Category: Commentary

We recently posted a few more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

–Three Thoughts on the 2024 U.S. Election

–Social Media – Who’s Responsible?

–Quality Government and Quality Data

–Covenants as a Modern Model for Peace

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 9 playlists, which you can find here.

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An American federal judge in Texas has just ruled that racist thinking cannot supersede professional best practices where the safety of airline passengers is at stake.

As I wrote several years ago when the virtue-signaling of the woke, diversity, equity and inclusion movement spread like a viral pathogen across American bureaucracies – public and private – invidious racism has no place in a moral capitalism.

We can each be as proud as we want to be of our genetic heritage and the cultures which have nourished our families over generations, but moral standards demand something more than application of genetic codes for appearance and reproductive capacities or cultural traditions when we pass judgment on others.

The issue before the judge was who Boeing may select as a monitor of its safety practices.  The case involved remediation of Boeing’s business model after the crashes of two 737 MAX aircraft.

In settling its case against Boeing for negligence in causing 346 passenger deaths, the federal government insisted on an agreement that Boeing would use standards of diversity and inclusion when choosing an independent monitor of its production of aircraft.

Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the government’s use of the words “diversity” and “inclusion” did not rule out racism and so opened the door to racist criteria in evaluating candidates for supervising the quality of the safety protections used in building airplanes and built into each aircraft brought to market.

I suppose the moral norm of justice is not to use racism to screen out qualified candidates and also not to use racism inappropriately to screen in qualified candidates.  That seems to be the basis for Judge O’Connor’s decision, which is in keeping with the Supreme Court’s refusal to legitimate racism in allocating acceptances for college admissions.

You may read Judge O’Connor’s opinion here.

On the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday, I spent a few hours walking about a pre-capitalist community.  It was the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the coast south of Boston.  The plantation is a recreation of the hamlet erected by the Pilgrims in 1620 after their landing on the coast of what was to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It is a tourist attraction, with some 10 thatched roofed houses built with historical accuracy and staffed with guides dressed in 17^th century style clothing and speaking a bit awkwardly in old English accents to the delight of young children and the amusement of adults.

After walking into three or so of the houses with gardens behind on a cold day, I thought of how did the Pilgrims grow enough vegetables to get themselves through the winter of 1620/1621?  Then, I thought of how many kegs of nails and barrels of flour they had brought over in the small Mayflower sailing ship?  Enough for a winter?  A year?  Two years?

They had no smithy then and so how could they have made or repaired iron tools – saws, hoes, etc.  Could their saws cut down enough trees for boards and firewood?  What if a saw broke?

Suddenly, every aspect of their lives appeared to have been arduous.  Cooking in a dark room. Walls that could not keep out the winter cold.  Did they bring enough woven cloth from which to make new shirts, dresses, pants and warm coats?

They had no shopping mall, no stores, no markets and no factories to provide wage employment.  The only money they had, most likely, was the coin they had brought with them.

I then thought of Adam Smith and his 1776 description of early capitalism in Wealth of Nations.  The Pilgrim lifestyle and its rigors were far inferior in quality of life than the realities he was describing.

That first winter perhaps half the new arrivals died.  Of course, their settlement had no doctors, no infirmaries, no antibiotics, no tubs for soaking baths, no showers, no flush toilets, maybe not much soap for washing.

I decided that I would not want to live that life.  If I were to choose between pre-capitalism and capitalism, I would take the latter in a heartbeat.

Adam Smith was wise: specialization of function, division of labor, the factory system, application of science in the invention of machinery, the manufacture of products, commodities, inventing property rights, holding markets, the creation of wealth, all made for improvements in the human condition.

Here is a chart that summarizes, in graphic form, the human good of capitalism:

Why are we today so concerned about social justice and economic inequality?  Is it not because those who live in poverty today still have lives more likely to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?”  Is not the quality of life a moral good to be sought and appreciated?  And therefore, from an equity perspective, we show concern for the quality of every life.

This appreciation of living with plenty, with opportunities to earn and to learn, with good health, with the manifold advantages of modernity, was especially voiced by Presidents Washinton and Lincoln in their proclamations asking Americans to set aside a day in the month of November to give thanks and not take their lives for granted or as an indulgence in undeserved privilege.

Washington wrote:

“Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26^th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation – for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war – for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty, which we have since enjoyed – for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness and particularly the national One now lately instituted – for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.”

Abraham Lincoln wrote:

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.  To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God…”

“Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.  Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.  No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.  They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.  It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

The December issue of The Atlantic magazine brings all of us a timely and important protest over mismanagement of the American elite.

David Brooks’ article is titled “How the Ivy League Broke America.”

Using institutions of higher education to recruit and condition future members of national elites is foundational to modernity.

Napoleon created the Grande Ecoles in France to elevate the French to the heights of Enlightenment reason and excellence.  Hegel and Humboldt did the same in Germany.  The German model of the university came to the U.S. after our Civil War, starting with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Previously, Oxford and Cambridge had executed the same function of providing specialized social capital creation for Great Britain.

Countries around the world now very much want to send their children to the U.S. for higher education.

But what if the American system of higher education has fallen down on the job?  What if its graduates cannot and do not serve the American people well as adult professionals?

This is the question Brooks puts forward in his essay.  He insists that there has been a disgraceful failure in American higher education, failings which need to be stopped and replaced with a better system.

What Brooks writes is relevant to every country.  Higher education opens the gates of a nation’s capacity to build a moral society, moral capitalism and moral government.

You may read my shortened version of his essay here.

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal deserves our attention.

It reports on how a company – Starbucks – famous and once very profitable – can’t just float on the tides of capitalism, but must work for its money by taking care of stakeholders.

As I have asked students in my MBA classes on business ethics, “What is a company without customers?”

The students almost always show some surprise in their faces – thinking perhaps that “Of course companies have customers.  It’s a capitalist system.”

Then, I pause and answer my own questions: “Bankrupt.”

The students immediately get the point: in capitalism, you have to attract customers in order to profit.  No one directs them to spend their money in your store.

So, to prove my point, here are excerpts from the reporting of Heather Haddon:

In late summer, a customer started showing up at Los Angeles-area cafes at all hours of the day, quizzing baristas about their favorite drinks to make, or problems with how the stores operated.

That customer, Brian Niccol, is now Starbucks’s chief executive officer, and he is moving quickly to change the way customers experience the world’s largest coffee chain as it struggles to draw customers.

In less than two months in the role, Niccol has pushed to focus Starbucks’s operations, trimming menu items and paring back discounts.  Instead, Niccol is giving priority to delivering quality coffee quickly and accurately with friendly service, particularly in the mornings, when the chain needs to shine.

Niccol, an Americano drinker, said he sympathizes with customers who want drip coffee but have to wait while Starbucks’s baristas labor over elaborate, customized drinks.  “Sometimes you just want a brewed cup of coffee really quick,” Niccol said in an interview.

Starbucks’s challenges have mounted this year and deepened since Niccol assumed leadership in early September.  The company in October reported that U.S. transactions fell for a third consecutive quarter, while earnings and revenue for its most recent quarter undershot analysts’ estimates.  It scrapped its fiscal-year financial forecasts. 

Niccol has said Starbucks needs to be clear-eyed about its problems and move quickly to make customer-friendly changes—such as bringing back Sharpies for handwritten notes on cups, and possibly reinstating newspapers for those who linger in cafes.  When he announced last week that self-service condiment bars would come back to stores next year, some lapsed customers said they would return. 

Donald Trump has just been re-elected president of the United States, but with nearly half the American people voting against him.  As of this writing and somewhat surprising to me, is that Trump’s Republican Party has elected enough senators to take majority control of the Senate.

The recent campaigns reveal a deeply divided American people.  There are lessons here to be learned and multiple conflicting discourses to assess.

Seeking to expand the availability of heterodox discourse, Alpha News, a very small start-up source of news here in Minnesota, has produced a moving documentary looking at a fault line among Americans – the ethical quality of our police.

For many, the police are racist in their interactions with minorities, especially with African American men.  For others, the police are necessary to protect families and neighborhoods against violence and criminal trespasses on the vulnerable and the innocent.

In Minnesota recently, 5 police and firemen have been killed in trying to do their duty.  Alpha News believed that telling their stories and bringing forward to the public the grief of their families would provide more perspective to voters in this time of disagreement and intolerance of the views of others.

For some, this documentary – Minnesota v. We the People – brings out feelings of compassion and respect as emotional responses to individual sacrifices made that the community might be more safely livable and supportive.

For others, it may not be so welcomed and so be perceived as too one-sided in its appreciation of policing.

The producer of the documentary, Liz Collin, received our Dayton Award for 2023 for her courage and leadership in making an earlier documentary commenting unfavorably on the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin for murder in the death of George Floyd, when Floyd was in the custody of officer Chauvin and other members of the Minneapolis Force and protest riots breaking out in response to his death in police custody.

Criminality is everywhere a human failing.  Policing, rightly done, is everywhere a human social asset.  Discourse everywhere facilitates both our becoming aware of our failings and our seeking betterment in our lives.

By sharing this documentary, we hope to provide you with a discourse worthy of reflection on how we, in every country, city, town and village, should meet our need for security of self and others and for providing respect for self and others.

You may watch the documentary here.

Ten years ago, some Peruvian farmers started growing blueberries for export.  They wanted to compete with growers in Chili for “profits.”  Imported berries sold in the U.S. in the cold months when they don’t grow there command high prices.

In 2013, Peruvians earned about $17 million in sales.  In 2023, their income from exporting blueberries was $1.7 billion.  A lot of Peruvian families and workers were better off.  Today, Peru exports more than its competitors, reports The Economist:

Innovation made this happen.  Shades of Adam Smith and creating the pin factory to make more pins and sell them for lower prices so that users of pins, those who wore the clothes they made, factory workers and factory owners, all saw a rise in their well-being.

Peruvians took from inventors in the U.S. new varieties of blueberries which did not need chilly winters and which could thrive on Peru’s coast.  By 1922, the yield of the typical Peruvian blueberry field was nearly double the global average, giving Peruvian growers and their customers a cost advantage.

The provision of public goods also lifted production and private wealth creation – tax breaks and irrigation megaprojects to bring coastal desert land into cultivation.

But as often happens with free markets, competitors join the party.  “Colombia, Morocco, everyone is growing blueberries now,” said one farmer in Peru.

Perhaps the stickiest objection to capitalism is that it produces – maybe for some, even thrives – on inequality.  The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.

A recent comment in The Economist complained that “The poor among us have stopped catching up.”  The system has failed them: extreme poverty has barely fallen since 2015.  The magazine, however, does not blame capitalism for this failure of economic growth.  Rather, the magazine puts the blame on governments for shifting from markets to industrial policy and trade restrictions.  It seems constricting markets puts the brakes on wealth creation – just as Adam Smith pointed out 249 years ago.  Indices of economic freedom have been largely flat in most of Africa and South America.

In addition, other data has surfaced that points the finger away from capitalism to culture as the incubator of economic inequality.  It seems that individual behaviors contribute to individual outcomes in life.  As Smith assumed and German sociologist Max Weber made explicit, values drive behaviors and behaviors bring about outcomes.  Social and human capital accounts are the foundations for the creation of financial capital.

A simple example is the entrepreneur.  Starting a new business requires finance, but what are the conditions which permit obtaining monetary capital?  Usually, it is the intangibles – the reputation of the entrepreneur, the practicality of his or her business model, trust that consumers will buy the new product or service with ready money, availability of labor skill and quality of worker diligence, etc.

In a recent article, Professor Roland Fryer of Harvard argued that choosing your identity or living with an identity provided to you by family, community and history, determines much of what your life will be like.  “How you view your role in the world will affect your choices.”  He follows the innovative thinking of George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate, on the complexity of rational economic decision-making once identity perceptions and priorities are taken into account.  Individuals intend to gain from both material outcomes and actions that affirm their ego-identities.  “A corporate job might offer financial stability, but if it conflicts with an individual’s identity as an environmentalist or feminist, the mismatch can lead to dissatisfaction and underperformance.  Lab experiments have shown that people may opt for lower-paying jobs if it means greater congruence with their social group or might choose consumer goods that signal affiliation to a particular identity, despite higher costs.

Then, a recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. concluded that the more you work, the more you earn when the major determinant of total lifetime working hours is individual choice – values, again, driving behaviors and life outcomes.

Those who work more, earn more because they spend more time acquiring skills.

Thirdly, religion adds weight to the scales of human capital.  Pious students have higher grades, better attendance records and complete more years of college (The Economist, August 17, 2024, p. 19).  Religious communities tend to be learning communities.  They read together, engage in dialogue together and build all kinds of social skills.  I recall my more conservative Jewish friends in high school and college with all the hours they put into reading and debating the Talmud.

Within nuclear families, the more religious siblings perform better in school.

Doing better in school also happens with faithful atheists.

I have just learned from one of our fellows, Recep Senturk, dean of the College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, that he is publishing an important new book on the topic of Adamiyyah.

Adamiyyah is a humanistic approach to application of Qur’anic teachings, an approach most needed at the present time.

Here is the pre-order flyer for his book:

You may recall from my report of our meetings at the Vatican in May that Recep spoke then about Adamiyyah at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies.  The audience was most impressed with and moved by his ideas.

I hope you will make time to buy his book and read it.

A recent CBS television program in the U.S. raised eyebrows and caused controversy within its culturally elite market segment.  Ta-Nehisi Coates was interviewed on his new book, which includes his vehement resentment of Jews in Israel.  Coates is African American, famous for his 2014 article in The Atlantic that America, because of its white racism and slavery, owes African Americans lots of money as reparations.  The CBS host – Tony Dokoupil – was not sympathetic in his questions to Coates and drew attention to Coates’ prejudice.

That put CBS in an awkward position of taking sides.  As the old movement song asked: “Which side are you on Boy, which Side are you on?  Do you march with Martin Luther King or do you “Tom” for Ross Barnett?”

Was CBS selling negative feelings about Israel and Jews or was it defending the cause of Israel as a Jewish homeland?  Hard to have it both ways.

But taking a side is selling a cultural product.

The interview led to dissension, recriminations and tensions in the CBS staff over what the company’s business should be, over what journalism is.  Really, the in-house debate was over the business model of CBS.  What is the product that CBS is selling – objectivity or emotions and prejudices?  What customer base do they seek to please?  Is that chosen product line profitable? What brand proposition does a company market when it associates itself with a cause or a lifestyle?  Is CBS selling news or entertainment?

One might argue that as long as CBS is meeting the needs of customers – a stakeholder constituency – it is a moral capitalist.  Or not?  What if its customers – like industrial polluters or individual drug users and alcoholics – generate negative impacts on society?  Some people’s values and beliefs make them despicable to others.

When values and lifestyles become products, business risks can rise, for not everyone likes every cultural or political value or personal lifestyle.  The business can follow its own values, but at an opportunity cost – it might make more money by selling the morality or the politics which are preferred by a different customer constituency.

But in closed societies, say theocracies or under intolerant authoritarian regimes that censor speech and seek to keep thinking straight and narrow, the choice of a business model is easier to come by: just do what the regime wants and don’t make waves by stirring up values and different opinions