Basic Choices

Leave it to the dolphins to teach us new insights!

2012-02-13T20:09:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, my wife and I journeyed to Clearwater, Florida, to visit a dolphin aquarium. At the aquarium, the staff presented a show in which trained dolphins performed.

During the performance, the announced stated that the trainers always used positive reinforcement to get the dolphins to learn tricks. They never used negative reinforcement. If the dolphin did not do as expected, the trainers ignored it.

This really caught the attention of this writer - because of our study of Reinforcement Theory our course.

Your humble servant here grew up on the concept of "carrots" and "sticks" to motivate people. He never really thought about ignoring negative behavior in a neutral sort of way as a valid, reliable technique.

Perhaps the dolphins know something we do not. In any case, it is worth mulling. I hope this finds you in good healthy, spirits.

My wife and I are enjoying being "snow birds" from Wisconsin here in Florida until April. Dr. Rux, Crystal River, Florida

Tempered Thoughts

2012-02-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

Pastor, thank you for your seasoned thoughts, insights. Again, pardons please for not replying sooner. Here are some thoughts on your thoughts. Most will overlap.

One, Christians built America, and there is no reason why we should give it up, surrender it. In fact, there is every reason for us to hold fast to our heritage. If we lose it, our country will sink into an abyss, if it is not already there.

The world will pay a price also for the loss of the "beacon on a hill" to borrow Reagan who cited the Puritans.

Two, I agree. We need folks at the helm who are seasoned, know "where the bodies are buried," and grasp our place in history. Gingrich, as you likely know, has a Ph.D. in history. This helps him to put issues into perspective. However, I remain a political "atheist." I no longer put my trust in men. I pray for God's will and listen for Him.

Three, from a secular viewpoint, we are facing a crisis of an overly centralized system. Think centralized factory model. The new model is decentralized, the logic of the Internet. We have come full circle. Why should Washington and Wall Street impact how we live in Horicon, Crystal River, Mt. Horeb, etc.? Local control again.

Benjamin Disraeli, British PM, is one of my heroes. Here is why. A man once asked him, "Sir, what is your policy?" Disraeli's answer, "England, all of it, is my policy." Where is the leader who says, "America, all of it, is my policy?" I will gladly follow such a person. America is worth having, the America in which we reached manhood.

Toward the end of his life, a biographer asked John Adams, second President of the Republic, sadly an empire now, why Adams backed parting from England. The answer Adams gave was one word: "Township." When London abolished township government, local control, in North America, which we invented, it was the last straw. This writer stands with Adams. Local control, the opposite of Industrial Age centralism, is our heritage. Restore it.

There, you have it. Disraeli and Adams. They are my guiding stars. I hope we are not at the point that Rome reached, when its Republic collapsed into Empire. I read Cicero in Latin at Concordia. But I do not want his fate.

I am pondering teaching people how to lobby, how to fight back. Perhaps there is a way we can synerigize here. I think giving people a toolbox now beats electoral politics as an investment of time, talent. It is one way to go.

The key is God's will. If we seek and follow it, we cannot go wrong. I am telling you nothing you do not know.

Those are my thoughts on your thoughts. It is bedtime now for your old friend. Paul

Paul Rux, Ph.D.
Imagineer
www.paulrux.net

Basic Choices About Business Profits

2012-02-01T12:58:00.000-08:00

Michael, here are two more thoughts, frameworks, points of view, part of which I have shared already:

1. Peter F. Drucker: Business Ethics: The purpose of business is to create jobs, for jobs enable people to live, and people have a right to live. Or as Russell Kirk put it, the survival of the human race trumps all other considerations.

2. Joseph Schumpeter: Creative Destruction: Profits exists as a measure of efficiency and as a source of resources for innovation. Profits do not exist for financial speculations in casino stock markets. The Germans grasp this, with good reason. They reinvest profits into improved equipment and training on a continuous basis, and the result is a country that A) has the highest export business in the world in terms of absolute value, and B) has a high-wage, high-benefit workforce at the same time! You do not have to be a Third World country to compete. Germany is proof. Let's talk about the German example, model. Germany learned from its history. We have not. As the old saying goes, winners learn nothing. The losers learn from the pain of losing, and this pain forces them to rethink why they lost.
My German information comes from first-hand observations by David McWilliams, Ireland's top business writer. www.davidmcwilliams.ie

3. We tend to frame the debate into simplistic alternatives: wide-open Darwinian looting or overwhelming governmental control of everything. Rather, it is a balance. I hope you can use these three viewpoints. Your humble servant here has come to accept them as his own.

Good luck with your projects. Keep me posted.

Paul

Crystal River, Citrus County, Flordia

2012-01-30T20:20:00.001-08:00

Walter, before going to bed, as you asked, here are some insights, thoughts about Crystal River, Florida.

Safe - The most important dimension of this area is safety. Check out the movie Rosewood, which is based on a real event. In 1922, a white woman in a nearby town of Rosewood accused a black man of raping her. Rosewood was a community of blacks, many middle class. When the whites heard the charges they went to Rosewood, burned it down, and killed 145 blacks in the process. There is an undercurrent of this penchance for racial violence here yet, but the result is the gangster class is afraid to come here. You see few blacks, period. Those who appear, as a rule, e.g. chamber of commerce events, which I have attended, are solid middle class.

Relaxed - We are in a rural area, although it is on the Gulf of Mexico seacoast. The result is a soft, gentle, friendly way of life, very similar to Mt. Horeb, Wiarton, Barrie, etc. It is great! People are not afraid of each other here. It is easy to be friendly without scaring the hell out of people. I go to the local Rotary Club meetings, since I am now a member in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, and folks are there from literally all parts of the U.S. - and Canada, including Guelph! This provides a large population of retired folks and "snow birds," like Jane and me, who seek relief from the cold up North. The intellectual, skill base of this area is immense. You do not hear the Southern drawl at all. Most folks are from the North, and this adds to a very pleasant mix of different people.

Moral - The number of churches, often fundamentalist, is impressive. It adds to the comfort level of the area, for the folks here know right from wrong overall. This spills over into their dealings with others, including outsiders. It also offsets the "dark side" of the undercurrent of potential violence, racial in particular, in the area's history. Frankly, I love it. Here are the values that formed this once-great countrty. If it recovers them, it will heal itself. Most of these churches run thrift stores and food pantires to help the 10-11% of the population here in need. We do not need Washington or Wall Street. This echoes my own local control value, tradition.

Beautiful - The natural beauty here is breathtaking. We have a federal bird sanctuary literally across the road from us, and it features over 200 species! We have over 300 manatees coming in from the Gulf into the warm river water around us. People routinely stand on shorelines bridges to observe them. Overall, there is no litter, garbage, and the beaches are clean, restful, and yes, safe. I cannot stress safety enough. It is the American in me. This writer is fed up with catering to a parasitic under-class - especially its predatory behavior on the very people who pay the welfare for its survival. So, I have come full circle. Safety coupled with natural beauty is a rare combination - at least in this Republic. Jane and I plan to become "regular" snow birds here. We frankly love the area, its people, its culture. Moreover, we do not have urban cost of living like a Tampa, 70 miles nearby. The area is suffering from the economic downturn here, but it is taking steps to grow new jobs here. When they heard I taught business, the chamber was excited and wanted me to return. I want to help out.

There, in a nutshell, is a quick "boots-on-the-ground" analysis of Crystal River, Florida and Citrus County, which is the county in which Crystal River is. The most important dimension is its moral dimension. As Russell Kirk, the late American philosopher taught, moral foundation must come first. Thank God, this area has it big time.

There, I must go to bed now. If you come South to the US from Canada, come to Crystal River, Citrus County

Paul

So what's the use of our abuse?

2012-01-30T17:04:00.001-08:00

Walter, think Plato, Aristotle. Plato wrote his Laws and Republic in response to the decay of his own society. Aristotle wrote his Politics for the same reason. Both, in effect, were desperate to reverse the degeneration of their homeland, Athens. They suffered similar emotional pain to ours; they could not reverse the decay. Enter the Macedonians and later the Romans. Nothing has changed since then. Classical study provides comforts like this.

"So what's the use of my abuse?

The world will run around the sun,

As it has done since time begun.

So what's the use of my abuse?"

- James Stephens, Irish Poet, Writer

The challenge is to stand clear of the debris when,as the system comes crashing down. Think Ireland, land of saints and scholars, during the dark and middle ages. It has been done, and it can be done again.

Paul

Basic Choice Crossroads

2011-12-22T19:05:00.000-08:00

Walter, Dick Morris, President Clinton’s political strategist, until Morris got caught with a hooker, wrote a book called eVote. In it he talks about information (true), misinformation (half-true through ignorance, oversight), and disinformation (purposely false, misleading). He points out that survival today depends in large part on our ability to distinguish among them, for we base our decisions, actions on what we know, or think we know. He restates your point here, and vice versa.

I just finished Mark Steyn’s After America (2011). In it he argues, that decline is one thing; fall is another. Societies go into declines, as did Rome, but its fall was rather abrupt when barbarians stormed the city. He predicts something like that is at work right now, a decline, and suddenly, an abrupt, surprise fall. What your humble servant here sees is the crack up of the now overly-centralized industrial approach to systems, e.g. education, economics, politics, etc. Steyn makes the same argument.

Morris by the way argues that the Internet, as it is now, allows us to bypass these co-opted, centralized systems.

In other words, decentralization will replace the present outmoded, dysfunctional centralization – Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” here – get the old off the road to make way for the new. We cannot save these centralized systems from themselves; we are best engaged with nurturing our own peace of mind, encouraging entrepreneurship to plant new decentralized seeds, and preserving the best traditions given to us for tomorrow, cf. the medieval monks.

I look at people around me, and on the whole, I see good people. They do not deserve to be abused. I am simply doing what I can to soften, remove the abuse.

I am now reading a fab study of the Copperheads, the anti-war Northerners. What is striking is how many of them anticipate the same arguments today, here, e.g. the preservation of some semblance of constitutional government. They also opposed over-centralization; they even proposed a third country – US, Confederates, and the Northwest Confederation of the Great Lakes States.

We are going to experience, at least here, the same stresses, as Celente argues, toward secession that once drove the agenda here. Call it secession, call it local control, call it decentralization, but it will be resistance to the over-centralized systems that in the US are bleeding us to death on many levels.

Thank God every day you are in Canada. You are not at war. You do not have vampires in charge of your economy. You do not have a parasitic under-class. Your economy is robust. You do not have people carrying concealed weapons all over the place. You are not polarized as are people here, more and more, which is frightening, for it recalls the Copperheads and the dynamics of the US Civil War. We do not need to repeat some variation on that sad story; at the present rate, we are risking institutional failure; what flows from it could be ugly.

However, God is good. We shall always be disappointed if we put our trust in men, human institutions, in the final analysis. We are off to Amish / Mennonite country in Eastern Ohio next week for several days en route to Florida. They offer a model, which we have discussed before, about how to be in but not of the world. Amen. Amen. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.

The future of taxation.

2011-12-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

Jessica, your humble servant here once spent 2.5 months in Greece, which is close to Italy in geography and mindset.

At that time 1/3 of the Greek economy was "off the books" in cash transaction! The people simply could not, would not pay the huge taxes on them.

Frankly, this writer hopes the "off-the-books" cash economy in Italy continues, and in Greece too. We are heading down the same path.

Thoughts on the US Postal Service

2011-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

Cornelia, according to the information your humble servant has received from his local postal workers, the Congress, government of this country took the $5 billion profit from the USPS and applied it to bank bailouts and oil wars.

In fact, the USPS has been operating in the black, at a profit. It is the politicians who have raided this surplus and then turn around and accuse the USPS of being an economic negative.

Apply the same logic to Social Security and Medicare. The Congress, government of this country raided these funds too for the same reasons - bail out Wall Street and fund oil wars overseas.

The concern of this writer is the job security of the decent persons who work hard day in and out at our local post office. It is sad, sad, sad.

Thoughts on the Passing of My Father-in-Law

2011-11-30T21:18:00.000-08:00

Walter, you have the same sense of our times as do I. In simplest terms, we are lamenting the passing of a set of values that my father-in-law embodied and lived.
He is physically gone; his spirit, his honor, his courage of conviction, his spirit are very much alive.

Jane also talks about the “Greatest Generation” – its values – and how her father – and mother – as did my parents – lived through tough times and retained humane, decent, healthy values. We have lost those values that matter most and undergird the survival of the human race.

As we approach the funeral, what matters now is that his formal departure does not disparage his life of honor as siblings fight with each other for various reasons.

The late historian Barbara Tuchman said it simply. We will regain our health when we restore the concept of honor to our affairs. Honor is defined as the respect of good people. We sadly, badly need to restore honor as a driving value in our affairs – as well as the basic religious values that grew our civilization.

We shall see. It may be too late, but as the late philosopher Russell Kirk observed, nothing is ever won or lost forever.

Yes, the human body decays, but the human spirit is made of stronger “stuff,” as the Bible teaches. We are indeed made in the “image of God,” and when we are true to this, our spirits soar and all they touch with them.

The funeral for my father-in-law is a celebration of the human spirit. I thank him for this gift of example, which I plan to follow. Thank you for your kind words.

Paul

The Statistics of Ethics

2011-11-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

Assignment 4.1. The statistics of ethics.

Stephanie, the laws of statistics operate in our universe. It goes like this.

You break the rules, ethics, laws and get away with it over and over. In other words, every "flip" of the "coin" gives you a "heads."

But we know that in reality there is also statistically a time when the "flip of the coin" will result in "tails." In other words, sooner or later you will make a mistake and get caught.

Northwest Illinois Faces the Basics

2011-11-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

Dr. Raftery, today I took a drive through my old stomping grounds, NW Illinois. What struck me was the deterioration in the economy.

The town where I lived, Warren (population 1600), for seven years, 1981-1988, is moving toward becoming a ghost town. The small downtown is even smaller – with scores of empty buildings now. The houses lack upkeep, e.g. paint.

What really jumped out at your humble servant here were the protest signs! There were, for the first time ever, in my memory, hand-painted protest signs against agri-business gobbling up more small operators, against real estate speculators snapping up farmland, and a protest against the Galena State Bank for foreclosing on a veteran. Plus, my friend’s booming real estate business is now closed; he was not home for me to get an update on why. You get the picture.

It is the first sign of populism that mirrors the Wall Street Occupy.

Wall-Mart was busy outside Galena, but the people looked rough, and the clerks seemed to be persons who had jobs elsewhere at one time, for they were older, 40ish.It was a real eye-opener about the deterioration, dislocation, desperation growing out there.

Mt. Horeb is buffered yet because of its proximity to state offices and civil service commuters from here. Thank God I am in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin near Madison.

This weekend’s drive mirrored what I saw last weekend in my hometown, Portage, Wisconsin, but the dislocation in NW Illinois is even worse. We are moving into uncharted waters, and land is not yet in sight. Take care.

You Cannot Go Home Again

2011-11-14T11:42:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I took a drive to my old hometown of Portage, Wisconsin. It was a shocker, for the town has declined visibly.

At the Kwik-Trip I briefly visited with a young clerk, who said he moved there from Sun Prairie at age 3. He stated that the town has become “rougher.” I concurred.

The key is lack of jobs. The “Rust Belt” has caught up with the town. Gone are the blue-collar jobs that underwrote a healthy lower middle class, blue collars, and a vibrant middle class, white collars (in which my parents were).

I left with a realization that my links to the town are now gone, for change has happened. What was no longer exists, except in my memories.

I came also to realize that I now, thankfully, live in Mt. Horeb which is miles ahead of Portage, is economically sound, vibrant, and feeding off the nearby high-tech, billion-dollar Epic medical software applications in Verona.

Also, high-teach, bio-teach UW research park 2 is slated to take root at Junction Road, which is 20 miles from Mt. Horeb. Its prosperity, the economy of the future again, not the gone-forever rust belt cheap labor manufacturing, the stuff of old Portage, is rooted in information systems and biotech systems.

These are the engines of the coming new economy of the 21st century.

In other words, I have come full circle. I started in Portage, Wisconsin, a vibrant community of the 20th-century industrial economy, and am now ending in Mt. Horeb,Wisconsin a vibrant community of the 21st-century knowledge economy.

As I drove back from Portage to Mt. Horeb, a distance of sixty miles by car, I realized that I was in fact driving home on many levels.

Speed of Information in Human Affairs

2011-11-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

Dave, Gerald Celente has it right. The blood-sucking vampires will drag us into a wider war to deflect domestic upheaval over the domestic economic terrorism here.

The Pennsylvania State, Joe Paterno scandal is further proof we are descending into institutional failure. One after another the institutions of this country display a total disregard for others and focus on their own money-making, regardless of the toxins this greed produces.

We are echoing the later stages of Rome when the intelligent people withdrew, for they saw there is, was no way to reverse course, and why sacrifice whatever peace of mind you can have here for a lost cause?

I have often thought about the speed of communication, the time factor, in social, political, cultural, economic dynamics. At one time it took weeks to send messages over Roman roads. Today it is instant. Therefore whatever processes of integration, disintegration, growth, collapse occur at ever-faster speeds today than when it took literally weeks for news to reach Williamsburg, Virginia from London, England.

We are living the new high-speed processes of social, cultural, political, economic dynamics because of communication speed. It took Rome two centuries roughly to collapse. We are compressing the collapse time faster and faster.

I do not want to waste my limited time on this earth on lost causes any longer. Yes, I believe in practicing kindness, but for me it will be one-to-one, local, immediate, with a human face on it and immediate accountability.

Forget the institutions and their self-serving humanitarianism. They are failing because they are hopelessly corrupt. There, I finally got that off my chest.

Impending Institutional Failure Because of Political Malpractice

2011-11-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

Bennamiah, yes, politics is a crucial factor in change management.

Today, for example, your humble servant here visited the Wisconsin state capitol, a 45-minute drive from where he is typing this. He made three stops to encourage three legislators who have befriended him and are worthy of and in need of support right now.

What surprised this writer was his complete lack of interest at this point in politics. Yes, this writer has lobbied government, literally; he more and more sees politics as a barrier to progress. This is sad.

However, it is an intuitive conclusion, and as a result, he is going to spend more time working on nonpolitical agendas, e.g. Rotary International, to further improvements.

Even more frightening is this writer's sense that we are facing institutional failure due to politics as mal-practiced today.

Words of Wisdom from Friend Walter

2011-11-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

Hi Paul,
Some things for you to ponder as you drift off.

Life requires that we play the game before we know the rules.
Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing.
Time-saving is useful only if you dislike what you are doing.
A church is an echo chamber of professed beliefs.
Philosophy is finding words for common sense: what is and what should be.
People say yes to garbage because they haven’t tasted food.
The band played live Muzak.

Walter

Organic Versus Contractual

2011-11-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

Walter, if I may, there are basically two ways to view society.

One is “organic,” and the other is “contractual.”

Organic uses the human body as an analogy. We are in the final analysis dependent on each other, or as Aristotle pointed out, we are “social animals.” For example, a baby, child is dependent on elders to survive; if children do not survive, the human race stops. Russell Kirk underscored this in his writings, as did Edmund Burke, two of my all-time favorites.

The “contractual” approach simply says we can “take the money and run” – regardless of the damage we do to the overall system. It pits the individual, isolated, against the group, society. Of course, we do not want to live in an ant colony, faceless creatures.

We need balance – between individual and group. Sadly, this balance is out of whack because of the mindless greed that has overtaken us. If we want to survive, we need to restore the balance.

In short, both of us favor the “organic” approach, reality. It would be great if there were more of us of the same, similar persuasion.

This quick jot in effect defines the difference between a Libertarian (contractual) and a Conservative (organic) at their cores. We confuse the two in North America, especially in the USA. What passes for Conservatism is simply rampant Libertarianism. We can witness the damage. Paul

Seneca the Stoic

2011-10-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Here are two tags for you from Mark Steyn’s After America, a very cleverly written book.

The Brokest Generation

The Gloomers

Nassim Nicholas Taleb reminds us of the Roman Stoic Seneca, who advised:

“The wise man withdraws from corrupt systems and lets them self-destruct.”

This is the thinking, realization of your humble servant here.

Or as Machiavelli put it, “Be mad with the many, but think with the few.”

For the record, Nero forced Seneca to commit suicide. Seneca did not follow his own advice to keep a low profile. He was an advisor to Nero, who was paranoid of smart folks, who just might out-think him. Bingo. Stalin was the same way.

Think Noah’s Ark – escape route – when the system comes falling down on itself.

God I love those old-timers like Seneca, minus the suicide part, of course.

Paul

The Bed of Procrustes

2011-10-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

Exactly! Same as it ever was. There is no heaven on earth.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, my Black Swan guru, observes that the Enlightenment gave us a trap. Rational is not empirical. We can reason all kinds of ideas, idealism (Plato here), but it collides with empirical reality (Aristotle here).

This is the great frustration of our time. We have people peddling ideas galore, fixes, social engineering schema, and in the end, they are simply ideas – often without bases in empirical reality. Facts and thoughts are not one and the same.

The Enlightenment has trapped us. Taleb makes this point in his latest book of “saying,” published in 2010, The Bed of Procrustes.

Procrustes is a bad guy out of Greek mythology. He had a sick hobby – capturing travelers and then tying them to his bed.

If the victims were longer than the bed, he hacked them down to fit the size of his bed. If they were shorter than the bed, he stretched them to match the size of his bed.

The bed Taleb says represents our ideological preconceptions. We chop, cut or stretch the facts to fit our preconceived ideological biases, the bed in the story.

We do violence to the facts in pursuit of fixation on ideas – the bane of the Enlightenment. Of course, the bed is just a part of reality, one variable in it.

The Greeks saw things so clearly. Then came the Muddle Ages in which we now live.

Message to Sister Renay from Brother Paul

2011-10-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

Renay, this is great, and thank you for sharing it with us! Let me frame this a bit for you. You are saying this already in your introduction, but I will boil it down into a two word summary. It comes from Chinese Taoism: “Hidden People.”

Taoism holds that the most important people in the world are those who remain hidden from the history books, mass media, political stage, etc. Rather, they are those persons who quietly do good when and where they are, and the sanity and health of society hinges on them – not the fakes, phonies, and frauds on the cable network news and elsewhere out there.

In effect, your introduction restates the concept of “Hidden People.” I share this, for it fits, and it may be of help to you in framing, shaping your writing. In fact, your brother here would like to write a memoir called “Hidden People” in which he would celebrate, as do you here, the goodness of those persons who added good to his life and the lives of those around him as he journeyed through this world.

We share the same perspectives, values, insights here. Celebrate the God-given goodness of such persons as you do here, for God is good. Your writing reminds us of this.

I take comfort in this Taoist insight for it means we do not have to wear ourselves out trying to be “big shots” in order to have purpose, value, worth. Keep it coming.

Today in the bank parking lot.

2011-10-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Today in the parking lot next to my bank branch in Madison, Wisconsin, a woman surprised your humble servant here. We were the only two persons in the lot; both of us had just left the bank branch; she was a few steps ahead of this writer.

As we exited into the fabulous sunny fall weather and stunning display of color in the leaves of the trees around the parking lot, she said, "Wouldn't it be great if we could put some of this into a bottle for later?" This writer agreed; in a few seconds the woman revealed what was really on her mind.

It was her son, a combat Marine in Afghanistan. The woman had come to the bank to visit with another mother who has a son in combat in Afghanistan also. The two in effect were a support group for each other. Sadly, the other woman was not there, but I was.

This mother shared her anguish with this writer for the next thirty minutes. For thirty nonstop minutes she shared her fears, hopes, pain with this writer. It brought home good and hard the true costs of war for those who must send family members to the front.

Of course the Chicken Hawks who send them do not go to war. Their kids do not go to war. They send the son of this mother - and others like her - instead. Nobody has the moral right to ask, tell another person to do what he or she has not done, will not do themselves, or have their family members do.

As she wound down, this writer asked, "What is your son's name." "Andrew, "she said. Your humble servant here replied, "I shall pray for Andrew. I shall pray for God's will."

This calmed her, but it did not calm this writer. He left the parking lot with a mixture of sadness and anger because of this mother's pain - and the pain of all of the other mothers in our great country because their children are in "harm's way" because some banker, political hack, military-industrial complex gangster, or oil company stooge sent them there to make money. The true cost of the oil wars in the Middle East are not trillions of dollars. It is the anguish of a mother in a bank parking lots for her son doing his duty in a land far away because the gangsters in Washington and vampires on Wall Street have sent him there.

America is better than this.

The Iron Law of Incrementalism Rules

2011-09-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

Terry, the ideal of applied learning, applied research is to "bridge" theory in concrete practice. You do this here very well. You define the terms, or theory, and then you detail how to implement them in the workplace. It works.

Your humble servant here read an assigned research article for his Ph.D. on incrementalism in public policy, politics. For some reason, the author's name escapes this writer right now.

Howevere, the author contrasted incremental change with "root-branch" change, deep top-to-bottom overhaul, or what we would call transformational change today.

Incrementalism triumps as a rule because in Newtonian physics "for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction." This creates gridlock or allows only incremental changes, a nibble here, a nibble there.

The Internet on the other hand is a transformational, root-branch change, and it is reorganizing how we live and work from top to bottom, unless we are Amish or Mennonites who live happily beyond, outside the modern technological structures that upend us.

Your humble servant here just experienced such a "reaction" by a state agency in Wisconsin against his proposal to improve management information systems in the criminal justice and health agencies.

Forget logic. Turf rules as a rule.

Leadership: We talk most about what we do not have.

2011-08-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

Gehan, this is excellent. You carefully define the key concepts for the reader before analyzing them. Your analysis, moreover, includes a first-class comparison of two key concepts about leadership. You do this very well. Comparison is a great way to learn.

Americans are obsessed with leadership. People talk most about what they do not have! If you are well fed, you do not as a rule talk about food. The constant jabbering about leadership - required yes at times - in American society gets boring, especially when we are watching the dissolution of the highly centralized factory model for organizations, in which the general, CEO at the top, led.

Today, we more and more see enterprise as self-organizing systems in which each person leads! You have done nothing wrong here. You have proved your mastery of key concepts in this basic field, but do not let it trap you. Good job! Dr. Rux

Reply to Eric Margolis Essay on Future Naval Warfare

2011-08-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

Eric, once again, you “hit the nail on the head.”

Sir John Keegan, the esteemed military historian in the UK, sadly ailing, wrote an excellent study of naval warfare, which you may already know, The Price of Admiralty.

In it, he argues exactly what you state in your superb essay on the decline of US naval power. Keegan wrote in his last chapter that the naval warfare of the future would be submarines, and as a result, the “hunter” submarine that would track and destroy other submarines would be the key naval weapon of the future.

He projected naval battles would be literally fought underwater because of the satellite and radar tracking potential that could target missiles at surface ships.

Of course, the military-industrial complex in the US cannot make gazillions of dollars from “hunter” submarines as it does from the now obsolete aircraft carriers.

Once again, the winners never learn anything.

We are getting ready to refight World War II. The French Maginot Line was in place to refight World War I. We know what happened to the Maginot Line.

Thank you again for your superb analysis and writing. Keep it coming!

Entitlement-minded, lazy Americans

2011-08-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

Ursula, bingo, you "hit the nail on the head."

Too many Americans have a lousy work ethic, or none at all.

As you observe, often they do not bother to show up to work.

Why should we blame business then for outsourcing production to countries with strong work ethics?

Some of the economic damage in this country has been by this country to itself because it has become lazy, undisciplined, entitlement-minded on too many levels.

The coming economic crash is going to provide a huge reality check for lots of Americans. They are not worth what they think they are.

Who is winning and losing?

2011-08-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

Mike, think Noah’s Ark. We all need our version of it today.

Meanwhile we do what we can. The winners never learn.

The losers unlearn what caused them to lose in order to bounce back. Germany and World Wars I and II are case studies of this.

Apply the same logic to economics.

As the Taoists say, who is winning and losing depends on what point in time you ask the question.

Sometimes, the winners of the moment are actually setting themselves up for future failure. The USA post World War II is a prime case study. Peace.

The Coming Post-Human Age

2011-08-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Todd, yes, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is not yet able to cope with the complexity of reality.

However, your humble servant is reading Mark Steyn's 2011 book After America. In it he provides scenarios about the future, 2020-2050.

He terms the future the "post-human" age because AI-based robotics will more and more replace people.

His argument is demographics show a declining birth rate as the population ages. To provide the caregivers for the seniors will require automation of such care.

Enter AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven robots! Imagine!

Dress for Success or Failure

2011-08-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

Kevin, in particular, your section on dress below jumped out at your humble servant here. Dress, how we look, has a direct impact on how we perform, behave.

The Japanese stress this with this method. Before a task starts, the supervisor makes sure the physical environment is in order, e.g. tools, which also includes the appropriate dress of the worker. How we dress reflects, drives how we act.

Look at the slovenly dress of students in our public high schools today; it is not hard to grasp why we are in trouble with our global business competitors.

Dress Code from the Real World:

Employees are expected to maintain the highest standards of personal cleanliness and present a neat, professional appearance at all times.

Our customers' satisfaction represents the most important and challenging aspect of our business. Whether or not your job responsibilities place you in direct customer contact, you represent the company with your appearance as well as your actions.

The properly attired individual helps to create a favorable image for the company, to the public and fellow employees.

Different business units may provide additional detail on dress code requirements based on customer input and type of work. Please contact your Project Leader for details on your individual unit's requirements.

The Ethics of Small Towns

2011-08-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

Ronald, your humble servant here lives in a small town.

It has one main street. If somebody cheats another person, the somebody will meet the other person sooner or later again on the main street.

Moreover, the cheated person will spread the word about the cheat. Statistically, each person can influence 250 others toward or against us. In a small town, this 25can bring a quick end to the cheat - and other unethical, dishonorable, boorish people.

Scale has its merits as a force for ethical behavior. In fact, your humble servant prefers small towns for this reason, among others.

Aristotle calculated the ideal size of a town would be 6,000 citizens in order to exert this kind of ethical discipline. He got that right!

Beyond Propaganda Stereotypes to Our Common Humanity

2011-08-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

Kristina, your humble servant here did his doctoral work with students from the Middle East. He in fact became good friends with two of them, from Baghdad, Iraq, to be exact.

Both of them really put women on a pedestal. They really valued women who had dignity. For instance, one of them once told how his father was arrested and imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, and how his mother called the family together to keep them together. She took over leadership, and every day she went to a spot where her husband could see her to buck up his spirits.

My friend said he wanted to marry a woman just like his mother. Who can blame him? He now lives in San Diego, after earning his Ph.D. in water chemistry from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The Iraqi exile community there helped him find such a woman, which is the last this writer has heard of him.

The other Iraqi earned his Ph.D. in soil sciences. Both wanted to return to Iraq to help boost agricultural production there, but when the wars came, they stayed here. Who can blame them?

Your humble servant here often wondered about the Iraqi people under our bombings.

The average person wants to eat, have clothing, housing. You get the picture. That was why these two students from Iraq were here.

Now we get the benefit of their talents. It is sad.

The First Reality

2011-08-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

Jon, in fact, no pun intended, we must start with morals as the first "reality," as you point out so well here.

Morals shape how we see facts, process them, and sadly we have become more and more amoral as a society. If we are not careful, it will destroy us.

As the late American philosopher Russell Kirk put it, without moral order first there can be no other order. Hopefully we have in place our traditional morals. The crazy stuff is not working, and it is toxic.

Facts Fictions Foibles

2011-08-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

Ronald, your humble servant here just finished reading the latest book, The Bed of Procrustes (2010, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of the famed bestseller [i]The Black Swan.[/i]

In it he argues forcefully, again, that humans are prone to try to fit facts into preconceived ideas of how things work, ought to be.

Often they mutilate, twist, ignore the facts to achieve this.

Over the weekend, your humble servant here attended a local political event (he lives in an exurb of Madison, Wisconsin, our state capitol) here, and again he was amazed at how people select facts, data to confirm what they want to believe.

It is scary, sad.

Making Decisions on Time

2011-08-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

Misty, yes, time, time frames, timelines, time pressures, etc. count for a great deal, especially today.

This is why cognitive psychologists more and more argue that intuition rather than prolonged rational analysis counts more today than ever.

Intuition is the sum of our conscious and subconscious learning over time.

Rational analysis only deals with conscious knowledge, not "tacit" knowledge from experience.

Yes, time is a crucial factor in human affairs today more than ever.

A Canadian Analysis of Multikulti Riots in UK and USA

2011-08-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hi Paul,

I can't comment on the specifics of local situations, but it appears to me that the USA was much like this 100 years ago and 150 years ago. The difference was that the frontier absorbed the crazies, criminals and malcontents.The frontier is now next door. In our lifetime there were still lynchings of blacks in many places in the USA and witches were still put on trial in Britain in the 20th century. These atavistic tendencies will always be there. The essence of civilization is to channel destructive tendencies into creative ones. In rare instances, repression is required to prevent anarchy, but like war it never solves anything.

The problem with elective democracy is that too many people can be manipulated for special interests and individual gain, but we still have to try to elevate the level of analysis and discussion. I was very disappointed in the British police and politicians in their response to the riots. Police in their regalia don't frighten anyone anymore and politicians talking like angry parents are not going to solve systemic issues. If you have problems of disorder you act decisively at clearly identified targets with no rhetoric. When you have things under control, you can start the discussion.

The USA in its ineffectual war on drugs and incarceration policy has so distorted questions of social justice and hidden the moral bankruptcy of the political leaders- the emperor has no clothes. There is so much good data on crime, where it takes place and how it could be dealt with better. It has been ignored for decades and instead policing and jail has been used as a blunt instrument when surgery was needed. We(especially you) are reaping the whirlwind.

Having said all this, social media are exacerbating contagion and we have not learned how to deal with it effectively. A few criminals and troublemakers can quickly expand their influence just as some tea partyers can advocate the destruction of society through ignorant chatter.

I had a good chat with my broker today about the technical fundamentals in the present global financial panic. Businessmen have to deal with one bottom line so I think they will sort things out. Society has many bottom lines making things much more complex. I truly believe that the best measure of a society is how they treat their most unfortunate citizens. The underclass does not want to be an underclass. Just as in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa...the un/under-employed under 25 males are going set the social agenda if we don't get things right. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Greece, London... forget the wars- are in flames. If the financial crisis merges with the social discontent it will only take a spark and a few leaders to create a world revolution.

I was partly shaped by the last big revolution, so 100 years from now someone may talk about the impact of the first world revolution that' s happening. We can hope to shape it and minimize the damage to innocent people.

We're off to Winnipeg to spend time with my siblings and visit some historical points of interest. I hope you have things to enjoy while events create murky waters around us.
walter

The Pareto Principle and the Vital Few

2011-08-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

Your humble servant here loves the Pareto Principle of 80-20. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. 20% of the people give 80% of the gifts.

You get the picture. Pareto helps us to discover the "vital few," the key leverage points, crucial variables in play.

You humble servant here has done fund raising. He prefers to apply 80-20 to it.

Find the crucial 20, and you get 80% of your funds.

Forget the 80 who will give you only 20%. In fund raising we call this approach "special gifts."

Forget the mass democratic campaigns. Focus on aristocratic givers!

Friction Friction Everywhere

2011-08-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey, yes, "friction" is a great concept.

Karl von Clausewitz, the great Prussian general at the time of the Napoleonic wars, wrote the classic [i]On War[/i], the first modern study of warfare. In it he distinctly analyzes "friction."

He puts it this way. The commander orders an attack at 9 a.m. However, his message does not get there until 8:45 a.m., and the bugler who signals the attack in the old days here cannot find his bugle!

You get the picture. From the time of giving an order to having it executed all kinds of variables intervene, interfere to slow down, distort the planned action.

Yes, friction abounds in all human affairs, not just military operations.

Plan for it.

The stock market meltdown and coming wars in 2011

2011-08-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

Sean, in May, my wife and I visited New York City. A Palestinian immigrant told me that hundreds of millions of dollars were coming into the area as Arabs from Syria and Saudi Arabia were immigrating to New York City to avoid the coming wars in the Middle East.

Moreover, they were immediately investing this money into real estate rentals, and not keeping it in any kind of stock, bond, currency, etc.

The stock market is a gambling casino. The real economy that actually produces things stands separate from it, and we are going to learn the difference good and hard.

The newcomers to New York City, the "smart money," understand this and are bailing out of the fake economy into the real economy as fast as they can.

Also, we ought to pay attention to their fear of coming wars there for going to war is one way governments solve economic depressions.

Elijah at Mt. Horeb

2011-08-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

Today at mass, our deacon read the story about how God asked the Prophet Elijah to come to Mt. Horeb to receive a mission from God.

This writer lives in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, and, of course, the mention of Mt. Horeb in the Old Testament caught his attention good and hard!

In fact, this writer wondered how much longer biblical names like Mt. Horeb can survive in this country given the mounting attacks on Christianity by atheists.

The reading told how Elijah waited in a cave for God. An earthquake shook the cave, but God was not in the earthquake. A fierce storm howled outside the cave, but God was not in the storm.

Then, it became quiet, and Elijah heard God's "still, small voice."

This Old Testament reading described our situation today.

The storms of today's mass media advertising and propaganda howl around us. Sadly, too often, we confuse their shouting with the "still, small, voice" of God in us.

Our society and economy quake from massive greed on Wall Street and in Washington. Sadly, we have let them shake our world apart because we put our Faith in them.

We, however, can still find and keep our balance despite the swirling chaos and nonstop shouting around us.

Like Elijah, we need to step back into our "caves" and wait to hear God's " still, small voice" in us.

This writer, like Elijah, is literally at another Mt. Horeb waiting for God's mission for him. He is listening for His "still, small voice" to guide him.

Jesus Walks on the Water

2011-08-06T22:33:00.001-07:00

Today, at mass, the deacon read the powerful story of Jesus walking on the water. As a boy, this writer loved a painting of this scene in Divine Savior Hospital, Portage, Wisconsin. For some reason this painting has remained with him over the decades.

The disciples of Jesus were crossing the Sea of Galilee, while Jesus remained behind to pray, when a horrific storm overtook them. They believed they were going to perish; in the middle of their fear, they suddenly saw Jesus walking on the water through the storm toward them!

The disciple Peter, always bold, asked Jesus if Peter could walk on the water with Jesus. Jesus consented and took Peter's hand, but Peter saw a gigantic wave coming at him, became fearful, and began to sink. Peter begged Jesus to save him, which Jesus did.

Jesus also stilled the storm and pointed out the power of Faith to keep us afloat to his disciples - and to us today.

We are all riding the Titanic today in America, for sure. Economic, political, cultural waves hammer our "boat," and we become afraid about what is going to happen next to us.

This event, "the Stilling of the Storm," on the Sea of Galilee centuries ago speaks to us today. If we continue to put our trust in politicians, banksters, degenerate Hollywood culture,and post-modern intellectuals, the storms that buffet our boats will cause us to lose hope.

We put our faith in the wrong things, persons, teachings, and the result is fear about what is going to happen to us, individually and collectively.

With Faith, however, we need not fear the "storms of life" no matter how fiercely they howl at and try to sink us.

Duty or rights: the fork in the road for America

2011-08-04T18:35:00.001-07:00

Jeffrey, thank you for the excellent application of the two theories for this case to this case! Your comment below jumped out at your humble servant here:

"Many people today expect for things to just be handed to them, in life and in their career."

Our society is degenerate, which means, it has declined from its former standard or standards. Your observation above confirms what your humble servant here experiences also.

Duty says there is something bigger than me, you. It asks us to put into the equation.

Rights on the other hand focus on what we get, entitlement, take from the equation.

Rights without duties will destroy us, as it surely is right now.

As the Ancient Chinese Taoists observed over 2,000 years ago, a society focused on rights will destroy itself.

We are watching this process right now; there may be no changing course now.

The costs of psycho-babble in America

2011-08-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Jacob, your humble servant here agrees with you. We need rules. We have let "psycho-babble" blind us to the realities of human nature.

Industrial psychologists (see Working Without a Net) tell us that the average American today does not reach emotional maturity until he or she is age 40!

They are adolescents in emotion, mind, behaviors, etc. and in the real world adolescents require "structure," the better word is discipline, but that is a no-no with the psycho-babble crowd that has distorted our overall sense of social reality.

We are paying dearly for this prolonged American adolescence as employers outsource production, services to youthful populations with high skills and a strong work ethic, which is what built this country.

Until words and concepts like discipline and duty regain central stature, value in American society, we are trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and all the king's horses and all of the king's men could not put him back together again. So it is here, now.

Tony Soprano's America

2011-07-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

Chanel, this is good business, but at another level, it is bad mental health. If people curse you, abuse you, we have in the real world the right to say no, that hurts, stop it.

Sadly, business today dictates that we pretend a happy face at all times. The result is a growing lack of "authenticity" to use a psychological, sociological concept. More and more people must put on an act on their jobs for the reasons you state.

The result is a growing anger under the surface in more and more people. In time, this will reach a boiling point an explode.

See the sociological study "Tony Soprano's America" (2005) for more detail on this trend. Tony of course was a Mafia leader; in the Mafia, pretending is part of the game, the fix. On the surface, Tony was a respectable suburban middle class home owner. Under the surface, he was a capable killer if you got in his way.

This dualism is exactly what our society is building, and professionals call this dualism "lack of authenticity." When will it explode?

Systems Thinking and Taoist Ducks

2011-07-18T22:40:00.001-07:00

W. Edward Deming (1900-1993), the Father of Total Quality Management, observed that we live and work in systems. These systems enable or limit what we can and cannot achieve. Americans increasingly live in totally dysfunctional systems of government, economics, and social values.

The frustration for the individual is that he or she feels totally helpless to reverse the destruction of these systems. The best we can do now as Americans who care about our country is to let the systems destroy themselves, stand aside as best we can, preserve our "seed corn" for better days to rebuild amid the debris of the lunatic systems now in control, in the "saddle."

This more and more is the counsel your humble servant here extends to persons in the USA. Save your time and energy for yourself, your family, friends, local community. Do not waste it on macro-systems that are intent on detroying themselves. Stand aside.

As Taosim teachers, ducks waddle, and all of the wishful thinking in the world will not make a duck walk. Apply this logic to the degenerate systems in the USA today. All of the wishful thinking will not make these "ducks walk." The systems need to destroy themselves, and in the debris the decent, good people of this country can rebuild.

Kiplinger Newsletter July 1, 2011

2011-07-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

July 7, 2011

This is the recent issue of the Kiplinger newsletter on trends.

The information on “virtual currency” underscores why we do not need Wall Street.

As Alvin and Heidi Toffler argue in the 2006 Revolutionary Wealth the Internet allows us to bypass the Wall Street vampires. The current banks, stock brokers, and stock markets are leftovers from the old dying Industrial Age. These “middle men” now produce nothing and the Internet makes them obsolete.

The section on the lack of computer science grads in this country is the result of two trends:

1. American society no longer has the discipline to turn out graduates in math and related fields like engineering because math demands disciplined learning. The inmates now run the asylums called schools.

The rot sadly is making itself felt more and more in “higher” education. My sister over the weekend told us about students at her “college” in Milwaukee who literally cannot multiply by 2 – with Milwaukee high school diplomas! They also do not know that there is a difference between centimeters and inches. And yet the constant chant is more money for schools, education!

What is doubly sad about this situation where my sister teaches, and elsewhere likely, is her “students” are training to be medical technicians! Imagine! They cannot do simple division and they are going to prepare medications for patients.

2. Also, given the economic terrorism in this country, why would somebody want to be an engineer when you can be an investment banker and steal millions from people – and not have to produce a single tangible product, service in the process?

Get your M.B.A. and you are on your way to looting the economy for billions. Why would you want to produce something real when you can flim-flam “gazillions” of dollars? China produces. American gambles. Engineers produce. Banksters, stock brokers, investment gurus gamble. We see the toxic results.

Moreover, America may no longer be the first choice of persons with high-tech skills as a place to live and work. The current push to carry concealed firearms and firearms openly in public will hasten the exodus of such skilled people from the U.S.A. to places like Canada that control weapons. See Richard Florida’s study The Flight of the Creative Class (2007) for detailed information on this.

July 4, 2011 in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, America

2011-07-05T22:54:00.001-07:00

It is sad, Walter, to realize that to survive now in this land you must more and more think and act like a Mafia member - because the "fix is in" at the "top."

On July 4th, my wife and I observed a parade in her hometown of Mineral Point, Wisconsin. The parade has been an annual event since 1827!

I saw the good, decent, normal people, who do the work, fight the wars, obey the laws, and pay the taxes, put on a two-hour parade in this small town of 2,000.

They celebrated, believed in the ideals that mark the better side of this country’s place in history.

I grieved to realize that these good, decent people, who, in effect, shaped me, my core values, for the better, are abused by the gangsters on Wall Street and their hired stooges in Washington, D.C..

The danger point is coming when these decent Americans, who love their country and do not exploit it and sell it out to "banksters," realize this, which may not be too far off in the future. How will they target the coming anger?

Cicero and the Death of the American Republic

2011-06-28T09:35:00.001-07:00

Michael, yes, the Republic is dead, and like you, I loved the old Republic.

Like you, I feel no allegiance to the Empire that has replaced it. When I lived in Canada, I thought of it as Gaul and how they must have viewed events in Rome as I thought about America.

Yes, we torture ourselves when we wish change has not happened. This is a basic premise of Zen Buddhism. Change happens and we torture ourselves when we want to restore what was. Live, here now, with “as-is.” Forget the past. Live in the present as best we can, here, now, or there.

Once, I visited Rome, and I stood at the exact spot outside Rome on the Appian Way where Caesar’s gangsters killed Cicero, the champion of the dying Republic. I have no wish to expire as did Cicero.

It is funny how I happened to visit this spot. I was in Rome and met two seminarians from Milwaukee there! They invited me to visit with them outside Rome at the villa / seminary for North Americans. The drive to the villa intersected with the old Appian Way, and the bus left me off at the intersection, “ground zero” for Cicero and Caesar’s killers.

Thank you for the reality check, old friend. There is no need to suffer, die for what was and is now no longer. Take care. Paul

A sad note to a Vietnam Veteran

2011-06-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

Michael, I find it very sad that you, a veteran of Vietnam, who put his life on the line for his country, must now consider leaving it. To what have we come? As I look at the landscape and people around me in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, I see good people. I saw good people on our recent trip to New York City as we passed through Ohio Amish country, Gettysburg National Battlefield, New York City, Pennsylvania, etc. I also saw a wonderful landscape. America is truly beautiful. Her people are basically good. They are abused, yes. It is not right. Yet, somehow this writer, your friend here, wants to focus on the goodness that exists and not let the awful greed and decay sap his spirit. At Gettysburg, a sobering visit, we had pause to think about the price our ancestors have paid to build this country. Somehow we ought not to let vermin take it from us. Yes, there are disturbing trends – for example, Wisconsin now permits open carrying of firearms in public! This makes your humble servant here think about heading for the door too. Who imagined such an impasse as we grew up? Yet, somehow, this writer hopes the basic goodness of our people will reassert itself. If it does not, cannot, we shall have to do our best to preserve the “seed corn” for better days. God bless. Paul

My first - and last - lesson in politics.

2011-06-22T21:13:00.001-07:00

I was age eighteen. I had never been to a political event. Our State Senator, Everett "Cy" Bidwell, offered to take me to the caucus of the Second Congressional District Republican Party at the Inn on the Park in Madison, Wisconsin. He and I lived in Portage, Wisconsin, forty-five minutes by car north of Madison.

As we waited in the hallway for the caucus to start, a tall, slender middle-aged man approached Bidwell. Bidwell said, "Jack, this is Paul; this is his first political event." Jack walked up to me. He was taller, and when he spoke he had to bend a bit to "look me in the eye." I shall never forget what he said. Here it is:

"Young man, when I was your age, I was going to save the world. Then, I got a little older, and I thought I would settle for saving just America. But now, I just want to do something to save Wisconsin."

The speaker, I later discovered, was Lt. Governor of Wisconsin, Jack Olson, US World War II Navy veteran, and owner of the fabulous Wisconsin Dells river boat tours.

To this day, his wisdom guides me more and more.

Yes, it is about Wisconsin, our home state. The rest of the world can take care of itself. It is about right here and now, not over there.

More and more, I can relate to Robert E. Lee who refused command of the Union Army when Lincoln offered it because Lee would not "lift his hand" against the people of his home state. Your humble servant here feels the same way, as did Lt. Gov. Olson.

The people of my beloved home state, Wisconsin, do the work, pay the taxes, obey the laws, and fight the wars that keep America going, and for this they ought not to suffer abuse by anybody, homegrown or foreign. Sadly they do more and more by the Vampires on Wall Street and their hired political gangsters in Washington, D.c.

Wisconsin, her people, matter, as Lt. Gov. Olson understood in his wisdom, which he shared with me. Time has tested his wisdom for me, and it has passed the test over and over and over.

I hope every American feels the same way about his or her home state. I hope every Canadian feels the same way about his or her home Province. And in the British Isles, I hope every man and woman feels the same way about his or her county in Ireland or the UK.

Charity begins at home. Loyalty beings at home. I thank Senator Bidwell and Lt. Gov. Olson, both Republicans, both now deceased, for this basic lesson early in life.

I wonder what Lt. Gov. Olson and Senator Bidwell, both Republicans, would think of the foreign wars for corporate oil profits now if they could come back to visit us today. The Republican Party of today is certainly not the one of my youth, sadly.

Yet, the good people of Wisconsin, my people, remain. God willing, I hope to be able to do something to help them in the spirit of Lt. Gov. Olson and Senator Bidwell.

Institutional Failure USA

2011-06-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

The USA faces institutional failure, sooner rather than later. This week, the media is abuzz with scandal about a member of Congress who sent pictures of his genitals over the Internet to at least seven women, one of whom was age seventeen. In addition, this piece of vermin has a pregnant wife. Also, public opinion now holds the US Congress at a 10% approval rating, which is less than a used car salesman. It has lost credibility with the people of the USA. It is losing more because it refuses to convene to expell this affront to decent people from its ranks. As the late, great American historian Barbara Tuchman warned, the USA is risking institutional failure because the good people who are left will no longer support a Congress that aids and abets perverts in its ranks. It is amazing to watch the US Congress destroy itself. What will replace it remains to be seen, but it is going down for sure.

Learning Organizations and Sleepy Hollow

2011-04-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

Herman, these are exclellent choices and excellent abstracts of your choices. It is fascinating that these two articles appeared tonight for your humble servant here. The learning organization concepts firmly ties education to business. The old saying was those can do, and those who cannot teach. This is a false dischotomy, for today, those who do must be able to teach! In fact, education, the learning organization, is crucial to success, and this has helped to redefine the historical relationship in American culture between education and business enterprise. This writer has resolved to claim and work with and build on this connection further tonight because of your abstracts here! Thank you for the guidance!

The classic story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, an old American folk tale, depicts the historical view of education in America in the person of the school teacher Ichabod Crane! Of course, he is the butt of humor and eventual abuse. We are now slowly starting to move beyond this sterotype of the educated person in our society - thankfully, although this writer loves Washington Iriving, the author, and the origin in the Hudson River Valley (NY) of these tales among the early Dutch settlers there. In fact, a Jean Paul Rux immigrated from Amsterdam, Holland, to New Amsterday, New York, now New York, New York, in 1693! The Hudson River Valley is "in my blood." In fact, it is calling to me to return to visit. I lived there for three years at Dobbs Ferry, NY, near White Plains, NY, home base for IBM (Armonk). It is funny how things fall into place. Yes, the learning organization thankfully is breaking down old stereotypes.

From forest to farm

2011-04-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

Monica, this is fascinating. My great grandfather immigrated from Germany in the 1880's to the USA. He became a lumberman in the State of Washington, and when he had made some savings, he moved to Wisconsin where he bought a small farm, which is still in our family!

For him, owning property was his goal, because he was a landless serf, peasant, laborer on the estates of rich people in Prussia, the Northern part of Germany. For him, property, having your own home, farm was his dream, and he made it come true. He lumbered on the way to achieving his dream, and your information here provides more background on why he left the lumber camps to farm.

Germany as past, present, and probable future example

2011-04-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

Alexis, this writer has in fact visited Germany twice. He is the first member of his family to ever return after they left Prussia in the 1880's. He has studied German language in high school and at the university level. Both of his parents spoke fluent German, which they learned at home in Wisconsin before they learned English, which they learned at school and through their dealings of course with other Americans.

Germany stands as an example for us today for how to nurture a first-rate economy. Its history also stands as a warning against what can happen when a government destroys the currency of a country as did the Weimar Republic to pay its bills for World War I, for which Germany, of course, unjustly received blame.

History offers lessons about what to do and not to do. Only fools ignore them. It seems what passes for leaders in America have not studied recent history! They are courting economic disaster for all of us in their pursuit of short-term greed.

Mini-lecture on the basics of business in Europe

2011-04-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

Jose, for many years, governments in Europe lived with the very real threat of Communism. If capitalism, or business, became too greedy, too barbaric, well-organized Communist parties were present to exploit abuses and take over.

As a result, European governments developed what we call the "welfare" state. They made sure that people got proper healthcare, wages, pensions, etc.

In short, they protected capitalism from destroying itself through provoking a bloody Communist revolution.

In America, we have never had, yet, such an organized force like the Communists in Europe to "put the fear of God" into the vampires on Wall Street for destroying our economy and millions of lives in the process as poverty increases.

Your humble servant here is not a Communist. He visited East Germany and Berlin - by motorcycle - when they were under Communist control, and he knows first-hand the fear under which people live under Communism. We do not want this.

We also do not want the banksters doing whatever they want in pursuit of greed. How we curb the current economic terrorism in the US remains to be discovered. The future is going to be very interesting, and, yes, scary yet.

Plato defines ethics, once and for all time!

2011-03-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

Plato defines ethics as behaviors that do not injure others or ourselves.

This is basic biology. It is universal.

It applies to all people in all places at all times Nobody wants to be involved with persons who will hurt, kill them.

Notice the word is behavior, not belief. Watch what I do, not what I say.

Pain is the basis or foundation of ethics.

Predators or Productive Citizens

2011-03-30T21:22:00.000-07:00

William, this is thoughtful, thorough, and first-rate. In particular, your observation below "hits home." In fact, the government is unwilling to deal with the predators good and hard out there. In effect, the government refuses to govern. It is the result of psycho-babble and political correctness. As a result, the normal, decent people realize they are on their own when it comes to dealing with the rising tide of crime because of a permissive "criminal justice" system. We are returning to the frontier days in America, and it is not the fault of the good citizens. It is the fault of the "lollipop" judges and "candy" legislators who will not step up to the plate to perform the first duty of government - protect life and property, not of the predators, but of the people who do the work, obey the laws, pay the taxes, and fight the wars. Right now the nomral people no longer count in our society. Change is coming.

Albert Schweitzer - Role Model

2011-03-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

Walter, in our local bookstore last week, I found a reader on the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer in his own words, writings. It was a surprise, or an act of grace, a gift from God, again. It came at the right time moment.

In effect, Schweitzer decided not to waste his time on this planet trying to save people from themselves, e.g. Western civilization. Instead, he went where he felt his gifts, values were received with a minimum of resistance. In effect, he went into exile. Yet, he did not waste his time on lost causes, e.g. World War I and World War II. Both of them loom as colossal human disasters with time and distance from the wartime propaganda generated to motivate people to engage in killing each other.

He is offering me a model. Go where your values, skills, talents are welcome. In other words, As/Is. This is how it is, and if the society, civilization is intent on destroying itself, which the American society is, we, you, I cannot stop it.

Rather, live as best we can in situations where what we can offer, share is welcome.

I often think of the Mennonites that I saw living around Elora, Ontario. In a sense they are practicing a form of Schweitzer. They are in but not of the world’s god-awful agendas. I am not a primitive here. Rather, this setting calls to me, the Elora Gorge, the scale of the village, the art, antiques, out-of-time (nobody likes the 20th and 2lst centuries if they are sane) 19th and 18th century ambience in which hope for better days still lived.

Schweitzer taught “Reverence for Life,” not Death. Life is a gift of God, and as the Bible teaches, God is not, like the Egyptian idols, a God of death. He is the God of life, and we align with this basic reality when we “Reverence Life.” This may lead us, as it did Schweitzer, to disengage from futile efforts to save people from the consequences of their follies, for as the Bibles teaches, “the wages of sin (to deny, oppose God’s design) is death” not life.

Our dialog is an expression of Schweitzer’s insight. We share with each other, because we value what each other has to share, offer. This does not waste our time, which is short enough in this world in any case.

Yes, the meditation here is Albert Schweitzer, and I plan to read his writing with great care as a guide to what comes next, God willing.

Do not despair. It is easy to do. Rather, as Schweitzer managed, be in but not of the world. So ends the sermon of the day. Paul

Limits to Therapy

2011-03-18T19:56:00.001-07:00

Donald, yes, the central concept of Wheatley, and of Quantum Physics from which she draws her basic insight, is "self-organization." The universe is a place that runs on "self-organization," and if we intervene with this we do harm to ourselves and others. This is hard for us to accept for we have grown up in a "therapeutic" society - see Ivan Illich on this theme - in which an intervention, therapy, technique, tool (industrial thinking here) exists to fix anything and everybody. Maybe people need to "fix themselves" more. As Buddhism teaches, we cannot really "untie knots" in other people. They must untie their own. Think alcholics and addictions here. We are moving beyond the Industrial Age mindset slowly, surely.

Natural Law or Enlightenment?

2011-03-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

Walter, how does the Enlightenment depart, diverge from the Natural Law tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas?

It seems to your humble servant here that the Natural Law tradition has its roots in reality, and the Enlightenment is a flawed “Idealism.”

One of the reasons this writer entered the Roman Catholic Church is because of its Natural Law tradition. It is an arrogance of Reformation historians to portray the “Middle Ages” as bereft of intelligence. Aquinas proves otherwise.

In fact, the “Middle Ages” did not know they were in the middle of anything. It is only the Reformation historians who decided that in fact they were the next step in “Progress,” from which, in turn, stems the whole Enlightenment notion of “Progress,” that we are progressing from a beginning, through a middle, toward a brighter, smarter, gentler future, or Heaven on Earth, as Carl Becker observed in his classic The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers.

I prefer Natural Law for it aligns with the Hindu / Buddhist idea of repetitive cycles, eternal themes, from which we do not escape. The word is as it is, Buddhism there, and no amount of wishful Enlightenment thinking is going to remove the basic factors of the human condition – the need for courage, compassion, love, etc. to borrow from William Faulkner.

In short, the Enlightenment is flawed, for it departs from the reality of Natural Law with its emphasis on “natural design” – eternal designs, which the Creator fashioned and men cannot violate without doing great harm to themselves.

I think this is at the heart of Liberalism and Conservatism in the classic definition of these terms. In other words, I do not see a start, middle and end toward which we progress. I see an eternal now, as is, on which theme there may be variations in how we express it. This in effect says there are limits, a classic definition of Conservatism, e.g. Russell Kirk, against which Liberalism, the offspring of the Enlightenment, struggles with its idea of limitless progress.

You are one of the few persons with whom this writer can discourse about such things, and I thank you for the conversation. Paul

Leaders are Entrepreneurs are Leaders

2011-03-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

There is an old saying: "People talk most about what they do not have." So exactly in and at a time when we really have a loss of leadership, it is, therefore, not surprising to find folks talking, writing, and researching about it!

In fact, this writer and his best-friend neighbor discussed exactly this today in the morning. However, we used the word, term, concept "entrepreneur" instead of "leadership." In fact, the end result of both is the same. We agreed.

If our country has a future it will come from entrepreneurs who will lead us into and help us seize new possibilities, opportunities.

Evangelical Revivalism and Entrepreneurship

2011-03-10T16:47:00.000-08:00

Madeline, your comments about underdogs are insightful. Here is why. In America, we encourage entrepreneurship, risk taking. The reason we do this is because in our culture to sin and to be saved from sin provides a cultural matrix in which failure does not permanently doom us. This is part of our religious revivalism that has spilled over into our secular culture. In fact, we admire the "sinner" (underdog) who has been "saved" (successful).

Internal Exile

2011-03-03T16:43:00.000-08:00

Michael, I have been mulling how to describe, define “internal exile.” Here it is.

Exile means to leave behind.

External exile means to geographically leave something behind, but too often the exiles carry their emotional “baggage” and issues with them from their place of geographic exile. As a result, the causes, discomforts for exile continue.

Internal exile means to mentally, emotionally leave something behind without having to change geography. Internal exile means we do not change geographic location to drop what “eats away” at us.
Of course geographic exile in time can help with internal exile, but it does not automatically cause us to drop the emotional “baggage” that triggered the geographic exile in the first place.

In fact, 16th-century French essayist Michael Montaigne observed that without internal exile first external exile was a waste of effort. We cannot run away from emotional baggage. We must set it down good and hard when and where we are.
More and more your humble servant here is moving toward a posture of internal exile, for it is a cost-effective, realistic way to gain peace of mind in the middle of the chaotic muddle swirling around us today. He retreated to a stone tower in the countryside of France, where he lived, a form of geographic exile but on a modest scale, not immigrating to Quebec, North America.

Moreover, internal exile, parallels the four stages of life in Hindu teaching. Each stage represents twenty-five years in a human life span, 0-100:
Stage one is student.
Stage two is household.
Stage three is withdrawal – setting “thing down” to become selfish with our remaining time, energy.
Stage four is preparation – becoming spiritually centered to face our physical demise and spiritual transition to the world beyond this one.

Your humble servant here is now preparing for stage three of his life, which results in getting ready for “internal” exile. Others will do what they want, and we ought not to wear ourselves with a futile idealism about being able to change the rest.

There, old friend, you have my promised definition of internal exile.

The future of education.

2011-03-02T18:26:00.000-08:00

This recent email came from my old, dear Friend Walter in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. He and I started our teaching careers together, and we have remained loyal friends ever since.

Hi Paul,

I concur with the idea that College is not the best way to prepare people for life. The participation rate among young people in 'higher' education is greater the than % that can benefit from the notion of a 'rounded' education. Both my experience in education and knowledge of society in general supports this view. The underlieing assumption appears flawed, namely that a few years of diversion in an institution will prepare people for life when all it does is postpone reality for many young people while placing unnecessarry burden on their parents.

I think that a university education and less so a 'college' education in Ontario inculcates a sense of entitlement to a 'good' life. It also delays adulthood especially in young males at a time when there is a shortage of skilled labour. By the time we are in our teens we need to feel we are useful to society or we become self-indulgent consumers of trivia. And we need to connect to society so that we have a real stake in political outcomes. Working while training does these things.

One of my brothers taught school while doing his 'teachers college' during summers and then his degree over a ten year period. I did my teachers training in summers as well, and believe it is more useful that way since you bring questions from the classroom to class. It also seems to me that education is not served well by having teachers who have never experienced anything but school. We should actively recruit business people, tradespeople, entrepreneurs ....to become teachers so that the schools more effectively reflect the options in society and change the culture of school. Remember Illich and 'deschooling' society?

In Canada we should make university at all levels more rigorous and focus on primary research. There are many ways that people who are curious can educate themselves in our connected world.

Are you planning to go to the world futures conference? Have you attended recently? I went to one in DC years ago and was rather disappointed so am wondering about what they are like now.

I've been delving into the Enlightenment for several months- I did major work on Francis Bacon and the scientific revolution- and am finding the likes of Adam Smith, Hume, Diderot and some Germanic types much clearer in their thinking than our contemporaries. The originating ideas of modernity are all there. In our present confusion we need to go back to some first principles.

Cheers,
walter

Frontline: Madison, Wisconsin

2011-02-26T23:41:00.001-08:00

Your professor lives in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, which is an "exurb" of Madison, Wisconsin, our state capitol. It is also the scene of a showdown over the future of teacher union rights, pay, benefits, etc. It is a precursor of what is to come across this country. The fact of the matter is state governments overall are out of money. Wisconsin, population 5.5 million, faces a $3.5 billion budget hole right now. Somebody must pay. One way to reduce this horrific state debt is to cut spending. This is why it is crucial for school leaders more than ever to have the skills and street smarts to know how to measure and communicate value from funding for schools. Moreover, there is going to be less, not more; we must learn how to conduct "lean" operations. We will also need to set priorities. For example, which is more important, teacher wages or new palatial school buildings? Your professor has been to the capitol square twice now in the middle of the protestors. On Monday February 28, 2011, in fact, he has an appointment with a policy planner of the Governor of Wisconsin in the Governor's Office - if he can navigate the protestors. His plan is to "dress down" to look like the protestors, not some slick corporate lobbyist. Hopefully the state capitol will be open for business on Monday coming. It was not Monday last because of thousands of protestors there. What is happening here is on the frontline of coming budget wars in this country, and education like it or not is going to be part of it. My message to the protestors was: "We ought not to be fighting each other. We did not cause this. The Wall Street banksters did. We ought to unite to go after them, not each other." Yes, nobody here did anything wrong. The damage was done on Wall Street and in Washington, and it is painful for me, a native Wisconsinite, to see my people at each other as if we are enemies. We are not. There are enemies, but they are not our people.

What's in a name?

2011-02-24T18:17:00.000-08:00

Christopher, your humble servant here agrees. Nothing replaces asking the "customer" or student directly what he or she thinks. This writer was part of a systems improvement team at a middle school in Madison, Wisconsin. We interviewed a broad sample of students face to face. We asked them, "What one thing could the school do to make your school day better?" Here is the honest-to-God answer: "I never hear my name." We found that this school had 100 of its 600 students coming from welfare hotels where the county parked their families until it could find housing for them. As a result, the teachers simply ignored these 100 students for they would be there on average only 30 days. This included not calling their names in home rome for attendance, asking them to participate in class, and ignoring them outside class for they were nameless to everybody. How much does it cost to say, use somebody's name? Yet, hearing my name counted more than school budgets, new school buildings, teacher unions, etc., which is the usual stuff of educational improvement talk. We pointed this out to the school, and to its great credit, it took steps to make sure these "rootless" children heard their names so they felt connected to something solid and not totally adrift. I have never forgotten this research project. I share it with you and the members of our course because as you argue there is no way statistical analysis would have ever found this. The analysts would have asked the "wrong" questions. I gave a workshop on this project at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma.

Jim "Mugs" Martin

2011-01-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Dr. Raftery, my boyhood friend Jim "Mugs" Martin, taught me this in eighth grade. He was fond of saying,

"I just can't figure it out. And when I can't figure it out, I don't understand it."

He stated clearly one of the central truths of Buddhism and Taoism: "as is." Things are as they are, and you cannot figure them out.

Of course, we boys had never heard of Buddhism and Taoism, but "Mugs" knew we were living it even if we did not have a fancy name for it.

Who is winning and who is losing?

2011-01-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

Todd, you raise an interesting observation. Brazil did not get into oil as an income source because the technology to do deep-sea drilling only became availalbe recently. In effect, the pace of technology saved it from taking the "wrong" fork in the road, and as they say "necessity is the mother of invention." When they could not tap oil, they needed an alternative energy. Enter ethanol!

Sometimes people who think they are winning - oil producers for example - in fact are losing as time passes. Today oil dependence is a losing situation. Brazil was a loser when it could not drill its own oil, but, in fact, this forced it to take a different path which has made it, in effect, a winner today because it is not dependent in any way on oil to run its economy. Ethanol from sugar cane works prefectly.

The answer to who is winning and who is losing depends on when we ask the question. This is classic Chinese Taoist thought.

Facebook and Goldman Sachs

2011-01-05T22:45:00.000-08:00

MINI-LECTURE – PAUL RUX, PH.D.

Last night a radio broadcast discussed the proposed $50 billion purchase of Facebook by Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse. Why would Goldman Sachs want to own Facebook? According to the broadcast, it intends to use Facebook to create its own electronic money! John Naisbitt, a world-class trend forecaster, predicted this use of the Internet in his last book Revolutionary Wealth (2007).

According to the radio panel, Goldman Sachs will create a new “credit bubble” by issuing its own credit outside the standard banking world, which is now out of credit because of its dependence on the dollar. Goldman Sachs will no longer be hostage to the value of the dollar, which will soon have the value of Kleenex tissue, to create credit. Facebook is a superb marketing, sales channel to millions. Here we go!

Party party party hearty at the old alma mater

2010-12-29T21:07:00.000-08:00

Herman, my visit to the main library of my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, today, was amazing! Here is why. I found the Cooper textbook. It is on permanent reserve and does not circulate. Within five minutes I had it in hand, after I renewed my state resident library card, $15 / year, a superb bargain. The reference librarian directed me to the copy room, and there I caught up with the 21st century. You can copy in print format for a small fee. However, you can scan copies for electronic document delivery to you by your private email address! The attachment is a free electronic scan of Cooper's 2.1 chart for our assignment 2.1. It cost nothing! Wow, this is the future of document delivery, and I love it!

Also, the student who helped me to work the system is from China, a Ph.D. student in Chinese linguistics. She and I had a great short visit about differences between East and West. I am a student of Chinese Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism. We understood each other clearly. I noticed too that all of the student workers today were Asian, which fits a pattern that I have observed before on campus. Work ethic is alive and well in the Asian students who did not take time off to party, party.

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-23T16:54:00.000-08:00

Walter, yes, we overlook the whole Christmas story, which includes the “Massacre of the Innocents” by King Herod. Joseph fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt until the pogrom ended and it was safe to return to Nazareth by another way, as the Bible states. The Christmas story in total deals with the very real collision between good and evil, and it is not about Christmas trees and traffic jams at malls. We concur.

The Vietnam War has much of its roots in the anti-Communism of the post-WWII situation. The US found itself needing to fill a balance of power vacuum in Europe, but this ran counter to its isolationist tradition. So the powers had to invent an hysteria that would justify the ongoing expenditures on the military industrial complex and mobilize American public opinion to support this very real violation of the country’s tradition of minding its own business, until the war profiteers dragged it into World War I.

The result was no politician here wanted to be accused of being “soft” on Communism. As a result, the domestic propaganda machine took on a political reality of its own, and, in turn, this led to the disaster in Vietnam. The CIA had done a study in 1955 that the US could not win a land war in Indo China. General Douglas MacArthur before he died restated this fact. Moreover, Vietnam is a natural ally of the US against China because of China’s imperial occupation of Vietnam. It is no accident that Vietnam looked to Russia for munitions, supplied during its war against the US, not China! Yet, the political rhetoric here caused the shameless scum in office to sacrifice young men, with whom I grew up, and damage public confidence in American institutions that has laid the ground work for institutional failure big time.

Lyndon Johnson put his political career ahead of the interests of America. Bush put his oil money interests ahead of the interests of the American people. Nobody speaks for America any longer. If this country wants to survive, it must find persons who put country first. As Benjamin Disraeli put it when asked once what his policy was, “England,” he answered. “All of it, not some of it.” Since the passing of Eisenhower and MacArthur, we have suffered clowns, gangsters, and hustlers. Yes, as you point out, decline has a logic, momentum.

I value your friendship, wisdom. Have a safe trip to Vancouver and may 2011 bring good things for us, here and there.

Merry Christmas 2010

Paul Rux

The coming German crisis in America

2010-12-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

Pastor, thank you for the invitation, and, yes, of course, we would be honored to attend your installation. We shall pray for you. We plan to be back in Wisconsin before Valentine's Day, February 14, 2011.

Yes, I concur with your assessment of trends. In fact, I just bought and am reading Glenn Beck's Broke - published 2010. I am pursuing one chapter at a time. What is basic to everything is what the late American philosopher Russell Kirk calls the "moral order." Moral order must precede political, social, and economic order, for without moral order we drift into chaos and destruction sooner or later. As Beck reminds us, we relearn basic truths as Dr.Samuel Johnson observed and Kirk observed, and Beck reminds us again of the having a healthy, basic "moral order" in place, for it is the required foundation on which to build other human activities. Of course, Revelation is the bedrock, source of this "moral order," and as secular humanism erodes this fact, we are paying an ever-mounting toxic cost.

Yes, I concur with your assessment of the probability of white flight, call it what it is, from the urban, metro areas to the safety of our small towns, which still preserve much of the old "moral order" on which this country was built and depends for its survival. This is why I love going to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, Jane's hometown, for there time has stood still and people go to church in large numbers as in the past. It provides the social, economic, and political order that invites people from Chicago to transplant there when they find the town. The result is a real estate market that is "out of sight" for a rural area. Yet, if we lose this bedrock Christian moral order, all is lost, and rightfully so.

Last summer, in Canada, at the Canadian Bible Society Thrift Store in Chathan, Ontario, somehow, God's grace at work, spotted an old book for $.50. Its title is The German Crisis. In it, a reporter fluent in German from New York with the name Knickerbocker (old New Amsterday legacy) travels the length and breadth of Germany n 1932 - to survey the impact of the Great Depression on the country. The publication date for the book is in fact 1932. It is a stunning, sobering description of what our country risks because of rampant greed on Wall Street and the loss of our basic "moral order." What jumped out at me was his chapter on the religious revival across Germany that was happening! He said 500-600 people nightly would crowd into the nearest church for comfort, hope, for they had given up on politics as salvation! Yes, we have put our faith in men, not God, and we can see the ever-worsening, terrifying results around us. You "hit the nail on its head" when you observe the coming need for spiritual oases of hope in our small towns and rural regions as people flee literally for their lives in every larger numbers. I believe this book came to me not by accident.

In the last chapter, Knickerbocker has a private interview with Hitler, yes, himself. Hitler is in a blue business suit. Knickerbocker asks Hitler how we feels about America. Hitler says he has no problems with America, except for the Woolworth stores in Germany. Knickerbocker asks what problem might this be. Hitler says, well, Woolworth is just fine as long as what it sells is made in Germany by Germans to provide jobs! Think Wal-Mart here, of course. In 1932, nobody knew who would take over the government in Germany, and of course, in retrospect, we know that Hitler in 1933 would emerge as the person to put "Humpty Dumpty" back together again, or try.

It is now 1932 again in America. We are on the cusp, and there is no easy way out of what is coming. More than they realize, people are going to be afraid, and they should be afraid if they are in their right minds, because of the horrific wounds inflicted on our country. Yet, whom God loves He corrects. More than you realize, and your eyes are wide open, and more than your humble servant here imagines, we are going to need our Lord, Who teaches us "Fear not little flock." Amen. Amen.

PAUL RUX, PH.D.

Mini-lecture on China, Germany, USA

2010-12-16T22:57:00.001-08:00

Erica, this is a fascinating comparison. Here is why. China pays less than we have, but its workers are as skilled as our workers. Therefore it is logical that business would go to the low-wage bid if the skills are equal. China, furthermore, is using our production of "American" autos there to in fact steal our know-how. It intends to be the world leader of electric car production, which is what China and India can afford on a mass scale as the price of oil skyrockets in time.

Germany on the other hand is a high-wage, high-skill economy, and after China, it sells the most "stuff" globally. Its "stuff" however is high-end technologies, and Germany plows back its profits into better, advanced equipment and better, advanced training to use this better, advanced equipment. Therefore, Germany is both a high-skill and high-wage success story!

The moral of the story is America loses on two fronts: low wages and high skills, plus high skills and high wages. The reason is simple. Our banksters, Wall Street, steal money in the form of profits from our companies and use them to speculate on the stock market instead of reinvesting the profits into better training and equipment. It is sad sad sad. Moreover, in the rush to make profits at any price, the Wall Street banksters are giving away what is left of our competitive know-how to China!

Mini-lecture on Korea

2010-12-16T22:13:00.000-08:00

Brigitte, here are some perspectives on this. One, during the Korean War, General MacArthur wanted to invade and clean out North Korea once and for all. President Truman said no, and the result is today we have an enemy with nuclear weapons that can reach our California coastal cities, Hawaii, and Alaska. Truman bought peace, but we are going to pay the price. Two, Japan will never allow a nuclear Korea to threaten it. Review history and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Korea before World War II. Korea must also be very careful that Japan does not come crashing down on it, and Japan can have nuclear weapons of its own within six months because of its massive technological know-how. Right now we provide the nuclear weapon defense, but if we show weakness, watch out. Japan will not hesitate to blow Korean off the face of the earth if they dare to touch Japanese homeland islands. Three, we ought not to be in Korea any longer. Let the Asians handle Asian rivalries. By having troops in South Korea, we have created a "trip wire" that automatically pulls us into a war there if the two Koreas go to war. We ought not to ever let other countries decide if we go to war, ever. Four, it is time we pulled back from Asia to defend our country through occupation of islands in the Pacific, which is what we did at one time. It is safer, cheaper, and it works. There, you have some further thoughts on Korea to mull.

Know and Know-How

2010-12-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

Joseph, your professor is reading Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan.

Taleb has a Ph.D. in statistics from Princeton University. Today, he pointed out the difference between episteme and techne, which are ancient Greek words.

We get the word epistemology for episteme: know.

We get the word technique from techne: know-how.

Taleb points out that we confuse know-how with know.

Lots of people know how to conduct statistical analysis, for example, but this does not mean they actually know what the meaning, value, of their analysis. They "crunch" more and more numbers, but the more they "crunch" the less they know.

Or as the Buddhists put it: Too much analysis leads to paralysis.

In other words, know means we understand the context in which we apply know-how. We grasp the big picture.

The M.B.A. has lots of know-how, techne, but he or she lacks episteme, know, or wisdom, because of limited hands-on experience with real-world situations.

For instance, numbers, statistical analyses, are not total reality. They are part of reality.

Reality is far more complex, and we fool ourselves if we think knowing how to do things, techniques (techne) like statistical analysis, without overall holistic, understanding of context(episteme), is enough to survive and thrive in our world.

M.B.A. know-how has its place, but it takes more than M.B.A. know-how to navigate successfully.

Today on TV

2010-12-14T22:46:00.001-08:00

MSNBC-TV interviewed a U.S.Congressman from the State of Washington today.

The hostess of the interview program mentioned the death of US Ambassador Richard Holbrook, a special envoy of President Obama to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Before the Congressman could respond, the hostess also mentioned the recent death of six American military persons in Afghanistan because of a roadside bomb.

The Congressman waxed eloquent about the terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible loss of the Ambassador. I waited, listened, hoped against hope.

The Congressman said nothing, zero about the deaths of our six military. Although this disappointed, angered this writer, it did not really surprise him.

Holbrook was a big-shot Wall Street banker in real life. As we know Wall Street banksters count. Our G.I.'s do not. Waste them. They signed up didn't they?

I saw why America is sick unto death. Washington and Wall Street live in their bubbles, suck literally the life blood out of our people, and do not even notice.

The families of those six Americans who died in the line of duty do not warrant simple decent sympathy from the big shots running and ruining our country.

The sooner the sick Wall Street / Washington game collapses the better the rest of us, the normal people, who obey the laws, do the work, pay the taxes, and fight the wars, will be.

Washington, DC, no longer has anything to do with us. I saw it today on MSNBC-TV - again.

Thoughts on basic trends for Walter in Canada

2010-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

Walter, this reminds me of “counter-factual” or “what-if” history. As Taleb argues, we play tricks on the dead (Napoleon’s definition of history) when we impost a cause-effect logic on past events that in fact were not there and only reflect the angst of our times. We select facts, which is the theme of axiology in philosophy – we seek what is of value to us.

I just finished reading The German Crisis published in 1932. An American named Knickerbocker wrote it after a year’s field study of Germany, and the last chapter includes a person interview with Hitler by the author! I read this book with the same frame of mind you suggest. Nobody in 1932 knew what was going to happen, and this is reflected in the book. Moreover, his observations of an economy in collapse may serve as a theme, warning for us today, which also overlaps with your interest. I happened to find it by “accident” at the Canadian Bible Society thrift store in Chatham, Ontario, one of our must stops when we visit. It cost $.50but its intellectual stimulus is worth far far more.

The seminal ideas today are Chaos Theory and Complexity, which are at the heart of Taleb. We are in effect watching the crack up of highly-centralized systems as the network logic of Internet technologies begin to reshape how things work best now. I am not saying we are going to return to a pastoral life, but we are going to Reset as Richard Florida at U of T puts it in his latest book, 2010, The Great Reset, which I highly recommend.

Here, we are watching the collapse, ongoing, of the middle class, or what is left of it. We are also moving toward institutional failure, which is a byproduct of greed and over-centralization. Dalton Camp predicted both of these trends in 1976 when I lunched with him in Kingston, Ontario after a teacher conference. He warned about the trends toward middle class collapse and institutional failure.

Thank God, in Canada, the Scottish values of hard money have prevailed to shield, buffer you from what is coming here. In fact, I keep my sanity by knowing that a place like Canada does exist. It is possible to live peacefully, productively, sanely in this world yet. Yes, it is possible. Canada is proof.

Here, we more and more have social depression on top of individual depression. We have people who cannot find work, and those who have it are more and more exploited by the system, 60’s talk there.

So, as far as your humble servant here can see, chaos and complexity are in the saddle, and what comes from this, self-organization and creative destruction, remains to be seen, but we can pick up the pieces. We will not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Humpty Dumpty is yesterday. We can invent a saner future, tomorrow

NFIB / Wisconsin members brace for double taxation!

2010-12-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

Your professor serves on the State Leadership Council of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) / Wisconsin. We have 13,500 small business members in our state. Other states have similar chapters and membership numbers, which makes NFIB the 10th most powerful lobbying group in this country.

However, my story is about our recent quarterly meeting of our board, on which your professor serves, this week Tuesday. The essence of it follows and aligns with our discussion this week of business ethics - behaviors that do not harm others or ourselves (Plato's definition of ethics):

This writer heard a detailed discussion of payroll taxes for unemployment at his state board meeting of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) / Wisconsin on Tuesday morning of this week. The "bottom line" is the State of Wisconsin has raided these funds for other purposes - a direct violation of the law - the state's own laws!

As a result, our lobby group, NFIB / Wisconsin, is taking steps to make sure our members do not have to pay this payroll tax twice! It is amazing to watch state government violate its own laws. It can do this as a rule with the "little people" because on average it costs $150,000 to litigate a claim against the state, which has lawyers on hand all of the time, courtesy or your and my tax dollars.

In addition, Wisconsin has also borrowed $235 million from the federal government to cover its depleted unemployment insurance fund. Now the "leaders" of this state are running around like so many circus Keystone Cops trying to figure out how to pay for this debt!

Our NFIB members are concerned small business in our state will get another bill. Nobody, moreover, seems to know where the money has gone that ought to have covered unemployment in the first place. This is only going to get worse.

Thanksgiving Thoughts 2010

2010-11-26T18:10:00.000-08:00

Joshua, Thanksgiving yesterday was a holiday with its roots in the Pilgrims of New England. The Pilgrims were Puritans. Puritan means 100%!

Puritans came to America to be 100% religious. This quest for purity has found its way into the overall American culture. As a result, we Americans tend to be overly hard on ourselves if we find flaws in our society.

It is the difference between realism and idealism. Americans because of the Puritans tend to be idealists and hard on themselves because of it.

This is why we often overlook the shortcomings of other countries. We are too busy trying to be pure.

This writer believes in statistics. Statistics tell us not everything is going to be 100% all of the time, and we need to not beat up on ourselves if we do not win or get 100% all of the time.

Experience outranks rank.

2010-11-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

Matthew, thank you for this powerful personal story! Here are some comments on it.

This writer chuckled over your personal, painful story about the clash between rank and experience.

There is a story in the British army about this.

The old sergeant major reports to the incoming youthful regimental commander. The sergeant says standing at attention and saluting:

"I will call you sir; you will call me sir, but you will mean it."

In fact, and this writer is not a veteran, but he has studied principles of military leadership, e.g. Sir John Keegan's "The Mask of Command."

Your career noncommissioned officers are the backbones of any military force. In them reside the operational, practical knowledge that we ignore at our own peril!

We call this Knowledge Management now. Pay attention to "lessons learned," and your non-coms have those "lessons."

Also, this is one of the reasons this writers gets upset when we do not pay our career non-coms decent wages and invest in useless corporate welfare weapon systems

The crucial importance of coffee houses today

2010-11-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

Shelby, your humble servant here, serves on the State Leadership Council of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) / Wisconsin. We have over 13,500 small business members in Wisconsin. The Council in effect is the state board of directors of this powerful small business lobby group.

The January - February 2011 national journal of NFIB My Business will feature an interview with your humble servant here on the do's and dont's of small homebased business, which this writer operates when he is no online teaching at JIU: www.paulrux.net

NFIB national has hired a photographer to do a photo shoot of me to go with its interview of me in its forthcoming national journal on Wednesday November 17, 2010 in nearby Madison, Wisconsin.

To drive home a key point in the interview, he will not meet with the photographer at my home. This is out of the question for small homebased businesses, for the customer psychology translates meeting at home with failure. Successful people do not meet clients in their living rooms.

Your humble servant here prefers classic, polished coffee houses for such transactions - not bars or even restaurants. Coffee is the drink of the Information Age, since persons who work with computing cannot have hangovers of any kind. Cancel the two-drink luncheons.

Coffee aligns with the power of IT to set economic, business trends today; I tell the owner of our new local coffee house in Mt. Horeb that it is a crucial resource for business today, especially small businesses like mine that cannot afford really commercial office rentals.

In short, image counts. The coffee house image works perfectly for business, especially small businesses. Now, I must figure out what to wear! My wife advises sport coat and tie. We do not want to be too "laid back."

The Basics of Making Decisions in Politics

2010-11-13T19:33:00.000-08:00

Your humble servant here has engaged in lobbying at the state and local levels of government. For instance, this writer is on the State Leadership Council of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) / Wisconsin. We lobby for 13,500 small businesses in Wisconsin! Overall, NFIB ranks nationally as the 10th most powerful lobby in the USA. IN the recent elections, the NFIB-endorsed candidates for both Governor and US Senate won! Both men met privately with our Council, which numbers twenty, to explain their policies and field our questions. I have been involved with the Council as a member for nine years now, and through it I have learned a great deal about influencing folks.

I point to my track record with formal statewide lobbying because a friend who was head ATT lobbyist in Wisconsin made this comment once to me. "When you enter the realm of politics, all reason ceases." I have seen, heard, or experienced nothing to counter his statement. Sadly, as you note, facts often have very little to do with what happens or is going to happen.

Pakistan or India - Obama Trip to India 2010

2010-11-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

Lisa, Eric Margolis, an expert on this part of the world, observes in his last essay for LewRockwell.com that because of our war in Muslim Afghanistan, America must play up to Muslim Pakistan in order to chase and kill Muslim Taliban fighters in Muslim Pakistan!

This writer underscores the religious culture of Pakistan and Afghanistan for it is a crucial driver of what may happen shortly.

American military operations in Pakistan, where Taliban fighters have sought refuge, is starting to destabilize Pakistan, for it is a Muslim country, and Muslims do not like to kill other Muslims. The people there may soon overthrow the government of Pakistan for "turning a blind eye" to American military operations in its territory.

So as the USA nuzzles up to India, it risks literally the overthrow of the Pakistani government as people in Pakistan consider India to be its arch enemy - plus we are killing Muslims in Pakistan!

Check out the history of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948 for some horrific stories about killings, of which one of my friends from India, now age 75, living in Canada, survived.

We want economic cooperation from India. We want military cooperation for Pakistan. Which is more important? In effect, Eric Margolis, with whom your humble servant here exchanges emails from time to time, says the USA cannot have Pakistan and India at the same. In the near future, we must make a choice. Which one will it be? Which one should it be?

Oh, we cannot overlook that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. If Pakistan's government collapses, who gets the nuclear weapons there - the Taliban? This has implications for horrific terrorism in the USA itself if this happens.

Failure of Michael Jackson Nation to produce enough engineers and scientists

2010-11-13T13:12:00.000-08:00

Lisa, on average 25% of all engineers and scientists in the USA now come from other countries as immigrants.

Americans frankly are too lazy to do the hard math and science required for these jobs.

Moreover, we reward financial banksters more than productive engineers and scientists.

We must pay engineers and scientists more thank bankster vampires if we really want to build an American economy that does not rely on imports of brain power and work ethic.

Alas, your humble servant here does not see this happening soon in the USA, now known as Michael Jackson nation in many circles.

The Prupose of Business - Restated

2010-11-13T12:58:00.000-08:00

Joshua, yesterday, my lawyer and I had a short debate about the purpose of business. He gave the pat answer, "Make money." I quoted Peter F. Drucker, "Create jobs." Profits exist as a measure of efficiency and as a surplus to reinvest in operations and training to keep the business competitive - not take the money to Swiss banks and gut the business.

Joseph F. Schumpeter, an economist at Harvard at the start of the 20th century made this argument. Profits exist to reinvest to create more jobs and profits. People needs jobs to live; society has the absolute right to devise any rules it wants to make sure its members live. Drucker recyles Schumpeter.

Germany today in fact follows Schumpeter, and it has the second highest export business in the world - after China. Moreover, its workers receive some of the highest pay and benefits in the world. It is because Germany reinvests the profits into improved operations(equipment, techniques, processes) and training of the workforce and management.

Germany is proof that we need not to be a Third World country to be competitive today and have jobs enough for our people. See the website of David McWilliams, an Irish busineess analyst, writer, for an excellent article on this by him.

Without a profit, you have nor surplus. Without a surplus, you cannot innovate to remain competitive. This writer is totally for profits if we reinvest those profits to stay in business and to create more business. Business is about jobs in the final analysis. The sooner American digest this the sooner we will know how to "set our house in order."

It is not take the money and run.l It is take the money and recycle it into competitive equipment and training.

Thus ends the sermon for today.

Amen.

Dr. Rux

Honor Your Father and Mother

2010-11-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

Renee, thank you for sharing this story. You have every reason to be proud, proud, proud of your father. Let him know while you can. My father wanted me to take over his business, a beauty shop; mother wanted a scholar. Mother got her wish. However, my father, who never finished grade 8 because he had to work on the family farm, always admired education. His son here has achieved for him what he did not get.

In fact, the last time we talked in the nursing home, literally the last time I saw him alive, we told the nurse, who was saying how her son planned to go to college, about how it was our dream to have somebody from our family get a university degree. And, I said, because of my father's hard work, values, we have done it. I have a Ph.D. and teach in the university three blocks from here.

It was literally a "perfect" closing for his life. For the next phone call told me he was dying, in a coma. I shall always cherish this memory. I am also thankful that I had the chance to thank him directly for his faith in me and hard work to achieve our dream. As I left that day, he called out, "Don't forget me." As I teach you and others, I remember him and honor his life's work and values. Honor your father - and mother - while you can.

Coming Basic Choice: To eat or not to eat.

2010-11-13T11:21:00.001-08:00

The Future of Food

The low cost of food in the history of America, which has shaped its economy, is probably coming to an end. Here is why.

Wanda, yes, look for food prices to rise, not fall. Therefore, commodities could be a smart investment, field of work. I am not a financial advisor; however, it is logical. China wants more food. India wants more food. Both China and India are gaining purchasing power. They, and others, will begin to raise the bidding for food. The same process will happen to oil and other commodities.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the fabulous book The Black Swan, the 2007 classic on how chaos theory and complexity theory impact economic behavior, and one of my intellectual heroes, last week that two fields will be growth fields in the coming economic collapse: health care (demographics) and food (commodities).

Yesterday, I told this to an old friend who is now manager of a new health food store here. He is on trend with Taleb. People will eat better to better manage health care costs.

In short, for Americans, the era of low food prices is going to come to an end. More and more of our paychecks, if we have one, will go to purchase necessities.

This is why trend forecasters like Gerald Celente advise their clients to invest in farm land, start their own gardens, and pay close attention to supply and demand dynamics for food.

Yin and Yang and Hand and Head not Head alone

2010-11-11T19:59:00.001-08:00

Nathan, the real profit is in the process, the making of a product or service, not its design. Japan taught us this lesson, or at least we could have learned it. For instance, we come up with the design of the copier; Japan copies (no pun) the design and finds a more cost-effective way to produce them - to "fire back" our own R&D at us as a compeititve advantage for them.

Moreover, it is very very hard to replicate, copy processes, and this gives them competitive safety. It is easy to copy blueprint in comparison to processes.

Moreover, we learn how to improve the design of a product, service as we produce it. It is called "lessons learned," or Knowledge Management. As a result, the Japanese, for instance, gain "lessons learned" as they produce a product, which, in turn, allows them to further refine, improve, perfect it to gain competitive advantage. In short, we need to produce at home - locally, which is the opinion of your humble servant here.

Look for this to happen as our currency collapses and we will have to pay more and more debased dollars to purchase foreign goods.

In time, it will become cheaper, more cost-effective to come full circle and making things once again in the USA - and regain the competitive advantage of Knowledge Management.

We have sadly denigrated the making, separate the "head " (design) from the "hand" (production). In fact, our foreign competitors are smarter than this and like Yin/Yang see the need for both design and production in order to function properly. This is a very important point, and thank you for raising it.

Latifundia and Municipia - Once More

2010-11-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

As Robert L. Heilbroner predicted in his "The Decline of Business Civilization" (1974, “historian of the future”), to reduce everything to making money as much and as fast as you can will destroy civilized standards. We are watching this.

This, in turn, leads to institutional failure, which is underway already and speeding up with each passing day.

The entire business reminds me of my history professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, a Dr. Sella, from Italy, who taught a course on the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Rome became “municipia,” read large urban corporate enterprises, and “latifundia,” large rural corporate enterprises. The massive scale of the “municipia” and “latifundia” alienated more and more people because it exploited them, and for this reason they withdrew their loyalty to the system. It is hard to remain loyal to slavery.

People began to “drop out.” Their opinions, votes, voices no longer mattered. The people began to stand aside. It in effect it was no tougher living under barbarian rule than Roman rule. In fact, the barbarians were not as thorough, ruthless, systematic in their exploitations as the Roman government had become.

This is when the early Church Fathers began to withdraw to the “desert,” to the “edges” of the system to watch its fall in some modicum of peace and safety. We might say Ireland and Canada today for “edge” or “desert.”

History is repeating. Our version of the “latifundia” and “municipia” corporate exploitation is going to cause more and more people to give up on it. Institutional failure follows. If the system wants to destroy itself, there is nothing you or I can do about it - except get out of the way as best we can – to live in a modicum of peace.

There. You gave me the reason to write down some thoughts that have been floating in my head of late. Look to the early history of the Church, its “desert fathers (mothers)” who preserved the “seed corn” of what matters for better days. This is still possible.

2, 4, 6, 8, let's all sacrifice - more and more and more!

2010-11-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

Sir, the American people pay taxes for Social Security and Medicare all of their working lives. It is an insurance, not a welfare handout for under-class loafers and gangsters.

If the vampires on Wall Street and in Washington have looted these insurance funds, it is not the fault of the people who have paid their premiums. Social Security and Medicare are not a “trough.”

To imply this is dishonest, and as a regular reader of your essays, I know you are not dishonest, or your humble servant here would not pay attention to your otherwise sound insights.

The merchants of death, “health” insurance companies, and banksters walk away with billions. When do they sacrifice? Why do you let them “off the hook?”

The good people who do the work, pay the taxes, obey the laws, and fight the wars no longer count for anything in their own country. For this a degenerate upper class abuses them good and hard.

At some point they may decide to take back their country. We are moving into institutional failure already, and to damage Social Security and Medicare insurances further will hasten this process.

Meanwhile, our homegrown chicken-hawk war criminals tout their books on TV talk shows and smile all of the way to the bank. They do not sacrifice. They ask others to do it.

The Collapse of Classic American Culture

2010-11-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

There has been much speculation on the causes of the US economy’s reluctance to return to healthy growth: a commercial life which once seemed to hold the secret of eternal expansion now seems to have lost the ability to recover.

My most recent visit inclines me to make an entirely anecdotal and inexpert contribution to this debate. When I was growing up in America – and working my way through university in jobs that involved serving the public – there was a sacred principle of employed life in the US: the customer may not always be right but he is always to be treated as if his needs and desires were paramount. The efficiency, courtesy and helpfulness provided by retail businesses was one of the great hallmarks of American life (and one that made a huge impression on European customers who were accustomed to being treated like grateful supplicants by those who deigned to provide them with any service at all). Over the years of return visits to the US I have noticed a really alarming decline in standards of behaviour and competence: attitudes which would have meant at least a serious warning if not instant sacking a generation ago now seem to go unmonitored and unreformed as a matter of course.

Shopping in New York a week ago, an American friend and I despaired of the uncooperative, unprofessional behaviour of staff in major stores. “It’s like being under water”, observed my friend, commenting on what seemed to be the deliberate slowness of people whose sullen manner reminded me of what it used to be like shopping in London thirty years ago. (When I first arrived here I thought that the dumb insolence of people in shops was directed personally at me as an American. It was a while before I realised that British customers were treated in exactly the same way.)

I do not know what accounts for this change but there are some fairly obvious candidates: politically correct employment policies which demand the hiring of less capable people, anti-employer attitudes encouraged by a school system heavily influenced by Left-liberal ideology, or just the waning of that work ethic which was once so deeply embedded in the American immigrant consciousness.

But whatever the cause, it is sad – and not just for the consumer. Having worked in such jobs myself, I know that the only satisfaction to be had from them comes from carrying them out well. Being forced to maintain standards of performance is not a form of oppression: it is a way of encouraging people to see the worth of what they are doing for a living.

Tags: customer service, New York, US economy

H.L. Mencken on Democracy

2010-11-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

“There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.”

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

Democracy has an “ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. . .When the national safety is menace. . .all the great tribunes of democracy. . .convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity.”

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. . . On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

The Basics of Push and Pull in Politics

2010-11-01T18:28:00.001-07:00

Adrienne, this writer just published a letter in support of his local state assembly woman.

It discussed "push-pull."

In "push," the vendor generates a quota of product, or service, and then pushes it at the customer in hopes the customer will buy.

In "pull," the vendor listens to the voice of the customer to tailor "just in time" the exact specifications, amounts for the customers.

In "push" we talk at people.

In "pull," we listen to people. My state assembly woman is pull, she pulls with and for you, us.

We can use quality concepts in politics too! It could create some badly needed improvements!

Dr. Rux

2010 Zombie Election Cycle in USA

2010-11-01T00:06:00.000-07:00

Zombies are persons who are dead and still walking. Moreover, Zombies do not know they are dead.

The 2010 election cycle in the USA is in effect a "Zombie Election." The country is going through the motions of an election cycle. It is walking, holding elections. However,sadly, on too many levels, it is already "dead" and does not know it yet.

Regardless of who wins in the 2010 election cycle in the USA, the econonmic, social, cultural, political toxins at work in the country have in effect killed it. It does not matter who wins in the 2010 election cycle. He, she, they are not going to be able to reverse course. For now, the country is no longer able to renew itself.

A Basic Question

2010-10-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ted, yes, instinct "hard wires" animals; of course, machines have no choices. Humans, as you observe, on the other hand, have a spectrum of choices. This in fact is what helps to define us as humans. When I first started at the University of Wisconsin -Madison, one of my first professors posed this question: What does it mean to be human? He hit the nail on its head good and hard. In fact, what we term the humanities deals exactly with this question. We do too here in our work.

East meets West

2010-10-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

Comment on Assignment 7.1

Kandi, your humble servant here has started to study Buddhism to gain peace of mind. In his studies, he has encountered the Buddhist concept of positive/negative, male/female, hot/cold, etc.

Buddhism calls this yin/yang, or to use Newtonian physicans, for action or statement there is an opposite and equal action or statement.

In effect, this is what you have done here. You have balanced both negative and positives. Therefore, there is no positive without a negative side to it; there is no negative side without a positive answer to it. East meets West!

Education from the heart for the heart

2010-10-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

Walter, wow, this is a beautiful story.

Mine centers on John S. Moir at U of T. I had the good fortune to take his one-year graduate course on Canadian religious traditions.

In it were Moir, myself, and a woman from Montreal! The three of us met from September to May, 1969-1970.

It was like the old Oxford system. He simply said, "Go to the library and read on this topic and tell me what you find next week."

When Christmas came, he was the only professor to invite us to his home! The other faculty with whom I worked prattled about humanity, and their love for it. But it was John Moir who invited us into his home, and since we had lost our country, this gesture was very powerful. Ever since I have a disgust for professional sentimentalist who are really careerists.

When I had flu in the spring of 1970 he called our apartment to check up on me. He expressed concern about my losing weight, down to 145 pounds in my desire to do straight A work, which in fact I did for my Toronto M.A.

Later, when I was in Wiarton, Ontario, he invited me to become his Ph.D. student. My wife resisted. Moir and his wife Jackie invited us down to their living room in Markham. The four of us sat in his living room, and he asked my wife, "Will you help him." "No" was her answer; it was one of the first nails to go into the coffin of our marriage.

John S. Moir has remained my hero, and whenever we can we stop to visit with him in Brantford, where he lives now to take kidney dialysis. He can no longer writer or type; his granddaughter must copy his notes to me. At my best, I try to be to my students what Moir has been to me.

He was the Ph.D. student of Donald Creighton, probably the greatest historian of Canada to date. He would walk with Creighton during the lunch hour in Queen's Park, Toronto. I wanted, longed to be the next link in this chain of loyalty to what matters.

Moir loved to tell Diefenbaker stories, and his wife Jackie and he enjoyed highland dancing. He did not engage in the politically correct drivel that permeated the rest of the curriculum, thank God. He kept track of the battle order of the army regiments of Canada as they would be called to the flag if Canada mustered for war. He had served in army intelligence in Ottawa during World War II where he translated German documents.

I shall always remember him brining a brick of Stratford cheese to one of our weekly "classes," actually a tutorial. He bought it on a return trip from Windsor, where had had attended the annual meeting of Canadian Historical Association! He was proud, proud, proud of that cheese! My God, Walter, it is sanity in this crazed world to know, respect good cheese when you find, taste it!

Only three other men come close to Moir in my list of educational greats, but John S. Moir stands above all of them. To this day, this very minute, your humble servant here wants to be worthy of his faith in me.

As I told him during our first Brantford visit, "You will always be my professor, and I shall always be your student." Yes, it is about people if it is about anything.

Or as Parker Palmer, a Madison, Wisconsin Quaker writer puts it, "It is education from and to the heart." It is more than facts, techniques. It is caring about and share from the heart. God has blessed me with these memories. God has blessed me with and through Professor John Sargent Moir, Ph.D., D.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada.

More Ancient Taoist Wisdom from China

2010-10-14T22:10:00.001-07:00

Taoism teaches that small and medium-sized countries in fact are superior to super powers. The super powers simply bully others.

Small and medium-sized countries on the other hand must offer value to other countries, since they are not strong enough to bully other countries.

For example, Canada offers American know-how to other countries without the threats.

Canada also exports food, products, and services in large quantities to the USA. My wife, for example, purchases tomatoes grown in Ontario, Canada here in Wisconsin!

This writer also purchased a snow blower recently at the local Wal-Mart. Yes, it too came from Canada! The bank down the street just became part of the Bank of Montreal's American subsidiary Harri Bank!

Americans are so busy waging war that they no longer seem to know how to grow tomatoes, build snow blowers, or run banks.

Thus ends our lesson on Taoism for today.

Ancient Taoist Wisdom from China

2010-10-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

"When armies fight nobody wins for men die.

The crops are not planted and the fields are destroyed."

This reflects the wisdom of Sun-Tzu, the great ancient Chinese military thinker who argued in his classic The Art of War that the best generals never fight.

They position their forces, resources in intelligent ways to make it impossible for rational enemies to want to war with you.

In other words, only the stupids end up waging war. The smart ones know how to get what they need, want without warfare. What does this teach us about today?

As Dr. Samuel Johnson observed many years ago, we never discover anything new. We rediscover old truths. Taoism offers old truths.

Rhetoric about rights obscures reality.

2010-10-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

David, review Thomas Hobbes, whose views shape mine.

Government by definition enjoys a monopoly on the use of physical force in a society, or it ceases to govern. Witness Mexico.

This writer follows Hobbes who puts physical force as the source of civil order or disorder, depending on who uses it.

If government fails to govern, maintain order and a monopoly on physical force, we open the "box" to each and every man for himself, the "first position" of humans on this planet.

The control of violence is not pacifism, for to control the use of violence requires the use of violence good and hard to maintain order,as Hobbes observes. The Romans understood this. They did not maintain order with psycho-babble and legalisms about rights. They used force good and hard, and it produced results.

Therefore, to disturb this monopoly of force on the part of government is to create a Mafia world, and we are moving this way.

John Locke, a contemporary of Hobbes, prattled on about rights. Hobbes said in effect the desire to physically survive trumps rights dreamed up by lawyers, business people, and idealists.

Hobbes and Locke lived at the time of the English Civil War, which was settled, as was ours, not by lawyers, but by force, good and hard. Revisit Oliver Cromwell here.

Americans suffer from the fact that the people who wrote our founding documents were lawyers and merchants, but it was Washington who settled the issue, and he was not a lawyer prattling about rights.

The first order of business is physical survival, safety, as Hobbes observed. We fool ourselves about the origins of this basic civil order, and it is not lawyers, economists, pacifists, etc.

It is the use of force to govern and to keep the vermin in place, check. The American romance with lawyers and related contract thinking obscures this reality, and it is leading us into the night, and not a pacifist bedtime story.

Hope versus optimism

2010-10-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks to David McWilliams, Dublin, Ireland for sharing the following insight:

"He (Seamus Heany, Irish poet)quoted Czech poet and former president Vaclav Havel on the distinction between hope and optimism.

Havel, a man who had plenty of time to think about these things following years of internal exile in Czechoslovakia – made the following distinction:

‘‘Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but hope is the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”'

Optimism is warm-fuzzy, group-therapy thinking without a basis in reality.

Hope is doing the right thing here and now. In doing the right thing today, we gain confidence in positive future outcomes.

Notice how the ruling vampire class in America peddles optinism through its mass-media shills and hack cheerleaders.

However, the vampires, in their greed, refuse to do the right thing here and now to create reasonable foundations, hope, for a better future.

America has lots of cheap optimism, but it more and more has no real hope.

New Government Employee Ruling Class in USA

2010-10-04T09:23:00.001-07:00

That’s how zombies do it. They take advantage of an easily-corruptible system. Government salaries and benefits, for example, are typically about 30% better than those in the private sector.

You can see the difference here in Bethesda. The houses are all tarted up. The cars are all new and expensive. The streets and restaurants are full. Everything is modern, rich….

The editor of US News & World Report talks of a “great divide” in the US…those who have government salaries…and the rest of us. People who work for government – or otherwise are supported by the government – have made steady income gains over the last 30 years. Others have not. Government employee labor unions have grown while others have declined.

Being a zombie pays. And it’s likely to pay even better in the future. Because now zombies control the White House (it was the zombie states…those that owed the most money…and those that get most money from the government) that elected Barack Obama.
They control the Congress too.

Zombies have the time (what else do they have to do?) and the resources (often, direct contact with the government itself) to get involved in elections. They have a motive too – they can pass legislation putting more money in zombie hands.

Military contractors, tax lawyers, “educators” and the handicapped – all have a keen interest in elections.

The rest of us have our work, business, families, careers to attend to. Not that every tax lawyer is a chiseler, every military contractor is a cheat, and every person who can’t walk is a malingerer – far from it. But they have to be doubly honest and independent to avoid the corrupting gravity of Planet Zombie.

October 4, 2010

The Growing Threat to Basic Civic Order in the USA

2010-10-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

Annette, in fact, your humble servant is reading a 2007 book by Richard Florida entitled The Flight of the Creative Class. In it, he argues, observes that talent today has many geographic options. America, the USA, is no longer the only destination of talent. Options like Toronto, Canada and Auckland, New Zealand exist, and we in effect are competing now internationally for talent, not just locally. The best talent will not automatically consider the USA its first choice.

This will become a huge issue if and when people are allowd to carry pistols in holsters openly in public in the USA. This is, believe it or not, a key rising political issue in our Madison, Wisconsin area. People are going to public places, e.g. restaurants, with loaded weapons in holsters, and they are claiming a constitutional right to do this in America. If this becomes legal, accepted practice, look for the flight of the creative class from America to become a race for the exits from the USA to other geographic locations that do not allow cowboy antics in the Information Age.

The local politicians here claim to want to bring, create jobs; after saying this, they start pushing public display of loaded weapons! Your humble servant literally heard a candidate for Wisconsin State Senate say this at a dinner last night. Canada, where this writer has options, looks better and better. Your professor is an example of the new creative class who has geographic options and is not place-bound as in the factory, farm age.

This writer has placed an election sign for the opponent of this "gun nut" in his front yard now.

The other danger is the public arming of persons of a certain political persuasion could result in overt violence against persons who disagree with them. Imagine having a political rally and your opponents show up with loaded weapons. It would have a chilling effect on politics and could quickly degenerate into "politics by the gun," not the ballot. This is a very real potential and lethal danger to democratic processes. It is not just the danger of increased, random public violence because of "bad hair days" or drunken feuds in and outside taverns.

The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida sadly sounds a warning about the future loss of critical human resources from the USA if this trend toward Wild West gun-slinging takes root.