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Pelted by a Storm of Silver Dollars While Looking for a Dime
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar. If you have a lot of what people want and cannot get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough. The men who contributed greatly to the palpability of the American Dream—shaping the legacy of this country through their actions and feats—rarely fall neatly int the categories of good or bad, virtuous or vile. Some were downright crooks, scoundrels, and thugs. Some murdered, and many stole. Some used language that would make your mother blush. These men, for the most part, are called “politicians.” However, to be a Mafioso, or a gangster of note, requires more than just criminal activity. Such individual garner perennial respect and admiration by representing complicated but quintessentially American concepts of honor, ambition, and style. The identification of the mafia with organized crime—and thus the idea of an alien conspiracy polluting the economic and social life of the country—has been rejected by the majority of American social scientists since the 1960s. These have alternatively accused the mafia-centered view of organized crime of being ideological, serving personal political interests, and lacking in accuracy and empirical evidence. Some scholars, however, overreacted; up to the early 1980s, they categorically denied the existence of the of the Italian-American mafia as a structured and longstanding criminal organization. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
One of the earliest proponents of the new approach, expressed organized crime as, “illicit enterprise is the extension of legitimate market activities into areas normally proscribed—id est, beyond existing limits of law—for the pursuit of profit and in response to a latent illicit demand. More often, however, organized crime itself has been equated with the provision of illegal goods and services. Hence, organized crime [should] be defined as (or perhaps better limited to) those illegal activities involving the management and coordination of racketeering and vice. It is a social bad, that harms people and the economy. Yet it is also a phenomenon that goes beyond the profit motive, involving rituals, norms of behaviour, and codes of conduct. Organized crime has, thus, become a synonym for illegal enterprise. That is, the involvement in criminal market activities has become nowadays the basic requirement of virtually all definitions of organized crime in the U.S.A. scientific and official discourse. All organized criminals see themselves as different from common delinquents and random street thus. They aim to obtain exclusive control over specific criminal marketplaces not only by using violence and intimidations but also by creating networks of trusts outside the gangs—lawyers, chartered accountants, brokers, bankers, bureaucrats, politicians, police officers, judges, and labour union representatives. Their ultimate goal is power, not money, and they will do anything to get it, using all kinds of tactic, from violence to bribery and other corruption schemes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In the World of organized criminals, the aim is also to acquire control or power over crime territories, which constitute the main source of money for the organized criminals which then, in turn, can be used to expand the power realm, thus guaranteeing more power in a vicious circle that is of great advantage to the criminal groups. This territory-power-money dynamic can be compressed into a formula that emblemizes the overall objective and operationality of all organized criminals. Territorial control = Power = Money = More power. The evil we are fighting out of us is also among us, inside us. Murders and tortures do not only have the cruel and famous faces of those who got their hands dirty with blood and in popular imagination are considered monsters (from monstrum: the person who is put on display) and on whom the evil of the Mafia can be cathartically projected, and exorcized. They also have the faces of people like us, who attend the same school, can be met in the best salons and pray to the same God, feeling they are good Christians at peace with themselves. Mobsters live among us undetected, making them enormously dangerous. They do not stand out publicly as marauders, like the pirates or brigands of the past, who could be identified easily through the particular type of clothes they wore and the kinds of weapons they bore. The mobsters move about incognito, indistinguishable from everyone else. They are doubly dangerous because they are well connected within legitimate society, having established connections with people in positions of influence and power—an arrangement based on the reciprocal exchange of favors. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
At one time, this system of collusion was called patronage. Today we call it corruption, a quid-pro-quo system formed between the gangsters and city politicians, members of the police, and other upright citizens. Gangsters and the operators of illegal business helped win elections as campaign worker or financial contributors, or they helped to steal elections using fraud or intimidations. In return, politicians used their direct or indirect influence over the police and the courts to provide virtual immunity for favored criminals, particularly those who ran or protected gambling or prostitution enterprises, and even to eliminate petty potential rivals to established entrepreneurs. In sharp contrast to the Mafia, most organizational offending takes on a longer, colleague, or peer format. To further highlight this illustration, persons who engage in individual acts of crime and who work in environments with a weak work group dynamic (id est, hawk jobs) will tend to operate as loners. Embezzlers who steal cash from a bank, or academics who commit plagiarism or research fraud almost always seek to keep their crime a secret. These offenders are willing to exploit opportunities that arise from associations with other but they rarely discuss their wrongdoings with others. Other forms of organizational crime take on a more social character, fitting better into what we call a colleague-like arrangement. This is the hallmark of offending that takes place in “vulture” or “donkey” jobs. Most salespeople who commit expense account fraud like to keep their offending to themselves, despite the fact that they know of coworkers who engage in similar misdeeds. The same type of pattern manifests itself among cashiers who steal from the till. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
“Wolfpack” jobs (id est, heavily rule-orientated, but group-centered workplaces) tend to produce yet another brand of organizational alignment. Here, strong group solidarity breeds peerlike associations and collective offending. For example, nurses and police officers are known to work together to ferine and maintain their collective and continued workplace violations. Regardless of the level of organizational alignment, it is safe to say that almost all organizational offending emerges from identifiable socialization scripts. Some horrific things such as the Nazi Holocaust can be incorporated into the common flow of everyday life. All members of the Nazi party, Germany army, and German population did not conspire to kill millions of Jewish people. Instead, the Nazi leadership devised and implemented a gradual transformation of how the rest of the country thought and behaved toward the Jewish people. This is called “metamorphosis,” “soul murder,” and “murder by installment.” It is the incremental move toward mass murder and the accompanying denial. The close-knit contacts within an organizational setting almost always provide ample opportunity for criminal tutelage to take place. By most accounts, the societal reaction to crimes that occur within organizational contexts is less severe than it is for street crime. This observation remains true even when the organizational crime in question is a violent or serious property offense. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In the organizational crime in question is a violent or serious property offense. In the final analysis, Americans simply subject business relations to a more loose set of moral expectations than they do personal relations. If someone kills a friend during n argument, we are outranged. However, if someone dies because of a profit-driven product was poorly designed or manufactured, we are likely to depict the situation as an unfortunate cost of doing business. Public apathy along with political denial or even complicity (id est, pressure from lobbyists and/or campaign contributions) gives rise to relaxed formal social control processes at every stage in the game (id est, enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing). Even when formal authorities want to get involved, they are forced to face the reality that these crimes are different. Corporate offenses pose special investigatory and prosecutorial problems that make the successful application of the criminal law complicated and difficult. The law enforcement response to cries that occur within organizational contexts has long been notoriously weak. For starters, organizational crime draws spotty attention from members of the law enforcement community. Federal authorities who bear the brunt of the enforcement workload reported 10,477 fraud (individual and institution-based consumer fraud combined) 1,170 tax fraud. There were 1,118 embezzlement, 745 RICO (organizational and nonorganizational offenders included), 419 obstruction of justice, 400 generic regulatory offense, 381 bribery, 341 civil rights, 318 forgery, 141 food and drug violation, 242 antitrust, and 4 national defense arrests. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Given the sheer number of employers and employees that exist in this country and the self-reported prevalence estimates that we have provided here, it seems quite reasonable to suggest that millions of organizational crimes go unreported to enforcement agencies each year. The question is why? Logic dictates the need for a multipart answer. First, many organizational offenses go undetected. Many of our nation’s corporations are so big that even the loss of large sums of money may never come to the attention of supervisors. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the finance department of most American corporations are sadly lacking in auditing skills and implementation. As such, unless a financial transgression is painfully obvious, most accountants will pass it over. In-house security personnel do little to improve this situation. In many cases, security departments are understaffed or underbudgeted. Take, for example, the retail industry. The average retail firm directs 0.79 percent of its total operating budget toward loss prevention and security. The average firm employs 5.75 security employees for $100 million in sales volume—the average firm deploys less than one security officer (0.85) per store location. Oftentimes, corporate officials become aware of transgressions but choose not to report them to outsiders. Organizations are hesitant to report internal theft for fear that it will be perceived as a sign of financial ineptitude by stockholders or potential clients. Company personnel choose to involve the police (id est, press charged) in 36 percent of all employee theft cases but 79 percent of all shoplifting cases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The news does not get much better when it comes to the prosecution of organizational offenders. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Attorneys declined to purse a criminal indictment in 36 percent of the embezzlement, 52 percent of the bribery, 55 percent of the perjury, and 57 percent of the regulatory cases that were forwarded to them. This is not to say that organizational offenders illicit no response from or federal prosecutor. A study found that U.S. Attorneys brought criminal cases against 55 percent of the suspects that they investigated. This figure was nearly identical to that observed among non-white-collar suspects. When charges were filed, the federal prosecutors were said to pursue the case with the same tenacity as they did violent, property, or public offenses. State-level Attorney Generals are the highest-ranking state prosecutors with jurisdiction over organizational offenses. We found that these officers of the court pursue individual violators with much greater frequency and tenacity than they do corporate or organizational entities. We conclude that civil or administrative remedies were the preferred course of action when dealing with crime suspected white-collar crime. It is fairly clear that prosecutors prefer to resolve white-collar crime cases via plea bargains. The average case is quite complex and defendants generally employ a very capable defense team. This makes for a long and expensive trial with no guarantee of conviction. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Defendants will gladly plea bargain their case if they feel that the government has a strong case against them; namely, they will seek to cut a deal that allows them to avoid a term of incarceration. However, if the evidence is at all suspect, the defense team is likely to force the prosecutor into a trial. We found that 20 percent of the federal white-collar defendants in our sample pled not guilty and forced a trial. This figure is 3 to 4 times the trial rate that is experienced for most conventional street crimes. Cases involving corporations and/or their executive stand as a notable exception to the rule. We found that less than 1 percent of the 200,000+ organizational defendants in our sample saw their cases proceed to trial. Landmark criminal proceedings such as the Ford Pinto case reveal that it is very difficult to obtain a trial conviction in the case of corporate violence. Very few examples exist in which prosecutors have gone to trial alleging murder by a corporation or its executives and come away with a conviction. The resources that corporate entities can bring to bear are sizable and simply insurmountable. The available literature suggests that white-collar individuals and organizations are treated less harshly than conventional offenders when it comes time for judges to impose sentencing. It seems that, although they can ruin more lives at one time than a street criminal can, they are given a higher status because they have power. Judicial empathy, a fear of the broad social consequences that go with harsh corporate sanctions, and the respectability of the offenders get offered up as possible explanations for the leniency. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Convicted white-collar criminals face a 36 percent chance of going to prison. This compares to incarceration rates of 53 percent for those nonviolent street crimes and 80 percent among convicted violent offenders. If convicted, white-collar offenders can generally expect to do less time than street offenders. The Federal Bureau of Prisons show the average time served for a robbery, larceny, and burglary was 46.5, 18.3, and 17.9 months, respectively. For fraud, embezzlement, and income tax evasion, the figures dropped to 13.6, 11.4, and 10.3 months, respectively. Almost half of all white-collar defendants are sentenced to less than 1 year behind bars. Governmental regulators and court officials often seek to levy fines and restitution as penalties against corporate and white-collar offenders. For example, we found that 89 percent of the corporate defendants who were convicted in federal court received some sort of fine. Another 16 percent were ordered to pay restitution, and 19 percent were ordered to make civil or some other sort of payment. Here again, however, corporate offenders are often able to sidestep the system by managing to have their cases subject to regulatory review as opposed to criminal prosecution. In our review of thirty-six of the most notorious acts of corporate and governmental violence from the past century (everything from the three Mile Island radiation leak to the Corvair and Pinto cases the plagued the automobile industry) reveals that, in the end, corporate violators almost always receive what can only be characterized as a slap on the wrist. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Civil litigation is the most frequently imposed form of formal social control that gets meted out against corporate, state, professional, and individual-level offenders. These cases can be brought to bear against violators by individuals, groups of individuals (id est, class-action suits), governmental regulators, or other organizational entities. We observed that, in almost every case, the plaintiff is severely outgunned by highly paid and knowledgeable corporate lawyers. More often than note, the defendant has vast resources and political power to mobilize on its behalf. In light of this bleak picture, numerous scholars and policy makers have proposed alternative means of formal social control that might be directed toward organizational crimes and criminals. We have proposed a form of “organizational probation.” This would involve the use of “occupation incapacitation” in which convicted offenders would be removed from the corporate or market environment in which they habitually offended. There is also a call for increased criminalization of corporate and individual-level misconduct. Some even endorse the use of community service and point-by-point monitoring as a means of achieving “corporate rehabilitation.” There is also a proposed punishment called “corporate dissolution,” whereby corporate entities would be held responsible for the crimes of their employees (if it could be shown that the corporation benefited from or endorsed the crimes). Informal social control efforts directed at crimes within complex organizations are diverse in nature but generally ineffectively implemented. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We often allow corporations, industries, or profession to self-regulate themselves. This is generally accomplished through the development and use of codes of ethics and internal oversight entities (review boards, investigators, and the like). Th sad reality is that profit motives and self-preservation usually get in the way of these efforts. Other advocate the use of shame and embarrassment techniques as a means of informational social control. It is encouraged that organizational entities develop and maintain “corporate case law” that would allow them to counsel repeated offenders into compliance without having to rely on threatening and ineffective external sources of control. Still there are people that advocate a structured transformation of organizations that would guide and encourage “whistleblowers” to come forward with information. We should enlist the research capabilities of the National White Collar Crime Center (a hybrid academic-political agency) to study the diverse phenomena and formulate more effective alternative policies. Most jurisdictions have in place specific statutory provisions that outlaw tampering with witness, informants, physical evidence, and/or public records information. Even in modern countries where a well-functioning institution and apparatus of government-provided law exists, economic—or, indeed, non-economic—disputes do not immediately lead to litigation. Recourse to the law is often the last resort, not the first one. People attempt to resolve their disputes using various private methods of negotiation, and only if these fail do they go to courts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In the context of business, this idea goes back at least as far as Macaulay (1963). Williamson (1996, pp. 10, 122), citing previous legal scholars, says that business people “speak of ‘cancelling the other’ rather than “breaching our contract’,” and that contracts and courts are “a norm of ultimate appeal when the relations cease in fact to work.” In matters of personal relationships, too, less and 10 percent of divorce are contested in court. All of this had led to the concept of private ordering in the shadow of the law. An obvious explanation for the persistence of such private ordering is that resolution of disputes using the formal machinery of state law is far from costless; in fact it costs especially times costs, often exceeded those of alternative methods of private ordering. Sometimes formal law may yield outcomes that are worse for all parties than can private ordering. Therefore the outcome that the parties expect to obtain in the court (net of the costs of using the court system) becomes a backstop or threat point to private negotiation. Long-term relationships and arbitration are the most common modes of private ordering. Long-term relationships can be self-enforcing for reasons familiar from the theory of repeated games: the immediate gains from behaving opportunistically can be offset by future losses, because the opportunism leads to a collapse of the relationship and therefore to lower future payoffs. However, now we have another possibility. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The relationship need not collapse completely; it can be replaced by one based on formal contracts and court enforcement. This is still costly and therefore serves to deter opportunism in the original ongoing relationship. However, the cost may be less than that of a total breakdown of interaction. Correspondingly, the deterrence effect falls short of the level possible when total breakdown is the only alternative. Thus availability of court enforcement may, in a seeming paradox, reduce the extent of good behavior that can be sustained in the long-term relationship. The official law can interfere with a long-term relationship in another way, namely by agreeing to hear a case filed by one of the parties in such a relationship attempting to overturn an adverse outcome in the implicit contract. However, courts often recognize the merits of implicit contracting in long-term relationships like employment, and refuse to hear such cases. This is the doctrine of forbearance. Private arbitration can have cost advantages over the government’s courts, but perhaps more importantly, it can have information advantages and therefore provide dispute resolution of higher quality. Arbitration forums specialize by industry, geographic region, and so on, in the range of disputes they take up. They acquire expertise in their special areas. They can adopt procedures and rules of evidence that suit their specific concerns. State courts must stand ready to consider all matters that could arise under the law, and although some attempt can be made to assign cases to judges on the basis of their expertise, the rules and procedures must remain the same for all cases. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
For these reasons, arbitrators are better able to obtain, interpret, and use information pertinent to the dispute than are the state courts. Arbitrators lack the coercive powers of the state and therefore cannot ensure compliance with their verdicts. However, as with long-term relationships, the government’s courts often recognize the advantages of arbitration for governance of particular classes of transactions. Then they accept the arbitrator’s verdict and will not agree to rehear the issue. This is formalized in USA laws and in international agreements. Given this shadow of the law, if one party refuses to comply with the arbitrator’s verdict, the other can enlist the help of the courts for enforcement. A specific historical institution, namely the lex mercatoria or merchants law was developed in medieval Europe. Many principles developed by the private judges or adjudicators of the law merchant were later taken over by the state’s law. However, private adjudicators lack the incentives to supply the public good of principles and precedent, so we expect it to be underprovided. So much is written about the substitution of computerized equipment for human labour that we often ignore the ways in which it also substitutes for capital. Indeed, in a sense knowledge is far greater long-term threat to the power of finance than are organized labour or anticapitalist political parties. For, relatively speaking, the information revolution is reducing the need for capital per unit of output in a capitalist economy. Nothing could be more revolutionary. Vittorio Merloni is a businessman. Ten percent of all washing machines, refrigerators and other major household appliances sold in Europe are made by Mr. Merloni’s company. His main competitors are Electrolux of Sweden and Philips of Holland. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
According to Mr. Merloni, “we need less capital now to do the same thing” that required more capital in the past. “This means that a poor country can be much better off today with the same amount of capital than five or ten years ago.” The reason, he says, is that knowledge-based technologies are reducing the capital needed to produce dishwashers, stoves or vacuum cleaners. To begin with, information substitutes for high-cost inventory, according to Mr. Merloni. By speeding the responsiveness of the factory to the market and making short runs economical, better and more instantaneous information makes it possible to reduce the amount of components and finished goods sitting in warehouses or railroad sidings. Mr. Merloni at one point cut a startling sixty percent from his inventor costs. Mr. Merloni’s case has been duplicated by every major company in the United States of America, Japan and Germany as just-in-time delivery of parts, based on computerized information, is slashing inventories everywhere. Cuts in inventory, of course, not only translate back into the smaller space and real estate costs mentioned earlier, but also into reduced taxes, insurance and overhead. Even though the initial cost of computers, software, information and telecommunications may itself be high, Mr. Merloni says the overall saving means that his company needs less capital to do the same job that it did in the past. Michael Milken, who for better or worse knows a thing or two about investment, has summed it up in six words: “Human capital has replaced dollar capital.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Because it reduces the need for raw materials, labour, time, space, capital, and other inputs, knowledge becomes the ultimate substitute—the central resource of an advanced economy. Ans as this happens, its value soars. To elevate living standards in America, we need to increase international and domestic consumption of American made products. One way to do this, is by getting the nation back under control. America needs to again become a nation of law in order and have a serious President so people will look at Americans as sane and as leaders. Then we need to help Americans achieve the American Dream of home ownership, so other nations will want to emulate the American lifestyle and buy American cars and trucks and other American made products because they are trendy and represent sophistication and class. There is a noticeable trend in the family law which deals with the authority of husband over wide, and of parents over children. The trend, of course, is toward greater freedom and equality for wives and children, and greater restriction upon the authority of husband or parents to dispose of the person or property of dependents. Compulsory education laws, laws restricting employment of minors, laws limiting the degree of physical violence which may be practiced upon one’s closet kind, often monitored by private humane societies, are of quite recent emergence, and are still being extended, along with appropriate inspection and enforcement agencies such as state licensing of boarding homes, nursery schools, and camps. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
For those to whom the family is a means to personal development, new horizons of emancipation remain to be achieved. Greater freedom and equality for women is being followed by a reduction of the voting age. Political efforts to pass laws to protect working women from special occupational hazards have been followed by agitation to dissolve the remaining barriers to their entering any occupation of their choice. The question of being leads to finitude which, in turn, leads to the question of God. The existence of God cannot be taken literally. God, the ground of being, is not found within the World of existing beings. Nor can existence be predicated of him, since it means an actual state of distorted being and of disruptive tensions. God does nor exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him. To make the World the data and God the conclusion is to derive God from the World. The argument for God’s existence is the expression of the question of God which is implied in human finitude. The worth of the so-called ontological and moral arguments (Augustine, Anselm, Kant) lies in this, that they provide a description of the way in which potential infinite is present in actual finitude. Man has a prior awareness of God that enables him to asked about the infinite from which he is separated, about the source of his courage to face anxiety. The truth of the ontological and moral argument is the acknowledgement of the unconditional element in the structure of reason and reality. They reveal n awareness of God which renders possible the question of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The cosmological and teleological arguments cannot prove the existence of a highest being, but they describe the threat of non-being, the ontological anxiety that drives man to ask the question of God. The cosmological argument is based on the categories of finitude. It seeks to the “eternal now” in which time and space are affirmed and overcome, the “ground of being” in which cause and substances are rooted and conquered. The teleological argument asks for the ultimate meaning of the ontological polarities and tensions. However, seeking is not finding, and to ask is not to receive. The cosmological and teleological arguments portray the inevitability and necessity of the question of God just as the ontological and moral arguments show its possibility. The ontological analysis began with the question being, and it ends with the question of God. How is He the answer to being? God is being-itself. Negatively, this means that God is not a being, not even the highest being, alongside other beings. Positively, it means that God is the ground of being or the power of being. He is beyond essence and existence because as being-itself He does not participate in nonbeing and finitude. He does not exist; He is. Counterfeits of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost Spirit are recognizable by the manifestations being given to the senses, id est, in the physical realm. For the true indwelling of God is in the shrine of the spirit alone; and the soul vessel, or personality of the self-actualized, is purely a vehicle for the expression of Christ, who is enthroned within by His Spirit; while the body, quickened by the same Spirit, is governed by God from the central depths of the human spirit, through the self-control of the man acting by his renewed will. #RandolphHarri 19 of 20
The counterfeit presence of God is given by psychopathological offenders working upon the physical frame, or within the bodily frame but upon the senses. We have seen the beginning of this, and how the first ground is grained. Control is advanced by these same-manifestations being repeated, ever so gently, so that the man goes on yielding to them, thinking this is truly “communion with God”—for believers too often look upon communion with God as a thing of sense, rather than of spirit. So one starts praying to psychopathological offenders under the belief that one is praying to God. The self-control is not yet lost, but as the believer responds to or gives oneself up to these “conscious” manifestations, one does not realize that one’s will power is being slowly undermined. At last, though these subtle, delicious experiences, a conviction is established that God Himself is in possession of the body, quickening with it felt thrills of life, or filling in with warmth and heart, or even with “agonies” which seems like fellowship with the sufferings of Christ and His travail for souls, or the experience of death with Christ in the consciousness of nails being driven into the bodily frame, et cetera. From this point the lying spirits can work as they will, and there is no limit as to what they may do to one who is deceived to this extent. Counterfeit manifestations of the divine life in various modes now follow quickly; movements in the body, pleasant thrills, touches, a glow as of fire in different parts of the body; or sensations of cold, shaking, and tremblings—all of which are accepted as from God. Psychopathological offenders work by sudden suggestions—which is not the ordinary working of the mind but suggestions which come without—“flashes of memory,” again not the ordinary working of the memory but thoughts coming from without; touches and twitches of the nerves; feelings of a draft and sensations of wind blowing upon the area round about, et cetera. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Despite—or perhaps because of—the great public and policy interest, organized crime remains a fuzzy and contested umbrella concept. The understanding of organized crime has since the 1920s shifted back and forth between two rivaling notions: a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime; and a set of serious criminal activities, particularly the provision of illegal goods and service, mostly carried out for monetary gain. The general public, the media, and most policy-makers primarily use the expression “organized crime” to refer to criminal organizations, such as the Sicilian and America Cosa Nostra, the Japanese Yakuza, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, and other large-scale criminal grounds around the World though to have a hierarchical lasting structure. However, even some of your local news stations may be involved in organized crime. There exists variation in the skills and techniques that go along with crimes that are committed within an organizational context. Organizational (id est, corporate) and state-authority occupational crimes tend to take on relatively sophisticated forms. To further highlight this illustration, we found evidence of complex and collective offending in our analysis of the savings and loan scandal. We grouped these offenses into three categories: desperation dealing, collective embezzlement, and cover-ups. Desperate dealing took shape as a series of complicated, high-risk investment and loan actions employed by executive to save their sinking financial institutions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
These practices included writing multiple loans to insolvent borrowers, inadequate loan underwriting practices, and other “go for broke” investment schemes. The term collective embezzlement refers to self-interested “looting” or unauthorized spending sprees that corporate executives pursued using investors’ money. The authors contend that extravagant parties and high ticket purchase were the order of the day as executives sought to enjoy the last days of their sinking business enterprises. Once things began to come unglued, cover-up practices were used to keep their insolvent ships afloat. These scams ran the gamut from criminal accounting practices (id est, misrepresenting capital reserves or capital-to-assets ratios) to money laundering, to hush money that was delivered to high-ranking state authorities and policy makers. Crimes that are committed by state agencies or institutions also tend to take on an elaborate character. To further highlight this illustration, numerous discussions, including one which documents how Nazi Germany and other rogue states have systematically embarked on genocidal plans to exterminate certain classes or creeds of people. Mr. Hitler’s “final solution for the Jewish problem” included a concerted effort of persecution, mass murder, and cover-up. Similarly, the hearings of the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s taught us that our own government is capable of hatching and carrying out some complex and especially devious criminal plans. By comparison, acts of professional occupational crimes or individual occupational crime tend to be much more simplistic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
More often than not, the employee simply pockets the money or materials and makes little or not effort to cover his or her tracks. A similar trend has been observed among embezzlers. The same can be said about most crimes that are perpetrated by professionals. For example, we will discuss how pharmacists who steal and use prescription drugs on the job tend to rely on simple and predictable routines. White-collar crime and criminals are spread throughout the landscape of the American industrial complex. No one type of business/industry, or even any one type of job role (secretaries versus executives), is disproportionately represented in the available samples of known offenders. In light of this observation, researchers have begun to adopt a more individual-level focus, targeting the role that occupational settings play in the spread of deviance. Companies that operate in autonomous space, free of external social and regulatory control, will be more likely to engage in criminal behavior. This type of free-wheeling, self-regulatory work environment allows profit motives to blur the lines between acceptable and unacceptable “business practices.” High levels of internal or external competition and cut-throat inter-office or industry-level politics appear to exacerbate matters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Organizational offenders are disproportionately, European-American, middle-aged men who possess modest to high levels of social capital. In our case files, there are 968 white-collar offenders who were sentences in seven U.S.A. district courts over a 3-year period. The bast majority of the offenders were men. The sample was also lopsided in terms of race, as better than 75 percent of the subjects were European-America. The average offender was well into his thirties and several offense types (antitrust, securities, tax, and bribery offenses) were dominated by offenders over 40 years of age. The participant’s elevated social capital was evident by the fact that most were salaried employees with modest financial assets. Most of the perpetrators were married homeowners with college degrees. Many occupied supervisory positions in their organization. Organizational offenders do not usually have squeaky clean pasts. We found that 36 percent of the 965 white-collar criminals in our sample had at least one prior arrest and 67 percent had been arrested more than once in the previous 8 years. Of the repeat offenders, 33 percent recorded five or more arrests. We found little evidence of criminal specialization. Of the 465 repeat offenders, only 15 percent were exclusively arrested on white-collar charges. Repeat offenders tended to stay away from violent crimes, but they often drifted into property or public order offering. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
However, the longer the person’s rap sheet, the more likely that one would face additional white-collar charges. Faced with comparisons to traditional street criminals, using arrest as indicator of offending, white-collar criminal careers begin and end later, and include smaller numbers of recorded criminal events, than do those of street criminals. However, they are similar to common crime careers in that they are unlikely to evidence a high degree of specialization, and that offenders seem to age out of crime. Moreover, the same variables that predict recidivism in street criminals (id est, marital status, history of drug use, prior record, gender, employment states) are predictive recidivism in white-collar offenders. Criminal intent is a difficult concept to nail down in the case of most crimes committed with an organizational context. This is partly a result of the fact that there are so many cognitive and behavioral variations present in these criminal events. Different jobs take on different cultural forms. For example, the term “hawk jobs” refer to those work environments that stress entrepreneurial creativity. Persons working in this type of environment are drawn toward innovative offenses directed toward enhancing their self-image among peers. Academics and business owners are examples of hawks. The term “donkey jobs” refers to those environments that are known for their “isolated subordination.” Deviance in this workplace manifests itself as sabotage or resentment and stems from low job satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Some cashiers and non-unionized line workers provide good examples of donkeys. The term “vulture jobs” characterize occupations with loose work groups and high levels of individual-level decision-making power (exempli gratia, outside salespeople). These persons will involve themselves in self-interested abuses intended to enhance their standing in the incentive-based reward system. Finally, “wolfpack jobs” were described as environments with tight work groups, for example, union employees and police officers. These persons will engage in habitual and collective forms of deviance intended to enhance group solidarity and camaraderie. Instrumental motivation is a cornerstone of crimes that are committed within an organizational context. Regardless of whether the outcome is monetary or physical loss, most of these crimes can be traced back to greed or a thirst for power. The vast majority of the incarcerated embezzlers in our sample suffer from an “unsharable problem.” This might include a self-imposed financial pinch resulting from promiscuous or seedy pursuits away from the job, sudden losses from a part-time business or investment venture, or the inability to finance an ever-increasing social status. Faced with the knowledge and skills of their jobs, these embezzlers came to exploit their position of trust as a means of alleviating the problem. We have also observed a slightly different motivational pattern among the female embezzlers; namely, the women tended to steal in order to provide for their families. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Analyses of corporate and/or state violators reveal that executives and politicians tend to commit their crimes to keep pace with the competition or to protect their own position within the organization. For example, most agree that former President Clinton committed perjury in an effort to avoid the political fallout associated with having extramarital sex in the White House. Regardless of the gender or organizational standing of the offender, these tend to be persons who commit their crimes because they see them as a way of alleviating some sort of specific threat. It is difficult to assess the amount of planning that goes into the commission of organizational crimes, since most of them come about as exaggerations of normal operating procedures. In the end, onlookers have difficult discerning where normal planning and implementation ends and where illegal and unethical cognition and behaviours begins. Persons who steal from their employers tend to construct their thefts as fringe benefits or simple extensions of normal business practices. To further highlight this illustration, a bank embezzler might claim that they simply loaned him or herself the money. A person who steals scrap metal from a manufacturing plant might say that they were simply taking out the trash. By equating these thefts to everyday business, it is difficult to determine how much planning exists. For decades, scholar have maintained that normative neutralizations play a central part in the initial and repeated offending that takes place among organizational offenders. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
More often than not, the source of these rationalizations and justifications can be found in the very workplace from which the offending emanates. To further highlight this illustration, in our seminal study of embezzlers, we use the term “vocabularies of adjustment” to describe how thieves routinely implied a sense of ownership or borrowing over the money that they stole as a means of denying their guilty mind. Some manufacturing employees adhere to a “cognitive mapping of property. Most of the materials in the factor are afforded a status as either personal or company property and thus rarely subject to theft. However, other property is afforded a status as “property of uncertain ownership” and thus fair game for theft. The workers reason that taking scrap material or component parts is not the same as taking a coworker’s wallet or an assembled television set in a box, but it is. You know, this really puts workplace theft into perspective. Stealing from work is a lot like if you went to a friend’s house and walked out with a glass, or their silverware. Through adequate education and upraising children properly and putting things in perspective, we can really train them to be model citizens. A tangential set of cognitive excuses has been uncovered among deviant professionals and corrupt state authorities. Blue ribbon commissions charged with investigating police misconduct have repeatedly unearthed evidence of a mindset in which habitual offenders deny criminal responsibility for their actions. The rogue officers claim that they were simply playing within the rules of aggressive crime fighting or explicitly following orders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
We have documented how workgroups norms centering around the need for effective and efficient patient care can lead nurses to excuse their repeated theft of hospital supplies and medications. Irrespective of the profession, we find that employees do not have to look or far to find the normative definitions that they use to neutralize their acts of wrongdoing; more often than not, they are derived from established workgroup norms or accepted business practices. Institutions are the overarching framework of rules and constraints, formal and informal, that govern interactions among individuals; constitutions and social norms are examples. Organizations are groups of individuals that operate within the general framework of institutions, and implement the rules and norms of the institutions; examples are legislatures, political parties, and universities. Of course there are interactions and feedbacks between institutions and organizations. The rules and constraints imposed by institutions do not eliminate all freedom for organizations to act, and since organizations have members with differing interest and abilities, interesting issues of “the play of the game” at this level must be analyzed. Institutions can then evolve to alter the rules of the game so as to achieve better outcomes from the play at the organizational level. Finally, individuals interact within the frameworks set up b both institutions and organizations, and these transactions have their costs of information, commitment, and so on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Institutions and organizations attempt to economize on transaction costs, but usually fall short of optimality, especially when changing economic and technological conditions require changed or new institutions. There are two categories of reasons for the long lags and bottlenecks in the process of institutional change: first, resistance by powerful special interests with stakes in the old system; and second, multiple equilibria and historical accidents. A regularity in social behaviour that is agreed to by all members of society, specifies behaviour in specific recurrent situations, and is either self-policed or policed by some external authority. Thus, the strategies that the individuals choose, include aspects of the play of the game as well as the rules, and also specifies the equilibrium that is to be played. An individual’s expectation of the response to one’s action is often an important part of the institutional environment; that is, the institutional environment also serves to coordinate beliefs and select equilibria. At the (highest or most basic) level stand informal institutions, such as religion, social customs and norms. These are slow to change, over the timescale of centuries or millennia. At the second level is the institutional environment, consisting of formal rules, such as constitutions and laws. The timescale of evolution of these is measured in decades. The play of the game occurs at the third level, and this includes the choice of appropriate modes of governance for each type of transaction, or organization, the aim being to economize on transaction costs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Finally, the fourth and lowest level contains routine economic activities such as production, employment, market equilibration. Societies make conscious efforts to instill some norms into their members, enlisting the help of parents, teachers, media, and leaders of opinion because norms and other informal institutions have mainly spontaneous origins and have a lasting grip on the way society conducts itself. Man of the norms pertain to civic duties such as voting, but others pertain to honestly in economic matters. This process of social conditioning and education can respond to changing needs much faster than the evolutionary timescale. Many of the communities facing collective-action problems treat laws, like prices, as incentives for behavior. Various branches of civil law—liability, tort, contract, property—govern situations where two or more individuals can enter into a contractual relationship, explicit or implicit, as well as ones where one person’s actions have spillover effects on others without any voluntary agreement on their side. These legal rues affect the incentives of individuals to take actions, or to refrain from actions, that carry benefits or costs to others, and that in turn affect overall economic outcomes and efficiency. Many changes in the society’s knowledge system translate directly into business operations. This knowledge system is an even more pervasive part of every firms environment than the banking system, the political system, or the energy system. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Apart from the fact that no business could open its doors if there were no language, culture, data, information and knowhow, there is the deeper fact that of all the resources needed to create wealth, none is more versatile than knowledge. Take Second Wave mass production. In most smokestack factories it was inordinately expensive to change any product. It required highly paid tool-and- die makers, jig setters and other specialists, it and resulted in extended downtime during which the machine were idle and ate up capital, interest and overhead. That is why cost per unit went down if you could make longer and longer runs of identical products. This gave rise to the theory of economies of scale. However, the new technology stands Second Wave theories on their heads. Instead of mass production, we are moving towards de-massified production. The result is an explosion of customized and semicustomized products and services. The latest computer-driven manufacturing technologies make endless variety possible and inexpensive. New information technologies, in fact, push the cost of diversity toward zero and reduce the once vital economies of scale. Or take materials. A smart computer program hitched to a lathe can cut more pieces out of the same amount of steel than most human operators. Making miniaturization possible, new knowledge leads to smear, lighter products, which, in turn, cuts down on warehousing and transportation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Up-to-the-minute tracking of shipments—id est, better information—means further transportation savings. New knowledge also leads to the creation of totally new materials ranging from aircraft composites to biologicals and increases our ability to substitute one material for another. Deeper knowledge now permits us to customize materials at the molecular level to produce desired thermal, electrical or mechanical characteristics. The only reason we ship huge amounts of raw materials like bauxite or nickel or copper the planet is that we lack the knowledge to convert local materials into usable substitutes. Once we acquire that know-how, further drastic savings in transportation will result. In short, knowledge is a substitute for both resources and shipping. The same goes for energy. Nothing illustrates the substitutability of knowledge for other resources better than the recent breakthroughs in superconductivity, which at a minimum will drive down the amount of energy that now must be transmitted for each unit of output. In addition to substituting for materials, transportation and energy, knowledge also saves time. Time itself is one of the most important of economic resources, even though it show up nowhere on a Second Wave company’s balance sheet. Time remains, in effect, a hidden input. Especially when change accelerates, the ability to shorten time—for instance, by communicating swiftly or by bringing new products to market fast—can be the difference between profit and loss. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
New knowledge speeds things up, drives us toward a real-times, instantaneous economy, and substitutes for time. Space, too, is conserved and conquered by knowledge. GE’s Transportation System division builds locomotives. When it began using advanced in formation processing and communications to link up with its suppliers, it was able to turn over its inventory twelve times faster than before and to save a full acre of warehouse space. Not only miniaturized products and reduced warehousing but other savings are possible. Advanced information technologies, including document scanning and new telecommunications capacity based on computers and advanced knowledge, make it possible to disperse production out of high-cost urban centers and to reduce energy and transport costs even further. There is currently an economic war going on. It is the war for dominance and wealth on a global scale, and political establishments and business elites are involved. It is also the fight to survive, involving myriads of small and medium businesses and hundreds of millions of ordinary working people. It is one of the strangest wars in World history. America is fighting at full strength, but unlike previous wars, even economic, America does not want its rival to suffer a complete defeat. America needs to remain rich, economically and socially stable, and technologically-progressive, it also needs to rebound and become cash abundant. America has to remain sufficiently healthy and strong and keep on running. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
This war for global dominance is a real war. The country that is the superpower is the one who gets to determine the rules of conduct on the global economic arena and the ways key international issues are approached. This is important because some governments are predatory or kleptocratic. As time goes by, America needs to keep the situation on the battlefield under control. Bargaining power, though absolutely nonquantifiable, exerts decisive influence on how key international economic issues are handled. To maintain status as a World Superpower, it is important for citizens become mature and competent individuals. There are extrinsic conditions for the development of competent personalities other than the kind of income possessed, and there are conditions intrinsic to family structure which may give even children within the same family differing starts in life. If individuals are to enjoy equal opportunity for the development of competent personalities, and this is limited by the resources of their families, then the objective of a community sharing such an ideal must be to provide these families, if not unlimited availability, at least some fair minimum of such resources. In general, this has been a guiding principle, though sometimes none too consciously, for the development of the agencies concerned. Equality before the law has been, of course, the bedrock principle upon which all these protective activities have been founded. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Pursuit of this ideal virtually require the state to take over and monopolize the function of securing justice for individuals when they were injured or threatened by other individuals, rather than leaving retribution to private feuds. The state taking over the elementary protection of life, liberty, and property could thus be regarded as the earliest and most irrevocable of transfers to another institution of a family function. There is, however, a function centered on family life which was in the hands of another institution even earlier than that, although it is not a function which the family itself ever possessed. That is the legitimation in the eyes of the community, through ritual and certain binding commitments, of marriage and parenthood. While the enforcement of these responsibilities has long since been concentrated in the state, in a society such as ours where there are so many faiths and churches the element of ritual with which these monogamic commitments are solemnly chartered by the community still remains conspicuous. The ritual testifies to the view that from its beginning any family is as much the creation and concern of the community as of its principals. In addition to formal legitimation of marriage (and of course of its rupture through divorce), there is a large area of family law, exempli gratia, inheritance of estates, administered through the appropriate legal institutions. The legal responsibility of a husband for the economic support of his wife, his children up to certain ages, and even his parents and siblings, remain in effect, though some of the economic burden has been taken over by family agencies. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Specific provisions vary widely among the states. Proposals for change in family law are more often concerned with codification on a national basis than with release of family members from their responsibilities. Indeed the notion, however fallacious, that by stringent limitation of divorce, family stability is somehow conserved, has served to arrest the liberalization that might narrow the gap between profession and practice; while efforts to move into a therapeutic phase, exempli gratia, family courts, have been largely resisted. How the powers of psychological offenders counterfeit the presence of God to those ignorant of their devices may be somewhat as follows. At some moment when the believer is yearning for the sense of God’s presence, either alone or in a meeting, and certain conditions are fulfilled, the subtle foe approaches, and wrapping the senses round with a soothing, lulling feeling—sometimes filling the room with light, or causing what is apparently a “breath from God” by a movement of the air—either whispers, “This is the presence you have longed for,” or leads the believer to infer that it I what one has desired. Then, off one’ guard, and lulled into security that the psychopathological offender is far away, some thoughts are suggested to the mind, accompanied by manifestations which appear to be divine. A sweet voice speaks, or a vision is given, which is at once received as “divine guidance,” given in the “divine presence,” and hence beyond question as from God. If accepted as from God when actually from the psychopathological offender, the first ground is gained. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The human is now sure that God has bidden one do this or that. One is filled with the thought that one has been highly favored of God and chosen for some high place in His Kingdom. The deeply hidden self-love is fed and strengthened by this, and one is able to endure all things by the power of this secret strength. One has been spoken to by God! One has been singled out for special favor! One’s support is not within—based upon one’s experience—rather than established upon God Himself and the written Word. Through this secret confidence that God has specially spoken to one, the human becomes unteachable and unyielding, with a beneficial trending on infallibility. One cannot listen to others now, for they have not had this “direct” revelation from God. One is in direct, special, personal communion with God, and to question any “direction” given to one becomes the height of sin. Obey one must, even though the direction given is contrary to all enlightened judgment and the action commanded is opposed to the spirit of the Word of God. In brief, when the human at this stage believes one a “command” from God one will not use one’s reason, because one thinks it would be “carnal” to do so. “Common sense” is lack of faith, and therefore sin; and “conscience,” for the time being, has ceased to speak. Some of the suggestions made to the believer by psychopathological offenders at the time may be: “You re more advanced than others”—working to blind the soul to sober knowledge of itself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“You are a special instrument for God”—working to feed self-love; “You are different from others”—working to make one think one needs special dealing by God; “You must take a separate path”—a suggestion made to feed the independent spirit; You must give up your occupation and live by faith”—aiming at causing the believer to launch out on false guidance, which may result in the ruin of one’s home, and sometimes the work for God in which one is engaged. All these suggestions are made to give the human a false concept of one’s spiritual state; for one is made to believe one is more advanced than one actually is, so that one may act beyond one’s measure of faith and knowledge (Romans 12.3), and consequently be more open to the deceptions of the beguiling foe. Ontological categories of time, space, causality, and substance are the basic forms of thought and being through which the mind makes contact with reality. Since they are forms of finitude, they express a mixture of being and nonbeing, positive and negative elements which we discuss in terms of courage and anxiety. Humans’ experience of time includes the anxiety of transitoriness and the courage of a self-affirming present. Space is not only physical, but also social—a sphere of influence, a place in the framework of value and meaning. The anxiety of insecurity arises from the danger of losing one’s place, only to be met by the courage to carve out a niche for oneself. Causality brings forth the anxiety of contingency, the awareness that one does not possess one’s own power of being. However, courage is there too, for causality affirms the reality of being by pointing to its sources in the power of being. Substance expresses the anxiety of change, of loss off identity, along with the courage to affirm the finite by laboring to produce cultural creations. Significance expresses the union of being and nonbeing in everything finite. They articulate the courage which accepts the anxiety of nonbeing. The question of God is the question of the possibility of this courage. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Professional Occupational Crimes—It was Obvious that they Had Made a Covenant with the Devil!
The first line of defense against employee fraud and embezzlement is to hire the most qualified and most trustworthy individuals to work in your business, especially those employees who will have access to your company’s finances. The problem is, in this day and age, that is easier said than done. There are so many laws and rules geared toward protecting potential employee from improper hiring practices that even when you perform proper due diligence with your candidates, you will be limited in what you can ask, where you can gain information, and how you can us the information you do obtain in your hiring decision. In the real world of embezzlement, the perpetrators rarely fit the stereotypical image of someone capable of concocting and carrying out fraud schemes. Rather, they are almost always someone above suspicion! Embezzlers are of any age, gender, race, religion, and income bracket. Why? Despite the appearance of honesty, you can never be sure of what is going on in someone’s personal life, and desperate people are capable of taking desperate action. To further highlight this issue, it is probable that you have no idea that a fellow employee may: Have a gambling issues, have an alcohol problem, have a substance abuse situation, be experiencing financial difficulties, have expensive medical bills, or—enjoy living life on the edge! The fraud triangle—and the top of the triangle is incentive. Incentive is the starting point of fraud. Then there comes opportunity. Too much trust, poor internal controls, lack of supervision, no financial audit by independent CPAs, and the like, all create opportunity for fraud. The basic purpose of effective internal controls is to remove the opportunity for fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Rationalization: After a period of time, the perpetrator actually convinces themselves that they are not stealing, but rather self-correcting a perceived wrong such as a pay discrepancy of the life. The Uniform Crime Reports collect data annually from law enforcement authorities on the crime of embezzlement. However, this crime is categorized as a Part II offense, which means that arrest data are disseminated to public but data on the number of known offenses are not readily available. In 2022, state and local law enforcement authorities effected 22,176 embezzlement arrests. There were 4,180 white-collar prosecutions in 2022. Annual losses from white-collar crimes as of 2021 are anywhere from $426 billion to $1.7 trillion. The wide range here is due to the lack of prosecution. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of white-collar crimes go unreported. White-collar crimes affect over 35 percent of U.S.A. businesses. It is estimated that 75 percent of all employees steal from their employer at least once, and another half of that percentage is repeatedly stealing. Plus, over 50 percent of embezzlers are managers. There are roughly 5,000 white-collar crime-related arrests for every 100,000 people in the U.S.A. Fraud makes up 63 percent of white-collar crimes, making it the most common. The painful reality is that there exists no reliable source of data on the incidence and/or prevalence of crimes within complex organization. For one, the vast majority of these offenses never get reported—a recent national telephone survey of white-collar crime victimization found that less than 1 in 10 victimizations were reported to law enforcement or any other regulator entity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is widely reported that corporate victims of embezzlement or employee theft prefer to handle these matters in-house for fear that external involvement will bring negative publicity or unnecessary scrutiny, or even jeopardize propriety information (id est, trade secrets). When members of government (id est, law makers or law enforcers) or corporate executives engage in economic or violent crimes against the public, they can usually rely on norms of secrecy or the threat of dire organizational sanctions to keep the matter from going public. Even if the public, media, or investigators begin suspecting foul play, corporate lawyers and the legal protections that are afforded to organizational entities will usually allow them to produce a formidable smoke screen. In these professional occupational crimes (id est, crimes committed by members of a profession), perpetrators can readily hide behind the collective code of silence, structures of self-regulation, and privileged information clauses as a way of controlling the flow of damaging information. In light of these structural impediments, one must rely upon data from small-scale and narrowly focused research efforts to speak to the descriptive aspects of these criminal events. Several studies have explored the topic have explored the topic of theft by employees. Property deviance refers to the theft of hard assets (id est, money, goods, raw materials). Production deviance refers to counterproductive behaviors such as the theft of time, the abuse of sick leave, on-the-job substance use, and engaging in intentionally slow and sloppy work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Of the 9,175 interviews with retail, hospital, and manufacturing employees working in forty-seven corporations located across the United States of America, we found that one-third of the interviewees admitted to some form of property deviance in the past year. A similar study involving restaurant employees found that 60 percent had engaged in at least one form of property deviance and a full 82 percent had engaged in production deviance in the preceding year. Experts note that as much as 40 percent of all shoplifting that is experienced by retailers can be traced back to acts of collusion in which one or more dishonest employees choose to assist the external thief in one’s crime. Research on corporate-level violations reveals that companies engage in a good amount of offending as well. First, there were 6,558 white-collar crime case involving 8,670 defendants tried by U.S.A. attorney in 2021. There were an additional 6,332 persons investigated and 3,224 persons tried by U.S. attorneys’ offices tht year for violating federal regulatory statue such as the Food and Drug Act or any one of the other special congressional provisions that were previously outlined. In 2022, there were 371 antitrust cases brought before the U.S.A. district courts (90 percent were pursued as civil, rather than criminal cases). There is a general consensus that these numbers represent only a fraction of the actual corporate wrongdoing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Numerous scholarly studies have attempted to more accurately estimate levels of corporate misconduct. In the study of court and administrative actions taken against the seventy largest U.S.A. corporations in, we found widespread evidence of abuse. All seventy firms in the sample had at least one formal action brought against them. The average number of violations per company was fourteen. A full 60 percent of the firms had been convicted in criminal court. All total, these seventy firms accounted for 980 violations of the law. Similar offending trends were found among the fifty largest corporations in Canada. Nearly two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies had come under fire from one or more of twenty-four federal regulatory agencies for violating corporate law during a 1-year time period. Abuses of state authority also appear to be widespread. There are 1,134 elected or appointed U.S.A. officials facing some form of criminal indictment. These offenses are capable of permeating every level of government. There have been more than 17 governors or former governors indicted between 1970 and 2009. There have been 487 instances of alleged and actual misconduct by legislators in the United States of America’s Congress from 1789 to the present. At least 13 mayors arrested on child sex crimes since 2021. And a considerable assortment of country officials have been indicted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Crimes by government agencies are yet another type of offense that must e assessed through targeted cases. There are several noteworthy examples. An estimated 63,000 developmentally disabled Americans were sterilized under eugenics statues that were widely imposed across the South for the better part of the early 1900s. Also U.S.A. Public Health Service withheld treatment from more than 400 impoverished African Americans in the notorious “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.” The excessive use of force by police offers represents one of the most prevalent and “newsworthy” forms of state crime. Voluntary data provided by 100+ police agencies reveals 25,067 incidents of use of force occurring in 2022 and 1,200 people were killed by police. Each year, fewer than 3 percent of killings by police result in officers being charged with a crime. A broad-based survey of citizens made it known that as many as 1 percent of police-public contacts that occurred in 2022 involved some form of force or threatened force on the part of the officer. Research suggests that as many as 40 percent of all use-of-force incidents involve improper force tactics on the part of the officer(s). Taken on face value, these findings suggest that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 180,000 abuses of police force occur each year in this country. Crimes by persons of professional status are yet another form of crime for which we have little incidence and prevalence data. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Members of the health care community engage in a broad range of criminal behaviors. Estimates suggest that as many as 50 percent of all doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will engage in illegal prescription drug use at some point during their careers—5 percent to 10 percent will come to abuse these drugs. AN untold number of doctors are said to defraud Medicare and Medicaid through overbilling or retainer scams, engage in prescription violations, conduct illegal abortions, and take part in self-referral or fee-splitting schemes (id est, providing kickbacks to other doctors for unnecessary or illegal referrals). It is estimated that as many as 15 percent of all elective surgeries are unnecessary; and documented is a considerable ineptitude and malpractice among doctors. Other professional groups have also evidenced considerable levels of criminal and unethical behavior. It is estimated that somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of all practicing psychotherapist have had sexual relationships with a patient. Additionally, 27 percent of university researchers surveyed admitted to having personal knowledge of research fraud or plagiarism on the part of one or more colleagues. Also, considerable numbers of lawyers have licensure complaints and criminal action filed against them. The monetary and social costs that go along with crimes within complex organizations are staggering. On average, there are over $50 billion in losses due to employee theft in a single year nationwide. Retail loss prevention professionals estimated employee theft to cost $18 billion a year. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly estimated that faulty goods, monopolistic practices, and other violations annually costs consumers between $200 and $275 billion. A Department of Justice estimate put the total annual loss of taxpayers from reported and unreported violations of federal regulations by corporations at $20 to $30 billion, and the Internal Revenue Service estimated that about $2.2 billion goes unreported each year in corporate tax returns. Given the fact that these estimates for each would be significantly larger. Even more disturbing figures emerge when one shifts the focus to the physical harms perpetrated by corporate entities. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that commercial entities are responsible for 90 percent of the more than 292 tons of toxic waste that are released into the environment each year. These toxins produce untold levels of harm to the air, water, and land of this country. Routine exposure to these poisons can produce cancer or other fatal diseases. The heavily polluted air of Los Angeles produces 220 cancer deaths each year and 240,000 persons will die from asbestos-related cancer over the next 30 years. Also, there are other things to consider when it comes to climate change. We have pumped so much groundwater that we have changed the Earth’s spin. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
By pumping water out of the ground and moving it elsewhere, humans have shifted such a large mass of water that the Earth tilted nearly 80 centimeter (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 alone. Based on climate models, humans pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater, equivalent to more than 6 millimeters (0.24 inches) of sea level rise, from 1993 to 2010. Therefore, it is important to slow the amount of water we are sucking out of the Earth, as this could add to the planet heating up. You will notice areas with oceans tend to be cooler and have more vegetation, but places like the desert are hot and have no vegetation. Anyone reading this page has an amazing skill called literacy. It comes as a shock sometimes to remember that all of us had ancestors who were illiterate. Not stupid nor ignorant, but invincibly illiterate. Not only illiterate, they were also “innumerate,” meaning they could not do this simplest arithmetic. Those few who could were deemed downright dangerous. A marvelous warning attributed to Augustine holds that Christians should stay away from people who could add or subtract. It was obvious they had “made a covenant with the Devil.” It was not until a thousand years later that we find “reckoning masters” teaching pupils bound for commercial careers. What this underscores is that many of the simplest skills taken for granted in business today are the products of centuries and millennia of cumulative cultural development. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Knowledge from China, from India, from the Arabs, from Phoenician traders as well as from the West, is an unrecognized part of the heritage relied on today by business executive all over the World. Successive generations have learned these skills, adapted them, transmitted them, and then slowly built on the results. All economic systems sit upon a “knowledge base.” All business enterprises depend on the preexistence of this socially constructed resource. Unlike capital, labor, and land, it is usually neglected by economists and business executives when calculating the inputs needed from production. Yet this resource is now the most important of all. Today we are living through one of those exclamation points in history when entire structure of human knowledge is once again trembling with change as old barriers fall. We are not just accumulating more facts. Just as we are now restructuring companies and whole economies, we are totally recognizing the production and distribution of knowledge and the symbols used to communicate it. What does this mean? It means that we are creating new networks of knowledge…linking concepts to one another in startling ways…building up amazing hierarchies of inference…spawning new theories, hypotheses and images based on novel assumptions, new languages, codes and logics. Businesses, governments and individuals are collecting and storing more sheer data than any previous generation in history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, more important, we are interrelating data in more ways, giving them context and thus forming them into information; and we are assembling chunks of information into larger and larger models and architectures of knowledge. Not all this new knowledge is “correct,” factual, or even explicit. Much knowledge, as the term is used here, is unspoken, consisting of assumptions piled atop assumptions, of fragmentary models, of unnoticed analogies, and it includes not simply logical and seemingly unemotional information or data, but values, the products of passion and emotion, not to mention imagination and intuition. It is today’s gigantic upheaval in the knowledge base of society—not computer hype or mere financial manipulation—that explains the rise of a super-symbolic, Third Wave economy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, today’s Western trade and economic relationship does provide for a certain kind of global equilibrium. It may be far from optimal, but it is not as bad as how you feel when you read numerous publications in the Western media or listen to politicians’ speeches. Here is the equilibrium’s outline. If American households’ savings increase, this translates into a higher investment rate (ratio of domestic investment to the GDP), rapid growth of production, and increasing exports to the East. Earning a lot of foreign currency, America boosts its foreign reserves (they expand further as American monetary authorities buy foreign reserves). The reserves are used to purchase securities, which fight with budget deficits and ease the pain of deep public spending cuts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We have to look at the global economy as an entity, with national economies as its integral parts. For decades, America’s enormous current account deficits were the focus of attention of economists, policy makers, and the media. All though those decades, critics, and skeptic did not stop saying that they were unsustainable. However, in reality they have proved to be quite sustainable: The U.S.A. economy remains safe as long as the inflow of capital continues and the capital and financial account remains in a comfortable black. Running large trade and current account deficits, the United States of America played the role of the major market creator for the World, supporting global growth, including growth in countries that were its major creditors. It was and is kind of a deal: market for money. Having become the U.S.A. government’s major, Beijing is and will be committed to playing its part because economic stability of America is indispensable for China itself: The United States of America is one of its most important trading partners. However, there has been a remarkable transformation of the U.S.A. international investment position occurring over the last 40 years. U.S.A. net foreign assets were larger than combined net foreign assets of all other creditors. By 1990, foreign-owned U.S.A. securities and real assets were larger than U.S.A. owned foreign securities and assets. This change occurred without the U.S.A. Treasury borrowing in foreign purchases of U.S.A. securities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Inferences from the currency composition of portfolio changes of those who acquired U.S.A. dollar securities suggest that foreign savers took the initiative on cross-border investment inflows. The U.S.A. could not have developed a larger capital account surplus after 1980 unless a similar increase in the U.S.A. current account deficit increase was the surge in U.S.A. stocks and other asset prices, resulting in a U.S.A. household wealth surge and consumption boom. The foreign saving inflow displaced domestic saving. In addition, an increase in the price of the U.S.A. dollar led to expenditure-switching from U.S.A. goods. When investor demand for U.S.A. dollar securities declined, the U.S.A. dollar price fell in 1992, 2002, and 2020 and the price of the U.S.A. dollar securities declined. Therefore, the U.S.A. has to stop living for today and pay off our debts, so we can once again become a creditor nation. We have to reduce the amount of goods and services that we import, and increase the amount of commodities we export. The good thing is that in the wake of this crisis, American households actually have begun to save more. However, Americans will have to learn to reduce their consumption to keep their savings high. This will encourage the central banks to raise policy interest rates to contain soaring inflation and prevent overheating. Of course, it will take time to rebalance the American economy. The private sector must continue to get stronger. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Generally speaking, the original so-called protective functions of the family as an institution are in modern times discharged by legal and political agencies. Beyond basic physical protection against human and nonhuman enemies, such institutions as police departments, child welfare agencies, marriage license bureaus, legal aid bureaus, inspection and regulation bureaus, traveler’s aid for desertees and the runaway child, and courts of every kind, are principally devoted to guarding the rights and safety of citizens. In the past, these functions have been construed ad largely negative or corrective. That is, when someone encroached upon another, or deviated from given rules or standards, it became the duty of one of these protective agencies to set matters right. In more recent times these bodies have tended to take a more affirmative approach. There are no clearly marked stages in the transition, and new functions have often been simply superimposed on old ones. This steady transformation of family legal agencies, though quite in accord with the ancient principle of equality before the law, nonetheless involves a conspicuous paradox if not a contradiction. For, all institutions, the family is traditionally the most addicted to conserving inequality, among, if not within, families. Many critics of the family have seen it primarily as a means for transmitted advantages from one generation to the next. The rewriting of family law, exempli gratia, on inheritance, has repeatedly run across the grain of this profound impulse of people to favor their own kin. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Nepotism is a term of discredit in the United States of America. Legal responsibility for misdoing is uniformly fastened on the individual, but upon one’s family. The near-legend of the Hatfields and the McCoys gain its popular interest largely from the extraordinary uniqueness of interfamily feuds in this society. Surnames, instead of being treated as facts of nature, are continually being changed by immigrants, members of minority groups, and people who, like entertainers, appear before the public. Antagonism to vestiges of primogeniture is as vehement among younger sons and daughter today as it was in the breast of Jefferson; heir must share alike, estates be broken up, and dynasties be avoided. Sons of great men find a thousand knives sharpened to whittle them down to size. Evidence like this could be multiplied to exhibit unmistakably the clash between our majority sentiment of individualism and philosophies of feudalistic or neofeudalistic familism. In spite of some opposition by a minority, purist of that idealized state of affairs, in which the person’s standing in the community is entirely a product of one’s own character and not all the result of one’s family connections, appears to be waxing, not waning. It has at least the vitality it had in Jefferson’s day and probably more. This ideal, however, would be absurd prima facie if it failed to recognize the overwhelming influence of the family in formation of the individual character. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Perhaps this fact was unrecognized in Jefferson’s day; perhaps he and his allies though that the leveling off of the extrinsic advantages and disadvantages of inherited property was the most important step toward equality. Anyhow, it is recognized today by students of the family that there are other advantages and disadvantages, just as important as those of inherited wealth and poverty, which must be dealt with, before every America child can truly asset that one enjoys equality of opportunity. The Lord said, “If ye abide in Me [id est, in the glory], and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will…” reports John 15.7. Christ abides in us by His Spirit and through His words, but He Himself, as a Person, is in Heaven, and it is only as we abide in Him there that His Spirit and His life, through His Word, can be manifested in us here. “Abiding” means an attitude of trust and dependence on Him in Heaven; but if one’s attitude is changed into trust and dependence upon a Christ within, it is really a resting upon an inward experience and a turning from the Christ in Heaven. This actually blocks the avenue for the inflow of His life, and disassociates the believer from cooperation with Him by the Spirit. Any manifestation, therefore, of a “presence” within cannot be a true “manifestation” from God if it uncenters the believer from one’s right attitude toward the Christ in Heaven. There is a true knowledge of the presence of God, but it is in the spirit, when joined to Him who is within the veil—a knowledge of spiritual union and fellowship with Him which lifts the believer, so to speak, out of oneself to abide with Christ in God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The counterfeit “presence” of God is nearly always manifested in the guise of love, to which the believer open oneself without hesitation. One may find that it fills and satiates one’s innermost being; but being deceived, one does not know that one has opened oneself to the activity of psychological offenders. The concept of finitude is the center of being which draws us to God. Man is terrified of nonbeing because his being does to secure him against it. His ability to question being, his separation from it, reveal that he shares in nonbeing. The undialectical concept of being is ouk on, the nothingness referred to in the phrase creatio ex nihilo. It has no relation whatsoever to being; it is pure negation, and hence undialectical. Me on, on the other hand, is the dialectical concept of nonbeing. It is related to being in the sense of resistance to being, or perversion of being, or menace to being. It is dialectical. The problem of finitude, then, is the dialectical problem of nonbeing. For being, limited by nonbeing, is finitude. Nonbeing appears as the “not yet” of being and as the “no more” of being. Being is the power of being! Power, however, presupposes, even in the metaphorical use of the word, something over which it proves its power. That which is conquered by the power of being is nonbeing. Being, therefore, is the power of being which resists nonbeing. Nonbeing is not a stranger to being. Metaphorically, it is that quality of being by which everything that participates in being is negated. Nonbeing is the negation of being within being itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Human experience of the ontological structure and elements shows that to be something is to be infinite. Yet the limitations of nonbeing are visible only against the backdrop of a potential infinity. For example, one realizes the finiteness of death only by imagining the possibility of something beyond death. Finitude is seen as finitude only if finite being transcends itself, steps out of itself in the direction of infinity. Infinity is a demand, not a thing. Infinite negates the limitations of finitude; it negates nonbeing. However, infinity is not being-itself. One must understand that infinite in the sense of infinite self-transcendence, while being-itself manifests itself to finite being in the infinite drive of the finite beyond itself. Infinity is a manifestation of being-itself, but the two can never be identified, for being-itself precede nonbeing and its negation by infinity. The awareness of finitude produces an ontological anxiety, for finitude contains the threat of nonbeing. Fear is psychological and stems from a menacing object, but anxiety is the self-awareness of the finite self as finite. Anxiety is all-pervasive as nonbeing. Since anxiety is the existential awareness of nonbeing, it is perfectly natural to man. Finitude and anxiety appear also in the ontological element. A polarity supposes a balance, each pole limiting and supporting the other. However, because of its finitude a polarity becomes tension, the tendency of elements within a unity to draw away from one another, to disintegrate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Thus, the polarity of individualization and participation becomes the tension of loneliness and collectivization. Dynamics and form become chaos and formalism. Freedom and destiny become arbitrariness and necessity. These tensions are threat to finite man, for if he loses one side of the polarity, he loses the other side. Once the polarity disintegrates, he is destroyed as a self. It must be insisted upon, however, that these finite tensions are only possibilities, tendencies, threats, if you will. However, they do not necessarily lead to actual disintegration, just as every threat is not inevitably carried out. Freedom is the pivot, for it is only through freedom that the threat is carried out, that the finite tensions snap, that potential disruption is actualized. Freedom ushers in the basic distinction between essential being, threatened but integral, and existential being, real but distorted. “Essence” is ambiguous in that it denotes a fact and connotes a value. It signifies the nature of being, the universal, the logical ideal. However, essence also pronounces judgment, for it is the undistorted state from which the being has fallen. Essence makes the being what it is and judges it. “Existence” exhibits the same ambiguity of meaning, for it signifies not only actuality, standing out from potentiality, but also imperfection, the failure to measure up to essence. Whatever exists, that is “stands out” of mere potentiality, is more than it is in the state of mere potentiality and less than it could be in the power of its essential nature. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Christian theology considers existence a positive fulfillment of creation, of essence. It also points out the split between essential created goodness and its existential distortion. The theologian cannot avoid this problem. The distinction between essence and existence, which religiously speaking is the distinction between the created and the actual World, is the backbone of the whole body of theological thought. If man is that being who asks the question of being, he had and has not the being for which he asks. He is separated from it while belonging to it. Certainly we belong to being—its power is in us—otherwise we would not be. However, we are also separated from it; we do not possess it fully. Our power of being is limited. We are a mixture of being and nonbeing. This is precisely what is meant when we say that we are finite. Hope in God, His goodness, and His power refreshed us with courage during difficult challenges. Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness. Its absence—when this desire of our heart is delayed—can make the heart sick. Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior. This kind of hope is both a principle of promise as well as a commandment, and, as with all commandment, we have the responsibility to make it an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope. Hope in our Heavenly Father’s merciful plan of happiness leads to peace, mercy, rejoicing and gladness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Look at those Big Bad Pimps—Americans Want to Pay for their Lunch!
Whenever a single wave of change predominates in any given society, the pattern of future development is relatively easy to discern. Writers, artists, journalists and others discover the “wave of the future.” Thus, in nineteenth-century Europe many thinkers, business leaders, politicians and ordinary people held a clear, basically correct image of the future. They sensed that history was moving toward the ultimate triumph of industrialism over premechanized agriculture, and they foresaw with considerable accuracy many of the changes that the Second Wave would bring with it: more powerful technologies, bigger cities, faster transport, mass education and the like. This clarity of vision had direct political effects. Parties and political movements were able to triangulate with respect to the future. Preindustrial agricultural interests organized a rearguard psychological action against encroaching industrialism, against “big business,” against “union bosses,” against “sinful cities.” Labor and management grappled for control of the main levers of the emergent industrial society. Ethnic and racial minorities, defining their rights in terms of an improved role in the industrial World, demanded access to jobs, corporate positions, urban housing, better wages and mass public education. This industrial vision of the future had important effects as well. The shared image of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
This industrial vision of the future had important psychological effects as well. The shared images of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. In contrast, when a society is struck by two or more giant waves of change and none is yet clearly dominant, the image of the future is fractured. It becomes extremely difficult to sort out the meaning of the changes and conflicts that arise. The collision of wave fronts creates a raging ocean full of clashing currents, eddies and maelstorms which conceal the deeper, more important historic tides. In the United States of America—and in many other countries—the collision of Second and Third Wave creates social tensions, dangerous conflicts and strange new political wave fronts that cut across the usual divisions of class, race, gender, or party. This collision makes a shambles of traditional political vocabularies and makes it very difficult to separate progressive from reactionaries, friends from enemies. All the old polarizations and coalitions break up. The apparent incoherence of political life is mirrored in personality disintegration. Psychotherapists and gurus do a land-office business, people wander aimlessly amid competing therapies. They slip into cultus and covens or, alternatively, into a pathological privatism, convinced that reality is absurd, insane or meaningless. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Life may indeed be absurd in some large, cosmic sense. However, this hardly proves that there is no pattern in today’s events. In fact, there is a distinct, hidden order the becomes detectable as soon as we learn to distinguish Third Wave changes from those associated with a diminishing Second Wave. The crosscurrents created by these waves of change are reflected in our work, family life, sexual attitudes and personal morality. They show up in life-styles and voting behavior. For in our personal lives and political acts, whether we know it or not, most of us in the rich countries are essentially Second Wave people committed to maintaining a dying order. Third Wave people constructing a radically different tomorrow or a confused, self-canceling mixture of the two. The conflict between Second and Third Wave groupings is, in fact, the central political tension cutting through our society today. The more basic political question, as we shall see, is not who controls the last days of industrial society but who shapes the new civilization rapidly rising to replace it. On one side are the partisans of the industrial past; on the other, growing millions who recognize that the most urgent problems of the World can no longer be resolved within the frame work of an industrial order. This conflict is the “super struggle” for tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
This confrontation between the vested interest of the Second Wave and the people of the Third Wave already runs like an electric current through the political life of every nation. Even in the nonindustrial counties of the World, all the old battle lines have been forcibly redrawn by the arrival of the Third Wave. The old war of agricultural, often feudal interests against industrializing elites, either capitalist or socialists, takes on a new dimension in light of the coming obsolescence of industrialism. Now that Third Wave civilization is making its appearance, does rapid industrialism imply liberation from neocolonialism and poverty, or does it, in fact, guarantee permanent dependency? It is only against this wide-screen background that we can begin to make sense of the headlines, to sort out our priorities, to frame sensible strategies for the control of change in our lives. Once we realize that a bitter struggle is now raging between those who seek to preserve industrialism and those who seek to supplant it, we have a new tool for changing that World. To use this tool, however, we must be able to distinguish clearly those changes that extend the old industrial civilization from those which facilitate the arrival of the new. We must, in short, understand both the old and the new, the Second Wave industrial system into which so many of us were born and the Third Wave civilization that we and our children have inhabited. America has a lot of structural problems. Almost all of them are similar to those faced by developing nations. However, they are more acute and visible to the World because of America’s unique status. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The list is well-known. We no longer manufacture a significant portion of products we use in our own country. Although we are technologically advanced, new technology is often not used in many buildings and infrastructure because older technology is more cost efficient. And there is a battle between polluting enterprises and green technology, both of which pose problems for the environment. There is high latent unemployment and underemployment in rural and urban areas. Large-scale migration to the cities overstrains their infrastructure causing a lot of ultra-urbanization pains. Obviously mismatch exists between the labor supply (and those willing to work for lower wages, tend to get most of the work). And so on, and so forth. Discussion of America’s present and future usually focuses on a gentlemanly set of problems. They are often looked upon as critical and posing a threat of abrupt and disruptive economic downturn, social and political turmoil or, in the extreme case, the country’s collapse. Such views do not look convincing. The gentlemanly set of problems is manageable, especially for America with its remarkable ability to address crucial issues a gradual, evolutionary, but persistent change. Let us have a loot at a conventional Problem List. Aging Population and Labor Shortages? Yes, population of the working age is apparently approaching its peak and will start to decline in the second half od this century. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, labor force constraints can and most likely will be offset by further gains in labor productivity. Also, there is still a lot of underused human resources in the countryside (about 40 percent of all American worker live in suburban areas) whose migration to the cities will continue to boost labor supply. However, many businesses are now leaving the decaying urban centers, for the suburbs, and many people are working from their electronic cottages. As a result, more businesses will move to the suburbs, which should decrease inner state traffic. As for the growing number and share of elderly people, America with its high migration rates, unhealthy public finance, extremely high social spending, and high dependency toward social safety nets in the future, is in a good position to address the population aging issues in a realistic and financially sustainable way. However, many senior citizens are now small business owners and in good health and are working and support their families, while their kids go to college to obtain degrees, and one day may take over the family business and expand it. Also, the genetic engineer and stem cell technology, we may be able to prevent and cure disabilities. Therefore, most of the population will be in the condition to work and pay taxes. One day, scientists may even find a cure for aging. So, there is a lot of hope for the future. Growing Income Gaps? Well, indeed, they are growing, but, on the other hand, low-income families are mostly elevating their earnings and consumption standards; social safety nets are improving; and, overall, today’s America provides a lot of opportunities to enhance revenues and life a better life to those who really want to make it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Intra-Regional Development Gaps Threatening the Country’s Integrity? Not at all. It is not a critical problem as less developed provinces are becoming the country’s major growth engines and the state has enough financial and other resources to support and amplify the trend. Environmental Damage Endangering the Very Basis of Human Life? No doubt, a whole lot of issues have become critical. However, America is more and more establishing the position of the World leaders in most areas of sustainable smokestack energy, as these companies like Standard Oil are starting to tackle the environmental problems in the same gradual, evolutionarily, but persistent manner it tackled the other ones. And, finally, is there a threat of a big political and social turmoil that may occur as people’s anger with the authoritarian Capitalist regime and democratic political system bursts out and they take to the streets again? Fringe groups of Americans have also been dissatisfied with law and order and hard work, and their anger with the regime is really strong and apparently growing, impacted by numerous cases of power abuse, rampant corruption, disrespect for law enforcement, abuse elder and contempt for leaders, and a lack of respect for patriots and Americana, and other violations of basic human rights. A fresh memory of mine…Some three or four years ago, during a reception in hour of a group of American professors visiting Africa, two of them approached me for a greeting and asked a tough question: “Sir, why don’t you write plainly the America’s present political system is outdated and has to be changed? It worked, but now it has ceased to work. For us it is kind of problematic to write such a thing. Why don’t you?” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
What could I say to this? For sure, democracy and human rights have a basic, universal value and are perhaps not less (or even more?) important than economic growth and rising living standards, but really all of that is intertwined. Generally speaking, people are disrespected because they do not have enough money, because the color of their skin, religion, physical appearance and what type of house they live in and the car they drive. However, as standards of living increases, through economic growth, people become more rational, better education, and have more money to defend themselves in a court of law, so people reconsider violating these peoples’ human rights because they know they may suffer dire financial and legal consequences as a result, which could impact their freedom and reputation. However, on a macro level, we are seeing people raging against the capitalistic regime and they are actually fighting to restrict freedoms and destroy human dignity; information block-outs are now occurring because a handful of corporations own the media outlets and are fighting to conceal the truth; as well as cynical politicians consorting with the World’s most dictatorial and criminal regimes, which often get a helping hand from Washington when the global community tries to do something to put an end to their brutalities (notably, America tends to mind its own business and condemns brutal regimes for massacres of all people or for developing weapons of mass destruction; it always repeats honest and genuine calls to resolve issues peacefully and not to interfere with internal affairs when possible), naturally, this causes resentment, anger, and indignation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is a moral and historical obligation of all America and all honest people in the World who care about justice, the rule of law, mortality, and individual freedom to do their best to send the global leadership a clear message about it. On the other hand, values, ideals, and emotions are not the right starting point when your task is to analyze the logic of the evolution of the country’s political system. And there the truth is that America is approaching the task of changing its political system in the very same way it has approached the task of the economic reforms; gradual, evolutionary, but persistent. Its ruling elite is really trying to find workable answers to key and very difficult questions, while avoiding, by all means, any abrupt revolutionary change. At the dawn of 2020, President Trump proclaimed that everything which is good for a human being is capitalism, that is it not so important if you drive a Cadillac or BMW as long as it is made in America or Europe, and that there is no problem with some Americans becoming rich earlier than others. A variety of forms of ownership is encouraged to give a boost to private enterprise and less the burden on social programs. Many affluent people, this may come to a surprise to some, when they retire, it is funded 100 percent by private investments. Wealthy and upper-class Americans have always felt shameful to use government resources, that is why they believe in capitalism. They want to pay for their lunch. After his election, President Trump boosted the stock market to record highs, we saw property value soar (which is a good thing because it puts money in the banks of homeowners), and unemployment reach a historic low. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Also, although President Trump is a Republican, he is also a business owner. He fought to make sure each and every America, no matter if they pack income taxes or not, and every business received stimulus money. This helped avoid a depression that would have been much more severe than the Great Depression. Because people have hope, they did not jump from buildings to end their lives like they did during the great depression. President Trump also made sure all Americans has access to medical care, that they had food on the table and that fuel prices remained low so people could get back to work and school. He also told people that they have a right to tell authorities about their grievances, in a respectful manner, but that is they got out of line that the situation would be dealt with by using necessary force. He also told Congress and state and local leaders that they are to listen to what the people say, as long as they are respectful, and seek solutions for the issues they pose. Also, perhaps, America is the World leader in terms of the number of high-ranking officials executed for corruption-related crimes. The FBI prosecuted several government officials in Sacramento when they raided the state capitol. Again, any changes America makes will not be abrupt: from one party of rule to full-fledged multiparty politics, but evolutionary and very gradual, which is why it is very important to people to actually to research about political issues and politicians and vote accordingly. Many people used to vote democratic because they wanted high welfare benefits and more social programs, but as you see, many democrats are using the money to build sports complexes and remodel state buildings and put in bike lanes and resurface sidewalks, while affordable housing needs are ignored. So a Republican may be your best bet. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
As any business owner will tell you, if your employees cannot take care of themselves, they will not take good care of your business. Therefore, a business owner might make a better President, than a politician because they are used to dealing with human concerns. Citizens are being encouraged by federal law enforcement to stop criticizing the ruling party too strongly because otherwise they may face tough penalties—for example, for disturbing the social order or for being a public nuisance. President Trump was even in the works of making a government news broadcast channel, like FOX News or CNN, so you could get the information directly and unfiltered from the government. That way, private entities and special interest groups will not be able to distort the information for profit. In other words, the major trend is and will be a shift from an outdated communist dictatorship of the traditional type to a more sophisticated political system with a democratic base. This will make the information projected over the airwaves more legitimate in the eyes of World and public opinion or at least to argue that it is legitimate and that it cares about democracy. Look around you and you will see: America is one of the best countries in the World. Now, prostitution is an economic activity, and it is one many people turn to when they cannot feed their families, and this is why the government likes to keep social programs because no matter how rich a person is or what political party, they are part of, their kids could become involved in prostitution if they have no other way to survive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The prostitutes-as-business-women and prostitutes-as-loving-partners identifications were made possible by a men-as-expense symbolic landscape where men were defined in relation to money because involvement with them was seen as necessitating payment in the form of “opportunity costs” (id est, vales which must be given up in order to achieve something) and “hidden costs” (id est values which are unknown at the time of calculation). The men-as-expense symbolic nexus was a construction of involvement with men in general rather than involvement with men in the context of engagement in prostitution. Hence, Sophie (aged 28) made the comment: “If you get involved with a man—ANY MAN—there’s always a price to pay. There’s always responsibility to give him money or something. You never can get away with it for free.” Throughout all the respondents’ talk there were differences drawn between the actual opportunity cost incurred by relationships with different categories of men. Involvement with pimps, boyfriends and the police were described as necessitating an opportunity cost in that the women understood involvement with all these men as providing them with “sanctuary” from prostitution or protection from prostitution-related risks, but at different and specific prices. “What I was left with was absolute fear and terror—a loneliness on a level I didn’t know existed. I didn’t feel like a human being anymore,” Michelle shares of her heartbreaking story of addiction—an addiction that eventually drove her to become a prostitute. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Most of the women spoke about boyfriends with whom they were or had been involved and who gave them sanctuary from prostitution through financially supporting them. However, the women described such involvement as costing them their independence and it was their unwillingness to pay this price that, they believed, lead to the break up of those relationships. Similarly, involvement with policemen was seen as offering the women protection from prostitution-related violence, especially against violence from pimps. In her moments of deepest darkness, Michelle began entertaining the idea that maybe God could help her, maybe He could provide hope and light like to one else could. “My World changed. You don’t life a life like that and then have things change overnight. It took some time,” she says. Indeed, two other women recalled that it was only after the intervention of the police that they were able to leave their pimps. However, here, the police did not arrest the pimps, rather they arrested the women and took them to hostels or other helping agencies. The price for this was understood as being both provision of information to the police, and more importantly being “indebted” to the particular policeman who provided the help. In one of her moments of desperation, Michelle heard a knock on the door. Two police officers were on her doorstep and wanted to share a message with her. “I needed to know that Heavenly Father loved me. Once I started to believe that—to believe that I was a child of God, that I want not the sum of my behavior, that I was not too broke and not too damaged. I was not unlovable. I was loveable and I was worth it, and He would send His police officers to knock on the door to make me feel loved that night.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Lastly, in relation in relation to pimps, more than half of the interviewees talked of making calculations about the quality of protection that pimps could offer them (against violence from johns or intimidation by other pimps) in exchange for the financial exploitation to which they would have to submit. This was most clearly seen in the women’s discussion of “big, bad pimps.” “Once they know who you’re working for and what status he’s got—like who’s the baddest, who’s got the gun and who hasn’t. You have only to mention his name and that was that. People leave you alone. Other [pimps] and other girls just leave you be. They don’t meddle because he’s psychotic! He’s notorious! He’s one very sick and twisted individual. People are afraid of him. (Anna, aged 36.) Of course, the obvious irony is that, although the women understood involvement with their pimps as a form of opportunity cost, providing them with protection, in reality, these pimps provided them with little protection and, in fact, exposed to them further violence and certainly to further financial exploitation. (I supposed they must have shorted him on his money.) In contrast, involvement with men as partners was described by the women as incurring “hidden costs.” In two cases, the hidden cost was initial entrance into prostitution. Both women talked about “having the knickers charmed off” them and being talked into engaging in prostitution. The cost was hidden because it only emerged after their relationships with these men were established. More commonly, however, was the woman’s understanding of the cost of maintaining their relationships as being their continued involvement in prostitution. As Anna (aged 36) stated: “There’s a lot of pressure. You have to do it, coz you need the money yourself. Then you get mixed up with someone and you have to do it again to help him, to keep a hold of him.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
A community committed to the optimal development of all its citizens will usually find—unless it is very small—that it has an array of all six types of agencies, both public and private. At the national level these are mostly grouped in the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare; at the local level, the city departments (plus some units of county and state) tend to cover the range, though very unevenly, and so do the councils of social agencies on the private side. Together they make up an impressive complement of personnel and machinery. From the administrative standpoint, not more machinery but its co-ordination to sever the family as a unit, appears to be the most pressing demand. From the standpoint of the citizen and family, however, the salient point is the effect achieved by the expenditure of resources; what matters is whether the agencies encourage dependency or foster development. Expressed in terms of values rather than functions, does the family agency attempt to define and achieve an optimal family, or does it avoid such responsibility, and merely seek to supply the most obvious and agreed-on deficiencies, as if these deficiencies were objective facts, not subject to different interpretations? In most parts of the United States of America, the hospital rather than the home is the place where babies are born and where patients with the more acute illnesses are cared for. Professional nurses and subordinate assistants have largely displaced kind relatives and helpful neighbors. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Yet while the hospitals have been taking over certain medical functions from the home, the biological scientists have been urging that greater responsibilities for nutrition, sanitation, and mental hygiene should fall upon the family itself. The vast and burdensome scale of mental disease in particular, which cannot possibly be reversed solely by psychiatric treatment at the point of breakdown, as well as an increased consciousness of the contribution of disturbed mental states to physical illness, have led physicians to expect more from the family than in the past. Nursing education steadily includes more social science. Likewise, the modern knowledge of bacterial and other origins of disease, and the biochemistry of healthful nutrition, have led to the elaboration of genuinely new functions, whereby the family may contribute to the physical competence of its members. Even if desirable, it would not be possible to have a psychiatrist, a bacteriologist, and a dietitian stand over every living unit of the community. If there is to be a rise in health along these lines, the members of each living unit must co-operate in supervising their own hygiene. It is not easy to think of a better institution for performing these functions than the competent family. There is a conspicuous problem for present families who attempt to cultivate the physical competence of their members. This is not really a medical problem at all but an economic one. It is the problem of hospital and doctor bills, and of spreading the risks of chronic or catastrophic illness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The believer needing deliverance from the condition of passivity must first seek to understand what should be one’s normal or right condition, and then test or examine oneself in the light of it to discern if psychopathological offenders have been interfering. To do this, let one recollect a moment in one’s life which one would call one’s “best”—either in spirit, soul and body, or in one’s whole being—and then let one look upon this as one’s normal condition, one which one would want to be maintained, and never rest satisfied below it. Since the passivity has come about gradually it can only end gradually, as it is detected and destroyed. The full cooperation of the human is necessary for its removal—a major reason for the long period needed for deliverance. Deception and passivity can only be removed as the human understands, and cooperates by the use of one’s volition in the refusal of both the deception and the ground upon which it was based. It is important to keep perpetually in mind the standard of the normal condition, and should at any time the believer drop below it, to find out the cause, so as to have it removed. Whatever faculty or part of one’s being has been surrendered into passivity, and therefore lost for use, must be retaken by the active exercise of the will, and thus brought back into personal control. The ground which had been given—which caused the fall into bondage to the enemy—must be eliminated and then refuse persistently, in a steady resistance to the spirits of evil in their hold of it. Remember, the powers of psychopathological offenders will fight against the loss of any part of their kingdom in human, just as any Earthly government would fight to protect its own territory and subjects. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
However, the “Stronger than he” is the Conqueror, and will strengthen the believer for the battle and full recovery of the spoil. First of all, the method of correlation is seen in action, the posing of existential questions followed by theological answers in the form of Christian symbols. Up to now the method of correlation has not been explicitly operative; rather, we have synthesized the union of religion and culture. Second, God, the Christ, the church, history—corresponds to the major divisions of Systematic Theology, and so we gradually progress systematically and express a lifetime of theological endeavor. The existential question is the question of being, and the answer is God. Also treated is the problem of the natural-supernatural and the problem of symbolism, or the way to speak about God. Thus we probe into the depth-dimension which underlies theonomous cultural forms, the holy which shines through the secular, the ground of being which alone can command the ultimacy of an ultimate concern. God is the answer to the question implied in being. We are nominalist by birth. And as nominalist we are inclined to dissolve our World into things. However, the true ontological question does not try to describe the nature of beings, either in their universal, generic qualities, or in their individual, historical manifestation. It simply asks: What does it mean to be? The profundity and the seriousness of the question is realized only in a “metaphysical shock”—the shock of possible nonbeing. The question, “Why is there something, why not nothing” produces the shock by peering into the abyss of possible nothingness. However, the answer to the question is always in terms of being, which permits it to be posed again and again in infinite regression. Furthermore, nonbeing cannot answer it, for nonbeing depends upon being. Therefore, we cannot go beyond being in order to explain being. However, there could be something, a state, beyond being and nonbeing that we cannot comprehend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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In a Few Years, California Will be the Capitol of Mexico
I confess that what I saw during my time of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. The debate over the nature and extend of the relationship between heroin used and criminal activity is a long-standing one which has generated a voluminous literature. An increase in criminality commonly occurs in conjunction with increased heroin use in the United States of America. The addict of lower socioeconomic class is generally a criminal primarily because illicit narcotics are costly and because one can secure one’s daily requirements more readily by committing crimes that will pay for them. The Heroin addict has a criminality that maybe a consequence of addiction, albeit an indirect one. As physical dependence upon and tolerance for heroin increases, and the cost of progressively larger dosages of heroin increase proportionally, some addicts seem to be driven to criminal means to satisfy his or her habit. Empirically, this hypothesis predicts a linear increase in heroin consumption and a corresponding increase in criminal activity necessary to support it. In contrast, a second hypothesis maintains that the principal explanation for the association between drug abuse and crime is likely to be found in the subcultural attachment comprised of the criminal associations, identifications, and activities of those persons who eventually become addicted. The basis for this hypothesis can only be understood in the context of the contemporary sociolegal milieu in which narcotics use takes place. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Since the criminalization of heroin in 1914, the social World of narcotics has become increasingly intertwined with the broader criminal subculture. Consequently, would-be narcotics users inevitably associate with other criminals in the highly criminal copping areas of inner cities, and, indeed, are often recruited from delinquent and criminal networks. Through these criminal associations, therefore, the individual is introduced to heroin, and both crime and heroin use are facilitated and maintained. Empirically, this second hypothesis predicts increases in heroin use following or coinciding with periods of criminal association and activity. A shorthand title for the first hypothesis is “Drugs cause crimes”; for the second “Crimes cause drugs.” Our contribution to understand the dynamics of the drugs-crime connection is based upon life-history interviews with 32 hard core heroin addicts in the Sacramento, California area. We purposely selected the respondents on the basis of their extensive involvement in the heroin subculture. All of the respondents had extensive contact with the criminal justice system. At the time of interview, 24 of the 32 respondents were incarcerated or under some form of correctional authority supervision (exempli gratia, supervised custody, work release, parole, or probation). While this places certain limits on the generalization that can be made from these data, the focus of this study is the dynamics of addiction among heavily-involved street addicts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
To further highlight this experience, controlled users or “chippers” will not have experienced many of the dynamics reported here. Similarly physicians, nurses, and middle class “prescription abusers” are not typically subject to many of the constraints experienced by lower-class street users. Hence, it is important to emphasize that the findings we report here are intended to describe “hard core” urban heroin addicts. Women are slightly overrepresented, constituting 14 of the 32 respondents. Ethnically, the sample consist of 23 African-Americans and nine European-Americans; Hispanic-Americans are not represented because there was no access to them at the time of this study. Respondents were paid five dollars per hour for their interview time, which undoubtedly contributed to the 100 percent response rate. The interviews ranged from 10 to 25 hours in length, with each interview session averaging between three and four hours. With a single exception, all of the interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. Respondents and most of the street respondents were selected with the assistance of treatment personnel who were carefully instructed regarding the goals of the research and selection criteria. This strategy proved invaluable for two reasons. First, by utilizing treatment personnel in the screening process, we were able to avoid the time-consuming task of establishing the “appropriateness” of respondents for the purposes of this research: the treatment personnel were already intimately familiar with the drug-using and criminal histories of the respondents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Second, the treatment personnel had an unusually positive relationship with Sacramento-area drug users. The treatment counselor in the prison system was regarded as an ally in the quest for better living conditions, appeals for early release, et cetera, and was regarded as highly trustworthy in the prison subculture. His frequent confrontations with prison inmates. Similarly, the treatment counselor who assisted in the selection of street respondents was carefully selected on the basis of his beneficial involvement with street addicts. His relationship with area addicts is a long-standing and multifaceted one. His reputation among street addicts was firmly established when he successfully negotiated much needed reforms in one of the local treatment agencies. Because of the long-standing beneficial relationship they had with area addicts, this initial contact by treatment personnel greatly facilitated our establishing necessary rapport. After a few initial interviews were completed, several broad focal areas emerged which formed the basis for future questioning. Respondents were interviewed regarding: childhood and early adolescent experiences which may have served as predisposing factors for eventual drugs/criminal involvement: initial encounters with various types of drugs and criminality; the evolution of their drug and criminal careers; their patterns of activity during peak periods of drug use and criminality, including descriptions of typical days during these periods; their preferences for types of crimes and drugs; the structure of understanding guiding drug use and criminal activity; and their perception of the nature and effectiveness of drug treatment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Structuring the life-history interviews in this way insured that most relevant career phases were covered while at the same time it permitted the respondents a great deal of flexibility in interpreting their experiences. One of the earliest strategies for testing the Drug-cause-crime versus Crimes-cause-drugs hypotheses involved trying to establish that a pattern of regular or extensive criminal behavior typically precedes heroin addiction, that finding would tend to support the Crimes-cause-drugs hypothesis. Conversely, is a pattern of regular or extensive criminality tends to develop after the onset of heroin addiction, that finding would tend to support the Drugs-cause-crimes hypothesis. Previous research on this question is mixed, but mixed in a systematic way. Most of the early studies found little criminality before the onset of opiate addition. Later studies, by contrast, have shown a high probability of criminality preceding heroin addiction. Our life-history interviews are consistent with the findings of the recent studies. All of our respondents reported some criminal activity prior to their first use of heroin. However, for nearly all of our respondents, both their criminal careers and their heroin-using careers began slowly. For the respondents in our study, a median of 3.5 years elapsed between their first serious criminal offense and subsequent involvement in criminal activity on a regular basis. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Likewise, all of our respondents reported at least occasional use of other illicit drugs prior to their first experience with heroin. Moreover, many of our respondents indicated that they spent substantial periods of time—months and even years—using heroin on an occasional basis (“chipping” or “chippying”), either inhaling the powder (“sniffing” or “snorting”), injecting the prepared (“cooked”) mixture subcutaneously (“skinpopping”), or receiving occasional intravenous injections from other users before becoming regular users themselves. Perhaps most importantly, virtually all of our respondents reported that they believed that their criminal and drug careers began independently of one another, although both careers became intimately interconnected as each evolved. In the earliest phases if their drug and crime careers, the decision to commit crimes and the decision to use drugs were choices which our respondents believed they freely chose to make and which they believed they could have discontinued before either choice became a way of life. From our interviews it appears that two very general factors shape and influence the drug and crime careers of our respondents, not only during the early stages of each career but as each career evolves through different stages. The first of these factors in the availability of heroin rather than the level of physical tolerance the user has developed “The more you had the more you did,” explains “Mona” a thirty-year-old female. “And if all you have was $10 than that’s all you did…But if you had $200 then you did that much.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Addicts are able to adjust to periods of sharply decreased availability (exempli gratia “panic” periods when supplies of street heroin disappear) by reducing consumption or my using alternative drugs (exempli gratia methadone). They are also able to manipulate availability, increasing or decreasing it in ways and for reason we will discuss. As we use the term, availability also means something more than access to sellers of heroin who have quantities of the drug to sell. By availability we also mean the resources and opportunities to buy the drug to sell. By availability we also mean the resources and opportunities to buy heroin or obtain it in other ways as well as the skills necessary to use it. In short, availability is understood to include considerations of all of those opportunities and obstacles which may influence a heroin user’s success in introducing a quantity of the drug into his or her bloodstream. The second general factor shaping the drugs and crime careers of our life-history interviewees is life-structure. By “life structure” we mean regularly occurring patterns of daily domestic, occupational, recreational, or criminal activity. Recent ethnographic accounts of heroin-using careers in several major cities reveal that, like their “straight” counterparts, most addicts maintain reasonably predictable daily routines. Throughout their lives or respondents fulfilled, to one degree or another, conventional as well as criminal and other subcultural roles. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
In fact, during most periods of their crime and drug careers, our interviewees spent far more time engaged in conventional as well as criminal and other subcultural roles. In fact, during most periods of their crime and drug careers, our interviewees spent far more time engaged in conventional role activities than in criminal deviant ones. Many worked conventional jobs. Women with children performed routine housekeeping and child-rearing duties. Many leisure-time activities did not differ from those of non-addicts. These hard-core addicts spent time grocery shopping, tinkering with cars, visiting relatives, talking with friends, listening to records, and watching television in totally unremarkable fashion. Life structure in the hard core criminal addict’s life can be also provided by some rather stable forms of criminal activity. Burglars spend time staking out business establishments. Shoplifters typically establish “runs,” more or less stable sequences of targeted stores from which to “boost” during late morning, noon, and early afternoon hours, saving the later afternoon for fencing what they have stolen. Prostitutes typically keep a regular evening and night-time schedule, which runs from 7 P.M. to 3 A.M. Mornings are usually spent sleeping and afternoons are usually occupied with conventional duties. It is within this structure of conventional and criminal roles that buying (“copping”), selling (“dealing”), and using (“shooting”) heroin takes place. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Likewise, prostitutes seek to manage their drug use so that neither withdrawal symptoms (“joneses”) nor periods of heroin-induced drowsiness will interfere with their work. In order to meet the demands of criminal or conventional roles, addicts in our sample often used other drugs (exempli gratia marijuana, barbiturates, alcohol, amphetamines, methadone) to alter their moods and motivations, saving heroin as a regard for successful completing a job or meeting other obligations. Of one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending time in seeing the actual life of these people, and that was that, in order to life them up, something must be done more than merely imitate New England education as it existed. I saw more clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had inaugurated at Hampton. To take these people, and each day give them a few hours of education, I felt would be almost a waste. The shock is great when one first apprehends the truth of deception as possible for oneself; but as the ultimate issue is realized, the joy of the one who sets oneself to understand and fight through to full deliverance is more than words can tell. Light pours in upon the unsolved problems of years, in both one’s personal experience and in the perplexities surrounding one, as well as on the conditions in the Church and in the World. As one seeks for light from the ultimate concern, the subtle inroads of the deceiving spirits into one’s life slowly become clear to the open-minded believer; and their many devices to deceive one stand revealed as the searchlight of truth goes far back into the past, uncovering the cause of unaccountable difficulties in experience and life, and many mysterious happenings which had been accepted as “the inscrutable will of God.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
PASSIVITY! How many have fallen into it, little knowing their state! Through the misuse of their faculties much time is lost in dependence upon the help of outward circumstances and environment. In the lives of so many there is much “doing,” with so little accomplished…many beginnings, and few endings. How familiar we are with the words, “Yes, I can do that,” and the impulse is there, but by the time the need for action has come the passive man has lost his momentary interest. This is the key to much of the lamented “apathy” and the dulled sympathy of Christians to really spiritual things, while they are keenly alive to the social or Worldly elements around them. The Worldling can be stirred in acutest feeling for the sufferings of others, but many of the children of God have, unknowingly, opened themselves to a supernatural power which has dulled them in thought and mind and sympathy. Ever craving for comfort and happiness and peace in spiritual things, they have sung themselves into a “passivity”—id est, a passive state of “rest,” “peace” and “joy”—which has given opportunity to the powers of darkness to lock them up in the prison of themselves, and thus make them incapable of sensitively understanding the needs of a suffering World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The equilibrium between cultural substance and form is achieved in a theonomy which embraces the truth of autonomy and heteronomy while avoiding their errors. Theonomy rejects both a divine law imposed by outside authority and a self-sufficient reason divorced from its depth. It demands that man seek a superior law which is at the same time rooted in the divine ground of being that lies at the depth of reason. The result is a theonomous culture which expresses in its creation an ultimate concern and a transcending meaning not as something strange but as its own spiritual ground. Theonomous creations are vessels of a spiritual content. Religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion. Theonomy, autonomy, and heteronomy as cultural types constantly act and interact in dialectical fashion. The shallowness of an autonomous, secularized culture creates a vacuum of despair, a sacred void which preludes the advent of a theonomous period in which empty cultural forms receive substance and depth. Theonomy, however, tends to degenerate into an oppressive heteronomy which, in turn, provokes an autonomous reaction, and so the cycle begins anew. For instance, Clement and Origen created a Christian theonomy which later came under the heteronomous influence of Athanasius and Augustine. The Middle Ages stated a theonomy and ended in heteronomy. The Renaissance had theonomous qualities, but deteriorated into autonomy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The Reformation itself developed into the heteronomy of Protestant orthodoxy and then succumbed to the triumphant autonomy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These examples illustrate that theonomy, though realizable, is ever fragile and incomplete. Its victory is always fragmentary because of the existential estrangement underlying human history, and its defeat is always limited by the fact that human nature is essentially theonomous. A description of the general qualities of a theonomous culture serves to highlight the reciprocal influence of the three cultural types. The first characteristic of theonomy is that it communicates the experience of holiness, of something ultimate inbeing and meaning, in all its creations. This theonomous style appears even in the most limited vehicles of meaning—a painted flower, a family habit, a technical tool, a form of social intercourse, the vision of a historical figure, an epistemological theory, a political document, and so on. The second characteristic is the affirmation of the autonomous forms of the creative process. The moment theonomy fails to respect legitimate autonomy and the freedom of the human spirit, it becomes heteronomy. The third characteristic of a theonomous culture is its permanent struggle against both an independent autonomy and an independent heteronomy. Only theonomy can prevent them from inflicting upon mankind either a meaningless or a destructive culture. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Asking which nations will dominate the 21st century is an exciting game. However, it is, in fact, the wrong question to ask—or at least the wrong form on which to ask it—because it overlooks what could turn out to be the biggest change in global affairs since the rise of the nation-state: the coming of the Global Gladiators. A new group of power-seekers are leaping onto the World stage and seizing sizable chunks of the clout once control by nations alone. Some are good; some, decidedly psychopaths. When a blood-besotted Ayatollah Khomeini called for a martyr to murder Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses Mr. Khomeini denounced as blasphemous, he sent a historic message to all the World’s governments. That message was instantly communicated via satellite, television, and print. The message, however, was totally misunderstood. One may argue that Mr. Rushdie’s book was in bad taste, that it deliberately offended many Muslims, that it derided an entire religion, that it violated the Koran. Indeed, Mr. Khomeini said these things. However, that was not the real message. Mr. Khomeini was telling the World that the nation-state is no longer the only, or even the most important, actor on the World stage. Superficially, Mr. Khomeini seemed to be saying that Iran, itself a sovereign state, had the “right” to dictate what the citizens of other equally sovereign nations could or could not read. In claiming this right, and threatening to enforce it with terrorism, Mr. Khomeini suddenly catapulted censorship from a matter of domestic concern to the level of a global issue. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In a World that is witnessing the glocalization of the economy and the globalization of the media, Mr. Khomeini was demanding the globalization of mind-control. Other religions, in past eras, have asserted a similar right, and burned heretics at the stake. However, in threatening cross-border assassination, Mr. Khomeini was doing more than attacking Salman Rushdie—a British citizen. He was challenging the most fundamental right of any nation-state, the right to protect its citizens at home. What Mr. Khomeini was really telling us was that “sovereign” states are not sovereign at all, but subject to a higher Shiite sovereignty, which he alone would define—that a religion or church had rights that supersede those of mere nation-states. He was, in fact, challenging the entire structure of “modern” international law and custom, which until then had been based on the assumption that nations are the basic units, they key players on the global stage. This assumption pictured a planet neatly divided into states, each with its flag and army, its clearly mapped territory, a seat in the U.N., and certain reasonably defined legal rights. It is no accident that, to much of the World, Mr. Khomeini seemed a cruel throwback to the preindustrial era. He was. His assertion of the rights of religion over nation-states paralleled the doctrine medieval Popes expressed during centuries of bloody church-state conflict. The reason this is important is that we may well be circling back to the kind of World system that existed before industrialism, before political power was packaged into clearly defined national entities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
That pre-smokestack World was a hodgepodge of city-states, pirate-held ports, feudal princedoms, religious movements, and other entities, all scrambling for power and asserting rights that we, today, assume belong only to governments. What we might now call nations were few and far between. It was a heterogeneous system. By contrast, the nation-state system that evolved during the smokestack centuries was far more standardized and uniform. We are now moving back to a more heterogeneous global system again—only in a fast-changing World of high technology, instantaneous communication, nuclear missiles, and chemical warfare. This is an immense leap that carries us forward and backward at the same time, and propels religion once more to the center of the global stage. And not just Islamic extremism. A totally different case in point is the growing global power of the Catholic Church. Papal diplomacy has figured recently in major political changes from the Philippines to Panama. In Poland, where the church won admiration for its courageous opposition to the communist regime, it has emerged as a dominant force behind the first noncommunist government. Vatican diplomats claim that the recent changes all across Eastern Europe were, in large measure, triggered by Pope John Paul II. The Pope is no fanatic and has reached out to other religions. He has spoken out against interethnic violence. Yet echoes of a long-distant pre-secular past are heard in his call for a “Christian Europe” and his repeated criticism of Western European democracies. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Pope’s policies call to mind a long-forgotten document that was circulated in European capitals in 1918 urging the creation of a Catholic superstate made up of Bavaria, Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Bohemia, Slovakia, and Poland. The Pope’s proposed Christian (though presumably not exclusively Catholic) Europe today embraces all of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, with a population of nearly 800 million people. Such religious stirrings are part of the gathering attack on the secular assumptions that underpinned democracy in the industrial era and kept a healthy distance between church and state. (If Europe is Christian, as distinct from secular, where do nonbelievers fit in, or Hindus or Jews, or the 13 million Muslim immigrants encouraged to come to Europe to serve as affordable labor in the recent past? (Some Muslim fundamentalists actually dream of Islamicizing Europe. Says the director of the Institute of Islamic Culture in Paris: “In a few years Paris will be capital of Islam, just as Baghdad and Cairo were in other eras.”) The emerging global power game in the decades ahead cannot be understood without taking into account the rising power of Islam, Catholicism, and other religions—or of global conflicts and holy wars among them. I know that one who makes a mistake does so because of one’s own lack of opportunity for the highest growth. I pity those type of people because I know that they are trying to stop the progress of the World, and because I know that in time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make one ashamed of one’s weak and narrow position. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Self-regulation and autonomy have emerged as key predictors of health and well-being in several areas of psychology. Autonomy has been provisionally defined as the ability to be one’s self. Analytically considered, it involves and requires knowing one’s self; having or finding an unambiguous identity to refer to in each situation; and being able to govern one’s self in the sense of being able to choose among alternatives. The development of autonomy is not synonymous with the development with a self, though emergence of a self is indispensable. The growth of autonomy is taken as measurable and as varying within and among individuals over time. Preliminary work indicates that a satisfactory index can be devised, although the invention of such a measure requires considerable analysis of the pattern in which autonomy is exhibited, so as to differentiate these as consequents from the reproducible condition hypothecated as their regular antecedents. The giving and receiving of characterizations of self and others not only exhibit various degrees of ease and constraint, but whether one’s self-concept is ratified rather than enforced by others is often ambiguous. That human beings are characterized by the possession of selves. Experimentally, it requires that the antecedent conditions conducive to increase in autonomy be distinguishable from autonomy as a dependent variable. Because autonomy is perhaps more vulnerable than any other component of competence to being constructed as a state of affairs, a trait, or a form of virtuous conduct following definite commandments, it is important to reiterate that it is here regarded as an acquired ability to handle certain aspects of problematic interpersonal situations with greater or lesser success. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Health which itself is one of the components of competence, significantly conditions all the other components including autonomy. The condition of health—nutrition, rest, hygiene—are therefore indirectly biological conditions of autonomy. However, there are a few biological conditions which more directly affect autonomy than through their influence upon physical health. In marriage and family living, these concern sexual adequacy and fertility, where these enter into self-respect and sense of worth, in the estimation of self and others. To the extent that sexual adequacy and skill can be improved by knowledge, practice, or medical treatment, a contribution is made by knowledge, practice, or medical treatment, a contribution is made to autonomy, id est, the person becomes more able to handle interpersonal situations making demands upon one’s sexual competence. The fact that there is a circular relationship here, in which autonomy significantly affects sexual functioning, implies the reverse proposition as a corollary hypothesis worthy of investigation. Fatigue as a biological variable distinguishable from health significantly conditions autonomy, and is also often the product of absence of autonomy. If practices are followed by which energy is fostered and fatigue diminished, at those times when the severest demands are made upon autonomy, autonomous capacity is itself increased. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Association in play exclusively with those with whom one is at a physical disadvantage, especially in the same family, leads to recurrent experiences of failure and submission which inhibit the development of autonomy. The optimal distributional of success and failures occurs when physical opponents are evenly matched in competition. The more adequate sexual satisfaction is in marriage, the less frequent is extra-marital sexual experience and consequent threats to mutually supported self-esteem. Cultivation of physical appearance—ccomplexion, weight, grace, posture, grooming—contributes to the growth of autonomy. Space for physical privacy and quiet—reduction of stimulation—facilitates the integration of new conceptions of self, especially during adolescence, and thus contributes to the development of autonomy. Autonomy is positively corelated with children’s opportunity progressively to earn money for performance of economically significant work and to gain practice in the management of their own economic affairs. (Safeguards against exploitation are assumed.) Economic independence develops autonomy, while chronic dependence undermines autonomy, unemployment undermines autonomy. Work which continually challenges the capacities of the person without taxing them beyond their limits enhances autonomy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Continuous employment at work far below one’s level of capacity reduces autonomy. Continuous employment at work which exceeds one’s capacities and causes a chronic judgment of failure by others and self reduces autonomy. Continual exposure to marked differences of reward for comparable effort reduces autonomy, whereas recognition of differences of effort by differences of reward enhances autonomy. Autonomy develops in direct proportions to the experience of participation in governing the conditions of economic life. Constant exposure to the inducement of wants which cannot realistically be satisfied reduces autonomy, whereas the inducement of wants which cannot realistically be satisfied reduces autonomy, whereas the inducement of wants within the range of realistic anticipation of achieving the means of realizing them encourages the growth of autonomy. Exclusive evaluation of personal worth by monetary standards reduces autonomy, whereas making available multiple criteria of personal worth cultivates autonomy. Voluntary and informed participation in the production of valued goods and services develops autonomy. Team play means that you alone cannot get too far out ahead of the troops. You cannot because in our company it is necessary to consult and check over everything. Someone will ask whether this does not lead to a certain amount of mediocrity. It does. There is an optimal balance of work and leisure which maximizes autonomy. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
It would be safe to say that overall, China has been fighting excessive lending and financial bubbles more persistently and successfully than most countries in the West. Chinese financial institutions do not play with tricky structured financial instruments the way their Western counterpart do—both because of tight government regulations and the lack of market infrastructure as well as financiers who are versed in such transactions. It goes without saying that financial sectors in China and in the West are going through different development stages. However, in the global economic arena China and the West are competing in a real-time format—and in this competition, paradoxically, China’s earlier stage works as a source of strength, shielding it from financial gambling risks the West is fighting, often unsuccessfully. Also, there is little doubt that from now on, while further developing its financial instruments, China will act much more cautiously than most of its Western counterparts, paying much more attention to accommodating and minimizing associated risks. In the West it is often argued that a wide variety of financial instruments, including risky ones, is needed to create money, which is invested in various industries. Nevertheless, China provides plenty of funds for the country’s industries—sometimes, according to Chinese financial authorities, even more than necessary. Today it is Western businesses that are facing a tighter credit squeeze. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Feeling of Being Watched and Impending Danger Gradually Increased
Shortly before nine o’ clock, a butler, dressed in an azure tailcoat and navy-blue breeches, escorted Me to my estate. A coldly sumptuous hall, it was the first point of entry to the 600-room mansion. Rows of muskets, taller than a man, and hundreds of swords, their blades sharp-edged and glinting lined its walls. From the vaulted ceiling hung several beautiful chandeliers. Directly in front of them, a magnificent staircase swept to the state rooms on the upper floors; and yet, as the butler led me across the hall, he veered to the right, heading for its farther corner. There, he ushered me through a discreet swing door. We had stepped into the “invisible World.” Behind the secret door, the entire ground floor was devoted to privacy. A magnificent hinterland of fifty rooms, some cavernous, some no larger than a closet, it was where many of the servant lived and worked. From here, a network of passages coursed through the mansion: hidden routes, which spiraled up the narrow turrets and towers to the splendid rooms above, enabling the servants to carry out their duties unobserved. One might ask, why was I touring the part of my home? It was through this labyrinth of passages, deep in the servants quarters, where the rooms were subjects of wild speculations, fueled by servants’ fears that someone had come back from the dead. It seems a few of the servants had been thinking of ways to make money. One of the servants, Olov told Stellan about a plan to end their money troubles. The scheme was simple. Each of the men would take a life insurance policy out of another one of the servants, twenty-year-old Leif Titus. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
They would say that they had helped raise and support Leif in his life and were looking for reimbursement for their help upon his death. There was nothing illegal about that. Then they would wait awhile before killing Leif, collect on the policies, and all of their money troubles would be over. Stellan asked who would kill Leif. “That’s the beauty of it,” Olov told his friend. “We each kick in a percentage of the policy money to pay an assassin so none of us has to do the killing.” Stellan was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. They could get someone at the tavern to do it. Olov arranged for a meeting with Duke. They worked it all out the details of the murder plot and agreed to execute the plan. The other men paid Duke $400 to arrange and carry out the murder. This was a lot of money, so Duke agree to do the deed. June 6, 1890, was just another day to Leif Titus as he went about his work on the estate. He was not surprised when Olov told them that their friend Duke had come by to see if he might want to go for a drink later that evening. The two men had hung out at the tavern from time to time, so he readily accepted the invitation. The two men set off after work. It was after dark and Leif and Duke rode horse back to the tavern. However, before getting their Duke fired his rifle, Leif horse was scared, threw him from the saddle. He fell off the horse, hitting his head on the cobble stones and his life had been snuffed out for $9,000 in life insurance policies. It was the perfect crime, or so it seemed to the men. They said that Leif fell off his horse and died on the way back from the tavern. And they seemed to have gotten away with it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Saturday night, Olov arrived back to my estate, and went to his room to lie down on his bed. He had not been there long when he heard noises. As he was just involved in a plot that robbed another man of his life, he became quite nervous. That night, there were doors opening and closing, footsteps of unseen guests. As he got up to go investigate, Olov felt a strange touch at his back; then a tug; then he felt the back of his sweater pulled several inches away from his back. He turned to look over his shoulder and wondered how, without moving, he could have hooked his sweater on something. However, there was nothing upon which his sweater could have been stuck. Just then he saw Stellan, eyes wide with astonishment. He blurted out to Olov, “I just saw the back of your sweater pull out all by itself!” Later the following evening Olov was closing up the mansion for the night, at about 9.00 P.M. Like all Victorian homes, “The House Built by Spirits” has its share of creaks and groans. Creaks and groans are one thing—but witnessing something supernatural is another thing entirely. He was turning out the lights. The house, as the light are slowly being extinguished, does have a certain “feeling” to it: as it grows dark, one gets the inkling that one need to hurry, that someone—or something—cannot wait for you to leave so that they may get on with their existence—if that is what one could call it—in peace. Moving from the parlor to the morning room, he casually looked into the darkened stairwell. His eye was caught by the manifestation of a spectral being. A strange man with long hair appeared in the morning room. Olov mistake this spectral man for a servant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When he realized his mistake, Olov hurried forward to see who the person was. As he watched the figure, the long-haired man moved out of the morning room, he followed him. Just as the icy fingers of fear had begun to trace a slow, deliberate path up the length of his spine, the figure floated the through the mahogany wall and disappeared. Stellan arrived to find Olov in a near state of panic. While in the servants’ quarters, he had been sitting in a chair with his back to the door. He heard the door open and close and the sound of footsteps enter the house and approach the spot directly behind his chair. Imagine the horror when he turned around and saw a misty figure take the form of a tall man all in gray. The ghost, wearing a tattered Revolutionary War uniform, looked unkempt with long hair and a grizzled appearance. Olov screamed, but it was only second before the specter faded away. When Stellan reached him, his was quivering and inconsolable. Stellan then figure it would be a good idea for the two men to quit their jobs and move north. After all, they now had the money to do so, they were rich. On that evening, Olov wandered into a dark and deserted section of the mansion. This was the most active area of the mansion and too dangerous to inhabit. The stairway to the attic was narrow and winding. Suddenly a shrill scream came from the attic. Stellan ran to the fourth floor where Olov was discovered lying on the floor, stabbed through the heart. He was dead. Stellan figured the men had been hexed, and he would be the next one to die. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Stellan went into a secret room under one of the kitchens through a trap door—a secret room that house Mrs. Winchester’s magic. He was looking for her book of spells in the secret room. However, there was someone in that room, perhaps waiting for a century or more, for someone to open the trap door. Walking through the small, arched doorway, the room was furnished and there were antique carpets near the alter. He heard music and instruments. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure of a small woman, seemingly cloaked in a long, dark, flowing dress with a wide-brimmed, black hat, standing in the corner. He stood for a brief moment, seeing her out of the side vision, afraid to look directly at her, since he realized that entities can sometimes only be seen through peripheral vision. Indeed, when he turned to confront the dark lady, he was struck on the head with a piece of stove wood, killing him. The story of a mysterious man in the servants quarters had spread throughout the estate, as we were touring the room that belonged to Leif, we herd the sounds of horses hooves and whips. Then sudden sound heralded the appearance of a bright figure we immediately recognized of Leif. He told us how he had died and how his poor mother was near a breakdown; after someone had dug up bushes in her yard, she took it as a sign that Leif’s body would also be dug up. He had him exhumed and reburied in the flower bed outside her house. Here she piled a huge mound of stones over his grave. Vowing to get revenge, she would sit up nights watching for grave robbers and crying for her lost son, until she died from a broken heart. And from beyond the grave, she had discovered who took the life of her son and returned the favor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Through the years the servants on occasion have hear Olov’s shrill last crimes repeated over and over again. The antique carpets in the secret alter room were cleaned, but the bloodstain frequently reappears. One of the servants mentioned that he saw an injured man, blood, and a woman in a dark dress in the alter room, leaning up against the walls, exhausted, dirty, bloody, smelling like sweat and fear. After hearing the specter’s story, I was trembling. I said nothing for a second or two, trying to find the words. Nothing ever came to mind. It is when things are busiest in their dwelling-places that the spirits are most active. Already disposed once out of their bodies, they react when they are again dispossessed of their homes. There was a great deal of strong, negative energy coming from this particular corner of the room. From the moment on, I closed off this section of the house and had Mr. Hansen build Victorian cottages for the servants to live in and increased their pay three times more than the going rate. The servants were good and faithful people. Perhaps these ghosts and restless spirits return to remind mortals of the evil that can be done in the name of good. Many people whisper that no one can make it through this area of the mansion. It is said that strange fear grips people as they approach the servant’s wing. As they pass through the threshold, they feel that they should turn back. A feeling of being watched and of impending danger gradually rises as they wander deeper and deeper into this wing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
O thou great and powerful King AMAYMON, who rulest by the power of the Supreme God El, over all Spirits, superior and inferior, but especially over the Infernal Order in the Dominion of the East, I invoke and command thee by the particular and true Name of God, and by the God whom thou dost worship, by the Seal of thy creation, by the most mighty and powerful Name of God TETRAGRAMMATION, who cast thee out of Heaven with the rest of the Infernal Spirits, by all the other potent and great names of God, Creator of Heaven, Earth, and Hell, of all contained therein, by their powers and virtues, and by the Name PRIMEMATUM, which commands the whole host of Heaven. Do thou force and compel the Spirit ADONAI, king of Kings here before this circle, in a fair and comely shape, without injury to myself or to any creature, that he may tide and time receive our wish, and grant us new beginnings so that we may accomplish our desires, whatsoever the be, provided that it is proper to his office, by the power of God, EL, who hath created and doth dispose of all things, celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. ASTRACHIOS, ASACH, ASARCA, ABEDUMABAL, SLLAT, ANABOTAS, JESUBLIN, SCIOIN, DOMOL, Lord God, who dwellest above the Heavens, whose glance searchest the abyss; grant us, we pray Thee, the power to conceieve in our minds and to execute that which we desire to do, the end of which we would attain by Thy help, O God Almighty, who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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Many False Opinion May be Exchanged for True Ones
I have learned from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. The American public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as they were before; and are still further from having acquired better habits of thought or feeling, or being in any way better fortified against error, on subjects of a more elevated character. For, though they have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of their minds, intellectually and morally, is not alerted. I am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. Unfortunately, our country’s ardent commitment to capitalism and the accumulation of wealth comes with a downside: Faced with the pressing need to obtain and expend monetary resources, untold scores of people simple take from their fellow citizens as a means of getting what they want. It is widely accepted that crimes against property account for the vast majority of criminal victimizations that occur annually in this country. However, these offenses tend to remain in the background of our discussions of crime, as society is much more concerned with the documentation and prevention of violent crime. This means that one must traverse a fragmented empirical and conceptual landscape when trying to piece together the nature and dynamics of what constitutes common property crime. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
When it comes to shear incidence and law enforcement workload allocation, common property crimes collectively constitute a most menacing foe. Turning to the limited list of eight Part I index crimes, we see that property offenses (burglary, arson, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft) accounted for 88 percent of all offenses known to the police in 2022. That translated to an official property crimes rate of 3,656 per 100,000 persons. These four offenses generated 1.6 million arrests in 2022, but this is only part of the picture. Several noteworthy forms of property crime are included on the supplemental list of Part II index offenses, namely, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, receiving stolen property, and vandalism. When these offenses are added to the mix, we see that more than 2.5 million arrests for crimes against property occur each year in this country. One could legitimately include, a long list of offense when trying to frame a discussion of what constitutes “common” property crime. The list might include such offenses as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, receiving stolen property, and vandalism. Given its unique status as a “crime of intrusion,” burglary had been allocated its own separate discussion. Even with this significant paring, a full treatment of the remaining laundry list of property crimes is far beyond the scope of this report. Luckily, this sort of comprehensive discussion is not necessary because the similarities between these crimes far outweigh the differences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In the tradition of the typologies approach, we will use the single conceptual category that is termed common property crime. These two offenses were chosen for several reasons. First, they are among the most recognizable and pure forms of crimes against property. Second, their status as Part I index crimes means that comprehensive data are readily available on each. These two offenses comprise roughly 80 percent of known Part I property crimes each year and more than 50 percent of all Part I and II property crime arrests that are effected each year. The crime of larceny is steeped in a rich legal history. In common law times, the larceny statue was comprised of five essential parts: (1) an act of wrongful taking; (2) an act of carrying away; (3) a piece of property; (4) a rightful owner; and (5) the intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession. As the nature of property and property relationships grew more complicates, so too did the larceny statue. In particular, the courts had to grapple with such complex issues as ownership versus possession, misappropriations that occur while a property owner has voluntarily relinquished possession to another for shipping or safekeeping, and what exactly constitutes “property.” The result was the gradual emergence of a flexible and more amorphous legal definition of larceny that incorporates all acts of wrongful property misappropriation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Today, most jurisdictions follow the direct of the Model Penal Code and rely upon a consolidated larceny-theft statue. For example, the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) defines larceny-theft as any “unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another.” Note that this definition effectively incorporates all forms of property theft under a single heading, regardless of the means or motivations that lay behind the act. There are two important caveats that accompany the UCR’s consolidated definition of larceny-theft. First, it does not apply to the theft of a motor vehicle. In particular, the theft or attempted theft of a self-propelled vehicle (id est, any nonmanual, nonrailrunning vehicle including cars, trucks, motorboats, construction equipment, airplane, or farming equipment) is in its own category named motor vehicle theft. Second, the UCR’s consolidated definition does not apply to acts of theft or conversion that are accomplished by “false pretenses” (id est, fraud), those thefts committed during the course of a contractual or work relationship (id est, embezzlement), or other legal contexts that would allow for the act to be categorized under the heading of specialized form of property crime. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) collapses all form of theft by taking, regardless of their manifestations (id est, by stealth or deceit) into one generic category—theft. Motor vehicle theft is afforded a separate offense designation. The NCVS classifies all nonviolent thefts from the body of a person under the heading of purse snatching or pocket picking. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Approximately 14,135,090 thefts, 1,008,720 motor vehicle thefts, and 188,370 purse snatchings/pocket pickings occurred in 2022. Combined, generic thefts, motor vehicle thefts, and purse snatchings/pocket pickings accounted from almost two-thirds of the overall victimization tall from 2022. Because crimes rates are so high and homeowners want more security than stationary cameras, within the next decade, it is predicted that homeowners will be able to purchase a noninvasive form of a satellite, probably smaller than a golf ball, which will blend in with the environment, that will hover over their homes and give them an aerial view of their property, and will detect body temperature and have infrared sensors that will allow homeowners to detect if there is an intruder hiding on their property, as thieves are becoming more and more stealth due to all of the modern technology. Nonetheless, the raw property crime numbers produce some lofty victimization rates. For example, the 2022 theft rate was reported at 129 per 1,000 persons or households. This is more than 4 times higher than the rate of any other type of crime that is tracked by the NCVS (burglary is second with a rate of 28.7 per 1,000). The rate of 9.2 motor vehicle thefts per 1,000 persons or households was also among the highest crime-specific victimization rates that year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The public is hesitant to report most property crimes to the police. This trend is illustrated by the reporting rates of 30.1 percent and 35.2 percent that are observed for the larceny-theft and purse snatchings/pocket pickings offenses in the 2022 NCVS. Debriefings indicate that victims see little benefit from reporting property crimes, as police are thought to be too busy to attend to such minor crimes, thus making the recovery of their lost property unlikely. Motor vehicle theft stands as a glaring exception to the rule. In 2022, 82 percent of all automotive vehicle theft victims reported the incident to the police. No other form of crime surpasses the 66 percent reporting level. This inordinately high reporting rate is drive primarily by insurance regulations that require victims to file police reports prior to having their automobiles replaced or repaired. In the aggregate, common property crimes generate a sizable price tag. Conventional victimization reports set the property losses due to larceny-thefts round $5.5 billion annually, with an average loss per incident of roughly $500. However, it is important to note that crimes against institutional or corporate entities are beyond the scope of the NCVS. This results in the exclusion of sizeable numbers of shoplifting, employee theft, and embezzlement offenses that are perpetrated against business. Shoplifting alone costs retailers an estimated $15 billion each year. In light of this oversight, it seems reasonable to conclude that the actual dollar loss from larceny-theft offenses is far larger than what is reported by the NCVS. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Equally disturbing dollar losses are attributed to motor vehicle theft. Victimization data suggest that the average auto theft victim experiences approximately $8,886 loss. There were an estimated 721,885 thefts of motor vehicles nationwide in 2019. The estimated rate of motor vehicle thefts was 219.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. More than $6.4 billion was lost nationwide to motor vehicle thefts. There appear to be no clear-cut regional disparities for common property crimes. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports shows that theft-larceny rates were highest in Texas, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Louisiana. West Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and North Dakota were found to have the lowest theft-larceny rates that year. Shifting our attention to state-level rates of motor vehicle theft offending, we see that Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Washington, and Michigan were top of the 50-state list. Officials in New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming, Maine, and Idaho reported the lowest rates of motor vehicle theft in 2022. Residents in densely populated, inner-city areas clearly experiences a higher risk of property crime victimization than do their counterparts who live in more sparsely populated outlying areas. The 2022 NCVS data reveal an inverse relationship in theft rates across urban, suburban, and rural locales (rates of 160.4, 123.9, and 101.6, respectively). A similar trend is observed in the 2022 motor vehicle theft victimization, where the rates in urban areas exceed those of suburban and rural areas. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Critics observe that motor vehicle theft rates appear to be more a function of automobile density (measured either in terms of cars per square mile or per capita automobile registrations) than population density. A city-level analysis of UCR data reveals tht New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Huston consistently rank among the top five most problematic locales in terms of larceny and motor vehicle theft rates. The larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft rates in the United States of America compare favorably to those reported by other developed countries. The United States of America experienced a larceny rate of 2,728.1 per 100,000 persons and an auto theft rate of 459.0 per 100,000. The official larceny and motor vehicle theft rates of our peer nations were as follows: England and Wales (3,460.2 and 753.0), Australia (3,033.7 and 706.2), France (2,527.5 and 546.1), Canada (2,431.0 and 547.10, Germany (2,406.3 and 137.4), Israel (2,149.0 and 694.1), Japan (1,198.1 and 28.4), and Spain (650.8 and 343.1). A guessing game of more than playful significance can be played among persons who have spent a few days sociably together, as in a series of parties or at a resort: one person attempts to describe the kinds of families from which the group members came, with no prior knowledge of their personal histories. The same is most successfully played when the group includes mainly young adults but some other and younger people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Still, if the attitudes of the group members toward waiters or clerks can be observed, more clues can be secured. Hits or misses are determined by checking guesses against the facts, and score is kept by noting the correct guesses and comparing them with the record of other guessers, or with the results that might be obtained by chance alone. A practiced observer of normal sensitivity and adult experience can usually make a surprisingly large number of correct guesses. The kind of questions to which one can most frequently give accurate answers are these: Did the person have any brothers or sisters? Were these brothers or sisters older or young? Ho much was one loved by one’s mother? Father? (Another adult?) With which did one tend to identify more? Was one’s family close and demonstrative, or cold and distant? Were one’s parents young or old when one was born? Was one’s mother or father dominant, or were they equal in authority? Was either parent repeatedly cruel or arbitrary in disciplining one? Which parent was more influential in the person’s career choices? Were one’s parents, or one’s siblings, approving or critical of one’s achievements? Which parent was the more intellectual? Action-oriented? Sociable? Sometimes, though less frequently, even such characteristics as the presence and importance of grandparents, adoptive status, father’s occupation, mother’s education, the family’s social status, and some quite idiosyncratic circumstances can be guessed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
As the guesser goes from the common relations of authority and affection among parents and children into these more peculiar features of another person’s upbringing, one’s chances of being right go down; one’s chances of being right by luck alone, however, decrease still faster. Yet the validity of some of one’s faintest premonitions can be quite astounding to one’s audience. Indeed, the more accurate in detail the guesser become, the more likely it is that the game will encounter two specific hazards. The person whose family origins are so closely described may suspect and charge that one ha been previously investigated and resent the implied invasion of one’s privacy, or one may be embarrassed by the disclosure of such intimate and perhaps ungratifying facts to the remainder of the group. Yet, if this game is played correctly, the guesser has depended for clues entirely upon what each particular subject has already disclosed about oneself through the characteristic patterns of one’s interactions with others. Whether consciously or not, each person tells one’s history publicly in one’s behavior, and could only conceal it by withdrawing from society, an act that in itself is diagnostic and occasionally observed. There is nothing mysterious or occult about the inferences employed. They are all derived from the theorem that one reproduces one’s earlier family relations in one’s interpersonal relations beyond the family. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Father-figure, mother-figures, brother-figures, sister-figures, rivals, servants, authorities, as first experienced in the family, furnish the prototypes for apprehending and responding to all later intimates. Especially in the rapid development of intimate association with strangers, the prototypical family constellation is most recognizably reproduced, and the characteristic actions which it guides from the “person” that becomes known to others. When a person is most spontaneously free, these same expressive acts are usually subjectively taken by one to be one’s natural self. A person’s identity in such a group is thus—or can be—simultaneously one’s self as privately conceived. Yet even one’s reactions to constraints upon one’s self-expression tell something of the figures one fears; in this sense, all one’s acts are representative. And it is precisely upon the evidence of many small but representative encounters witnessed between each subject of this game and the others that successful guesses and generalizations can be made. In later discussion, the basis for errors through insufficient evidence or mistaken inference may be brought out, but no evidence used is found invalid. (Such checking back is useful for improving the skill of the guesser.) To be sure, no single episode leads directly back to a specific family pattern. Rather, by recurrence of similar episodes in orderly relationship to episodes of other kinds, the generic constellation is pieced together. As more information is added, the more the pattern hangs together and even indicates missing evidence to be sought for by reviewing a wider range of incidents. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
For instance, a girl bumps a boy and blushes; he speaks to her cordially and thereafter her eyes follow him about the room; a younger boy tries to gain her attention, but is ignored; she appears respectful toward a male teacher and defends him against gibes by other girls; after a downpour, she organizes the drying out of clothes by other girls; her female teacher speaks equivocally of her as independent. Is it possible that her father was a widower, and let her play the role of a “little mother” to her small sister—which she did out of a desire to please him, who she admires? Even with these many observed details, much of the complex is missing from which a successful guess might be made; but at least the principle employed is evident. If it is remembered that boys who have dated her found her somewhat repressed and inclined toward intellectual conversation, further confirmation may be added, but also complications may emerge which reduce the plausibility of the previous guess. From experience in playing this game, several limitations become evident. The older the person—the further one had left one’s parental family behind, in time or in any other sense—the less does one’s present behavior tell about one’s past. And if one’s succeeding experience has been markedly heterogeneous, with strong emotional attachments intervening between one’s original family and one’s present circle of intimates, the less does the present constellation tell us about the original. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
If the person’s cultural or sub-cultural background is markedly foreign to the guesser’s, of course the latter has more difficulty in interpreting the biographical significance of behavior. Patterns of sociability among teenagers still living at home, by contrast, almost transparently reveal the structure of their families. Although there is thus no mystery as to why successful guessing is not really guessing or intuition, but complex inference from objective evidence, explanation of the procedure does not dimmish the uncanny feeling of some of the subjects that they are being laid bare. Even when the bits of evidence are painstakingly pointed out and are admitted to be public knowledge, the sense of exposure may persist and give rise to mild dismay on the part of the beholders as well. If the procedure were explored systematically and no longer used mainly as a game, what might develop is a matter for speculation. However, questions are raised by the demonstration of the underlying theorem which are far more important than the mild shock of the shyer players. If postdiction is this easy, why is prediction so hard? And if prediction from pervious to future behavior is hard, does not this fact qualify the determinisitic assumption which underlies an characterizes much research and writing in social science? And finally, what might this game of revelation disclose about the role of the social scientists and one’s ultimate audience? #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
There is a mistake about forgiveness by the ultimate concern that many people make. First, a mistake conception about the “shelter of the blood,” claimed upon an assembly as a guarantee of absolute protection from the working of the powers of darkness. However, if we walk in light, if we confess our transgression, then the blood of Jesus cleanses from sin. The blood of Jesus gives us access to the Holiest of all, because of the cleansing power from sin. The blood of Jesus is the ground victory over the Offender, because of its cleansing from every confessed sin, and because at Calvary the Offender was conquered. (However, remember, you can confess your sins silently in prayer. Not all religious figures uphold their oath and keep the things you say confident, much like therapists or their employers.) However, nowhere do we read that any person can be put “under the blood” apart from one’s own volition and individual condition before God. Therefore, if the “shelter of the blood” is claimed over an assembly of people and someone present is giving ground to the Offender, the “claiming of the blood” does not avail to prevent Offender from working on the ground to which one has a right in that person. This misconception about the protecting power of the blood is serious; for those who are present at a meeting where the Offender as well as God is working many believe they are personally safe from the Offender’s workings apart from their individual condition and dealing with God. However, through the ground they have given—even unknowingly—to the Adversary, they are open to one’s power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Faith, religion, and revelation, are readily intelligible. If one simply stated that religion is ultimate concern, a turning toward the unconditional, and that it is not a special function of man’s spirit but a centered act of his personality, that would be an adequate summation of the broad sense of religion. Here faith and religion are identical. The narrow sense of religion is the “churchy” sense—doctrine, rites, and all the appurtenances of an institution. While the above paragraph sufficiently describes religion, a somewhat deeper examination is called for. The ultimate concern is what we rely on chronologically as an evolved insight of religion more than faith. Doctrine is developed under the heading of religion. Religion cannot be identified with any of the functions of spirit and it cannot be placed beside them as a special function animated by one’s thinking at a very early date, and this insight is decisive. Religion is an attitude of spirit which participates in all these spheres. Spirit depends on two other concepts, thought and being, which are in constant dynamic tension. Spirit is neither pure thought nor pure being, but involves both. Being and Spirit are the essential components of the act of knowledge. The act or intention is thought, and the object or thing intended is being. For Spirit is the form of thought-in-being. Every being has something of thought in it, but the more thought it contains the more reality is possesses. The most real of beings is the one in which thought as thought is realized, that is, a spirit-bearing totality—man. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the economy, there are power triads, and wealth is one, which is experiencing deep transformation as the new system for wealth creations spreads across the planet. As corporations integrate their production and distribution across national boundaries, acquire foreign firms, and draw on brainpower from around the entire World, they inevitably need fresh sources of capital in many countries. They also need it fast. Thus we see a race to “liberalize” capital markets so that investments can flow more or less freely across national frontiers. The result is a surging ocean of capital free of restraining walls. This, however, shifts power away from central banks and individual nations, undermining sovereignty and introducing new dangers of financial fibrillation on a Worldwide scale. After the 1987 Wall Street crash, it was understood that building a single completely open financial system, subject to minimal regulation, is like building a supertanker without airtight compartments. With adequate dividers or safety cells, a big system can survive the breakdown of certain parts. Without them, a single hole in the hull can sink a tanker. There was also a warning that the creation of multinational securities firms that buy, sell, underwrite and invest in many nations increases the risk of large-scale breakdown. A loss by one or more of these firms, could result in transmitting a disturbance from one country to another. As finance is globalized, nations risk losing control over one of the keys to their power. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The proposed all-European currency, for example, would reduce the flexibility of individual nations to cope with their own unique economic problems. Another proposal would arm the EC commissioners with far greater control over the budgets of Europe’s supposedly sovereign nations than the federal government of the United States of America exerts over its fifty states—a centralizing power shift of massive proportions. While this power redistribution is going on, the entire wealth system becomes, as we have seen, super-symbolic. Like violence, wealth, too, is shifting and being transformed at the same time. Until recently, China was not on the list of the World’s major foreign direct investor nations. An important breakthrough came in 2008. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, outbound FDI increased dramatically to $55,907 million from $26,506 million in previous years (flow; FDI by financial institutions is not included). In 2009, it rose further to $56,529 million, in 2010 it hit $59 billion. In recent years, China has been the second largest recipient of foreign direct investments (FDI) Worldwide, attracting approximately USD $181 billion in 2021. That is extremely significant. Compared to the U.S.A FDI of USD $367.38 billion. According to preliminary figures, monthly foreign direct investments (FDI) inflows to China amounted to approximately USD $20.69 billion dollars in February 2023. For the whole year of 2022, FDI flows to China reached around $189.1 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to the year before. Western companies have become a hot topic around the World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Acquisitions account for 40 percent of China’s total FDI. The major targets are mining industry, high-tech manufacturing firms, and well-known but usually ailing companies possessing famous brands. Such acquisitions are usually carried out with the backing of the government, mostly by state-owned companies. On the other hand, Chinese companies, especially the private ones, are gradually increasing FDI of quite a conventional Character. They are investing in India, Africa, North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, and elsewhere in the developing World seeking lower production costs or better access to local markets. Also, more and more often, they are coming to the West entirely on their own initiative (without the government’s backing), attracted by markets, technologies, and high-skilled human resources. In these cases, Chinese investors act basically the same way and pursue the same goals as investors from any other country, whether America, a European state, or Japen. China’s foreign portfolio investment reached an all-time higher of USD $99.45 billion in December 2020. United States of America’s foreign portfolio investment accounted a record deficit of USD $206.805 billion in December 2022. American leaders should be scrambling to invest in improving technology and infrastructure in American cities, investing more in education and recruitment of students for medical, engineering, and computer science careers. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Dabbling in its Dark, Cruel Possibilities
It was one of the brisk winter mornings that begins in a fog, promising the cold to come. A mist was rising from the fruit orchards as I dropped down the hill into Llanada Villa in the valley below the mansion. It was a fair-tale mansion, all turrets and towers, stained glass and plush Victorian gardens, sitting majestical on the most valuable plot of land. As I entered my home, I heard the music playing softly from the morning room. I sat sipping coffee at nine thirty, glad it was Saturday. I knew that life was going to be vastly more complicated now. Well, it was going to be more dangerous, too. Overhead, the morning sky had turned a vivid blue, intersected by fading vapor trails. It was bright enough blue, the sky. However, it had a depth and stillness suggestive of the steady retreat of sunlight and a slight warmth. I have seen real ghouls in my home, and I knew that magic was something that could be harnessed and exploited and there were people in the World with hunger for power and influence enough to risk dabbling in its dark, cruel possibilities. The whisper of water dropping on to leaves as the rain began to fall could be heard. The lights flicked on and off. I looked around, half-waiting for the sound to stir again. The rain strength. I heard drops begin to fall on the roof. For many years the staff reported hearing a little girl crying. She has been seen on occasion, and is described as about seven years old. She has been seen in the house at the main stairwell, on the lawn, and on the third floor. I passed on through the passages of crystal and rooms of silver—spacious chambers, empty and silent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
This house felt older than the memory of man. It was an accursed mansion. There were strange noises in the mansion. Every night the wailing of a woman could be heard above the moaning of the wind. If ghost must walk the Earth, they could find no spot on the globe where their appearance would be more natural, or better understood. The staff tells tales of disembodies footsteps, lights that switch themselves off and on at will, and objects moving. The Daisy Bedroom has lights that switch themselves on and off after dark and phantom footsteps are often heard in the hallway near the room. One day a housemaid was speaking to a guest as she served dinner downstairs. To everyone’s surprise, the serving tray sitting on the table picked itself up and tipped itself upside down. The tray was filled with plates of hot foot that went everywhere. The sacrificial stones of the Druid priests, oriented after the fashion of the ruin of ruins of Stonehenge, the blood-vats, imperishable adjuncts to human sacrifice, have stood through the ages, grim guardians of the mysteries of the haunted fruit orchards. If someone were to tell me that the fruit orchards at Llanada Villa echoed nightly with the shrieks of sacrifice and that the ghost fires of forgotten priestcraft still glowed in the morning, I would find it hard to disbelieve. That ghastly curse remained on my family and fortune. The mansion has picked up a few permanent guests. One evening, from the observation tower, I saw a huge black figure gliding along the grounds. It could not be human because of the rate of speed it was going. I felt not just fear, but absolute dread. I experienced a bone-chilling could throughout my body. I ran down nine flights of stairs, while crying uncontrollable and my heart was pounding. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Only in the understanding of the stock from which the Victorian mansion’s ghosts are sprung can one appreciate the immortality with which long-accepted tradition has endowed them. Ghostly itself is the history of the Winchester Mansion. While the carpenters were painting on the fourth floor, one of them was startled to see the word MURDER appear in the freshly rolled paint, as if written with someone’s finger—only the words were backwards, as though being written from the other side of the wall. One of the painters explained: “We were quite surprised when a shadow started moving towards us.” As they realized that the “shadow” was approaching them, they also realized that area of the mansion was a very lonely place, especially at night. Not many people ventured up there. And although in their haste to leave, they could only give brief glances at the dark figure, they were sure of one thing: “The only outstanding feature was the outline of a wide brim hate.” Another evening while the carpenters were painting, they heard a quiet creaking emanating from the wood floors. They steeled their nerves before investigating. That is when they saw a young woman sitting in a chair directly behind them. The woman was there for just a moment before disappearing. Later the evening as the farmers were picking fruit in the fields, the dark figure “floated” diagonally across the field. It drifted rapidly to a clump of trees with two flat rocks near by and disappeared over a slight drop-off beyond. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
One of the farmers screwed up his courage and, in spite of the bizarre, dark figure’s mysterious and even menacing appearance, volunteered to walk down to the spot where the apparition disappeared. After five minutes of observation, he returned, like an efficient scout, with his report, unsettling as it might be. He said when he reached the far side of the hill there were two “soldiers-dressed” figures stilling on the two flat rocks near the clump of trees. Neither one spoke to the other; nor did they acknowledge the other’s presence. Instead they just sat, seemingly rigidly fixated, staring down into the field. Other ghost haunting the mansion include those of two little boys, who have been heard running on the second floor. One night, while I was preparing for company, I found two sets of muddy boot prints coming from the door to nowhere and crossing the room. When I told Daisy about the boot prints. She said they must be made by the same boys who keep coming in the door the opens to the wall, and we had locked them out. Looking toward the door she said, “It’s OK, if you prefer this door, go ahead and use it.” Immediately the door swung open. Needless to say cold chills ran through both of us. We never worried about the door that opens to the wall again. My idea for the mansion was not only to create a place for the spirits, but also to build an estate that would inspire awe. The gorgeous series of fields gardens, forests, and grassy acres are as fascinating as they are beautiful. However, when the sun goes down, the shadows creep and spread, giving the Victorian Mansion an entirely different look and feel. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
With grounds lit by a full moon hanging low in the sky, just to the side of the columns of the mansion, one begins to ponder the many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. One night I was putting out a candle when I heard the sound of a singing voice. At first I thought: “Oh, that sounds nice.” However, then I wondered what it was and where I could be hearing singing from. After all, the staff was asleep and there was no one around, and the sound definitely was not coming from outside. It was frightening, but it was not explainable. It was just a couple of phrases of singing and it took me by surprise. I could faintly see the hazy shape of a woman moving down what the hallway. One night, a group of farmers were packing up for the evening. A they looked around with a lantern for their tools, they were shocked to see what appeared to be the black form of a man moving toward them. The figure was larger than human and had no features—it was a black mass that seemed to sway toward them in the bright light. The man wielding the lantern quickly put it out and they all ran away. For weeks the men thought about what they had seen; they just could not forget it. They spoke to other servants about the vision or sighting. They were quite disturbed and unable to let the subject drop. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Take heed! Come, all Spirits! By the virtue and power of your king, and by the seven crowns and chain of your Kings, all Spirits of the Hells are forced to appear in my presence before this circle of Solomon, whensoever I shall call them. Come, then, all at my order, to fulfil that which is in your power, as commanded. Come, therefore, from the East, South, West, and North! I conjure and command you, by the virtue and power of Him who is three, eternal, equal, who is God invisible, consubstantial, in a word, who has created the Heavens, the sea, and al which is under Heaven. I conjure thee, Lucifer, by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, who spake and all was made, who commanded and all things were created and made! I conjure thee by the ineffable name of God, ON, ALPHA, and OMEGA, ELOYM, YA, SADAY, LUX, MUGENS, REX, SALUS, ADONAY, EMMANUEL, MESSIAS; and I adjure, conjure. I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the power Principality of the fernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God and the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and by the authority I derive from our Savior Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
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All is Well that Ends Well?
The family is sacred to the ultimate concern and is the most important social unit in time and eternity. The ultimate cause established families to bring happiness to its creations, allowing them to learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and prepare them for eternal life. The home is the best place to teach, learn, and apply virtuous principles. It is where individual learn to provide love, food, clothing, respect, shelter, security and other necessities they require. The mother and father, as equal partners, should help each family member. However, sometimes things do not go as planned. Because we live in a World with many influences, people may become criminals. Men and women can both become involved in crime. When it comes to burglaries, for the females who worked as partners, this could involve a variety of tasks. Many of these tasks were indistinguishable from those traditionally associated with men, such as gaining entry, searching the house, carrying goods outside, and disposing of them. The following interview segment describes some of the tasks performed by a female acting as a partner. Although this was her first offense, she heled to find the transportation to reach the target (by stealing a truck) and took part in the actual break in: “Well, it wasn’t up on me, somebody else who was in there different, not state, in a different county. He just came up and told me he knew about it, a rich guy that was gonna be gone for the weekend. He knew this person, knew who it was, and he knew about it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
“When he left that night about two or three in the morning, we went down there. We had stolen a truck, we had stolen my ex-boyfriend’s father’s truck, went down there. We tried to get in, but we couldn’t get in. Everything was locked. Right…We couldn’t get in for nothing, so what we does was, we had some sh*t in back of the truck and we took some tape. Then we put it over the window real tight, then we busted it, and then we took the tape down and the window was shattered. It had no window in it. So—everybody used gloves of course—so we went in there, you know, and we knew when we went, we knew nobody was gonna be home. There wasn’t a house around for two blocks, each way you went. So…my first one was basically the easiest one.” The target often was located by a female partner, who also took the lead in planning the offense. In these cases the women had a substantial say in determining how the proceeds of the crime were divided: “…whatever you chose to give to the other person. We tried to split everything equally. We were all good friends, you know, so I got the best deal out of it because of the fact that I needed the money more than everybody else. Me and my sister needed the money more than everybody did and…we were the ones that said hey, we pointed it out, we found a way to get in, we knew where everything was, we told them how, we had everything planned out down to the TV. This is where this is at and this is where this is at.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
The roles played by female burglars are dynamic and can chance over time. Many of the women who currently participate in offenses as partners started out as accomplices. The woman quoted below clearly has an equal relationship with her co-offender, but this was not always the case: “The first burglary I ever committed, I was in the house and I was smoking weed at the time. A friend came in and said ‘I want to go in this house.’ I said ‘Okay, it was around the corner….what part am I going to play?’ He says ‘All you got to do is watch the doors for me. The bags I bring down, take them out, and you also drive the car for me.’” As should be obvious from above, women who work as accomplices in burglary play much more limited roles. They seldom participate in planning the crime, and often do not even enter the dwelling. Some claimed to prefer working with others because they lacked the skills needed to be a successful burglar: “I can’t do all by myself…I haven’t mastered that yet.” Others simply felt more comfortable when relying on a colleague’s expertise; they were uncertain about their ability to work alone. In the following case, a woman reports that she deferred to her boyfriend’s judgment in determining the suitability of a given target. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
“He can look at them and tell. He’s better at it than me. Sometimes I give him tips to go on, but he checks them out. I feel safer for him to check them out.” A common work assignment for accomplices was acting as a lookout or driver. Several of the women stated that driving was their primary job in burglaries: “Well, see, me and my boyfriend had been together for a year, and he done them all the time. Well, not all the time, but it was no big deal, and all I had to do, all I ever do, is drive. I just go like he’ll go, him and his friend. He don’t do ‘em every week or anything like that. Like it’s not really ‘cause we need the money or anything either. Like he’ll go during the day and he’ll look at a house and he’ll find one, and then he’ll tell me about where the house is…all I have to do is drive to the place and wait for them to start bringing out the stuff, and then drive off.” Other said that they typically kept a lookout for their colleagues: “They came and picked me up with a stolen automobile. I didn’t know that it was stolen. We went out there to this house and they got out. I just assumed—I didn’t know what was going on at first. We got out and they went in first, and then they came back out. One of the men came back out and told me to come in and to keep an eye out to see if anybody was there or anybody comes down the sidewalk or if anybody drives down the street or anything.” In both of these cases the women, as accomplices, did not choose to perform these secondary tasks. Instead the tasks were assigned to them by a dominant co-offender. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
What light does this quantitative and qualitative information shed on the nature of female criminality? Our sample was not generated randomly; with this fact in mind, the quantitative findings suggest that women involved in residential burglary do not differ significantly from their male counterparts on a number of relevant dimensions (exempli gratia, drug and alcohol use, degree of offense specialization). Nevertheless, the results show that some important differences may exist as well. Compared to the males, for example, the females more often committed burglaries with others, began offending at a later age, and had less contact with the criminal justice system. Further examination of these apparent differences is warranted. The qualitative data demonstrate that women’s involvement in residential burglary is marked by diversity and that the debate about whether women play a primary or a secondary role in the offense is probably a red herring. In fact, as among males, some assume primary roles exclusively, some adopt secondary roles exclusively, and others move from one type of role to another s they become more experienced. This observation has important implications for research into women’s involvement in crimes committed more often by males. To be sure, a much lower percentage of women than of men participate in residential burglary. Even so, our qualitative data reveal substantial similarities be tween males and females. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This fact suggests that the activities of women who do engage in such offenses may be explained by some of the same factors that explain men’s participation. When it comes to the stole property system (SPS), we must consider the law of supply and demand shape the SPS. This term refers to the loosely formed relationships that bring about the theft of property and the subsequent repackaging and resale of these goods via the “black market.” We use contacts with law enforcement authorities to formulate a revised view of property crime. Instead of viewing burglaries as isolated incidents of theft, we argue that we should conceive of the acts and actors involved as spanning a more broadly defined set of roles and behaviors. They identify the thief, fence, and person who buys the stolen goods as key players in the SPS. They also identify multiple stages in the process: research and planning, extraction, exchange (id est, conversion of the goods to money), marketing, residtribution/resale, and evaluation. Moreover, the roles and behaviors of the various players are said to be interchangeable and flexible. In the end, we reconsider the way that we think about property crime. We become more sensitive to the potential for business concepts such as division of labor, entrepreneurial spirit, supply and demand, and marketing to manifest themselves in the World of property theft. In doing so, we are able to drive home the complexity and fluidity tht can beset property crime events. Moreover, we illustrate how the criminal calculus can lead to mutually beneficial relationships and roles that allow the criminal subculture to expand and innovate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Perhaps no area of contemporary criminal activity holds more potential for improved understanding and successful intervention through analytical reorientation than does that of property theft. This area of crime is by no means new, a situation which may in fact constitute the greatest barrier to fresh thinking on the subject. Centuries of experience with thefts of property have give us a fairly strong conceptualization of this crime area, a conceptualization which centers almost exclusively on the thief. There is of course nothing illogical or erroneous about a concern for this individual; it is one after all who steals property. What is argued here, however, is that an exclusive concentration of the thief yields a myopic view of the process of theft, a view which draws the boundaries of the crime too tightly around that individual. It is a view which tends therefore to consider each incident of theft as a unique event, determined and constrained by the motivations, needs, and skills of the perpetrator. This “conventional view of theft” (if we can use this phrase) prescribes a response to this crime which largely consists of a fairly sophisticated sorting process, linking one individual (or one group of individuals) with each event as it occurs. Such an “individualistic” approach to crime and criminals is not, of course, confined to the property theft area. For example, we suggest that it is the most prevalent approach to crime in general. Consistently, both the popular and scientific tendency is to view the criminal’s behavior as a problem of individual maladjustment, not as a consequence of his participation in social systems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Perhaps it is for this reason that in criminology we have had thousands of studies that have sought some damaging trait in the personalities of individual criminals, but very few studies of the organizational arrangements among criminals who commit crimes in concert. The tendency toward an individualistic interpretation of criminal behavior cannot be laid to the idiosyncrasies of either the public or the scientist, but rather is undoubtedly influenced by the nature of the legal systems, with their concepts of individual responsibility an intent, upon which most democratic societies are based. However, while such an interpretation may conform well to the needs of a legal system, it may have the additional effect of causing us to ignore some important dimensions of contemporary criminal behavior. It is the perspective that property theft is one area of criminal behavior that has sorely suffered both conceptually and practically from a failure to probe the relationships among criminals (and)…the structure and operations of illicit organizations. Perhaps the mot glaring evidence of this failure concerns what the President’s Crime Commission called “little research…done on fencing,” id est, on the criminal receiver of stolen property. This crime figure, although tallying an impressive list of protestations to one’s importance over several centuries has remained little explored, while one’s relationship with the thief has been virtually ignored by the criminologist. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
However, if the popular and scientific tendency has been to overlook the fence, the police detective assigned the responsibility of dealing with property theft has not found it possible to do so. Instead, as the authors discovered in the course of an ongoing study of patterns of criminal receiving, police detectives possess a great deal of information about the fence. Other researchers have reported similar experiences. Because the police know about the fence does not imply that one’s activities are either successfully or efficiently interdicted, for the police agency is as influenced by an individualistic approach to crime as is the social scientist. Thus the bulk of enforcement resources and activity against theft is directed to the thief, and the situation in which police effort is devoted directly and exclusively to the fence appears to be rare indeed. The criminal receiver remains a curiosity to the criminal justice system, being infrequently arrested and even less often convicted. The model of property theft employed here—the Stolen Property System—is an operationally based one, derived from the author’s research into patterns of criminal receiving in a large urban area of the northeastern United States of America. As a part of this study, access to police intelligence reports on the activities of burglars and fences has been obtained, as well as records of these activities maintained in a special investigative unit in the office of the district attorney. Now, as burglaries are crimes of economics, this indicates that economics plays a kay factor in our lives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
China is an economic power house, and it growing production and export power enhances its financial strength as well. This is natural. However, compared to its sensational emergence as a leading manufacturing and trading nation, the process of its ascending to the position of a major financial power is more fragmentary and complicated. China has by far the largest foreign exchange reserves in the World, about three times as large as Japan, which is number two. It is also rapidly emerging as the leading international lender. In contrast, China’s role as a foreign direct and portfolio investor is still considerably smaller than that of America, major European countries, and Japan. For the time being, the story of China’s growing financial clout is, first and foremost, the story of the unprecedented increase of the financial power of the Chinese state. As of the end of 2021, the gross financial assets of China increased 13.6 percent to USD $29,689 billion. That is an increase of USD $25,563 billion since 2010. In December 2022, the reserves of China stood at USD $3,120 billion. The exact composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves is classified information. Foreign direct investment into China totaled $42.5 billion between July and December 2022. That constituted a 73 percent decline on the year. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
China’s net international investment position reached USD $2,531.328 billion in December 2022. As of the year 2022, the United States of America’s net international investment position was USD -$16.12 trillion. The United States of America is currently the World’s largest debtor nation. Thinking about the pre-cybernetic machine—with minor exceptions, state socialism had led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system…a massive bureaucracy…heavy-handed secret police…government control of the media…secrecy…and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system revealed that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people, but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling, and controlling knowledge. A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback, and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel, and commands flowing downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation, since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also, a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments or cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” while de-legitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals, and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—know what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machines as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines—the kind that surrounded Mr. Marx in the 19th century—for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and it runs irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes, and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. While Mr. Marx, Mr. Engels, Mr. Lenin all bitterly assailed the philosophy of “mechanical materialism,” their own thinking, reflecting their era, remained steeped in certain analogies and assumptions based on pre-intelligent machinery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be pre-set to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production, too—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism, and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time the various branches of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks, all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Published and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in low-level smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advance in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The Third Wave wealth-creation system now spreading also challenges three pillars of the socialist faith. Take the question of property. From the beginning, socialists traced poverty, depression, unemployment, and the other evils of industrialism to private own-unemployment, and the other means of production. The way to solve these ills was for the workers to own the factories—through the state or through collectives. Once this was accomplished, things would be different. No more competitive waste. Completely rational planning. Production for use rather than profit. Intelligent investment to drive the economy forward. The dream of abundance for all would be realized for the first time in history. In the 19th century, when these ideas were formulated, they seemed to reflect the most advanced scientific knowledge of the time. Marxists, in fact, claimed to have gone beyond fuzzy-headed utopianism and arrived at truly “scientific socialism.” Utopians might dream of self-governing communal villages. Scientific socialists knew that in a developing smokestack society such notions were impractical. Utopians like Charles Fourier looked toward the agrarian past. Scientific socialists looked toward what was then the industrial future. Thus, later on, while socialists regimes experimented with cooperatives, worker-management, communes, and other schemes, state socialism—state ownership of everything from banks to breweries, rolling mills to restaurants—became the dominant form of property through the socialist World. (So complete was this obsession with state ownership that Nicaragua, an imitative latecomer to the socialist World, even created “Lobo Jack,” a state-owned disco). Everywhere, the state, not the workers, thus became the chief beneficiary of socialist revolution. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Socialism failed to meet its promise to improve radically the material conditions of life. When living standards fell in the Soviet Union after the revolution, the decline was blamed, with some justification, on the effects of World War I and counterrevolution. Later the shortfalls were blamed on capitalist encirclement. Still later, on World War II. Yet thirty years after the war, staples like coffee and oranges were still in short supply in Moscow. In the period preceding Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika, the diet of a middle-class researcher at a state institute in Moscow was heavily based on cabbage and potatoes. In 1989, four years after the start of Mr. Gorbachev’s attempt at reforms, the U.S.S.R. had to import 600 million razor blades and 40 million tubes of shaving cream from abroad. Remarkably, though their number is declining, one still hears orthodox socialists around the World calling for the nationalization of industry and finance. From Brazil and Peru to South Africa and even in the industrialized nations of the West there remain true believers who, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, still regard “public ownership” as “progressive” and resist every effort to de-nationalize or privatize the economy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
It is true that today’s increasingly liberalized global economy, uncritically hailed by the great multinational corporations, is itself unstable and could suffer a massive coronary. The distended debt balloon on which it rests cold be punctured. Wars, sudden interruptions of energy or resources, and any number of other calamities could cause its collapse in the decades ahead. Under catastrophic conditions, one might well imagine the need for temporary emergency nationalizations. Nevertheless, incontrovertible evidence proves that state-owned enterprises mistreat their employees, pollute the air, and abuse the public at least as efficiently as private enterprises. Many have become sink-holes of inefficiency, corruption, and greed. Their failures frequently encourage a vast, seething black market that undermines the very legitimacy of the state. However, worst and most ironic of all, instead of taking the lead in technological advance as promised, nationalized enterprises, as a rule, are almost uniformly reactionary—the most bureaucratic, the slowest to reorganize, the least willing to adapt to changing consumer needs, the most afraid to provide information to the citizens, the last to adopt advanced technology. For more than a century, socialists and defenders of capitalism waged bitter war over public versus private property. Large numbers of men and women literally laid down their lives over this issue. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
What neither side imagined was a new wealth-creation system that would make virtually all their arguments obsolete. Yet this is exactly what happened. It is super-symbolic. It is knowledge. The same knowledge can be used by many people simultaneously to create wealth and to produce still more knowledge. And unlike factories and fields, knowledge is, for all intents, inexhaustible. Neither socialist regimes nor socialists in general have yet come to terms with this truly revolutionary fact. An established firm in an industry stands to gain by keeping out new competition. Then it can raise prices to monopoly levels. Since monopoly is socially harmful, the antitrust authorities try to detect and prosecute firms that employ strategies to deter rivals from entering the business. In 1945, the Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa) was convicted of such a practice. An appellate panel of Circuit Court judges found tht Alcoa had consistently installed more refining capacity than was justified by demand. In his opinion, Judge Learned Hand said: “It was not inevitable that it [Alcoa] should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before other entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
This case has been debated at length by scholars of antitrust law and economies. Here we ask you to consider the conceptual basis of the case. How could the construction of excess capacity deter new competitors? What distinguishes this strategy from others? Why might it fail? An established firm wants to convince potential new competitors that the business would not be profitable for them. This basically means that if they entered, the price would be too low to cover their costs. Of course the established firm could simply put out the word that it would fight an unrelenting price war against any newcomers. However, why would the newcomers believe such a verbal threat? After all, a price war is costly to the established firm too. Installing capacity in excess of the needs of current production gives credibility to the established firm’s threat. When such capacity is in place, output can be expanded more quickly and at less extra cost. It remains only to staff the equipment and get the materials; the capital costs have already been incurred and are bygones. A price war can be fought more easily, more inexpensively, and therefore more credibly. This makes sense in the logic of strategy, but will such a device work in practice? There are at least two qualifications that limit its success. First, if there are many firms already in the industry, then discouraging newcomers gives more profit to all of them. Will any one firm bear the costs of capacity when it gets only a part of the benefit? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
This is a standard prisoners’ dilemma. If one firm is large enough, it may in its own interest provide such a service to the rest of the industry. Otherwise the firms must collude in building capacity; this may be hard to hide from the antitrust authorities. In the Alcoa case, only may not regard the dilemma of whom will install capacity as a serious problem, because Alcoa had a 90 percent share of the primary aluminum ingot market. However—and this is the second qualification—is that the relevant market? Even if there are no other producers of primary ingots, secondary production from scrap is a source of competition. So is Alcoa’s own future production. Many aluminum-based products are highly durable. If Alcoa puts more aluminum on the market in the future, then the values of these durable goods will decrease. If the company cannot credibly guarantee the users that it will restrict its own future, output, they are willing to pay for aluminum now. This is just like IBM’s problem of pricing mainframe computers. The solution of renting is much harder here: you cannot rent aluminum as such; Alcoa would have to extend its operations into all sorts of aluminum-based products. In accordance with the directions of the ultimate concern, and in view of the critical time through which the World is passing, every expression, “view,” or theory which we hold concerning things should now be examine carefully, and brought to the proof, with open and hones desire to know the pure truth of the ultimate concern—as well as every statement that comes to our knowledge from the experience of others, which may throw light upon our own pathway. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Every criticism—just or unjust—should be humbly received and examined to discover its grounds, apparent or real; and facts concerning the verities from every self-actualized being should be analyzed, independent of their pleasure or pain to us personally—either for our own enlightenment or for our equipment in the service of the ultimate concern. For the knowledge of truth is the first essential for warfare with the lying offenders, and truth must be eagerly sought for and faced with earnest and sincere desire to know it and obey it in the light of God: truth concerning ourselves, discerned by unbiased discrimination; truth from the virtues, uncolored, unstrained, unmutilated, undiluted; truth in facing facts of experience in all members of the hierarchy of self-actualization. Sometimes we are we can be too engrossed in our own internal struggle to intervene and prevent someone else from being hurt, but gradually the fragments and splinters and hurts began to disturb us. We may experience internally the broken moments, shattered dialogues, and cruelty of neutral faces. Here were people committed to the rescuing of “dropouts” and “rejects” from the public school, blatantly ignoring the crucial feelings being expressed. In this room, in the many passing hours and in that moment were people who hungered for a vital, active, listening human presence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
However, what they get are intellectual arguments and words with little or no feeling. What they get are dead faces and lifeless bodies. Within one is growing an indignation against these denials or elemental human values until at last one’s own existence, one’s own isolation, one’s own desire for a solitary state crumbles away and vanishes. For the first time in weeks, one may experience intense and vital feelings from within, a full response to others. One’s anger mounts at the surface way in which fundamental matters are handled, at the ignoring of potential for intensity and depth, and at people committed to serving abused and rejected children failing to reach out, recognize and affirm each other. It may take one back to another time and place. This may cause of to reflect on the coldness and indifference others have to the personal struggles and feelings, an avoidance of intensity and depth in interactions, an intellectualizing and professionalizing or values and concepts of the ultimate concern. Mystery, spirit, feeling, the human sense, the unspoken and ineffable, the sense of awe and wonder, aesthetic appreciation—all might be missing. What else is the ultimate concern but a willingness to submit to the unknown, to learn from the unseen and intangible what we must fulfil? Where else do powers of life, actions to living in the deepest and fullest sense, come but from felt presences that awaken us to a fuller realization of what it means to be unique and human. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
There will be pronouncements, lineal objectives and goals, definitions, rules, all carefully edited and articulated. We must be concerned with deviance and social injustice, and be aware of the importance of using political and economic powers to being about beneficial social changes. We have to speak about poverty and war, the end of killing and hunger. However, these are devotions to abstractions: for there before us are instances of human suffering, and individuals struggling to rise, and they are being met with indifference, with a refusal or inability to listen and respond. Some may speak glibly of the value of love in enlightenment, but these words do not strengthen and affirm, not support or encourage individuals in their search and struggle. The words are empty. The soul of life dies quickly in the presence of doctrines, rituals, and intellectual reactions. The central concern, the only immediate and intense here-and-now feeling, is a fear of the people who rate us, an incessant anxiety boarding on paranoia that they are being judged in every detail and nuance. Without exception, the fear of being tossed out, or of being put on probation, is paramount. The way to success is to be silent, to speak in abstractions, to avoid action in any living, breathing terms. They will be startled at one’s indignation, at one’s efforts to arouse genuine caring, interpersonal involvement, and decent human responses. When we examine the sacred of the “is” namely, actual purity, or the present reality of the revered it is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the experience of ‘the ultimate’ in the double sense of that which is the abyss and that which is the ground of man’s being. The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the beneficial side of sacredness; it attracts because, as the ground of being, it implies the fulfilment and the beatitude of the creature. The negative side is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum which terrifies because, as the abyss of being, it implies an infinite, unbridgeable distance between the finite and the infinite. In the ecstatic experience of revelation one feels both the elevating power of the divine presence and its annihilating power. This is the experience of the actual sacredness of the ultimate concern. A man who has never tried to flee from the ultimate concern has never experienced the ultimate concern that is the ultimate concern. The ultimate concern of our own making, fashioned after the image of man, is easy to live with, but man cannot stand the ultimate concern that is really the ultimate concern. Man tries to evade the ultimate concern, and hates it, because one cannot escape it. The protest against the ultimate concern, the will that there be no ultimate concern, and the flight to nihilism are all genuine elements of profound philosophy. Such is the shaking power of the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. The eyes of the Witness we cannot stand are also the eyes of One of infinite wisdom and supporting benevolence. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The center of being, in which our own center is involved, is the source of the gracious beauty which we encounter again and again in the stars and mountains, in flowers and animals, in children and mature personalities. The scared can be viewed not only from a phenomenological point of view, but also from an ontological one. The sacred contains the meaning of individuals and of the whole, and is the ground of meaning. It is also the abyss of meaning because it transcends every individual meaning and cannot be fully grasped in any act of meaning. Unconditioned meaning is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, the abyss and the ground of the meaning of things, not only in so far as they are, but also in so far as they ought to be. Against this ontological background, the sacred is not unperceptible, but it is not objective. The sacred is contemplated not as an object; it I contemplated as transcendent meaning. To be sure, there exist also sacred objects to see them as purity is to grasp through them the meaning of the unconditioned. The sacred is being-itself or the power of being. What is required in the professional sense is the fullness and depth of a truly human commitment to self and others, and the love that connects one man with other men. This love must be allowed to develop because love is immediate and grows out of a willingness to enter into interpersonal dialogue and communication, out of the willingness to permit the unknown in one’ self to connect with the unknown in others. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Ruin is the Destination Toward Which All Men Rush
With equality and gender-based studies becoming more important, it is a goo idea that we take a look at a gender-based analysis of residential burglary. The study is based on interviews with 105 active residential burglars, 87 of whom were males and 18 were females. The project employed a snowball sampling strategy in which an ex-offender recruited known burglars who were presently operating in a city. The gender-based compassion suggests that, in many way, female burglars resemble their male counterparts. For example, both group display long criminal histories that span a variety of property, violent, and public order offenses categories. Both groups accumulate long, diverse substance abuse histories that overlap with and contribute to their involvements in burglary. At the time, the gender-based comparison reveal several differences. Female burglars begin offending at a later age, are more likely to co-offend, and have less contact with authorities. The typology of female burglars describes offenders as either accomplices or partners. Factor of motivation, levels of target selection and planning, and patterned work roles serve to differentiate these two conceptual categories. Despite growing interest in female criminality, little is known about the nature of women’s participation in crimes statistically dominated by males. Certainly that is the case for residential burglary, an offense labeled as an overwhelmingly male enterprise. For example, we hardly know how female become involved in such offenses or what roles they play. Are they tempted into these crimes, for instance, by the influence of delinquent peers or by the use of drugs? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Because we lack detailed knowledge, we cannot assess the extent to which the processes underly burglaries committed by females differ from those underlying burglaries by males. This lack also restricts our capacity to detect important differences among female burglars. An assessment of these difference, however, is crucial in formulating effective policy responses to female criminality and to developing theories of lawbreaking by women. Short of observing burglaries, perhaps the best way to acquire this information is to go to the offenders themselves. The most pressing need today, in researching the agenda for feminist criminology, is observation and interviewing so we can plunge more deeply into the social Worlds of girls and women. Such a strategy will allow researchers to comprehend women’s crime on its own terms. Often it is claimed that offenders are versatile and commit a wide range of offense. This observation, however, is derived largely from studies of males conducted in criminal justice settings rather than on the street. During our interviews we asked the subjects whether they ever had committed other sorts of crimes beside residential burglary. We did so because we were concerned primarily with prevalence—that is, whether the subject ever had engaged in other kinds of offenses. Stealing (which includes shoplifting and corresponds to the legal definition of this activity), auto theft, and assault were the offenses most commonly reported by males. Stealing and assault were mentioned most frequently by the females; these offenses were comparable in rank of frequency to those reported by the males. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Beyond these two offenses, however, little other criminality was reported by the females. The only meaningful differences between the men and the women for this measure was found in regard to auto theft. This crime was fairly common among the males, but unknown among the females. The explanation for this difference might reside in a strong cultural tradition linking masculinity to driving and car ownership. Alternatively, males may have “cornered the market” in auto theft; to be profitable, such a crime requires sophisiticated coneections with garage owners, automotive recycle yard employees, and car dealerships. One important aspect of offending style concerns the degree of crime specialization—that is, the extent to which offenders concentrate on one particular type of offense. When we asked offenders whether they had been involved in crimes other than residential burglary during their most recent period of offending, thirty-four percent of the males and 42 percent of the females claimed that they had committed only residential burglaries during this period (roughly the last six months). This finding is consistent with a substantial body of previous research showing that offenders display considerable diversity over the course of their criminal careers, but may specialize in a particular “line” for short periods. This phenomenon is labeled as “short-term specialization.” Another element of offending style concerns the inclinations to work with others in carrying out cries. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Previous research demonstrated that more often than not, [burglary] is committed by two or more persons acting in concert. The results of our study bear this out: 79 percent of the males and all of the females reported that they had worked with others in the past. The males showed considerable variation in frequency of working with others: 39 percent said they “seldom” worked with others, while another 39 percent reported that they “always” did so. For the women, however, the picture was much clearer: an overwhelming 83 percent reported that they “always” worked with others, and the remaining 17 percent states that they “usually” did so. The final aspect of offending style that we examined here relates to drug and alcohol use among our respondents, as well as to their perceptions of the role played by intoxicants in leading them to commit such crimes. Our research reveals that there is little difference between the males and the females in self-report drug use. When the drug users were asked whether addiction had anything to do with their burglaries, 71 percent of the males and 82 percent of the females answered affirmatively. A majority of those in both groups said they committed burglaries to obtain the money they needed to buy more drugs. In addition, slightly more than three-quarters of the users in each group—76 percent of the males and 79 percent of the females—claimed that they used drugs before committing their burglaries. A higher percentage of females than of males started that they “always” or “usually” used drugs beforehand. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
One explanation seems to be that many female burglaries arise from crack “runs.” This point, however, is difficult to determine conclusively because use of the drug is heavily stigmatized. We explore male-female differences on three dimensions designed to measure burglary offending histories: age at first burglary, total number of lifetime burglaries, and lambda, the mean number of annual burglaries. The ages at which males and females committed their first residential burglary differed significantly: the males generally started much earlier in life. None of the female burglars had committed their first offense before age 12, but 22 percent of the males had done so. The modal category for males was the 13-16 age bracket, which accounted for 53 percent of the cases. Sixty-one percent of the females, on the other hand, were over 16 years old when they carried out their first burglary. Given that the females started to commit burglaries later, on average, than their male counterparts, we are not surprised that a greater proportion of females had been involved in fewer than 20 residential burglaries in their lifetime. Perhaps more interesting, 39 percent of the females had committed more than 70 lifetime residential burglaries, a proportion roughly comparable to the males’ figure of 41 percent. The bimodal distribution of the females’ responses suggests that women are likely to engage in burglary at two very distinct levels, and perhaps to employ two different styles. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The males were more likely than the females to have had contact with the system for offenses of all types. This difference was most notable at the stage of the criminal justice process that resulted in incarceration. Over ninety percent of the respondents in each group had been arrested previously, but only one woman (6 percent) had been convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. In contrast, 26 percent of the males had served time in the past. This difference may exist in part because the females began offending later and consequently had fewer “years at risk.” Other factors, however, are probably at work as well including an assumption by the police that most burglars are male, which allow females to remain above suspicion and a tendency for those females who are arrested to receive preferential treatment in the courtroom. Certainly the women in our sample believe that their gender conferred a degree of protection from the law. Several expressed the belief that authorities would not take action against them simply because they were female. Is it not becoming clear, in light of the existence of deceiving offenders and their methods of deception, that close examination is needed of modern theories, conceptions, and expressions regarding things in connection with the ultimate concern and its way of working in man? For only the certainty of ultimate concern, apart from “views” of truth, will avail for protection or for successful warfare in the conflict with wicked offenders in the self-actualized hierarchy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
When we reach self-actualization, we are at the highest hierarchy of the pyramid, and this is denoted by morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts. There are five levels in the pyramid. At the very bottom, people are interested in physiological functions only which include: breathing, food, water, pleasures of flesh, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion. At the second level of the pyramid, individuals are concerned with safety and this entails security of: body, employment, resources, mortality, the family, healthy and property. At the third hierarchy most are concerned with love and belonging. This includes friendship, family, sexual intimacy. At the fourth hierarchy, this realm focuses on esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others. All that is in any degree the outcome of the mind of the “natural man” will prove to be but the weapons of straw in this great battle, and if we rely upon others’ “views of truth,” or upon our own human conceptions of truth, offenders will use these very things to deceive us—even building us up in these theories and views so that under cover of them he or she may accomplish one’s purpose. We cannot, therefore, at this time, overestimate the importance of believers having ready minds to “examine all things” they have thought, and perhaps taught, in connection with the things of ultimate concern and the self-actualized realm—all the “truths” they have held, all the phrases and expressions they have used in “virtue teachings,” and all the ideas they have absorbed through others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
For any wrong interpretations of truth, any theories and phrases which are man-conceived and which we may build upon wrongly, will have perilous consequences to ourselves and others in the conflict with truth and individual self-actualized people passing through. Because in the present offenders will comes to them with deceptions in DOCTRINAL form, self-actualized individual must examine carefully what they accept as “doctrine,” least it should be from the emissaries of the deceiver. Some people are tired of struggling and want only to know a quiet silence. This can be a shock to one’s own awareness of who he or she is. One may have always considered struggle essential in growth, and in many crises and conflicts it has provided the turning point in one’s life. Not wanting to be burdened and overwhelmed by heavy feelings and thoughts or by complicated searching and painful of what is wrong with oneself, people, and life, this can create the desire to turn away from the struggle. And this is what causes the requirement to be alone in simple and ordinary ways. Once one goes through this process of healing in solitude, and by only engaging in simple routine, gradually, with each day, an individua is able to listen a little more to what others are saying. (This is why during a break up, space, instead of forcing the issues is important. Of course, there are times when you need to know what the reason it so it may be a good idea to press for answers to start a dialogue and not necessarily to just focus on getting back together.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Slowly it becomes each to be interested in and comfortable with other people’s problems. Although there may be some drawbacks. Some individual may be able to be with others while you struggle to make decisions, but one may not be opened to questions or personal comments and responses directed to one. This may cause one to offer nothing of oneself and comment only on what one is hearing and understanding from others. During this period, some find work a truly rewarding activity; it is a place that feels like home. It does not matter whether the work takes the form of writing—reports, references, and letters—or reading. Or, if it involved physical activities, one may become totally absorbed in what one is doing, get lost in the activity and experience a full sense of relief. Active mental and physical involvement in solitary projects can be a sense of salvation. By surrendering to powers within to powers within and sources of light in the universe, in some mysterious way, a miracle happens. It is the loss of the old man and the discovery of the new man. When the light reveals itself, the individual is ready to accept it. This reduces the need to force or push or beseech. One simply waits with firm faith that one is meant to be whole again and that one will live more in a full and complete way. It becomes clear that people one loves and those who love one cannot reach the individual going through changes. And so, life has to come from another source, and that new direction will emerge in solitude. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The problem of the truth of faith presents itself from both the subjective and objective sides. Subjectively, faith is true if it adequately expresses an ultimate concern, that is, if the symbols of faith are alive and speak to the heart with an urgency of concern that impels to action and replay. This criterion is more a rule of thumb that works best for obviously dead symbols and is not so useful in judging contemporary ones. However, it is the objective truth of faith that interests us here. The content of faith is true if it is really and not just apparently ultimate. The great danger is demonization, elevation of the symbol to ultimacy, which results in idolatrous faith. Therefore, the criterion of faith is self-negation. The true symbol not only conveys the ultimate, but proclaims its own non-ultimacy. It pronounces a Yes and a No. For the Christian the Cross of the Christ is such a symbol. Name for this criterion—the No that follows immediately on the heels of the Yes—is the Protestant principle. The Protestant principle pervades in this whole theology, both systematically and chronologically. Chameleon-like, it changes its formula of expression against the background of diverse theological problems. Hence, a rapid rundown of its various formulations is useful for identifying it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In addition to being the objective criterion of faith, the Protestant principle expresses man’s infinite distance from God and his dependence upon the divine initiative. The Protestant principle is the prophetic protest against every form of self-absolutizing—for example, the demonic elevation of the churches, of the Christian Bile, and the priesthood to absolute validity. The Protestant principle is “resistance to idolatry,” that is, it stands for non-conformity in family, school, state, and church. The Protestant principle protests the objectifying of grace (die Vergegenstandlichung der Gnade) and so smashes the barriers between the holy and the secular. For, by the Protestant principle, God is as near to the lowest as he is to the highest, as close to the material as to the spiritual. These manifold expressions of the Protestant principle can be summarized in and derived from the basic doctrine that the Protestant principle is justification by grace through faith. We reject the traditional Protestant formula of “justification by faith” on the grounds that is has been misunderstood to mean that the human act of faith sets in motion God’s justifying act. Faith itself is a gift of grace, all justifying actions is entirely on the part of God, and, consequently, the more accurate formula is “justification by grace through faith.” The Protestant principle ultimately rests upon an experience of God’s majesty that attributes absoluteness and holiness to him alone and denies such dignity to all else. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Untrammeled choices of individuals could lead to disaster for society. Picture a paster open to all. It is to expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on this commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels one to increase one’s heard without limit, in a World that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing one’s own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Overpopulation, pollution, excessive fishing, and depletion of exhaustible resources are all part of the problem. People Worldwide must recognize the necessity of restricting individual freedom in these choices, and accept some mutual coercion mutually agreed upon. Depending upon the circumstances, the tragedy of the commons could be a many-person prisoner’s dilemma (each person grazes too many cows) or a spillover problem (too many people choose to become herdsmen). The economist’s favorite solution would be the establishment of property rights. This is what actually happened in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England: the common land was enclosed and claimed by the local aristocrats or landlords. When land is private property, the invisible hand will shut the gate to just the right extent. The owner will charge grazing fees to maximize one’s rental income; the grazing fees will make the owner richer, and the herdsmen poorer. This approach is not feasible in some instances. Property rights over the high seas are hard to define and enforce in the absence of an international government, as is control over air that move from one country to another carrying pollutants. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
For this reason, whaling and acid rain must be handled by more direct controls, but securing the necessary international agreements is no easy matter either. Population is an even harder problem. The right of decision about one’s family, including its size, is enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in many countries bills of rights. Countries like China and India that have at times used some coercion in their population-control efforts have evoked widespread disapproval. Sometimes, when the group is small enough, voluntary cooperation solves the problem. When two oil or gas producers have wells that tap into the same underground deposit, each has the incentive to speed up one’s uptake, to get more of the resource before the other does. When both of them follow this policy, the excessive speed of depletion can actually lower the total amount that can be recovered from the deposit. In practice, drillers recognize the problem and seem able to reach production-sharing arrangements that keep at the proper level that total flow from all wells tapping one deposit. All’s well that ends well? For the less developed countries (LDCs), as for the rest of the World, power stems from the holster, the wallet, and the book—or, nowadays, the computer. Unless we want an anarchic World, with billions of poverty-stricken people, unstable governments led by unstable leaders, each with a finger on the missile launcher or chemical or bacteriological trigger, we now need global strategies for preventing the de-coupling that looms before us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In the years immediately ahead the LDCs will acquire sophisticated new arms—enormous firepower will be added to their already formidable arsenals. Why? As LDC economic power diminishes, their rulers face political opposition and instability. Under the circumstances, they are likely to do what rulers have done since the origins of the state: They reach for the most primitive form of power—military force. However, the most acute shortage facing LDCs is that of economically relevant power is no longer through the exploitation of raw materials and human muscle but, as we have seen, through application of the human mind. Development strategies make no sense, therefore, unless they take full account of the new role of knowledge in wealth creation, and of the accelerative imperative that goes hand in hand with it. With knowledge (which in our definition includes such things as imagination, values, images, and motivation, along with formal technical skills) increasingly central to the economy, the Brazils and Nigerians, the Bangladeshes and Haitis must consider how they might best acquire or generate this resource. It is clear that every wretched child in Northeast Brazil or anywhere else in the World who remains ignorant or intellectually underdeveloped because of malnutrition represents a permanent drain on the future. Revolutionary new forms of education will be needed that are not based on the old factory model. Acquiring knowledge from elsewhere will also be necessary. This may take unconventional—and sometimes even illicit—forms. Stealing technological secrets is already a booming business around the World. We must expect shrewd LDCs to join the hunt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Another way of obtaining wealth-making know-how is to organize a brain drain. This can be done on a small scale by bribing or attacking teams of researchers. However, some clever countries will figure out that, around the World, there are certain dynamic minorities—often persecuted groups—that can energize a host economy if given the chance. The overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, Syrians in West Africa, Palestinians in parts of the Mideast, Jews in America, and Japanese in Brazil have played this role at one time or another. Transplanted into a different culture, each has brought not merely energy, drive, and commercial or technical acumen, but a pro-knowledge attitude—a ravenous hunger for the latest information, new ideas, skills. These groups have provided a kind of hybrid economic vigor. They work hard, they innovate, they educate their children, and even if they get rich in the process, they stimulate and accelerate the reflexes of the host economy. We will no doubt see various LDCs searching out such groups and inviting them to settle within their borders, in the hopes of injecting a needed adrenaline into the economy. During World War II the Japanese military actually drafted a plan to bring large numbers of persecuted European Jews to Manchuria, then called Manchukuo, for this purpose. However, the “Fugu Plan,” as it was known, was never implemented. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Smart governments will also encourage the spread of nongovernmental associations and organization, since such groups accelerate the spread of economically useful information through newsletters, meetings, conferences, and foreign travel. Associations of merchants, plastics engineers, employers, programmers, trade unions, bankers, journalists, etcetera, serve as channels for rapid exchange of information about what does and does not work in their respective fields. They are an important, often neglected communications medium. Governments serious about economic development will also have to recognize the new economic significance of free expression. Failure to permit the circulation of the new ideas—including economic and political ideas, even if unflattering to the state—is almost always prima facie proof that the state is weak at its core, and that those in power regard staying there as more important than economic improvement in the live of the people. Governments committed to becoming part of the new World will systematically open the valves of public discussion. Other governments will join knowledge consortia—partnerships with other countries or with global companies—to explore the far reaches of technology and science and, especially, the possibility of creating new materials. Instead of pandering to obsolete nationalist notions, they will purse the national interest passionately—but intelligently. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Rather than refusing to pay royalties to foreign pharmaceutical companies on the lofty ground that health is above such grubby concerns, as Brazil has done, they will gladly pay the royalties—provided these funds stay inside the country for a fixed number of years, and are used to finance research projects carried out jointly with a local pharmaceutical firm’s own experts. Profits from products that originate in this joint research can then be divided between the host country and the multinational. In this way the royalties pay for technology transfer—and for themselves. Effective nationalism thus replaces obsolete, self-destructive nationalism. Similarly, intelligent governments will welcome the latest computers, regardless of who built them, rather than trying to build a local computer industry behind tariff walls that keep out not merely products but advanced knowledge. The computer industry is changing so fast on a World scale that no nation, not even the United States of America or Japan, can keep up without help from the rest of the World. By barring certain outside computers and software, Brazil managed to build its own computer industry—but is products are backward compared with those available outside. This means that Brazilian banks, manufacturers, and other businesses have had to use technology that is inefficient compared with that of their foreign competitors. They compete with one hand tied behind them. Rather than gaining, the country loses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Brazil violated the first rule of the new system of wealth creation. So what you will with the slowly changing industries, but get out of the way of a fast-advancing industry. Especially one that processes the most important resource of all—knowledge. Other LDCs will avoid these errors. Some, we may speculate, will actually invest modestly in existing venture capital funds in the United States of America, Europe, and Japan—on condition that their own technicians, scientists, and students accompany the capita and share in the know-how developed by the resulting start-up firms. In this way, Brazilians or Indonesians or Nigerians or Egyptians might find themselves at the front edge of tomorrow’s industries. Astutely managed, the program could well pay for itself—or even make a profit. Above all, the LDCs will take a completely fresh look at the role of agriculture, regarding it not necessarily as a “backward” sector but as a sector that potentially, with the help of computers, genetics, satellites, and other new technologies, could someday be more advanced, more progressive than all the smokestacks, steel mills, and mines in the World. Knowledge-based agriculture may be the cutting edge of economic advantage of tomorrow. Moreover, agriculture will not limit itself to growing food, but will increasingly grow energy crops and feed stocks for new materials. These are but a few of the ideas likely to be tested in the years to come. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
However, none of these efforts will bear fruit if the country is cut off from participation in the fast-moving global economy and the telecommunications and computer networks that support it. The maldistribution of telecommunications in today’s World is even more dramatic than the maldistribution of food. There are 7.33 billion unique mobile phones users in the World today, which makes 91.40 percent of people in the World cell phone owners. The lopsided distribution of computers, data bases, technical publications, research expenditures, tells us more about the future potential of nations than all the gross-national-product figures ground out by economists. To plug into the new World economy, countries like China, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India, as well as the Soviet Union and the East European nations, must find the resources needed to install their own electronic infrastructures. These must go far beyond mere telephone services to include up-to-date, high-speed data systems capable of linking into the latest global networks. The good news is that today’s slow countries may be able to skip over an entire stage of infrastructure development, leapfrogging from First to Third Wave communications without investing the vast sums needed to build Second Wave networks and systems. The Iridium systems, for example, announced by Motorola, Inc., placed 77 tiny satellites into low orbit, which make it possible for millions in remote or sparsely populated regions like Soviet Arctic, the Chinese desert, or the interior of African to send and receive voice, data, and digitized images through handheld telephones. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It is not necessary to lay cooper or even fiber optic cable across thousands of miles of jungle, ice or sand. The portable phones communicate directly with the nearest overhead satellite, which will pass the message along. Other advances also similarly slashing the huge costs of telecommunications, brining them within reach of today’s impoverished counties. Large scale production and hyper-competition among American, European and Japanese suppliers will also drive down costs. The new key to economic development is clear. The “gap” that must be closed is informational and electronic. It is a not gap between the North and the South, but between the slow and the fast. However, China’s inadequacy in services is of a structural character. It has it historical and cultural roots, especially the legacy of several decades long epoch of Soviet-style socialism. The mentality of many Chinese service companies and workers may have exceeded those in America. When I was in China, I was impressed by their customer service. They were extremely polite, spent time talking to me, even offered me candy and gave me a soccer ball for shopping at one of their malls. They did treat me like a king. I did not want to come back to America because I loved China so much. Maybe people have different experiences? #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The overall picture of the service economy in China is not gloomy. Even on the airplane they were polite and told me to stop being so “Western.” The hotels were awesome, as well as the recreation facilities and restaurants. As local consumers’ demand for a variety of good services is increasing, American, European and Japanese service providers have a good chance to exploit their competitive advantage in this area, establishing a stronger position at the Chinese market. Here, however, comes a surprise. You may expect that, in the wake of what was written earlier, America and Europe are enjoying substantial surpluses in their services trade with China, not incomparable to their huge deficits in merchandise trade. But the thing with the people in China, one cannot tell when they are just being nice. Things are so different. They try so hard to like people and make them happy that it seems like they really like you. And they try really hard to keep a neat appearance, are very careful with their work, and take pride in what they do. Because their image and reputation depends a lot on word of mouth, they are very careful not to hurt your feelings and to conceal negative topics, ideas, thoughts and behavior. And their houses are really clean, many of them have never heard of “racism” and the student work very hard in school. It is amazing how many hours a day they spend studying. They really went out of their way to impress us, like hosting us in a restaurant, but making it a private event, of course it meant getting up at 3 A.M. in the morning, but I was happy to. They are so polite and taught me if something is meant to be, you will meet that person again. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Randolph Harris II International Institute 