economics – Auxiliary Memory

Squeezing the System: What Happens When You Ask an AI If Greed Rules Politics

by James Wallace Harris, 7/7/26

Lately, I’ve been thinking that greed is the ultimate driver of modern politics in the United States. Is greed a byproduct of evolution? If it is, then how could we control greed politically? I thought these could be good questions to ask my AI, Gemini. I find chatting with an AI to be educational. Many of my liberal friends have big hopes for the 2026 and 2026 elections, but I wondered if their hopes were practical.

This is my second conversation. I had the first conversation with the AI built into Google, but I wasn’t able to save it. I switched to my paid AI, Gemini, and it was helpful to get the conversation formatted in HTML so I could copy it here.

Each gave similar answers but explained in different ways.

I recommend learning to chat with an AI. It makes you think. They also bring up details you haven’t considered. I’m posting this as an example.

I don’t want AIs to think for me. Nor do I want AIs to create content for me. But I do find talking with them educational. It’s like having a dialogue with Socrates.

Jim: Is greed darwinian?

To kick this off, let’s look at this through the lens of evolutionary biology, where “greed” translates to resource hoarding.

From a strict evolutionary standpoint, the short answer is yes, but only up to a point.

In a world of pure scarcity, an organism that secures more food, better territory, or more resources than its peers is simply maximizing its chances of survival and reproduction. If a harsh winter or a drought hits, the individual with the hoard survives, passes on their genes, and the “hoarder” trait continues. In that narrow sense, capturing resources is entirely Darwinian.

However, evolutionary biology throws us a massive curveball when it comes to social species like humans. Pure, unchecked individual greed actually runs counter to another powerful Darwinian mechanism: reciprocal altruism and group selection.

Here is why pure greed fails the long-term Darwinian test for humans:

The Cost of No Friends: Humans are physically weak compared to apex predators. Our primary survival strategy has always been the tribe. If an individual in a hunter-gatherer group hoards meat while others starve, the group will ostracize, banish, or kill them. In a social structure, losing the protection of the group is an evolutionary death sentence.
Tit-for-Tat (Reciprocity): Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers demonstrated that cooperation operates on a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” loop. True greed breaks this loop. If you never share, no one shares with you when your luck runs out.
The “Selfish Gene” Nuance: Even Richard Dawkins’ famous “selfish gene” theory explains that genes replicate by making organisms act unselfishly toward their kin. Sharing resources with family ensures the survival of shared genes.

So, while the drive to secure resources is deeply rooted in our evolutionary past, unchecked greed is actually a maladaptive strategy for a social primate. We evolved a fine-tuned radar for fairness and cheating because, for most of human history, hyper-greedy behavior threatened the survival of the whole tribe.

Jim: Let’s rephrase it then. In a capitalistic society, does greed drive competition and determine which laws are made?

In a capitalist framework, greed—often rebranded by economists as rational self-interest—shifts from a basic survival mechanism to the primary engine of the entire system.

When applied to competition and the legal landscape, it operates on two distinct levels.

1. Does Greed Drive Competition?

Yes, it is the primary catalyst, but with a massive catch.

In classic capitalist theory (think Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”), individual self-interest drives people to compete. A business owner wants to maximize profit (greed), so they try to build a better, cheaper product than their rival. This competition benefits society by driving innovation, lowering prices, and increasing efficiency.

However, pure greed also carries the seed of its own destruction regarding competition. If an actor is truly greedy, their ultimate goal isn’t to compete forever—it is to win permanently.

The Monopolistic Drive: The most profitable thing a business can do is eliminate competition entirely by creating a monopoly or a cartel.
Systemic Stagnation: Once competition is eliminated, innovation stalls, prices rise, and the market stops benefiting the consumer.

So, while greed starts competition, its natural conclusion is to kill competition.

2. Does Greed Determine Which Laws Are Made?

Yes, through a process economists call “regulatory capture.”

In a capitalist society, the immense wealth generated by successful self-interest doesn’t stay insulated in the market; it inevitably flows into the political and legal spheres.

Writing the Rules of the Game: Powerful economic actors use their resources (via lobbying, campaign contributions, and public relations) to influence the legal system. They don’t just compete under the rules; they try to rewrite the rules to protect their wealth.
Barriers to Entry: Ironically, large corporations often lobby for more regulation, not less, if those regulations are expensive to comply with. This creates a barrier to entry that prevents smaller, innovative startups from competing with them.
Externalizing Costs: Greed drives entities to lobby for laws that allow them to maximize profits by shifting their costs onto the public (e.g., pollution, underpaid workers’ healthcare).

Ultimately, laws in a capitalist society often reflect a tug-of-war between the public interest and concentrated economic interest. When the legal system fails to act as a neutral referee, greed effectively dictates the law, shaping it to protect incumbents rather than foster open competition.

Jim: Isn’t private equity investing mainly greed? Isn’t car manufacturers selling only the most expensive models because they make the most profits really just greed?

These two examples highlight exactly how the pressure for short-term profit can make a system look deeply exploitative to the average person. When we strip away the corporate buzzwords, both situations demonstrate what happens when market incentives align entirely with maximizing financial extraction.

Here is how each of these plays out under the hood:

1. Is Private Equity Investing Mainly Greed?

If we define greed as maximizing wealth extraction with little to no regard for human or systemic fallout, then yes.

The core business model of private equity (PE) is to buy companies, “optimize” them, and sell them for a massive profit within a few years. Because PE firms rely heavily on debt to buy these companies—placing the burden of that debt onto the purchased company itself—they are forced to squeeze out cash quickly.

The Squeeze: To pay down the debt and hit double-digit returns for investors, PE firms frequently cut labor costs, reduce service quality, strip real estate assets, or raise consumer prices. We see this acutely in sectors like healthcare, nursing homes, and local journalism.
The Shield: The PE structure largely protects the investors from the downside. If the acquired company goes bankrupt due to the heavy debt load (as Toys “R” Us did), the PE firm often still walks away with millions in management fees, while workers lose their jobs.

In economic theory, PE is supposed to find inefficiencies and make businesses leaner. In practice, it often functions as an engine that converts functioning community institutions into short-term financial capital for wealthy investors.

2. Are Car Manufacturers Killing Cheap Cars Out of Greed?

Yes, it is a deliberate “profit pivot” that completely abandons the needs of the working class.

For the past several years, major automakers (especially the big American brands) have systematically killed off smaller, affordable sedans and compact cars. They have shifted their factories almost entirely to massive, expensive trucks, SUVs, and high-trim crossovers.

The Margins vs. Volume Math: Automakers discovered that the profit margin on a $60,000 fully loaded truck can be $15,000 or more, whereas a $22,000 economy sedan might only net them $1,500. From a pure spreadsheet perspective, selling fewer cars at a much higher price is far more lucrative than selling lots of cheap cars to regular people.
“Trimflation”: Even when they do offer base models, they purposefully limit production on them, forcing buyers to choose higher, tech-loaded trim packages that push the average transaction price toward $50,000.

By prioritizing Wall Street’s demand for higher profit margins over the public’s need for basic, affordable transportation, automakers have effectively priced millions of average households out of the new car market entirely, trapping them in high-interest, long-term loans.

Jim: Is it possible to create laws that would be more equitable to the majority and not to just those who have money?

Yes, it is entirely possible to create laws that are equitable to the majority rather than just the wealthy. In fact, a major part of political history is a continuous tug-of-war between concentrated wealth trying to shape the rules and public movements pushing the legal framework back toward fairness.

When a society successfully shifts the legal balance back to the majority, it usually happens through three specific legislative pillars:

1. Insulating the Political System from Money

The most direct way to stop the wealthy from dictating laws is to cut the link between cash and political power. When money is required to win elections, laws naturally bend toward those who have it.

Campaign Finance Reform: Forcing strict transparency and placing hard caps on political donations—including banning “dark money” Super PACs—stops wealthy donors or corporations from buying access.
Publicly Funded Elections: Some democracies give candidates a fixed pool of public money to campaign with once they qualify, meaning they don’t have to spend their time begging billionaires or corporate interests for funding.
Closing the “Revolving Door”: Passing strict laws that ban politicians and regulators from immediately taking high-paying lobbying jobs at the very corporations they used to regulate.

2. Rewriting Market Rules (Antitrust & Corporate Law)

The laws governing how businesses operate are not laws of nature; they are choices. Governments can rewrite corporate guardrails to force capital back toward the public good.

Aggressive Antitrust Enforcement: Breaking up monopolies and heavily scrutinizing private equity “roll-ups” (where a firm buys up dozens of small, competing businesses in an area to kill competition and raise prices). By enforcing competition, laws protect small businesses and consumers.
Ending Short-Termism: Changing tax and corporate laws so that companies are penalized for prioritizing short-term stock buybacks over long-term investments in worker wages and product safety.
Stricter Corporate Liability: Holding corporate executives personally and criminally responsible for systemic fraud, environmental damage, or labor violations, rather than just hitting the corporation with a fine that they treat as a mere “cost of doing business.”

3. Strengthening Collective Power

When individuals stand alone against massive capital, they lose. Laws can be designed to give the majority collective leverage.

Labor Protections: Making it legally easier for workers to unionize and collectively bargain. Historically, a strong labor movement is the single most effective counterweight to corporate greed.
Consumer Protection Frameworks: Building robust regulatory agencies (like the CFPB or FTC) with the teeth to ban predatory lending, hidden fees, and deceptive pricing outright, rather than relying on consumers to read 50 pages of fine-print legatory terms.

The challenge is never a lack of ideas or legal mechanics; it is a lack of political will. Wealthy interests will always use their resources to resist these changes. Passively waiting for the system to fix itself rarely works—historically, equitable laws are only passed when a highly organized, sustained public movement forces politicians to choose between the voters and their donors.

Jim: What chance would of these changes being made in the current political culture of the United States?

To be blunt: in the current political culture of the United States, the chances of passing sweeping, systemic changes to curb the power of money are very low near-term, but highly volatile long-term.

If we look at Washington today, the system isn’t just stalled by accident; it is operating exactly as it was designed to by the interests that fund it.

To understand why the odds are so long right now, we have to look at three structural barriers dominating our current political landscape:

1. The Supreme Court’s “Free Speech” Iron Wall

Even if Congress miraculously found the political will to pass massive campaign finance reform, it would run headfirst into a judicial brick wall. The U.S. Supreme Court has spent decades cementing the legal doctrine that money equals speech. Following the landmark Citizens United ruling, the Court has consistently struck down attempts to limit political spending. Under the current judicial philosophy, spending unlimited amounts of money to influence an election is protected by the First Amendment. Short of a constitutional amendment or a generational shift in the makeup of the Supreme Court, the legal avenues for major campaign finance reform are effectively blocked.

2. Systematic Congressional Gridlock

The incentive structure in modern Congress actively rewards non-governance. Because of extreme gerrymandering and intense polarization, most politicians are not afraid of losing a general election to the opposite party; they are terrified of being primaried by the most extreme wing of their own party. Furthermore, congressional paralysis has hardened into a routine strategy. Passing major, structural reform requires building broad coalitions. Today, lawmakers face immediate backlash from their donors and media ecosystems for compromising, while obstruction carries almost no political cost.

3. The Power of “Cultural Disruption” as a Smokescreen

When a society is deeply divided on cultural and identity issues, it is very easy for concentrated economic power to maintain status quo economic policies. If a politician wants to protect a private equity firm or a major automaker from regulation, they rarely stand up and say, “I want to protect corporate greed.” Instead, they shift the public conversation to highly emotional culture-war topics. Because voters are hyper-focused on these identity issues, economic consolidation happens quietly in the background with very little unified public resistance.

Where the Chinks in the Armor Are

While federal legislation faces bleak odds, change is creeping in through different, less visible avenues:

State and Local Laws: Individual states are increasingly passing their own right-to-repair laws, data privacy protections, and state-level labor rules that push back against corporate consolidation.
Executive Agency Action: Federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are using existing, century-old laws to launch aggressive antitrust lawsuits against tech giants and corporate monopolies.
The Boiling Point: Public frustration with the cost of living, housing, and healthcare is reaching a historic peak. History shows that when the middle class is squeezed tightly enough, it eventually creates an unpredictable political wildfire that can shatter institutional gridlock entirely.

Jim: How likely are any of these changes being made in the 2026 and 2028 elections?

To be direct: the probability of passing any of these structural changes during the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential cycle is virtually zero at the federal level. In fact, the legal system is currently moving rapidly in the opposite direction.

Just at the end of June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered another major blow to campaign finance limits in NRSC v. FEC. In a 6-3 decision, the Court struck down decades-old limits on how much money political parties can spend in direct coordination with their candidates. This means billionaires can now hand massive checks to political parties, and the parties can act as an alternative checking account for a candidate’s media campaigns.

Because the legal landscape is shifting toward more money in politics rather than less, the 2026 and 2028 cycles will likely be defined by a massive arms race of political spending, making structural reforms highly unlikely.

Here is how the realistic probabilities break down for 2026 and 2028:

1. The 2026 Midterm Landscape: High Friction, No Room for Reform

Midterm elections are rarely moments for deep, structural economic reform; they are usually reactive backlashes against whoever holds the White House. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the House and a 53-45 majority in the Senate. Even if control of Congress splits or flips by a tiny margin, neither party will have the 60-vote supermajority in the Senate required to bypass a filibuster. Neither party will have the legislative strength to pass sweeping antitrust or campaign finance overhauls.

2. The 2028 Presidential Cycle: Rhetoric vs. Structural Reality

By 2028, public frustration with everyday costs—like the private equity squeeze on housing or automakers eliminating affordable economy cars—will likely become central campaign issues. You will hear an immense amount of anti-corporate rhetoric from both sides in 2028 because that is what voters want to hear. However, even if an administration wins on a platform of economic populism, it will still have to contend with the Supreme Court. Because the Court has dug in on the “money equals speech” doctrine, any new federal law trying to curb campaign finance or corporate influence would likely be struck down within a year of passing.

Where Real Change Will Actually Move the Needle (2026–2028)

While sweeping federal legislation is off the table, the next two years will see major battles fought through alternative channels that don’t require passing new laws through Congress:

Executive Trust-Busting: The FTC and DOJ will continue using existing, century-old laws to sue monopolies. The outcome of the 2026 and 2028 elections will decide whether these aggressive antitrust lawsuits against Big Tech, corporate landlords, and healthcare conglomerates are allowed to proceed or are shut down by a new administration.
State-Level Rebellion: Because Washington is locked down, states will be the primary battleground. Over the next two years, we will likely see more states bypass federal gridlock by passing localized consumer protection laws, right-to-repair bills, and state-level labor protections.

Ultimately, 2026 and 2028 will not be the years in which these major changes are made. Instead, they will be the years when public frustration builds up even more pressure against a rigid, money-driven system—setting the stage for a much larger political breaking point further down the road.

Jim: Looking at the long term, is there any reason to believe some kind of social/poltical revolution occuring that changes the status quo? Will current politicies cause a tipping point?

Historians, sociologists, and macroeconomists generally agree that long-term status quo changes are inevitable, but they rarely happen through neat, organized policy changes. Instead, history shows that major social and political revolutions occur when a system reaches a structural “tipping point” where it can no longer resolve its own internal crises.

Rather than a single, cinematic explosion, modern researchers view societal tipping points as a slow, systemic erosion of institutional capacity that suddenly accelerates due to an unexpected trigger.

The primary catalysts driving the current status quo toward a long-term tipping point span three major areas.

1. The Biophysical Tipping Point (Climate & Resources)

The most concrete threat to the current global status quo isn’t ideological; it is physical. [6]

The “Limits to Growth” Model: Decades of data tracking the famous MIT Limits to Growth study demonstrate that humanity remains locked onto a “Business As Usual” trajectory. This economic model predicts that unchecked exponential growth will result in a structural peak and subsequent decline in industrial output, food production, and welfare.
Ecological Cascades: Scientific consensus from the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 warns that human activity has pushed critical Earth systems—such as warm-water coral reefs and major ocean currents like the AMOC—to the brink of collapse.
The Political Tipping Point: When environmental degradation causes localized agricultural failure or water scarcity, it triggers mass migration. Historically, sudden demographic shifts and resource competition have severely stressed existing legal frameworks, forcing governments to rapidly adapt or face collapse.

2. Structural Demography (The “Elite Overproduction” Crisis)

Sociologist Peter Turchin utilizes data-driven historical models (Cliodynamics) to predict political instability. His research highlights a repeating historical cycle that triggers revolutions: Elite Overproduction.

The Dynamic: In a highly unequal capitalistic society, the education system and economy produce vastly more ambitious, highly educated, and wealthy individuals than there are positions of actual political and economic power (e.g., thousands of law graduates competing for a handful of congressional seats or judicial appointments).
The Tipping Point: This creates a massive class of “frustrated elites” who are shut out of the status quo. To gain power, these individuals stop playing by the traditional rules. They weaponize the grievances of the working class, funding grassroots populist movements to intentionally dismantle or rewrite the governing system from within.

3. Technological Disruption (AI and Cognitive Automation)

Historically, revolutions happen when the economic base shifts faster than the political superstructure can manage. The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence represents an unprecedented shift.

The Wealth Gap Explosion: If AI automates white-collar and cognitive labor, it will vastly increase corporate profit margins while displacing millions of workers. This creates a hyper-concentration of wealth that the current tax and welfare infrastructure cannot handle.
The Friction Point: When a majority of a population realizes that hard work no longer guarantees housing, healthcare, or upward mobility, the psychological contract holding society together dissolves. Distrust in the system peaks, rendering traditional laws unenforceable due to widespread civil non-compliance.

What Does a Modern “Revolution” Look Like?

A 21st-century revolution is unlikely to mirror the French or Russian revolutions with storming palaces. Instead, macro-historians suggest it will take one of three paths:

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                           FUTURE SCENARIOS                              │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                       │
         ┌─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┐
         ▼                             ▼                             ▼
  [ Democratic Renewal ]       [ Neo-Feudal Autocracy ]     [ Networked Regionalism ]
  Mass civic organizing        Corporate elites use         Central government fails;
  forces a "New Deal" style    AI & surveillance to         local communities build
  restructuring of the system. lock down the status quo.    parallel legal/food systems.

Democratic Renewal / The Concession Path: Faced with immense civil unrest or the threat of systemic collapse, elites often make massive concessions to save themselves. This is how the U.S. avoided a communist revolution during the Great Depression—by passing the New Deal to redistribute wealth and stabilize the majority.
Neo-Feudal Autocracy: If the status quo changes via a right-wing or corporate consolidation, technology could allow elite classes to effectively “lock in” their power. Using algorithmic surveillance, automated policing, and legal control, they can suppress majority dissent far more effectively than historical empires ever could.
Networked Regionalism (The “Slow Crumble”): If the federal government becomes completely paralyzed by polarization, power naturally diffuses. States, cities, and regional coalitions will begin ignoring federal mandates, creating their own localized healthcare, environmental, and economic laws, effectively rendering the old national status quo obsolete.

The Verdict

Current policies—specifically the refusal to regulate campaign finance, the failure to address structural climate change, and the lack of a safety net for technological displacement—are absolutely creating the objective conditions for a tipping point.

JWH

Is Ethical Capitalism Even Possible?

by James Wallace Harris, 10/20/23

This month, several of my friends have separately expressed doubt about the future. I don’t hold much hope either. Our current world civilization seems to be falling apart. Capitalism is consuming the planet, but capitalism is the only economic system that creates enough jobs to end poverty. The only alternative to free market capitalism I can imagine is if we adapt capitalism to an ethical system. So, I’ve been keeping my eye open for signs of emerging ethical capitalism.

Here’s one: “The Workers Behind AI Rarely See Its Rewards. This Indian Startup Wants to Fix That” from Time Magazine (8/14/23). The article describes how AI startups need vast amounts of sample data from other languages for their large language models. In India, many data companies are exploiting poor people for their unique language data and keeping the profit, but one company, Karya, is giving the poor people they employ a larger share of the profits. This helps lift them out of poverty.

Capitalism has two dangerous side effects. It destroys the environment and creates inequality. For capitalism to become ethical it will need to be environmentally friendly, or at least neutral, and it will need to be more equitable. If we want to have hope for the future, we need to see more signs of that happening.

Right now, profits drive capitalism. Profits are used to expand a corporation’s ability to grow profits, and to make management and investors rich. Labor and environmental controls are seen as expenses that reduce profits. For a corporation to be ethical it will have to have a neutral or positive impact on the environment, and it will need to share more of its profits with labor.

Since the pandemic hourly wages have been going up, and so has inflation. If capitalism becomes more ethical, costs for environmentalism and labor will go up, thus ethical capitalism will be inflationary. Some people have gotten extraordinarily rich by making things cheap, but it’s also shifted labor and environmental costs away from corporations onto the government and the public. The price at the store does not reflect the actual cost of making what you buy. You pay the difference in taxes.

For ethical capitalism to come about things will need to be sold for what they cost to make. That will involve getting rid of governmental and corporate corruption. It will involve political change. And it will be inflationary until the new system stabilizes.

My guess is ethical capitalism will never come about. If I were writing a science fiction novel that envisioned life in the 2060s it would be very bleak. Life in America will be like what we see in failed states today. Back in the 1960s we often heard of the domino theory regarding communism. Failed states are falling like dominoes now. Environmental catastrophes, political unrest, dwindling natural resources, and viral inequality will homogenize our current world civilization. Either we work together to make it something good, or we’ll all just tear everything apart.

Civilization is something we should all shape by conscious design and not a byproduct of capitalistic greed.

We have all the knowledge we need to fix our problems, but we lack the self-control to apply it. I have some friends who think I’m a dope for even holding out a smidgen of hope. Maybe my belief that we could theoretically solve our problems is Pollyannish.

I have two theories that support that sliver of hope. One theory says humans have always been the same psychological for two hundred thousand years. In other words, our habits and passions don’t change. The other theory says we create cultures, languages, technologies, systems that can organize us into diverse kinds of social systems that control our behavior.

We could choose better systems to manage ourselves. However, we always vote by greed and self-interest. We need to vote for preserving all.

In other words, we don’t change on the inside, but we do change how we live on the outside. My sliver of hope is we’ll make laws and invent technology that will create a society based on ethical capitalism and we’ll adapt our personalities to it.

I know that’s a long shot, but it’s the only one I have.

I’m working to develop a new habit of reading one substantial article a day and breaking my bad habit of consuming dozens of useless tidbits of data that catch my eye as clickbait. In other words, one healthy meal of wisdom versus snacking all day on junk ideas. Wisdom doesn’t come packaged like cookies or chips.

JWH

Make America Great Again

by James Wallace Harris, 10/2/21

Donald Trump had his shot at making America great again with his tax cuts for the rich. That put us trillions in debt. Why not let Biden have his legislative shot to make America great again? It will add more trillions to the national debt, but why worry about that now when we didn’t under Trump? Besides, the consequences of doing nothing condemns us to failure. And who knows, rebuilding the country might increase the economy letting us afford to pay off the debt better in the future? Isn’t that what the Republicans promised? Why shouldn’t the Democrats have their chance at the same idea?

Isn’t it time to try the trickle up theory? The conservative theory claimed if the rich had more money some of it would trickle down to help all Americans. That hasn’t happened. Let’s try the opposite, make everyone better off, and maybe some of the wealth will trickle up to the wealthy.

To find out what’s in the infrastructure bills, I copied the details from Investopedia. It all sounds good to me. We’ve been avoiding fixing all this stuff for decades. Why not just go ahead and get it done?

We’ve tried the Republican’s method more than once, let’s test the opposite to see if it works?

What's in the $1.2 Trillion Bipartisan Bill

The 2,702-page bipartisan bill contains just $550 billion in new spending. The $1.2 trillion figure comes from including additional funding normally allocated each year for highways and other infrastructure projects. The new spending consists of:8

$110 billion for roads and bridges. In addition to construction and repair, the funding also helps pay for transportation research at universities, funding for Puerto Rico’s highways, and “congestion relief” in American cities.

$66 billion for railroads. Funding includes upgrades and maintenance of America’s passenger rail system and freight rail safety, but nothing for high-speed rail.

$65 billion for the power grid. The bill would fund updates to power lines and cables, as well as provide money to prevent hacking of the power grid. Clean energy funding is also included.

$65 billion for broadband. Includes funding to expand broadband in rural areas and in low-income communities. Approximately $14 billion of the total would help reduce internet bills for low-income citizens.

$55 billion for water infrastructure. This funding includes $15 billion for lead pipe replacement, $10 billion for chemical clean-up, and money to provide clean drinking water in tribal communities.

$47 billion for cybersecurity and climate change. The Resilience fund will protect infrastructure from cybersecurity attacks and address flooding, wildfires, coastal erosion, and droughts along with other extreme weather events.

$39 billion for public transit. Funding here provides for upgrades to public transit systems nationwide. The allocation also includes money to create new bus routes and help make public transit more accessible to seniors and disabled Americans.

$25 billion for airports. This allocation provides funding for major upgrades and expansions at U.S. airports. Air traffic control towers and systems would receive $5 billion of the total for upgrades.

$21 billion for the environment. These monies would be used to clean up superfund and brownfield sites, abandoned mines, and old oil and gas wells.

$17 billion for ports. Half of the funds in this category would go to the Army Corps of Engineers for port infrastructure. Additional funds would go to the Coast Guard, ferry terminals, and reduction of truck emissions at ports.

$11 billion for safety. Appropriations here are to address highway, pedestrian, pipeline, and other safety areas with highway safety getting the bulk of the funding.

$8 billion for Western water infrastructure. Ongoing drought conditions in the western half of the country will be addressed through investments in water treatment, storage, and reuse facilities.

$7.5 bill for electric vehicle charging stations. The Biden administration asked for this funding to build significantly more charging stations for electric vehicles across the nation.

$7.5 billion for electric school buses. With an emphasis on bus fleet replacement in low-income, rural, and tribal communities, this funding is expected to allow those communities to convert to zero-emission buses.

What's in the $3.5 Trillion Democratic Proposal

The Democratic FY2022 Budget Resolution Agreement Framework memorandum is designed to enact President Biden's Build Back Better agenda. This proposal, often referred to as an investment in human infrastructure, is far-reaching and ambitious. It lists the following amounts and areas to be addressed:9

$135 billion for the Committee on Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry. Funding to be used to address forest fires, reduce carbon emissions, and address drought concerns.

$332 billion for the Banking Committee. Including investments in public housing, the Housing Trust Fund, housing affordability, and equity and community land trusts.

$198 billion for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. This would develop clean energy.

$67 billion for the Environment and Public Works Committee. These monies would fund low-income solar and other climate-friendly technologies.

$1.8 trillion for the Finance Committee. This part of the bill is for investments in working families, the elderly, and the environment. It includes a tax cut for Americans making less than $400,000 a year, lowering the price of prescription drugs, and ensuring the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

$726 billion for the Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions Committee. This addresses universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds, childcare for working families, tuition-free community college, funding for historically black colleges and universities, and an expansion of the Pell Grant for higher education.

$37 billion for the HSGAC Committee. This would electrify the federal vehicle fleet, electrify and rehab federal buildings, improve cybersecurity infrastructure, reinforce border management, invest in green-materials procurement, and invest in resilience.

$107 billion for the Judiciary Committee. These funds address establishing "lawful permanent status for qualified immigrants."

$20.5 billion for the Indian Affairs Committee. This addresses Native American health programs and facilities, education programs and facilities, housing programs, energy programs, resilience and climate programs, BIA programs and facilities, Native language programs, and the Native Civilian Climate Corps.

$25 billion for the Small Business Committee. This provides for small business access to credit, investment, and markets.

$18 billion for the Veterans Affairs Committee. This funds upgrades to veteran facilities.

$83 billion for the Commerce Committee. This goes to investments in technology, transportation, research, manufacturing, and economic development. It provides funding for coastal resiliency, healthy oceans investments, including the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund and the National Science Foundation research and technology directorate.

JWH

The Future Is About Jobs

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, 1/16/21

Most people assume the best possible society will be one where everyone has a good job and can be self reliant along with the freedom to make what they want out of their life. That was the direction America was taking until a revolution in the 1970s, when a few people had a new vision of the future. Since then the best possible society was decided in favor of the wellbeing of corporations over a the last five decades. Unfortunately, corporate success depends on having fewer employees. They have chosen profits and automation over people. The citizens of America want jobs, but the citizens of corporations want profits. Whose future will win out?

If you put your faith in politicians and think they will bring happiness to Americans with more jobs then you are deluded. The past four years were Trump feeding his massive ego which distracted us from the real issues. But electing Biden is not going to save us either. Arguing over partisan politics is like brawling in the ballroom of the Titanic an hour before hitting the iceberg.

If we stay on our present course America will collapse economically before climate change can do us in. If we want to avoid both hells then we must decide on a better final destination. It will require cooperation. It will also require knowledge, but not the kind of knowledge you can get off the internet or cable news. The amount of knowledge needed will require studying books, lots of books, and not books written by egomaniacs trying to become rich.

The problems we’re facing and will face are so enormous that it will take a significant percentage of the population working together to solve them. If we want that future where everyone has a good job it will require a new kind of education. We used to believe higher education guaranteed a successful future. But the kind of education I’m talking about is not technical job training or academic enrichment. What we need is to educate ourselves about a holistic understanding of our present reality. However, most citizens of this society have chosen to deny reality, or accept it and just enjoy themselves as much as possible before the apocalypse.

Remember in The Matrix when Neo was told he’d need a lot of guns to overthrow the machines, and rows and rows or armaments sped past him? Yeah, well we need to read lots of books, rows and rows of bookcases. At a guess, a good portion of the voting population needs to start reading one important nonfiction book a month to alter our path and avoid the twin icebergs of climate change and wealth inequality. Will that happen? I doubt it.

We’re now more polarized politically than anytime in my lifetime. The country is almost perfectly divided into two opposing philosophies. The conservatives want free market capitalism with winners take all. The liberals want capitalism supplemented with socialism to protect the losers. Strangely, I see it as the Darwinians v. Christians, even though the conservatives see themselves as Christian, I see them as advocates of survival of the fittest, while liberals want to follow the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, yet expect the Darwinians to pay for the sick, lame, and homeless.

If we continue on the current path blazed by libertarian free-market true believers, all the wealth will be sucked out of the middle and lower classes, and probably even from the lower upper classes. The future promises a small wealthy class with their robots and corporations, and a vast lower class, struggling to survive off a small basic income. If you believe in trickle down economics then why are the richest cities in America being overrun by homeless encampments and decay? If you don’t believe me watch these videos about L.A., San Francisco, and Miami.

These are just a few images that show the result of our present economic policies. They are like the early signs of climate change that everyone wants to ignore. I’m old enough to look back over 50-60 years of history and change. Most people believe things stay the same. They don’t. The societal erosion you see in these films will spread like kudzu unless we change course. But how?

In physics we’ve learned that space and time are really one thing and we should refer to it as spacetime. And we’ve also learned that the mind and body are not separate and should refer to it as the mindbody. Well, the same is true for politics and economy, it’s really the politicaleconomy. When new concepts emerge they go through a phase first as two words, then as two-words, and finally as oneword. We’re still thinking in the political economy phase, but after reading Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen I’m going to think of it as the politicaleconomy, and even bypass the hyphen phase.

If you only see politics in terms of liberal and conservative, or Democrats and Republicans then you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If you only look at the economy in terms of gains and losses then you’re not even seeing the tip. Evil Geniuses will not give you a complete holistic view of current politicaleconomic reality, but it will hint at it. Andersen is a synthesizer who has written a history of the politicaleconomy beginning in the late 1950s to show how our present state of the politicaleconomy evolved. It’s very complicated, and like Einstein working to develop a Grand Unified Theory Andersen does not succeed.

It comes down to simplex, complex, and multiplex. Most humans want simplex answers to explain reality. The more we study reality, the more complex reality appears. Focusing on single systems causing complexity in our minds. It’s only until we try to see how multiple systems work together that we develop multiplexity of thinking.

Personally, I’m smart enough to see complexity and intuit a bit of multiplexity. I believe Andersen is able to mentally juggle several complexities and visualize a certain level of multiplexity to be able to write about it. I envy him that ability. I envy that because simplex thinking is very satisfying. Complex thinking is stressful, even painful and discordant. It’s only until we get into the multiplexity stage do things become calm again, and we hear the harmony of relationships between system interactions.

Reading Evil Geniuses and exploring the individual observations Andersen makes has reduced some of the political anxiety I acquired from 2016-2020. Donald Trump wasn’t the real issue even though we’ve agonized over his impact for years. He was just a rash and not the underlying disease. Most Americans are riled up politically but are looking for answers in all the wrong places. We keep trying to cure symptoms and not the disease. Until we think of the politicaleconomy as one holistic system that includes all life on Earth we’re going to stay the course towards extinction. We need to be working towards a new word, the politicaleconomybiosphere.

I cannot properly review this book without restating almost everything that’s in it, and Kurt Andersen has already done that, so just read it. Don’t expect to accept everything he says. I haven’t yet. But if you’re like me, do expect to want to read his sources, or at least other books about the issues covered. For example, I bought a Milton Friedman book to understand the other side of things. One book ain’t going to cut it. If you’ve ever gotten fascinated by a subject and had to read everything you can about it, that’s how I feel now about the politicaleconomy.

Reading Evil Geniuses made me realize I wasn’t paying proper attention to the history of the last fifty years. Andersen chronicles no secret cabal of conspirators, all those evil geniuses were working completely out in the open. Another realization I take away from the book is don’t assume the nightly news will tell us what we need to know. Following the sensational stories on TV and the internet is watching the delusional argue over how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

Understanding comes from longer essays, like those in The Atlantic or The Economist, or from good solidly researched books. And that reading never ends, because there’s always need for deeper insights. For example, I think I need to read The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon to understand the history before the history outlined in Evil Geniuses and Dark Money by Jane Mayer. But it’s also important to read opposing views, like Age of Discovery by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna.

That’s a lot of relentless reading. Is it practical to imagine that a significant portion of the voting public will do this kind of reading? No, not really. That’s why the movers and shakers of the economic right were able to achieve their goals. They used their knowledge to change just a few institutions and people to alter the course of history. Can liberals make such surgical decisions to reflate the wealth of the middle and lower classes? I won’t know until I read a lot more. If you know of any books that offer such insights, let me know.

JWH

Playing Fair in the Game of Life

by James Wallace Harris, Friday, November 15, 2019

Imagine a poker game with one person winning every pot. Eventually, all the players but that one winner will become tapped out unless someone else starts winning. This is a good analogy for wealth inequality.

The challenge to the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls is making rule changes to the game we all play. Warren and Sanders want to make drastic changes to the rules to quickly make our society fairer to all, but that scares both the conservatives and the older well-to-do liberals. Biden promises to just tweak the rules a bit which enrages the extreme liberals who want significant change sooner.

We’re all playing this game of economic life whether we realize it or not, even when we think we’re not participating. Our economy is a game that everyone plays and the rules are decided by politics, laws, and voting. We like to think we’re a democracy and we all decide how the game is played but that’s not true. The winners of the game keep altering the rules so they can keep winning.

What would society be like if the game was played fair? What if everyone had an equal say in making the rules of the game, how would society differ from how we play the game now? Would wealth start circulating amongst all the players? Or will the winners refuse to ever change the rules? Maybe losers don’t want to change the rules either. Maybe they hope to be winners someday? How many players have to be wiped out before they realize their true odds of becoming a winner?

Right now a majority of our citizens believe everyone should work to make a living, and if you fail you should suffer the consequences. If you doubt this read “The American Right: It’s Deep Story” by Arlie Russell Hochschild. Hochschild had come up with a little story she tells people that’s a Rorschach test for conservative thinking. Read it to see how you react, then read her article for how she interprets your reaction.

You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line leading up a hill, as in a pilgrimage. Others besides you seem like you – white, older, Christian, predominantly male. Just over the brow of the hill is the American Dream, the goal of everyone in line. Then, look! Suddenly you see people cutting in line ahead of you! As they cut in, you seem to be being moved back. How can they just do that? Who are they?

Many are black. Through federal affirmative action plans, they are given preference for places in colleges and universities, apprenticeships, jobs, welfare payments, and free lunch programs. Others are cutting ahead too – uppity women seeking formerly all-male jobs, immigrants, refugees, and an expanding number of high-earning public sector workers, paid with your tax dollars. Where will it end?

As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re asked to feel sorry for them all. People complain: Racism, Discrimination, Sexism. You hear stories of oppressed blacks, dominated women, weary immigrants, closeted gays, desperate refugees. But at some point, you say to yourself, you have to close the borders to human sympathy – especially if there are some among them who might bring harm.

You’re a compassionate person. But now you’ve been asked to extend your sympathy to all the people who have cut in front of you. You’ve suffered a good deal yourself, but you aren’t complaining about it or asking for help, you’re proud to say. You believe in equal rights. But how about your own rights? Don’t they count too? It’s unfair.

Then you see a black president with the middle name Hussein, waving to the line cutters. He’s on their side, not yours. He’s their president, not yours. And isn’t he a line-cutter too? How could the son of a struggling single mother pay for Columbia and Harvard? Maybe something has gone on in secret. And aren’t the president and his liberal backers using your money to help themselves? You want to turn off the machine – the federal government – which he and liberals are using to push you back in line.

To go deeper into what Hochschild is revealing with her “Deep Story” test, read her book Strangers in Their Own Land. She finds that conservatives identify with this story. In past decades I’ve known many conservatives that have told me variations of this story. But their resentments and prejudices keep us from making society fair. What I find ironic is many of the people who resonate with Hochschild’s Deep Story claim to be Christians, but isn’t her story an anti-Gospel?

We don’t have to examine the whole economic system to see how it’s unfair. Just look at companies like Amazon and Uber as samples. A few people in each company make billions while most workers barely make a living, yet each company would collapse without the low-paid participants in their shared game. Why do thousands of employees have to work their asses off so one guy gets rich enough to have his own space program? Why do Uber drivers put in all the millage but don’t get their fair share of the fares? Why is Trump so desperate to keep his tax returns secret? Is it because he doesn’t want us suckers to know he’s rich without paying his fair share of taxes?

What if labor got a fairer share of the rewards of our economic game? Somehow we’ve decided the owners of a company deserve more money than the people who punch the clock. Is that how we really want to play the game? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to make the game fairer by taxing the winners and use the government to redistribute the winnings. This is one way, but is it the only way, or the best way?

If you don’t understand the long history of capital v. labor I highly recommend reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. Before the industrial revolution wealth was mostly in owning land, and the landowners used slaves, serfs, peasants, and tenant farmers to make themselves wealthy. When industrialization came along those with capital shifted to owning businesses and letting labor do all the work to make them wealthy.

The reason why capital has always been at war with labor is capital didn’t want to share the rewards of the game. They have always fought unions because of greed. They have always embraced automation because of greed. If they could completely eliminate labor they would. Just see how hard Uber wants to develop self-driving cars, or Amazon to add robotic book pickers. If we extrapolate these trends into the future we’ll have a game with very few winners owning a lot of robots and mostly jobless losers.

Our present economic system is rigged to produce fewer winners. We think because unemployment is low most people are still in the game. But is that really true? The economy doesn’t have a finite pot of money, wealth is always being created. But it appears the 1% are acquiring all the old wealth and new wealth at an increasing speed. Liberals have a history of creating safety nets to keep players in the game. Conservatives even begrudge this level of wealth redistribution. If Warren or Sanders is going to win in 2020 they need to convince a vast majority of players there’s a genuine need to redefine the rules to keep the game from collapsing.

Capital needs consumers with money to spend. That means labor must stay in the game. That’s why we’re hearing talk of guaranteed incomes. If the rich aren’t willing to share their wealth now I doubt they will in this future scheme. This means the present game will end when the very few have corned all the chips and the economy falls apart.

Capital is against universal healthcare because they profit from limited healthcare. Republicans and conservatives are passionately fighting any changes to the game. They see any proposal to redistribute wealth as an attack on the existing game rules that favor them winning. Is there a way to change the game to be fairer to everyone that doesn’t involve redistributing the wealth?

Can the 99% create their own wealth without interfering with the 1%? I recently read an article that said the lower 50% has already been drained by the 1% and now they are working to drain the other 49% percent. Wealth transfer to the wealthier even effects millionaires. For Bill Gates to have $100,000,000,000 means 100,000 people aren’t millionaires. And for every 1,000 billionaires, we don’t have a 1,000,000 millionaires.

How can Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have their own space programs? How many underpaid workers does that take to build that science-fictional dream? Is the game really fair when some winners in society can afford to play NASA and millions of losers are without homes? Even if we rationalize losers don’t deserve anything because they don’t work, does anyone in our rich society deserve to have so little? Bezos and Musk cannot have their space programs without the whole society supporting them.

Isn’t what we want is a fair society that rewards hard work but is passionate toward those who can’t compete? Don’t we also want a society that is ecologically friendly and sustainable? How do we change the rules to get that if the greedy want to keep playing the existing game?

The game requires everyone to play, even when they don’t work or vote. I’m sure conservatives would love to ship off all the unemployable to another country. A certain percentage of the active economy generates wealth by taking care of people who can’t. If they didn’t exist, these caretakers would be out of a job too. We’d have to exile them. But then that would put more people out of work. See the snowball growing? All activity in the economy goes into generating the total wealth of the economy. And yes, building private space programs do create jobs, but how much more economic activity would our economy have if average workers were paid more?

I’m not saying billionaires shouldn’t have their rewards, but couldn’t the rewards of a successful company be spread around fairly? Why do the owners and shareholders get all the profits? Because labor has always been the target of cost reduction. It’s so ingrained that it’s a religion with business. But if the wealthy don’t want to have their taxes raised they should consider raising the wages of their employees so society won’t have to raise taxes on the rich to help the poor.

The trouble is people who have gained seldom want to give back. Of sure, they become famous philanthropists, but that’s not really giving, is it? It’s just another expression of being a winner.

I don’t know why I keep writing these essays. Striving to describe how things work does not change anything. I’ve been reading about Plato lately. He had lots of insights into how things work. And over the centuries society has changed. That’s hopeful. Everyone has way more than what everyone once had. Besides more material wealth, we have more peace and personal health than our ancestors.

Yet there is still so much poverty and sickness in our world today. Can’t we change the rules of the game to help them? Aren’t there more billionaires today because there are more workers getting ahead? Wouldn’t universal healthcare stimulate the overall economy? Would giving the homeless homes stimulate the economy? Doesn’t raising the living standards for the 99%, create more wealth for the 1% to chase?

I see the 2020 election as a referendum. It’s not really about Trump, he’s only the face of greed. Voting for Trump is a vote for maintaining the plutocracy. Voting for a democrat will be a vote to change the rules.

JWH