Of rights and responsibilities
February 6, 2012
This is a topic very near and dear to me. It's a topic that touches… nay, permeates every aspect of our lives, and one that seems to have lost its path by way of neglect. Values and character education have given up much ground in the battle for precious minutes of the school day. Employable skills, defined by bean counters, have come to dominate the formal curriculum of our schools. Ambitious parents send their kids for tutorials outside of school, fearful that some great future opportunity may otherwise be missed. In doing so, they are party to a very great deceit.
Throw more money at education and the 'problem' will go away.
I think not!
"We lose money on every unit, but we'll make up for it in the volume."
Money is not the issue in education. Context is the issue.
For this reason, our kitchen table is my daughter's enrichment program. I certainly do not look to the school on this account. When we last went to her school for a parent/teacher conference, we did not ask for extra academic work for our daughter. Her school is not equipped to properly teach academics at her level in the first place, so why would we ask for more of the same? We asked only that she be given the opportunity and encouragement to fully engage in helping others less gifted than she.
This contextual experience is every bit as important, if not more important, in comparison to the actual content of classroom lessons. This, I'm afraid, is the forgotten lesson of yesteryear. Without values and character education, without focus on 'the other,' what comes out the other end will look more like… well, actually, it looks very much like Wall Street today, to be specific.
"I have the right to pursue my own interest, and if it steps all over you, I don't care. It's your job to look out for your own interest. If you do not, or can not, provide a counter-balance to my gain, for whatever reason, that's tough. That's life. That's the way of the world." I've heard this proclamation so many times, it sickens me.
Unfortunately, this interpretation is accurate… to a point. That point is historically defined as the place where the have-nots and downtrodden collectively stand up and say, "I'm mad as Hell, etcetera." You know the drill. It's the jarring dislocation of a precarious balance that makes for revolution. This so-called balance is the tension captured in another quotation: "A candidate is someone who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them both from each other."
When the banksters from Wall Street spend (by some estimates) 25 times as much as the reformers, lining pockets in Washington, the tension in this balancing act approaches the tectonics of a transverse fault about to make a major move sideways.
Rights and responsibilities represent a balancing act in precisely the same way. I think my first serious consideration of the topic came in the Fall of 1982. I was introduced then to the board game, Risk, by my study group at business school. We'd get ourselves all wired up by working on academics until late at night, then expend our nervous energy in battle on the board game until first class in the morning. For those unfamiliar with the game, conquer the world is your objective. There is nuance to the game, but in large part, every truce falls to the wayside when the smell of blood is in the air. That, in a nutshell, is the game. Seems well suited to the context of a half-dozen aggressive, hungry, and exhausted MBA students, doesn't it? Be nice until you don't have to be nice. Then kill.
There must be more to it, I thought. Naïve? Perhaps… okay, probably. Innocent? For sure. So young, so much to learn. For sure, but if so, I still haven't learned. This dynamic may, in fact, be the way of the world as we know it, but I don't think it accurately reflects our true nature. I don't think that self-interest is the beginning and ending of this story. Or, maybe it is but remains inextricable to other-interest. There must, as I say, be more.
While at business school, I sketched out for myself a new board game, which I called Competunity or Co-opetition (I couldn't decide). The framework was a cross between Risk and Monopoly, but one in which the market was not restricted in size to the 'neighbourhood' or the 'planet'. The pie could become larger with success of 'the whole.' As my neighbour wins, I win. As my neighbour's neighbour wins, I win. My decisions: purchase and sale of property; upgrades to the street; fire, police, and hospitals; schools and parks. All of these and more would have an impact on property values in my neighbourhood and, in turn, on the size of the entire pie. The synergy of everyone's decisions together could translate into a larger value to the whole game. As I conceived it, the game held two objectives, not one. As for predecessor games, the individual amassing the greatest personal real estate wealth by the finish would be a winner. At the same time, a score would be generated for the game as a whole. The community would be scored. Success for the individual comes from competition. Success for the community comes from cooperation… from consideration of the other as well as the self.
Pollyanna, you say… maybe.
I saw this game principally as an educational tool, one that could teach the importance of engagement in something larger than the self. Played around the world, the dual objective would see students as groups competing with other groups for highest community score, while leaving individuals still free to pursue self-interest and the personal victory. This, I saw as much more representative of the natural and right way of the world.
Of course, I never did take the game any further. It became clear to me that such an ambitious undertaking would require computing power far greater than was available to consumers at the time. Remember… we're talking about 1982 here. SimCity came out in 1989, but still did not incorporate the dual objective I set for my game. While more than enough computing power now exists, I have yet to encounter a 'game' that appropriately incorporates the dual objective.
All we have to work with in this area is life, itself. The lesson seems not to be going so well, as we're left with the repeated dynamic of increasing concentration of power, followed by uprising from below, followed by the increasing concentration of power. As Sonny and Cher intoned, "the beat goes on."
In the United States, the controversy of gun ownership rages on. This debate hinges on the very same principle. One side claims the rights of the individual. The other stands on the rights for protection of the collective. As I see it, this is not an on-off switch. Like so many other aspects of life, it's another continuum.
I see this continuum as one of the most distinguishing (if not the most distinguishing) of elements in comparison of the Canadian experience to the United Station experience (we're Americans on both sides of the border, right?). Again, it's not an all-or-nothing trade-off. Perhaps it's a 40:60 versus 60:40 scenario.
In Canada, the rights of the collective supersede those of the individual (hence, higher taxes, socialized medicine, low-cost education, shelter and syringes for the homeless and addicted). In the United States, the rights of the individual supersede those of the collective (gun laws, health care, dispersion of wealth, and expensive education). The ratios I use here are not important and are not the result of any study – they're just presented to illustrate a distinction I see. I also do not present this distinction to make judgement in favour of either scenario. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
At the same time, I do want to explore the missing term of reference in such debate. While everyone seems focused on rights, few stress the equally important, and full counter-balance of, responsibilities.
Rights without responsibilities are the territory of the teenager. "When you're ready to act like an adult, we'll treat you like an adult." How many of us heard that while going through our teen years? How many of us have used this line on our own children? All and all, I think, are the correct answers.
The Venture Exchange is an excellent illustration of rights and responsibilities gone amok. The collective (lay shareholders) are seen as little more than sheep for shearing. The rights are dictated and controlled by an elite few. The regulatory bodies, it would appear, are controlled by those who have no interest in serving the needs of the collective. Though this is claimed as primary to their function, these bodies appear firmly in the grip of a status quo that works in an opposing direction.
The Venture is rightly seen by many as far too risky for their investment dollars. While some of this risk is captured in the speculative nature of exploration companies, I would contend that a larger share of the risk reflects a stacked deck of brokerage houses in control of the rules. Short-sighted as they are, focused on near-term gain, they sacrifice the potential for many more billions of investment dollars. So many more people would invest in Venture listings if they could see a level playing field. To wit, the pie could become bigger (this all does fit together, folks). Unfortunately, reality is something else. Like Wall Street, like Washington, like so many other tightly-controlled systems, those in power are happy to let their successors right the wrongs. "It's all fine, as long as you wait until I get out of town with my winnings."
Short selling is a perfect case in point here. The concept of short selling is, in principle, a good one. It's in the execution that it falls down. I wrote an indictment of short selling three years ago, answered quickly by my friend (I consider him a friend), Bob Moriarty with an emailed recommendation to study Economics 101. Still makes me smile to think of it. Well, I did study Eco101. Also studied Eco701 and 702, and did not too badly if I may say. The nuance at work here is not a flaw in short selling, but rather in the structure that governs it. While a person can borrow shares to sell, the lack of governance in structure also allows a person to sell shares that don't actually exist. By flooding the market with phantom shares, dilution exaggerates the depression of share price, creating a false market.
Within our international banking system, I can travel almost anywhere in the world, walk up to an automated teller machine, and withdraw cash from my home account. I can also have that same ATM advise me that I don't have enough cash to make that withdrawal, and refuse the transaction. In the face of such international, inter-institutional transparency in banking, I ask: Why can the Venture Exchange (or any exchange, for that matter) not create a central clearinghouse record of every existing share from listed companies? Money cannot be created out of thin air (Ben Bernanke's helicopter notwithstanding). Real money cannot be created out of thin air. Why can a broker sell shares not in his possession? The simple answer is that he's in charge of the structure. The fox and henhouse allegory seems quite fitting.
When you claim for yourself the rights to do anything, you must answer to a matching set of responsibilities to ensure that your rights do not stomp on those of others. Failure to do so is what calls for the regulations so hotly debated. Lack of self-governance and self-control – lack of social conscience… psychopathy… eventually leads to action et reactio.
"Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. It is defined in different ways, but can involve a lack of empathy or remorse, false emotions, selfishness, grandiosity or deceptiveness."
It's not so complicated, I think, to create a structure that says, "I'm sorry, Sir. You cannot sell those shares until they exist and reside in your control." Another crazy idea? Maybe, but most great ideas started in the crazy department. The argument that this is how we do it and this is how it's always been done, doesn't fly with me. There's always a better way. Whenever we stop looking for the better way, it's game over and we're finished.
Collective bargaining is one more example of a pendulum swung too far out of balance. Artificially inflated salaries (I say artificially because they're not a function of supply and demand.) paint our working world into a very tight corner. Job security for life does the same. "I have the rights to protections not enjoyed elsewhere in the world, but you don't have the right to close up shop and take your factory to Brazil or Mexico or anywhere else in the world. That would be unpatriotic." Cute, but not realistic in our very flat world today.
Just as teenagers need to understand that they cannot act without consequences. Just as gun enthusiasts need to consider their own rights in balance with those of the collective. Just as low- and semi-skilled workers are now discovering the realities of globalization. So, too, the financial elite may soon find themselves replaced by another generation of power-seekers… and the beat goes on, indeed.
Inasmuch as corporations have, in many people's minds, fallen to the very narrow purpose of making a profit, to the exclusion of all else, our society has lost much. In my view, a healthy business is the one that takes account of a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including: shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and society at large. Too many forget this final stakeholder group. The result is a fatal (I hope) imbalance.
The rights of the individual cannot be expressed in the absence of consideration of responsibility to the collective. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." The 'look out for yourself – it's your right' mentality has a very painful consequence being played out before us now in many diverse arenas.
My final example of this rights and responsibilities distortion is that of the Stockhouse investors' forum for Southern Arc Minerals. For a couple of years, it represented an excellent meeting place for shareholders and interested parties to discuss the pros and the cons of this investment. With a few diversions along the way, it essentially worked.
In the past several months, however, one person (well, I think it's just one person) has derailed the entire train. What I know and what I see are, as usual, two different things. What I see is one person, adopting multiple identities, posting great quantities of irrelevant noise, and hijacking what once was an intelligent conversation. I don't 'know' who this person is. This said, I share the opinion of many that it's a certain person, whose name I know. Let's call him X and pretend that he lives in Mississauga, Ontario. He posts (I believe) under the aliases of: buyb4its2l82; goldmemberpower; frankman; johnfever21; tayser; jedclampett1; and dogrenf1, to name just a few. He regularly posts more than 20 times per day, citing articles from the Indonesian press that have absolutely no bearing on Southern Arc. I don't know his purpose, though it would include the portrayal of Southern Arc in a less than favourable light. Perhaps he's just trying to accumulate cheap shares. Perhaps he is upset with management for some reason.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what his purpose is. Whatever his purpose, the effect is that he has destroyed a community of investors who, in a very delicate balance at the best of times, enjoyed shared interest. Conversation is impossible, unless you count the number of posts X makes in response to his own posts from this assortment of identities. He talks to himself all the time, praising his own posts, asking and answering questions… very Sybillic.
While Stockhouse forbids multiple aliases, I have it on reliable source that there have been incidences of people adopting as many as 50 different aliases. I met with Stockhouse senior staff a number of years ago, suggesting that they take steps to prevent this sort of activity. The answer was a summary, 'No.' Stockhouse is paid by advertisers based on the number of users. It's reportedly not in their interest to cut this number. Again, we're talking about short-sighted thinking that limits what could be a very great opportunity for a successful business.
X has, on numerous occasions, declared his rights to post his opinion and facts (despite the notion that the facts he posts bear no relation to the Company in question) and that no one can deprive him of these rights (do you see now how this all comes together?). This may be a good place to repeat the selection from above:
"Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. It is defined in different ways, but can involve a lack of empathy or remorse, false emotions, selfishness, grandiosity or deceptiveness; it can also involve impulsiveness, irritability, aggression, or inability to perceive danger and protect one's self."
What X fails to account for is his responsibility to consider the rights of others. Unfortunately, he sees no such responsibility. Irrespective of his claim to the contrary, he is not interested in discussion and debate. All evidence paints him clearly in a different camp altogether. Collectively, his aliases at times account for more than 90% of all posting on this forum. At the same time, he regularly accuses others of hiding behind hidden names. Huh? Black pots and kettles aside, his intent (whatever it may be) and the effect of his actions have disrupted, if not destroyed what once was a productive community.
X calls for my return but will not see it. He pleads for engagement by other posters, but should not see it. What he does not witness is the very healthy and very active conversation about this investment taking place among dozens of shareholders by phone and by email. He will fall into the ditch soon enough by virtue of the merits of the Company. Already, he trips over himself often enough that he may fall flat on his face without help from anyone else. X thinks himself quite smart. He is not. Nevertheless, when a muddy pig runs into the centre of the room, anyone who chooses to wrestle will only share in the splatter of mud. Little does he know that the coals in the pit are becoming quite hot, and that the spit is getting oiled. More than a few people are watching very closely, waiting patiently for the dirty pig to collapse under its own weight. Ham steak anyone?
I tell you this little story only so I can say the following:
Those who trample on your rights in declaration of their own do so with your agreement unless you declare otherwise.
No man is governed against his will. Whether it be Congress or the Kremlin, Wall Street or illegal short sellers, gun companies or muddy pigs like X, you and I bear the sole responsibility for protecting our own rights. In today's world, do not look to anyone else to do it for you. What we boast in numbers, we lack in initiative. Users and abusers know this, and will push to the edge of what we will bear. Our own apathy is the greatest enemy. We can put much on the shoulders of transgressors, to be certain, but in the end, if we're willing to accept what they do, they'll do it.
Your call.
With respect,
Kevin Graham