On 2 November 2008, the New York Times Magazine headlined “Questions for James K. Galbraith: The Populist,” which was an “Interview by Deborah Solomon” of the prominent liberal economist and son of John Kenneth Galbraith. She asked him, “There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis” which had brought on the second Great Depression?

He answered: “Ten or twelve would be closer than two or three.”

She very appropriately followed up immediately with “What does this say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?”

He didn’t answer by straight-out saying that economics isn’t any more of a science than physics was before Galileo, or than biology was before Darwin. He didn’t proceed to explain that the very idea of a Nobel Prize in Economics was based upon a lie which alleged that economics was the first field to become scientific within all of the “social sciences,” when, in fact, there weren’t yet any social sciences, none yet at all. But he came close to admitting these things, when he said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” His term “useless” was a euphemism for false. His term “blot” was a euphemism for “nullification.”

On 9 January 2009, economist Jeff Madrick headlined at The Daily Beast, “How the Entire Economics Profession Failed,” and he opened:

At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists. Mainstream economists from major universities dominate the meetings, and some of them are the anointed cream of the crop, including former Clinton, Bush and even Reagan advisers.

There was no session on the schedule about how the vast majority of economists should deal with their failure to anticipate or even seriously warn about the possibility that the second worst economic crisis of the last hundred years was imminent.

I heard no calls to reform educational curricula because of a crisis so threatening and surprising that it undermines, at least if the academicians were honest, the key assumptions of the economic theory currently being taught. …

I found no one fundamentally changing his or her mind about the value of economics, economists, or their work.”

He observed a scandalous profession of quacks who are satisfied to remain quacks. The public possesses faith in them because it possesses faith in the “invisible hand” of God, and everyone is taught to believe in that from the crib. In no way is it science.

In a science, when facts prove that the theory is false, the theory gets replaced, it’s no longer taught. In a scholarly field, however, that’s not so — proven-false theory continues being taught. In economics, the proven-false theory continued being taught, and still continues today to be taught. This demonstrates that economics is still a religion or some other type of philosophy, not yet any sort of science.

Mankind is still coming out of the Dark Ages. The Bible is still being viewed as history, not as myth (which it is), not as some sort of religious or even political propaganda. It makes a difference — a huge difference: the difference between truth and falsehood.

The Dutch economist Dirk J. Bezemer, at Groningen University, posted on 16 June 2009 a soon-classic paper, “‘No One Saw This Coming’: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models,” in which he surveyed the work of 12 economists who did see it (the economic collapse of 2008) coming; and he found there that they had all used accounting or “Flow of Funds” models, instead of the standard microeconomic theory. (In other words: they accounted for, instead of ignored, debts.) From 2005 through 2007, these accounting-based economists had published specific and accurate predictions of what would happen: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Stephen (“Steve”) Keen, Jakob B. Madsen, Jens K. Sorensen, Kurt Richebaecher, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

He should have added several others. Paul Krugman, wrote a NYT column on 12 August 2005 headlined “Safe as Houses” and he said “Houses aren’t safe at all” and that they would likely decline in price. On 25 August 2006, he bannered “Housing Gets Ugly” and concluded “It’s hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.” Bezemer should also have included Merrill Lynch’s Chief North American Economist, David A. Rosenberg, whose The Market Economist article “Rosie’s Housing Call August 2004” on 6 August 2004 already concluded, “The housing sector has entered a ‘bubble’ phase,” and who presented a series of graphs showing it. Bezemer should also have included Satyajit Das, about whom TheStreet had headlined on 21 September 21 2007, “The Credit Crisis Could Be Just Beginning.” He should certainly have included Ann Pettifor, whose 2003 The Real World Economic Outlook, and her masterpiece the 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis, predicted exactly what happened and why. Her next book, the 2009 The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, was almost a masterpiece, but it failed to present any alternative to the existing microeconomic theory — as if microeconomic theory isn’t a necessary part of economic theory. Another great economist he should have mentioned was Charles Hugh Smith, who had been accurately predicting since at least 2005 the sequence of events that culminated in the 2008 collapse. And Bezemer should especially have listed the BIS’s chief economist, William White, regarding whom Germany’s Spiegel headlined on 8 July 2009, “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis.” (It is about but doesn’t mention nor link to https://www.bis.org/publ/work147.pdf.) White had been at war against the policies of America’s Fed chief Alan Greenspan ever since 1998, and especially since 2003, but the world’s aristocrats muzzled White’s view and promoted Greenspan’s instead. (The economics profession have always been propagandists for the super-rich.) Bezemer should also have listed Charles R. Morris, who in 2007 told his publisher Peter Osnos that the crash would start in Summer 2008, which was basically correct. Moreover, James K. Galbraith had written for years saying that a demand-led depression would result, such as in his American Prospect “How the Economists Got It Wrong,” 30 November 2002; and “Bankers Versus Base,” 15 April 2004, and culminating finally in his 2008 The Predator State, which blamed the aristocracy in the strongest possible terms for the maelstrom to come. Bezemer should also have listed Barry Ritholtz, who, in his “Recession Predictor,” on 18 August 2005, noted the optimistic view of establishment economists and then said, “I disagree … due to Psychology of consumers.” He noted “consumer debt, not as a percentage of GDP, but relative to net asset wealth,” and also declining “median personal income,” as pointing toward a crash from this mounting debt-overload. Then, on 31 May 2006, he headlined “Recent Housing Data: Charts & Analysis,” and opened: “It has long been our view that Real Estate is the prime driver of this economy, and its eventual cooling will be a major crimp in GDP, durable goods, and consumer spending.” Bezemer should also have listed both Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore at Northern Trust. Kasriel headlined on 22 May 2007, “US Economy May Wake Up Without Consumers’ Prodding?” and said it wouldn’t happen – and consumers were too much in debt. Then on 8 August 2007, he bannered: “US Economic Growth in Domestic Final Demand,” and said that “the housing recession is … spreading to other parts of the economy.” On 25 May 2006, Bangalore headlined “Housing Market Is Cooling Down, No Doubts About It.” and that was one of two Asha Bangalore articles which were central to Ritholtz’s 31 May 2006 article showing that all of the main indicators pointed to a plunge in house-prices that had started in March 2005; so, by May 2006, it was already clear from the relevant data, that a huge economic crash was comning soon. Another whom Bezemer should have listed was L. Randall Wray, whose 2005 Levy Economics Institute article, “The Ownership Society: Social Security Is Only the Beginning” asserted that it was being published “at the peak of what appears to be a real estate bubble.” Bezemer should also have listed Paul B. Farrell, columnist at marketwatch.com, who saw practically all the correct signs, in his 26 June 2005 “Global Megabubble? You Decide. Real Estate Is Only Tip of Iceberg; or Is It?”; and his 17 July 2005 “Best Strategies to Beat the Megabubble: Real Estate Bubble Could Trigger Global Economic Meltdown”; and his 9 January 2006 “Meltdown in 2006? Cast Your Vote”; and 15 May 2006 “Party Time (Until Real Estate Collapses)”; and his 21 August 2006 “Tipping Point Pops Bubble, Triggers Bear: Ten Warnings the Economy, Markets Have Pushed into Danger Zone”; and his 30 July 2007 “You Pick: Which of 20 Tipping Points Ignites Long Bear Market?” Farrell’s commentaries also highlighted the same reform-recommendations that most of the others did, such as Baker, Keen, Pettifor, Galbraith, Ritholtz, and Wray; such as break up the mega-banks, and stiffen regulation of financial institutions. However, the vast majority of academically respected economists disagreed with all of this and were wildly wrong in their predictions, and in their analyses. The Nobel Committee should have withdrawn their previous awards in economics to still-practicing economists (except to Krugman who did win a Nobel) and re-assigned them to these 25 economists, who showed that they had really deserved it.

And there was another: economicpredictions.org tracked four economists who predicted correctly the 2008 crash: Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Med Jones, the latter of whom had actually the best overall record regarding the predictions that were tracked there.

And still others should also be on the list: for example, Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider headlined on 21 November 2012, “The Genius Who Invented Economics Blogging Reveals How He Got Everything Right And What’s Coming Next” and he interviewed Bill McBride, who had started his calculated riskblog in January 2005. So I looked in the archives there at December 2005, and noticed December 28th, “Looking Forward: 2006 Top Economic Stories.” He started there with four trends that he expected everyone to think of, and then listed another five that weren’t so easy, including “Housing Slowdown. In my opinion, the Housing Bubble was the top economic story of 2005, but I expect the slowdown to be a form of Chinese water torture. Sales for both existing and new homes will probably fall next year from the records set in 2005. And median prices will probably increase slightly, with declines in the more ‘heated markets.’” McBride also had predicted that the economic rebound would start in 2009, and he was now, in 2012, predicting a strong 2013. Probably Joe Weisenthal was right in calling McBride a “Genius.”

And also, Mike Whitney at InformationClearinghouse.info and other sites, headlined on 20 November 2006, “Housing Bubble Smack-Down,” and he nailed the credit-boom and Fed easy-money policy as the cause of the housing bubble and the source of an imminent crash.

Furthermore, Ian Welsh headlined on 28 November 2007, “Looking Forward At the Consequences of This Bubble Bursting,” and listed 10 features of the crash to come, of which 7 actually happened.

In addition, Gail Tverberg, an actuary, headlined on 9 January 2008 “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008,” and provided the most detailed of all the prescient descriptions of the collapse that would happen that year.

Furthermore, Gary Shilling’s January 2007 Insight newsletter listed “12 investment themes” which described perfectly what subsequently happened, starting with “The housing bubble has burst.”

And the individual investing blogger Jesse Colombo started noticing the housing bubble even as early as 6 September 2004, blogging at his stock-market-crash.net “The Housing Bubble” and documenting that it would happen (“Here is the evidence that we are in a massive housing bubble:”) and what the economic impact was going to be. Then on 7 February 2006 he headlined “The Coming Crash!” and said “Based on today’s overvalued housing prices, a 20 percent crash is certainly in the cards.”

Also: Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens issued an analysis and appropriate graphs on 7 December 2007, headlined “When Animals Attack” and predicting imminently a huge economic crash.

In alphabetical order, they are: Dean Baker, Asha Bangalore, Jesse Colombo, Satyajit Das, Paul B. Farrell, James K. Galbraith, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones, Paul Kasriel, Steve Keen, Paul Krugman, Jakob B. Madsen, Bill McBride, Charles R. Morris, Ann Pettifor, Stehanie Pomboy, Kurt Richebaeker, Barry Ritholtz, David A. Rosenberg, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Gary Shilling, Charles Hugh Smith, Jens K. Sorensen, Gail Tverberg, Ian Welsh, William White, Mike Whitney, L. Randall Wray.

Thus, at least 33 economists were contenders as having been worth their salt as economic professionals. One can say that only 33 economists predicted the 2008 collapse, or that only 33 economists predicted accurately or reasonably accurately the collapse. However, some of those 33 were’t actually professional economists. So, some of the world’s 33 best economists aren’t even professional economists, as accepted in that rotten profession.

So, the few honest and open-eyed economists (these 33, at least) tried to warn the world. Did the economics profession honor them for their having foretold the 2008 collapse? Did President Barack Obama hire them, and fire the incompetents he had previously hired for his Council of Economic Advisers? Did the Nobel Committee acknowledge that it had given Nobel Economics Prizes to the wrong people, including people such as the conservative Milton Friedman whose works were instrumental in causing the 2008 crash? Also complicit in causing the 2008 crash was the multiple-award-winning liberal economist Lawrence Summers, who largely agreed with Friedman but was nonetheless called a liberal. Evidently, the world was too corrupt for any of these 33 to reach such heights of power or of authority. Like Galbraith had said at the close of his 2002 “How the Economists Got It Wrong“: “Being right doesn’t count for much in this club.” If anything, being right means being excluded from such posts. In an authentically scientific field, the performance of one’s predictions (their accuracy) is the chief (if not SOLE) determinant of one’s reputation and honor amongst the profession, but that’s actually not the way things yet are in any of the social “sciences,” including economics; they’re all just witch-doctory, not yet real science. The fraudulence of these fields is just ghastly. In fact, as Steve Keen scandalously noted in Chapter 7 of his 2001 Debunking Economics: “As this book shows, economics [theory] is replete with logical inconsistencies.” In any science, illogic is the surest sign of non-science, but it is common and accepted in the social ‘sciences’, including economics. The economics profession itself is garbage, a bad joke, instead of any science at all.

These 33 were actually only candidates for being scientific economists, but I have found the predictions of some of them to have been very wrong on some subsequent matters of economic performance. For example, the best-known of the 33, Paul Krugman, is a “military Keynesian” — a liberal neoconservative (and military Keynesianism is empirically VERY discredited: false worldwide, and false even in the country that champions it, the U.S.) — and he is unfavorable toward the poor, and favorable toward the rich; so, he is acceptable to the Establishment.) Perhaps a few of these 33 economists (perhaps half of whom aren’t even members of the economics profession) ARE scientific (in their underlying economic beliefs — their operating economic theory) if a scientific economics means that it’s based upon a scientific theory of economics — a theory that is derived not from any opinions but only from the relevant empirical data. Although virtually all of the 33 are basically some sort of Keynesian, even that (Keynes’s theory) isn’t a full-fledged theory of economics (it has many vagaries, and it has no microeconomics). The economics profession is still a field of philosophy, instead of a field of science.

The last chapter of my America’s Empire of Evil presents what I believe to be the first-ever scientific theory of economics, a theory that replaces all of microeconomic theory (including a micro that’s integrated with its macro) and is consistent with Keynes in macroeconomic theory; and all of which theory is derived and documented from only the relevant empirical economic data — NOT from anyone’s opinions. The economics profession think that replacing existing economic theory isn’t necessary after the crash of 2008, but I think it clearly IS necessary (because — as that chapter of my book shows — all of the relevant empirical economic data CONTRADICT the existing economic theory, ESPECIALLY the existing microeconomic theory).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

I was not one of those people who knew they were going to be a writer from the age of three or something. But I think, from pretty early on, I did have a sense that I might want to do something creative. I was very interested in drawing. I think I spent far more of my childhood drawing and sketching all sorts of things. But writing wasn’t something that I did too much of as a child. I think I just associated it with school and with work. And I still do, which is one of my challenges.

But in the course of my childhood and teenage years, I really tried a lot of different things. There was a period of time when I was convinced that I was going to become a Claymation animator because I found my parents’ Super 8 Camera, and someone told me that if you just click on the trigger really quickly and then move the clay a little bit, you could make movies that way. It was all I could think about for about six months. But I was a kid, so I would fall passionately in love with some kind of art making, and then I would run up against the brick wall of my lack of ability and experience. And then I would become terribly frustrated because I was a child, and then I would give it up in disgust. And I must have cycled through, I don’t know, a dozen different ideas in the course of my childhood and teenage years.

And that continued through college. I was a studio art major for a while in college. I played in about 15 bands. And I played different instruments in different bands, which meant I never got good at any instruments. And that was really my situation. I was just kind of a dilettante, really, from the ages of zero to 26 or something.

How did you eventually land on writing?

What happened wasn’t so much that I had any sort of revelation or that any sort of magical door opened for me. It was more a sensation of various doors closing. I never pursued the animation thing. I was a really bad painter. I had a lot of fun playing in bands, but none of them were ever really anything that even I took seriously. When these doors quietly started closing for me—at least in my own sense of what I was capable of through my mid-20s—what I was left with was writing. Writing was the one thing that had consistently been more satisfying to me. I probably found a little bit more encouragement and a slightly warmer reception than the other stuff. So, in a way, I became a writer by default.

Which came first for you? Was it fiction or journalism?

I was never interested in journalism, actually. I consumed it with great pleasure, but it was never something that I aspired to do because I don’t like telling the truth. What happened was, I published my first novel when I was just shy of 30. And then a friend of mine, who I always had a crush on, became kind of a star in music, and had a record coming out. We’d lost touch with each other, but I heard an advance copy of the record and thought I would really love to write about it. And then maybe that way we’d see each other again.

So, my wonderful agent, Jean, pitched this piece to some magazines, and they all turned it down. But that led them to offering me other pieces. The first article I ever wrote was for the New York Times Magazine, which was a real thrill. So, I came to journalism through fiction, which is a very ass-backwards way of arriving in the journalistic world. And it meant that I had to really learn on the job. I mean, it’s sort of like never having learned to drive a car, and all of a sudden, you’re the chauffeur for the Queen. It’s like, “What am I doing? This car is already rolling. What are these knobs and buttons for?” Fortunately, I never got into big trouble, but I always had to curb my urge to invent or shape the facts into a more effective or fictionally successful narrative, which obviously you’re not supposed to do as a journalist.

Tell me about the process of writing your first novel. How did you approach it?

Well, a couple of years before I wrote the first novel of mine that was published, I tried to write a different novel. That was truly daunting, and it was a tremendous failure. I really didn’t even have any idea what I wanted to say or write about. I was really only going off the sound of what I was writing. I had this vague sort of ambition to do something. My touchstones at the time were pretty random: William S. Burroughs and N. Scott Momaday, a Native American novelist who wrote what I thought was a beautiful novel called House Made of Dawn. But those are two writers don’t have anything in common, really.

I just tried too soon, so I had to scrap that book. It was completely bizarre and strange, but also just a blatant imitation of those two writers and a few others. Some wonderful, honest people told me it was bullshit so I scrapped it. And then about two years went by. Without being aware of it, I’d been nursing the hope of giving writing another shot, since it was, by that point, the only art form that I felt I stood a chance at.

That summer, on a visit home, I went on a long hike with my parents. They were arguing or something, so I kind of lagged behind. As the hike progressed, a situation sort of presented itself to my mind, I guess, is the only way I can really put it. I began to think of three characters, and I began to think about writing a book that was set in a little town in the Austrian Alps, where my mother had been born and grown up, which had been a place that I always loved spending time in as a child. I had this idea that if I set a novel in a place that I really enjoyed spending time in, in my thoughts, that might make it easier or more pleasant for me to spend a really long time every day going back there and trying to put a story together. So, it came to me on a walk is the answer.

Once you had the idea, did it go quickly, or did you struggle?

It came very quickly. Actually, it was night and day compared to my attempt of just two years earlier, because I had a much clearer sense of what I wanted to do, or at least of the mood that I wanted. And from the mood, I got maybe the sense of the sound that I wanted and the rhythm that I wanted. It’s a little bit like playing music. I felt like I had just kind of dropped into the pocket. I could hit all sorts of false notes here and there, but at least the rhythm was right. It still took me almost four years, but I didn’t really make a lot of wrong turns in that time. That’s the only book I’ve written that felt really kind of magical. It just seemed to be the right thing to do, so I kept doing it.

I know you’re a very research-oriented kind of guy. What do you enjoy about that process?

It’s funny because I don’t actually think I am a very research-oriented kind of guy. I have come to appreciate the research stage as the most pleasurable state of things because you haven’t screwed anything up yet. When you’re doing the research, you may not know what you want to do exactly. But insofar as you do have a sense of what you want to do, it’s still this perfect thing because you haven’t actually fucked it up yet. I think Cormac McCarthy once said that every word you set down on paper as you’re working towards finishing the first draft of a novel is a step away from the perfect dream you had that got you started in the first place. Every choice you make reveals slightly more clearly the extent of your inadequacy for the beautiful dream that you were hoping to capture.

Do you sketch out your plots in advance, or just let them unfold as you write?

I do just enough research to get to the point at which I start to feel confident and comfortable making things up. With some books that’s no research, and with some books, it’s quite a bit depending on what I’m doing. But I do not make an outline or anything like that. I do very little written preparation because I’m an impatient person. Once I’ve got the fever, I want to get going. And I kind of trust in the facts that I will find out as I go [as far as] what I need to research and what I need to plan. Because it would be a colossal waste of time and effort if you were going to write a novel about the war in Vietnam, let’s say. For you to master every aspect of the history of the Vietnam War, only to then after years of research decide you’re just going to follow one little platoon through an anonymous stretch of jungle, which would require very little knowledge of the actual war… you know what I mean?

Totally.

I always like to just roll camera, and based on where the camera’s pointing and whether you need a wide shot or a close-up, so to speak, then do the research you need to do. I mean, of course, you have to know what you want to do and have some general sense of at least how to start. But again, if I were to do too much outlining and too much planning, the whole thing would start to feel like homework again. And I always hated school.

When you’re working on a novel, do you set aside a certain amount of time each day to work on it? Do you set a goal or cut yourself off at a certain point?

I think most writers who write book-length things—as opposed to poets, let’s say—have some sort of protocol that they follow and some sort of quota that they impose on themselves most days. In my experience, it’s sort of like in New York City when you want to put more money on your MetroCard and it says, “Would you like to add value or add time?” I feel like some writers focus on time and they say, “It’s a regular job. I’m going to go to the office. I’ll be there six hours a day or eight hours a day, or however long it is. And even if I get nothing done, I’m going to be in that damn room.” I know writers who set timers for themselves. When they’re actually writing, they’ll hit the timer, and if they start daydreaming, they’ll pause the timer. They’re that hardcore about it.

I did a profile on Nick Cave once. He told me has an office that he goes to for eight hours a day when he’s not on tour. It obviously works for him. He’s hugely productive. But I can’t do that because, for me, writing is not painful, but it’s really effortful. I always liken it to holding your breath underwater. That’s what it feels like in my brain. It’s not painful, but I wouldn’t choose to do it, either. It is effortful, and I can’t sustain it for more than a few minutes before I need to kind of surface again. I’m a bank clerk-style writer, like bureaucratic writing: I do 500 words a day. That was Graham Greene’s approach. If I do that, then I know that I have to do it. If I actually apply myself and focus, I could be out of there in an hour and a half, or I’m there for 10 hours. It all depends. Some days the brain just doesn’t want to cooperate.

500 words seems like a totally manageable number.

Well, that’s very important. I think Hemingway did it that way, too. And I think he said it was very important to pick a very reasonable number, so you can’t come up with any reason why you couldn’t do it. Who can’t write 500 words? It’s literally just a page. It’s like a slightly longer email. But the catch is you have to do it every day that you’re working. And also, you have to try to make it good. There are some sneaky little hidden complications there. But it works for me because I’m a very work-avoidant person who would rather never do the actual work and just reap all of the lovely rewards.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

I’m dropping all these pearls of wisdom from far better writers than me into this conversation, but I was once doing an interview with Haruki Murakami when he was visiting New York City. After the interview, we were sitting in this German beer garden kind of thing on Bleecker Street. I confessed to him that I was really in a jam with this book that I was writing and had no idea how to go forward with it. He listened very politely to what I was saying. But then it seemed as though he hadn’t been listening at all because the next thing he said was, “Do you like that bratwurst?”

I was like, “What? Excuse me. Haven’t you been listening? I’ve been sobbing on your shoulder.” And he just repeated the question. And I said, “Yeah, it’s actually very good bratwurst. Would you like some?” And he kind of looked at me for a moment and said, “Put the bratwurst in the novel. Next scene of the novel, someone should be eating bratwurst.” And it seemed like one of these Zen koans or something, like he was going to hit me in the head with a board or something and say, “Now, do you see?”?

How I interpreted that was: Anything can go into a novel. One of the things that novels have that many other art forms don’t is they’re so expansive and they can metabolize anything you want to throw at them—especially a large novel. So, I did what he told me. In the very next scene, some characters were going to have an argument. And I made that happen over the course of a meal of bratwurst, and it helped me to go forward. I then cut that out of the book, actually.

You’ve talked about writing as a way to target your own anxieties. How does that apply to your new novel, Gone to the Wolves?

Oh, that’s interesting. That’s something I haven’t actually thought about. I mean, with Lowboy, for example, which was a book I wrote about this schizophrenic kid who’s obsessed with global warming, that was my climate change book for myself. In creating a character who was so much more obsessed, and not neurotic, but really actually psychotic about this question, it really allowed me to sort of exorcise these demons that I had surrounding that. Which didn’t last, of course, because now who isn’t freaked out about climate change?

And with other books, I can really point to certain things—my family history and things like that. The need to find an outlet for my anxieties is always a very potent motivator. I probably couldn’t finish a book without that kind of compulsion. In the case of Gone to the Wolves, I wrote it during a time when quite a few people that I was very close to passed away. My father died, and my uncle—who was more of a role model for me—died, and a close friend as well. This is off the top of my head, but I think that may be why friendship and the sort of love one feels for a friend became so important in this book. I think I was having some anxieties about losing people in my life.

You did an interview with The Guardian a few years ago in which you said that when you’re writing a novel, it’s better to not to feel like you have all the answers going into it. Can you talk about that a little bit?

There are all sorts of reasons why that’s true, I think. You need to leave some room to be able to surprise yourself because the process needs to be exciting and interesting to you in order for you to be engaged enough to write well. I think maybe that’s part of why I tend to avoid too much planning and too much outlining. I don’t want it all to seem like a sort of foregone conclusion. I always have a general sense of where I’m headed, but in the same way that you would get in the car to go on a road trip and say, “Oh, it would be cool to end up at Big Sur.” But how the fuck are you going to get to Big Sur? I mean, there are a thousand ways to go. So, I just think that it has to be a bit of an adventure. On the most basic level, it has to be exciting. It has to be fun for you. Which means you have to choose something you’re genuinely interested in, not falsely interested in because you think it’s what people want to read about.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by J Bennett.

The plan calls for a number of improvements to Norfolk Southern's systems to detect overheated wheel bearings, which the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report appeared to be the cause of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3.

In addition, Norfolk Southern said it aims to accelerate its "digital train inspection program" by partnering with Georgia Tech Research Institute to develop new safety inspection technology the company claims could "identify defects and needed repairs much more effectively than traditional human inspection."

The technology would use "machine vision and algorithms powered by artificial intelligence," the plan reads—offering what journalist Sam Sacks said is likely a thinly veiled proposal for "further reductions" in the company's workforce.

As Common Dreams reported last month, the national inter-union organization Railroad Workers United (RWU) has called for comprehensive legislation and robust action from regulators to keep rail workers and communities safe, warning that rail companies including Norfolk Southern have been lobbying for years for federal approval to reduce train crews and loosen safety protocols.

Rather than rail companies developing safety plans themselves, federal action is needed to guarantee "proper and adequate maintenance and inspection of rail cars and locomotives, track, signals, and other infrastructure, RWU co-chair Gabe Christenson said in a statement Monday.

Rail workers have "predicted stuff like" an increased reliance on automation, railroad worker and RWU steering committee member Matt Weaver told Common Dreams on Tuesday, as "the Precision Scheduled Railroading [PSR] business model" used by rail companies "calls for doing more with less."

Under PSR, rail companies attempt to maximize profits by running trains on strict schedules and cutting back on equipment and staff. Railroad unions have said the system and the resulting lax safety protocols are an underlying cause of recent train accidents including the East Palestine derailment, another derailment that took place in Michigan less than two weeks later, and a collision between a Norfolk Southern train and a dump truck on Tuesday in Ohio, in which conductor Louis Shuster was killed.

Weaver noted that RWU and his own union, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED), aren't opposed to the use of automation in inspections entirely.

"We used to have 12-man gangs that put all the ties in by hand and everything, and now we have lots of machines which do help us live longer and not have our backs or our hips, knees, shoulders [get injured]," he told Common Dreams. "But you can't just replace the manpower with a machine when it's not always as effective. Eyes on the rails and the tracks can catch some things the machines do not."

"We've accepted those as additional help," he added. "Not as a replacement."

Last year, as railroad companies including Norfolk Southern demanded that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) allow them to continue pilot programs testing automated safety inspections, BMWED noted that according to FRA data, the causes of 48 train accidents that took place between 2016 and 2021 could only be detected through visual inspections while just 14 could be detected through "enhanced track geometry inspection" done by machines.

"Over 50% of the accidents that happened from 2016 to 2021 do not even have the ability to be found by the technology that they're looking to use," Roy Morrison, director of safety for the union, toldFreight Waves last May.

In recent days rail unions have denounced an attempt by Norfolk Southern to use workers' demands for paid sick leave against them—offering BMWED members four days of sick leave in exchange for the union's support for its automated inspection program.

"Norfolk Southern's proposal was ultimately for the union to be complicit in Norfolk Southern's effort to reduce legally required minimum track safety standards through supporting their experimental track inspection program without a sensible fail-safe or safety precautions to help ensure trains would not derail," wrote Jonathon Long, general chairman of the American Rail System Federation of the BMWED, in a letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. "In other words, Norfolk Southern's proposal was to use your community's safety as their bargaining chip to further pursue their record profits under their cost-cutting business model."

Weaver argued that strong comprehensive railroad safety legislation is needed to compel railroad companies to keep workers and communities safe. RWU has expressed support for some aspects of the bipartisan Railway Safety Act of 2023, introduced last week, but warned that loopholes will allow companies to "avoid the scope of the law without violating the law" and ultimately use the legislation to reduce staff.

"That's kind of their ultimate goal," Weaver told Common Dreams. "And you can't trust a capitalist industry, a for-profit industry to self-regulate. We have to have government intervention. So it's time for the regulators to regulate and the public servants to serve the public."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

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