o666lai

[o666lai]

Work to live, live to work?

I’ve been feeling this way for decades, but the last couple of months, slowing down, working at my own pace and on my own terms, have brought it into sharper focus and I don't think I'm alone in this. The overall feeling can be summed up as: there's got to be more to life than work as a primary purpose, than a career with sprinkled extracurricular activities; of course, we need to engage in some activity to feed ourselves, to survive and even thrive. 10 000 years ago, we would go hunt and/or gather, and then we started specialising and bartering the fruits of our labour. Along the way, we started creating things that were not necessary for our survival but made our lives richer, more interesting, we might even say we were compelled to create. Before agriculture, before the invention of money and cities, we were already painting, making music, dancing, and then later literature, perspective, polyphony, conceptual art, theories about gravity, evolution, wave functions and cosmology. Creating new things, new knowledge, new objects requires energy. It requires input and effort and it also requires the dissipation of this energy, as waste and failed attempts; entropy as it were. But the work generated is and should be means to a specific end, whatever that is.

But for the last two decades (for me, though I'm sure it goes back further than that), it feels that work has become something else. It has become the goal in and of itself, a necessity, an empty obligation. We work without question, without questioning whether what we do even has meaning, whether it is useful, whether it helps a common cause or serves a purpose. In many cases it's actually backwards: we engage in some line of work and attach meaning to it to justify the sacrifices it requires of us. And if there was a logic to it, all this work should generate more satisfaction or prosperity for us, but objectively our lives are not really getting any better. It feels as if we are asked to become more productive, more competitive, running faster and faster, and yet we remain in the same place socially and economically, we struggle to get promoted or to get ahead in some way. And why would we even want or need to get ahead (in contrast to the Japanese concept of ikigai, or the dudeist "underachiever")? Because we worry that if we don't, we'll get left behind, we'll lose the little security we have gained with our employment. And spiritually, emotionally, psychically, we are regressing. We experience anguish, depression, insecurity at the mere thought of our existence. We have to pay the price of admission to the ride of life, that none of us asked for in the first place. If we don't pay to play, we risk getting kicked off... Where's the justice, where's the fairness, where's the compassion in that?

But surely, this is not what life is about? Surely, we are being fooled and manipulated, living in fear that if we stop being productive, there'll be no safety net, we will slip through the cracks, and worst of all… the insidious feeling that we'll have deserved it. Is it really any wonder that there is such prevalent dissent to returning to normal, when normal is so widely perceived to be the problem? However, what such a platitude reveals is that there is so very little hope to break the cycle of this Calvinist work ethic that we seem to have bought into. We embrace the shackles that enslave us to our work, and until we are ready to radically break away from the promises of salvation through individual security and exclusive prosperity, we will not be able to address the root cause of our predicament. The fact of the matter is that we are being held hostage by greed. Those who own the wealth and capital, financial markets and shareholders need us, require us to keep being productive to increase their wealth. Do you think I exaggerate when I say that we are held hostage? Consider this: when things are going well, profits, dividends are generously distributed to the shareholders, not the people who are actually generating the wealth, that's the agreement, unfair as it may be. But when things stop going so well, as with the current crisis, then the real economy, the one where real jobs are being cut, is expected to bear the burden. If we are not even more productive, if we don’t cut into social programs, if we don't make up the lost GDP of the first quarter, it is small businesses that go bankrupt and workers and employees that get massively laid off, all the while dividends are still being paid out*. But does it have to be this way? Why can't the financial markets play their part and inject some their capital back into the real economy to support it, by prompting spending and preventing massive foreclosures and layoffs? There's nothing written in stone to say it can't be done, that they can't act in solidarity. But no, the sad truth is that it's just the inherent avarice of capitalism that would rather bring the whole economy down with it, rather than redistribute some of its surplus. In that sense, the real economy is held hostage by financial markets. If the same rules were to apply in times of crisis as in times of prosperity, logically we should let financial markets fail and not bail the banks out. But how can we do this without inflicting hurt on ourselves? We need either massive solidarity for all the people who will lose their jobs and their income while the financial markets collapse, or we need a political revolution that is willing to massively tax wealth and radically reduce inequality. Honestly, I don't know which one seems the least impossible. *https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-corporatelayoffs-a/u-s-companies-criticized-for-cutting-jobs-rather-than-investor-payouts-idUSKBN21Q24Z

[o666lai]

Uncertainties of the world, unite!

Life in uncertain times is not easy.

If we know one thing with absolute certainty, it's that there is nothing that we know with absolute certainty (apart from that - whew, just avoided a paradox there!). Good science is the closest we can get to knowing things, but scientific prediction of future events is also limited; in parts due to the limited and approximate nature of our theories, but even more fundamentally, due to the complex nature of the world around us. Some theories, such as gravity, have beautiful predictive power, sometimes to great comedic effect when there's a banana peel involved, sometimes more profoundly, accurately forecasting solar and lunar eclipses with the precision of clockwork. But even with such a attractive theory, we cannot predict the dynamical fate of the solar system beyond a few ten million years; not knowing all the asteroids and other objects zooming around the solar system, we are powerless to predict collisions of celestial bodies, some of which could be of great consequence to us. Evolution, an elegant theory, illustrates why this is so with limpid clarity: although it explains so much of the diversity and ingenuity we see around us in the natural world, it is impossible to predict what future species will look like, because they will depend on the environment in which they'll evolve, that they will themselves modify.

Living with so much uncertainty is not easy. We evolved to be able to predict the future based on past events, and are at a loss when we have no predictive frame of reference. This is brought into sharp focus with the current pandemic. Will there be a second wave if we lift quarantines and lockdowns? What is the right approach to containing this virus, what is the tolerable amount of death versus the risk of economic collapse and anguish that will come from mass unemployment? Should borders be opened up, what restrictions should be imposed on traveling, when will we get to see our loved ones again? Nobody truly knows the answers to these questions and a pretty good rule of thumb would probably be not to trust anyone who claims to have absolute answers. This level of certainty reveals that their opinions come from principles or dogma, which are dangerous, in that they are impervious to recalibration, when new facts, data or information come to light. One way to navigate these uncertain times is to recognise opinions for what they are, irrespective of the eminence or vehemence of those who possess them. The problem then becomes that there are simply too many opinions, too many options; we are facing an infinitely complex world and yearning for some certainty, or at least some clarity. Some of us wish for a better, fairer world where we realise that "my pain is no different from yours", some others of us see the natural world as competitive and fundamentally unfair and make that the basis for the society they want to live in. Some others recognise that while our society is not fair, it's not that bad and can be improved gradually, incrementally, while yet others feel a sense of urgency that requires upheaval and systemic cataclysm. In truth, most of us wish for all these things at different times, in cycles of hope and frustration. I sometimes want to laugh at the world, and I often also get disheartened to the point that I want to cry but there are rare moments when I see it for what it is, an uncertain, complex canvas, constantly evolving, of which we are simply a part of and I feel a bit of peace.

Be that as it may, with so many opinions we end up infinitely divided, arguing about whether we are too radical, or not radical enough, and did you see this study, read that article, watch this documentary. A good debate is profoundly human and useful, but this level of debate is leading to effective paralysis, without even touching on the distracting noise coming from the White House. Infinitely divided, we are powerless, but on the opposite bleachers, speaking in unison, the powerful and ultra rich are not, they have a clear goal, to maintain their grip on their wealth and the inequality that it rests upon. They want us to get back to normal and get us all back to work as quickly as possible, and hope that financial markets will withstand these crises. They have certainty, based on economic and political principles, pitting us versus them. Will we be able to find a common voice to oppose them, or will we keep squabbling while they go to the bank, laughing...

[o666lai]

Addicts have a lot to teach us

I was going to write about the national debt and why it should be erased, but today I went to the local store to get our weekly food supply and what I saw made me question the relevance of such a post. Indeed, all the safety measures seemed to have dissipated, no maximum number of people inside the store, about two thirds of the people without masks (most of them older ladies - for those who know the South of France, they are not cute little old ladies, they are terrifying), no safety distance between people to get to items on the shelves. And yet we are still more than 12 days away from the official “deconfinement” in France on May 11th.

First of all, the date of May 11th was decided almost three weeks ago, and the government is set on maintaining it. Why? Why not take a pragmatic approach and decide to introduce deconfinement measures when it is safe to do so and more importantly when the means of tracking the infection are in place. I think the answer is to be found in the fact that the government in France has lost a lot of support and credibility in the way it has dealt with the mask situation in early March. A quick recap: since the mid-2000s the national stockpile was supposed to be a billion masks for the general population. Over the course of the 2010s, it dwindled as stocks were not replenished, and last year, only 100 million masks were left, all set to expire, with no plans to replace them. All this is documented*, and yet may not be the most important aspect of the story, which is how the government claimed (in early March) that masks were ineffective and therefore not required. This was (rightly, I believe) interpreted as a move to buy time to restock, to not draw attention to (or be held liable for) the policy of not renewing the national stock and to have to deal with its immediate consequences. The effect was the opposite, the government lost more credibility than if it had been transparent and admitted past problems and focused on ways to solve them, which it eventually did with a lot of obfuscation.

But back to May 11th. It seems that choosing such a date and sticking to it without a pragmatic reassessment of the situation is primarily designed to give the impression of competence, and to prioritise restarting the economy at all costs, you know, to "make up for lost GDP in the first quarter", as it were. Sticking to the plan and rushing forward is also a way to not look back at the mishandling of the start of the pandemic. But to be able to stick to this calendar and the narrative that we will be ready to return to a slightly altered normal (voluntary social distancing, voluntary masks, etc.), the government also has to downplay the risks when the truth is that there is still a lot more that we don't know about this virus than we do know (in particular, its effects on kidneys, blood and brain in are chilling**). Don't get me wrong, I am glad that the government is calling for individual responsibility to slow the spread, and there is absolutely no need to stoke a sense of panic. But it is the lack of pragmatic assessment and the downplay narrative that worry me.

From what I saw at the store this morning, it appears that the effect of the government’s narrative is that people are behaving as if it's behind us, and it's no big deal, a flu, maybe a bit worse, but whatever. I fear that when an inevitable second wave will hit us, it will be even more difficult to contain since the government has demonstrated it is unwilling to learn the lessons of the past, mainly because it would reveal petty politics and incompetence. A sad reality seems to be that rulers of all shades care after their own to maintain their grip on power.

Finally, the rush to return to normal in the name of the restoring the economy has lowered my level of hope that we will be able to change anything in our relationship to our growth- and inequality-based economy. We will be asked to be even more productive in the next few months to make up for lost GDP, cramming into public transport, all the while not being allowed to congregate in groups of more than 10 people, insidiously killing the right to protest and demonstrate the policies that led to this situation in the first place. I've often wondered if we, as a species are capable of changing our course of action before it's too late, before we hit the proverbial wall. Our addiction to consumerism and perpetual growth seems to far outweigh any concerns that there is a wall and that we are even headed for it. But maybe therein lies the answer and addicts (I should know) have a lot to teach us about this question: It's not before we hit rock bottom that we are capable of admitting our problem and starting the process of change.

*https://www.liberation.fr/france/2020/04/27/masques-comment-le-gouvernement-a-menti-pour-dissimuler-le-fiasco_1786585   * https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus-kill-clinicians-trace-ferocious-rampage-through-body-brain-toes

[o666lai]

Financial markets have to fail.

During the lockdown, the notion that we can't go back to normal, that normal was the problem, has been flourishing. While I believe this to be true, I am concerned because there is little in the way of what the alternative should be and how to make it happen. Specifically, I am deeply worried because if we can't even imagine what this world - that we know we desperately need - ought to look like, there will be a vacuum that authoritarians will be quick to fill. We can see it already, with the EPA loosening regulations for polluting industries, with Blackrock positioning itself to advise the EU environmental, social and governance policies, with governments slowly but inexorably implementing regressive and repressive "solutions".

So what exactly made the past normal so toxic and so detrimental to our well-being, that this pause is experienced as a time to take care of ourselves, reflect and give a voice to this malaise. Part of the answer lies in the frenetic pace imposed by the permanent growth and increased productivity dictated by the free markets. Even before the covid-19 crisis and the lockdown, we were at a breaking point, especially as the increased wealth created by our ever-growing economy was not redistributed to the people generating it, and the fallacy of the invisible hand of the free market was becoming apparent. Resources are finite, human work output and productivity reach a point when they become incompressible but our financial system still require more growth to sustain themselves. Endless growth on a finite planet is bound to lead to catastrophe.

What drives this growth? Investors only buy stocks if they can make a profit (otherwise what would be the point?). The value of stocks increases if a company is expected to do well and has good prospects. But let us be clear, this is based only speculation and past a certain point, investment in stocks does not directly benefit the company itself since the dividends are paid to the shareholders. Money from the real economy flows into financial markets, but rarely the other way around. As billionaires get richer, they suck the real economy of any wealth it generates. The real economy has to then produce more for less to feed the profits and dividends of shareholders. For workers and employees, it’s a Red Queen scenario, where you have to run faster to barely manage to stay in the same place.

It is easy to manipulate the price of stocks, in all legality, to increase shareholders profits because they are not tied to the services or products of the company. Although I know this sounds preposterous, an obvious example of this can be found in the airline industry, which benefitted from large bailouts after the 2008 recession. Airlines used the $45 billion of bailout money ($45 000 000 000) to buy back their own stock (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/u-s-airlines-spent-96-of-free-cash-flow-on-buybacks-chart), thereby artificially increasing the value of their shares by making them more scarce on the market. Furthermore, since CEOs have large stock options, this was a nice little way to give themselves huge indirect bonuses. But can anyone honestly say that services improved in the travel industry in the 2010s? If airlines had been responsible, they could have used the bailout money to invest in their product, for example by improving the work conditions of their employees or the comfort of the passengers or the infrastructure required to handle increasing numbers of travellers; or they could have saved some of the bailout money to prepare for a future when travel would inevitably become more difficult; or even invested in ways to improve their environmental footprint and reducing their carbon impact. But no: instead they gave themselves and their shareholders dividends and bonuses by manipulating and buying back their stocks, at the expense of everyone else, society, travellers, customers, employees. There is no reason to believe that they will act any differently in the coming economic crisis: in the US, airlines are being bailed out by the government to the tune of $58 billion ($58 000 000 000), but United Airlines is already warning its employees that there will be lay-offs starting in October. Bailout money is tax money, it's literally us funding them, with no strings attached, no say in how this bailout money should be used. But have they not lost their credibility, and more importantly our trust? The most revolting aspect of capitalism that our current crisis is revealing is how expendable workers are to the shareholders: "late capitalism has always been a death cult. The tiny-minded incompetents in charge cannot handle a problem that can’t be fixed simply by sacrificing poor, vulnerable, and otherwise expendable individuals. Faced with a crisis they can’t solve with violence, they dithered and whined and wasted time that can and will be counted in corpses. There has been no vision, because these men never imagined the future beyond the image of themselves on top of the human heap, cast in gold. For weeks, the speeches from podiums have suggested that a certain amount of brutal death is a reasonable price for other people to pay to protect the current financial system." (https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-apocalypse-myths/)

People who have money set aside, who have disposable income, believe it's their natural right (it is, after all, the basic tenet of capitalism) to use that money to make more money, to let the money do the work for them. And the more disposable income is available, the more money can be made for nothing, just by speculation. But owning stocks does not contribute to the real economy, it does not generate goods or services. In fact, quite the opposite: the people doing the work and producing the wealth of shareholders are being asked to make more sacrifices by working more, producing more, for equal (or lower if adjusted for inflation) pay, while the fruit of their labor gets reinvested in stocks. If that seems not only wrong, but also immoral, then the only answer is to refuse to bail financial markets out, to let the stock markets crash, despite the unavoidable collateral damage*. Make no mistake, the collateral damage will be even worse if we do bail them out: austerity, with increased taxes and fewer social benefits (such as retirement, social security, healthcare for all). Investors got themselves into this mess, it's time for them to pay the price. When things are going well, they want to keep their fortunes to themselves, but when things take a downturn, they demand that taxpayers bail them out. This has to change and we have to let them deal with the consequences when their investments fail. After all, they took a risk putting money in the speculative stocks, and losing is an integral part of the deal.

This can only be implemented by demanding changes in current laws and regulations, and it will not be easy. Governments are begging companies not to pay out dividends or using buy backs of their shares, but will this be enough? Billionaires and their lobbyists have too much invested to give up their bloated cash cow easily. We will have to mobilise and demand the change that will make the new normal different from the old one. Strikes, especially in unsafe sanitary work conditions, is a way to demand this change. Solidarity, especially for people who will lose their employment or their retirement as a consequence of failing markets, will also be required. Governments need to step in to nationalise essential services. The climate crisis will be monumentally more devastating than the current covid-19 pandemic. Are we, as a society, going to be able to learn from this warning?

*I will address the collateral damage, especially retirement funds in a next post.

[o666lai]

Global recession and financial markets

Not exactly sure how to put this thought into precise words. But bear with me... Financial markets are a speculative investment, essentially wealth that is in surplus, and used to "gamble" and make a profit. The profit is only possible if there is growth of the economy, yet the profit is expected and thus is the engine for this perpetual growth. Now I understand that a lot of retirement funds are in stocks so it’s not as if all that money is surplus, outside of the real economy. But when individuals have obscene (and I do mean obscene, see below) amounts of money, and they invest it in financial markets and expect growth, motivated by profit, let's not forget, isn’t it time to start questioning the moral dimension of the financial markets? Economists are projecting for the real economy to suffer more than during the 1929 crash, with possible unemployment rates of up to 30% for Europe and US. I can't even start imagining the impact for Africa and emerging nations, hopefully, some will be more resilient because less dependent on growth and greed, but maybe that wishful thinking in a globalised and connected economy. Yet, would the world's richest people rather let the world burn than stop making a profit? There are now 2,816 billionaires in the world with wealth of $11.2 trillion. $11 trillion= $11 000 000 000 000.  Who needs a billion dollars? Whose job or contribution to society is SO important that they deserve one billion dollars? Ok, so maybe they contribute to society through philanthropy, maybe... not that all of them do, or if they do it often is to avoid paying taxes, and/or they can invest in subjects of their choosing, like colonising Mars for a select few while the Earth burns and the rest of us are stuck on it. In that context, how much does Jeff Bezos, with a wealth of $140 billion, give back to society? Bill Gates may be the exception, but does he need or deserve $106 billion; he's going to build 7 factories to develop coronavirus vaccines faster than governments could, he claims. But how many years of public research on coronavirus vaccines could have been funded with taxes equivalent to that donation? But as Noam Chomsky says "There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe." If the upcoming crisis is going to be as bad as economists are forecasting, it is worth remembering that the real economy (wages, jobs, unemployment, pensions, health care, etc.) does not benefit as much from financial markets during times of growth and prosperity as much as financial markets hurt the real economy in times of crisis. I don't know what the answer is, and I don't want to sound Marxist but the level of inequality that capitalism has led to in the last 40 years is simply unbearable.