Category: Commentary

Kendall Qualls, a new member of our board, recently published a commentary on how to promote the best interests of African American families after some 200 years of chattel slavery, 100 years of legal and social segregations and 6 decades of trials and tribulations.

I find his recommendations vitally important because they flip Karl Marx’s theory of what causes injustice on its head.  Marx believed that values and the derivative behaviors which they install in our psyches are superficial and that materialism structures social outcomes as the “base” of human fortunes and misfortunes.

Marx’s theory has been put in this graphic:

Kendall’s theory of achievement puts the superstructure of intangibles as the base of human civilizations, creating the realities of economy, society and politics, war and peace.  To a great extent, individually and collectively, we really are what we want to be.  This puts activating the best of ourselves – the quality and quantity of our personal capital – front and center in our “business plan” for living as well as circumstances will permit, at any given time.

To reconstruct Marx, we can say that the base of human capital shapes the superstructure of production – for richer or for poorer – while the superstructure then perpetuates value-oriented and cultural structures of the base.

Thus, while Kendall focuses on a particular challenge for the U.S., his recommendations have relevance for every human society.

You can read his commentary here.

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has a brief article which gives an insight into the importance of “mindsets.”

Researchers collected data from 389 publicly traded Fortune 500 firms seeking to measure female influence on the top management team.  Their standard for firm success was Tobin’s q or the current market value of the firm, divided by the replacement costs of its assets.

The findings were: the more intense the presence of women in the management team (share of positions; rank of highest woman; ranks of all women; length of their “to do” lists), the higher the firm’s customer orientation and Tobin’s q.

A different mindset for women was proposed by the researchers as the cause of firm financial outperformance – an instinct for customers, so to speak.  The researchers called this customer mindfulness “interdependent self-construal,” adding: “Women are more likely than men to see things in terms of relationships and to consider the perspective of others.  So, when in positions of influence in the C-suite, they often promote strategic decisions that reflect a higher focus on customers.”

This study challenges older stereotypes: “Many studies suggest that female executives engage in reduced risk-taking, but customer orientation may actually result in female executives pursuing riskier strategies.”

The full study will be available in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing.

The Harvard Business Review, in its current issue, has an interview with Savva Shanaev on correlations between stock market movements and the calendar. (HBR reprint F2301B)

Shanaev and his colleagues mapped 100 years of U.S. stock market movements against the predictions for the coming of spring on Groundhog Day, when a groundhog in Pennsylvania is let out every February 2 to see his shadow.  If he does see his shadow, winter will last 6 more weeks and the stock market will be sluggish.  If he does not see his shadow, spring will come soon and the stock market will rise.

Also documented, according to Shanaev, is that the market tends to be at its worst from May to October.  Additionally, stocks tend to rise in January and market returns are lower than average at the start of the week – the “Monday effect.”  Other studies have found that stocks perform poorly around the full moon and when Mercury is in retrograde.

However, Shanaev said that the “Monday effect” is now so well-known that it has largely disappeared.

We in the West, at least in some countries, are living in an era fraught with concern for social justice – different outcomes for different people that seem unfair.

I have long been interested in better understanding why people are different one from another – children of the same mother and father have different personalities and life outcomes. Why?  And norms and behaviors that give rise to life outcomes might be common to this religious community, but not to that other one or to this class, but not to that or this ethnic descent group, but not to that one.

Famously, the German sociologist, Max Weber, connected the creation of wealth through capitalism with a religious mindset and its favored behaviors – the Calvinist Protestant ethic – encouraging dedication to one’s work, acceptance of personal responsibility, trust in those who are like-minded and savings.

“Otherness” seems a necessary part of the human condition.  So, if “otherness” is not going to go away in our lifetimes, what are we to do about its tendency to keep us apart from one another?

People in different societies live life differently.  Why?  People in one socially recognized class act, feel and speak differently from those in other classes.  Why?

We are told by those who insist that they know that our separatenesses necessarily give rise to cognitive biases favoring “our kind” and inducing us to give the cold shoulder or worse to “different” kinds.  Pope Francis, in his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, disagreed and there urged us to overcome the political and psycho-social distancing associated with our differences.

I saw in a recent issue of The Economist a map of India showing that some regions of the country have more wealth and others more children.  It seems that the areas with more children have less wealth per capita.  Why should this be?

If different economic outcomes come from different behaviors and mindsets, what is to be done to equalize the outcomes?  What is fair?  Should changes in mindsets or behaviors be a condition for imposing social and political interventions designed to favor one group over the other so that outcomes change?  Cui bono – all or only some?

As we close the passage of time and events which was solar year 2022, I was thinking of all the ups and downs we have been through or witnessed from afar.  At times, it seems like our efforts are useless or evanescent, our prospects foreboding.  From whence cometh good cheer?

I might suggest to you that the light of hope, which each of you raises up, will bring us better days.  But it depends on us, as the founders of the Caux Round Table believed.  Individuals always make a difference – for better or worse or for naught.

I was reminded by this poem of Shaykh Rumi titled “Moses and the Shepherd” on the vital importance of each person:

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying, God,
Where are You?  I want to help You, to fix Your shoes
and comb Your hair.  I want to wash Your clothes
and pick the lice off.  I want to bring You milk,
to kiss Your little hands and feet when it’s time
for You to go to bed.  I want to sweep Your room
and keep it neat.  God, my sheep and goats
are Yours.  All I can say, remembering You,
is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh.

Moses could stand it no longer.
Who are you talking to?
The One who made us,
and made the earth and made the sky.
Don’t talk about shoes
and socks with God!  And what’s this with Your little hands
and feet?  Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like
you’re chatting with your uncles.
Only something that grows
needs milk.  Only someone with feet needs shoes.  Not God!
Even if you meant God’s human representatives
as when God said, I was sick, and you did not visit me,
even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent. …

The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed
and wandered out into the desert.
A sudden revelation
came then to Moses.  God’s voice:

You have separated Me
from one of my own.  Did you come as a Prophet to unite,
or to sever?
I have given each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.
What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
these mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.

It’s all praise, and it’s all
right.
It’s not Me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers!  I don’t hear the words
they say.  I look at the humility.

Happy New Year.

A moral capitalism is not an end in itself, but a means serving a higher end – human felicity and well-being.  So, too, is moral government a means to that same end.  And so, too, is a just society.

It seems to me that we have evolved over the millennia to thrive best when provided with the right public goods (which include avoidance of public “bads”) and beneficial private goods.

As a means to promote moral government, there is a tradition, most actively practiced in constitutional democracies, of tolerating free speech and thought.  Such private goods, so to speak, are both a barrier against abuse of public trust by governments and a wellspring of individual agency and fulfillment.

But the protection and promotion of free speech and thought becomes a public good, for it is to be enjoyed by all without discriminations and builds social and human capitals of sustaining value to the community.

In the U.S. these past several weeks, we have been in a contretemps or a “dustup” among ourselves over the right of a private social media company, Twitter, to censor speech and so thought in order to guide and control public opinion.

Internal emails of Twitter employees have been made public, documenting these attempts to promote “right” thinking among Americans.

Many on the “left” here think such censorship is most valuable, as it contributes to the eradication of “wrongthink.”  On the other hand, many on the “right” find such censorship appalling because it discourages the discovery of truth.

A defense of Twitter from the left rests on the character of Twitter as a private company, noting that constitutional prohibitions against interference with free speech only apply to government.

While there is truth to that observation, private persons and companies also have moral standards to follow in their conduct.  So, we can very correctly and necessarily ask what moral or ethical standards might constrain Twitter’s private rights to censor users of its service?

In particular, right now, what do ESG moral objectives have to say about censorship?  Free speech is part both of “S” and of “G.”

In the following comment, I argue that ESG morality protects free speech because it is a public good, inculcating among us better “society” and better “governance.”

You may read my analysis and recommendations here.

Much dissatisfaction with capitalism, as a system, focuses on economic inequity – some have more wealth than others.  But is it capitalism that has failed or the state in which capitalism is attempted, which has serious shortcomings?

The Caux Round Table has, for 20 years, pointed to the interaction of the state and the economy as driving social outcomes.  The failures of the state should never be overlooked in analysis and efforts at remediation of inequality.

An article in a recent issue of The Economist was a proof point for this argument.

In South Africa, the company, Gold Fields, proposed to build a solar plant to help power South Deep, one of the largest gold mines in the world.  But soon thereafter, the mining company began to receive extortion demands from “business forums.”  In 2019, such “forums” invaded 183 construction sites worth $4 billion in investment value.  Gun-toting forum members led to two firms pulling out of a project to build what would have been the highest bridge in Africa.

There is a lot of crime in South Africa.  The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime ranked South Africa ahead of Russia and Libya.  Wildlife is poached.  Drugs are transited. Kidnappings rose from 6,000 in 2021 to 10,000 a year later.  Mafia-like organizations run the mini-buses used by two-thirds of commuters.  The cash-only business model opens access to money laundering.  Tens of thousands of illegal miners work for criminal organizations, taking from the industry $7 billion a year.  Around 10% of South Africa’s chrome production is exported illegally.

In 1997, there was roughly one private security guard for every policeman.  Today, the ratio is 4 to 1.

It is a fundamental axiom of a government’s claim to be a legitimate sovereign that it has a monopoly of violence in the territory it purports to rule.  If the state cannot provide security for lives and property, how can wealth be created?

As Adam Smith taught us in 1776, the wealth of nations does not originate with criminal enterprises and lawless environments.  Those conditions rather call forth social Darwinism of the most stark harshness and injustice, where lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” to quote another Englishman, Thomas Hobbes.

My colleague Patrick Rhone, who does such a marvelous job with the design and formatting of Pegasus, recently shared with me one of his blog posts.  We were discussing in a staff meeting the importance of free human agency and he mentioned his different take on achievement.

Here is his blog:

Profit and Passion

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
-Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (via Annie Mueller)

Once we can divorce profit and passion, only then can we find passion in any profit and truly profit from our passion.  The idea being that it is not the thing that is the passion, but something deeper.  That the thing is simply a clear path to a feeling… A place.

I’ve had a lot of disparate jobs in my life.  Bagging groceries, working front desk at a hotel, managing video rental stores, writing customer service letters — the list goes on.  A common thread I found in all of my jobs and roles, both past and present, is “helping people.”  Every job I’ve had or volunteer opportunity, this is not only the common thread, but what “filled me up” about it.  And if I can simply identify the way in which whatever I choose to do helps people, I then can be filled up doing just about anything.

Once I discovered that my real passion wasn’t the various jobs/titles/work I’ve done in my life, but, instead, was the common thread that ran through all of them, I found that I didn’t need to do a particular job or a thing to experience the joy of my passion.  I found those roles were simply a catalyst and that I could find my passion doing just about any job or thing.

If I were paid to dig ditches, I would discover that the ditch is for a water line to a new house. That means someone gets clean water.  Once I think it through, I can find my passion in the ditch digging.

My friend, the storyteller Kevin Kling, once said to me, “A story is always about two things: what it’s about and what it’s really about.”

I think this is the “really” behind “pursuing your passion.”

Now, I am a writer, technical consultant, circus rigger, home restorer and mental health advocate (Not to mention a husband, father, son and friend).  The title field on my business cards reads, master generalist.  If you ask me what I do for a living, I’ll answer, “I help people. Sometimes, money is involved.”

I discovered that I don’t need a specific career, job, hobby, etc. to be able to “do what I love” or get “paid for my passion.”  I could stop chasing it and start realizing that I already have it (or could choose to).  Not only have it in one specific thing, but could have it in just about anything.

Patrick’s insight aligns with a famous affirmation of Mencius:

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

Mencius replied, “Why must your Majesty use that word “profit?”  What I am provided with are counsels to benevolence and righteousness and these are my only topics.  If your Majesty say, “What is to be done to profit my kingdom?,” the great officers will say, “What is to be done to profit our families?” and the inferior officers and the common people will say, “What is to be done to profit our persons?”  Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit the one from the other and the kingdom will be endangered.  In the kingdom of ten thousand chariots, the murderer of his sovereign shall be the chief of a family of a thousand chariots.  In the kingdom of a thousand chariots, the murderer of his prince shall be the chief of a family of a hundred chariots.  To have a thousand in ten thousand and a hundred in a thousand cannot be said not to be a large allotment, but if righteousness be put last and profit be put first, they will not be satisfied without snatching all.  There never has been a benevolent man who neglected his parents.  There never has been a righteous man who made his sovereign an after consideration.  Let your Majesty also say, “Benevolence and righteousness and let these be your only themes.”  Why must you use that word – “profit?”

Last Saturday, December 10, was Human Rights Day.  That same day, Memorial, a Russian research and human rights organization, received a Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts.

The principal mission of human rights, as set forth in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, is to put limits on government.  Certain rights of individuals are given priority over and protection against some applications of state power.  Under the social justice standard of human rights, individual persons are given some powers which governments must not restrict and governments are given some duties to serve individuals which such governments must not ignore or abuse.

In short, human rights prevent the state from acting as a tyrant and transform its work into service of the people.

When it recognized that no moral capitalism could survive cruel and oppressive political regimes, the Caux Round Table proposed a set of moral principles for governments.  The principal standard for all government action is to faithfully execute a public trust.  The Caux Round Table’s standards for government mirror the moral foundation of human rights.

The Caux Round Table Principles for Government hold as a fundamental principle that:

Public power is held in trust for the community.

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

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

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

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

The fundamental principal for moral government was eloquently applied by Jan Rachinsky on Saturday in his remarks accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Memorial.  He said, in part:

We are investigating and documenting crimes; crimes against individual human beings and against humanity, already committed or currently being committed, by state power.  What we see as the root cause of these crimes is the sanctification of the Russian state as the supreme value. This requires that the absolute priority of power is to serve the ‘interests of the state’ over the interests of individual human beings and their freedom, dignity and rights.  In this inverted system of values, people are merely expendable material to be used for resolving governmental tasks.  This is the system that prevailed in the Soviet Union for seventy years and regrettably continues ‘til today. …

Another consequence of this exaltation of the state was and remains impunity, not only for those who make criminal political decisions, but also for those who commit crimes in the execution of those decisions. …

For seventy years, the Soviet state destroyed any solidarity among people, atomized society, eradicated any expression of civic solidarity and thus turned society into docile and voiceless masses.  Today’s sad state of civil society in Russia is a direct consequence of its unresolved past.

If the state has supreme value, as Rachinsky asserts, it cannot serve as a faithful trustee of its citizens and their values.

There has been a lot of hype these past months on ESG as the road to capitalist nirvana, but it might be, as Texans allegedly say those who would be taken for cowboys and cowgirls: “All hat and no cattle.”

A recent commentary by Rob Wiesenthal in the Wall Street Journal teaches a playground lesson about corporate governance – beware the second law of thermodynamics.

Authority structures which use power and rules to isolate themselves from a surrounding ecosystem succumb to entropy.  Entropy then opens the way to a slow death – to atrophy.  Self-absorption and decadence are two peas from the same pod.

Wiesenthal wrote about Twitter and the beneficial impact on its governance made by its new owner, Elon Musk.  His point is that Musk is anti-entropic.  Musk seeks maximum work output from the system (overcoming entropy) by linking it directly to the ecology in which it lives in ways that will promote a flow of productive energy from the outside to the inside.

Wiesenthal writes:

Minutes after closing his purchase of the company, he started a process that reduced the workforce from 7,500 to 2,500 in 10 days. …

Mr. Musk is trying to cure a degenerative corporate disease: systemic paralysis.  Symptoms include cobwebs of corporate hierarchies with unclear reporting lines and unwieldy teams, along with work groups and positions that have opaque or nonsensical mandates.  Paralyzed companies are often led by a career CEO who builds or maintains a level of bureaucracy that leads to declines in innovation, competitive stature and shareholder value. …

Redundant managers, along with managers who have opaque responsibilities, are in essence professional critics.  Kenneth Tynan said, “A critic is a man who knows the way, but can’t drive the car.”  While corporate execs typically can’t drive the car, they do have a time-tested path to success at big companies: Don’t do anything.  Simply critique others’ attempts to do something. Don’t initiate any projects that have any risk of failure or embarrassment.  And always stay close enough for credit, but far enough from blame.  That’s the road map for job security, but not for innovation.

And innovation in its various manifestations – tangible and intangible – is the death of entropy and the road to sustainability.  Innovation brings energy to a firm’s stocks of human and social capitals.