Right and Wrong

 A couple of decisions throw this society's stability into question. One time a California judge ruled in a city's rights case that climate is political, not a matter of justice. Other times the justice system has ruled corporations are people. The disrespect for language those decisions demonstrate scares me about whether courts are upholding the constitution that is constituted from language. Of course climate is a matter of justice; indigenous people are the first to demand we keep the oil in the ground to protect water. Of course corporations are not people; not only are they brainless, but they don't even breathe. You could claim the courts were not being literal, but I claim that is disrespectful of the language, and therefore unconstitutional. Why would an institution ostensibly based on truth be non-literal? Math is not literal because there are not words for the things it decides. But there are plenty of words for matters of justice; there is no excuse for courts to be not literal. They are plenty literal when it suits them. If words can be taken out of context, they they can mean literally anything. It is almost certainly a more literal interpretation of the constitution to treat corporations as collectives than to treat them as persons, if only because the constitution consists of language. It is literally impossible to respect the language, and treat a corporation as person. The constitution certainly does not mean to be ignored, so it certainly does not allow collectives to be persons. Similarly with climate justice, if the constitution is not to be disregarded, then we have to interpret it to mean judges must dispense justice, and not defer it to congress. In fact, the judge is dispensing justice by deferring it to congress. I'm certain the citizens in that case felt as ruled against as I did, when there was no justice against the oil company. No justice against an oil company is injustice against the citizens; the judge cannot hide behind congress, and will go down in history as a criminal against humanity. I'm not saying the legal branch of government is inherently bad. I'm just saying that if it wants to survive, it has to rule against oil companies at every opportunity. Just because that would not be sufficient for survival is no excuse. Certainly we could vote an oil company out of existence, and no other action would be needed to stop the climate from getting worse. But we should not have to fight against other victims of oil companies to get there.

Why not Y?

 I left Twitter before the name change; those I followed did not like the change of management. How do I reconcile my premise that CEOs have no control over their company with my departure? To me, it makes sense that a brainless corporation would rebrand itself and change its CEO at the same time; both are smokescreens for the substantive changes it is making. What of the X in other companies ElonTrump has benefitted from? Again, that is more misdirection; the company wants us to believe Musk has control over the company. I suspect the substantive change it is covering up is its promotion of Trump, despite his ouster. Trump represents Republicans, and Republicans represent consumers. Before I joined, and maybe a little after, Twitter allowed underrepresented to release emotions in overrepresented, thus allowing the overrepresented to engage in more rational morality, self-interested or otherwise. An example of self-interested moral reasoning that de-repression of emotion can allow is that closing swimming pools to hurt the underprivileged hurts the privileged too. An example of other-interested moral reasoning that de-repression of emotion can allow is that theorizing about race is hurtful and unnecessary. Twitter became increasingly supportive of consumerism, not by selling us stuff, but by repressing our emotions, thus preventing us from reasoning. Prevention of reasoning can go in two ways, habituation or impulsiveness. Consumers are impulsive, and workers are habitual. Republicans like consumption, and socialists like labor. Democrats like neither of those things; they want voters to be deliberative. Unfortunately, corporations have so much control over the separation of powers, that Democrats cannot do anything surprising, so deliberation is boring; vote blue, no matter who. Corporations dislike change, because it threatens their existence. With each change, one large corporation disappears, and many small corporations take its place in the economy, if not in the industry. I measure the size of a corporation by how much power it has, not by some pretend bottom line. Just as an animal's life is not limited to its own skin, a company's actual bottom line is not restricted to its own books; it extends out into the whole economy. Thus, oil companies are the biggest, and to blame for Democrats not suggesting to eliminate one of them.

Memes

 I should probably research its origins, but I learned of memes from the Galactic Center science fiction series. Consider the meme that it is self evident how emergent properties of individuals affect the emergent properties of their collectives. This underpins the long history of socialism failing. They take as received wisdom that collectives are good, and explain their failures by denying that any bad collectives are not collectives at all. The absurdity of their axiom that individual greed explains corporate irresponsibility opens them up to stress created by the neoliberal hypothesis that greed is good. In fact, greed does not matter. All that matters is which companies do more harm than good. The reason the considered meme is so persistent is because it helps out so many other memes. By blaming the individual, corporations create stress that prevents individuals from thinking straight. The primary advantage of the scientific method meme is not finding the truth; the primary benefit is reducing stress. Reduced stress is not only directly an example of the goal of society, taking care of individuals; it is also a way to allow individuals to think of ways society can take care of them. During my embarrassing divorce, my lawyer kept saying “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” That went over my head, because I was stressed, and it increased my stress because I think it would be good for beggars to ride. Now, I’ve converted the beggars riding meme into “if wishes were beta, dirtbags would send.” That makes more sense to me, because dirtbags do indeed send; dirtbags are vagrant rock climbers, sending is completing a climb, and beta is how to climb. Anyway, we could replace bad positive feedback to stress caused by and benefiting oil companies. Replace it with good positive feedback from fewer oil companies leading to less stress leading to more ideas. We can’t lead with individuals consuming less because that would increase stress, and individual stress is already maxed out.

Extremism

 My opinion is that my most extreme opinion is that employees, including CEOs, have no control over their employers. Socialists like to imagine some line between human employers and human employees. I believe the employers are not human; the employers are corporations. I try to annoy socialists and capitalists alike, by calling corporations collectives. To me, a collective is a collection of humans. My extreme view, that collectives have emergent properties, is not original; it comes straight from system dynamics. Perhaps, I go further out on the limb than system dynamics does, by claiming that those emergent properties include a survival instinct for corporations. I admit I'm more metaphysical than pure system dynamics; I explain the irresponsible opposition to change of hierarchical collectives, such as corporations, by thinking of them like jello; one human employee of the corporation tries to change, but is pulled back by others that do not simultaneously change in the same way. Each employee of a company may temporarily change towards transitioning to renewables without all of them transitioning simultaneously, and the company will not change. To change the company, all employees have to change simultaneously, and that only happens with outside influence. Perhaps a more extreme idea than companies with survival instinct would be that companies have self awareness. If a company is self aware, then it could know it is against changing, and lobby government to make change unpopular. That would explain what climate activists call predatory delay. To me, predatory delay is the substitution of marginal change for actual change. Bloomberg credits itself with the reduction of coal in the USofA. Unfortunately, PeabodyEnergy still exists, so the USofA is still producing coal. In my opinion, the USofA will produce coal so long as PeabodyEnergy exists, and PeabodyEnergy will exist so long as the USofA produces coal. I say the USofA produces coal, instead of saying PeabodyEnergy produces coal, because I've established that I believe PeabodyEnergy cannot change; the existence of PeabodyEnergy is synonymous with the production of coal. PeabodyEnergy exists in the USofA, so the USofA is producing coal. Anyway, producing coal is bad, no matter how little of it is produced, because CO2, and pollution in general, is cumulative. If it's not cumulative, is it pollution? If it is not cumulative, it is being consumed by the environment, so it is nutrition, not pollution; if it kills a species, then when the species dies, it stops being consumed, and accumulates, so it is pollution. How does noise pollution accumulate? Perhaps, it drives away quietness, making the noisy things more necessary, because alternatives require quietness to think of. Anyway, the only policy that is not "blah blah blah", as GT would say, or predatory delay, as others would say, is one with a goal of making PeabodyEnergy stop existing before the time we wish the climate to stop getting worse. Policy taken on faith never works, because the collective brainpower of companies that want to exist is superior to the brainpower of individual voters, and it takes no faith to believe corporations are not afraid to lie. Even though a majority of voters want to exist, they cannot eliminate companies that threaten their existence, because corporations don't want them to. Unless an election is spelled out as a referendum on the existence of a company, instead of a popularity contest, democracy will collapse. Delicense an oil major.

Politics

Should I be open to communicate with people that have different political leanings? My politics is that we should deliberately eliminate irresponsible companies, such as ExxonKnew, from existence. The requirement that it be deliberate is at once democratic and fringe. It is so fringe that the common wisdom that diplomacy is good is laughable to me. My idea, to delicense an oil major, is so simple and unheard of that I have to assume nearly everyone is desperately repressing it. Does a psychologist keep harping on the repressed obvious truth? Should I try to convince others to picket with me? Or should I make their intransigence felt by my absence? I imagine there will be a tipping point for me when a movement is close enough to the one and only mark that I tolerate a little misdirection. But by then society will have reached its tipping point already. Are movements symptoms or causes of social change? I suppose it depends on the change. The change I want, the liberty to vote against companies I don’t like, is so consequential that I imagine the movements would be reactionary rather than revolutionary. Thus, it makes sense to trust super-national survival instinct instead of interest group survival instinct to stop climate change. Is that grandiose? I would argue a referendum against ExxonKnew would be super-historic. Hopefully it would be good, because climate change makes it necessary. Politicians are people; we vote for people, also known as characters or personalities. That is the level of democracy we have now. That is a low level because individuals, such as politicians, at best and/or worst right now, mirror collective will, instead of influencing it. Math is not made up; gdp, inflation, demand, and value are made up. California is great because it tried so many experiments, such as universities, ballot measures, and cap and trade, not because it succeeds. Democratically destroying ExxonKnew is not voting on a person or measure; it is voting on progress; in contrast, it would give individuals much more of the power they deserve. The story of the USA, California in particular, and the world in general, is one of individuals grudgingly taking on more responsibility. It is reluctance to take on the responsibility of deciding whether ExxonKnew is responsible that causes climate change.

Collectivism

 Modern monetary theory disabuses several myths about economics, but it does not go far enough. It corrects the misunderstanding about whether debt or currency came first, and it discourages the anthropomorphization of government as a household. To be fair, the story that royalty was a household might explain conservative fear of government as a royal household. RBF's story of establishments (collectives) created by, and persisting after the demise of, secretive big pirate merchants that usurped housholdish governments is more plausible. Anyway, it is obvious that today (and plausibly historically) collectives, such as ExxonKnew, are in control. The myths that MMT does not contradict include that demand is real, that gdp is different from inflation, and that technology replaced slavery. Without technology, Romans could as well have used their own muscles. After all they had Olympics, so they could have done the work too. I believe collectivism, as distinct from democracy, social or otherwise, is positively correlated with exploitation. Slavery as well as labor are ways to collectivize. Unfortunately, socialists have succumbed to collectivist language, limiting their actions to boost their collective in the process of shaming their collective's figure heads. More realist language would associate boosting the individual by tearing down collectives, such as ExxonKnew, with action such as voting. First climate scientists made the mistake of being dispassionate, then they made the mistake of imitating past movements, such as civil rights and unions. Hopefully, they will finally realize that destroying irresponsible collectives, such as ExxonKnew, is the only way to halt climate change. Half measures, such as regulation and consumer manipulation, that secretly hope for the unthinkable demise of ExxonKnew over time, will take too long and probably will not work, because collectives have innovated over time to protect their survival. One innovation is the concept of a bottom line, the lie that collectives only care about money, or the worse lie that they only care about investors. Investors are high turnover; collectives don't care about them. Another harmful idea that collectives have used to survive is the notion that executives control the collective; in fact, it is the collective will, usually in opposition to the employee will, of the collective that controls the collective. I'm not saying all collectives are bad, but they are certainly getting worse and worse. The only way to make them better is to disband the most irresponsible of them. That will motivate enough employees in other collectives to make the collective more responsible. I'm not saying employee will has no effect on the collective; it's just that the will has to be to change the collective, not to change the employees. Another benefit of eliminating an irresponsible collective is that it frees up resources for potentially responsible startup collectives. A final benefit of eliminating an irresponsible collective is that, unlike will, pollution is collective; the fewer irresponsible collectives there are, the less pollution there will be.

Diary

I disowned my brother because my emotion about climate change made him uncomfortable. My mother took that personally. My aunt claimed to observe patterns in my behavior. I'm no Buddhist; I don't put my comfort above my awareness of reality, but I do use coffee and streaming to deaden my emotions. Whether that is because of climate change or not, I don't know. I minimize my fossil fuel use, but have given up trying to reduce the fossil fuel use of other individuals. My only hope is to convince others to join me in reducing the production of fossil fuel. Individuals have emergent properties, and collectives have emergent properties, but the relation between the two is unknown. To assume the reality of such a relation is blind faith. To assume corporate speech is the same as individual speech is insanity; the law is insane, there is no hope there. To assume a desire to survive will translate into less fossil fuel purchases, and fewer fossil fuel purchase will result in less fossil fuel produced, is insane blind faith squared. Religion is harmless, but some blind faiths, such as market fundamentalism, are harmful. The closest to conformity I will admit is that fear of change is one individual emergent property that exacerbates climate change, and politics is a collective emergent property that exacerbates climate change. Those are among my blind faiths; another is blind faith in democracy. I'm not convinced that my non-conformist lack of faith in corporations is blind faith. I think the assumption that a delicense of an oil major will stop climate change is less of a reach than the assumption that it can be stopped, or even slowed, with regulation or consumer manipulation. The most thoughtful climate deniers point out that startups, surviving corporations, or extra-national corporations could take up the slack of an oil major voters chose to eliminate. I think that is less plausible than that oil majors would thrive from regulation and consumer manipulation. The consensus is very much in disagreement with me there. Since the consensus there is not scientific, it is more susceptible to corporate persons. Assuming corporations influence non-scientific consensus to preserve their existence, the consensus on what would harm corporations is likely wrong. The hope is that enough think for themselves, and realize the only way to stop climate change is to go after the most singular causes of climate change, the oil majors, and stop wasting time assuming we understand markets better than oil majors do, or that our understanding of markets is less compromised than my conviction of the link between the existence of oil majors and climate change.