Showing posts with label segregation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label segregation. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Hiking into the Wilderness

Recently, I hiked with a friend. After losing over 100 pounds, she enjoys walking an hour a day and can get along with anyone, which explains her willingness to spend time with me. I'd call her a "Southern belle," except she's Midwestern and from Minnesota. 

Speaking to any native-born American in 2021 involves some degree of post-traumatic political disorder. They are beginning to realize the same tools that elevate deserving and undeserving elites also shield just about anyone capable of generating marketing dollars. Consequently, once multi-million dollar advertising campaigns are bought, a domestic violence incident becomes insignificant to local police departments as well as private security and PR firms receiving assignments from those same marketing firms. Though a symbiotic relationship between the entertainment industry and government--which issues permits and provides consultants--encourages positive portrayals of government employees, once upon a time, Americans recognized the difference between protecting talent to promote leadership versus advancing people to mislead the public. (Neither General Eisenhower nor General Marshall saw combat but were justifiably recognized as military experts, and their values shaped the entire world after WWII.) 

Obviously, government's corruptibility when receiving non-transparent, private funds is nonnovel. Mobster Al Capone wasn't convicted of federal tax evasion rather than murder because local governments were more honest in the 1930s. Moreover, even if local governments manage honesty, they are often outgunned technologically. (Someday, Americans will realize expertise allowing an intelligence agency to "spoof" surveillance video of a competing country's nuclear reactor may also be used to replace domestic surveillance footage, complicating police work.) Though marketing departments have never been bastions of integrity, a sharp eye isn't required to see USA's content machine degrading as it produces flimsier copies of the same celebrities, with Kanye West replacing Puff Daddy, Kim Kardashian replacing Dolly Parton, and several more attempted clones I'm glad not to know. (We don't immediately recognize clones because their color or ethnicity has changed, diversity used to sweeten superficiality.) Meanwhile, as America's upper echelons also enable the trend of marketing dollars overwhelming substance, politics has mutated into a jobs program for content curators and other persons intent on occupying space otherwise open to competitors hostile to the status quo. 

Against this backdrop, my friend and I walked and talked for two hours at a local park, having enough of a pleasant time to schedule another hike in two days. On the day of the hike, however, my friend texted me, saying she needed to change plans. She was going to the beach by herself to "listen to some music and not talk about governments or politicians or politics." "I need to recenter my vibe," she said, and in that moment I fully realized the precariousness of the American experiment. That my friend and I were able to converse at all was a small miracle. Our time occurred only because the American marketing machine convinced my father and mother, whose second language was English, to leave Scotland for Texas. From these two ESL learners came a son who earned an English degree and whose linguistic ability you are now seeing because of the risks they took. Had my parents been inundated with media reports of school shootings, police brutality, and other American events, it is possible they would not have taken the transatlantic journey. Risk-reward ratio is a concept everyone understands, regardless of mother tongue. The marketer's or propagandist's job is to render the equation in their client's favor and leave the rest to fate.

Such a paradigm might not be inherently immoral, except fate isn't the correct term. What we deem fate--including an empire's decline--is the direct result of whether institutions uphold their principles in ways balancing the status quo with changing demographics. If native-born citizens (aka the majority) no longer have the patience or willingness to adjust their institutions as circumstances change, the result is failure fated by reason of indifference

Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals? -- Elie Weisel (1999)  

Thus far, I have approached the situation from the perspective of a political minority, but indifference is contagious and does not spare the majority. It is only that the majority takes notice of failing institutions much later than the minority unable to use government connections or political savvy. For example, last week, I needed a response from the county to complete some work. An automated reply indicated a three-week wait, an unacceptably long time for a process requiring 10 minutes per individual application. No database exists showing the number of outstanding applications--they are handled as soon they reach the appropriate department--and the public has no choice but to trust government workers are not dallying. 

In a one-party state like California, my immediate reaction was to assume a lack of accountability based on non-transparency, but I realized a more connected, more trusting, more faithful person might take a different approach. He might, while accessing the application, notice translations incorporating our city's sizable Vietnamese and Spanish speaking population and conclude resources were being diverted that would otherwise accelerate the process. A tale of two cities emerges: whereas I blame the majority for using government to boost their influence under unaccountable terms, the majority can counter by blaming the costs of greater inclusivity. Just like that, two residents reach vastly different yet reasonable conclusions using the same data, but with one distinction: as a political minority disdaining the state's political Establishment, I cannot vote in ways that impose my interpretation on the majority, and without millions of dollars allowing me to advertise my opinion, I cannot convince dispersed voters to change their minds, nor can I nudge government lawyers to investigate themselves. In contrast, my fellow resident can more easily access established channels of communication used by the majority to carry out his proposed solution(s). Put simply, he is not bound by the weight of historical vested interests and their present-day progeny. 

Of course I do not mean to suggest a native-born American can flip a switch and inspire a mob. The journey from an open society to isolationism, from curiosity to scapegoat, requires sustained effort from government and the private sector, particularly when eluding self-blame. Somehow, whatever the time period, as services degrade, a minority is always there to deflect attention from 
the majority's own mismanagement or to assist powerful interests eager to associate with a vulnerable group. Given humanity's wont to project faults onto dissimilar groups or to create institutions whitewashing weaknesses (e.g., regularly including bars and pubs in Christian media makes alcoholism more acceptable), true diversity always denotes cultural powderkegs.

A small part of an aisle selling alcohol in an American grocery store

What happens to a dream deferred? ... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? -- Langston Hughes, "Harlem" 

Another example: to some native-born citizens, a police officer is helpful and to be trusted, but to many others, the same person represents danger. Yet, neither the minority nor the majority know which uniformed officer will come calling when needed, and since many honest officers exist, any gap in perception results from one side having faith in their institutions' willingness to impose accountability while the other is skeptical of equal treatment. 

From where does the majority's faith arise? Is it segregation, a feature of post-WWII planning that divided groups by religion and race in order to better manage them through targeted investments and tax spending? (Not all international law experts realize segregation and partition, often with United Nations support, go hand-in-hand: Israel was partitioned into three states based on religion: West Bank (Christian), Gaza Strip (Muslim), Israel (Jewish); Czechoslovakia became Czechia (non-Catholic) and Slovakia (Catholic); Pakistan (Muslim) split from India (Hindu); South Sudan (Catholic) seceded from Sudan (Muslim); etc.) If Western city planning includes segregation, which may have resulted from Western dependence on slave labor and an unwillingness to see black/Negro slaves as fully human, then gerrymandering and other legal maneuvers ("separate but equal") are features, not bugs, of American culture. As such, while American progressives are taught their country is continually striving for "a more perfect union," in reality, perfect divisions have succeeded. Yet, so long as any group is skeptical of equal government treatment, even well-meaning government employees become viewed as non-individuals--a matter not helped by government unions--which in turn leads to contempt of public institutions by violating the principle of the sanctity of the individual.

"My mom and dad may have been segregationists, but we were taught fairness and decency, and what we were seeing [in the South with Bull Connor and KKK bombings] was not fair and not decent... It was a turning point [in our critical consciousness]." -- progressive Judge William Alsup, who grew up in Mississippi and attended MS State in the 1960s (February 25, 2021)

If a diverse society requires effective checks and balances to maintain trust between residents and government, can a segregated society function without legal safeguards by using tribal affinity as a cost-effective replacement? Our political betters certainly seemed to think so. 

Where does this leave my kindhearted friend and I, her cynical compatriot? Nowhere new. Conflict portends opportunity, giving citizens, politicians, and business leaders a chance to mediate, gather information, and achieve a balance between vested and new interests. Absent open conflict, information gathering requires cloak-and-dagger operations ill-suited for local governments. Conflict, however, is a two-edged sword: at the same time it improves the signal (and hopefully the fidelity) of noise, it stress-tests political structures, often finding them wanting, especially as voter-targeting technology encourages soft deceit. (I've seen photos of my Catholic-educated mayor kneeling in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and also standing next to a Catholic-educated police chief encouraging cooperation with federal deportation authorities. To see the hypocrisy, watch Immigration Nation (2020).) 

Sadly, it has never been easier for public leaders to dissemble and in doing so, bamboozle their communities. When confronted with conflict, some attempt solutions, and some get better at public relations. The United States, like my friend, probably prefers a bit of both, but also finds it easier to avoid the matter altogether. Unfortunately, avoidance or better PR masks indifference while allowing authorities to temporarily solve issues using unoriginal ideas like debt and deportation. Somewhere along that path, diversity's long-term benefits are put in danger of being subsumed by short-term negatives, with the mob always waiting for its cue.     

I wish my friend would reflect on the following: "Why do we not remember most native-born Germans fondly from 1932-1938, if at all? And why, given Germany's past and present ethnic and religious diversity, do we not lionize anyone but anti-Germans from that time?" One clue involves German emigration; after all, if Germany's Albert Einstein left in 1932, other talented individuals must have also departed, shifting attention away from monolingual Germans. Be that as it may, given Germany's economic success after 1936, which includes movie-making, why are we, the recipient of so many German immigrants, mostly indifferent to Germany's individuals based on the accident of time? Though Americans may be in denial, we know the answer: indifference spreads quickly and spares no one in its wake. In murdering millions of minorities, Germany obliterated its citizens' place in humanity's remembrance, even though most Germans were not directly culpable. A people indifferent to brewing conflict or skilled at avoiding genuine inclusion tend to be as forgotten as the minorities they neglect or deport, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

A leading voice in the chorus of social transition belongs to the white liberal... Over the last few years many Negroes have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Society, but the white liberal who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers tranquility to equality... The White liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love, but justice. It is not enough to say, “We love Negroes, we have many Negro friends.” They must demand justice for Negroes. Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. It is merely a sentimental affection, little more than what one would love for a pet. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) 

I forgot to mention my friend enjoys trance music, a form of electronica. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I won't belabor it. It's too easy. Almost as easy as going to the beach.   

© Matthew Rafat (March 2021)

Bonus I: My friend and I discussed cruise ship workers, who are often non-citizens because of low wages. Cruise ships are not subject to labor laws because their operations mostly take place in non-territorial or extrajudicial waters. I said 
given currency arbitrage, the hourly wage was not as important as working conditions and the likelihood of citizenship. Additionally, an empire's ability to underpay, in relative terms, foreign workers improves its willingness to accept immigrants. My proposed solution? Mandate one-year contracts with quitting for good cause or early termination immediately vesting all contractually unpaid wages; and require companies to put foreign workers on a path to citizenship after two years' tenure. Of course, companies may "game" such rules by terminating employees after two years, even good ones, and aggressively litigating the meaning of "good cause," but the law was never meant to replace integrity, and at some point, journalism must play a role in modifying unfair corporate behavior. (Note: upon hiring, one years' worth of wages could be put into an escrow account handled by an independent entity.)

Bonus II: Some people may see a conflict between my appreciation of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites, and Amish and the ideas herein. There is no conflict. The aforementioned groups are apolitical as a matter of morality, not apathy, and have ample evidence supporting their intent. 


Wednesday, August 12, 2020

In Search of a Useful Obituary for the United States of America

If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1967)

All empires eventually overextend themselves in their efforts to prevent potential competitors and threats, and all empires overextend themselves because at some point, their military commits egregious mistakes and atrocities, which must be assuaged with propaganda to maintain forward movement. In this way, My Lai and Abu Ghraib are connected, not as distant relations, but direct descendants. 

For the United States, Vietnam was the beginning of overt moral lapses by the the Catholic-Church-backed military, and the failure to prevent Catholic political influence thereafter has led to continued moral descent, including coverups of child molestation by priests. The lesson for other countries is straightforward: if your military commits a moral mistake, you must acknowledge and resolve it as best as possible, or you will find yourself on a slippery slope towards overall decline.  

Human nature is not so complicated, and every mother knows children recognize unfairness and must be trained to accept some measure of it in order to become adults. Once adults, the question is how many degrees of unfairness must be accepted to fit into an environment where insidious elements know such degrees can increase if adjusted gradually. No matter the level at which nonconformity becomes an obligation, if an individual, entity, or government seeks to evade responsibility for the death and destruction of one's fellow human being, it is no longer a leap but a mere skip towards fudging numbers at the accountancy firm, approving mortgage loans on questionable terms, and using violence to collect debts. 

We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood... [and] no sooner does [violence] become strong, firmly established, that it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. -- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)

A military's initial moral lapse, if unaddressed, cracks the overall societal fabric, creating a chasm soon large enough for everyone to fall through. Before and after such an abysmal result, segregation is the preferred method to prevent the downfall of the Establishment, and it is segregation that is most visible in any declining empire--if one has time and freedom to look.

1. Klara Pƶlzl/Hitler was a devout Roman Catholic and attended church regularly with Adolf.
2. After the Roman Empire fell, the New Holy Roman Empire was established in Saxony, Germany. The region today is Germany's most anti-immigrant province, and members of AfD, Germany's far-right party, first sought election in Lower Saxony.

I refer you to the numerous Christian offshoots in my neighborhood. Within five miles, I count at least two Korean churches, one Mormon church, one Seventh Day Adventist church, one Orthodox church, one Jehovah's Witness Hall, and one denomination I do not recognize, all of which demonstrate dispersed private groups not part of the Catholic political infrastructure--and, too, the government's failure to provide sufficient common spaces where diverse groups can freely meet and interact. When such segregation becomes a natural part of the landscape, it gives the appearance of diversity and progress when reality is the opposite: fragmentation within a politically homogeneous structure means the Establishment has failed to incorporate groups in ways actively welcoming common direction. While all religious centers we cited were Christian and thus in possession of familiar commonalities, if not managed with communal care, are in danger of differences as wide as different religions, which arise from the fact that apart from tax advantages, certain conditions had to exist for them to be conceived as separate entities. 

There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development... This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era... -- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1978)

Appearances can be deceiving, and the presence of a cross on a building does not mean its adherents believe the same things or vote the same way, just as the appearance of new cars does not represent wealth but consumer debt. When we live in a place where the things we see do not represent the things they appear to be, it can only mean a country has overextended itself or lost credibility, leaving a moral wasteland where economic transactions and marketing bind residents together, elevating the banking system and its efficacy as the vanguard of stability. 

Any professional group no sooner sees a convenient opportunity to BREAK OFF A PIECE, even if it be unearned, even if it be superfluous, than it breaks it off there and then and no matter if the whole of society comes tumbling down. -- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)

On this straight-and-narrow path comes economic growth but also the dangers of inflation and unequal spending, both public and private. Over time, when economic growth slows--partly due to mismanaged economic investment--a minority is conveniently in the ghetto or segregated area to chastise and to absorb our animal passions so as to deflect attention from the majority's continued failure to right the direction of its moral compass. The writer or documentarian, if independent and curious, is the only one capable of bridging such chasms as they grow wider, but such writers can only function within open societies where others are willing to risk criticism and then do something about it together. 

When people ask, "What good is a writer?" tell them this: only the writer can defeat the invisible barriers and borders that inevitably separate residents in their hometowns from each other, regardless of distance; and only the writer can minimize the spaces between ourselves in ways showing us the next step towards a common humanity. Absent the sincere writer and the competent journalist, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and the rough edges sharpen into knives of our own neglect. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020)

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. -- Arnold J. Toynbee 

And they were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and die. It is we who shall die – art will remain. -- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)

Friday, June 21, 2019

Segregation as Logical Extension of American Policies

Regular readers understand de facto segregation--based on race or class--is the primary scourge of modern Western societies, particularly when governments do not adhere to any borrowing limits. Yet, few people realize modern segregation is rooted in logic, not a nature-based pattern of "birds of a feather flocking together." To summarize, in a decentralized environment without a trusted mediator, new residents gravitate towards informal norms, including those relating to communication and conflict resolution; and because self-segregation allows minorities to replicate their informal norms (for example, see Amish or Mennonites), immigrants as a whole have tended to succeed when they self-segregate and to fail when they don't. (The West's response to its failure to correct racial segregation has been emphasizing or promoting individual minority outliers.) 

When Malcolm X and others discussed separation, they weren't just concerned with violence and police dogs--they were acknowledging a link between failure and ineffective governance in their own communities. More controversially, W.E.B. DuBois, Harvard's first African-American graduate--also referring to a lack of institutional trust--wrote of Germany's Jews banding together due to "oppression in the past." 
Kwame Appiah's The Lies that Bind (2018)
In my own California county, I notice clear distinctions when I drive 15 minutes in any direction, with Sunnyvale "belonging" to Indian-owned businesses, Cupertino "belonging" to Taiwanese-owned businesses, and East San Jose "belonging" to Vietnamese-owned businesses. Like DuBois, I, too, have seen minority Jews succeeding through voluntary separation, though in my case, I had argued other minorities ought to follow the same example in America. In the end, regardless of profession or location, the catalyst for self-segregation remains the same: a lack of trust in institutions, especially police and courts, increases the likelihood self-segregation will provide favorable outcomes, leading to a rise in the informal economy, which eventually weakens social cohesion and inhibits formal economic activity. 

Some countries understand this phenomenon well. Singapore, one of the world's most diverse countries, has taken so many measures to signal integrity, its overreach is sometimes comical--though no one can argue with its success. Like everywhere else, Singapore can be clannish; after all, its Chinese population was famously "kicked out" of Malaysia, and its experience with riots in 1964 led to its founder insisting "on a multiracial, multireligious, multicultural model to provide a cohesive identity for the new nation." (Kwame Appiah, The Lies that Bind Us (2018), hardcover, pp. 93) Despite its hallowed status as SE Asia's least corrupt country, most Singaporean experts have not fully connected their tough social harmony laws with a lack of entrenched mafia or a black market. Why not? Given the West's history, where racial subjugation and slavery have been based on widely publicized theories of inferiority, Western-educated graduates tend to focus on laws relating to "free speech" or race more than others, missing the fact that Singapore's laws restricted all non-modern behavior--to the point of fining residents in their own condominiums for being naked. (LKY, a lawyer educated in London, had no patience for those wishing to maintain "backwards" kampong behavior.) Somehow, Singapore knew it first had to establish social harmony then economic success, especially if it demanded sacrifices from most of its residents. 

Oddly enough, when modern thinkers today argue multiculturalism has failed, they do not cite poorly distributed government funding, inadequate governmental hiring practices, or convergence between vested political interests and historically one-race residency. They certainly do not point to their own failures of institutional integrity, causing either intentional or unintentional misdirection and further strengthening separatists, who often overlap with racists. The popular solution to modern society's ailments has been more meritocracy; however, elevated debt levels in both private and public markets have effectively propped up existing institutions regardless of merit, thereby entrenching the status quo. 
Appiah's The Lies that Bind (2018)
Indeed, any country where a man can borrow billions of dollars to invest in real estate under a tax code favoring such investments, then become president primarily on such a basis, means wealth and banking have become divorced from societal good. The effects of such a result are not only a coarsening of culture and greater skepticism of the kind of public-private partnerships making Singapore and China successful, but disillusionment, especially among young adults. 

As I write, I am reminded of 12 year-old Cassius Clay being assisted by Louisville police officer Joe Martin in a state prohibiting race-mixing in social venues, public parks, recreation centers, schools, and public transportation (one reason Cassius must have been so distraught over his lost bicycle). What was it that made Officer Martin look at a scrawny, tearful boy, realize the bike was gone for good, and decide he had to make sure this kid wouldn't lose hope? Why did the same conservative legal Establishment in that same Louisville city continue to protect the teenager when he was no longer Cassius Clay but a man with a foreign name and an unfamiliar religion? How did one Southern city looked down upon by Northerners look out for a boy different from themselves and then a man even more different than the boy? It must be because social cohesion and integrity, whether in Singapore in 2001 or Kentucky in 1954, are the stewards of any successful enterprise, cities included, and authority, when just, can prevail in spite of written laws or because of them. 
From Louisville's Muhammad Ali Museum, featuring meritocracy in action.
I do not claim to know all the reasons some communities succeed while others fail. I do know, however, the more Americans continue their current path, where they do not learn from Singapore and its foundation of informally and formally enforced social harmony and also from Louisville's refusal to allow formal laws to dictate social outcomes, the more they create a society where a Schwinn bike is just another bicycle, and a police officer's badge just another piece of tin. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2019)

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Dear Kids: It's Up to You Now, and It Always Has Been

Philip Larkin was more right than he realized. They do f*ck you up, your mum and dad, but this time, they've managed to f*ck up the entire world. Let us count the ways--and provide a few lessons from their failures. 

1. Segregation has been the defining feature of 21st century Western civilization, as has constant warfare. You'd think more people would make the connection between conflict and segregation, but you'd be overestimating humanity's ability to self-analyze--especially when much of its wealth derives from selective inflation in residential property. Seen properly, segregation constitutes unconscionable insider trading on the future of one's neighborhood at the expense of all other residents. 
From Perry's Singapore (2017)
To fight this alliance between respectable taxpayers and the shills they elect, we must understand segregation is not the natural result of registering property, respecting property rights, insurance company incentives, or Hernando de Soto-style capitalism. ("The issue in the 21st century in the West is assetless paper and everywhere else it is paperless assets.") It is the result of lawyers and governments creating legal systems that prioritize tax revenue using short-term metrics (i.e., not factoring in long-term costs of segregation) and then delivering services based on assumptions of expected tax revenue. To take one extreme example, during the 1992 L.A. riots, LAPD cordoned off affluent Beverly Hills, leaving Koreatown and other minority areas to fend for themselves. Of course more prosaic examples of segregation's long-term inefficacy exist, but by now, even the most myopic must see two systems: one for respectable taxpayers, and another for the ones left behind invisible lines until a crisis makes them visible. 

Once we realize the primary evil in the world can be reduced to a single phenomenon, we can marshal our resources to eliminate it. Unlike abstract wars on poverty and terrorism, a war on segregation is capable of producing tangible results. Complexity by and for lawyers can be made simple; government hiring practices can be reformed to avoid nepotistic job structures often benefiting one race, one religion, or one ideology; and mafias thriving in the ruins of political neglect can be co-opted. 

Any decent sociologist or city planner's goal should be to create James J. Guild's Indonesia, the opposite of segregation: 

This is not a city of sanitized and detached nuclear families living in insulated bubbles and disconnected from one another. It’s a city of bonds, where neighbors — probably because they are packed together so densely — chat with one another and hang out on the curb eating fried tempe with raw chilis. The city may not be perfectly planned, but everyone that lives here — minus the super rich — experience and share in those imperfections together.

There has never been a sustained War on Segregation. Its supporters are too numerous, too united, too powerful. Brown vs. Board of Education failed even as it succeeded, but as the world becomes increasingly globalized and diverse, I foresee mandatory conscription if civilization is to continue.  

2. Any entity that can attract and deploy capital without consequences will become corrupt--often with unforeseen consequences. For example, study Project MKUltra or review America's "black budget," estimated at 50 billion USD annually (as of 2016). Ted Kaczynski, a domestic terrorist caught only because a family member recognized his handwriting, was part of Project MKUltra. Some lessons: community collaboration and other factors not part of any formal accounting mechanism can be more valuable than tools valued at billions. Meanwhile, progress is often packaged with expensive bells and whistles to prevent you from seeing gifts proffered are less valuable than the ones you already have. 

3.  Incremental change is common in advanced societies because compromise is a sign of maturity. When consistent, incremental change occurs in pursuit of a specific goal benefiting all--educational reform, tax reform, etc.--progress continues. When incremental change occurs because political factions are preserving their own bailiwicks, social cohesion suffers, revolution inches closer, and propaganda proliferates. If you see stagnation and greater inequality--potentially fatal self-inflicted wounds when others are improving living standards--be flexible in your choice of location unless you have a long history in one place.
From Jim Rogers' Street Smarts (2013)
4.  Don't read or listen to people who rely on secondhand information. Every single scenario has two sides--look at Barry Seals' life, for example--and remember: if one person's motives and motivations vary so vastly by the month, large organizations with hundreds of individuals cannot be summarized in neat packages. 

5. You will hear others telling you to keep your "inner child." They mean your sense of wonder. To that end, watch and find good movies. Almost anything with Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, or Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai will do. These are my sources of wonder--yours may differ. 

6. Be careful whenever you establish legal preferences. First, all laws will be enforced by Establishment-minded employees, whether police, lawyers, or judges. Second, the enforcement of the law matters far more than the law itself. (Selective drug arrests and prosecutions are simple examples of the aforementioned principle.) Third, the original purpose or intent of any law will always degrade or attenuate, and as society itself changes, laws made by previous legislators are more likely to be useless over time--except to characters within the Establishment desiring to entrap political or other enemies.

7. In the end, the world is filled with charlatans, liars, and thieves, but it has always been this way, and one of your ancestors may have been one of them. Your lack of knowledge about the past--and the future--does not excuse you from being honest and forthright. In the end, each generation must contend with an ever-increasing pile of dung, so get your shovel, and get to work. 

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Simple Truths: De Facto Segregation


Author's note: I just discovered this post from many years ago. It's a draft, but I can't capture my original train of thought, so I am publishing it below "as is." I'm very surprised at #3, because I now firmly believe segregation, assisted by poor public transportation, is the cause of almost all major issues in modern countries. I don't mean only race-based segregation--I mean segregation of all kinds. In nature, birds of a feather may flock together, but if the human race's survival depends on "getting used to each other," segregation must be actively fought with the same planning and precision militaries fight wars.

Truth #3: Segregation may help minorities, at least in modern-day America.

Look at the history of assimilation in America. Which groups have been successful? How have they been successful? And why have we had so much "white flight"? Is "white flight" just a term for rich people trying to avoid an influx of poor people of a different color? Or is it a practical response to unwanted cultural change?

I don't know the answers to the aforementioned questions, but I do know there is safety in numbers. In America, as much as we advance the "melting pot" theory, the real power is in concentration, not integration. Democratic societies function based on elected representatives. Who chooses the representatives? The majority. If your group--whether professional, religious, or racial--is in the majority, chances are, your group will maximize its political potential. In contrast, if your group is in the minority, you will be dependent on the kindness of the majority to ensure your prosperity.

In good times, everyone is usually on the same page--it's the bad times that cause miscommunication and violence. History shows that when things get bad enough, majorities have no problem gassing millions of Jews, locking up Japanese-Americans, detaining and torturing Arabs and Muslims without due process, and so on.

In short, when the economy is doing well, Americans love assimilation; however, problems tend to arise during each recession.

Truth #4: Most people don't even know our two biggest problems.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons is a massive problem--so is trying to compete in a globalized economy. Sure, other major problems exist, such as cybersecurity, a crumbling infrastructure, and a declining K-12 education system, but nuclear weapons and globalization stand out because we don't necessarily have the answers yet. 

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Uncomfortable Questions about Germany for Americans

I am not a history expert, but I proffer several questions historians ought to ask about Nazi Germany: 

1.  When Adolf Hitler was appointed or elected, who were the alternatives? Were they more distasteful than Hitler in some way? 

2. It seems clear the first way to isolate a minority is through laws. (Violence is too obvious and its showcasing results in weakening the image of law and order.) 

What were the first laws that targeted minorities? What did the enforcement of those laws look like? How did the national government incentivize local police to turn against their own residents or at least to look the other way? 

3. What were immigration patterns from 1919 to 1937? Which types of persons moved away Which types of persons stayed? (Government employees? Recent immigrants? Affluent and/or educated residents?)

4.  Obviously, propaganda existed, but how was it made pervasive? For example, did the government arrest certain people and highlight their situations extensively? Did they use coercion to silence or blacklist persons who questioned the status quo? What specific methods did they use to dissuade behavior they deemed unacceptable? 

5.  What were marriage, divorce, and childbirth rates in Germany from 1900 to 1945? Can we break down statistics by each year to see useful patterns?

6.  What were immigration patterns--both legal and unauthorized--into Germany from 1900 to 1945? (Germany had to have been at least moderately diverse to generate backlash against "outsiders.") 

As an American citizen but a minority, I've left the United States. Whether my absence is temporary remains to be seen. Obviously, I have to return before April of each year to pay taxes, but the more I travel, the more I see other areas of the world that feel like America, pre-9/11. Part of the reason I've left is because I see history repeating itself. 

America elected someone who wasn't presidential but who was still better than the alternative. Vested interests within the opposition/losing political party elevated someone they favored rather than someone more electable, angering their base. 

Economic gains were not distributed to all corners of society, rendering some people vulnerable to propaganda, especially against minorities, tearing apart any common social fabric. Inflation in essential items increased, but without wage increases.

Being part of a group, in and of itself, became worthy of respect and heroism. For instance, merely being part of the military or police entitled someone to automatic respect--regardless of the presence or absence of specific actions. 

This patina of heroism translated into less accountability for certain groups, leading to a "uniform culture" that allowed consolidation of power--and government funding--for special interests, especially the military. 

Economic gains continued not to be diversified, with old and now new special interests caring less and less about results and accountability. All sides in power begin realizing problems involve fundamental issues that cannot be solved unilaterally or that require sacrifices they were elected to avoid implementing. Rhetoric such as "Drain the swamp" becomes muted as the new political establishment resorts to extreme signaling or headlines to avoid losing power or legitimacy. 

Political discourse becomes progressively more toxic, throwing people into two or three camps: 1) yelling to become heard, i.e., the rise of the outrageous as the new normal; 2) taking no substantive positions but remaining agreeable, losing the support of anyone with principles (Note: appeasement comes in many forms, including economic appeasement); or 3) advocating solutions that cannot be implemented without massive changes (i.e., politically impossible solutions that require a dictatorial approach advocates would say they despise). 

In many cases, outliers are highlighted by both sides to justify their political positions or at least to blunt criticism of the status quo. As outliers become used more commonly, the media loses its ability to rally the public to act as a check and balance against government overreach or against the government's honest mistakes. 

Such political toxicity permeates the culture, causing children to grow up in a desensitized as well as unstable environment. For children growing up during a toxic time, the abnormal becomes normal. The children, unlike adults, don't have an earlier time to which they can compare their current lives. The shift from normal to abnormal occurs without any obvious outward signal because the new generation is mimicking the only behavior they know.

Reasonable, empathetic adults see what is going on and leave or self-segregate. They reject such an environment in which to raise or have children or self-segregrate in ways that may require ever-escalating costs to maintain their positions. Many people within this camp will be among the most successful members of society or its most principled--exactly the kind of people who would otherwise stand up effectively for minority rights. Without them present or fully integrated in their communities, little resistance exists against actors wanting to remake society in their own image. 

The lowered number of sensitive, empathetic, principled, or quietly diligent people--whose absence occurs gradually and is therefore difficult to register in any official capacity--causes a collective shift to a new, desensitized normal. At some point, even the less sensitive and empathetic residents realize something is wrong and they, too, leave, self-segregate, or disconnect psychologically from broader society. Yet another barrier of resistance to conformity is removed, leaving strongmen, radicals, and fools to dominate the culture. 

The children in this society grow up to become the new SS. Threats not otherwise perceived by any reasonable person in the previous generation are suddenly seen where few to no new substantive threats actually exist. (e.g., the North Korean nuclear threat is not new; however, NK's increased ability to survive without any need to be connected to countries other than China renders conventional solutions more impotent with each passing year.) This distortion leaves less time--and taxpayer funding--to deal with real problems, the causes of which become less obvious as more time passes. 

Society decays inexorably as more people hold onto power by any means necessary, whether through propaganda (fake news), new laws (CBAs, etc.), or brute force. The inability to resolve fundamental problems means fewer resources to be divided, leaving charity--both psychological and financial--less viable ("compassion fatigue").  Segregation becomes the new normal as fewer people care about others, especially persons who do not look or act like them. 

Segregation is crucial to understanding how a society changes its character because as more and more groups segregate themselves from each other, the information they receive is different. For example, despite living just 15 to 100+ miles away from each other, Community 1 may believe in a totally different reality than Community 2. In addition to making communication and therefore collaboration more difficult, segregation also allows Community 1 to hide its activities from outsiders. To take an extreme example, Community 1 may be brutalizing a minority group, but Community 2 has no realistic way of discovering such activity if the media no longer captivates the general public's attention or continues to lose readers/viewers and therefore status, revenue, income, access, and jobs. In the alternative, a "Neil Postman scenario" may result where excessive information functions the same as deliberate misinformation, leaving too few persons able to ascertain reliable facts, making broad or nationwide cooperation extremely difficult. 

In this future, everyone wonders how such normal, nice people changed in just a few decades. Most people are convinced by academics and media that some unique phenomenon occurred in the past. Some historians highlight positive outliers to provide people with hope when they ought to be warning that atrophy has occurred in every society and could occur again, right here. Otherwise reasonable people have left or spend their time battling misinformation, leaving them exhausted or with less time to contemplate solutions to fundamental problems--the same ones that continue unabated as distractions and noise increase. 

More people leave or self-segregate through laws, legal agreements, harsher police enforcement, and/or physical barriers. Society's only hope is to allow more immigrants who still believe in the country's advertised principles, which are no longer actually true. Whether the government and existing residents allow new immigrants or some other source of fresh idealism to save their country dictates the direction of the society's future. Many countries, after a certain point in this cycle, choose war. 
From Bremmer's Superpower

The key is the youth. Do they choose the old ways, or do they forge a new path? 

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Bonus: when my family came to America, I remember being assisted by multiple native-born Americans who took pride in assisting my conservative and socially awkward father. (Like father, like son.) I remember this kindness vividly, even though I did not communicate verbally with any of the persons I saw. I was too young and, as noted, socially awkward. 

Yet, I still remember minute details: the family from Davenport who took the time to guide my family around unfamiliar territory, but who became separated at a highway offramp, leaving us to attempt to re-connect unsuccessfully in an era without cell phones or GPS. Being separated from this family distressed me greatly, even though I was not close with them. Why? I knew these people had made sacrifices to assist us, even if just losing time, and their sacrifice meant something. It meant I felt I was welcome in their community, and if I followed the rules, one day, it could be my community. Do recent immigrants to America have similar assistance and feelings that come with such generous assistance?  If not, how do they forge a bond, if any, with their communities?

Bonus II: my comment above regarding segregation is a precursor and base requirement to 
Kwame Anthony Appiah's worldview, in which he believes change and tolerance come from getting used to each other, not logic or arguments:

"I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that will bring us to agreement but because it will help us get used to one another--something we have a powerful need to do in this globalized era. If that is the aim, then the fact that we have all these opportunities for disagreement about values need not put us off. Understanding one another may be hard; it can certainly be interesting. But it doesn't require that we come to agreement." 

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Just Sayin'

People intuitively understand segregation is immoral and counterproductive.

Then they drive to their private schools, past the security gate with a guard who can reject anyone for any reason, onto a campus charging 40K+ annually for tuition, and say hello to a professor with legal protections under an MOU unavailable to 85% of the general public.

My former law school, Santa Clara University, is asking for donations. I don't see anywhere that SCU plans to forgive the student loans of graduates who are unemployed; who make under a certain income after five years; or who don't have affluent parents who can help pay off the loans.  Must be an oversight.

I wonder what all the pro-regulation professors would think about a law mandating colleges, as 3rd party beneficiaries, to absorb some percentage of a grad's student loan after 5 years if the student makes less than x dollars (with x dollars tied to tuition cost). This paradigm might cause different tuition rates for different majors, but funding discrimination against liberal arts departments is occurring anyway with students bearing all the risks.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Consequences of Housing Inflation Policy in the U.S.

From OECD 
The above chart compares the types of countries' 2015 financial assets.  More specifically, it shows the percentage of cash (currency and deposits) held by households as a percentage of overall wealth.  You'll notice the U.S. is an outlier, because most Americans have their life savings in their home equity. From the Federal Reserve, on housing before the 2009 financial crisis:

[H]ousing wealth of U.S. households at the end of 2008 was 25.4 trillion dollars. Housing wealth is about one half of total household net worth (which is 52.9 trillion dollars), and is larger than the Gross Domestic Product (14.4 trillion dollars). Moreover, since financial wealth is more unequally distributed than housing wealth, housing wealth accounts for almost two thirds of the total wealth of the median household.

Housing as the driver of America's savings vehicle is no accident.  Tax policy guarantees housing prices will always increase absent extraordinary circumstances. In fact, tax policy is so potent in this regard, what brought about the 2008-2009 financial crisis wasn't some unexpected event but the overuse of this magical money-making machine.  (Like most sure things, the main threat is overloading and overextension of the thing itself.)

The issue isn't just the well-known mortgage tax deduction, which cost the government about $70 billion in 2013--it's the way it favors banking dependency and excessive borrowing.  You can deduct all of your mortgage interest up to $1 million in principal on the home in which you live, which means banks and buyers are incentivized to borrow as much as they can up to that limit.  By setting a limit by fiat, the government has encouraged everyone to game the system up to that limit (a corollary to Goodhart's Law).  What's worse is the government compounds the problem by guaranteeing the borrowed money indirectly through agencies like Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae.  Meanwhile, homeownership rates in the U.K. and Canada are similar to the United States, even though the first two countries don't allow such a tax loophole, er, deduction.  (Anything that allows you to minimize your taxes is a "loophole," but if the government likes a loophole, it'll call it a deduction to make it sound nicer and to encourage its use.)  Why set up tax policy that confers so much power to the banking system?

First, in theory, it makes sense to support home ownership.  Owning a home is usually a long-term decision that creates more interest in sustaining your surroundings.  The reality, however, is different--as cities have become larger, community becomes difficult to achieve, and most Americans tend to be private folks anyway--they may bring an apple pie to a new neighbor, but unlike many other countries, an invite into one's home is rare.

Second, by having so much wealth held illiquid and therefore captive and subject to fees (broker fees, closing costs, etc.), which discourages impulse moves, the government can manipulate its citizens' financial freedom and also its currency strength.  In contrast, in other countries, especially China, residents can remove their wealth--such as stock market gains--and transfer it elsewhere, such as Canada (Vancouver) or the United States (Cupertino, CA).  Such options can create havoc for governments, because not only do they lose wealth that supports their own currency, but the wealth they helped created is now captive in another country's currency and protected by law, making its return more difficult.

Third, if wealth is illiquid, easily tracked, and tangible, it can provide stable tax revenue.  How does this help the average resident?  Under a cost-benefit analysis, it doesn't.  In California, even after passage of a proposition that limited the government's ability to raise property taxes, some local governments still tried to over-estimate housing prices for purposes of increasing the applicable tax revenue or granted more developer permits than usual, harming quality of life by not accounting for public transportation or improved roads or new highway lanes.

At the end of the day, globalization requires more flexibility, more consumer disposable income, and more individual labor mobility.  Meanwhile, America's tax code continues to prioritize the exact opposite.  What could possibly go wrong? (Again?)

Bonus: the key to currency strength is reserves, and when your non-gold and non-natural-resource reserves are guaranteed to grow as well as be held captive, the (financial) world is a reserve bank's oyster.  In normal economic circumstances, if you want to make your exports more attractive, you can weaken your currency by issuing more debt; if you want your currency to remain strong, you issue less debt or debt at ultra-low interest rates.  In America, however, you can have the best of both worlds--you can issue more debt, keep it captive in housing, and create tax policies that ensure the debt becomes an asset at some point.  How does this captive wealth, which allows greater government manipulation of both currency and exports/imports, help sustain a growing middle class? Well, it doesn't.  It actually leads to more boom-bust cycles and debacles like the 2003 Cancun WTO trade failure and its continuation. Rendering the sale of essential items like housing and education on the financial sector's willingness to issue debt is a recipe for short-term gains and long-term disaster.

Worse, by ensuring both private and public banking entities have disproportionate influence over the economy, you cede power to the financial sector in the absence of almost perfect regulation and enforcement.  What does the financial sector do in exchange for such power, given that it doesn't make anything?  In theory, it exists to encourage stability, predictability, and the integrity of economic transactions.  Unfortunately, with pro forma accounting and conflicts of interest within banks, it doesn't even do accounting or valuation well.  In short, America's current tax system takes a sector that should be the designated driver in the economy and makes him or her into a Formula One fan itching to get into the driver's seat.  Given the global nature of finance, it's not just America that falls prey to such problems--google "Deutsche Bank hidden losses swaps" for more. 

Friday, June 29, 2007

Seattle Desegregation?

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 yesterday. In what will be quoted forevermore, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Justice Breyer called the opinion simplistic. Justice Stevens, as the most tenured judge on the Court, stated that the Court is radically changing precedent because the Supreme Court justices in the past would have disagreed with the Seattle decision ("It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.").

When reading the majority opinion, I was struck by how much enmity Justice Roberts has created between the justices despite his pledge to unite the Court and create more civility. After writing for the majority, Roberts then blazed through Justice Breyer's dissent and dissected it like a law clerk attacking another lawyer's brief--or, to be more colorful, Sherman going through Atlanta. In contrast, Justice Kennedy, as the fifth vote necessary to have a majority, appeared to distance himself from Roberts in various sections in a separate concurrence. Justice Thomas also seemed to go out of his way to be respectful to Justice Breyer, saying that while he has no doubt Breyer's intentions are good, the law must remain as immutable as possible rather than being contingent on a particular judge applying the law.

In short, Roberts stated that there had to be a compelling reason to use race. For law students, this is Con Law 101, i.e. the strict scrutiny test. Kennedy appeared to try to compromise by saying that diversity was a compelling goal, and other methods could be used to create diversity, such as locating new schools in neighborhoods that would naturally draw upon different races (although one wonders how this would be accomplished if some neighborhoods are already segregated--I predict a future opinion echoing O'Connor's disdain for gerrymandering, where she famously called some of the Congressional districts similar to a Rorschach test or a "bug splattered on a windshield.") Breyer essentially stated that the Court is betraying precedent and twisting the intent and spirit of Brown v. Board of Education.

The opinion is most intelligent when differentiating between de jure segregation and de facto segregation. The conservatives seem to say that de facto segregation is permissible. The paragraph that seems to lay the best rationale for the decision is directly below:

"The Court’s emphasis on‘benign racial classifications’ suggests confidence in its ability to distinguish good from harmful governmental uses of racial criteria. History should teach greater humility. . . . ‘[B]enign’ carries with it no independent meaning, but reflects only acceptance of the current generation’s conclusion that a politically acceptable burden, imposed on particular citizens on the basis of race, is reasonable.” Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 609–610 (O’Connor, J., dissenting). See also Adarand, supra, at 226 (“‘[I]t may not always be clear that a so-called preference is in fact benign’” (quoting Bakke, supra, at 298 (opinion of Powell, J.))). Accepting JUSTICE BREYER’s approach would “do no more than move us from ‘separate but equal’ to ‘unequal but benign.’” Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 638 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting)."

One interesting point made in the dissent is that the school plans in question here are voluntarily attempting to desegregate. Breyer indicates that voluntary plans to achieve desegregation should be viewed with a different lens than laws involuntarily ordering segregation, as was the issue in Brown v. Board.

(Ironically, this same month, the U.S. Mint produced one of the most beautiful coins ever made. It is a silver coin depicting the Little Rock Central High School Desegregation. See here.)

My take on the situation is that the conservative justices have no patience for dividing Americans by race. In their minds, they are attempting to prevent America from becoming Yugoslavia 100 years from now. One of Justice Alito's quotes from a different case could summarize the majority's feelings: "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” The majority opinion forcefully points out that under the Seattle program, if a school was 30% Asian, 30% Hispanic, 10% African-American, and 30% Caucasian, this breakdown would not be sufficiently diverse. Justice Roberts' example implies that this is a different world than 1975.

The liberal justices, on the other hand, believe that in much of America, we are still segregated by race. A cursory glance at any BLS or Census statistics will show lower rates of net worth and home ownership in the African-American community than in any other community. Although not stated in the opinion, the liberal justices seem to imply that the only reason for such modern disparity is the legacy of slavery and unequal access to education. It is not mentioned in the opinion that most of the conservative justices worked or are from large cities that are more integrated than smaller cities in the South. In much of America, it is indeed true that not much has changed since 1975. On the other hand, Justice Thomas's opinion seems to carry more weight because he actually integrated schools, sometimes against the wishes of classmates and parents of other students. An unsung hero, Rev. John Brooks, was instrumental in Thomas's education, and an interview given to BusinessWeek provides the most insight I have seen about Thomas and his background. See here (3/12/07, interview & Rev. John E. Brooks).

While it may seem counterintuitive that Justice Thomas would side with Justice Roberts here, Thomas may believe that his personal experience actually supports the majority's arguments because there was no de jure segregation at the time, and as a result he was able to attend majority-white schools and receive a top-notch education. Thus, Thomas may view Seattle through the prism that he is not dealing with any law forcing segregation, and any rule classifying anyone based on race could very easily turn against him or another race in the future. Jim Crow, after all, was not that long ago.

Perhaps an economic analysis would be helpful in understanding the majority opinion. Schools receive much of their funding from local property taxes. Housing values closely correlate with local school quality, as parents are willing to spend more money to buy into a better school district. See The New Economics of the Middle Class: Why Making Ends Meet Has Gotten Harder, by Elizabeth Warren and Leo Gottlieb:

Failing public schools have an impact on the children trapped in them, but they also impose a terrible burden on the families struggling to escape them. Failing public schools translate directly into higher housing costs for middle class families as they try to escape those schools. Home prices have grown across the board (particularly in larger urban areas), but the brunt of the price increases has fallen on families with children. The home value for the average childless couple increased by 58 percent between 1984 and 2004—an impressive rise in less just twenty years. (Again, these and all other figures are adjusted for inflation.) For married couples with children, however, housing prices shot up 145 percent during this period—nearly three times faster.

The Seattle parents were paying lots of money in mortgage payments and local taxes and were being told that some of their kids would have to go to an inferior quality school as part of a greater good. The students benefiting from the Seattle program would be students who, but for the program, would have to go to poorly funded schools. The students from poorer school districts would probably come from families that did not pay as much money in taxes or who lived in apartments (thereby not paying property taxes). Thus, the Seattle program indirectly charged parents who paid more in taxes more money for an inferior product while gifting parents who paid fewer taxes with a better product. In California, we had a lawsuit that argued that property taxes should go to the state rather than the county and then distributed among school districts in amounts to prevent inequality. I am unclear how Washington or Kentucky, the other state affected by the opinion, distributes its property taxes. The opinion did not discuss anything about vouchers, either. It remains to be seen what impact the opinion will have on voucher advocacy movements.

For now, in a time in America when we have ample resources and the economic "pie" is large, the Seattle decision will not create massive problems in the near term. The question is how we will view the decision if a sustained recession occurs, bringing to light the economic inequality in America that oftentimes can be categorized by race. A middle ground post-Seattle might be to balance schools by income, thereby avoiding any legal review or analysis. Federal courts do not usually get involved in a state's local affairs absent some illegal activity or protected class, and rich/poor is a category that is not illegal nor protected. America spends 400 billion dollars a year on schools, according to Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin Toffler. With that much money, perhaps the "pie" is still big enough to focus on economic rather than judicial solutions to improve school quality.