Coalition parties in the US.

It has become a common assumption these days that bipartisanship is almost impossible in the US. Ever since the 1980s or so, both parties have made huge efforts to dig their heels behind the trenches and consolidate their own world visions without conceding anything to the opponent. In other words, politics has become far more ideological. A pragmatic politician, the one who could reach agreements across the aisle in order to promote a broader interest, is invariably call a "flip-flopper" these days, derisively painted as someone without convictions. And yet, as Halstead and Lind state, American politics worked best when Democrats and Republicans could reach such agreements, when neither party had a firm control of every single representative in Congress and convincing members of the opposite party was at least theoretically possible. Or, to put it a different way, when party discipline was far more loose than it is these days.

The attempts by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans to make the two major parties in the United States more ideologically uniform have had two results. The first result has been the alienation of a growing number of American voters, who cannot find even a faction within a major party with which they can identify. The second has been the debasement of our political discourse and the emergence of a political cultura based on partisan scandal-mongering rather than bipartisan achievement.

When the US Congress worked best —from the mid-1930s until the early 1970s— the House and Senate functioned in a fluid, kaleidoscopic manner. Conservative Democrats often sided with conservative Republicans; liberal Republicans voted sometimes with liberal Democrats; sometimes liberals and conservatives, in the same or opposite parties, cooperated. Indeed, if we look at the major congressional achievements of the twentieth century —Social Security, the Marshall Plan, the enabling legislation for NATO and the UN, the GI Bill, Medicare, Head Start, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts— we find that they are concentrated in this era of weak parties and strong cross-party coalitions. Democrats may have controlled Congress, with a few brief exceptions, during this period, but much of the credit for these landmark achievements goes to Republican lawmakers. For example, as a result of the number of segregationist Democrats in Congress in the 1960s, Republican members of Congress were more likely to vote for the historic civil rights legislation than Democrats. Moreover, the great House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who worked comfortably with members of the other party as well as with their own.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 116-117)

There are two issues that are worth considering here, I think. First of all, we have witnessed in the past few years an overall tendency towards an excessive partisanship and, even worse, a clear polarization of the political debate in two blocks —one conservative, the other socialist or social-democratic— inescapably opposed to each other. This trend can be observed in the most recent period of elections in most countries (Germany, United States, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico...), where one or the other side won by a very narrow margin after a campaign that has always been characterized by an embarrassing lack of serious debate over the issues and an exchange of insults that does little but turn the citizens away from the political process. The second issue is the worrisome trend, parallel to the polarization mentioned above, towards the imposition of party discipline over the individual conscience of the political representatives, which is putting an end to a real pluralism within the political parties. While our societies are becoming more fluid and complex, the organizations that supposedly represent their interests and ideas in the political institutions appear to be moving in the opposite direction, promoting the lack of debate and the homogeneity in the name of appearing "strong" during the campaigns.

Down payment for newborns and other highly original ideas.

Halstead and Lind come up with some interesting proposals every now and then. Proposals that may sound as highly innovative or the unintended consequence of smoking some illegal substances, depending on your point of view. For example, in order to promote financial independence, they propose to create what they call a down payment for newborns:

What if each American newborn were given a onetime gift of $6,000, at birth, as a down payment on a productive life? This is the amount that would be required for all Americans to have approximately $20,000 in their own capital accounts by the time they reach their eighteenth birthdays. Given the number of babies born each year in the United States, such a plan would cost surprisingly little —about $24 billion annually— and if the program were means-tested, it would cost even less. But the potential rewards could be astonishing.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 100)

Can we truly consider US $24 billion a year to be "surprisingly little"? That would be roughly $100 billion per presidential term, and I didn't notice the authors explaining where the money would come from. Sure, the idea sounds intriguing and it might even do wonders for millions of American kids who (as in any other developed society) are sentenced to a life of relative deprivation and low expectations. After all, our governments already give tax credits and use other policies to promote natality. This idea to give a down payment to newborns wouldn't be, in a sense, but a variation of the traditional policies, with the additional advantage that it has a far more important long-term impact. Still, one cannot avoid the feeling (with this and several other proposals put forward in this book) that the authors are behaving a bit like divine figures who can afford to discuss about the topics without a need to pull up the sleeves and go down in the mud. It always happens that wonderful ideas get all blurred when someone tries to implement them. The devil is usually in the details, and Halstead and Lind never have to deal with that. They can just look from a distance and give advice, which is at the same time this book's strength and major weakness.

Give wage-earners a stake in the system.

The same as American society as a whole, Halstead and Lind are also obsessed by what we can call the "stock market myth":

What would be the twenty-first-century American equivalent of the Homestead Act of the nineteenth, and the home mortgage interest deduction of the twentieth? Both were tremendously successful in democratizing access to economic wealth and opportunity, and both did so by broadening ownership of assets in the form of real estate. In the Information Age, however, it is the ownership of financial assets that most needs to be broadened. Those who have benefited disproportionately from the new economy are those with significant assets in the financial markets, not those who derive their income solely from wages. The most obvious solution for lifting all boats in the new economy is to turn all Americans into owners of financial capital. In the twentieth century, public policy cushioned wage earners against shocks from the economy. In the twenty-first century, public policy should go one step further, and give all wage earners a stake in the system.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 98-99).

First of all, I find it quite interesting that the same people who criticized the concept of self-management that became popular among leftists in the 1960s are now proposing... well, a limited form of the very same idea. Or, to be more precise, self-management without the power. Actually, what they propose is more like sharing part of the workers' rents with the company in the form of purchases of stock (for that is what it amounts to in the end, let's be clear) without having any say whatsoever in the way the companies are run.

Who hasn't heard these wonderful speeches about how capitalism is becoming "more democratic" as of late because more and more Americans invest in the stock market? And how about the idea that companies themselves are far more scrutinized today because there are more stock holders who, supposedly, keep a close eye on the top executives? Let's be real. The vast majority of companies are still under the control of a bunch of capital owners. And, to make matters worse, the stock holders meetings are pretty much useless. Most of the decisions are made, as in politics, behind the curtains and by those who hold the higher stakes. It's not how many Americans hold stocks that matters, but rather the percentage of stocks that they hold that matters. Obviously, that little detail is ignored in the wonderful rah-rah rhetoric.

To put it a different way, it sounds to me as if Halstead and Lind have drunk the Cool-Aid of the stock market speculation that has been raging through the financial markets during the last twenty or thirty years. They have come to believe that the current state of affairs truly is normal.

Philosophy behind Social Security system.

Halstead & Lind are clearly in favor of reforming Social Security to promote self-reliance and diminish the importance of the intergenerational transfers:

The major reason for replacing, rather than reforming, the Social Security system inherited from the New Deal era is as much philosophical as it is pragmatic. A public pension system should be based primarily on individual savings rather than on an intergenerational transfer system; it should encourage individual self-reliance, with assistance when necessary from the government, not paternalism by an all-providing government. Many on today's Left, believing that the oversized welfare states of northern Europe should be the model for the US government, defend Social Security on the grounds that it provides a sense of shared citizenship among Americans. This sentiment, common among social democrats, was quite alien to the thinking of mainstream American liberals who originally devised Social Security. Franklin Roosevelt thought of Social Security as insurance, not as a sacred political expression of egalitarian solidarity, and went to his grave hoping that it could be fully funded like a conventional insurance program. The genuine heirs of FDR are not the old-fashioned leftists who idealize Social Security but the pragmatic reformers who want to achieve the goal of FDR —preventing destitution in old age— by methods better adapted to the Information Age.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 86)

Yet, they don't truly address the issue raised by those "old-fashioned Leftists" they deride so much. The fact that the founders of the system intended this or that shouldn't matter at all, unless one assumes that they were right for the simple fact of being the first to propose something (or that they knew better because they lived earlier than us, which is the way many nostalgic conservatives would have it). What should truly concern us is the best way to guarantee a decent retirement to our elders at the same time that we make it just and fair, in the sense that those who are in the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder can also retire and enjoy some minimum living standards. That, and nothing else, is precisely the objective of the system as it was first implemented by FDR. Any reforms that keep that as the main objective are more than welcome, although what is presented to us as "reforms" usually amount to little else than a hidden privatization of the whole system that will only benefit the wealthy. That's the danger. And that is also the main reason why the "old-fashioned Leftists" feel a bit skeptical of any such talk of Social Security reforms.

How the American health system came to be.

I found the following paragraph quite interesting:

The employer-based portion of America's current social contract is not the product of intentional design but rather of historical accident. During World War II, wage and price rationing prevented American companies from raising wages. In order to attract workers, companies began taking advantage of a loophole in the tax code that gave them a tax break if they provided health insurance for their employees. This minor loophole then expanded to become the basis of the American health care system for the adult workforce, creating a type of welfare capitalism without parallel in other societies. Subsequently, the major reason for the failure of repeated attempts —by Presidents Truman, Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton— to establish a single-payer system like those of other advanced technological societies was the fact that many Americans already had health inurance through their employers.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 66)

Taking into account how strongly Republicans advocate the current system, one would think that it somehow reflects a very deep American conviction over how these issues should be managed. Yet, it seems that the system came to be in a very haphazardly manner. I suppose it is one of those instances where today's reform (or even revolution) will be tomorrow's status quo, firmly defended by conservatives as the "traditional way to do things". One way or another, it definitely puts things in perspective.

Labor market policies in the Information Age.

Halstead and Lind clearly state the dilemma of any labor policy in the Information Age:

The central challenge of the new Information Age social contract is to destroy less-productive jobs and less-productive businesses, without destroying lives and livelihoods. There are two sides to this challenge: the need of America's employees for greater security in the new economy, and the need of America's employers for greater flexibility in the new economy. A failure to meet either side of this challenge will ultimately hurt all parties involved. That is, if reliable and flexible safety net program do not make it easy for workers to move from one job to another or one sector to another, without devastating losses in income or gaps in insurance coverage, then voters will pressure politicians to preserve outmoded jobs and antiquated industries, thereby threatening the very engine of our prosperity. Likewise, if our social contract does not afford modern corporations the increased speed and flexibility they so need to succeed in the new economy, then our engine of prosperity will suffer just as seriously.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 63)

Certainly, as our economies have become more open and global in nature, the need for flexibility has increased. It is simply not possible to run businesses the way they were run during the heyday of the large corporation back in the 1950s and 1960s. The post World War II era was truly unique on two counts: first of all, it created solid, stable and comprehensive institutions that made it possible to organize and channel the collective interests of the citizens (trade unions, employers' organizations, political parties...), providing stability to society as a whole along the way (well, at least to the most advanced societies); and, second, it also strengthened the importance of the nation state as a consequence of the Cold War alliances. It was the combination of these two factors that made it possible to build a new social contract based on political consensus, collective bargaining and the type of welfare policies that brought about the longest period of economic and social development ever seen. But there was also a price we had to pay for all that. We built some humongous, hiper-bureaucratic institutions that could get out of control at any time. Our societies became too sclerotic, too used to the excess of red tape and overregulation. Our companies (and all other institutions) were simply too slow moving, too big to adapt to rapid changes. As long as these didn't happen, there was no problem. However, as it ought to happen, more and more social and political changes started mounting in the 1960s and by the late 1970s they had reached such a proportion that it was patently obvious how the old system didn't work anymore. Things had to change, and that's precisely what Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promised to bring about. Change.

Now, after a few decades of neoliberal economic policies, it has become clear to us that while we managed to streamline our economies, the same has not happened in the political field, where our institutions still expect the sort of large collective action of yesteryear. Worse yet, liberal de-regulation has widened the social divide back to what it was during the pre-war years, undoing a good part of what was done by the New Deal. Needless to say, all this has increased the amount of instability in the world as well as in our own developed countries, where we have witnessed a rise of populism without precedent since the 1930s. To a great extent, both the anti-globalization and the anti-immigration movements are a direct consequence of this.

So, here we are in a situation where, on the one hand, we have to provide the amount of flexibility that our businesses need in order to stay competitive in a global economy and, at the same time, we also have to respond to the clear need the citizens have for a minimum amount of job security that guarantees a decent standard of life. In other words, we have to find the way to provide the competitiveness of the 1980s and 1990s together with the job security and social policies of the 1950s and 1960s. Halstead and Lind have clearly reached this conclusion, as did millions of other people who felt comfortable with the levels of social, economic and political development we reached in the post-war era (i.e., all those who felt represented in the social contract reached by Christian-Democrats, Social-Democrats and social liberals in the 1940s and 1950s). They are not discovering anything new. We are all familiar with the main outline of the analysis. The problem, of course, is to offer a workable solution to the dilemma, and that's where Halstead and Lind definitely fail short for they offer little else than the overall generalities quoted above.

So, is there any solution? How do we square the circle? How do we provide, at the same time, flexibility to our businesses and security to our workers? Sometime ago the Danish came up with something they call flexicurity, a combination of pro-active labor market policies that allows for easy hiring and firing as well as high benefits for the unemployed. While the policy has worked marvellously in Denmark (their current unemployment rate is 2.8% as of the end of 2008), it is not clear yet to what extent it can be applied to other countries. In any case, it relies on a the previous existence of a highly educated working force (as is the case in Denmark, of course) as well as a solid and dynamic education system capable to train those who lose their employment. The high benefits for the unemployed, therefore, are not limited just to financial support. Rather training is understood as a right and a duty of the unemployed. Obviously, as we just mentioned, this assumes the previous existence of a dynamic education system that is capable of taking on this task at a decent cost.

Two social models: safety net versus universal provider.

Halstead and Lind distinguish between two clearly distinct social models, clearly placing their bets (and that of what they call "the radical center") with one side:

Implicit in this Radical Centrist philosophy is a new conception of the role of government. There are, in essence, two models through which a government can provide basic economic security to its citizens: the safety net model and the universal provider model. The former assumes that public benefits should only go to help the neediest, while the latter assumes that public benefits should accrue to all citizens, regardless of need. The New Deal philosophy, in its most familiar version —epitomized by programs like Social Security and Medicare— is based on the universal provider model. The Radical Centrist philosophy, by contrast, is premised on the safety net model.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 22)

Really, what Halstead and Lind call the "safety net model" is no different than the traditional concept of subsidiarity, a concept very dear to liberals . The so-called welfare state originally started as an attempt to provide a safety net to those individuals who might fall through the cracks of an economic system that promoted fast-paced change and led to social inequality. It was a way to promote equality of opportunity in capitalistic countries without guaranteeing a more clear-cut equality of outcome, which would be closer to the Communist or traditionally Socialist approach. However, as many critics of the welfare state point out, the original intent was somehow distorted and quickly derived into a free-for-all approach where even the richest individuals could benefit from the Government services. Now, perhaps there are certain fields (education might be one) where this policy makes sense, since choosing the universal Government-backed service may be the consequence not only of a personal preference for a given service quality but also for a given philosophical approach that perhaps cannot be found anywhere else (in the case of education, it's not easy to find a secular approach to education outside the public school system in most developed nations). Yet, the unintended consequence of applying the universal provider model to most services is that even those who are rich enough benefit from it.

Now, this is one of the key differences between the classical liberal school and those who prefer to follow the Christian-Democratic and Social-Democratic traditions, with the so-called social liberals somewhere in between. One could argue in favor of the universal provider system on several grounds: first of all, clearly distinguishing between a public system for the needy and a private system for those who can afford it will most likely end in underfunded and poorly managed public system; second, while it is true that the better off benefit from a Government backed service, they pay for it via taxes, so it's not as if they get the service for free, they pay their proportionally equal share of it; and, finally, it can also be argued that by providing certain benefits to society as a whole regardless of income, our systems promote the idea of citizenship and belonging to the same community.

One way or another though, the pragmatic approach ought to take into consideration not only these philosophical reasons in favor of one approach or another, but also the practical conditions under which they are implemented: to what extent can we fund the universal provider system?, what is the overall quality of the system?, etc. As it tends to be the case, the answer to very old questions (and, let's face it, humans have been dealing with this one for quite some time now) rarely involves a clear "yes" or "no" universal answer. It all depends on the particular society we want to implement the policy for and its particular set of circumstances. Personally, I find it more interesting making an efffort not to rule anything out than to stress a single answer as the magic solution that will come to solve all our problems across the globe. Let's just agree to consider all the possibilities, take the time to obtain the data, review it, discuss it, and then make a common decision that counts with the largest possible support. All this, by necessity, has to be done individually in each society, which also rules out any universal solution.

The three spheres of American society: business, state and community.

Halstead and Lind define three spheres that, according to them, combine to form American society. The description obviously responds to traditional liberal political theory:

In our opinion, America's unique ability to remake itself and thrive during each successive wave of technological change —past and future— stems from its core commitment to a division of social authority among three distinct realms of society: the market, the state, and community. Our nation's history reveals that these three sectors —the private, the public, and the communal— are interdependent, complementary, and mutually supporting. For our nation to flourish, all three must be in relative balance with one another, so that each may perform its unique functions, and provide its unique form of freedom.

The core value of the market is liberty, and its core functions are to promote wealth creation and the efficient allocation of resources. The core value of the state is equality of opportunity, and its core functions are to promote the public good, maintain civil liberties, and preserve law, order, and national defense. And the core value of community —which encompasses the realm of organized religions, voluntary organization, customs, and traditions— is solidarity; its core functions are to preserve communal bonds and national unity and to nurture civic virtues. Each provides a unique form of freedom: The market provides freedom to enrich oneself through hard work, the state provides freedom from oppression and destitution, and the community provides freedom of association with like-minded people. The precise form and makeup of each of these three sectors have changed dramatically throughout our nation's history, but their core values and functions, as well as the freedoms they confer, have remained constant and, it may be hoped, will for the foreseeable future.

Rather than to any particular ideology, it is to our nation's ongoing commitment to this unwritten division of authority between the private, public, and communal spheres that we owe our historic success both in balancing and expanding our competing goals of liberty, fairness, and unity. This is not to suggest that American history has been unidirectional —to the contrary, we have progressed in fits and starts, at times moving forward and at other times moving backward. But taken as a whole, there is little question that our nation's relatively short history has been characterized by an unmistakable upward mobility on the axes of individual freedom, social equality, and national unity. Any particular program must be judged on the basis of its success un promoting improvement in all three realms of American society, not just one.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 14-15)

In other words, Halstead and Lind don't only take this as a description of American society as it is today, but also as a recipe for the best way to organize its future too. Again, in this sense, they are being completely consistent with classical liberalism, or perhaps a moderate form of social liberalism. I agree with their position on this issue. Contrary to what conservative Republicans state these days, the US has not traditionally stood for unfettered market capitalism, but rather for a far more fluid, dynamic and to some extent unstable relationship between the three spheres described by Halstead and Lind.
There have been some changes in regards to the upward mobility and social equality lately, as the authors themselves bring up later. Yet, the very fact that this mode of organization cannot be easily described as a set of simple rules makes it difficult to be adopted as a political dogma, which is precisely the reason why said conservatives dislike it —this is not to say, of course, that there aren't any sensible conservatives, nor does it mean that dogmatism doesn't exist among liberals or progressives, quite the contrary.

In any case, be it liberal, conservative or whatever else one may consider it, this approach to social and political organization does appeal to me too. I agree that a society where these three spheres of activity share a healthy existence, enriching each other, is the way to go. It is, I believe, a centrist (or moderate) approach to politics that solves more problems than it creates, allowing people from different political allegiances to chip in. Perhaps in the US they have overdone it a bit by letting corporations (i.e., the business leg of the tripod) extend its power too much, but the fact is that in Europe we may have also overdone it by letting the state spread too far at the expense of the other two legs (especially at the expense of a healthy, thriving civil society).

Reforming the Social Security system.

Halstead and Lind quickly introduce two key issues that have taken the center stage in the American political debate for the past couple of decades:

Many of the New Deal programs of the industrial era are now as obsolete as they are entrenched in our two-party structure. To appreciate the depth of this disjuncture, we need only take a quick look at many of the inherited assumptions and institutions that both parties take for granted, and ask ourselves: Does it still make sense to go on organizing our society this way in the twenty-first century?

Let's begin with our basic social contract —an arrangement inherited from the mid-twentieth century— which is premised on an intergenerational public pension program and an employer-based health care system. At the birth of the New Deal, it made sense to structure Social Security as a transfer program in which current workers pay for current retirees —so long as the working-age population greatly outnumbered the elderly whom they subsidized. Indeed, the system worked remarkably well for the first generation of retirees to benefit from it. Today, however, the rapid growth in the ratio of retirees to workers threatens to bankrupt both Social Security and Medicare, or to impose crippling taxes on the young and the employed. What was the proudest achievement of the New Deal era is fast becoming a sobering liability in the information era.

At the height of the Second Industrial Revolution, when most employees aspired to lifetime employment with a single firm, it also might have made sense to link the provision of health care benefits to one's employer (although even then a series of American presidents tried and failed to create a single-payer universal health care system). In the turbulent economy of the early twenty-first century, however, when average job tenure is only three to five years and the proportion of contingent and part-time workers is high, does it really make sense to maintain this industrial era linkage between health insurance and employers? Doing so only makes changing jobs that much more disruptive, and breeds a profound sense of insecurity in a workforce that is increasingly oriented toward a free-agent model. Our basic social contract, then, is being undermined by the inescapable forces of demographics and economic change.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 8-9)

While most other countries in the world aren't as affected by the problems concerning the health care system (they do, although in quite a distinct manner that we will discuss later), the issue of how to avoid the bankruptcy of our pension systems is certainly widespread in the advanced industrial world. The reality is that medical, social and economic advances have lengthened the average life expectancy of most people in our countries, which in turn (and coupled with the obvious fall in our birth rates) has increased the financial burden that our public pension plans represent for our Government finances. We can discuss forever how to solve this problem, whether the pension system needs to be fully or partially privatized (or not privatized at all), whether the retirement age needs to be pushed further or not, etc. However, what we cannot do is dismiss the problem and play the ostrich strategy. We cannot simply ignore the current state of affairs and pretend that if we look a different way the problem will get solved somehow. Today's public pension system in economically advanced nations is as unsustainable as our current levels of pollution and the release of global warming contributing gases. Denying the reality because we don't like it won't get us anywhere closer to the resolution of the problem.

So, what do Halstead and Lind propose? A return to FDR's original plan: a retirement plan that relies on what the retirees saved during their working life, more than on transferences from the younger to the older generations. They would establish a system of mandatory retirement savings backed by Government transfer payments in those cases where the individuals didn't manage to save enough. The Government would establish the bare minimum that individual citizens would have to take out of their paychecks and save towards retirement, and the future retirees would get to choose where to invest that money. In this sense, the system would be privately run but highly regulated by the Government. Additionally, the Government would also step in to supplement the retirement of those who didn't save enough in order to promote social justice. Altogether, then, is a mixed plan, a plan that cannot be legitimately labeled neither conservative nor liberal according to the traditional political distinction. A system not so different after all from the one that has already been implemented in Chile or Australia.

Now, the thorniest problem facing any attempt to move from the current system to the one laid out by Halstead and Lind involves how to finance the transition. After all, our retirees depend right now on the influx of money from those who are contributing to the system. If we were to allow those who are currently working to take the money away, save it and invest it somewhere else, who would finance the cost of today's retirees? As the authors point out, it's a problem that has already been faced by other countries where the transition took place. There are multiple ways to solve it: first of all, we can begin the means-testing part of the plan immediately (i.e., the Government would stop paying for those retirees who can afford to live comfortably from their own savings, which is something not currently happening); second, retirement age can be gradually extended; and, finally, the amount of money contributed to the Social Security by today's workers is actually larger than what would be needed to guarantee a decen retirement for them in the future, therefore allowing us to still use the difference to pay for today's retirees. Would all of this work? I don't know. I'd have to look at it with more time. However, it sounds reasonable and, above all, as Halstead and Lind rightly argue, there are countries that have already transitioned.

Let's finish this post with some brief comments about the national health care systems and their shortcomings, as I promised above these lines. Halstead and Lind discuss the problems currently affecting the US health system at length. In general, most of the issues they raise were solved a long time ago in Europe by what Americans quite often derisively refer to as socialized medicine. Socialized or not, the fact is that it solved the very issues Americans are dealing with right now. However, this shouldn't lead us to feel superior in any way for our publicly funded systems have a whole slew of different issues to deal with: excess of bureaucracy, inefficiencies, inability to choose between different types of service, etc. All these are issues that we should wonder about and strive to find solutions for. A creative approach, free of ideological prejudices, like the one taken by Halstead and Lind may do us some good here in Europe too.

The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.

Ted Halstead and Michael Lind propose to take the US in a completely new direction, away from the "rigid two-party cartel" dominated by Republicans and Democrats. While the vast majority of Americans label themselves as independents, both parties appear to be leading in the opposite direction: quickly moving towards the extremes in an attempt to clearly establish their identity in opposition to the other party. But in order to respond to the challenges of a new world characterized by the increasing influence of technology, globalization and all the changes they are bringing about, Halstead and Lind think that the US needs to adopt a new set of ideas, a pragmatic mishmash that blends already existing proposals from here and there depending on their merit, and not any ideological prejudice.

Technical description:
Title: The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.
Author: Ted Halstead and Michael Lind.
Publisher: Doubleday/Random House
Edition: first edition, New York (USA), 2001.
Pages: 264 pages, including index.
ISBN: 0-385-50045-9

Find it on Amazon (US, UK).

Manual de civismo: un breve esbozo de temas sin mucha consistencia.

No puedo evitar sentir una cierta contradicción de pareceres con respecto a este librito. En primer lugar, el tema me parece relevante y los autores lo tratan con el respeto y la atención debidas. Y, sin embargo, Camps y Giner se dejan mucho en el tintero. Simplemente esbozan cada uno de los temas que tratan en sus capítulos (convivencia, responsabilidad, derechos, deberes, violencia...), apuntando unas cuantas reflexiones pero sin entrar a discutir ninguno de ellos en profundidad. Lejos de ser un manual, el libro es un conjunto de ensayos deslavazados. De hecho, debiera haberse titulado, siguiendo la tradición latina, algo así como Sobre el civismo. Lo que tenemos entre manos no es, definitivamente, un manual, ni siquiera un ensayo serio, profundo y consistente. Sencillamente, no pasa de ser un compendio de reflexiones casi recogidas al vuelo sobre una serie de temas que tienen en común el tema del civismo, y poco más.

En lo que respecta a la edición, es aceptable en líneas generales, si bien es cierto que el capítulo IX está plagado de gazapos de cierta consideración: "vé", "inícuo", "entgre" en lugar de "entre", "puedem", "manipulades" en lugar de "manipuladas", etc. Se me hace difícil entender cómo un editor del nivel de Ariel puede dejar pasar este tipo de errores, sobre todo en lo que después de todo es la sexta edición de la obra.

¿Recomendaría el libro? Pues depende. No está mal como introducción, como documento de debate para plantear ciertas cuestiones relevantes en contextos como el de una clase de Educación para la Ciudadanía o, quizá, un grupo de lectura interesado en tratar estos temas. Sin embargo, uno tiene la impresión de encontrarse ante una obra algo light, como si los autores la hubieran escrito con la intención de hacerla lo más llevadera posible, en el sentido veraniego del término. En otras palabras, no puedo evitar la sensación de que le falta chicha. Tanto Victoria Camps como Salvador Giner podían haber firmado un volumen mucho más profundo, algo que tuviera más que aportar, si bien a lo mejor hubiera sido menos legible, hubiera requerido más esfuerzo, y ya sabemos que desgraciadamente la lectura compite hoy día contra la televisión y los juegos de consola. En fin, Manual de civismo me parece pasable, pero nada del otro mundo.

La paz como valor absoluto.

El capítulo IX del libro (Violencia: tolerancia cero) está dedicado a un tema —el de la violencia— que viene centrando las reflexiones de politólogos y filósofos políticos y sociales casi desde el principio mismo de la civilización. Camps y Giner parecen tomar partido claramente por lo que yo denominaría un pacifismo absoluto:

La violencia es siempre intolerable, venga de donde venga, de un gobierno inícuo [sic], como de una banda de fanáticos. Si ello significa que la militancia cívica y pacífica no da resultados inmediatos o a corto y hasta medio plazo, sea.

(Camps y Giner: p. 120)

Se trata de una posición muy a la moda últimamente, sobre todo en Europa. Casi pareciera que hubiéramos olvidado nuestra propia Historia, entregándonos en cambio a un idealismo pacifista que, en principio, es bien difícil de criticar, pero que sencillamente no siempre se ajusta a nuestras experiencias. Es algo así como si entre todos nos hubiéramos puesto de acuerdo para aceptar una descripción falsificada de los hechos históricos. Veamos, la paz es, sin lugar a dudas, un principio fundamental. Se trata de un valor tan importante que debemos hacer todo lo posible por evitar la guerra, incluso en aquellos casos en los que una de las partes implicadas se está comportando de manera obviamente injusta o impropia. Ahora bien, ello no quita para que dejemos de defender el derecho a la defensa frente a ataques a los derechos fundamentales. Es ésta, precisamente, una de las cuestiones básicas que aún no ha resuelto la izquierda contemporánea: por un lado, se hace una crítica permanente de la colusión con gobiernos autoritarios aquí y allá pero, por otro lado, también se critican los intentos de deponer a dichos regímenes por las armas o, incluso, de castigarlos con sanciones económicas que no tienen más remedio que afectar también a sus respectivas poblaciones. ¿Qué hacer, pues? ¿Continuar criticando todo lo que se nos pone por delante sin proponer jamás solución alguna a los problemas? Esta posición se me antoja bastante deshonesta, la verdad. ¿Estamos proponiendo que los milicianos republicanos debieran haberse negado a luchar en 1939, aceptando el golpe de Estado ilegítimo con entereza y resignación? ¿Estamos diciendo que la oposición armada a las tropas hitlerianas no debiera haber tenido lugar jamás, que hicimos bien en mirar para otro lado mientras Pol Pot cometía sus crímenes de lesa humanidad? ¿Estamos diciendo que usar la violencia para detener el genocidio en lugares como Bosnia o Ruanda es algo inmoral y que debemos evitar a cualquier coste? Se trata, después de todo, de casos en los que "la militancia cívica y pacífica no da resultados inmediatos o a corto y hasta medio plazo". ¿Demos responder, entonces, tal y como hacen Camps y Giner con un "así sea"? ¿Seríamos capaces de hacer esto mirando a los ojos a las víctimas de estos totalitarismos?

Como decía antes, la paz es un valor importante, sin lugar a dudas. Se trata de algo que debemos esforzarnos por preservar, usando la fuerza únicamente como último resorte. Sin embargo, no podemos renunciar a la fuerza en un mundo en el que aún hay demasiados individuos, estadistas y colectividades empeñados en imponer sus ideas totalitarias sobre la mayoría de la población usando métodos violentos. A todos nos gustaría vivir en un mundo donde la violencia no existiera, pero de momento no hemos sido capaces de alcanzarlo. Eso es una realidad. Se me dirá (de hecho, Camps y Giner lo hacen en su libro) que ha habido claros casos en los que el uso de métodos no violentos condujo al triunfo final de lo que todos asumimos hoy día como causas justas: Gandhi y su movimiento contra el apartheid que afectaba a la minoría india en Sudáfrica o en favor de la independencia de su país y la abolición de la sociedad de castas después, o el movimiento de Martin Luther King contra el racismo en los EEUU de los años sesenta. Sin embargo, no se tiene en cuenta algo de suma importancia: en todos estos casos estamos hablando de movimientos de resistencia no violenta que se desarrollan en el marco de regímenes democráticos o cuasi-democráticos y sociedades más o menos tolerantes. Ni el gobierno colonial británico, ni las autoridades sudafricanas, ni tampoco las instituciones políticas estadounidenses son comparables para nada con el nazismo, el fascismo o el comunismo. A menudo nos gusta exagerar las cosas, se nos calienta la boca y caemos en simplificaciones que tienden a oscurecer el asunto que estamos tratando. La comparación entre el racismo del Sur de los EEUU en los años sesenta y un Estado totalitario como el soviético sería uno de estos ejemplos. La segregación racial era, ciertamente, injusta. Ahora bien, en ningún caso se llegó a vivir el nivel de represión totalitaria llevado a cabo por las propias autoridades en la Unión Soviética. Ni Martin Luther King ni Gandhi jamás corrieron peligro de ser deportados a un campo de trabajo en Siberia ni tampoco de ser enviado a Auschwitz en un tren de ganado. Son cosas que a menudo olvidamos en nuestra pasión dialéctica por defender la viabilidad de la acción no violenta.

Ética privada y ética pública o la importancia de la virtud en nuestros representantes.

Leyendo el libro de Camps y Giner me encuentro con la siguiente reflexión que me pareció sumamente interesante por sus implicaciones:

La vida privada y la pública son mundos continuos, no separables del todo. Son las mismas personas las que tienen que estar en uno y otro sitio. El que no sabe ser educado con su propia mujer es difícil que sepa serlo en el metro o en la oficina. El que no ha aprendido a convivir en casa, no podrá improvisar formas de convivencia fuera de ella. La virtud —decían los antiguos— es una disposición a actuar de determinada manera, algo habitual, no "puntual", como diríamos en el lenguaje algo absurdo de hoy. No es posible despojarse de unos hábitos en privado y vestirse con ellos en público. O sólo es posible para quienes creen que la vida es sólo una comedia cruel.

(Camps y Giner: pp. 91-92)

¿Y por qué digo que la cita me parece sumamente interesante? En fin, de todos es conocida la obsesión rallana en lo enfermizo que el votante medio estadounidense parece tener hacia el trapicheo de noticias sobre la vida privada de los candidatos a los distintos cargos políticos. Y es igualmente sabida la opinión del europeo medio sobre el tema, achacándolo a un puritanismo intolerante muy propio de los norteamericanos pero contra el que nosotros estamos, al parecer, vacunados. Pues bien, la reflexión de Camps y Giner viene a arrojar luz sobre este tema, permitiéndonos verlo desde otro punto de vista. ¿Y si resultase que, después de todo, el votante estadounidense no anda tan descaminado? Hay que tener en cuenta que en su sistema político no se votan listas bloqueadas y cerradas, sino candidatos individuales que, en numerosas ocasiones, mantienen puntos de vista que vienen a radicalizar o moderar las posiciones del partido político al que pertenece. A lo mejor tiene sentido conocer cómo se comporta un determinado candidato en privado antes de decidir si le puedo confiar mi voto. Después de todo, como bien afirman Camps y Giner, "no es posible despojarse de unos hábitos en privado y vestirse con ellos en público". No hay más que recordar el bochornoso espectáculo que ofreció Jesús Gil en Marbella, por poner tan sólo un ejemplo. Conociendo los antecedentes del personaje, ¿quién no pudo predecir lo que se avecinaba? Y cuidado, porque no estoy haciendo un llamamiento a convertir nuestras elecciones en una caza de brujas ni nada por el estilo. Simplemente estoy señalando que a lo mejor el comportamiento del votante medio estadounidense no es tan descerebrado como pudiera parecernos. Claro que eso tampoco responde dónde debemos colocar los límites a este tipo de comportamiento para evitar los excesos.

No puede haber educación (ni civismo) sin represión.

De un tiempo a esta parte, el adjetivo libertario parece haberse convertido en uno de los epítetos políticos más preciados, al menos en el mundo anglosajón. Simpatizantes de derechas e izquierdas se esfuerzan por presentar una imagen de "amantes de la libertad", de individuos "independientes" que "van por libre". Lo colectivo está en horas bajas. La exaltación de las libertades invididuales, por el contrario, es de lo más in. Pues bien, Camps y Giner vienen a pinchar ese globo con una sensatez que abruma:

Vivir con otras personas obliga a reprimirse, a no hacer lo que a uno le viene en gana en cualquier momento. Se reprimen las emociones y los instintos. En su lugar, aparece la razón y la conciencia moral. Uno no hace lo que quiere sino lo que se debe hacer.

(Camps y Giner: p. 34)

Todo un toque de atención para una sociedad consumista acostumbrada a reivindicar sus derechos pero que desconoce la existencia de deberes. Las libertades individuales están muy bien, pero a lo mejor hemos ido demasiado lejos en su exaltación. Sencillamente, en la vida en sociedad no es posible una libertad sin cortapisas. Se trata, ni más ni menos, que del viejo adagio según el cual mi libertad llega hasta donde comienza la de los demás. Y la única forma de aplicar este principio a la realidad es, en primer lugar, mediante el auto-control de nuestras tendencias más individualistas y egoístas. Se trata, sin embargo, de un valor moral (el del auto-control) que está sin lugar a dudas en franca decadencia. Hace ya varias décadas que no hacemos sino denigrar a quienes se comportan de forma sensata, responsable y moderada, al tiempo que elevamos a los altares mediáticos a aquellos individuos que se atreven a "expresar sus sentimientos sin cortapisas" y, sobre todo, "hablan sin pelos en la lengua". Desgraciadamente, esto se interpreta a menudo como un derecho (una obligación, incluso) a comportarse rudamente, a insultar sin ton ni son, a faltarle al respeto a quienes tienen la mala fortuna de encontrarse frente a nosotros en la trinchera dialéctica en que hemos convertido casi todo tema de debate (por cierto, que nunca falta quien apunta al mundo de las bitácoras con dedo acusador respecto a este tema, cuando me parece obvio que la pantalla televisiva o las ondas de la radio no son precisamente ejemplo de virtudes cívicas).

¿Acaso no es cierto que, al menos desde finales de los setenta, hemos vivido en nuestro país una cierta ola de ira libertaria contra las reglas más elementales de cortesía? Lo que antes se consideraba, sin más, buena educación hoy se considera un comportamiento carca, anticuado, reaccionario y conservador, algo más propio de tiempos franquistas que de esta España moderna y finalmente integrada en Europa que hemos construido entre todos. Y, sin embargo, como advierten Camps y Giner:

Es cierto que las reglas de buena educación han solido distinguir entre clases y categorías. Pero ¿hemos dejado de distinguir al eliminarlas? ¿No es cierto que las reglas de cortesía están siendo sustituidas por las normas que impone la moda?

(Camps y Giner: p. 40)

Como dicen los anglosajones, pareciera que hubiéramos tirado al bebé junto con el agua sucia. Con tal de extender las libertades individuales y limitar las tendencias autoritarias de una sociedad que aprendió a vivir cómodamente bajo la dictadura franquista, es bien posible que hayamos caído en el error contrario. Y, sin embargo, ¿qué generación no ha oído este tipo de letanías sobre la falta de educación de los jóvenes y la decadencia general de las formas? Se ha convertido en un lugar común del comentario social casi desde los inicios mismos de la civilización. La verdad es que lo que consideramos cortés o educado cambia en cada época porque se trata, en realidad, de normas puramente contingentes, acuerdos tácitos a los que llegamos entre todos para conducir nuestra vida en común. De ahí que las normas de comportamiento de las nuevas generaciones siempre parezcan inaceptables a los mayores. Sencillamente, se trata de un consenso diferente en el que ellos no siempre han participado.

En todo caso, lo que sí es cierto es que unas mínimas normas de cortesía y educación son imprescindibles para la vida en sociedad. No puede haber convivencia si antes no existe un acuerdo de mínimos sobre las reglas del juego que todos nos comprometemos a acatar. Pues bien, esto es precisamente lo que hemos dado en llamar civismo. Y tampoco es menos cierto, aunque no siempre nos guste, que estas reglas del juego han de comunicarse de una u otra forma a las nuevas generaciones e incluso hayan de imponerse en ocasiones mediante la represión (una represión sensata y medida, por supuesto).

Quizá las buenas maneras no sean más que el principio, el punto de partida o el medir [sic, ¿medio?] para la adquisición de unos hábitos que luego habremos de llamar morales. Las buenas —y malas— maneras, si se aprenden bien, acaban siendo un hábito. Los pedagogos saben que educar significa inculcar hábitos. Hábito de limpieza, de orden, de puntualidad, de mínima seriedad, de silencio. El fin de todos ellos es la vida en común y en paz.

(Camps y Giner: pp. 41-42)

Estamos hablando de una idea (la de inculcar hábitos) que no puede ser sino el elemento central de la educación, por más que no falten quienes pretenden criar a los hijos sin límites ni imposiciones. El niño —y esto debiera quedar bien patente— no tiene la madurez reflexiva para conocer las consecuencias de su comportamiento, que es precisamente en lo que consiste la responsabilidad ciudadana. Por consiguiente, son sus padres quienes tienen el deber de inculcar estos hábitos elementales en ellos. Eso sí, una vez crezcan, serán capaces de adaptar lo que aprendieron a las necesidades de su entorno, que pueden haber cambiado (de hecho, lo más probable es que hayan cambiado bastante) desde su infancia. Pero ello no quita para que padres y educadores hagan dejación de sus funciones en este aspecto echando mano a una concepción errónea de la libertad.

En fin, de todo esto trata (o debiera tratar) la dichosa asignatura de Educación para la Ciudadanía que tanto debate generó hace unos meses. Como suele suceder en política, unos (los del PP) aprovecharon para acusar a otros (los del PSOE) de intentar lavar el cerebro de nuestro jóvenes, mientras que éstos (los del PSOE) vieron una oportunidad de oro para acusar a aquéllos (los del PP) de mostrencos reaccionarios que se oponen a los principios fundamentales del civismo. Yo, por mi parte, estoy convencido de que ambos pecaron de un exceso de partidismo, cerrazón y mala fe. Nos iría mucho mejor si, en lugar de dedicarse a lanzar huevos de un lado para otro, tanto socialistas como populares mostraran una disposición a debatir seriamente la mejor forma de incluir una asignatura que trate sobre las mínimas reglas de convivencia en una sociedad democrática (algo que considero elemental) al tiempo que evitemos entrar en asuntos claramente polémicos y divisivos como el aborto o el matrimonio de personas del mismo sexo. Me parece evidente que podemos estar en desacuerdo con respecto a estos últimos temas y, aún así, encontrar puntos en común, reglas básicas de convivencia que nos unan como ciudadanos, independientemente de nuestra ideología política, nuestra fe o nuestra procedencia étnica.

El sustrato moral del civismo.

Camps y Giner reflexionan en el primer capítulo del libro sobre la convivencia, la necesidad de la vida en sociedad para poder desarrollar nuestra naturaleza humana (el hombre como animal político, que definiera Aristóteles) y las posibles acepciones del término civismo:

La fuente ciudadana, por así decirlo, de la palabra civismo nos recuerda un hecho elemental, sobre el que se fundamentan estas reflexiones: mujeres y hombres —es decir el hombre, en abstracto, un sustantivo masculino que nada tiene que ver con la masculinidad— son esencialmente animales cívicos. Son, para usar la raíz griega, animales políticos. (...) El civismo entraña el buen gobierno de nuestra convivencia, pero no desde un centro de autoridad, desde el gobierno, sino por obra y gracia de todos los que participamos en ella.

La noción de civismo posee dos acepciones. La más corriente, y que todo el mundo entiende de buenas a primeras, es la de conducta correcta y respetuosa entre propios y extraños. Incluye los buenos modales, la buena educación. (...) Hay otro sentido de la palabra, algo más sutil, que nos parece fundamental: civismo es también la cultura pública de convivencia por la que se rige, o debería regirse, una determinada sociedad. Según este significado el civismo está formado por un conjunto de procederes de interacción humana sin los cuales la convivencia es difícil o imposible. (...) Pero el civismo —he aquí una afirmación que consideramos crucial para nuestro argumento a lo largo de todas estas observaciones— no es sólo un conjunto de normas o modos de proceder —es decir, no es solamente procedimental— sino que incluye también un contenido moral: expresa unos determinados valores morales y unas creencias acerca de la sociabilidad humana, que iremos explorando poco a poco.

(Camps y Giner: pp. 15-17)

Dudo mucho que haya lugar a discutir la primera acepción, la que relaciona el civismo con la buena educación, entendida ésta como el comportamiento respetuoso y responsable hacia los demás (en cierto modo, lo que antiguamente se llamaba urbanidad, aunque el concepto de civismo tal y como lo definen Camps y Giner en el libro va mucho más allá). En cambio, la segunda apreciación de los autores me parece más importante y, quizá, no tan obvia para la sensibilidad contemporánea: no puede haber comportamiento cívico sin un mínimo contenido moral. En una época tan propensa al relativismo casi absoluto —el todo vale que algunos caracterizan como elemento primordial de la sociedad postmoderna—, pocas cosas hay tan pasadas de moda como la reivindicación de la moral. Y, sin embargo, lo cierto es que no puede haber sociedad (ni democracia) liberal sin un mínimo consenso moral porque la democracia se fundamenta en la actitud cívica, y ésta no puede existir sin una conciencia de la responsabilidad individual y, sobre todo, sin la aceptación de unos deberes mínimos hacia la comunidad en la que desarrollamos nuestra vida. De ahí que el relativismo absoluto —el pasotismo, la dejadez, la indiferencia— sea tan corrosivo y amenace con destruir las bases mismas de la democracia. No es necesario considerarse un feligrés del Papa Benedicto XVI (ni tampoco compartir el resto de sus opiniones) para estar de acuerdo con su crítica del relativismo contemporáneo. La corrosiva acidez del todo vale, la peligrosa idea de que las cuestiones éticas y morales son completamente secundarias, nociones anticuadas que pertenecen a un pasado dominado por el autoritarismo más atroz, afecta a la democracia tanto o más, si cabe, de lo que lo hace a las religiones establecidas. Conviene que reflexionemos sobre ello, en lugar de esforzarnos tanto por no aparecer como viejos carcas.

"The Bug": unexpectedly interesting.

Now, when I first read about this novel my first impression was: "What? A novel about a programmer dealing with a bug? That has to be booooring!" Well, Ellen Ullman definitely does raise to the challenge... at least in the eyes of somebody interested in these issues like me. Perhaps a non-techie would find the book boring but I thought it was amazing how the author manages to pull this one out. A book telling us the story of a programmer and his relationship to a bug —no chases, no crimes— and it still manages to be interesting. She writes about the human side of the story —the programmer slowly being eaten away by this intractable bug as well as by his own ghosts and personal problems with his girlfriend— and also discusses deeply technical issue in a manner that they become understandable by the average reader. Chapeau!

A programmer's madness.

And yet another description of a programmer mesmerized by his task, of which Ullman's book is full of:

He pushed away his plate. By now the water for this night's dinner had boiled, the past had cooked, been drained, and Ethan was sitting behind a plate of pasta with sauce from a jar, but his appetite was gone. He wanted to give up on this remembering thing. It was useless, disorienting. What he wanted was to find that clarity again, the astringent pleasure of the time after Joanna had left, when he was alone with his books and manuals, and he didn't think about her at all.

Because that's what happened while she was away: he forgot her. He was working on the most interesting project of his life, doing significant work, nontrivial work. A programmer can write code for years and never be involved in a project of lasting value. Ethan's work before going to Telligentsia was a compendium if disappointments: projects canceled when a vice president was fired, when a hardware manufacturer changed its pricing structure, when a company was bought by a bigger one. Telligentsia was his chance to build something that might be used for years —decades! Who could blame him for sequestering himself with books and manuals?

(Ullman: p. 302)

Haha! Pasta? Sauce from a jar? Ramen noodles anyone? Man, that sounds familiar! No wonder there are so many people who believe that geeks are almost autistic. But then, we can also find this high level of commitment and concentration in other fields. It's quite normal among artists, for instance, who are quite often accused of being egotistical. Perhaps there is a connection between the two activities after all. Perhaps the programmer is nothing but an artist who gives shape to the most important medium of our time: bits.

Artificial intelligence and complexity arising from simplicity.

Nathan Levin describes Conway's Game of Life in a very excited manner:

At first, his description of the simulation was reasoned, quiet. He told me about the creatures, their interactions with the habitats, how the populations rose and fell in response to the food stores, and how the food stores in turn responded to the presence or absence of creatures. He discussed his plans for migration, so that the creatures could search for food stores on other "island" habitats. Next he turned to the philosophy behind the simulation, the idea that all complex systems were actually nothing more than a collection of simple, "mindless" interactions, complexity not being something built into a system from "on high" by some designer, but something that emerges from "below", as a result of some unexpected interplay among all the underlying simple interactions. A complicated world without a god to oversee it, he called it (or, the idea of God itself was something that emerged from the underlying interactions —I really don't recall which way he put it). All of this took some ten or fifteen minutes, during which time I started to have hope for the night's outcome. I was impressed with what he was attempting, if not for the current results. And he showed philosophical depths I had not suspected were in him.

But as he began describing the elements he would add over time to his world —genders, species, variation in habitats, weather, predators, parasites, viruses, fires, floods, earthquakes, all manner of biblical-scale disasters— a terrible manic energy began to take him over. He started swiping at his hair. His voice rose in pitch and volume, and his legs, splayed out from the sides of the stool, began shaking up and down. It was as if the ideas themselves were banging around furiously in his body, wanting to get out. I had no idea exactly what was causing this reaction, whether it was the drinking or the lateness of the hour or something truly strange in Ethan suddenly showing itself (or the ideas actually battling it out inside him), so there was no recourse for me but to sit quietly and hope that soon come to a conclusion.

(Ullman: pp. 291-292)

Now, these ideas are quite similar to those proposed by Stephen Wolfram in A New Kind of Science, as Ullman herself acknowledges later in the book:

By then he was raving. I'd already spent hours inside his mind —an odd mind, full of tight kinks like his hair. But I was not prepared for this rush of what seemed to be intellectual hysteria. I had no way of knowing that, less than two decades later, a famous computer scientist would be trying to warn the world about the dangers of self-replicating artificial creatures, descendants of Ethan Levin's silly milling O's. No idea I would attend a seminar at which perfectly sane-seeming men would debate not if but only when artificial life-forms, complete in their "humanity", would surpass our poor carbon-based existence, the coming of the "posthuman". What Ethan could only imagine in a fever that night —the notion of human beings as nothing more than a collection of chemical and electrical processes that could be scanned, stored, and replicated in silicon— has already come to be seen as reasonable. And his ideas about complexity arising from simple interactions —now proposed as the basis of an entirely new science. But at the time, I simply thought that Ethan Levin had gone a little crazy —in that hyperlogical way men can get crazy, when they isolate an idea and keep traveling deeper and deeper into it, until they arrive at a place so narrow their little idea seems huge, all-encompassing, an explanation for the world.

(Ullman: p. 293)

Well, that happens, right? How many times have we heard of what we thought was a pretty crazy idea just to find out years later that it slowly became the widely accepted mainstream? Wolfram's theory remains quite controversial, to be fair, but the overall idea that information pervades our whole universe is a whole different story. That other idea is quickly becoming part of the mainstream, if not the main hypothesis of what some might term a new paradigm. Now, from there to Wolfram's hypothesis there is only one more step: the one that assumes that even complex systems can be reduced to small tidbits of information, simple statements —as in a computer program— that, when combined with other statements and interacting with them, can end up building enormously complex systems. I'm by no means an expert on any of this, but it sounds quite reasonable to me, to be honest.