7-Nov-12 World View -- Labor unions shut down Greece

[OLD1953]

The US has always turned left during crisis eras in the past. I think whichever candidate was perceived as more "left" would be more likely to win, taking that into account. Romney could have taken that position away from Obama, given his actions as Governor of Mass., but decided not to do so.

[Higgenbotham]

Ron Paul: Election shows U.S. 'far gone'

Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick presidential bids shook the GOP, said in the wake of this week's elections that the country has already veered over the fiscal cliff and he sees no chance of righting ship in a country where too many people are dependent on government.

"And they don't believe that we've gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. But you can't have a budgetary solution if you don't change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we are going to argue about is who will get the loot."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/ins ... z2BlasJ8db

[John]

*** Role of women in election

> John and OLD, last year, I had compared Obama with Buchanan and
> found a quote from Edward Harrison comparing him to Hoover, both
> one term presidents with limited capability to deal with the
> onrushing crisis who were replaced by Prophets who were perceived
> to have greater capability. Going back to 1860, when women didn't
> have the right to vote, had that been a constant and only men
> could vote last night, the Prophet Mitt Romney would have been
> elected by a wide margin. Instead, the less capable (in my
> opinion) Nomad was reelected. What would Generational Dynamics say
> about that, or what are any general thoughts you may have about
> that? Is the 19th Amendment random noise or part of a trend that
> changes who gets elected at similar points in the cycle?

> I think you would both know my take. It would be that there are
> larger forces that underlie the cycles and in this case the fact
> that Obama was reelected has random components to it as well as
> nonrandom components. The random components had the impact of
> pushing Obama over the edge. The nonrandom components never would
> have given him a chance. I would view the 19th Amendment as a
> nonrandom event within the larger cycle.

It's always very difficult to say what would have happened under
certain contrafactual situations. In this case, the easy response is
that if women didn't have the vote, then we wouldn't have had to
listen endlessly about why we should pay for Sandra Fluke's
contraceptives. In that case, there would have been a completely
different set of political issues, and they might have been more
successful or less successful.

In my opinion, the role of women in politics and society is almost
completely determined by technology. In the 1850s, the divorce rate
(ratio of divorces to marriages in a given year) was under 1%. It
increased exponentially since then, only finally leveling off around
50% in the 1980s.

What made divorce possible was that technology freed the woman from
the home, thanks to refrigerators, freezers, stoves, microwave ovens,
dishwashers, clothes washer/dryers, vacuum cleaners, and mass produced
clothing and prepared foods. With technology giving women huge
amounts of additional free time, it's inevitable that their role would
change in society and the workplace, and that the divorce rate would
surge.

Even the physical act of voting for women has been made possible by
technological advances in transportation. In the 1800s, a trip by
women to the polls to vote would have required a major family trip,
with the kids, and with enough supplies to last a few hours. It would
not have been thought worthwhile in most cases, since it would have
been assumed that a woman would just duplicate her husband's vote
anyway. So, with women free to be single and divorced mothers, the
vote for women was also inevitable. Even Sandra Fluke's contraceptive
demands are only possible because of technology that made the
contraceptives available.

So in my opinion, if you wanted to try to guess what would happen if
women never got the vote, you'd also have to make many assumptions
about technology and the divorce rate.

It's also worth pointing out the role of women's hormones in the last
election. Men in general rarely have the vaguest clue what's going on
in the world, and women know even less. So we have to assume that
women's choice of candidate is driven by hormones, and Obama was
presumably better looking than Romney.

This is consistent with the apparent fact that since women started voting,
the taller candidate usually won, while before women started voting,
the shorter candidate usually won:

> Does the tallest candidate always win?

> Posted by Dan Makaon at 13:52 | Sunday, November 13. 2011

> I once heard that the tallest candidate for President almost
> always wins, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. They say it’s a myth
> and that before 1900 the shortest candidate had the edge. After
> 1900 the tallest had an edge, but not much. Overall, the tallest
> seems to have a slight edge. I decided to take the raw data and
> adjust it with some common-sense assumptions, as follows:

> 1. Elections before television (prior to 1930) should be
> eliminated. Most voters could not judge the height of the
> candidates before TV. I’m sure that the shorter candidate knew to
> avoid still photos showing himself aside his taller
> opponent. Today, on TV, they can see them side-by-side and
> standing next to other people.

> 2. I eliminated elections with height differences of “same height”
> or “less than one inch”, under the assumption that puffy hair or
> shoe/boot heels could easily make up the difference, and that many
> people would not notice a less than one inch difference.

> 3. I eliminated second term elections under the assumption that
> physical stature is only significant when one has no record to
> judge. Once a voter judges an incumbent’s performance, I believe
> height probably becomes secondary.

> 4. Ignore elections of unopposed candidates.

> 5. Ignore elections where the height of one or more candidates is
> unknown.

> RESULT:

> Although there were only 7 elections that met my criteria, 6 of
> the seven were won by the tallest candidate. In the one election
> won by the shortest candidate (Bush beat Gore), Gore actually won
> the popular vote, which is consistent with my hypothesis.

> QED: The significantly taller candidate for President of the USA,
> in the age of electronic media, is highly likely to win a first
> term contest.

> Look at it this way: if you flipped a coin, and heads came up 7
> times in a row, what would you think? (If it’s a “fair coin,” the
> odds are 1 in 128 that heads would come up 7 times in a row.) Of
> course the sample of 7 elections is small. I would have preferred
> at least 30 elections, but I won’t live that long.

> http://danmakaon.com/blogweb/archives/8 ... s-win.html

[John]

> The US has always turned left during crisis eras in the past. I
> think whichever candidate was perceived as more "left" would be
> more likely to win, taking that into account.

I think that this would be a hard position to defend in general. What does
"more left" mean? During the Civil War, who was "left" and who was "right"?
One could say that the North was on the "left" because of more "progressive"
policies on slavery, but that the South was on the "left" because of
better economic policies. This latter remark comes from the Southern criticisms
of the North in the 1850s, where they pointed out that the South always took
care of their elder slaves, while elder people in the North very often were out
in the street.

How does interring Japanese fit into America's "left" during WW II?

As I discuss in the following sections, countries tend to become more
"anti-nationalistic" during Awakening eras, and this continues through
the Unraveling era. During the crisis era, societies to become
increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic, and that's usually associated
with moving "right."

So how did Obama win by moving "left"? I believe it was by targeting
specific groups -- women, blacks, Latinos -- with specific Awakening
era concepts. I don't believe that the country is moving left at all,
not in a crisis era. But that doesn't mean that Awakening era
concepts can't still be used powerfully during an election.

[John]

*** Generational Dynamics forecasting - Part I

In the past, I've frequently referred to generational trend
forecasting as if it were one concept, but as this discussion has
pointed out, there are really two different kinds of generational
trend forecasting, and I've never really spelled out the differences
as clearly as I should have.

The first kind falls directly out of generational theory. The
following generational trends are always in every society, differing
only in degree and impact from society to society:

• There's always a crisis war.
• There's always a Recovery era after the war, where the war
  survivors implement rules and institutions to keep it from ever
  happening again.
• There's always an Awakening era after the war, where nationalism
  and xenophobia begin to decrease substantially, and where there is a
  sharp "generation gap" between those surviving the crisis war and
  those growing up after the crisis war.
• There's always an Unraveling era, where all the Recovery era rules
  and institutions unravel, to the point where there are no rules at
  all.
• There's always a new crisis era, when nationalism and xenophobia
  begin to increase again, along with anxiety of the survival of the
  society and its way of life.
• There's always a crisis era regeneracy, when civic unity is
  regenerated for the first time since the end of the previous crisis
  war, and where increases in nationalism and xenophobia become so great
  that they lead to disastrous consequences.
• There's always a crisis war climax, where nationalism and
  xenophobia become the only important thing, and the value of an
  individual human life approaches zero. The crisis war climax itself
  often involves a major massacre that has the dual purpose of ending
  the war, and leaving the survivors so traumatized so that they spend
  the rest of their lives trying to keep anything like it from happening
  again.

[John]

*** Generational Dynamics forecasting - Part II


The first kind of generational trend, described above, is very
general, applying uniformly to any society. The second kind of trend
is more specific to a particular society and time frame.

Let's take "nationalism" as an example. Nationalism is increasing
around the world. Nations become increasingly nationalistic during
generational Crisis eras, but the choice of "target" of their
nationalism is a chaotic choice, related to the previous crisis war.

In a typical situation, every nation has been "wronged" in many, many
different ways. A nation can't want revenge for all of them, but
instead the nationalism is focused on certain targets. Almost always,
the first signs of the selected target begin to show themselves in the
Recovery Era following the previous crisis war.

The choice of nationalism/xenophobia "target" is completely chaotic at
the beginning of the Recovery Era, following the crisis era climax,
when people are so traumatized that they are willing to endure any
hardship or humiliation, as long as doing so is thought to prevent
a recurrence of the last war. But as time goes on, the choice of
target becomes clearer.

For example, in 1945 we could not have predicted with any confidence
that Japan would become our friend and China would become our enemy 60
or 70 years later, effectively reversing their status from during the
war itself. But during that 60-70 year period, the choice of
nationalism target has become clearer. The Korean and Vietnam wars
were early signs of increasing anti-American nationalism in China,
while the long-term Japan-U.S. defense treaties were signs of
decreasing anti-American nationalism in Japan.

Although the choice of nationalism target is chaotic, the chaotic
choices begin to achieve a kind of momentum that increases over time.
In the past, I've used "Pólya's Urn" as a conceptual model to show how
this process might be understood.



If you consider the selection of the ball to be removed a chaotic choice,
then you can see that the early selections cause a "momentum" that affects
the later choices. The initial choice of red or green may be 50-50, but
once there's a slight preponderance of red or green, then it will
accelerate.

(This is in contrast to an urn with different rules: You simply add a
random red or green ball in each move without removing anything. In
this case, there might still be a preponderance of red or green, but
it's only temporary, and by the Law of Large Numbers it will correct
itself. But in the case of Pólya's Urn, a preponderance of red or
green won't be corrected, but instead will become permanent
and entrenched.)

So if you imagine our relationship with China as being Pólya's Urn
with the same number of red or green balls in 1945, you can imagine
that as the years go by, the number of red balls increase
dramatically, so that today, 65 years later, there are so many red
balls that we can make a "trend prediction" that China and America are
headed to war.

Most of what I've been doing since I started my web log years ago has
been mentally estimating red balls and green balls on a daily basis.
If the red/green ball ratio is close to 1, then I use words like,
"this is a chaotic outcome and can't be predicted." If the ratio goes
up (in my mind), then I say, "this is very likely to happen." And
when the red/green or green/red ratio become so great that it can't be
reversed, then I feel confident in saying, "this will happen with 100%
certainty."

[John]

*** Generational Dynamics forecasting - Part III

> Your paragraph on chaotic versus generational predictions, a
> systematized prediction if you will, fits in a micro vs. macro
> paradigm as well. But I want to ask you about a third type of
> prediction that you have made that doesn't fit into either of the
> chaotic vs. generational categories in my mind. You have often
> stated that you see Iran lining up with the USA, Israel, Russia
> and India, vs. China, Pakistan and the Arab Sunni block.

> I have thought long an hard on this and don't disagree. In fact I
> find it prescient. But what I don't see is how generational
> dynamics fits into that prediction. I can see how GD is a
> predictor of when it might happen but not necessarily that
> that particular alignment will happen. I see that
> prediction much more in the lines of analyzing a social/religious
> and geopolitical/economic alignment. It is still an amazing
> statement to have made for as long as you have been making it and
> is certainly not an obvious prognosis given the current state of
> relations between Iran and the USA. But how do you tie it into GD
> other than using GD to posit potential timings for such
> realignments.

This has all been done by counting red and green balls over the last
ten years. Briefly:

• Counting red and green balls, it's perfectly obvious that China
  and Japan will be at war, and American and China will be at war over
  Taiwan. So it's Japan+Taiwan versus China.
• You might have noticed that I've never taken a position on Korea.
  I've had no idea how to count red and green balls in the case of
  Korea, since Koreans hate both China and Japan. All we know for sure
  is that North Korea will be fighting South Korea. In fact, maybe I've
  just answered my own question -- Korea will be like China during WW II
  -- having a major civil war that consumes them, and not really
  actively taking either side in the world war.
• For years I've been reading about the close relationship between
  China and Pakistan. For example, last year, Pakistan's ambassador to
  China described the Pakistan-China relationship as "higher than
  mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, sweeter than
  honey, and dearer than eyesight."
• Similarly, I've been reading about the close relationship between
  Russia and India. At the same time, Russia and China almost went to
  war in the 1960s, as did China and India. These are all another kind
  of red/green ball relationship, where the number of red/green balls
  was established not just by the previous crisis war, but by ethnic
  relationships that go back for centuries.
• It's clear that there will be another war in Kashmir/Jammu,
  refighting the 1947 war between Hindus and Muslims, and this will
  spread to a nuclear war between Pakistan and India. One political
  thing that's off-trend is that the President of Pakistan is a major
  Shia leader. Next year's expected victory of pro-Sunni pro-Taliban
  anti-American Imran Khan is more in line with the overall trend in
  Pakistan.
• One thing that's always struck me is that Russia's great historic
  crisis wars have always been in Central Asia and with Turkey, and not
  with Europe. Russians have always loved Europe, and all the wars with
  Europe (Great Northern War with Sweden, Napoleon's invasion, Hitler's
  invasion) have all been Awakening era wars for Russia and Crisis era
  wars for Europe. Then you have to remember that that Russia was our
  "bitter enemy" before and after WW II, they were our allies during WW
  II. In 2008, when Russia invaded our ally Georgia, no one even
  suggested sending American troops to Georgia. But if China invaded
  Taiwan, we'd be at war within six hours.
• In the case of Iran, counting red/green balls really hasn't been
  that difficult. I was reading about pro-American student protests in
  Iran as early as the late 1990s. Later, as I developed generational
  theory, all of fit into place. Iran's senior leadership were
  survivors of the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, and were simply trying
  to duplicate the policies that worked for them at that time, and
  especially tried to recreate the enthusiasm and success of the Iranian
  hostage crisis. Everything they've done fits into that template.
  Meanwhile, the young generation of prophets were demonstrating against
  the government, and they have no desire to see Israel pushed into the
  sea.
• Then one day, six or seven years ago, I started reading about the
  relationship between Shia Muslims and Hindus. Apparently this
  relationship goes back to the 680s, the time of the original Sunni/Shia
  split. That's a hell of a lot of green balls, over a 1300 year period.
  During an Awakening era, Iran will try to avoid taking side, but at
  some point, Iran will be FORCED TO CHOOSE SIDES, and they will then
  side with India. Add to that the fact that most Iranians (the ones
  under 35) are pro-West, and you have overwhelmingly generational
  evidence that Iran will be on the side of the West.
• Go one step further, and look at the wars between Sunnis and Shias
  have also been going on for 1300 years, we can see that Iran and India
  will be at war with Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula. And let's not
  forget that the 9/11 attack came out of Saudi Arabia, not out of Iran.

Obviously, I could go on and on, and include the Arabs vs Jews, the
Caucasus, and Europe itself.

Putting all this together has been an interesting exercise because it
really creates the picture of a huge jigsaw puzzle where all the
pieces are falling into place. The result is an enormous mosaic where
all the parts are linked in ways that could not have been uniformly
predicted without generational theory.

[Higgenbotham]

It's always very difficult to say what would have happened under
certain contrafactual situations.

So in my opinion, if you wanted to try to guess what would happen if women never got the vote, you'd also have to make many assumptions about technology and the divorce rate.

Your response makes good sense. Thanks.

[Marshall Kane]

Russians have always loved Europe, and all the wars with
Europe (Great Northern War with Sweden, Napoleon's invasion, Hitler's
invasion) have all been Awakening era wars for Russia and Crisis era
wars for Europe. Then you have to remember that that Russia was our
"bitter enemy" before and after WW II, they were our allies during WW
II.

WWII was an awakening era for Russia?