Capitalism (Good & Bad) – Page 33 – Public Intelligence Blog

Imperfect but Riveting and Essential,

April 30, 2006

Louis Uchitelle

Some of the criticisms ofThe Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead this book are valid, but I completely disagree with those who sound more and more like a corporate fascist every day, equating the “social contract” with socialism. If they would take the time to read William Greider's book The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy or Herman Daly's Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications or John Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hit Man or any of a wide variety of books that I have reviewed for Amazon readers, they might realize that the concept of the corporation as a legal entity that absolves its managers and stock-holders from immoral, predatory and even illegal behavior, is one that we can do without. I will go further–I have coined the term “Communal Capitalism” to describe that condition where the people retain ownership of the factors of production, and the managers are well-paid employees but not war profiteers or out and out thieves against the commonwealth.”

Hans Morganthau clearly identified the people–the demography of a nation–as a major sources of national power, and Thomas Jefferson was among the first to say that “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.” Most recently I have reviewed the new book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler on Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives and there is much agreement between the two books, both of which address the dysfunctionality of our educational, health, energy, and transportation systems.

I am especially taken by the author's tracing of how a series of Presidents, but most terribly, President Clinton, essentially left the American worker to the wolves at the door, and made them disposable. Perhaps Clinton sold out to Wall Street and to bribes from corporations, a standard practice in our (see my review of the book by that title). Whatever the case, what this book clearly documents, albeit with more personal vignettes than I really cared to deal with, is that we are killing not just our middle class, but our worker class as well. This is nothing short of economic and social suicide.

There is one thing and one thing only that we can do to address this unhealthy economic situation that is exhacerbated by the double deficits (trade and debt): this book should be a call to arms for the public, which should demand that both its legislative candidates its presidential candidates in 2008, restore their integrity by once again serving as the champions of the worker-people rather than the corporate special interests.

There is a great deal that is wrong with our predatory form of capitalism, one reason why I champion communal capitalism (my term, not to be confused with socialism or communism but rather with capitalism of, by, and for the people). This author has very capably summarized the real costs to the people, and to the country, of irresponsible lay-offs from which we do not recover.

2006/04/282009/12/04

Review: Revolutionary Wealth (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

TIME as translated into wealth, fouir-part anti-poverty plan,

April 28, 2006

Alvin Toffler

Their first key focus is on TIME and its relation to space, knowledge, and effectiveness as translated into wealth. Innovative businesses are going 100 mph; civil collective groups at 90 mph; the US family at 60 mph, labor unions at 30 mph, government bureaucracies at 25 mph, education at 10 mph, non-governmental organizations including the United Nations at 5 mph, US politics and the participation process at 3 mph, and law enforcement and the law it enforces at 1 mph. This is really quite a helpful informed judgment as to the relative unfitness of all but two of the groups.

The TIME section of the book has some very interesting insights including the fact that anything that requires time, like filling in a form, or that adds time to a process through regulation, is in fact a TIME TAX that is more costly than an old money tax.

The Tofflers note that vice is globalizing faster than virtue. This is very important from a taxation and social goods perspective.

They spend a great deal of time discussing the intangible economy that consists of non-rival knowledge that can be shared and bartered; volunteer time that produces economy value (notably parents who teach their children sanitary habits, how to speak, and discipline or social IQ); and alternative forms of capital–social, moral, whatever. They point out that 60% of the value of the industrial era companies is intangible knowledge, while almost 100% of the new economy is intangible.

This entire book is an Information Operations reference. They discuss global battles to manage our minds in multiple domains–religious, cultural, economic, moral. We need to pay more attention to what filters the target audience uses to determine the truth, and what filters the hostile groups are using to try to shape the local perception of truth to fit their wishes.

The book moves on to discuss what the Tofflers call the “outside brain” or the sum aggregate of knowledge that is available for individual exploitation. By one account, this consists of 12,000 petabytes.

They then begin the heart of the book on “prosumption” and the economic and social value of what they believe can no longer be called capitalism in the traditional sense.

The authors spend a sufficient amount of time exploring the implications of information technology on knowledge creation and capitalization, to include cell phones or other microchip devices that serve simultaneously as identity devices, bank accounts, and knowledge devices (as WIRED said in one issue, point the phone and read the bar code, and see if this product will kill you or if someone else was killed or abused as part of the product's development)

Having explored the emergence of the new economy, they then return to their opening discussion of time, and point out that America's infrastructure and institutions are imploding. Our energy, transportation, health, and educational infrastructures are 50 years out of date and cannot be converted or upgraded fast enough. So we have two Americas, an old industrial era poor America, and a new knowledge age rich America. They articulate a battle raging between decay and revolutionary birth, noting that micro-cash and the Internet are empowering social entrepreneurs who use the Internet to mobilize both volunteers and contributions. Micro finance is liberating small innovators from the death knell of merchant banks and venture capitalists with old mind-sets.

I learned two big things relevant to government tax fraud. Although I knew of import-export tax fraud ($50 billion a year in false pricing, an advanced form of corporate money laundering) Major corporations and most nations are heavily engaged in barter or counter-trades (e.g. billions of dollars in vodka for equivalent value in Pepsi BUT the US corporation can manipulate the valuations). They say many corporations are now moving to a form of internal corporate money so that their subsidiaries can do off the books trades that do not require either taxation or foreign exchange transactions.

The final third of the book is an absorbing discussion of how knowledge can eliminate extreme poverty, which the authors believe is more important than closing the gap between rich and poor. They emphasize that both India and China are leap-frogging the industrial era, with India focusing on connectivity to reduce poverty as well as urbanization, while China is focusing on setting standards that will allow it to “own” future information technology architectures. Africa and Latin America are being lost to Chinese immigrants, language, trade, and aid.

The Toffler's articulate a four part anti-poverty plan that makes sense to me: 1) Use knowledge to wipe out subsistence agriculture, which is the foundation for extreme poverty. They discuss how bio-technology can impact on crop yield, include medical vaccinations, convert crops into fuel, allow precision farming which dramatically reduces water and seed and fertilization costs, and improve sales while sensing disease or other threats to the crops. 2) Empower women, as this one focus leads to advances across the board. 3) End corruption by using knowledge and technology to make it next to impossible and largely transparent–the carrot side of this is that knowledge and technology can lower costs and increase government salaries. 4) Avoid industrial poisons, e.g. do not go with chlorine and oil based industry

The book concludes with a review of China, India, Japan, and Europe as either threats (the first two) or potential disasters (the last two). The authors, while extolling the possibilities of Chinese capitalism, are careful to point out the many things that could go catastrophically wrong for China, and do a similarly balanced presentation on India.

The Tofflers come across as cheerleaders for the future, accepting of the decay and disaster that will be required to dismantle dysfunctional systems including (my observation) the U.S. Government. They see real possibilities of eliminating poverty and stabilizing the world.

If you like this book, bookmark my review page, 1000+ non-fiction books that underlie and expand on this superb work by the Tofflers.

2006/03/152009/12/04

Review: Twilight in the Desert–The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Environment (Problems), Priorities, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Reveals both US Senate and Oil Executive Dishonesty,

March 15, 2006

Matthew R. Simmons

This book, does, as at least one reviewer notes, “drag on,” but it does so because it is a meticulously presented case, a case that would stand up in Court, on the death of Saudi Arabia and its oil reserves.

The book concludes with an Appendix C, “The 1974 and 1979 Senate Hearings,” that I believe should be used to impeach, retrospectively, the Senators then responsible for Energy oversight. The documented public record is quite clear, and the Senate and media and banking and industry cover-ups are also quite clear and carefully documented: all of the Brahmins, including Dick Cheney, knew in 1974 and then again in 1979, that Peak Oil had been hit and we were on a downhill slope. For purely short-term political and profiteering motives, the oil industry and the U.S. Senators responsible for energy oversight, conspired to keep silent. This is, in a word, treason.

Exxon's CEO today, on the basis of this book, is either stupid, mis-informed, or a world-class criminal. I don't think he is stupid. I do think he is mis-informed. I also think that if he does not come to grips with reality soon, he will be proven to be a world-class criminal before 2008. The other energy CEOs, with British Petroleum a possible exception, are clearly duplicitous and in my own mind, display behavior that demands a nationalization of the energy industry, and a draconian criminalization of information withholding on this extraordinarily vital aspect of national security and prosperity.

This book has a world class bibliography, a world class index, and is, alone, sufficient to indict the energy company CEOs for high crimes against the Nation and the rest of the world.

For the reviewer upset that the author did not offer alternatives, I would make two points: 1) that is not the point of the book, it is about revealing the decrepitude of Saudi Arabia and the dishonesty of both the U.S. Senate and the oil industry executives in America; and 2) go to the two WIRED magazine articles, the one on doubling electrical output by creating a two-way system and localizing production; the other on the price points at which oil makes all other energy alternatives cheaper.

For those who want alternative views:

on Oil and 9-11: Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

on Oil and Other Converging Catastrophes: James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

on Saudi Arabian and US corruption, Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism and Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

on US Political Incompetence and Corruption, Peter Peterson, Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It William Greider, Who Will Tell The People? : The Betrayal Of American Democracy and Tom Coburn, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders as well as The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy).

See my 1000+ other books. This book is the tip of the spear that just went into the heart of the CEO of Exxon and his pals, all of whom will be held accountable by the American people, as will the corrupt politicians that have sold out to Wall Street and to bribery from lobbyists. We are in for a very rude and rough 20 years.

2006/03/152009/12/04

Review: The Coming Economic Collapse–How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Get out of oil-dependent assets, as long as politics corrupt, energy policy will never be real,

March 15, 2006

Stephen Leeb

I am giving this book a 5 instead of a 3 or 4 because I believe that it does a superb job of laying out some facts that every normal adult needs to understand, and I want to encourage everyone to buy and read this book.

That having been said, I also found it disappointing. The author's main points can be summed up in this review, and take less than an hour to absorb in the actual book:

1) Peak oil and the need for alternative energies are being over-shadowed by myopic media and lack-luster academics that focus on poverty, climate change, terrorism, everything but the core Achilles heel of the Western world, its addiction to cheap oil which is no more.

2) Cheap oil is made possible by blatant political and financial maneuvers that enrich a few and set the rest of us up for life long poverty. Government subsidies and tax breaks purchases by expensive lobbyists giving expensive gifts and cash bribes to our politicians are directly responsible for pre-determined failure of our energy policy and the lack of an energy strategy.

3) The catastrophic nature of the collapse of cheap oil is dramatically enhanced by the combination of the *huge* U.S. deficit and by the increased prospects of war over oil.

The author concludes with some bottom line advice for investors: get out quickly from stocks associated with high oil usage (airlines, autos, chemicals; followed by cosmetics, food requiring processing and transport, and retail dependent on far away factories and raw materials).

I disagree with one key point he makes. He assumes that Wall Street and the media have been ignoring this problem because of “group think.” I certainly do agree that the larger mass of the public and the average bureaucrat that do not know any better have fallen prey to unethical propaganda, but I am quite persuaded by Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy; Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil; The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century and other books that this catastrophe in the making was clearly understood by the White House and the US Senate in 1974-1979, and a very deliberate selfish even treasonous decision was made to profit in silence and let the people fry.

This is a much simpler book than most of the others I have read and recommend, but I give it a solid five stars because if you can only afford to buy and read one book, this is the one that will be easiest and most to the point.

And just to drive the point home, when WIRED had the cover story on alternative energy, Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon, and went on to amass 25 documented high crimes, 23 of itemized in my review of this book (Cheney makes Agnew and Johnson look like wall-flowers–this is the guy that put HIGH into “High Crimes.”
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

2006/02/102009/12/04

Review DVD: Lord of War (Widescreen) (2005)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Reviews (DVD Only)

Helpful in National Soul Searching and Confronting Reality,

February 10, 2006

Nicolas Cage

Many of the reviews of this movie are unusually naive and stupid.

My review of this movie is based on a lifetime overseas as the son of an oilman, as a Marine Corps infantry officer, as a clandestine case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, and as the foremost trainer of governments interested in getting a grip on reality by focusing on open source of information in all languages.

This is a first rate movie with some truly extraordinary visuals and some truly extraordinary lines. It is an intelligence movie for intelligent people, and it should certainly give anyone both a couple of hours of enjoyment, and a couple of hours of reflection.

Among the highlights:

1) AK-47 as the real weapon of mass destruction

2) Africans stripping a plane overnight, literally pulling every piece of it off and making it “disappear”

3) There is one gun for every 12 people, the arms dealers goal is to arm the other 11 as quickly as possible

4) The top arms dealers (“merchants of death”) are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

I read more than I watch movies, and will end with two comments: a) all of my reading bears out the importance and relevance of this movie; and b) it is easily one of the more serious and appreciable movies I have seen in some time. The intellect in the devising and presentation of this movie is absolutely first rate.

2006/01/122009/12/04

Review: Conspiracy of Fools–A True Story (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption

Inspired detail on corporate stupidity and dishonesty, government incapacity,

January 12, 2006

Kurt Eichenwald

There are some superb reviews here that I will not replicate. Here are a few things that jump out at me:

1) This author sets the gold standard for investigative journalism and non-fiction authorship. 1000 hours of interviews, 200 three-ring binders, and a gifted ability to communicate extremely complex issues. Perhaps more pointedly, the author shows what a good solid investigation can produce in the way of facts and context and understanding, to the point that one wonders why the government cannot do as well.

2) This book confirms the author's earlier findings as documented in “The Informant,” to wit, the government does not take enforcement seriously, and lets very bad people off with very minor sentences. When combined with the books on “The Cheating Culture,” or “The Soul of Capitalism,” or “Rogue Nation,” what we see is a complete break-down of ethics in business–Wall Street business, not Main Street. Enron, and then WorldCom, are the poster children of greed run amok. The profligacy of Enron is quite amazing—they paid 25% to 100% above the industry average in salaries, and made huge deals with falsified projections of future profit that were used to hemorrhage tens of millions in cash bonuses to key Enron managers.

3) Neither Arthur Anderson nor the government did their jobs. Arthur Anderson “sold out” and as the author concludes, deserved to die a corporate death penalty for its malfeasance. The government, for lack of deep economic understanding among key staffers, allowed itself to be manipulated into opening the door for Enron to cook its books.

The level of detail in this book is extraordinary, and I find that it softens my view of Ken Lay and others in a substantial way. One can see how they were drawn in, how the context led them to make bad uninformed decisions, avoid due diligence, avoid holding corrupt officers to account. This is a deeply human story, full of failings at every turn.

I put the book down reminded of the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) scam that stole billions from the public, and then the series of scams outlined in this book. To that one can add the very negative findings outlined in “Crossing the Rubicon,” where the author documents $3 trillion stolen by Wall Street from Main Street and the public.

It is possible to conclude that between the illicit profits of the overtly criminal gangs in the US, and the illicit profits of the covertly criminal Wall Street high-flyers, that the USA is as close to being a narco-crime state as is Colombia or Afghanistan. We have a superficial semblance of order and freedom and good living, but it is a Potemkin Village. We are being hollowed out as a Nation. This book is as close as I have seen to a medical diagnosis of all that is wrong with Wall Street and the very large corporations.

2005/12/182009/12/04

Review: The Outlaw Sea–A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (Paperback)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Replays Atlantic Monthly But Pleasantly Surprising,

December 18, 2005

William Langewiesche

This is not the book I was expecting. Normally it would only have gotten three stars, for recycling three articles, only one of which was really of interest to me (on piracy), but the author is gifted, and his articulation of detail lifts the book to four stars and caused me to appreciate his final story on the poisonous deadly exportation of ship “break-up” by hand. It is a double-spaced book, stretched a bit, and not a research book per se.

Two high points for came early on. The author does a superb job of describing the vast expanse of the ungovernable ocean, three quarters of the globes surface, carrying 40,000 wandering merchant ships on any given day, and completely beyond the reach of sovereign states. The author does a fine job of demonstrating how most regulations and documentation are a complete facade, to the point of being both authentic, and irrelevant.

The author's second big point for me came early on as he explored the utility of the large ocean to both pirates and terrorists seeking to rest within its bosom, and I am quite convinced, based on this book, that one of the next several 9-11's will be a large merchant ship exploding toxically in a close in port situation–on page 43 he describes a French munitions ship colliding with a Norwegian freighter in Halifax. “Witnesses say that the sky erupted in a cubic mile of flame, and for the blink of an eye the harbor bottom went dry. More than 1,630 buildings were completely destroyed, another 12,000 were damaged, and more than 1,900 people died.”

There is no question but that the maritime industry is much more threatening to Western ports than is the aviation industry in the aftermath of 9-11, and we appear to be substituting paperwork instead of profound changes in how we track ships–instead of another secret satellite, for example, we should redirect funds to a maritime security satellite, and demand that ships have both transponders and an easy to understand chain of ownership. There is no question that we are caught in a trap: on the one hand, a major maritime disaster will make 9-11 look like a tea party; on the other the costs–in all forms–of actually securing the oceans is formidable.

Having previously written about the urgent need for a 450-ship Navy that includes brown water and deep water intercept ships (at the Defense Daily site, under Reports, GONAVY), I secure the fourth star for the author, despite my disappointment over the middle of the book, by giving him credit for doing a tremendous job of defining the challenges that we face in the combination of a vast sea and ruthless individual stateless terrorists, pirates, and crime gangs collaborating without regard to any sovereign state.

I do have to say, as a reader of Atlantic Monthly, I am getting a little tired of finding their stuff recycled into books without any warning as to the origin. Certainly I am happy to buy Jim Fallows and Robert Kaplan, to name just two that I admire, but it may be that books which consist of articles thrown together, without any additional research or cohesive elements added (such as a bibliography or index), should come with a warning. I for one will be more alert to this prospect in the future.

Having said that, I will end with the third reason I went up to four stars: the third and final story, on the poisonous manner in which we export our dead ships to be taken apart by hand in South Asia, with hundreds of deaths and truly gruesome working conditions for all concerned, is not one of the stories I have seen in article form before, it is a very valuable story, and for this unanticipated benefit, I put the book down a happy reader, well satisfied with the over-all afternoon.

Category: Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Review: The Disposable American–Layoffs and Their Consequences (Hardcover)