Our Gullible Press

In his landmark book,Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued that the dominant cultural mediumdetermines the culture itself. Today, blogs and social media are that dominant medium.

Unfortunately, they worship a single god: traffic. The central question for the Internet is not, “Is this entertaining?” but “Will this get attention?” “Will it spread?” And it happens that almost everything that blogs do to get traffic, keep traffic, and profit from traffic puts them at odds with the truth, good journalism, and serving their readers.

That’s the world I operate in. This world exists primarily because it is so poorly understood—too commonly dressed up in the cyber-utopianism of the Jeff Jarvis crowd, or lost in the out-of-touch complaints of old-school journalists like David Simon.

Good read. This type of behavior extends well beyond the reaches of online journal entries and websites, though. Number of eyes and advertising are two things that publishers put above their readers. We’ve seen it in talk radio, trashy television, and desperate magazines, to name a few. But what the Internet does is increase the frequency and reach of hit pieces, baiting articles, incomplete news, and other noise that lazy actors lean on to take advantage of other people’s trust. It is a big reason why mainstream culture has, in the last decade or so, become so vapid and disinterested in “no frills” information, essentially demanding a certain narrative be displayed in the media they ingest even if it bear no significance in reality.

Culture is shaped by dominant ideologies, carried out on the dominant medium. We get what we pay for, I suppose.

Capitalism's Ideological Crutches

From Richard D. Wolff:

By portraying government as wasteful, incompetent, corrupt, power mad and oppressive, it strives to establish another “common sense” idea. Government should be kept economically weak: Keep its spending down, its budget balanced, or else in debt to capitalists and the rich (main government creditors). Limit the taxes it can levy, the regulations it can impose, and so on. Hobble the government while painting it as a negative social force, not to be trusted. Corrupt the politicians with the resources only corporations and the rich have and spend for such purposes and then denounce that corruption as the government’s fault. Turn workers away from engagement, respect for, or even interest in politics. Disgusted and alienated, many workers withdraw, leaving the political arena to the capitalists and the rich to buy and shape. US mainstream politics thus serves and never challenges capitalism.

Out of the many quotable excerpts from this piece, this one is resonant. It echoes my experience with the majority of people not in the field of government, politics, and policy. This is where the blame goes. This is why there is no time or want to talk about or get involved in politics. This is why it’s tough to start something real. The promise of a square deal after performing hard work is a horribly misguided perspective, and for the most part will never materialize for most people. The fact that we Americans are so turned on by the size of paychecks and price tags over the gravitas of our individual and collective decisions and behavior ensures that we remain locked in the cages we built for ourselves. So long as our perspectives are skewed by the apparent need for wealth, our solutions will only become limited, more anemic, and ultimately destructive.

Perhaps in a better world we could count on the news media to sort through the conflicting claims. In this world, however, most voters get their news from short snippets on TV, which almost never contain substantive policy analysis. The print media do offer analysis pieces — but these pieces, out of a desire to seem “balanced,” all too often simply repeat the he-said-she-said of political speeches. Trust me: you will see very few news analyses saying that Mr. Romney proposes huge tax cuts for the rich, with no plausible offset other than big benefit cuts for everyone else — even though this is the simple truth. Instead, you will see pieces reporting that “Democrats say” that this is what Mr. Romney proposes, matched with dueling quotes from Republican sources.

Paul Krugman, Policy and the Personal (via zeitvox)

Language is everything. In a futile effort to provide journalistic balance to every story, the news does more to harm Americans than even the craziest elected officials. Fight back and demand your news outlet report the news completely and concisely, otherwise your silence indicates your consent.

Amber Waves of Green

I’d worked out that there are six degrees of economic separation between a guy making ten bucks an hour and a Forbes billionaire, if you multiply each person’s income by five. So I decided to journey across America to meet one representative of each multiple. By connecting these income brackets to actual people, I hoped to understand how money shapes their lives—and the life of the country—at a moment when the gap between rich and poor is such a combustible issue. Everyone in this story, then, makes roughly five times more than the last person makes. There’s a dishwasher in Miami with an unbelievably stressful life, some nice middle-class Iowans with quite difflcult lives, me with a perfectly fine if frequently anxiety-inducing life, a millionaire with an annoyingly happy life, a multimillionaire with a stunningly amazing life, and then, finally, at the summit, this great American eagle, Wayne, who tells me he’s “pissed off” right now.

Amazing article. This offers a great look at both sides of the “combustible issue” that income inequality has become in the United States, and adds some much-needed perspective on the issue without turning it into an “us versus them” hit piece.

My takeaway is more or less a confirmation of my own observations over the past few years: There are people who believe they are being vilified for doing what they’ve known to be the right all their lives. There are others who are victims of an arbitrary system, able to fulfill the most basic needs but not much more. Others still are financially sound but are intimidated or not interested in making more. The thing these people have in common is that they’re all basically stuck where they are on the socioeconomic ladder, and no one person or group will be able to do anything about it. Those that admit that there’s a problem with how the system works now have probably thought about how their personal wealth will change if the system were reformed. For some, it will be a positive change and for others it will be negative. The reality is that like it or not, this system is something we have believed in for a long time, and it will take some more people—from all rungs on the ladder—to speak up and start talking about fairness and equity. Nick Hanauer, one of the gentlemen interviewed for the story put it best: 

“You can’t build a society around the effort of a few do-gooders,” he replies. “History shows that most people would not do it voluntarily. People have to be required to participate.”

A little over a month ago, I had a very engaging conversation with a few of my coworkers (in the place where all good conversations are had—over some Taco Bell at the food court in Union Station). It was comprised of bits and pieces from work that week, news, technology, and the like, but at one point the discussion evolved into a talk about law and society, both present and in the future. It was then that Bill asked a really good question: “What would we think if a future generation that wanted to end the concept of monogamy?” 

This garnered an interesting range of opinions, but it sparked a thought in me: “How do we, in general, define and justify some things in the eyes of the law? Right now, we are struggling with same-sex marriage, transgender people, abortions, contraceptives, divorce, etc., but at some point all of this will be resolved, and as things move towards a ‘singularity’ of sorts, it will require us to revisit those things and find less rigid definitions of the institutions, demonstrating that the definitions are not that rigid to begin with.” In other words, as society progresses further along, our laws will naturally become less encumbered by precedent and will instead act like a more bare-bones framework for which people will have more flexibility to move around and grow.

For this rather idyllic vision to work, it requires a majority of people to be educated well enough to understand a concept which in today’s environment would be panned as too abstract or insanely liberal, and to be mature in handling issues which, frankly, this country is either too embarrassed or ashamed to talk openly about. It isn’t about achieving total perfection—and I think a lot of people lose faith in ideas when they realize it won’t mean that every little problem won’t be solved—but about working towards a more sound understanding of the world we live in and share.

Bill and I had conversed further about this via email that night, when he sent me a link to the above video of Philip K. Howard’s TED Talk from 2010. I finally watched it last week, after putting it off for far too long, and found everything the man said to be a concise assessment of the burdensome legal ideals modern Americans have to face. It was a more articulate version of what I had said earlier, and the four main points of Mr. Howard’s argument more than make up what was missing from mine. If you don’t end up watching the whole thing, at least read the text below, because this is really where he drives the point home (note: emphasis mine):

Law has to be simple enough so that people can internalize it in their daily choices. If they can’t internalize it, they won’t trust it. And how do you make it simple? Because life is complex—and here is the hardest and biggest change: We have to restore the authority to judges and officials to interpret and apply the law. We have to re-humanize the law. To make law simple so that you feel free, the people in charge have to be free to use their judgment to interpret and apply the law in accord with reasonable social norms. As you’re going down, and walking down the sidewalk during the day, you have to think that if there is a dispute, there’s somebody in society who sees it as their job to affirmatively protect you if you’re acting reasonably. That person doesn’t exist today.

This is the hardest hurdle. […] But it’s a hard hurdle because we got into this legal quicksand because we woke up in the 1960s to all these really bad values: racism, gender discrimination, pollution — they were bad values. And we wanted to create a legal system where no one could have bad values anymore. The problem is, we created a system where we eliminated the right to have good values. It doesn’t mean that people in authority can do whatever they want. They’re still bounded by legal goals and principles: The teacher is accountable to the principal, the judge is accountable to an appellate court, the president is accountable to voters. But the accountability’s up the line judging the decision against the effect on everybody, not just on the disgruntled person. You can’t run a society by the lowest common denominator.

So, what’s needed is a basic shift in philosophy. We can pull the plug on a lot of this stuff if we shift our philosophy. We’ve been taught that authority is the enemy of freedom. It’s not true. Authority, in fact, is essential to freedom. Law is a human institution; responsibility is a human institution. If teachers don’t have authority to run the classroom, to maintain order, everybody’s learning suffers. If the judge doesn’t have the authority to toss out unreasonable claims, then all of us go through the day looking over our shoulders. If the environmental agency can’t decide that the power lines are good for the environment, then there’s no way to bring the power from the wind farms to the city. A free society requires red lights and green lights, otherwise it soon descends into gridlock. That’s what’s happened to America. Look around.

What the world needs now is to restore the authority to make common choices. It’s the only way to get our freedom back, and it’s the only way to release the energy and passion needed so that we can meet the challenges of our time.

I see a lot of potential in what’s next—particularly since I will soon have an opportunity to contribute to truly shaping it. I’ll wrap this up by asking a fairly simple question: What inhibits us from making things happen sooner, rather than later?

Here’s hoping it got a few people thinking.

P.S. - In case you feel like you’ve seen this guy before, it’s not just because he looks like Jimmy Stewart, but also because he was on The Daily Show last year, talking about Common Good, which is an initiative to overhaul the legal system and work on implementing just what I’ve been rambling on about for the last nine paragraphs.

I reject the term “piracy.” It’s people listening to music and sharing it with other people, and it’s good for musicians because it widens the audience for music. The record industry doesn’t like trading music because they see it as lost sales, but that’s nonsense. Sales have declined because physical discs are no longer the distribution medium for mass-appeal pop music, and expecting people to treat files as physical objects to be inventoried and bought individually is absurd.

The downtrend in sales has hurt the recording business, obviously, but not us specifically because we never relied on the mainstream record industry for our clientele. Bands are always going to want to record themselves, and there will always be a market among serious music fans for well-made record albums. I’ll point to the success of the Chicago label Numero Group as an example.

There won’t ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that’s fine with me because that industry didn’t operate for the benefit of the musicians or the audience, the only classes of people I care about.

Free distribution of music has created a huge growth in the audience for live music performance, where most bands spend most of their time and energy anyway. Ticket prices have risen to the point that even club-level touring bands can earn a middle-class income if they keep their shit together, and every band now has access to a world-wide audience at no cost of acquisition. That’s fantastic.

Additionally, places poorly-served by the old-school record business (small or isolate towns, third-world and non-english-speaking countries) now have access to everything instead of a small sampling of music controlled by a hidebound local industry. When my band toured Eastern Europe a couple of years ago we had full houses despite having sold literally no records in most of those countries. Thank you internets.

steve albini (via willthismatterlater)

Fuck yeah. I like to look at the current debates surrounding Internet piracy as a challenge to market-centric business models in general, and am enjoying watching the industry behemoths lumber around trying to find ways to make this horrible system still work for a bit longer.

Keep pushing back, Internet.

(via thrash-bandicoot)

Source: friedeggsandwiches

Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide

Media, Occupy, Congress, labor, corporations, communities, society. This is such a phenomenally great interview I don’t even know where to begin. I think this quote embodies both the argument Chomsky is making, as well as my own feelings towards the status quo:

[Y]ou also have to get beyond that to dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems. Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive, you are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.

Markets also have a very bad psychological effect. They drive people to a conception of themselves and society in which you’re only after your own good, not the good of others and that’s extremely harmful.

One other part that really stood out to me was his explanation of “concision”—the requirement media companies follow in order to provide people with brief sound bytes and basic information between commercials, with little to no explication of an idea or opinion. The whole thing is designed to cut out the real meaty part of the news and limit responses to “repeating clichés” or sounding “like a lunatic”. And if there is something that is not deemed worthy enough to talk about, then it didn’t happen, therefore it becomes irrelevant to people. I think this illustrates exactly what is wrong with American society today, and I do not see any other rationale behind it other than the self-interested profit-mongering that Chomsky talks about in the quoted text above.

This interview has also made me think again about the Occupy movement. As we continue to see people standing up to challenge the status quo, perhaps protesters could begin organizing against the information systems which fail to inform in general and obfuscate their purpose as a movement by portraying them poorly. I truly believe that the key to changing the debates surrounding our myriad issues begins with changing the way people see those debates happening, and creating communities which encourage rational and civil discourse. We will reach a point where this will become a necessity and not just a fringe issue, and the onus will rest on people everywhere to turn on and push back.

The Invisible Hand Is Invisible Because It Isn't There

So why was there so much economic growth after World War II? Stiglitz says one reason is “the legacy of the Roosevelts, the legacy that government made a difference.” In making the case for government he also points out that “government has played an important catalytic role in a whole variety of other areas. If you think about our modern economy, you think about Internet, you think about biotech, you think about telecommunications and all of these things rest on government-funded basic research.” 

Having the opportunity and the privilege of working in government and with some truly great people at this relatively young age has taught me that what Stiglitz says in his speech tends to lean more towards the way things actually are than not, but it is obfuscated by ineffective leadership, decision-makers, and press. The thing is, government has always been about creating tools which advance society, bringing people together, and finding solutions to rather complex problems—it has only been about stirring up war and keeping “the other guys” at bay for a much shorter amount of time, and putting the will of financiers and investors for even shorter than that. As the realities of our failures become more apparent, my thoughts are that those once-desirable ideals are again espoused, in favor of pushing past the clutter and mindless gridlock, the emotionally-charged words, and the money (especially the money), which have stifled innovation in this country for far too long. 

On that note, Stiglitz goes on to say that having a strong economy is also about paying for what you get. I believe that while that is probably meant in a monetary sense, that this does not mean one couldn’t give back in other ways too. Money is an easy way to pass off real motivation for things, but if the spirit behind the paper was seen and expressed in its raw form, it has the potential to change the equation, transform conversation and debate, push for a truly information-rich culture, and solve problems the size of mountains.

Like most of the greatest addictions, the first step is often admitting that you have a problem…

NPR Ethics

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.

ATTENTION: ALL OTHER US NEWS OUTLETS

Take heed. Truth in reporting > all other rationales.

This is why I love NPR.

The question, “If I were President I’d…” implies that if you swap out one leader, put in another, then all will be well with America—as though our leaders are the cause of all ailments.

That must be why we’ve created a tradition of rampant attacks on our politicians. Are they too conservative for you? Too liberal? Too religious? Too atheist? Too gay? Too anti-gay? Too rich? Too dumb? Too smart? Too ethnic? Too philanderous? Curious behavior, given that we elect 88% of Congress every two years.

A second tradition-in-progress is the expectation that everyone else in our culturally pluralistic land should hold exactly your own outlook, on all issues.

When you’re scientifically literate, the world looks different to you. It’s a particular way of questioning what you see and hear. When empowered by this state of mind, objective realities matter. These are the truths of the world that exist outside of whatever your belief system tells you.

One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

New York, Aug. 21, 2011

Those last two paragraphs are music to my ears. Wake the fuck up, asshats of the world!