Failure

These are depressing, frustrating times for a lot of people. Those of us with a progressive perspective on things tend to feel especially thwarted. For those of you who see your place in this country as being shackled to huge muscular moron bent on destruction, self and otherwise, I offer a real life parable.

Just about anybody who has had a high school education in this country has read the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. The second version, that is. No copy of the first version survives. We only know of it by reading the commentary of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.

Apparently it was a major piece of crap.

And a flop.

One line became a running gag among the wags of Elizabethan London. As far as we can tell, Shakespeare had a much more prominent role for the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who popped up like a white-powdered jack-in-the-box and recited the line “Hamlet, revenge!” ad nauseam. Young Bill was a theatrical joke. (Steven Spielberg learned this lesson during the previews of Jaws. The mechanical shark leapt and chomped so regularly in the first cut that people started to giggle at it.)

So, Shakespeare got discouraged, went back to Stratford on Avon to take up his father’s glove-making business, and didn’t go on to become the greatest dramatist in the history of the English language.

Oh, and for those of you who believe that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays (despite the fact that he died before ten of them ever were produced): That was when Eddie said “Sod it” and went back to pederasty, sucking up to the Queen, flogging the servants, and whatever else passed for light entertainment among the nobility.

John Holt, in his excellent book How Children Fail, wrote that babies have no concept of failure. A child tries to learn to walk by repeated failed attempts. The kid grabs on to something, wobbles to an upright position, lets go, and falls on its ass. Then it does this again. And again. Eventually it manages a few steps, and pretty soon you have to keep a constant eye on the kid. No baby ever decided that it was a worthless failure and spent the rest of its life crawling.

Granted, there is physical and physiological reality. People with a higher percentage of slow twitch muscles will make better marathoners. Good luck with that perpetual motion machine. But within the bounds of natural talent, physical capability, and the laws of physics there is a lot of room for maneuvering.

There was a kid at my school who had what professionals might call a “defiant oppositional” problem. Ok, he had a hell of an attitude. When someone told him he had to do something and he really didn’t want to comply he would say, “All I gotta do is die.” In a way it is a concise piece of existential wisdom. The only real restrictions on your life are the laws of physics and the resulting chemical processes that end in your eventual death. Everything else is cultural programming, personal preference, and the consequences that you are willing to live with. Or, to put it another way, the most high security prison in the world is between your ears.

And no, I’m not one of those dupes who paid good money for “The Secret” and are wasting their time trying to wish things into existence. I’ll quote someone with a better attitude, a neighbor of mine: “The harder I work and the smarter I act, the luckier I get.”

Failure is a momentary condition. Life is an ongoing condition. Take a lesson from Shakespeare and keep going.

Sneering at the French

I am still getting emails with snide jokes about the French. You’d think that since the re-revision of the congressional cafeteria menu from Freedom Fries back to French Fries, that whole thing would have died away.

If we are to dislike the French, then let us do so on a realistic basis: envy rather than condescension. How should we envy the French?

First, on the basis of the situation that started it all. The French are not mired down in Iraq. They thought that the WMD claims were nonsense, that Iraq was contained, and that the invasion was a bad idea. It turns out they were right. (Note: Some of us on this side of the Atlantic realized this at the time as well.) Their government is not bankrupting itself into the pockets of corrupt contractors. Their army is not being stretched to the breaking point. There are a couple of thousand French troops in Afghanistan, a few thousand sprinkled around Africa and South America, and a few thousand unfortunates stationed on islands in the Caribbean. The rest of the French Army is stationed in France, smoking Gauloises and looking cool in designer uniforms.

Free time.

The French take five-week paid vacations. Yes, five weeks, when most Americans fight for two. There would be a crippling general strike in France if this were reduced to four. I have heard that the French lunch hour has actually been reduced to an hour in some cases, but they still drink wine with the meal. Somehow, their economy survives. Please note that in a list including even moderately industrialized countries, only the U.S. has no minimum required paid vacation time. The Finns get seven weeks off from making our cellphones – envy them more.

Decent food.

The French simply would not accept the swill that is shoveled at Americans over Formica counters. France is a country with four hundred varieties of cheese, innumerable vineyards, and artisanal bakers on every corner. The French have specialty and sub-specialty shops dealing in what we would consider gourmet foodstuffs but what they consider the very least a civilized person could expect. Sure, there are McDonalds, but even their McDonalds are better than ours.

Better health.

The World Health Organization rates the U.S. healthcare system (if you could call it that) 37th, right ahead of Slovenia and just behind Costa Rica. France? Numero un. (Number one.) Even with all that rich food (see above) they have a higher average life expectancy. Their death rate from heart disease is 63% lower than ours, despite a higher rate of animal fat consumption. Some researchers think that all that wine drinking might protect their hearts.

The American Dream.

This is the kicker. There is a measure studied by sociologists called intergenerational income mobility. This is the mathematical relationship between the income of one generation and the next. If this is 1, it means that parental income absolutely determines the income of the next generation and there is no upward mobility whatsoever. If it is 0, then there is no parent/child income relationship, indicating an absolutely socioeconomically fluid society. France beats us at what is supposedly our own game, 0.36 to 0.61. A young French person has a far better chance than a young American of earning more than his or her parents.

The French are ahead of us in many ways, including our much vaunted social mobility. The facts of French life throw American exceptionalism back in our faces. For the flag-waving set this must be exceptionally painful. And then, of course, there is their condescension towards us. Perhaps well deserved.

Carbon Currency

I just found an interesting speech by the Rt. Hon. David Miliband MP. Over in the UK they seem to be far ahead of us on the issue of climate change. In his speech Mr. Miliband proposes an idea that has been around in one form or another for over a decade – a carbon currency. His interests in this concept, aside from the end result of limiting carbon dioxide emissions, are those of fairness and flexibility. There are fledgling carbon trading markets for large utilities, but Miliband wants to bring it down to the 44% of carbon emissions that result from personal choices about energy use.

Imagine if every adult in the U.S. had an extra account at his or her bank. Every year the government would deposit into this account a certain number of carbon credits. When buying gasoline, diesel, heating oil, propane, natural gas, or electricity, each person would have to withdraw from that account and transfer carbon credits into the account of the company selling the energy. The company would then transfer the credits back to the government on the basis of the amount of fuel or electricity sold.

The transfer could be built into gas company credit cards. People could write checks from the account to the local utility. The U.S. mint could even issue carbon notes, much like our present currency, for people who want to make cash transactions. It could become a second national currency.

As long as someone stayed under the carbon limit there would be no negative financial impact. People who ride bikes to work or drive small hybrid cars could sell their extra carbon credits to people who want to drive large cars. People could retrofit their houses for energy efficiency and sell their extra carbon credits to pay for the work. Over time, as people adjust to the new pay-as-you-go carbon reality, we could reduce the number of carbon credits allocated per year. Certain noble (and solvent) individuals might forgo the potential income and retire their extra carbon credits.

Of course, commercial entities and industry would be on the same kind of budget. There would be transaction costs, but most of these transactions could be automatic and electronic. When you pay your power bill, some of your carbon credits could auto-deposit into PowerCo’s account. When PowerCo contracts with NaturalgasCo for 500 million cubic feet, the carbon credits would shift from account to account, and thence to the national stockpile, to be reissued the following year.

It is a radical proposal, and not just in its restriction on emissions. It is a pay-as-you-go system, a system that makes our personal impact on the planet tangible. Right now we can burn fossil fuels without being forced to think in a quantifiable way about the damage we are inflicting on the environment. A carbon currency would be valuable for the general change in mindset as much as the decrease in carbon emissions.

Francois Bigot, meet Kellog, Brown, & Root

I just read an interesting book, titled “1759” and subtitled “The year Britain became master of the world.” The author, Frank McLynn, explores the conflicts between Britain, France, and the other major European powers through the lens of that one eventful year. 1759 was four years into what we in the U.S. call the French and Indian War, and what the rest of the world calls the Seven Years War. One of the fronts he covers is New France, now known as Canada. The colony of New France was governed by several officials more recommended for their connections at court than their competence or honesty. (Does this sound familiar?) The outstanding scoundrel was the Finance Minister and Intendant (military supply officer) of New France, Francois Bigot. He controlled a web of corruption from the top to the bottom of the supply chain. To quote Mr. McLynn:

“A favourite wheeze was importing provisions from Bordeaux (where Bigot's corrupt partners had a trading company) on the grounds that there were food shortages in Canada. Since prices were higher in Canada, there were already profits to be made, but Bigot increased his profit margins by escaping import duties: he simply had his officials at the customs house wave the goods through as the King's personal stores and therefore exempt from duty. The stores were then sold back to the government and the military at inflated prices fixed by edict, often with other rogues taking cuts along the way: the first buyer would make a profit, then the second, until finally `the King' bought at a grotesquely distorted high price. One transaction netted Bigot and his associates twelve million francs: they bought for eleven million and managed to sell for twenty-three million.

But there was simply no end to the defalcation and embezzlement of which the ‘Bigot ring’ was capable. Bigot liked to force farmers to part with grain at a fixed, low price on pain of confiscation, on the grounds that they were ‘hoarding’, then sell to the highest bidder when dearth or famine threatened. He would bribe officers at the military forts to sign for, say; two million francs of goods, then deliver one million and pocket the difference. He bought up boats for military purposes, then leased them to the King at high prices. A favourite scam was cheating France's Indian allies. Let us suppose that Bigot had raised an invoice allowing him to give gifts to 2000 Indians. First, `payroll padding' would be employed, for there would be just 500 Indians, not 2,000. Then Bigot would charge the highest prices and sell one-third of the gifts to the tribes, keeping the other two--thirds as ‘perks’. Another dodge was to employ free labour in the form of boatmen, drivers and porters in return for a rear's exemption from military duty; then charge the government for their wages. All the time Bigot enjoyed the protection of Vaudreuil, who in turn was a beneficiary of the corruption.”

248 years later we find ourselves in Iraq, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on food, fuel, ammunition, vehicles, and housing. We have machine guns, not muskets, and helicopters instead of horses, but the categories of need are much the same. Alas, so are the categories of corruption. To term it a hog trough would be to slander good swine. Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article in Rolling Stone on the subject, which was reprinted online at Alternet. A few choice excerpts:

“Like most contractors, Custer Battles was on a cost-plus arrangement, which means its profits were guaranteed to rise with its spending. But according to testimony by officials and former employees, the partners also charged the government millions by making out phony invoices to shell companies they controlled. In another stroke of genius, they found a bunch of abandoned Iraqi Airways forklifts on airport property, repainted them to disguise the company markings and billed them to U.S. taxpayers as new equipment.”

“The company [KBR] has been exposed by whistle-blowers in numerous Senate hearings for everything from double-charging taxpayers for $617,000 worth of sodas to overcharging the government 600 percent for fuel shipments. When things went wrong, KBR simply scrapped expensive gear: The company dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they were too short, and left the Army no choice but to set fire to a supply truck that had a flat tire. ‘They did not have the proper wrench to change the tire,’ an Iraq vet named Richard Murphy told investigators, ‘so the decision was made to torch the truck.’

In perhaps the ultimate example of military capitalism, KBR reportedly ran convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the insurgent-laden desert, pointlessly risking the lives of soldiers and drivers so the company could charge the taxpayer for its phantom deliveries. Truckers for KBR, knowing full well that the trips were bullshit, derisively referred to their cargo as ‘sailboat fuel.’”

Monsieur Bigot would smile.

But this should be no surprise to a student of military history. As Marine General Smedley Butler put it, “War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

I can imagine one Roman soldier on the Gallic frontier, grousing to another, “Rancid olive oil and diluted wine, if you can call it that, and Kappa Beta Rho is getting double the local market price. And have your heard what the AquaNiger mercenaries are getting paid?”

War is the mother of corruption. To some, that is its chief appeal. When we try to answer the question of why the Bush Administration invaded Iraq we should realize that nothing happens for one reason alone. Yes, it was about oil. Yes, it was about being a war president in an election year. Yes, it was about neocon fantasies of empire. We still have our foot on the dime and crude is trading above $80, so the oil play can be called a success. The political gains are long gone, along with dreams of hegemony. However, no matter what happens on the ground in Iraq, the cash is in the bank for a horde of swindlers and the corporate behemoths they serve. Taxes on millionaires have been slashed, so the beneficiaries of a privatized military can hold their loot while the rest of us hold the bag – a multi-trillion dollar deficit. Mission accomplished.

In a previous post I suggested that our elected representatives, upon declaring war, should sign a statement acknowledging that they take responsibility for the inevitable killings of innocent civilians. Perhaps there should be an addendum to that statement where they declare their understanding that the nation’s wealth will be wasted as well.

Waiting to be Conned

I have just experienced a new level of raw, unadulterated chutzpa.

My phone rang, and a recorded female voice informed me that my car’s warranty had expired and that I should press “one” to talk to their representative about a warranty extension, or “two” to be removed from their list. Ok, so far, the usual. You have probably received similar recorded pitches for extended car warranties, Caribbean cruises, or insurance. This was probably the tenth extended warranty pitch I had received, having pushed “two” each time to get myself off the list. This time I decided to press “one” to talk to a human being and get them to actually take me off their list. I did so, and got the usual recorded message about how my call might be monitored or recorded for quality control.

Then they put me on hold. A tinny version of a Frank Sinatra classic played in the background, interrupted periodically by the assurance that my call was important to them and that I would soon be talking to the next available customer service representative.

Wait a goddamned second. I’m not some desperate software owner trying to deal with the inevitable failure of a beta test program served up as a product. I’m not a sick person trying to actually get some health coverage for the wads of cash I’ve sent in to my insurance company. I am, as far as they know, a potential customer, the Holy Grail of telemarketing. By pressing “one” I have signaled that I am a sucker, a buffoon, one of P.T. Barnum’s favorite morons, credit card at the ready, waiting to be fleeced.

And they put me on hold. How much contempt do they have for their victims? Not content to merely separate us from our money, they want us to wait on hold for that privilege. I sat there for a minute with my jaw down, listening to Old Blue Eyes and a string section before I dropped the phone back on the hook.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. If they have enough contempt for the public to interrupt our day with a hailstorm of bunko propositions, then why not inconvenience us that much more and save on operator wages?

I mentioned this experience to a friend and he said “Of course they put you on hold.” His thesis was that they don’t want to waste their time on rational individuals. Putting people on hold separates those who are truly desperate to burn their cash from those with a “Let’s see” attitude. It sounds cynical enough to be real.

There is an answer to all this, short of the mother of all lawsuits. (Believe me, if I had infinite time and money I would sue them for disturbing the peace with commercial speech and take it all the way to the Supremes.) Telemarketers use so-called predictive dialers, computers with programs that filter out unwanted numbers. One sign of an unwanted number is that rising boo-dee-beep tone you hear when you call a number no longer in service. If you put that tone at the very beginning of the message on your answering machine, then any digital dialer that gets your message will note that your number is no longer in service and expunge it from its database. I used to have this on my phone message, and I am going to again.

You only have to put the first tone in, actually. If you are adept with computers, edit it down. If not, find an average 14-year-old to do it for you. You can download the tone here. Turn up the speakers on your computer, rerecord your message with the tone, and in time you will enjoy peace. At least in terms of the telephone.

Afterthought: I am going to put a shortcut to the SIT tone on my computer desktop so that if I am working at the computer and pick up a telemarketing call I can just click the icon, hold the phone to the computer speaker, and bid that phone list goodbye.