Letter Never Sent

Now that things have stabilized, I wanted to take a moment to explain where I’ve been for the past two weeks. On March 15th (beware the ides of March), my father was in a bad car accident. The situation is very serious and up until a few days ago when we started to see some improvement, the last thing on my mind was to write about it. Until I came home this weekend, I basically lived at the hospital. It has been a perspective-inducing experience without parallel. When things get better, I will share some of what I have learned.

Google Book Search is a project that exemplifies Google’s vision for information. For the past few years they’ve worked with various libraries and universities to digitize books, periodicals, and journals that might otherwise have remained untouched in their collections. Each resource is scanned by hand and rendered into indexable text. For older works whose copyrights have lapsed, you may read the entire thing online. Even for books under copyright, Google Book Search is a good way to search the contents of published works and is a great supplement to the usual search engine results for many research topics. Over the past few months, I’ve come across several books I might have paid for available online via Google Book Search. For any older books, this is now the first place I check. Here are a couple good books you may read online. They’re mostly aphorisms or concise wisdom, so it should be good for casual reading:

1. The Maxims of Cháṇákya: The Maxims of Cháṇákya are an interesting record of thought by an early Indian statesman.
2. The Maxims of Francis Guicciardini by Francesco Guicciardini. Practical and political philosophy by a contemporary of Machiavelli, the historian Guicciardini.
3. The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave: From the Latin
4. Maxims and Moral Reflections by François La Rochefoucauld

Every year I get a green, printed Social Security statement in the mail from the federal government. It lists my taxable income for every year I’ve paid taxes. Looking at past earnings is a trip down memory lane. The first jobs at 16, the lean college years, the post college flailing about… my life story in numbers, faithfully recorded by the Social Security Administration.

• It would be useful to take this information and chart your earnings over time to see the trend. I would imagine that if you did this over your expected lifetime you would observe a bell-like curve. From no earnings in youth to a considerable increase then a slowed growth, then inevitably a decline as you approach old age. (I could be wrong here. How would you continue increases in income growth? Invest an inordinate amount when young?)
• You could also calculate your year over year percentage income growth to keep your career earnings on track. For example, if you experienced 15% in annual growth for several years and then observed a decrease in growth or even negative growth you might consider retooling your skillset or looking for other income growth opportunities in order to maintain your growth trajectory. Income growth is essential in asset growth, though you will have no asset growth if you spend everything you earn.
• It might also be a good idea to keep an eye on average annual income growth on a five year trend. The last five years are probably a better guide to your income growth than what you earned at 16.

I saw this high school kid yesterday with the whole 80’s metal look: black Iron Maiden t-shirt, tight grey jeans, and long hair with Dave Mustaine bangs. I’m amused by how often teen fashion recapitulates past trends and then I remember how we were no different in my time, aping the teens of past generations who seemed cool. In a way, fashion is regressive and evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. It looks for inspiration from the past while adding the stamp of the present; creating culture while maintaining direct links to previous layers of culture. I would like to see people drawing fashion inspiration from far-flung periods in time or from extrapolations of the future, but we will continue to see kids drawing inspiration from more recent trends simply because, as a culture, we lack both a deep sense of history and an imagination for the future.

While wandering through Google Books, I came across this compelling passage in William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England:

In a democracy, where the right of making laws resides in the people at large, public virtue, or goodness of intention, is more likely to be found, than either of the other qualities of government. Popular assemblies are frequently foolish in their contrivance, and weak in their execution; but generally mean to do the thing that is right and just, and have always a degree of patriotism or public spirit. In aristocracies there is more wisdom to be found, than in the other frames of government; being composed, or intended to be composed, of the most experienced citizens: but there is less honesty than in a republic, and less strength than in a monarchy. A monarchy is indeed the most powerful of any; for by the entire conjunction of the legislative and executive powers all the sinews of government are knit together, and united in the hand of the prince: but then there is eminent danger of his employing that strength to improvident or oppressive purposes.

Thus these three species of government have, all of them, their several perfections and imperfections. Democracies are usually the best calculated to direct the end of a law; aristocracies to invent the means by which that end shall be obtained; and monarchies to carry those means into execution. And the ancients, as was observed, had in general no idea of any other permanent form of government but these three: for though Cicero[12] declares himself of opinion, “esse optime constitutam rempublicam, quae ex tribus generibus illis, regali, optimo, et populari, sit modice confusa;” yet Tacitus treats this notion of a mixed government, formed out of them all, and partaking of the advantages of each, as a visionary whim, and one that, if effected, could never be lasting or secure.

It is likely that the founders of our constitutional government had this in mind when planning our legal framework. In the United States, these three attitudes exist in a state of tension: the will of the people vs. the wisdom of the elite vs. the authority of the monarch (monarchy is literally the rule of one). The authority of the monarch is represented by the President and the Executive Branch. The will of the people is represented by the Legislative Branch with its representative bodies. The wisdom of the elites is represented by the Judicial Branch. The system of checks and balances ensures that each branch possesses some influence over each other branch and allows for a dynamic tension that can respond to change.

Maybe this tension is responsible for our success and relative stability. This dynamic tension allows each tendency to influence events when it is most needed. When the public Will grows new laws can be promoted by the legislature to change policy, when authority is required the President can exercise his particular advantage, when wisdom and judgment is necessary to arbitrate, the judiciary can make decisions independent of the public will or the authority of the executive. The genius of our political system is that it provides a stable framework for this tension and recognizes at a basic level that society is both cooperative AND competitive.