Greater Racket Tailed Drongo

J was sitting on the balcony watching this guy way out there in the tree. With the binoculars you could see his crest and the long dangly tail crisply. He even shimmered dark green. When I looked at the photo I was pretty sure that the black spot below the branch below the bird was the end of his tail. He flew away before I could check They have long strings with these little feather puffs way at the end. You can see it clearly on my favorite drongo picture which I extracted from a video I managed to catch of it flying near our balcony last year.

Overnight Changes

Literally overnight (and a little of yesterday) there were two changes in my environment.Until yesterday, the parking lot at our building for motorcycles and bikes was pretty much a free for all. Here's a picture from last year. There are a lot more motorcycles and bikes this year.
I did see them working on this when I left for work yesterday and by last night it had been transformed.




And then, near my office, was this newly erected billboard - there was literally nothing there the morning before - urging the people of Chiangmai to stop fires and help reduce global warming. As an Alaskan, where billboards are banned statewide to protect the spectacular view, it was a little jarring to have my view of Doi Suthep at this point so suddenly blocked. But the poles holding the sign up are made of bamboo, so there is a possibility that this is a temporary sign.

Alaska in the News

I learned from a Monday Bangkok Post article which has a National Geographic.com byline, that

Hunting the biggest 'trophy' individuals, including caribou in Alaska, influences plant and animal populations faster than natural selection and even other human impacts, a study found. Such preferences leave a disproportionate number of smaller animals and plants to reproduce.

The rest is at the link.

Chiang Mai T Shirts

We had dinner tonight with Rachel, one of the other AJWS volunteers who's working with a Burmese related organization. We ate at the vegetarian restaurant across the street from the North Gate of Chiang Mai University. After dinner, we wandered around the little night market there, which like the one near us on the south side of the University, is geared toward students. Rachel has been getting pictures each day of the number of days she's been here. Today she was looking for the number 41. She has them on the photo section of her blog.

While we were looking I discovered a really neat T shirt shop. The guy said he did them all himself. I liked their originality but none of them had my name on it. He said some were sold in Germany.



Then we found another spot selling T shirts. These were also neat, but again, there was something not quite right - in one case the word nigga - in the middle of the T shirt, so I ended up with some pictures of T shirts. The second batch were from Bangkok they told me.

Bangkok Protest 5 - Sufficiency Economy

[Monday, February 16, 2009, 5pm Thai Time - well that's when I started. I let this set yesterday while I did other things and now it's Wednesday about noon.]

Note: This is going to be somewhat rambling as I'm ruminating on this topic. In some ways it is new to me, in other ways it's old, but with new names. So consider this an exploratory look.

As I'm reading the English version of the Recommendations for the New Government, the policy recommendations made by the Thai Land Reform Network (or Network for Thai Land Reform, depending on who's translating), a coalition of organizations representing farmers and other poor Thai communities, I'm being pulled in different directions. I support the basic sentiments, but I think that the arguments could be better organized and documented.

As an US citizen reading this, one who lives in a red state (bizarre isn't that a 'red state' means a conservative state?), I've been sensitized to expect strong criticism of anything that isn't strongly pro-capitalist. The six months we lived in Portland, I was constantly surprised at how the liberals were as free and loose in their philosophy as the conservatives are in Alaska. But when you are always about to be criticized, you're forced to think about what you believe much more carefully and how to justify it.

And my academic training always wants an argument to so logically lead to the conclusions that the attentive readers already knows the conclusions before they reads them.

Anyway, this document basically assumes that the government has strong responsibilities to redistribute land to poor farmers, and I think it is this part that makes me feel, as a member of one of the organizations, vulnerable to challenge. I say that knowing that a document like this in Alaska would be blasted as 'socialist' (by people who probably couldn't tell you exactly what socialist means) and un-American. Of course, I'm not in the United States now, so that really is irrelevant. Also, I don't think you can really call it un-American after first the Bush Administration gave out $700 billion or so followed now by the Obama Administration doing the same. And, of course, both the US and Alaska have given away land to homesteaders in the past as well. But I would like to see this document's arguments better organized. There were a number of declaratory statements like this one:

Land is a social resource and an important productive resource. Thai society needs for there to be a just and fair distribution of land holdings so that the poor and small-scale farmers can have their own land for use in building up food security and security of settlement. . .

The phenomenon of land that is being held for purely speculative purposes, with an owner but not being put to productive use, indicates the injustice in land holding patterns in Thailand. This land should be used for production and distributed efficiently and appropriately for the benefit of landless farmers and the poor who lack land for settlement.

OK, I thought, you can say this, but many would argue that owners have the right to leave their property 'unproductive.' You have to link this to something that shows this is basic Thai policy or at least congruent with Thai values.

So, finally I got to the part of the document that mentioned Section 85 of the 2007 Thai Constitution (oh my, the Thai Constitution is 97 pages long, while the US Constitution is only 17 pages). But before I get to that, let's go back to another reason for concern about grounding these arguments.

I'm also thinking of my former student (forty years ago) who I visited Thursday on the way back from Bangkok. His grandparents immigrated to Thailand from China maybe 70 or 80 years ago with almost nothing. They took what little they had and bought a plot of land and planted bananas. They lived in a very basic house - I was in it a number of times in 1967 and 1968 - that had no electricity and water came from a well outside. It had a dirt floor. Every baht they had, they reinvested into land and production of bananas. They are no longer alive, but their son and grandsons have a great deal of land planted mostly, now, in sugar cane. Mook lives in a comfortable house and has, by anyone's standards, a good life - both in terms of material needs and spiritual needs. As I was reading the document, I could hear him saying, "My grandparents came here with nothing and worked extremely hard for their land. Why should the government be giving away land to farmers?" In fact on Thursday he bemoaned how hard his mom worked, going out early (before 7 am) every morning with the cane workers and getting back about 5pm when she would prepare food for all the workers. So, I want to be able to respond to Mook.

Additionally, I know there are lots of examples where rich investors were able to corruptly gain title to land. The document briefly cites some examples:

. . .there are many cases of land use/ownership documents that have been issued illegitimately and illegally. This applies to private land and land used by communities, such as land for production, community forests, public land, and land distributed by the Agriclutrual Land Reform Office. This land, for which use/ownership documents have been issued fraudulently, was often later deposited as collateral for loans, on which debtors defaulted. In these cases, classified as non-performing loans, the banks sue in court, seized the land, and sold it on the market. However, the land then sat vacat, as if abandoned. When the people adopted measures to solve the problem of land in a just manner by carrying out land reform themselves by occupying and putting this land to use, the state used its legal power to arrest and prosecute the landless poor.

As you can see, things can get messy.

But let's hold off on that line of reasoning for now.

I want to raise the issue of "Sufficiency Economy" which I found in Sections 83 and 84 of the Constitution.

Part 7
Policy Directive on Economics

Section 83. The State shall promote and support the implementation of philosophy of sufficiency economy.

Section 84. The State shall follow the Policy Directive on Economics as follows:

(1) Encourage a free and fair economic system through market force, and encourage the sustainable economic development by abolishing and refraining the enactment of laws and regulations supervising the businesses that are inconsistent to the business necessity; shall not engage in an enterprise in competition with the private sector, except it is necessary and beneficial for maintaining the security of the State, preserving the common interests, or providing public utilities.

This unofficial translation has been provided by IFES Thailand and the
Political Section and Public Diplomacy Office of the US Embassy-Bangkok.


20

(2) Promote the practice of virtues, ethics, and good governance in business affairs. . .

(8) Protect and maintain the interests of farmers in production and marketing; promote the highest price possible for agricultural products; encourage the grouping of farmers in the form of the farmer council in order to work out on the agricultural plan and protect their common interests. [emphasis added]

That sounded vaguely familiar, or maybe it was just that I'd heard both those words before - Sufficiency and Economy - but I looked it up and found it was a philosophy put forth by the King of Thailand. The King of Thailand, by the way, is the longest reigning Monarch in the world. He was born in the US while his father Prince Mahidol was getting his MD at Harvard. He was educated in Switzerland and he has a long history of taking a strong interest in the spiritual and economic well being of his people - all people of Thailand including members of ethnic minority groups. He's well educated, plays jazz saxophone, is (at least was, don't know about now) an avid photographer, and traveled extensively around Thailand to meet with ordinary people to understand how to make their lives better. No, I'm not working for the palace, this is my sense of him having paid some attention over the years. He has been King for over 60 years now. He's truly a remarkable man.

So, this is not some backwater monarch coming up with some nationalistic plan with no practical basis.

As I googled and read more, this appears to me more general principles, not a micro-economics plan. But it attempts to balance the needs of people and communities against the realities of international capitalism. From Reflected Knowledge:

Sufficiency Economy advocates taking the middle path in life as the optimal route for personal conduct at all levels: individuals, families and communities. It counsels moderation, self-reliance, honesty and integrity, while exercising knowledge with prudence.

Sufficiency Economy posits that an individual should be able to lead a reasonably comfortable life without excess or overindulgence in luxury. That is, if extravagance brings happiness it is permissible only as long as it is within the means of the individual. As His Majesty stated in a Royal Speech on December 4, 1998, “If one is moderate in one’s desires, one will have less craving. If one has less craving, one will take less advantage of others. If all nations hold this concept of moderation, without being extreme or insatiable in one’s desire, the world will be a happier place.”

Economics professor Mehdi Krongkaew writes in a Kyoto Review article:

The philosophy can be summed up in one paragraph, as translated from the Thai:

“Sufficiency Economy is a philosophy that guides the livelihood and behavior of people at all levels, from the family to the community to the country, on matters concerning national development and administration. It calls for a ‘middle way’ to be observed, especially in pursuing economic development in keeping with the world of globalization. Sufficiency means moderation and reasonableness, including the need to build a reasonable immune system against shocks from the outside or from the inside. Intelligence, attentiveness, and extreme care should be used to ensure that all plans and every step of their implementation are based on knowledge. At the same time we must build up the spiritual foundation of all people in the nation, especially state officials, scholars, and business people at all levels, so they are conscious of moral integrity and honesty and they strive for the appropriate wisdom to live life with forbearance, diligence, self-awareness, intelligence, and attentiveness. In this way we can hope to maintain balance and be ready to cope with rapid physical, social, environmental, and cultural changes from the outside world.”

There's a Wikipedia article on localism in Thailand which discusses Sufficiency Economics which also includes some criticism, but this particular feature caught my eye:

Loan.

Another example in the philosophy: one must save money enough before investment, and do not overinvest such that you become deep in debt. Some believe this idea is in conflict with the concepts of economy of scale and economy of scope in economics and exploitation of the future demand.

It seems to me in the aftermath of the crash of the US housing market, this sort of philosophy should have a much better reception in the West than it might have had a year ago.

Overall, I think that black and white, good versus evil, picture that many in the US have of the world is not an accurate reflection. Rather, the social world is a complex set of forces constantly in tension. I think the King's sufficiency economics reflects that better than much of what we get in the West. There's a sense of moderation that we can also see in Greek tradition in Western heritage. There is a recognition of the need to be prepared for unforeseen catastrophes. As I visit different villages, I see farmers, with which my organization works, who are able to feed themselves through their farming and would be much more self sufficient should this economic crisis get worse. Certainly they are much better prepared than most people living in Alaska who are totally dependent on the outside world for nearly everything we consume.

So now I'm left to try] to recraft the document, taking the points they have, and reorganizing how they are presented, and getting more information in some areas. At the very least, I'll understand this all better afterward.

Lineated Barbets Alarm Clock

[Wed. Feb. 18, 9am Thai Time]
This morning we awoke to Barbets calling. Bu Bok, Bu Bok, Bu Bok. Oh to have more than 3X optical zoom. But you can see them. (Double click to enlarge the pictures) They're there, in the middle of the picture, two one a little above the other.

Does this help? With the binoculars, they were crystal clear, green birds with greyish mottled heads.


Yesterday, on the way home from the Consulate, I passed the DK Book Center, along the outside of the moat of the city center on the East side. It's basically a Thai bookstore and there I met a tourguide, Sun, who has worked for an NGO giving micro-loans to hill-tribe villages and was interested in my idea of training villagers to be bird guides. I told him I was looking for a Thai bird book and they had one at the counter. I bought the Thai version - I want a copy for the office and it does have the names in English and an English index. The two on the left are the same book - one in Thai, one in English, which was published first.

I'm hoping Sun can meet with people at the office to talk more about the bird guiding idea. He seems to know the birds and the different books well.

Rachmaninov Comes Out of the Gramophone Archive

From an April 1931 article in Gramophone by Sergei Rachmaninov:

Not long ago I was asked to express my opinion as to the musical value of broadcasting. I replied that, to my mind, radio has a bad influence on art: that it destroys all the soul and true significance of music. Since then many people have appeared and surprised that, disliking wireless so intensely, I should lend myself to recording for the gramophone, as though the two were, in some mysterious way, intimately connected.

To me it seems that the modern gramophone and modern methods of recording are musically superior to wireless transmission in every way, particularly where reproduction of the piano is concerned. I agree that piano recording was not always so successful as it is to-day. Twelve years ago, when I was making my first records with Edison in America, the piano came out with a thin, tinkling tone. It sounded exactly like the Russian balalaika, which, as you may know, is a stringed instrument resembling the guitar. And results produced by the acoustical process in use when I began to record for His Master’s Voice in 1920 were far from satisfactory. It is only the perfecting of electrical recording during the last three years combined with recent astonishing improvements in the gramophones themselves that has given us piano reproduction of a fidelity, a variety and depth of tone that could hardly be bettered . . .

Thanks to Perverse Egalitarian for posting that Gramophone's 85 years of publication are now available online.

Visit to US Consulate Chiang Mai

Three weeks ago I got onto the US Consulate in Chiang Mai website. I wanted to get some information, maybe some help if possible, about the project to export mangoes our farmers grow here to Anchorage. Well, I couldn't find any email addresses or any phone numbers. The only thing you could do is make an appointment, using their form.

Note: there is a phone number up now, but that is only if you have technical difficulties with the online appointment.


I looked for information on trade or commercial assistance but couldn't find any phone numbers or emails. As you can see from the screenshot, there weren't very many choices.


None fit my needs except 'other.' Would they even have someone there who could talk to my needs? I didn't really want this kind of help, but there was no way to contact them to find out how to get to someone who had the information I needed. (I could have gotten an appointment last week, but with the Bangkok trip, I wasn't sure if I'd be back in time. Also, there still are walk appointments for Americans until the end of March when that will end.)

OK, I decided this was an experiment in US State Department services. My last overseas experience, going to the US Embassy in Beijing had been a nightmare. (Let me modify that a bit. I'd made an appointment from Anchorage through someone who had a contact in the US trade office in Beijing. That was great. It was going to the Embassy that was awful. I did get treated reasonably when I got to the window, but I could see how bad it was for Chinese folks and that was the real nightmare. I was embarrassed that my country was treating them like that.] They did have phone numbers in 2004, but they only got you to recordings and no one ever called back. But the Embassy itself is in no-man's land. they shut off the streets around it, the buildings all around it seemed abandoned, and we had to walk about 100 yards through barricades down this deserted street to the Embassy. It reminded me of walking from West Berlin into East Berlin in the 1960s. Creepy. And we didn't have to stand in the long line like the Chinese and other non-Americans did before getting to walk through this empty corridor.

Once inside, there were a couple of small room with few chairs. Americans got to sit in a special area and got called to the window when it was their turn. Others stood waiting in the depressing little room. It was very demeaning in every way and I had Chinese colleagues who would rather pass up US grants or activities than be treated the way they got treated there. It thought of the retired college professors I had visited in Beijing who had to go through this to get to visit their daughter studying in the US. And you had to go in person, even if you lived several hundred miles away. And there was no guarantee you'd get a visa even though you had paid for one.

So, would this be different? My boss knew I was going and yesterday gave me the name and phone number of a Thai friend who worked at the Consulate. "Today is a holdiay. Call him tomorrow. What holiday?" I had to think - oh yes, Presidents Day.

This morning I wasn't sure how long it would take - it's on the opposite side of town. Not all that far - maybe 4 or 5 kilometers of traffic. So I left an hour before on the bike just to be sure. It was a breeze. The morning was still cool and cars and motorcycles are very patient with bikes. I got there in about 20 minutes.

I didn't take any pictures. It does look a bit like a prison, with a huge wall all along the street. I realized I hadn't taken my passport or even my appointment number. I'd made the appointment before I'd worked out the wireless connection to the printer. But, no problem. My driver's license was fine. Empty your pockets for security. They went through my shoulder bag and put my camera, phone, extra sound card for the camera, and a usb drive into a plastic bag. "But wait, I need to make a call." No problem, they gave me my phone and sent me out the front door. I called Pet's friend and he said he'd come join me when he finished his meeting. Gave them back the phone.

Back in, and into another room that was open to the outside with green even hanging in, lots of seats, even a flat screen tv playing Battlestar Gallactica, but no sound. A sign said that people with appointments should go in the door on the right and report at Window 1.

The young Thai at the window, wearing a leather jacket (it's air conditioned) was extremely nice. I spoke in Thai. He had me listed for an appointment, what did I want to discuss? Exporting mangoes.

He said he'd give me a phone number to call. At that point I mentioned Pet's friend and he said, OK, then just go wait in the previous room. Pet's friend came in a few minutes later and looked around trying to figure out which farang was Steve. He sat with me and we talked, again in Thai mostly, but I had figured if he worked at the Consulate his English was much better than my Thai. I told him I wasn't sure there'd be someone who could help and he assured me there was and I should wait for my appointment.

I hadn't been given a ticket and maybe the first man thought that my appointment was with Pet's friend. So he left and I went back to the window to check. The man said that someone would come out into the waiting room to talk to me. Pet's friend had let him know.

Eventually she came out and sat down there with me. I had a list of questions, but she made it clear that the US government was interested in helping people who wanted to import American goods to Thailand, but much less interested in exporting Thai goods to the US. But she could give me information. We did this all in English. She went out and got several pages of contacts with trade related organizations that she thought would be helpful. In the conversation it came out that I had been a Peace Corps volunteer and we switched to Thai and she suddenly became much more helpful. She went out again and brought back two huge books - one was the Thai Association of Small and Medium Enterprises - which she told me to take and bring back when I got what I needed and gave me her email address.

I left thinking - if I hadn't had Pet's friend as a contact, would I have gotten to talk to anyone at all? It would be so much easier from a user's perspective to be able to email "Here's what I need, can you help me or give me some better places to get help?" than to have to go down to the Consulate.

My sense is that 9/11 made everyone paranoid and all the US diplomatic outposts became fortresses and entry has become much more difficult. They used to be open and friendly US PR offices where people living in other countries could get a glimpse of the American democracy. Now they are hostile and demeaning (not at all unlike airport security - if you are not white expect extra scrutiny) for Americans and non-Americans alike.

The second problem, I suspect, is that the State Department budget has been cut badly over the years and so they've switched from human contact to all electronic contact. The Thai security guard appeared to be a contract security person, not a Consulate employee. That may make it easier for the State Department, but it defeats a great deal of the purpose of being there. People just don't go there to get help anymore. It's too much of a hassle. My boss laughed when I told him where I was going. He said security wouldn't let him in when he tried to go. Unless they HAVE to go - to get a visa etc. - many people just skip it. It really adds to the negative image of the US abroad.

In the Chiang Mai case, I have to say the US is lucky that all the staff I dealt with were Thai and they were all extremely polite, hospitable, and helpful, even doing the security check. It isn't like that in Beijing.

Perhaps our new Secretary of State along with our new President can make some changes here, to make our embassies and consulates sources of information and glimpses of democracy once again instead of the grim, intimidating places they've become.

Bangkok Protest Post 4 - What's it all About?

[Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009 6pm Thai Time]
OK, I've been avoiding this post - probably the most important one about the Bangkok protest - by putting up pictures and saying very little. But it's time to bite the bullet. As I said in the first protest post, figuring out what it is all about isn't easy. They did finally give me a six page report on what the alliance of organizations wants out of the new land reform policy. But I'm not happy with what they wrote.






There is a potential problem for all people who are highly dedicated to a goal and who believe they are fighting 'an enemy' to achieve that goal. The people in the group 'know' their cause so well that they forget that others do not understand all the details and reasons that are so obvious to them. I'm not talking here about the more rationalized groupthink where challenges to the groups ideas are discouraged, but rather the natural tendency to see things alike and not see the problems an outsider might have with a plan or statement. The report I got is like that. It argues for certain things, but doesn't explain things in ways that work for me. One of my new projects is to critique their policy statement to make it more to the point and understandable to people who aren't on the front line and know the problems from the inside.

So, here is my interpretation of the issues facing poor Thai farmers and some urban poor regarding land reform issues that are of importance to my organization:

1. Forest Land Issues - There are people living in the forests of Thailand. We'd probably call them 'inholders' in the US - people who owned property before an area was made into a park or forest. While the Thai government wants these people out of the forests, it seems to me the inholders have some very strong points. It also appears to be different in different places. Here are two examples I'm aware of (even if I don't have all the facts exactly right)
   
   • In an area in Chiang Mai province, there are hill tribe peoples who have lived in the forested area for 50 years or more. It's their home. Now the government is saying they need to leave the forest. Their way of life, their culture are threatened if they are forced to move out of their natural habitat. There are identified problems with some hill tribes in terms of the effect of their cultivation practices and subsistence hunting practices. But I've been told these tribes have been practicing agricultural practices that are sustainable and do not threaten the forests and last year we went to an event to celebrate the maintaining of long fire breaks to prevent fires. There are precedents for getting indigenous peoples to switch from hunting threatened species to being protectors who prevent poachers, so their living in the forest could help protect the resources that the Thai government wouldn't otherwise have the resources to protect.
   • At the Bangkok march I learned about a man in the South, who is being told he must move out of the 'forest.' His argument is pictures of himself and his family planting 'the forest' of rubber trees years ago.
     
     
2. Land Ownership Issues - One of the villages my organization works with received their land maybe 15 or 20 years ago in a government land distribution program. It is now well planted with mango trees. About eight years ago, a group of wealthy businessmen showed them deeds to the land and told them they had to leave the land. The farmers were never giving proper documents when the land was distributed and they believe that the businessmen used their connections or money to get a land official to come up with the documents they possessed. All the people who worked in the office at the time are dead. I was at a public meeting at the Land Office last year when the spokesman for the businesses acknowledged - after repeated questions about exactly who sold them the land - that it was possible that the person who sold the land, did not own it.
   
   So there are these kinds of issues where farmers have been threatened by people who do not have legitimate ownership of the land.
   
   
3. Method of Land Reform - The last Thai government and the new Thai government both had land reform in their platforms. The organization that I work with is affiliated with a number of other organizations that are working with other farmers and urban poor around the country. A major objective of the march this last week was as bargaining power in their negotiations with the new Thai government over the details of the new land reform policy. They want the new government to understand the issues from the farmers' perspective, not simply from that of influential business owners.
   
   There is going to be land reform. The question is how it will be implemented and these groups have specific ideas about how to do this so that farmers are able to productively work the land to help feed the people of Thailand.
   
   
4. Money[/Fund] - Part of the land reform involves monetary distributions. For instance, the government wants, as I understand it, to dismantle some of the slum areas in Bangkok and make monetary compensation to the people living there. How this is going to happen - whether there are payments to individuals, to communities - is part of the negotiations. [There's also a land bank but I don't understand yet the details of how this works.]
   
   
5. Macro Issues - one of the changes in Thailand over the last 20 years has been a change in how, at least some, Thais conceive of land. I don't have a good grasp of the historic ownership and use of land in Thailand. I know for periods much of the land belonged to the King. But land has not, historically, been seen as a capitalist commodity. When the new economy of the Asian Tigers crashed in 1997, those with money first began to seriously invest in land because other investments seemed risky. This has caused - and one of the things I'm questioning about the six pages I was given is how they discuss land ownership - a disparity in the ownership of land. Farmland was bought at inflated prices - at least in the eyes of the farmers who sold their land - but what many farmers thought was great wealth, proved to not go very far. Soon they found themselves without the land that gave them a level of self-sufficiency and with no way to feed themselves. Apparently, much farmland now sits fallow as the wealthy hold onto it hoping to eventually sell at a profit, while farmers sit idle because they do not have land to farm.
   
   Such problems defy simple ideas of fairness, common sense, and work ethic. They are systemic problems that result from buying into a capitalist mentality in a society that doesn't have all the infrastructure to limit the inequity that wealth can cause. Even in the US, we are seeing similar problems in terms of the housing market and the banking collapse.
   

So, these are the issues as I seem them. There are probably others I've missed and there are certainly more and better examples than the ones I've listed, but this is a start.

Doing What's Possible

Maureen Dowd writes in today's (Feb 15) New York Times,

At his news conference last Monday, Mr. Obama was asked by Fox’s Major Garrett about the vice president’s startling assertion that even if he and the president do “everything right,” “there’s still a 30 percent chance we’re going to get it wrong.”

Management and policy are fuzzy topics. Knowing a policy will work, especially one that is untried, is impossible. It's not like changing a lightbulb. It is even hard to prove in hindsight that a policy worked, or that a management practice improved an organization. We can 'know' about basic mechanical things. Adding gas to the tank will enable a car go. But GM thought a policy of selling gas guzzlers would keep them profitable.

Sure, there are some policy decisions that we know work. Historically, we know that supplying clean water and sewage systems did more to improve health of communities (which led to other improvements) than anything else.


But it is difficult to do 'scientific' experiments with policy - to have a control group and an experimental group. Even if you have several states adopting the same new policy, are all the other conditions similar enough that we can attribute a change in (you name the topic) statistics to the policy or to something else. And even if the statistics are better, does that mean that things have gotten better, really?

There are so many factors that affect so much, that it is often unclear whether our policy changed the crime rate, for example, or whether a change in demographics (fewer people in the high crime age) or a change in the economy (more people working for better wages) or a combination of these and other factors caused the change. Does an increase in the number of rape cases mean things are worse, or that more people feel emboldened to report rapes?



The other side of this is when we ask managers or politicians to fix something - like turning the economy around. We often have simply no idea whether it is possible in the given situation.

If your boss told you to jump over a three story building, you'd laugh. If she told you to pick up some bagels in a New York deli for lunch (and you were both in Los Angeles,) you'd laugh.

But I've seen managers tell subordinates to do things that were equally impossible - I want you to improve the reading scores of these students in three months, or I want you to improve the morale and increase production by Y% by August - and their workers run to accomplish it, because they simply didn't know it was impossible. (Of course, some things we think are impossible, are actually possible too.)

So I wonder whether Barrack Obama's goals are even physically possible to achieve. And if they are physically possible, are the political obstacles too overwhelming?

And so if Biden suggests that even if they do all the right things, it's possible they will fail, I think he may well be on to something. And despite Obama's seeming truth telling to the public (anything compared to Bush would seem to be incredible candid) he knows that telling the public we might fail isn't the winner that the 'politics of hope' is.

I don't think it is inevitable that our economy crashes and many of us become destitute. But it may require serious changes in our perceptions about what is a good life. As a Peace Corps volunteer many years ago, here in Thailand, I saw that there were alternatives to the models of what makes people happy that I grew up with. The US model is basically 'thing' based. The more stuff you have, the happier you're supposed to be. But I found myself living in Thailand with a lot less stuff, but being happier. In Thailand then, and still today, I see a model that is relationship based - the more family and friends that you can rely on for everything, the happier you will be. (Of course, relying on others means that they can rely on you as well - it's not all take.)




When we went to Bangkok Tuesday night and passed some relatively large and fancy houses in the little villages, one of the Thai farmers said, "Rich Folks." I had to smile. These people would hardly qualify as rich in other places. It's all relative. And this is rich in terms of money and goods. This T shirt on one of the farmers demonstrating Wednesday summarizes what I'm talking about: Give me soul, take away the rest.

I have to admit, Salesian didn't sound much like a Thai name, though, when I asked, he said something about the Northeast of Thailand. I just looked it up. Wikipedia says:

The Salesians of Don Bosco (or the Salesian Society, originally known as the Society of St. Francis de Sales) is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in the late nineteenth century by Saint John Bosco in an attempt, through works of charity, to care for the young and poor children of the industrial revolution. The Salesians' charter describes the society's mission as "the Christian perfection of its associates obtained by the exercise of spiritual and corporal works of charity towards the young, especially the poor, and the education of boys to the priesthood"[1]. The order is named for St. Francis de Sales, an early-modern bishop of Geneva.

And they do have a presence in Thailand and Cambodia. Their interpretation of soul and mine are probably not quite the same. Mine is more focused on qualities of the heart, a spiritual health. And I don't reject physical comforts in moderation.

I'm always leery about religious groups that proselytize around the world. I can't tell if the Salesians in Thailand are merely doing good works or also trying to convert people. (Radical Catholic Mom might know.) I'm here with the American Jewish World Service, but there is absolutely no religious content to what I do, other than the fact that helping others is a basic tenet of Judaism.