Category: Commentary

I ran across this article on Harley-Davidson, trending now due to the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally having taken place earlier this month.

Again, it speaks to a reality about consumers – different people have different values.  Is a company in the business of alignment with social values or product values?  How can a company learn what values drive purchases of its goods and services?  Does reticence in identifying a company or its products with non-commercial values make sense from time to time?  Or should a company position itself in the sweet spot of affinity for one, but not other consumers?

In the quest for practical wisdom, finding the intersection points where ideas are validated by worldly realities puts us on the course for knowing what is best to do.  Theories can help by presenting relationships between and among facts, but how many times have theories not aligned with practical realities in the long run?

There is a theory of capitalism and a theory of socialism.  Which is a better theory to guide our decision-making?  Which is more likely to bring about better outcomes?  There is a theory that democracy is the best form of government for people.  But how many successful democracies has humanity experienced?

The scientific method likes to look for facts and data and then examine them for patterns which repeat when the same facts and data are present and then propose a law of causation to explain why the pattern emerges.  The law of causation permits prediction of future outcomes.  So, if the law correctly correlates the necessary interdependence of some facts or data with other facts or data, then we can, with confidence, use the law to predict the future.

We can use the law to obtain desired results or use it to avoid outcomes we don’t want.  Thus, if we want to know what outcomes to expect from capitalism and from socialism, it is best if we find some facts in the real world which might lead to the discovery of patterns and then to predictions of what will happen if that pattern is followed in our behaviors.

Nigeria today presents us with such facts on systems of human governance and economics.  The conclusions we can draw from Nigeria, as a case study, are credible and revealing.

First, the July 13 issue of The Economist reported that “soaring food-price inflation is hurting Nigeria’s poor.”

Tomato prices that fluctuate with the seasons are normal in Nigeria, but the record annual pace of food inflation, which hit 41% in May, is not.  Most pinched are the poor.  Staples, such as beans and maize, cost 400% more than they did a year ago, while a 100kg bag of sorghum has more than tripled in price.  Since wages have barely moved, the result is a deepening food crisis.  Whereas hunger was once concentrated in conflict-ridden areas in northern Nigeria, now it affects poorer households nationwide (see map).  Of the 44 million people in west Africa and the Sahel who do not get enough to eat, more than half are Nigerian.

We may ask if the inflation is the result of free market capitalism?

The Economist reports:

Much of the blame should be heaped on the government.  A haphazard introduction of new banknotes under the previous administration led to a shortage of legal tender. This caused most hardship in the countryside, where penetration of bank or mobile-money accounts is lowest.  With cash scarce, farmers charged middlemen a premium if they used electronic payments, pushing up prices in the markets.

A weakening naira dealt another blow – its 40% fall against the dollar made it the worst-performing currency in the world in the first half of this year.  That has pushed up the cost not only of imported foods, but also of seeds and fertilizer.  The government’s removal of fuel subsidies, though necessary, further raised the cost of running farming machinery and taking harvests to markets. …

A year ago, Bola Tinubu, the president, declared a state of emergency for food insecurity.  Yet, promises that savings from the fuel-subsidy removal would be reinvested into farming have not materialized.  A program to give free fertilizer to farmers to boost production was subverted by politicians, who put their faces on the sacks and gave them to loyal voters.

This week, the government announced plans to waive import duties on maize and wheat and to set a recommended retail price.  The government itself also plans to import 500,000 tons of grain.  But so far, Mr. Tinubu’s administration has been unable to stop prices from soaring.  Last year, Nigerians were already spending 59% of household incomes on food, a higher share than in any other country.  How much harder can they be squeezed?

In the July 26 issue of Newsweek, it was reported that Nigeria is at a cross-roads, quoting former U.S. Ambassador John Campbell saying, “I would suggest that Nigeria, at present, is not holding together.  What you have is a government whose writ runs in only certain parts of the country and there are alternative power centers all over the country.”

Nigeria is beset by the lack of governance and the rule of the gun – a Hobbesian condition, where the life of people can easily be “solitary, nasty, brutish and short.”  The country, reports Newsweek, is beset by Islamist insurgents, separatist movements, kidnapping and robbery.  This year, through May, saw 7,519 incidents of violence, 9,892 killed and 6,292 abducted.

One woman said, “You can see people going crazy.  They are not crazy, they are hungry.  They are frustrated, they don’t have work to do, they don’t have anywhere to go.  That is why you see them walking about stealing, doing armed robbery, kidnapping.”  This would not be expected in a successful capitalist society, where wealth is created through enterprise and shared with stakeholders.

Nigeria sits near the bottom of rankings for corruption and still has a reputation after decades of being home to scammers who operate globally to strip the innocently trusting and the naïve of their savings.  Long has Nigeria been under the thumb of military rulers.  Tinubu won election as president in 2023, when less than 10% of registered voters bothered to vote.

Hard to have capitalist wealth creation where there is no morally responsible government.

The new government took steps to move towards more market rationality – ending subsidies for fuel and letting the currency float to a market value.  But the initial consequences of those steps towards market efficiency is seriously higher inflation.  A critic commented that the reforms were not part of any larger, broader program to boost the economy, again a shortfall on the part of government and the culture to value enterprise.

Nigeria’s government and economy run mostly on the proceeds of selling oil, not producing goods and services.  This is the curse of dependence on rent extraction from natural resources. The cash flow does not come from workers earning wages through capitalist wealth creation.  Nigeria ranks 127 out of 133 countries for diversifying its economy.  It gained independence from Great Britain in 1960 – 64 years ago.

Fifty years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States.

He gave up his office rather than defend himself in an impeachment process in the U.S. Senate that, if successful, would remove him from that office.

What might we learn of contemporary international relevance from this American’s voluntary surrender of his authority?

First, we might consider how rare is the resignation from office of presidents and prime ministers.  Pope Benedict stepped down as Pope.  From time to time, royals have abdicated in favor of their heir apparent, but most, like Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, retain the crown until death.  Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, just resigned as protestors stormed her official residence.  Just last month, President Joe Biden resigned as the presidential candidate of the Democrat Party.

Few leaders come to feel that it is prudent or necessary for them to resign from high office.  They tend to prolong their tenure as long as they can get away with it.

The issue for political systems is when does a president or a prime minister or a monarch become unfit for the office and so deserves removal from that position?  What behaviors make an incumbent unfit to serve?  Who should decide whether removal is justified?  Do rulers like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have to worry about being removed from their offices?

In the case of Richard Nixon, the rules and procedures for removal were written in the Constitution of the United States: the behavior deserving removal is the commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  The decision to remove a president is made by the U.S. Senate after an impeachment petition has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The removal of high royal officials for “high crimes and misdemeanors” was a practice of the English parliament for several centuries and was borrowed by the Americans who drafted the federal constitution of 1787.  The proposal to set the standard for removable conduct as “high crimes and misdemeanors” was made by George Mason to include the precedent of the impeachment of Warren Hastings by the British Parliament.  Hastings was charged with corruption and other abuses of power when acting as the governor general of Bengal for the British East India Company.

Edmund Burke brought the impeachment before the House of Commons.  The Commons impeached Hastings.  Then Burke made the case before the House of Lords in Parliament assembled that Hastings justly deserved impeachment:

Do we [lack] a tribunal?  My lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this.  We commit safely the interests of India and humanity into your hands.  Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons, I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed; whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation and condition of life.

My lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal order, we stand.  We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labor; that we have been guilty of no prevarication; that we have made no compromise with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth, with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption.

My lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations.  There is one thing and one thing only, which defies all mutation: that which existed before the world and will survive the fabric of the world itself—I mean justice; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser, before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life. …

My lords, if you must fall, may you so fall!  But, if you stand—and stand I trust you will—together with the fortune of this ancient monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom, may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you stand long and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice!

What Burke argued was that public office is a trust, not a personal property to be used selfishly, capriciously or stupidly by the incumbent.  The holder of the office is a trustee of the public good and so is held to perform fiduciary duties of due care and selfless loyalty to those who stand to benefit from the execution of powers so held in trust.

In the case of Hastings, Burke argued that the people of India, under British colonial rule, could not be abused by a British official, that they were beneficiaries of a trust held by that official.

The trial of Warren Hastings in the House of Lords started on February 13, 1788 and continued over a period of seven years, with 148 days of hearings.  The House of Lords acquitted him of all charges on April, 24 1795.

The first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon spoke similarly of abuse of power:

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice, in that:

On June 17, 1972 and prior thereto, agents of the Committee for the Re-election of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing political intelligence.  Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry, to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities. …

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office.

(As a student at the Harvard law School, I was privileged to have been able to research the English parliamentary precedents of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors and have my conclusion that such impeachments were fiduciary proceedings for breach of public trust included as above in the articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon.  My law review article making that case is: “Public Office as a Public Trust: A suggestion that a fiduciary standard is implied in Impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Georgetown Law Journal, 1975.)

In his impeachment of Warren Hastings, Burke advanced principles of justice of global and therefore of cross-cultural application.  Today, in our world seeking to put behind it the abuses and injustices of yesteryear for the benefit of all humanity, public office everywhere should be held to standards of responsible stewardship of the public good.

Mencius argued that every monarch should institute governing by benevolence.  All persons living under Heaven would approve of such government. (Bk. 1, Pt.1, Ch. VII, 18)  He advised King Hui of Liang that he would find advantage in ruling if he delivered humanness and benevolence.  In other words, if he ruled as a caring steward of the people’s well-being.  A benevolent person has a duty to care for others.  Mencius referred to rulers as “shepherds of men.” (BK. 1, Pt. 1, Ch VI, 6)

Mencius said to King Xuan of Qi, “Suppose that one of your Majesty’s ministers were to entrust his wife and children to the care of his friend, while he himself went into Chu to travel and that, on his return, he should find that the friend had let his wife and children suffer from cold and hunger – how ought he to deal with him?”

The king said, “He should cast him off.”

Mencius proceeded, “Suppose that the chief criminal judge could not regulate the officers under him – how would you deal with him?”

The king said, “Dismiss him.”

Mencius again said, “If within the four borders of your kingdom there is not good government, what is to be done?”

The king looked to the right and left and spoke of other matters. (Bk.1, Pt.2, Ch. VI, 1)

The Qur’an provides guidance that all men and women were and are created by God to serve as stewards (khalifa) in his creations.  Their skills and powers, intelligence and capabilities, are given to all of them in trust (as an amanah) to be used wisely and selflessly.  We can properly ask if Islamic rulers today and throughout history have lived up to this exacting standard.  In adopting its global ethical principles for moral government, the Caux Round Table has followed the ideal articulated by Edmund Burke and others with similar idealism.  The Caux Round Table Principles for Government hold that:

Public power is held in trust for the community.

Power brings responsibility.  Power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds the actions of one to the welfare of others.

Therefore, the power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the community and its citizens.  Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold.  They have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.

Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office.  They are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.  The burden of proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the officeholder.

The state is the servant and agent of higher ends.  It is subordinate to society.  Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others.  Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

Yesterday’s Zoom round table discussion of the covenants given by the Prophet Muhammad to respect and protect Christian and Jewish communities drew forth concerns for creating relationships that embody commitments to respect others and live in peaceful coexistence.

The conversation brought to my mind violence.

Why so much violence?

A war in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands killed, more wounded, as I have read.

A war in Gaza, many thousands killed, more wounded.

On October 7, 2023, a killing spree with associated rapes and other wanton brutalities in Israel.

On July 13, a 20-year-old “kid” tried to kill Donald Trump.

Where does the inner compass of each of us end up – pointing to violence or pointing to harmony?

The teaching of history is clear – violence is in our DNA.  Some speak of original sin, which can only be remediated by a divine gift of forgiveness for our trespasses if we look to ourselves and work to deserve redemption.

But so is a moral sense in our DNA – a higher level of consciousness with more ability to create well-being – spiritual, social, economic, political.  But building moral competence out of that potential is not an automatic reflex, like the fight or flight response to danger.  Nor is it fully instinctive as breathing.

We are left with freedom to be violent or to seek peace.  Violence is sometimes forced upon us by others, making the choice of how to live for us.

My colleague, Michael Hartoonian, put the challenge before us as: “Given what I know, how should I conduct myself?”

So, then: what do I know?

And then: what should I know?

Those who can help us turn away from violence by sharing their learning and their good conscience are most needed at all times.

In March, for a second time, I took a very non-Western approach to making judgments about what choices to make in life.  I consulted the Yijing of ancient China and sent you my inferences for making good decisions this year, as stimulated by thinking about one of its 64 hexagrams hexagram 43.

Now, President Joe Biden has just announced that he will no longer seek re-election to the presidency of this country.

In my commentary on what the Yijing indicated might happen in the American presidential election, I wrote:

A yang environment, not restrained by yin energies, is a call to action, a time to start big projects, to aim high.  It is a year that will reward vitality with success.  Those with courage, tenacity, confidence and enthusiasm will do well.

To me, this bodes well for Donald Trump in the forthcoming American November election, but not for Joe Biden.  Trump is all energy and action.  Biden is, more and more, slowing down.

…

The hexagram supposes the flow of water parting or breaking through an obstacle, scattering whatever is in the way.  This will happen in a fortuitous coming together of supporters, say voters or investors.

In the American presidential election, again, this environment would seem to favor Trump, the challenger, over Biden, an incumbent.  Yet, will Trump provide a “sincere and truthful” message which will align with yang priorities?  Or will he pout and focus on himself, which are behaviors and casts of mind more aligned with yin attributes and so be out of sync with the times?

Some say that Trump’s near death experience a week ago with a failed assassination attempt indeed changed him when he later addressed the Republican Party convention to accept his nomination as its candidate for the presidency.  He did, for some, speak less as an obnoxious braggart, but with subdued sincerity about his caring for others.

Can we always rely upon the Yijing to accurately advise us as to the future we face?  I doubt it. But thinking about its values can more fully open our minds and hearts to different perspectives and possibilities.

Here in Minnesota, we have a small group called the Minnesota Character Council, affiliated with the Caux Round Table, advocating the education of future citizens in good character.  I am its chair.  Here is a link to the current issue of our newsletter, with two statements of global relevance on character and leadership.

We cannot have a moral capitalism if there is no moral government.  We cannot have moral government if there is no moral society.  We cannot have a moral society unless people have good character. That has always been true, is true everywhere people live and will always be true.

To make the case for the human universality of benefiting from good character, let me quote Ptahhotep of Ancient Egypt, Mencius of ancient China and Heraclitus of ancient Greece.

Ptahhotep

The Vizier Ptahhotep, around 2375–2350 BC, during the rule of King Djedkare Isesi of the fifth dynasty of ancient Egypt, wrote out certain criteria to be followed by those of good character.  His text was discovered in Thebes in 1847 by Egyptologist M. Prisse d’Avennes.

“All conduct should be so straight that you can measure it with a plumb-line.”

“Punish with principle, teach meaningfully.  The act of stopping evil leads to the lasting establishment of virtue.”

“Do not gossip in your neighbourhood, because people respect the silent.”

“Listening benefits the listener.”

“If he who listens listens fully, then he who listens becomes he who understands.”

“To listen is better than anything, thus is born perfect love.”

“As for the ignorant man who does not listen, he accomplishes nothing.”

“He does everything which is detestable, so people get angry with him each day.”

“Only speak when you have something worth saying.”

“May your heart never be vain because of what you know.  Take counsel from the ignorant, as well as the wise.”

“Think of living in peace with what you possess and whatever the Gods choose to give will come of its own accord.”

“He who has a great heart has a gift from God.  He who obeys his stomach obeys the enemy.”

Mencius

Mencius went to see king Hui of Liang.  The king said, “Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?”

Mencius replied: “If your Majesty say, “What is to be done to profit my kingdom?”  The great officers will say, “What is to be done to profit our families?” and the inferior officers and the common people will say, “What is to be done to profit our persons?”  Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit, the one from the other and the kingdom will be endangered.  There never has been a benevolent man who neglected his parents.  There never has been a righteous man who made his sovereign an after consideration.  Let your Majesty also say, “Benevolence and righteousness and let these be your only themes.”  Why must you use that word – “profit?”

Heraclitus

Ethos anthropos daimon – “For persons, ethics governs their fates.”

George Washington

“Since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

In all that we do, let us think of character first and foremost.

There are two stories in today’s paper here about the ongoing travails of a once great company – Boeing.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Emily Glazer and Sharon Terlep reported:

Several high-profile candidates have turned down the chance to run Boeing, complicating the jet maker’s search for a new leader amid discussions about whether the next CEO needs to be based near its Seattle-area factories.

Boeing Chief Executive David Calhoun said in March he would step down by the end of the year.  GE CEO Larry Culp, widely considered a natural for the job, declined Boeing’s request to consider taking over, said people familiar with the discussions. 

Calhoun’s successor will have to deal with those issues, while rooting out ingrained quality problems that have led to massive production delays and drawn the ire of airline customers, federal regulators and investors. 

Culp, GE’s first-ever outsider CEO who rehabilitated the industrial giant, was a favorite of investors and suppliers.  He is known as a guru in the world of lean manufacturing, a management philosophy focused on cutting waste while continuously improving quality. 

Culp has said publicly that he intends to stay at GE Aerospace, which has shed its other businesses to focus on making jet engines used in Boeing and Airbus planes.

One of the company’s own directors, aerospace veteran David Gitlin, also declined an approach.  Gitlin, the current CEO of manufacturer Carrier Global, said on an earnings call in April that he told Boeing’s board to remove him from the list of potential contenders.

Secondly, also in today’s Wall Street Journal is a story that the U.S. Department of Justice is considering whether or not to pursue a charge that Boeing violated a pre-existing corporate probation for fraud related to the 2018 and 2019 crashes of Boeing aircraft, given a recent midair failure of a door.

If the measure of success in capitalism is, as many argue, financial returns to owners, then Boeing is a failure.

From the perspective of stakeholder capitalism, the company’s single-minded search for cost reductions devalued the importance it put on customers by compromising their safety through toleration of a shoddy production process, a failure to take due care and so set the company on a course to short-change its owners in the long run.

Who, in their right mind, would want to become the CEO of a company like that?

From time to time, I have shared reports on new technologies which can de-accelerate global warming or even, with carbon removal and sequestration, reverse it.

My thesis is that technology, a product of capitalism, got us to where we are today and that technology, again, can get us to where we want to be.

The only questions are: who will invent the technology and who will take it to scale?  The history of the Industrial Revolution down to today is that the private sector (including now non-profits and researchers) and markets are better designed to invent and scale technology than are governments.

Here is an update on some developments supporting the cogency of my thesis:

Graduate students at Purdue University came up with an ultra-white paint which reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight, cooling down buildings painted with that paint.

Direct air capture uses chemical filters to trap CO2 out of the air.  The captured CO2 can be converted to fertilizer or fuel or pumped underground to be trapped in rock formations.  A Swiss company, Climeworks, now mixes captured CO2 with water and pumps it underground.

Another company, Biochar, uses a kiln to heat agricultural waste without oxygen to make biochar, which traps the CO2 in the waste to prevent it from re-entering the atmosphere.

A company in Somerville, Massachusetts, is making batteries to store electricity by using iron and air.  When iron and air combine, rust is created and energy is released.  Apply an electric current to rust, it changes back into iron and stores energy.  The company’s batteries are charged with an electric current.  Then, when air is pumped in, energy is released as the iron rusts.  This technology, the company says, stores electricity much more cheaply than current batteries.

American Airlines is buying credits from a new company that uses bricks of carbon-absorbing plant material.  The company collects sawdust and tree bark and compresses that biomass into bricks sealed to prevent the plant matter from decomposing and releasing CO2.  The bricks are then buried.  The plants use photosynthesis to remove carbon from the air, so this technology piggybacks on nature itself.

Trees remove from the air each year some 2 gigatons of CO2.

Though the private sector is at work bringing forth new technologies, government transfer payments from taxpayers to companies finance the costs of developing the new processes.

Since the Earth produces hydrogen a fuel – from iron-rich rocks and radioactive rocks – such hydrogen can be extracted from those rock formations.  Iron-rich rocks react with very hot water to produce iron oxide and hydrogen.  A Canadian firm, Hydroma, is searching for the gas.

Extractable hydrogen has been found in France, America, Brazil, Australia, Colombia and Oman.  The search for hydrogen has attracted millions of dollars in private investments.

Private sector ventures need capital.  There is a market for carbon credits – some reduce carbon and get rewarded by society (government) for doing so with credits that can be used by others, which generate greenhouse gas release.  The generators can buy the credit from the reducers.

The total value of assets in global carbon markets was roughly $950 billion last year, with Europe accounting for most of that value.

But who will be a willing buyer and seller of such credits to make a market open to buyers and sellers, facilitating the creation and use of such rights created by government?

In the U.S., to facilitate growth in the trading of carbon credits, State Street Bank is now providing back-office services to clients who want to invest in carbon credits, expanding the market for such securities.  State Street is providing its usual custody and fund administration, including handling and valuing assets, gathering prices and maintaining investment records.

Markets need confidence and trust, which come with reliable custody of assets and transparency of pricing arrangements.

Concrete is the second most consumed substance in the world after water.  Around 3 tons per person are poured each year.  The production of 5 billion tons of concrete produces 8% of man-made CO2 per year.  The Materials Processing Institute has claimed to have made the first zero-emissions cement in northern England.

The key ingredient of cement is limestone – composed of oxygen and carbon.  A chemical reaction drives the carbon from the limestone, producing lime and CO2.  Roughly, one ton of carbon is produced when making one ton of cement.

A professor at the University of Cambridge proposes to recycle old cement into new cement and side-step use of lime.

In Germany a steel firm is using wind-generated electricity to run electrolyzers that split hydrogen from oxygen.  The hydrogen can then replace coke with its carbon in reducing iron ore into iron.

In Woburn, Massachusetts, a company, Boston Metal, proposes to use electrolysis to separate iron from its ore compound, avoiding any use of carbon to produce iron from iron ore.  This approach produces oxygen as the byproduct of the chemical reaction.  Iron ore is dissolved in a molten mixture of metal oxides.  Passing an electric current through the molten mass heats it and splits the iron oxide into its component molecules.  The liquid iron produced is chemically pure and homogeneous.  The impurities from the ore are left in the molten electrolyte.

There are also other new technologies that would give better protection to our environment.
A biochemist has suggested feeding insects on the waste – discarded barley and yeast – of beer breweries.  Such insects could become feed stock for beef cattle.

Sway, a small company near San Francisco, extracts cellulose from seaweed and turns it into a plastic-like substance, which can be used in plastic manufacturing equipment and then biodegrades when disposed of.

Solugen makes chemicals from boring ingredients, such as corn syrup, to replace ingredients that disrupt the environment or the climate.  The company’s founders used AI to design new biomolecules.  They invented a “biofuge” – a 60-foot-tall tank that keeps harmless ingredients, like sugars, trigger them with biochemical reactions and aerates them with a dense stream of microbubbles.

The machine creates a biomolecular alternative to phosphates, which reduce corrosion in water systems, but cause life-killing algae blooms.

The bioforges produce enormous volumes of chemicals at a profit, using renewable energy and removes more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit.

Solugen wants to produce enough bioplastic to remove from commerce 5 billion non-degradable plastic bottles.  Though a private business, the owners want government to use its regulatory power to create incentives for customers to demand their new products.

Finally, a company in Norway wants to put 8 million young Atlantic salmon in tanks.  Fish farming is the fastest growing method of food production, now accounting for 17% of the world’s protein intake.  The World Bank estimates that 90% of the world’s fisheries are fished either at or over their capacity to regenerate.

But aquaculture in net pens creates serious pollution of surrounding waters.  And rearing lots of fish in close proximity to one another risks outbreaks of diseases and parasites.  That demands that the fish farmers use antibiotics and other drugs.

In tanks, a new technology continuously cleans and recycles water for the tanks.  Water cleaning machines dispose of the waste produced by fish living in the tanks.  This technology was largely borrowed from the sewage treatment industry.

Standard salmon farming requires about 50,000 liters of water per kilogram of salmon, when the new technology might need only 150.

Tank farming also has the advantage of being close to consumers in urban areas.  But the capital costs of using more technology are high.

Human ingenuity – for good and for evil – must not be underestimated.  But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Yesterday’s decision of a jury in New York City to find Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with the intent of covering up a crime puts before the American people this question: how much do they want their constitutional republic to survive?

One notable and now relevant historic precedent was the factional self-destruction of the Roman Republic.

A second relevant and most notable precedent was Maximilien Robespierre’s terror during the French Revolution to cleanse France of “enemies of the people.”  The law which established the tribunals seeking out those “enemies of the people” and killing them was the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794)

That law legalized the following procedures:

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The Revolutionary Tribunal is instituted to punish the enemies of the people.

The enemies of the people are those who seek to destroy public liberty, either by force or by cunning.

The following are deemed enemies of the people: those who … have sought to disparage or dissolve the National Convention and the revolutionary and republican government of which it is the center.

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Those who have deceived the people or the representatives of the people in order to lead them into undertakings contrary to the interests of liberty.

Those who have sought to inspire discouragement.

Those who have disseminated false news in order to divide or disturb the people.

Those who have sought to mislead opinion and to prevent the instruction of the people, to deprave morals and to corrupt the public conscience, to impair the energy and the purity of revolutionary and republican principles or to impede the progress thereof, either by counterrevolutionary or insidious writings or by any other machination.

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The penalty provided for all offenses under the jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Tribunal is death.

The proof necessary to convict enemies of the people comprises every kind of evidence, whether material or moral, oral or written, which can naturally secure the approval of every just and reasonable mind; the rule of judgments is the conscience of the jurors, enlightened by love of the Patrie; their aim, the triumph of the Republic and the ruin of its enemies.

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If either material or moral proofs exist, apart from the attested proof, there shall be no further hearing of witnesses, unless such formality appears necessary, either to discover accomplices or for other important considerations of public interest.

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The law provides sworn patriots as council for calumniated patriots; it does not grant them to conspirators.

We should note in this law that those accused had no right of defense.  If there was evidence against them, they could not contravene it with counterevidence of their own. And no legal counsel could assist them.

More importantly, the standard for conviction was whatever the jurors might believe, no matter how false such beliefs were or how prejudiced the jurors were.

In the criminal proceeding against Donald Trump and in line with the Law of 22 Prairial, the judge left it to the conscience of the jury to find a crime.  His jury instructions encouraged them to indulge in speculation and prejudice.

Nor, during the trial, did the judge permit Trump to have effective assistance of counsel.  The judge even refused to let the jury hear germane and material testimony from an expert witness that no crime had been committed under federal election laws.

Trump’s trial, in other words, was a diluted measure of French revolutionary terror seeking to destroy an “enemy of the people.”  The revolutionary faction on the hunt for its enemies being the Democrats in the White House desperate to crush through state repression those whom they fear as “counter-revolutionary” activists.

Fear of such opposition to the moral hegemony asserted by the Democrats has been given the name of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a kind of elite psychosis.

Looking back, we might even say that Robespierre, Saint Just and other Jacobins also were under the influence of some derangement of mind and heart.

The dynamic of breaking the law in order to defend the law was presciently described by James Madison in his 10^th Federalist Paper on factionalism.

Madison considered any propensity for the “violence of faction” to be a “dangerous vice.”  He reasoned:

“The instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the moral diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.” …

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.  A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” …

“It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good.  Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”

John Locke, in his 1690 second treatise concerning civil government, had previously rendered an opinion as to abuse of lawful authority as we have seen accomplished in the criminal trial of Donald Trump.

According to Locke, the purpose of civil government is to protect us from “the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men.”  Thus, a government may be directed to no other end but the peace, safety and public good of the people”.

Locke proposed that all power is given to public officials as a trust and that whenever that trust is manifestly neglected or opposed, the powers which have been given in such trust must be forfeited and returned to the people.  A public trust may never be used to further personal ambitions.  Making use of power not for the good of those who are under it, but for one’s own private, separate advantage, is tyranny.  “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins,” he said.

Locke insisted that whenever rulers “make themselves or any part of the community, masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties or fortunes of the people,” they forfeit their trust and lose their authority.  They, thus, “put themselves into a state of war with the people.”

“Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws and all the slips of human frailty will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur.  But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people and they cannot but feel what they lie under and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.” (Sec 225)

“The end of government is the good of mankind and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power and employ it for the destruction and not the preservation of the properties of their people?” (Sec 229)

“Here, it is like, the common question will be made, who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? … To this I reply, the people shall be judge; for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he fails in his trust?” (Sec. 240)

With the conviction of Donald Trump, no matter how the case finally comes out after appeal courts have considered its lawfulness and fairness, the American people now face a watershed November election in their political history: will this abuse of power by the Democrats be ratified by the people or will the Democrats be found to have forfeited their public trust?

At stake for the American is nothing less than the rule of law and their constitutional order.

The Caux Round Table Principles for Government accept the righteousness of the rule of law, looking at precedents in different wisdom traditions – Ezekiel 34 in the Old Testament, Cicero, the Buddha’s middle way, Qur’anic guidance in keeping one’s trusts (Amanah) and serving as God’s steward (Khalifa), Mencius on the right of revolution, Confucius on the need for virtue (te).

Our principles include the following:

Public power is held in trust for the community.

Power brings responsibility.  Power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds the actions of one to the welfare of others.

Therefore, the power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the community and its citizens.  Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold.  They have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.

Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office.  They are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.  The burden of proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the officeholder.

The state is the servant and agent of higher ends.  It is subordinate to society.  Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others.  Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

Justice shall be provided.

The civic order and its instrumentalities shall be impartial among citizens without regard to condition, origin, sex or other fundamental, inherent attributes.  Yet, the civic order shall distinguish among citizens according to merit and desert where rights, benefits or privileges are best allocated according to effort and achievement, rather than as birthrights.

The civic order shall provide speedy, impartial and fair redress of grievances against the state, its instruments, other citizens and aliens.

The rule of law shall be honored and sustained, supported by honest and impartial tribunals and legislative checks and balances.

I just read a clever little human-interest story which brought me up short.

The story was about Peter Barton Hutt, of whom I had never heard.  He apparently introduced to the American consumer systemic learning of the “truth” about what they bought to eat – the mandated nutrition labels that sellers of food products must put on their packaging to inform customers of what is in the food they are buying.

Five decades ago, Hutt wrote the rules on disclosure of ingredients for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  Disclosures of ingredients have since appeared on billions and billions of packages in legible typeface.

But consider: how can a moral capitalism ever work if there is no truth?

Running capitalism on “your” truth or “my” truth just won’t cut it.  Such a system of illusions and delusions, of random guestimates, will never gain traction among human persons.  Who will trust whom about what something is or is not?

If there is not truth, how can any good, service or company be given a sound and sensible valuation?  Governments impose a requirement for telling the truth on those who issue securities.  Donald Trump is in big legal trouble for allegedly not telling the truth about the value of his ownership interests.  The courts impose liability on those who lie, cheat, deceive and misinform and so harm others.

Markets need flows of trusting buyers to survive from moment to moment.  Unquestioned reliance on the probity and honesty of sellers makes markets possible.  Caveat emptor – “buyer beware” – is an age-old caution putting a drag on market dynamics.  Not every seller tells all the truth all the time.

Alan Greenspan’s quip about the dangers of “irrational exuberance” – a form of truthlessness – has caused many a market bubble to form and then pop, leaving buyers sorry and angry over their unexpected losses.

If truth drives markets to produce the “wealth of nations,” as Adam Smith observed, who then can we find to always be truthful and keep our markets working for the best?