1 Keyboard Settings

2 Running remote desktop

3 Full screen mode

4 Price

5 Conclusion

• Initiative Measure No. 1125 - No

• Initiative Measure No. 1163 - No

• Initiative Measure No. 1183 - Yes

• Senate Joint Resolution No. 8205 - Approved

• Senate Joint Resolution No. 8206 - Rejected

• County Directory of Elections - Mark Greene

• Port of Seattle - Commissioner Position No. 2 - Gael Tarleton

• Port of Seattle - Commissioner Position No. 5 - Dean Willard

• City of Seattle - Council Position No. 1 - Bobby Forch

• City of Seattle - Council Position No. 3 - Brad Meacham

• City of Seattle - Council Position No. 5 - Dale L. Pusey

• City of Seattle - Council Position No. 7 - Tim Burgess

• City of Seattle - Council Position No. 9 - Sally J. Clark

• City of Seattle Proposition No. 1 - Levy, Yes

• Seattle Transportation Benefit District - Proposition No. 1 - Yes

• Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 1 - Sharon Peaslee

• Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 2 - Kate Martin

• Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 3 - Harium Martin-Morris

• Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 4 - Marty McLaren

Note: For brevity's sake I'm omitting any uncontested races.

Initiative Measure No. 1125 - No

This initiative would let the legislature set tolls for toll roads. This is really just a way to get rid of any new toll roads since generally the folks who are willing to buy bonds secured against toll revenue won't do so if the legislature can change the toll at any time. That's why typically tolls have to be set by an independent group according to some criteria that assures the bond holders they will get paid. The initiative also bans variable tolls, this means that time based road pricing isn't allowed. That makes it impossible to use tolls to control traffic and also requires either setting very low tolls or setting reasonable tolls and then keeping them high on evenings and weekends. The initiative would also require that all tolls be used on the highway in which they were collected (an existing requirement) and cannot be directed to non-transportation uses.

What I find particularly rich regarding the arguments against 1125 is that we can't let politicians set tolls. Why not? More to the point, with our politicians so firmly in the pocket of moneyed interests I feel pretty secure that they will set the tolls at whatever level their financial masters dictate and this won't be any different than an unelected 'independent' committee. I suspect the real reason that politicians don't want to be on the hook for setting tolls is because when the 'independent' committee raises the tolls the politicians can just throw up their hands and say 'well the committee did it'.

The Stranger claims the real purpose of this bill is to kill light rail on I-90. That's fine with me. I remember Sound Transit Proposition No. 1 and I voted against it because it did nothing substantial to help alleviate traffic (and no, this isn't an attack on light rail, it's an attack on how Washington does light rail).

But I'm actually not against tolling and I'm am for variable priced tolling so unfortunately I have to vote against this initiative as much as I would love some of the damage it would cause.

Initiative Measure No. 1163 - No

This is another blast from the past that I voted against. This was Initiative Measure No. 1029 that added extra certification requirements for long term home care workers. As I argued then this measure was a bad idea since it seemed to mostly be about keeping people out of employment as home care workers by putting in place unnecessary barriers to entry. The main arguments made for this initiative is that it mandates training (which is already mandated by law) and mandates background checks (which are already mandated by law). What would get me to vote for this initiative was proof that the current training and background checks are inadequate. I haven't seen any proof provided of either issue so I'm voting No.

Initiative Measure No. 1183 - Yes

Education is a horrible thing. Things were so simple when I began researching 1183. CostCo == Bad. They want to run small stores (under 10,000 sq ft) out of the business of competing with them on hard liquor. They don't want to increase alcohol taxes enough to make up for the damage that extra availability will do. And they want to write themselves a really nice little tax exemption where they can sell alcohol directly without the distributor mark up to re-sellers so long as those re-sellers are selling the alcohol by the glass (e.g. restaurants). Add to that the fact that CostCo tried to do the same thing (more or less) last year and got rejected and that CostCo has set a state wide record for funding an initiative and you have an obvious slam dunk no.

But then SB 5942 enters the picture. This bundle of joy was signed by the Governor on 6/15/2011. What it does is auctions off the right to the state's monopoly on wholesale hard liquor to a private distributor and closes down the state stores anyway. This private distributor will apparently pay an up front fee in return for reduced taxes. Having seen this 'sell off/rent back' nonsense before the result is typically that well connected cronies get a sweet heart deal and the state (meaning us) gets screwed.

So as much as I hate 1183 I am stuck voting for it since I think SB 5942 will almost certainly make things worse than 1183 will.

Senate Joint Resolution No. 8205 - Approved

Once upon a time someone couldn't vote in Washington State for president or vice president unless they lived in the state for 60 days. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that voter restrictions couldn't require more than 30 days of residency and the Washington Constitution was changed to reflect that, except for the section about voting for president and vice president. Because of the supreme court ruling the president and vice president sections can't be enforced so this remaining part of the constitution is a dead letter. This resolution will remove that inoperative part of the Washington State constitution. And yes I'm paranoid enough to have read both the resolution and the relevant part of the Washington State constitution and yes this resolution appears to do what it says.

Senate Joint Resolution No. 8206 - Rejected

This is a continuation of SJR 8206 from 2007, which I rejected. It wants to create a rainy day fund and force state money into it. This particular extension requires that any time state revenue grows 'too quickly' the surplus has to go into the rainy day fund. My logic is the same now as then. If there is extra money, let's leave it with the people and when times are bad lets have deficit spending. It's perfectly reasonable for the state to go into debt during bad times to pay for services and then pay back the debt during good times. This is certainly more sensible than handing billions of dollars over to the state to sit on instead of keeping it in citizen's pockets. Now I do appreciate the argument that in practice if revenues increase our state will just spend them. But locking that money away won't work, what our representatives pass during downtimes they will undo during good times. So if we are going to have meaningful reform of our tax system it won't come from locking away our money.

County Directory of Elections - Mark Greene

Mark Greene - O.k., let's be honest. Mr. Greene is kinda 'out there'. His web page struck me as a bit on the conspiracy side. And having held no elective office at any level (despite multiple tries) and having no apparently significant executive experience I don't think one can really say he is qualified for the position. But I just can't bring myself to vote for Ms. Huff for reasons I will describe below. So Mr. Greene it is.

Sherril Huff - By all accounts Ms. Huff is quite competent. But the director of elections position was actually created as a response to King County's undemocratic decision to switch to an exclusively vote by mail system thus open endless doors for vote fraud and coercion at every step of the process. As the director of elections I would expect her not to boast, as she has in her materials, of how well she implemented vote by mail and thus removed our democratic rights but rather how she tried to fight it every step of the way. And yes, I realize to some extent that is unfair but when you take on a job as protector of elections I expect you to do that job to the full, including lobbying to get unfair and undemocratic election rules changed.

Port of Seattle - Commissioner Position No. 2 - Gael Tarleton

Richard Pope - I was going to give Mr Pope some credit for cleaning up his act, his candidate statement was entirely reasonable on its face. But then I went to his website and its advertising his election from 2006.

Gael Tarleton - By all accounts an outstanding commissioner who has increased transparency, environment friendliness and the over all effectiveness of the port. Of course I voted against her in 2007 but oh well.

Port of Seattle - Commissioner Position No. 5 - Dean Willard

Dean Willard - Mr Willard's main qualification seems to be that he isn't Mr. Bryant. Willard is quick to point out that Mr. Bryant approved a 9% pay increase for the port CEO while the rest of the staff are capped at 3.5%. That Mr. Bryant voted against the Clean Ports Act of 2010 and that Mr. Bryant is planning on running for governor so how committed is he to the job anyway? But Mr. Willard's site has almost nothing useful to say about what Mr. Willard will do beyond some platitudes regarding jobs, the environment and accountability. In the end I'm going to vote for Mr. Willard but only because anyone insane enough to openly associate themselves with the Republican party anywhere near Seattle deserves a drubbing.

Bill Bryant - In addition to the negatives listed above I have an extended list available from the last vote for Port of Seattle position No. 5.

City of Seattle - Council Position No. 1 - Bobby Forch

Jean Godden - She is strongly pro-tunnel and I am strongly anti-tunnel so really I'm just looking for an excuse to vote against her. But no, I'm not a one issue voter so that on its own isn't enough. The muni league gave her 'good' while her opponent got 'very good'. That's worth something. Her website is pretty much content free so that didn't help.

Bobby Forch - The only part of his website that seemed to have any substance was his police plan which honestly was fairly milquetoast, re-affirming the chief, having an anonymous tip line, letting a civilian on the fire arms review board, etc. They are all good ideas but I don't see any of them really changing, for example, what happened in the battle in Seattle. I also have no idea where he stands on the tunnel. Neither candidate has said much that is really clear or useful and I think Ms. Godden's track record is pretty impressive but I'm willing to give Mr. Forch a chance and maybe see some progress in helping Seattle to have a world class police department that serves its people.

City of Seattle - Council Position No. 3 - Brad Meacham

Brad Meacham - In reading his various comments the only mildly interesting thing he said was that he wants to move to district based elections for the city council (something I think is a good idea). Honestly I can't find anything really conclusive between either candidate so I'll go for Meacham on the general principal that if you are in office and can't convince me you did something useful then you need to be out of office.

Bruce Harrell - I'm very concerned about the accusations made against Mr. Harrell that he doesn't show up for council meetings. I don't want to elect someone who won't show up for the job. Then there is the question of his support around paid sick leave. His signature issue is putting cameras on cops, while this may be a good idea I'd like signature issues like fixing our libraries, our streets, our schools, etc.

City of Seattle - Council Position No. 5 - Dale L. Pusey

Dale L. Pusey - His candidate statement is a typical "they are all screwed up so try me" line. On the other hand his website actually has some concrete things to say. His argument against the $60 car tab proposal makes sense even if I don't totally agree. It's clear that Mr. Pusey does not have the experience for this job. And yes the Muni league rated him as not qualified, which is probably true. But as I watch house break ins all over my neighborhood, see our schools going down the drain, have already given up on our libraries and sit stewing in traffic with no real alternatives I'm willing to give someone else a try. So Mr. Pusey gets my vote.

Tom Rasmussen - His candidate statement has something to do with kissing babies and hugging puppies. His website was even less useful. And of course he was a major force behind the tunnel thanks to his position as the chair of the transportation committee. Yeah, Yeah, I know, he'll win anyway. My job is not to vote for who is going to win (believe me on that one, if it was I would have been fired a long time ago) but who I dislike least (sigh...)

City of Seattle - Council Position No. 7 - Tim Burgess

David Schraer - His candidate statement had something to do with hugging trees. Oh and he loves the tunnel. Ugh. I really liked that he posted a link to the questionnaires he has filled out, major bonus points. But I read the one from Seattle Public Library and it was completely content free.

Tim Burgess - His candidate statement hit most of my issues, schools, safety and transportation. If he had thrown in the library it would have been a perfect hit. Except he is the chair of the public safety committee and the rash of home burglaries in my neighborhood have made me feel especially unsafe. On the other hand he pushed the school levy which I guess means he actually did hit all of my hot topics. On the job he has put in a residential treatment program for at risk kids, got rid of the employee head tax, pushed the Levy and other fun things. So it seems like he might have accomplished something. So I'll vote for him.

City of Seattle - Council Position No. 9 - Sally J. Clark

Sally J. Clark - Her candidate statement had something to do with building, building and more building. Honestly I think she'll do a terrible job but I'm tired of incumbents who don't seem to do anything so if I have to pick between two do-nothings I'll try the new one.

Dian Ferguson - She is as content free as Sally J. Clark. I actually voted for Ms. Ferguson in the primaries but I've decided on a new guidelines regarding incumbents. If they haven't done something interesting while in office then unless their opponents are certified wing nuts I will vote for their opponents. So I'm voting for Ms. Clark. How's that for an endorsement?

City of Seattle Proposition No. 1 - Levy, Yes

This is a levy against property taxes in the city of Seattle to provide additional funding to Seattle's schools. Funding for Seattle's schools is always a tricky proposition given their history of criminality and incompetence (do a search for "fraud seattle school district" and bring a coffee, you'll be there for a while). But let's look at a few numbers. Seattle's projected FY11 budget is $577.7 million (see page 44) to serve 47,000 students. And keep in mind that this budget was put together before the governor's proposed cuts in school funding. That works out to around $12,300/student. To put that in perspective a high end private school in Seattle costs around $15,000 in tuition plus another $2,000 or so in 'voluntary' mandatory donations.

So it might seem, thanks to economies of scale, that we should have enough money for students and not need any more. But unfortunately this is an apples to oranges comparison. Private schools don't have to deal with any form of 'problem' student. Special needs students of any type from physical to mental will generally not get into a private school. And private schools don't have to worry about breakfast and lunch programs for poor children, transportation to school, extra resources for remedial education, etc. So in fact it's quite possible that once you add it all up the average per student in public schools should actually be more than a private school because the private school simply doesn't have to carry the burden that public schools do.

So this argues to me pretty pervasively that whatever Seattle School's myriad problems they need the money, but they might not be spending it appropriately. But that's a separate subject. So I'm voting yes.

Seattle Transportation Benefit District - Proposition No. 1 - Yes

This would increase car tab fees by $60 to pay for a mixed bag of improvements to the transport infrastructure. My main problem with this proposal is that it's so painfully regressive it hurts. How the heck does it make any sense to charge everyone from those driving a junker to those with a new high end car the same amount of money? Now, one could argue that they both take up the same space (but if that's the argument shouldn't we charge by car size?) but tons of funding in this proposal goes to things that having nothing to do with cars, like sidewalks. But The Stranger, of all people, actually made to me the most compelling argument for voting yes for this proposition (besides the three ways), that we've screwed bus passengers with massive rate increases over the last several years far worse than we are screwing drivers with tab increases so it's time to share the pain. I still think it's wrong to pass something so regressive but on the list of monumental sins the amount is relatively small so I'll go with it.

Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 1 - Sharon Peaslee

Peter Maier - In his candidate statement his main claim to fame is firing the superintendent, which given the situation, is a pretty good claim to have. His website was unfortunately content free.

Sharon Peaslee - Her candidate statement has the standard 'clean up the mess' claim but in terms of past history she claims to have helped break Lake Washington and Bellevue School Districts of their idiotic math curriculum, another good claim. Her website actually had some crunchy things to say in terms of flattening hierarchy, giving teachers more flexibility in curriculum, a good list of frauds perpetrated by the school district, etc. But honestly just her willingness to go after Discovery math makes me really happy so she gets my vote.

Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 2 - Kate Martin

Sherry Carr - She claims credit for neighborhood-based student assignment. I'm both happy and sad about that. I'm happy because when someone moves to a location I think it's fair that they should know where their kid is going to school. A system where you can't be sure where you kid will go is unacceptable. At the same time I recognize that neighborhood based assignment means that poor kids go to poor schools and rich kids go to good schools. But still, on balance, as a parent, I think I have the right to know that if I live in neighborhood X then my child will attend school in neighborhood X. In looking at her website though she doesn't have anything to say about how the various financial frauds weren't her fault. And in general I didn't find much substantive on her website.

Kate Martin - I suspect Ms. Peaslee and Ms. Martin are at least comparing notes, their candidate statements look fairly similar in terms of key points. I read her website but it was less direct than Ms. Peaslee's, it was mostly 'teach kids stuff' from what I could read. So following my general rule that incumbents without impressive accomplishments and detailed plans get kicked out so long as their opponent isn't a wing nut (and Ms. Martin is not a wing nut from what I can tell) means my vote goes to Ms. Martin.

Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 3 - Harium Martin-Morris

Harium Martin-Morris - He seems mostly famous for having voted against a bunch of bone headed things that the school board wanted to do, which again, is nice. Of course he still lost all the votes. And his website and candidate statement are content free.

Michelle Buetow - As content free as Mr. Martin-Morris's candidate statement and website are Ms. Buetow's is vacuous. It doesn't take much to get me to vote against an incumbent but Ms. Buetow didn't even meet that level. So Mr. Martin-Morris gets it by default.

Seattle School District No. 1 - Director District No. 4 - Marty McLaren

Steve Sundquist - Wow, good shot mentioning your relationship to the Democratic party right at the top of your candidate statement for a supposedly non-partisan position. That's ethics baby! I also liked the throw in about his church. Because hey, being active in the Church is super relevant for the position. Or maybe it is and that should be something I should be worried about? The rest of his candidate basically says how wonderful the board has been doing, you know, the same board that screwed the pooch left, right and center. Sigh...

Marty McLaren - She throws in her Democractic party association but much less strongly that Mr. Sundquist on her candidate statement. And she actually takes credit for the horrible 2008 math standards (you know, Discovery math). So really, neither choice is giving me much joy but oh well I'll vote against the incumbent, so Ms. McLaren gets my vote.

• King County Proposition No. 1 - Veterans and Human Services Levy - Approved

• Count of Appeals, Division No. 1, District No. 1, Judge Position No. 2 - Michael Spearman

• City of Seattle Council Position No. 1 - Michael Taylor-Judd

• City of Seattle Council Position No. 9 - Dian Ferguson

• City of Seattle Referendum 1 - REJECTED

• Seattle School District No. 1 Direction District No. 3 - John Dunn

King County Proposition No. 1 - Veterans and Human Services Levy - Approved

This continues an existing property assessment used to fund services for veterans and other populations that share their needs. I haven't been able to find good material on just how well this money is used but given the statistics around the problems that veterans, above and beyond the general population, face, I'm willing to vote for this.

Count of Appeals, Division No. 1, District No. 1, Judge Position No. 2 - Michael Spearman

Since he is the only one running, he wins.

City of Seattle Council Position No. 1 - Michael Taylor-Judd

Michael Taylor-Judd - Is against the tunnel (yes!) and generally says nice warm fuzzy things. He wants to bring back the families & education levy and supports parks and libraries. He also wants to support more low income housing and planning that makes it possible for people who aren't filthy rich to live in Seattle. I suspect that his muni league rating of 'adequate' is deserved. He hasn't proven his ability to deliver in any other position. But at least he speaks clearly and most of what he says I agree with so I'll go with him.

Maurice Classen - A former prosecutor who wants to bring us more law and order. Because, hey, with more people in prison both per capita and in total than anywhere else in the world what we need is more law and order. Next.

Jean Godden - She is a strong supporter of the billion dollar monster known as the tunnel. Given Michael Taylor-Judd's in the race I can say - Next.

Bobby Forch - Nothing about the tunnel and his 'on the issues' link is basically content free. Next.

City of Seattle Council Position No. 9 - Dian Ferguson

Fathi Karshie - His candidate statement says nothing about what he is going to do. His website is equally content free without so much as an on the issues link. Next.

Sally J. Clark - I like the Bank On Seattle/King County project to bring fairly priced banking services to poor people. And her community planning work also appeals to me. But nothing about the tunnel. Now, I admit the Tunnel is not the be all/end all of existence but it is one of the biggest expenditures facing the city and I think anyone running for city council needs to have a clearly stated position on the issue. According to the Stranger, however, she supports it. Unfortunately there is no equivalent to Michael Taylor-Judd in this race so I can't just say next. So I looked more and I see someone who seems to mostly be focused on buildings rather than people. Our schools are in trouble. Our city services are in trouble. But I don't see much from Ms. Clark on how she would address any of this.

Dian Ferguson - Her candidate statement says more about what she doesn't believe in than what she does. Her website was more useful. She now supports the tunnel. No she doesn't like it but feels its a done deal. Personally I'm not willing to buy that. But still, I read the rest of her issues page and really there isn't much there. Although I do like her saying that Yesler Terrace low income housing does need to be replaced and in a single location. I listened to some of the videos where she calls out issues (expense of living in the city, school issues, etc.) but doesn't really offer anything in the way of concrete solutions. She isn't saying what I want to hear (neither is Clark) but at least she seems to have the energy to perhaps make a difference. I'll just have to blindly hope it's a good one.

City of Seattle Referendum 1 - REJECTED

In order for the Alaska Way tunnel disaster (no bias there, ehh?) to proceed the city has to issue certain notices which will then trigger state and federal processes. To make this possible the city passed an ordinance which gives it the right to issue these notices by a council decision. A petition was held to put the ordinance on the ballot. The courts decided that only one section of the ordinance, the one that gives the city the right to issue the notices, could be put on the ballot. So that's what is being voted on.

A rejection means that the city can't just issue the notices. Instead they will have to pass a new ordinance which will empower them to issue the notices. But by issuing a new ordinance it's possible that the ordinance could be rejected (unlikely) or put to referendum (a possibility).

An approval of this ordinance will give the city the ability to issue the necessary notices and we will be stuck with this multi-billion dollar boondoggle. A city that can't keep its class sizes down, can't keep its libraries open, barely can keep its road passable and is cutting social services left and right has no business building this nightmare of tolls, taxes and congestion. We need other options, it's time to kill this kick back vehicle for construction interests and look at real options that can meet the city's need without saddling its citizens with yet more taxes, especially since any cost overruns, and on a project like this 100% cost overruns are nothing special, will be billed by the state to the city of Seattle.

Seattle School District No. 1 Director District No. 3 - John Dunn

John Dunn - Other than saying that there should be an external auditor for the school system's finances (a no brainer given recent history) his candidate statement and website saying essentially nothing. I did manage to get some insight into his beliefs from a questionnaire available here. But even the data in that link doesn't make it clear where he would really take things in the district. Then again, none of the candidates really seemed to say much about anything. At least Mr. Dunn has a ton of experience as a teacher and former head of the teacher's union. Not usually my favorite recommendation but given the other candidates he gets my vote.

David Blomstrom - Hum... I would suggest reading his candidate statement for the entertainment value alone. But in the end his ranting and raving never really addresses if he would be a good candidate for the school board. Next.

Harium Martin-Morris - Just a note, candidate statements in the third person sound really stilted. He makes a couple of good claims about rejecting bad board policies but of course the policies went ahead anyway which I suppose says something about his effectiveness. Still, it's good to say no. I checked out his website but I couldn't find anything substantive in terms of what he wants to actually do. Mr. Dunn seems more qualified.

Michelle Buetow - In her candidate statement she wants lots of programs, but says nothing about how she will pay for any of them given the Seattle School District's finances. And unlike the other candidates who at least in their candidate statements honored the nonpartisan nature of this office, Ms. Buetow decided to plaster her entry with a bunch of Democratic Party supporters. Next.

The nature of slavery before the new world

The author starts (after the first chapter on the Amistad) with a potted history of slavery as practiced in ancient human societies. The overview hits a couple of key points. Just about every large scale culture we know of, everywhere in the world, practiced slavery. Slavery was traditionally more about being on the losing end of a war than having anything to do with race. Slaves often could and did rise to high points in society, were typically allowed to own property, could potentially buy their freedom and in general had some small set of rights. Slaves often served in armed forces and as high councilors. In other contexts they served as objects of derision who would be slaughtered and eaten. So generalizations are hard to come by.

But a few themes do come out. Slaves were property. That is, they were belongings of their owners whose existence was first and foremost as 'things' that their owners controlled. Slaves were also often seen as animals as opposed to humans. In fact the author theorizes (although how one would prove this is another question) that slavery came from animal husbandry. When mankind successfully took wild animals and turned them into slave labor then a model was created that it seemed natural to apply to humans. If a horse could be broken into a pack animal, why not a human?

The Greeks (as far as we can tell) seem to have formalized the idea that some people were naturally slaves. But the idea of race in the modern sense didn't exist and this seemed more to apply to individual people rather than entire races. The result was that anyone and everyone, white, black and in between were made into slaves.

The roots of race based slavery

The English word Slave apparently has its root as Slav, meaning Slavic people. This was because the western world got many of its slaves (all white) from the Slavic lands. So clearly slavery didn't start off with a racial component, at least not to the extent we will see in the New World.

African slavery was of course common in Africa. In fact the vast majority of black Africans who would be sent to the New World were captured and enslaved by other black Africans. But the Western world's interaction with black slaves on any significant basis didn't appear to really get going until Islam took off around the 600s CE. Islam generally forbade enslavement of muslims so there was an incentive to find people to enslave who weren't muslim. This led Muslim slave traders to the north (the Slav lands) and to the south (Africa). Note, however, that if a slave converted they would still be a slave.

As things progressed Muslims had large groups of both white and black slaves. But for reasons that aren't entirely clear the worst work was generally given to sub-groups of African slaves and over time their appearance (e.g. skin color) was taken as a natural sign of slavery by the largely lighter skinned Muslims. Muslim writers start to refer to the Africans as natural slaves, low in intelligence, child like, animalistic, overly sexualized, etc. These characterizations would later be taken wholesale by the New World to justify their own use of race based slavery. Over time the very word for Slave in Arabic came to be understood as referring exclusively to black people even while whites were still being enslaved by Muslims on a grand scale. Clearly, however, something was changing.

Eventually the western world would get caught up in all of this when the West conquered Spain and Portugal from the Muslims. This is where the West learned of the ideas (not to mention slave trade routes) of the Muslim world and started to avail themselves en masse of the slave opportunities of Africa. It also appears to be where a lot of the philosophy and ideas of New World slavery based on race came from.

I'm leaving a lot out here. There are lots of interesting issues raised by the biblical view of slavery, the consequences of the inquisition and other bits and pieces but I'm trying to focus primarily on what I feel to be the key point. Which is that starting with Greek philosophy of the natural slave, moving to the Muslim world with the identification of Africans as a whole as natural slaves and then coming back to the west we see Africans marked as natural, eternal slaves. Slavery had thus transformed itself from an institution based on individuals to one based on race.

The economics of slavery and the history of its abolition in the British Empire

The author goes to great length to make the rather compelling case that slavery throughout history right into the 'modern' era was incredibly profitable. That arguments that slavery would eventually be overturned in the western world because it was no longer economical to keep slaves are simply false. The author provides an endless list of examples of the economics of slave societies and shows just how much riches were to be made by stealing the labor of others right up into and even past the American civil war. So whatever made slavery go away, it wasn't economics. In fact, it was exactly against the economic interests of the general society (and not just slave holders) to get rid of slavery since the enslavement of slaves made profits not just for the slave holders themselves but also for all the peoples who benefited from the products that slaves made. Slaves, especially in agriculture, were an economic powerhouse.

So what would make empires like Britain's give up such an enormously profitable enterprise? The author struggles with this question throughout the book. The British empire is important because it went first. It was the first major Western power to not just ban slavery but to use its wealth and military might to try and end the slave trade everywhere. It still isn't completely clear why the British did this. We know with certainty that the decision was economically harmful to Britain. In fact one is tempted to argue that the later English use of money and power to stop slavery everywhere might have been at least influenced by a desire to rebalance the economic scales for Britain against countries that continued to use slavery.

The author does try to provide some insight into what drove Britain's decision in the 1830s to end slavery in the British empire. First, slavery had been illegal in England itself as a result of a court judgement in the Somersett case since 1772, so Slavery was something done in the colonies, not at home. In a sense this might make slavery more acceptable since it was 'out of sight' but it also seemed more frightening because people didn't have direct experience with it. Second, the industrial revolution was changing the nature of what it meant to work. For most of history having to work was seen as a sign of poverty. The rich didn't labor, others did their laboring for them and everyone wanted to be rich so labor was always looked down upon.

But as the industrial revolution moved on enormous numbers of laborers were needed to man the factories and offices. Labor couldn't be seen as something that denigrated one if enough laborers were going to be ensnared to be the human fuel for the industrial revolution. The result is that when someone's labor was being 'stolen' (as in slavery) this was now seen as a great crime and a strike to the pride of the laboring classes (which were now the majority of British society).

But none of this really seems enough to explain why Britain would make such an enormous decision. The decision was doubly hard because the British decided to compensate slave holders through a combination of compulsory work by 'former' slaves (slavery by another name) as well as direct cash payments.

The author's general feeling is that Britain freed the slaves, at great cost to itself, because it was the right thing to do. That once all was said and done the decision was fundamentally altruistic.

Back in America

Slavery in the New World occurred in different ways in different places. By sheer number of imported Slaves places like the Caribbean and Brazil used more slaves than America did. But they treated their slaves so horrifically the most died childless so there was little or no natural growth. Mostly in America we see natural growth of slave populations. It is this natural growth that made it possible for the American constitution to contain article one, section 9 that explicitly allowed Congress to ban the import of slaves into the United States starting in 1808. Which, when 1808 rolled around, Congress duly banned the import of slaves.

But in general slavery was well accepted in America. Yes, there were abolitionist movements, but they were never terribly powerful. Most Americans firmly believed that Africans were inferior. Even the 'great emancipator' Lincoln was a confirmed racist. The only bone of contention was if it was o.k. to enslave the inferior Africans or if they should all just be packed up and sent back to Africa because slavery was just too cruel.

Up until the 1840s or so the answer was 'slavery is generally o.k.' But starting in the 1840s we see more abolitionist or at least emancipatory thought in the Northern states who even created laws trying to help slaves who managed to escape from the South. The later was a serious bone of contention since the Supreme Court on multiple occasions ruled that slaves could not be freed when going North and that, in fact, Northerners had a positive obligation to return escaped slaves. But one shouldn't overstate the abolitionist movements of the 1840s and 50s. They made progress but mostly in areas that cost the North nothing. Slaves were mostly focused in the South because that was the area where their labor could be most leveraged. It's hard to remember now but Cotton and Tobaco were perhaps the most valuable exports from America for much of its early history. And neither cotton nor tobacco grew in the North. It grew in the South and so that is where the majority of slaves were over time. Slaves were still a relatively small portion of the over all U.S. population and since they could only grow at their natural growth rate after the ban on imports in 1808 they were incredibly profitable. They were moved where they could make the most money and that was in the South.

This left the Northern states free to rattle their sabers against slavery but never in any effective way. First, thanks to the constitution granting votes to the south based on their slave populations, the South was dominant in the federal government. This means that presidents were typically from the South, Congress was dominated by southern states and Supreme Courts were appointed by Southern Presidents with approval of Southern dominated congresses. Up to the civil war in the 1860s there was no legitimate threat to slave holding in America.

Even Lincoln, the president whose election triggered the civil war, was no abolitionist. While he felt that slavery wasn't a great thing and that slaves should be freed, he also felt they should all be packed up and shipped back to Africa. He didn't relish the idea of a biracial society at all. He had also made it clear throughout his career that he did not feel the federal government had the ability to end slavery. Instead each state had to make its own decision. So Lincoln clearly wasn't going to free the slaves.

Causes of the Civil War

So why did the civil war start? The author's contention is that the South's decision to secede was driven by several events.

First, the ideological tide did seem to be turning against slavery in America. New states were being fought over if they should be 'free' or 'slave' and there was a general feeling that America should probably get rid of slavery, eventually, somehow, maybe. Not today certainly, or tomorrow or maybe in the lifetime of the people with such genteel thoughts, but eventually.

Second was the British example. Britain was the most powerful empire in the world and they had, at extraordinary expense to themselves, freed their slaves. The results had been an unmitigated disaster for slave owners. Yes, they gotten some compensation. But fundamentally their entire way of life collapsed. Once freed the British slaves, rather than working for a pittance of 'wages' under the horrible conditions required to produce commercial quantities of cash crops had instead chosen to switch to subsistence farming. Subsistence farming may not be a great life but compared to life on the plantations it was heaven on earth. The end result was that the British plantation system collapsed and with it the livelihoods and perhaps even more importantly, the way of life of the slave holders themselves. To make matters worse the British were quite energetic in trying to get other countries to get rid of their slave systems. So not only did the Southern states have a real world example of a major power rejecting slavery as well as the awful consequences for themselves it would create but they also had the fear that even the milquetoast abolitionism that was taking hold in the North was really the result of British influence. In other words, from the South's perspective there was now a very real possibility that the next up and coming Empire of America would be enabled by the existing Empire to destroy the Southern rich white's way of life.

But probably the straw that broke the camel's back really was the election of Lincoln. To be clear Lincoln was about as far from an abolitionist as one could get without actually being a slave holder. Lincoln was repeatedly clear that he thought blacks a deeply inferior race and had no desire to create a bi-racial society. He did feel that slavery was wrong but he also felt that the federal government, under the constitution, had absolutely no power to do anything about it. His feeling was that slavery would, if kept contained to the Southern states and not allowed to spread to new states, burn itself out and when it did all the blacks should be packed up and shipped off to Africa. So, to be clear, Lincoln was in no way a real threat to slavery in America. But the thing about Lincoln wasn't really who he personally was, but rather what he represented.

Thanks in part to article 1, section 2, paragraph 3 of the United Stated constitution all slaves held in the South counted as 3/5s of a person for the purposes of apportioning seats in the house, senate and electoral college. For the majority of the country's history this had meant that the President was almost always a Southerner (or someone the Southerners found acceptable) and that the Congress and Senate were dominated by the South. Lincoln, for example, was the 16th president. Of the previous 15 presidents 9 were southerners.

To understand how profound Lincoln's election was let's look at a few numbers. Lincoln was elected without wining a single Southern state. In fact, apparently zero votes were cast for him in 10 of the 15 southern slave states and he only won 2 out of 996 counties in all the Southern states. (The previous facts stolen from Wikipedia who attributes them to Larry D. Mansch's book "Abraham Lincoln, President-Elect: The Four Critical Months from Election to Inauguration.") That a president of the United States could be elected with essentially zero Southern support made it absolutely clear that the North now ran the country.

So in a sense Lincoln's election did cause the civil war but not because of anything Lincoln said he would do but rather what he represented, the end of Southern political domination and hence the ability, in Southern minds at least, for British influence to continue to drive northern emancipation/abolitionist thoughts until they would inevitably become strong enough to end slavery. So for the South the writing was on the wall and it was time to get out while the getting was good.

Now, really, was it all that simple? As the author goes to great pains to point out, no it wasn't. But even the summary of the events leading up to Lincoln's election make up a good section of the book. We would have to talk about John Brown and Harper's Fairy. We would have to talk about the internal politics of the Democratic party and the internal split between the Northern and Southern candidates. We would have to talk about the Dred Scott decision and the meaning of popular sovereignty as championed by folks like Stephen A. Douglas. We would have to discuss the British role in Texas as well as in supporting American abolitionist movements. All of which is touched upon in the book. Then there are issues that the book only alludes to but didn't go into such as the different economic needs of the North and the South (as well as the MidWest) and the problems that caused. Trying to nail down something as complex as the civil war to a few causes is hopeless and to the author's credit he doesn't try. Instead he creates a tableaux with many parts that give the reader a sense for the fervent, fears and hopes of the time and how they all mixed together to eventually produce all out war.

The emancipation proclamation and the 13th amendment

The book spends the last chapter before the epilogue talking about the civil war and the path to the emancipation proclamation. The details are interesting but the upshot is that Lincoln fought more or less until the end of the civil war to not end slavery. He felt the constitution simply didn't give him the power. The emancipation proclamation was more or less forced on him (in idea, not substance) by the peoples of the North. Not out of any great love of the slaves but as vengeance for the horrors of the civil war. But even more than popular will, what really seems to have driven Lincoln was military necessity. The slaves were the economic and agricultural backbone of the South. If the South was to be defeated and brought back into the union that back bone had to be broken and the emancipation declaration was the vehicle to do it.

What's interesting about the emancipation proclamation is that it did not end slavery in America. Lincoln issued the proclamation using his war powers authority as a means to remove key materiel (slaves) from an enemy (the states that succeeded). So the four slave holding states who hadn't joined the confederacy were not affected nor areas of succeeded states under effective Northern control. Lincoln also offered to void the proclamation for any state who rejoined the union before the proclamation went into affect, but none did.

True 'freedom' (in the most limited possible sense given what would happen to blacks in America after the civil war) didn't come until the later passage of the 13th amendment which finally banned slavery everywhere in the United States.

The consequences of how slaves became 'free' in the United States continue to haunt America to this day. There never really was a real national consensus that blacks were people deserving of rights. To the extent that existed at all, it wouldn't become real until the civil rights of the 1960s. Reading the book and other material I get the impression that the 13th amendment had a lot more to do with punishing the South than about the inalienable rights of all people to be free. And soon after the Civil War, once the South was let back into the Union, blacks would again be slaves in all but name. But that is a story for another time.

Slavery in the rest of the New World

Even after the Civil War in America slavery continued to be practiced in Cuba and Brazil who both used it to greatly enrich slave owners. Cuba would eventually free its slaves as part of general upheavals in the fading Spanish empire. Spain finally abolished all colonial slavery in 1886.

Brazil experienced slavery differently than America. Brazil's slave population was never terribly good at natural growth and as the international slave trade was shut down new slaves were hard to get (although smuggling still continued). Also manumission was more common in Brazil and Brazil's 1864 to 1870 war with Paraguay required a lot of soldiers, many of whom were slaves and died, thus further reducing the Slave population. Over time a domestic movement grew to enable emancipation and in 1887 a large number of slaves just ran away from many plantations and the government seemed unwilling or unable to stop them. In 1888 90,000 poor immigrants from Europe showed up in Brazil and so lowered concerns about a lack of alternative labor should the slaves be freed. So finally in early 1888 slavery was officially end in Brazil.

Why didn't the slaves rebel?

One wonders given how many slaves there were, why didn't they rebel? The answer is - they did. In fact there were whole 'marooned' cities of escaped and rebelled slaves. It's hard to know how often slave revolts occurred because it was a scary topic for whites, especially in areas with small white populations and large black populations. It's also hard to be sure how many revolts were real or imagined. There were serious rewards (minimally including freedom) for slaves who reported revolts so this created some perverse incentives. By far, the most famous slave revolt was in Haiti. The only country in the world where the slaves threw out their masters and took over. Of course the west, after failing to conquered Haiti directly, had to punish Haiti for its temerity. Punishments that one can argue continue to this day, especially if one looks at the cables leaked by Wikileaks about Haiti.

But for all the slave revolts, victory was hard. Even in the more remote Caribbean islands where there were many more slaves than masters the situation was dire. First, slaves came in different classes and the higher 'class' slaves were well motivated to keep the other slaves down. Second, even if a revolt succeeded eventually the army of the sovereign power would show up and kill lots of folks to make things 'right'. So unless one's goal was to die it was hard to run a successful revolt. Also running a revolt is no easy thing. Training, material, planning, etc. are all needed. In many parts of the new world slaves were worked so hard they had no time to think, only to survive. And even in places like America where slaves were relatively better treated they were brought up, trained literally from birth, to believe in the system they lived in. That kind of pervasive brain washing isn't easy to get over or beyond.

So slaves did revolt but the logistics of a successful revolt were so daunting that in all cases but Haiti it was largely hopeless.

Did slavery make American democracy possible?

One of the ideas mentioned by the book is the thesis by Edmund S. Morgan that racism and slavery made American democracy possible. The essence of the argument is that before racism white people separated themselves based purely on class. An upper class white would see, especially in the colonial era, as much separation between himself and a lower class white as he would with a black man. This created an internal division amongst whites that made the idea of general sovereignty (at least amongst white males) unthinkable. But racism finally provided the glue that gave all whites a common foundation. Thanks to racism all whites now saw in themselves a common cause, a common humanity that made of them a unified whole. It was suddenly possible to think in terms of all whites as one 'race'/'people' and to think about the rights that the people should have as a whole. Thanks to racism it was possible for whites to define a difference between 'us' (white people) and 'them' (black people, Indians, mulattos, etc.). This, Dr. Morgan argues, created the foundation for Democracy in America. I will need to read Dr. Morgan's book on the subject, American Slavery, American Freedom, to learn more. It is a fascinating idea.

Dr. Abuelaish grew up as a refugee in the camps in Gaza where by hard work and some luck he managed to get scholarships that eventually led him to get his M.D. and to become the first Palestinian doctor practicing medicine in Israel. The book tells his story of growing up and living in Gaza. Even when he worked in Israel he still kept his home and family in Gaza. The pain, suffering and humiliations of his life are just awful to read. But the horrors grow even worse when his wife, within two weeks of being diagnosed with leukemia, dies and several months later three of his daughters and his niece are killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during a shelling of his home in Gaza. The Israeli militarily would eventually admit the shelling was a mistake.

But the power of this book is not Dr. Abuelaish's suffering but how he deals with it. As someone who has a better understanding than most of both the heights of human nobility and the depths of human depravity Dr. Abuelaish makes the conscious choice not to hate. He understands that hate is a poison which afflicts the hater rather than the hated. He understands that the only hope the Palestinians have to end the war with the Israelis is for both sides to get to know each other as people, to realize how similar they are and to figure out how to live together. The doctor understands that hate can have no role in that process. In fact, it can only stop that process. So the doctor works tirelessly to build bridges and bring people together.

This might all sound like some rose colored view of the world but the doctor comes across not as a martyr or a saint but as a very real human with real anger and real frustration who has used his mind to master his emotions and direct them down paths that he thinks can improve the world. Yes, the doctor is clearly angry. But instead of turning that anger to hate he turns it to action such as forming his foundation.

The biggest surprise for me was the sheer size of the population. The exact numbers are not known but it is within the realm of possibility that in 1491 the majority (51% or so) of the human population on Earth lived in the Americas. The Americas were packed to the brim with people. This reality was actually recorded in the journals of the early European settlers to America but got discounted because later settlers (for reasons described below) didn't see the profusion of humanity that the early Europeans recorded.

The next big surprise for me was the vast terraforming that the Indians engaged in. The Indians massively altered the ecology of the Americas. They managed their environments using everything from gigantic terracing and irrigation projects to make otherwise inhabitable lands habitable to the use of fire and forest management to remake the Americas into a more hospitable land. Their work in turning the Amazon jungle into fertile farm land was particularly impressive to me. Much of the 'pristine' forests that people fight over today in the Americas are in reality artificial environments created by the Indians that were left to go wild once the Indians were gone. What was also amazing about Indian farming technology was how sophisticated and successful it was. From the creation of maize (corn) through sophisticated hybridization (far beyond anything seen anywhere else in the world at the time) to land management strategies that created completely sustainable land use while producing enormous amounts of food, the Indians were the masters of the farming technology of their time. The early Europeans noted this disparity and were openly jealous at how healthy the Indians were compared to themselves.

This is without even going into their metal working and textile technologies. While Europeans largely focused on using metal for war and tools the Indians used it for decoration and creating ductile, flexible, glossy metals beyond anything seen in Europe (and no, this didn't make the Indians a bunch of peace worshipers, it turns out that obsidian and stone are perfectly fine tools for killing mass numbers of people). Their textiles led to everything from cotton armor that was almost as strong as steel but much lighter to tension bridges made of cloths and fibers used to cross large gorges. Or, perhaps most importantly of all to early Europeans, shoes that didn't torture your feet. The Indian cultures also had extremely sophisticated mathematics and astronomy with Indians having understood zero long before Europe did. The Indian cultures also had a profusion of writing systems as well as books using both deer skin (the equivalent of European Vellum) as well as thin wood. Most of the written material however was consciously destroyed by the Europeans as it was felt to somehow be inherently evil. So very little survives to this day.

This all having been said Indian culture also had some interesting blind spots. Besides not using metal primarily to kill people, they also didn't have the gun nor the wheel. We know they knew about the wheel because we have found Indian toys that used it. But no evidence has been found for the widespread use of the wheel even thought the Indians created sophisticated road systems that appear to be larger than what even the Roman empire at its height managed to build. And as anyone who has been to any of the ruins can tell you, the Indians had sophisticated architectural techniques that the Europeans were in open awe about.

While there is much argument about exactly how many Indians lived in the Americas what seems clear to everyone is where the Indians had gone, they were killed, in massive numbers, largely by disease. The arrival of Europeans introduced a raft of diseases that the Indians had no immunity against. The exact level of slaughter this induced is argued about but the slaughter seems to have carried off somewhere between 80% to 95% of the pre-Columbus Indian population. European diseases, once introduced into America, spread much faster than the Europeans themselves did. So most of the Indians killed by those diseases never actually met a European.

So the traditional image of the Americas as open land ready for settlement with a sparse Indian population (that Europeans nevertheless continued to slaughter, torture and rape) was true to a point but the truth was the result of a near extinction event that destroyed what were incredibly sophisticated and successful societies.

The reason so much of this wasn't known before is because no one really looked. The idea of the Indians as stone age primitives served a lot of people's agendas so no one really went out and looked at the enormous marks the Indians left behind. Over the last forty years or so people have started to look and the historical record is there to be seen. Now that we understand what we are seeing we can see the marks of the Indians all throughout the Americas and can start to appreciate at some base level what has been lost.

To be clear this is not some paean to a lost idyll. The Indians were humans like us all with all the flaws that brings in. Although Indians were, on average, it seems healthier than the equivalent Europeans, Indian societies had plenty of war, death and domination. Although Indian societies do appear much more egalitarian than their European equivalents of the time there was no question who ran things and it wasn't the women. So this isn't really about Indians being better or worse than the Europeans. It's about knowledge.

There are many parts to the story that Mr. Taibbi tells but I'll stick to what I see as the highlights. This means I'm leaving out lots of information about Alan Greenspan, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

The core of the problem

It all begins with collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). These are essentially bonds that bundle together groups of debts. One of the biggest sources of debt used to create CDOs are home mortgages. The way CDOs are generally structured is that the CDOs are split into three tranches, senior, mezzanine and junk. The idea is that if mortgages start missing payments then the people who own the junk tranche will not get paid. If a lot of mortgages start missing payments then the people in the mezzanine tranche get hit. Finally if lots and lots of people stop making payments on their mortgages then finally the senior tranche gets hit. The banks argued with the credit rating agencies that the probability of the senior tranches ever losing money was so low that those tranches should be ranked as AAA. The rating agencies not just agreed but in fact went out of their way to provide detailed guidance to banks on how to structure CDOs to make sure they would get AAA ratings. Both the banks and the rating agencies won here. The rating agencies get paid by folks who issue CDOs and the more CDOs that are issued the more the ratings agencies get paid. The banks win because they could take mortgages, even low quality mortgages and through the magic of CDOs turn their junk into AAA rated securities.

Although CDOs had been available for quite some time they really hit big around 2000 when the market was depressed and treasuries (the traditional source of AAA rated bonds) weren't paying well. By law banks, insurance companies, pension companies, etc. could only buy AAA rated bonds. So when CDOs showed up paying more than treasuries at around the same cost with a AAA rating it was like crack. Everybody wanted a hit.

Suddenly banks needed huge numbers of mortgages to quickly churn into CDOs. So this led to enormous mortgage fraud. All sorts of fun terms were invented like NINJA loans (No Income, No Job or Assets) or liar loans (where people could state their income without any verification). Whole industries popped up to help fake up people's credit ratings so they could quality. It didn't matter if these mortgages were fraudulent since the banks wouldn't be holding them long enough to get burned. They just needed the mortgages to hold together long enough to become CDOs, at that point, it was someone else's problem. So the focus was - get people into mortgages by any means possible.

Now if things had stopped there then by the end of 2007 we would have been looking at around $1.4 trillion worth of bad loans. That's a lot of money but not a real disaster. The actual cost of the bailout by around 2009 was in the region of $13 trillion. So where did the other $11.6 trillion come from?

Making it worse

The first step in making things worse was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000 which essentially deregulated derivatives. A derivative is just a bet on 'something'. A classic example are weather derivatives that bet on how cold or hot a particular winter will be. However, like any bet, one needs to capitalize the bet. In other words, one needs to put money aside to pay off the bet in case one loses. The problem was that CFMA didn't require capitalization. This meant that people could bet with each other using derivatives without having enough money put aside to pay off if they lose. The dangers of improperly capitalized derivatives were already well understood from the Orange County bankruptcy of 1994, the Bankers Trust scandal of 1995 and the near market destruction caused by the failure of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, etc. But all of this was ignored and the CFMA passed.

The second step in making things worse are called Credit Default Swaps (CDS). These are kind of like insurance contracts. Let's say one is worried that a CDO is going to go bad (perhaps one doesn't quite trust that AAA rating). In that case one could buy a CDS against the CDO. If the CDO defaults then the issuer of the CDS pays off the buyer.

Except that thanks to the CFMA companies that sold CDS's didn't have to capitalize their CDS's. In other words, they didn't have to put money aside in case the CDO they were insuring with the CDS went bad. This meant that if a CDO went bad then not only was the person who bought the CDS on the CDO out their money but the person selling the CDS was also legally liable for the insurance they promised the purchaser. In other words the total debt in the economy, once CDOs started going bad, doubled.

The situation got worse thanks, again, to the CFMA which effectively allowed naked CDS's. In theory a CDS is used by someone who owns an asset and wants to insure it. With a naked CDS one can buy insurance on an asset one doesn't own. This is effectively a form of shorting. It lets the buyer bet that an asset is going to go bankrupt. With naked CDS's it was suddenly possible to expose a much larger group of people to the outcome of a particular CDO.

Sticking us with the bill

One can potentially understand why the CDOs going bad were a problem since lots of systemically important actors like insurance companies, banks, pension trusts, etc. had purchased them. So in theory the government could have just paid off the $1.4 trillion and called it a day. But the reason the CDSs mattered had to do with major changes in the regulatory environment in the United States. Without those changes the issues with CDS's would have just been a bunch of broke gamblers instead of a broke nation.

There are lots of places one could start but I'm going to start with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) act of 1999. This act repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933. Glass-Steagall made it illegal for insurance companies, savings banks or investment banks to merge. The logic being that two of these entities (insurance companies and savings banks) are absolutely critical to the functioning of the world economy and so shouldn't be exposed to each other's risk and most certainly shouldn't be exposed to the kind of risks that investment banks take. With GLB this legally mandated fire walling was over. The term 'bancassurance' got coined and suddenly savings banks, investment banks and insurance companies couldn't merge fast enough. The end result were mega financial companies whose failure would literally rip apart the financial structure of the world. Thanks to GLB 'too big to fail' was now in full effect.

Well guess who was issuing those CDOs and CDSs? And, even better, guess who were the major buyers of CDOs and CDSs? Yup, in both cases it was insurance companies and major banks. So when the Ponzi scheme that was the mortgage market finally started falling apart in 2007 or so it was the mega-banks that were in deep trouble both coming and going.

Except now that the banks, thanks to GLB, were too big to fail (if they went, they were taking the whole world with them, individual savings accounts would be wiped out, pension funds would be wiped out, insurance wouldn't be paid out, etc.) it became impossible to let the banks fail. Exactly the situation Glass-Steagall had been passed to prevent had happened.

What was even more fun was that tons of CDSs had been sold against the banks themselves! In other words plenty of people were happy to bet on the banks failing. So as the banks started to go down those CDSs came due which made things even worse since now the banks (who issued the CDS's against each other) didn't have the money to pay those off either. The entire financial system was in a death spiral. This freaked everyone out and amongst other things froze liquidity world wide as no banks were willing to lend money to any other bank, even just for a day, because they were afraid the bank they lent to might go bust. Without liquidity companies everywhere suddenly found that they couldn't do things like pay their payrolls or their bills. The entire financial system was freezing up.

So we ended up with a trillion dollar bailout. And yes, it's more complicated than that. And yes the bailouts were horribly abused to let the big banks make free profits by taking risk free zero interest money from the government and turn it into various interest paying financial vehicles that the banks made, well, bank on. But that's another story.

Lessons

The key parts of this story had to do with the absence of effective regulation. Without empowered, intelligent, motivated regulators to keep mega banks from forming, to prevent systemic risk, a blow up was just a matter of time. In fact, now the probability of another blow up is higher than it was before the mortgage crises. The reason is that no effective regulations have been passed and now there are even fewer mega-banks. And those mega-banks understand that they can do no wrong. They might as well take all the risks they want because if things blow up the government (read: Us) have no choice but to ride to the rescue. And this is without even talking about the revolving door between Wall Street and their 'regulators'.

But it's unclear to me how this situation can ever be prevented. Wall Street floods government at all levels with money to push their interests which are basically to take as many risks as possible with them keeping the upside and the people taking the risk. Who is going to stand against this wall of money? To put this in perspective today roughly 400 people (the Forbes 400) have the same wealth as half the population of the United States. In other words if we put all the assets of roughly 150,000,000 people together it would just about equal what those 400 people are worth. How the heck can we expect 1.5 million people to effectively lobby our government in a coherent way as 400 people can? The total lack of meaningful regulation after the latest fiasco answers the question, we can't.

So we are going to go through this again and again and again until there is simply nothing left. Or we can radically change the laws in this country. We can understand that inequalities of wealth on the level of the United States are incompatible with democracy and freedom. We can have a small group of super wealthy or we can have freedom, we can't have both.

What is modern anarchism?

Dr. Gordon explains that the modern anarchist movement is incredibly rich in diversity. So trying to come up with a single dogma to describe it isn't useful. Instead he identifies the anarchist movement as having three defining characteristics.

The first and foremost is resistance to domination. The idea is that no one should be forced to submit to domination of any kind, societal, work based, sex based, race based, financial, etc. So one of the key goals of the anarchist movement is to create a world free of involuntary domination. The term 'involuntary' is key because if someone wants to be dominated (insert obvious jokes here) then they should have that choice. Freedom from domination is extended to animals and the earth as part of the anarchist animal rights and ecologist movements.

The second characteristic that Dr. Gordon identifies is what he calls prefigurative politics. The idea is that for anarchist ideas to become real then anarchists must live those ideas. This can range from anarchist collectives like IndyMedia to the organization of various direct action groups such as those that protest at G8 summits. The idea is to create organizations free of domination where groups are formed on an ad-hoc basis based on the consent of the members and where action is taken in rough but not absolute concert. In other words there are in fact many small affinity groups, each with own agenda, who will work together on an ad-hoc basis to engage in 'actions' such as summit protests. The key idea here is to organize the Anarchist movement itself along Anarchist principals.

The third characteristic is open endedness. This is the explicit idea that there is no 'end point' for the revolution. That anarchism is a constantly growing and changing entity. This intentionally means that the movement doesn't try to answer questions like 'what does the world look like under anarchism?' Because the answer would be 'we won't know till we get there and not even then since it will constantly change.' This is also about trying to create a very big tent. Almost anything that seems to have some component of resistance to domination can find a space in the movement. It also means that no one is allowed to tell anyone else what is and is not anarchism (which itself is almost an inevitable conclusion given the axiom of resistance to domination).

The rest of the book

The rest of the book honestly wasn't that interesting to me because I didn't feel like there were really informative points being made. A long discussion was held on the nature of power and the kinds of power within the movement which I think can be summarizes as 'influence is good, domination is not'. Another section discussed violence and its role in the movement which I think can be summarized as 'violence to resist domination is legitimate but given the overwhelming violence that modern society has at its call there is no way the revolution can win by violence.' There is then a really painful discussion of technology that mostly shows that Dr. Gordon couldn't be bothered to do much research (for example, no the Internet was not invented to be resistant to nuclear attack and no there is no inherent reason to believe that smaller scale technology should be any less advanced than large scale technology) but whose summary seems to be 'an anarchist society would have to be a more technologically backwards society'. The book then ends with a discussion of the Anarchist movement in Israel/Palestine and the question of - can anarchists support a two party state if they don't believe in states? Dr. Gordon's answer is that yes, they can, tactical alliances are fine on the road to the true anarchist paradise.

Questions

Like all political systems there are always conflict between rights. If two people want the same object or space then somehow this conflict has to be resolved. It doesn't matter if there is property or not, there will still be conflict. It's unclear to me how anarchists propose to resolve these conflicts in a non-trivial manner. So I will have to look elsewhere to see if anyone has any reasonable suggestions on the topic in the context of anarchism or if anarchism is just another silly ism.

The key question seems to be determinism versus non-determinism. Determinism means that everything in the world is pre-ordained. That the universe is just a big clock work machine.

Non-determinism means that there is randomness in the universe. That we can't know the outcome ahead of time.

To me this is a distinction without a difference. From the perspective of moral responsibility if I did something because I have burned into my brain "If X then Y" or if my brain says "If (X and Random() > 3) then Y" doesn't make a bit of difference. I'm still a machine with no real say.

Which gets to the real problem that all four authors struggle with. If we have free will, if we can make "free" choices, then this argues that there is something inside of us that can affect the universe without being a part of the universe. Because if something is part of the universe then it is influenced by the universe in which case how can we really say that someone is morally responsible for their actions? In other words if a child is raised to believe that enslaving black people is just fine then how can we hold that child responsible for their actions in enslaving black people as an adult if they literally had access to no other idea? Moral responsibility would seem to call for some ability to act independently of the rest of the universe.

One of the names given to this ability is the "Unmoved mover", another is a soul. This idea that some such mechanism exists has had a long history in the free will debate but is currently out of favor because we can't find any scientific basis for believing in it.

The four views presented in the book are:

Libertarianism - Libertarians (in the philosophical sense) are what are called incompatibilists. What this means is that they don't believe that free will is compatible with a deterministic universe. But Libertarians affirm that that we have free will. So first the author has to show that the universe is non-deterministic (since, being an incompatibilist, they don't believe in free will in a deterministic universe). This is done mostly by alluding to quantum mechanics which works on probabilistic rather than deterministic laws. Of course this doesn't prove the universe is actually non-deterministic since in theory what appear to us to be probabilistic outcomes might actually be pre-ordained. But where the author runs into real trouble is trying to explain the unmoved mover. He really seems to argue that just having a random component is enough but as I explained above that isn't compelling to me as an argument for free will. So in the end the author throws out some chaos theory and quantum mechanics as being present in the brain as a possible thesis on how the unmoved mover exists. None of it was really compelling to me.

Compatibilist - This author argues that free will is consistent with a deterministic universe. But he does this in a very sneaky way, he redefines the question. He essentially argues that if you can do what you 'wanted' to do then you have free will. But what is never usefully touched upon is how you came to what you 'wanted' to do. In other words if what you 'wanted' to do was what was pre-programmed into you before you were even born then in what useful sense is that free?

Hard Incompatibilism - This author essentially makes the arguments I'm making above that deterministic or non-deterministic, without an unmoved mover, which nobody can find, there is no free will. So get over it. We don't have free will. That logic I can buy (even if I don't like it) but where I think his arguments fall apart is when he tries to argue that it's just fine if everybody knows they don't have free will. That this won't rip our society apart. I tend to suspect that someone who truly believes they don't have free will will just use this as an excuse to do horrific things (not that humans have ever really needed such excuses). It's tempting to argue that if Hard Incompatibilism is correct then discussing it is useless since everything we will do is pre-ordained. But actually that doesn't need to be true even if Hard Incompatibilism is correct. I can write a program that says "If "I have free will" then "be nice" else "Kill everyone". It might not be a free decision but it's still a decision. So even if one doesn't believe in free will, arguments about the psychological effects of Hard Incompatibilism are still relevant since there are consequences to adopting those beliefs.

Revisionism - This author is also trying to change the question. Essentially he wants to redefined free will so that it works in either a deterministic or non-deterministic universe. This is really a compatibilist view except that even if compatibilists can be shown to be wrong his argument is that it doesn't matter because he is redefining what free will is to essentially be what the compatibilists claim (e.g. the right to do what you wanted to do even if what you wanted was pre-programmed into you). I tend to have a bit more respect for the revisionist author's arguments than the compatibilist author's arguments because the revisionist author is crystal clear about what he is doing. That is, changing the rules of the game.

So in the end none of the views really floated my boat. I do think it would be very interesting to further explore the consequences of Hard Incompatibilism. I have a suspicion that there is a Pascal type wager in here where the 'best' thing to do is pretend there is free will until such a time as we have proof positive (and don't ask me what that would look like) that we don't have free will.

In any case, I'm going to look for more books in the series. I really like the idea of allowing philosophers to discuss things with each other. Their questions and challenges help to bring clarity to otherwise difficult points.