Land is the subtext in the fight over American internet access

I just finished reading a fascinating article on the Evonomics.com website, a website dedicated to rethinking economics. Economist Josh Ryan-Collins' article, "How Land Disappeared from Economic Theory" uncovers a giant hole in economics. In his article, Collins describes how economic theory taught in classrooms for decades has been shaped to teach us to ignore land values in economic planning and public policy. What Collins shows us is that it is nearly impossible to have a coherent discussion of economic policy without talking about land ownership and rents:

"But there has always been a third ‘factor’: Land. Neglected, obfuscated but never quite completely forgotten, the story of Land’s marginalization from mainstream economic theory is little known. But it has important implications. Putting it back in to economics, we argue in a new book, ‘Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing’, could help us better understand many of today’s most pressing social and economic problems, including excessive property prices, rising wealth inequality and stagnant productivity. Land was initially a key part of classical economic theory, so why did it get pushed aside?"

Collins goes on to show in his article (a long but very worthy read), how the wealthy interests who own most of the land influenced how economics is taught to take land out of the equations, why would wealthy interests seek to do that? People who have used their wealth to amass ownership of land may well want to keep the greatest of all monopolies hidden from Economics 101. For who would want to admit that their share of all wealth is mostly unearned due to the happy circumstance of mere land ownership? From the article, but not necessarily in original sequence from article:

“In such a case …[land rent]… it would be no violation of the principles on which private property is grounded, if the state should appropriate this increase of wealth, or part of it, as it arises. This would not properly be taking anything from anybody; it would merely be applying an accession of wealth, created by circumstances, to the benefit of society, instead of allowing it to become an unearned appendage to the riches of a particular class.” 

... 

The reasons for this may well be political. Mason Gaffney, an American land economist and scholar of Henry George, has argued that Bates Clark and his followers received substantial financial support from corporate and landed interests who were determined to prevent George’s theories gaining credibility out of concerns that their wealth would be wittled away via a land tax. In contrast, theories of land rent and taxation never found an academic home. In addition, George, primarily a campaigner and journalist, never managed to forge an allegiance with American socialists who were more focused on taxing the profits of the captains of industry and the financial sector. (emphasis mine)

If most economic theories have buried land values as a factor in how an economy works, that would explain this meme:

Credit for meme: By Stephen Ewen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27391254

Take a close look at that image. The top 10% own more than half of the land value in the country. The top 40 percent own almost all of it. The bottom 60% own a tiny fraction of the United States. And then there is that little red dot, owned by 40% of the American people.

Now follow the dots. Very wealthy interests comprising of a small minority of the population, intent on preserving their wealth for generations to come, use their influence to change how economics is taught. By exerting their influence on how economics is taught, they influence economists who graduate American colleges teaching the wealthy man's version of economics, the one that hides the value of land from the rest of us. Those same economists, particularly if they follow the party line, become sources of information for people who write public policy regarding economics and journalists who write about economics. The people who write the laws regarding economic policy turn to experts who were trained to ignore land ownership as a matter of economics. All this effort is just so that the biggest land owners can avoid paying some taxes on the rents they receive from the land they own.

The tax on the land (we call them inheritance and real estate taxes) is to put the wealth generated by the land back into the economy as government spending for all to enjoy. That is the tax that the wealthy land owners wish to avoid. Such patriotism.

Now some of you may have read my earlier works on this blog and may well be aware that I'm a big fan of community broadband. I live in an area where there is only one wired internet access provider. That's what FCC Chairman Ajit Pai calls "competition". Ars Technica reports that, "Ajit Pai says broadband market too competitive for strict privacy rules". I guess that's what we can expect from a captured regulator.

I have long wondered why there is so much resistance from the top of the economy for making broadband markets work. I get it that we have telecom monopolies like Comcast, Time-Warner, ATT, Verizon and CenturyLink all working through a local franchise agreement with the cities and states they operate in. Those franchise agreements allow a de facto monopoly to take shape. That de facto monopoly receives enormous protection from state and federal governments that few are willing to acknowledge. There must be a reason why the biggest telecoms get so much protection. Do they really lack the skills to compete against municipal governments in the market for internet access?

I believe that I understand now why the fight is so difficult. It is not just the incumbent providers protecting their cash cows. It is the land owners protecting their monopolies (from the same Evonomics article):

Ricardo and Smith were mainly writing about an agrarian economy. But the law of rent applies equally in developed urban areas as the famous Land Value Tax campaigner Henry George argued in his best-selling text ‘Progress and Poverty’. Once all the un-owned land is occupied, economic rent then becomes determined by locational value. Thus the rise of communications technology and globalisation has not meant ‘the end of distance’ as some predicted. Instead, it has driven the economic pre-eminence of a few cities that are best connected to the global economy and offer the best amenities for the knowledge workers and entrepreneurs of the digital economy. The scarcity of these locations has fed a long boom in the value of land in those cities. (emphasis mine)

The fight over internet access is a fight to protect land values in large cities, to protect the land monopolies held by the wealthy elite. If internet access were made easy, cheap, fast and ubiquitous, anyone with good clerical or technical skills could live and work anywhere. For the wealthy landed class, it isn't enough to discourage and restrain social and economic mobility. Geographic mobility must be restrained as well.

Since at least 2001, there has been a very intense fight in the statehouses across the country over internet access. The major ISPs are just proxies in this fight, but effective proxies they are. One of the first community broadband networks is UTOPIA, built right here in Utah, formally known as the Utah Open Infrastructure Agency. When incumbent ISPs received word of UTOPIA around the year 2000, they worked with The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to draft model legislation to kill off UTOPIA or at least seriously hobble it. Since then, ALEC has participated in a largely successful effort to restrain or eliminate municipal efforts to build public internet access networks in more than 20 states (Utah was the first state to pass that model legislation) across the country.

The primary argument used against municipal broadband systems is that municipal governments should not be taking the risk of building internet access infrastructure, a function best left to private enterprise and savvy investors who really know what they are doing. At least, that's the narrative most of the public is fed. But a funny thing happened in Utah. A natural experiment occurred where the municipal network of Spanish Fork was spared the most onerous requirement of that model ALEC legislation: that the network must rely upon a third party to sell access. While the city of Spanish Fork could sell directly to customers, UTOPIA was required to rely upon third party sellers.

The results are plainly obvious in this article, "How Lobbyists in Utah Put Taxpayer Dollars at Risk to Protect Cable Monopolies", by Chris Mitchell, director of Community Networks, at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. UTOPIA is now buried in debt because they could not sell service directly to residents in their service area. The Spanish Fork municipal network was allowed to sell directly to residents, paid off its debts early, used their profits to add capacity, increase speeds and improve service.

I know, it sounds absurd, but there are ISPs that actually do that, but they're not private ISPs. More than 450 cities around the country have created public networks to get around private ISPs who will not build at all, or refuse to increase capacity and speed for the cities they serve. I guess the risk that opponents of community broadband refuse to talk about is the risk of legislative opposition, of which they themselves finance, to the public option for internet access.

Close observers of the struggle for internet access may also be familiar with the fight in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the Electric Power Board provides a symmetrical gigabit connection for $70 a month, mopping the floor with their competition. The Electric Power Board is a public utility that set up fiber connections to every home for meter readings and discovered that they could also provide internet access. When incumbent service providers discovered what the EPB was doing, it was too late to stop them. So incumbents moved to restrict the EPB from providing such offensive service outside of their original service area. Neighboring communities stuck with inferior service from Comcast and ATT clamored for service from EPB and took their fight to the FCC.

You might also recall how the FCC ruled that the EPB could provide service to their neighbors in adjacent areas, but the state of Tennessee sued for injunctive relief and won on behalf of the incumbent service providers to set aside the FCC ruling permitting EPB to service their neighbors. To put it differently, the fight over geographic mobility is so serious that wealthy interests are willing to do whatever it takes to maintain their monopolies, first by wire and then by land.

It's a subtle fight and it is rarely mentioned in the news if at all, and you'll never see mainstream media framing the story this way. Mainstream media teaches us that when property values go up we all prosper, what they don't tell us is just how much of a drain on the economy rent seeking is. The biggest land owners want steady and stable renters, not people who think they can move to a small town, buy a house and still make a living because they can do their work online or run an online business. The last thing they need is policy makers figuring out how to properly tax and regulate the absentee land owners, the land owners who rent their land rather than occupy it.

This silent struggle over land is only silent to the extent that the press is willing to discuss it. Some of you still read newspapers. I used to do that, too. But since then, I've learned that when I put a quarter into a newspaper vending machine, I didn't pay for the contents of the paper, the advertisers did. The content we call news, is called the "newshole" by the newspaper editors for a reason. The advertisers pay for influence on what's fit to print and what is not. Those advertisers are paying for a narrative that is flattering to their enterprise, which on the surface is anything but extracting rents. Advertisers in mainstream media are paying for a narrative that would have us all believe that rent seeking passes for capitalism. And so far, it seems to be working.

Government isn't the problem - people are the problem - let's solve our problems together

I've been debating in Google+ again. The worry over Trump as president increases with each passing day as inauguration looms closer. I'm not worried myself, because we have a government that is built with checks and balances. I don't believe the gloom and doom about Trump. Already, I see the debaters in Google+ scoring points against each other and I see the posturing. I've also noticed some anarchists coming out in the debates I've participated in. Some are gun rights activists. I know this because I can check their profile to see what they're promoting with their Google+ accounts.

"Guns don't kill people, people do." This is the mantra of most gun rights activists, and they're right. That doesn't mean we should not regulate the sale and use of guns. That slogan simply makes the observation that guns are inanimate objects and do their damage in human hands.

I have a song playing in my head and I can't get it to go away. It's called "Heartache Tonight", by The Eagles. They are the ultimate band for the bar scene because that's what they sing about. I see the bar scene as being analogous to the playground and high school. That song "knows" that someone will get hurt tonight and assumes that no one can do anything about it. The Eagles were a big part of American pop culture for my generation and they provide some of the inspiration for this article.

I'm also reminded of this very interesting quote from a former member of the Nixon Administration:

“You want to know what this was really all about,” Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said, referring to Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

That was from John Ehrlicman, counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon. It is a rather startling admission of the need of those in power to score points against those not in power. The attitudes expressed by the drug war clearly show the need to silence the opposition, the dissent, so that other wars may proceed without challenge. It is all about scoring points against the other side.

More recently, I'm now seeing worry about efforts by the GOP to defund Planned Parenthood. There are some who would have us believe that efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are about defunding abortions performed by the agency, but I've seen very well documented proof that no federal money is used to pay for abortion services at Planned Parenthood. Defunding Planned Parenthood means removing funding for a wide range of services that women need to check on and maintain their health. Again, I see one party with power scoring points against someone with less power.

Maybe it's just me, but lately, politics has become a sport to some and for them, it's all about scoring points. I disagree. Politics is not a sport for me. Politics about how we can all get along together. In peace.

As we close the book on the Obama Administration, I see that people are worried about Obamacare. There are serious concerns that millions will be booted from their health care plans, their insurance, and a portable system that works regardless of jobs or employers. Millions of Americans found that they are no longer tied down to one employer just for health insurance, always a dismissal away from being uninsured. Millions of Americans found that they could work part time and still have health insurance and made a choice to work part time.

With the election of Donald Trump, we see Republicans, with their majorities in Congress, ready and willing to repeal Obamacare. Yet, few if any can point to a practical and realistic replacement for Obamacare offered by Republicans. It is even a fair question to ask if Republicans did whatever they could to hobble Obamacare with amendments to the legislation that were tacked on in committee or during reconciliation proceedings as the legislation went from House to Senate and back. Their goal, it seems, is to make sure that no government healthcare program could ever work.

A fair number of conservatives that I've encountered in social media debates on the subject would have us believe that private enterprise has clean hands. Yet I can recall upon the passage of Obamacare how private insurance companies jacked up rates, leaving the marketplaces set up for Obamacare and generally, acting like sore losers in the debate, doing everything they could to make Obamacare bitter for the beneficiaries.

More than a few conservatives in debate and in the op-ed pages worried that Obamacare paved the way towards a single payer system. They worry about a government monopoly on healthcare. What they fail to acknowledge is that in many cases wherever government monopolies are compared to private monopolies, government monopolies tend to be more efficient. 

We have a natural experiment to consider with public vs private monopolies: internet access. In millions of homes across the country, most people have one or two broadband providers, and they are mostly private service providers. This is not a sign of thriving competition. These private monopolies are often unresponsive to the needs of the communities they claim to serve. They use a portion of their profits to lobby for greater protection of their business interests. Protection? From what? Municipal broadband.

In places like Colorado, Tennessee and even Utah, incumbent providers faced with real competition from "the public option" have spent millions lobbying statehouses to protect their monopolies. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, they have the very popular EPB, the Electric Power Board, now offering 1Gbps up and down service for $70 a month. Neighboring counties clamored for EPB service but are now denied service due to state legislation that prevents the EPB from servicing customers outside of their original service area. Incumbent providers like Comcast, Time-Warner and ATT all lobbied hard against the EPB, claiming unfair competition. This is what I mean when private enterprise claims the need for protection against "the public option". This is what opponents of Obamacare are afraid of - that the public option might actually work.

In Colorado, communities fed up with the private monopolies of Centurylink, Comcast and ATT decided to build their own broadband services run by the local municipalities. The incumbent providers prevailed again with a state law that says that communities may not provide public internet service without passing a series of hoops intended to hobble adoption of municipal broadband, again claiming unfair competition from a public utility. The law had an out, the referendum.

To date, 95 governments in Colorado have passed referendums seeking local control over their internet access to escape the grasp of the private monopolies running the show in their towns. Often, these referendums passed with better than 80% of the vote, sometimes breaching 90%.

Colorado is not exactly a hotbed of liberal passion, either. They are a mostly Republican state and have found the low hanging fruit of change is at the local level. Colorado passed legislation making cannabis legal for recreational use. They are flirting with the idea of a public option in healthcare, too.

Long ago, I read of an insurance executive who was paid $80 million for one year of service. He was one of the highest paid executives in the United States. His company had a PR department that worked hard to justify this outrageous CEO compensation. The wealthy, when they find the power that comes with their wealth, seem to have a hard time knowing when to stop. How do they know enough is enough? They too, are scoring points.

I'm reminded again of the soup bowl study. They tested college students in two settings. In one room, the control group, the test subject was presented with a bowl of soup and something to read, like magazines. Students were asked to eat until they were full or until the soup was gone. Most ate until the bowl was empty. They stopped when they could see the bottom of the bowl.

In another room, they were presented with the same thing, but this time, there was a hose connected to the bottom of the bowl that would create a bottomless bowl of soup. Students with the bottomless bowl would not stop even after they were full because they were looking for the bottom of the bowl. Instead listening to their bodies, they were looking for external clues and references to determine if they had enough to eat.

Wealthy people do that. After making their first billion, do they have enough? I see hedge fund managers who make more money in a day than many people do in a lifetime. Oil company executives continue to work long after they have more money than they could ever hope to spend. Long after our environment has been polluted and denatured. The wealthy can use their money to influence politics, for better or worse. I see them just scoring points, too. They seem dependent on external cues for happiness.

Life is more than just scoring points: getting an A, getting rich, making the other side feel pain. Yet there are some people who want government to work that way. Legislative jockeying and political posturing is about scoring points and making the other side feel pain. We saw that with the government shutdown a few years ago. We saw that with the DNC and their deliberate plans to make Hillary the nominee. We're seeing it again now that Republicans have majorities in Congress and the White House. They're all about scoring points and making the other side lose or feel pain.

Government is not the problem. People are. The Washington Post has an interesting article about two socialist countries. One on the brink of economic and social collapse, the other experiencing economic growth and blossoming culture. Conservatives would score a point by telling us that Venezuela is getting what they deserve while omitting how well Bolivia is doing. Both countries made different decisions about how to allocate resources. Both countries have problems, just like ours, both countries have governments that are run by people and those people determined the outcomes.

People have frailties. They have faults. They are not perfect. When governments fail, it's not because of the system, it's because of the people. When governments are run by people who treat others with respect and empathy, it doesn't matter which system they're in, the people will be better off. In every case where there is tyranny, there are abusive people in abusive cultures raised by abusive parents. Hitler's Germany was an authoritarian culture seeking world domination. The system of government didn't make Germany that way, the people did. Scandinavian countries shun confrontation with their kids, they shun judgement of their kids and they actively work with their kids to solve the problems of life with them.

It doesn't matter if the service provider in any economy is public or private. If the people providing the service are abusive, we can expect abuses. It doesn't matter if the system of government is libertarian or totalitarian, if the people are abusive, we can expect abuses. It doesn't matter if the economy is socialist, communist or capitalist, if the people are abusive, we can expect abuses.

People who are abusive believe in reward and punishment. They believe in scoring points and making the other side suffer for their weaknesses. Abusive people have a really hard time finding or creating internal motivation to succeed, to do the right thing, to have empathy for others. Abusive people rely upon external cues for happiness. This is not to say that abusive people are bad. This is to say that abusive people lack the skills they need to get along with others and play nice.

We find abusive people in a continuum, from the violent to the merely passive aggressive. We find them in a cult of personality. We find them in identity politics where we are made to focus on the person rather than the policies. Abusive people in politics exhibit little interest in teaching skills and more interest in making people pay the price for their lack of skills.

So how do we break the cycle? How do we make the world a better place? Bernie Sanders said real change starts at the bottom. Although I don't think this is what he had in mind, I believe that real change starts with our kids. How we raise our kids determines their outcomes. We've tried teaching them how to score points, but in the end, they will not find happiness in a gold star or winning at the game of life. Scoring points means that someone else loses.

Achievement cannot fill empty arms. So we could teach them collaborative and proactive solutions. When we see challenging behavior in kids, we could look at the behavior as a signal rather than the problem. Then we work with the kids to solve the problem that gives rise to challenging behavior. In so doing, we teach kids how to meet their own needs without making someone else lose. We teach them to be internally motivated to solve problems independent of how other people act.

Where could we learn about this? We could start with a book by Ross W. Greene, PhD., "Raising Human Beings". In fact, this isn't just for kids, this is for adults, too. The principles described in this book (and a few others by the same guy), are not just techniques for getting along. They are a way of life.

Dr. Greene is not the only one on this trail. There are many others on the same trail. They too, have learned that reward and punishment don't work. Happiness is not about scoring points or getting the best of someone else or making them lose. Maybe the human race is starting to learn that happiness is knowing that we have the skills to solve problems with durable, repeatable solutions.

Isn't that what government is supposed to be for?

A sort of political movie review: Star Wars: Rogue One

A few days ago, I had an opportunity to see a movie and I took it. As a busy dad of two small kids and working full time, getting out to a movie is tough unless I want to be a night owl. For Christmas, my employer bought a theater room full of tickets and sent my team to the movies. I've done this before and saw Batman vs Superman, which I enjoyed. This time it's Star Wars: Rogue One. I enjoyed that movie so much, that I thought I'd offer a sort of political review of that movie.

As I've mentioned before, I've been reading a couple of books that have changed the way I look at pop culture, perhaps irreversibly. Two books written by Ross W. Greene, PhD, have completely changed my outlook on human behavior and pop culture. The first is The Explosive Child and the second is Raising Human Beings. Both are exceptional in their presentation of the subject matter and both provide practical guidance for raising human beings and living life. Adoption of the practices described in those books entails more than learning a method for raising children, it is a lifestyle change.

I'm still on the second pass of Raising Human Beings, a book devoted to doffing the reward/punishment philosophy of child rearing to adopt a proactive, collaborative approach to raising kids. Instead of spanking, extortion, yelling, screaming, grounding and a wide assortment of "incentives", including gold stars, time with electronics and sweet treats, we can take a different approach. We can set expectations for our kids and work with them to help them meet our expectations. We make the assumption that they want to do better and that motivation is not an issue. The only issue we're concerned with is whether or not they have the skills they need to comply with our expectations as parents.

It's Christmas Eve as I publish this and I recall that even Santa Claus has been invoked to coerce kids into better behavior. The song, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", uses Santa Claus to extort good behavior from kids. I sang that song with mixed feelings in school with other kids in our auditorium, even though that was supposed to be a "fun" song. Here are a couple of verses to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town

He's making a list
And checking it twice;
He's gonna find out
Who's naughty or nice
Santa Claus is coming to town

The song tells us that Santa knows when we're sleeping and when we're awake. He knows enough to know which houses to skip on Christmas Eve. The implication is that children should behave during the winter when they have to stay in the house, or there won't be any gifts for Christmas.

Raising Human Beings teaches us that instead of whipping out punishment for failure to comply, we talk with our kids to find out why they cannot meet our expectations and collaborate with them to solve the problems that get in their way to success. That's our job as parents and I think that's our job as humans. Like I said, that's a lifestyle change that I believe will help us treat each other with respect and dignity. Even between adults.

I know, you're wondering about the movie. After reading those books, I found myself wrestling with questions about the plot while watching Star Wars: Rogue One. I considered the characters and their motives and alternative paths to resolve the conflict between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. Don't worry, there are no spoilers here.

First, I have to say that I enjoyed the entire movie. I enjoyed the characters, the robots and graphics. Everything went together well and the plot moves well, too. It is well written and I laughed out loud because the robot in this movie reminded me so much of C3PO. For me the highlight of the movie was seeing Donny Yen (Internet Movie Database). Some of you might remember him from the Ip Man movies. In this movie, he's funny, fast and smart. If you've seen him before, you may find some delight in seeing him again in this movie.

As I watched Rogue One, I was recalling all of the other Star Wars movies I've seen. It finally dawned on me that I have almost no idea what they're fighting over. What does the Rebel Alliance want? What does the Empire want? I did some research and as far as I can tell, this entire struggle is over trade. I found a Wikipedia article on the subject of Star Wars and here is an excerpt of the description of Episode I: The Phantom Menace:

About 32 years before the beginning of the Galactic Civil War, the corrupt Trade Federation sets a blockade of battleships around the planet Naboo. The Sith Lord Darth Sidious had secretly planned the blockade to give his alter ego, Senator Palpatine, a pretense to overthrow and replace the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic.

It looks like the spark of the struggle is a trade blockade setup as a pretense for a power grab. Sounds familiar, huh? And notice that The Empire has an enormous military infrastructure and it hasn't stopped building yet. So I have to wonder about Senator Palpatine. Just how much power does he want? Does he have a family? Kids? Does he even know when he has enough power to stop? Will he ever get to a point where he sits in his chair at home (if he has one), looking at the horizon as two suns set and asks, "Pfffft! What's the point?"

If this struggle is about trade, then The Empire is using force to enter into trade agreements on their own terms. That sure sounds familiar. The United States is like that. Bases all over the world, "free trade" agreements with every country that will buckle, and all of the agreements are negotiated on terms that are decidedly favorable to the United States.

Then I looked at the stormtroopers. The way they talked, they have a remarkably human nature to their voices. I have to wonder, don't those guys have families? Where do they live? Do they really believe in what they are fighting for, or are they just mercenaries? Could they be under mind control from the guys at the top? Are they even conscious?

Then there is the Force. "May the Force be with you." There is the Dark Side and there is everyone else. The Empire is on the Dark Side. It is all about rule by fear of punishment and lust for reward. There is judgment and severe punishment for failure, but no inquiry as to why someone fails. There is no assistance from the guys at the top to fix the problems that get in the way of the subordinates when they fail to meet expectations.

When I see Darth Vader closing the windpipes on one of his subordinates with the Force, as in the first movie, I now see someone who thinks that motivation is an issue. Every character in the movie wants to do well, they want to meet expectations. But when they fail, they failed in a contest of skill and luck. If the other guys have better skills and they defeat you, Vader lacks the compassion to help you. He makes no inquiry to find the problems and fix them, other than by force.

I notice also, that the good guys don't wear masks that hide their eyes. The bad guys, for the most part, are completely covered in body armor. The bad guys at the top are always scheming against each other and the Rebel Alliance. The good guys show their faces, they help each other and have each other's back. The Empire practices competition in the extreme. The Rebel Alliance practices cooperation and compassion with everyone except for the enemy.

The Dark Side never negotiates. The Dark Side operates on the threat of force at all times. The Empire has enough power that it does not need to negotiate in good faith. The Dark Side does not question failure, it only expects success and punishes failure rather than collaborating to solve the problems that get in the way of meeting expectations.

This is what I mean when I say that the book, Raising Human Beings has changed my outlook so much. Instead of accepting the plot of the movie at face value, I deconstruct the plots in movies for more favorable outcomes. As all the Star Wars movies show, just plowing through conflict with force is very expensive and very time consuming. A little tact and compassion goes a long way to smoothing things out.

The antagonist of the Star Wars story line, Darth Vader, imposes his will upon others and does so by force, open, implied and applied. Children, adolescents and young adults all enjoy the movie and get the message that it's not right to impose your will upon others and that fighting back is justified when someone tries to impose their will upon you.

In a sense, Star Wars is a cultural irony. Parents eager to raise children "the right way", the way they have been taught by their parents, have been using force in the form of extortion, open threats and/or implied threats to coerce children into complying with their expectations, however reasonable they might be, regardless of whether or not their kids have the skills to do what they ask. This is not a case of bad parenting, but rather, uninformed solutions to problems that kids experience everyday.

No one is guilty or wrong. Just a bit confused. I don't even believe in evil as a concept, for it is born out of religion. Evil is a supernatural explanation for challenging behavior in both children and adults. In my mind, there is no good and evil. There is only confused (what we call evil), and less confused (good).

The way Vader treats his subordinates implies that everyone who fails is guilty of not being motivated to succeed, even when it seems abundantly clear that they are motivated. Whether or not someone has the skills to comply with his expectations is never questioned because the entire focus of Vader is not skills, it is ulterior motives for failure to comply. He represents the ultimate alias for the authority figure in the lives of millions of children and adult children.

The message of the movie is to fight back and protest when confronted with an authority figure. The assumption is that the authority figure cannot comprehend the suffering of his adversaries, therefore, the only reasonable response is to fight. But Star Wars raises some interesting questions. If it is wrong for Darth Vader to impose his will upon others, why is it OK for parents to impose their will upon kids? In a political context, it is reasonable to ask, why is it OK for American government to ignore the needs of the middle class while catering to the wealthy?

Star Wars is not just science fiction. It is an allegory for what America has become and will continue to be until we decide to be the change we want to see. The Empire is a totalitarian regime, no doubt. America is not a totalitarian state, and I hope we can keep it from becoming one. But The Empire is analogous to the oligarchy we have here in the United States. The Rebel Alliance is analogous to the middle class struggling to sustain themselves and to restore their ability to influence the government for the benefit of everyone, not just the 1%.

To live together in harmony requires skill. Such skills include recognizing challenging behavior when it happens and to conduct a non-confrontational inquiry into why it happens. Additional skills include being proactive in addressing challenging behavior because in most cases, it's predictable. And finally, we need to develop the skill of collaborating with people who exhibit challenging behavior to find out the cause and come up with a solution for it, together. Challenging behavior is the signal not the problem. This isn't just for kids. It's also for adults.

Rogue One is a great movie. But, like much of popular culture, it pretends that injustice comes from someone else, outside of us. It perpetuates acceptance of the wartime economy that powers the United States with "free trade" and cheap foreign goods. It also perpetuates the myth that with enough force any problem can be solved with an adversary.

I believe that as a family and a nation of families, we can do better.

Write on.

BF Skinner, kids and politics

I'm looking forward to seeing my kids go to school someday. They have graduated from peanut to toddler and preschooler. It is at once a wonder and a little teary for me. I remember how cute they were as babies and how I used to walk around the house in the dark with their head on my shoulder to help them fall asleep with motion. Drool on my shoulder was a badge of honor for me. Now I see that school is on the far horizon for them and I want them to have a good experience there, too.

So I did some checking to see if corporal punishment is allowed in schools in the fair state of Utah. Happily, it is not. The literature suggests that schools did not give it up so willingly. Most states gave it up to avoid litigation that tends to empty their coffers for things that would be better spent somewhere else. Yet there are still 19 states that permit corporal punishment in our schools. Studies have shown there is a clear bias in meting out this punishment. People of color are far more likely to be paddled in school than anyone else, a trend that continues well into adulthood.

While digging around for this information, I happened upon this article from the Daily Herald in Utah. It's a guest editorial by Julian Mercer, published astonishingly enough, in February of 2015. In his article, Mr. Mercer expresses his fondness for the good ol' days when spanking was still cool and kids were under control. He likes to think that kids behave better when force is in the wings, waiting to strike should a kid cry, whine or complain in church. To wit:

I believe in spanking and I wish schools today would return to using the paddle. When I say spanking or paddle, I know many people jump to the erroneous conclusions of child abuse or battered children and want to report such activities, and so do I. I’m not advocating abuse but discipline.

I probably spanked my kids once or twice total, and that was all they needed, because it sent the message. After that, when they saw that look on my face, they settled right down. At church, they always had several choices: Being quiet was first and paramount, and to help with that process, they had quiet books, pencils, crayons and paper for drawing and snacks to eat. If nothing worked, then it was out for a spanking. For some reason they never chose the latter. They were able to amuse themselves.

I suspect he's a bit optimistic about how often he has spanked his kids, but here is where it gets really interesting:

The behavioral psychologists B.F. Skinner learned what behavioral psychology really meant, by placing some chickens in a box with a red dot on the wall. As the chickens pecked the wall and hit the red dot, food would drop down.

Guess what happened.

The chickens continued pecking the red dot and nowhere else.

Like those chickens, people always go for the reward. Children soon learn this at a very early age, so that’s when negative reinforcement comes into play.

This is from a newspaper in Utah, a Red State no doubt. But these same people will tell you that they believe in America, the land of the free. On the other hand, they believe that people behave better if they know that physical punishment just a few steps away. Training kids to behave on threat of force is not the way to teach kids about liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I know this first hand.

Here we have a man advocating the same tactics used by BF Skinner to raise his kids in modern day America. Be nice and you get the reward, for the alternative is pretty grim. Get out of line and we can talk about it quietly in the car or the restroom after a few good whacks. Notice that for this man, spanking is not something to be done in public, so I guess he might have a bit of shame about that. Or maybe not.

After I read that article, I was reminded of someone else who talks about BF Skinner: Larry Lessig. I know, I know. Some of you might not be pleased that Lessig is offering pro bono legal counsel to get enough unfaithful electors in the Electoral College to vote for someone other than Trump in two days. That's not likely to happen, but if it does, maybe they'll have the good sense to elect Bernie Sanders instead.

Anyway, Lessig has been fond of pointing out how many members of our Congress are stuck in a sort of Skinner Box, a metaphor to describe the pickle that most members of Congress are in:

...members of Congress spend 30-70 percent of their time fundraising, Lessig noted, adding that they behave like animals in a “Skinner Box,” a device that doles out rewards (food) for animals that push the right buttons. 

Gosh. That sounds a lot like the description that Mr. Mercer gave earlier about using reward and punishment for raising "good kids". Now we see how that plays out in politics. Our politicians have become more interested in rewards than policy. Once a politician gets into that Skinner Box, they have no choice but to let that reward influence how they write and vote for public policy.

The results we see today are consistent with the Skinner Box metaphor described by Mr. Lessig. In this study, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, we discover that we reap what we sow. From the summary:

Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics—which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism—offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. 

A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. 

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. (emphasis mine)

To rephrase what is said above in simple language: the average person citizen has near zero influence on the men and women who write public policy. The Skinner Box is the perfect metaphor to describe just how dependent our elected officials are on big money in politics. Larry Lessig has created the SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs which can be found at mayday.us. He has advocated for strong anti-corruption laws with teeth that send people to prison for corruption. Unfortunately, there are too many people in positions of power to let that happen nationwide. They just can't bear to get off the gravy train.

It is also worth noting here that Bernie Sanders is not in the Skinner Box. He does not dial for dollars from members of the wealthy donor class. He has advocated for publicly funded elections and himself only takes small donations from average citizens. He has won 14 elections just using small donations. His focus is on policies that work for all of us, not rewards from people who want something else in return.

The behavior of our politicians is the signal, not the problem. The problem starts in the home and works up to politics that all of us have to deal with. Generations of kids have been raised on the reward and punishment pedagogy. These same kids grow up to get into positions of power and it shows. This is the end result of using reward and punishment to raise kids. You get a government that is more interested in rewards and punishments than actually solving problems.

How do we stop this cycle and get off? We change our theories of how people behave. We make the assumption that kids would do better if they could. We assume that challenging behavior is the signal, not the problem and we investigate to find out what the real problems are.

How do we do all that? It won't be easy, but life gets easier if we make some changes. Dr. Ross W. Greene is all over it in two books: The Explosive Child and Raising Human Beings. He's got many more, but I've read these two. I believe that a change from reward and punishment to collaborative problem solving for kids will help to create a generation of kids that know how to avoid the Skinner Box.

Note that the principles taught in both of those books can be applied to adult relationships, too. This isn't just about kids for me, this is about humanity.

Bernie Sanders said that real change starts at the bottom. He's right. It starts with our kids.

Corruption and war are really just politically acceptable methods of abusing other people

Today, I'd like to show you an interesting observation made by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism. The topic of her article is the declining value of education beyond 4 years of college and how elites seem to have abandoned everyone else in their quest for wealth and solitude:

Another layer of the problem is increased class stratification. I know lots of people personally who came from working class families, both my age and somewhat younger, who went to elite schools and got prestigious jobs. All sorts of data now shows that people who grow up in lower income cohorts are unlikely to leave them. Greater class differences and less class mingling means that there are fewer opportunities for bright, energetic kids from the wrong side of the tracks to learn to master the class markers necessary to move up the social ladder. And that’s before you get to the fact that continuing attacks on public education and teachers, the increased propensity of parents of means to send their children to private schools, and the looting operation known as charter schools (video) have increased the gap between the pre-college educational experience of the upper middle class and affluent and everyone else.

The current economic regime in America is all about increasing distance between the 1% and everyone else. "But, but...Hillary Clinton says we're stronger together!" Ah, but they're mere words that don't match the neoliberal agenda dutifully followed by every administration since Reagan. Both parties have abandoned the working classes and instead, have pursued the big bucks of the elites, the 1%, and the professional class.

If you don't believe me, check out this video of Bill Clinton and Paul Ryan talking together at the conservative Peter Peterson Foundation in May of 2011:

Bill Clinton is a Democrat and former president of the United States. Paul Ryan is a Republican, and now speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States. In this video, we see that both of them agree to cut Medicare. Isn't it interesting that a former president could still have so much influence in public policy long after leaving office? The Peter Peterson Foundation is a part of the "Fix the Debt" cabal of very wealthy people who are continually shifting the burden onto the middle class. Fix the Debt is an organization dedicated to balancing the budget, without raising taxes (on the wealthy).

Notice that when politicians talk about tax cuts, they're not talking about anyone but the 1%. When the 1% get those tax cuts what do they do? This is what I said about the Bush tax cuts in 2013:

The tax cuts were not used to spread the prosperity around. They were used instead to build, secure and assert an advantage for the business owners over the rest of us. For example, the trend over the last 30 years has seen business investments move from labor to capital. This means that instead of paying employees to do the work, more automation is in use or, labor has been moved offshore. This resulted in exploding profits for the largest corporations. This is a tremendous advantage.

What will employers do with this advantage? They will use it to buy homes in gated communities, private security services, power generators for their homes, private schooling for their kids. They will seek distance from the middle class, both in economic and social terms to ensure that they no longer have to compete directly with the middle class or even have contact with them.

The 1% has very little empathy for the lower classes. As the 1% prevail to cut education funding, health care funding, seek to privatize public lands for exploitation, send our jobs overseas and send our kids off to war, the costs are borne by the lower classes, and the wealthy get their bailouts when it all goes bust. I get the sense that the 1% sincerely believe that they are entitled to punish everyone else for "not getting it".

I have seen firsthand the contempt some wealthy people can have for "lesser humans". We see it in Donald Trump. We have seen it in Hillary Clinton as she wore a $12,000 pantsuit while schooling us about inequality. We've seen it in the DNC and their zeal for getting Hillary nominated despite popular support for Bernie Sanders, something that I will never forget.

The class stratification that we've witnessed over the last 40 years allows the upper classes to isolate from the rest of us. They go to their own private schools, have their own social and business networks and get exclusive access to the halls of power. They exert meaningful influence over Congress and statehouses, something that middle class people can only dream about, as observed by this study, Testing Theories of American Politics:Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Though we are all human, the money is what separates us.

Our supersized prison industrial complex is nothing more than modern day slavery. It is punitive in every sense of the word for the inmates and for the guards. The American prison system is not about rehabilitation, for if it were, we'd have a far lower rate of recidivism, and that is by design of the people who have the most influence in public policy. The 1%.

If the 1% are unhappy that they are so reviled by everyone else, perhaps they need only to look in the mirror and consider the following proposition: punishment does not build coping skills.

In every case where punishment is delivered, the recipient only grows more determined to defeat the messenger and the sender. It is as if the elite truly believe that they can overwhelm their opponents with force. We see that attitude in our criminal justice system, our politics and our foreign policy.

I believe that pain is America's biggest export. I know this because for as long as I can remember, terrorists has been the enemy and terrorism has been used perversely to unify Americans. Terrorism is simply a ruse to distract us from a much bigger problem.

Check out this video of a boy as he is pulled out of the rubble in Syria. He has no idea what is going on. All he knows is that he is hurting, covered in blood and dust, and has no idea who did this to him. He is a victim in a war he knows nothing about. Thousands of kids like him may later be indoctrinated to find the source of the bombs and seek retribution. Those people seeking retribution, are probably the same people we call "terrorists". When we sell or send bombs that are used to kill the children of other people, and those other people strike back, we call them "terrorists".

Because we live so far away from them, we can objectify those other people as "terrorists" instead of actually helping them. Hillary Clinton and others like her, helped to sell those weapons. People like Hillary Clinton and President Obama either gave the order to drop the bombs or delegated that authority to someone else to do it. That's the punishment foreign countries receive for "not getting it".

Whether the perspective is global or local, we can easily verify that punishment does not teach coping skills. Punishment only teaches us to cope with punishment, it does not teach us how to solve problems. Punishment distracts us from the natural consequences of our behavior. When a kid does something "wrong" punishment is a manufactured consequence. When a kid makes a mistake, the consequence is not manufactured by the parent. The natural consequence of a mistake is an opportunity to learn how to do something that works. As parents, it is our job to teach our kids the skills they need to cope with life.

In politics and economics, most of what we have been doing in America is manufacturing a consequence for everyone but the 1%. Since the 1% have real influence over the government by virtue of their money, they should be held accountable for their public policy decisions, including their mistakes, but they're not. Everyone else is punished for the mistakes of the 1%. The austerity, the slow economy, the wars, and the prison state, are all manufactured consequences of the rest of us "not getting it".

I have yet to see an example where punishment did not reinforce unwanted behavior. Not as a parent, not as a child and not as a social or political observer. Punishment doesn't make society better. Anyone familiar with our prison systems knows this. One only need to compare recidivism rates between America and Norway. In America, if the problem goes away, it is only because the problem "solved" by punishment when it goes into hiding. In Sweden, if the problem goes away, it is because inmates are taught the skills they need to be a part of society.

It is only through true political discourse, negotiation and a commitment to living peacefully together, that real solutions are created. Take note of some of the deliberations of the Democratic National Committee. As punishment for "trespassing", most of Bernie Sanders' picks for committee appointments were ignored. As punishment for even being present in Nevada, many delegates that supported Bernie Sanders were shut out of the deliberations process. After all that, there were calls for unity. But instead, the DNC got a #demexit that is ongoing and could potentially damage or even decimate the Democratic Party after the elections in November.

Until we make a sincere commitment to live in peace and work together to solve our common problems, little progress will be made. Neither the Democrats or Republicans are truly committed to peace. Both major parties still very much believe in punitive action as part of the solution in the hopes of securing that elite campaign funding goodness.

There are some Berniecrats entering the fray who can help set things right. They believe in the peaceful agenda set by Bernie Sanders. The Green Party is finally starting to get meaningful national recognition with their peaceful agenda as well. With any luck, Jill Stein may appear on the stage with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson. We need greater diversity of political parties in political discourse because the two party system is broke and doesn't work for us anymore.

I would love to see Bernie Sanders on the debate stage, but he has other plans and from what I can tell, he's really busy with Our Revolution. The closest match for my priorities for the remaining candidates for president is Jill Stein. The Green Party represents my values in a way that the Democrats abandoned decades ago. That's why I'm voting for Jill Stein this November. Fortunately, she's on the ballot in this state and the list of states where she will appear is still growing.

It's time to replace the war and punishment agenda of establishment politics with an agenda based on peace and cooperation. It's time to recognize that all the corruption, the crime, war and the punishment are forms of abuse and are not a sign of mental health. We must recognize that all abuse is a sign of past child abuse sustained by the person delivering the abuse. Whenever a politician insists on dropping bombs on a foreign nation, it's a sign of abuse. We must recognize that when a politician insists on depriving someone else of a right, it's a sign of abuse.

Every person who abuses another is telling the story of how they were once abused as a child. This is true on a personal, regional and nation scale. When we can admit the error of war and can see how what happened to us leads to war, we may finally be in a position to commit to world peace.