AI chatbots: hype meets reality

Artificial Intelligence seems to be everywhere.  Companies use powerful AI chatbots on their webpages or phone systems to handle customer questions.  Newsrooms and magazines use them to write stories.  Film studios use them to produce films.  Tech companies use them to program.  Students use them to write papers.  It seems like magic.  And with everything supposedly happening “in the cloud,” it is easy to believe that AI-powered systems are good for the environment.  Unfortunately, things are not as they appear to be. 

Chatbots are built on exploitation, use massive amounts of energy, and are far from reliable.  And while it is easy to imagine them growing in sophistication and making life easier in some respects, companies are pouring billions of dollars into their creation to make profits with little concern about whether the results will be socially beneficial. In short, we need to take the corporate interest in AI seriously and develop strategies that can help us gain control over how AI is developed and used.

The climate crisis: corporations are gambling with our lives

The World Meteorological Organization has declared 2023 “the warmest year on record, by a huge margin.” Annual global carbon emissions also hit a new high, surpassing the previous record set in 2022. We have to act now before critical thresholds or tipping points are crossed, and that means rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels.  And yet, the US government continues to green light the exploration, production, and use of fossil fuels, even while simultaneously voicing support for an international agreement to phase out fossil fuels at the recently completed COP 28 in Dubai. What gives?  And what can we do about it?

The scales of justice are weighted against workers: The NLRB and first contracts

According to a recent Gallup poll, seventy-one percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest approval rating since 1965.  And worker organizing has led to unionization at a number of well-known, profitable companies.  The problem is that many of these new unions have yet to win a first contract. One important reason: companies like Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joes, and REI are taking advantage of shortcomings in US labor law to drag out the negotiating process until workers give-up or worker turnover undermines support for the union.

Green Capitalism—Don’t believe the hype!

We are running out of time to avoid climate disaster.  As signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, more than 190 governments have committed to take action to limit the rise in average global temperatures to “well below” 2°C above preindustrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to a safer 1.5°C.  The stakes are high: failure means a very high risk of catastrophic climate change, with feedback mechanisms triggering unbearable heat waves, massive migration, mega fires, droughts and desertification of lands, and the flooding of low-lying cities.  

The UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has declared that it is “Code Red for Humanity.” And yet, according to a 2022 UN Environmental Program report that incorporates updated national pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions, “Policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century. Implementation of the current pledges will only reduce this to a 2.4-2.6°C temperature rise by the end of the century.” 

So what gives?  In short, most governments remain unwilling to change existing systems of production and patterns of consumption.  The US government, for example, continues to act as if it believes that environmentally sustainable growth, or green growth, can be achieved through the use of targeted incentives and subsidies.  In other words, that corporations will, in response to state-influenced market signals, produce the new technologies and products needed to reduce future emissions and even pull existing emissions out of the atmosphere in the nick of time, all while allowing economic growth to continue.

Planning an Ecologically Sustainable and Democratic Economy: Challenges and Tasks

The July-August 2023 issue of Monthly Review includes 12 articles on Planned Degrowth, Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development. 

One of them, titled “Planning an Ecologically Sustainable and Democratic Economy: Challenges and Tasks,” is mine. It begins:

We desperately need an ecosocialist-inspired transformation of the U.S. economy, one that will allow us to substantially, equitably, and democratically reduce its energy and materials usage. This cannot be achieved without planning, a process that deserves more attention than it currently receives. Although most activist organizations are focused on winning changes in a single defined area of concern, thanks to their collective work, we do have a broadly shared vision of the societal transformation we seek. But a compilation of desired changes does not by itself promote an understanding of the likely challenges and tasks involved in achieving these goals. Read more here.

Growing up in the US: it’s bad and getting worse

US capitalism shows little love for children.  And there is every reason to believe that things will get worse as a result of the ongoing corporate push, supported by an increasing number of state governments, to roll back child labor laws. 

The kids are struggling

There are many signs that things are not well for our youth.  One is the relative stagnation in the height of our children, especially relative to those in other countries. As Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology at University College London and past president of the World Medical Association, explains:

The link between height, nutrition and social circumstances can already be seen in childhood. There is a neat gradient – the greater the deprivation, the shorter the child. The height of individuals is mainly determined by their genes, but the differences between groups, and trends over time, are largely the result of differences in exposure to nutrition, infections, stress and poverty.

US foreign policy: A bipartisan embrace of militarism

There is a lot of talk lately about the federal budget, with Democrats and Republicans arguing over whether to raise the debt ceiling and allow the government to borrow enough money to fund already approved agency budgets and programs. But you know what they never argue about—financing the military.

Showing the love 

In December 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, approving “national defense” spending of $858 billion for fiscal year 2023. The act covers Pentagon spending as well as work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy.  That total represents a 4.3 percent increase over the previous year’s authorization, the second biggest increase in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II.  If spending on other military-security related programs were added, such as homeland security, veterans’ care, and Ukraine related military aid, the total would exceed $1.4 trillion.   

The National Defense Authorization Act was overwhelmingly approved by both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives passed it 350 to 80.  The Senate 83 to 11.  In fact, Congress actually voted to give the military $45 billion more than what Biden and the Pentagon had originally requested.  Now, that is showing the love!

In March, the military proposed a national defense budget for fiscal year 2024 of $886 billion.  We shall see how much that figure will grow once Congress takes it up.

The rollback of child labor protections is well underway

The hunt for profits is driving ever more despicable labor laws and practices.  A case in point: the sharp rise in the number of states seeking to rollback restrictions on the use of child labor.  We need to fight this trend and if we are to succeed we must be clear on who we are fighting. Advocates for the relaxation of child labor protections are not some fringe wackos; they include some of the most powerful rightwing foundations and profitable corporations in the United States. 

Social Security: The attacks keep coming but the system remains strong

President Biden is winning praise for his State of the Union defense of social security.  But while he correctly called out Republicans for their machinations, it was not so long ago that Democratic Party leaders—for example, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—appeared willing to support plans for weakening the program.  Thus, we need to be vigilant and always prepared to defend the program, especially since, as the economist Paul Krugman commented:

I’ve seen numerous declarations from mainstream media that of course Medicare and Social Security can’t be sustained in their present form. And not just in the opinion pages: There’s been at least some reversion to the early 2010s practice of including anti-social-insurance editorializing in what are supposed to be straight news reports, with highly disputable claims about these programs’ futures presented as simple facts.

Don’t let the critics fool you. Our Social Security system remains sound.  Moreover, there are simple steps we can take to expand its benefits.

U.S. Economic Planning in the Second World War and the Planetary Crisis

The February 2023 issue of Monthly Review includes an article of mine, “U.S. Economic Planning in the Second World War and the Planetary Crisis,” which is a revised version of a past blog post.  

The following is from the article’s introduction:

Not surprisingly, the consensus from those studying the wartime conversion experience is that a rapid and successful transformation requires aggressive state planning and direction of economic activity. This is indeed an important lesson for our movement to learn. But there is another lesson to be learned from that period, one that deserves more attention than it currently receives. It is that in a capitalist economy, capital’s ownership position greatly enhances its ability to mold state structures and their policies in ways favorable to its interests and to the detriment of workers. In other words, the planning process is a contested terrain, and one not usually favorable to working people.

I will show that, during the war years, corporate leaders were able to rebuff Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) planning proposals and successfully marginalize the participation of unions in the mobilization agencies that were formed, ensuring that labor would be forced into a defensive and ever weaker position relative to capital as the war progressed. Thus, if our aim is not simply a transformation to a somewhat less carbon consuming economy, but a complete and just transformation, we must prepare ourselves, and the movement that we hope to build, for an ongoing and complex struggle to overcome capital’s structural advantages. It is my hope that this article, which focuses on the class dynamics shaping the Second World War mobilization process, can help that preparation. The history it describes offers a useful primer on how the other side conducts its class war.