civil society

To help future generations, study previous ones.

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The Common Problem . . .

is that people fail to examine geopolitics on geopolitical time scales. NATO is not an artifact of the Cold War era, it is a result of the interwar era. In 1914, the Pope warned that conflict between the two great alliances would be “the suicide of Europe.” By 1918, the millions of casualties constituted a demographic bottleneck called the “Lost Generation.” Yet, just 20 years after Armistice, the antebellum maneuvering of World War 2 was trumpeted as “Peace In Our Time” . . . and war only a year out. After the War to End All Wars, the Allied nations placed their faith in international justice and nonviolent coexistence. A generation later, the nations of Western Europe knew better. They had seen two wars settle into long, grinding equilibrium, then watched a latecomer disrupt the balance of power. With the knowledge that long wars just get more people killed on both sides, the statesmen of Europe and America created a power structure where the nation which had proved to be the balance of power in both World Wars would be committed to any new European war from Day 1. The nations behind the Iron Curtain subscribed to the new theory of heavily-armed peace, as well. When the Warsaw Pact was finally formed, it only formalized the existing power structure of Soviet forces under Soviet commanders deployed in the countries which the Red Army had reconquered from Germany. Any future war was to be made short and decisive, and preferably so destructive that compromise and coexistence would be a far better option. In ultimate purpose, NATO took the principles of 19th-century statesmen into the nuclear era, a non-nuclear deterrent schooled in the lessons of Summer, 1914.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Geopolitics is best studied on generational timescales. When nations set policy, it is best done with an understanding of the previous 50-100 years of decisions and options in that area of government activity.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Now that everyone has had a week to find their center

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The Common Problem . . .

is that people get beside themselves over elections, whether their preferred candidate came out on top or under the curve. The US has survived contentious elections before. Most people do not depend on the implementation of a political agenda for their day-to-day existence. In civil society, there is a general agreement that police forces and fire services and post offices and road construction, things which everyone in the society can directly benefit from, are fair game for the government to do. That degree of non-dependence, of actually sharing the benefits of government with all citizens, is the core strength of a free society. Free markets do not suffer from what engineers call “single point of failure.” In a centrally-controlled, planned economy, one report with incorrect information can impair all the critical decision-makers for an entire country. The core strength of the Western World for the last 400 years has been that the average person does not need direction or permission from a higher authority for any aspect of their regular activity.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Get up, go carry out the tasks of your normal day, and live your life without waiting for permission from someone who doesn’t even know you.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Ignoring history hurts everyone.

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The Common Problem . . .

is that people keep thinking they have outsmarted human nature. In the financial sector particularly, the “experts” keep thinking they have found a solution to the limits taught by 5 millennia of painful experience. All economies are barter economies. Advanced ones simply have a commoditized, granular unit of exchange called money. Instead of exchanging product for product, they exchange value for value; by decoupling value from the product, money integrates time as an aspect of the economy. Where Marx went wrong was to view time as an independent store of value, the determining factor in the value of labor. Time can never have commercial value unless some other exchange of value is also in progress. Quality of work, innovation in new products or practices, the effects of the mind, are where value comes from. Debt, interest, investment, can only exist with an agreed unit of exchange. Resources in their natural state have a latent value, but they provide no direct impact on the economy. Transferring the future value of undeveloped resources requires an agreement about the nature of possession, as well as a unit of stored value. That’s why inflation is destructive to economies, because it reduces the stored value represented by each unit of money. Interest, rent, and equity returns are the return on time value, because they represent a deferred exchange of value. The use of money as a unit of exchange means people can exchange partial value of a product, temporary use rather than full transfer of ownership.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

When someone with letters after their name says they have overcome or are willing to ignore history, expect their “new and improved” idea to self destruct. Sooner or later, history and human nature combine to return everything to normal.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Counted votes which still don’t count.

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The Common Problem . . .

Is that large population centers politically outweigh the surrounding areas. Cities like Los Angeles and Chicago vote very differently from the rest of their respective states. The result is that millions of voters are effectively disenfranchised, when it comes to Presidential elections. In the case of California, this results in millions of disenfranchised voters in the largest, most powerful state in terms of electoral votes. The first solution typically proposed is to do away with the Electoral College entirely, and go to a direct election by popular vote. The problem with this proposal is that it ignores the purpose of the Electoral College. By distributing the voting representation across geographic separations, it ensures anyone elected President has a broad base of support across a large portion of the country. Even when the system seemed to fail in 1860, the states which elected Lincoln had such an advantage in population, in development, in every measurable aspect of power resources, that the Union victory in the American Civil War was practically guaranteed.

So, how can we solve the problem of disenfranchised voters without sacrificing the advantage of national harmony that comes from the current system?

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Any city with a census population larger than the least populated state should have its electoral votes divided from the state in which it resides. Both the state and city get to round up their total of electoral votes, resulting in one electoral vote added per city which is divided from its state.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Cops have watches; Watches have faces

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*Special Note: Due to ongoing events, active consideration on the current question has been extended.*
 – J.D. Lewis

The Common Problem . . .

Is that local police have surrendered the street corners to drug dealers and gang lieutenants. To improve relations and communication between urban police and urban populations, the most needed change is to give the police a recognizable face for each neighborhood, instead of the thin blue line all the time. Urban centers were safer places for everyone when there was a neighborhood cop who knew not just the neighborhood, but the actual neighbors. Police intelligence-gathering was an automatic process, because there was a trained observer walking the streets and watching who goes into which doors and comes out of which alleys. We can afford for inner-city cops to skip traffic duty 2-4 hours of their workweek.

Starting out, it may be four officers who all park at a community center or a neighborhood store, grab a cup of coffee and walk the neighborhood in pairs for an hour. For longer foot patrols, have three officers walking, and one in a cruiser to run communications between the walking officers and the patrol desk; the radio officer can also shuttle the walking officers to their cars if they are needed elsewhere. Eventually, it will come down to a single officer who climbs out of his cruiser and walks a neighborhood for an hour or two. It is a simple, but not easy, answer. It may take a generation or two, so departments need to implement it as soon as possible.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

People need to be able to say “the” neighborhood cop again. Even better, would be for them to say *our* neighborhood cop. That will take a generation or two. Traffic stops have their place, but police should be more than traffic cops. Foot patrols, and the resulting face-to-face interaction outside an enforcement or investigative context, will go a long way to putting an individual, recognizable face on the monolithic, mysterious force behind the system.

Copyright 2016 J.D. Lewis

Free Ride or Free State?

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The Common Problem . . .

Is that people look at government as good or evil. They tend to view it as either their best friend or their worst enemy. Government is always inefficient, because government, by definition, is about control and limitation in the interest of safety. The question is, what is the appropriate balance point between safety and self-determination? Unfortunately, this is one of those questions where 3 people will give at least 4 different opinions.

Opinion is a bad basis for policy in the first place, but it often becomes law through the force of public opinion. In this case, opinion cannot even provide a generally accepted answer. Logic is the only available answer to set the appropriate balance between safety and self-determination. So, do we make government a first response, last resort, or somewhere in between?

There is a case for government being the first response. Government can bring more power to bear on any given problem than any other entity, because it can always assemble more resources. With a gross revenue measured in trillions, and future revenues guaranteed through a monopoly on premeditated force, government can buy the answer. The question is, at what cost to the rest of society? Because of its very size, national government alters the supply-demand curve by any concerted action. That alone makes a good case for delegating powers to lower tiers of government. Greater accountability of and access to government institutions makes a better case for assigning government power to the lowest level with the budget and personnel base large enough to handle the job. This is the core ideal of federalism, many smaller units of government working for the narrow interests of their specific constituencies and ceding to higher levels of government only what powers they cannot effectively use themselves.

Even better, though, is for government to be the final resort. This is not because large corporate interests are inherently more moral or responsive; in the general case that is used to set public policy, they are not any better than government. They are, however, more easily avoided than government, if they become harmful to someone. Nor are small, voluntary associations such as co-ops, collectives, or syndicates going to be an effective alternative. For government to justify its existence, it must be large enough to do what the people themselves cannot do in voluntary associations. For government to meet its primary responsibility of preventing violence to its populace, it must be powerful enough to coerce compliance from those who place little or no value on peaceful coexistence. In short, there is no more trustworthiness or value in large corporations or small associations than in government. However, there are more options available in interacting with them.

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

The balance between safety and self-determination lies in a government which follows the Hippocratic Principle: First, do no harm. If a government will limit its actions to ones which meet that standard, it can be trusted with sovereign power. Even such a government, though, should be a last resort. If another private entity does harm, the government can provide effective redress. If the government does harm, there is no other recourse.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis