"It's the economy, stupid" is how James Carville described Bill Clinton's election strategy back in 1992. However apt it may have been at the time, it is senseless today.
Those pundits who claim that blue collar Americans flocked to Trump because of economic woes are wrong. For the economy is doing very well--better than any time in recent history, with record low unemployment, interest rates, and poverty.
Some Democrats argue that Trump is weak on healthcare or the environment. I suggest that these topics will move the electorate not at all--people have already made up their minds. Nor is income inequality a compelling issue--people don't care how much money somebody in Mountain View, CA, earns. The fact is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats, and that some boats are fancy yachts really doesn't matter very much.
Trump didn't win in 2016 on economic issues. Any promises to his blue collar audience about better health care or fancier pensions were brief, pro forma and without detail. Mr. Trump obviously knows nothing and cares less about health care in this country.
Instead, he won the election by flattering and entertaining his audience. He paid attention to people who typically sit in politics' back row. As Michael Moore eloquently puts it "Trump's election is going to be the biggest fuck you in human history. And it. will. feel. good."
Why did it feel so good? Because Trump's election, not about economics, was instead about status. While a rising economic tide lifts all boats, that is definitely not true about status. Status games are inevitably zero-sum--if my status goes up, then yours must relatively go down. Trump rewarded his listeners just by spending hours with them at his rallies, telling them how they were going to Make America Great Again, in contrast to the evil, dishonest media in the back of the room.
He put low-status people at the top of his list and won their undying affection as a result.
Democrats also play status games, but unlike Trump they're not strategic in their choices. The top dogs in their universe are upper middle class white women, and gay men. The leading Democratic issues are #MeToo and Gay/transgender Rights.
Of course there is nothing intrinsically wrong with those issues. Women should be treated respectfully in the workplace, and gays do deserve civil rights. That's really incontrovertible, though opinions will vary on what respectful and civil rights specifically mean. The argument isn't about issues--instead it's about the enhanced status that accrues to those groups.
But if somebody's status goes up, then who goes down? The Dems seem to have forgotten the downside, and that is their Achilles heel. For people who lose status far outnumber the population of upper middle class women and gays, and they will feel their loss acutely.
Trump understands this. 62% of white men voted for Trump. More ominously, 14% of Black men voted for Trump, as compared to barely 2% of Black women. Obviously men see themselves as losers in the Democrat's status sweepstakes. And there are a lot more men than there are upper-middle class women and gays.
A couple weeks ago I heard an interview with Brad Parscale on Fox News. I don't have a transcript, but the gist was the campaign will recruit a million volunteers to pay personal visits to 20 million undecided, persuadable voters.
Undecided voters? That sounds like people on knife's edge: Are higher taxes a good trade-off for better medical care? Or Should student loans be forgiven for everybody, or just for poor people? Of course that's not how this group thinks. These instead are people who don't really care about politics--left to their own devices they might not vote at all. They don't listen to either FOX News or MSNBC.
If they do vote, they'll vote on emotion. And among those, the strongest political emotion is fear. So (and Mr. Parscale did not say this) the goal of all these visits is to make these people afraid--very, very afraid.
Obviously the undecideds do not include me--the only message I'll get from the Trump campaign is a fundraising letter. As readers of this blog, they don't include you, either. We're committed ideologues--unpersuadable by either camp. The folks we're talking about are precisely NOT part of Trump's base, and indeed, may even not have voted in 2016.
I surmise that Black men are a significant number of these undecideds, for they have a lot to lose from the Democrat's program. They are threatened with nothing less than abject servility, doomed to serve at the whim of upper middle class white women. In a word, they face emasculation. For men who historically have been lynched for looking at a white woman the wrong way, the #MeToo movement is a dire threat. Or at least that's how the Trump campaign will portray it.
Then there is affirmative action, which Black men see as their victory achieved during the civil rights movement. Yet today--with Democratic party connivance--the principle beneficiaries of affirmative action are upper middle class white women, who preferentially get jobs in academe or in the corporate suite. A less deserving population is hard to imagine.
Speaking of civil rights, the hijacking of the civil rights agenda by the LGBTQ community is, in the eyes of Black men, a complete travesty. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday: "Pink is the New Black." While I'm not sure what the driver actually intends, as a political statement it encapsulates the feelings of Black men--they're less important than gay people. Despite having fought and won the civil rights struggle, they're supposed to yield status to a bunch of spoiled sissies.
In 2016 Trump won his fraction of the Black male vote mostly by accident. That won't be true this time around--he will aggressively go after those people. The groundwork is laid--criminal justice reform, a thriving economy, Kanye West, the "what have you got to lose?" message, etc. He can't lose support from Black women, so playing the gender card has only upside for him. If he can increase his fraction from 14% to 20%, that likely puts Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan out of reach for the Democrats.
Trump has the advantage of being a very masculine, bad-ass, man. He's a great role model. Especially if the Dems nominate a woman, expect this strategy to work big time.
For different reasons Trump has an advantage among Hispanic voters (28% of whom voted for Trump in 2016), especially Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are American citizens who are now being forced to share their communities and jobs with a marauding horde of illiterate illegals from Central America. They are likely to throw more support to Trump in 2020. That will make a difference in Florida, where it is speculated that Puerto Ricans cost the Dems the election in 2018. (Unfortunately it won't matter much in New York or New Jersey, which are safe Democratic redoubts regardless of how Puerto Ricans vote.)
The immigration issue may also redound to Trump's advantage in Texas and Arizona, where other Hispanic communities are on the front lines.
In summary, Trump may lose votes among "suburban women," aka upper middle class white women, but he'll more that make up for it with additional male, Black and Hispanic support. The gender gap will work in his favor.
Further Reading:
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Friday, April 19, 2019
"Primacy of the Working Class"
The current issue of Socialist Viewpoint contains a wonderful article by Susan Roberts, entitled Primacy of the Working Class. It's long and not an easy read--I actually printed it out and went at it with a sharp pencil. The effort was rewarded.
(I am unable to find any biographical information about Ms. Roberts. It appears she's British, and she's obviously an academic of some sort. But I don't know where.)
She begins with a strange but useful redefinition of the word politics, which becomes "the contestation of power." Specifically, "it contests the balance of power wielded by different class interests." The contrast is with the apolitical--"concerned more with ameliorating the excesses of capitalism than with challenging the system itself."
I think this is the weakest part of her argument. Such a conspiracy would be impossible to keep secret; would require impossible unity among the myriad ruling class actors; and implies an ability to predict and manage an exceedingly complex future from 1970 to the present to ensure that the outcome comes out just right.
There is no conspiracy, and nobody is doing the bidding of the ruling class in any intentional way.
A second argument is more profound. The apolitical movements are principally concerned with moral arguments rather than power relationships. Traditional working class movements were ultimately about money and power, and not about saving whales or eliminating malaria. (The implausible conceit is that proletarians will successfully take on these important issues after they get power.)
The apolitical movements are aided by post-modernism, which suggests that
Ms. Roberts recalls the bygone days of working class politics:
She faults the apolitical organizations.
She's quite right about the effect--and that's what makes her article so interesting. But I think she's got cause and effect wrong. I think the NGOs, etc., are as much a symptom as is the decline of working class politics. The causes of both phenomena are to be found in automation, globalization, and social media.
The decades since 1970 have largely put paid to the angry grey men. The Upper Clyde Ship Building Works were closed for good in 2001. A similar transition has occurred in American manufacturing. For example, Peabody Coal Company--still the largest coal company in the US--only employs 7,100 people total, including white collar workers. Membership in the United Automobile Workers has declined from 1.5 million in 1979 to under 400,000 today. Even retail companies like Walmart, McDonalds, and Starbucks are shrinking their work forces (along with raising the pay of their remaining employees). The era of cashierless stores is nearly upon us.
Globalization has mostly ended the labor strike as a useful weapon. Production can be sourced anywhere in the world. If the UAW strikes against General Motors, it may lead to the bankruptcy of the company, but it will have minimal impact on the ability of consumers to buy cars. The vehicles will be manufactured elsewhere by other people.
The result of these trends has (so far) not been higher unemployment, but rather different employment. Unskilled labor is devalued in this new world. The angry, grey, faceless men are no longer needed. Instead, one wants smiling, skilled, customer-friendly women. These new employees, far from being faceless, are required to invest their personality into their jobs.
When I was a cab driver back in the 70s, my colleagues were 99% male. And for good reason--cab driving was a dangerous job back then, especially for women. We were faceless, unskilled labor.
Today, with Uber, it's quite different. The app mostly ensures safety for both passenger and driver, and accordingly many drivers are today women. Customers and drivers are rated by each other, with consequences for both. A smiling woman is much more likely to get a high rating and a big tip than an angry, grey, faceless man. He's gonna get left by the side of the road.
So one reason one doesn't see "angry grey men huddled around braziers" anymore is that such gentlemen are no longer employed. It's got nothing to do with any conspiracy theory.
I strongly commend to Ms. Roberts' attention the book by Martin Gurri entitled The Revolt of the Public. Mr. Gurri explores in great detail the effect of social media on our politics. In the past people had no good way to communicate with like-minded folks around the world. The best they could do was listen to the nightly news and latch on to some lowest-common-denominator mass movement--e.g., opposition to Thatcherite economics. Just as there were only three channels on television, there were also only a handful of opportunities for political activism.
Social media changes all of that. This blog, for example, reaches people interested in the residue of Trotskyism, including many on the Right. It's a very small audience, but it is global. Such an effort is impossible absent social media.
Martin Gurri argues that social media empowers the "public," under which he includes all the "particularistic interests" that "impose themselves on inchoate civil society all over the globe." In the 1970s one had a mass movement--called Earth Day. But that has fractured, and today there are undoubtedly Facebook pages devoted to saving whales. And more--there are likely Facebook pages devoted to saving specifically Blue whales.
Each tiny cause attracts its own public, and each public sees its particular cause as reason for revolt. The publics, cumulatively, have buried mass movements. When it's so easy to create an association to promote the specific interests of trans females, for example, it's much harder to maintain a unified LGBTQ community against the rise of all the narrower publics.
We've ceased being a mass movement of angry, grey, faceless men, and instead become members of a myriad of angry, colorful, Facebooked men and women. Politics, as Ms. Roberts notes, is fractured beyond repair.
There is much more to Ms. Roberts' essay than I've discussed here. It is well worth reading. Make sure your pencil is sharp.
Further Reading:
(I am unable to find any biographical information about Ms. Roberts. It appears she's British, and she's obviously an academic of some sort. But I don't know where.)
She begins with a strange but useful redefinition of the word politics, which becomes "the contestation of power." Specifically, "it contests the balance of power wielded by different class interests." The contrast is with the apolitical--"concerned more with ameliorating the excesses of capitalism than with challenging the system itself."
These new [apolitical--ed] players comprise a panoply of “Global Social Justice Movements,” (GSJMs) and “Non-Governmental Organizations,” (NGOs) which impose themselves on inchoate civil society all over the globe. Whilst the range of their particularistic interests is vast, they are generally united in the denigration of working class politics. These movements, which tend to be managed by western, middle class personnel, and are very often funded, directly or indirectly by western corporate interests and unelected bodies, eschew the representational demands of the “old” class politics, insisting instead that their “individualistic” agenda wields a higher moral authority. In the eyes of these new global players, “collective” politics, with its demands of representation, constituency and even democracy are discredited artifacts of a broken system, which needs to be superseded by a more moral form of global governance. [Footnotes deleted--ed]Ms. Roberts elaborates on the themes of this paragraph. The denigration of working class politics is, in her opinion, purposeful. There's a whiff of a conspiracy theory in the plot--the ruling class has purposely substituted apolitical action precisely for that reason. That funding comes from "western corporate interests and unelected bodies" is evidence, along with "western, middle class personnel" hired to do the dirty work.
I think this is the weakest part of her argument. Such a conspiracy would be impossible to keep secret; would require impossible unity among the myriad ruling class actors; and implies an ability to predict and manage an exceedingly complex future from 1970 to the present to ensure that the outcome comes out just right.
There is no conspiracy, and nobody is doing the bidding of the ruling class in any intentional way.
A second argument is more profound. The apolitical movements are principally concerned with moral arguments rather than power relationships. Traditional working class movements were ultimately about money and power, and not about saving whales or eliminating malaria. (The implausible conceit is that proletarians will successfully take on these important issues after they get power.)
The apolitical movements are aided by post-modernism, which suggests that
...a range of social interest groups, (e.g., feminism, anti-racism, environmentalism, etc.) can, through “moral and intellectual” leadership, (as opposed to mere “political” leadership) combine to effect such a challenge. Workers remain relevant to that amalgamation of interest groups, but only through their lived, concrete experience and not because of the historicity of their position.The rejection of historicity strikes at the heart of Marxism. Post-modernism denies the objective truth of any history--including Marxist history--substituting instead "lived" fables and tales.
Ms. Roberts recalls the bygone days of working class politics:
In the UK of the 1970s strikes, sit-ins, worker occupations and even work-ins (most famously perhaps at the Upper Clyde Ship Building works (UCS) were common events. Angry grey men, huddled around braziers, were a regular sight on the nightly news, and everyone seemed to be locked in debate about the economic and political future of the country.Today those angry, grey, faceless men are replaced by climate demonstrators, women's marchers, and pleas to close Guantanamo. A demand for power has yielded to middle class, moral lobbying.
She faults the apolitical organizations.
By elevating a spurious moral leadership above class politics a platform has been created for an open-ended plurality of apolitical causes. The effect of which has been to radically depoliticize democracy by removing from its preserve the defining issues of working class contestation.In her view, the social justice movements and NGOs have killed off the working class--and given the supposed conspiracy theory that was precisely the point.
She's quite right about the effect--and that's what makes her article so interesting. But I think she's got cause and effect wrong. I think the NGOs, etc., are as much a symptom as is the decline of working class politics. The causes of both phenomena are to be found in automation, globalization, and social media.
The decades since 1970 have largely put paid to the angry grey men. The Upper Clyde Ship Building Works were closed for good in 2001. A similar transition has occurred in American manufacturing. For example, Peabody Coal Company--still the largest coal company in the US--only employs 7,100 people total, including white collar workers. Membership in the United Automobile Workers has declined from 1.5 million in 1979 to under 400,000 today. Even retail companies like Walmart, McDonalds, and Starbucks are shrinking their work forces (along with raising the pay of their remaining employees). The era of cashierless stores is nearly upon us.
Globalization has mostly ended the labor strike as a useful weapon. Production can be sourced anywhere in the world. If the UAW strikes against General Motors, it may lead to the bankruptcy of the company, but it will have minimal impact on the ability of consumers to buy cars. The vehicles will be manufactured elsewhere by other people.
The result of these trends has (so far) not been higher unemployment, but rather different employment. Unskilled labor is devalued in this new world. The angry, grey, faceless men are no longer needed. Instead, one wants smiling, skilled, customer-friendly women. These new employees, far from being faceless, are required to invest their personality into their jobs.
When I was a cab driver back in the 70s, my colleagues were 99% male. And for good reason--cab driving was a dangerous job back then, especially for women. We were faceless, unskilled labor.
Today, with Uber, it's quite different. The app mostly ensures safety for both passenger and driver, and accordingly many drivers are today women. Customers and drivers are rated by each other, with consequences for both. A smiling woman is much more likely to get a high rating and a big tip than an angry, grey, faceless man. He's gonna get left by the side of the road.
So one reason one doesn't see "angry grey men huddled around braziers" anymore is that such gentlemen are no longer employed. It's got nothing to do with any conspiracy theory.
I strongly commend to Ms. Roberts' attention the book by Martin Gurri entitled The Revolt of the Public. Mr. Gurri explores in great detail the effect of social media on our politics. In the past people had no good way to communicate with like-minded folks around the world. The best they could do was listen to the nightly news and latch on to some lowest-common-denominator mass movement--e.g., opposition to Thatcherite economics. Just as there were only three channels on television, there were also only a handful of opportunities for political activism.
Social media changes all of that. This blog, for example, reaches people interested in the residue of Trotskyism, including many on the Right. It's a very small audience, but it is global. Such an effort is impossible absent social media.
Martin Gurri argues that social media empowers the "public," under which he includes all the "particularistic interests" that "impose themselves on inchoate civil society all over the globe." In the 1970s one had a mass movement--called Earth Day. But that has fractured, and today there are undoubtedly Facebook pages devoted to saving whales. And more--there are likely Facebook pages devoted to saving specifically Blue whales.
Each tiny cause attracts its own public, and each public sees its particular cause as reason for revolt. The publics, cumulatively, have buried mass movements. When it's so easy to create an association to promote the specific interests of trans females, for example, it's much harder to maintain a unified LGBTQ community against the rise of all the narrower publics.
We've ceased being a mass movement of angry, grey, faceless men, and instead become members of a myriad of angry, colorful, Facebooked men and women. Politics, as Ms. Roberts notes, is fractured beyond repair.
There is much more to Ms. Roberts' essay than I've discussed here. It is well worth reading. Make sure your pencil is sharp.
Further Reading:
Monday, April 8, 2019
The Militant Hails a Ride
The headliner in this week's Militant is an article by Bernie Senter entitled Uber drivers fight bosses’ pay cuts across California. The lede paragraph:
Then one has to take the "25% pay cut" headline number with a grain of salt. Were the cut that big drivers would be quitting in droves--not simply going on strike. So there obviously has to be more to the story than what The Militant is telling us.
This website lists all changes in Uber pricing in Orange County since way back when. The relevant entries appear to be these:
Another website (here) has information about Uber's pay policies--and as Mr. Senter suggests, they certainly are complicated. The company's cut varies by length of service and geography, ranging from 20% to 28%--though in the latter case the company pays the driver's insurance. That percentage only applies to time & distance charges, resulting in a service fee. In addition customers pay additional fees:
Uber is a platform--it connects drivers with passengers. An analogy is the stock market, which connects stock sellers with stock buyers. The price of stocks fluctuates as necessary to clear the market.
Uber needs all passengers to get rides and all drivers to get passengers. There is a price that will do that--it's called the market price. If Uber charges below market, it is just leaving money on the table--money that could otherwise be shared with drivers. Conversely, if Uber charges more than market, there will be fewer passengers, and therefore also less revenue.
The market price is the price that maximizes total revenue. Obviously that's good for the company--25% of more is better than 25% of less. It is also good for the drivers collectively, who get 75% of more. It may not be good for individual drivers, since more drivers mean that the money gets split up more ways.
So the drivers, as described in Mr. Senter's article, are pushing to limit the total number of drivers, similar to what cab companies did with the medallion system. This is good for those (relatively few) drivers who have a job, but bad for those who are left at the side of the road. Even worse, it's bad for passengers, who will now have to wait longer and pay more to get a ride. And it's bad for Uber who, by charging above market rates, receives less revenue.
The drivers become rent collectors--selling access to a licensed, Uber slot--and can charge a premium for the privilege. Perhaps that's good for those drivers, but rent collecting never generates social utility.
Contrary to Mr. Senter's quote, Uber does not dictate its prices. The market does.
Still, the drivers have a case. Given that Uber has maximized total revenue, how should that revenue be split between driver and company? The drivers argue for more, while Uber wants to give them less. But the company can't dictate this, either. It is also determined by the market.
The market price is established by that equilibrium where the number of drivers equals the number of passengers. If the drivers are paid more, there will be too many drivers. Conversely, if they're paid less, there won't be enough drivers. The company has no real discretion over what that pay is. Indeed, it varies by time of day--during rush hours more drivers are needed and therefore a surge price is added.
Uber also has to cover its own expenses. It has to handle requests from customers, process payments, and arrange for pickups. Payment processing alone probably accounts for the majority of the booking fee--that's a real expense. The service fee likely pays for the elaborate computer navigation systems, which has to be absolutely fail-safe. That's expensive.
It's worth noting that neither Uber nor Lyft are profitable. So the incipient union (Rideshare) demand that the service fee be capped at 10% is a non-starter. Both companies would go bankrupt.
Likewise, demands that Uber pay for gas, car repairs, taxes, health insurance,... is a non-starter. Uber is a software and payment processing firm. They're not a transportation company. Folks in the transportation business need to cover their own expenses. It's a hard-scrabble, low wage industry to be sure, but asking Uber to manage a business for which it has no expertise will not make it better.
I think Uber is better for drivers than my initial job as a cab driver in the mid 1970s. I worked for Checker Cab in Chicago and received 42% of the meter, plus tips. Tips were about half my income. Apart from social security I got no benefits, but Checker covered all the car expenses (including gas).
It was a lousy job, and within a year I switched cab companies to one that operated more like Uber.
Further Reading:
Uber drivers held a 25-hour strike March 25 to demand the company reverse a 25 percent per mile pay cut it imposed on drivers in Los Angeles and parts of Orange counties. Two hundred of the striking Uber drivers were joined by drivers for Lyft to protest in front of Uber headquarters here. Protests were also held in San Francisco and San Diego against similar cuts.There's reason for skepticism. Uber drivers go on strike all the time--whenever they turn off their app--say to sleep, eat, or pick up their kids from school. That a few drivers turned off the app for 25 hours to uselessly rage against the machine is irrelevant to the company. I doubt it even noticed.
Then one has to take the "25% pay cut" headline number with a grain of salt. Were the cut that big drivers would be quitting in droves--not simply going on strike. So there obviously has to be more to the story than what The Militant is telling us.
This website lists all changes in Uber pricing in Orange County since way back when. The relevant entries appear to be these:
UberX cost per mile decreased from $1.06 to $0.80 - 3/11/19So the dramatic cut in per mile compensation is at least partially offset by a comparable increase in per minute pay. This is good for drivers who spend a lot of time in traffic, but less beneficial for those out on the open road. The decrease in the minimum fare only affects very short trips. I think The Militant's "pay cut" phrase is an exaggeration.
UberX cost per minute increased from $0.24 to $0.28 - 3/11/19
UberX minimum fare decreased from $7.30 to $6.10 - 3/11/19
Another website (here) has information about Uber's pay policies--and as Mr. Senter suggests, they certainly are complicated. The company's cut varies by length of service and geography, ranging from 20% to 28%--though in the latter case the company pays the driver's insurance. That percentage only applies to time & distance charges, resulting in a service fee. In addition customers pay additional fees:
- A booking fee--that goes entirely to the company.
- A surge fee--applied in cases when there is a shortage of cars, and that goes entirely to the driver.
- A tip--which also goes entirely to the driver.
The booking fee is per trip and looks to cost about $2.30. On a short trip that will be a substantial fraction of the fare, which inflates Uber's percentage of the total haul. A long post from an Uber driver (well written, despite typos, from somebody who self-identifies as Underachiever (1970-present)) details an example:
- The customer paid $9.90.
- Booking fee--$2.30
- The time & distance charge is the difference--$9.90 - $2.30 = $7.60
- Service fee (25% of time & distance)--$1.90
- Total paid to Uber--$2.30 + $1.90 = $4.20
- Total paid to driver (75% of time & distance)--$5.70
For short trips the booking fee is substantial. For a $50 airport run, on the other hand, it's nearly trivial.
Mr. Senter quotes an Uber driver:
“In 2015, I was making between $1.15 and $1.20 per mile,” driver Esterphanie St. Juste, an organizer of the action, told Los Angeles Magazine. “Today, I’m making 50 percent of that. They call us partners, but we’re not. They dictate everything.”As just documented, Uber drivers have not taken a 50% pay cut. But let's focus on the last sentence: "They dictate everything." They don't, and here's why.
Uber is a platform--it connects drivers with passengers. An analogy is the stock market, which connects stock sellers with stock buyers. The price of stocks fluctuates as necessary to clear the market.
Uber needs all passengers to get rides and all drivers to get passengers. There is a price that will do that--it's called the market price. If Uber charges below market, it is just leaving money on the table--money that could otherwise be shared with drivers. Conversely, if Uber charges more than market, there will be fewer passengers, and therefore also less revenue.
The market price is the price that maximizes total revenue. Obviously that's good for the company--25% of more is better than 25% of less. It is also good for the drivers collectively, who get 75% of more. It may not be good for individual drivers, since more drivers mean that the money gets split up more ways.
So the drivers, as described in Mr. Senter's article, are pushing to limit the total number of drivers, similar to what cab companies did with the medallion system. This is good for those (relatively few) drivers who have a job, but bad for those who are left at the side of the road. Even worse, it's bad for passengers, who will now have to wait longer and pay more to get a ride. And it's bad for Uber who, by charging above market rates, receives less revenue.
The drivers become rent collectors--selling access to a licensed, Uber slot--and can charge a premium for the privilege. Perhaps that's good for those drivers, but rent collecting never generates social utility.
Contrary to Mr. Senter's quote, Uber does not dictate its prices. The market does.
Still, the drivers have a case. Given that Uber has maximized total revenue, how should that revenue be split between driver and company? The drivers argue for more, while Uber wants to give them less. But the company can't dictate this, either. It is also determined by the market.
The market price is established by that equilibrium where the number of drivers equals the number of passengers. If the drivers are paid more, there will be too many drivers. Conversely, if they're paid less, there won't be enough drivers. The company has no real discretion over what that pay is. Indeed, it varies by time of day--during rush hours more drivers are needed and therefore a surge price is added.
Uber also has to cover its own expenses. It has to handle requests from customers, process payments, and arrange for pickups. Payment processing alone probably accounts for the majority of the booking fee--that's a real expense. The service fee likely pays for the elaborate computer navigation systems, which has to be absolutely fail-safe. That's expensive.
It's worth noting that neither Uber nor Lyft are profitable. So the incipient union (Rideshare) demand that the service fee be capped at 10% is a non-starter. Both companies would go bankrupt.
Likewise, demands that Uber pay for gas, car repairs, taxes, health insurance,... is a non-starter. Uber is a software and payment processing firm. They're not a transportation company. Folks in the transportation business need to cover their own expenses. It's a hard-scrabble, low wage industry to be sure, but asking Uber to manage a business for which it has no expertise will not make it better.
I think Uber is better for drivers than my initial job as a cab driver in the mid 1970s. I worked for Checker Cab in Chicago and received 42% of the meter, plus tips. Tips were about half my income. Apart from social security I got no benefits, but Checker covered all the car expenses (including gas).
It was a lousy job, and within a year I switched cab companies to one that operated more like Uber.
Further Reading:
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Amazon HQ2
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| Queensbridge Houses (Source) |
Kudos to Marty Goodman, Socialist Action's (SA) reporter on the Amazon HQ debacle in Long Island City. SA is rare on my beat in covering the situation at all--there is nothing in The Militant, nor has Solidarity said anything. Neither has Louis Proyect. Mr. Goodman's two articles are entitled New York Democrats shower Amazon with $billions and Protests bust up New York's Amazon deal.
It's a pity, then, that Mr. Goodman misunderstands almost everything. His confusion is so typical of my Trotskyist friends that it's worth a post to clarify.
The lede paragraphs from the first article:
On Nov. 13, after long secret negotiations, two New York “progressive” Democrats, Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, jointly announced that Amazon will place one of two new corporate “headquarters” in New York City and the other in Arlington, Va.
Virtually kissing the feet of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, whose personal wealth is $166 billion, both Democrats have bestowed upon Amazon about $3 billion in tax breaks and construction grants, which include even a nifty helipad for its owner. ...
New York State offered $1.525 billion and the city is giving $1.28 billion to locate in Long Island City, in rapidly gentrifying Queens, a short train ride from Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal reports a “condo gold rush” in Queens.This data can all be checked by simple Google searches. At today's price one share of AMZN costs $1759. There are 500 million shares outstanding, so multiplication yields total capitalization at $880 billion. Mr. Bezos owns about 79 million shares, worth $138 billion. He has a few other assets (e.g., Blue Origin), but his net worth likely isn't much more than $140 billion at today's market price.
Mr. Goodman should note how hypothetical that all is. It assumes that Mr. Bezos could sell all of his shares at today's market price. Of course he can't--putting that many shares on the market would crash the price. Further, we can suppose Mr. Goodman wants to confiscate his wealth. But if he did he'd end up only with a pile of worthless stock certificates--nobody will buy stock in a company whose assets are routinely confiscated.
Mr. Goodman will claim he doesn't care about the certificates, but instead only wants the physical assets: warehouses, offices, computers, etc. And yes, he could confiscate those, and perhaps those would have some residual value above zero. But the company Amazon is a whole lot more than the physical assets--it is a business that depends crucially on its management, specifically on Mr. Bezos. Take Mr. Bezos out of the picture and Amazon is reduced to a pile of trash.
Mr. Goodman is correct that the handouts offered to Amazon are tax breaks. Those bennies are contingent on Amazon upholding its part of the agreement, e.g., hiring the promised number of employees, and are payable many years in the future. Of the $3 billion in handouts, very little of it is money in the bank that can be reallocated to schools, housing, welfare, etc. As Tyler Cowen puts it,
There is no $3 billion that NYC gets to keep if Amazon does not show up. That “money” was a pledged reduction in Amazon’s future tax burden at the state and local level.By comparison, the annual NY State budget is about $150 billion, while the City budget is roughly $89 billion. The (mostly virtual) gifts to Amazon are small change--Mr. Goodman blows the whole issue way out of proportion.
Mr. Goodman's fixation on "handouts" is a red herring.
Then Mr. Goodman is against the "gentrification" of Queens. Why? Is he against new housing? Does he prefer that construction workers be unemployed? Does he really think that everybody should be forced to live in the low-quality, slum-like conditions present in public housing? Is he opposed to new restaurants, shops, and grocery stores, all of which employ people? Should the subway not be rehabilitated?
Those questions are not rhetorical. The honest answer to all of them is "yes." Mr. Goodman is very much Pro-Poverty!
The best argument he can muster for more poverty is this:
For its part, Amazon promises 25,000 new jobs in New York City, with an average salary of $150,000, far above the average salary of the nearby Queensbridge Houses, the largest housing project in the U.S., where the poverty rate is near 50% and the average income is below $20,000. Amazon says it will spend $5 million in training. ...
Raymond Normandeau, a resident of Queensbridge Houses since 1973, told the on-line Gothamist, “It’s pure bullshit. They’re never going to hire us for these jobs. Only a country bumpkin like de Blasio or Cuomo would believe this shit.”Because of Queensbridge, nobody else should be allowed to earn any money.
My brief encounter with housing projects leads me to believe that most residents are old, disabled, and/or sick. So obviously they're not candidates for high-stress jobs at Amazon. Beyond which, residents of the Houses, even if not debilitated, do not have the skill set necessary for such employment. Because if they did they'd already have high-paying jobs and wouldn't be living in the projects. It's not like there is a surplus of skilled labor in the country.
The Queensbridge residents live almost entirely on taxpayer largesse, and occupy some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Nevertheless, they won't be displaced no matter what company moves to Queens--"gentrification" is not a problem for them.
Quite the contrary, their self-interest is that more people should earn enough to pay taxes. Of all people, they should support Amazon. An employee earning $150K will pay about $10K in state and city income taxes, for an annual haul of $250 million. That's just income tax--it doesn't include sales or property taxes, nor does it include taxes paid by construction workers, suppliers, and vendors who support Amazon and its employees.
It is truly bizarre that a few Queensbridge residents, along with Mr. Goodman, are so blinded by envy and ideology that they can't see the huge, indirect benefit that Amazon potentially provides for poor people in the Queensbridge Houses.
A bunch of Democrats (stupid ones), as pro-poverty as Mr. Goodman, pushed Amazon away, depriving the state and city of tens of billions of dollars in real revenue (as opposed to the hypothetical "handouts"). Progressive heroine Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez led the charge. She may win plaudits in her district, but her future in state and national politics is now foreclosed.
Most people are against poverty. Mr. Goodman is a rare exception.
Further Reading:
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Louis Proyect and Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel and Louis Proyect will both be astonished to learn that they agree with each other. Neither of them is enthusiastic about the process of "creative destruction," albeit for very different reasons. Mr. Thiel expresses his opinion in a fascinating Youtube video of a conversation between him and Cornel West (along with another unidentified gentleman) in a Harvard University classroom. (It's nearly two hours long. I watched it yesterday and do not have a transcript. My comments are based entirely on memory.)
Mr. Proyect's thoughts are recorded in a post entitled The Boeing 737 Max 8: a case-study in uncreative destruction. The lede paragraph:
Mr. Thiel's larger point is that we can no longer organize large-scale collective effort. That's readily apparent in public works: the NYC subway, public schools, NASA, Obamacare, etc. But Thiel argues that the rot is spreading into the private sector. The 737 scandal is not simple error or corruption on the part of some individuals--it is instead because the US can no longer manufacture aircraft. It's too complicated and we're increasingly incompetent.
I always thought Mr. Proyect was a pessimistic Luddite, but when it comes to pessimism Mr. Thiel has him beat by a mile. Don't watch the video if you're in need of cheering up.
Mr. Proyect's anti-technology bias does show through big-time, however. He bemoans automation on the flight deck, suggesting it deskills pilots. And it is true: nearly the entire commercial flight is by wire: from accelerating down the runway until landing, the pilots do nothing but oversee the computers. They are still in charge of landing the plane--the last hundred feet descent to the runway still requires human control.
They retain responsibility for when something goes wrong. Most dramatically that happened in 2009 when "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed an Airbus 320 in the Hudson river after bird strikes had knocked out both engines, saving all lives on board. Mr. Sullenberger was 1) a skilled pilot with military experience; 2) had spent countless hours in a simulator rehearsing emergency procedures; and 3) had a genius IQ. Lucky passengers!
Somebody in the video says "no human should be condemned to do work that a machine can do better." A computer can do straight and level flight much better than a human being. It's not a hard job (even I, a novice flight student, can do that), but it requires unflagging attention. People aren't good at that--certainly not on 14 hour trans-Pacific flights. Computers are much better.
I think Mr. Proyect believes we should go back to digging ditches with picks and shovels. Let's return to the days when men did real work!
Mr. Proyect thinks that we're on the cusp of pilotless planes. I think he's wrong--no computer will ever be able to deal with an emergency. Driverless trucks, if they run into problems, can simply pull over to the side of the road and wait for human assistance. An airplane can't do that; it has to land, one way or the other. For any circumstances outside the training of AI, a human being will have to be on board. Perhaps we'll reduce the number of pilots in the cockpit, but we'll never eliminate them.
I'm more optimistic than Mr. Thiel. I do think driverless trucks on the interstate are on the near horizon. Driverless taxis will be possible in simpler environments--say in small and mid-sized towns. Though it will be a long time before they're feasible in complex places like Manhattan or Mumbai.
Mr. Thiel does not bemoan creative destruction. It is a symptom of technological progress, and at the end of the day any durable improvement in our standard of living is because of new technology. The fact that (in his opinion) technology has come to a standstill means that per capita economic growth is now zero. There is not too much creative destruction, but rather too little. Or maybe none at all.
I'll observe that our current circumstance--full employment at low wages--supports Mr. Thiel's point of view. Technological change implies a lot of churn in the labor market, and that's what pundits keep predicting. (It's even what I predicted in my book on careers.) But perhaps there is no technological change. Perhaps, instead of churn, the problem is stasis. Then everybody works as hard as they can just to stay in the same place. No creativity, and also no destruction.
The worst outcome is zero growth, which is where Mr. Thiel believes is where we're at. Then everything becomes a zero-sum game. In a zero-growth world there is no room for charity.
I hope he's wrong.
Further Reading:
Mr. Proyect's thoughts are recorded in a post entitled The Boeing 737 Max 8: a case-study in uncreative destruction. The lede paragraph:
On October 29, 2018, a Boeing 737 Max 8 belonging to Lion Air in Indonesia crashed into the Java Sea 12 minutes after take-off. All 189 passengers and crew members were killed instantly. It is extremely unusual for planes to suffer such accidents in clear weather after having reached their cruising altitude. Flight experts concluded that the pilots were not adequately trained in the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a robotics technology that lowers the nose of a plane to prevent a stall. Although there is no definitive judgement on exactly what happened, it appears to be a combination of inadequate training for the pilots and a malfunctioning MCAS.His larger argument is that flying has become deskilled, and therefore pilots less competent. Similarly, he bemoans the rise of driverless cars. Noting that pedestrians have been killed by such vehicles, he writes,
Despite such incidents (there have been 4 fatalities already), the bourgeoisie is determined to push ahead since the savings in labor costs will make up for the collateral damage of dead pedestrians. While I am skeptical that completely driverless cars will ever become the norm for Uber or Lyft, I can see people with little driving experience being paid minimum wage just to be a back-up to the computer system—as long as they don’t watch TV on the job. (Fat chance with such a boring job.)Mr. Thiel agrees with him--the dead pedestrians are a problem. Indeed, Thiel goes further and suggests that driverless cars are mostly propaganda and won't happen for decades, if ever. The reason--we have become way too risk averse. He mentions that two dozen people died from polio vaccines when they first came out--there was a lot of uncertainty about the correct dosage. Had that happened today the whole vaccine effort would have been put on ice--the FDA would never approve a polio vaccine today.
Mr. Thiel's larger point is that we can no longer organize large-scale collective effort. That's readily apparent in public works: the NYC subway, public schools, NASA, Obamacare, etc. But Thiel argues that the rot is spreading into the private sector. The 737 scandal is not simple error or corruption on the part of some individuals--it is instead because the US can no longer manufacture aircraft. It's too complicated and we're increasingly incompetent.
I always thought Mr. Proyect was a pessimistic Luddite, but when it comes to pessimism Mr. Thiel has him beat by a mile. Don't watch the video if you're in need of cheering up.
Mr. Proyect's anti-technology bias does show through big-time, however. He bemoans automation on the flight deck, suggesting it deskills pilots. And it is true: nearly the entire commercial flight is by wire: from accelerating down the runway until landing, the pilots do nothing but oversee the computers. They are still in charge of landing the plane--the last hundred feet descent to the runway still requires human control.
They retain responsibility for when something goes wrong. Most dramatically that happened in 2009 when "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed an Airbus 320 in the Hudson river after bird strikes had knocked out both engines, saving all lives on board. Mr. Sullenberger was 1) a skilled pilot with military experience; 2) had spent countless hours in a simulator rehearsing emergency procedures; and 3) had a genius IQ. Lucky passengers!
Somebody in the video says "no human should be condemned to do work that a machine can do better." A computer can do straight and level flight much better than a human being. It's not a hard job (even I, a novice flight student, can do that), but it requires unflagging attention. People aren't good at that--certainly not on 14 hour trans-Pacific flights. Computers are much better.
I think Mr. Proyect believes we should go back to digging ditches with picks and shovels. Let's return to the days when men did real work!
Mr. Proyect thinks that we're on the cusp of pilotless planes. I think he's wrong--no computer will ever be able to deal with an emergency. Driverless trucks, if they run into problems, can simply pull over to the side of the road and wait for human assistance. An airplane can't do that; it has to land, one way or the other. For any circumstances outside the training of AI, a human being will have to be on board. Perhaps we'll reduce the number of pilots in the cockpit, but we'll never eliminate them.
I'm more optimistic than Mr. Thiel. I do think driverless trucks on the interstate are on the near horizon. Driverless taxis will be possible in simpler environments--say in small and mid-sized towns. Though it will be a long time before they're feasible in complex places like Manhattan or Mumbai.
Mr. Thiel does not bemoan creative destruction. It is a symptom of technological progress, and at the end of the day any durable improvement in our standard of living is because of new technology. The fact that (in his opinion) technology has come to a standstill means that per capita economic growth is now zero. There is not too much creative destruction, but rather too little. Or maybe none at all.
I'll observe that our current circumstance--full employment at low wages--supports Mr. Thiel's point of view. Technological change implies a lot of churn in the labor market, and that's what pundits keep predicting. (It's even what I predicted in my book on careers.) But perhaps there is no technological change. Perhaps, instead of churn, the problem is stasis. Then everybody works as hard as they can just to stay in the same place. No creativity, and also no destruction.
The worst outcome is zero growth, which is where Mr. Thiel believes is where we're at. Then everything becomes a zero-sum game. In a zero-growth world there is no room for charity.
I hope he's wrong.
Further Reading:
Monday, March 11, 2019
The Philippines
My first visit to the country was in 1988, and the last time I was there was 1995. So it's been 24 years--and gosh, the country sure has changed! It's much richer than before.
Manila traffic is still awful, but it's not as bad as I recall from my previous trips. They have expanded rail transit significantly. Just as important, they have built out the expressway and toll road system around Manila. The famous boulevard--Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, known universally by its initials, EDSA--has been converted to a full-fledged expressway. That cuts the heart out of the city, but it has hugely improved traffic flow.
EDSA, you may recall, was the site of the mass demonstrations that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. The date, February 25th, is celebrated as Revolution Day and is a national holiday. EDSA today could not host such an event--it would be like holding a mass rally on the Dan Ryan Expressway. I'm not real clear where a revolution today might happen. Rizal Park? Triangle Park in Makati? Roxas Blvd? I'd vote for the latter.
Manila used to be very polluted--everybody wore face masks. I'd end each day with my nose, eyes and ears filled with diesel dust. Today this is much improved, largely because the country is gradually banning the diesel-burning, smoke-spewing jeepneys. These iconic vehicles are being replaced by less attractive but much cleaner, gasoline powered minibuses.
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| Filipino Jeepney (Source) |
They've also banned smoking! There is no smoking in any mall, store, or restaurant. Indeed, apparently it's illegal to smoke on the street--I didn't see anybody doing it. I did see the occasional Jeepney driver lighting up.
Apart from the rail system (which I never used) public transit in the country is all privately owned and operated, beginning with the Jeepneys or their replacements. Bus lines are private, as are all the ferry boats. The latter are clean, punctual, safe, and cheap. Domestic air travel is also cheap, the result of competition between Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific. The toll roads are privately operated--I'm not sure who owns them or how the right-of-way was procured. They are in good shape, but the tolls are pretty steep. Accordingly there isn't too much traffic, and most users are trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles. By contrast, publicly-owned EDSA (which is not tolled) is a parking lot for much of the day.
Approximately 25% of all Filipinos are part of the global poor. The definition roughly corresponds to the United Nation's--less than $3/day. That means 75% of the country has moved into the global middle class, i.e., possesses some discretionary income.
Grab drivers (the Filipino equivalent of Uber) earn about $15/day (net of expenses). I think store clerks are paid similarly (there are a lot of them!). That's enough money to occasionally eat in a fast food restaurant, buy toys or cosmetics, or once in awhile take a day off and go to the beach. On the other hand, one of my wife's relatives is the director of a large Catholic school (more CEO than principal)--she earns $2,000 per month.
My wife grew up in a rural barangay ("village," or "neighborhood") 100 km south of Manila, known to locals by its initials: GKBB. It consists of a single road, lined on both sides by large, mostly unoccupied houses. The story of who built, owns, and occasionally lives in those houses is the story of the Philippine economy.
The country produces no industrial exports. Agricultural land is in short supply, and used mostly for local consumption. Regards services, since English is widely spoken many work in call centers, assisting American customers. Finally there is tourism--mostly oriented around beaches and diving.
By all rights the Philippines should be a very poor country--rather like Haiti--foreign exchange coming only from low-grade services and tourism. But it's much richer than that. It's because they export people.
One third of the world's seafarers are Filipino (source). Filipinos are favored employees for cruise lines--they're 60% of the crew on Royal Caribbean vessels (source).
While unskilled labor in the Persian Gulf comes mostly from India and Pakistan, the skilled trades and mid-level engineering jobs are held mostly by Filipinos. My wife's cousin spent 20 years in Saudi Arabia, before coming home to live off the proceeds.
Thousands of Filipina women work as domestics in Hong Kong and Singapore. Hong Kong's infamous yayas (nannies) lead very hard lives, as they do also in Singapore. The movie Ilo Ilo movingly relates the story of a yaya in Singapore. Filipinas by the tens of thousands staff brothels throughout East Asia and Australia.
In the United States Filipinos are concentrated in health professions--all the way from orderly to cardiac surgeon. You will also find them in engineering and hospitality jobs. The Filipino population in the US is estimated to be around 3.4 million (source).
The Philippine diaspora is truly global. My wife, children and I spent a year in Uganda--and sure enough we found a thriving community of several hundred Filipinos already there.
All those people send money home--money that's used to build fancy houses in their ancestral home towns such as GKBB, which they'll occupy when they visit or retire. In the meantime they sit mostly empty.
Of course this works--as long as the global economy grows, the Philippine economy grows with it. It's obviously grown like gangbusters since 1995--that's why the country is so much richer today than in 1995.
The precondition for the business model is that the Philippines has enough people to export. And sure enough, it has the highest fertility rate in East Asia. About 37% of the population in the central Visayas (Cebu) is below 10 years old (source). Filipinos are rightly proud of their shopping malls, but the biggest difference between those and malls in the US is this: In the Philippines they have lots of babies, while in the United States they have lots of baby boomers. (It's an added bonus for the tourist since Filipino children are crazy cute!) The Philippines is today a lifeline to places like Japan and South Korea, peoples so obsessed with birth control that they can't even reproduce themselves.
While the Filipino fertility rate is still about 3.0 (source), it is down from 3.5 in 2000 (source). A continuation of that trend spells disaster for the country--you can't export people if you don't have any. Without people, the country becomes as poor as Haiti.
But, being optimistic, let's hope they maintain their birth rates. Then the future belongs to the Filipino. And that's not a bad future. Not bad at all.
This isn't a travel blog. Still, here are a few pics from my trip.
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| Momo Beach on Panglao Island. Cebu Island is visible in the distance. |
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| Manila Bay and city skyline--from our hotel (TRYP at Mall of Asia). |
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| Cross of the Holy Child--Magellan's Cross in Cebu |
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| Magellan was killed fighting for King Humabon against the Lapu-Lapu on neighboring Mactan Island. |
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| The Chocolate Hills, Bohol |
Further Reading:
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Book Review: From Fire, By Water
Author Sohrab Ahmari's memoir is entitled From Fire, By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith.
I first encountered Mr. Ahmari's writing in the pages of Commentary Magazine, the only print periodical to which I still subscribe. I do so because the writing is unfailingly excellent and about topics that interest me. Mr. Ahmari's contributions were no exception. In my mind's eye I pictured him as an old, wizened Iranian Jew, highly educated and long since exiled from his homeland.
So it was a shock to learn that he was born in Tehran in 1985, and raised in a nominally Muslim, mostly secular, upper-middle class family who imagined themselves to be "intellectuals." He and his mother emigrated to America when he was 13 years old, settling in (of all places) rural Utah. There he finished high school and attended college at Utah State, eventually graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Washington.
So I'm a sucker for the spiritual journey memoir. The first one I read many years ago was Thomas Merton's famous Seven Storey Mountain, a book describing his journey to a Trappist monastery. I even enjoy the genre in movies--among the few films I have watched more than once is the low-brow rom-com Finding Normal. While not explicitly churchy, the lady protagonist finds love, faith and happiness in small town Normal, Louisiana.
A spiritual journey typically involves a descent into "hell" (my term) followed by a climb back into the light. That is precisely the path followed by our protagonist, including a lot of drinking and loose living. Mostly it's an intellectual journey, beginning with the faux-intellectualism of his youth and bottoming out in dissolution.
Of specific interest to this blog's readers is his stop on the way down at Trotskyism. While a student at Utah State (must've been around 2003) he contacted a grouplet in Salt Lake City called the Worker's Alliance, supposedly affiliated with the Fourth International. They published a newspaper called Equity. I have never heard of this organization before, which given the plethora of Trotskyist grouplets is not surprising. But Google doesn't help--a search for Worker's Alliance or Equity turns up no relevant results.
My hunch is that our author has changed the names so as not to embarrass anybody.
Mr. Ahmari, now committed to his new ideology, moves to Seattle where the national headquarters was located, and to complete his education at UW. The only Trotskyist organization I know of headquartered in Seattle is the Freedom Socialist Party, along with sundry splinter sects therefrom. But that group is centered more around a bespoke version of feminism than Trotskyism--a topic never mentioned in the book.
One more odd thing: Mr. Ahmari refers to his comrades as "Trotskyites," a name that in our day we found insulting and derogatory. It was the term of abuse Stalinists employed against us. Accordingly we always called ourselves "Trotskyists." Though by 2003 the Stalin/Trotsky thing may have faded into history, and perhaps that bit of political correctness was no longer necessary.
Apart from walking a few picket lines, Mr. Ahmari didn't do very much. He never reports writing for their newspaper--a natural thing for him to do. Mostly he engaged in long conversations that he perceived as indoctrination sessions. For him, Trotskyism was an intellectual waystation--there was very little about it of practical significance. In my day we would have called him a dilettante--I don't think he'd disagree with that description.
Though the book is overwhelmingly intellectual, in one episode reality breaks through. Our author is locked in a room with a bunch of very poor, very desperate men about to embark on a dangerous and illegal journey, and for whom there was no turning back. Naturally, in that environment some people behave badly. In his words:
Rather than spiritual journey, another way to read the book is as a coming of age story. In this it is remarkably similar to Hillbilly Elegy (my review here), authored by J.D. Vance. Unlike Mr. Ahmari, Mr. Vance didn't descend into "hell," but rather was born there. And the rise wasn't spiritual as much as sociological or political. Both of them found their calling at about age 30, which I think is when the (male) personality reaches maturity. (My history is similar.)
Mr. Vance, at least, is accompanied on his journey by other people, notably his sister, Lindsay. The book is as much about his grandparents as it is about him. But he acquires a wife only at the end--she arrives as a reward for successfully coming of age.
By contrast, Mr. Ahmari travels alone. His grandparents figure in the first chapter, and his mother also during the first years in Utah. But once he leaves home we barely hear from them again. I, for one, wanted very much to know how his mother made out. Unlike Mr. Vance, he gets married midway through his sojourn. The new bride makes a cameo appearance, after which he leaves her for London where he embarks on becoming a Catholic by himself.
Mrs. Ahmari must have been present (on the most important day of his life) when he'd "have the archdiocese convalidate my civil marriage." But she's not mentioned by name, and even the grammar of the sentence suggests she wasn't even there. She plays absolutely no part in his conversion, and behaves like she's a wooden post.
Weird.
There's probably an innocent explanation. Perhaps Mrs. Ahmari enjoys her privacy and doesn't want to be in the book? Or maybe he's convinced that conversion is an internal affair of the heart--solely a matter between him and God? Whatever--he comes across as a selfish cad.
How different this is from the movie Finding Normal, where the beloved is not only a suitor, but also an agent of transformation. It's the romance that makes the movie, and the movie can then carry the underlying message of faith, hope and love.
I have one more nit to pick, and only because I'm a certified geographical pedant. Mr. Ahmari's knowledge of our country's geography is simply appalling! Brownsville is not anywhere close to the Texas panhandle, nor is California north of Texas. I'm astonished that such obvious errors got by the book editors.
The above paints too negative a picture. I actually enjoyed this book--a lot. Mr. Ahmari is a good writer, it's an engaging read, I'm a fan of the genre, and it's not too long. I read it over two or three evenings just before bedtime. Beyond journeys, spiritual or otherwise, you'll learn a lot about both Iran and Utah. My review leaves out the good stuff. In part that's on purpose--go read the book for yourself.
Further Reading:
I first encountered Mr. Ahmari's writing in the pages of Commentary Magazine, the only print periodical to which I still subscribe. I do so because the writing is unfailingly excellent and about topics that interest me. Mr. Ahmari's contributions were no exception. In my mind's eye I pictured him as an old, wizened Iranian Jew, highly educated and long since exiled from his homeland.
So it was a shock to learn that he was born in Tehran in 1985, and raised in a nominally Muslim, mostly secular, upper-middle class family who imagined themselves to be "intellectuals." He and his mother emigrated to America when he was 13 years old, settling in (of all places) rural Utah. There he finished high school and attended college at Utah State, eventually graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Washington.
So I'm a sucker for the spiritual journey memoir. The first one I read many years ago was Thomas Merton's famous Seven Storey Mountain, a book describing his journey to a Trappist monastery. I even enjoy the genre in movies--among the few films I have watched more than once is the low-brow rom-com Finding Normal. While not explicitly churchy, the lady protagonist finds love, faith and happiness in small town Normal, Louisiana.
A spiritual journey typically involves a descent into "hell" (my term) followed by a climb back into the light. That is precisely the path followed by our protagonist, including a lot of drinking and loose living. Mostly it's an intellectual journey, beginning with the faux-intellectualism of his youth and bottoming out in dissolution.
Of specific interest to this blog's readers is his stop on the way down at Trotskyism. While a student at Utah State (must've been around 2003) he contacted a grouplet in Salt Lake City called the Worker's Alliance, supposedly affiliated with the Fourth International. They published a newspaper called Equity. I have never heard of this organization before, which given the plethora of Trotskyist grouplets is not surprising. But Google doesn't help--a search for Worker's Alliance or Equity turns up no relevant results.
My hunch is that our author has changed the names so as not to embarrass anybody.
Mr. Ahmari, now committed to his new ideology, moves to Seattle where the national headquarters was located, and to complete his education at UW. The only Trotskyist organization I know of headquartered in Seattle is the Freedom Socialist Party, along with sundry splinter sects therefrom. But that group is centered more around a bespoke version of feminism than Trotskyism--a topic never mentioned in the book.
One more odd thing: Mr. Ahmari refers to his comrades as "Trotskyites," a name that in our day we found insulting and derogatory. It was the term of abuse Stalinists employed against us. Accordingly we always called ourselves "Trotskyists." Though by 2003 the Stalin/Trotsky thing may have faded into history, and perhaps that bit of political correctness was no longer necessary.
Apart from walking a few picket lines, Mr. Ahmari didn't do very much. He never reports writing for their newspaper--a natural thing for him to do. Mostly he engaged in long conversations that he perceived as indoctrination sessions. For him, Trotskyism was an intellectual waystation--there was very little about it of practical significance. In my day we would have called him a dilettante--I don't think he'd disagree with that description.
Though the book is overwhelmingly intellectual, in one episode reality breaks through. Our author is locked in a room with a bunch of very poor, very desperate men about to embark on a dangerous and illegal journey, and for whom there was no turning back. Naturally, in that environment some people behave badly. In his words:
[The] house was a kind of charnel pit or Sheol, though the people in it were yet alive. It was a void, though it existed within the boundaries of space and time. It was on fire with degradation--and sin.I wasn't there, so I don't know. But from his account I think he overstates the case. Yes, bad things happened. But there were also small acts of heroism and charity. There was degradation--but more because of poverty, panic and desperation than sin. Describing it as "Sheol" seems uncharitable.
Rather than spiritual journey, another way to read the book is as a coming of age story. In this it is remarkably similar to Hillbilly Elegy (my review here), authored by J.D. Vance. Unlike Mr. Ahmari, Mr. Vance didn't descend into "hell," but rather was born there. And the rise wasn't spiritual as much as sociological or political. Both of them found their calling at about age 30, which I think is when the (male) personality reaches maturity. (My history is similar.)
Mr. Vance, at least, is accompanied on his journey by other people, notably his sister, Lindsay. The book is as much about his grandparents as it is about him. But he acquires a wife only at the end--she arrives as a reward for successfully coming of age.
By contrast, Mr. Ahmari travels alone. His grandparents figure in the first chapter, and his mother also during the first years in Utah. But once he leaves home we barely hear from them again. I, for one, wanted very much to know how his mother made out. Unlike Mr. Vance, he gets married midway through his sojourn. The new bride makes a cameo appearance, after which he leaves her for London where he embarks on becoming a Catholic by himself.
Mrs. Ahmari must have been present (on the most important day of his life) when he'd "have the archdiocese convalidate my civil marriage." But she's not mentioned by name, and even the grammar of the sentence suggests she wasn't even there. She plays absolutely no part in his conversion, and behaves like she's a wooden post.
Weird.
There's probably an innocent explanation. Perhaps Mrs. Ahmari enjoys her privacy and doesn't want to be in the book? Or maybe he's convinced that conversion is an internal affair of the heart--solely a matter between him and God? Whatever--he comes across as a selfish cad.
How different this is from the movie Finding Normal, where the beloved is not only a suitor, but also an agent of transformation. It's the romance that makes the movie, and the movie can then carry the underlying message of faith, hope and love.
I have one more nit to pick, and only because I'm a certified geographical pedant. Mr. Ahmari's knowledge of our country's geography is simply appalling! Brownsville is not anywhere close to the Texas panhandle, nor is California north of Texas. I'm astonished that such obvious errors got by the book editors.
The above paints too negative a picture. I actually enjoyed this book--a lot. Mr. Ahmari is a good writer, it's an engaging read, I'm a fan of the genre, and it's not too long. I read it over two or three evenings just before bedtime. Beyond journeys, spiritual or otherwise, you'll learn a lot about both Iran and Utah. My review leaves out the good stuff. In part that's on purpose--go read the book for yourself.
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