Platform Part V: Education, Science and Culture (Section B)

subtitle: Enough with the Boring Blog Post Titles, Eh?

Larry Kuznar’s post about the failings of higher education last week deserved a better title than we gave it. It was a brave and outstanding piece written by someone who knows how higher education works in the nation today. Larry’s post also opened the door to express more of our own perspectives.

Larry’s post was part of the series on a Platform for FAPITCA we “cleverly” called Building a Platform, Part I, in which we introduced an outline for five “Planks” that a more center-focused “political party” could use to inform how our nation moves away from fringe- and edge-driven politics. [1] Recent posts, while titled with boring but semi-descriptive phrases, are all part of this Platform; after today’s post, we’ll have only one plank left. [2]

Most importantly, we’re indebted to Larry for challenging us with his example to open up more and try to express our feelings about America with less equivocation. This means no longer blaming both sides of the political spectrum equally with softly uttered descriptions, although we will endeavor to maintain balance and represent the Center as an attractor to the disillusioned in the Edges. [3] America needs these people at the Edges to come back towards the Center, post-haste…please! [4]

First, here are a couple of thoughts about how Larry’s post fits into the Science, Culture and Education plank of the FAPITCA: America is greatest when we support the sciences (and the arts, hence culture). Education for our upcoming generations is the singular best way to build and strengthen our contributions to both our nation’s and the world’s science and arts. [5]

Each of the planks of the FAPITCA Platform is proposed as part of a whole. This whole benefits from linkages between the planks through rich interacting network connections that leverage the Connected Age in which we live. The planks can even compensate for each other when one is working less well than we might hope. [6]

As Larry noted, education and the resultant growth of science and culture (and arts) that ensues from education are deeply interacting pieces of the plank that deserve constant attention and investment to sustain our future as a nation. Education must evoke critical thinking and problem solving capabilities in order to grow America. They combine and even coevolve to provide the basis for our “national seed corn.”

It’s a mystery to us how our American system of education has not been more greatly valued and received more investment and encouragement. Instead, the various education factions line up against each other and rail about how the other side’s approach is so wrong. The various sides’ capacity, if it exists, to listen to each other and compromise with our nation’s interests in mind could surely produce a better working educational system if only they really wanted to and cared enough about America’s future.

It’s sad to note that too many in our political parties have forgotten whatever lessons they learned in school about compromise and collaboration. How much longer are the two parties and their supporting factions going to refuse to work together so we can stop eating our seed corn?

While both parties are at fault in the realm of agreement, the rise and influence of entities like the so-called “Tea Party” faction and its ilk have aggravated the failure of our national capacity to compromise and cooperate. These groups, even if well intended, must get down off their high-horses and start cooperating a bit more…with BOTH parties. They need to use the education they received in the American school system to help us move forward, not backwards! [7]

In the last few decades, America has been at the global forefront in scientific discovery and technological development (which leveraged those discoveries in science, by the way). We’ve also led in social and cultural activities that changed the world in many places and pushed forward the role of higher education across the nation and the world.

As Larry pointed out, education in America has experienced challenges to continuing that momentum of the past. We’ve lapsed in how many levels of education stack up with the rest of the world. But, this is America…we can fix that. If we don’t, science and culture will also lapse!

Our biggest challenge is that we have to collectively rediscover the will to succeed as a nation…we have to want to fix education. We have to embrace the need to invest in our ability to do good science. Americans must desire to collaborate and exploit our science into even better technologies, cleaner environment, enhanced infrastructures and other improvements in our way of life. Most importantly, we have to feel the love in doing all of this for our children and their children. We think Americans really do want to do these things…so let’s do it.

Now, if we can only find better titles for our blog posts! We want to and we will!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 7/16/2014.

NOTES:

[1] While we have been disparaging in our blog posts of the “Edge” and “Fringe” (the edge of the edge, as we like to label them) segments of American political parties throughout our posts, we do appreciate the paradox that they also apparently represent a source of real “out of the box” thinking about politics in this nation. In that regard, the Edges and Fringes might have a leg up on imagining new ways to govern and the rejection of the traps of excessive government and financial policy into which we’ve fallen as a nation through traditional politics. We strongly recommend the edges and fringes read Joseph Stiglitz’s recent book The Price of Inequality (or at least the essay of the same name at AlterNet) to better understand the effective role of government (as the Founders intended), rather than reject government outright.

[2] After this post and the final Plank post, we’ll finally post that essay on Transforming Consumption in America that expands on the second plank, again “cleverly” titled “Transform Production and Consumption.”

[3] So, some admissions: We are both moderately progressive, reformed semi-conservative types…sorry we can’t make a meaningful acronym out of that; perhaps we were really “radical moderates” as Elliot Richardson coined it in a book of the same name). One friend called Carl “socially progressive and fiscally conservative”…maybe that also works! The bottom line is that we’re not particularly happy with where the Edges of the Republican Party have taken our nation in the last decade or two, making issues of inane subjects that really should not affect how our nation moves forward in Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. This is not to say that the Democratic Party is above the fray in promoting irrelevancy as well, but the Republican Party has not done well by America, perhaps even for the last 20 years. If only we could say the Democratic Party had done all that much better! As Adelson, Buffet and Gates wrote recently in Break the Immigration Impasse, “Americans deserve better than this” and “It’s time for 535 of America’s citizens to remember what they owe to the 318 million who employ them.”

[4] The bottom line here is that the Edges and Fringes (and apparently even the larger parties with which they are associated) could likely never come together sufficiently to champion opportunity for all Americans. At the rate we seem to be going, they probably could never be large enough to be a source of real change that enables maximum equal access to opportunity for all. Only the Center can act with enough mass and momentum to bring about that kind of change. A balanced Center that understands the importance of equal access to opportunity, and enforces it with their vote, will make the kind of difference America so desperately needs now.

[5] To ensure we can sustain such growth, we also commented on the need for protecting our environment and infrastructure…that one plank is tied to the success of all of the rest.

[6] The interacting principles of FAPITCA can also be viewed as a complex system that creates maximum resiliency and opportunity if used to inspire new thinking about governance in America.

[7] See footnote 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Platform, Part V, Section A: How Higher Ed Fails the American Promise

Editor’s Note: This post is part of the FAPITCA Platform series entitled: Sustain and Advance American Culture, Science and Education. Dr. Kuznar provides us a distinctive perspective on education in America.

By Dr. Lawrence Kuznar, Ph.D., Indiana University – Purdue University, Fort Wayne [1]

Higher education is central for Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. This essay is one insider’s perspective on how higher education fails to deliver that promise to our next generation, and what can be done to correct this failure. [2]

The core of the problem is that higher education has become a system for issuing credentials (degrees), and not one that transfers the skills our next generation requires to serve themselves and our society in a globalized, interconnected world.

Consider three dimensions of the problem:

• Our upcoming generation needs to acquire a set of useful thinking skills from universities
• Our universities claim to confer these skills
• Universities actually provide something else

The system fails due to specific actions by faculty, administrators and students, and therefore integrated changes in their actions can solve the problem.

Desired Thinking Skills

Here’s the bottom line objective: Today’s college graduates need to be employed to be productive, and the skills employers desire are consistent with academic ideals that are applicable to both the world of work and responsible citizenship. This involves knowing how to think and how to learn (and keep learning and thinking)!

A couple of recent surveys (National Association of Colleges and Employers, Chronicle of Higher Education) [3] provide results consistent with other research on the skills employers want and need, and what graduates often lack. Some of the most important skills employers note lacking in college grads, and that would be most valuable in the modern workplace, include: verbal and written expression, time management, problem solving and decision-making.

What Universities Claim to Produce

Academics consistently insist a baccalaureate degree signifies that a graduate has acquired the time-honored skills of expression, critical thinking and love of learning. This is true for an elite research institution such as Harvard [4], and for a State-sponsored institution such as Indiana University – Purdue University, Fort Wayne, which serves typical middle Americans. [5] Yet, employers of recent graduates claim that these skills are lacking across the board. Something is wrong.

What Universities Really Confer

If students are not acquiring the skills that academics claim they teach, then what do students get from their universities? The answer is simple: a credential, the baccalaureate degree.  Universities are more systems that confer symbols in the form of diplomas, and less like institutions that educate the next generation.

The Problem: Why Don’t Students Learn?

Universities fail to educate and prepare the next generation to lead our society because education has become a tertiary objective at best. Arum and Roska’s 2011 Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses is an honest and sound analysis of higher education’s failings. They administered a widely accepted test of expression and critical thinking to thousands of college students across the spectrum of higher education institutions. They found that students demonstrated only marginal gains in these skills since high school, and those gains were directly proportionate to the amount of time students spent reading and writing for their class requirements.

The problem is not that students are lazy. They spend a lot of time socializing, working and even serving their communities. What they do not do is spend much time studying because educators do not require much reading and much writing on behalf their students.

Arum and Roska keenly point out that over the past several decades, an agreement has tacitly emerged between faculty and students: “Don’t bother me and I won’t challenge you.” Students responded as consummately rational actors, allocating their time efficiently to gain their credential, the degree, with the least effort possible. We have incentivized students to earn credentials, and de-incentivized them to learn.

Why don’t my colleagues and I require students to read, process and think? It is because that would be valuable time taken away from our research, our ever-increasing administrative duties, and other academic activities. There is a triumvirate involved in this systemic failure. Administrators focus on creating new programs and increasing graduation rates, faculty concentrate on research accomplishment, and students efficiently gain the benefit we taught them to value, the degree.

In the end, everyone gets what they want (or think they “want”), but the students are robbed of a genuine education and our society is robbed of an upcoming generation prepared to meet the challenges of a new, interconnected and globalized world. We rob our future of the thinkers our nation so desperately needs!

The Solution

The solution is daunting, especially given how administrative, faculty and student goals interact to create an agenda that subverts the real educational mission…this substituted agenda has taken on a life of its own. [6]

Businesses in our modern economy demand smart, creative, communicative and sound-thinking employees and this should be used as incentive for positive change. To help things change, employers need to emphasize credentials less, and value evidence of thinking and the ability to express oneself effectively more in potential and desired employees. This could be fed back into the cycle through more active support of effective universities on the part of employers.

There is some progress. Some employers are starting to scrutinize the whole applicant and some universities are helping students develop portfolios as a means of demonstrating their skills. However, we need a tighter focus, and real education.

The successful Berlin model [7] that required educators to be current in their fields by engaging in active research has metastasized, practically turning many of our universities into for-profit research institutes. Teaching at these institutions is often denigrated, and graduate students are socialized to avoid and dislike the classroom.

In order to avoid this distraction and refocus the system on education:

• Faculty and administration must balance the emphasis between research, teaching and service in meaningful ways when evaluating faculty for tenure, promotion, and compensation.
• Time spent productively challenging and interacting with students should be rewarded and not punished. If so, I am pretty sure many of us would focus more time on challenging students and not merely mollifying them.
• Graduation rates should not dominate the metrics used to calculate state and federal support.
• Instead of using graduation rates, the teaching component in state and federal funding formulae needs to measure actual learning and intellectual development, not credentialing. An educated public can prevail upon legislators to change those formulae.

As for the students in this new focus on education, they just need to be themselves. Our next generations have always risen to a challenge, and they continue to do so today: that’s an American legacy that still works! Unfortunately, the older among us have forgotten that legacy and have stopped truly challenging our young learners in productive ways.

The problems with our higher education system genuinely threaten our ability to sustain the American Promise. If we fail to recalibrate our higher education system toward learning and away from symbolic credentialing, then we fail to provide our next generation with the tools they need in a modern, globally interconnected world…the Connected Age. Ironically, these are timeless tools the ancient Greek founders designed and intended for higher education to deliver 2500 years ago. It’s time to get back to applying their wisdom to the future of America!

Originally posted by Carl Hunt, on behalf of Dr. Lawrence Kuznar, on 7/9/2014.

NOTES:

[1] Mariah Yager kindly produced graphics for this essay.

[2] I am a career university professor. I attended a large state institution for my undergraduate degree where I witnessed the shift from learning to credentialing, and then attended an elite research institution for my graduate work where I was socialized to focus entirely on research and to denigrate teaching. I have spent the past 24 years as a professor at an institution that primarily serves working class, first generation college students. The views I express are mine alone and do not reflect any official position of my university.

[3] National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2014, Job Outlook Survey https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/press/skills-employers-value-in-new-hires.aspx?land-surv-lp-3-prsrel-07042014; The Role of Higher Education in Career Development: Employer Perceptions https://chronicle.com/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf.

[4] “To these ends, the College encourages students to respect ideas and their free expression, and to rejoice in discovery and in critical thought” http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/mission-statement.

[5] “IPFW values… a strong general education program and baccalaureate framework that emphasize critical thinking, promote lifelong learning” http://www.ipfw.edu/about/strategic-plan/mission-values-vision.html.

[6] While I am focusing on education, it is important to note that universities also have equally important research and service missions that cannot be ignored in any solution. While none of these missions can be neglected, education has been de-emphasized and thus fallen behind.

[7] Anderson, Robert (March 2010). “The ‘Idea of a University’ today”. History & Policy. United Kingdom: History & Policy. Retrieved 20 June 2014.

The Platform, Part IV – Environment and Infrastructure, Section B

(Note: as this piece is being posted on July 4, 2014, we pause to think about the bravery of the Founders who took on the responsibility to launch the United States of America in 1776 and truly hope their courage will inspire those who now hold the future of our great nation in their hands.)

Rethinking Ecosystems

In Section A of this post on Environment and Infrastructure as a part of the FAPITCA Platform, we used the word “ecosystem” a bit loosely. We did this in an effort to create a metaphorical visualization of how the environment and the infrastructure coexist and coevolve with each other in America (and indeed in all civilizations).

In reality, the environment nature provides is really its own ecosystem (or family of ecosystems), as is the infrastructure we build to support our way of life. Our friend, Harold Morowitz, pointed out that “life itself is a property of an ecosystem rather than simply biochemical interactions,” – that principle is important. Harold writes that “no species is an ecosystem itself, and a fuller treatment would include coevolution, the evolution of all species in an ecosystem, as well as the symbiosis in all its forms.” [1]

In this sense, the American way of life has emerged as a property of the interaction of our magnificent environment and the infrastructure we build to support our economy and access to opportunity to partake in that economy. The two coevolve to produce the America in which we live.

We just wanted to push forward the conversation about how the environment and the infrastructure can better interact to provide a basis for enhancing the opportunities we must discover and exploit in Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. We can control to a large extent the effect the infrastructure has on the environment and we can find more effective ways to protect the environment: this is what we search for in defining a possible “ecosystem” that might exist between the two.

Our argument is that in order for us to find a meaningful ecosystem that includes all ways of political thinking (even including the edges of each political party), it’s important to think in terms of ecosystems and balance. Understanding the role of our interacting environment and infrastructure as an ecosystem is a way forward to success (or more accurately rediscovering inclusiveness and progress) in America.

To expand on this, let’s return to our previous discussion of human habitat and how recent history has impacted it.

Building on our National History

Jan Hauser, guest contributor from Part A, points out that “creating good habitat requires collective and integrated action. Today, there appears to be little political support for ‘collective action’ and integration (and even less financial support), and the term ‘collective action’ has almost taken on a negative connotation.” This is tragic, Jan adds, posing a not-too rhetorical question of “how do you think we got a Constitution, a Declaration of Independence or triumphed in World War II if not for collective action and thinking about how all of the parts will work together?” [2]

Speaking of World War II, possibly some of the best urban human habitat can be found in pre-World War II neighborhoods. They are characterized by sidewalks, parks, functional front porches, places of worship, public transportation, and often, just enough commercial activity (restaurants, taverns and grocery stores) that one can take care of most regular needs on foot – people can walk, not drive, to tend to their affairs! And, in walking they’ll likely meet and talk face-to-face (and even share ideas!).

These environments weren’t created by each person doing their own thing. They were the result of many people working together to create community: business people, city planners, real estate developers, architects, transportation planners, recreation advocates, and others concerned about life in America.

Another example of different views of habitat can be found in transportation planning. If you get the chance, drive Interstate 10 from East Texas into Louisiana. If you have in the recent past, think about the contrasts.

In Texas, almost every major highway is ringed by “feeder” roads. These feeder roads almost always become choked with commercial activity: fast food restaurants, gas stations, four-wheeler dealers, truck stops…you name it. Unfortunately, these feeder roads make driving in Texas much less pleasant than it could be as the scenery of right-of-way is often an unsightly mishmash of development. More importantly, there is constant traffic coming on and off the interstate to access these businesses. [3]

Compare that experience with Louisiana. As soon as you enter Louisiana, you notice that the scenery is more prominent and that “civilization” is far less developed. You also notice less traffic weaving in and off the highway. Your driving experience becomes more relaxed and feels safer. The big difference is the lack of feeder roads. Yes, it took collective action to build these feeder roads in Texas, but let’s question the motivation and effectiveness of that activity. Apart from making room for another four-wheeler dealer, what did that feeder road really provide?

Hey, what’s wrong with taking a little collective action to improve human habitat? Somehow, that makes all too many politicians nervous and they lose focus on people in contrast to commerce and tax bases. When we want to improve habitat with parks and community areas, all too often we hear from our elected officials, “Oh, we can’t afford that!” or “That’s a frill the budget doesn’t support.” Strangely, there’s always room for another McDonald’s or car dealership!

Rather than just having to deal with anxiety, obesity and depression, why can’t we address our habitat needs as humans who want to live in the most free and lovely place on earth? Why don’t we enhance our habitats with parks, sidewalks, calmer (and safer) roads or just a little more open space? That would allow us to better blend our environment and infrastructure.

If we are going to have a better, stronger nation, we’re going to have to think about our infrastructure and environment in a more integrated fashion including their relationship to our quality of life. We’re going to have to relook how we live together with nature, our environment and the infrastructure we build.

Empowering the Synergy

We think that a key to advancing the way we best exploit the work Americans put into protecting the environment and building on our infrastructure investment is to transform how people see this interdependent relationship. Policy makers must encourage people in all parts of the political spectrum to value achieving a balance and synergistic relationship between the two. This balance would give us:

• Healthy habitats in which to live. Here we should seek to build harmony between our habitats and our ways of life where these habitats bridge between environment and infrastructure in complementary ways. This might be accomplished through creating more realistic expectations about what American life is, both in terms of responsible wealth and stuff accumulation, as well as stewardship of that wealth for future generations. We might create these expectations through a range of approaches that start with responsible parenting and early education all the way through the protection of the environment and infrastructure as national security priorities.
• Freedom from political exploitation of the environment and infrastructure. We need to quit making the environment a political issue so that the parts that make up this critical sustaining ecosystem for people and other living things may thrive in balance. As a nation we simply have to respond to the urgency to find balance in our political systems and throughout all levels of American community. Political exploitation of the both the environment and our infrastructure has become so pervasive that we may just have to find ways to minimize the damage the older generations do and try to hold on to a core the younger generations can inherit and rebuild. Many of the people who compose our current political system seem to have transcended the ability to preserve our future or even to think about our nation’s future.
• Access to a thriving economy and the opportunity needed to sustain our economy. Equal access to opportunity is critical since we need some reasonable level of wealth to support our lives and investments in our environment and infrastructure…everyone should be able to invest in this ecosystem. This blog was founded on the idea of creating access to opportunity as a principle for Fulfilling the American Promise. Again, we may just have to wait until the older generations pass on the mantle before any real progress in this area can be made. The Founders of America and the Framers of our Constitution must be rolling over in their graves at the sclerosis we call Congress today.
• Better future world for our children through education and access to opportunity. This may seem to be a repeat, but it’s worth repeating so that the quest for balance in the ecosystem is a more natural and logical pursuit. This has also been a common refrain in this Blog. More than anything else we hope to achieve through FAPITCA, it is the hope that our older generations now “in charge” will stop blocking the future progress of America and invest in our future generations through affordable, quality education and the creation of new ways to ensure access to opportunity for young Americans. We must get past our biases about social standing, race, gender and other distractions to focus on making America a sustainable place for all who would contribute to our future. Anything less than that is a betrayal of what our Founders left us to preserve.

It’s simple as an idea, if not in execution: We must stop treating the ecosystem of our environment and infrastructure as a “political, partisan” issue…the sustainment of our world and the American way of life is just too important for that.

There is nothing ground breaking in arguing for a more integrated approach to preserve our way of life in America. Objective students of history might argue that American Indians, based on thousands of years of reflection, have shared similar philosophies for a long time: what we build must synergize with what nature gives us…Nature owes us nothing! In his work, Chuck had a recent contact with the Onondaga Nation in New York that only reinforces this conviction. We would be well served to consider their insights. (Perhaps we will write more on this in the near future.)

Next time, we move on to the fourth plank of FAPITCA, “Sustain and Advance American Culture, Science and Education,” leading off with a guest post by a professional educator and great friend. Stay tuned for our penultimate plank in the FAPTICA Platform!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 7/4/2014.

NOTES

[1] Morowitz, H., The Emergence of Everything, Oxford Press, New York, 2002. Harold’s explanation says a lot in a few words. While we don’t go into the coevolution of environment and infrastructure in this post, if our readers recall our earlier discussions of coevolution and emergence (here and here), we introduced the idea of different players in a system (federalists and anti-federalists in the examples we used) as coevolving with each other to produce emergent behaviors, again citing Harold’s work. This same principle is at play here, as the environment and infrastructure coevolve to produce the physical setting for our life in America. Harold’s insights about the components of an ecosystem are a close parallel as this physical setting is fundamental to life and the opportunity to maximize life in America.

[2] Jan Hauser is a pioneer of developing and applying science and technology to business, social and environmental problems. He was formerly a principal (technology) architect at Sun Microsystems and a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. Jan is also responsible for Sun Microsystems joining The Santa Fe Institute and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution on “Complexity and Gaia” a topic closely related to this post. He periodically spends time working on the difficult and complex problems of “Global Sustainability” (see www.janhauser.com).

[3] San Antonio to Austin is now becoming one continuous urban entity. There is woefully little natural scenery between those two cities on I-35, and no attention paid to human habitat.

The Platform, Part III: Transforming Consumption, Section B

In the last post, we wrote about the challenges that today’s Consumption-Production-Marketing (and Investment) model present to us in creating a sustainable American economy and access to opportunity. We’ve repeated that model in the graphic below to help us refer to the processes and interrelationships of the processes.

High-level model suggesting relationships of key components related to “Acquiring Stuff” within the American capitalist-based economy.

In this post, we want to consider how we might start to transform these processes, particularly the one that every American can control: Consumption. We want to talk a bit about assessing and exploiting the information that this model generates and how we might use Connected Age technologies to create more value and an eventual solution-based approach to smarter consumption and production. Most importantly, we want to tie this model to creating greater access to opportunity to Fulfill the American Promise.

Value

Note that none of the data native to or generated by the loop in the above model offers any informational insight about the quality or value of the stuff produced or consumed (either goods or services). In our current economy, the pertinent information has to do with the financial gain that can accrue to the Producer, Marketer or Investor; while it’s true that money can also be a source of information, this is not the kind information flow that best depicts the American economy.

Today, the Consumer, who ultimately funds the cycle and is the ultimate source of return on investment, has the least input into the process in terms of identifying value or generating information. The Consumer, who should be on a level playing field in terms of information flow, could provide much more useful information for the entire system if we better harness the connecting technologies we have available to us today. Big Data analysis won’t be nearly as useful to knowledge generation about our economy if all it’s concerned with is tracking how much stuff Consumers buy!

The Consumer, who should be creating both the demand and the means of identifying value, actually has only a small role in this loop, other than to acquire stuff. In the graphic above, note how the solid arrows point one way. Apart from tracking what stuff consumers buy, where is the information flow on behalf of the Consumer?

This loop affects how the American Promise might be fulfilled in a big way! New technologies and the resulting gadgets we can buy because of new inventions and innovations have subtly changed the way we look at opportunity and value in America. We’ve forgotten the interdependent responsibilities of buying and selling, the basis of a value-creating capitalistic culture. We’ve become ill-informed Consumers of goods and services in this great nation, and it’s past time we transformed that part of American life.

That’s right: both Producers and Consumers have a complementary responsibility to help drive the cycle of Production, Marketing and Consumption (and thus effectively influence Investment). The model today is Production and Marketing driving Consumption, whereas the market should really be Consumption driving Production (and Marketing as needed in the case of value creation that has not yet been adequately promoted). Investment will chase after either model as long as the information flows are there.

Consumers must influence Producers to make and deliver sustainable goods and services that account for long-term value, not the whims of today’s hottest craze. This was also a lesson that former City of Lewes, DE Mayor Jim Ford imparted in a recent post.

Solutions?

So, what do we do to bring about more value-driven Consumer behaviors? How do we make our stuff tell a better story about our lives as individuals, communities and as a nation committed to a long-term, sustainable economic future?

One way to begin Consumer behavior change is to start using the transformational power of our information technology to inform ourselves about what has happened to the United States in the last 40-50 years as far as politics and budgets are concerned. We need to overcome the political influence that some have sought to leverage in distorting the use of IT to separate us from each other. The gulf that edge-driven politics has created using IT today also inhibits bringing about a sustainable economy through generation of maximum opportunity to participate in that economy.

Fixing these kinds of problems requires individual responsibility and even an individual change in the way we Consume and Produce goods and services in the United States and abroad. Producing, selling and buying simply to make money can no longer be the primary rationale for the American Connected Age form of capitalism.

Production and Consumption requires more intelligence than that in a globally Connected Age. We need to harness IT innovation and change our political infrastructure to leverage these new opportunities to succeed as a people – we need to create better access to opportunity for all to participate in these new economies. Buying and selling and making money is inherent to capitalism and is great as long as Producers deliver real value and not just bottom lines. It’s even greater if everyone has an equal shot at participating in the opportunities we create as a nation.

Perhaps the most important responsibility we need to take on as Americans is to transform ourselves away from the compulsion to acquire stuff. We all need to contribute to reassigning value to what America Produces and Consumes through the “Stuff Acquisition” model. This is how we ensure Producers produce good and meaningful stuff that helps us sustain a good environment and infrastructure that America needs to prosper. Consumers can and must drive this!

We are a connected people in this country and we need to start using that connectivity to become The United States once again. Our nation can once again reflect concern for our future generations by transforming the way we buy and use stuff. We can live up to the important and relevant responsibilities we’ve taken upon ourselves to lead the rest of the world in supporting societies that embrace freer and more open forms of government and care for the environment in which we all live together.

If there’s one place innovative thinking could be introduced with the prospect of good return on investment, it’s in the development of an adaptive model of American capitalism that embraces smarter Production, Investment, Marketing and Consumption. We welcome the discussion of what that model looks like as we move forward with FAPITCA! The graphic above is the “as-is” model but what we need is the “to-be” model, as engineers call them. Please join in this critical discussion to help our nation design this model!

Our next post in this series on Building a Platform will look at protecting and securing our environment and infrastructure, two deeply interconnected challenges for America which have a significant role to play in how we use, consume and ultimately dispose of our stuff!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 6/12/2014.

The Platform – Part II: Ensuring Opportunity

A major premise of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age has been about opportunity in our nation. In fact, it’s the first point of definition of the American Promise in the Principles of FAPITCA: “our people have freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail).” Freedom is at the root of this definition, and both success and failure are possible outcomes. America’s brand of capitalism has never been promoted as a guarantee for “success.”

Source: Wikipedia

To make capitalism work at maximum efficiency, however, government and commerce need to interact with each other to ensure equal access to opportunity. The roots of this are acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson channeled the likes of John Locke and George Mason proclaiming in our Declaration our unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

VA Declaration of Rights Virginiamemory.com

Locke and Mason both wrote about “life, liberty and property” [1] or “…life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property…” [2] During the era of the authorship of these documents, Locke, Mason and Jefferson considered the pursuit of happiness to mean both personal “ownership” (freedom) and the property one could acquire.

We posited in our outline for the FAPITCA Platform that in effect our Declaration provides a foundation for equal access to “a baseline income that provides a foundation to support the ‘pursuit of happiness’ and that this baseline income should offset practical living expenses while making it possible to pay reasonable taxes and to loosen ties to government support.” Whether this is manifested in a higher minimum wage or a renewal of support for businesses and governments to work together to create more and better opportunities for our nation’s unemployed is a topic to be discussed in more depth than within this blog.

In any event, the creation and sustainment of access to opportunity to obtain ownership of property (personal and tangible) certainly appears to have been the intent of the Founding Fathers! [3]

A major issue we face in the political quagmire of Congress and all too many statehouses today is how to visualize ways to create opportunity and get our economy back on track…ways that don’t smack of “socialism” or “welfare state” politics. It is a tough problem, but it’s not as intractable as it seems.

America has been at these very challenging “inflection points” before and we found ways to overcome them. In fact, in Dead Men Ruling, C. Eugene Steuerle argues that America has faced at least two of these kinds of crises we face today: in the post-Revolution when America faced the choice of amending the Articles of Confederation and writing a new American Constitution; and “at the start of the Progressive Era, when the nation’s leaders began to add the governmental structures that proved necessary for an emerging world power.” [4]

In both instances, our elected leadership (granting that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were in fact elected) found ways to compromise and push forward in the interests of the nation and the American people. They saw the future of America and worked together to address the challenges they knew they would face: they visualized and compromised. This ability to visualize and compromise has not been successfully applied in our politically-driven world lately, even though we have some of the best Connected Age technologies we could ever hope for! We have the tools that our forefathers could only dream of and yet our Congress won’t use them…very sad.

One of Steuerle’s key points is that our previous era’s leaders found ways to work together and considered the challenges we faced in the post-Revolution and the start of the Progressive era as opportunities for the nation rather than threats to their political careers. “Because elected officials who acted would often pay the ultimate political price at election time, they were often reluctant to act, and delays in achieving fundamental reform imposed additional burdens on the public. Not surprisingly, the current turning point requires much the same focus and presents the same political threats and theatre to the elected officials of our time,” Steuerle notes.

But our leaders in the past found the courage to compromise and act to set America up for success rather than the failure upon which our political leaders of today seem bound to engage. Disregarding Locke, Mason and Jefferson, our current crop of edge-driven representatives in both houses want to choke back opportunity for fear of looking too liberal, too progressive and too inclusive of the younger generations. They seem to be more concerned about reelection in spite of the opportunities this current situation offers – their courage and leadership are lacking. Their current approach fails to recognize the successes we found in opportunities like Steuerle cites.

All that said, there are a few straightforward proposals in which we could start using our Connected Age technologies to visualize and even predict how well we could move forward in this time of great opportunity. We could start using the technologies described in past FAPITCA blog posts to model and observe the interactions of people, tools and policies to project a future environment for success that matches the outcomes about which Steuerle writes. More importantly, if we are objective enough, we could use these technologies to create compelling, unemotional arguments for experimentation and possible adoption. Good ideas only go so far; we also need action and effective execution of ideas and plans. That’s another good use for visualization!

Below are several proposals that we might consider as part of our interaction experiment. Using the modeling technologies we’ve discussed elsewhere (here and here), we could build integrative models that visually demonstrate how one proposal interacts with another, or even all of them. By integrative models, we mean modeling in a fashion that highlights synergy between the elements of the models that shows dependencies in context, not attempts to cherry-pick pet projects – we have to see how all of these things work together to avoid the “unintended consequences” of one change here and another change there. We need to show holistic impacts.

We don’t claim that any of the following are original to us, and they certainly haven’t been “scored by the Congressional Budget Office,” but they are a viable starting point. We present these proposals as the basis for generating good hypotheses and experimentation; call them thought experiments at this point.

Some of the initial things to model include:

– A proposal that we lift the cap on Social Security contribution limits from its present limit of $117,000, while lowering the contribution rate from 7% to 5%. This will be a “tax increase” for people whose earnings are in excess of about $163,800, but a “tax cut” for all other workers. [5] Indirect compensation like corporate benefits and perks could also be subject to this 5% contribution on the personal income side. Self-employed would pay a flat 10% and all would continue to contribute 1.45% to Medicare. We call this first proposal sparing a nickel for Social Security.

– Increasing the minimum wage to a pay scale that rewards work more than not working. Whether $10 an hour or $15 an hour is appropriate, these rates of pay can be easily modeled in an integrated fashion as we’ve been discussing. The bottom line is that the level of income must be sufficient to empower living in a safe home that supports raising a family and pumps more money back into the economy. The scale of payback to the economy from many more folks who could then live fuller lives that achieve the American Promise will be much greater than the money a few wealthy Americans would “pump” into the economy. Scale is on our side here and we must use it.

The first two proposals could actually be combined in legislation as part of what we might call the 2014 “Rewarding Work in America Act.” Using the modeling techniques we referenced above and just applying basic economic principles, it should be straightforward to show that these first two proposals will put more money in the pockets of lower and middle income working people, boost the economy and address several of the income inequality issues that appear to be worsening. We must reward work, which means we must get people back to work so that they can earn a living wage and create their own positive impact for the economy!

– Eliminating tax breaks that ONLY benefit the wealthy, such as eliminating all mortgage interest and tax deductions for second homes. It no longer makes sense to provide these kinds of tax breaks to people wealthy enough to own second homes—or a boat because it happens to have plumbing aboard. The “return on investment” for these kinds of deductions is ineffective in an economy that’s changed as much as ours has in the Connected Age. If we must add deductions that stimulate the economy, let’s find deductions that benefit everyone.

– Making a meaningful contribution to our young people by:

   — Eliminating ALL interest on student loans if paid back in a finite period (say five-ten years)

   — Exerting downward pressure on tuition by providing a cap of no more than $50,000 as eligible for the “interest-free” provision

   — Encouraging state universities through a variety of means to embrace a “two-and-a half” rule which provides that no state university can charge more than two-and-a-half times the cost per student to that of the per-student costs of the state’s high schools. (The actual number would be subject to the modeling recommendations, but we hold that it should not cost states that much more to educate freshman and sophomores than seniors in high school.)

   — Offering more extensive and inclusive forms of public service such as AmeriCorps, Peace Corps and similar organizations that can both pay grant money for education and create invaluable work experience. We want to restore the value of public service to young people and our nation; these programs should be inspired by the contributions of the various forms of the GI-Bill that have positively impacted those who served in our nation’s military

   — Convening a national panel to explore what we can do to reengineer our colleges to stimulate lower tuition costs and deliver greater education value (it is inexcusable for the cost of a college education to exceed inflation costs so severely.)

– Reducing corporate taxes and at the same time encouraging and enforcing paying taxes on corporate income rather than “protecting” that income in foreign banks or holdings. American earnings belong in America as much as possible, to be invested into our own economy and infrastructure and most importantly, our people. Hiring Americans, paying taxes and supporting American research and development are some of the most patriotic things our businesses can support. America needs our businesses and companies to be part of the solution that saves and preserves our economy and environment—government cannot and should not do that alone.

Could these types of collaborative and interactive solutions serve to increase both opportunity and the tax base (without really increasing the rate of taxes paid)? That’s a sound and testable hypothesis anyway. These types of actions can provide win-win for both parties and it can be demonstrated through low-cost experimentation. In spite of this fact, neither party will talk seriously about these proposals, or if they do they talk about one, they exclude the others. All of these things, and probably others, are part of a system of success: the American Promise.

The refusal to compromise and do right for America is withholding equal access to opportunity. Far too many in America do not have access to Fulfilling the American Promise because too many of our leaders, and our electorate apparently, can’t see the opportunities and visualize how to achieve them. It seems they prefer to be frozen into stalemates and inactivity because of the challenges…that’s not the America most of us grew up to appreciate!

Increased access to opportunity presents us a remarkable path forward towards Fulfilling the American Promise – that’s why this is our first platform plank in FAPITCA. Unfortunately, how America (and most of the West) approaches production, consumption and marketing contribute to the cloudy visuals we suffer these days. We’ll talk about that next time.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/29/2014.

NOTES:

[1] This was labeled as property in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, although it also referred to the concept of “estate”. See also Beeman, R., Our Lives, Our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor, Basic Books, NY, 2013, pp. 394-398.

[2] As written by George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights; this document was a significant source of inspiration to Jefferson and to many of the committee who drafted the Declaration of Independence.

[3] We do not address the national shame of slavery or dispossession of the American Indians from the lands on which they lived during this time, discussed very recently and in more detail in James Fallows’ blog post “The Civil War That Does Not End,” but the idea of “personal ownership” for all would surely have applied had America been founded in this day and age.

[4] Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue Our Future (Kindle Edition), The Century Foundation Press, Washington, DC, 2014.

[5] Employers would also save by paying a matching 5% instead of the current 7%, although their contribution could be phased out at some point, say $175,000 or $200,000, based on the findings of the models.

Building a Platform, Part I

While we’ve been working on the essay, “Renewing American Vigor: Transforming Consumption in Public and Private Life,” it’s become apparent to us that we needed to permeate the essay with an ecological perspective. This perspective should demonstrate the holistic nature of good governance, similar to the way our Constitution does. It should also set up a dialogue about design and function of government in the Connected Age.

In other words, to approach Center-driven government and move away from the edges, we need a tool from today’s “political” campaign, in a manner of speaking. To compete in the current culture, we need a “platform,” as the political parties call them, that provides a foundation and a framework that empowers Americans to Fulfill the American Promise in the Connected Age. This platform should be simple, interconnected like an ecology, and easy to implement through the existing political process.

Our colleagues working on A National Strategic Narrative have a “storyline” to integrate their proposals for America…so we’ll borrow and adapt that approach to FAPITCA. This is evolution, not revolution. The platform will help us grow our narrative.

Today’s post lays out five initial categories or “planks” that would make up a platform on which the Center can design and build our nation’s future. The platform and its planks do not try to reach out to any particular political constituency, but rather seek to offer a workable, “good enough” approach to Fulfill the American Promise. Some of the planks may better appeal to conservative ideals while some may seem to lean more toward progressive principles. To be sure, we don’t propose this platform as our own approach to a “political movement” but rather to inform the evolution of existing platforms.

After all, America has room for more than one perspective; in fact, it requires more than one perspective to remain a diverse and resilient home for freedom, security and prosperity.

This hopefully impartial, neutral bias is by design since we generally view FAPITCA to support and balance socially progressive thinking with fiscally conservative restraint. We propose this balanced state all while positioning America to be a leader and inspiration to the rest of the world. We look to move forward as a nation while minimizing and mitigating the financial burdens we face today.

The platform builds on a couple of main themes: 1), Individuals at all levels have roles and Governments at all levels have roles: America can’t succeed otherwise; and 2), government, business and academia must all work together to open up and build opportunity for all Americans, individually and collectively. Underlying all of this is the fact that our Constitution guarantees to our citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and other important rights critical to the function of our freedoms – these must be preserved. All of this is fundamental to the platform.

In introductory form, the following broad categories compose our platform. These five categories are the planks upon which we’ll build in future posts, consistent with the Principles of FAPITCA. All of these planks are active in the American political environment at some level of maturity today, although some have not been referenced in the halls of Congress for a while.

1. Ensure Equal Access to Opportunity: The United States is a capitalist-based economy that is supported by democratically-elected servants of the electorate to oversee fair and open competition for access to opportunity and resources to succeed. This does not imply a guarantee of success in competition, but does guarantee all Americans will have access to the same basic entry points for fair and open competition at the beginning. This must include equal access to a baseline income that provides a foundation to support the “pursuit of happiness” as our Declaration of Independence proclaims. This baseline income should offset practical living expenses while making it possible to pay reasonable taxes and to loosen ties to government support. Individuals must all have a level playing field to enter, whether they take advantage of that playing field or not. This is the first definition of the American Promise: “our people have freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail).”
2. Transform Production and Consumption: We must not leave our children the tab for all that we’ve produced, consumed and wasted. Covered in more detail in the aforementioned essay, this includes addressing how we value material and intellectual goods and services, how we produce and market these goods and services and how we consume and dispose of them. It also includes developing an understanding of the relationship between “values-based” production, marketing and consumption in the light of changing demographics and resource bases. This emphasis on the transformation of production and consumption is also at the heart of any new or modified “social contract” between America and its citizens. This plank addresses one of the Principles of FAPITCA: We are borrowing this land, culture and governance system from our progeny; what we pay back to them reflects on our legacy and lays the foundation for their legacy.
3. Protect and Secure our Environment and Infrastructure: America is a rich ecosystem of diverse, interacting parts. Humans are the stewards of this ecosystem although all too often we fail to exercise that responsibility. Two of the most important interacting parts of our ecosystem are our environment, provided by nature, and our national infrastructure, designed and built by all of us: both need care and foresight to continue to nurture and serve Americans. Both must coevolve with each other in ways that protect their distinctive contributions to America so that they help provide maximum security to our way of life and economy. By security, in addition to national defense, we also mean “freedom from anxiety” in the words of our colleague Captain Wayne Porter of the National Strategic Narrative project. Equally important, we must protect and secure our environment and infrastructure for our posterity as our Constitution’s Preamble demands in order “to promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty…”
4. Sustain and Advance American Culture, Science and Education: Three of the richest interacting components of America that offer the deepest impact upon our future way of life are our amazingly diverse culture, our contributions to science and our educational systems. Clearly, these distinct but highly interconnected areas go through ups and downs in terms of local, national and global contributions, but they are at the center of all that makes America so great. These three areas deserve constant attention and investment to sustain our future as a nation. Both our citizens and our governments at all levels must work together to build these elements on behalf of America and indeed the world. This is our “seed corn” and must be protected for all future generations.
5. Restore Recognition for Public Service: America is indeed a capitalist-based economy, but it thrives because for the most part, American governance works and acts effectively as a “silent-partner” to commerce and industry. After all, who else protects intellectual property, maintains law and order, provides national security, builds and maintains our infrastructure and educates future leaders and workers? Government and other forms of public service are critical components of this partnership. We must restore and both improve and streamline the services governments at all levels perform on behalf of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. Most importantly, we must restore the image of government and public service as desirable training grounds and potential career pursuits. We should also consider ways to incorporate public service as a supporting and sustaining entry point into any career pursuit regardless of sector; we should find ways to use this initial service as an investment opportunity for education and employment training, much like the GI Bill did for many veterans of military service. Finding success in restoring the image of public service may be one of the best ways to assist our younger generations in both the near- and long-term as they search for new careers and find themselves as Americans. Those that do choose public service careers must understand and feel good about themselves in their service and their contributions to building and sustaining the American Promise.

We’ll explore more about each of these planks in future posts, seeking to refine them into actionable objectives that could inform future policy-making and elections in our nation. Until next time…

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/23/2014.

 

 

“…and our Posterity…”

Courtesy Ourdocuments.gov.

It’s encouraging to note that when we do a web search for those three little words “and our Posterity” most of the first page results point to the Preamble of the United States Constitution. That preamble, which many of us had to learn in elementary school, is just 52 words long but it shouts to the world so much about what America was and still is, for the most part. [1] The preamble told the world that America looked to the future and was concerned about the welfare of our coming generations.

Even though the framers of our Constitution were not soothsayers, nor perhaps even futurists the way we define that term today, they did have a great deal of concern about the prospects for our nation to succeed beyond the Revolution. Much of the friction the framers experienced in Philadelphia in 1787 had to do with balancing the great need to address contemporary shortcomings with the Articles of Confederation against how the nation would emerge as a collective of diverse state interests and governments. But even the original drafts of the Constitution that included a preamble overcame that friction and incorporated the term “…our Posterity.” [2] Our Constitution was not a short-sighted document. [3]

One thing the framers fully agreed on was how important their decisions and actions would be to future generations. This was not a stated interest of the Articles of Confederation as ratified in 1777, so we could surmise that overcoming Great Britain and prevailing in the Revolutionary War gave the framers deeper insight into the potential that transformed the “united states” of the Articles to the “United States” of our Constitution. In the intervening years, our framers had grown and become more aware of the Promise of America. That doesn’t seem so much the case today in our Congress.

Today, the “posterity” cohort is composed primarily of the Millennial generation about whom we’ve recently written. [4] In the blogosphere, there are signs that point to this new generation of Americans appreciating the foresight of the framers. In part this is based on the ways in which Millennials have exploited the technologies of the Connected Age. The blog posts that Millennials publish on the web seem increasingly open to a future with which we Boomers are uncomfortable. Millennials are showing early, positive signs of overcoming the Boomer passion for control and accumulation of “stuff” that haunts the production and consumption practices that drive America today.

In spite of our current political system’s preoccupation with endless election cycles and relentless pursuit and accumulation of massive campaign chests, Millennials seem to be getting on with the business of living in the real world of adaptation, flexibility and cooperation. They seem to relish finding and sustaining interdependent relationships that challenge biases and opinions held by the “ruling” generation of Boomers. These biases and opinions have unfortunately informed the growth of edge-driven politics and policies that jeopardize the world “our Posterity” must inhabit when we Boomers are “done” with it.

Last time, we wrote about how to tackle some of these important issues at the polls, but elections are subject to shortened perspectives and timeframes. We need long-term, strategic perspectives and solutions. Some of the best and most objective sets of solutions we’ve seen are embodied in a document about which we’ve also recently written: A National Strategic Narrative.

The authors of the National Strategic Narrative describe what they call a “Strategic Ecology” that could “represent opportunities to reestablish and leverage credible influence, converging interests, and interdependencies that can transform despair into hope.” Millennials are already establishing those interdependencies and from their writings on the web, are in fact transforming “despair into hope.” This is all despite the fact that the vast majority of the cohort of Boomer politicians decline to help Millennials in terms of affordable education and health care, better employment opportunities and seem ready to leave them a crumbling infrastructure.

Millennial objectivity almost seems more like the America in which we grew up as young Boomers in the 50s and 60s…perhaps it offers a better prospect about the future than we suspect. Perhaps the framers would have smiled about this new generation more than they would the Boomers!

Getting back to stuff, consumption and production, we’ll soon publish on the FAPITCA website an essay that has been four years in the making entitled “Renewing American Vigor: Transforming Consumption in Public and Private Life.” We started this work in 2010 when it became apparent that America was still struggling to recover from the “Great Recession” but we didn’t feel we had a proper forum in which to publish it. FAPITCA seems to be the right place now that we have had the website up and running for almost four months and have had a chance to think about this topic and its relationship to Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, particularly concerning Millennials.

The website The Story of Stuff offers a compelling look at how America (and indeed most of the world) got into a vicious cycle of building for obsolescence rather than sustainability, and offers ways to think about completely “changing the game” of production and consumption. Introductory videos featuring The Story of Stuff Founder and President Annie Leonard are in the playlist below:

Given our careers of diverse domestic and overseas service, both Carl and Chuck appreciate what The Story of Stuff contributes to this important conversation: we both have a lot of stuff from a great many moves and have lived in countries where stuff wasn’t nearly as important! [5] Look for the essay in coming weeks.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/15/2014.

NOTES:

[1] Our preamble reads “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Source: 100 Milestone Documents: The Constitution of the United States of America, www.ourdocuments.gov. NOTE: It was also a bit curious that “And Our Posterity” is the name of a blog about “Observations on energy, geopolitics, and the federal budget,” which seemed to focus mostly on the “energy” part of the title, but since it’s not readily apparent if there are political implications to this blog, we’ll just leave it in the category of “that’s another story.”

[2] Beeman, Richard, Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, Random House, NY, 2009.

[3] Consider the first of committee chair Edmund Randolph’s first two principles for the Committee of Detail in drafting the Constitution: “to insert essential principle only, lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated by time and events…” (italics added by the editors for emphasis on the framers’ future perspectives. Quoted from Beeman, Plain Honest Men.

[4] We appreciate that the editors of The Generation Me reposted this piece on TGM Millennials, a prolific and attractive website “created to serve as a filter for all the political stories out there with a progressive point of view approach.” While FAPITCA avoids taking positions for or against specific political viewpoints, we do take a position on the future of America, “our Posterity,” and recognize The Generation Me as a web-based leader in this field.

[5] Our essay is also informed by an interesting book recently published by Betty and Mike Sproule called The Stuff Cure. Betty, the administrator and an advisor to the National Strategic Narrative website, provides a nice blend of philosophical and practical insights about living with less “stuff.”

The Promise of the Millennials

When we debated our definition of the American Promise, “freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail),” we discussed at length how we could consistently apply this characterization of the American Promise to young Americans. We wanted to speak to all Americans about how Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age is so important in such a special way to our progeny, the group we call Millennials.

There are a lot of blogs by and for Millennials; there are too many to even begin listing here. Ease and freedom of expression of a wide variety of perspectives has been one of the hallmarks of the Connected Age for people of every generation, but particularly the Millennials. These Millennial perspectives can form a vast resource of insight and inspiration while setting the stage for what America becomes…if we start realizing it and nurturing this emerging body of work now.

In The Next America, Paul Taylor of The Pew Research Center reports that the Millennial Generation began in 1981 and that the cut-off year has not yet been determined. [i] Whatever the actual dates may be, the Millennials are graduating from school and taking their place in junior leadership positions (when they are available) or other employment opportunities (when they are available). By Taylor’s calculations, this means at least 34% of the American population can be considered part of the Millennial cohort, using 2012 US Census data.

This also means that 34% of the US population that will be responsible for the future of America and running for elected office across the country is now starting to take its place on the American scene.

Boomers and Generation X cohorts [ii] have been responsible to prepare America for this up and coming generation. In light of the American Promise theme, it’s worth doing an inventory of what we Boomers and Gen X’ers are accomplishing on behalf of the Millennials, and indeed on behalf of the future of America. What have our earlier generations done to set the tone for growth and development of our budding leaders?

In terms of leadership, we’ve shown the Millennials the “productivity” of a starkly, edge-driven Congress and other federal, state and locally elected officials. We’ve demonstrated to our young people how to use politics to rig election district boundaries, solicit enormous sums of politically-motivated monies, fight against protecting our environment and exploit an all-too-willing media to further divide our nation. Pretty impressive examples, the edges might claim.

The senior generations have also overseen the significant escalation of education and healthcare costs while enabling the rise of wealth for a select few who have little regard for the principles of the American Promise. We’ve shown how our young people can “benefit” more by being investment bankers and stock brokers than becoming scientists, civil servants and educators. Again, this is another impressive list of accomplishments that can serve as examples on which to build the America of the next generation and beyond…well, no, not really. What in the world are we thinking?

From time-to-time, we’ll visit a very fine piece of work accomplished by Captain Wayne Porter, USN and Colonel Mark (Puck) Mykleby, USMC (ret) called “A National Strategic Narrative.” We’ll look at this document in increasing detail as we unroll the relationship of the Millennials to the future of America. But for now we want to emphasize the Narrative’s points about the youth of America and what they can do for all of us if we empower them. In speaking about young Americans, Wayne and Puck wrote:

By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans – the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow – we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth. [iii]

This is more than parents doing the right thing and setting good examples for our children…this is about investing in the children of all Americans to build the future of our nation. As Wayne and Puck note, these investments build on the most important infrastructure component we could possibly construct: our young people and the intellectual capital they will need to keep America going.

By cooperating even as a politically-driven body, our senior generations now in power can set the tone and framework starting today. By recognizing and being accountable for what we’ve done to our future generations, the rest of us can start electing responsible people who care more about America and our young people than themselves…who care more about our future than measuring a campaign coffer. Through the electoral process and a responsible political system, we can “sand” the edges from divisive office-holders and start building a system that rewards “competitive cooperation” and collaboration rather than simply “win-at-all-costs” politics.

The Millennials we talk to and read about want to step up and take their place, just like we did when we were their age. They’re not lazy and they’re not unmotivated…they are Americans who love their country but have to overcome college debt, healthcare costs and meager job prospects. Worst of all, they have to overcome less access to opportunity than many of our older generations faced.

Let’s start fixing that now, Boomers and Gen Y’ers…let’s cooperate and try harder to create access to opportunity for our young people – they have great Promise. Let’s empower all Americans to Fulfill the American Promise in the Connected Age.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/8/2014.

 

[i] A claim in dispute in some circles based on the beginning of the so-called “Generation Z” in the mid-2000s.

[ii] 1946-1964 and 1965-1980, respectively, according to Taylor in The Next America.

[iii] Quoted from the section “Our Three Investment Priorities” from A National Strategic Narrative.

A Narrative for our Nation and our Promise

In 2010, I had the privilege of participating in the first of two Highlands Forum meetings I attended that year. This first meeting was in Newport, RI, and hosted a small group of remarkable thinkers and professionals from diverse industry, academic and government organizations. You won’t find much about the Highlands Forum from the official website, but there is a publically accessible site that talks about its background and purpose when it was first established.[1]

One of the government folks I met in Newport was Captain Wayne Porter, United States Navy. At the time, Wayne was serving as a personal advisor to Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I had several intimate chats with Wayne, including a marvelous breakfast in which we shared our thoughts about the effects of cyberspace and emergence on the nation and the rest of the world. During breakfast, Wayne shared with me some of the initial thoughts he and his office mate, Colonel Mark “Puck” Mykleby, United States Marine Corps, were working on in a paper they were crafting for the Chairman.

The title of the paper Wayne and Puck created was illuminating. Wayne called it “A National Strategic Narrative.” He explained that they decided to call it a narrative rather than a “strategy” because the nation had plenty of strategy documents (e.g., National Security Strategy, National Military Strategy, and a host of others). What America really needed, Wayne said, was a narrative (a coherent story) that served to remind us of who we were and how we should think about going forward in the future as a “whole of nation” (or government) to maintain the essence of what made America great.

Wayne’s ideas really resonated with me at the time and thanks to a new project to which I’ve been invited to participate, it’s more meaningful than ever. Add to that the work in which Chuck and I collaborate with Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, and the narrative becomes greatly relevant and compelling.

The “final” version of A National Strategic Narrative is available on the web, along with other supporting information about the project, but I’m reserving the remainder of this post to describe the priorities of the effort and compare it to some of the objectives of FAPITCA as we’ve presented them in this blog.

Wayne and Puck, originally writing under the pseudonym of “Mr. Y” (in memory of George Kennan),[2] assert that their foundation is “built upon the premise that we must sustain our enduring national interests – prosperity and security – within a ‘strategic ecosystem,’ at home and abroad….” This notion of a strategic ecosystem is also compelling and forms the basis of the remaining narrative. An ecosystem, as we’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, is energized by coevolution and emergence, and is another appealing way of expressing FAPITCA.

The Narrative proposes three “Investment Priorities” that align with FAPITCA. The first priority is “intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth.” This priority is perfectly matched to the basis for achieving the American Promise: “freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail).”[3] Investing in the social “infrastructure” of America empowers greater access to opportunity.

The second priority of the Narrative is “ensuring the nation’s sustainable security – on our own soil and wherever Americans and their interests take them.” According to Wayne and Puck, this requires us to think about American “power” as more than just defense and security, although these are vitally important areas. We should also think about America as a source of inspiration to our nation and the world for “domestic and foreign trade, agriculture and energy, science and technology, immigration and education, public health and crisis response….” This enables us to also observe national security through the lenses of our economy, the environment, our willingness to help other people and nations, and indeed our social fabric. This perspective can also link the Center of America to the rest of our world through Connected Age technologies.[4]

Finally, the third priority of the Narrative is to “develop a plan for the sustainable access to, and cultivation and use of the natural resources we need for our continued wellbeing, prosperity and economic growth in the world marketplace.” This priority has a clear connection to the second priority and speaks to sustaining a global ecosystem of natural resources that supports not only America but the whole world. In this way, America reemphasizes its role as a truly exceptional nation both in terms of leadership and stewardship of human and natural resources. This is consistent with one of FAPITCA’s key principles: “We are borrowing this land, culture and governance system from our progeny; what we pay back to them reflects on our legacy and lays the foundation for their legacy.”[5]

There’s quite a bit more to A National Strategic Narrative that deserves mention in this blog, and we’ll revisit it from time-to-time. Having the privilege of chatting with Wayne and Puck in years past makes this Narrative more personally meaningful as Chuck and I undertake our work with FAPITCA. I’m glad I recently rediscovered it and have a chance to cite it as an additional source for our effort. If the FAPTICA project makes sense to you, please read the National Strategic Narrative and understand where it could take us in Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age.

Originally posted by Carl Hunt, 4/24/2014.

 

[1] The Highlands Forum is a remarkable effort that has informed the development of US strategy, research and development for over a decade, and is superbly managed by Dick O’Neill, Captain, US Navy (ret.). Some of the presentations at Highlands Forum meetings are also available on the public website.

[2] As a National War College alumnus, I appreciate the nod to George Kennan, who was a professor at NWC in the mid-1940s when he was forming thought about maintaining a balance of power with the Soviet Union, a paper called “The Sources of Soviet Power” which he authored in Foreign Affairs in July 1947, under the pseudonym of Mr. X.

[3] As quoted from the Principles of FAPITCA.

[4] As proposed in the FAPITCA Principles.

[5] As articulated in the FAPITCA Principles.

Millennial Perspectives

Greetings, readers. I would like to preface this blog post with a little bit of info about myself, because I really want you to understand where I’m coming from. I’m 23 years old, grew up in a northern Virginia suburb, and have recently graduated from a four-year degree program at a state university.

According to “traditionally” established titles, I am a Millennial, a term which seems not only to be growing in popularity among sociologists, but also looked on with some skepticism by parts of the older generations. I suggested the change of appearance of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, and also recommended that my father, Carl, broaden the spectrum of topics discussed in the blog. This widened perspective, in theory, would be more appealing to multiple demographics, and would bring the Millennial generation into play.

Most of us aren’t quite ready to enter the political arena with an established agenda for change just yet, but many of us are and have been formulating powerful opinions based on the (inter)national events of the past two presidential terms. Our best hope, in our beginning quest for a more stable political environment, is to seek a deeper understanding of current political machinations. With this information, we will know what to avoid, and where to best focus our efforts for quick, efficient, and beneficial political evolution. I would like to thank my dad for provoking my interest in this project, and am excited to be able to contribute to the blogging effort.

On this initial topic of Millennials, I have read some of the latest work from the Pew Research Center (Millennials in Adulthood). I don’t know that I would agree verbatim with what they found in the study, but they got the gist of it. I feel as though I am politically and spiritually independent, and have never really experienced a strong urge to conduct myself otherwise. I would prefer not to delve into the facets of my spiritual and political beliefs at this time, but will contend that they do play a large role in charting the course of my continued adult development.

But I digress. The biggest nit I have to pick with the “Boomer” generation can be summed up in a paraphrase of the old adage: “You talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” One of the older generations’ primary concerns, based upon observed frequency of discussion, would seem to be the preservation of an America that is “at least as good as theirs was.” What I read from Congress and state legislators, however, paints a somewhat different picture. Far from being worth a thousand words, this picture is quite the opposite; when one side presents an idea about looking out for the interests of the future generations, the other side fires back, using the ever-penetrating bullets that are “cost”, “time” and “difficulties”.

If there is nothing else that the human race has collectively established, we can agree that life is difficult. It most likely always will be, and with that understanding, I’d like to take this chance to posit that change requires work, and work is often difficult. This should not be a point of contention…more of a universal constant.

Most of our perceived political leaders, scaling from community to nation, have developed a nasty propensity to argue, often to the point of producing a “product” no sane individual would clear for consumer use. I’d give the average legislative product these days a rating of 2 out of 5 stars. Frequently, the same cannot be said for our foreign policies and initiatives, begging the question of whether Congress is more interested in saving the rest of the world before America. That seems woefully unproductive, and is most certainly not conducive to the improvement of domestic conditions in any venue.

My generation, and even the one before it (Generation Y), is setting the stage for what America will be when our kids start leading the nation. With respect to current parties in power, I hope on behalf of our future leaders that our erstwhile gang can pull themselves together in the present, and courteously accommodate the transition to the next generation of movers and shakers. With your help, eventually from the sidelines, we can begin to rebuild the concept of the American Dream, and fulfill the American Promise of equal access to opportunity set forth in this blog.

Your intentions were good, Boomers, and you don’t seem to be leaving us with a completely defective product. We don’t need continued reinforcement for bad habits though, like political infighting and attempts to govern from the edges instead of the center (where our forefathers started in the late 1700s). As many of you are acutely aware, it takes a lot longer to break a bad habit than to form a good one. So you should probably get on that.

I have plenty of faith that we, as a country, can get back on track. Avoiding unnecessary wars is a good place to start, and paying a little more (read: a lot more) attention to the environment wouldn’t hurt, either…we have to live here after you’re gone. The Pew Report said that overall, Millennials are “Upbeat about the Nation’s Future”; we need your help to make sure we stay that way.

In closing, we Millennials are well aware that you have to leave us something to work with. So please consider that, while you’re arguing about politics and voting to repeal laws of the land that have already been adjudicated in the highest courts. And to the older voters who keep electing these people who represent the extreme edges of politics: please stop electing these people who represent the extreme edges of politics! They can’t distinguish between good and bad government.

America needs a responsible political system to be the best we can be; the Founders knew that, and that’s why they created a government intended to adapt and evolve with the adapting and evolving American people, from the Center out. Congress, please take some time to familiarize yourselves with an African tradition known as the Sankofa Process. Think of it as the homework you’ve been neglecting to do since you got elected. You don’t have to look back before you move forward, but avoiding this process can definitely compromise the end result.

Josh out.

Originally posted by Joshua Hunt, 14 March 2014.