HOW TO MAKE AMERICA PRODUCTIVE AGAIN

Who makes things? It is part of human hubris to ask that question because it assumes that only the things humans make are worth being called “made”. In fact, humans make almost nothing. Instead we remake what exists into new forms and uses. But as far as I can tell no human makes a raw product, we simply remake. I wish there was a more honest word for what we do.

I checked the thesaurus for synonyms of “make” but none of the words particularly describe our activities in changing raw products into some other thing. What we actually do is remake materials into new forms and uses. But none of the words in the thesaurus for “remake” actually describe what humans do either.

And what does it mean to make, or remake, something. Is it only the person who puts his hand to the raw product and changes it, or is the person who thought of the process a “maker” also? What about the person who designed the product; are they “makers”? Is the person who saw the design and the process and believed that it could work and so financed the operation, are they “makers”? And is the person who simply grows the products a “maker”, or a kind of miner?

Making is not always the same as production, yet we use the same word for extracting coal, growing crops, assembling cars, or manufacturing widgets. Making, mining and growing are not the same things, but they all seem productive. Even writers and musicians produce, but do they make? As I set out to make suggestions for how to make America productive, am I making anything at all? I am first beset by confusion over what it even means to make and produce.

This is the year 2011. It has been a busy holiday and I am just getting back to business, if one can call it that. My first post of the New Year was about time. Nothing to creative about that I suppose. But back in November of 2010 I wrote a blog about how America has moved from a production society to a consumption society. In that post I said I would follow up with one about how Americans might reverse that trend.

Was that ever presumptuous?! I have been thinking about that promise for over two months now and decided that there is so much to be said that suggestions for making America productive should become my theme for 2011. I don’t intend to neglect the bees. It turns out that bees are one way we can be productive, and at the same time save the world. It isn’t too much to ask is it?

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

          “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . .”  No, wait! That’s already taken.  How about, “To everything there is a season . . . .”  What?  That’s already been used too?  Then how about, “The time of your life”?  I know it’s a cliché, but I really mean the “time” of your life.  Our lifetime’s take place at certain rhythms that are sometimes obscured and forgotten in our modern world that is driven by technology.  It might be interesting to know how things happen through biological time.

One of the fastest things that happen in your body is the transmission of information along your neurons.  The rate is variable depending on a lot of factors.  In peripheral nerves from your big toe to your spinal cord information can transfer as fast as 225 miles per hour, or 330 ft/sec.  That’s about the fastest thing that happens in your body.

Some muscles work quickly and some work slowly.  There are muscles in your body that can take several minutes to contract.   Then, there are your eyelid muscles.  They can contract in about 1/300^th of a second.  That is what makes a wink so deadly.  A wink can happen so fast that you aren’t really sure if the winker actually winked at the winkee, or not.  Then what is the winkee to do?  But maybe winking is old fashioned.  Does anyone wink anymore?  Obviously not at me.

          Emptying your stomach can take anywhere from fifteen minutes, if all you put in it was water, to up to six hours, if you ate a big, greasy, pepperoni pizza.  Yes, the pepperoni can still be there at 2:00 am!  The time it takes, on average, for food to move entirely through your digestive track, from start to, shall we say, finish, is about 12 hours.  If you hurry things along much faster than that, there isn’t time for your body to remove enough water from the food.  Then you will have, what are politely called, loose stools. 

          Did you know that if you get less than eight hours of sleep, all your immune cells are measurably less effective.  Certain cells that attack and engulf foreign invaders loose efficiency with the loss of only one hour of sleep.  Other cells secrete antibodies when you get sick.  Even if you are healthy and well rested, it can take up to two or three weeks to produce enough antibodies to be effective.  That’s why they say that if you eat right and get plenty of rest, you can get well in two weeks.  But if you don’t, it’s going to take fourteen days.

          The truly-magic number in human, biological time is six weeks.  That probably doesn’t sound familiar to you.  But consider these facts.  Wound healing generally takes about six weeks.  Obviously the timing depends on the wound, but even minor surgery requires about six weeks to repair the damaged capillary bed.  And guess how long it generally takes to remove all the nicotine from the body after you quit smoking.  About six weeks.  If you start a new training regimen, it will take about six weeks to grow new muscle.  If you start learning a new skill, like playing a new song on a musical instrument, it will take about six weeks to master.  It even takes about six weeks to metabolize 5 lbs. of fat.  Six weeks is such a universal estimate of biological function in humans that I have decided to name this time frame a new unit of time called a “hexachron”. 

          Though we coordinate our lives around a twenty-four-hour clock, a seven-day week, a thirty-day month and a fifty-two-week year, biological time is something else entirely.  The biological “time” cycle is most often about six weeks, a hexachron.  And you only have a little less than nine hexachrons left this year. 

WHY AMERICA DOESN’T PRODUCE

In 1947, at the end of World War II there were about 7.9 million Americans living and working producing food and materials in agriculture.  By 1998 that number had dwindled to 3.4 million.  BY the year 2007 it had further eroded to 2.2 million.  So what happened to all the farmers?  Where did they go?  What did they do instead of living on their farms? Why did they leave farming?

While each farmer assuredly has their own individual story about why they left and where they went, collectively there are identifiable reasons.  But the one overwhelming cause was the Federal Government.  And the shift in populations was perhaps the greatest relocation of people ever accomplished under government coercion.  While the US Government did not use the forcible methods of a totalitarian regime such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, they never-the-less accomplished a similar relocation of people.  Only in this case people went from a rural existence that was tremendously productive to an urban life that was marginally productive.

With thousands of men returning from the war and the nation on a war economy there was little work for all of them.  During the war years the government had erected numerous agencies and enacted many regulations to martial the country’s economy to wage the war.  So the government used those same powers to do what many people probably thought was a good thing. 

They enacted the G.I Bill which allowed thousands of men to attend college.  They created the Veterans Affairs programs to provide returning veterans with support, health care, and training for employment.  And they offered subsidized loans for housing so the returning veterans could afford to buy homes and establish families that had long been postponed to defend the country.  While intended to reward courageous veterans and defend against economic chaos with so many out of work, these measures also enticed many men to leave the farm and move to the cities where they created overcrowding and urban sprawl. 

Men who had been independent business men and farmers now became industrial employees in manufacturing and industry.  Others joined the burgeoning crowd of service and white collar workers living in suburbia.

To pay for these measures and the war debt that had accumulated the government raised taxes, of all kinds and all levels.  The growing cities saw increased demands for space and services.  In order to raise funds for local expenses such as schools, roads, fire and police protection they raised property taxes.  But property taxes became a two edge sword.  While it raised funds to care for the displaced workers moving to the cities, it raised the cost of farming thus driving more people from the farm.

A well-managed farm of thirty of forty acres can support a family in an almost self-sufficient manner, with a little to spare to sell for cash and to support their local neighbors.  But such a family farm could not generate enough money to pay the increased tax burden.  More farmers were driven from their farms by higher taxes and into the cities, thereby increasing demand for services and yet higher taxes. 

Those who left the farms either attended college and became white collar and service workers, or entered into the building trades and work in manufacturing plants.  In the latter occupations, independent men increasingly found themselves employed in settings that were restrictive and dehumanizing, controlled more as machines than men.  In response, the movement to unionization that had occurred before the war in response to poor work conditions continued. 

While union leaders are often seen as corrupt and greedy, the rank and file members were usually more interested in gaining some independence and control of their lives and decisions, a little more like the independent farmers and businessmen that they had been.  But their discontent usually became translated into higher pay and fewer working hours. 

So today America is overwhelmingly urban and either white collar, service, or unionized.  White collar workers and service employees do not produce product.  Expensive union labor has taken America out competition for production.

Agriculture does not have to be based on huge farms of thousands of acres to be successful.  Small farms and manufacturing units can be successful, and in some overall way be healthier for the country.  There are alternative ways of organizing the country that can be imagined.  But they cannot probably be accomplished under present law and government regulation. 

There are many people clamoring for lower taxes and reduced government interference.  But it is not enough to just proclaim the need to reduce government regulation.  There needs to be some kind of vision of what the country can be, and needs to become, so that the regulations can be reduced or changed in specific ways.  What those ways are not being addressed by our current leaders, even those who are involved in the so-called Tea Party. 

It is shortsighted to complain about the past and criticize present policy without offering solutions.  In my next blog I will try to sketch out an alternative view and suggest policies that might help to make America productive.

THE CREATOR LOVES THE CREATION

          The Creator loves the creation: both the act and the product.  Why else would He create?  We are told that he has created “worlds without number”.  That is not something someone does out of duty.  Creating this world is quite enough to impress me.  When I have created something I am sometimes tired of the project, and sometimes aware of how it could have been better.  But it is still my creation and I love it in a certain way. 

          Gods love for His creation is mysterious to most of us.  So much of the creation appears to have no human purpose.  The beautifully colored beetle and the lilies of the field are loved by God yet serve no particular purpose to mankind.  Yet they are part of the pattern of which we are a part.  They are part of the whole that sustains us.  We share a common parentage in creation. 

          Humans have made some strides towards understanding the patterns of creation that binds the earth together, though it is doubtful that we will ever understand it completely.   We have found many ways to use parts of the creation in practical ways.   We may respect and preserve the creation.  But we cannot control it.  There is always the wedding of the mysterious and the practical, the Heavenly and the earthly.

          Humans are generally interested in the practical, the physical acts that we practice.  We often separate abstractions into a separate area.  Freedom may be a political, theological, or physical concept.  But it is not an abstraction, it must be lived.  Love of our fellow man, which the Bible sometimes calls charity, may be a theological or philosophical concept.  But it must be practiced.  And so it requires a certain skill. 

          One cannot be free if they cannot earn their own living.  One cannot love one’s neighbor if they cannot keep their trash out of their yard, their poison out of their water, or care for themselves so they are not a burden.  If one has not learned to play the piano, they are not free to play the piano for a Church service.  If one cannot produce something and have nothing to offer, you cannot help your community.

          The good man is not the man who committed no crime.  Doing good is not the same as doing nothing.  Doing good is the ability to do something well.  In order to do good you have to know how to do something.  Doing good is not just about the Heavenly, but also includes the practical.  It is learning and practicing these practical skills that we become Heavenly.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR THE LAND TO HEAL?

Several years ago I went to Lake Powell with some friends.  We climbed up through a place called the Hole in the Rock where some early settlers took their wagons as they traveled down to Bluff to settle the country down there.  It was an amazing feat to take the wagons down that canyon wall.  People still talk about it today. 

Later we went across the lake and followed their trail for a couple of miles on the other side.  This country was much friendlier, with rolling hills of grass, sage brush and junipers.  No other vehicle had traveled this trail for well over a hundred years, but the ruts of their wagon wheels were still visible in the sand.  

This image has stayed with me for a very long time.  As impressive as the human accomplishment of determination and ingenuity was, the record of their damage to the land may be even greater.  Not because it is such an eyesore.  But it is a lasting testimony to how long it takes for the land to recover from mans interference. 

When the first American settlers arrived in the plains of Nebraska and Kansas they found top soil that was more than a foot deep.  They were amazed at the fertility.  Now we routinely add chemical fertilizers.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  There are ways of farming that replenish the soil and maintain nature’s richness and variety.  But modern farming is often more like strip mining.  How many years would it take to replenish the great plains of the United States?

A trail of wagon ruts is no big deal.  A mountain side of four-wheeler and motorcycle tracks is probably not significant except in terms of aesthetics.  But they are symbols of how little humans know about the earth, and how little value they place on the land.  We understand very little about the responsibilities of dominion, the techniques of replenishment, or our position in nature.    

IDEALS AND NECESSITIES

I looked on the internet for images from 1913, the year my Father was born.  Should I have been shocked that it seemed like such another world?  Not only was it unlike today, it was totally unlike the year I was born, 1945.  I am not as impressed with the machinery, prices, or styles as I am that the entire way of life was obviously different. 

Most people still lived on their land.  Even so-called townsfolk had large lots, gardens, chickens or a milk cow.  If one wanted chicken, they had to raise their own, or buy from a neighbor.  There was electrical refrigeration so there was no way to keep meat, eggs, or milk fresh.  It all had to be pretty much local.  That means that most people participated in agricultural activities, or in other words work.  And since physical labor was needed, families had to work together.  The home wasn’t a place as much as a series of events that required cooperation and participation.  This was not some idyllic existence.  This was necessity. 

But then things changed, and what was necessity became less necessary.  Government policy encouraged large farms.  People moved to the cities.  Cars made it possible to work ever farther away from home.  Television made the idyllic seem trivial.  And public education took our children away from home.  Education is good, of course.  But does it really take as many hours of the day as it presently takes.  Or is it, perhaps, that school is more about watching the children while parents work (and play)? 

Now, we worry because the family doesn’t work together.  If we try to work together it must be before early morning when the bus for school leaves, or late afternoon after the school activities.   We pay for gym memberships because we don’t do enough physical labor.  And we’re never quite sure if our food is good for us or not.  The tendency is to think of the way it was then to be an “ideal”.

But as the idyllic has become less necessary, it has also become less possible.  In 1913, the benefits, and difficulties, couldn’t be avoided.  Now the ideal would have to be upheld mostly by will.  There is no necessity for such a way of life, and that makes it very difficult to create or continue. 

That does not mean it is less important.  It doesn’t mean it’s impossible.  It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try.  It’s just that government and culture will not help you.