Cul De Sac Kids

One of my pastors turned me on to this syndrome: "cul de sac kids."
I'll quote an excerpt from a paper I found on Riverkeeper's website
entitled "Pave It or Save It":

The "cul-de-sac kids", isolated in their suburban communities, are
completely dependent upon their parents' driving, and thus suffer from
a loss of autonomy and become "frozen in a form of infancy." When
asked, children express this feeling of social isolation; when asked
about what they would like to see developed in their communities, the
answer is not often a mall, but rather places to "hang out" such as
parks with "people" in them. In suburban California, children watched
four times as much television as those in rural Vermont who had access
to recreational opportunities that did not require parental driving.
And, sociologists identify "teen isolation and boredom" as a
contributing factor to the high national rate of teenage suicides –
nearly nonexistent in before 1950 and the advent of the "suburbs," by
2000 suicide accounted for more than 12% of youth mortalities, and the
suicide rate is much higher in suburbs than in cities.

Wow. Where to start? My mind is racing with thoughts. Maybe you
should fear for lone teens from rich suburban neighborhoods, not big
groups of teens from poor urban neighborhoods. Maybe you could
replace the "kids" with "seniors" and have the some syndrome. Maybe
this becomes a significant enough population that we can trace its arc
through life like we can trace that of boomers. Maybe developers will
get wise and figure out how to build developments that lend themselves
to non-car mobility instead of slapping them next to highways and
making walking practically impossible (no sidewalks or trails,
spaghetti roads that make it difficult to leave the development by any
mode of transport besides driving, no easy access to public
transportation). Maybe cul-de-sac kids become the next group churches
mobilized themselves to reach out to.

And maybe cities are the safer place to raise kids, after all.

If the Price is Right

One of the favorite targets of progressive folks is sprawl. Sprawl,
in their minds, is ruining communities, causing congestion, isolating
the poor, the young, and the old, even making people fat. I buy all
the arguments but wonder if these folks have thought through their ill
will.

Take Oregonians, for example, as progressive a people as you can get
in our country. In the 1970's, when Portland drew a circle around it
and declared everything outside the circle off-limits to development,
their goal was to make development inside the circle denser.
High-density development, after all, is the counterbalance to sprawl:
it makes car trips shorter, avoids the costly build-out of far-flung
infrastructure, and makes it easier for the very young and the very
old to get around. And high-density development is what should happen
if you draw an urban growth boundary: as the metro area grows and the
population rises, the demand for housing will be met not by growing
out further, but by growing more dense.

Only Oregonians, apparently, didn't want that, either. It's like John
Kitzhaber, former governor of Oregon, once said: "There's two things
people hate: density and sprawl." The marketplace demanded more
housing, but the current residents rejected proposals for new, dense
construction in their neighborhoods.

But it wasn't just an aesthetic distaste or a need for elbow room.
When demand increases, and supply can't increase by growing out or
growing up, what happens? Price goes up. Current residents saw their
housing values skyrocket. Why let in new, dense development that
would alleviate that built-up demand, when you could have more and
more equity building up in your own home?

But let's not pick on Oregonians. Many suburbanites are like this.
With one side of their mouth, they vilify Toll Brothers and other
mega-builders of McMansions on the outskirts of the metro area. But
with the other side of their mouth, they shout down any application
for a high-rise, multi-unit development in their neighborhood. The
thought of farmland being sold off to build a residential complex or a
Walmart offends their progressive hearts, but the thought of having
their house values dampened and their schools burdened by new
neighbors squished into their community offends their rational heads.

The problems of sprawl are still worth figuring out solutions for.
But some of those solutions assume a willingness to do things – like
live in a high-density neighborhood or use public transportation –
that many people just won't do, no matter what the economic
incentives.

That's why I'm feeling urban economist Edwin Mills more and more: just
get the price right. Artificial limits and incentives seem to have
unintended consequences, or even worse, lead to more of what you were
trying to prevent; so instead of stopping people from doing what you
don't want them to do, just make them pay for it. After all, the
economists will tell you that if the price is right, the amount
consumed will be optimal from a market standpoint. When it comes to
things like sprawl, the price is wrong right now, and so too much of
it happens. Raise the price of sprawl (gas tax and impact fees are
two easy ways), and maybe you'll get the right amount of it consumed.

I Heart Andrew Cassel

If I had to name a person who best captures my economic and political
views, it would be Philadelphia Inquirer business columnist Andrew
Cassel. I've yet to read a column of his that I've disagreed with,
and usually more than once a week not only do I agree with what he's
saying but I give an audible "amen!" (which can be strange when I'm
all by myself reading the paper at 7 in the morning).

To give you a flavor of what's his angle, lately he's argued for a
national gas tax, ridiculed the protesting youth in France, and
predicted the demise of malls. Yesterday, he saluted George Mason
University, not for its improbable run to the Final Four but its
clever economics department, which among other intriguing works has
produced a paper entitled "The Market for Martyrs: An
Economic-Sociological Perspective on Religion and Suicide Bombing,"
which argues that the best way to stop suicide bombings is to curtail
the demand of them, not the supply of them (go to
http://gunston.doit.gmu.edu/liannacc/cesr_web/papers/cesr_research/Iannaccone%20-%20Market%20for%20Martyrs%20-%20IJRR.pdf
to read more).

I can't say I have positive feelings about GMU, seeing as how they
busted my bracket last weekend, but I will take a look at the school's
econ page and related blogs. Thanks once again, Andrew Cassel.

Yes, Mercy

I'm realizing that I'm not a very merciful person. For one, I'm
extremely competitive. Since I can remember, I've always wanted to
win, and not just win but demoralize and break my opponent(s). And I
never expected, never wanted my opponent(s) to think any different.
When I was in fifth grade, we would have weekly times tables contests.
Being fast at math, I won just about every week. But that wasn't
enough for me; I had to slam my pencil down when I finished, just to
let everyone know how much earlier I was done than anyone else. If
anyone ever beat me, I couldn't stand it, but I respected that person
so much for having won.

Flash forward a couple of decades. I'm pretty hard on myself and on
others. I was late for a very important meeting last week, and it
just killed me. Even though everything turned out OK, I couldn't
forgive myself. I felt horrible for not planning ahead, not
anticipating that I'd need more time to get to the meeting. Again, no
matter that everything proceeded smoothly; I felt I had failed and
didn't deserve for people to wait up for me. And if I had been in
someone else's shoes, I probably would have been mad at me for being
late.

The fact that God is merciful, then, is a truth that is sometimes hard
for me to accept and sometimes so wonderful to receive. On the one
hand, mercy, even from God, is difficult for me to appreciate, because
it seems so undeserved, so unearned, so sloppy and unmerited. I can
relate to the workers in Jesus' parable, who worked all day for a wage
that had been agreed upon ahead of time, only to cop an attitude when
other workers who only worked for a fraction of the day earned the
same wage.

On the other hand, it is because mercy is hard for me that I cherish
God's. For when I consider God's mercy in light of my many failings,
there is a freedom and a security in His acceptance that I seldom feel
but that feels so good. Some days, I shun such mercy because I
haven't earned it; but many days, I love it precisely because I
haven't earned it. The fact that it is from Him, flowing forth from
His character and love and abundance, and not from something I have
scraped together with hard work and superior planning and crafty
ingenuity, that is what makes His mercy so rock-solid, so delightfully
wonderful. I may not be a merciful being, but thanks be to God that
God is.

We Were Once Strangers

I've been reading the book of Exodus in the morning, and I've gotten
to the part after God rescues the Israelites out of Egypt and is now
dispensing His laws for them. Two of the main themes, the maintenance
of a just society and the welcoming treatment of foreigners, are
relevant to the current debate in our country over illegal immigrants.
Given that it involves angles like jobs, national security,
xenophobia, and the law, it is an emotionally charged debate.

What makes the debate juicy to follow but which is ultimately
unhelpful in determining a just solution, in my opinion, is the
"either-or" stance many people seem to be taking. On one side, you
have people flustered that we wouldn't uphold the laws that are on the
books. On another side, you have people incredulous that we would be
so closed off and rude to a people group so desirous to be on our side
of the national border.

I support President Bush and others seeking to find a way to be both
welcoming and lawful, two traits America would like to be known for,
two traits that I believe God in the book of Exodus was calling the
Israelites to display. I am loath to make comparisons between Old
Testament Jews and modern-day Americans, but here is one case where it
might make sense. After all, regardless of our own current religious
persuasion, we ought to be able to comprehend the importance of
maintaining a lawful society.

We also ought to understand that aside from the native Americans, we
all were once strangers arriving to a new shore, and so we ought to be
welcoming to those who are doing today like we did yesterday. And yet
how quickly after we arrive on these shores do we take on a sense of
entitlement, that this land is ours and that we ought to look upon
newcomers with suspicion and disdain. God calls the Israelites to a
welcoming countenance by reminding them they were once foreigners and
should therefore know what it's like for the foreigners in their
midst.

I'll leave the details for the politicians and lawyers, but I regret
that some in this debate would wish to forcefully and hatefully deport
all the illegals, and that others would wish to allow them to remain
in an illegal, limbo state. I support immigration policies that
welcome those who seek to live and work here, and that provide a
process for becoming legal members of a lawful society. I hope that,
like the Israelites after the Exodus, we Americans will desire to be
both lawful and welcoming.

What's God Like

There are so many potential paradoxes about the God of Christianity to
navigate through. These can frustrate some and turn off others. But
those who desire to contemplate end up with a richer and deeper
experience of God.

One I want to muse on today is His sense of righteousness and mercy.
God simultaneously abhors sin and loves the sinner. His character
would cease to be the God He has described Himself as if He
accommodated sin or if He turned away the sinner. This much we know
from the Bible.

It can be easy to infer from this that God is one of two things,
neither of which is true. On the one hand, you can consider that God
hates sin but is somehow bound by a higher law to love the sinner, so
He begrudgingly makes a way for the sinner's sin to be pardoned so
that the sinner can be reconciled to Him. On the other hand, you can
consider that God loves the sinner but is somehow bound by a higher
law to hate sin, so He begrudingly makes a way for the sin to be
punished.

But God is not bound by a higher law, and He does nothing
begrudgingly. He can and does simultaneously hate sin and love the
sinner. There is a pleasure God derives -- the pleasure of a perfect
God, acting in character perfectly -- when He punishes sin. He feels
the same pleasure when He loves a sinner back into relationship with
Him.

If it is possible for a perfect God, who never acts begrudgingly but
takes pleasure in everything He does, to derive even more pleasure in
something, it is surely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
For here is the nexus of holy hatred of sin and holy love for
mankind, the perfect representation of the perfect character of a
perfect God.

We who are finite can, however subtly, place upon God the limits we
face. Imperfect man would certainly have to choose between being a
hater of sin who begrudgingly loved sinners or a lover of sinners who
begrudingly hated sin. God is not imperfect man. He can -- not out
of insecurity or duty or impulse, but from the core of who He is -- be
both.

America's Getting Sloppy

US News and World Report's cover story this week was on the US
slipping in its competitiveness in comparison to the rest of the
world. While I'm not a big fan of America-bashing, and I'm leery of
articles that pick a few disparate data points and tell an overarching
story, I have to say that I agree with the sentiment. What's worse
about our slippage is the clueless attitude that both causes the
slipping and insulates us from knowing that we're slipping. In my
opinion, there are two characteristics of this all-too-American
attitude, which we will live to regret harboring if this goes any
further.

One, we think the world revolves around us. We're so used to being
the biggest and the best that we've completely lost our
entrepreneurial hunger and our willingess to learn from others. Too
many Americans speak only English, while many in the rest of the world
have mastered English and another language to go with the language or
languages they need to use to get by in their country. Eastern
Europe, East Asia, and of course China and India are kicking our tail
in terms of entrepreneurial hunger, the desire to get better and
better, faster and faster. There is an openness to learning, both in
terms of gaining technical knowledge and cross-cultual fluidity, that
you just don't see in our country. Meanwhile, we speak as if there is
no other world outside our borders -- witness how all our sports
winners are declared "World Champions," and we discuss business and
economic matters on national rather than global scales.

Two, we think it's good to be fat, lazy, and happy. People scorn the
mechanical approaches recent immigrants to this country have towards
the education of their children, but that's because (see above point)
they're hungry. Americans, for the most part, are full, and I mean
that in every sense. I understand that you can go too far -- witness
the Todd Marinovich's and other burnt-out child prodigies -- but I
believe you can not go far enough. There's a time for play and for
fun, but also a time for us -- as families and communities and a
nation -- to get our act together. Why are we afraid to push
ourselves in exercise, in the sciences, in entrepreneurship? Because
we're not hungry, we're plenty full. Well, the rest of the world is
plenty hungry, and pretty soon, they're going to eat our lunch.

I've Got a Price for Gas

In his comments on a recent article in the Brookings-Wharton Papers on
Urban Affairs, urban economic development godfather Edwin Mills
calculates what the price of a gallon of gas should be in the US. He
considers the gas tax to be a user fee which, if priced correctly,
will result in the optimal level of its consumption; i.e. if the fee
is too high, we'd underconsume it, and if it's too low or free, we'd
overconsume it.

The user fee isn't really to use the gas, of course, but to use the
roads, but it's a close enough approximation. Considering an
uncongested urban road, an appropriate user fee should consist of
three things, according to Mills: 1) the opportunity cost of the land,
the depreciation of the right-of-way, and the operating cost of the
road (traffic control, snow removal, etc.). Divide that by vehicle
miles, and Mills arrives at a figure of $2.50 per gallon of gas, which
at the time of the article's publication (2001) would result in a
price to us consumers of about $4.00 to $4.50; today it would probably
be closer to $5.00 or $6.00.

You could throw in all sorts of other externalities that gas consumers
should pay for, but let's not for a second. At that new price, Mills
argues, all sorts of changes would take place, which would help the
marketplace arrive at a better equilibrium: less wasteful car trips,
more purchases of fuel-efficient vehicles, people moving closer to
their places of work, higher densities around centers of urban and
suburban employment, and so on.

To Mills, it's all about getting the price right. He is a true
economist: if the price is right and the market is correct, the right
level of consumption will take place. As a result, he pooh-poohs
urban growth boundaries, which are a trendy but blunt object for
reining in excessive suburbanization.

He also points a finger at cities, often the finger-pointers
themselves in the vilification of sprawl. Far from being the passive
victim as people and jobs and resources move away from them, cities
sometimes contribute to the problem, in Mills' mind. Take Chicago,
for example. As dense as its center is, the marketplace would welcome
more density, except that current property owners lobby to zone it
out, lest the additional demand deflate the rent prices they can
charge to their tenants.

I've been recommended to Edwin Mills before, but haven't yet found a
good book of his to read. And here I bump into him at the back of an
article I'm to read for school. The guy's given me a decent price for
a gallon of gas, so now I have to find more of his writings to guzzle.

What Diversity Really Means

My pastor often tells a story in the pulpit about his friends who have
adopted two boys from South America. He says they didn't tell the
boys when they adopted them, "OK, we're Americans: we like football
and hamburgers and monster trucks. So if you're into those things,
then you can join our family." Instead, rather than mold their sons
around their existing family, they molded their existing family around
their sons. Sure, their sons picked up the hobbies and habits of
their new family. But their new family also picked up hobbies and
habits, like soccer and South American cuisine.

(As a parenthetical note, this story always resonates with me, as
someone is in a biracial marriage and who has adopted from outside the
US. It bodes well for our daughter, who was adopted from China, that
I am also Asian, that we live in a big and diverse city, and that our
church congregation is very multiethnic. But it will take effort to
help her find her identity, her understanding of race and ethnicity
and country of origin. It will take effort, in other words, from my
wife and me, both to welcome her into our worldview and to change our
worldview to accommodate hers. Adopting from Asian countries has
become so trendy that I worry for kids whose ethnicity seems more like
a fashion accessory than a profound facet of their beauty and
uniqueness.)

My pastor shares this story to say that churches ought to be like
this. When we welcome folks, we ought not to explicitly or implicitly
tell them, "This is who we are. We're glad you're here . . . as long
as you start looking like us." Instead, the church ought to stretch
and grow as it welcomes new people. Newcomers might bring new
languages or worship styles or spiritual gifts to the mix. They might
bring new mental health problems or financial difficulties or soapbox
issues to the mix. Whatever they bring, both good and bad, the church
ought to be big enough to welcome in, adapt, and speak truth in love
and power to.

Almost every church would say they want to be diverse. But is every
church willing to stretch and adjust and reorganize in response to its
new diversity? It is easy to dream about diversity, much harder to
live it day by day. But those churches that truly seek to welcome in
and bend to newcomers will experience the true power and unchanging
fundamentals of the gospel message.

Finally Cheaper Than Phoenix

Phoenix and Philadelphia are like ships passing in the night. One is
about to replace the other as the fifth-most populous city in the US.
I'll give you a hint: it's not Philadelphia. Phoenix's explosive
growth is the envy of many an old and achy Northeastern city.

One thing that helps Phoenix is that it's a relatively new city. It's
been around for a fairly long time, but only as a small and sleepy
town. Then, air conditioning was perfected around the 1950's, and
Phoenix started growing.

And growing and growing and growing. Arizona State University,
located in nearby Tempe, is opening a Phoenix campus. Why not -- the
university adds the equivalent of the entire enrollment of Villanova
every year. Suburbs of Phoenix are now bigger in population as such
major-league cities as Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. The
growth in the present and future boggles the mind sometimes.

Back to old and new. Phoenix doesn't have to spend as much on
rebuilding crumbling infrastructure (roads, water and sewer lines, and
the like) as older cities like Philadelphia. More money to spend on
other things that serve its citizens and draw new citizens.
Meanwhile, Philly can't even keep up with plugging potholes and
repairing broken water mains.

But I've finally found one area in which Phoenix's infrastructure is
more expensive than Philadelphia's. It seems that while we might lust
after Phoenix's features, Phoenicians envy the walkability of our
downtown.

Philadelphia is nice and compact, after all; an annoyance if you don't
like tight streets and high density, but a convenience if you like
walking from Point A to Point B. And in fact, there's a lot of
walking going on in downtown Philadelphia: walking to work from home,
walking from bar to bar, walking through urban parks and shopping
districts.

In downtown Philadelphia, you're never too far away from something
that you can't reasonably walk to it. In downtown Phoenix, on the
other hand, if you're two blocks away, you might as well hop in a car.
Because those two blocks are so big that they'll take you fifteen
minutes walking fast. (And let's not even get started on the
pleasantness of walking in 110 degree dry heat.)

So Phoenix is installing light rail cars to shuttle people into and
around its downtown. They have plenty of space to drop the lines into
existing roads; when your main boulevard is four wide lanes wide,
there's no need to tunnel below grade or build an elevated train, is
there? But it's still expensive. Time will tell whether this will be
successful in terms of people using it to become more mobile apart
from cars, but even if it is successful, it's still expensive. Much
more expensive than what the city of Philadelphia has to do to get
people in and around its downtown. Score one (finally) for Philly.

An Honest Answer to a Complicated Question

I quickly skimmed Governor Jon Corzine's budget address last night and
have to say that I appreciated his honesty. He didn't BS people with
fluffy talk and empty promises. He leveled with the people of New
Jersey and said, "We've been spending more than we bring in, and now
we have to rein in it." He acknowledged that his financial background
didn't mean he had magic solutions for the state's fiscal distress,
but rather it gave him a level-headedness in understanding that the
way out is to raise taxes and cut spending.

As much as I'm a traditional small-government Republican, I liked all
of his tax-side solutions. He cut back on promises of property tax
rebates. He raised taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. He raised the
sales tax by one percent. I would've gone one further, and hiked the
gas tax -- even though that negates my incentive to gas up on the
Jersey side whenever I need to fill up.

Most importantly, he shot straight. Now he has to implement. Keep an eye out.

Green China

Urban Land Institute had a nice article in their February 2006 issue
about urban development in China. Like in every other category,
China's growth in this area is staggering. The article says a half a
billion rural folks will be moving to cities by 2050, and that the
increase in high-rise residential and office space in Shanghai will be
greater than the total office space now present in New York City.

With this explosion comes the opportunity to cut off the negative
consequences of suburban sprawl before things get out of hand. A
variety of factors have created a low-density, automobile-dependent
culture in our country, which is one the main reasons the US is such a
massive guzzler of energy.

The Chinese, especially those in the exploding middle class, are
starting to develop a taste for the car. The number of cars in that
country has gone from 10 million in 1995 to ten times that ten years
later.

China's centrally planned economy is, in some respects,
well-positioned to address urban development and funnel it in greener
directions. It can authorize massive mass transit projects, for
example, more easily than is done here in the US. On the other hand,
local decision-making in the US has the positive effect of driving
infrastructure investments where the market is calling for them; too
often in China, Beijing decides on a project somewhere, and halfway
through its construction, it's clear that location was the wrong place
for that project.

We keep our eye on China for a number of reasons, as it grows into a
political and economic superpower. I'll be keeping my eye on it for
another reason: to see how its cities develop over time.

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears

The local paper ran a couple of stories this weekend that I want to
blog about, because they are exactly the kinds of things that rile me
up. The first, which I believe ran on Saturday, was about opposition
by some Americans of Arab media powerhouse Al Jazeera expanding into
Western markets, including the US. Some Americans despise Al
Jazeera's coverage as biased, wrong, and inflammatory, and shudder at
the thought of it being broadcast here in this country.

Maybe instead we should be welcoming Al Jazeera, and the opportunity
to hear what world news sounds like from an Arab standpoint. We're so
used to being the center of attention that we've completely lost touch
with how the rest of the world thinks, or else we're aware and we
think they're the ones that are out of touch. I can't tell you how
refreshing it is to read about US and world news from the Economist, a
British periodical. And that's the UK, as close to our culture as you
can get in another country. I think we'd do much better as a nation
if we were more in touch with the Arab perspective on global events.
Let's give Al Jazeera a chance in our country, no matter how fanatical
or foreign their broadcasts might seem at first.

The second article hits a little closer to home. It seems the Comcast
Center, when completed, would be the tallest "green" building in the
US (as deemed by the US Green Building Council) . . . except that the
unions are blocking the developers' and the architects' decision to
use water-saving no-flush urinals. Without these environmentally
friendly installations, the Comcast Center won't get the "green" seal
and a building in Manhattan that's also going up right now will claim
the honor of tallest green building.

What's not to like about water-saving no-flush urinals? Supporters
say they'd prevent 1.6 million gallons of water from being consumed
each year, they're just as safe as traditional urinals, and in fact
are probably more sanitary and less smelly. Green buildings, in
general, aren't just for the tie-dyed environmentalists but have
bottom line justifications for the coldest of bean counters: lower
utilities costs mean a lot nowadays, cleaner air results in less
worker sick days, and being green can be the determining factor for
tenants in a competitive market.

But the plumbers' union is opposed to the no-flush urinal. They claim
it's because they're not convinced of its safety; never mind that you
can already find them in places like Disney World and a Pittsburgh
elementary school. They also claim it's not yet in the local building
code; true, but if the union wasn't opposed, local officials would
change that code right away. The reason for the opposition, say some,
is that they require less labor to install. You read that right:
better for the environment, cuts costs, and easier to install – and
that's a bad thing.

Who knew that, after reading the paper this weekend, I'd get all riled
up about Al Jazeera and no-flush urinals?

I’m Not Asking You to Get Out of the Car

I've written often in this space against the car and for alternate
modes of transportation. But I'm not asking you to get out of the
car. Some would vilify the car as the root of such evils as rampant
obesity and suburban sprawl and escalating pollution. I understand
the argument, but still accept the car as a fine mode of transport.

Besides, I'm doubtful we can change Americans' love affair with the
car. Gas prices would have to go significantly higher, public transit
options would have to get a whole lot better, and traffic jams would
have to become incredibly worse, for people to even think about giving
up the car and all that comes with it. It's like it's fixed into our
country's psyche.

But while I condone driving, I hope you'll think about some things,
maybe the next time you're stuck in a sea of cars on your local
highway at rush hour. Namely, that you'll think about how little you
are paying for the societal negatives your driving and idling imposes
on all of us: carbon emissions, wear and tear on our roads, and loss
of productivity caused by sitting in traffic, to name three. If you
think the taxes you pay when you first bought your car, or the taxes
embedded the price of each gallon of gas you pump into your car, are
covering this, you're not even close.

So I'm not asking you to get out of the car. I'm just asking you to
pay for what your car is costing all of us.

The Meaning of Matrix

Am I the last person in the English-speaking world to learn that the
primary definition of the word, "matrix," is "the womb"? I was
reading in Exodus this morning and came to a phrase, "the first
offspring of every womb," that I wanted to look up in the King James
translation and then the original Hebrew. The King James renders that
phrase, "all that open the matrix." Who knew that you could find the
word, "matrix," in the King James? Sure enough, my Hebrew/Greek
concordance defined "matrix" as "the womb."

This certainly adds a layer of depth to the 1999 sci-fi movie of the
same name. It also makes me chuckle that in the youth
entrepreneurship program I used to run, we called our entrepreneurial
assessment tool "The MATRIX." Having gone to b-school, I always
thought that a matrix was a grid of rows and columns, and so when we
decided such a grid to track our students' progress (entrepreneurship
success categories in the rows, stages of development in the columns),
it only seemed natural to call the thing, "The MATRIX."

This word in the Hebrew, "rechem," is certainly an interesting one.
(As an aside, isn't Biblical Hebrew, in general, just more interesting
than its English translation? I can see why they make seminarians
learn it, because it makes the Bible a much more expressive and vivid
read.) It comes from the root word, "racham," which means "to fondle,
love," and which is often translated in English versions of the Old
Testament as "mercy." How rich an image, then, that God's mercy is in
the same realm as a mother's womb.

Mercy is a common concept in the Christian tradition, one that is easy
to gloss over. But thanks to a little probing this morning, I now
have a deeper understanding of the concept. I just need to make sure
that when I think about mercy, I don't conjure up images of sleek
heroes in all black or of green letters and symbols cascading down the
screen.

The Future of Newspapers

Newspaper businesses are struggling. Like TV stations, proliferation
of choices for the consumer has meant less of the pie for newspapers.
And unlike TV stations, many of these other choices are not just more
choices for the consumer but better, faster, and cheaper choices.

So what will the newspaper of the future look like? Here are my
musings, off the top of my head:

o Lots of partnerships. Could newspapers partner with the postal
service on deliveries? Or maybe co-brand the Sunday section with a
popular lifestyle weekly?

o The paper as teaser for a more comprehensive website. Run a teaser
on various articles, with the full versions appearing on the website.
Don't print pages and pages of stock prices or classified ads, just a
few to get people to go online, where you can navigate and search more
easily.

o More audience participation. Facilitate discussions with readers on
hot topics, link to their blogs, give them the rush of having their
words or their pictures published in the paper.

o Serve local government. Get the cities you're in to pay you to push
important reference information to citizens: how to access public
services, where to vote, resources for better health and wellness.

More on the Purpose of Government

Yesterday, we had a guest lecturer in our private economic development
class who is a law professor. The subject was takings in general, and
Kelo v. New London in specific. Here is a great flashpoint on the
topic of the purpose of government. So many issues and angles to
consider: property rights vs. police power, the framer's original
intent in the Constitution vs. what those words written 200+ years ago
mean today, the role of the legislature vs. the role of the judiciary,
the power and limits of government in the realm of economic
development, the legal arguments vs. the economic arguments vs. who
can tell the better tear-jerker vs. who's cheating who, and the list
goes on and on. The only thing I'll say here is, I wonder what the
Founding Fathers would say, if they could've been magically
transported to the present day; how they'd marvel at the longevity of
the Constitution and at the same time the challenge of applying it to
a society and economy so different from its original context.

What’s the Distribution

Many of my posts are in response to something I’ve read, and I can’t think of a writer who so easily inspires a response than Malcolm Gladwell. His writing is entertaining and insightful, ever probing an everyday issue from a counterintuitive perspective.

Last month, he wrote about the power law distribution of homelessness. That is, if you were to chart the users of homeless shelters by their number of stays, you wouldn’t get a normal distribution (from left to right: gradually sloping upwards, peaking at a certain number, and then gradually sloping downwards) but rather a power law distribution (high numbers at the far left, sloping drastically downward and leveling off around zero).

What this means is that the high majority of homeless shelter users are only there for a day or two: 80%, according to research Gladwell quotes. Another 10% are periodic users, dropping in for a week or so, getting back on their feet, only to return a few months later. The last 10% are the chronic users: often mentally ill, staying in shelters for months at a time.

This last group is the one people associate with when they think of the category, “the homeless.” They are also very costly to care for, in term of their constant use of both homeless shelters as well as emergency health services.

Gladwell argues that our response to homelessness has assumed a normal distribution, when perhaps a more cost-effective approach is to provide high-intensity services to the chronic users. I read this argument somewhere else, that if a chronic user that is being treated with our current homeless solutions is costing us fifty to sixty thousand dollars a year in services, it is actually more cost-effective (and ,you would assume, better for the person himself or herself) to provide a home and enough amenities to turn things around.

I’m not here to argue homelessness from a political or moral standpoint. (At least not today.) What Gladwell’s article sparks in me is this notion that understanding the distribution of the problem is key to adopting the appropriate solution. Too often, we assume normal distributions and gradual slopes, when perhaps in reality we are looking at tipping points and sharp slopes.

As I’ve said before in this space, if you’re willing to give up 10% in value, sometimes you don’t save 10% in cost, you can save 50%; and if you’re willing to pay 10% more in cost, sometimes you don’t get 10% more in value, you can get 50% more. And as I’ve also said before in this space, sometimes it’s better to pay a dollar now, no matter how hard up you are in being able to spend that dollar today, then to have to pay ten dollars later. So after reading Gladwell, I’ll be extra careful to keep my eyes open for what distribution we’re really looking at.

Government and Health Care

I'm probably the last person you'd want analyzing our nation's health
care problems. If I ever become president, I'd gladly cede that issue
to my wife, who's quite knowledgeable on the subject. (And hopefully,
by then people will have forgotten how that strategy turned out in the
1990's.)

But I did want to put my two cents in on one aspect of the issue. I'm
a big fan of putting more market mechanisms into things that have
gotten sloppy because of their lack of them. But this move towards
"consumer-driven health care" is a tricky one. On the one hand, it
makes sense, because while doctors and hospitals may have medical
expertise, their motivations aren't always the same as that of their
patients. However, on the other hand, while patients are most
motivated to look out for their own health, they may lack the medical
expertise to make good choices about treatment options.

Governments have neither medical expertise nor aligned motivations.
But I could see them playing an important role on issues of overall
public health. Let's say, for example, that consumer-driven health
care becomes the norm in this country. People have medical spending
accounts, which keeps them from pursuing unnecessary treatments and
pushes them to shop around for the right treatments. Doctors and
hospitals have to compete for their customers just like every other
business: on service, on price, and on quality. All is good, right?

Not necessarily. I would venture to say that if people were in charge
of their consumption of health care, they would tend to under-consume
a lot of things that they ought to consume but don't feel like
consuming. And those things that they would under-consume would be
things like prostate exams and mammograms and smoking cessation
programs and other preventive measures. The kinds of things where an
ounce of prevention really is better than a pound of cure. The kinds
of things that doctors and hospitals are already having trouble
getting patients to take the time for. The kinds of things, then,
that if people are in charge of their own health spending, will get
under-consumed.

And that'll lead to more expensive interventions later: expensive for
people, and for society as a whole. So there's a market failure that
governments could shore up. In fact, many state and local governments
are doing a lot of this kind of stuff already, helping their citizens
quit smoking and eat right and pursue healthy lifestyles. Even we go
all-market on health care, I hope there's a way to add this piece of
government intervention into the market, so that there's a more
societally beneficial level of consumption of these kinds of
preventive measures.

What Makes a Good Follower

A friend of mine asked me some questions about leadership for one of
his classes, and I was happy to oblige with my thoughts on the
subject. I told him I consider the key role of a leader to clarify
for others what direction the organization is going, what their role
is in helping make that happen, and what the leader can do to help
them do that job of theirs. I took this role seriously at my last job
and tried to fulfill it every day.

But it occurs to me that while I've given leadership a great deal of
thought, what would I say is the key role of the follower? It's not a
hypothetical question for me, for I'm likely transitioning from being
a relatively big fish in a relatively small pond to being a relatively
small fish in a relatively big pond. So I'll be playing the role of
follower much more often than that of leader. And what is that role?

I hope that my experience in leadership can be beneficial to my
approach to followership. In my opinion, a good follower helps his
leader be a good leader. I can do that in three ways: by doing my job
effectively, by supplying my leader with information and access so he
or she can help me do my job effectively, and by working with my
leader to constantly refine my job so that it better contributes to
the overall direction of the organization.

So that's my take on followership. I would also commend Useem's
Leading Up and Bradford's Influence Without Authority as two good
books on the subject.

Economics is Politics

Let me chime in on the Dubai Ports thing. I love how riled up
Congress is getting, seeing this as an easy way to look tough on
terrorism. D's can finally say W is the one that's soft on terror,
and R's are trying desperately to carve out their own positions of
strength at an arms-length from W. And anyone who tries to take an
economic approach to the matter is shouted down as being too focused
on the numbers when national security is on the line.

But as Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Andrew Cassel pointed out in
one of his pieces this week, economics is politics. Slamming the door
on competent Arab countries who want to do business with us has
political ramifications. Protectionism isn't just about protecting
jobs or not protecting jobs; it's also about sending a signal to the
world about whether America is willing or unwilling to be open for
business. And given how poorly we're perceived in the Arab world, we
sure could use a win here.

I understand the need sometimes to levy sanctions, to take a stand
against a country and decide not to business with them, to keep
national secrets close to the vest. I just don't think the Dubai
Ports deal is one of those. And by getting all lathered up about
national security, just to look good for this year's elections, all
Congress is doing is telling the Arab world that we're closed for
business.

What is the Purpose of Government

What is the purpose of government? Philosophers and scholars have
debated this question since the beginning of time, so we're dealing
with weighty matters here. What I write here is not intended to be
that heavy, just (as usual) some musings.

If you listen to the libertarians, they'd tell you that in this
country, the Constitution tells us what the role of the federal
government is, and that what the Constitution circumscribes is
actually not a whole lot. If you listen to the liberals, they'd tell
you there are so many noble things that ought to be done and that can
be done in this day and age, and government can and should be doing
those things, because it has the resources and/or clout and/or moral
obligation.

I tend to look at things from an economist's standpoint, and clearly
in between government doing nothing and government doing everything
there are important though limited roles that governments ought to
play. Economists speak of "market failure" when they discuss areas in
which people and markets, if left to themselves, will achieve a less
than ideal equilibrium; those areas, then, are where governments can
and should intervene, and everywhere else, let the people and the
markets reach a better equilibrium. For example, there's not enough
incentive for any one person or organization to build a park in their
community, but if a government does it for them everyone'll benefit.

Fair enough. But who's to say what is an ideal equilibrium? If a
perfect match between the supply of labor and the demand for labor
means that every twentieth person who wants a job won't be able to
obtain one, is that acceptable? Some people would say yes and some
no. If a perfect match between producers and consumers leads to a
society in which there are very rich people and very poor people, is
that acceptable? Again, some people would say yes and some no. What
I'm trying to say (and doing a poor job of it) is that sometimes there
are market failures where it makes sense for governments to intervene.
But sometimes the market's just fine, and we don't like the end
result.

Still looking at things from an economic standpoint, many people would
say government exists to protect the people, primarily through
enacting laws, enforcing them, and punishing those who break them.
This is not a function that any one person or organization would be
properly motivated to do in a completely free marketplace, and so the
government steps in with its authority and its resources to provide
such things as police, national defense, and courts. Fair enough.
But what does that actually mean, in terms of the depth of that
responsibility? Where is a city supposed to be, in the continuum of
providing an acceptable minimum level of policing or providing
complete safety for its residents and visitors? When a person is sent
to a state prison, is it to keep him or her from society, punish him
or her for a law broken, and/or provide rehabilitation? When should
the federal government butt into a local matter to address lawlessness
or injustice? Depending on how big or small you want your government
to be, how much you trust or distrust government, your answers to
these questions will be very different.

Still looking at things from an economic standpoint, many people
consider government a conduit to lower transaction costs. In other
words, a lot of roles governments play can be taken care of just as
logically without government help, but the fact that it can be
centralized into one large bureaucracy does have its advantages of
consistency and efficiency. For example, despite Houston's relative
success in city planning without any meaningful zoning ordinances,
most people would agree that it makes sense for the laying out of
different uses of space to have some level of coordination and
deliberation. But again we have a dilemma, for we are torn between
the gain in centralizing (economies of scale) and the gain in
decentralizing (faster, more knowledgeable responses).

The great thing about the American way of government is that we can
argue how big or small government should be, and that this argument,
far from ever being settled once and for all, is an ongoing, organic
argument. It was an argument our Founding Fathers wrestled through,
and thankfully, instead of resolving their conflicts they laid a
framework for the conflicts to be wrestled over. Sure, all politics
is dirty and some politicians are even dirtier. But I wouldn't trade
our system for any other in the world.

Darwinian or Not

Everywhere I turn in my readings, it seems, I'm confronted with the
notion of "survival of the fittest." I have read of military bases
and state hospitals that can no longer cut it; how, then, to
strategically close the right ones without the process turning into a
shouting match between communities to see who can howl the loudest
about not wanting to lose their jobs? I have read of very large
businesses propped up by the federal government in the name of
"national commerce," and of relatively small businesses propped up by
state and local government in the name of "economic development"; and
I wonder how much of this is a net gain for society and how much of
this is just political deal-making and grand-standing. I have read of
the extremely high costs borne by us taxpayers to preserve the tiniest
of endangered species, wondering if we should just allow natural
selection to run its course or if we must halt the precipitous slide
in biodiversity at all costs.

Darwin believed that natural selection led to stronger and more
durable species, even if it meant a few, weaker variants had to die
out. Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter believed in the power of
"creative destruction," that wonderful entrepreneurial process by
which older, dying industries are replaced by newer, nimbler ones.
Pessimistic economist Thomas Malthus thought over-population was the
number one danger facing humanity, to the point that he was nervous
about things like cures for deadly diseases and advances in medical
procedures, because the gain in life and longevity just aggravated our
problem of overcrowding. All of them believed in some form of letting
some things die out rather than letting them hang on.

The notion of "survival of the fittest" has been argued for many
centuries. It is a deeply political, religious, philosophical,
scientific, and economic debate. As an urban Christian, it is a
debate that flavors my thoughts on how to work towards a more just
society, which economic development strategies will be best for
America's cities, and what should be done about New Orleans, among
other topics. Honestly, I am torn. I see the merit, both in theory
and in reality, of both sides. Ultimately, I want to be true to my
faith, righteous in my thinking, and effective in my work. What side
of this debate, then, should I be on?

Responding to Adam Carolla

(Feel free to also email this to him at adam@adamcarolla.com. While
you're at it, cc Joel Hollander, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
of CBS Radio, at joel.hollander@infinitybroadcasting.com)

Dear Adam:

I don't listen to your show so a boycott from me is probably not going
to cause you much pain. But six weeks after your infamous "Ching
Chong" broadcast, I finally got around to listening to the clip. And
let me tell you, what you did is ignorant and racist and demeaning and
stupid. As an Asian-American, I am offended by your spoof of the
Chinese language and by your incredulousness that there would be such
a thing as an Asian Excellence Awards. If you think you can have
success in New York and LA by making fun of Asians, you are just plain
dumb.

I am also troubled that you don't seem to realize how loaded the
phrase, "Ching Chong," is. It is an ethnic slur that takes us back
about 100 years and hearkens us back to so many shameful treatments of
Chinese and other Asian immigrants by other Americans throughout the
history of this nation. Consider, just to give one example, the
experience of author Mary Paik Lee, a Korean immigrant, who on her
first day of school was greeted with a nursery rhyme popular at the
time, sung by her classmates as they circled and hit her: "Ching Chong
Chinaman / Sitting on a wall / Along came a white man / And chopped
his head off."

Shame on you, Adam Carolla.

Buying a Car in the City

About a month ago, our 1993 Pontiac Grand Am broke down, and we had to
buy a new car. In hindsight, I should've sold it a year ago after it
crossed 75,000 miles, since I heard that's when cars can start to fall
apart. But I kept putting it off, putting it off . . . until the car
pooped out and left my wife and daughter stranded on the side of a
highway.

So it was time to buy a new car. Since I married into the Pontiac,
I'd never bought a car before in my life. And it's funny how it's
hard to shop for a car when you don't have a car, since it often
entails driving from dealership to dealership.

Enter the Internet. In less than an hour, I had read a few online
reviews, narrowed my search, comparison-shopped at nearby dealers, and
even picked up some pointers on how to get a good deal. I zeroed in
on a couple of cars I wanted to test-drive, and fortunately, both were
accessible by public transit.

Although the first was in the suburbs. I just had to get on a
regional rail, get off at the nearby stop, and walk about ¾ of a mile
to the lot. But I got some stares walking that ¾ of a mile, since it
was down a busy arterial street that no one else was walking. I was
hoping to sneak onto the lot without the dealers seeing me – you have
considerably less leverage when you walk onto the lot than when you
drive on, right? – but they were smoking out front. Oh well; I knew I
had a second place to go, so I could play hardball there. And in
fact, I walked away from the first place, walked the ¾ of a mile to
the rail stop, and took the regional rail, subway, and bus out to the
second place. Fortunately, I liked the car there, and drove it home.

As for our old car, this too was an experience interlaced with urban
and Internet themes. To begin with, I made arrangements via the
Internet to have it donated. But the towing company that was to pick
up my car was taking too long, and the mechanics where I had had the
car towed to needed it off their lot. So I had to drive the wreck a
mile and a half down a busy urban street back to my place. It
sputtered and smoked and shook the whole time, and halfway through it
stopped cold. I was greeted with a symphony of horns. Fortunately, I
was able to coax it back to life, but then I began to wonder what
would happen if I got it back to my house and I couldn't find a
parking space and I had to circle and circle and circle. I decided
instead to stash it on the street I was driving on, thinking it close
enough to my house and probably an easier pick-up spot for the towing
company anyway. And there it sat for 48 hours, until it got picked up
and whisked away from me forever.

There's no moral of this story, no deep underlying significance.
Every once in awhile, I just like to write about something urban.
Consider it a bit of documentation of life in the city.

All In For Him

In an online conversation with sportswriter Bill Simmons, writer
Malcolm Gladwell talks about why people don't try hard. He says it is
because know that it is easier to not try and then fail, and that it
would be devastating to try and then fail. Since they were talking
about sports, he used an example of an athlete who was content to mail
it in, since if he failed he could say that he didn't give it his all.
He then used an example of another athlete who was afraid to try his
very hardest, because if he and then failed, he would be absolutely
devastated. He then used a third example on another athlete, who
wasn't afraid to try his very hardest, and who had the mental
toughness to deal with the greatness when he succeeded and the
demoralization when he failed.

I think Gladwell is right. I think fear of knowing that at your very
best you're still a failure is what keeps many people from trying
hard. And I think being tough enough to try your hardest and deal
with what happens if you fail is a rare thing to find in a person.

I bring this up because I think a lot about greatness. As a
Christian, I understand that there are different definitions of what
it means to be great and what it takes to get to greatness than what
the world might say. But I still think there is a Christian
definition of greatness, and a Christian way to get to it.

And so I wonder if I and my contemporaries are too often scared of
greatness. We are afraid to give our all to pursue it, because we'll
be devastated if we fall short. We settle for half-pursuits of
Christian greatness because we are more comfortable being
half-successes than complete failures. We may even look with
suspicion upon people who are "all in" for Jesus, thinking them too
emotional, too inflammatory, too naïve, too imbalanced.

But what if God is calling us to greatness? What if He has placed
upon us a unique combination of talents, resources, and opportunities?
What if He has given us His Son, His Spirit, and His Word? What if
He has given us a mission field that is oh-so-ripe for harvest, a
mission that cannot not be fulfilled?

I watched a Veggie Tales DVD with my daughter yesterday. It was about
Esther, who her uncle Mordecai said God raised for "such a time as
this" when she had the opportunity to appeal to her husband the king
on behalf of her people. Esther bristled at the responsibility. I
think she just wanted to be a regular, nice teenage girl.

In the movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the lead character comes to
grips with her special powers and purpose: to slay vampires. She too
bristles at the responsibility: she just wants to be a regular, nice
teenage girl.

What about us? I believe God has called each of us to something
great, that He has called us together as the church to be great – in
His way and for His sake. And I am ashamed to say that I and others
are all too often found trembling at the thought of being "all in" for
Him. We would rather not try so that if we fail, we can say that it
was because we didn't try. We would rather not give it our all, lest
we fail and have to deal with the wrenching psychological
vulnerability of knowing that at even our very best we are still
failures.

Some of us who try will indeed fail. And thanks be to God that He has
enough room in His heart for failures. And some of us who try will
instead succeed. And glory be to God when His greatness is made known
through those successes. Either way, I hope I and others in my
generation will have the moral courage and spiritual toughness to be
"all in" for Him.

The Good Life

It is important to remember that many of the Bible's great heroes of
faith were, in the world's eyes, nothing special. David was the
youngest of seven brothers. Jeremiah cried a lot. Even Jesus came
from a lineage that, in some respects was impressive but in other
respects was downright shady. God likes to use the weak so that His
strength can be even more magnified.

But it's also important to remember that some of the Bible's great
heroes of faith were, in the world's eyes, quite impressive. Abraham
achieved great wealth and was respected by the contemporary rulers.
Solomon became quite powerful and was known by many for his wisdom and
riches. Paul was the bluest of blue bloods in terms of his heritage
and religious schooling.

And then there was Moses. When God met him in Exodus 3, he was living
a decent life, thanks to his having been rescued by Pharaoh's daughter
and given the best education the Egyptians could offer. And yet God
tells Moses that He is going to rescue His oppressed people, and that
Moses is going to lead the rescue effort. The book of Hebrews puts it
like this:

"By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian
royal house. He chose a hard life with God's people rather than an
opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued
suffering in the Messiah's camp far greater than Egyptian wealth
because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff."

This passage has always challenged me. I too have had the privilege
of a good education, and the opportunities that come with it. As God
spoke to Moses, so I believe He speaks to people like me, inviting us
to a better way even than the good lives we can lead by parlaying our
schooling into posh jobs and posh lifestyles. "A hard life with God's
people" and "suffering in the Messiah's camp" hardly qualifies as the
good life in the world's eyes, but indeed it is the path to true
payoff for people of faith.

In His infinitely wise ways, God sometimes does use those who are
relatively weak in the world to achieve great things. But sometimes
He asks those who are relatively strong in the world to achieve great
things, too. Whether we are weak or strong in the eyes of the world,
may we respond to such a God and such an invitation to do great for
Him.