In response to a followup note on my post on local government, Keith Owens asks:
When you say “a series of self-sustaining societies” what do you mean exactly? I think I may have an idea, but I want to make sure I’m clear on what you’re saying.”
Right now cities are designed for a uniquely mid-twentieth century purpose. They exist as a hub for labor, for manufacturing, for distribution. External capital creates and sustains them. Damn near every significant institution in the city is designed to reproduce this system. Education for example is designed to produce workers/mid-level managers/executives for industry. In a city like Detroit even the churches fit in this model-at least they used to.You could distinguish the powerful churches from the not-so-powerful by how many Ford Motor Co. jobs they could provide.
The strength of this city model is pretty clear. When industry rolls, the city rolls.
But the weakness of the model is not just the flipside of that (when industry fails, so does the city).
The model itself is not sustainable. Not environmentally, as twentieth century industry leaves a pretty toxic footprint. Not economically. Profit margins cannot continue to increase, and even if we take economic cycles into consideration over the long haul the peaks will decrease in size because of diminishing returns, competitors, market saturation, etc.
Finally it is not sustainable politically. As markets free up and capital becomes more and more mobile firms (as a partial result of government action) leave for better economic climates–first outside the city, then later outside of the country. To compete for those firms the best governments can do is reduce the tax burden. Reducing the tax burden means in effect reducing the ability of government to provide services to citizens. This in turn further neuters the citizens.
Now the thing is, at its best the twentieth century model of the city lasted a good 60 years or so. But that’s about it. And while cities like New York may very well last in something like its present form for another 100 years, there are a whole range of rustbelt cities that have not, and will not. Cities like Gary and Detroit are now full of literally thousands of citizens who are trained for jobs that no longer exist, and as a result are unemployable. In Detroit? I’d estimate that about 300,000 citizens in Detroit could easily work on the assembly line if this were 1965, but cannot find meaningful employment now.
So what type of vision can we generate for these cities that put these people to work, and give meaning to their lives?
This is where the idea of self-sustaining societies come from. We’ve got to create a model of living that both generates a life of meaning and purpose for everyone with the physical capacity to work, we’ve got to create a model of living that is not based on the vagaries of global capital, but on local development and modest growth. This means revisiting the idea of community, and perhaps reframing it. This means generating a new more transparent form of politics. This means identifying different means of feeding ourselves. And this definitely means a different way of educating our citizens.
Does this make sense?
A few days ago, Spencer Overton put up a post over at Blackprof.com that led to one of the top five conversations I’ve participated in over a blog—one of those types of conversations I had hoped I would routinely have with talented Black thinkers and grassroots activists via Black-focused blogs when I began to spend six to twelve of my leisure hours per week with them in October 2005. That conversation was/is in the same vein as the one your post might launch.
http://www.blackprof.com/archives/2007/03/the_case_against_black_leaders.html#comments
And, I like most of the ideas you just laid out in this post. I hope, one day, I’ll be able to pack as much into as few words as you just did. I’d like to add some things in this thread from an entrepreneur’s and long-time student of Black entrepreneurship’s perspective and perhaps use some concepts available to a fledgling economic sociologist.
However, I received my copy of Eddie Glaude Jr.’s new book In a Shade of Blue yesterday afternoon (the very best work he has produced so far). I flew through its first three chapters (I am lucky enough to be familiar with all of the ideas he is synthesizing) this morning before I took this brief internet break. And the book is currently competing for the top spot on my list of Black-focused philosophical writing by Black scholars during the past decade.
So after I’ll have submitted this comment I plan to read the rest of his superior work straight through. And I’ll submit some of my thoughts on your post later today or tomorrow.
On point Doc ,create a credit card for service,barter skills,i.e.babysitting for home repairs.Turn neighborhoods to collective commune decentralize the city.
Stuff like this was recently at issue in the mayoral election in Kansas City where the local government has been attempting a rennaissance (I’m sure that term makes an old Detroiter like you cringe) in our ghost-like downtown. The outgoing mayor and most of the city council gave out millions and millions in TIF money to developers to help revitalize the area bringing in a new arena (that has yet to attract a pro team, and an IRS processing center, while critics say it has been at the expense of the poorer neighborhoods.
The new mayor-elect promised all along the sampaign to put a moratorium on TIF’s in order to focus more on fixing some of the infrastructural problems of the city (our potholes are infamous) but he’s already feeling the pressure from the business community to keep TIFing the city’s money away to developers.
I fear unless we can come up with solutions and models along the lines of what your talking about that my fair city may look a lot like Detroit in the next couple of decades.
“The model itself is not sustainable. Not environmentally… Not economically. Profit margins cannot continue to increase, and even if we take economic cycles into consideration over the long haul the peaks will decrease in size because of diminishing returns, competitors, market saturation, etc.”
I might disagree with you here. I’m not sure. I think the model you describe as sustainable, the model based on “local development and modest growth,” might circumscribe economic growth if the society that would take this approach would be required to compete directly or indirectly with other societies that wouldn’t agree to restrain themselves similarly and would have immodest political economic ambitions. The society that chose to use the sustainable model you describe might plant the seeds for its own demise in a capitalistic global (or national) political economic market by uneconomically, and perhaps unintentionally, limiting its output and long-run economic exchanges with external economic agents/organizations.
And, I think the unsustainable model you describe, as I understand it, is sustainable indefinitely. Technology, increased efficiency and transportation of outputs, decreased barriers to trade between states and nations, and efficient training or retraining of laborers would sustain it. Profits needn’t necessarily stop increasing due to the economic forces you describe: “diminishing returns, competitors, market saturation, etc.” The best business organizations defend themselves against these types of encroachments with their managerial innovations, superior strategies, partnerships, technological innovations, and political influence. Some protect market share by intentionally or unintentionally establishing barriers to entry. And, markets can always expand.
I think the obstacles to building or rebuilding the most deprived cities from the ground up are obstacles I would seek out our nation’s most talented and altruistic entrepreneurs to take on. However, trying to find entrepreneurs who would be both talented (those who would know how to build competitive businesses that generate millions in profits) and altruistic (those who care at least as much about social justice as maximizing profits) might be difficult.
When I look at our deprived Black communities through an entrepreneur’s lens, I see them as sets of relationships, rules, and resources. I call these the 3Rs. Entrepreneurs evaluate a social system’s or organization’s 3Rs in addition to the opportunities to meet the needs of internal or external economic agents/organizations in order determine which forms of business organizations might enable us to achieve our desired profit margins, given those 3Rs. Unless a social system’s 3Rs were so invaluable or there were no way they could be combined to profitably manufacture outputs that would meet the needs of external economic agents, the social system’s 3Rs could be used to help it accumulate capital.
I don’t think we have any predominantly Black U.S. communities that have 3Rs that would be impossible profit from. Some of these communities would require a higher level of entrepreneurial talent or entrepreneurial genius than others. Most experienced entrepreneurs realize that the same amount of effort, and perhaps capital, would probably enable them to generate 40% profit margins during the first seven years of operations in communities with better 3Rs as would enable them to generate 15% profit margins during those first seven years in many of our most deprived predominately Black communities. And, I suspect there aren’t many able entrepreneurs or capitalists in the U.S. who would be willing to sacrifice so much profit. Even talented and altruistic entrepreneurs might have great difficulty obtaining enough capital to get profitable businesses up and thriving in many of our deprived communities—no matter how strong their relationships were with the world’s most powerful or wealthiest capitalists. But the best and most altruistic entrepreneurs would not be deterred.
We need more talented, experienced, well-connected, and altruistic entrepreneurs who understand real-world business and real-world politics (real world business operations are a little foggier and messier than most university courses lead their students to believe) to go build some businesses using the 3Rs that our deprived communities have to offer.
Technology reduces the need for labor. A reduction in the need for labor reduces demand. A reduction in demand here diminishes the capacity of the individual to negotiate prices. It diminishes the capacity of the union to negotiate prices.
Technology also reduces the need for certain types of land. Certainly with an increase in communication power there is a reduced need for office space, and an increased capacity to move industry and finance in response to various external forces. This in turn reduces the ability of local governments to make demands upon corporate citizens.
Now in the case of something like the automotive industry, it relies upon a market with the income to purchase its products. If the labor pool no longer has the money to consume–because they are no longer PART of the labor pool, or if they are they aren’t make the same type of loot–then they can no longer purchase the product.
If they can’t purchase the product the corporation will fail.
Unsustainability in a nutshell. And I haven’t even touched the environment–or the idea of social entreprenuers yet.
The other model is much more sustainable because it is not based on external consumption and demand as much as it is in creating local products that can be in turn exchanged for local goods. At its best it is a closed circle that in turn overlaps with other circles.
I understand what you’re proposing better now. I’ll think over your economic arguments this weekend. I do have some thoughts on your first argument.
“Technology reduces the need for labor. A reduction in the need for labor reduces demand. A reduction in demand here diminishes the capacity of the individual to negotiate prices (I read your use of prices here as prices for their labor hours).”
Better technology does decrease the demand for human labor hours per unit of output (better technology changes the production function), but this doesn’t entail that the laborers would lose their abilities to negotiate for fair proportions of the profits with the entrepreneurs or capitalists. If the laborers’ skills were to increase as technology advanced, they would be able to negotiate for more income per hour of labor. They could then earn the same amount of money selling fewer hours of their labor or more money selling the same amount of labors hours.
Nor would a decrease in demand for human labor hours per unit of output necessarily decrease the number of jobs. If the market for an economic system’s outputs were to expand and the laborers were to increase their skills (enabling them to negotiate for more profit per hours of labor), then there could be more high-skill laborers working fewer hours for the same amount of opulence they once had to work more hours to obtain.
I don’t assume that advances in technology couldn’t make everyone better off.
Historically speaking advances in technology don’t make everyone better off, that is one of the most glaring contradictions in capitalist production. The goal of introducing new technology generally has no altruistic need it has to do with increasing the surplus-labor time and decreasing the overall number of laborers laboring, thus leaving large parts of the population un- or underemployed which does decrease the ability of those left working to bargain for a better price for their labor.
“Historically speaking advances in technology don’t make everyone better off, that is one of the most glaring contradictions in capitalist production.”
Rob:
I understand where you are coming from. And, I know how things have been done in the past, in the U.S. and other nations. Technology, however, was not the wrongdoer. Those who used their superior influence over the rules to manipulate the resources and relationships and to bleed the laborers dry were responsible for making laborers worse off despite the efficiency gains made possible by technology. Those who chose not to share, those who could have forced or pressured them to share but didn’t, and those who inhumanely stranded so many laborers in order to invest their capital in more profitable pastures were the wrongdoers, not the technology.
I didn’t intend to argue that capitalists and their entrepreneurs are more likely to be altruistic than not. Indeed, I all but explicitly stated the opposite. However, what ignoble capitalists and entrepreneurs have done in the past and how they got away with it only informs us of what we might expect from them if they were given the same opportunities to control or make (or break) the same or similar rules. I am thinking about what is possible in systems where the rules might be different or the power to control or make (or break) them might be distributed differently.
What is possible, with capitalists and entrepreneurs who would care as much about social justice as they would about profits (these types of capitalists and entrepreneurs are indeed rare; however, they exist), and who could navigate through municipal, state, federal, and international corruption; antiBlack laws and regulations; anti-entrepreneurial laws and regulations; tricky political environments; and a whole bunch of other things they would have to deal with in order to help deprived communities profit from their resources and relationships, are profitable business organizations that would enable people to live close enough to their jobs so that public transportation shortcomings would not make it very difficult for them to start earning decent incomes.
Successful businesses such as these have been built and are being built. We just need to build many, many more. If we could begin to build many more businesses such as these, and begin to bring much more capital into these communities, then we could build on that.
For me, Detroit is case study #1. What happened here? Laborers lost their ability to negotiate for fair proportions of the profits, because they were faced with competition from cheaper labor pools. This is the norm, not the outlier.
Note that I talked about the role of education above. How exactly are skills supposed to increase if the institutions designed to increase the skills are bureaucratically designed not to do so? Again Detroit is the case study. What happened to the potential labor population–the ones who would have normally gone into the plant?
Hey Lester.
Wow. Between that detailed response of your generous answer to my question, and then the responses to that response, I definitely have a much clearer understanding of what you’re talking about. And yes, in large part it does make sense. Not to repeat so much of what has already been said, but it is definitely true that the industrial manufacturing model is dead and gone. But what’s worse, I think, is that the mentality that accompanied that model is still alive and well. Too many people in Detroit continue to think and problem-solve using the thought-process derived from an era that has fgaded into the rear view mirror. Before we can develop newly sustainable societies in cities like Detroit, we need to adjust and upgrade the Rust Belt mentalities so that we are better capable of designing and implementing those societies.
Thanks again, Lester, for taking the time to answer my question in such detail. And thank you also to the other readers who also provided me with a considerable amount to think about and digest.
Just as an aside, I think some of what you’re talking about is less a general loss of power for labor relative to capital than a loss of stability of business relationships. Fast changes in technology and society and markets and government can all mess up existing ways of doing business. The problem is that people need to be able to plan for the future, more than a couple years in advance. It really sucks to be a trained, well-paid guy doing a job that’s no longer necessary, when you’re 40 and have a mortgage and two kids. You’re looking at going back to the bottom of the economic ladder, losing your home, etc. Communitities work better when they can plan for the future, in the same way. Nor is this limited to blue-collar workers, as many a middle-manager or engineer at a defense contractor learned to his pain in the 80s.
I don’t know how you’d address this in a general way. Technology and markets will change over time, and trying to lock them in place would probably be worse than the instability if it were possible at all. I have a feeling that the notion that everyone should buy a house on a 30 year mortgage and accumulate equity as their only real form of savings is one source of great inflexibility.
Aren’t some cities better at adapting to these changes over time than others? It seems like you want cities that can adapt to changes, and that aren’t bound to a single industry. That way, American car makers’ demise doesn’t have to destroy your city. (And I am not convinced that their demise is as much about cheaper overseas labor as about lousy products from the American companies.)
I apologize for responding late. You make a good point. But the problem isn’t just a matter of stability…even if such a thing were possible. It is also a matter of generating civic capacity in citizens. So-called “global cities” like NYC, L.A., Chicago, and Houston are always going to be ok…baring an unforseen apocalypse. But just because the cities will continue to work does not necessarily mean that the people in them will be ok, nor does it mean that their model is anymore sustainable than the rest.
Let me say this latter part another way because as written it sounds like a contradiction when compared to the entry. There will always be some number of American cities that will continue to work even as the rest fail. While which cities those are may be the partial function of choices made at the local or state level, the presence of those cities are NOT the function of choice, but rather the function of the system itself. So going back to Detroit, people have been talking about how it should wean itself off of the auto industry and follow the path of X (Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, you name it). And I use to buy into that argument. But I do not any longer.