The workings of plutocracy: part 10^6.

Slashdot has been trumpeting copyright reform for a while. This issue was revived recently when the Republican Study Committee issues a report calling for restraints on copyright law. The report was quickly withdrawn and the author fired, apparently following pressure from the copyright cartel. This has all culminated in an article in Harvard Business Review describing how political corruption is strangling innovation.

The 99% are to blame

This past week saw two "riots" on college campuses. There was a bit of a scuffle with cops as the Occupy Cal group (i.e. the "99%-ers) tried to establish a campsite on campus. Across the country at Penn State, a spontaneous riot broke out following the announcement of Joe Paterno's dismissal for his failure to adequately respond to news that one of his assistant coaches was raping 10-year olds in the team showers.

Each of these confrontations is worthy of much discussion, but what I find most interesting at the moment is how the events at Penn State undermine the narrative being presented by the Occupy crowd.

Joe Parterno is the 1%. Even by the standards of University faculty, sports coaches have extremely high pay. Paterno was bringing in around a million dollars a year, while several other head-coaches bring in multimillion dollars salaries. University payscales are a perfect microcosm of the more widespread inequalities that the Occupy movement decries.

My view is that "gods are not allowed to make mistakes"-- when someone of Paterno's stature and power is this neglectful of his duties, he deserves to be thrown out on his ass. However, consider the reaction of the great masses in the Penn State community -- they defended Paterno, with massive public protest. They embraced the idea that a person like Paterno is above the law; he is so great that he can do no wrong. Even more telling, there was no Karl Rove manipulating public opinion behind the scenes. This was totally spontaneous.

I have read innumerable essays by concerned leftists pondering why the lower classes repeatedly vote against their own interests. These overly partisan egalitarians find the obvious answer -- it's the other party! (i.e. the Republicans). If they would open their eyes, this riot (which is just part of a long-standing phenomenon) would put their partisan theories to lie. There is no need for sophisticated propaganda to create massive inequality. A college education does not cause people to open up their eyes to what really matters. The truth is that most people are morons. Most people are willing slaves who fantasize about having a king. They dream of a benevelent lord who will provide them with bread and circus, absolving them of any responsibility for their own lives.

A half-century of middle class unionism and public universities has done nothing to lessen this peasant mentality among the masses. It's time to consider the possibility that democracy has failed. Democracy is impossible because when power is given to the masses, they give it right back. Those of us who want freedom will have to find it ourselves. If we want a society of equals, we will have to find it separately from the servile masses. We obviously can't physically separate ourselves from them, but we can weaken the institutions that they use to force themselves on us.

Is it wrong to pay a bribe?

There's recently been a bit of commotion about government corruption in India (particularly, bribery), with a lot of public pressure to eliminate it. According to the Economist magazine, (A novel way to combat corruption: Who to punish), one aspect of the debate is whether the laws should be changed to actually eliminate criminal penalties for people who pay bribes, as long as they are only paying to secure a service to which they are legally entitled.

There is some debate as to what the consequences of such laws would be. Such concerns seem irrelevant to me. It is praiseworthy to resist a demand for a bribe, but it should not be treated as an obligation. People need to get on with their lives, and can't be expected to bear the arbitrarily large burden associated with having licenses revoked or not being given access to money that is rightfully theirs.

The proposal described in the Economist is probably the most orderly way to deal with the problem. If some communitarian view of justice demands that the victim of corruption be held accountable for the crime (and he has no realistic administrative or legal remedy), then maybe the victim should have an alternative. Perhaps ad hoc tribunals should be able to run a corrupt official out of town. Or more realistically, if the state cannot effectively administer all of its regulations, the people at the top should aggressively move to eliminate them. If they can't do that, then their power should be eliminated.

CA district court shuts down Wikileaks

A district court in California has ordered Wikileaks.org to be shut down, at the request of the Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer, apparently because Wikileaks published internal company documents related to money laundering.

I'm not happy. I'll be watching this.

Hat Tip to OpenLeft and the Draft Lessig movement.

The ethical bright line

The hardest part of Washington is knowing where you ethical line, your bright line is. Because it’s not so bright when you cross it. When you get up close to it, it looks rather gray.

This thought from Raynard Kington comes to us by way of joshuah, a young up-and-comer among the Washington technocrats. While Kington emphasizes the problem of identifying the line once you are close to it, Joshuah ponders the problem of identifying the line from a distance. Joshuah also comforts himself with his self-perception that:

I feel I am secure enough in my sense of self, and not particularly motivated by money or power, so I am at a pretty low risk for getting caught up in ethically questionable doings.

Let's take for granted that Joshuah's perception of himself is accurate, and he doesn't have any need for self-aggrandizement (a rare breed!), nor does he see himself as part of an aristocratic class that needs to keep the riffraff in their place. I think that there is still a real risk of corruption that faces even the most well-intentioned and well-adjusted individuals--it is the dynamic that I called "competing power" in a previous post on how power corrupts.

I can present this either in terms of modern American politics, or in terms of Nazi Germany...let's do the Nazi's first. The following quotes come from Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free, an excellent and enthralling case study of Nazism in Kronenberg, where this form of corruption was called the temptation of effectiveness.

"Yes," said (the professor), shaking his head, "the 'excesses' and the 'radicals.' We all opposed them, very quietly. So your two 'little men' thought that they must join, as good men, good Germans, even as good Christians, and when enough of them did they would be able to change the Party. They would 'bore from within.' 'Big men' told themselves that, too, in the usual sincerity that required them only to abandon one little principle after another, to throw away, little by little, all that was good. I was one of those men."

Another professor (a chemical engineer) confessed:

You see, refusal (to take an oath of fidelity in 1935) would have meant the loss of my job, of course, not prison or anything like that... But losing my job would have meant that I could not get another.... Nobody would hire a 'Bolshevik.'

I tried not to think of myself or my family. We might have got out of the country, in any case, and I could have got a job in industry or education somewhere else.

What I tried to think of was the people to whom I might be of some help later on, if things got worse.... If I took the oath and held my job, I might be of help, somehow, as things went on. If I refused to take the oath, I would certainly be useless to my friends, even if I remained in the country. I myself would be in their situation.

This man used his apartment as a hideout for fugitives until he was caught in 1943. But he still believed that he should not have ever taken the oath...

(T)here is the problem of the lesser evil. Taking the oath was not so evil as being unable to help my friends later on would have been. But the evil of the oath was certain and immediate, and the helping of my friends was in the future and therefore uncertain. I had to commit a positive evil, there and then, in the hope of a possible good later on. The good outweighed the evil; but the good was only a hope, the evil a fact.

In explaining why he regretted the decision to take the oath, this professor emphasized his privileged and influential position in society, and his view that the failure of people like him to resist the Nazis in 1935 guaranteed that the Nazis would come to power. He didn't even delve into the fact that even as he was hiding refugees in his apartment, he was also going to work (as a productive member of German society) and paying his taxes--providing the Nazis with the resources they would use to commit the very crimes that he was risking his life to mitigate.

To illustrate the same issue in contemporary American politics, consider two Senators running for President, with sincere differences of opinion on a number of "big" issues. Each of them believes that his own election will result in a substantial increase in the welfare of the people, yet he needs to convince the voters of this fact. Should he use his current power to direct taxpayer money to a particular company, with the expectations that this will increase campaign contributions from that company and help his election? The politician believes that the harm of this little kickback scheme is trivial next to the benefit arising from the campaign contribution (likewise, the voters believe that the harm of this kickback scheme is nothing compared to the harm caused by "the other guy" winning the election and setting policy on the "big issues").

Tragically, if both politicians follow this strategy, then they will resort to bigger and bigger kickback schemes, with the only limit being that they can't be substantially worse than their opponent. This is the basic problem of retaliation and escalation. I think the whole point of morality/ethics is to make sure that we don't go down that path...but it's so easy.