I want to share a quote from a book, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman.

"I believe the five gas station theory of the world.

"That's right: I believe you can reduce the world's economies today to basically five different gas stations. First there is the Japanese gas station. Gas is $5 a gallon. Four men in uniforms and white gloves, with lifetime employment contracts, wait on you. They pump your gas. They change your oil. They wash your windows, and they wave at you with a friendly smile as you drive away in peace. Second is the American gas station. Gas costs only $1 a gallon, but you pump it yourself. You wash your own windows. You fill your own tires. And when you drive around the corner four homeless people try to steal your hubcaps. Third is the Western European gas station. Gas here also costs $5 a gallon. There is only one man on duty. He grudgingly pumps your gas and unsmilingly changes your oil, reminding you all the time that his union contract says he only has to pump gas and change oil. He doesn't do windows, He works only thirty-five hours a week, with ninty minutes off each day for lunch, during which time the gas station is closed. He also has six weeks' vacation every summer in the south of France. Across the street his two brothers and uncle, who have not worked in ten years because their state unemployment insurance pays more than their last job, are playing boccie ball. Fourth is the developing country gas station. Fifteen people work there and they are all cousins. When you drive in, no one pays any attention to you because they are all too busy talking to each other. Gas is only 35 cents a gallon because it is subsidized by the government, but only one of the six gas pumps actually works. The others are broken and they are waiting for the replacement parts to be flown in from Europe. The gas station is rather run-down because the absentee owner lives in Zurich and takes all the profits out of the country. The owner doesn't know that half of his employees actually sleep in the repair shop at night and use the car wash equipment to shower. Most of the customers at the developing country gas station either drive the latest model Mercedes or a motor scooter -- nothing in between. The place is always busy, though, because so many people stop in to use the air pump to fill their bicycle tires. Lastly there is the communist gas station. Gas there is only 50 cents a gallon -- but there is none, because the four guys working there have sold it all on the black market for $5 a gallon. Just one of the four guys who is employed at the communist gas station is actually there. The other three are working at second jobs in the underground economy and only come around once a week to collect paychecks."

There is a direction here, but I have to take off and do something. More later.

Development

What is it?

• Is it physical? Yes, in developed societies, children have the opportunity and possibility to physically develop to maturity without the interference of disease and hunger. But birds, bees and other living creatures achieve this in non-developed countries and cats and dogs achieve this in developed countries but would we say that they live in developed societies? I think not.
• Is it spiritual? There are certainly components of development that require strong spiritual, ethical components. Trust for just one quick example. But there are many examples of people with strong, rich spiritual lives living in non-developed countries so there must be more to this.
• Is it legal? Well, you can't really pass a law that says that some group is henceforth developed but on the other hand, it is hard for me to imagine a developed society that didn't have some well defined and implemented legal system. Is development only possible in democracy? Or even more confining, in American style democracy? Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom argues that "expansion of freedom is viewed ... both as the primary end [of development] and as the principal means of development." Expansion to what limits - anarchy?
• Is it economic? Yes, I suppose that there probably needs to be ongoing economic development in a developed country but I suspect that narrowly focusing on that aspect of development doesn't lead to a very well-balanced well-being.
• Most, if not all, groups of people have some semi-unique definition of themselves and how they fit into the world. They have unique contributions to the world as well - art, music, stories.

Well...I don't really know that I can tell you what development is but, I know it when I see it (maybe).

The only real thing I am sure of is that it is not monolithic and it has many, many facets.

Culture

Main Entry:

1 cul·ture

Pronunciation:

ˈkəl-chər

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, cultivated land, cultivation, from Anglo-French, from Latin cultura, from cultus, past participle

Date:

15th century

1: cultivation, tillage

2: the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education

3: expert care and training <beauty culture>

4 a: enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training

4 b: acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills

5 a: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations

5 b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>

5 c: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization <a corporate culture focused on the bottom line>

5 d: the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic <studying the effect of computers on print culture> <changing the culture of materialism will take time — Peggy O'Mara>

6: the act or process of cultivating living material (as bacteria or viruses) in prepared nutrient media; also : a product of such cultivation

There is a lot of food for thought!

Although there is a lot of talk of culture in terms of agriculture (meaning one) in development, I suspect that most societies today are beyond this aspect though there is always more to learn here.

There is also a lot of focus on definition 2 in development work. One of the MDGs directly address this (Achieve universal primary education) and another (Promote gender equality and empower women) impinges on it.

The 5th definitions are the ones I really want to look at in part because it looks a lot like development is a full frontal assault on this kind of culture.

Often dealing with development of education in developing countries has entailed the imposition of outside educational structures that have really in fact undermined culture as in definition 5.

Another factor that entails cultural change is globalization. Cultural homogenization. Is this a part of development?

Globalization

So much has been written on Globalization. Many of the efforts of the IMF, WTO, World Bank, NAFTA etc have been to further Globalization.

If we are to have a connected world, does it require accepting the whole menu? Is there no place for developing countries to be able to protect infant industries in the same way that developed countries did when they were in the same economic place? Is there to be no consideration to protection if something goes wrong in the "ONE" world? How ecologically sound is globalization?

It seems that with Globalization, you are either on one side of the fence (the Bretton Woods trio) or the other (Environmentalists and politicians like Mahathir bin Mohamad). I am hereby declaring that I am straddling the fence.

Well being

Well being is really of the most interest to me. If I had a magic wand I would immediately wave it and everyone would have well being. The question is, what would that look like? Would it be the same thing to everyone? What factors would be considered and how would you measure them?

Until the mid '70s no one ever really considered challenging the fact that measuring well being would include a measure of GNP (GDP). At that time Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan, declared unequivocally that human well-being, happiness and development can not be measured by the financial output of a nation. In 1990 the development of the Human Development Index acknowledged that development was more than financial and included factors for health (life expectancy) and education (adult literacy and school enrollment ratio) were included with GDP at PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). The UN has continuously used this measure since then.

Only in relatively recent years has serious attention been given to how to measure King Singye's Gross National Happiness.

Economics

Describe four main categories of institutional requirements for markets.

1. Individual ability to own property and make decisions
2. Trust
3. Good physical infrastructure
4. Currency

Give several examples of ways in which trustworthiness can be established.

1. One-on-one relationships
2. Reputation
3. Societal norms - expected ethical or religious behavior
4. The existence of laws that can be enforced

Give several examples of the infrastructure necessary for market functioning.

Roads, phones, internet, rails, airports, postal and delivery services, media

These are 3 homework questions my students had earlier in the semester. Crucial questions even in neo-classical economics.

Looking at the African continent where the development and well-being problems are the most critical, one sees some immediate problems, even if you are not a development guru.

Starting at the bottom of those questions were things are easiest - Roads, phones, internet, rails, airports, postal and delivery services, media.

What is all of this about?

I had planned my PhD research around Opok Farm and the formation of a village there to help heal children affected by the war, AIDS and poverty. Plans were in place set up a supportive community, to do organic farming with the children and to establish a learn by doing school to help the children and young adults who are faced with raising many of these children with their broken educations. There was talk of being able to export organic produce to the EU. My job was to build a method of evaluating development in a basically non-monetary economy.

Since our original plans were made, Life in Africa has broken ties with the group in Gulu. That may be resurrected near the beginning of the year but is unsure at the moment.

Peace plans were progressing though still there was quibbling over the ICC warrant for Joseph Kony. Kony had agreed to sign the peace accords if the ICC would drop the warrant and then he would turn himself over to the Ugandan court system. This was something that was agreeable to everyone apparently except the ICC.

With the "impending peace" there was billions of dollars that was flying around the Gulu district for relocation of families. Then the greedy came out of the woodwork and there was a lot of insecurity due to the threats against people who might be recipients of that money. This was what led me to cancel my trip to Gulu this past March-May.

Now the ICC has issued a warrant for the arrest Sudan's Bashir? He's now threatening Museveni that unless Museveni helps him he can count on more trouble in N. Uganda. And Kony is already stirring up new demands. In addition, 2 weeks ago there were at least 5 farms (including Opok Farms) that were hit by theft - all of the old farm implements/tractor parts and everything else metal was stolen. Norbert's uncle is the military commander in charge of security for the IDP camp returnees, and he's really having trouble.

The crops have been stolen and the forests have been cut down by "poachers" to make charcoal.

In addition, while I was in the UK I heard of the UK's plans to revoke organic certification for produce flown into the UK because of the impact on the carbon footprint. The EU had already revoked organic certification for Ugandan produce due to government spraying of DDT even though the spraying had not reached as far north as Gulu.

All of these problems and this continued instability has led to at least the temporary abandonment of the Opok Farms Project. The project just doesn't seem to make sense at this time.

I am still interested in developing tools to help communities that are basically non-monetary economies measure their development. I will either continue the work I did in March in Mae Usu and or work with other sufficiency economy communities here in Thailand.

Wow, so much to think about!

You probably saw that I reacted poorly to Paul Ehrlich's Cultural Evolution. There are many reasons why, all of which I don't seem to be able to coherently say. What I reacted to quite unfavorably was the apparent notion that all the academic study of culture hadn't matured because the academics don't understand how science is done. I find Ehrlich's application of science in this example very shoddy, and apparently none of his colleagues bothered to tell him so. If such prominent scientists are so loose with their methods the advancement of science is retarded.

I think there is benefit in scholars attempting to talk across disciplines. That conversation is impeded when the everyday tinkering within scientific disciplines is taken to be science. One of the saving graces of economics is there is still plenty of debate at the theoretical level.

I'm sort of odd--okay you knew that--so I always scroll through the comments when I read a economics blog post. It seems a handy ways to get at least a familiarity with the various perspectives. Over time some more or less jaded points of view become obvious, so I get a sense for the "sides" more broadly in the discipline.

Last month Dani Rodrik posted The Economist evaluates the randomized evaluators. Rodrik made the point:

The trouble is that the moment you take the experiment from Western Kenya and want to use it to inform policy in another setting, you need to make all kind of additional, not rigorously tested assumptions (about how similar or dissimilar the settings are and how these affect the likely outcomes). By the time the evidence is used, it has become as "soft" as many other kinds of evidence that development economists traditionally rely on.

One of the commenters seemed to think Rodrik is against randomized trials. That's hardly the case. Rodrik is encouraging scholars to be careful in their work. Timbuktu Chronicles links to an article by Duncan Green Power v poverty. Green basically argues that for development to work the politics has to be right; an idea not too far removed from George Ayittey's point of view. In that article Dani Rodrik came up:

Harvard economist Dani Rodrik found that democracies produce more predictable long-run growth rates, greater short-term stability and more equality, and are better able to handle economic shocks.

One of the commenters on Green's piece has the handle "antileft." There are trolls online. Antileft in this instance at least doesn't seem a troll but someone whose views are rigid enough so to provide the outlines of a more general line of reasoning. I hardly would paint Rodrik as a leftist, but surely he is viewed so by many. What worries me is that what gets missed is genuine intellectual concerns, not particularly political ones in Rodrik's views. Loyalty has it place, and good scholarship often comes down to a dogged commitment to see a particular set of ideas through. Communists and Jesuits make good scholars. Still there is always a role for professors to remind us, and more especially students of the discipline, to take care in such thing as minding ones priors.

The edition of Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture has a neat feature: There is the original Introduction by Franz Boaz, a Preface by Margaret Mead and a Forward by Mary Catherine Bateson. Boaz was Benedict's teacher and colleague, Bendict was a friend and mentor to Mead, and Bateson Mead's daughter. The book itself might be said to be "old fashioned" or "outdated." It is, for example the culture and personality has been generally abandoned in anthropology. Yet the book is still in print 75 years after first being published. I think Ehrilich would have been wise to read the first chapter "The Science of Custom."

Jim Culleny puts up poetry at 3Quarks Daily. Today's poem by Gwee Li Sui seemed relevant and I want to share it.

A Chinese Parable ~Gwee Li Sui

Said the Premier: For a lifetime I have sought only the common good and with bare hands wrought a kingdom, whose vast wealth now stands testified by pagodas, innumerable, sundried as the blades of grass – a permanent fortune locked from the barbarians of the warring dune by the joining of walls. So long as we strive, we shall enjoy our fruits; and he will survive who works on diligently – for Work is Life. God gave them the hands, I have given them tools; and none starves in this kingdom except the fools. Our magistrates are just and good law is praised. Our governors are wise and the stores are raised. Here are the foundations for millennial peace! Is there more a people will desire than these?

Said the Mandarin: There is nothing lacking in the provision of the body, seeing our middle kingdom bodily strong, sinewy-- but there is more to Kingdom and Man than Body. When a people clutch all gods as money gods, you must be vigilant. Pieties are not rods to fish material things; they form a World-Soul to which one gives assent and he is whole who lives in fellowship: this, too, is your goal. Great cultures are not hewn from a heritage for sons, but for great-great-grandsons of due age. Some investments then must always seem pointless, a fling into the well, but there's some goodness to be less than pragmatic. No work is ample and no wall strong if you should slight the temple.

Culleny also put a quotation from Leonard Cohen before the post:

I've seen the nations rise and fall / I've heard their stories, heard them all /but love's the only engine of survival --Leonard Cohen

The second part of Gwee Li Sui's piece is as good a definition of culture I've seen. And the juxtaposition of the Cohen quote made me smile and think of you. One way or another I think both of us believe, "but love's the only engine of survival." So much so that surely economics as a discipline cannot continue to ignore something so important.

One assumption that I think most of the international development agencies buy into is that development in one place looks the same as development in another place and it is all on a globalization path that aims for what the USA "is/has/does".

This is bad, bad, bad in my humble opinion because what the USA "is/has/does" is not what it is painted to be. The people in under-developed and developing countries are painted a grand and glorious picture of beautiful people, wearing beautiful clothes, in beautiful homes, with totally awesome jobs taking glorious vacations to exotic places. People in America live in a perfect democracy with no corruption. It is the advertising thing.

I am sure that most of us around here snickered when Dr. Ayittey talked of African crony capitalism. (Wikipedia defines it thus: Crony capitalism is a pejorative term describing an allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businessmen and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, and so forth.) Let me see - think Bush/Cheney/Halburton. Corrupt elections? Never happen in the US. Ha! I was thinking the other day: If you were going to go to a country to live, would you think twice about living in a country that looked like this?

The Wage Gap, by Gender and Race

• Prescription drugs cost, on average, 30 percent to 50 percent more in the United States than in Europe.
• Doctors in the United States earn two to three times as much as they do in other industrialized countries.
• In the United States during 1997, there were 15,289 murders. Of these, 10,369 were committed with firearms.
• In the United States during 1997, there were approximately 7,927,000 violent crimes. Of these, 691,000 were committed with firearms.
• As of 1992, for every 14 violent crimes (murder, rape, etc…) committed in the United States, one person is sentenced to prison.
• Incarceration rates in the US are four times the world average.
• US rates are in large part driven by disproportionate minority incarceration.

Gini Indexes (A measure of inequality. The higher the number, the less equal incomes are)

Notice that the Gini Index for the United States is closer Mexico's than it is to Canada's.

The US made it to #17!

I didn't even try to look up the cancer rates, psychological health, obesity rates, death rates due to bad life styles.

How do we turn this whole mess around? How do we convince people in developing countries to look for other goals? How do we get people in the west to look for other goals? From these statistics, development is not just a problem in poor countries.

Dave Pollard is a blogger with an ironically named blog How to Save the World. Saturdays he does a round up of links to things he's found interesting. This week he begins with "Disparity, Poverty and Environmental Health." He's reading Herve Kempf's new book How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth and ties that together with a post by Ian Welsh at Firedoglake There Was a Class War. The Rich Won It.. I like reading Welsh's economic pieces, but he's Canadian and has a certain sourness about Obama that's a little off-putting--instructive as that may be. Welsh has written at The Agonist blog where Sterling Newberry sometimes writes. The two of them together provide real insight.

Anyway, this part of Pollard's weekly roundup addresses the questions your post raises. Pollard makes the point:

There are no economic 'market' or technology fixes for either the economic disparity or the environmental devastation that continue to accelerate every day. What is left is belief in violent political revolution, belief in a collective new social consciousness that will drive a spontaneous plunge in global consumption and a massive redistribution of wealth, belief in the Rapture, or belief that our civilization is inevitably in its last century.

Pollard chooses the belief "that our civilization is inevitably in its last century." My bleeding heart preference is in "a new social consciousness," but not at all certain in my convictions to be optimistic.

The deadline for papers for The 2nd International conference of the Buddhist Economic Research Platform is fast approaching and I'm scratching my head to think of people I should alert to it.

One of the aspects of Buddhist Economics which I find so interesting is the intersection of cultural change:

This conference is therefore an attempt to bring together opposite ends of numerous spectrums: Buddhism in a primarily capitalist, Christian culture and Buddhism in a Buddhist culture that is increasingly capitalist; Western theoreticians working on ways to incorporate theory into culture and Eastern practitioners seeking to build theoretical frameworks from practice; and Eastern and Western religious leaders seeking the best methods to influence their followers.

Ha ha, I suppose you wrote that so don't need to be reminded what you said. I put it up for me really.

It's interesting to think what role religion might play in an emerging social consciousness that might transform the ways people live to save the planet for life and make human lives more abundant. In the past decades Christianity in the USA has been seen as a vocal ally of the rapacious rich. Given the life and achievement of Jesus to a heathen like me this has always seemed puzzling.

Back in college I was trying to write a paper. The question that animated my research, although one which didn't lend itself to such an assignment was: Did the Civil War alter the notions of womanhood in the North and South? Silly question, but woman, especially in the USA have a special role in the transmission of culture. I guess I would have predicted that rather than reinforcing the hierarchical view of social stratification of the South, that Southern women immediately after the war might have gone the other way.

Oh well, I never got very far. But something that I discovered was that at the turn of the 19th Century Appalachia was the heart of the anti-slavery movement here. This movement was connected to the religious fervor of the times. So it seemed rather remarkable that in fairly short order a Christian defense of slavery and against miscegenation became the received wisdom.

I'm fascinated with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Hindu nationalism in India gives me the creeps. Even though I'm hardly a keen India observer, I suppose I would place odds on Indian nationalists winning the day. That Singh became Prime Minister provides some glimmer of optimism.

Many Americans rightly caution not to over blow the significance of election a black president. But race is so over blown here, it clearly would be significant. Clearly competence is what's most important. India's election of Singh provides some optimism that Americans may too value the more important first.

A religious consciousness is obviously important as to what people do, but certainly not in some automatic and linear way. It's not at all helpful to you, but as I write I'm thinking about two intellectuals, Regis Debray and Rene Girard.

Debray has been working on Mediology. From Wired here is a short sentence by Debray on the matter:

It focuses on the intersections between technology and intellectual life.

I mentioned a while back that I wanted to re-read McLuhan's "Understanding Media." I haven't been able to get into it. But it was seeing Debray's writing around that made me want to turn more attention to the issue of the material transmission of ideas. That relates back to the sorts of changes that an Internet connected world might bring. I have an idea for "kinder gentler people" but also know that my rosy-colored glasses often distorts my view of reality.

Girard's work is still very new to me, but I'm convinced I'll have to delve in more deeply. Central to his work is a hypothesis of memetic desire. By the way I got to that site via a really excellent site of links compiled by Dietmar Regensburger of the University of Innsbruck. Here's the raw nub of mememtic desire:

By analyzing the novelistic masterpieces (Cervantes, Stendhal, Proust and Dostoïevski), René Girard reveals a different mechanism for the human desire. This one would not fix itself in an autonomous way according to a linear path between the subject and an object, but by imitation of the desire of an Other, according to a triangular plan : subject - model - object.

Girard's work is quite explicitly Christian. That perspective is of great interest to me, but I also imagine how this hypothesis can be useful to the role of religions in the emerging social consciousness I hope for. Eric Gans has begun to trod down this path with Generative Anthropology.

I always start writing just before supper. What might be a good habit would be to wait until after supper to post. Then maybe I'd finish or edit what I write. But I'm too impulsive. If there is anything that ties this mess together it's the notion of the economy as a communications network. I'm interested in the "language" (in quotations because surely I mean more than mere words) of economics and how economics contributes to the sort of change of consciousness I'm hopeful humanity can achieve.

I'll go make supper now.