Shifting Economics: The Austerity Drag and Modeling a Better Future

[Occupy? Whatever happened to Occupy? What I was afraid of, basically, is what happened. Repression has had the effect of factionalizing the Movement -- inevitable in any case -- which caused multiple schisms. There is much common ground on the issues; the fundamental problem is how to undertake the necessary actions. There is no "process" agreement, and as long as there isn't one, the Revolution is stalled. This leaves lots and lots of room for the demons of Austerity to frolic unmolested.]

Supposedly, because of the leftist-commie-pinko-socialist-mau-mau-kenyan in the White House, the United States has been the victim of an enormous lack of Austerity, unlike the happy-contented Europeans who have been wallowing in it for the past many years thanks to the brilliant economic mind of Frau Merkel.

Well. The absence of Austerity in the United States is something of a myth, one that is kept alive almost as much by the one political party as the other. Government Austerity is being imposed, in some cases quite radically, at the state level where all the many experiments in New Model Economics have been underway for some time.

As I've been pointing out since the beginning of the Endless Recession, certain aspects of the New Model Economics of Austerity being imposed on the United States, Europe, and much of the rest of the world by what amounts to a handful of institutions and individuals intent on world domination and endless exploitation of the masses are clearly matters of policy: keeping unemployment high, driving down wages and benefits, disinvestment in large segments of numerous countries including the United States; accumulation of vast wealth in fewer and fewer hands, forced impoverishment of millions upon millions of Americans, Europeans and other people around the world, rampant commodities speculation and resource exploitation at a more massive scale than ever, financial manipulation, looting of national treasuries, restriction of (some) civil and political rights, driving people out of their own homes and into rental properties, cutting welfare and social benefits including education, making access to what remains increasingly difficult, restricting access to and raising the cost of medical care, on and on and on.

These and more are the obvious policies of more and more supposedly "democratic" governments which have taken the almost universal position of governing contrary to the will and the interest of the People.

This is Doctrine, applied almost everywhere, and the Kenyan Socialist isn't standing in the way, he's lubricating the skids. He's doing a remarkable job of it, too. He was auditioned and hired to manage the masses, and some tumult from time to time, he's done a bang-up job of it.

Ahem.

Documentation of the atrocities continues without let up, but without much point either. One cannot still be "laying the foundation" for a Progressive (or any viable) Future, not by a long shot. One needs to be actually doing it by now, or undertaking a viable alternative, not pretending that one more Democrat (or one more Republican for that matter) is going to be the transcendent change-agent who will bring on Paradise. That's not what our political class is there for. At least they're not there for your Paradise. Or mine. Or anyone who hasn't bought and paid for them.

No, we cannot re-create the conditions that led to the Progressive Revolution of the 20th Century, and I doubt we'd really want to. I don't think we really want another Revolution along those lines.

We need something different, something better, and something that contrasts sharply with the policies that are being imposed from the top which are impoverishing and restricting and repressing millions upon millions of Americans and others around the world.

That's what Occupy set out to be, but it has so far been unable to maintain a unified front in the face of increasingly harsh repression. The key to Occupy was the demonstration of alternatives to the Way Things Are. Occupy was for a time a very public model of What Could Be.

This aspect appealed to me probably more than any other, but I remember a conversation I had with a fellow named Dominic at one Occupy event I was part of last fall. We were discussing intentional communities, and how I saw the Occupy Movement as one that was establishing spontaneous temporary intentional communities all over the country and the world as demonstrations of another world of possibility. He agreed, but he had many reservations about it. He said that he had been involved in the establishment of a number of intentional communities over the last ten or fifteen years, and he said it is a very difficult and delicate process, and that most efforts fail.

The spontaneity of the Occupy effort was itself a problem for endurance, and even then, at a very early stage, it was clear that burn-out was going to be a big factor. He thought the temporary nature of the community -- no matter how long or short a time it lasted -- was actually a benefit, because if the Occupations were not intended to be permanent, they would not become institutionalized, and their efforts, while fleeting, could well have a greater long-run influence than if they became "established" and all the difficulties and flaws of community building were to become the focus, or the Occupations became fundraising or political institutions like practically every other non-profit or NGO.

The notion of separation from and limiting engagement with the broader society -- including the police who even then were so intent on repression; the local Occupy was confronted with nightly raids and arrests by riot-clad police from the first day -- was appealing to Dominic, as it was to me.

But if you separate, how can you demonstrate?

"That's the problem, isn't it?"

The point of the demonstration, after all, is to present to the public a vision and a model of what could be and should be. If you've separated from the broader society, such as the hippie communes did in the Olden Days, how do you demonstrate and model the alternatives for a better future? You can't assume that everybody will show up at your door. You have to go to them...

At this point in the Austerity Drag, however, any alternative at all becomes a potential model, I think, and some of what we were fretting about -- productively -- back in October may well have been mooted by events.

One of the clear points back then and now, for example, is that there are hundreds and hundreds of "models" out there, churning away at the mill of change, each one an element of what could be a transformative whole.

I've wanted to write something about "transition towns" for example, as one of many models of one element of shifting perspectives. Transition towns and permaculture are of course Utopian visions, but that's how you make real change happen. Without the vision you get nowhere. I'm well aware of that in my personal life, and I know something of how the "vision thing" works in the larger social context as well. It's fundamental. Or at least it should be. Yet ignoring or keeping visions and Utopias under wraps while focusing on matters that are really not going to change anything have come to dominate consciousness.

The nearly universal quest for Austerity (for everyone else) from the top -- even when it's masked as kenyan-mau-mau-socialism -- is an opportunity, it seems to me, to probe ever deeper into the question of modeling and demonstrating a better future, Utopianism, and shifting perspectives.

I like the model of St. Francis because he was able to establish a clear contrast between the opulence and violence of the social and political leaders of his time with the simplicity, harmony and joy to be found in the voluntary poverty he and his disciples instituted and practiced. In other words, voluntary "austerity" is one thing; the violent imposition of Austerity being practiced by governments and the particular private interests that own and control them is quite another.

Of course, as some wag at St. Peter's said (at least in the Zeffirelli movie) about Fracesco and the Pope, "The Holy Father knows what he's doing; this filthy, ragged beggar will bring the Poor back to the Church." Mwah ha ha ha ha.

Power can imagine nothing except that which serves it or is destroyed by it.

But there is something else, isn't there?

Lessons From St. Francis?

Cimabue's portrait of the Saint above is said to be a fair likeness of his appearance, largely because it was painted within a few decades of his death in Assisi, apparently with the advice of some of the brothers who knew Francesco in life.

There's something deeply sad and other worldly about it. The full-length portrait, in the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis:

shows him with the Stigmata which he acquired toward the end of his life, well after the founding of the Franciscan Orders, and well after the time when the administration of those Orders had been taken from Francesco and put in the hands of Brother Elias, one of his first and most ardent followers -- and conveniently an administrative and architectural genius, though not necessarily a political one, as Elias himself would be removed from his position of authority over the Franciscan Orders in turn.

Cimabue's version of St. Francis is quite different than the more famous versions of Giotto in the same church; most of Giotto's versions show Francesco in a kind of mystical ecstacy, for the man had visions and heard voices after all. Today, of course, we'd call that a "condition" and label it schizophrenia, especially if its onset comes during the patient's early 20's, as was the case with the young Francesco. Medication and treatment would be advised, though a cure remains elusive.

But in Francesco's day, such a condition was considered either of God or the Devil, and appropriate tests and ordeals could be administered to determine which. In Francesco's case, he managed to charm the Bishop of Assisi right off the bat, so the tests weren't necessary, and from that point, the issue of whether he was possessed of demons or was a child of God simply wasn't an issue any more. With the Bishop's imprimatur, Francesco was pretty much left alone to develop his mission and calling as he and Divine Wisdom considered fit and proper and to gather about him such followers as he might.

His approach varied considerably depending on his state of mind. Francesco appears to have both bipolar and schizophrenic such that he was continually beset with contrasting states of utter joy and crippling depression. Add on top of this mental/emotional chaos his frequent physical illnesses and his penchant for mortification of the flesh and we have a picture of a man who must have had a very difficult time functioning at all, something that Cimabue seems to have captured in the portrait above. There is a definite "WTF?" impression about it.

Whatever his personal woes, Francesco's legacy is as vibrant today as his life's work was in his own time, though changes have been made to accommodate the Franciscan Orders to the needs and requirements of the Church. For their part, Franciscans have a mixed legacy through history, though apparently in Francesco's own time, there was no doubt about his and his followers' holiness.

Part of the Franciscans' mixed legacy has to do with their service to the Church and especially to the Spanish Crown in the New World -- which led to such unspeakable horrors against the Indians that even now the mind and heart recoils at what was done and why. The Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico resulted in the execution of 21 Franciscan priests (The Martyrs) who'd been sent to the Natives to save their souls, but wound up tormenting, exploiting and oppressing them -- on the orders of the Church and the Crown, of course -- sometimes quite as viciously as anything Francesco did to himself, if not more so.

Old Cross of the Martyrs in Santa Fe. Erected in 1920 in honor of the 21 Franciscan priests put to death during the first days of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.

The issue for the Indians was not so much of an issue for the Spanish or their Franciscan missionaries, whose dismissal of Native interests and concerns was notorious throughout their era of conquest. I can't help but think that Francesco himself would not have approved of the highhanded and destructive behavior of the conquerors of the New World -- not that anybody who mattered would listen to him.

There was no real conception of a New World when Francesco lived -- except in the sense of that which could be acquired through Crusades against the Muslims, the Fourth of which got under way during Francesco's lifetime. That led to a remarkable encounter -- or perhaps a series of them -- between the Sultan of Egypt and Francesco at the Sultan's camp in the Nile Delta while a cease-fire between the Crusaders and the Sultan's forces was in effect. Francesco sought to convert the Sultan who had other ideas, but who saw the little monk (Francesco was said to be about 5'4") as a more appealing avatar of the infidel Christians, and with whom he apparently enjoyed parlaying. The Sultan was not converted, but he seems to have become enough of an admirer of Francesco that once the Holy City of Jerusalem was retaken from the Crusaders, the Franciscans were the only Christians allowed back in to care for the Christian holy sites, said to be due to the fact that St. Francis himself had provided the model of consideration and respect for the interests and views of Muslims, a characteristic that later Franciscans would have some trouble applying to the Indians of the New World.

Yes, I know, what happened wasn't entirely their fault, but it's much like the continuing problem of abusive police and military forces in our own day. Abuses become institutionalized far more easily than care and consideration, and failure to oppose or intervene in cases of abuse becomes just as institutionalized. Once that's the case, it is very hard -- almost impossible -- to change the dynamic without completely overturning the status quo. Franciscans may not have wanted to be, but they were participants in the abuses by their secular compatriots, and on some occasions might well have led the abuse.

Early on, though, Francesco and his followers had profound insights into the human condition -- both spiritually and temporally -- as it was in Italy at the turn of the 13th Century. They sought and put into practice another way of living, creating a Utopian spiritual and temporal world of their own in the midst of the crumbling mess being made of Umbria and Italy by The Powers That Be. Their Utopia was based on Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience (to God). They lived simply, served their fellow sufferers and nature, and expressed a joyfulness in life and creation that was practically unheard-of in connection with either the Church or secular powers at the time. The contrast between the simplicity of their lives and their joy in living compared to the misery that even the highest of the mighty seemed to suffer from was instrumental in building up the early membership in the Franciscan Orders, and that success inspired others to found Orders of their own; in Assisi, that meant the Poor Clares, founded by St. Clare, an admirer (and some claim a lover, but I think not) of St. Francis.

St. Clare of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Television, from a fresco by Simone Martini in the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi

The key, of course, for both the Franciscans and the Poor Clares was the simplicity and material poverty of their lives; they found it was possible to live well without striving in the material world. There was plenty enough for the well-being of all. They lived well enough on the surplus of the land and the gifts of their admirers that their communities became magnets for others would do likewise. And in their time, they were very successful.

A great deal of the material presence of St. Francis, St. Clare, and their followers has been preserved in Assisi and round about Umbria and Italy, so it is possible today to not only retrace their steps but to get a remarkably full picture of what their lives and their Utopia was like. And at least some of that picture was translated to the New World through the Franciscan missions that were established in California and New Mexico among other places.

It's actually remarkable to see how closely those missions followed the pattern set in Assisi and Umbria centuries beforehand. Each of the Missions was intended to be an expression of the Franciscan ideal. To an extent, they worked, at least for a time.

They worked to the extent they were joyful, let's say. And when their joy was interrupted, as it always would be, much as happened to St. Francis himself, they could quickly turn into miserable sites of suffering and death.

Yet there is something about the Franciscan mission wherever it has been extended that those who experience it don't want to lose. Much to the disgust of some, for example, Franciscans are notorious for singing and dancing and putting on shows, somewhat like the Mormons, but without the breeding. They have always sought to serve the least advantaged among populations, to lift up the weakest, to gently chastise the proud and the strong. St. Francis and St. Clare were notorious in their own time for feeding and caring for the lepers of Assisi, as many Franciscans today feed and care for those our current societies fear, denounce and despise. Their vows of poverty have meant they never lack for what they really need, and the community and companionship they find with one another and with those they serve has long been a model for intentional communities far and wide.

The ideal of a Franciscan community is to be as self-sufficient as possible, but as a mendicant order, Franciscans rely on the generosity of adherents and admirers as well as what the friars can do for themselves. In other words, they can produce for their own needs to a certain extent, but they can also benefit from the material surplus of the wider society. That surplus is ever-present.

Francesco himself demonstrated that repeatedly, but perhaps best known is the church of San Damiano outside of Assisi where he had gone to pray. The church was falling to ruin, and as he prayed, he heard a voice telling him to rebuild the church. He took it quite literally; accomplishing the task, however, seemed to him to require money for stone and building materials, which he got through the sale of cloth and his mule. But the priest at San Damiano refused the money, which he thought was ill-gotten, as the cloth he had sold belonged to Francesco's father. Francesco threw the money on the window-sill, so the story goes, and retreated to the church basement, where he stayed as a hermit for a month or so trying to understand what was wanted of him. Finally, he went back to Assisi to face his father's wrath, leading ultimately to the famous scene of Francesco's renunciation of his father and all his material things before the Bishop of Assisi, and his return to San Damiano as a mendicant and penitent. Shortly, followers came with stone and building materials, and the church of San Damiano was rebuilt from the generosity of those who had witnessed the scene in Assisi's plaza and had heard Francesco's call.

San Damiano became the initial convent for the Poor Clares, and Francesco moved on to repair and rehabilitate other rural churches and chapels in the Assisi region.

In doing so, the Franciscans often simply "occupied" vacant, abandoned, neglected, and run down buildings or took over land that was otherwise going unused. They didn't ask permission, they just did it. And from time to time, that got them into trouble with the authorities, both with the Church and secular authorities, leading to conflicts and struggles that would not be unfamiliar to observers today given the travails and attempts at repressing the Occupy movement.

Of course it helped somewhat that Francesco himself was a favorite of Bishops and the Pope in Rome and that the Franciscan Order had the imprimatur of the Pope; only two years after Francesco's death, he was proclaimed a Saint by Papal decree. Despite the political turmoil of the times, having such high level patronage was of immense assistance in establishing and legitimizing the Franciscans. So far as I can tell, Occupy has no such patronage from On High.

But the "occupation" strategy was very definitely -- and often successfully -- utilized by Francesco and the Franciscans as their movement grew.

Yet the minute Francesco was elevated to sainthood, what was left of the innocence of the Franciscan movement was lost. The Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi is a gorgeous pilgrimage site that contrasts starkly with the humble places where St. Francis actually lived and did his spiritual and temporal work. When parts of the Basilica's ceiling fell during an aftershock of the 1997 Umbrian Earthquake, killing four -- two Franciscans and two engineers checking for damage -- it was shocking (the video is still terrifying -- and seems to presage other events). The ceiling collapsed over the entrance and the altar -- ie: at opposite ends of the church. Repairs were undertaken quickly, and restoration was beautifully done, but the frescoes were lost from those areas of the ceiling that collapsed, and many other frescoes were damaged. In a sense, it was perhaps a reminder that Francesco would never have approved a church like that to honor his memory. It's too fine, too beautiful and far too decorative. Yet as someone from Assisi pointed out to him when he was railing against the fine accommodations the city had built for pilgrims who were already coming to Assisi in his lifetime, "This wasn't built for you. It was built by and for the Assisi Commune."

If there is a lesson from St. Francis for the modern era, apart from the spiritual, it is in the determination and persistence of Francesco to throw off the shackles of his past and adopt a new and simpler way of life, based on his profoundest beliefs in what was right and moral, and to hold on to his beliefs and practices through thick and thin.

Pax et bonum.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Tonight's sky should have one of those occasional celestial displays : the largest moon of the year, as it will be full and nearly the closest to Earth it gets.

Naked eye and binocular astronomy is always rewarding and can be deeply moving when you realize what it is you are seeing.

Franco Zeffirelli's glorious "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" is a reminder -- if one were needed -- how rewarding the simplest things and the faith that goes with them can be.

I don't know how much longer this HD internet version will be available from YouTube, as I'm sure the copyright bots are busy scouring the web for violations. But I hadn't seen the movie in 40 years, and it was an extraordinary experience to see it again today.

No matter how lapsed we may be, the stories of the Saints, particularly St. Francis for me, can still inspire and uplift.

Roadtown, a Western Fantasy

"Roadtown" was a Progressive futurist notion that Edgar Chambless came up with toward the beginning of the last century. He published a book in 1910, called "Roadtown" appropriately enough, that set forth his ideas about the linear City of the Future, and it apparently caused quite a stir, enough of one, in fact, to lead to much popular press. Nevertheless, January, 1914, issue of Sunset Magazine, published by the Southern Pacific Railroad, seems to be the last major press notice of Chambless's ideas for the Future. One of his plans at that time was to have a Roadtown exhibit at the Panama Pacific Exhibition the following year, but so far as I've been able to find out there is no record of any such exhibit.

Roadtown was intended to be a technological marvel and to use the latest technology of the era to improve the lives of citizens, city dwellers especially.

At the time, the City was considered to be the root of evil and the den of iniquity. I thought about this in connection with my mother's family's removal from Indianapolis and all its urban troubles -- including labor strikes and all that went with them -- to the very small and relatively isolated California town of Santa Maria in 1916. I tried to imgine what impelled them, and one of the obvious factors was the City itself. Indianapolis was a large, gritty industrial city at the time, and the lot of those on its economic margins (where I would say my mother's family lived) was not a particularly good one. When my mother's father was killed, life for her and her mother was made nearly impossible. There were few options available for young widows and orphans.

The lot of others was comparatively worse, and many poor City dwellers had no option to leave for California or anywhere else for that matter. They were tied to their sorry lot in life, and that was that. The United States may have been a Land of Opportunity, but it was Opportunity open to some, not all. The suffering of the poor was intrinsic to the Opportunities afforded to others. And the suffering of the poor in America's cities was intense and self-perpetuating.

One of the chief means social scientists imagined would alleviate the situation was to remove the City's population to the Country. Roadtown was seen as one of the ways to do that.

In essence, Roadtown is a version of a linear city that is built on top of the then prevalent interurban street railways.

Street railways were the principal public transportation method prior to the widespread adoption of the private automobile. In 1910, when Chambless published his Roadtown manifesto, there was little expectation that automobiles would ever become much more than vehicular toys for the rich; they were wildly expensive, unreliable, uncomfortable, dangerous, and so on. Outside the cities, roads were in deplorable condition. The commerce and sightseeing travel of the Nation was done by rail. For personal use, the bicycle was considered the most appropriate form of wheeled transport, and bicycling had become a popular national pastime.

So when Chambless -- a patent examiner -- came up with his Roadtown plan, the most up-to-date Futurist ideas did not necessarily include the Automobile as an important factor to consider. Not only was the need for them limited in 1910, their ultimate utility was questionable. Automobiles were on par with the then novel Aeroplanes. On the other hand, bicycles, interurban street railways and long distance trains were proven technology widely considered to be the most efficient and thus the most Progressive and useful transport systems for the Future.

Roadtown was conceived as a multi-layer, multi-mile long extension of the City along the interurban transit lines that had either already been developed or would be developed in the Future.

At the bottom, in a deep trench, was to be found the interurban express line, stopping maybe every five miles or so, that would deliver goods and people to and from the City cores from which Roadtowns would radiate. Above the Express lines would be the interurban local lines, stopping every hundred yards or so, to provide a means for goods and people to travel easily -- "effortlessly" -- within Roadtown itself along what were conceived of as silent running monorail lines, rolling on leathern tired wheels in futuristic, even somewhat streamlined cars that were something like this:

This test track was built and demonstrated in 1911 in the tideflats of Seattle, Washington. The rails were made of wood and track cost was estimated to be around $3,000 per mile. A bargain! The Seattle Times commented at the time that "the time may come when these wooden monorail lines, like high fences, will go straggling across country, carrying their burden of cars that will develop a speed of about 20 miles per hour." Like so many inventions, lack of financial backing prevented further development.

Above the local transit lines, and directly connected to the transit platforms via internal stairways, would be the residences of Roadtown citizens. In other words, the "front doors" of these residences would be on transit platforms, not on the street. In essence, there would be no streets, for all transportation would be along either the rail lines below ground or on the roofs of the attached dwellings above where there would be a Promenade -- open to the wafting breezes in the spring and summer, glassed in and steam heated in the winter -- where pedestrians, cyclists, and roller-skaters (using rubber-wheeled roller skates) could amble along the way, stop at leisure, and enjoy the bracing Country Air and rural sights as they chose.

The Roadtown dwellings would consist of five to seven rooms -- depending on family size and necessity -- two rooms deep and two stories high, built of precast (and we assume reinforced) cement (concrete), forms and materials for which would be rapidly and efficiently carried along the rail lines by construction trains and erected in a trice on a common plan. These attached dwellings would be between 21 and 33 feet wide. Approximately 1,000 dwellings would be found in each mile of Roadtown. Each dwelling would be provided, of course, with the latest equipment including electricity for lighting, gas for home heating and cooking, hot and cold running water, proper sewage, and telephony of many kinds which included applications that anticipated radio and possibly even television.

Each dwelling would be supplied with heat and refrigeration from central plants, carried in pipes below ground. In fact all utilities would be underground, easily accessible from below for inspection and repair as well as expansion when necessary through passages aligned with the rail platforms.

On either side of each dwelling would be the private plots of the residents, each the width of the dwelling and extending as far as the eye could see into the distance. Because not everyone would want to or be able to utilize such an abundance of land, arrangements would be made to limit the land-holdings of those who needed or wanted less, and expand the holdings of those who could utilize more for crops, though leisure and gardening purposes were by no means restricted or limited. The idea was to provide enough land for each household to enable it to grow sufficient produce (and if so desired, animals) for its own needs, and for those so inclined, to enable modest-scale intensive farming to produce surpluses for sale to those who weren't generally farm-folk by nature. Chambless seemed to recognize that not everyone who could benefit from Roadtown living had a green thumb.

Communal and cooperative ventures and endeavors were to take the place of the corporations and the trusts that dominated the economy in those days. On the domestic front, the drudgery of "women's work" in the kitchen and laundry particularly was to be eliminated through the utilization of central kitchens and laundries. Households would order their meals from the central kitchens which would prepare and deliver them at the appropriate times. Laundry would be sent out to be done in the central facilities -- which would of course include wet washing and dry cleaning -- to be returned when complete. Central vacuum systems would be installed so that all households would be free from dust and dirt, while automatic mechanisms would lift bedding into airing (and disinfecting) closets during the day and return it to the bedstead at night for restful and clean sleep.

Citizens would be able to work at home in low-impact industry, making necessary items for use or sale, while heavier industry could take place in factories set away from but convenient to Roadtowns. No factory or industry would be allowed to grow so large as to dominate the economy of any Roadtown or locality.

The Future, as seen by Chambless and the many Roadtown advocates is one of independence as well as community, of dignity and well as quirky eccentricity, of industry as well as abundant leisure and creativity, of freedom from drudgery, of education and entertainment, of innovation as well as preservation of tradition.

And yet, nothing quite like Roadtown has ever been undertaken, at least not on the scale Chambless envisioned it, nor for quite the purpose he had in mind.

Instead, the Garden City alternative has been almost universally adopted for suburban expansion of urban centers. Garden Cities essentially continue the endless grid of streets and surface, overhead or underground utilities that have been the hallmarks of Cities throughout history. The chief difference is that Garden Cities make the grids much larger than in the past, infilling the gridded sectors with curving streets.

The whole point of Roadtown is to get away from the street grid, eliminating it entirely.

And that still seems to be a bridge too far for even today's Futurists.

Whatever Shall We Do About The Unemployment Problem?

Oh. Have you noticed? The issue du jour is the persistent unemployment abroad in the land, indeed, abroad abroad as well (it is one of the chronic issues driving protests in Europe and North Africa). The Rs have a Solution: cut taxes on business and corporations and the rich and remove regulations that protect air, water, and lives of workers as well as requiring employers to pay a bare minimum wage to their workers. Oh, and require them to actually pay it, too.

Both Robert Reich and Paul Krugman have come out full-bore on the topic and the blogosphere is all atwitter over it, so it must be important somehow.

Now they notice.

You know, I've been banging the drum on this topic for years, since the Endless Recession got underway in earnest with massive job losses. Forcing unemployment and keeping unemployment rates high is what it's all about for the Ruling Class. The current situation for the struggling masses -- now entering its fourth year -- is not accidental. The lovely thing for the High and the Mighty is that high unemployment rates force down wages and benefits for those who can manage to get a job or stay employed. It's a wonderful profit center for those on top of the heap, and they know it.

Commentators, though, either have ignored the problem (because they have other interests) or have been sorely confused about why the Government (let alone Industry) does nothing about the persistently high unemployment rate and squabbles over the high cost of unemployment benefits instead. This is frankly insane, but it is so confusing to the nation's commentariat.

Shouldn't the Government be doing something? Shouldn't they have been doing something all along? Why haven't they?

I attribute it to a deep-seated Hooverite belief system and ideology implanted in the White House and especially in the beliefs of the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama.



You might want to take a look at this commentary by Jared Bernstein regarding the White House's continuing lack of interest in doing something about unemployment:

There will be no WPA-type programs in our near future. There was no appetite for them in the Obama admin in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression and there’s a lot less now. The reasons for that are interesting and I’ll speak to them another day. But it ain’t happening.

And please don’t accuse me of “negotiating with myself” here. I stressed above the importance of making those arguments, and I frequently made them myself as a member of the President’s economics team.

It’s also congenitally hard for politicians to get behind “a serious program of mortgage modification.” Those who advocate for this (the NYT editorial page, e.g.) are right, but they’re also downplaying a very binding constraint. The politics of this idea are deeply wound up in moral hazard. People forget, but it was precisely this action—giving mortgage relief to someone at risk of default and not to someone who was struggling to keep up their payments—that birthed the Tea Party.

This is a straight out statement by Joe Biden's former chief economic advisor about what was going on in the White House and -- apparently -- in the President's mind about these matters.

He simply does not believe that the Government's role should be to interfere in the labor market by directly employing the vast armies of the unemployed. Instead, like Hoover, he believes (I think sincerely) that the issue of lack of employment must be dealt with in the private sector -- with the encouragement and "help" of Government where necessary -- but without direct Government intervention on behalf of labor.

At the same time, I've been hammering the issue of the crushing burden of debt the masses are under for years, debt which is crippling the economic recovery for ordinary people, and I proposed long ago that the answer to it was a debt relief program that was driven from the bottom up -- instead of paying off bankers' and financiers' gambling debts straightaway (which is what the Government has been doing) pay households an amount to lower their debt, and watch the economy recover immediately. The banksters will get their cut anon, for the money would "trickle up" (and BTW multiply on the way up), but no. Couldn't even consider it. "Moral hazard" and all that, you know.

Whereas paying off the banksters' gambling debts straight out of the Treasury has no "moral hazard?" I see. Then there was the Rick Santelli rant on the teevee, and that just made everything hard.

Yes. Well.

It's all such a load of utter horseshit, isn't it?

It's probably not too late to correct this situation, but it will require concerted and persistent action on the part of the People to get it done.

The Krugman and Reich considerations (and in the case of Krugman, the mea culpa) are coming out at a time when Democrats are recognizing that they "should be talking more about" unemployment more than they have been. So they're "talking about it more."

They are not doing anything about it, any more than the Rs are, and any more than they have been since the beginning of the Endless Recession.

"Doing something about unemployment" is contrary to Ruling Class Doctrine as is relieving the debts of the Lesser People. Doctrine requires those Lesser People to endure untold hardship so as to ensure the comfort and convenience of Their Betters.

So. What can We the People do about it, since our rulers refuse to do anything of substance for the masses, but instead insist on chipping away at whatever slim benefits remain to the unwashed?

How do we who have nothing put people back to work and keep them working? And if we can figure out how to do it, how do we prevent the benefits from increased economic activity from being Hoovered up by the Overclass?

The key, certainly, is to start small, start locally, combine skills and resources to accomplish what needs to be done. Basically what you do is form a cooperative alternative to government and its sponsors to provide for the needs of the People. Ultimately, it becomes a kind of parallel government and economy, and if it is successful, it will in time replace them.

Every Utopian project in the nation's history has started this way and some have flourished at least for a while, and the Mormons have become an extremely powerful political and economic player in local, state and national affairs.

There is a reason why. And it is not necessarily because of Divine Favor.

It wouldn't hurt to study how they did it... And Demand Better!

Puritan Utopia

Utopia was written by Sir Thomas More (whose tribulations have been the subject of several of the posts on this blog) in 1516. Utopia, in turn, was built on Plato's Republic from 4th Century BC Greece.

At the time Sir Thomas wrote, English Puritans were on not yet on the horizon as their fundamentalist sect hadn't jelled sufficiently to be either a political or religious force to be reckoned with. The Puritan sect arose, essentially fully formed, during the reign of Elizabeth I as a reactionary and purifying element in the (and eventually separate from) the Church of England, which itself had recently gone rogue from the Catholic Church as a consequence of Henry VIII's overweaning self-love and his erotic/dynastic desires.

The concepts of the ideal republic that were the touchstone of both Plato's Republic and Sir Thomas's Utopia would become central to radicals and reformists alike throughout the English speaking world and beyond. Some of that influence came to America with the Puritans of New England, and it spread from there. While Puritanism and Utopianism are not the foundation of the American move to Independence, there can be no doubt of their strong influence.

And today, Puritanism and Utopianism are once again arising as answers to what ails the faltering (or in some views, my own included, the extinct) American Republic. We see it in the widespread Fundamentalist Religious movements, and we're seeing it in the Libertarian/Propertarian public figures of Ron and Rand Paul and their ilk which have been so highly "scrutinized" since the Younger Paul's Republican Senate primary victory in Kentucky.

Libertarianism and its narrow-focused brother Propertarianism are Utopian and they are Puritan. They propose a narrowly defined ideal civil society based on theoretical constructs of human nature and what should be, ignoring what is or what has been experienced along Libertarian and Propertarian lines, in favor of constant adherence to and promotion of what the ideal would be and should be if only everyone applied it purely enough. That no one does apply the theoretical concepts of Libertarianism/Propertarianism -- at least not sufficiently for Ultimate Proof of the theories -- is a failing of ruling elites and ignorant masses, not -- at all -- a failing of the political, social, and economic concepts involved, and certainly not a failing of Utopian and Puritan vision. Which, by definition, cannot fail, they can only be failed by cowardly humans who deserve their own misery. So there.

They are Unredeemed. Perhaps Unredeemable. Oh well.

Ron Paul has long been the Voice of Libertarianism in the US Congress, where he has had the seat from Galveston, TX, off and on for many a long year. He claims to be a Constitutionalist, but like many such self-proclaimed Puritans, he is nothing of the kind. It is impossible for someone like Paul, who disputes essentially the entire history of self-government under the Constitution, warts and all, to be a Constitutionalist in any rational sense.

What I've said is that he is a Confederate. And so is his son.

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America (ie: Dixie, the Rebel South as it were) is similar to that of the United States of America, but for that fact that property (specifically and especially property in Negro slaves) has a much more important role in the purpose of Government. It is close to a Propertarian's dream, and because it is otherwise similar to the United States Constitution, so similar as to be identical word for word in many cases (somewhat like the US Bill of Rights is sometimes word for word similar to the English Bill of Rights of 1689, though the two had very different purposes), there might be something of a Constitutional Confusion in the minds of so-called Constitutionalists like the Pauls. Just what Constitution are they referring to? Hm?

Property is so central to the Libertarian/Propertarian Puritan Utopia that Ron and Rand Paul, in defending their "concerns" about the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and so on, essentially declared them "unconstitutional" insofar as they interfere with or regulate the use of private property by their private owners. An argument can be made -- and certainly was made by the property-obsessed Owners of the South (and elsewhere) back in the day -- that legal prohibitions on segregated public accommodations violate some sacred notion of private property. It is difficult, nay impossible, to find that sacredness in the US Constitution as amended, because it isn't there. It is, however, in the Confederate Constitution, and it is implied in the Articles of Confederation that preceded the adoption of the Constitution of the United States.

The struggle with the South -- and parts of the West -- has been over the primacy of private property rights ever since. Libertarians/Propertarians are as focused on the primacy of private property as any Georgia Cracker ever was.

And their claims of adoration of the Constitution of the United States ring hopelessly hollow. Securing, protecting and defending private property rights is not the prime objective of the United States Constitution; in fact, property rights barely enter into it at all.

However, those protections and defenses missing from the US Constitution are in the Confederate Constitution, and they are implied (through the primacy of States Rights) in the Articles of Confederation.

The Private Property Utopia was neither the intention nor the outcome of the adoption of the United States Constitution, but there have been many opportunities for individuals and groups to form Utopias within the United States -- based on pretty much anything they want. They haven't succeeded. There are and have been extraordinary opportunities within the United States to acquire, develop and prosper from private property, but always under some form of lawful taxation and restrictions. The absolutist notion of rights in property that are so fundamental to the the Libertarian/Propertarian world view (and achieving their Utopia) are simply not part of the framework of American law and governance.

Consequently the Puritan Utopia of Private Property -- which is fundamentally what Libertarianism and Propertarianism are all about -- is not American, as in the United States of America. It is, however, a principle of the Confederation and the Confederate States.


The Perfesser Chomsky explains it all for you:

Private Tyranny - the Libertarian Wet Dream and Utopia

Formalism and Legalism versus Justice and Sir Thomas More

I ended yesterday's post on this note:

[Note: I would ask those who use the "Giving the Devil the Benefit of the Law" scene in "A Man for All Seasons" as justification for putting terrorism suspects in Federal Court whether they believe Justice was done in the trial of Sir Thomas More. If so, how? And if not, why not? It is the fundamental issue here. And it is, perhaps, what the theme of this whole blog has been.]

The point being, of course, that Sir (later Saint) Thomas More had all the advantages of Law and extensive Due Process as it was conceived at the time, and many, many, many opportunities to recant, confess, sign, -- to do his liege lord's bidding, in other words. And he refused. Adamantly. He refused on the basis of Law, he refused on the basis of Custom, he refused on the basis of Honor, he refused on the basis of Process, he refused on the basis of Conscience and Higher Law, he refused on the basis of the Rights and Privileges of an Englishman, a Gentleman, and on and on.

Yet all the forms of the Court were followed, perhaps too exactly, and all the legal niceties were observed, and Sir Thomas was beheaded at the Tower for his trouble, and the trouble he had given the King. The charge was High Treason; the crime was Sir Thomas's failure to obey.

And I asked, "Was Justice done?"

Perhaps the answer is another question: "For whom?"

The King had a desire, and under the circumstances, a necessity to assert his power and authority over his subjects especially with regard to marriage (his own) and the succession to the Crown. In doing so, he broke with the long-held British royal custom of submission to Papal authority in matters spiritual as well as temporal. In doing that, he violated both custom and law; by his command, law was brought into conformity with his desire. Sir Thomas's refusal to submit to this King's law was the source of the charge of High Treason, which ultimately resulted in his trial and execution. This rid the realm of one dissenter from the rule and authority of the King to assert his power over God's Law -- as it was understood at the time -- but there would be more, oh so many more, and in due time, there would come a Civil War in Britain over such matters as the authority of the Crown over the lives and religion of its subjects, among other things.

Was Justice done in Sir Thomas's case?

If you believe that following the forms and the due processes of the Law is the definition of Justice, then Justice was done. Even if the outcome was wrong in some higher sense, Sir Thomas was not subjected to the arbitrary authority of a lawless monarch.

If you believe that Justice is to be found in the actions taken to fulfill the requirements of the Rules of the Game, in other words, then you cannot but agree that Justice was indeed done in the case of Sir Thomas More.

That was certainly King Henry's belief, sorry as he was about the outcome and all that.

But Sir Thomas was arrested, held and tried on trumped up charges and he was convicted on false witness. Surely that cannot be Justice even to a formalist and legalist for whom all things boil down to following correct procedure and applying the law as it is written and received. But if the charges are trumped up and the witness is false, how is the Law to know that? How is a follower of Legalism and Formalism to know that? And if there is no such knowledge, how can there be injustice when the forms of the law and the rules of procedure are followed?

We know now that the charges were trumped up and the witness was false, and so we can say now that perhaps there was some injustice done in the case of Sir Thomas More, but was it known at the time? And if it was, who knew? Did the Court know? If the Court did not know, then wasn't the judgment of the Court correct according to both Law and Procedure, and wasn't the sentence just under the law at the time?

And yes, Sir Thomas lost his head, but there is nothing to be done about that now, and besides, the Church later canonized him, so he got a kind of comeuppance -- if not exactly Justice -- in the end anyway, didn't he?

Sir Thomas wrote about Justice in his Utopia, and as we consider the differences between formalism and legalism on the one hand, and Justice on the other, we might do well to consider Sir Thomas's own thoughts on the matter.

From Utopia: [A long excerpt]

They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations, whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.


They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws; and therefore they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places the client trusts it to a counsellor. By this means they both cut off many delays, and find out truth more certainly: for after the parties have laid open the merits of the cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to run down: and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labor under a vast load of laws. Every one of them is skilled in their law, for as it is a very short study, so the plainest meaning of which words are capable is always the sense of their laws. And they argue thus: all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may know his duty; and therefore the plainest and most obvious sense of the words is that which ought to be put upon them; since a more refined exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would only serve to make the laws become useless to the greater part of mankind, and especially to those who need most the direction of them: for it is all one, not to make a law at all, or to couch it in such terms that without a quick apprehension, and much study, a man cannot find out the true meaning of it; since the generality of mankind are both so dull and so much employed in their several trades that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity requisite for such an inquiry.


Some of their neighbors, who are masters of their own liberties, having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which they observe among them, have come to desire that they would send magistrates to govern them; some changing them every year, and others every five years. At the end of their government they bring them back to Utopia, with great expressions of honor and esteem, and carry away others to govern in their stead. In this they seem to have fallen upon a very good expedient for their own happiness and safety; for since the good or ill condition of a nation depends so much upon their magistrates, they could not have made a better choice than by pitching on men whom no advantages can bias; for wealth is of no use to them, since they must so soon go back to their own country; and they being strangers among them, are not engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and it is certain that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice or partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice, the chief sinew of society.


The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from them, neighbors; but those to whom they have been of more particular service, friends. And as all other nations are perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any State. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of leagues and treaties. We know how religiously they are observed in Europe, more particularly where the Christian doctrine is received, among whom they are sacred and inviolable; which is partly owing to the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly to the reverence they pay to the popes; who as they are most religious observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs; and when fainter methods do not prevail, they compel them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if men who are particularly distinguished by the title of the "faithful" should not religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in that newfound world, which is not more distant from us in situation than the people are in their manners and course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to escape at; and thus they break both their leagues and their faith. And this is done with such impudence, that those very men who value themselves on having suggested these expedients to their princes, would with a haughty scorn declaim against such craft, or, to speak plainer, such fraud and deceit, if they found private men make use of it in their bargains, and would readily say that they deserved to be hanged.


By this means it is, that all sorts of justice passes in the world for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of royal greatness. Or at least, there are set up two sorts of justice; the one is mean, and creeps on the ground, and therefore becomes none but the lower part of mankind, and so must be kept in severely by many restraints that it may not break out beyond the bounds that are set to it. The other is the peculiar virtue of princes, which as it is more majestic than that which becomes the rabble, so takes a freer compass; and thus lawful and unlawful are only measured by pleasure and interest. These practices of the princes that lie about Utopia, who make so little account of their faith, seem to be the reasons that determine them to engage in no confederacies; perhaps they would change their mind if they lived among us; but yet though treaties were more religiously observed, they would still dislike the custom of making them; since the world has taken up a false maxim upon it, as if there were no tie of nature uniting one nation to another, only separated perhaps by a mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of hostility, and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their neighbors against which there is no provision made by treaties; and that when treaties are made, they do not cut off the enmity, or restrain the license of preying upon each other, if by the unskilfulness of wording them there are not effectual provisos made against them. They, on the other hand, judge that no man is to be esteemed our enemy that has never injured us; and that the partnership of the human nature is instead of a league. And that kindness and good-nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever; since thereby the engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.

One cannot read Sir Thomas's considerations of Justice in his Utopia without recognizing that he is condemning both Legalism and Formalism as means to achieve Justice, and that our own Founders were more than a little influenced by Sir Thomas's vision of what the Law -- and what Justice -- should be in an ideal state and society.

But still the question remains, was Justice done in the trial and execution of Sir Thomas More? If so, how? If not, why not?