Comments 1 to 13:

1. nigelj at 07:16 AM on 22 July, 2024

   Regarding Project 2025 and its unfortunate attempts to dismantle the administrative state. Firstly I suggest we need to come back to some of the core problems we face as a society, and why this lead to the administrative state. And virtually all successful civilsations have an administrative state:

   1) The capitalist free market is great at producing goods and services, but is not inherently good at providing adequate health and safety. This is known as a market failure in economics and well acknowledged by virtually all economists.

   2) The failures of some leadership in all facets of society to act responsibly and helpfully towards people. 

   3) "The tragedy of the commons" is the concept which states that if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result a tragedy for all." (Wikipedia definition)

   Modern society has responded to these problems with various attempts at corrective mechanisms including , self regulation, and civil court action (lawsuits), government laws, regulations, and market orientated mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap and trade, and incentivising people not to pollute. These mechanisms and the related government agencies are the administrative state (excepting self regulation obviously).

   Self regulation has a history of mostly not working, and the only real winners with lawsuits are lawyers. Government paying people not to pollute gets expensive but might ocassionally have its place (IMO). Because of this most civilisations have developed a set of government organisations, agencies, laws, regulations, cap and trade schemes and so on and these have been very effective when they have been strong enough.

   Examples are the ozone hole was reduced using a cap and trade scheme to push alternative refrigerants. Air pollution has plumetted in various countries due to government laws and regulations witrh penalties. The growth in renewable energy has been due to the use of regulations, carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes and incentives (subsidies) depending on the country and which solution it has preferred. Some countries use a combination of solutions.

   The proponents of project 2025 by dismanting the administrative state are putting all these gains at risk. They are apparently trying to return to hiding environmental  problems,  (for example by dismanting NOAA)  and to bring back failed self regulation, or failed, very weak regulations, and costly reliance on lawsuits, and will no doubt try to weaken even that as well. As Einstein said "dont keep doing the same experiment and expecting different results".

   Of course sometimes you can have too many regulations or bad regulations and governmnet agencies can get too powerful. There are simple ways to minimise this and America already does a decent job of this by its democratic government and its divisions of government power. What is unfortunate is a clumsy wrecking ball like project 2025, that destroys agencies, is slanted to benefit the big corporates and rich people, puts profit above all other considerations, and that clearly does not serve the wider public interest.

   2 0
2. Cleanair27 at 04:25 AM on 23 July, 2024

   As nigelj points out, the proper term is 'dismantle', not Heritage's humorously incompetent and unintentionally ironic use of 'deconstruct'. This calls to mind Jacques Derrida's post-modernist deconstruction project, hardly what Heritage would want to be associated with.

   I don't entirely agree with nigelj's critique, rooted in standard welfare economics. There is no free market, and market failures are common and widespread, so different concepts are better for justifying regulation. For a different perspective on the history, troubles, and potential of the American administrative state, and why the Heritage wrecking ball is seriously foolish, consider this: The Fourth Branch

   0 0
3. Bob Loblaw at 05:39 AM on 24 July, 2024

   I think I'd go further than "deconstruct" or "dismantle". If we are looking for antonyms to "construction", then I think "demolition" is the one that comes to mind. There are certain elements in the US (and other countries) that simply want to blow up any sort of regulation or governance that gets in their way.

   ClearnAir27 is correct that there is really no completely "free market" economy anywhere. There might have been back in the days 100,000 (+ ?) years ago when everyone lived in little tiny family groups. Even then, when Grog discovered how to make a club and decided that he could just bash the head in of anyone that got in his way, others would have decided that they, too, could make clubs and bash heads in.  "Society" would have started to put constraints on how people could behave towards others, subject to the wrath of the group as a whole.

   [On the other hand, maybe we have not advanced that much from Grog's way of thinking.]

   Taking a look at that page for The Fourth Branch, I kind of like the phrase "the accumulating derangements in the American constitutional system". Not enough to buy the book, though. I'm sure the Libertarians would view it as yet another One World Government to Rule Us All.

   0 0
4. nigelj at 07:33 AM on 24 July, 2024

   Just adding to Bob Loblows comments. In my view the term free market is a bit problematic, because what is meant by the term free? Taken literally it would mean people are free to do what they like including theft and murder, so you have the rule of the jungle. Of course no modern markets work like that, there is basic criminal and property law. The free market is thus really a managed market in practice. 

   The question is how many other restraints / constraints are acceptable? Many economists say markets should not have tariff protections or price controls but its acceptable to have governmnet regulations relating to health and safety and the environment and anti monopoly laws. This is common in practice in many countries, and seems sensible to me. Some even call this a free market.

   Free markets really is a terrible term and when we use the term we need to define what we mean by it. I should have done that. I did in fact mean the free market in its unconstrained form and  without governmnet interventions, and this is not inherently good at providing adequate health and safety outcomes. Thus the need for adequate regulations. Whether we have this in practice is of course up for debate.

   0 0
5. Bob Loblaw at 23:27 PM on 24 July, 2024

   nigelj:

   Yes "free market" is difficult to pin down.

   Of course, corporations only exist as legal entities because governments created the legal structures that allow them to exist. Prior to that, individuals carried on business as individuals - so that any business liabilities fall on the individual. Your store owes money to a supplier? The supplier takes the individual to court, and the individual can lose their house (which has nothing to do with the business) because it's all part of the individual's assets.

   The "Ltd" in "Acme Ltd." stands for "limited liability". Created by government.

   0 0
6. One Planet Only Forever at 07:04 AM on 25 July, 2024

   I agree with the comments made by nigelj, Cleanair27, and Bob Loblaw.

   I would add that part of the 2025 weapon of mass destruction is “The Seven Mountain Mandate” (link to Wikipedia here). Note that many prominent New Right (Wikipedia link here) Republicans have chosen to promote the Seven Mountain Mandate.

   And, building on nigelj’s @1 suggestion that “we need to come back to some of the core problems we face as a society, and why this lead to the administrative state”, I would add the need to collectively effectively address anti-intellectualism (wikipedia link here), particularly the dislike for ‘learning to be less harmful and more helpful’ that applies to denial and attacks on climate science.

   The core problem of the popularity of anti-intellectualism is an understandable threat to social democracy. Anti-intellectualism claims that emotional instinctive beliefs are superior to the results of rigorous skeptical investigation and thoughtful consideration.

   A clear recent example of the harmful popularity of anti-intellectualism is Michael Gove’s, a misleading promoter of Leave in the Brexit referendum, declaration that “Oh we’ve had enough of experts”. His “we” was only himself and easily impressed anti-learning types.

   The Wikipedia item regarding anti-intellectualism is quite informative. But the Nature Human Behaviour article “Anti-intellectualism and the mass public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic” includes the following helpful description with my addition in [ ]:

   “People tend to be persuaded by speakers they see as knowledgeable (that is, experts), but only when they perceive the existence of common interests [when the expert’s statement supports their preferred belief and interests]. Some groups of citizens, such as ideological conservatives, populists, religious fundamentalists and the like, may see experts as threatening to their social identities. Consequently, they will be less amenable to expert messages, even in times of crisis.”

   Origins or causes of anti-intellectualism can be complex. Protestants opposed to being dictated to by The Vatican educated experts are an example. But evangelists also used it against established Protestant groups. However, it is clear that there have always been, and always will be, some anti-intellectualism.

   It is important to understand that everyone can choose to learn to not be anti-intellectual. Nobody is ‘born to be, and destined to be, intractably anti-intellectual’. Being anti-intellectual is a ‘learned behaviour’.

   In Alberta, I encounter many non-religious people who are selectively anti-intellectual and resist learning about climate science. They really dislike the related importance of rapidly ending the harmful impacts of fossil fuel use and making amends for the damage done. I also encounter many religious people who are more open-minded regarding climate science and the required corrections of what has developed and making amends for damage done.

   There are many examples that highlight anti-intellectualism attacks on ‘climate science and the need to rapidly end the harmful impacts of fossil fuel use’. Al Gore presented this ‘problem in America’ in his 2007 book “The Assault on Reason”. In that book Gore presents many ways that the New Right Republicans make-up misleading attacks on evidence-based and reasoned understanding that ‘is not in common with their interests’.

   A detailed explanation of the source/cause of anti-intellectualism in America was presented by the originator of the term ‘anti-intellectualism’, Richard Hofstadter, in his 1963 book “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” (Wikipedia link here). In the 1700s anti-intellectual evangelism grew quicker in the US than organized established religions. That anti-intellectual revolution of religion extended into secular aspects of society, with business interests becoming engaged with evangelical interests in the 1800s.

   The need for the welfare state to address the unjust inequities (marketplace failures) of freer misleading marketplace capitalism in America, free to fail to investigate the potential for harmful results and free to misleadingly excuse or deny that harm has been done, fuelled growth of anti-intellectualism beyond the Protestant-Evangelical anti-intellectual religious movements.

   I will end my comment with an edited quote from the Hofstadter’s Introduction, Chapter 2, Section 4, with my inserts in [ ]. Note the ending lists targets (supporters) of anti-intellectual misleading politics that will look very similar to today’s New Right-wing targets of unjustified attack. Being anti-climate science is a major part of the New Right-wing anti-intellectual agenda because it connects to other anti-intellectual targets of attack.

   “Compared with the intellectual as expert, who must be accepted even when feared, the intellectual as ideologist is an object of unqualified suspicion, resentment, and distrust [Now even the expert can be dismissed, disrespected, and attacked by the misleading New Right]. The expert appears as a threat to dominate or destroy the ordinary individual, but the ideologist is widely believed to have already destroyed a cherished American society. To understand the background of this belief, it is necessary to recall how consistently the intellectual has found himself ranged in politics against the right-wing mind. This is, of course, no peculiarity of American politics. ...

   “... if there is anything that could be called an intellectual establishment in America, this establishment has been, though not profoundly radical (which would be unbecoming of an establishment), on the left side of center. And it has drawn the continuing and implacable resentment of the right, which has always liked to blur the distinction between the moderate progressive and the revolutionary. ...

   “... The truth is that the right-winger needs his Communists [unjustified made-up threats] badly, and is pathetically reluctant to give them up. ...

   “... Had the [McCarthy] Great Inquisition been directed only against Communists, it would have tried to be more precise and discriminating in its search for them: in fact, its leading practitioners seemed to care little for the difference between a Communist and a unicorn. ...

   “... The inquisitors were trying to give satisfaction [create misleading anti-learning attacks] against liberals, New Dealers, reformers, internationalists, intellectuals, and finally even against the Republican administration that failed to reverse liberal policies [like the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus radical factions in the Republican Party. What was involved, above all, was a set of political hostilities in which the New Deal was linked to the welfare state, the welfare state to socialism, and socialism to Communism. In this crusade Communism was not the target but the weapon, ...

   “... The deeper historical sources of the Great Inquisition are best revealed by the other enthusiasms of its devotees: hatred of Franklin D. Roosevelt, implacable opposition to New Deal reforms, desire to banish or destroy the United Nations, anti-semitism, Negrophobia, isolationism, a passion for repeal of the income tax, fear of poisoning by fluoridation of the water system, opposition to modernism in the churches.”

   0 0
7. nigelj at 08:49 AM on 25 July, 2024

   I agree with OPOF.

   Philosophically a lot of anti intellectualism is just envy (IMO) and a failure to carefully weigh the downsides and upsides of experts plans carefully enough. Often while there might appear to be problems with the plans, the upsides outweigh the downsides. But even when criticism of specific intellectuals and / or their findings or plans is justified, that is not a good reason to claim expertise in general is bad, or that all experts are bad. It does not provide a workable alternative to experts.

   An example of anti intellectualism is the criticism of the so called elites behind "globalisation" with its removal of tariff barriers and outsourcing of manufacturing to Asia etc,etc. In the USA some lower skilled workers in manufacturing have lost their jobs, seen their wages stagnate. Financial inequality has grown although not as much as the critics claim.

   But this ignores the benefits of globalistion, for example keeping inflation low for the last several decades, cheap imports especially manufactured goods, and closer relations between countries and international agreements and laws and improvements in living standards in poor and developing countries.

   And its easy to help workers who are pushed into low paying jobs by government assistance programmes to retrain or relocate or financial aid like family benefits. But the critics of globalisation seem to resent those measures and instead want to take us back to a time of national "self sufficieny." There is a wise old saying the grass always seems greener in the past.

   Of course China does not play nice with the global rules, and does put America in a difficult position. But as The Economist Journal points out,  abandoing globalisation and imposing 100% tariffs on everything  is not the answer. They argue if there must be retaliation, and some level of self sufficieny in manufacturing, it needs to be narrow and targeted.

   0 0
8. One Planet Only Forever at 06:10 AM on 26 July, 2024

   nigelj @7,

   I agree in general but offer a clarification regarding "An example of anti intellectualism is the criticism of the so called elites behind "globalisation" with its removal of tariff barriers and outsourcing of manufacturing to Asia etc,etc."

   “Globalization” has many aspects, good and bad. And some of them are facts supporting the criticisms.

   Less scrupulous wealthy and influential people (so called elites who don’t deserve their perceived higher status) benefit from unjust exploitation of populations and resources globally. They exploit having more global freedom to get things done more harmfully in regions that allow more harmful activity (worker compensation below a decent living wage, less safe work, more environmental harm).

   A desire for “potential regional benefits from investments by those less scrupulous pursuers of benefit” produces competition between regional leadership to allow more harmful activity because of the regional benefit for the leadership and its fans. And that tragic competition spiralling down to more harmful “pursuits of benefits for some” can even happen between regions within a nation.

   Tariff barriers can make those who try to benefit from “outsourcing that is cheaper and more profitable by being more harmful and less helpful” pay a penalty for doing that.

   1 0
9. shohag at 09:34 AM on 28 July, 2024

   Hi All, BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz

   You absoulately right about the heatwave during hajj. It was not only in middle east but also all over the world. i put the asia heatwave data in my blog during developing my https://carbonrevolve.com/ site. 

   0 0
10. One Planet Only Forever at 06:15 AM on 31 July, 2024

    This BBC News item provides an update about the increasing Project 2025 team's efforts to successfully mislead. The diverse group of callously harmful self-interested people supporting Project 2025 like misleading leadership marketing and actions that are anti-intellectual and biased poor judgments.

    BBC News: Project 2025 leader resigns from conservative think tank.

    Don’t be misled by the headline. The article explains that the person in question is ‘stepping up into a more active misleading marketing role’.

    • refer to my comment @6 regarding anti-intellectuals based on Richard Hofstadter's book “Anti-intellectualism in American Life”
    • also see my comments regarding ‘judgments’ based on Daniel Kahneman’s book “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment” on the SkS OP “What’s next after Supreme Court curbs regulatory power: More focus on laws’ wording, less on their goals’”, particularly my comment @64.
    0 0
11. One Planet Only Forever at 08:37 AM on 31 July, 2024

    It is important to understand that Project 2025 would be unacceptable (being anti-intellectual poorer judgment) even if it supported intellectual better judgment regarding climate science and the importance of rapidly ending, and making amends for, the harms done by fossil fuel use.

    A political group’s collective of interests is unlike cases where the net-benefit is a legitimate evaluation such as:

    • a medical treatment where the patient’s net-benefit is the important evaluation (not the medical industry’s net-benefit)
    • a business investment decision with only investors at risk of the harm of poor return on their investment, no harm is done to others

    Project 2025 contains many interests that conflict with ‘intellectual good judgment in pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of how to limit harm done and be more helpful to others’. Note that it is not harmful to limit the ability of a person or group to succeed in the pursuit of interests that conflict with intellectual better judgment.

    The dystopian drama series “The Handmaids Tale”, a story where the majority of Project 2025 interests win power over substantial parts of the US, has Gideon fully embracing low carbon living. That aspect of the interests of Gideon should not count as a positive against the negatives. The negatives of a collective of interests has to make the overall evaluation of the collective of interests negative. Otherwise you get harmful nonsense like ‘claims that the benefits as determined by the people wanting to benefit from that collective of interests appear to outweigh the negatives as determined by the people who want to benefit from that collective of interests’.

    0 0
12. nigelj at 06:39 AM on 1 August, 2024

    Reading OPOF's links, Agenda 2025 appears to be trying to forcibly restore an earlier version of America of the 1800's or earlier, where the traditional family was the model in society and was the only thing permitted, and  you had very small government. There's nothing inherently wrong with the traditional familty of course, but but history shows this was a mean and nasty society with no care for human diversity, or government help for people who are struggling, and terrible economic depressions.

    This was a system that was ultimately rejected by the vast majority of people during the 1930s period with its socio-economic reforms, that essenetially expanded the role of government and took a more compassionate view of people. Now the administrative state is under attack by the ultra conservatives..

    Agenda 2025 sounds like something authoritarian and pretty close to fascism. The implications for the natural environment and limiting anthropogenic climate change are horrendously bad.

    Fascinating that the writers prioritise freedom then want to forcibly impose the traditional family model on everyone and remove the freedom of choice to buy the abortion pill. The contradiction would go right over their heads. They are not exactly geniuses. They seem to have an aversion to diversity, and are very uncomfortable unless everyone conforms to a specific lifestyle. 

    Interesting how Donald Trump is distancing himself from Agenda 25. I suspect he is doing this because he knows it will be rejected by the majority, and so linking himself to it would damage his election chances. But make no mistake, once elected he will embrace virtually every aspect of Agenda 2025. Its all consistent with his values.

     

    0 0
13. One Planet Only Forever at 04:05 AM on 6 August, 2024

    Responding to nigelj @12, particularly regarding skepticism of Trump’s denial of knowledge of Project 2025.

    Trump winning appears likely to result in increased amounts of harmfully biased and noisy leadership judgment, especially if New Right Republicans win control of the House and/or Senate in addition to their already potentially very long lasting harmfully biased majority influence on judgments by the Supreme Court (SC).

    This July 16, 2024, Inside Climate News article “Trump’s Environmental Impact Endures, at Home and Around the World” presents the legacy of actions by New Right Republicans last time they ‘owned’ the Presidency. And a significant part of that legacy is the ways the current day SC has continued to make harmful noisy biased judgments against everybody who is concerned about the future of humanity and learns to be less harmful and more helpful to Others.

    Passionately held emotionally-based opinions can be aligned with better understanding that is developed through unbiased investigation and thoughtful consideration of how to be less harmful and more helpful to others. But in many cases the pursuit of better understanding results in changes and corrections that conflict with established passionately held opinions. Tragically, instead of learning, many people are easily convinced, susceptible to being conned into believing, that they are victims of attacks on their passionately held harmful misunderstandings.

    The truth about what Trump will try to do if he is elected President appears to be exposed by this July 27, 2024, NPR article “Trump tells Christian voters they 'won't have to vote anymore' if he's elected”. Trump appears ready to try to lock in passionately held irrational misunderstandings as ‘what rules in the US’. The following quote appears to be Trump’s honest promise (in brackets are my clarification of more specific understanding regarding over-generalized terms misleadingly used by Trump).

    "Trump also urged (fundamentalist anti-learning) Christians to turn out for him ahead of Election Day, calling it the "most important election ever." He added that if elected, (fundamentalist anti-learning) Christian-related concerns will be "fixed" so much so that they would no longer need to be politically engaged.
    ""You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful (fundamentalist anti-learning Caucasian only-English speaking) Christians," he said."

    That harmful promise by Trump is in addition to the additional harms his leadership would inflict on climate science understanding.

    The New Republicans definitely appear determined to promote harmful misunderstanding to “fix” things in their favour on many important issues (like they “fixed” the SC) to the detriment of Others, especially to the detriment of all the future Others.

    Paraphrasing nigelj's last sentence: Its all consistent with the New Right Republican interests in resisting learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others.

    0 0

You need to be logged in to post a comment. Login via the left margin or if you're new, register here.