The Benefits of Trust

Last night I was having drinks on the patio with a few friends at Zeitgeist, on the corner of Valencia and Duboce. Being outdoors in a San Francisco drinking establishment is somewhat of a novelty. I imagine it's a nice place to have a drink on a sunny afternoon, but it was cold and foggy, and the crowd and staff were particularly ill-mannered. It's at times like these when I find myself thinking that maybe conservatism isn't all bad. As mistaken, misinformed and misguided as they may be about so many things, conservatives at least seem to raise children who are better behaved than those raised by liberals.

Anyway, our conversation meandered and wandered until it landed on the documentary "The Corporation," which a few of my friends had watched the night before. All of them seemed equally struck by the message of the movie, I think, and worried about the increasing consolidation of businesses, how corporations have become arguable much larger, and undoubtedly more powerful than nation-states, and how they so often seem to act selfishly, and insensitively.

I played devil's advocate, and tried to argue that not all corporations were bad, in fact many were good citizens and demonstrated what could only be called a conscience. I'm not sure that I made much of a case, but if I didn't, it was because I hadn't yet read the following passage from "The Wisdom of Crowds,"by James Surowiecki.

In the wake of the orgy of corruption in which American businesses indulged during the stock-market bubble of the late 1990s, the idea that trustworthiness and good business might go together sounds woefully naive. Certainly one interpretation of these scandals is that they were not aberrations but the inevitable by-product of a system that play's to people's worst impulses: greed, cynicism, and selfishness. This argument sounds plausible, if only because capitalist rhetoric so often stresses the virtue of greed and the glories of what "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, the legendarily ruthless, job-cutting CEO, liked to call "mean business." But this popular image of capitalism bears only slight resemblance to its reality. Over centuries, in fact, the evolution of capitalism has been in the direction of more trust and transparency, and less self-regarding behavior. Not coincidentally, this evolution has brought with it greater productivity and growth.

That evolution did not take place because capitalists are naturally good people. Instead it took place because the benefits of trust -- that is, of being trusting and of being trustworthy -- are potentially immense, and because a successful market system teaches people to recognize those benefits.

"Boys Like To See Things Go Bang."

Believe it or not, that's what former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys had to say about the 24 year-old "boy" who was caught recently trying to board a flight at Will Rogers World Airport with an explostive device.

"He had a little explosive device, and boys like to see things go bang. He took it down to an outing at the lake, left it in his bag, forgot it and went to the airport."

The device was described in an FBI affidavit as a carbon dioxide cartridge filled with gunpowder that could be detonated when connected to a power source such as the batteries Dreyling had in his electric razor and in his cell phone, which were also in his carryon bag.

See that's the difference between red and blue states. In blue states, pyromania is considered borderline behavior, and certainly inappropriate for a man in his 20s, who should at least know better than to carry a pipe bomb on to a plane. In Oklahoma, apparently it's just another privilege of youth.

"I am intolerant of intolerance."

Another classic from San Francisco columnist Mark Morford

I cannot, for example, tolerate the dark and violent road down which this nation seems intent on careening like an Escalade on meth. I cannot tolerate brutal never-ending unnecessary wars and I cannot allow gay rights to be bashed and I truly loathe watching women's rights be slammed back to 1952. Or 1852.

I really have little patience for the gutting of our school system and the decimation of science and mysticism and the human mind for the sake of a handful of militant Christian zealots who truly believe the Second Coming will be arriving really soon but hopefully not before the next episode of HBO's "Cathouse: The Series," which they watch in secret with the lights off while clutching a Bible in one hand and a big tub of Country Crock margarine in the other.

I cannot tolerate an American president, ostensibly meant to be one of the most articulate and intellectually sophisticated leaders on the planet, mumbling his semicoherent support of the embarrassing nontheory of "Intelligent Design," to the detriment of about 300 years of confirmed science and 10 million years of common sense to the point where America's armies of dumbed-down Ritalin-drunk children look at him and sigh and secretly wish they could have a future devoid of such imbecilic thought but who realize, deep down, they are merely another doomed and fraught generation who will face an increasingly steep uphill battle, who will actually have to fight for fact and intellectual growth and spiritual progress against a rising tide of ignorance and religious hegemony and sanitized revisionist textbooks that insult their understanding and sucker punch their sexuality and bleed their minds dry.

I have surpassed my allowable limit for how much environmental devastation I can willingly swallow or how many billion-dollar tax subsidies our cowardly CEO president gives his cronies in Big Energy while doing nothing to ease our gluttony for foreign oil, all the while trying to tell us how many undereducated misguided American teenage soldiers we have to sacrifice at the bloody altar of oil and empire before we can call ourselves king of the bone pile again.

I am most intolerant of, well, of those who allow such intolerance. Of those who would, based on their narrow views of sex, God, love, hope, war, the mind, the Earth, soil and animals and air and water and fire and love and spirit and drugs and guns and dildos, work to legislate those neoconservative beliefs, codify them, make them the law of the land, force their regressive beliefs on everyone else under punishment of violence and beatings and prison. I am, in short, intolerant of intolerance.

Democract, Iraqi War Vet Paul Hackett Runs Tough Race In Ohio

Special election in Ohio today. Paul Hackett is a Democrat running against Republican Jean Schmidt in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District, which has been held by Republicans for three decades. Hackett is also "a Marine Reservist and an Iraq war veteran who opposed the war before the U.S. invasion and remains a harsh critic of President Bush's policy there."

Hackett told USA Today that Bush's taunting line, "Bring em on!" was "the most incredibly stupid comment I've ever heard a President of the United States make." He also told the newspaper that, while he was willing to put his life on the line for the President, "I've said that I don't like the son-of-a-[expletive] that lives in the White House."

Both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have bought TV time for commercials over the weekend. "He called the commander in chief a son-of-a-[expletive]," said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti. "We decided to bury him."

Hackett, hoping to capitalize on the widespread disarray in the scandal-plagued Ohio GOP, remains unapologetic about his characterization of the President. "I said it. I meant it. I stand by it," he said in a phone interview. "In this district, we need more straight-talking, straight-shooting politicians."

It's refreshing to see a Democrat who is unafraid to talk tough.

"All the chicken hawks back here who said, 'Oh, Iraq is talking bad about us. They're going to threaten us' -- look, if you really believe that, you leave your wife and three kids and go sign up for the Army or Marines and go over there and fight. Otherwise, shut your mouth."

Let's just hope that all the votes are counted this time and there aren't any security lockdowns in Warren County.