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Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

Democracy? No – Dollarocracy: U.S. Elections Are About Money, Not Ideas

By Shlomo Maital

   President Obama has announced the launch of his presidential candidacy for 2012. According to USAToday,   the Democrat and Republican presidential candidates will each raise, and spend, $2 b. on the campaign!   It’s a bright new era — the Age of Dollarocracy!

   A stupid and disastrous Supreme Court decision has paved the way.  In Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee,  the Court ruled in 2010 that independent groups not associated with political parties or campaigns can spend unlimited corporate and union cash on ads!  The Republicans used this ruling effectively to outspend the Democrats in the mid-term 2010 elections and thoroughly drubbed the Dems.  So the Dems are planning to try the same in 2012.

   Election spending has been rising exponentially in the U.S.  The elections have become a race to see who can raise more money for costly TV ads, not who can solve America’s myriad problems. 

   If you are really good at math, project these numbers into the future, and see where they lead. They definitely do not lead to an open democratic election where ideas compete, rather than corporate wallets:

     (President, and his total campaign spending, by election):  Clinton, 1992:  $100.6 m. ;  Clinton 1996, $108.5 m.; Bush, 2000, $172.1 m.; Bush, 2004,  $356.4 m.; Obama, 2008, $745.7 m.;  Obama, 2012, (est.), $2 b. 

    USAToday says Obama has asked 400 Democrat fundraisers to collect at least $350,000 each, by year’s end. 

     You may say that much of Obama’s money came from millions of small donations.  Close inspection reveals, however, that it is the big corporate donations that drive fund-raising. And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, these are nearly unlimited.

  Way to go, judges.  You’ve helped ruin American democracy for many years to come,  under the pretense that bankrolling candidates with unlimited millions is a constitutional right and part of freedom.  Where is the freedom to elect the best candidate even if he or she takes positions that anger the big-money corporate interests?

Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

“Thunderous” New Nuclear Energy Technology

 Thor God of Thunder

 The current technology used to generate electric power from nuclear fission is a product of the Cold War.  The nuclear reactors are derived directly from technology developed to power American nuclear submarines, by generating steam through nuclear fission, based on Uranium 235.  This technology may be acceptable for nuclear subs, but after Japan’s disastrous mishap in Fukushima, it needs to be re-evaluated for civilian power stations.

   There is an alternative.  Kirk Sorensen, of Teledyne, and many top physicists,  predominantly Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia (CERN), note that one ton of thorium can generate as much nuclear energy as 200 tons of uranium.  But research on thorium reacts was halted in the 1950’s, when uranium reactors were built.

     How would a thorium reactor work?  Basically, if you use a small linear accelerator to bombard mined thorium (there is only one isotope, unlike uranium, which has several),  with slow neutrons, Thorium 232 absorbs the neutrons and becomes Uranium 233.  This fission reaction, which releases energy, creates heat that generates steam and turns turbines to make electric power.  And the process can be designed so that the byproducts cannot be used to produce nuclear bombs.  Moreover, the waste products deteriorate in a few hundred years, unlike thousands of years for plutonium waste.  And the process can be halted instantly, in the event of trouble, unlike the uranium process, which requires cooling rods and cooling water (which tsunamis can disable).  Just turn off the neutron-generating accelerator, and presto, the process halts.  In the event of a disaster, the process stops itself in milli-seconds. 

     This is not theoretical.  Pilot plants have been built in the U.S. and Russia, and China is currently engaged in large-scale research on thorium-based nuclear energy.

    Thorium gets its name from the Greek God Thor, the god of thunder.   A crash project to develop thorium nuclear technology could greatly help global warming, and alleviate the damage fossil fuels cause by generating carbon dioxide.   It could be literally a thunderous development.

 Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

Power, War & The Power Law: We Need Double Loop Thinking Fast!

By Shlomo Maital

X axis: Casualties: Y axis: Probability

 Organizational psychologist Chris Argyris once coined the phrase “double loop thinking”, to define thinking that seeks to change entire SYSTEMS, by utterly different thinking, not just parts of the existing system with in-the-box more-of-the-same thinking.  In this he reflects Einstein’s “Law” that “you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it”.

   Now we have evidence from mathematicians and physicists, who have analyzed centuries of data regarding war and bloodshed.  They have discovered the “Power Law” (originally noted by the physicist Lewis Fry Richardson)  (see diagram), which says that when the ‘severity of the (war) event’ increases by a factor of 10, the probability it will happen declines by a factor of 10.  In other words, the probability a terrorist attack will take 10 lives at a given point in time is 1/10, but an attack that kills 100 has a probability of 1/100.    Thousands of data points fall very close to this ‘power law’ inverse line.  and this “law” seems to have prevailed for centuries.

    Why?    According to one of the researchers working on this problem, Dr. Sean Gurley (Oxford U.):

  “The fact that the power-law distribution seems to be constant across all long-term modern wars suggests that the insurgencies have evolved to find an ideal solution to the problem of how to fight a stronger force.   Unless this structure is changed then the cycle of violence in places like Iraq will continue,” said Dr Gourley.” We have used this analysis to advise the Pentagon, the Iraqi government and the United Nations.”

  Here in the Mideast, events seem to constantly confirm the Power Law.  Recurring cycles of violence, revenge, counter-attack, revenge, etc. appear to create an endless Doom Loop of violence.   There must be some way to ruin the Power Law and implement Double Loop thinking. But the problem is, those whom we elect to solve our problems and conflicts actually seem to be trapped in the Power Law and confirm it rather than disprove it. 

Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

Stressed Out? Hard to Make Ends Meet? There Is A Simple Answer: Kick the Money Habit

By Shlomo Maital

 The results of the American Psychological Association’s 2010 Stress in America survey are now out. *  The results compare a) the causes of stress yearly, from 2007 (pre-global-crisis) to 2010 (post-crisis, post-joblessness), and b) the physical symptoms of stress, yearly.  

  I am hugely surprised by the results (for reasons way different than the APA).  Despite the earthquake of the financial crash, recession, loss of jobs, loss of homes, foreclosures,  Lehman Bros., etc. – Americans are stressed by the same things in 2010 as they were in 2007, with insignificant differences.  And the symptoms caused by stress also remain the same. 

    Here are the results:   In order of importance for 2010:  76% are stressed by money issues (73% in 2007), 70% by work issues (74% in 2007 !);  58% are stressed by family issues (60% in 2007).  The results of stress:  45% show irritability or anger (50% in 2007), 41% show fatigue (51% in 2007 !), 38% lack of interest or energy (45% in 2007), and 36% feel nervous or anxious (44% in 2007).  Surprisingly: 24% in 2010 showed NO symptoms of stress, compared with only 16% in 2007. 

I have a modest suggestion.  If money is a cause of tension, and so is work (working at jobs we don’t like, so we can earn money and spend it on things we don’t need),  why not tackle the issue head on?  Kick the money habit.  Start to reduce your spending.  Cut it by 10 per cent (of course, on discretionary items) this month. See how you feel.  If you feel OK, do the same in six months. Make it like a permanent diet – not a one-time crash that leads to weight gain almost at once, but a permanent change in behavior, a GRADUAL one.  Attack the primal cause of tension  by learning to do with less money, almost as addicts kick the drug habit by doing without it, cold turkey.  

    What, you say, will happen to the economy if everyone starts doing this? We’ll have a Depression to end all depressions.

    Not at all.  The capital markets will be awash with savings.  The money will be borrowed and used to build infrastructure, technology, education, environment, alternate energy.  We will replace spending (selfish and self-defeating, for those now alive) with investment (selfless, for those who will live in future).  We will all feel much better.  Over time, we will work at jobs we love rather than jobs we work at, for the paycheck.  And then, man, will that APA stress survey take a hit!  

* APA Monitor Jan. 2011, pp.60-61.

Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

Parag Khanna Knows How to Run the World: From Medieval Disorder to a New Renaissance

By Shlomo Maital

Parag Khanna is Director of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation, and is an Indian-American and author of best-selling books.  His latest book is:  How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.  Parag’s main argument?  The world today is in disorder, much as it was in medieval times, with no country or city-state able to dominate or exert global control.   This book extends Khanna’s first book, The Second World, which was about  the disorder stemming from a multi-polar no-superpower world.  In this book, according to Publisher’s Weekly, Khanna claims “the “American Century” is over. …we are in for a fractured, fragmented, multi-polar  world, a new Middle Ages of decentralized power where “corporations, powerful families, humanitarians, religious radicals, universities, and mercenaries are all part of the diplomatic landscape.”   Here is an excerpt of Khanna’s own words, from an interview with Washington Notes blog

  “Instead of a world of just great and lesser powers, the emerging landscape looks a lot like the Middle Ages of a millennium ago. That was the last time in history when, like today, both East and West were powerful at the time same time. Song dynasty China invented paper money (of which they have plenty today!), the south Indian Chola empire ruled the seas from East Africa to Indonesia, the Arab-Islamic community was at its peak as the Abbasid caliphate stretched from Andalusia in modern day Spain to Central Asia, while the Holy Roman Empire marked an uncertain and unstable period in Europe.  The aftermath of the Crusades was a crucial turning point in history when Europeans began to focus on commerce to acquire commodities and spices, prompting voyages of discovery that created the first global trading system. Banking houses in Europe rose to finance long-distance naval expeditions, which were aided by the invention of the compass. Travelers such as Italian Marco Polo and the Moroccan Ibn Batutta covered tens of thousands of miles by land and sea, deepening understanding between East and West. Globalization was thus taking place on economic, strategic, and cultural levels just as it is again today. It’s also interesting that the participants in globalization were cities, corporations, churches, guilds, mercenaries, universities and humanitarians—very much like today.    America’s footprint in the world is much greater than that of its government alone.  American companies spread financing, technology and management know-how around the globe, American universities have set up campuses across the Middle East and Asia to educate the next generation of leaders, and American citizens and charities are the most generous in the world. So America needs to stay open and engaged in the ways that have made it the most respected leader in decades past. Where America builds relations among citizens and not just governments, such as with Europe, Japan and India, alliances are much more long-lasting and stable.”

    How will this new Renaissance occur?  The last Renaissance occurred when enlightened leaders liberally funded artistic creativity.  This Renaissance will occur when the real powers in today’s world, global corporations, become aware of their obligation to the wellbeing of the world, the planet, the environment, not solely their own stockholders, and act together to make the lives of ordinary people, and future generations, significantly better.