Tag: future

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.

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Triumph of the Trads

The vision recurs; the eastern sun has a second rise; history repeats her tale unconsciously, and goes off into a mystic rhyme; ages are prototypes of other ages, and the winding course of time brings us round to the same spot again.

— A N Mouravieff

In this series, I am presenting scenarios that represent possible Futures. Each Future is not intended to be an end state. Instead, each is a possible way station in our country’s evolution about a decade from now. My goal is not to write a history of each Future but rather to point to plausible paths that could lead us to that Future – looking for its “mystic rhymes” in our history. Unfortunately, politics will impinge on each scenario, but I will try to be as non-partisan as possible.

I call this first way station the “Triumph of the Trads,” signaling a resurgence of more traditional American values: family, community, civility and hope. The voice of “woke-ness” is muted, not silenced. As in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s there is dissent, but it is now more couched in aspirational terms, echoing Dr King: calling on our better angels to surpass what we have been, calling for evolution not revolution.

Oddly enough, this scenario starts with the election of Trump to the Presidency (His braggadocio and bluster are perhaps a better reflection of our current state than we’d like to admit.). His 2024 Presidential campaign captures an unparalleled number of minority and blue collar voters, overcoming Biden’s advantage among college-educated voters. Trump immediately begins a concerted effort to trim our bloated bureaucracies. He proceeds with his now-customary chaotic fits and starts, punctuated by the media’s predictions of dire consequences. But there is a definite shift toward a leaner, more competent, federal government.

In 2026, we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. Planning has gone on for over a decade for celebrations across the country. There is a veritable orgy of patriotic fervor, and a renewed dedication on the part of many to the principles enunciated so well in the Declaration of Independence. Although there are protests, the anniversary celebrations are wildly successful. This is in part due to a surge in religious feeling and churchgoer attendance. Overall, a feeling of something like hope starts to bloom across most of the country.

However, barely after the confetti has been swept up, ill health forces Trump to hand the reins to his Veep. His selection as Vice-President is very significant in this Future. Trump has chosen a younger person of color with an inspiring family story, emphasizing personal effort and grit. The now-President is almost an embodiment of the American Dream.

Seldom have the Man and the Moment been so well-met. The new President builds on the bursts of patriotism to begin to rebuild bipartisanship in Congress. Both parties follow his lead in consciously turning down the rhetorical heat. This stands him in good stead in his second term when he gets Congress to pass dramatic reforms to both Medicare and Social Security, assuring their solvency.

During his first term, non-college-educated workers regain the upward income trajectory they enjoyed prior to the pandemic. Inflation is tamed. His second election campaign signals the completion of the realignment of the political parties. The working class coalition that was so important in getting Democrats elected in the 20th Century is no longer a voting bloc the Dems can rely on. In fact, joining with small business owners, they tend to vote cultural issues rather their pocket books, reject “woke-ism,” and vote Republican especially in the 2028 and 2032 elections. The Democratic party is now led by Big Business (esp. Big Tech), academia, the cultural elites and those living in big cities (but whose populations continue to decrease).

The President also uses the Bully Pulpit as well as the Department of Education to advance policies aimed at encouraging diversity of viewpoints. The University of Chicago’s principles serve as the basis. Incidents of viewpoint discrimination are much less frequent, though there are pockets of resistance.

When the President leaves office on January 20, 2037, his successor rightly characterizes him as “everyone’s friend, but nobody’s fool.” Economically, the country is the strongest it’s been in the last quarter century. This is helped by demographics: as the Baby Boomers pass, less of our budget has to go toward their entitlements and pensions. In foreign affairs, the President has steered a careful course. His State Department has extended the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia. China has continued to claim Taiwan, but his Cabinet has greatly decreased the nation’s dependence on China for precious metals and electronics. The standoff in Ukraine has been resolved.

Perhaps his greatest legacy, however, is a turn toward civility in the country. He is not a very flamboyant person, but after the Sturm und Drang of Trump-Biden people find that they kind of like “boring.” The positive economy and the downturn in the volume of political rhetoric also have important implications for communities.

In this scenario, communities find what is probably their most positive Future. The financial stress due to pensions is largely relieved. The economic gains of their members translate into increased business activity and tax revenues. The trimmed federal government empowers them to do more for themselves. The rebirth of civility in civic affairs means that they can actually accomplish more – compromise is easier when everyone can get something they want. For many communities this leads to an enhanced “Culture of Accomplishment” – a confidence that the people living there can make good things happen. As a result, the quality of life in a majority of communities is improved, though some still stumble (There’s no cure for bad governance!).

In short, this scenario is actually the “High Resilience” scenario – more resilient families and individuals living in more resilient communities. In a sense, this is sort of an outlier – probably a low probability of occurrence from where we are now. Many things need to break right for it to happen. But that’s one of the benefits of working through scenarios – we can take conscious action to go after those we deem more positive, and try to mitigate the more negative.

In my next post, I’m going to interrupt this series to look at some interesting data relating to corruption. Following that, I’ll resume this series with “The Empire Strikes Back.”

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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.

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The Price of Time and Our Communities’ Futures

Only entropy comes easy.

Anton Chekhov

I have been reading excerpts from Edward Chancellor’s The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest for the last few weeks. I suggest you get a copy – I think it will become one of those books that shape people’s thoughts and color public dialogue. It illuminates the path our country took to get into its current economic mess. It is an in-depth study of what I wrote about in “Masked Villains.”

Chancellor has an interesting metaphor that I want to borrow. Suppose there are two cities, separated by a raging river. One city is the Present and one is our desired Future. There is a bridge that crosses the river – the only way we can get to that Future.

But we live in the Present, and have to meet the Present’s daily needs: food, clothing, shelter, education for our kids, medical care … And so, it is all too easy to forget about the bridge to our Future. But there is a price to pay for our forgetfulness, for our neglect – entropy. Entropy is the price of that wasted time.

Entropy is perhaps the most difficult physical property to understand. Temperature, mass, distance, velocity, volume, and even time are all concepts that we almost intuitively understand. And yet entropy is in some ways the most important, because of its ties to our own mortality.

Entropy is Nature’s drive toward randomness, seen in the buildup of waste products and the dissipation of energy and order. It is the loss of information in messages, the fading of memories, and the decaying of our bodies and bridges. Entropy embodies uncertainty, risk, and friction.

It takes effort – energy – to combat entropy. Our bodies’ systems geared toward repairing the day to day wear and tear on our bodies first and foremost rely on our internal energy generation systems. As we age, those systems become less and less efficient until our bodies no longer are able to withstand entropy’s inexorable pull. Thus, in a very real sense, entropy kills.

At the community level, entropy means concrete will inevitably crack, stone will erode, and iron will rust. We often call these the ravages of Time, but just as it takes effort to maintain our bodies, maintaining our physical infrastructure also requires effort – energy. In fact, all of our infrastructures – whether physical, social or economic – require effort if they are to be remain viable parts of our communities.

If we neglect them, they will inevitably crumble: the concrete pillars holding up a condo will fail; our children will forget how to interact with others on a human level; our businesses will waste their capital on meaningless gestures instead of investing in themselves. One need only look at our frayed social networks and our confused and conflicted culture to recognize entropy’s fingerprints.

Because of entropy, our communities will always face chronic slow-onset crises that eventually will require immediate attention and action. It is all too easy to become so wrapped up in the Present’s crises that we forget to maintain the bridge to our Future. The Chekhov quote is a stark reminder of how easy it is to forget, and of how hard it is to remember to invest in our bridges toward our Futures. If we don’t invest and maintain those bridges, we risk their collapse. And if they collapse, we may fall into the river’s swift current, perhaps never to find our desired Future.

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A side note. The sharp-eyed may note that Chancellor in effect is calling interest (e.g., on loans), not entropy, the Price of Time. In effect, interest is a measure of the entropy of financial systems. When the interest rate is decided by the financial market without government interference, it is a reasonably accurate measure of the financial system’s entropy. In times of low monetary volatility, market interest rates tend to be low, indicating the market’s conclusion that the loss in value of the loan’s principal over the term of the loan is relatively low. As market volatility and perceived risk (uncertainty) increase, the interest charged increases. So, too, with increasing length of the loan – longer time, larger uncertainty.

Unfortunately, when central bankers do silly things like giving us negative interest rates (where we still are now in almost all of the developed world), then the measure becomes highly inaccurate.

Future-Focused Education

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,
Don’t stop it’ll soon be here…
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.

Christine McVie

Over the summer I wrote about the importance of having an ecosystem that would enable the poor and disadvantaged to succeed – to rise out of poverty. I used a quote from Bobby Unser to identify the key attributes of that ecosystem – preparation and opportunity – and went into some detail about what opportunity is, and isn’t. But opportunity by itself isn’t enough – our enabling ecosystem must help the poor and disadvantaged recognize opportunities and provide them with the tools to seize them.

And that’s where education comes in. A strong educational system is a hallmark of a resilient community. In these communities everyone has a good chance to succeed. Even the poor and disadvantaged are prepared to seize the opportunities that are there for them. While there are already too many voices screaming out what an education should be, let me softly come at it from a slightly different direction.

Obviously, I’m not an educational expert (I’m sure some of you sometimes wonder if I’m even educated, or an expert in anything). But what I think we all need to focus on is education for what. That’s why the song lyrics from Fleetwood Mac – the what is to be ready for whatever tomorrow brings. I want our kids – all of them – to be ready to be able to survive and thrive in the world to come. And I want them – all of them – focused on their futures, and not dwelling on their parents’ past. After all, yesterday’s gone…

A farmer in 1800 would be doing things much the same as his forefathers in the 16 and 1700’s. By 1900, he would be very uncomfortable with the mechanization of farming, but would still recognize many of the basics he knew. That same farmer really would be lost in the world of precision farming based on information technology we have today. Further, he would not be able to cope with the accelerating pace of change in our world; that didn’t happen in his.

So, to me, a future-focused education has to provide the following:

An accurate understanding of the path to the present and possible futures. As I’ve often said before, trajectory doesn’t have to be destiny, but it takes action to set a different course. To be future-focused means knowing how we got where we are, where the world is heading and what its drivers are. This means our education system has to provide an accurate picture of what we know about our past and our present and where the world may be going. That picture can’t be black and white; whether we like it or not, we’re awash in a world of grey. And the picture shouldn’t be just shades of red or blue.

To be more concrete, let me use climate change as an example. The global climate is changing; it is getting warmer on average, and has been (by fits and starts) since the 1700s. Sea levels are rising on average. But the sea level at some locations is actually falling; some locations are actually seeing a long-term cooling trend. Students need to understand what is happening to their local climate. Coastal development coupled with poor land use decisions has resulted in greater devastation due to storms, i.e., the number and intensity of the storms we’re having has stayed about the same but the damage is greater. Students need to be taught the facts not just about climate but about the drivers that have put so many people and so much property in harm’s way.

The ability to learn. The amount of new knowledge is growing exponentially; there is no sign that this is abating. No one can expect to grasp all of it. But being future-focused requires that we are able to restock our mental shelves with new information and cast aside what’s no longer useful. Many have talked about the skills and sources that are necessary for continued learning; often overlooked is the personal element that has to underlie their use. Our education has to help us to find our place in the global kaleidoscope. If we know that and understand the world around us and how it might change we can begin to apply the general lessons of how to learn to gain the knowledge we will need for future success.

Opportunities to form networks. We humans are social animals. For most of us, the networks we form are important components of our success. Throughout my life I’ve been fortunate to have lots of chances to network. As a kid I played football and baseball and soccer in school; I acted in plays; I worked on the high school yearbook. Throughout my life, the networks I’ve formed have provided social and emotional support when I needed it, and helped me to what’s been a great career (or three). Very importantly, my networks have been great indicators of future trends for me.

Our educational system needs to help students form their own networks. These are formed naturally through participation in sports teams, special interest clubs (e.g., chess, 4H, computers, gardening), music or drama groups, or junior ROTC. Not all kids will form lifelong networks (you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink) but we need to make sure they have the chance.

Confidence. Confidence is probably the most overlooked component of success (this applies to communities as well). If you have the confidence of accomplishment you’re more likely to take steps to better yourself. No matter how benevolent our governments, the poor ultimately have to take the steps to lift themselves out of poverty. That means they need to have accomplished something or have developed some special skills (forming networks is one of those skills) to give them the confidence to act to better themselves. Participation in network-forming activities can provide this confidence, but there are other ways – sports, academics, home ec (for women and men), shop (ditto) – where accomplishment can lead to confidence.

In a previous post I noted that kids need “the experience of working with their hands. We have too many who took on too much debt going for a college education that hasn’t prepared them for a career. We need people in the crafts and trades – especially when disaster strikes. Roofers, plumbers, electricians even at the bottom of their professional ladders make much more than the poverty level, giving them the chance to accumulate some wealth.” Becoming confident is arguably more important than simply acquiring academic skills; we’ve all seen examples of kids with high grades who had virtually no life skills or street smarts.

Communication skills. Whether you’re a plumber or a CEO, you have to acquire information if you’re to succeed, especially as the world changes around you. That means you have to be able to read. In a networked world, you have to rely on others sometimes; that means learning to write and to speak coherently. Public speaking is probably the most basic of these skills; it needs to have greater emphasis in education. And our globalized world increases the value of being able to speak a foreign language.

Financial literacy. In an earlier post, I mentioned the importance of being able to handle money. All children need to become financially literate. Ignorance leads to bad decisions in handling money which leads to a lack of reserves when times get bad. This is especially important for the poor; they have less to manage and the greatest need to manage their money wisely.

Technological literacy. Information technology has been the greatest accelerant of change the world has ever seen. However, we are on the cusp of even greater change brought on by the intersection of information technology, psychology and the health sciences. The nature of work will change; life spans will potentially become much longer; how we learn will change. In other words, technology will continue to be a major change agent shaping our futures. Technological literacy thus has to be a key component of a future-focused education.

Ultimately, community resilience is predicated on people and institutions ready to take on the future. That’s why education is more important now than at any time in the past. But education cannot simply be a presentation of a panoply of facts; it has to be focused on preparing everyone – especially the poor and disadvantaged – for the future. Unless the young acquire the knowledge and skills I’ve listed, they will be ill-equipped to deal with future change. And thus our communities will be less resilient. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.