2010 – Jonathan Rowe

The Missing Sector

For more than two hundred years, mainstream thinking has regarded the market as the primary source of material “progress.” And indeed, to a large extent that’s been true. But yesterday is not forever. Today the market is approaching a point of diminishing returns – systemic diminishing returns. It is yielding less well-being per unit of output by practically any measure, and more problems instead: obesity instead of good health, congestion instead of mobility , time deficits instead of leisure, depression and stress instead of a sense of well-being, social fracture rather than cohesion, environmental degradation rather than improvement.

In place of wealth, the economic machinery increasingly turns out what John Ruskin, the 19th Century essayist on art and economics, called “illth,” which is accumulation that fosters ill results rather than towards weal, or well-being.This is not just a matter of distribution, which is the traditional concern of the Left. Inequitable distribution is a major problem, to be sure, and becoming more so. But to redistribute illth is not necessarily to do anyone a great favor.

Fellow Conservatives

Out here on the edge of the continent, where the force fields of respectability and convention run thin, we like to think of ourselves as progressive, in an undogmatic way. But really we are conservative, when you get down to it. We are alert constantly to the capacity for evil in human nature, especially in the form of greed, and greed’s designs upon the land. We are skeptical of the version of progress that the corporate market pushes at us. We embrace the wisdom of the past, especially as embodied in the natives of this place.

Russell Kirk, the intellectual progenitor of modern conservative thought, marked these as central tendencies of what he called the “conservative mind.” (Kirk would not be pleased by what claims that banner today, but that’s another matter.) We revere the land and take a dim view of change, and if those are not conservative inclinations, then nothing is.

Do You Have to Buy?

You came for the weekend and you fell for the place. Soon you were looking at real estate, and getting pretty intense. It wasn’t enough to be in this stunning … More

Why It Matters Who Owns Local Businesses

Does it matter who owns our local businesses? According to the economics texts the answer is “No.” The only question is “consumer value” which is to say, how much we get for our money. We are one-dimensional creatures; our psyches are essentially those of wall-eyed bass with better math skills.

So ownership is not relevant. Business is essentially none of our business. So long as Wal-Mart offers the cheapest prices, we should welcome it to town. Ditto Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, and Dominos Pizza. They provide the most stuff for the least price (Starbucks excluded there) so what’s our beef?

Shoreline Education on the Brink

To: Meredith Siebe and Sandy Kaplan, Co-Presidents, Shoreline Education Association From: Jonathan Rowe, Point Reyes Station Date: May 13, 2010 Now the ball is in your court. The jobs of … More

Meet Us at the Zocalo

We humans like to gather, and to be around other people in informal and unstructured settings. For time out of memory, places in which to do so were built into daily life. Medieval cities had squares outside of churches, which is where markets first began. Boston and other New England towns began with commons. Towns in Mexico have zocalos, or central plazas where people congregate and socialize.

At least one couple here in Point Reyes Station, California, met at a zocalo in their home town. Another local couple was married in the Boston Common. These spaces all are versions of the same thing: settings in which people can be in the presence of others, even if just to sit and read, or play dominoes or chess, or watch the world go by. The instinct to do so runs deep. The office coffee machine. The street corner outside a bodega. Front stoops in the city or the mango tree in my wife’s village in the Philippines — the gnarly roots provide a place to sit and the leaves offer protection from the brutal sun.

West Marin School: A Success Story Threatened

The West Marin School doesn’t have an easy assignment. Roughly half the students are Latino; and many of those are from homes in which little or no English is spoken. … More

A Prairie Populist Leaves the Senate

It’s going to take a while to get used to the thought that the “Senator” part of Senator Byron Dorgan soon will be in the past tense. For most of my adult life, Byron has been an elected official of exceptional conviction and resolve. He also has been an employer and friend of mine. Name a fight that pitted global corporations and entrenched financial interest against the little guy in the U.S. economy, and Byron probably has been there. He has also sought to address global hunger and bring some sanity to foreign affairs.

Byron’s retirement, which he announced recently, isn’t just a loss for the Senate. It marks the waning of a political outlook that took shape in the farm states more than a century ago and that has given spine to the nation’s politics for decades. Byron is probably best known today for opposing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Depression had held the speculative urges of the banking industry in check. In a prescient speech on the Senate floor in 1999, he warned that Congress would “look back in ten years time and say we should not have done this.” He called it practically to the year. (Only seven other senators voted along with him.)

Obama Needs Our Help

I think it was the late Paul Sweezy who said that you could make Leon Trotsky the CEO of Exxon and the company wouldn’t change much. The behavior of that company, as with any corporation, is built into its DNA, which is encoded for the unrelenting pursuit of gain. A CEO can make changes at the edges. But Exxon still will be Exxon, for pretty much the same reason that a goat isn’t going to fly.

I’ve been thinking about Sweezy’s comment in light of the recent complaining about Obama on the Left. It’s gotten pretty intense, and it’s what the Left in America does best—feel victimized and disaffected. I understand the disappointment. I have been especially dismayed at Obama’s inability to do—and in fact apparent disinterest in doing—the thing I thought he’d do best, which is define the debate. On medical insurance, for example, he’s given his big speeches and then let his opponents drive the issue through the daily news cycle. As a result, advocates of health insurance reform have been on the defensive throughout, which is quite an achievement considering the insurance mess that exists today.