Ebeneezer, Conspiracy Theories, and Misunderstanding Occam's Razor

Ebeneezer, a very good friend of mine, is probably one of the more interesting people I know. He is, first of all, bright and clever -always a welcome combination (or not). Moreover, he is a man of extreme talent, ever ready to learn something new, whether in music, technology, or cooking fish. He has also studied political science, history, and psychology whilst in college and when completing his masters, but for some reason hates discussing any of these topics. Be it some dinner conversation on Brazil's future or some musing (at, say, a bar) on the political economy, Ebeneezer, for whatever reason, dislikes (or so he tells us) discussing these or similar matters.

He also gets extremely annoyed when someone does indeed start discussing history, political science, or psychology and says that a certain event has taken place for something other than the simplest of reasons. (This would be Neezer's insistence on Occam's Razor, though he's getting the definition wrong, as most people do, confusing topicality with simplicity). Like when I insist that the latest war in Iraq began for reasons other than messianism (i.e., bringing Jesus and free markets to those heathen Muslim protectionists for the sake of all civilization). According to him, these are conspiracy theories and therefor ridiculous.

Like many, many others, my friend of old assumes that there are no conspiracies, that people do not get together and conspire to do a, b, or c. Funny and tragic at the same time: being from Brazil, he should understand that not only do many conspiracy theories exist, but some of them are no longer theories, such as Globo Television attempting to defraud the 1982 Rio de Janeiro elections for Governor. To Ebeneezer, this would be absurd: never would Globo's owner, Roberto Marinho, do such a thing! Never would he have such power! Then again, there's that BBC documentary from 1993, Beyond Citizen Kane, which Globo had courts prohibit from circulating in Brazil, and the very helpful book on Globo by V.C Brittos and C.R.S. Bolaño, which detail (beyond doubt, in my opinion) just how powerful Marinho was and Globo continues to be. Ebeneezer would do well to check out these sources, but something tells me he won't.

As Noam Chomsky once observed (actually, he did so many times, since he is incredibly repetitive), a lot of folks, usually from sectors of the establishment, like to dismiss any notion that several individuals might conspire against the public good as, again, conspiracy theories. They do so with disgust, a frown or menacing look on their faces. So when we suggest Florida's Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris, helped steal the 2000 election for George W. Bush, it's a conspiracy theory. When it is pointed out that wars are started to increase corporate profits, (amongst other reasons, obviously) we're lunatics, the kind of people that think no one ever landed on the moon. When it is suggested that the American Media purposefully presents the Israel-Palestine conflict in a very biased fashion, with an obvious favoritism towards the Jewish State, we're crazy, prone to hateful "anti-semitic" propaganda (the quotes are due to the fact that anti-semitic is used in a mistaken fashion in the US and much of the world, implying that only Jews are Semites). And, of course, the latest episode recently seen in the news showing a willingness by some of its major participants to conspire against the public good is the latest financial crisis, with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke continuously cheating the American public out of hundreds of billions, soon to be trillions of dollars to help out banks, financial institutions, and other major corporations that, since the eighties (at least), have been making one outrageous mistake after another, creating a shitball of ill-conceived choices that has ultimately led us to the present state of things -that, my friends, is just hippie Marxist ranting.

I'm sure Neezer would simply read a post like this and piss all over it, since it is presumably full of crap: to my good friend, Iraq was but a series of debacles born of dumbfounding incompetence, oil was never a real issue; Globo and its (thankfully) now-defunct owner Marinho aren't/weren't as powerful or mean-spirited as they are/were made out to be; the 2000 US Presidential election was never stolen, it was simply organization incompetence at work; wars are started with a dynamic all their own (very true), but never due to private interests (laughable); Israel just chanced into unbridled, unquestioning support from the American government and population; and Paulson and Bernanke would never act out of naked self-interest or to shamelessly help out their rich finance mates. In Ebeneezer's magical world, when something doesn't happen in a vacuum, we can always understand events as people fucking up or getting really lucky; otherwise, the explanation's faulty. There are no class interests, folks don't conspire, people don't scheme.

Again, it would be funny were it not tragic; it's like a brilliant mind going to waste. Ultimately, I understand complaints that the lament I just uttered in this post is without importance, for indeed it is; actually, this post is here just so I can tell Ebeneezer, should he ever again make fun of my "tendency to believe in conspiracy theories", that he can go fuck himself, with evidence provided. But all kidding aside, I do hope that this post might help my ever-talented, ever-skeptical good friend and bandmate to see the world is actually more complicated than his misreading of Occam's Razor would have him believe.

Obs. 1: Neezer, in case you're wondering: yes, I love you, and for trashing you I owe you a nice single malt and a blowjob, though I guess you'll only want the former.

Obs. 2: The video concerning the American Media's bias towards Israel is quite revealing but I can't embed it; I strongly urge the reader to see it, though, it brings to light issues with which many are not familiar.

Brazil's Forced Democracy, continued

However, to be fair with Brazil, our American friend's democracy is pretty fucking shitty. Actually, to see just how incredibly crappy it is, one should notice what it is exactly that has been making headlines when the country is near the brink of financial and economic disaster. Please, folks, follow the link and be awed at the awesomeness of American stupidity.

Albeit late in the game...

America's top news show helps us understand some aspects of the financial crisis and of those who are at the helm supposedly trying to solve it.

An Interesting Primer

The following article is a great intro to the reasons why we are facing such a crap shower, as commented in my previous post.

The Left, the Right, and the Crap Shower We're In

Perry Anderson asked of the Left, during the end of the last century, that it accept what the eighties and nineties were about: the undeniable consolidation of neoliberalism. He spoke of this consolidation both economically and politically and pointed out more than once that, though history was far from over, certain present facts could not be ignored simply because it would (supposedly) make Uncle Karl upset.

I do wonder what the Right's main thinkers will ask of its political wing ten to twenty years from now. It's a question worth asking because orthodox economics is not without merit, and certainly did bring about some positive changes. The attempt at integrating the world economically that has been taking place since the nineties has undeniable benefits, such as an increase in the standard of living for certain sectors of Third World society, or the increase in globalized knowledge that we all have of each other, of one another's countries, cultures, and problems.

Globalization as it stands, however, the orthodox economics that have been put into play since the seventies, carried a danger that many only now begin to acknowledge. The danger of a major financial crisis was some thirty years in the making, clear as day, as entire economies became financialized, as the middle class in the developed world began to see its living standards decrease, as we saw the gap between rich and poor in the First World widen. The danger of leaving business people to regulate their affairs unchecked was apparent from day one, but, since Freedom was supposedly at risk, those who call the shots decided we should try it anyway.

So we get what we have now. First off, there's the inability to use a crisis (say, Enron) as a learning tool; instead, we use the unbridled faith we have in one of our many modern deities, Friedrich Von Hayek, to justify anything we want, from tickle-down economics and trillions of dollars in foreign adventures to making countries like Brazil veritable delivery services of quick and sexy financial returns, as illustrated by Leda Paulani. And yes, it is total faith in folks like Hayek or Milton Friedman, because proving that market forces do work, and that the ever-sexy Invisible Hand can masturbate anyone to eternal glory, is nigh impossible.

Except when you wish to prove that which you wish to see. The Left did this for years after the Second World War, building socialist economies like that of Britain and India without giving a flying fart for nuisances like inflation or people's wish to enterprise without having to file seven forms just to bang your next door colorful friendship. Folks like Friedman correctly predicted later on in the sixties that the kind of central planning you saw around the world (in some countries more than others) would lead to what came to be known as stagflation. They were on the money, and the parts of the Left that insisted that good intentions would eventually help during economic downturns were left at times with their dicks in their hands, looking dumbfounded.

But power, when first tasted, just tastes too damn good. It became common place, given the failures of central planning (and they were undeniable), to point to the bevy of millionaires popping up in the US and Britain during the eighties and say, "Look!, it works, Unfettered Free Enterprise works!!!" That living standards were falling, that growth in the economy was, in the best of times, artificial, that so much of the money that circulated in the markets was, to be honest, bullshit money; this was all irrelevant, for Grenada and the Falklands had been conquered, the Berlin Wall fell, and us Third World niggers were finally learning how to play the game.

And so here we are, October, 2008. The financial elite's reluctance to have its actions checked (and the willingness of many governments to simply look the other way for twenty-odd years) has taken it's toll: credit-based economies are tumbling and their populations are looking at the barrel of a gun as recessions with the potential for lasting some two years stare them in the eye. What's worse, we see governments like that of the United States shamelessly socializing losses, telling the taxpayer it is in their interest that the lenders be saved, but not the borrowers. It is also amusing to see so many telling themselves this is not socialism for the rich, that saving these banks and insurance companies is exactly what should be done, without considering that it would be economically and ethically interesting to perhaps bail out the taxpayer. And it's not like this crisis is a complete surprise, since there have been economists warning against that which we see happening right now.

This is perhaps the part where it is valid to note that the Right and the Left (or parts of them, anyway) share some similar goals: both exalt freedom; both seem to search for ways to better the world in which we live. The Right espouses that this will come about through economic freedom, and the Left seems to believe social justice will do the job (it is even argued by some, including noted Brazilian economist Luis Carlos Bresser Pereira, that Socialism was not so much a mode of production as it was a system for theorizing the concept of Social Justice). And it is fair to note that, since 1945, both sides of the spectrum have had the opportunity to practice what they preach, sometimes with brilliant results on both ends. What is depressing about what we see right now is that the current discussion keeps concentrating, on the part of the Left, on how we can't leave the economy to greedy whores on Wall Street, and on the part of the Right... well, the Right isn't saying much right now.

I don't doubt that giving a den of unhumanity such as Wall Street complete control over the economy is a bad idea: going unchecked, people are obviously going to do exactly as they please, without fear of consequence; at most, a few scapegoats, guilty or not, go to jail and a few companies go under, but the structure stays the same, and the freedom to fool yourself as well as your customer (the very definition of ninja loans) goes unchallenged. We had this behavior in centrally planned economies, and it was assumed by government technocrats that no one was more suited to run the general populace's affair than government technocrats. Needless to say, these economies were the same dens of senseless greed that we see on Wall Street. In many cases, though, after shunning the centrally planned state, all we did was move from State Communism to Corporate Communism; we changed the word public to private and called it a day.

Perhaps the conversation should now focus on two fronts. First, it might be safe to assume we've seen enough of both sides of the political economy pendulum since the late nineteenth century, so that we may finally focus on a formula that uses both State and Private tools to help us achieve a more desirable society. Secondly -and, I believe, more importantly- it is time to discuss, really discuss, Power. It is high time we realize that the difference between giving people's houses to private firms that are allowed to freely cook their books, and giving it to government officials that inflate bureaucracy so as to be above the law, is exactly the same thing. Actually, if we are to be honest, we can quickly realize countries like the Soviet Union were capitalist, that all they did was take the economy and give it to gentlemen in KGB uniforms instead of gentlemen in Armani wear that write successful self-help books. The KGB privately owned the USSR; its member had business which they ran -supposedly for the State, but, in actuality, for themselves. The difference between these gentlemen and the heads of AIG, Lehman Brothers, and so many other institutions that are going under, was one of terminology and semantics. More importantly, they answered and answer to no one, and, in the American case, it would seem that some of these apparatchiks are walking away with bonuses after having run their companies under.

If we do not begin discussing the power relationships that society's most important institutions have with its citizens, we're doomed to a new financial fiasco such as the present one in another generation or so. If we're going to build, by Left or Right, a world that's even remotely admirable, we have to be sure that we are honest about what can and cannot be done through the institutions we build for ourselves. Corruption, in the long run, State- or Corporate-run, is too much of a burden for any society to handle (just look at Brazil: we keep missing every historical opportunity under the sun because our elite can't stand to lose an inch of its power). And this burden can only grow heavier if the society we envision for ourselves is to have smaller and ever more artificial borders, if we are to truly live in some global way.