A Radical Rethink

Post-Positional

Whether or not people realize this, we are close to the end of everything we know.  I am not talking about an End of the World scenario: an Armageddon of Climate Change, World War or Nuclear Holocaust.  

I am however, nonetheless, talking about a true Apocalypse. 

However, I am using the term "Apocalypse" in the actual meaning of the word which is "an unveiling or drawing back of the curtain."  The curtain that is about to be drawn back is the fact that humans are soon going to become a completely superfluous ornamentation.  We are very quickly becoming unnecessary, even a liability to the global capitalist economy.  And because of this, we will either face a Terminator-esque future (which I think is highly unlikely) or we will live to see our economic system completely collapse.

In my last Blog, I discussed the fact that automation was going to render humans virtually unemployable.  This point was exactly copied by CGP Grey in his video Blog on Wednesday, and he expanded on it considerabily, detailing exactly how this will happen.  (And by the way, it always creeps me out when I hear exactly what I say repeated just a few days later by someone with no connection to me.  Jung's Universal Subconscious strikes again.)

However, given the bleakness of my last blog, and CGP Grey's Video,  I want to propose a very different future, a future, by the way, that Gene Roddenberry prophesied.    And I should note, that I am beginning to believe that he was as tapped into the future as Jules Verne was in his day.  Both of them extrapolated existing trends, combined them with a genuine vision of their implications, and created models of the future we were heading toward.

And that future that we face, by necessity, is going to be what I call either Post-Economic, or better yet, Post-Positional. 

"Positional Goods" is a term used by anthropologists to describe the items that delineate societal status.  This can be anything from the feathers of the Quetzal bird to a diamond to a private Lear Jet.  Basically, anything that shows your class or caste is a positional good.  They function across all of the classes, but also within a class.  Even in the poorest classes, there are positional goods.  For example, a corner to fly a sign, or a coveted sleeping spot will indicate social position in the Homeless Community.

So why would I call this new economic system, "Post-Positional?"   Before I answer that question, I want to describe the economy that we will have to adopt out of necessity.  That is, unless we want to go down the drain of grinding poverty, mass famine, dying children, and ultimately endless revolution.

And that economy is going to look a lot more like Karl Marx than Adam Smith.  But, I should note, I am not talking about Communism as implemented by the Soviets or any of their satellite countries.  I am talking about a return to a true Egalitarian Society, a Utopia that Marx envisioned, but with the technology of the 20th Century was utterly unattainable.

Marx's theories were 150 years too early, because we lacked the technology to make them work.  In short, with even current technology, someone needs to service the sewers, someone needs keep the peace, someone needs to draw the buildings, and someone needs to build them.  And lacking any monetary incentive, everyone wants to do the fun things, and no one wants to do the hard, dirty or downright disgusting ones.  And therefore, to make the system function, you have to have one of the most draconian, totalitarian governments imaginable.  Basically, without money, you have to use brute force to make the system function.

And this is why, in the end, Capitalism won; it was the least brutal system that actually brought the most stability and prosperity.  At least for now. 

So to return to my point, we are going to be forced to adopt an economy straight out of Star Trek: the Next Generation.  In that series, there was an episode when the crew discovered a set of space-farers that had been cryogenically frozen for centuries.  When they found out that the Federation was moneyless, and further, no one worked for wages in the manner they were familiar with, one of them asked "what was the point of life."  Picard responded, "to strive to make yourself better."

So basically, the future as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry is one where people do the things they want, to become better people, and to leave the world (or universe) a better place.  While that seems like a Utopian Fantasy, we will have no choice but to figure out how to make it real.  Again, the alternative is to have starvation, revolution and slaughter.

So, with the automation world, very few jobs will remain that cannot be done by robots, or other sorts of thinking machines.  Now, we could demand that laws be passed to not allow robots to do any job that can be safely done by a human.  This is what I proposed in last week's Blog.  However, this will not fly with the Capitalist system or the "Masters of the Universe"  They will demand that no such laws be passed, because that will cut into their maximization of profits.  They are going to insist that they be allowed to replace all of their workers with automated systems, because it will put the most money in their pockets at the immediate time.  And it is important to note, Capitalism is somewhat poor at planning past the next economic quarter, and it is terrible in planning for the ten year horizon.

So, you will wind up with literally billions of unemployed, and unemployable, humans.  (And I did mean billions with a "B")  There will be a small sector of people still employed, probably about 10% to 20% of the population, but the vast majority will have no employment option.  Therefore, in order to feed them, house them and clothe them, Welfare and other Social Safety Net programs will have to cover their living.  And that will have to be done, because, just in America, a 25% unemployment rate during the Depression brought us to the brink of anarchy.  Only the New Deal saved the country from a violent revolution.  (And even if you don't think it did, the majority of people believed it did, and it calmed the people down, because they knew the government was trying to solve the problem.)

So in the end, with 80%+ of the population on the Dole, the taxes on the remaining 20% will become utterly unsupportable.  I don't mean to get all Ayn Rand here, but really, that 20% will just stop working, because the government will HAVE to take almost 100% of the money they make in order to make the system work.  Basically, each working person will have to fully support at least four other people completely.  It is a completely unsustainable system.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand said the "Makers" will just all go on strike and stop producing, bringing the system to a halt and making all of the worthless "Takers" recognize that they are leaches on society, at which point, they will let the precious "Makers" act without restriction.

That is a childish fantasy.

Oh, for certain, the "Makers" will stop, go on strike as it were.  That will be inevitable.  However, the rest of us won't miss them at all.  In fact, without them pulling the levers of society, we might be able to actually accomplish this transformation to the Post-Positional system.

Basically, with automation, there will be essentially no cost, or almost no cost to any production.  I know that sounds strange, but everything, from cost of materials to cost of finished goods exists because people have to be paid wages to get the raw materials or make the product.  If there are no labor costs, then the cost of something is a purely artificial cost.  (I realize this is an oversimplification, because there are carrying costs, such as environmental damage and such.  But for the most part, the actual cost of anything is the result of having to pay people to extract, grow, finish, etc.) 

So with that, food, shelter, clothing and all of that will essentially become free with automation.  This effect will do nothing but increase as "replicator" technology comes on-line.  Right now, we call that technology "3D Printing" technology.  But as it increases in quality, and the types of things that can be made increase in diversity, it will emulate the replicators of Star Trek. 

And at this point, there will be no want in society that is not instantly filled, and filled for no actual monetary cost.  Of course, this is dependant on us not imposing some sort of arbitrary barrier, just to make sure that societal status gets preserved.

And this is why I call this Economic System, "Post-Positional."

When anyone can have anything for free, barring the passage of arbitrary sumptuary laws, good will no longer be able to be used to indicate social status.  If you can replicate a plate of diamonds, how can diamonds show your economic class?  (Sumptuary laws were laws passed in Europe in the Middle Ages up to modern times that forbid certain classes from owning or wearing certain things.  For example, no one was allowed to wear purple except royalty.  To do so would land you in jail or even get you executed.)

So in this world what happens?  Well all of the work is done by the machines and by the bots, leaving people completely unemployed.  However, people need to occupy their time in order to feel fulfilled.  For the most part, people don't handle idleness well.  Which leads to the other part of the Star Trek future; people will work at self improvement.  They will spend their lives learning, practicing, experimenting.  They will be free to explore whatever takes their interest.

There will still need to be some jobs, especially in the creative arts, but the people who do them will be doing them because they want to, not because they have to.  And the amount of time spent on them will be far less than we spend today.  And here, I would like to point out the brilliance of the Star Trek Universe. 

The Federation was an absolute necessity.  Without the Frontier, humans stagnate.  If we have no challenges, we become overwhelmed with inertia.  This is what the exploration culture of Star Trek promoted.  It provided the drive to keep humanity advancing, developing and improving.

So basically, the world we will be forced to adopt because of technology will be one where each human becomes occupied with personal growth, and one where all of the necessities of life are just provided.  Further, there will be no more class, or status, at least no status based on goods or possessions, because anyone will have equal abilities to access anything they want.  This will not be because of any sort of actual egalitarian thought, at least not initially, but because there will literally be no inherent costs to any goods.  And because of this, there will ultimately be no need for services to have any cost either, because the people providing the services will have no expenses.  People will become free to essentially do what they want, without any economic fetters. 

And ultimately, that is where we will have to go, unless we want the Apocalypse of Automation to become an actual Armageddon.  Of course, the rich and powerful will view this future as an Armegeddon, and they will likely fight it to the bitter end.  However, they will lose.

History is not on their side. 

The Zombie in the Room

Automation

Capitalism is dead.  It isn't apparent yet, because it is still shambling around like the zombie it is, but for all of that it is dead.  Really in the end, it was the victim of its own success.  It survived for centuries, outlasting revolutions, adversarial paradigms and even outright attempts to stack the deck in the system. 

The one thing it cannot survive, however is automation.

I know that seems like an odd thing that would kill off a dominant economic system, but it has and it will.   The reason, automation eviscerates the center.  And just like a person cannot live without a digestive tract, capitalism cannot survive without a middle class.

People see that capitalism is failing, at least intuitively.  Right now people are focused on a number of things that they claim are destroying capitalism.  However, they are focused on symptoms or phantom causes, not on the actual rot at the heart of the tree. 

The Right screams regulations, minimum wages and health care spell the end of the system, and we will be left with socialism or communism.   To a certain extent, they are correct; we will have to turn to a form of socialism if we continue on this path, but not for any of the reasons they claim.  The Left, on the other hand, blames income disparity, greedy business tycoons and mega-banks for the downfall.  Again, as with the Right, they have some correct points, especially where greed is concerned.  But again, they miss the forest for the trees.  Not that the individual trees are unimportant, they are, but the larger picture is being ignored.

And, as I stated before, the root problem is automation. 

But why is it such a problem?  The reason is simple, automation destroys the low-education, focused skill, high paying jobs, that built the system.  It destroys the jobs that are central to making things.  And these jobs, not professional positions are central to a strong capitalist economy. 

There are certain realities to the professional world.  We only need a certain number of doctors and lawyers and other professionals.  For example, unless we deliberately infect people so they are sick more, or change the system to require all people to be needing a lawyer at all times in their lives, there is a saturation point to these jobs.  They are population ratio jobs.  You only need a set number of these people to serve a set number of members of society at large.

Similarly, there are only a certain number of teachers that were need, because, again, it is a population ratio profession.  Even at the most generous staffing levels, you only need about one teacher to every 15 full time students.  That's a lot of teachers, but overall, it isn't an overwhelming number, and it is completely driven by a limited resource, namely, the number of people seeking education.

Almost every profession is similar, architects, engineers, even bankers are limited by the number of people who will seek their services.  The only profession that I would say is exempt from this would be scientists, because, there is always far more to explore than there are people to explore it.  However, this is also a self-limiting profession in another way; only a certain percentage of the population has the inherent talent to excel in the sciences.  And honestly, that limitation also applies to the other professions as well.  Only a certain number of people have the skills for law, or design or teaching.  Yes, you can teach some of that, but, honestly, there is a need for aptitude as well.  And I would like to note, aptitude is not equivalent to intelligence.  A person could be brilliant, but if they cannot deliver a good oration and handle themselves in a debate, they are not going to make it in law or politics.  It just won't happen.  Similarly, as we see over and over in our current crop of politicians, you don't really need to be smart to be elected, you just need a great stump speech and a powerful delivery of that speech.

However, manufacturing jobs are not a limited field, at least not in the same way as the professions.  And by manufacturing, I am including all types of making, from a baker, to a carpenter, to an auto assembly line worker.  These jobs are demand driven.  The more cakes, the more buildings and the more cars people want, the more people will be employed in those professions.  On a side note, this is why most companies created planned obsolescence, to make sure that people kept buying.  It is also why "in" colors, and other fashion and styles change, it keeps demand high. 

But to return to the point, making is typically a focused skill, instead of one requiring extensive and wide ranging education.  Further, any needed education in making is typically done through an apprenticeship.  There are schools that have stepped in with vocational education, but often these are six month to two year programs.  In the traditional apprenticeship, you didn't even have to pay for your education, you got paid to learn.  Although the pay was certainly lower than it would be for a journeyman, it still was income during the education process.

Further, these jobs were typically high paying, often even higher paying than professional positions.  My uncle, who was a licensed engineer, educated at Perdue, left engineering and became a pipe-fitter, because he made significantly more money at it.  After he made the switch, he was able to pay off his mortgage in 7 years, instead of the 20 more that it would have taken before.  He also found it to be more satisfying work, but that is another topic for another time.  For now I will just say, often people engaged in making things have a very high level of satisfaction and pride, because they see the product of their labor.

So in the end, in a workforce with a large manufacturing component, you get a lot of people employed at high paying jobs, without needing years of expensive education.  Further, these jobs can be done by almost anyone who gets the necessary training.  My uncle always said that he could pull anyone off the streets and make them an excellent pipe-fitter in six months if they put their mind to it.  And with the wages of a pipe-fitter, they could have a nice house, a nice car and send their kids to college, if the kids wanted that.  And even with all those expenses, they could put aside enough for a very nice retirement.

However, automation has wiped out a vast majority of these jobs, and is on track to obliterate even more in the coming years.  Already, they have developed 3D printing technology to build simple houses.  How much longer will it be before they can 3D print skyscrapers?  And when they do, what will happen to the carpenters, steel workers, concrete guys and bricklayers?  They will go the way of the assembly line worker. 

And pushing this is the inevitable drive to maximize profits.

If you don't have to pay wages, insurance, unemployment, and taxes on thousands of employees, and can replace them with robots, or printers, or other machinery, you save yourself a fortune.  Of course, the equipment costs a lot of money at the outset, but that is a one time expenditure, and further, it can be depreciated, saving even more money when tax time rolls around. 

Not only is this good for the bottom line, it is actually a mandate of the capitalist system.  Failing to maximize shareholders' profits is at best dereliction of duty, at worst, possibly a criminal fraud.  Regardless, the economics require the companies to lower overhead and increase profit.

And we have seen it over and over.  There are virtually no receptionists left in the American corporation, and increasingly all basic customer service calls are handled by automated systems.  Grocery stores rely more and more on self-service checkout lanes.  Assembly lines  use robots.

Its even creeping into the professions.  Fifty years ago, the average architectural firm had a couple of dozen draftsmen (and yes, they were almost all men at that time) cranking out detail after detail, by hand on Mylar.  Then came AutoCAD, and those two dozen could be replaced by six, because the details could be cut and pasted from one drawing to another, no effort required.  Now, Revit is reducing the six to three, and further, with the internet, those three can be in India, just as easily as in the US.  Pretty soon, given how BIM is evolving, the architect will be able to click a set of menu options, design the building and instantly produce a set of CDs without a single other person needed: one step production.  And with that, what jobs will there be for architectural interns, job captains or technicians, or any other employee beyond possibly an accountant to manage the books?  And really, with Quickbooks, is that even needed?

And this is how capitalism dies, not with a bang, going out in some sort of proletariat conflagration, but with a whimper of disappearing jobs, with no hope of employment for the vast percentage of people.

So, the Right is correct, in their minds, by saying all that will save it is for labor to become so cheap that it actually doesn't make sense to automate the jobs.  They don't acknowledge the actual problem, and I doubt they consciously recognize it, but intuitively, they understand this.  However, what they fail to understand is that if everyone is receiving poverty wages, no one will be able to buy anything.  And since this model depends on demand, it enters a death spiral.  For certain, the captains of industry will get even more fabulously wealthy, at least until the bottom drops out.

At the end of this death spiral is a sad fact, either the world embraces a radical socialism, where almost everyone in the bottom 2/3's of society is on the Dole, or we accept that we will unleash a string of violent revolutions.   People who are starving, and who have no hope, will overthrow a government, and kill everyone who has the things they want.  Then, a small faction gets the power and the money, and the cycle repeats.  Over and over, into eternity.  France had this happen for about a hundred years; Revolution, brief prosperity, disenfranchisement, discord, Revolution.  Only an embrace of a socialistic ideology and two world wars completely broke this cycle.  Had those two things not happened, France would likely be as unstable today as many of the countries in South America.

The Left also sees some of what is going on, that the big banks and CEO greed are driving the bus over the cliff.  They also recognize that income disparity is really impacting the demand based economy.  But they are focused on the symptom, not the underlying disease.  They want to institute policies that redistribute the wealth and level the playing field somewhat.  However, just like the Right, all this does is delay the inevitable.  Sure there will be a short term spike in demand, as people have more disposable money, but that increased demand will produce money that is used to increase automation.  The construction company is suddenly awash in capital, so what will they do?  They'll buy that really cool concrete printer that they couldn't afford last year.  And suddenly, an entire concrete crew is out of work.  That crew's prosperity is gone and they stop buying.  This is repeated over and over in company after company.  And then demand sinks.  And once again, we are back to the point where it is either almost universal Welfare, or revolution.

But what about education?  Can't we just retrain these people for new jobs?  Teach them a profession?  Well, that puts us back to the beginning of this paper.  Professional jobs are based on populations; it isn't a demand system, unless you create artificial demand.  Therefore, you will quickly get saturation.  We are already seeing this in Law and in Higher Education.  There are far more law school graduates and PhD's than there ever will be available positions.  And suddenly a Juris Doctor is handing you your McDonalds.

Further, I am going to be blunt here, (and probably destroy some of my Liberal credentials) not everyone is cut out to be a college student.  Even though we like to think everyone is a special and unique snowflake, and that everyone gets a prize because they tried, that isn't the way it works.  Can someone with an IQ of 95, which is solidly average, but not outstanding, really make it as a neurosurgeon or a physicist?  That is not to say that there are tons of things they can do, and do very well.  But, are they going to succeed in an intensive and competitive college program?  Unless we genetically engineer everyone to be brilliant, we will have a range of intelligence in humans.  (And don't even get me started on Eugenics being a "good idea."  It isn't.)

So what is the solution.  Either we have to develop a post-capitalist economic model that is not based in employment, and maybe not even in money, or we have to limit automation.  Although the first option is, in my mind at least, the more realistic long term solution, the reality is, no one is going to go along with that strategy, at least not now.  We can't even get the powers that be to move on climate change, which is as close to a certainty as science can ever get.  We will never get people to move on some sort of change to the fundamental economic structure of the entire world.

So that leaves limiting automation.  I read a science fiction story by Jack Chalker where they had a law that stated, "unless the job is too hazardous to be undertaken by humans, no job that can be done by a person is allowed to be given over to a robot."  Although some would argue that this, for all intents and purposes, kills off capitalism, in actuality, it is the only way to save the system.  At least save it until we can actually come up with something better.

Why?  Because it would re-insert the high paying, low education but focused skilled jobs back into the economy.  If assembly lines and construction sites were required to be using people instead of machines, we would have a much more robust middle class.  and with a robust middle class, demand for the products of manufacturing would go up.  And this would lead to further expansion of job opportunities, which would in turn lead to more demand. 

I realize that this would also lead to more resource consumption, more pollution and more environmental devastation, so this is not really a long term solution.  As I said before, it would only be a bridge to a different system.  But it would give us the time to come to terms with some realities that we don't want to face right now.

However, in the end, it would give us what we need most, time to solve the problem.

What If We're Not Actually All In This Together?

Assumptions

The news media today is making a fundamental assumption that I'm not sure is still valid.  Specifically, they assume that, no matter which party is putting forth their ideas, both sides of the political spectrum are working to make the United States stronger and better.  They frame all discussion based on the long standing tradition that only the vision of how to improve the country differs, but the end goal is a shared one, that we always try to leave the next generation with a better country than we inherited

But what if that assumption is fundamentally flawed?

What if one side is not actually trying to make the country better and stronger?  What if one side is no longer working for the interests of America, but for the interests of themselves?  What if, in some people's minds, we are not still all in this together?

This is a dangerous assertion; many people would view this as an accusation of treason.  A few years ago, I would have felt the same, and would have believed that it was unthinkable that some of our political leaders are not working towards a better America.  

It also means that all of the media analysis is incorrect.  Budgets are not brave solutions to the countries problems, politicians are not sticking their necks out for the country, and most importantly, both sides will not lead to the same place of a stronger country.  When the media assumes that both sides have our best interests at heart, they create a dangerous implication that no matter who wins, they will try to rebuild the nation and the economy.

But what if one side is not out to strengthen these things?

This is an accusation that gets leveled frequently at President Obama, that he is trying to destroy the United States from within.  He is accused of everything, up to and including being an agent of Satan.  People on the right think he is a Muslim out to convert the country through some sort of jihad, that he is a socialist, bent on nationalizing all industry, and that he is a tyrant, determined to shred the constitution and use it as confetti at the party celebration the death of the United States.

However, in reality, the actual villains that I am describing are some of the leaders of the Republican Party.  It is a very common scenario in psychology to transfer your wrongdoing onto someone else.  If you are a liar, you accuse someone else of lying, if you are a thief, you see theft all around you,  if you are a sociopath, you expect everyone else to engage in sociopathic behaviors.  In short, when you engage in inappropriate behaviors, you see those behaviors all around you because you expect everyone to behave as you do.  You also begin to accuse others of those behaviors to draw attention away from your own misdeeds.  The easiest way to see this behavior in action is when a child does something wrong, and then accuses a sibling of something even worse to evade notice or punishment.  This behavior pattern is discussed extensively in Lakoff's book, "The Political Mind."

This is what I see happening at some of the highest levels of the Republican Party.  They accuse Democrats of wrecking this country, when they are the ones with the blood on their hands.

I do want to note here, I am not saying that all Republicans want to destroy the country, I'm not even saying most do.  There are many on the Right that care passionately for America, and would be justifiably horrified at the accusation that they do not.  I would even include most of the social conservatives in this group.  I would never want to live in a country modeled after Rick Santorum's vision, but I am certain that he genuinely believes that his rigid view of religiosity would make America a better country in the future. I also think that most of the rank and file Republicans believe that they are working for an stronger tomorrow.

No, my accusation is not leveled at the majority of Republicans, it is aimed squarely at billionaire inner circle: Mitt Romney, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Sheldon Addleston and the others at the very top who profit from America's failure.  I would also place some other people in this circle, both in punditry, such as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and some in political office, such as Scott Walker, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

Why do I think these people want America to fail, or at least not to thrive?  As I said, it is a serious accusation.  What is my line of reasoning to make this charge?

It is derived from Morris Berman's book "Dark Ages America."  I have referenced this book in the past, because I find it to be one of the scariest and most astute critiques of 21st century America.  In the book, Berman diagrams the fall of every great empire and compares it with the current conditions in this country.  The parallels are frightening.

One hallmark of the "End of Empire" is a deliberate decision by those in power to "rape out the system."  In other words, in a declining empire, the rich and powerful take as much out of the economic structure as they can, in order to move that money into the places that they feel have high likelihood of  becoming the new financial juggernaut.  They are on the hunt to invest in the "New Empire."

Any investment in the dying system is seen by these titans as a waste of money that is better used somewhere else.  You can see this attitude in the outsourcing of manufacturing to Asia, while at the same time refusing to shore up any infrastructure in the United States.  Roads, Schools, Utility Grids, and all other public works are literally crumbling around us, and yet, the Republican hierarchy refuses to consider any spending on these necessary repairs.

Improving infrastructure would require raising taxes, the bulk of which would fall on the wealthy, at least under our current progressive taxation model.  This would, of course, limit to some extent the money that they could move to offshore tax havens.  And, I should note, it isn't even just Republicans guilty of this move.  A former darling of the Clinton administration, Denise Rich, recently gave up her U.S. citizenship strictly to avoid taxes.  In this offshoring paradigm, it is rich vs. poor, not right vs. left.

But refusal to replace a decaying infrastructure isn't the end of this move to dismantle everything that makes our country great.  We are selling off national assets such as public parks and other amenities.  Benton Harbor in Michigan was recently forced to sell off a public park that had been willed to the city by a former resident.  The governor appointed fiscal manager is requiring a beloved amenity be sold to a developer who has been trying for years to get his hands on the property.  Never mind the fact that the will explicitly stated that the park was to be public and free for all time.  A few years ago, a mayoral candidate even proposed selling New York's Central Park.  I can't find the name of that candidate, because all Google searches lead me to sites selling multi-million dollar Co Ops overlooking the park.  There are proposals to allow gas and oil exploration in the National Parks, the national forests are being auctioned off for timber companies, and countless other national assets are on the chopping block.

And then we have the refusal to fund the social safety net, and to fundamentally dismantle it where possible.  We want to privatize Social Security, giving that money over to Wall Street.  Similarly, Medicare would be handed off through vouchers to the private insurance companies.  These are just moves to get that money out of the government's hands and into the hands of private business.  After the Wall Street meltdown of 2008, we know how this story ends; the rich get richer, and the rest of us just get soaked.

And this is why I think that the certain people in the Republican hierarchy are not on the side of the United States.  All of the assets, all of the social programs and all of the melting pot attitudes of this country are sacrificed on the altar of profits.  We are being torn apart, both financially and emotionally, to make the gutting easier.  In some cases, we are even dancing towards the gallows where we will be hung.  You see this in the Tea Party fanaticism.  

And this makes no sense if you want a strong America on the other side of the Great Recession.  Our economy, rightly or wrongly, is built on a foundation of consumer spending.  In fact, our absolute need to shop is all that kept the economy going for most of the last decade; we have built the country on malls and services.  Since we have eliminated most of our manufacturing base, all we have left is shopping to move the economy.  Because of this, the only way it will get better is to get people to start spending again. 

Understand, I'm not advocating this economic system, I'm just pointing out the reality of it.  Also, I recognize that changing how the system works, even though it would be healthy in the long term, is not feasible in the short.  Trying to fundamentally alter the system while the ship is foundering would likely sink it as thoroughly as current Republican policies will.  We need to stabilize the economy before performing massive surgery on it.  After we are back to a healthy position, we can examine the wisdom of our system.

So to return to the point, we need to shore up the economic drivers in this country, and the best way, as we learned in the Great Depression, is Keynesian Economics.  Even the hero of Laissez Faire Economics, Milton Friedman, advocated strong economic intervention and stimulus in a severe downturn.  We know that it works, even though it took the massive spending of a World War to finally shake off the doldrums.  

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, has written a book to this effect called "End This Depression Now."  If you get people back to work, even if it is with government jobs of social services, they will have money in their pockets.  And when they have money, they will spend it, especially in the middle classes.  That spending, in turn, drives more employment, which facilities more spending.  It is a positive version of a viscous cycle, each turn of the wheel builds momentum.

So, if we know how to get the economy running smoothly again, why are we not doing it?  I know the story for public consumption is deficits and the burden that the place on the country, but if that was the case, why did we authorize two wars paid for with a credit card?  And why, for the first time in American history, did we not raise taxes during those wars?  Why, if we are concerned about deficits, are we arguing to keep the Bush tax cuts in place?  If we let them expire, we could plug a huge hole in the deficit, without impacting services.  Time after time, we have enacted policies that seem designed to create deficits and devastate the financial security of the government. 

None of it makes sense, if you just view it through the filters that we are told to look at it through.  Why are the poor and middle class having to pay heavy costs, both in regressive taxation and loss of the social safety net, while the wealthy continue to stick money in offshore accounts and build factories in China?

The answer, I fear, is that the rich just want more money in their pockets, and damn the consequences in the long term.  They are willing to sacrifice America, just to have more profit.

And that is not how America succeeds.  It is however, how the vultures thrive.

The Holodeck Will Be Mankind's Last Invention

Obsolescence

What goes around, comes around; history is a never ending repeating cycle.  We can look to the horizon and see the work life and economy of Ancient Rome returning.

In the next few decades, humans may revert to a society where the primary occupations are agriculture and food preparation, basic service industry jobs and the manufacture of small scale handcrafted items.  The reason: 3D printers may make large scale manufacturing obsolete.  The Pirate Bayis claiming within 20 years, you will be able to print off a new pair ofsneakers.  When you factor in quantum molecules, there is essentially no limit to what that technology can create, other than organics fit for human consumption.  Creating those is a much harder endeavor.

While I am skeptical of the timeline that they are putting forth (aren't we supposed to have flying cars, robot servants and colonies on the moon by now?) I do not doubt that we will have the technology at some point in the next century.  And once we have it, it will spell the end of our current economy as we know it.

First, we will begin to lose manufacturing.  It will be the simpler products first, like clothing, that has uniform materiality, or the very high tech products, like computers, which already are created primarily by printing processes right now.  Then it will expand to printing objects like car parts (which they are also planning for) and once that happens, how long will it be until entire cars can be printed.

Admittedly, printers on that scale will not be household items, but it could be very possible for you to go to a car dealer in the future and order up your car and then wait for it to be printed out.  Similarly, you go to the contractor, and they haul a building-sized printer out to the building site and print your new house right up for you, furniture included.

And with that, the entire manufacturing industry goes away, except for boutique artisans who handcraft objects for technophobes or iconoclasts who insist on human made products.  Otherwise, all of our hardgoods will come out of the printer's hopper.

Soon you will even see designers begin to disappear as design your own (whatever) software becomes readily available.  These programs are already beginning to cut into home design, as people are bringing in plans they came up with using the design your own home program.

Add to that the idea that the iPhone will have the ability to take blood and saliva samples to diagnoseany illness.   Researchers in South Korea are already beginning to develop this technology.  With robotic surgeons, and digital diagnosis, there will be very little left for doctors to do.

This is the next wave of a revolution that began with the first textile mills, which eliminated the need for hand woven cloth, except, again, for highly specialized artistic or luxury purposes.  The assembly line, the robot, the computer, the self scanning checkout lane, all of them have reduced the need for human labor, and yet at the same time increased the amount of goods to consume.

The unexpected ramifications of this are staggering.  We have had to create a consumer driven economy in order to consume all that we create; our products, our stuff, literally controls our lives.  We have planned obsolesce simply to make people buy replacements of things they already own; if you only needed to buy one refrigerator every generation, there would be no refrigerator industry.  My aunt and uncle had a refrigerator that they purchased when they got married in the 1940's.  That refrigerator was still in their house and working when my aunt sold it in 2003.  You cannot tell me that in 2012, we cannot build a refrigerator that lasts for over 50 years with no repair, given that we were able to do so in 1945.

For the same reason, fashion and design change at lightning pace.  The couch you bought five years ago now looks dated and unstylish, and you need a new one, so that you don't look behind the times.  A couch is harder to make break down, since there are no moving parts, so other strategies to get you to buy a new one have to be employed.  It is all a game to keep the industrial machine humming.

But the side effect of automation in this process is we no longer need very many people to build it, yet we need them to be employed to buy it, hence a service based economy.  When my grandparents were growing up, there were very few restaurants, and most of those existed in conjunction with hotels, to cater to travelers.  My grandmother only ate in a restaurant maybe twenty times in her whole life.  Thirty years ago, when I was a kid, there were only three restaurants in our neighborhood, a McDonalds, a casual diner, and a decent Italian restaurant.  Now there are at least 12, not counting the four Starbucks.  (And you can stand outside of any one of those and see the other three, I'm not joking.)

With fewer and fewer manufacturing jobs, we have had to expand the service industries to pick up the slack.  We've even had to create new services, like personal trainer, massage therapist and dog walker, to compensate for the loss of manufacturing jobs.  And the worst thing is, these jobs will never pay as much as those lost industrial wages.

And this will result in the eventual end of manufacturing, because no one will have enough money to buy the products, at least not on the scale that is necessary to keep the assembly lines humming.  So really the only answer is to eliminate the assembly line and completely automate the process, which is what the 3-D printer revolution will bring about.

But this new revolution will require a radical rethinking of the economy.  There will be no manufacturing jobs, not even running the assembly line, because there won't be an assembly line.  Moreover, a large segment of the cost of goods comes from the overhead of running the factory, and with no factory, there is no overhead, in fact, there isn't even really a company if you make the object in your own house on your own 3-D printer, so the cost of goods will have to drop.  Maybe money can be made from the design, but that is about all.  You might even subscribe to brands like you do to Netflix, with unlimited downloads and printouts.

So really, in this new high tech economy, we might look very much like a low-tech agrarian economy, with the only jobs being in agriculture and service industries.

   

The only other professions we would need would be all of the copyright lawyers and  digital police to try and stop all of the illegal downloads of Nike shoes.

Am I a Soon to Have?

Economics

What we have here is a failure to understand basic economic principles.

In his response to the President's State of the Union Address, Governor Mitch Daniels claimed that this is not a nation of haves and have-nots, but a nation of haves and soon to haves.

Huh???  Excuse me?

Did I get this wrong, did he suddenly avow communism, because it certainly sounds like he just did. 

Let me explain.  If everyone had a at least a million dollars, no one would be rich.  The people who only had a million dollars would be poverty stricken.  The reason is that the economy would normalize to a million dollars being poor; inflation would run rampant until the prices leveled out to a new plateau.  Your grandparents probably can tell you that they remember a loaf of bread costing a nickel, and that's because they only made a few thousand dollars a year.  In fact they probably made in a year what the average person now makes every month.

Prices will always rise until a point of equilibrium is met.  The market will determine how much things cost, and it will always set prices based on general income.  Now if everyone had a million dollars, there would be a short grace period where everyone could feel rich, but that would only last a few weeks, maybe even only a few days, possibly only a few hours.  The reason: every one would immediately raise their prices.

The only way you could prevent that from happening: price controls, absolute rigid price controls, government mandated maximum prices, government intervening to set the prices.  Sounds pretty communistic.

But that is not the only way his statement is communist.

It echoes the statement, each to each according to need, the Marxist motto.  (On a side note, it also echoes "A chicken in every pot," Hoover's slogan, and we know how that ended.)  Why does it echo Marxism?  Because Marx advocated a classless society as one of the hallmarks of his economic theory.  What Daniels seems to be advocating is that everyone will be rich, which actually means no one will be rich, because there will only be one economic class, which brings us back to Marxism.

How do you enforce a single class society?  Redistribution of wealth.  Wait a minute, isn't that what they are accusing democrats of tying to do?  I guess two can play that game.

The other possibility is that there will be more than one class, but I guess that there will have to be a rotation set up: you get to be rich this month, but next month you have to go back to being a soon to have.  Then you wait your turn, in August of 2013 you go back to being a have for six weeks, and the wheel turns round. 

Actually it sounds kind of nice, everyone gets to be rich on a schedule. While you're not rich, you can dream of all the fun you'll have when you are.  It's kind of like a money vacation or a money cruise.  You spend all of your time dreaming about that period when you're rich, which will make your time being poor bearable.

And since there would have to be some central authority to work out the turns, and make sure that the haves turn in their stuff to the soon to haves, you'll need a pretty big government.  And a communist one at that, since the government will need to control all of the assets to make this work.

So Mitch Daniels is a communist advocating the largest bureaucracy the world has ever seen.

At least, I wish that's what his statement was about, because that  would be really funny.

The truth is much less funny.  It is the worst sort of political rhetoric and pandering; he is playing on the American Dream in a very vicious and cynical way.  He is pulling the "If you vote Republican, we'll make sure that you get rich."  It is no different than the Nigerian who just needs access to your band account to deposit thousands of dollars.

He is playing on Americans' desires and beliefs, when there is no possibility of every delivering on the promises.  There will never be a country of haves and soon to haves, because for a soon to have to become a have, one of the haves must become a have not.  There is a limited pool of openings at the top.

But he is playing off the idea that there are unlimited openings up there, and everyone can become a VIP, and all you have to do to make sure that you become one is to vote the right way.  He is buying votes with dreams of unicorns and rainbows.

The reality is, not everyone will be rich, there will always be poor people, unless we go communist or discover some new economic theory that allows for universal wealth without devaluing it.  I would love that to happen, but under the current system, it is impossible.

And Mitch Daniels is just playing with our hopes, only to crush them in the future.

And that is the worst sort of viciousness.

Against the Fall of Night

Outsourcing

I just read an article detailing a conversation between Steve Jobs and President Obama.  At an technologies industry dinner last year, the President opened the floor for questions and Steve Jobs began asking him a question.  The President then asked Jobs "what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?  Why can't that work come home?"

Jobs' reply, "Those jobs aren't coming back."

The MegaCorps have no interest any more in investing in America.  Apple used to make all of its products in the United States, now it makes almost nothing here.  And Apple is not alone, this is being repeated in company after company, industry after industry.  All of them are moving their manufacturing to other countries.

Morris Berman, author of Dark Ages America describes this process as: at the end of empire, the moneyed interests rape all of the money out of the system to take it to where they think the next empire will be.

Those jobs, that capital, is never coming back.

I have blogged in the past about how greed will destroy capitalism, and eventually it will, unfortunately, the path to its death will be strewn with millions of bodies of those it discarded and crushed in it's death throws.  Before succumbing, Capitalism, in its current greed driven form, will wreck entire nations.  I should point out, this is not a rant in support of communism or socialism, as those are also failed models.  The seven deadlies will always bring economic systems down.

No, what I would like to look at is what this flight of industry means.  There are a few different scenarios that are possible.

First, we continue to outsource our misery.  This is what we are doing now.  In America, we have demanded things like living wages, an end to sweat shops, workplace safety and clean air and water.  These are things that most Americans believe are necessary for a civilized and enlightened society, most American, that is, except the captains of industry.  The people who run the companies see these things for what they are, unacceptable infringements on profit margins.

Every minimum wage law, every pollution regulation, every safety policy cuts into the money that they can make.  To most people, that is a decent trade off, but not to the Masters of the Universe.  As Stephen Bainbridge said,  " The social obligation of business is to sustainably maximize long-term profits for shareholders. Nothing more. Nothing less."  Anything that cuts into profit margins is unacceptable.

Therefore, in this view of corporate responsibility, the responsible action is to move the company to a place where pesky things like human dignity do not interfere with profits.

The technical term for this, by the way, is "Externalizing Costs."  We gain cheaper goods by outsourcing the environmental and human damages to another country.  Every time you buy an item from Wall-Mart that is made in China, you have externalized these costs.

This scenario does not have a happy ending for either our country or the places we move our industry to.

In the United States, it means fewer and fewer jobs, especially in the low education, high wage sectors of manufacturing.  An assembly line worker typically does not need a college education, but they make a very comfortable, middle class wage.  They can buy a house, go on vacation, have nice things and even send their own children to college.  Without industry, we move even more to a two class society of highly educated elites and poorly educated service workers.  (And one only needs to look at France circa 1780 or Russia circa 1915 to see how this ends, its not pretty.)

But this also does not have a happy ending for the countries we outsource to either.  As those countries get richer, and consequently, more educated, the workers there will begin to rise up as American workers did in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  They will begin to demand change as well.  But the captains of industry did not make the same mistake they made in the United States.

Here, we are a democracy.  (I know, we are technically a Republic, but everyone has a say in how the country is run)  If the corporations are grinding us underfoot, we have the recourse of the ballot box.  Now the corporate masters are locating in totalitarian countries, where it does not matter how much the people scream, they will just massacre the protesters and bring in new workers.  Never doubt that they will depopulate entire cities to try to suppress rebellion.  (And trust me, they will not allow the Arab Spring to spread, efforts to shut down social media are already underway across the planet.  SOPA anyone?)  The MegaCorps will prop up, and even put into place, ruthless dictators who will bow to those corporations. 

This scenario ends with a devastated America and a totalitarian ruled Third World.

The second scenario is almost as bad, especially for America.  We will normalize the value of a dollar to that of the Rupee.  In other words, we will drastically reduce the value of the dollar relative to other currencies.  In India, most people live on a few hundred dollars a year, much like Americans in the early 1900's.  We think, in our little bubble, that that means that they all live in poverty.  It is true that they do not have our standard of living, but with that amount of money, they have a comfortable life.  Again, much the same as an American's life in 1910.

I went to India a few years ago, and felt like a Rockefeller because I had a few hundred dollars in my pocket; I could afford to buy almost anything I wanted.  The reason for this was the exchange rate.  My dollar was worth 45 Rupees, and a Rupee was worth slightly more than 2 cents.  But to an Indian, a Rupee had a similar amount of purchasing power as a dollar here.  I would buy a cup of coffee for 2 Rupees, which is like a $2.00 cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Profit is made on the exchange rate.  Industry can pay an Indian worker 40,000 Rupees a year, but that amounts to only $800.00 US Dollars.  The Indian worker can live as comfortably in India on that as an American could live on $40,000.00 a year (provided they don't want to travel outside of India) and the American company can save $39,200.00 on salary costs.

If we want to bring industry back to the United States, we would need to reduce the value of the dollar to approximately 2% of its current value.  You can imagine the havoc that would wreak on both the American and Global markets.  Industry would return, at the cost of a devastated global economy.  This scenario also works in the opposite direction as well, that the Rupee could rise in value to be equal to the U.S. Dollar.  This would have the same effect, just from the other end.

Unfortunately, if America fades as an empire, which it already is doing, this scenario will be extremely likely, especially given that our currency is not backed by anything more than "the full faith and credit of the United States."  If we were on the Gold or Silver Standard, this couldn't happen, because our currency would be pegged to something of real value, as opposed to an agreed upon worth.  (I'm not going all Ron Paul here, but he does have a point, even if it is completely unfeasible at this time.)

The final scenario is the most optimistic, but it requires all Americans to join together and take control of our destiny.

Buy American, and only buy American.

If people rise up and demand American goods, and refuse to purchase products made outside of the country, we will cut into the profits of the MegaCorps and they will notice it.

Then one of two things will happen: either they will accept a reduced profit rate in order to make any profit at all; or other companies will rise up to meet the demand, and they will make things here because there is a market for them.

For too long we have been victims to the market, without realizing that there is no market without us.  We do have some control over the economy; we are not at the mercy of the Masters of the Universe.  We can turn the free market against the people who's only obligation is to line their own pockets. 

The Law of Supply and Demand states that when there is a demand, there will have to be a supply to fill that demand.  If we demand only American goods, then the Market will have to supply them, one way or another.

This path requires courage, and a willingness to forgo cheap goods, but if we all stand firm, and do not waver, we will succeed.

And this success has further ramifications.  Without the need to protect cheap labor, the MegaCorps will have no incentive to continue to prop up totalitarian regimes, other countries will see that you can have a thriving economy and still have human rights and a clean environment, and the corporations will learn, with great power comes great responsibility.

This is the only way to hold back the fall of night.  Let us not go gently. 

The Other Failing of Pure Systems

Anarchy.

One of the two main failings of modern economic theory is its failure to account for the seven deadly sins.  I wrote about this a few days ago, and then touched on it again a couple of days later.  As I said, human nature will defeat any pure economic system from without.

But contained within economic theories are the seeds of their own destruction, a failing that is so hidden in plain sight, most people do not even recognize its existence.  The two primary economic models of the last century, Capitalism and Communism, seek to replace government with an economic system.

Let me repeat that, both Marx and Smith advocate anarchy.  Both economic systems state that followed in their purest form, government will no longer be necessary.

The reasoning is different for them, but the end result is the same.

Communism states that in a pure egalitarian society, there is no need for governance, because all citizens will work equally toward the common good.  “Each to each according to need.”

Obviously, this will not work at any social scale beyond a band level society.  It works well at that scale because there are social controls, such as shunning that work very effectively in a group of twenty.  Those social controls do not work with advanced, modern society.  If your group of friends won’t talk to you, there’s always Facebook.  We lack the sanctions in a large scale society to make egalitarianism work.  We only need to look at the Soviet Union to know how this story ends.

The anarchy in Capitalism is more obscured, but it is still obvious if you know where to find it.  The Invisible Hand of the Free Market cannot function with any form of regulation.  No safety laws, taxes, tariffs, inspections or regulations.  Any government interference cripples the Invisible Hand, and that hand can only function in a completely free environment.  Again, pure anarchy, although not as overt.

Some of you might say, well what about police and such.  The free market cannot work without security.  The free market answer is you pay for it.  Private security, for those who can afford it, will take care of crime, at least, again, for those who can afford it.  Military, fire protection, roads, all of these can be paid for by the users, maybe as a subscription, but all bought and sold on the free market.

You can see this anarchy appearing in Tea Party purists.  Ron Paul, Grover Norquist, and their ilk would be just as happy with this scenario as they could be.  The real aim of the Tea Party is not to get government out of your life, it’s to get government out of government, kill it and bury it in an unmarked grave.

This is the Capitalist Utopia, a world where there is only the Free Market, and that is the world that they wish to make for the rest of us.

I would like to point out here, by the way, a scary corollary to this.  The minute you outlaw slavery and prostitution, you have destroyed the Free Market.  I want to make absolutely clear that I am not talking about the institutionalized race based slavery of the Antebellum South, which is also destructive to the Free Market, although for different reasons.

I’m talking about a person’s right to sell themselves, or possibly their children, as most common law in this country deems children as the property of their parents.  At its root, on the books, Statutory Rape used to be classified a hundred years ago as a property crime.  (I was sickened when I learned that.)  As soon as you cannot sell yourself, for money, the there is no Free Market.  I know that sounds harsh, but a free market must be absolutely free.  Ask a die hard capitalist economist and they will point out that a truly free market has never been achieved.  That's because people wouldn't stand for it if it was.

Those of you who worship at the Altar of Free Markets need to remember that.

It is unacceptable to allow a human to sell themselves.  Not everything is a commodity to be sold on the open market, and that is something most people, from all aspects of the political spectrum, would agree with.

Once you accept that premise, all that is left is to accept that the Free Market is an illusion, we need government and economic systems are NO substitute for that government.  Unless the Tea Party really wants to cause the United States to cease to exist for all intents and purposes, they need to accept that there will be laws, taxes and regulations.

If you still want to live in Anarchy, move to Haiti.  I'm sure you'll find it lovely.  The rest of us will stay here and try to make this impure system work.

The Sins of Sins

Sin

Failure to account for the Seven Deadly’s will defeat all pure economic systems.  (And to avoid an accusation of religious bias, these concepts exist in most of the world’s major religions.)  No model system is invulnerable to these pressures.  Feudalism failed due to cruelty, communism fell to sloth and capitalism is being sacrificed upon the altar of greed. 

The medieval serf lived under the knout, and even relatively recent psychological experiments have shown that modern human is still more than willing to inflict cruelty, which is an aspect of wrath, on their fellows when ordered.  (For an example of this phenomenon, refer to the Milgram Experiment.)  The Soviet worker, without incentive became unproductive, and an elaborate, and again vicious, totalitarian system was required to keep the country functioning.  Both systems were unsustainable and collapsed because of human nature.

Capitalism is currently destabilizing because of greed and envy.  Greed has taken the brakes off of the system, envy has created a consumer economy built on keeping up with, or surpassing, the Jonses.  Income disparity in America is at its highest level in a century, and the middle class is being forced out of existence.

The wealthy are repeating the pattern that occurs at the end of every empire, where the self styled “Masters of the Universe,” are finished with the current superpower, and proceed to rape out all of the assets from the fading nation, to take and invest in the new place of interest.  This process is detailed in Morris Berman’s book “Dark Ages America.” 

This can be seen in the drive to outsource jobs, relocate companies, and sell off assets.  When the economic powers are done with a place, they will not come back.  This happened in Rome, Spain, Holland and England.  The Empire is still respected to a certain extent, as a doddery old country, but they never again stride on the world stage.  Greed drives this migration.  When the capitalist interests realize there are more profits to be made elsewhere, they move on like a swarm of locusts.  It is natural.

Envy also is destabilizing capitalism.  It is one thing to consume; almost all economic systems are based on this.  (I’m sure that a non-consumer system could be envisioned, but I’m not sure that it would be an economic system in the strictest sense of the word.)  Envy is the sin that drives people to desire the best, newest, fanciest thing out there, even to the point of disposing of something just because a newer version came out.  (You can find first generation iPads on e-bay for under $200.00)  This pure consumer, envy driven, model is not sustainable.  If nothing else, resources will run out.

Envy also has a more subversive side, one that is not overtly recognized as an aspect of the sin, but when you look at St. Thomas Aquinas’ description of the sin, it becomes very clear.  Invidia also causes people to block other people’s access to the things they have.  With envy, it is not enough for you to have something, you need to make sure that no one else has it either.  In the United States, this has created a perfect storm, where the right blocks access to resources, like education, that would help the poor better their situation, and the left then gives them welfare, which makes striving to improve a zero sum game.  (in other words, it encourages Sloth.  The Seven Deadly’s just keep cropping up everywhere.)

Now back to the original point about economic systems.  They are pure systems, not practical blueprints to build a country, or a world.  The problem with a pure system is that it is a pure system, unadulterated by human failings and unwilling to accept that people typically act in their own self interest, and that self interest is rarely even enlightened.  People act in ways that are best for them at the moment, aspects of lust, gluttony and pride, more Deadly’s, seem to show up everywhere we turn.

Is there a solution to this?  Possibly.

First, people need to recognize that an ideologically pure system is not practical for the real world.  (This litmus test of purity will be further addressed in a future blog post.)  No system can exist in a vacuum.

Second, people need to stop conflating economic systems with political systems.  Communism was not a description of the governmental system of the Soviet Union, it was there economic system.  Their governmental system was Totalitarian.  (Although on paper, it was technically a democracy, even though the Soviets never actually had free elections)  Capitalism does not require a democracy or a republic, just look at Central America, or the New China.  The only economic system that conflates political power with economics is Fascism.  (And then only in some definitions.  Pure Fascism is the control of the economy by corporations.)  Detaching economic theory from governmental theory would free both of them.

Third, people need to fight against the Seven Deadly’s.  This is not advocating a specific religion, or even the necessity of religion, Aristotle created a very significant ethical framework separate from morality.  That said, people need to strive to overcome the demons of their lesser natures, and try to be better than they are, to transcend the petty emotions and impulses that limit them.

It starts with each of us.