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Capitalism is inherently unfair and will produce a world full of sad and disgusting inequalities, but Communism is also doomed to fail, a leading scientist claims to have proved using the laws of physics.

Professor Adrian Bejan told The Independent he was so excited by the huge implications of his theory that he kept having to pinch himself.

A former member of the Romanian national basketball team, he is now an expert in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics at Duke University in the US, having written 30 books and more than 600 scientific papers.

He now claims to have shown that physics can essentially explain economics.

Inequality has been seen as a factor in the election of Donald Trump as US President and in the UK referendum vote in favour of Brexit.

According to Oxfam, the richest eight men own the same wealth as the poorest 50 per cent of the world's population.

Professor Bejan said it was possible to explain how such inequality can develop by demonstrating that wealth moves around in a society like water in a river basin using the laws of physics.

In a natural environment, water flows from small tributaries into larger and larger streams.

And, according to Professor Bejans theory, the same is true of money.

So, in a free market system, wealth will naturally flow from the poorest in the small tributaries to the richest in the wide rivers.

Using this analogy, Communism is comparable to an attempt to restrict the flow of water to a network of equally sized concrete channels, which Professor Bejan said would inevitably be overcome by the forces of nature.

But, just as humans do sometimes harness rivers to produce energy or divert them around cities, it is possible to alter the flow of money in society, he added.

And this is exactly what is being done by liberal democracies around the world with measures such as free education and healthcare, anti-trust regulations designed to prevent large corporations abusing their power, and the rule of law.

I want to see less inequality in the distribution of wealth. I get not just sad, but disgusted by it, Professor Bejan said.

My urge is kind of synonymous with trying to make all the channels in the river basin one size.

But he said his desire for everyone to have the same amount of money was futile.

For the flow to thrive, it must have freedom, so one does not make a river basin out of channels built in cement, he said.

The small channels are flowing because of the big channels, the big channels are flowing because of the small channels.

If the whole flows the best that it can, then everybody is empowered to flow and the access of everybody is maximised to the big flow.

Yes, people do redirect river channels for hydro-electric plants or to make the river flow around a city, but the basin is not affected to such an extent so the basin revolts against the human intervention.

Any such heavy handed intervention in an economy would be soon overturned by the river.

This is why it has always been difficult to deal with the unequal distribution of wealth, Professor Bejan said.

But difficult doesnt mean impossible.

What is incumbent upon the governing person or society as a whole is to be aware of the natural tendency of the movement and then to use the flow in order to endow the flow with better features for everyone riding about in that flow.

Simply allowing an entirely free market devoid of any human interference would see a Wild West distribution with no rule of law to curtail the unequal distribution of wealth, he warned.

That is where you find a striking discrepancy between the ultra-rich and the very poor, he said.

The rule of law is constantly morphing. Thats the great invention of the West and it has this effect of keeping an unequal distribution of everything in the area in check.

It is very important for people to know first of all why it is difficult to implement what is actually a common urge, which is to basically live together happily.

The physics explains why experiments such as Communism were doomed to fail and why socialism is a difficult project.

In an academic paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, Professor Bejan sets out the physics behind his theory.

One main point is that wealth and any kind of movement, a defining part of life, are essentially synonymous.

Movement requires some kind of power which can come from fuel for machines, solar power or food for animals.

A graph in the paper shows that the amount of fuel consumed by a country is directly proportional to its gross domestic product.

And since all movement on Earth is hierarchical like a river basin or a tree with smaller and smaller branches, a human lung or traffic in a city and movement and wealth are synonymous, then wealth must also be hierarchical or iniquitous.

However Professor Jeremy Baumberg, director of the NanoPhotonic Centres at Cambridge University, was distinctly unimpressed.

It seems to me an extremely poorly written paper, conflating many ideas in a rather unrigorous mishmash," he said.

I do not believe it even has a new theory, so not seeing the huge implications.

And, displaying the contempt many scientists have forclaims made bythe current US President,Professor Frank Close, an Oxford University physicist, said: 'Huge seems to be a favourite Trumpism so perhaps not the best claim to be making these days.

I suggest the authors be invited to make a prediction whose failure would be able to refute their theory. Otherwise its not good physics.

Original post:
Capitalism inevitably creates a 'sad' unfair world, physicist says he has proved - The Independent

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The official Twitter account of the Democratic Partyremoved pro-socialism and anti-capitalism messages last week from one of its promotional photos.

While the focal point of the image is the big bold white letters reading PERSIST, a socialist newspaper hoisted during a protestappears to be rather bare because someone scrubbed the more contentious parts of the cover.

The full message reads: Trump is the symptom. Capitalism is the disease. Socialism is the cure.

But the edited image only shows the first part criticizing President Donald Trump.

The administrators of the social media profile likely either edited the photo themselves, or chose an already-doctored image of the scene.

The decision to airbrush the more extreme statements from the newspaper, at least to some degree, embodies a divergencethe Democratic Partyhas with a large portion of its electorate.

The base of the Democrats are pushing forward and exploring new options, Rachel Silang, the national social media coordinator for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the organization listed under the message, told Mic. For them to edit out the words capitalism and socialism is just so telling about how disconnected they are from young voters, and even older voters.

Silang reportedly said that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, is the most popular politician in the U.S., likely referencing a recent poll from Fox News.

Its incredible to see that our energy we have is taken and repurposed, without wanting to engage in our politics,Silang said, according to Mic.

The Democratic Partys Twitter account wasnt able to cleanse all of the socialist content from the photo. Featured in the deep center of the image is a hammer and sickle (a Communist symbol).

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Bernie Sanders supporters prepare for a march at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last year. Socialist groups are experiencing a surge in popularity, underscoring divisions within the Democratic Party. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Donald Trumps rise to the presidency thrust far-right groups into the spotlight. But on the other end of the political spectrum, socialist organizations across the country are quietly experiencing a surge in popularity of their own, driven in part by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders outsider campaign last year and a determination to thwart President Trumps policy agenda.

The Party of Socialism and Liberations meetings have tripled in size at the groups New York headquarters in the months since Trump won the election. And the Democratic Socialists of Americas membership has more than doubled to 19,000 activists since Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, launched his presidential campaign in 2015.

The last time the Democratic Socialists of America saw such growth was in the early 1980s, said Joseph Schwartz, a member of the groups national committee. People feel like they have to fight back, said, Schwartz, who teaches political science at Temple University.

But with interest in socialism on the rise, insiders are struggling to figure out how socialist groups will fit into the Democratic Party, and what role theyll play in the lefts opposition to Trumps presidency.

Socialism has long been at the fringe of center-left politics in the United States. But activists like California Tech graduate student Charles Xu said Sanders presidential campaign was a new wake up call.

Bernies self-identification as a socialist normalized it, Xu said in a phone interview.

Xu said he first encountered socialist politics on trips to Europe in the past few years. After the 2016 election, Xu and a friend founded the Cal Tech chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists, the student arm of the national Democratic Socialist of America organization.

Were on the cusp of a moment that can be really exciting, he said.

What the moment represents, though, is not yet entirely clear.

What the moment represents, though, is not yet entirely clear especially given the lefts recent electoral setbacks at the federal, state and local level. In 2016, Democrats were crushed in state races. Now, only five states have Democratic-controlled state legislatures and Democratic governors; 25 states have complete Republican control. Democrats lost a presidential election that many thought was in the bag, and Republicans maintained control of Congress.

The losses sparked a period of soul-searching in Democratic Party establishment circles. But it also energized grassroots activists around issues like immigration, womens and civil rights and criminal justice.

Registered socialists and others friendly to the cause are not just paying dues [to organizations] like the ACLU, Schwartz said. They want to make progressive gains.

Its no coincidence that the movements policy goals seem similar to Sanders talking points during his White House run. The Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Sanders, and many of its members worked on his campaign. More than 6,500 people joined the organization after Sanders jumped into the race, Schwartz said.

There is [a] desire to deepen what Sanders started, he said, adding: There is a push to move Democrats away from neoliberal policies and corporate donors.

A 1904 campaign poster for Eugene Debs, a socialist leader who ran for president five times in the early 20th century. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This isnt the first time Americans have looked to socialism to solve societys woes. In the early 20th century, many Americans began to view socialism as a solution to broader problems, like wealth inequality, urban poverty and child labor, said James Barrett, a history professor at the University of Illinois.

The Socialist Party of America, which was formed in 1901, had deep influence in some unions, especially [ones] with immigration members like the garment manufacturing unions, Barrett said. On the state level there was a lot of electoral success in a lot of smaller industrial towns, too.

Milwaukee liberals, for example, embraced sewer socialism as a means to reform the citys political corruption and improve its unsanitary conditions. In 1910, voters from Milwaukee elected Victor Berger to the U.S. House of Representatives, making him the first socialist to serve in Congress.

Eugene Debs, who formed the Socialist Party with Berger and other activists, represented the movement on a national level, becoming a household name thanks to his five presidential bids between 1900 and 1920. For his 1920 campaign, Debs received nearly a million votes in the general election, despite being in jail for violating the Espionage Act.

At the time, the Socialist Party was a diverse voting bloc that included immigrants, Southern farmers, Christian socialists, urban intellectuals, and writers and activists like Upton Sinclair and Helen Keller, Barrett said. But the Socialist Partys popularity was short-lived. Membership declined because of the partys opposition to World War One, and support for the Russian revolution, Barrett said.

The Russian revolution affected how Americans viewed socialism, by creating a negative association between the U.S. Socialist Party and Russian-style socialism that never entirely went away, Barrett said.

A century later, todays socialist movement has changed with the times in some ways. Activists add rose emojis to their Twitter profiles, instead of wearing the black armbands that were popular when Debs was a perennial White House contender. But 21st century socialist groups in the U.S. have continued struggling to make inroads into the mainstream Democratic Party. Sanders did better than many people expected in 2016, but still wound up losing the partys primaries to Hillary Clinton after failing to win over its establishment wing.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, speaks at a campaign rally in Stockton, California on May 10, 2016. His presidential campaign helped spark new interest in socialism in the U.S. Photo by Max Whittaker/Reuters

The intraparty fight continued after the election, when Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn), a Sanders supporter, ran for chairman of the Democratic National Committee against Tom Perez, a former Labor Department secretary and Clinton backer. Perez won in a close vote, but named Ellison as DNC vice-chairman, giving the progressive wing of the party a top leadership slot.

And polls show Sanders popularity hasnt diminished months after the election ended. A recent Fox News poll found that Sanders was the countrys most popular politician. Sixty-one percent of Americans viewed the Vermont senator favorably, the poll found, far outpacing other Democrats and Republicans like Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

There are other signs, too, that interest in socialism and Sanders liberal policy agenda could have some staying power. Jacobin Magazine, the countrys largest socialist publication, had about 17,000 subscribers in the run-up to last years Nov. 8 election, according to Bhaskar Sunkara, the magazines editor. It now has 30,000 subscribers, a nearly 100 percent increase in just four months.

Sunkara said the publications goal was to legitimize socialist ideas and bring them into the political mainstream. He compared it to libertarian think tanks that have helped drive conservative policy on the right in recent decades.

With our growth, were planning to expand, he said. Basically do things in a more polished, professional way.

Schwartz said groups like the Democratic Socialists of America hope to create a climate where more left-wing candidates are viable at the state and local level.

But the movement still faces plenty of opposition from the right.

I understand why [people] fall susceptible to socialism, said Charlie Kirk, the executive director and founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative organization that promotes limited government and free market principles on college and high school campuses.

It sounds really good when a professor or teacher or peer talks about Denmark or Norway or Sweden, said Kirk, whose group runs socialism sucks campaigns on campuses across the country. But the free enterprise system is the most prosperous system weve discovered, he said.

Schwartz, of the Democratic Socialists of America, argued that socialism was poised to become an important part of the American left. Were part of a broader left, Schwartz said. We want to be a socialist presence in a national movement for democracy.

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Is socialism in the United States having a moment? - PBS NewsHour

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FX's The Americans Shows Socialism in Action: Barren Shelves in ... - NewsBusters (blog)

By pushing a draconian repeal of Obamacare, they awakened a giant. Thanks, guys!

Health-care-justice advocates outside Trump Tower in New York on January 13, 2016. (Sipa USA via AP)

In September 2011, a little over two years into its existence and fresh off some high-profile victories in the midterm elections, the Tea Party hosted its first presidential debate in Tampa, Florida. Late in the evening, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Congressman Ron Paul, a physician by training, what should happen to a 30-year-old healthy young man who decides to forgo insurance but then becomes catastrophically ill. Whos going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Blitzer inquired.

Paul rattled off some libertarian bromides about the evils of welfarism and socialism and how freedom is all about taking your own risks. Unsatisfied, Blitzer drove home the point: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die? At which point, the audience burst into applause, as several members roared out Yeah! followed by all-around laughter. It was a stunning moment, spiked with instant and unfaked schadenfreude, that caused even Paul to blink back surprise and that overshadowed anything else on the stage that night. (The debates other newsworthy moment came when then-front-runner Rick Perry was jeered for defending the HPV vaccine.)

The GOPs ignominious withdrawal of the American Health Care Act, backed by President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, brought this insurrectionary moment full circle. Rebranded and purified as the House Freedom Caucus, the Tea Partys hard-core members took Ryans already shoddy proposalincluding a giant tax cut for the super-wealthy and the end of coverage for some 24 million Americansand extracted concessions that would have made it remarkably worse. The caucus insisted on gutting the requirement that insurance companies offer essential benefits, permitting them to sell junk plans. As the clock wound down on negotiations, it was still holding out in the hope of repealing Obamacares most popular provisions, which allow young adults to stay on their parents plans and require coverage of patients with preexisting conditions. The resulting monstrosity would have simply allowed millions of sick Americans to die. Moderates bolted, even as the Freedom Caucus refused to budge. And so ended, at least for now, the Republican Partys abiding obsession with abolishing Obamacare.

A complete disaster! as Trump might say. But one richly earned. Since the first year of Obamas presidency, the Republican establishment has allowed its extreme right-wingers to run off the leash. It has amplified their every outburst, fed every conspiracy theory, nurtured every grievance, and enabled every act of hostage-taking. Now, itand the vandal in chief that the Tea Party helped elect presidentis their hostage. In the battles ahead on infrastructure spending, taxation, and the debt ceiling, theres no reason to believe that the GOP will behave in any less dysfunctional a manner.

Given this self-inflicted gridlock, Democrats may be tempted to let the Republicans implode and live with the status quo. This would be a catastrophic mistake. The grassroots uprisings that swarmed congressional town halls with angry constituents were not, at their core, a defense of Obamacares particulars. Keep your hands off my Affordable Care Act premium tax credit! protested nobody, ever. The 25-year-olds who raged at the prospect of getting kicked off their parents plans, the senior citizens worried about out-of-control costs, the patients anxious about preexisting conditions, were expressing a much more profound belief: that health care is a fundamental right.

Obamacare falls far short of that mark. The fact that it has become more popular49 percent of Americans now support itas more people have used and understood it should come as no surprise. That was always its design. The more unexpected turn of events is that significant majorities of Americansand 41 percent of Republicans in one pollnow support a single-payer plan. To that end, in the coming weeks, Senator Bernie Sanders plans to reintroduce his Medicare for All bill, an idea that has backers in both expected (Keith Ellison, John Conyers) and unexpected quarters: Nancy Pelosi, Obama-cares true architect, recently told a questioner at a town hall, I supported single payer since before you were born. More importantly, the citizen coalition to defend Obamacarebacked by Planned Parenthood, the AARP, MoveOn, Our Revolution, the chapters of Indivisible, and othersis amped up to push for its passage. In 2009, the Obama administration purposefully tamped down that energy, preferring to run an inside game. But with Trump in the White House and the Freedom Caucus bullying Congress, the only game now is on the outside.

The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.

Along the way, Democrats must continue to defend the current law. Trumps promise to let Obamacare explode was not an empty threat. Already hes appointed two leading saboteurs to head key agencies: Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services and Seema Verma at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Together, they could radically reduce subsidies to insurance companies, causing more to leave the exchanges; discourage enrollment and weaken enforcement of the individual mandate; undermine Medicaid by allowing states to impose premiums and work requirements; and reinterpret what qualifies as an essential benefit, letting insurance companies offer stingier plans. These changes will come wrapped in a thick fog of bureaucracyand its up to progressives to expose and humanize whats really happening. We also need to counter each proposed cut with an alternative plan to expand and improve coverage: to extend Medicaid, increase subsidies, elevate insurance standards, and lower the Medicare eligibility age to 50, as Senator Jeff Merkley has proposed.

Taken together, these steps would grow the public aspects of Obamacare while reducing its reliance on private markets. When the bill was first passed, centrist Democrats placated its critics on the left by claiming that Obamacare could act as a bridge to a single-payer system. Wouldnt it be amazing if that actually came trueand if the Tea Party helped make it happen?

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The Tea Party Helped Build the Bridge to Single-Payer | The Nation - The Nation.