Says Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics IX-5: "Goodwill is a friendly sort of relation". but not the same as friendship. And the reason is simple. In goodwill there is not the "intensity or desire" that arises in "friendly feeling". We would not necessarily "do anything with" people to whom we feel goodwill but not friendship.
You might say, he writes, that goodwill is "a beginning of friendship", for philia starts with delight in the "form of the beloved". But delight does not mean love. Love means a longing when the beloved is absent and a craving for his presence. The feeling of goodwill does not encompass longing and craving.
Aristotle seems to suggest that goodwill comes close to his definition of his second-class friendship, that based on utility or pleasure, for he says "The man who has received a benefit bestows goodwill in return for what has been done to him". Yet he denies it, saying that goodwill "does not arise on those terms", i.e., the friendship based on utility or pleasure. That is because, he says, the exchange of benefits is "only doing what is just"; men are not friends if they cherish each other "for the sake of some use to be made of" the other. No, Aristotle insists, "goodwill arises on account for some excellence or worth, when one man seems to another beautiful or brave".
If this is so, then Aristotle is proposing that goodwill is the flash of pleasure that, e.g., a man feels when he sees a beautiful woman across the room. But he has already said that goodwill does not involve "intensity or desire" and that certainly gets involved in the feeling that a man has in the fleeting view of a beautiful woman.
What then does Aristotle mean? He just wants to say that goodwill is a feeling, the precursor to friendship, a delight in the other. But it is not, repeat not, to be dirtied with the second-class transactional friendships based on utility and pleasure. The best friendship is about love, wanting to spend time, to live next to the other person, wanting good for the other person for their own sake, and not a utilitarian quid pro quo.
And yet surely a friendship based upon utility or pleasure could just as easily start with the goodwill that Aristotle approves of, the glance across the room, the good feeling at seeing the beautiful or brave. We proceed to friendship, because today and tomorrow we could use a bit of beauty, or could enjoy the pleasure of being around a tasty piece of beautiful fluff.
On Aristotle's view of goodwill, his second-class friendship is not really a friendship. Only the best kind, the friendship between equals, based on love and wanting the best for the other person on their own terms, only that is the real thing. Goodwill is the precursor to real friendship, the frisson of attraction. And it is not to be confused with mere pleasure or mere utility.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Is Aristotle Too Egoist?
It is the fashion today to privilege the notion of "altruism" over the notion of selfishness. Things done for another, in the right way at the right time for the right reasons, are considered worthy. Things done to liberate a group of victims of exploitation are beyond reproach. But things done for ourselves, particularly when performed by businessmen and patriarchs, is tainted with the stain of egoism. This Manichean system, stripped of its veil of illusion, is a system, naked, brutal and direct, to privilege government and political action over those of private citizens in the economic sector and civil society.
Thus some may criticize Aristotle's celebration of eudaimonia of the good man in a life of virtue to be "objectionably egoist."
But we should pause for a moment and consider what might be meant by "objectionable egoism." For when Aristotle speaks of "love of self" in Nichomachean Ethics IX-8 he opens the discussion only to differentiate between the self-loving man "who is grasping" with regard to "wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures" and the man who strives for the noblest deeds, and what "is best for itself" and who "does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country". The latter self-loving man is clearly a horse of a different color.
Perhaps we should extend Aristotle's distinctions in self-love further. Both his ideal types are egoists, but the former is clearly a crude egoist, driven merely by "the irrational element of the soul". The other is a rational egoist, who does things for himself according to practical wisdom, in the right way for the right reason at the right time. It is invidious to call the latter an "objectionable egoist" just as it is pointless to dignify the crude selfishness of the man of appetite with the epithet "objectionable."
Perhaps, in Aristotle's time, there were no objectionable egoists. Evidently, our time is different. So who is this "objectionable egoist?" He is not the man of simple appetite; we call him a selfish bastard, and so he is. Nor is he the naïve egoist, the seeker after a successful career in business or the libertarian follower, perhaps, of Ayn Rand. Anyway such a man at least follows a rational principle, and can justify his egoism with the philosophy of sentiment from the Scottish Enlightenment. No, in our time the "objectionable egoist" can be none other than the government university professor or the liberal NGO activist. For these are people that trumpet to the world their selfless altruism while living a life of utter egoism. Nothing can be more objectionable.
Aristotle has a notion of egoism (to the extent that egoism is possible before the separation of body and mind in Descartes) rather different in mind for his eudaimonia, the life of happiness, conducted as a pursuit of virtue adding up to practical wisdom, doing the right thing in the right way for the right reason at the right time. This individual eudaimonia, Aristotle makes clear, this life of happiness, does not occur in a selfish vacuum, but in a life of full social and political connection. The good man does not love himself as a narcissist might, but in the fullness of practical wisdom, acquiring his happiness through his social contribution. The Aristotelian virtues are not what we would now call strategic or instrumental; they are social virtues, and the good man, in acquiring excellence in these virtues—at an appropriate mean between defect and excess—acquires a social excellence, a facility to contribute to the happiness of his friends not for his sake but for their sake, and to his polis because the practice of political science, next to philosophy itself, is the final end and purpose of individual virtue.
In setting up his argument in Book 1 of Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle defines "happiness" as the one thing we choose for itself, for every other good we choose "for the sake of happiness." But this happiness does not exist in a vacuum, sufficient for a solitary man, but occurs in a social context, and includes "parents, children, wife, and in general... friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship." Thus "the function of man is activity of the soul which follows or implies a rational principle", in accordance with the best and most complete virtue. And that activity extends to "a complete life."
Aristotle does not require that this happiness, this activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life, occur in a state of self-denial. He looks for a happiness issuing from a complete human flourishing, He sees happiness identified with virtue and with virtuous activity, for "in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete". And this life is "pleasant," for "the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant." Virtue, as we say, is its own reward; it "has its pleasure in itself." Aristotle does not see the world as illusion, and practical activity meaningless. He sees happiness issuing from a real life virtuously led in a real family in a real society in accordance with practical wisdom.
Aristotle does not consider that happiness comes unearned, merely as a gift from the gods, although, he twinkles, if it were a gift of the gods, it would be appropriate, "inasmuch as it is the best." Happiness, he asserts, "comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training", the "prize and end of virtue". Happiness is not something that just comes to you; it is the reward of effort and practice.
The practical ethics of Aristotle, celebrating a life of practical wisdom at the virtuous mean between excess and defect, does not satisfy those who yearn for a more salvific meaning of life. From Plato's Republic to Buddha's enlightenment to the Christian idea of poverty to the modern secular religions that define themselves against ordinary human flourishing, Aristotle's eudaimonia represents at best a low bar to aim at and at worst an "objectionable egoism." Plato calls for the destruction of the family and the raising of children by the state. Buddhism calls for a radical departure from ordinary human flourishing as the only way to overcome suffering, and Siddhartha Gautama set the tone by dumping his noble inheritance, his wife and children for a life of contemplation and teaching. Christianity called for complete separation from worldly goods and pursuits, and has ever after wobbled on the edge of an extreme asceticism that rejects the workaday world. The modern secular religions set themselves against the bourgeois ambition and domesticity. They want to bury all egoism and mobilize the entire population in the service of the state, recreating the Prussia of which Mirabeau said it was "not a state with an army, but an army with a state." Even philosophers like William James have found themselves hankering after the moral equivalent of war, celebrating a suspension of normal domestic life in the cause and excitement of moral emergency.
Whatever may be the merits of these utopian fancies, they have not delivered on their promises except when implemented as shadows of themselves. Humans as social animals combine in a mysterious mixture the selfishness of egoism and the selflessness of altruism. They serve others to serve themselves, as Adam Smith declared. Everyone understands that untrammeled egoism is derisive, but not a few imagine that social cooperation means nothing unless it means altruism. Aristotle's life of practical wisdom is a healthy mean between the extremes of selfishness and selflessness. He takes the world as it is, a world of families, of activity, of friendship and politics, and proposes a method not to transform it but to shake a little of the slackness out of it.
It is natural that the good and happy man should "be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows)". But he will not shirk his duties as a citizen in his bath of self-love. He does not live congratulating himself on his virtue, for his self-love is a consequence of his happiness, and his happiness a consequence of his living a life of practical wisdom, living the right way for the right reasons at the right time. He is consequently ready to sacrifice his equanimity "for the sake of his friends and his country", ready to "throw away both wealth and honors... gaining for himself nobility" in the activity of the soul following its rational principle.
A man of his times, Aristotle does not worry much about the happiness of women and slaves. But then what modern elitist worries that marriage is collapsing among the white working class and the minority underclass?
Thus some may criticize Aristotle's celebration of eudaimonia of the good man in a life of virtue to be "objectionably egoist."
But we should pause for a moment and consider what might be meant by "objectionable egoism." For when Aristotle speaks of "love of self" in Nichomachean Ethics IX-8 he opens the discussion only to differentiate between the self-loving man "who is grasping" with regard to "wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures" and the man who strives for the noblest deeds, and what "is best for itself" and who "does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country". The latter self-loving man is clearly a horse of a different color.
Perhaps we should extend Aristotle's distinctions in self-love further. Both his ideal types are egoists, but the former is clearly a crude egoist, driven merely by "the irrational element of the soul". The other is a rational egoist, who does things for himself according to practical wisdom, in the right way for the right reason at the right time. It is invidious to call the latter an "objectionable egoist" just as it is pointless to dignify the crude selfishness of the man of appetite with the epithet "objectionable."
Perhaps, in Aristotle's time, there were no objectionable egoists. Evidently, our time is different. So who is this "objectionable egoist?" He is not the man of simple appetite; we call him a selfish bastard, and so he is. Nor is he the naïve egoist, the seeker after a successful career in business or the libertarian follower, perhaps, of Ayn Rand. Anyway such a man at least follows a rational principle, and can justify his egoism with the philosophy of sentiment from the Scottish Enlightenment. No, in our time the "objectionable egoist" can be none other than the government university professor or the liberal NGO activist. For these are people that trumpet to the world their selfless altruism while living a life of utter egoism. Nothing can be more objectionable.
Aristotle has a notion of egoism (to the extent that egoism is possible before the separation of body and mind in Descartes) rather different in mind for his eudaimonia, the life of happiness, conducted as a pursuit of virtue adding up to practical wisdom, doing the right thing in the right way for the right reason at the right time. This individual eudaimonia, Aristotle makes clear, this life of happiness, does not occur in a selfish vacuum, but in a life of full social and political connection. The good man does not love himself as a narcissist might, but in the fullness of practical wisdom, acquiring his happiness through his social contribution. The Aristotelian virtues are not what we would now call strategic or instrumental; they are social virtues, and the good man, in acquiring excellence in these virtues—at an appropriate mean between defect and excess—acquires a social excellence, a facility to contribute to the happiness of his friends not for his sake but for their sake, and to his polis because the practice of political science, next to philosophy itself, is the final end and purpose of individual virtue.
In setting up his argument in Book 1 of Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle defines "happiness" as the one thing we choose for itself, for every other good we choose "for the sake of happiness." But this happiness does not exist in a vacuum, sufficient for a solitary man, but occurs in a social context, and includes "parents, children, wife, and in general... friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship." Thus "the function of man is activity of the soul which follows or implies a rational principle", in accordance with the best and most complete virtue. And that activity extends to "a complete life."
Aristotle does not require that this happiness, this activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life, occur in a state of self-denial. He looks for a happiness issuing from a complete human flourishing, He sees happiness identified with virtue and with virtuous activity, for "in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete". And this life is "pleasant," for "the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant." Virtue, as we say, is its own reward; it "has its pleasure in itself." Aristotle does not see the world as illusion, and practical activity meaningless. He sees happiness issuing from a real life virtuously led in a real family in a real society in accordance with practical wisdom.
Aristotle does not consider that happiness comes unearned, merely as a gift from the gods, although, he twinkles, if it were a gift of the gods, it would be appropriate, "inasmuch as it is the best." Happiness, he asserts, "comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training", the "prize and end of virtue". Happiness is not something that just comes to you; it is the reward of effort and practice.
The practical ethics of Aristotle, celebrating a life of practical wisdom at the virtuous mean between excess and defect, does not satisfy those who yearn for a more salvific meaning of life. From Plato's Republic to Buddha's enlightenment to the Christian idea of poverty to the modern secular religions that define themselves against ordinary human flourishing, Aristotle's eudaimonia represents at best a low bar to aim at and at worst an "objectionable egoism." Plato calls for the destruction of the family and the raising of children by the state. Buddhism calls for a radical departure from ordinary human flourishing as the only way to overcome suffering, and Siddhartha Gautama set the tone by dumping his noble inheritance, his wife and children for a life of contemplation and teaching. Christianity called for complete separation from worldly goods and pursuits, and has ever after wobbled on the edge of an extreme asceticism that rejects the workaday world. The modern secular religions set themselves against the bourgeois ambition and domesticity. They want to bury all egoism and mobilize the entire population in the service of the state, recreating the Prussia of which Mirabeau said it was "not a state with an army, but an army with a state." Even philosophers like William James have found themselves hankering after the moral equivalent of war, celebrating a suspension of normal domestic life in the cause and excitement of moral emergency.
Whatever may be the merits of these utopian fancies, they have not delivered on their promises except when implemented as shadows of themselves. Humans as social animals combine in a mysterious mixture the selfishness of egoism and the selflessness of altruism. They serve others to serve themselves, as Adam Smith declared. Everyone understands that untrammeled egoism is derisive, but not a few imagine that social cooperation means nothing unless it means altruism. Aristotle's life of practical wisdom is a healthy mean between the extremes of selfishness and selflessness. He takes the world as it is, a world of families, of activity, of friendship and politics, and proposes a method not to transform it but to shake a little of the slackness out of it.
It is natural that the good and happy man should "be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows)". But he will not shirk his duties as a citizen in his bath of self-love. He does not live congratulating himself on his virtue, for his self-love is a consequence of his happiness, and his happiness a consequence of his living a life of practical wisdom, living the right way for the right reasons at the right time. He is consequently ready to sacrifice his equanimity "for the sake of his friends and his country", ready to "throw away both wealth and honors... gaining for himself nobility" in the activity of the soul following its rational principle.
A man of his times, Aristotle does not worry much about the happiness of women and slaves. But then what modern elitist worries that marriage is collapsing among the white working class and the minority underclass?
Monday, March 5, 2012
Misunderstanding Charles Murray
What is it about liberals, anyway? Why did they gang-tackle Charles Murray on The Bell Curve? And why does liberal Joan Walsh of Salon miss the point of Murray's latest book, Coming Apart?
I suppose it's because she sees everything through a lens of social justice, in that everyone's position in society is a consequence of white racism, or a consequence of how much support they get from government.
The point of Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 is that the white working class are suffering many of the same pathologies as the minority underclass: a decline in marriage, an increase in single parenthood, a detachment from community organizations, and a retreat among single men from work.
The reason Murray made his book exclusively about whites was that he wanted to detach from his argument any question of racism. Folks like Joan Walsh live by the accusation of racism. If brown people are doing badly, it must be due to racism. The argument that Charles Murray wants to make is that if the white working class is experiencing increases in social pathology then something other than racism must be at work. Maybe it is government programs!
Joan Walsh lives by the notion that a Democratic majority of "the young, women, lower-income blacks, Latinos and Asians" is waiting to take over--if not this year then next. The suffering white working class could throw a wrench in the works if it votes Republican in 2012, and that would be a pity. And in due course, social justice activists will have to pay attention to their grievances.
Actually Walsh is wrong about that Democratic majority. If it forms, it would be the young, single women, all blacks, lower-income Latinos and lower-income Asians. And I'm not so sure about the young, since they have been disproportionately affected by Obamanomics and might be having second thoughts about hope and change.
But Walsh does make a telling point about white seniors. The most Republican counties are the ones that get most federal payments, "crop subsidies, housing assistance, and Medicaid payments". In other words, Republicans are all on welfare. Tea Party supporters, for instance, have no intention of giving up their Medicare, yet that is just what Paul Ryan and the Republican Party want to do; they want to end Medicare as we know it.
Will white seniors continue to support the Republican Party if it takes away their Medicare and replaces it with a fixed subsidy? Maybe that would be the issue that creates a Democratic majority.
But that would turn Joan Walsh's social justice notions on their head, because a Republican reform of Medicare would make wealthy seniors--like me--pay more. So she is hoping for a realignment based upon Republicans making Medicare more progressive?
No wonder she doesn't get the point of Coming Apart.
I suppose it's because she sees everything through a lens of social justice, in that everyone's position in society is a consequence of white racism, or a consequence of how much support they get from government.
The point of Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 is that the white working class are suffering many of the same pathologies as the minority underclass: a decline in marriage, an increase in single parenthood, a detachment from community organizations, and a retreat among single men from work.
The reason Murray made his book exclusively about whites was that he wanted to detach from his argument any question of racism. Folks like Joan Walsh live by the accusation of racism. If brown people are doing badly, it must be due to racism. The argument that Charles Murray wants to make is that if the white working class is experiencing increases in social pathology then something other than racism must be at work. Maybe it is government programs!
Joan Walsh lives by the notion that a Democratic majority of "the young, women, lower-income blacks, Latinos and Asians" is waiting to take over--if not this year then next. The suffering white working class could throw a wrench in the works if it votes Republican in 2012, and that would be a pity. And in due course, social justice activists will have to pay attention to their grievances.
The forces of social justice have always looked out for the rights and singular insights of minority populations. We’re about to have a new one to think about.And that's even though "low income white people have benefited from the long legal and extralegal history of racial subjugation and white supremacy".
Actually Walsh is wrong about that Democratic majority. If it forms, it would be the young, single women, all blacks, lower-income Latinos and lower-income Asians. And I'm not so sure about the young, since they have been disproportionately affected by Obamanomics and might be having second thoughts about hope and change.
But Walsh does make a telling point about white seniors. The most Republican counties are the ones that get most federal payments, "crop subsidies, housing assistance, and Medicaid payments". In other words, Republicans are all on welfare. Tea Party supporters, for instance, have no intention of giving up their Medicare, yet that is just what Paul Ryan and the Republican Party want to do; they want to end Medicare as we know it.
Will white seniors continue to support the Republican Party if it takes away their Medicare and replaces it with a fixed subsidy? Maybe that would be the issue that creates a Democratic majority.
But that would turn Joan Walsh's social justice notions on their head, because a Republican reform of Medicare would make wealthy seniors--like me--pay more. So she is hoping for a realignment based upon Republicans making Medicare more progressive?
No wonder she doesn't get the point of Coming Apart.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Friendliness is Not Just For Friends
Aristotle's idea of friendship is a central idea of his Nichomachean Ethics. One supposes that its importance lies in the central need of friendships that Aristotle desires in political affairs: the citizens must be friends, based on an equality of virtue and power, if they are to govern their polis successfully: "Friendship seems too to hold states together". We have seen in the United States recently how much that mistrust and the erosion of political friendships "across the aisle" have cost the nation. When partisans only desire to score points on the opposition, the national interest gets thrown under the bus.
Aristotle perceives three kinds of friendship. There are those who love for the sake of utility: the use the other person has for them. There are those who love for the sake of pleasure. But Aristotle is not much interested in that sort of friendship, for such friendships are focused on what is good for oneself, not for the other person.
"Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves." That is the kind of friendship that Aristotle believes in. As for the other kinds? They are included anyway in the perfect friendship of good equals, because good friends are naturally useful to each other and pleasant too.
One may, however, be friendly to other people without being friends. Aristotle praises friendliness as a mean of doing the right thing in the right way at the right time that lies between the extremes of obsequiousness and churlishness. Although "no name has been assigned to it" it most resembles friendship. But it is not actually friendship because "it implies no passion or affection."
It seems obvious that "in gatherings of men, in social life and the interchange of words" that a proper friendliness is appropriate. Aristotle notes that this friendliness would adapt itself according to the situation. Proper friendliness would differ: for intimates one style is appropriate, for strangers another. And Aristotle recognizes, by his extremes, that proper friendliness avoids both rudeness and fawning while recognizing that normal intercourse must involve some level of disagreement and conflict.
The template that Aristotle proposes, as a mean to avoid both giving unnecessary harm and receiving it, it the behavior that a friend might use with a friend, the natural and sensitive behavior of the good man who wishes good for the other person as they would desire it. Only, of course, in mere friendliness his virtuous man does not presume to love or hate the other.
However, Aristotle's perfect friendship is necessarily the love between equals, and the virtuous mean of friendliness applies to interactions also between unequals. Friendliness will mean different behavior from superior to inferior than from inferior to superior. In all cases, the mean of friendliness presumes behavior that is "befitting," a mean peculiar to each social situation that avoids the excess of churlishness or the defect of obsequiousness.
Aristotle perceives three kinds of friendship. There are those who love for the sake of utility: the use the other person has for them. There are those who love for the sake of pleasure. But Aristotle is not much interested in that sort of friendship, for such friendships are focused on what is good for oneself, not for the other person.
"Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves." That is the kind of friendship that Aristotle believes in. As for the other kinds? They are included anyway in the perfect friendship of good equals, because good friends are naturally useful to each other and pleasant too.
One may, however, be friendly to other people without being friends. Aristotle praises friendliness as a mean of doing the right thing in the right way at the right time that lies between the extremes of obsequiousness and churlishness. Although "no name has been assigned to it" it most resembles friendship. But it is not actually friendship because "it implies no passion or affection."
It seems obvious that "in gatherings of men, in social life and the interchange of words" that a proper friendliness is appropriate. Aristotle notes that this friendliness would adapt itself according to the situation. Proper friendliness would differ: for intimates one style is appropriate, for strangers another. And Aristotle recognizes, by his extremes, that proper friendliness avoids both rudeness and fawning while recognizing that normal intercourse must involve some level of disagreement and conflict.
The template that Aristotle proposes, as a mean to avoid both giving unnecessary harm and receiving it, it the behavior that a friend might use with a friend, the natural and sensitive behavior of the good man who wishes good for the other person as they would desire it. Only, of course, in mere friendliness his virtuous man does not presume to love or hate the other.
However, Aristotle's perfect friendship is necessarily the love between equals, and the virtuous mean of friendliness applies to interactions also between unequals. Friendliness will mean different behavior from superior to inferior than from inferior to superior. In all cases, the mean of friendliness presumes behavior that is "befitting," a mean peculiar to each social situation that avoids the excess of churlishness or the defect of obsequiousness.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
People Who Live to Intimidate
Looking at India from the outside you appreciate the venality and the brutality of politics.
There's the Indian Railways that seems to rate an editorial in the newspaper every couple of days about its failure to improve safety, its failure to invest, its failure to turn a profit. Committee after committee reports and nothing is done. I wonder why the railways only seem to carry passengers. Perhaps the railway bureaucrats aren't interested in freight.
As we drive into the big cities, there seem to be endless important buildings announcing themselves as the Institute for Agricultural Basket Weaving, or some such, and you wonder: can India really afford to be flushing money down the toilet on useless bureaucracy just like in the US? The trouble is that developing countries seem to think that they have to mirror the west to count as serious nations.
Just how serious can serious be? There are wind farms in every state we have visited. I'm sure they are just as useless as the wind farms in the US. But I am sure that their crony wind-farm capitalists have benefited many an Indian politician.
Today, February 28, is a one-day general strike by Indian unions protesting rising prices and violations of the labor laws.
Yesterday there was a piece in the paper about Prime Minister Singh accusing anti-nuclear protesters in Tamil Nadu of getting support from foreign NGOs in the US and Sweden. The protest leaders react with outrage. Oh come on, fellahs. If you don't take money and advice from the anti-nuclear chaps in the west you would be fools. Meanwhile Tamil Nadu has daily electrical blackouts while two newly-constructed nuclear units sit idle. The protest leaders say they are determined to fight for the grievances of the fisher folk near the nuclear plant.
I'm trying to think about what these radical suits want. Right now in the US they are "auctioning" off the house of Wells Fargo Bank CEO. And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is on the TV every day whacking evil Republicans. Meanwhile the left is protesting "workfare" in the UK as "slavery" and intimidating the corporations that signed up to hire welfare recipients into quitting the program.
What is it about these people? I suppose it's all about the intimidation. If they can intimidate someone, they will. Muslims excluded, of course, because Muslims don't believe in letting western radical suits, or anyone else, into intimidating them.
Intimidation. Government is force, and politics is the threat of force. So anyone in politics is someone that likes to intimidate.
There's the Indian Railways that seems to rate an editorial in the newspaper every couple of days about its failure to improve safety, its failure to invest, its failure to turn a profit. Committee after committee reports and nothing is done. I wonder why the railways only seem to carry passengers. Perhaps the railway bureaucrats aren't interested in freight.
As we drive into the big cities, there seem to be endless important buildings announcing themselves as the Institute for Agricultural Basket Weaving, or some such, and you wonder: can India really afford to be flushing money down the toilet on useless bureaucracy just like in the US? The trouble is that developing countries seem to think that they have to mirror the west to count as serious nations.
Just how serious can serious be? There are wind farms in every state we have visited. I'm sure they are just as useless as the wind farms in the US. But I am sure that their crony wind-farm capitalists have benefited many an Indian politician.
Today, February 28, is a one-day general strike by Indian unions protesting rising prices and violations of the labor laws.
Yesterday there was a piece in the paper about Prime Minister Singh accusing anti-nuclear protesters in Tamil Nadu of getting support from foreign NGOs in the US and Sweden. The protest leaders react with outrage. Oh come on, fellahs. If you don't take money and advice from the anti-nuclear chaps in the west you would be fools. Meanwhile Tamil Nadu has daily electrical blackouts while two newly-constructed nuclear units sit idle. The protest leaders say they are determined to fight for the grievances of the fisher folk near the nuclear plant.
I'm trying to think about what these radical suits want. Right now in the US they are "auctioning" off the house of Wells Fargo Bank CEO. And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is on the TV every day whacking evil Republicans. Meanwhile the left is protesting "workfare" in the UK as "slavery" and intimidating the corporations that signed up to hire welfare recipients into quitting the program.
What is it about these people? I suppose it's all about the intimidation. If they can intimidate someone, they will. Muslims excluded, of course, because Muslims don't believe in letting western radical suits, or anyone else, into intimidating them.
Intimidation. Government is force, and politics is the threat of force. So anyone in politics is someone that likes to intimidate.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Bad Science Fails Like Bad Business
Our friends in the mainstream media were eager to regale us with stories of the failure of Enron and other overleveraged corporations in the 2001-02 recession. It just showed, they said, the need for robust government regulation.
Actually, it showed nothing of the sort. It showed, if anything, that crony capitalist outfits like Enron that seek the favor of the great and the good are a menace. Enron was also making a big play in carbon offset trading.
Our liberal friends are a lot quieter about corporate corruption when we are talking about bailouts for auto companies.
The point is that, when things go south, and in this vale of tears they often do, then you will find out who are the fakes and who are the real thing.
The current moral meltdown is the FakeGate affair in which global-warming enthusiast Dr. Peter Gleick seems to have obtained internal documents from The Heartland Foundation and maybe faked an additional document to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing statement. (That's what the government employees talked about in The Mikado when they had been ordered to produce an execution).
That's what a lot of folks do when they realize that their hopes and dreams are going up in smoke. That is why J.P. Morgan told the House of Representatives a century ago that the big thing in loaning out money was the character of the person seeking a loan.
Morgan knew, as a veteran of life as well as numerous railroad bankruptcies, that when things get rough, a lot of good people get tempted to cheat.
Let us turn this around. When you see a lot of cheating going on then you know that things are going wrong.
Everyone makes a mistake. Everyone misreads the weather forecast. Anyone can hit an iceberg. But not everyone shoulders aside the women and children in order to get a seat in a lifeboat.
But we are getting close to Goldfinger's Rule in the climate racket. Climategate, you may say, was Happenstance. Fakegate, you may claim, is Coincidence. But one more warmist-gate means Enemy Action, Mr. Bond.
Actually, it showed nothing of the sort. It showed, if anything, that crony capitalist outfits like Enron that seek the favor of the great and the good are a menace. Enron was also making a big play in carbon offset trading.
Our liberal friends are a lot quieter about corporate corruption when we are talking about bailouts for auto companies.
The point is that, when things go south, and in this vale of tears they often do, then you will find out who are the fakes and who are the real thing.
The current moral meltdown is the FakeGate affair in which global-warming enthusiast Dr. Peter Gleick seems to have obtained internal documents from The Heartland Foundation and maybe faked an additional document to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing statement. (That's what the government employees talked about in The Mikado when they had been ordered to produce an execution).
That's what a lot of folks do when they realize that their hopes and dreams are going up in smoke. That is why J.P. Morgan told the House of Representatives a century ago that the big thing in loaning out money was the character of the person seeking a loan.
Morgan knew, as a veteran of life as well as numerous railroad bankruptcies, that when things get rough, a lot of good people get tempted to cheat.
Let us turn this around. When you see a lot of cheating going on then you know that things are going wrong.
Everyone makes a mistake. Everyone misreads the weather forecast. Anyone can hit an iceberg. But not everyone shoulders aside the women and children in order to get a seat in a lifeboat.
But we are getting close to Goldfinger's Rule in the climate racket. Climategate, you may say, was Happenstance. Fakegate, you may claim, is Coincidence. But one more warmist-gate means Enemy Action, Mr. Bond.
Friday, February 24, 2012
On the Road to Ooty
To get from Coimbatore in South India up to Ooty, the old hill-station for the Madras Presidency, you climb up a fierce switchback road into the Nilgiri Hills, famous for its tea plantations. The grade is steep, the switchbacks are endless, with some hairpin bends so tight that buses must go into the right lane, in the path of opposing traffic, in order to make the bend. Sometimes there's a truck coming in the opposite direction and it doesn't stop in time to give the bus the full use of both lanes. So everyone toots their horn; someone gets out and directs traffic, and eventually the truck backs up, the bus makes the turn, and the great hustle and bustle of the Indian roads resumes.
And what a bustle it is. There are buses everywhere carrying people from anywhere to everywhere. There are the ubiquitious Indian trucks, three axle jobs, and usually dreadfully underpowered by US standards. But hey, what's the problem, the traffic on the National Highways seldom goes faster than 80 kph. Then there are cars darting in and out: they generally want to pass the slow trucks and buses, but there isn't always room to pass if tuk-tuks and motor-cycles are coming in the opposite direction. No problem, you just toot your horn and expect the motor-cycles to jam over to give you room. In the cities, of course, the motor-cycles form a flood tide of traffic, forever flowing around and in-between the bigger four-wheeled vehicles.
India is on the move; everyone is driving or riding somewhere, and if not they are building something. Construction is ubiquitous and construction materials litter the side of the road. Advertising appears everywhere; if large diameter pipe is left very long, it soon sports advertising.
Highway construction is ripping swathes through the countryside. Houses are condemned and torn down: sometimes a building only partly intrudes on the right-of-way and is only partly demolished. Culverts and bridges are built right across the existing road and the traffic flows off to the side and around the new concrete structures under construction. When it's all built, each National Highway is a four-lane divided highway, with plenty of at-grade crossings. But it is no longer an upgraded country lane meandering up and down and around, but a real engineered highway with steady grades, embankments and cuttings: that unmistakable mechanical Newtonian look and feel. At the toll plazas one of the many signboards lists the dignitaries exempt from payment.
When we get up to Ooty, after negotiating the hair-pin bends and the trucks and the buses and the cars and the motor-cycles and the vehicles stopped by the side of the road unloading something, we find that the old hill-station is a major tourist destination for Indians. Just the place for a weekend getaway from Bangalore or Mumbai. And when tourist season fades during the monsoon it's time for honeymoons--for yes, Indians like getting married in the rain, as Monsoon Wedding testified a while back.
Our guide tells us that Indians like to have their photos taken with western tourists, and when we go into the Ooty Botanical Gardens we understand what he means. Young Indian men just love to get Marjorie and me into a group photo with them and their pals. Sometimes one of them takes the picture; sometimes the guide does it.
Marjorie spies two twenty-ish girls wearing exactly the same black and white pattern. Are they sisters? No, just friends, and it's time for photos all round again.
This is a glorious time in India. A rising tide is floating all boats, and India is full of its possibilities.
And what a bustle it is. There are buses everywhere carrying people from anywhere to everywhere. There are the ubiquitious Indian trucks, three axle jobs, and usually dreadfully underpowered by US standards. But hey, what's the problem, the traffic on the National Highways seldom goes faster than 80 kph. Then there are cars darting in and out: they generally want to pass the slow trucks and buses, but there isn't always room to pass if tuk-tuks and motor-cycles are coming in the opposite direction. No problem, you just toot your horn and expect the motor-cycles to jam over to give you room. In the cities, of course, the motor-cycles form a flood tide of traffic, forever flowing around and in-between the bigger four-wheeled vehicles.
India is on the move; everyone is driving or riding somewhere, and if not they are building something. Construction is ubiquitous and construction materials litter the side of the road. Advertising appears everywhere; if large diameter pipe is left very long, it soon sports advertising.
Highway construction is ripping swathes through the countryside. Houses are condemned and torn down: sometimes a building only partly intrudes on the right-of-way and is only partly demolished. Culverts and bridges are built right across the existing road and the traffic flows off to the side and around the new concrete structures under construction. When it's all built, each National Highway is a four-lane divided highway, with plenty of at-grade crossings. But it is no longer an upgraded country lane meandering up and down and around, but a real engineered highway with steady grades, embankments and cuttings: that unmistakable mechanical Newtonian look and feel. At the toll plazas one of the many signboards lists the dignitaries exempt from payment.
When we get up to Ooty, after negotiating the hair-pin bends and the trucks and the buses and the cars and the motor-cycles and the vehicles stopped by the side of the road unloading something, we find that the old hill-station is a major tourist destination for Indians. Just the place for a weekend getaway from Bangalore or Mumbai. And when tourist season fades during the monsoon it's time for honeymoons--for yes, Indians like getting married in the rain, as Monsoon Wedding testified a while back.
Our guide tells us that Indians like to have their photos taken with western tourists, and when we go into the Ooty Botanical Gardens we understand what he means. Young Indian men just love to get Marjorie and me into a group photo with them and their pals. Sometimes one of them takes the picture; sometimes the guide does it.
Marjorie spies two twenty-ish girls wearing exactly the same black and white pattern. Are they sisters? No, just friends, and it's time for photos all round again.
This is a glorious time in India. A rising tide is floating all boats, and India is full of its possibilities.
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