SOCIETY – Page 11 – REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

VENGEFUL IDEALIST

The election results are in, and Trump is our President once again. This is a sad commentary on the will of the American people and the threat America is to world economic comity.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

People, Power, and Profits (Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent)

By: Joseph E. Stiglitz

Narrated By: Sean Runnette

Joseph Stiglitz (Author, American economist, public policy analyst, received a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001.)

With reservation, Joseph Stiglitz’s book “People, Power, and Profits” is reviewed here. The reservation is because of the risk of succumbing to echo-chamber’ belief. That belief is that corporations and wealthy individuals should not be able to pour as much money as they want into the American election process, that bankers unjustly escaped punishment for the 2008 financial crises, and that Donald Trump should never again be elected President of the United States.

Stiglitz is considered a “New Keynesian” economist which puts him at odds with famous economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Friedman believes the most effective fiscal policies comes from monetary policy control by the government. Hayek believed in a market economy with as little government intervention as possible. Stiglitz flatly disagrees with Hayek and only agrees with Friedman in that government has a responsibility to intervene in government economic policy. Stiglitz identity as a “New” Keynesian is because, unlike Keynes’ economic theory, there is no waiting for an economic crisis for government to intervene but to intervene now to make future economic crises less likely.

John Maynard Keynes (English, Eton and King’s College graduate, mathematician, economist, 1883-1946, died at age 62.)

Why I am concerned about listening to Stiglitz’s book about the economy is that I am listening to some things I already believe. I believe the gap between rich, and poor is the greatest threat to, not only American democracy, but all forms of government. Stiglitz may be my echo chamber.

Stiglitz believes in democratic government intervention to ameliorate the wide gap between rich and poor.

Stiglitz has an idealist platform to cure what he views as the solution to narrowing the gap between rich and poor in America. Stiglitz makes five policy recommendations to reduce the gap between rich and poor in America.

Increase taxes on income from capital gains and inheritance.
Use tax revenues to improve public education in ways that equalize costs between the rich and poor.
Refine anti-trust laws to prevent monopolies and promote competition.
Intervene in corporate governance to ensure fairer compensation between management and labor.
Regulate banks to prevent exploitation of the public.

These are defensible polices but they have to survive the give and take political process of American democratic government.

However, that process is unfairly biased by allowing corporations and the wealthy to pour disproportionate amounts of money into the American election process. Contribution by corporations and the wealthy should be limited because candidates are beholding to big financial donors with little concern for the poor.

Small donors driving 2020 presidential race

In the 2020 and 2024 election cycle, big donors contributed from 75 to 78 percent of campaign donations.

The problem with Stiglitz’s book is not in his recommendations but in his vengeful angel’ rhetoric. America is founded on freedom, not revenge. It is the give and take of differences of opinion and “checks and balances” of the Constitution that have made America great. Many mistakes have been made and are still being made by our government but even a horrible President like Trump cannot change the fundamental direction of our democracy.

John F. Kennedy’s belief that a rising tide lifts all boats has not provided life vests to the poor in America.

The gap between rich and poor in America must be resolved. Neither Harris nor Stiglitz may be the answer, but Trump is only going to try to resurrect a past that has led our government in the wrong direction. The unconscionable cost of medical services and drugs, extraordinary compensation for executives, regressive taxes, election financing bias, and financial industry greed must be addressed through the American political process.

American democracy’s failures will not be cured, but they must be addressed and ameliorated to remain a beacon for freedom in the world. The election results are in, and Trump is our President once again. This is a sad commentary on the will of the American people and the threat America is to world economic comity.

AMERICAN SLAVERY

The truth Everett reveals in “James” is that men and women of color are neither the same nor different than other people of the world.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

James (A Novel)

By: Percival Everett

Narrated By: Dominic Hoffman

Percival Everett (Author, Distinguished Professor of English at University of Southern California, winner of the Booker Prize in 2024 for “James”.)

The Booker Prize is a prestigious British literary award for “…the best sustained work of fiction written in English”. The award was first created in 1969. Percival Everett’s “James” is an imaginative work well-deserved of the award. Everett recalls a version of Samuel Clemen’s (Mark Twain’s) character Huckleberry Finn and makes him a white-boy companion of a self-educated slave in the American South. The slave’s name is “James”, called Jim in Everett’s story.

Jim and his family are about to be separated with his sale to a New Orleans slave owner.

Jim finds out that he is to be sold by his owner. Jim chooses to leave the family he loves to avoid separation from his wife and daughter in Hannibal, Missouri. His hope is to reunite with his family by somehow earning enough money to buy his family from their slave owner, i.e. an unrealistic prospect considering the owner’s loss of a slave’s sale. Jim escapes on a raft to an island on the Mississippi river and comes across Huck, a young boy who also escapes to the island. Jim is acquainted with Huck from a friendship he has with Tom Sawyer who plays tricks on people in the neighborhood.

Huck , as most know, is Mark Twain’s creation in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

Huck is characterized as Mark Twain described him, i.e., the son of a white father who abuses him. In Jim’s escape to the island, he finds Huck’s father’s body. Huck’s father is dead. Huck is unaware of his father’s death and Jim chooses not to tell him. Huck and Jim decide to leave together on a raft. Jim leaves for obvious reasons. Huck presumably leaves with him because of his troubled relationship with a father who beats him and a mother who has been dead for years.

What is cleverly explained by Percival Everett is how Jim is a teacher to black children in his Hannibal neighborhood.

The essence of Jim’s teaching is to hide the intelligence of black people by teaching children how to hide their intelligence. Jim explains they should talk in the patois of black slang while keeping their own council, appearing respectful to their white enslavers. Everett is symbolically illustrating how slaves were the equals of their slave holders by showing they hid their innate intelligence. Everett’s hero understands the truth of slavery’s iniquity with the story of Jim’s escape and eventual triumph.

What makes Everett’s book an award winner is its pacing and descriptive events that draw reader/listeners into the history of American slavery and the advent of the Civil War.

Everett clearly shows the horror of being a slave. Men and women are beaten, raped, and murdered at the discretion of white people who believe the color-of-one’s-skin marks human beings as property, qualifies them for enslavement, and proves their inequality.

There are a number of incredible surprises at the end of Everett’s story. The Civil War has begun and the fight between North and South are made clear in Jim’s apocryphal return to Hannible with Huck. Huck’s relationship with Jim grows into something Twain never suggests.

The truth Everett reveals in “James” is that men and women of color are neither the same nor different than other people of the world. They are simply human beings.

Everett shows how powerful social interests can grow to treat powerless cultures as property and make them think and feel inferior.

SERVICE TO HUMANITY

Harari explains why bureaucracy and A.I. can mislead as easily as inform. A.I. should never be considered a decision maker but a tool for human understanding of a complex world.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Nexus (A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)

By: Yuval Noah Harari

Narrated By: Vidish Athavale

Yuval Noah Harari (Author, Israeli medievalist, historian, and public intellectual serving as a professor in the Department of History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Yuval Noah Harari’s “Nexus” is a perspective on information networks and how they evolve from neanderthal grunts to the fundamental link of society. Harari dissects human history and information networks with an eye toward the existence and future of Artificial Intelligence. Harari’s point is that information networks create, control, and compel change. Civilization began with verbal, then written, then video, and finally digital information that brings human beings together into larger and larger groups.

Networked information creates interest groups. Harari explains these interest groups rise from the evolution of information networks.

With written documents and invention of the printing press, the influence of information spreads across the world. Reproduced documents like government Constitutions, the Bible, Quran, The Torah, The Vedas, The Tripitaka, The Guru Granth Shib, The Tao Te Ching, and The Bhagavad Gita create followers whose understanding of society is reenforced by bureaucratic organizations. Villages, towns, cities, and nations grow from religious organizations and government bureaucracies.

Harari notes how information network’s compel obeisance to group think.

Human conflicts may be based on the desire for money, power, and prestige, but Harari’s point is that the agency of change is the information network. Without cohesiveness of an information network, governments, rebellions, and invasions fail. Successful governments, whether formed from rebellions, or invasions succeed or fail based on bureaucracies that use information networks to influence and indoctrinate citizens of established or acquired territories. The power of information networks is exponentially increased by A.I.

The crux of Harari’s concern is the difference between autocracy and democracy and the harmful potential of a digital age that uses information networks to weaponize and control society with the addition of A.I.

The next great economic revolution, after the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions is today’s Information Age. I would argue America nearly lost control of the great wealth it created by making the rich richer and the poor unchanged. American democracy’s inequality of opportunity remains a work in process.

America’s failure to provide income equality.

Providing equal economic opportunity is a complicated achievement because it begins with the birth of newborns, acceptance of legal immigration and an education system that fairly serves the needs of society. America is among the wealthiest nations in the world but unlike the Nordic countries and its northern neighbor, Canada, it ranks below the middle for income equality. America’s economic tide is not raising all boats. The Information Age provides an opportunity for America to get its economy right by using A.I. to create a more equal income opportunity for its citizens.

We are moving out of the industrial age.

We are entering the human services age. A.I. presents a second opportunity for America to address income inequality by educating young Americans, immigrants, and citizens to serve the needs of themselves and the people of society. America needs to smooth the transition from being just a product producer to both a producer of goods and services. As A.I. reduces employment for product production, workers should be reeducated to become workers in service to society.

Harari’s book is erudite, enlightening, and worth one’s time to read and understand. He advises of many things beyond what is mentioned in this brief review. Harari explains why bureaucracy is both a good and bad thing and that A.I. can mislead as easily as inform. A.I. should never be considered a decision maker but a tool for human understanding of a complex world.

TO BE JEWISH

One hopes for more Leifer’s in this world of human tragedy.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Tablets Shattered (The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life)

By: Joshua Leifer

Narrated By: Eli Schiff

Joshua Leifer (Author, journalist and scholar who explores the past and present of American Jewry, Leifer pursues a PhD at Yale on the history of modern moral and social thought.)

Joshua Leifer reflects on the Americanization of Jewish ethnicity in modern times. Leifer offers his personal view of modern events in Israel, including the terror of October 7th, 2023, and its aftermath.

In the last month, my wife and I journeyed to Poland, the Baltics, and Finland.

On the trip, we visited Auschwitz, the terror of Soviet occupation of the Baltics, and the tenuous relationship of Finland and Russia. More will be shared in a future review.

The holocaust is made present to anyone who chooses to visit Auschwitz.

This is a monument to the Holocaust, located in Germany.

Leifer’s book is not about Auschwitz’s atrocity but about a diminishment of Jewish identity. One who reads or listens to Leifer’s view of Jewish ethnicity will look at Judaism in a different way. Regardless of one’s personal beliefs, Leifer argues Judaism is losing its way from what he believes is a fundamental tenet of the Jewish religion. That tenet is that Judaism will always be a minority within cultures of the world and, as a minority, Leiger argues it is critically important for followers to return to its Judaic roots. Leifer implies Americanization of Judaism is a social influence that threatens the Tablets of the Covenant, i.e., the Ten Commandments.

Leifer explains that Israel will continue to grow as an independent nation with an exodus of Jewish believers from America and the world. Leifer suggests that exodus is evident in the diminishing number of American Jews who have chosen to leave America to become Israeli citizens. His hope is that in Jews return to a nation of their own with a renewed belief and adherence to the Ten Commandments.

I am the Lord your God: You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make for yourself a graven image: No idols or images.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
- Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet: Do not desire your neighbor’s house, wife, or possessions.

Of particular note is the Haredim who adhere to traditional Jewish law and customs.

There is an underlying accusation in Leifer’s book that America reinforced want for money, power, and prestige that changed the nature of Judaism.

However, human nature is a failing in all cultures. The truth is that all forms of government and culture seduce human beings to violate the Ten Commandments: not only Jewish followers. Human nature is an equal opportunity exploiter of society and people.

Leifer does have a point in that any ethnicity that truly follows the ten commandments is better than one that ignores them.

The fault in Leifer’s belief is that the ten commandments will or can be universally accepted by any culture or ethnicity. Human nature can be improved upon, but one doubts it can be erased by either religious or secular teaching of the Commandments.

Leifer hopes for a two-state solution in Israel. That seems a laudable and achievable goal, but human nature remains the same. With statehood, both Israeli and Palestinian societies may become better but there will always be the threat of Commandment violation because of human nature. One hopes for more Leifer’s in this world of human tragedy.

POLITICAL CHAOS

Tariffs to restrict foreign production is shooting citizens in the foot by artificially increasing the cost of living.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It

By: Dambisa Moyo

Narrated By: Pamala Tyson

Dambisa Moyo (Zambian-born economist and author with a BS and MBA from Harvard, former World Bank consultant to Europe, Central Asia and Africa.)

“Edge of Chaos” is a revelatory and intelligent analysis of economic rewards and risks of democracies and dictatorships. Fundamentally, Moyo argues failures of government economies are related to societal instability and short-term government economic policies that are disproportionately influenced by monied interests and kleptocratic political leaders. Rich corporations and kleptocratic leaders distort economic opportunity, create chaos while producing and exacerbating economic inequality. She argues America is at the edge of chaos because of a flawed democratic election system that is biased toward short-term rather than long term economic policy.

Moyo identifies the Gini index of income inequality to show that there is little difference between the rich and poor in China and the United States despite their government leaders’ differences.

China is a dictatorship while America is a form of democracy. They are nearly the same on the Gini index scale of citizen inequality while South Africa, Zambia and Brazil are at the bottom. Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus and most of the Scandinavian countries show the lowest differences in citizen’ economic inequality. Mayo argues the difference has little to do with their forms of government except in relation to their government policies. In her opinion, China and the United States could improve their citizen’s Gini index position if their government policies would focus on income equality.

Both China and America have relative stability but with different forms of government.

Unquestionably, freedom is the sine non quo (indispensable ingredient) of America, but it is income inequality that causes the chaos Moyo alludes to in her book. That chaos is not overtly apparent in China because of dictatorship but one who has traveled to China feels there is a similar level of discontent, if not chaos, among its citizens over economic inequality.

Moyo’s solution for reducing America’s growing chaos seems difficult but not impossible to implement.

Dambisa Moyo’s solution revolves around the following 8 recommendations.

Make voting compulsory to increase voter participation more representative of the people.
Make election to the House of Representatives a six-year term like the Senate to encourage longer term economic goals but limit the number of terms one can be in office. (Eliminate career politicians.)
Increase the pay of politicians to what successful private sector leaders receive.
Establish policy making agencies that can focus on long-term policies without being threatened by near term election cycles.
Invest in the education of future leaders of the political system.
Encourage public officials to focus on economic diversification with an educated understanding of technological change in the world.
The wealth of the nation should be focused on reduction of economic inequality.
Strategies to manage natural resources should be developed to focus on sustainability.

Fair trade is where America is on the wrong side of history according to the author.

Adam Smith believed in fair trade.

Adam Smith argued for removing trade barriers like tariffs and quotas because of limited natural resources. He explains resources are more efficiently allocated, product production is increased, and economic growth is improved with free trade. As inferred by Moyo, American chaos is partly a result of ignoring Adam Smith’s prescient understanding of economics.

America democracy has journeyed a long way since 1776.

America’s fundamental success came from its emphasis on freedom within rules-of-law organized around the “checks and balances” of three distinct branches of government, i.e., the executive, congressional, and judicial branches. This is the strength of American Democracy that has offered stability. The inference made in “Edge of Chaos” is that America’s stability is at risk if it does not adapt to technological change wrought by A.I. and global interconnectivity.

Service is a growth industry in America.

Technology is changing the nature of American productivity from material products to service. With the help of A.I., America can begin to address many of the service needs of its citizens. From aid to the homeless, to education for service to others, to drug treatment of the addicted, to improved health care for all, the prosperity and income of Americans can be more equitably shared.

Global interconnectivity requires greater acceptance of fair trade as originally described by Adam Smith.

Today’s alleged protection of worker employment by using tariffs to restrict foreign production is shooting citizens in the foot by artificially increasing the cost of living. Re-education for service to the public by using A.I. to make citizens more human-centered offers an alternative to 21st century American chaos.

These are intelligent observations by a very young and well-educated author.

HARSH ASSESSMENT

No one can kill an idea. Ideas come from human beings who believe, rightly or wrongly, they are being victimized.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Homeland (The War on Terror in American Life)

By: Richard Beck

Narrated By: Patrick Harrison

Richard Beck (Born in 1987, received a BA from Harvard in 2009, Masters Degree in music from the University of North Texas, and Doctorate in performance and pedagogy from University of Iowa.)

On September 11, 2001, Richard Beck was 14 years old, living in a suburb of Philadelphia. In remembering life before 9/11, Beck looks at that tragedy as a reminder of life and America’s struggle to become a free and independent nation. “Homeland” uses the tragedy of 9/11 as an introduction to what might be interpreted as American Cowboyism.

Beck suggests the myth of American cowboys exemplifies who and what American society has been and will always be.

His recollection of 9/11’s news coverage is a distortion of reality. The reaction of the fire department, rather than heroic, is characterized as a matter of clean-up and ducking from falling debris and bodies, not of climbing stairs or entering buildings engulphed in fire and nearing collapse. Beck suggests like the myth of cowboys ridding America of Indian savages, expanding, and conquering the West, that firemen and rescuers did little to save workers in the towers collapse.

Beck’s history smacks of not being there but watching tv, reading echo chamber books, and listening to and watching news of the 9/11 tragedy.

Heroism is being there when the planes hit the towers, when smoke and debris were choking firefighters and police trying to cordon the area from surrounding businesses and people. This is the same fault Beck has of writing of unreasonably lionized frontiersmen and later leaders of America and the mistakes made by America’s leaders in the Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. Horrible things have happened in America’s history that have been caused by humans who are not gods but fallible, self-interested strivers for a better life. The meaning of life in America evolves just as it does in every country of the world. No society is proud of their failures, but failures are part of being human. Obviously, it is how we overcome failures that makes society.

Beck’s inference that Martin Luther King’s “…arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice” as a false observation breaks a listener’s heart.

Many would disagree because life for native Americans, women, non-white minorities, and the white majority have improved over the years since the founding of American democracy. This is not to say, there are not miles to go for America to realize equality-of-opportunity for all its citizens.

Beck uses the great tragedy of Gaza and Israel’s occupation and murder of innocents as a primary example of American Democracy’s failure.

There is little to argue that Israel is crossing a Rubicon of regret for their slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Palestine has as much right to exist as the nation of Israel.

America’s position has been to support Israel because they are a bastion against systems of government that have little to no interest in equality of opportunity for all. The author fails to appreciate America’s guilt for turning away Jewish immigrants fleeing Europe during WWII when six million Jewish people were slaughtered in concentration camps.

Beck’s history disregards and diminishes the history of Jewish ethnicity that has given so much to societies’ advance of science, literature, and political theory.

This is not to argue Israel is right in thinking that ridding Hamas or Hezbollah leaders can be accomplished with ethnic cleansing while murdering innocent bystanders. No one can kill an idea. Ideas come from human beings who believe, rightly or wrongly, they are being victimized. Israel is making the same mistake Nazi’s made when they began exterminating Jews in WWII.

CLICKS

Just as McCulloch’s history shows how the internet changed yesterday, it seems A.I. will change the future.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

How the Internet Happened (From Netscape to the iPhone)

By: Brian McCullough

Narrated By: Timothy Pabon

Brian McCullough (Author, CEO of Resume Writers.com, entrepreneur.)

A book about the beginning of the internet is such old news, one is inclined to put this book aside. The internet was born in the 1960s and only became recognizable in the 1980s. However, even in 2024, it is interesting to hear about early users who became rich just by organizing information on an easily accessible and free media platform.

Like this blog, it is rewarding to write something that others are interested in reading.

The exercise of book reviews is a reward to one’s education and an ego boost for a writer from an audiences’ clicks. Brian McCullough tells the story of the founders of YAHOO, Jerry Yang and David Filo who were in college and became fascinated by the World Wide Web because of information it offered with clicks on a computer board. This was in the 1990s. Though there were many websites to choose from, they were disorganized and difficult to find if you were looking for specific information. Yang and Filo began organizing the websites by their offered information. YAHOO’S founders were looking for information of interest to them, and presumed others would like to know how they could use a keyboard to find information they might need or want.

Jerry Yang and David Filo were fascinated by what could be found on the internet.

They spent hours, days, weeks, months that grew into years organizing website addresses so others could find what was interesting to them. In these early years, making money was not their primary objective. They did not use their site to advertise products for income. They felt clicks were their reward and that clicks would be lost if advertisers were allowed to use their site. They chose to have users pay a fee to become members of their site. Their use and organization of the internet became an obsession for them and followers steadily increased. Their click numbers and users rose into the millions and advertisers were again knocking at their door. They resisted until they realized their idea could be worth something more than their interest in learning, gathering, and organizing knowledge. They relented, allowed advertising, and the clicks to their site kept on rising. YAHOO went public. The rest is history.

McCulloch goes on to describe the rise and fall of companies that capitalize on the internet.

The companies ranged from behemoth companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Ebay that rocketed to the stratosphere while Priceline.com, Netscape, Pets.com, Webvan and others plunged into the abyss. This is not to say today’s behemoths will continue to dominate the market or that some new company will replace their success with even greater appeal. A.I., like the internet, may be a killer discovery that makes or breaks today’s behemoths into tomorrow’s also-rans or hangers-on.

McCulloch’s history is interesting because it explains how winners understood the future better than losers understood the present.

It’s fascinating to find Apple’s Jobs resisted creation of the iPhone but employees worked secretly to refine the idea and Jobs eventually agreed. McCulloch also reveals the monopolistic nature of today’s winners and the threat they present to the future. Killer ideas of today’s tech companies capitalize on the internet’s information ubiquity, and how it can be organized to offer product to the world at a competitive price.

A.I. is a new idea that organizes information on its own with consequences to the public that are yet to be realized. Just as McCulloch’s history shows how the internet changed yesterday, it seems A.I. will change the future.

RULE BY THE ONE

With rule by the one there are no checks and balances which threatens war and discounts peace.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Autocracy, Inc. (The Dictators Who Want to Run the World)

By: Anne Applebaum

Narrated By: Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum (Author, journalist, historian, wrote Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction with “Gulag: A History” Also wrote “Red Famine”, both of which have been reviewed in this blog.)

“Autocracy, Inc.” infers there are two forms of government in the world, one is autocratic, the other democratic. Applebaum shows autocracies are often venal and kleptocratic. One might agree, but immorality and greed are a part of human nature in every form of government. This is not something Applebaum denies, but all forms of government have experienced excesses of wealth and power that have led to autocracy. What Applebaum argues is that autocracy is more threatening today than at any time in history.

The prestige of national leaders is by definition power.

As the British Lord Acton noted in 1887–“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Both democratic and autocratic leaders are subject to Acton’s aphorism. This is not to say Applebaum’s argument is not important, but no form of government, including democracy, has been found to fairly regulate the faults of human nature.

What Applebaum makes clear is that autocracy magnifies the faults of human nature because in countries like China, North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, parts of Africa, and similar autocracies, there are no checks and balances.

Imprisonment, torture, and murder for challenges to leadership are condoned, and commonplace. Applebaum’s added dimension is that many autocratic nations have begun aligning themselves to split the world between the lands of the relatively free and the chained.

Applebaum offers many examples of imprisonment, torture, and murder in autocratic countries. Some of the most famous are Navalny in Russia, the Nobel Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo in China, Jang Song-thaek, the second most powerful leader in North Korea, and of course, Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar. However, what makes Applebaum’s history terrifying is the calculated and cooperative effort by aligned autocracies to subvert freedoms offered in America and other democratic countries.

The author argues many autocratic leaders have become so powerful that no fellow countryman, regardless of their location, is safe from incarceration or assassination.

Assassination of Kim Jon Un’s brother.

Vladimir Putin is believed to have ordered the assassination of a number of Russian citizens around the world. Autocracies use the tools of State to directly or indirectly threaten or assassinate dissidents anywhere in the world.

Facial recognition in China.

The advance of Artificial Intelligence has magnified the strength of autocratic rule with tools of surveillance, assassination, and indoctrination that reach around the world. Applebaum argues the line between democracies and autocracies is hardening to the point of irreconcilable difference, leading to wars between states and territories like Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza.

Democracy has its problems which includes dalliance with autocracy, but rule by the one where there are no checks and balances threatens war and discounts peace.

SO MANY SORROWS

What Kalifa shows is how alone every human being is in a country led by leaders who care only about their power.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Death is Hard Work

By: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price-translator

Narrated By: Neil Shah

Khaled Khalifa (1964-2023, Syrian author, screenwriter, and poet, died at age 59.)

Conscience is an inner sense of voice that guides a person to understand the difference between right and wrong. The author is characterized by western publications as a critic of Baath party rule in Syria. Khaled Khalifa chose to remain in Syria despite the horrendous rule of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad. (Khalifa died of a heart attack at age 59 in 2023.)

Khalifa’s “Death is Hard Work”, published in 2016, seems a conscience driven criticism of Bashar’s rule during Syria’s 2011 civil war.

Though Khalifa is a Muslim, his novel appears to object to Assad’s rule during the war. Of course, there are five sects of the Muslim church in Syria, but al-Assad’s Alawites are only 10% of the population versus 74% Sunni Islam, of which the author is said to belong.

This is not to suggest Khalifa is anti-Assad because of religion but that Khalifa is noting in his book the muti-religious fabric of Syria. The novel is about the cruelty and lawlessness in Syria during the 2011 Civil War which is, at best, a frozen conflict in 2024. The country remains divided despite Assad’s continued rule and growing normalization of his regime among regional powers.

“Death is Hard Work” reflects on the many wars being waged today. The conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, tribal conflicts in Sudan, the Sahel, Ethiopia, and Nigeria create societal tragedies that make America’s problems pale in comparison.

The overarching story is the main characters commitment to his father to bury him in his family village somewhere near Aleppo.

Khalifa explains some of the horrific consequences of the Syrian civil war in “Death is Hard Work”. The Civil War is raging in Damascus where the family patriarch dies from old age. There are checkpoints throughout the country that have to be crossed. Each checkpoint is a test of two brothers’ and a sister’s resolve to fulfill their father’s last wish.

The backstory is about a father who marries and has been a constant critic of Assad-rule. He recalls his life in the 1960s as much better. That is odd considering history shows the four Presidents during that period fostered political instability, revolt, and global tension. The point made by the author is memories often block out the truth of our past.

Assad’s murder of women and children is a reminder of today’s conflicts in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, several African nations, and Gaza. Leaders in these countries are fomenting war over land and ideas that only increase the suffering of their people.

The past is always present. Khalifa reflects on what he sees as Syria’s present. He writes of a Syrian woman raped to death by four men. He explains a story of a husband who sends his children to another country while he stays in Syria to plan the murder of the four rapists whom he knows. Khalifa writes of the poverty and hunger of Syria’s civil war. Citizens searching garbage cans and eating flowers and grass to stay alive. It makes no difference whether one is a college professor or bum, all were hungry. One is reminded of the chemical attack in Syria and the many bodies on the ground that President Obama called a red line for America when it was not.

The two brothers and sister risk their lives at each check point in their treacherous journey to bury their father in his ancestral graveyard.

At each check point, they explain the reasons for carrying a dead body cross country while it begins to smell. “You have to do something if you don’t want to die” becomes the mantra of Bolbol, i.e. the youngest son who is trying to fulfill his father’s last wish. Flash backs remind listeners of what happens to one’s beliefs about right and wrong when powerlessness against tyrannical leaders is the measure of life. The older brother, Hussein, is influenced by belief in power and is often in conflict with his younger brother as they take their father’s body to his home village.

The two brothers and a sister have lived sorrowful lives because of their country’s leadership. What Kalifa shows is how alone every human being is in a country led by leaders who care only about their power. Until or unless leaders in Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Gaza come to understand the harm they are doing to their societies, only sorrow remains for their people.

A.I.s’ CROSSROAD

The greatest threat of A.I. is that the ubiquity of information will turn people and countries against each other.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Feeding the Machine (The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.)

By: Mark Graham, Callum Cant, James Muldoon

Narrated By: Orlando Wells

Graham, Cant, and Muldoon have backgrounds that offer an educated opinion about the impact of artificial intelligence on the world labor market. Graham is a Professor of Internet Geography affiliated with the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. Cant is a researcher and labor rights advocate for workers in the gig economy. Muldoon is an Associate Professor in Mangement and Head of Digital Research at a think tank on modern technologies.

“Feeding the Machine” reminds one of the Industrial Revolution in its early stages.

The fear of loss of jobs because of machine replacement led to the Luddite movement that destroyed machines manufacturing products. The quality of machine-produced product may not have met craftsman standards, but production cost was so much less, the public preferred the lower-cost product. As the industrial revolution grew, the quality of production improved, and many craftsmen lost their jobs. Many of these craftsmen had to find new jobs. Some became users of machines to produce product. The transition was undoubtedly difficult because it required changes in the way people work. Rather than working for themselves, they had to work for manufacturers that produced products with machines. Craftsman had to work regular hours for a wage rather than sell product based on their exclusive labor. Karl Marx in “Das Kapital” explained that capitalism devalued worker’s contribution to society because they were not compensated fairly for their work based on profits earned by company’ owners.

Workers began to unionize to increase their political power and influence on managers of companies owned by entrepreneurs.

The results of unionization have been to begin equalizing wages and company profits. That equalization is a battle between corporate profit needed to stay in business, reasonable return to company owners, and livable wages for workers. When any of these three are out of balance, companies either go bankrupt, or find an acceptable balance that serves the needs of all.

Information is energy in today’s A.I. world., just as steam was in the industrial revolution.

As one listens to “Feeding the Machine” which claims A.I. produces poor quality energy is like early steam engines that provided inadequate energy. Who can say that A.I. “energy” will not improve just as steam engines improved? One becomes skeptical about the authenticity of the authors’ opinion. It seems too soon to believe A.I. power will not improve human life, just as steam engine power improved product quality and lowered consumer prices.

The authors make valid points about the impact of A.I. on workers.

Workers are often paid a pittance for repetitive work that is mind numbing because of the need to monitor digital information for its accuracy and quality. Is that significantly different than the repetitive motions needed by workers on a production line for manufactured goods? Henry Ford changed the way cars are produced by creating assembly line work that gave repetitive jobs to workers. Is that repetitive work much different than digital inspection by workers of A.I. production?

The many examples the authors give of remote workers’ wages for digital accuracy in Africa and other poverty-stricken areas of the world is heart rending. These new laborers are paid small wages that assure continued poverty. Economic inequality is a crime against humanity. Improving education seems the only sure way of defeating economic inequality. Education is a long road to travel but there seems no solution for economic insecurity without it.

Having traveled to Africa, seeing firsthand a dedicated teacher in a class of school children, one feels there is hope that the world’s economic insecurity will end.

Ford was a conservative right-wing businessperson by any measure. He supported Hitler because he was an authoritarian that resurrected a faltering German economy. However, Ford recognized workers were consumers and despite low wages for automobile workers of his time, he chose to raise wages. Ford recognized workers were also consumers. That remains true today. It seems reasonable to presume, unlivable wages will rise for digital workers around the world for the same reason the conservative Ford raised his worker’s wages.

This is not to say, what the author’s write is wrong about workers in Africa that are exhausted from repetitive work at an A.I. company but that the world is at a crossroad similar to the industrial revolution.

The world will change based on the weight of people’s discontent. The greatest threat of A.I. is that information ubiquity will turn people and countries against each other. The result may be a nuclear holocaust that changes the world and societies in a way that is impossible to predict.

The war in Ukraine.

The authors go on to explains how A.I. dehumanizes society. Creating a world-wide’ assembly line for product production allows companies to reduce their production costs by hiring workers around the world who are eager to have an income to improve their lives. The consequences to companies in the host country are improved profits. The consequence to host countries’ workers are layoffs and loss of income. A country of wealth has tools to mitigate worker layoffs, poorer countries do not. Laid off workers have better chances of finding new jobs in wealthy countries. This is not to minimize the consequence but to suggest the world is benefited more than harmed by A.I.

A point made by the authors that played out in the actor strike in America is that actors should be compensated for any work generated by A.I. images or voices of actors.

A.I. that generates false images should be penalized for misrepresenting real people without their consent. Another caution suggested by the authors is that A.I. can recreate art that is equivalent to todays and past literary and visual artists. That seems somewhat hyperbolic but if it is true, society has the tools to penalize those who choose to use A.I. to deceive the public. A.I. is only a tool of society. It is a source of energy that can destroy but also improve the lives of humanity. The authors note only minds are truly creative. A.I. is a recreator of the past, not the future. The use of A.I. by humans improves creative potential.

IN THE LAST CHAPTERS OF “FEEDING THE MACHINE”, THE AUTHORS SOUND AN ALARM BY NOTING THE CONTROL EXCERCISED BY INTERNET MOGULS WHO DIRECT THEIR EMPLOYEES TO CODE ALGORITHMS TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THEIR COMPANIES. THIS IS A SMILAR POWER EXERCISED BY ROBBER BARONS OF THE LATE 19TH CENTURY. DEMOCRACRATIC CAPITALISM COPED WITH ROBBER BARON’S HEGEMONIC POWER THROUGH GOVERNMENT HEARINGS AND OVERSIGHT. ELECTED OFFICIALS SEEM WILLING TO COPE WITH MEDIA BARONS OF THIS CENTURY IN THE SAME WAY. PUBLIC HEARINGS AND GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT OF MEDIA MOGULS ARE BEING CONDUCTED TODAY.

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