Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association

This is the building in HotWinds, USA in the Chinatown area. I snapped this photo and later wondered what the heck it was. As it turns out, the H.S.N.Y. Benevolent Association and others like it do some good, and have done, for more than a hundred years. Although I don't know if this particular office has been here for more than a hundred years.

In general, there are more than one Chinese Benevolent Association, generally in cities that have enough ethnic Chinese to form a Chinatown area. Many of these societies banded together into a Consolidated Benevolent organization, tying efforts in New York to those in San Francisco, for example.

Historically they have helped Chinese immigrants get on their feet, and also lobbied for guidelines for immigration. They represent a self-help approach to acclimation to American culture, and also a network within American culture.

They are also the kind of group that in Singapore's public assistance model would be funded for social good instead of the Welfare system we have now.

Interesting, no? And all I did was just walk by.

Hoy Sung Ning Yung B.A. in Atlantic City Web site.
New York City's Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Web site, which I found interesting.

Plantation Architecture, part I

I have cynical feelings about restoring Plantation Mansions. Most of them are depressing indeed: in want of funds, with period wallpaper books open to show what they want donations for, and  a dusty mayonnaise jar for you to put those donations in.

Most of these homes are mouldering faster than John Brown's body. In Louisiana along the (Mississippi) River Road, you can see them gradually cut out from under by river water, industrial development, weather, mold, cockroaches, mice, and human neglect. Most of them have elegant proportions that speak past the shabbiness and decay. They represent a type of architecture which will never return.

European Tradition
If this was Europe, we would prize the chateaus where elegance once reigned at high human cost. Europeans don't raze their architecture just because there were dungeons in the basement full of torture implements, or even though rich young lordlings raped servant girls in the pantry or peed on the marquetry table legs in marble halls. During the French Revolution, they chopped off the heads of the Lords in the palace and those who tried to sell luxury goods to those Very Royal. This scared the hell out of the rest of Europe, but not enough to change central government.  Napoleon showed up, and the Royal Pageant went on. So did war--but it was not a war to free the oppressed. It was a war of Kings against an Emperor. Like his forbears in French leadership, Napoleon sought to control all of Europe with a ruling class, not to abolish central rule.

Our Idea
But in this country, we ended slavery through means not strictly class-driven. It was a regional break, and yes an economic break, but not by class: all classes went to war against slave states or to preserve their 'peculiar institution'. Today I'm not delving deeply into the long but true history of how the slave class had to suffer too long, and never got an even break afterward--that's for another time. But this is where some cynicism lies when it comes to preserving Plantation Architecture.

The American ideal of equality for all, plus a disdain for losing, makes a full-out federal preservation protection of plantation items seem ludicrous. Why would the United States of America revere the homes of its lost oppressor class? Yet those who don't grow up in the South never quite figure out that shabby plantation homes recollect war depredations (Sherman's torch) or reparations (carpetbaggers). Each failing site signifies that an entire economic class was decimated, that they were taxed and driven out of business, that they gave their all (gallantly) and lost. So in the South, preservation of the "highest achievement" is complicated by the fact that their best wasn't good enough. It was too long on grandeur, too short on foundries. Too cruel to sustain, but it propped elegance. A shabby Southern plantation denotes high ambivalence due to unresolved injury and the memory of historical outrage. Pick the injury and the outrage depending on who you are.

Therefore, any restoration of plantation architecture seemingly speaks to a lack of ambivalence: that the North should have left the South alone, and onward to that slavery somehow was acceptable. Onlookers who wish the Confederate flag to disappear distrust the motives of plantation preservation. .In this country, such preservation is a political statement. But I think the statement could  and should be be more complex.

Yes, these plantation homes describe the high living of careless  and cruel rich white people. Maybe some were "good to their slaves". They turned the cruelty over to subcontractors: foremen, patrollers, estate agents, so they could accord themselves this luxury of kind treatment on the face-to-face or escape altogether. And we do this now whenever we buy goods produced by slave labor elsewhere. These homes have the capability of throwing present sins into our faces, too. The ambivalence may be about a present international economy as well.

These homes also describe, just as the Egyptian pyramids do, or Versailles, or any Gothic chapel, the workmanship and artisan craft of the working class. Plantation sites don't just describe a place where whipping posts were used--but a place where black artisans designed and built sugar refineries, timber mills, environmentally suitable homes, levees that held back swamps, defensive avenues of fire, forest fire abatement, and strong buildings for storage and their own, far-lesser habitations. Most of these artisans are not recorded in history, just as the masons of palaces and cathedrals and pyramids are not. Most of them were never remunerated and hardly recognized.

And Just Maybe . . .
Maybe historical preservation can bring out that an enslaved people contributed mightily to American historical infrastructure. That without the unnamed architects of the sugar refinery, the unnamed engineers of the levees, and the faithful work undertaken, we would not be who we are and what we are today.  I think when we preserve mansions and slave quarters, we should preserve technological works as well--less glamorous, far more important. Then we could see that despite every attempt to stifle personality, capital aggregation, and justifiable pride in the slave, their contributions remain. Our very map would be different along the Eastern seaboard and the Southern coastline were it not for these unnamed souls.

We could find a way to honor slaves at these sites as well as deplore their situation. We could advance our understanding of history and the human spirit--gifted and superior, even in slavery. Something past Gone With the Wind, King Tut, European Lords and Medieval Popes. Something that reconciles this historical ambivalence by refusing to bury any part of it. Something that gives shape to current national aspirations.

Still, though I believe this could be achieved, I remain cynical. I wonder, when the last plantation house in the South collapses, will we be done fixing the scars by then? On the other hand, I remember that forgetting history is like being blind to a warning. We have long been blind to the achievements of the unknown laborer, whether we espouse their cause en masse or not. So I do not know the answer.

Tomorrow, a plantation architecture that should be preserved . . . . or at least I think so . . . .

International Standards of Law and Order: Vancouver & the Olympics

Cities, Crime, and The Olympics

This is the second part of Columbia University’s  video linked here, starting about 28 minutes in until the end, on “economic violence”. The first presentation was by Sudhir Venkatesh, on gangs and inner city regimes that conflict with urban political systems. That was discussed in a previous post.  Professor Cutler discusses, in high contrast to poor inner-city regimes, the moneyed regime of the International Olympic Committee.  I wouldn’t call it violent. I do find it interesting.

She refers to the “collision in normative values.” She means we have daily expectations for city services and amenities (police and parks, for instance). Just as gang regimes pressure cities and reduce control, she says the International Olympics Committee dis-empowered the government of the City of Vancouver.

You should know that I checked with a correspondent in Vancouver. This correspondent thinks Ms. Cutler has an inaccurate analysis of events. And I found Ms. Cutler to be unreliable too--with a theory that makes some sense, and that I might even agree with in part--but spinning the results into something that approaches a violence toward reality. Still it's food for thought, even if it reads like Orwell's 1984.

My synopsis of Ms. Cutler's words are green.

Vancouver Prepares for the Olympics
Ms. Cutler reports that the City of Vancouver subordinated its own authority over its own jurisdiction in order to attract the Summer Olympics. By so doing, they reduced the rights of Vancouver's citizens--their human rights--but also their economic rights. In order to win the Olympic bid, Vancouver had to be an "international city". Its urban planning was then modified to suit people who do not vote there, live there, or go to school there. Those who have local businesses, or provide local security were not accorded the same protections.

The "international community" that expects and values "international cities" are generally parts of large corporations, cartels, and governments, and individuals with a significant disposable income. Every city wants their spending dollars, their investments, and their interest. (Ms. Cutler didn't mention this.) However, what does it mean for those in small business, the homeless, the lower middle class, or the privacy of individual citizens, each who are accustomed to a certain street standard?

Paraphrasing Cutler (and I was typing notes as fast as I could):

Changes in Security Regimes:
A.Vancouver had already begun increasing Panoptic Surveillance and control, but the Olympics bid created a major impetus. Surveillance ranged from elevators in the city to along the long highways to Olympic attractions. The surveillance included perimeter detection, license plates readers, airport style surveillance technology all over the featured parts of the city. Sometimes these surveillance systems along the highway traversed different jurisdictions, outside of Vancouver’s bailiwick.


This indicates something about the control of the state--though Vancouver was the one doing it. It means the nation of Canada may have
1. abdicated control (letting Vancouver hold the mandate instead) or
2. that the state of Canada authorized Vancouver’s extra-territorial control or
3. that both state and city suspended their control in order to let the Olympic Committee create standards, ordinances, and methods of security provision, for the benefit of visitors over residents.

B. The technology-driven security is an economic boon to international marketing, not local security. It is "the corporate face of a new war." But private (international, for-profit) security firms were given broad powers of search, seizure, and arrest. This sidelined both the Vancouver Police and the RCMP (national).

If local security was not sidelined, it still creates a culture of cooperation with a corporate/market entity. It gives some parity to corporate security that formerly was a government monopoly. Security arrangements also privileged international security organizations such as NORAD, which played a part in anti-terrorism measures.


Public/private security partnership may be permanent. Contracts were for installation of surveillance devices, but not their removal.

In other words, these systems were purchased not rented. In almost every alternative, the city continues to give away its power over its own jurisdiction.
1. Vancouver decides not to use the security system they paid for, and still must pay to maintain, thereby creating unsustainable development.
2. The RCMP uses it, giving local security duties/powers to the state of Canada that belong to the city of Vancouver.
3. Vancouver PD staff is diverted from street security to panoptic surveillance, swelling police budgets with new hires or reducing street presence. They also watch areas that are not their jurisdiction, thereby wasting some man-hours or exceeding their authority. (NOTE: she offered no reference for this).
4. Vancouver hires a private security company, thus diverting security to a private firm who has first access to the data.

I'm not sure which of these competing alternatives Ms. Cutler found more dangerous. Mostly she was ranting in the scholarly way, of course.

Zoning Restrictions
C. The city re-zoned itself into orderly zones and free speech zones. No dissing of the Olympics, no demonstrations, riots, posters, sit-ins, or protest parades allowed in the Olympic zones or near city attractions. These "orderly zones" included the public library and art museums. Universities were approached, certain known activists, and students, warning them not to kick up any fusses in areas adjacent to Olympic events. Cutler maintains this also crossed jurisdiction (e.g., University by-laws).

I can't get too worked up over this, given how awful protests could have been. In a way, the City of Vancouver is protecting its investment in Olympic attractions, its reputation, and local property. But it does bring up the specter of how much, how long, what precedent does it set? What is considered a "non-celebratory Olympic demonstration?  Does it get into bad manners? Will it mandate manners next time?

Local Expectations vs. Local Capacities.
D. Courts and Citizens
1. The City of Vancouver empowered the police to take homeless populations to shelters or jail them. But there were not enough shelters for the homeless population, so many were inevitably jailed.


2. Vancouver also empowered "City Ambassadors" to "move undesirable people along", watch streets or parks, and report undesirable persons or activities.

Where I live, this activity is routine and not draconian. It does extend surveillance in particular tourist-attractive areas. It also keeps the streets clean, gives the tourists good directions to attractions, and so forth. It is also a benefit for those who live in those parts of my city--that is not shared equally by all residents of that city, but for which all taxpayers must pay.

During the events, a special system of courts was set up, separate from normal municipal courts, to deal with jailing "undesirables" 24/7. This may strain city budgets.

E. Likewise, local business was subject to specific opening and closing times. In the event of business conflict, local businesses in Olympic venues had to agree to take grievances to international commercial arbitration rather than the local court systems.

That’s pretty standard, I think, around the world. It keeps international corporations out of local court. It also creates a huge barrier to suing an international corporation for a small business.

Conclusion—Two Dilemmas
Perhaps the citizens of Vancouver saw this influx of security, such as a 24/7 court system, as desirable. Perhaps the drastic change in "normative values" by moving the homeless along meant that sitting in the park, going to the library or museum, or even taking a walk was better than before.  We would then say that international business brought in greater urban capacity. And that’s what cities need.

But even finding it desirable might also show that cities have lost power. Maybe Vancouver could not enforce these desirable standards without international scrutiny (or the excuse of international scrutiny). Maybe citizen scrutiny was not enough. Or maybe citizens have already accepted a decline in normative values.

Either way, under Cutler's exposition, the city looks weak. And we need not single out Vancouver, either. All cities are trying to attract international business. They are all giving out tax breaks and making promises to get them to come to their cities.

Second, at what point do all of these temporary "protections of investment" manage the risk of terror, riot, local safety, and at what point do they impinge upon citizens? Maybe demonstrations aren't your concern. Maybe some other "normative right" is.

I wonder what you all think of this, and what examples you may have in your own city.

Related articles

• Vancouver Games gave C$2 billion economic boost: study (reuters.com)
• Olympic security bill tops $850 M (globaltvbc.com)
• Vancouver Games says broke even in end (reuters.com)

Tomorrow's Post

Tomorrow, instead of presenting an economist I agree with, I am presenting one that makes me uneasy.

I subscribe in part to her theory--that states/governments are losing power compared to markets. I'm just not sure she picked the right example, or that her follow-through from theory to event is correct. So be warned--critical reading ahead.

Big day tomorrow on other fronts, too. But I can't write about them yet!
See you all in the threads.

Cities, Crime, Detente: Sudhir Venkatesh

More on Cities, Crime, and Economics:

Colombia University's School of Social Studies gave a Conference on "Cities and New Wars" which is definitely a timely topic Sudhir Venkatesh spoke, (and so did Claire Cutler of Victoria, Canada).  With only two panelists, and two divergent sets of concerns, I don't think it was the best panel ever. However, each speaker was interesting in their own way. And I'm actually going to take them both, one post at a time.

But never mind Cutler now. Here is the link to the video, 55 minutes long. Professor Venkatesh spoke starting at minute two, and ended at minute 30 or so. That's plenty to start with.

The examples are set in Chicago. Nobody needs to think this is limited to Chicago, by any means.

Policing, or Not, in the Urban Ghetto
Venkatesh's topic was ostensibly "Policing in the U.S. Ghetto." However, it took a sharp turn into urban economic violence from the start. His contention was that the ghetto has a "city government within a city government." It is unofficial, shady, what we call extortion, gang wars, and the crack economy. The police are not the main security providers in these areas.

He describes drive-by shootings--that they have a definite sound sequence, a noise associated with "incoming". One of the things I noted was that children were growing up in the Robert Taylor homes with the same expectations of violence that we consider a feature of Beirut or Baghdad. That a mother's care includes an admonition to "get your ass down now."

He then describes the park/turf that was the proximal cause of this violence: a three-way gang war for the economic benefits of the park. This included sales territory for drug or weapons sales, but also "taxation authority" for the other activities around the park: food vendors, clothing vendors, prostitutes, car repair.
Before they were torn down, the Robert Taylor Project was truly ruled by an alternate authority than the City of Chicago. It's interesting to note that under-the-table businesses do have a huge tax bill, in the government that makes the place work (dysfunctionally or functionally, take your pick) and that with this alternate government, they also try to evade or avoid taxation through under-reporting of receipts.

The gangs have pride of place. Like a nation, they control specific territory. When two gangs contest turf, the sets of diplomats include community leaders such as pastors and activists. A summit meeting is called, several diplomatic activities through different intermediaries take place. The gangs eventually agreed to a division of the park for commerce and taxation. They also agreed to avoid certain hours for their activities, such as when children were out of school.

Mr. Venkatesh does note that the police came but did not get out of the car on several occasions when drive-bys or other violent/war-like events occurred. I don't think he was making a judgement, just underlining his theory that the City does not have primary authority in this area, even in security.

More Recent Data
The Robert Taylor Homes are long gone. This second video is from last year. Hat/Tip Second City Cop's "A Riot? Not Quite" post of August 16, 2009. And this one is perhaps more to the point.

1. You can see that the police car is the first presence, and that the police disperse the crowd--by getting out of their cars at great risk--only when the second police car shows up.
2. You can also see that the fighters don't disperse right away. They're defiant.
3. You can also see that if they were totally defiant, things could have taken a totally different turn. But two police officers in two cars cannot change a neighborhood in the middle of the night. They can only impose order for that time, that place, that minute.

It remains a question about how controlled the "rioters" were. I think not so very. .

What a riot! from Joe Gray on Vimeo.

But let's look at the other city, state, and national authorities. Their first job is to provide security, and they have, in some fashion. Governments also have tax authority--this goes hand in hand with having the "standing armies" that maintain the state. Yet this is equally compromised. No IRS or other local authority shows up to collect taxes--they send a letter once a year. The evasion or avoidance of taxes to the local authority--the gang--is even more prevalent for the government--because the first tax becomes "business overhead".

The place where (what we call) the legitimate state makes the most impact is in a kind of internal "foreign aid". This aid is a tied aid--to certain behaviors (live here, for instance). Like much foreign diplomacy, it does not succeed in changing many internal cultural values. It may not even seek to. Mostly it stops war from breaking out along the border. In the end, looking at the shadow economy, you almost begin to wonder: just who runs this territory? At what point does legitimate rule go to who claims it?

The U.S. claimed a lot of land by sending people to sit on it that were sympathetic to their government, their culture, and their folkways. Other parcels they bought: from Mexico (the Gadsden Purchase), from France (the Louisiana Purchase). Other parts were wrested away (e.g. the Republic of Texas fighting against the government of Mexico). At the time we brought all this territory under one aegis, we also allowed people to barter, make local arrangements, and didn't tax so much. Many customary activities then are now considered shadow economy by our own nation, state, and city. And yet we won't pay for increased security without increased taxation.

If we want the inner city claimed by the government we know, then the city has to have a presence in that area that can contend with the de facto government that really seems to run it. That means increased security, and establishment of taxation authority, and cultural interchange, and--gaining the consent of the governed.

Venkatesh doesn't necessarily lead where I did, but he has plenty to say. It's well worth picking up a book or two of his and giving them a good read. The one I am still reading (fascinating!) is:

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Venkatesh. It's not at every bookstore, but still readily available.

Introduciing Sudhir Venkatesh: The Ghetto Economy

Sudhir Venkatesh is the graduate student from the University of Chicago that made Steven Levitt's and Stephen Dubner's first Freakonomics book so interesting--he is the one who brought in the great gang information and even the gang accounting for Levitt to peruse (as he says himself) at leisure.

He is not strictly an economist, so his vision of social activity is quite different. Nevertheless, he has studied economic phenomena (such as drug accounting and unofficial business) within the inner city. His work is genuine field work of the old style. In short, he lived it first, developing long-term relationships, which gained him more access and longer times to formulate and test his theories. His work is therefore a little more personalized than Levitt's. It is also terribly important because is not a hit-and-run intellectual exercise. It is the long way around getting a graduate degree, and at some risk to his health, indeed.

I was lucky to find that C-Span spent an hour with Mr. Venkatesh in its "Q and A" program. The following video is 58 minutes long. It was spurred by his most popular book, Gang Leader for a Day, but introduces his work in general. All of the video I am finding with Professor Ventakesh (now at Columbia) seems to be an hour long, which is not optimal for blog readers, I know. So the transcript of the talk is here. And since Professor Venkatesh took the long way around his sociology degree, we have a lot of personal witness to life in the Robert Taylor homes in Chicago--including some mistakes he made as well as the mother lode of information. He spent seven years at it.

He discovered an entirely different kind of government in the inner city. An entirely different economy. And in Gang Leader for a Day, he was able to access the workings of what I would call America's fastest-growing conglomerate--the crime conglomerate.

In my studies of gangs and gang economics, I have run into two remarkable men who have accessed the ghetto in a long-standing relationship AND studied it with academic rigor. Mr. Venkatesh is one. He is, further, an ambitious scholar. Without his interest, commitment and compassion, we would never get a glimpse of what we see here. 

So I think it's very important to view his work as a series of large clues and insights. The raw material may lead, certainly, to any solution he suggests, or any emotion he invokes. It may also lead to other conclusions of your own. But very rarely do we get to access someone with such an involved history of the details, as well as economic and social studies background, to translate for us. It's strong work. 

Mr. Venkatesh has his own Web site.

Books by Mr. Venkatesh:

Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Ventakesh. Available, and featured above.

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Available.

American Project: The Rise and Fall of the Urban Ghetto. Available.

There are also several documentaries noted at his Web site. Not all of them are about economics or gangs, but a good many of them are indeed on this very important part of urban life.

The National Debt

I don't care if you're liberal or conservative, authoritarian or libertarian--

Whatever you believe our government should do in the way of programs, policies, and initiatives--
Whatever you believe our government should get its damned nose out of--

You need to look at the national deficit.
I am not going to send you to anyplace that calls this "Babylon" or "Nero fiddling as Rome burns" or a site that whops one President or another, or indeed points fingers at anyone.

I'm going to send you straight to the guys who report it and let you come to your own conclusion. 

The Federal Government. The U.S. Treasury. We still have transparency in this country. We need to take a look at the truthful things our government is reporting for us.

The interest we have paid so far to our debtors in the last ten months is:

$375,247,863,222.70

.That's the Interest. It's not the Principal, which means we have paid MORE.

This is from the report of the General Accounting Office (GAO) for 2003.  This does point to dates, and leads me to my conclusion as to where to point fingers. However, its Real Value is explaining how we financially transact debt. In short, never mind who's to blame. Learn how it's done.

Cash surpluses during fiscal years 1998 through 2001 enabled Treasury to reduce debt held by the public by $476 billion, from $3,815 billion as of September 30, 1997, to $3,339 billion as of September 30, 2001. Treasury reduced this debt by redeeming maturing debt, reducing the number of auctions and size of new debt issues, conducting “buybacks” of debt before its maturity date, and redeeming callable securities when the opportunities arose.2 

However, because of the return to deficits, in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, debt held by the public increased by $585 billion, with about $371 billion of this increase occurring in fiscal year 2003. Treasury issued more debt by increasing the number of auctions and the size of new debt issues. During fiscal year 2003, Treasury reintroduced the 3-year note, which will be offered every quarter. In addition, Treasury increased the offerings of the 5-year note from quarterly to monthly offerings; the 10-year note from an offering every quarter to eight offerings a year; and the 10-year inflation indexed note from three offerings a year to an offering every quarter. Notwithstanding the increases in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, debt held by the public as a percentage of total federal debt has decreased from approximately 71 percent as of September 30, 1997, to approximately 58 percent as of September 30, 2003.

Debt is held by the people/ individual states/ local governments or by the world market. That also tells you who is making the money off of it. For instance, the City of New York (or my Condo Board) might buy a T-bill and fund City Functions with that interest--a no-risk bond that protects the principal and gives back income.

This report tells us that debt is being held 42% by the market and not by the American people. The GAO is telling us also that the old debt was more internal, and when we made new debt, we went external, to get a lot of money fast. This in response to a national security crisis. Oh, do I find that ironic.


So even though I know whose watch this was, and detest this person myself--have even named my vacuum cleaner for this man, because it sucks so much dirt--

It doesn't matter any more. It only matters What We Do.

We need to get this thing corralled. Every other battle we are fighting--for good education here and for literacy in Afghanistan, for soldiers to have body armor and police officer to have it, to increase manufacturing in this country or stop all unsafe manufacturing--Every Single Thing--is affected by this deficit.

I encourage you to look around the Web to find more reasons to hate the deficit. I also encourage you to take stock of your political priorities, whatever those may be,  and set them against the frame of the deficit. Let's save that money! Let's reduce our debt! Then, with what we save, we can argue over what to spend it on.

Go get 'em. I implore you.

Related articles by Zemanta

• US Congressional Budget Office Sees $1.34T Deficit in FY'10 (forexlive.com)
• UK borrowing falls as country slide deeper into debt (telegraph.co.uk)
• UPDATE 2-US Treasury trims debt sales, doubts on future cuts (reuters.com)

Crime and Insurrection: Local Economics, part 1

Credit: AP, via UK's Independent

When I read law enforcement blogs, I frequently come across writers who are convinced that civil conflict has started or is on its way. They don't mean a bad Friday night, either. They frequently see the destruction of civil society as a permanent or lasting problem, close to or past the tipping point to insurrection.

This is hard for many of us to reconcile in other neighborhoods. And as a nation, we don't seem to be at that point. Look at Iraq: just yesterday, a suicide bomber blew himself up along with 61 Army recruits. Perhaps we could look at Hemet, California, or Chicago, Illinois, and see equally deadly, unpredictable, and fatal or potentially-fatal results for law enforcement. Places where terrorist attempts or local violence has escalated to mean that local authority has no sway.

Customary Expectations
Nevertheless, even in Hemet and Chicago, most people have an expectation that they will be able to buy groceries from their desired list instead of whatever's available. They expect to be able to drive there without too much chaos, complain about gas prices but still be able to obtain some from a safe device, complete their shopping, and go back home without incident. Odds are highly favorable that this set of actions will occur as predicted. This is not the case in Baghdad. Baghdad has civil conflict. They have war.

The United States is not at war with itself. But something is up, and it is a crisis for us as a society. It's past time to examine what these law enforcement professionals are telling us. It's important to relate their real-life, anecdotal, experiential accounts to a discipline and study instead of a platform or set of platitudes such as "tough on crime" or even "soft on crime".

This post compares the economic predispositions toward civil war, as studied by international political economy, applied to our own international, local, political economy. (Footnotes below).

Paul Collier  on Economic Drivers of Civil Conflict
Earlier I posted twice on Paul Collier's work. He asserts that civil conflict has consistent economic features. Here are the high points:

A. Economists view civil conflict as crime, since it
1. is against the law and
2. causes the destruction or seizure of capital assets (reorganizing ownership).

For those of you who aren't used to this way of looking at it: when an army invades: they take your factory or trample your crops. They loot your house, eat or waste your food, kill your sons and carry off your daughters. These are property crimes and crimes against persons.

When your car stereo is stolen, and somebody fences it, it changes something for you--but not on the same Scale. Likewise, if your son is murdered for his watch or your daughter brutalized, these are horrible, life-changing tragedies. But they are still not war, because in general they are Exceptions to the local Majority experience. There is still someplace to go (the police, a minister, a counselor) in your milieu. It is still, terrible as it is, on a lesser scale.

 Yet if you take these crimes against property and even persons as an economic event, you will see that they have reorganized ownership. They took a watch, a car stereo, a life that did not belong to them. They disposed of it as they saw fit. Add all these up in aggregate--a car stereo, a watch, lost human capital--lost wages as well as a lost life. Pretty soon you're talking about a lot of reorganized wealth.

And when that reorganization and violence become Customary, or the Majority experience under local conditions, with little or no recourse, it begins to approach the conditions of War.

B. Three economic features drive civil conflict. They are:
1. Nation trades in one (or few) commodities, and does not produce what it needs to live. It must trade for those goods. Or put it another way: the economy is unvaried. It has one main industry, and everything else supports it. consider a mining town, for instance, with a few stores that all live on mine owner purchases and mine worker wages.

2.Low national income.

3. The "revolutionaries" have the means to fund revolt, (through appropriation/theft of national commodity, remittances or donations from elsewhere, and / or illegal activities such as piracy, kidnapping, or extortion.

C. The economic causes of civil war will be cloaked in public relations, the language of grievance and protest.

--I won't get to this one today.

Macro versus Micro
In aggregate, this country is huge, with plenty of resources. On the local level, in many inner cities or poverty enclaves (condition # 2), these conditions do apply. These are what police bloggers are informally calling "war zones." There is little industry: chain restaurants, a few drug stores, some bottle-and-sandwich outlets. If you need to buy a shower curtain or a decent frying pan, you must go elsewhere. Same with services: no dry cleaner, few auto repair shops, pawn shops that lock down like jails and maybe a hardware store. Joblessness is high--if you count legitimate jobs especially.

Illegitimate jobs
There are two kinds of illegitimate jobs. One is to do honest work (car repair, house-cleaning, house-painting, plumbing, whiskey distillation, clothing import/export by the suitcase-load, etc etc) without benefit of a license or payment into the government's tax regime (of which licenses and permits are a part). The other is to engage in illegitimate work that is in itself a crime (selling drugs, pimping, kidnapping for ransom, and so forth).

The former is a drag on the tax system--just ask Former Soviet states, where a good part of the challenge of building the economy is to get it on an official standing. But again, this is a matter of scale. We forget that most business in the U.S. grew under a lack of licensing and permitting by the state. Just as an example, stagecoach stations had horses, carriages, guns, food and sometimes beds--but also no standards for animal care, stagecoach repair, marksmanship, sanitary food or sheets on the beds. Conditions were frequently appalling. Yet they were integral to continental transit. They hired people. Poverty does not grow into a middle class unless some barriers to entry are low.

In the unofficial economy, many services are bartered or run on a goodwill system--untaxable already. And it's not optimal, according to our contemporary standards. A renegade auto mechanic is not disposing of oil properly (I'm betting). He's not paying taxes or attending classes that certify his understanding of computer chips in cars. A woman who sells home cooking without a food license has not taken food handler classes (these cost $500 to $1000 per person, are only offered occasionally, and do not automatically net you the license, which is another fee).  On the other hand, the mechanic and the cook are not unemployed. They are entrepreneurs, building a local economy that inner cities would otherwise not have. Their industry is also very precarious.

Illegal Markets
For the United States, the real challenge is the second category of illegal work. In a way, the unofficial-legal economy is part of the good in a poor neighborhood. They make up a sector of productive economy. They keep normal life running in a location with few official goods and services.

In contrast to the unofficial-illegal economy, the criminal market is running on one class of industry--that in illegal drugs. Other sorts of crime are lucrative, but the various drug markets constitute the overwhelming percentage of dollars earned and numbers employed. The other crimes have become externalities to drug markets, or a source of capital for entering the drug market in a bigger way.

The world market for illegal drugs is hard to get a dollar feel for, because it is unofficial. But figures from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimated USD 110 billion yearly ten years ago. When I checked the Worldometer at the time of this writing, the total they estimate so far this year world-wide is 251 billion and counting. This is, for a poor neighborhood, the only rapid-growth industry. It dominates economic activity and  ensures that Collier's condition # 1 is met in full--a one-note, unvarying economy. Because it leads to other crime, it creates barriers to entry for other, more varied industry, goods, and services. It also looks like the only real-money profession around.

The third condition of civil conflict is that there is money to spend on it--that there is funding. The funding in the "unofficial war zones" that law enforcement continually faces comes from a variety of sources. There is, when you add it all up, plenty of money to be found.

1. Illegal drug sales.
2. Prostitution
3. Property crimes
4. Extortion from other criminals, such as the "street tax" collected by the Mexican Mafia.
5. Public assistance
6. Wages diverted from other wage-earners (e.g., "borrowing" from someone who has a job).

I have more to say on this issue, and to drag other economic findings in. The point I would like to leave with today is that civil conflict does appear to be a huge problem in the United States in growing areas. We are not at war with ourselves in the grand picture. Yet in almost every city we have microclimates that contain the economic elements required for violent civil conflict on a large scale. And because of the money involved, these microcosms are connecting to each other. They are growing in area. At what point could this growth in area, population, and local risk constitute a threat to national integrity?

I am not advocating that everyone buy a bunker and a machine gun. It would be better if we looked at these conditions and made some assessments. Then we can lower the risk of civil conflict and re-introduce conditions conducive to law and order.

I'm going to gather some supporting posts from police officers who blog and collect them here.

I will talk about drug markets more fully, using Levitt and Ventakesh, a few others. This set of thoughts will grow and be extend my Crime, Economics, and Cities series. Also, I want to spend some time on the language of grievance, on the organization/coalitions necessary for civil conflict to organize.

Just food for thought.

References:
Second City Cop for Chicago's out-of-control crime. A recent post.
Hemet California PD's troubles at Ann T. Hathaway
Click on the Worldometer to see the estimated total U.S. Dollars spent on illegal drugs worldwide this year. When I checked, it was $251 billion.

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Green Row House

A little shabby. About three blocks east of where streets are revitalizing. Their time will come. 

In the meantime, the green paint has faded and cracked and softened. I know improvement is good, but when these houses are rehabbed, who will be able to afford them? 

Yet there is absolutely nothing I would do to prevent someone from trying to get their money back. Rehabbing is expensive. It frequently doesn't pay to make a house of smaller expectations. I think that is why condominium ownership is a good way for inner cities to keep a middle class. 

In the case of this rowhouse, though, we are talking four families, maximum, to split the costs--three floors plus the English basement. There is a problem of scale with that. It would be better to own the whole row and defray the costs by that many families. And that takes a larger investor. Again, where does the middle class go?

Truly, I love them just as they are.

Crime and Insurrection: The Economic Causes

Today the Ann T. Hathaway blog features Paul Collier as an economist in the Crime and World Economics series. Normally, he's at Oxford University. Thanks to book publishing and the Internet, he can be here also. I did write him a fan letter once. He is very gracious.

This paper is based upon Professor Collier'a studies of civil wars across the globe, 1965-1999. Additionally he follows the economies of African states, which have had a good many civil conflicts. He wrote a most sensible chapter in a textbook I read,  based on these years of research:

"Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy" in Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing Internal Conflict. Edited by Crocker, Hampson, Aall. US Institute of Peace Press.

And of course he kept going. He has two books out for mainstream readers.
--
He found that the political language of civil conflict pops up everywhere. The reasons for grievance never correlated to actual conflict--in short, everyone complains, but it doesn't always lead to war. Some citizens in some countries have extremely good reasons to complain, and still don't have civil conflict. But research showed that civil war occurs only under consistent economic phenomena. These phenomena were:

1. Dependence on primary commodity imports. (they raise cotton, coffee, diamonds, oil, opium, et cetera, but not enough foodstuffs, or goods used at home).
2. Low national income.
3. The ability of the insurrectionists to finance their disorder.

Organized Crime
Collier says that "economic analysis sees rebellion as more of a form of organized crime." This is not a huge leap for us, because the legitimate government is at least titularly in charge, and creates a state-run justice system (see Thomas Hobbes post from last week). Furthermore, the disorder against life and property is, in a specific sense, against the stability that the state is supposed to confer.

Now he goes on to explain about the language of grievance versus the dry quality of economics:

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a leader of a rebel organization, needing to offer an explanation of your goals. What are the likely elements? Most surely, they will be a litany of grievances against  the government, for its oppression, unfairness, and perhaps victimization of some part of the population that your organization claims to represent. That is, your language will be the language of protest.  You will style your  rebellion as a protest movement driven to the extremity of violence . . . almost certainly, the government will have responded to your insurgency with an incompetent counterinsurgency campaign. "Almost certainly" because counterinsurgency is very difficult. . . . .

Rebellion is large-scale predation of productive economic activities.  . . . However, [the economist's] view is so at odds with the popular discourse on conflict that there is temptation to dismiss it as fanciful. The techniques of economics do not help its arguments: compared with the compelling historical detail produced by histories of protest . . .

In other words, grievance creates a story that can sway the emotions. But underneath it all, there's a way to grab capital and power for the "aggrieved" side, which doesn't sound as good no matter who says it.

Unlike organized crime, rebel movements need good international public relations and they need to motivate their recruits to kill. They need good international public relations because most of them are partially dependent upon international financial support. They need to motivate their recruits to kill because, unlike a mafia, a predatory rebel organization is periodically going to have to fight for its survivial against government forces. A rebel organization cannot afford to be regarded as criminal . . . Grievance is to a rebel organization what image is to a business.

While [grievance] is morally interesting to observers--is the cause just?--it is of no practical importance. .  . . The economic theory of conflict argues that the motivation of conflict in unimportant; what matters is whether the organization can sustain itself financially. . . . Regardless of why the organization is fighting, it can fight only if it is financially viable.

It is the feasibility of predation that determines the risk of conflict.

--
So, the question is, can you fund your war?

In Sierra Leone, Angola, and elsewhere, civil conflict is funded by portable, hideable, and valuable diamonds. In Iraq, the insurgency is funded by the very liquid commodity of oil. This has also been true in Chechnya and Dagestan, where Russia is fighting a secessionist movement with some Islamic connections. In Afghanistan, opium pays for terror and Taliban.

In Nigeria, insurrection is funded by oil. It is also funded by the Nigerian scams, diverted but legitimate income from oil companies, shippers, and the like--and by lawsuits. Mostly the oil.

Let's talk about the FARC in Colombia, which Collier (2001) says "has grown to employ around twelve thousand people. . . . The FARC earns around $700 million per year from drugs and kidnapping. . . ."

In Israel and Palestine, in Ulster, conflict is funded by the remittances of rich people living elsewhere.

Mexico
In Mexico, the drug war is taking on overtones of civil war, as police officers and innocent bystanders are massacred. More than one organization is downed only to rise again with new leaders. Each fights for regional control, ruining local stability. But as long as they are fighting among themselves, they are not as busy suborning national government. The civil conflict in Mexico is funded by purchasers of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine. The U.S. is the biggest purchaser because of proximity. However, drugs such as heroin or cocaine sell for a much higher price in Europe, so some illegal trade via Mexico is going there.

The counter-insurgency is also funded by the U.S. in part. Agencies lend expertise and dollars to a huge effort to knock these cartels down. It would not be good for us to have a failed state with a long border adjacent to us.

The only thing missing is the language of grievance. Until that political language enters, it is states versus markets. And when grievance comes in, we'll call it civil war--but it's still states versus markets. The market is definitely strong enough to fund civil conflict in the Caribbean, Colombia, and Mexico. As we see.

--
It is interesting to note for funding civil conflict: the worldwide drug trade, as of 2003, earns an estimated 1% of world GDP. That's more than enough to tip toward civil conflict in states that do not have other industries--see condition 1 above. In states such as Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Jamaica, and Colombia, or in pockets thereof, these make up close to 100% of national or local GDP. These states are all failing.

Just as these things relate to world trade, they also relate to local trade. I'll talk about that tomorrow, using some of Professor Collier's principles.

Two articles below go international! Look beyond our borders to see what's universal!
The third and fourth feature Mr. Collier himself.

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World Economists: Paul Collier

Paul Collier is a Professor of Economics at Oxford University. He has written a prize-winning book on foreign aid, world poverty, and local wars in places such as Somalia and the Sudan. The book is called The Bottom Billion and you can probably buy it anywhere. Another book, the Plundered Planet, talks about how environmental concerns affect the poor--both hurting them and taking away assistance for their economic plight. He is an even-handed man.

Professor Colllier is not an actor. He sounds like a teacher. And he is so worth listening to, if not for international relations, for poverty reduction here in the United States. "An alliance of compassion and enlightened self-interest." He talks about the Marshall Plan.

Before you make up your mind, two minutes in, that this is some liberal do-gooder, he has no patience for the language of grievance, or for the political discourse of victimology as related to civil war and warlords. He is brilliant and until recently has worked in relative obscurity, attracting neither celebrities nor panic-mongers. It is well worth considering his arguments.

In the post above, I looked at Mr. Collier's work in regard to civil conflict. This represents some of his more recent thinking, based upon his earlier research. Mr. Collier thinks for himself. It is well worth a listen.

Books by Paul Collier
The Bottom Billion. Available.

The Plundered Planet. Available.

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Public Assistance in Singapore

Image via Wikipedia

CPF Building, Singapore

There will be a million reasons why the public assistance model in East Asia is not applicable, unworkable, ridiculous, impossible, or politically dead in the water for the United States. I do not care. Their system is worth a look: a successful model, surely imperfect, but worth describing. 

The argument along economic lines will be circular: Singapore has a growing economy, low unemployment--they can afford to have less expenditures in public assistance. Yet the cost of U.S. public assistance and two wars (let's don't leave that out; however you may feel about them, they are expensive) has caused the U.S. to swim in debt. We are a sluggish, water-logged ship on turbulent economic waters. Let's see what Singapore does for Welfare. Maybe they know something we don't.

Most of my info and quotes come from:

David Seth Jones (June, 2002)
Welfare and Public Management in Singapore: A Study of State and Voluntary Sector Partnership. Asian Journal of Public Administration, 24:1, pp. 57-85. HERE. (Download; pdf)

Jones states that East Asia follows a Confucianist model of public assistance rather than a Western model. As such, it privileges "correct behavior" in regard to public assistance rather than what I think we do, which is "redress of wrongs, forgiveness, and mercy, to apathy and despair". The "correct behavior" applies to every individual in society, on public assistance or not. Those who have money have duties; those who accept assistance also have requirements. The level of conformity is high.

The following comes from one long paragraph that I separated for easier reading. All emphases are mine:

"Although the classic model of state welfarism has been eschewed, the Singapore government has sought to ensure that certain basic needs are met. This has been done in three ways.

The first is by subsidization.  Services such as education and health care are provided by the state with the consumer required to pay a proportion, sometimes a quite small proportion, of the cost. In this way the consumer assumes a shared responsibility in financing the services from which he or she benefits.

The second is through state-administered asset acquisition. The cornerstone of this is the Central Provident Fund scheme. Under the scheme, each employee is required to set aside 20% of his or her income every month, with 16% contributed by the employer. This amount of money is lodged in the employee's own personal account in the CPF--essentially a form of compulory savings. The employee can invest ...a certain proportion of the savings, or may use it to purchase a residence or to pay for costly medical treatment. The primary objective of the scheme, though, is to provide finance for retirement.

The third way by which social needs are met is by voluntary involvement. This relates to welfare provision and personal social services for the most needy and vulnerable in the community, which will be discussed below. (pp.61-62)

Jones says (p. 62) "At the heart of the model is the primary role of the volunatary sector and the community--welfare organizations, community associations, charities, religious bodies and even businesses, as well as the family--in the management and delivery of welfare services. The government is considered essentially a regulator and a facilitator, rather than a deliverer."

1. So Singapore does have public health care. They also require a co-pay.
2. Singapore has public education. That also requires a co-pay, and probably other steps such as entrance exams.

3. Singapore has a kind of Social Security, a little more direct than our Social Security. They have an Ordinary Account, a Medisave Account, and in some years a Special Account was also used. The government allocates, say 24% to the Ordinary and 6% to the Medisave. In times of economic downturn, they lower percentages in order to stimulate the economy. (Vandine, p.2).

II. Voluntary Welfare Organizations

Paraphrasing Jones: VWO's include: charitable organizations, community associations, ethnic self-help groups, religious groups (Christian, Taoist, Buddhist, and Muslim).  The volunteer aspect is that a (church) might agree to fill a particular need and become a VWO. Volunteerism comes from their membership, although a lot of people do seem to get paid. It's subcontracting with citizen participation. The government pays about 25% of the Total spending on Public Assistance.

As a group, VWOs do the following:
1. provide care for elderly and disabled
2. individual and family counseling (either in need or under stress)
3. accommodations and 'support in kind' for the destitute
4. assistance to needy families.
5. preschool education
6. supervising children before and/or after school
7. child and adolescent counseling
8. therapy and rehab for drug addicts
9. home health care
10. their version of "Meals on Wheels"
11. operate residential institutions for addicts in rehab, abused children or children 'out of control'; elderly; disabled, and destitute.

In many of these activities, day-care centers for children provide the locus also for child or adolescent counseling; other centers will do elder counseling, socializing, or care during the day.

Jones does not specify what number of these people are paid. I suspect  most of them. But they are hired through a VWO organization, not civil service. The VWO might also seek informal, free consultancy: a food kitchen might benefit from a (ethic association member's) grocery store acumen, or "Meals on Wheels" might get its restaurant layout looked at by a (neighborhood association member) who owns a restaurant. This help would be graciously accepted but is also part of one's civic duty.

III. Funding

Singapore's citizens may donate directly to a VWO or to Singapore's state-run Community Chest, which allocates funds for VWOs. This is also voluntary giving, frequently through regular paycheck donation. The donated C.C. funds are apportioned according to governmental criteria by the National Council of Social Service. This Council is quasi-governmental and works closely with the Ministry of Community Development and Sports. There is also a fund for Corporate Giving. Corporations can choose broad areas of concern, or specific charities, or the general welfare. Then the NCSS takes that into account.
Last of all, the Government of Singapore also chips in, up to 50% of of what it considers an appropriate operating cost for an approved VWO. Many times this is done on a per-capita basis (by number of people served).

IV: The Government of Singapore Generally Pays for: 

1. Start-up grant, for first months of investment.
2. Building/remodelling costs for facilities (including furniture, transportation, all initial costs), up to 90%, based upon a budget submitted by the VWO and approved/checked beforehand. Therefore, the VWO is kicking in 10% or more of the cash, plus the sweat equity.
They also pay 'hidden costs':
3. Rents are high in Singapore. Part of the government funding is to arrange low rent in federal property, and then pay that rent. The lease generally must be renewed every year or some agreed period of time. It is not automatic.
4. Auto licenses are expensive in Singapore. The government pays that.
5. If there are many voluntary donors for a particular Local project, sometimes the government matches funds. In that case, locals get a little more say in what is put into their area. Otherwise it follows the federal formula. In other words, citizens have to put their $$ where their commitment or perceived need is, not wait for a Congressman to pork it up for them.

V. The Ministry of Community Development and Sports is responsible for:

1. Training and advising paid staff of volunteers, occupational therapists, aides, etc.
2. Training in motivation, administrative, and career skills for VWO managers.
3. Consulting for continual training and advisement.
4. Manuals and guidelines to set standard best practice. Every VWO operates from a standing government-determined framework. Frequently there are targets and quotas.
5. Expects quarterly reports from each VWO
6. Expects conformation with guidelines/manuals--everything from how much space to staff/service ratios, hygiene, safety
7. Measures performance and holds VWOs accountable for government guidelines.

Thus Singapore has a public/private partnership that "avoids dependency on direct state welfare". The government supplies funding, regulations, guidelines, and limits duplicate efforts in the same region. The private sector is the partner who delivers the care. It is perhaps paternalistic--it requires conformation to societal norms by all parties--and it requires a significant amount of private donations.

Okay, So--?
What do you think? Consider my first example, a "disadvantaged youth in trouble."  He would go to school, be supervised before and after, his parents would be counseled or he would be housed in a charity arrangement. The difference is perhaps that he might be expected to conform against inner inclinations (to violence, good; but to a certain profession, maybe that's un-American?).  The standard set before him would be the only one to attain. On the other hand, encouragement and attention would be given when he made those steps.

or take my second example, the temporary food stamps. A person in crisis might have gotten a little financial counseling, or, a follow-up to be sure they no longer required assistance. That follow-up may have been an appointment that I would be duty-bound to make.  They also may have been making sure I DID spend those food stamps on staples or canned goods, rather than Kool-Aid or candy bars.

That's what I'm seeing, though I could be wrong in details. I don't think one paper is enough to know how Singapore and East Asia's social contract works--but I do think this gives us plenty to think about.

Another question: are we too corrupt/special-interest driven to implement this system fairly?
Is our land-mass too widespread to implement a standard system?
Another question: despite our opinion of ourselves, the U.S. is not by per capita measure or % of GDP the most charitable nation in the world. Could we get into the culture of giving?

Further References:
Government of Singapore, Central Provident Fund Web site. in English
Vandine, Comparing U.S. Social Security to Singapore's Central Provident Fund
Wikipedia, Central Provident Fund, linked above.
Hat tip to Inspector Gadget at Police Inspector blog. He wrote that Blair was interested in Singapore for UK welfare reform, and then never reformed UK public assistance. That got me started.

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A Public Assistance Mind-set, part 1

Today and Tomorrow: Two Anecdotal Reports on Public Assistance, with Two Different Viewpoints:

I don't know if I blogged about this before or not. It's a little bit about political correctness I suppose and a little about me. My main point will be, though, that public assistance comes with an attitude. When that attitude is pervasive in your life, I think it is deadening.

A long time ago, I worked for 7-11. At that time, companies such as this were eligible for supplements from the government for hiring people that fit a job-training criteria. Therefore, all of the employees in my district were sent, with pay, to the local Social Services for an interview to see if we were part of 7-11's job-training contribution to American society.

Now this program probably had the intention of rewarding companies that taught job skills, and making it easier for small businesses to hire people who didn't have those skills in the first place. At the same time, it seemed ridiculous to me. This company was nation-wide, and was doing okay. Why give money to a corporation when there were so many people walking around with real problems?

I didn't get it. It was about teaching people how to fish, instead of standing in line for the Dole.

My appointment (although I didn't realize it at the time) took up time for local S.S. (social services, not storm troopers). Multiply that by every clerk in every convenience store in town. We all know that S.S. workload is huge and heartbreaking. Conversely, it is a system dominated by a civil service mentality. So long as Some progress is made, then it's progress, so do your work steadily, slowly, and avoid burnout.  I am sure that my appointment looked like a huge waste of time to the S.S. that interviewed me.

At the end of my interview, she told me that "Yes, I did look like a disadvantaged youth in trouble" to her and so would be eligible for the program. I couldn't believe she said that to me. Was that what I was interviewing for, the position of "Disadvantaged" and "In Trouble"? How could you call a person like me disadvantaged? What about all the amazing steps I was taking, to pay my own rent, get to my own job, fix my own car for the first time in life? I had a royal blue phone and the bill was paid on time. What was so damn wrong with me?

I cried all the way to work. Shouldn't have been driving, really. My boss was flabbergasted.

"They called me a disadvantaged youth, like I have nothing going for me at all," I sobbed.

This (the same guy who told me to use napkins on a bleeding-to-death shooting victim, because they were not on inventory) got mad. "Those Assholes!" he stormed. "You're perfectly good just as you are. I'm calling the f*ing District Manager! None of my people are going to go through this. I'm telling him."

I would like to think that he supported me, but nowadays I wonder about the extra hours he was putting in while we all went to be interviewed. That may have been a major part of his ire.

My main point is this: the language of classification in Social Services is not empowering. It is a language that documents our weaknesses and not our strengths. How could it be otherwise, if they are addressing  social gaps? We aren't planning to give assistance to the able-bodied that don't need it (except, well, 7-11?). The only way to avoid this weakening language is to use number categories, which are even more dehumanizing, and--always come with a verbal explanation anyway.

Somehow I fit that description, and though I was insulted by it, it wasn't wrong. If major disaster had struck (as it did, a year after) I had no cushion.  Yet I found the process demeaning, dismissive of my humanity, and onerous. If a "disadvantaged youth's" parents learn to operate under this demeaning, dismissive, and onerous categorization, what does he or she learn? They are more disadvantaged than me, have more to overcome. We talk about generations of people on Welfare, but we don't see how the system itself can be weakening to its participants from the get. And yet starvation and joblessness are far more weakening still.

There must be a way to involve the language and actions of strength in the public assistance process. If we can do that, we can probably get people out of the bottom of the barrel and into a better world. By doing this, we strengthen our citizenry, and our efforts are more likely to gain us a win-win outcome.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 ) from Leviathan (1651)

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Thomas Hobbes explains the reasons for nations, governments, and war, and even police departments (which did not show up for another two hundred years) in Leviathan, Part I: Of Man. Chapter 13: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery, pp. 73-74. You can read it in full in Google books, in his own language and spelling. (It's not hard, but it's not a beach read, either.) It won't cut and paste, worse luck. I am going to type parts of it in modernized form.

It is so relevant.

In the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition: secondly, diffidence: thirdly, glory. 

The first, maketh men invade for gain: the second, for safety: and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, chilcren, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.

WARRE
In the next paragraph, Hobbes notes that WAR is a period of both violence and potential violence. One can live in a state of war even when they are not being robbed, invaded, killed, or beaten--if they know it could happen any minute. His example is weather. It doesn't have to be raining twenty-four hours to be a rainy day. It's a matter of environment, and what one must do to survive it (carry an umbrella, go out only in armed company, stay under the awning or inside the fort. THEN he writes (I have divided the paragraph):

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. 

Anarchy
This is Hobbes' famous "war of all against all" or anarchy. It is Road Warrior the movie (no old people or young ones, only predators and prey), only ten times worse; infighting and genocide between the Serbs and Croats and why gangs spring up in part. A strong man with good luck can live long enough to do--what? Steal and sneak and kill to gain what's needed in life, or to keep the bone he's got.

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; 

and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Government
Hobbes goes on to say that Kings (read: warlords, band Chieftains, or hey, our own government)  have these same qualities: a military for gain, or for defense, or stuck in pride and invasive for that reason.  But what a government does is displace this anarchic war of "All against All" to the limits of territory. Thus farmers may "till the soil" and builders may "build cities". Trade may take place under the protection of the state (flagships, caravans, trains, etc). The "movement of large things" might be Treasuries or even a load of lumber, impossible when people are hanging onto every part of it to make it booty or spoils of war.

Safety
It's not that Hobbes didn't lock his door or hide his money. However, once he did that, he could sleep at night, and wake up to study and write his famous work. Band chieftans and kings also held their own territory with domestic troops--if for no other reason than to execute murderers and gather tax money. But without a King or Chieftan or Police Force, in Hobbes words, there is no justice. Nor is their injustice. Because anything goes. Any strong person or lucky person can do whatever they want, and everybody else either has to kill him or suck it up.

Police
Our police force did not give us life, or air, or buy our food. They are the facilitators of our own ability to "know the face of the earth" or at least our part of it; to "plan our time" and expect that the plan will be fulfilled; to enjoy arts, letters, society and contribute to them in our own way..

Right now, many cities are giving up their police forces--contracting city services to the county sheriff as a cost-saving measure. In so doing, they may very well be contributing through economic choice to a more streamlined effort in county-wide protection. They have also given up their first reason to be a government, the only reason they are a government. Therefore, they are not really a government at all.

If you can, read some of Hobbes. The link and pages are above.
Last comment: isn't it funny that Hobbes also links politics to having an economy? I'm telling you, political economy is the way to know government the best. There will be another post on an economist this week.

In the meantime, appreciate your police force! They make it happen for you.

Steven D. Levitt on Gang Economics

I'm kicking off a World Economics Series, with lectures and maybe even book reviews of the economists that have important things to say, or in some cases, who are influencing our view of politics and economy and world affairs.

I'll start with a funny one, that provokes thought about local economics. It is also a study of gang economics, previously posted at Ann T. Hathaway.
This is Steven Levitt,  author of Freakonomics and Super-Freakonomics. He talks about the local aspect of international drug trade. By explaining it as a business, he also shows us just exactly what barriers we face. He also maybe missed a few.
The video, like many I am contemplating, is produced by TED.com. I hope you enjoy.

I am not always a fan of the Freakonomics blog, but other times I think they have a great thing going.

Mr. Levitt and Mr. Dubner also have a Freakonomics Web site, with Study Guides to their books.
The Freakonomics books are readily available.

Sudhir Ventakesh is the graduate student Mr. Levitt refers to as doing the field work. He has also written extensively, and I will feature him in another post.

Lincoln's Political Economy, part Three of Three

Last week, I wrote on Abraham Lincoln and the National Economy, part 1: income taxes, the national bank system, and the first U.S. savings bonds.

There are some other features of international trade, in regard to the "nations vs. markets", where Lincoln exercised "restraint-of-trade" actions. These are what some libertarians and other detractors find against him today.

The first is that Lincoln advocated a strong tariff regime, which was discussed in Lincoln and International Economy, Part 2. The second is that he used national clout and diplomacy to restrain trade for the South. The third is that by curtailing political freedom, in regard to the dis-United states of America, he infringed upon individual rights and individual commercial choices about how and where to conduct business.

Shifts in International Trade During the Civil War

I have already mentioned that Britain was incensed by the Morrill Tariff. Add to that a naval blockade by the Union against maritime trade with the South. Lincoln did not want international war at the same time as he had civil war. Therefore, diplomacy with Britain was key.

In a message to Congress (sweating in Special Session on July 4, 1861, during the stand-off at Fort Sumter), Lincoln noted that:

 . . . this illegal organization, in the character of confederate States, was already invoking recognition, aid, and intervention from Foreign Powers.

Shelby Foote recounts how Jefferson Davis sent a delegation to both England and France, the Confederacy's best trading partners. He did not give his first nor his second delegation sufficient instructions or sufficient powers to cut deals on their own. Trying to get instruction from Davis via Atlantic ship messages, especially during blockade, limited their ability to see important people or revise their strategies.

As Great Britain was the primary world naval power, they were the best hope of the Confederacy to lift the Union blockade, so they went to London first.

But the South had two other major problems in their diplomacy: one, European mills had all the cotton they needed. They had been watching the U.S move toward conflict for a long time and had stockpiled supply. Second, Great Britain and France had already dealt with their own slavery question from the abolitionist point of view. By the time Manchester mills were hurting for supply, the shrugging 'neutrality' of British and French Foreign Offices had left the South with no political allies and no true diplomatic alliances. (I, pp. 135-137). And the laboring class in England did not approve of slavery, even when their factories were shutting down because of war-related shortages. (Letter, Lincoln to the Workingmen of Manchester, England, January 19, 1863).

Both Britain and France watched the war closely, waiting for an outcome and planning diplomatic measures as needed. By September of 1861, after the Battle of First Manassas, Britain was beginning to think they would have to recognize the CSA. They still wanted to wait and see. France, while more friendly to the Confederacy, had essentially the same attitude. (I, p. 666).

But the war dragged on, and so did blockade. The South's capacity to export continued to fall over time as labor went to war, or food became scarce. In the meantime, English and French manufacturers sought other world economies for cotton production: such as Egypt and India. Cotton was sold from Texas into Mexico, making its way to Europe. And a contraband trade in cotton with the Union began to occur, in exchange for currency and foodstuffs.

Lincoln's simple, consistent avowal that the Confederacy was an insurrection and not a state left other nations in diplomatic stalemate. Then Lincoln's active diplomacy was primarily a market-based diplomacy:

In the end, however, no European nation offered mediation nor extended recognition of the Confederacy. Among the reasons undermining active European intervention were several principal considerations. Economically, there were developments that shifted trade relations to emphasize the North's economic ties with Europe. To begin with, huge cotton exports in 1857-1860 had enabled English manufactures to stockpile inventories that carried them through much of the war. Additionally, new sources of cotton in Egypt and India replaced the southern supply after 1862. Furthermore, the Union became a major consumer of British iron, ships, armaments, and woolen uniforms and blankets, which absorbed the decline in the U.S. market for English cotton textiles. At the same time, crop failures in western Europe in 1861 and 1862 increased European dependence on American grain and flour, making King Corn as powerful as King Cotton.

The South financed its war on cotton futures on the foreign exchange at the same time it diminished its acreage for wartime needs (or had it destroyed during battles and occupation). They also added a (smaller) cotton tariff to finance the war. Eventually, according to Foote, they took over all legal cotton sales to Europe. Is that libertarian? No, it is desperate.

Lincoln financed his country on income tax, bond sales to U.S. citizens, and (less important, as it turned out) with tariffs.

Conclusion

Lincoln refused to consider individual liberty for businesses, states, and plantation owners that did not accord that same liberty to its workers, i.e. the slaves. There are examples of him just moving past the "popular sovereignty" campaigners to expose their fatal weakness. "Popular sovereignty" always masked a heinous lack of freedom for the slaves in the United States. Libertarian arguments founded on popular sovereignty, such as the freedom to run your plantation any darn way you choose, are just the same argument in a different century. Lincoln believed in the sanctity of labor, that it contributed to society, and as such, it must be paid labor.

Lincoln's speeches are peppered with references to agricultural and industrial tools, labor, and processes. He was a man with a wide acquaintance with the elements of industry.  In his Lecture on Discoveries (February 11, 1859), he exults in trade diplomacy, where American railroad engineers go to Russia to consult. He praises the patent system as "adding the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things."

In his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861), Lincoln said that secession would not solve the slavery dispute because of the proximity of borders:

 . . . A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.  . .  Is it possible then to make that intercourse more advantageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before? . . . Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always, and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting; the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you. 

We were perhaps past the notion of friendship at that point, but Lincoln's concerns about border security and continual conflict are valid. He also believed a nation together would have better efficiencies for trade in the long run. In his Annual Message to Congress (December 1, 1862), Lincoln began by talking about our nation's interior regions, and then expanded:

And yet this region has no sea-coast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South Americana and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. But separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets, not, perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

And this is true, wherever a dividing, or boundary line may be fixed.  . . . These outlets, east, west, and south, are indispensable to the well-being of the people inhabiting, and to inhabit, this vast interior region. 

By calling Lincoln in restraint of trade, his detractors ignore the restraint of trade involved in slavery. They posit that two national governments, with two different bureaucracies and extra borders, would have less trade restrictions, and less customs duties, less tariffs and less tax codes.

The truth is, the question of trade restraint needs most to be answered by the South. On the household level, they denied millions of slaves of the chance to participate in a free economy. On the desperation side, their government took over foreign commodity exchange in a way that the North never even contemplated (nor had to). Lincoln's tariff regime constituted no barrier to his trade diplomacy with Europe. And on the reduction of trade barriers question, which is what free markets is all about, the South erected a political border.  This border would have changed the face of commerce and security on our Continent.

Most of all, Lincoln had heard the first generation of all of these arguments against him in his lifetime. He rejected and prevailed over them all.

References:

Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865. Library of America. Available.

Civil War Home, using the Macmillan Information New Encyclopedia, linked above and here.

Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume I. Random House. Available.

The Miller Center, University of Virginia: Abraham Lincoln, part 5, linked above and here.

The Union Pacific Railroad, Lincoln and the Railroad, here. Is that restraint of trade?

William Wunder, The American System of National Republican and Whig Henry Clay, above and here.

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• Eric Ehrmann: Johnny Reb Was a Globalist (huffingtonpost.com) This article has a slightly different slant on Southern lack of cotton production, which is interesting.