Global Hints about Community Resilience

Long is the road to learning by precepts, but short and successful by examples. ~ Seneca the Younger.

I am an unrepentant data geek. One facet of my geek-ness is that I am autodidactic (I actually had a Professor call me that – I had to look it up) – I seldom accept others’ conclusions; I have to see for myself (actually, the Professor said I had to learn from my own mistakes, which I sometimes do). About 10 years ago, I first stumbled over FM’s Resilience Index. Now in its 12^th year, it is a composite of 18 different indicators.

I posted about it at the time; lots of graphs, but I didn’t really put them into a useful context. In this post, I want to take a look at hints that they may have for those of us trying to understand a community’s resilience, in particular factors that we should consider in the resilience indices so prevalent in the literature and in use in the US.

The variables. FM is an insurance company. So “resilience” has to do with physical phenomena – natural hazards and climate change, as examples. It bins the 18 variables included in the Index into two categories: Physical factors and Macro factors. The Physical factors, in effect risk factors, rely on FM’s experience in each country, except for the cybersecurity data. The Macro factors might be considered as those attributes related to recovery from a natural disaster, i.e., resilience factors. If you’re interested in the data sources and methodology, follow this link.

Whenever possible, the data are averaged over a five-year period. This is something that is generally not done for most (any?) of the US resilience indices. The advantage of this is that it smooths out some of the inevitable noise in the data while maintaining evidence of a significant trend.

All of the Macro factors that involve money are adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). The intent is to remove cost-of-living differences from comparisons. For the most common resilience indicator systems in the US, this has not been done. Thus, California counties (or other units) are indicated as more resilient than they really are because important data such as median household incomes are not adjusted for the very high cost of living (CoL) in CA. Using poverty values not adjusted for CoL, the number of people living below the poverty line in CA is less than the US average. However, once the value is adjusted, California has the highest fraction of its population living in poverty of all the states. In this context, it’s not surprising that it’s taking so long to rebuild Pacific Palisades!

Physical factors

Climate risk exposure – the portion of the country’s economically productive area exposed to climatic risks today.

Climate change exposure – the portion of the country’s economically productive area exposed to climatic risks in 2050.

Climate risk quality – enforcement of building codes for wind (90% of the indicator), and mitigation of flood and wind impacts.

Seismic risk exposure – the portion of the country’s economically productive area exposed to seismic risks.

Cybersecurity – commitment as shown in action (80%), and risk reduction relative to risk.

Fire risk quality – enforcement of fire codes (80%), and risk reduction relative to risk.

I haven’t seen the proportion of economically productive area to determine exposure to hazards used before. In the US, we either don’t include exposure data in our resilience indices, or else use something like the HAZUS code to calculate hazard losses (as is done for FEMA’s Community Resilience / National Risk Index). We certainly don’t include projections of risks in the year 2050. We also don’t include fire risks to the built environment as is done here, nor effectively give credit for mitigating actions.

Macro factors:

Control of corruption – perceived amount of corruption (public resources used for private gain) as well as “capture of state by elites and private interests.”

Education – average of expected years of schooling and the mean of actual schooling.

Energy intensity – energy consumption divided by the adjusted gross domestic product.

Greenhouse gas emissions – emissions divided by the adjusted gross domestic product.

Health expenditure – mean expenditure on health per person, both public and private, adjusted for PPP.

Inflation – annual rate of inflation.

Internet usage – fraction of the population using the internet.

Logistics – how easy it is to export to a target country in terms of the quality of infrastructure, the quality and availability of logistics activities, and public sector bottlenecks; based on survey data.

Political risk – perceived likelihood that the national government will be either destabilized or overthrown, either unlawfully or by violence.

Productivity – GDP (adjusted for PPP) per capita.

Urbanization rate – on an annual basis.

Water stress – freshwater withdrawn as a fraction of available resources.

Each factor was statistically massaged so that they were on a common scale (0-100). The resilience index for each country is then the mean of the 18 values. In contrast, in FEMA ‘s resilience index, the exposure (calculated via HAZUS) is divided into the Macro factors.

I took this data and mapped each factor against the resilience index and against each other. I won’t clutter this too-long post up any further with a bunch of graphs. The results are summarized in the following table where I’ve looked at correlations among the variables. R² is a measure of how well two variables are linearly correlated. I’ve arbitrarily chosen an R² value of 0.5 as the threshold indicating a strong relationship. All of the strong relationships are listed in the table below. If anyone wants the complete set of correlation just let me know.

Strong relationships R² ≥ 0.5
Resilience index	Control of corruption	0.76
	Climate mitigation	0.74
	Productivity	0.70
	Education	0.70
	Logistics	0.66
	Fire mitigation	0.65
	Health expenditure	0.57
	Internet usage	0.57
Productivity (GDP per capita)	Control of corruption	0.65
	Logistics	0.60
	Climate risk mitigation	0.57
	Health expenditure	0.53
	Education	0.52
	Fire risk mitigation	0.51
	Internet usage	0.50
Health expenditures	Climate mitigation	0.56
Education	Internet usage	0.68
	Climate mitigation	0.57
	Fire mitigation	0.52
	Urbanization rate	0.51
	Control of corruption	0.51
Political risk	Control of corruption	0.55
Control of corruption	Logistics	0.66
	Climate mitigation	0.54
Urbanization rate	Internet usage	0.52
Logistics	Fire mitigation	0.63
	Climate mitigation	0.57
Climate mitigation	Fire mitigation	0.73
Climate risk exposure	Climate change exposure	0.50

The strongest correlation was between the resilience index and control of corruption. This factor is not considered in any of the commonly used resilience indices. In effect, we are ignoring the community’s governance/institutional capital as a factor in its resilience. The impact of official corruption on recovery from disaster is obvious. The news from Gaza bombards us daily with a reminder of how much corruption hinders recovery. And apparently misuse of $100 M in recovery funding is another factor hampering the Pacific Palisades recovery. The only index that considers this factor is Arup’s resilience index for the 100 Cities initiative. Based on its strong relationship to a country’s resilience, this factor deserves more attention. (As an aside, I compared FM’s “Control of corruption” data with the Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International. The two are determined rather differently; however, they are highly correlated R² = 0.96, i.e., they apparently are reflecting the same thing!).

Logistics, internet usage and fire risk mitigation are all important factors strongly related to both resilience and productivity. None of them are currently included in common resilience indices. I have often said that resilience is a manifestation of a community’s strengths, not its vulnerabilities. Intuitively, the ability to move physical assets where they are needed is an important strength related to recovery. In a similar sense, internet usage facilitates movement of information across the community. More generally, this emphasizes the importance of dispatchable capital.

One surprise: exposure factors weren’t correlated with the corresponding “quality” factors, i.e., mitigation wasn’t related to exposure. While the two climate exposure factors were correlated, none of the exposure factors were correlated with any of the resilience factors. Similarly, greenhouse gas emissions were not correlated with any of the other variables.

This is the first time that FM has included cybersecurity. It doesn’t make any difference to the resilience index, and is not correlated with any of the other factors. It seems to be irrelevant to both resilience and natural hazards and fires.

There is a lot more that can be extracted from this data, but this post is long enough already. FM has provided a rather different window on resilience, pointing out the importance of variables not often considered when we look at our communities. I hope that those working to make their communities more resilient will include all of the community’s capital portfolio in their efforts – its logistics systems (physical capital), its information systems (social capital), and above all, how the community makes and implements decisions (governance/institutional capital).

Another Minsky Moment

Stability leads to instability. The more stable things become and the longer things are stable, the more unstable they will be when the crisis hits. ~ Hyman Minsky

As Dan Alesch has pointed out, we designate disasters by their triggering events, but we remember them for their impacts. Thus, we know Camille and Katrina and Sandy and Maria and Ian by the devastation they created; had they exhausted their energies over the Atlantic, their names would be forgotten. In years to come, COVID-19 will cause all of us to shudder, even though we’ve experienced many decades of influenza outbreaks. And it will be hard to forget the 100+ lives lost this week in Texas – “Guadalupe” and “Kerr County” will trigger those memories.

But why were these disasters so impactful? And, for all of them, why were there such great disparities in those impacts, even among neighboring counties and communities? My answer – Minsky Moments.

A Minsky Moment is a crisis paradoxically born of stability (It takes its name from Hyman Minsky and his financial instability hypothesis, quoted above). Minsky believed that a long period of stable financial markets led to ever increasing risk tolerance (and often risk-taking) which in turn led to a sudden collapse in the market. His ideas have been used to explain both the crisis in Asian markets in the late 1990’s and the Great Recession that we have so slowly climbed out of.

A sad pattern seems to be all-too-frequently repeated. We take action immediately after a disaster and then as its devastation slowly fades from our memories we become more and more tolerant of risk and eventually engage in increasingly risky behavior. Almost invariably, this leads to a Minsky Moment.

For example, the hurricanes in Florida in 2004 and 2005 were the first major storms to hit south Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Individually, each was weaker than Andrew, but collectively their impacts were much greater (For example, Wilma – a Cat 3 hurricane – did almost as much damage as the Cat 5 Andrew even after Ivan and Charley had already done so much.). Over time, people forgot Nature’s devastation – many let their insurance policies lapse; many didn’t properly protect their homes; virtually no effort was made to strengthen buildings built prior to the more stringent building codes put in force after Andrew. People became so risk tolerant that even common sense precautions (such as properly functioning storm shutters) were ignored.

Craig Colton has pointed out that this behavior happened in New Orleans after Katrina as well. Homeowners bought insurance in almost record numbers in 2005 and 2006; by 2009, many of those policies had been allowed to lapse.

A very different type of event – a school shooting. We were all horrified in 2015 by yet another scene of senseless violence, this time at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR. But the fact that there had been a deadly shooting at Roseburg High School in 2006 was lost in the tragedy of the event. Clearly the quick response of the police indicates that they, at least, remained highly aware of the risk, but it appears that the leadership of UCC was ill-prepared. And being unprepared for this kind of an act on a campus in today’s world means that the risk is tolerated and, unfortunately, accepted.

Similarly, even after the devastating effects of the coronavirus in China became apparent (in spite of the Chinese government’s efforts to hide them) in January, 2020, the President and many governors and mayors tried to downplay its potential impacts. People were encouraged to “party hearty” – Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras and others. Spring Breakers beached it even into March, and for some, sadly, it was their last Big Wave. We had not had a major epidemic in 100 years; the false alarms of the last two decades (SARS, Ebola, et al.) conditioned us to believe that the party would never end – until it did.

And just this week, the tragic deaths of campers, and many others, in Texas. The “We can’t afford a warning system” thinking; the “The water in that creek is only a foot deep or so – it won’t flood” mindset; the “We haven’t had a big flood since 1987” excuses led to so many lives wasted.

Perhaps the most touching were Blair and Brooke Harber, two sisters who along with their grandparents, were swept away by the flood. The love of those two sisters – so strong that even the powerful surge of water could not prise their hands apart – is matched only by the weak judgement of the adults who failed them.

Sadly, there can be Minsky Moments in any and every aspect of our lives. Certainly AIDS took so many lives in the 1980s because of the risk tolerance and risky behavior that were the hallmarks of the sexual revolution and drug use in the ’60s and ’70s. We had conquered polio in the ’50s; antibiotics seemed able to cure even STDs; there was no real risk – or so we thought. And yet a virus that apparently had been lying in wait since the ’20s pounced on our risky behavior to become a pandemic. Polio and measles – evil genies we thought we’d eradicated – are again emerging as real threats.

The levees of the Sacramento River Valley provide the basis for a potentially devastating Minsky Moment. Originally built to provide water for reliable irrigation of farm land, the levee system has led to unrestrained development. This residential and commercial development is occurring in an area that has seen at least six massive floods (When Leland Stanford became Governor of California, he had to use a rowboat to get to his inauguration.). When the levees breach (one estimate indicates a 64% chance in the next third of a century), the drinking water for 25 million people will be contaminated, millions will be left homeless and tens of thousands will die. All because we have forgotten the lessons of the Great Mississippi flood of 1927 (John Barry’s Rising Tide provides an excellent explanation of how bad management and engineering contributed to this event. His The Great Influenza is also an excellent reference on the Spanish flu pandemic.). Similarly, had we remembered the lessons that Nature tried to teach us with the Long Island Express of 1938 (a massive meat cleaver – compared to Sandy’s butter knife – that carved up the Long Island Sound) much of the devastation of Superstorm Sandy would have been avoided. While some communities had wide beaches and recently constructed berms and dunes that protected them from the worst of the storm, many more of their neighbors went unprotected into that good night. And those still rage over the blight that is strangling their communities.

In too many cases, the impacts caused by extreme events – especially the human suffering – can be attributed to Minsky Moments like these. It is all too human to want to forget the bad things that have happened to us. It is all too human to believe that since no crisis has happened recently, none lies lurking in our future. But we must go beyond our human failings – we must ensure that fading memories do not give rise to tolerance of risk, then risky behavior, and then the inevitable Minsky Moment. Or else more young voices will go silent, more precious lives will be lost.

Freedom For

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. — Declaration of Independence

Happy Birthday, America!

Today we celebrate our Founding Father’s act that signified the birth of our Nation. Gathered in Philadelphia that July in 1776, they signed what has become a quintessential statement of men’s right to be free.

Many today are focusing on that Freedom as the basis for American exceptionalism. But I find that incomplete. What makes America truly exceptional is not Freedom per se – other nations have been and are free. Our exceptionalism is in the aspirational nature of the Declaration of Independence and of our nation. We are the only ones who have a Dream. It is that aspirational nature of our society – the “pursuit of happiness” as Jefferson put it – that sets us apart. And that we must safeguard.

That means that we Americans not only have freedom “from” as many other nations do, but freedom “for.” Our Founding Fathers were rightly aware that Freedom without restraint becomes License. Baked into the Declaration and many of Lincoln’s most famous speeches (as well as Franklin’s “a republic, if you can keep it”) is the notion of Responsibility – Freedom’s homely twin. As Americans, we have a responsibility to those who came before to safeguard what they have bequeathed us. And we have a responsibility to those who will come after – to ensure that they viscerally value what we bequeath to them. Thus, the American Experiment is (to borrow from Edmund Burke ) a partnership “between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

Our “Freedom For” is thus part of a social compact between ourselves and our communities. We are free to pursue our happiness but have a responsibility to our community as well. First, do no harm – the Hippocratic Oath applied to our civic life. Don’t litter; don’t commit immoral acts; don’t make the commons a tragedy. And then make the community better. Not in a performative way (what did “No Kings” accomplish?), but by taking positive action. Picking up the litter or helping those who are in need. As de Tocqueville observed, that sense of community is also a part of America’s exceptionalism.

Like so many of you, tonight I’m going to see the fireworks and celebrate with family and friends. I will celebrate – in my Freedom to act and think and write – America’s exceptionalism. And in the days to come I will continue to work to make my community an even better place to live. That compact between me and my community is also part of America’s exceptionalism – it’s what gives me my “Freedom For.”

It began with a bull

…and a community mired in poverty…and a stubborn man who cared enough to do something about it.

The following is based on a nifty little book by Vaughn Grisham and Rob Gurwitt called Hand in Hand. It provides more detail about Tupelo’s economic and community development and is well worth reading in its entirety. I’ve added details that reflect the city’s further progress after the book was written.

In the 1930s, Tupelo, in Lee County, MS, was an economic basket case. Its economy (primarily agricultural, mainly relying on cotton) had been devastated by the Great Depression of the 1930’s, a killer tornado in 1936 (230 died in the county), and the ravages wrought by the boll weevil on the cotton fields. The hub of one of the poorest counties in arguably the poorest state in the nation, a majority of its population were below the poverty line. Tupelo was rather isolated – with few roads and no nearby waterway; it had no amenities to foster tourism; it had no mineral resources (and severely depleted agricultural land!); it had no nearby federal installations to act as a center of growth. Today, Tupelo is the center of a thriving economic and educational ecosystem. And this amazing turnaround, this transformation, began with a bull.

Prior to World War II, city leaders had tried to improve Tupelo’s economy several times. These efforts had been haphazard and without lasting success; even the city’s electrification had had little impact. However, these efforts had shown that the fate of the city and the rural areas around it were highly intertwined. City businesses had little chance of growing unless their poor rural customers had more money to spend.

As early as 1936, the owner of Tupelo’s newspaper, George McLean, had begun editorializing that the city’s best chance for growth lay in lifting the poorest out of poverty. He expressed the belief that if the “haves” in town invested in the “have nots,” the return could be tremendous. And like all good prophets, he was ignored – at first.

Previous efforts to help the farmers had focused on diversifying their crops. What little success that had been achieved disappeared into the Great Depression. McLean and a few other forward-thinkers in the town visited several ag schools across the region and beyond to develop a new and more lasting approach. They concluded that if farmers could turn to dairying (in addition to cotton if they wished), they could greatly improve their economic condition. Instead of a single payday when they brought in their cotton crop (and living on credit much of the rest of the year), they could have a steady income from selling their milk every day or so.

Great idea! Except … a successful dairy farm requires quality milk-producing cows. By and large, the poor farmers’ cows weren’t good milk producers. A good bull was needed to provide better milkers. George and a few others then began a campaign to buy a bull. They eventually ~~pestered~~ persuaded nearly every business in town to contribute. They went to the Isle of Jersey to buy the best bull they could find. They hired a dairy expert to provide advice to aspiring dairy farmers. For $5, any farmer within a 33-mile radius of Tupelo could have his cow mounted. The first year, only 150 cows were bred, but results seemed promising. The second year 1100 cows were bred, and the total kept going up – the farmers were making money!- In fact, the demand became so great that McLean and others started a foundation to support an artificial insemination program, and bought a world champion bull. By the end of the decade, dairying was pumping over $27 million (2025) dollars into Lee County’s economy.

But that success was only the start for McLean and other business leaders. McLean in particular believed that a community’s sustained vitality required not only increased financial capital but the other forms of community capital as well – better infrastructure, better schools, closer ties between town and the surrounding county. McLean and the other community leaders concluded that achieving all of this was beyond the scope of a Chamber of Commerce but did need to be institutionalized.

This led to the formation of Tupelo’s Community Development Foundation (CDF) in 1948. Eight-eight business leaders were involved in the planning. In its first year, 151 founding members contributed over $25,000 to get it started. It has held fast to McLean’s original belief that investments by the “haves” in the “have nots” pay big dividends. However, it has not remained static in its vision. Every decade the CDF has moved its aim point in response to the city’s development. In this table, some of the returns on those investments are detailed.

Capital	Accomplishment
Physical	Prepared report for legislature which averted water crisis by using Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway as source of water Encouraged development of four-lane roads to facilitate rural access to manufacturing facilities
Human	Partnered to form adult literacy program Partnered to provide free tuition to local community college to all Lee County high school graduates Partnerships to advance education in STEM disciplines with TVA and IBM Brought a branch of the University of Mississippi to Tupelo
Governance	Instrumental in formation of Council of Governments for the county Developed Community Leadership Institute Fostered alliance between Pontotoc, Union and Lee Counties (PUL Alliance) for economic development Guided development of city strategic plan focusing on attraction and retention of talent and on improving the city’s quality of life
Financial	Aided Lee County to climb from 10^th to 1^st in the state in terms of manufacturing jobs Played major role in establishing city as a major hub for furniture manufacturing As part of PUL Alliance, captured Toyota manufacturing facility (2007) Impacts of Great Recession less than those nationally, with quicker recovery
Cultural	Guided formation of United Way of Lee County Recognized five times as an “All American City” Forged culture of accomplishment and openness to new ideas and people
Social	Built linchpin connections between city business community and rural surrounding areas

Today this revitalized city is the home of two regional banks, a Baldridge award-winning hospital, and a thriving regional automotive industry. Its poverty rate is below the national average. Tupelo’s per capita and median household incomes are about 40% higher than the rest of the state and above national averages. Its unemployment rate is about two-thirds the national average and 58% of the state as a whole. And to think this amazing turnaround, this transformation, began with a bull.

The book on which this is based has an excellent table that sums up the “guiding principles” by which the CDF operates. These are explained fully in the book but they’re worth listing here.

• Local people must address local problems.

• Each person should be treated as a resource. The community development process begins with the development of people.

• The goal of community development is to help people help themselves.

• Meet the needs of the whole community by starting with its poorest members, not just as targets for top-down efforts but as full partners in helping design those efforts.

• Community development must help create jobs.

• Expenditures for community development are an investment – not a subsidy – and will return gains to the investors. So people with money have both the responsibility and an interest in investing in the development of their own community.

• Community development must be done both locally and regionally if the full benefits are to be achieved.

• Start with a few tangible goals, and measure your progress in meeting them.

• Build teams and use a team approach.

• Leadership is a prime ingredient, but community development cannot be achieved without organizations and structure.

• Never turn the community development process over to any agency that does not involve the people of the community.

• Persistence is essential, and programs must be continually updated.

Winning Tomorrow

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but Tomorrow is ours to win. — Lyndon Baines Johnson

As many of you know, I have spent much of my later-career years focused on communities, especially community resilience. The “resilience” that I and my colleagues have talked about goes beyond the conventional “bouncing back” from adversity – survival – to include seizing the opportunities inherent in any “change” whether adverse or not, i.e., thriving.

But this put us in a somewhat awkward position: virtually all of our funding was coming from sources most interested in “surviving” crises. If you think of the Chinese ideogram for crisis, it is made up of the symbols for “danger” and “opportunity.” Our funding tended to focus us on mitigating “dangers” and on recovery when they overwhelmed communities, with much less attention to seizing opportunities.

Now that I’m self-funded (ahem), I’m trying to bring balance back into my own thinking and writing. As a part of this, I’ve struggled to find something that better captures our conception of “resilience.” If the purpose of a community is to provide the quality of life that its members want, then a community should be continually striving to meet or exceed that goal. I was searching for a way to express that idea when I stumbled across the quote for President Johnson.

Winning Tomorrow – the American Dream for communities! The American Dream is the essence of what makes America exceptional. It is inherently aspirational. It is built on a belief that anyone – even the poorest among us – can rise above even the humblest of beginnings to achieve a better life with hard work and persistence. Just as we as individuals work to make the American Dream a reality for ourselves and our families, our communities should work to make themselves better, more livable, places to work, play, and raise a family – they should aim to Win Tomorrow.

Certainly, achieving that purpose is complicated by the sea of changes in which our communities are immersed. Winning Tomorrow means that the community will continue to move forward no matter what challenges they face in the future. Communities are open systems. People are moving in and out of them continually. Today’s acceptable quality of life may not satisfy the community’s residents 10 years from now. Neighboring communities will also change. The community may be struck by a Wild Thing, resulting in loss of life, in damage to infrastructure, or to businesses closing. The state or federal government may enact new regulations altering community processes. And, of course, the community’s infrastructures and dispatchable capital will degrade over time if not maintained.

A community Wins Tomorrow if the community’s quality of life steadily improves over the long term. The community successfully adapts to its stressors before failure occurs. If the community fails (e.g., if it is devastated by a Wild Thing), it rapidly recovers, and regains its upward momentum.

It takes self-investment to Win Tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean mountains of money. It does mean institutional capital to make decisions and to implement them; human capital to take action; and social and cultural capital to sustain the effort.

Some of you cynics may scoff at this: “Mine is a poor community with few resources.” The American Dream doesn’t care where you start, or how poor you are. If you work hard and smart over the long haul, you can create a better life. In the same way, even the poorest of communities can Win Tomorrow, using what they have to take small steps that become bigger steps that ultimately become transformative.

In that sense, Winning Tomorrow is a journey, not a destination. It is not a one-time exercise but rather a continuing effort to make Tomorrow better than Today for the entire community. Efforts to Win Tomorrow should last for decades – ideally never ending. Winning Tomorrow mostly consists of incremental changes to individual community systems.

I know this may seem like what my good friend Warren Edwards calls the “Square Root of Ether” – an intellectual exercise with little practical merit. In my next post – It Began with a Bull – I’ll tell the story of a dirt-poor community who started its journey with nothing but a leader who cared about his community and the community is still working to Win Tomorrow.

Competence and character

Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive and your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills and your track record. Both are vital. – Stephen Covey

In response to my last post, one of you asked a really good question – “How do we get competence AND character in our elected officials?”

I [tried to] provide a brief answer in the last post:

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.

So let me personalize this. I vote for the candidate that I most trust to do the things that need to be done. Too often, our elections become a referendum about one candidate or the other (arguably, 2020’s Presidential election was a referendum on Trump). But elections actually are choices. A vote against a candidate is a vote for their opponent. If we vote for someone because we dislike/loath/hate their opponent we may well get what we deserve – an incompetent with little integrity.

That skeletal bone “the things that need to be done” demands a bit more meat. The first duty of community office is to maintain or improve the community’s quality of life. Ideally, that means finding people who will “do the right things right the first time.” Finding people who will not only work to solve Today’s problems but are also focused on Winning Tomorrow – a sustained effort to improve the community’s capacity and its quality of life (I’ll talk more about Winning Tomorrow in my next post). But we’re all flawed; there are too few of these paragons around.

Thus, one way to get competence and character in office is to urge those we believe approach this ideal to stand for election. I judge a candidate’s competence based on

The candidate’s past. Does the candidate meet the requirements for the position (e.g., age, experience, education)? If the elected position requires working with a bureaucracy, does the candidate have any relevant experience? Has the candidate handled difficult situations before in an acceptable manner?
The candidate’s positions. Is the candidate focused on solving what I believe to be the community’s problems? Which of these are the candidate’s highest priorities? Is the candidate offering likely solutions, that won’t have any obvious “unintended consequences?” Is the candidate driven by ideology or by observation of the community’s conditions?
Tenure. Has the candidate (or the candidate’s party) held the office for longer than a decade? If so, what does the candidate propose doing differently to solve the community’s problems?

I judge a candidate’s character based on

The candidate’s past. Any scandals, or anything unsavory? If it’s something said or written in the candidate’s youth, has the candidate learned and moved beyond the immature transgression? Conversely, are there laudable actions or statements (e.g., serving one’s country)?
Confidence. Is the candidate confident – neither cocky nor projecting mock humility? When confronted by those who disagree, does the candidate “keep their cool?”
Trust. Do I trust the candidate to do their best in the position? This is a personal thing: the person’s confidence plays a role, as does the candidate’s respect for those who disagree. Ultimately, I’m looking for that person who, if necessary, will “rise above principle to do the right thing.”

The crucial element is information. Correctly judging a candidate’s competence and character requires accurate – and often nuanced – information. As a result, I spend a great deal of time before an election seeking information about the candidates in the races I care about. I try to glean information from several sources to construct the best picture I can. As an aside, the consolidation of the media often makes that difficult. We often overlook that the news media are both reporters and curators. If they choose not to cover a story (e.g., Hunter Biden’s laptop; JFK’s infidelities) then we as citizens are denied the ability to factor it into our decisions. The rise of the “New Media” such as the Free Press (left of center) and the Daily Wire (right of center) is helping to restore balance at the national level. But while there may be multiple sources of information in some of our big cities, in many locations – especially smaller cities – there often is only one.

Once I’ve collected the information, it’s crunch time. Remember, elections aren’t referenda, they’re choices. And since we’re all flawed, it’s highly likely that each candidate has pluses and minuses. I look for the candidate best able to get the things done I believe desirable under the circumstances.

We can’t always have both competence and character. In one of the first elections in which I voted, I was faced with the choice between a competent (possible) crook and an (apparently) honest fool. I voted for the crook because he seemed best able to make and implement the hard decisions demanded by the times.

If we want both, we have to urge competent people of character to run for office. But – like us – our information will always be flawed. We will make mistakes. The easiest is to simply vote straight party tickets, as if one of the parties has a monopoly on mendacity and the other lives close to the saints. If we vote for the candidate and not the party; vote for what we believe is needed for our communities to survive and thrive; and dig for the information we need to do these – we likely won’t go too far wrong … at least not very often!

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).

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