During the past few years we have been experiencing an ever accelerating trend for money to bubble up from low and middle income people to a few rich folks, leaving those on the bottom and middle in an ever tightening bind. The number of billionaires has increased from 423 in 1996 to 2755 in 2021. (Statistics) Billionaires now own 12% of the GWP (gross world product). That is a staggering amount of wealth held by a vanishing small number of individuals – and the problem is rapidly growing. This situation is clearly unhealthy for the economy, or the individuals whose wealth is bubbling up away from them. The obvious questions are 1) “How can this be happening?” and 2) “What can be done to stop it?”

I don’t claim to have a final answer to these questions, but I have a few observations that might take a small step toward clarifying some of the issues involved. A caveat is appropriate for this discussion: The examples that I am using as the basis of this discussion are not accurate for any specific business or situation, they are presented illustrative purposes only. I believe they are close to the “average” values, but since there is such a wide variation between situations there are no “right” answers. I am using the numbers to illustrate some points, not provide dependable statistics.

I found myself pondering the situation for traditional hardware stores. Image a locally owned and operated “mom and pop” hardware store such as an ACE or True Value hardware store. Most of these stores are locally owned even though they have a “national” name resulting from them belonging to what amounts to a “buyer’s club”. For example, most ACE stores are locally owned, but belong to a COOP that provides many services (for a fee), including bulk purchasing capabilities. The owner of the individual store owns the land, the building, the merchandise and pays for all services including staffing. In order to cover all of their costs they have to mark-up their merchandise by an average of about 200% (they call it 50% – but in any case the cost to the customer is about twice what they pay for the item). The exact markup varies by department, local competition, and other things – but the average is close to that. After all of their expenses are paid, they hope to make a “profit” that is greater than what they could get it they invested their money some other way. The profit margin varies greatly between individual stores – for the sake of argument I am going to assume a 5% “profit” (a moderately profitable store) based upon the value of their gross sales. So if they do a million dollars in business a year, they will get a profit of around $50,000 (this is after paying all expenses, including the owner’s wages or salary).

This relatively thin profit margin puts strict limits upon the range of the markup. In my example, $1,000,000 in gross sales means that they purchased $500,000 of merchandise (wholesale price), cost of sales was $450,000 and “profit” was $50,000. However, if they could only mark up their cost by 180%, things become very different. In that situation an item that they bought for $1.00 would be sold for $1.80, resulting in a “discount” to the customer of 10%. The result is that instead of a gross of $1,000,000 for a given basket of goods, they only get $900,000. The cost of sales is still $450,000 and cost of goods is still $500,000 but they only receive $900,000 for their efforts – a negative $50,000 profit! Oops, it is no longer such a great opportunity to be in the hardware business. While a 10% discount seems like a small amount, it is the difference between a healthy profit of $50,000 and a disastrous loss of $50,000.

The point is that if competition drives the market price down by 10% the hardware store either must close, or must drastically reduce their cost of doing business. Since they have already had a few decades of extremely thin profit margins, they are faced with some daunting choices. Generally they don’t have the ability to respond to competition that forces a small decrease in prices.

Now I want to consider what happens with the introduction of companies such as Amazon, a direct competitor for many of the products stocked by hardware stores. These new businesses operate with a very different business model. They have vastly reduced costs for sales because of their reduced labor cost as a percentage of product cost, and skip one or two “middlemen” in the supply chain so that their initial costs are much lower. For the original example “basket of goods”, instead of paying $500,000 for the goods, they pay probably pay $300,000 or less. Instead of paying $400,000 as the cost of sales, it is probably pay less than $200,000. They also operate much closer to a “just in time” supply chain so they don’t have to invest nearly as much in maintaining stock on the shelves. These values are just guesses, but are probably conservative in the sense that actually differences are likely even greater that my assumptions.

Assuming my numbers are approximately correct, this means that their “break even” retail price for that basket of goods is $500,000 – which is $400,000 less than the breakeven point for the local store. The “Amazon” model now has a choice – they could add enough to make a 10% profit – selling the merchandise for approximately $550,000 (55% of what the local store has to charge to stay in business), or they can aim their price point to what the market will bare, just enough to out-compete the local stores – perhaps 10% below the local price. When they do that, their profit becomes 40% rather than 10%, and the local store’s profits become zero. The result is obvious, profits skyrocket for the Amazon style businesses, and the local stores go out of business.

The net result of this is that local money, money that is used to keep the local community solvent and functional, bubbles up to some distant location. Local jobs dry up, local entrepreneurs go broke, and the money used to purchase goods enriches those that own these new businesses. Perhaps 1/10 as many people are required to service these sales, no local taxes are paid for the services or property, and the local community takes the hit. Even though the individual purchaser gets a slightly better deal, their money joins an ever growing river of money/wealth flowing upward. It is not a trickle – it is a torrent.

For the past 20 or 30 years, the target for “what the market will bare” is balancing on the edge of bankrupting local businesses. They keep trying to cut costs, keep trying to find ways to reduce labor costs (paying people less or offering less benefits), purchasing cheaper goods, etc. But are fighting a losing battle.

The big companies know that if they drop their prices much more, that will crash the retail sector of the economy, and that in turn will result in far fewer people having sufficient money to purchase what the large companies want to sell. Therefore, they cannot drop their prices. It is a little like when Henry Ford realized in order to be successful he had to pay his workers enough so that they could purchase is automobiles – otherwise nobody could buy his products. The large “internet” companies could increase their costs by increasing wages and benefits, but the business imperative is always to only pay what the market will bare – always keep costs as low as possible. No business is willing to pay more than someone is willing to take. That is the supposed “secret sauce” of the capitalist system. Supply and demand will even out all things. However, it is apparent that is a logical fallacy – it cannot, and does not, work to the benefit of all. It works very well for those in control of the supply. However, the prices cannot fall below the threshold that would cause the economy to crash, therefore the prices remain where they are – and profits go “through the roof”, creating the new and ever growing population of billionaires (according to the latest news, it is now trillionaires). Given the current situation, billionaires have no choice but to keep accumulating vast amounts of wealth. If they cut their profits they bankrupt too many local businesses, so in order to be “good citizens” they have to keep their prices high – forcing them to have huge profits. Huge profits mean that the value of their stock goes up, adding yet another multiplier to the rate that they accumulate wealth.

I see only one solution to this problem if we are to remain a viable capitalistic economy – vastly increased taxation for the wealthy. Instead of letting the increased profits flow to the corporations (and thus the wealthy owners), the money needs to be returned to the society, workers and local communities impacted by this diversion of funds. As a minimum we might consider returning to the “good old days” of the 1950’s were the maximum income taxation rates were near 90%. That resulted in a blossoming of the economy with money available to build a new national freeway system, new hospitals, good pay to teachers, free (or nearly free) college educations, a vastly improved overall health care system, a functioning postal service, functioning social security system and many other benefits. All the spending on infrastructure, health care, education and other things made good paying jobs available so that families with one wage earner could afford to own their home, take vacations, and have a secure retirement.

A 90% income tax at the highest levels has little, or no, impact on the lives of those paying those rates. The incomes are vastly greater than there is an conceivable way to spend the money. The only significant spending they can accomplish is through investments, which in-turn make more money, they don’t “cost” anything. They represent investments, not spending. As it stands, even charitable donations turn into profitable activities because of our broken tax system. Large corporate donors give unappreciated securities (stocks and bonds) to foundations that they control. There is a “step up” in value at the point of the donation, so that securities that were purchased at a small value but now have a high market value are donated, resulting in a large tax deduction based on the higher value without even having to pay capital gains taxes. For example, if they give stocks that cost them $1 but have appreciated to be worth $100, they claim a $100 donation. If they are in the 50% tax bracket (which most are) that creates a net income of $49.50 for their “donation” (they pay $49.50 less in income taxes). Since they are often on the board of directors of the foundation, they manage the foundation in ways that don’t require the sales of those stocks to do the charitable work(they use the income of the securities rather than the principle) – meaning that their ownership is never diluted. They keep control of their business. These donations are profit centers – they are not “gifts”. It would be much better to eliminate these types of charitable donations, and increase taxation so that they government could actually use the money to do the great things that are intended. Personally, I am of the opinion that all tax credits for donations to charitable organization should be eliminated. Why should I, as a tax payer, help fund charitable causes that you feel are important? If you fell they are important, that’s great – donate, but don’t make me support your donation.

A major problem with “income tax” on the wealthy is in determining what that means. The “normal” definition limits it to something like wages or salaries. It basically means money received for doing something (working, investing, retiring, selling things, etc). However, that clearly isn’t a definition that is particularly useful for the problem at hand. The problem is that this definition means that in order to be considered “income” it needs to be associated with receiving money. That leaves almost all means of increasing “wealth” out of the equation. For example, my house is being more valuable over time, but since I haven’t sold it there is no income. My wealth increases, but no money exchanges has, hence there is no “income” and no tax. I have become wealthier, but do so without paying any taxes until such time as I sell the property. When I sell the property then it becomes “income” (unless I use that income to purchase another house) except not income subject to income tax, it because a capital gain that has a much lower tax rate (20% instead of 50% for high income people). However, wealthy people seldom sell their properties, therefore they seldom convert their increased wealth into “income” or “gains” – avoiding all taxes. In most cases, wealthy people only have to convert as much “wealth” into “income” as is necessary to cover their living expenses. Billionaires seldom never convert this vast fortunes into income or capital gains and therefore don’t pay tax on their increased net worth. Even when they do “spend” money on things those things are often “investments” and therefore do not require converting investments to income.

Of course, if taxes are increased this means that you have to trust the government to do the right things with that money . We know the corporations won’t, they will do what is in the best interests of their shareholders (that is their legal fiduciary responsibility). However, we seem to have lost so much trust in the government that we don’t want to let them control the flow of money. I believe this lack of trust is because the government is being controlled by “big money” to make choices in favor of big money, instead of society. That is certainly a problem, one that needs to be fixed if we are ever going to move past the current situation of spiraling down into an apparently nasty future. The solution to the ever widening income discrepancy, and rapid decrease in our standard of living is fairly clear, but the problem of managing how government uses the increased taxes is far from clear. We don’t seem to have an agreed upon vision for what needs to be fixed.

The October 22, 2021issue of CounterPoint online magazine has an interesting article by George Wuerthner titled “The Dixie and Bootleg Fires : Examples of Failed Forest Policy.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/22/dixie-and-bootleg-fires-examples-of-failed-forest-policy/ Part of what makes this article so interesting are the many “before and after” photographs of burned over areas. I don’t know anything about the Mr. Wuerthner’s qualifications for making a “scientific” pronouncement upon what he observed, but he certainly raised interesting questions that demand answers.

Just as a happenstance, my wife and I drove through the area to the west of Chester on the way to our cabin at Lake Almanor yesterday.  While the author was correct that the more managed parts didn’t appear to control the fire, he didn’t discuss what I thought was the most sticking aspect.  Hwy 36 goes through about 20 miles of burned area to the west of Chester.  That includes sections of relative old growth (24 to 36 inch trees) and sections of newer growth (8 to 16 inch trees). The old parts are in national park lands (Lassen) and the other part appear to be on timber company land (perhaps some overlap).  The new part had been highly managed – before the fire it had been “raked” and kept free of brush and smaller trees.  No large trees are in that area because it had been clear cut and replanted.  

The experience of driving through that section of road was amazing.  The old, brushy parts have a mix of burned out brush, and brush untouched by fire, with almost no obviously killed trees.  All of the bigger trees looked fine, the areas that had burned brush were already regenerating (after only 2 months), and all looked pretty good.  There is clearly a lot of remaining habit for animals.  The other part consists of vast forests of dead 12 inch trees sticking up from totally bare ground – with the burned out clear cut areas showing in the background. There is close to zero habit or cover remaining in these areas.   It is pretty obvious, where the trees are bigger the fire was smaller – and appeared to just open up some areas.  It looks good and healthy.  The parts that are managed and clearly all the same age are totally gone.  Just dirt and rocks remain. The photos in the story fail to capture the distinction between heavily managed forests and those that have had time to grow “wild” since the last great logging operation 50 or 60 years ago. There is no “old growth” forest visible from the road.

Most of the “extreme” fire damage occurred to plantations of small, recently planted trees that had been extensively “managed” to eliminate the fire danger. These trees have almost all been killed by the fire. Areas with larger (older) trees, and a mix of trees and brush have very little fire damage to the trees. In these areas, most of the fire was low to the ground, cleaning out brush but leaving the more mature (and highly fire resistant) trees intact. The large plantings of new trees to support future logging is the situation that caused the large loss of buildings on the Paradise fire during the previous year, and that destroyed the town of Greenville. The residents of Greenville had been assured that by extensively “managing” the surrounding forest they would be protected from fire danger. However, managing meant clear cutting and replanting with new identical trees in the style of a plantation, resulting in out of control spread of high intensity fire and the destruction of the town.

Part of the fallacy of the story of the Indians burning the forests the assumption that they burned ALL of the forest.  They didn’t do that, they burned small parts for specific purposes.  For example, an area that might have the resources to grow sweet grass for making baskets would be burned to keep it clear from invading brush.  An area that got to brushy to travel through might be burned.  Not the whole damned forest, just the two acre sweet grass plot or the brush patch.  They were “farmers” who used fire instead of a plow in many instances, but they didn’t burn it all or burn it indiscriminately.   What they didn’t do was burn it as an excuse to cut all of the big trees down and they didn’t haul all of the carbon out of the forests to be cut into lumber and burned as “bio-fuel”.
One thing about the drive along hwy 36 that really stands out is that they created a swath about 1000 feet along both sides of the road where they clear cut and logged out everything, ground up the remainder and let a 20 mile long desert with a road through the middle of it.  Tens of thousands of trees were cut for timber, all of which had been “protected” because of the national park.  My guess is that not only did they get the trees, but they got paid to get them out of there ASAP.  I suppose it makes sense to clear a “safety corridor” for evacuation purposes, but they really did it big time.  It would be interesting to “follow the dollar” on that operation.  They did this along all of the roads in the fire area – hundreds of miles of roads through “protected” areas.  When we were up here at the lake in September the roads were the biggest logging operation I had seen or contemplated – loggers were thick.  Now they are gone, along with the trees.  The machines that remain are gathering up all of the leftovers and grinding it up, resulting in deep layers of ground up material that prevents much of anything living in that area for the next few years.  It is a well managed, mulched landscape – kind of like what you find around assisted care facilities where the old go to die. A few plants for color, all mulch to minimize weeds and anything “wild” from intruding. 

I just finished reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (who surprisingly turns out to be something like a great-great-great… uncle of my wife) back at the time when his uncle on his mother’s side (Folger) married a Starbucks woman. (Who would have thought that the Folgers and Starbucks would be marrying each other in the 1600’s?). I found the autobiography to be mostly a rather charming book – although toward the end it got a bit too “political” in nature for my tastes. The book was written to his son as a way to tell him some of the more salient parts of his life.

There are a lot of “homey” phrases and things in the book, one of which particularly caught my attention. The praise is:

“Don’t pay to much for your whistle.”

The story behind this phrase has to do with when Benjamin was a small child, receiving a few coins for Christmas. Being newly “rich” with those coins, he rushed to town and came across a friend that traded (sold) him a tin whistle for his coins. He was very excited by his purchase, whistling all the way home and around the house until it drove everyone crazy and he had to moderate his whistling in the house. Soon the excitement of his new purchase dwindled. His helpful brothers and sisters pointed out that he had paid about four times as much for the whistle as he should have, and that if he had been more careful with his purchase he could have had a few other things as well. He therefore felt remorse for his purchase. Hence, “don’t pay too much for your whistle.”

I read that phrase a week or so ago and surprisingly find it amazingly apropos for a number of situations. It has broad applicability to life situations where we want something so badly that we focus on it too much, ending up spending more (money, time, energy, attention, etc) than the object of our desire is worth. Examples include things like wanting to succeed in business so much that you lose you friends, your wife, your family and eventually your life. Wanting to be liked so much that you give up your values to be part of the group. An example that Franklin gives is, “If I knew a miser who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow citizens, and the joys of a benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle.” A beautiful, sweet-tempered girl married to an ill-natured brute of a husband has paid too much for her whistle.

Franklin concludes that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon us by the false estimates we have made of the value of things, and by our giving too much for our whistle.

At first I thought this just another kind of humorous bit of witticism – but have found it has changed how I judge people’s actions (including my own). Perhaps I should be a bit more charitable to unhappy people that have gotten there by unfortunately paying too much to achieve their life goals and desires. I hope to keep in mind the idea that there are some things in the world that are so tempting as to be almost impossible to avoid, causing us to pay a price that is too much for the whistle. We all have these temptations, so instead of judging them, perhaps I can instead understand a little better how that comes about, and perhaps have a little compassion for those that have clearly paid far too much for their whistle, perhaps paying with most of the joys and opportunities afforded to them by life.

I attended jury selection yesterday morning in person at the Woodland California Courthouse. To my dismay I found that the safety measures being taken at the courthouse with respect to covid are lacking to the point that I wanted to, and should have, left immediately upon entering the jury services space (a large open room with immovable rows of chairs. Basically, there are NO safety precautions being taken to protect the public or the county employees. There are many problems, but here are a few of the most egregious:

• No attempt was made to screen out ill people. There was no temperature testing, no questions, no option to leave if ill, nothing. We were mandated by law to attend in person without any offers or suggestions about what to do if not feeling well.
• No attempt was made to keep people separated in the rooms (both the jury services room or the jury selection room). It was just open seating without any attempt to keep people separated. Most people complied, but not everyone. The ones that appeared to be most “questionable” about whether or not they follow safety guidelines are the ones that most often violate the separation distance guidelines as well. In fact, in the jury selection room people were seated shoulder-to-shoulder with zero separation and absolutely no way of taking personal changes of the situation without being deemed in contempt of court.
• The ventilation system in the jury services room is not adequate to control potential exposure One indication of this is that it was easy to smell perfume and other odors on people seated on the far side of the room. That means that aerosols are lingering in the room and traveling to all people. The smells travel as aerosols exactly the same way as covid infected breath generated aerosols do, so if you can smell another person you can be infected by the other person. The masks provide zero protection from these aerosols, and almost no reduction in their creation.
• The only bathrooms are available at the break, meaning that the rooms are packed with people in a very small room with zero separation between anyone and close to zero ventilation in the short term. No sanitation or means to enforce separation were in evidence. It was either potentially expose yourself to the virus, or “hold it”. This is extremely risky.

There are more problems, but I think this enough to get the point across that the safety during these events it totally inadequate. I think it is a travesty that County has decided to expose so many citizens and employees at this time during the pandemic. This practice should absolutely be stopped ASAP.

By the way, I ended up catching a cold during this four hour period of time. If I could catch a cold I could have much easier have caught covid (which is MUCH more contagious). Perhaps we will all be lucky and there were no contagious people present and therefore no cases will come from this little “super spreader” event, but that is not through anything that the County did to protect people.

I think in person trials should be halted until proper protections are implemented.

While sitting in my morning meditation today I found myself recalling a rather odd and memorable New Year’s Eve “celebration” back in the days when my wife and I were newly weds (perhaps December 31, 1974 or 1975). We were visiting my parents near my hometown of Sonoma California during the holidays. We decided to “step out” a little bit to celebrate the new year. We didn’t really know anyone in town, so decided to just go see what we could find that might be fun.

My attention was drawn to an old resort hotel near my parent’s home – the El Verado Inn. This inn had always intrigued me as a young person partly because it was “upper class” to my way of thinking, partly because of stories that I heard, and partly because while I swam in their pool (for a nominal fee) as a youngster, they never let me look inside of the hotel. It was “fancy” around the pool area – so I assumed it would be fancy inside as well.

This hotel was in an area that was a very popular resort San Fransisco “getaway” from about 1910 to perhaps 1940. I heard that people would take boats from San Fransisco to a dock on the Sonoma Creek (this was before the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge, so it made sense to travel by boat) near the resorts. That never made sense to me since the creek is either almost dry, or a raging river most of the year. I recently read that they traveled by train to this resort area – which makes a lot more sense. Perhaps they took boats to a pier at Schellville to the south, catching the train to El Verano. This makes more sense, particularly since that pier area had acted as the primary “gateway” to the gold fields of California during gold rush days. The gold seekers would take boats to Schellville, buy their mining tools and supplies in Sonoma, continuing to the Sierra Mountains from there.

In any case, the rich and famous – reputably including mobsters such as Baby Faced Nelson and Al Capone – frequented this early 1900’s resort area. There were (and still are) many up-scale resort hotels in the area, including the El Verano Inn (originally called Parente Villa – the building that is called “El Verano Inn” is not this resort).

The local stories tell that both the Perente Villa and neighboring Paul’s Resort were pretty wild places (speakeasy style) during prohibition – accounting for the mobster clientele. The Perente Villa (called the El Verano Inn when I lived nearby) had a beautiful large swimming pool, great open gardens, a large ballroom, upscale dining, etc. Immediately across the road to the south there was a large outdoor bandstand and dancing/party grounds. While growing up I heard these rumors and stories, always wanting to “check it out.” On this particular new year’s eve they had a sign out front advertising their bar and restaurant for a good time party. My wife wasn’t all that excited to go since it looked pretty “dead” at that time in the evening.

It was indeed pretty dead. As usual, we were quite early (probably before 8:00 pm). When we walked in the only person in the place was the bartender. We sat down at the bar, ordered our drinks and started up a conversation with the bartender. It turned out to be one of those extremely rare “connections” as if with forever-close-friends types of conversations. We (perhaps only me and he – my wife was perhaps not quite so enthralled) started having one of those great discussions that just seem to dive into topics as they pop up to share stories, share interests, and just plain have a really good time. I don’t know how to properly describe these encounters, but they are about the best and most fun times that I have had in my life.

After an hour or so the bartender noticed that it was getting to be the time when customers would start to show up – so he got up, pulled the blinds shut, and locked the front doors! He explained that customers would just be a distraction. So we continued with the discussion while people would come up to the door, try to get in, knock on the door and finally leave! It was a pretty odd way to treat potential customers, but we were having a great time. After awhile my wife suggested that since there were no customers, perhaps we could get a tour of the hotel since it was clearly a high-end “period piece” that apparently hadn’t changed in decades.

The first part of the tour led us to the ballroom. It was a very large, ornate room with a large hardwood floor. Our bartender guide explained that the floor was supported on springs so that when a crowd was dancing, the floor responded and kind of “danced back.” It was designed to enhance the experience of a shared group experience, because that is just what it was doing. The really odd part about this large room was that instead of having room to dance, it was filled with perhaps 20 or more beautiful, gleaming old racing cars. I recognized some of the brand names, such as Ferrari, Alpha Romeo, Maserati as well as others that I hadn’t heard of – including one or two old open-wheeled racers. All of these cars were in immaculate condition, just sitting there ready to be admired. This area was normally closed off to customers, apparently they were a private collection.

We left the ballroom and wandered through the halls and guest rooms admiring the old zinc ceilings, 1930’s era wall paper, stunning furniture and all that came with it. It was an amazing throw back to times gone by – apparently unappreciated and largely unused any longer.

I don’t know how long we stayed that night, probably not until mid-night, but perhaps we cheered in the new year. Too many years have passed for me to have a clear recollection of that part of the evening – but the amazing conversation and tour have stuck in our mind ever since. We finally took our leave, and have never been back or followed up in any way. It remains as a separate, almost surreal, moment in time – it feels like it was perhaps one of those “twilight” adventures that Rod Serling hosted on “The Twilight Zone”. Nothing untoward, scary, or outlandish happened that night – but it is forever set off as some kind of “separate” event that is oddly disconnected from the normal flow of events.

My wife and I went to Oregon last weekend to attend a memorial service for one of her cousins. We anticipated a small gathering of “older” relatives including his children and those of us in the “over seventy” group of cousins. It turned out to be a memorial put on by the local police department and included about 60 towns folks – including a mix of officers and people from around town. The police blocked off the street in front of the police station, set up folding chairs in the middle of the street, with a nice presentation area backed by flags, flowers and a shiny white police cruiser.

While this cousin was close to my wife in age, we knew little about his life because he distanced himself from the family about 40 years ago. We knew generally where he was, a bit about what he was doing, but almost nothing else. Because of this, most of what learned that day was new to us and more than a little unexpected.

A very brief story of his life includes growing up on a very rural farm in northern California, having a father that left the family at an early age, moving to Canada to live with his mother and her new husband, fighting as a Navy Seal in Vietnam and have a career as a prison guard in several prisons in California (including Alcatraz). It seems that his experience as a Navy Seal left him as a pretty troubled individual, probably with significant PTSD – accounting for his estrangement from his extended family over the years. Sometime within the past 20 years or so he was no longer a guard and was living somewhere in Oregon. About two years ago my wife found out that he was very ill, found his address and started an irregular snail-mail correspondence with him – enough to inform us where he was living and that he had become extremely ill, leading to his recent death.

The new information that we heard that day was completely unexpected. The “rest of the story” was that he moved to a small coastal town eleven years ago. After moving to town he took up a personal project of cleaning the trash from around town. Walking, or riding a three-wheel bicycle, picking up trash along the roads and in the parks. His stated purpose was he was doing that because he wanted to live in a clean town, and that trash attracts trash, so he spent his days changing that situation. The police noticed and because worried about him working near traffic, so they offered him a reflective vest to at least enhance his visibility. He refused it at first because he didn’t like the “image” that created – until they offered him one with the words, “Do Good” on the back. He accepted that and came to be known as “Do Good Jerry.”

While picking up trash, he also met people – often people having difficult times in their lives. People walking their dogs, or sitting on a park bench, or having a cup of coffee at the local coffee house. He got to know many people, being a bit of a expected “fixture” who people could depend upon for a little chat, a little cheering up, or a compassionate ear.

After a year or so of this, he decided he needed to do more than just pick up trash (perhaps he had cleaned the town?). One day he went to the police department and offered his services, free of charge, to help with anything they needed help with.

They started by offering him menial tasks such as cleaning rooms, dealing with the trash and things like that. After a bit they found that he could easily talk to the prisoners; offering advice, listening to their stories, and just being friends. He was allowed to take them into the exercise yard and play basketball or whatever. Soon he was taking small groups of prisoners for walks around town – walking five or six miles around the docks, along the river, or into parks. He became a confidant and trusted friend to them, and to the officers. Offering suggestions about how to avoid returning to the jail after being released, and how to live a more “normal” and peaceful life. As time went on the department outfitted him with things including a uniform, a badge, handcuffs, allowed him to carried his own gun, and finally they provided him with a car (the one parked behind the “alter” at the service).

His “normal” shift started at 6:00 am and ended at 8:00 pm – beginning the day by washing the car. He could “work” all of these hours because he wasn’t an employee and therefore didn’t have to abide by legal requirements concerning shifts, overtime, or anything like that. He just was there when he felt like it and did what needed to be done – apparently he felt like it most of the time. The sheriff spoke of a time when he chastised Jerry for working so hard sincel he didn’t get paid for anything. Jerry’s response was that it was the best job of his life.

The “talks” during his memorial service were amazing little vignettes provided by local folks that he encountered on his daily exercises of “doing good.” They spoke of things such as him hanging out at the shopping center parking lot on hot days to make sure that dogs left in cars were safe, and to make sure that everyone was being careful of the heat. There were stories about him sitting and listening to people’s stories and troubles, helping them when help was most needed. Sad little stories, touching moments. Clearly stories with great appreciation and caring by many of the local folks from all walks of life without consideration of social status or life situations.

It was a really touching and impactful memorial service for me. Here was someone who had clearly led a troubled life, perhaps unhappily (or not – I will never know) – who found a way to quiet whatever demons he had and instead put his focus on the task of “Do Good” without expectations of reward, honor, or even being noticed. He was of course noticed, and clearly he was highly honored as evidenced by the stories at the memorial – but it was also clear that was not the reason for his actions. I feel that his actions were pure – he decided he wanted to dedicate his life to helping in whatever form that might take. Perhaps that was always his main goal – even when deeply involved in the life as a Seal in a terrible war.

I ended up finding a very powerful life lesson that day. Why don’t we all take that view of life and our roles? If we focused on doing good, rather than whatever it is that drives our individual lives, that might be the cure for all of the myriad of troubles in the world. It could inform our decisions about whether the “profits” achievable are the results of doing something good, or doing something that results in harm (to people, the environment, society, each other). Maybe all that is needed to fix the problems is for us all to embrace the goal of doing good. Then we could discuss options in a rational way, rather than in a political divided way. Perhaps we could avoid doing some things that have the potential for generating great profits (and wealth), but do so at the expense of depleting and invading the shared “commons” (shared resources). Perhaps this point of view could inform our decision making so that we protect the environment and each other, rather than treating everything as a “resource” to be used (and used up).

I have been pondering what it means to be a “successful” business person (or a successful person in general).  At first I thought it might mean running a “profitable” business.  That seems to make some sort of sense, after all what could be more successful than making money?  However, that is a rather nebulous criteria because it doesn’t include the idea of how profitable a business needs to be to be successful, nor does it include anything about how the “costs” of that profitability.  Our current social-economic model assumes that profit only includes the costs to the business; it doesn’t include the costs that are “paid” by others (such as society, the environment, or our future).  Just following “profit” as the criteria for success doesn’t seem to have a stopping point, or provide criteria for how much is enough.  Picking a target such as a “50%” profit as the criteria seems reasonable, but that approach results in some odd outcomes.  If I start with $1,000 and accumulate a 50% profit every year, in 40 years I would have over seven billion dollars.  Perhaps that would be a sign of being “successful” – but is this an appropriate goal?  I think we all know there is more to being successful than just making a profit.

I generally reject the idea that rich people got that way by being “greedy” – that is much too simple, and isn’t the way that most people’ mind works. People that make more money than others are not necessarily being greedy, they got that was as the results of making smart decisions, hard work, and luck.  I believe that most people (even very rich ones) are attempting to be “good” people, at least in the eyes of those that are personally close to them.  Not all of them are “good” of course, there are indeed psychotic and anti-social people that get into places of power – but even then it is seldom greed that is driving them, it is a desire for power – or perhaps fear.  If “success” means making money, and making money isn’t all about greed – I wonder what the relationship might be.  Perhaps that connection just results from there being a lack of an alternative criterion.    

I think billionaires are much like the rest of us.  They want to be successful.  They justify their wealth by convincing themselves that they are doing great things for humanity.  They have convinced themselves that by hiring tens of thousands of people they are providing much needed livelihoods and jobs – which is true.  However, in many cases they are actually providing poverty because of the low wages they offer.  They also spend a lot of money on silly, and stupid, things – but a point can be made that even buying expensive, frivolous things (yachts, mansions, private jets or flights into space) provide even more jobs, many of which are quite high paying. Oddly, these kinds of extravaganzas often turn into good investments and therefore don’t “cost” anything.  They are just different investment opportunities.  Many wealthy people turn to philanthropy in an attempt at “balancing” the obvious unbalance in their wealth – but because of the tax regulations even that effort often becomes yet another type of investment generating even more “profit.”

Success based on accumulating money seems rather hollow and not very “fulfilling” with regard to personal needs. I am wondering if perhaps a better vision for “success” is something along the lines of being “honorable”.    Realizing that there are many meanings for the term “honorable”, I Googled it and found this description: “The word honorable has to do with people and actions that are honest, fair, and worthy of respect. An honorable person is someone who believes in truth and doing the right thing — and tries to live up to those high principles.” This seems close to what I am thinking about.  What if this is how we judge “success”? What if a successful person is someone that achieves a life based upon these principles, instead of success based upon gaining wealth and power?  Would that make a difference?

While a definition of “a success person” as someone who does “the right thing” seems better than being someone that makes a lot of money, I am not sure how to use it as a useful criterion.   I wonder if there is a way for an individual to take actions that “help the world,” or does it take a community of everyone to accomplish that.  For example, when selecting something to eat for dinner, can I actually make meaningful decisions about helping the world – or do I have to depend upon others to do the right thing to support my decision?  If I buy some shrimp for dinner, does that somehow make me complicit with supporting the Thai fisherman that “captures” destitute Burmese to work in insanely cruel conditions for little, or no, pay?  If I purchase a shiny new all electric automobile, do I somehow also become responsibly for the environmental destruction caused by mining the metals for those batteries?  I think not, it is all too big, too far from my control, and too deeply embedded into the system of exploitation supporting our entire economic system. 

The most an individual can do it hope that the store selling the shrimp does their best at being “honorable” in their choices.  The best that they can do it hope that their suppliers are being “honorable”, and so on down the line until you come to shrimp farms and the fisherman in Thailand, or Vietnam, or India or Indonesia – we are all hoping that they are also being “honorable” – unfortunately, it appears that the attribute of being “honorable” isn’t necessarily prevalent everywhere along the chain.  What drives every step is someone trying to be “successful” in the sense of making a living, making a profit, expanding the business – being “successful”.  For anyone to do the “honorable” thing, everyone involved has to do it too.

Are these two possible meanings of success mutually exclusive?  Is there a way to be successful as a business person while being careful to treat people fairly?  Is it possible to make use of the natural resources in a way that is sustainable and healthy for the environment and all of the critters sharing it with us?  Is it possible to use resources in a way that does not plunder and “steal” them from others that need to share the resources of the “commons”?

If this is not possible, then we have a bit of a problem – there may be no solution to our current over-exploitation in support of our current striving for over-abundance.  What if the price of shrimp reflected the true cost of obtaining them?  What if the fishermen actually got paid enough to support themselves and their families?  What if the fishing is only done in ways that aren’t destructive to the oceans? What if the people that profit from the price “mark-up” at each stage do so only in relation to what they need, not just what they can get?  What would happen to the price of shrimp in that situation?  Would shrimp once again become very expensive, and therefore rare?  Is that a bad thing?  Just because someone finds a way to build, or expand, a lucrative market opportunity doesn’t mean that they should. Do we really need five times as many shrimp now as we did forty years ago, even if  they did find a way to supply them at 1/10 the price and still make massive profits?  Who is paying for those profits?  It seems like we all are, but in ways that we can feel or even know about. 

I think perhaps our only choice is to find a way to change what it means to be successful.  The meaning of “success” is just an opinion that we have, it has no “reality” – it is merely a dream that is shared by humanity, one that could be changed.  A shift in point of view, a shift in opinion, perhaps a shift in what it means to be “honorable” is all that is necessary.  Greta Thunberg pointed directly to this issue when she told the members of the UN that they should be ashamed of themselves.  To be ashamed of yourself means that you are doing things that you know are wrong, and that are not “honorable”.  She obviously has a strong opinion about what it means to “do the right thing.”