Everything that is wrong with American capitalism, in one headline

Here it is, in the LA Times:

"Comcast, Charter reach $20-billion deal, would swap customers in L.A."

Cable companies Comcast Corp. and Charter Communications have agreed to a $20-billion deal that would exchange subscribers in numerous markets, including Los Angeles, should Comcast prevail in its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable.

Nearly 280,000 homes in Los Angeles that currently receive their cable service from Charter would be affected by provisions of the deal unveiled Monday. 

Those Charter subscribers, in such cities as Long Beach, Malibu, Burbank, Glendale and Alhambra, would eventually become Comcast customers -- perhaps as early as next year.

I'm not sure which is the more shocking, the headline (and the associated story) or the completely blasé and matter-of-fact way in which it is being reported.   This is not the way a free market is supposed to work.  At the risk of stating what should be obvious but apparently isn't, in a free market, the customer is supposed to select the supplier, not the other way around.  Suppliers are not supposed to be able to trade customers as if they were a commodity.  And yet, this is the situation we are in.

Not only is this the situation we are in, but we have somehow gotten here with only the feeblest of protests.  This should be an outrageous situation, but there is no outrage.  There is barely any indication that anyone thinks this situation is even remarkable or noteworthy, let alone outrageous.  And that is truly outrageous.

[UPDATE] A number of commenters have made the point that it's not capitalism that's the problem but politics.  I basically agree with this, and perhaps I should have chosen a different headline.  But the point I was trying to make is not so much about the exact nature of the problem but rather that the Charter/Comcast deal -- and, more to the point, people's (lack of) reaction to it -- is illustrative of the problem.

[UPDATE2] Lively discussion on Hacker News

Evidence that religion is a drug

Five years ago I advanced the hypothesis that religion is essentially a drug that works through the placebo effect.  Today I happened to stumble across a data point to support the theory:

I've been feeling down enough that I considered suicide. But today the reverend said something that got to me "Easter takes you away from despair because you yourself are also resurrected with Jesus". That made me think that if I can now spiritually resurrect myself then I'd much rather do that than take my life, I'm feeling great right now.

Of course, the religion-as-a-drug theory predicts that this feeling of euphoria will wear off and he'll need another hit soon, but I can't think of a way to test that without being cruel.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Opposing gay marriage is no longer an acceptable position

I wrote my first blog post on gay marriage over ten years ago, and I'm proud of having written back then:

There are no tenable grounds for denying equal rights to homosexuals, just as there are no (and never were any) tenable grounds for denying equal rights to blacks. This one is a complete no-brainer. Why does it have to take so long for society to figure these things out?

Today, in the shadow of the debate of Brendan Eich's ouster from Mozilla, it is time to go one step further: opposing equal rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity should no longer be an acceptable position in civilized society, just as opposing equal rights for people according to the color of their skin is no longer an acceptable position.  Anyone who opposes gay marriage, or who opposed it in the past and does not repent, doesn't deserve to sit at the grown-up table any more.  Gay marriage is no longer an issue where reasonable people can agree to disagree.

Why now?  Because this year is the tenth anniversary of the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts.  Over the staunch objections of conservatives, we did the experiment, and the results are clear: none of the horrible things that conservatives predicted would happen if gay marriage were legalized have actually happened.  Children have not been "converted" into being gay.  They are not confused over gender roles.  Reproductive rates have not plummeted (alas).  There has not been a dramatic increase in child abuse.  In fact, the most egregious source of systemic child abuse in the last ten years has been the Catholic church, one of the staunchest opponents of gay marriage!

So, enough already.  This is no longer a theoretical debate.  Unless someone can come up with some actual evidence of harm caused by allowing gays to marry (and making bigots feel queasy doesn't count) this debate should be over.

Brendan Eich was not fired for his politics, he was fired for his morals

The difference between conservative hypocrisy and liberal hypocrisy is that conservatives employ hypocrisy in service of their goals, while liberals employ it to undermine theirs.  Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, in a classic fit of liberal moral relativism, argues that Brendan Eich being fired as CEO of Mozilla for having supported Proposition 8 is a violation of the liberal values of tolerance and acceptance of other people's views.  And it's not just Conor, other self-identified liberals are wringing their hands about this as well.

All of which badly misses the point.  Gay marriage is not like other political issues.  Reasonable people can disagree about economic policy, industrial regulation, campaign finance reform.  Reasonable people cannot disagree about gay marriage.  Every single non-relgious argument ever put forth against gay marriage has been definitively debunked.  Allowing gays to marry does not destroy the fabric of society.  It is not bad for kids.  It does not deter heterosexual people from marrying and forming stable families (or not, as they choose).  It does *none* of these things.  The *only* negative consequence of allowing gays to marry is that it makes bigots feel queasy.

Brendan Eich was not fired for taking a political position, he was fired because his actions provide evidence that in his heart of hearts he is a bigot, that he has a broken moral code.  And while having a broken moral code is not necessarily a show-stopper for being a CEO (alas), it is not an unreasonable qualification for a company to choose to adopt.  There is nothing illiberal or unreasonable about it.  The world would probably be a better place if more companies did it.

But again, this is not really about gay marriage.  This is about liberal self-doubt.  Why is it so hard for liberals to stand up for their convictions?  Even if gay marriage were not so morally cut-and-dried, privately discriminating against Brendan for his political views is at least as morally justified as the public discrimination against gays that he once tried to have enshrined in law.  No matter how you slice it, there is no injustice here.

The Supreme Court just killed American democracy

Imagine we play the following game: we each take out our wallets and place a stake on the table.  Whoever places the larger bet wins, and gets the whole pot plus half of whatever remains in the loser's wallet.  No cards, no dice, just strategy.  Would you play?  Would you play against David and Charles Koch?

In the aftermath of the latest Supreme Court decision you will have no choice.  Actually, you haven't had a choice but to play this game for a very long time now, ever since the Court gutted soft-money campaign contribution limits in the Citizens United decision.  The game is politics, and since Citizens United, politicians have been for sale to the highest bidder.  (The corruption is shockingly brazen.  I write checks that are big enough to get myself invited to personal meetings with senators and congressmen on a fairly regular basis.  These invitations literally come with price lists attached.  It's like ordering off a (very expensive) restaurant menu.)

But Citizens United still left in place an overall limit on direct contributions somewhere north of $100,000.  That is a substantial amount of money to be sure, but not entirely out of reach of small (100-1000 people) groups who really felt passionately about some issue or other.  (Such groups are sometimes pejoratively known as "special interest groups".  Note to Mitt Romney: special interest groups are people, my friend.)  This meant that non-billionaires, if they worked together, still had a shot at winning the political poker game that Citizens United has forced us all to play.

The latest decision, McCutcheon vs. FEC, removes the house limit on the stakes in the political poker game.  This magnifies the political power of those at the very top of the economic ladder, and accelerates the transformation of the united states into a fully fledged plutocracy.

Here's the really scary thing about the political poker game: to win the game, the super-wealthy don't actually have to write these enormous checks.  All they have to do to have undue influence over a politician is to make a credible threat to write an enormous check to their opponent in the next election.  Before McCutcheon, the law limited the magnitude of that threat.  Now that limit is gone.

As a result of McCutcheon, democracy is now fully dead in the United States of America, even though the show will go on for quite a while.  There will be campaigns, and there will be elections, and there will be lip service given to the will of the people.  But American politicians will henceforth have no choice but to do the bidding of the super-rich.  That will be the only way to keep their jobs.

UPDATE: Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a Constitutional amendment to fix this problem.  I urge you to contact your senators and representatives and urge them to support this amendment.