(Un)Comfortable Life

A good-conscience life will never be comfortable.

A parent's worst nightmare is that their child will be swept comfortably along by culture and style and the crowd. Peer influence is particularly difficult to resist, and it can be the most disruptive element in a child's development, especially when it conflicts with parental goals and values.

Our alternative is to deliberately raise a leader instead of a follower, a self-shaped individual who understands how to choose their own path, make their own mistakes, and pursue their own goals.  It's not comfortable, but it can be the difference between meaningful or meaningless years.

It's hard enough managing our own life, of course.  It's difficult to objectively evaluate and choose our path through the alternatives thrown in our face by life and media.  So how might we equip a child to face that same minefield?

A suggestion -- Pull, don't push.  Draw them forward as decision-makers, standard bearers, change-makers and help-bringers.

Issues of faith and conviction come first, perhaps, and must be practical rather than wishful thinking.  Let them pick their cause, conduct their own inquiries, listen to their own heart.  Children can be deeply moved by small concerns from which sound principles and life goals can emerge.  And, they'll learn more from your example than from your words.  The things that are important to you can become important to them.

Live strong from a good conscience.  Fight the good fight.  Pray a lot.  It's not the most comfortable path, perhaps, but it's more likely to be the right one.

Christian Clarity

"Why is it that corporations give millions of dollars to elected officials? 

   Do you think it's simply public-spirited behavior?"   ~Walter E. Williams

Depression era - When they realized women were
using their sacks to make clothes for their children,
the mills started using flowered fabric for their
sacks.  The label was designed to wash out.
(a time long ago when companies took
 care of their customers)

The heart of business and capitalism has changed over the years, and it appears the change is driven by the top 1%.  

The early marketplace was a mutual benefit model.  Farmers, fishermen, clothiers, and tool makers would sell what they produced to buy everything else they needed.  They did well enough, considering the times.  They were flexible across the seasons and helped each other during hard times.

Open lands, the 'commons', were like the seas, they were available for grazing and farming and lumber to whomever would do the work.

Privatization and money were game changers.  The commons were deeded to the influential who charged fees to farmers and herders. Rulers taxed everyone, and productive folks went from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. 

In the last fifty years, Western economics has become predatory, focused on profitability and competitive advantage.  Wealth generation for those who didn't do the work has become the norm.  The most benefit goes to the least deserving, it seems.  Perhaps wrong has become right.

Centuries ago along Africa's Niger River, rainfall varied greatly from year to year. One year in six was near the region's average; other years were at the extremes for rainfall on the plains and in the upper regions where the river's source was fed. So to a greater or lesser extent, the plains flooded a little or a lot and crops did or didn't do well. There wasn't any way to predict how a year's growing season would turn out, so the residents adapted. It's instructive for us to see their approach.



The river's inland delta is almost level and the Niger river descends just a few millimeters per kilometer over much of its 4000 km length. When the rains come, the flood moves broadly across the region. The amount of rain determines how far from the river the floods will carry, and it's rarely the same two years in a row.  Folks learned that they couldn't master all the skills and manage all the resources needed for every opportunity.  Fishing was varied from year to year and tremendously labor intensive. Farming was even more so with a requirement to understand which crops would do well in which water depths.  The pastoralists managed their flocks by moving significant distances regularly.  Out beyond the edge of the floodplain that was waist deep for six months of the year, then rapidly inward as the land and vegetation dried up.

Communities specialized and cooperated, and they did so without one specialization or community being at the top. Some years the farmers did better than the fishermen and vice versa. Some years, the herds survived well; others, not so well. They needed each other in order to survive, so they shared more or less graciously. Ancient stories persist of conflicts being resolved generously.

Communities grew into cities around the specializations, and they persisted successfully for more than a thousand years. It was hard, of course, but they did it without an upper class and without a central government and without Wall Street leeches. Interesting. More than a thousand years without war or sequestration or ... well, you get the idea.                              See: John READER (1999): Africa, A biography of the Continent.

Our present competition and consumption model is unsustainable, we've discovered, and it brings suffering and death to others. We're all at risk, but there are many alternatives. Walmart could become a community focused and sustainable not-for-profit with reasonable salaries and benefits for all workers...  don't hold your breath for that one.

Christian clarity?  If you muzzle the ox that grinds the grain ... is it eligible for food stamps?  That's the Walmart solution.  If the way you live makes people poor, are you the bad guy?  If you fill up your barns and have a lot stored for a lot of years, are you foolish?  Are you rich in good works, or just rich?  And what are good works, anyway.  Could you get through the eye of a needle?  Christians in developed countries may struggle with such a blind spot.  Me included, of course.

2Co8:13 Our hope is not that others will have it easy at your expense, but that things might be fair. 14 Right now you have plenty in order to take care of what they need. Later, they will have plenty to take care of what you need.  The goal is to even things out, 15like it's written, “The one who gathered a lot didn’t have too much, and the one who gathered a little had enough.” 
Definitely not on capitalism's agenda.

Wealth vs. Ethics

Are rich people more ethical than poor?  No. 

According to a string of new studies, it's clear that the farther up the money tree folks climb, the foggier they become about ethical issues.

Rich people are more likely to take candy from children, lie, cheat, endorse unethical behavior at work, and cut off pedestrians while driving, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  A report from researchers at the University of California-Berkeley came to similar conclusions.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having plenty of everything.  Trouble perhaps arises when one grasps at having more solely for the sake of having.  There's no need, and at the later stages, no reasonable use for more.  A $2M collection of cars, a $250M net worth; such are perhaps extremes.

The top 0.01% of Americans make an average of $27,000,000+. The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244. (2015)  The associated trends are reshaping our culture and communities.

Questions for individuals:  What are we willing to do to gain material wealth?  How much is enough?  How does that affect the values our children learn?

Questions for government:  Why should it be legal for the top 25 hedge fund managers to personally rake in $25B (average, a billion dollars each, more than enough for a hundred lifetimes) in the year following the Great Recession which they helped precipitate?  They've provided no benefit to society, no help to the economy, no good to the nation.  They've extracted wealth from the economy and given nothing in return.  Absolutely nothing.  Why should that be part of the nation's plan?

"Bill Gates (an unusual humanitarian) predicted that by 2035 there would be no more poor nations. However, this assertion is based on projected gross domestic product per person. This simply means that countries will produce more wealth. But if current trends continue, most of that wealth will be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands." 

For 35 years, the top 10% have gotten richer while the rest have lost ground.

Such a trend is troublesome, not because the rich get richer, but because they do

so at the expense of others.  The oppression is systemic, known, documented.

In America today 1 percent of the population owns about 43 percent of the wealth.  (20% owns 93%.)  So the question isn’t whether nations will accumulate more abundance. The question is what will become of this abundance.

"Capitalism has no inherent morality. However, it was thought that Christian virtue would not only temper capitalism’s natural excesses, but also guide abundance toward humanitarian purposes. Our history has shown that not to be the case. 

Capitalism’s inexorable drive for more and more accumulation has cast Christian virtue aside in exchange for a modern social morality that proclaims “I deserve all that I can acquire.”'        

 Victor Goode, associate professor at CUNY School of Law

There's perhaps room for us all to consider our position on such things.

Problems With Wealth

The continent of Africa owns approximately 1% of the total wealth of the world.  
~Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data

Africa is huge, the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent.  For the fifty-four countries with extraordinary natural resources and a willing workforce, why does their wealth flow to the developed world?  For hundreds of years, exploitation has been the norm with today's showcase elements being indebtedness and predatory trade practices.

Business and financial practices can be troublesome as they seek sustainable wealth extraction.  Multinational corporations apply their influence against tariffs and other trade restrictions.  A favorable rule broadens their market, increases workforce competition and lowers wage rates.  It enhances their profitability with little regard for socioeconomic impact. Current initiatives impose an external capitalist/business model on large social groups.

"Why is it that corporations give millions of dollars to elected officials? Do you think it's simply public-spirited behavior?"  ~Walter E. Williams

NAFTA:  After 20 years, the 'free trade agreement' has mixed reviews. The U.S. and Canada came out well enough, but Mexico ... The agreement removed tariffs on most agricultural products. U.S. and Canadian farms sell (govt subsidized) corn to Mexico, and Mexican corn farmers are unable to compete. "Entire towns are emptying because thousands of small farms have gone out of business. As many as 2 million farm workers have lost their jobs."  CBS News  Mexico does have increased exports of other products, but the workforce upheaval continues. Real wages are down, unemployment is up, and 25% of their children are malnourished.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), both are NAFTA on steroids with risks.

• In 2013, Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz warned that TPP presented "grave risks" and "serves the interests of the wealthiest." 
• Organised labour in the U.S. argued that the trade deal would largely benefit corporations at the expense of workers in the manufacturing and service industries. 
•  The Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research argued that the TPP could result in further job losses and declining wages.
• In 2014, Noam Chomsky states that the TPP is "designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximise profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity." 
• Senator Bernie Sanders stated that trade agreements like the TPP "have ended up devastating working families and enriching large corporations." 
• Nobel Prize economist, Paul Krugman, reported, "... I'll be undismayed and even a bit relieved if the TPP just fades away", and said that "... there isn't a compelling case for this deal, from either a global or a national point of view."  Krugman also noted the absence of "anything like a political consensus in favor, abroad or at home."
• Economist Robert Reich contends that the TPP is a "Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits."

Such practices risk widening the GAP and creating persistent poverty in the lower income groups.  Today, about half the world lives on less than $5/day per person.  Improvements in recent decades have benefited the wealthy with comparatively little progress for lower income groups.

"More powerfully, this process of poverty creation - the forceful extraction of commonly managed assets to serve financial elites - is exactly what recent social movements have called attention to. Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, the African uprisings, even the anti-austerity stance of new political parties in Spain and Greece, all have one thing in common: The recognition that the only way for a tiny group of people to become obscenely rich is for huge masses of others to be kept chronically poor.

This cold logic of poverty creation tells us what needs to be done. Before obsessing about amounts of foreign aid, or pretending it can solve deep systemic problems, we need to all focus on changing the rules of economic systems to make them more inclusive, more participatory, more focused on creating well-being than simply extracting more aggregate wealth, and more accountable to those billions who are not being served by the current rules. This is how mass poverty truly can be brought to an end."  ~Jason Hickel, Joe Brewer, and Martin Kirk

Good-for-Nothing John

King John of England ran headlong into a brick wall.  Like his predecessors, he had ruled rather heavy-handedly on the basis of divine right, believing the king was the law and above whatever tradition there might be.  His decisions were arbitrary, often unjust, and folks finally got tired of the abuse.  They rebelled.

In 1215, King John signed the Great Charter, a precursor to the Magna Carta, as an attempt at peace.  The charter established the rights of freemen along with a host of constraints on rule.  King John reneged three months later, and war broke out with London and half of England being occupied by the rebels.  John died of dysentery the following year.

Such abuse of power has long been the root of unrest among common folk and continues so today.

• We acknowledge the rule of law.  However ...  
• The rightness of our laws must be continually proven.   

Deregulation of the financial industry has made an extraordinary mega-fortune for the top 1% at the expense of everyone else, and more than a million died as a result of the Great Recession that ensued.

The laws governing the financial industry have failed the intent of having laws in the first place.  The industry, still unrestrained, has added many to the list of the world's greediest, those who extract wealth from others, who gamble with the resources of others, and who indenture nations.

Overstated?  

One year after the recent financial collapse, the top 25 hedge fund managers earned approximately $25 billion, an average of $1 billion each.  ~Business Insider, Zero Hedge  More than enough for a thousand lifetimes each, pocketed in a single year and every year.

This is money extracted from the economy by individuals who provide no benefit to the citizenry.  Their 'work' brings no benefit to the marketplace, no opportunity for employment, no improvements in productivity, no food or water.  They serve themselves, pumping wealth out of the efforts and out of the pockets of others.  Why would government allow such activity?

Why, indeed.  In the absence of other evidence, it would appear that governments are managed by the rich.  Not all of it, of course.  Governments are necessary, and in many venues, they're helpful for all.  The rightness of laws, however, must be continually be proven.

"Why is it that corporations give millions of dollars to elected officials? Do you think it's simply public-spirited behavior?"  ~Walter E. Williams

MSM

MainStreamMedia - the business practice has evolved over the years.

When folks had access to just a couple of newspapers, a couple of radio and TV stations, news services were valued for timely informational content, for clarifying things.  When hundreds of channels and internet sites appeared, competing news services began adjusting their focus and presentation, targeting ideological segments of the market.

Revenues depend on ratings which depend on engagement which requires selective and emphasized presentations designed to appeal to and capture a particular audience.

This isn't really freedom of the press, is it.  Perhaps MSM is really MildlyStupidMusings or MoreSlantedMush, but it's not 'just the news' any more.  We all know that.


Actually, it's advertising.
If you were to use the same visual and narrative framework from MSM for, say, a new car model, it would look like today's advertising. The elements are the same, offering the appearance of information but actually designed and presented to appeal, to persuade, to reinforce a particular slant.  Whether the content is political, ideological, or cultural, it's a slanted sales pitch.  (That's the description of propaganda, by the way.)

Watching the news, the only thing we know for sure is that none of the MSM providers are 'fair and balanced'.  Knowing the direction and degree of bias for a provider helps.

The result of competitive propagandizing is the polarization we see today, a marked increase over recent decades.  Republicans and Democrats are farther apart than at any time in history, and both are extreme or nearly so.  Liberals and conservatives have little middle ground they share.


Most of us have deliberately chosen to distrust advertising.  We understand it's more persuasion than information.  We might reconsider our preference in information sources and our willingness to accept content just because it matches our preferences.   That isn't objectivity.  It isn't even honesty, is it.  Wouldn't we be better served by a more thoughtful consideration of all sides of an issue?


Def/Ref:  Media bias occurs when the media systematically emphasizes one particular point of view in a way that contravenes the standards of professional journalism. Claims of media bias include liberal bias, conservative bias, mainstream bias, and corporate bias. To combat this, a variety of watchdog groups research and report the facts behind both biased reporting and unfounded claims of bias.  Research about media bias is now a subject of systematic scholarship in a variety of academic and business disciplines.  Note: that includes how to do propaganda effectively.

The Brookings Institute, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, Pew Research Center, ConservativeFactCheck.com, Snopes.com,  etc.

28 OCT 17 - Note: as an outsider observed today, MSM bias limits their content to fit their narrative.  The issues are much more complex than the simplistic headlines provide.

The problem, perhaps, is that there is much in government, politics, and business that needs to be transparent. Obama personally advised Trump not to appoint Michael Flynn as national security advisor, a warning Trump ignored. Flynn sat in on classified briefings with Trump while he was at the same time employed by foreign interests. Flynn's 24 day tenure is the shortest in the history of the office; he turned out to be both untruthful and deceptive, and was asked to resign. Later, we find out he was involved in political efforts in the U.S. by Russia and Turkey.