Author: John Plodinec

Dr. John Plodinec is an independent scholar. As part of the Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI), he was responsible for identifying and evaluating technologies that can enhance a community’s resilience. His most important contributions have been development of action-oriented tools that operationalize the “Whole Community” concept, including CARRI’s Community Resilience System and its Campus Resilience Enhancement System. He has also helped several communities and universities develop plans to recover from economic and natural disasters. Dr. Plodinec also coordinated development of an action plan for management of woody biomass and debris generated by disasters in support of the federal government’s Woody Biomass Working Group. This effort involved a team from seven federal agencies as well as coordination with other major stakeholders in the American forest enterprise. Dr. Plodinec also developed CARRI’s Resilient Home Program, aimed at improving the survivability of American homes to natural disasters. This built on earlier work he did while at Mississippi State University, where he led the University's efforts to develop programs related to severe weather events. As part of a joint program with the International Code Council and other partners, he has led initial development of a Community Resilience Benchmark System.

Looking beyond the flames

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are. ~ Cal Thomas

The ongoing wildfires in California have shone a light on one of the too-seldom recognized flaws of Democracy. The only real form of accountability for poor performance by elected officials is to vote them out. But what if there isn’t a viable opposition? What if the Public is not well-informed?

There should be no question in anyone’s mind that poor governance and incompetence are the root causes of the human tragedies in LA. The first duty of any government is to assure its citizens’ quality of life. At the community level, that means law enforcement, fire protection and support of a viable economic life. It doesn’t mean towing away anyone’s vehicle without appropriate notice for possible violations unrelated to the car (as is being done in Chicago, New York and other big cities). It doesn’t mean ignoring the deaths and destruction caused by black-on-black crime. It doesn’t mean accepting petty crime (so corrosive to community). It doesn’t mean cutting millions from the fire department’s budget while funding less fundamental functions.

There is a sad litany of poor performance by the politicians that led to this. A few examples:

  • Having ~100 emergency vehicles out of commission because they need maintenance – but not having the mechanics to work on them.
  • The Mayor of LA going to Ghana on a boondoggle – in spite of extraordinary warnings from the National Weather Service that a fire disaster was looming – before the fire.
  • Empty reservoirs and not a single new dam – even though the state’s voters had approved a $7.5B ballot initiative for more water storage – in 2014!
  • There is evidence that arson was the cause of at least one fire – caused by a homeless person. In spite of spending billions, the number of homeless continues to rise.
  • Water not being pumped because there was too little pressure – but that’s OK because at least 300 water hydrants had been stolen and not replaced.
  • Not having a scheduled controlled burn – because it might make somebody look bad if it went wrong.
  • Sending supposedly “excess” equipment to Ukraine – and then not replacing it.

There are many, especially on the Right, who blame the “progressive” policies pursued by the Democratic leadership, both locally and at the state level. It is easy – now – to recognize the folly of effectively incentivizing petty crime, for example. But the failure of governance in California ultimately is really not a Red vs Blue issue. It is a corruption issue. Most simply, when one party has been in power for a long time (whether GOP or Dem) and has no real opposition, corruption is the result. As Lord Acton said, Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not that Democratic politicians can’t govern, it’s that they have been in power in California so long that governing is immaterial to many of them.

Their dysfunction is an extreme example of Pournelle’s Iron Law. Idealists start movements to right wrongs, to make life better in their communities. Over time the idealists get pushed aside; their places are taken by the bureaucrats and hacks. These may pay lip service to the founders’ visions and ideals but their real aim is to perpetuate their power and the perks that come with it.

In a sense, most of us are a little complicit in their sham. Too many of us accept the hacks’ lip service for intention; or vote for them because, well, we always have. We don’t go beyond the honeyed words to see the toxic acid corroding our communities. We are too caught up in our own day-to-day struggles to actually understand why things seem to be going so wrong. We believe the media’s half truths (“mostly peaceable demonstrations”) because to doubt is to risk being cancelled. Or maybe we take the coward’s way out, soothing ourselves with the “certainty” that we can’t make a difference anyway, can we? Whatever the reason, the corrupt incompetents remain in power, almost certain to be overwhelmed by the next crisis.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Poor opponent or not, vote the jackals out; don’t reward incompetence! If what you see doesn’t match what you’re being told – by either the politicians or the media – then suspect you’re being lied to. Dig at it until you get at the truth – and then act on it. Most importantly, don’t vote based on loyalty, or to just go along – vote for who is going to do the best job. If they don’t live up to your expectations, vote them out. And if none of that works, then vote with your feet – leave.

It might seem that I’m playing the Blame Game, but actually I’m not. I’m looking forward to how we can best help the devastated rebuild their shattered lives. Those of us thankfully muttering to ourselves “There but for the Grace of God…” are faced with a moral dilemma: how can we best help our friends in California recover?

Do we trust the recovery to the incompetents who contributed to this horrendous human tragedy? Do we find another way to get the funds needed for rebuilding and recovery into the hands that need them? Do we deny the funds so badly needed (no one seriously believes we’ll actually do this) to those who need housing, jobs; because we fear that the incompetents will fritter those funds away? I offer no answers but the questions demand them.

Trends – maybe

“I don’t set trends. I just find out what they are and exploit them.” ~ Dick Clark

In previous posts, I’ve highlighted trends that will likely impact our communities. Dick Clark’s quote is particularly relevant to communities. A community needs to be ready for the trends that are impacting them, or may impact them. If the trend is negative, a community should take action either to minimize the impacts or to be able to rapidly recover. If the trend is positive, the community should be ready to exploit and accentuate it, if possible.

The fly in this ointment is that we sometimes think we see a trend when there may not be one at all. We humans are pattern-seeking animals. We owe our survival as a species to our ability to recognize slight changes in familiar scenes; our ability to recognize strange whispers intruding on the rhythms of our lives.

In this post, I’m going to look at two different potential trends. One of them already seems to be impacting our communities. The second may be real or not. Only time will tell.

Peak Population

According to the United Nations, the rate of growth of the global population peaked at 2.3% in 1963. Since then it has decreased to today’s 0.84%. The UN projects that the global population will peak before the end of the century (~2080) with a very high probability. Recent model developments are indicating that the UN model is very conservative; peak population may well occur decades sooner. The Eurozone, China, Japan and Russia have all already peaked. The African population is set to continue to expand throughout the rest of this century, but not enough to overcome the declining populations elsewhere.

Peak population appears to be driven by two entangled factors. Compared to 1990, women globally are having one less child. In countries with declining populations, the birth rate is simply too small – below the 2.1 births per woman – to maintain the population. In large part this seems to be a consequence of greater prosperity. In richer countries families don’t need childrens’ work to sustain themselves. In richer countries women are more likely to be working. Life expectancies are greater in richer countries.

In fact, life expectancy is increasing globally – the UN predicts that about 1/4 of the world’s population will be 65 or older in 2080. By 2070, people’s longer life spans will result in over hslf of the world’s deaths occurring after the departed has reached age 80 (compared to only 17% in 1990). In the US by 2035, the number of people 65 or older will exceed those 18 and younger.

As the UN points out, the only reason the US has not peaked (and probably won’t) is immigration. Without immigration, the UN projects that the US population would slowly decrease from today’s 340+M to 245M by the end of this century.

An important global consequence of this trend is what it implies about climate change. All of the scenarios built into our climate models assume that global popuation will not peak (at around 10.5 B people) until early in the 22d Century. Fewer people mean fewer emissions. Thus, adjusting these models to account for fewer people may drastically alter the expected climate impacts.

In the US, the consequences of this trend will vary greatly depending on the community. Communities that rely on exports to Eurpoe for their economic vitality may find that their markets are shrinking due to the decreasing population. Competition for these markets is already intensifying. However, the growth that will occur in the developing world, particularly Africa, in the next decades means that there may be new markets to exploit.

Communities that do not have a significant immmigrant population may stop growing or even contract. Longer life spans are already increasing the demand for elder services (pet care is an interesting example); these communities may not have enough people with appropriate skills to satisfy that demand. These communities may also start to hemorrhage higher paying jobs. Companies requiring a technologically adept workforce may leave because of a lack of skilled workers.

In fact, the Peak Population implies that human capital will be at a premium. We are already seeing this in a decline in the ratio of those employed to job openings – now less than 1. A part of this is the Baby Boomer generation leaving the workforce. This increased demand for workers implies that wage-induced inflation is likely to persist.

However, this does not necessarily mean that our economy will decline. Gross Domestic Product is the working population multiplied by their productivity. If AI is able to increase productivity enough, our economy may even thrive.

As we’re already seeing in our stores, immigrants bring with them a demand for products we have seldom encountered before – food, fashion, and entertainment. They also potentially bring with them severe demands for community services – schools, medical facilities, transportation and welfare. While our new President may be able to stem the flow of immigrants, he won’t be able to stop it.

Peak Population will likely have a significant impact on Higher Education. The declining number of students will place great pressure on colleges and universities to survive. This will place a premium on their reputations and “branding.” Institutions of Higher Education likely will begin to react more forcefully to acts of student hooliganism.

Other possible consequences:

  • Greater demand for workers may well mean greater career volatility as workers go after a wider universe of opportunity.
  • As the well-to-do elderly die or dowsize, there is likely to be a glut of McMansions in some communities. This should drive prices down so that middle class families can afford them, but this will have impacts on the tax base of local governments and schools.
  • Immigration into the US, is already impacting the country culturally and socially. Peak Population is likely to accentuate these impacts, both positive or negative.

The 2024 election and political realignment

We’ve had entirely too much theorizing over what our election meant or didn’t mean. Four things stick out to me:

  • Trump got slightly more votes than in 2020, meaning he got about the same proportion of the electorate in 2024 as in 2020 .
  • Much of the theorizing (scapegoating?) revolves around percentages, not the absolute number of votes. Since the total number of votes cast in 2024 was well below that of 2020, Trump’s percentage of the total vote was bound to be higher.
  • Trump’s coalition (his mix of the voters) changed. He picked up more votes from blacks, hispanics, and blue collar workers than before. Conversely, his proportion of white votes went down slightly, continuing a larger trend.
  • Harris got 10 M less votes than Biden. She ran an abysmal campaign, and was a worse campaigner. A lot of Dems just stayed home on election day. The telling stat – to me – is that Harris was unable to get out as much of the urban Dem vote as Biden did. She reached only 80% of Biden’s total in Chicago (Cook County) and Philadelphia, and 75% in New York (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens).

All of this suggests that the demise of the Dem Party has been greatly exaggerated. Ultimately you have to give people “a reason to believe.” The Veep never did. Had Biden withdrawn sooner so that the Dems could have had a more “primary-hardened” candidate, they might have won.

Is there a trend toward political realignment of our country? A certain – “maybe.” Definitive conclusions about party realignment will have to wait for more detailed analysis of the absolute vote totals. I suspect that it will be a definite “Yes” in only a few states. Ideally this election might mark the beginning of the end of “identity” as an important factor in our elections. We can only hope.

The Domain of Manners

With freedom comes responsibility, a responsibility that can only be met by the individual.

— Ronald Reagan

The Culture Wars have made it much more difficult for the Public to accurately understand almost any fast-breaking event. Ideology snakes itself into almost everything. Take the news coverage of Hurricane Helene. During the scenes of devastation, we heard one side blaming it all on climate change. On the other, we heard that FEMA would be compounding the tragedies through its emphasis on DEI (All the while, so many of us were focused on the lives lost and devastation, especially in western North Carolina. Very personally, the destruction of our beloved Biltmore Village hit us hard. The Boss and I were there just two weeks before Helene arrived.).

These ideological snakes are so intertwined that they have become a Gordian knot strangling our access to accurate information. I try to cut through this by getting information from many sides and then using each to filter the others, to get the nuggets of reality. In doing this, I’ve found some unusual sources, particularly on Substack. One of these is a neat little space called “Jotting in Purple” by Celia M Paddock.

One day last week, she reprised the text of an impromptu address given over 100 years ago to the Authors Club of London. It was given by Lord Moulton (UK) who was Minister of Munitions at the beginning of World War I. Called Law and Manners, its relevance to Present problems is startling (or at least to me – but maybe I’m easily startled!).

Lord Moulton’s focus is on people’s behavior. He divides what controls our behavior into three domains:

  • Positive Law – laws and regulations codified by government at some level;
  • Free Choice – uncontrolled except by our own self-interest;
  • Obedience to the Unenforceable – controlled by our duty to our community and our society.

The main thrust of his talk (from the 19-teens!) was that the domains of Positive Law and Free Choice were expanding to the detriment of that third domain, which he shorthanded as the Domain of Manners. A key phrase from his talk: the Public has “not yet learned that power [the ability to act] has its duties as well as its rights.”

For him, these were somewhat wry observations about his own time. For me, they were like looking at the picture on a jigsaw puzzle’s box. Suddenly a lot of pieces fell into place.

The Domain of Positive Law is definitely expanding. We have governments throughout the Western World imposing laws and regulations limiting what we can say and do. One of the first – and arguably one of the worst – of these laws was the Patriot Act. Passed in response to 9/11, it gave the federal government unprecedented power to listen in on our conversations. Perhaps the worst of these laws, though, are the numerous “Hate Crime” laws at the state and federal levels. They have tipped the scales of justice far to the side of the Prosecutors, with few checks to protect defendants’ rights.

While the Domain of Positive Law is expanding, so is the Domain of Free Choice, or at least it seems to be. To me, it’s more like the multi-culturism – “anything goes” – spawned in the 60s has become an Un-culture, one without fixed stars to help us navigate our lives. A culture has norms which act as those fixed stars. A culture sets expectations of behavior and responsibility. A culture helps us “find a reason to believe.” Thus, our current Un-culture with its kaleidoscopically changing “do’s and don’t’s” creates a sort of vacuum that Free Choice fills.

But in the Domain of Free Choice there is little Responsibility. We see this in many things. Take “my body, my choice” for example. Women took the power to make their reproductive decisions. Too many forgot that that also meant they took the responsibility for those decisions. And as Tim Carney has pointed out:

“Before the sexual revolution, women had less freedom, but men were expected to assume responsibility for their welfare. Today women are more free to choose, but men have afforded themselves the comparable option. If she is not willing to have an abortion or use contraception, the man can reason, why should I sacrifice myself to get married?”

The intellectual rot that’s set in at many of our colleges and universities provides another example. At one time, academic freedom meant that one could espouse any view as long as others in the community of scholars could do the same. Over time, that responsibility to protect others’ right to express themselves was lost. Just as Freedom without Responsibility descends into License, so too academic freedom without responsibility became licentious. We have the sad spectacle of climate scientists trying to silence those with contrary views. We have the sad spectacle of faculty and students in the so-called liberal arts preventing those with views contrary to theirs from even speaking. Even sadder is the spectacular anti-semitism of faculty and students.

Thus, Moulton’s Domain of Manners is actually the Domain of Responsibility. Its shrinking can drastically impact our communities. For a community’s success – whether civic or a community of scholars – ultimately depends on people who feel a responsibility to help make their community successful. They have an innate sense of duty that impels them to go beyond their personal interests for the greater good. Sadly, in too many communities, we’ve seen their number dwindling.

Oddly, I’m guardedly optimistic that the tide is starting to turn. Surely, the often-enforced isolation of the pandemic turned the attention of many inward and away from their communities. As memories of the pandemic are fading, many are rediscovering their own communities. We see so-called “classical schools” introducing a million students to those classics that were the basis for our own Culture of Responsibility. In the time of Hurricanes Helene and Milton we see so many working in their communities to clear the debris and restore normal living. So far to go, but small signs of hope.

Ecological vs engineering resilience

The goal of resilience is to thrive. – Jamais Cascio

Both Claire Rubin and James Brooke were kind enough to forward to me a short piece from The Conversation, by Prof A A Batabyal of RIT (nice that someone is looking out for me!). Although the short essay started by looking at “sustainability,” it was really focused on “resilience.” In particular, Batabyal contrasts “ecological” resilience against “engineering” resilience.

He uses a lake and a bridge as exemplars: the former for ecological resilience (as defined by Hollings) and the latter for engineering resilience (as defined by Pimm). The bridge has only one stable state; the lake has more than one stable states. As the Prof points out, Hollings’ definition boils down to how much stress an ecosystem can withstand before it restructures. Pimms’ definition of resilience relates to how fast a system can return to equilibrium.

The Prof then points out that most socioeconomic systems – such as communities – “exist” in multiple states. Thus, Hollings’ definition should be favored. I disagree, for several reasons.

First and foremost, Hollings’ definition and the panarchic framework it leads to is not very useful for a community trying to become more resilient. The definition requires us to observe a system under stress and then watch it change. The amount of stress needed to force the system to change is its “resilience.” If I’m a community professional, in essence this implies I have to let the community fail before I can gauge its resilience! Of course this is nonsense – but it does point to the difficulty of predicting a community’s resilience using this approach.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is knowing whether a community has restructured. Take New Orleans after Katrina as an example. There were several differences in the Before and After:

  • The city’s population dropped by a third.
  • Several new civic organizations were put in place.
  • There were measureable changes in the performance of important community systems (e.g., student performance improved).
  • Much of the sleaze in the French Quarter disappeared.

Did these indicate a change in structure?

Then there’s the “resilience-to” problem.In practical terms, we know that a community generally doesn’t have a single “resilience.” Rather a community’s resilience depends on

  • The stressor. A community may be able to deal with a great deal of economic stress, but fold like a house of cards in the face of a pandemic.
  • The speed of stress. A community may be able to adapt to a high level of stress spread over time but unable to tolerate the same stress experienced as a rapid shock.
  • The amount and type of damage, and the resources available for recovery.

Pimm’s concept of “engineering resilience” has the advantage of seeming more like what people think of as resilience. As the result of a Wild Thing – some sort of extreme event – a community loses capacity or functionality. Over time, the community recovers from the Wild Thing and regains its capacity. The time required to regain its functionality is the community’s resilience. Bruneau et al’s concept of resilience is very consistent with this idea.

From a community’s standpoint, community systems are either functional or failed – they either do or don’t meet the community’s demand for their function. After the damage wrought by a Wild Thing, the community at large doesn’t really care whether the health care system, or the system providing electricity are structured the same as before. They only care whether they can obtain the same (or better) health care as before the Wild Thing. They only care whether they can get light when they flip the switch, or air conditioning when it’s hot outside. Community professionals are most concerned with determining how soon after a Wild Thing the health care system is functional; how soon the lights can come back on after power is lost.

The stress testing approach* that Jennifer Adams and I have developed provides community professionals with a way to gauge this type of resilience. To summarize, community professionals postulate a particular Wild Thing – type, intensity, timing. This leads to a prediction of the damage the Wild Thing will cause. This in turn leads to a prediction of which community systems will fail. The resilience of each system is then determined by the use of dispatchable capital over time. The resilience of the community is inferred to be the resilience (time to recovery) of the last system to recover.

Community professionals and communities themselves want to know how resilient they will be to Wild Things before they occur. Simply put, Hollings’ approach to resilience may be useful in explaing what happened to a community as a result of a Wild Thing after the fact. It’s not very useful to community professionals trying to determine their community’s “recoverability” before a Wild Thing strikes. There is a certain inevitability to the “ecological” resilience approach when applied to communities. If sufficiently stressed, they will fail and restructure. When and how and to what is unanswered. Measuring the “engineering” resilience of communities using stress testing methodology gives community professionals answers they can work with, and is more intuitive. The approach can indicate paths to reduce damage and community system failures. It can also point to which additional resources could speed the community’s recovery from a Wild Thing. Ultimately, it can make recovery surer and more rapid – and communities more resilient.

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* M. J. Plodinec, “Stress Testing of Community Resilience to Extreme Events,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 18(2), 151-176 (2021).

Five easy pieces

“The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.” ~ William James

Purpose of a community

Quite simply, the purpose of a community is to provide its members with the quality of life they want. If what the community provides either drifts or jumps away from what they want, people leave. We’ve seen this response to “defunding the police” in too many of our great cities – LA, San Fran, Portland, New York…. This mismatch between what people want and what the community provides leads to hollowed out cities. Those who can (esp the middle class), leave. The community’s remnant is a powerful elite and a struggling underclass. Some expect unearned benefits. All are crushed by the taxes and fees and other dictates exacted and enacted by the elite.

Business of a community

Quite simply, the business of a community is to increase its “community capital” so that it can maintain, and perhaps improve, the quality of life it provides. When people leave, they take capital with them. If there is a net out-migration, the community has less capital to fulfill its purpose. As we’ve seen with the Rust Belt cities and others such as St. Louis, this becomes a vicious cycle: fewer resources leading to a poorer quality of life, incentivizing people to leave, reducing the resource base even further. Conversely, communities that are growing have more resources – and more discretionary resources – to fulfill their purpose. This can lead to a virtuous cycle. There’s nothing inherently evil in “the rich getting richer;” but those caught in the vicious cycle of a crumbling community may be easily persuaded that it is so.

Knowledge and community decision-making

In 2007, Sarewitz and Pielke wrote an interesting article on “reconciling the supply and demand for science” in policy-making. They focused on research to guide policy formulation. I’ve generalized their work to “knowledge-gathering” to support community decision-making. For example, this would apply to expert advice.

S and P start with an often-overlooked aspect of decision-making – the need to engage the decision-maker when gathering knowledge to inform decisions. The decision-maker has to identify both the drivers for making a decision and the information needed. This led me to a useful (at least to me) set of 3-D cartoons that sort of predict/explain what “works” in providing information for decisions:

• A decision-maker who can communicate information needed for decision.
• A decision-maker engaged with those gathering information.
• The information provided is both relevant and comprehensive, i.e., all of the information available that helps the decision-maker make a good decision.

Each of the planes (Engagement-Knowledge, Engagement-Relevance, Knowledge-Relevance) can throw additional light on what leads to U3 advice (useful, usable and used!). In the following, the blue lines point toward the quadrant most likely to lead to U3 advice.

Human action

For many years, I have looked at communities through the lens of systems. In this age of specialists and technocrats, I’ve found this a very useful way to begin to solve a community’s problems – not just those that are obvious, but those that cascade through the community. Systems thinking lends itself to ferreting out the linkages – the interdependencies and couplings – that are key to avoiding unintended consequences.

Occasionally this approach has been criticized as too mechanical, and that it ignores the “human in the loop.” Actually, human action is at the core of my thinking. I define my systems in terms of people, and a system’s processes in terms of the actions that the people who make up the system take. So, for me, the “transportation system” isn’t roads, bridges, airports and so on, but rather the people who ensure that people and goods can safely and expeditiously go where they are needed. The people in these systems have fixed (infrastructure) and dispatchable (e.g., skilled technicians, maintenance equipment) assets that they use to take action – to achieve the system’s purpose.

This approach provides the context within which human action takes place. Too often we look at results as simply manifestations of the skill (or lack of skill) of those who are taking action. That misses the point that the results are also conditioned by how the system is connected, or wired. Skilled people usually overcome bad wiring, but at the cost of efficiency. The efforts of the less skilled are likely to be negated by bad wiring. Context counts!

Systems thinking also forces me to focus on linchpins and their connections. These are members of one system who link their system to others. In particular, these linchpins are crucial to the success of efforts to transform a community. In fact, my experience indicates that a community cannot positively transform itself without a tight web of linchpins who can work together.

“Wilding” and communities

After almost every plague in history, there has been a period of “wilding” – during which many survivors threw caution to the winds (France after the Terror may be another kind of example.). In the 1920’s, after the Spanish flu pandemic too many people invested money they didn’t have. Inevitably, this led to an economic crash but with socio-political impacts as well.

During the recent pandemic, many local governments intensified the social damage (via lockdowns and fear-mongering) caused by the pandemic which has led to a more severe “wilding” than we saw in the 1920’s. The riots of 2020-21, the public excesses of the LBGTQIA+ … are manifestations of this “– survivors”wiling.” In the 1920’s, the inevitable crash was more economic (reflecting the major mode of “wilding”?). This time, I fear, the crash will be more socio-political, and probably violent. Communities need to prepare for a crash, whether it is the violence I fear or whatever their guts tell them it will be.

Communities’ responses will likely be hamstrung economically, but good leadership can overcome that. The question we must then ask is – have we elected effective leaders?

The Pursuit of Happiness

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Almost a quarter of a millennium ago today, 52 brave men ratified what has become perhaps the most important document in the English language. Largely written by a shy, red-headed Virginian, with a few significant changes by Ben Franklin, it was at first merely a justification of our breakaway from Great Britain. As memories of the Revolution have dimmed, this sentence has come to be seen as one of the foremost statements of the rights of Man.

The key phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” harkens back to John Locke’s political philosophy of Life, Liberty and Property. By changing “Property” to the “Pursuit of Happiness,” Jefferson lifted the document from the humdrum to the profound. This phrase signaled that, at its best, our nation would be aspirational, reaching to be more than it was before.

We are told that the ratification itself was somewhat somber. And yet there were lighter moments as well: Hancock’s bravado in signing so boldly so that King George could read his signature without specs; Franklin’s half-playful admonishment that the signatories should all hang together or they would certainly all hang separately.

But afterwards there was a giddiness, a sort of Divine Madness, that gripped almost all of the signatories. John Adams wrote to Abigail that the signing would be cause for celebrations of that day for all time and everywhere. Some freed their slaves – their major source of wealth – because they could not fight for liberty while denying others freedom. It was almost Shakespearean. In fact, in some ways the Bard presaged this. Read Henry V’s speech to his “band of brothers” before Agincourt, to see how great words can inspire great deeds.

And in signing the Declaration, the signatories did, in fact, become a band of brothers, a sort of community – a group of individuals and organizations bound together by geography and self-interest.

As in any community, there were disagreements, sharp words, and views that sometimes could not be reconciled. Some members, at some times, pursued their own self-interest to the exclusion of the community’s. Some forgot that the pursuit of happiness was for all men; one’s rights ending when they impinge on those of others.

But above all else, this community, this band of brothers bequeathed to us something profoundly important – the purpose of a community. Above all else, a community’s purpose is to facilitate the pursuit of happiness of all its members.

At their best, this is what communities do – provide a quality of life so that their members can pursue their dreams. At their worst, communities allow their quality of life to diminish, or sometimes degrade it themselves. We see this in so many cities blindly “defunding the police,” empowering the criminals and preventing the innocent from pursuing their happiness. Most severely impacted are those who most badly need help. We see this in district attorneys and other law enforcement agencies in some cities selectively enforcing the laws, in effect denying the rights of some to pursue happiness. We see this in our partisan politics in some communities, where each side denies the humanity of the other’s adherents, to deny them their right to pursue their dreams.

But lest we lose hope, let us remember that our Revolution did succeed. The promise of the Declaration is embedded in our Constitution. Our Civil War, our support of Freedom in Europe during and after the World Wars, and the gradual clearing away of the dross of governance and government that has empowered the disenfranchised to pursue their dreams are all evidence that those glorious words of the Declaration still echo in our hearts and minds and communities.

Is resilience an illusion?

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice. ~ Stephen Covey

Last month, Claire Rubin – knowing my obsession with great interest in all things Resilience – sent me a link to a blog by Professor David Alexander – Resilience is an Illusion. After reading it the first time, I promptly went on vacation for two weeks, still pondering Alexander’s provocative post.

Surprisingly, I agree with much of what Alexander wrote, while disagreeing with his conclusion (obviously!). His view of Resilience is that of Hollings – a sort of Nietzschean eternal recurrence. This was originally focused on ecological systems returning to a stable state after a disturbance. Alexander quite properly points out that Change has become inherent in our lives. Instabilities of many types abound, often coupling with strong underlying trends. He concludes that Resilience “can only be attained by constant adaptation, which is a case of pursuing an ever-receding goal.” Thus, for him, the illusory nature of Resilience. He closes by advocating that we focus instead on vulnerabilities – identifying and reducing them.

Personally, I’m really uncomfortable with the Hollings view of Resilience (and his and Lance Gunderson’s overlying Panarchy concept), especially when applied to communities. I have two fundamental problems with the concepts: time and agency.

Even if this eco-construct is completely accurate over the long-term (e.g., it has been applied to the Roman Empire’s rise and fall), it is descriptive rather than predictive. If I’m a community leader worried about my community’s future, it adds nothing to my understanding of what’s happening next week, next month, next year or even next decade.

Similarly, while the concept is useful in describing the evolution of ecological systems, it seems to assume that over the long-term communities are essentially passive. Awash in a sea of influences, a community thus resembles a ball in a multi-dimensional game of ping-pong, unable to dodge any of the paddles aimed at it.

This ecosystem conception of Resilience when applied to communities (or any type of human society) ignores the fact that they are made up of humans. As implied by the Covey quote above, we think, we dream, we aspire, we create. While we cannot completely control our Future, we can envision what we want it to be and steer our lives toward it.

To put this in terms of the Law of Community Momentum, this ecosystem concept changes the Law from “A community’s trajectory will not change unless some force changes its path” (i.e., trajectory is destiny only if you take no action) to “A community’s trajectory will not change.” Alexander ultimately seems to accept this while calling Resilience illusory.

In fact, I strongly agree with Alexander that community resilience requires – demands – that communities adapt to their changing contexts. Alexander seems to despair of their ability to do so. I don’t. I believe that if a community’s leadership can stare into the abyss of the present clear-eyed and without ideological blinders, they can find a path to a better future. And if they are committed to their communities, they will take it. We have examples of this – Charleston, SC, taking advantage of Hurricane Hugo’s havoc to build a stronger, more livable city. We have Pittsburgh and Charlotte – each reinventing and reinvigorating itself – in the face of crumbling economic foundations. In each of these, we have leaders who cared about their communities enough to step up and act. Each of these a case study for the reality of Resilience. Resilience illusory?  Absolutely not!

Muddling Through

Life was a damned muddle – a football game with everyone offside and the referee gotten rid of – everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

In this series, I am presenting scenarios that represent possible Futures. In the last – The Empire Strikes Back – I laid out a “low resilience” scenario. In that scenario, the Democrats triumph in the 2024 election, and essentially take control of the government. Freedom’s light dims, and communities have little say in their own Futures. I personally don’t expect either of these to be the path we follow. Instead I expect us to “muddle through;” to use John Mauldin’s apt phrase, our country will be a bug looking for a windshield.

This scenario starts with a bang – neither Trump nor Biden win the election in the Electoral College. Kennedy wins enough states so that neither Trump nor Biden have the requisite 270 electoral votes. The election is thrown to the House of Representatives. The incoming House has a slightly larger Republican majority, but it is still close – 27 states for Trump, 23 for Biden.

The new Congress starts similarly as in 2016, rescinding many of the regulations put in place by the previous administration. However, with only a slim majority little else is accomplished. The Sestercentenial in 2026 is rather muted; lost in the uproar over Trump’s decision to forcibly expel illegal aliens from the country. Although the vast majority of the country is initially in favor of the policy, the videos of the use of force and the heart-rending separation of families turns the tide of opinion against it.

In 2028, Governor Newsom narrowly defeats Governor DeSantis after DeSantis pauses his campaign due to the recurrence of his wife’s cancer. In 2032, DeSantis wins a large personal victory, but, again, the GOP has only a slight majority in Congress. As a result, compromises that “save” Medicare and Social Security are little more than kicking the can down the road. While there is much furor over individual initiatives each side takes, our policies lurch from Left to Right and back again, with no net accomplishments by either side.

In foreign policy, China’s threat to take Taiwan by force slowly recedes as China’s leaders try to stop “peak people.” Its population (already less than that of India in 2024) may decrease by as much as 1% per year. This same niggling problem impacts the entire developed world over the next two decades.

For communities, it is “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” To the good, communities are able to plot their own course; ever-changing policies mean that local politicians are only responsible to their voters for what they do. The Bad – polarization leading to migration. Communities in Blue states such as California and New York struggle to deal with a shrinking tax base and blight. They face the same problems unsuccessfully faced by the Rust Belt decades before. Red state communities must strain to provide services to a welter of new arrivals. And the Ugly confrontations between angry populists and arrogant technocrats proceed apace.

Under these conditions, communities that forge lasting coalitions between local government, local business, NGOs and higher education are likely to be the most resilient. Because of their extensive connections outside the community, they are most likely to take advantage of any opportunities and be able to leverage state resources. These coalitions are also likely to be flexible – they can “stop on a dime and give you nine cents change.” They are likely to recognize that positive change is incremental, and have the patience to accept incremental progress.

* This roughly mirrors the current makeup of the House. However, the outcome could easily be different depending on the votes for House members. The Republican will probably firmly control the delegations of 26 states; they currently have control of the North Carolina delegation by only one vote. I’ve assumed that the GOP will gain hold serve there to nail this down. Conversely, the Dems firmly control the delegations of 20 states, with very slim control (one vote) of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

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Some of you may be interested in a new paper I have written that is now available online (abstract below). Published in the Journal of Critical Infrastructure Policy, it’s entitled “Making Policy for Complex Adaptive Systems.” Liesel Ritchie made the connection between myself and the journal’s editor, Rich Little; I’m most grateful to her!

Abstract:

We have come to rely on a variety of systems – social, economic, environmental – in our modern world. All of these systems are made up of people, working together, to carry out an important function. All of these systems are complex and adaptive. In the face of change, they each may react in different ways, often unpredictably. If they are unable to react to the stress caused by change rapidly enough, they may fail – no longer providing the product or service we’ve come to rely on.

Unfortunately, many policies are being enacted that do not recognize the nature of these systems. Though often well-intended, policies made that do not consider the systems that they impact can lead to failure of those systems. We use the rolling blackouts that began to afflict California’s electricity consumers in 2020 as an example of this type of failure. We conclude with lessons learned to help policy makers “embrace the complexity” of these systems.

The Empire Strikes Back, or, Revenge of the Woke

This country is never going to move forward unless we end Republican rule in the House and Senate. ~ Bernie Sanders

In this series, I am presenting scenarios that represent possible Futures. In the last post of this series – the Triumph of the Trads – I laid out a “high resilience” scenario. This scenario was based on a resurgence of more traditional American values, and the muting of “woke-ness.” This post is thus the inverse of the previous ones.

In this scenario, President Biden and Vice President Harris are re-elected in 2024. Shortly after the election, a highly embarrassing on-screen moment leads the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. President Biden then resigns, admitting that his downward spiral is irreversible; within months he dies.

Harris becomes President at a difficult time. While the Democrats have won the White House and the House of Representatives, the Republicans have won the Senate, making it difficult to ram through legislation. The Russian-Ukraine war is dragging on. China has stepped up its provocations against Taiwan. While Hamas has been destroyed, Iran has found other ways to ratchet up its proxy war against Israel. And the border crisis rolls on.

The Sestercentennial celebrations in 2026 are marred by protests (many violent) and a variety of demands that all have some form of “social justice” in common. More disturbingly, in 2027, the BRIC counties band together to knock the US dollar off its perch as the global reserve currency. As a result, the cost of imports skyrockets, resulting in stagflation – high inflation and a jump in unemployment – in 2029.

The President counters all of this by

  • Colluding with the media to hide or obfuscate all of the potential bad news;
  • By Executive Order, directing federal departments to establish Offices of Information Management to “counter the flow of mis- or disinformation;”
  • Setting up a new office in the Department of Justice to aggressively pursue those who “knowingly spread mis- or disinformation.”

As a result, American free speech becomes something like that in Scotland under its Hate Crime Act. You can say anything you want, but it is likely that you’ll be prosecuted if someone is offended, especially if that someone is a federal bureaucrat.

In 2028, things take a turn for the worse – in a lightning raid, China seizes Taiwan before we can even mobilize our naval forces. This is barely mentioned by the mainstream media, but it is a rude awakening for our allies. NATO effectively splinters; Ukraine falls; in spite of US opposition, Israel bombs the Iranian nuclear sites touching off a major war in the Mid-east.

The 2028 Presidential election finds Governor Newsom of California against Governor DeSantis of Florida. In October, DeSantis suddenly withdraws because his wife’s cancer recurs. This means that the Republicans are not on the ballot in several states and Newsom wins. As a result, he begins to implement what had been done in California in the rest of the country.

Ballot harvesting becomes the Law of the Land. Illegal immigrants are given the right to vote in federal elections. In the 2030 elections, the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress. In 2032, Newsom is reelected, and the Democrats win supermajorities in both the Senate and the House, realizing Bernie Sanders’ Dream. As in California, only “woke” opinions are allowed – Congress passes and Newsom signs a law that makes it illegal to say anything that offends anyone of any protected class.

After being reelected, Newsom is faced with the potential insolvency of Medicare and Social Security. He solves the former by replacing Medicare with a new National Health System. He replaces Social Security with a Universal Guaranteed Income. He pays for the latter by seizing the bank accounts of everyone worth $400,000 or more.

This scenario is perhaps the worst for communities. They are under extreme stress. Those economies that have relied on exports find that their products are no longer cost-competitive. Under this scenario, any brakes on the federal bureaucracies are effectively eliminated. The federal government effectively decides what communities can and cannot do in the face of Wild Things. Instead of a Culture of Accomplishment, communities take on a Zero Sum mentality (like the South after the Civil War) – no one can gain anything unless everyone does. The quality of life in our communities tanks!

This is the “Low Resilience” scenario. Communities have few resources, much less say in how they can be used, and a polity best characterized as cynical and full of resentment.

My personal view? Our country now stands at a crossroads looking at signposts toward the Future. One signpost points to the Triumph of the Trads: a reaffirmation of the American Dream – a government and a society that functions as if people – you, I, our kids, all of us – matter. It points to a country that provides plenty of opportunities to achieve our dreams, and in return asks only that we respect each other’s aspirations.

Another signpost is toward a land of supposed equity – the Revenge of the Woke. No one can advance unless all do. A country willing to be mired in mediocrity that not only disrespects our aspirations but actually seems to fear those who dare to Dream.

There is another road leading off from the crossroads into a dark forest that has no signpost, one that finds us muddling through without a coherent direction. In the next in this series, we’ll look at a “Muddling Through” scenario.

An Age of Corruption

People who live in an age of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know that there are other kinds of murder than by dagger or assault; they also know that whatever is well said is believed. – Friedrich Nietzsche

As some of you may know, my daily routine starts with a 4-5 mile walk every weekday. This is my time to cogitate and try to make sense of what I know, have read, or have inferred about the world around me. Few distractions (almost no cars on the road at 615) in the darkness.

The other morning I was thinking about what the age we’re living in should be called – Anthropocene, Ignoramuscene … the Age of Stupid? Nietzsche’s quote, however, seems an all-too-accurate description of our modern world. We’re witnessing the attempted murder of Responsibility. Our culture has become a caricature of what it once so vibrantly was, corrupted by a lack of accountability.

When parents turn raising their kids over to the educational system or social media or …, the kids go from being Johnny, Mary, Lakeisha, and Juan to White male 53, White female 27, Black female 31, Hispanic male 22, i.e., they become identitarian statistics. No one is ever held accountable for mistreating or not educating statistics.

Our history has either been forgotten or so badly distorted by Hannah-Jones’ bastardization of Howard Zinn’s communist re-imaginings to be unrecognizable. Our “leaders?” A demented dolt and a braggadocious narcissist. Our “humorists” – whether Colbert on the Left or Gutfeld on the Right – are indeed witty but simply aren’t funny. Their mean-spirited sarcasm is more aimed at de-platforming – a form of social and economic murder – than of satire. Our supine press publishes the verbal scraps handed them by Government without questioning or probing their veracity. Even our Science is perverted by partisan politics.

We know that many of our educational institutions at all levels are failing too many kids. The disadvantaged have probably been hurt the worst. When the majority of kids in schools in our largest cities get social passes but “graduate” without being able to figure or read – or think! – something’s wrong. When over one-sixth of our young women contemplate suicide or have other mental health issues – something’s wrong. When our health establishment pushes “gender affirming care” as the answer to our kids’ mental health crises – something’s wrong. When the pill pushers pump our young men full of Ritalin or Adderall to tame their “toxic masculinity” – something’s wrong.

Perhaps the most atrocious indicator that we are living in an Age of Corruption is how seemingly blasé we have become to Corruption itself. In my youth, a muck-raking journalist exposed that the Chief of Staff to our President had received gifts of $1,000 in paid travel and a vicuna coat; Congressional pressure forced him to resign. Today, we have the sad spectacle of Congressional sophists ignoring millions of dollars of bribes to our President’s son by hostile foreign governments, and billions of dollars to be “managed” by a President’s son-in-law from a shaky ally. And the press seems unable to muster the muckrakers to uncover what these foreign governments have received or hope to receive.

A dark portrait of our Age, but one we can brighten. First, we must rebuild trust in our institutions. This starts by electing real leaders – intelligent people who are worthy of our trust; who care about our communities, our nation, and all of our people; who have the courage to make the tough choices; who hold themselves and those they work with accountable regardless of party.

But at the same time, we as parents have to take responsibility for raising our kids. That starts with recognizing that we – and no one else – are responsible for their passage from child to adult. Yes, the schools should play a role – teaching the kids to read, write and think critically. But if their schools aren’t doing that, or if the schools are indoctrinating them rather than teaching them, then we have both a moral and legal obligation to ensure the kids’ education in some other way.

One of the things that we as parents can do is make sure that the schools set standards and hold our kids accountable for reaching them. I recently read a nice piece in the Free Press about the Classical Education Movement. It is sort of “Back to the Future;” its foundations in the classical trivium and its focus on enabling critical thinking as preparation for training in a vocation. People on both the Left (Cornel West) and the Right (Ron DeSantis) have seen what this could mean for our future generations.

Our institutions need firm standards firmly enforced as well. For example, we need to nail shut the revolving door between regulators and regulated, lawgivers and those bound by the laws.

Most importantly, we need a resurgence of wisdom:

  • Understanding what is known, and recognizing what is uncertain;
  • Assessing conditions based on facts as we know them, not someone else’s idea of what the facts are, no matter how well said;
  • Using reason and logic – not emotion – to make decisions; and,
  • Holding ourselves to a high ethical standard.

If we can start on these, we can eventually pass out of the Age of Corruption.

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On a related note: several weeks ago, I was notified that Transparency International had published their new Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The CPI reflects perceived corruption in the public sector of 180 countries around the world.  I had seen previous versions (the first was in 1995) but hadn’t looked into the making of the Index. It’s really an interesting piece of work.

Transparency International uses 13 different sources of data relating to corrupt behavior (e.g., diversion of public funds), or mechanisms to prevent corruption (e.g., legal protection of whistleblowers). TI vets its sources based on their reputation, methodological reliability, focus on corruption, quantitative scalability, cross-country comparisons, and repetition over time. TI then standardizes the data to a 0-100 scale, where “0” indicates the high level of perceived corruption and “100” the lowest (I know; this does seem a little bass-ackwards!). In this year’s compilation, Denmark was the least corrupt (CPI = 90), and Somalia the most (CPI = 11).

We all “know” that corruption is an enemy of freedom and free enterprise. But we really haven’t paid attention to what that means in the real world. One way to do that is to plot the CPI against the GDP per capita of the 180 countries (GDP, adjusted for price parity, available from the CIA World Fact Book).

The blue line indicates that a country’s economy (as measured by its GDP) apparently is constrained by its public corruption. Although I haven’t found any comparable data for communities, the plot at least suggests that economic developers should pay attention to community corruption. Certainly there are other constraints – the wide range of GDP’s for countries with a CPI ~ 75 attests to that. However, eliminating corruption may be crucial, esp. for those with poorly developed economies.