TIME IS AN ARROW?

Time is an arrow! Or is it? In America, for the last at least fifty years, and perhaps much more, productivity has been defined as larger, more and faster. Economics of scale have been the holy grail of all efforts, from the farm to the retail store. Sales of every quarter must exceed the previous quarter, or the CEO’s position is in danger.

This has been encouraged by government leaders who have believed that this was the way to wealth and power. Leaders who believe in this paradigm set policies that encourage “biggerring and fasterring”. We moved people off the land to live in bigger and bigger cities, so farms could get bigger and bigger. The people worked in factories of ever increasing size that were surrounded by the bigger cities.

In this scenario everything is a straight line to progress. In fact, many government leaders literally called themselves progressives and actively pursued these ideas.

There is nothing wrong with this theory of course, except that it doesn’t reflect the real physical world in which nothing is a straight line. The earth is round, the planets orbit in circular motion which gives rise to circular seasons. The day revolvers and morning differs from night. The heartbeat, probably the first sound a human hears, is marked by systole and diastole and the blood flows in repeating cycles. Youth is followed by four periods of time from birth to death and new generations arise periodically.

When man’s concepts of order are not in agreement with nature, it is always nature that wins. It may take a considerable amount of time, but straight lines never continue upward. Eventually the cycles will turn them down, so those progressive ideas will always eventually lead to decline.

This is why a people who loose site of agriculture and the natural cycles of nature, and who begin to put their time and energy into the straight line progression of industry will always reap what they sow. The lineup will become the line down. Those countries that do not grow their own food, will eventually loose site of the wisdom of nature.

This is not some weird concept of nature worship, it is physics. Chemical reactions never proceed in only one direction. They are reversible under proper conditions, or they trigger yet further chemical reactions which changes the circumstances of the first reaction. The environment selects the plant and animal that survives, but the surviving plant and animals change the environment. Physical laws proceed in one direction only so long as the initial state is maintained. Once the physical world has changed to a new physical state, the laws of physics will change directions.

The problem with modern concepts of business, management, and government is that those teaching and executing the policies have lost sight of the fact that life and the world are cycles, requiring periods of rest between periods of growth and different behaviors during different seasons, all in preparation for the next cycle. If we wish to live at peace and with some kind of understanding, we must accept the concept of death. We must embrace the winters as much as the summers. We must alter our behaviors according to the cycles of our world, the times of our lives, and the periods of the universe.

UNITED

Bees produce. On the average a hive of honey bees can produce sixty pounds of surplus honey a year. But there are numerous kinds of bees, and while they all produce the same things, they don’t all produce the same amount.

All bees produce more bees, and provide pollen and nectar for their offspring. But only honey bees produce pollen and honey beyond the immediate needs of their offspring, because only the honey bee colony lives from year to year. Honey bees must put up stores for the winter. If the stores are inadequate, the colony dies.

Stay with me here. This is about more than bees.

A single bee, like most native bees, lays an egg and provides it with sufficient stores to survive the winter. After provisioning somewhere between ten and thirty eggs, which takes around six weeks, the adult dies and leaves the offspring to their own fate.

A single honey bee lives only about six weeks as well. But it spends its days serving the needs of the hive in various ways and provisioning the hive so that some descendents of the hive can survive the winter. At the peak of summer a beehive may contain 150,000 bees. Even over the winter, the colony will usually contain several thousand bees.

OK, so now we get to the point.

If a solitary bee can only provide for maybe thirty bees, how can a collection of bees in a hive produce and provide for several thousand bees?

They are UNITED! Each bee is programmed to do what it is supposed to do at each time in his or her life. But they all treat the hive as if it were there sole reason for existence, which, in fact, it is. A honeybee without a hive dies. But working together towards the same ends enhances survival of each bee as well as the whole.

An individual person can only accomplish so much. By working together we can produce more. The difference is that humans are not programmed to do only certain tasks. Humans can choose. This makes unity far more rare and difficult to achieve. However, those who accomplish and produce the most find ways of convincing others to unite with them in common, mutually-supportive goals and activities.

In most cases in history, and still in the world today, unity of a country has been achieved by force or accident. But one country has united by voluntary consent of the people. These people embraced a set of common constraints, responsibilities, and commitments called a constitution. They did so for the purpose of uniting because they were convinced that unity would better preserve the peace, protect the citizen, foster economic opportunity and allow individual self-determination.

Each individual gets to choose how carefully he or she adheres to the commitments and responsibilities of the constitution, but we are the first people in history to attempt to live like the bees, united in purpose and support for the good of all.

Bees do not reinterpret their purpose with each generation. They do not renegotiate their responsibilities or opportunities from season to season. It is the stable unity that has allowed them to flourish for thousands of years.

Mankind is not pre-programmed to a life like the bees. But we are programmed to live in groups. The lone survivor is a fascinating subject, but in reality a myth. Humans accomplish more when they are united and cooperative in social groups. The successful business man is able to encourage others in common goals and activities.

The value of the US Constitution is in its planned method of uniting the group for safety, efficiency, and economic benefit while protecting the individual to choose their own goals. It will only be advantageous to the country as a whole when it is treated with respect and as a rigid, only pragmatically flexible, foundation for the good of all mankind.

THE SECRET OF PRODUCTION

Seemingly complicated things aren’t usually very complicated. After all, an entire sky scraper is made of the same short list of materials used over and over again in different ways. In fact the entire universe appears to be made from just a little over 100 elements. Shakespeare only involves twenty six letters of the English alphabet. The information on the computer used to write this blog is done with just two characters: 0 and 1, on and off, however you describe it.

The secret seems to be in how these simple things are connected together in different ways. Knowing how to assemble the elements into a sky scraper is crucial or it will fall down. The variation of 100 chemical elements is phenomenon and accounts for all of the physical world and its manifestations. My words do not seem to be as well connected as William Shakespeare’s. Still, they have some meaning to them, even if not entirely clear.

So it isn’t the elements of production that make a product. It is how they are connected. This seems to be true at many more levels than objects, elements, or language. It is the strength of the connection, the number of connections, and even the types of connectors that makes a new product.

There are some connectors that are stronger than others. For example, a weld is probably stronger than bubble gum for holding things together. A staple is superior to a folded edge on two pieces of paper. The type of connection doesn’t always make the difference. Two staples are only slightly better than one because the paper will tear with the same stress. However, two welds may be better than one if the surfaces to be held together are large. And while a weld can’t be any stronger than a weld, more than one weld does add strength.

Holding things together to make connections can be difficult. In many cases it simply can’t be done with just two hands. That is when we enlist tables, vices and tools to help us temporally. Often the best help is another pair of hands. Hands have a way of holding things together that seems more organic than natural than tool benches. Even when one could get by, two extra hands often seem to be the best way to produce more.

So many people who are producers find that what they really must achieve is the cooperation of many more hands. This is a little in the face of the myth of the independent, strong American. We’ll do it all on our own, and we’ll do it our way. The only problem with that is that it isn’t probably possible and probably never was true. I am pretty sure of this, now, after a long lifetime of being somewhat of a loner. People who produce create communities.

These may be families, clubs, or business organizations. But humanity has not developed from loners surviving, but from banding together in communities with all the frustrations that entails. If the world were to fall apart tomorrow, families would not survive because they are “self-sufficient”. The families and people who would survive are those who have connections and value to other people. Those who have skills, friendships, and products to share will survive. Those who are trusted, needed, and generous will thrive.

WHAT DO WE NEED?

I hear a lot of talk about jobs. Everyone says the country needs more jobs. Yet I know many, many people with jobs who are not very happy. I suppose they are happier than if they could not pay their bills, but perhaps the problem is that they have too many bills to pay. I don’t know.

It just seems to me that historically jobs have not been society’s problem. Everyone had more than enough work to do taking care of their own work. Don’t misunderstand. I know that for much of history things were very hard for the common man. But usually poverty stemmed NOT from not having enough work to do. Historically poverty has usually stemmed from the fact that individual toil benefitted others than oneself: often royalty or government, but occasionally thieves and armies.

Today we need jobs because men have been removed from their work. Laying concrete all day pays a wage, but it is not very personally satisfying. Waiting on customers all day is less strenuous, but nearly drives people crazy. There seems to be more to life than a job and salary. Or at least many people think so.

There has also been a tremendous interest develop in entrepreneurship. I wonder why that is. It looks to me like owning one’s own business is a lot more risk and hard work than a job. Yet many want to own what they do. They even seem to work harder at their own enterprise than they do their jobs.

There is a common psychological list of people’s needs. It varies from time to time and from psychologist to psychologist. But generally it looks something like air, water, food, shelter (including clothes and housing), and energy for warmth and cooking. I find it interesting that psychologists never list work as essential to man’s well being. Yet humans are seldom idle. They may socialize and spend time in various forms of meditation. But they often spend their time beautifying, improving, and building. Art, music, poetry, tools, and better equipment seems to have occupied much of mankind’s time.

Maybe people need fewer bills and more demands. Maybe people would rather work for their own risks and rewards. Maybe people don’t need jobs, but businesses. Maybe we don’t need to create jobs, but farms and small factories. Maybe people need to work. Maybe people need to work for themselves as much as they need to work. Maybe it isn’t jobs we need at all.

WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT, CITIES OR LAND?

(Oh, this is the same post as it was last week. But no one seemed to care much about the flooding of Louisiana. I wondered if they would be more interested in the concept of whether cities or food are more important? Or maybe they think that cities are more important than land. Do people think the world advances because of brilliant individuals, or by the caring labor of thousands, if not millions, of minds? Are any of these things related?)

They made the decision today to release water upstream from New Orleans. I understand the thinking behind that difficult decision. They had to weigh the needs of a few thousand people against the needs of many thousands more. I don’t know what is right.

But I do know the decision is very much a modern decision, and may prove short-sighted. They have basically decided that a city is more important than a farm. When inflation increases the price of food and there is no food to buy, the decision may look less compassionate.

One of the reasons this decision was made is that in the past sixty years we have moved people off the land in massive droves, and into the cities. So now very few people live on the land and many live in the city. Compassion would lead one to spare the city. But the people were moved off the land, supposedly in the name of efficiency. Large corporate farms being considered more efficient than the family farm.

But it is a false efficiency. No one ever has time to do sloppy work, and the modern corporate farm is sloppy farming. Eventually the exhausted soils, the erosion, the mono-cropping, the failure of pollinators, the energy expenses of plowing and shipping will overwhelm the system and it will collapse. When bad work is done the future will pay the price, and it will be very expensive in suffering.

As I look at cities with high buildings, slums, industrial blight, sameness and masses of people, I sense the loneliness and the lack of dignity. Each individual vies to be considered an individual, to be noticed. We glorify the individual in the celebrity culture. If one fails at gaining individual attention they fade into the anonymity of the city and abandons personal responsibility.

The real genius in the world is not individual genius. It is in the minds and hands of 10,000 individuals going about their business sharing ideas, helping one another and collectively finding what works in society. The genius of human culture is long, deep and slow. Sloppy work looks efficient. The city is always in a hurry.

MAKING, DISTRIBUTING, CONSUMING

Most economists talk about production and consumption. In between the two, the produce must be delivered to the consumer, and that portion of the economy has exploded in the last fifty years. This has been driven by two changes in the economic world.

First, industrialization increased efficiency of production. But this required centralized production into specific local areas, often far from the consumer. Whether this consists of an expensive factory, or huge corporate farm, production became more and more centralized.

But produce must be delivered to the consumer. So following industrialization the means of delivery and distribution needed to be expanded. This began with railroads and expanded to automobiles and airplanes. Overnight shipping companies and delivery services expanded. But all of this required cheap fuel so that the cost of delivery was reasonable enough to keep the price down.

So the cost of delivery is due to the cost of fuel. The question is, if the cost of delivery (fuel) goes up; will the cost of goods become too expensive for the centralized manufacturing model to work? And if the centralized manufacturing model fails, what will take its place?

It seems to me that there are only really two solutions. Either the cost of fuel must decline, or manufacturing needs to be decentralized so goods are closer to the consumer. Either of these solutions can be fostered by technological changes, but the technology developed will look very different.

A great deal of energy is being spent on the fuel question. Oil has driven the cheap distribution paradigm, and so much attention is paid to finding oil, obtaining oil, extending oil and replacing oil. However, the amount of oil available is finite, even though we don’t agree on how much is there. We will eventually run out of it. Biofuels, in the quantity needed to run the present system, is thermodynamically impossible. Efficient use of present fuels may be increased, but that also has a probably finite set point. The development of hydrogen as a fuel would seem to be a valuable development, but is some time away, if possible at all.

The other solution is to decentralize production. Some would say that this can’t be done. But it has been done before. In fact, throughout of most of human history, production and consumption have been local. Using modern technology which has reduced the amount of labor necessary to run factories and automated much production, could a post-industrial system develop in which factories were small and decentralized, manufacturing close to the consumer to minimize shipping.

Perhaps where there used to be family farms, there could instead be family factories. These could produce goods for, at most, regional consumption. The attention of most technology researchers is directed at continuing the present system and working on extending cheap fuels. Should someone be looking at miniaturizing manufacturing and minimizing distribution costs? If you know of people who are doing this let me know.

HUMAN NATURE

Humans are all confused about human nature. On the one hand we understand that in some ways we are like animals and have similar needs for food, shelter, and reproduction. But then we want to claim that we are not like animals because we are “civilized”. But the concept of being civilized means that we aren’t like animals at all and therefore have very different needs and expectations.

This leads us to do all sorts of crazy things and adopt some very conflicting attitudes. For example, as civilized animals we need food to survive, but routinely do things that endanger our food supply in the name of ease, efficiency, or profit. We grow more food than we need to make money which cannot be eaten. We create shelters, not just for our lives, but for our separate work, play, recreation and storage of things. Animals would mostly be appalled. And then we have turned reproduction into entertainment, and made it a matter of civilized correctness that everyone must get to participate regardless of fitness or wasted effort between identical genders. And lastly, as civilized animals we think that we should live infinitely, even in a finite world, and that people should not necessarily be held accountable for their actions. The animal world is singularly unforgiving.

Human success as an animal relies, not on strength, speed, tooth or claw. Instead it lies in intelligence, family groups and culture. Yet we are busy destroying the family group and our brains in our excesses.

You may wonder what this has to do with making America productive. But before anyone can produce anything, they have to decide what it is they should produce. And their concepts of why they are alive, what is their purpose in being alive and what they hope to accomplish will dictate to a great extent what they choose to produce. If we do not think clearly about the issue of human nature, we will not think clearly about what we produce.

The point is many people do not think clearly about who they are or why they exist. When that happens they may willingly embark on production activities that make no sense or that may actually hurt them in the process. Are you an animal? Or are you something different, something special, whether we call that civilized or divine (“a little lower than the angels”)? That will make huge difference about what you choose to produce.