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NPR reports:
On Wednesday morning, the United States Department of Justice announced the result of a yearlong investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, which found that BPD habitually violates the civil rights of its residents. These violations, the Justice Department found, have an outsized effect on the city's black population.
[...] The report's findings were far-reaching. Between 2010 and 2015, BPD recorded over 300,000 pedestrian stops (a number the DOJ believes vastly underrepresents actual stops.) Those stops often lacked reasonable suspicion, and were mostly confined to black neighborhoods — 44 percent occurred in two low-income black neighborhoods that make up 11 percent of Baltimore's population.
In the same time period, the report found that BPD made "warrantless arrests without probable cause," stopped black residents three times as often as white, and arrested black folks on drug charges at five times the rate of white folks, despite comparable levels of possession. They were also found to have used unreasonable force against juveniles and people who presented "little or no threat to officers or others."
According to the investigation, the BPD has also failed to respond adequately to reports of sexual assault, resulting "in part, from underlying gender bias." It reported BPD detectives asked questions like, "Why are you messing that guy's life up?" when interviewing women who reported sexual assault.
The World Socialist Web Site reports:
The report finds that despite making up 63 percent of the city's population, African-Americans account for over 83 percent of all criminal charges and are regularly over-represented in arrest reports in comparison to their percentage of the population.
The DoJ found that the percentage of people arrested in a five-year period on the petty and highly subjective charges of "failure to obey" or "disorderly conduct" was 91 and 84 percent African-American respectively. Even starker, African-Americans made up over 83 percent of the area's traffic stops, despite being less than 30 percent of the entire metropolitan region's total driving population.
[...] The DoJ found that over a five-year period, BPD officers made over 11,000 arrests that were subsequently thrown out at central booking for being groundless. [...] Investigators found "BPD uses overly aggressive tactics that unnecessarily escalate encounters, increase tensions, and lead to unnecessary force".
[...] Then there is the first African-American president, who has handed out military grade weaponry to local police departments across the country--at the same time his Justice Department has routinely rejected calls for killer cops to be prosecuted under federal civil rights laws and invariably opposed every attempt to bring police violence cases before the Supreme Court.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 14 2016, @03:27AM
> Recessions are just as temporary as expansions in the absence of government intervention.
You...are joking here, right? See I know what all those words mean individually, but when you put them in that particular order...well, the best one could say is a sarcastic "[citation needed]" you know?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 14 2016, @04:16AM
And of course, Obama badly botched the Keynesian strategy and yet the US economy is recovering anyway.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 14 2016, @05:03AM
...you DO understand, don't you, that the other half of Keynes' policy was "...and when times are good--DO YOU HEAR ME? Write this shit down, it's vitally important! When times are good, you use the payoff to close that big gaping debt-hole you opened up." The problem we have is everyone's so damn happy to spend spend spend, but not to put it back when the spending has the proper results...and most of the time it doesn't since the spending isn't happening in infrastructure.
Mr. Hallow, I am not an economist, but even I can tell your economic worldview is made of half-truths and vitriol at best. Has it ever even occurred to you that there is a limit on growth, that raw materials are not infinite, and that at some point we are going to have to hit an equilibrium with the world around us?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 14 2016, @06:50AM
"...and when times are good--DO YOU HEAR ME? Write this shit down, it's vitally important! When times are good, you use the payoff to close that big gaping debt-hole you opened up."
Sure. That's a common public spending strategy. We'll spend like drunk sailors now because there's a scary crisis. And we'll pretend that we'll be all disciplined later when nobody cares and the media spotlight is elsewhere. Keynesian economics was and is so popular because it rationalizes a huge amount of uncritical spending. The second half is just a rhetorical dodge to get the more fiscally conservative voters on board. Nobody actually has to deliver and it shows.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 14 2016, @10:49PM
Mr. Hallow, what you have a problem with is the misuse or abuse of Keynesian policy then, not the ideas itself. Be honest here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 15 2016, @06:33AM
Mr. Hallow, what you have a problem with is the misuse or abuse of Keynesian policy then, not the ideas itself.
The problem in question is twofold. First, it's a very obvious and very widespread failure mode for the policy even if this misuse is not intended. For a car analogy, the Pinto wasn't designed to rupture its gas tank [wikipedia.org] when rear-ended by another vehicle. But that was an unhappy consequence of the design and how the car was constructed. But should we advocating use of the Pinto because when it's not rear-ended by another vehicle, then it's not particularly dangerous?
Second, the Keynesian policy might be working (or "misused") as intended. Using crises to grab more power or to commit society to pet programs and spending is not exactly a new thing. Keynes might have been sincere, but I think there's strong evidence that most of the developed world never was interested in the boom-side part of the theory (for example, the enormous debt to GDP ratios of most of the developed world countries or the enduring nature of programs that outlived the crisis they were supposedly created to deal with. Some examples off the top of my head: Tennessee Valley Authority, Japanese postal savings system, basically all developed world agriculture subsidies, and NATO).
So yes, I do have a huge problem with implementation of Keynesian policy seeing as the above failure mode (not cutting back on government spending during times of plenty) is the usual outcome.
But I also have a problem with Keynesian economics as an idea. First, I think the theory places far too much emphasis on economic activity and not enough on the creation of value. This leads to Broken Window fallacy decisions where net wealth of the society is reduced in order to increase economic activity.
Second, short term interventions have short term effect and long term interventions create long term dependencies. My view is that Keynesian policies do nothing to address the cause(s) of a recession. Most recessions (at least prior to 1990) in the US were quick and already partly finished by the time any Keynesian policies could be applied. That includes the temporary increase in unemployment.
OTOH, in a severe recession (or "depresion"), especially one encumbered by some external effect, such as government regulation, recovery can take a while. Keynesian policy is particularly treacherous in this situation since the duration of the intervention may be unknown from the start (and considerably longer than expected), the parties receiving the intervention resources can change their behavior in a way that makes the intervention less effective, and a "Red Queen" dynamic can thus be created (where more and more intervention is required just to maintain the current status quo).
For example, the US Federal Reserve purchased somewhere around $4.5 trillion in bonds over a six year period (the matter is a bit more complicated than that, since a fair portion just ended up going straight into the US government general fund via purchases of US treasuries). But it started as a $600 billion purchase of bonds in late 2008 and ballooned from there. I doubt they thought they'd be at it for six years.
The Japanese have a particularly serious problem with that since apparently a considerable portion of the problem (the long ago creation of government-subsidized savings program via their postal service) is untouchable. But they can borrow lots of money to maintain the status quo and they have done so. Again, I doubt they thought they'd still be "priming the pump" a quarter century after the 1990-1991 recession.
Third, the boom-bust cycle has considerable value and trying to avoid it leads to some nasty unintended consequences. Here, the problem is two-fold. A Keynesian strategy tends to allow the worst businesses to survive while creating a great deal of moral hazard concerning future choices. For example, General Motors should have died in 2009. A bankruptcy court could then have sold its assets off and encouraged the creation of new automakers or expansion of the automakers that were better. A common complaint in these forums is the lack of long term vision in the business world. Keynesian economics encourages that by greatly reducing the risks from recessions. The boom-bust cycles create a strong incentive to look long term which a Keynesian strategy attempts to take away.
Even though it means a significant decline in economic activity, I think the traditional paying down of debts and more frugal existence is a better behavior than what Keynesian strategy would try to encourage.
Finally, a Keynesian strategy tends to make an economy more fragile through many of the effects already described. We have the control systems which generally don't work that well or as expected. We have the behavior changes in the economy that comes from the expectations and resources provided by the strategy. The existence of these control mechanisms can hide other problems and allow them to build up. That can result in a longer run up of prosperity followed by a massive recession due to all these problems coming out at once.
And we create the precedent of government intervention by parties who aren't particularly competent (and often don't care about that) when things are perceived to be wrong. They might intervene Keynesian-style today, but that opens the door to intervention on more spurious grounds tomorrow.
So in summary, I dislike the Keynesian strategy both as an idea and in its real world implementations. It's too easy to set up to fail and it solves problems that I don't think are a good idea to solve.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday August 15 2016, @04:04PM
That was actually insightful, well-thought-out, and gave me a couple of new pieces of information to consider...bravo :)
I agree with you for the most part, too, although I still think the problems you're describing aren't Keynesian but human, i.e., the "failure modes" you're mentioning. Those are all true, and heaven knows we've seen them enough, but by this metric, representative democracy (USA voting system) is a failure too.
That said, I think we're converging on the same solution by different paths: at some point we're going to need to come to grips with the fact that growth isn't infinite and that we're going to need to settle at some equilibrium point. Personally I think that's going to make money as we understand it mostly obsolete, and it will *have to* involve at least partial post-scarcity economics; specifically, electricity and water at the very least. THAT is going to make a lot of people used to the old system very, very angry, because it will reduce the gap between them and the worst off and give them far less leverage over the hoi polloi like you and I.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 15 2016, @11:41PM
at some point we're going to need to come to grips with the fact that growth isn't infinite and that we're going to need to settle at some equilibrium point.
But that equilibrium point can be really far away. For example, we could be living in space, no longer age, no longer eat food, and have physical and mental capabilities far beyond our present and yet not consume more than we currently do. An equilibrium of the near future which doesn't let us progress to making ourselves far better than we currently are is stagnation and dooms many future lives to the suffering we currently undergo.
Growth isn't really growth. We don't need an exponentially growing pile of resources or people. Most of economic growth is really about finding new things or a better way to use existing resources.
Personally I think that's going to make money as we understand it mostly obsolete, and it will *have to* involve at least partial post-scarcity economics; specifically, electricity and water at the very least.
I disagree. Money is a very useful algorithmic tool without a good replacement. It allows us to trade without having to do NP hard barter computations. And we already tried post-scarcity electricity and water. Even then, it turns out that those resources are still scarce and there are still times that you would want to curb human consumption of those goods (California, for example, has had both water and electricity supply crises with fixed rate consumption contributing to the resulting harm). However, it is worth noting that I currently consume water and electricity on a post-scarcity model (not billed at all for them) and pay a fixed, rather low rate per week for food and shelter (one of the many privileges of working in Yellowstone National Park for a contracted resort concessionaire).
Near future equilibrium and post-scarcity are IMHO mutually exclusive. We aren't close to the infrastructure to deliver a lot of post-scarcity goods with significant material requirements. My view is that such a thing would require basic human needs to be a small part of the overall economy which would require a lot of economy growing in order to achieve. For example, the construction of human shelter can be seen to be a huge part of present economies, as seen in the recent recession. But in the post scarcity world it would need to be very small.
And I think that's relevant to my current situation. I live and work at resorts which collectively handle somewhere well above 4 million tourists a year. My additional small bit of consumption is negligible in comparison to the infrastructure that is required to support that number of guests.
My view is that the current economic growth leads to a cleaner, better world and is quite sustainable for a very long time. For example, a common current complaint, which manages to preserve developed world guilt, is that pollution is "exported" to the developing world. But what happens in 2050, when China has joined the developed world? This flexible system of blame will now claim that pollution is exported to Africa, which will be at that time the last bastion of widespread poverty. But what happens in 2100 when Africa becomes part of the developed world? Where's the pollution going to export to next? Nobody on the environmental front thinks ahead to the point where every part of the world has the inevitable developed world standards of living. At best, they ascribe to the Luddite notion that automation will, for the first time in history, make a large population of unemployed people. Hasn't happened yet, I note.
I guess my point here is that the current system has applicability far beyond the present. Even when our economic system breaks, often with considerable political interference, it still recovers and we still have a society capable of meeting our needs. I feel that trying to create a moneyless economy or a post-scarcity world is trying to solve problems we don't have (maybe combined with a little putting the cart in front of the horse). How about instead, we think of ways to improve the genuine problems of the current system?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:19AM
And they say the techno-utopians have their heads in the clouds of unrealistic expectations...
No, Mr. Hallow, pollution, like the "jobs no one wants to do," will not just poof into the aether one day. Not under the current paradigm. Until we get sustainable and renewable electricity, water, and food at the very least going, today's problems are going to continue, and likely get worse. The whole thing is based on some untenable and frankly idiotic assumptions, such as that there will always be growth (by whatever definition you care to use), that there will always be a place to outsource *to,* that it's possible under the current system's limited raw materials and energy supply for every country to hit first-world standards of living, and so forth.
We either get the long-promised "electricity too cheap to meter" (that also can be kept up almost limitlessly and causes little to no pollution) or the system collapses all at once when one or more vital resources run out. End of story.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:23AM
No, Mr. Hallow, pollution, like the "jobs no one wants to do," will not just poof into the aether one day.
It did in the developed world.
Until we get sustainable and renewable electricity, water, and food at the very least going, today's problems are going to continue, and likely get worse.
We already have that. I don't think the worst of today's problems have anything to do with the scarcity or relative unsustainability of our activities. But they have a lot more to do with a lot of poor people who don't have the infrastructure or wealth to take advantage of today's incredible bounty.
We either get the long-promised "electricity too cheap to meter" (that also can be kept up almost limitlessly and causes little to no pollution) or the system collapses all at once when one or more vital resources run out.
Unless, of course, those vital resources don't run out and/or we come up with an adequate substitute. There's nothing about a capitalist economy that requires resources to run out. Nor does a "too cheap to meter" society sound like the kind of place that does resource management.
A fair portion of these "vital resources" are in the local landfills. Make them scarce or valuable enough and someone will dig them up.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:30AM
I'm standing here with my jaw on the floor, trying to figure out what it is about people who think like you that insists on doing everything too late and in the most difficult possible manner. What kind of attachment could you possibly have to the current paradigm, especially if you think it's full of so many untermenschen compared to you? Do you truly hate vast swathes of the human race so much, that you want to shift the detritus and suffering of the "developing world" onto them? No, that's not making it disappear, any more than taking a shit down your neighbor's chimney makes the shit disappear.
Everything you're saying here points to the idea that you really *do* think large chunks of humanity are "useless eaters" and unworthy of their own lives. Do you have any idea how completely frightening and repellent that is to anyone who still has a conscience?! Worse still, you don't seem to want to change the current system, but rather let it consume billions of human beings in misery for not measuring up to your, frankly, poorly-understood standards as denoted by your definitions of K- and r-selected life strategies. This is plain old social Darwinism, J-Mo; it's the same negative-eugenicist drumbeat we've been hearing since the Civil War, and it leads to ovens and gas chambers.
What is missing in your life, what was done to you, to make you think this way?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:04PM
?! Worse still, you don't seem to want to change the current system, but rather let it consume billions of human beings in misery for not measuring up to your, frankly, poorly-understood standards as denoted by your definitions of K- and r-selected life strategies.
I don't want to break the current system. It's working marvelously well. I think 30-60% income growth over two decades after inflation for two thirds of humanity is pretty damn good. Sure, humans suffer under the current regime. But they'll suffer under any other approach too. The question is how much better are those other approaches? It's not worth my while to switch, if your supposedly better approach causes more suffering and other harms than the status quo.
There's a lot of huckster's selling utopia out there with no downsides [penny-arcade.com] promise! A litany of telling us how bad the present is (especially when that litany is very inaccurate), doesn't make those utopias work any better.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:16PM
Only someone who isn't suffering the short end of this system would say it's working. My God, what is it like to be so completely selfish, to have such a closed-in, tiny orbit of awareness?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:44PM
Only someone who isn't suffering the short end of this system would say it's working.
You can say that about any system. Here, we have an objective measure by which far less than third of the entire world would be at the short end of this system. That's far better than anything we've had before.
My God, what is it like to be so completely selfish, to have such a closed-in, tiny orbit of awareness?
You tell me.