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Maybe there’s something about the name “Sinclair”.  Last year, I blogged about Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here, and mentioned how terribly unsubtle its political commentary is.  I just finished reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and it has much the same problem.

Upton Sinclair did not like the meat-packing industry. And so he wrote this book to explain why it–and ultimately the entire capitalist system–was corrupt and evil.  The book tells the story of a Lithuanian family who comes to America and finds work in the Chicago meat-packing industry.  Every single horrible thing that you can imagine happening then proceeds to happen, and so, through soul-crushing poverty, crime and death, the family breaks up.

The main character is the family patriarch, Jurgis Rudkus, who goes from being an honest working man beaten down by the cruel meat industry to a cynical and selfish criminal to finding the light of socialism, which he then espouses with religious zeal.

I have to admit, though it is about as heavy-handed as it could have been, it nevertheless succeeds somewhat in making you feel sorry for the characters by sheer force of repetition.  Sinclair had this irritating habit of writing something along the lines of: “Jurgis went home that night, little knowing that something unbelievably horrible was about to happen.”  This kind of kills the suspense, and is dramatically a dreadful device, but it beats you over the head with it so much it sometimes works anyway.

The irony is that though the book is famous for its depiction of the disgusting practices of the meat-packing industry, that was really just a bit of extra detail Sinclair included. His real point was much broader; it was that the workers were oppressed by the bosses.  So, he actually accomplished the extremely rare feat of writing a novel that accomplished social change, but it was not the change he wanted. (It wouldn’t shock me if the reason the book is famous for the parts about the food production processes is because those bits are closer to the beginning, and most people quit reading after that.)

Sinclair wrote this novel for a socialist magazine, and this is where it comes to its central problem: the conflict between being a work of propaganda and a work of art.  There can be propaganda that is also art, but when a person is writing to make a political point, there is a dilemma between portraying things as they are versus how the ideology requires them to be.  So, almost all of the characters in The Jungle are just puppets with which Sinclair makes his political points.

There are vast swaths of the book that don’t really qualify as being part of the story, they are merely long lists itemizing everything that is wrong with meat-packing, or the city of Chicago, or the factories, or whatever.  The last chapter of the book is just a huge lecture on the evils of Capitalism and the virtues of Socialism:

“How is the price of an article determined?”

“The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is determined by the first principles of arithmetic. The million workers in the nation’s wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the total product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat is the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an arbitrary symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of a bushel of wheat is fifty cents.”

“You say ‘for farm work,'” said Mr. Maynard. “Then labor is not to be paid alike?”

“Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners. Of course the wages may be left the same, and the hours varied; one or the other will have to be varied continually, according as a greater or less number of workers is needed in any particular industry. That is precisely what is done at present, except that the transfer of the workers is accomplished blindly and imperfectly, by rumors and advertisements, instead of instantly and completely, by a universal government bulletin.”

That’s just a bit of it–to give you the flavor.  It reminded me of Ayn Rand’s writing, and almost made me wonder if her books are better once you are familiar with clumsily-written socialist propaganda.  Perhaps her sledgehammer approach to philosophical writing was intended as a parody.

There are a ton of obvious questions Sinclair fails to answer in the concluding chapters.  Given the benefit of hindsight, the “Socialism is Our Salvation” message of the book is truly ironic.  Just in the above passage, you may ask “how exactly will this ‘universal government bulletin’ work?” Or perhaps, if you’re after the big game, you might wonder “if price is determined by labor, wouldn’t that mean something produced with more labor–that is, less efficiently–be more valuable than the same good produced with less labor?”

Ok, that second one is unfair.  I’m criticizing Sinclair for repeating Marx’s mistake.  But if we just stick to the problems with this as a novel, it’s still pretty bad to end your book with a series of “Marty Stu” characters giving speeches.  This Socialist F.A.Q. in the last chapter made me think of a quote from Marx–Groucho, that is.  In one of their movies, there’s a bit where Chico is asking and answering his own rhetorical questions and then asks Groucho, “Now so far I’m right?”.  Groucho responds: “It’s pretty hard to be wrong  when you keep answering yourself.”

Now, don’t misunderstand me–I’m sure a lot of the criticisms Sinclair made of the meat industry were quite valid.  It was just the solutions where he went wrong, I think.  According to Wikipedia, an employee at the publishing company for The Jungle wrote:

One feels that what is at the bottom of his fierceness is not nearly so much desire to help the poor as hatred of the rich.

Doubtless, Sinclair would say that this employee was just slandering him on behalf of the capitalists in order to crush the glorious proletariat uprising. “Now we see the violence inherent in the system!”

Seriously, though, that person was right that Sinclair hated the rich.  He seems to have surprisingly little actual interest in the poor, and besides that, he seems to have had odd little prejudices of his own.  (Especially against the Irish–I think nearly all of the bad characters in the book are explicitly noted to be Irish.)

As a novel, it is pretty poor.  As a work of propaganda, it is also fairly weak, though it did actually set people thinking and inspire them to take action to make changes in society, even if it wasn’t what the author himself had in mind.  It caught the attention of  President Theodore Roosevelt–clearly, it was an effective vehicle for getting a message across.

And if nothing else, it made me glad I’m a vegetarian, even though I’m quite certain the meat industry’s practices have improved over the last century.

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I see  that Electronic Arts has gotten the exclusive rights to Star Wars video games.  I remember another thing EA got exclusive rights to, and that didn’t work out so great…  but we’ll see.

I’m not saying this is necessarily bad news–for one thing, if I understand correctly, EA can still publish games that other developers make. To my mind, it could be good or bad.

I’ve been thinking about the Mass Effect series again, and how weirdly uneven it was for a trilogy that was supposedly mapped out in advance.  The first Mass Effect had a very interesting story, but the gameplay was a little wonky, at least to people like me who aren’t really familiar with RPG mechanics.  Combat in ME1 feels very awkward.

Then Mass Effect 2 streamlined the combat, making it much more like the popular Gears of War series.  The hardcore RPG people may disagree, but I think this made for a superior game, even if they had to mess with some established background information of the setting to make it work.  ME 2 is still my favorite in the series, even though parts of the story don’t make sense.  And I think it’s interesting that EA acquired BioWare between ME1 and 2, and in the latter, the game suddenly became much more  accessible to the average gamer.

But then you have Mass Effect 3, which had many well-known problems with its infamously unsatisfying ending.  BioWare insists that they had total creative control, so you can’t blame EA for the ending.  (Then again, the Illusive Man insisted he had control of the Reapers, too…) But in addition to all the in-game problems, it was criticized for forcing players to buy a bunch of additional stuff in order to get the “full” ending.  Again, it’s just interesting to me that there was no comparable marketing scheme for, say, BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic (2003) or Jade Empire (2005) or even the first Mass Effect (2007).

So, I think we have a pretty good roadmap already for what is going to happen to a beloved science-fiction franchise whose video games department is now being run by EA.  But wait!  There’s more!

Everyone thinks that this means Star Wars game will become increasingly Call of Duty-like, and you will see a lot of polished but simplistic games.  Pretty much everyone feels that the  Battlefront series or something like it will be making a comeback. And why not?  If EA can make something Star Wars themed that can compete with the highest-grossing game series in history, why wouldn’t they?

This isn’t so bad, really.  Battlefront was a fun game.  It’s just that I think everyone feels EA is just too big, and when a company gets that big, it’s hard for them to function the right way.  They can keep making money off of AAA blockbuster games for a while yet, but they can’t really innovate, because that involves risk. Which means we probably won’t be seeing any deep, philosophical,  Star Wars RPGs like the great Knights of the Old Republic II anytime soon.

But more than that, there are indications that EA is just generally mismanaged.  As Shamus Young says in that article, they are not running their company as well as they might, just from a pure business point of view.  However, I think their model is sustainable for the near-term future.  Star Wars has been popular since the 1970s–people will continue to buy any heavily-hyped game that ties with that franchise for a few more years.  This is where we see the similarity to EA’s NFL license monopoly–the NFL has been popular since the 1960s, and for those who play sports games, it’s the only show in town.

The difference, of course, is that the NFL, while not technically a monopoly is the only widely-watched pro football league in America. Star Wars is not the only major science-fiction franchise. There are still more of those to compete with Star Wars games.

That’s why I think the monopoly on Star Wars has a greater chance of blowing up in EA’s face than their NFL  monopoly–the latter is essentially a monopoly on a near-monopoly, because the NFL controls a huge amount of market share in the market for football.  EA is building off of that. But it’s different with the market for sci-fi games–it’s more of an oligopoly, with just a few competitors: Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on.

If we assume that consumers are indifferent as to which science-fiction franchise’s video games they choose to spend money on, this means there is still an element of competition in the market.  But, of course, not all consumers are not indifferent–they have preferences for franchises.  So, I want Star Wars to have the better video games, among other reasons, to show up the Trekkies. (Not that I dislike Star Trek, but still.) Branding is always very important in oligopolies.

The point is, this arrangement coupled with EA’s past problems with understanding different markets as mentioned in the Shamus Young article linked above and… well, the title of this post says it all.

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I know I’ve talked about this before, but it never ceases to fascinate me how the Republicans can miraculously understand and believe in Keynesian economic theory when military spending is at stake, and then forget all about it later.

By the same token, I do think it was a mistake on the administration’s part to make those cuts during a period of sluggish economic growth.  If you buy into Keynesian macro-economics, you have to admit, even if you oppose the military-industrial complex, that it is a useful economic tool.   Maybe not the best way to build an economy in the long-run, as Richard Nixon kind of alluded to in the famous “Kitchen Debate“, but even so, it certainly does work the same way as any other fiscal stimulus program.

This kind of doublethink is quite irritating, but at the same time it’s important to see what underlies it: the huge divide between Republicans and Democrats.  It is not just a matter of disagreement on economic theory, but on what the nation ought to be like and what it ought to produce.  It’s much deeper than just economics.

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I was listening to the radio today, and on NPR (not sure what program) they were discussing the Libor issue, and how the city of Baltimore had lost money because of it.  They quoted somebody saying how it could seriously harm funding for basic city services.  She mentioned specifically how crucial even “just” a million dollars could be, and the impact of losing that.

When that story ended, I flipped the dial over to sports talk radio, where they were discussing quarterback Drew Brees’s new $100 million contract, with $60 million guaranteed.

Just kind of interesting.

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What’s this?  The government is fighting over spending again?  Oh, I bet those skinflint Republicans want to cut the jobs and those money-wasting Democrats want to keep spending and keeping government jobs.  Nothing new here.

Eh, what’s that you say?  The Republicans in Congress want more money for government jobs, and the Democratic White House is opposed?  Why, what manner of devilry may this be?  Has the world turned upside down?

Ah, of course!  It’s a military matter, and so the financial philosophies of the two parties are completely the opposite of what they normally are!

M1 Abrams Tank. Image via Wikipedia

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Krugman coined the phrase on his blog to describe the British government’s economic policies.  I like the term, but in truth, I think all Keynesianism must be of the “crony” variety, in practice if not in theory.

Keynesianism says that in a period of declining aggregate demand, the government must spend money to boost the economy.  (That’s the super-simplified version.)  Well, if politicians are spending money, you can bet that they will make sure to spend it on their friends and their pet projects.  This is still just as stimulative to the economy as any spending, so the Keynesian theory is fulfilled, but at the same time, it’s a kind of corruption.

But, as Krugman says, it’s still a sound economic policy overall.  It’s just that politicians take advantage of it to engage in a little cronyism on the side.  Only to be expected, because you can’t really be a politician without engaging in cronyism.

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This was the sight that greeted my eyes as I was trying to watch a video on YouTube today. It’s rare to hear Obama attacked for being too pro-Wall Street except in the most progressively liberal–or is that liberally progressive?–circles. But, as far as I am aware, the liberal progressives have no viable candidate in this election. Obama being the more liberally progressive, one assumed they would all line up behind him.

So, I went to the website of the outfit that paid for the ad: “American Future Fund“. Their website says they are “Advocating Conservative, Free-Market Ideals.” So, no Progressive Liberals are these, but Free-Market Conservatives!

They say they’re worried about Money corrupting the political system. Well, so am I. But what is their solution to this problem? How would the free market fix it? There is potential for corruption even in a free market. You need a regulatory body to guard against that sort of thing. But, as Juvenal asked, “who shall guard the guardians?” It’s a good question. Unfortunately, the only answer that a free-market ideology seems to provide is “Government is too big. Get rid of all the guardians.”

This ad is pretty obviously targeted at low-information voters. Whenever you hear people who are not with the “Occupy” movement or some such attacking Obama for being too friendly to Big Business, you have to wonder what’s going on.

(Here is a 2008 story about this group for some further reading.)

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It’s making me uneasy how much “social issues”–lousy term, by the way–keep coming up in this campaign. I had hoped that would stop after Santorum got out, but it hasn’t.

In my opinion, this is exactly the formula for an economic disaster: voters so busy worrying about this stuff that they forget the major economic problems the country’s facing. Even if we finally do recover from the recession, as we appear to be, it will be only to revert to the major economic problem of summer, 2008: high gas prices and stagflation. While I feel they are important, I nonetheless believe that a problem like a major stagflation epidemic dwarfs issues like government-subsidized birth control or whether gays can marry.

Although at least those actually are issues. What’s worst of all is how much attention is devoted to what Mitt Romney did 45 years ago in high-school, or what Obama had for breakfast as a kid in Indonesia.

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I’ve been meaning to blog about this Paul Krugman vs. Ron Paul debate for quite a while. First of all, while I side pretty much with Krugman, do think it’s kind of cool that Representative Paul was willing to debate him. Do you think we’ll ever see Romney debate Krugman?

A few points:

  1. For the most part, they talk past one another. It’s not really a back-and-forth except for a few snarky remarks, (e.g. Krugman’s Diocletian quip). They just say their ideas without responding to the other guy’s.
  2.  Krugman got Rep. Paul good on the question of what Milton Friedman said about the Fed.
  3. On the other hand, he kind of let Paul’s “competing currency” scheme go. There was a lot of currency competition among the thirteen colonies and in the early U.S.  And it didn’t last. Also, what was the Congressman talking about with “legalizing currency competition”? What about BerkShares?

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Seeing as it’s International Workers’ Day, it seems it’s only fitting to address an issue that some of my Republican friends like to raise. I was inspired to write about this on reading one of  Ferrerman’s posts, in which he revealed he gets the same question. That question being:

“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

Okay, so it’s rarely phrased that way anymore. In fact, it usually isn’t even a question; it’s an accusation. And, for the record, I haven’t been. “But that’s not good enough”, say the inquisitors; “are you sympathetic to them?”

Well, I think it would be good if wealthier people paid higher taxes. I believe that something ought to be done to help the poor people all over the world. And Marx also believed that something ought to be done to help the poor. And Marx believed in confiscating property from the wealthier classes.

“Ah-ha!” the Republican reader says to himself. “I knew it would come out eventually!”

There are some key differences, though. I don’t think, as Marx did, that private property is a bad thing. I think private property is a very good thing. I also don’t have a problem with people having more money than others. And I think his fixation on “class” issues is almost morbid. There will always be classes, so long as there are different kinds of people. Then there is his labor theory of value, which I think is just plain silly. So, on the whole, I am not a Communist. Or a Marxist.

But there is still that bit about making wealthier people pay higher taxes nagging at us, isn’t there? What sort of depraved mind would come up with such a scheme, if not a Marxist?

Well, it’s like this, you see: I am thinking of it in marginal terms. The marginal value of a dollar is much lower for a rich person  than it is for a poor person. Because the rich person has many dollars, one additional dollar doesn’t mean nearly as much to him as it does to the poor person. The same is true for a hundred dollars; which mean only a bit more than the one dollar to the rich guy, but a great deal to the poor guy. (I’ve read all this somewhere–John Rawls, probably.)

Now, I wouldn’t think of proposing so ridiculous an idea as everyone having exactly equal wealth. I don’t think anybody would. For one thing, it would cease to be true the instant someone bought something. It’s a straw-man argument when people say that.

It’s also not an issue of jealousy or resentment; I don’t favor these policies out of a desire to punish the rich or wage class-warfare; it is just that the whole system seems to work better when the rich pay higher taxes.

Well, hope I’ve cleared that up. If you don’t quite understand this yet, read this essay by Stephen King that Thingy linked to.