luxurious times

The stunning productivity of the agriculture and manufacturing sectors-- the roots of post-industrialism-- should be cause for celebration. The ancient Greeks would have seen the current moment as a turning point in human history, where only a tiny fraction of the population's hours are needed to produce all the food, clothing, shelter and material goods people need to live comfortable. Surely, we were on the verge of a society devoted to a life of art, literature, and contemplation. Instead, Americans face economic anxiety and chronic insecurity about the future. Houses are going into foreclosure, food prices climb ever higher, and millions of families are one medical crisis away from bankruptcy. Why is there such a disjuncture between the economy's capacity to produce and the lived experience of Americans?

~ Gerard Davis, Managed by the Markets

it's a wonderful life revisited 2008

Excerpts from the article "The Rise and Fall of Finance and the End of the Society of Organizations" cited from the death of the corporation? on orgtheory.net:

The traditional model of banking is fairly simple: Banks gather deposits from savers, who are paid interest, and lend it to borrowers, who pay it back at a higher rate of interest.

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, banker George Bailey explains this model to his anxious depositors, who are causing a run on the bank: “No, but you . . . you’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house . . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?”

The best-known form of securitization is mortgage- backed bonds, in which hundreds or thousands of mortgage loans are pooled together and then divided into bonds that, by the law of large numbers, have more predictable and “safer” returns. This practice allows banks to free up funds for additional lending and generally lowers the cost of taking out a mortgage. Rather than relying on a local bank and its depositors to fund their home purchase, buyers can access funds from dispersed investors around the world via mortgage-backed securities.

A modern-day George Bailey might have a more difficult time explaining contemporary banking: “No, but you . . . you’re thinking of this place all wrong, as if I held your mortgage on my balance sheet. I sold your mortgage to Countrywide 10 minutes after we closed the deal, and they sold it along with 3,000 other mortgages to Merrill Lynch, which divided it into bonds that were bought by a Cayman Islands LLC, which bundled them together with other mortgage-backed bonds into a collateralized debt obligation that Citigroup sold to a Norwegian pension fund. Now what are you going to do? Stop making your payments and force those Norwegian retirees to go back to work?”

the recovery of virtue

After many months of what appeared to be politics as usual, President Obama managed to give me hope again with his speech on Wednesday night. (And I can only hope that his rhetoric is matched with substance—integrity is after all often defined as coherence between the internal and external).

I was especially moved to hear him quote Ted Kennedy towards the end of his speech:

[Ted Kennedy] repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that "it concerns more than material things." "What we face," he wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."

…

That large-heartedness - that concern and regard for the plight of others - is not a partisan feeling. It is not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character. Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand. A belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgement that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.
…

And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al.) noted back in 1985, the loss of the notion of civic virtue and warned of its potential consequences. Obama’s speech suggests that we recover the value of virtue and character in our national discourse. While the concept of virtue may not give us clear answers about the size and role of government in our technologically complex society, it can atleast be a guiding principle in how we frame our public debate about how this country should be governed.

From Habits of the Heart:

We spoke of the belief of Madison and the other founders that our form of government was dependent on the existence of virtue among the people. It was such virtue that they expected to resolve the tension between private interest and public good. Without civic virtue, they thought, the republic would decline into factional chaos and virtue, and probably end in authoritarian rule. Half a century later, this idea was reiterated in Tocqueville’s argument about the importance of mores – the “habits of the heart” – of Americans.

…
As the twentieth century has progressed, that understanding, so important through most of our history, has begun to slip from our grasp. As we unthinkingly use the oxymoron “private citizen”, the very meaning of citizenship escapes us. And with Ronald Reagan’s assertion that “we the people” are a “special interest group”, our concern for the economy being the only thing that holds us together, we have reached a kind of end of the line. The citizen has been swallowed up by the economic man.

Yet this kind of economic liberalism is not ultimately liberating, for, as became quite clear with the final two visions of the public good described, when economics is the main model for our common life, we are more and more tempted to put ourselves in the hands of the manager and the expert. If society is shattered into as many special interests as there are individuals, then, as Tocqueville foresaw, there is only the schoolmaster state left to take care of us and keep us from one another’s throats.*


* I realize this quote may suggest that one-payer government-run healthcare system would be the perfect example of putting ourselves in the hands of the manager and expert and handing the disciplinary ruler over to the schoolmaster state (you know with the death panels and all). I am not inclined to read the passage in that way, especially not in the context of the book, but I will leave it up to you ponder.

what does it mean to own something?

As Matt and I adjust to renters and new neighbours, we wonder what it means for us to own a house, the pivotal piece of our private American dream. What does it mean to own something? Most would say that owning something entitles you to use it however you wish, as long as you do not harm anyone else or cross certain cultural taboos (e.g. sale of organs etc…).

But as with any concept, our understanding of ownership has been culturally determined. Nowhere is this more evident than our understanding of a corporation. Currently, a public corporation, or more precisely, a for-profit publicly-traded private company exists to increase shareholder value. What is owned serves solely the owner. And what is owned by the corporation must serve the owners of the corporation. But our understanding of corporations and of ownership was not always so, and many wish for a change.

From Habits of the Heart:

Henry Lee Higginson, a leading member of Boston’s business establishment, wrote in 1911, “I do not believe that, because a man owns property, it belongs to him to do with as he pleases. The property belongs to the community, and he has charge of it, and can dispose of it, if it is well done and not with the sole regard to himself or to his stockholders.”

~

The word [corporation] refers to any association of individuals bound together into a corpus, a body sharing a common purpose in a common name. In the past, that purpose had usually been communal or religious; boroughs, guilds, monasteries and bishoprics were the earliest European manifestations of the corporate form… It was assumed, as it is still in nonprofit corporations, that the incorporated body earned its charter by serving the public good… Until after the Civil War, indeed, the assumption was widespread that a corporate charter was a privilege to be granted only by a special act of a state legislature, and then for purposes clearly in the public interest. Incorporation was not yet thought of as a right available on application by any private enterprise.

~ Alan Trachtenberg

Reasserting the idea that incorporation is a concession of public authority to a private group in return for service to the public good, with effective public accountability, would change what is now called the “social responsibility of the corporation” from its present status, where it is often a kind of public relations whipped cream decorating the corporate pudding, to a constitutive structural element in the corporation itself. This, in turn, would involve a fundamental alteration in the role and training of the manager. Manager would become a profession in the older sense of the word, involving not merely standards of technical competence but standards of public obligation that could at moments of conflict override obligations to the corporate employer.

~

There’s a recently-created legal entity, known as the low-profit limited-liability company (L3C) that has been structured to be a business entity for the public good. While reading and hearing about the L3C, I was struck by how the language and the hype surrounding this new legal entity was rooted in pragmatism and lacked a greater moral vision.

The public good is privatized as L3C’s must “significantly further the accomplishment of one or more charitable or educational purposes,” as though “charitable or educational purposes” are but fragmented demands and desires of special interest groups. It is designed to attract program-related investments from foundations and hopefully obtain certain tax benefits.

I have yet to read anything that suggests the L3C could be part of building a moral vision of stewardship. (But if you do see anything, please let me know!) In fact, its very existence reinforces the idea that private companies and public corporations serve the private interests of their owners. That being said, I do commend the creators of the L3C for making a legal entity that could be a better vehicle for improving the common good.

Rather, what all this suggests is our collective poverty of language and imagination. We are caught in thinking in categories of for-profit, non-profit and government. And when we think about ownership, we are foolish enough to presume that our property really is ours.


*This was supposed to be a quotes-only post. Oops. I guess I like this topic a lot.
**It feels rather self-aggrandizing to bold your own text. I suppose they are my little delusions of grandeur in this little corner of the interweb. Alternatively, I could also argue that I bold text because I don't actually believe anyone will read this entire blog post...
***Sigh, time to make my mortgage payment. Ownership is only enjoyable when you get to exercise tyranny, not when you assume the liabilities.

nonprofit news

In Dallas, Plano children’s clinic refuses county funds because of reporting requirements, which would force them to screen patients’ income and citizenship status.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s budget impasse is wreaking major havoc on Philadelphia nonprofits, including childcare centers and other social service agencies.

a new species

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Great and rational organizations- in brief, bureaucracies- have indeed increased, but the substantive reason of the individual at large hast not. Caught in the limited milieux of their everyday lives, ordinary men often cannot reason about the great structures- rational and irrational – of which their milieux are subordinate parts. Accordingly, they often carry out series of apparently rational actions without any ideas of the ends they serve, and there is the increasing suspicion that those at the top as well- like Tolstoy’s generals- only pretend they know. The growth of such organizations, within an increasing division of labor, sets up more and more spheres of life, work, and leisure in which reasoning is difficult or impossible. The solider, for example, ‘carries out an entire series of functionally rational actions accurately without having any idea as to the ultimate end of this action’ (Mannheim, Man and Society) or the function of each act within the whole. Even Men of technically supreme intelligence may efficiently perform their assigned work and yet not know that it is to result in the first atom bomb.

~ C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, quoted previously

Whatever kind of future suburbia may foreshadow, it will show that atleast we have the choices to make. The organization man is not in the grip of vast social forces about which it is impossible for him to do anything; the options are there, and with wisdom and foresight he can turn the future away from the dehumanized collective that so haunts our thoughts. He may not. But he can.

He must fight The Organization. Not stupidly, or selfishly, for the defects of individual self-regard are no more to be venerated than the defects of co-operation. But fight he must, for the demands for his surrender are constant and powerful, and the more he has come to like the life of organization the more difficult does he find it to resist these demands, or even to recognize them. It is wretched, dispiriting advice to hold before him the dream that ideally there need be no conflict between him and society. There always is; there always must be.

~ William Whyte. Jr., The Organization Man

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when ascetism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate the worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determines the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

Since ascetism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history…

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained level of civilization never before attained.”

~ Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

the slippery slope

Improved technology and more goods and services have raised the standards for what is acceptable in our culture. While there is more to choose from, we also have more to live up to. The introduction of indoor plumbing, electricity and household appliances into our homes have only pressured us to maintain higher levels of cleanliness. While wrinkles were once an accepted symptom of aging, we are now pre-occupied with anti-wrinkle creams and Botox treatments. The greater variety and availability of clothing has only raised expectations for our appearances (It’s not terribly acceptable to wear the same thing every day, unless you’re my husband. He somehow manages to get away with it).

The odd thing about the constancy of (housework) hours is that it coincided with a technological revolution in the household. When the early studies were done, American homes had little sophisticated equipment. Many were not yet wired for gas and electricity. They did not have automatic washers and dryers or refrigerators. Some homes even lacked indoor plumbing, so that every drop of water that entered the house had to be carried in by hand and then carried out again.

By 1950, the amount of capital equipment in the home had risen dramatically. Major technological systems, such as indoor plumbing, electricity, and gas, had been installed virtually everywhere. At the same time, many labor-saving appliances also came into vogue- automatic washing machines and dryers, electric irons, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and freezers, garbage disposals. By the 1990s, we had added dishwashers, microwaves and trash compactors. Each of these innovations had the potential to save countless hours of labor. Yet none of them dead. In terms of reducing time spent on domestic work, all this expensive labor-saving technology was an abject failure.
…
Laundry provides the best example of how technology failed to reduce labor time... Laundry that had previously been sent out began to stay home. At the same, standards of cleanliness went up… In the (colonial) days, washing would be done once a month at most and, in many families, much less—perhaps four times per year. Nearly everyone wore dirty clothes nearly all the time. Slowly, the frequency of washing rose… Standards have crept up for nearly everything that housewives do—laundry, cooking, care of children, shopping, care of the sick, cleaning…

One 1920s housewife realized: Because we housewives of today have the tools to reach it, we dig every day after dust that grandmother left to a spring cataclysm. If few of us have nine children for a weekly bath, we have two or three for daily immersion. If our consciences don’t prick over vacant pie shelves or empty cookie jars, they do over meals in which a vitamin may be omitted or a calorie lacking.

But we were not always like this. Contemporary standards of housecleaning are a modern invention, like the vacuum cleaners and furniture polishes that make them possible. (The culture of cleanliness) was delayed because it was expensive. The labor of colonial women was far too valuable to be spent creating spic-and-span…

~ Juliet Schor in The Overworked American

Likewise, more freedom around what parts of our body we can display has resulted in more concern for how those parts of our body appear.

By the 1920s, both fashion and film encouraged a massive “unveiling” of the female body, which meant that certain body parts-such as arms and legs- were bared and displayed in ways they never had before. This new freedom to display the body was accompanied, however, by demanding beauty and literary regimens that involved money as well as self-discipline. Beginning in the 1920s, women’s legs and underarms had to be smooth and free of body hair; the torso had to be svelte; and the breasts were supposed to be small and firm. What American women did not realize at the time was that their stunning new freedom actually implied the need for greater internal control of the body, an imperative that would intensify and become even more powerful by the end of the twentieth century… cultural pressures have accumulated, making American girls today, at the close of the twentieth century, more anxious than ever about the size and shape of their bodies, as well as particular body parts.

~ Joan Jacobs Brumberg in The Body Project

No doubt we have made progress since the early twentieth century. And while most of these accomplishments have materially improved our quality of life, we continue to expect more. Improved technology designed to make life more convenient has not given us more leisure and rest time. And more freedom to choose what we wear and how we appear, may have only increased anxiety and worry.


* Somehow I feel a bit better that my apartment is not Real Simple-worthy. There are piles of books and papers stacked up in the corners collecting dust. Our bathtub is developing a ring of soap and scum residue and I believe our sink is building a lovely layer of grime. Yes, I would like my home to be cleaner, but I’m just too damn lazy to do it myself or to nag my husband to do it. But now I can say something elitist like I’m intentionally being counter-cultural and protesting the absurd standards of hygiene in our society… or tell everyone that I’m saving the environment. But don’t we often discover that our practical decisions end up being political? We didn’t buy a car, because we’re cheap. We line-dry our clothing, because there was no room in our apartment for a dryer. We try to reduce our meat consumption, because I don’t like cooking meat…
** Did you see this study that asked households to rank appliances as luxury or necessity? Fascinating!

America's welfare state

“the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world… multitude of men… incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives…”

“That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild… It seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances – what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking all the trouble of living… It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

“…everyone wants to be free; everyone wants to eat… Everyone does indeed want to be free: free from bureaucratic control, free from burdensome taxation, free to exercise and enlarge the area of private enterprise. Everyone does indeed want to eat: the poor want welfare, the aged want security, the ill and the handicapped want medical care, parents want education for their children, consumers want protection.. The rich, too, want to be fed. They believe in private enterprise and delude themselves that corporations are somehow private rather than the product of very special privileges granted by the state and to be enforced by the state… When coal miners are in trouble they recommend government takeover. When railroads and airlines are in trouble they persuade the government to subsidize them, at least the bankrupt ones… We have developed not only a welfare state with all of its bureaucracy for the poor, but a welfare state for corporations and business interests as well. Clearly the most completely socialized ingredient in our economy is not the poor who are on welfare, but the complex that President Eisenhower first publicly identified as the military-industrial, which we can now see embraces as well labor, banking, the scientific community, and the academy. If these want governmental protection and aid, as clearly they do, they must take for granted big government, big bureaucracy and centralization. Those who yearn to diminish the powers of government must learn to lower their expectations from government, to restrain their demands on nature, to temper their insistence on endless growth and progress that is almost entirely material.”

~ Henry Steele Commager, Commager on Tocqueville, 1993

*I’m really scraping as far as blog posts are. I just can’t bring myself to write anything. I did, however, like my husband, cave in and start a twitter account. I have yet to determine whether or not I will update it regularly or whether or not I like the whole affair. It feels all a bit too suspiciously trendy to me, but perhaps 150 character posts will be more palatable to my creative tendencies. It also fondly reminds me of those good old AIM profiles and away messages I used to check. I guess Twitter is its syndicated version.

the inflection is near

I feel like I haven't posted anything substantial here in awhile. In any case, Thomas Friedman wrote an excellent Op-Ed in the New York Times about this recession marking an inflection point in the way that we think about the economy. (I suspect that you've already read it since it's currently Number 1 on the popularity list for "Most emailed"). Perhaps in the future, we will no longer measure the health of the economy in terms of growth, but rather in terms of flow (sustainability and reproduction). Friedman has a way of finding witty little catchphrases and analogies to describe current events, which for some reason I find annoying, despite the fact that they are generally intelligent and helpful in explaining the matter at hand. Perhaps I am jealous :P

In any case, now that I am done rambling, here are some notable excerpts from the article:

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.

“We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder,” he wrote me. “No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply.” We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

the life and death of great american corporations

ramblings on the economy

“Around one in ten US companies disappears each year. Between 1989 and 1997, to be precise, an average of 611,000 businesses a year vanished out of a total of 5.73 million firms. Ten per cent is the average extinction rate, it should be noted; in some sectors of the economy, it can rise as high as 20 per cent in a bad year. According to the UK Department of Trade and Industry, 30 per cent of tax-registered businesses disappear after three years. Even if they survive the first few years of existence and go on to enjoy great success, most firms fail eventually. Of the world’s 100 largest companies in 1912, 29 were bankrupt by 1995, 48 had disappeared* and only 19 were still in the top 100.”

~ The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

In these hard economic times, I doubt it’s any consolation to know that capitalism has been characterized by innovation and failure at the micro-level and cycles of boom and bust at the macro-level.

But we should still remember that it’s not all bad news.* Many of us still have jobs (and are feeling more thankful for them than we ever have before.) It’s also encouraging to see the nation shifting away from consumerism, but the accompanying layoffs are troubling.

That’s the complicated part about fighting against consumerism-- every purchase links back to a job. (And likewise for sweatshops). We stop buying and companies start hurting, which in it of itself doesn’t bother me, but then the layoffs begin. And while this recession has been hard-hitting for well-educated financial professionals, it is still the most hurtful for the least educated and the most vulnerable in our society. (I can’t seem to find the article, but basically decline in employment has affected high school diploma-less men the most).

Bankruptcies and layoffs in a capitalist economy that champions creative destruction technically shouldn’t be something we fear. Nevertheless, when the destruction doesn’t just affect legal entities and the pocket change of the rich, but begins to leave many without jobs, then we do need more consolation than “It’s just the nature of capitalism. Boom and bust. We just have to wait it out.” (“Collateral damage” for a “cyclical adjustment” perhaps? It will just be a matter of mathematical calculations before the supply and demand curves reshift.)

How many days or years or decades of waiting before you can get back on track with your life?

I hope that as we wait out this recession, we will actively care for those who are most vulnerable. I hope that while we may be cautious with our spending, that we can still be generous with our giving. And I hope that as we are trying to fix the economy, we’re building something more sustainable and just, rather than just patching up something that was never that great to begin with.


* Interestingly enough, the longest-existing institutions in our day have been nonprofit organizations such as universities…
** For instance, Amazon is still doing okay and so is Wal-Mart, which obviously makes me happy since you all know how much I love and adore and worship Wal-Mart.

opium of the masses

Whenever we talk about money, we always end up asking, How should we organize the economy? –or even, What economic system should I support? “At the moment,” we explain, “I may not be using money the way I should, but when the new system (whatever it may be) is instituted, when the general money problem is solved, I in turn will become just.”

Thus we subordinate moral and individual problems to the collective problem, to the total economic system. If a man is a thief, it is not his fault; his economic conditions were such that he could be nothing else. Let us beware. If we accept this excuse on behalf of a poor person, we must accept it for everyone. Both the capitalist who exploits workers and the farmer who dabbles in the black market are also involved in impersonal economic conditions which leave them no options. As soon as we accept the supremacy of global concerns and of the system, as soon as we agree that material conditions remove our freedom to choose, we absolve all individuals of all responsibility for their use of money.

…

… human nature (with its lust for money) is corrupting the system. And that is why it is horribly wrong to believe that the problem of money can be solved by a system. It is horribly wrong thus to cheat man’s hopes and thirst for virtue and honesty. “You want justice? Then establish my system.” This is the error of all committed economists and others who think they can solve the problem without considering human nature.

But it is more than an error: it is also hypocrisy and cowardice. For then I ultimately ask no more than to believe the system-builder. It is so convenient. I don’t have to think about what I do. I don’t have to try to use my money better, to covet less, to quit stealing. It’s not my fault. All I have to do is campaign for socialism or conservatism, and as soon as society’s problems are solved, I will be just and virtuous- effortlessly.

…

But all this activity is a justification for avoiding personal decision making. My money? My work? My life? I don’t have to worry about them because I am involved in such-and-such a movement which will take care of all that for everyone once it comes to power.

~ excerpts from Jacques Ellul's Money and Power

Sometimes you just stumble upon the right book at the right time. Providential perhaps?

the humble social activist and the humble civil servant

Social activists annoy us because they can be so full of it. They tote around their Adbusters magazines, walk in their Blackspot sneakers, wearing thrift store rags like some halo of righteousness. (Sort of like the guy who won’t stop talking about how he doesn’t own a television set)

Unfortunately, the profession naturally lends itself to pride. Being a social activist generally entails that you think you’re right and the rest of the world is not.

So how do we practice humble activism? How do we go about believing that what we stand for is true, while still acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge? How do we go on acting on issues that we care about deeply, while still being open to the possibility that we might be wrong? What would that look like? Would we be so seized with uncertainty that we could not do anything at all? Or, would a more humble spirit emerge? (One that is less concerned with being right and more concerned about loving others)

~

I wonder what happens to people as they climb up the ranks of prestige, power and wealth. In the Senate Banking Committee, it was testified that the treasury may have overpaid by $78 billion for troubled assets in its first round of investments of the TARP Program. How do you mess up $78 billion dollars? I may have overpaid for a shirt from a consignment shop, but that was $10 too much, not $78 billion. But perhaps at those amounts, the numbers cease to be real, especially when you’re sheltered within the comfort of prestige and power.

How does it feel to manage $800 billion? Do you feel confident and smart because only the best and the brightest could ever climb so high in the ranks of government? Or do you move forward with fear and trembling and much prayer?



* I use the word “we”, which seems to imply that I consider myself a social activist. However, I don’t really identify myself as a social activist because my accompanying action seems lacking. All talk, no action. However, Kalle Lasne would argue that words do matter—so perhaps I am just uncomfortable with my hypocrisy.

internet links from a brainwashed radical

To prove that my blog hasn’t just turned into one long rant based on my indoctrination from my "radical" “leftist” “progressive” “post-Marxist” “feminist” Penn class, I thought I’d try to amalgamate some other links and thoughts of interest. In order to remain true to shameless self-promotion, I’ve also provided links to past blog entries relating to these topics. I guess in an ideal world, I would post a follow-up blog entry tying in the article. But we all know this isn't an ideal world...

For those of you who left comments on my last blog post, I haven’t had the opportunity to reply yet, because you both posed thought-provoking questions and I need to think a bit more before replying. Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Ideology vs. Money. In China, the latter speaks the louder word.

Ted Stevens was not re-elected. What a relief. Otherwise, the Penn maintenance guy would lose his faith in America: “If a convicted felon can be elected into the Senate, why can’t a felon in jail vote?”

Sick and tired of ethics in America? Just as we may no longer believe in neoliberalism in economics, we’re perhaps also in need of a change in the field of ethics:

We don’t need microfinance. We need sweatshops. I’m only half kidding. But Oxfam’s Uttaran in some ways manages to get the best of microfinance and manages to approximate more formal employment.

Michael Lewis, the writer of Liar’s Poker, comments on his experience and on events and people leading up today’s Wall Street mess.

I criticized WalMart in my last entry. Jonathan has redirected me to an article that argues to the contrary. I hope to post a response at some point.

Sometimes, I just want to make something beautiful, but it certainly tries my patience. Here's my half-finished quilt top:


I manage to look supremely uncool on my bike with my pant leg retainers, mismatched mittens, and Eco vegan sneakers. Practicality trumps narcissism. I definitely do not follow these instructions. Apparently, there are plenty of others who manage to bike fashionably. Though sometimes, in looking at their footwear, I wonder if they will soon remove themselves from the gene pool.


Incharacter.org runs a feature on forgiveness. Notably, Ten Greatest Moments in Forgiveness History highlights the extraordinary forgiveness exhibited by the Amish community after the school shooting.

If you’ve ever read C.S.Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet, you might understand the theory that the seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia proxy atrological symbolism of the planets. A review on the book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the ¬Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward

Single Young Male (SYM). Single Young Female (SYF). The dating scene turns Darwinian (the end result of Sex and the City). It makes me really glad that I’m married. Young Married Couple (YMC) I suppose. Some notable quotables from the dating article:
“I am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman . . . who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it’s time to act accordingly.” “Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a ‘grown-up life’ but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.” “Men are finally waking up to the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery.”

From Orion Magazine: Why are corporations treated as individuals and not nature?
“In particular, we should examine the fact that, in the eyes of the law, corporations are considered people and entitled to civil rights. We often forget that corporations are only a few centuries old and have been continually evolving since their inception. Imagine what could be done if we changed the fiduciary responsibilities of directors to include obligations not only to profitability but also to the whole natural world, and if we imposed collective personal liability on corporate managers and stockholders to restore any damage that they cause to natural communities.”
Corporations are treated as individuals as a result of the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in what some would argue is actually the most significant Supreme Court case in the US.

Find out how many earths would be required to support the human population if everyone lived the same lifestyle as you.

The game of monopoly provides an explanation for today’s economic crisis. While we need to fundamentally reform our economy, so that it is no longer a casino for speculation but an arena for responsible production of goods and services, we still need banks and financing. While many banks loaned with only an eye for increasing short-term profit, there are many subprime mortgage lenders who did it responsably.

As this financial crisis has forced us to question whether or not buying a house is always a wise financial decision for the poor, this economist questions whether accumulating savings is a good idea.

And oh, what shall I do now that the elections are over? Unfortunately, I forgot to save the links to all the articles I found interesting. I did find myself frequently crying the week after his win whenever I read anything about his historic election. Symbolically, Obama’s win has meant a lot, we have yet to see what it will mean practically.

In retrospect, some of the articles above are rather “lefty” or “progressive”. I guess I can’t help it. So I wonder if I think this way because of the class I am taking now, or whether I have always thought this way and this class has merely given more concrete words and frameworks to express it. I suspect the latter, given that I wasn't indoctrinated by my Wharton or economics classes, but it's always important to question how we form our opinions. How much of our thoughts are truly our own and how much are they influenced by what we hear and read and the people we hang out with? And how much of our common sense and knowledge as a society as a whole is influenced by the way the academy produces and frames research?

On a similar note, I also have noticed that my husband and I (or perhaps to use more PC terminology, my "partner" and I) have experienced a convergence of opinions in recent years. Do we have similar opinions because we started dating and got married? Or, did the similar opinions make us attracted to each other in the first place? Chicken and the egg.

subjecting the city

Note (11/13/08): Having received back the paper from the professor and having done some additional reading on alternative currency systems, I may need to change and revise some of the ideas in this paper...

As per my dear husband’s suggestion, I am posting a two-page paper that I recently wrote for my Community Economic Development class. It touches upon several subjects that I’ve blogged on before, including a rather biaised comparison of Philadelphia and New York* and reflections on gentrification and the personalities of cities.

Subjecting the City

Martin Buber writes about two modes of relating in his book I and Thou. The word pair “I-You” “establishes the world of relation” (Buber 56), which involves encountering the other as a subject, whereas the word pair “I-It” treats the other as an object, a thing to be experienced. Cities exist along a continuum between the city as a subject, that is, a community where individuals encounter each other in reciprocal relationships; and the city as an object, that is, a provider of income, a commodity to be consumed, a physical space where a set of transactions take place. The different approaches to community economic development, as described in Peter Boothroyd’s and H. Craig Davis’s article “Community Economic Development: Three Approaches” can result in cities that either encourage transactions between objects or promote relationships of reciprocity between subjects.

Growth planning’s emphasis on monetary transactions produces more “I-It” relationships. The use of money leads individuals to consider one another as objects, because money assigns a quantitative value, or as Buber would put it, a “border” to contain the other. Money speaks the language of “I-It” as it allows a person to limit and quantify what he might exchange with others. The other person is only a conduit to some service or product for purchase or some earned income. A person is not valued beyond his or her function in a transaction of exchange.
Furthermore, growth planning does not take in consideration the structure or ownership of firms. If firms are owned by anonymous shareholders or by external wealthy proprietors, workers are much more likely to be treated as an “It” by their employer, and subsequently lose a sense of control and investment. Profits from successful firms may not trickle down into higher wages and rising home prices may only result in gentrification. A city that prioritizes “I-It” relationships will be, at its best, a spectacle like the casinos of Las Vegas or the advertisements of Times Square. People’s commitment to the city will end whenever the city can no longer benefit them. The city becomes a transaction space where people work as an “It” for money, which people then use to buy things or acquire “experience capital” in more “I-It” interactions.

In contrast, the structural change approach and the communalization approach recognize the importance of noncash transactions and local and cooperative ownership, which are important conduits for “I-You” relationships. Noncash activities, which include volunteer children groups, babysitting co-ops and community gardens, require mutual trust, commitment and responsibility from its participants. It relies upon and builds up social capital. More local and shared forms of ownership such as worker-owned cooperatives and community land trusts also bind people together in more formal organizations. While these activities and forms of organization do not guarantee “I-You” relationships, they provide a better basis for them. When people must rely upon each other directly for assistance, and when people must make decisions collectively, reciprocity is more likely to exist. People will be more likely to consider themselves as part of the city, a community member who contributes to the well-being of the place.

The structural change approach and the communalization approach have been criticized for being “out of step with the mainstream” emphasis on economic growth (Boothroyd and Davis, 236). Yet to focus solely on economic growth with no concern for the other aspects of city life runs the risk of “the proliferating It under which the I” becomes “more and more impotent” (Buber 97). To create a city of “I-You”, one must emphasize what cannot be measured in dollars and cents, and what draws people together in closer interdependence.

Works Cited

Boothroyd, Peter and Davis, Craig. “Community Economic Development: Three Approaches”. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 12 (1993): 230-240.

Buber, Martin. I and Thou. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.





* Sigh... I can't seem to be able to find the link to this blog post.
** Wow, this paper looks so short now that it's posted on my blog. Blogging is growing the tendency within my character to be excessively verbose.....

exercises in cynicism and hope (3)

Today is Tuesday October 14th. The era of the large investment banks and excessive trading and easy credit is coming to an end. Our banks are getting partially nationalized. Senator Obama is ahead in the polls.*

Just as the Great Depression marked the acceptance of Keynesian economics and the economic stagflation of the 70s ushered in several decades of deregulation and trickle-down economics, this year’s economic crisis will shift the prevailing economic and social policies of this country.

By no means do I want nationalization of major industries** or excessive redistribution of income, but I do hope for a new era of politics that does not confer disproportionate power to large corporations, but rather encourages appropriate government regulation, and more equitable and socially responsible economic growth.

Today, I’m feeling a bit more hopeful.
(Oh, and the Phillies are one win away from being in the World Series.)


* Sorry, Palin sealed the deal. My respect for McCain has only gone down since then.
** Though I do want universal health care coverage. (I'm still Canadian!)