Fifteen Minutes

Why this liberal doesn't love the Second Amendment

Mon, 5 Jul 2010 01:46:11 +0200

Also on the Daily Kos. This diary began as a comment to Angry Mouse's front page diary on the Daily Kos about the Second Amendment, but since it ended up being nearly a thousand words long, I decided to make a full diary out of it. It ended up on the rec list, over 400 comments at last count.

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I was born in the US and have lived in Germany for the past 24 years, and although many Americans don't like to hear it, it remains an enduring truth: the proliferation of guns and prevalence of gun violence in the United States is appalling, tragic, breaks my heart as an American, and is utterly out of line with just about all of the Western democracies that we consider comparable to ours. No American, certainly no liberal, should be willing to stand for it a moment longer. Certainly it's possible to do a lot about that without changing anything about the 2nd Amendment, but if repealing the Amendment is what it takes, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.Having come from the US, I know that many of you believe that certain things are just inevitable facts of life -- that there are certain areas of large cities where you just don't go, for fear of your life (and you're raised with the assumption that people who do go to those places and die, in a crucial sense, should have known better); that thousands upon thousands of people just get shot to death every year; and that's just the way it is. But from my experience outside of the US I can assure you -- it doesn't have to be that way. I live in the second-largest city in Germany, with a metro population of over 4 million, and while violent crime certainly does go on here, the level of fear and deadliness is worlds apart from what we know in America's largest cities. A quick trip to Wikipedia shows firearms homicide rates in the US as six times the rate in Germany, and also vastly higher than anywhere else in western Europe, but I don't need statistics to know that, because the everyday sense of safety is vastly greater here than where I came from. We don't have to tolerate these conditions in our country. If your argument is based on patriotism, then I have to ask -- how much do care about your country if you're willing to live with so many murdered Americans, when evidence around the world shows decisively that the deaths can be greatly reduced?

As for Angry Mouse's arguments about the Constitution -- let's be fair and recognize that the Heller and McDonald decisions, led by Scalia and the strong conservative drift of the Court in recent decades -- overturned decades of precedent according to which 2nd Amendment rights were not interpreted as an unlimited individual right to gun ownership. Whether or not you agree, the fact is that this is a major historical turn to the right on the part of the Supremes, made possible by decades of Republican presidents filling up the Court.

I take a back seat to no one in my reverence for the Constitution, and I resent the implication my problems with the 2nd Amendment are a symptom of disrespecting it. If you truly love the Constitution, then know a few things about its history, and its flaws. The Constitution is an enduring work of genius, the longest-lasting foundation of a nation-state in history. It also, in its original form, counted slaves as three-fifths of human beings. It gives us the cockamamie scheme of the Electoral College that makes it possible for someone to become President with a minority of popular votes, thus leaving us with Dubya instead of President Gore. And I notice that in Mouse's rundown of the Bill of Rights, she skipped over the Third Amendment, which most charitably can be described as an anachronism (it's widely regarded as something of a joke). Cherish the Constitution, fight for it, but don't make the naive mistake of treating every bit of it as sacred and untouchable. Among the many brilliant insights of the Founders was their knowledge of their own limitations and the unforeseen circumstances of the future; they built it so that we can fix its flaws, if necessary.

Upon reflection during my years outside of the United States, I've realized that the problem of gun violence has more to do with the people's attitudes than with legal questions. If the people of a democracy want more restrictions, they'll have them, and that's exactly the difference over here. What distinguishes a place like Germany from America, where gun ownership is involved, is first and foremost that hardly anybody here wants the damn guns. Guns kill people. If many people have many guns, many people will get shot, and gun violence in the country will start to be more like it is in the US, and nobody in their right could want such a thing.

So the discussion of gun rights and violence really should begin with what we think about the guns in the first place, rather than with the law and the Constitution. But let me just say a few things about that anyway. First of all, the idea that there is a "natural right" to own a firearm, equivalent to freedom of speech, has always struck me as profound nonsense. It's like saying you have a right to drive an SUV. In so many ways, we recognize the government's right to impose restrictions in the interest of public safety. There's no "natural right" that stands in the way of doing so with firearms.

Worst of all, a moment's consideration of the rate of firearms violence in the US makes it clear that advocates of unlimited gun ownership rights are being selfish and, frankly, ghastly. What the hell is it about owning a gun that is so sacred and inviolable? Is it the joy of felling the deer, or hitting the bullseye? For that, we're willing to live with the deaths of thousand upon thousands of Americans every year? What kind of values are those, where is the humanity? If we can save American lives, then of course restrictions on gun ownership are an acceptable price to pay; I recoil in horror at any standard of morals that could conclude any differently.

Process Over Principle

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 13:37:26 +0100

I'm afraid I don't have much of anything original to add to this, but these two paragraphs in today's NYT op-ed by Frank Rich are worth quoting (and the whole thing's worth a read):

Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan � of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a �pragmatic agenda.� But pragmatism is about process, not principle. Pragmatism is hardly a rallying cry for a nation in this much distress, and it�s not a credible or attainable goal in a Washington as dysfunctional as the one Americans watch in real time on cable. Yes, the Bush administration was incompetent, but we need more than a brilliant mediator, manager or technocrat to move us beyond the wreckage it left behind. To galvanize the nation, Obama needs to articulate a substantive belief system that�s built from his bedrock convictions. His presidency cannot be about the cool equanimity and intellectual command of his management style.

That he hasn�t done so can be attributed to his ingrained distrust of appearing partisan or, worse, a knee-jerk �liberal.� That is admirable in intellectual theory, but without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America�s future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat anyway. His domestic policies, whether on climate change or health care or regulatory reform, are reduced to items on a standard liberal wish list. If F.D.R. or Reagan could distill, coin and convey a credo �nonideological� enough to serve as an umbrella for all their goals and to attract lasting majority coalitions of disparate American constituencies, so can this gifted president.

During the first half of last year, Obama had an extraordinary opportunity to articulate the moral case for his causes, creating public pressure on the opposition not to stand in the way of his goals, and defining the broadest ambitions as the starting point of negotiations. Instead, he gave away concessions, before negotiations ever began, that a recalcitrant opposition has pocketed while stonewalling him on everything anyway, recognizing that he won't make them pay any political price for it. Maybe he can still recapture that moment, I'm not so sure if it's possible any more, but first and foremost, he'll have to want to lead that way in the first place.

Love is Like the Summer

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:13:44 +0100

Summer is the most beautiful season -- I think so, as many people do, but not everyone agrees. Summer is liberating and exhilarating, a time of warmth and long days, when all of nature is alive and welcoming, freeing us from the shelter of our homes and from thick bundles of sweaters and jackets and boots. It's a time of green grass and blue skies, days at the beach and nights under the stars, sensual and passionate, the heat on our skin felt all the way into our hearts.

Summer days can be blazing, blinding, overwhelming. It's prudent to protect yourself, with screen for the skin, a cover for your head, shade for the eyes, and maybe an extra layer of clothing after all. Sometimes it's necessary to seek out the shade, and some days you're better off just staying inside, avoiding the unbearable light and heat altogether.

Some summers can kill you.

Once in a while, a summer is a an extraordinary gift, with months of perfect days that never seem to end, lasting longer than anyone expected. Other summers are mediocre, and a few of them are frustrating disappointments, filled up with days of rain and overcast skies and mild temperatures, and too few redeeming days of sunshine scattered between them, ending abruptly when the chill of autumn arrives much too soon, so that we are left wondering whether the season was ever really there at all.

Summer is transient. We see the signs of its inevitable passing slowly but surely building up around us, the coolness in the air, the shortening days, nature's gradual retreat into dormancy. We bulk up and brace ourselves for the long season of darkness and cold. Winter is more oppressive and harder to survive. But it has its own kind of beauty, the quiet elegance of stillness and solitude.

Not everything about love is like the summer. The seasons are predictable -- we never know exactly when they will begin and end, but we know that they come and go once every year.

Cease, Desist and Cut That Out

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:01:08 +0100

People are always talking about cease and desist letters, but why do these things go to all the trouble to demand that you cease AND desist? What if you cease, but decline to desist? Could you get in trouble if you desist, but pass up on the ceasing?

By way of contrast, it makes perfect sense to tell someone not to "fold, spindle or mutilate" something. Folding is not the same as spindling, nor is it the same as mutilating; and you can spindle a thing without mutilating it, just as you could mutilate it without spindling it. Folding, spindling and mutilating are three different things, so if you don't want someone to do any of them, you have to tell them not to do all three.

A demand to both cease and desist implies that they're two different things, and you're demanding them not to do either one (ask your friendly neighborhood linguist about the Gricean maxim of quantity). Otherwise it's just a waste of words. To be sure, it only takes a second to say "cease and desist", but think of all the accumulated loss of productivity in all of the lawyer's offices all over the world, dictating and typing more than is necessary. Think of all the printer toner wasted printing out three words, when one would have been enough. In these difficult economic times, every little bit of extra efficiency makes a difference.

I'm troubled by the thought that I could get one of these things, and sincerely attempt to comply, but unwittingly fail because of some unfathomably subtle legal distinction between ceasing and desisting. A Kafkaesque nightmare scenario comes to mind -- cops and lawyers hammering on the door, the cops slapping on the cuffs while the lawyer cackles, "You CEASED but you didn't DESIST, SUCKAH!"

It's the Kitsch that Binds Us, and Sets Us Apart

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:41:01 +0100

So last night I was over at SureShot's, and somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I'm still not sure why, he started singing out "Manchmal m�chte ich so gern mit Dir ...". In an almost solemn voice, suitable for a musical. "You know that, don't you?", he said, "that Roland Kaiser feeling?"

Um, I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

"Komm", he said, exasperated at my Ami cluelessness, "you've lived here all this time."

The song was apparently a Schlager. Germans just love their Schlager (the word is presumably related to "hit"), popular music from German artists with German lyrics, with something of a 70's flair -- many of the popular numbers really are from that era, although they're still making them to this day. Kitsch is a German word, and Schlager form the Platonic ideal of Kitsch; an explosion, a fountainhead, a tsunami of schmaltziness. I'm certain that this is the music they play over the loudspeakers of Hell -- how could there be a worse psychological torture than having to listen to this stuff through all of eternity? And yet, I rarely see Germans getting more animated and loose than when the Schlager are playing. There are places around the Reeperbahn in Hamburg with jukeboxes fully loaded with the stuff, blasting out one after another all night long, while everyone in the place bursts out joyfully singing along, and I look around feeling bewildered and stupid. Every year, the weekend-long Schlagermove is one of the biggest parties in Hamburg (so much that they have three of them planned just for this year), complete with a parade of floats down the Reeperbahn, sort of a self-consciously lowbrow answer to the Love Parade. Everyone there is decked out in garish, hippy-ish outfits, the more outlandish, and the more outrageous the color contrasts, the better. I've had a great time when I've been there, but when everyone is singing along with the Schlager, I have to grin and move my lips as if I know what I'm doing.

I started typing at SureShot's laptop. "No, no," he said, knowing what I was up to, "no Roland Kaiser, not now, please ..." But he asked for it.

(It's about a guy imagining telling his neighbor that he has the hots for her, but he can't risk going through with it. "You'll lose your husband, and I'll lose my friend ...", cue the ominous minor chord.)

I've been in Germany for going on my 24th year now, and SureShot was amazed that I didn't know the first thing about Roland Kaiser, or most other Schlagers�nger for that matter. To be sure, I'm now versed in German cultural references I never could have imagined 24 years ago, but you have to grow up with this stuff, or else it might as well be from Mars. "I grew up in America," I told him, "let me show you the kind of thing I know and you've never heard of," and started tapping at his laptop again.I brought up the video, and he watched me wide-eyed as I sang along with the entire song.

Just in case he might have thought that this is some special and quirky talent that I have, I assured him, "every American can do that."

(Important technical note: that video is the version from the first season, with "and the rest" instead of "the Professor and Mary Ann", a crucial point for a Mary Ann man like myself. But I decided not to confront him all too quickly with such advanced topics.)

In Inglourious Basterds, a Brit disguised as a Nazi officer blows his cover when he holds up three fingers to indicate the number three. His German adversary spots him right away -- "you're just as German as that whiskey there!" -- but I didn't know what the hell was going on until it got explained later in the movie. He held up his index, middle and ring finger, which to a German is impossibly weird and a dead giveaway -- they hold up the index finger, middle finger and thumb. I asked my German friends if that really stuck out to them so much, and they said well yeah, obviously, and they were just as amazed that I would have done the same thing that the outed Brit did.

If I had to spot a spy pretending to be an American, this is how I would do it. "Finish this song for me: 'Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale ...'" If they can't do it, you've got your spy. I've never met and couldn't imagine a Yank who can't sing the song, and everywhere else, they're blissfully unaware. Try to picture that, if you're an American reader -- a universe of television, and no Gilligan's Island anywhere to be found.

What's the true meaning of a nationality? What is it that makes an authentic German, and a genuine American? It's the kitsch. If you're a True German, you know your Roland Kaiser; if you're a Real American, you can sing the Gilligan's Island theme song. God bless.

Gifts from Chucky P

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:17:20 +0100

It was back in September 2007 when I got an electrifying message from SureShot -- Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel Fight Club, which is best known for the film with Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter and Meat Loaf, would be appearing at Uebel & Gef�hrlich for a reading of his book Rant (which was just coming out at the time).

Count me among the legions of fans who think of "Fight Club" as a life-changer, high on my list of favorite films of all time. I have a standing challenge to SureShot that he hit me as hard as he can -- so far, we've both been too chicken to go through with it, but one of these days, if I manage to get him pissed off enough ... And like many other fans, I was turned on to Chuck's writing by the film. There was no way I was going to miss the reading, this would be a brush with greatness.

The reading featured a man and a woman reading excerpts of the German translation of "Rant", and Chuck himself read a chapter in his native Upper Northwest accent. The best part of the evening, though, was the Q&A session -- all you had to do was get him going with a good question, and he would run with it, telling fantastic, hilarious stories. He wanted to encourage questions -- audiences in Hamburg tend to be very reserved -- so he promised that anyone who spoke up would get an envelope with an address, which you could send in, and he would send you a little something sometime later. He didn't elaborate. But that was good enough for me, I thrusted up my arm like an eager Arnold Horshack.

"Rant" is structured as a fictional oral history, told as quotations from various characters, and some of the quotations are attributed to the "Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms", which was not explained at the reading. So I asked Chuck what that was all about, hoping I would get him started on another good story. But it seemed that the question bored him; he gave a flat, matter-of-fact answer, and that was that. I was a little chastened, but I got the envelope, which was addressed to his agency in New York. I stuck in a note, saying that if I could wish for anything, it would be for an autograph with the dedication "Dear Geoff, I want you to hit me as hard as you can, Chuck", and mailed it in the next day.

The week after Christmas, a package arrived, and what a box of surprises I found inside.The box of stuff from Chuck was filled with strips of blue and red confetti, and contained the following items:

Orange blossom scented incense sticks

A ceramic incense burner, sculpted as a turtle

A string of Bells of Lal

About four or five Atomic Fire Balls

A small sampler box of Whitman's chocolates

A bar of handmade "Dark Chocolate" soap

A rubber severed finger

12 relight candles (you can't blow them out)

Two temporary, stick-on tattoos, in the shape of Chinese letters

24 "Color Splash" bath tablets ("Add color to your bath"), red, yellow, blue and green

A box of bandages, yellow with the text "CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS", in the manner of TV police shows, and a "Free Toy Inside" (a tiny plastic walkie-talkie)

A keychain laser pointer

Carrot seeds

Forget-me-not seeds

Seeds for an herb garden

A "Wash Away Your Sins" towelette ("Heavily Scented", "Handy reliable", "Anti-Bacterial formula, kills all sins on contact")

A superball

Two CDs with recordings from Chuck's reading tours

And the best of all: a hand-strung necklace, with beads made of green howelite, turquoise, moss agates, dark-green malachite and pale-green amazonite; two glass beads cast with phosphorescent bits so that they glow in the dark; a hand-carved pig in the center made of serpentine jade; and a string of beads that spell out "To Geoffrey Simmons" on one side, and "From Chucky P" on the other. The chain is now one of my most cherished possessions; I wear it every day.

All of this from the man whose mind conceived of Tyler Durden, Marla Singer, Robert Paulson, the eight rules Fight Club, Jack's smirking revenge, Jack's raging bile duct, Jack's complete lack of surprise, Jack's inflamed sense of rejection, Project Mayhem, the Space Monkeys, and the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

The box contained a letter signed by Chuck:

... here's a necklace I've made for you, using stones I gathered while on tours. ... I love the fact these stones are ancient -- and that they'll outlast all of us.

If this letter seems short it's because I get bored with too many words. Instead, I'd much rather send you as many sounds, smells and tastes as I can pack into this box. And I hope this mess arrives on a day when you need a good surprise.

Please, when you have the opportunity, never hesitate to surprise someone. And if you receive this package, consider it a small miracle. With so much unhappiness in the world, let's make the effort to create good events.

Now, have a wonderful 2008.

I'll shut up now.

Yes indeed, Chuck, the box came on a day when I needed a good surprise, and I consider it a small miracle.

So with so much unhappiness in the world, let's never hesitate to surprise someone, and let's all make the effort to create good events. Let's never be complete, stop being perfect, let's evolve, and let the chips fall where they may.

Goodbye, Cruel Sun

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 11:47:24 +0100

On January 27th, the Oracle Corporation completed the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, my former employer.

The history of Sun's high ride and demise, and the continuing story of the newly-merged Oracle's fortunes, will occupy the minds of the IT industry and its pundits for a long time to come. I could easily go on and on about it, but that's not what I want to talk about here. Instead, I think that something should be pointed out about the way it all ended. It's another example of a phenomenon that's been covered extensively in political circles, and present in the public mind ever since the Wall Street collapse -- grotesquely extravagant compensation and golden parachutes for executives whose performance, on objective terms, can only be viewed as failure, compared to the burdens borne by laid-off rank-and-file employees who were far less responsible for the company's woes. What does this tell us about the Reaganist dogma of an unencumbered free market that currently has a powerful grip on the minds of almost everyone in the US ruling class? The circumstances of my own departure from Sun, under the laws and standards of a "socialist" European state, have something to say about that.To head off a possible reservation that you may be having -- one could reasonably suppose that this is just sour grapes from a disgruntled ex-employee, directing his resentment at his former bosses. On the contrary, I had a pretty good job at Sun for the most part, and have done fairly well for myself in leaving, as we'll see in a moment. The title of this post is just a play on words; I don't think that Sun was cruel. And I've always had a rather sympathetic view of Sun's executives, inasmuch as you can have a valid opinion about personalities who are highly visible and seem familiar but are in fact very remote (like Hollywood celebrities). I agreed with many of the things they tried to do, and disagreed with some others, as did just about everyone else in the company. What Sun did well, but not well enough to survive independently, are complex questions that will elicit a wide variety of sometimes contradictory answers. But I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going.

However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word "deserve". But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. As a regulatory requirement for the merger, Sun filed a statement with the SEC in October detailing the compensation (salary, stock awards, options and various perks) that executives were expected to receive as a result of the acquisition deal. As interpreted by the Register, the figures mean that Sun's final CEO Jonathan Schwartz ("Jonathan" in the lingo of us ex-Sunnies) stood to gain $19.8 million in stock value. Ex-CEO, co-founder and chairman Scott McNealy ("Scottie") gained $164.5 million; in all, Sun's top 21 executives owned stock and options amounting to a three percent share in the company, meaning that they stood to gain $217.5 million from the deal.

That's just from the increase in stock value, which came about because of the price that Oracle paid for the takeover ($9.50 per share, 42% higher than Sun's closing price on the day that the acquisition was announced). The SEC filing also sets forth the golden parachutes that executives would receive if they are let go after the merger: $12.8 million for Jonathan, $10 million for Scottie, and about $4 million to $5 million to various other executive vice presidents.

I had the clever timing to join Sun in 2001, just as the Internet bubble was unraveling. The boom was a wonderful time for Sun, but the company never really recovered from the bust -- there were signs of a rebound in the year or two before 2008, but when the financial crash hit, Sun was essentially done in for good (Jonathan's tweet announcing his departure from Oracle/Sun included this haiku: "Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more"). Within my first few years at the company, Scottie announced the first "reduction in force", or RIF, the euphemism for layoffs that quickly got verbed ("did you hear? Joe Blow's getting riffed!"). Over the years, I couldn't keep track of how many rounds of RIFs went by; probably an average of one for every year I was there, affecting many thousands of employees, including about 7500 during the past year or so. Most of the time, the layoffs were associated with a "restructuring" that put me into a different internal organization, each of them named with a different acronym that makes my work history at Sun look like alphabet soup, and each time assigning me to a different manager. I had, on average, a new boss every year. More layoffs are expected as a result of the Oracle acquisition, as inevitably happens with such large-scale mergers. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said that there would actually be a net increase in the workforce for the Sun business, with an additional 2000 hires; but 1000 former Sun employees would be let go (and none of the reports about this mentioned the fact that Oracle quietly advised Sun to complete its 7500-strong RIF before the merger).

In his farewell message to Sun's employees, Jonathan had this to say to those who "ultimately won't become a part of Oracle":

With the world economy stabilizing, I'm very confident you'll land on your feet. You're a talented, tenacious group, and there's always opportunity for great people.

I'll be the first to admit that many laid-off IT workers probably aren't in quite as bad a predicament as some of the other unemployed, relatively speaking. Most of my former colleagues who lost their jobs are skilled, well-educated specialists working in an industry with a strong demand for their abilities; I have no personal knowledge of anyone from Sun who crashed and burned altogether after getting riffed. Then again, I don't personally know everyone who lost their job, and certainly can't guarantee that no crash-and-burn stories ever happened. These were people who were trying to support their middle-class families, pay for their homes, and ensure a good future for their kids, and all of these goals are at risk after a layoff. I can attest that for every one of them, no matter how highly skilled, the RIF was a frightening and demoralizing experience, forcing them into an uncertain future. Moreover, many of the affected employees come from the back office, the department that tends to be hit hardest by layoffs; the 1000 Sunnies to be let go by Oracle are rumored to come mostly from there. These are workers with clerical skills that cannot necessarily count on new openings in a tight job market just because they were associated with the IT industry. Worst of all, Jonathan's sanguine confidence about a "stabilizing world economy" is startlingly naive in view of an economy that is currently at about 10% unemployment in the US (16.5% on the more comprehensive U6 measure), expected by optimistic projections to remain above 7% for the next three years, with similarly high unemployment on average in the EU, as much as 12% in Ireland and 19% in Spain. In the current atmosphere, no one is assured of a new job, no matter what their background is. Jonathan's message was no doubt meant to be optimistic and encouraging, but an assertion this complacent, coming from someone who is walking away with about $30 million and addressed to employees whose economic survival is at grave risk, is presumptuous to say the least.

Scottie's farewell message to Sunnies includes this passage:

... this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company.

And I sure "hope" America regains its love affair with capitalism. And except for the auto industry, financial industry, health care, and some other places (I digress), the invisible hand is doing its thing quite efficiently. So I am more than willing to accept this outcome.

And my hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison. ...

One can only wonder why he put the word "hope" in scare quotes, and what he meant by America "regaining its love affair with capitalism". Scottie is known to be a Republican; he maxed out on campaign donations to John McCain in 2008, and to David Dreier in 2007. In view of the recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll showing that 63% of Republicans believe that Barack Obama is a "socialist" (and other examples of astounding disconnect from reality), I'm inclined to suspect that the scare-quoted "hope" is an allusion to Obama, and the remark reflects a genuine belief that America has turned away from, or fallen out of love with, "capitalism". If so, then I have to wonder if he thinks of it as "capitalist" or "socialist" that he's getting about $175 million for having founded and led a company that lost billions, laid off tens of thousands, and ceased to exist.

In the introduction I referred to what I call the "Reaganist dogma" of the free market, my description of what a Republican might refer to as "capitalism" as opposed to "socialism". This is the conviction that market forces, and only those forces, can be counted on to deliver economic rewards to those who "deserve" them, and the more they deserve, the more they get. The market also penalizes those who are not capable or hard-working enough to "deserve" more. If corporate executives receive tens or hundreds of millions in salary, bonuses, stock value and golden parachutes, well then they simply deserve that much -- they are the Masters of the Universe, the Best and the Brightest, the wizards of business whose brilliance is necessary to run a successful company, and they're being compensated at a level commensurate with their skill. Those who take home less, or lose their jobs, must not have been competent or industrious enough to do better. And only the market can make these determinations; any interference with those forces, such as labor regulations, union negotiations or progressive taxes, only serves to distort the market's equitable distribution of wealth to those who deserve to be more wealthy.

Historically minded readers might fairly object to my use of the word "Reaganist" to name this ideology, pointing out that Ronald Reagan did not originate those ideas ("Friedmanist" or "Randian" might be a better attribution to the intellectual authors), nor did he actually govern all that dogmatically according to them, at least not as much as many people now believe. I choose that name because, accurately or not, Reagan is the figure who today is upheld as the grandfather of the ideology, a mythologized and unassailable American icon, which is part of the reason why the dogma itself is regarded by many as a sacred American value beyond dispute. That's certainly the case for conservatives these days; for them it's an article of faith, a certainty that never needs to be scrutinized against evidence, a "love affair", a central component of their identity. Those who would dispute it in any form are not only wrong, but guilty of a moral sin; they're "socialists", a word that is indistinguishable in their minds from "communist" and "traitor". It's also implicitly assumed as conventional wisdom by most American media, and deeply internalized by nearly all of the Democratic leadership, as evidenced most famously when Obama spoke with approval of Reagan having "changed the trajectory of America".

These assumptions have made it profoundly difficult in the United States to implement a wide variety of measures that are desperately needed, ranging from financial reform to an adequate stimulus to comprehensive health care reform to
measures against climate catastrophe. And all of this in spite of the fact that the dogma is empirically refuted in numerous ways -- even taken on its own terms, it fails to account for the states of affairs that prevail in the real world. Whatever sympathies we may have for a company and its leadership, whatever we think the company "should have been", the only thing that matters on the Reaganist worldview is the bottom line, and the bottom line for Sun is that it went out of business. Scottie acknowledged as much when he wrote that "I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company", but he left something out of the love story. The survival of a company is the responsibilty of its executives, and the bottom line for Sun's executives is that they failed. One would think that the reward for failure, certainly from the standpoint of someone who claims to love the market economy and capitalism, would be nothing at all. And yet, as we have seen so often in recent times, it's the failures who make off with a king's ransom, while the brunt of a company's woes are borne by the laid-off rank-and-file employees, who had the least influence on its fortunes and the least means to fend for themselves in a strained economy. If this is what "capitalism" means, no wonder Scottie loves it; who wouldn't love 175 million bucks?

For all of the millions and billions going around, Sun's story is frankly small potatoes compared to the calamity and glorious executive benefits that prevail in the financial industry. The demise of an IT player is influential enough, but its effects are largely limited to just one industry, whereas the meltdown of Wall Street's irresponsible crap shoot took down the entire global economy. Far from the Best and the Brightest, the case could be made that the financial world's leaders are the Worst and the Dimmest. And yet according to recent reports, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, whose company received $1.1 billion in TARP funds, may be getting a bonus of about $100 million. AIG, who was rescued to the tune of $180 billion in 2008, is paying out bonuses totalling $100 million for employess of its financial products division -- the unit at the heart of the derivatives scam that brought about the collapse.

Why do things like this happen? The leadership of a public company like Sun or Oracle, the kind that anyone can own a share in by buying public stock, is bound by what is known as the "fiduciary duty" -- their decisions must be made with the goal of maximizing company profit, to be paid out to its owners in the form of dividends to the shareholders. Shareholders supervise the executives' fulfillment of this duty through a board of directors, who are elected by the shareholders and usually represent the interests with the largest shares. Notice that the well-being of employees, or of the public at large in the economy in which a company participates, are not a part of this equation. The idea of the market economy is that everyone benefits, at least indirectly, when companies act according to the incentives defined by the fiduciary duty. A company seeking to maximize profit will be inclined to give better compensation to employees who create more value, and to work efficiently to deliver products and services with value that matches the price that customers are willing to pay, thus benefitting the economy at large. But in recent decades, it's been increasingly the case that the shareholders whose profits executives seek to maximize are, to a large extent, themselves. Direct payments in the form of salary and bonuses are now often the smallest part of executive compensation; the largest part of the package is made of stock and options awards. Sun's second-largest shareholder was Scott McNealy; Jonathan Schwartz and CFO Michael Lehmann were among the top six. Scottie was the chairman of Sun's board of directors throughout nearly all of the company's lifetime. If executives who are also major shareholders work out an acquisition deal in which the buyer pays a price per share that is 42% higher than its current market price, then they've certainly done their job of maximizing shareholder profits, and at the same time have scored a juicy windfall for themselves.

Adherents of the Reaganist dogma in the US, and others who profess their "love" for a "capitalist" system that distributes so much wealth in such a dubious way, are often the same people who like to sneer at the "socialism" in Western Europe -- in spite of the consistently high standards that European nations obtain in health care, education, and various other measures of public well-being. I think that the circumstances of my own departure as an employee of Sun in Germany is yet another small real-world example that demonstrates how foolhardy it is to dogmatically reject the regulation of business, specifically with respect to labor laws. Middle-class workers like myself are better off overall if we have a little bit of power to negotiate with management, the kind of power that only a government and its laws can provide.

For the final round of RIFs last year, the big one, Sun Germany made an offer to "volunteers" -- employees who agree to leave the company under beneficial terms. It included severance pay that, according to a lawyer I consulted who specializes in employment cases, was generous on German standards: the amount was based on years of service with the company and scaled to increase with the age of employees over 40; a "turbo-bonus" for volunteers equivalent to three months' salary; and additional benefits for each of the employee's dependents. Volunteers would stop working for Sun as of the new year, but could remain on payroll for up to four months, after which they could enroll in outsourcing or outplacement services with subsidies from Sun.

The decision about whether or not to volunteer had to be made quickly, a risky proposition because it would hardly be possible to have a new job secured before the deadline passed. My manager informed me that I wasn't on the RIF list, but I decided to go for it. For me, the deal worked out to about a year's salary -- with the four-month free period and the total severance package, I would be able to support my family for the entire year 2010, which I reckoned would be enough time to find a new job, and I'd come out ahead if I found one sooner. As it turned out, I found a new job right away; so now I'm taking advantage of the free time availed by the waiting period (formally I'm still an employee of Sun Germany), and when the time has elapsed and the severance pay arrives, I'll be able to pay off all of my outstanding debts, so that in the end I'll not only be debt-free, but in the black such as I've never been before.

Sun Germany made a good offer to volunteers, and the reasons for that have a lot to do with German labor laws and standards. A major difference between the economies of the US and Germany is that unions in Germany are now much more powerful than their counterparts in the US, where their influence has declined enormously in recent decades. White-collar industries are generally not unionized, but employees at many companies in all branches of the economy are represented by a works council (Betriebsrat), which consist of employees elected by the rank-and-file and are legally empowered to negotiate with management on their behalf. In particular, the conditions of a layoff generally cannot be dictated unilaterally by management; they have to be negotiated with the council. Legal disputes between a company and its council or individual employess are settled, if necessary, by dedicated labor courts (Arbeitsgericht).

I wasn't privy to the negotiations between Sun and its council -- most of what I understand was explained at water-cooler conversations -- and I'm not sure what I could disclose if I were, so let's put this in hypothetical terms. Suppose that the management of a Germany company decides that it wants to lay off N employees, where the number N could be described as "considerable". Suppose also that this is a fully-owned subsidiary of a multinational American corporation, and the number N has been handed down by the American parent company. The German management may be under orders to execute the layoff, but in Germany they can't just do that; layoffs due to poor economic conditions have to be justified by extent of losses incurred by the German company, not by a number that the courts would regard as arbitrary. An employee could dispute the layoff in labor court, where judges customarily make comparisons to other companies in the same industry, examining how many people are typically laid off in response how high the losses are. The number N, relative to the financial losses experienced by the German company in question, would have been far too out of proportion; the laid-off employees would have very good chances to prevail in court. If the German company goes ahead with the simple plan to get rid of N employees, they'd have about N labor court cases on their hands, with poor chances to win any of them.

So far that sounds pretty good from the employees' perspective; most importantly, it's what gives a works council significant negotiating leverage with management. The problem is that a labor court challenge in Germany rarely results in an employee saving the job -- usually, a successful challenge means that the employee gets a better settlement, meaning more money from the employer, but will have to find a new job anyway. In light of that, it's in the interest of both the management and the works council of our hypothetical German company to work out a deal by which laid-off employees get a good severance package and other tools to weather the unemployment. Under those conditions, the layoff is much more likely to prevail in labor court, so that management can get the reductions it wants, and the council has at least mitigated the harm to the departing employees.

This arrangement does not address the issue of extravagant executive compensation -- about as controversial in German politics as it is in the US -- but it goes a long way towards softening the impact of unemployment. And it all results from laws and courts placing restraints on how and why a company can fire people. I don't know why anyone might dismiss that as "socialism", but knowning the present state of discourse in the US, I don't doubt that many people would, outraged at the idea that the government or anyone else can have anything to say about who gets fired. But if so, that attitude is just dogma. It is far more important to find ways to lessen the real-world human impact of economic crisis than to slavishly follow the imperatives of an ideology, or a love affair, that in so many ways fails to deliver on its promises of a better world for all of us.

So what will happen to the newly-expanded Oracle? Only time will tell, and predictions in the IT industry are notoriously risky, but the new software-hardware giant is widely regarded as a formidable force to be reckoned with. I wish them all the success in the world -- as an ex-Sunnie, I can't help but relish the idea of seeing them give IBM a good run. Whatever happens, however, one thing seems to be certain -- the excesses of executive compensation appear to be no better at Oracle than anywhere else.

Larry Ellison, praised by Scottie as "one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met", was estimated in 2005 as having a net worth of $18.4 billion, making him the ninth-richest man in the world (in 2000 he was the richest man in the world for a while). He received a total compensation of over $85 million in 2008, and $56.8 million in fiscal 2009, and is known to have a taste for fast yachts and exotic cars, among other luxuries. Oracle has been a successful company for many years, doing relatively well during the current hard times, so presumably somebody thinks that the money for Ellison is well-spent; after all, it was Oracle that bought Sun, not the other way around. But after all that's happened, it ought to be clear by now that the Master of the Universe concept is baloney. And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine.

(Also at the Daily Kos. And there's a good discussion of this up on Slashdot.)

BITTE KAUFT MIR DAS AB!

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:29:21 +0100

Heute Werbung. In eigener Sache.

Kuckt es euch an und kauft es mir ab, bitte:

http://www.quoka.de/searchresult.cfm?CUSTOMERDISP=15586174

Passend zu meinem Lieblingssatz aus Fight Club:
Je mehr du besitzt, um so mehr nimmt es Besitz von dir.

Und ebenfalls passend zum Film:
Die meisten M�bel sind von Ikea!

Danke f�r diese guten Taten,

Tyler aka Sureshot

The Zero Years

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:03:26 +0100

There seems to be a growing consensus around the Internet that the decade that is coming to a close today was one of the worst in memory, even the "worst decade ever", on a variety of measures, from politics to economics. I can hardly disagree with that, and from a personal perspective, I can add that for me it was quite easily the worst decade of my life. I remember that when we entered 2000, many people were wondering what the new decade should be called -- it's easy enough to talk about the Nineties and the Eighties, but what do we call the 00's? This was when we started hearing expressions like the Aughts and the Naughts and the "Naughty Aughties". But it was already clear to me a few years ago that these were the Zero Years -- just one great big Zero, right from the start. I don't want to go into details, but let's just say that, starting just in time in 2000, this decade took me on a journey to some of the worst places I've ever been, and never want to go to again, my own personal Zero.

If this all sounds a little too depressing for your taste, go on over the jump, because things are looking up.It's just a funny coincidence, but the end of the Zeroes seems to be going hand in hand with the end of my own Zero Years. I got the worst part of it behind me, and changes are coming up in the new year that are likely to put me on a much better path into the future. After a long streak of misfortune that seemed like it would never end, a lucky streak has apparently begun. There will be ups and downs of course, but I have good reason to be confident that I won't fall back into that less-than-zero state I was in not long ago, probably not in the next ten years, hopefully not ever again.

The New Year's celebration always seems so delightfully silly, since we make a big party out of an event that's really altogether arbitrary. The fact that we change the years on our calendars now rather than, say, four and a half months later is a decision made by pure fiat, which we could just as arbitrarily change if we really wanted to. But there's no reason to do that, so we keep on changing the years on this date, and celebrate it by getting drunk and blowing stuff up. A year is a long time, and a decade, century or millennium are especially so, so that the sense of monumental change is powerful and yet wholly illusory. We know that, but we feel it anyway. And it makes any other changes that just happen to coincide with the time transition seem highly significant (even though they could have happened any other time).

But what the hell? If an illusion helps to make something happen, if it gives me a psychological boost where I need one, I'll take it. My Zero Years are over, and good riddance, I'm ready for a new era to begin.

ICH BIN FREI

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 23:05:34 +0100

ICH BIN FREI
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ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI
ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI
ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI
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ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI ICH BIN FREI
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ICH BIN FREI

FLIEG, SCHMETTERLING, LOS JETZT
DU BIST FREI