Integrity at Scale Blog

What I Have, What I Am

If am sick with a mild virus, then "I have a cold."  If my shoulder is sore, "I have a sore shoulder." 

But suppose I have grown up in America.  What will I say then?  Any chance I'll say "I have an American upbringing"?  Not very great.  Most likely it will be this:  "I am an American."     

Suppose my good friend views me as a neurotic person.   Will he say of me, "he  has a neurosis" or will he say "he is a neurotic"?  Either is possible.   Suppose I have a conservative point of view.  Will my friend say, "he has conservative views" or will he say "he is a conservative"?  Who knows?  Each is possible.

Suppose I attend my local Presbyterian church.  Will my friend say, "he has Christian views" or will he say "he is a Christian."  He could say either one.

Suppose I own waterfront property.  Once a forested area sat between me and the bay.  When it rained, the forest filtered the rainfall and prevented torrents of sediment from gushing into the bay. Now I raze the forest.  I replace it with a tennis court and a lawn.  Today's rainfalls are no longer filtered as they used to be.  Will it be said that "I practice polluting behaviors"?  Or that "I am a polluter"?  

Who am I?  Am I my illness?  Am I my neurosis?  Am I my political views?  Am I my church membership?  Am I my behaviors?  (mis)behaviors as a homeowner?  Am I my virtues?  Am I my vices? 

At a recent wedding, the father of the groom offered a toast.  Not to the bride and groom.  To himself.  And to his wealth, his power, and his pride.   What shall we say of the father?  Is arrogance "something he has" or is arrogance "who he is"?

Aristotle took this on.  Human beings are naturally creatures of passion.  Some passions are beneficial, some are damaging.  Civilization depends on its members developing a sense of character.  We develop virtues so that we can hold our damaging passions in check.  We develop virtues so that our civilization can rest on a foundation of good character, not on a foundation of perpetual vice.  In Aristotle's view, "I am my sense of virtue," and sometimes "I am gripped by passions that violate my character."  Who I am, what I have - it's a vital distinction. 

Religious faith has a similar potential.  Religion can teach us respect for ourselves, for our families and neighbors, and for distant brothers and sisters in faith whom we have never met.  It can teach us compassion toward total strangers, regardless of their faith.  It can create a sense of faith-based character that keeps us in touch with the divine and in touch with our own capacities for virtue.

"American character."  Is it something one has?  Or is it central to who one is?  And if it is central to who we are, is it a source of vice?  Or is it a source of integrity? 

Aristotle's teachings were wise.  Religious faith lifts our sights.  As Americans, yes, we have many vices.  But who are we?  What lies at the heart of our identity as Americans?

Steven Howard Johnson

 

 

Gerrymandering: Why It Matters

A 1964 Supreme Court decision - Wesberry v Sanders - touched off modern gerrymandering.  The Court held that all congressional districts in a state must be of equal population.  By an old custom, the power to redraw district lines had long been assigned to state legislatures.   Now, by a new custom, state legislatures corrupt our democracy a little further after each new census by indulging themselves in new bouts of gerrymandering.

Here's the Receipts and Outlays graph from Chapter 18 that illustrates the damage caused to the federal budget.

A long string of Congresses, from 1947 through 1970, demonstrated exemplary fiscal discipline.  Eight surpluses.  Only two years in which the deficit exceeded 2% of GDP.  Gross federal debt in 1947 had been well above 100% of GDP; by 1970 it had fallen to 36% of GDP.   

Fiscal behavior changes in the 1970s, following the first round of legislative gerrymandering.  Outlays regularly exceed receipts.  Surpluses disappear.  Deficits increase, cautiously at first, then more dramatically.  Then, in the 1980s, following the second round of post-census gerrymandering, deficit spending accelerates.  There was a pause during the Clinton presidency, with higher tax rates, contained federal spending, exceptionally high stock prices, and a momentary surge in capital gain tax collections.  It didn't last.  With George W. Bush as president, Congress once again slashed tax rates and resumed its deficit-spending ways.

In the forty years from 1971 through 2010, Congress ran only four surpluses.  Twenty-eight deficits exceeded 2% of GDP.  Of those, 18 exceeded 3% of GDP.  Gross federal debt shot back up. 

People wonder where the debt crisis comes from.  The single largest reason for the debt crisis is modern gerrymandering.  Gerrymandering discriminates in favor of the nation's ideologues and against the nation's moderates.  Once the nation elected fiscally responsible Congresses; now the nation elects fiscally irresponsible Congresses.        

In a genuine democracy, voting districts aren't rigged.  Candidates face voters of every persuasion.  The center has the voice it deserves, and the nation is the better for it.  In a gerrymandered democracy, district-rigging is pervasive.  The center is disempowered and the two-party duopoly takes over.   Congress loses its wisest and most temperate voices.  Gerrymandering is a civic poison.  A competent America would shed itself of gerrymandering at the earliest possible opportunity.

Steven Howard Johnson

Gerrymandering: A Strategy for Ending It

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States . . . ."  This phrase from Article I, Section 2, captures the essence of America's democratic tradition.  "Members" of the House of Representatives are to be "chosen . . . by the People of the several States."  

Modern gerrymandering stands this principle on its head.  Instead of the people choosing the representatives they want, each state's dominant party uses its boundary-drawing power to choose the voters it wants.  This reverses the intent of the Constitution. 

It's time to put together a well-drawn constitutional challenge.  Find people with standing.  Find a great team of lawyers and well-heeled sponsors.  Draw up the best possible case and take it to court. 

Modern gerrymandering was set loose on the land as the collateral damage that flowed from Reynolds v Sims and Wesberry v Sanders in the 1960s.  Those decisions were right, on their merits, but they also created a damaging mess that can only be undone by another Supreme Court decision, one that outlaws the practice of allowing legislators to choose their voters.

Steven Howard Johnson

 

 

Redesign: The Next Revolution

The Scientific Revolution, the Democratic Revolution, the Free Market Revolution, the Social Revolution, the Environmental Revolution, the Computer Revolution.  Our history books capture broad shifts in human history with simple phrases.  Once human society didn't have the scientific method; now it does.  Once monarchy was the norm; today's standard is the democratic republic.  Markets once were shaped by royal charters; market freedom is now the norm.  Once slavery was acceptable and only men had the vote; now women also have the vote and slavery has been outlawed.  Once we ignored the environment entirely; now we have laws that give the environment some protection.  Once we struggled along with typewriters and libraries where knowledge was stored in books and catalogued by card files; now we have computers and servers and broadband and search engines and social media and countless websites.

Are we done?  No.  The revolution that awaits is the Redesign Revolution.  A competent civilization knows when major ways of doing business no longer works.  It redesigns its business practices and its public policies; it rethinks its popular culture and its spirit of stewardship.  It refreshes itself by redesigning major institutions that have become corrupt.  It saves what it needs and casts aside the corruption.   

We are in the early stages yet of redesigning the energy industry.  Fossil fuels have been discredited as an energy source for the future by the terrible damage they cause; new tools for capturing and distributing and using energy are being tested in laboratories all over the world. 

At an even more sweeping level, we are in the early stages of redesigning human activity in order to comply with Nature's iron laws of sustainability.  Succeed in this quest and human civilization will enjoy an unlimited ride on planet Earth. 

Economic life in the modern world continues to be driven by the idea that prosperity requires growth.  If growth stops, prosperity stops.  Yet endless growth is incompatible with sustainability.  What we need, for a healthy future, is a world of post-growth prosperity.  How are we to do that?  We don't know.  Yet.  But we need to figure it out, and it's one of the major parts of the Redesign Revolution to come.   

And what of Gated Capitalism?  Its practices trap the bottom seventy percent in poverty so that the top one percent can acquire virtually unlimited wealth.  Gated Capitalism lusts after endless growth and an endless expansion of wealth.  It is a human conceit of catastrophic biblical proportions.  Capitalist wealth has a legitimate role, but taken to excess, the drive for wealth becomes terribly destructive.  Capitalism needs to be redesigned so that the practice of Gated Capitalism can be left behind. 

Today's toxic Congress is the product of modern gerrymandering.  In an honorable democracy, voters choose their legislators.  In today's gerrymandered America, legislators choose their voters.  Today's Congress is filled with partisand from the right and the left.  The national interest has no voice.  Huge redesign challenge here as well. 

The same basic principles underlies all these examples.  A bad design creates a bad system; a good design creates a good system.  In a bad system, special interests are rewarded; the national interest is ignored.  In a good system, the national interest is protected and special interests are required to behave responsibly. 

Badly designed systems have been characterized by journalist John Cassidy as examples of "Rational irrationality."  Each piece in a badly-designed system seems rational to the special interests who profit from it, yet the system as a whole is irrational.  The greater the profit for the special interests, the greater the damage for the nation.

Rational irrationality is a pervasive problem, one that will recur again and again.  Integrity at scale is always the better answer.  A competent modern society uses large scale redesign as a tool for protecting itself from rational irrationality.   The Redesign Revolution awaits.

Steven Howard Johnson

 

 

 

Prosperity without growth?

Growth.  It is the essence of an industrial civilization, is it not?  Coal gave us ironworking and steelmaking.  Steel gave us railroads, and engines and trains, skyscrapers, and the capacity to create turbines and generators.  Generators gave us electricity.  In time, electricity gave us computers and the internet.  We added highways and suburban homes and refrigerators and freezers and washer-dryers and television and two car families, or is it three car families?  Medicine became more high tech, and then even more. 

It was through growth that the United States enjoyed such a vast surge in prosperity from the late 1940s into the mid-1970s.  Of course, growth has been our norm from the very beginning, when the first English settlers landed in the New World.  Initially there were but a few dozen settlers.  By 1776, there were three or four million.  Now we number 310 million and counting.  Growth is our thing.  We grow in numbers, inventions, and technologies; we expand the range of our industry, the amount of land we occupy, the financial wealth at our disposal.  We grow in longevity.  Growth as a way of life is deeply ingrained.  We are Americans; we are a people committed to growth, a people committed to prosperity.  We cannot imagine being an America without growth; we cannot imagine prospering economically without growth.

What if we're wrong?  That is to say, what if we're no longer right?  In his new book, The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama notes the tendency of powerful civilizations to institutionalize the practices that made them successful.  When conditions change, their inertial momentum is strong and they refuse to adapt.  They cling to old habits and because yesterday's habits no longer fit, civilizations go into decline. 

So it is with our habits of growth.  Growth is one of those civilizational behaviors that acquires great inertial momentum.  We will imagine ourselves defined by growth for years or decades too long.  

The Earth is finite - finite in size, finite in resources, finite in its carrying capacity.  The era of endless growth is very close to the end of its run.   Peak oil is here; peak everything else seems to be here as well.  We can't dig stuff up and pump stuff out and consume it and throw it away, endlessly; we especially can't do that on an ever-rising exponential growth curve.  It's a hard truth to face, but in our hearts we know we weren't placed on the Earth simply to liquidate its resources and exterminate its living species.   The Earth is not a throwaway resource.  That's not the bargain the Creator cuts with any species.   

So here's a new phrase.  "Post-Growth Prosperity."  Growth isn't a permanent necessity.  Even without perpetual growth, America can always be a prosperous nation.  The American people can always be a prosperous people.  If we change the way we do business, if we change our ideas, we can learn how give ourselves a perpetually prosperous future.  Without growth.  It will be a huge change in habits.  Hard as all get out.  Hard, but for the better. 

Steven Howard Johnson

The debt isn't America's only problem . . . but it is one

The annual deficit and the rising debt has become the central obsession of the nation's conservatives, who have successfully used the Debt Ceiling law to extract a number of concessions in return for the vote to raise the debt ceiling. 

It is a legitimate concern, but only one of many.  Here's our problem as a nation.  We don't have a workable strategy for achieving long-run sustainability.  Sustainability requires a shift from today's growth-growth-growth way of life to a steady state way of life.  And that implies, in turn, a shift from growth-based prosperity to post-growth prosperity.  We haven't any idea how urgent the sustainability problem is, nor the need to shift from growth-driven prosperity to post-growth prosperity. 

Here's a second major part of America's larger crisis.  The Reagan tax cuts murdered America's middle class.  It used to be the case that the American middle class participated equitably in the expansion of American prosperity.  Now the nation's expanding prosperity benefits the top ten percent, and especially the top one percent.  The lower 90% are almost wholly left out.  I call this Gated Capitalism. (See Chapter 15, "President Reagan and Gated Capitalism")

Post-Growth Prosperity, as a goal, is wholly incompatible with Gated Capitalism, the consuming passion of the nation's top one percent.  Post-Growth Prosperity requires a balanced economy, in which America's middle class is an honored and full partner.  Gated Capitalism is all about maximizing the wealth of the very top by minimizing the earnings of the lower 90%.  The two principles are inompatible, and just now the wrong one is uppermost.

Not only is Gated Capitalism a barrier to sustainability, it also creates a host of immediate problems. 

When the squeeze is on the middle class, as it is today, the economic difficulties of unemployed and underpaid families multiply.  The pressures on society's social insuranc system multiply - more government money is needed for medicare, for medicaid, for Social Security. More money for state and local social services.  And so on.

How many Americans realize just how dramatically this area of government has expanded?   In 1962, federal spending on social insurance was roughly 4% of GDP.  Now it's 13% of GDP - more than a tripling.  That's huge.  (See Chapter 18, "Another Failure Spiral")

This puts a natural strain on taxpayers who feel as though they're paying a lot and not getting much in return.  Social insurance is necessary to a civilized society, but its total size also has to be kept in check.  The best way to keep the pressure for social insurance under control is to end Gated Capitalism.  Do that and the pressure to spend on social insurance will shrink, at least just a bit.

Neither party knows what it's doing.  Republicans defend Gated Capitalism, and thereby deepen the hole for the nation's middle class.  As the pain intensifies for ordinary Americans, the pressure intensifies for social insurance.  Which Republicans also hate to pay for.  Republicans do not look in the mirror; they do not realize how their policy of cutting taxes on the rich creates social decline within the middle class and generates rising pressure for social insurance. 

Democrats, for their part, also don't understand the driving dynamic that gives us Gated Capitalism, but they do understand social insurance.  So they layer on ways of protecting society's most vulnerable.  Democrats willingly drive up social insurance costs, willingly pay for the increase with borrowed money, and in a somewhat different way, also try to postpone the nation's day of reckoning.

Congressional Republicans play one brand of whack-a-mole, Congressional Democrats play another kind.  No one steps back and asks the basic question.  "Are we doing Job One?"  The answer is no.  Sustainability is Job One.  Post-Growth Prosperity is Job One. 

Catering to the top one percent is not Job One.  Digging the middle class into a pit is not Job One.  Turning America's back on its weak and vulnerable is not Job One.  Rescuing the victims of a badly designed system is not Job One.

Job One is getting America's future right.  Completely right.  Neither party has allocated a single brain cell to this responsibility.

Steven Howard Johnson