The Aphid Problem

I’m just an ant.

I was born in this colony from an egg the Queen laid, just like all my sisters. I started tending larvae when I was younger and smaller, then cleaning up rotting stuff in the colony’s garbage dumps as I grew, then bringing dead leaves back to the colony to grow fungus for food and carrying things twenty times my weight – not showing off, everybody does it. And once I got full-sized and in rippin’ shape, I was charged with protecting the colony from attacks by other ants and using my kickass mandibles to dig tunnels. And all the while I’ve lived peaceably alongside my eight million siblings, a part of the colony’s collective hive mind.

Like I said, just an ant.

But something’s been bothering me.

A few days ago, given my size and my mandible strength, I was promoted to outside forager. I was proud, sure, but it’s not about me, it’s about the colony, about that hive mind like I said. That’s a real thing, you know. We all somehow understand right away what’s best for everybody as a group without ever communicating -- bees and termites have it, too. I guess the hive mind figures I’m strong, but getting old, so if I’m foraging outside and a woodpecker or a caterpillar eats me, it’s no big loss. I get it.

Well, I was foraging with some of my sisters when one of them looks up at a liriope (which is a great plant for ants to explore -- low to the ground, easy leaves to traverse) and she suddenly shouts, “Aphids!”

You might as well have said there was a picnic somewhere, because the other girls made a bee line towards the aphids, which were hanging on the underside of a liriope leaf, using their piercing mouthparts to suck leaf sap. So I ask, “What’s up? Are we going to suck leaf sap, too?” And the ant next to me – Beatrice was her name – laughs and says, “Suck sap? Hell, no! Follow me and watch this.”

So, we walk up the leaf with the aphids on it, and Beatrice positions herself right behind one – the aphids are so stupid they don’t even look up at us -- and starts eating its poop! I’m sorry, there’s no other way to say it. Now, in her defense, it wasn’t animal lumps like deer pellets, which are chock full of protein but many species pass up. Instead, the stuff coming out of the aphids was like clear bubbles of syrupy sugar. Really -- it was beyond delicious! And the aphids could care less, they’re just sucking sap and pooping something between rock candy and maple syrup! “This is unbelievable!” I say to Beatrice, and she tells me, “Wait, there’s more,” and the next thing I know, once we’ve eaten all the aphid poop there is to eat, she and the other girls each grab an aphid in their mandibles and start walking away with them.

“Are we going to eat the aphids, too?” I ask.

Beatrice gives me the look you give to a stone cold idiot. “No,” she scoffs. “We’re going to take them back to the colony! Grab one and let’s go!”

So, I grab an aphid and follow the other girls home. Once we got there, we immediately headed down past the chamber where we relieve ourselves and the chamber where we let old corpses and discarded food rot. And it was then I saw something terrible.

It was a chamber filled with aphids, all of them just lying there, sucking leaf sap, and pooping sugary bubbles under the watchful eyes of a couple mean-looking sisters. Beatrice and all the other girls put their aphids down in the middle of the pile, and then bit their wings off, just like that! My aphid gives me a sad look, like it knows how bad this is going to be for the rest of its life, but I guess have a job to do, so I bite my aphid’s wings off, and it gives out a miserable little cry and looks away. The other girls all drop their aphids on the pile after they’ve bitten off their wings, and then they give each of them a leaf to suck, and Beatrice shouts, “Let’s go, kids, time to do your stuff” to the new aphids, like it’s a big joke. Then she turns to me and says, “C’mon, let’s get some more.” And off we go, leaving the new prisoners sucking sap and pooping delicious sugar bubbles.

Well, I found it very troubling – I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it. Sure, sugary poop bubbles are delicious, but who are we to subjugate these aphids? And the more I considered it, a terrible thought came to me – what if we don’t have the moral right to do this? What if we’re condemning the aphids to a life of subjugation while we appropriate their labor? What if our entire colony is built on a foundation of oppression? What if this whole “hive mind” thing is just a tyranny of conformity that blinds us to a much more difficult reality?

At that moment, I realized our colony had an “aphid problem.”

The next morning, we lined up wordlessly – hive mind again -- for another day of foraging. Beatrice was there right in front of me, and I confessed my concerns to her.

“You’re worried about the aphids?” she asked, astonished. I shrugged as best I could in a shoulder-less, ant kind of way. “Don’t worry about the aphids,” she scoffed. “We feed them, we protect them, they have a great life.”

“We bite their wings off!” I protested. “They’re prisoners! Slaves!”

“It’s for their own good,” Beatrice said as we started out foraging. “If we didn’t take them back to the colony, they’d be finished – like that,” she said, intimating a snap with her foreleg. “Did you ever see a ladybug or a lacewing tear up an aphid on a rose or a tomato? It’s not pretty.”

I let the conversation drop and after a few hundred yards we found an ice cream cone some kid must have dropped, so we spent the rest of the day carrying bits of it back home. But after the day’s work, I stopped by the chamber where the aphids were, just to look. There they were, sucking sap, pooping their magic bubbles, and if one of them took a break, a guard ant would subdue them and stroke their abdomen until they reflexively got back with the program and pooped some more.

Right then and there, I’d had enough. I decided to take this matter to the top – right to the Queen.

But when I got to her chamber, I was totally unprepared for what I found. The Queen was enormous, I mean, four or five times the size of a regular ant such as me. And she was busy laying eggs – they came out boom boom boom, like a paint ball gun. I was scared to death, but I cleared my throat to get her attention and she whirled around – her giant head was bigger than my abdomen – and she glared at me before speaking in the loudest, deepest rumble I could ever imagine.

“WHAT IS IT?”

I guess I got her upset, because suddenly the place stank to high heaven – her pheromone dial must have gone to eleven. I almost evacuated myself right there! But I got myself together enough to squeak out, “We have a problem with the aphids.”

She popped out a few more eggs, glaring at me all the while. “AREN’T THEY POOPING SUGAR ANYMORE?”

“No, they’re still pooping. But, we’re kidnapping them,” I said, “holding them prisoner against their will! Biting off their wings, it’s unethical, morally wrong! It’s as if there are two laws, two sets of rules, one for the ants and one for the aphids! And I, for one, object!”

“YOU OBJECT?” she bellowed. “WHO ARE YOU TO OBJECT?” More eggs -- boom boom boom.

“I’m me, just a sister ant, and I’m voicing my opinion –”

“YOUR OPINION? YOUNG LADY, DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT ‘HIVE MIND?’”

“Well, of course I have, Your Majesty, but—"

“ AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT ‘HIVE MIND’ MEANS?” I was forming an answer when she made it clear she wasn’t waiting for one. “I’LL TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS. IT MEANS LAW AND ORDER!”

I was about to argue the point, when she cut me off again “IF WE LET THEM, THE APHIDS WOULD BE RUNNING WILD IN THE TUNNELS! THEY WOULD BE STREAMING INTO OUR CHAMBERS, UPSETTING OUR WAY OF LIFE! THERE WOULD BE LAWLESSNESS THROUGHOUT THE COLONY!”

“But do we have to bite off their wings off, or leave them imprisoned in the dark, for that matter, without a life of hope, or purpose, or meaning? Must they live as slaves, living in fear and despair? What makes us better than them? We’re all sister insects.”

“THEY ARE BETTER OFF WHERE THEY ARE – IN FACT, THEY’VE NEVER HAD IT AS GOOD AS THEY DO NOW!”

“Maybe we could let them keep their wings, or time to rest, or maybe some lighting –”

“YOU’VE REALLY DRUNK THE KOOL-AID, HAVEN’T YOU?” the Queen said, and she didn’t have to say she meant real Kool-Aid, with sugar, not that bogus chemical stuff.

This was not going well, I thought, and my feeling was confirmed when a few of the ants that guarded the Queen approached me and gave me the old “move along” with their antennae. So I did.

So, that’s what’s happened. I’ve still been going on foraging trips every day, and sometimes we bring back more of these poor, oppressed creatures, but I keep an eye out for a moment and a place where I could make a break for it. One ant alone in the world doesn’t sound like a good thing, but on the other hand, I’d be small, almost not worth any predator’s effort, I tell myself – who’s ever seen a solitary ant? And there’s plenty to eat in the world. But still, it’s scary out there.

And then the other day, we were coming back from foraging and dumping a new bunch of aphids onto the pile and biting their wings off and stroking their abdomens to get them to poop sugar bubbles, when the ant next to me – Josephine was her name – looks at me and says, real quietly, “Doesn’t this all seem wrong to you?”

So…you never know.

Echo and Narcissus

Echo was a nymph cursed by Jupiter’s wife to surrender her power of speech except to reply – she could never initiate conversation. She fell in love with Narcissus, a beautiful but haughty youth who rudely spurned her, leading Nemesis, the Roman God of Vengeance, to make him fall in love with his own reflection, to teach him the meaning of lovelessness.

From Bullfinch’s The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes, 1855

Curses from Gods are usually definitive – you might as well beg Samuel Alito for mercy. But Echo and Narcissus pledged to overcome their deficiencies so heartfeltly Jupiter allowed them to return to Earth and have a second chance. So they returned, and moved into a rowhouse in a hipster neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Narcissus was sitting on the sofa late one afternoon, watching a video of a man skateboarding while drinking cranberry juice and lip-synching Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” The man in the video was strikingly handsome, tall and thin with prominent but striking features – an Adam Driver type. Narcissus smiled broadly as he watched the man because, as you’d imagine, he was watching himself. His promises to reform and his ongoing psychotherapy aside, he was pursuing a career as a social influencer and looking for part-time work as an underwear model to get himself over the temporary hump – he was having trouble holding a job.

He heard the door open. “Hi, honey,” he shouted without looking up.

“Hi, honey,” came the reply. Echo was elfin, attractive, with a pixie haircut and delicate features. She worked as a court stenographer, allowed her to use her power of repetition to good advantage.

“What’s up?” Narcissus asked.

“What’s up?” Echo replied, putting her keys down.

“I had my first session with that therapist,” Narcissus replied. “She says I need to start thinking about what other people say and think.”

“What other people say and think?” Echo replied.

“And she said you need to think for yourself.”

“Think for yourself,” Echo mused. Narcissus’ attention shifted back to his phone when he suddenly remembered he was talking to Echo. “She said relationships where the partners are driven by hidden agendas and compulsions can be unhealthy.”

“Unhealthy?”

Narcissus shrugged. “Well, who knows what’s healthy and what’s not, right? But therapy’s not so bad. You sit around and talk about yourself. Which reminds me! I’m watching myself on Tik Tok,” he said. “Look at this -- I look really good!”

Echo took the phone from him and looked. “Really good,” she agreed before handing it back. She sloughed off her backpack, took out her own phone, and sat down next to him. They kissed perfunctorily and regarded their devices.

Narcissus admired his video all over again. “A cool video like this one should get me – what? – five hundred new followers? Pretty soon I’ll have millions, like that Cameron Dallas, or that Zach King dude, or Rhianna. And I’m way better looking.”

“Way better looking,” Echo repeated, offering a small smile.

“That’s what I was saying!” Narcissus replied, and went back to his cranberry juice video.

“Everybody loves that Fleetwood Mac thing.”

“Everybody loves that Fleetwood Mac thing,” Echo said, nodding in agreement as she returned to her phone.

“You said it!” Narcissus said, and technically he was correct. He flipped through more videos of himself, including one of him wearing a laurel wreath he kept as a memento of the Roman woods from which they originally came. “I love that wreath,” he said.

“I love that wreath,” Echo replied.

They smiled at each other and then returned to their phones for a while, although Echo’s mind seemed elsewhere. In fact, it was not long before she was startled and began repeating what was on her screen as opposed to repeating what Narcissus had just said, but repeating just the same. “Relationships can be made more intimate and durable through a commitment to openness and transparency,” she said, pointing to the words on her phone as she read them. (Learning to read expanded both her horizons and conversation.) She looked up, puzzled.

Narcissus wasn’t listening – his eyes never left his screen. “This one of me in the convertible is pretty good, too.” He leaned over to show her the screen.

“The convertible is pretty good, too,” Echo said, her tone growing frustrated..

Narcissus swiped energetically. “And this one of me modeling clothes – it’s the bomb.”

“It’s the bomb,” Echo repeated, smiling weakly. They again focused on their devices – he at himself, she at things to repeat – until she again read her screen, word by word. “A simple twenty minutes of walking, calm thinking, or meditation can reduce your level of cortisol and help create wellness and composure.” She paused, her fingers going to her lips as she considered what she repeated.

Narcissus looked over at her screen and saw Echo’s words there. “Why are you looking at that, honey? You know you’re just going to repeat stuff they tell you. The therapist thinks that’s bad. Here – let me find some cool stuff to watch.”

“Cool stuff to watch,” she agreed and nodded, focusing again on him. Narcissus went flipping through his phone for more videos of himself, but when he found them, they distracted him so completely he forgot to show them to Echo. She, meanwhile, returned to her phone, and after a few moments, read from it again. “Gratitude is the key to building intimacy.”

Narcissus didn’t look up. “To building what?” he said, now watching a video of himself dancing in a glade in a forest. He was wearing the wreath again. “Look at this,” he said, showing her his phone again

Echo remained glued to her screen. “Look at this.”

“Look at what? Are you watching my dancing in the forest video?” he said, grinning. “it’s really good.”

Echo read her screen once more. “Expressing interest in others increases your mental and physical health,” she read, then held the phone up to him. Narcissus didn’t look up. Echo looked at him frustratedly and began scrolling on her phone until she found else something worth repeating. “People often find themselves trapped in self-defeating and counterproductive relationships,” she read pointedly, glancing at him as she read the words one by one, their meaning beginning to dawn on her.

“Sucks for them,” Narcissus replied.

“Sucks for them!” Echo agreed emphatically.

Narcissus looked up, slowly becoming aware that Echo seemed dissatisfied. “Are you OK? Like, are you having some kind of problem?””

“Having some kind of problem,” Echo declared, her tone now more accusatory.

“Why are you looking at me like what?” Narcissus blurted defensively. “Is this about our relationship?”

“About our relationship!” Echo said.

Narcissus sighed with exasperation. “Are you going to bring up all that stuff from the Roman woods again? OK, I was a bit of a dick. But that was forever ago. Jupiter gave us another chance. We’re happy here, aren’t we? Echo, babe, you’ve got to control your attitude,” he said entreatingly, rubbing her shoulders.

“You’ve got to control your attitude!” she said, pulling back.

“I am,” Narcissus said, surprised by her insistence, then added, “although you could tell me how nice I look,” he said, pulling up another video of himself.

“You could tell me how nice I look!”

Narcissus was now confused. “Echo, baby,” he said, “I thought we were going to give this a chance. I thought we agreed I would get help, that we would work on changing.”

Echo put down her phone and looked at him. “Work on changing.”

Narcissus’ annoyance was mounting. “Echo, honey, if you’re going to be like that, then maybe we ought to break up.”

Echo’s jaw clenched and firmed. “We ought to break up.”

Narcissus laughed involuntarily. “Babe, it’s just old mountain nymph stuff again. It happened two thousand years ago. I thought we were over that. I’m over it,” he said, even as a video of him overlooking a scenic vista was playing.

“I’m over it!” Echo answered, and strode purposefully into their bedroom. Narcissus heard drawers opening and closing in rapid succession.

He followed her in. “What are you doing? Are you packing?”

“Packing,” Echo said without looking up. She collected things from around the room and bathroom and threw her few possessions into a bag, but then spied their the laurel wreath from the ancient Roman woods sitting on the dresser.

“No! Not the laurel!” Narcissus shouted.

“The laurel,” Echo repeated as she held it resolutely.

“I look so good in that!” Narcissus cried.

Echo whirled to face him. “I look so good in that,” she said, threw it in her bag, and marched to the door. She opened it and turned back to him.

Narcissus stammered as it occurred to him she light leave. “Please don’t go, Echo baby. Don’t do it. No! I’m going to change!”

She paused halfway out the door when she turned to him. “No,” she said firmly. “I’m going to change.”

And with that she was gone, for there was nothing left to say..

Happy Valentine's Day!

Why Larry's Wrong

Oh no. More economics? don't worry -- hillarity resumes Tuesday. In the meantime...

Larry Summers column in The Washington Post last Thursday challenged the thinking behind the Biden stimulus, and might have led some to second thoughts about it. Is the $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus too big, too risky, and does it, as Larry says, “threaten future inflation and financial stability …(and)…our ability to build back better?”

No, it doesn’t; Larry is wrong. The stimulus is not too big, and the risks of curtailing it are much greater than the risks of not doing so. We’ll throw some numbers around later, but it boils down to this -- Larry is treating the current situation as if it were a math problem to be solved instead of a national crisis that reaches the roots of our society. We’re not just trying to fix the economy, we’re trying to take steps to avert a colossal shitshow, a true existential crisis. Failure means a virus that’s uncontained and mutating, more economic dislocation, and even greater social strains that lead to dangerous, if ludicrous, behavior from shaming mask wearers and attacking science to picking up assault rifles to kidnap the Governor or storming the Capitol. The “right” level of effort is not one that uses past recessions as a guide, but one that overwhelms the crisis we face, the economic equivalent of shock and awe. Besides, the economy’s growth has disappointed us for coming on two decades – is the risk of “too strong” an economy really keeping you up at night?

Let’s start with some of technical stuff. Larry’s argument is that we’re going too big, much bigger than the problem. He gets to that by focusing on the “gap between actual and potential output,” which he says is $50 billion a month and declining. While our child’s “potential” is unlimited, “potential” output is more like an actual limit – it means the economy could be producing $50 billion more stuff – goods and services – if everybody had a job and all the factories were humming and so on. Sure, it’s not a hard number like your age or the temperature, it’s an “estimate,” a good guess. But let’s accept it for the time being, because it’s ultimately not that important.

Larry writes the Biden stimulus would be in the neighborhood of $150 billion a month, which is “three times the size of the output shortfall,” as if we were shoveling three shovelfuls of dirt into a one-shovelful hole, which understandably sounds silly. And he then goes further, noting that “wage and salary incomes are now running $30 billion below “pre-COVID-19 forecasts” and so the $150 billion a month stimulus appears to be five times as big as needed, which sounds really silly.

But it’s the comparisons that are silly. If consumers were simply cutting back on their purchases while hoping to find work, instead of quarantining at home, fearful for their lives with stores and workplaces disrupted, the comparison would be less jejune. We’re not trying to fill a hole here -- we’re trying to build a dike. And the “right” height for the dike is based on how high the water is.

That is, ordinarily, you combat a recession by adding purchasing power to the economy. But here, we’re after much bigger game – we’re trying to do things that must be done if we’re going to get through this. A good way to understand the difference is by looking at what’s in the package that adds to $1.9 trillion. Here’s the list, lifted from an article published by Brookings.

1. COVID-19 containment and vaccination, aid to state and local governments, and increased federal spending ($750 billion): this category includes both the direct $350 billion in state and local aid, as well as money for vaccination, testing and tracing, and reopening schools;

2. Direct aid to families ($600 billion): this category includes the $1400 per person rebate checks and the child tax credit expansion;

3. Aid to financially vulnerable households ($400 billion): this category includes the additional $400 per week in unemployment benefits and the extension of the pandemic unemployment programs; and

4. Aid to businesses ($150 billion): this category includes loans and grants to small businesses and paid sick leave.

So, is this three times or five times what’s needed? Would you cut this stuff by two-thirds because of the “output gap?” Go through the list. There’s $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, which are going broke and will be laying off copious people while cutting basic services if left to their own devices – remember, they were assigned both the job and the bill for managing the crisis. Instead, this aid preserves the basic services state and local governments provide, and then more for vaccinations, testing and tracing, and everybody’s darling, reopening schools. And Larry should be excited about this part of the program, because it doesn’t add output so much as replace the output state and local governments are about strip away through cutbacks. We can’t afford not to take these steps.

And let’s say what is often left unsaid – aside from wanting to screw over predominantly Democratic officials and people of color in urban centers, the Republicans who oppose this aid also likely want to leverage the situation to break public sector workers’ pension systems. Aid to state and local governments would not only help preserve them as active partners in the campaign to stop the pandemic, but would also help defeat that sad agenda.

The second component is direct aid to families. There’s been a push to limit this in two grounds. First, families with incomes as high as $290,000 would receive a check, albeit a very small one. Now, where to draw the line is a reasonable thing to discuss within limits, but the Republican starting point is $100,000 is even more divorced from reality than the $300,000 found in the proposal. (Remember, a $100,000 “limit” means benefits start phasing out at half that amount.)

We also hear that families who receive this money appear eager to save it if they can, and therefore don't need it. Oh, please. When we cut taxes for wealthy families in 2017, that money was saved – come on, they’re rich people, what else are they going to buy? – and I don’t recall complaints. But more crucially, if families can save that money, that’s good, too. Again, this isn’t about promoting spending – it’s about giving families better ability to make choices, to give them a cushion in case – let’s make up something crazy here – a mutant variant of the virus throws the whole vaccination strategy into a cocked hat. I’d go out on a limb and say families that have some resources will be less willing to protest mask wearing or restrictions on bars and restaurants or even taking masked pictures with their guns. Again, it’s not a math problem – it’s a response to a social crisis rarely experienced in our history.

The third item on the list — unemployment benefits -- is one Larry and every attempted targeter – from William Tell to Bill Burroughs – should support. An expanded unemployment benefits program is completely targeted -- if you’re working you don’t get it, it goes away.

But Larry is still uncomfortable with it. He says, “…a family of four making $1,000 a week would take home $22,000 over the next six months. Under the Biden program, if…laid off, the family’s income…would likely exceed $30,000.” I suppose the good news is that if the pandemidc ends and the economy improves we can stop worrying about overpaying working families! But nobody’s produced evidence of workers goldbricking to get lush unemployment bennies – working people understand the way to have a job tomorrow is to have a job today. More important, strong unemployment benefits make it possible for families to get by if pandemic-related restrictions deprive them of work. No one thinks everyone protesting mask mandates and business closings is going to change their mind if they’re offered better benefits. But they are just responding to the Trump dictum that our two choices are “get sick or go to work.” That approach fed an insurrection. The Biden program sets up a third alternative. It’s not “excessive” – it’s vital.

And then there’s finally aid to businesses. This isn’t a “stimulus” so much as it attempts to put those businesses crushed by the pandemic into the economic equivalent of a “medically-induced coma,” keeping them alive until their underlying disease passes. And it’s worked -- small businesses failures were actually dramatically lower in 2020 than in 2019, although I've heard no complaints about the absence of targeting in this case. And of all the components of the plan, it’s the one guaranteed a seat on the bus – Republicans want less vaccination money, less open schools money, and so on, but actually want more money than Biden does here. So, it’s moot.

All of these details support a central argument – defeating the virus means more than producing as much vaccine as is possible or increasing consumer purchasing power. It means supporting Americans as they try to navigate the crisis and get to the other side. The compelling risk here is not that we miss our “target,” but we fail.

Sure, there are risks. An overheated economy risks inflation, but we’ve been under the Fed’s inflation target for coming on two decades now – even Larry admits “an overheated economy…(that pushes)…up wages would be a very positive thing.” And Larry is worried that “economic space be found for the public investments that should be the nation’s highest priority.” But the best way to tee up those investments – added infrastructure, universal broadband, a climate program -- is to end the pandemic and move those items to the top of the agenda. You’re not going to get a carbon tax or user fees for highways with the economy contracting and 20,000 people dying every week.

Ending the pandemic and its economic effects means not just producing and distributing vaccine, but allowing state and local governments to continue to deliver services, supporting our families so they don’t fear the disruptions that are part of pandemic response, and keeping in mind the greatest sacrifices have been made by low-income people and people of color, and so the greatest efforts must be made to assist them. Failing to do so means not just hundreds of thousands of additional deaths and an economic calamity, but a society in a dangerous stand-off.

The Biden program is not too small. It responds to a danger of massive proportions and is therefore massive. History will measure its success not by comparing it to an “output gap,” but by whether it succeeded in bringing our country back. That is the right “target.”