Trading up

Thomas Friedman made a very good point in his op-ed column on CAFTA in the Times today (6/24/05). The hazard of protectionism in a rapidly growing global economy is shutting yourself out, proverbialy cutting off your nose to spite your face. With China on the make, particularly, it is almost certain that trade barriers between the US and Central America would undermine joint ventures between US designers and Central American producers. Competiton with China is going to be nip and tuck and we shouldn't let protectionist urges do that.

First, though, let's take a moment and celebrate the problem. It's been a hundred years or so that the developed economies, the US and old Europe mainly, have been doling out a few fish and unsuccessfully trying to teach the rest of the world how to catch their own. It was a largely disappointing enterprise, save for easing our guilt for being rich and not knowing how to share it. Just last week we signed onto canceling the debt of a number of African countries, for example, giving up on decades of old pump priming that didn't work. So, maybe it's not quite uniform, but globalization is indeed now finally here. If it's a surprise, well then it's a great surprise, wonderful evidence that long patient effort in support of just causes can really pay off. Think about it, wouldn't the world be a disgusting place if it didn't?

Of course, now that we can declare significant success, we also have to figure out what to do about it. Globalization does indeed bring with it serious competition, leaving us undercut on a lot of our best hands. One otherwise hidden painful loss is all our formerly internal legal and cultural agreements on how businesses should behave, now effectively thrown in disarray. Business culture itself spreads the good, and bad, practices of those that spread most rapidly. Other deals are off. We have to do over our deals on the basic problem that business leaders have a feduciary responsibility to undercut their employees and their environments. Do we let it be just a free-for-all with the lowest standards of the inexperienced societies sure to win in the short run? Do we take carefully designed steps of self-defense? Do we take responsibility for teaching those following our lead how to do something better than just get away with the most money? They say business does better when it doesn't wreck its people or its place. Are we willing to wait for another hundred years while the rest of the world finds that out?

Look, we've got computers, we can do it. It'll take some effort developing standards and self-correcting mechanisms, but there's no reason the world should trade favorably with businesses which, for example, don't respect their environments or include in their costs either credible retirement plans or set asides that allow workers to save for themselves. Too sudden a change, or too heavy or loose a hand, would definately invite abuse, but that's no reason not to find some reasonable place to start and to persue globally raising and equalizing business standards, aiming even well above where our own are now. The businesss providing the best stewardship would finally get a direct reward for it, a huge plus. There's also the other motivation... If we don't we're likely to loose our shirts. We got the car started, now the job becomes one of steering.

I think that's pretty good!

Why I've been so quiet

Call this a draft, maybe I’ll come back to smooth it out. I try to be daring, pure in heart and completely honest. It’s not easy, but it sure does feel good when I am able. Some people seem to have chosen to simplify the problem, to have either their faith or their reason shut out the other half. I find each needs the other, without reason faith has no relevance and without faith reason has no purpose.

My dad was a physicist, the ultimate staid rationalist and a very regular old fashioned Protestant. Life was rather dull, and then I smelled a rat, actually lots of them, conventional thinking that simply didn’t have the ring of truth. That was a long time ago. Trying to be considerate, of course, there’s now no idea I wouldn’t still gladly smash to bits if it does not have it.

It’s not, for example, quite truthful to harden individual sites to protect them against terrorism. It doesn’t create a barrier against terrorism. It acts more as a diversion of the threat toward unprotected targets, and doesn’t recognize the nature of the problem. Open societies are based on trust, and there's a breech. We need to accept the threat and face the problem. There's only one way to end it really, and that's to stop making enemies. That’s easier said than done, of course, and there’s much to say about who could be reconnected and how, but let’s consider the antithesis.

Vilifying your enemies is a tried and true practice of charismatic leaders, and well worth smashing to bits. It’s both strategically misguided and deeply un-Christian. Christ taught us the power of love, not the love of power after all, and the latter is what vilifying your enemies is largely for, in addition to running up your own false pride and dishonestly subjugating your listeners. When faced with a threat do we then need to abandon ourselves to panic and give up on self-defense? No, but resisting the urge to hate and the war feavers it feeds will get you threatened with that and worse.

just making up the losses on volume!

It’s curious that the Republican's new twist on the Social Security reform ignores both the long run solvency of the system and the long run solvency of the people who rely on it. Yes, the new idea makes a tiny bit more sense than for the federal government to borrow the life savings of its citizens (that was the last great idea)! Now the idea is to give away the trust fund surplus that future generations will need. Fortunately people are really stupid and it endears them to you to abuse their trust. Once upon a time if you wanted to be taken seriously you’d try to actually address the problem.

The Democrats are not shedding a lot of light in the darkness either. "No comment" is no help at all. What seems guaranteed is that the projections everyone agees on are not likely to be far off, long term declining savings, long term declining employee benefits and long term declining government benefits. We need to match that to long term increased life expectancy and long term increasing medical, energy and housing costs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this does not work, that economic growth simply isn’t doing what it’s supposed to.

Is getting richer all the time making us poorer anyway? It could really be. The last 35 years, my whole work life, have been really rich for some folks, for example. I now own a computer and can be read around the world, which is neat. I’m now a seasoned professional, quite good at what I do and the highest paid guy in a respected firm. Funny thing is I remember a good starting salary in 1970 was $10,000. Yea I did some other things, and I'm not the owner, but discounting for inflation I still haven't matched that good starting salary yet! I think that's weird. [http://www.nber.org/data] Individual experience, of course, generally does not make a good aggregate measure, but may accuratly characterize trends of a sector. Here the real story doesn't seem to be about the whole, but the persistently diverging experience of the parts.

When they're right theyre right!

Joe Frank, the late night NPR weirdo, renders his imaginary average American characters and situations with a wandering laser beam, creating fascinating strangers. Last night he started talking philosophy, gave me the opposite reaction and I just had to shut it off. We’re all not good at something it seems.

For a while I've been wondering how I can give credit where credit is due to the neo-cons. I’m generally loath to give them and inch, considering their tendency to ridiculously abuse any opening. It would be SO helpful if they would just say what they mean, for example. I can't tell, was it a mistake or an accident that the neo-con led welfare reform in the 90’s, made practical by President Clinton, actually produced a liberating experience for a lot of people formerly trapped on the dole? Who knows? Time and again the neo-cons are so quick with rhetoric cloaking obviously mean proposals with heroic images it’s impossible to tell which they’re more snowed by, and they’re anything but consistent. What about this not "legislating from the bench" idea that seemed so important a few years ago. Politicizing the judiciary now seems to almost be their central purpose! What is that?

I don't think there's any more long standing neo-con objective than to reduce government spending and return to simpler times. It wouldn't have occurred to me perhaps, and they have made a big point of it, but why, at the same time, are they also leading promoters of the things complicating all our lives, amplifying our impacts on the earth and adding to the tasks of government, this endlessly accelerating economic growth? They’re not the only ones, but they have sure stuck their noses in it, and it doesn’t make sense. They promote a return to simplicity and exploding complication at the same time. I think what happens is that we get the one message from a fear of loosing our freedoms, and the other from our big and little greeds, and somehow stick it all together. Real smart! With all due respect, we’re all perfect idiots sometimes, perhaps especially when it comes to the important things. Life is too confusing and we really do need someone less involved in the passions of our own inspiration to help set us straight.

Shrinking government is a very good idea… a great idea. Government is essential for some things, and can deliver with excellence, but we've all seen hopelessly inefficient and counter productive bureaucracy and felt powerless to do anything about it. Maybe we could introduce budget competition between work groups within the same department, using peer reviewed performance measures. Lets look at the problem and do something. Lets also look squarely at what’s actually making government's task more complicated.

It's the boundary problem. We're all continually increasing our spheres of influence, living in a finite world, and dealing with the overlap requires more and more complicated coordination with 3rd party oversight, government.

a passer bye

I’d really like to apologize to him for arguing with what he thought Senator Durbin meant about torture at Guantánamo recalling Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. He was in such anguish, a passer bye on the sidewalk who challenged me with his feeling of insult while I collected signatures to put a slate of local candidates on the upcoming primary ballot in NYC. Even if I think being inhumane to prisoners harms our cause, not acknowledging his life changing experience with real torture was a mistake. I have a lot of radical ideas, easily misunderstood, and I’m in awe of how the worlds we create within our minds bounce off reality and each other, sometimes shaking us to the core.