He, like many of us, has been the recipient of numerous emotionally-charged forwards blasting President Obama, librerals, environmentalists and various other groups perceived by some on the right to be the primary cause of all ills infecting our country.  You know the kind of e-mail, the ones that equate Obama with Hitler, scream of the impending moral destruction of our country at the hands of the left and warn that we’ll all turn into socialists/aetheists/communists at the stroke of midnight if we don’t forward the message to 10 people in the next hour.

It’s not that rigorous debate over issues should be stifled in any way, however, as a country we’ve begun to lose the ability to argue in a logical, civilized manner.  If you can’t at least imagine that those in disagreement with you 1) may have a reasonable position 2) are not the scum of the earth, than your voice in the discussion will soon become no more than a clanging gong with no value other than increased volume and noise.

I share the following e-mail simply because I believe in its underlying message.  We don’t have to all agree with each other, nor should we, but peddling half-truths and fear-based hype as something resembling reason is not what the country needs and something we should strive to do better than.

The following is fairly long, but well worth the read.  Print it off, take it with you and read it on the subway, airplane or by the fire as you enjoy a good glass of wine.

On rumored proposals to “tax the wealthy out of prosperity.”

I’ve been mulling over this quote ever since you sent it and would agree that taking something from the “haves” is a poor incentive to generate additional resources for rich or poor. However, it also strikes me that Mr. Rogers is speaking to something of a straw man argument here in the sense that for years our federal taxes hardly go to support the lazy poor relative to other government priorities–which are not by any stretch of the imagination set by low income people.

You know the federal budget better than me, but for twenty years or more the three major ticket items have been defense, social security, and Medicare, which together represent at least 60% of all monies spent. Other sizable chunks go to interest on our every growing national debt, veterans’ and federal employee benefits, etc. As far as I can tell, Medicaid and safety net programs for low income kids, foster care, food stamps, and supplements for the elderly make up at most 18%. If these groups are what Mr. Rogers means by those “receiving without working,” then I’m not sure what he wants a civilized country to do with our mentally retarded, aged, and dispossessed minors. I have seen first-hand in several countries in Eastern Europe and Asia what happens to individuals in these groups when public officials turn a blind eye to their needs and cannot fathom that happening in any nation that considers itself civilized.

Philosophers and politicians throughout the last century have variously and eloquently verbalized the ethic of a civilization’s moral value determined by how it treats its most unfortunate, but it seems to me this is also a fundamental spiritual value. Our Sunday School lesson this week was about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and I confess that my mind drifted for a time to the matter of whether such responsibilities should be matters of personal or collective public responsibility. I concluded that to the man in the ditch, whom I take to be the focus of the story, it didn’t really matter as long as he got some help. You have probably heard me tell stories about my mother’s mother, our dear Grandma Peterson, whom we all thought somewhat strange as children. I don’t think she ever passed a hitchhiker that she didn’t insist be given a ride, and she regularly packed lunches for them whenever traveling to the city. Our family tales of her peculiar ways are legion, but she was never preachy about her various private ministries; it was simply a matter of cheerfully following our Lord’s example in spite of sorrowful circumstances. I can’t say how cheerfully she paid her taxes, but if it meant helping those in need I have little doubt it would have ranked at the top of most public priorities.

The thrust of Rogers’ argument seems to be that that taxing rich people at a rate higher than others is unfair. I think I probably agree with this, but fair doesn’t mean equal in all kinds of settings from school to business. Whatever lobbyists the poor and elderly can afford to press for their needs likely get drowned out by those of the well-heeled; thus all kinds of special interest tax breaks and benefits exist ranging from large commodity price supports to federal guarantees of excessive cost overruns by defense contractors. Of the remaining federal budget categories–scientific and medical research, international commitments, and the like, I don’t see any of that directly benefiting those who don’t work for one reason or another. We probably could have gilded the door knobs of every poor person in America for what the Iraq diversion is costing and we still haven’t accomplished the original mission in Afghanistan.

The alternative to taxes, of course, it to continue to spending mindlessly and increase the national debt as has been happening for years under both Republicans and Democrats. I realize there are all kinds of valid emendations and interpretations in matters this large, but these broad strokes occur to me.

On the matter of Obama directly addressing students in school.

You are absolutely right that “federal involvement in education is extra-Constitutional” as it has been essentially a matter for state and local governance since the inception of the Republic. However, by no stretch of the imagination  does Obama’s interest in sending a message to American students about topics related to personal responsibility approach a totalitarian effort akin to pre-war Germany. To argue otherwise seems to me to be a highly misguided interpretation of history and government policy. In the first place, our federal executive branch has no authority to compel any teacher in the country to watch or listen to anything. In American public schools, that is explicitly the final authority of a district school board of locally elected citizens. Of course most lay board members can’t be expected to know everything that might be studied by teachers and students in the course of a school year, so virtually every district has adopted board policies that outline for principals and teachers what they are authorized to view, read, discuss, etc. Even state “mandated” curriculum, like the recent HIV/AIDS education guidelines, cannot be unilaterally forced upon a local district; a school board can only be encouraged to adopt it. (To be sure, there are federal requirements attached to what we call compensatory programs like special education, but these are programs funded by the federal government which is a relatively small though important portion of any district’s total budget.)

Students at the secondary level far and wide have for years routinely watched excerpts from the presidential State of the Union addresses and related political discussions, though such audiences are not primarily students of course. If Obama’s intentions imply that he thinks all K-12 kids are “his children” as you assert, of course this would be blasphemous as you point out, and I confess that you may be more well-informed regarding his intentions than me. I had several reasons to hope John McCain would have been elected, but we all know that didn’t happen. However, the few references I’ve seen to the theme of his intended remarks relates to affirming for young people values like personal responsibility. I tend to be suspicious of most politicians so perhaps there are more sinister motives, and if this presentation takes place I guess we can analyze his remarks. However, there’s scarcely a school district in any American city that isn’t at its wit’s end trying to figure out what to do about problems like the high school drop-out rate. (The few times I’ve heard or read Obama on issues in education his remarks have tended to be in this direction.)

The national drop-out rate is presently around 33%, which means there must be lots of places in this country where it is far above that. The impact of legions of young people whose employment prospects are significantly diminished because they never finished school is an impending national disaster for reasons that also relate to other matters than just earning a living wage (like what they do when they don’t earn a wage, but that’s another story). If the president or anybody else can get even 1% of urban youth to reconsider dropping out by a twenty minute pep-talk, frankly I’m all for it, though I’m not getting my hopes up.

Whatever this upcoming address represents, it is difficult for me to reconcile any association with the Ziemer book and its context. Germany’s National Socialist agenda was rooted in militaristic racism. Hitler’s chief interest in economics was in finding ways to nationalize the war machine industry so he could annihilate Europe’s democracies and non-Aryan peoples. We know now from recent historical scholarship that he was seriously eyeing a second crusade against the United States once his plans for continental domination were to be accomplished. From my limited perch, if I see anything in the policies of the new administration, on the international front it is to be more focused, i.e., limited, in foreign obligations, and to promote greater diversity in the domestic realm.

The hands-down single greatest effort to increase state and federal authority in the public schools against local control took place ironically during the Reagan administration. He had campaigned against Carter for months with recurrent accusations that American public schools were falling behind the rest of the world, and used “The Nation at Risk” report to fuel a major effort to raise standardized test scores especially in mathematics and science. The array of “accountability” terms and acronyms in public education like No Child Left Behind (Inside?)–a well-intentioned bipartisan effort, EALR, and WASL, are direct descendants of this initiative. The story of the origin of this report and the nature of its statistical comparisons has an extensive and controversial history, but anybody who wandered around a typical American high school in the 1980s and a college-prep one in Japan or Germany could tell you that ours weren’t up to snuff. Of course American public schools have a statutory obligation to accept every child from every home—and those who don’t even have homes, rather unlike those in many European and Asian nations where students are tracked from their early teens. So when I was in Cashmere or St. John-Endicott, we routinely worked with kids whose parents had tattoos up to their neckline and whose home methinks promoted rather different values than my folks did back on the farm.

This takes us back to possible motives for the president’s upcoming remarks. Responsibility means dealing with the prospect of all these millions of future drop-outs and marginally educated citizens in this country whose home life does not especially promote their moral well-being. (NB: The two factors most influencing student academic success have nothing to do with school: 1. availability of an enriched and supportive reading environment at home, and 2. restricted access to television and electronic media.) We can ignore these kids to our peril, which many people do until their house gets robbed or next welfare budget is published, or we can hope the private schools will accept them–but the vast majority don’t (nor would most charters though I wish Washington State would permit them), or we can kick them in the rear verbally (in the case of my own I was open to other more physical means) and tell them that even if they don’t have the best home life, and the unemployment rate is 10%, and we’re fighting two wars, and on and on, they still need to buck up, work hard, and start living responsibly, because nobody else is going to do it for them.

If he says just this much to them, Obama will have my gratitude. But where he and I part ways is the apparent implicit understanding that if people don’t live responsibly, Uncle Sam will bail them out, as we have now done to the extent of many trillions of dollars for all those who needed federal stimulus monies to salvage bad investments or upside-down home mortgages. But I am also aware that for years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by far the lion’s share of the federal budget goes to a bloated defense department (even when the Secretary of Defense pleads to cut certain programs), interest on the ever increasing national debt, entitlement programs like Medicare to the elderly, etc.

As a percentage of the entire budget, the amount that goes to social welfare programs is relatively modest, and less than virtually all democratic nations of Europe and Asia. Obama had an opportunity when he took office after the economy went south under Bush to affirm the time-honored (and I believe biblical) values of thrift, self-reliance, and hard work. Instead, he told people to go out and spend money to invigorate the economy, get a new car, buy furniture with tax rebates, etc., etc. Bush and Cheney also spent mindlessly but many of their chief beneficiaries were in the military-industrial and extra-military complex (e.g., Halliburton, Blackwater). If I wanted to give myself a headache I could probably do a little research and find out how much was spent this direction during the last administration; but I may not be able to comprehend the more disturbing value in loss of life of our valiant American soldiers or Iraqi civilians, though I read the latter is conservatively estimated to be 40,000 and many sources cite something closer to 100,000.

At some point when we have spent and shot ourselves into oblivion, both Democrats and Republicans might dust off a copy of E. F. Schumacher’s book from a generation ago, “Small is Beautiful”, or occasionally read an essay by Wendell Berry like “What are People For?”. They’ll find out we have no divine obligation to be the world’s policeman, to dam up every river for our inexhaustible appetite for energy, or to bankroll a military-intelligence-industrial complex that five-star general, supreme WWII commander, and president Dwight Eisenhower presciently warned us about. (If anything, I think a case could be made that we have an obligation not to do these things, but that would be another essay.) I say this as a proud Vietnam-era veteran and the father of an Air Force Academy graduate soon headed to Iraq where a nephew is presently serving. But my children have also heard that there is no pride in policies that spend more in two weeks on military adventurism abroad than the annual national budget for dispossessed or underprivileged children at home. You probably know that one of my sisters is a school nurse and a while back I asked for unrelated reasons about changes in the WIC program that provides nutrition and medical services to at-risk children and their mothers. She told me it had been discontinued for more than a year. I’m all for saving a buck, but it was enough to make your blood boil when not long afterward I read how a number of congressmen were strongly lobbying on behalf of a series of multi-zillion dollar defense projects Secretary of Defense Gates told both Bush and Obama were not needed.

I fear my response here may have exceeded what was invited or anticipated, friend, so thanks for your indulgence.

On the matter of global warming.

I am not a scientist but I can see. I have also been sent several email attachments lately questioning a recent National Academy of Sciences report that global warming has been taking place for some decades. This is in spite of general historic trends of temperature oscillations lasting several centuries that should have the earth presently in a cooling mode. Although a consensus of the professional scientific community has endorsed reports coming from the NAS and similar international organizations, the credentials of those who represent dissenting viewpoints seems impressive enough to elicit my confession that I can only offer a layman’s commentary on the matter, but one that has attempted to somewhat keep abreast of the issues by reading conflicting viewpoints in such venues as The National Review (conservative), Atlantic and The Economist (centrist), and Harper’s (liberal). (I also like reading Scientific American but come away from most issues feeling like I understood about 10% of what was written.)

While my limitations in understanding the matter of global warming are manifold, I can offer that our family was blessed by the presence of a scientist of some note whose work had special relevance to this topic. Willis M. Johns, my mom’s brother, served for many years as chief geologist for the Montana Bureau of Mines, professor of economic geology at Montana Tech, and surveyor for the US Geological Survey’s Northern Rockies district. Uncle Willis was also very conservative in his politics and generally suspicious of most things emanating from Washington, DC. But Willis knew intimately the Northern Rockies from living in the field for weeks on end in order to conduct USGS mapping and explorations for various mining interests.

Through Willis I was introduced to the grandeur of Glacier National Park in the 1960s and traveled through it one summer when he lived in nearby Kalispel. I remember marveling at the high peaks draped in the enormous gray-white formations for which the place is known, and journeyed through the park again via its famed Highway to the Sun in the early 1980s. I last visited Glacier two weeks ago with my 85-year-old mother with whom, incidentally, I had been on that first trip there nearly five decades ago. Our first impression upon approaching the park last month was the stunned response to each other, “So where are all the glaciers?” Of course there are still a number of glaciers girding the higher peaks and numerous snowfields, but even to amateur climatologist eyes like ours, it was clear that something significant had changed the landscape since our previous visits.

In the absence of Willis, who passed away in 1989, I made inquiry locally among other relatives who had long lived in the area and learned that it is common knowledge there that at the present melt rate, “Glacier” Park is no longer expected to have any by 2030. Of the 150 glaciers large enough to be named in the nineteenth century, only 26 exist today which explains why the summer landscape looks so different from what I observed those many years ago. The chief cause is not attributed to the lack of annual snowfall, but to a rise in daily minimum temperature that has accelerated in the last fifty years. But the most peculiar observation for me was the evidence from ice core studies reported there that the pattern of fluctuations in glacier advance and recession over millennia has been reversed for over a century. The terrestrial climate of cold and warm trends over time that continues to be the subject of so much research seems to be related to variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun.

That the evidence should suggest the planet be in a cooling trend now when temperatures are actually increasing leaves one to theorize about what variable or variables have been introduced since the 1800s to cause this change. I’m entirely open to other hypotheses regarding factors that may have interrupted the general cycle over the past century and a half. But it strikes me as eminently reasonable that nothing has been proposed that can even slightly compare to the effects of hundreds of billions of greenhouse gases and related emissions/pollutants introduced into the environment as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The benefits to humanity, of course, have been rather substantial, and I greatly enjoy traveling by car and air and using all manner of oil-based products and by-products. But to deny this has had a detrimental impact on the environment that will only get worse without forthright intervention from the lowest (household) to the highest (international) levels seems akin to infantile “me-ism”, a term used by Georgie Ann Geyer has used to characterize the attitude about life being all about self.

Many of the recent emails I have received on climate change fall into two categories: The first continue to question whether or not global warming is actually taking place. To these authors I honestly suggest a trip to someplace like northwest Montana or an examination of glacier ice core reports from there or most any other high mountain range in the world. I gather the Inuit people probably know ice better than most scientists or politicians so gleaning their perspectives might also be more useful than that of someone representing special interests in our nation’s capital. But another body of rhetoric related to this topic involves the matter of cause, and dismisses the notion that global warming is related in any significant way to mankind’s effect on the environment. What folks in this camp do see is a sophisticated ploy by a coalition of environmentalists and Third World plaintiffs seeking financial remuneration through groups like the UN for damages from industrialized countries. The implication, of course, is since humanity is not responsible for global warming; we are not accountable for its consequences, or for moderating its effects through cap and trades or other proposed interventions.

I’m not sure exactly what, if anything, I might owe the citizens of the Maldives Islands, Bangladesh, or anywhere else threatened with rising sea levels because I have and am using fossil fuels as my ancestors have since the 1800s. But it seems to me that ignoring the obvious, or at least forthrightly addressing valid differences of opinion,  is irresponsible citizenship, and arrogantly risks the wellbeing of the next generation and God’s creation for which we are to be stewards.

I suppose many people who knew Uncle Willis would have said he was not an especially religious person. He didn’t often attend church and believed the earth and solar system to have been formed through natural processes over billions of years. But I came to understand that he did not believe faith, reason, and observation to offer irreconcilable conclusions about the nature of spiritual or biological life. Rather, like John Wesley, he thought these ways of knowing all attested to the same unified truth. Willis’s far ranging interests led him to investigate truth about many different subjects, and following his retirement our uncle devoted considerable attention to biblical archaeology. He traveled to the Middle East to investigate recent discoveries of Hittite culture that he thought shed light on Old Testament history he more fully sought to understand. I’m grateful for what his honesty taught me about rocks and glaciers, truth and responsibility.

Richard Scheuerman

Related posts:

1. The State as a Substitute for God Economist Robert Higgs on Americans’ unrealistic expectations of their government...
2. Why the Safe Haven Argument for Afghanistan is Weak If you follow the constant chatter of proponents for increased...
3. What I’ve Been Reading (9.28.09) Every once and a while I like to fill everyone...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reported on Tuesday,

“When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.  A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.”

Hoh is 36 years old.  This is significant to me because it places him in a generation, close to mine, who isn’t so heavily influenced by the Cold War-era mindset of strategy and warfare.

There has been some controversy relating to his actual role in the State Department, with DeYoung calling him a Foreign Service Officer and others calling this incorrect, stating he was a “3161″ employee brought on for a temporary cycle.  Regardless, after reading his full letter of resignation out loud to my wife this morning over coffee I felt it was worth sharing with my intelligent and discerning cadre of readers.

What strikes me is not the symbolism of such a resignation, but rather the content of his letter.  He lays out a battering ram of an argument as to why continued expenditure of blood and treasure in Afghanistan is not worth the sacrifice.  Remember, this is a seasoned Marine talking, not someone who is necessarily opposed to waging war.  Hoh says, “I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love.”

The following are some segments from his chilling, but important letter (emphasis mine).  Read the full letter here:

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan.  I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end. To put simply: I fail to see the value or worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.”

Regarding the Pashtun population,

“The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies.  The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in the Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified.  In both RC South and East, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.”

On why the safe-haven argument is weak (something I have written about here),

“I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan.  If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence of regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc…More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries.”

Or the idea that we should be there to help a failing state,

“Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate and increase our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.”

Even if the war seems worth it, we can’t afford it,

“‘We are spending ourselves into oblivion,’ a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer.  We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come.  Success and victory, whatever that may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations.  The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory.”

This analysis of our presence in Afghanistan is not the type that will get you promoted, but it presents a formidable argument that few will be able to dismiss.  To be fair, there are many other intelligent voices who are advocating increased presence, resources and time in Afghanistan.  Some of my favorites include: Steve Coll and Andrew Exum (who posted a blistering critique of the Washington Post article mentioned above).

Related posts:

1. Why the Safe Haven Argument for Afghanistan is Weak If you follow the constant chatter of proponents for increased...
2. The Strategic Debate Over Afghanistan If you want to know where the great strategic minds...
3. Why China Cares About Afghanistan In case you were wondering if China has any interest...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“There’s no question people have left because of uncertainty of our ability to pay,” said an executive at one of the affected firms. “It’s a highly competitive market out there.”

I understand that people are frustrated with the economy, but it is foolish to think that cutting the pay of people within the financial industry will turn out well. Compensation is a drop in the bucket compared to the host of other problems plaguing our economy.

This is going to backfire and the evidence above shows that it already is. If you are an executive in a multi-billion dollar financial firm chances are strong to very strong that 1) You are highly skilled and educated and know how to create value in an organization  2) You can find another high-paying job at the drop of a hat, or the ring of a phone.

The people working at firms that the Pay Czar is going after are already leaving and those who haven’t yet, soon will. As Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution commented the other day (emphasis mine),

There is no way this will work as advertised. If the administration actually follows through, most of these executives will quit and get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Executives not directly affected by the pay cuts will also quit when they see their prospects for future salary gains have been cut. Chaos will be created at these firms as top people leave in droves. Will the administration then order people back to work?

Ayn Rand fans are chuckling right now asking themselves, “Who is John Galt?”

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Globalization

Instead we’ll be fighting non-state actors, or superempowered groups, Robb calls “global guerrillas.”   While globalization has unleashed amazing economic opportunities for all of us, it has also allowed for groups like al Qaeda to reap the benefits of low-cost technology, global communications, D-I-Y weaponry and information gathering.  Robb points out, the same tools we use everyday are being used against us by global guerrillas seeking to weaken and de-legitimize the state.

“Airplanes are being turned into flying bombs, cell phone networks are being used to simultaneously detonate bombs from miles away, and critical computer networks are being hacked.”

Rather than openly facing our military forces on the battlefield, most global guerrillas practice fourth-generation warfare (4GW), avoiding our strengths and exploiting our weaknesses.  One path through which they have found the most success in creating chaos is through systems disruption.  For example,

“…one small attack on an oil pipeline in southeast Iraq, conducted for an estimated $2,000, cost the Iraqi government more than $500 million in lost oil revenues.  That is a return on investment of 25 million percent.”

and in Africa,

“In February 2006, Nigerian guerrillas of the amorphous Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta attacked the loading dock on Shell Oil’s Forcados export platform.  The attackers escaped without being captured or suffering casualties.  The estimated cost of the attack was $2,000…The cost to Shell was $400,000 in lost oil exports for an estimated two weeks and the indefinite shutdown of an adjacent oil field.  The estimated lost revenue to Shell was over $50 million.  The rate of return: 25,000 times the cost of the attack.”

For now these systems attacks have been taking place in far away lands, but there’s no reason to believe our nation is immune.  Global guerrillas are operating much closer to our border than most of us realize.

Black Swans

Of course, the example that hits closest to home is 9/11 (cost $500,000 to plan and execute) – which brings us to the idea of black swans.  Nassim Taleb explains in his brilliant book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” black swans are events with the following three characteristics:

• Outlier – “…it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.”
• Carries extreme impact
• Causes us to “concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”

The frustrating reality is that black swans will continue to happen and there’s nothing we can do about them since, by their very nature, they’re impossible to predict.  In an increasingly interconnected world, the problem with black swans is that their impact can multiply exponentially.  Crisis in one country can easily lead to regional and global distress.

For example, the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997 led to a financial crisis all across Asia and was further linked to economic slowdowns in developing countries, the drop in oil prices, Russia’s default of 1998 and the collapse of Long Term Capital Management.  Regarding our extremely complex global system Robb warns,

“It is too complex for any single state, or group of states, to keep under control.  As a result, most of the systems we have built over the last several centuries to dampen the excesses of instability – enabled by markets, travel, communication, and other global systems – are now ineffectual.”

Resilience

How do we protect ourselves as a nation in an age marked by global guerrillas, increasing interdependence and financial volatility?  By building resilience into our networks and country.  The highly-centralized bureaucracy that characterizes much of our national security apparatus can barely keep up with the decentralized, rapidly evolving, open-source insurgencies at work around the world.

Robb feels, “the only way to ensure security in the future will be through survival and decentralized resilience.”

The term survival tends to invoke the image of surrender to impending doom, but before you go thinking this sounds like raising the white flag, Robb explains,

“A focus on survival and decentralization isn’t as simplistic or naive as it seems on first glance.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t pursue criminals, terrorists, and other threats that face us – far from it.  The state should pursue these individuals with all the means at its disposal.  It also doesn’t mean that we should attempt to remake the world in our image or attempt to fight grand battles for the hearts and minds of the world.”

At the state-level resilience means:

• Not allowing nationalism to destroy international trade
• Decentralizing security and emergency response efforts
• Decentralizing utility networks like the electrical grid – allow individuals to become both energy producers and consumers (see here)
• Thinking in terms of ecosystems and open-source networks
• Increasing sustainability, decreasing dependence

Some will dismiss Robb’s ideas and advice as far-fetched or “gloom and doom,” but they do so at their own peril. The world we live in today provides many of us with limitless possibility and freedom, but there is a collection of individuals, looming just below the surface of this new world order, who threaten to hijack globalization for their own aspirations – we must adapt to meet the challenge.

Related posts:

1. What I’ve Been Reading (9.28.09) Every once and a while I like to fill everyone...
2. The Ultimate AfPak Reading List Peter Bergen recently posted “a guide to the most critical...
3. It’s All About Tribes It seems there is lots being written about tribes these...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Until more people come to a more realistic, fact-based understanding of the government and the economy, little hope exists of tearing them away from their quasi-religious attachment to a government they view with misplaced reverence and unrealistic hopes. Lacking a true religious faith yet craving one, many Americans have turned to the state as a substitute god, endowed with the divine omnipotence required to shower the public with something for nothing in every department – free health care, free retirement security, free protection from hazardous consumer products and workplace accidents, free protection from the Islamic maniacs the U.S. government stirs up with its misadventures in the Muslim world, and so forth. If you take the government to be Santa Claus, you naturally want every day to be Christmas; and the bigger the Santa, the bigger his sack of goodies.

Related posts:

1. A Response to E-mail Forwards Blasting Obama, Environmentalists, Etc. The following is an e-mail written recently by my friend’s dad, a university professor...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If — by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The truth is that the falling dollar is good news. For one thing, it’s mainly the result of rising confidence: the dollar rose at the height of the financial crisis as panicked investors sought safe haven in America, and it’s falling again now that the fear is subsiding. And a lower dollar is good for U.S. exporters, helping us make the transition away from huge trade deficits to a more sustainable international position.

I agree that shrinking our trade deficit is a definite plus, but there have to be better ways to get rid of it than a falling dollar.  Right?

**What say you readers?  Is Krugman right or is he off his rocker?**

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In a sense it’s like the Lending Tree commercials – “When banks compete, you win.”  At IdeaOffer when the crowds compete to give you the best idea, you end up with a multitude of ideas to choose from, hopefully culminating in some quality ones, and once again…you win.

To try out the service myself I posed the following question:

I am looking to improve my reach as a blogger and improve the quality of comments received. In addition, I’d like feedback on my blog design. What do you like? What would you change or add?

I also offered the following as background information:

Originally I focused on writing about life lessons or hacks, but have recently begun to steer away from that path in hopes of being able to write about my varying interests in fields like military theory, political science, sociology, books, wine, coffee and fitness among other things.

This obviously makes it more challenging to answer the question: “What is your blog about?” I know many bloggers say you should focus on one or two things, but I grew bored following that path. Not having a well-defined niche can be dangerous, but for now it’s the path I’d like to take.

Final bonus question:

How do I write about a wide variety of subjects without losing my readers in the process?

As with any brainstorming session, I received some really great ideas, some decent ideas and a few losers. This was to be expected.

***BEFORE I CONTINUE – IdeaOffer has generously offered readers of Schaefer’s Blog a $5 credit on their site just to sign up – no obligations to use the site.  All you have to do is enter the voucher:  cam5

Back to the show…

As I surveyed the various projects out there I noticed the following and tailored my project accordingly:

The quality and quantity of ideas depend on:

1) The amount of reward money promised to the best idea. Obviously the more money you’re willing to offer the more people will check out your problem to see if they can offer a good idea or solution. As with most things, you get what you pay for.

2) The amount of detail in your question. If I would have just asked, “How do I improve my blog” I probably would have gotten a ton of answers that wouldn’t have been what I was looking for. Instead I tried to hone in on a few key aspects to include comments, design and managing multiple topics.

IdeaOffer allows you to not only set the amount of prize money for the user with the best idea, but also the length of time your question will be posted on the site for viewing. I initially set my time for 1 week, but moved it to 2 weeks to allow for more opportunity for ideas. I’m glad I did since many of the ideas for my blog came in the second week.

In the end I awarded a user who’s idea was to unite my many writing topics around the idea of surviving a turbulent world. He said,

Many people are jumping on the survival bandwagon these days due to the current environment. Everyone knows there is something wrong from the educated to the unwashed masses. Your interest profile matches survival advice to a T.

I thought about this and realized that it lined up with some thoughts I had been bouncing around regarding resilience after reading John Robb. It’s true that the global recession, Iraq & Afghanistan, terrorism, growing national debt, etc. pose some incredible challenges to not only our nation, but each of us as individuals. The black swans (think unpredictable, like 9/11) that will come in the future have the capacity to break us unless we build more resilience into our lives and communities. Things like getting out of debt, becoming less dependent on oil, growing your own vegetables, just to name a few.

The idea also covered my blog design, though sadly I have yet to adapt these changes other than taking out one of my adsense displays (which, incidentally, was one of the suggestions offered in another user’s idea — who says you just have to use the winner’s ideas).

In the end I felt like my experience with IdeaOffer was a good one. I appreciated the ability to get a diverse set of eyeballs on my blog to give me a better idea of what I could improve on. It will be interesting to see if the site can reach a tipping point and see some serious growth. For now I’ll be recommending it as a possible solution to anyone who has a problem and a shortage of good ideas.

Disclaimer: Author was given a small amount of upfront credit by IdeaOffer to get started using their service, in addition to the money he put in himself.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Thinking about men I admired, it dawned on me that most had a quiet contempt towards any excess of material possessions. Their expertise and confidence were displayed by the fact that they did not require much to live successfully. They could just as easily get along for a week in the woods with nothing but a knife as they could living in a posh suburban neighborhood with all its amenities. Possessions had no control over the trajectory of their lives. They were not gadget junkies, seeking their fix from the latest Best Buy sale.  They were in control of the things they owned, not the other way around.  Real manliness meant freedom from the bondage of material goods.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Those of us fortunate enough to live near Seattle (if only for the coffee) have the opportunity to visit the original Starbucks in Pike Place Market. If you too live in Seattle, or are visiting sometime in the near future, I strongly recommend forgoing the opportunity to see the “original Starbucks” in the market. Instead, visit the nearby newly “de-branded” store caddy-corner to the market on 1st and Pike. It is a throwback to the original conception of Starbucks, and a concept that has a lot of merit in my eyes as to what the company should strive to return to.

Also, you may be disappointed after waiting in the long line and flustering amongst the impatient crowd at the “original Starbucks” only to learn that it was actually the 4th store built and operated by the company. Actually, you’d never learn that unless I told you, because its location simply lends to a feeling of originality. So Starbucks actually goes along with the white lie that it’s the company’s first storefront. It’s great for business as several thousands of visitors flock through the market daily after disembarking from their cruise ship in the Seattle Harbor.

Speaking of Starbucks, what’s going on with that company nowadays? Last I’d heard: Howard Schultz had returned to the company as CEO after the stock price was greatly diminished, stores were closing all over the globe, and employees were laid off in droves. It seems that regardless of these facts, I still loyally buy almost 3 cups of the best Joe on the planet per week from the store. So where are they now in the face of their recent challenges? I did some research to find out…

As a quick recap of the company’s woes: The company was a part of the massive boom in the coffee industry following the turn of the century when the US retail coffee market recorded a growth of 157% in value terms between 2000 ($3,258 million) and 2005 ($8,372 million). As a leading coffee retailer during this lucrative period for the industry, Starbucks accumulated a large amount capital at a rapid pace. Accordingly, the company began to offer outstanding salaries and benefits to their employees while opening new stores at a feverish-pace. Starbucks was expanding globally and the company’s stock price rose quickly up until FY2007. At that point in time, Starbucks ran into a series of difficult circumstances that ultimately led its financial performance into a downward spiral.

Starbucks Corporation faced several challenges in recent years including:

• intense competition
• low employee productivity
• changing consumer habits from the global economic downturn.

As a result of these challenges, “the company’s profit margin decreased nearly $500 million (an approximate 50% decline) during FY2008 in comparison to FY2007”.

Accompanying this fiscal crunch was the closing of many stores and the termination of thousands of jobs within the organization. Additionally, the anticipated growth of the company came to an abrupt halt in the face of diminished capital. The retained employees received massive cuts to their pensions and a seemingly hollow promise from the revived CEO Howard Schultz that the company would return to its once prominent spot atop the food and beverage industry. While it is apparent that recent results suggest that he is on the right track…some observers remain skeptical.

What has the company done to correct itself?

The coffee giant has taken several steps to address their current problems. First and foremost, it underwent a major restructuring effort that included downsizing the overall size of the company. To improve their balance sheet, Starbucks executives decided to cutout several liabilities in the form closing nearly 700 stores, both existing and under construction. In addition, the company made the difficult decision to lay off several thousand employees in the midst of a recession. The company has also attempted to shed their monopolistic-faux image by undergoing a “de-branding”.

The brand itself began as a local-niche-firm, one that was incredibly inviting and sparked the interest of millions of customers. Inevitably the firm grew quickly and eventually became a global brand that has lost its once niche appeal. According to one coffee advertiser, the relatively rapid success of the company “led to issues of brand depersonalization”. Now, in an attempt to return to its wildly successful roots, the company is de-branding in an effort to regain a community personality and the image of the neighborhood coffee shop.

There is an incredible urgency for this company to return to profitability. Mainly, competitors both small and large threaten to take over the majority of the market share in coffee retail and production. According to Data Monitor, “Starbucks faces intense competition in coffee beverage segment from other specialty coffee shops, restaurants, and doughnut shops”. Namely, McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts have increased their share of overall coffee sales worldwide.

In an effort to not miss out on the market of consumers thirsting for better quality coffee beans, grocery markets have adopted the practice of selling their company’s own higher-quality coffee-beans. In addition, coffee bean companies (i.e. Folgers) that have traditionally used lower-quality beans began offering a higher-quality bean choice to consumers. The urgency in this market shift deals with the risk associated with the recent economic downturn.

Consumers are now making more decisions based upon a cost-benefit analysis vice brand-name recognition. If an organization puts forth a product that is nearly equivalent to a traditionally higher-quality product for a lower price, the consumer is increasingly more inclined to choose the former product. In the case of Starbucks, competitors are doing just this, at a lower price. While the strong brand-name has seemingly protected Starbucks thus far, if they cannot fix their problems soon, many industry experts expect the company to fall further into irrelevancy in the eyes of the global consumer.

Motivation is one of the key elements towards positively changing the progress of the company. No one is more in tune with this concept than the resurrected Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Starbucks most recently dropped only 5% in year-on-year sales in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008 (beating analysts’ expectations).

Schultz sees hope in the progress made thus far, but is quick to not discount the work that lies ahead of the company and its employees. This sentiment was readily apparent in Schultz’s rhetoric when he recently stated that “There’s no victory lap going on at Starbucks here…We have a lot of work to do, one quarter [of improving sales] does not make a trend”. This cautious optimism that Schultz maintains is critical towards ensuring that the company does not become overly confident or complacent in its change effort.

If it fails to make the necessary changes, the coffee company will likely lose its majority stake in the marketplace to competitors, and ultimately lose money for its shareholders. A publicly-held company exists solely to make money for its shareholders, and a shrinking company fails to achieve its mission. Such an outcome would draw down levels of capital within the company from outside investors. Lower levels of capital equate to more job losses and store closings. In the worst case scenario, Starbucks would go bankrupt or even become obsolete. These reasons are indicative of why it is so important for Starbucks to make the necessary changes to ensure its viability for years to come.

In these times of financial uncertainty for so many companies, one thing is for certain…God they make great coffee…

Related posts:

1. Is Your Organization Afraid to Take Risks? Fear of failure is something many of us struggle with...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.