In the spirit of the season I think we need a little musical number for this blog entry. Therefore, I give you "Halleluiah Corporations" performed by Stanza XXI.
Happy Holidays!
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Wal-Mart: Save Money. Screw Employees
Wal-Mart is at it again. According to the Associated Press Wal-Mart is slashing its health care coverage for part-time employees and jacking up its premiums for its full-time employees.
Of course, Wal-Mart isn’t alone in screwing its employees. AP reported that according to the insurance company Kaiser only 42% of companies offer health care coverage to their part-time workers. It’s even worse if the employee is in retail because according to Mercer only 28% of those companies offer health care coverage.
Health care is a universal human right. It’s that simple.
Of course, Wal-Mart isn’t alone in screwing its employees. AP reported that according to the insurance company Kaiser only 42% of companies offer health care coverage to their part-time workers. It’s even worse if the employee is in retail because according to Mercer only 28% of those companies offer health care coverage.
Health care is a universal human right. It’s that simple.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Black Friday Backlash
According to the New York Times there’s a growing backlash against Black Friday by consumers. Some say it’s an extension of the Occupy Wall Street sentiment. Others say they don’t like that the Black Friday openings are pushing further and further into Thanksgiving. One interesting motivation for some is an acknowledgement of the strain it places on the Workers, which might indicate a growing Worker identity in America.
Whatever the reason for the backlash, the fact that some people are standing up and declaring that they’re not going to take it anymore is a great thing. It gives one hope.
Whatever the reason for the backlash, the fact that some people are standing up and declaring that they’re not going to take it anymore is a great thing. It gives one hope.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Beginning and the End
"You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out"
~ Revolution by the Beatles
Over the last few weeks events in Oakland took a violent turn as a minority of people rioted after an Occupy Oakland protest. Even the police agreed that the rioters were not part of the Occupy Oakland group but a group of outsiders. In fact, the next day the true members of Occupy Oakland came out to help clean up. But with events such as this I thought it was important for me to state emphatically where I stand.
My position can be best summed up by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. back in December 11, 1964 "Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."
If we truly want change we have to become part of the political process. By becoming part of the process we can change the world in a peaceful and orderly manner from the current one of injustice to a world built on justice. To quote Adlai E Stevenson, "As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end."
Become organized, get involved, and most importantly: vote. Those are the keys to change.
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out"
~ Revolution by the Beatles
Over the last few weeks events in Oakland took a violent turn as a minority of people rioted after an Occupy Oakland protest. Even the police agreed that the rioters were not part of the Occupy Oakland group but a group of outsiders. In fact, the next day the true members of Occupy Oakland came out to help clean up. But with events such as this I thought it was important for me to state emphatically where I stand.
My position can be best summed up by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. back in December 11, 1964 "Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."
If we truly want change we have to become part of the political process. By becoming part of the process we can change the world in a peaceful and orderly manner from the current one of injustice to a world built on justice. To quote Adlai E Stevenson, "As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end."
Become organized, get involved, and most importantly: vote. Those are the keys to change.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
It's been over a year ago that I stopped posting here and my return took longer than I expected. However, with recent events in the news I felt like I couldn't wait any longer.
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
~ Buffalo Springfield, “For What It's Worth”
You can’t miss them because they’re all over the news media. In major cities across the world groups of people, some groups are small while others are large, setting up camps under the banner of Occupy Wall Street. There are no obvious leaders of this movement. Certainly, the Canadian based magazine Adbusters deserves some credit for helping to provide the spark but the magazine has pulled back and the movement has grown and taking a life of its own. PBS Newshour provided a very good report on the movement.
Most criticisms of Occupy Wall Street have simply been nonsense. Contrary to what critics say, while comments by a few protestors have been rather unrealistic, the majority of the protestors appear unified with three primary complaints: wide-scale corporate greed, excessive unemployment and underemployment, and the power of the top 1% wealthiest of the population over our political and economic system.
However, while their complaints are valid there has been one criticism by commentators that I think has merit. Most protestors have failed to provide practical proposals on how to fix these social injustices. When injustices exist, then it’s good and right to complain but it’s meaningless if real world solutions aren’t proposed.
This is not to say there haven’t been any proposals. In an article on MSN Money “What if we took down Wall Street?”, Anthony Mirhaydari wrote, “One thing the occupiers on Wall Street seem to imagine is a return to a small, community-based lending model -- with mortgages and small-business loans owed to the bank down the street…” While this is a good start, it’s not complete enough. Any socio-economic model big enough to successfully replace Capitalism requires something more than just mom and pop shop lenders.
What the Occupy Wall Street movement needs is to demand replacing Capitalism with an Economic Democracy, which would incorporate these proposed small, local lenders as part of a bigger and more robust model that would actually work.
Those that have followed my blog in the past are knowledgeable of Economic Democracy. For my new readers this is a good time to review what that means.
The choice is yours.
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
~ Buffalo Springfield, “For What It's Worth”
You can’t miss them because they’re all over the news media. In major cities across the world groups of people, some groups are small while others are large, setting up camps under the banner of Occupy Wall Street. There are no obvious leaders of this movement. Certainly, the Canadian based magazine Adbusters deserves some credit for helping to provide the spark but the magazine has pulled back and the movement has grown and taking a life of its own. PBS Newshour provided a very good report on the movement.
Most criticisms of Occupy Wall Street have simply been nonsense. Contrary to what critics say, while comments by a few protestors have been rather unrealistic, the majority of the protestors appear unified with three primary complaints: wide-scale corporate greed, excessive unemployment and underemployment, and the power of the top 1% wealthiest of the population over our political and economic system.
However, while their complaints are valid there has been one criticism by commentators that I think has merit. Most protestors have failed to provide practical proposals on how to fix these social injustices. When injustices exist, then it’s good and right to complain but it’s meaningless if real world solutions aren’t proposed.
This is not to say there haven’t been any proposals. In an article on MSN Money “What if we took down Wall Street?”, Anthony Mirhaydari wrote, “One thing the occupiers on Wall Street seem to imagine is a return to a small, community-based lending model -- with mortgages and small-business loans owed to the bank down the street…” While this is a good start, it’s not complete enough. Any socio-economic model big enough to successfully replace Capitalism requires something more than just mom and pop shop lenders.
What the Occupy Wall Street movement needs is to demand replacing Capitalism with an Economic Democracy, which would incorporate these proposed small, local lenders as part of a bigger and more robust model that would actually work.
Those that have followed my blog in the past are knowledgeable of Economic Democracy. For my new readers this is a good time to review what that means.
- An Economic Democracy would be a market economy,
- The core economic unit would be based on autonomous, democratically governed, worker-owned cooperatives,
- In addition, there would be an increase in the number of family-owned enterprises and sole-proprietorships in comparison to the current capitalist system,
- Both types of enterprises would be networked together by economic councils that would allow for mutual aid and input from the community,
- There would also be the existence of non-profit and community-owned enterprises for services that cannot be provided by either co-ops or sole-proprietorships,
- Investment would be provided by a mix of public sources in the form of governmental bodies and non-profit NGO’s rather than private capital, and
- There would be extensive support to individuals and the various enterprises by local, state, and federal governments, such as universal health care and free education from pre-school through college.
The choice is yours.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
An Important Announcement
I began writing this blog back in October of 2007, making this month the third anniversary of my first entry. Upon this anniversary I've decided to take an approximately three month sabbatical from this blog until the end of 2010.
Over the last year I’ve developed a serious medical condition, which requires that I reorganize my life. I don't make this decision lightly, for I'm still a strong advocate for the cause, but I've decided that a temporary leave from writing this blog is best.
To my loyal readers over the years I want to say thank you for following my blog. I hope my writings have been helpful to the cause of creating a more just society.
If Providence allows, I expect to start posting to this blog again in January of 2011. There's other possible venues to advocate for the cause that I might use other than returning to this particular blog come the new year. I will decide over the next three months what path I take.
Until then I leave you with the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, “Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.”
Pax,
Larry
Over the last year I’ve developed a serious medical condition, which requires that I reorganize my life. I don't make this decision lightly, for I'm still a strong advocate for the cause, but I've decided that a temporary leave from writing this blog is best.
To my loyal readers over the years I want to say thank you for following my blog. I hope my writings have been helpful to the cause of creating a more just society.
If Providence allows, I expect to start posting to this blog again in January of 2011. There's other possible venues to advocate for the cause that I might use other than returning to this particular blog come the new year. I will decide over the next three months what path I take.
Until then I leave you with the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, “Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.”
Pax,
Larry
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Who We Are: Conclusion
Paleontology
This is the final installment in a series of postings in which I explore the growing mountain of scientific evidence that supports that human have, as a species, a cooperative nature.
Olivia Judson in an article titled "How Heroes Are Made" (USA News and World Report Special Edition: Mysteries of Science) explained that in nature benefit and costs are determined by one standard and one standard alone, which is the number of offspring that an organism has. The more children an organism has then the more successful that organism is. This standard poses a problem for those of us who claim that humans have a cooperative nature. It would seem that if we cooperate then we run the risk of helping others pass along their genes at the expense of ours. Altruism and cooperation would seem to contradict natural selection. If mutual cooperation is indeed what separated us from the other primates what might have been the evolutionary pressure that could have created a cooperative and altruistic ape?
The famed evolutionary biologist and game theory pioneer William Douglas Hamilton published several studies on what might cause altruism to evolve in the species. According to Hamilton a gene that promoted extreme altruism, which is a form of altruism that is so sacrificial that the organism leaves no descendants, could spread if it helped individuals who were closely related. Hamilton created a formula to predict whether an organism had a predisposition to altruism. Known as Hamilton’s Rule if the action’s benefit is large enough and if there is a close enough genetic relationship so as to outweigh the cost then the altruistic gene would be promoted.
One can expand this principle of "kin selection" beyond the immediate family. Many species live in large groups such as herds and flocks in which they interbreed. For example, the Common Chimpanzees mentioned in my last blog while intolerant aren’t loners but live in large communities with layers of sub-communities. While the females leave during adolescence the males stay and form gangs which roam across their territories guarding it from interlopers. These males can set up friendships across family lines and prefer to set up gangs with their maternal brothers and half brothers. If they run across a gang from another community there can be violence to the point that some smaller communities may be wiped out.
According to Judson in the 19th century Charles Darwin hypothesized that early humans warring in same fashion as the chimps might actually have created altruism. Darwin hypothesized that unified groups of caring early humans might have been more successful in competition with the rugged individualist humans. Over time the rugged individualists and non-cooperative humans were put under such evolutionary pressure that they were replaced by cooperative humans.
Darwin’s hypothesis is intriguing but is there any evidence to support it? In a paper published in the journal Nature, Judson reported that it was found that people tend to prefer to help strangers from their own ethnic group. Such studies as the one in Nature, along with others, have increased interest in Darwin’s idea. But some of the strongest evidence may have been found by the evolutionary biologist Sam Bowles. According to Bowles during the last 90,000 years of the Pleistocene era, which lasted from 100,000 to the 10,000 years ago, there was little growth in the numbers of humans. Certainly climatic volatility during this time was rather extreme and that could have kept numbers down. But Bowles reviewed the archeological records and various studies and estimated that a substantial numbers of the deaths could have resulted from wars. According Judson, "Bowles shows that supercooperative, altruistic humans could indeed have wiped out groups of less united folk." Judson wrote that for this to be a success the model would also require supportive groups based on monogamy, sharing of food, and little disparity between members. It’s interesting to note that Judson states that if Bowles was right then any group that failed to drive out or kill disruptive or non-cooperative members would have had a disadvantage in battles.
With these studies are taken together, along with many others that I haven’t covered, it turns out that natural selection can indeed lead to the development of an altruistic and cooperative ape.
Conclusion of Series
In conclusion, what can we draw from these studies reviewed over the past months? We are hardwired by millions of years of evolution to make cooperative behavior intrinsically reinforcing. Because of these studies we can now see that the very heart of capitalism, the idea of the rugged individual and looking out for Number One, is a myth. Economic democracy is built upon the reality of the cooperative nature of humans. It’s time for society to move beyond the unnatural system of capitalism and move on to its logical successor: economic democracy.
This is the final installment in a series of postings in which I explore the growing mountain of scientific evidence that supports that human have, as a species, a cooperative nature.
Olivia Judson in an article titled "How Heroes Are Made" (USA News and World Report Special Edition: Mysteries of Science) explained that in nature benefit and costs are determined by one standard and one standard alone, which is the number of offspring that an organism has. The more children an organism has then the more successful that organism is. This standard poses a problem for those of us who claim that humans have a cooperative nature. It would seem that if we cooperate then we run the risk of helping others pass along their genes at the expense of ours. Altruism and cooperation would seem to contradict natural selection. If mutual cooperation is indeed what separated us from the other primates what might have been the evolutionary pressure that could have created a cooperative and altruistic ape?
The famed evolutionary biologist and game theory pioneer William Douglas Hamilton published several studies on what might cause altruism to evolve in the species. According to Hamilton a gene that promoted extreme altruism, which is a form of altruism that is so sacrificial that the organism leaves no descendants, could spread if it helped individuals who were closely related. Hamilton created a formula to predict whether an organism had a predisposition to altruism. Known as Hamilton’s Rule if the action’s benefit is large enough and if there is a close enough genetic relationship so as to outweigh the cost then the altruistic gene would be promoted.
One can expand this principle of "kin selection" beyond the immediate family. Many species live in large groups such as herds and flocks in which they interbreed. For example, the Common Chimpanzees mentioned in my last blog while intolerant aren’t loners but live in large communities with layers of sub-communities. While the females leave during adolescence the males stay and form gangs which roam across their territories guarding it from interlopers. These males can set up friendships across family lines and prefer to set up gangs with their maternal brothers and half brothers. If they run across a gang from another community there can be violence to the point that some smaller communities may be wiped out.
According to Judson in the 19th century Charles Darwin hypothesized that early humans warring in same fashion as the chimps might actually have created altruism. Darwin hypothesized that unified groups of caring early humans might have been more successful in competition with the rugged individualist humans. Over time the rugged individualists and non-cooperative humans were put under such evolutionary pressure that they were replaced by cooperative humans.
Darwin’s hypothesis is intriguing but is there any evidence to support it? In a paper published in the journal Nature, Judson reported that it was found that people tend to prefer to help strangers from their own ethnic group. Such studies as the one in Nature, along with others, have increased interest in Darwin’s idea. But some of the strongest evidence may have been found by the evolutionary biologist Sam Bowles. According to Bowles during the last 90,000 years of the Pleistocene era, which lasted from 100,000 to the 10,000 years ago, there was little growth in the numbers of humans. Certainly climatic volatility during this time was rather extreme and that could have kept numbers down. But Bowles reviewed the archeological records and various studies and estimated that a substantial numbers of the deaths could have resulted from wars. According Judson, "Bowles shows that supercooperative, altruistic humans could indeed have wiped out groups of less united folk." Judson wrote that for this to be a success the model would also require supportive groups based on monogamy, sharing of food, and little disparity between members. It’s interesting to note that Judson states that if Bowles was right then any group that failed to drive out or kill disruptive or non-cooperative members would have had a disadvantage in battles.
With these studies are taken together, along with many others that I haven’t covered, it turns out that natural selection can indeed lead to the development of an altruistic and cooperative ape.
Conclusion of Series
In conclusion, what can we draw from these studies reviewed over the past months? We are hardwired by millions of years of evolution to make cooperative behavior intrinsically reinforcing. Because of these studies we can now see that the very heart of capitalism, the idea of the rugged individual and looking out for Number One, is a myth. Economic democracy is built upon the reality of the cooperative nature of humans. It’s time for society to move beyond the unnatural system of capitalism and move on to its logical successor: economic democracy.
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