Basics of the Civilization Sphere

 

This is the third in an anniversary series reviewing the basics of the Spherical Model. The March 1st post was on the Political Sphere. The March 4^th post (the actual 2-year anniversary of the start of this blog) was on the Economic Sphere. Today’s post is on the Social Sphere, or Civilization Sphere. I have varied on the terminology for this sphere, since the three legs of the conservative stool are political, economic, and social. But my emphasis is on the goal of civilization, so I often use that word rather than the more general word social. The northern hemisphere is Civilization; the southern hemisphere is Savagery. The goal is not just to be barely at or above the equator line; it is to be far enough north to reside above the 45^th parallel, in the Civilization Zone, where there can be true, sustained, thriving civilization.

Since the November election, I have spent more time on civilization than on political and economic freedom. Of the three, it is the most essential. You can’t have self-governance is you don’t have people who can and do govern themselves. Nor can you have a thriving economy without people who have a strong work ethic and honesty about earnings in exchange for labor (replacing the uncivilized desire to get something for nothing). And that starts with individual families, regardless of what sort of regime the family is subject to, to pass along the behavior required of civilized people.

A critical mass of healthy, civilized families leads to strong communities, then outward to cities, then states, then nations. Going north on all three overlapping spheres starts with going north on the Civilization Sphere.

Here are the two basic premises for the Civilization Sphere (covered in detail in two parts at Spherical Model, here and here):

1.      Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition, which differs from the archaeological definition—see below in “What does civilization look like”), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

2.      The family is the basic unit of civilized society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. So preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations in a civilized society.

Sometimes people claim to be conservative on economic issues, but not on social issues. They are misguided; it isn’t possible to successfully follow free market principles and get economic prosperity in a decaying civilization. It likewise isn’t possible to talk about the rights guaranteed us in the US Constitution, and the philosophical concept of ultimate good the Constitution is based on, without acknowledging the giver of those inalienable rights: God.

I just finished reading Hugh Hewitt’s latest book, Talking with Pagans, a collection of debates, mostly from his radio show, collected over the past several years. One section was with Christopher Hitchens, who believed he had deflected the pro-religious argument by insisting that he did believe in ultimate good and ultimate standards of right and wrong. He simply believed the sense of ultimate good we have, in anyone choosing to be ethical and good, is the result of Darwinian natural selection. I’m glad that worked for him; being around people who are good and ethical is always better than being around the savage opposite. But it is capricious, since the ultimate arbiter of right is the person himself, with no higher authority (other than just civil law) to contradict his opinion.

Hitchens, along with some of the others on the atheist side, claimed that there’s a lot of disagreement among religious people on the code of living righteously. Almost without fail these debaters take as evidence the relatively rare fanatics, a few of whom in history have been violent, claiming to act in the name of their god(s). They choose to cherry pick, however, leaving out the savage atrocities of anti-religious tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, just to cover the past century.

In fact, over the centuries there has been a great deal of consensus about how to live a basically moral life. The primary list is the Ten Commandments, which outline our requirements to honor God, the giver of life, liberty, and free will, along with limitations that show respect for those very rights in those around us. No community ever progressed to civilization while simultaneously allowing murder, theft, and promiscuity. In fact, you will find life, family, and property rights valued in any community that can be construed to be truly civilized.

In addition, there are refinements, positive behaviors to develop, many listed in the New Testament. (See The Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12, plus the definition of charity in I Corinthians 13, and Paul’s admonition on seeking virtue in Philippians 4:8. I keep returning to the BoyScout Oath and Law as well.)

What does civilization look like? This description is from the Spherical Model:

In the northern circle that is the goal—Civilization—families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

I haven’t spent a lot of time writing about what savagery looks like; I prefer looking at the positive goal. However, I’m concerned that we may be missing the signs of the savagery we’re suffering. It’s like the problem abuse victims have with their thinking: “I’m surviving this; it’s not that bad. I’m just glad it’s not worse.” Only when they get out and get some perspective can they recognize how wrong it was for them to submit themselves to so much abuse.

So I’d like to continue this series with one more post, on Friday, to look at where we are—not so we can feel miserable about it, but so that we can take that first step of recognition that must come before doing something about it.

Economic Sphere Basics

Today is the second anniversary of the beginning of the Spherical Model blog, and we’re doing a recap of the basics of what the Spherical Model is. Friday’s summary covered the principles that lead to the northern freedom zone on the Political Sphere. Today’s summary covers the basic principles leading to the thriving free enterprise zone on the Economic Sphere. (I hope you'll read the full version of each.)

The principles themselves are simple. The preliminary discussion is basic economics, which doesn’t get taught nearly enough in schools. Here are some of the main points:

·        Wealth represents the accumulation of the results of labor.

·        Money is a representative, or symbol, of wealth, to make it easier to exchange.  

·        Problems of the economy as a whole always result from interference in the exchange of labor, or value of money.

·        There has never been a national recession or depression that wasn’t caused by interference with the money supply, or in other words dishonesty about the value of money.

·        Capitalism is a system of increasing productivity, and thereby increasing wealth.

o   Capital is extra time/work/wealth that is invested to make it possible to produce more wealth.

o   Capital in and of itself is simply never evil. Capital might be considered always good. It represents work above and beyond what is essential followed by careful use of it toward a good idea, resulting in even more surplus.

·        Government cannot create wealth; government can only spend it. Government can, however, regulate (that is, make standard) monetary units by coining money, or printing money, each unit of which represents a result of labor that can be exchanged for the results of someone else’s labor.

o   Government can cause harm by printing “money” that does not represent actual wealth.

With these things in mind, how do we identify ways to guarantee thriving free enterprise? Limit government to its proper role: protecting people and their property (wealth), and guaranteeing the value of the money. Maybe add to that some infrastructure to help facilitate commerce, and that’s about it. Every intervention by government to redistribute from those who have to those who have not causes unintended consequences that make things worse both for those being taken from and those being given to.

Capital is taken that could have been used for productive purposes, possibly that could have provided employment for those in need. Incentive is taken from those who would have freely given to the needy, taking their surplus so that they can’t decide to give, and making them resentful that they had no choice about the confiscation. And the receivers of government largesse feel entitled to the redistribution, since the faceless government, rather than a neighbor who did the earning of the wealth, has decided they deserve it. They are therefore ungrateful. If there had been a personal connection between willing giver and reluctant but grateful receiver, both could have benefitted and moved forward in a positive relationship.

The way to limit government is to recognize God-given rights and never allow government to usurp power over those things. That requires political freedom instead of tyranny, so you can see how free-enterprise overlays freedom in the north and controlled economy overlays tyranny in the southern hemisphere.

So freedom and economic thriving both require knowing what a right is. The Constitution, again, is handy for that. The first Ten Amendments were not an afterthought; they were understood clearly by the founders, so much so that they went without saying. But then some of the wiser ones wondered what would happen if these rights didn’t remain self-evident. So they were included before the Constitution was ratified.

They are in a way “negative rights”: God has given these to all men, and government shall not infringe upon them. Government, in other words, is limited, while the individual, in regard to rights, is not.

Then along come the “progressives,” who start talking about “positive rights,” things they think every person ought to have, and therefore government should have the ability to bestow upon them, things like a right to a job (regardless of skills), a right to food, a right to shelter. Are these things rights?

If it is a right, God has given it. But we all come into the world naked, impoverished, and inexperienced. It is by growth, hard work, and gaining in expertise that we try to overcome this condition throughout our life. We are born with the right to life, the right to live free (not enslaved), and the right to pursue our own path to overcome the naked impoverished state.

Do we have a right to clothing? Well, it’s sure nice to have the appropriate clothing when you live through a northern winter. But is it your neighbor’s obligation to work to provide your clothing? Or is that your own obligation? Would it be good of your neighbor to give you his surplus clothing if he saw you were in need? Yes. But his giving it to you is charity, or philanthropy, not an obligation to meet your right. If he had no surplus, but just enough clothing to keep himself from freezing, would it be his obligation to give up a coat to you? No. If he were heroic, he might work out a way to share with you and perhaps keep you both alive. But he is not obligated to do so. So, your clothing is not his obligation. Providing clothing for someone other than self is a charitable act.

At the basic level, the relationship of parent to child is charitable. The parent can clearly see that the child cannot provide his own clothing, so the parent, showing his care for the child, provides that clothing. Same with food. You might even say that the parent has an obligation to feed, clothe, shelter, and nurture the child, because the parent brought the helpless child into the world and therefore has an obligation to that child. But the obligation isn’t without limit. The parent nurtures the child to be capable of feeding, clothing, and sheltering himself. And then, at that point, the parent no longer has the obligation to provide. If the grown child has lost a job, and has a temporary need for economic help, it might be that the parent could step in and offer food, clothing, and shelter from his surplus (charity). But the parent would have no such obligation to a grown and capable child who lacked means simply because of unwillingness to work for them. And that parent would have absolutely no obligation to provide from his hard-earned supply to a lazy child of the neighbor down the road.

So, even though we need them, we do not have a right to food, clothing, and shelter. Ditto for a furnished apartment, a television, telephone, medical care, air conditioning, or a car. Nice to have. Important to have. Maybe even necessary to have in order to fulfill one’s purposes in life. But it is a capable person’s own obligation to work to provide these necessities for himself.

In a civilized society, there will be a desire to somehow provide these necessities to those who are not capable of taking care of themselves: the impoverished because of illness, accident, injury, or lowered mental capacity. But it is philanthropy that fills the need—not government taking from a producer by force to give to a non-producer.

Economic thriving, then, requires limited government, adherence to laws protecting property, and then a charitable people to care for the truly needy.

What Is the Spherical Model

We’re approaching an anniversary here at the Spherical Model. While the website has been up somewhat longer, the blog began March 4,2011, which is Monday. That first post was a Friday, so I think I’ll start the celebration today.

The Spherical Model is a way of looking at ideas and how they interrelate. It begins as an alternative to the left/right paradigm of politics, because that view is inadequate. Using a three-dimensional model allows for a full range of ideas, along with an understanding of how they compare to each other and whether they lead to freedom or tyranny. In addition, the model shows similar three-dimensional positions for economic and social ideas. These aren’t three separate models; they are three layers of the same model.

For the full explanation, I hope you’ll read the website. A year ago, at the one-year anniversary, I offered a shorter version, to get you started with the basics.

The Spherical Model idea is my own. It began in 2004, during our homeschooling decade, when I was looking for a way to explain the political spectrum during our history lessons, including a pretty long unit on the Constitution and government. I expanded the spherical idea beyond politics to include economic and social ideas sometime later and started writing those segments in 2008. I got the website up in 2010, when we finally graduated Social Sphere from our homeschool.  

I consider Spherical Model to be a think tank, but as think tanks go this is about as small as one can get. It consists of me and my personal research and opinions, along with input from my grown children, who happen to have personalities and interests that coincide with the three portions of the model: Political Sphere, Economic Sphere, and Social Sphere. The oldest, Political Sphere, who is a law student now, tends to offer the most input, which I appreciate. A time or two he has written a guest post. Economic Sphere has a degree in economics, and when I had more access to him daily, I often had him school me in how to explain economic principles. He’s now in the Army, studying at the Defense Language Institute. My daughter, Social Sphere, got married this past year, and is studying Family Consumer Science, which fits well into what we cover in the ingredients needed for civilization. Mr. Spherical Model, my husband of 31 years, also offers occasional general input.

For this anniversary review, I’d like to do a series on the three overlaying spheres. The goal, in all three spheres, is to follow the principles that will lead us to and help us remain in the northern hemisphere—the further north the better. So we’ll cover the principles over the next few days.

Political Sphere

The northern hemisphere is freedom; the southern hemisphere is tyranny. The longitudinal lines relate to the perspective—who has the interest. The western hemisphere is most local/individual, and moving toward the eastern hemisphere is moving toward larger interests, with national, regional, and global interests. In the south the two quadrants divide, then, into chaos tyranny in the southwest and statist tyranny in the southeast—both bad, and both the most common versions of governance throughout history. Too many people see the whole political struggle as consisting of the opposition between chaos and control; power seekers often use chaos as an opportunity to gain power by offering relief from the chaos.

These people are blind to the entire northern hemisphere, where people are more peaceful, more productive, more thriving. America, as created in the US Constitution, is probably the best example we have of northern hemisphere freedom at the national level, possibly in all of world history.

What are the principles that get us to the northern freedom zone? The following questions let us know whether the principles are being met.

• Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government? For example, a person has the right to protect his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore the person cannot delegate the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him without moving too far south on the sphere.
• Does the policy infringe in any way on the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? Does the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on the God-given rights, then government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people and is too far south on the sphere.
• Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, some aspect of protection (including national defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency to protect the value of wealth, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution and is too far south on the sphere.
• Is the perspective appropriately local? It is important that any issue be handled at the most local level possible. Parents should decide the means, methods, and curriculum for educating their children, for example. An issue that affects a state should be handled at the state level, not the national level. National decisions should not be ceded to some international body. As listed in the above question, some interests are national, but ceding power to a larger entity than the actual interest leads to tyranny, which means too far south on the sphere.

Women Who Civilize

In the last post we talked about some of the special qualities men need to develop in order to contribute to civilization. To be fair, it seems we ought to look at some of the special qualities women need to develop in their contribution to civilization.

I’ve written about the importance of motherhood and women to civilization. Today I think I’d like to look at something specifically connecting economics and civilization, because we count on women to make contributions without remuneration.

Much of the economic debate is limited to the southern hemisphere of the Spherical Model. The statist side (southeast quadrant) believes that people can’t be counted on to earn enough to support themselves, make the best decisions about how to spend any money they earn, and take care of those who are unable to care for themselves (those too elderly, too young, too ill, or too underprivileged). The better parts of the southwest quadrant align with the Atlas Shrugged view, with this creed:

“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

At Spherical Model, the economic answer leading to civilization is always a combination of free market plus philanthropy.

Imagine, seriously, if mothers lived by John Galt’s oath. The world would collapse. It is the fatal flaw of Ayn Rand’s philosophy that she eliminates several essential qualities that are part of womanhood. She admires women who are like men: self-sufficient, intelligent, hard-working, entrepreneurial—all good qualities—but also infertile while sexually promiscuous, unsympathetic, and lacking in altruism. Dedicating your life to care for others for the sake of love instead of earning money is anathema to Rand’s world. (I wrote about this in much more detail in a three-part post here, here, and especially here).

The fact of humanity is that there are some people who depend on others through no fault of their own. Children are essential for our future, and any care we give them pays off for the future of us all. But it is usually women who are willing to do the day-in-day-out loving care, forgoing pay to do it.

I do not in any way intend to discuss whether women should be stay-at-home moms. I only know what God led me to do at various seasons, and I trust that other women can listen to God’s voice in their circumstances. Women are intelligent and capable; in today’s world, women are more likely to have college degrees and succeed academically. Woman can make many many valuable contributions to the economy. Nevertheless, civilization depends on the contributions women make without being paid.

While men can and should do many of these things as well, women as a demographic whole are more likely to give emotional nurturing to children, see to the academic progress of children, seek opportunities for social and physical growth and see to the spiritual training of children. While she goes about this, she is more likely to do volunteer work in schools and community organizations.

She is more likely to care for elderly adults. She is more likely to do the cards, letters, and gifts that keep family and friends connected. She is more likely to plan and carry out holiday celebrations. Imagine Thanksgiving if we expected nothing from women except what we pay for.

Imagine what homes would look like if women didn’t take it upon themselves to surround themselves and their loved ones with beauty and comfort. (Example: look at the difference between a series of girls’ dorm room and boys’.)

There are so many talents and abilities women naturally share, abilities we count on, that there’s a problem with women comparing themselves to the best examples in every category and always feeling they fall short, even when their unheralded giving pushes them beyond exhaustion.

Contrary to popular belief, women receive either equal or superior pay for equal work, and have done for some time. Where there seem to be differences, they are because women choose to spend less time at the office so she can spend more time with family and other ways that contribute to quality of life. She is more likely to break up her career for the sake of children. If her child is sick, she’s more likely to take time off from work than the dad is. If there’s a special event in the child’s life, she’s more likely to rearrange her schedule to be there.

Women make men more civilized than they would be without her, just by being part of his life. He’ll also be more productive and successful in his work than he would be without her in his life. Men want respect, and a wife can give him that; women want to be loved and cherished (more than rewarded with money), and a faithful, civilized man can give her that.

According to the conclusion of the Motherhood Study, many mothers understand she “holds a fragile but nonetheless powerful cultural position as the last best defense against what many people see as the impoverishment of social ties, communal obligations, and unremunerated commitments” (p. 42). Women ceasing to value civilization is a quicker route to savagery than men ceasing to value civilization. Economic necessity might require more of women in the workplace, but civilization also requires that she keep doing what she feels the life-giving need to do regardless of pay.

Women, value yourselves for what you do so unselfishly. Men, let her know how valuable you know she is.

Civilized Manliness

Some years ago, when I was just discovering what a blog was, long before I considered doing a blog myself, I came across a young writer named R. J. Moeller. I only check in there occasionally, but I’ve been glad someone out there is approaching the world after digesting C.S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton [is it a coincidence, all the initials without names?] This past weekend Andrew Klavan linked to a Moeller piece worth reading; it’s part of a collection of commentary on the social question of why it’s taking so long for young men to grow into men—why the 20s have changed from a time when men accomplished education and embarked on career, marriage, and parenthood into a time of extended adolescence.

The whole series is probably worth considering. It got me thinking about how dependent civilization is on men growing up into men. It’s not something that happens automatically just because time passes in the life of a male. It requires guidance and choice in taking on personal responsibility. Odds of it happening are much higher if there is a father modeling the example. In the absence of such a father, the surrounding family and church community can help make up the deficit with good men volunteering to take an interest in each young man and lead him toward manliness.

Most of what I talk about in the Spherical Model concerning civilization are qualities all people need to develop, not just men. But there are a few that men especially need to work on.

A couple of weeks ago I shared the Boy Scouts’ list of qualities, with their oath and law: honor God, do duty to God, do duty to country, be helpful, be physically strong, be mentally awake, be morally straight, be trustworthy, loyal helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

There isn’t anything in there that woman shouldn’t also develop, but there are some things that might be more natural to women (possibly courteous, clean, reverent).

Over the past few decades, in large part because of women badgering men to this point, we are afraid to talk about gender roles. But here are some biological facts: women give birth to babies; men don't. Growing a baby is harder for some women that others, but there’s a good chance the pregnant mom will be tired, nauseated, sore, mentally foggy, and near the end less and less physically capable. Then she goes through the physically taxing birth, followed by recovery, while adjusting to new life connected to another little human who depends on her. She’s sleep deprived for months (maybe years). She probably has to carefully watch what she eats to make sure she’s providing for herself and the nursing baby; she may have to adjust if what she eats leads to a fussy baby. She may end up spending hours of her day sitting in a chair holding this new little person as part of the baby’s growth process.

Some dads get very involved in helping with their babies. They may spend nighttime hours walking the floor with them and feel sleep deprived as well. They may be willing to change the diapers with the best of moms (although that’s a rare dad). But they can’t provide breast milk. I know there are bottles, but biology didn’t design that as the ideal way. And it’s part of the developing process for a baby to look up into the face of a mother while nursing; changing sides develops both eyes and both sides of the brain in important ways often missed with bottle feeding.

In short, nurturing a baby is essential for mothers, which severely limits how much time and energy a mother can put into being a breadwinner. Anyone who has been through it knows that being a mother to a newborn is such a full-time job that even doing laundry and other basic household tasks is challenging. So it would be wrong for society as a whole, or for men in individual families, to assume that the mother of the children must be required to earn a living wage on top of that responsibility. Some can and do, but it takes an exceptional energy with special circumstances; it isn’t logical to expect that of all mothers.

Old photo of Mr. Spherical Model
doing manly household tasks

That means that not only the newborn child needs a financial supporter, but the mother as well. The father, who is not going through the physical task of growing, birthing, and nursing a baby is the logical person to take on the responsibility. It’s odd that I should have to spell this out, since most people over the millennia of human existence have recognized this as obvious. Civilization depends on men taking on the protecting and providing roles, and men become better, more civilized, when they take on these responsibilities. Anything that fails to lead men to take on these roles is not civilizing.

So, specifically, a young man should learn a strong work ethic. He should learn to plan for his future and his family’s future. He should consider education and training that will allow him to provide a decent living, considering physical and mental labor and personal aptitudes. He should be able to make the connection between what he’s studying, learning, and doing in his youth and how his life and family will benefit later.

He should learn to stand firm for his beliefs. That takes bravery sometimes, but it makes for a good dad. He should learn to enjoy time with others, considering others, even over his own interests or indulgences. Again, these are easier things to learn by example of a manly father than by the Lord of the Flies savagery of youth manipulating and influencing each other without civilizing adult guidance.

A real man will delight in playing with his kids. His recreation will mostly involve doing things with the family rather than getting away from them. He will be patient and understanding with children, while standing firm as he teaches them principles. He might be strong enough to go all the way through his children’s growing up years without ever yelling at them in anger. Talk about manly!

A real man will use clean language around women and children—because he uses clean language always. There is nothing manly about losing control of his mouth. A real man will recognize some built-in tendencies and always turn away from seeing a female not inadequately covered. We don’t observe averted eyes nearly enough anymore, and the need grows greater.

A real man will take his family to church with him. And he will pray with them and read scriptures with them, and talk with them about the ideas they read together, so his children can learn along with him how to apply those principles to life, and to learn to get answers to their prayers.

A real man might know how to shoot a deer and butcher it for the freezer, and might cook a good steak on the grill. But those are individual preferences—like for a woman being able to sew a good quilt or make a lovely scrapbook. Personal preferences but not essential for civilization.

What we need to do, for the sake of civilization, is give more honor to the real men, to lead more young men in that direction, so they can see the value of growing into one.

Low-Information Brick Wall

A few weeks ago I went up against a wall that was hard to break through. I was just trying to get some photos printed before going to see my mom, who can’t receive anything digital in her pre-computer world. I used to use a local photo shop that I loved; they had weekly sales of 7-cent photos, slightly smaller (3 ½ x 5, instead of the more standard 4x6). It was cheap enough that I could print out practically everything for my mom, without having to take too much time going over each photo to decide if it was worth sharing. And they always gave me good service and had lots of extra options. But they went out of business last summer, so I have been trying to adjust by using the local Wal-Mart photo center.

Some of the difficulty of the change is my technological challenge; I haven’t figured out how to override the automatic cropping for size (my old shop used to let me adjust the auto crop before placing the order). But at least I can get photos at only about double the previous cost (13-cents for 4x6 photos) if I get over 100 at once. Well, I’ve been building up for a while. I hadn’t sent my mom photos of the new grandson, or any photos of him growing (he’s five months old already). I hadn’t sent photos from our Thanksgiving trip, or Christmas with the kids visiting. So there were plenty—over 200 that I was printing.

It took a while to put in the order, and while they said they’d be ready in an hour, I wasn’t able to get back before an evening event, so I stopped in just before 9:00 PM. I should preface by saying the regular Wal-Mart photo guy, there during most daytime hours, has been knowledgeable and helpful. But he was gone for the day. In fact, the equipment in the photo section was covered, and I wasn’t sure I could still get my photos, but I was going to be gone the next day, and the day after that was my packing day, so an extra trip to the photo section would have been inconvenient. So I looked to the nearby electronics section.

There were two workers there. I asked them if they could help me pick up my photos. No answer. They spoke to each other, in Spanish. I speak Spanish, but whatever was said was mumbled, and they didn’t respond to me. I repeated my request. The young man, still without speaking to me, went toward the photo center, so I followed. He asked my name, which is a little hard to understand and spell, so, while I said it, I also got out my claim ticket, which had my name on it. He saw the name; he heard me say it. But he kept looking in the Ms (instead of the Ns) and saying “Is it such-and-such?” No. And I showed him again how it was written on the claim ticket. He brought a stack from the Ns, a few Nguyens (the most common N name around here) and then mine, which was a sizable stack of envelopes in itself. I told him which ones were mine—the ones with my name clearly written on them.

the alphabet book I made for my granddaughter
during a flurry of crafting

There was a note attached that 7 of the photos needed copyright permission. This was puzzling, because I thought they were all mine. The young man started looking through the photos to find out what the problem was. He found photos of a book and decided that must be the cause. It was a one-of-a-kind book I made myself, for my granddaughter—an alphabet book with animals made from thumbprint drawings. I took the photos of the book to show my daughter, whom I was going to see on the trip, because the book had turned out so cute. There was no copyright infringement. My book; my photos. So he kept looking.

Eventually I opened up one of the envelopes that had a separate envelope in it; these were the questionable photos. It was my fault; I had downloaded photos from my son-in-laws Facebook page, of him. They were team photos, and I didn’t have any such photos of him, so I wanted to save them. But I hadn’t looked at them for a while, and I hadn’t realized they were not photos he had posted; they were photos he was tagged in, done by a professional photographer. I saw the little icons on my computer and thought, I’d like to show these to my mom. Once I understood, I said,”These are the problem. I had forgotten I couldn’t print these. So I’ll just leave them and buy the other photos.”

The young man kept looking through all the other photos, saying he couldn’t give me these without copyright permission. I repeated my explanation, saying I just wanted all but the 7 photos copyrighted ones, so just subtract 7 x $.13 from the total and I’d pay.

He didn’t know how to find out what I owed, so I should just come back tomorrow. Now, Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day, and I was there in person, ready to pay. There should be no problem. But, while my order had shown me what the cost would be, on their computer, the claim slip didn’t show the price, and he didn’t know how to find out what it was. I’m thinking a bar code would do, but he seemed to think he could only get that done at the photo center till, which was closed down for the night.

So I pulled a calculator out of my purse and did the math. I had about 230 photos at $.13 each, minus the 7 photos (so subtract $.91), and then add in a few 5x7s. He didn’t know how much a 5x7 cost; it didn’t happen to be written on one of the signs behind him, and I couldn’t remember. But I knew it showed me on the computer, so I pulled out my SD card to start a new order, just to find out what a 5x7 would cost. Fortunately I was able to abbreviate that process when I noticed the price of a 5x7 written on a note on the computer. So I wrote out the math on the claim ticket and showed him what I owed, before tax.

“I don’t know how to charge you for that.” Seriously? He works in electronics. He doesn’t know how to use a cash register? Any cash register in the store? At about this time, the female worker from electronics, that he had spoken to when I first asked for help, came over and offered to help me. She took the claim ticket to her register in electronics, charged me the 30-something dollars, and I left with my photos (minus the 7 I couldn’t take). Mission impossible accomplished.

The young man getting paid to do work in electronics at Wal-Mart (where I assume there is a need for some knowledge of how to use equipment, probably beyond my knowledge of such things) couldn’t read my name or find it alphabetically in a drawer. He couldn’t do simple math. He couldn’t solve a simple problem. And he couldn’t figure out how to have a customer pay a known amount at a cash register. I had to do all of the thinking necessary to get what I wanted, pay for it, and leave with what was mine.

I related this tale of woe to Mr. Spherical Model when I got home, and he made me feel worse by saying, “And the sad thing is, this guy probably votes.”

Whether he is in the portion of the population we call low-information voters, or whether he’s even below that in the half of the population that is so little engaged that they don’t even bother to vote, the trouble is, those of us with understanding, who are making efforts to do our best to be civic minded and make wise voting decisions, are at the mercy of the uninformed.

The president doesn’t even bother to talk to people like me; he only talks to those who are so little aware that they will believe him when he says outright lies. Just minor ones this week: “I didn’t have anything to do with the sequester; that was Congress,” and “If these disastrous cuts go through, you’ll lose police protection and fire protection,” knowing full well that those services are paid for locally, and even a total end of all the federal budget would not take a single police officer off our local streets.

Education, of course, is something we’d like to see working better, but I don’t see that happening with government doing all it can to indoctrinate rather than allow the teaching of thinking skills. The power-mongers see it as an advantage to have an uninformed populous reliant on them. And, seriously, I don’t know what to do about stupid. It may not be possible to fix stupid.

Simple Math above His Pay Grade

It shouldn’t be necessary to spell this out over and over again. But certain highly paid world leaders seem unable to do the simple math. Thus the minimum wage issue rears its ugly head—again.

The President thinks it ought to be $9.00 an hour, up from the current $7.25, set in 2007 by a Democrat Senate and Congress. But,, what with inflation, that ought to go up, right? I used an online calculator, which goes up to 2012 (maybe there’s been extraordinary additional inflation in the past month and a half, but it’s the closest I could get):

$7.25 in 2007 = $8.03 in 2012

The $9.00 amount would be 12.1% over inflation. Put another way, the people who could be entry level workers within that 12.1% difference in wage (from $7.25 through $8.99 per hour) will no longer have jobs available to them.

This chart shows how minimum wage affects jobs
for unskilled workers, from this 2006 article

Just to be sure this concept is clear, a wage is a contractual agreement between an employer and an employee. As I explained 5-11-2011 and 10-7-2011, in a free market, the employer is willing to pay an amount that will increase his business income, typically the lowest amount he can pay to get that outcome. The employee exchanges his time and effort in exchange for a wage—typically the highest wage he can persuade an employer to pay for the work. Both agree to what is mutually satisfying.

When government steps in and insists on a minimum wage, the employer is forced to either take a profit loss or hire only better qualified workers that are worth the set wage (plus social security, possibly insurance or other costs of employing a worker). Efficiency and effectiveness become absolute necessities. So the employer can’t risk hiring entry-level, untrained workers. Thus lower skilled workers are left unemployed, causing them both loss of income and loss of accrued experience.

As John Boehner responded following the State of the Union Address, “When you raise the price of employment, guess what? You get less of it.”

Right now we have a reported 7.9% overall unemployment, and this past summer the unemployment for youth (ages 16-24) was 17.1, with blacks suffering beyond depression levels of 28.6%. Is this the time to enforce fewer opportunities?

You know how in the cartoon Dilbert the people actually speak what they are thinking? Wouldn’t it be handy if the president actually spoke the truth? What he is saying is, “No one working 40 hours a week should be living in poverty, so we should make sure the minimum wage is high enough to provide for a two-parent family of four. We need to keep employers from unfairly exploiting workers.”

But if he were speaking truthfully, he’d be saying, “Even though a minimum wage is designed for entry level workers to gain experience that will lead to better future pay opportunities, and no one who works steadily and gains experience is likely to remain at minimum wage levels, so feeling sorry for families supporting children endlessly at minimum wage is a crock. It just sounds better politically to claim we care about the poor. So we are willing to risk having fewer job opportunities for entry level workers, thus seriously interfering with their current and future earning power, so we can claim we are the ones who care. The important thing, after all, isn’t to help poor Americans; it is to make the GOP look bad.”

Imagine the difference in polling results if the question were asked, “Do you think the minimum wage should be raised if it means all workers currently being paid below the new minimum are laid off?”

The basic fact is that government can’t make free people employ people they can’t afford to employ. You’d think the leader of the free world might have enough understanding of basic economics to know that. Either he can’t do the math, or, more likely, he’s done the math and chosen a path that purposely causes harm but gives him political bonus points in the game he’s playing with our lives. Standing firm for free enterprise is essential, despite the political cost.