In 1993 the musician Prince, in a flash of brilliance, decided to change his name to an unpronounceable symbol:

It didn’t really catch on, and worse than that, meant that newspapers and industry publications couldn’t write about him much, as his name was a symbol.

This reminds me of the inadequacies of our language. English is a really good language for a lot of things, and so flexible, but often people have to grab things from other languages to express a fine point. So for instance, from the Germans we get words like schadenfreude, meaning the joy we take at the misfortune of others, or zeitgeist, or spirit of the times. From the French we get a whole array of expressions – je ne sais quoi – that certain indescribable something, agent provocateur, one who entices another person to commit an illegal act or who deliberately stirs up rebellion to allow police to put it down (see how many words it takes?); and coup de grâce, or mercy blow – the kill shot. From the Italians, we learn how to order coffee.

Each of these expressions is used because they convey just a little bit more meaning than the English definition. My wife’s je ne sais quoi – well, you’d have to know her. I cannot describe it well.

I was looking for a word last week after a debate with Big Swede and Craig Moore – one that describes the indestructible wall of certainty that surrounds their stupidité profonde. In addition, I was looking for a word that describes Black Flag’s unwavering certainty in his philosophy of free markets in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

The best I could do was “absurd,” “bizarre,” “silly” and “ridiculous.” They don’t really carry it.

Then I had an idea – I don’t know enough French or German to grab the right phase from their language, but I do have access to a whole array of symbols via Microsoft Word. One of them will do – it will be the symbol I use to describe the indescribable. I will inject it at that point in a conversation where information can no longer be exchanged, when the language has lost power, and all we have left are blank stares. Here it is:

¥

I invite others to use it on me as well – I cannot not grasp things that I cannot possibly grasp. And, I invite others to offer their own words or symbols – we might breach a wall, and open up new lines of communication.

The North Face is a company that is owned and managed by very, very clever people. Here’s their business model: Branding. They hire Chinese peasants to make average products of no special quality, and then apply a huge markup to them.

Because no self-respecting person would pay such outrageous prices for such mundane merchandise without some ulterior motive, North Face hired the advertising industry to do what Phil Knight did with Nike: use subversion, glamor-appeal and celebrities to invest the products with a silk-purse glow. They market their products to those who have more money than sense, and who are so image-conscious that they make foolish purchases.

These very, very clever people at North Face stole their whole business plan from Nike. Not a damned thing about it is original or clever.

Along comes a clever kid, Jimmy Winkelmann, who wants to go to college. Unlike North Face, Jimmy is clever and original (he should really think about college). Jimmy founded a company called “South Butt”, and began marketing products appealing to people who don’t really like exercise.

North Face is suing Jimmy. Jimmy don’t like being sued.

North Face says that Jimmy is stealing their clever ideas. Since no one at North Face is clever, they probably don’t get what Jimmy is doing. He’s trying to make a buck by being clever.

North Face is punishing Jimmy. Jimmy might have to quit now. North Face can force him out of business just by taking him to court to defend himself. They will legal-fee him to death.

Jimmy, being very clever, maybe ought to think about being a lawyer.

Go to South Butt today, buy something from Jimmy. Jimmy needs help.

The reason I put up these two images is not because I think Joe Lieberman is a bad guy, or that he is in any way scary. The point I want to make is that Health Care politics has a kinship with professional wrestling because it is scripted. Lieberman, like any of the “bad guys” in wrestling has a job to do – he has to move the story forward. To do so, he appears on stage at strategic intervals when the story is failing. He does eeeeeeevil things, now threatening to help filibuster the Medicare 55 option.

It’s scripted. He works very closely with the Democrats on all of this stuff, and appears when he should and says what he must. In the end, he will take the heat when the ‘desired’ legislation (which is doomed to fail anyway) goes down. Other Democrats feel less heat because of Lieberman.

So Joe is an actor on a stage, and I even like him, much as I like villains in any movie. (All time classic: Heath Ledger’s “The Joker.”)

Lieberman should paint his face.

But I much prefer professional wrestling, as the players aren’t so slimy. But please note: The mindless zombies who think wrestling is real cannot hold a candle to the party hacks who buy the “Bad-guy-Joe” narrative.

Is it just me? The Internet seems to be really degrading itself now. A tour through various websites is a light show, with flash ads jumping at you from every direction, text superimposing itself over the text you want to read, and what were once known as “obnoxious pop-ups” reappearing in the form of obnoxious boxes that swell up in our faces if the cursor accidentally hits a trigger word.

And Google, the search engine that distinguished itself from the others by offering true results based on popularity instead of back-door payments, is almost entirely given over to advertising results. You have to scroll deep down a page to get true results these days.

The real business of web pages, the content, is now a left-hand affair, taking up about half the screen. The rest of the page is devoted to ads and links to ads. A visit to most web sites for any kind of video content will deliver what is known as a “pre-runroll”, and ad that you must try to ignore before you are allowed to view the content you are after.

All of this comes to mind because Steve and I were looking for Glenn Greenwald’s Radio show. Click on that link, and you will first be subjected to an annoying full-page ad, and you have to find the button to close it. The page below flashes and annoys, in customary fashion. But then another ad appears, this one imposing itself over the text you want to read. This ad will not close. You have to guess what is behind it.

It was only a matter of time before the Internet, a taxpayer invention, was taken over by that thing they call the “free market” – carnival barkers, whores in dark alleys, snake oil salesmen and, everywhere you look, Google. But I repeat myself.

Enjoy the page your are now reading, free of flashdancing and pop-ups. Most places you go for content, and get hit with shit. Here we are more up front.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has introduced an amendment to the senate “Health Care” bill (apparently the names “Healthy Forests” “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution”, and “Clear Skies Initiative” were already taken). Dorgan’s bill would allow for the “reimportataion” of drugs from Canada.

Away from industry jargon, that word, “reimportation,” means that Americans would be allowed to buy drugs from a country where prices are regulated, and monopolies are not allowed to flourish. It means lower prices for Americans – a savings over ten years of $19 billion for us as “taxpayers”, and another $80 billion for us as “consumers.”

That’s considered poltical grandstanding, and is highly frowned upon in Washington. That $99 billion in savings would come from the pockets of “PhRMA,” the drug lobbying group also known on the streets of Newark as the “Drug Cartel.”

Said Sen Jay Rockefeller, D-AR, “Bad form, Byron – not done! Not done! Order! Return to order! Order in the senate!”

The White House, of course, opposes Dorgan’s amendment. President Obama supported drug reimportation as a candidate, but that was before he realized how really powerful these PhRMA dudes are (or, perhaps, was, just, well, you know, lying). He still supports reimportation in principle, but has alterted his stance a bit to suggest that even though it is a really good idea, it should never be implemented. That is considered, in DC parlance, a reasonable compromise.

Dorgan is making a mess of things, it appears. The White House and PhRMA had crafted a deal where PhRMA would offer up $80 billion in concessions over ten years, by first adding $80 billion to their pricing structure, which they can do as a cartel, and then giving it back. Maybe.

Dorgan is being unreasonable, and worse, he’s not backing down. Oh, he will eventually. They always do. Stuff goes on behind the scenes, and these guys always think better of behaving like this – there must be some sort of woodshed behind the capitol buidling where spankings are administered, and not the fun kind like Max Baucus does with his aides.

Dorgan has threatened to put a hold on all other amendments until his is voted on. He is really, really in for it.

There’s a rule in Washington known as the “order of feeding”, and Dorgan is violating it. It works like this: The carcass of the American public lies finally still after a long chase, eyes glazed, steam still rising from the nostrils. Wolves did the kill, but grizzlies eat first, filling their bellies until content, often resting on the carcass while processing carrion and making room for a later re-gorging. Then wolves feed, followed by coyotes and eagles, ravens last. Dorgan, an egotistical man who is not even thinking in terms of feeding rights, seems to believe that the beast should not even be killed, that there should not even be a feeding ritual. PhRMA begs to differ, and having higher standing in the senate than Dorgan, will prevail.

But in the meantine, it’s just embarrassing! Here’s what one senate aide said about the whole affair (this is true):

Of course, with Dorgan, it’s all about Dorgan.”

He will be chastised. Even as I write, PHrMa is looking for a suitable replacement for him in the coming elections. A mediocre man or woman of low character will soon have a high public profile in North Dakota, appearing in photos on newspaper front pages, having op-eds written by ghosts, and being sought out for wise commentary on the issues of the day by news stations. He/she will soon be thought of as senatorial timbre, and will draw quiet, behind-the-scenes attention from the real voting public in American politics, lobbyists, corporations, and wealthy families.

Dorgan is toast.

Private for-profit health insurance is a significant factor in our high medical costs in this country. The reasons are many, but one is externalization of their internal contradiction. In order to enhance and preserve their profits, insurance companies have to go to great lengths to avoid people who are already sick, examine claims in detail to see if they can be legally avoided, and rescind coverage for some people who get sick after taking out a policy.

In addition, insurance companies impose costs on health providers by making them submit precise and detailed paperwork to assist them in the weeding-out, avoidance and rescission processes.

In total, the private insurance system imposes an overhead burden on the entire system of 31% of each premium dollar.

Often these discussions devolve into exchanges involving “evil” insurance companies. They are not evil. They are merely doing what the market demands of them.

Three insurance executives were held in a submissive posture before a House Subcommittee and asked about the policy of rescinding coverage for people who take out policies when healthy and then get sick. (Often these people have lied about preexisting conditions, but that too is a rational response to market forces.) In a powerful act of grandstanding, the executives were lectured on the cruelty of the rescission process, and they agreed that it was indeed distasteful. They were asked if they would stop doing it. They said no. They would not.

They can’t. They can’t stop doing anything they do. The market will not allow it.

Say, for example, Dennis Kucinich leaves office and becomes CEO of Unitedhealth (NYSX: UHS). He immediately announces that Unitedhealth will no longer reject coverage for people with preexisting conditions. There’s a flood of new business for Unitedhealth. Unfortunately, the business is comprised of sick people, and Unitedhealth ends up paying far more in claims than they receive in premiums. Profits are reduced, investors become unhappy and begin unloading the stock, and the market price plunges. Investors who had hedged or borrowed on Unitedhealth stock are at an extreme disadvantage. Margin calls go out.

Kucinich is assassinated fired.

Health insurance companies cannot leave the pack. They must behave as the worst actors behave. Otherwise, they are at a competitive disadvantage. Even supposed “not-for-profit” insurers, like some Blue Crosses and Kaiser Permanente, have to follow the practices of the worst actors. Otherwise they cease to exist.

There’s nothing wrong with the behavior of the people who run and work for the health insurance companies. They have to do what they do. Even if they got together and agreed to behave in more socially conscious way, there would always be one who went for the gold and undercut the others

People who work for large organizations are not free human beings. They are occupants of slots in a machine, and must behave as the machine dictates.

This is why I often say that private for-profit health insurance is incompatible with health care. Provision of care undermines profitability. The market cannot do a good job of providing health insurance. It can’t even though it is loaded with good people.

Every other industrialized country has figured this out. But, as always, the United States is exceptional.

This has nothing to do with anything that has transpired before. I am curious about one thing. It’s not because of what I am reading of what I have read before – there’s no great philosopher behind it. It’s just my own observations.

A workman who uses tools keeps his tools in good operating condition. If he lets them fall in disrepair, he impairs the cash flow he gets from them. But if he needs a snow plow to clear walks, he’s not going to go out and buy plow that attaches to the front of a pickup. He wants minimum investment and maximum utility.

In the antebellum South, the cheapest way to plant, grow and harvest cotton was human labor using crude tools. In true free-market fashion, an entrepreneur discovered that Negro slaves could be brought in, kept in involuntary servitude, and forced to do the work. It was a dynamic breakthrough, and anyone else who wanted to compete in the cotton market faced the dilemma of investing in labor at prices that free people might demand, or buying slaves. The South became a slave-driven economy, and slave ownership was so common as to be thought normal. Even the finest egalitarian minds of the age, such as Jefferson, owned slaves, whom he also boinked. The market gave him not much choice – if he invested in free labor, his cash reserves would soon be depleted, as the whole of the wealth of the South was based on slave labor.

But slave ownership was not without costs. In order to keep slaves in good working order, they had to be fed and housed. Replacement slaves had to be bred, so that aging ones could be replaced by newer machinery. There had to be a regular flow of machinery through the marketplace to keep it all functioning smoothly.

Laws enacted by the slave owners who controlled government enforced the rules of the slave system. If a slave escaped, local officials would assist in the hunt-down. If a slave had to be killed to teach a lesson, it was not considered a crime. Government was the servant of wealth.

Other maintenance matters were cultural – that is, understood to be necessary but not necessarily requiring cash investment. It was understood that slaves of one plantation should not be free to mingle with slaves of another, as secret alliances might form that might lead to escape plans or revolts. Slaves had to be kept illiterate, as education leads to desire for freedom. Religious indoctrination taught them to expect rewards in some other world. And even though on the surface it appears that a machine necessary for production of wealth was being abused, slaves had to be regularly beaten to demonstrate the futility of rebellion. It served a greater good.

The open market further required that family ties be broken – it was harsh, and there was no cultural or control reason to do so, but for sake of maximization of profits, families had to be broken up, children sold off if their labor was not needed, old men and women whose value had diminished sold at clearance prices too less wealthy or non-landed gentry who could use them for other purposes. (William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, had a slave, York, who accompanied him on the great expedition. York’s mingling with natives encountered on the trip taught him about how free men lived, and created an uppity attitude. Clark wrote of having to beat York on occasion, as his attitude was becoming insolent.)

All in all, it was an efficient marketplace, and as such, would not naturally dislodge itself. It took a great war to undo the system, and the aftermath of the war was devastation of the southern economy. Slavery became illegal in the United States, but investors, manufacturers and landowners adapted to the new economy, and soon followed the Industrial Revolution, where machines could to the work formerly done by slaves.

But market pressures would still exist to minimize the cost of labor, and due to the advance of machines, a surplus labor force was always available. So the same market forces that produced slavery still existed. On the surface it appeared as though free men and women were negotiating for fair wages in an open marketplace. The fact was that cheaper labor was always available, so that wages were eventually reduced to the point where they would provide enough for a worker to have food and crude housing – enough to make him serviceable to employers.

The Progressive Movement of the early twentieth century, which is no longer taught about in schools, fought long and bloody battles for the right of workers to form unions, a forty-hour work week, the end of child labor, and eventually, a minimum wage. Later battles would bring about unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, and workplace safety laws. Still later laws would try to enforce standards to minimize environmental degradation, discrimination based on color or gender, access to buildings for handicapped people … the list goes on.

All of that, from outlawing of slavery to ramps leading into public libraries, was the work of evil government, which a certain commenter here repeatedly tells me does nothing but visit “violence” on people.

Markets are powerful engines for good, as they maximize efficiency for wealth creation and general good. Without them I would not be typing on this computer, which I depend on for my living as well. But markets have negative side effects, among them, slavery, pauper-wages, humans as chattel, and externalities such as environmental degradation. Markets do not provide remedies for these problems, as remedies do not generate immediate and visible profits.

Market pressures also demand that that investors would go elsewhere to avoid U.S. laws protecting workers, the old and disadvantaged, and the environment. So it is that most of our goods are made in other countries like China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, where democratic impulses do not exist, where the environment and workplace are not a huge concern, and where labor is cheap. Very cheap.

In those countries, workers subsist on lousy wages and live in hovels. It’s almost like being a slave, except that workers are free to go starve somewhere if they don’t want to submit to market pressures.

Slavery never left. It’s a natural byproduct of free markets. It still exists in its true form (prostitute slaves are common throughout the world), and in the form of sweatshops. In an article in Scientific American from 2002 (behind a subscription wall), Kevin Bales argued that there were as many as 18 million slaves among us, including in the United States. (Going on memory here.)

Markets work, but without governments, they don’t work as well as some would have us believe. In fact, they can really hurt us. Free markets gave us slavery. Government freed them.

If only Kramer were here to break up all blog-o-wars – things would be a lot easier ’round here.  For this particular one, I suggest fast-forwarding to 2:35 – it’s strangely apt.

Years ago, in the mid-90’s, I attempted to read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. In those days my time was limited, and I tried to be at my desk at a certain time each day, and so was distracted by the anxiety of a day’s work ahead and all of the attending problems as I tried to read in the morning. By evening, my mind was fried, and so I was more likely to be watching Bart Simpson than reading Adam Smith. Weekends were devoted to kids, but to meaningless pursuits as well, like a certain woman who had captured my interest. So in the end I returned the book to the library unread, and worse yet, with the attitude that it was too dense-packed for me, and that I was not capable of absorbing its contents.

I never went back to it.

I am very lucky, in that these days I use my mornings to read, and feel no pressure to get on about my work until late morning. But there are certain works that I find daunting – I read Origin of the Species, for example, but did not feel that I had absorbed much even as I plodded through it. Surprisingly, I had the same experience with Alexis de Toqueville, whom I expected to be a bit more refreshing. So my conclusion was that it takes special concentration to translate the prose of one era to another.

That in mind, I still thought it important to read Adam Smith, as I understand that Wealth of Nations holds many surprises, and that the people who wear Adam Smith ties likely have not actually read him. So we visited Barnes and Noble last week, and I walked out $10 poorer, and Wealth of Nations in tow.

What a surprise! Smith is a bit tedious, but warns the reader in advance that it is a necessity. Be patient, he says. But even though tedious, he is not dense-packed. He states his ideas in a clear and understandable fashion. Example:

Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man’s own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”

That is not complicated at all – Lincoln must have read Smith, as he said very similar things. But since that day, an especially since 1980 forward, Smith has been supplanted, ignored, and obfuscated by the very people who supposedly admire him. Labor is demeaned, and the creation of wealth is thought to be some magical process brought about by those who merely direct the labor as they strive to take control of the resources that labor adds value to. But labor is still at the center of all wealth creation.

So, back to basics. Smith is readable and enjoyable, and I have a long way to go and I am really looking forward to it. Many surprises await.

Just a word about “intellectuals”. I had quite a pissing match with Wulfgar yesterday at Left in the West. We were once of a similar mind and got along OK, but when health care came to the fore, I began to criticize Democrats, especially Baucus, for selling us out. Wulfgar gave me grief, and accused me of being incapable of understanding the process by which meaningful change comes about. My response was simple: Democrats were not about bringing change, but rather preventing it by any means possible. Republicans, dense and thick as so many of them are, are at least straightforward in opposition to change. Democrats are more nuanced.

My relationship with Wulfgar devolved, and I especially took issue with his notion that Democrats were about bring reform to health care by means of “clever negotiating strategies” which were beyond my understanding. I ridiculed him for that, rightfully. I thought it was utter and self-deluding and obfuscatory nonsense.

Well, we have a health care bill now, and predictably, it’s shit. There are no cost controls, competition between government and the health insurance companies will be forbidden, states are prevented from having their own systems, drug prices are still artificially propped up, and billions in subsidies are pointed at and will soon arrive on the doorsteps of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Democrats did that to us.

So yesterday I learned that Wulfgar had changed his tune, and was now all about reform, and typically put up a dense and meandering post about how it will come about – intellectualizing it, for lack of a better word. But his prose is not simple. He doesn’t enlighten, but rather obfuscates, even jargonizes.

So, I went after him. It got very personal, even down to whether or not I desired to copulate with his mother. (I don’t.) Read all about it here. Have some fun.

I am not an intellectual. I merely have something others lack: Time. If I read intellectuals, that does not make me one. But I am smart enough to know what an intellectual does: He takes complicated matters and makes them understandable to regular people like me. While it is true that some matters simply cannot be made simple, like quantum mechanics, there are brilliant people who can express ideas in that field so that average people can at least grasp some of the concepts … say, people like Michio Kaku and Neil De Grasse Tyson. That ability speaks of true brilliance – an understanding so deep that it can be expressed with confidence in simple and understandable terms.

Other fields, such as economics or health care, are not so complicated, but are full of the obfuscators whose goal is to confuse us rather than state things in a simple manner to aid our understanding. Usually there is an agenda behind such obfuscation, but often it is just buffoonery.

So, as we move from the great scam of 2008 into an era where, hopefully, enough people will see the need for reforms and join popular movements to achieve true reform outside of party politics, we will need leaders who can express goals and ideas simply and at the same time inspire a following that will have an impact on national politics.

We do not need obfuscation nor should we be worried about defining movement politics. That is obfuscatory, like seeking to give us directions to Denver by educating us in the makeup of road materials.

We need leaders who define and inspire. Nader is passe’, others will have to take his place. I’m like a child on Christmas Eve.

The removal of inhibition can be liberating as well as criminal. Recently, a Reuters reporter expressed frustration that American soldiers stationed in Iraq would tell him nothing until he went to the latrines. “You have to go to the Port-o-Potties. For some reason, they talk there. You can read how they really feel – all the anti-Bush stuff, all the wanting to go home – in the writing on the shithouse walls.
Rose George, “The Big Necessity”