Lessons of History - Evolution or Revolution

I recently reading an excellent book about the Spanish Civil War (Spain in Our Hearts, by Adam Hochschild).  Looking back on the events of 80+ years ago in Spain keeps bringing to mind the Arab Spring.  It also brings to mind the Berns call for a new Revolution.

We memorialize, indeed almost worship, our own founding fathers revolution, and tend to see revolutions around the world by people seeking government by the people as a wonderful thing.

But looking back at history one is tempted to conclude our revolution was as successful as it was in part because of fortuitous circumstances that seldom arise in modern reality.  Our revolt against England was relatively amicable, we were culturally nearly identical and England was far away so atrocities were few and in the end England's pride was dented and they lost some tax Revenue, but the battle was more a test of wills.   The English public would not have tolerated the sort of scorched earth military tactics England might have used to put down a revolt by their darker skinned subjects in other parts of the world.

Revolutions within a single country tend to be much uglier, more like our own Civil War.  Zero sum games where the losers are crippled and carry resentments for generations. 

The Spanish Civil War, like the Arab Spring involved uprisings where the powers that be were pushed aside by an left leaning modernist uprisings seeking to completely remake society.  They are inherently zero sum games, for every gain by the people there are huge losses by the upper strata of the society.  The people gain an apparent victory, only to have a more repressive regime imposed militarily.

In Spain Franco ruled for 40 years or so and it was only after he died that modern democracy could begin to develop in Spain.  Is this what the Arab Spring countries can look forward to?

Certainly in most of the famous revolutions of recent history - Russia in 1917. Spain, China after WW II - revolution produced decades of repression and misery. 

Perhaps Bernie should stop talking about revolution and start talking about evolution.  Move away from the language of winners and losers toward aiming to improve the lot of those at the bottom without demonizing those at the top.  Clearly China's communist party has recognized that evolution is their key to avoiding revolution.

Who Is likely to Perpetrate a Mass Shooting?

I haven't seen any data on the subject but running my mind back over the litany of mindless mass shootings over the last couple decades, it seems like every one of the shooters was a young man (I don't recall if the wife of the San Bernardino shooter took part in the actual shooting).

Given the difficulty we have as a nation coming to grips with any kind of effort to keep guns out of the hands of possible terrorists perhaps it would help to focus on identifying the characteristics of those who actually do the shooting.

Criminal statistics have shown for years that most violent crimes are perpetrated by young men, mostly between ages 18 and 25, perhaps that is where we should start with limiting access to killing tools.  Perhaps people under the age of, say, 30, can't buy a weapon without going through some rigorous process of training - sort of like licensing drivers.  We would also have to make it a crime for anyone to sell or give weapons to persons of that age to avoid having them just get someone else to buy one for them.

Paying People More Reduces Corruption? Maybe not.

Government folk and economist's have traditionally intuitively ascribed to the view that corruption in government, sports or politics is a product of low pay and if you pay people more, corruption would go away.

A recent study in Ghana suggests maybe not.  In 2010 Ghana began to move public officials to a new salary structure.  The first and biggest beneficiaries were police officers whosr pay doubled.  One hope was the police would stop extorting money from drivers at roadblocks.  It just happened that a large survey of Ghanian truckdrivers was already underway.  Drivers with all the right paperwork were asked to keep track of how many times they were stopped and how much the had to pay to police and customs officials along the way.

The date revealed that after having their pay doubled the officers erected more roadblocks than before, kept drivers longer and extracted more money.

Rising expectations?   More demanding dependants?  Or just a culture of corruption?

For more details see the Economist January 30, 2016 issue, page 65.

Odd Quirks in US our law regarding Free Speech

Free speech is the canary in the coal mine for assessing the political health of a country.  Although individuals may abuse that freedom in aggravating ways, that aggravation is vastly less consequential than the consequences of allowing speech to be controlled by society, since that inevitably means control ends up in the hands of the most personally ambitious people who cannot separate their own personal beliefs and interests from the greater interests of society, so their instinct is to stifle the speech of anyone who disagrees.

We do enjoy living in a country where free speech is a fundamental value, but there are still some oddities in how that speech is protected in the United States.

One of the most glaringly wrong oddities is the curious application of the constitutional right to free speech in business relationships that has evolved in US Supreme Court decisions.

Corporations exist only because the government creates them.  Government sets up rules that if the organizers follow they get certain benefits (most importantly the owners of the corporation are insulated from some responsibility for their actions).  But according to our Supreme Court, even though the people who own corporations already have all the free speech rights any citizen has, and even though Government could do away with all corporations tomorrow, government can't regulate corporations ability to spend money to forward the corporations political aims.  

Yet those same Corporations (and business in general) can use contracts to limit the free speech of their employees.  If a Corporation decides to fire a bunch of US workers and hire cheaper employees overseas, or bring in cheaper employees from overseas, it can pay the employees they are laying off a little bit of money as a severance pay and require those employees to sign contracts in which the employee promises not to say anything the employer doesn't want to hear.  For the employee's that get a pink slip they generally have little choice but sign, they have bills to pay and they need the severance money to keep them going while they get back on their feet.

Or if a Corporation is sued by some folks who were damaged by faulty products or services, the Corporation will typically will use the leverage of their ability to prolong lawsuits interminably to extract contracts where the victims promise not to tell the world about the corporation's bad behavior.   So the rest of society remains clueless and vulnerable to the corporation's bad activities.

Both of these seem wrong to me.   Corporations are not people, they are creatures created by government for economic purposes, the idea that government that can abolish them at the stroke of a legislative pen can't regulate their conduct in the political arena is nonsense.   

Further it seems to me society has an interest in free speech that should trump individual rights to use superior bargaining power to control situations to hide their bad behavior.  The law should take a dim view of contracts restricting free speech rights, and any contract with a clause prohibiting certain speech should be void when it a favors a party with a clearly superior bargaining position.