Category: CULTURE

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The Lessons of the Chilean Mine Rescue

     Ramparts of Civilization kept a close eye on the unfolding drama of the mine cave-in at the San Jose Mine in Chile trapping 33 miners that ended in triumph with their rescue this past week.  I held back commenting on the event of the day as it was obviously truly about the heroic fortitude of each of the miners and their salvation at the hands of a committed drill team and country.   I also held back so I could absorb some of the deeper lessons of the almost perfect rescue process and see if I could put it into a worthy tome.  No worries. Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal beat me to it, and in a terrific column nailed it better than I ever could- the powers of human innovation, and the need for governments to unleash them by getting out of the way.

     The lessons abound to any open mind in the continuing examples of the difference in response times and quality between profit driven private innovation and government driven “job creation”.   The power of Steve Jobs to take a moribund computer company and through innovation lead it to become by value the largest corporation in the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.  The ability of Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson to foresee and create a space port and offer space tourism at 200,000 dollars a flight versus 40 million on a Russian government Soyuz capsule,  along with Burt Rutan’s genius creating from scratch a whole new industry.   The capacity of private funded  charter schools to accomplish higher graduation rates and academic competence in poor neighborhoods where public teacher’s union led schools underwritten with billions of public funding score worse graduation outcomes with each successive decade since the 1960’s, when government first took over public school performance.  

      The Chilean miner drama had a multitude of private enterprise innovations that created the unexpected mechanisms for rapid success.  The crisis’s outcome turned forever, when Brandon Fischer, President of Center Rock, Inc., a 75 man company with an innovative forward hammering tool leading the typical rotatory drill bits of a drilling rig drilling for water in Afghanistan offered his company’s services to the Chileans.  A piece of equipment quite a bit less glamorous than the iPhone but every bit as innovative punched a perfect man sized rescue hole through 2300 feet of diamond hard volcanic rook and granite in record time as more established drill systems fell behind.  As Henninger points out this wasn’t the only profit driven innovation at work.  The scope of the rescue was a constellation of brilliant innovative products from all over the world – micro cameras and fiber optic cable from Japan, super high grade transport cable for the “rescue wagon” from Germany, even bacterial resistant socks from a Virginia company for the miners living in the humid conditions of the mine to protect their feet.  All in all, a symphony of creativity and innovation from little and big ‘capitalist moneymongers’ from all over the globe who managed to coordinate to perfection in short order a rescue process that amazed the world. 

     We have only to look at a specific example of the American governmental response to the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer to recognize while the American economy is currently in its doldrums led by a clueless governmental class.  With oil gushing and soiling the gulf waters and fish beds, an innovative Dutch process of “water washing” capable of achieving 98% cleansing of the water of oil and retrieving the oil for use was rejected by the over regulated American government as it did not meet the 99% regulation standard artificially put forward by environmental bureaucrats.  Therefore, 100% of the water remained contaminated to prevent the perception of a weakness in bureaucratic control.  If the more forward thinking Chilean government had used the same principles, the Center Rock drill would still be undergoing testing to determine its environmental impact and the miners would be sitting in the dark gloomily consigned to a horrible fate.

     Innovation driven by capitalism has continued to be an unsurpassed success story in the efforts of man to raise his quality of life and provide hope for more and more of the world’s poverty striken areas.  It may be at times unseemly, ‘unfair’,  unpredictable, and in its means of egocentric success, unfathomable to the erudite, but it is the system of choice for the betterment of man because it is intimately tied to the human spirit, the driving force of all positive outcomes.  No amount of government money thrown against a wall will achieve the lasting benefits of creative intellects feeding of each other’s success for their own benefit, and collectively hwever indirectly, for us all.

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A New Champion in the Art of Tunneling

    The world was captivated earlier this week by the incredible engineering achievement of drilling teams to bore through 2300 feet of the granite rock of the Andes in less than two months to successfully provide a rescue portal for 33 trapped Chilean miners.  This same week another drilling milestone was achieved in the Swiss Alps every bit as awesome in its achievement and unsurpassed in its scope.  Since Roman times the perilous journey from northern to southern Europe has been blocked by the granite majesty of the alps with only two viable portals, the St. Gotthard and St. Bernard passes providing arduous and time consuming causeways for the motivated traveller.  In modern times these passes have been successfully traversed by roads that make trans-European travel viable, but there has been increasing concern for the threat of damage to the local alpine environment caused by increasingly high volume truck and rail freight travel through the passes.   The Swiss, however, are a particularly focused people acutely aware of their unique position on the European continent and the integral role the soaring alpine vistas play in the formation of their national character.   Over two decades ago, they determined to do something about the increasing congestion.  The  something was a massive public works project costing over 10 billion dollars and 23 years to completion- and what a project it has been.

      This week the Swiss nation celebrated the completed drilling of a 35.4 mile tunnel under the Gotthard that now forms the longest transport tunnel in the world, surpassing the Seikan Tunnel in Japan by over a mile.  The Swiss are no strangers to tunnel technology and achievement owning 3 of the 20 longest transport tunnels currently serving world travellers.    The achievement at this time is one of connectivity only as the viable use of the tunnel is expected to take 7 more years to initiate. 

      When all is said and done, the tunnel is expected to reduce the travel time for road freight slightly over one hour in passage through versus over the Gotthard, but more importantly to the Swiss, remove the visual damage to their beloved alps caused by the travel of people looking to pass through the country, not be a part of it.   Only the Swiss can say if it is worth three decades and billions of dollars to achieve this engineering marvel for the sheer joy of returning the Gotthard Pass to something closer to the vistas enjoyed by Europe’s first hardy travellers.  The toll to each Swiss citizen for this investment, 1300 dollars apiece.  Hopefully, the next time I travel the pass, they won’t try to get their investment back all in one transit through the tunnel.

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Smart Presidents versus Dumb Presidents

     It is one of the more ingrained myths of the modern American political experience that the more liberal you are, the more likely you are going to be seen as intellectually gifted or even brilliant,  the more conservative, more likely the dummy with persistence.   Quick – name our “intellectually gifted” presidents of the last fifty years: Kennedy, Carter, Clinton ,and Obama -the “intellectually challenged”: Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush.  Our current President Obama was noted to be “brilliant” by commentators as diverse as Peggy Noonan and Joe Klein, without a single released college transcript revealing assessed capacity, or a single legislative accomplishment as a state or federal senator.  David Remnick, Obama’s biographer, states, “Its certainly a relief to a lot of people that Obama shows no signs of the incuriosity displayed by his predecessor (Bush).  Obama has proven his intellectual and literary firepower.“  The power of liberal insight is it transforms people from being intellectually capable to being intellectually “gifted” on the solitary basis of the righteousness of the idealistic liberal cause.   President Obama in his righteousness has struggled with the inability of the segments of the American public to see the obvious benefits of his well thought out positions. Instead they “cling to their guns and their religion”,  and inconceivably deny the merits of the stimulus and health care packages he has produced,  so clear to any thinking person.  In juxtaposition are the two identified presidential “dullards”, Reagan and George W. Bush.  Mr. Reagan the obvious C student at Eureka College and B-movie  actor, was assumed to be incapable of the decision making capacity and policy conceptualization that led to a spectacular economic boom and the fall of the Iron Curtain.  Yet his diaries and writings show a depth, assuredness, and farsightedness based on bedrock principles that defy the attempted dismissiveness of his critics.  George W. Bush holds an especially pilloried position in intellectuals’ hearts when it comes to dullardness. He is the king of the incapable conceptualization, the crown prince of incuriosity. Yet of the three combatants for the Presidency, in order of intellectualism- Gore, Kerry, Bush- which had the SAT score in the top 20% of takers, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and the intellectual competence to fly jet fighters?  Ummm, that would be the dullard Bush.  No matter – the guitar playing Kerry was a clear intellectual heavyweight compared to the thick thinking Bush according to the media  definitions of 2004,  and Bush’s structural clarity in his decision making style and firm support of his management team were seen as profound mental rigidity bordering on -that’s right, dullardness.

     Intellectuals remain flummoxed by the unwillingness of people or events to conform to their version of the facts.  The sceptics of global warming were denounced as “flat earthers” for being unwilling to accept the “overwhelming evidence” of global warming, even as the 2009 East Anglia debacle showed data manipulation and out right fabrication at the base of the arguments.  President Clinton insisted that engagement with the North Koreans worked “under my watch” even though the North Koreans themselves admitted they brazenly lied regarding all elements of the Clinton era benchmarks, and successfully achieved a nuclear device.  Now President Obama is flummoxed by Iranian leaders engaging in evangelical self interest in nuclear development, when it was clear to him the failing of the Bush team was their anti-intellectual obstinance about accepting the Iranian theocracy as the legitimate expression of the Iranian people, even as Obama observed as  hundreds of thousands of Iranians bravely protested and hundreds died defining for all time the regime’s illegitimacy.

     The “unfortunate” conclusion of all this smart vs dumb presidential nonsense is that the components of leadership – organizational skills, temperment, intuitiveness, insight, principled logic and ability to instill passionate trusting involvement of a people- are hardly gaged by an individual’s grade in first year law school or his or her media savvy.  It is hard earned, ‘ boots on the ground’ performance that shows a politician’s true smarts, and our ability to find leaders who can solve some of the bigger issues of our time will determine our own success as a people, and our survival as a civilization.  We may want to consider a more diverse assessment of leaders as they come before us, such as the contrasting leadership styles under pressure of people such as Sara Palin or Hillary Clinton, before we dismiss one, and anoint the other.  The great educational institutions of America have produced some great leaders, but no more than the training ground of the school of hard knocks and personal challenge.

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“Like A Tremendous Machine!”

     A new movie reminding  all of us of the excitement surrounding one of the great “athletes” of any generation is moving into theaters.  The movie is about the horse Secretariat, the magnificent triple crown winner of 1973.  I expect to go see it and cry like a baby. Why? Because Secretariat is intimately tied to my life long emotionalism regarding the concept of being a witness to an act of perfection.  Whether it is Usain Bolt winning the 100 meters at the Olympic games in a style so thoroughly outclassing his opposition,  Roy Halladay pitching a no hitter, or Franz Klammer skiing at the edge of catastrophe and death willing himself to victory in the downhill at Innsbruck in 1976, I have always struggled with my composure at the moment of triumph.  Amazingly, in 1973, the hero-athlete was a horse and an epic one at that.

     Secretariat was not a great story that snuck up on anybody that year.  He was from the moment he stepped on the track at age two already a horse with incredible attached expectations.  He looked like a winner, with a beautiful sorrel finish, three white stockings and a blazing white star on his forehead. And Secretariat was huge; 16.2 hands tall and in his prime cracking the scales at a Peterbilt size of 1,175 pounds.  He had a appetite like a glutton, and a bizarre “human” personality – spunky, confident, and particularly fond of crowds and cameras.  He was in short, “the Natural”, at a time when the national media was capable of framing a story and the public was desperate for a feel-good true life hero.  At the end of his entry year in racing, he was already voted Horse of the Year by the horse racing establishment,  and was the odds on favorite to bring home a triple crown for the first time in 25 years – consecutive wins in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont over a 5 week period.  Considered the ultimate racing competition , this marathon process demands progressively longer distances out of the race horse until the final sprint of the Belmont, where the animal is expected to duel over 1 and1/2 miles to complete the crown.

    Like any great victor, Secretariat needed a foil.  In the Triple Crown races of 1973, it was an extremely talented horse named Sham, who it seemed was capable of matching Secretariat stride for stride and clearly was the class of the competitor group.  Sham dueled with Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby, requiring a track record performance by Secretariat to nose out Sham by 2.5 lengths.  The Preakness followed, and the duel continued with Secretariat again applying a late surge to catch Sham and win the Preakness.  With the Preakness win, Secretariat was reaching legend status and simultaneously appeared on the covers of Tim, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated as “Superhorse”, a level of celebrity hard to describe at a time when there was no internet or 24/7 coverage of events as the Internet and cable TV now provide.

     The Belmont loomed as the ultimate match race between Sham and Secretariat, as other horse owners cowed by Secretariat’s dominance refused to participate in the expected humiliation of their prized horses. As a result, only three other non-descript horses were entered in the race.  Ali had his Frazier, Laver had his Newcombe, and now Secretariat would have his Sham.

     I was a child at the time but it seemed that all the world was watching on that Saturday afternoon, June 9th, 1973, for the great Belmont Stakes duel.  The Triple Crown was on the line, the hype of a “superhorse”, and the overflow New York crowd at the Belmont bet on Secretariat for the simple right to covet the winning ticket if Secretariat could pull off the win, as the winner was going to collect only 20 cents on a 2 dollar ticket.  The right to say “I was there” with the momento was felt to be more important than cashing in the ticket.  The crowd was psyched and wanted to see something special – and that is what they got.

     The horses broke and by the first turn the two protagonists had separated themselves from the others. Secretariat and Sham pressed each other neck and neck through the first mile at a blazing speed. Sham’s jockey Laffit Pincay, Jr. a hall of fame jockey knew his horse was at maximum capacity, and prayed that Ron Turcotte, Secretariat’s jockey was as concerned about his steed.  It didn’t really matter what Turcotte had in mind.  At the 6 furlong mark, Secretariat pushed into the lead, and created a level of performance no jockey had any right to control.  As unforgettably described by Chic Anderson, the legendary horse race announcer on CBS that afternoon, the unfolding event stunned Anderson into emotional awe – “Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!” 

     No one had seen anything like it in a championship event.  The horse was now 9 lengths, now 16 lengths, now 20 lengths, and finally an impossible 32 lengths in front of the field.  He stormed down the stretch alone, no whip driving him, the hysterical crowd roaring, to the fastest quarter ever recorded, and the fastest mile and 1/2 distance in history. In a race records set by tenths of a second, Secretariat would break the Belmont record by 2.5 seconds and crushed the competition  in a performance for the ages.  Pincay, knowing the challenge was hopeless in the face of such greatness, eased Sham back to a last place finish to preserve the competitive colt’s body against certain destruction.  I will never forget the unforgettable moment, the sense of perfect beauty and power that this special horse provided in that two minute interval of my life.  Secretariat averaged almost  38 miles an hour, and was still accelerating at the finish. 

     When the great horse died of laminitis at age 19, an autopsy revealed what we all suspected – the great heart of Secretariat was at least two times the size of an average thoroughbred.  In a world where thoroughbreds were driven by propellers, Secretariat was powered by a jet engine.  Behold –  “Superhorse”.

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The Chilean Miners’ Drama Approaches the Essential Moment

     I reported on August 30, 2010, about the unfolding drama in Chile where 33 miners thought lost in a mine collapse over 700 meters underground at the San Jose Mine in Chile were discovered trapped but alive. The amazing story of their survival and perseverance is about to reach the moment of truth as rescue efforts are approaching critical drilling depth for rescue from three directions. There has been little recent information regarding the health and mental stability of the minors, but the rescue efforts have been historic and the hope is the longest known underground human survival saga may soon reach a successful climax. Two Chilean and one Canadian mining rig are pounding through bedrock in order to create a rescue tunnel through which a rescue cage may be lowered over two thousand feet and pull the miners out one by one.

The extent of this rescue effort and the scale of the human heroism being displayed knows little comparison. The lessons learned by so many sciences with this effort – rapid deep rock drilling, isolation psychology, group leadership, effects of extended claustrophobia, lack of light, and sleep wake cycles in a non-structured test environment are all at unforeseen levels of experience. The trial of these miners could easily help us to understand the effects of deep space travel and many other considerations only hinted at experimentally.
We can only hope and pray that the end process is a successful escape for these brave, tortured men, who lived their lives to bring food to the table of their families, but may soon provide us all with profound food for thought.

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A Neighbor’s Fight To The Death

     Something awful is enveloping the proud Mexican nation south of our borders.  A vicious and dangerous war between the Mexican government and drug cartel warlord armies have since 2006 taken the lives of over 28,000 Mexicans, and with no end in sight, threatens to extend its spasm of violence across the porous American border.   This under reported war is approaching the ferocity and brutality of a fight to the death survival match that puts at risk the Mexican republic and its fragile economy in a way thought inconceivable but a few years ago.

     The New York Times reports a recent battle that took place a mere 18 miles from the American border that had all the makings of a modern war battle between two well stocked armies.  The United States has long flourished under the ability to maintain thousands of miles of undefended borders with previously peaceful neighbors of Canada to the north and Mexico to the south respectively.  This has been the presumed status of the borders since the exploits of Mexican bandelero and peasant hero Pancho Villa’s incursions into the United States in 1916, and the U.S. ill-conceived reaction with General John Pershing’s expeditionary force that unsuccessfully searched northern Mexico for him throughout 1916 into 1917.  World War I’s expansion mercifully brought the American expedition to a halt, and relative peace has existed ever since.  That peace is now in peril, particularly along Mexico’s northeast border with Texas, where some of the most vicious fighting just across from El Paso has occurred.  In Arizona, the refugee response is imperilling the local economies and social systems to absorb, and on several occasions, armed violence has spread across the border with the murder of border ranchers who have managed to “get in the way” in an effort to defend their homes.

     The origins of the war are complex and involve the United States from many angles.  The first is reflective of the insatiable appetite for south and central American drugs in American society that makes the transport and sale of such “crops” a enormously lucrative and powerful draw for Mexican crime cartels to take the associated risks they are now taking.   The second is the porous border that the U.S. has neglected for decades and allows, in addition to the 12 million illegal laborers that have crossed it, the presence of a steady group of drug smugglers that feast on innocent people to act as mules for the drug contraband.  Third, the ironic success of the Colombian government with the help of the United States starting in 2002 to stamp out what was once the temple of narco-terrorism in Columbia , has forced the  redirection of the traffic and tactics of the narco-terrorists into Mexico.  Fourth, the government of President Felipe Calderon declared war on the Mexican cartels from a position of significantly less strength than the Colombian Uribe. Calderon’s government has been much more susceptible to intimidation and in some cases corrupt officials that have undermined the goals of utilizing the professional Mexican army against his own nation’s well armed thugs.  The death totals are staggering in the nation seen as the U.S.’s neighbor and prominent economic trading partner.

     The battle may yet require the concerted action of U.S. forces now patrolling the border with Mexico and this runs untoward risks with unclear outcomes between the two long standing neighbor countries.  The United States is best served by standing well clear of any effort to “assist” the Mexican government in a military fashion (see Pershing’s folly), and at the same time focusing on returning the respect for law and governance on its own territory, by being firm on drug laws, firm on the rights of citizenry, and firm on the role a border plays in the preservation of a country’s nationhood.   As for Mexico, the struggle is deep rooted, structural, and tied to the tradition of a lack of  governmental agencies, corruption free,  with integrity the population can trust. In a world where the bandelero and the local federal officer vie for the bribe, and the central government is powerless to defend the citizen against either, the citizen has little choice but to keep his head down,  let the two battle it out for supremacy, and hope all along that they simply kill each other off and leave him alone.  Not exactly the scenario that promises a early end to a devastating war.

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The Unalienable Right of Stupidity?

     The comedian Dennis Miller was asked about his view regarding the filmmaker Michael Moore’s right to make movies that bombastically drive opinions through questionable logic and facts.  Miller stated bluntly that although he found Moore despicable, he believed that the unique premise of America regarding free speech needed to be defended to the hilt, an inalienable right that ” allowed that stupid moron to be that utterly, completely wrong”.   I have decided for the most part to stay away from day to day stories on this blog for the simple reason that the immediate impulse to interpret rarely provides perspective.  A recent story however about unknown minister determined as a right of free speech to burn Korans has managed to ensnare the national media, the President of the United States, and the General in charge of combat forces in Afghanistan.  Now that’s the power of free speech; thus far no Korans burned, and yet the entire world is commenting on whether this man has the right to state his opinion through a ludicrous and reckless public display.

     What exactly is the right being defended here?  The First Amendment to the Consitution of the United States states the following:

          “Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”

     The privilege to act in ways that express your freedom of speech by voicing your discontent and outrage through the burning of Korans shall not be infringed by law or law officers, whether it be the chief legal officer of the the land, the President, or your local constabulary.  And clearly, your privilege as an Imam to build a mosque within blocks of ground zero is to upheld as a free man’s exercise of his religious expression.  The chief officer of the land, the President, who so vociferously rejects the logic of free expression of a crazy minister, is caught in the quandary of defending the free expression of a crazy imam who desires to build a triumphal temple at the site of the barbarous acts of fringe members of his religious vision.

     The problem comes down to the concept as to whether a right exists, versus whether it’s expression is moral or correct action.  In simple terms, do we have the right to be “that stupid moron” that Dennis Miller eviscerates?  Of course we do – and a developed, mature society has the equal right to complain, abhor, and most importantly, ignore moronic expression. The lunacy of defending indefensible acts does not protect the right of expression, but instead cheapens it by implying every stupid indefensible act needs to be supported righteously by a healthy society as a viable expression.  The right to express, does not make it viable expression.  The defense against stupidity and the prevention of moronic acts is a common sense recognition of right and wrong that demands society not needlessly support its own destruction through publicity.  If Nazis want to march through Skokie, Illinois no one should watch the parade. If an artist expresses his immaturity and perversion of placing a symbol of Christ in a glass of urine, he has the right, but society has the right to assure no public funds or facilities be utilized to publicize his moronic talentless expression.    If imams want to build mosques, they have the right to build but not the right to build unfettered to location.  If Koran burning makes the minister feel better, the total avoidance of any publicity or attention, the two outcomes he craves more than anything, merits the common sense approach.  We all have rights to expression, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to like a particular stupidity, expressed by a particular moron- we can use our common sense and express our opinion, that when you desire to express your right, we reserve the capacity to inform you societally that your right, is utterly, completely wrong.

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The Road To Serfdom

     In an  Internet bookstore with millions of available titles, Amazon.com lists its category best sellers and overall best sellers monthly, an interesting pulse on the  interest areas of the reading public.  The number 1 best seller for all books on Amazon in June of 2010 was  The Road To Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. – WHO?? – It is reasonable to consider with some amazement that an economic treatise written by an obscure Austrian intellectual 66 years ago could captivate such a large segment of the population as to lead all books in all categories.  A book that dominated the usual summer classics, such as the vampire inspired The Passage or the son’s memoir of his father S**t My Father Says , would be assumed by all to have some violent or sexy angle to bring in all these literary stragglers.  Perhaps this is a book about a Serf mafioso who rules over a dangerous road through which a hero must travel to attain a powerful ring…clever premise, but no,  that’s far from the book’s central theme. 

      It turns out that the gripping premise of F.A. Hayek’s book that so absorbed the American public’s attention this summer is a call to intellectual arms to avoid the collectivist mistakes of socialized states and to defend the power of man’s individualism.  How could such ideas written by a relative unknown born in 1899 resonate so strongly this summer? The answer is obvious to those like me who have read Hayek’s treatise.  Its is Hayek’s description of the collectivist impulses of governments promoting good acts that ultimately strangulates the capacity of individuals to achieve success by “developing their own individual gifts and bents”.  Hayek saw the collectivist responses of governments to the world wide depression born of classic liberal utopian desires to level the playing field and eliminate the inequities presented by the capitalist model.  In the process of seeking societal ideals of social justice, grater, equality and security, the social utopian structures common plans that deferentially and without prejudice would “handle our common problems as rationally as possible”.  For these modern planners, “it is not sufficient to design the most rational permanent framework within which various activities would be conducted by individual persons according to their individual plans.  What our planners demand is a central direction of all economic activity according to a single plan, laying down how resources of society should be ‘consciously directed’ to serve particular ends in a definite way.”  Hayek saw the classic argument regarding a totalitarian socialism that neither cared nor understood how the utopian goals were achieved and were merely certain that they be achieved, no matter what the cost, and the democratic socialist who struggled with dictatorial tenets of such utopians, argued only regarding the means, not the ends.  Both fundamentally believed that government must ” centrally direct economic activity if we want to make the distribution of income conform to current ideas of social justice.”  Hayek quoted Benito Mussolini as objectifying the need for central planning to reduce the inequities of individual competition in a modern world – ” We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.”  benito mussolini (1929).

     Hayek was speaking to an audience dealing with the aggressive impulses of the totalitarian socialists Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, but asking them to recognize the tendencies in their own threatened democratic world to the less martial but every bit as threatening collectivist strains of their own society.  For Hayek , ”the welfare and happiness of millions cannot be measured on a scale of less and more.”  What becomes inherently clear in the democratic effects on building a collectivist society, is not that the equality of society transcends to an absolute good, but rather, that the benefits of society receive a more equal distribution.  The definition of good or bad can not be left to society to determine benefit, for obviously everyone’s opinion as to good differs, and millions of people’s definition of good differs absolutely.  Inevitably, the direction of relative good can not be left to people to decide as in the end, the decisions in attempting to satisfy everyone will satisfy no one.   The lasting consequence, Hayak suggests, is the inevitable “cry for an economic dictator as a characteristic stage in the movement toward central planning.”   The death of freedom of choice must be the outcome that permits the central planner to achieve his end, because every effort to direct tendencies brings the unforeseen consequence of the individual’s adaptation to the rules, to secure the individual’s best possible outcome against the difference of the definition of good acknowledged by the many individual variations, and the single definition of the central planners.

     The treatise of a long ago theorist has become the running commentary of today’s events and has once again made the obscure economist Hayek a best selling author and a prophet to millions of Americans concerned with the direction of current governmental actions.  The need to eliminate individual variation in decision making and responsibility to achieve a common good – government takeover of mortgage loans, college education loans, credit card and financial lending,  the government take over of health care decisions and insurance, the government takeover of major industries such as the automobile industry, the government regulatory processes to “effect” climate change, social justice, immigration, propagation of non-elected “czars” rather than legislators to effect change – all point to the road map to servitude Hayak pointed out so presciently many years ago. 

     The reason The Road To Serfdom is a best seller again, is because we, as a free society under attack are farther down that road than ever before, and a larger and larger proportion of the populus is recognizing it.

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A Chilean Drama Elevates Us All

     On August 5th, 2010, a temblor caused the collapse of deep exit tunnels in the San Jose copper and gold mine in some two hundred miles north of Santiago, Chile.  This has been a year of intolerable national disasters for Chile, including both an 8.8 magnitude earthquake and a devastating tsunami.  The news from the August 5th mining disaster seemed destined to fit the solemn and depressing narrative as it was reported that 33 miners were lost behind the cave-in and presumed dead, as water and air was felt likely only available for 48 hours. As days stretched to several weeks the efforts to drill relief holes were felt to likely be perfunctory – then a miracle.  On August 22, seventeen days after the cave in, a sentinel probe drill was noted to vibrate and upon being withdrawn from a point some 2200 feet under the ground, was found to have a note attached – Estamos bien in el refugio los 33 – we are safe in the shelter the 33. 

     We are once again confronted with the amazing tendency for the human race rise to heights of true heroism.  Thirty three common men faced with fearsome odds and rapidly diminishing resources, managed to stay alive and sane in the pitch darkness of a hole 2,257 feet underground lit only by their head lamps and stretch water and food resources for 17 days until a rescue relief 4 inch drill hole that they had no certainty would reach them provided them with contact to the outside world.  They were not specially trained cavers, submarine officers, or survivalists.  In the notes that followed to the surface, it was clear that these men were driven only by their bonds to each other, and their hope to someday see their families again. 

     The challenge that lies ahead of them remains daunting.  Even provided the most modern machinery, it is assumed a relief channel sufficient to lift out grown men will take up to 60 or more days to drill.  The ever present risks of further mine collapse, disease, claustrophobic dementia, depression, and physical collapse remain dangerous adversaries to the men, who, if they survive will likely have sustained themselves longer than any previous group has in such conditions.

     Chile is a country that has survived its own civil crises of the 1970’s to become a leading light in both economic and civil progress in the Americas.  It is putting on display the inate strength of its national character in this year of  challenge, and thirty three men are showing us all the way to face difficult moments, work together for a common good, and hopefully, ultimately, triumph.

     It just may elevate us all.

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Are Big Ideas A Thing of the Past?

     Michael Barone has a thoughtful essay on our ability to conceive and create significant construction projects in today’s world.  He bemoans a smaller bridge project in Washington DC that has been going on for 42 months with no end in sight. He compares it to the building of the Pentagon in the forties that as the largest building in the world at the time was conceived,constructed, and opened in less than three years.  The number of similar current “big idea” morasses clumsily produced by the public sector brings forth the premise that we have lost the ability to conceive of the planning, coordination, and logistics that are required to bring big projects to fruition in a time frame that any individual would recognize as an achievement in their lifetimes.  The “Big Dig” in Boston was an effort to reduce traffic congestion over a 3.5 mile stretch of central Boston conceived in the 1980’s, begun in 1991, opened in 2006 ,and an estimated 22 billion dollars later still being shaped by shoddy construction, leaks, ceiling collapses, and minimal improvement in traffic congestion.  The “Deep Tunnel” project in Milwaukee invested billions and two decades in an effort to capture and treatment water runoff before it reached Lake Michigan – it has resulted in multiple sewage back-ups into homes with any steady rain and frequent needs to dump millions of gallons of  raw sewage into Lake Michigan – not exactly the vision of its idealistic planners.  The World Trade Center catastrophe stimulated the plans for a monumental restoration of the subway center, the skyscrapers, and a fitting memorial, all of which languish 9 years later in a state of paralysis and delay, with no conceived process for showing the necessary will to initiate and complete the project.

     Have we lost the ability to work and sacrifice together as a nation to achieve the significant projects that benefit us all in order to focus only on our own security and gratification?  Our government has become wholly interested in its control of the individual life, securing ifor the individual perceived freedom from want, responsibility, damaging health choices, and personal decision making capacity, at the expense of doing what it once did best – achieving the great ideas that were beyond any one individual or group, for the betterment of all.  In 1931, the United States committed to the Boulder (Hoover) Dam project on the Colorado river, completing the dam by 1936, supply water and electricity to millions in the midst of a great economic depression.  The total construction cost? -49 million – which paid for a 12oo foot long 726 foot high structure that 70 years later still generates 4.2 billion kilowatt/hours of electricity every year.

This clearly is not an issue about money, intelligence, capacity, workforce, imagination, or need. This remains a crisis of lack of will and overwhelming self-absorption. Can we once again achieve processes where strangulating regulations don’t destroy momentum and focus on the larger good, where important public needs are subjugated to the attack and erosion of personal needs, where corruption and shoddy leadership suffocate the realization of good ideas in reasonable time frames?  It is truly the question of our time, and reflects on us all.