Friday, April 19, 2013
The Oligopoly Problem
Although T-Mobile’s decision is welcome news for consumers, it doesn’t change the fact that the old extortions remained in place for about fifteen years, and that they remain in place for the vast majority of Americans still trapped in contracts with Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. And it sheds light on a long-standing problem with how we think about and treat anticompetitive practices in the United States. Our current approach, focussed near-exclusively on monopoly, fails to address the serious problems posed by highly concentrated industries.
If a monopolist did what the wireless carriers did as a group, neither the public nor government would stand for it. For our scrutiny and regulation of monopolists is well established—just ask Microsoft or the old AT&T. But when three or four firms pursue identical practices, we say that the market is “competitive” and everything is fine. To state the obvious, when companies act in parallel, the consumer is in the same position as if he were dealing with just one big firm. There is, in short, a major blind spot in our nation’s oversight of private power, one that affects both consumers and competition.
This blind spot is of particular significance during an age when oligopolies, not monopolies, rule. Consider Barry Lynn’s 2011 book, “Cornered,” which carefully detailed the rising concentration and consolidation of nearly every American industry since the nineteen-eighties. He found that dominance by two or three firms “is not the exception in the United States, but increasingly the rule.” Consumers, easily misled by product labelling, often don’t even notice that products like sunglasses, pet food, or numerous others come from just a few giants. For example, while drugstores seem to offer unlimited choices in toothpaste, just two firms, Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, control more than eighty per cent of the market (including seemingly independent brands like Tom’s of Maine).
The press confuses oligopoly and monopoly with some regularity. The Atlantic ran a recent infographic titled “The Return of the Monopoly,” describing rising concentration in airlines, grocery sales, music, and other industries. With the exception of Intel in computer chips, none of the industries described, however, was actually a monopoly—all were oligopolies. So while The Atlantic is right about what’s happening, it sounds the wrong alarm. We know how to fight monopolies, but few seem riled at “The Return of the Oligopoly.”
Things were not always thus. Back in the mid-century, the Justice Department went after oligopolistic cartels in the tobacco industry and Hollywood with the same vigor it chased Standard Oil, the quintessential monopoly trust. In the late nineteen-seventies, another high point of enforcement, oligopolies were investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, and during that era Richard Posner, then a professor at Stanford Law School, went as far as to argue that when firms maintain the same prices, even without a smoke-filled-room agreement, they ought to be considered members of a price-fixing conspiracy. (By this logic, the Delta and US Airways shuttles between New York and Washington, D.C., would probably be price-fixers, since their prices do vary by how far in advance you buy, but are always identical.)
Like many things from the nineteen-seventies, the treatment of oligopoly was subject to an enormous backlash in the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties. (Posner actually helped lead the backlash.) And with some justification: some of the cases were quite bad, like a long-forgotten federal war on the breakfast-cereal industry. Firms shouldn’t be penalized for practices that are parallel but not actually harmful, nor for mere “parallel pricing.” An interpretation of law that makes nearly every gas-station owner into a felon is questionable.
But just as the nineteen-seventies went too far, the reaction to the nineteen-seventies has also gone too far. As part of a general retreat from prosecution of all but the most extreme antitrust violations, the United States has nowadays nearly abandoned scrutiny of oligopoly behavior, leaving consumers undefended. That’s a problem, because oligopolies do an awful lot that’s troubling.
by Tim Wu, New Yorker | Read more:
Illustration by Marcos Chin
Holding Back the Ocean
[ed. 'Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.' ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald.]
Soon after Hurricane Sandy hit last fall, Joshua Harris, a billionaire hedge fund founder and an owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, began to fear that his $25 million home on the water here might fall victim to the next major storm. So he installed a costly defense against incoming waves: a shield of large metal plates on the beach, camouflaged by sand.
His neighbor, Mark Rachesky, another billionaire hedge fund founder, put up similar fortifications between his home and the surf. Chris Shumway, who closed his $8 billion hedge fund two years ago, trucked in boulders the size of Volkswagens.
Across a section of this wealthy town, some residents, accustomed to having their way in the business world, are now trying to hold back the ocean.
But the flurry of construction on beachfront residences since the hurricane is touching off bitter disputes over the environment, real estate and class.
Some local officials said they were worried that the owners were engaging in an arms race with nature, installing higher and higher barricades that could rapidly hasten erosion — essentially sacrificing public beaches to save private homes.
Last week, down the beach from Mr. Shumway’s home, another project was under way. Bulldozers and backhoes were carting stones and piling sand, assembling what appeared to be ramparts. It was to protect the home owned by Vince Camuto, one of the founders of the Nine West fashion brand.
These fortifications have been built along a stretch of coast just over 2,000 feet long in one of the most exclusive sections of Southampton, off Gin Lane. The houses they protect cost as much as $60 million and stand, flanked by swimming pools and tennis courts, on hedge-lined lots of three to five acres. (...)
Several of the protective barriers of boulders and bulkheads are now covered in mountains of sand so high that they obscure much of the houses when viewed from the beach. (...)
“I don’t think it’s reasonable to point to every sea wall that exists and say it’s a problem,” said Aram Terchunian, a coastal geologist who has advised some of the Southampton homeowners on their beachfront defenses.
“You need all the tools in the toolbox in order to effectively deal with these erosion problems,” Mr. Terchunian said. “And to ban them for philosophical and political purposes is shortsighted and certainly isn’t scientific.”
Others disagreed.
Robert Young, a coastal geologist hired by the Southampton trustees to evaluate these and other projects, said the beaches on Long Island were formed from sand carried from the eastern tip along westward currents. Sea walls seal off sand and sediment, preventing this drift, starving beaches farther west.
Mr. Young added that erosion became more pronounced at the edges of sea walls because water bends as it rushes off the wall face, carving out the sand on the sides.
“If you build a structure like that, the beach is going to disappear,” he said. “The sea wall is not there to protect the beach. It is there to protect the property behind the beach.”
Soon after Hurricane Sandy hit last fall, Joshua Harris, a billionaire hedge fund founder and an owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, began to fear that his $25 million home on the water here might fall victim to the next major storm. So he installed a costly defense against incoming waves: a shield of large metal plates on the beach, camouflaged by sand.His neighbor, Mark Rachesky, another billionaire hedge fund founder, put up similar fortifications between his home and the surf. Chris Shumway, who closed his $8 billion hedge fund two years ago, trucked in boulders the size of Volkswagens.
Across a section of this wealthy town, some residents, accustomed to having their way in the business world, are now trying to hold back the ocean.
But the flurry of construction on beachfront residences since the hurricane is touching off bitter disputes over the environment, real estate and class.
Some local officials said they were worried that the owners were engaging in an arms race with nature, installing higher and higher barricades that could rapidly hasten erosion — essentially sacrificing public beaches to save private homes.
Last week, down the beach from Mr. Shumway’s home, another project was under way. Bulldozers and backhoes were carting stones and piling sand, assembling what appeared to be ramparts. It was to protect the home owned by Vince Camuto, one of the founders of the Nine West fashion brand.
These fortifications have been built along a stretch of coast just over 2,000 feet long in one of the most exclusive sections of Southampton, off Gin Lane. The houses they protect cost as much as $60 million and stand, flanked by swimming pools and tennis courts, on hedge-lined lots of three to five acres. (...)
Several of the protective barriers of boulders and bulkheads are now covered in mountains of sand so high that they obscure much of the houses when viewed from the beach. (...)
“I don’t think it’s reasonable to point to every sea wall that exists and say it’s a problem,” said Aram Terchunian, a coastal geologist who has advised some of the Southampton homeowners on their beachfront defenses.
“You need all the tools in the toolbox in order to effectively deal with these erosion problems,” Mr. Terchunian said. “And to ban them for philosophical and political purposes is shortsighted and certainly isn’t scientific.”
Others disagreed.
Robert Young, a coastal geologist hired by the Southampton trustees to evaluate these and other projects, said the beaches on Long Island were formed from sand carried from the eastern tip along westward currents. Sea walls seal off sand and sediment, preventing this drift, starving beaches farther west.
Mr. Young added that erosion became more pronounced at the edges of sea walls because water bends as it rushes off the wall face, carving out the sand on the sides.
“If you build a structure like that, the beach is going to disappear,” he said. “The sea wall is not there to protect the beach. It is there to protect the property behind the beach.”
by Michael Schwirtz, NY Times | Read more:
Richard Perry/The New York Times
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John James Audubon - Great Blue Heron (1835)
Worth noting, not only did Audubon paint this exquisite watercolour, but he was also the discoverer of the subspecies illustrated here (Ardea herodias occidentalis) in the same year as this painting.
via:
So You Want to Be a #Longreads Superstar
Those of us who read Bissinger’s GQ piece were giving the same go-ahead. It’s as if Bissinger invited readers to watch him try on his 41 pairs of leather pants one by one and tell him what a bad, bad boy he was for buying them. Many on the Internet who read popular long essays (often hashtagged #longform) were happy enough to join in. “My Gucci Addiction” spawned a whole ecosystem of response pieces that variously suggest he is mentally ill, trolling all of America, or a role model and spokesman for male shopaholics everywhere. He may be one or all three, but his essay is better explained as a large-scale work of exhibitionism. Instead of sneakers, he’s using expensive apparel, but it’s the same principle. (...)
Some people want celebrity for the money, some want it for the affirmation, but some just want to be watched. It’s clear from this essay that he — already part of a very small tier of commercially successful non-fiction writers who aren’t obvious frauds — doesn’t just want to be critically acclaimed or best-selling. He wants to be Us Weekly famous. You know, real famous. “My Gucci Addiction” obviously draws inspiration from the MTV show Cribs, which always includes a tour of the closet and the bedroom. Like a rock star or Hollywood leading man, Bissinger inventories his wardrobe: “I own eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves.” (...)
Exhibitionists have found ways to use and even structure the development of online platforms like Tumblr, Vine, and Snapchat, but the assumption has been that their domain would stay limited to visual media. But when you hook anything up the Internet — including non-fiction — you change its nature in a way that makes it particularly attractive to show-offs of all kinds. The #longreads hashtag was supposed to be about the viability of the proud and enduring essay on the web, not the name for a new form of writing, yet “My Gucci Addiction” is a #longread through and through: The piece contains a call for its audience, a call for the reaction pieces and the controversy and the gossip. Bissinger isn’t navel-gazing; he’s talking about himself, but looking right at us.
Even though we mostly discuss online virality of pictures of cats and funny Youtube videos, the huge potential audience for long-form writing has profoundly altered the essayist’s incentive structure. For the first time, a single piece of writing can find an audience far larger than the readership of the publication in which it appears. As longform nonfiction has found a home on the Internet, an echo-chamber effect has developed by which a piece that breaks through is guaranteed a few signal boosts from aggregators like Longreads and Byliner, both of which picked up “My Gucci Addiction” within the day. If nothing else, Bissinger’s performance marks the maturity of the #longreads form. Since no one has yet taken a hard look at Mike Daisey’s sex life, Buzz heads into rehab as the first #longreads rockstar. Just the way he wanted it.
by Malcolm Harris, TNI | Read more:
Image: Hongkou Flashers Liu Dao, 2010
Thursday, April 18, 2013
House Passes Cispa Cybersecurity Bill
[ed. Congress: the biggest terrorist threat to America today. Kill gun control but facilitate warrantless eavesdropping and legal immunity for corporations disclosing private personal information. Pretty handy work for one week's effort. See also: Oppose Cispa if you value any privacy in our digital world.]
The House of Representatives passed a controversial cybersecurity bill on Thursday in the face of warnings that it undermined privacy and a threat from White House advisers warning they would recommend President Barack Obama veto the legislation.The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa) passed by a 288-127 vote, receiving support from 92 Democrats. It will move to the Senate and then to the president's desk.
The bill allows private businesses to share customers' personal information with any government entity, including the National Security Agency.
Reintroduced in February after failing to pass Congress last year, the bill would afford legal protection to the government and businesses to share data with each other on cyber threats.
Its co-author, Mike Rogers, the intelligence committee chairman and a Republican from Michigan, argues that cyberattacks and espionage, particularly from China, where a number of high profile attacks have originated recently, are a number one threat to US economic security.
"We have a constitutional obligation to defend this nation," said Rogers, on the House floor. "This is the answer to empower cyber information sharing to protect this nation, to allow those companies to protect themselves and move on to economic prosperity. If you want to take a shot across China's bow, this is the answer."
Earlier this week, Rogers dismissed opponents of the bill as teenagers in their basements. (...)
Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority leader, expressed the same concerns shared by the White House and civil liberty groups that the bill had failed to strike a "crucial balance between security and liberty".
"Im disappointed that we did not address some of the concerns mentioned by the White House about personal information," Pelosi said. "Unfortunately, it offers no policies and did not allow any amendments or real solution that upholds Americans' right to privacy."
Last year, global protests by a coalition of internet activists and web companies, including Google and Wikipedia and Twitter, scuppered a similar bill, the Hollywood-backed Stop Online Piracy Act. At the time they warned that future attempts to push through legislation that threatened digital freedoms would be met with a similar response.
Holmes Wilson, co-founder of online advocacy group Fight For the Future, said he and other critics would continue to lobby against Cispa. "It would have been so easy to fix this bill and require sites to strip out personal information before passing them to the government." he said.
He said amendments had been made in closed sessions and it was "not out of the question" that privacy protections had been left out intentionally at the behest of the intelligence agencies.
House intelligence committee leaders addressed some privacy concerns by endorsing an amendment that gave the job of clearing house for the exchange data to the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, rather than a military agency.
The bill has attracted support from tech giants including IBM who are keen for liability protection from consumers whose information they have shared, said Wilson. "Right now if the government wants users' information, the company can say no because it opens them up to being sued," he said. "If Cispa passes, there will be no legal restraint."
by Karen McVeigh and Dominic Rushe, The Guardian | Read more:
Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
Building a Better Bitcoin
How much is a bitcoin worth?
Well, it's worth whatever somebody will pay for a unit of the online currency, which as I write this is $209, up from $142 last Friday, $44 a month ago, and $4.93 a year ago. This huge run-up — the latest spike began with EU's botched rescue of Cyprus's banks — has led to much talk of a bitcoin bubble.
The word "bubble" has been greatly overused in recent years. My understanding is that you're in a bubble when the price of an asset becomes completely detached from its intrinsic value. It's a bubble when the price you pay for share of stock cannot conceivably be recouped from the earnings of the company (this was Cisco in 2000) or the price you pay for house cannot conceivably be recouped from rental earnings (this was Phoenix in 2005). The only way you can avoid losing money on your investment is for a greater fool to come along — in the case of real estate, a greater fool backed by an even-greater-fool lender — and take the asset off your hands.
Bitcoins have no intrinsic value. They lay claim to no stream of future earnings. A price of $198 per bitcoin is surely not justified by the fundamentals. But neither is a price of 10 cents. There are no fundamentals.
So as an asset, Bitcoin (I'm trying to follow Maria Bustillos' rule of capitalizing the system but lowercasing the coins) is clearly in a bubble, and always has been. But maybe asset pricing is the wrong lens to be looking through here. A dollar bill lays claim to no stream of future earnings, yet nobody says there's a "dollar bubble" because somebody's willing to give you a candy bar for one. This even though a dollar is almost certain to buy you less in a few years than it does now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 2013 dollar has one-tenth the purchasing power of the 1950 version.
By contrast, bitcoins have been skyrocketing in value. This sounds like a good thing, but for a currency it's really not. An economy where bitcoins were the means of exchange would have experienced 98% deflation over the past year. No one would be able to repay any loans, or really do business at all. What we want out of a currency is not price appreciation but stability. Monetary economists differ on whether the optimal stability is inflation of 0% or in the low single digits. Nobody thinks 98% deflation is healthy, and all but a small minority seem to think any deflation at all is a bad thing.
So ... bitcoins are without intrinsic value as assets, yet they have risen too fast in value to be much use as a currency. Kind of makes your head hurt, doesn't it? But it also sounds a bit like a familiar commodity, gold, that's also been on a roll, with its dollar price quintupling over the past decade. Gold has, over time, not been the greatest of assets to invest in. It's not the greatest of currencies, either: Back when the gold standard was widely adhered to, nations struggled regularly with deflation. There's persuasive evidence that the primary cause of the Great Depression was a refusal to unlink currencies from gold until too late. Still, gold has held onto its purchasing power over time. It remains something that people turn to in times of financial uncertainty such as now. And while there are skeptics these days who talk of a gold "bubble," they don't really mean it. That is, they may expect the price of gold to decline from the current $1,575 an ounce, but they don't expect it to suddenly lose most of its value, as assets tend to do when real bubbles burst.
There are some key differences between gold and bitcoins: Gold is a shiny metal that can be made into jewelry, electronic components, and dental fillings — meaning it has some intrinsic value, albeit nowhere near $1,575 a troy ounce. Bitcoins are made of otherwise valueless digits. And while mankind has treated gold as a store of value for millennia, bitcoins were first unleashed upon the world in January 2009, by a mysterious and pseudonymous cryptographer (or cryptographers).
But there are important similarities. Both bitcoins and gold are pretty much impossible to counterfeit. (That is, whatever fakes you might be able to produce won't get past an expert.) Also, bitcoins are "mined" — by computers that have to solve a tough mathematical problem in order to free a block of 25 coins. This isn't exactly the same as gold mining, but in one crucial aspect it's the same. Unlike dollars, which can be created at will by the Federal Reserve, the supply of both bitcoins and gold is determined by forces outside the control of elected or appointed government officials. Given the long history of governments debasing their currencies to the point of worthlessness, the limited-supply, non-governmental nature of gold and of bitcoins has its attractions.
Well, it's worth whatever somebody will pay for a unit of the online currency, which as I write this is $209, up from $142 last Friday, $44 a month ago, and $4.93 a year ago. This huge run-up — the latest spike began with EU's botched rescue of Cyprus's banks — has led to much talk of a bitcoin bubble.
The word "bubble" has been greatly overused in recent years. My understanding is that you're in a bubble when the price of an asset becomes completely detached from its intrinsic value. It's a bubble when the price you pay for share of stock cannot conceivably be recouped from the earnings of the company (this was Cisco in 2000) or the price you pay for house cannot conceivably be recouped from rental earnings (this was Phoenix in 2005). The only way you can avoid losing money on your investment is for a greater fool to come along — in the case of real estate, a greater fool backed by an even-greater-fool lender — and take the asset off your hands.
Bitcoins have no intrinsic value. They lay claim to no stream of future earnings. A price of $198 per bitcoin is surely not justified by the fundamentals. But neither is a price of 10 cents. There are no fundamentals.So as an asset, Bitcoin (I'm trying to follow Maria Bustillos' rule of capitalizing the system but lowercasing the coins) is clearly in a bubble, and always has been. But maybe asset pricing is the wrong lens to be looking through here. A dollar bill lays claim to no stream of future earnings, yet nobody says there's a "dollar bubble" because somebody's willing to give you a candy bar for one. This even though a dollar is almost certain to buy you less in a few years than it does now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 2013 dollar has one-tenth the purchasing power of the 1950 version.
By contrast, bitcoins have been skyrocketing in value. This sounds like a good thing, but for a currency it's really not. An economy where bitcoins were the means of exchange would have experienced 98% deflation over the past year. No one would be able to repay any loans, or really do business at all. What we want out of a currency is not price appreciation but stability. Monetary economists differ on whether the optimal stability is inflation of 0% or in the low single digits. Nobody thinks 98% deflation is healthy, and all but a small minority seem to think any deflation at all is a bad thing.
So ... bitcoins are without intrinsic value as assets, yet they have risen too fast in value to be much use as a currency. Kind of makes your head hurt, doesn't it? But it also sounds a bit like a familiar commodity, gold, that's also been on a roll, with its dollar price quintupling over the past decade. Gold has, over time, not been the greatest of assets to invest in. It's not the greatest of currencies, either: Back when the gold standard was widely adhered to, nations struggled regularly with deflation. There's persuasive evidence that the primary cause of the Great Depression was a refusal to unlink currencies from gold until too late. Still, gold has held onto its purchasing power over time. It remains something that people turn to in times of financial uncertainty such as now. And while there are skeptics these days who talk of a gold "bubble," they don't really mean it. That is, they may expect the price of gold to decline from the current $1,575 an ounce, but they don't expect it to suddenly lose most of its value, as assets tend to do when real bubbles burst.
There are some key differences between gold and bitcoins: Gold is a shiny metal that can be made into jewelry, electronic components, and dental fillings — meaning it has some intrinsic value, albeit nowhere near $1,575 a troy ounce. Bitcoins are made of otherwise valueless digits. And while mankind has treated gold as a store of value for millennia, bitcoins were first unleashed upon the world in January 2009, by a mysterious and pseudonymous cryptographer (or cryptographers).
But there are important similarities. Both bitcoins and gold are pretty much impossible to counterfeit. (That is, whatever fakes you might be able to produce won't get past an expert.) Also, bitcoins are "mined" — by computers that have to solve a tough mathematical problem in order to free a block of 25 coins. This isn't exactly the same as gold mining, but in one crucial aspect it's the same. Unlike dollars, which can be created at will by the Federal Reserve, the supply of both bitcoins and gold is determined by forces outside the control of elected or appointed government officials. Given the long history of governments debasing their currencies to the point of worthlessness, the limited-supply, non-governmental nature of gold and of bitcoins has its attractions.
by Justin Fox, HBR | Read more:
Image via: Motherboard
Cyborg Dreams
Except, of course, so far we remain thorougly embodied. Flesh and blood. There is just us, slumped in our chairs, at our desks, inside our cars, stroking our smartphones and tablets. Peel back the layers of illusion, and what remains is not a brain in a jar — however much we might fear or hunger for this — but a brain within a body, as remorselessly obedient to that body’s urges and limitations as any paleolithic hunter-gatherer.
It’s a point that has been emphasised by much recent research into thought and behaviour. To quote from Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, ‘cognition is embodied; you think with your body, not only with your brain’. Yet when it comes to culture's cutting edge, there remains an overwhelming tendency to treat embodiment not as a central condition of being human that our tools ought to serve, but rather as an inconvenience to be eliminated.
One of my favourite accounts of our genius for unreality is a passage from the David Foster Wallace essay ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction’ (1990), in which he describes, with escalating incredulity, the layers of illusion involved in watching television.
First comes the artifice of performance. ‘Illusion is that we’re voyeurs here at all,’ he writes, ‘the “voyees” behind the screen’s glass are only pretending ignorance. They know perfectly well we’re out there.’ Then there’s the capturing of these performances, ‘the second layer of glass, the lenses and monitors via which technicians and arrangers apply ingenuity to hurl the visible images at us’. And then there are the nestled layers of artificiality involved in scripting, devising and selling the scenarios to be filmed, which aren’t ‘people in real situations that do or even could go on without consciousness of Audience’.
After this comes the actual screen that we’re looking at: not what it appears to show, but its physical reality in ‘analog waves and ionised streams and rear-screen chemical reactions throwing off phosphenes in grids of dots not much more lifelike than Seurat’s own impressionist “statements” on perceptual illusion’.
But even this is only the warm-up. Because — ‘Good lord’ he exclaims in climax — ‘the dots are coming out of our furniture, all we’re really spying on is our furniture; and our very own chairs and lamps and bookspines sit visible but unseen at our gaze’s frame...’
There’s a certain awe at our capacity for self-deception, here — if ‘deception’ is the right word for the chosen, crafted unrealities in play. But Foster Wallace’s ‘good lord’ is also a cry of awakening into uncomfortable truth. (...)
At the start of the 1990s, screens — whether televisions or computers, deployed for work or leisure — were bulky, static objects. For those on the move and lucky enough to employ a weight-lifting personal assistant, a Macintosh ‘portable’ cost $6,500 and weighed 7.2 kilos (close to 16 lbs). For everyone else, computing was a crude, solitary domain, inaccessible to anyone other than aficionados.
Today, just two decades on from Foster Wallace’s ‘E Unibus Pluram’, we inhabit an age of extraordinary intimacy with screen-based technologies. As well as our home and office computers, and the 40-inch-plus glories of our living room screens, few of us are now without the tactile, constant presence of at least one smart device in our pocket or bag.
These are tools that can feel more like extensions of ourselves than separate devices: the first thing we touch when we wake up in the morning, the last thing we touch before going to bed at night. Yet what they offer is a curious kind of intimacy — and the ‘us’ to which all this is addressed doesn’t often look or feel much like a living, breathing human being.
by Tom Chatfield, Aeon | Read more:
Photo by Allen Donikowski/Flickr/Getty
Japanese Roots
Unearthing the origins of the Japanese is a much harder task than you might guess. Among world powers today, the Japanese are the most distinctive in their culture and environment. The origins of their language are one of the most disputed questions of linguistics. These questions are central to the self-image of the Japanese and to how they are viewed by other peoples. Japan’s rising dominance and touchy relations with its neighbors make it more important than ever to strip away myths and find answers.
The search for answers is difficult because the evidence is so conflicting. On the one hand, the Japanese people are biologically undistinctive, being very similar in appearance and genes to other East Asians, especially to Koreans. As the Japanese like to stress, they are culturally and biologically rather homogeneous, with the exception of a distinctive people called the Ainu on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. Taken together, these facts seem to suggest that the Japanese reached Japan only recently from the Asian mainland, too recently to have evolved differences from their mainland cousins, and displaced the Ainu, who represent the original inhabitants. But if that were true, you might expect the Japanese language to show close affinities to some mainland language, just as English is obviously closely related to other Germanic languages (because Anglo-Saxons from the continent conquered England as recently as the sixth century a.d.). How can we resolve this contradiction between Japan’s presumably ancient language and the evidence for recent origins?
Archeologists have proposed four conflicting theories. Most popular in Japan is the view that the Japanese gradually evolved from ancient Ice Age people who occupied Japan long before 20,000 b.c. Also widespread in Japan is a theory that the Japanese descended from horse-riding Asian nomads who passed through Korea to conquer Japan in the fourth century, but who were themselves—emphatically—not Koreans. A theory favored by many Western archeologists and Koreans, and unpopular in some circles in Japan, is that the Japanese are descendants of immigrants from Korea who arrived with rice-paddy agriculture around 400 b.c. Finally, the fourth theory holds that the peoples named in the other three theories could have mixed to form the modern Japanese.
When similar questions of origins arise about other peoples, they can be discussed dispassionately. That is not so for the Japanese. Until 1946, Japanese schools taught a myth of history based on the earliest recorded Japanese chronicles, which were written in the eighth century. They describe how the sun goddess Amaterasu, born from the left eye of the creator god Izanagi, sent her grandson Ninigi to Earth on the Japanese island of Kyushu to wed an earthly deity. Ninigi’s great-grandson Jimmu, aided by a dazzling sacred bird that rendered his enemies helpless, became the first emperor of Japan in 660 b.c. To fill the gap between 660 b.c. and the earliest historically documented Japanese monarchs, the chronicles invented 13 other equally fictitious emperors. Before the end of World War II, when Emperor Hirohito finally announced that he was not of divine descent, Japanese archeologists and historians had to make their interpretations conform to this chronicle account. Unlike American archeologists, who acknowledge that ancient sites in the United States were left by peoples (Native Americans) unrelated to most modern Americans, Japanese archeologists believe all archeological deposits in Japan, no matter how old, were left by ancestors of the modern Japanese. Hence archeology in Japan is supported by astronomical budgets, employs up to 50,000 field-workers each year, and draws public attention to a degree inconceivable anywhere else in the world.
Why do they care so much? Unlike most other non-European countries, Japan preserved its independence and culture while emerging from isolation to create an industrialized society in the late nineteenth century. It was a remarkable achievement. Now the Japanese people are understandably concerned about maintaining their traditions in the face of massive Western cultural influences. They want to believe that their distinctive language and culture required uniquely complex developmental processes. To acknowledge a relationship of the Japanese language to any other language seems to constitute a surrender of cultural identity.
What makes it especially difficult to discuss Japanese archeology dispassionately is that Japanese interpretations of the past affect present behavior. Who among East Asian peoples brought culture to whom? Who has historical claims to whose land? These are not just academic questions. For instance, there is much archeological evidence that people and material objects passed between Japan and Korea in the period a.d. 300 to 700. Japanese interpret this to mean that Japan conquered Korea and brought Korean slaves and artisans to Japan; Koreans believe instead that Korea conquered Japan and that the founders of the Japanese imperial family were Korean.
Thus, when Japan sent troops to Korea and annexed it in 1910, Japanese military leaders celebrated the annexation as the restoration of the legitimate arrangement of antiquity. For the next 35 years, Japanese occupation forces tried to eradicate Korean culture and to replace the Korean language with Japanese in schools. The effort was a consequence of a centuries-old attitude of disdain. Nose tombs in Japan still contain 20,000 noses severed from Koreans and brought home as trophies of a sixteenth-century Japanese invasion. Not surprisingly, many Koreans loathe the Japanese, and their loathing is returned with contempt.
What really was the legitimate arrangement of antiquity? Today, Japan and Korea are both economic powerhouses, facing each other across the Korea Strait and viewing each other through colored lenses of false myths and past atrocities. It bodes ill for the future of East Asia if these two great peoples cannot find common ground. To do so, they will need a correct understanding of who the Japanese people really are.
The search for answers is difficult because the evidence is so conflicting. On the one hand, the Japanese people are biologically undistinctive, being very similar in appearance and genes to other East Asians, especially to Koreans. As the Japanese like to stress, they are culturally and biologically rather homogeneous, with the exception of a distinctive people called the Ainu on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. Taken together, these facts seem to suggest that the Japanese reached Japan only recently from the Asian mainland, too recently to have evolved differences from their mainland cousins, and displaced the Ainu, who represent the original inhabitants. But if that were true, you might expect the Japanese language to show close affinities to some mainland language, just as English is obviously closely related to other Germanic languages (because Anglo-Saxons from the continent conquered England as recently as the sixth century a.d.). How can we resolve this contradiction between Japan’s presumably ancient language and the evidence for recent origins?
Archeologists have proposed four conflicting theories. Most popular in Japan is the view that the Japanese gradually evolved from ancient Ice Age people who occupied Japan long before 20,000 b.c. Also widespread in Japan is a theory that the Japanese descended from horse-riding Asian nomads who passed through Korea to conquer Japan in the fourth century, but who were themselves—emphatically—not Koreans. A theory favored by many Western archeologists and Koreans, and unpopular in some circles in Japan, is that the Japanese are descendants of immigrants from Korea who arrived with rice-paddy agriculture around 400 b.c. Finally, the fourth theory holds that the peoples named in the other three theories could have mixed to form the modern Japanese.
When similar questions of origins arise about other peoples, they can be discussed dispassionately. That is not so for the Japanese. Until 1946, Japanese schools taught a myth of history based on the earliest recorded Japanese chronicles, which were written in the eighth century. They describe how the sun goddess Amaterasu, born from the left eye of the creator god Izanagi, sent her grandson Ninigi to Earth on the Japanese island of Kyushu to wed an earthly deity. Ninigi’s great-grandson Jimmu, aided by a dazzling sacred bird that rendered his enemies helpless, became the first emperor of Japan in 660 b.c. To fill the gap between 660 b.c. and the earliest historically documented Japanese monarchs, the chronicles invented 13 other equally fictitious emperors. Before the end of World War II, when Emperor Hirohito finally announced that he was not of divine descent, Japanese archeologists and historians had to make their interpretations conform to this chronicle account. Unlike American archeologists, who acknowledge that ancient sites in the United States were left by peoples (Native Americans) unrelated to most modern Americans, Japanese archeologists believe all archeological deposits in Japan, no matter how old, were left by ancestors of the modern Japanese. Hence archeology in Japan is supported by astronomical budgets, employs up to 50,000 field-workers each year, and draws public attention to a degree inconceivable anywhere else in the world.
Why do they care so much? Unlike most other non-European countries, Japan preserved its independence and culture while emerging from isolation to create an industrialized society in the late nineteenth century. It was a remarkable achievement. Now the Japanese people are understandably concerned about maintaining their traditions in the face of massive Western cultural influences. They want to believe that their distinctive language and culture required uniquely complex developmental processes. To acknowledge a relationship of the Japanese language to any other language seems to constitute a surrender of cultural identity.
What makes it especially difficult to discuss Japanese archeology dispassionately is that Japanese interpretations of the past affect present behavior. Who among East Asian peoples brought culture to whom? Who has historical claims to whose land? These are not just academic questions. For instance, there is much archeological evidence that people and material objects passed between Japan and Korea in the period a.d. 300 to 700. Japanese interpret this to mean that Japan conquered Korea and brought Korean slaves and artisans to Japan; Koreans believe instead that Korea conquered Japan and that the founders of the Japanese imperial family were Korean.
Thus, when Japan sent troops to Korea and annexed it in 1910, Japanese military leaders celebrated the annexation as the restoration of the legitimate arrangement of antiquity. For the next 35 years, Japanese occupation forces tried to eradicate Korean culture and to replace the Korean language with Japanese in schools. The effort was a consequence of a centuries-old attitude of disdain. Nose tombs in Japan still contain 20,000 noses severed from Koreans and brought home as trophies of a sixteenth-century Japanese invasion. Not surprisingly, many Koreans loathe the Japanese, and their loathing is returned with contempt.
What really was the legitimate arrangement of antiquity? Today, Japan and Korea are both economic powerhouses, facing each other across the Korea Strait and viewing each other through colored lenses of false myths and past atrocities. It bodes ill for the future of East Asia if these two great peoples cannot find common ground. To do so, they will need a correct understanding of who the Japanese people really are.
by Jared Diamond, Discover (1998) | Read more:
Image: The Fuji seen from the Mishima pass, Katsushika Hokusai
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Shame On You
[ed. Spineless cowards. Who cares if Republicans threaten a filibuster - and Democrats are just hiding behind that threat. If someone wants to filibuster, then let them make their case in the full glare of media attention and see what happens. The blood of our children all around.]
A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., all but ended Wednesday after the Senate defeated several measures to expand gun control.
In rapid succession, a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun buyers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines all failed to get the 60 votes needed under an agreement between both parties. Senators also turned back Republican proposals to expand permission to carry concealed weapons and to focus law enforcement efforts on prosecuting gun crimes.
Sitting in the Senate gallery with other survivors of recent mass shootings and their family members, Lori Haas, whose daughter was shot at Virginia Tech, and Patricia Maisch, a survivor of the mass shooting in Arizona, shouted together, “Shame on you.”
President Obama, speaking at the White House after the votes, echoed the cry, calling Wednesday “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”
Opponents of gun control from both parties said that they made their decisions based on logic, and that passions had no place in the making of momentous policy.
“Criminals do not submit to background checks now,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “They will not submit to expanded background checks.”
It was a striking defeat for one of Mr. Obama’s highest priorities, on an issue that has consumed much of the country since Adam Lanza opened fire with an assault weapon in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.
Faced with a decision either to remove substantial new gun restrictions from the bill or to allow it to fall to a filibuster next week, Senate leaders plan to put it on hold after a scattering of votes Thursday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a longtime gun rights advocate who had thrown himself behind the gun control measures, is expected to pull the bill from the Senate floor and move on to an Internet sales tax measure, then an overhaul of immigration policy, which has better prospects.
More than 50 senators — including a few Republicans, but lacking a handful of Democrats from more conservative states — had signaled their support for the gun bill, not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.
by Jonathan Weisman, NY Times | Read more:
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