A Better Way to Offset Your Carbon Footprint

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know I've written a lot about raising the price of gas to help offset all the negative externalities that come from consuming it.  More and more people are becoming aware of a thing called Terrapass, where you pay for credits to offset the carbon emissions your car is belching into the world.  Basically, your car pollutes the earth, but the money you spend on a Terrapass funds clean energy projects that help make up for that pollution.

I've found what I think is a better offset: carbonfund.org.  Not only is the equivalent credit 50% less (in the case of our family's car and the type of mileage we put on it, $20 per year instead of $40 per year), but the donation is tax-deductible.  You can even select the type of offset project you want your money to go towards: renewable, efficiency, or reforestation.  Carbonfund.org also has a "zero carbon" option where $99 per year offsets everything in your life, not just your driving. 

But there's an even better way to offset the negative effects of CO2 emissions, and that's with a carbon tax.  I know, a Republican advocating a tax, look at me.  But bear with me here.  A tax on something does two things for you: the higher price causes people to consume less of it, and the revenue you raise gives you money you can do something with. 

In the case of carbon, no tax means people are getting a free ride, only everyone else and Mother Nature are paying for it.  Tack the tax on and people will do less of the things that incur the tax, and the tax revenues can be used on clean energy projects. 

I've heard a lot of talk lately about food and the environment, that if you eat fruit that's from far away (and a lot of the good fruit we eat in this country is from really far away), that's bad because a lot of pollution happened in getting that piece of fruit from where it was grown to where you bought it.  The problem here isn't that it's inherently better to eat locally-grown food, but that the price of transporting food is artificially low.  If you get the price right on that, it doesn't matter how far your fruit had to travel to get to you, because the different prices account for the environmental impact and profit-taking that happened along the way. 

The fact that you can voluntarily zero out your carbon footprint is great.  But the fact that it has to be voluntarily isn't.  If you want to buy your produce in such a way that it didn't have to travel so far, more power to you.  But if you like bananas from Ecuador and oranges from Florida and tomatoes from New Jersey, the price of getting them to you shouldn't be skewed to the point that we're all worse off than if you'd planted a garden in your own backyard. 

Somewhere between the smugness of the tree huggers and the oblivion of the SUV drivers, there's got to be a place to rationally calculate what sort of tax it would take to get this right for both sides, so that the tree huggers get the zeroed-out carbon footprint they're fighting for and the SUV drivers can pay the right price to exercise their preference for big cars.  Does anybody out there have the economic acumen and political savvy to make that happen? 

Lose Your Life

Most polls will tell you two things about Americans: 1) they don't approve of Congress, and 2) they approve of their Congressional representatives.  How can this be?  Easy: it's the fractured, pork-laden, and, some would say, corrupt nature of what passes for congressional politics nowadays.  The rules of the game we don't like, but the fact that our guy or gal played it well makes them OK in our book.

I'm not here to excuse our elected officials -- I wish and work for things to be better -- but I understand their plight.  After all, like all of us, they're looking out for their own jobs.  All the things you don't like about congressional politics -- earmarks, gerrymandering, dirty campaigning -- can be explained by the fact that these people could lose their seat every two to six years. 

It's no different in other fields, lest we unfairly heap all of our righteous indignation on the professional politicians.  Unions, for example, lobby in ways that will protect their members' jobs and their business' opportunities, even if those ways are a net loss for society as a whole.  You conspiracy theorists among you would argue that there are entire job categories that benefit from "the war on drugs" -- policemen, judges, prison operators -- that don't really want to win that "war" as much as make sure it stays well-funded. 

On a personal level, we do things every day to demonstate we're more interested in personal protection than in societal benefit.  We move our kids to better school districts instead of helping improve the ones we're in.  We consume according to our own preferences for price and feature, not accounting for any social injustices we're supporting with those purchases. 

Which is why Jesus' rhetoric about saving your life and losing your life is just so darn radical.  Instead of protecting your own job, you use that job while you have it to benefit others?  Instead of looking out for your own family, you work hard to help out other families?  How quaint and unusual that is, in this day and age. 

And yet the motivator Jesus uses isn't altruism but the opposite.  "If you try to save your life, you'll lose it; but if you lose it for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you'll save it."  It's not bad to want to save your life, Jesus implies; it's the way you're going about it that's all wrong. 

Here we are, looking for the politicians who can't be bought, for the leaders who stand for something greater than their own personal gain -- and we who call ourselves Christians, who of all people have a logical motivation to "lose our lives," haven't lived up to that calling. 

At least in the political and civic realms, those who have stood out lately in this respect are people who are either so rich they can't be bought or so radical that they care nothing about what rules they're breaking or what conventions they're flaunting.  Besides these two groups, the landscape is bland with people like you and me, who might mean well but at the core are in it for themselves. 

Jesus calls us instead to be the salt of the earth, to spice up this monotony with radical living that trades self-saving with self-losing for the gospel and for others.  Would that we who call ourselves by His name get a little saltier in the way we live our lives, in the way we approach politics, parenting, and purchasing; the way we do citizenship, commerce, and community; the way we steward our time, talent, and treasure. 

Well, Actually

Among the many facets of my personality are two that would seem to belong to two pretty different kinds of people.  There's the contrarian, who revels in taking the minority and counter-cultural point of view on issues.  And there's the stat geek, who would blush at such bravado and who loves nothing more than to crunch numbers and look at objective facts.   Put these two sides together and I'm realizing I love playing the "well, actually" role. 

What do I mean by "well, actually"?  I'll give you three examples from my life.  First, the trivial: I love baseball.  So the little leagues have been on the decline for two decades, and so the major league version of the sport is tarnished by steroids and free agency.  I don't care, I still love the sport.  And I especially love the Oakland A's "Moneyball" approach of the past decade or so.  Faced with a payroll a fraction of their major competitors, they turned the sport into a mathematical puzzle that could yield them insights on how to best spend their limited resources.  When the rest of the league overvalued certain athletic traits and performance stats, the A's figured out which traits and stats actually had the highest payoff.  They exploited these market inefficiencies to the tune of 612 regular-season victories so far this decade, the most of any team in the majors (I believe).   It just so happens I grew up in the Bay Area and rooted for the A's as a kid, so my allegiance runs deep; but it feels particularly good to root them along, because I can often say "well, actually" when I argue baseball with friends: "well, actually, power stats in college are a poor predictor of power stats in the big leagues," or "well, actually, defensive prowess is now undervalued in the market, so stocking up on good glovemen is a good way to build a team." 

Second, the political: I defy the stereotypes of my affiliations.  I'm much more to the right than most in my church and neighborhood, much more to the left than most in my extended family and political party.  The thing about stereotypes is that there's a veneer of truth, but the reality is usually much deeper on the inside.  So I often find myself saying "well, actually" when political conversations come up: "well, actually, Social Security reform is not as simple as that," or "well, actually, that sort of program has been statistically proven to be ineffective, no matter how popular or well-meaning it might seem." 

Finally, the vocational: we tackle some of the most politically contentious issues in as apolitical of a way as possible.  That's really our bread and butter as a company, that in the midst of people arguing on both sides of an issue, we scrutinize the numbers as objectively as possible and let them dictate to us what the best course of action is.  Not that we are oblivious to the political issues or are ourselves politically uninvolved in our personal lives; far from it.  But like the good guys on CSI, we look for the right evidence and the right context and we let it, and not the yelling around it, tell us whodunit.  It's a role I'm enjoying so far, six weeks into my new job, and it's slowly occurring to me why: because, like baseball stats and political views, it speaks to these two facets of my personality that you wouldn't think could come together but quite often do.

Seeking Less Diversification, More Maturity

As you go from high school to college to your twenties to your
thirties, you usually go from doing more things to less things. As an
example, in high school, I had about six or seven classes at a time,
played a sport, was heavily involved in three clubs and casually
involved in five or six others. Of course, I had a ton of friends and
saw my family every day. In college, I took about four or five
classes at a time, was heavily involved in two clubs and casually
involved in two or three others. I had a bunch of friends and saw my
family twice a year.

After college, I worked at one place and volunteered at another, went
to church, and kept in touch with some of my high school and college
friends. After that, I quite my volunteer position and worked
full-time, went to church, and started seeing less of my friends and
less often. Now I'm in my early thirties. My job is more
specialized, I spend most of my non-work time taking care of my
daughter, and see even less of my friends and much less often.

I don't write this wistfully wishing for my high school or college
days: I don't have the desire or the energy for that lifestyle
anymore. I write this to make a point about how we spend our time.
With greater investments in less things, we run counter to the notion
of diversification. The good of diversification is that when one
things zigs, another thing zags to compensate. In fact, I learned in
business school that diversification, when done correctly, can boost
your return and minimize your risk.

So what's going on when we're becoming less diversified with our time
and commitments? Are we reducing our "return" and raising our "risk"
in life? On the contrary. If we're living right, we're drawing on
our experience to determine what are our best uses of time. In high
school and college, we didn't know, so we did a little bit of
everything to help find out. Now that we're twice that age, we don't
need to experiment like that anymore. To attend the meetings of six
clubs every month would be a waste, because we know now from
experience that five of them, however interesting and noble they might
be, aren't worth our increasingly scarce time. Far from reducing our
"return" and raising our "risk" in life, if we're living right, we're
reaping greater returns and avoiding greater risk because we know
what's worth our time.

All of this, of course, presupposes that we're living right. And
while we may be more mature, we're not perfect. It is so easy in our
culture, especially, to second-guess ourselves. It is tempting to
want to diversify, because having your eggs in less baskets, even if
they're the right baskets, seems scarier. After all, having less
baskets means there's a lot of attractive and worthy baskets out there
that we don't have our eggs in.

I recently discussed this with a friend of mine, who, like me, has
ambition that far outstrips the physical limitations of his time and
energy. We're both happy with what we give our days to, but easily
wander into the land of second-guessing. If we are pursuing more
vigorously a certain professional competence, for example, we are not
free to pursue other professional competences. And if others around
us have decided to pursue those competences, we will necessarily be
inferior to them in those areas. If we decide to focus our relational
energy on one group, there will be other groups that mean a lot to us
that we will drift away from.

And that is the cost of doing one thing and not the other. And that
is the reality of growing up and becoming less diversified. Those who
age well learn not only how to be less diversified in ways that
increase their "return" and decrease their "risk" in life, but also
how to be at peace with falling behind in the other things. It's a
maturation process my friend and I understand we're going through, and
one we pray for the faith to go through well. For it takes faith to
know that the things we're giving ourselves to are the things that
ultimately matter; for with time and energy as scarce as they are, who
can waste them on things that don't?

When Knowledge Gets in the Way

Usually the way knowledge stands in the way of effective ministry is
when a person thinks they know so much that they can depend on their
human knowledge and not on God to get something done. While I've
certainly been guilty of this before, I feel like lately the way
knowledge has been getting in the way of effective ministry for me is
that I think I know so little.

Let me explain. For a long time, my ministry has been in the field of
urban economic development. Early on, I learned about God's concern
for cities and about godly ways to use business and economics to
actualize those concerns. The more I learned about the business and
economic side of things, the more equipped I felt to do effective
ministry.

But now it seems the more I learn about how business and economics
work in the city, the more ill-equipped I feel. For I understand just
how complex are the systems, the structures, and the solutions. Where
once I felt optimistic about urban Christians like me making a
difference in areas like education and homelessness and jobs and
neighborhoods, now I know more clearly just how hard it is, from an
economic and political and organizational standpoint, to make even
minor dents in these problems.

I'm not quite ready to concede that these are all moral issues, that
what we really need to do is to pray for hearts and fight for souls
and work towards better relationships and healthier behaviors. I want
to believe that, as important as that dimension is, there is still a
role to play for those of us who are trained in and energized by the
more secular disciplines, like business and government and law and
administration.

But I know, better now than I did before, just how hard it is to make
a difference for the Kingdom of God in these fields. May God grant
me, with this greater understanding of our problems, a greater
understanding of His solutions.

Ask For More

A fellow in our church's men's Bible study this morning recounted a
sermon from a church he attended in New York last weekend, about how
Jesus healed this blind man partially at first, and then all the way.
After his first touch, Jesus asked if the man could see, and he
responded that everything was blurry, so Jesus touched him again and
fully restored his sight. The preacher at this church remarked that
it would've been tragic if the blind mand had decided after the first
touch that partial sight was acceptable -- obviously much better than
he'd ever had before -- and walked away before Jesus could administer
the second touch. The lesson, of course, was that we ought to stay
with Jesus for the fullness of His blessing, and not be satisfied with
partial healing.

It made me think of another Bible story, that of Elisha (a Christ
figure if there ever was one) and this poor woman who needed money for
her ill son. Elisha asked her what she had in her house to sell and
the poor woman said she just had a small jar of oil. Elisha asked her
to gather as many containers as she could, even from neighbors, and to
pour out the oil into the containers. This little jar of oil
miraculously filled several large containers and kept on going, until
the woman ran out of containers, and then the little jar was finally
emptied. The lesson to me was that God's ability to bless us is
limited only by the number of empty containers we're willing to bring
to Him.

And so I think about this blind man who was healed, and this poor
woman who experienced this miracle, and I wonder to myself if I have
their faith to receive the fullness of blessing from God, or if I am
content with a partial blessing. Perhaps I feel I don't deserve more,
or that I'd be bothering God, or that halfway is acceptable to me.
None of these attitudes glorifies God; in fact, they dis Him.

Better that I exercise greater faith, that I pray bolder and wait
longer and dream bigger. It is easier to settle when settling means a
comfortable, easy life. But our lives, whether we are rich or poor,
healthy or sick, young or old, are more desperate than we know. For
if we could only see with real, spiritual eyes, we would know that we
are on the precipice of either great wonders or great catastrophe. We
can, in Christ, be great and do great and see great for His kingdom
and for this world; or we can live half-lives that are no lives at
all. We may not have the immediately tangible circumstances of the
blind man or the poor woman, but we ought to be like them in their
desperation and desire. We ought not to stop God halfway through Him
blessing us, but rather ask for more.

Older Suburbs

Everywhere I turn I read about the plight of our older suburbs.
Cities are enjoying a renaissance, as boomers crave the ability to
live near where they take in art, culture, and alcohol. Outer suburbs
are where the biggest growth is, as both young families and big box
retail stores love the cheap land and new infrastructure.

Left behind and left in the middle are our older suburbs. The poor in
our cities that are pushed out by gentrification often end up in these
areas. Higher social service burdens and aging infrastructure cause
those who have the means to flee further from urban centers. As a
result, our older suburbs are feeling the double pain our cities felt
a decade ago: a dwindling tax base and soaring costs.

What to do? Two things come to mind, both traditionally urban
solutions, one easier to do than in the city and one harder to do.
The easier thing is for governments to be pro-active in working with
private developers to assemble multi-tenant lots. Whether
residential, retail, or commercial, these things rarely get done
without government intervention, and this kind of in-fill development
can bolster a sagging municipality and stem the unceasing outward
march of sprawl. In-fill development in the suburbs, no matter how
old they are, is easier than in urban areas, because issues of land
fragmentation, environmental cleanup, and lot size are just less
messy.

A second thing, harder to do than in cities, is mass transit.
Transit-oriented development isn't a panacea, but if done well it sure
can rejuvenate an aging area by providing activity and opportunity in
an environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing way. Mixing of
uses, pedestrian walkways, and alternatives to cars and roads are all
the kinds of the things older suburbs need to come back to life.

American Syncretism

Syncretism is a missiological term that means when people co-opt their
original religious practices into their newfound faith. We often
think of it as something people faraway from us do, like newly
converted African tribes incorporating their animist worship ideas
into their notion of God and Christianity. But I wonder if we in
America are subtly, or maybe not so subtly, guilty of syncretism, too.

Some Christians, for example, are just plain lazy, and subconsciously
excuse their laziness by leaning on God's grace, while other
Christians are workaholics, and consider it righteousn to be ever
doing God's work. For some, the Christian faith justifies their rich
and bloated lifestyles, and for others, it justifies their fiery
countercultural radicalism. One person celebrates the intellectual
underpinnings of the faith, while another loses themselves in
Spirit-filled worship.

It's hard sometimes to distinguish bad syncretism from good diversity.
After all, the Kingdom of God and the truths of God are certainly
vast enough to embrace a wide range of worship styles, ministry
approaches, and political viewpoints. But even diversity is
susceptible to being upheld, syncretically, as a core value, and then
the Bible used to justify it; not meaning that diversity isn't
Biblical, but that diversity is held as the absolute truth and the
Bible validated from it, not the other way around.

Or consider that just as there are vices different people groups are
more apt to be guilty of, there are virtues different people groups
are more apt to gravitate to. These virtues, of course, are great
things: being communal, or hospitable, or disciplined. But they can
border on syncretic if we let them and not the Bible be the final word
on our behavior and perspective, if we take pride in that virtue first
and foremost, glad that the Bible salutes it, rather than giving glory
to God for giving us the commandment and the strength to pursue that
virtue.

Come to think of it, whether we are considering the people group in
the deep bush in Africa or our own modern American society, syncretism
is hard to define and even harder to shake. Of course, it's easier
for us to see this in faraway people than in ourselves, because the
culture we're in is like water to a fish: all around us and yet
imperceptible to us. And yet it is no less amiss from the truths God
would have us to live by.

So how can we say no to our syncretic ways and yes to higher, better
ones? I would put forth three suggestions. One is to be careful not
to uphold a certain value – however noble it is, like social justice
or environmental concern or moral purity – as an absolute truth from
which we view the Bible. In other words, we don't obey what the Bible
says because it fits into our notion of social justice; we pursue
social justice because it's a natural extension of obeying what the
Bible says.

Second, we need to regularly study the Bible and hear it exposited it
to us from people whose viewpoints – whether geographic, political, or
socio-economic – are different than ours. I learned a lot about my
Americentric view of God and Christianity when I spent a summer in
Eastern Europe, for seeing others of the same God and faith see that
God and faith in ways different than mine challenged me to parse out
what I believed because I was a Christian from what I believed because
I was an American.

Third, we should strive to obey the Bible in ways that stretch us. If
you are naturally hospitable, for example, good for you; be hospitable
for God's glory. But for the one for whom hospitality doesn't come
easy, obeying the command to be hospitable can sometimes more easily
be about glorifying God, less about showing off or feeling good about
ourselves.

I'm reminded of an illustration from the sermon at today's morning
service, of an inquisitive little boy constantly asking his aunt,
"Why?" "We have to eat dinner now." "Why?" "So we can have energy."
"Why?" "So we can do what we need to do." "Why?" The answer to
syncretism is to be as this little boy and ever ask the question,
"Why?" If we find that our final answer is something besides
"bringing glory to God," then we know we are being syncretic.

June 18, 2006 – Happy Father’s Day

In 1998, I read a book called The Making of a Leader, by Bobby Clinton. In the book, Clinton looks at Christian leaders in the Bible, church history, and contemporary times, and parses out common phases and lessons leaders go through. I decided after I had finished the book that I would try to apply its principles as thoroughly as possible to my own leadership development. Specifically, I mapped out my whole life to date, trying to apportion various milestones and lessons into the various categories Clinton spelled out. When I was done, I had before me a better understanding of the unique way God had made me, a clearer sense of all the ways God was at work in my life not only to bless me as a person but to equip me as a leader.

Every year, I return to my original notes from this exercise, and add a year’s worth of new experiences and lessons to them. And having recently searching for and found a new job, I have been especially contemplative as it relates to what drives me, what I am qualified to do, what I want to accomplish with my days.

I share this today because the more I think about it, the more I realize how influential my father has been in who I am. Even though he is not a follower of Jesus (yet), his values have been deeply embedded into my worldview, to the point that I cannot hardly think of a thing that moves me as a human being that wasn’t somehow influenced by his example.

For example, I hate waste. Whether it is money (i.e. thriftiness), time (i.e. productiveness), or people (i.e. empowering the disenfranchised), it pains me when something is carelessly wasted. I learned that from my dad, from whom I observed zero wasting of money, time, or people.

Or take my insistence on a “right way” of doing things. Whether it’s a work assignment, a school paper, or washing the dishes, I cannot not do it in a way that I believe is proper. This too I learned from my father’s example, who always communicated to me the “right way” of doing things, every once in awhile with his words, and always with his actions.

Even my need to document is from him. Finances, calendar events, even vacations were always meticulously recorded. Now you know why I always ask for a receipt.

So while we may disagree on some of life’s biggest issues, still I count him as one of the most influential people in my life, one of the people I have most patterned the way I conduct myself as a person. To Ba, Happy Father’s Day.

In Defense of Moms

I know this weekend is for dads, but let me put in a good word today
for the moms. Moms in our society feel two competing pressures: to
take care of their kids and to have successful careers. One side
guilts moms into choosing their jobs over their children, while
another side is critical of moms for letting their domestic
responsibilities waylay them from their professional ambitions. A lot
of moms respond by trying to do both perfectly: keep the home and the
kids in top-notch shape AND climb the corporate ladder. Never mind
that just doing one of those is hard enough.

We get Parenting Magazine (tagline: "what matters to moms"), and it
seems half of each issue is devoted to telling moms that it's OK to
not be perfect. It's OK not to have the perfect 1st birthday party,
it's OK to take some "me" time in the midst of all the juggling, it's
OK to be frustrated with your kids when they're being bad. Most of
all, its OK to be a stay-at-home and it's OK to be a working mom.

For awhile, I've been aware of the fact that women are pressured into
impossible body ideals. But since becoming a parent, and talking
through stuff with my wife, and reading Parenting Magazine, I've
become aware of the fact that women are pressured into impossible time
and value and role ideals. So while I'm glad that the dads are the
focus of this special weekend, I'll be sure to keep my eye out for the
moms, too.

Urban Biking in Chicago

Chicago is one of the prettiest big cities I've ever been to. So I
was heartened to hear that the city has unveiled an audacious plan
called Bike 2015, which seeks to make biking a safe, easy, and fun
option for residents and commuters. And what could be bad about
promoting bike use: it's healthy for you, it gets people out of their
cars, and it adds to the vibrancy of a city and its streets.

Of course, all these bike lanes will eat into car lanes, so traffic
could get worse. The extra space for bikes could go unused, as the
city finds it harder than they thought to wrest people out of their
cars. And more biking could lead to more bike accidents -- not
necessarily more per bike trip, but more in raw number.

Here's hoping the city gets it all right and its residents take
advantage of the wonderful resource the eventual network of lanes will
be. Just don't let them steal away the big international bike race
from Philadelphia.

What Do You Call Someone Who Speaks One Language

I'm not much of a joke-teller, but one I usually have the courage to
break out goes like this:

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.

Between Utah residents calling for their state government's
Spanish-version website to be taken down to my own city's uproar over
the local cheesesteak owner's sign that says, "This is America -- when
ordering, speak English," the fact that many Americans only speak one
language is well in play.

As a nation of immigrants and the self-proclaimed "melting pot" of the
world, we should be ashamed of our unilingual narrow-mindedness.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for assimilation. I believe that if you
want to be a citizen you have to take on the responsiblity of
citizenship, including learning the dominant (some would want it to be
"official") language of the land.

But most of the rest of the world speaks two or three or more
languages, and are better off for it. Sometimes it's out of
necessity: nearby countries speak other languages, or a tribal tongue
is used in one setting and an official language in business settings.
And sometimes it's just for making a connection to a broader array of
cultural experiences: being able to cross a border or criss-cross the
world and have dialogue with others.

Have we gotten so geographically and culturally isolated, so mentally
insular, so xenophobically threatened that while the rest of the world
runs circles around us in multi-cultural openness that we demand our
citizens get municipal information and our customers order
cheesesteaks using just English?

If so, then the next time you travel to another country where English
isn't the dominant language, don't talk loudly in English and expect
everyone else to understand you. Although most of the rest of the
world, no matter how this behavior makes them bristle, will probably
accommodate you anyway. After all, I'm pretty sure if you went to
Cancun, for example, you wouldn't find a sign that says, "Esto es
México -- al ordenar, habla español."

When Donkeys Talk

It was by coincidence, but not really since there are no coincidences
under God's direction, that I read the 22nd chapter of the book of
Numbers the morning of my first day at my new job as a consultant. It
is a hilarious account of how a king asks a prophet to curse God's
people so that he can win his battle against them. The prophet
refuses on the grounds that he can't well curse a people without first
consulting God to see if they are indeed cursed. But the king keeps
upping the fee, and so the prophet agrees to meet with him. Only the
prophet's donkey, under the influence of God, keeps redirecting him
away from this meeting, and finally just up and says, "Where do you
think you're going?" The image of a prophet, surrounded by the king's
regal envoy, being bucked left and right by a divinely-inspired ass,
is one that makes me laugh out loud even now.

It was no coincidence that I read this very chapter on the day that I
was to start as a consultant. For it is tempting in this industry,
particularly as we tackle such political hot-potatoes as tax abatement
and legalized gambling, to arrive at whatever answer the client is
paying for, regardless of what the data says. Just like the prophet
was tempted to take the king's money and lay a curse on a people he
knew were not cursed, consultants are tempted to take their client's
fee and say what they want to hear. Thankfully, the company I'm
joining is one that takes seriously its objective, analytical, and
apolitical role. Still, it's good to know that even if I cave in a
little, God can do things like make donkeys talk to keep me from
betraying my integrity.

A Weekend Without Internet

We've been without phone service since last Friday. No phone is no
big deal, since my wife and I both have cell phones. But our Internet
connection at home is via DSL. So no phone means no DSL. And no DSL
means . . . what?

I'd like to report that no Internet access meant that I spent the
weekend doing stuff I ought to be doing more of anyway: going to the
park with my daughter, hanging out with my wife, reading books and
magazines, taking naps. In fact, I did all those things and enjoyed
them all immensely.

But I still miss my Internet. I can't tell you how many times I
wanted to jump on, whether to check a baseball score, research a
purchase, post a blog, or see what the weather was going to be like.
I'm frightened by how dependent I am on the Internet for information,
and yet if service were restored today (which I hope it will be),
there's nothing different I'd do from here on out than I was doing
before last Friday.

I guess what I'm saying is if I'm sick with Internet addiction, I
don't want to know what the cure is.

Pitching Philly for the Olympics

The US Olympic Committee has called the cities interested in being the
US bid for the 2016 Olympics to LA to make their pitch. I know a few
of the board members of the local team and have heard some of what
they'd say if they were part of the presentation. Here's what I'd
say:

From the standpoint of the host country, the Olympics are an
unparalleled opportunity to showcase itself to the world. Which is
why China can't wait until 2008. Well, we can't wait to tell the
American story in 2016. And we, the Philadelphia team, think the best
"we" to tell this story is Philadelphia.

After all, a few (hundred) years back we hosted another auspicious set
of gatherings, some folks we now refer to as "our founding fathers,"
and they wrote up some documents you might have heard of: the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. When we're at our
best as a nation, it's because we're actually living out what those
guys believed, what those documents said.

I don't have a crystal ball to say what global relations will look
like in 2016, but I'm going to venture a guess that it will be helpful
for America to retell its founding story, not only to the world but to
itself. I have a feeling we'll want to recommit to the equality of
man, to the safeguarding of life and liberty, to the notion and
defense of unalienable rights.

And I think in 2016, we'll be glad we chose Philadelphia as the
backdrop to tell that story.

Two Things I Alone Think Should Be More Expensive

Perhaps I am committing political suicide by posting such an unpopular
statement, but here goes: I think gas should be more expensive and
that property taxes should be higher. There, I said it. There goes
my future political aspirations.

Let me explain why such statements. But let me first explain my take
on why people are so fervently thinking the opposite. On gas, we've
grown accustomed to it being cheap, thanks to 25+ years of deal-making
between the Bush family and the Saudis (a deal that Clinton was more
than happy to keep going). Well, what's the matter with cheap gas,
you say? All manner of negative externalities that don't get built
into the price of gas, which lead to way more gas being consumed than
is good for us. Negative externalities everywhere you look, from
environmental (pollution, the consumption of a scarce resource) to
social (congestion, the isolating effect of driving vs. riding public
transit) or political (unhealthy reliance on a scarce commodity that
is mostly found in volatile countries).

Rising gas prices really get our dander because their prices are
posted on big colorful signs along our roads, and because every week,
we have to sit there at the pump and watch those numbers turn. Don't
think that if any other item we bought regularly was treated in thise
way that we wouldn't get pissed off that it's price was going up, too.

So it's partly the way we see gas prices that causes us to get mad
when they go up. Same story with property taxes. Early every year,
when we're still hung over from our holiday spending sprees, we get a
huge bill from our municipalities. Most of us have spread our auto
and home insurance over twelve months, so there's less sticker shock
there. Not so with property tax. Even worse, it's easy to wonder
what we're getting for all that money. Some of us don't have
school-age children, which is where most of that money goes, so it's
like we're paying something for nothing. Some of us do have
school-age children, which makes us even madder because we think that
for all we're paying, we ought to be getting more for our kids.

But property tax is, most public financiers would agree, the best kind
of tax. Because most property can't move, it leads to the least
amount of bad maneuvering (I say bad maneuvering because of course
oftentimes taxes are used to stimulate good maneuvering -- doing less
of something that gets taxed more or doing more of something that gets
taxed less). It's a fairly progressive tax, even moreso than the
income tax, because if you have enough wealth to own property, you
ought to be taxed more than if you don't. If anything, property tax
should be higher, either to raise more funds for schools or to lower
the rates on taxes that aren't nearly as progressive or as immune from
funky maneuvering. You could make a case that, as with gas, property
taxes being too low leads people to "consume" more of it than they
need to, leading to excessive decentralization as people gobble up
larger and larger parcels further away from our important urban
centers.

In my opinion, gas and property taxes aren't too high, they're too
low. And keeping them too low creates all sorts of problems. And yet
the general public is rabidly demanding relief, and in a swing
election year, politicians are bending over backwards to offer it. It
would be funny to observe how entitled we are about these two things,
except that it's not funny at all. It's preventing us from
considering how much better off we'd be -- all of us -- if we'd
realize these two things are actually under-priced, and worked towards
getting the price right.

The River With the Funny Name

When I first came to Philadelphia in 1991, they told me about the
Schuylkill River. "Don't bother trying to spell it right," one person
said. "'Sure Thrill' is more like it," said another who had to make
the death-defying "merge into the left lane on a high speed blind
curve" move every day to work. As a PENN student, I just knew it as
the somewhat-murky, funny-sounding river that we'd throw the football
goalposts into after a big win. My only other connection was a
hair-raising walk alongside the river with my future wife,
hair-raising because it really wasn't safe at the time for us to be
walking there like that, but we were in love and looking for a thrill.

Flash-forward a few years and the river's side has been paved and
greened, and a non-profit organization, the Schuylkill River
Development Corporation, is filling it with all sorts of activities
and buzz. There are multiple, well-lit paved ways onto the trail, and
multiple destinations to look at and go to along the way. Could it be
that this foreboding, "Amy hold my hand and let's walk a little
faster" area has gotten pretty on us? Indeed, this Friday they're
kicking off the path's first official summer with announcements about
boat and kayak tours, educational programming for the kids, and all
sorts of other fun. Amy and I have already hit the path countless
times, sometimes for a demanding run and sometimes for a leisurely
stroll. It looks like the river with the funny name and the even
funnier smell has become a nice little urban amenity for us.