Congress: Hitched to the Status Quo

To lead is to be out in front, pointing the jet’s nose one way rather than another. Leadership is not that which causes drag at the back of the plane. Leadership is not that which holds a society in place or protects the vested interests. Whether envisioning something new or a return to a better time, a leader is not oriented to the status quo. It is significant, therefore, that the Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, one of the two chambers in the American Congress, has stated publicly that the Congress is rigged to advantage the status quo. The stunning implication is that members of Congress are actually anti-leaders.

The full essay is at "Congress and the Status Quo."

When Platitudes Undermine Real Change: The Case of U.S. President Obama

U.S. President Obama’s 2010 speech at the UN’s annual opening lacked tangible proposals.  For example, he urged progress on the Middle East peace talks, but proffered no proposal.  He said Africa could be prosperous agriculturally, but gave no proposal for how.  He claimed that corruption in governments of developing countries is a problem, but offered no solution.  Pointing to corruption in general diffuses responsibility so talking about it does not shame anyone into making hard choices. Such platitudes belied the president's claim to being an advocate of real change. 

The full essay is at "Platitudes Undermine Real Change."

On the History of Thanksgiving: Challenging Assumptions

We humans are so used to living in our subjectivity that we hardly notice it or the effect it has on us. In particular, we are hardly able to detect or observe the delimiting consequences of the assumptions we hold on an ongoing basis. That is to say, we have no idea (keine Anung) of the extent to which we take as unalterable matters that are actually quite subject to our whims individually or as a society (i.e., shared assumptions). In this essay, I use the American holiday of Thanksgiving, specifically its set date on the last Thursday of November, to illustrate the following points.

The full essay is at "On the History of Thanksgiving."

Protest Movements 101

David Johnston of Reuters opined on October 7, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street “protests show signs of sparking a major change in U.S. politics by creating common ground among people with wildly divergent views. The key to their significance will be whether they foster a wholesale change in political leadership in 2013 or whether Americans return a vast majority of incumbents in both parties at all levels of government.” But are “wildly divergent views” really represented, and did the movement translate dramatic camera-ready protest parades and sit-ins into grassroots work to get specifically anti-corporate candidates past the primaries and into office in 2012?  I contend that from the get-go, the Occupy Wall Street movement set itself on a trajectory antithetical to being able to answer both of these questions in the affirmative. In so doing, the movement’s “non-leaders” sowed the seeds of the movement’s demise—or at the very least of being relegated as partisan and thus contained as a sub-part in the system.

The full essay is at "Protest Movements 101."

Real or Incremental Change?

On October 13, 2010, Fox News reported a poll that found that women were turning on Obama.  The reason cited was that they feel there has been too much change—that it has been “jarring.”  I was stunned—wondering if I was listening to a broadcast from another planet. I remembered that when I had been sampling a fattening food item in a grocery store in my antiquated home town in Illinois; the old woman who gave me the sample, said, “We have lots of devils here!” as she was handing me the sample.  She was referring to the array of food samples in the store that day a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  My reaction, which I charitably did not share with her, was, Oh, horrors! I wondered what century she was from (probably Calvin's, I concluded privately as I chewed a “devilish” olive). I wondered, moreover, why some people magnify little things into horrendous sins. Such people, I concluded, cannot seem to let go of what is to the rest of us so utterly antiquated and get with it. That is, why are some people so resistant to change? Why do they perceive small, incremental changes as somehow momentous—even jarring?

The full essay is at "Real or Incremental Change."

Business CEO’s Overstating Political Uncertainty in the United States

The impact on business of political uncertainty in countries that are seized by revolution can be substantial—so much so in fact that CEO’s and board directors are motivated to avoid the uncertainty itself. I submit that business analysts of political risk tend unwittingly to routinely overstate the uncertainty arising from incoming U.S. presidential administrations. If I am correct in this claim, CEO’s and board directors pay too much heed to political uncertainty itself in the making of major strategic decisions involving operations in the American context.

The full essay is at "Business CEO's Overstating Uncertainty"

Electric Utilities Thwart Solar Applications: A Conflict of Interest Rewarding the Status Quo

Considering the contribution of coal-burning power-plants to atmospheric carbon-emissions and thus global warming, governments around the world should be encouraging rather than discouraging home-owners to install solar panels. That is to say, we ought not privilege the status quo when it has contributed so much already to an uncomfortable or even uninhabitable Earth for mankind. So it is unfortunate that energy officials in Hawaii’s government had to step in to pressure—no, order—the Hawaiian Electric Company to approve its “lengthy backlog” of solar applications.[1] I submit that the officials should have gone further in correcting for the conflict of interest in the utility. Put in the vernacular, electric companies tended at the time to screw customers who could sell back “home-grown” solar power. The root problem here is in the utilities’s dual roles of seller and consumer of power.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

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[1] Diane Cardwell, “Utilities See Solar Panels as Threat to Bottom Line,” The New York Times, April 19, 2015.

Stifling Change: Columbus Day and Thanksgiving

In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated at harvest-time, on October 12^th, rather than a week before the first month of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. For the States south of Canada, whether their respective peoples are cold or warm on the third Thursday in November, the holiday’s date is etched in stone, given the illustrious aura of the U.S. president who had enshrined the date in the midst of a horrendous war between the USA and CSA in the 1860s. Few people would dare even entertain the natural assimilation of Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day on October 12^th. So, well after harvest in most of the States and bunched in with Christmas and New Years—effectively ridding the latter of any left-over enthusiasm—people in the States in the northern climes are consigned to stuff themselves like Turkey birds while the surviving natural turkeys shiver outside. Human nature itself may be hardwired against change, and the massive scale of modern political association may exacerbate the paralysis. 

The full essay is at "Stifling Change."

On the Tyranny of the Status Quo

Ever wondered why so much energy must be expended to dislodge a long-established institution, law, or cultural norm? Why does the default have so much staying power? Are we as human beings ill-equipped to bring about, not to mention see, even the “no-brainer” changes that are so much (yet apparently not so obviously) in line with our individual and collective self-interest? In this essay, I look at Ukraine, Spain, and Illinois to make some headway on this rather intractable difficulty.

The full essay is at "On the Tyranny of the Status Quo"

U.S. Postal Service: Home Delivery Up Next?

After years of billion-dollar losses, the U.S. Postal Service announced in February 2013 that the “long-held tradition of Saturday delivery” would come to an end. Only packages would still be delivered on Saturdays. The Postal Service expected the change to save $2 billion a year. That even such a minor “tradition” would have had such staying power amid billions of dollars of losses supports the old adage, old habits die hard. It is as if even a minor change from a long-standing practice would throw us into chaos. Our tolerance for ending things that have been around seemingly forever is far too limited.

Moreover, the human aversion to changing long-standing customs or practices adversely narrows perception itself. For example, the much costlier, labor-intensive practice of delivering mail to homes was as though above critique. Particularly with many Americans paying their bills online, the “need” for mail delivery even five days a week to one’s house can alternatively be viewed as antiquated.  It is as if that practice had gone on as though without any thought on it itself.

                                               Is this highly labor-intensive custom really necessary?    source: zimbio

The door-to-door salesmen selling vacuums or Bibles had surely become a relic long after the film Paper Moon popularized the lifestyle. Why then have we held on to the notion that mail should be delivered to one’s apartment building or house? We go to stores to get food and medicine. Particularly with so many people paying bills online, is mail so much more vital than food or medicine that we couldn’t just as well stop by our local post office to pick up our mail a few times a week? At the very least, we would not be bothered by the anxiety of whether a threatening notice is waiting for us at home. Just as computer technology has enabled the automation of stored-book retrieval in a few academic libraries (e.g., the University of Chicago), the Postal Service could automate mail retrieval so millions of P.O. Boxes would not be necessary.

In short, we humans are not very good at “thinking outside the box” of current custom. Put another way, habits that have gone on seemingly forever have a habit of going on mindlessly. The U.S. Postal Service has suffered greatly from this particular human proclivity. Perhaps with a wider perspective other institutions can be found that are similarly suffering assumed demands to perpetuate practices that are no longer justified.

Source:

“U.S. Postal Service Right to End Era of Saturday Delivery: Poll,” The Huffington Post, February 9, 2013.

The West Crawling on Syria

Those who laud the efficiency of the market mechanism are particularly wont to point to the slow mechanizations of government machinery. Cautiousness along with a subtle bias in favor of the status quo may be the culprit. For example, after perhaps a year of urgings by Western governments for Assad of Syria to step down, finally a lone governor of a large E.U. state ventured to say that his state would recognize Assad’s opposition as the legitimate government of Syria. “France asks the Syrian opposition to form a provisional government — inclusive and representative — that can become the legitimate representative of the new Syria,” Francois Hollande was quoted by news agencies as saying on August 27, 2012 during a speech at the Élysée Palace. “France will recognize the provisional government of Syria once it is formed.” It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether the statement would make any difference in Syria.
 

Part of the reason why European states formed a union was because a united front would have more power both economically and politically. Were the E.U. Parliament to offer to recognize Assad’s opposition as the legitimate government of Syria, the announcement would have more punch behind it. This is why the American states consolidated their foreign-policy power at the union level. Simply put, the world would be more likely to deem it as important.
 

Beyond the question of whether the E.U. should take on a greater role in foreign policy (the union does have a foreign minister) is the matter of why Western governments were so reluctant (or slow) to recognize Assad’s opposition as the government of Syria. American officials had stated that Assad had lost the right to rule because his government had turned on so many Syrian civilians in killing them. The recognition of another government is more or less implied. Why not make it official? Why hold on so to the status quo, even after it has been deemed to be illegitimate?  Put another way, why must so many people be killed before even an implied step is taken?
 

Strategic concerns typically weigh heavily in the formulation of foreign policy. The possible reactions of China and Russia were no doubt salient in the calculations of the foreign policy experts at the time. Even so, it seems that too much cautiousness (i.e., avoiding even a low-probability negative reaction) goes with the calculating orientation itself in the formulation of foreign policy, which can be at the expense of common sense. If Assad was no longer held as the legitimate ruler of Syria, it follows that some other person or group could (and should) be recognized as legitimate. Furthermore, that such recognition would trigger Russian military retaliation should have been regarded as a stretch at best. The result of the excess cautiousness is that Russia and China were essentially able to proclaim the status quo as the default (a default whose legitimacy had been explicitly refuted in the West).
 

Put another way, the desire not to rock the boat even just a bit by paddling can be self-defeating if the boat is filling up with water. The mechanism by which Western governments formulate and implement foreign policy may be too mired in statecraft at the expense of not only common sense, but also the human rights of a people elsewhere in the world.
 

Source:

Kareem Fahim and Rick Gladstone, “France Says It Would Recognize Provisional Syrian Government,” The New York Times, August 27, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/world/middleeast/rebels-claim-to-shoot-down-syrian-helicopter.html?_r=1&ref=world

 

 

Economic Inequality in the U.S.: A Conflagration of Accumulated Dead Wood

According to the Congressional Research Service, the share of total net worth held by the less affluent half of American households dropped from 3.6% in 1995 to 1.1% in 2010. Meanwhile, the share held by the top 10 percent increased from 67.2% to 74.5 percent. That is to say, ten percent of the American population holds three-quarters of all of the wealth. The top 1 percent went from holding 30.1% to 34.5% of the wealth. According to the report, "Inequality is the term commonly applied to the concentration of total net worth among the relatively few households at the top of the wealth distribution." The study shows that inequality increased in the U.S. during the 1990s and 2000s.

Perhaps of all the statistics listed in the report, the one that leaps off the page as a harbinger of future problems in terms of democracy concerns the fact that half of the American population holds only one percent of the wealth in the United States. This means that half of the population has little at stake and therefore little to lose. It is a feat of the sheer breadth and depth of propaganda from the top one percent via the corporate media companies that the bottom fifty percent continue to buy into the system, figuratively speaking, rather than revolt. At the very least, to have half of a population excluded is dangerous, even if only potentially at the moment. In terms of quality of life, society itself would have a much better feel to it were the wealth not confined to 50 percent of the population (with the top ten percent of the population owning 75% of the wealth).

No one likes to have one’s property taken, even if one would not be inconvenienced by the removal.  Hence the dreaded term of “redistribution” is excoriated. However, trends such as those described above can come from systemic biases rather than by outright taking from the poor; similarly, a design could “lean” in the direction of economic equality without overtly taking from the rich. To be sure, the super-rich, or multi-billionaires, could legitimately be subject to direct redistribution because after a certain point a person’s additional wealth exceeds that which can be spent. To play investment games with wealth while half of a population goes without (including many without healthcare) can be subjected to critique as evincing a rather warped sense of priorities in terms of values.

Therefore, both the design of the American political economy and the assumption that no amount of wealth can ever be too much from the standpoint of societal values could be subjected to critique. Raising such basic questions after the twenty-year trend of increasing inequality could in turn be part of a wider societal awakening in the context of not only a new century underway by a decade, but also a new millennium. Even back in 2000, the recognition could have been that a new status quo should at least be attempted in a “spring cleaning” of sorts during the first decade of the new millennium. It was not already too late even in the second decade for a wholesale re-consideration by society at large of that which had been taken for granted in the status quo.

In addition to subjecting the corporate capitalist system and the related amount of economic inequality to a fundamental debate, a constitutional convention in each of the fifty republics, and one for the U.S. constitution itself could be called on the basis that a new millennium calls for fundamental re-examination of the status quo, which is no longer rightfully the default. For example, the long trend of declining federalism could finally be subject to a decision either to restore that system or make the de facto near-consolidation de jure too, constitutionally.

Admittedly, my suggestion is a pretty tall order, and therefore very unlikely to see the light of day. Instead, the unquestioned hegemony of the antiquated default is likely to go on, unthreatened by any societal awakening, especially from the half of society with a vested interest in upsetting the apple cart. Indeed, human nature itself my strongly favor tomorrow being rather like today, instead of being rid of all the dead wood (which can easily catch fire).

The 1988 fire in Yellowstone spread “like wildfire” in large part because of the years of Interior Department policy against allowing contained fires to incrementally consume the accumulating dead wood. Similarly, the dead wood of economic inequality (and political consolidation) renders the American empire extremely vulnerable. One indication of this sort of unthinking build-up is the $16 trillion imbalance represented by the debt being held by the U.S. Government as of 2012. The less tangible dead wood may be even more dangerous.

Once a fire starts (e.g., higher interest rates or small riots), it could quickly get out of control before anyone has any idea that the ship called America will founder as if by some mathematical certainty. Fifty-one percent on one end of a balancing scale is by definition a majority. To put it another way, what goes around comes around. Lack of concern for the other half is likely to have its own consequences, even if only for one’s posterity.

Source:

Dan Froomkin, “Half of American Households Hold 1 Percent of Wealth,” The Huffington Post, July 19, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/households-wealth-american-1-percent_n_1687015.html#slide=more217997