August 8 2014. Blogs, the media, and monopoly. Ownership of the media is becoming ever more concentrated. The number of journalists is ever shrinking. Could blogs substitute for the media? I think not (as matter stand) But there is more going on here. Every market sector (including traditional book publishing) is being (or already has been) concentrated—typically under the control of three to five large corporations. A consequence of this is de facto monopolization. Prices and corporate profits go up. Service goes down. The end result is not free market capitalism.

I'm not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to resolve them through legislation of that nature.

Alan Greenspan

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I would like to think that blogging can stand in for the media—but in most cases it doesn’t (as yet). The difference is that whereas we bloggers can entertain, inform and amuse, in most cases we rely on the media for our information—so we are using secondary sources. In contrast, the better journalists—who also have superior resources—go out into the field and dig, investigate, and generally get as close to primary sources as possible.

True, much less investigative journalism is now done—unfortunately—but journalists are still much more plugged into primary sources than bloggers are.

Where analysis is concerned, bloggers are on more solid ground. In fact where the economy is the issue, my sense is that the standard of blog analysis is at least as high as the media—and probably superior. Bloggers, in most cases, don’t worry about offending some potential advertiser. They just say what they think.

Personally, I don’t see how a democracy can hope to work without good information—and I don’t think we are going to get good information if the media are owned by a handful of ultra rich guys with their own agendas—and if the media are under-staffed. Yet that is exactly the trend.

Blogger Brian Feinblum has just drawn attention to this fact.

Many people don’t pay attention to who owns a publication or TV station, but they should. The guy who owns Amazon, owns The Washington Post. The guy who owns Cablevision, Knicks, and Rangers owns Newsday. The guy who owns The New York Post, WSJ, and Harper Collins also owns Fox-TV, 21^st Century Fox, and over 800 companies in 50 countries.

Short of the government owning or influencing the media, the next biggest danger is having a handful of people own most of the major media. It’s spreading online as well. Google owns YouTube and Amazon owns GoodReads. The big buy up the small and competitors merge.

Stateofthemedia.org  reported in 2013 that:

• The newspaper newsroom’s full-time professionals dropped below the 40,000 mark—down 30% since 2000—for the first time since 1978. 
• The ratio of PR professionals to journalists was 1.2 to 1 in 1980. It was 3.6 to 1 in 2008—and has since grown with the editorial layoffs.
• Since 1980, the three original networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS lost 52.6% of their evening news audience. About 50 million used to watch Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather. Now 22 million watch who, what, and where.
• 2006 is the all-time best ad revenue year for newspapers. After peaking at $49.275 billion in ad revenue (print and digital combined) it has fallen to $22.31 billion in 2012. Quite simply, print revenue from ads collapsed from $47.4 billion in 2005 and online only grew from 1.216 billion in 2003 to a paltry 3.37 billion in 2012.
• Daily newspaper readership went from around 62 million in 1990 to 45 million in 2012.
• The number of newspapers dropped from 1,100 dailies in 1990 publishing evening editions to 550 in 2009, and morning dailies going from under 600 in 1990 to over 800 in 2009.
• Since 2007, magazines lost 50% of its subscribers.
• In 2002, the 22 largest newspaper groups owned 39% of all newspapers in the US and their combined circulation was 70% of daily circulation totals.

So, the state of the news media, as it relates to money, users, and influence, can be summarized as follows:

• A handful of corporations and billionaires own most of the major mass media.
• The number of newspaper and magazine readers, as well as television viewers, has steadily declined in the past decade while Internet content downloads, blogs, and e-books have exploded.
• The growth online, in certain areas, doesn’t make up for offline losses, both in subscriber revenue or ad revenue and in total number of content consumers.
• The diversification of media has caused both a dilution in editorial content at any single source and a dilution of influence of any one source.
• However, there are still leaders in the media, and these leaders still carry a lot of weight in shaping public policy, entertainment, and commerce.

This tend towards concentration and oligopolies—and the elimination of competition—is happening throughout U.S. business at a rapid rate and is the antithesis of a free market. It is being driven by financialization and by the fact that we are not enforcing the anti-trust laws.

Why aren’t the anti-trust laws being used? Because politics is largely financed by large corporations—and it is not wise to bite the hand that feeds you.

Thom Hartmann develops the same disturbing point—and focuses directly on the price gouging that results from lack of competition. In a nutshell, it is competition—and only competition—which polices a free market so the consequences of monopoly (or oligopoly) are entirely predictable.

The real reason that airfare costs are so high is because of the stunning lack of competition in the airline industry today. Back in 2001, there were 10 major airlines flying through American skies: American Airlines, TWA, America West, U.S. Airways, Delta, Northwest, United, Continental, Southwest, and AirTran. All those airline choices meant more completion in the marketplace, which translated into lower airfare prices for American consumers.

However, slowly but surely, the competition in the airline industry has disappeared. In 2001, American Airlines bought out TWA. In 2005, America West bought up US Airways, keeping the US Airways name. In 2008, Delta officially began the process of merging with Northwest. In 2010, United and Continental announced that they were joining forces, and just a few months later, Southwest announced that it was taking over AirTran. And finally, last year, US Airways and American Airlines announced that they were merging to form the world’s largest airline.

So, in less than 15 years, the American airline industry has shrunk from ten airlines in the sky to just the big four that are left today.

Similarly, as the number of airlines has dwindled, airfare prices have shot up, because there’s so little competition in the marketplace. The disappearing competition in the airline industry isn’t just some strange phenomenon. In fact, this same sort of thing is happening in just about every other industry in America.

Look at America’s media and telecom industries. Back in 1983 - 90% of American media was owned by 50 companies. As of 2011 - that same 90% was controlled by just 6 massive corporations: GE - Newscorp - Disney - Viacom - Time-Warner - and CBS. Similarly, right now, there are just 10 giant corporations that control, either directly or indirectly, virtually all American consumer products.

And then there’s America’s banking industry. As Mother Jones points out, 37 banks and financial institutions back in 1990 have slowly transformed into the big 4 banks we see today (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo). And we all know how much damage those big banks have done to the American economy.

From fewer airlines in the skies, to fewer banks on Main Street, competition has disappeared from the American marketplace, and it’s all because Ronald Reagan, in 1982, stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Ever since Ronald Reagan came to Washington, "mergers and acquisitions" became the main way to do business, and we’ve all suffered as a result, in the form of things like higher airfare costs.

The steady aggregation of big businesses taking over entire industries over the past 34 years in just about every major commercial sector has concentrated far too much power in the hands of too few players. Americans deserve choice.

- See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2014/08/we%E2%80%99re-being-robbed-every-time-we-fly#sthash.Xo0wCugs.dpuf

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August 7 2014. Is reading escapist books just consumption? But what is such a book?

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Good grief! Why have I asked that question.

I’m going to tie myself in knots trying to answer it because I don’t like to think of any form of book reading as mere consumption. And yet, it is hard to elevate reading an escapist novel—such as one of my very own researched action thrillers—to  productive “doing” (except to make the point that relaxation, in itself, is both necessary and productive—indeed it is essential). I guess I should probably add that many thrillers—apart from being thrilling—are well written, witty, and informative.

But I also seem to be making the point that consuming is inherently flawed—and inferior to doing. But is that true?

In previous blogs, I have made the point a number of times that while in boarding school, I escaped into books—something which rather gives the impression that escape was all I did. Actually, that is very far from the truth.

What happened in reality was that reading endless adventure stories not only taught me a great deal about world events, history and geography (an unintended but useful consequence) but they countered the loneliness I felt at being in boarding school—and gave me the confidence to develop in other ways.

For instance. reading roughly three books a week—in addition to my academic work and compulsory sports—laid the foundation for me to become a writer.  They also taught me to write well by school standards (I was to learn humility when I tried to write professionally) so I won numerous prizes. I also became the academic top of my prep school—a position I did not retain in middle school after puberty cut in (and I truly hated Greek). Nonetheless, I was still sufficiently academically advanced to enter university two years ahead of the norm (more fool me).

All in all, my personal experience of reading a truly astonishing number of books—most of which would not be regarded as literature—has been nothing but positive. That said—were they other than consumption?

Or could it be there are different types of consumptions?

Well, of course there are—and I am being intellectually careless in ranting about consumption without clarifying what I really mean.

But do I know what I really mean—or was I just shooting from the hip?

I plead guilty to not thinking things through. My very own blog has nailed me! Now there is irony for you.

A key point about reading is that it is imagination dependent. No book gives you the full story—or close. Mostly, the reader has to fill in the blanks—something which can require considerable effort. In short, you have  to do—think—to read. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. That morphs reading into the category of doing.

A lot?

Not necessarily. That depends hugely on the book. But, unless you read nothing but trash, I tend towards the view that reading is doing—that reading contains an essential element of doing—that it is active rather than passive.

Enough? I find it hard to answer that.

But why do I object to consumption? Is there any validity to my argument?

I think there is. I have explained myself badly—and regret that—but the essence of a consumer society is one which encourages people to buy rather than to think. It substitutes stuff for social concern. It regards the acquisition of stuff as behavior of social merit—and failure to acquire it as failure. In practical terms, it tends to have numerous negative side effects including threatening the environment. In truth, the issue is not consumption as such—but the importance we give it, and the degree we consume. We allocate it social esteem it does not deserve.

Perhaps I have failed to advance my case adequately. Still, the issue in itself is worth thinking about.

A classic argument against reading is that it is not real life—and that only social activities are real. I have had that viewpoint expressed to me repeatedly—and with some vehemence.

Following that line of thought through, watching football on TV with friends is in some way morally superior to reading a novel.

Do I buy that? No—I don’t think I do. I think reading—and writing—enhance the human condition in more ways than we understand.

But what really is “an escapist book.”

In truth, the genre is not really the issue. It’s any book that really engages you—and that is a lot of books as far as I am concerned—some of which would be regarded as really “heavy.” What can I say! Economics, for instance, turns me on.

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August 6 2014. Yes, I do have adventures—but not (during the day) while I’m writing. Then my characters have them. Seems only fair.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

W. Somerset Maugham

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Amelia Earhart

The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.

Christopher McCandless

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Recently, I wrote about the importance of have a routine when writing—and a rigid one at that—yet while I was out walking this evening it occurred to me that I was projecting a picture of a very dull life.

Four  things here:

• I never find life to be dull when I’m writing. On the contrary, I find life—when I’m in focused scribe mode—to be singularly exciting—and at least as good as exceptional sex. As to which is better, I can never quite decide. Fortunately a writer can have both. In fact, one complements the other. If you are sitting in front of a computer all day, it’s rather pleasant to be more active at night. Besides, it is much easier to write about sex, when you’ve just had sex. Trust me on that.
• The whole idea of a routine is both to prompt writing and to simplify life so your focus can be on the story. If you are dodging bullets in your study—so to speak—you won’t get much writing done. The idea is for you to be calm and disciplined in order that you can concentrate on your characters while they fight, fornicate, investigate, stress out, exchange repartee, explore, confront, deceive, adventure, and kill. It is turn, and turn about. It seems only fair when you think about it.
• I do have adventures—in the very real physical sense—with attendant risks—but try and confine them to when I’m doing research in the field. Adventuring is fun and dangerous—and  stimulates the creative juices. That said, I regard writing as the greatest adventure of them all.. And it keeps on getting better (an agreeable surprise).
• Never confuse the appearance of a dull life with reality. The surface is not the substance. Energizing—and really, truly, and absolutely using your mind—is the ultimate high-risk adventure. Everything else pales.

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Michael Lewis on Why We Write

At any given time I usually have eight new ideas. … I need time between projects. It’s like a tank filling up. I can’t just go from one to the other.

Lewis Carroll

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It’s funny—but writing about writing seems to make me ever more interested in the whole process. I never used to think about it much—I just did it (or tried to—learning how to was a long and difficult process).

Now I’m consumed with trying to find out why it has such a grip on me, why I love it so much, why it seems to become ever more enjoyable. There is always something new to discover—from the intensity of the experience to having ever greater insights. As with most things, your powers of mental observation—to coin a term—increase with practice.

Writing is very far from sheer description—though description certainly plays a major role.. It’s very much exploration, observation, and analysis—and it’s very much about learning. It is also the antithesis of consumption—a refreshing contrast to this consumer society of ours (which I have come to regard as not without some merit—but deeply disturbing).

One of the main reasons why writing is so stressful is that it is an activity which involves constant decision making—and your choices are near infinite. You will be sorely tempted to freeze at the keyboard—overwhelmed by the options available—but if you do that you end up with nothing more than a blank screen. On the other hand, if you are writing for any kind of public consumption—which is likely to be the case—you face the fact that if you decide wrong you are likely to be criticized to the point of pain.

Where writing is concerned, inactivity is not an option. Writing is about doing—and doing with intensity and commitment at that. Whereas, you can half watch a TV program while fiddling with your tablet, I defy you to write well in a similar manner. Writing demands that you focus. It’s a stern but fair disciplinarian. You get out of it what you put in—leveraged by the expertise you have built up over the years. All that initial frustration and failure—that desperation, that agony—eventually pays off. You will suffer on the way—but that suffering has a purpose. It stretches you, exposes weaknesses, builds stamina, and makes the necessary skills part of your mental muscle memory. It may also break you. Very few aspiring writers succeed. The odds are higher in SEAL training.

I don’t seem to do it for reward. Of course I like and need some reward, but my real reward seems to come from the work itself. It is pleasurable, deeply satisfying, educational, thoroughly entertaining—and addictive. And it is terrific exercise—for the mind. After a day’s writing, you may, indeed, feel mentally exhausted, but—once you reach a certain level—you will feel the equivalent of a runner’s high.

The wonderful Maria Popova of Brainpickings.org seems to be similarly obsessed to the extent that it is one of her recurrent themes. To that end she regularly quotes writers on writing. She also recommends WHY WE WRITE: 20 ACCLAIMED AUTHORS ON HOW AND WHY THEY DO WHAT THEY DO.

Mad fools!

The following quotes are from non-fiction author Michael Lewis—a writer I deeply respect—who is also fun to watch when being interviewed. He has an appealing outlook on life and a great sense of humor. The man is intelligent, empathetic, and witty—fine qualities for a writer to have, and arguably essential for the kind of work he has the courage to undertake. He seems to be prepared to tilt at windmills—but is protected by his humor. His latest book exposes high frequency trading so he is going head to head with the immensely powerful financial sector. That takes guts.

Before I wrote my first book in 1989, the sum total of my earnings as a writer, over four years of freelancing, was about three thousand bucks. So it did appear to be financial suicide when I quit my job at Salomon Brothers — where I’d been working for a couple of years, and where I’d just gotten a bonus of $225,000, which they promised they’d double the following year—to take a $40,000 book advance for a book that took a year and a half to write.

My father thought I was crazy. I was twenty-seven years old, and they were throwing all this money at me, and it was going to be an easy career. He said, “Do it another ten years,then you can be a writer.” But I looked around at the people on Wall Street who were ten years older than me, and I didn’t see anyone who could have left. You get trapped by the money. Something dies inside. It’s very hard to preserve the quality in a kid that makes him jump out of a high-paying job to go write a book.

The reasons I write change over time. In the beginning, it was that sense of losing time. Now it’s changed, because I have a sense of an audience. I have the sense that I can biff the world a bit. I don’t know that I have control of the direction of the pinball, but I can exert a force.

That power is a mixed blessing. It’s good to have something to get you into the chair. I’m not sure it’s great for the writing to think of yourself as important while you’re doing it. I don’t quite think that way. But I can’t deny that I’m aware of the effects my writing will have.

Once you have a career, and once you have an audience, once you have paying customers, the motives for doing it just change.

Commercial success makes writing books a lot easier to do, and it also creates pressure to be more of a commercial success. If you sold a million books once, your publisher really, really thinks you might sell a million books again. And they really want you to do it.

That dynamic has the possibility of constraining the imagination. There are invisible pressures. There’s a huge incentive to write about things that you know will sell. But I don’t find myself thinking, “I can’t write about that because it won’t sell.” It’s such a pain in the ass to write a book, I can’t imagine writing one if I’m not interested in the subject.

When I’m working on a book, I’m in a very agitated mental state. My sleep is disrupted. I only dream about the project. My sex drive goes up. My need for exercise, and the catharsis I get from exercise, is greater. When I’m in the middle of a project, whether I’m doing Bikram yoga or hiking up the hill or working out at the gym, I carry a blank pad and a pen. I’ll take eight hundred little notes right in the middle of a posture. It drives my yoga instructor crazy.

Lewis ends with some advice for aspiring writers. They are gems—funny, disconcerting, and true. Pay particular attention to that point about delusional thinking. The man gets it.

1. It’s always good to have a motive to get you in the chair. If your motive is money, find another one.
2. I took my biggest risk when I walked away from a lucrative job at age twenty-seven to be a writer. I’m glad I was too young to realize what a dumb decision it seemed to be, because it was the right decision for me.
3. A lot of my best decisions were made in a state of self-delusion. When you’re trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.

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August 5 2014. How much should you write in a day? And when should you write? Should you write at all? It is a gruesomely difficult line of work.

NOTE: The following is not my opinion—but it is a provocative piece—well written—and makes a valid point.

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BE A WRITER

Just because you can write doesn’t mean you should. Just because you do write doesn’t mean you’re good. You could call yourself an Olympic diver, but that doesn’t mean you are.

Congratulations on penning that poem, posting that blog post, self-publishing that novel, finishing that manuscript, churning out that personal essay that is sitting on your desk, hard-drive, the internet.

But here’s the question you should be asking yourself: Can I write? Not literally. Not physically. Not technically. Anyone can do that. Can you make the words sing? Does your prose have that certain something? Are you gifted at showing not telling, or telling not showing, or creating an entire world that didn’t exist before that is born again when someone else reads your work?

Probably not. Most people cannot write well. This is a fact. This is something that is true. This is a hard thing to accept. Most people cannot write well, and that includes you, and what we can conclude from this is that the person we are talking about here who cannot write well is, in all likelihood, you.

TIP #2: It’s too hard.

Think digging ditches is hard? At least you know when you are done. Think erecting a skyscraper is hard? At least what you have when you are finished is an unequivocally completed project. Think flipping burgers at the fast food restaurant in the strip mall of the nowhere town in which you live sucks? At least you get a paycheck.

Writing is thankless work. It is like housework. It is like laundry. It is like a soap opera. It is never finished. There is always more to do. People may tell you that you are good, but you won’t believe them, or you will believe them too much, or you will not know who to believe, least of all yourself and this thing you created that is nothing more than a mess of letters trying to make sense of things that don’t: life, death, what happens in between.

No one can help you.

The above is from an article in Forbes magazine by the redoubtable Susannah Breslin—who clearly likes to write regardless—and is very good at it. That is her in the photo below. Interesting lady.

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I don’t have one answer this question. There are so many variables—from subject matter to your typing skill.

What I do think is that it is important (essential) to write every day—and I include the weekend. You need to condition your brain to think: This is what I do.

This has the effect of making writing almost a reflex—something that you are very comfortable doing.

You don’t need to psych yourself up. You just sit—and the next thing you know the words are appearing on the screen—and good words at that.

So they should be if you are a professional. Pros are consistently good. That’s the whole point.

It is not that it is an automatic process—writing will always be hard and demand effort. It is more that you have trained yourself to rise to the occasion instantly. When your fingers touch the keyboard, everything kicks in. You go from zero to maximum in a fraction of a second. There is no need for a warm-up period. Your previous mood is irrelevant. You are in the zone immediately.

That level of practiced expertise is immensely useful—and it doesn’t come easy. But if you work at it every day for long enough, it will come. How long is “long enough?” Think years or decades.

I don’t think writing a few paragraphs every day will be sufficient. Mind you, I don’t know for sure because I have never limited myself to that extent. But my general thought is that you need to write at sufficient length to tax yourself. Here, I would suggest 500 words a day up—as being the acceptable minimum. That is a sufficient length to allow you to write a full piece—to tease out an issue, to stretch your brain., to make it hard. Writing practice needs to be hard.

It’s a good idea to develop your typing skills. They won’t necessarily help you to write faster because thinking about what to write is typically the controlling factor—but typing speed will help greatly where the administrative work that goes with writing is concerned.In my case, the bulk of that has had to do with fan-mail, which, at times, has been near impossible to keep up with. Still, it is a particular pleasure to receive—and, I have long felt, deserves a personal response.

I haven’t followed my own advice—and regrettably am unlikely to change at this stage.In short, I am merely a two finger typist—albeit a practiced one.

My natural book writing pace—which allows time for thinking, re-reading (and making tea) is about 2,000 words a day. I have done nearly twice as much on occasions, but I can’t sustain the higher pace—and don’t need to.

This now brings up the question of when to write. If you have a day job, you may not have much choice in the matter—you write when you can.

If you are a full time professional, then I always recommend writing when you are at your freshest—which means first thing in the morning after a good night’s sleep.

I had a very close friend, Niall Fallon—a true prince of a man, now sadly dead before his time—who argued strongly that writing required full time commitment. He spoke from experience having written several books while also having a  day job—but he felt he would have done a better job if his focus on writing had been total.  He was preaching to the converted. He was also an exception. Most people seem to think that if you love writing sufficiently, you can hold down a job and still find the time to write. Many do just that—and they have my admiration—but it’s not the same thing.

Writing is a serious and immensely time-consuming business which demands everything you have in you—and more besides. It deserves that level of effort. Its rewards are immense—and, with luck, you may make a little money too.

Make a start. You can have breakfast later.

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A writer’s perspective: I’m increasingly concerned to do—rather than to consume. That concerns me a little. It’s something I’m thinking about.

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

George Burns

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

Simone de Beauvoir

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This photo has little to do with this piece except that I have quoted Simone de Beauvoir—and I am an admirer of her work. She also reminds me of a French girlfriend of mine—now sadly dead. She, Catherine, used to kid me about the importance of balance—and she had a point. It became something of a running joke—with a serious dimension—between us. I was—and remain—very distressed by her premature death.

I’m now of an age—70—where most of my peers are retired. Not unreasonably, having worked most of their lives, they want to take life easy. They want to keep busy enough not to be bored—but primarily they want to do things they enjoy at a stress-free pace.

What do they want to do? Spending time with family, exercising, enjoying their pets, gardening, eating out, doing good works, and travel are high on the list—with just chilling out featuring prominently. Few want to accomplish anything of  significance anymore—except in a lifestyle sense. They are retired and financially secure. They don’t have the imperative. They have earned the right to relax.

I am entirely sympathetic with such an outlook and lifestyle—but don’t share it. In fact, I have never felt more driven or worked longer hours. What is more, I have projects lined up which seem likely to keep me busy for years—certainly as long as my health holds out. And that assumes I won’t come up with a single fresh book or writing idea—which seems highly unlikely. Most of my projects, needless to say, concern writing one way or another.

Two aspects concern me. One is the ability to relate to my peers. Driven people may be interesting, but they tend to be the opposite of relaxing. The second is the sense that I need to rebalance my life a little. Writing with intensity is all very well—and I love it—but I’m pretty sure I would benefit if I relaxed a little more. And maybe become a better writer. Besides, it would be fairer to my friends.

My attitude towards travel illustrates my concerns. My retired peers seem to have bucket lists (an expression I hate) of places they want to visit—and most are highly travelled already. In contrast, though I would like to travel more as well, I am even more interested in writing about where I have already been. Thinking like the writer I am, I want to use the material I have already accumulated. No matter how great the disaster—or the pleasure—we writers like to take the view that it’s all material. We collect experiences with a view to using them.

We are not dilettante watchers. We vacuum up our experiences with some diligence. Such happenings, as far as we are concerned, are there to be used. We have no conscience in that regard. It is our role to observe, record, recall, interpret, and utilize. On balance, we writers are not really in the forgetting business—regardless of the consequences. Our recollections are as gold to us.

That said, when I get the chance, I chill out well—and really like travel providing it is based upon soaking up the atmosphere rather than ticking destinations off a list. I prefer to see few places in more depth. I like walking and wandering—and sleeping a lot. When I’m awake, good wine,  good food, and good company, don’t go amiss

My favorite country is France—and my favorite part of it is the South West. I would go back there in a heart-beat—and hope to.  Will I do that instead of seeing somewhere new? Yes—though I’m open to negotiation. I also fancy going to Tel Aviv. For some strange reason, it fascinates me. And yes, is does feature—rather bloodily—in a book. It’s a setting in THE BLOOD OF GENERATIONS. But then so is South West France. Travel and writing are interconnected as far as I am concerned.

Regarding re-balancing my life, I have given that a great deal of thought—and have some ideas. However, it seems likely that I will need to make a great effort first.

I could do with a serious vacation beforehand—but I am content to do without. As for classic retirement, I’m certainly going to ease my work routine—but I have no plans to retire. I love what I do. But I’m going to work hard to achieve the right balance. My sense is that it will be important—and not just for me.

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August 4 2014. Let me explain why we need a war—and why our next war needs to be with Sweden.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?

Blaise Pascal

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Did I hear you right? Are you seriously arguing in favor of war?

It is quite clear that the U.S. needs to be at war with someone—virtually permanently.  If you don’t have a war, weapons don’t get used, there is no rationale for making more, and the economic stimulus that the Defense Budget provides, withers on the vine. 

In addition to that,  just so you know, nuclear weapons go weird. Entropy kicks in. They get old and moody and degrade. That is not a word that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. It means they rot and become unpredictable. Where nukes are concerned, uncertainty is not a good thing.

Peace linked with degrading weaponry is no way to fire up an economy. Defense spending is the kind of stimulus you need—and for that you need war. We don’t need a world war—too risky, too destructive. China has too many people and has stolen too many of our military secrets. No, what we really need is a manageable, comfortable kind of war.

I though we didn’t believe in economic stimulus. Besides, we keep on saying government stimulation of the economy doesn’t work.

Of course, government economic stimuli work. Virtually all the economists interviewed about the stimulus that stopped the Great Recession agree that it worked well in that particular case—though probably should have been bigger.. But, we don’t want to admit that it worked because then the Democrats get the credit. Instead, we want all the money to be spent on defense.

But surely that is a stimulus too?

Yes it is—but we don’t call it that. We call it “having a strong defense” and Americans approve of that. In contrast we have been extremely successful at conditioning the public to hate stimuli—and government stimuli in particular.

Are they that gullible?

Yes. Besides they are conditioned to react a certain way from birth. We just have to press the right emotional buttons—and we’re very good at it. In fact, without propaganda, there wouldn’t be a Right Wing or a Republican Party. Most Americans don’t agree with us on the issues. However, we reframe the issues so that they vote against their own interests. We deserve to be rich. We are extremely smart.

Besides, Americans expect us to be at war. It has become integral to the American Way of Life. It makes us feel powerful and superior even while our personal situations are crumbling—though not yours and mine, of course. If ever you had lynched an underdog, you would understand. You just feel better by proving your superiority. And the dead don’t answer back.

The MICC—our Military Industrial Congressional Complex—is integral to growth, and nothing boosts the MICC more than war. It provides jobs, obscene profits, stimulates the financial sector because it encourages massive borrowing, and allows wage and price controls which mean workers can be kept in line.

Price controls?

They can be massaged if the right administration is in power. Corporate profits were excellent during WW II—though both corporate and personal taxes clawed back a significant proportion. But, times have changed since then. Corporate taxes are out of fashion now—and needless to say we rich don’t pay much tax. We buy politicians instead.

War also kills a useful number of the underclass, sort of thins them out.—never a bad thing—and as for the injured, it offers a prodigious boost to anyone remotely involved with healthcare.

Good grief! Soldiers are mostly extremely young. An injured soldier represents a profit opportunity for the next half century—longer given the right technology. Wounded warriors may be one of the best ways yet found to stimulate an economy. Hell, a quadriplegic could yield a million a year—and much more if blind or affected by gas. These guys are gold mines that don’t require digging—and keep on giving—and war just churns them out.

But the data—of which there is plenty—indicates quite clearly that investment in defense is vastly les productive than almost anything else. In essence, it is dead money. It builds structure and hardware to no purpose.

Quite true as a generalization. Entirely untrue in the particular. In the context of the public good, of course defense is a lousy investment. But it makes we members of the MICC a great deal of money. Think personal—and be much comforted. Of course war is bad for the general public—but it’s terrific for us. And, what else counts?

Why Sweden?

Well, it’s small for a start—so we can’t lose—only 9.7 million people. Secondly, everyone knows it’s socialist—so it will be easy to demonize. Americans don’t know what socialism is, but they think it is roughly the same as communism—so, by definition, a threat to democracy.

True, we don’t have democracy any more—but people think we have—and that is all that matters.

But the real point is that reconstructing Sweden after we have defeated it will be much easier. Americans are terrible at nation building—yet look how well we did with Germany and Japan. We succeeded there because the locals are highly educated and have terrific work cultures. In contrast, both Afghanistan and Iraq are basket cases. The lesson is clear. We need to leave dead beat areas like the Middle East alone—and only go to war with developed countries. Besides, they have better road systems so are easier to invade. The U.S. Army doesn’t do so well off-road any more. Like all Americans, they prefer the comfort of a road trip in a wheeled vehicle. Tracked vehicles are too much like hard work.

But what has Sweden ever done to us?

It’s a downright existential threat to the current American Business Model. They are doing better than us under just about every heading you care to name. They actually know how to make capitalism work in a way that benefits everybody. They actually practice “We The People.” It’s not just a slogan. They are showing us up. If word gets out that there is a dramatically better economic system out there, our current cozy form of crony capitalism won’t endure. However, word probably won’t get out because we control the media and Americans aren’t interested in foreign news anyway. We’ve conditioned them not to be. I mean why should any red-blooded American give a fig about the European Union.

But surely we’d be better off declaring war on Germany. It’s a direct competitor—and, historically it has been an enemy. Be easy to cast it as an enemy again?

Err—we might lose.

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