Women's March 2018

I screwed up when I wrote this post earlier.  By mistake, I embedded a clip from last year's Women's March.  I apologize.  That said, I've heard there were at least 250 different Women's Marches over the weekend, with hundreds of thousands of total women marching.  That's lots of pink hats.  And lots of power.  So what is this all about?  It's not just about reproductive rights or our current president talking about grabbing the the pussies of women on a tape years ago.  There's a lot more going on here.  I picked this clip because AM Joy on MSNBC always has a great take on things like this.

Twenty-eight years ago, I picked up a book about economics, and I read it.  The book was called The Great Depression of 1990, by Ravi Batra.  Now I know we didn't have a great depression in 1990.  What we did have was a six year long economic lull, officially called a "double-dip recession" at the time.  I watched most of what Ravi Batra predicted happen, it just didn't happen to the depth and intensity he predicted.

In that book, Batra shared the basic ideas of a social theory by a thinker from India.  That concept is called the Law of Social Cycle by  P.R. Sarkar.  It's a deep and involved theory on how societies evolve and change.  Sarkar said there are four basic mentalities in every society, the Intellectuals, the Acquisitors, the Laborers, and the Warriors.  At any given time, one of these mentalities dominates a society, and that way of thinking shapes all of that society.  The ages that each mentality dominate can last for hundreds of years.  There's no set time period.  But the mentalities dominate in a certain order, the order listed above.  Ravi Batra applied Sarkar;s theory to the United States, and concluded that we have been in the Acquisitor, or businessmen's age, since we were English colonies.

Over time, the business people dominating society become more and more corrupt.  At the end of the Acquisitor Age, the average, working class people, the Laborers, rise up in a series of populist movements.  Things get really chaotic and crazy.  Sound familiar?  The rise of the Laborers leads to the end of the Acquisitor Age.  Unfortunately, the Laborers aren't capable of actually running society for long.  So one of two things happen.  Either the society collapses (not a good outcome), or the Warriors rise to power.  Where the Acquisitors earn their living in the world with success in business and finances (and often corruption), the Warriors earn their way using courage and physical ability.  In earlier societies, soldiers, police, firefighters, professional athletes are all examples of the Warrior mentality.  Action sports athletse, stuntmen, the more dangerous construction jobs,  and entertainment industry roadies are other aspects of the Warrior mentality in today's world.  But it's not their time... not yet.

Now is the time of the people.  Average, everyday, working people.  After reading Batra's book in late 1989/early 1990, and watching most of what he predicted actually happen, I started looking for a populist movement in the U.S.  It was a long wait, but now we're seeing it happen.  The very, very beginning of the Tea Party Movement might have been populist, but it was quickly taken over by evangelicals and Republicans within weeks.  The Occupy Wall Street movement was the first real look at the populist uprising in my opinion.  The reason that took off like wildfire was because many people across the U.S. were ready for something like that to come along.  When it did, it struck a chord.

Then came two HUGE populist movements in the 2016 election cycle.  As we all know, Billionaire Donald Trump tapped into latent anger in working class people who'd lost their manufacturing jobs years before.  He also tapped into the racist, sexist, and just plain xenophobic fears of a lot of people, mostly on the Right side of the political spectrum.  But don't forget, the Bernie Sanders' populist movement garnered just as big, often bigger, live crowds, and tremendous energy on the Left side of the political spectrum.  The 70-something social Democrat tapped into the intellectuals and the rising Millennial generation.  I keep reminding people in here in North Carolina, all those Bernie people are still out there.  We'll hear from them again.  I saw a sign in the women's march photos today that said, "Grab 'em by the midterms."  We'll see what happens this fall's election.  We might see big political changes even before that.

But the populist movement isn't just a political thing.  It's a "we average Americans are tired of being screwed over by those ruling the world" thing.  A year ago, in conjunction with Donald Trump's inauguration, we saw the massive Women's March.  In the crazy year since that movement, we've seen the #metoo Movement and the #timesup Movement both primarily female, rise.  We've also seen a huge number of young people, particularly in the Democratic party, start running for public offices up and down the ballots.  This weekend, we've seen another HUGE series of Women's Marches.  One source said there were at least 250 organized marches around the world, and it appears millions of women marched in them.  All of you women, and everyone else in these different populist movements, are part of the Laborer mentality uprising in the U.S. and much of the world.

There will be other # movements, there will be other groups rising up, and there will ultimately be a complete change in who runs our world.  And THAT really has the powers at be worried.  Personally, I've caught A LOT of shit for simply sharing these ideas.  And I've been sharing this basic idea since a zine I wrote in 1998.

This is big.  It is crazy.  And it will be chaotic.  And yes, the Trump followers AND the Sanders followers, AND the Women's March are all aspects of the larger populist uprising.  It will be chaotic for quite a while to come.  And it could all end really badly if all these aspects of populist movements continue to fight among each other.  This is a time for our highest selves and our highest ideals.  It's a time to find what common ground there is with people who may oppose much of what you believe.  It's a time to let our best selves shine.

Now you know what we're all a part of.  Where will it go from here?  That's up to us.  Let's make something amazing out of the mess we've inherited.

Richard Florida and the New Urban Crisis

I just finished reading Richard Florida's newest book, The New Urban Crisis.  It gives a great (if often gloomy) look at how technology and the "back to the city" movement have changed the world in the last fifteen years.

In 2002, Professor Richard Florida exploded onto the economic development scene with his book, The Rise of the Creative Class.  A big part of his findings were that a new class of workers, which he called the "Creative Class," comprised about 35% of the U.S. workforce.  This class was made up of tech workers, scientists, educators, researchers, artists, designers, engineers, media, healthcare, and people in the legal professions.  These people have to think, use creativity, and make complex decisions on a daily basis. 

Back then, in 2002,  in the U.S., about 1% of people worked in agriculture, less than 20% were part of the Working Class (manufacturing/construction/transportation), and around 30% were part of the Creative Class.  The other 50% or so were in the low wage Service Class.  The Creative Class people mostly made good money and lived well.  The former American Middle Class, the Working Class, were (and still are) disappearing as jobs were lost to new technology and outsourcing.  In its place, tens of millions of people were struggling to survive by working one or more low wage Service Class jobs. 

Teaching then at Carnegie Mellow University in Pittsburgh, a city devastated by the loss of high paying factory jobs, Professor Florida saw lots of bright tech students graduating from the college, but none of them were staying to work in Pittsburgh.  He started researching the issue, and found that most of the tech workers, this new Creative Class, were clustering in a small number of areas.  They were going to Silicon Valley (San Jose/San Francisco area), Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., New York, Austin, and to a lesser degree, the Raleigh Research Triangle. 

The tech companies, he found, were moving to where all the talented tech workers lived.  That's the opposite of what happened with Industrial Age manufacturing companies.  So in "Rise" Florida made the case for cities to work to build their creative climates like art, music, and high tech scenes.  Research universities also played a key role in attracting the top Creative Class people. 

After reading his book and hearing him speak, civic leaders across the U.S. and the world worked on making their cities more inviting to this Creative Class.  It worked in many ways.  Cities across the nation have attracted upscale people back into their revived downtown areas.  They've attracted businesses and venture capital dollars as well.  There are now around 100 "innovation parks" in the U.S., like the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter here in Winston-Salem, NC. 

Unfortunately, the clustering effect of these creative people worked better than Richard Florida had expected.  That leads to his findings in The New Urban Crisis.

Here are his main points:
1.  In describing what he calls "winner-take-all urbanism," only a handful of larger cities have really benefited greatly from this Creative Class clustering.  The best people, the main tech companies, the most promising start-ups, and the vast majority of venture capital money are going to a handful of places.

2.  This has created a crisis in the "winner" cities.  While the tech workers live well, the prices of housing and other things have risen, and the majority of non-Creative Class people have a harder time affording to live in these cities.

3.  As upscale techies and other well off Creative Class people move back to the rebuilt downtown areas, many of the lower income people have been pushed to the suburbs.  Poverty, crime, drug problems, and over all distress of just surviving has spread to suburbs throughout the country.

4.  The core issue of the New Urban Crisis continues to be the loss of the American Middle Class that made this such a prosperous nation for several decades. 

5.  Finally, while the New Urban Crisis is serious in the U.S., the U.K., and even Canada, it's much worse in the developing countries around the world. 

And then, to top all this off, we had the huge populist uprising that led to Donald Trump taking over in the White House.  While he promises many things, his policies are pretty much the opposite of what is needed to help out the tens of millions of struggling Service Class workers and the hundreds of smaller cities and towns that don't benefit as much from the Creative Class concentrating in a few regions. 

Richard Florida spends the later part of the book outlining the policies he thinks will help us spread the benefits of the Knowledge Based economy that has replaced the old Industrial Economy of the 1800's and 1900's. 

You can get a good feel for his ideas by listening to the talk above.  But, of course, the book is much better and goes into all the details explaining his findings.  If you look toward the future, want to build your city up, or are a civic or cultural leader, The New Urban Crisis is worth the read.

(The links to buy the book are unpaid links.)