Statement to Judge Spottswood Williams

Statement to Judge Spottswood Williams

Tuesday, 27 May, 2014

After losing the camping ticket case described in earlier posts here, law professor Chris Lasch made himself and his brigade of students available for an appeal. I asked him when we first spoke if an appeal wouldn't most likely be futile. After all, our failure to bring anything new to the discussion with anything other than a previously failed 1st Amendment argument i figured we were done. I thought law students would be fun, though, so i went along. The proceedings were mostly remote afterward; when appellate courts refuse to see you, you don't have to see them, either. By the time the status hearing Judge Williams had scheduled rolled around, i had had time to mull the idea of community service as punishment over a bit. So i had to tell him this:


 Judge Williams, we’ve come to the end of my case, and it seems we come now to the end of this part of the larger thing we have been discussing, you and I. The societal problems that engendered the Occupy encampments of which i was and am a part have not by any means been alleviated since we began our relationship. Cases like mine, but initiated by necessity rather than principle can only increase in the face of increasing tension and decreasing wealth for most Americans. Things have developed some since this started, and positive advancements like Utah’s near elimination of homelessness with housing programs have been overshadowed by wars and rioting in the world, and continued societal polarization here at home. The principles and dynamics from which i derive motivation in what i am doing here have remained in place in the world, and also in me.

This action i have undertaken is about the widening rift between ordinary citizens and the increasingly few remnants of the old “American Dream,” defined by ideologies like Manifest Destiny and practices like eminent domain, in the wake of which the so-called dream becomes just sad justification for sidestepping the guilty baggage we have engendered by its systemic misuse and redefinition, however fine the intentions of its architects may have been. Whatever the disagreements may have been among Occupiers here in Colorado Springs, and whatever success the system may have enjoyed in obscuring the fact, i remain a part of Occupy and i became so because the package of grievances Occupy rose up to address fitted so well with positions i have held since my ethics were formed as a child, i imagine in more or less the same educational milieu as you, Mr. Williams. I see the ethical misfire of the camping ordinance in question here because it  is addressed by that package of moral truths i learned early. I cannot believe that you failed to note the same noble principles as i, involving truth, justice, equality, and by extension maybe even empathy and community. These are the principles that allow for national pride, but i have seen these principles abandoned wholesale, during my lifetime, if they ever really existed in our power structures to start.

I find attempts on the part of our government, (of which you are a part, i must note while avoiding personal disrespect), to criminalize poverty while simultaneously building policies that appear very well-designed to increase the same to be antithetical to those principles i have noted both now and throughout our interactions, which i was led to believe were entwined with our national identity. The development of stances that allow effete aesthetics to take priority over the most basic of human rights has positioned those of us outside the empowered set--one might say the 99%--in a defensive place. The system is at war with us.

We Occupiers have not gone away, nor have we failed to note that the troubles we came together to oppose have increased rather than subsided. We saw in the beginning that the sort of catastrophe that has been ongoing in Greece, for example, and now the Ukraine and Taiwan, of all places, will certainly happen here. Our American Dream has been twisted from a noble goal of an experimental system to a cruel motivation for clambering over the head of the next guy. Our system, our government, our corporations, and, yes, our courts have failed us and in truth actively oppose the people they are meant to sustain and protect. I can’t accept that in good faith. I have kids, for crying out loud.

So, with that i come to the meat here. You and i have engaged in a fairly deep conversation on the record here; you may recall a portion of that conversation, (recorded on around pp. 73-74 of the hearing transcript from 7 June, 2012, and throughout, really). The impoverished, i said, “have got to be under somebody else’s purview.” Because of the ordinance “[we] no longer have liberty.” We are barred from being where we need or want to be and must, by law retreat to where you, the System, wants us and we ourselves want specifically not to be. This is effectively status-based incarceration. I said already that “[T]he end result of this is jail,” and forcing another into a locked “shelter” is incarceration. The ordinance demands that i incarcerate myself prior to the commission of any so-called crime.

With all this in mind i have wrestled my own mind into a position wherein i can not accept your sentence of community service in lieu of jail. I figured up along the lines of around 20,000 hours of community service i’ve completed of my own volition in this town, and i’ve added several hundred to that figure since we met. I do this as a matter of course in my life. I don’t think it will mean anything at all to do more service at the Court’s behest. For the court to attempt to punish me with more is at least disingenuous, and hardly punishment; in fact it’s a bit of a sham, that seems to mock the values in question. The United States of America is not supposed to be a place where only the sensibilities of insensate money and its owners serve as our ethical foundation. So we arrive back at the point of where i want to be and what i want to do, which is not to submit to this ordinance which has acquired no redeeming attributes since we met. Therefore, i am here in front of you forcing your hand. You must now either acknowledge the ethical poverty of the ordinance, or prove my point. I hope this move doesn’t damage our relationship. You owe me a beer and a conversation, i think.

Uncommon Sense • A Shift From Competition to Conscious Capitalism

Uncommon Sense • A Shift From Competition to Conscious Capitalism:



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George Who?

George Who?

        It seems peculiar that in 2009 no one has heard of Henry George, if only for the fact that during his prime a hundred years past his was easily one of the most recognizable names on Earth. Just a journalist really, George’s hardscrabble upbringing, his early experience in the business world, and maybe just a little OCD inspired him to craft an entirely new approach to economic theory. Its publication very quickly garnered him international acclaim, respect, and supportive friendship from many of the greatest figures of his day. Many, encountering his work for the first time today, would no doubt label him a Commie, particularly given that George’s work followed Marx and Engels’ by three  decades. This misinterprets George. His thinking split the difference between Adam Smith and the Communist theorists in many ways, sharing common ground with both camps but firmly establishing his own territory. His work deserves a second reading.

        George was born in Philadelphia, September, 1839, to a family headed by a hardworking but low-budget printer. By providing the Church cut-rate printing services, George’s devout father enabled Henry to garner a relatively high-standard primary education from the Episcopal Academy. He left home after high-school seeking his own way, and after a brief period of adventuring, found himself in San Francisco where he joined the Printer’s Union, following in his father’s footsteps after all.

        George lived a poor man’s life--same as any tradesman at the height of the Robber Barons’ power--until an editor at the San Francisco Times came across a piece he had written and left lying around. He accepted an offered staff writing position at $50 a week, which seemed a princely amount compared with his father’s $800 a year. He traveled quite a bit for the Times, and in 1868 on assignment in New York City first encountered the squalid conditions surrounding and adjoining vaunted islands of luxury and power that would inform and undergird his writing for the rest of his life.

        Having gained considerable respect as a newsman and a fair amount of seed-money, George and a partner, William Hinton, established the San Francisco EveningPost in 1871. George unabashedly used the paper as a human rights platform until 1877, when, some say, powerful railroad interests against whom he had written since his SF Times days shut the Evening Post down. Quickly landing a government post through highly-placed friendships he had developed, he used the leisure time it afforded to produce his magnum opus, Progress and Poverty, and published it in 1879. George moved to New York in 1880 and promptly left for England and Ireland, touring there to support Irish land support. By the time he returned, his life had changed forever. Progress and Poverty had made him a celebrity (de Mille 1-152).        

George’s political economy laid out in his roughly 600 page book begins with his assertion that Smith’s approach established private land ownership as the foundation of economic and social structure, referring often to “the sacred rights of private property” (Smith, par. 1.11.79). So far few would argue, but George figured this skewed, and brazenly wrote that, “[t]he great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the intellectual and moral condition of a people....[I]t necessarily follows that the only remedy for the unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common property” (295, 391). He argued that as a foundational natural resource there is no basis for sequestering land in private hands. He proposed to hold land in common and allot it to users for as long as they needed, for whatever production they could derive from it, and the holder would pay tax, (rent), on its assessed value until relinquished. The holder and any capital or labor involved would keep whatever profit came from the working of the land, and the public would base taxation only upon the land itself. Note that this negates both income and capital gains taxes. (During George’s prominence, no federal income tax existed in the United States). George insisted the extensive system described philosophically in Progress and Poverty, and rather more technically in The Science of Political Economy, would adequately supply the government’s fiscal needs without additional taxes while simultaneously encouraging entrepreneurship and curtailing development of a landed class.

Marx, whose seminal works came before George, but close enough that both wrote from the surrounding milieu of the Industrial Revolution, addressed similar problems. He and those following took the matter to a deeper extreme, however, allowing for no private ownership of either property or capital. Marx expressed a well known hostility to capital. The familiar Communist adage, “Property is Theft,” represents a drastic condensation from Marx’s arguments that labor always seems to wind up on the short end of dealings with those holding either land or capital (Marx, chap. 6, par.2). Like George, Marx chafed at the inequities this arrangement produced, especially with the exacerbations of capital lording over labor, which industrial development had completely disassociated from the land producing the wealth. “The means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up,” says Marx, “were generated in feudal society,” (Marx, and  Engels 1848, chap. 1, par. 21).The Communists implemented a far more radical seizure of all private property, including both land and capital, consolidating it under a central federal power (chap. 2, par. 75). Contrarily, George felt that capital deserved its due, and sought to rectify the problems he saw by implementation of a more enlightened “single tax.”   

A few germane observations present themselves for discussion. Smith, George, and Marx all expressed notions we might call idealist—Utopian even. Each sought to solve timeless conundrums with an incredibly optimistic approach. Jaded 21st century readers might consider any one of them painfully naive, in retrospect. None of them had the advantage of the hindsight we enjoy, however, and fruitlessly denying the problems each pointed out in his broader work does not help at all. Smith wrote when, fresh from the collapse of European Feudalism, land served as the key to wealth of any kind, and still viewed as an unlimited resource for the grabbing. The vast inequities the Industrial Revolution had abruptly produced vexed George and the Communists. None of these could have predicted today’s technological, information-based economies, with the problems they addressed dispersed over the entire planet. Today, the rate of separation between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” poises to exceed the conditions affecting either set of writers.

George did not design a perfect system. Neither, as amply demonstrated by both history and current events, did Smith or Marx. Henry George thoughtfully and humanely addressed a terribly intractable matter in human affairs, however, and deliberately allowed for future thinkers to expand his work. His work deserves contemplation as we forge into a new century fraught with uncertainties. Our present crisis may help encourage just that.                                                      

Works Cited

De Mille, Anna George. Henry George: Citizen of the World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950.

George, Henry. Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy. 1898. New York, New York: The Robert Shalkenbach Foundation, 1979. 17 February 2009

Marx, Karl. Wage-Labor Capital. 1849. 17 February 2009 <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm>

Marx, K. and Engels, F. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848. 17 February 2009 <http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html >

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776.  Ed. Edwin Cannan. 5th ed. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1904. 17 February 2009 <http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html >

United States Department of the Treasury. Fact Sheets: Taxes. 17 February 2009 (This link is obsolete).

http://www.henrygeorge.org/

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=progress+and+poverty&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

Dangerous Knowledge - ScienceGymnasium

Dangerous Knowledge - ScienceGymnasium: "Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable."



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Top o’ the World

In 1776 the British colonies in America rejected tyranny and established a democratic republic, to the consternation of monarchs everywhere, and the Western World embarked on its “Great Experiment.” Two hundred years later, in a tiny, ruggedly beautiful, and culturally Medieval Asian country, a monarch began to dream of his own experiment, and in 2006, to the consternation of his people, Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated his hereditary power to further his plan for a new constitutional government, turning the venture of the Americans on its head.

It would be difficult to deny the similarities between issues the early Americans faced, like the need to build both industry and infrastructure, and what the Bhutanese confront today, but the overall essence of Bhutanese politics is unique and the results of reform will prove telling for any third-world country in its emergent years. King Wangchuck and his son Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck are attempting to develop practical applications for idealistic political theories that few Westerners can view as less than extraordinarily naive, but early observations offer encouragement.

The Ideal

            In 2005, King revealed his proposal for a new constitution to the people of Bhutan, a document loaded with democratic reform (Kingdom). The constitution took decades of thought and soul-searching to produce by the old King, who upon his installation in 1972 as the fourth monarch in a kingdom established by the British in 1907, almost immediately announced his Gross National Happiness Index (GNH). This quirky title applies specifically to Buddhist Bodhisattva Wangchuck’s policies, but also expresses his personal approach to reform. The rather nebulous concept has gelled over a period of years into a solid body of constitutional policy supported by the “Four Pillars” of GNH, cultural promotion, good governance, equitable economic development, and environmental preservation (van Willenswaard 2).

Wangchuck knew that small, isolated countries like his, subject to the pressures of Asian politics, have rarely managed to pass the threshold into modernity without revolution and severe social disruption. He carefully designed a new democratic government and constitution for his country, beginning from the assumption that happiness supersedes other more conventional measures of wealth, particularly targeting the standard economic pulse of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as incomplete in scope. During the intervening years between Wangchuck’s initial proffering of his philosophy a cottage industry has arisen to apply flesh to the framework, with a small horde of Bhutanese intellectuals providing contributions, centered at the ubiquitous “Centre for Bhutan Studies,” an independent “think-tank” that enjoys substantial government support. The discussion has become endemic in public discourse, with threads of GNH woven into every aspect of conversation from Bhutanese newspaper coverage, to debate in legislative bodies (“Daydreaming,” People’s 1-28).

In 2006 Jigme Singye Wangchuck became the first absolute monarch ever to relinquish power as part of his commitment to reform, turning the reigns of government over to his son in hopes of affording him experience as head of state before conversion to a new democracy. Jigme Khesar has since proven an enthusiastic purveyor of his father’s ideal. The new constitution, ratified on 18 July 2008, includes much dear to Westerners like limiting powers between branches of government, and separation of church and state (Kingdom). Policy developing from the seed of GNH has included wealth redistribution, protective environmental law, and relocation of rural populations disrupted by infrastructure projects, a ban on public smoking, and a national dress code. The object is to ease Bhutan onto the international stage and into the modern era without thoroughly disrupting its largely agrarian Buddhist culture (Larmer 128-149). It remains to be seen how this will work.

The Reality

Not everyone likes the changes in Bhutan, either inside the country or from an international perspective, and the Wangchuck camp acknowledges its plan as highly ambitious. Many Bhutanese view the whole notion of democracy with a jaundiced eye, expressing a conservative preference for a status quo supported by their religious appreciation for the King as a Bodhisattva, the “Druk Gyalpo,” or Dharma King of Bhutan (Larmer 131). Foreigners remain skeptical. Observers point out that idealistic doctrine notwithstanding, the country still faces a virtually non-existent infrastructure, a long-standing low-tech agricultural economy in a mountainous geography, political realities for a strategically important zone surrounded by powerful and at least latently hostile countries, and internal ethnic concerns the handling of which has brought perhaps the harshest criticisms of Bhutan since ratifying its new constitution.

Daunting matters abound. Poverty hampers any development effort in Bhutan, a country with a GDP of only $3.294 billion in 2008, and little level ground with which to work. Very few passable roads exist, with goods often transported by foot or in small carts, and though 12% of the GDP comes from hydroelectricity exports to China and India, only about 12% of total electricity produced is used in country because the bulk of the population has no use for it. For perspective, in a country about the size of Switzerland, with a population just under 700,000, there exist only about 11,000 television sets, 30,000 telephone connections, and about 5,000 km of paved roads (“World,” sec. 5; National).

The low-budget lives of many Bhutanese raise issues when government efforts at planning come to play, for instance, when in attempts to prevent dislocation of rural populations resulting from infrastructure projects, officials shuffle farmers to ostensibly more productive land. The principle behind this move keeps economic disruption from forcing impoverished subsistence farmers to enter dead-end pursuits in the lower strata of the urban milieu, and to keep the crop base that feeds the population viable. The politics of this kind of forced removal often engenders contention, especially when it involves minority ethnic Nepalese, as it frequently does, whom the Bhutanese simply deport, often to countries that do not accept them. This presents only one of the issues that come to the fore in the play between Bhutan and China, and Bhutan and India, both of which neighboring countries see Bhutan as a useful buffer, and often dispute Bhutan’s authority (Walcott 3).

The Synthesis

In spite of problems with implementation, Bhutan has made notable progress pursuing “Gross National Happiness,” and other governments and institutions are taking notice. Life expectancy ballooned 72% since 1972. Adult literacy has risen by 42% to 59.5% of total population (Walcott 5). Planners have made long strides in areas such as taxation, land preservation, and economic and infrastructure development. The whole undertaking still seems a work in progress, and lively debate dominates local discussion. Two political parties have formed, if only to apply an ideal, since the parties display little difference (Larmer 130). Satisfaction still eludes some, but Bhutan’s government seems genuinely committed to felicitous reform, establishing vigorous commissions and accessible avenues of communication. Reassuring his tentatively willing subjects, Jigme Singye Wangchuck said:

“looking at the improvement in the living standard of our communities, which were never heard of before, we are reassured without any doubt that our goals will be achieved well in future just as in the past. We now understand more about our incomplete works, our inabilities and the problems that arise with development activities” (qtd. in Nishimizu, sec. 5).

In spite of his choppy English, Wangchung’s evident concern for his people comes through as nearly palpable as he encourages them to ease into embracing an expansive new way of life.

The crux of Bhutan’s GNH, and the policies it engenders is a respect for traditional culture. Both the elder and the younger Wangchuck exhibit awareness that entrance to the new global forum is both necessary to his country’s well-being, and inevitable in some form or another. In the past, development efforts in Third World countries have come from the top down, planned and executed by economists and technocrats with little regard for cultural matters viewing traditional culture as a superfluous impediment (Daskon 168-9). The orchestrators behind GNH policies want to pioneer a method of both measure and practice whereby the religious, rural, traditional culture of Bhutan and its people participate actively in the emergence of the country onto the world stage. Physical and economic development are viewed as secondary to points of national identity, comfort, and welfare, and projects focused on developing a sense of cultural pulse are initiated before rushing in with bulldozers and bank loans. This is in stark contrast, one might note, to proceedings in many of the most troubled parts of the world.

Even accounting for physical development headaches, perhaps the most ambitious of these cultural projects is the nearly 300 line GNH Index questionnaire aggressively disseminated across all societal lines. The index represents a substantial departure from measurements that account for only economic measurements of progress, and exposes a much gentler philosophical basis. Added to what most Westerners wound normally consider germane to economics, the GNH Index survey seeks to measure such variables as the number of yaks owned by a household, room occupancy in the house, the popularity of traditional festivals and activities, health and meditation practices, and in short, happiness (“Gross”). “We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other" (qtd. in Revkin, par. 13). The objective is not to make the country rich by materialistic standards, but rich in a broader, metaphysical sense. Only after exhaustively measuring and merging the broad Bhutanese cultural climate as well as possible do officials allow necessarily disruptive projects or policies allowed to commence.

Others in the international community have taken note, with discussion of GNH cropping up everywhere from United Nations fora to political discussion in the U.S. (Revkin). In his recent London Financial Times piece, Simon Briscoe even pointed out the similarity between Bhutan’s overarching programs and the possible course America’s new president finds himself forced to pursue (par.10).

Dharma Democracy

The Bhutanese, it appears, are chasing democracy because the King says they should. Likely no one but the Dharma King, the “King of the Way Things Ought to Be,” could have convinced his conservative, impishly Buddhist people in favor of the drastic transformation inherent in the changeover he has instigated.

Up to now, the Wangchungs’ plan seems effectual. Though the pace of life remains comparatively slow, the new mingles with the old, with Buddhist teenagers break dancing on the new television program “Bhutanese Idol,” to the bemusement of their elders, and Western styles tentatively emerging in city centers (Larmer 127). Standards of living, health, and felicity are rising in spite of transformation and an expected modicum of turmoil. Unlike other developing countries suffering severe population disturbances while elites wrangle over resources, in Bhutan, families continue to hold strong, and the countryside atmosphere remains stable. Education and literacy have become both valued and broadly supported. Revolution and upheaval are nowhere in sight. Disagreements find redress in a newly empowered and revamped court system. Happy reform gains new ground in every aspect of Bhutanese life with each fresh glance.

The new administration always meant for its country to mount the world stage, and as it does, the West takes it all in, to the extent that Bhutan garners attention at all. Many of Bhutan’s renovated policies show a recognizably Western influence with a singularly Bhutanese spin. Maybe we Westerners would do well to study the Bodhisattvas’ logic before we rush into sweeping changes of our own.

Works Cited

Briscoe, Simon. “A More Humane Way to Measure Progress.” Financial Times of London 31 January 2009. 8 March 2009  <http://www.bhutanstudies.org.bt/ main/highlight_detail.php?id=44>; [The previous link is dead. Here's a new one: <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b2926d7e-eb63-11dd-bb6e-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz2xTbYTpKX>.

Daskon, Chandima D. “Gross National Happiness: A New Paradigm.” bhutanstudies.org.bt. 2008. Thimphu, Bhutan: The Centre for Bhutan Studies. 10 March 2009 .

“Daydreaming GNH.” Bhutan Observer. Editorial. bhutanobserver.bt 8 March 2009. 12 March 2009 .

“Gross National Happiness Pre-Test Questionnaire #3 November 2007, Final.” Thimphu, Bhutan: Centre for Bhutan Studies. 2007. 10 March 2009 .

Kingdom of Bhutan Constitution Drafting Committee. Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, The. Thimphu, Bhutan: Constitution Drafting Committee, 2008. 5 March 2009 < http://www.constitution.bt/TsaThrim%20Eng%20(A5).pdf>.

Larmer, Brook. “Bhutan’s Enlightened Experiment.” National Geographic March 2008: 124-149.

Mathou, Thierry. “How to Reform a Buddhist Monarchy: The Political Achievements of His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the Fourth King of Bhutan (1972-2006).” bhutanstudies.org.bt. 2008. Thimphu, Bhutan: The Centre for Bhutan Studies. 5 March 2009 .

National Portal of Bhutan. Profile page. 9 March 2009 .

Nishimizu, Mieko. “Portrait of a Leader: Through the Looking-Glass of His Majesty’s Decrees.” bhutanstudies.org.bt.2008. Thimphu, Bhutan: The Centre for Bhutan Studies. 10 March 2009 .

“People’s Democratic Party Manifesto 2008: Well Being for Everyone, The.” pdp.bt. 2008. People’s Democratic Party of Bhutan. Party homepage. 8 March 2009 .

Revkin, Andrew C. “A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom.” New York Times 4 October 2005. 5 March 200 .

van Willenswaard, Hans. “Critical Holism: A New Development Paradigm Inspired by Gross National Happiness? A Contribution to the Global GDP Debate.” Paper for the Fourth International Conference on Gross National Happiness, 24-26 November 2008, Thimphu, Bhutan. GNH Project Team, Suan Nguen Mee Ma Co., Ltd.,Thailand. 5 March 2009 .

Walcott, Dr. Susan. “Urbanization in Bhutan:(Geographical Field Notes).” Geographical Review 99.1 (Jan. 2009): 81-93. EBSCO Academic Search Premier. 5 March 2009 .

“World Factbook, The 2008.” Washington, D.C: United States Central Intelligence Agency 2008. 3 March 2009 .

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Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

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