Gyroscopic Investing

I was reading Orwell's essay "England Your England" and it struck me how similar the overall tone of his piece was to many of the currents in American life today.

Here is a link to the essay:

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye

The dynamic that Orwell focused on is that as a society becomes more mired in bureaucracy and absurdities, the truly able people become less willing to participate in the ongoing farce that government and society becomes, which leads to many self-reinforcing and unpleasant outcomes.

In the U.S. today, we have the same mindless bureaucratic creep across all of society and the dawning realization among many that perhaps there is no real choice in any election, since the process that creates political candidates in the first place is incapable of creating any real diversity of perspective or philosophies.  For example, if you heard a no-name description of the Bush II administration and Obama's administration so far, are you sure you could tell which was a Republican and which was a Democrat?  (Remember, Bush gave us Medicare Part D.)

The point I am working up to (and which I heard in a recent interview) is that America today is spitting out the same type of people Britain was spitting out in the decades leading up to WWII: people who understand the nature of the system and how to work successfully within it, but who are utterly incapable of grasping the meaningless and ultimately ridiculous nature of what they are doing.  The kind of person I am describing is sort of like an institutionally molded idiot-savant who can execute the trivial and tactical flawlessly, but who is conditioned not to ever be able to engage in any meaningful or effective strategic thinking or even be aware that such thinking exists.

In the case of the U.S., it is as if the assumptions underlying the "Dilbert" cartoon have become part of our social DNA without anyone every questioning the process that led to that outcome.  It's like it started off as a joke, and everyone thought it was funny, but over time the joke became the reality and the fact that it was only supposed to be a ridiculous interpretation of reality has been completely forgotten.  Things like the world of Dilbert begin to seem more like exposed pieces of cultural infrastructure rather than works of parody.

Here are a few bits from Orwell's piece:

It is fairly certain that the bulk of the English people were behind Chamberlain's foreign policy. More, it is fairly certain that the same struggle was going on in Chamberlain's mind as in the minds of ordinary people. His opponents professed to see in him a dark and wily schemer, plotting to sell England to Hitler, but it is far likelier that he was merely a stupid old man doing his best according to his very dim lights. It is difficult otherwise to explain the contradictions of his policy, his failure to grasp any of the courses that were open to him. Like the mass of the people, he did not want to pay the price either of peace or of war. And public opinion was behind him all the while, in policies that were completely incompatible with one another.

The nation is bound together by an invisible chain. At any normal time the ruling class will rob, mismanage, sabotage, lead us into the muck; but let popular opinion really make itself heard, let them get a tug from below that they cannot avoid feeling, and it is difficult for them not to respond....Even among the inner clique of politicians who brought us to our present pass, it is doubtful whether there were any conscious traitors. The corruption that happens in England is seldom of that kind. Nearly always it is more in the nature of self-deception, of the right hand not knowing what the left hand doeth. And being unconscious, it is limited. One sees this at its most obvious in the English press. Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash.

One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.

...After 1832 the old land-owning aristocracy steadily lost power, but instead of disappearing or becoming a fossil they simply intermarried with the merchants, manufacturers and financiers who had replaced them, and soon turned them into accurate copies of themselves. The wealthy shipowner or cotton-miller set up for himself an alibi as a country gentleman, while his sons learned the right mannerisms at public schools which had been designed for just that purpose. England was ruled by an aristocracy constantly recruited from parvenus. And considering what energy the self-made men possessed, and considering that they were buying their way into a class which at any rate had a tradition of public service, one might have expected that able rulers could be produced in some such way.

And yet somehow the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring, finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like Eden or Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for Baldwin, one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air. The mishandling of England's domestic problems during the nineteen-twenties had been bad enough, but British foreign policy between 1931 and 1939 is one of the wonders of the world. Why? What had happened? What was it that at every decisive moment made every British statesman do the wrong thing with so unerring an instinct?

For long past there had been in England an entirely functionless class, living on money that was invested they hardly knew where, the ‘idle rich’, the people whose photographs you can look at in the Tatler and the Bystander, always supposing that you want to. The existence of these people was by any standard unjustifiable. They were simply parasites, less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog.

By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this. By 1930 millions were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them – into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.

Does any of that sound familiar?

For some reason, this perspective is helpful to me.  With these ideas in mind I can watch politicians and other things on TV and at least have a framework for understanding what I am seeing.  

Here is another good one:

Imperialist sentiment remained strong in the middle class, chiefly owing to family tradition, but the job of administering the Empire had ceased to appeal. Few able men went east of Suez if there was any way of avoiding it.

But the general weakening of imperialism, and to some extent of the whole British morale, that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was partly the work of the left-wing intelligentsia, itself a kind of growth that had sprouted from the stagnation of the Empire.

It should be noted that there is now no intelligentsia that is not in some sense ‘left’. Perhaps the last right-wing intellectual was T. E. Lawrence. Since about 1930 everyone describable as an ‘intellectual’ has lived in a state of chronic discontent with the existing order. Necessarily so, because society as it was constituted had no room for him. In an Empire that was simply stagnant, neither being developed nor falling to pieces, and in an England ruled by people whose chief asset was their stupidity, to be ‘clever’ was to be suspect.

Back in 1726, Johnathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels.  The origin of the computer-science term Endianness supposedly came from that novel (http://programming-tidbits.blogspot.com ... nness.html).  It's my understanding Swift was poking fun at the meaningless debates he felt were going on in the British Parliament at the time.

Political parties often trade policy positions over time.  But the process has been accelerated lately, as Pres. Obama finds himself advocating debt ceiling expansion just 5 years after voting against it.  And scheduling military trials which he once claimed were illegal at a prison he more than once promised to shut down. And intervening in Libya without provocation or Congressional approval just four years after VP Biden insisted that such a thing would be an impeachable offense.  And trumpeting "historic" budget cuts which aren't even equal to the debt incurred during the time it took to debate them.  Remember when the national debt was nothing to worry about because it was just money we owed to ourselves?  So is it different now that we owe it to foreigners?

Not to be outdone, the Republicans have shown how opposition to nation-building does not prevent multiple attempts at, well, nation-building.  And how support for limited government is now paramount, but for some reason was less so the last time they controlled the House.  And how an "ownership society" which was actually bankrolled by government guarantees was supposed to usher in an era of personal responsibility.  Funny how no one wants to take ownership now of any part of the housing meltdown, wherein private homes became bank-owned and private banks became government-owned.

There was a time when people were concerned about electing a person who, while in state office, had too often voted "present."  Now we've graduated to state legislators who vote "absent" to make sure that nothing gets done at all.  How nice that we have such a fine tradition of public service. 

Time was when things were bad, we'd say that the wheels are coming off.  But now everything's different.  At Government Motors, it's the steering wheels that are coming off.  At least with no wheels, there was a chance of stopping before going over the cliff.  Now we get to see what lies ahead, but with little chance of altering course.

All of this leaves me (us?) a bit in a pickle. I do want to use my voting rights, but it just gets harder and harder to find people worthy of my vote. So what to do? With basically a two party system, there aren't too many choices left. And maybe that vote degenerates into more of a vote against then a vote for somebody...

jmourik wrote: All of this leaves me (us?) a bit in a pickle. I do want to use my voting rights, but it just gets harder and harder to find people worthy of my vote. So what to do? With basically a two party system, there aren't too many choices left. And maybe that vote degenerates into more of a vote against then a vote for somebody...

I don't think that institutional decline is a reason not to vote.  I just think that the meaning of the act of voting may change for some people.

An analogy I like is the futility of changing pilots as a means of correcting a design flaw in the airplane.  Coming to this realization can, however, take a LONG time when the pilots themselves believe that the problem can be corrected through a pilot change. 

MT --

Wow! That essay is a great read.  He really nailed England and British culture.

Yes, I've felt for many years that the gradual decline of the mother country offers a hazy glimpse of America's future.  Considerably diminished, but not necessarily the end of the world.   

jmourik wrote: All of this leaves me (us?) a bit in a pickle. I do want to use my voting rights, but it just gets harder and harder to find people worthy of my vote. So what to do?

A good reason to vote is to preserve the right to complain.  And as you mentioned, there is a lot to complain about, with so many unworthy candidates.

jmourik wrote: All of this leaves me (us?) a bit in a pickle. I do want to use my voting rights, but it just gets harder and harder to find people worthy of my vote. So what to do? With basically a two party system, there aren't too many choices left. And maybe that vote degenerates into more of a vote against then a vote for somebody...

Yes, effectively we have a two party system, as the major parties stack the deck in their favor.  But in reality you do have options -- Libertarians and Greens are usually present on the ticket.  While many say that is "throwing your vote away", what do you think are the odds that your vote will determine the outcome of an election?  For city dog-catchter perhaps, but not for a major office seeker. 

I get just as much satisfaction voting for my preferred candidate, knowing that he or she has zero chance of winning the election, as I do for what I believe to be an inferior choice, even if they have a realistic shot at winning.

Pkg Man,

I feel exactly as you do, with one exception... I think this kind of falls into the same paradigm as macroeconomics vs microeconomics.  It may be true that we have the choice to vote for whoever on the individual level, but the system is set up so those votes, on a more macro scale, are counterproductive to the actual will that's behind them.

For instance, if you considered the libertarians to the right of republicans and the green party to the left of democrats, it's easy to see that as any 3rd party candidate gains popularity beyond the usual 1-2%, if they represent those outside influences, their being an excellent candidate is probably actually going to HURT the cause of the right or the left.  Therefore, lets say Ron Paul runs as a libertarian in 2012... my guess is we'll have a far less libertarian federal government as a result.

That's what I don't like... you need MASS "revolution" to upset the established order.  Otherwise it's just playing right into the other side's hands.

moda0306 wrote: Pkg Man,

I feel exactly as you do, with one exception... I think this kind of falls into the same paradigm as macroeconomics vs microeconomics.  It may be true that we have the choice to vote for whoever on the individual level, but the system is set up so those votes, on a more macro scale, are counterproductive to the actual will that's behind them.

For instance, if you considered the libertarians to the right of republicans and the green party to the left of democrats, it's easy to see that as any 3rd party candidate gains popularity beyond the usual 1-2%, if they represent those outside influences, their being an excellent candidate is probably actually going to HURT the cause of the right or the left.  Therefore, lets say Ron Paul runs as a libertarian in 2012... my guess is we'll have a far less libertarian federal government as a result.

That's what I don't like... you need MASS "revolution" to upset the established order.  Otherwise it's just playing right into the other side's hands.

You make an good point.  But my vote alone for a third party candidate will not bring that result about, although you are correct that in aggregate it certainly can, at least in the short term.  Over the longer run the major parties will tend to adopt some of the ideas of the third parties that get the most traction.

moda0306 wrote:
but the system is set up so those votes, on a more macro scale, are counterproductive to the actual will that's behind them.

That is true, but it's not necessarily counterproductive.  If one of the two major parties is losing votes (even a small percentage) to a 3rd party, they will be much more likely to cater to the voters they are losing in the next election.  I think if you are truely dissastisfied with your party's platform, voting a 3rd party is a vote much better spent than a "less of two evils" vote.  

Adam1226 wrote:I think if you are truely dissastisfied with your party's platform, voting a 3rd party is a vote much better spent than a "less of two evils" vote. 

The problem for me is more on the national level. When voting for a president, say. Remember all the 2008 hoopla about Nader possibly keeping Obama out of the white house? Well, that wasn't just an issue in 2008 I suppose...

Having worked in Washington for a while when I was younger, the thing that struck me is that the concept of the "American People" is mostly a vague abstraction to those in power.  The focus of most of their energies is outmaneuvering one another, and the larger goals of representative government, democracy, etc. really don't come up that much.  Most politicians simply think they know what is best for everyone and focus their effort on turning the world into the kind of place that they think everyone ought to want to live in.

Harry Browne suggested many simple and common sense methods of protecting yourself from the incompetence and other schemes of whoever happens to be in office at a given time.  These ideas have been helpful to me.  Much of the focus of "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" was on getting your personal focus off of things that either have nothing to do with you or over which you have no control, and onto the things that are within your control and which will help you actually experience more personal freedom (which has many different dimensions).

There are occasionally people I enjoy voting for.  I voted for Ron Paul for President in 2008 and it felt good.  I would have enjoyed voting for Harry Browne had I know about him then.

jmourik wrote: The problem for me is more on the national level. When voting for a president, say. Remember all the 2008 hoopla about Nader possibly keeping Obama out of the white house? Well, that wasn't just an issue in 2008 I suppose...

Would that be so bad?  Maybe the democrats would adopt some policies that are actually different than those of the republicans had they lost voters to Nader.   

Do you really think things would have been much different with McCain than with Obama? 

Adam1226 wrote:
Do you really think things would have been much different with McCain than with Obama?  

The "birther" debate would probably be more intense, since McCain really wasn't born in the United States.

The McCain camp would remind people that he was born on a foreign U.S. military base in Panama, which is the same as being born in the U.S., but the birthers wouldn't see it that way.  They would probably accuse him of being part of a Latin American conspiracy to take over the U.S.

MediumTex wrote:
There are occasionally people I enjoy voting for.  I voted for Ron Paul for President in 2008 and it felt good.  I would have enjoyed voting for Harry Browne had I know about him then.

I voted for Ron Paul in '88 (my first Presidential election) when he ran on the Libertarian ticket, whoever the Libertarian party candidate was in '92, and HB twice -- '96, and '00.  I've only "strayed" once, in the 2004 election, but have since returned to my senses.

I would trade all the pleasure derived voting for HB those times had I just discovered his financial side and the PP.  Although, as I mentioned before, I might not have been as receptive to the PP back then, having not experienced the roll-a-coaster ride in equities that was soon to follow.

Pkg Man,

Funny, 2004 would have been a very strong pull for me to vote for a 3rd party candidate compared to the other years you chose to.

Pkg Man wrote: I voted for Ron Paul in '88 (my first Presidential election) when he ran on the Libertarian ticket, whoever the Libertarian party candidate was in '92, and HB twice -- '96, and '00.  I've only "strayed" once, in the 2004 election, but have since returned to my senses.

I would trade all the pleasure derived voting for HB those times had I just discovered his financial side and the PP.  Although, as I mentioned before, I might not have been as receptive to the PP back then, having not experienced the roll-a-coaster ride in equities that was soon to follow.

Looking back to periods prior to 2008, I'm not all that impressed with either my investment decisions or my voting decisions.

That's what life is about, I suppose--learning what works through systematically figuring out what doesn't work.

moda0306 wrote: Pkg Man,

Funny, 2004 would have been a very strong pull for me to vote for a 3rd party candidate compared to the other years you chose to.

Yeah, in retrospect I'm not sure I should have strayed...  :-)

MediumTex wrote: That's what life is about, I suppose--learning what works through systematically figuring out what doesn't work.

Funny, I have that exact quote tattoed to the small of my back.