POCKET GOFER 4
Download the Pocket Gofer 4 Here
ON THE BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO GETTING THINGS DONE
- WHY TOP-DOWN DOESN’T WORK
- THE BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO PROBLEMS
- WORKING TOGETHER TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT
- BOTTOM-UP IS DEMOCRACY
- CONCLUSION
Former soldier George Washington in his farewell address as president: “But let there be no change by usurpation (by force); for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Washington knew that government is force, and the top-down variety has the potential to destroy citizens’ freedoms.
We have been wondering why vast government projects financed by us taxpayers so often bring half-vast or worse results when carried out. We put this one in our pipe and puffed on it for a while. Then the urge to write something hit us.
Groups of ordinary folks often located far from Washington are presumed to benefit as our money comes at them. The distance may be geographical, cultural, economic or some combination.
They may be similar to us. One factor that is consistent throughout is that such folks are far different from the insiders in Washington who dream up the projects.
Another consistency among these people lies in the desire of government to help them. Or so it seems to the concerned but not well-informed taxpayer.
This desire to help people may be sincere or it may not. Either way, the government hires experts to analyze problems and generate plans to solve them. Resources then take to the field.
Why does the record show mixed results at best? This pocket gofer will investigate why so little gets done on the ground in spite of great gobs of bucks out there and presumably working.
We want to learn why social problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them, no matter how much. (Actually, FDR taught our recent ancestors this valuable lesson. But it did not take, possibly because World War II intervened.
Moreover, we taxpayers want to know why the problems in our inner cities are worse now than they were 60 years ago. In the time since then our government has dumped more than $6 trillion of our tax dollars into these areas. We strongly suspect that we are not getting our money’s worth.
WHY TOP-DOWN DOESN’T WORK
Two of the major parts of government include politicians and bureaucrats. The first breed must stand for re-election from time to time, and hence must in theory accept the risk of being turned out of office if his/her opponent wins.
THE POLITICIAN: He/she has a posh life in Washington. Therefore this risk motivates him to take whatever actions he can to minimize it come re-election time. We will see that he does not allow principles as stated in the Constitution to get in his way.
Randy Barnett wrote a book called Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. “For some political agendas to advance, the heart of the Constitution must be excised and so it has been, clause by inconvenient clause, until the Constitution has been distorted and lost.”
Barnett argued that the Constitution has over decades been politicized. We think practically everything and every idea in Washington has been fouled by politics as career politicians grow wealthy on the taxpayers’ dime.
As human beings we feel sympathy for those poor souls in the low-income parts of our cities, and also for the rural poor. Because the city poor are more concentrated than in the country the news media, with offices in the cities, find it more convenient to report on urban drug use, violent crimes, and other bad stuff.
This means urban social programs have more impact on voters, so most of our politicians’ efforts are directed there. In this way they can point to high-profile projects, dump in pots of money, and “buy” lots of concerned people’s votes (with their own money).
This gimmick works. Buying votes, that is. Whether the project works is quite another matter, often of little concern to a triumphantly re-elected politician. The reality is that he/she doesn’t want us to know, and the news media cooperate in keeping information about half-vast results from the public. (Pocket Gofer 5 elaborates.)
Without the support of the people no government can go on indefinitely. By taking its citizens’ money by force and deceiving them regarding what their money has accomplished that kind of government only hastens the day when it goes under.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent (our emphasis) of the governed, —.”
We get tired of government officials telling us that they are working hard at doing what we want done, and that we have given our consent to their actions through our responses to polls. The above quote comes to us from the Declaration of Independence. We contrasted these statements of principle with what we’re getting from government today, and did some thinking.
Are we really giving our consent to what government is (presumably) doing for us? We have identified types or stages of consent as follows: implicit consent, explicit consent, informed consent, and active participation in our government.
Implicit roughly means assumed; we don’t even say “yes.” Explicit hangs it right out there for all to see: “okay.”
Informed consent means we have made an effort to learn both sides of an issue so we could form an accurate opinion before deciding. Participation is getting involved in discussions and debates, influencing others on the issue, forming a conclusion, and notifying the responsible public official what we want done.
So the questions arise: What type of consent are politicians seeking and getting from us? What type should they be seeking?
What type did they seek on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and terror? It must have been implicit, as we don’t recall being asked. But good grief, friends, if we citizens will be forced to fight, kill, and die in them and also pay for these wars, shouldn’t we have something to say about declaring them? In ca. 1790 Thomas Paine said that were this citizen freedom available: “—– we should hear but little more about wars.”
We strongly suspect that poll questions are rigged to get desired responses from us. The person asking never wants to get involved in a discussion. Rather, just answer the question, please, and we’ll move on to the next one.
There is evidence that politicians often ignore the results of polls. This suggests that they have them done only to lead us to believe they are seeking our consent.
Furthermore, there is evidence that questions are often psychologically rigged to generate responses that support what politicians have previously decided to do. Friends, even if hard to prove, this is outright deception. See PG19.
Therefore our conclusion is that public officials are not even operating on a basis of implicit consent; rather, it is what they want us to want. And Pocket Gofer 3 showed us that members of the elite class in Washington are very different from us, and want different things.
The kicker here is that few of us reach for informed consent, and still fewer extend themselves to active participation. (It’s not all on us. There are reasons for this state of affairs. We explore them in several pocket gofers.)
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING: Because we are discussing human nature, we could begin almost anywhere. We choose to begin with Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759.
“Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than any other person.” Now we can see why politicians twist our wants toward what they want us to want. We should not let them do this.
The truth is we are “fitter and abler” to take care of ourselves than is anyone else. But today’s top-down BIG GOVERNMENT claims it knows what we want. It does not, so it often gets in our way as we strive to improve our lives. PG15 compares big governments to small ones.
On September 17th 1787 in Independence Hall, Philadelphia the final meeting of the Constitutional Convention took place. Delegates had worked thruout the hot summer without air conditioning. When they exited the hall Benjamin Franklin told the crowd of enthusiastic citizens that we delegates have prepared a document to guide government of a republic, or a representative democracy. (Without even telephones, much less motorized transportation, a pure democracy was impractical.) Ben finished with (paraphrased) “Now you have a government that preserves individual freedoms, if you can keep it (emphasis added). He was an 82-year-old student of human nature. An apt adage springs to mind: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
In 1830 a young Frenchman named Alexei de Tocqueville toured our country and wrote a book called Democracy in America. He found that everyone was very busy building a new nation. However, most important decisions affecting government, including laws, were debated and passed locally. When he visited Washington, DC he found it to be “a sleepy little town,” and very different from the old and top-down national governments he knew in Europe. Finally, showing amazing prescience for a young man, he warned that at some time in the future our government will dominate our lives.
In 1850 Frenchman Frederic Bastiat wrote a book titled The Law. “Are people to be stamped from the same mold? And who will possess the mold? A towering question, which should give one great pause.” The man was a thinker.
Rose Wilder Lane in her great 1943 book The Discovery of Freedom: “For six thousand years at least, a majority has generally believed in pagan gods. A pagan god ——- ‘Authority’ which (men believe) controls the energy, the acts, and therefore the fate of all individuals. The pagan view of the universe is that it is static, motionless, limited, and controlled by an ‘Authority.’”
As the world society evolved, clan changed to tribe and leaders appeared. Later there were chiefs, ranks, and a ruling elite. Then there evolved cities and nations. Hereditary elites utilized religion to maintain their dominance over the peasants.
Religion and law were written, and bureaucracies were expanded. Ms. Lane showed that during these thousands of years the notion of Authority grew stronger.
She argued powerfully that men are by nature free, and therefore world history is shot thru with one revolution against Authority after another. “Every imaginable kind of living Authority has been tried, and is still being tried on earth now.”
A baby or small child has few options and therefore must look to an Authority for every need. Parental authority limits a child’s options. This is proper, as the child lacks the necessary mature judgment in order to evaluate alternatives.
As the child grows older, he/she yearns to break free: to become an adult. Good parenting sees this trend and adjusts its authority accordingly.
But along comes BIG GOVERNMENT with its womb-to-tomb care, and young people find they are prevented by government from assumption of the natural mantle of adulthood. This includes making mistakes — a great learning tool. “We have the experts. We know just what you want and we will see that you get it even if we must force-feed you.” This has to be frustrating, and we conclude that this frustration is largely responsible for the turmoil that we daily see in society.
Dr. Ferris’s comments in Ayn Rand’s 1956 novel Atlas Shrugged springs to mind. “We want them broken. (paraphrased) We want citizens to live in daily fear of the law. It’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re dealing with here.” Agreeing with Lane’s warning, Rand predicted the ultimate failure of society. Jefferson: “If citizens fear government there is tyranny. If government fears citizens there is liberty.”
The Economist Jan. 2015: “Federal statutes contain some 4,500 crimes, and there are thousands more in the federal regulatory code.” Here we see the results of decades of lawyers criminalizing civil laws, partly to make more work for lawyers.
Elder President Bush’s much-hyped Goals 2000: Educate America Act was passed in 1994. Charlotte Twight (her book Dependent on DC) ticked off a total of 12 new bureaucracies that this act created, all aimed at increasing government control over K-12 schooling throughout the USA. Pocket Gofer 10 shows us why top public officials want to keep the public in a state of perpetual childhood.
This one got us to thinking, and out popped a theory. Maybe this educational trend goes a long way toward explaining why young people these days fly the nest when they think they are ready, but then a short time later they are back.
Some time after that, another go and again back. Are government policies that intrude upon family life and education preventing parents and schools from properly preparing their children for life in the cold, cruel world?
Furthermore, we did not pay our grandparents to exert Lane’s “Authority” over us, but we must pay BIG GOVERNMENT to do the same. And do this when we are ready to become adults. We have no choice in the matter, as government is force.
And now we have the Patriot Act because young President Bush said he needs it to protect our liberty from those who plan to destroy it. The Act includes warrantless wiretaps, sneak-and-peak invasions of private homes and random demands for library records.
Big government apparently wants to know what books we borrow, what we buy with credit cards, what is in our business accounts, etc. Why can’t we stop thinking that these actions will not protect our liberty, but rather undermine it?
The 4th Amendment to the Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, ——.” The Patriot Act has the potential to turn our government into a modern WWII Gestapo or Soviet KGB.
Today a paternalistic BIG GOVERNMENT blocks an individual’s natural maturation process into adulthood. This done, it has only to manipulate his/her thinking to expect that such a government will solve his problems just as Mom and Dad did for all the years he can remember.
Surely the logic is sound. Children are insecure due in large part to fear of the unknown. So government gradually takes over as they age, keeping them fearful and dependent on government by pointing out one terrible threat after another.
Publius II developed the “external threat” gimmick. See PG18 and his essay. Any shaky ruler uses this ruse to keep the peasants hunkered down and dependent on Big Government to prevent some huge foreign ogre from devouring their children. But even this does not work when the enemy is right here at home in Washington.
Therefore if a problem comes up the tendency is to look to BIG GOVERNMENT for the solution. What happens then? Only one thing can happen: BIG GOVERNMENT will only grow bigger and bigger, exerting more force (Lane’s book and Pocket Gofer 15).
The only possible citizen reaction against this additional force creates more problems and hence more top-down “solutions” laid down on the rabble. Elite officials and immature, unthinking citizens thus create a vicious cycle that, if not checked, can only ultimately cause a rebellion.
In 11/2008 columnist George Will wrote one entitled “Government Fingers in All Kinds of Pie.” “The seepage of government into everywhere is, we are assured, to be temporary and nonpolitical.” Well.
“Probably as temporary as NY City’s rent controls, which were born as emergency responses to the Second World War, and which are still distorting the city’s housing market. The Depression, which FDR failed to end ——-, was the excuse for agricultural subsidies that have lived past three score years and ten.
“—- will be nonpolitical? How could it be? Either markets allocate resources, or government — meaning politics — allocates them.
“Now that distrust of markets is high, Americans are supposed to believe that the institution they trust least — congress — will pony up $1 trillion and then passively recede, never putting its 10 thumbs — into the pie?” And pigs might fly.
“As for the president-elect, he promises to change Washington. He will, by making matters worse.”
There we were in 2010 and another political promise not kept. But it’s not just Obama. We believe the entire huge, bloated outfit has gradually become ungovernable thru the top-down approach.
The Great White Father takes thru withholding tax, and then grants his children an allowance. He permits his kids to keep some of what they earn.
But human nature dictates that maturity cannot be arrested, except among the tiny minority who suffer from fixations. Thus we have hordes of people yearning to break free while restrained by an overbearing BIG BROTHER. Small wonder the underground economy is so well developed in many countries, as people struggle to work around, over, and under the bureaucracy.
THE SITUATION TODAY: It seems to us that every thinking citizen lines up on one side or the other in his/her attitudes toward people. Either he inherently trusts people to determine what is good for them, or he lacks faith in this capability. We weigh in on the first side, but only provided that government allows people to mature into adults and thereby bring mature judgment to their decision-making.
Europeans have suffered under “Authority” for at least 500 years. This is why America exists today. We might want to put this one in our pipe and puff on it for a while.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman challenged the do-gooders who argued that the whole welfare mess in New York City would have gotten still worse in the absence of huge spending when John Lindsay was mayor. Many folks at the time argued that we need still more money thrown into this pit. Friedman commented:
“The total amount available for spending has not been increased by Lindsay’s programs. On the contrary, it has been decreased as the deterioration of the city and ever-higher taxes have encouraged people and business to move out. Is it really a paradox that we get less for our money when government bureaucrats spend our money for our supposed benefit than when we spend our own money on our own needs?
“But, you may say, government spending is for the poor; the money government spends comes from the well-to-do; hence private spending would benefit different people.
“Wrong on both counts. The government program may be labeled ‘welfare for the poor,’ but that does not mean that very much of the money spent benefits the poor. Much of the money goes to buy land or buildings or services from the non-poor — as, most notably, in urban renewal programs — to provide amenities for the not-so-poor.
“Some of the rest goes to pay excellent salaries to bureaucrats. Even the part that does trickle down to the poor is largely wasted because it encourages them to substitute a handout for a wage.”
These comments were offered in 1972. We flipped the calendar ahead twenty years to have a look at progress since then.
In 1992 New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley supported pumping another $1.45 billion into the administration’s Urban Emergency Aid bill. “To say that you don’t need a massive investment of perhaps $20 billion a year to reclaim the cities is ludicrous.”
We think calling it an investment is equally ludicrous. The top-down approach to an inner city’s problems simply makes it a money pit. We suspect that as of this writing Mr. Bradley’s thinking has changed. We hope so.
So much for progress. The top-down approach mainly buys votes and lines already deep pockets, but it’s great for politicians seeking re-election.
Also in ’92 we observed three big city mayors being interviewed on the tube. One bragged that Bill Clinton had promised to spend $20 billion a year on inner cities over the next four years (Yeah, we know; election campaign time).
Dammit!! If a mayor can’t run his/her operation efficiently and we don’t live in his city, what claim does he have on our tax payments?
THE WRONG INCENTIVE: Maybe there is too much wealth coming into Washington. We will argue that flinging tons of it into inner cities actually prevents effective solutions from being devised and carried out. The money is a barrier.
If they are given money, this only enables them to continue their present miserable, drug-addicted lifestyles. That is, the money provides no incentive to make a change, as they need do nothing in order to receive it.
They need an incentive to reach out to something different. They don’t perceive themselves as capable of taking the initiative on their own.
They have lost their self-esteem, and most probably hope as well. The availability of money keeps this misery going indefinitely.
This is the impact of top-down money. If we offer to help these good people with some advice and possibly some money after they have started something on their own initiative it is not a gift.
It is an investment in something perceived by all as worthwhile. This is the impact of bottom-up money.
This pocket gofer discusses the difference. If it finds its way into many citizens’ pockets and purses and generates serious thought and discussion, we could make a difference.
There is another difficulty with top-down. Everybody is different in body, mind, heart, and spirit. Therefore any one-size-fits-all program coming top-down from Washington won’t wash. This is because it cannot.
Take President Clinton’s 1993 health plan as an example. He traveled all around the countryside pushing “Hillarycare,” but each citizen he talked with objected to at least some part of it.
This result implies that any top-down comprehensive health plan is a non-starter. Would someone please tell this to the president and congress? Apparently whoever does will need a two-by-four to get their attention. But today we see that even this did not work; Obamacare is on life support and a federal judge declared a key part of the law unconstitutional. See PG1.
US VS THEM: But reality for us seldom bothers a career politician. He/she is interested in reality for him: votes.
Take housing as an example. In 1994 the feds created a “moving to opportunity” plan that would help folks who could prove racial segregation to move elsewhere.
The kicker here was a requirement that qualifying black families had to move into areas which were at least 65 percent white. They didn’t want to do this, as their families and friends would be left behind. And so one more top-down social engineering project fell flat on its face.
Black columnist William Raspberry (11/97): “The true problem, I suspect, is deeper: long years of learning to see ourselves primarily as victims —– of exploitation, of disadvantage, or racism. If we are primarily victims, it follows that the primary duty of our advocates is to wage war against our victimizers.
“And so our emphasis has been on —— trying to make sure we get our fair share of what others produce —– rather than on opportunity to do a good deal more of the producing ourselves.” Well put, sir! Victimology blinds its victims to opportunity, right here in the Land of Opportunity. Raspberry: “Dig for gold, not excuses.”
Many state governors and concerned citizens think there is far too much money and power concentrated in Washington. One governor pushed for the death of “Washington sense” and the rebirth of “common sense.” He wants states to seize control over bloated and screwed-up central government programs.
Good thinking, in that it is at least a step away from top top-down. However, it is unrealistic as it assumes that Washington will voluntarily give up some of its awesome power and perks.
And pigs might fly. Personal power is like a drug. People get hooked. See Pocket Gofer 13. The worldwide record thruout history weighs in to support this conclusion.
The elite class in Washington has carved out a highly posh lifestyle courtesy of the taxpayer. Members naturally want to preserve their privileges.
This means they are not about to make any significant change in government policies that will benefit anyone other than themselves. Of course what we hear from them will attempt to distract our thinking from this truth.
Now, it is the natural for society to advance. But the government says things are just fine as is. This situation makes for tension between the elitists and us peasants. See our essay “Society v Government.”
Today congress makes policy in the most intimate detail, primarily so there is something for every interest group with the price of admission. (See Pocket Gofer 8.) The fact is that congress cannot manage an economy that doesn’t move, much less one that does.
We conclude that government cannot order an economy to prosper, but it surely can become a wart on the arse of progress. The government did not order Einstein and Edison to invent things that would dramatically change our economy of that time.
Today’s inventors often jockey for central government money to help things along. They are better off without it, because with the money comes control from Washington.
THE SECOND BREED: A bureaucrat is often hired to develop and carry out projects presumably aimed at helping the poor. He/she may tickle a computer keyboard in a Washington DC office, or he may be located out in the field. In either case his motivation, while different from that of a politician, is also not oriented toward getting things done.
Quite the opposite: if he really works at getting it done he runs the very serious risk of succeeding. If this unfortunate outcome should actually happen he may be out of a job.
Hence bureaucrats are by nature time-servers. They get hired and immediately dig in for the long haul. Taking cues from veterans, a rookie quickly gets to know how to hunker down, write justification memos, fight turf battles and ride out the political storms which blow through at fairly regular intervals.
This done, the only worry is how much money some other bureaucracy may pry loose from his operation come the next fiscal year. This worry is the motive behind the colossal budgetary turf battles in the central government.
Because for bureaucrats there is never enough money. We taxpayers see the situation through different eyes.
We should observe that politicians who keep on getting re-elected also become timeservers. But that is another story; Pocket Gofer 3 elaborates.
Bureaucrats have a lot of formal education, but this causes them to be misled. They lack respect for street smarts.
Therefore they don’t think of using street people as resources. Either that or they avoid them for fear of success.
Bureaucrats don’t see the value of the saying “People support what they help to create.” This mentality is necessary for practically every social project to work. We shall have a good look at this one; stay tuned.
Bureaucrats assume the poor cannot contribute, and so therefore top-down is the only approach available. We disagree, as this attitude gives no recognition of the capability of the poor to solve their own problems in the absence of interference by Uncle.
Many of the poor dodge welfare programs, figuring the rewards are only negative. Others work the system, and so it is loaded with fraud. Pocket Gofer 2 elaborates.
These folks aren’t dumb, in spite of poor education in run-down schools with guns and drugs everywhere. They know how to function on the street, and it is there that projects to improve lives either sink or swim.
Except for getting the newspaper, mowing the grass and putting out the trash, we step out the front door and into our cars. In the inner cities life is different. Yes, there are cars, but street life is very real for them.
Bennies for bureaucrats lie not in successful programs. Their promotions, perks, prestige, power, and job security lie in expanding programs.
This is how bureaucracies grow. Bureaucrats often fake citizens into believing that government can create permanent jobs, but it cannot.
Barnett: “——– economist who visits China under Mao Zedong, who believed in top-down management. He sees hundreds of workers building a dam with shovels. He asks: ‘Why don’t they use a mechanical digger?’
“‘That would put people out of work,’ replies the foreman. ‘Oh,’ says the economist. ‘I thought you were making a dam. If it’s jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons.’
“For an individual, —— makes some sense. He prospers if he has a job, ——. For the nation as a whole, however, what matters is not whether people have jobs, but how they do them.”
In this example Barnett refers to productivity, or amount accomplished per unit of labor used. It is the key to long-term prosperity in a country with capitalism, of which competition among producers is a vital part. (Mao died in 1976 and the Chinese economy has grown rapidly ever since excepting 2020, but this is temporary.)
Contractors who provide taxpayer-paid services to the poor also like expansion. They will often kick back some of our tax money into congressional re-election campaigns.
Kickbacks help to direct future contract awards to contractors who do the kicking. This is bribery, but politicians will surely call it something else. Because the bureaucrats who award those contracts have no real interest in helping the poor, we offer no prizes for guessing whom such contracts really help.
The expansion mentality really works. In 1965 Medicaid’s estimated cost was $500 million. By 1989 it had ballooned to $34.2 billion, or a 6,840 percent increase. Even when we patch inflation in, that’s impressive.
We would like to own a piece of a private company that expands at this rate. The expansion would then generate income for us, instead of constantly increasing taxes going in the other direction. Pocket Gofer 1 offers some insights.
We will give several examples of successful bottom-up projects below. We are intrigued that practically none seem able to spread out and provide benefits to many.
We are into this thing deep enough to suggest possible explanations. One may lie in the fact that every situation is unique and therefore different.
A second is more likely, we think. Bureaucrats develop finely tuned antennae. If they see a threat to their turf coming they can probably figure out a way to squelch it.
ABUSE BY JUDGES: Recently some of the worst intrusions upon our personal freedom have come from judicial decisions. Here is an example.
Nationwide at present, the Boy Scouts of America has been a private organization since 1910. To our knowledge it has never accepted dollar one from the taxpayer. As such, it should be free to make whatever legal policies it may want concerning membership (even if some of us may disapprove).
But the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that the organization has no right to exclude gay men and boys. Therefore it converted the Boy Scouts into a public organization in order to force them to accept these people. Pedophile priests spring to mind.
We quote Richard Sincere, a libertarian gay activist: “—– threatens all of us who want to set standards for our organizations —- including gay men and lesbians.” He thinks the policy should be changed, but only through persuasion. This would be the democratic way.
Judges have no authority to change anyone’s moral code, but they have been doing it anyway. The Massachusetts high court recently decided that a minister has no right to discipline his son by swatting him with a leather belt.
The court and the child protection bureaucracy called it child abuse. The minister’s lawyer: “Who the hell are they to tell parents how to discipline their children?”
ON CRIME: In the Middle Ages (roughly 12th-15th centuries) instances of crime were resolved in favor of the victim. Members of communities often formed laws, and everyone cooperated to catch a violator.
Over the centuries since then governments have gradually intervened. The result is that today laws are made by governments via the top-down approach. This opens the door to abuse of power, as the temptation is to pass laws that severely punish anyone who gives the government any guff.
There are two kickers here. The first is that whenever citizens have no say in making the laws that govern them there is less incentive to obey them. This means a crime problem.
The second one kicks even harder. Politicians react to our media-hyped screams of panic by passing even more restrictive laws, and ultimately we end up with a police state.
Over the years the news media have become adept at manufacturing crises, usually at the instigation of government officials. Each one opens another opportunity to tighten control over the peasants in the guise of protecting them from some threat to their safety.
This ruse is timeworn: governments thruout history have used it. The cover story is always protecting citizens’ freedom, while the reality is further restriction on that freedom. In 1957 it was Sputnik; later it was 9/11 and al-Qaeda (with many more in between). See our essay “The External Threat Gimmick.”
The Constitution emphasizes justice, or equal treatment under the law for all. The Supreme Court reinforced this principle nearly 60 years ago when it ruled that poor defendants must be provided with a lawyer at state expense.
Most of us still believe this is how the system works. But during the past 40 years career politicians have bent over backward to look tough on crime. (The power-seeking hidden agenda is a police state. See Pocket Gofer 19.)
This means they provide only a pittance to pay public defenders. Furthermore, today’s Supreme Court has restricted opportunities for appeal.
Actually, these lawyers were given a raise in pay in 1986. But we understand that the measure later was not implemented in 77 of the 94 judicial districts nationwide, because congress refused to turn loose any money.
And in state courts the situation is far worse. What kind of justice is this?
There are two reasons for this sad state of affairs. We mentioned the first, which is the desire to look tough on crime. The other is that poor people don’t vote much.
Stalinism in the Soviet Union was great for politicians and other privileged government officials. No one gave them any guff as they did their thing. The rest of the population lived in fear of a 2:00am knock on the door.
Surely we exaggerate; couldn’t possibly get this bad here in good ol’ US of A. However we have reason to believe the press is cooperating with the establishment, in which case we can’t rely on the news media to push our desires for personal freedoms. See PG5 for an astounding elaboration.
Another thought on crime. Suppose some crazy repeatedly threatens to harm another person, and it is well known that he has guns. Must we wait until he does the dastardly deed? Local police today are likely to tell us their hands are tied.
Time passes. Lacking money to hire protection, the target may well go bananas before he/she gets it.
In a community with civic pride this crazy would be watched by a squad of hawk-eyed volunteers. Whenever he left his house a red alert would spread instantly. The target would know immediately via cell phone or social medium and his /her stalker’s whereabouts would be communicated to her continuously.
Maybe an attempt would be made to plant a bomb in the target’s car. But someone with a cell would be watching the car. Ditto the house and workplace.
A mentally ill or poor criminal cannot compensate his/her victim. Hence the emphasis on prevention in a bottom-up community (other reasons too).
Friends, we do have a crime problem, even considering over-hype by the media. Here comes at us another top-down “solution.”
Georgia recently became the 37th state to pass so-called pre-emption legislation. This stops communities from regulating guns on their own. Additional states are considering such a law.
This is top-down and absolutely wrong, even if we agree with its intent. This is because it denies a community or neighborhood the freedom to solve its own gun problem (and part of its crime problem) in a way of its own choosing.
A veteran cop was recently interviewed. He asked what police were supposed to do, search every house for guns? Under mattresses? In closets and dresser drawers?
A bottom-up cat just raised his hand. He explains that, yes, there would be a search, but the searchers would not be police.
Rather, they will be members of the same neighborhood as the suspected bad guy with a gun. There may be a cash reward for the finder. A family member might help.
They know the territory, so they would know where to look. They would know the bad guy, where he goes and when, and how he thinks and acts and why. Sooner or later they will find that gun, and probably sooner.
This is because they have held political meetings and after discussion and debate passed a law to rid the neighborhood or community of guns and drugs. This is bottom-up.
Almost everyone was involved in making the law, so everyone would have an interest in seeing it enforced. People support what they help to create.
The streets would be different. No one would see a prowl car with cops inside as the enemy. All would work together.
Because the bad guys would know this, there would be fewer bad guys. Those who persist could do less damage.
The Economist is published in Britain, where gun control has become strict and gun-related crime has dropped rapidly. But US government officials don’t want to regulate gun ownership because career politicians frequently get great gobs of dirty money from lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association.
The Economist weighed in (4/2015): “—– 2012 and murdered 20 small children —–. Surely America would not enact laws to keep lethal weapons out of the wrong hands?
No chance. Bids tocurb sales of the mostpowerful guns and largest-capacity magazines failed. Congress even refused to expand the number of gun buyers checked for histories of crime or severe mental illness — tho 90% of Americans support such checks.” NRA lobbyist money does not talk; it shouts. Must we live in a society where dollars outvote citizens?
Today the situation has got so bad that NRA members are abandoning the organization and hence its coffers are getting thin. With less dirty money going to career politicians in congress we are finally getting some progress.
We have argued that each community should be free to make its own policy on guns. Decentralization would neutralize lobbyist money. One of these may permit ownership and debate and pass regulations on their use that fit its knowledge of the territory.
Another may ban guns altogether. A resident who owns guns and lost the debate on banning in a political meeting would probably move to a nearby community that permits gun ownership. Further debate on the full meaning of the 2nd Amendment may be necessary, or perhaps another amendment. (This was done previously; see amendments 18 and 21.)
ON FIRE AND FLOOD: In 1881 there was a terrible fire in Michigan. The federal government was small back then, so there was little to spare for this emergency. American citizens knew this, and so thousands volunteered labor, bedding, and heavy clothing.
Railroads donated shipping services. This was the first disaster relief challenge for Clara Barton and the newly formed American Red Cross.
Well, the central government is no longer small, so officials sent megabucks of our money to help victims of the spring 1998 flood in North Dakota. Today national disaster relief also goes for local calamities that are not really national emergencies by any reasonable definition.
But not by a politician’s definition. There are votes in these grand gestures. No problem with news media coverage: they always jump on high drama and tragedy, and can easily scale up a small emergency into a big one.
But even when it is big there are valid questions to be asked. We point to the September 1999 hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in eastern North Carolina as a shining example. An economist named Jack Chambless wrote some truth that career politicians don’t want to admit.
He began with forced evacuations of people from their homes. He thought the government should provide information and leave individuals to decide for themselves what to do.
However, this means those who stay are on their own if they get into trouble. In most instances this realization will cause people to evacuate, but it will not be forced by top-down government.
Today people have been programmed by years of government intervention to believe that the taxpayer will bail them out if their homes are destroyed by fire, flood, wind, earthquakes, etc. This means they often rebuild in flood plains, and they seldom buy insurance even when it is available.
Taxpayers provide the money. But did we give our consent?
Chambless wondered about a government that forcibly forbids local merchants from charging higher prices for emergency goods. Most of us don’t realize that high prices are good for nearly all of us. Here is how they work.
We might think that customers are being ripped, but the reality is that high prices sharply reduce hoarding by early birds. This means that there is merchandise like bread, bottled water, and flashlights available to many more people.
But what about the poor, who cannot afford to pay higher prices? What matters the price if there is none? (A few hoarders might sell on the sly, but at a stout mark-up.)
For the very best example of disastrous government disaster relief look no further than Hurricane Katrina. Bureaucratic snafus and finger-pointing combined to generate stupendous waste and resentment. Finger-pointing did not help; not many votes in this fiasco.
We went there in April 06 to do what we could to help. The word we got was that New Orleans would not return to normality for ten years, provided that in that time there is no second Katrina.
We feel secure in stating that top-down has done it once again. We are left to wonder what New Orleans would look like today if the government had butted out and left the rescue and rebuilding to private agencies and just plain folks like us.
We happily add here that the K-12 education institution in New Orleans was totally obliterated. Citizens and local government had to rebuild with a blank slate; even teachers’ unions had split. The result was and is a bottom-up K-12 system, under which children are prospering.
MONEY AS THE ROOT OF EVIL? Many years ago someone said money should be raised where it will be spent. Let’s dig into this one. Is there a reason why this is a useful guide?
If there is, maybe we are onto something heavy here, as each year hundreds of billions of our dollars are picked out of our pockets and sent to Washington. After the bureaucracy skims around 25 percent off the top some of the remaining dollars are sent many more miles outward to us and into pork barrel projects.
Money is designed to move easily and efficiently from person to person, from organization to organization, and from place to place. This is good, because if we had to barter for everything we need and want it would be a very inefficient world.
The flip side of this is that money has no conscience. It just as willingly lines the pockets of bad guys/gals as it does those of the good guys.
Therefore, whenever a big bunch of it goes traveling someone had better be watching closely. Because it’s our money we want that someone to be somebody whom we can trust.
We have studied human nature. We have learned that the larger the amount of money involved the fewer the people who can be trusted to keep watch. Temptation is part of human nature.
If we raise money where it is to be spent we can have something to say about both the raising and the spending. We like that.
The pile of bucks would be much smaller, and so far fewer would be tempted. And we can watch those to whom we do entrust our money. Knowing this, these folks are tempted even less.
The logical result of top-down government is an oligarchy (rule by the few). Ours amounts to about four million people by now. Included are government, owners of news media and banks, university administrators, and those who control the money supply and write laws and regulations.
Because we are fortunate to have the world’s richest country we are unfortunate to also have history’s most awesome concentration of personal power and money. That story appears in Pocket Gofer 13, where we show when, where, and how all this got started.
The dark side of human nature dictates that this trend has no end. Evidence can be found in the thousands of new looters pouring into Washington every month.
In March 2009 the government took over a huge company called AIG, and then it went from bad to worse. After a $150 billion taxpayer bail-out it lost about another $60 billion.
Governments often become attached to banks they take over. Willie Sutton understood this tendency when asked why he robbed banks. “That’s where the money is.”
In 1830 the young Frenchman Alexi de Tocqueville visited the infant USA and wrote Democracy in America. Amazingly, he forecasted our current mess.
“We would be governed by ‘an immense, tutelary power’ ——. It would envelope society in a network of petty regulations — complicated, minute and uniform.”
Maybe this is not so amazing. Tocqueville also understood human nature and he had seen the same misery laid down upon his fellow citizens in Europe. In that place even today top-down, one-size-fits-all reigns supreme. People should read history.
Economist 3/2009: “The biggest cause of anger is Mr. Obama’s willingness to bail out everyone with a tin cup, from bankrupt bankers to incompetent carmakers to over-the-ears mortgage holders. People who have borrowed prudently and lived within their means are livid ——- asked to bail out neighbors, who splurged ——-.”
Rose Wilder Lane: “Stupid men believe that force can improve other men’s morals; they want force to stop men’s drinking, or smoking, or gambling ……. They dream that because a law can make any action a crime, it can stop that action.
“To those ardent reformers who want to do good (as they see good) by using force upon the greatest number of their inferiors, add the groups of those who want to rob others by force without risking going to jail.” These are the looters. See PG19.
Politicians and bureaucrats subscribe to the PANG principle: People Are No Good. Therefore they must be ruled and not led.
Whenever a problem surfaces the solution must lie in a new batch of rules and regulations passed without our consent. They don’t repeal any; they just pile new ones on top of old.
Ms. Lane saw thru this deception in 1943. Furthermore, too many rules and taxes rob us of our basic freedoms. This pocket gofer and others help us to also see truth as Lane saw it.
THE BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO PROBLEMS
Bacteria are parasites, which feed on host tissues and sometimes organs in people. If not controlled thru maintaining good health they will act like any parasite and continue to multiply and feed until they have killed their host and themselves.
Government is an institution whose members feed off the bounty of the private sector. Therefore public employees are by definition parasites. They cannot create wealth; they can only collect it from us thru threat of force and spend it.
Our healthy bodies always contain parasites, but our natural immune systems keep their numbers under control nearly all the time. We need a medication so that the parasites in government are kept to the absolute minimum that is necessary for it to be a benefit to its host, — citizens, and not a drag (or an executioner).
But in government there is no such natural control. Therefore we citizens must exert conscious and constant effort to keep the number of parasites under control.
We described above the standard top-down approach to solving social problems. In summary, that is lots and lots of someone else’s money being carelessly spent by people who are not aiming at getting a good job done. The action on the ground takes place among people who are far different from those who put together the plans.
The overriding assumption is that we here in Washington know precisely what your problems are, and aren’t you glad? We’re here to solve them for you. (But there is a hidden agenda.)
The following observation shows up elsewhere, but we repeat it here because it fits perfectly. Ronald Reagan: “The most dangerous nine words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”
Well, the poor folks are not glad at all, as there is no improvement in their lives. So it’s back to the drawing board for another expensive go. Maybe we should get another drawing board.
That is what this gofer is about: a different drawing board, a different approach to social problems. As promised above, here is one of our favorite mottos: “People support what they help to create.”
If people have an active part in the design of a project they will feel a commitment to make it work on the ground. This is the reason why an entrepreneur starting a business often works inhuman hours.
It’s his/her baby, his idea. His ego is hanging out there for all to see. He is going to make this thing work; no ifs, ands or buts, and come hell, high water or the Judgment Day.
We have set the stage for the bottom-up approach. We need people who know the territory, because every community and neighborhood is different from every other one.
A solution suitable for a neighborhood in the Bronx, NY won’t work worth a damn in a neighborhood in Watts, Los Angeles. Top-down and one-size-fits-all doesn’t stand a chance. Such projects can only be half-vast at best.
The only folks who know the territory are those who live there. But surely, some of us may object, they cannot do much to help their neighborhood, or they would have long since done it.
Why haven’t they done it? Top-down Washington and state governments won’t stop sending those damned checks and doing other Big Brother actions. We have shown that bureaucrats don’t want local folks helping themselves.
Doing something constructive means taking risks, but when folks know the check will be there next month the incentive to do something is undermined. Therefore Big Government needs to give these people the freedom to help themselves.
North Carolina has a bottom-up program called NC Character Educators of the Year. It recognizes and rewards teachers who creatively weave character into their teaching. Because society has arguably lost its moral compass during the past 50 years or so, programs like this one surely need encouragement.
Enter the state legislature with “encouragement.” Three bills were aimed primarily at requiring kids to address their teachers as “M’am” and “Sir.”
Mitchell (6/14/2000 column) was disappointed. “It’s difficult to understand why no one I know of in the state’s character education movement was contacted to contribute expertise or advice to the range of bills being presented in the general assembly today.”
Ms. Mitchell is a bottom-up person, but today’s career politicians are top-down. Hence the alienation and lack of communication. “My mind is made up; don’t confuse me with facts.”
Mitchell concluded: “—- it’s just so frustrating when those who are in the media’s eye can’t see those in the trenches, working day after day to resolve the hard stuff.” Those in the trenches should be the governors, not the elites. If this country is to enjoy the fruits of democracy it must be so.
Paul O’Neill was in the media’s eye as President Bush’s Treasury secretary, before Bush fired him for his insistence on truth and reality. O’Neill accompanied rock star Bono to Africa to examine a proposed water project.
We quote the secretary: “The war of ideas you win on the ground, walking with the people, not with pronouncements from on high looking down.” He believed that the first step is to show the people you care, but don’t fake it.
Someone said the US Senate is a place where ideas go to die. Famous poet Goethe: “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.”
Washington State’s Tim Eyman is another bottom-up cat. He took a look at what California has been doing with grassroots ballot initiatives, and founded Permanent Offense to hold politicians accountable for their use of tax dollars.
Friends, we are in love with that A-word. See Pocket Gofer 7.
Career politicians and judges often work together to frustrate the public will (Economist 2/9/2002). “Another initiative aimed at reducing property taxes was also approved by voters, but was deemed unconstitutional by the state’s supreme court. Undaunted, Mr. Eyman revised the proposal, and saw it pass overwhelmingly last November, to the fury of many elected politicians.”
Unless it is faked combat among parties, whenever politicians get mad something good for voters has happened. “Defenders of Mr. Eyman point out that he has been, —- an astute judge of the public temper, and a skilled finger-pointer at the emperor’s scanty wardrobe.”
Here is a story about Nigeria that was predictably fouled by corruption but is still positive in its outcome (Economist 3/16/2002). “The oil companies that work in the Delta have spent lavishly on schemes to make locals’ lives less irksome, but to little effect. An external review for Shell found that over half the projects supported were either ‘non-functioning’ or ‘partially functioning.’
“Some were scuppered by the crookery of local politicians; others were simply inappropriate. Oil firms tended to favor big, visible gifts, —–. But the projects that work best are the ones where donors ask the locals what they actually want (emphasis added) before writing checks.”
Several years ago a French charity asked. The answers guided projects that made more profitable use of skills the locals already possessed. “With advice from a visiting agricultural student, some locals have started raising giant African snails, a popular ingredient in spicy Nigerian soups.
A new micro-credit scheme offers small loans to people with ideas for new businesses. So far, the repayment rate has been an impressive 98%.”
Local folks operate all ventures, occasionally using foreigners as advisers. “A local youth leader says that young (Nigerian) men, who used to hijack oil-company speedboats for a living, now see more future in learning to read.” Hard to argue with this.
Mohammad Yunus organized Grameen Bank to make micro-loans to small businesses in poor countries, where ordinary banks refused to deal. He won a Nobel Prize for his efforts.
We have all been programmed since childhood to look upward for leadership. We are accustomed to receiving directions from above.
So were all local Communist party secretaries in cities and towns throughout the failed Soviet Union. Even in this country we no longer have leaders in charge. They are rulers. See Pocket Gofer 17 for an explanation of this vital difference.
We feel frustrated. We are human, so we feel a real sympathy for poor folks, and yet we seem to be powerless to help them. Where to turn?
Enter “People support what they help to create.” Here we have something with real potential. We will ask those street-smart people who know the territory to dream up a project and we’ll help them to get it going.
Just like beauty, reality exists in the eye of the beholder. In this case their street smarts are more useful than are our outside academic smarts. We must school ourselves (damn! —- sorry) to rely on them, and carefully avoid falling back upon our own background, even when the project seems to be going nowhere.
MORE PROOF: Have we more evidence that bottom-up can work? Take Five Oaks, which was half black and 60 percent inhabited by renters. Formerly white, the place had fallen on hard times. Residents felt like they were living under siege.
Three years later the prostitutes and drug dealers were gone and a sense of community had been restored. Public areas have been tidied up. Children again play in the streets.
The source of this apparent miracle? Residents and police got together and decided that something had to be done, and the government was not able to do it. A consultant named Oscar Newman recommended installing gates to limit through traffic.
They went to him; not the reverse. This is important.
In the first year crime was reduced by 25 percent, violent crime by about 50 percent. Through traffic was reduced by 67 percent, and accidents were down 40 percent.
Prices of housing rose by 15 percent. A local black man pointed out that because neighbors talked to each other they could identify suspicious strangers and watch them. We cannot overemphasize the importance of neighbors talking, and not just in poor areas.
Current thinking by black leaders is beginning to focus on enterprise, or doing it themselves. The balance is tipping away from marches, boycotts, and voter registration aimed at more top-down laws.
We quote one leader named Bakewell: “The beauty of it is that we don’t have one wonderful white man giving us a million dollars a year. We’ve got 100,000 black people giving us $10 and 100,000 black people giving us $1, and that becomes a spigot that you can’t shut off.” Here is an excellent example of the momentum that can be generated by the bottom-up approach.
The Economist (10/2002) favored us with another. “’Barbershop,’ a new comedy written, directed, and acted by some of the best black talent, has grossed over $51 million in the past three weeks. ——- it depicts a young man’s ‘empowerment’ thru a barbershop he inherits from his father.
And there is Bertha Gilkey. Actually, we would like to meet her. She started working to improve her neighborhood, Cochran Gardens, as a teenager. The place was a war zone; even the police avoided it.
Ten years of hard work later, Cochran Gardens was operated by tenants and it had been completely redone. The place was nearly spotless. Tenants provided day care, a senior citizen residence, a medical clinic, and meals on wheels.
And all because a teenage black girl refused to back down in the face of dozens of hardened criminals twice her size and with guns. We salute her.
This gives us an opening, and we seldom pass up one of these. (In this respect we’re quite like politicians.) Friends, we can do a Cochran Gardens in the whole US of A, and we can do it without violence. Doubters might check in with Ms. Gilkey.
Congressman (and Rev.) Floyd Flake became ex-congressman Flake, apparently because he couldn’t hack the top-down blarney. He started a school in 1982 which is doing great.
He built a $23 million church complex with a credit union, clinic, and Head Start classrooms for its 11,000 members. There is a 300-unit apartment building for the elderly.
While in congress he supported a capital gains tax cut and school vouchers to enable parental choice. But this man clearly likes bottom-up better. We quote George Will in a 11/1998 column: “Victimspeak is not spoken here.”
There are useful resources available. Freedom House classifies countries as “free,” “partly free” or “not free.” Barnett: “Its core concern is liberty — defined as elected, accountable government, the rule of law and human rights —.
The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict has a variety of resources. Its shows how, where and why tactics have worked.
Along about April 2009 sprouted a modern version of 1773’s Boston Tea Party, where colonists dressed as Indians boarded British ships in the harbor and threw their highly taxed tea cargo overboard.
In February 2010 the modern version held its first convention in Nashville, in part to see who and how many citizens supported small government and reduced tax loads. A number of politicians were invited, but they predictably decided to give it a pass. As of August there are signs that the bottom-up Tea Party movement is beginning to coalesce around democratic principles.
Apparently the news media were not enthused. This was predictable; these pussycats prefer pleasing the fat cats in the congress to publishing truth. But in late 2013 we learned that the Tea Party was still lurking around Washington. Tim Phillips, president: “——- building a meaningful grassroots infrastructure so we can win these battles — these policy battles — at the local, state and federal level.” We were happy to see that the movement is still alive. As the central government remains gridlocked the outlook has to improve. For some intriguing news media history see Press Saga in PG5.
Eugene Robinson: “When the economy begins to rebound, Wall Street will come back first ———. After recovery begins, unemployment will almost certainly continue to rise for months ——-. The mad-as-hell faction may thrive and multiply.”
This prediction makes sense because managers don’t begin hiring until they are absolutely sure the economy is on the mend. We hope and pray that reason will guide the crowd’s behavior and not violence.
If the pocket gofers have spread widely this could come true. We must get the word out.
WORKING TOGETHER TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT
It looks very much like we have a winner here, but how do we gear up and get a project started? We don’t. Bottom-up is an approach to a project, not its start, middle or finish.
To this point we have said relatively little about money. We find this interesting in view of the long tradition of top-down approaches to problem solving that puts the money up front.
Today a bureaucracy moves large amounts of financial and other resources onto the job site, ready to enact a miracle straight from heaven. We have seen that much of it misses the poor altogether even if it buys many votes. The flip side of creating is people do not support what they do not help to create.
The reason we haven’t said much about money is that when using bottom-up we don’t need a lot of it. This discovery will not make happy campers out of congressmen and bureaucrats, but the effect on us taxpayers will be different.
Maybe we got carried away with detail here. We believe that once bottom-up gets momentum we will no longer need to send teams into low-income areas.
Residents will learn to initiate and do for themselves, and eventually those low-income areas will not be so low-income. The whole process could be helped greatly if we could convince the government to butt out. In fact, this is essential.
Many of us do not make long-term plans. We suspect part of the cause is a government that focuses only on the short term (the next election).
Therefore we don’t save for retirement. Some folks recently hatched a scheme aimed at persuading people to save; it’s called “default option.”
“Instead of an employer asking a new hire if he/she wants to sign onto a pension plan, the default option puts him into one with an opt-out choice available. One study result showed that this scheme raised the enrolment rate from 49% to 86%.
This scheme is not top-down, nor is it pure bottom-up. But it seems to persuade people to plan. We prefer a better education and pure bottom-up, but until we have this maybe default option is a good idea (see Pocket Gofer 10). Just keep government out.
Missouri has a voluntary plan where gambling addicts can add their names to a list but cannot get off it once on. If they enter a gambling establishment they are subject to prosecution for trespass.
Here is a lesson in all this. Freedom is a use-it-or-lose-it commodity. If we hang back and don’t assert our freedoms we can bet our bippy that government will leap into the breach.
Today BIG GOVERNMENT butts into the mix by force. It has occurred to us that if we are the bosses and government officials are our servants we could “invite” them to butt out.
Here is a recent example (2018). We think the reporter is Thomas Friedman. “My original host was the Hourglass, a foundation founded by community leaders in Lancaster County in 1997, when the city was a crime-ridden ghost town at night. Some of the leading citizens decided that ‘time was running out’ — hence ‘Hourglass’ — and that no cavalry was coming to save them — not from the state’s capital or the nation’s capital.
“——— throwing partisan politics out the window and forming a complete adaptive coalition in which business leaders, educators, philanthropists, social innovators and the local government would work together to unleash entrepreneurship and forge whatever compromises were necessary to fix the city.” Bottom-up at work.
BOTTOM-UP IS DEMOCRACY
Friends, by now this headline should not surprise us. We have seen how it works. Now we will look more deeply into the connection with democracy.
Democracy is power placed in the ideas of citizens. These ideas are criticized and debated by citizens in order to make them stronger and to earn agreement among those concerned. See PG13.
Once this is accomplished, an idea may become law. If citizens have something to say about making a law they will obey it.
People support what they help to create. This is the bottom-up approach to lawmaking. People governing themselves will make very few laws and they will enforce them; people support what they help to create.
Lincoln said “And that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” This is democracy.
As with individual transactions, the only people who possess accurate information are those who know the territory. The people who live and work there every day know best just as “Mother knows best,” and for the same reasons.
Bertha Gilkey’s accomplishment is not unique. There are many other examples of people maneuvering around government bureaucracies to get things done bottom-up style.
For example, citizens in Chattanooga, TN rebuilt their public school system. In Seattle there is a fund to provide seed money for local self-help projects.
Many efforts are being coordinated through the Alliance for National Renewal. The National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise annually hands out “Achievement Against the Odds” awards to residents of low-income neighborhoods everywhere who have seized the initiative in starting projects. (No prize for guessing what created the odds.)
There is another point to be made. As a manager listens to his/her people they are skeptical at first. However, soon they get the idea that he is sincere, if in fact he is.
When this realization happens, the managerial climate is well on its way to being one of mutual trust and confidence. This is because when a manager truly listens he is sending a vital message:
“I care about you as a person. The company values your contribution, not just technically but also your thinking. We recognize your expertise in this part of the business, and we look forward to further contributions in the future.”
Not easy to bring off, because as a manager listens he/she is exposing his ego to the possibility that his thinking may be wrong or not as good as that of his employee. However, the latter feels valuable to the company and will therefore work harder and smarter.
We are impressed with what this effort can do for democracy. Picture an elected public official. He/she is dedicated to bottom-up government or we would not have elected him.
If power rests in our ideas properly debated, he must listen to us. How else will he/she understand our ideas, our desires? If the bloke does not listen, and we mean really listen, we will find someone who can and will.
We want him to look forward to listening to us. If he does we will reward him with our trust and confidence. This is democracy.
There is another vital factor here. If our public servant is to listen we must have some ideas and recommendations that are worth his/her time and effort. Difficult as it often is, we will need to do some serious thinking.
Good government should begin at the neighborhood and community levels. Once citizens have formed self-government, the few issues that cannot be handled effectively here are handed over to state government. But this is done only through a crystal-clear process of active participation thru informed discussion, criticism, and debate.
This means that Washington gets what is left over from state government operations. This is democracy. When BIG WASHINGTON dictates terms to states and communities it is not.
We offer this brief section to help prepare us for further discussions of democracy. (See especially Pocket Gofer 16 and our essay “Democracy.”) We believe this discussion is important for our future and that of our children.
CONCLUSION
We have described a radically different approach to solving problems in low-income areas of our cities. This approach can also be used in non-poor areas, and in towns and villages.
While examining the bottom-up approach, we have developed a powerful suspicion that Washington has been part of the problem and not part of the solution. Therefore we have decided to show BIG WASHINGTON the door.
We have concluded that social problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them. In this conclusion we don’t lack for proof: while the tuition was a bit steep we have learned the lesson.
The realization that we don’t need megabucks from taxpayers to solve social problems in poor areas comes as a powerful jab in the keester. We wonder whether those huge pots of money spent during the past 60 years has actually subtracted more than it has added, in terms of people’s self-esteem and values.
We also wonder why we had to scratch for examples of bottom-up over much of the world. Rose Wilder Lane’s argument haunts us: everyone tends to look to authority, for someone else to do it, even though it is human nature that humankind is free.
People support what they help to create. We cannot repeat that one too often. If poor people generate an original creation we can bet our bippy they will make it work. If we don’t stand clear we risk being sucked up in the backwash. And not just poor folks (Lancaster).
Finally we see how bottom-up ties in with something that we all value most highly: democracy. While we remain concerned about the poor, this one has potential for all of us.
The recent history describing the evolution of politics could look like this: Left vs. right; open vs. closed; and top-down vs. bottom-up. When we apply some serious thinking to this sequence, we will conclude that top-down populists on both sides of left vs. right are curtailing our freedom. So, we move on to open vs. closed. But closed means citizens cannot learn the truth about what government is doing behind the rhetoric (read “fake news” and “propaganda”). Thinking about it more, we conclude that open is good; we can see what our tax dollars are buying. Finally, we add a free press that responds to our demand for truth, and we get a bottom-up government that holds every public official’s feet to the fire.
Democracy is nonviolent, and bottom-up is an important part of it. When we pull together we can practice these and make good things happen. That is, we have the potential for WORKING TOGETHER TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT, and peacefully.
Rose Wilder Lane: “If Americans ever forget that American Government is not permitted to restrain or coerce any peaceful individual without his free consent, if Americans ever regard their use of their natural liberty as granted to them by the men in Washington or in the capitals of the States, then this third attempt (after Moses and Jesus Christ) to establish the exercise of human rights on earth is ended.”
……….PUBLIUS II
TITLES OF OTHER POCKET GOFERS WHICH WE CAN DIG INTO, DISCUSS, CRITICIZE, AND ACT ON:
PG 1 – ON HEALTH AND FITNESS IN THE USA
PG 2 – ON VOLUNTEERISM
PG 3 – ON THE CAREER POLITICIAN IN A DEMOCRACY
PG 5 – ON THE COMING OPEN SOCIETY
PG 6 – ON MAKING A CONTRIBUTION
PG 7 – ON CORRUPTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY
PG 8 – ON GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF BUSINESS AND THE PHANTOM
PG 9 – IT’S ALL IN THE FAMILY
PG 10 – ON EDUCATION IN THE U.S.A.
PG 11 – ON THE U.S. AS A WORLD CITIZEN
PG 12 – ON THE U.N. AND POTENTIAL CONFLICTS
PG 13 – ON PERSONAL POWER AND IDEAS
PG 14 – ON RESPECT FOR TAXPAYERS’ MONEY
PG 15 – ON BIG, SMALL, AND GOOD GOVERNMENT
PG 16 – ON DEMOCRACY AND OUR CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
PG 17 – ON LEADERSHIP IN A DEMOCRACY
PG 18 – ON WAR, WEAPONS, AND PEACE
PG 19 – ON THE GRAND DECEPTION
PG 20 – ON LIFE IN A DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY
PG 21 – PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF A CONSTITUTION