Sunday, July 11, 2010
To Socialists, the World Is a Classroom
Schools are mostly government-run operations and reflect government values. Few institutions in American life have failed as badly as the education system. My claim is that socialism is modeled after the classroom. The teacher, Professor Obama, stands before the classroom. Any students who disobey the Professor's instructions are disciplined. The school board, US Congress, concocts ever more elaborate and stricter rules. If a student does not learn, does not obey, he or she must serve detention. Those who obsequiously learn the professor's lessons most studiously, the socialists, consider themselves smarter than everyone else. Because they lack the legitimation of a state diploma, those who would rather not comply with the Professor are intimidated. But they are productive and competent. The socialist lesson plan is that the state is all knowing; that those who obey are intelligent; that subservience to government is morality; that the Professor and the school board know best.
Five Louts Extend Invitation to Destructive Oaf
Mike Marnell, crusading publisher of the Lincoln Eagle of Kingston, NY, just sent me this press release. Congressman Maurice Hinchey has a long history of camouflaging extremist environmentalism in moderate rhetoric. For instance, he proposed to turn the Adirondacks into a socialist dictatorship run by Soviet-like planning boards, and was able to convince the Adirondack Enterprise that this was a "moderate" proposal. Likewise, he was able to convince stock trading maniac Jim Cramer that he really does intend to permit drilling of the Marcellus oil field.
***NEWS RELEASE***
July 2, 2010 | Contact: Mike Morosi 202-225-6335 (Hinchey) |
Reps. Hinchey, Murphy, Tonko, Lowey and Hall Invite
U.S. Interior Secretary Salazar to Visit Hudson Valley
Washington, D.C. -- Five members of Congress for New York's Hudson Valley have invited U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to visit the region as part of his America's Great Outdoors initiative. U.S. Representatives Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Scott Murphy, Paul Tonko, Nita Lowey and John Hall asked that the secretary make the trip in order to learn about innovative strategies being used to conserve lands and waters for public benefit in the Hudson Valley.
Salazar recently announced that he is touring several regions of interests in order to develop the America's Great Outdoors program, which aims to reconnect Americans to the outdoors. The full text of the letter inviting the secretary to the Hudson Valley is below. More details about the America's Great Outdoors program can be found at: http://www.doi.gov/
July 1, 2010
The Honorable Ken Salazar
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
Dear Mr. Secretary,
As you continue to plan and develop America’s Great Outdoors program, we hope you will consider visiting the Hudson Valley region to conduct a listening session and learn about innovative strategies at work to conserve our lands and waters for public benefit now and for future generations.
The Hudson River Valley is one of the most significant river corridors in the country. The historical, natural, cultural, commercial, scenic, and recreational resources spread throughout the region are unparalleled. Our region is home to a wealth of history and beautiful landscapes that inspired a school of art and fostered innovation that drove our nation's early economy. Today, the region is a model for the green job movement, with an emerging solar energy industry and a $4.7 billion tourism economy that is closely linked with conservation and outdoor recreation industries.
Currently, the Hudson River Valley is designated as a National Heritage Area, National Estuarine Research Reserve and a New York State Greenway. In addition, the House of Representatives recently passed legislation authorizing a National Park Service special resource study of the Hudson River Valley.
We applaud your effort to promote and support innovative community-level efforts to conserve outdoor spaces and to reconnect Americans to the outdoors. Stakeholders from across our region have been involved in exactly these types of efforts for many years. Whether it is connecting residents of the New York City metropolitan area to one of our country's greatest landscapes or working on a regional-level through the Greenway to conserve our historic, cultural and natural resources in the face of persistent population growth, the Hudson River Valley has been at the forefront of promoting innovative and cooperative solutions to our challenges.
We are confident that you will find many projects and partnerships that exemplify the America’s Great Outdoors agenda in the Hudson Valley and we hope that you will be able to include our region in your upcoming tour of the country.
Sincerely,
Maurice D. Hinchey
Scott Murphy
Paul Tonko
Nita Lowey
John J. Hall
##
Americans Likely to Vote Against Incumbents
Mike Marnell, crusading publisher of the Lincoln Eagle of Kingston, NY, sent me a link to a recent Marist Poll which found that about equal proportions of Americans are likely to vote for (42%) and against (43%) incumbents. This is better than last year, when only 37% said that they would vote against incumbents and 51% said that they would vote for them. The poll also found that 56% say that the nation is headed in the wrong direction. That seems high for a republic. The poll also found that 55% of Democrats say that they will support an incumbent while 52% of Republicans say that they will vote for someone else.
The Marist blog posts a table which shows the distribution of the population that feels the country is headed in the wrong direction. Liberals feel that the country is headed in the right direction and independents, Republicans and conservatives feel it is heading in the wrong direction.
This seems hopeful for the nation at large, although Mike is concerned that the predominance of Democrats in New York will prevent improvement here. I have been thinking of buying some land in a more civilized locale, like West Virginia. According to this site a two bedroom house in West Virginia on 22 acres costs $165,000. Why would anyone want to live in New York any more?
The Marist blog posts a table which shows the distribution of the population that feels the country is headed in the wrong direction. Liberals feel that the country is headed in the right direction and independents, Republicans and conservatives feel it is heading in the wrong direction.
This seems hopeful for the nation at large, although Mike is concerned that the predominance of Democrats in New York will prevent improvement here. I have been thinking of buying some land in a more civilized locale, like West Virginia. According to this site a two bedroom house in West Virginia on 22 acres costs $165,000. Why would anyone want to live in New York any more?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Reflections on the BP Oil Disaster
The issue before the nation is the BP oil disaster. I do not watch television news but obtain snippets while in public places like my gym. I suspect the key issue behind the spill and its handling has not been discussed. That is BP's incompetence, which reflects the Progressive economic system's decline. BP is not a free market, competitive institution. Rather, it is a product of government subsidy and protection. The government subsidization that has given power to an incompetent management like BP's arises from Progressivism's regulation and subsidization of big business; its emphasis on interpersonal skills and looks in employee selection; its emphasis on the ability to "get along" rather than to get the job done; and its emphasis on paper credentials like college degrees rather than performance.
There is a competency gap in American society. It originates from the lack of competitiveness of American business, that in turn arises from the protections government affords business in a variety of ways but especially through the Federal Reserve Bank's subsidization of interest rates and the imposition of regulation and income tax on small producers. The succor that the state provides to big businesses inhibits the innovation that characterized the gold standard-based capitalist economy of the post-bellum nineteenth century. Progressivism, a radical form of Whig elitism, claimed that it was establishing government as a stabilizer of the economy and a countervailing power to favor justice. In fact, the economy has become less stable and less just following Progressivism's advent in the 1890s. The economic policies of Progressivism created racially divided inner cities. It smashed the competitive spirit of small business. It served to transfer wealth to university-supplied economic elites.
One of Progressivism's most important effects was the replacement of inner-directedness or individualism by other-directedness or stylish conformity and "keeping up with the Joneses". This effect took place in several stages. It was not an effect that the Progressives or their New Deal successors anticipated. It occurred as follows. Progressivism created protections for business. It also advocated increasing efficiency for business and for a time encouraged implementation of efficiency through the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose book Principles of Scientific Management outlines one, not the only one but one, approach to managing work well. But Taylor's and other management theories, such as Elton Mayo's 1930s human relations school and, in the 1950s, Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory of motivation (the idea that you motivate workers through opportunity for achievement), were never widely adopted. Nor have the chief insights of human resource management that also arose in the Progressive era been adopted as widely as they should. Thus, the scale of business increased while the competency of business did not keep pace. For example, General Motors was a dynamo of innovation beginning in the early 20th century, just following the introduction of Progressivism. As Progressive ideas circulated, GM became a bastion of conformity; of yes-man-ism; of groupthink. It blamed its organizational problems on labor unions. Meanwhile, Toyota implemented lean manufacturing and total quality management concepts in the 1950s. It literally took GM fifty years to catch up, if it has caught up.
In the 1950s, books advocating other-directed interpersonal skills like How to Win Friends and Influence People became staples of business success. The emphasis was not on how to make work more efficient, which was Frederick Winslow Taylor's interest, but in how to get along; how to make people like you; how to fit in. This reflected the sociologist David Reisman's observation that other-directedness was replacing inner-directedness in urban centers dominated by university graduates.
Not that achievement orientation had ever completely disappeared. But in the centrally planned, Federal Reserve-subsidized sectors of the economy, the world of large corporations and Wall Street, conformity became paramount, as did paper credentials. In New York City parents began to vie to get their children into the best nursery schools so that they could get into the best private schools and then into the best Ivy League colleges so that they would present a good package to Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, and in turn prove that they were the most eligible for public bailing out. The idea that the most competent employee ought to rise to the top had died long before. All that mattered was conformity to elite norms. American business was no longer the powerhouse of innovation it had been until 1950.
This brings us to BP. I can picture the management of BP: educated at elite schools; tall in height; masculine or feminine; good looking; well dressed; capable of holding their own with the best groomed elite of Wall Street. Have these men and women been selected because they are the best engineers; the best managers; or the best planners? Or have they been selected because they conform to the social standards of the economic elite; they fit in, are physically attractive and so ought, in the vision of Wall Street's analysts, to run businesses.
Progressivism has destroyed America's future. Now, its incompetence is destroying the environment. A just economy would require all firms to bear the costs of the externalities that they generate.
There is a competency gap in American society. It originates from the lack of competitiveness of American business, that in turn arises from the protections government affords business in a variety of ways but especially through the Federal Reserve Bank's subsidization of interest rates and the imposition of regulation and income tax on small producers. The succor that the state provides to big businesses inhibits the innovation that characterized the gold standard-based capitalist economy of the post-bellum nineteenth century. Progressivism, a radical form of Whig elitism, claimed that it was establishing government as a stabilizer of the economy and a countervailing power to favor justice. In fact, the economy has become less stable and less just following Progressivism's advent in the 1890s. The economic policies of Progressivism created racially divided inner cities. It smashed the competitive spirit of small business. It served to transfer wealth to university-supplied economic elites.
One of Progressivism's most important effects was the replacement of inner-directedness or individualism by other-directedness or stylish conformity and "keeping up with the Joneses". This effect took place in several stages. It was not an effect that the Progressives or their New Deal successors anticipated. It occurred as follows. Progressivism created protections for business. It also advocated increasing efficiency for business and for a time encouraged implementation of efficiency through the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose book Principles of Scientific Management outlines one, not the only one but one, approach to managing work well. But Taylor's and other management theories, such as Elton Mayo's 1930s human relations school and, in the 1950s, Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory of motivation (the idea that you motivate workers through opportunity for achievement), were never widely adopted. Nor have the chief insights of human resource management that also arose in the Progressive era been adopted as widely as they should. Thus, the scale of business increased while the competency of business did not keep pace. For example, General Motors was a dynamo of innovation beginning in the early 20th century, just following the introduction of Progressivism. As Progressive ideas circulated, GM became a bastion of conformity; of yes-man-ism; of groupthink. It blamed its organizational problems on labor unions. Meanwhile, Toyota implemented lean manufacturing and total quality management concepts in the 1950s. It literally took GM fifty years to catch up, if it has caught up.
In the 1950s, books advocating other-directed interpersonal skills like How to Win Friends and Influence People became staples of business success. The emphasis was not on how to make work more efficient, which was Frederick Winslow Taylor's interest, but in how to get along; how to make people like you; how to fit in. This reflected the sociologist David Reisman's observation that other-directedness was replacing inner-directedness in urban centers dominated by university graduates.
Not that achievement orientation had ever completely disappeared. But in the centrally planned, Federal Reserve-subsidized sectors of the economy, the world of large corporations and Wall Street, conformity became paramount, as did paper credentials. In New York City parents began to vie to get their children into the best nursery schools so that they could get into the best private schools and then into the best Ivy League colleges so that they would present a good package to Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, and in turn prove that they were the most eligible for public bailing out. The idea that the most competent employee ought to rise to the top had died long before. All that mattered was conformity to elite norms. American business was no longer the powerhouse of innovation it had been until 1950.
This brings us to BP. I can picture the management of BP: educated at elite schools; tall in height; masculine or feminine; good looking; well dressed; capable of holding their own with the best groomed elite of Wall Street. Have these men and women been selected because they are the best engineers; the best managers; or the best planners? Or have they been selected because they conform to the social standards of the economic elite; they fit in, are physically attractive and so ought, in the vision of Wall Street's analysts, to run businesses.
Progressivism has destroyed America's future. Now, its incompetence is destroying the environment. A just economy would require all firms to bear the costs of the externalities that they generate.
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