Two houses up the street from me is a brown house that belonged to Bill Hurst. He had a large family with kids around my age and I hung out there a lot. The driveway in the foreground beloned to the Colwell’s. There is a narrow storm drain that ran underneath the lenght of the driveway. One time a soccer ball went down the outlet to the drain pipe near the garage in back. Being of stout heart and foolish mind I slithered my way down to get it. This drew a neighborhood crowd, including my father once he heard. A storm was on the horizon and my father, a natural worrier, thought that I would get stuck and a lightning bold would strike the storm drain and kill me. I made it out OK, at the outlet you see right in the foreground of the picture. The rest of the neighborhood got a good show, provided by both me and my father.
Tags: Sense of Place
I no longer watch corporate media news, but I was informed about some talking heads out there claiming Haiti is getting what they deserved. That is why I don’t watch corporate media news. I don’t care if those pundits came from one of the most respected think tanks, those are the most dangerous ones for reinforcing dogma. To claim that any country in the western hemisphere is solely responsible for their own tragedies is either blissfully ignorant or diabolical. A closer look at our role in the western hemisphere is warranted.
During my family’s work camp experience in the Dominican Republic I learned that, because of the large role IBM has in their economy, a small hit to that company from our perspective amounts to a full scale recession there. This provides insight as to the impact of corporations in a global economy. Corporations centralize resources to expand markets. There is nothing sinister about that, but there are certain unavoidable costs and benefits associated with that economic practice. If you concentrate resources you can do some impressive things, but the natural resiliency that comes through decentralized diversity is lowered. Every ecologist knows this principle, and the study of resource distribution known as economics should be aware as well. In our country we have some built in resiliency to corporations because our economy is so large that even large corporations are still part of a diverse mixture. The same cannot be said for small countries.
So multinational corporations in small countries generally means huge vulnerability to economic disturbances but, hey, don’t they get the huge capital gains advantage of a large corporation as well? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Economists have long championed the principle of comparative advantage, which asserts that in a global economy a country that can produce both high and low value goods should focus on the high value while other (underdeveloped) countries focus on the low value goods. This may be good for the global economy in a “greatest average utility” sense, and certainly good for the few richest countries in this global context, but not for the many countries that produce mainly the low value goods. A bigger problem still is the practice of paying labor at the market equilibrium of a developing country and selling the goods at the market equilibrium of a developed country. That’s a clever manipulation of multiple markets that really does not abide by free market principles, particularly since the excess capital formed through this practice tends to be concentrated in the country that consumes rather than the one that produces. “Having your cake and eating it to” is normally a strange saying to me, but is appropriate for describing the benefits to developed countries in a global economy.
Ah, but don’t the underdeveloped countries yet deserve the capital drain that results, since they consent to playing an inferior role in a global economy? I suppose you could use the word “consent,” but “extortion” is a more accurate term. Since 1893, when we sponsored our first overthrow of a foreign government in Hawaii, the United States has been better and more prolific at overthrowing governments than any other country in the world. Granted, in different eras we needed different approaches. During the “banana republic” years we were pretty brazen about sending some of our troops in to support the overthrow of Central American governments, at times replacing fledgling democracies for an effective dictatorship that would be more friendly to fruit corporations. During the more recent “Operation Condor” era we had a more underground approach to backing the right kind of South American governments with the right kind of sympathies for multinational corporations. Suffice it to say this was a busy, busy time for the CIA.
There really is no government in the western hemisphere that we have not influenced towards our advantage, their disadvantage, or both. Yet the amount and type of influence varies. Puerto Rico and Haiti provide examples of perfect opposites. We have been fully committed in our involvement with Puerto Rico, to the extent that they became one of our territories. Ironically, with this full commitment comes a bit of self-governing autonomy, perhaps even more autonomy in some ways than possessed by one of the fifty states. In contrast, Haiti became an independent country early on, 1804 I believe, but independent only in the context that they became a separate nation state. In reality they have been in a colonial tug-of-war between France and our country and dependent on both. For our own part, Haiti has never been a big enough interest a la Puerto Rico to engage our focused efforts and good will but, hey, they are in OUR hemisphere and we’ll be damned if we let those Frenchies get away with their colonial intentions. The well-connected of Haiti have benefited from this colonial game, but the vast majority of the population have not.
OK, OK, so perhaps we should not put all the blame on Haiti for their troubles, save for the wealthy few propped up by either colonial power for the sake of our own interests. Yet our country dishes out massive foreign aid already, do we need to do more than that? The topic of Haitian giving comes next.
The next few entries will be about the Haitian earthquake tragedy, starting with this first post about “normal” conditions.
In 2003 my entire family of five went on a work camp trip to the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island as Haiti. We were in the suburbs called Los Alcarizzos to help rebuild a school. From that experience I can put the current conditions in Haiti in some context.
The city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic is much like an American city. There are affluent parts and run-down parts. The distinction between the two countries lies in that living conditions get worse outside of Santo Domingo, whereas in our country the suburbs generally have better living conditions. Los Alcarizzos features rutted streets of dirt with open sewage flowing through tiny gulleys. Farm animals roam streets lined with corrugated metal shacks. Power lines are in abundance, and almost every shack features a radio or even a TV, but the infrastructure for transportation, sanitation and health is very sparse.
In the rural hinterlands it can get worse still. We made a field trip to a Haitian village within the borders of the Dominican Republic. The reason a Haitian village formed there was because the economic “opportunity” of picking sugar cane was better there than what they could find across the border. The village had one rutted street with sewage as in the suburbs, but in addition to live animals there were also the skeletons of dead cattle that one had to be careful not to step on. Instead of corrugated shacks there were something like barracks where many different families were grouped together. Most people, to our knowledge, had only one set of tattered clothes which they wore. And this was their preferred option to being in their native Haiti.
I have never been within the actual borders of Haiti, but these experiences give me a sense of the conditions for the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Port-au-Prince was probably not a great place to live before the earthquake, but probably the best place to live within Haiti. Being destroyed by earthquake means, in essence, that Haiti is equally bad everywhere at this point.
I hope this encourages people to contribute to the rebuilding of Haiti. There may be some reservations about foreign aid in general or to Haiti in particular. Some types of reservations are justified. More on that next.
Tags: Cultural Harmony
This is a letter from Harold Lufkin to Pop. Since Pop’s previous letter mentions Colfax, as well as the next one, I’m including this letter as a bridge between the two.
Mr. Leon Sinclair February 13, 1961
Box 473
Norfolk, Connecticut
Dear Leon:
You have an excellent memory. What you were talking about at Colfax is Captain James Norman Hall who was a Captain in the LaFayette Escadrille in France during World War I. In 1914 at the outbreak of the war, he enlisted in the British Army and was in the original Kitchner’s Mob and wrote his original book with that name.
When he came back after the war, he spent some time in the extreme Northern Scandinavia area and wrote another book about that.
Later on, he did go to the South Seas, married a girl down there who was part English and part Polynesian and spent practically the rest of his life down there. Some of his best known books were written at that time, and a couple of them were made into movies.
Hall wrote some of the greatest sea stories of our time including “Mutiny on the bounty”, “Men Against the Sea”, “The Hurricane”, and “The Dark River,” novels which blended the courage and the fortitude of the Anglo-Saxon with the exotic beauty of the South Seas.
He was about my age and I knew him as a boy. Many months after he had achieved fame on one of his rare and brief visits back to his home port.
He seemed to be fed up with civilization and as near as anyone could tell, was happier during the period of his life that he spent in the South Seas than in any other place. Some of his books were written in cooperation with a fellow by the name of Nordhoff who he met in France at the time he joined the French Army after he had been discharged from the British Army.
Hall was shot down over Germany and his experience in the German Prison Camp led to another book.
He was definitely a citizen of the world. His brother lived out his life in Colfax, but even while Norm’s mother was alive there, he rarely ever came back. Actually, I don’t believe after he left Colfax and Grinnell College, that he spent more than ten days in Colfax during the balance of his life. He wrote often and nostalgically about Colfax and his boyhood, but he recognized as we all do that times change and return trips never restore the conditions as they were originally.
Well, enough of this chatter, but I thought you did mighty well to remember that all these years and to associate it with Colfax.
It is now indeed a defunct town. We still go over there for Mineral Water occasionally, but the hotels are all closed and gone and the special trains that they used to run to Colfax have quit running. Its days as a Midwest Spa died somewhere around the outbreak of World War I….1914.
We’re having another wonderful February day here. Temperature around 50, bright winter sun and a yellow glint to the willows that is a promise of spring.
Surprisingly enough, the business recession or whatever you want to call it has had little effect on our business. Apparently more salesmen are more active and that brings the businesses any time. Besides, when things get a little tough, it separates the men from the boys and some of your annoying competition has a way of stopping cold under these conditions…and that’s a welcome thing.
Cheerio,
NEWTON MFG. CO.
HALufkin/ab
Tags: Pop's Letters
This is on Mountain Road, at the intersection with the road to Tobey Pond. Do they make pooper-scoopers for this type of pet?
Woman's Best Friend
Tags: Sense of Place
I sent along some final thoughts to the editor of the business magazine for the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia, Molly Curso. Here they are.
Final Thoughts
First, I would like to qualify my previous answer to question #2. I said markets were necessary for the middle class. I would add that free markets are best. The trouble that the United States has faced in large part since the seventies is that: 1) corporations compromise free markets and 2) there is a misinformation network to convince us that corporations thrive in free markets.
There are three main requirements free markets: voluntary, private and informed. Misinformation from corporate sponsored think tanks has grown into a billion dollar a year industry. These think tanks, along with corporate media, emphasize the first requirement; selectively interpret and apply the second; and outright interfere with the third with a Buyer Beware advocacy. Equating corporations with free markets tends to place us in a Catch-22 situation. We seek to “bolster” free markets by nurturing corporations, with the overall impact that we are farther away from free markets than we were. This opens the door for perhaps an unintended consequence of the misinformation campaign: opponents of corporate misdeeds become opponents of free markets.
I’m willing to bet that this misinformation within our country spills over to affect countries such as Georgia, precisely because corporations are involved. You mention that Georgia has been divorced from a history of shopkeepers and merchants. Perhaps Georgia is divorced as well from realizing these are the true expression of free markets, and not government licensed, protected and subsidized corporations.
I could go into this more when we chat.
Ironically, too few people with strong desires to change the world for the good are attracted to decentralization. After all, more effective action can take place through centralization. If you are one of the “good guys,” then why not make your life easier through centralization.
History has shown that even the most magnificent of empires collapse partly because of internal problems. Of particular note is that empires not conquered by other empires eventually collapse into a decentralized default, such as the “Dark Ages.” Yet the decentralized “Dark Ages” featured longer life spans for ordinary folk than occurred in the western empires that immediately preceded or followed. Merchants and shopkeepers did alright for themselves. County fairs were first established during the “Dark Ages.” There were significant inventions to make agricultural life easier, such as the water wheel and plow. Life was mainly “Dark” from a centralized perspective.
The Scientific Revolution provided a remedy to one problem inherent to decentralization, a means of aggregating, distributing and prioritizing decentralized ideas and discoveries for the common good. Our democracy of federation was constructed to accomplish this same objective. Federation was our greatest contribution to the science of governance, not democracy, laws or even grand documents.
We have become more national and less federated for centuries now. We have trended towards greater protections of intellectual property rights and tying up patent rights as sacred free market icons. Lost in this false association is that the right not to be imitated, a natural human drive, can only be achieved by centralized government. The basic research shared at universities is being replaced with applied research with protected benefits for corporations. Bankruptcies get tougher for small businesses, bail outs get larger for corporations. I’m not recommending a return to the “Dark Ages,” but some type of scientific/federated/decentralized rebirth seems to be in order.
Tags: Middle Class Culture, Middle Class Economics, Middle Class Politics, Misinformation
Last week I posted my responses to three questions asked by the editor of a business magazine put out by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia (the country). Here is my response to her final question.
(4) Is there such a thing as the mentality of the middle class? There is the idea that the middle class promotes democracy and diminishes the chance for war and violence since it is committed to (a) maintaining what it has and (b) improving itself. Do you agree?
I believe the middle class mentality, like the middle class, depends on how society functions. Let me draw upon a metaphor I have seen used repeatedly to explain comparative advantages. The theory of comparative advantage holds that the overall global economy benefits when countries that can produce goods of both high and low value well stick with producing goods of high value, while other countries produce goods of low value yet needed to compliment the goods of higher value. The oft-cited metaphor involves a manager and a secretary of a company. If the manager can both manage and type better than the secretary, the company benefits if he/she just sticks to managing and the secretary to typing.
This is a metaphor for what “ought to be” from the viewpoint of the company, but what about the secretary? Throwing all societal/company expectations of how things work aside, the secretary best pursues his/her economic interest by enrolling in a management training program offered by the company. However, if “once a secretary always a secretary” is the expectation a training program is neither provided nor sought after. Companies develop an alternative incentive, called the Christmas bonus, for keeping secretaries happy.
The middle class of a society can have a “training” mentality where through entrepreneurial skills or other available opportunities they pursue options they choose for themselves. Decentralization helps to foster this “training” mentality. Without centralization concentrating resources for you, you adapt on your own initiative. On the other hand, the middle class can have a “Christmas bonus” mentality where they accept things as they are, spiced up with bonuses. How things are depend on what centralized decision-makers want them to be.
I was amazed when, leading up to the 2008 election, a blue-collar worker interviewed by the Hartford Courant stated: “Why tax the wealthy, they give us jobs?” Whether the wealthy needs to be taxed more or less is beside the point of what was wrong with that quote. Rather than entertain the notion of starting his own business, or even working for some other entrepreneur, he wanted the pursuit of jobs made easy through centralized corporations. A country that trends towards paternalism and centralization, as the United States has been doing, will foster a “Christmas bonus” mentality among the middle class of dependency on the existing centralized structure.
I would love to agree with your premise that the middle class promotes democracy and diminishes the chance for war and violence, but I believe the relationship is spurious. Decentralization fosters all of these desired conditions. At the heart of all wars is some type of dogma, whether cultural, political or economic. World War I was described by the historian David Stevenson as a tragic case of “right versus right.” The more centralized a society the more likely they are to be caught up in a collective dogma, rather than collective wisdom. This has been the curse of centralized nation states that developed along with the advent of western colonialism.
Tags: Corporate Capitalism, Middle Class Culture, Middle Class Economics
The next installment.
Mr. Harold Lufkin, V.P. Feb. 9, 1961
Newton Mfg. Co.
Newton, Iowa
Dear Mr. Lufkin:
I have no typewriter as David took it off to College, but thought (if you can read it) that it was time I told you how I enjoyed your letter about your younger days.
Somewhere, in my memory is something I have read about Colfax. Some chap described his childhood there and he had a great deal to say about the trains going by and their whistle, and also the River (is there a River there)? At any rate he (like yourself) loved the trains and he said they had spoiled the River by taking the curves and bends out of it, etc.
Also as I remember it the chap either bought or lived on an Island in the Pacific, and has no more use for us and the Helter, Skelter life. I am quite sure I read the article in either the Readers Digest or the Post some years ago. Anyway Colfax immediately “Struck a Chord” and I knew it was a pleasant memory for someone.
I had no idea some of your forebears came from my Rockbound Coast of Maine. Perhaps that is why at times he was a little “Cold and Stiff” as you say. Mr. Scott of Marines all have that reputation, and for those who (in the good old days never got out of the State it was quite true.
You have to get out into the world and absorb some of its warmth before you can surprise only yourself.
As soon as I graduated from High School, I took the next train out of Ellsworth and I met some very warm and happy people of all Nations in New York City and I like to think that I absorbed at least a little of their warmth. There is not much warmth in New York City today though.
I would say your ancestors on both sides of the fence did pretty well, and I certainly agree that once the Sea touches you, that a part of it always remains.
The only part of it I see these days are “Scenes and Sounds” on TV commercials. They have some beautiful Surf on Narragansett Bell ads, and the Sea Gulls and their lonely cries on Carling Ale, and it just makes me furious (and me not a tee totaler) that they tie in such beauty with such nasty stuff as beer.
I feel the same way when I see one of our great athletes puffing on a cigarette and extolling its virtues. Why do we, the public allow the clean and the unclean to be tied together without any complaint?
I am sending along one Editorial from the Waterbury Republican which seems to “hit the nail on the head,” even though the substance of it was taken way back in the year I was born ,and for worriers like myself, I suppose we can take comfort form the next to the last paragraph.
It is most discouraging to notice the almost daily headlines are about the thieves in big Corporations, the dishonesty of our police force and worst of all the behavior of our youth who are the ultimate survival of our nation.
Janet has done a fine job with our sons and there surely will be a place in Heaven for her, when that time (which I hope is far away) comes. I take no credit whatsoever, as I do not have the patience and understanding that she does and of course children cannot survive as free and healthy individuals without it.
I have always thought that if this Country gave Oscars to its Mothers instead of the Movie Stars that it would be more to the point. Ah Men! I’m an impossible Old Codger anyway.
Still four feet of snow on the level in Norfolk but the Sun is high enough now so that it will settle a little each day.
Again, I enjoyed your pre-Christmas letter immensely and am sorry to be so late telling you so. You tell Mrs. that Leila is one of my favorite names.
Sincerely,
Leon
Tags: Pop's Letters
The Battell-Stoeckel estate is where Yale holds its summer schools for music and art. This is a private estate, but the trustees have allowed public access. It’s like having your own private estate without having to do the upkeep. This picture is of a bridge over a brook which some kids have used for their prom shots. Unfortunately, my attempts at capturing rays of sunshine don’t look very nice, but I’m too lazy to go back for another shot.
The Bridge at Battell-Stoeckel
Tags: Sense of Place
Here is the third question posed to me by the editor of the business magazine Investor.ge, put out by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia.
(3) Why is it (the middle class) important? Can we say it is more important economically than socially or does it play an important role in both spheres? What is its role in the United States? Is it merely a mass that balances the interests of the rich and the poor or does it do more?
The status of the middle class serves as an economic, political and cultural indicator for a country. I do not think you can socially engineer to strengthen the middle class in order to have other desirable outcomes fall into place. Rather, as my dichotomous key suggests, the economic, political and cultural functions of a society will be reflected in the quality and quantity of the middle class. The middle class is an effect, more than a cause.
A strong middle class is an indicator of merit based economics. A weak middle class indicates greed at the helm and warrants measures to check that greed. From the United States experience a weak middle class should lead one to examine what is happening with the financial sector in relation to other business sectors. They should track together in a balanced system. Over a thirty year stretch starting in the mid-seventies the GDP of the United States grew by a factor of 13. The financial sector, net dividends and privatized health insurance costs all grew by around a factor of 25. This reflects a growth in producing capital without being backed by producing goods. We are now seeing the effects of that greed based strategy on economic instability and the middle class. If the middle class is struggling there are changes that likely should be made to the financial sector.
A strong middle class is an indicator of wisdom based politics. The middle class benefits from decentralization. As James Surowiecki wonderfully documents in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, wisdom also benefits from decentralization. This may sound counterintuitive, since we have a tendency to look towards experts for answers. Yet my own discipline, science, is a confirmation of what Surowiecki convincingly establishes. The Scientific Revolution brought a change to the university system where erudite scholars promoting fixed beliefs, usually religious dogma, were replaced by scientists skeptically cross-examining flexible theories. Yes, we have our Newtons and Einsteins and such, but science is very much driven by the masses all making their small contributions to the collective wisdom of science, rather than by authorities establishing unquestioned schools of thought. Science, like wisdom, like the middle class, thrives on decentralization. If the middle class is struggling the decision-making mechanisms of a country (whether by political parties or corporations or a synergy of both) are too centralized.
A strong middle class is an indicator of a high quality of life. Here is a seemingly trivial anecdote which I believe has far-reaching implications. In the sixties even people in the upper class would report that they were in the middle class. In contrast, one survey in 2005 reported that 20% of respondents thought they were in the top 1% of wealth. This turnaround reflects two things: 1) people do not understand how obscenely rich the wealthiest people have become in the United States; and 2) one assumes that in a culture turned “dog-eat-dog” one aspires to be a “top dog” in order to enjoy a high quality of life. Quality of life is a highly subjective and variable concept, but if the middle class is struggling one or more of these problems likely occur: 1) people are devoted more to interest groups than their communities; 2) people are spending too much of their labor on economic productivity rather than community and family involvement, or personal growth; and 3) people’s needs are not being met or require a high proportion of their income. All these conditions have increased in magnitude in the United States since the seventies.
So while I would not say that the middle class is an ultimate cause of societal conditions we are the canary in the coal mine. If greed is driving the economy the middle class will suffer. If paternalism is driving the decisions the middle class will suffer. If special interests are driving the quality of life the middle class will suffer.
Tags: Cultural Harmony, Economic Merit, Middle Class Culture, Middle Class Economics, Middle Class Politics, Political Wisdom
