Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus

In the course of our taking up various topics it's time to cycle back around to Foreign Policy. At the same time it's also drawing toward the close of the year and some sort of wrap up and status check is appropriate. We started the year in the middle of the worst worldwide economic crisis we've seen since the Great Depression and WW2, and have avoided the first. It's not as likely that if we hadn't we'd have seen another world war but there were legitimate worries about major sociopolitical collapses that would have been too close for comfort. Organizing and leading concerted world action to deal with these crisis were the principal foreign policy challenge that started the year and the successful navigation, despite almost nobody really acknowledging the US's role as leader, wasn't a bad way to begin the year. Especially when it was done so that it lays the foundation for new institutional frameworks for future collaboration and development.

Did we say that nobody noticed? Well, that's not quite true. As it happens the last several years have seen the emergence of new tools to measure the value of a country's "global brand", which is not as wacky as you might think. By using very large surveys, among other data sources, you get a certain quantitative and analytical rigor (though that can be distorting). But there's a real value - "brand" measures influence, ability to attract investment and trade and otherwise influence the course of events. Interestingly country rankings tend to be relatively stable from year-to-year, very stable. This year the US brand value not only shot way up from $9.7 to $11.9T ($2T jump of 23%) but the US had the biggest jump in relative rankings ever seen in the studies.

Continue reading "Pragmatic Idealism: Peace, Stabililty, Progress & Prosperity" »

Posted by dblwyo at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The changes just keep coming fast and hard. Last week saw the announcement of the new Afghanistan strategy, this week a major compromise in the Senate on the Healthcare bill, financial reform continues to make progress, on both a legislative and regulatory base and last Friday saw job numbers that were much better than anyone anticipated. Simultaneously but farther out of the limelight we continue to evolve our Foreign Policy, keynoted today by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the President, and on Education and Energy. Both of which have also seen significant strides. At the same time, while people are feeling more comfortable, in some quarters even complacent and ready to return to business-as/was-usual (we're particularly thinking of Wall St. there!) most people are still in a bit of shock and very unsure of what the brave new world we'll look like.

After the last three posts on specific policy problems (Healthcare, the Economy and Financial Reform) preceded by several posts riffing on the related themes of Veterans Day, Ft. Hood and coping with change and stress, we're going to pop up a couple of levels. In that pop up we want to frame the approach to roadmap where we're at and going, do a little survey of the changes swirling around us (mostly in the readings) and talk about change management. Along the way we hope this helps you get oriented, sort things into buckets but see how they are related and agree that there's actually some method to our madnesses. In an ideal world we'd even like to argue that our approach works fairly well. Just an an example our Healthcare analysis pretty well captures what's going on and the pros and cons while our early October assessment of what Afghanistan strategy should be bears more than a passing resemblence to last week's announcement had to say. That's either encouraging and confirmatory or really.....really scary. In effect we're picking back up on a theme we set in an earlier post on change being hard and the breadth and depth and number of changes we needed to adapt to this Brave New world. In fact you might want to go back and review it as it lays out some useful background and machinery (Change is Hard: Policy, Politics, Partisans and Gumption). You might even say that one has led to this one, if you like.

Framing Complex Problems: the Digital vs. the Organic

Let's pop way/weight up the stack if you'll bear with me. When we deal with complex real world problems we're almost always wrestling with complex issues that involve multiple disciplines, perspectives and datasets. The problem is that the world doesn't care. Several years back a sketch and performance artist put on a childrens show at the Berkeley Livermore Labs telling an ancient Indian creation myth and illustrated it with her own on the spot drawings, using her own organic colors made from natural materials. She explained that she did that because natural colors were so much richer because they were complex compounds of many elements instead of the chemically derived industrial colors we tended to use from Industrial processes. Looking back on her drawings that had a richness and complexity unmatched by the typical commercial color. Ever since I've thought of the argument as the digital vs. the analog theory, or the organic vs. the artificial. Ever wonder why electronic synthesizers aren't used much any more? Or why we tried digital dashboards but found them over-precise but hard to read and therefore inaccurate?

The accompanying graphic is the best illustration I've ever seen of how complex real-world problems are organic; composed of many elements which must all be addressed to deal with the problem at hand. Normally we drift along and only deal with the tip of one particular pipette stem. Incremental change in other words. The result of drifting with incremental tunings of problems is that, sooner or later, they shift from being minor to major. And we're facing major problems on each of several areas. from Foreign Policy to the Economy to Domestic issues. And the world doesn't care that we'd like to think about them one specialty at a time. It's organic, a whole and insists on serving us with the whole bouillabaisse with everything thrown into the stew. At some point we need to wrestle with all the parts to get to the wholes.

Continue reading "Hard Problems, Deep Changes, Bitter Fights: Framework to Power Politics" »

Posted by dblwyo at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the Fall socionomic crisii plus the election and (can it only be a "month") the jumpstart of the Administration we've sadly neglected Foreign Policy; aside from the "detour" to address Gaza and the ME it's been since August. But because we've not talked about it doesn't mean either that a lot isn't going on nor that a lot isn't being done. Our intent here is to refresh, update and frame all that and provide a benchmark against which we can measure the FP situation going forward. The accompanying graphic is from a Davos09 session detailing the kind, nature and magnitude of the major risks facing the World Community. The readings survey the vital role of the US, the general world situation, the growing depth, breadth and sophistication of the US institutional response (which in all fairness despite rhetorics and mis-interpretations is more building on Bush Administration initiatives and is also a continuation of policy and strategies !). In the readings you'll find the URL (as always click to visit on the blue-shaded titles) to this and at the end a careful selection of other key Davos sessions (along with some valuable Kennedy School and TED talks). But if you listen to nothing else listen to George Friedman's survey of the structural nature of things and the world outlook (The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century), along with Hans Rosling's TED talk (Rosling's TED profile with two great talks) which'll greatly surprise you IOHO !

Let's summarize things a bit to sketch out what we're going to talk about:

1. The "end of history" is flat wrong - instead we're re-discovering history and all the old political power games, need for international institutions and requirements for national security, defense, a robust and clever foreign policy and, most especially, the need for the US to be constructively engaged in re-factoring the post-WW2 institutional framework and adopting new forms to enable adaptation to new realities, or old ones re-discovered.

2. The single most urgent FP crisis is the metastasizing worldwide economic crisis which could threaten the stability of many different countries and regions; which also means that the Administration's focus on economic policy is in fact the sine qua non of re-stabilizing the world. Despite all the arm-waving in fact the US is more than ever the in-dispensable country, both economically and politically.

3. That means we need to be constructive in our engagement which means pursuing our national interests as the pre-dominant stakeholder while also recognizing other's critical interests and emphasizing getting as many as possible to also act as responsible stake-holders in the state of the world.

4. A critical component, however it works out in details, is focusing on encouraging good but appropriate governance suited to the level of development and cultural history of these potential stakeholders.

 So with that as a set of assertions, which we think are provable, let's dive right in. Bear with us a bit here as we're going to cover some ground at a mostly conceptual level and lay down some machinery which we'll be re-using in the future in deeper dives on particular topics.

Re-stabilizing the World

Let's start by taking a look at this little jewel of conceptual over-compression expressed in graphics. One of the things that most folks are in denial about is the fact that violence, or being more sensitive, the control and management of force, governs the nature of how things are run. Just ask any German Baron with a castle on the Rhein. It's always greatly amused us that the US Navy dominates the world's oceans more completely than the Romans controlled the Med and as a result the sea lanes are safe for everyone's commerce. Without it and it's hidden support the world's economy couldn't function yet no critic of so-called American Hegemony objects. Stop and think about it for a while. And has been true for a long-time whether or not the US acts to support the world system or goes ostrich has enormous impacts on everybody else's ability to do their business. The converse is also true - as we should know beyond a shadow of a doubt after 911 ! In an international system control of force is a negotiated balanced among those with the capability, one reason among many that nations will continue to dominate international relations. If we compare and contrast US policy to some representative average of the world's other players we end up with this graphic. Let's say the US can be isolationist and self-centerred, strictly pursuing it's own agenda, call that a Chauvinist. Or it could say the devil with the rest of you all, we're going to pursue our own narrow interests, call that an Evangelist. Or it could act to actively promote worldwide institutions and a stable world order, rather as it has done to  a large extent for the last century.(WRFest 27Jan08: What World Do You Want to Live In ?) We think the case is pretty clear-cut that our prosperity and security is better served by pro-active and constructive support of the world system. Contrawise the Rest of the World (RoW) would choose to Tolerate and respect the rights of other nations, go along to get along and Muddle Thru or pursue their own aggressively chauvinistic policies. WW2 was caused by the Axis powers pursuing an aggressively self-centered set of policies while the RoW just let them. The result was a major implosion. The graphic shows this as a dynamic flow of currents over time; wherever you start each set of policies will tend to create force vectors which will move the trends one way or another. Prior to Iraq the US leaned isolationist though it was THE major under-pinner of the system as it existed while the other major powers tend to want to pretend that everything was alright and let it drift. So, for example, Iraq had pursued a corrupt and corrupting Oil for Food program and threatened the stability of the world sytem. The Europeans denied all that and we were eventually headed for a major problem. Not getting int'l support the US chose to act unilaterally. Oddly enough our difficulties in Iraq caused more foreign powers to become more interested in being contributors rather than free-loaders and the current crisis has taken that up a bunch of notches. That timepath is mapped out by the Blue Line which, at this current point in time, presents us with future strategic alternatives of joint collaboration as responsible stakeholders (Green), a gradual degradation driven by un-balanced policies (Yellow) or a true implosive devolution (Red) based on "suave qui peut", or save yourselfs. The catch is that nobody, including the US, can just save themselves. In some ways the Davos speeches and Brown's recent Congressional speech suggests the meta-crisii have presented us with the best opportunity to re-formulate the world system in generations.

Responsible Stakeholders & Good vs Bad Governance

The ability of any government to both maintain it's own stability, manage the socionomic crisis and be a contributory stakeholder rests on the soundness and stability of their governance institutions. (Peace, Stability and Prosperity: the Nature of Good Government) That is can they hold things together, provide the institutional framework for their societies and economies, maintain their legitimacy (their citizens trust them and are committed to supporting them) and balanced inclusisveness. That last is particularly important - the purpose of government is to make societies work better and a critical factor is the extent to which the interests of the citizenry and polity are reflected in decision-making. There's been a slew of books in the last two years or so highlighting the fundamental changes in the world and arguing that China, India, Brazil, et.al. will dominate the next century eventually. State capabilities are ultimately based on two factors: the totality of resources available to them and the efficacy and efficiency with which those resources are deployed. Have you ever wondered how tiny Holland fought and eventually won a century long war against the mightiest power on earth - the Spanish Empire ? While the latter drove itself to bankruptcy multiple times and so encumbered the institutions of Spain with rigid, non-adapative and non-progressive characteristics that Spain to this day hasn't even begun to recover ? The secret lay in Holland's modern, progressive economy, it's manufacturing and trading capabilities, capital markets and representative government. On a 1-10 scale of effective use of available resources the Dutch were probably an 8 while the Spanish were arguably a 3 at best. The French created and experiened similar problems until the repeated bankruptcies and corruptions of the Royal regime led to the Revolution and two centuries of French political instability and dysfunction. Friedman alludes to all this but at the end of the day the ability of the emerging powers to continue their startling progress rests firmly on their ability to re-vamp their institutional foundation. Europe for example has never been able to marshall the continent wide governance to make it's potential power effective. Among other things the accompanying graphic is trying to tell us is that government must be appropriate - don't try to leap to full-blown democracy until the social institutions will support it for example. Russia underwent a big bang that led to the Oligarchs taking power and exploiting the "state" for their own purposes. Putin's rise was essentially the restoration of the Civil Authority. Unfortunately we seem to be seeing the resurrection of traditional Russian power politics, a rigidification and corruption of the system and a likely collapse. Ditto for Europe with a lower probability. What's required for domestic strength AND international contribution is a government that's appropriate AND at least on the frontier that balances extractions of resources with re-investment in socionomic development. The US clearly has a very strong framework as does the UK. It's not clear about Japan, India is fragmented, China is doing alright and Brazil doing quite well, all things considered.

 Putting the House in Order: Getting Back on Balance

The guiding principles for US foreign policy are two. First, encourage and support the best achievable governance frameworks around the world. And second, get our own house in better order. We've argued that, aside from the consequences of the socionomic implosion, the most critical (as in urgent and important) foreign policy challenge we face is pro-active engagement and support for the Middle East. (Gaza and the ME: Flames for the Fuses) Every situation is unique and policy, strategy and means have to be adopted that are appropriate for the circumstances. Nonetheless we'd like to suggest that our outline of a sustained US strategy that moves beyond simply keeping the lid on is in our own best interests. And that the strategies sketched in that post are a) models of how we should approach the RofW; for example Latin America and particularly Mexico. And b) an example of the kind of detailed thinking that needs to go on with regard to all our foreign relationships for both geographies and countries as well as the problems inventoried by the Davos group.

At the same time we need to get our own house back in order. The accompanying graphic is from our last post and creates a simple model of post-WW2 US history that argues that we've cycled around civic-minded effort and self-minded indulgence. In that model after the recovery efforts, so-to-speak, of the '80s we went over-board in the '90s and paid the price this decade. And will continue paying it for some time. Since all the troubles we've been wrestling with from the War on Terror (now the Long War) to the changes in the world system to the crisis are all metastasizing we effectively got blindsided. To meet these challenges requires a return to core values, concerted efforts and the design, development and implementation of new institutions and capabilities. Again much that the Bush Administration did behind the scenes was trying to adapt to the new emergencies without having adequate capabilities on hand. Enormous strides have been made in many areas, for example Intelligence. (There's no better example of perspective and insight than this Kennedy School talk:Today's Challenges, Tomorrow's Threats: Why America Needs an Agile and Robust Intelligence Community . Nor no better example of the organosclerotic barriers to adaptation than the post we built around another one:Changes and Challenges: a New Year Unlike Most Others).

Meeting the Enemy

Now, to get our own house in order, we need to make and implement the same kind of policy initiatives and strategic capability development in a whole host of other areas (). Which brings us full-circle back to the importance of domestic economic policy, investment in the future and the development of new institutions and policies in Regulation, Education, Healthcare and Education ! (Miracles on Pennsylvannia Ave: Make it So, No. 1 !, The Devil's Advocates: Dancing Dimagogues vs Economic Policy (Update),To Boldly Go Where We Must: Speech, Budget and Dr. Noes). Unfortunately too many seem to be interested in manuvering for partisan political advantage rather than acting for the general public good. We need a loyal opposition but it must needs be a constructive opposition. As that great philosopher and statesman Pogo told us so long ago we have met the enemy and he's us.

Continue reading "Foreign Policy for a Dangerous Old World: Adoption, Adaptation & Resilience" »

Posted by dblwyo at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In case you didn't happen to notice Randy Pausch, the compsci professor from Carnegie who's literal last lecture became a worldwide phenomenon, finally succumbed to his pancreatic cancer. A sad thing ? Well, yes. In many ways. But Randy lived a full and fruitful life and even without the fame and the impact of his lecture made contributions that few of us are given to make. Also this last week plus Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist who impacted the lives of millions, also passed on. A long time ago watching the film of Ivan Denisovitch with my college classmates in S.Cal. they were immensely puzzled by the squeaking noises made when the prisoners walked on the snow. You see when it's very cold and very dry snow squeaks. But you have to have lived there, or someplace similar, to know how cold that really means it was and feel it in your bones. Yet Solzhenitsyn's stories helped tell the story of the Gulags, first to the Russian people - which brought him exile, and then to the world. Both of these gentlemen told us stories in the best sense - myths that cut to the heart of things and helped us understand the world, how it worked and our places in it. Things that we need to know even when they're ugly, sometimes ugly beyond my experience or grasping. Randy's words of wisdom helped many people and to hear them again here's a little YouTube playlist: Randy Pausch  Playlist. There's quite a few but his Carnegie lecture is short and to the point while the ABC Memorial Special is the one I'd recommend really listening thru. Hopefully they're all in order.

But with all due respect to Randy the mad Russian poet changed the lives of millions who suffered, as he did, thru one of the most evil tyrannies in human history. Literally - look up the casualty estimates on Wikipedia. Or think about the fact that never before in human history had a government distorted and destroyed the most fundamental human relationships between family, friends, colleagues and fellow citizens. Stalin destroyed the most fundamental glue that holds us in a society, makes us human and is rooted in our fundamental biology and evolutionary history. But he wasn't able to eliminate it or keep it from coming back. I rather like the political cartoonist's tributes to Solzhenitsyn.

The Storyteller

 Unfortunately Stalin's inventiveness didn't go unoticed around the world and many clever and imitative people were able to add to our Medieval legacies, natural biological tendencies and combine it with Stalin's lessons to create their own solutions. Yet just as Czesław Miłosz was able to find the poetry and stories to help Eastern Europe rise above those degradations others are doing the same today. Let me introduce you to Chris Abani, courtsey of the TED Talks (an unparlleled resource for exploring all sorts of things). the Nigerian author, activist, UCSC professor and torture survivor.

This is what TED had to say about his first talk:

"In this deeply personal talk, Nigerian writer Chris Abani says that “what we know about how to be who we are” comes from stories. He searches for the heart of Africa through its poems and narrative, including his own."

But the one you should really listen to is his second. If the first makes the point we're shooting for here, that stories (myths, values, beliefs) are what make us truly human this second tells you what the struggle to be human in a nightmare is like. Take a moment (actually about 20 mins to watch Chris). Maybe longer if you really listen to his story. We'll still be here. The thing, once it truly sinks in about what you're hearing, is how he takes us beyond to the best we can be. The Roman Stoic philosopher was an advisor to Emporer's, a great man, rich and influential and one of the great thinkers of Classical times. What lends special credability to his wors, for me, is that his last and greatest work was written in prison just before he was executed. Chris speaks to us from the "Heart of Darkness" and finds a path to humanity out of it. Based on the stories we tell and the redemptive powers of human nature.

Values, Culture and Stories

Not to get all abstract on you, especially after getting down in the "mud, blood and beer" with the real realities nonetheless I do want to come to a larger point, or return to it, in a sense. And pardon the graphic but it gets back to something we think is central. The ground we stand on, our values and culture, is what makes our lives livable, worthwhile and survivable even. And it is the glue that holds our society together. At the end of the day each individual must find the stories the wrestle with each of these dimensions that help them find their ground. And society must achieve the same goals collectively. Or not with the penalties we now know all too well. We've previously dove into the role of religion and believes and their historical evolution and that can be some interesting background if you like: Faith, Hope and Enchantment: Why Religion Matters...More.

The questions might be put this way, but feel free to put them whatever best suites you.

1. How do we cope and manage with violence ? Modern man forgets that violence is the foundation of our society and endemic in our history. And only in modern times and in the West has there been anything like a brief interlude, preceeded by the most horrific and destructive wars and governments in human history.

2. How do we reconcile Faith and Knowledge, or Science and Religion ? This is a newer question that is the fruits really of the Rennaissance and has led to a continous 500-year struggle. One that strangely enough seems to be more vituperatie with intellectual denials recently than organized religion's denials. A large topic but one that is essential for our future and we've extensively discussed (Science vs or plus Religion: From Disingenuous to New Frontiers).

3. How do we find and express the best that is in us ? Another large question but the arts serve a dual purpose of entertainment to help relieve the stresses of the day. And make no mistake - one only has to watch the Kennedy Honors to understand that entertainment can require everything a gifted performer has. But "High Art" at it's best holds up a mirror to help us see what we've not seen - truthful, ugly, beautifully. At its' better than best it helps us find deeper truths and experience things beyond mere words.

4. How do we train our minds and our selves to truly use our knowledge, mental capabilities, etc. to think about the world ? What is the best way to think ? To learn to think and apply it ? And how do we move from being animals who's minds are rationalizing engines to enable our more primitive selfs to pursue the game and instead elevate our decision-making processes ?

One way or another you and your society answer those questions. Often accumulatively and unconsciously over a period of time, at least until the ground shifts and shows how unstable it is. But it is stories that helped you find your ground in the first place. And may help you find new ground when you need to.

Continue reading "Stories We Tell Ourselves: Values, Culture and Change" »

Posted by dblwyo at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over the weekend a friend sent me an interesting message talking about irrational voters making the wrong choices and not doing what they were told to by the academic economics community. Now as it happens there’s often a great deal of sense in what the economists have to say -  on the whole their analysis pans out. On the other hand they often are too narrow in their views, as all specialists tend to be and neglect many real world factors and dependencies. This is such an important issues it seemed like it was worthwhile to share the exchange with you. Below is the original e-mail and my reply – which with my friend’s pronounced talent for tabling simple questions with painfully complex answers require some effort to respond to. Hence…

But the reply, longish as it is, bears so much on the dilemmas we face in this election and the structural problems we need to resolve that it provides a very useful piece of background information.

“These are serious times and we have serious problems….and we need serious people to address them. Your 15 minutes are up.”

- Andrew Shephard

Continue reading "Rational Voters, Public Choice, Economics and Futures" »

Posted by dblwyo at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Our last post (Party on Grasshopper: Digging Deeper....into the Policy Agendi) laid out a perspective on a comprehensive strategic policy agendii that covered Foreign, Economic and Domestic/Social Policy and related them to some over-riding principles. The goal was only partly to suggest specifics - it was also to provide a blueprint and checklist for your own thinking and to show how all the moving pieces fit together. We took our own best shot at the "right answers" of course but are more than willing for you to take yours. That said there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip - or as a famous German statesman once pointed out if you can't stand the sight of blood but want to enjoy the results don't go inside the sausage factory. In other words no matter what our best intentions on Policy nothing will change unless we understand how things get translated. The key factors that control the results are Policy, Players, Position and Power. After the break we're going to take a deeper dive, again, and get a little abstract on you, again, but sometimes a picture or headline is worth a thousand graphics and arm-waving so let's shoot for a little motivation. Since the last major post several friends and I have had a running exchange on "CHANGE" and one of them put it very nicely - "Perhaps only an independently wealthy President can achieve his policy goals", talking about why a decent national energy policy has been available and frozen in limbo since '01. Of the major policy issues we outline there are none them not resolvable, IOHO, and most with straight-forward and availble knowledge, resources and capabilities. So why ain't nuttin gettin done, Yogi ? Consider the following headlines:

Call for Change Ignored, Levees Remain Patchy Few of a presidential panel’s recommendations after the Midwest’s devastating flood in 1993 were implemented.

Did Bank of America Write the Housing Bailout Bill?  ." I don't understand why a realistic bill can't be hammered together. It should reflect the following realities:... It is not the taxpayers responsibility to bailout borrowers who are in over their heads, or lenders that made bad loans. How hard can that be?

Economic Scene: High Medicare Costs, Courtesy of Congress  Based on a pilot program, the price of walkers, delivery and setup included, will fall to about $80. Now, would you like to guess how the equipment makers feel about this?

Reading those headlines/excerpts perhaps it's clear why the opening cartoon makes so much sense or why we started with "Institutional Re-engineering" as the sine qu non, the fundamental starting point without which we'll continue to remove both our feet at the shoulder or higher, as the critical initial point of our Domestic Agendii blueprint. After the break we'll dissect the whole problem in some more detail but consider the accompanying chart, which summarizes, some major policy problems that we've cheerfully been ignoring until the current stage of near-terminal feasturation has set in. BtW - this and other charts are part of a dloadable Powerpoint slideshow you can open and save. Please feel free to do so and share it around as widely as you like - better yet, mail it to your political representatives. Politics of Change: Strategic Agenda vs Interests  

Continue reading "Inside the Sausage Factory: the 4P's of Political Reality" »

Posted by dblwyo at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Different people blog for different reasons. Other than the real motive - "because it's there and I wanted to" - my goal is to introduce a point of view and associated tools that emphasize a deeper look and appreciation for the whole topic of what makes a society work better. And to use the blog as a testbed for some of my ideas, tools, perspectives, etc. The other benefit is that writing is more than a bit of discipline itself and forces one to try and be organized.

You'll have to judge for youselves of course whether those goals are being satsified and what the value to you is. However the number of readers appears to have reached a relative small but reasonable number - on the order of 40-80/day on the whole, nothing in comparison to say BigPicture or CalculatedRisk - of readers. That's satisfying.

The running stat that is gratifying however is the amount of time you apparantly spend in reading these posts; which admittedly tend to run on while trying to both beat a topic or thought thread into submission and often contain some measure of added value with the associated collection of readings. Which may in fact be the primary value.

Anyway the typical blog seems to get about 30 sec. per post while mine seem to run in the 5-7 min. range. Given that there's at best one/day and each usually contains the equivalent of several small posts that's probably reasonable.

But in any case your readership is appreciated. THANKS.

Posted by dblwyo at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well thru the last post we built up an interesting series of posts on the role of good government in the overall well-being and longevity of society. Which leads, eventually, to a set of imperatives for US Foreign Policy. But the lessons and implications come much closer to home. They are in fact the central but very hidden issue in these elections. And somethine we've posted on in terms of describing the symptoms, growing public dissatisfaction and consequences in several prior posts. We'll list those after the break for a refresher. But week before last David Brooks of the NYT had a magnificent column on what we think is the central issue. Here's a brief excerpt with the whole below the break:

Talking Versus Doing Barack Obama’s vote for a recent farm bill may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. In 1965, Mancur Olson wrote a classic book called “The Logic of Collective Action,” which pointed out that large, amorphous groups are often less powerful politically than small, organized ones. He followed it up with “The Rise and Decline of Nations.” In that book, Olson observed that as the number of small, organized factions in a society grows, the political culture becomes more divisive, the economy becomes more rigid and the nation loses vitality. If you look around America today, you see the Olson logic playing out. Interest groups turn every judicial fight into an ideological war. They lobby for more spending on the elderly, even though the country is trillions of dollars short of being able to live up to its promises. They’ve turned environmental concern into subsidies for corn growers and energy concerns into subsidies for oil companies.

If you'd like to see real change our central challenge is to find new mechanisms of government that recognize the interests of narrow groups but don't allow them to dominate policy making at the expense of society as a whole. There is no single policy domain we've discussed that doesn't need a new institutional framework. In other words the mechanisms of government are as important as the policy goals. If for no other reasons than we now have decades of experience with watching good intentions being suberted by terrible implementation and the triumph of special interests. 

 Consider the inter-linked social policies in the graphic. If we continue business as usual we'll get results as usual. What's the old saying....the one about the triump of optimism over experience ? Yet when and where have you heard this as a major subject of discussion in the election campgain so far ? That's why we were and are so tickled to have a major, respected and insightful columnist like Brooks put it on the table. We've talked before about the economic crisis facing us as well as the performance problems in education and other social policy areas that we face. If we'd like to see them addressed we need new mechanisms.

After the break you'll find a longer excerpt from Brooks as well as a lengthier excerpt from a young think-tanker who wrote an interesting article that triggerred Brooks' interest. That's followed by a set of other excerpts that talk about many of the symptoms in various areas. But, we repeat, if you'd like to see constructive change give some thought to the HOW...as well as the WHAT. 

Continue reading "Hidden Issues and Government Reform: the Politics of Special Interests" »

Posted by dblwyo at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the break are several of this week's interesting excerpts on key policy issues which we'll leave you to skim as you would. [UPDATE: two new readings on Education have been  added recently].

We're going to use them as an excuse and fulcrum to sketch a framework for thinking about an integrated set of policies. They point toward a set of pragmatic and workable paths for where we need to go to tackle all our "Black Swan" challenges. Let's start with a diagram we've used before to illustrate the dynamics and dysfunctions we face and explain where it comes from, in part. Just to frame it we return to one of our favorite Adam Smith quotes (the real one not the popular financial columnist):"Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice."

We've used the diagram before to analyze why the parties and politicians retreat to the extremes, where the electorate tends to converge on the middle and how the major policy clusters map to the political spectrum. In case you were wondering the party mappings come from the last 20 years of partisanship and the voter mappings from the last several years of polls. But the policy mappings are the most interesting and come from our accumulated analysis of what's the best portfolio of policies that satsify Smith's Criteria of Prosperity. Notice he essentially uses the same three categories we use of Defense, Economics and Social administration, as understood in his day.

Our proposals build on the string of analysis you've seen being built up from the framework, the issues of making politics more about serving the national instead of special interests and the examples of what happens when the politicians and the voters (that means US) choose short-sighted, sounds-good over sound, sensible and workable. The posts are listed below if you want to track them down. 

 We start with the great paradox of a Prosperous society - this isn't tribal warfare where you win and I loose. It's a non-zero sum game where if we cooperate the pie gets bigger even though my share may be relatively smaller. A proposition that seems to have escaped most statesmen and societies for millenia and still today. Oddly enough what's really a fundamental and provable tenet of Political Economy sounds rather like a fundamental principle of Moral Philosophy (Smith's 1rst book was "Theory of Moral Sentiments" btw and he was famous for it in his day). Or Religion even, if we may be so bold.

From that over-arching 1rst Principle we go to each of the areas - not just by derivation but also because the sub-principles stand along on their own merits as well. First, we need to be constructively engaged with the world both because of the gains and, as we should have all learned and known, the need to avoid the losses. That just keeps us safe - to make us satisfied we need food, clothing, shelter etc. In other words we need a healthy economy. Finally economics alone is not enough - both as an end goal and as a means. For everybody to get into the game the playing field has to be level and accessible. And finally society needs to have citizens who believe in it because it works and they know these principles. Which we call Civitas. At the end of the day we don't owe you a win in this game but we owe you a fair chance to play and visa versa. There'll always be differences in ability, character and history. The trick is to not let the fortunate abuse privelege to reduce access for the rest. As Buster says in Gettysburg, "I want to be judged for myself, as a man, on my own merits. Not on who my facther was or his position. And damm all gentlemen to hell".

You can break all those principles down a bit more in each of the areas and also make the big picture stuff more operational IOHO. Our breakdown of the Critical Philosophies is not so much new as a return to the principles that have underpinned our entire history. The big change maker is to re-discover that the implication is that on a level field with equal access you are then self-responsible, not owed or excused from playing. To make that work we need to re-visit our governance machinery - not at the Constitutional level where it's one of the most brilliant and creative creations in the history of mankind. Rather we need to leverage the framework's adapatability to adapt yet again and change the machinery that's grown up in the last 40-50 years. All too often machinery that sounded good but was distored to support political agendii of one group, party or another. Finally in each of the Big Three policy areas you need to break down the principles to Policy, Strategy and Plans for the major issues contained in the larger buckets. While each list is not entirely exhaustive we will very strongly suggest it is comprehensive. That is the key issues listed taken all together span strategies and solutions for all the swirling myriads of details. In other words, among other things, you can think of this as a filter and analysis toolkit for sorting things into graspable and workable categories. Solve the key issues and the rest can be cloned. Or so we opine but not without a little work, investigation and thinkng.

But test it for yourself on the excerpts below - or in fact any prior post. We think you'll find that things do slot in fairly well. 

Continue reading "Framing the Radical Center: a Policy Agenda for the 4th Republic" »

Posted by dblwyo at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're going to start with a confession of being tremdously jealous of the Brits and what their political system has managed for them. If you've ever seen The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you've got a perfect picture in the Borgons what their system was like after decades of socialism and wrong-headed policies - a level of dysfunction we thankfully never reached. So when Thatcher came on board and proceeded to Roto-rooter the arteries and blow out the accumulated scelrosis we applauded. And hoped that Reagan would do the same for us. Which he did but not to the same radical extent. The question then was what was the next step ? Once you got the blood flowing again it was time to pendulum back off the extemes which Major proceeded to do. And when Bill Clinton came in '92 he and the DLC proceeded to promise to maintain a healthy, growing adaptive economy, continue to free us up from regulation and find new, innovative ways to achieve major social policy reform. After being in power too long the Tories lost to Labor in Britain and Blair started his reign as the longest serving Prime Minister since Pitt. Yet, oddly, he continued Major's major policy thrusts at the expense of alienating the die-hard ideologues in his own party. Clinton turned Healthcare over to Hillary who proceeded back to 1963 with a huge, unwieldy, unworkable, high-tax and political un-saleable proposal for a giant "moonshot" of a program. At which point we got the "Contract with America" which turned out to be as ideological and unworkable in the other direction. So the Brits got 25+ years of continuous, thoughtful and workable adaptation and we got increasingly partisan, bitter and special interest based politics. Which we apparantly wanted because we kept voting for these idiots. Before you start thinking we're entirely nuts about all this we've got a few things for you to check out. First off the graphic at right will take you to a worldwide survey and you can find out where you stand. Now it's a European survey and while you're there take the time to look at the examination of European politics if you don't think the US is both different and more conservative on the whole.

Since '95 as the partisanship has grown Americans have gotten increasingly dissastisfied with Washington, the in-fighting and the breakdown. Which, IOHO, is central to this election. Before we go on though we think you ought to know there's a 3rd Way forward, it works and it's got some darn good leadership with names like Bloomberg, Schwarzeneggar, et.al. Take a pause (it's a full hour but it's chock full of really good insights) take a look at this:

A conversation with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California.

[PAUSE] 

 Now we've been here before and with worse challenges. When Industrialization took off in the late 1800's we had no mechanisms for dealing with the growth of the economy, industry, urbanization, public health, education or any of the other things that we're threatening to break down our society. That was the Progressive Era and we had two great almost back-to-back presidents in Roosevelt and Wilson who helped lead us thru the morass. But they didn't get it started or down by themselves. It was started, tested and developed on the state and local levels by concerned citizens who knew we had to find ways to change. And didn't have a clue to start with but invented them and then put them in place. In fact this country is run today on the socio-political innovations of that era. Which have obviously been successful but need to be significantly, if not radically adapted, in combination with the adoption of new innovations, to deal with the challenges we face. Which are not at crisis proportions yet but could be if we don't Gung Ho - "all pull together now" - these things.

By and large we've actually reached a point of national consensus on what we'd like to accomplish though with significant differences remaining. The real problem is the means not the goals. We've been our own victims for years and decades now by creating UiC galore thru choosing to believe the easy answers and opt for the quik fix. The second graphic captures that, at least conceptually. If you'd like to see some changes then vote for the candidate who a) tells you the truth, b) recognizes how hard and complex this is and c) is willing to work in the center and not on the extremes. Otherwise, par for the course, we'll get what we deserve. Again.

And if you don't believe us check out the readings below which range from the previously unknown and hidden story of how Next the Grinch and Slick Willie almost worked it out but got sideswiped by Monica and the partisan warfare that resulted. There are so many ironies here since it was Newt who created this attack-dog political process in the first place and which has hamstrung us ever since. IOHO the reason Barry's had so much appeal this time is that's been speaking toward this Radical Center. Let's hope we can all find it.

And oh yeah, in case you were wondering the first graphic are my results :) ! 

UPDATE: This is a great interview with Howard Fineman, a noted political commentator, on Charlie Rose. It starts with a discussion of the Penn. primary contest but the real interesting part is his new book on the 13 American Debates discussing the key questions we've argued over since the founding of the country. Obviously I think well of this and it's alignment with my basic argument. See what you think ! 

Continue reading "Finding the RadCenter: Making Politics Work ?" »

Posted by dblwyo at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A friend suggesed that this blog had so much loaded up that he couldn't see how the pieces all tied together so it seems like a good idea to show the framework that underlies all the postings. But just showing the framework leaves us with an abstraction - a powerful, useful tool for understanding how all the myriad bits and pieces fit together into a more comprensive whole. That's nice but so what ?

Well we're facing an accelerating seris of crisis, e.g. the Black Swan of the exponentiating world food crisis, which we need to address both nationally and internationally. What each of these problems have in common is this: they all inter-relate and are themselves built of component parts. If we want to address them we need, as my intellectual hero Robert Heinlein put "know how the buzz saw works". Good intentions are no substitute for being able to run the sawmill if you need lumber to build houses, provide jobs and all the other things that are bedeviling us. And TANSTAFFL - there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Telling people what they want to hear instead of telling them how things work and pretending the easy answers are feasible is disingenous at best and dangerous. But not at worst. Worst is when all these problems metastasize into crisis and catastrophes. Fortunately we can solve most of them with a combination of realism, hard-work, skills & knowledge and discipline. In fact there's no crisis I'm aware of that's not capable of being addressed, if not readily solved. But let me appeal to Hans Rosling in the 2nd of two great TED talks he gave on how things all work together. In the accompanying video he uses his great toolkit to show us where we've been and are going, introduces some realism on how things really work and points the way to the critical factors we need to address. It'll take you 19 min. but it's such a well-spent 19min that you may want to watch it more than once. 

The table below summarizes Han's final points about which are the critical factors and how they serve as either means or ends. As you'll see an important and vital distinction. After the break we lay out some more of our framework - one we hope you find answers the challenge.

Continue reading "Putting the Pieces Together: Framing, Crisis & Linkages" »

Posted by dblwyo at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Take a look at the cartoon (click to enlarge) on the Bear-Sterns rescue and tell me/us/yourself how you react to. Right on brother ? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure ? Well there are some elements of truth in the argument but more that are missed, wrong-headed and fundamentally dangerous. And by dangerous we're talking about the collapse of civilization dangerous - with not too much hyperbole. First off the bank's not getting bailed out the Fed is guaranteeing debts that suddenly turned into nearly worthless to keep BSC from declaring bankruptcy. And the real central truth is that Bear was involved in so many other links to other banks and financial institutions that if they had much of their paper would have followed, we'd have had a cascading run on the financial system and we'd have re-created the factors that led to the Great Depression. We'll diagnose that and related economic problems some other time. Though if you want some wonky disucssions you can try these (Five "Funny" Things on the Way to the Market,Continuing the Dialog: Facing Realities in the Credit Market).

What we'd like to focus on is the unintended consequences of well-meaning policy choices that turn out to cause longer-term and deeper problems than they purported to solve and didn't solve the problems they were targeted at. Instead they created new ones. In fact much of the last forty years of domestic policy has turned out to be social engineering on a grand scale and almost all of the consequences have turned out badly. We're going to explore that some more here with some examples and start with an illustration from wildlife management in Yellowstone Park where the restoration of the wolf population has re-created a natural and healthy balance.

Continue reading "Unintended Consequences: Blowing Off Our Own Feet" »

Posted by dblwyo at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)