Gaia Community: FLOW's Blog

The Congo Civil War and Gang Rapes

Fri, 09 May 2008 22:48:05 -0000

The Congo Civil War, the most lethal war since WW II, has dragged on for a decade now. War is always horrible, and often accompanied by the most brutal rapes. For some years now graphic accounts of the most sadistic gang rapes imaginable have been pouring forth from the Congo. For a relatively tame account from the New York Times, see this. For far more horrifying accounts, simply Google "Congo" "gang rape" and read for as long as you can stomach it.

Yesterday I was standing in a kitchen listening to a debate about what type of water bottle was most environmentally friendly, with the advantages of different types of plastic and metal bottles compared. The conversation was morally earnest, as if using one bottle vs. another might make a significant difference in one's personal health or the state of the global environment.

The day before, I was given a necklace made by Lovetta Conto, a 15 year old Liberian civil war orphan, from bullet casings left after the seventeen year civil war. I met Lovetta a few weeks ago, a lively, intelligent, dynamic, entrepreneurial young women. Wearing the necklace each day provides me with a very powerful reminder of the reality of those who face bullets and for whom violent death is very much a part of their lives. It is hard to focus on the advantages of aluminum water bottles when bullets are flying.

One of the projects we are working on is rebuilding the Liberian economy. There are large numbers of unemployed young men. Although the peace seems to be stable, violence could erupt again, and Liberia could collapse back into war.

The U.N. is ineffective at stopping the violence in the Congo. No one really wants the U.S. to invade, and the U.S. wouldn't invade in any case. So more millions continue to die, and more millions of women continue to experience the most horribly violent degradation imaginable.

I wish more people would focus on pro-actively providing a foundation for peace. Once war has broken out it is very difficult to create peace. But in places such as Liberia, Nepal, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, there are situations in which the creation of jobs and a healthy economy could make all the difference in the world between a collapse into violence vs. the beginnings of a stable peace. We have contacts in all four locations working on creating Peace through Commerce, and on Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs. Let us know if you would like to help.

Economic Reforms for the Poor

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:28:10 -0000

An upcoming talk at Stanford; a marvelous validation of the core concerns of our Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) program as well as all the focus on De Soto, North, the Doing Business rankings, U.N. Commisson on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and Economic Freedom Indices:

Laws, Liberty, and Livelihood:
The Need for a Bottom Up Agenda of Economic Reforms

Madhu Purnima Kishwar is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. She is also the Founder President of Manushi Sangathan, an organisation committed to strengthening democratic rights and women's rights in India. She is the founder editor of Manushi - A Journal About Women and Society, which has been published continuously since 1978.

This presentation will focus on the absurd laws and regulations governing the livelihoods of two of the most visible and numerically large groups of urban self-employed poor--street vendors and cycle rickshaw pullers--showing how needless bureaucratic controls trap the hard working poor in a web of illegality and make them victims of extortion rackets.

While political theorists in India have engaged extensively with the need for greater political rights and freedom, far less attention has been paid to economic freedom. Political freedom has been understood very narrowly. Economic issues have been viewed largely through the prism of class struggle, with the state being projected as the sole 'protector' of the weak and vulnerable sections of society from the greed and exploitation of the rich and powerful. Neither our economists nor our political theorists have come to grips with the often predatory role of the State and how it works to wreck people's livelihoods and self-confidence. Obsessed with the political and electoral dimensions of democracy, our intellectuals and media tend to ignore the systematic and routine loot, extortion, violence, and indignities suffered by our people as they go about legitimate economic pursuits. The livelihood concerns of the vast majority of our people remain marginalized as even the agenda of economic reforms is focused on transnational corporations, the Indian corporate sector, and government-run public enterprises. Indian and foreign corporations and the PSUs together provide employment to no more than 3% cent of our population. As against about 10% who are self-employed in Europe and America, more than 90% of people in India work in the unorganized and self-employed sector.

Sunday, April 20, 2008, 3 p.m.
Building 200, Room 219

Map: http://campus-map.stanford.edu/index.cfm?ID=01-200

FLOW Vision News April 2008

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:48:01 -0000

Dear FLOW Members,

Human beings evolved the cognitive and moral capacities needed to make
the judgments needed to survive in small tribes of 150 or so. Given
the limitations of our cognitive and moral judgments, it is truly
extraordinary how we have extended our lifetimes several times over
and created a world in which the death of an infant has become rare
rather than typical. But our path to the luxury of children who
typically live, rather than die, and who typically grow to an old age
has not been an easy one, nor will it be easy to continue to improve
human life around the world.

One of the primary challenges we face in creating a world of
widespread peace and abundance, is overcoming the hatred many people
feel towards the free enterprise system, or "capitalism," as the free
enterprise system is referred to by its critics and enemies. If we are
to dramatically reduce global poverty and war we need to re-vision and
re-brand capitalism. In order to do so, those of us who seek to
create a new identity for capitalism need to identify those elements
of capitalism that are intrinsically virtuous while also admitting
those elements of capitalist practice which are, in fact, vicious,
much as the critics believe. We also need to create and support ever
more virtuous manifestations of capitalism while also fighting the
deep-set bigotries against capitalism that prevail in so many
quarters.

John Mackey's preferred expression to represent the ever more virtuous
manifestations of capitalism is "Conscious Capitalism." His two
criteria for the practice of Conscious Capitalism are:

That it be based on a deeper purpose than profit maximization.
That it understands the interdependent relationships between all stakeholders in the enterprise, including shareholders, employees, suppliers, customers, communities, and the environment, and addresses the interests of each and the relationships between the stakeholders to optimize the enterprise system for the highest good for all.

I won't add to his discussion of the stakeholder model at present, but
with respect to deeper purpose, John makes the sensible point that the
creation and management of enterprises ought to be regarded as a
profession, with ethical standards and lofty aspirations, so that we
understand the nobility of enterprising much as we understand the
nobility of law, or medicine, or education. This is not to deny that
sometimes businesspersons, or lawyers, or doctors, or educators are
sleazy or unworthy individuals. Some are, some always have been, and
some always will be. But those who limit "capitalism" to a mechanical
notion of "profit maximization" are unfairly denying the nobility of
the nature, effects, and intentions of many in the business world.
Worse yet, by claiming that "capitalism" is somehow intended to be no
more than "profit maximization," they thereby encourage and support
those who are either mindless or vicious in the business world.

Moral purpose is an essential feature of human nature. In the tribal
environment, it was crucial to survival that each member of the tribe
supports the norms of the tribe, which were often manifested in a
moral and cosmic order integral to the beliefs and identity of the
tribe. Beyond loyalty to the customs and the gods worshiped by
individuals in the tribe, tribal leaders needed to exemplify support
for and commitment to the customs and the gods. Contrariwise, tribes
disciplined those who failed to adequately support the cultural
integrity of the tribe by means of social disapproval as well as
harsher sanctions, ultimately including banishment or death. The code:
"Good people support the moral purposes of the tribe" has been bred
into us through its utility to tribal survival over millions of years.
It isn't smart to ignore Mother Nature.

Indeed, despite the extraordinary diversity of recorded human history,
until the 19th century the centrality of moral purpose to human life
was self-evident. There were many villains and criminals, but
typically even they claimed some higher purpose for their crimes.
Only in late 19th century Europe do we find a widespread decline in
belief in moral purpose among certain intellectuals, even a dogmatic
belief that the most advanced scientific thinking - sometimes regarded
as Marx, Darwin, and Freud - had shown that moral belief was a
delusion. The evolutionary psychologists have shown (as did Darwin)
that the hunger for moral purpose is as real as is the hunger for
food. And just as our evolutionarily optimized appetite for food
leads us to eat fats and sugars that are not good for us today, our
appetites for moral purpose have sometimes led us into dangerous moral
diets.

Just when the timeless belief in moral purpose was fading among some
intellectuals, there were violent conflicts between workers' unions,
on the one hand, and business leaders, on the other. These conflicts
were exploited by intellectuals starved for meaning who believed that
they could create a better world through violent revolutions leading
to an idyllic Marxist communism. By the 1920s the Marxists had taken
the moral high ground at many universities around the world. While
there continued to be many noble business leaders who continued to
create and manage companies based on a deeper purpose, by the early
20th century almost no intellectuals were willing to defend them.
Anti-capitalist moral righteousness intimidated all but a very few
defenders of free enterprise into silence. By the late 1930s, the few
remaining defenders had been effectively marginalized.

Rather than defend the moral purposefulness of free enterprise, as
classical political economy had done, neo-classical economics withdrew
into mathematical formalism and developed the notion that corporations
"maximized profits," an amoral but mathematically convenient notion
that was completely alien to the classical political economy of Adam
Smith and J.S. Mill. And thus during a period in which we most needed
a moral theory and practice of capitalism, moral perspectives on free
enterprise almost completely vanished from the realm of ideas. The
universities, widely believed to be temples of learning for the sake
of human advancement, often advanced Marxism, the most lethal moral
ideal the world had yet seen. Our appetite for moral purpose had led
us grievously astray.

Ironically it was during this period in which defenders of capitalism
based on moral purpose were most needed that our business schools were
founded, almost all of which taught that profit maximization was the
goal of businesses, and which attempted to provide "scientific"
methods for maximizing profits. This is not to disparage the
excellent technical analyses which have been developed through schools
of business that have, in fact, been very useful. But it was not
necessary to neglect the moral dimension of business, and it is a
tragedy that it was so neglected. Thus it came to pass that those
temples of learning were simultaneously advocating destructive
anti-capitalist ideas as well as destructive capitalist ideas based on
the notion that corporations are no more than machines for maximizing
profits.

In response to the generations who have been taught the mistaken
notion of "capitalism as amoral profit maximizer," we have seen an
increase in interest in making business more moral. Unfortunately, in
the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) the primary
perspective has been that of the anti-capitalists: Business is often
perceived as intrinsically guilty, and CSR campaigners sometimes
regard themselves as self-appointed moral police force out to force
business to be moral according to their beliefs. Again, this is not
to disparage all CSR campaigners, who have often won important
campaigns that have, in fact, made moral improvements in the
functioning of capitalism. But just as amoral "profit maximization"
was not an ideal, so to the notion that business is ipso facto guilty
is also not an ideal. It is not true, and the notion of business as
"guilty until proven innocent" will never mobilize a generation to
utilize capitalism to transform the world for the better.

The moral purpose of capitalism has been largely asleep for a hundred
years. It is time for capitalism to wake up, and become conscious,
more conscious than it has ever been before. Many of the great
entrepreneurs and inventors of the past - Thomas Edison, Henry Ford,
Alexander Graham Bell, George Westinghouse, Samuel Insull, etc. - were
morally purposeful business leaders. Unfortunately the intellectuals
were united against them and not enough of their colleagues came out
in their defense, and no one foresaw how close we came to losing the
free enterprise system altogether until it was almost too late.
Moreover the earlier generation of morally purposeful business leaders
were not as sophisticated in their moral entrepreneurship, in their
moral leadership, as they needed to be (for instance, although Ford
really did care about democratizing transportation, and did so, he was
also a bigot).

Thus it is important that the new Conscious Capitalists be more
sophisticated, mature, aware moral entrepreneurs, and use their
enterprises and their abilities to create and lead enterprises in ever
deeper and more morally inspiring ways. The fact is that free
enterprise is the most powerful tool for human betterment the human
race has ever known. We need to pick it up and use it consciously.
We need moral purpose and we need the nimble, scaleable, innovative,
versatile power of free enterprise. We need organizations in which to
work, in which to invest, with which to trade, and from which to
purchase goods and services that are truly deserving of our highest
moral aspirations.

It is natural and good for human beings to want moral purpose, and for
young people to respect, admire, and seek to emulate those individuals
with integrity who exemplify moral purpose. As business leaders,
business schools, economists, and others who believe in the positive
power of free enterprise increasingly commit to a Conscious Capitalist
model in which the moral purpose of business is central to the life of
every so called "for-profit" corporation, we will see capitalism
increasingly respected as the powerful force for positive change which
it has the power to be.

A parable on the power of purpose: As a delegate at the U.N.
Commission on the Status of Women, I attended a panel on innovative
ways of financing women's causes. At one point when the panel was
discussing ways of obtaining funding from corporations, a delegate
from Brazil raised her hand to say that she would never take money
from a corporation because all corporate money was morally tainted.

At that moment I paused to consider the fact that she, and all others
there, clearly respected the U.N. But what would we think of a
for-profit corporation which had a "Human Rights Advisory Board" that
included many of the worst human rights abusers on earth, that had
"Peacekeeping Forces" that went to developing world countries and
raped the women, and which was involved in a billion dollar oil
corruption scandal involving the leader's son and one of the worst
dictators on earth? Strictly based on the facts of the case, such a
for-profit corporation would be regarded as a corporate criminal far
more evil than Halliburton or Blackwater. And yet alongside these and
other grisly facts about the U.N., the U.N. exemplifies some of the
highest aspirations of the human race, as exemplified in the U.N.
Declaration of Human Rights and other U.N. documents. And to a
remarkable extent aspiration trumps behavior when it comes to public
perception. Our evolutionary code apparently inclines us to swoon
before moral aspiration much as it causes us to crave sugar and fat.

Hardheaded economists and businessmen may snigger when John and others
talk of "moral purpose" and "Conscious Capitalism." For those who
would snigger at the real world impact of moral purpose on public
moral regard and reputation, I would have them explain why the U.N. is
regarded around the world as a more positive global moral force than,
say, Johnson & Johnson or EBay.

The fact is that the U.N. is not and never will be capable of making
the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights a reality. But business is
bringing those goals closer to reality every day. Conscious
Capitalists need to commit to goals as lofty as those of the U.N.
Declaration of Human Rights - and higher. A global league of
Conscious Capitalists, with the stated intention of bringing peace and
prosperity to all, and manifesting their intentions with integrity,
could make extraordinary progress towards those goals.

And as millions of our brightest and most ambitious young people pour
into ever more morally committed corporate entities, and as we create
a more conscious operating system for capitalism, we will thereby
create a healthier world with happier people, a world of
morally-inspired enterprises in which profitability is ever more
closely aligned with contribution to the good, the true, and the
beautiful.

Peace,

Michael Strong
CEO & Chief Visionary Officer
FLOW, Inc.

P.S.: For a fabulous account of how our evolutionary mind is confused
by contemporary economies, see Michael Shermer's new book, "The Mind
of the Market."

P.P.S. Don't miss John and the FLOW team at 2008 FreedomFest, July 10
– 12 in Las Vegas.

Beauty and Nature Heals

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:19:35 -0000

Most of us have always known this, of course, but Virginia Postrel has a great article at The Atlantic on how scientific evidence has finally convinced hospitals that it is worth their time to begin making hospital rooms beautiful:

Such “evidence-based design,” which draws its principles from controlled studies, is the great hope of professionals who want to upgrade the look and feel of medical centers. Much of this research follows a seminal 1984 Science article by Roger S. Ulrich, now at the Center for Health Systems and Design at Texas A&M. He looked at patients recovering from gallbladder surgery in a hospital that had some rooms overlooking a grove of trees and identical rooms facing a brick wall. The patients were matched to control for characteristics, such as age or obesity, that might influence their recovery. The results were striking. Patients with a view of the trees had shorter hospital stays (7.96 days versus 8.70 days) and required significantly less high-powered, expensive pain medication.
Along similar lines, a 2005 study compared patients recovering from elective spinal surgery whose rooms were on the sunny side of a ward with those on the dimmer side. Those in the sunnier rooms rated their stress and pain lower and took 22 percent less pain medication each hour, incurring only 80 percent of the pain-medication costs of the patients in gloomier rooms. Other studies, with subjects ranging from the severely burned to cancer patients to those receiving painful bronchoscopies, have found that looking at nature images significantly reduces anxiety and increases pain tolerance. Not all distractions are good, however. Ulrich and others have found that inescapable TV broadcasts and “chaotic abstract art” can increase patients’ stress.

This is a great specific example of the phenomena described by Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind, in which he points out that the future of the U.S. economy will consist largely of making things more beautiful, more comfortable, more empathetic, and more humane.

FLOW Vision News - March 2008

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:45:27 -0000

Dear FLOW Members,

Two Buddhist monks came across a river where a beautiful woman was trying to cross the deep rapids. The older one picked her up and carried her across the water, gently setting her down on the other side. That evening when they reached their lodgings, the younger monk chastised his companion, noting that he had violated his vows by touching a woman. The first monk replied "I set her down on the other side. You are still carrying her."

Buddhist practice aims at cultivating an inner clarity that is free from impulsiveness and desire. There are similar strands of thought in the western philosophical tradition; the Platonic Socrates, and later his Stoic followers, similarly sought a life free from a "slavery to the passions." The Enlightened Buddha in the East, or the Philosopher in the West, both dedicated themselves to a personal discipline of the psyche in which their minds were free from the motivations that come from the neediness of the ego. One need not believe that the ego is necessarily to be extinguished to agree that the ego ought nonetheless be subject to a discipline that recognizes that our intentionality may have higher goals than the needs of the ego.

Most people associate "unbridled capitalism" with "unbridled egotism" and believe that it is a social system that is driven by greed and vanity, from the capitalist who pursues monetary wealth beyond all measure to the consumer who constantly puts herself in debt to buy the next object she doesn't really need. Indeed, there are those who believe that capitalism as a system depends on the multiplication of needs, and that if we all developed Buddhist or Stoic wisdom and discipline that it would all come crashing down.

But this understanding of what I will call "the free enterprise system" is as misguided as if we came to believe that the only books were those that encouraged us to covet and hate, ignoring the enormous diversity of written materials. The free enterprise system is a powerful tool, much as the written word is a powerful tool, and it can be deployed in endlessly diverse ways. Now that the 20th century bigotries against markets are becoming a thing of the past we are obliged to pick up this tool afresh and discover new and beautiful ways to use it. Those of us who are still hostile to acts of voluntary exchange have not yet let go of 20th century animosities.

For those of us who are committed to a personal discipline of the ego, and who believe that we will be happier and better people if we train our desire, it can be frustrating to see so many people engaged in such acts of personal indulgence and vanity, many of which will not bring them greater happiness. Our frustration is apt to grow when we are acutely aware of the enormous human needs of the world's poor, and see such waste of talent and resources as takes place constantly. When one adds an understanding that there are limited material resources on earth, some find the frustration overwhelming and give themselves over to a life of anger and resentment.

But surely such anger and resentment is not a mark of wisdom. Once one has set aside such unbridled impulses, how can one then act out of compassion and justice to make a better world?

For me, there are three priorities:

1. The creation and development of communities of practice in which we may learn to become our best selves day in, day out, for a lifetime.

2. The implementation of property rights solutions to tragedy of the commons problems so that we no longer need to worry about the problem of environmental sustainability.

3. Increase economic freedom around the world to the point at which we have seven or eight billion people, all prosperous and freely engaged in fulfilling, peaceful, constructive work.

These are goals that the world's wisdom traditions would largely endorse if they were equipped with adequate intellectual tools. Unfortunately all too few are exposed to the intellectual tools needed to deploy the free enterprise system to make a better world. Thus my ongoing attempt to share some beautiful and powerful intellectual tools more broadly so that we may all work together on creating a better world.

There are adults who are spontaneously creating small communities of practice, in their workplaces and in their personal lives, to help them become their best selves. As adults, we tend to be set in our habits and busy with adult responsibilities, and thus the process of becoming our best selves is a slower and less effective process with adults than it would be with young people. This is why I spent fifteen years creating schools that served as communities of practice, and why I continue to support anyone who attempts to do the same in K-12 education. The unfortunate truth is that it is not possible to create lasting communities of practice in government-managed institutions.

Peter Barnes, in Capitalism 3.0, has provided a brilliant first draft of an integrated set of property rights solutions to environmental problems. If we are able to implement something like Capitalism 3.0 in the coming decades, we will be able to enjoy a world of ever-increasing standard of living without worrying about environmental sustainability.

Through our Peace through Commerce and Empowering Women Entrepreneurs programs I am most focused on communicating the impact of increasing economic freedom. For some time now I've been focused on creating a prediction market game on economic freedom indices. In November of 2006 I met with my thesis advisor and economics Nobel laureate Gary Becker to discuss this idea with him, and he agreed that

"The idea of a prediction market in economic freedom indices is interesting and worthy of exploration. If such an idea could be made practicable, such a market could have a very positive impact in increasing awareness of economic freedom and thereby improving prospects for long-term growth."

At the time I was thinking more of a commercial market than a game version, and spoke with Leo Melamed, the head of the Chicago Board of Trade. Leo was intrigued by the idea, but impressed upon me the challenges of creating a successful commercial predictions product (and he has introduced more of them than anyone).

I've thus turned more in the direction of game development, in association with a school-based curriculum, as a more realistic approach to introducing the idea of predicting economic freedom ratings. While it may at first sound like an odd theme for a game, when I worked in schools I introduced students to stock market games and found that they loved the excitement of trying to out guess the market, and that eventually they became motivated to do research in an attempt to do even better. In a very different context, a few months ago I discovered realius.com, a real estate prediction market that is based on the idea of fantasy football. With no cash prizes, Realius has developed an active market among real estate professionals competing to see who can best predict the price at which a given property will sell. Chuck Teller, the founder, points out that if Realius had been in existence a few years ago it might have prevented the mortgage crisis.

The stakes involved in an economic freedom prediction game are even higher. Last fall I co-wrote a paper in which I challenged Jeffrey Sachs to a wager: Let's compare the twenty nations with the highest gains in economic freedom against the twenty nations that receive foreign aid to determine which ones experience the most economic growth in the next twenty years. After writing that paper, I decided to check the twenty nations with the largest gains in economic freedom in the past ten years, 1995-2005. Of the 122 nations for which measures are available, the top twenty gainers in economic freedom average rate of growth 2000 - 2005 is 4.2%; this set of nations as a whole averaged growth of 1.7%.

Ah, but statistics are boring. And yet it turns out that if the entire world had grown at 4.2% instead of 1.7%, by 2006 we would have had an extra $10 trillion in wealth - this is more than five times as much wealth as is generated each year in Africa, and nearly as much as is generated each year in the U.S. Basically if we increased economic freedom around the world, we could add a U.S. economy to the world every five years. Moreover poor nations benefit more from a given improvement in economic freedom than do rich nations.

Let's take the case of Malawi, at $750 annual GDP per capita one of the poorest nations on earth. For 2000-2005, Malawi has grown at a rate of .44% per year. In 45 years time at this rate of growth, Malawi's GDP per capita would be $914. At 4.2% annual growth, in 45 years time Malawi's GDP per capita would be $4776. This is much better. But the nations with top ten gains in economic freedom (without losing ground in their legal structure) averaged a rate of growth of 6.1%; this rate of growth would result in 45 years in Malawi reaching $10,844, almost where Mexico is today. Of course China has been growing at or near 10% for some time now; if Malawi could do that for 45 years, they would have a GDP per capita of $54668. And, lest this seem like the top of possibility, Dubai has averaged rates of growth of 17% for more than fifteen years. If Malawi could average 17% for 45 years, it would have a GDP per capita of $17,329 in 20 years, $83298 in 30 years, and $877,859 in 45 years.

This may seem absurd, and yet everything about our wealth in the developed world would seem fantastic to anyone living in 1800 or 1900. Fred Turner, in his wonderful article "Make Everybody Rich," estimates that by 2100 the average family of four around the world will be earning $320,000 annually, with of course much of the population being millionaires and some "poor" families only receiving $100,000 per year in income.

The real task is not to react against these marvelous possibilities; it is to steer them so that they happen more quickly, with less environmental damage, and a deeper fulfillment of human potential, happiness, and well-being. The numbers are merely numbers; they can represent great ugliness or great beauty. Ultimately the wealth that will be created, be it ugly wealth or beautiful wealth, will depend on the legal structures within which the billions of acts of creation take place. At present far too many people are still stuck in a primitive 20th century opposition, either for markets or against them, either for economic freedom or against it, either for economic growth or against it. The next stage is to transcend the opposition and recognize that the creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship of seven or eight billion people can be directed in any number of different directions, towards great violence and destruction or towards ever deeper humanity and adventures of the spirit.

Do not cling to the violation of your vows. Let go of your attachment to the old conflicts, and move forward into our next adventure of the spirit.

Towards peace and prosperity for all,

Michael Strong
CEO & Chief Visionary Officer
FLOW, Inc.

Mastering the Art of Living

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:30:59 -0000

“The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.”

Zen Buddhist Text

The quotation above is an excellent statement of one of my ideals as an educator. In addition to mastering the art of living as described above, I would want my students to be complete autodidacts: Capable of learning anything on their own by the time they are 18. They should be polite and respectful, independent and creative.

I believe that most young human beings can be educated in such a way that most young people, even those from the poorest families, could develop abilities that are superior to those of our most capable adults today. As an educator with 15 years experience in innovative education, I am certain that our existing efforts at education are analogous to medicine circa 1500: Primitive.

How could such gains be possible?

To begin with, when I hire teachers, I look for three things: Do they love young people? Can they set boundaries with young people? Are they truly masters in their area of expertise?

If I were allowed to select students, there would be one criterion: Is this person ready to commit him or herself whole-heartedly, heart and soul, to excellence in the chosen course of study?

Then, in a large, diverse market of seekers of excellence, an innovative dynamic among truly committed expert and novice learners would develop, capital would rush in to support research and development, and new ways of learning would be developed that are strictly unimaginable today. As the learning process began offering real results, more people would commit their lives to excellence in the various learning paths being offered.

Note immediately that, despite massive spending on education and participation in education that the description of teachers and students stated above describes less than .0001% of our existing teacher - student interactions. One would have to conduct a very careful search to discover any such interactions in today's world. Perhaps a music student here and a martial arts student there have relationships with teachers similar to that described above. Such simple and obvious pre-requisites to excellence in education are almost non-existent in today's world.

Suppose that a ruler once read a beautiful love story, in which two hearts' longing for each other was at last blissfully relieved when they found each other, consummated their love, and lived happily ever after.

Then suppose, having read this love story, and thus concluding that love was a good thing, this ruler forced everyone in his land to marry immediately. In order to ensure that marriages happened, police would enforce the law. Experts in marriage, who had received licenses from universities in their expertise, trained each participant using a state-approved textbook on marital happiness. Then people were forced together and required to use the "research-driven" techniques for "marital happiness." Worse yet, the "marital happiness" manuals continually emphasized the importance of "love." Individuals were trained in "love" and certified in "love" based on the scores they received on tests. The tests, of course, were based on "research."

People would come to loathe love and marriage. Young people, forced into their "marital happiness" courses, would hate the courses and rebel. While there would be earnest professors doing their best to write good books on "marital happiness," many people would realize that the whole system was a joke. Or, in terms of last Friday's post, it was all crap.

This is precisely where our education system is. Education should be based on love and a commitment to excellence, a longing for the true, the good, and the beautiful. Education should not be a forced marriage supervised by government-licensed experts.

Former communist nations are going through a long, painful process of re-creating the most basic human virtues and civic institutions. If we dismantled our education system, we would have to go through a similar long, painful process of re-creating healthy educational relationships. But it is important to realize that we cannot get to a better place by continuing in our present direction.

No Child Left Behind is a Kafka-esque extension of the insanity of our existing education system. The nightmare would be that, after it fails, the response is to increase control more, with more specified curriculum and more tests and more dishonesty about what is really happening to the hearts and souls of our young.

I await a time when the Berlin wall of government-controlled schooling is finally shattered, and we can begin to share the art of living with millions of young people in honest, straightforward, real relationships.

A new era of human happiness will begin at that point in time.

Homeschoolers' setback sends shock waves through state

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:08:51 -0000

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."

The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/MNJDVF0F1.DTL

In Germany homeschoolers are routinely imprisoned.

See here as well.

Increasing the wealth of the world by an amount equal to the U.S.

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:50:55 -0000

I recently calculated that the 122 nations ranked by Fraser Index averaged a rate of growth of 1.7% from 2000-2005. The twenty nations that had the highest gains in economic freedom from 1995-2005 averaged a rate of growth of 4.2%. If the entire global economy had grown at a rate of 4.2% instead of 1.7% between 2000 and 2005, the world would have an extra $10 trillion in wealth, equal to more than five times the annual income of Africa and almost equal to the $13 trillion U.S. annual economy.

The nations with the top ten gains in economic freedom averaged growth rates of 6.1%. At this rate of economic growth, by 2006 the world would have had nearly $20 trillion in additional wealth.

Those nations with the largest gains in economic freedom are likely to experience faster rates of economic growth, and the poor will usually benefit. For example India, the 19th largest gainer in economic freedoms 1995-2005, experienced an average rate of growth of 5.38% in 2000 - 2005. The McKinsey Quarterly reports that in 1985 93% of the Indian population lived on less than a dollar per day. By 2005 that had been almost cut in half, down to 54% of the population. They estimate that 431 million Indians were brought out of severe poverty by means of the economic growth that took place from 1985-2005. They estimate that if India could achieve an average annual growth rate of 7.1% for the next 20 years, another 465 million would be brought out of extreme poverty. There are no charities that can bring so many people out of poverty so quickly.

Each year, tens of millions of Indians are buying their first wristwatch, transistor radio, blender, or bicycle, and feeling a sense of gratitude and satisfaction from these modest gains that most of us will never know. Read Gurcharan Das' India Unbound for a beautiful description of this transition from an Indian who loves the spiritual India but also knows that her people need material goods to thrive.

Great Video on Parents and Students Taking Back Education

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:42:15 -0000

From Drew Carey at Reason TV:

Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book.
Frank Wells has also had it with Locke High. When he became principal he says gangs ruled the campus. He tried to turn things around but ran into a “brick wall” of resistance from the school district and teachers union.
Locke seemed destined to languish in high crime and low test scores until Wells, Reyes, and many reform-minded teachers joined with a maverick named Steve Barr in an attempt to break free from the status quo. Their battle is just one example of the charter school education revolt that’s erupting across the nation.

FLOW Vision News, February 2008

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:09:23 -0000

In promoting "entrepreneurial solutions" we include not only those forms of social entrepreneurship that are possible given today's policy environment, but more importantly those entrepreneurial solutions that will become possible with a different policy environment. Government institutions encourage some entrepreneurial possibilities and discourage others.

The simplest example of this is in the area of energy policy. A green tax shift that shifted from payroll taxes to carbon taxes would create two dramatic changes. On the one hand, hundreds of thousands of employers would make very different decisions about how many employees to hire. It would become "cheaper" to hire employees; a given payroll budget could either be used to increase the salaries of existing employees or to add new people, or both. With all employers facing a similar set of incentives, all employees would find themselves valued more than they were before, but this effect would be especially powerful for those who are paid the least in our society – payroll taxes are an insignificant factor in executive compensation but a large factor in the compensation of low-wage employees. While this shift to increased value of human labor would not solve all problems of unemployment and job quality, it would be boost in the right direction. It is one of the biggest gifts we could give to the American working poor and to the businesses that employ them.

At the same time, many thousands of products that are not yet profitable businesses would become so if carbon taxes made coal-based electricity and oil-based fuels more expensive. There are thousands of devices that could make homes more electricity efficient, ranging from new window screens and coatings and storm windows to more efficient appliances to automatic lighting systems to new types of insulation and on and on and on. Likewise with automobiles – not only would new fuel-efficient automobiles benefit from increased demand, but fuel additives that improved mileage would be in greater demand, as would various devices that could be installed on existing automobiles, as well as hybrid autos – including a pedal car hybrid. At the same time, patterns of work and commuting would change, housing that required less commuting time would become more valuable, various flex-time and work from home options would be explored more, electronic conferencing would receive a boost, etc. It could be that increased demand in electronic conferences could fuel the creation of low-cost sophisticated virtual reality meeting rooms with hyper-realistic interaction.

Many of these are not currently regarded as "green businesses," and yet in terms of energy savings some might have a more profound impact than do the current generation of "green businesses." This not to be critical of existing "green businesses," but rather to remind people of the large realm of uncharted territory of green innovation yet to be explored, much of which might not be regarded as "green" in today's world.

Most who support entrepreneurial solutions today try to persuade people to purchase green products and "go green." There is an active "green" culture in the U.S. today that strive to persuade others to do as they do. Not only do government institutions define the boundaries of entrepreneurial possibility, they thereby also insidiously define the boundaries of cultural possibility. For instance, it is an old stereotype that the French love wine whereas the British prefer beer and port. But these preferences are due to eighteenth-century tax policy: After a tariff was passed targeted at French wine, it became disproportionately expensive in Britain shifted British national tastes away from wine and towards beer, on the one hand, and port, from Portugal, on the other. Now we regard it as a cultural difference.

One of my favorite thought experiments is to consider what our world would look like culturally today if, say, starting in the 1840s, and growing to cover a majority of Americans in the 1930s, the U.S. government had chosen to provide free public housing to all Americans and tax deductions for education, rather than public schools for all Americans and the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners. For the purposes of the thought experiment, let's add that instead of an 1860s legal decision declaring "A man's home is his castle," (following a British tradition that dates to feudal times) our legal history had long ago decided that "A parent's right to educate their children as they saw fit is sacred" but that the government had a right to intervene in housing decisions and arrangements as it sought fit, even intervening in private housing arrangements when it was declared to be "in the public interest" to do so.

With a public-spirited commitment to provide free public housing for all, perhaps single adults would get a single room unit with 300 square feet and families would get a standard apartment of 800 square feet with three tiny bedrooms using cutting-edge 1930s building technology. Over time, as it was discovered that some contractors were not building homes built to appropriate standards, a government certificated education program would be required for contractors and construction workers to ensure that they consistently produced high quality homes according to the government interpretation of 1930s "best quality" building standards. Our homes would receive periodic inspections from government-certified home inspectors who would repair and replace those defective parts and materials that were listed in the official home repair manual. There would be no homelessness.

There would be a small, marginalized private apartment building industry, but because free public housing dominated the market, the materials used even in the private market would mostly be the same as that used in the public market. In most states, there would be regulations that forced private builders to build private apartments in a manner similar to the standards set by public housing using only government certified builders. Because the private apartment industry was so marginal, units therein would be more expensive and lower quality than in our world. It would be considered normal to live in public housing, and many would consider it elitist and extravagant to pay for an apartment when the government supplied a "perfectly good" one for free. There would be a national debate about the deteriorating state of public housing, but most would regard their own neighborhoods as adequate even while being concerned about the squalor elsewhere. With everyone living in public towers, those hippies and fundamentalists who went out into the country and "built their own" unit in isolation would be regarded with suspicion and considered "undemocratic."

At the same time, with all payments on education tax deductible, we would now have three, going on four generations of Americans who had had a greater incentive to spend more on education, of all sorts, because those expenses were tax free. A more diverse market in education would exist, with hundreds of thousands of education entrepreneurs creating surprising innovations. Children would learn more academically, while enjoying it, having less homework and spending more time with their families, and learning lifelong habits of well-being. There would be wealthy educational entrepreneurs who specialized in creating highly customized educational programs for students with special needs, families with special interests, or students with unusual aptitudes. There would also be wealthy educational entrepreneurs who had specialized in mass-producing consistent, high quality plain vanilla education programs that incorporated the innovations of those programs of the vanguard a decade later.

Highly capitalized education corporations would hire the best expertise in human development, and those individuals who had an unusual ability to design and replicate systems of human development would be highly sought-after professionals with salaries to match. The entire world of education would be highly differentiated with many different kinds of specialized positions we can't imagine, some offering in-home educational opportunities, some offering diverse wilderness and deep cultural experiences, some cultivating the ability to think creatively, others the ability to intuit the feelings of others, some developing entrepreneurial visioning to an extraordinary degree, others developing the capacity for understanding the human body from the inside out. A small attempt at "public schooling" would be rejected after a short period as an embarrassment to those who had originally endorsed it.

In short, instead of a shallow, hedonistic culture with rebellious teenagers living in enormous houses (the average American under the poverty line lives in more square footage than the average European), we would today be known as a culture that was highly attracted to learning, well-being, and human development, but with small, dull, crowded apartments. Teenagers would be committed to learning and well-being, with teen social hierarchies based on who was doing the coolest learning stuff, but perhaps they'd have sullen, angry attitudes about their dull, tiny homes.

Sound implausible? Perhaps. But consider the cultural effects of Soviet communism: Vibrant intellectuality in math, physics, and chess, where creative freedom was allowed, and a leaden conformity in the social sciences and broadcast media. Talented people want the freedom to create always and everywhere

Let's liberate the entrepreneurial spirit for good in education, housing, health care, and everywhere, so that we may enjoy the fruits of such creativity in all aspects of our life.

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Learning to Sail in High Winds

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:27:11 -0000

As someone who very gradually came to accept market mechanisms as a better way to organize society, I would say that along the way I had to let go of a certain type of passion for justice, a certain type of expectation that life outcomes would be based on desert or moral worth.

For instance, often people are for rent control because they are outraged that a retired person on limited income who has lived in a particular apartment her entire life suddenly has to move at an elderly age, leaving behind a rich life and community in her lifetime apartment. She has done nothing to deserve this sudden loss of well-being. Market forces (sometimes personalized in the form ofa "greedy landlord" who may or may not be "greedy") have changed the rent levels and she must leave.

At an intuitive level, I still find this narrative very compelling and would not wish for events like this to occur. At the same time, I now find the argument against rent control even more compelling: rent control reduces the quality and quantity of lodging available in an area and, ultimately, produces even greater corruption and injustices than do market forces. That said, if private philanthropies, municipalities, or FLOW entrepreneurs want to provide rent vouchers to help out such people, such actions might be considered laudable humanitarian acts.

MiltonFriedman has long made a sharp distinction between policies such as rent control or public schooling, on the one hand, in which government intervenes in the economy, and rent vouchers or education vouchers, on the other hand, in which the poor are assisted but markets are allowed to function properly. I would likewise make a sharp distinction between market-friendly welfare states, such as Finland, compared to highly interventionist anti-market governments, such as France.

But ultimately we want to create a world in which there exists a radical acceptance of choice and personal responsibility in all aspects of our life. Charles Murray suggested a libertarian idealism based on a folksy, American sort of respect for personal responsibility.

In addition to the traditional American respect for personal responsibility, the Cultural Creatives are often very serious about personal responsibility. Tibetan Buddhists such as Tarthang Tulkuand "New Age" spiritual writers such as Anthony de Mello and M.Scott Peck all state directly that each of us is responsible for our own happiness. If we are unhappy, we are not to blame others for our own happiness: We are strictly responsible for our own well-being. Indeed, these and other writers in the Cultural Creatives' canon would state clearly that acceptance of personal responsibility in our lives is virtually identical with spiritual growth.

In a world in which each of us is responsible for our own well-being, we will not whine or complain about market forces. We will accept personal responsibility for our habits, for our character, for our personal and professional decisions, for our financial choices, for our purchases, etc. We won't complain about rent increases or jobs going over seas. We will realize that we will live our lives in a world which is undergoing an endless process of creative destruction and that change is productive. In the words of Leif Smith: "We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds."

"The Singing Revolution"

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:13:59 -0000

"The Singing Revolution" is a wonderfully inspiring film of the role of singing in keeping the human spirit alive in Estonia during the Soviet occupation and the role of singing in creating a peaceful liberation from the Soviets. An entire culture devoted to singing, using their love of music to achieve truly amazing feats.

The director, Jim Tusty, speaks here about the film with a few great clips of the film included in his talk.

The photo shows the filmmakers filming the traditional annual Estonian Song Festival Laulupidu, through which they subverted the Soviet authorities by singing, that attracts about 7% of the population of Estonia.

Peace and singing!

A Young Ethiopian Activist vs. Jeffery Sachs on Poverty

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:04:03 -0000

Samuel Gebru, an 11th grade Ethiopian activist living in Cambridge, Mass, offers the following insightful remarks on the causes contributing to poverty in Ethiopia:

In Ethiopia today, everyone is deprived of an integral part of their economic rights: the right to own property. In American History, the Puritan pilgrims traveled from Great Britain to the "New World" because of various factors, amongst which included religious freedom and the desire to own land. Land is a measurement of wealth in most countries. However, Ethiopia's Constitution which was authored by, amongst others, Meles Zenawi states that:

"Every Ethiopian citizen has the right to the ownership of private property[...]The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange" (Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia; Chapter 3: Fundamental Rights and Freedoms; Part Two: Democratic Rights; Article 40: The Right to Property).

In this passage there are two contradicting ideas: the idea that every citizen has the right to private property, however, on the other hand this so-called private property is "exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia." This clearly is a communist economic approach.

In communism, land is the property of the people, however, our country is the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, hence property should not be nationalized but should really be private. Many attribute this since the TPLF, the core of the ruling EPRDF coalition, was at one point a Marxist-Leninist group idolizing Albania.

In Ethiopia, there isn't security over land rights, in the rural population, 85% of Ethiopia, some complain that low-level cadres have evicted pastoralists or denied fertilizer due to not voting for the EPRDF or being loyal thereof. Knowing this, its hard to see how every "Ethiopian [peasant] ha[s] [the] right to obtain land without payment and [...] protection against eviction from their possession[s]" (Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia; Chapter 3: Fundamental Rights and Freedoms; Part Two: Democratic Rights; Article 40: The Right to Property).

This practice of abusing pastoralists is further supported by the US Stat Department: "During the year there continued to be credible reports from EHRCO [(Ethiopian Human Rights Council)] and opposition parties that in certain rural areas in the Oromiya region; Amhara region; and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples region; local officials used threats of land redistribution and withholding of food aid and fertilizer to garner support for the ruling coalition. There were many reports of ruling party or government harassment intended to prevent individuals from joining opposition parties or from renting property to them. There were numerous reports of more serious forms of harassment and violence directed against members of opposition parties in many areas of the country, including beatings, house burnings, and killings (see sections 1.c., 1.d., 3, and 5)" (Ethiopia: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices).

Furthermore, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has stated that he has "[N]ot heard of any truly convincing reason as to why we [(the government)] should privatize land ownership at this stage. I have not heard of any economic rationale for doing so. If there were to be an overwhelming economic rationale to do it and ultimately that would be the best way of securing the interests of our peasant farmer and therefore politically that would be our agenda" (I have never heard of any convincing reason as to why we should privatize land). It is interesting that the Prime Minister states that the current economic secures the best interests of the peasant farmers because according to the US State Department, the Ethiopian Government conducted forced displacements of rural families, which the government states was entirely voluntary. While the initiative might sound well-thought of: moving families from drought prone areas to fertile lands, the notion of any government forcing citizens to leave their "land" is a clear abuse of civil rights.

I discovered Mr. Gebru's thoughts on land ownership in Ethiopia after reading at wikipedia that Ethiopians cannot own land, and was shocked.

By contrast, Jeff Sachs, the celebrity economist, best-selling author, and Special Economic Advisor to the UN Secretary General, recently expressed the following opinion about Ethiopia:

"I believe that Ethiopia can maintain 10 percent per year growth for many, many years to come. Indeed double digit economic growth for the next 20 years . . . ."

Upon reading Sachs' optimism, I checked the Fraser Economic Freedom Index and the World Bank's Doing Business rankings, and both confirmed that Ethiopia is a dreadful place to do business, ranked around 102nd on both indices. Worse yet, market reforms are slow in coming. Ethiopia is a recovering Marxist country that has barely begun the transformation into an effective market economy. It is suffering from one of the highest population growth rates in Africa as well as some of the worst environmental degradation - both of which would be rapidly ameliorated by economic growth.

Unfortunately Sachs is delusional in his optimism until and unless Ethiopia reforms - the Ethiopian government would be better off listening to Gebru than to Sachs. Sachs makes no mention of the importance of these market reforms, leading the reader to assume that all is fine with the future of Ethiopia. No nation on earth has experienced continuous growth of the kind suggested by Sachs without increasing economic freedom.

Just to check to make sure I wasn't going crazy, I checked in with an economist friend with real expertise in the developing world. His estimation of Sachs' comment: "Irresponsible."

Go Gebru!

Simeon Djankov, Hero and Genius

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 05:04:39 -0000

A selection from "Measuring the Ease of Enterprise," a December 2007 paper by Simeon Djankov, the World Bank economist responsible for creating their "Doing Business" Index, and thereby a global hero for his role in alleviating global poverty:

Support for specific reforms

Some reforms require not only ideas and learning from other countries but also investment in setting up new agencies or upgrading old ones, buying new technologies, and paying higher salaries for specialized experts. An example is the setting up of specialized commercial courts. This reform takes 2-5 years and costs from $5 to $25 million, depending on whether new buildings have to be bought. The logic behind such courts is clear: specialization increases the expertise of judges and lawyers, and allows
the use of simplified civil procedures. Doing Business 2007 reports on the success of such courts in Ghana and Rwanda.43 Azerbaijan, Georgia and Egypt are setting up such courts too.

There are several other such reforms: setting up one-stop shops for business entry and licenses, establishing credit information bureaus, upgrading property registries, reforming customs and tax authorities. These require expertise as well as some investment (table 4).

Table 4: How much does a reform cost?
Topic $ million
Ease of doing business 59-165
Starting a Business 2-5
Dealing with Licenses 5-10
Employing Workers 5-10
Registering Property 5-20
Getting Credit 2-5
Protecting Investors 5-10
Paying Taxes 10-25
Trading Across Borders 10-40
Enforcing Contracts 10-30
Closing a Business 5-10
Source: Author’s estimates. The cost includes drafting of legal texts and public dialogue.

European donor agencies are the most successful supporters of such specific reforms. The Swiss have supported successful court and customs reform projects, the Norwegians successful property registries, the British excel at reforming tax authorities, the Swedish at business registries, the Icelanders reforms in small states. Choosing which type of reforms to support frequently depends on what the donor is good at: Norway has the world’s best property registry, Switzerland is known for efficient customs.

This is what the nuts-and-bolts work behind the alleviation of poverty looks like.

See also the brilliant December 2007 paper he co-authored titled "The Curse of Aid".

Love is the Opposite of Fear

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:03:36 -0000

FLOW consists of two core elements:

1. An unabashed passion for free enterprise
2. An unabashed passion for doing good

And yet we are continuing to refine exactly what we mean by each of these elements.

In a long conversation with John Mackey yesterday, I proposed two key foundations for the "unabashed passion for doing good,"

1. Transcending the ego
2. "Love is the opposite of fear"

There will necessarily also be a rational component of doing good - one needs to figure out what the consequences of one's actions will be, and if the consequences of one's actions will be positive or negative. That said, in this conversation we were most interested in the more internal, psychological aspects of manifesting good ("spirituality," if you will, though as a scientific materialist the term is unnecessary to me personally).

Transcending the ego is important insofar as much harm and short-sightedness comes from being driven by ego. Many mindfulness practices, as well as traditional religious practices and philosophical reflection, seeks to help people to transcend their ego. And yet complete transcendence of ego is rarely possible for most people. At best we can be reminded that the ego should not be the primary driver of our behavior and identity; it is a part of being human, but to mistake one's ego for one's being is to mistake a partial and misleading portion of one's being for the whole.

The discussion of the role of the ego and the extent to which it can be transcended is an endless conversation. John and I agreed that the expression, from The Course in Miracles, that "Love is the opposite of fear" is far easier to understand and communicate. Far more than is realized, fear drives behavior. If we are coming from a place of love, compassion, and abundance, we are less likely to be graspy and antagonistic in our interactions with others. Whenever we are not feeling loving and compassion towards others, it is always useful to stop and see if there is an underlying fear interfering with the interaction.

I suppose there are people who regard a stance of love and compassion towards others as, in some sense, unnatural and alien. They might believe that their lack of love is not motivated by fear. I don't know about such people.

For me, "love is the opposite of fear" is a very helpful rule of thumb, which I can use to remind myself whenever I am not acting out of love that I must have some underlying fear. And, of course, I have much such fear - this is why the dictum is useful to me.

Peace,

Michael

The Ultimate Act of Generosity

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:26:29 -0000

When an unskilled Mexican laborer crosses the border from Mexico into the U.S., a day's worth of his or her hard work increases by a power of 10 - instead of receiving $6 for a day of work, they can receive $60 for a day of work. While most of us regard $60 as a low wage, the fact to focus on is that they are receiving 10 times as much as they were before. No wonder they are willing to risk death to come into the U.S.

When a piece of land in the developing world is designated as a free zone, often (it depends on the design, location, and legal structure of the zone) land values increase 10x or more. Over time this 10x land value increase can become a 100x increase or more as investors become confident that a world class business environment has been created.

I've noted before that the entire developing world regulates business more than does Scandinavia. The entire developing world also has weaker property rights and contract enforcement than does Scandinavia. There is abundant evidence that global poverty is caused by "poor institutions" or a "lack of economic freedom" or the absence of a "world class business environment." These are all different ways to express an underlying truth - if we could install a business environment that was more like the business environment of Finland or Denmark, the U.S. or Hong Kong, in any developing nation, investment dollars would flow into the country, entrepreneurial start-ups would increase, and GDP per capita would increase.

Despite the dramatic differences in the legal systems of Finland, Denmark, the U.S., Hong Kong, and other nations with high economic freedom rankings, with respect to their power to alleviate poverty their similarities are more important than their differences. Strong property rights, contract enforcement, rule of law, and minimal regulation are necessary foundations to an entrepreneurial capitalism that alleviates poverty. The more quickly we can share these institutions with the peoples of other nations, the more quickly they will experience hope and optimism based on the expectation that their children's lives will be significantly better than their own.

In order to avoid a 21st century that turns out to be even bloodier than the 20th century, I am seeking to communicate these understandings so that we can share the institutions of prosperity with people around the world. Sharing an understanding of these institutions of prosperity is the ultimate act of generosity.

Empowering Women Entrepreneur Events

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:58:55 -0000

FLOW is sponsoring two events on Empowering Women Entrepreneurs, a two-day version on Nov. 30th and Dec. 1st in Austin (one can come either or both days) and a one day version in San Rafael, Dec. 7th. Each day is 9-5 p.m. Check in with us at contact@flowidealism.org. The link above, going to:

http://www.flowidealism.org/EWE.html

provides more detail.

Part of what we are doing:

Help to create a global system that results in the creation of millions of new income streams for women around the world. These paths include:

Importing products from women artisans and entrepreneurs at every level.
Supporting the development of women-led ecotourism, adventure tourism, and experience tourism enterprises around the world.
Populating our wiki with women-led businesses and support the women-led business on our wiki.
Training and hiring women to provide on-line services, either as free agents or as entrepreneurial service providers.
Creating "Women's Empowerment Zones" with world class business environments in nations' that currently lack positive business environments.

Contact us for specific entrance points into these and related projects; we have partners who are active in these and related areas. The more people that participate in this, the better.

Solar Lamps and Colonias in Reynosa

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:13:17 -0000

My November FLOW Newsletter highlights the solar lamp being developed by the John Ernest Foundation. This solar lamp, designed to replace kerosene use in poor households, currently retails for $55 in India. They seek to get it down to $25 by summer 2008 and $15 by summer 2009 in order to make it accessible to an ever-increasing percentage of the 1.7 billion people who don't have access to electricity.

In the meantime, I've been advising an Austin-based church group on entrepreneurial projects for a community they are helping in a Reynosa colonia. They have helped build about 20 homes in the colonia and, on Nov. 24th, will be holding a "Grand Opening" for a water tower and bath house that they helped build in the community (all projects involve a combination of local labor and Austin labor, all volunteer). They are now considering businesses to start to provide jobs in the colonia. At present, many of the people in the colonia consist of poor women and children, left behind as the men cross into the U.S. to get a job here. Among the businesses they are considering building is a manufacturing plant for the solar lamp described above, to introduce it into the Mexican market. Let me know if anyone is interested in helping with this project or replicating it elsewhere.

New Peace through Commerce book by Christopher Coyne

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:24:02 -0000

After War

The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

Christopher Coyne

May 25, 2007

Summary

Forthcoming from Stanford University Press, November 2007

Why does liberal democracy take hold in some countries but not in others? Why do we observe such different outcomes in military interventions, from Germany and Japan to Afghanistan and Iraq? Do efforts to export democracy help as much as they hurt? These are some of the most enduring questions of our time.

Historically, the United States has attempted to generate change in foreign countries by exporting liberal democratic institutions through military occupation and reconstruction. Despite these efforts, the record of U.S.-led reconstructions has been mixed, at best. For every West Germany or Japan, there is a Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, or Vietnam.

After War seeks to answer these critical foreign policy questions by bringing an economic mindset to a topic that has been traditionally tackled by historians, policymakers, and political scientists. Economics focuses on how incentives influence human action. Therefore, within an economic context, a successful reconstruction entails finding and establishing a set of incentives that makes citizens prefer a liberal democratic order. Coyne examines the mechanisms and institutions that contribute to the success of reconstruction programs by creating incentives for sustained cooperation.

Coyne emphasizes that the main threat to Western nations in the post-Cold War period will not come from a superpower, but rather from weak, failed, and conflict-torn states-and rogue groups within them. It is also critical to recognize that the dynamics at work - culture, historical, and social- in these modern states are fundamentally different from those that the United States faced in the reconstructions of West Germany and Japan. As such, these historical cases of successful reconstruction are poor models for today's challenges. In Coyne's view, policymakers and occupiers face an array of internal and external constraints in dealing with rogue states. These constraints are often greatest in the countries most in need of the political, economic, and social change. The irony is that these projects are least likely to succeed precisely where they are most needed.

Coyne offers two bold alternatives to reconstruction programs that could serve as catalysts for social change: principled non-intervention and unilateral free trade. Coyne points to major differences in these preferred approaches; whereas reconstruction projects involve a period of coerced military occupation, free trade-led reforms are voluntary. The book goes on to highlight the economic and cultural benefits of free trade.

While Coyne contends that a commitment to non-intervention and free trade may not lead to Western-style liberal democracies in conflict-torn countries, such a strategy could lay the groundwork for global peace.

(Hat tip to Mercatus Center, from whence this summary was taken)

Publisher : Stanford University Press

ISBN : 0804754403
Purchase Link

Creation vs. Conflict

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:54:53 -0000

I recently ran across a survey that claimed that 80% of college graduates want work that is "meaningful" when they graduate. As a school administrator, I frequently receive resumes from people in their 40s and 50s who have "retired" from the worlds of business, law, technology, or banking and now want to have a second, more meaningful, career.

As incomes continue to rise, an increasing percentage of our population will have the option of spending an increasing percentage of their work career engaged in employment for which meaning, rather than pecuniary gain, is the primary rationale for their choice of work.

Often college graduates are attracted to "activism" as a meaningful career. Although there is certainly a role for activism, often activism treats symptoms rather than causes. The ultimate cause of poverty is that people don't have adequate marketable skills and sufficiently professional job habits. Until and unless poor people develop the marketable skills and professional job habits required, they will remain poor.

The position of office manager in a school is key: The person who runs the office ensures that all the systems runs smoothly, that parents get the information that they want, that teachers are properly supported, etc. In Palo Alto during the dot com boom, our school couldn't find an adequate office manager for $40,000. Tech companies were paying similar people $50-80K and we couldn't offer a similar salary. This position does not need a college degree, or even a high school diploma. A person simply needs to be smart, organized, responsible, and with good people skills. "Training" programs do not supply these pre-requisites. Basic computer knowledge is also useful, but basic computer knowledge can be taught very quickly to the right person.

While I love education, most education is a ridiculous waste of time. If someone simply wants to earn a living, were it not for government-mandated credentials, there would be numerous career paths for bright people with (or without) a high school diploma. Often sales people earn more than $50K, in many cases over $100K. These positions require no education: just excellent persuasion skills and verbal style that matches the social class to which one is selling. Rather than a worthless high school diploma and a worthless four year degree, bright young people could be taught to speak in a particular manner and make great incomes selling. At no point in our education system is this option recognized.

One of the marvelously democratic aspects of the early tech boom is that no credentials were required. As a consequence, many high school and college drop outs became programming professionals. The last tech expert that I hired was a high school drop out who had been making more than 100K working for Sun Microsystems.

What if activists, instead of fighting zero-sum battles on behalf of the poor, fought battles that resulted in endless opportunities? Credentialism limits access to, and increases the cost of, education and health care. Yes, activists can fight to obtain more funding for education and health care for the poor. They may or may not win. If they win, they may deepen resentment from other taxpayers. They will not have made much of a difference in terms of why the poor are poor. And because they will not have resolved the root causes of poverty, they will feel a need to keep fighting. War is costly, and so are political battles.

The idealism that motivates activists could be re-directed towards creating a society based on creation rather than conflict. What if we were to create lower cost, and ultimately much higher quality, health care options by means of eliminating most (or all) government regulations concerning health care? What if we were to create lower cost, and ultimately much higher quality, education options by means of elimination most (or all) government regulations concerning education? The same applies to housing and community creation.

Looked at from this perspective, a horrifying conspiracy exists to keep education and health care expensive, hard to obtain, and not appropriately designed for the needs of the people. This conspiracy is led by some of the nicest, most conscientious people, including professors at our best universities. Nonetheless, the result is the same: limit quality and access, and raise cost, for those things that are most important to human well-being.

If it were legal to do so, and if there were visionary entrepreneurs who helped to make it happen, the millions of young people who long for meaningful careers, the millions of older people who are ready to retire into meaningful careers, could flood into the fields of health, education, housing, and community and reduce poverty more than any government program possibly can.

"Let us do it" is the true meaning of "laissez-faire." We want to do it, we can afford to do it. We need visionary leaders and we need freedom. Given these pre-requisites creative idealists can begin to improve life for rich and poor alike.