Weekly Musings© - “Snow Down”

Weekly Musings© - “Snow Down”

J. Sweeney
December 20, 2009

It’s about time to slow down. Thank goodness for the snow and nature’s strong suggestion to stay in for a day. Now the list lays waiting but a quick pause to jot down some thoughts before they fade away like so many other recent ones. Here are a few recent musings that may receive longer treatment when the world turns more slowly. For now I’ll make like a molecule and slow down with the cold.

A few weeks ago, no, perhaps a few months now, I was sitting with a friend when I noticed the tree outside of my window at work. It hit me like the proverbial bolt; lightening.

As water molecules rub against one another in the atmosphere they create a static electric charge. The clouds begin to build a voltage differential with negative on the bottom of the clouds and positive on the top. The negative charge at the bottom begins to draw positive charge in the Earth toward it. Eventually the charge jumps up from the Earth and down from the cloud, lightening.

As I sat there looking at the naked tree it occurred to me that a similar albeit slower process was at work. Charge in the form of minerals, water, and nutrients build up in the soil. The Sun reaches out with its radiation and with a simple spark of DNA, the seed, lightening in the form of a tree.

Look at the bare tree outside your window, as it reaches to the sky and imagine yourself aging and moving slowly enough to witness it as a flash in the vast expanse of time. It reaches up into the sky and down into the soil briefly and then with dying falls apart, the pattern collapses.

It’s beautiful to think that a walk in the wood is really a walk through a slow motion lightening storm.

Awesome.

On an entirely different topic I was driving home on Thanksgiving and passing the same shopping center for the fourth time that day when it occurred to me that it might be fun to see only the copper.

Imagine a shopping center but all that you can see is the wiring, transformers, circuits, the internals of cash registers, just the copper in the wires.

Can you see the beautiful structure, the wire frame of the whole building, perhaps even the parking lot full of copper coils from the inside of cars?

Now, imagine an alien race watching Earth for millennia thru a telescope. Imagine that they could only see copper. For millions of years the copper sat sedately below the surface slowly pushed up toward the crust by heavier nickel heading to the core. Then a few thousand years ago copper starting coming together into little clumps barely visible thru that distant telescope. The Aliens see axe heads, spear tips, bowls, cups, and eventually armor, all shaped by unseen life. (Remember they only see the copper).

Suddenly about two hundred years ago copper begins rapidly coming to the surface and then nearly instantly it spins out across the continents. Copper threads connecting points all over the planet. Huge elegant cobwebs of copper threads forming everywhere and giving off heat and light, electro magnetic radiation emits and travels out to the stars. What a spectacle to behold. Lucky aliens.

Just a few thoughts that today’s snow permitted time to transcribe…

Some day soon the research at MIT and IBM currently underway will allow us to project thoughts from one mind to another. Until then, your comments are welcome.

Happy Holidays,
Joe

Response to "The Priority of Labor"

A friend recently sent me an email promoting the Catholic teaching or principle of the priority of labor over capital. The Church has been promoting this view for centuries and it is to the detriment of the working poor. What they should be teaching is equity in pay, freedom of movement, and promoting education that would enable workers to become skilled. Below is my initial response to the lead in line to Pope John Paul II's "The Priority of Labor". I reserve the right to respond in greater detail.

B.D.,

Thank you for bringing the thread up again. This is part of why I think it would be interesting to explore the topic, but I am not interested in taking up positions and then defending them. I am more interested in exploring the assumptions of both sides and testing the ideas a bit. For example, the mondragon link you sent has a line "We must first of all recall a principle that has always been taught by the church, the principle of the priority of labour over capital." On the surface that seem compassionate and consistent with deferential treatment of the poor. Until that is, you consider what is meant by capital. Capital is simply stored labor. Nothing more. It is the product of labor that was not consumed but was rather saved. Understood this way there can be no preference between capital and labor. If anything, once basic needs are met, surely there should be a preference for the moral behavior of delayed gratification that enables the accumulation of capital versus the luxury consumption that is usually the alternative.

Moreover, capital, that is the saved product of labor, is the property of the producer created by their moral act of delaying gratification for the purpose of improving the well-being of their family, business, or interests. This is different than excessive profits that exploit the laborer. For indeed the working class have proven better savers (creators of capital) than the debt ridden upper class of recent years. Surely the church would not think that the labor of a financial engineer on wall street should receive priority over the lifetime savings of a grocer, plumber, or dare I say, teacher?

There is an aversion to capitalism within the tradition of Catholicism. I was raised with it and still find myself falling into the pattern of thinking that money is a corrosive element in our society. However, specialized labor leads to surpluses, which can be consumed or saved. The saved (delayed gratification) product of labor can be used to hire new workers, build public goods, or even just protect the worker from downturns in income or the vagaries of life including health crises. I think we need to reconsider the basic assumptions of what is right behavior and what the principles we hold lead to as consequences. A society or tradition that teaches labor over capital might just as well teach consumption over saving. This is the worst thing we could possibly teach the working poor if we want to help them overcome their poverty.

Thanks again for the example.

Healthcare Reform Comment

Here is my brief response to Frank Rich's latest column.

I would like national healthcare. It would be great not to worry about whether we can afford medical care for our children or have to consider the loss of benefits before switching employment. The problem is that enacting such a plan continues to move us away from the model of a restricted role for federal government where only those powers enumerated in the constitution are available to it and the rest are reserved to the people as individuals or to the many states.

You may choose to demonize our fellow citizens and lump the majority of conservatives in with the gun toting crazies but that dismissive attitude fails to illuminate their legitimate reluctance to grant ever more authority to politicians in DC.

How is it that states, not the federal government, are able to provide education to all their students yet you think it appropriate that they not do the same for health care? Maybe you don't see a difference between the roles of state and national governments except that the national government can be used as a means to achieve your goals in one swoop.

The rights we maintain, the gift of Liberty, is the result of a conscious choice on the part of our society and is only maintained by restraining the power of the government. As much as you don't want to give Republicans authority to say who can and cannot marry, so too we must not be seduced into using the awesome power of the federal government to coerce behavior that is not within it's constrained and enumerated authority.

What Massachusetts has begun let others follow. Let our states compete for workers by enacting health reform that improves their competitiveness. Let's keep the Federal Government out of anything for which it is not absolutely necessary. Failing that, let's have a real national debate and amend the Constitution if needed to facilitate the form of government we find preferable.

What are you reading?

With the blessing of downtime peculiar to the teaching profession many of us have been catching up on our reading.

Our school's "One Book, One School" book this year is

"Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David Relin.


I've also been reading:

"The Road to Serfdom" by Freidrich von Hayek

"Thomas Paine: The Right's of Man" by Christopher Hitchens

"The Discourses" by Machiavelli

"Why Lazarus Laughed" by Wei Wu Wei

"Banks and Politics in America" by Hammond

"Investments" by Bodie, Kane, and Marcus

"In Defense of Property" Dietze

"The Dirty Dozen", Robert Levy and William Mellor

As well as a rereading of some favorites...

"The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins

"The Tao te Ching" translated by Stephen Mitchell

Among the numerous children books read out loud to my daughters was one stand out

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling


Still to be completed before summer's end:

"Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstader

"The Word in a Phrase: A Brief History of Aphorism" by James Geary

"The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living" by Fritjof Capra

"The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century", edited by John Brockman


Thank you to those that recommended or in some cases even lent the books above. There is little finer than a good book from a friend. Please mention some of your own summer reading especially if you recommend them to fellow members of WeeklyMusings.

Response to Paul Krugman's "Obama's Trust Problem"

I am an independent who voted for President Obama. He won my vote by promising to leave Iraq and to repeal the outrageous doctrine of preemptive war. As a conservative I would prefer to see healthcare, education, etc. left to the many states. However, elections have consequences and we should expect candidates to live up to their stated principles.

Conservatives weren't able to stop President Bush from launching his ill-conceived war of aggression nor were we able to restrain his prolific spending. Even though he was elected on a campaign of fiscal discipline and humility in international affairs. We all remember his promise to avoid "nation building".

The financial crisis was shared by both administrations and both spent our children's money to prop up corrupt financial institutions. The wars, the spending, the bailouts, all were done against a backdrop of enormous protests and flagrant disregard of the people's will.

The vested interests of lobbyist and corporations are winning on every major issue. In regards to the war, Blackwater, Bechtel, Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, etc. won massive contracts, billions of dollars. The people lost. We lost our brothers and sisters in arms, our standing among the nations of the world, and some would argue our opportunity to defeat radical Islam.

On the issue of the bailouts, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Berkshire Hathaway, etc. won to the delight of their again enriched executives. The people lost and will be paying for it dearly. The massive bailouts are a redistribution of wealth from the many to the connected few.

Now, on healthcare, the insurance, medical equipment, and drug companies are winning. Once more the forces of special interests are arrayed against the will of the people and look ready to win.

If with a majority in congress and a Democrat in the White House, progressives are not able to have their voices heard and enact universal healthcare then I fear it may be time to reconsider the efficacy of our national government. The system is not working.

Debt Payments

Weekly Musings – Debt Payments
J. Sweeney
07/31/2009

Imagine for a moment that upon the death of your parent, you became responsible for their debts. The phone rings and calls start to pour in from banks, credit card companies, the mortgage company, the nursing home, even the state and local government. In total you find that you, your siblings, and all of your children each owe approximately $37,700 (or $60,000 per worker). Further, the amount that you owe is growing each day.

The western world has a tradition of debts being obligations of the individual not to be passed on to the children. After all, how can you hold me accountable for the choices of my parents? Since I have no say over their spending, no authority, then it stands to reason that I cannot be held accountable for the outcome, no responsibility. We take this idea very seriously. In fact it underpins our financial freedom to act as individuals instead of patriarchal family units.

Unfortunately, it is breaking down. Indeed, you, your siblings and worst of all your children and any living grandchildren now each owe approximately $37,000. Our national debt has grown to over eleven trillion dollars ($11,000,000,000,000.00).

So what? For as long as most of us can remember (except briefly with President Clinton and a Republican Congress) we have run deficits and the debt has thereby grown. We’ve grown accustomed to the idea and for a long time the rest of the world celebrated our debt-based spending spree.

Soon, very soon, the bill is coming due. In the past this meant that the government issued bonds and then printed money and bought back (retired) some of the bonds. Nice trick eh? Let me explain that again. Our government is not allowed to print money to pay the bills. So, if there is not enough money from taxes, they issue bonds to the public. Then, the government goes out and buys the bonds back with new money.

Sounds good right? Well, obviously not. Imagine that you hold a lot of our debt and a lot of our currency and we start paying you with these newly created dollars. You might get a bit annoyed. You might, and here is the big change coming, demand that we start paying our debt with something other than dollars.

If, instead of paying our debt with dollars, our children and grandchildren were required to pay in Euros, or gold, or oil, what would that be like?

For example US proven oil reserves are approximately 21 billion barrels. At today’s spot price of $70 the total proven reserves of the country are worth $1,470,000,000,000 or only $1.47 trillion. Clearly, we’re not paying our debt with oil.

We also have about 11 or 12 billion dollars of gold bullion, and an estimated 63 billion in foreign currency.
In other words, we could nationalize every drop of oil in this country and hand it along with all of our gold and foreign currency over to China to pay that share of the debt and we would still owe other countries and private citizens more than $10 trillion.

China is not the problem. We are.

The problem is that we are spending money without earning it. Unless we dramatically slash government spending across the board but especially for Social Security and Medicare or dramatically raise taxes, we will go broke.

How will we actually go broke? When foreign governments begin to require payment in goods or currencies other than our phony dollar bills, we’re toast.


My solution:

The Baby Boomers are about to retire. But, they can’t afford it. We can’t afford to let them leave us with the tab for the debts they’ve run up. They have spent without prudence or thought for the future and are about to leave without paying the tab.

It’s time to start demanding responsible government. No more bank bailouts, clunker car incentives, National Endowment of the Arts, bridges to nowhere, or rainforests in the Midwest. It is time to stop spending. It’s going to hurt like hell because it will lead to a massive recession. Unfortunately this is the inheritance the Boomers are leaving us.

The Social Security and Medicare minimum age requirements need to be moved immediately to 75. Not tomorrow, not in over a decade, immediately. It should then be means tested, meaning only the very poorest would qualify.

Private Property and Theft by Desire

Last week Alison and I took the children for a little vacation at their Grandparents’ vacation home in Rock Hall, a small community on the eastern shore of Maryland. My Mother, “Gran”, had graciously provided a copy of the local paper for us to enjoy with coffee in the morning. It was fun to read about the goings on in a different place. One article in particular caught my attention and in light of having recently read Ayn Rand’s, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” I began to muse…

It seems that the foolhardy folk of Chestertown, Maryland recently passed revisions to their Tree Ordinance. The new guidelines would, “require a permit for the cutting of large, healthy trees on private property.” Mayor Margo Bailey is quoted by the Kent County News as saying, “You need to consider their other uses beyond decorating your property.”

Alice McNow, a member of the planning commission said that she, “would be heart-broken if her neighbor cut down a large tree that shaded her house.” Another member of the committee, James Tobriner, said that the ordinance did not apply to pruning and trimming to maintain a healthy tree, indeed that was not only permitted but encouraged!

So, the private property owner is encouraged to spend his capital to provide an unearned benefit to others simply because they want it. This is a scandalous assault on private property, capitalism, and most importantly on the founding principles of this country.

Our nation is the unique experiment in human history where Capitalism was first attempted as an organizing principle for a society. This government of the people determined that our society would be organized and its production distributed to the producers, the innovators, the organizers, in short, the doers, not the consumers.

Chestertown’s ridiculous ordinance turns that concept on its head and allocates unearned benefits to those that want something, not those that produce or maintain the production of the benefit. This form of majority rule is the empty husk of freedom. It is the final stage of a collapsing society attempting self-rule.

You may be wondering how we get from a silly ordinance to the collapse of a free society, but sadly the walk is not long and I hope to illuminate the path a bit so that we can turn aside. Let us consider the consequences of the ordinance.

The stated goal of the ordinance is to maintain and increase the amount of the tree canopy in the town. I maintain that the real political goal is to further accumulate to local bureaucrats power to which they have no legitimate claim, but let’s take the official’s at their word.

If the goal is to maintain and increase the amount of tree canopy you would expect the town to enact a policy which was likely to lead to the desired outcome. Consider instead the likely outcomes of this ordinance.

Imagine yourself a property owner with a tree now at 35’ in height (the ordinance currently applies to trees over 45’ feet). Each year you find yourself paying some fee that is likely to grow over time for the pruning of the tree to keep it from growing over property lines, into electrical lines, and over useful land for gardens, skylights, etc. You now have a choice. You can continue to let your tree grow and lose the right to decide or you can exercise your right now, to cut the tree, and replant a smaller growing tree, perhaps a dogwood or a dwarf.

Even if you think it unlikely that most property owners would choose to cull a healthy tree approaching the ordinance minimum, consider the effect on your property value were you to allow the tree to continue to grow. Potential buyers of your property would see the over 45’ tree as an impediment to putting on an addition, creating an outdoor living space, adding a pool, creating a large cutting or vegetable garden, etc. You have reduced future owners’ options, and therefore your property value.

Perhaps instead you are considering the planting of a new tree for the purposes of shade or aesthetics. Would you plant a tree that would become a financial burden and property restriction, or would you plant a tree that avoided the ordinance?

I ask you then, what kind of tree canopy can we expect in Chestertown in just 30 years? Would you expect most new trees to be over, or under, 45 feet?

So, the town fails to reach the stated goal of maintaining and extending its tree canopy.

Now, let us ask why. When you allow the majority to take what it wants by government fiat (force), you remove the incentive for production of the desired good. If you leave private the costs but make public the benefit, the producers stop producing.

Chestertown will learn the consequences of its misguided policy soon enough. It will be a good lesson for the backward thinking “citizens”. Sadly, it is not a lesson they needed to learn by experience, for it has already been taught to us by history. Communist Russia is the easy example but there are many others.

How could Chestertown achieve the intended result? They could offer a stipend to any property owner with at least one healthy tree over 45 feet in height. If you wish to enjoy the benefit, provide incentives for its production.

If the small-minded choices of some backwater town seem too insignificant to warrant mention I ask you to reflect on the lesson as it pertains to current national debates.

This slow transformation of our society from one based on production to one based on consumption is corruption our very nature. It is undermining our long-term growth and success. We must go back and consider what has facilitated our remarkable achievements and turn aside from the modern day socialists currently calling themselves Democrats and Republicans.

We have fallen victim to the trap of consumption, the belief that wanting something badly enough entitles us to it. Wanting something does not entitle you to it. Only the producer has a moral claim to the produced.