Gratitude is the sentiment that comes of acknowledging one's own undeservedness. It is how the undeserving relate to the deserving.
27 November 2009
18 April 2009
Keeping taxes low and America childish
In a society that has embedded the adolescent values of unlimited growth into its corporations while the adult values of stewardship and succession are embedded in the government, it is small wonder that a political movement that wants to keep the world in its adolescence is interested in lowering to the vanishing point the taxes that would support that government.
Weak leaders means poor stewards
A high incidence in a society of weak leadership is a symptom of the resource curse and the concomitant extractive values failing to promote the proper values of stewardship, caring and contentment. Stewarding leaders tend to be strong leaders whereas extractive leaders tend to be strongmen who talk strong but are, at bottom, weak and cowering.
The strongest leaders are those who are doing God's work, protecting His values and His apportionments, recognizing His higher power and leveraging that power to their own ends, accepting humbly His higher authority and gaining a great measure of dignity in the process, tending in reverence to the welfare of their charges and inspiring their followers to rise, to refuse to kneel, to insert their systems into the general order of things, to face their challenges and their allies, to achieve inner harmony and wholeness, and to resonate with the non-material essence of the material fertility that transforms a stock into a fund and gives it life.
The strongest leaders are those who are doing God's work, protecting His values and His apportionments, recognizing His higher power and leveraging that power to their own ends, accepting humbly His higher authority and gaining a great measure of dignity in the process, tending in reverence to the welfare of their charges and inspiring their followers to rise, to refuse to kneel, to insert their systems into the general order of things, to face their challenges and their allies, to achieve inner harmony and wholeness, and to resonate with the non-material essence of the material fertility that transforms a stock into a fund and gives it life.
They were right all along
The irony of American history is that in the end it could well be that the Native-Americans were right all along. Europe's industrial might well have overwhelmed the Native-American's political order, especially considering the possibility that those societies had already gone into steep decline centuries before the Europeans arrived on the continent but the values the Europeans had imported with them would eventually result in American catastrophe and collapse because America was not in harmony with the natural order and because America's leadership class did not recognize the responsibilities of stewardship.
What happened to American small businesses?
The story of public capitalists cashing out the American economy is only part of the story. The shock doctrine is also in play. The big business managers are also using this moment to eliminate their small business suppliers and integrating the supply chain in an attempt to overtake and consolidate their hold on the economic system, end to end.
The real battle is between the SBA and the Commerce Department. The only trouble is that small businessmen don't recognize their adversaries because they've been distracted by their antipathy to the labor unions.
The real battle is between the SBA and the Commerce Department. The only trouble is that small businessmen don't recognize their adversaries because they've been distracted by their antipathy to the labor unions.
What did he open when Nixon opened China?
When Nixon and Kissinger originally opened China what they were really doing was putting an end to the rule of communism there and replacing it with the rule of the crony capitalism -- an economic system that presently under-writes the ruling party's power.
Our Constitution and our economic system were no-where to be seen in the decision-making of those two fore-runners of the present-day conservative movement.
The conservative movement is the last gasp of the ancien regime in the modern world. The conservative movement is finding a home in the former super-powers -- America, China and Russia -- because those regimes still extol the virtues of large scale systems over the smaller scale ones that are closer to the ground.
Our Constitution and our economic system were no-where to be seen in the decision-making of those two fore-runners of the present-day conservative movement.
The conservative movement is the last gasp of the ancien regime in the modern world. The conservative movement is finding a home in the former super-powers -- America, China and Russia -- because those regimes still extol the virtues of large scale systems over the smaller scale ones that are closer to the ground.
LBJ & KBR
LBJ might have been the source of the final take-over of the American political system by the Texas oligarchs. The Vietnam War, which was Johnson's war, kicked off the KBR juggernaut, which ultimately resulted in the Wall St asset inflation and the current meltdown. It was probably KBR's people who took it upon themselves first to assassinate JFK to deliver the presidency to LBJ, and then to assassinate RFK to keep the presidency at LBJ's re-election. How different the course of history might have been had it not been altered the by LBJ cabal.
Contentment engenders gratitude in us
Gratitude is a measure of contentment. It is a consequence of having been taken care of.
Depth & qualitative measures of value
Abundance is about power and maturity and up-grown-edness and the ability to transition to adulthood where responsibilities and duties over-shadow opportunity and adventure. Implicit in all that is the role of stewardship coupled to the humility of reverence so that one can keep their sights clear and their eyes on the prize.
The essence of stewardship is care-taking, and the essence of humility is contentment. Both these values measure the dimension of depth rather than of scale. As a living being grows-up its value system shifts from scale and quantitative measures of value to depth and qualitative measures of value.
The essence of stewardship is care-taking, and the essence of humility is contentment. Both these values measure the dimension of depth rather than of scale. As a living being grows-up its value system shifts from scale and quantitative measures of value to depth and qualitative measures of value.
Jefferson vs Hamilton
Market economies honor balance and equilibrium as embodied in market-clearing prices. That the market-clearing price is the result of a highly unstable process of adversarial competition is not something the neo-classical economists are ready to address or admit. The instability of the market-clearing price mechanism comes from the fact that the losing adversary in the competitive process is typically eliminated. Once the losing adversary is eliminated, the logic of the competitive marketplace -- that there will be many players competing myopically against each other over price -- breaks down and the price mechanism begins to fail.
The deeper flaw in the system is the problem that triumph in the marketplace and the elimination of one's competition is seen by the world as a good thing when, in fact, it likely injures the victor more than the vanquished. The arena where a marketplace has wiped out the adversarial life-forms is what we call big business. China is a political/economic order that is more congenial to the interests of big business than America. There's a new struggle coming. It's not between capitalism and communism but between big business and small business. The battle between Jefferson and Hamilton has gone global, and it has just begun.
The deeper flaw in the system is the problem that triumph in the marketplace and the elimination of one's competition is seen by the world as a good thing when, in fact, it likely injures the victor more than the vanquished. The arena where a marketplace has wiped out the adversarial life-forms is what we call big business. China is a political/economic order that is more congenial to the interests of big business than America. There's a new struggle coming. It's not between capitalism and communism but between big business and small business. The battle between Jefferson and Hamilton has gone global, and it has just begun.
When a power utility grows up
When an electric utility changes its corporate mission from selling more electric power to helping its customers retro-fit their plants to consume less electric power it is growing-up. It is moving from one stage of of its corporate life to another.
Practice is hard; theory, not so much
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; but in practice, there is."
17 April 2009
Asset price volatility and the shock doctrine
Volatility of the asset prices is what allows the oligarchs to maintain their competitive advantage over any new entrants into the market. Asset price volatility is the instrument of the corporate shock doctrine that re-shapes the political landscape in favor of the incumbents and to the detriment of the corporate insurgents.
The grown up corporation
The alternative to a culture of corporate growth is a culture of corporate growing up, of adulthood and maturation. Absent that, the impulse to grow becomes an impulse to obesity that manifests as over-compensation and the insulation of the leadership from the rigors of the workforce, and an impulse to cosmetic surgery that manifests as the fictitious inflation of asset values through financial engineering and the irresponsible risking of the shareholder's long term value.
To grow-up is to accept the responsibilities of stewardship, of succession, of preserving the status quo for the sake of the next generation. That is the quintessence of up-grown-edness. To be a grown-up is to be done with the self-involvement of adolescent youth and to be ready to bear and to rear the next generation. It is to be willing to grow in and down and not out and around. It is, in the end, to be willing to let go. That letting go must be built in periodically into the functioning of the social order. In the case of sheviit, the sabbatical year, it is the letting go of the land; in the case of shemitta, debt forbearance, it is the letting go of political rule.
To grow-up is to accept the responsibilities of stewardship, of succession, of preserving the status quo for the sake of the next generation. That is the quintessence of up-grown-edness. To be a grown-up is to be done with the self-involvement of adolescent youth and to be ready to bear and to rear the next generation. It is to be willing to grow in and down and not out and around. It is, in the end, to be willing to let go. That letting go must be built in periodically into the functioning of the social order. In the case of sheviit, the sabbatical year, it is the letting go of the land; in the case of shemitta, debt forbearance, it is the letting go of political rule.
Who's the grown up now?
The left did not grasp the proper dimensions of its own struggle. The left, no less eggregiously than the right, was willing to support grand scale organizations and resource extraction over organizations of modest scale and resource stewardship.
When the lid came off the Soviet Union it was revealed to be among the worst environmental offenders on the planet; labor unions demand self-serving regulations that punish productive effectiveness without their bothering to invent better solutions to the challenges of technological progress; self-righteousness, self-pity, self-victimization, and the disempowerment that comes of an adolescent cast of mind typify much thinking on the left -- all these bespeak a lack of a deeper vision and a deeper focus on the liberal left which is commensurate with the myopia and shallowness of the conservative right.
The environmentalists who whine like adolescents mistakenly perceive the corporate incumbents as the grown-ups. That perception needs to be reversed. The true environmentalist sees the values of stewardship, which are the values of up-grown-edness, while the true blue corporate director and his CEO sees only the values of unlimited growth, which are the values of adolescence.
The crony communists of mid-20th century Russia and China eventually sloughed off their communist roots and have, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, morphed into crony capitalists par excellence. Indeed, they are today the global ground zero of crony capitalism, to which the crony capitalists of America and the Middle East and Europe turn for leadership and guidance and financial support. The thuggery of the old communist regimes has survived and is indeed overwhelming the populist instincts of the small-l liberal, free market entrepreneurship of the American republic. The conservative movement and the crony communists are in league to transform the world's economic order to the dictates of strongman rule and the resource curse. God's word that teaches stewardship and reverence are our only bulwark against that threat.
When the lid came off the Soviet Union it was revealed to be among the worst environmental offenders on the planet; labor unions demand self-serving regulations that punish productive effectiveness without their bothering to invent better solutions to the challenges of technological progress; self-righteousness, self-pity, self-victimization, and the disempowerment that comes of an adolescent cast of mind typify much thinking on the left -- all these bespeak a lack of a deeper vision and a deeper focus on the liberal left which is commensurate with the myopia and shallowness of the conservative right.
The environmentalists who whine like adolescents mistakenly perceive the corporate incumbents as the grown-ups. That perception needs to be reversed. The true environmentalist sees the values of stewardship, which are the values of up-grown-edness, while the true blue corporate director and his CEO sees only the values of unlimited growth, which are the values of adolescence.
The crony communists of mid-20th century Russia and China eventually sloughed off their communist roots and have, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, morphed into crony capitalists par excellence. Indeed, they are today the global ground zero of crony capitalism, to which the crony capitalists of America and the Middle East and Europe turn for leadership and guidance and financial support. The thuggery of the old communist regimes has survived and is indeed overwhelming the populist instincts of the small-l liberal, free market entrepreneurship of the American republic. The conservative movement and the crony communists are in league to transform the world's economic order to the dictates of strongman rule and the resource curse. God's word that teaches stewardship and reverence are our only bulwark against that threat.
Conduct becoming to a distinguished board member
The objective of environmental programs in a corporation should not stop at greening the practices of the management and the employees, it should go on to re-configure the entire governance -- the corporate mandate and the corporate culture. The boards of directors have ultimately to be greened. The reason the boards of the major public companies are so dysfunctional is they don't have all that much of value to do. The objective of growth for the large corporation has by and large been exhausted and alternative programs that would properly merit the attention of the men and women of distinction who sit on the boards of the large corporations are no longer challenging because the corporations are still behaving like adolescents even though their powers have already matured into adulthood. So that instead of governing the corporation for the sake of some higher values the boards begin to drift to the kind of crony capitalism that's growing up in China and Russia under the guidance of Wal-Mart, Big Oil, Wall Street and the conservative movement and its Republican Party.
The virtuous shock doctrine
The real challenge is how do you replace a leader who's already been resource cursed and who is benefitting from all the short term advantages that extractive policies offer? Such a leader will recognize a threat to their incumbency a mile away, and they will stop it. That is the real pressure point.
The virtuous shock doctrine is the answer. The 'virtuous shock doctrine' is (what we consider to be) a better name for the containment strategy. The virtuous shock doctrine encourages the collapse of the extractive rulers and then replaces them with managers who understand the advantages and responsibilities of stewardship.
The virtuous shock doctrine is the answer. The 'virtuous shock doctrine' is (what we consider to be) a better name for the containment strategy. The virtuous shock doctrine encourages the collapse of the extractive rulers and then replaces them with managers who understand the advantages and responsibilities of stewardship.
Corporate governance for stewardship rather than growth
The model of the public corporate manager could begin now to evolve into a reverential style of businessman. Once a corporation, a corporate person, has achieved oligarchical status it needs to become mature in its outlook and to govern its conduct by a code of honor that recognizes its responsibilities for stewardship and not only for growth.
The reason the corporate trustees of the big business companies are unable to control the compensation packages of their executive management is because the mandate for the corporation is out of whack. When a company becomes too big for others to compete against it its objective should become stewardship rather than the maximizing of anything, least of all 'growth.' So long as the corporation keeps trying to grow in an environment where growth is impossible, it will keep trying to engineer that growth artificially. Because the corporation does not see itself as a steward, the top managers have stopped seeing themselves as stewards and instead are using their positions to cash out the corporation, at the expense of the long term interests of the shareholders.
The governance boards must turn to stewardship as the corporate objective. Once that's done, the mandate to the executives will be to maintain competitive position and to transform the corporation into a leader for the good grace of God's apportionments. Having a mandate for stewardship on the outside, the top managers will once again be able to justify their responsibilities for stewardship on the inside.
A mature, fully grown adult who tries to simulate youth and to behave according to the dictates of adolescence is an embarrassment. It's like middle-aged women wearing mini-skirts or middle-aged men driving flashy sports cars. They haven't grown up. They haven't recognized the new stage in their lives and in their positions. They are trying to stay forever young rather than maintaining their vitality through stewardship and by passing along their energy and power to the next generation.
The reason the corporate trustees of the big business companies are unable to control the compensation packages of their executive management is because the mandate for the corporation is out of whack. When a company becomes too big for others to compete against it its objective should become stewardship rather than the maximizing of anything, least of all 'growth.' So long as the corporation keeps trying to grow in an environment where growth is impossible, it will keep trying to engineer that growth artificially. Because the corporation does not see itself as a steward, the top managers have stopped seeing themselves as stewards and instead are using their positions to cash out the corporation, at the expense of the long term interests of the shareholders.
The governance boards must turn to stewardship as the corporate objective. Once that's done, the mandate to the executives will be to maintain competitive position and to transform the corporation into a leader for the good grace of God's apportionments. Having a mandate for stewardship on the outside, the top managers will once again be able to justify their responsibilities for stewardship on the inside.
A mature, fully grown adult who tries to simulate youth and to behave according to the dictates of adolescence is an embarrassment. It's like middle-aged women wearing mini-skirts or middle-aged men driving flashy sports cars. They haven't grown up. They haven't recognized the new stage in their lives and in their positions. They are trying to stay forever young rather than maintaining their vitality through stewardship and by passing along their energy and power to the next generation.
A kinder and gentler corporate structure
Technology need not necessarily be the enemy of reverence. The whole earth designers are comfortable with technology while at the same time highly reverential to the ecological context in which they wish to insinuate that technology.
We might wish to re-conceive the corporation away from its present capital-centric structure toward a structure that serves the whole earth. It would be a corporate structure that would be less focused on the raising and the deploying of capital because it would be functioning in a world where capital was no longer scarce; nor would it be focused on the organizing and deploying of labor. Rather it would be a corporate structure that focused on the preservation of the raw materials and the natural resources not merely because they were scarce but because we cherished the resources and wanted to preserve them for future generations. It would be a corporate structure that was teleological in orientation rather than one based on cause and effect (and the scarcity or abundance therein implied).
Such a corporate structure would need a political/economic environment that priced or discounted (or, dare we say, even privileged and appreciated) the future more honorably than the way the natural resource-consuming order is doing today. It would be a corporate structure designed for collaboration rather than competition since it would be a corporate structure made for a society that privileged the covenantal order rather than the adversarial order that dominates present day business practices.
We might wish to re-conceive the corporation away from its present capital-centric structure toward a structure that serves the whole earth. It would be a corporate structure that would be less focused on the raising and the deploying of capital because it would be functioning in a world where capital was no longer scarce; nor would it be focused on the organizing and deploying of labor. Rather it would be a corporate structure that focused on the preservation of the raw materials and the natural resources not merely because they were scarce but because we cherished the resources and wanted to preserve them for future generations. It would be a corporate structure that was teleological in orientation rather than one based on cause and effect (and the scarcity or abundance therein implied).
Such a corporate structure would need a political/economic environment that priced or discounted (or, dare we say, even privileged and appreciated) the future more honorably than the way the natural resource-consuming order is doing today. It would be a corporate structure designed for collaboration rather than competition since it would be a corporate structure made for a society that privileged the covenantal order rather than the adversarial order that dominates present day business practices.
The struggle within capitalism
Big business is the more fitting instrument of the values of the Borg ("We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."), be they the manifestations of natural systems or mechanical systems. Big business has less tolerance for the niceties and idiosyncracies of sociological relationships; it benefits more from the installation of large scale systems that maintain flow by altering rather than adapting to their environments; and they are more susceptible to blind processes that are self-perpetuating but that risk catastrophic collapse in the end.
The struggle in capitalism isn't between the factors or the classes -- capital vs labor or the moneyed vs the working classes. The large labor unions have been just as culpable (or would have been just as culpable, had they had the chance) as the large corporate enterprises. The real struggle in capitalism is between large and small, between those who honor not only the imperatives of competition but the beneficence of reverence and a regard both for the integrity of the third factor of production -- raw materials -- as well as for a submission to a higher power Whose covenantal partnership is essential for sustainability.
The answer to the challenge of big-business-capitalism is not the American way of developing big labor unions as a counter-vailing force, nor the Russian way of privileging labor over raw materials the same way capitalism privileges money over raw materials. The Western Europeans and the Japanese are moving close to some sort of answer but they still suffer from a too-strong dependence on large scale production. They understand the problem of balancing out the power of three factors as a national problem that cannot be solved at the individual person or individual corporate level so they are beginning to organize their nation-states to mediate between the three factors to keep the prerogatives of the several factors in balance. These experiments Western Europe and Japan are not yet mature but they are beginning to head in the right direction.
The struggle in capitalism isn't between the factors or the classes -- capital vs labor or the moneyed vs the working classes. The large labor unions have been just as culpable (or would have been just as culpable, had they had the chance) as the large corporate enterprises. The real struggle in capitalism is between large and small, between those who honor not only the imperatives of competition but the beneficence of reverence and a regard both for the integrity of the third factor of production -- raw materials -- as well as for a submission to a higher power Whose covenantal partnership is essential for sustainability.
The answer to the challenge of big-business-capitalism is not the American way of developing big labor unions as a counter-vailing force, nor the Russian way of privileging labor over raw materials the same way capitalism privileges money over raw materials. The Western Europeans and the Japanese are moving close to some sort of answer but they still suffer from a too-strong dependence on large scale production. They understand the problem of balancing out the power of three factors as a national problem that cannot be solved at the individual person or individual corporate level so they are beginning to organize their nation-states to mediate between the three factors to keep the prerogatives of the several factors in balance. These experiments Western Europe and Japan are not yet mature but they are beginning to head in the right direction.
07 April 2009
Tacit versus explicit knowledge
Tacit versus explicit know-how was the difference between the workshop and the factory. Working to specification via the blueprint eliminated the need for the master craftsman who suffered from the dis-economies of his small scale.
The Industrial Revolution undermined the workshop, and, along with it, the social system that embraced the values of stewardship in the transmission of skills from one generation to the next. The embodiment of surplus into human capital that propelled the crafts and guilds was turned into the system of capitalism where the surplus was embodied in the capital stock.
How society handled the virtue of stewardship morphed over historical time as productive work shifted away from the workshop and toward the factory. How stewardship is being updated is a question that is still being answered today in the 21st century.
Clearly the American system managed for a while to update the virtue of stewardship when it invented the role of the professional manager and the corporate man. The exploitation of that system by the globalized banker coupled to the out-sourcing retailer who have plundered the small and mid-cap business sector in the United States and have devastated the vitality of American big business for the sake of short term gain is threatening the viability of the American system because it betrays the vows of stewardship that serve to shunt the surplus down to the most diverse layer in the society.
When the society is able to digest well the surplus it produces it results not only in greater well-being for the largest number and for the society as a whole, it also enables a creative vitality that permits the upper classes and the middle and lower classes to walk together in covenantal partnership.
Stewardship has an economic and a political side, and it is the political side of stewardship that is least well understood.
The Industrial Revolution undermined the workshop, and, along with it, the social system that embraced the values of stewardship in the transmission of skills from one generation to the next. The embodiment of surplus into human capital that propelled the crafts and guilds was turned into the system of capitalism where the surplus was embodied in the capital stock.
How society handled the virtue of stewardship morphed over historical time as productive work shifted away from the workshop and toward the factory. How stewardship is being updated is a question that is still being answered today in the 21st century.
Clearly the American system managed for a while to update the virtue of stewardship when it invented the role of the professional manager and the corporate man. The exploitation of that system by the globalized banker coupled to the out-sourcing retailer who have plundered the small and mid-cap business sector in the United States and have devastated the vitality of American big business for the sake of short term gain is threatening the viability of the American system because it betrays the vows of stewardship that serve to shunt the surplus down to the most diverse layer in the society.
When the society is able to digest well the surplus it produces it results not only in greater well-being for the largest number and for the society as a whole, it also enables a creative vitality that permits the upper classes and the middle and lower classes to walk together in covenantal partnership.
Stewardship has an economic and a political side, and it is the political side of stewardship that is least well understood.
The eclipse of God
The eclipse of God is mirrored in society by the alienation of the ruling class from the subject class. The eclipse of God represents the breakdown of covenantal values in the society and their replacement with values that can operate particularly well between strangers. Such values do not function well around the question of earnedness and trust.
Inevitably the values that favor inter-action in anonymity and transaction over inter-action in relationship and co-ordination result in collapse. Such value systems are brittle and non-adaptive.
Inevitably the values that favor inter-action in anonymity and transaction over inter-action in relationship and co-ordination result in collapse. Such value systems are brittle and non-adaptive.
Embarrassment of riches
The Industrial Revolution brought with it an embarrassment of riches. People in the 16th and 17th centuries were initially quite concerned with the abundance the new industrial technologies were enabling for their societies.
A crisis of religion that saw virtue in scrimping and saving engulfed much of Western Europe, both in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. They worried about the effect abundance would have on the religious sensibilities of the ordinary citizen: how to use the goods well, what abundance was for, how not to be spoiled by possessions. The revolt against technology and toward an explicit embrace of the values of 'plain and simple' was a direct outgrowth of this religious crisis.
What people in those days perhaps didn't see quite as clearly was how it was that this embarrassment of riches signified the exploitation of natural resources and the corresponding betrayal of the stewardship of God's Creation for the sake of short term gain. The riches fell to the lower classes to lift them up into the middle class but the damage was being done to the upper classes who were superintending the extraction and exploitation that this Industrial Revolution was both enabling and propelling.
The Industrial Revolution ruined the upper classes all over Europe. It was those classes who couldn't adapt to the embarrassment of riches the modern era's increase in control afforded aristocrats in positions of privilege. The upper classes perhaps knew about choq but they couldn't deal with mishpat. They didn't know how to cultivate self-restraint in their culture. They simply didn't know what to do with the surplus the Industrial Revolution was producing. It never occurred to them to deliver the surplus to God.
A crisis of religion that saw virtue in scrimping and saving engulfed much of Western Europe, both in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. They worried about the effect abundance would have on the religious sensibilities of the ordinary citizen: how to use the goods well, what abundance was for, how not to be spoiled by possessions. The revolt against technology and toward an explicit embrace of the values of 'plain and simple' was a direct outgrowth of this religious crisis.
What people in those days perhaps didn't see quite as clearly was how it was that this embarrassment of riches signified the exploitation of natural resources and the corresponding betrayal of the stewardship of God's Creation for the sake of short term gain. The riches fell to the lower classes to lift them up into the middle class but the damage was being done to the upper classes who were superintending the extraction and exploitation that this Industrial Revolution was both enabling and propelling.
The Industrial Revolution ruined the upper classes all over Europe. It was those classes who couldn't adapt to the embarrassment of riches the modern era's increase in control afforded aristocrats in positions of privilege. The upper classes perhaps knew about choq but they couldn't deal with mishpat. They didn't know how to cultivate self-restraint in their culture. They simply didn't know what to do with the surplus the Industrial Revolution was producing. It never occurred to them to deliver the surplus to God.
The blessings of Abraham
Preservation takes on two forms: offspring -- the passing along of the mystery of vitality from one generation to the next; and land -- the stewardship and sustenance of the fertility of the soil despite the regular harvesting of its produce.
Family (offspring) and farm (land), community (offspring) and planet (land) -- these are Wendell Berry's categories. They are also the two elements of the blessings God promised Abraham, the incentives He offered him to leave his homeland and move to Canaan.
The one is mishpat, the other is choq. Both are crucial to the preservation of the society's culture.
Family (offspring) and farm (land), community (offspring) and planet (land) -- these are Wendell Berry's categories. They are also the two elements of the blessings God promised Abraham, the incentives He offered him to leave his homeland and move to Canaan.
The one is mishpat, the other is choq. Both are crucial to the preservation of the society's culture.
Covenant and class
"... in court societies the. bond of mutual obligation was distorted." Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, pg 73.
Power relations historically put one class above another, and in the process broke the covenantal bond that should have connected the classes with each other.
So too the divine and mundane courts. When God becomes a ruler out of touch with His subjects the cosmic order becomes distorted.
Power relations historically put one class above another, and in the process broke the covenantal bond that should have connected the classes with each other.
So too the divine and mundane courts. When God becomes a ruler out of touch with His subjects the cosmic order becomes distorted.
Scholasticism is scholarship as craft, not art
The artist offers the originality of self-expression beyond what the craftsman would be able to produce. With that self-expression comes the possibility of forging a new future in a way that societies founded exclusively on craft cannot accomplish. Craft is more humble and anonymous.
Scholasticism is scholarship as craft rather than as art. The present day Yeshivish world is saddled with such scholasticism. It cannot break out of its vise of rote learning to envision a new future for its people.
Scholasticism is scholarship as craft rather than as art. The present day Yeshivish world is saddled with such scholasticism. It cannot break out of its vise of rote learning to envision a new future for its people.
Steward as surrogate
The steward is a surrogate. He takes on the trappings of the higher authority. That goes for both power as well as love.
An honorable profession
Honor is the expression of mutual obligation. So, for example, banking is an honorable profession in that there are reciprocal codes of conduct at play in the loaning and in the repaying of debt. As the debtor is honor-bound to repay so the creditor is honor-bound to lend only to those who can repay without altering their lifestyle.
In modern times, with the collapse of the venerable codes of honor that had for nearly a millennium governed the conduct of the aristocracy, the market has been offered by society's 'conservatives' as a substitute for those codes as the proper mechanism for governing honorable behavior.
In modern times, with the collapse of the venerable codes of honor that had for nearly a millennium governed the conduct of the aristocracy, the market has been offered by society's 'conservatives' as a substitute for those codes as the proper mechanism for governing honorable behavior.
Craft as a vow
The master craftsman benefited from the apprentice's labors but he was also honor-bound to improve the apprentice's skills. By dint of the master's oath he was constrained from exploiting the apprentice for his own immediate and selfish benefit.
Alchemy as purification
Alchemy is the search for the noble essence embedded in the crude earth. Alchemy was more about the purification of what is noble out of the divestment of what is crude than it was about the transformation of one element into another.
Purification is the refinement of the highest element out of the dross of the whole organism.
The goldsmith was often the experimental judge of the alchemist's theories. Hence the craftsman was the fore-runner of the experimental scientist as the alchemist was the fore-runner of the scientific theoretician.
Purification is the refinement of the highest element out of the dross of the whole organism.
The goldsmith was often the experimental judge of the alchemist's theories. Hence the craftsman was the fore-runner of the experimental scientist as the alchemist was the fore-runner of the scientific theoretician.
Hand off the power to a third, divine party
So long as the ultimate power resides across the covenantal divide between man and God it is difficult in the affairs of men for any elite to wield absolute power. Divine authority is a stop against despotism, against the disintegration of diverse institutions of power within the civil society and the concentration of all the levers of power into one centralized corpus.
When you don't earn, you tend to hoard
The accumulation of power in the Church is another example of hoarding that obstructs the free flow of creative energy in a society. The clerics do not deserve the power they wield and thereby focus more on preserving than on deserving the power. The preservation of power in an institution is another example of hoarding, not unlike the accumulation of financial wealth, which comes across as greed.
People, people who don't need people
"... it is no exaggeration to say that a man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, Alexis de Toqueville; (page xv)
Sounds like our former vice-president
"Despotism alone can provide that atmosphere of secrecy which favors crooked dealings and enables the freebooters of finance to make illicit fortunes. Under other forms of government such propensities exist, undoubtedly; under a despotism they are given free rein." The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, Alexis de Toqueville; (page xiii)
The 'freebooters of finance' make fortunes that are not illegal so much as they are illicit.
The 'freebooters of finance' make fortunes that are not illegal so much as they are illicit.
Craft needs integrity no less than skill
The user evaluates the skill of a craftsman but his peers evaluate the craftsman's integrity. Fellow members of a craft have to be the ones who police their profession. These are the equity courts that govern a profession or trade. This is the genius, for example, of the scientific community.
When ideology overwhelms a profession's ability to police the conduct of some of its own members it throws into doubt the society's authority, and the society's ability to engender good leadership weakens.
When ideology overwhelms a profession's ability to police the conduct of some of its own members it throws into doubt the society's authority, and the society's ability to engender good leadership weakens.
Codes of political conduct
The most elementary challenge of representative government is the problem of fighting corruption. One of the greatest achievements of the American system of management was the solution, in commercial establishments, to the problem of keeping managers honest. American corporations figured out how to stop the corruption of agents from undermining the interests of the principals.
American managers developed a professional culture that defined self-interested management corruption as unprofessional and thus shameful, and of inferior behavior. The self-dealer in corporate business establishments was understood to lower the professional caliber of the entire organization.
A similar sort of culture needs to grow up in the political arena. Engineers, designers, architects, planners, managers of all sorts should form a professional movement to make whole earth design a matter of professional pre-requisite. Stewardship could serve as the fundamental code of honor for professional politicians much as service to the interests of the client within the temperance of the professional terms of conduct have served to guide the activities of medical doctors, lawyers, and accountants.
Schools of technology and design need to expand their scope to embrace the political elements of their practice. Technology and design needs to develop a code of political conduct along the same lines that the purer scientists have established codes of conduct in the selfless pursuit of scientific truth.
The crafts and guilds of medieval times understood this imperative. The mechanics and freemasons of old recognized their political duties along with their craftsman-like duties and responsibilities.
Likewise, the priesthood of ancient Israel altered its essential meaning when it shifted from the nation's first-born to the male offspring of Aharon. When the creative gift of grace is manifest throughout the land the first-born merely serve as agents of the families to deliver gifts of recognition and thanks to the divine source of their creative power. As the creative process becomes more institutionalized the ministers function becomes: first, to separate the divine from the mundane and thus to clarify the contribution of each; second, to professionalize the crafts so that they can serve the covenantal principles of stewardship and the duties of privilege and power.
The solution to a corrupt ruling class is a priesthood dedicated to the covenantal principles as they apply to the crafts and trades and arts. The source of the contemporary problem facing the Jewish people is the diaspora yeshiva system. The Jewish people need spiritual masters who can teach craft and technique, not merely scholasticism. The Jewish people need an education system that trains applied practica and ties it through coaching and inspiration to the covenantal principles of stewardship and the duties of privilege.
That's why camp makes more sense than school. Bnei Akiva should really be Bnei Bezalel. High schools and colleges should teach the principles of the practica which are usually reserved for competitive sports training. Rather than academic institutions drawing the best and the brightest while trade schools are second and third rate, it should be the other way around where coaching in hands-on design and development becomes the launching pad to military service and political leadership. Science was advanced less by the theorists and more by the practical experimenters.
American managers developed a professional culture that defined self-interested management corruption as unprofessional and thus shameful, and of inferior behavior. The self-dealer in corporate business establishments was understood to lower the professional caliber of the entire organization.
A similar sort of culture needs to grow up in the political arena. Engineers, designers, architects, planners, managers of all sorts should form a professional movement to make whole earth design a matter of professional pre-requisite. Stewardship could serve as the fundamental code of honor for professional politicians much as service to the interests of the client within the temperance of the professional terms of conduct have served to guide the activities of medical doctors, lawyers, and accountants.
Schools of technology and design need to expand their scope to embrace the political elements of their practice. Technology and design needs to develop a code of political conduct along the same lines that the purer scientists have established codes of conduct in the selfless pursuit of scientific truth.
The crafts and guilds of medieval times understood this imperative. The mechanics and freemasons of old recognized their political duties along with their craftsman-like duties and responsibilities.
Likewise, the priesthood of ancient Israel altered its essential meaning when it shifted from the nation's first-born to the male offspring of Aharon. When the creative gift of grace is manifest throughout the land the first-born merely serve as agents of the families to deliver gifts of recognition and thanks to the divine source of their creative power. As the creative process becomes more institutionalized the ministers function becomes: first, to separate the divine from the mundane and thus to clarify the contribution of each; second, to professionalize the crafts so that they can serve the covenantal principles of stewardship and the duties of privilege and power.
The solution to a corrupt ruling class is a priesthood dedicated to the covenantal principles as they apply to the crafts and trades and arts. The source of the contemporary problem facing the Jewish people is the diaspora yeshiva system. The Jewish people need spiritual masters who can teach craft and technique, not merely scholasticism. The Jewish people need an education system that trains applied practica and ties it through coaching and inspiration to the covenantal principles of stewardship and the duties of privilege.
That's why camp makes more sense than school. Bnei Akiva should really be Bnei Bezalel. High schools and colleges should teach the principles of the practica which are usually reserved for competitive sports training. Rather than academic institutions drawing the best and the brightest while trade schools are second and third rate, it should be the other way around where coaching in hands-on design and development becomes the launching pad to military service and political leadership. Science was advanced less by the theorists and more by the practical experimenters.
What would "The One' really look like?
The modern businessperson all around the world is really the cultural manifestation of the lassez faire, free market, capitalist entrepreneur and industrialist that is the genius of the American man. The mid-20th century corporate man is the second generation version of that stereotype. The executive manager and his financial counterpart, the Wall St. 'master of the universe,' are refinements and extensions of that second generation business type. The question is what kind of person is the modern-day equivalent of the defender of God's covenant? What are the makings of that style of decision-maker?
Whole earth designers might come close in that they are architects, designers, engineers, technologists. They have the quiet self-assurance of the very bright and the very clever and the very well-prepared. They have in them a rationalist bias that is at once uncompromising while at the same time not doctrinaire.
What is missing however is the element of leadership -- the political aspect. How does someone of this covenantal ilk wield power? Duty to the covenantal project is the basic motivator for action, and the cool of a Barack Obama certainly seems like a key ingredient in the personality profile of such a one.
The question is how does privilege translate into stewardship and the humility that attends it, and how does stewardship then translate into the proper and effective wielding of power? To describe the stereotype is to identify the seed that defines the whole culture and civilization. It could be the leader would need to relate to the people in the vocabulary of the Bible.
Whole earth designers might come close in that they are architects, designers, engineers, technologists. They have the quiet self-assurance of the very bright and the very clever and the very well-prepared. They have in them a rationalist bias that is at once uncompromising while at the same time not doctrinaire.
What is missing however is the element of leadership -- the political aspect. How does someone of this covenantal ilk wield power? Duty to the covenantal project is the basic motivator for action, and the cool of a Barack Obama certainly seems like a key ingredient in the personality profile of such a one.
The question is how does privilege translate into stewardship and the humility that attends it, and how does stewardship then translate into the proper and effective wielding of power? To describe the stereotype is to identify the seed that defines the whole culture and civilization. It could be the leader would need to relate to the people in the vocabulary of the Bible.
Pride in accomplishment is important
When you earn something you feel proud. When society is run by leaders who do not know the experience of that pride the society becomes dejected and humiliated. Most humiliated societies feel the sting of foreign oppression but the first instance of shame comes from their own leadership's not knowing how to promote excellence for its own sake.
Power, tempered
To be an 'am mamlekhet kohanim vgoy qadosh' defines the covenantal relationship as being about the moderation of power. Humility is the counterpart moderating value in the matter of leadership. The entire matter of ahimsa, non-violence, is not so much about the use or mis-use of force as it is about the temperance of power or the use of power for the long term rather than for the short term.
They forgot to watch the movie
ChZL inculcated in Jewish practice the preparation for the kingdom come, olam haboh, by training the diasporic Jewish people in the practices of the miqdash: zekher lemiqdash -- washing hands for bread, salting the bread, etc. They did not however do the same with the relationship of sheviit/shemitta to miqdash. They did not inculcate the practices of stewardship into the diasporic Jewish people.
In general, the practices of stewardship are a modification of the practices of power. Because ChZL were averse to displaying the signs and portents of power, being themselves, as they were, under the heel of foreign powers, they eschewed the teachings of power and thus lost the central teachings of the Bible -- the tempering of power under the duties of stewardship.
For ChZL stewardship became an exercise in petrification and ossification, and in the passive waiting for the arrival of power and the miraculous awakening of the skills to wield that power under the magical workings of the new Messianic order. Stewardship became something once-removed. Stewardship was no longer to be exercised with respect to the creatures of God but merely with respect to the instructions of God.
In general, the practices of stewardship are a modification of the practices of power. Because ChZL were averse to displaying the signs and portents of power, being themselves, as they were, under the heel of foreign powers, they eschewed the teachings of power and thus lost the central teachings of the Bible -- the tempering of power under the duties of stewardship.
For ChZL stewardship became an exercise in petrification and ossification, and in the passive waiting for the arrival of power and the miraculous awakening of the skills to wield that power under the magical workings of the new Messianic order. Stewardship became something once-removed. Stewardship was no longer to be exercised with respect to the creatures of God but merely with respect to the instructions of God.
He will walk Himself among us
Stewardship is a three-way reciprocal relationship. The steward lives off of the charge. If the steward and the charge get along well, the higher authority will make His presence felt. That presence will be the fulfillment of the values of the steward/charge relationship.
That three-way relationship is expressed in Leviticus 26. The question is why does the text not refer to mishpat in the positive statement of the choq laws, only in the negative statement Leviticus 26:3, 15)? Why did the biblical author leave out reference to mishpat in the statement of 'Im bechoqotai teileikhu ...'?
The mishpat reference comes up implicitly in the description of God's presence among the people. The verse (Leviticus 26:11,12) says 'vlo tigal nafshi etkhem vhithalakhti btokhkhem...' using the same term, 'tigal nefesh,' the text uses later (26:15) in association with the violations of mishpat. The fulfillment of the mishpat of sheviit is therefore manifest in God's presence among His people in the land. It seems it needn't necessarily be stated explicitly.
That three-way relationship is expressed in Leviticus 26. The question is why does the text not refer to mishpat in the positive statement of the choq laws, only in the negative statement Leviticus 26:3, 15)? Why did the biblical author leave out reference to mishpat in the statement of 'Im bechoqotai teileikhu ...'?
The mishpat reference comes up implicitly in the description of God's presence among the people. The verse (Leviticus 26:11,12) says 'vlo tigal nafshi etkhem vhithalakhti btokhkhem...' using the same term, 'tigal nefesh,' the text uses later (26:15) in association with the violations of mishpat. The fulfillment of the mishpat of sheviit is therefore manifest in God's presence among His people in the land. It seems it needn't necessarily be stated explicitly.
To forbear is not to write-off
The size of the float is not effected by shemittat kessaphim, only its liquidity.
Plain is also refreshing
A national sabbatical year could have the effect of de-technologizing the entire society for a spell. Designed properly, the land-sabbatical could remove the degradation not only of the soil but also of the blood of man.
Resistance is futile
To be meshamet can, under some circumstances, mean to surrender. Shemitta as surrender, as a dis-arrogation to oneself of prerogatives whose exercise could injure rather than enrich one, is a way to recognize how it is that in the realm of abundance every addition is also a subtraction, that after the threshold of abundance has been passed, the marginal utility of 'more' not only gets smaller, it can easily go negative, and when it goes negative it does so infra-marginally, catastrophically. Shemitta recognizes that regularly and periodically the best thing a person could do for his welfare is to let go, to surrender and to refresh.
'Resistance is futile' was the slogan of the Borg, the life-form of ruthless, mechanical efficiency and reproduction through assimilation rather than through insemination and gestation. The Borg were the emblem of the life-crushing collective. It is ironic that the complement to 'resistance is futile,' namely 'surrender is inevitable' could well be the slogan for the most effective way to achieve personal fulfillment and individuality. Dis-arrogation is not the same as embracing the mechanical collective. It is rather the expression of recognizign one's limits and of opting for depth over grandeur.
'Resistance is futile' was the slogan of the Borg, the life-form of ruthless, mechanical efficiency and reproduction through assimilation rather than through insemination and gestation. The Borg were the emblem of the life-crushing collective. It is ironic that the complement to 'resistance is futile,' namely 'surrender is inevitable' could well be the slogan for the most effective way to achieve personal fulfillment and individuality. Dis-arrogation is not the same as embracing the mechanical collective. It is rather the expression of recognizign one's limits and of opting for depth over grandeur.
The stores of surplus
In addition to the matter of speed bumps, which are the periodically spaced land-sabbaticals, to keep the valuation of momentum from growing too large and thereby overwhelming the political/economic system, there is also the matter of the establishment of banks of surplus (chelev & dvash, suet and sap (?)). These banks are the other side of the coin of the speed breaks. The accumulation of the surplus is the result of, and complementary with, the imposition of speed breaks. Both are elements of the laws of sheviit and shemitta, though the laws that focus on the shnat shemitta, the sabbatical year, tend to get more attention than the laws that would focus on the shnat chozeq, the productive years. Perhaps that might be because the chozeq years are the responsibility of the mundane leadership rather than the responsibility of the priests, ministers of the divine authority.
Speed breaks
The question of the exhaustion of a fund by mining its stock of fertility is a matter of how fast rather than how much. By erecting speed bumps and thereby introducing speed breaks into the economic system, the laws of sheviit provide the society's stewards a set of tools to counter-act the demands of speed the financiers use to exhaust the stock of fertility in the society's political/economy.
Them vs Us
Circulation vs percolation; monoculture vs diversity; transaction vs relationship; profitability vs fertility; venture capital vs nurture capital.
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The costs of the Green Revolution
"In the name of cheaper, more plentiful food, we are doing violence to our rural communities, diminishing biodiversity, destroying topsoil, eutrophying groundwater, and putting toxics into the food chain." Slow Money, page 188.
Back to the land, household, community, place
"The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, 'hard facts'; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind." Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America, quoted in Slow Money on page 175.
Shnat shemitta, the sabbatical year, dis-establishes the 'institutions and organizations' for a year and forces attention onto the land, household, community, place.
Shnat shemitta, the sabbatical year, dis-establishes the 'institutions and organizations' for a year and forces attention onto the land, household, community, place.
06 April 2009
Extraction by another name
The Cheney/Rove/Bush administration under-cut the procedural safeguards of the Federal government as an extension of their policy to beggar the future for the sake of the present.
The dawn of a new non-violence
The Renaissance spelled the end of the Dark Ages in Europe. Mankind might well be heading to a Second Renaissance that opens the possibility for a new non-violence.
Scared people behave like hungry people
An abundant society is railroaded by the invocation of fear and danger into organizing itself as a social order more appropriate for a scarcity society. Fear and danger shorten the time horizon for decision-making as they justify the exploitation of what is unearned for the sake of protecting what is earned and perceived to be at risk.
Stewards must know value when they see it
As fiduciaries, stewards have a duty to take care of their charges. That duty to care-for implies a prior duty to recognize the value in the charge, and to recognize what it is about the charge that embodies that value. That prior duty is the basis for establishing value-measures in a society. By invoking the duty of the fiduciary, the society would be able to arrive at valuations in the context of an abundance economy.
Men have for centuries wrestled with the question of how society should measure value. The free market is today's world's primary mechanism for measuring value. In our world today, the social measure of value is its free-market price. That price mechanism for measuring value, which is just one way to measure value, works well in an economy where scarcity is the rule. Prices serve well to suss out how much value a thing has in a world where there's never enough to go around.
In an abundance economy, prices are poor measures of value. Where decision-makers typically have enough, how much someone is willing to pay to acquire some thing has little typically to do with how much value it has.
What the Bible suggests is that in an abundance economy we measure value by imagining ourselves as stewards who have a fiduciary responsibility to know well the value of what is in our charge, so that we can fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to preserve and enhance that value. Stewardship could be an alternative mechanism for the society's measuring of value. It could supplant the market mechanism in an economy that has matured past its 'early growing pains.'
When the managers of mature corporations take over their direction, for example, they need to serve as stewards who are keenly interested and acutely cognizant of the value that is embodied in their corporations. They must know the locci of value in their corporations not only in terms of what produces the highest share price or the highest sale price but what accounts for the ability of the coporation to continue harvesting the value from the fund of fertility that is embodied in its organization's name, structure and culture.
Men have for centuries wrestled with the question of how society should measure value. The free market is today's world's primary mechanism for measuring value. In our world today, the social measure of value is its free-market price. That price mechanism for measuring value, which is just one way to measure value, works well in an economy where scarcity is the rule. Prices serve well to suss out how much value a thing has in a world where there's never enough to go around.
In an abundance economy, prices are poor measures of value. Where decision-makers typically have enough, how much someone is willing to pay to acquire some thing has little typically to do with how much value it has.
What the Bible suggests is that in an abundance economy we measure value by imagining ourselves as stewards who have a fiduciary responsibility to know well the value of what is in our charge, so that we can fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to preserve and enhance that value. Stewardship could be an alternative mechanism for the society's measuring of value. It could supplant the market mechanism in an economy that has matured past its 'early growing pains.'
When the managers of mature corporations take over their direction, for example, they need to serve as stewards who are keenly interested and acutely cognizant of the value that is embodied in their corporations. They must know the locci of value in their corporations not only in terms of what produces the highest share price or the highest sale price but what accounts for the ability of the coporation to continue harvesting the value from the fund of fertility that is embodied in its organization's name, structure and culture.
Commercial action at a distance
Consistency in the rules that define property rights is the foundation of a workable financial system. Keeping promises and establishing predictable laws that are not arbitrary is the key to making financial systems that function smoothly. Exemptions, exceptions, unpredictable lurches in policy and in the definition of property all contribute to the drying up of liquidity.
Consistency allows for commercial action at a distance where unacquainted parties to a transaction, parties who do not necessarily know each other and who wish to transact with each other, can still depend on the workings of the system to ensure proper conduct.
Consistency allows for commercial action at a distance where unacquainted parties to a transaction, parties who do not necessarily know each other and who wish to transact with each other, can still depend on the workings of the system to ensure proper conduct.
Reconciling political man and Nature
The world at present is perched on the edge of a great transformation. The Enlightenment was the last gasp of a process of profanation and desacralization that had been going on for millennia, a long and steady process that led ineluctably to the eclipse of God. Now Man and Nature need to reconcile with each other, as the end of the Book foretells (vkhippehr admato ammo -- His earth, His nation will reconcile). We need a messianic vision of reconciliation between political man and the land.
Drowning in the bathtub
When the world promotes the defense of innocent civilian life it results in the loss of innocent civilian life. The terrorists kill civilians to get press coverage; and the terrorists use human shields in order to be able to shout 'disproportionate response.' If we stopped reporting civilian deaths and if we stopped defending accusations of disproportionate response, civilian deaths would go down.
It's like the argument not to negotiate with or pay ransom to hostage takers. It just encourages them. When you don't negotiate with hostage takers you are in effect, in the short term, devaluing the human life that has been taken hostage. The argument, of course, is that the short term loss is over-ridden by the long term gain so you don't pay. Same with terror casualties and collateral damage. The civilized world's public opinion should be trained to consider them non-events, not unlike traffic accidents and people drowning in the bathtub.
It's like the argument not to negotiate with or pay ransom to hostage takers. It just encourages them. When you don't negotiate with hostage takers you are in effect, in the short term, devaluing the human life that has been taken hostage. The argument, of course, is that the short term loss is over-ridden by the long term gain so you don't pay. Same with terror casualties and collateral damage. The civilized world's public opinion should be trained to consider them non-events, not unlike traffic accidents and people drowning in the bathtub.
We are in an end-time
An end-time is a time when a large, incumbent order is coming to an end. The incumbent order can collapse or it can whither away but in either case it becomes difficult for people to see the shape of the future clearly. 'What comes next?' becomes harder to answer while 'What comes after?' becomes the more urgent and relevant question.
We are in an end-time. We are in a dis-orienting time when venerable truths and institutions are beginning to lose their vigor. We are returning to a time like in the ancient past when environmental conditions could be much more threatening than they have been for millennia, and when the natural environment occupied a far more vital part of human consciousness than it has for millennia.
The Biblical teachings (as opposed to the teachings of the daughter religions -- Rabbinic, Christian, Islamic) seem to be fitting in better with our contemporary zeitgeist because those teachings addressed the problematics of an earlier end-time when a brand new order was coming into being.
The Biblical teachings stand there for us as a manual for identifying what are the important parameters of understanding an end-time moment when the over-arching, incumbent cultural and institutional order can no longer support the edifice of civilization. In such a moment individuals with prophetic sensibilities must instead turn for guidance to the unvarnished word of God.
We are in an end-time. We are in a dis-orienting time when venerable truths and institutions are beginning to lose their vigor. We are returning to a time like in the ancient past when environmental conditions could be much more threatening than they have been for millennia, and when the natural environment occupied a far more vital part of human consciousness than it has for millennia.
The Biblical teachings (as opposed to the teachings of the daughter religions -- Rabbinic, Christian, Islamic) seem to be fitting in better with our contemporary zeitgeist because those teachings addressed the problematics of an earlier end-time when a brand new order was coming into being.
The Biblical teachings stand there for us as a manual for identifying what are the important parameters of understanding an end-time moment when the over-arching, incumbent cultural and institutional order can no longer support the edifice of civilization. In such a moment individuals with prophetic sensibilities must instead turn for guidance to the unvarnished word of God.
'What comes next?' vs 'What comes after?'
'What comes next?' is the slogan of evolution; 'What comes after?' is the slogan of revolution. Passive resistance is the poor man's revolutionary program. Passive resistance is directed at uncoupling from the incumbent order so that the resisters can prepare for the kingdom to come.
Messianism is the ultimate program of passive resistance. It emphasizes the bankruptcy of the incumbent power-holders while it ushers the chosen, the elect, the born again, the enlightened into a way of life that is insulated from the insults of the degeneracy and the debasement of the incumbent power order, and, at the same time, it prepares the elect for the new world order that will come after the collapse of the incumbent order is accomplished.
Both 'What comes next?' and 'What comes after?' can conceal the issues of power and power-wielding. The early Church organized as a revolutionary force to insulate from the then-present corruption, and to prepare for the kingdom come, the olam haboh. At the time the Church became an institution of the incumbent powers (with Constantine, let us say) it had not yet prepared for the kingdom come in a concrete and realistic way. It had defined the preparatory work as laying the ground for an other-worldly existence, not for holding power in this world. The Church therefore defined its power-wielding role as merely preparing the secular rulers for their other-worldly existence, and, not about how the mundane rulers should do their mundane work. In the process, the Church became as degenerate as the incumbent rulers.
True messianism is both about insulating from the debasement of the incumbent powers and their culture as well as about preparing in the present moment for the take-over of that power after the apocalypse. That means developing the skills of power-wielding, and of developing the institutional and procedural basis for running the society once power comes to the righteous.
Sustainable power that is not vulnerable to the temptations of fear and danger or righteous, puritanical fervor but that stewards the fertile ground on which an orderly society must settle and live -- that is the true challenge of the new world order.
Messianism is the ultimate program of passive resistance. It emphasizes the bankruptcy of the incumbent power-holders while it ushers the chosen, the elect, the born again, the enlightened into a way of life that is insulated from the insults of the degeneracy and the debasement of the incumbent power order, and, at the same time, it prepares the elect for the new world order that will come after the collapse of the incumbent order is accomplished.
Both 'What comes next?' and 'What comes after?' can conceal the issues of power and power-wielding. The early Church organized as a revolutionary force to insulate from the then-present corruption, and to prepare for the kingdom come, the olam haboh. At the time the Church became an institution of the incumbent powers (with Constantine, let us say) it had not yet prepared for the kingdom come in a concrete and realistic way. It had defined the preparatory work as laying the ground for an other-worldly existence, not for holding power in this world. The Church therefore defined its power-wielding role as merely preparing the secular rulers for their other-worldly existence, and, not about how the mundane rulers should do their mundane work. In the process, the Church became as degenerate as the incumbent rulers.
True messianism is both about insulating from the debasement of the incumbent powers and their culture as well as about preparing in the present moment for the take-over of that power after the apocalypse. That means developing the skills of power-wielding, and of developing the institutional and procedural basis for running the society once power comes to the righteous.
Sustainable power that is not vulnerable to the temptations of fear and danger or righteous, puritanical fervor but that stewards the fertile ground on which an orderly society must settle and live -- that is the true challenge of the new world order.
The enemy is the plunderer
The enemy is the plunderer who exhausts the world's fertility for the sake of a fleeting, present over-consumption. The terrorist, the ethnic adversary, the corporate power broker, the corrupt politician, the tyrant or despot -- these are all only minor instances of a world gone gluttonous over instant or immediate gratification, awash in indifference to the bitter fruits of self-indulgence.
Were the hippies right?
At the end of the sixties and early seventies, as the counter-culture was winding down, the current asset bubble began its long march. Now that we are at the collapsed stage it seems as though the warnings of the counter-culture -- that the corporate culture was not only ineffective and bankrupt but also ultimately destructive of the entire system -- were not as off-target as it might have sounded at the time.
We are living through a cultural watershed. For better or for worse, the collapse into shambles of the world's financial system must signify something more than, as Alan Greenspan would have us believe, just an innocent error.
We are living through a cultural watershed. For better or for worse, the collapse into shambles of the world's financial system must signify something more than, as Alan Greenspan would have us believe, just an innocent error.
Unemployment and war
In the face of high unemployment cunning leaders turn to military conscription to enact a Keynesian-like stimulus and spending program. They pull masses of unemployed young men and women into the armed services to strengthen the national morale while giving the conscripts regular food and shelter and, at the same time, getting them out of the civilian labor pool. Military expenditures are the most stimulative forms of fiscal spending because military spending is completely unproductive and so it doesn't crowd out other kinds of spending, which is a good thing during a severe economic downturn. This is how persistently high unemployment leads to war.
02 April 2009
Stewards are the anti-markets
Stewards are fiduciaries. They take care of something for someone else. They are the complements to the producers and consumers. They are the care-takers -- neither producing nor consuming.
Like brokers, who catalyze a transaction, stewards are un-brokers, who inhibit transactions. The stewards are the anti-markets.
Like brokers, who catalyze a transaction, stewards are un-brokers, who inhibit transactions. The stewards are the anti-markets.
Asset bubbles work by insecuring the affluence
What is it about asset bubbles that makes them so compelling? Why is it that when you're in the middle of the bubble it is no longer rational to resist the temptations even though you know you're risking more than you can afford to lose?
It seems that asset bubbles function by wiping out any safe harbors. You are compelled to enter the market because there's no place left to store your value that's not in the market. The last administration's failed attempt to privatize Social Security would have been the keystone to such an de-securing of safe harbors. Had it succeeded, it likely would have extended the asset bubble well into the next administration, or beyond. It would have been as though an enormous investor had suddenly been forced to take his money out of the bank and put it into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. It might have kept Madoff afloat through the meltdown.
Asset bubbles make for insecure affluence by shifting the usual balance from security to affluence. Usually it is easy to find secure stores of wealth while it is hard to acquire affluence. In an asset bubble environment it is easy to acquire the wealth, it is just hard to find where to store it. Given that in a bubble environment all stores of wealth are being degraded, the only rational thing to do is to try to acquire as much affluence as possible, hoping that after the crash you're left with enough to get by on.
'Get rich quick' usually comes with 'it's getting harder and harder to stay rich.' Along with mortgaging away the future for the present comes the problem of mortgaging away the present for the present.
It seems that asset bubbles function by wiping out any safe harbors. You are compelled to enter the market because there's no place left to store your value that's not in the market. The last administration's failed attempt to privatize Social Security would have been the keystone to such an de-securing of safe harbors. Had it succeeded, it likely would have extended the asset bubble well into the next administration, or beyond. It would have been as though an enormous investor had suddenly been forced to take his money out of the bank and put it into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. It might have kept Madoff afloat through the meltdown.
Asset bubbles make for insecure affluence by shifting the usual balance from security to affluence. Usually it is easy to find secure stores of wealth while it is hard to acquire affluence. In an asset bubble environment it is easy to acquire the wealth, it is just hard to find where to store it. Given that in a bubble environment all stores of wealth are being degraded, the only rational thing to do is to try to acquire as much affluence as possible, hoping that after the crash you're left with enough to get by on.
'Get rich quick' usually comes with 'it's getting harder and harder to stay rich.' Along with mortgaging away the future for the present comes the problem of mortgaging away the present for the present.
Speed and forcing the matter
The matter of speed is related to danger. Danger is related to imperatives -- non-voluntary choices. The choices of the lesser of two evils. The point is: something is forcing the matter, and so speed becomes valuable.
Deservedness and speed
Speed and earnedness are inversely correlated. The faster you have to produce something, the more you have to employ, as elements of the thing, what others have already made.
Deservedness is less about 'how much ' and more about 'when', and 'before whom' or 'after whom'. Deservedness determines seniority and duration.
In sum, fairness determines how much and who, while deservedness determines when and in what order.
Deservedness is less about 'how much ' and more about 'when', and 'before whom' or 'after whom'. Deservedness determines seniority and duration.
In sum, fairness determines how much and who, while deservedness determines when and in what order.
Institutions as large-scale, inter-locking trust relationshps
Trust is an asset. It must be built up. In the process of that building up it must be earned. It cannot be taken, it can only be given and received. Once it is built up it must be nurtured through stewardship; it cannot be exercised exclusively in the service of welfare- or profit-maximization.
Trust is a fund that has a fertile core that can be harvested. That core is also susceptible to be abused and exploited for short term gain. Given enough abuse, the trust would eventually be exhausted.
Now imagine the earning and the building up of trust not just between two people but in a larger population. Such a process of large-scale earning and building up of trust shades into institution-building, where the institution is the development of a set of inter-locking trusting relationships. We can go further and describe the establishment of standards and practices which are institutions for institutions, which is to say a set of inter-locking trusting relationships among sets of inter-locking trusting relationships. All of these must be nurtured and stewarded. They can be exploited for short term gain but at the cost, in the long term, of exhaustion and collapse.
Trust is a fund that has a fertile core that can be harvested. That core is also susceptible to be abused and exploited for short term gain. Given enough abuse, the trust would eventually be exhausted.
Now imagine the earning and the building up of trust not just between two people but in a larger population. Such a process of large-scale earning and building up of trust shades into institution-building, where the institution is the development of a set of inter-locking trusting relationships. We can go further and describe the establishment of standards and practices which are institutions for institutions, which is to say a set of inter-locking trusting relationships among sets of inter-locking trusting relationships. All of these must be nurtured and stewarded. They can be exploited for short term gain but at the cost, in the long term, of exhaustion and collapse.
Yes, we don't have to
Forbearance is to the value system of ecology what tolerance is to the value system of democracy. Forbearance is the ground in which culture takes root. Forbearance is knowing when to stop, knowing when enough is enough. Forbearance is self-limitation and self-restraint. Forbearance is to know 'yes we can...but no we don't have to'. Forbearance is good for the forborne but it is better for the forbearing.
How we live depends on subsidy
"The first step in the process of our recovery is an unabashed acknowledgement of the extent to which how we live depends on subsidy." Slow Money, page 163. That subsidy, in times ancient and not so ancient, was known as God's Providence.
Markets and covenants -- conquest and occupation
The market is about conquest. It is about linear time that points with verve and energy to some clearly demarked objective. The market is aggressive, innovative, entrepreneurial, clever, always on the move wanting more and different and the exciting.
The covenant is about occupation. It is about cyclical time that recognizes periodicity and the waxing and waning of ordinary processes. It is prudent, selfless, respectful, wise, at peace with the rewards of the underlying values of life.
They belong together, the market and the covenant, but in the end the covenant must rule.
The covenant is about occupation. It is about cyclical time that recognizes periodicity and the waxing and waning of ordinary processes. It is prudent, selfless, respectful, wise, at peace with the rewards of the underlying values of life.
They belong together, the market and the covenant, but in the end the covenant must rule.
Occupation, not conquest of land
Conquest differs from occupation. The Bible's 'When you come to the land ...' is not about conquest but about occupation.
It is the occupation forces that must recognize the dependency of every person of the health of the land.
"Those are the two poles between which a competent morality would balance and mediate: the doorstep and the planet. The most meaningful dependence of my house is not on the US government, but on the world, the earth. No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms. To cease to know this, and to fail to act on upon this knowledge, is to begin to die the death of a broken machine. In default of man's personal cherishing and care, now that his machinery has become so awesomely powerful, the earth must become the victim of his institutions, the violent self-destructive machinery of man-in-the-abstract. And so, conversely, the most meaningful dependece of the earth is not on the US government, but on my household -- how I live, how I raise my children, how I care for the land entrusted to me.
"... To assert that a man owes allegiance that is antecedent to his allegiance to his household, or higher than his allegiance to the earth, is to invite a state of moral chaos that will destroy both the household and the earth."
Wendell Berry, Some Thoughts on Citizenship ..., in The Long Legged House, 1969; quoted in Slow Money, page 158.
Berry is almost right. He cannot however really take the nation-state out of the equation. Sheviit/shemitta recognizes what Berry instinctually understands and elevates his sentiment to frame it as the fundamental predicate behind God's covenant with the people of Israel. As far as the Bible is concerned the meaning of faithful service to God is the proper stewardship of the land. We serve God not in acts of conquest, not in the prosecution of His holy wars, but in the stewardship that comes with our occupation of His land as we come to that land granted to us by Him. Without this national and this cosmic articulation with the household and the planet, Berry's prescription is just so much wishful thinking that, as it inevitably does, just ends in a sad sigh.
It is the occupation forces that must recognize the dependency of every person of the health of the land.
"Those are the two poles between which a competent morality would balance and mediate: the doorstep and the planet. The most meaningful dependence of my house is not on the US government, but on the world, the earth. No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms. To cease to know this, and to fail to act on upon this knowledge, is to begin to die the death of a broken machine. In default of man's personal cherishing and care, now that his machinery has become so awesomely powerful, the earth must become the victim of his institutions, the violent self-destructive machinery of man-in-the-abstract. And so, conversely, the most meaningful dependece of the earth is not on the US government, but on my household -- how I live, how I raise my children, how I care for the land entrusted to me.
"... To assert that a man owes allegiance that is antecedent to his allegiance to his household, or higher than his allegiance to the earth, is to invite a state of moral chaos that will destroy both the household and the earth."
Wendell Berry, Some Thoughts on Citizenship ..., in The Long Legged House, 1969; quoted in Slow Money, page 158.
Berry is almost right. He cannot however really take the nation-state out of the equation. Sheviit/shemitta recognizes what Berry instinctually understands and elevates his sentiment to frame it as the fundamental predicate behind God's covenant with the people of Israel. As far as the Bible is concerned the meaning of faithful service to God is the proper stewardship of the land. We serve God not in acts of conquest, not in the prosecution of His holy wars, but in the stewardship that comes with our occupation of His land as we come to that land granted to us by Him. Without this national and this cosmic articulation with the household and the planet, Berry's prescription is just so much wishful thinking that, as it inevitably does, just ends in a sad sigh.
Sorry, but real social change requires the authority of the sovereign
The left keeps looking for clever, creative ways for getting around the incumbent power of the corporate interests. Tasch thinks we can get around corporate interests by re-building the financial markets. He may be right but it doesn't feel that way.
Right now the only vehicle for social change on this planet is the nation-state. If change is to come, it's going to have to come at some national level. It's not a matter of scale. The national level could, and likely should, in fact, be a small scale nation. Rather, it's a matter of sovereignty. It is the sovereign who defines the fundaments of the people's value system. It is the sovereign who makes the laws. These values and laws happen at the nation-state level.
It might be true that the market, with its global reach, has now superceded the nation-state. If so, perhaps solutions for building a political/economy that is restorative might be achievable through the devising of a different sort of well-meaning financial exchange. But if so, then it seems to us the scope of the exchange will need to go well beyond the definition of a transaction, a share, the investment objectives, etc. Somehow the entire super-structure of money and laws and military power really needs to be re-designed, and that takes us right back to the sovereignty that one can find these days only at the nation-state level.
Alternatively, one can imagine the day when failed states abound in the world, and one could devise plans to rehabilitate those failed states according to values that are more restorative than they are, at present.
How can restorative institutions defeat the resource curse and the strongman rule that comes of that curse? That's the deeper question, it seems.
Right now the only vehicle for social change on this planet is the nation-state. If change is to come, it's going to have to come at some national level. It's not a matter of scale. The national level could, and likely should, in fact, be a small scale nation. Rather, it's a matter of sovereignty. It is the sovereign who defines the fundaments of the people's value system. It is the sovereign who makes the laws. These values and laws happen at the nation-state level.
It might be true that the market, with its global reach, has now superceded the nation-state. If so, perhaps solutions for building a political/economy that is restorative might be achievable through the devising of a different sort of well-meaning financial exchange. But if so, then it seems to us the scope of the exchange will need to go well beyond the definition of a transaction, a share, the investment objectives, etc. Somehow the entire super-structure of money and laws and military power really needs to be re-designed, and that takes us right back to the sovereignty that one can find these days only at the nation-state level.
Alternatively, one can imagine the day when failed states abound in the world, and one could devise plans to rehabilitate those failed states according to values that are more restorative than they are, at present.
How can restorative institutions defeat the resource curse and the strongman rule that comes of that curse? That's the deeper question, it seems.
Clarify the vision of what comes after
The financial system is broken. The industrial system is broken and so is the financial system. Oil broke the industrial system and oil broke the financial system. Luckily, oil's power is not long for this world. In the meantime, however, the world's political/economy is a shambles.
It's going to take quite a collapse to clear out all this damage. All we can really do for the time being is clarify our vision of what comes after.
It's going to take quite a collapse to clear out all this damage. All we can really do for the time being is clarify our vision of what comes after.
Take-make-waste
The extractor employs the technology of take-make-waste. In the limiting, plunderer case, as it applies, for example, to the oil sovereign or the oil executive, it is take-waste without bothering with the '-make-' step.
In the extractor case, the system distracts the public's attention from the 'take-waste' steps to focus the people's attention on the '-make-' step. In the plunderer case, the strongman ruler invokes extraction distraction when there is no '-make-' step to emphasize so that attention must be directed somewhere else entirely -- to some cooked up danger or ethnic or cultural violation. The milder form of such distraction emphasizes the '-make-' step, the growth and employment and high returns to investment, while it de-emphasizes the '-take-waste' step that is degrading the foundation on which the ostensible 'productivity' is built.
In the extractor case, the system distracts the public's attention from the 'take-waste' steps to focus the people's attention on the '-make-' step. In the plunderer case, the strongman ruler invokes extraction distraction when there is no '-make-' step to emphasize so that attention must be directed somewhere else entirely -- to some cooked up danger or ethnic or cultural violation. The milder form of such distraction emphasizes the '-make-' step, the growth and employment and high returns to investment, while it de-emphasizes the '-take-waste' step that is degrading the foundation on which the ostensible 'productivity' is built.
The order of the Other
The exploiter likes organizations and institutions while the nurturer likes orders, the human order relative to the other order. Out of that seeing of the world as organized and divided into orders emerges the possibility of the sacred, for the sacred is lodged in the order of the 'Other'.
Fiduciary means how much you leave on the table
Sustainability is a fiduciary responsibility. If we would become stewards, then we must recognize the role of fiduciary in the deployment of resources.
We are entitled to private property for the sake of consumption and investment but not for extraction and waste. Our resources are assets, and our assets don't belong to us as owners but only as stewards -- to use but not to exploit.
As such our natural resources are given to us in trust, as a fund, for which we have a fiduciary responsibility not unlike the values that would have been in effect had we been made trustees of some financial estate. We owe it to our children, yes, but the truth is it doesn't belong to us in the first place. It belongs to God.
When the power utility gets returns for helping the utility's customer base produce electricity rather than to demand it, and to lower the demand for electricity rather than to promote increases in its demand, it is behaving like a steward that measures its corporate mandate in terms of how much it's leaving on the table rather than how much it's taking off of the table.
We are entitled to private property for the sake of consumption and investment but not for extraction and waste. Our resources are assets, and our assets don't belong to us as owners but only as stewards -- to use but not to exploit.
As such our natural resources are given to us in trust, as a fund, for which we have a fiduciary responsibility not unlike the values that would have been in effect had we been made trustees of some financial estate. We owe it to our children, yes, but the truth is it doesn't belong to us in the first place. It belongs to God.
When the power utility gets returns for helping the utility's customer base produce electricity rather than to demand it, and to lower the demand for electricity rather than to promote increases in its demand, it is behaving like a steward that measures its corporate mandate in terms of how much it's leaving on the table rather than how much it's taking off of the table.
Change as up-speeding or down-slowing
Change-as-accelerant is part of the ideology of the modern era that deems natural resources cheap and labor resources dear. Change-as-decelerant is a countervailing force that honors the natural resources and prohibits the sale of labor. It moderates the acceleration and preserves the system's sustainability. Change as decelerant can kick in, say, like every seven years, just to keep all the players honest.
Financialized CEOs cashing out the ranches
After the trusting relationships among the engineers and developers and the marketing people and the operations people, all of which relationships are necessary for the building up of a productive enterprise, have done their job and fulfilled their purpose and the profit-maximizing firm has completed the task of building a productive enterprise a new phase of the capitalist's objective will begin. The firm, ready to betray those operational trusts, will turn to the financial officers and financialize corporate relationships. The objective of the financialization would be to use up all the built-up the trust while the executive management engages in a process of cashing out the embodied and stored value in the enterprise.
When the financial officers take over the enterprise, the cashing out will have begun. Then the chief executives of the enterprise become members of the financial sector rather than the operating sector. Then they begin to demand financial sector-style compensation packages as pay-offs for their willingness to sell out the trust of the material-economy-based enterprises.
The financial officers accomplish this betrayal by introducing the element of time. They demand speed in the returns of the enterprise rather than allowing for the respecting of the natural rhythms of the operating company. When the operational managers fail to live up to the unreasonable demands for speed in the development of returns the financial managers are able to replace them with managers who are willing to draw down the stored up value in the interests of achieving short run returns. That drawing down of stored up value is what makes the enterprise more fragile, and ultimately leads to its collapse; but typically not before the managers have wrung all the value out of the enterprise not through equity participation but through salary and the rights to sell their equity holdings.
When the financial officers take over the enterprise, the cashing out will have begun. Then the chief executives of the enterprise become members of the financial sector rather than the operating sector. Then they begin to demand financial sector-style compensation packages as pay-offs for their willingness to sell out the trust of the material-economy-based enterprises.
The financial officers accomplish this betrayal by introducing the element of time. They demand speed in the returns of the enterprise rather than allowing for the respecting of the natural rhythms of the operating company. When the operational managers fail to live up to the unreasonable demands for speed in the development of returns the financial managers are able to replace them with managers who are willing to draw down the stored up value in the interests of achieving short run returns. That drawing down of stored up value is what makes the enterprise more fragile, and ultimately leads to its collapse; but typically not before the managers have wrung all the value out of the enterprise not through equity participation but through salary and the rights to sell their equity holdings.
Caveat vendor
When a producer sells a durable product to a consumer the quality and the maintenance costs and the operating costs are all implied in the product and in the sale. If the quality is not up to what the consumer had a right to expect, or if the product broke down and cost too much to repair or needed to be repaired too often, or if the cost of operating the product was higher than it needed to be, then these are all examples of the trust of the consumer having been abused and exploited for the short term gain of the producer. It is an example of profit-maximization overwhelming the obligations of the stewardship of trust.
For a consumer public to remain compliant in the face of such abuses of trust is merely to say the public has been trained into servility. Often the functions of advertising are to establish the semblance of trust-worthiness in the face of the exploitation or downright abuse of that trust.
For a consumer public to remain compliant in the face of such abuses of trust is merely to say the public has been trained into servility. Often the functions of advertising are to establish the semblance of trust-worthiness in the face of the exploitation or downright abuse of that trust.
Equity for stability, not necessarily growth
Traditionally the investment in equity was for the sake of growth while the lending of debt was for the sake of stability. We need to figure out how to invest equity for the sake of stability. It would be investment as endowment rather than as bridge loan unsecured by any extant revenue streams.
Commercial investment is really just a risk-bearing way to solve the cash flow problem all unrealized projects have. Everyone focuses on the risk but what's really going on in early-stage investment is really just a bridge loan until the revenue stream kicks in. That's why strategic alliance is such a good source of seed capital -- strategic allies have a clear understanding of the prospective revenue streams that will pay off the investment.
What mature enterprises need is an internal bank to establish the enterprise's capital requirements to reflect the minimal store of fertility to make the fund able to generate income and harvests. That would be more like slow capital. Presently the equity investments we make for the sake of stability we call philanthropy. We need a different sort of relationship to stability and the management for the sake of deepening rather than elaborating whatever value someone is trying to promote.
Commercial investment is really just a risk-bearing way to solve the cash flow problem all unrealized projects have. Everyone focuses on the risk but what's really going on in early-stage investment is really just a bridge loan until the revenue stream kicks in. That's why strategic alliance is such a good source of seed capital -- strategic allies have a clear understanding of the prospective revenue streams that will pay off the investment.
What mature enterprises need is an internal bank to establish the enterprise's capital requirements to reflect the minimal store of fertility to make the fund able to generate income and harvests. That would be more like slow capital. Presently the equity investments we make for the sake of stability we call philanthropy. We need a different sort of relationship to stability and the management for the sake of deepening rather than elaborating whatever value someone is trying to promote.
28 March 2009
The little guy
The reinforcement of the prerogatives of the institutions of government is one of the most troubling features of the modern era. The exertions of ordinary people cannot come close to matching the scope and scale modern governments have become able to harness. It's a kind of dis-enfranchisement not of authority but of legitimacy. The ordinary citizen is stopping to matter anymore because citizens are all being piled up together into an uncountable heap and the experience of the modern life of action is becoming faceless and miniscule as a result.
The curse of the gift
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo argues that international aid to ruling elites introduces the resource curse into their countries. The political leaders need not be accountable to their populations because they stay in power by catering to the wishes of the donor nations. Foreign aid crowds out indigenous entrepreneurship and turns the native populations into servile and passive recipients of gifts.
What do you do with the excess?
After America was unleashed from the constraints of the Cold War it experienced an explosion of surplus power. The nation didn't know what to do with all that excess power so it went on a consumption binge kicked off by Reagan and promoted by the conservative movement which has just ended in the Great 2008 Meltdown.
Inter-bank hoarding
What is really going on when inter-bank lending dries up is that the banks with surplus funds after the inter-bank accounts have been cleared are hoarding their excess funds instead of passing them along into the inter-bank market.
Selfish leadership
The radical conservative/Republican leaders are presently willing to undermine the power of their own party so long as they are able to hold on to their own power within the party. This sort of behavior on the part of the leadership typifies social organizations that are in decline and are headed for collapse. First eliminate all your internal adversaries; then, when the system begins to fail, insist on maintaining your leadership for the sake of the system's purity.
When strongman rulers capture control over the social/political system they never let go, no matter what.
When leaders wring the last bit of self-importance out of their leadership position irrespective of the damage it might be doing to the followership, that's an unalloyed example of extraction. Ideologies of selfishness result in collapse because the leadership embodies the ideology's selfishness and ultimately fails to act selflessly even when their own movement needs it.
When strongman rulers capture control over the social/political system they never let go, no matter what.
When leaders wring the last bit of self-importance out of their leadership position irrespective of the damage it might be doing to the followership, that's an unalloyed example of extraction. Ideologies of selfishness result in collapse because the leadership embodies the ideology's selfishness and ultimately fails to act selflessly even when their own movement needs it.
It is easier than you think
The 40 years in the desert could well be a template for how to prepare for creative rule. The argument we are making is that we can stop thinking about how to bring down the ruling power because God, through the application of the resource curse, will see to the collapse of evil power. The question is what should we do instead of denouncing the incumbent, established power. The events in the wilderness could well be a narrative for how a people fashions itself for creative rule.
Star Wars has it wrong
The standard progressive rap is that of the small band of rebels fighting fearlessly against the great incumbent powers. The real progressive story should be of the collapsed incumbent powers giving way to a new world order whose rulers respect covenantal relations and the reverence for a higher authority such reverence implies.
Competition vs complementarity
Extremism vs moderation, ideology vs practicality, extraction vs creation, scarcity and fear and danger vs abundance and hope and respect for institutions and for standards and practices -- these are the competition vs complementarity poles of evil vs good, vice vs virtue, fury vs generosity.
When the moderates share more with each other and the extremists share more with each other across ideological lines than they do within the ideological lines it is because competition prevails over complementarity, and ideology has become an instrument of the ruling class over the ruled class. The pagan gods speak for the ruling class, the religious God speaks for the ruled class.
When the moderates share more with each other and the extremists share more with each other across ideological lines than they do within the ideological lines it is because competition prevails over complementarity, and ideology has become an instrument of the ruling class over the ruled class. The pagan gods speak for the ruling class, the religious God speaks for the ruled class.
Easy pickin's
The resource curse is mutually reinforcing with the imperatives of war. A world where there are so many easy pickin's available for the taking demands the build-up of military force to maintain balance. The cruel logic of the resource curse is that the surplus will be transformed into materiel and personnel to defend the surplus. Our world is a dangerous world because we persist in producing surpluses that are easy pickin's, alienable and ready to be hunted and plundered.
Start from now and here
The issue in the framing of an alternative narrative is to start from the status quo. The proper path of change must follow directed evolution, which is to say, to move the present into the future. That means we must understand the present and we must have a clear vision of the path to a better future.
The Bible reframed the mythic under-structure of the ancient world to describe a modern vision both wise and deep and gentle. We must start from the contemporary mythic under-structure of the world today so that we can describe an alternative vision that is wise and deep and gentle, and comprehensible to people everywhere.
The Bible reframed the mythic under-structure of the ancient world to describe a modern vision both wise and deep and gentle. We must start from the contemporary mythic under-structure of the world today so that we can describe an alternative vision that is wise and deep and gentle, and comprehensible to people everywhere.
Counter-narratives after the collapse
The other side of containment is the duty to lead. Wise leadership must be ready to swallow up cunning leadership, both by demonstrating its own, superior cunning and by showing a willingness to fill the narrative void (the old regime will have left behind) with an alternative cultural context wherein it makes sense for the wise leadership to replace the old, exhausted, cunning leadership.
The development of a counter-narrative is the dimension whereby wise leadership earns its legitimacy. The counter-narrative resides in the nation's diplomatic institutions where ideology and a vision of a bucolic future civilization can take root. The institutions of containment -- the ones that work to stop extractive power -- are the analogue to the state's military services whereas the counter-narrative institutions -- the ones that work to fill the leadership void of a collapsing extractive power -- are the analogue to the state's diplomatic services.
When the old king, who has lost his vigor, is no longer able to lead the nation it is the young prince who will bear the responsibility of any failures unless he takes his father's place and renews the land. The impulse to fill the void with a new and different leadership style of one's own is the mark of a true leader. The task is not so much to wrest power from one vigorous ruler to the next. That is just old-fashioned, great power warfare and realpolitic. The task is to find those moments or places of power vacuum and to fill the vacuum with a new, vigorous leadership propelled by a counter-narrative that has built into it the regular institutional infra-structure of renewal and legitimate autonomy.
We are describing here an entrepreneurial model of power relations. The entrepreneurial start-up does not try to take on the incumbent on his own turf. Rather, he finds the undefended hill and establishes himself there in the marketplace's open niches. He builds a new culture and then waits for the aging incumbent to collapse under his own weight, only applying the coup de grace at the very end when the last vestiges of reactionary power remaining are unwilling to give up the ghost and so they must be inundated under the new regime's creative waters.
The true politics of renewal is able to anticipate the moments and the situations of the incumbent power's impending collapse and to be prepared with counter-narratives and a readiness, willingness, and ability to lead in a new direction. It is a sort of reverse 'shock doctrine' for the benign rather than for the malign political forces in the world today.
Such a entrepreneurially political approach is tailor-made to Israel and its contemporary as well as ancient geo-political situation. That is the logic of the Bible's political posture -- entrepreneurially to find political opportunities that come about from the self-inflicted decline and collapse of the greater powers of the time and the neighborhood, and to have little Israel light the way into the future.
The development of a counter-narrative is the dimension whereby wise leadership earns its legitimacy. The counter-narrative resides in the nation's diplomatic institutions where ideology and a vision of a bucolic future civilization can take root. The institutions of containment -- the ones that work to stop extractive power -- are the analogue to the state's military services whereas the counter-narrative institutions -- the ones that work to fill the leadership void of a collapsing extractive power -- are the analogue to the state's diplomatic services.
When the old king, who has lost his vigor, is no longer able to lead the nation it is the young prince who will bear the responsibility of any failures unless he takes his father's place and renews the land. The impulse to fill the void with a new and different leadership style of one's own is the mark of a true leader. The task is not so much to wrest power from one vigorous ruler to the next. That is just old-fashioned, great power warfare and realpolitic. The task is to find those moments or places of power vacuum and to fill the vacuum with a new, vigorous leadership propelled by a counter-narrative that has built into it the regular institutional infra-structure of renewal and legitimate autonomy.
We are describing here an entrepreneurial model of power relations. The entrepreneurial start-up does not try to take on the incumbent on his own turf. Rather, he finds the undefended hill and establishes himself there in the marketplace's open niches. He builds a new culture and then waits for the aging incumbent to collapse under his own weight, only applying the coup de grace at the very end when the last vestiges of reactionary power remaining are unwilling to give up the ghost and so they must be inundated under the new regime's creative waters.
The true politics of renewal is able to anticipate the moments and the situations of the incumbent power's impending collapse and to be prepared with counter-narratives and a readiness, willingness, and ability to lead in a new direction. It is a sort of reverse 'shock doctrine' for the benign rather than for the malign political forces in the world today.
Such a entrepreneurially political approach is tailor-made to Israel and its contemporary as well as ancient geo-political situation. That is the logic of the Bible's political posture -- entrepreneurially to find political opportunities that come about from the self-inflicted decline and collapse of the greater powers of the time and the neighborhood, and to have little Israel light the way into the future.
27 March 2009
The irony of fear and hunger
PTSD sees danger everywhere. The health of PTSD sufferers becomes injured by the unrelenting excess of stress such hyper-vigilance produces in a body.
The right-wing 's insistence on seeing the nation's economics as based on unrelenting and insatiable scarcity, and on seeing the nation's politics as based on imminent, clear and present danger drives the society into a stressed-out state that is a kind of national PTSD.
What allows people to believe in their own safety and abundance is a faith in divine providence. A national PTSD is like the loss of faith in divine providence. Lose faith in divine providence and it makes people believe they need to feed themselves all the time; and it makes them spend their waking moments looking over their shoulders for the enemies lurking in the shadows. National PTSD results in a people that becomes obese and terrified.
A people that loses faith in divine providence develops the a yearning for strong leadership--a leadership that must be allowed, nay, even encouraged, to do whatever it takes to sustain the excess consumption and to secure their (what they perceive to be) vulnerable borders. To accomplish those objectives, the leaders encourage the people to violate the boundaries of the gifts of divine grace and bounty. The nation is driven to use up the creative fundament of the nation's productivity. That leads eventually to the exhaustion of the society and the ultimate collapse of its civilization and the values it promotes.
A nation that lives in a state of unrelenting fear and hunger will collapse under the weight of its own stresses and distresses.
The right-wing 's insistence on seeing the nation's economics as based on unrelenting and insatiable scarcity, and on seeing the nation's politics as based on imminent, clear and present danger drives the society into a stressed-out state that is a kind of national PTSD.
What allows people to believe in their own safety and abundance is a faith in divine providence. A national PTSD is like the loss of faith in divine providence. Lose faith in divine providence and it makes people believe they need to feed themselves all the time; and it makes them spend their waking moments looking over their shoulders for the enemies lurking in the shadows. National PTSD results in a people that becomes obese and terrified.
A people that loses faith in divine providence develops the a yearning for strong leadership--a leadership that must be allowed, nay, even encouraged, to do whatever it takes to sustain the excess consumption and to secure their (what they perceive to be) vulnerable borders. To accomplish those objectives, the leaders encourage the people to violate the boundaries of the gifts of divine grace and bounty. The nation is driven to use up the creative fundament of the nation's productivity. That leads eventually to the exhaustion of the society and the ultimate collapse of its civilization and the values it promotes.
A nation that lives in a state of unrelenting fear and hunger will collapse under the weight of its own stresses and distresses.
A coach's testament
Contentment is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you're capable. UCLA basketball Coach John Wooden's definition of success.
Character and reputation differ in that character is what you are while reputation is what you're perceived to be."
Coach's four rules: never be late; always be neat & clean; no profanity; never criticize a team-mate.
Giving all is victory.
You can lose when you out-score an opponent, and you can win when you are out-scored.
Character and reputation differ in that character is what you are while reputation is what you're perceived to be."
Coach's four rules: never be late; always be neat & clean; no profanity; never criticize a team-mate.
Giving all is victory.
You can lose when you out-score an opponent, and you can win when you are out-scored.
The deeper market failure
Absent self-restraint the forces of market competition de-limit the effect of people's constant impulse to want ever more.
In the absence of market constraints and budget constraints and resource constraints what limits unrestained growth is the resource curse. Subjecting oneself to the market mechanism frees one from the burdens of self-restraint but it exposes one to the dangers of the curses that come from excess.
In the absence of market constraints and budget constraints and resource constraints what limits unrestained growth is the resource curse. Subjecting oneself to the market mechanism frees one from the burdens of self-restraint but it exposes one to the dangers of the curses that come from excess.
Commons and composition
The tragedy of the commons comes from hoarding the extractive resources rather than renewing their fertility; the paradox of composition comes from hoarding the money rather than circulating it. The commons problem comes from failure of clear property rights to the resources' fertility; the composition problem comes from risk of default.
The tragedy of the commons is analogous in the real economy to whatthe paradox of composition signifies in the money economy.When people do not hoard what they need to pass on, we call it tradition. Tradition cures both the tragedy of the commons as well as the paradox of composition.
The tragedy of the commons is analogous in the real economy to whatthe paradox of composition signifies in the money economy.When people do not hoard what they need to pass on, we call it tradition. Tradition cures both the tragedy of the commons as well as the paradox of composition.
Yo ho ho
The pirate plunders another's wealth whereas the entrepreneur fashions and takes what no-one has yet made.
Two kinds of balance/equilibrium
Satiation, sova, means balance, equilibrium, sustainability. Sova plays the role in the dimension of property and apportionement and deservedness that the equilibrium price plays in the dimension of welfare and allocation and fairness. Sova refers to an interior sense of balance and equilibrium, while market clearing prices refer to an exterior manifestation of balance and equilibrium.
Just enough time to get comfortable
Sabbatical years mimic in the economic sphere what democracy looks like in the political sphere. The point of holding elections is to subject the power-holders to regular interruption to their regime. Elections are meant to weaken the advantage of incumbency. That objective is likewise the point of the sabbatical year. It breaks the momentum of economic incumbency. It suspends impoverishment and endebtedness and delivers into the hands of the dis-empowered the prerogatives of rulership, if even for only a moment.
Over a rainbow
Organized economic systems started, at the dawn of civilization, in agriculture, which was renewable but nonetheless susceptible to extractive excess. In modern times economic activity moved to industrial manufacture, which pushed economic activity to a more serious dependence on extraction--this time of raw materials. In contemporary times global industry shifted even further to a more purely extractive system of oil and finance economies, which just last year began to burst. When the oil economy inevitably follows the finance economy over the cliff, what comes next could well be an economic system that finally takes seriously the matter of extraction. With extraction constrained, industry and market transactions would respect the sustainability of productivity and maintain a stable economic order by managing the accumulation and disbursement of surplus. That wouldn't be Kansas anymore.
How sacred is private property?
When the market controls the economy people are taking for granted the respecting of the rules of property; when the government controls the economy the issue is property. As government-regulated economies like China or Russia come to the fore, the rules of private property matter less and less to the proper functioning of the economies. Eventually, private property rights will lose their sacred place in the world's value structures. It would not be the end of the world but it would be the end of something basic in Western society.
What might help a future crop of leaders prevail
Clear eyed empiricism coupled to radical transparency could tunnel through complexity to simplicity.
Expecting to get what you deserve, more or less
The government's role in setting macro-policy according to Akerlof is based on its ability to correct money illusion and the various misconceptions the permanent income hypothesis or rational expectations would lead policy-makers in the private sector to believe. An alternative way to look at the matter is to posit that people take their wages as a measure of their self-image and of what they believe they deserve. The role of government would therefore be to make sure just deserts prevails in the society because just deserts is an important factor in how people make their individual decisions. When the economy heats up so that people are making too much easy-money, money they do not deserve, when the economy starts to head toward an asset bubble with its attendant mis-allocation of resources, then the government needs to intervene to correct the situation.
Seen this way, the role of government is not a matter of regulation so much as it is the setting of long term expectations in society to match what they believe they deserve, the consequence of which would be that people would be able to coordinate better.
Seen this way, the role of government is not a matter of regulation so much as it is the setting of long term expectations in society to match what they believe they deserve, the consequence of which would be that people would be able to coordinate better.
Do you deserve what you're entitled to?
We need to distinguish between what people feel they deserve versus what they feel they're entitled to. Just deserts versus entitlement is a subtle shift that focuses either on what the person has made and the pride s/he takes in that act of production versus on what the person feels comes to him/her by virtue of their membership in the society or some such.
What happens when we deviate from the market
The market defines the consumption decision in terms of a trade-off, and the market defines the production decision in terms of a trade-off. Hence, in a market-based economy, all decisions are couched in terms of prices.
When we deviate from the market we can go in one of two directions: (1) consumption as production; or (2) production as consumption. Consumption as production is plunder. The plunderer simulates production by taking what already is there. Yes, the act of taking could by itself be a costly act that entails exertion and the expenditure of resources and energy, and sometimes plunder can be the mere extraction of natural resources, but in the end the actual productive act is not being performed by the agent who claims the booty, the extracted commodity, as his own. That claim to what someone else produces is the essence of what the market denominates as the consumption decision -- hence 'consumption as production'.
Production as consumption, on the other hand, is caring and contentment. The caretaker enjoys the consumption of the cared-for, and takes pride in having produced that which benefits the cared-for. Yes, the caretaker is getting something for what he produced but the satisfaction is inalienable, it comes out of the act of production and out of the sharing of the product with others. In the end, the pleasure comes not from the consumption of something that someone else made but from the consumption by someone else of something the agent made. That pleasure not from the product but from the making of the product and the delivering of the product to another is the essence of what the market calls the production decision -- hence 'production as consumption'.
When we deviate from the market we can go in one of two directions: (1) consumption as production; or (2) production as consumption. Consumption as production is plunder. The plunderer simulates production by taking what already is there. Yes, the act of taking could by itself be a costly act that entails exertion and the expenditure of resources and energy, and sometimes plunder can be the mere extraction of natural resources, but in the end the actual productive act is not being performed by the agent who claims the booty, the extracted commodity, as his own. That claim to what someone else produces is the essence of what the market denominates as the consumption decision -- hence 'consumption as production'.
Production as consumption, on the other hand, is caring and contentment. The caretaker enjoys the consumption of the cared-for, and takes pride in having produced that which benefits the cared-for. Yes, the caretaker is getting something for what he produced but the satisfaction is inalienable, it comes out of the act of production and out of the sharing of the product with others. In the end, the pleasure comes not from the consumption of something that someone else made but from the consumption by someone else of something the agent made. That pleasure not from the product but from the making of the product and the delivering of the product to another is the essence of what the market calls the production decision -- hence 'production as consumption'.
Pick a country, any country
Implementation of sheviit (land-sabbatical) laws must be national in scope because individuals can't really accomplish the task. Sabbaticals work only when they're operating at the national scale. Asking individuals to accomplish the tasks of stewardship is an empty exercise because stewardship at anything lower than the national scale is doomed to fail.
Stewardship is not only about good intentions, it's about properly defining property rights and then enabling a commercial system that works according the dictates of gift exchange rather than market exchange.
The teaching of the Chumash (Bible) is that stewardship must occur at the national level. That's the point of the laws of sheviit and shemitta (debt forebearance and disbursement of the sabbatical surplus).
A better strategy than getting people with good intentions to practice eco-friendly tasks would be to find a country whose citizens would be amenable to the ways of the stewardship of the environment, and then, as a demonstration project to show the world how it is done and what the national advantages to such an approach really are, to implement the ways of environmental stewardship at the national level. That would be the 'light unto the nations' part of the biblical mandate.
Such an approach is has the advantage that it is not so much anti-corporate as it is pro-stewardship. That it is 'pro-' means the approach doesn't have to be angry. It also means the policy positions don't have to be negative. It means that people are preparing for the inevitable collapse of the corporate, 'mechanical' systems by describing what will take their place.
Gandhi was proposing such a approach when he taught non-violence. Non-violence presumed the resistance to, and thus the containment and eventual collapse of illegitimate power. The problem with Gandhi's experiment was poor timing. Had the Muslim world not descended into an epochal resource curse with the discorvery of oil on their lands at almost exactly the moment his teachings were coming to the fore with the indendence of India and the creation of Pakistan, Gandhi's wisdom would have been much more clearly manifested in the world today.
Stewardship is not only about good intentions, it's about properly defining property rights and then enabling a commercial system that works according the dictates of gift exchange rather than market exchange.
The teaching of the Chumash (Bible) is that stewardship must occur at the national level. That's the point of the laws of sheviit and shemitta (debt forebearance and disbursement of the sabbatical surplus).
A better strategy than getting people with good intentions to practice eco-friendly tasks would be to find a country whose citizens would be amenable to the ways of the stewardship of the environment, and then, as a demonstration project to show the world how it is done and what the national advantages to such an approach really are, to implement the ways of environmental stewardship at the national level. That would be the 'light unto the nations' part of the biblical mandate.
Such an approach is has the advantage that it is not so much anti-corporate as it is pro-stewardship. That it is 'pro-' means the approach doesn't have to be angry. It also means the policy positions don't have to be negative. It means that people are preparing for the inevitable collapse of the corporate, 'mechanical' systems by describing what will take their place.
Gandhi was proposing such a approach when he taught non-violence. Non-violence presumed the resistance to, and thus the containment and eventual collapse of illegitimate power. The problem with Gandhi's experiment was poor timing. Had the Muslim world not descended into an epochal resource curse with the discorvery of oil on their lands at almost exactly the moment his teachings were coming to the fore with the indendence of India and the creation of Pakistan, Gandhi's wisdom would have been much more clearly manifested in the world today.
When food becomes a weapon
The industrialization of farming led to the increase in its scale and in the scale of its technology and of its political/economy.
Industrial farming is farming for export where food becomes a strategic commodity that enters into the military leadership's calculus about national security. All these agra-business developments lead to farming being pushed to extractive extremes, and ultimately to the exhaustion of the nation's soil's fertility.
Industrial farming is farming for export where food becomes a strategic commodity that enters into the military leadership's calculus about national security. All these agra-business developments lead to farming being pushed to extractive extremes, and ultimately to the exhaustion of the nation's soil's fertility.
Blood and soil
"Hypothesis 1: Thnking in terms of bioregions and communities is necessary but not sufficient. We must zero all the way in, down to the land itself, to our final destination and the source of wealth and health -- soil fertility." (Slow Money, Woody Tasch, 2008, page 61)
Actually, it goes further than the land itself. It goes down to the combination of the land and the biomass that constitutes the ingredients of fertility, what we call soil. As the soul of animal life is in the blood, so the soul of plant life is in the soil.
The soil needs caring not only from the proper use of the farm-land but also of the forest-land as well. The forests and the farms work in concert to renew the fertility of the soil.
Actually, it goes further than the land itself. It goes down to the combination of the land and the biomass that constitutes the ingredients of fertility, what we call soil. As the soul of animal life is in the blood, so the soul of plant life is in the soil.
The soil needs caring not only from the proper use of the farm-land but also of the forest-land as well. The forests and the farms work in concert to renew the fertility of the soil.
Sustain or demolish
The difference between Main St and Wall St is that on Main St you work your craft to make a living while on Wall St you work your deals to make a killing.
Pay up
Financial assets tend to be antagonists to material assets. The inflexibility of having to pay back debts and interest or the pressure to grow the return on equity drive the managers of the material assets to extract the value more rapidly than is sustainable. 
Community Supported Agriculture -- CSA
In the CSA model the customers/shareholders also serve as the source for financial capital. The model dis-intermediates the financial institution and the problems of price fluctuations in marketplace for the produce. It thus internalizes the financial function into the relationship between the producer and the consumer. By internalizing the financial function the model honors the stewardship of the storehouses of fertility in the producer and in the consumer, and so it keeps the financial institution from forcing the producers and consumers into an extractive mode of life.
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