Transportation Industry Plummets, Thousands Lose Jobs

New York (1926) — In yet another blow to the declining transportation industry, the Carriage Builders’ National Association met for the last time, signaling the automobile’s final triumph over the horse-drawn carriage and the loss of thousands of related jobs, from craftsmen to barn keepers.  Pessimism reigned at the Metropolitan Hotel, where attendees recalled that just ten years ago, carriages and wagons were still a common sight on every Main Street in America.

From the previous century until now, carriage-building had been one of the largest and most dynamic industries in the country. As recently as 1880, the legendary Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company produced a hundred wagons a day — one every six minutes. Across the country, smaller factories fashioned vast quantities of buggies, farm wagons, and luxury carriages. Sociologists mourn the loss of the proud US-based approach to production that flourished for decades. Skilled workers face the continuing trend of industrial development in which hand tools, small firms, and individual craftsmanship simply give way to mechanized factories

Our children may think of the carriage and wagon as merely foreshadowing the automobile industry, but the loss of this industry is just one of the many losses brought on by the advent of the automobile.  Not only carriage makers, but horse trainers, manure scoopers, and buggy whip makers have all suffered from this economic transition, which many see as evidence of the continuing dehumanization of technology.

Not only is the automobile a job-killer, but for many interviewed on the street, the prospect of traveling at speeds up to a mile a minute is simply unnatural, as summarized in the commonly repeated phrase, “If God had meant for us to fly, He would have given us wings.”

With apologies for barely-disguised plagiarism, this piece of historical not-quite-fiction is inspired by the book summary found here:  The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America (Studies in Industry and Society)

Social Invention

The most transformational inventions will not be technological but social. For example, Ben Franklin was proudest of his social inventions. He created the first fire department ever, and the first public lending library in America.

I believe the next great social invention will be the political means for distributed decision making. We already have the technology, but social-political constructs are still catching up. In primitive societies, political decision-making (and authority) was tribal. In agricultural-feudal societies, it was hierarchical. In industrial societies, it was representative — it doesn’t matter whether it was capitalist, socialist, or communist — if a society was industrial to any degree of success, the politics were built on a system of electing or selecting people to go to a central location to make decisions on behalf of the society.

Now, in the information age, there is decision overload. Society is too fast-moving and complex for decisions to be made at the center. Yes, coordination and standardization is needed; the information systems our society is building require common interfaces and regulatory stability the same way the power grid needs standard plug-ins defined. But the world of information is much more complex than choosing 110v and 220v power and standard-gauge railroads; there are now social and technical decisions with that level of complexity and more being made on a daily basis, in every industry, and sometimes in every city or school district as we explore new models of education and self-government. We want to be involved in these decisions because we care, and we can. We have access to information and we expect the personal power that comes with knowledge, the power of choice. Rightly harnessed, that power of participation can be and will be a great good.

The necessary political environment will require collaborative and distributed systems that have yet to be built, which both encourage innovation around flexible interactive standards and discourage stifling monopolies. Structures need to simultaneously empower the masses for distributed common good, identify and consolidate the fruits of distributed expertise, and provide checks against both a lowest-common-denominator tyranny of the majority and the back-room dealings of powerful special interests. This political invention must allow for diverse political choices for diverse constituencies and communities, down to the individual neighborhood with its unique covenants, codes and restrictions. For example, people who like a broken down vehicle parked on their lawn can choose to live in a neighborhood that allows that freedom — or not. As more information-age communities are “virtual”, that same flexibility of regulation may need to apply to shared choices that are not specific to geography.

In our economic and educational structures, the common man is realizing that “one size fits all” is no longer necessary as we leave behind industrial age assumptions; citizens will expect the same flexibility in their political systems. Binary choices in voting may be joined by the means for sorting and ranking of priorities and options. A two-party system will seem quaint and outdated. A multiparty parliamentary system seems more relevant but even that falls short of capturing the fluid nature of alliances and interest groups that will develop. Federalism, the sharing of power between central and local governments, is only a glimpse of how power and decision-making will be distributed and diversified. Some very important decisions will be made by ad hoc gatherings of experts and citizen working groups — maybe dozens, hundreds or even millions will focus on a specific issue that requires research, complex analysis and deep reasoning and their decision will stand for the whole populace. Other decisions may be made by a series of consensus-building votes by the whole citizenry, which capture and incorporate the interests of different groups into a shared solution. Other, more administrative decisions may be left to elected representatives or even — gasp — bureaucrats who keep the wheels turning. But the fundamentals of political decision-making will and must change to satisfy the expectations and complexities of our informed world. And things may look as different as feudalism to the current represent-o-kit.

In my opinion, this political invention — call it participative or distributed government – may look like a blend of the concepts of social networking and jury representation for when complex deliberation is needed. But that’s just a guess.

Go ask a medieval monarch if he could picture what was coming.

What is at stake

There is no “theocratic” movement within America of any size or substance. If you believe that, you’ve been sold a straw man.

There is, however, a significant movement toward restoring the American secular religion of considering our human rights as embedded directly in Nature and coming from Nature’s God, rather than derived from any government power or coalition.  Indeed, this was the fundamental point of our American Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate every July 4.  A higher power is the source of the “Blessings of Liberty”; these are blessings which the US Constitution notably sets itself to secure, not create.

Thus established, our rights are irrevocable by any tyrant, special interest group, or system of power who seek to undermine the fundamental tenets of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

The case for repealing the 17th Amendment

In terms of structural impact to our government, the 17th Amendment was the worst amendment to the US Constitution, and should be repealed.
Currently, there is no power structure in Washington DC which represents the states. I’m not speaking of the people in the states, I’m talking about the states themselves.

The founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing in setting up checks and balances in our government, and the 17th Amendment destroyed one of the most valuable — that is, a check on the centralization of power from the states to the federal government.

I’ve held this position for years but had little hope of its actual repeal because it seemed too esoteric for the average person. Now it’s quite refreshing to see a movement of people — everyday, salt of the earth people — who know their Constitutional history well enough to understand the consequences at stake in this debate.

Representing the people of the state is different than representing the government of the state.

We all know why we have three branches of government — separation of powers. The federal system was based on a similarly motivated separation of powers. You embed into the system checks and balances. Those checks and balances are designed to go far beyond the power of an individual’s vote in a general election, to structurally and explicitly prevent consolidation of power.

If the federal government takes a dollar instead of the state government taking a dollar, the individual does not feel the difference right away. But the state government knows immediately when it loses power to the federal government. That is why the senators were initially accountable to the state governments, so they would have a natural check on consolidating their power into Washington DC.

Right now, in Washington DC, the president is accountable to the legislature and judiciary through risk of impeachment; the legislature is accountable to the executive through veto and the judiciary through court rulings, and the judiciary is accountable to the legislature and executive through new legislation. This accountability is built into the structure of the system and exert continuous force even in between the elections; however, since the enactment of the 17th Amendment, no power structure in Washington DC is accountable to state governments. Without this accountability, aka check and balance, consolidation of power is inevitable because unchecked power always grows.

Power is a necessary feature of government, in order to prevent anarchy and an “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” system of personal revenge that happens without government.  So the power that comes from the people is delegated, consolidating the right to use force.   Yet power corrupts, and consolidation of power hastens corruption, so the American founding fathers were careful in how they designed a system of accountability to prevent the unchecked authority that leads to totalitarianism.  One of their concerns – and ours today — is the federal balance of power between distributed states and centralized national government.

Before the 17th Amendment, power delegated to the state governments was then delegated to the Senate. In other words, the Senators not only answered to the people directly, they answered to the state governments as the intermediate source of their power. With all power in Washington DC coming directly from the people, now there is no overt force to keep power distributed to the states.

Here are two articles that illustrate the impact of unchecked federal power.

Federal Workers Make Twice That of Private Sector

Radical Britain:  The unlikely revolutionary

In the latter article, scroll down to see the second chart, titled "Top heavy. Central-government spending as % of total government spending." You’ll see that two-thirds of government money in the US flows through Washington DC. That statistic ought to get any advocate for limited government riled up, especially when compared to governments in that same chart that we like to think of as more "socialist" than we are, yet who have much more distributed, decentralized government spending.

With more accountability directly to state governments in order to keep their jobs, you’d have Senators incentivized to vote down federal spending and send government work back home to their bosses, that is, back to the states. You can be sure that state governments would love to pull some of those high-paying federal jobs back into the states, under their own control. But they have no voice.

Remember, the currency of politics is power; how it is distributed is the essence of checks and balances. Without the currency of power (in this case, the election of the Senators) flowing *through* the state governments, the states have no voice in Washington. I’m not talking about the power of the people, I’m talking about the power of the state government itself as a competing force against centralized government.  Some say about repealing the 17th Amendment: "The State doesn’t get anything out of it." On the contrary, the State would have a powerful veto power: if a Senator consistently votes in a way that takes decision making authority out of the hands of the people who put him or her in office, you can bet the state legislature will not re-select that person. Repealing the 17th Amendment restores that lever of authority given to state legislatures, to directly influence decisions in Washington. A Senator would be hard pressed, for example, to ignore a resolution by his home state legislature on an issue that affects states’ rights; ignore enough, and you’re out of a job next cycle.

Bottom line: repealing the 17th Amendment would reintroduce into every US Senate vote a subtle issue behind "what is the responsibility of government", and that is, "what is the responsibility of what level of government".

Note added 2010-08-23:   This post originated as a discussion with Bob Duker on an Idaho political message board, .  He has copied the original exchange to his web site here:  http://www.dukertech.com/gpage.html

How to Eliminate Legal Gridlock

This is an excellent video if you are frustrated by our legal system and have 20 minutes to learn about real solutions.

Philip Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system

Many of the themes are covered in detail by Francis Fukuyama in his classic book called Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity.  Without trust as a solid social foundation, society cannot thrive and freedom is impossible.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize that an over-regulated, lawsuit-happy society is not one built on trust.

So how do we fix it?  Watch the video for some great starting points.

Exposing the world’s most corrupt large economy

Here’s another video showing how the information age is challenging centralized power and control, including highly organized and corrupt power and control:

Russia’s YouTube cop (New York Times video story)

Does anyone else see the pattern here?  It’s all connected.

Battling Tyranny in the Information Age

Last week my wife and I toured Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  I think the author of our Declaration of Independence would appreciate the radical freedom of information and checks on overly-powerful government being promoted by a growing effort called WikiLeaks. 

Here is a video with real-world examples of information espionage that takes the core American values of freedom of the press to a whole new level.

The end of the video poses a telling question:  will information age technology be used for Big Brother to keep an eye on us?  or for us to keep an eye on Big Brother?  The answer is yet to be known.

The rugged individual or the rugged household

Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave is an essential book for understanding the dramatic social shifts of our time.  In 1980, he predicted and even described Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with amazing accuracy (without calling them by name of course)!

One area Toffler falls short, however, is in his use of the word "prosumer" – activity by a person who produces something for his or her own use.  He used this concept as the basis for identifying trends such as the rapid growth of Home Depot, Lowe’s and other “do-it-yourself” stores.  As our information economy breaks down the mass market, personal customization and production is the natural result – moving right in hand with the environmentally conscious trend toward local production and consumption. Of course, this is valuable, yet I think Toffler goes too far in saying that homemakers should be subsidized by tax dollars for the value they bring to society in raising children, a recommendation which interferes with the family as it builds up the welfare state.  (Neither should they be penalized, of course.)

Though I’m astonished by his brilliance; in this case I think he conflated concepts by focusing too much on the individual as the primary economic unit of society.  In my opinion, the primary economic unit is the household.  In fact, this is etymology of our word "economy", from the Greek words "oikos" (household) and "nomos" (law, or ordered behavior).  The household is the ultimate cradle-to-cradle system.  This resolves Toffler’s concern of putting a salary on domestic work; while it is true that domestic work has a significant social benefit, it is primarily a household benefit, and today our society is beginning to reaffirm the household benefits of our actions.

The dramatic increase in telecommuting, home schooling, and square foot gardening are just three examples of a social trend toward more household-centric cultural orientation, and I’m sure you can think of several others.

Thomas Jefferson: a man of inspiration and contradiction

Sandwiched in between the Fourth of July and an upcoming trip to Washington DC, my wife and I sat down to watch a wonderful PBS documentary on Thomas Jefferson.  (Thank you Netflix!)

No other man so effectively captured the Spirit of America.  His words have resonated throughout every revolution, and universally encouraged the overthrow of despotism since the 18th century.

It’s true that Jefferson was a flawed man and even a hypocrite.  He proposed multiple laws to overturn slavery, and even blamed Britain for the slave trade in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence.  Yet he never freed his own slaves, even upon his death.  Jefferson called slavery a “toxin” that poisons the morals of everyone it touches, and it poisoned him as well.

Nevertheless, the principles that Jefferson wrote down captured so eloquently the core American values that “all men are created equal”, that our nation could not live with the discontinuity between what we believed and how we behaved.  Jefferson died exactly 50 years after the Declaration was penned, on July 4, 1826, drifting in and out of consciousness, asking until midnight on the eve, “is it the fourth yet?” Only twenty five years after his death the American Civil War brought catharsis to the tension of one class of mankind living off the backs of another class.  The elimination of slavery was something Jefferson dreamed of but unfortunately gave up doing anything about in the last decades of his life.

Thank God for Jefferson’s legacy, on the one hand deeply flawed and on the other hand amazingly transcendent:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Redefining Freedom of Religion

There appears to be a trend among government officials lately to use the phrase “freedom of worship” instead of “freedom of religion” in their speeches. 

Chuck Colson provides a very good commentary on why this is a dangerous trend. 

The word “worship” has a much narrower meaning than “religion” in English.  Religious practice changes every aspect of life, and is not limited to personal or private expression. 

This was first noticed in a recent speech by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.  It was interesting to read one of the responses to Colson’s commentary, by a former Reagan administration official, who noticed the same word choice by Obama on the Fourth of July:

Robert W Sweet Jr makes this comment

2010-07-05 12:13:15

Last night, July 4, 2010 my wife and I were on the west lawn of the Capitol in Washington, DC for the fireworks, and the 30 anniversary of the National Symphony Orchestra concert preceding the fireworks. Among the remarks of the M.C., an Obama White House Official, was a reference to the "freedom of worship" as one of the basic rights of all Americans. I had just listened to Chuck Colson’s "Two Minute warning" about this "newspeak." It was chilling to have such a reminder of the slippery slope we are on to diminish, and ultimately deny the "rights" guaranteed by our U.S. Constitution. I had just posted his "two minute warning" on my FACEBOOK account….something I recommend everyone do as well. The First Amendment freedoms all tie together: This amendment has these four important safeguards for the American people. (1) Congress must not set up any religion for the nation. It must not keep you from practicing whatever religion you prefer. 2) Congress cannot stop you from saying, writing, or printing almost anything you like. 3) Congress cannot keep you from meeting peaceably with other people to talk about anything you like. 4) Congress cannot keep you from asking your government to correct something that you think is wrong. Using the Bible as our authority, and the U.S. Constitution as our guide in this age, we have the right to assemble in our churches, preach against homosexuality, or abortion, write about it, talk about it, tell the world about it if we so choose. The right to "worship" Implies a personal action that would be extremely limiting for Christians in America. If substituted for "religion it would virtually destroy our houses of worship, radio and TV broadcasts, and even our home church movements. Thank God for Charles Colson’s warning. May we all take heed before it is too late. Robert W. Sweet, Jr. Senior Staff Member (Retired) White House Office of Policy Development Reagan Administration (1981 – 88)

Words have meaning.  This will be something to pay attention to.  Freedom of religion is fundamental to our society and our form of government – something worth protecting with prayer and diligence.