Scarcity and Poverty

 @IDS_UK and @owenbarder offer two related but logically distinct interpretations of a new book on the Limits to Scarcity.

• How faulty economic models keep the poor poor.
• Does rhetoric about scarcity help to keep the poor poor?

From a POSIWID perspective, these two interpretations each imply a hidden purpose: for the economic models and rhetoric respectively. But the POSIWID heuristic is a fairly blunt analytic instrument that probably doesn't help us choose whether to focus on the models or the rhetoric.

Here's an extract from the blurb

The 'scare' of scarcity has led to scarcity emerging as a political strategy for powerful groups. Aggregate numbers and physical quantities are trusted, while local knowledges and experiences of scarcity that identify problems more accurately and specifically are ignored. Science and technology are expected to provide 'solutions', but such expectations embody a multitude of unexamined assumptions about the nature of the 'problem', about the technologies and about the institutional arrangements put forward as a 'fix.' 

The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation (2011). Edited By Lyla Mehta. ISBN 1 844075423

Hyperbole

A year ago, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi described himself as the most persecuted person "in the entire history of the world". [BBC News 9 October 2010]

Clearly it's an important question: "Who is the most persecuted man in history?" And can you find a search engine that doesn't answer "Berlusconi"?

Let's try a similar question: America's most persecuted minority? Apparently either Big Business (Ayn Rand) or tobacco smokers. It's a good thing we have search engines to help us investigate such important questions.

So that led me to a third question: Does Big Businessman Berlusconi smoke? That question led me to an op-ed piece comparing Berlusconi's vices with those of President Obama [Maureen Dowd, Vice and Spice, NYTimes 23 June 2009]. Obama has admitted to a smoking habit; Berlusconi apparently admitted to paying millions of Euros to judges, before hastily correcting himself. No smokescreen without fire Silvio.

Obama Heathcare Plan

What kind of nitwit (asks @RSessions ) would believe Obama's health care plan wants to kill the elderly? Roger cites a New York Times article, Obama Calls Health Plan a 'Moral Obligation' (20 August 2009).

Another way of putting this question is as follows. Within what frame or worldview does this outcome (killing elderly people) seem both likely and deliberate? And what are the characteristics of those people who view Obama's healthcare plan in this way?

One of the hotly contested frames is the religious one. Obama is specifically addressing the religious lobby, and is hoping to get the moral high-ground. Obama turns to faith leaders Josh Gerstein (Politico, 20 August 2009).

Care for the elderly has apparently become a focal point for opposition to the healthcare plan. Conservative religious leaders such as Dr Alveda King (niece of Dr Martin Luther King jr and supporter of John McCain in the recent presidential election) adopts the rhetorical trick of stringing emotive words together ("health reform ... unborn ... elderly ... genocide"), which may create the desired effect in some audiences without the need for detailed (and refutable) argument.

One of the interesting things here is the way a single word or phrase (in this case "elderly") becomes a substitute for a proper argument and well-articulated worldview. This is a very common phenomenon: the word acts as a totem, creating a frame around itself. The power of words.

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Sources

• Health reform fact check: Euthanasia of the elderly, Cindy House. Rocky Mountain Independent, 10 August 2009
• Fox & Friends crew frighten elderly viewers: health-care reform is 'a subtle form of euthanasia' David Neiwert Crooks and Liars Blog, 27 July 2009

See also

• Matt Frei, Washington diary: Making the sale, BBC News, 23 July 2009.
  
• Arnold Relman, The Health Reform We Need & Are Not Getting. New York Review of Books, July 2, 2009.
• Theodore R. Marmor and Jonathan Oberlander, Health Reform: The Fateful Moment. New York Review of Books, August 13, 2009.

Comforting Maxims

There are some sayings that are plainly not true, but people like to repeat them anyway. Here are a few. If you have any more, please add to the comments.

1. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

This maxim is often attributed to Frederick Nietzsche. I found an application of this maxim to the history of Turkey by adriangzz.

Geva Perry adds: "In Israeli military we used to say: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and what DOES kill you makes your mom stronger."

The satirical website Newsbiscuit mocks the maxim. "What doesn’t kill you may not actually make you stronger, warn doctors."

"Doctors have discovered that among those conditions which won’t leave you feeling better than before are cancer, HIV/AIDS, strokes, Parkinson’s disease, a broken spine, Ebola, heart attacks, radiation poisoning and massive trauma to the head. ... There are no recorded instances of a rejuvenating bout of typhoid or a restorative case of the clap."

2. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

Oh yes they can. Robert Fulghum, US author and Unitarian clergyman, coined a counter-maxim: "Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts..." (via Suzette R. Hinton, eZine Articles).

Commentary

Clearly there is a short-term purpose in these comforting maxims - to comfort those who have suffered or are suffering, and to encourage people to take command of their lives and move on. But there is also a disturbing erosion of truth, which ultimately lead us to regard all such maxims as vapid cliché, and to distrust the old wives who supposedly tell these tales. As Francis Bacon said (not the painter, the other one)

"So whosoever shall entertain high and vaporous imaginations, instead of a laborious and sober inquiry of truth, shall beget hopes and beliefs of strange and impossible shapes." (Advancement of Learning)

Nuclear Weapons 2

It appears that Iran may not have nuclear weapons after all. According to some commentators, this is bad news for the Bush administration, and for the America it represents.

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that a US report on Tehran's nuclear programme is a "great victory". [BBC News, December 5th, 2007]
  
• "a massive body blow for the United States" [Ulterior Motive, December 5th, 2007]
• "this is a bombshell" [Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly, December 3rd, 2007]
  

So Iran's not having the bomb is a "bombshell" is it? This illustrates the strange rhetoric of nuclear weaponry I commented on before. A bomb that doesn't work, or a bomb that doesn't even exist, can still produce interesting and powerful effects.

Previous post: Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Weapons

What is the purpose of the atomic bomb (or any other weapon)? Can a weapon be regarded as successful if it is never used? Some people might think that a weapon can ONLY be regarded as successful if it is never used.

Umberto Eco argued that the bomb was an act of communication.

“Until the middle of the century the force, the power, still resided in guns and in weapons. After the middle of the century the real power is in information. Even the atomic bomb is used today not as a weapon but as a message. The fact, the happy fact, that it is not used means that it is not the bomb in itself which works: it is the continuous exchange of messages between powers.” [Umberto Eco, interviewed by Christopher Frayling, The Listener, 11th Oct 1984]

More recently, in a post entitled Weapons and Weapons Technology as Rhetorical Devices, Michael Goldhaber identifies Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative as one of the most powerful weapons of modern times. It never really worked properly (in the engineering sense), but it brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Goldhaber also quotes Anton Chekhov:

“If a gun is on the table in the first act, it will go off by the third act.”

Chekhov understood that a weapon possessed a tragic aura of inevitability, its destiny. A weapon is also an attractor - it draws (however reluctant) our attention. It is this combination of forced attraction and apparent inevitability that makes it all the more likely that any weapon will be used sooner or later. If it works.


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Papa Ratzi 5

I have just read an extremely interesting analysis of Pope Benedict's lecture and the ensuing row on the Duck of Minerva blog - Misdirected Offense. 

In my earlier comment Papa Ratzi 3, I wondered why His Holiness had chosen to include the offending quotation, which didn't seem to add any logical weight to his argument. As PTJ points out, the lecture wasn't actually about Islam at all, but about the place of force within Christian tradition. So why did the Pope talk about Moslem violence, when history contains so many examples of Christian violence? 

PTJ suggests that the Pope was merely adopting a cheap rhetorical trick against Christians who disagree with his Hellenistic position. Many Christians have believed that God is above reason, but the Pope chooses to associate this belief with Islam (which he regards as an alien and inferior religion), and then uses the ad hominem fallacy to dismiss this belief without proper argument. 

Whom was the Pope addressing in the offending lecture? Some people have noted that the Pope's words have caused some violence in the Moslem world, and imagine that this violence somehow proves the Pope correct. (It doesn't - he wasn't talking about that kind of violence.) And imagine that he was talking directly to the Moslem world. Surely we cannot see the Pope as some kind of provocateur, deliberately stirring up trouble in the Moslem world in order to demonstrate that Christianity is more civilized? This seems extremely unlikely, if only because this Pope probably doesn't think the superiority of Christianity needs any demonstration. 

PTJ constructs a system frame in order to make sense of the out-of-context quotation - what assumptions does the Pope seem to be making about his audience, in order that this quotation might contribute (albeit fallaciously) to his argument. According to PTJ, the Pope thought he was addressing Christians who share his ignorance about (and aversion to) Islam. If Islam is the Other, then the only acceptable course for Catholics is to believe the opposite of whatever Moslems believe. 

In short, PTJ assumes that the use of the offending quotation was carefully chosen to produce some (rhetorical) effect within some (academic) context. This explanation appears to be sufficient to explain the Pope's original speech, as well as his professed surprise when the speech was widely interpreted as anti-Islamic. Within the system frame of giving an academic lecture, it might seem reasonable for the Pope to ignore effects outside this frame. But this system frame is embedded in a much larger system frame. The Pope has advisors who can warn him of the wider effects of his words, but only if he choses to listen to these advisors. 

In this situation, the Pope's lack of awareness and lack of consideration must be regarded as (the consequence of) a strategic choice.

War of Words

The leader of the UK Conservative Party (and Tony Blair clone) David Cameron has described the UK Independence Party as a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". [Source BBC News]

What is the purpose / effect of this statement?

Commenting on the story, BBC political correspondent Nick Assinder identifies two results, and infers a purpose.

It has got him on the news bulletins (result no 1) for suggesting his Tory party has absolutely nothing in common with the party which once boasted Robert Kilroy Silk and Joan Collins among its members (result no 2). And, as such, it can be seen as part of his campaign to distance the all-new Conservative Party from anything that smacks of extremism, illiberalism or, well, nastiness.

In other words, saying that UKIP is X is an indirect way of saying that the Conservative Party isn't X. (This is a useful rhetorical pattern for handling negation.)

But name-calling is a dangerous game, and often reflects back onto the name-caller. It is an commonly observed phenomenon, that people often apply to other people precisely those epithets that apply equally to themselves. Pot calling kettle black.

And the attack also establishes an apparent symmetry between the Conservatives and UKIP. Cameron and UKIP Spokesman Nigel Farage are given almost equal billing in the BBC story. UKIP leaders are threatening to sue Cameron for libel. Well it keeps UKIP in the headlines as well, doesn't it?

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