The Dog Ate My Homework

When I was in sixth grade, we had to make a project for ancient civilization, and it was a Sumerian brick. I made it, and I left it on the radiator overnight. I came downstairs in the morning, and it had disappeared. And my dog – my Labrador was looking very guilty… So it must have been like, what she dreamed of because it was the size of a loaf of bread, and there was nothing left.

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I have been an indifferent correspondent this quarter. After my last post on “The Coming Crisis,” I had intended laying out a few possible futures, starting with one I call “Triumph of the Trads.” Three things intervened.

  • October 7. A Minsky Moment of the first magnitude! And something that I believe may have a profound impact on the Coming Crisis’ outcome. The testimonies of the “three sisters” – I mean the Presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT – were as appalling as the response to them was surprising. In fact, I’m still processing what the impact of 10/7 and beyond on those futures might be. I’ll come back to this next month.
  • Medicare Open Enrollment. As some of you know, for the last decade I have helped hundreds of seniors optimize their choices, esp. for their drug plans. I’ve helped them save almost a half million dollars. As you might expect, it takes a lot of time.
  • Over the last few weeks, Bill Hooke and I have had a running dialog over whether and how the First World should help the Third World deal with the “Climate Crisis.” My responses are in the comments to his posts here and here. Our views are, ahem, a bit divergent, but as he posted, “Readers are treated to another view, and then are better positioned to sort out their own thinking on the subject of the day.” His posts and my comments (well, his posts and maybe my comments) are worth reading.

I am one of Bill’s biggest fans. He is – as I try to be – an intellectual provocateur. He forces me to more clearly think through my own positions and to correct them as necessary. If I can characterize our starting points, his is that as a rich nation the US should help poorer countries when they have climatic damage because we have benefited so much from what has caused that damage. In that sense, he is a “gentle collectivist.”

My starting point is quite different. I’m not sure what harm has been done that can be attributed to a changing climate (Feel free to object in a comment). Further, while our forebears certainly left us much better off than many others, we should not forget how much they and we have done for the rest of the world, with our money, our time and even our blood. And I would much prefer donating my money, time and talents myself to those that I believe can truly benefit from them rather than have the government make the judgment of who is worthy. All of this makes me a sceptical individualist.

But please read the exchange – the issues we bring forth are important. Perhaps equally so, we can disagree while respecting each other.

In a sense “climate reparations” is [are?] a moot point, since John Kerry and company have already established such a fund at COP28. But in a sense it’s not: Congress still must authorize the release of funds for our contribution.

So these are the dogs that ate my homework. Seriously, I’ll try to do better! Maybe next year…

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Finally, we are rapidly approaching Christmas and a new year. It is a time for giving and sharing. Please remember those less fortunate. Help them not out of guilt for what you have, but out of the responsibility inherent in our common humanity. Above all, treat the less fortunate as human beings, as individuals, not faceless avatars of some group identity. And, maybe, we can do the same for those with whom we disagree.

I hope we all find that 2024 ends better than 2023 has. Peace!

The Coming Crisis

History does not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.

Attributed to Mark Twain

Eighty years ago, our nation’s armies and the world were being savaged by World War II’s dogs of war. Eighty years before that, the country was in the midst of our Civil War. Eighty years before that – almost exactly 240 years ago – the Treaty of Paris ending our Revolutionary War was signed. Do you see a disturbing pattern here?

Mark Twain’s “rhymes” are the patterns that prophets use to foretell the future. Over the last few months, John Mauldin has collated predictions based on historical patterns that indicate that the next ten years may well be more tumultuous than any of us have seen before in our lives. These come from three very different perspectives: one demographic, one geopolitical and the other historical. Independently, William White has observed that we are passing from an Age of Plenty to an Age of Scarcity. A crisis is coming, with potentially profound impacts on our communities. In this post, I’ll look at the patterns that point to crisis. In the next, I’ll offer two different possible futures that the coming crisis might lead to. I’ll also offer some thoughts on how the coming crisis might impact our communities.

Neil Howe focuses on generations and their characteristics. He sees a cycle of 80 years, roughly corresponding to the human life span. A generation of Nomads is followed by Heroes, then Artists and Prophets. Each generation is born during a 20-year period; each dominates affairs in their later middle age (40-60), and then begins yielding to the next generation. This change from one generation to the next is called a Turning.

Heroes must deal with the great crises of their times. They are the ones who fought and won our Nation’s independence from Great Britain. They are the ones who preserved the Union and ended slavery. They are the Greatest Generation who won World War II. Artists watched their Hero-parents struggle through crisis, but are powerless to act. As a result, they are risk-averse conformists. Their times tend to be relatively calm and crisis-free. Prophets reap the advantages – and the disadvantages – of never knowing a real crisis. They tend to be focused on cultural and moral issues (e.g., the ‘60s), and – most importantly – set the stage for the next crisis. They are followed by the Nomads, pragmatists who are suspicious of bureaucracies of any form. Because they have few connections and trust only themselves, crises brought on by the Prophets tend to fester when Nomads are in power. It is up to the next generation of Heroes to resolve them.

According to Howe, we are now in the Fourth Turning – Gen X (Nomads) giving way to the Millenials (Heroes). It started with the Great Recession, and should reach its culmination around 2030. Going back to the 15th century, Fourth Turnings have been times of crisis and upheaval. They were often violent, but more importantly, have each resulted in social upheaval. To quote Mauldin, “This major upheaval doesn’t have to include war, or at least the calamitous shooting wars of past cycles. Hopefully. But anyone who thinks the current cultural antagonisms, rabid partisanship, unrealistic expectations, geopolitical turmoil, and the staggering accumulation of debt will end with a whimper isn’t paying attention.”

George Friedman, one of the preeminent observers of the geopolitical scene, has observed an 80-year institutional cycle and a 50-year socioeconomic cycle in our nation’s history, starting in 1783. A crisis occurred at the peak of each cycle; for the first time, those peaks coincide. That implies the coming crisis will be both an institutional and a socio-economic one. Again, to quote Mauldin, “it seems likely we will face social crisis, economic breakdown, and structural political change—all at the same time.”

Friedman sees our increased longevity and reduced reproduction as fueling the crisis. We have an increasing number of elderly consumers, spending their own savings (and pensions – in some cases) as well as their Social Security benefits, and Medicare for health care. In principle, Social Security and Medicare are supported by taxes on workers, but fewer births means that the number of workers supporting each older American has almost halved – falling from 6 in 1980 to slightly more than 3 now. And the ratio is continuing to decrease – this is not sustainable!

Friedman points out that the last institutional crisis – dealing with the post-World War II world – was solved by transitioning to “government by experts.” In the post-war world, our experts were truly heroes. George Marshall shepherding Europe’s economic recovery. Lewis Strauss forming the “Atoms for Peace” program. Eisenhower championing the Interstate Highway System, and many others.

However, we currently are awash in “experts” seemingly more adept at bureaucratic gamesmanship than solving our problems. As I’ve previously noted, the economists at the Federal Reserve are largely responsible for the widening gulf between rich and poor. It is clear that the masking and lockdown “guidance” from the “experts” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was, at the least, misguided. And the remote learning foisted upon us by the “experts” in the educational establishment will continue to wreak havoc on the futures of our disadvantaged youth, perhaps for generations.

Peter Turchin is a Ph.D. zoologist, who founded the field of cliodynamics. He and his colleagues have focused on the study of state formation and collapse, compiling a database that spans virtually all of recorded history. Using mathematical models to test trends, he concluded that

“when a state, such as the United States, has stagnating or declining real wages (wages in inflation-adjusted dollars), a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt, these seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. In the United States, all of these factors started to take an ominous turn in the 1970s. The data pointed to the years around 2020 when the confluence of these trends was expected to trigger a spike in political instability.”

Turchin has noted that as societies age, they naturally evolve into a state of inequality. An elite forms, based on wealth and education, which directs the actions of the commoners. Turchin sees this as a power imbalance. Over time, the gap between the two widens leading to the commoners becoming what Turchin calls “immiserated,” no longer able to work to achieve the advantages of being in the elite. As an aside, before the pandemic, data indicated that social mobility – the rate of socio-economic “churn” – had significantly slowed, consistent with Turchin’s slowly building crisis. The decreasing life expectancy of lower middle class white men is also in line with Turchin’s view of immiseration.

According to Turchin, over time the elites over-produce – a group of educated potential elites, who are without power, and in danger of slipping into immiseration. It is at this point that the crisis arises as there is a competition between the elites and these counter-elites. As Turchin points out, the crisis often turns violent and rarely turns out well for the society as a whole.

One more negative pointer – William White sees the global economy moving from an Age of Plenty” to an “Age of Scarcity.” He believes that its systemic instability (high public and private debt, geopolitical turbulence, declining workforce worldwide, restricted energy supplies due to fears of climate change, …) are leading to political instability, that is being exacerbated by the distrust in established institutions.

To add my personal viewpoint, this omni-directional distrust seems to be the one “belief” that currently unites Americans of all political persuasions. A Turchin might point to the CDC’s botched handling of the pandemic. A Friedman might point to Biden’s timid attempts to prevent the Russo-Ukrainian War. A White might point to the Fed’s fiddling with the economy that has exacerbated the wealth gap between rich and poor. But universal distrust in our institutions has become the hallmark of our age.

None of us can predict how all of this will play out. we can only postulate a range of futures. It may be my own personal idealism, but I believe that our future path will depend on how we resolve this lack of trust in our institutions and ourselves. In the next post, I’ll spin out two scenarios of how these crises might be resolved, and their impacts on our communities.

Five Pillars of Community Resilience

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

Noam Chomsky

The other week, Claire Rubin sent me a link to an article from Beaumont resilience training – Here’s How to Use Resilience to Move out of Your Comfort Zone. The author – Laura Ponting – focuses on the personal growth of the individual, but her “five pillars” seem to fit well with my own conception of community resilience as a springboard for growth – development or strengthening – of a community, i.e., for making a community more Future-fit.

I apologize to Ms Ponting – I’m reorganizing her order to suit my [sometimes – often?] warped logic. I’ve also taken some of her words out of context, to help make my points. I’m also couching this in terms of systems; after all, communities are first and foremost complex adaptive systems (CASs). I’ll also use the Seven Community Capitals as a way to clarify some of my points.

First Pillar: Purpose. Future-fitness – growing in strength and capability – requires not just action, but purposeful action. Action — to strengthen the individual or the community. Since a community is only successful if it provides the quality of life its members want, the purpose of becoming more resilient is to safeguard that quality of life, and to improve it if possible. This is often called a vision; the community’s conception of what that stronger community will be. The community as a whole has to buy into that vision, or else it is likely that it won’t be realized.

In particular, this requires cultural capital. A common language to describe and understand that future state. A common self-confidence that breeds optimism. As Chomsky implies, without that confidence and the optimism it engenders, the community won’t work together to achieve it.

Second Pillar: Self-awareness. “Know Thyself” is not just an inscription on a Greek temple; it is the zero-th step for any community plan. For the community as a system, self-awareness means knowing who its members are. It means knowing how they are connected – or not. It means knowing the “balances” in each of its capital accounts, and the constraints or limits on the use of each capital. Most importantly, it means that the community’s leaders know how to make decisions and take action (human and institutional capital).

Third Pillar: Mindfulness. “Mindfulness” for a community equates to situational awareness. Communities as systems are in dynamic environments, with trajectories conditioned by both internal and external forces. “Mindful” communities recognize not only where they’re headed, but the forces that are driving them. The fine people at ResOrgs in NZ consider situational awareness one of the four enablers of effective crisis strategic planning.

Situational awareness rests on the community’s social capital. It requires “ears to the ground” within the community to gauge the community’s mood and its ability to move. Situational awareness also requires linchpins keenly tuned in to sources of information outside the community. They can warn the community about new sources of stress and alert the community to unexpected opportunities.

Fourth Pillar: Self-care. As individuals, we know we have to take care of ourselves. We exercise (well, some of us do). We have physicals to tell us whether we’re overweight, have high blood pressure, are pre-diabetic or any of the other warning signs the doctor looks for. And if we’re wise, we take action to avoid further damage to our vitality.

The same holds true for our communities. We know that if we fail to maintain our homes or our physical and natural infrastructure, they may be damaged in a severe storm, or even collapse from neglect. But the same holds true for our “softer” infrastructures.
• our community’s culture that, at its best, brings us together and gives us the confidence to act;
• our community’s social networks that enable us to communicate with each other, and – in times of crisis – tell us where resources are needed;
• our community’s economy that provides us with the financial capital to take action.

And just as we as individuals have physicals to point out where action is indicated to strengthen us, so too should we in our communities be aware of those signs that point out that action is needed. More frequent maintenance of physical systems, rising crime, a fraying social fabric, or growing poverty each are indicative of the need for “self-care” for our communities.

Fifth Pillar: Positive relationships. Ms Ponting couches this in terms of finding people to support us, esp. as we strive to better ourselves. The same holds true – in spades – for communities. It is simply a reflection of the economy of scale. The more resources we can bring together, the more we can do. If we work smartly (after all, two heads are better than one) we can make our communities more functional and better places to live for all of us.

But there are also traps for the unwary in this. First, “working smartly.” If we let ideology overrule reality, in other words if we don’t couple Purpose and Mindfulness/Situational Awareness, then we may actually harm our community. The debacles that so many of our big cities have become – crime, filth in the streets, the ugliness of the hopeless homeless – are monuments to failed ideologies not rooted in reality.

The second trap seems to be endemic in our age of “engagement.” Even the best of ideas can die the death of a thousand cuts in a committee. When egos are engaged, everyone wants to see a little of themselves in what’s done. That leads to inefficiencies and sometimes even alters the idea so much that it no longer supports the Purpose.

A third trap is the difficulty in overcoming the distrust and mistrust that seems to be endemic in our not-so-civil civil life. It sometimes seems that no one has the authority to act but everyone has veto power over any action. Relationships ultimately are grounded in trust. In our age, however, Trust has become a rare commodity. Thus, building positive relationships particularly in our polarized polity is not for the faint of heart.

Five Pillars for strengthening us as individuals; Five Pillars to move our communities toward a better and more secure future. That should be our Purpose. Achieving the Purpose has to be grounded in self- and situational-awareness, so we can set a realistic path from today to that better tomorrow. As we advance upon that path we must maintain those strengths we rely on to move forward – self-care. And if we can find willing partners to support us, these positive relationships can help us to advance more rapidly.

Our Declaration of Independence

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

This week the US celebrates its founding. The date chosen commemorates the signing of our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. This document is arguably the most important written in the English language in the last 250 years. Its ringing words sparked our own and the French revolutions. It voiced the aspirations of the voiceless around the world yearning for a better life.

And let there be no mistake – it is truly an aspirational document. It articulates a vision of what our nation should be. Our Founding Fathers were all too aware that government formed by Man cannot be perfect; our Constitution with its checks and balances is their attempt to protect our “inalienable rights.” I believe all of them recognized their society’s failings; Slavery – America’s original sin – chief among them. Three quarters of a million died as part of our national penance to expiate and exterminate this sin. The Declaration and the Constitution established an aspirational culture in our country that continues to be a magnet attracting those from other countries who want to have a piece of the American Dream.

However, we now live in a world in which many Americans are questioning those aspirations and would have us deem the American Dream a nightmare. Some want to subvert our aspirational culture and deny the importance of the rights so many have sought and so many have fought to ensure.

This battle of conflicting visions of our future is being fought at the national level, in our state capitals, and in our communities. It has profound implications for our resilience at each of these levels. And while Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Livingston and Sherman didn’t use that term, I think it’s important to examine the impact of the Declaration on our resilience.

First and foremost, the Declaration is about “Rights.” In our highly polarized politics at the national level, both sides claim to be for “Freedom,” although they seem to be worlds apart in what they think Freedom is. To me, our Bill of Rights – inspired by the Declaration – lays out an excellent definition of our Rights, especially in the First Amendment. We must be free to believe as we wish and to express those beliefs. We must be free to peaceably assemble. In the Constitution, these are couched in terms of prohibiting the federal government from denying these rights. But it is just as important that we recognize that no individual or group has the right to abridge those freedoms either. “Cancel culture” does not exist in a society that values freedom.

But – in more subtle ways – the Declaration also speaks to Freedom’s homely twin – Responsibility. In the Declaration, the Founding Fathers talk about the duty of the people to “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them” (to wax Shakespearean). The Declaration also states that the colonists have reached out to their fellow citizens in Great Britain, implying a responsibility of citizens to support each other.

This theme is also hidden in the famous phrase “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This was originally the more prosaic “Life, liberty and property” borrowed from John Locke. Jefferson changed this based on another of Locke’s essays in which the pursuit of happiness is seen as the antithesis of today’s “don’t think twice, it’s all right” culture. Rather, in Locke’s (and apparently Jefferson’s) view, the pursuit of happiness was not chasing whatever “feels good now,” but rather thinking in terms of what is best overall. In other words, seeking the timeless rather than the timely. In the Federalist papers, both Madison and Hamilton referred to this as social happiness.

Today, many question the Declaration and its worth. They assert that the Founding Fathers’ conceptions were necessarily corrupted by their owning of slaves. They assert that so much has happened – so much more has been learned since then that these simple principles should be effectively abandoned. But what they fail to realize is that the Declaration is indeed timeless; that the flawed men who wrote it were all too aware of their own flaws. Those who would modify the Rights the Declaration so powerfully asserts ignore the role that these words played in bringing an end to slavery. The role that they played in the French Revolution. The role they more recently played in the UN’s Charter. The role these words continue to play in drawing immigrants to America so that they can pursue their dreams, so that they can create and pursue their own happiness. Calvin Coolidge said it well:

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward … Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Only free men and women can take purposeful action to better themselves and their families, whether in adversity or in good times. Only free men and women can truly be resilient. Our Declaration is the fundamental statement of both the Rights and Responsibilities of that freedom. It is thus the basis – the foundation – of our resilience.

Memorial Day 2023

we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion

Abraham Lincoln

This past weekend we remembered those who died in service to our country. For them, Duty, Honor, Country was more than a phrase, it became the visceral reality they lived and died for. They understood the concepts of Duty to guard the ideal of Freedom, of Honor in doing that duty, and of devotion to Country. 

After Viet Nam, we as a country decided that we would move from a military based on the draft to an all-volunteer service. This resulted in an Army that was able to transform itself into a much more capable fighting force after the debacle that was Viet Nam. However, it meant that our youth no longer had to serve, but rather only if they chose to do so.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since then we have drifted toward a “me-centric” society. This “multi-culture” requires no Duty, has no concept of Honor and is at best indifferent to its Country. In my youth (as best I can remember it!), the idea of a Trump or a Biden as our President would have been unthinkable. In our media we had men and women who had actually lived on the frontlines, seen soldiers die, who knew what Duty, Honor, Country actually meant. We had leaders who had served, and whose leadership had been literally honed under fire. These honorable men and women stood above party to do the right things for their country.

Those who haven’t served have no conception of service to something greater than themselves. Those who have never seen the great good that our country has striven for here and abroad cannot truly appreciate our country until they contrast it against foreign societies (Brittany Griner’s epiphany is a good case in point). We cannot “get our Country back” until we – all of us – rediscover the importance of that cause that so many have died for.

One might think that these are idealistic concepts, of no practical importance. But they are, even – perhaps especially – at the community level. We see rising crime, a widening partisan divide – a chasm!, leaders who are pushed forward by their “followers,” citizens lacking trust in their governments because they sense that their governments don’t trust them, and decreasing life expectancies especially among those who have lost all hope. 

And yet … And yet, even in the kaleidoscope of our current dysfunction, I see glimmers of hope. I see parents starting to speak up for their kids’ education and taking back responsibility for their upbringing. I see business owners starting to pressure their city councils to take back their downtowns from the thugs and the druggies. I see people voting with their pocketbooks against businesses that seem to have forgotten who their customers are. 

Yes, these growing pains can be messy; yes, they sometimes are downright ugly. But ultimately, my hope is that this reawakening of responsibility will lead to greater civic engagement. That we will all eventually realize the importance of community, of serving something greater than ourselves. And in doing that, we will have rediscovered Duty, Honor Country. And if we can, we will pay the greatest possible tribute to those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.”

Embracing Complexity

… actually a complex, adaptive system (CAS) which is constantly evolving, never in equilibrium.

Wiliam White


William White has been called the “Central Banker for Central Bankers.” I first became aware of him when I read the transcript of a speech he gave in Philadelphia. His understanding of practical macroeconomics is probably second to none.

Many of his writings in the last few years have been focused on the global economy as a complex adaptive system (CAS). However, his insights apply just as well to communities as economies. As some of you know, I’m hip deep in a book-writing project on systems thinking for community professionals. One of its themes is that communities are CASs, and have to be understood as such. What distinguishes “complex” from the merely (!) complicated is that the system’s behavior can’t be predicted from that of its parts. CASs web of interdependencies and their open-ness mean that their behavior can be spectacularly non-linear. CASs – as their name implies – also have the ability to adapt. They can change their structure and thus their behavior in response to stress.

In the following, I’ve provided excerpts from White’s “Simple Lessons for Macro Policymakers from Embracing Complexity,” and suggested what they mean for community leaders.

Policymakers’ multiple objectives make trade-offs inevitable. Ultimately, the job of a community leader is to provide their community’s residents with the quality of life they want. Without infinite resources community leaders must make choices – balancing priorities.


Policymakers can affect structure, and structure matters. As I’ve posted previously, “Form Follows Function.” But the converse is true, as well. Changing “form” – how the community is wired – leads to changes in what the community can do. When some new problem arises, one of the knee-jerk reactions of community leaders is to add a new organization to deal specifically with the problem. Unfortunately, that makes the community as a CAS more complex, and even less predictable. Whether recognized or not, this creates new interdependencies and a high likelihood of unintended consequences. This is what I see when I look at a city like New Orleans where it seems that no one is responsible anything but everyone has veto power over everything.


Policymakers should minimax not maximize. When we want to introduce new policies (e.g., “Defund the Police”) we need to think in terms of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. We can’t predict how a system may adapt to a change, but we can foresee negative ways it may do so. Community leaders need to find ways to protect against them.


Policymakers should act more symmetrically. Simply put, avoid both the high highs and the low lows. Build up rainy day funds in good times to tide the community over in bad times.


Policymakers should expect the unexpected. Stress can come from the darndest places. And its impacts can resonate throughout the community’s web of interdependencies.


Policymakers should focus on systemic risks more than triggers. Quite simply, “follow the trend lines not the headlines.” Rather than trying to guard the community against every possible stressor, focus on inoculating the community against changes in its environment, loss of community capital, changes in demand for its common functions, new constraints imposed by state or federal governments, and, of course, against entropy – the ravages of time.


Policymakers should be guided by multiple indicators. Communities adapt by a “Learn-Plan-Do” process. An important part of learning is gathering information about potential stresses. Since there are many sources of stress, community leaders need several ways to look for them.


Policymakers can’t forecast. Community leaders are as unlikely to accurately predict the future as economists. What they can do, however, is to use trends to develop scenarios of what the future might be, and then shape their communities to be Future Fit.


Policymakers should be prepared for breakdowns. Crises are built into the DNA of a CAS and a community. Communities in which leaders work through various scenarios to minimize pain and eliminate suffering are the ones which are truly resilient. It’s not so much that they develop specific plans to deal with each scenario but that they build the collective experience of working together for the community. This is cultural capital of the highest order!


No policymaker is an island. In the modern world, every community is connected to others. Every community is embedded in a state or province, and that in a nation. Every community is made up of neighborhoods and other community systems, many of which are also complex. Ultimately, each of these is a group of people bound together for a common purpose. Thus, when community leaders take action in their community – hopefully to improve it! – the impacts may be felt in their residents’ homes, in neighboring communities, and up to the halls of government. Thus, evaluation should be part of action, especially looking for unintended consequences.


A community’s resilience resides in its ability to adapt – both to the stresses inherent in its connections to the rest of the world and to the Wild Things it faces – those extreme events that can permanently alter a community’s quality of life. White’s “Lessons” make the point that communities as CASs may be unpredictable, but that policymakers – community leaders – can devise means to see where the community is going, and to influence the outcome. Ultimately White’s most important lesson is for community leaders to embrace the complexity of their communities. His “Lessons” provide community leaders with a practical playbook they can use to build their communities’ adaptive capacity and to make their communities more resilient.

Trend lines

Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.

Bill Clinton

Advice as applicable to communities as to Presidents. Following the headlines tells us of disasters that have happened; following a trend – a trajectory – can alert us to disasters – and opportunities – to come.

Almost every community has some sort of plan for its future. Too often, those plans are predicated on a hoped-for future, and formulated without following the trend lines. It is far better to start with “What will our world look like in X or Y years?” Far better to acknowledge the trends, to consider a variety of scenarios reflecting their interplay, and then to aim for a future that mitigates the downside and maximizes the chances to thrive.

Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote a piece about our current decade – the Roaring Twenties. I highlighted trends that I thought would profoundly impact the evolution of communities this decade (and a bit beyond).
• The continuing culture clash;
• The dwindling influence of the Baby Boomers;
• Low interest rates punishing savers (esp. the elderly) and exacerbating the rich-poor divide;
• Business consolidation;
• Youth unemployment; and
• The accelerating pace of change itself.

The pandemic was a disaster most of us lived through. It was a shock wave that reinforced almost all of the trends I cited. The culture clash between individualists and collectivists has gotten worse. Baby Boomers have left the workforce in increasing numbers. While interest rates have risen, they are still less than the rate of inflation – the value of savings continues to fall and it is still more difficult for the poor to accumulate wealth. Youth unemployment has not been solved (and, as I discuss below, there are other trends affecting our kids). And the pace of change continues its dizzying acceleration.

However, the pandemic shock wave – the compound of the pandemic itself and our responses to it – has also brought to the fore other trends that will shape our communities’ futures. An especially concerning trend is the increasing social isolation across society. According to a recent Pew Foundation study, on average the time we spend with friends dropped by about half a day compared with 2012, as did the time we spend with acquaintances. On average we spend the equivalent of a day more a week alone. Who will we turn to in times of crisis?

There have been several articles pointing out how few of us have sufficient savings to meet a crisis. It is just as true for social as financial capital – other people are crucial resources in times of trouble. Fewer resources imply slower [or no] recovery. And less resilient people mean less resilient communities relying on resources they may not have.

And whether alone or even when out with friends and family, too many of us have our noses buried in our phones. We tune into the echo chambers fostered by social media, telling us that the Reds [or the Blues, depending on the hue of our personal echo chambers] are evil degenerates beneath contempt. This reinforces a lack of trust in our institutions and ourselves.

Sadly, too many of our community leaders seem bewildered by parents who want to have a say in what’s being taught their kids. Bewildered by parents who believe that parents must have a say in life-altering “transitions” of their kids. Bewildered by a public who believe that denying opportunities to Asians is really racism. Bewildered by a public who bemoan the growth of a “culture” that seems to have turned its back on accountability. Bewildered by a public that believes crimes should be punished, and that the police are all that stands between them and the barbarism of the mean streets.

Many of our youth are the unfortunate victims of these trends. Over the last ten years, emergency room visits for acts of self-harm by young women have gone up almost a factor of five; the rate for young men has almost doubled. Kids with “Progressive” parents – esp. young women – have fared even worse. Our kids are living in our houses longer and marrying later than in previous decades. There really aren’t any jobs in our inner cities for kids who can’t read or write.

And we know that our poor response to the pandemic only made things worse. Too many kids in public schools not only lost learning time, but some, I fear, will have to learn how to learn again. We know that the masking of young kids slowed the development of their social skills. While we have poured money into our inner city schools, we also find that in Chicago, for example, not one student – not one – in 55 schools (about 10% of the total) can read or do arithmetic at grade level. In Baltimore, Philadelphia and DC less than one in four students can read or do math at grade level. And way too many are functionally illiterate.

And it’s not only the mega-cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia or DC. In Schenectady, NY, only 4% of black students passed the state’s math test this year. Overwhelmingly this hits boys – esp. African-American boys – the hardest. Much more than girls, they fall by the wayside on their way through school. As a result, young men make up only 40% of incoming college classes (with disproportionately fewer blacks), and even fewer make it through to a degree. Too many of our kids are the real losers of the political games being played around our schools. Our often dysfunctional education system’s recovery from this loss of learning will be a true measure of its resilience. I fear that communities will be dealing with the aftershocks of this for decades.

The restructuring of the global economy is another trend accelerated by the pandemic. Companies are edging away form indiscriminate off-shoring; they’re looking to locate facilities in more stable environments and to shorten supply chains. There is a much greater emphasis on resilience over efficiency. More future-fit communities will find ways take advantage of this and seize the opportunities inherent in this restructuring.

The pandemic also led to a wave of early retirements which revealed another facet of this restructuring. Prior to the pandemic, there were five people unemployed for every job opening. Last year, there were two job openings for every person unemployed. This opens the door to greater automation and to the use of AI techniques to augment the workforce.

For most of my life, the economy could be characterized as goods looking for buyers, i.e., excess supply. We’re now in a position of buyers looking for goods, i.e., excess demand. This drives inflation. We also have excessive spending and a political tug of war that is likely to lead to recession and significant economic volatility. Really hard on those with fixed incomes!

Finally, we are at the leading edge of an energy crisis in many parts of our country, caused by our ill-considered rush to renewables and unreasoneing refusal to use fossil fuels. This crisis has already hit Europe in the form of “energy poverty,” where many can’t afford the electricity we take for granted. Or, some of us take for granted. As is true for so many trends, California is at the “forefront,” with brownouts and rolling blackouts periodically occurring.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against renewables. But our governments’ approach to integrating them into our power systems is something like

  1. Mandate a date when all our electricity comes from renewables (ignoring the coupling of these mandates to economics, power system reliability, …);
  2. Shut down other sources of electric power – nuclear, and fossil fuels;
  3. Further mandate that we won’t build any more cars fueled by petroleum, thus increasing our demand for electricity (ignoring the need to develop a charging infrastructure); and then,
  4. Expect three miracles to occur:
    (1) We will somehow find the materials necessary for all of the electric vehicles and wind turbines and photovoltaic systems;
    (2) We will somehow find the engineers and scientists to make this transition work; and
    (3) Our power engineers will find ways to reliably provide electricity from all of these inherently intermittent energy sources.

Good intentions are not a plan. If we are going to shift to renewables we need to lay out a realistic path toward that aim. One that recognizes that we need stable baseload power. If that means batteries to store power from solar and wind, then we shouldn’t shut down our nuclear plants nor our fossil plants until affordable storage systems are available (as California has done). We must also recognize that we likely will need to install something like 20,000% more battery storage than we currently have. Just in California!

Elon Musk installed a single 100MW/128MWh battery for $100,000,000. The city of San Francisco would require seven of those to provide power for a week. Where would that money come from?

In developing that path, we also need to consider the destination. Renewables require large amounts of metals. The world’s known reserves of copper are only 20% of what’s needed to make renewables work. The known reserves of lithium and nickel (e.g., for batteries) are only 10% of what’s needed. The known reserves of cobalt and vanadium are only about 3.5% of what’s needed. Where are the minerals and the mines for all of these metals? Is it even realistic to think we can completely “go electric?”

Future-fit communities will carefully plan this transition, while keeping a sharp eye on the evolution of technology. Right now, the capital cost of battery storage for New York City is 200X greater than the cost of a comparable diesel system. I fully expect that to change, but no one can predict when. It is foolish to expect that the relative cost will decline enough to satisfy some politically-motivated mandate.

Sadly, many communities will be swamped by these trends, but future-fit communities will take purposeful action to transcend their tyranny. They will carefully set reachable goals, and develop practical plans to reach them. They will maintain keen situational awareness, so that they can alter those plans as the future unfolds. They will follow the trend lines, not the headlines, to a better Future.

+++++++++++

I blundered across this essay over the weekend. It effectively identifies an important destination; but purposeful action is needed to get there.
https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/to-save-america-restore-our-frontier

Form Follows Function, Except …

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law.

Louis Sullivan

We’ve all heard the old rubric, “Form follows function,” apparently first coined by Sullivan discussing the design of large buildings.  But it is just as true of our bureaucracies.  As I’ve ranted discussed in a previous post (see Bureaucracy and Community Resilience), “bureaucracies exist to carry out routine functions efficiently and in a consistent manner.”

What I didn’t say (and probably should have!) is that bureaucracies usually are tuned to be efficient under normal conditions.  Thus, the bureaucracy’s structure – its form – reflects business as usual.  The bureaucracy works because its structure is consistent with the tasks it must perform.

Sullivan goes on to say, “Where function does not change, form does not change.”  But what happens when a bureaucracy is faced with a significant change in its working environment – during a crisis, for example – that forces changes in how it functions?

The short answer, of course, is that it tries to handle the unusual in its usual manner.  Its organizational structure – the bureaucracy’s form, hopefully well-tuned to normal conditions – now governs its functioning.  If the organization’s form does not change, then its ability to function efficiently and consistently may well suffer.  On the other hand, if the bureaucracy adapts quickly to the new set of conditions, it may find an opportunity in change to reach a higher level of performance.

Let me look at some very disparate examples to illustrate this.  Hurricane Katrina had a major impact on the forest enterprise in the impacted regions (esp. in lower Mississippi).  In the most affected areas, 40% of the forests were damaged.  According to the Forest Service, the downed or damaged timber could have produced 800,000 single family homes and 25 million tons of paper products.  The EPA and Mississippi’s Department of Environmental Quality had no plans for dealing with this massive amount of solid debris.  It took several months before the owners of downed timber could gain permits for wet storage areas to preserve their timber, primarily because the regulators involved did not change their bureaucratic structures (and thus not their processes) to deal with this unusual situation.  While the permit process was expedited, this was accomplished by simply adding more people, not through restructuring to better handle the problem.  As a result, over half of the timber was lost with major repercussions on the entire forest products enterprise.  In addition, the downed timber led to a situation in which there was literally a new forest fire in Mississippi every day during the spring, summer and fall of the following year.  In short, regulatory functions were dictated by organizational structures tuned to “normal” circumstances; i.e., form dictated function, and resulted in poor performance.  Unfortunately, the regulators have not really learned anything from this – in the face of another Katrina, it would still take months before storage sites for downed timber would obtain permits.

Waffle House provides a very different example.  It plans for surprises, and is organized so that it can function under almost any set of circumstances.  It clearly has learned from past experience and has adapted itself so that restaurants impacted by disasters can open with restricted menus.  If workers can’t get to a Waffle House location (as happened to my community in January, 2014, because of an ice storm), workers can be temporarily brought in from other locations to minimize service interruptions.

WalMart provides an excellent example of finding opportunity in change.  In the ‘90’s, virtually every corporation in America spent huge amounts on information technology.  For most companies, the gains in productivity (i.e., the return on investment) were modest.  However, WalMart used this technological change to reorganize its supply chains so that it quickly gained a tremendous competitive advantage.  In other words, it altered its form to improve functioning.

Form follows function, except when changing circumstances demand changes in how an organization functions.  In the earlier blog on bureaucracies, I pointed out the factors that determine how rapidly an organization can change:  its history, its age, its ability to collaborate, its ability to innovate, and, most importantly, its leadership.  The resilience of an organization, or a community, is manifested in how rapidly it adapts – how quickly it changes its form – so that it can function effectively in a new environment.

Bureaucracy and Community Resilience

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of vision.

Jim Collins

Bureaucracies are inherently anti-democratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.

Alan Keyes

I’ve had way too much experience with bureaucracies in my almost fifty years working with the federal government.  In the next couple of blogs, I’ll be looking at bureaucracy through the lens of community resilience.

First, a word of disclaimer.  My view of bureaucracy is well summarized in some of Moore’s laws of bureaucracy:

  • Bureaucracies have no heart.
  • Bureaucracies are perverse.
  • Bureaucracies will thrash about, causing much cost, pain and destruction.

If I (and so many others) feel this way, why do we still have bureaucracies?  There are two reasons for this that more or less mirror the quotes above.

  1. Most importantly, bureaucracies exist to carry out routine functions efficiently and in a consistent manner – bureaucracies are the wheels that keep organizations (governments, businesses…) running more or less smoothly.  But this also implies a more fundamental role for bureaucracies.  Their rules, regulations, and procedures encapsulate the organization’s corporate memory of what works, at least within a bureaucracy’s domain.  However, the more rigid this procedural structure, the more resistant the bureaucracy is to change.
  2. Bureaucracies tend to be self-perpetuating.  As formulated in Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:  In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.  In other words, in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Larger organizations – and communities – tend to be more bureaucratic because they tend to do more things on a routine basis. All too often, however, their bureaucracies are rigid and resistant to change. But resilience is all about managing and adapting to change.  Achieving resilience thus means tearing down the walls between balkanized bureaucracies that are busily making their silos into fortresses.  This leads to a paradox:  if a community is working to become more resilient, it will try to take action through its tried and proven bureaucratic channels, the ones least prone to change.  Further, since adapting to major disruptions (e.g., pandemics, recessions) generally does not neatly fit into a single bureaucracy’s purview, it forces bureaucracies to interact with one another in non-routine ways.  If the community’s bureaucracies are flexible, the community is likely to be more resilient; if not, any efforts to enhance the community’s resilience become much more difficult. 

Of course, these are general thoughts.  However, they lead to some specific things to consider in determining whether a community’s bureaucracies will help or hinder efforts to become more resilient.

  • History.  If a bureaucracy is a sort of corporate memory container, then look at the challenges the community, esp. the bureaucracy, has faced.  Were they varied?  Were some of them relatively recent?  Were they successfully met?  “No” answers may indicate that the bureaucracy is too rigid.
  • The age of the bureaucracy.  Just like people, a bureaucracy can get “hardening of the arteries” with age.  It can accrete documentation requirements, for example, that continue on long after the need for a document has disappeared.  In a crisis, these will sow frustration in both the public and the bureaucracy and slow down recovery.
  • Collaboration.  Has the bureaucracy worked with others outside their domain to solve crosscutting problems?  City governments such as San Diego and Baltimore that are managed in a fashion that forces bureaucracies to work together toward common crosscutting goals are likely to be more resilient than ones that are managed in a more stovepiped manner.
  • Leadership.  Is the leadership of the bureaucracy open to new ideas?  Does the leadership have experience working outside the bureaucracy?  Has any of the leadership come from outside the bureaucracy?  Again, “No” answers raise red flags.
  • Innovation.  Has the bureaucracy periodically changed how it does business?  Is continuous improvement a part of its culture?
  • Number.  More bureaucracies imply more organizations that must be aligned to actually make something happen.
  • Accountability. Do community leaders hold their bureaucrats accountable for how they have served the people?

Bureaucracy can be a boon or a bane to community resilience. It’s up to the community – through its leaders – to determine which it is to be.

Community culture and community resilience

Culture outperforms strategy every time; culture with strategy is unbeatable.

Quint Studer

A community’s culture is one of the most overlooked – and misunderstood – contributors to its future fitness. A community’s culture is primarily its history – not the one in books but the one embedded in its mind, its heart and its soul. A community’s culture shapes its shared values, and how its residents expect each other to behave. It thus conditions how a community approaches its problems, and whether the community can even recognize its problems.

A community’s culture is related to but different from its social capital. A community’s social capital resides in its connections – how the community is wired, and how effectively those wires enable the community to share information. A community’s culture conditions which connections are made, how messages are framed and even which information is shared. Thus, a community’s culture is a sort of skeleton supporting its social connection and directing where they form.

One of the ways that a community’s culture is manifested is in whether or not the community has a “can-do” attitude. Some time ago, I read an interview of the CEO of Fluor, focusing on his move of the giant construction company from California to Texas.

[When the 2006 move became known] “California made no attempt to keep us… things started to happen quickly [in Texas], without us initiating them. The Irving Chamber of Commerce did orientation sessions for employees and spouses, even helping with new-house searches. Or ‘little things:’ Irving on its own renamed a street Fluor Drive, which in California or the Northeast would be laughable.”

This sort of attitude implies a community self-confidence that results in decisive action.

A community’s culture also reveals itself in how – whether – it recognizes its problems. When working with the Navajos, one of the striking features of their culture is the implicit prohibition against talking about bad things that might happen. This was based on the fear that talking about them would lead to them occurring. This sort of “whistling in the dark” makes it very difficult to prepare for or mitigate against disaster.

So how do I know whether my community has a culture that makes it future fit, that makes it resilient? There are several signposts.

First and foremost, the trajectory of the community. If the community’s quality of life is improving, that’s a sign of a proactive culture, indicating a self-confident community. If the community’s quality of life is deteriorating, the community is going to become less confident and less able to tackle its problems. Its future fitness is questionable.

Next, the unity of purpose within the community. As Paolo Freire has said: One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Thus, if a community’s leaders are pushing programs that negatively impact a large swath of the community – that, in fact, are counter to their cultural values – the community has a culture that is in conflict with itself. It cannot confidently attack its problems. In fact, it may not even address them until they balloon into a crisis.

Then consider how tolerant the community’s culture is. As Joel Salatin says: The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers. If one part of a community refuses to let other – different – voices be heard, then the community effectively is limiting its approach to solving its problems to only those “approved” by the intolerant. Effectively, it’s like a general stubbornly concentrating on taking the hills in front of him while refusing to look at the mountains behind. Whether it’s banning books or refusing to listen to parents’ concerns, this kind of community culture will impair a community’s fitness to face the future.

Finally – and closely allied to its tolerance – look at the community’s open-ness, its willingness to accept new people and new ideas. The quote from Fluor’s CEO about Irving, TX, indicates a culture that knows how to adapt to new people and to accept new ideas. In solving their problems, “open” communities will be open to innovations, whatever their source. “Open” communities will also be the most likely to see and seize opportunities brought on by changing circumstances.

Most importantly, “open” communities are the ones most likely to have some sort of strategic vision for their community. They know what they want to become. They may even have mapped out a plan for their future. These communities – their actions compounded from culture and strategy – will be the ones best able to cope with change and to seize the opportunities inherent in change. They will be the most future fit, the most resilient.