To whomever introduced me to the music of Bedouin Soundclash...
...Thank you.
Tonight, while working, I’ve really enjoyed listening to their albums Street Gospels and Sounding a Mosaic.
Rhythmic, upbeat, groovy. Not normally a reggae kind of guy, but their music is catchy.
The song “When the Night Feels My Song” (from Mosaic) is a good one to sample, to get a feel for their music. ...Although I think I like Gospels slightly better, as a collection of songs. So try “Midnight Rockers” off that album, instead.
Akawelle: Also Known as ‘Love’
A 2003 photo from the coverage of Liberia’s civil war:
From this month’s FLOW newsletter:
Akawelle means “also known as love” in Liberia. 15-year-old former Liberian civil war refugee Lovetta Conto created the Akawelle necklace from the casting of bullets spent in the Liberian civil war, as a symbol of the life that come from devastation, with the right attitude, real support, and a liberated entrepreneurial spirit. FLOW is working with the Strongheart Group, who provided Lovetta with a fellowship and a new place to call home in Liberia to advance her work of inspiring other young Liberians to make a new world by engaging their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. We encourage you to support Lovetta and the youth of Liberia by purchasing her Akawelle necklace.
I enjoy the symbolism of her jewelry, and the spirit which it embodies:
I like it that there are parts of the world where the realities of life and death obviate any kind of postmodern cynicism and make people feel proud to embrace life with both arms.
Kudos to the FLOW team for helping support entrepreneurialism in Liberia — beginning with projects that help heal the heart and restore the human spirit to its upright position.
FLOW: Markets in happiness and well-being
I’ve been greatly enjoying my monthly newsletters from FLOW, because these guys are genuinely committed to exploring the reconciliation between liberal values (of personal development, generosity, community, and peace) and free markets.
Below is their latest, from CEO Michael Strong. Other than perhaps his analysis of Mac vs. PC 
I find this to be a very stimulating and incisive discussion of the relevant topics.
Dear FLOW Members,
One of our most powerful instincts is that those who contribute the most to a community should be rewarded the most. From this perspective, it has always been a source of great consternation that educators and healers are often poorly paid, while other individuals whose contribution to the public good are more dubious may be highly paid. For many of us, our sense of justice is constantly violated by this obvious inequity. For much of the last century, “capitalism” was blamed for this state of affairs.
I know a dedicated, hard-working Montessori teacher approaching fifty with no pension, barely able to pay her bills, whose school may be going bankrupt, leaving her unemployed. I once calculated that Montessori teachers sacrifice about a million dollars in lifetime earnings, relative to public school teachers, in order to pursue their vocation.
In another direction, I know the CEO of a large yoga business, a highly professional businessman who once led his family’s multi-million dollar jewelry business, who struggles with the challenge of paying his yoga teachers well.
What to do? There are those who would legislate more government funding for educators and medical professionals, in various ways. But precisely because the vast majority of Montessori educators and yoga teachers practice their arts outside government-legitimized channels, such legislation would not help them at all. Indeed, sometimes government-mandated education and health care reduces the opportunities for alternative practitioners. Montessori educators, for instance, often campaign against government-mandated pre-school, because by supplying free government pre-school such programs would probably put the vast majority of Montessori schools, most of which are private, out of business.
One could, of course, declare that all alternative education and healing are appropriately marginalized, and with issues as urgent as education and health care the last thing that we need to worry about are alternatives outside the mainstream (though both Montessori education and yoga are creeping towards the mainstream).
For those of us who do find value in alternative education and health care, and for those of us who are simply committed to innovation and to individuality, this perspective is profoundly unsatisfying. I don’t want my options for myself and my family to be limited to those legitimatized by the custodial state.
Moreover, a strong case can be made that there are severe weaknesses in the “establishment” education and health care systems. This does not mean that there are not some things that they do well, but it seems premature, to say the least, to reduce the amount of innovation that is possible in the most important realms of human life.
One of the statistics that has long interested me is the fact that about three-quarters of health care costs in the U.S. are attributable to chronic diseases: heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes leading the way. The single most powerful way to reduce the incidence of all of these diseases, and their associated costs, are lifestyle changes (The most lethal cancer by a large margin continues to be lung cancer, largely due to smoking). In addition, most accidents, the largest source of death among young people, are due to lifestyle choices, among them drinking and driving. Separate from both the costs of chronic diseases and the costs of accidents are the costs associated with addiction per se. The epidemic of obesity results in all health care problems become more frequent, more deadly, and costlier to treat. Added together, the overall health costs of bad habits may well exceed 80-90% of our health care costs, somewhere between $1.2 - $1.4 trillion per year, more than double what we spend on all K-12 education in the U.S., more than the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa.
As an educator, I was always more concerned with the school’s culture than I was with academics per se; it is a profound mistake to force schools to focus directly on test scores and ignore all other aspects of life. My explicit goal was to develop positive habits and attitudes among the students in my care. The best “alternative” or “holistic” educators and health care practitioners are often profoundly focused on habits and lifestyle choices, as are many of the best traditional educators and health care practitioners. But we have created institutions that penalize such a focus rather than reward such a focus.
I have often looked at the $1.2 trillion or so in health care costs due to our bad habits and wondered how that massive amount of wealth could be redirected towards those educators and health care providers that support the development of good habits. It is a well-documented fact that cultural variables are more important determinants of health than are education, income, or access to health care. At a given level of income, Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans tend to have better health than Euro-Americans, who in turn tend to have better health than African-Americans and Native Americans. Hispanic Americans from Mexico are healthiest when they first immigrate to the U.S., and gradually regress closer towards the national average the longer they live here. Mormons are significantly healthier than the rest of us. If we could all be Asian, Hispanic-fresh from Mexico, or Mormon, health care costs might instantly drop by nearly a trillion dollars.
What if some educators or health care practitioners were actually effective at helping us cultivate better habits? In principal, our insurance costs should decrease. There are already insurance discounts for non-smokers in health insurance and for good students in auto insurance. If an insurance company knew that students from a particular educational program, or practitioners of a particular kind of yoga or martial art or whatever had reliably better health statistics, they could provide significant discounts to the individuals who were associated with such healthy practices. If the discounts were significant enough, those organizations and individuals who were consistently able to improve health habits could increase their rates, and pay their professionals more highly. Ultimately high-quality preventative care, with highly paid professionals providing such care, would become a reality.
Most of the alternative educators and health care professionals I know believe that, in fact, they are more effective at imparting good habits and lifestyle changes than are most mainstream sources of education and health care. The mainstream would counter that there is inadequate research evidence of this fact. And so the Montessorians and yoga teachers and others patiently work to try to obtain funding for research to prove that what they are doing has some measurable value. Most of them hope to become legitimate in the eyes of the establishment so that they can receive some of the establishment funding.
In the world of personal computing, for nearly thirty years now there has been a virulent argument between supporters of Macintoshes and supporters of Microsoft PCs. On the basis of cost and measurable performance, Microsoft PCs are almost always a better buy than are Macs. On the basis of quantifiable evidence, Macs lost long ago. And yet Macs have retained their position on the leading edge, inspiring millions of enthusiasts even while Microsoft continues to imitate elements of cutting-edge Mac design.
Insofar as improvements in our quality of life are not easily measured, it is a mistake to await double-blind research evidence and government approval before allowing such innovations to receive support. Insofar as the worlds of education and health care are heavily regulated and have been for the past hundred years, the vast majority of potential innovations in our quality of life have remained stillborn during this period.
Entrepreneurs bet their lives on unproven visions. If it were legal to do so, more entrepreneurs would bet their lives on delivering education and health care that changed habits and improved quality of life and, most importantly, health insurance that monetized the value of those improved habits. Some of those, using unproven technologies, would become wealthy and provide new and better ways of living to millions of people. We should have education and health care chains that are far more powerful than Apple and Whole Foods Market, bringing new and better ways of living to millions. Ultimately, once these markets in happiness and well-being have been legalized, we will see all of the capital and talent that we now see flowing into technology and finance flowing into education and health care. And great educators and holistic health care practitioners will become highly paid, highly respected members of our society. In this sense we need more capitalism, not less, in order to create an ever-improving quality of life for everyone in our society.
Newsweek Magazine recently named Moreno Valley High School (MVHS), of Angel Fire, New Mexico, the 51st best public high school in the U.S. based on the number of students who take Advanced Placement (AP) exams. The first year I founded the school none of the students had taken an AP test and a local college professor told me point blank that northern New Mexican students were not capable of passing AP tests. The second year of the school we were ranked the 147th best in the nation, the third year 36th best, and now 51st best, with AP passing rates more than double the national average. Most of the schools ranked more highly than MVHS are either wealthy suburban schools in elite enclaves or they are magnet schools that gather the best and the brightest from an entire city. Given the demographic profile of the school, it has consistently been one of the highest performing schools three years in a row.
I know exactly how to replicate this performance and had wanted to create a chain of these schools across the country. But I was forced out of the school due to the fact that I had never had an administrator’s license. There is no research evidence showing that the “methods” that I used produce these results – because the devil is in the details. I got into the business of starting schools because I realized I had to design every aspect of the school in order to ensure these results. It is not a matter of a “method” resulting in “replicable results.” It is the matter of individual vision manifest in a unique organization leading to outstanding results. Government-controlled institutions can never support the cultivation of thousands of individual visions resulting in unique organizations leading to outstanding results.
Through economic freedom based on rule of law and secure property rights, war and poverty can become a thing of the past around the world. Through property rights solutions to tragedy of the commons problems, we can create an environmentally sustainable world. And by legalizing markets in happiness and well-being, we can create a lively, innovative industry in health and learning, happiness and well-being, that will result in a continuously improving quality of life for all nine billion human beings in the 21st century.
Towards life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
Michael Strong
CEO & Chief Visionary Officer
FLOW, Inc.
If you find this kind of analysis interesting, I encourage you check out their web site and sign up to receive their newsletter yourself.
Profits are like happiness: If you aim for it directly, you’re more likely to miss
I’ve become very intrigued lately by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s concept of “conscious capitalism” (link to PDF essay).
A few days ago, Justin Fox from Time Magazine published a lengthy interview with Mackey and his college housemate Kip Tindell — who, as it happens, is the CEO of the Container Store, which is similarly prosperous and also run by a very similar business philosophy.
Year after year, Fortune magazine consistently rates their two companies as among the best companies in the world for which to work.
Here’s a good quote from Mackey, from the Time interview, that sort of sums up Mackey’s business philosophy:
First of all, Milton Friedman is one of my personal heroes, so I don’t want to trash Milton Friedman. But he had a mechanistic view of business–it’s like a factory that you bring inputs in, capital and labor, and you mix them together and out spits profits, and that’s the reason business is created. That’s how he would think about it.
It’s true that what Kip and I do also does create the best or maximum long-term shareholder value, but that’s not the reason we do it. If that was the reason we did it, we probably wouldn’t be as successful at it. The whole idea is to create an organization where all of the stakeholders are flourishing at the same time. Or in a very simple, simplistic model, which I teach our team members, the purpose of management is to make sure that the team members are well-trained and they’re happy in their work. If they’re happy in their work, then that’s going to result in good customer service and happy customers. If the customers are happy, then the business is going to flourish and the investors will be happy.
So you get this virtuous circle, and you can add the suppliers in because they have to be flourishing as well. It’s this idea that everyone is creating with the business voluntarily, and they all need to simultaneously flourish. And if they do, the business will prosper. And that will maximize long-term shareholder value.
It’s not a strategy to maximize shareholder value. It’s not the reason we’re doing it. The reason we’re doing it is because we want all of the stakeholders to flourish. Where I differed with him was what was the purpose of the business and why it really existed. He couldn’t conceive that it would exist for any other reason than to maximize shareholder value. And once he understood that this does maximize shareholder value, he said, “Oh, we agree.” I said, “No, we don’t agree because that’s not the purpose of the business.” And that’s where we never could quite sync up.
And Tindell says a short bit later:
I mean, we were joking at a gathering that we had this past summer that even the lawyers and bankers kind of get into the act. They’re so philosophically proud of the way your organization is governed that they kind of get into the conspiracy and feel somehow a part of it and do things that wouldn’t ordinarily take place.
I’m not quite nailing that description, but there’s a harmonic effort that takes place, like a chorus is so much more beautiful than a single voice. These people are all interconnected. And it not only provides a higher return to each of them–compensation for the employees, return for the shareholders, this creative crafting of a mutually beneficial relationship from the vendors–but it enriches the lives of those people, too, as crazy as that sounds.
So that’s when business starts transcending into sort of an emotional response. It’s fun. It’s passionate. People love Whole Foods. They love the Container Store. And it’s very satisfying to not just us but everybody that works there and everybody that shops there.
Fascinating. Read the full interview for much more about these two creative, intelligent gentlemen.
I keep thinking there’s something important for Objectivists to learn, here.
At a recent talk I saw him give in Austin, Mackey made an interesting statement to the effect that “Profits are like happiness — if you aim for it directly, you’re more likely to miss. But if you aim for the underlying values that make it possible, you get the big payoff.”
I do wonder whether Ayn Rand is guilty of encouraging people to aim a little too “directly” at happiness rather than understanding just how fully happiness comes through caring relationships, radical self-acceptance, and personal generosity.
True to form, many Objectivists and free marketers criticize Mackey’s approach to maximizing stakeholder value (rather than just shareholder value) because it’s not aimed directly at maximizing corporate profits.
My own sympathies, though, are increasingly with Mackey. I think his company, and his life — he looks to me like a happy, actualized man, from what I can tell — provide good testimony on behalf of his approach.
Dark Green 1999 Honda Accord - $7,000 OBO
I’m selling my car. Drives extremely smooth and I rather like it, but we’re moving to Reno on July 1st and we only want to bring one of our cars with us.
From my CraigsList ad:
$7,000 — or best offer. We’re moving out of state and we need to sell this car (which has been our second car) by June 28th to avoid having to transport it! Dark metallic green. Custom rims with low-profile tires. 98K miles, sunroof, ice-cold A/C, auto transmission, auto locks, auto windows, CD player, tinted windows. Upholstery is in excellent condition. Very clean inside and out. Garage kept. Diligently maintained. Just back from quarterly 73-point inspection and made all suggested repairs. Has fresh brake pads, rotors, & calipers.
Paid $8,400 for it a couple years ago — and barely driven it since.
UPDATE: SOLD, to the single dad with one lucky high-school-aged daughter.
John Adams ... and Speaking Truth to Power
Kathy and I have been watching HBO’s mini-series John Adams lately, and it’s terrific.
I particularly like the plain-spokenness and integrity of those intelligent men who were involved in founding the United States of America.
Paul Giamatti, who plays John Adams, brings a wonderful sensibility to his role. Had Adams been played by someone less geeky — someone more charismatic, like Daniel Day Lewis or Tom Cruise — I believe the story would have been far less meaningful.
Giamatti’s performance makes it clear that Adams was no Obama-style rock-star; he was a more ordinary, though clearly intelligent, man who stood at a crossroads in history and understood the challenge before him, to which he must rise personally.
One week soon, I hope to write a review of this miniseries for the Atlasphere.
On a semi-related note, something about the video below reminds me of the sort of no-bullshit address that could have been delivered, on a completely different subject, to Congress in the late 1700s.
(h/t Jordan Zimmerman for the video)
UPDATE: On the other hand, here’s a pretty good smackdown from commenter “myseed” over at LiveJournal:
If it’s just a rights issue, I understand, but most of his argument seems to be bitching about CFLs themselves...nevermind the fact we’ve been surrounded by fluorescent, mercury-filled bulbs for years with all the same “restrictions” he’s described. We’ve just gotten more terrified of litigation as a society, so this is the first time it’s all being spelled out. He’s acting like the fact that he is seeing the warnings for the first time means they’re new.
And half of the “procedure” he outlined would be the same for regular incandescent bulbs, since it was dealing with how to pick up broken glass and store it such that no one gets injured. And as far as I know, EPA guidelines for disposal of objects are not “laws” and are never enforced — they are just guidelines. No one stops us from throwing out our alkaline batteries, which we shouldn’t do.
And made in China? So what, so is everything else and has been for years. If he really doesn’t like it, why doesn’t he try and get someone to build a factory for the bulbs in Texas? Photo fading? All light fades photos, even incandescents it’s the amount of UV that you need to monitor, and you can get CFLs with different degrees of UV emission. And as for the expense, you pay for the bulb many times over in life span and reduced energy costs — even if they only get to half of their expected lifespan. (As long as you don’t break them...then it is too bad about the mercury.) Then there’s his “pollute the landfill, of all things” comment, which is a whole other discussion.
Kind of a silly argument all around, so narrowly focused on details that he fails to make the legitimate argument he could have about freedom of choice and governmental reach.
The Socratic method in education
I enjoyed this interview with Michael Strong on Socratic Practice in education. The interviewer, by the way, is from the same Francisco Marroquin University that we noted recently at the Atlasphere, for their pro-freedom political views.
Hauser’s Law: Why You Can’t Soak the Rich
Over the past 60 years, no matter how much federal tax RATES have been raised or lowered, tax REVENUES have remained at about 19% of GDP:
The chart nearby, updating the evidence to 2007, confirms Hauser’s Law. The federal tax “yield” (revenues divided by GDP) has remained close to 19.5%, even as the top tax bracket was brought down from 91% to the present 35%. This is what scientists call an “independence theorem,” and it cuts the Gordian Knot of tax policy debate.
The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates over this period, but tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.
What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser’s Law says it will also lower tax revenue. That’s a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice. It would surely be unpopular today with those presidential candidates who plan to raise tax rates on the rich — if they knew about it.
Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal for more.
(h/t Chris Rasch)
We The Living’s acoustic cover of “Viva la Vida”
This is terrific!
I have (and love) We the Living’s album Heights of the Heavens — which gets a strong 4 out of 5 stars, in my book — and would enjoy seeing them record more acoustic pieces.
Roney and his band-mates are huge fans of Atlas Shrugged, incidentally.
No recession? We can still kvetch!
Will Wilkinson — whom some of you may know by virtue of his attendance at some Objectivist seminars in the 1990s — has some clever commentary over at American Public Radio: Keep complaining about the economy.
What I want to know is, how do they manage to make everyone on public radio sound so unfailingly BOOKISH? You know the sound I’m talking about. Do they make them drink a special concoction before they start rolling the tapes, or...?
(h/t Farsam)
