RE: Citizens as clients/consumers
Though it may not be news to you, I was surprised by how wide-spread the language of "customer service" and "business-client" is in reference to the provision of public services. . . . Comment: that the client may not know which agency is actually delivering (or not) is a handy foil for deflecting any and all manner of pressure on the delivering agency, wundntcha say? You might think that as contracting replaces public employment, performance indicators are an instrument for wage reduction and other unpleasantness, but you would not necessarily be right. In contracting I've investigated, in local public school management and welfare, the contractor and sponsoring politicians want no part of performance data. The reason is that such data might not put them in a favorable light. In general they are reluctant to be forthcoming with any sort of data, such as cost, since it might be shown that taxpayers end up paying more for less under contracting, rather than paying less for more. It is true, as you note, that contracting diffuses accountability for performance. The public official and contractor blame each other for problems. This only reinforces my point that contracting is not necessarily consumer-friendly. I've argued that it is public employees who have more of an interest in measuring performance and making cost data accessible to the public, insofar as performance can legitimately be measured. Public employees can use this information to show how they can give the taxpayer a better deal--how labor standards beget productivity and service quality. The fact that contractors could be expected to grind down wages does not mean they should be expected to be more efficient. More often than not, a reasonable argument can be constructed and documented to debunk such efficiency claims. Many taxpayers are also workers, and as we know a pure appeal to class solidarity is not the most powerful political argument going these days. So I wouldn't write off treatments of public services addressed to customers, consumers, clients, etc. Cheers, Max
Re: 15-point essay question
Friends, To be honest, I find college towns very depressing. Down the hill from Cornell the rest of the place sucks. Of course, I'm so disgusted with higher ed that I could not bear to live among so many academics, not to mention drunken students. I've taught for a few weeks at UMASS and I found Amherst to be just too precious. State College, PA (Penn State) has a great reputation as a place to live, but I'd be suicidal in a week It is in the middle of nowhere. Plus in these towns where do you get the mix of people you get in a real city? So many professors teach about workers or race or the rest of the wrold but have only a passing acquaintance with people of color or working people, including those who clean their buildings and wiat on them in the dining hall. I've often thought that we should do what was done in the Cultural Revolution and just close the colleges for awhile. I've got a quote on my office door (I'm at home now and I cannnot remember the author.) A man asks, "Do you think the colleges have done much for the world?" Another man answers "Is it the wheel that makes the water run?" sort of sums up my view of the higher learning and by extension college towns. michael yates Thomas Kruse wrote: I heard from a friend that Utne Reader has called Ithaca, NY the best place to live in the US. BUT: I remember also a Tompkins County Labor Council (Ithaca Area) video on the enormous chasm separating "town" and "gown". University towns can be groovy places; universities are often nasty employers. I also heard whn in Ithaca that it has the highest PhD per cap. of any census tract in the US (and, given the number of anguished grads, probably highest unemployed PhD rate too, tho' the latter is speculation). Tom At 21:53 23/04/98 -0500, you wrote: The university town's fitness as a place to remain in or move to is one of the biggest little secrets in American life. I'm wondering if anyone has undertaken a systematic study of the growth and change occurring thus in the country's Eugenes and Ann Arbors, and whether some magazine or journal already addresses it. Any leads much appreciated. valis Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New Marxism list
By coincidence, inspired by the collapse of the Spoons Marxism lists, I'm about to start up a mailing list that will focus on doing exactly that - to try to move towards some synthesis across the disabling virgules in the following: old/new left, marxism/postmodernism, class/identity, "cultural"/"real" politics, particularist/universal, economics/culture, etc. Not sure of the exact details yet, though I'd like it to be born on May 1. Interested parties contact me privately. Doug I'm setting up a list myself that will be hosted at EDIN. Doug's mail-list is tied to LBO and will try to involve his subscriber base. My mail-list will be called Marxism-L and will be dedicated to the sort of non-dogmatic Marxism that appears in the pages of journals like Against the Current, Monthly Review, CNS, the NLR, etc., although it is certainly not to be meant to be an academic exchange. The moderation principles will be very much like the kind that Michael Perelman exemplifies: a light touch, until there is some problem that needs resolving. My role will be to try to raise points of discussion that I think are worth addressing. My posts here should give some indication of what I think is important, but these topics are not by any means the parameters of the discussion. In general, the kind of Marxism that Gramsci, Mariategui and CLR James stood inspire me and I try to inspire other people with that vision. I want to extend a special thanks to Nathan Newman, who is facilitating the creation of the new mail-list. He did not let the acrimonious exchanges and occasional rudeness on my part of past years and months get in the way of lending a hand on this project. This is an example all socialists should aspire to. I will keep you posted. Louis Proyect
Re: 15-point essay question
I think college towns are o.k., not that I live in one currently. Mostly, I think it depends on which town you're talking about. When I was in New Haven, it was upsetting how Yale looked like a bunch of gothic or Georgian fortresses (called "colleges") complete with moats, (ornamental) drawbridges, and battlements, designed to keep the Unwashed out. I understand that it's gotten much worse since the early 1970s (as the internal Preppie Quotient rose and the external social situation fell). In Berkeley, I liked the town more than UC. Maybe it was the town that made the university rather than vice-versa? But there were a lot of people who had become excessively adapted to Berkeley and had a very hard time dealing with the rest of the world. The politics there tends to be very insular. It does seem to be a major source of the current manias about "designer coffees" (Starbucks, born of Pete's), yuppie chow (Chez Panisse), and men wearing earrings, since those were common in Berkeley back in the 1970s, before they took hold in the rest of the US. Kinko's, which is taking over the US (and maybe the Canadian) copying business, also started there. In L.A., there's no real "college town" around Occidental College (where I worked first). It's more a collection of lower middle-class bungalows. There's also not a college town around LMU, where I currently hang my hat. It's more upper middle-class houses, a neighborhood that had deliberately excluded non-whites until very recently. UCLA also doesn't have a college town. There are very rich houses in Bel Air and other UCLA-adjacent neighborhoods, plus a consumer-oriented neighborhood with lots of movie theatres (Westwood Village). Few if any bookstores exist there, so I can't call it a college town. (It's no longer the teen scene that it used to be, due to some gang slayings.) BTW, these days the UCLA profs seem to be living way off near Simi Valley, the white enclave famous for getting the LAPD goons off the hook in the first Rodney King trial. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html "A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and human beings dear." -- R.H. Tawney.
Re: New Marxism list
Louis Proyect wrote: Doug's mail-list is tied to LBO and will try to involve his subscriber base. I'll certainly try to recruit LBO subscribers, but the whole world is welcome (with a few exceptions). Doug
Re: 15-point essay question
I have my own prejudice about college towns. Most places today are strips of freeway that connect tract houses and shopping malls. College towns tend to be older towns. In a place like Chico, I can still get around without a car. An ideal location would have a wide mix of people, bookstores, farmer's market, avoid freeways and car traffic, be ecologically sensible, had have a socialist government. But this mix seems unlikely in the near future. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 15-point essay question
I was born in Ithaca and lived there, off and on, until the age of 15. People used to wisecrack that it was the "most centrally isolated place in the United States." Barkley Rosser On Fri, 24 Apr 1998 09:08:59 -0400 Thomas Kruse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I heard from a friend that Utne Reader has called Ithaca, NY the best place to live in the US. BUT: I remember also a Tompkins County Labor Council (Ithaca Area) video on the enormous chasm separating "town" and "gown". University towns can be groovy places; universities are often nasty employers. I also heard whn in Ithaca that it has the highest PhD per cap. of any census tract in the US (and, given the number of anguished grads, probably highest unemployed PhD rate too, tho' the latter is speculation). Tom At 21:53 23/04/98 -0500, you wrote: The university town's fitness as a place to remain in or move to is one of the biggest little secrets in American life. I'm wondering if anyone has undertaken a systematic study of the growth and change occurring thus in the country's Eugenes and Ann Arbors, and whether some magazine or journal already addresses it. Any leads much appreciated. valis Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 15-point essay question
At 11:10 AM 4/24/98 -0400, michael yates wrote: Friends, To be honest, I find college towns very depressing. --snip --- We need to distinguish two things: the yuppiefication of the college culture, and universities being the only engine that keep many cities afloat. I agree that the fraternity-row-cum-yuppieville character of many college towns (cf. New Brunswick, NJ where I did my graduate work) is not particularly attractive. On the other hand, land speculators aka 'developers' and government offcials they bribed thoroughly devastated our urban landscape to the point that if it were not for the presence of universities and colleges, those cities would beacome ghost towns. Baltimore is a good case in point. The city life was thoroughly destroyed by suburban sprawl and 'block busting' (the illegal practice by real estate speculators of renting houses in 'white' sections of the city to poor black tennants whose rent was subsidized, and then using various fear mongering tactics to convince the white residents to sell their homes below their value and move to suburbs). Today, Baltimore is about 85% Black and shrinking both demographically and economically.The city stays afloat mainly thanks to the presence of colleges and universities: Johns Hopkins Institutions -- university, conservatory, and hospital (probably the largest provate employer in the State of Maryland, U of Baltimore, Morgan Staety, Coppin State - two Black colleges, Loyola College etc. True, Baltimore does not look like a college town -- even the nearest bookstore worth its name is outside the city limits in nearby Towson (home to Towson State U). The Johns Hopkins campus looks more like a country club, both visually and demographically, amidst urban wasteland. We rank #6 on the Money magazine's list of the least desirable places to live (#1 is Newark, NJ). However, if it were not for the colleges and universities, we would probably be #1 on that list. regards, Wojtek Sokolowski
Re: Foster-Harvey debate
Is it not also the case that in hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. trailer parks and similar such structures are the worst hit? Who lives in these, rich or poor? michael yates I read somewhere recently that more than a few US folks (don't recall %) believe that such storms are attracted to mobile homes and trailers... Michael Hoover
Re: IMF vote
-Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Interesting tally on the IMF funding vote in the House, from Robert Weissman of Multinational Monitor: -cut - The Dems are the party of the IMF, which isn't surprising, since it was founded under a Dem regime! With the strong support, of course, of Keynes and every other left-liberal movement in the post-World War II period. The IMF was deformed by its failure to have enough capital to be anything more than a debtors emergency source of funds, rather than the broad Keynesian stabilizer in its original conception. Marx did not like Bismarck but he supported centralization of the German state, since that was preferable to the competition of small little states. Just as Marx could attack Bismarck's actions while supporting a more centralized state, it is perfectly consistent for left activists to condemn the IMF's anti-labor policies while defending the existence of it as an institution of centralized global credit. --Nathan Newman
Suggestion for book or article appreciated
Is there a good book or article on the theory of the state you would recommend, particularly ones written in the last 10 years, and that deal with state repression, state violence within the U.S. or internally. Thanks, peter Bohmer
Re: 15-point essay question
Well, I regularly spend parts of each summer in Madison, Wisconsin, which the year before last _Money_ Magazine listed as the best place to live in the US. It certainly is a lot more fun to hang around in than Harrisonburg, VA, especially in the summer. But then, it has never been purely a college/university town, being the state capital and also having some industry, notably Oscar Mayer, as well as more recently burgeoning hi-tech stuff that may yet turn it into an Austin, Texas (the two used to resemble each other before Austin got dominated by the hi-tech industry). In any case, with poor African Americans coming in from Chicago with attendant problems and other such developments, Madison is also turning more into a more typical mid-sized US city. But it has had reasonably progressive and enlightened leadership for long periods of time (former student radical, Paul Soglin, was mayor, 1973-1979 and again, 1989-1997; its politics until recently also had that insular quality a bit like Berkeley). There is certainly a lot of whitebread, academic hypocrisy in Madison. But there are also certainly worse places in the US. Barkley Rosser On Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:10:52 -0400 Mike Yates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Friends, To be honest, I find college towns very depressing. Down the hill from Cornell the rest of the place sucks. Of course, I'm so disgusted with higher ed that I could not bear to live among so many academics, not to mention drunken students. I've taught for a few weeks at UMASS and I found Amherst to be just too precious. State College, PA (Penn State) has a great reputation as a place to live, but I'd be suicidal in a week It is in the middle of nowhere. Plus in these towns where do you get the mix of people you get in a real city? So many professors teach about workers or race or the rest of the wrold but have only a passing acquaintance with people of color or working people, including those who clean their buildings and wiat on them in the dining hall. I've often thought that we should do what was done in the Cultural Revolution and just close the colleges for awhile. I've got a quote on my office door (I'm at home now and I cannnot remember the author.) A man asks, "Do you think the colleges have done much for the world?" Another man answers "Is it the wheel that makes the water run?" sort of sums up my view of the higher learning and by extension college towns. michael yates Thomas Kruse wrote: I heard from a friend that Utne Reader has called Ithaca, NY the best place to live in the US. BUT: I remember also a Tompkins County Labor Council (Ithaca Area) video on the enormous chasm separating "town" and "gown". University towns can be groovy places; universities are often nasty employers. I also heard whn in Ithaca that it has the highest PhD per cap. of any census tract in the US (and, given the number of anguished grads, probably highest unemployed PhD rate too, tho' the latter is speculation). Tom At 21:53 23/04/98 -0500, you wrote: The university town's fitness as a place to remain in or move to is one of the biggest little secrets in American life. I'm wondering if anyone has undertaken a systematic study of the growth and change occurring thus in the country's Eugenes and Ann Arbors, and whether some magazine or journal already addresses it. Any leads much appreciated. valis Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Frederick Jackson Turner quote (fwd) from Lou P.
Forwarded message: Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:19:44 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Frederick Jackson Turner quote In-Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-UID: 524 Michael, for some weird reason this message refuses to appear on PEN-L even though I don't get a delivery problem notification. Could you please post it for me. I don't have a clue what the problem is, since my other messages have been getting through with no problem. Lou In the remoter West, the restless, rushing wave of settlement has broken with a shock against the arid plains. The free lands are gone, the continent is crossed, and all this push and energy is turning into channels of agitation. Failures in one area can no longer be made good by taking up land on a new frontier; the conditions of a settled society are being reached with suddenness and with confusion. The West has been built up with borrowed capital, and the question of the stability of gold, as a standard of deferred payments, is eagerly agitated by the debtor West, profoundly dissatisfied with the industrial conditions that confront it, and actuated by frontier directness and rigor in its remedies. For the most part, the men who built up the West beyond the Mississippi, and who are now leading the agitation, came as pioneers from the old Northwest, in the days when it was just passing from the stage of a frontier section. For example, Senator Allen of Nebraska, president of the recent national Populist Convention, and a type of the political leaders of his section, was born in Ohio in the middle of the century; went in his youth to Iowa, and not long after the Civil War made his home in Nebraska. As a boy, he saw the buffalo driven out by the settlers; he saw the Indian retreat as the pioneer advanced. His training is that of the old West, in its frontier days. And now the frontier opportunities are gone. Discontent is demanding an extension of governmental activity in its behalf. In these demands, it finds itself in touch with the depressed agricultural classes and the workingmen of the South and East. The Western problem is no longer a sectional problem; it is a social problem on a national scale. The greater West, extending from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, cannot be regarded as a unit; it requires analysis into regions and classes. But its area, its population, and its material resources would give force to its assertion that if there is a sectionalism in the country, the sectionalism is Eastern. The old West, united to the new South, would produce, not a new sectionalism, but a new Americanism. It would not mean sectional disunion, as some have speculated, but it might mean a drastic assertion of national government and imperial expansion under a popular hero. This, then, is the real situation: a people composed of heterogeneous materials, with diverse and conflicting ideals and social interest, having passed from the task of filling up the vacant spaces of the continent, is now thrown back upon itself, and is seeking an equilibrium. The diverse elements are being fused into national unity. The forces of reorganization are turbulent and the nation seems like a witches' kettle: "Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble." But the far West has its centres of industrial life and culture not unlike those of the East. It has state universities, rivaling in conservative and scientific economic instruction those of any other part of the Union, and its citizens more often visit the East, than do Eastern men the West. As time goes on, its industrial development will bring it more into harmony with the East. Moreover, the old Northwest holds the balance of power, and is the battlefield on which these issues of American development are to be settled. It has more in common with all regions of the country than has any other region. It understands the East, as the East does not understand the West. The White City which recently rose on the shores of Lake Michigan fitly typified its growing culture as well as its capacity for great achievement. Its complex and representative industrial organization and business ties, its determination to hold fast to what is original and good in its Western experience, and its readiness to learn and receive the results of the experience of other sections and nations, make it an open-minded and safe arbiter of the American destiny. In the long run the centre of the Republic may be trusted to strike a wise balance between the contending ideals. But she does not deceive herself; she knows that the problem of the West means nothing less than the problem of working out the original social ideals and social adjustment for the American nation. (Concluding paragraphs of Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Problem of the West," published in the Sept. 1896 Atlantic Monthly) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California
Re: Richard Rorty *- demise of left
James Devine wrote: I thought that the point of left politics in the 1990s was not to oppose the old left vs. the new, etc., etc., but to try to seek a synthesis, criticizing the lefts both old and new (ruthlessly, of course, to use Marx's word), but while rejecting the "bad," also trying to find the "good" on both sides and bring them together as part of a coherent whole. By coincidence, inspired by the collapse of the Spoons Marxism lists, I'm about to start up a mailing list that will focus on doing exactly that - to try to move towards some synthesis across the disabling virgules in the following: old/new left, marxism/postmodernism, class/identity, "cultural"/"real" politics, particularist/universal, economics/culture, etc. Not sure of the exact details yet, though I'd like it to be born on May 1. Interested parties contact me privately. Doug
Introducing G-DAE Online
We'd like to introduce you to the G-DAE WEB SITE http://www.tufts.edu/gdae THE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE a research institute of Tufts University offers resources for faculty and students interested in development economics and environment and energy policy economics. The following papers can be downloaded FREE from the web: ALTERNATIVES TO GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT by Richard W. England and Jonathan M. Harris Explains the major environmental, social, and economic inadequacies of prevailing systems of national income accounting and provides a review of several proposed alternatives. ARE ENVIRONMENTAL KUZNETS CURVES MISLEADING US? By William R. Moomaw and Gregory C. Unruh Environmental Kuznets Curves pose a relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth. Using non-linear systems dynamics, the authors show that historic events, policy choices and resource prices, not GDP growth, drive the transition from increases to decreases in pollution. CAPITAL CHOICES - NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF INVESTMENT By Michael E. Porter Investment links the present with the future, but the U.S. system threatens long-term growth. This essay, available only from G-DAE, identifies legal, institutional, and other problematic factors, and offers suggestions to improve decisions by owners, managers, policymakers, and institutional investors. Look for information about other G-DAE activities, books and discussion papers, including: AS IF THE FUTURE MATTERED - TRANSLATING SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC THEORY INTO HUMAN BEHAVIOR Edited by Neva R. Goodwin FRONTIER ISSUES IN ECONOMIC THOUGHT A series of books on critical themes for formation of a sustainable economy. Each book contains 3-5 page summaries of 80-90 key articles: Volume 1 A SURVEY OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume 2 THE CONSUMER SOCIETY Volume 3 HUMAN WELL-BEING AND ECONOMIC GOALS Volume 4 (forthcoming) THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK Projected future volumes will concern Power and Inequality, Fully Sustainable Development, and New Issues in Macroeconomics The Global Development and Environment Institute Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 USA http://www.tufts.edu/gdae -- -Laurie Laurie Dougherty Global Development and Environment Institute Tufts University Medford, MA 02155 http://www.tufts.edu/gdae [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 15-point essay question
I heard from a friend that Utne Reader has called Ithaca, NY the best place to live in the US. BUT: I remember also a Tompkins County Labor Council (Ithaca Area) video on the enormous chasm separating "town" and "gown". University towns can be groovy places; universities are often nasty employers. I also heard whn in Ithaca that it has the highest PhD per cap. of any census tract in the US (and, given the number of anguished grads, probably highest unemployed PhD rate too, tho' the latter is speculation). Tom At 21:53 23/04/98 -0500, you wrote: The university town's fitness as a place to remain in or move to is one of the biggest little secrets in American life. I'm wondering if anyone has undertaken a systematic study of the growth and change occurring thus in the country's Eugenes and Ann Arbors, and whether some magazine or journal already addresses it. Any leads much appreciated. valis Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Citizens as clients/consumers
Dear PEN-lers: Though it may not be news to you, I was surprised by how wide-spread the language of "customer service" and "business-client" is in reference to the provision of public services. Below two "[snips]" to illustrate: the first from a GAO report on the performance of private incarceration contractors (for-profit jailors) and the problem of quality service; the second from a chat by Gore on the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). I am interetsed in the latter (GRPA), beceasue it is behind the push to implement quanitfiable performance measures for the drug war (like body counts in the days of old). Good morning shoppers! Tom -- 1. GAO Report Federal Prison Industries: Limited Data Available on Customer Satisfaction (Letter Report, 03/16/98, GAO/GGD-98-50). Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on whether Federal Prison Industries (FPI) collects and maintains data that would enable it to make reliable, generalizable statements about the satisfaction of its federal agency customers with respect to the quality, cost, and timely delivery of FPI's products, focusing on: (1) if FPI has data, either from its management information system or other sources, to support overall conclusions about how federal customers who buy and use its products and services view their timeliness, price, and quality; and (2) whether agencies who are among the largest buyers of FPI products and services monitor FPI's performance the same way they do commercial vendors in terms of timeliness, price, and quality. GAO noted that: (1) FPI has been the subject of substantial debate over the years, much of which has centered on the timeliness, price, and quality of its products; (2) missing from this debate have been convincing data that show whether federal customers who buy and use FPI products and services are satisfied with FPI's performance; (3) FPI has a variety of management information systems that allow it to track customer orders and react to complaints; (4) however, FPI does not have a systematic or structured process for collecting and analyzing customer satisfaction data so that conclusions can be drawn about customer satisfaction; (5) FPI's efforts to gauge customer satisfaction have been limited to relying on narrowly scoped surveys as well as other efforts; (6) without convincing data on customer satisfaction, FPI: (a) remains vulnerable to assertions by its critics that federal customers are dissatisfied and, in turn, should no longer be required to buy FPI products; and (b) may miss opportunities to improve its operations by having better data on how federal customers view its performance in the areas of timeliness, price, and quality; (7) furthermore, FPI's lack of a systematic approach for collecting these data appears inconsistent with contemporary management principles used by both public and private sector organizations; (8) regarding agencies' efforts to monitor FPI performance, major customer agencies that GAO contacted stated that they consider price when awarding contracts and monitor factors like quality and timeliness while administering contracts for all vendors, including FPI; (9) it should be recognized, however, that the contracting officer's leverage in resolving procurement problems is different for FPI than for private sector vendors since the rules that typically govern contracts with private sector vendors do not apply to FPI; (10) in this regard, on September 13, 1993, the Acting Attorney General issued a legal opinion that FPI, as a seller of goods to the federal government, is not covered by the Federal Aquisition Regulations (FAR), and must be treated under its authorizing legislation FAR Subpart 8.6; (11) furthermore, agencies cannot use past performance information to deny awarding a contract to FPI because, under the law, FPI is a mandatory source of supply; and (12) however, at FPI's discretion, agencies can use it to negotiate with FPI factors such as product quality or delivery time frames, or to seek a waiver from FPI so that they can buy from a commercial vendor that can better meet their quality or delivery requirements. -- 2. Gore Comments Rallying Around the Performance and Results Act By Stephen Barr Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 24, 1998; Page A25 [...] The Results Act, which has been phased in over the last five years [...] seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs. Under the law, federal agencies write "strategic plans," set goals, develop measures of progress and write annual reports on how well they performed against their plans. Gore, who views the law as a cornerstone of his "reinventing government" crusade, gave a detailed speech, laced with references to Industrial Age hierarchies and the Internet. "In the long run, we have to build agencies -- and, I might add, a congressional committee structure -- that work more on horizontal than vertical
Liebig's Law and the limits to growth
In 1842 an obscure professor of agronomy in the German provincial town of Giessen, published a book in English which would revolutionise agriculture. Marx would say that Justus, Baron von Liebig (1803-73) was ‘more important than all the economists put together’. Only one other natural scientist had as great an influence on Marx, and that was the biologist Charles Darwin. Liebig's discoveries put soil science on its modern footing. He analysed plant photosynthesis and found how plants fix nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the air. The lab he set up pioneered work on artificial fertilisers. By putting it on a scientific basis, he helped make possible the capitalist agriculture which complemented capitalist industry. But Liebig himself was no great fan of capitalism. He believed it led to a damaging divorce between man and nature, and it was from Liebig's work that Marx drew the conclusion that in the long run capitalist agriculture will lead to falling yields, desertification and loss of biodiversity. Even more than his work as a soil scientist, Liebig's lasting achievement was to postulate that any complex system is always limited by a single boundary condition. Liebig's Law is fundamental to most modern ideas about carrying capacity and the limits to growth. It states that the productivity and ultimately the survival of any complex system dependent on numerous essential inputs or sinks is limited by that single variable in least supply. Thus, the lack of any essential soil nutrient limits overall soil fertility. The shortage of iron constrained development of the English economy in the 18th century. Removing such bottlenecks attracts resources on a scale ultimately dependent only on the limits of the whole economy and the available capital. But accumulation can never eliminate bottlenecks entirely. Instead, expanding economies which constantly transform their technical basis, will always press against new limits to growth, struggle to overcome them and sometimes succeed, sometimes not. Liebig's Law has proven fundamental to understanding the cyclical dynamics of capitalist accumulation, but what the Law points to is not the existence of external limits to growth, as most environmentalists assume, but to the limits which occur immanently, as a system's dynamics evolve. This is true of any natural ecosystem, from soil itself to the large scale interactions between species coexisting and competing within biomes. Liebig's Law points to the existence of interdependences within holistic systems. It is not a simply question of one nutrient or mineral in short supply determining the growth in numbers of all populations within a system, but rather of the way the relative availability of components conditions the complex interactions of the organisms making up an ecosystem and without any one of which the integrity of the ecosystem as a whole may be compromised. One mineral or nutrient is in short supply relative to the reproduction and evolution of the whole system. Feedback processes may and often do act to ensure that equilibrium is maintained by ensuring the continued existence of a limiting factor. Well-functioning ecosystems do not normally overstress the species inhabiting the common space by allowing populations to bloom to the point of collapse and die-off. Rather, as Eugene Odum says, the tendency that seems to characterize natural ecosystems is that of maximizing the quality of the overall environment for the mutual benefit of all species within it. For Marx, too, the limits to capitalist accumulation were immanent, not external, and derive from its own operation. This is questioned not only by environmentalists but some Marxists who have adopted Green arguments that the 'limits to growth' are external and are posited by objectively-pre-existing environmental constraints, for example finite resources, or the limits potentially imposed by environmental impacts such as global warming resulting from anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. The exponents of a Green-Red synthesis have actually adopted arguments from ecology which are mistaken in their own, terms, however. In fact it is Marx who is closer to the underlying thought: capitalism too can be regarded as a closed, self-sufficient system, evolved and governed by its own laws. There is no need to resort to externalities to explain either capitalist crisis or the limits to capitalist growth. To reassert the holistic nature of Marxism does more than underline its affinity with holistic ecology. It is also to demolish post-modern critiques of Marxism which deconstruct Marxism (and the emancipatory task) into particularities which deny hegemony and finally history. Thus Harry Cleaver has written about hegemony and counter- hegemony: "Two great mistakes in the Western revolutionary tradition have been the obsession with totalization and the idea that system must follow system. Revolutionaries, despite their rejection of capitalism's imperial efforts
