my business is being taken care of.’ I mean, give me a break. All of the money she is raising is blood money. Look, she is getting tremendous amounts from Wall Street. She is going to take care of Wall Street.”

All of the money she is raising is blood money

Does he lie?

[vt]

Re: Merchants

The seeds of the financial crisis of 2008 were sown by the repeal of Glass-Steagall, signed by none other than Bill Clinton. In supporting roles were Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin (Goldman Sachs).

The only dissent came from a wise woman: Brooksley Born

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born

https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page...ticle_id=30885