Understanding social force diagrams: A tool for achieving progressive goals

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Friday January 26, 2024 · 9:31 AM PST

2024/01/26 · 09:31

A social force diagram of the My Car Won't Start Problem. This is a simple educational example of how if we analyze existing data that is often ignored (why solutions failed), then we can use that information to efficiently guide us to the root causes. This example was discussed in the first article in this series.

THE GOAL OF THIS ARTICLE is to teach you how to read and create social force diagrams.

A social force diagram is a high-level form of root cause analysis designed to analytically solve difficult large-scale social problems, such as democratic backsliding, climate change, systemic discrimination, and high inequality of income. This class of problems includes all the high-level hard problems of interest to progressives, so this tool should be of considerable interest to Kossacks working on hard problems.

This is the third article in a series dealing with the topic: Is it possible to take a more effective problem-solving approach to achieving progressive goals?

The first article introduced root cause analysis and then social force diagrams. The second article introduced causal diagrams, including feedback loops. This article covers social force diagrams in depth and builds on the first two articles.

A word of caution: This is not your average Kos article. It will take some concentration to follow. But we see no other way forward.

How science makes progress

THIS IS A STORY of scientific progress.

What do all scientific theories do? Only two things: Explain the past and predict the future.

In 1543 Copernicus did it with a comprehensive heliocentric theory of the solar system that explained how the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun, as opposed to the earlier geocentric theory where all heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth. The theory allowed astronomers to at last accurately predict planetary motion.

In 1687 Newton’s theory of universal gravity and the laws of motion (now known as classical mechanics) did it by explaining why all motion occurs. Now people could accurately explain past motion and predict future motion of any kind, such as why the tides occur, why Kepler’s laws of planetary motion work, and where a shot cannonball will go, given its starting speed, angle, size, weight, and air resistance.

Moving up to the twenty-first century, Nate Silver did it by inventing a new form of political election forecasting: weighted poll averaging. Before Nate pioneered the technique, poll based predictions were only slightly more reliable than horoscopes. In the 2000 US presidential election, the consensus, based on published forecasting models, was that Al Gore would win by as much as an 11 point landslide. Instead, Gore won the popular vote by 0.5% while George W. Bush narrowly won the electoral vote.

Fast forward to the 2008 election. Nate Silver (a former Kossak then writing as Poblano) became an overnight sensation by correctly calling 49 out of 50 states for the presidential election, and 35 out of 35 for senate elections. And then in 2012 he did it again, calling it correctly in all 50 states and 31 out of 33 senate seats. “Triumph of the Nerds: Nate Silver Wins in 50 States” proclaimed a Mashable headline. A Daily Beast article themed the Revenge of the Nerd described how:

The author of The New York Times–hosted blog FiveThirtyEight had correctly predicted the electoral lay of the land when all around him political pundits pronounced the race too close to call or maddeningly inconclusive.

Today in 2024, the nerds have won. Weighted forecasting models, based on
objective statistical analysis of poll data (with no thumbs on the scale via personal intuition), are the new norm.

How did the scientists and the nerds do it? By figuring out how to use existing data that was being ignored. Copernicus did it by using the hundreds of thousands of astronomical observations made by others to derive the parameters of the heliocentric model. Newton did it by using astronomical observations and prior theories to derive and prove the inverse square law of gravitation and the laws of motion. Nate Silver did it by using existing poll data in a new way. He statistically analyzed the past predictive accuracy of each polling firm, used that and date of polling to weight each firm’s poll results, and calculated a moving average for election result forecasts.

Let’s see if we can think like scientists and use existing data that is being ignored.

The great advantage of the superficial layer

Social force diagrams are organized into two layers: superficial and fundamental. The standard fill-in-the-blanks template looks like this:

The purpose of the superficial layer is to use existing data about solution failures to explain the past. Why did past solutions fail? Why did some do better than others? Starting at problem symptoms, you ask: WHY does this occur? to find the first intermediate cause. Then you ask the same question again: WHY does the first intermediate cause occur?

As you work down the causal chain from symptoms to first intermediate cause, second intermediate cause, and so on, you eventually arrive at the deepest intermediate cause. (The template has only one intermediate cause.) Then the question of WHY did that occur? allows you to at long last begin to penetrate into the fundamental layer, where the well-hidden root causes can be found.

At this point knowing where the deepest intermediate cause is gives you the world’s biggest clue about where to dig down the causal chain next. This is like the uncommonly good detective (or scientist) who uses ALL clues available, not just the ones everyone else is using. They know where to best dig next. No magic or super-human expertise is required.

Stop and think about this. Have you ever seen a story, analysis, or solution based on root cause analysis of the superficial layer? Probably not, because present approaches throw solution failure data away and ignore it. Yes, people try to learn from their solution failures and improve their solutions. But in the big seemingly impossible-to-solve problems they never put it all together into a comprehensive theory of WHY all past solutions are failing. The inevitable result is more trial and error and error and error. They don’t know where to dig since they don’t know where the deepest intermediate cause is.

Let’s further explore the advantages of the two layered design. The two layers are:

The superficial (symptomatic) layer. Here intermediate causes are so easy to see they are erroneously assumed to be root causes.
The deeper fundamental layer. Here, by understanding the problem’s feedback loop structure, its root causes may be found.

The superficial layer contains one or more intermediate causes. Some problems require multiple diagrams, since they contain multiple subproblems (defined by multiple symptoms) and thus multiple root causes. Difficult problems usually require construction of a feedback loop model to analyze the fundamental layer. Without root cause analysis of the fundamental layer, difficult problems tend to stay stuck in the superficial layer for a long time, as the Autocratic Ruler Problem (see below) did for thousands of years and many progressive problems are doing today.

This social force diagram was covered in the first article. Imagine how much sooner the problem could have been solved if a tool like social force diagrams had been used.

Social force diagrams are built by starting at problem symptoms and identifying the causal chain with “WHY does this occur?” questions until the root causes are found. As this is done, why past superficial solutions failed is diagrammed. This is critical knowledge, as it indicates the intermediate causes are indeed intermediate rather than root causes, and triggers insights about where to dig deeper. After the superficial layer of the problem is understood, the analyst digs down to follow the causal chain into the fundamental layer to find the problem’s true root causes.

Knowledge of the superficial layer and why past solutions failed is required for solving difficult problems. Karl Popper, who famously invented the principle that a theory or hypothesis is not scientific unless it can be falsified by measurement or experimentation, explains why (italics in the original):

We are always learning a whole host of things through falsification. We learn not only that a thing is wrong; we learn why it is wrong. Above all else, we gain a new and more sharply focused problem, and a new problem, as we already know, is the starting point for a new development in science.

(From All Life Is Problem Solving, Karl Popper, 1999, page 13.)

After the superficial layer is built, “a new and more sharply focused problem” that could not be seen before becomes not just visible, but crystal clear:

What is the feedback loop structure that identifies the root cause of the lowest intermediate cause in the superficial layer?
What is the high leverage point for resolving the root cause?
What practical solutions can push on the high leverage point in a manner so well-engineered that the root cause stays resolved and the mode change is relatively permanent?

Because each question is so sharply focused, the answer landscape is relatively small and quickly searched.

The four forces of social force diagrams

Here’s a simplified social force diagram template for quick reference:

Social force diagrams focus on understanding four key forces: S, F, R, and new R. Superficial solutions (force S) fail because force S is always less than root cause forces (force R), indicated by S < R. By contrast, fundamental solutions (force F) can succeed because if the solutions are properly designed (especially their impact on feedback loop structure), force F can exceed force R, indicated by F > R. This leads to a systemic mode change, during which the old R is replaced by a new R. The new force R must be engineered to be strong enough and self-managing enough to permanently hold the system in the solved mode, due to the way force F fundamentally changes critical feedback loop structure and loop dominance.

If analysis shows no F > R exists (no resolvable root cause is found), the problem is unsolvable as defined. In this case problem definition (old symptoms) can often be relaxed to make the problem solvable, such as raising the maximum allowable global temperature rise for the climate change problem to make that problem solvable. Otherwise, the problem should be declared unsolvable and solution should not be attempted.

Once all four forces are understood and all key assumptions have been measured or tested with experimentation, the analyst has a sufficiently complete theory of the problem. Each of the four forces provides an explanatory tenet of the theory. This gives the social force diagram theory of problem behavior:

Social Force S. Why past solutions failed (S < R).
Social Force R. Why the problem occurs (force R is unresolved).
Social Force F. Why fundamental solutions can be expected to succeed (F > R).
New Social Force R. Why the mode change will be relatively permanent.

This suggests that any comprehensive theory of how to solve a difficult social problem must adequately explain all four forces. The above list thus serves as the four requirements for a comprehensive theory of a difficult large-scale social problem. The theory must identify the four forces and explain their causal structure. While this may seem like an excessively high bar, we see no other minimum set of requirements capable of specifying the information needed to solve problems of this class, due to their extreme complexity.

Application example: The Recurring Wars in Europe Problem

Now that we’ve explained the heavy duty technical stuff about how social force diagrams work, we can review an example of how to apply the tool. This is the Recurring Wars in Europe Problem.

Problem symptoms were recurring large-scale wars in Europe. First came World War One, which introduced the horrors of trench warfare, poison gas, and battlefield tanks. Losses were unprecedented. Total estimated deaths were 9 to 11 million military and 6 to 13 civilian, causing H.G. Wells to coin the expression that World War One was “The War to End All Wars.” That didn’t happen. Germany rebuilt its war machine, Hitler rose to power, and World War Two killed an estimated 80 million people. It was the deadliest war in human history.

At this point our social force diagram looks like this:

Let’s apply root cause analysis. WHY were wars recurring in Europe? What was the immediate precursor to war? The main cause was arms buildup with strong attack capability, as shown in the revised diagram.

What clues can we use to build the superficial layer of the diagram? How can we use data that has long been ignored to learn from the past?

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

First, is arms buildup with strong attack capability an intermediate cause or a root cause? We know it’s an intermediate cause because after the War to End All Wars, attempted solutions failed, leading to World War Two. They failed because they pushed on a low leverage point: direct ways to discourage attack. This was done with traditional superficial solutions like: peace treaties, defenses, royal inter-country marriage, etc. Repeated solution failure indicates superficial solutions. Adding these nodes to the diagram gives:

The superficial solutions failed because they pushed on a low leverage point where S < R. Whatever the deeper cause was, it was a stronger force than S.

Next, WHY did arms buildup with strong attack capability occur? The answer is as old as human history. We live in a world of limited resources, where the behavior of all species is driven by the evolutionary algorithm’s struggle for survival of the fittest. All living organisms must pursue a survival of the fittest strategy that maximizes their competitive advantage, because if they don’t they will lose out to those who do. This holds for individual organisms as well as groups, such as families, tribes, confederations, and nations. Members of a group cooperate to maximize their group’s competitive advantage over other groups, as well as to optimize their own benefits using those natural resources they own in the territory they control.

Thus the main cause of arms buildup with strong attack capability is pursuit of survival of the fittest strategies in order to maximize a state’s competitive advantage. That leads to this diagram:

Is this cause an intermediate cause or a root cause? Should it be in the superficial layer or the fundamental layer? Examination of the history of the problem shows it to be the main root cause, because it led to a fundamental solution that worked.

After the horrors of two successive world wars on European soil, problem solvers said never again, looked deeper, and intuitively (without use of formal root cause analysis) found the root cause, high leverage point, and fundamental solution. The high leverage point was tight inter-country coupling so if you harm another country you are harming yourself. The fundamental solution was the European Union, with the Benefits of Cooperation Feedback Loop. This caused a permanent mode change due to the feedback loop. Today no union member would even consider war against another member since that would be terribly self-destructive. The final diagram looks like this:

The fundamental solution worked because it pushed on a high leverage point where F > R. The new root cause forces resulted from careful design of the fundamental solution. Once member states took the first strong step toward tight inter-country coupling, a new reinforcing feedback loop began. The European Union started with market integration and proceeded to further integration and benefits (for most members) via a common currency, membership in NATO, military integration, open borders between member states, common policies on agriculture, fisheries, and regional development, etc.

Check out the desired mode on the right side of the diagram. This is the desired behavior. We want no more large-scale wars in Europe. That should happen, due to shared goals and a common good attitude. That in turn should happen due to the European Union’s tight inter-country coupling via free trade, common currency, free immigration, etc.

A comprehensive theory of problem behavior

The completed social force diagram describes (at the high level) a comprehensive theory of the Recurring Wars in Europe Problem. The theory does this by explaining the problem in terms of the four main causal forces involved:

Note how the tool of social force diagram gives an easy-to-understand, high-level theory that explains everything important. However, this was a retrospective problem so it was an easy problem to analyze. The fundamental solution was known.

The “That’s a wicked problem” argument

But in the top problems facing the world’s progressive problem solvers, the fundamental solutions are unknown. The difficulty of these long-unsolved problems (such as climate change, democratic backsliding, high inequality of income and wealth, systemic racial and gender discrimination, and war) is so high it’s off the chart. Many people consider these to be insanely difficult or impossible to solve wicked problems:

What's a Wicked Problem?

In 1973, design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber introduced the term "wicked problem" in order to draw attention to the complexities and challenges of addressing planning and social policy problems. Unlike the “tame” problems of mathematics and chess, the wicked problems of [governmental social] planning lack clarity in both their aims and solutions. In addition to these challenges of articulation and internal logic, they are subject to real-world constraints that prevent multiple and risk-free attempts at solving. As described by Rittel and Webber, wicked problems have 10 important characteristics:

1) They do not have a definitive formulation.

2) They do not have a “stopping rule.” In other words, these problems lack an inherent logic that signals when they are solved.

3) Their solutions are not true or false, only good or bad.

4) There is no way to test the solution to a wicked problem.

5) They cannot be studied through trial and error. Their solutions are irreversible so, as Rittel and Webber put it, “every trial counts.”

6) There is no end to the number of solutions or approaches to a wicked problem.

7) All wicked problems are essentially unique.

8) Wicked problems can always be described as the symptom of other problems.

9) The way a wicked problem is described determines its possible solutions.

10) Planners, that is those who present solutions to these problems, have no right to be wrong. Unlike mathematicians, “planners are liable for the consequences of the solutions they generate; the effects can matter a great deal to the people who are touched by those actions.”

I firmly disagree with the implication of the wicked problem concept, and by now I hope you do too.

Over and over, I’ve seen the equivalent of “That’s a wicked problem, so no wonder we can’t solve it.” argument trotted out. To those who deeply understand advanced forms of problem solving, that’s rubbish. Here’s why:

The real reason progressive activists, governments, and social scientists have been unable to solve members of the class of difficult large-scale social problems is NOT that they are inherently wickedly difficult or impossible to solve. It’s because problem solvers have not been using a form of root cause analysis designed for this class of problems. That is the gap this series of articles seeks to fill.

Difficult large-scale social problems are all solvable, with the right analytical tools and their correct application. The steady march of science will prevail over intuition and trial and error and error.

The next article in the series is here.

Free online Empathy Summit | A review of Empathy Training Programs from around the world

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Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday September 01, 2023 · 7:29 AM PDT

2023/09/01 · 07:29

Free Online Empathy Summit - A Review of Empathy Training Programs - September 2 & 9, 2023 - Join the Empathy Center, on Zoom, in a review of Empathy Training Programs from around the world. 24 professional trainers will share with us how they teach and use empathy in their practice. After the presentations attendees will be invited to join an Empathy Circle to further discuss empathy training.

Purple Flowers with a title saying Free Facilitator Training Classes Start October 4, 2023. Enroll in our training course to learn collaboration, reflective listening, mutualism, and empathy circle facilitation. Certificate awarded on completion of the 4 classes. — Enroll in our FREE upcoming Facilitator Training Course to learn collaboration, reflective listening, mutualism, and empathy circle facilitation. A certificate will be awarded on completion of the course. For registration visit: www.bestempathytraining.com.

I would like to remind Daily Kos readers that The Empathy Center is hosting an Empathy Summit that will bring together professional empathy trainers from across a wide variety of interests to share how they use empathy in their practice. This event will start this weekend, Sept. 2nd and continue on again the next weekend. And, it is free! A more detailed explanation of the event can be on my previous Daily Kos diary: Building a Culture of Empathy #03| Free review of empathy training programs from around the world!

Coming up in October is our Free Facilitator Training Course. (See advertisement graphic on the right.) This is a 4 week course conducted on Saturdays that lasts about 2 and a half hours per class. In course we teach participants how to conduct and facilitate empathy circles. In the class we teach how our four main values of mutualism, empathy, openness,and care support the Empathy Circle process.

In addition to the classes students are encouraged to have “buddy calls” each week with fellow students to practice what is learned in class. These calls are about 40 minutes each and are scheduled at the convenience of the students.

Today I would like to highlight a few of the guest speakers. Edwin Rutsch, William Filler, Lou Zweier, and Jim Wharton.

Please jump the fold for a brief discussion of a few of the speakers and details on attending.

The next Empathy Summit will be held on Saturday, November 4, 2023. For more information click here. The topic will be:

Why is Empathy Essential in Conflict Mediation?

geo3

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 21, 2020 · 7:26 PM PST

2020/01/21 · 19:26

2018 Redmond Washington, smoke from the fires in British Columbia block out the summer sun | Drone Pano

Cascading Effects

This is the framework behind The Carbon Victory Garden in the Anthropocene posted recently. The article was written during a very smokey summer in the Pacific Northwest due to massive fires in Eastern Washington, Oregon, California and British Columbia. Our friends in Australia are living in this situation right now.

This last summer of 2018, the cascading effects of climate change were very visible in the Pacific Northwest. The summer fires were on a mass scale, in a faraway place, impacting a local community. This was one of those outlier climate events, lasting for an unspecified time, that may just become part of the norm.

Fires from British Columbia, Eastern Washington, and California brought a very visible smoke to the Puget Sound Region. The air quality was designated as unhealthy, solar panel electric production was reduced during this time. Yet, we in the Puget Sound Region had a fraction of the effects of some locations in British Columbia, where daylight was reduced to dusk and air quality was at the extreme levels

Like many citizens I am concerned about climate change, this incident was an indicator that brought climate change very front and center. I have kids and am concerned about their future as well as future generations. I wonder whether our civilization has the wherewithal to do something about climate change while strategically building in resilience to our communities. In my lifetime (I am 54) what was originally "environmentalism" is now a cause of reducing carbon emissions, with the magnitude of the challenge, environmentalism seems like a quaint subset.

The World’s Climate is Changing

The 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment states that Climate change has created new risks and exacerbated existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States. This situation, presents unprecedented challenges to human health and safety, quality of life, and the rate of economic growth.

Climate change and extreme weather events are expected to increasingly disrupt our nation’s energy and transportation systems, threatening more frequent and longer-lasting power outages, and service disruptions. The full extent of climate change risks to interconnected systems, many of which span regional and national boundaries, is often greater than the sum of risks to individual sectors.
Failure to anticipate interconnected impacts can lead to missed opportunities for effectively managing the risks of climate change and can also lead to management responses that increase risks to other sectors and regions.
Forward-looking infrastructure design, planning, and operational measures and standards can reduce exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and reduce energy use while providing additional near term benefits, including reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Mitigation and adaptation actions present opportunities for additional benefits that are often more immediate and localized, such as improving economies through investments in infrastructure.

Background to the Essay

I have drawn my own conclusions from a variety of sources and study. Numerous influencers apply a patchwork of environmental concepts to the general public, spreading the word about the issues of climate change. The climate influencers call to action has often been framed as a call to action in the broad sense, a call for civic activism and not always an inward-looking call to action to take personal responsibility to baseline, improve and record one's own impact.

Perhaps I am missing something or I am just being a bit naive, I seem to have a want for that climate influencer to ask something of me (or perhaps demand), to do something quantifiable about reducing -my own impact- on climate change. What has been missing is a "to do" list that I can follow it to reduce my environmental impact and carbon footprint.

As with many issues of the day, it seems to take a crisis to drive action whether it is war or a natural disaster. Thus, by looking into the past at the World War I and II Victory Garden Movement then enhancing this movement concept with modern sustainability frameworks, there is a path to offer an easy to understand "to do" list for carbon reduction for the average citizen or organization (club, business, city, state country).

This carbon reduction framework can work not only as a patriotic duty on a national level but as a humanistic duty as a citizen of the earth. A framework of baselining current use, then creating goals for efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions.

---

Climate Change is Real

Anthropogenic causes of climate change are real, the scientific reality that CO2 emissions brought on by numerous carbon-based emission sources and the lack of a coherent plan to manage these emissions pose a threat to planet Earth through increased atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.

YouTube Video

NOAA: Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Grand Challenges

A recent Linkedin article by Bill Gates; My plan for fighting climate change, discusses potential investments in technologies or methodologies to reduce carbon emissions in five sectors, described as the “grand challenges” that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documented as the economic sectors that produce greenhouse gas emissions.

The IPCC 2014 report (PDF 50 MB) has estimated emissions by economic sector as well as offers different mitigation “pathways” to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Gates, a big-picture thinker, looks towards grand solutions focused on entrepreneurial corporate technological innovation to mitigating climate change from the “lab to market, at scale” a method that is difficult for governments to execute. Gates plan is to create a privately managed fund for cutting edge research and development based on a framework of the five “grand challenges”. The idea is to cut bureaucracy and have flexibility in funding and operations.

Global Framework for Carbon Reduction

With the magnitude of challenges to reduce carbon emissions, multiple levels of framework based methodologies are needed to make a difference. UN-based initiatives involve worldwide and country-level emissions.

Gates mentions how each economic sector above relates to a core part of a consumer’s life including food, clothes, housing and the products that are consumed. With the worldwide growth of the middle class, individual carbon footprints increase along with each sector and the related energy needs and emissions. Gates suggests the need for breakthroughs in how these goods are grown or made, transportation and how a home or car is powered.

YouTube Video

A few summary paragraphs from IPCC 2014 show both human influence in carbon emissions as well as the monumental scale of carbon emissions.

About half of cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2010 have occurred in the last 40 years (high confidence). In 1970, cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, cement production and flaring since 1750 were 420±35 GtCO2; in 2010, that cumulative total had tripled to 1300±110 GtCO2. Cumulative CO2 emissions from Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU) since 1750 increased from 490±180 GtCO2 in 1970 to 680±300 GtCO2 in 2010. [5.2]

Annual anthropogenic GHG emissions have increased by 10 GtCO2eq between 2000 and 2010, with this increase directly coming from energy supply (47%), industry (30%), transport (11%) and buildings (3%) sectors (medium confidence). Accounting for indirect emissions raises the contributions of the buildings and industry sectors (high confidence). Since 2000, GHG emissions have been growing in all sectors, except AFOLU. Of the 49 (±4.5) GtCO2eq emissions in 2010, 35% (17 GtCO2eq) of GHG emissions were released in the energy supply sector,

Globally, economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. The contribution of population growth between 2000 and 2010 remained roughly identical to the previous three decades, while the contribution of economic growth has risen sharply (high confidence). Between 2000 and 2010, both drivers outpaced emission reductions from improvements in energy intensity (Figure SPM.3). Increased use of coal relative to other energy sources has reversed the long-standing trend of gradual decarbonization of the world’s energy supply. [1.3, 5.3, 7.2, 14.3, TS.2.2]

Without additional efforts to reduce GHG emissions beyond those in place today, emissions growth is expected to persist driven by growth in global population and economic activities. Baseline scenarios, those without additional mitigation, result in global mean surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7°C to 4.8°C compared to pre-industrial levels (range based on median climate response; the range is 2.5°C to 7.8°C when including climate uncertainty, see Table SPM.1) (high confidence). The emission scenarios collected for this assessment represent full radiative forcing including GHGs, tropospheric ozone, aerosols and albedo change. Baseline scenarios (scenarios without explicit additional efforts to constrain emissions) exceed 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2eq by 2030 and reach CO2eq concentration levels between 750 and more than 1300 ppm CO2eq by 2100.

( Page 25-26 Climate Change 2014 Mitigation of Climate Change )

Kyoto Protocol

The current worldwide framework for carbon reductions has its origins in the Kyoto Protocol, the 1992 United Nations Convention on Climate Change. The Kyoto Protocol involves pledges by individual countries to collectively reduce carbon emissions.

The Kyoto Protocol applies to the reductions of the following greenhouse gas, with its related Global Warming Potential (GWP) of each gas, a multiple of CO2, based on the different properties of a greenhouse gas and how much heat energy is trapped over a 100 year time period, in the atmosphere, per the mass of the gas. This methodology allows for the designation of a value of “CO2e”, with “e” designated as “equivalent.”

This situation is monumentally complex and difficult to find consensus on methods of mitigating further damage or ways to adapt through resilience. Yet, humankind has faced numerous challenges throughout time and typically faced the challenges through strategy and cooperative human engagement.

Framing a Solution

Civic and corporate entities tackle climate change through sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks based on the global initiatives and carbon accounting methodologies, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is a common method of accounting for carbon emissions.

Corporate sustainability frameworks are structured around organizational principles and the bigger picture of creating efficiencies that not only lower emissions but create more cost-effective, safer and environmentally sound processes. The complexity of the framework is dependent on the size of the organization as well as the "buy-in" of the participating members of the organization.

Yet, how can smaller organizations participate and potentially drive demand (for a green economy) to the corporations that produce and market carbon-intensive products as well as driving demand for civic institutions from a neighborhood to a town, city county and state work within a carbon reduction framework?

Engagement

To date, the top-down approach such as a worldwide effort with the Kyoto Protocol, to The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to corporate and civic level initiatives have left smaller organizations and households to participate in their own ways whether it is driving an electric car that may or may not be powered by a green energy mix or the purchase of certified products that promote a green lifestyle.

The consumer has created a scattershot of practices from recycling or driving an electric car to lower their footprint. While this is well-intentioned, there may not be any baselining of carbon-reducing practices that can be measured and improved upon over time following a specific framework.

With the USDA Organic Certification, a method of agriculture has been marketed as a green lifestyle choice attained through the purchase of certain certified products, leaving the consumer to think that they are helping the environment. “I only buy organic” is a common refrain of the modern-day consumer. The consumer aligns with a method of agriculture through their purchases, though that is only part of the carbon reduction puzzle.

Yet, it is hard to know whether buying an organic head of lettuce from the local food cooperative is grown locally or trucked from far away. Though due to the scale of an organic lettuce operation in a faraway place this method may have a lower per-unit carbon footprint than the locally purchased head of lettuce trucked in by a panel van to a distributor that supplies the local food coop. Understanding the emissions in the supply chain is a difficult concept that can work in either direction despite the agricultural method, organic or traditional that is employed.

The Victory Garden

Looking back in recent history, from an American perspective, the country as a whole seems to engage through shared adversity whether it is a natural disaster or a war. The collective idea that we as citizens are all in this together, leads to a collective effort towards a purpose or a goal. During these events, efficiencies through sustainable practices are realized, whether they are intended or not.

The Victory Garden movement is a good example of a collective effort on a national scale to plant gardens on a community level not only to conserve fuels and the labor force needed within the agricultural supply-chain but to create community well-being from the hard work, sense of accomplishment and nutrition available from a local food source.

In 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack one of the five wealthiest Americans prior to World War I, whose family’s timber empire was later diversified into real estate investments and philanthropy, organized the US National War Garden Commission in 1917, with the goal of putting idle land into agricultural production.

This approach engaged the citizenry, three million garden plots were planted in 1917 growing to five million in 1918, primarily to support the war effort so that local communities could feed themselves with the larger agricultural production supporting the allies in the war effort. Concurrently in Canada, the motto “a garden in every home” brought expert gardeners into schools and promoted gardening and home-based chicken coops for egg production.

By localizing food production, a portion of the fuel and labor resources that would typically be used for large scale agricultural production and transportation could be repurposed due to the savings for the war effort.

In the early 20th-century local food production was in part influenced to the work of George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery and had a lifelong passion for the natural world. Carver's passion for botany led to a college education and later as a professor at the Tuskegee Institute. His early work was based on techniques of diversifying crops for poor farmers beyond the common cash crops of the day. Carter promoted crop rotation as well as soil conservation. Carver published Natures garden for Victory and Peace a detailed pamphlet describing numerous nutritional and medicinal uses for common plants.

With World War II, the victory garden movement was revitalized through necessity in Britain with food rationing and as a patriotic duty to support the war effort in the United States. In 1943 Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden on the white house lawn while up to 18 million victory gardens were planted nationwide, 12 million in the cities and 6 million in rural areas.

YouTube Video

Victory Garden Film USDA 1942 with modern restoration and notation.

Many gardeners followed the framework of Victory Gardens for Every Family by the New York-based National Victory Gardens Institute. This easy to understand pamphlet along with other publications aimed at home, workplace and civic gardens provided a framework of common understanding to a methodology to participate on an individual level towards a larger goal in supporting the war effort.

The typical household of the WWWI and WWII era had a larger average of occupants, the gardens at the time were larger than today's standard garden. The ubiquity of made from scratch cooking and home canning as well as other preservation techniques dealt with the surplus home production. Many of the gardens during WWII were using organic methods since the marketing of synthetic fertilizers reached the mainstream after the war. Synthetic fertilizers were primarily used in larger agricultural methods, primarily corn.

Mechanization and a global supply chain have shifted household food acquisition from the yard to the supermarket, delivery and the high carbon footprint ready to cook meal subscription. By localizing food production with the primary goal of national fuel savings in WWI and WWII can now be repurposed towards the goal of reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain of a modern food delivery system.

Framework for Household Reduction of Carbon Emissions

In WWI and WWII, citizens responded to the threat of war following a national campaign with a defined framework. Local ingenuity refined the processes that have since been handed down through generations of gardeners. Today's threat is climate change and the immediate need for mitigating future warming of the planet beyond 2 degrees Celsius.

YouTube Video

The Gardens of Victory / Office of Civilian Defense

The Victory Garden campaign engaged 51% of US Households during WWII. With potential social media engagement, there is the potential to reach a similar civic engagement rate by extending a Victory Garden response to a global threat, climate change.

https://garden.org/special/pdf/2014-NGA-Garden-to-Table.pdf

Comparing the participation in gardening through these three eras, two of which were world wars and the third era perhaps a larger battle for the survival of the planet. Participation in 1943 seemed to be the height of the American gardening movement with ⅓ of national vegetable production originating in a victory garden. The Victory Garden movement is an excellent example of a purposeful civic campaign that yielded results by engaging numerous sectors of the society in a common cause.

A Modern Day Victory Garden

Today's threat is climate change and the immediate need for mitigating future warming of the planet beyond 2 degrees Celsius. The Victory Garden campaign engaged 51% of US Households during WWII. With potential social media engagement, there is the potential to reach a similar civic engagement rate by extending a Victory Garden response to a global threat, climate change.

Can you imagine if this type of a coordinated federal, state, local effort was put into a modern-day campaign to reduce carbon emissions?

Sustainability

By approaching a challenge with the three aspects of sustainability in mind, each process within a system has the potential for increased efficiency that leads to the harmonization of true sustainability. In the case of carbon emissions, these efficiencies can be quantified with the economic efficiency of cost savings, social efficiencies of increased stakeholder involvement and environmental efficiencies of cleaner air, land, and water.

The term “sustainability” came into modern parlance through the 1987 United Nations Brundtland report (PDF), “Our Common Future.” which discussed environmental and developmental issues as one issue, associating business with development.

"Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Sustainable development was framed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development involves the transformation of an economy by increasing productive potential while society ensures equitable opportunities.

Three aspects of sustainability are typically considered

The economic aspect maintains cash flow to support the business and the workers
The social aspect treats everyone within the business and community with respect.
The environmental aspect involves being a good steward of the land, air, and water

Within each sustainability aspect processes are identified, examined and benchmarked for efficiency. Each aspect is distinct but not isolated, each aspect is managed for the long term. The sustainability story of a home, organization or business is embedded within its activities.

Economic Aspect: How does the economic aspect affect a process or system?

Generate income
Pay workers / vendors
Engage Stakeholders

Social Aspect: How does the social aspect affect a system or process?

Social Responsibility
Do good
Engage Stakeholders

Environmental Aspect: How does the environmental aspect affect a system or process?

Reduce the impact on air, land, and water
Be a good steward
Engage Stakeholders

Sustainability Framework Components

By borrowing from the Victory Garden movement as well as a corporate sustainability framework, there are potential opportunities to fine-tune a methodology that could be easily understood and replicated in a broad nationwide (and worldwide) method similar to the Victory Garden movement. While it is always a good idea to continually record and monitor this continual improvement, even if a portion of a projected 167 million US Citizens active participation substantial carbon reduction is possible.

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was formed to communicate sustainability performance to investors. Many industries have their own specific disclosure topics with their SASB frameworks. The Alcoholic Beverages industry disclosure topics(pdf) align well with a small organization or household participation in carbon reduction.

Energy Management
Water Management
Responsible Drinking & Marketing
Packaging Lifecycle Management
Environmental & Social Impacts of Ingredient Supply Chains

This corporate sustainability framework, while not specifically aimed at carbon reduction, it does have components of reducing carbon emissions. Energy and water are necessary modern-day household components, responsibility can be transposed to a variety of social themes, packaging relates to households upstream purchases while impacts can be modified into a downstream topic in the household. Depending on the size and complexity of an organization, a variety of detailed baseline documentation and continued reporting can be incorporated within each of the disclosure topics.

How to ...

With a few modifications to the SASB framework above, a household or small organization has numerous opportunities to reduce their footprint by baselining current usage or resources or methods then over time continually improving on the baseline. A simplified household and small organization carbon reduction framework address the following:

The Sustainability Framework for Carbon Reduction

This is a framework, an outline, something easy to remember and to be used as a guide.

Energy Management
Water Management
Social Responsibility
Supply Chain Upstream
Supply Chain Downstream

Each organization can add detail within each step of the framework. Carbon emission reductions are realized when there is a net reduction in emissions that are measured per the use of the resource, thus it is a good idea to create a baseline first, then set attainable goals. If you cannot measure a reduction how do you know that you have reduced anything?

Framework adaptation: George H Thomas

1. Energy: Create a Baseline and Reduce Energy Use Over Time

By calculating an individual, household or organization baseline emissions, a starting point is created to improve on. By setting a yearly or multi-year goal, real efficiencies can be created that in turn reduce the annual carbon footprint of the participant. The three major types of emissions, Scope 1, 2, and 3 can easily be calculated through online calculators or by applying some additional research for more exact metrics.

Energy has a footprint, whether it is a direct emission out of a tailpipe, a smokestack or indirectly through the purchase of electricity from a utility or the indirect emissions from a trip on a plane. By calculating a current footprint then setting a goal for reduction is the first step. Even modest reductions can add up over time and in many respects, these goals create opportunities for efficiencies and cost savings, similar to a corporate sustainability model.

Set a Goal for Scope 1 Direct Emissions Reduction

The average driver in the United States drives 13,476 miles annually at 23.3 mpg. Each driver can account for an average of 5.07 mT Scope 1 CO2e emitted from the tailpipe of their automobile.

13,476 annual miles at 23.3 mpg = 578 gallons gasoline
Gasoline Automobile Scope 1 emissions = 5.07 mT CO2e

A 5% reduction can be rounded to 675 miles or a monthly savings of 56 miles, a goal that can easily be realized through combining errands or taking the bus. By riding a bike, taking public transportation or rideshare, the Scope 1 direct emissions normally attributed to the mileage and gas efficiency of driving, are now accounted for as Scope 3, indirect emissions.

One method to reduce Scope 1 direct emissions from a car is to purchase an electric car. An electric car's "emissions" are accounted for Scope 2, indirect emissions.

Driving an electric vehicle in Washington using eGrid emission factors for WECC Northwest at 3 miles per kWh (Tesla).

13, 476 annual miles at 3 miles per kWh = 4492 kWh
Electric Vehicle Scope 2 emissions (WA) = 1.36 mT CO2e
Electric Vehicle Scope 2 emissions (CO) = 3.71 mT CO2e

Scope 2 Home Electricity Use

In the home, if you use 10,000 kWh annually (US Avg) a 5% reduction of 42 kWh monthly can be realized through efficiencies, whether it is a thermostat on an electric baseboard heater, or a combination of LED light bulbs, powering down a computer and shutting off unnecessary lighting. The United States Department of Energy offers numerous tips and strategies to reduce home energy use. Yes, there is a financial investment involved, though many utilities offer rebates and efficiency programs to assist. With electricity use shifting into the realm of transportation, home electric demand will most likely increase.

Utility-based Scope 2 energy emissions are classified by the energy mix within an eGrid region (see eGRID map at top). Each region has a different energy mix including renewables, hydro, coal, gas, nuclear and coal for utility-scale power generation.

An investment in Solar PV can reduce or eliminate Scope 2 emissions within a household or an organization while supplementing the addition of an electric car. Solar PV directly impacts both the economic and environmental aspects of an organization based on numerous factors including the sighting of the installation, weather, climate, latitude, temperature and the overall installation including the quality of the panels.

Some new homes include Solar PV, thus deferring costs over the mortgage period. Batteries and energy management software will take efficiency to a new level within the next few years. The localization of electric production offers a resilient method for preparedness within the changing climate. Further community efforts of community solar and microgrids with battery backup can reduce some impacts.

This savings in energy use from the utility serves the economic aspects of sustainability with annual cost savings over the life of the solar system as well as serving the environmental aspect of sustainability by using less utility energy and its associated Scope 2 carbon emissions.

2. Water: Conserve with Efficient Use

In many areas of the United States, clean water is taken for granted. You turn on the faucet and out comes the water, and why drink the tap water when you can have bottled water! This is an all too common occurrence and in this example, a safe resource that is available to many homes is not always the first choice.

Water has been rebranded as a beverage, complete with a supply chain of extraction, packaging, transport, then finally consumption by the consumer then recycled or in some cases waste and the environmental issue of micro-plastic degradation in our waterways and oceans. The simple act of filling a reusable water container can impact reductions in three of the five Sustainability Framework for Carbon Reduction steps, water, supply chain upstream by eliminating the need for the packaged water and the supply chain downstream the waste associated with plastic packaging.

3. Social Responsibility: Do Good Things

Social responsibility is not always associated with some type of quantifiable metric. Living by the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or in modern parlance "do something good" is a good place to start.

Social responsibility can take the form of volunteering, philanthropy, engaging in a cause or simply "walking the talk" and living a purposeful life than engaging with others to promote socially responsible purposes.

Social responsibility involves stakeholder engagement, a stakeholder is an individual or concerned group, they are powerful people and not so powerful people. They address their concerns in numerous ways. Successful projects engage the stakeholders.

A business positions itself within a community from a sustainability perspective with its "license to operate" which is proactive and involves a network of individuals and groups. A focus on communication and community engagement builds broader public support that results in action and a broader broadcast of goodwill that promotes awareness of social legitimacy, credibility, and trust.

4. Upstream Supply Chain

An effective strategy to reduce solid waste on the supply chain downstream is to "pre-cycle" or think about the components or processes of a consumer product or other purchase, before the purchase. Plastic, paper, styrofoam, glass and food are components of the upstream supply chain, both packaging and product involve components or processes that have a carbon footprint.

Do you drink organic wine? while organic agriculture is an excellent mostly low carbon method of growing things, have you considered the carbon footprint of the wine bottle?

5. Downstream Supply Chain

The supply chain downstream is the "waste" in a household or an organization. There are numerous methods to both quantify the footprint as well as simpler methods of using a mindset within a daily routine.

Pre-cycle by purchasing smartly packaged goods, purposely recycling the packages from the goods you smartly purchased, reuse or donate any surplus goods and composting food waste through a municipal "clean green" bin, backyard compost or worm-bin whose nutrient-rich compost can be used in your victory garden.

Measuring Results of Carbon Emission Reductions

Averaging emissions on a national scale is a moving target, though these averages do provide reference points.

Household averages within this article, using conservative estimates emissions related to US household average energy use.

Scope 1 direct emissions 5.07 MT
Scope 2 indirect emissions 3.02 MT
Scope 3 indirect emissions 2.15 MT.

The Union of Concerned Scientists in 2015, have estimated the US per capita carbon emissions related to fossil fuels as 15.53 MT per capita. The US EPA has estimated overall carbon emissions, including all CO2 equivalents as 6.5 billion MT CO2e or 20.18 MT per capita (every man, woman, and child). These cumulative per capita averages most likely include emissions beyond the boundary of a home, including many of the emitters mentioned as grand challenges.

This example chart assumes annual US carbon emissions of 6.5 billion mT (EPA,2015) with a participation of 66 million households in a Victory Garden scale effort to follow a sustainable carbon reduction framework, the same participation rate as the WWII Victory Garden movement.

While combining the Scope emissions is not a common practice (Net estimates, bottom 3 rows), they are included in this chart for a comparison of the potential emission savings scenarios using 2% and 5% household reductions. Emissions savings can be attained through conservation and efficiency, eventually, technology will reduce the overall reliance and inefficiencies with carbon-based fuels, offering overall reduced emissions from transportation and the energy mix associated with generating electricity.

As this reliance of carbon-based fuels for cars reduces, the Scope 1 emissions which are direct, become Scope 2 emissions that are indirect and at the whim of the energy mix of the utility. This example chart using eGrid data provides insight into the geographical variability of Scope 2 emissions. What stands out clearly is that Washington State has a 52% reliance on Hydro-electric power generation, while Colorado has a 70% reliance on coal.

National regulation, market economics, and consumer demand are the drivers that will change the energy mix provided by electric utilities. This risk-averse industry by necessity will have to assume more risk in creating innovation to reduce their emissions.

The Future

We should all really be listening to the youth, this young woman has a command of the climate crisis topic and she will face this issue head-on long after the "adults" are gone.

Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. plenary in Katowice, Poland, condemning global inaction in the face of catastrophic climate change.

YouTube Video

Tools to Measure Emissions and Create Efficiencies

Creating a baseline is a starting point, depending on how much detail and effort one puts into this carbon reduction effort, visualizing a footprint is the first step to creating a mindset for necessary change.

Greenhouse Gas Protocol Take a corporate approach to your home emissions.

Carbon Footprint Calculator a comprehensive guide to a variety of carbon emissions measuring tools.

Nature Conservancy Carbon Calculator This website will give you a starting point, though a more detailed analysis with Greenhouse Gas Protocol methodologies will zero in on exact metrics.

Energy Star Portfolio Manager Create efficiencies within your home or office.

Landscape Water Conservation USDOE guide to reducing water use on landscape applications.

Puget Sound Energy calculators for ownership, energy usage and carbon footprint of owning an electric car.

The Carbon Victory Garden In The Anthropocene

geo3

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday January 20, 2020 · 6:04 PM PST

2020/01/20 · 18:04

©George H Thomas | vermicompost, heirloom lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, carrots and saved seeds for the next season.

Anthropocene: "the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment."

In December 2018, I posted on LinkedIN Climate Change: Sustainability Framework for Carbon Reduction (Now a link to Daily Kos Post). This simplified, five-part framework for carbon reduction can be applied to any organization from a family residence to a larger organization, even a corporation.

Within the framework, the concept of mass civic engagement in a manner reminiscent of the Victory Garden movement of WWI and WWII was explored as a method to create an impact of CO2 reduction through engaging a large percentage of the US population (or any country).

What if we applied the framework to agriculture?

Agriculture is a sector of society that involves backyard gardeners, small market farm producers, and large multinationals, with all of humanity as the consumers.

Applying the Framework to the Modern Day Carbon Victory Garden

In an earlier article, I outlined a framework for carbon reduction. This framework can be adapted to any organization, process or industry.

Sustainability Framework for Carbon Reduction

The Carbon Reduction Framework is divided into five parts. Each part plays a role in carbon reduction through the lens of sustainable processes.

Economic, social, and environmental aspects are taken into consideration through specific decisions and the refinement of processes for daily life, backyard or commercial agriculture.

Three aspects of sustainability are typically considered:

The economic aspect maintains cash flow to support the business and the workers
The social aspect treats everyone within the business and community with respect.
The environmental aspect involves being a good steward of the land, air, and water

Within the Carbon Reduction Framework, as it is applied to agriculture, daily routine modification is leveraged through a mass civic effort to reduce the demand and the resulting emissions from fossil fuels. This type of effort takes leadership on a national level since the World War Victory Garden model was administered from the leadership perspective towards a common goal.

The primary benefits from following a sustainability framework when applied to agricultural processes include reduced carbon emissions per each agricultural site, reduced air pollution, locally produced tasty food, and providing an enriched civic experience connecting the production of food with the consumer.

Who or what event would provide the modern-day motivation to participate en masse?

Background: The WWI and WWII Victory Garden

The Victory Garden movement of the early 20th Century is an excellent example of a purposeful civic campaign that yielded results by engaging numerous sectors of society in a common cause.

The Victory Garden campaign of WWII engaged 70 million citizens, 51% of US Households. Efforts in Britain, Canada, and Australia followed a similar framework of localizing food production into backyards and local parks to reduce fuel and labor resources used in large scale agricultural production and transportation then repurpose these resources to the war effort.

Victory Garden Engagement

Data: https://garden.org/special/pdf/2014-NGA-Garden-to-Table.pdf

Comparing the participation in gardening through these three eras, two of which were world wars and the third current era perhaps a larger battle for the survival of the planet. Participation in 1943 seemed to be the height of the American gardening movement with ⅓ of national vegetable production originating in a local Victory Garden.

In addition to the material efficiencies, a social benefit of a civic camaraderie through working collectively on building and maintaining Victory Gardens, then sharing in the harvest boosted the morale of communities during these challenging times.

Cuba’s Urban Garden

A modern example of local food production for a large urban population can be found in Cuba. With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, imports of food were reduced and eventually suspended along with material goods to produce food that included fertilizers.

Local ingenuity through organic agricultural methods on small plots of land through the necessity to provide caloric intake for the citizens, continuously increased yields so that by 1995, most of the fruits and vegetables of Havana (1995 population 2.25 million) were grown locally. What started as a grassroots effort was later adopted and promoted by the government.

While Cuba does have the advantage of a tropical climate with the availability of year-round agriculture, many of the small scale agricultural methods can be implemented anywhere on the planet. Innovative raised bed structures built from wood, rocks, brick and a diverse range of locally acquired materials make up the foundation for an easily worked vegetable bed with crop residues, household food waste, animal manures, worm castings incorporated into the soil to build a nutrient-rich soil.

Efficient drip irrigation, carefully selected open-pollinated crops, crop rotation and integrated pest management produce yields up to 20kg per sq meter (rapidtransition.org , 2019).

This government adoption of a citizen-driven movement was crucial to the success in Cuba, while the Victory Garden movement of WWI and WWII was primarily promoted by the government and rapidly adopted by the citizens. This distinction reflects a global shift towards "people power" in influencing governing bodies, with the government adapting to the needs of the people for the greater good of all of society.

Modern Engagement

The example in Cuba was necessitated by the need for survival of the population through the loss of imported foods and basically the need for caloric intake to survive. The modern-day Victory Garden is an important component for the survival of the planet.

In the time since the victory garden movement, society as a whole has become more dependent on fossil fuels is not only the transportation of agricultural products but the actual growing methodologies dependent on synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and the related processes deployed on GMO mono-crops.

Mass civic engagement for a cause, or these days a cause is reframed as a “challenge” has a historical precedent. Today, with social media engagement, there is the potential to reach a similar civic engagement rate by extending a Victory Garden type of civic engagement, to a global threat, climate change.

Back to the Local Garden

Gardening is already a popular activity in the United States with over a third of the population with or near a garden. In order to make a dent on climate change, the number of gardens needs to increase, the gardening methodologies shift to a more “organic” approach away from fossil fuel-based fertilizers and herbicides and the yields and varieties of nutritious vegetables need to increase.

“Local” and “organic” are synonymous with healthy eating. These terms are not only embraced by the regional farmers market but marketed by the big box Walmart and Costco who play a large role in this $49 billion dollars organic food and non-food sector (Organic Trade Association, 2017).

“Local” speaks to community engagement, through sharing the harvest of a backyard garden or pea patch or the fact that you can meet the farmer that grows your food at a farmers market or local CSA.

While “organic” in the marketplace refers to the USDA Organic Certification an internationally recognized methodology for producing food and even some non-food products.

When not addressing agricultural commerce from the USDA Organic Certification perspective, organic agriculture is the practice of growing plants without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and ideally with heirloom seeds, seeds that are “open” pollinators that have been grown for several generations, typically acquired through specialty plant breeders or even from local seed savers since these types of varieties can reproduce similar qualities from parent plant through the following generations.

Natural fertilizers include manures and rotational cover cropping that build soil health and retain an ecosystem within the soil that sequester carbon, stores nutrients as well as maintain the conditions to retain water in the soil.

A Very Local Supply Chain

The modern Victory Garden is in the backyard, the local “pea patch” community garden, the CSA subscription from a market garden or small farm, the commerce of a local farmers market and the occasional locally sourced vegetables from the supermarket.

Localizing food production to not only reduce the energy used within the supply chain but to connect the consumer with the producer whether it is a neighbor or the local organic farmer at the farmers market.

Many home gardens, family farms and larger agribusiness have some connection with the historical Victory Garden movement. Whether it is generational gardening knowledge passed down through a family member through hands-on backyard ingenuity or the family farm that once was guided by the Farmers Almanac and now organized through GPS and data in the cloud, where the end goal is to produce an abundance of crops through efficient methods.

Localizing food production provides opportunities to not only reduce the energy used within the supply chain but to connect the consumer with the producer whether it is a neighbor with a surplus of vegetables for gifting or trade or the local organic farmer at the farmers market.

Within this example, the individual Victory Garden mitigates the supply chain emissions on a small scale that can be scaled to large scale supply chain emissions mitigation through mass civic engagement with numerous neighborhood and regional Victory Gardens. A larger impact can be realized through diversely planted vegetable beds in a local garden, with the variety of vegetables available to the citizens multiplied through trade and barter with neighboring gardens.

Supply chain emissions can be reduced through growing food locally. The historical case of WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is an example of how fuel savings are possible, yet these historical fuel savings were meant to be repurposed towards the war effort, where the modern-day Victory Gardens intent is to eliminate the need for fossil fuel in the supply chain.

In this modern-day supply chain example, growing tomatoes (or any vegetable) in the backyard or community pea patch reduces individual participation in the supply chain. A Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription reduces supply chain emissions to a lesser extent since many CSA allotments are either picked up by car or dropped off by delivery. Delivery emissions are classified as Scope 3 indirect emissions.

Additional carbon mitigation through the extension of the seasonality; using the locally grown tomato example, through greenhouse use or the preservation of the tomato by making a sauce, salsa or roasted then frozen or canned for a special treat during the long winter months.

Back to the Garden

By scaling the community-based backyard garden, community garden as well as creating more centralized market gardens, significant benefits related to human well being, ecosystem preservation and carbon reduction are possible.

Overhead view of a no-dig garden early in the season

An aerial view of a large backyard no-dig garden, in Redmond Washington May 2019. This is early in the growing season, this image illustrates the use of straw as "armor" to protect the soil and foster an active ecosystem within the soil. Leafy greens are growing under a floating row cover while overwintering kale continues to produce. Peas are starting to grow up a trellis next to sprouting potatoes.

The rain barrels are fed from a rainwater collection system on a nearby barn. The garden is designed to capture subsurface water off of the hill above it. Layers of composted manure with timothy hay and alfalfa layered above that, with another layer of composted manure, then a final layer of straw to act as armor to protect the soil from the elements during the winter.

In the spring, the straw is carefully raked off to plant leafy vegetables, under the floating row cover in this image. Tomatoes, broccoli, squashes, and similarly structured vegetables are placed in "nests" where straw is strategically removed, a hand full of compost from the worm bin added, then the plant "start" (grown in a window sill, cold frame or greenhouse) is placed in the soil with the straw pulled up to the stem of the plant to suppress surrounding weeds and retain moisture.

Backyard gardens using “no-dig” methods, where mulches, compost, and cover crops build up the soil rather than turn it over. The no-dig method is very efficient with water and nutrient retention, thus reducing municipal water input or well water from aquifers. These organic methods eliminated the need for chemical inputs due to the vigorous growth of the plantings while heavy mulch suppresses weeds and the undisturbed microbial ecosystems below ground are left alone to do their ecological services.

Heirloom potato crop through the season

Heirloom potatoes are easy to grow in Washington State, this plot received only the occasional rainfall for water input. Washington summers are notoriously dry, thus the no-dig method provides plenty of nutrients and water retention, while the remainder of straw that was placed on the garden the preceding fall as armor suppresses weed growth.

Potatoes provide ample calories and are easily stored for months, these potatoes are stored in old file cabinets in the garage. Any potatoes that sprout can be used as seed potatoes for the follow-on years crop.

Supporting the no-dig method is (supply-chain downstream - see below) outputs from the kitchen such as food waste that is processed in a worm bin as well as locally sourced (supply chain upstream) composted manure material. Additional practices of taking care to tread lightly on the soil by walking on the paths and not the beds and not disturbing the beds with manual or mechanical tilling methods suppress weeds and provide rich undisturbed live soils that can support numerous succession plantings over a season.

New Agriculture that is Really Old

When organic agricultural systems are taken to the next level, the term regenerative agriculture comes into play. This method takes a multidimensional approach to not only growing the crop but preserving and in some cases regenerating the ecosystem surrounding the crop. With a focus on soil fertility, soil health, and carbon sequestration in both above the ground surrounding diverse ecosystems and below the ground ecosystems using no or low till conservation practices. All inputs are monitored such as fertilizers and livestock feed as well as outputs whether it is the final agricultural product, wastewater, or carbon emissions.

Michael Pollen’s Book The Omnivore's Dilemma introduced regenerative agriculture to the mainstream with a profile on Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Virginia. Salatin focuses on livestock production through a field rotational method that produces naturally fed chickens, pigs, and cattle. The rotational method is also good for the land through “mob” disturbance of the grassland, then clean up and fertilization of the land and finally regrowth for the next rotation.

North Dakota rancher Gabe Brown proves that regenerative agriculture is scalable with his family’s 5000-acre ranch that employs a no-till farming methodology with cover and companion cropping with minimal herbicide use and no GMO or Glyphosate (Roundup).

Gabe Brown outlines the five principles of regenerative agriculture:

YouTube Video

Limit disturbance of the soil: be it a mechanical, physical or chemical disturbance.
Armor: Keep the soil covered at all times (cover crops or plant residues).
Diversity in plant and animal species: enhances ecosystem functions through numerous different characteristics above and below ground. Nature is more collaborative than competitive.
Keep living roots as long as possible in the ground. Living roots feed soil biology by providing carbon. This, in turn, fuels the nutrient cycle that feeds plants.
Integrate animals. Grazing of plants stimulates the plants to pump more carbon into the soil, which again drives nutrient cycling by feeding biology. By cycling more carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into the ground, we can actively mitigate climate volatility. It goes without saying that pollinators, predator insects, earthworms and all of the microbiology are incremental to any system.

(Gabe Brown)

"I want to say one word to you. Just one word." Soil.

The process of photosynthesis fixes atmospheric CO2 into plant biomass. As plants form roots and discard their leaves, organic matter is deposited in the soil which serves many purposes, among them water and nutrient retention. This natural cycle allows a natural ecosystem or a crop to thrive as well as future crops stabilizing soils from erosion. Over time as more plant biomass is produced, the soil is left undisturbed so that microbial processes can be sustained and more carbon is sequestered in the soil.

When soil is disturbed through deforestation of natural ecosystems or agricultural tilling, this carbon sequestration process is disrupted along with the nutrient and water retention natural services. By altering modern agricultural processes to adapt to and manage soil carbon sequestration, a vast problem of mismanagement can be shifted into a solution. The positive aspect of regenerative agriculture and surrounding ecosystem preservation works hand in hand to sequester carbon for the long term. Considering the size of some agribusinesses, this new way of thinking can provide measurable results.

Applying the Carbon Reduction Framework To the Carbon Victory Garden

Carbon Reduction Framework | © George H Thomas

What can you add to the list? Please comment below the article!

Energy

Install solar or join a community solar group.
Power an electric car with solar, use the car battery for on-site storage.
Reduce the dependency of fossil fuel-based inputs by supporting organic agriculture.
Plant a garden to reduce car trips to the grocery store - reduce Scope 1 emissions.
Reduce energy use in the supply chain of consumer goods with smart consumer choices - Reduce Scope 3 emissions.

Water

Develop an awareness of your water supply and water discharge.
Reduce water use around the house and garden.
Design garden or large agricultural system with efficient water use in mind.
Rain gardens create additional water sequestration on a property.
No-till or reduced till soil management for carbon sequestration and water resiliency.

Social

Supply Chain Upstream

Think about the supply chain and associated emissions with food purchases.
Develop “Precycle” thinking about the packaging and the need for grocery store purchases.
Shop efficiently with minimum car trips to the grocery store - reduce Scope 1 emissions.
Plant a garden to reduce vegetable supply chain emissions.
Use open pollinating heirloom seeds in the garden, then save the seeds from the harvest.

Supply Chain Downstream

Dispose of food waste through composting or a backyard worm bin.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle waste from the home or organization.
Be aware of local water resources, eliminate herbicides, excessive lawn fertilization, and chemical dumping.

Supply Chain Downstream: Food waste example

The USDA estimates 30% to 40% of the food supply is wasted, 31% at the consumer or retail level or approximately 133 billion pounds (2010). The EPA estimates 218.9 pounds per person in 2010 or approximately 71 billion pounds. The difference accounts for more waste in the upstream supply chain. Yet either way that is a lot of food waste.

The main issue with food waste in a landfill is that the food waste is not exposed to oxygen and it slowly decomposes releasing methane (CH4) to the atmosphere, a potent greenhouse gas that has 24 to 80 times the heat-trapping properties compared to CO2. If the food waste is sent to a composting or worm bin process, the food waste is broken down by worms and microbes and while the process still releases CO2, fertile soil is produced for future agricultural uses.

scenarios with different participation rates for managing food waste Table © George H Thomas \| Data: https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

The table above illustrates a few scenarios with different participation rates for managing food waste. Using the WWI and WWII Victory Garden participating rates in a modern-day context, significant CO2 reduction is possible. As a comparison, three large technology companies with their publicly reported combined Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions are displayed.

With all US households participating in food waste composting, 35.2 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions can be diverted from release into the atmosphere.
Amazon total carbon footprint, 44.4 million metric tonnes CO2 emissions, greater than 100% US household participation in reducing food waste.
Microsoft total carbon footprint, 17.6 million metric tonnes CO2 emissions, equal to 50% US household participation in reducing food waste.
Google total carbon footprint, 4.4 million metric tonnes CO2 emissions, equal to 20% US household participation in reducing food waste.

Many local waste disposal services now offer compostable food waste disposal as a service. If you live in a detached house or use a local pea patch community garden, a worm bin is an excellent method of diverting this waste from the landfill or avoid the downstream footprint of the food waste disposal service.

Household food waste

My household food waste: onion skins, eggshells, coffee grinds, kale stems on the left, the worm bin on the right that processes the waste into vermicompost.

While I have not weighed my own food waste, I do fill a large bowl every day or two with food waste that includes coffee grounds, food scraps from meals, vegetable off-cuts including peels, paper towels, stale or past-use vegetables or other food waste. My household does not eat out that often thus food is either consumed or sent to the worm bin. I find the 210 lb. annual food waste metric (USDA) to be accurate and similar to my household.

I have a large 3 ft diameter plastic composting bin with a secured bottom and top to keep out the vermin (a few years ago a bear broke into the bin!). The food waste is deposited into the bin and covered with a pitchfork full of the worm bin material that contains worms, castings (worm poop) and previously disposed of material.

Every few months some of the material is transferred to a stackable worm bin for final processing by the worms. Once processed the material is added to the garden, typically as a handful of material with specific plants or mixed into raised beds.

The worms go on to do their work within the gardens. What is really remarkable about the worms is that they regulate their populations per the amount of material they are processing, thus they never overpopulate as long as there is a steady stream of material (their food).

Household Carbon Footprint Reduction

By incorporating the carbon reduction framework into a victory garden model, the supporting daily services of transportation, utility serviced electricity and air travel are daily reminders of a household or business footprint with a clear methodology on how to reduce that carbon footprint through efficient low carbon methods of food production.

Each meal continues to remind us of that footprint and the value of whole, nutritious and local food brings to a kitchen table with family or community.

Average per capita automobile mileage, electricity usage, food waste management, and air travel can be reduced through awareness and efficiencies in daily processes. By setting a goal as in the example below of a 10% reduction, with national participation at the scale of the WWII Victory Garden movement can make a difference.

The table below illustrates the average energy use for an American citizen.

Average auto mileage of 10,000 miles @ 22mpg
Average household electricity use 10,000 kWh
Assumption of one coast to coast airline trip to account for jet setters and business travelers.
Food waste of 202 lbs. per household.

The air travel is above average to account for jet setters and business travelers.

Food waste is not often mixed into a household footprint, though with the previous calculations earlier in the article and the availability of waste services that provide household composting, this metric has a significant potential for greenhouse gas reduction when food waste is managed properly.

The scope of the climate crisis is overwhelming, thus it will take a critical mass of participants to make a difference. As noted, 51% of Americans participated in the Victory Garden movement during World War II, with today’s connected society, there are numerous opportunities to match and exceed this participation, the Carbon Victory Garden can not only feed a community with nutritious local food but can reduce impacts associated with global warming gases and their association with components of the supply chain associated with food production.

WWII Victory Garden movement was primarily facilitated initially from federal government promotion. The power of this messaging has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improve the quality of life for many individuals and communities.

“Breaking bread” or the act of sharing a meal or metaphorically as fostering meaningful connections is taken to a new level to involve not only the human commonalities but to integrate the natural world through a local relationship with the production of food.

It Is Time For Grand and Not So Grand Solutions

The modern carbon victory garden is in the backyard, the local “pea patch” community garden, the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription from a market garden or small farm, the commerce of a local farmers market and the occasional locally sourced vegetables from the supermarket. Locally produced food from the Carbon Victory Garden serves as a cornerstone to an overall carbon emissions reduction practice.

Apply or at least think about the Carbon Reduction Framework in all processes! The low apples on the tree are very obvious.

Drive less or use public transit.
Use less electricity in the home or business through efficient processes.
Fly less.
Compost at home or participate in waste disposal composting program.

Climate change is upon us and it is being documented in real-time. No longer are we talking about an academic concept. Last summer the media focus was on the fires in the west, this summer it was the melting glaciers in Greenland and the warming of the arctic.

Like many citizens, I am concerned about climate change. I have kids and am concerned about their future as well as future generations. I wonder whether our civilization has the wherewithal to do something about climate change, while strategically building in resilience to our communities.

Grand solutions take buy-in from a large portion of the population. It is time to consider the grand and not so grand solutions that are needed to turn the tide to stabilize CO2 emissions.

---

Links for further research

What is the Anthropocene?

Soil Carbon Storage Soil carbon storage is a vital ecosystem service, resulting from interactions of ecological processes. Human activities affecting these processes can lead to carbon loss or improved storage.

Masanobu Fukuoka Japanese farmer and philosopher celebrated for his natural farming and re-vegetation of desertified lands.

Charles Dowding has explored and shared new ways to garden since 1983, most notably no-dig organic gardening, and since 2003 has developed ways to continuous-crop salad leaves. Discover his weed-free, no-dig methods to achieve superb and time-saving results in both small and large garden areas.

Geoff Lawton Permaculture Masterclass Zaytuna Farm, home of the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI), is situated on a sixty-six acre (27 hectares) property opposite the village of The Channon, Northern NSW Australia.

Morag Gamble: Our Permaculture Life

Permaculture Womens Guild Guided by women, we offer free and low-cost training to ecological designers of every gender, class, and persuasion.

Pete Kanaris is a professional landscaper who has taken his craft to another level with permaculture inspired garden and food forests using only organic inputs.

Justin Rhodes A permaculturalist homesteader who has inspired (and taught) thousands of people to grow their own food.

Curtis Stone - Urban Farmer There are over 40 million acres of lawn in North America In their current form, these unproductive expanses of grass represent a significant financial and environmental cost. Access to land is a major barrier for many people who want to enter the agricultural sector, and urban and suburban yards have huge potential for would-be farmers wanting to become part of this growing movement.

Richard Perkins Learn about the decisions and economics of Farm Scale Permaculture Design, Regenerative Agriculture, Keyline Design, Agroforestry, No-Dig Market Gardening, Pastured Livestock Enterprises, On-farm Slaughter facilities and Holistic Management.

Rob Greenfield Growing and Foraging 100% of your food.

The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni Food Forest Gardening in New Jersey!

Cuba’s Urban Gardens A fascinating overview of urban gardening out of necessity.

Gardening Australia Urban Farming Series

Down to Earth Community Gardens Free garden resources in Washington State.

Soil Carbon Cowboys A film about innovative ranchers and farmers who work with regenerative systems to make their animals healthy and their farms profitable.

Jackson Carpenter: Three steps to cut your carbon footprint 60% Today

World Food Day: time to put a spotlight on the food we produce and consume, as well as business leadership for change in the next years and decades. WBCSD is a global, CEO-led organization of over 200 leading businesses working together to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world.

The power of fruits and vegetables for nutrition

Food in the supply chain calculator

Food scrap calculator using EPA Waste Reduction Model (WARM)

Climate Victory Garden* A non-profit whose mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.

* I found this link after I wrote much of the article, so I guess we are all on a similar journey!

** This is my first daily Kos article, thus I am not sure that all of the graphics will display properly.

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Poll

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Add annual driving miles, household kWh, air travel miles and food waste in comments.

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California Becomes First State to Enable Public Banking In 100 Years!

jpmassar

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday October 02, 2019 · 6:04 PM PDT

2019/10/02 · 18:04

One hundred years ago the legislature of North Dakota created a public bank for the state and its people.

Today, moments ago, Governor Newsom signed into law legislation passed last month by the Legislature enabling the creation of public banks in California. It is the first such legislation to be enacted by a US State in a century (but like much that California does, quite possibly in the near future not the only such).

Unlike North Dakota's legislation, the new law (effective January 1st, 2020) does not establish a public bank of California. Rather, it lays out the process for how a municipality may create a public bank for itself or join together with other municipalities and jurisdictions to create a jointly-operated (aka, Joint Powers Authority) public bank.

This legislation is a milestone on a path that began at least ten years ago in California. In 2013 a Public Banking conference was held in Marin County, bringing together activists from all over the state and country. In 2014 Ellen Brown, a principal advocate for public banking and author of books on the subject, ran for State Treasurer with public banking being a major plank of hers — she received more votes and a higher percentage of them as a third party (Green) candidate that any other such candidate to date. Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities began looking seriously at public banking, commissioning reports and feasibility studies.

It became evident that while there was nothing, per se, prohibiting a California municipality from starting a public bank, neither was there any clear regulatory path for a city or joint powers authority to do so. The public banking movement needed a firm foundation. Local groups, including Public Bank for the East Bay (formerly Friends of the Public Bank of Oakland, nee Strike Debt Bay Area) banded together to form the California Public Banking Alliance.

After much hard work and many hours of volunteer effort, early 2019 saw Asssemblyperson David Chiu of San Francisco and Assemblyperson Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles introduce "AB 857, Chiu. Public banks."

Needless to say, Wall Street and their lobbyists opposed the measure, but somehow public banking activists prevailed. And while it is not likely that Wall Street will crumble at this setback, perhaps today there are at least a few minor tremblors in the bedrock beneath Manhattan.

Now comes the next phase. Having established the mechanism for creating a public bank, activists must demand of local politicians the will to actually create one - or many. Prospects include a coalition of cities in the East Bay, and San Francisco, Los Angeles (despite having rejected the idea in a referendum in 2018, before AB 857 had been introduced), Long Beach and San Diego independently.

It won't be easy. But insofar as public banking activists have been going strong, never giving up over the last ten years despite multiple trials and setbacks, betting against them may not where the smart money is placed at the casino that is Wall Street.

“We have been poisoned every day of our lives.”

Rashida Tlaib

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday September 20, 2019 · 4:26 PM PDT

2019/09/20 · 16:26

ScreenShot2019-09-20at9.50.02AM.png — Photo credit: Daniel Mears, The Detroit News. From a September Congressional field hearing in Michigan's 13th district.

Hello Daily Kos community! I appreciate all the work you do for the left, and I’m excited to start posting here and getting to know you.

I wanted to kick off by sharing stories about the incredible, resilient residents of my Congressional district.

This week, I brought Congress to Michigan’s 13th district for a field hearing on air and water quality. Residents in Wayne County and across my district have felt unseen and doubted for so long—despite experiencing unbearable odors, headaches, and nosebleeds. So we brought Congress to the residents.

Members of the House Oversight Committee & Environment Subcommittee went on a “toxic tour” of the state's most polluted zip code, 48217, and then heard from a panel of community members, experts, and advocates.

The 8,000 people in the 48217 zip code live in the shadow of Michigan’s only oil refinery, auto and steel industry plants, and other major corporate polluters. In total, there are 52 heavy industrial sites within just 3 square miles, putting out dozens of toxic chemicals.

That means children have elevated blood lead levels, infant mortality is twice the rate of the rest of Michigan, and many residents suffer from health problems like asthma and cancer, which lead to lower life expectancy rates.

In the face of this crisis, residents are taking matters into their own hands. The Eden Park Community Project is advocating for residents and fighting for environmental justice—including demanding that the Marathon Oil refinery pay for air quality monitors for the area. Eden Park aims to create much-needed green space and gardens, which would not only bring beauty to the community, but also serve as a buffer to mitigate air pollution.

If you’re able, can you chip in $5, $10, or as much as you can to the Eden Park Community Project’s fight for environmental justice?

At the hearing, this week residents explained how pollution disproportionately affects low-income communities of color, including in Detroit and Flint. They demanded the right to clean air and water, asking for:

Real infrastructure investment for our water and sewage systems and water affordability plans.
Green buffers to offset pollutants (like the Eden Park Community Project).
Cumulative impact analyses, because federal clean air laws just regulate individual companies, rather than accounting for the cumulative effect of polluters concentrated in certain neighborhoods.
Structural legal changes, including some that will be reflected in my upcoming Justice for All bill, which would restore disparate impact claims within the Civil Rights Act, to allow us to fight environmental racism.
Real accountability from corporate polluters that poison the community, illegally exposing us to toxins. One of the biggest is Marathon Oil, which continually poisons the community—including yet another toxic leak just last week—and escapes with modest fines.
A permitting process that gives residents a real say on whether or not an air permit should be issued.

Please donate now to the Eden Park Community Project—an essential environmental justice project in one of our country’s most polluted communities.

Photo from Congressional field hearing on air and water quality.

The communities in 48217 are majority Black, filled with long-time residents. As I noted in this week’s field hearing, this area is an example of how entire generations grow up in sacrifice zones, where our air and water is polluted by wealthy corporations for profit, and we are expected to accept it.

But we won’t accept it. Residents have been fighting for environmental justice and taking to the streets in protest for decades, because our lives are at stake. As resident and community leader Theresa Landrum said at a protest last week: “We're tired of waiting; we're tired of being afraid.”

Photo credit: Charles E. Ramirez, The Detroit News

Environmental justice activist Emma Lockridge explained in this week’s hearing how dangerous it is to have dozens of heavy industrial sites in such a concentrated area. She sleeps each night wearing a surgical mask, and still wakes up coughing.

The Eden Park Community Project would help rectify this long-term damage. But they need funds in order to buy and develop the plot of uninhabited land for the project. In preparation, community volunteers have been periodically cleaning up the property, once the site of a Detroit public school.

Please donate whatever you can to the Eden Park Community Project’s fight for environmental justice.

One committed community advocate, Vincent Martin, said: “We have been poisoned every day of our lives.” It’s true. I grew up thinking the smell of pollution was normal.

As the House Oversight Committee & Environment Subcommittee Chair Rep. Harley Rouda noted at the hearing: “The people of Detroit and Flint have been living without their basic rights, and they have lost trust in elected officials’ commitment to preserving and protecting those rights."

It’s time to change that. I told a local TV station this week that #13thDistrictStrong is my original squad. I learned from my community to never back down. And I won’t.

Street Prophets Coffee Hour | The Mark Sumner Utopia Challenge: Endosymbiosis as a Metaphor

linkage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 24, 2018 · 1:03 PM PST

2018/12/24 · 13:03

Street Prophets Coffee Hour title with coffee cup on table with two cookies.

This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself below in a comment. This Coffee Hour series is brought to you by the Mark Sumner Utopia Challenge.

The Island of Utopia - For the 1518 edition of Thomas More — A woodcut by Ambrosius Holbein, illustrating a 1518 edition. In the lower left, Raphael describes the island Utopia.

Mark Sumner in a recent diary reminded Daily Kos readers of a dream he had of rehabilitating Thomas More’s 500 year old idea of Utopia. He refers the readers to his May 29, 2016 Daily Kos Diary, The Good Future: Reclaiming Utopia, where he critiques Thomas More’s Utopia pointing out the good and the bad. And at the end of the diary he outlines a simple three step plan to organize the search for a path to a new utopia.

I think it is fair to say the delivery and detonation of the Russian weapon called Trump on November 8, 2016 is a good reason for a Daily Kos Staff Writer to interrupt the search for Utopia. What is encouraging for me Mark has made a new commitment to spend some time developing the idea and asked for community input for the project.

Remember back in May 29, 2016 when Marc wrote his hopeful utopian diary. We had a well qualified candidate for President running and Trump looked like a long shot. There was an inevitability of incremental progressive progress in the air. Dreamers believed justice would prevail. Under President Obama America still had the respect of much of the world. And, most importantly of all most Progressives and Democrats felt we had a future. Perhaps a future moving toward some utopia or better life.

And then on T-Day, November 8, 2016, everything changed. Overnight we lost the dream of utopia and we got caught up in an eternal rehearsal of disputing the facts and signaling for attention. The national dialog became making America great again.

Forgive me for digressing for a moment but I think that any conversation about creating an utopia should start with understanding the political mood, trends, and language that could help or impede the creating a utopian alternative. In fact the path to a utopia may include a new type of politics, new metaphors, and new language.

Historian, Timothy Snyder, offers two new terms that name the moods referred to above. The first is the Politics of Eternity and it describes the Russian political mood. And it names the direction the Republican party is allowing Trump to lead us in. The second he calls the Politics of Inevitability and it sums up the American mood prior to T-Day.

In the spirit of Snyder’s two neologisms I would like to create a third called The Politics of Structural Stability. It is my belief that building a utopia requires a new politics. And that the current dominate eternity and inevitability politics will not allow any serious development of any type of utopia. It is also my belief that the Democratic Party could adopt many elements of the mechanics of Structural Stability into its party platform.

Simply put the Politics of Structural Stability is applying the science of homeostasis to governance. It is the recognition that all living systems have value and must be maintained within limits. The goal of Structural Stability Politics is to foster and nurture stability, resilience, and predictability in living systems.

Lastly, Sumner’s utopia project mentions that his utopia vision would be built under “post-scarcity” conditions. I must take a different direction on this design parameter. The ideas I’m working with suggest that post-scarcity economics is a form of inevitability politics and thus is not sustainable or necessarily desirable. So my utopian proposal assumes we are crafting an utopia for an age of scarcity.

Jump the fold for a look at the utopian vision I propose. The quickest way for me to convey my idea is to pretend I’m telling the story of the history of the success and compromises of the utopia project from the vantage point of a few hundred years in the future.

This article is continued after the fold. The comments for this article are are after community links and its sub thread.

Please limit community links to one per user because we want to encourage greater diversity of submissions of community links from different users. In the case of a needed fundraiser, either the member in need will write a diary or someone will do it on their behalf. That diary is then linked to in the comments. Please only post community links in community links comment provided.

NBBooks

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday December 23, 2017 · 5:28 PM PST

2017/12/23 · 17:28

Cross posted from Real Economics.

I suspect that most people do not understand bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because they also do not understand how money is "created." The reality that money can be created out of nothing is so ludicrously simple that most people simply cannot believe it. John Kenneth Galbraith observed that "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled."

I am going to go out on a limb and assert that if you do not understand the creation of money, you cannot be truly progressive on economic issues. You can support progressive positions on economic issues, but until you understand how money is created, you will always be vulnerable to being herded into a veal pen for slaughter by financial oligarchs.

If you want an explanation of money creation, in January 2015 I posted Creating money out of thin air on DailyKos. If you want examples of so-called progressives freaking out because they refuse to believe money is created out of nothing, read the comments.

Cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is now the best known example, with the highest market capitalization -- $217.8 billion the minute I write this -- are nothing more than computer programs creating their own units of money. Libertarians love it, because it is money that is NOT being created by governments. No small number of libertarians also hate the big banks almost as much as they hate government. So, I think cryptocurrencies are going to be more than a passing speculative fad simply because they are a libertarians wet dream. Nothing will happen to knock cryptocurrencies that libertarians won't shake off as they cling to their anti-government, anti-"crony capitalism" ideology.

The infuriating irony is that one of the things libertarians hate most about governments and central banks (which are often quasi-government entities controlled by the very financial oligarchs who control the big banks of Wall Street and the City of London) is that governments and central banks issue fiat currency that is backed by nothing. Libertarians insist on a return to the gold standard, so that government-issued money has "value." What about cryptocurrencies, though? I have yet to hear any libertarian denounce Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency because it is not backed by gold, or backed by anything else of "value."

So, while the speculative frenzy of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is bad, the one good thing is that it is teaching people that money can be created out of nothing. I suspect that's why Dimon of JP Morgan hates Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies so much. Either that, or Dimon is just talking them down to manipulate the price.

(A note on why the speculative frenzy is bad. Because it is a misuse and misapplication of society's talents and resources at a time when the only frenzy should be building the Tesla and electric car recharging stations, wind turbines, solar energy arrays, geothermal generating plants, urban mass transit systems, and upgrading and replacing every man-made structure on the planet to, to transition as quickly as possible away from burning fossil fuels and worsening climate change.)

Post employment : The end of things

ArdeeWNC

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday March 14, 2017 · 10:38 AM PDT

2017/03/14 · 10:38

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/15/news/economy/smart-robots-stealing-jobs-davos/

I have wondered for some time, whether any think tanks or institutes were working on a vision of our future, post-employment. After all, we have known since the first mainframes that computers would take our jobs. I come to find out that it was always only a punch line to a joke. No one has developed a plan for a society without employment for our culture to shift into. So the joke is on us.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I am going to make a prediction that I hope never comes true. At least, I hope I'm not here to see it. No, not the end of the world, or even the end of democracy, but the end of 'things' as we know them.

I make "things." So this prediction is not made lightly. I have made things for my entire working life, from making food on a restaurant line, drafting plats for engineers, designing magazines and brochures, coding websites and apps, and now handmade art-to-wear. I have been inside and outside the corporate world, and often in just the right place to see trends happen in slow motion.

I was fresh out of college when there were actual warnings that computers would take our jobs, it was discussed in newspaper articles and on talk shows. There were jokes, and smug contests like the Big Blue chess contest that Gary Kasparov lost, much to everyone's secret chagrin. But the economy was booming so we forgot to worry about it. And sure enough, one industry by one, jobs were eliminated and the ones that were left all went to Asia. So that prediction, while accurate, is incomplete. Those jobs, we think, are still ours by right.

And we say to ourselves, there are still jobs in healthcare, retail, food service. We just have to suck it up and take the lower pay scale to work at all. Yes, the word from the corporations is, there are still jobs here in the US. And, while the government changes it's flavor of lip service each administration, the outsourcing of our jobs will not end until US workers will accept starvation wages and poor working conditions. And we are halfway there.

Or, until there are enough high functioning computers and robots to do even those last few labor-intensive functions that corporations are so loathe to pay humans to do.

www.cnbc.com/… “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income”

www.npr.org/… “Rise Of Artificial Intelligence Met With Mixed Reaction At SXSW”

Yes, jobs could easily come back to the US if Trump incents corporations to that tune. If he gives out corporate cash that will pay for the last few shovels of dirt that bury human labor as a valuable commodity, all the US corporate manufacturing will come home, but we won't be working for them.

It’s not just things that will disappear. Practically all our service jobs can be replaced to some degree by robotics. Fast food started life at an Automat, after all. All reasonably paid healthcare and social work jobs will go away when there is no funding from the government. Certainly, if the poor, sick and elderly don’t add to someone’s bottom line, they don’t matter as consumers. The last few holdout jobs will be paid at the lowest scale that Congress will consent to dribble out for us.

We already have cheap goods and a drastic reduction in choices - either fall-apart-yearly or high-end-luxury-(mostly)-well-made. Most of us are already buying at dollar and discount stores, warehouse clubs and the great Satan, Walmart. Soon quality will only be available to the billionaires and their millionaire underlings. Selling small moderate price goods in volume for pennies is much less profitable than selling big ticket items to rising niche markets of people who have money to spend.

And, in the end, selling companies or stock is so much cleaner and less troublesome than making things for people. What we are seeing in Washington now is a buying and selling of countries and their assets. If Russian sanctions are dropped, a handful of people will own part of Russia's oil industry. That's the market level that our leaders have in mind when they think of a 'free market.' That would also mean free of any responsibility to citizens, free of us entirely. If our existing economy shifts dramatically to take out the last human element, we don’t just lose a job, we lose a reason to get up in the morning, pride in one's work, seeing something grow that you are a part of. That will be the end of our shared community identity as we've known it since the Industrial Revolution, at least.

I don't make that statement idly. I have wondered for some time, whether any think tanks or institutes were working on a vision of our future, post-employment. After all, we have known since the first mainframes that computers would take our jobs. I come to find out that it was always only a punch line to a joke. No one has developed a plan for a society without employment for our culture to shift into. So the joke is on us.

The most that I have heard is a living stipend for all citizens, that has some good aspects and bad aspects. As in, there's really no plan there. What do people do all day? They can't possibly expect us to have real leisure time on a stipend, so what will we all do?

And factor in the decrease in public education, probably more lead and pipeline toxins in the water, more mental illness, more guns. Now add in added support for militarized policing and increased business for private prisons, more latitude for police and citizen killings. Trump is pushing all those forward as I write.

Will we be doing a lot of shopping in that environment? Will we be feathering our nest at West Elm or buying gourmet ingredients from local artisans? Are we filling our closet with new clothes or having dinner parties?

I can already tell you about the luxury market of things made by craft artists. The universal truth is that none of us can afford our own work. We have nice things if we are feeling flush enough to trade away our handmade work for someone else's. We are flush if there were enough people at a show who can drop a thousand bucks on something that has limited functional use in most cases. They are the ultimate "things", valued for their thing-ness. That group of buyers is thin on the ground in the US, other than the big cities where artists and anyone making less than 500K can't afford to live. I live in one of the few artist enclaves where the craft market is active and the cost of living is reasonable. But government is rapidly making changes to hobble the spending and traveling habits of 95% of the population. So rather quickly, I will have less and less of a future making things.

Here's the rest of the loss - big things, things that make our infrastructure. Unless a robot with AI can lay pavement, roads and bridges won't be built, repaired or maintained, because there's no profit in it and the government is now only there to make the lives of the "job creators" happy. Actually, I'm sure there is such a robot, but only Europe and Japan feel that their citizens are worth the expense. The US public infrastructure is already deteriorating from neglect, because politicians won’t pay for it. Travel will be difficult at best, expensive and dangerous at worst. Meanwhile, those who were shamed by Elizabeth Warren for having benefited from the public roads that led to their factories will have taken the hint. No workers, no roads. Voila. And the corporate heads have helicopters, jets and drones, so Nyah, Nyah, Nyah.

So let's recap. Jobs - going, going, gone. Government - in crisis, but heading towards corporate fascism. Everyone’s budget restricted to essentials like healthcare. Difficult travel conditions, bad roads, heavily policed air and train travel, more people staying at home. Public Education, air and water quality, civil rights enforcement, healthcare, and support for seniors are all ending in the foreseeable future. Like this month. Policing, violence and maligning minority groups on an uptick. Now.

No one is at the helm now to direct our future, because everyone is watching the circus. No one is parsing the effect on the people of this rapid shift of capital and public assets to the 1%. While dissent and resistance are healthy right now, we don't have leadership who sees the big picture.* The Democrats are certainly not addressing a future without employment; they know it's coming but are afraid to talk about it. ‘Bring back Jobs’ is way too handy as a political meme for anyone to admit that employment as a whole is a dead concept.

This is a dystopian vision, but if you can't see the way this is going, and has been for 50 years, then you may be surprised when you are laid off and replaced by AI. After all, an internet site random-lie-generator can do what KellyAnne Conway does. Why not your job?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Bernie Sanders is on point for the economics issues that I mention, supporting single payer healthcare, a living wage and a future living stipend:

“It does seem to be one of those rare ideas drawing support from both conservatives and liberals alike, and being that we stand to lose half of our jobs to automation within 20 years, it seems like an inevitable choice between technological unemployment causing great suffering or great liberation.”

However, he has never discussed a post-employment scenario either, and as an independent, he depends on a coalition with the Democrats to get anything accomplished.

SP Coffee Hour: Complementary Economies Revisited

linkage for Street Prophets

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday August 29, 2016 · 1:09 PM PDT

2016/08/29 · 13:09

Welcome to the Coffee Hour / Open Thread. For today's suggested topic lets consider Complementary Economies.
-

From Designing Bioregional Economies in Response to Globalization Bernard Lietaer and Art Warmoth © 1999
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This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself below in a comment. Today's Coffee Hour is brought to you by Complementary Economies. ... More beyond the fold.

linkage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday August 29, 2016 · 1:08 PM PDT

2016/08/29 · 13:08

This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. Today's suggested topic is: Thinking About Utopia.

New Harmony - A bird's eye view of a community in New Harmony, Indiana, United States, as proposed by Robert Owen. Engraving by F. Bate, London 1838. — New Harmony, a utopian attempt; depicted as proposed by Robert Owen

A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities. Utopian ideals often place emphasis on egalitarian principles of equality in economics, government and justice, though by no means exclusively, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology. — Wikipedia

What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself beyond the fold in a comment. This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. What are your thoughts about Utopia.

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Sunday July 10, 2016 · 12:38 PM PDT

2016/07/10 · 12:38

On April 5 2016, someone wrote a story assailing Senator Sanders’ claim that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.” I was shocked to see the story had enough support to elevate it to the recommended list, despite these provably false statements:

...to say that the “business model of Wall Street” is fraud “to a significant degree” is completely irresponsible. Do you know what else is part of their business model? Helping enterprises raise capital in order to innovate and grow and provide goods and services to the economy.

On reflection, I realized that there are a lot of new people reading DailyKos who are—how to put this politely?—not completely aware of certain facts. Once or twice a year, Kos proudly notes how many more people are reading this site—which is great and certainly something to be proud of. But, it obviously means that we need to begin a new cycle of educating people about economics, banking, finance, Wall Street, and so on. The facts clearly show that Wall Street is NOT a net benefit to society, but a major reason why the United States continues to suffer poor economic performance for the bottom ninety percent of Americans.

The large graph at the head of my story was compiled by the staff of the New York Times, and published on November 7, 2011. It is based on reports and other documents of the Securities and Exchange Commission going back to 1996. I like it because

1) it includes the specific law or regulation that has been violated;

2) it includes the names of the financial firms that committed violations—and the list include all the large Wall Street firms; and

3) the chart shows clearly that specific financial institutions have committed repeated, serial violations.

I would hope that just this graph alone would convince anyone of how stupid, ignorant, and/or deceitful it is to claim that Wall Street’s business model is not based on fraud. But the reality is that the graph captures only a very small part of the mendacity, deceit, fraud, and lawlessness that characterizes almost every aspect of Wall Street’s operations. Much of what I present below was initially presented in an excellent and exhaustive collection of links on WashingtonsBlog in May 2014: 6 Years After the Financial Crisis Hit, The Big Banks Are Still Committing Massive Crimes.

Oil market manipulated

In August 2008, Global Research’s F. William Engdahl, author of numerous books and article on the geopolitics of the oil industry, wrote that “As much as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds.” Engdahl’s research is corroborated by former Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Michael Greenberger. Here is a collection of documents by Greenberger, including his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, both in June 2008. In May 2013, the European Commission began a major investigation after concluding that oil prices have been manipulated for many years. In April 2016, it was revealed that large banks in New York and London aided Unaoil in bribing governments worldwide to manipulate oil prices.

Other commodity markets manipulated

Big banks and government agencies have been conspiring to manipulate commodities prices since the 1990s—demonstrating that Wall Street’s capture of the regulators in government is not new at all:

In 1991, the CFTC started issuing exemption letters. The first letter was written to J. Aron, a subsidiary of … Goldman Sachs.

Pretty soon, every major bank in the U.S. was given an exemption.

Congress didn’t know about the exemptions. Indeed, the House Agricultural Commission – which oversees the CFTC – didn’t even find out about the exemptions until 6 years later … in 1997.

When a congressman on the Agricultural Commission asked the CFTC for a sample of one of the exemption letters, the CFTC official said he had to ask Goldman Sachs whether or not the CFTC could show a copy to Congress. In other words, the banks were already running D.C. by the 90s.

Commodities speculation has exploded since the exemption letters were issues.

For example, in 2003, there was only $29 billion in speculative activity in the commodities markets. By 2007-2008, there was over $300 billion in commodities speculation.

In July 2010, the British organization Global Justice Now issued its report The Great Hunger Lottery - How banking speculation causes food crises. In November 2013, Global Justice Now reported that just five banks made £2.2 billion (around $4 billion) from food speculation in 2010-2012. The five banks—Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley—are the largest global banks involved in food commodity speculation. In its overview of the problem of bank speculation in food commodities, Global Justice Now estimated that

In the last six months of 2010 alone, more than 44 million people were driven into extreme poverty as a result of rising food prices. At the same time, banks and financial investors are making a killing. We estimate that Barclays makes up to £340 million a year from betting,

Big banks have reportedly also taken over important aspects of the physical economy – including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity – to manipulate market prices.

Fraud in the US treasury bond market

Every day in America, news reports provide hourly summaries of the latest indicators of the USA stock market, such as the Dow Jones Industrials Index, or the Standard and Poors 500 index. But the stock market is actually one of the smallest of the financial markets. In terms of capitalization (the market value of the face amount of all stocks or bonds) the USA bond market is nearly twice as large: the total capitalization of the USA stock market is $21 trillion; while the bond market is $37 trillion. In terms of daily trading, the USA Treasury bond market is three times or more larger than the stock market.

In September 2015, Bloomberg reported that the auctions that underpin the USA Treasury bond market have been rigged for years, according to a 115-page lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on behalf of a number of pension funds by Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and other law firms against the 22 primary dealers who serve as the backbone of Treasury trading—including Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA), Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS Securities, and Wells Fargo Securities. According to the Bloomberg article, the plaintiffs have based their case on data which indicates that more than two-thirds of a certain type of Treasury auction have been rigged to favor the primary dealers.

Fraud in world’s foreign exchange (currency) markets

Here I think it essential to supply historical background, because today, only about a third of Americans now living were alive at a time when there was no speculative foreign exchange trading at all. Foreign exchange trading or forex is trading of one nation’s currency for another’s, such as trading U.S. dollars for Japanese yen, or Swiss francs for Swedish krona. From the end of World War Two, until the early 1970s, forex was strictly related to one of four things:

1) actual foreign trade of goods or services between countries;

2) the need of people traveling out of country to change the currency of their home country into the currency of the country they were traveling to;

3) payments between governments, such as payments by the U.S. government to other governments for “basing rights” for U.S. military installations in those countries, or payment of aid to and from countries, such as the former Soviet Union to Cuba; and

4) illicit cross-border movement of things such as narcotics, weapons, human slaves, and covert intelligence operations.

In 1960, for example, there was $47 billion in forex conducted in the USA, an almost exact one-to-one match to the $25.9 billion in exports plus $22.4 billion in imports of goods and services.

In the nearly three decades from 1945 to 1971, the exchange rates of currencies were rather strictly controlled under the August 1945 Bretton Woods agreements between 44 Allied nations. These nations’ currencies were set in narrow band of values in relation to the USA dollar, and the USA dollar in turn was valued at 35 to one ounce of gold (one ounce of gold equaled $35). But on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced what amounted to the end of the Bretton Woods system: the suspension of the convertibility of dollars into gold. This ended the post-World War 2 era of fixed exchange rates.

It is the world’s single most momentous decision of government economic and financial policy in the entire post-war period, up until today. Nixon’s decision meant that exchange rates could float, or rapidly shift in relative value, entirely independent of any action by any government. This allowed massive, and I mean massive, amounts of speculative forex trading. In 2001, for example, while there was $1.94 trillion in total imports and exports of goods and services, there was $254 billion in forex trading every day. That works out to $60.96 trillion for the entire year. (See the 2001 Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity by the Bank for International Settlements.) In other words, there was over 30 times more forex trading than there was actual trade in goods and services—a very far cry from the near one-to-one ratio of 1960.

But the big banks of Wall Street, the City of London, and other world money centers were not content with this huge new bonanza. Rigging any market they’re involved in appears to now be instinctual. In December 2013, Bloomberg reported that Secret Currency Traders’ Club Devised Biggest Market’s Rates:

...regulators from Bern to Washington are examining evidence first reported by Bloomberg News in June that a small group of senior traders at big banks had something else on their screens: details of each other’s client orders. Sharing that information may have helped dealers at firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., UBS AG and Barclays Plc, manipulate prices to maximize their own profits, according to five people with knowledge of the probes.

Just under a year later (November 12, 2014, Reuters reported that regulators had imposed $4.3 billion in fines on major banks after an initial investigation. The banks fined were: HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, UBS AG and Bank of America Corp. In May 2015, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland pleaded guilty to manipulating currency markets, and agreed to pay a $7.5 billion dollar fine. According to the New York Time’s report, the

scandal...unfolded nearly every day for five years. The crimes described on Wednesday also painted the portrait of something more systemic: a Wall Street culture that enabled many big banks to break the law even after years of regulatory black marks after the crisis.“If you aint cheating, you aint trying,” one trader at Barclays wrote in an online chat room where prosecutors say the price-fixing scheme was hatched.

Interest rates manipulated since 1991

The first thing that should be noted is that—like forex—only about a third of Americans today have lived during a time when interest rates were very strictly controlled by government regulation and intervention. A July 2009 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, A Short History of Financial Deregulation in the United States (pdf file), provides a brief but excellent review of these issues: the two sections on the shredding of usury laws and interest rate regulations is less than four pages long. The two key events were:

1) The 1978 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp., which held that nationally-chartered banks lending
across state lines were governed by the laws and regulations of the state in which they were incorporated, not the states in which they lent money to customers. This initiated a “race to the bottom” of financial firms, especially those offering credit cards, relocating or creating subsidiary headquarter in the states with the most industry-friendly regulation.

2) The passage and signing into law in 1980 of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act, which began the complete elimination of all regulatory caps on interest rates.

(See also Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006), pages 290-291, for three paragraphs succinctly listing 10 major landmarks in financial deregulation; and Simon Johnson and James Kwak, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010), Chapter 3, “Wall Street Rising.”)

Today, the largest fraud in terms of sheer size is the rigging of LIBOR—the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is used as a baseline in financial derivative contracts amounting to over $800 trillion. That is slightly more than 10 times the size of the entire world economy. Experts have stressed that the LIBOR fraud was both the largest insider trading scandal and the largest financial scam in world history. On 27 July 2012, the Financial Times published an article by a former trader who stated that manipulating LIBOR has been common since at least 1991. Among the biggest losers in the rigging of LIBOR were state and local governments which lost an estimated $10 billion. Even though a RBS subsidiary in Japan and a handful of other banks have been fined for interest rate manipulation, the BBC reported in February 2013 that LIBOR is still being manipulated.

(Again, to stress the point that there once was a time, before many of you were born, when financial markets were tightly regulated: LIBOR was not conceived until October 1984, and unveiled about two years later. See also Federal Reserve Bank of New York, LIBOR: Origins, Economics, Crisis, Scandal and Reform (March 2014)(pdf)).

In May 2015, USA Securities and Exchange Commissioner Kara M. Stein publicly released her strong dissent from a recent SEC decision to “allow Deutsche Bank to maintain its well-known seasoned issuer (“WKSI”) status, which would have been automatically revoked as a result of its criminal misconduct” in the rigging of LIBOR:

Deutsche Bank’s illegal conduct involved nearly a decade of lying, cheating, and stealing. This criminal conduct was pervasive and widespread, involving dozens of employees from Deutsche Bank offices including New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and London. Deutsche Bank’s traders engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud Deutsche Bank’s counterparties and the worldwide financial marketplace by secretly manipulating LIBOR. The conduct is appalling. It was a complete criminal fraud upon the worldwide marketplace…. Numerous Deutsche Bank derivatives traders communicated their desire to manipulate LIBOR to Deutsche Bank pool and money market derivatives traders, causing the pool and money market derivatives traders to submit false and misleading LIBOR contributions. These derivatives traders would then enter into derivatives transactions tied to LIBOR with unsuspecting counterparties who were unaware of Deutsche Bank’s criminal manipulation of LIBOR going on behind the scenes. These counterparties included universities, charitable organizations, and other financial institutions.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks, bonds, options, currencies and commodities, and anything else traded on financial markets by using computer trading programs which direct buy and sell orders in just thousandths of a second. Goldman Sachs has admitted that its computer trading programs can be used to manipulate any market. In March 2013, a Dutch company unveiled a new microwave network in Europe solely dedicated to HFT. The company’s 13 microwave towers cut the time it takes to transmit orders between London and Frankfurt by 4.43 milliseconds, or about 50 percent compared to cross-channel cable. Anyone looking at this process from the outside knows instinctively that buying a company’s stock or bond, or whatever, then selling it less than a second later, has absolutely nothing to do with the actual business performance and prospects of that company, or with supplying that company with financing.

On January 31, 2016, Business Insider reported:

Officials at the Australian Securities and Investment Commission have described the possible impact of HFT as “sometimes manipulative or illegal”, but “often predatory”.

In Australia HFT has made significant inroads into the market. In 2015 it accounted for nearly one-third of all equity market trades, a level similar to Canada, the European Union, and Japan.

ASIC estimates that HFTs in Australia are collectively earning an not inconsequential $100 million to $180 million annually.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The June 2013 post on Washington’s blog ended with a cascade of links showing that every single financial market is massively rigged and rife with fraud:

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways, for example:

Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts

Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this

Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this

Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this

Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this

Participating in various Ponzi schemes

Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees

Cooking their books (and see this)

Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says that JP Morgan has massively manipulated energy markets in California and the Midwest, obtaining tens of millions of dollars in overpayments from grid operators between September 2010 and June 2011.

The Biggest Fraud: Getting You to Believe Wall Street Has a Socially Useful Role

From Debunking the Great Myth of the Financial Markets, which I posted in May 2009,

Suggestions to solve the financial crises by basically shutting down most of Wall Street are always shouted down by howls of "How are companies going to raise money?" or "How are people going to invest in companies?"

Well, take a good, long look at this graph, which shows the percentage of capital expenditures by U.S. non-financial companies that was raised in U.S. financial markets from 1952 to 2006.

Financial markets provide less than zero percent of the funding for capital expenditures by non-financial companies (NFCs). “Less than zero percent” means the financial markets are taking money OUT of non-financial companies, exactly the opposite of the myth that Wall Street provides financing to companies in the rest of the economy.

Wall Street simply is not doing what most people think it's doing. Nor what most people think it should be doing. Wall Street is not even doing what it says it is doing. Wall Street is pushing a big myth that its services are essential to the functioning of the rest of the economy. But the truth as, as this graph shows, Wall Street does not -- and has not for a very long time -- serve the function of allocating credit in the economy….

...the fact that the financial markets contribute so little to the most crucial operations of non-financial companies is just the beginning of the story. The financialization of the economy has had severe effects on the goals and objectives of NFCs (non-financial companies), not just their operations and capital expenditures. What has really happened is that while the size of financial markets and types of financial instruments and transactions have increased, non-financial companies have been forced to abandon the long-term planning and goals of industrial capitalism, and instead adopt the short-term perspective and "quick buck" goals of the financial markets.

John Bogle, founder of the world’s largest group of mutual funds, the Vanguard Group, has written an entire book on the subject, entitled, The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation. Bogle has calculated that the financial system destroys $500 billion in value every year. Put another way, in less polite words: the financial system extracts $500 billion in loot from the rest of the economy every year.

A few weeks ago, there was an interesting interview with Rana Foroohar, author of Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and The Fall of American Business. Foroohar chronicles the rise of the financial industry and its destructive impact on the global economy.

But only 15 percent of all the money flowing through financial institutions today ends up in businesses. The rest of it is staying within the closed loop of the market itself. It’s being traded.

In June 2012, I posted Neo-liberalism, De-capitalization/De-industrialization, and the Res Publica on Naked Capitalism, examining the evidence that this process of financialization and the dominance of Wall Street has resulted in the United States economy becoming less capital intense—in other words, less capitalistic—and less entrepreneurial.

For example, fixed investment by manufacturing companies as a percent of GDP has fallen to less than half what it was during the 1950s through 1970s. In December 2011, Roth wrote Capital in the American Economy Since 1930: Kuznets Revisited, and reported that he had found:

The most notable and consistent postwar trend is the decline in net investment, even while gross investment remained mostly flat with slight decline, and capital consumption increased slightly. Those two small trends compound to result in the quite large (35%) decline in net investment as a percent of GDP from the 50s to the 00s.

This de-capitalization and de-industrialization of the U.S. economy is often attributed to globalization and the pressures of foreign trade, but I think this argument is largely a diversion from the role Wall Street and the financial system have played in looting America’s industrial base and working force. And make no mistake: the stagnation of USA wages for the past four decades is directly tied to the financialization of the economy. As former AFL-CIO economist Thomas Palley explained in The Debt Delusion in February 2008 (before the collapse of Bear Sterns laid bare the rot within the financial system):

America’s economic contradictions are part of a new business cycle that has emerged since 1980. The business cycles of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush share strong similarities and are different from pre-1980 cycles. The similarities are large trade deficits, manufacturing job loss, asset price inflation, rising debt-to-income ratios, and detachment of wages from productivity growth.
The new cycle rests on financial booms and cheap imports. Financial booms provide collateral that supports debt-financed spending. Borrowing is also supported by an easing of credit standards and new financial products that increase leverage and widen the range of assets that can be borrowed against. Cheap imports ameliorate the effects of wage stagnation.

This structure contrasts with the pre-1980 business cycle, which rested on wage growth tied to productivity growth and full employment. Wage growth, rather than borrowing and financial booms, fueled demand growth. That encouraged investment spending, which in turn drove productivity gains and output growth.

Palley’s overall schema of the shift from an economy based on rising wages and increased productivity, to one based on inflation of assets and increased debt, is another way of describing how the U.S. economy is being made less capital intense, or de-capitalized. If a corporate raider or “private equity partner” is able to gain control of an industrial company for $1 billion, and is able to break it apart and sell it piecemeal for $1.2 billion, the nation’s capital intensity has NOT been increased. The stock of capital did NOT increase by $200 million, contrary to all the numbers on all the financial statements dutifully reported by the dupes of the financial press. And this is an extremely simple example. Reality is more often characterized by complex financial arrangements that, when boiled down, amount to asset stripping and outright de-capitalization through imposing debt. These are not new tactics: Donald Bartlett James Stewart detailed this financial piracy in a nine-part series originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer in October 1991, which was published as the book America: What Went Wrong?.

I want to end by quoting again from a recommended story in April 2016:

...to say that the “business model of Wall Street” is fraud “to a significant degree” is completely irresponsible. Do you know what else is part of their business model? Helping enterprises raise capital in order to innovate and grow and provide goods and services to the economy.

And ask people: how is it possible that so many people who consider themselves part of the fact-based liberal community, can be so wrong?

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