In recent years, I have concluded that all my professional life has been subsidized. I don't mean that I'm getting paid. I mean that someone or some organization is actually contributing money to what I am doing, and, consequently, to my livelihood. I have worked at seven non-profit organizations since graduating from college. All of these organizations get some money from people who do not necessarily receive any tangible benefit. People, either as individual contributors or through a corporation or foundation, provide funds to make these things function.
So nothing I do really has made something by itself that people find valuable enough to buy for the price. I'm like the clearance endcap at Target, full of discontinued products sold below cost to clear the shelves. But non-profits have raised money this way for a long time, through private wealth. The assumption was that a public good does not always have a public to pay for it or that can pay for it.
Most of these jobs, being non-profit, do not justify very high wages, which is the second level of subsidy in my life, the cash and in-kind donations of parents, mostly my wife's. They will occasionally give us money, not whole lot: $25, $50 or a few times a couple hundred dollars. They also watch the kids when my wife has to go to work, at least once a week. They have us over for dinner, too.
So am I a blood sucker, draining my host dry while not returning anything? I started to think: who is a net producer? A tree.
In junior high science, we learned about producers and consumers. Producers make their own food, i.e. plants making glucose from light, sun and water. Consumers eat the food of others or just eat the others, whatever is easier and tastier. So, then, are any animals actually producers? Do any of us give more than we take?
Consider Apple, a very profitable company these days. Are they subsidized? They have investors, but that's hardly the same, is it? Unless the investment goes south, in which case they were subsidizing it. Ideally, though, the investment dollars are returned to investors plus more, maybe lots more.
Apple makes computers, monitors, iPods and software. How much is extracted from the earth in order to meet the mineral needs of their hardware? How much copper, lead or mercury? Or the plastics? Is there any way to replace it? If not, that's a net loss? And they are hardly a huge user of metals in their products compared to cars or big appliances.
The earth is subsidizing the profitability of Apple, carrying all the materials necessary to create the iPod or MacBook. But the hardware is just the necessary materials. What makes Apple and, essentially, every company unique is what they do with the materials, what approach they take, how they marry idea with medium to create something of value.
My conclusion: we all live a subsidized life. Some of us are better at using the subsidies provided by the earth and sun, others are better and extracting the refined subsidies of wealth from people. They are all gifts. We are all recipients.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
To Act is to Risk Failure. To Not Act is to Ensure It.
Perfect love casts out all fear. Does perfect fear cast out all love? Consider, how can you love what you fear?
Actually, I have a relationship like that. I love to write. Only I become afraide every time that I contemplate doing so. I fear that I will have nothing to say; that I whatever I am to say, I won't say well; that I can't finish. I will go out of my way not to write, despite my having held jobs for the past seven years in which writing was a major component. Still, fear creeps in.
Fear came up during a This American Life broadcast this week, which was a clip show of popular segments from old shows. The segment featured a couple zines written by a guy with some kind of mental disability. The zines were about his fears. He detailed his fears in language as ungrammatical as it was effective. In fact, its "outsider" language and word choice made the fears seem all the more real. Some of the fears were funny, "fear of the Rugrats being taking off the air," while others stripped off my ironic amusement, "fear that a friend who travels to other countries might come back not able to understand English" or "fear that if he go into the library and get 7 or 8 books and somehow while reading his voice going from low to high."
My fears are no less byzantine: "fear of my boss disapproving of what I do and telling me of that disapproval whenever I see her;" "fear of not being a good father by neither encouraging my kids to read the Bible nor talking about Jesus enough;" or "fear of not being able to actually follow through on anything I say that I'll do."
Fear paralyzes me, but I know that I'm not alone in this. It's a deer-in-the-headlights sort of reaction. In the face of not knowing what to do, we do nothing. Nothing ventured, nothing at which we have failed. In response to fear, I do something else, something I am sure that I can achieve: send an e-mail, rake the yard, make a phone call, or bake cookies.
The result: I'm so afraid that I might fail that I ensure it by doing nothing or doing something so late (though well) that the end is superceded by the quality of means.
As an antidote, I recently came across a quote by John Henry Newman: "Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it."
To act is to risk failure. To not act is to ensure it.
A caveat: I would say that to do nothing IS sometimes the best action to a problem that will most likely work itself out, particularly when my kids are involved. I find that most of their arguments, for instance, are solved without my intervention. The difference is to question whether not acting is out of good judgement or fear. It's easy to rationalize our fears, after all.
Consider terrorism, which has killed people, including Americans. To fear it seems prudent. Out of our fear, we support action to rid us of the threat of terror. But is it not like fearing a deadly storm? It may strike, and probably will, but no one knows when or where, for sure. Do we plan for that or live our lives regardless? Can we do both?
More on this later . . .
Actually, I have a relationship like that. I love to write. Only I become afraide every time that I contemplate doing so. I fear that I will have nothing to say; that I whatever I am to say, I won't say well; that I can't finish. I will go out of my way not to write, despite my having held jobs for the past seven years in which writing was a major component. Still, fear creeps in.
Fear came up during a This American Life broadcast this week, which was a clip show of popular segments from old shows. The segment featured a couple zines written by a guy with some kind of mental disability. The zines were about his fears. He detailed his fears in language as ungrammatical as it was effective. In fact, its "outsider" language and word choice made the fears seem all the more real. Some of the fears were funny, "fear of the Rugrats being taking off the air," while others stripped off my ironic amusement, "fear that a friend who travels to other countries might come back not able to understand English" or "fear that if he go into the library and get 7 or 8 books and somehow while reading his voice going from low to high."
My fears are no less byzantine: "fear of my boss disapproving of what I do and telling me of that disapproval whenever I see her;" "fear of not being a good father by neither encouraging my kids to read the Bible nor talking about Jesus enough;" or "fear of not being able to actually follow through on anything I say that I'll do."
Fear paralyzes me, but I know that I'm not alone in this. It's a deer-in-the-headlights sort of reaction. In the face of not knowing what to do, we do nothing. Nothing ventured, nothing at which we have failed. In response to fear, I do something else, something I am sure that I can achieve: send an e-mail, rake the yard, make a phone call, or bake cookies.
The result: I'm so afraid that I might fail that I ensure it by doing nothing or doing something so late (though well) that the end is superceded by the quality of means.
As an antidote, I recently came across a quote by John Henry Newman: "Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it."
To act is to risk failure. To not act is to ensure it.
A caveat: I would say that to do nothing IS sometimes the best action to a problem that will most likely work itself out, particularly when my kids are involved. I find that most of their arguments, for instance, are solved without my intervention. The difference is to question whether not acting is out of good judgement or fear. It's easy to rationalize our fears, after all.
Consider terrorism, which has killed people, including Americans. To fear it seems prudent. Out of our fear, we support action to rid us of the threat of terror. But is it not like fearing a deadly storm? It may strike, and probably will, but no one knows when or where, for sure. Do we plan for that or live our lives regardless? Can we do both?
More on this later . . .
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
From Denial to Action in this Election
I must be in denial about this upcoming election.
We have a good guy, a young, idealistic, fresh-faced fellow running on the Democratic ticket. Jim Esch for Nebraska's 2nd congressional district. I went to Esch's campaign kick off, walked down there with my kids, sat our baby on my shoulders as Esch gave his stump speech. Saw folks I knew. Then, what's he do but set up his office a block from where I work and RIGHT NEXT to the place I get Thai food. A perfect opportunity to volunteer, make calls, stuff envelopes, etc.
I did nothing. I don't even know why. I just never stopped in to volunteer my time or even get a yard sign.
See, I didn't really pay attention, having felt burned in the last two elections, when I tried to get a Green Party congressman in 2002 and a Democrat in 2004. We marched, held signs, made fundraising calls, the whole nine yards.
Of course, it would be this year that the Democrats have a chance take Congress. It would be this year that a pro-life Democrat runs in our district, a good Catholic. And I sit this one out.
Now that I'm unemployed, I should have no problem helping Esch. It may not get him elected, but I will have plugged into the process once more. It's shameful to do less. What will I tell my kids when they ask what I did to make this world better?
OK, I know what I'll do: I'm going down to Jim Esch for Congress today and find out how I can help.
I encourage anyone who has a progressive running in their district to do the same. We have less than three weeks to shape a Congress that looks more like the nation that it does right now. As I'm sure you've heard elsewhere, a state gets the leaders it deserves. Let's be deserving of the best people in the country. Let's work for change.
Bush's Cut and Run Antics in 2004 and What They Mean for Today
Watched Frontline last night: "The Lost Year in Iraq," about the time between the fall of Baghdad and hand-over of "sovereignity" Iraq. It was incredibly damning.
The thing that really stuck out: Bush's cut-and-run tactic for the hand over. And the timetable in which he enacted his tactic.
What became clear is that Bush wanted out of Iraq as soon as possible. It was supposed to be so easy (like The Streets might say), but they flubbed it badly. They let chaos reign, and famously excused it.
They didn't count the cost. They didn't know the country, its people, its character. They made bad decisions and left the governing power over a powder keg in the hands of people walled in from every side by angry citizens which matches lit.
The people I began to feel most sorry for, other than the Iraqis, for whom the word "disillusioned" must be an understatement, is the US military. They are left to be the police in an ungovernable war zone. It's like a guard dog surrounded by wolves in sheep's clothing. Who are we protecting and from whom are we protecting them?
If Bush had been serious about getting Iraq stabilized, he wouldn't have cut and run from his civilian/political responsibilities. He wouldn't have set up what was by most accounts too short a time period in which to create the conditions for a functioning Iraqi government.
For all the talk of Democrats being cowards (which is what the "cut and run" charge is all about), it is the Bush administration that saw the gaping maw of civil violence that Iraq was becoming and decided to take his envoys out on a secret flight and leave the mess for the military to try to clean up.
If I know anything I didn't know before watching Frontline last night, it is that the political and military commands were never in sync and that competence in both were needed to get Iraq back from the chaos that awaited.
We just left it to Rumsfeld and the revolving door of Iraqi leaders. It was a doomed from the moment that this de facto plan was conceived. The people in Iraq and the soldiers have borne the brunt of Bush's cowardice.
The thing that really stuck out: Bush's cut-and-run tactic for the hand over. And the timetable in which he enacted his tactic.
What became clear is that Bush wanted out of Iraq as soon as possible. It was supposed to be so easy (like The Streets might say), but they flubbed it badly. They let chaos reign, and famously excused it.
They didn't count the cost. They didn't know the country, its people, its character. They made bad decisions and left the governing power over a powder keg in the hands of people walled in from every side by angry citizens which matches lit.
The people I began to feel most sorry for, other than the Iraqis, for whom the word "disillusioned" must be an understatement, is the US military. They are left to be the police in an ungovernable war zone. It's like a guard dog surrounded by wolves in sheep's clothing. Who are we protecting and from whom are we protecting them?
If Bush had been serious about getting Iraq stabilized, he wouldn't have cut and run from his civilian/political responsibilities. He wouldn't have set up what was by most accounts too short a time period in which to create the conditions for a functioning Iraqi government.
For all the talk of Democrats being cowards (which is what the "cut and run" charge is all about), it is the Bush administration that saw the gaping maw of civil violence that Iraq was becoming and decided to take his envoys out on a secret flight and leave the mess for the military to try to clean up.
If I know anything I didn't know before watching Frontline last night, it is that the political and military commands were never in sync and that competence in both were needed to get Iraq back from the chaos that awaited.
We just left it to Rumsfeld and the revolving door of Iraqi leaders. It was a doomed from the moment that this de facto plan was conceived. The people in Iraq and the soldiers have borne the brunt of Bush's cowardice.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Signs of life?
I remember how after the 2004 election I realized that the Christian left was noticeably absent.
The first question, I'm sure, is "the Christian left?"
Right, I know, hardly a term most people are familiar with. What I mean are those who go to church regularly (by most statistics the most accurate predictor of a Republican voter) but do not accept gay marriage, abortion, and tax cuts as our holy trinity. While there may be a lot of us out there, we don't necessarily speak up in church about our views for fear of offending our conservative fell0w-worshippers. We sort of huddle around after or before service in small groups, looking both ways before mentioning the most recent egregious act by the president, his administration, the congress, the courts or even the Church itself.
Where were they in 2004?
That is how I discovered Sojourners and Jim Wallis.
The first question, I'm sure, is "the Christian left?"
Right, I know, hardly a term most people are familiar with. What I mean are those who go to church regularly (by most statistics the most accurate predictor of a Republican voter) but do not accept gay marriage, abortion, and tax cuts as our holy trinity. While there may be a lot of us out there, we don't necessarily speak up in church about our views for fear of offending our conservative fell0w-worshippers. We sort of huddle around after or before service in small groups, looking both ways before mentioning the most recent egregious act by the president, his administration, the congress, the courts or even the Church itself.
Where were they in 2004?
That is how I discovered Sojourners and Jim Wallis.
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