Can anyone tell me where to find the anti-life and anti-choice bumper stickers? I didn’t think so. Is it not true that any discussion of morality and public policy seems quickly to devolve into shrill assertions of disputed values? As a whole, the West’s political discussion of morality seems to consist of antagonistic individuals desperately clinging to fragments of a larger worldview, and engaged in a discourse that both aspires to rational universality, and flounders amid chaotic subjectivism.
The first sign of a splintered morality is a shift from dialogue to shouting matches. Indeed, many current political thinkers demonstrate this with their astonishing ability to talk past one another. The implicit dialogue between an op-ed by Anna Bernasek of the Times (arguing the necessity of broad equality of income to social justice), and a Wall Street Journal piece calling for tax cuts to ensure free wealth-creation is about at the level of grade school name-calling. The abortion debate has somehow pitted the sanctity of a woman’s body against a child’s right to live. Marriage, President Bush insists, is “a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society,” to which Stephanie Coontz of the Times responds, “Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age.” Just war theorists join Clausewitz in accepting the death of the few to save the many, while Wendell Berry and his followers decry any action that knowingly takes a life, despite the costs.
Each of these paralyzed arguments shares a common trait: if one only accepts the initial premises, the conclusion follows logically. If bodily self-determination is the highest good, then abortion ought to be legalized. If equality of income yields the best kind of society, America ought to create a more progressive tax system. If there is no justification for willingly taking an innocent life, America ought to stay out of all wars. We have no problem teasing out our arguments; we just can’t seem to agree on the premises.
Politicians recognize this problem, and have sought a solution in a fulfillment of Kant’s dream of a rational morality. Thus, Barack Obama has called for a policies rooted in “universal, rather than religion-specific, values,” while Hillary Clinton insisted, “I don't think this [abortion] debate should be about ideology - it should be about facts, and evidence.” Denis Kucinich went so far as to argue, “By removing the trappings of religion from our public…institutions…we actually increase the freedom of everyone to freely and openly practice the beliefs of their choice.”
However, far from having found a few “first principles” by which to define some sort of common good, American politicians consistently voice uncertainty and confusion amid the chaotic demands of conflicting moral premises. John McCain trumpets the morality of democracy-building, while John Edwards calls poverty, “the great moral issue of our time.” Even Mike Huckabee, with his remarkably well-grounded emphasis on a consistent pro-life stance that does not merely “end at the birth canal,” could only describe executing the death penalty as the most difficult part of his job as governor. In the circus of American politics, these public figures pick one or two of many issues to stand upon, demand a rational discussion, free from the local prejudices of religion, and yet find themselves with no justification for their narrowly defined morality outside their own preferential assertions. Thus, the conversation devolves quickly into finger pointing and shouting, with seemingly no way to bridge the gap between competing premises.
Historically, most cultures have taken a very different approach to morality, creating systems that could possibly overcome some of the shortcomings of American rational-assertiveness. First, nearly every major worldview has viewed morality, not as a series of distinct precepts, which could be examined and debated in isolation, but as an integral whole. Jews have Torah, the Law; the Chinese have the Tao, the Way; Hindus have Rta, or Order; Christians have the way of Jesus, and his Greatest Command, which draws all others into itself. Second, each of these cultures has developed a praxis that provides a context in which moral action and discussion can take place. Plato remarks in Book 5 of the Republic that only men whose souls had been tempered by years of “music and gymnastic” could ever be fit to discern justice. Likewise, in Hebrew Psalms, it is the Law, not reason, which provides a lamp to man’s feet; a comprehensive morality tutors a flawed rationality. Christianity seeks to create a new society rooted in sacrificial love by ordering its followers around the Eucharist, a common, egalitarian meal, commemorating the sacrifice of Christ; likewise, Muslims act out their zealous pursuit of submission to God through their five daily prayer hours. Now, these moral systems may assume different premises at the outset, but they do so with the assumption that in order to engage the worldview, one must accept it as a whole. Even further, to grasp it fully, one must first order one’s life according to its praxis, and let that shape his understanding.
In America, men commonly seek to use their reason to construct a moral system from the ground up, and the resulting creation of whim, chance, and confusion is a shabby structure indeed, fit only for housing a few moral precepts, plucked from a larger traditional system either at random, or with sinister intent. It is as though the West, which clung for centuries to the Judeo-Hellenistic worldview, delicate and beautiful as stained glass with its complex and nuanced morals informed by a richly symbolic praxis, had suddenly let the treasure crash to the ground, and shatter into a thousand fragments; America is now picking up the pieces, but finding itself bloodied by the lone shards of its disjointed morals.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
"The Most Natural Defense of a Free Country"
Virginia Tech. Columbine. Jonesboro. These names need no elaboration; they instantly evoke images of fleeing students and body bags strewn across hillsides, and their syllables echo with screams of terror, and the roar of pistol-fire. These names seem to pronounce a prophetic doom over our society, and like any good oracle, a fierce debate rages over their meaning. Teens steal guns from home, construct bombs, and scheme to slaughter an entire public high school—what must we do?
The gun control movement, led by organizations such as the Brady Campaign and Handgun Control, offers one response, essentially seeking to sever the supply chain that enables public shootings, by sharply curtailing average citizens’ rights to own weapons. With ever-more stringent background checks, waiting periods (thought to prevent “crimes of passion”), and “gun-free zones,” gun-control advocates envision a relatively weaponless, and therefore (they reason) relatively peaceful, society. By this argument, if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had not had access to high-powered weapons in their parents’ house, then the thirteen victims of the Columbine massacre would not have died.
University of Chicago economist John Lott has offered a powerful critique of this notion. Restricting the supply of a good principally drives the price up, creating powerful incentives for vendors to find ways to deal illegally. Gun control laws, he insists, have had this effect. Lott argues, “Concealed handguns by permit holders are virtually never involved in the commission of crime, let alone murder”; rather, almost all criminal use guns they purchased illegally on the street. As government officials have found in the case of alcohol, narcotics, and now firearms, trying to stamp out a trade rich with profit opportunities inevitably devolves into a national game of Whack-a-Mole.
Lott defends the notion that to prevent violent crime, particularly public shootings such as Virginia Tech, we must shrink the demand—we must make attempting such slaughter prohibitively risky, so that the killers will choose to stay home. In his view, the best approach to this end is to pass right-to-carry legislation that would allow “law-abiding citizens with no history of serious mental illness” (he might have said “virtuous and healthy,” a crucial point that bears meditation) to carry concealed arms. Consider—if only 5% of the country had concealed weapons permits, then the likelihood of someone in a crowded public area (a school, a restaurant, a park) being able to respond to an attacker with force is virtually certain.
The often-untold history of multiple shootings defends this theory. When a teen stabbed his mother, stole a rifle, and began to terrorize a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car, and wounded the shooter. In a similar incident, a restaurant owner held a school-shooter at bay with a shotgun, ending the killing nearly ten minutes before the police arrived. Even more telling, public shootings were commonplace in Israel, until after an expansion of right-to-carry laws, when terrorists found civilians returning fire. Indeed, Lott found that states with right-to-carry laws saw an average decline of 89% in murders per 100,000 people within the first year, while states without such laws consistently account for almost 90% of multiple-shootings.
Now, Lott acknowledged the limitations of his theory: “The deterrent effect depends on how many potential offenders are close enough to the margin so that the passage of a shall issue law changes the net benefit from positive to negative.” In other words, such economic modeling only works with people exercising the rational faculty of cost-benefit analysis, people with enough of a stake in a the normal social sphere to be deterred by the thought of resistance and imminent death. Lott’s theory accounts for the vast reduction in multiple shootings: most potential killers now stay home, having calculated the odds and found them slim.
However, the killings that continue to occur involve a different kind of person, one indifferent to Lott’s models. In an article on Slate.com, Dave Cullen described the Columbine killers: Klebold was “depressive and suicidal,” and Harris a malevolent sociopath, devoid of conscience. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 33 during his rampage at Virginia Tech, was treated for severe anxiety and speech impediments throughout his adolescence, and wrote such graphically violent poetry for a class that the teacher threatened to quit if he were not removed. Mitchell Johnson, one of the twelve year-olds involved in the Jonesboro killing, had a history of sexual abuse as a child. Indeed, Lott observed, “Half of 100 multiple-victim public murderers had received formal diagnosis of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia.”
Lott’s economic model of deterrence works only in a society of virtuous, decent, courageous citizens, a society where public killings remain a horrific novelty, a society where average men and women would risk their lives for strangers. Ultimately, the issue of public killings devolves principally to citizen-virtue, not gun control. The government can insure that the “demand” for public killings stays low by cultivating those virtues, whether by honoring in its tax codes the family structure that stewards it, offering affordable psychiatric treatment to the wounded children who could wield tomorrow’s guns, or educating parents to identify the signs of serious emotional disturbance. Alexander Hamilton thought armed civilians “the most natural defense of a free country”; we ought only to restrict gun ownership when we cannot trust the average citizen to use them wisely and courageously.
The gun control movement, led by organizations such as the Brady Campaign and Handgun Control, offers one response, essentially seeking to sever the supply chain that enables public shootings, by sharply curtailing average citizens’ rights to own weapons. With ever-more stringent background checks, waiting periods (thought to prevent “crimes of passion”), and “gun-free zones,” gun-control advocates envision a relatively weaponless, and therefore (they reason) relatively peaceful, society. By this argument, if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had not had access to high-powered weapons in their parents’ house, then the thirteen victims of the Columbine massacre would not have died.
University of Chicago economist John Lott has offered a powerful critique of this notion. Restricting the supply of a good principally drives the price up, creating powerful incentives for vendors to find ways to deal illegally. Gun control laws, he insists, have had this effect. Lott argues, “Concealed handguns by permit holders are virtually never involved in the commission of crime, let alone murder”; rather, almost all criminal use guns they purchased illegally on the street. As government officials have found in the case of alcohol, narcotics, and now firearms, trying to stamp out a trade rich with profit opportunities inevitably devolves into a national game of Whack-a-Mole.
Lott defends the notion that to prevent violent crime, particularly public shootings such as Virginia Tech, we must shrink the demand—we must make attempting such slaughter prohibitively risky, so that the killers will choose to stay home. In his view, the best approach to this end is to pass right-to-carry legislation that would allow “law-abiding citizens with no history of serious mental illness” (he might have said “virtuous and healthy,” a crucial point that bears meditation) to carry concealed arms. Consider—if only 5% of the country had concealed weapons permits, then the likelihood of someone in a crowded public area (a school, a restaurant, a park) being able to respond to an attacker with force is virtually certain.
The often-untold history of multiple shootings defends this theory. When a teen stabbed his mother, stole a rifle, and began to terrorize a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car, and wounded the shooter. In a similar incident, a restaurant owner held a school-shooter at bay with a shotgun, ending the killing nearly ten minutes before the police arrived. Even more telling, public shootings were commonplace in Israel, until after an expansion of right-to-carry laws, when terrorists found civilians returning fire. Indeed, Lott found that states with right-to-carry laws saw an average decline of 89% in murders per 100,000 people within the first year, while states without such laws consistently account for almost 90% of multiple-shootings.
Now, Lott acknowledged the limitations of his theory: “The deterrent effect depends on how many potential offenders are close enough to the margin so that the passage of a shall issue law changes the net benefit from positive to negative.” In other words, such economic modeling only works with people exercising the rational faculty of cost-benefit analysis, people with enough of a stake in a the normal social sphere to be deterred by the thought of resistance and imminent death. Lott’s theory accounts for the vast reduction in multiple shootings: most potential killers now stay home, having calculated the odds and found them slim.
However, the killings that continue to occur involve a different kind of person, one indifferent to Lott’s models. In an article on Slate.com, Dave Cullen described the Columbine killers: Klebold was “depressive and suicidal,” and Harris a malevolent sociopath, devoid of conscience. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 33 during his rampage at Virginia Tech, was treated for severe anxiety and speech impediments throughout his adolescence, and wrote such graphically violent poetry for a class that the teacher threatened to quit if he were not removed. Mitchell Johnson, one of the twelve year-olds involved in the Jonesboro killing, had a history of sexual abuse as a child. Indeed, Lott observed, “Half of 100 multiple-victim public murderers had received formal diagnosis of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia.”
Lott’s economic model of deterrence works only in a society of virtuous, decent, courageous citizens, a society where public killings remain a horrific novelty, a society where average men and women would risk their lives for strangers. Ultimately, the issue of public killings devolves principally to citizen-virtue, not gun control. The government can insure that the “demand” for public killings stays low by cultivating those virtues, whether by honoring in its tax codes the family structure that stewards it, offering affordable psychiatric treatment to the wounded children who could wield tomorrow’s guns, or educating parents to identify the signs of serious emotional disturbance. Alexander Hamilton thought armed civilians “the most natural defense of a free country”; we ought only to restrict gun ownership when we cannot trust the average citizen to use them wisely and courageously.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Which Christianity?
It was a historic night for King's--our fledgling college hosted a debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens on the topic, "Is Christianity the problem?" Overall, I feel nothing but elation for the outcome. The debaters (both social critics and columnists) displayed poise, wit, and an incredible command of history, while King's created a forum in which to present itself to New York as a serious voice for cultural change. Let's do it every week.
However, I definitely have some reservations about the course the debate took. It seems that the topic question divides somewhat neatly in two, namely, "Which Christianity?" and then, "Is that Christianity bad for the world?" The debaters spent most of their time camped in the second question, with Hitchens asserting that Christianity (or its "parodies," i.e. Islam) had proven itself primarily as an agent of oppression and degradation, and D'Souza countering (mostly convincingly, in my mind) that Christianity had in fact created an unprecedented culture, one rooted in love and self-sacrifice. Yet, this aspect of the debate seems, in reality, least controversial--I think everyone in the audience would have agreed that Church history consists of a muddle of light and dark, of beautiful ideals (or at least ethical precepts), imperfectly lived out.
However, much less clarity emerged on the issue of the fundamental nature of Christianity. Hitchens had no real complaints about Christian ethics; he merely asserted that they were not original to Christianity, that pure reason or common sense could supply mankind with the Golden Rule, and the like. Conversely, Hitchens displayed a bitter, even vitriolic distaste for Christian theology (or what I might characterize more broadly as the "Christian worldview"), which he characterized as a creation-hating, sado-masochistic system catering to snivelling, grovelling, irrational bullies who use their dated, corrupt, contrived book to oppress others, even as they fawn and abase themselves before a God who at best could be a petty tyrant, and at worst is nothing at all. To Hitchens, Christian theology is ultimately centered in the gruesome, arbitrary, and unjust human sacrifice of the Cross, and cannot mount any more powerful moral exhortation than "Turn, or burn!" To Hitchens, the greatest argument for the evil of the "good news" is that it has duped billions of people into embracing a worldview that is at its heart irrational, inhuman, and anti-life (in the sense that it ultimately negates all material existence with apocalyptic judgment).
When Hitchens described in his disbelief in such a system, his hatred of it, I wanted to leap from my seat and give a shout of affirmation. Unfortunately for Hitchens, with all his rancor and wit, he was (in my view) emphatically not describing the gospel of Jesus. Still more unfortunate, D'Souza never clearly articulated an alternative to Hitchens' portrayal. I have outlined my understanding of the Kingdom more fully elsewhere on this blog site (see especially "Jesus," "Dreaming Reality," "Choices," and "Capitalism and the Kingdom"), so I won't delve into the details here. However, one of Hitchens' points makes me especially nervous, because I don't think mainstream evangelicalism has articulated an appropriate response to it. He castigates the church for its dualism, for its patient resignation to endure material existence, in the hopes of some better, spiritual existence after death. He despises this attitude; so do I. Here's a basic fact about the narrative of the Bible--Genesis begins with the creation of the earth; Revelation ends with the re-creation of the heavens and the earth. The Bible does not end in some heavenly realm, but on earth. The gospel does not negate creation; it restores it. Hitchens needs to get his facts straight, and D'Souza should have helped him.
I think that Hitchen's characterization of Christianity creates an irresolvable tension, which he failed to address. If, as he asserts, Jesus' teachings on the nature of God, humanity, and creation at large are fundamentally corrupt and malicious, inhuman and irrational, how on earth could Jesus have produced an ethical system of such resounding beauty? How could a sado-masochistic worldview produce the Sermon on the Mount? To alleivate this tension, it seems that Hitchens must deny at least one of three things: his description of the Christian worldview, the historical validity of Jesus' teachings (i.e. Jesus never actually said those things), or the moral value of the teachings themselves. He lives by the teachings, so the third option is out; he clearly knows very little about historical criticism of the Bible, so I won't even bother to challenge him there; thus, all that remains to him is to acknowledge his inadequate understanding of the gospel itself.
However, I definitely have some reservations about the course the debate took. It seems that the topic question divides somewhat neatly in two, namely, "Which Christianity?" and then, "Is that Christianity bad for the world?" The debaters spent most of their time camped in the second question, with Hitchens asserting that Christianity (or its "parodies," i.e. Islam) had proven itself primarily as an agent of oppression and degradation, and D'Souza countering (mostly convincingly, in my mind) that Christianity had in fact created an unprecedented culture, one rooted in love and self-sacrifice. Yet, this aspect of the debate seems, in reality, least controversial--I think everyone in the audience would have agreed that Church history consists of a muddle of light and dark, of beautiful ideals (or at least ethical precepts), imperfectly lived out.
However, much less clarity emerged on the issue of the fundamental nature of Christianity. Hitchens had no real complaints about Christian ethics; he merely asserted that they were not original to Christianity, that pure reason or common sense could supply mankind with the Golden Rule, and the like. Conversely, Hitchens displayed a bitter, even vitriolic distaste for Christian theology (or what I might characterize more broadly as the "Christian worldview"), which he characterized as a creation-hating, sado-masochistic system catering to snivelling, grovelling, irrational bullies who use their dated, corrupt, contrived book to oppress others, even as they fawn and abase themselves before a God who at best could be a petty tyrant, and at worst is nothing at all. To Hitchens, Christian theology is ultimately centered in the gruesome, arbitrary, and unjust human sacrifice of the Cross, and cannot mount any more powerful moral exhortation than "Turn, or burn!" To Hitchens, the greatest argument for the evil of the "good news" is that it has duped billions of people into embracing a worldview that is at its heart irrational, inhuman, and anti-life (in the sense that it ultimately negates all material existence with apocalyptic judgment).
When Hitchens described in his disbelief in such a system, his hatred of it, I wanted to leap from my seat and give a shout of affirmation. Unfortunately for Hitchens, with all his rancor and wit, he was (in my view) emphatically not describing the gospel of Jesus. Still more unfortunate, D'Souza never clearly articulated an alternative to Hitchens' portrayal. I have outlined my understanding of the Kingdom more fully elsewhere on this blog site (see especially "Jesus," "Dreaming Reality," "Choices," and "Capitalism and the Kingdom"), so I won't delve into the details here. However, one of Hitchens' points makes me especially nervous, because I don't think mainstream evangelicalism has articulated an appropriate response to it. He castigates the church for its dualism, for its patient resignation to endure material existence, in the hopes of some better, spiritual existence after death. He despises this attitude; so do I. Here's a basic fact about the narrative of the Bible--Genesis begins with the creation of the earth; Revelation ends with the re-creation of the heavens and the earth. The Bible does not end in some heavenly realm, but on earth. The gospel does not negate creation; it restores it. Hitchens needs to get his facts straight, and D'Souza should have helped him.
I think that Hitchen's characterization of Christianity creates an irresolvable tension, which he failed to address. If, as he asserts, Jesus' teachings on the nature of God, humanity, and creation at large are fundamentally corrupt and malicious, inhuman and irrational, how on earth could Jesus have produced an ethical system of such resounding beauty? How could a sado-masochistic worldview produce the Sermon on the Mount? To alleivate this tension, it seems that Hitchens must deny at least one of three things: his description of the Christian worldview, the historical validity of Jesus' teachings (i.e. Jesus never actually said those things), or the moral value of the teachings themselves. He lives by the teachings, so the third option is out; he clearly knows very little about historical criticism of the Bible, so I won't even bother to challenge him there; thus, all that remains to him is to acknowledge his inadequate understanding of the gospel itself.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Radiohead's "In Rainbows" points to new pots of gold
On October 10, Radiohead uploaded its newest album, "In Rainbows," to the Internet, and allowed fans to pay whatever they wished for the DRM-free recording. In the time it took Thom Yorke to click, "Send," everything changed. For the entire history of the music recording industry, a band looking to produce an album faced an arduous quest, requiring the assembly of a motley fellowship of producers, agents, audio technicians, advertisers, photographers, manufacturers, distributors, even lawyers. The album itself had to trek from writing table to studio to lab to factory to distributor to retail store before it ever graced the ears of a fan.
As I said, everything has changed. The blossoming Information Revolution has created a global economy, in which anyone can create practically anything, and trade with anyone, anywhere. Radiohead (helped, of course, by their fabulous wealth) recorded "In Rainbows" from home, using studio-quality equipment that allows bands to become musicians, producers, and technicians at once, cutting costs by tens of thousands of dollars per day. If you doubt the efficacy of such an attempt, listen to the music--$500 headphones might reveal the shortcomings of the recording, but the quality is identical to their prior albums on the $20 iPod earbuds that we all use. Now, once they had a finished product, they were truly finished--no subesequent supply chains of production, no mark-ups along the distribution line. They uploaded one, digital copy, and every subsequent copy purchased incurred exactly zero marginal cost, making every sale almost pure profit, especially relative to the expensive production systems of traditional records. Singer Thom Yorke, summed the issue nicely in a comment to TIME, " “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one."
Radiohead's radical move represents an intelligent response to this newfound Global Village, where information diffuses at an incredible rate among millions of users, defying even the most violent attempts to thwart its flow (compare Napster's spectacular downfall with the continued growth of P2P networks). Increasingly, the hype surrounding a new album breaks days before the release, when a pirated copy (often originating from within the studio itself, cf. Underoath's recent album, "They're Only Chasing Safety") leaked to the Internet soars into millions of downloads within days, or else dissipates after the release, as illegal downloads steal revenues from retailers. If music-lovers will bypass $15 prices regardless, why not allow them to set a price reasonable for themselves? After all, some money is surely preferable to none. The initial sales dispersion of "In Rainbows" is telling--about one-third of the downloads received no payment (except for the 45 cent credit charge levied on everyone), but high numbers of outrageous bids (upwards of $21) have brought the average price to about $8. Whether from guilt, philanthropy, or elation at collaborating directly with their band, many customers have found incentives to pay outside mere material self-interest.
Changing technology has made the recording industry unprofitable; Radiohead's new approach admits these realities. Do not, however, assume that the age of professional music has ended. Album sales have always paled before the profits from concerts and lower-cost merchandise, and both industries are booming. Further, this new medium of sale will likely open hitherto unexpected profit opportunities. For instance, the required credit card form forced every customer, even those who paid nothing, to give their name, email, and home address--this information is a valuable on its own, and the marketing schemes and products sold using it could be more valuable still. Innovation always comes from unexpected directions--that's what makes it so profitable. In the early part of the 20th century, when labor groups and economists alike bemoaned the inefficient, oligopolistic, government-collusive railroad industry, two men invented the airplane, and revolutioned transportation. I sense a similar change is afoot for the recording business.
As I said, everything has changed. The blossoming Information Revolution has created a global economy, in which anyone can create practically anything, and trade with anyone, anywhere. Radiohead (helped, of course, by their fabulous wealth) recorded "In Rainbows" from home, using studio-quality equipment that allows bands to become musicians, producers, and technicians at once, cutting costs by tens of thousands of dollars per day. If you doubt the efficacy of such an attempt, listen to the music--$500 headphones might reveal the shortcomings of the recording, but the quality is identical to their prior albums on the $20 iPod earbuds that we all use. Now, once they had a finished product, they were truly finished--no subesequent supply chains of production, no mark-ups along the distribution line. They uploaded one, digital copy, and every subsequent copy purchased incurred exactly zero marginal cost, making every sale almost pure profit, especially relative to the expensive production systems of traditional records. Singer Thom Yorke, summed the issue nicely in a comment to TIME, " “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one."
Radiohead's radical move represents an intelligent response to this newfound Global Village, where information diffuses at an incredible rate among millions of users, defying even the most violent attempts to thwart its flow (compare Napster's spectacular downfall with the continued growth of P2P networks). Increasingly, the hype surrounding a new album breaks days before the release, when a pirated copy (often originating from within the studio itself, cf. Underoath's recent album, "They're Only Chasing Safety") leaked to the Internet soars into millions of downloads within days, or else dissipates after the release, as illegal downloads steal revenues from retailers. If music-lovers will bypass $15 prices regardless, why not allow them to set a price reasonable for themselves? After all, some money is surely preferable to none. The initial sales dispersion of "In Rainbows" is telling--about one-third of the downloads received no payment (except for the 45 cent credit charge levied on everyone), but high numbers of outrageous bids (upwards of $21) have brought the average price to about $8. Whether from guilt, philanthropy, or elation at collaborating directly with their band, many customers have found incentives to pay outside mere material self-interest.
Changing technology has made the recording industry unprofitable; Radiohead's new approach admits these realities. Do not, however, assume that the age of professional music has ended. Album sales have always paled before the profits from concerts and lower-cost merchandise, and both industries are booming. Further, this new medium of sale will likely open hitherto unexpected profit opportunities. For instance, the required credit card form forced every customer, even those who paid nothing, to give their name, email, and home address--this information is a valuable on its own, and the marketing schemes and products sold using it could be more valuable still. Innovation always comes from unexpected directions--that's what makes it so profitable. In the early part of the 20th century, when labor groups and economists alike bemoaned the inefficient, oligopolistic, government-collusive railroad industry, two men invented the airplane, and revolutioned transportation. I sense a similar change is afoot for the recording business.
Monday, October 8, 2007
THE THIRD WAY
Popular culture espouses two, competing narratives of American history, each evaluating the whirlwind of globalization, and America’s growing inequality. (An aside: Every individual combines and develops the various worldviews available to him uniquely; however, any coherent thought requires some level of generalization, to which we now turn.) The liberal-progressive sees the prime mover of history as a social struggle towards equality, and thus dismisses globalization, calling increased taxation to redistribute its benefits. The conservative-capitalist sees history as an economic struggle for wealth, and thus embraces the possibilities of globalization, calling only for a leveling of opportunity. The latter narrative offers powerful critiques of the former, but American culture has yet to produce a third way that might overcome the pitfalls of the conservative-capitalist vision.
In 2003, John Edwards neatly summarized the liberal-progressive stand, decrying "two Americas...one privileged, the other burdened...one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks." Indeed, trends in recent American history could make sense in that light. Over the past thirty years, the annual income of the poorest 20% has risen 10%; the top one percent has experienced 157% income growth in that time, and the average CEO’s salary (composing roughly the top .01% of the population) has risen nearly 3600%. In fact, that very .01, 13,000 individuals with an average income of $17.6 million, have earned almost 30% of the gains recorded by the top 10%. Indeed, America’s per capita GDP is far greater than Sweden’s, but so is its illiteracy rate, and infant mortality, while life expectancy here is shorter than in the socialist bastion. To the liberal-progressive, such inequality is the source of strife and misery; to right the world, he claims, we must redistribute the burgeoning riches of the wealthy to the poorer classes, by taxing a growing percentage of his income.
A second narrative at play in America offers some profound criticism of the liberal-progressive’s history. To a conservative-capitalist, such as Steven Landsburg of the Wall Street Journal, world history until about 1800 was a haze of squalor, misery, and oppression, with a few aristocrats living in palaces financed by the blood and sweat of peasants. Then, about 1800, a confluence of technology and liberty allowed millions to get rich, almost overnight. This overwhelming progress has only intensified over time, so that today, the average income increases by about 2.3% a year, meaning that incomes nearly double every half-century; even the “poor” in America enjoy luxuries beyond the imagination of any feudal lord: indoor plumbing, television, cars.
The conservative-capitalist sees growing income inequality as merely a new chapter in this story of boundless growth. Over the past thirty years, incredible strides in communications technology, particularly the information-sharing capacities of the Internet and fiber-optics, have created a global economy, one in which companies can extend their manufacturing- and supply-chains across continents, in which programmers in India and Palo Alto can seamlessly collaborate in real-time. A few visionary individuals—Bill Gates, Page and Brin of Google, Taguchi of Toyota—have seized the opportunities afforded by this new technology, and they have been rewarded fabulously for their efforts. Far from the source of the problem itself, these captains of industry are showing a new way forward, and even carrying the rest along with them: Windows’ uniform software platform, and Google’s database have allowed millions of others to innovate as well. Indeed, over the next ten years, America will likely gain 13.5 million new jobs, most of them in the technology and services sectors made possible (or profitable) by globalization. Of course, some Americans (as many as 800,000) will lose their jobs, as low-skill manufacturing and service work travels to cheaper labor markets. However, the capitalist-conservative would demand, not redistribution, but greater government spending in education, and some short-term financial assistance, to help the displaced workers develop new skills to engage the changing economy. Greater taxation, they insist, will only worsen matters by hobbling innovation and growth. In fact, the richest 1%, earning 17% of the GDP, pays 37% of all income taxes. Increasing their burden will not create more jobs to better American lives.
The conservative-capitalist offers a powerful critique of the liberal-progressive narrative, powerful principally because it seems mostly true: the world really is getting richer, and most Americans will likely catch up to the super-rich eventually. However, the conservative-capitalist, with his ultimate appeal to the quest for wealth, has little defense against the stark figures of American living standards. Yes, we are richer, we have more things, but we also die sooner, and work more than almost anyone in the West (the richest 10% of Americans work almost twice as much as the poorest 10%). In America, almost 1.2 million people a year die of heart disease; in Britain, one of Europe’s unhealthiest states, barely 120,000 people die from heart attacks yearly. America has more McDonald’s than any other nation, with nearly 1 franchise per 10,000 people. Americans also drink (on average) 216 liters of soda a year, more than anywhere else in the world. Could there be a connection here?
Free markets are not the disease afflicting America, but they do facilitate the disease, a cancer called consumerism. Consumerism is marketing-turned-religion, and its creed is, “More, and cheaper.” More food, cheaper, leads to McDonalds. More detergent, or blue jeans, cheaper, leads to Wal-Mart, and the death of Main Street America. Has Wal-Mart exploited the American people by selling them cheap underwear? Of course not—Americans have debased themselves by equating wealth with health, and thus sacrificing much that is wonderful to trivialities. More wealth, cheaper (e.g. faster) leads inevitably to Enron, and a culture of corporate corruption. The 20th century, with its gulags and Great Leaps Forward, proved the bankruptcy of Equality as an ideal; the 21st may well prove the bankruptcy of the idol of Wealth. As a culture, we need to articulate in vision of life in which men consist of more than the sum total of their possessions.
Perhaps the gospel, with its stunning alternative to consumerism, could show America a way forward. The gospel offers a better story; one of God’s restoring all of creation to shalom, or wholeness. The gospel calls for a new kind of society, one in which people give generously out of the prosperity they graciously receive, one in which forgiveness and mercy—not greed and malice—act as arbiters between men, one in which each thinks of others—his neighbors, his enemies, his environment—before himself. In the Kingdom, we can say, “Enough!” In the Kingdom, we do not hunger for things we don’t need, and that cannot satisfy. In the Kingdom, we do not poison ourselves, or pillage our home, for the expedience of the moment. In the Kingdom, our mantra is not, “More, and cheaper,” but, “Enough, and better.”
In 2003, John Edwards neatly summarized the liberal-progressive stand, decrying "two Americas...one privileged, the other burdened...one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks." Indeed, trends in recent American history could make sense in that light. Over the past thirty years, the annual income of the poorest 20% has risen 10%; the top one percent has experienced 157% income growth in that time, and the average CEO’s salary (composing roughly the top .01% of the population) has risen nearly 3600%. In fact, that very .01, 13,000 individuals with an average income of $17.6 million, have earned almost 30% of the gains recorded by the top 10%. Indeed, America’s per capita GDP is far greater than Sweden’s, but so is its illiteracy rate, and infant mortality, while life expectancy here is shorter than in the socialist bastion. To the liberal-progressive, such inequality is the source of strife and misery; to right the world, he claims, we must redistribute the burgeoning riches of the wealthy to the poorer classes, by taxing a growing percentage of his income.
A second narrative at play in America offers some profound criticism of the liberal-progressive’s history. To a conservative-capitalist, such as Steven Landsburg of the Wall Street Journal, world history until about 1800 was a haze of squalor, misery, and oppression, with a few aristocrats living in palaces financed by the blood and sweat of peasants. Then, about 1800, a confluence of technology and liberty allowed millions to get rich, almost overnight. This overwhelming progress has only intensified over time, so that today, the average income increases by about 2.3% a year, meaning that incomes nearly double every half-century; even the “poor” in America enjoy luxuries beyond the imagination of any feudal lord: indoor plumbing, television, cars.
The conservative-capitalist sees growing income inequality as merely a new chapter in this story of boundless growth. Over the past thirty years, incredible strides in communications technology, particularly the information-sharing capacities of the Internet and fiber-optics, have created a global economy, one in which companies can extend their manufacturing- and supply-chains across continents, in which programmers in India and Palo Alto can seamlessly collaborate in real-time. A few visionary individuals—Bill Gates, Page and Brin of Google, Taguchi of Toyota—have seized the opportunities afforded by this new technology, and they have been rewarded fabulously for their efforts. Far from the source of the problem itself, these captains of industry are showing a new way forward, and even carrying the rest along with them: Windows’ uniform software platform, and Google’s database have allowed millions of others to innovate as well. Indeed, over the next ten years, America will likely gain 13.5 million new jobs, most of them in the technology and services sectors made possible (or profitable) by globalization. Of course, some Americans (as many as 800,000) will lose their jobs, as low-skill manufacturing and service work travels to cheaper labor markets. However, the capitalist-conservative would demand, not redistribution, but greater government spending in education, and some short-term financial assistance, to help the displaced workers develop new skills to engage the changing economy. Greater taxation, they insist, will only worsen matters by hobbling innovation and growth. In fact, the richest 1%, earning 17% of the GDP, pays 37% of all income taxes. Increasing their burden will not create more jobs to better American lives.
The conservative-capitalist offers a powerful critique of the liberal-progressive narrative, powerful principally because it seems mostly true: the world really is getting richer, and most Americans will likely catch up to the super-rich eventually. However, the conservative-capitalist, with his ultimate appeal to the quest for wealth, has little defense against the stark figures of American living standards. Yes, we are richer, we have more things, but we also die sooner, and work more than almost anyone in the West (the richest 10% of Americans work almost twice as much as the poorest 10%). In America, almost 1.2 million people a year die of heart disease; in Britain, one of Europe’s unhealthiest states, barely 120,000 people die from heart attacks yearly. America has more McDonald’s than any other nation, with nearly 1 franchise per 10,000 people. Americans also drink (on average) 216 liters of soda a year, more than anywhere else in the world. Could there be a connection here?
Free markets are not the disease afflicting America, but they do facilitate the disease, a cancer called consumerism. Consumerism is marketing-turned-religion, and its creed is, “More, and cheaper.” More food, cheaper, leads to McDonalds. More detergent, or blue jeans, cheaper, leads to Wal-Mart, and the death of Main Street America. Has Wal-Mart exploited the American people by selling them cheap underwear? Of course not—Americans have debased themselves by equating wealth with health, and thus sacrificing much that is wonderful to trivialities. More wealth, cheaper (e.g. faster) leads inevitably to Enron, and a culture of corporate corruption. The 20th century, with its gulags and Great Leaps Forward, proved the bankruptcy of Equality as an ideal; the 21st may well prove the bankruptcy of the idol of Wealth. As a culture, we need to articulate in vision of life in which men consist of more than the sum total of their possessions.
Perhaps the gospel, with its stunning alternative to consumerism, could show America a way forward. The gospel offers a better story; one of God’s restoring all of creation to shalom, or wholeness. The gospel calls for a new kind of society, one in which people give generously out of the prosperity they graciously receive, one in which forgiveness and mercy—not greed and malice—act as arbiters between men, one in which each thinks of others—his neighbors, his enemies, his environment—before himself. In the Kingdom, we can say, “Enough!” In the Kingdom, we do not hunger for things we don’t need, and that cannot satisfy. In the Kingdom, we do not poison ourselves, or pillage our home, for the expedience of the moment. In the Kingdom, our mantra is not, “More, and cheaper,” but, “Enough, and better.”
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Character versus Constitution
(For Politics 213)
In the months following the Constitutional Convention, a fierce debate swept across the country, over the precise nature of the problems besetting the fractured Union. The Federalists, who supported ratifying the Constitution, argued that solving American political difficulties mainly consisted in creating the proper legal framework: in this view, the Constitution is a complex machine, driven by individual self-interest, which receives human nature, and produces liberty on the other end. Conversely, the Anti-Federalists argued that American political stability rested primarily in the virtue of its citizens. The Federalists saw the greatest hope for peace in a system of checks and balances that would prevent tyranny at any level; the Antis- countered with a vision of an nation full of citizens who loved liberty, and also loved their neighbors.
Ultimately, the Anti-Federalists had the weaker argument, and so lost the debate. They placed more confidence in men, individually and collectively, than prudence merited. However, the true legacy of American political life lies in the tension between these two arguments. In the 85 years following the Constitution's ratification, America showed a distinct love for complex legislative solutions to its great national challenge: slavery. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise Tariff Act, the Compromise of 1850 were nothing more than elaborate chains to restrain the beast that raged within America. For eight decades, legislators devoted all their energy to the minutest details of the law, never bothering to question whether two groups divided by such a yawning moral chasm could agree to disagree indefinitely.
Perhaps men must always learn important lessons through painful experience: it took a Civil War to awaken America to the reality that the moral content of its citizens played a crucial role in the application of its laws. The War was never fundamentally about states' rights, or even about the Constitutional allowance of slavery: 500,000 men bled and died to decide whether America would become a nation of slaveowners, or a nation of free men.
While the Civil War showcased the need for attention to citizen-virtue, the war itself ended in still more legislative compromise. That was why the 14th Amendment, victory though it was, did not truly mark a period of equality and prosperity for blacks. Indeed, the nadir of racism and oppression really came during the 1920's--blacks only began to make true strides within society once the Civil Rights movement shook the racist culture of America to its core. The effects of Constitutional change can only come with significant cultural change: the character of the citizenry upholds the Constitution.
The history of racism and civil strife sheds light on the moral dilemmas racking the country today. In many areas, we have never abandoned the notion that politics is a purely technical matter, operating independently of the culture in which it resides.
Can anti-poverty legislation help a population increasingly bound to an ethic of entitlement and sloth? Will any amount of pro-life legislation end the murder of babies in a society increasingly indifferent to human life? Will any amount of Social Security ensure the welfare of the elderly in a society that increasingly scorns family solidarity? Will any amount of military spending secure American liberty, if Americans themselves are callous towards liberty (cf. either the Patriot Act, or Abu-Ghraib)?
More than ever, we need to listen to the losers from our history: if nothing else, perhaps we could take away some measure of humility.
In the months following the Constitutional Convention, a fierce debate swept across the country, over the precise nature of the problems besetting the fractured Union. The Federalists, who supported ratifying the Constitution, argued that solving American political difficulties mainly consisted in creating the proper legal framework: in this view, the Constitution is a complex machine, driven by individual self-interest, which receives human nature, and produces liberty on the other end. Conversely, the Anti-Federalists argued that American political stability rested primarily in the virtue of its citizens. The Federalists saw the greatest hope for peace in a system of checks and balances that would prevent tyranny at any level; the Antis- countered with a vision of an nation full of citizens who loved liberty, and also loved their neighbors.
Ultimately, the Anti-Federalists had the weaker argument, and so lost the debate. They placed more confidence in men, individually and collectively, than prudence merited. However, the true legacy of American political life lies in the tension between these two arguments. In the 85 years following the Constitution's ratification, America showed a distinct love for complex legislative solutions to its great national challenge: slavery. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise Tariff Act, the Compromise of 1850 were nothing more than elaborate chains to restrain the beast that raged within America. For eight decades, legislators devoted all their energy to the minutest details of the law, never bothering to question whether two groups divided by such a yawning moral chasm could agree to disagree indefinitely.
Perhaps men must always learn important lessons through painful experience: it took a Civil War to awaken America to the reality that the moral content of its citizens played a crucial role in the application of its laws. The War was never fundamentally about states' rights, or even about the Constitutional allowance of slavery: 500,000 men bled and died to decide whether America would become a nation of slaveowners, or a nation of free men.
While the Civil War showcased the need for attention to citizen-virtue, the war itself ended in still more legislative compromise. That was why the 14th Amendment, victory though it was, did not truly mark a period of equality and prosperity for blacks. Indeed, the nadir of racism and oppression really came during the 1920's--blacks only began to make true strides within society once the Civil Rights movement shook the racist culture of America to its core. The effects of Constitutional change can only come with significant cultural change: the character of the citizenry upholds the Constitution.
The history of racism and civil strife sheds light on the moral dilemmas racking the country today. In many areas, we have never abandoned the notion that politics is a purely technical matter, operating independently of the culture in which it resides.
Can anti-poverty legislation help a population increasingly bound to an ethic of entitlement and sloth? Will any amount of pro-life legislation end the murder of babies in a society increasingly indifferent to human life? Will any amount of Social Security ensure the welfare of the elderly in a society that increasingly scorns family solidarity? Will any amount of military spending secure American liberty, if Americans themselves are callous towards liberty (cf. either the Patriot Act, or Abu-Ghraib)?
More than ever, we need to listen to the losers from our history: if nothing else, perhaps we could take away some measure of humility.
Monday, October 1, 2007
FROM GILDED TO GLOBALIZED
A time of whirlwind economic growth, of unparalleled technological innovation, of social upheaval, of great prosperity overshadowed by an explosion of wealth in the upper echelons of society: such a description could fit America of 2007, or 1871. As the Union recovered from the Civil War, a confluence of technological genius, entrepreneurial vision, widespread immigration, and lenient fiscal policy set a Second Industrial Revolution in motion, rocketing America to be the richest nation on Earth, yet also breeding a system of corruption and exploitation. In 1873, Mark Twain compared America to Shakespeare’s “gilded lily,” rich, yet luxurious beyond reason. Today, Americans can learn valuable lessons in confronting income equality from the Gilded Age, with its strange relationship between income inequality, corruption, and governmental intervention.
Historians often view the last quarter of the 1900’s in stark terms, either lauding the achievements of industry in creating wealth, or castigating the viciousness of “robber barons” and their cronies in oppressing the masses. The reality requires meshing both pictures. In 1901, the median American income was $227 per capita (factory workers earned $484), compared with $181 in Britain. During those thirty years, a wave of 11 million immigrants swept across the Atlantic and Pacific, each finding hoping to benefit from the astonishing economic growth driven by some 500,000 American patents registered during that time. Edison founded GE, Rockefeller brought kerosene to the homes of every American, Carnegie brought the Bessemer process to America, Morgan let his capital congeal into transcontinental railways, and new drills allowed coal mining to expand twenty-five-fold in ten years.
However much innovation led to prosperity, inequality and corruption also defined America during this period. The Union Pacific Railroad sold Congressmen stock in exchange land rights, as their workers (Chinese and Irish immigrants, paid $2 per day) died by the hundreds from heat and cold exposure. The immigrant laborers often starved; the factory workers grew fat with their wealth; but, Andrew Carnegie, with his yearly income of $40 million, and J.P. Morgan, sitting on the boards of 48 separate corporations, defied the imagination. Thomas Edison offered New Jersey representatives $1000 each for beneficial legislation; President Cleveland used federal troops to rout a national railroad workers’ strike; and Congress soon passed anti-trust bills to break the monopolies that their subsidies and favoritism had created.
Today, America faces a similar situation. Global broadband networks, a superabundance of information (e.g. the Internet), new software, and breakthroughs in high technology have created a world in which anyone—whether Albanian, Brazilian, or Chinese—with access to a laptop and an Ethernet can compete with the whole world for any job. This innovation and global supply of cheap labor have combined to bless the technologically proficient, and to curse those whose low-skill service and manufacturing professions have fled for cheaper markets overseas. Over the past thirty years, this trend of increasing rewards to education (along with the social splintering caused by divorce) has led to greater income disparity: while the real wages for the bottom 5% of households have largely remained unchanged since 1967, the wages of the top 5% have grown by 20% every eight years. Even as America has experienced this general trend of growth, with some residual stagnation, a stratosphere of super-rich has emerged, populated by billionaire CEO’s such as Bill Gates, corporate scandals in the spirit of Enron, and the growing pains of a fledgling global economy (i.e. the recalls of hazardous, Chinese-made toys).
The Gilded Age emphatically does not instruct us that big business and corporate innovation are somehow evil, and require firm government restraint for men to survive them. On the contrary, the most egregious sins of the epoch were carried out through government collusion, often with the government’s money, land, and troops. On the contrary, the legacy of the Gilded Age is that, when the government enforces the few simple rules of the free market (NO GUNS, NO LYING, NO STEALING), and allows men of ability to trade value for value (e.g. labor for innovation), America has shown a startling ability to remake its economic life in very little time. Globalization represents an entirely new vision of how men produce and exchange, and many Americans now find themselves in a state of flux, with no firm ground to stand on, finding it necessary to run harder and harder to stay in one place.
These factory workers, service professionals, and programmers do not need protectionist barriers to crush the business that, having once fed them, now feeds ambitious Indians. They do not need the government to subsidize their anemic professions, or to steal (redistribute?) the wages of competitive, talented entrepreneurs. The government will most benefit these workers when it empowers them, through primary, secondary, and continuing education, to acquire the skills that will make them competitive in a global marketplace. It will ensure that the benefits of growth spread themselves evenly when it stops trying to hold business’ hand, and creates a global environment where men must trade value for value in order to survive: this will require international collaboration on a scale heretofore unanticipated. When the government seeks to legislate equality, it can only succeed in creating a society uniform in its dysfunction and poverty. When it allows men a plot in which to work and produce freely, it will find that prosperity, and a great deal of equality, flower in the space it created.
Historians often view the last quarter of the 1900’s in stark terms, either lauding the achievements of industry in creating wealth, or castigating the viciousness of “robber barons” and their cronies in oppressing the masses. The reality requires meshing both pictures. In 1901, the median American income was $227 per capita (factory workers earned $484), compared with $181 in Britain. During those thirty years, a wave of 11 million immigrants swept across the Atlantic and Pacific, each finding hoping to benefit from the astonishing economic growth driven by some 500,000 American patents registered during that time. Edison founded GE, Rockefeller brought kerosene to the homes of every American, Carnegie brought the Bessemer process to America, Morgan let his capital congeal into transcontinental railways, and new drills allowed coal mining to expand twenty-five-fold in ten years.
However much innovation led to prosperity, inequality and corruption also defined America during this period. The Union Pacific Railroad sold Congressmen stock in exchange land rights, as their workers (Chinese and Irish immigrants, paid $2 per day) died by the hundreds from heat and cold exposure. The immigrant laborers often starved; the factory workers grew fat with their wealth; but, Andrew Carnegie, with his yearly income of $40 million, and J.P. Morgan, sitting on the boards of 48 separate corporations, defied the imagination. Thomas Edison offered New Jersey representatives $1000 each for beneficial legislation; President Cleveland used federal troops to rout a national railroad workers’ strike; and Congress soon passed anti-trust bills to break the monopolies that their subsidies and favoritism had created.
Today, America faces a similar situation. Global broadband networks, a superabundance of information (e.g. the Internet), new software, and breakthroughs in high technology have created a world in which anyone—whether Albanian, Brazilian, or Chinese—with access to a laptop and an Ethernet can compete with the whole world for any job. This innovation and global supply of cheap labor have combined to bless the technologically proficient, and to curse those whose low-skill service and manufacturing professions have fled for cheaper markets overseas. Over the past thirty years, this trend of increasing rewards to education (along with the social splintering caused by divorce) has led to greater income disparity: while the real wages for the bottom 5% of households have largely remained unchanged since 1967, the wages of the top 5% have grown by 20% every eight years. Even as America has experienced this general trend of growth, with some residual stagnation, a stratosphere of super-rich has emerged, populated by billionaire CEO’s such as Bill Gates, corporate scandals in the spirit of Enron, and the growing pains of a fledgling global economy (i.e. the recalls of hazardous, Chinese-made toys).
The Gilded Age emphatically does not instruct us that big business and corporate innovation are somehow evil, and require firm government restraint for men to survive them. On the contrary, the most egregious sins of the epoch were carried out through government collusion, often with the government’s money, land, and troops. On the contrary, the legacy of the Gilded Age is that, when the government enforces the few simple rules of the free market (NO GUNS, NO LYING, NO STEALING), and allows men of ability to trade value for value (e.g. labor for innovation), America has shown a startling ability to remake its economic life in very little time. Globalization represents an entirely new vision of how men produce and exchange, and many Americans now find themselves in a state of flux, with no firm ground to stand on, finding it necessary to run harder and harder to stay in one place.
These factory workers, service professionals, and programmers do not need protectionist barriers to crush the business that, having once fed them, now feeds ambitious Indians. They do not need the government to subsidize their anemic professions, or to steal (redistribute?) the wages of competitive, talented entrepreneurs. The government will most benefit these workers when it empowers them, through primary, secondary, and continuing education, to acquire the skills that will make them competitive in a global marketplace. It will ensure that the benefits of growth spread themselves evenly when it stops trying to hold business’ hand, and creates a global environment where men must trade value for value in order to survive: this will require international collaboration on a scale heretofore unanticipated. When the government seeks to legislate equality, it can only succeed in creating a society uniform in its dysfunction and poverty. When it allows men a plot in which to work and produce freely, it will find that prosperity, and a great deal of equality, flower in the space it created.
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