david brooks

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On PRISM

prism

First, I want to congratulate the NSA-leaker Edward Snowden for his courage and the great service he has done to Americans and to the world in exposing the NSA’s PRISM surveillance programs. The man must have balls the size of basketballs, although perhaps letting the world know his location — in Hong Kong, territory controlled by the People’s Republic of China, another nation that runs its own share of online surveillance programs  — was unwise.

Some critics like the New York Times’ David Brooks say that what Snowden did was wrong, and that he showed a lack of respect for authority. It is certainly true that we live in an age where distrust of authority and the state has become commonplace. But perhaps that is only fair — after all, it is just ten years since the Iraq war, a war for which David Brooks was a cheerleader, wasted trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, and hundreds of thousands of lives chasing after so-called weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. If my state goes about wasting my money and thousands and thousands of lives on destroying foreign lands chasing after non-existent weapons of mass destruction, I am prone to distrust the state. Had the security services’ claims been subjected to proper scrutiny, it is possible that the disaster of Iraq could have been averted. Snowden is opening the surveillance and intelligence agencies that brought us the Iraq war — and that have now brought us PRISM — to proper public scrutiny.

In a democratic society, this is critical. These mass surveillance programs have been implemented without any real public discussion, precisely because they have been enacted in secret. This means that there has been no public discussion of goals, evidence, effectiveness and procedure.

We don’t know how effective or ineffective these programs are, because they have been concocted, enacted and analysed secretly. The security services have, in the interests of “national security” been empowered to enact the policies of their choice with limited governmental oversight, and certainly no public oversight. Their implicit hypothesis — that mass surveillance can prevent or reduce terrorism — has not as far as I can tell been subjected to serious academic scrutiny, at least publicly. This is not a scientific approach to policy — it is a knee-jerk approach to policy. In science, you collect data, release your findings and let others review your data, not claim a finding, secretly enact policies based on that finding, and hide any data.

We know that PRISM did not stop the Boston Bombings, or Sandy Hook, or the Aurora massacre. So perhaps it is the case that mass surveillance programs are ineffective against terrorists, particularly lone wolves who may exist outside of traditional social networks. Agencies have many questions to answer. Are there not more effective methods to preventing terrorism than dragnet surveillance? On what scientific basis have agencies enacted their current policies? Would Geiger counters not be more effective than surveillance dragnets in preventing nuclear terrorism? Where is the data to show that mass surveillance is or can be effective?

The bigger question, though, is whether the agencies involved considered the constitutional implications of their actions. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This empowers agencies to search and seize only with a warrant that particularly describes the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. A dragnet like PRISM would seem to obliterate any such protections. Did the NSA and those who empowered them to undertake surveillance consider PRISM to be constitutional? If so, why? Although only a slim majority of Americans are against monitoring everyone’s electronic communications for the purposes of preventing terrorism, the Constitution is very clear about the conditions necessary in order to seize evidence.

Ultimately, the essence of national security are the legal and constitutional frameworks upon which civilised countries are based. By shredding constitutional protections through unaccountable and secretive mass surveillance programs, governments may be giving up the national security that they claim to be seeking to save. Only with transparency and daylight can society properly assess which measures are effective and acceptable to public safety and public liberty, and implement them in an accountable way.

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Deindustrialisation & Male Jobs

A whole lot of pundits are spending column inches trying to explain the cruel reality of the last forty years — stagnant wages for full-time male workers, and falling wages for men as a whole:

And there has been a huge outgrowth of men who aren’t in the labour force. In 1954, 96 percent of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent. That’s a humungous decrease.

The question is why.

Mainstream media pundits are suggesting that men are unsuited to the present economic landscape. The suggestion is that men have been bad at adapting to change, and that women have been good at adapting to change:

In The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, Hanna Rosin argues that changes in the world economy have dramatically shifted gender roles. Women have adapted more skillfully to the new socioeconomic landscape by doggedly pursuing self-improvement opportunities, rebranding as the economy requires it, and above all possessing the kind of 21st century work attributes — such as strong communication skills, collaborative leadership and flexibility — that are nudging out the brawny, stuck-in-amber guys. Rock steadiness, long a cherished masculine trait, turns out to be about as useful in our fleet-footed economy as a flint arrowhead. Life favors the adapters, and it turns out they’re more likely to be women.

Now two things have very clearly changed for women — access to birth control, and the end of the traditional social compact where women did housework, and men did wage work. In regard to the vast majority of expanding occupations today — teaching, medical services, bureaucracy — women no longer are at a material disadvantage due to their (on average) smaller size and lesser strength.

Overall, this has meant proportionally less jobs for men, and proportionally more for women.

But it’s not just that women have been advantaged. Men have been deeply disadvantaged. In sectors that due to physical characteristics men have traditionally been dominant in — manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, mining and heavy industry — there has been a vast decline in output-as-a-percentage-of-GDP, whereas in services — a sector in which men have not traditionally dominated — there has been a vast increase.

Yet it is not the case that there are less manufacturing jobs globally. As we mostly already know, this is a case of manufacturing and industry being exported overseas, most obviously to China. China manufactures, and America consumes. This is America’s trade balance with China:

This is reflected in China’s sectoral employment balance compared to Western nations, and the world at large:

So it’s not at all the case that the United States is cutting back on industrial jobs because industry is less in demand. The United States still has plenty of demand for industry. America has cut back on industrial jobs because it has the ability to run huge trade deficits, through the dollar’s role as global reserve currency, and shipped its manufacturing industry abroad. Other countries have required dollars for trade purposes, so have been more than happy to sell to the United States, making dollars and debt the United States’ greatest exports.

Yet the present paradigm has severely damaged the prospects of young men, for whom a generation ago jobs in industry and manufacturing were once plentiful. Quantitative easing led to a jobs boom — in China, for Chinese industrial workers. That doesn’t help the growing chunk of the male population in the United States who have been shut out of the job market by the rise of America’s Chinese addiction.

And it seems unlikely that the industrial jobs are coming back any time soon. Although there are reasons why America may soon import less from China — rising energy and transport costs, rising Asian wage costs, and questions of the dollar’s sole reserve currency status — there are plenty of places in Latin America with cheap and plentiful labour for America’s corporate elite to set up factories. Even the manufacturing jobs that remain in America will be under threat from increased automation and robotics.

This implies that barring a miracle, joblessness and stagnant or falling real wages will continue to be a significant and worsening challenge for young Americans, and particularly men, in the coming years.