Category Archives: Politics

Before mariner starts his main topic

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Bon Voyage to Jim Lehrer. He was a newscaster when the news was real and meaningful and more of the moment than broadcasting is today; for much of mariner’s life MacNeil and Lehrer were mariner’s go to newscasters. (Those were the days when news did not have to make a profit – it was a public service. Since Sixty Minutes in 1977, not only did news have to report news, it had to entertain – the beginning of pundits, gossip and, if not fake, trumped-up news.)

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As to the main topic, evidence of plutocracy and corporatism:

֎ Top twenty corporations in lobby expenses:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $58.2 million (versus $64.1 million in 2018)

Open Society Policy Center: $48.5 million (versus $31.5 million in 2018)

National Association of Realtors: $41.1 million (versus $72.6 million in 2018)

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $28.9 million (versus $27.5 million in 2018)

American Hospital Association: $22.2 million (versus $19.9 million in 2018)

American Medical Association: $20 million (versus $19.8 million in 2018)

Business Roundtable: $20 million (versus $23.2 million in 2018)

U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform: $18 million (versus $29.8 million in 2018)

<Facebook: $16.7 million (versus $12.6 million in 2018)

<Amazon: $16.1 million (versus $14.2 million in 2018)

National Association of Manufacturers: $14.6 million (versus $9.5 million in 2018)

NCTA — The Internet & Television Association: $14.2 million (versus $13.2 million in 2018)

Boeing: $13.8 million (versus $15.1 million in 2018)

Comcast: $13.4 million (versus $15.1 million in 2018)

Northrop Grumman: $13.3 million (versus $11.9 million in 2018)

Lockheed Martin: $12.9 million (versus $13.1 million in 2018)

United Technologies: $12.7 million (versus $10.1 million in 2018)

National Association of Broadcasters: $12.7 million (versus $14.2 million in 2018)

CTIA — The Wireless Association: $12.4 million (versus $11.4 million in 2018)

Southern Company: $12.2 million (versus $12.3 million in 2018)

֎ WHO’S AFRAID OF THE IRS? NOT FACEBOOK. The social media behemoth is about to face off with the tax agency in a rare trial to capture billions that the IRS thinks Facebook owes. But onerous budget cuts have hamstrung the agency’s ability to bring the case. [ProPublica]

֎ WHAT FORMER LAWMAKERS WHO WENT TO K STREET ARE UP TO: More than a dozen lawmakers who lost their seats or chose to retire in 2018 announced they were heading to K Street (‘Lobbyist Street’) last year. The former representatives are allowed to lobby their former colleagues . . . [Politico]

֎ EFFORTS TO REFORM FINANCE CAMPAIGN LAWS in the United States invariably disappoint or enrage some people. In 1976, Sen. James Buckley (R-NY) became the latest in a long line of politicians to take his outrage all the way to the Supreme Court. He argued Federal Election Campaign Act limits on campaign spending violated free speech rights. The Supreme Court agreed, and the act was amended to allow unlimited spending by political candidates. This decision opened the floodgate of political advertising that pours through television sets from coast to coast in the run-up to a major election. [Wikipedia]

֎ LET NO GOOD DEED GO UNPUNISHED. The latest attempt to level the financial playing field among federal candidates was the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Coming together in relative solidarity, Republicans and Democrats sought to ban non-federal contributions to campaigns, limit spending by federal candidates and also ban political issue ads from airing within 30 days of an election. This development might have been music to the ears of those Americans weary of listening to the steady stream of political advertisements that emanate from radios and televisions every four years. However, several aspects of this law were challenged less than a year after it was enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court has subsequently struck down many provisions of the act. [Wikipedia]

֎ The DISCLOSE Act (S. 3628) was proposed in July 2010. The bill would have amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and establish additional disclosure requirements for election spending. It went nowhere. [Wikipedia]

For many decades mariner’s position on campaign financing has been twofold: (1) All financing for an elective position, local, state or federal, is limited to the jurisdictional boundaries of that specific election subject to local election regulations. (2) The election of the President and other inter-jurisdictional positions (including referendums) are funded by the Federal Election Commission and disallow private funding.

There is an underlying belief that explains the Supreme Court’s willingness to be complicit in unfair election practices: Money and speech is the same thing and protected by the First Amendment – an idea the Supreme Court has upheld a number of times. The flaw in this philosophy is that a zillionaire has a zillion votes and the common man has one – if they’re lucky.

Ancient Mariner

Whose Government?

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For readers that believe the nation’s laws are passed by a Congress representing the people, they are right – if corporations are people. Certainly those who defend corporations make arguments based on citizen ethics as though a corporation were a human being. The following paragraph is from Propublica:

“For years, [Microsoft] has moved billions in profits to Puerto Rico to avoid taxes. When the IRS pushed it to pay, Microsoft protested that the agency wasn’t being nice. Then it aggressively fought back in court, lobbied Congress and changed the law.”

To read the entire article link to https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter The article also was published in Fortune Magazine.

Many human citizens from every walk of life do not deny that the United States is run by corporations. Corporations have the profits to buy the federal government. Two democratic candidates are billionaires and a lot of noise is made about them ‘buying the election.’ They can’t buy it; they can only rent the presidency from the corporations – especially the big data tech corporations.

Every walk of corporate life has an open channel to buy the government through lobbyists, election buy-outs, and hidden support for the lifestyle of ‘the citizen’s representatives in Congress.’ Just mention Koch Brothers, insurance companies, banks, health services and not to be overlooked the fossil fuel industry.

Through ‘their’ elected officials, the tax code is controlled by the corporations. Add insult to injury, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been gutted of staff and budget.

Read the article.

Vote with your brain!

Ancient Mariner

 

The Biggest Great Divide

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The last post on perception is a lead-in to this post about a great divide. What are our perceptions of the future – not the far future but starting now until 2050? An emerging perception is that millennials (born 1981 – 1996) will live their lives on the fence between two very different social and economic cultures. They will bear the burden of financially supporting both offspring and elders; their own careers and roles in society will be tumultuously tossed about and fraught with uncertainty.

Millennials started their lives in an Adam Smith world (he married capitalism to reformation ethics) and will end it in an economic and social world beyond description today – though many futurists believe the concept of ‘job’ will be divorced from Adam Smith’s marriage; artificial intelligence will disrupt existing class perceptions; Planet Earth will play havoc with resources from Helium gas to the disappearance of vast stretches of dry land, to a shift in weather patterns that will collapse significant agricultural markets.

Progressive economists suggest if the economy isn’t soon redistributed from its advantages to oligarchs, the US may experience rebellion similar to that in other countries in the news today. Data tech corporations are so pervasive and so uncontrolled that a new retail culture may evolve with a US Congress of self-appointed data tech CEO’s and Jeff Bezos as President. (mariner speculates)

Presuming all these hotspots of change may happen, what is the core cultural issue? What will people experience day-to-day? What persistent event will cause foment and disorder as society rewrites itself?

Greater than identity politics, greater than economic imbalance, greater than global warming – it is the educated versus the uneducated; the elite versus the useless; those who can participate in society and those who can’t.

These perspectives are not new. Social philosophers and futurists have suggested this great divide since the 1970’s. But today it is a fresh subject in journals, magazines and online science sites. There are characteristics of the divide that exist today. For example, those who accept that the successful will be successful and others never will be are the same people who don’t believe in welfare, Medicare and Social Security. In other words, if a person hasn’t made it, they are not allowed to have any value in society – they are useless even to themselves.

The French term is ‘raison d’êtra’, which means reason to be or role in life or in personal terms, why am I here? The feeling of uselessness is a struggle often among retirees, young adults without links to society, and especially those who by their class and education are denied the right to succeed or interact with the participating members of society. Psychologists long have defined the emergence of gangs in destitute neighborhoods as a result of not being allowed to participate in society therefore they create their own role within their neighborhood.

Society is only a decade from the first waves of white collar job loss. It is a common statistic that artificial intelligence may eliminate from fifty to eighty percent of jobs across every discipline, every skill, and every function that constitutes the ‘common workforce’ today. It does not help that income for middle and lower income people already is suppressed and hasn’t kept up with inflation. Donald’s base, suffering job loss and massive reduction in salary, is a current example of a segment of workers that has fallen on hard times and claim they are forgotten in today’s economy. Indeed they are.

As the months roll by, the issue of joblessness and especially the denial of the right to pursue happiness, success, etc., otherwise known as a raison d’êtra, will reach a breaking point where violence may be the proletariat’s only option.

The federal government has no choice even given polarized parties, wealth-driven politics and the cost of global warming, but to address joblessness which may be at a level commensurate with Venezuela today. The tax code, ensconced for generations as a capitalistic friend, must be dismantled in order to accommodate a very large portion of the US population.

Already in today’s democratic campaign for president, Andrew Yang has proposed a minimum income supported by taxes. A monthly distribution to citizens, especially those shut out of social participation, may be one way of preventing violence and stabilizing feelings of personal worth.

In a recent post mariner suggested that a new concept of having a job was to create a self-managed job. This is a job that a person assumes on their own for the good of their society. A pure example of this is a member of mariner’s family who has taken it on himself to improve the bare space around the base of trees along the sidewalk; he plants flowers and attractive greenery. He is satisfactorily employed but has taken on a role to improve his neighborhood. In the future, this approach to raison d’êtra will be a major way of defining work – and – it will need to be a source of income as well.

Another example is mariner’s neighbor who has chosen to maintain the gravel alley for his block. Again, income was not involved but, given the idea of a monthly distribution from the government, many otherwise unemployed citizens will find roles to play that will, mariner suspects, greatly improve the civility that is in short supply today.

If artificial intelligence and the corporations that control it are brought under control; if the tax structure shuts down abusive wealth and redistributes economic participation to the proletariat; if new job growth can be harnessed to deal with global warming; if international cooperation can be modified to support the economics of sustainability – maybe there will be some fun moments learning a new culture and new economics.

Ancient Mariner

 

Perceptions

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Mariner once heard a politician complain about the (liberal) New England states and that the fathers of our country should have just continued the forty-ninth parallel past the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and left New England to Canada. This happened some fifteen or twenty years ago; even then mariner knew that the forty-ninth parallel crossed into the Atlantic at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River just south of Newfoundland. Self-perception, whether of one’s importance or one’s knowledge of facts, is not a good view of reality. A lesson for all of us; if we are to represent reality, it must be only after a fact check.

Mariner mentions this story because today perception, in whatever form it will take, has replaced reality in its entirety. One of the bad things about perception is that it is short lived. Whether the presumption was useful or not, it quickly becomes useless. It is difficult to step out of one’s perceptions and see reality. Often, one’s immediate perception distorts historical perspective or situational reality. Some examples:

֎ Often, citizens today interpret the US Constitution as if it were written for today’s Internet world and its rapid travel options and its ability to know what’s happening in Winner, South Dakota in seconds, but that perception wasn’t even in the fantasy world of politicians in 1789.

> The fathers of our nation, who suddenly had most of a large continent to manage and states that were suspicious of federal power and jealous of other states if they had more influence, had to manage the situation with nothing more than travel by horse carriage or letters carried in that same horse carriage. Further, enemy nations were present on the continent and wanted to control the new wealth to be had. Certainly the perceptions of today and the perceptions of 1789 are vastly different.

> A well-known perception is the right to bear arms. What else would the fathers recommend since there was no army large enough or transportable enough to police the continent? Authorize the citizenry to defend themselves. Mariner notes the use of the word ‘bear’ implying the right to fight rather than simply to ‘own.’ Over the eons of history, Congress should have recognized the dangers of allowing this militarily important measure to continue in the Constitution but it did not and today guns kill more people than cars or disease – disregarding the realities of 1789. Mariner will not prosecute this case here but wants to demonstrate clearly that perception is not reality.

> “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is a well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence. The phrase gives three examples of the “unalienable rights” which the Declaration says have been given to all humans by their creator, and which governments are created to protect. Even as the document was created that ideological perception did not reflect reality: African Americans and Native Americans are humans, too. This is an example of how a perception can be deliberately applied knowing full well it is just a perception that would not hold up to a fact check.

֎ Perception is a cousin to prejudice. In many cases perception simply will be a misrepresentation of reality whereas prejudice has a vindictive side to it. Today, in this time of identity politics, prejudice helps its cousin more often than not.

> Donald’s base is a good example. The serious issue of wage suppression and disappearance of profit sharing began during the Reagan administration and has been sustained as a national economic policy by political conservatives, typically the Republican Party. The base, largely disgruntled democrats, perceived that their government had abandoned them; it was the “establishment” that was not protecting them. Given that Hillary had political baggage, did not campaign for the labor class, and proposed an uninspiring image of the future, she became a target of a perception (aided by prejudice) that defeating her would be vindication. They chose an outsider with no record to defend, and who spoke in vindictive terms.

If only the electorate would check the facts. Unfortunately, both news media and social media have no interest in facts, just market share.

Ancient Mariner

 

The US has a bad transmission

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The ol’ federal bus doesn’t move very well. The clutch is totally blown because legislators become more and more bound up in polarization, some want to shift gears, some don’t. Unengaged, the bus drifts down the road in neutral, ever slowing; other national buses rush by at the speed limit. Adding insult to injury, the gear box is a skip and miss experience even if the clutch worked.

Each gear tooth, a principled thrust applying torque to society, is bent, missing or warped. If the clutch worked, if the gear box worked, the bus at best would stutter and jump down the highway.

The sparkplugs, a vibrant electorate spark of energy and focus, are old and misfire, not knowing exactly when or even why they should energize their respective pistons.

The carburetor, instead of measuring and controlling the cash flow, leaks profusely, placing the whole bus in peril as hot spots grow and may combust even as the pistons run lean.

So it’s time to take the ol’ bus to the repair garage. A lot of work needs to be done:

The camshaft, sometimes called the Electoral College, causes misfiring. A better grease called National Public Vote (NPV) needs to be applied to restore smooth synchronization.

The valves are worn and should be replaced with newer, unified roles for state voting.

The clutch should be rebuilt with non-binding redistricting.

The entire transmission must be rebuilt with properly applied representation that synchronizes legislative energy with the sparkplugs.

Looking at the bus, many seats are missing and torn; there aren’t enough seats for every kind of rider that wants to go home.

No question new tires are needed that understand the meaning of “where the rubber meets the road.”

The repair had better be sound and functional; the storms of global warming are just down the road.

Ancient Mariner

 

Observations in Passing

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֎ Has anyone noticed that constraints on nuclear weapon manufacturing, in place since the cold war days, are gone? Has anyone noticed that mature nations with sound ethos like North Korea, Iran, Russia, China and the US are building these weapons again? Perhaps this is preparation for uncontrolled climate change – something like euthanasia . . . .

֎ Science Magazine had a couple of new insights: the African Grey Parrot has compassion – the only bird known to comprehend the act of sharing between adults without recompense. If a parrot can pass it forward, one would think humans may be capable as well.

The second insight is that the average body temperature of human beings has been dropping for the last 160 years. Traditional perception is a temperature of 98.6 m/l; it has dropped to an average of 97.5. That drop may be a product of lower overall levels of inflammation, thanks to antibiotics, vaccines, and improved water quality.

֎ Rather quickly, Iran announced it was culpable for downing the Ukrainian passenger aircraft. Likely, it was because evidence to the cause of the explosion was available around the world. Nevertheless, mariner thinks Donald would never admit culpability if it were his fault. His Base would have a good guess at whose fault it was – Hillary or Nancy.

It isn’t that mariner is an advocate of continued identity conflict; the US is a nation torn apart and flailing a bit. Still the electorate, mariner’s nemesis, is required to think – even a tiny bit – about the cause and effect of reality. Even if the nation’s ‘astute’ politicians suddenly were to economically repair forty years of wage suppression across the country, the Base would attribute that gift to their emotional and irrational interference with democracy without any concern for the facts and would thumb their noses at Hillary and Nancy. Democracy is a thinking person’s philosophy of government, dammit.

֎ In a similar model to Russia meddling in US elections, China is doing the same to Taiwan elections. However, the democratic forces won in Taiwan rejecting China’s “one country, two systems” model for unification that China has used in Hong Kong which promises a “high degree” of autonomy, was soundly debunked by the recent election that re-elected Tsai Ing-wen, the current president of Taiwan.

During his career Mariner spent some time in Taiwan and he was impressed with the democratic aura of the nation. It has a tough row to hoe being only 110 miles from the China coast. Three cheers for the solid rejection despite China’s political invasion.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Just so you know:

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֎ A new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research says the cost of President Trump’s trade war has been paid almost entirely by American businesses and consumers, not China. Experts and economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton said analysis of tax levies found “approximately 100 percent” of import taxes fell on Americans, despite the president’s assertion the country was “taxing the hell out of China.” Some of the implemented tariffs on Chinese goods are as high as 25 percent. [New York Times]

 

֎ Prices for hundreds of pharmaceuticals went up on New Year’s Day, though the increase was actually smaller than that of a year ago. Data analysis from software company Rx Savings Solutions found that more than 60 drug makers increased their prices on Wednesday by an average of 5.8 percent, following last year’s increase of 6.3 percent. Pfizer Inc. saw the largest average increase this year, raising prices by more than 9 percent on dozens of products. [The Wall Street Journal]

The nation’s inflation rate in 2019 was 1.79 percent!!

 

֎ — FTC chief threatens to drop the hammer: Chairman Joe Simons fired a shot across the bow of Facebook and Google, two tech titans that have faced historic fines from his agency in recent months — and warned that even tougher consequences are coming if the online giants don’t course-correct on privacy. “If they continue to do what they were doing in the past and violate the privacy laws, then they can expect that the repercussions will be even more severe,” he said during an afternoon one-on-one discussion. [Politico]

It’s about time! But zillions of dollars are at stake. Congress will have to jump in, presumably after the elections.

 

֎ Today’s polling in Iowa only weeks before the caucuses has Warren, Buttigieg and Biden virtually tied according to realpolitics.com and fivethirtyeight.com, two of mariner’s trusted sources.

Ancient Mariner

The Democratic Candidates – 2

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On November 29 mariner published a post analyzing the chances of the zillion democratic candidates, projecting in the final analysis Joe Biden. This perspective was based on the expected response of democrats at the primaries as the campaign rolled out across the nation.

Today the democrats are revisited from the point of view of republicans and an important outlier bloc, estranged democratic voters who abandoned Hillary because they shared the economic angst of the working class across the rust belt and in many cases, also feared the demise of political power for agricultural states if the coastal democrats would realign Congress and eliminate the Electoral College.

Who still is viable:

Biden
Buttigieg
Klobuchar
Sanders
Warren
Steyer
Yang

To wit: If the democrats nominate any candidate who is not white (including Yang), it will encourage marginal democrats who may lean toward racist opinions to vote for Donald. This eliminates Yang.

If the democrats nominate candidates in the progressive channel, it will harden the republican business vote, rural vote and evangelicals. This eliminates Sanders and Warren.

That leaves Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer. The last three are, in a metaphoric way, show horses in the parade. Each of them is an excellent ideological democrat; each draws attention, each is worthy of party support but none are brand democrats. The primary objective in this election is to defeat Donald. That requires a brand candidate who can attract at least part of the many identities split among the other candidates.

Further, in mariner’s opinion, wise democratic voters would prefer to keep the six Senators running for President to stay in the Senate where they are desperately needed. They are:

Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

This leaves Joe. He is a national brand democrat; he is a moderate, capable of drawing even a few disgruntled republicans; the democratic Hillary dissidents would feel comfortable voting for Joe; Joe still has the Obama aura among many African Americans. Joe is acceptable to the billionaire democrats – Donald has a record-breaking war chest.

Generally, the election won’t change many opinions. Joe isn’t a policy wonk but then neither is Donald. The popular vote will go to Joe; the electoral representation still is a tossup but maybe there will be enough old friends of Joe in the swing states to make the Electoral College moot.

Ancient Mariner

 

The New Economics

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For the last post or two, mariner has been lamenting the human creature. A creature who foremost is selfish, then vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded especially as seen by other creatures in the biosphere. There are more adjectives but the reader gets the point. If the reader is a human creature, do not discount one’s self; you are selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded. Mariner speaks his mind in the name of his alter ego and mentor, the prophet Amos.
More abstractly, the societies that human creatures build are based on their inherent characteristics but formulated into a system of measure that illustrates their success at being human creatures. The measuring system is economics in its varying forms and philosophies. Very briefly but without jaundice, consider these behavioral definitions of various economic patterns:
Capitalism is parasitic. Profit is the end product of consumed biosphere – whether human or environmental. Profit is a visible measure of selfishness, vanity, oppressive behavior and narrow mindedness.
Socialism is less parasitic as long as defined territories guarantee that everyone is assured of being equally selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded.
Communism is less parasitic in that it constrains the opportunity for just about everyone to be selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded.
Corporatism is parasitic, a child of capitalism that has developed better skills at being selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded.
There are other isms but by and large they are governmental variations applied to economics that promote selfishness, vanity, oppressive behavior and narrow mindedness. One thinks of authoritarianism, dictatorships, slavery, monarchies, militarism, plutocracy and oligarchy. Oh, about democracy: it’s a method of altering overly abusive practices between human creatures; it’s just like war but it takes several generations. Parasitic economics isn’t the focus.
Mariner is sorry to be redundant but again he references the Native American societies that existed for thousands of years across the North American continent – until white man appeared. The Indians may not be any less vain, selfish, etc. than white people but they had not mastered Mother Nature. Indians had not learned how to be parasites. As human creatures they still were bound by a quid pro quo with their ecosystem. What was their economic philosophy? Sustainability.
The tribal hunters were the ‘capitalists’ except that the profits taken from the environment were not owned by the hunters; the ‘gross domestic product’, if you will, was distributed to the entire tribe (That is not true today in white man’s world).The primary requirement was sustainability – not profit or possession or any of the other human creature adjectives. Indians could not dominate their environment; rather they had to survive within the constraints of their quid pro quo agreement. The first order of economic importance was sustaining the ecosystem. The Native American economic model worked for thousands of years. Dependence on the ecosystem held a cap on abusive selfishness, vanity, oppressive behavior and narrow mindedness, AKA parasitic behavior.
– – – –
Today, just a few decades past Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the planet itself has bought a seat at the economics table. New issues that aren’t focused on the human creature adjectives have come into play. Things like global warming, overpopulation, disappearing agriculture, scarcity of minerals and critical chemicals, depth of ecological sustainability, global extinction of important plants and animals and the chemistry of survivability itself.
Whether human creatures want to or not, it is time to settle with Mother Nature. The combination of parasitic behavior, planetary cycles, and shifting biosphere dependencies all will have serious impact on human creatures in the near future and in the far future.
The new rule for human economics is not parasitic behavior. It is sustainability as a member of the biosphere. Sustainability has no room for parasites.
Ancient Mariner

Examining Existence

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The planet is embroiled in many confrontations. It has its own issues regarding its tendency to grow warmer and warmer; something Earth has been doing since the last ice age over twenty thousand years ago. Further, hominids have pitched in for the last 12,000 years, putting Earth on something akin to Cocaine. More on that later.

Earth, given its proximity to the Sun and carrying its own moon around, permits a certain pattern of life to exist. Hominids call it environment, ecosystem, life, nature, laws of physics and quantum mechanics. For the planet, though, the patterns of life are very much trial and error; Earth is indifferent to any intellectual perception that there is meaning to this randomness. Every evolutionary change is totally arbitrary.

This randomness is a characteristic of the entire universe, its stars, planets, moons and any order of nature that may exist in or among celestial reality. Consequently, all modifications to life are indifferent and may enhance an environment or may damage that environment. For example, recently an asteroid collided with the Earth in Mexico destroying ninety percent of life on the planet. On other occasions, volcanoes and earthquakes have stressed the environment to the point of having to start most of evolution over again. On the other hand, the assimilation of oceans of water placed on the planet allowed a supportive, temperate climate to emerge. Life was free to effortlessly experiment and has created a highly diversified environment.

The ethical premise of the universe and Earth is “what happens is what happens.” This applies to evolution in its entirety. In general, what keeps evolution going and surviving is, if mariner may borrow a politicized phrase, a quid pro quo arrangement between a species and its environment. A species takes from the environment to survive but also in the final analysis gives something back to the ecosystem. Overall there is a balance between species and environment.

If evolution is to be sustained, there is a need for predators. Many species in ignorance will over indulge their environment and breed to the point that nature becomes imbalanced; consider the cougar versus white tailed deer or the Peregrine falcon versus pigeons.

There is an exception: parasites. Parasites will consume an entire ecosystem even to the point it becomes fatal for the parasite. In the bacteria-virus world, parasites are common: the black plague, measles, sexually transmitted disease, ebola, etc. In the mammalian age, there are hominids.

– – – –

The ‘what happens is what happens’ phenomenon in this case is intelligence. Hominids are subject to the same quid pro quo as other mammals but after a while, intelligence learned how to break that deal between nature and the species. And by the time Homo sapiens sapiens evolved, brutalizing nature was an art form. Humans had become parasites of the planet’s environment. No aspect of nature was protected. Mining, chemical farming, destruction of large ecosystems like the Brazilian rain forest, and the extinction of 83 percent of the world’s species is de rigeuer. Atmospheric pollution took a back seat to profit – a classic parasitic move.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of ‘The Sixth Extinction’, believes that Homo will bring about the global extinction of the mammalian age. Species are driven to extinction by simple but thorough intrusions into sensitive biospheres. A blatant example of parasitic behavior is to open the world’s largest surface mine and the largest oil drilling operation in Alaska – thereby wiping out the salmon that must use the same rivers to populate. As the reader reads this post, profiteering (AKA parasitic behavior) has moved to the bottom of the Earth’s oceans in search of new profits.

Mariner believes that the imminent recession in the world economy, the inability of governments around the world to find an ethical compass, and the disregard of individual citizens to take responsibility for the state of the planet, all may lead to a great collapse made more punitive by a planet on cocaine. How Homo and Earth’s creatures will recover is open to question.

If nothing else, vote to sustain the future, not to repair the past.

Ancient Mariner