The Probability Broach: Peak oil

The Probability Broach, chapter 1

It’s time to plunge into The Probability Broach. The opening narration tells us that it’s July 1987, in Denver, Colorado.

Every chapter opens with a fictitious quote setting the scene. Here’s how the first chapter begins:

…would cease operations early next month. In a joint press release, executives of the other networks regretted the passing of America’s oldest broadcasting corporation and pledged to use the assets awarded to them by the federal bankruptcy court to continue its tradition of operation “in the public interest.”

In a related story, TV schedules will be cut back by an additional two hours in eighty cities next week. Heads of the FCC and Department of Energy, officially unavailable for comment, unofficially denied rumors that broadcast cutbacks were related to recent media criticism of the President’s economic and energy policies.

—KOE Channel 4
Eyewitness News
Denver, July 6, 1987

As I mentioned earlier, Atlas Shrugged spends almost all its run time in the “regular” world, with just a brief sojourn in the capitalist utopia of Galt’s Gulch. The Probability Broach does the opposite. It starts out in the “regular” world, but spends only a short time there before switching tracks to its sci-fi libertarian utopia, the North American Confederacy, where it spends the rest of the story.

Both Ayn Rand and L. Neil Smith are trying to pull the same trick on their readers. They portray a dystopian world of repressive government and economic decay, and they want you to think it’s our world – either now, or in the very near future if we don’t adopt those authors’ politics.

In reality, these authors’ so-called regular worlds are just as fictional as their utopias. They’re not the product of any real or proposed set of progressive policies. Rather, they’re a pure conservative straw man about what would happen if liberals took power.

The narrative starts:

Another sweltering Denver summer. A faded poster was stapled crookedly to the plywood door of an abandoned fast-food joint at the corner of Colfax and York:

CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
The Secretary of Energy Has Determined That This Unit
Represents An Unjustifiable Expenditure of Our Nation’s
Precious And Dwindling Energy Reserves. DOE 568-90-3041

Smith’s protagonist is Lieutenant Edward W. Bear, known as Win, a detective for the Denver police force. Like a thousand other gumshoes from hardboiled crime fiction, he’s middle-aged, world-weary, bitter and cynical from a long career dealing with the worst of humanity. Also from the handbook of genre cliches, he’s the sole honest man in a world of pervasive corruption, betrayal and violence.

He’s sitting in his car, trying to eat lunch, sick to his stomach from a brutal murder scene he witnessed that morning. Win narrates:

Most of all I longed to take off my sodden jacket, but the public’s supposed to panic at the sight of a shoulder holster. I knew that sweat was eating at the worn, nonregulation Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum jammed into my left armpit. The leather harness was soaked, the dingy elastic cross-strap slowly rasping through the heat rash on the back of my neck.

If it were only—hell, make that five years ago. A man could enjoy a sanitary lunch in an air-conditioned booth. Now, CLOSED BY ORDER signs flapped on half the doors downtown; the other half, it seemed, had been shut by “economic readjustment.” And unlicensed air conditioning was a stiffer rap than hoarding silver.

Like Atlas, TPB begins with the world already in a state of decay, but never circles back to explain how things got to that low point. Like Rand, Smith assumed his intended audience would take this for granted and wouldn’t demand a deeper explanation. Still, it’s fun to pull at the threads of a fictional world and see how it holds up.

Why is there an energy crisis in this world? What’s changed from five years earlier?

Obviously, Smith’s description of energy shortages echoes the real-world 1973 OPEC oil embargo, where Arab states refused to sell petroleum to Western allies of Israel, and then the 1979 oil crisis after the Iranian revolution.

To people who read this book when it came out, those would be recent memories. Americans from that era remember long lines at the pump, skyrocketing prices for gas, painful inflation, and government plans for rationing. However, Smith never says if his timeline went through the same crisis, or if something else happened instead.

Is there an actual energy shortage? Did Smith’s world hit peak oil early and then fail to develop any alternatives to fossil fuel (solar and wind energy don’t exist in this book), resulting in permanent depression because energy really is scarce? Or is there plenty of energy, but no one can get it because the government is hoarding or mismanaging it?

Are the repressive laws a heavy-handed response to a real crisis, or did the government concoct a crisis as an excuse to pass repressive laws? Which answer a libertarian goes for says a lot about their politics. Do they believe socialism is a well-intentioned attempt to help people that inevitably goes bad, or was it only ever an excuse to seize power and impose tyrannical rule?

Smith doesn’t say, but his explanation seems to hew closer to the latter. He believes that government never has done or can do any good for anyone, that it’s always power-hungry tyrants imposing rules on people against their will. In his worldview, “government = evil” is the only thing you need to know. It accounts for everything, so no deeper cause-and-effect explanation is necessary.

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The Probability Broach: Meet L. Neil Smith

Before I begin my review of The Probability Broach, let’s discuss its author: L. Neil Smith (or Lester Neil Smith III, to be more precise).

Smith was born in 1946 in Denver. He died in 2021, but his personal website is still up. I assume a fan or like-minded fellow traveler is paying the hosting bill.

His account of his life mentions:

Neil’s boyhood favorites were Arthur Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Richard Wilson, Robert Scheckley, and of course, Robert Heinlein. It was through his interest in science fiction that he encountered the works of Ayn Rand in 1961, when he read Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged and knew he had found the worldview that would guide him the rest of his life. He also recognized the unique way the ideas of Rand and Heinlein compliment each other, and it was this direction he began to take philosophically and politically.

It goes on to detail his involvement in politics:

Neil joined the Libertarian Party in 1972 (serving on the national platform committee in 1977 and 1979) and became a life member of the NRA in 1974. It was in 1972 that he met the great libertarian teacher Robert LeFevre. In 1977, frustrated by the course American politics was taking, Neil began work on a highly polemic science fiction novel, originally titled The Constitution Conspiracy, which he hoped would do the same thing for libertarianism that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for Abolitionism or Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and the works of H.G. Wells did for socialism.

That book, of course, became The Probability Broach. Smith’s website says it’s “widely considered the definitive libertarian novel”, although it suspiciously neglects to mention who’s doing the considering. It’s also amusing to note that the book won the Prometheus Award, an award for libertarian fiction that was created by… L. Neil Smith.

Even among libertarians, Smith never ascended to the heights of mass popularity. According to his Wikipedia page:

In 1999, Smith announced that he would run for president in 2000 as an independent if his supporters would gather 1,000,000 online petition signatures asking him to run. After failing to achieve even 1,500 signatures, his independent campaign quietly died.

The experience appears to have soured him on politics, as he recounts:

I’ll say it up front: I will no longer be available to anybody as a candidate for any political office.

…the Libertarian Party, which I once regarded as our last, best hope for freedom, now seems irrevocably broken. At best, it wastes the time and energy of thousands of wonderful people. At worst, it’s become a gruesome pit of vermin whose personal psychological and emotional problems drive them to attack anyone who actually does something, instead of arguing purposelessly and endlessly with them about it.

What, you might be wondering, left him so disillusioned and embittered? Well, he tells us: he was ticked off at another Libertarian Party member who accused him of initiating force (a big no-no in libertarian circles), just because he said that politicians who lie to the public should be executed by hanging.

As this interaction hints, Smith spent a great deal of time engaging in that most cherished libertarian pastime: arguing with other libertarians. He said that the Second Amendment should be the Libertarian Party’s “principal – even their only – election issue”. He sneeringly derided libertarians who care about any other issue, or who care about this issue less than he judged they should, as “Nerf libertarians”.

That brings us to the other thing you should know about L. Neil Smith. He was a gun nut – no, a serious gun nut. An essay on the front page of his website says:

If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash—for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything—without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.

Smith’s political philosophy can be summed up as: guns everywhere, for everyone, all the time. His ideal world is one where everyone carries deadly weapons at all times. That includes children, as soon as they’re old enough to physically hold one. (This is depicted in The Probability Broach.)

This horrifying fantasy flows from Smith’s anarcho-libertarian ideology. He believes that the state shouldn’t exist; therefore, it’s up to each individual person to protect themselves from evildoers. Or, possibly, the causality goes the other way: he fetishized guns because they made him feel manly, and because of this, he adopted an ideology that gives him an excuse for wanting to carry one around all the time.

Most of Smith’s books were published before the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School that arguably began the modern era of gun massacres. However, he’s certainly old enough to have lived through earlier gun slaughters, like the 1966 University of Texas clock tower massacre.

None of those atrocities dissuaded him from his conviction that guns, guns and more guns are the solution to literally every problem. He can’t appear to perceive any possible downside to selling a machine gun, for cash, to anyone who wants one, with no ID, no background checks, without even asking what they plan to use it for. If mass killings and random shootings were a concern to him, he took pains not to say so.

Smith’s website also features reverent pictures of his personal gun collection, including this incredible line:

I get this piece out first thing in the morning, when I go to the kitchen to make coffee, because most of my other weapons are so cold they hurt my arthritic hands. Guess I could use the Glock for that, as well, but this one just feels good.

Does… he think guns are somehow required for making coffee?

Now you know L. Neil Smith. Next week, we’ll see the anarcho-libertarian literary vision that sprang from his mind, as we dive into The Probability Broach.

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New on OnlySky: A less crowded future

I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about the bright side of global population decline.

For most of the 20th century, the world feared the consequences of disastrous overpopulation. Doomsayers predicted famine and ecological collapse as humanity consumed every natural resource. But those fears weren’t born out, because history took a swerve. The birth rate is falling rapidly all over the world, as humanity becomes more educated, women gain more autonomy, and the economy shifts to less labor-heavy professions.

Now doomsayers are raising a brand-new set of fears. However, contrary to those dire forecasts, a less crowded future might not be such a bad thing. It will present its own challenges, but a world with fewer people could bring many unexpected bonuses. It will mean ecological regeneration, fewer wars, more power for workers, and a stronger attitude of loving and cherishing every child, which we should have held all along.

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

To keep the population at a steady level, each woman has to have 2.1 children on average. Some countries—especially in sub-Saharan Africa—are still above this replacement rate. But most others, especially wealthy nations like Japan, China, South Korea, and most of Europe, are well below.

As a consequence, the global birth rate is falling. It’s barely above replacement now, and if present trends continue, it will drop below that tipping point soon. Previous forecasts predicted we’d hit this mark in the next several decades. But as new data comes in, it appears it could happen as soon as 2030.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

Let’s review The Probability Broach!

A paperback copy of the book "The Probability Broach" lying on a desktop

Ironically, my copy came used from a public library

[Previous: Atlas Shrugged; The Fountainhead]

It’s time I reviewed another work of libertarian fiction. I’ve picked a good one: the 1980 novel The Probability Broach, by L. Neil Smith. For readers who enjoyed my reviews of Ayn Rand, you’re in for a treat.

Since you may not be familiar with this novel, here’s a brief summary. The protagonist is a detective from a corrupt, authoritarian socialist dystopia. In the course of a murder investigation, he stumbles through a dimensional portal into a parallel universe that’s a super-advanced libertarian utopia. He learns how much better it is, then has to fight to defend it from invaders from his own universe.

As opposed to Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, which strove for a more realistic tone, The Probability Broach is straight sci-fi. It’s a shorter book, with a brisker pace of storytelling. Its more recent publication makes it feel less dated, as opposed to Atlas which treats railroads and radio as the height of high-tech. Smith also occasionally has a sense of humor, whereas Rand had none.

You might wonder what the point is of reviewing another libertarian novel, especially since The Probability Broach is an obscure book with nowhere near the popularity of Ayn Rand. I have three reasons for wanting to write about it.

First, Rand was what’s called a minarchist. She believed in a minimal state whose only purpose was to protect people from crime and enforce contracts. Smith was a true anarchist; he didn’t believe there should be any state at all. The contrast between these brands of libertarianism offers a wealth of opportunity to explore why the state exists and what its rightful powers should be.

The second reason is that TPB says more about how the author believed his politics would work in practice.

Atlas Shrugged is frustratingly light on detail about Rand’s preferred alternative. Most of it takes place in the “outside” world, which has been taken over by scheming socialists. It has only a few chapters in Galt’s Gulch, the mountain retreat where the world’s greatest capitalists hide out to live free. Many crucial details about how Rand thought such a society would function were missing.

By contrast, almost all of TPB is set in Smith’s utopia, the North American Confederacy. It doesn’t have the doorstopper monologues Ayn Rand is famous for, but he does try to explain how his society resolves disputes, handles crime, defends against invasion, and so on. (That’s not to say his answers are good ones, as we’ll see; but at least he acknowledges that these issues deserve to be addressed.) This gives insight into the world libertarians want: what it would look like, how it would function, and how everyday life would be different.

The third reason is that it’s just plain fun to write about. TPB is bonkers in the way only a true believer can be.

Ayn Rand wrote as if her only audience was herself. She took the stance that the truth is so obvious, it doesn’t need to be defended. It only needs to be proclaimed, so the faithful can bow their heads in agreement while the heretics go shrieking into the shadows. She had the dogmatic confidence of a religious sect that believes in predestination.

TPB wants to evangelize. It doesn’t start with the conviction that everyone already agrees with the author. It wants to appear reasonable, to paint an appealing picture. It tries to convey the message: “Look how much sense this makes!”

But that earnest insistence is undercut by a parade of wild absurdities that leap out from almost every page. (Here’s a foretaste: kindergarteners with guns.)

Possibly the best part of all is the climax, which accidentally offers a perfect demonstration of why libertarianism doesn’t work. It’s a self-refutation so enormous, it’s hard to believe the author overlooked it.

The contrast between the dead-serious message and the ludicrous plot is deeply hilarious, and it furnishes plenty of entertaining material for a review. It’s going to be a great ride!

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New on OnlySky: The passing of the American era

I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about America and how we had a long run as the world’s reigning superpower, but now that era is coming to an end.

Every empire, no matter how powerful it was in its day, topples eventually. America’s fall may be a spectacular one, and it won’t happen because we were conquered by any external enemy. It will happen because we did it to ourselves: because a variously apathetic, ignorant, or racist electorate chose a president who’s unleashing chaos exactly as he promised, wrecking our democratic system in ways that will reverberate for decades.

It raises the question: When America has faded from the global stage, who will take our place? Is there any nation or coalition of nations waiting in the wings that has the ability and the desire to set the rules of a new, post-American world order? Or is the world’s future a multipolar free-for-all?

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

Whatever happens in the next few years, the damage is done. America’s erstwhile allies will conclude, rightly, that we’re no longer a trustworthy partner. All our obligations and commitments are chaff that blows away on the wind, vulnerable to the whims of every election. On the intellectual front, America is lobotomizing itself: muzzling its scientists, threatening to prosecute doctors, cutting off funding for research and education. In a world of declining population, where countries that welcome immigrants are best-positioned to thrive, America is slamming that door shut. Xenophobic hostility is burning like a brushfire, and federal goon squads are being empowered to seize and deport as many people as possible, regardless of legal status.

The consequences won’t be felt overnight. The US is still an economic colossus, accounting for almost a quarter of global GDP. Sheer momentum will keep us coasting for some time, perhaps for another generation. However, the seeds of long-term decline have been sown.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

New on OnlySky: Is oligarchy the human condition?

I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about the deferred dream of democracy and the stark reality that human beings have always been ruled by the few.

The early 21st century has seen a global turn toward authoritarianism. Nations that have always had oligarchical tendencies, like Russia, are growing more so, and formerly democratic countries like the United States are backsliding.

However, this isn’t a new threat. Almost every society, in almost every era of history, has been an oligarchy where a tiny elite class held enormous wealth and power. If anything, it’s democracy – true democracy, where everyone has an equal say, as opposed to democracy-in-name-only where the wealthy few still rule – that’s always been the exception. For all the reformers who’ve worked and fought for it, it remains a utopian ideal rather than a reality.

This raises the question: Is oligarchy natural for humans, in the sense that it’s an inherent part of our mindset and cultural makeup that can’t be overcome? Or is real democracy an ideal we might still one day hope to achieve?

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

The hunter-gatherer tribes of our past led an egalitarian lifestyle. But almost every society since then has been marked by extreme inequality. Whether in the form of pharaohs, kings, feudal aristocrats, colonizing imperialists, or corporations run by mega-wealthy investors, oligarchy—rule by the few, usually the wealthy—has been a consistent pattern across history.

To be sure, the oligarchs have never gone unopposed. In every era, people have dreamed of some version of democracy, of shared prosperity. There have always been radicals who proclaimed that we shouldn’t bow to crowns or thrones, that everyone deserves to have a say in their own future.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

Two portraits of Christianity in America

A withered, dead tree in a desert

[Previous: Let them eat the Ten Commandments]

It’s a consistent theme across history that religions are only as tolerant as they have to be. When they’re in the minority, they call for individual freedom and state neutrality. But when they attain majority status, they immediately try to take over the government, write their beliefs into law and silence the competition.

The state of Oklahoma is a case in point. There was a time when the courts protected Americans’ constitutional rights. Now the right-wing takeover of the judiciary is all but complete, and Christian nationalists are sure they can do whatever they want and get away with it. They’re dropping any pretense of neutrality and seeking to cram Christianity into public schools across the state:

All Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments in their curriculums, effective immediately, the state’s chief education officer announced in a memorandum Thursday.

At a State Board of Education meeting, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said the Bible is “one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country.”

“It’s crystal clear to us that in the Oklahoma academic standards under Title 70 on multiple occasions, the Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters said.

Every classroom in the state from grades 5 through 12 must have a Bible and all teachers must teach from the Bible in the classroom, Walters said.

If there’s any glimmer of hope, it’s this: even in a state as conservative as Oklahoma, this blatant Christian nationalism isn’t going unchallenged. Multiple school districts are shrugging it off. And as recently as 2016, Oklahoma voters supported church-state separation, resoundingly rejecting a bid to strip a secular provision from the state constitution.

But leave that aside for the moment. The political leaders of Oklahoma are proclaiming that America is a Christian nation. What does that mean to them?

Here’s a clue. At the same time as they’re preaching pious myths about how the Bible is the source of our laws, Oklahoma is also considering outlawing homeless shelters across most of the state:

A bill proposed in Oklahoma would make it illegal for almost all cities in the state to provide homeless shelters or outreach and halt existing programs.

Oklahoma Senate Bill 484, introduced and authored by Sen. Lisa Standridge, R-Norman, would prevent municipalities in all cities with a population under 300,000 from using city resources to operate homeless shelters or perform homeless outreach.

Only two cities in Oklahoma have more than 300,000 residents — Oklahoma City and Tulsa — which means that if SB 484 passes, the measure would affect every other municipality in the state.

…The policy is similar to Oklahoma’s anti-camping law that took effect Nov. 1, 2024, which criminalizes camping on unauthorized state land or rights-of-way such as under bridges or alongside public roads and highways.

Taken together, these actions send a clear statement. Oklahoma’s deeply conservative government wants schools to teach kids about the Bible and Christianity. At the same time, they want to make it illegal for homeless people to sleep outdoors and also illegal to build places for them to sleep indoors. They don’t see any contradiction between these messages.

(And yes, Oklahoma was also one of the states that refused federal money for feeding hungry children.)

Here’s my question. If Oklahoma is set on teaching the Bible, are they going to mention verses like these?

“And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.”
—Leviticus 25:35

“For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.”
—Deuteronomy 15:11

“Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate.”
—Proverbs 22:22

Call me cynical, but I’m guessing these passages won’t be included in the public school curriculum. Christian nationalists only want to teach the good stuff – the biblical passages about stoning gay people, butchering heretics, and commanding women to submit to their husbands. They ignore, or outright reject, the parts of the Bible that are suspiciously liberal, like caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger, loving your enemies, and the meek inheriting the earth. That woke stuff has no place in their version of Christianity.

This is the state of Christianity in America today. Whether it’s Christians who burn with hate and prejudice toward refugees and immigrants – and thus aspire to be among those the Bible condemns to hell – or the Christians who demand more and harsher persecution of gay and transgender people, or the Christians who want to make it illegal for homeless people to exist… American Christians, especially right-wing evangelicals, are a bubbling cauldron of hate and rage.

They try to outdo each other in sadism; they compete to see who can show the most cruelty toward the oppressed and downtrodden. At the same time, they thump their breasts and proclaim their superiority because they’re believers.

However, it would be unfair to leave it at that and say that these people represent all American Christians, rather than only most of them. There are a few – all too few – Christians who stand out as beacons of compassion and decency. Like Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde, who enraged right-wingers with a post-inauguration sermon at Washington’s National Cathedral:

“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said.

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors.”

Worth noting, Budde is also the bishop who helped lay Matthew Shepard to rest. After his murder, Shepard’s parents were reluctant to inter his ashes in their hometown, for fear that the grave would be desecrated by bigots. Budde stepped in, offering them space at the Washington National Cathedral.

If more Christians were like Mariann Budde, I’d have written something different. Even if Christians were trying to take over the government, but actually cared about using that power to help the poor and the needy and to welcome refugees because the Bible tells them to, I’d be more conflicted.

But that’s not the world we live in. It’s the worst ones who are occupying the seats of power and setting the agenda, and that’s been true for a long time. Their religion is a dead tree leaning over a dry spring. Whatever love or kindness it ever had was thrown away long ago. There’s nothing left of it but a withered cult of hate and power.

Image credit: David Brossard via Flickr; released under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

New on OnlySky: Weather whiplash

I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about how we’ll have to redesign society for the increasingly chaotic, climate-change-driven weather of the future.

The drought and apocalyptic wildfires in Los Angeles, coming just two years after a series of devastating floods, are a dramatic example of “weather whiplash” – weather that swings wildly back and forth between extremes of heat and cold, wet and dry. As climate change accelerates, disrupting formerly stable weather patterns, this phenomenon will spread to more areas and will get worse.

It’s possible to design communities that will survive the extremes of future weather, but it won’t be easy or cheap. We’ll have to build houses armored against wildfire, with metal roofs that won’t burn and landscaping without flammable greenery. But we’ll also have to engineer communities to divert and protect against flood: rivers that have room to rise, parks and gardens that soak up water, and even underground reservoirs to capture and safely store storm-driven overflow. Communities that make these choices now will have a greatly improved chance to prosper in the future, while those that don’t will be swept away.

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

Since we’re well past the point of preventing climate change, our only choice is to adapt. Until now, human beings have acted as if nature was beneath our notice. We’ve heedlessly built houses on floodplains, at the edge of crumbling coasts, or at urban-rural interfaces among ecosystems like chaparral that are evolved for fire. We’ve built them from cheap materials, like untreated wood that burns and plastic that melts, with no thought for insulation or energy efficiency. We’ve tried to entomb rivers in concrete, as if we knew best where and how much they should flow.

Climate change is exposing all of this for the folly it is. The more we try to ignore nature, the worse it will be for us. The communities that will survive the upheavals to come are the ones that are designed to be resilient.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

I don’t want a Great Firewall of America

[Previous: The Splinternet: The balkanized future of cyberspace]

After a dramatic weekend, TikTok is alive. For now.

Last year, Congress passed – by large bipartisan majorities – a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell the site to American owners or be shut down. ByteDance took their case to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ban this month.

TikTok’s owners insisted they wouldn’t sell. Despite the outgoing Biden administration declining to enforce the law, TikTok shut down on the night of Saturday the 18th. It came back the next day, purportedly with assurances from Donald Trump that he won’t ban it either.

But even if TikTok comes back for good, there’s a sword of Damocles hanging over it. Its existence is at the whim of the executive branch, which can choose whether to enforce the ban or suspend it.

If Trump allows it to exist, it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to suspect he’ll demand something in return. Will TikTok use its algorithm to push messages friendly to his campaign? Will it stifle his critics?

A shameful first

Like 170 million other Americans, I have a TikTok account. Its algorithm learns from what you watch and what you skip, so what you see depends on what you’re interested in.

Like every social media site, it has lots of vapid content and misinformation. But there’s good stuff there as well. My feed is mostly science and nature videos, beautiful places, books and progressive politics. It’s also a good source of breaking news, the way Twitter used to be long ago.

I don’t make videos too often, but I’ve experimented with posting content on TikTok about atheism and secularism, which got a reasonably good response. If China is using it to push propaganda on me, I’ve yet to notice.

As I wrote on OnlySky, the TikTok ban is a shameful first in American history. It’s at risk of being shut down not because of anything it’s done, but because lawmakers feared what it might do. It’s not even a punishment for speech – it’s a punishment for hypothetical speech!

Notwithstanding the court’s blessing, this is a horrible precedent. It’s now accepted constitutional interpretation that “national security” needs override the First Amendment – that the American government, at the very least, can ban any viewpoint or platform that originates from another country. Why couldn’t this argument be used to ban a Chinese-language newspaper, or a media website like the BBC or Al Jazeera?

If the argument is that China could influence TikTok’s algorithm to control what views people are exposed to, or harvest personal info to blackmail us… then why is it the only platform subject to that concern? Why don’t the same “national security” concerns apply to American social media companies run by American billionaires? The oath of citizenship says “enemies foreign and domestic”, after all.

You’re not the customer, you’re the product

By any measure, American social-media companies have done worse than anything that TikTok is accused of. Their algorithms have amplified harassment, toxic conspiracy theories, bigoted rumors, and right-wing misinformation. They’ve contributed to violent radicalization, the spread of fascism, even genocide. They’ve harvested massive quantities of data about us, with no constraints on how they use them.

In fact, Facebook has sold user data to China and to Russia. That’s the very thing we were supposed to be afraid of TikTok doing. Why isn’t Facebook facing a forced divestment or shutdown?

To be clear, I don’t think that TikTok is the “good” social media platform. Fundamentally, all social media companies are for-profit businesses with the goal of collecting user data and monetizing it. It’s just that TikTok is on the rising side of the enshittification curve, the phase when a platform wants to make its user experience pleasant to build an audience. Facebook and Twitter long since passed the peak and are sliding down the other side. If TikTok lasts for the long term, I don’t doubt the same thing will happen.

Instead of targeting TikTok in particular, Congress could have passed comprehensive social-media regulation that applied to every platform alike. That would have been fair and welcome. Such a law could have given us control of our personal data, like Europe’s GDPR, letting us decide who can collect it and what they can do with it. It could have mandated that social media offer non-algorithmic feeds, giving us the choice of what content we want to see. It could have guaranteed interoperability, giving us the right to delete our data or transfer it to a different platform.

But instead, they did… this. It’s roaring hypocrisy for Congress to ban a Chinese-owned company from doing the same things that American companies have been doing, successfully and profitably, for years. It puts the lie to anyone who claims that America has either free speech or a free market.

Flocking to China’s welcoming embrace

However, Americans aren’t sitting back and taking this. In an act of collective spite, they’re flocking to a Chinese social media app, Rednote. So many people have downloaded it, they’ve pushed it to #1 on app stores worldwide.

In fact, Rednote is a colloquial translation. The Chinese name of the app, Xiaohongshu, more accurately translates as “Little Red Book“. If the U.S. government wanted to stop American citizens from being influenced by China… it’s safe to say they failed catastrophically.

Rednote is similar to TikTok, but it’s hosted on servers in China. It has no American presence that a U.S. law or court would have jurisdiction over (although it could be removed from U.S. app stores).

The influx of Americans on what used to be an exclusively Chinese app has sparked fascinating conversations. People are swapping memes and jokes, answering questions about each other’s countries, even helping each other with their homework. It’s a true social experiment – perhaps the first large-scale cultural exchange between the U.S. and China.

I admit I’m curious, but also wary. Although I think the American government blundered badly with this ban, I don’t believe China is our savior. The honeymoon isn’t going to last.

Some Americans on Rednote have been shocked by the high quality of life in China, which they’re seeing for the first time. If that motivates them to demand more from their own government, so much the better. However, China isn’t the template we should be seeking to copy.

China isn’t a democracy. It has no freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion. There’s no due process; you can be disappeared or imprisoned at a party official’s whim. Chinese citizens need permission not just to leave China, but to travel or move internally within its borders (the hukou system). China props up totalitarian regimes like Russia and North Korea and wants to conquer democratic Taiwan. It has little or no tolerance for LGBTQ+ people and other minorities.

That said, it’s not as if the U.S. is a shining example of liberty to contrast with Chinese repression. We’re hurtling backwards on LGBTQ+ and minority rights. While the Chinese regime censors Tiananmen Square, American legislators want to ban books and outlaw history lessons. While China controls its citizens’ movements, red states want to round up immigrants and make it illegal for pregnant people to travel to get an abortion. The U.S. has colonized other countries and engaged in imperialist wars of its own. And now, for the first time ever, the U.S. censors foreign media just like China does.

Besides, whatever China’s government does, it’s not the fault of ordinary Chinese people. They can say that they have no responsibility for the actions of their state, because they never got to vote on it – a claim Americans can’t make!

There’s no telling what will become of TikTok. I haven’t decided whether to give Rednote a try. But whatever social media platforms I’m on, I’ll always be a lover of free speech.

No matter what, I believe we’re better off when people can express their views and talk to each other. I don’t want anyone – not China’s government, not America’s government, and certainly not a handful of billionaire oligarchs – deciding what I can and can’t see on the internet. I don’t trust anyone with that kind of power.

Congestion pricing and change rage

A road sign announcing NYC's Congestion Relief Zone

[Previous: Cars shouldn’t be a necessity for living]

I’ve always believed that all interesting moral problems reduce to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Briefly summarized, this is a situation where it’s better for each individual to make the selfish choice. But if everyone does that, it guarantees disaster, whereas everyone would have wound up better off if only they’d been able to cooperate.

To be sure, there are other moral problems that don’t fit this framework, like racists or religious fundamentalists who want to force their own beliefs on everyone. Obviously, with the state of things as they are, these people are huge threats – but at the level of pure philosophy, they present no challenge. It doesn’t take any serious consideration to dismiss them.

The real moral dilemmas arise when there’s a true clash of interests: individuals’ selfish desires against the collective good. Who should sacrifice, and under what circumstances? How do we prevent free-riders and ensure that those who contribute are repaid in kind?

Traffic in big cities is a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma problem. Most people see cars as more convenient than buses or trains, since you can drive on your own schedule and go straight to your destination.

But if everyone thinks that way, the system collapses. No matter how many roads you build, it’s impossible to accommodate everyone wanting to drive everywhere all the time. Massive traffic jams snarl every highway and street, and no one can get anywhere. Too many people choosing the selfish solution ensures a worse experience for everyone than if they had just taken mass transit.

Then there are all the other externalities of car culture. There’s noise pollution that disrupts people’s sleep. There’s air pollution that causes asthma and other health problems. There are the injuries and deaths from crashes and pedestrians hit by reckless drivers. There are the huge swaths of valuable space given over to parking – which raises rents and real-estate prices on the space left over for human beings to live.

This is where congestion pricing comes in.

After months of delay by our cowardly governor, New York has finally rolled out its congestion pricing program. It’s a modest $9 toll to drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan during business hours.

Congestion pricing increases the monetary cost of driving to be more in line with the true cost. It doesn’t take away driving as an option for people who need it. But for those who don’t, it’s an extra nudge to consider walking, biking or mass transit. It also benefits people who have to drive – because they’ll enjoy faster, easier commutes with less traffic.

Even in just a few days, there are encouraging signs that congestion pricing is working. It’s caused a dramatic drop in traffic on previously car-choked streets and bridges. The revenue will fund badly-needed improvements to the subway system.

All in all, congestion pricing is a great example of public policy working as intended. So, predictably, New York Republicans flew into a lather of rage over it.

For example, MAGA city councilwoman Vickie Paladino – yes, a sitting elected official – encouraged people to destroy the cameras that read license plates:

City Councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Republican who represents parts of northeast Queens, wrote on X that “a high-powered green laser pointer like the ones you find on eBay for under $30 can destroy a camera sensor.”

“So if you buy one of these lasers, be sure to NOT point them at any cameras, because they could be permanently damaged!” she added.

When another user on the platform asked if the laser pointers could “take care” of the MTA’s congestion pricing toll readers, Paladino replied with multiple thinking-face emojis.

As you’ll notice, there was no appeal to democracy. Paladino didn’t ask New Yorkers to protest, write letters or call their representatives. She went straight to wink-and-nudge calls for vandalism and destruction of government property. If a Muslim imam or an immigrant had done the same, who can doubt it’d be treated as terrorism?

It would be one thing for people like Paladino to acknowledge the tradeoff, but to argue that individual liberty is supreme and no one should ever have to sacrifice for others. That would be the philosophically consistent libertarian position.

But this is something different. It’s an immediate, knee-jerk fury at the mere idea of changing anything or giving up any privilege you have. Paul Krugman calls it “change rage“:

Yet while cars may be special, there’s a broader syndrome — change rage? — in which a significant number of people go wild at any suggestion that they should change their behavior for the common good. The change doesn’t have to involve major cost or inconvenience; seriously, even masking up during the pandemic wasn’t that big a hardship. It’s more the principle of the thing: How dare you tell me how to live my life?

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it took off during COVID. The stage was set by decades of conservative anti-intellectualism, which taught their voters to reject science and scorn expertise whenever it didn’t align with what party elites wanted.

Then, when the pandemic hit, the cult of Trumpist Republicans denied there was a problem, because admitting its existence would be a blot on the competence of their Dear Leader. All the anti-mask and anti-vaccine frenzy grew from this starting point.

This oppositional, defiant, “you can’t tell me what to do” attitude has spread to every issue on conservatives’ radar. They rage over replacing polluting gas stoves with clean electric appliances. They take a concept as simple and appealing as the “15-minute city” – the idea that cities should be designed at human scale, so all the amenities you’d want are no more than 15 minutes’ walk – and twist it into a bizarre conspiracy about imprisoning people in their homes. If drunk driving laws or no-smoking zones were proposed today, in our poisoned political atmosphere, I doubt they’d pass.

Democracy can handle the give-and-take of political sausage-making. What it can’t survive is one faction treating every policy it disagrees with as an existential threat. This isn’t just a hardball bargaining tactic. It’s a wholesale rejection of the social contract that makes us a society in the first place.

Image credit: Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz via Wikimedia Commons; released under CC BY-SA 4.0 license