Bill Stonebarger's Blog

I am writing this on Father’s Day. It is also the summer solstice at 8:48 pm. I have lived through quite a few solstices and Father’s Days  and I am feeling nostalgic.

When I was in high school (a long time ago) there was a popular song that summarized one my bigger worries. The song began “you’ve got to be a football hero to get along with a beautiful girl.”

Even today I remember how much I wanted to be a football hero. Or for that matter any kind of sports hero. Alas, in my large high school I was good in academics but mediocre in sports. I was just not talented enough or tough enough to make any of the varsity teams.

My two sons did better. Both were varsity basketball and soccer players and I was proud. I was also proud of quite a few of my nieces and nephews who were outstanding athletes in school and in college. One played quarterback in a California Bowl game and was voted the most valuable player.

All of this personal confession has relevance to my comments two weeks ago about the differences between liberals, progressives and conservatives. Progressives, I claimed, tended to stress equal results and liberals equal opportunities. Conservatives tend to think we should think twice before making radical changes in systems that work pretty well. I went on to point out that “in sports, minorities (especially African-Americans), have opened up achievement gaps every bit as wide in their favor as the academic ones where they lag behind. No one seems to be alarmed about this sports gap, why make so much about the academic test gap?”

The truth is that for most young people (and their parents and friends and fans) sports are, if anything, as important if not more important than academics. Still another truth is that the qualities that lead to success in sports – work ethic, perseverance, ability to work together in a common cause, courage, competitive drive, social skills, natural grace and ease – are just as important in life after school, if not more so, than success in academic subjects (especially as it is poorly measured by achievement tests).

In my humble opinion the best thing to do about any and all so-called “achievement gaps,” between any definable groups is–ignore it. Forget about it. Live with it. Make sure politically and practically that you provide opportunity for all individuals but as for results, let the chips fall where they may. So I can’t throw a football as well as Brett Favre. And I can’t hit a baseball like Willie Mays. And I can’t jump as well as Michael Jordan. And maybe I never had the toughness, perseverance and work ethic that made some of these athletes along with the lowliest second stringer on the high school football team successful in sports and in life. So what? You can probably get along with a beautiful girl anyway. I did.

In my recent News I did endorse the progressive point of view on health care. I think now that may have been premature. I do think that we are a wealthy enough society to assure everyone good health care just as we promise roads, sanitation services, police and fire services, etc. How to do that is still up for argument. An article in the NY Times last week as well as a thoughtful response from a reader leads me to rethink however my unqualified endorsement of some health care reform reforms.

Last week, for instance, the NY Times reported that the latest twist in progressive health care circles is to not just pay for prescription drugs but to pay people to take them. According to Pam Belluck, the NY Times reporter, “one-third to one-half of all patients do not take medication as prescribed, and up to one-quarter never fill prescriptions at all.”

Some doctors, pharmaceutical companies, health-care providers and social workers are trying a new experiment. Paying people to take their medicine! From $10 to $100 a day! Part of the rationale I suppose is that we want equal results as well as equal opportunity. The promoters also claim it will save money in the long run because these same people who do not presently take their medicine end up in the hospital or nursing home and since taxpayers will have to pay that bill too, better to bribe them to take their medicine now than pay more to save their lives later.

The Times reporter claims that “experts” vouch for the one-third, one-half, one-quarter statistics. I am suspicious. Who are these experts and what evidence do they have for such big numbers?

Aside from that and aside from the question of the government becoming the ultimate nanny, comes the question how far are we prepared to go to assure equal outcomes? Do we want to pay people to wear their helmets when riding motorcycles or fasten their seat belts in cars on the grounds that if they have an accident we will have to pay for their hospital and burial bills? Do we want to pay students to do their homework in high school on the grounds that we will have to support them with welfare if they don’t graduate? Do we want to pay people to recycle their newspapers and plastic cups on the grounds that if they don’t we will lose forest acreage and contribute to climate change? Do we want to pay people to buy hybrid automobiles on the grounds that doing so will help conserve oil? Do we want to pay people to exercise in gyms, swimming pools and health clubs on the grounds that it will save money in the end by preventing heart attacks later? Where do you draw the line? Or do you?

A Hawkhill News item the week before last about health care reform brought a thoughtful critique from retired psychologist Larry Larrabee who has an original take on these questions. He had long experience running a mental health clinic in Wisconsin.

“I agree [that in health care], a definite change is needed, both the basic costs are frequently ridiculous and, although accessibility (in my opinion) is not a major problem, care should be more affordable for everyone  …  I feel that until tort reform occurs in health care, we are dealing with a problem that absolutely cannot be afforded by ANY country. A recent study by a prestigious university found that among diagnostic tests ordered by cardiologists, 75% had been ordered solely to protect the doc from a malpractice suit and the doc saw absolutely no other justification for his order. The study surveyed several hundred cardiologists in the US and provided anonymity to obtain the honest reporting by the cardiologists. When the left says malpractice costs do not drive up health care cost, they are simply referring to awards, settlements and premiums. The far, far greater cost is the cost of defensive medicine done by all practitioners, including myself.

“The other part I am uncomfortable with is that the government will essentially be running the program (certainly later if not initially) much like it does Medicare. The Left cites the lower cost of the Social Security Administration managing Medicare as compared to private health insurance carriers. Again, this is a major error. That lower cost is based on the SSA cost of operation as a percentage of the entire SSA budget with many costs for Medicare generally folded into the overall budget. … when you make the adjustments, the average private administration cost is 30% less than the public administrative cost!

“The answer, to me, is to drastically correct the tort boondoggle and then to set up a system very much like the Medicare Prescription program that very clearly allows for private companies, with government supplements, competing on the Part D premiums and doing so while each company offers several alternative plans. AARP, of course, trashed the Part D program since it is quite left leaning but, in fact, Part D works very well, thank you.

“I think that if we do have a national health insurance of some kind, the premiums should be graduated based on annual income (as in gross, unadjusted, federal. income tax records of the preceding year) or establish very high deductibles, based again on income, with some relatively large deductibles (say $1000 to $2000 per year or illness for the lower income group and as much as $40,000 or $50,000 for upper income groups). High deductibles are an excellent way to reduce cost as all corporations know.”

I realize that none of these questions are easy nor are the answers obvious. Let me know what your opinion is.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. You already know my pitch. Please look to our web site for more information and insight on science/society issues like the ones addressed in these blogs. Our big sale is over but we have dramatically reduced regular prices on all of our programs for the 2010/2011 school year.

For health care issues see: DISEASE AND HEALTH. For progressive, liberal and conservative points of view on other science/society issues see: SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: GLOBAL ISSUES OF THE 21^ST CENTURY, CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRACY IN WORLD HISTORY and RESOURCES, POPULATIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE.

June 14, 2010

Some readers were incensed by my comments in last week’s News about the Gulf Oil Spill.

Dennis Conroy, retired USAID executive in California, wrote: “Your Hawkhill News of June 7 was incredulous and disgusting. No mention of the eleven men who died.  No concern for the tens of thousands of fishermen, shrimpers and other watermen with no job and the loss of their way of life. And no pity for those who depend on tourism along the coast for a living. The impact on the gulf and on these people and sea life will be felt for years.”

Robert Baxter, a Canadian librarian and teacher, wrote: “So, according to you, we can forgive the disaster, as well as other similar types of environmental pollution (Alberta Tar Sands, for one) and wars over oil in the Middle East because we don’t want to live like they did in the Middle Ages. Is that supposed to be some kind of an argument, justification or comparison? … Please stop sending me these messages, and remove me from your list of contacts. Thank you. Have a nice day.”

On the other hand I did get some compliments.

Pete Cerar, real estate agent in Dayton, Ohio wrote: “Right on Bill. By stopping drilling we depend more on foreign oil which has to be shipped to us. The spills from tankers far out weigh the spills from oil rigs by about 10 times. Again, we do things for the wrong reasons.”

And Kerry Swift, university administrator in South Africa wrote: “Well spoken Sir! There is, of course, another side to this whole debacle which has been picked up by the Spectator (UK not US version). In a recent editorial they find the constant harping on BP as ‘British Petroleum’ with heavy emphasis on the ‘British’ distasteful as it is being done to deflect responsibility away from those U.S. players, like the company that built the defective platform and in a much broader sense the US consumer’s insatiable demand for oil for lifestyle wants rather than human needs. The Spectator points out that BP has been a global player for many years and its British roots are lost in the distant past. It suggests that the Federal Government should also take the rap for this disaster. It is a kind of U.S. jingoism that is making the Brits really mad and which damages the ’special relationship’. I think it is also showing up Obama in a poor light but that’s a personal view! I never really liked the Chicago activist’s mafia moving in on the White House anyway. As you say, it’s not as if BP planned this horror show!”

I replied to critics Conroy and Baxter that I have a lot of sympathy for all of the people harmed by the Oil Spill (including BP employees, shareholders and customers). Sympathy is cheap. Planning for the future is more difficult. BP promises (we’ll see if they live up to the promises) to pay for all legitimate claims from families of the men killed in the explosion, of fishermen, shrimpers, tourist losses and any other people harmed by the spill. They are also paying right now to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for ships, equipment and workers to clean up the beaches, keep oil out of the marshes, and in general mitigate as best they can the environmental damages to the ecosystem of the Gulf and the Gulf states.

BP has the major liability for this tragedy. They are accepting the responsibility. Our federal government has responsibility too, but so far it has not distinguished itself. The governor of Louisiana, the state most affected, has begged the feds to respond more promptly to his calls for more equipment, more workers, and more help in building berms to contain the oil and keep it off the beaches and marshes. I understand that many high-tech ships from other countries that have special gear to help in oil clean-up operations are ready to help but apparently they cannot be used because of a 1920s law in the U.S. that forbids foreign ships from working in U.S. waters. This Jones Act was waived by Bush in the Katrina disaster, but presumably because of his ties to unions, Obama lets these ships remain idle. Bush was excoriated unmercifully for his supposed tardiness in responding to the Katrina hurricane damage. Obama’s response to this tragedy has, if anything, been slower and less effective.

More important than sympathy or blame or even cleaning up as best we can, is the future of oil and gas exploration in this country. That was my main point last week and I repeat it this week. My example of medieval life in the castle may have been a bit of a stretch, but I really think many people today do not understand the desperate importance of fossil fuel energy and material in our world-wide modern civilization. Not only do we depend on fossil fuels for transportation, electricity, agriculture and other energy-rich activities, they are also the base for our modern material culture from medicines to shampoo, from computers to furniture, from books to condos, iPads and baseball mitts.

Some of us older folks remember the bitter anger and the long gas lines in Jimmy Carter’s days. Those times will be a picnic compared to the future time when gas will sell for thirty dollars a gallon, our factories come to a screeching halt because they can’t get enough electricity, food quadruples in price because fertilizer becomes too expensive and unemployment hits 50% rather than 10%. Recycling, eating organic, biking to work or driving a Prius might help. But not much.

Even on a less apocalyptic note if we continue to support moratoriums on drilling in the gulf and Alaska, the immediate result will be increased imports from unfriendly nations, more support for terrorists, and risks of tanker spills worse than risks of new oil spills from drilling. The other immediate and inevitable result will be the removal of drilling rigs that presently supply a third of the crude oil produced domestically and with the removal the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many of them permanently. This will be even more of a disaster for the Gulf States and a huge increase in the already bloated unemployment rolls. To compound all this damage I just heard last week that the administration falsely claimed that a scientific panel endorsed the moratorium. Falsification of a scientific report like that is inexcusable.

Just about everyone including me is in favor of developing alternative energy sources as fast as possible. But not everyone seems to realize how long it will take for any alternative to fossil fuels to make a substantial difference. As I said in my blog, the most optimistic forecasts I have seen from experts would be two or three decades. Twenty or thirty years! That’s a long time to be unemployed. What are we going to do in the meantime? All the invective and criminal prosecution in the world against BP (and other oil-companies) is not going to help. But it might make things worse.

Let me hear from you.

Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President

P.S. Again I urge you to consider some of our own Hawkhill programs that address different aspects of these very real national problems that in one way or another all involved the crossroads of science and society. Even if you do not want to buy the complete video or DVD programs, you might want to read the scripts (at no cost) that are also published on our web site. www.hawkhill.com.

Relevant programs to this discussion are: Energy and Society, Ecosystems, Toxic Wastes, Ecosystem Cycles, Resources Populations and Climate Change and Capitalism and Democracy.

The environmental tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico is ongoing and sad. To listen to some pundits you would think it was the end of the world. It’s not.

More important, many of these pundits are using the tragedy to advance an ongoing hate-oil-companies, anti-free-market agenda that could result in environmental tragedies far worse then the Gulf oil spill. Rather than spending so much time and energy on finding someone to blame I think we should concentrate on cleaning up the mess as best we can and getting on with the job of finding new sources of energy to power our 21^st century world.

By new sources of energy I do mean solar, nuclear, fusion, hydro, geothermal, whatever. But I also mean new fossil fuel discoveries including domestic sources of oil and natural gas. And yes, all of these fossil fuel quests will no doubt mean more “drill-baby-drill.”

If you want to consider what everyday life would be like without oil and gas (and without free-market capitalism) you should read: AD 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse (Harper & Row, 1988) by Richard Erdoes. In those feudal “green” pre-industrial, pre-fossil fuels and pre-capitalist days, if you were rich enough to live in a castle (99% percent of the people were not) here is what life would be like without oil and gas.

“Lords might be powerful, but they were seldom comfortable. The castle’s heart was the great dining hall, its floor covered with straw or rushes. Bones and scraps from the long trestle table were simply thrown upon the floor and eagerly snapped up by the ever-present snarling dogs, who generously supplied fleas to both high and lowborn. Whenever the rushes began to stink of rotting scraps and dog droppings and so ‘full of vermin that they seemed to move by themselves,’ they were thrown out and replaced by fresh ones, on special occasions by sweet-smelling grasses.

“The typical castle was dark and dank. Windows were mere slits covered by parchment or small slabs of horn, as glass panes had not yet come into use. Rooms were consequently very drafty, and rheumatism was the common lot of the suffering tenants. In winter, people either fried by roasting their backsides at the fire or shivered if at a distance from the chimney place. Smoke, soot, and cinders found their way into inflamed eyes. Castles were insufficiently lighted by torches or pine slivers dipped in resin. Only the richest barons and prelates could afford candles. It was no wonder poets waxed ecstatic singing of the coming spring and the fading winter.

“People relieved themselves wherever and whenever they could, and crude scatological jokes were part of the table talk. Furnishings were spare. The residents’ few possessions were kept in a chest, sometimes covered with a pillow, which also served as a seat. Tables often were just boards laid over trestles. Long benches seated the guests, and always there was a special high seat for the lord and master at the head of the table.”

Besides the discomforts, if you were really lucky (and really rich) you might live to be as old as 40. But not without suffering and recovering slowly from nasty diseases like smallpox, bubonic plague, typhoid, cholera and pneumonia that killed your brothers, sisters, children and parents many years before.

Instead of piling on we should be thanking BP, Exxon-Mobil, Shell and the other giant oil companies and their hundreds of thousands of skilled and semi-skilled workers for their difficult and almost-all-of-the-time successful work in bringing this precious fuel up from the depths of sea and land to support our civilization. And when inevitable freak accidents happen rather then threatening them with criminal prosecution we should at a minimum be sparing with criticism and condemnation. BP did not do this on purpose. They have taken responsibility and are doing their best to minimize the damage. How many can say as much?

To repeat the obvious, our civilization desperately needs oil and gas to survive and it will need more oil and gas for quite a few decades to come before new and cleaner sources of energy can be discovered, marketed and adopted by any significant portion of humankind. Banning drilling (or crippling it with still more bureaucratic regulations) in the Gulf, in Alaska or in the continental U.S. and Canada will not be helpful. All it will do is increase our dependence on oil from places like Nigeria, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Besides exporting our cash and pollution risks to these not very friendly countries, we will be forced to depend on shipments in ever larger tankers where the risks of disastrous spills will be as great, probably greater, than the risks of drilling in deep water.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. If you want to know more about the change from feudal zero-sum economies and societies see our program THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, CAPITALISM AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.  Or the new releases RESOURCES, POPULATIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE and ENERGY AND SOCIETY.

Timothy Ferris in a new book THE SCIENCE OF LIBERTY (HarperCollins, 2010) promotes a new way of looking at political labels. He points out that the usual left wing/right wing labels are out of date. They originated back in the French Revolution when the then liberal radicals sat on the left side of the French National Assembly and the conservative monarchists sat on the right side of the Assembly.

Instead of a straight line with left-wing liberals at one end and right-wing conservatives at the other end, Ferris suggests a triangle. At the apexes of the triangle you would have LIBERAL, PROGRESSIVE and CONSERVATIVE. Classical liberals are people (going back to John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine) who lean in the direction of freedom. Progressives (going back to Karl Marx and social-democrats) lean towards equality. And Conservatives (going back to the English philosopher Edmund Burke) lean towards tradition.

Like any and all labels, of course, this oversimplifies. Individual people (and politicians) are always some unique mixture of these three trends when it comes to individual issues.  Even though I remain suspicious of all political labeling, the Ferris triangle seems to me more sensible than the traditional left-right continuum. Let’s take a few examples.

Minimum wage. Progressives favor raising the minimum wage as high as possible in order to bring more income equality. Liberals favor no minimum wage at all, on laissez-faire free-market principles. Conservatives are reluctant to change whatever we have now.

In this case I think the liberals have the strongest argument. Progressives have good intentions but many studies have shown that the higher the minimum wage, the more unskilled young workers are squeezed out of the market and left unemployed. This especially hurts young minority males who do not get the chance to take that first step on the lower rungs of the employment ladder. Of course you could abolish the free-market altogether and go to a system like Cuba where everyone has the same salary and inequality of income does not exist. You would probably also get, as in Cuba, equal poverty.

Health care. Progressives are in favor of a national heath care program where every citizen would have equal access and equal treatment. Liberals say the government should stay out of it and let the chips fall where they may. Conservatives say our present system is adequate.

In this case I think that the progressives have the better argument. Just as good roads, clean air and water, police protection, and equal access to the courts are important government benefits for all citizens, so too I think we are a wealthy enough society that good health care should be a must for all citizens. My wife and I get our health care bills paid (mostly) by Medicare. So here I agree with the progressives. It would probably be best to have a single-payer system for everyone as we presently do with Medicare, and as most European countries do with all citizens.

Education. This is one is tricky. Progressives, with their emphasis on equality, demand that we close the achievement gaps between minority and majority populations. That we produce not only equal opportunity, but also equal results. Liberals agree that we need to provide equal opportunity but we can’t and should not guarantee equal results. Conservatives demand that we provide solid content education for all citizens, minority and majority. All three have a point.

On the whole here I find myself somewhere in the middle of liberal and conservative points of view. Like the conservatives I think we do need more attention to solid content. Like the liberals I think we need to keep advancing the equal opportunity side promised by the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision in 1954.  So far as the progressive point of view goes, I applaud efforts to close the “achievement gap.” However I wish we did not put so much alarm and publicity on this particular gap. There are “gaps” in every field, in every job, in every activity.

For most people (especially teenagers and young people) sports, for instance, are far more important and far more prestigious than academic test scores. And in sports, minorities (especially African-Americans), have opened up achievement gaps every bit as wide in their favor as the academic ones where they lag behind. No one seems to be alarmed about this sports gap, why make so much about the academic test gap?

Free-markets and globalization. Here I think the conservatives and the liberals have the winning side and progressives who often oppose globalization today are simply wrong. If you define progressive as favoring equality, globalization has been a huge success. Progressives today, in other words, seem to oppose the very things that are helping to achieve their goals. A recent study found that globalization does lead to change as capitalism always has. UN statistics show enormous overall gains in countries as diverse as India, China, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil and South Africa. The World Bank reported in 2004 that economic growth in the underdeveloped world resulted in a “spectacular” decline in poverty in East and South Asia. The report showed that with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, world poverty as a whole has declined dramatically. “Never before have so many people—or so large a proportion of the world’s population—enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living,” reported the Bank.

What about the United States? Have we suffered? Actually no, we too have gained! Spectacularly. Contrary to the critics of globalization, the Congressional Budget Office reported that average wages in the United States rose between 1991 and 2005. This was the period of greatest expansion in global trade and the period when China and Mexico were blamed for taking American jobs and income. Dividing the level of income in the U.S. into five parts, the gains between 1991 and 2005 for the wealthiest fifth were indeed large, 50%. But contrary to what many think the gains for the lowest fifth, the poorest in the U.S., were even larger. They increased by 80 percent! (The gains for the three in-between middle-class fifths increased by around 20%.) In the end globalization not only resulted in truly astonishing increases in world-wide prosperity, but it has also added around $10,000 a year to the average American household income!

War and peace. Here there are so many exceptions I don’t think labels make sense. When I visited the cemetery at Omaha Beach in France a few years ago I sobbed on my knees when I saw all of those crosses. Young men who never had a chance to live the rich full life I have had. And not a single one had a political label.

In the end as my few examples demonstrate, none of the three political categories, liberal, progressive or conservative has a monopoly on “progress” In other words, you can’t bank on solving problems by reaching into your back pocket and pulling out a prepaid credit card labeled “liberal,” “progressive,” or “conservative.” Maybe in the end we should refrain from using these labels at all.

Corrections and additions:

Dr. Doo Jung Jin at the Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington kindly sent me a couple of corrections for my recent blog on experiments in Korea. Japan controlled Korea from 1910, not from 1911. The Korea War did not start in 1947 as I mistakenly wrote, but in 1950. I should have caught that last error myself because it was indeed in 1950 that my wife and I had just graduated from Antioch College and were quite aware of that war.

Another reader, Steve Gorzula, gave me a boost by agreeing with my comments on zero-sum economics and by sending an interesting article of his own on Nepal, a country right now going through painful political turmoil. His article gives a good example of win-win economics by focusing on the potential for hydro-power in Nepal that could make a crucial difference in the Nepalese struggle to move into the modern world.

Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President

P.S. The 2010 sale is over now, but for the rest 2010/2011 school year we have cut all of our regular prices by 50% or more.  Look to our web site above for bargains on top-quality relevant DVDs to help make your fall beginning a rip roaring success.

It’s a bit of a stretch perhaps but the news last week that scientists had for the first time constructed a living thing from scratch (from chemicals off-the-shelf that is) got me to thinking in a different way about what I had originally planned to write about for this Hawkhill News. Here goes.

Many people today still believe that the wealth of the country, and of the world, is like a big pumpkin pie. If I get a bigger piece, you will have to be satisfied with a smaller piece. This makes for a zero-sum world. If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Actually for quite a few thousand years that view made sense.

Agricultural-age societies for at least ten thousand years past banked on a pie of land, gold and slaves (or serfs or peasants) for their livelihood. Since these all were severely limited the only way one group could get wealthier was to steal from another group. That usually meant war.

When the scientific and industrial revolutions began a few hundred years ago the enormous leap forward in world-wide wealth made this zero-sum economics obsolete. Now instead of war, creative invention and free trade was the best way to get wealthier. But belief in zero-sum wealth did not disappear. Unfortunately it is still alive today and distorting our world views.

Some green activists, for instance, still seem to believe in zero-sum ideas. Jeremy Rifkin, one of the green movement leaders, claims that “we are going to have to learn that the more we consume the less resources are available on the earth for other human beings and other creatures.  So if we want to steward this planet for our children’s generation we are going to have to develop a green lifestyle, a green cultural movement, we are going to have to learn to use our fair share of resources and no more, we are going to have to be good neighbors in terms of the rest of the planet.”

Which gets me back to the new invention that J. Craig Venter and his associates announced last week–life. His new bacteria were created from scratch, using only simple common chemicals as the raw materials, the “natural resources.”

What would Rifkin say about this new invention? My guess is he would object as he has to most experimental work in genetic engineering. But suppose we could, as Venter just demonstrated, design bacteria (or a new plant or animal) on the computer, using only the most common simple chemicals. This new “resource” might reproduce rapidly and be able to gobble up carbon dioxide, or oil spills, or create a new fuel for vehicles, or a new material to replace paper or copper wires or lumber, or take down malarial mosquitoes, or attack cancer cells, or repair the molecules in the brain that cause Parkinson’s Disease or Alzheimer’s. Just suppose. All of these are not only possible now, but probably inevitable.

(I can already hear some saying, but what if these new bacteria get away from us and cause havoc, even catastrophic havoc? My answer: yes, we do have to keep up our guard, but would you want to give up automobiles, computers, electricity, etc. just because sometimes they do cause serious problems?)

The main point is, if and when they come (and actually some have already come) would you call the new organisms a “natural resource?” Would you want to buy and sell these resources with our neighbors around the world or corner them for only our own use and prosperity?

The point is, like most of modern resources, like most things we call wealth today, the important thing is not the simple chemicals that come naturally out of the soil, air and water, but what human sweat and creativity has made of them. One of the most important forms of modern wealth, for instance, computers, are made of the most common of chemicals, mostly silicon, which comes from sand. Ventnor’s new bacteria too are made of the most common chemicals, water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and a few other very common elements like nitrogen, sulfur, potassium and zinc.

To be good neighbors to the rest of the planet it seems to me that our best bet would be to share the information needed to create the new wealth, like computers, vaccines, plastics, scientific laboratories, schools, books, blogs. Then we would both benefit. It would be a classic win-win exchange.

Last week I used Korea as an example of a controlled experiment in history. This week I have another experiment in mind that shows in a major way how win-win economics trumps zero-sum thinking. It also shows that there is progress in the world even if delayed.

After the First World War ended in 1917 the allies were still thinking in zero-sum ways. After you win a war, to the winners go the spoils, right? They proceeded to impose harsh revenge on Germany. They took away big chunks of its territory, stole factories and mines, imposed heavy reparations and in general made life miserable for the defeated country. The result was what they could have predicted. Germans rebelled, reorganized and rearmed for the next war. And you got Hitler, World War Two and the Holocaust.

After the Second World War the United States and her western allies took a different tack, based on a different idea, win-win economics. Instead of punishing Germany and Japan we helped them rebuild their devastated cities and economy. This strategy resulted in quick recovery, conversion to liberal democratic ways of life and peaceful win-win competitive trade where both sides became winners.

Today Germany and Japan are among the world’s richest free-market liberal democracies. And the United States, contrary to some critics, is still number one–the world’s richest, most powerful, freest and most creative country. In other words, all sides over the past sixty years, victors and vanquished (with the notable exception of those states that are today still Communist or Radical Islamic) have been winners.

Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President

P.S. You still have time. The big 2010 sale will end next week on June 1. Please take the opportunity now to stock up with top-of-the-line VHS videos and DVD programs at huge discounts. 90% for the videos, 70% for the DVDs. Your students will appreciate it next fall and you won’t be sorry. I guarantee it. See our web site above for further information and to place your order.

P.P.S. For more on the connections between win-win economics and democracy see our well-reviewed program CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY. For more on the history of genetic engineering see STEM CELLS, GENETIC ENGINEERING, THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT, CLONING: HOW AND WHY, and THE GENE ON DVD.