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11 comments:
""Today's report that the price of oil has reached $100 a barrel is just another example of how corporate greed is squeezing the middle class," said Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, in a statement."
Isn't this just an outright lie?
Western oil and gas companies don't control the oil price. They didn't cause India and China to adopt more neoliberal policies and become richer. They don't control the state-controlled oil companies in Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia that fail to invest in new technology and more efficient extraction. They don't run the U.S. government, which has severely hurt oil production in both Iran and Iraq through war and sanctions, and created a risk premium due to political instability.
What's your take?
And why protest increased gas prices that will encourage the development of efficient electric, hybrid, and other vehicles?
Isn't this just an outright lie?
Well, it's certainly a brutal oversimplification, as would be any other statement that sought to register an awareness of this problem in the context of caucus season.
Edwards' statement does has the advantage of foregrounding a piece of the puzzle that locates blame at a truly heinous location in our culture. One can, for example, expect (or, at any rate, hope) that a consistent anti-corporatist rhetoric will play out as an anti-neoliberalism as well.
As for questions of investment in renewable energy and more efficient cars and so on -- Edwards isn't too bad on that question, tho' nobody is as good as they need to be.
I do think the politics of incumbency are the greatest obstacle to more technoprogressive green strategies, and anti-corporatist rhetoric isn't the worst way to nudge the public conversation in anti-incumbent directions.
Again, you have the problem of finding a rhetoric that puts the right people on their guard, sends the right people in the right direction, and so on. One can't expect caucus season to be the occasion in which the public is educated about complexities (a sentence that is enraging and depressing from about a hundred different angles at once).
Anyway, I stick by my assessment that Edwards is engaging in a gross campaign oversimplification that is probably, sadly, one of the best on offer in these circumstances, rather than an outright lie. It is close enough to a lie, however, that it falls to us to exert the pressure to ensure that it doesn't degenerate into a lie should we be so lucky as to get an Edwards Administration at the end of this whole spectacle.
"certainly a brutal oversimplification"
What's the complex explanation? Attribute the failure of the auto industry's failure to develop electric cars to the oil industry? Blame oil company shareholders, including lower income people, union pension funds, for not donating oil company profits (in the form of subsidies for fossil fuel use, rather than medical research or contributions to MoveOn.org)? I just don't see it. The overextension of the 'corporate greed' angle seems analogous to the Wall Street Journal endlessly deceiving and exaggerating about the benefits of tax cuts in the U.S. (beyond cuts from extremely high marginal rates, and reductions in corporate taxes), and I'm curious as to how this sort of thing fits into your P2P democratic ethos.
If you were writing speeches and press releases for Edwards, would you have taken out that line? Was it wrong of him to use it? Or was it justified by the expectation that he would be signifcantly better than other candidates if he can get into office?
"As for questions of investment in renewable energy and more efficient cars and so on -- Edwards isn't too bad on that question, tho' nobody is as good as they need to be."
I know (and his stated policy stance is pretty good, all things considered) which is why this is doubly deceptive. First Edwards makes an absurd claim blaming the oil price on corporate greed, convincing voters that he thinks prices are too high. At the same time he supports carbon quotas, i.e. driving up the price for these same voters (and committing the proceeds to energy research, a good policy), since the current price is too low.
But Edwards also wants a cap and trade system rather than a carbon tax. Not only is that more subject to corruption and loopholes (look at the European carbon markets) than a tax, it also means that price increases at the pump can not be attributed to government action without some sophisticated economic reasoning. I imagine that when his own (appropriate) policy forces prices to rise again Edwards might blame that, too, on corporate greed.
What's the complex explanation?
What's complex is the rhetorical situation. Edwards is building a populist / anti-corporatist brand, which among other things is pushing Clinton and Obama left to the good of all, and providing dots for people to connect when the next Administration and Congress starts fighting Big Pharma for Universal Healthcare. These are good things.
What are we arguing about? Edwards mentioned one moving piece of the machinery of which there are more than one. He's highlighting an anti-corporatist line and I'm glad he is. These are campaign speeches not policy lectures or white papers.
If you were writing speeches and press releases for Edwards, would you have taken out that line? Was it wrong of him to use it? Or was it justified by the expectation that he would be signifcantly better than other candidates if he can get into office?
That line occurred in the context of other lines, in the context of other speeches, in the context of speeches by other candidates, in the context of the vicissitudes of a preseidential primary poliitics, with all that that entails.
Assessing his take overall you have to see what other things he is saying about the other moving pieces elsewhere. Look, I doubt I disagree with you much either on what needs doing, what needs emphasizing, or where Edwards fails to pass muster (as certainly he does in many areas).
But I think it's a little weird to frame this as a matter of straightforward "deception" when he's probably just trying to finesse some finer points or locate the right pivot points for legislative successes that take us in better more progressive directions -- even if he's mistaken in some of his assumptions or goals. I think it's especially odd to raise the issue of such deceptiveness only in respect to Edwards at this moment on this question, among other framings on offer among candidates we're choosing from in the context of the primaries.
Btw, I disagree with cap and trade follies too. And I sympathize with the number of saucers you have spinning on poles as you assess the scene of sustainability politics -- we're actually on much the same page.
But I also think Edwards's anti-corporate emphasis is exactly the right one, the urgently needed one, and very much the otherwise neglected one.
You mention the problem of over-extending the "corporate greed" line -- which I can agree with you about as a logical possibility, but not at all a problem in the actual practical world of available discourses and megaphones we're contending with.
Honestly can you tell me you think we are even remotely close to a place in which serious anti-corporate framings of issues are perniciously overextenting anything like the bs "tax cut" panacaea parroted for decades across the institutional spectrum by representatives and administrators actually shaping policies?
Give me a break. You don't really believe that, surely?
As for the connection of anti-corporatism to my p2p ethos -- I do see a helpful connection between those, like Sirota, who speak of money politics as against people politics, and there is an obvious connection between media consolidation as against net neutrality, copyfight and so on.
But p2p democratization is much bigger and much more interesting than populist anti-corporatism in my view. Very useful for p2p to take up opportunistically in this historical juncture though.
Btw, it is very interesting that this exchange is piggybacking on Oscar Wilde's epigram. He would surely be enormously appalled by our earnestness.
"Honestly can you tell me you think we are even remotely close to a place in which serious anti-corporate framings of issues are perniciously overextenting anything like the bs "tax cut" panacaea parroted for decades across the institutional spectrum by representatives and administrators actually shaping policies?"
No, of course not. I mentioned above that Edwards' policies on energy are better than most, and the consequences of a Giuliani victory assisted by bogus claims about tax cuts raising revenue would be terrible. The similarity is procedural, not in consequences, which is why I asked whether you took an ends-justify-the-means stance around this sort of thing. In this case you're pro, at others times you've opposed that view, and I'm curious as to why.
"But I think it's a little weird to frame this as a matter of straightforward "deception""
It's a false statement intended to attract political support by exploiting and reinforcing erroneous beliefs about a scapegoat. You defended it on instrumental grounds, which I think is reasonable, but don't contest the subtance.
"when he's probably just trying to finesse some finer points or locate the right pivot points for legislative successes"
Finesse is a euphemism here, and 'pivot points' mean misleading rhetoric. Would you accept the use of those terms to describe similar rhetorical tricks by a bad candidate?
"that take us in better more progressive directions."
I'm quite certain that he would, but that's not what I was inquiring about.
"He would surely be enormously appalled by our earnestness."
Well, this is a matter of some importance.
reinforcing erroneous beliefs about a scapegoat
Entirely erroneous? Corporations are entirely a scapegoat here? You don't think neoliberal/corporatist policies have been part of the story of the run-up to $100 barrel oil? Isn't this precisely the kind of oversimplification that would make you vulnerable to a charge of deception on your terms? Did you read Jerome de Paris' two and a half year long series on this topic over at dKos and EuroTrib?
I happen to think the price of oil should reflect the social costs of its extraction and the environmental costs of its use and so should be high -- but this isn't the discussion Edwards is having, is it? It isn't the discussion anybody but very high information citizens are having so far. One has to prepare the ground for this discussion. p2p to the rescue again, I hope!
But baldly saying Edwards is lying when he is making a different sort of point just doesn't make sense to me in terms of the context he is actually contributing to and responding to -- and neither even does such a charge contribute to the necessary work of preparing the ground for the better and necessary conversation you are talking about.
""reinforcing erroneous beliefs about a scapegoat
Entirely erroneous? ""
Directly reinforcing an erroneous belief, one can also make it more likely that someone will adopt true beliefs. If I convince a Republican that Bush eats babies, his or her new negative affect towards Bush may lead to the adoption of more accurate beliefs about Bush overall (becoming more open to accurate criticisms), but the baby-eating charge remains false (I hope).
"You don't think neoliberal/corporatist policies have been part of the story of the run-up to $100 barrel oil? Isn't this precisely the kind of oversimplification that would make you vulnerable to a charge of deception on your terms?"
Edwards said that the price increase was an *example* of corporate greed, as though oil companies had greedily decided to raise the price of oil on commodity exchanges. But suppose that he had said something different, like 'some greedy corporate leaders were important indirect causes of one of the factors driving the trend towards increased oil prices.'
I cited the main factors I see driving the price up: demand from the developing world, policy in basket-case oil-producing nations (where production has been poor in part because governments expelled Western oil companies with capital and technology), and Bush foreign policy. Corporate lobbying in connection with energy policy has the wrong sign, as you noted: oil companies have been lobbying against price increases driven by quotas or taxes.
So a link between corporate greed and the high oil price would have to be mediated by foreign policy, but I don't see the oil price boosting Bush foreign policy as oil-company driven. The war on Iraq seems to have been a result of a drive for revenge for the assassination attempt against Bush 41, religious megalomania, ideologically-driven neocon advisors, non-neocon hawks who see a stable oil supply as strategically valuable, and bull-headed stupidity/incompetence. Still, I wouldn't exclude causal influence from oil companies, and if Edwards had said something like what I wrote above he would have ground to stand on.
"But baldly saying Edwards is lying when he is making a different sort of point just doesn't make sense to me in terms of the context he is actually contributing to and responding to -- and neither even does such a charge contribute to the necessary work of preparing the ground for the better and necessary conversation you are talking about."
I used a provocative example so that the 'do-the-ends-justify-the-means' question would have more bite. It's easy to attack misleading statements by opponents using procedural language, but applying the principles to our own treasured causes and candidates is more illuminating. I baldly talked about lying because I think that that's a fair description of much discourse by politicians, which the media does not label as such because of its desire to appear 'objective' and nonpartisan. Watching various candidates swear allegiance to farm subsidies and corn ethanol (which drives up food prices for the global poor, and is supported by trade barriers against the entry of more environmentally friendly Brazilian sugar ethanol), or dance around marriage equality, or profess improbably profound religious faith, it's obvious that a lot of lies are being told for electoral advantage. In a forum such as this I think we can call a spade a spade.
Don't quibble, Sybil. It is altogether more true to say one hundred buck oil is an example of corporatist greed (which is indeed a part of the story of hundred buck oil) than it would be to say Bush eats babies, this isn't a provocative example, it's something else. Given how much we actually agree on I'm beginning to think you're flogging this point because you're bored on your day off or something. Saying a spade is a spade is something any politician can say when confronted with a spade not only because it's true but because it'll fit on a bumper sticker. Recognizing this doesn't mean we have to jettison our ideals or wave aside the facts we believe in for good reason. Calling Edwards' comment a lie rather than an oversimplification embedded in a truly progressive narrative frame still seems to me wrongheaded. I don't think there's much point in making too much of our difference here, tho.
"Given how much we actually agree on I'm beginning to think you're flogging this point because you're bored on your day off or something."
Too much truth to this, and you've already answered my question. Good times.
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