The mobilization of the American people to solve a national crisis during World War II was an unprecedented and phenomenal occurrence. Never before or since have the American people sacrificed so many daily comforts in order to overcome a national threat. The story is moving and is justifiably looked to for inspiration for solving today’s problems. Accordingly, it is fair to ask, what was it that caused Americans to act together with such unanimity and purpose? What would it take to get them to act in such a manner again? And, could those efforts be duplicated and spread on an international scale?
Not surprisingly, it was no small impetus that pushed individual Americans to sacrifice for the greater good of the nation. For years World War II was developing in Europe and Eastern Asia and for years it was being fought in those places without Americans making any sort of sacrifice. Why not? Because as desperate and real as WWII was abroad, it was not yet desperate and real in the US.
That all changed with Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor, far more than any attack on Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, or any of the Pacific Islands brought home the reality that Americans could be harmed by the Japanese and Germans. American soldiers and citizens actually died during the attack! Clearly it was a sign of what was yet to come if America remained indifferent. Pushed by the dramatic clarification Pearl Harbor brought, change came to America. As US soldiers marched off to war, parents, grandparents and younger siblings faced the undeniable reality for the first time that their loved ones might die, and that if their beloved soldiers failed, they themselves might be at risk. Suddenly sacrifice became very desirable. Indeed, it ceased to be a sacrifice at all and rather became many daily acts of self-preservation from a very real, “clear and present danger.”
Just as WWII is instructive in teaching us what it took to get people to sacrifice for the greater good, it is also instructive in teaching us about what it would take to get people to do so again. The obvious answer is that it would take another impetus as immediate, as desperate and as seemingly real as the attack on Pearl Harbor. After all, Hitler’s rise and the rise of Japanese aggression were not done in a corner. They were big news for years and years. Why didn’t Americans act on them earlier, before they got so far out of hand? The reasons are numerous and varied: they include the hope that appeasement would work, that somebody else would deal with it and the imagination that the problem could never reach them (protected as they were by two vast oceans). All of these reasons, and others, turned out to be wrong, but the lesson we learn about human behavior is that up until the moment some danger becomes undeniably real and threatens the end of our expected form of life as we know it right now, people will continue to ignore it.
We learn yet another lesson from World War II. As destructive and widespread as its effects were, not every nation in the world chose to involve itself. Although Canada and South Africa did send soldiers to the fray even though they were not directly involved, they were the exception rather than the rule. Many other countries, unless they were directly threatened by one power or another, chose not to get involved. And, can we really blame them? Who would want to feed their youth to the machine guns and poison gas if they didn’t have to? And, could you really expect the Guatemalan government to boat soldiers over to Europe when its entire population lived below the poverty line?
What does all of this have to with climate change in the world today? A lot. Climate scientists often fail to remember that although their models are great at capturing changes that have happened in the world’s climate over the past 200 years, and might be scarily prescient at predicting what will happen to the world’s climate in the future, those models don’t assess or predict the human response. That is the realm of historians and sociologists, and our case study of World War II is a perfect example of what it will take for humanity to stir itself to action in regards to climate change. Winston Churchill correctly predicted the danger Hitler posed to the world but nobody listened until German tanks rolled into Poland. It will be the same with climate scientists: their predictions will come true, but the citizens of the world will not take action on them till those predictions are undeniably proven in their individual minds and their forms of life as they know it are threatened with a serious risk of extinction.
In this arena, climate scientists are faced with three challenges common to prophets of destruction. First, many people view climate change as a hoax and see climate scientists as false prophets. Those scientists can welcome themselves into the company of Isaiah and Jeremiah, if that’s any consolation. Second, many people believe that while climate change may be taking place, it won’t be that bad. To paraphrase one religion’s book of scripture, they think, “Eat, drink, and be merry … and if it so be that we are guilty, [climate change] will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of [some new climate]” (2 Nephi 28: 8). Finally, there are those that believe that although climate change is indeed happening, its affects will be mitigated by technological developments that combat the effects of climate change without targeting its causes. After all, Holland has been pumping water out of its lowlands for years. All we need is more pumps…
Predictably, climate scientists are enraged by such thinking. They rightly point out that climate change is happening, that its effects will be very bad and that no technological developments can mitigate its effects if the causes aren’t targeted. They rightly prophesy the widespread destruction threatening the globe if no action is taken to reduce the continued production of greenhouse gasses.
What is truly aggravating, however, is that climate scientists continue to think that their self-righteous campaign of crying, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” will actually work. While Chicken Little is actually right this time, and the sky will fall if nothing is done about climate change, the people they’re yelling it to won’t believe them until it is too late. Just as Americans and every one else didn’t engage in WWII until there was no possibility of denying the danger that was at their doorsteps, the world’s population won’t act on reversing the effects of climate change until it is too late to turn back the natural processes we’ve started. To paraphrase scripture again for our purposes, “as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of [the effects of climate change be.] For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the [the effects of climate change be] (Matthew 24: 37-39).
As gloomy as this picture is, it sadly represents the truth. What is to be done then? Should climate scientists, like Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes and John the Revelator sadly predict and then detail the destruction of their people? And maybe buy some real estate above 5,000 feet? If all they want to do is play the part of the “I told you so” prophets, the answer is yes.
On the other hand, if they really would like to save the world, there is a way. It would require them to abandon the role of martyrs and to engage in a lot of hard work, but it is possible and scientists can lead the way. And, they can also benefit more than they can possibly imagine if they choose to adopt this strategy rather than the former.
The scientists’ salvation of the world would have to take place in three steps.
Step one: scientists have to unite. Yes, as we’ve heard a billion times before, all credible scientists believe in climate change, but as of yet they still haven’t united behind one plan to fight against it. Some say we ought to do one thing and some say another. While many of their debates on what the best course of action is are credible they fail to recognize that while they’re debating the world is just getting warmer. It makes one wonder if they’ve forgotten the saying, “the worst action is inaction.” Whatever scientists may disagree on, they have to agree to act together and to start acting together soon!
Step two: scientists have to abandon their “convince the world campaign.” The way scientists are going about trying to tell people that the world is coming to an end right now is a marketer’s worst nightmare. One day one scientist is talking on this talk show, the next another is testifying before congress, and the next day a professor is going off on a tangent in his university course. There is absolutely no consistency! There is absolutely no clearly defined target audience! There is absolutely no clearly defined message trying to be delivered to a clearly defined target audience! And, perhaps worst of all, the scientists talk in such technical terms that are so incomprehensible to the average person they’re trying to convince that people either can’t understand it or they’re unwilling to try. As one of my marketing professors would say, the climate scientists have forgotten that you have to convince people with kitchen logic (i.e. something an average housewife could understand) and not with technical terminology.
If scientists, with their limited manpower and resources really want to save the world from the effects of climate change, they’ll have to identify a target audience they think are the most important people in the world that they need to convince, they’ll have to deliver a clearly defined and consistent message to that target audience, and they’ll have to make sure that message is delivered in understandable, convincing terminology.
Step three: scientists have to come up with and execute a plan that makes reversing the effects of climate change “easy and simple.” A full discussion of what “easy and simple” means can be found in a previous article of mine entitled Easy and Normal: What Food, Literacy, Transportation and Social Networking have to do with Healthcare in America (available at http://supelillywhite.blogspot.com/2011/09/easy-and-normal-what-food-literacy.html ). For now, however, a simple example will have to suffice.
50 years ago, the idea that someday every American could have access to a computer that would allow them to type and edit documents, send electronic mail, shop without moving from their homes and do the host of other things our computers do now days would have been unbelievable. Now, it is such a part of our reality that the idea of such things not being available is laughable! What happened to make the change? Well, first I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. Computer specialists did not go out and tell everybody that we all needed to come together to build computers, they did not try to convince congress that building computers was the most pressing task they could possibly involve themselves in, and they did not harass and belittle anybody that thought it was worthwhile to concentrate on things other than computers. Instead, they took the computers of yesteryear from enormous, building-filling machines that were little more than glorified calculators, and progressively worked on them until they fit in a small building, in a house, in a room and finally in the palm of our hands. Those specialists took something that seemed impossible to attain and attained it in less than 50 years! And, best of all, they made using computers, something that before only the specialists themselves could master, and made it so my three year old nephew can navigate one with ease. Today the thought of not using a computer to do so many of our daily, routine tasks is ludicrous because they are so much simpler and easier to use than the alternatives.
Now, if a group of unaffiliated computer specialists working with no set goals could realize so much in 50 years, what could a group of highly trained, highly intelligent, united and motivated climate scientists accomplish if they wanted to? General Motors, Ford and other companies really have no motivation to make clean running cars. They, like all other publicly owned companies, are fixated on achieving high quarterly profits, which are best obtained by producing what works. Even though inventing and producing green cars might save the world, R&D costs and retooling factories would erode the profits of next quarter.
Climate scientists, on the other hand, could target the right people to help them in their quest and then build green cars together. And, if they set their goals on making green cars so easy to use and so cheap to buy, and not to simply attain a quarterly profit, sooner rather than later they would reach their goals. Also, as soon as they demonstrated that it was possible to produce green cars and other green technologies that would turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions, and that it was possible to do so for less money and better efficiency than older technologies, every other company on Earth would follow suit. Soon, it would be so easy, simple and cheap to use green technology that nobody would think of doing otherwise.
Are any of you climate scientists out there shaking your heads? Does this sound like too much work? Does it sound like you’re unfairly being singled out? Are you upset that it is suddenly your job to save the world? Poor babies. But, just remember, you’re trying to save the world right now anyway and it’s not working. And, the way you’re going about it right now won’t ever work before it’s too late. So, the choice is yours: you can either choose to be tomorrow’s “I told you so” prophets that watch the world crumble with everyone else, or you can choose to dedicate your life to helping create and produce the technologies that will save humanity and the world. Just remember that although people still read Isaiah, they prefer the prophet Moses that led people to the promised land.
Supe Lillywhite
PS. Did I mention that although climate scientists that embrace the course of action I propose don’t get to say I told you so, they do herald in a technological revolution and become the leaders of industrial tomorrow? Something to think about.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Response to the Gray-Haired Brigade
Does it ever make you angry when old people try to blame you for the problems of today without acknowledging that they caused them?
Below is a lengthy chain-email I received blaming me for screwing up America. After that is my response. While mine doesn't exactly represent my thoughts it did feel good to write. They are both fairly long, but if your in the mood for a stupid argument you might enjoy them!
Letter #1
Grey-Haired Brigade
They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.
In school we studied English, history, math, and science which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience. We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days.
We are probably considered old fashioned and out-dated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield. We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America, we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, America, and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read about in history books and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America.
Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent.
It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change" which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies." You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the 'Cool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom. This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.
Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey-Haired Brigade is here, and in 2012 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like but we get where we're going, and in 2012 we're going to the polls by the millions. This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to "We the People" and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren. So the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, Stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the "Grey-Haired Brigade."
Author, Anon. Grey-Haired Brigade Member
Footnote:
This is spot on. I am another Gray-Haired Geezer signing on. I will circulate this to other Gray-Haired Geezers all over this once great county. Can you feel the ground shaking??? It's not an earthquake, it is a STAMPEDE.
Letter #2
Grey-Haired Brigade,
I call BS. Let’s examine your “few things that need to be taken into consideration” one by one, shall we?
First of all, congratulations on having studied English, history, math and science and leading America into the technological age.
My generation now studies English and foreign languages.
My generation, instead of learning history from quaint, biased books written by authors exclusively from our own race, reads and writes history books that are rigorously researched and peer reviewed by scholars from all over the world. If we don’t know as much general history as you, it is simply because we have learned that the superficial lens of history that your generation viewed the world through inexorably led to poor, ill-informed decisions. Instead, we choose to specialize our knowledge of history and then come together with a collection of in depth research to base our decisions on.
My generation, while we are dependent on calculators for doing things like simple arithmetic, uses those calculators to push the limits of math further than ever before. And, while we are impressed that you studied math by counting spiders in your outhouses, even our dumbest high school students have at least a basic knowledge of calculus.
My generation studies science too! In fact, one of the biggest things we study is how to reverse the alarming trend of anthropogenic caused climate change your generation’s application of science started … thanks!
Congratulations, also, on remembering what outhouses are and on struggling to live through the days of iceboxes. Thanks to your generation’s reckless pursuit of the consumer goods you despise us for having grown up with it is likely that my generation will get to use those same antiques again soon! Or haven’t you heard that our generation will enjoy a lower standard of living than yours did, precisely because your generation obtained those evil commodities by paying for them with money you didn’t have and outsourcing their production (and our jobs along with them) overseas?
I’ll admit that I cannot congratulate you on the qualities you praise yourself for having as a consequence of being old fashioned and outdated. For instance, you fail to mention that your generation caused World War II by not properly resolving World War I. And, do you really expect us to praise you for your divided, confused and ultimately failed conquests of Korea and Viet Nam? The fact that you lost many friends on the battlefield is a result of your generation electing leaders that felt it was more important to police the world than it was to preserve the lives of their youth.
Should I be impressed that you can quote the pledge of allegiance while placing your hand over your heart? I’m pretty sure we could train a parrot to do the same (if parrots had hands, that is). What would have been more impressive is if you would have taught that pledge to your hippy children from the 60s and 70s that were burning the very flag you were paying allegiance to. Great parenting!
You didn’t fight for the Socialist States of America? Puh-lease! Who was your president during the majority of World War II? Who did you allow to pass legislation in the 60’s? We didn’t create Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. FDR and LBJ were your presidents! Whether you fought for socialism or not, you voted for it or didn’t speak out strongly enough against it when it was in its infancy in America.
We might feel inclined to look on you with pride when tears run down your cheeks as you sing our country’s hymns until we remember that you are crying for what your generation gave up and the ruined country you are passing on to us, your grandchildren. Also, we’ve heard you say over and over again that you won’t apologize for America abroad. Fine. We want the apologies made to us for leaving us with your mess to clean up while you scooter around your nursing homes in your jazzy chairs.
YOU are going to save this country? About time! You’ve been screwing it up for the past 80 years!
You’re right in that it was mostly the young people of this nation that elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. But, what choice did we have? After eight years of putting up with the president you elected that took our nation from a budget surplus to a budget deficit, continued the ruinous housing policies of Bill Clinton that crashed our economy, killed thousands of our brothers and sisters fighting on foreign soil under the pretext of a lie and ruined the American reputation in general can you really blame us for wanting some change? Any change? And, may we please remind you, disastrous as our election of Barack Obama has been, he was raised by your generation, not ours!
We “make a lot of noise, but most [of us] are all too interested in [our] careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting,” eh? Perhaps that is because despite all the noise we make we can’t get rid of the idiots you lot have been electing to office year after year after year. Barney Frank? Orrin Hatch? John Kerry? John McCain? Your generation has done a great job at electing real winners! And as for climbing the social ladder, what social ladder are you talking about? Your generation dismantled that ladder long ago by outsourcing first manufacturing jobs, next engineering jobs and now technological jobs overseas. Why? So you could afford refrigerators built by cheap foreign labor with the money you receive from your pensions and Social Security, two other things we won’t ever have. The reason we attend university for so long is so we can compete for the few good jobs that are left in this country or so we can put off for as long as possible the day that we have to take the menial service jobs you’ve left us with (tending bar or washing your filthy butts in your nursing homes). Some social ladder.
What worries me most, however, is not your ridiculous and demonstrably false tirade about how you’ve saved the country time and time again, but rather the fact that you say your generation is going to try and save it again! PLEASE DON’T! Haven’t you done enough damage already? Or haven’t you realized that Nancy Pelosi (age 71) and Harry Reid (age 72) are both the products of your generation? If you’ve been saving the country for so long, why haven’t you ever gotten rid of them before now?
And how are you going to save the country? By electing Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney? Like that would be a huge change from the George Bush’s of the past … In the meantime, you’ll keep on ignoring Ron Paul because he doesn’t want to waste trillions of dollars playing policeman all over the globe.
So, Gray-Haired Geezer, please don’t stampede to the polls with your walker and your equally delusional friends. As noble as you think your sentiments are, we know they aren’t true. You’ll keep on voting to extend Social Security, to keep Medicaid around so I can subsidize the continuation of your artificially preserved life and you’ll keep sending back the same losers you’ve been sending to congress for the past 50 years. And, you’ll either cause an accident on your way to the polls or drive so slow getting there that you’ll prevent five members of my generation from getting to the ballot box on time to cast their more informed votes.
Author, Anon. Youth Fix-It Brigade Member.
PS. Sorry for any errors in my post. I'll have more time to proofread my posts when I retire to a nursing home...Monday, September 19, 2011
Abomosu Video
Here it is finally. I'm not going to lie, even after working on it for several hours the finished product still made me want to cry like a little girl cuz I miss it so much. Hope you enjoy!
Supe Lillywhite
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Easy and Normal: What Food, Literacy, Transportation and Social Networking have to do with Healthcare in America
Americans, it seems, have forgotten their past and their present. They have forgotten what made them successful at solving problems and what continues to make them successful at solving problems. I am not talking about virtue, honor or any of those other high minded values politicians and ourselves like to gush about in public ceremonies. On the contrary, I'm talking about a habit Americans have espoused for centuries and continue in many to espouse today that is absurdly simple and brilliantly effective. It is the tendency Americans have to find the easiest way to do something they want to do, and the tendency they have to make doing it normal. I think four simple examples will suffice to illustrate my point.
Let's talk about food to start with. For much of America's history, and indeed for much of the world still today, obtaining enough food to eat on a daily basis was and is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, in many countries people don't get enough to eat and even starve to death because it is so difficult to get enough calories to sustain them. That is hardly the case in America. If anything, we have a surplus of daily bread. The reason why is long ago Americans made it easy and normal to get enough food to eat on a daily basis. By using fertilizers, tractors and other modern farming techniques, they made it so everybody in America can get food fairly easily. And, everybody in America got into the habit of eating enough food everyday and looking at doing the opposite as something crazy. Now, the idea of not eating at least three meals a day in America is seen as ludicrous; it's easy and it's normal. Remember, that was not the case for much of our history and is still not the case for much of the world today.
America did the same thing with literacy. Just 100-150 years ago it was not normal for everyone to know how to read in America. It certainly isn't normal for everyone in the world today to know how to read and write. But today, here in the states, our literacy rate is probably close to 100%. Why? Because a while ago we made it easy and normal to be literate. This time we used public schools. Public schools made it so easy and so normal to become literate that pretty soon everybody was.
Quick and efficient means of transportation underwent the same change in America. Before, America was like every place else in the world. Transportation was difficult and costly. It was rare to go on a journey of a hundred miles and even stranger to go a thousand. Not so today. Starting with canals, moving to steamboats and railroads, and then to automobiles, airplanes and subways we've made it easy and normal to travel far distances at a fast pace. It's so normal, in fact, that people that walk more than a few blocks are now considered the strange ones in society.
My last example of things America has made easy and normal is social media. Back in the day it was difficult to stay in touch with your friends. When America was founded, if you left England for America you were pretty much saying goodbye to your old friends for forever. Sending letters was too expensive and too unreliable to bother about maintaining the relationship. Even with the advent of the telephone, many people didn't bother to maintain hundreds of their friendships because it took too long to call that many friends on a regular basis. Facebook has changed all of that entirely. Although you might not have a deep, soul searching conversation with your friends on a real often through facebook, it is so simple and easy to send them a short message or check out what they are doing with their lives that almost everybody does it. In fact, for the three years that I resisted joining facebook I was seen as a freak for not maintaining my friendships because it was so easy and normal to do.
Now, with four examples under our belts, we should be able to see that Americans are very good at making things they want to do so easy and normal to do that everybody does them. But for some crazy reason, we seem to think it is impossible to make it easy and normal for everyone to get in and stay in shape! Well, I'm here to tell you that if we could make it easy and normal for everybody in America to get enough to eat, to read and write, to use fast and efficient transportation, and to stay in touch with their friends, we can make it easy and normal for everybody to live and enjoy a healthy lifestyle!
One way to do it is to keep going down the road of fear and unbelief that we are currently headed down. As long as Americans continue to believe that we can't solve our own problems and that government has to solve them for us, everybody will be in great shape before you know it. Why? Because our economy will stagnate to the point that we all have to become subsistence farmers again. I know of few workout plans better than subsistence farming to keep someone in good shape.
That being said, for all you die hard conservatives out there, it's not enough to just shout that the government needs to get out of our lives at the top of your lungs. You have to provide and implement solutions for the problems the government is trying to solve! And, if you don't want the government to step in, you have to provide solutions that are far reaching enough that they will help everybody, just like the solutions to food, literacy, transportation and social networking did. And “giving the consumer more choice and purchasing power,” as the latest idiotic Republican plan proposed to do, is not the far reaching solution that would work. Think for just one second: you're wanting to give more choices and purchasing power to the same morons that chose to never exercise and purchased twinkies instead of vegetables for the past 50 years. More options and more purchasing power will not help these people.
But that doesn't mean these people are beyond help. They just need a solution like these solutions we've used in the past. When we made it normal and easy for everyone to get three square meals a day, we didn't do it by teaching every American to farm more efficiently. Nope. We built huge farms ran by machinery that made food so cheap everyone could afford to buy it. Same thing with literacy. We didn't place good teaching materials in every home in America and trusts parents to educate their kids. Nope. We built schools that kids had to attend and were forced to learn how to read. Even social networking. We didn't send out manuals that showed people how to program their own social networking site. Some guy built the site himself and made it so easy to use that everybody could use it. Giving consumers more power to purchase something they don't understand and have consistently shown they don't desire isn't going to solve our problem. Again, we have to come up with a solution that is so easy everybody can do it and so effective it will become the norm in a very short time period.
As for me, I believe there are easy solutions to our healthcare problems that could become normal in a very soon. Want to hear them? Read these two articles and let me know what your thoughts are on them!
Let's talk about food to start with. For much of America's history, and indeed for much of the world still today, obtaining enough food to eat on a daily basis was and is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, in many countries people don't get enough to eat and even starve to death because it is so difficult to get enough calories to sustain them. That is hardly the case in America. If anything, we have a surplus of daily bread. The reason why is long ago Americans made it easy and normal to get enough food to eat on a daily basis. By using fertilizers, tractors and other modern farming techniques, they made it so everybody in America can get food fairly easily. And, everybody in America got into the habit of eating enough food everyday and looking at doing the opposite as something crazy. Now, the idea of not eating at least three meals a day in America is seen as ludicrous; it's easy and it's normal. Remember, that was not the case for much of our history and is still not the case for much of the world today.
America did the same thing with literacy. Just 100-150 years ago it was not normal for everyone to know how to read in America. It certainly isn't normal for everyone in the world today to know how to read and write. But today, here in the states, our literacy rate is probably close to 100%. Why? Because a while ago we made it easy and normal to be literate. This time we used public schools. Public schools made it so easy and so normal to become literate that pretty soon everybody was.
Quick and efficient means of transportation underwent the same change in America. Before, America was like every place else in the world. Transportation was difficult and costly. It was rare to go on a journey of a hundred miles and even stranger to go a thousand. Not so today. Starting with canals, moving to steamboats and railroads, and then to automobiles, airplanes and subways we've made it easy and normal to travel far distances at a fast pace. It's so normal, in fact, that people that walk more than a few blocks are now considered the strange ones in society.
My last example of things America has made easy and normal is social media. Back in the day it was difficult to stay in touch with your friends. When America was founded, if you left England for America you were pretty much saying goodbye to your old friends for forever. Sending letters was too expensive and too unreliable to bother about maintaining the relationship. Even with the advent of the telephone, many people didn't bother to maintain hundreds of their friendships because it took too long to call that many friends on a regular basis. Facebook has changed all of that entirely. Although you might not have a deep, soul searching conversation with your friends on a real often through facebook, it is so simple and easy to send them a short message or check out what they are doing with their lives that almost everybody does it. In fact, for the three years that I resisted joining facebook I was seen as a freak for not maintaining my friendships because it was so easy and normal to do.
Now, with four examples under our belts, we should be able to see that Americans are very good at making things they want to do so easy and normal to do that everybody does them. But for some crazy reason, we seem to think it is impossible to make it easy and normal for everyone to get in and stay in shape! Well, I'm here to tell you that if we could make it easy and normal for everybody in America to get enough to eat, to read and write, to use fast and efficient transportation, and to stay in touch with their friends, we can make it easy and normal for everybody to live and enjoy a healthy lifestyle!
One way to do it is to keep going down the road of fear and unbelief that we are currently headed down. As long as Americans continue to believe that we can't solve our own problems and that government has to solve them for us, everybody will be in great shape before you know it. Why? Because our economy will stagnate to the point that we all have to become subsistence farmers again. I know of few workout plans better than subsistence farming to keep someone in good shape.
That being said, for all you die hard conservatives out there, it's not enough to just shout that the government needs to get out of our lives at the top of your lungs. You have to provide and implement solutions for the problems the government is trying to solve! And, if you don't want the government to step in, you have to provide solutions that are far reaching enough that they will help everybody, just like the solutions to food, literacy, transportation and social networking did. And “giving the consumer more choice and purchasing power,” as the latest idiotic Republican plan proposed to do, is not the far reaching solution that would work. Think for just one second: you're wanting to give more choices and purchasing power to the same morons that chose to never exercise and purchased twinkies instead of vegetables for the past 50 years. More options and more purchasing power will not help these people.
But that doesn't mean these people are beyond help. They just need a solution like these solutions we've used in the past. When we made it normal and easy for everyone to get three square meals a day, we didn't do it by teaching every American to farm more efficiently. Nope. We built huge farms ran by machinery that made food so cheap everyone could afford to buy it. Same thing with literacy. We didn't place good teaching materials in every home in America and trusts parents to educate their kids. Nope. We built schools that kids had to attend and were forced to learn how to read. Even social networking. We didn't send out manuals that showed people how to program their own social networking site. Some guy built the site himself and made it so easy to use that everybody could use it. Giving consumers more power to purchase something they don't understand and have consistently shown they don't desire isn't going to solve our problem. Again, we have to come up with a solution that is so easy everybody can do it and so effective it will become the norm in a very short time period.
As for me, I believe there are easy solutions to our healthcare problems that could become normal in a very soon. Want to hear them? Read these two articles and let me know what your thoughts are on them!
Monday, August 29, 2011
A New Way to Lower the Costs of Healthcare?
Healthcare continues to get more expensive in America. The reasons I've heard for why it continues to get more expensive are endless: the “Baby Boomers” are all getting older and overloading the system, malpractice premiums are sky rocketing as juries hand out bigger and bigger awards to plaintiffs, and doctors saddled with loads of debt from medical school have to charge high prices to make ends meet are just a few.
Whatever all the factors are that are driving up the costs of healthcare, there is one ultimate causation that will continue to make healthcare expensive no matter how much we focus on solving all other problems. It is the simple fact that people continue to get sick. If this one central problem could be overcome or reduced, the costs of healthcare would plummet.
Think about it. How much have you paid to get better from smallpox, polio or the measles? Most of us didn't pay anything to help us recover from these horrible diseases. We may have paid a simple fee to receive a vaccination but that was it.
Now, we all know that vaccines to every illness we could possibly face are a long way off and not realistic in our lifetime. But the basic concept behind vaccines are not so far off. Vaccines belong to a realm of medicine that we don't focus on enough today. That realm is called “preventative medicine.”
Preventative medicine, simply put, is trying to stop people from getting sick in the first place rather than treating them once they are already sick. There are many types of preventative medicine available: vaccines, as already discussed, give you immunity to certain diseases; other procedures, such as mammograms and colonoscopies detect problems early on when they are easy to treat and the likelihood of survival is high; perhaps the simplest example of preventative medicine is living a healthy lifestyle, thereby decreasing your susceptibility to conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
So, if all of these types of preventative medicine are available, why aren't they more widely used?
The biggest reason, as you've probably heard before, is that doctors have no incentive to practice preventative medicine. Indeed, doctors get paid for helping you when you are sick, not for keeping you from getting sick in the first place. There is no surer way to put every doctor out of business than developing a universal vaccine for every illness.
The other big reason why preventative medicine isn't practiced is because people are unwilling to do what is necessary to practice it on their own. We all know we should eat healthy, exercise often, have regular check ups for colon and breast cancer, wash our hands and do all those other things, but we don't do them. We're either too lazy or in too big of a hurry to practice the preventative medicine that could greatly reduce our healthcare costs and prolong our lives. And so, between the way doctors are currently incentivized to treat us and the way we treat ourselves, it seems likely we are doomed to a continued high dependance on a healthcare system that seems to be getting ever more expensive.
As dark as this prediction is, the way I see it, there is a simple a solution that could make the widespread use of preventative medicine a reality. It would, however, require a basic restructuring of how doctors are viewed in America and the things they focus on.
As I have already mentioned, we currently look as doctors as experts at healing you once you get sick. If we ever want to start using preventative medicine, however, we need to start looking at doctors as experts that keep you from getting sick in the first place. And, we need to start paying them to keep us healthy, rather than to fix us when we're broken.
How could we do this? Well, right now when we get sick, we call up any old doctor, schedule an appointment, get a diagnosis and receive a prescription or procedure to make us better. Then, we go on our way and never see that doctor until the next time we get sick. In fact, we might not even visit the same doctor twice in our lives. We can keep bouncing from one doctor to another to fix us whenever we're broken.
This has got to stop. We need to stop treating doctors as mechanics that fix broken vehicles, and start treating them as full time athletic trainers working to keep us in prime competitive condition.
Here's how: you should go get a bunch of your neighbors together and buy a doctor. Furnish him with a clinic, and then tell him that you and your group of neighbors will pay him $200,000 a year to keep you healthy and treat you should you get sick.
This would change the doctor's incentives overnight. He would know that healthy people visit the doctor a lot less than sick people. And, since he has a guaranteed salary now, the best deal for him would be to work as little as he could and still collect all that salary. The way to do that would be to do his utmost to keep you healthy and out of the clinic so he could spend more time on his houseboat and at the golf course.
I think the primary things the doctor focused on and the way he went about his business would change substantially. Rather than waiting for you to call saying you had a high fever and a headache, he'd be calling you to come in and get your flu shot months before flu season. Rather than waiting for you to show up at his office worried about a strange lump you'd found, he'd be scheduling regular check ups to find those lumps before you did. Rather than waiting for to be wheeled into the hospital experiencing chest pains, he'd be checking your cholesterol level and putting you on a healthier diet.
Again, there are two great parts about this. By preventing problems before they happened and finding issues before they got out of hand, the doctor would be saving himself loads of time in the long run. And, all the while he'd be collecting his steady, substantial salary. The other great part is that you wouldn't be paying any more money for this preventative medicine. You'd pay your up front fee and that's it. And, should a substantial problem arise, the likelihood of it being found and handled early on would save you thousands of dollars in the long run.
Obviously there are lots of details that would have to be worked out for a system like this to work. But, I think the basic idea is solid. We know that doctors aren't incentivized to keep you healthy but rather to treat you when you get sick. We also know that the vast majority of us don't have the willpower to practice preventative medicine on our own. Why not, then, start paying doctors to be responsible for keeping us healthy? Pay them to have the willpower we don't have. Pay them to keep us from getting sick and not try and salvage our wrecked bodies once it is already too late.
Now, before I close, let me give you one more detail before I forget about it. In addition to every member in the group paying their share of the doctor's salary, each group member should pay a certain amount into what we'll call the “general insurance fund” every year. To make this simple, let's say everyone pays in $1,000. That money is what would be used to pay for the actual “things” needed to treat you with. To cite examples I've already used, it would pay for flu shots, colonscopies, etc. It would also pay for any treatments that you ended up needing, such as an antibiotic for a throat infection, surgery for your torn rotator cuff, or radiation therapy for cancer your doctor detected early on. It is also important to point out here that some years you would use hardly anything out of the $1,000 you paid into the insurance fund and other years you would use far more than you paid into the insurance fund.
So far it sounds like the health insurance you have right now. But here is how it would be different: if, at the end of the year some of the money your group paid into the insurance fund was not used, it would go to three different places. First, half of the unused money would be rolled over into the insurance fund to protect against big problems in the future; a rainy day fund if you will. Over time, this rainy day fund would get bigger and bigger and offer you more and more protection.
Next, one fourth of the left over money would be refunded to you the client each year. The kicker on this is you would only get one fourth of the $1,000 you paid in at the beginning of each year. Therefore, if you actually had to use $2,000 out of the insurance fund that year, you wouldn't get anything. The reason to do it this way is to incentivize you to be as healthy as possible. Doing it this way will help you realize that if you follow your doctor's advice to eat healthy, exercise regularly and come in for all of the appointments he sets with you, it will pay off at the end of each year in refunded cash.
Finally, the last fourth of the surplus insurance fund money would go to the doctor. That means, the healthier he keeps you and the less he has to spend on expensive medicines and procedures to keep you healthy, the fatter bonus he gets at the end of each year. In other words, it is one more incentive for him to keep you healthy. Also, this would encourage your doctor to find inexpensive but still effective ways to treat you when you do get sick. Under this system, he would be more likely to negotiate for lower prices with the surgeons he sends you to and to find less expensive brands of medicine to treat you with.
So that's my idea. What are the problems with it? Why wouldn't it work? How could it work better? Would it be a realistic way of lowering some of the costs associated with healthcare? What are your thoughts?
Whatever all the factors are that are driving up the costs of healthcare, there is one ultimate causation that will continue to make healthcare expensive no matter how much we focus on solving all other problems. It is the simple fact that people continue to get sick. If this one central problem could be overcome or reduced, the costs of healthcare would plummet.
Think about it. How much have you paid to get better from smallpox, polio or the measles? Most of us didn't pay anything to help us recover from these horrible diseases. We may have paid a simple fee to receive a vaccination but that was it.
Now, we all know that vaccines to every illness we could possibly face are a long way off and not realistic in our lifetime. But the basic concept behind vaccines are not so far off. Vaccines belong to a realm of medicine that we don't focus on enough today. That realm is called “preventative medicine.”
Preventative medicine, simply put, is trying to stop people from getting sick in the first place rather than treating them once they are already sick. There are many types of preventative medicine available: vaccines, as already discussed, give you immunity to certain diseases; other procedures, such as mammograms and colonoscopies detect problems early on when they are easy to treat and the likelihood of survival is high; perhaps the simplest example of preventative medicine is living a healthy lifestyle, thereby decreasing your susceptibility to conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
So, if all of these types of preventative medicine are available, why aren't they more widely used?
The biggest reason, as you've probably heard before, is that doctors have no incentive to practice preventative medicine. Indeed, doctors get paid for helping you when you are sick, not for keeping you from getting sick in the first place. There is no surer way to put every doctor out of business than developing a universal vaccine for every illness.
The other big reason why preventative medicine isn't practiced is because people are unwilling to do what is necessary to practice it on their own. We all know we should eat healthy, exercise often, have regular check ups for colon and breast cancer, wash our hands and do all those other things, but we don't do them. We're either too lazy or in too big of a hurry to practice the preventative medicine that could greatly reduce our healthcare costs and prolong our lives. And so, between the way doctors are currently incentivized to treat us and the way we treat ourselves, it seems likely we are doomed to a continued high dependance on a healthcare system that seems to be getting ever more expensive.
As dark as this prediction is, the way I see it, there is a simple a solution that could make the widespread use of preventative medicine a reality. It would, however, require a basic restructuring of how doctors are viewed in America and the things they focus on.
As I have already mentioned, we currently look as doctors as experts at healing you once you get sick. If we ever want to start using preventative medicine, however, we need to start looking at doctors as experts that keep you from getting sick in the first place. And, we need to start paying them to keep us healthy, rather than to fix us when we're broken.
How could we do this? Well, right now when we get sick, we call up any old doctor, schedule an appointment, get a diagnosis and receive a prescription or procedure to make us better. Then, we go on our way and never see that doctor until the next time we get sick. In fact, we might not even visit the same doctor twice in our lives. We can keep bouncing from one doctor to another to fix us whenever we're broken.
This has got to stop. We need to stop treating doctors as mechanics that fix broken vehicles, and start treating them as full time athletic trainers working to keep us in prime competitive condition.
Here's how: you should go get a bunch of your neighbors together and buy a doctor. Furnish him with a clinic, and then tell him that you and your group of neighbors will pay him $200,000 a year to keep you healthy and treat you should you get sick.
This would change the doctor's incentives overnight. He would know that healthy people visit the doctor a lot less than sick people. And, since he has a guaranteed salary now, the best deal for him would be to work as little as he could and still collect all that salary. The way to do that would be to do his utmost to keep you healthy and out of the clinic so he could spend more time on his houseboat and at the golf course.
I think the primary things the doctor focused on and the way he went about his business would change substantially. Rather than waiting for you to call saying you had a high fever and a headache, he'd be calling you to come in and get your flu shot months before flu season. Rather than waiting for you to show up at his office worried about a strange lump you'd found, he'd be scheduling regular check ups to find those lumps before you did. Rather than waiting for to be wheeled into the hospital experiencing chest pains, he'd be checking your cholesterol level and putting you on a healthier diet.
Again, there are two great parts about this. By preventing problems before they happened and finding issues before they got out of hand, the doctor would be saving himself loads of time in the long run. And, all the while he'd be collecting his steady, substantial salary. The other great part is that you wouldn't be paying any more money for this preventative medicine. You'd pay your up front fee and that's it. And, should a substantial problem arise, the likelihood of it being found and handled early on would save you thousands of dollars in the long run.
Obviously there are lots of details that would have to be worked out for a system like this to work. But, I think the basic idea is solid. We know that doctors aren't incentivized to keep you healthy but rather to treat you when you get sick. We also know that the vast majority of us don't have the willpower to practice preventative medicine on our own. Why not, then, start paying doctors to be responsible for keeping us healthy? Pay them to have the willpower we don't have. Pay them to keep us from getting sick and not try and salvage our wrecked bodies once it is already too late.
Now, before I close, let me give you one more detail before I forget about it. In addition to every member in the group paying their share of the doctor's salary, each group member should pay a certain amount into what we'll call the “general insurance fund” every year. To make this simple, let's say everyone pays in $1,000. That money is what would be used to pay for the actual “things” needed to treat you with. To cite examples I've already used, it would pay for flu shots, colonscopies, etc. It would also pay for any treatments that you ended up needing, such as an antibiotic for a throat infection, surgery for your torn rotator cuff, or radiation therapy for cancer your doctor detected early on. It is also important to point out here that some years you would use hardly anything out of the $1,000 you paid into the insurance fund and other years you would use far more than you paid into the insurance fund.
So far it sounds like the health insurance you have right now. But here is how it would be different: if, at the end of the year some of the money your group paid into the insurance fund was not used, it would go to three different places. First, half of the unused money would be rolled over into the insurance fund to protect against big problems in the future; a rainy day fund if you will. Over time, this rainy day fund would get bigger and bigger and offer you more and more protection.
Next, one fourth of the left over money would be refunded to you the client each year. The kicker on this is you would only get one fourth of the $1,000 you paid in at the beginning of each year. Therefore, if you actually had to use $2,000 out of the insurance fund that year, you wouldn't get anything. The reason to do it this way is to incentivize you to be as healthy as possible. Doing it this way will help you realize that if you follow your doctor's advice to eat healthy, exercise regularly and come in for all of the appointments he sets with you, it will pay off at the end of each year in refunded cash.
Finally, the last fourth of the surplus insurance fund money would go to the doctor. That means, the healthier he keeps you and the less he has to spend on expensive medicines and procedures to keep you healthy, the fatter bonus he gets at the end of each year. In other words, it is one more incentive for him to keep you healthy. Also, this would encourage your doctor to find inexpensive but still effective ways to treat you when you do get sick. Under this system, he would be more likely to negotiate for lower prices with the surgeons he sends you to and to find less expensive brands of medicine to treat you with.
So that's my idea. What are the problems with it? Why wouldn't it work? How could it work better? Would it be a realistic way of lowering some of the costs associated with healthcare? What are your thoughts?
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
When the world is your home people pooh on your floor
Contrary to popular belief a lot of planning and consideration went into my decision to move into my car. I suppose the real genesis came in October of 2010, when I realized that between my $200 a month car payment, my $250 a month rent payment and my $50-100 a month utility payment, my monthly net income of $550-600 dollars left me with little or no wiggle room. The moment I realized this the dream of saving $300 a month by moving into my car was born. Since then, I have planned, weighed costs and benefits, and scouted out suitable nightly parking places with a thoroughness that I believe merits respect. My diligence notwithstanding, there have been several things that have surprised me in these first few days.
1. I have way too much crap. After living in Africa a Honda Civic seems like a roomy place. While there I often saw 8-10 people packed in a car comparable in size to my own: one driver, two people in the passenger seat, five people in the back seat and two in the trunk. It is amazing, therefore, that my person can barely squeeze into my car simply because I have so much stuff. Thankfully, this predicament has lead me to make an important change in my life: I'm a much better packer now. Things that are rarely needed but still essential find their place on the floor under and behind the front seats of the car. More frequently used items like clothes and gear merit a spot beside or on top of the mattress that covers the folded down back seat and extends into the trunk. They are neatly packed to optimize utility and provide a “narrow strip of land” to sleep on. Finally, food gets shotgun. A package of Oreos currently serves as my copilot.
2. The world is my home. Before I left for Africa, my good buddy Nick Romano came up one weekend unannounced to spend a couple of days with me. He was surprised that I didn't have a place for him to stay, being unaware that I was executing a trial run of living in my car. Later, when we were discussing those few days together Nick commented that when you live in your car the community where you live automatically becomes your home; the library is your sitting room, the school gym your bathroom and the movie theater your entertainment center. I think this is true. The disturbing part about this is that when the community is your home, the community is free to do whatever they would like to it. Today for instance, while I was at the park filling up my water bottles, I noticed a little kid walking out of my bathroom. Graciously, I didn't yell at him for failing to ask permission before using my accommodations, but I was very put out when he announced to his young friend that was about to enter the facilities after him, “somebody pooped on the floor!” Honestly. You'd think people would have more respect when I let them come in my house.
3. Necessity is the mother of invention. I have always considered myself to be a fairly innovative individual (using the thick plastic bags my school books came in as gators being just one example...) but living in my car has revealed the new levels of genius I am capable of. For instance, as great a company as Honda is, their engineers failed to realize that when you fold down the back seat of a Civic, there is about a six inch drop from the plain of the folded down seats to the plain of the trunk. While I am sure that is fine for normal use, it makes sleeping on a mattress that covers both areas very uncomfortable. To remedy this problem I simply placed a two foot piece of plywood over the drop. While there is still a bit of bend in my mattress the result is substantially more comfortable than before. I am sure Honda will be contacting me for the design soon. More tricky than that, however, is figuring out how to maintain airflow through a hot and stuffy car at night without letting a swarm of mosquitoes in. Luckily, my three months in Africa provided me with the solution. Before leaving I bought two square yards of mosquito netting. By shutting pieces of mosquito netting in the top of my rear doors and letting it hang down over the open windows I effectively allow a nice breeze to flow through the car while the mosquitoes remain outside the vehicle. You'd think this would come standard.
I sure am learning all sorts of great things at college this year!
1. I have way too much crap. After living in Africa a Honda Civic seems like a roomy place. While there I often saw 8-10 people packed in a car comparable in size to my own: one driver, two people in the passenger seat, five people in the back seat and two in the trunk. It is amazing, therefore, that my person can barely squeeze into my car simply because I have so much stuff. Thankfully, this predicament has lead me to make an important change in my life: I'm a much better packer now. Things that are rarely needed but still essential find their place on the floor under and behind the front seats of the car. More frequently used items like clothes and gear merit a spot beside or on top of the mattress that covers the folded down back seat and extends into the trunk. They are neatly packed to optimize utility and provide a “narrow strip of land” to sleep on. Finally, food gets shotgun. A package of Oreos currently serves as my copilot.
2. The world is my home. Before I left for Africa, my good buddy Nick Romano came up one weekend unannounced to spend a couple of days with me. He was surprised that I didn't have a place for him to stay, being unaware that I was executing a trial run of living in my car. Later, when we were discussing those few days together Nick commented that when you live in your car the community where you live automatically becomes your home; the library is your sitting room, the school gym your bathroom and the movie theater your entertainment center. I think this is true. The disturbing part about this is that when the community is your home, the community is free to do whatever they would like to it. Today for instance, while I was at the park filling up my water bottles, I noticed a little kid walking out of my bathroom. Graciously, I didn't yell at him for failing to ask permission before using my accommodations, but I was very put out when he announced to his young friend that was about to enter the facilities after him, “somebody pooped on the floor!” Honestly. You'd think people would have more respect when I let them come in my house.
3. Necessity is the mother of invention. I have always considered myself to be a fairly innovative individual (using the thick plastic bags my school books came in as gators being just one example...) but living in my car has revealed the new levels of genius I am capable of. For instance, as great a company as Honda is, their engineers failed to realize that when you fold down the back seat of a Civic, there is about a six inch drop from the plain of the folded down seats to the plain of the trunk. While I am sure that is fine for normal use, it makes sleeping on a mattress that covers both areas very uncomfortable. To remedy this problem I simply placed a two foot piece of plywood over the drop. While there is still a bit of bend in my mattress the result is substantially more comfortable than before. I am sure Honda will be contacting me for the design soon. More tricky than that, however, is figuring out how to maintain airflow through a hot and stuffy car at night without letting a swarm of mosquitoes in. Luckily, my three months in Africa provided me with the solution. Before leaving I bought two square yards of mosquito netting. By shutting pieces of mosquito netting in the top of my rear doors and letting it hang down over the open windows I effectively allow a nice breeze to flow through the car while the mosquitoes remain outside the vehicle. You'd think this would come standard.
I sure am learning all sorts of great things at college this year!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Elected Office
Hey everybody, I wrote this a while ago, but I think it still applies. It is not Africa related, but feel free to read it if you would like!
Elected offices attract the worst sort of people. The really intelligent never want to be elected because they would rather be out making better money, doing research or running their own businesses. Nor does elected office attract the visionary. Visionaries have little patience with an environment choked with red tape. And elected offices are certainly not the place to find the patriotic. Patriots are men and women of principle, and principle is the one thing elected office simply will not abide.
So who, besides just saying “the worst sort of people,” is attracted to elected office? Simply put, the opportunistic. Those that are willing to change their position over and over are the only ones flexible enough to get elected, and then re-elected time and time again.
If your red flags have not gone up already, they should have. You should be asking yourself, does not America have elected offices? Do not Americans pride themselves on seeking out just and honorable men and women to fill their positions?
Whatever you may think the answer to that question is, the real answer is “no.” America, despite what the pledge of allegiance every elementary school student repeats each morning, is a democracy. And, the last thing democracies want are constant, honorable men and women to lead them. In fact, the members of democracies don't want to be lead at all: they want to lead. Democracies want leaders that do what they are told. Thus we return to our original point: smart people, visionary people, even patriotic people, do not want to be told what to do. Only the opportunistic are willing to be told what to do over and over or to take positions they do not like or know nothing about.
Tocqueville called this constant capitulation by elected leaders the 'tyranny of the majority.' When the people say jump, politicians jump. In fact, the really good ones try to jump before the people tell them to in order to be mistaken as visionary. The tyranny of the majority, therefore, results in just this: if a politician wants to get re-elected, to keep his or her job and all the prestige that comes with it, he or she must do what is popular. It does not matter if what is popular conflicts with their personal views of what is right or wrong, even if those views are based on evidence or reasoning not available in the formation of popular opinion. It does not even matter if popular opinion conflicts with what is truly in the best interests of the people they serve. If they want to keep their jobs, politicians listen to what 51% of their constituents say and then vote accordingly.
“This is all true,” you might say, “but it is ultimately preferable to the alternative. Remember kings? Remember taxation without representation? Remember the 'tyranny of the few?'”
I do. I remember that countless generations have struggled under despotic kings and aristocracies, and that many still do. But just because our tyranny is imposed by 51% of the people instead of .01% or 3% of the people does not make it any better. And, what it does do is make those in power, the tyrants if you will, a lot less effective in dealing with real problems when they come along. While it is true that a king might over tax his people, execute his opponents and demand droit de seigneur from their daughters, it is also true that he mobilizes his armies much faster to defend his people when his nation is under attack.
Debates over the costs and benefits of a king, however, are not my central argument. What is my central argument, is that as our political system now stands we consistently elect representatives that fail to make any significant progress on the most pressing issues we face. Think about it. The cost of healthcare, rising energy costs, terrorism and education are not new problems. They have existed since the beginning of this nation. Nor has there been, or is there now a lack of solutions to these problems. What is lacking is a majority in our government that will take action to solve these problems one way or the other. Instead, we get half-way compromises cobbled together from a multitude of ideas that, while they might put off the day of reckoning now, ultimately create more problems than they solve. Examples? The 3/5ths compromise, the Missouri compromise, the Treaty of Versailles, the New Deal and, recently, Obama care.
So, what exactly is the solution to this long-lived problem? How do we get our representatives to vote for viable solutions when we ourselves, as a ceaselessly shifting majority on which they depend for re-election, are constantly changing our directives to them?
Well, I'll tell you the answer you hear most often: “Kick the bums out! Take back Washington! Elect leaders that will do what we tell them to!” Heard it before? Said it before?? We all have. But it does not change the real problem. If we kick out old opportunistic leaders that were dependent on the majority for their power and prestige and replace them with new leaders that are dependent on the majority for their power and prestige we have changed nothing. We just have new faces in the same old spaces, finding out what the majority wants to hear and then making sure the majority hears it from their lips. In fact, it may be worse. At least we knew something about the old faces.
What can we do? Is there no way to elect leaders that we trust as responsible men and then let them make what they determine are responsible decisions for us, but at the same time avoid the risk of establishing a dictatorship? If there was one thing our forefathers agreed on it was that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Thankfully, there is a way to avoid both extremes; a way to separate elected leaders from the tyranny of the majority and at the same time keep them from seizing absolute power. That way, however, is the one politicians least want to see put in place. Let me explain with an example.
George W. Bush was like any other politician. He wanted to get re-elected. No matter what he might say to the contrary, in his many years in public service, all his calculations included the thought, “what will this do to my re-election prospects?” While there were certainly other things that must have entered into his calculations, like, “is this morally right? How will this affect my friends? How will this affect my own personal wealth?”, he knew that if he made a decision that was vastly unpopular, especially with his party, he would never get re-elected. I believe that a careful examination of his political career or a truly honest self-evaluation by himself would prove this assertion to be true.
Except for at one point near the end of his career. Cast your mind back with me. In 2008-2009, Bush was approaching the end of his public service. He had reached the pinnacle: two terms as president. He had achieved what his father had not. And, of vital importance, he would never run for elected office again. Then, crisis hit. Huge financial institutions began to fail left and right. The American economy stood on the brink. Bush should have known what to do; he and his party had been preaching it for years. The republicans, particularly conservative republicans, were firm believers in laissez faire government. The financial crisis was a good thing. Bad businesses would fail, good would prevail, and the market would correct itself. All Bush had to do to keep in his party's good graces was do nothing.
Doing nothing, however, is exactly what Bush did not not do. He bailed out the banks. He passed TARP. He was as interventionist as he could be. What on earth was he thinking?
He was thinking that he was not up for re-election. He was done. And, he thought that bailing the banks out and passing TARP was the right thing to do, and the necessary thing to do to save the country, and the world from financial disaster.
Now, you certainly may disagree with what he thought. But, I find it very hard to believe that his actions were motivated by a desire for re-election. If you do not believe me, just look at what the Tea Party did to the republicans that voted with Bush on those bills. Bush had reached point in his career where he felt he was free to do what he felt was right, based on his conscience and on the information available to him.
This, then, is the secret. We want men and women in government that we elect. We do not want some psycho sitting on American throne just because his or her father sat there before them. We do not want someone governing us that the rich, or academia, or one certain geographical area decided was best for the job. We still want to chose them. And, once we choose them, we do not want them in there forever. But, at the same time, we do not want to elect someone that can never use their best judgment, and would never want to in the first place because they have been conditioned to only do that which will get them re-elected.
How do we do this? We elect somebody for public office and then do not allow them to stand for re-election; at least not for a long time. Can you see how this would help? Why would a politician pander to fickle public opinion if they were not going to get re-elected no matter how much pandering they did? Leaders would stop looking at their term in office as a job they had to hold on to, and more as the public service it was intended to be.
The problems: what if we get fooled and do elect a crazy? How do we get rid of them? Well, one of the best things about this plan is we'll be sure to get rid of them once their term expires even if they still have 51% popularity! Also, it is not like we are electing them to a sole position of power. One man or woman by themselves will not be able to over power all of congress in one term. And, at the end of that one term, again, they are done.
How do we ever get anyone in office long enough to do any good? One of the most common arguments in favor of returning representatives is that the workings of the US government are seriously complex and not to be learned over night. I recognize this, and personally would recommend lengthening the duration of most public offices. But, whether lengthened or not, I think such a revision would actually increase rather than decrease the efficiency of public representatives. As it is, they spend half of their time posturing for the media in their respective bodies rather than actually working to solve problems. Then, they use up the other half of their time zipping around the campaign trail making false promises and kissing ugly babies. If they had no re-election there would be no reason to make blustering speeches designed to embarrass their opponents on the other side of the aisle. Also, if they had no re-election there would be no campaign trails; just the knowledge that once they were done they would be going home to live with their consciences.
Who knows? If we removed the opportunity of securing a lifelong job of power and prestige as well as sniveling servitude to public opinion out of public office maybe we would get less opportunists seeking it. Maybe patriotic people would see a real opportunity to help their country rather than the dismal promise of being stuck in endless debates put on for the sake of constituent's every changing opinions. Maybe intelligent and visionary people would see a real opportunity to improve the country, and would take a break from jobs that actually utilized their vision and intelligence. Certainly, my idea is not a cure-all, but maybe, just maybe we would get people in office that were good at governing and leading, and not just good at getting re-elected.
Elected offices attract the worst sort of people. The really intelligent never want to be elected because they would rather be out making better money, doing research or running their own businesses. Nor does elected office attract the visionary. Visionaries have little patience with an environment choked with red tape. And elected offices are certainly not the place to find the patriotic. Patriots are men and women of principle, and principle is the one thing elected office simply will not abide.
So who, besides just saying “the worst sort of people,” is attracted to elected office? Simply put, the opportunistic. Those that are willing to change their position over and over are the only ones flexible enough to get elected, and then re-elected time and time again.
If your red flags have not gone up already, they should have. You should be asking yourself, does not America have elected offices? Do not Americans pride themselves on seeking out just and honorable men and women to fill their positions?
Whatever you may think the answer to that question is, the real answer is “no.” America, despite what the pledge of allegiance every elementary school student repeats each morning, is a democracy. And, the last thing democracies want are constant, honorable men and women to lead them. In fact, the members of democracies don't want to be lead at all: they want to lead. Democracies want leaders that do what they are told. Thus we return to our original point: smart people, visionary people, even patriotic people, do not want to be told what to do. Only the opportunistic are willing to be told what to do over and over or to take positions they do not like or know nothing about.
Tocqueville called this constant capitulation by elected leaders the 'tyranny of the majority.' When the people say jump, politicians jump. In fact, the really good ones try to jump before the people tell them to in order to be mistaken as visionary. The tyranny of the majority, therefore, results in just this: if a politician wants to get re-elected, to keep his or her job and all the prestige that comes with it, he or she must do what is popular. It does not matter if what is popular conflicts with their personal views of what is right or wrong, even if those views are based on evidence or reasoning not available in the formation of popular opinion. It does not even matter if popular opinion conflicts with what is truly in the best interests of the people they serve. If they want to keep their jobs, politicians listen to what 51% of their constituents say and then vote accordingly.
“This is all true,” you might say, “but it is ultimately preferable to the alternative. Remember kings? Remember taxation without representation? Remember the 'tyranny of the few?'”
I do. I remember that countless generations have struggled under despotic kings and aristocracies, and that many still do. But just because our tyranny is imposed by 51% of the people instead of .01% or 3% of the people does not make it any better. And, what it does do is make those in power, the tyrants if you will, a lot less effective in dealing with real problems when they come along. While it is true that a king might over tax his people, execute his opponents and demand droit de seigneur from their daughters, it is also true that he mobilizes his armies much faster to defend his people when his nation is under attack.
Debates over the costs and benefits of a king, however, are not my central argument. What is my central argument, is that as our political system now stands we consistently elect representatives that fail to make any significant progress on the most pressing issues we face. Think about it. The cost of healthcare, rising energy costs, terrorism and education are not new problems. They have existed since the beginning of this nation. Nor has there been, or is there now a lack of solutions to these problems. What is lacking is a majority in our government that will take action to solve these problems one way or the other. Instead, we get half-way compromises cobbled together from a multitude of ideas that, while they might put off the day of reckoning now, ultimately create more problems than they solve. Examples? The 3/5ths compromise, the Missouri compromise, the Treaty of Versailles, the New Deal and, recently, Obama care.
So, what exactly is the solution to this long-lived problem? How do we get our representatives to vote for viable solutions when we ourselves, as a ceaselessly shifting majority on which they depend for re-election, are constantly changing our directives to them?
Well, I'll tell you the answer you hear most often: “Kick the bums out! Take back Washington! Elect leaders that will do what we tell them to!” Heard it before? Said it before?? We all have. But it does not change the real problem. If we kick out old opportunistic leaders that were dependent on the majority for their power and prestige and replace them with new leaders that are dependent on the majority for their power and prestige we have changed nothing. We just have new faces in the same old spaces, finding out what the majority wants to hear and then making sure the majority hears it from their lips. In fact, it may be worse. At least we knew something about the old faces.
What can we do? Is there no way to elect leaders that we trust as responsible men and then let them make what they determine are responsible decisions for us, but at the same time avoid the risk of establishing a dictatorship? If there was one thing our forefathers agreed on it was that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Thankfully, there is a way to avoid both extremes; a way to separate elected leaders from the tyranny of the majority and at the same time keep them from seizing absolute power. That way, however, is the one politicians least want to see put in place. Let me explain with an example.
George W. Bush was like any other politician. He wanted to get re-elected. No matter what he might say to the contrary, in his many years in public service, all his calculations included the thought, “what will this do to my re-election prospects?” While there were certainly other things that must have entered into his calculations, like, “is this morally right? How will this affect my friends? How will this affect my own personal wealth?”, he knew that if he made a decision that was vastly unpopular, especially with his party, he would never get re-elected. I believe that a careful examination of his political career or a truly honest self-evaluation by himself would prove this assertion to be true.
Except for at one point near the end of his career. Cast your mind back with me. In 2008-2009, Bush was approaching the end of his public service. He had reached the pinnacle: two terms as president. He had achieved what his father had not. And, of vital importance, he would never run for elected office again. Then, crisis hit. Huge financial institutions began to fail left and right. The American economy stood on the brink. Bush should have known what to do; he and his party had been preaching it for years. The republicans, particularly conservative republicans, were firm believers in laissez faire government. The financial crisis was a good thing. Bad businesses would fail, good would prevail, and the market would correct itself. All Bush had to do to keep in his party's good graces was do nothing.
Doing nothing, however, is exactly what Bush did not not do. He bailed out the banks. He passed TARP. He was as interventionist as he could be. What on earth was he thinking?
He was thinking that he was not up for re-election. He was done. And, he thought that bailing the banks out and passing TARP was the right thing to do, and the necessary thing to do to save the country, and the world from financial disaster.
Now, you certainly may disagree with what he thought. But, I find it very hard to believe that his actions were motivated by a desire for re-election. If you do not believe me, just look at what the Tea Party did to the republicans that voted with Bush on those bills. Bush had reached point in his career where he felt he was free to do what he felt was right, based on his conscience and on the information available to him.
This, then, is the secret. We want men and women in government that we elect. We do not want some psycho sitting on American throne just because his or her father sat there before them. We do not want someone governing us that the rich, or academia, or one certain geographical area decided was best for the job. We still want to chose them. And, once we choose them, we do not want them in there forever. But, at the same time, we do not want to elect someone that can never use their best judgment, and would never want to in the first place because they have been conditioned to only do that which will get them re-elected.
How do we do this? We elect somebody for public office and then do not allow them to stand for re-election; at least not for a long time. Can you see how this would help? Why would a politician pander to fickle public opinion if they were not going to get re-elected no matter how much pandering they did? Leaders would stop looking at their term in office as a job they had to hold on to, and more as the public service it was intended to be.
The problems: what if we get fooled and do elect a crazy? How do we get rid of them? Well, one of the best things about this plan is we'll be sure to get rid of them once their term expires even if they still have 51% popularity! Also, it is not like we are electing them to a sole position of power. One man or woman by themselves will not be able to over power all of congress in one term. And, at the end of that one term, again, they are done.
How do we ever get anyone in office long enough to do any good? One of the most common arguments in favor of returning representatives is that the workings of the US government are seriously complex and not to be learned over night. I recognize this, and personally would recommend lengthening the duration of most public offices. But, whether lengthened or not, I think such a revision would actually increase rather than decrease the efficiency of public representatives. As it is, they spend half of their time posturing for the media in their respective bodies rather than actually working to solve problems. Then, they use up the other half of their time zipping around the campaign trail making false promises and kissing ugly babies. If they had no re-election there would be no reason to make blustering speeches designed to embarrass their opponents on the other side of the aisle. Also, if they had no re-election there would be no campaign trails; just the knowledge that once they were done they would be going home to live with their consciences.
Who knows? If we removed the opportunity of securing a lifelong job of power and prestige as well as sniveling servitude to public opinion out of public office maybe we would get less opportunists seeking it. Maybe patriotic people would see a real opportunity to help their country rather than the dismal promise of being stuck in endless debates put on for the sake of constituent's every changing opinions. Maybe intelligent and visionary people would see a real opportunity to improve the country, and would take a break from jobs that actually utilized their vision and intelligence. Certainly, my idea is not a cure-all, but maybe, just maybe we would get people in office that were good at governing and leading, and not just good at getting re-elected.
Monday, July 18, 2011
More Adventures in Africa
Well everybody, it has been a long time since I've posted, for which I apologize. But, it has been awesome here! Let me give you some of the good news.
First of all, the loans are going great. We gave out one more to bring our total loaned out to six loans, with about $2500 loaned out. Besides that, however, we have almost twenty other people that are ready to receive loans! Now, the only thing we are waiting for is that money to be transferred from America.
In addition to that, I have started teaching in four new villages. Their names are Akokom, Amonom, Akwadom and Ekorso. They are all pretty small. I would guess none of them can have more than 1500 people in them. But, the people are way excited about coming to learn and even more excited that they might have prospects of getting loans to improve their lives. At the first city I went to 58 people showed up to listen to me talk. At the next one, 85 people came! Although most of them can't read or write, they are great people with great business ideas. While a college education can help, I am convinced that you don't have to have a degree to be successful in business, especially in places like these.
One of the other exciting things I've gotten involved with lately is talking to local city leaders about the challenges they face in their towns and what they are doing to overcome them. One of the amazing things is that they actually listen to me and want advice from me. Nick, Aaron and I have all commented that one of the hardest parts we'll have to get used to when we get home is being a nobody again. Anyway though, it has been a real eye opener into the challenges people face here and a cool way to try and help out. Also, I've put several of the town mayors here in contact with local political leaders back home. They will act as mentors, and give the leaders advice on things that have worked well in America and might work well here too. I hope that just putting the two people in contact will continue to provide help for these great people here long after I am gone.
A couple of more things. Last night it started raining around midnight and kept raining hard until about 10:30 this morning. When we finally went outside, there was water everywhere! I walked down to the nearby river and it was way beyond its banks. Then, this afternoon, Nick and I had to walk to a town about an hour away to teach a class and give out a loan. Along the rode, we came to two lakes that weren't there before. But, since there was no other way around them, we just had to walk on through! The deepest it got was about chest deep. A lot of the Africans saw us walking through and laughed at us. It was a great time.
The only other thing I have to tell you is that some of the shirts for the family are ready! Here is a pic of me modeling one of the guy ones, along with my sweet African hat I bought in Cape Coast.
Hope you are all well!
First of all, the loans are going great. We gave out one more to bring our total loaned out to six loans, with about $2500 loaned out. Besides that, however, we have almost twenty other people that are ready to receive loans! Now, the only thing we are waiting for is that money to be transferred from America.
In addition to that, I have started teaching in four new villages. Their names are Akokom, Amonom, Akwadom and Ekorso. They are all pretty small. I would guess none of them can have more than 1500 people in them. But, the people are way excited about coming to learn and even more excited that they might have prospects of getting loans to improve their lives. At the first city I went to 58 people showed up to listen to me talk. At the next one, 85 people came! Although most of them can't read or write, they are great people with great business ideas. While a college education can help, I am convinced that you don't have to have a degree to be successful in business, especially in places like these.
One of the other exciting things I've gotten involved with lately is talking to local city leaders about the challenges they face in their towns and what they are doing to overcome them. One of the amazing things is that they actually listen to me and want advice from me. Nick, Aaron and I have all commented that one of the hardest parts we'll have to get used to when we get home is being a nobody again. Anyway though, it has been a real eye opener into the challenges people face here and a cool way to try and help out. Also, I've put several of the town mayors here in contact with local political leaders back home. They will act as mentors, and give the leaders advice on things that have worked well in America and might work well here too. I hope that just putting the two people in contact will continue to provide help for these great people here long after I am gone.
A couple of more things. Last night it started raining around midnight and kept raining hard until about 10:30 this morning. When we finally went outside, there was water everywhere! I walked down to the nearby river and it was way beyond its banks. Then, this afternoon, Nick and I had to walk to a town about an hour away to teach a class and give out a loan. Along the rode, we came to two lakes that weren't there before. But, since there was no other way around them, we just had to walk on through! The deepest it got was about chest deep. A lot of the Africans saw us walking through and laughed at us. It was a great time.
The only other thing I have to tell you is that some of the shirts for the family are ready! Here is a pic of me modeling one of the guy ones, along with my sweet African hat I bought in Cape Coast.
Hope you are all well!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
The Tini Waterfalls (not so tiny)
Hey all, here is a report on probably the funnest thing we've done since I've been here. This last Saturday (June 18, 2011), we headed to a town called Anyinem to see some nearby waterfalls. It was quite an adventure!
First of all, our 16 year old cook/maid/interpreter named Augustina (pictured below)decided to accompany us because she thought we were too stupid to handle ourselves on our own (she was probably right). But, she thought we were just going to the local river, which is about a five minute walk away from where we live. She was even more alarmed when she found out we'd be journeying by taxi to a fairly distant city. Luckily, she decided to come along anyway.
When we got to the local taxi station in Abomosu we had our first adventure. A bus driver and a taxi driver fought over who would get to transport us on the 50 minute drive to Anyinem. Unfortunately, the taxi driver won so the five of us got to pack into a very small car. He thought one of our group, the taller girl named Melody, was quite attractive so she got the front seat and the other four of us packed in the back seat. We rolled down the windows though and it wasn't too bad of a trip. One thing I should mention, however, is that the roads here are horrible! Often times they are more pot holes than they roads. And, many of the pot holes are not inches deep, but rather feet deep! So, the taxi drivers speed like mad men on good stretches of road and then slam on the brakes when they approach a pot hole section. Amazingly enough, I still managed to fall asleep in the car on the way home.
So, we eventually got to Anyinem and then convinced our driver to drive us the rest of the way to the trail head of the waterfall. Then came the really fun part. I thought it would be just a quick walk to the waterfalls but it turned out to be an almost 45 minute hike through the jungle! Oh man, I have missed hiking so much that it felt great to be out again. I kind of ditched the other guys so I could enjoy the woods by myself for a bit and so I could water a particularly dry looking spot of jungle...
So, when we got the falls they were amazing! Most of Ghana is pretty flat but here there we cliffs that ranged from about 100 to 500 feet tall! They looked awesome and I would love to be the first limber to establish some routes on them! Another time. Anyway, where the falls came out was in this kind of natural amphitheater surrounded by jungle and huge cliffs. Then, right out of the middle these huge falls pour down! They are gorgeous and everything is green and covered in the spray from the falls. And one of the coolest things is that the water is clean and clear. Most of the rivers here have been torn up for gold mining and are muddy brown. This water is crystal clear though and just looks clean and nice!
So, once we got there we started dinking around. I went swimming and pretty soon two of the other interns followed. It was nice and cool and for the first time since I have been here I actually felt a little chilly! You'd think after Logan I wouldn't want to be cold again but it was really refreshing!
After that we came on home. It really was such a great trip! I hope we get to do more things like it. Anyway, take care all!
First of all, our 16 year old cook/maid/interpreter named Augustina (pictured below)decided to accompany us because she thought we were too stupid to handle ourselves on our own (she was probably right). But, she thought we were just going to the local river, which is about a five minute walk away from where we live. She was even more alarmed when she found out we'd be journeying by taxi to a fairly distant city. Luckily, she decided to come along anyway.
When we got to the local taxi station in Abomosu we had our first adventure. A bus driver and a taxi driver fought over who would get to transport us on the 50 minute drive to Anyinem. Unfortunately, the taxi driver won so the five of us got to pack into a very small car. He thought one of our group, the taller girl named Melody, was quite attractive so she got the front seat and the other four of us packed in the back seat. We rolled down the windows though and it wasn't too bad of a trip. One thing I should mention, however, is that the roads here are horrible! Often times they are more pot holes than they roads. And, many of the pot holes are not inches deep, but rather feet deep! So, the taxi drivers speed like mad men on good stretches of road and then slam on the brakes when they approach a pot hole section. Amazingly enough, I still managed to fall asleep in the car on the way home.
So, we eventually got to Anyinem and then convinced our driver to drive us the rest of the way to the trail head of the waterfall. Then came the really fun part. I thought it would be just a quick walk to the waterfalls but it turned out to be an almost 45 minute hike through the jungle! Oh man, I have missed hiking so much that it felt great to be out again. I kind of ditched the other guys so I could enjoy the woods by myself for a bit and so I could water a particularly dry looking spot of jungle...
So, when we got the falls they were amazing! Most of Ghana is pretty flat but here there we cliffs that ranged from about 100 to 500 feet tall! They looked awesome and I would love to be the first limber to establish some routes on them! Another time. Anyway, where the falls came out was in this kind of natural amphitheater surrounded by jungle and huge cliffs. Then, right out of the middle these huge falls pour down! They are gorgeous and everything is green and covered in the spray from the falls. And one of the coolest things is that the water is clean and clear. Most of the rivers here have been torn up for gold mining and are muddy brown. This water is crystal clear though and just looks clean and nice!
So, once we got there we started dinking around. I went swimming and pretty soon two of the other interns followed. It was nice and cool and for the first time since I have been here I actually felt a little chilly! You'd think after Logan I wouldn't want to be cold again but it was really refreshing!
After that we came on home. It really was such a great trip! I hope we get to do more things like it. Anyway, take care all!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Pictures of Abomosu (and Asonofo)
So, I figure it is about time I finally post some pictures of what life is like here and some of the people that I am working with. In my defense the power and the internet are very unreliable at best so posting has been a little bit difficult. Anyway, all excuses aside, in no particular order, here is some about life in Abomosu!
First of all, this is downtown Abomosu. Yes, that is a chicken running around. They are all over the place. And, yes, that is all the bigger any of the stores are here. No grocery stores, just these little garage type things. Lots of stores are just wooden shacks in fact. The beauty salons are my favorite of I think. Nothing like going to the shack on the side of the road to get your hair done, eh ladies?
Next, this is Aaron on one of the days that we walked to the nearby town of Asonofo. This little guy lives along our route and always comes out to walk with us some of the way. He doesn't speak any English and we don't speak any Twi so our communication is pretty limited but he doesn't seem to mind. He just likes holding the white guys' hands and walking along with us I guess.
This here is Nkansah. He is our translator and one of our best friends in the village. He went on a mission to Nigeria some years ago and now lives in Abomosu. For work he helps us, makes cement blocks for people to build with when there is any building going on and works on his farm. He says everything he does he tries to do "small small." Anyway, we went to work with him at his farm one day. He didn't really trust us to do anything so we mostly stood around and talked to him while he hacked away at stuff with his machete. It was fun though. This is him carrying kasava root in a sack so he can cook it for dinner later on that night.
This is a red headed lizard we saw walking around one day. If JJ were here I am sure he would have caught it in a second with a hang stick. They're probably about a foot long if you count their tail. Pretty cool looking.
This is George Obeng, aka, the Black Dwarf. Honestly, I think he comes up a little higher than my belly button. He is way cool. He lives in Asonofo, the outlying town we go to teach at twice a week. He is a cocoa farmer and would like a loan so he can buy fertilizer that will make it so he can get two crops a year instead of just one. He is really cool.
This is Sally and I. She is one of the nurses at the health clinic we volunteer at every Friday morning. Aaron and I sit around and fill out insurance forms with her for about 4 hours each time. Way fun. She is always giving me dating advice. Surprising how I get that wherever I go. She just doesn't understand the special bond Maggy and I have either...
Last, for this post, we have Benjamin Dehoe (make sure to take a closer look at his shirt!). He is a perfect example of the guys we are here trying to help. He is 29 years old and is the branch president in Asonofo. He has a wife and three kids. And, he has almost no economic opportunities. He works on his farm everyday but still has very little to spare. He is a great guy though and we are hoping to give him about a $400 loan to start a fish farm soon.
Anyway, these are just a few of the people we are here to help. Hope you guys enjoy the photos!
First of all, this is downtown Abomosu. Yes, that is a chicken running around. They are all over the place. And, yes, that is all the bigger any of the stores are here. No grocery stores, just these little garage type things. Lots of stores are just wooden shacks in fact. The beauty salons are my favorite of I think. Nothing like going to the shack on the side of the road to get your hair done, eh ladies?
Next, this is Aaron on one of the days that we walked to the nearby town of Asonofo. This little guy lives along our route and always comes out to walk with us some of the way. He doesn't speak any English and we don't speak any Twi so our communication is pretty limited but he doesn't seem to mind. He just likes holding the white guys' hands and walking along with us I guess.
This here is Nkansah. He is our translator and one of our best friends in the village. He went on a mission to Nigeria some years ago and now lives in Abomosu. For work he helps us, makes cement blocks for people to build with when there is any building going on and works on his farm. He says everything he does he tries to do "small small." Anyway, we went to work with him at his farm one day. He didn't really trust us to do anything so we mostly stood around and talked to him while he hacked away at stuff with his machete. It was fun though. This is him carrying kasava root in a sack so he can cook it for dinner later on that night.
This is a red headed lizard we saw walking around one day. If JJ were here I am sure he would have caught it in a second with a hang stick. They're probably about a foot long if you count their tail. Pretty cool looking.
This is George Obeng, aka, the Black Dwarf. Honestly, I think he comes up a little higher than my belly button. He is way cool. He lives in Asonofo, the outlying town we go to teach at twice a week. He is a cocoa farmer and would like a loan so he can buy fertilizer that will make it so he can get two crops a year instead of just one. He is really cool.
This is Sally and I. She is one of the nurses at the health clinic we volunteer at every Friday morning. Aaron and I sit around and fill out insurance forms with her for about 4 hours each time. Way fun. She is always giving me dating advice. Surprising how I get that wherever I go. She just doesn't understand the special bond Maggy and I have either...
Last, for this post, we have Benjamin Dehoe (make sure to take a closer look at his shirt!). He is a perfect example of the guys we are here trying to help. He is 29 years old and is the branch president in Asonofo. He has a wife and three kids. And, he has almost no economic opportunities. He works on his farm everyday but still has very little to spare. He is a great guy though and we are hoping to give him about a $400 loan to start a fish farm soon.
Anyway, these are just a few of the people we are here to help. Hope you guys enjoy the photos!
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