Remember that picture from school textbooks the one of life evolving on earth. On the far left was a single-celled organism and “progressing” up through the eons were sponges, mollusks, fish, and then mammals.  The mammals started as rodent-like things and they advanced to the epitome of complex perfection: man, modern man. That picture is the problem, or more precisely, the social mindset behind the picture and the ignorance of scientific fact.

By evolution or creation, the result was the same; at the top of the pyramid the ultimate creature was human. Humans are the most complex, thinking, social creatures — it doesn’t get better than this. If the conclusion is all things progress to complexity and man is the most complex (i.e., successful) by self-fulfilling logic, man is it.  And all observations need to bend to this conclusion.

However, instead of the orderly march to complex perfection that the image suggests, the reality, as shown in the fossil record, are a series of “experiments” in complexity; most failed rather quickly. It left a ragged set of branches with mostly dead-ends on the family tree. The complexity experiment has been run many times in life’s history. When the perfect conditions exist that allowed the relatively unstable experiments in complexity (complex organisms, like dinosaurs that can’t adapt easily to changes in their environments) to run their course, perturbations knocked life back to the simple and adaptable.

Complexity is not better; it is just another strategy and a risky one in a changeable environment. Complex organisms are in fact the deviant outliers. Complexity has its advantages but the pitfall seems to be that complex creatures die out after relatively short runs. If you were graphing it, most successful life would be massed at the y- axis (bacteria) and the outliers would be all the complex creatures straining out there over time several standard deviations from the norm.

In the long haul, the life-theater is filled with an audience of bacteria who applaud the next experiment as it entertains in its walk across the stage; dinosaurs; marsupials; and mammals. Not since trilobites have we seen such a display — they would say.

But in defense of the idea that we are the most advanced species on the planet and truly different form all other lesser forms of life, humans can fall back on a number of reassuring facts; the we are the only species that ...

• Humans are the only species to use tools – FALSE – Porpoises, crows, apes and others do so too;
• Humans are the only species to use meta-tools (tools that make other tools) – FALSE – Crows, parrots and perhaps others;
• Humans are the only species to use language, name ourselves – FALSE – whales, porpoises do this as well;
• Only species to pass on learning to the next generation – FALSE – Ravens, crows, (surely others);
• We can’t even claim wars, or emotion or, irrational behavior or ability to end life as we know it to our list of why we are the bomb.

But when all else fails and all the evidence demonstrates otherwise, we have the game winning play: We are the only species to have a soul. That’s it, we have it, and they don’t. Just because you can’t see it, can’t prove it exists and it has this slippery quality of existing in some humans and not others, it is still enough to justify our actions. We are superior; we should be able to do what we want with all other life just as we did with the other creatures without souls: African Slaves, Native Americans, Gypsies, Jews…

By: Douglas R. Eger

I was not raised a foodie. Actually, it was quite the opposite. Growing up, vegetables came from a can, boiled until gray and paired with meat that was cooked to a complimentary color. Everything was quick, convenient, and sterile. Sauce was important—it was the flavor part. Ketchup was a key sauce. I didn’t mind, because as a hungry kid I focused on quantity and didn’t know what I was missing. I had not yet connected environmentalism, economics, and love for animals with the food I eat.

Fast forward to a dinner at White Dog Café in Philadelphia. The duck was as advertised, and maybe even better. The waitress had said to us, “You know how duck always has that sort of texture, a bit chewy? Well this duck is like nothing you have ever tasted.” Sure enough, this duck was a first for me. Immensely flavorful, no hint of a gamey taste, and with a texture that was more like a filet and almost buttery to cut. It was simply amazing. The reason? This duck came from a farm a few miles away, a small farm where the ducks are not only not in cages, they have free range with access to a pond where they swim, eat, and live, well, like ducks. 

Here I was, eating duck for the first time instead of a variation on a duck product manufactured at the end of an efficient agribusiness system. The difference was as pronounced as the difference between those rubbery Whamo Super Ball®-like tomatoes and the heirloom tomatoes found at a summer farmer’s market. 

This led me to look up the farm from which the White Dog Café bought their duck and, while surfing, I happened upon Blue Hill Restaurant. My wife and I had eaten at this NYC restaurant and remembered it as a great meal, which led me to Dan Barber (owner of Blue Hill) and what he had been thinking, doing, and living, and I was amazed. Here was a man after my own heart and soul.

Dan spoke at a TED conference and described his quest for flavor and sustainability. His example was his quest to find the perfect fish. The more you know, the more you care, the more complicated it is to eat well, eat ethically, and eat sustainably. But when you get real flavor, real food, it usually comes with the bonus of being better for the animal, good for the farmer, and far better for you from a health and incredible real taste standpoint. 

It was the payoff of Dan’s talk at TED that brought me to the most amazing discovery of all. Dan walked the audience through the process of finding a sustainable fish that tastes great. This is not easy, as so many questions must be asked. How is the fish caught if wild? Did it come from the right place, and are the fisheries managed there? If farmed, how is it farmed? Does the farming harm native fish or the environment? Is chicken fed to farmed salmon? (Yes, it often is.) I have been on this search of finding healthy ethically produced food myself and it can be very frustrating. It drives many waiters, chefs, and grocery store personnel crazy when we ask real questions about our food, but asking these questions is worth it. Each time we ask, each time we buy real food, we are voting for something better.

Dan’s truly flavorful and sustainable fish came from a farm in Spain called Veta La Palma. This farm is like no farm I have ever seen. It is my dream mash-up of a wildlife sanctuary and farm. Here, wildlife, fish, grain, and beef are raised in what is called extensive farming, which is the opposite of intensive factory farming. It is productive (for both humans and wildlife), humane for the food animals it produces, and beautiful. The farm produces real, tasteful, and nutritious food. 

The idea of this blew my mind. I am accustomed, unfortunately, to farms that smell horrible, treat animals like “things” in an existence that makes the Saw films look like ethical treatment, and plants just rows of biological production units in what was once soil but is now a chemical brew of fertilizer, pesticides, and fungicides, stretching for mile upon mile of biological desert. The idyllic farm of Normal Rockwell and the farm subsidy propaganda are no more. In place of this ideal are factories—industrial farms that are as noxious as any 1960s oil refinery. These industrial plants produce calories, but not food. They claim to “feed the world” while mining the life out of the land, economy, and people. It is no coincidence that we have reversed the costs of healthcare and food. What we once spent on food we are now spending on healthcare, with healthcare expenditures increasing geometrically.   

So why don’t we have more farms like Veta La Palma, those on Blue Hill’s list of suppliers, or the one that raised the duck for White Dog Café? In addition to being fed factory food, we are being asked to swallow a cynical myth: Organic farming, or extensive farming, could never feed the world. 

The proponents of the status quo industrial agriculture argue that if you indulge in taste, care about animal welfare, and believe in job creation, you are stealing from the mouths of those less fortunate, both here and abroad. It is this false, dismissive, condescending, and cynical myth that flips a human virtue—caring—into a trap of acceptance. It is “known” that organic farms are “less” productive and cannot “feed the world.” If you believe otherwise you are a granola cruncher living a 60’s mythology. Yet each year organic products find more shelf space, more consumer acceptance. And for the first time in 100 years the number of farms has increased in the U.S.

Let’s break down the argument against sustainable agriculture. First, no one should feed the world. The world should feed itself, and it should do so sustainably. It does no good to use factory farming to mine the productivity of the earth, destroy jobs, and concentrate wealth in one geography while encouraging destructive practices and unsustainable population growth in another.

Second, cheap food is not only not quality food; it is expensive if you account for its true costs. If we accounted for the health costs of eating non-food food (think Cheetoes), the loss of jobs factory farming inflicts and the destruction of air, water, and wildlife resources—cheap food is very expensive.

Third, organics and the like may not be as productive in terms of yield, but they are far more productive in units of nutrition per acre, job production, and decreased healthcare costs. What they mean when “they” say organic or extensive farming doesn’t economically scale is that a few companies cannot maximize and control the production, distribution, and processing of food. This concentration may create short-term economic gain for a few but does long term damage to the environment, our health, and our economy.  

Fourth, the biggest knock on organic, slow food, is that it is labor intensive. Labor intensive means that people have jobs. One headline bemoaned the fact that it might take 30 million people to produce quality organic food for all in the U.S., stating this as if employment were a BAD thing. The production and distribution of quality food should be the one area of our economy that is a bastion of local production, local value creation, local prosperity, and local jobs. With unemployment at 9.8% and healthcare costs rising 30% every year, I argue that the one thing we cannot afford is to not have organic foods and that we should never, ever try to feed the world. As nice as it sounds to “feed the world,” it is an amazingly cynical and dangerous goal.

By: Douglas R. Eger

I was having breakfast with one of the genuine Wall Street Masters of the Universe, the type that Congress or even the President calls out for having too much power, influence and compensation. We had not met before, and one of the first things he said to me was that he, in fact, never made anything, never started anything, but he was very, very good at making money. I have a theory that most people, upon meeting them, will tell you what they’re all about within the first few sentences, and I felt this statement was a positive data point for my theory.

This particular Master of the Universe is unquestionably bright and successful in terms that Wall Street measures—he has made a lot of money for himself, his bank and, I hope, for his clients. The conversation was fueled with truly amazing stories of the power one holds when one can finance, or not finance, others’ ambitions. Even with my 10-to-1 ‘inflation’ ratio (all Wall Street talk is greatly exaggerated when openly discussed—a $1 million deal is $10 million, and so on), he was involved in huge deals.

We were meeting about a small (very small) deal that normally should not have been of interest to any Master of the Universe, but the potential was there for amassing prestige and social points that earning money simply does not accomplish; how perhaps doing the right deal or giving away money en masse might accomplish. And somewhere in the conversation, the talk turned to venture capital. Suddenly, watching the mind of a Master of the Universe at work had become something more like a National Geographic special on Orcas: an awesome, truly amazing creature who suddenly grabs a full-grown sea lion and flips it like a bloody toy—the scene is suddenly very serious. One has to watch it unfold, of course—all the while feeling conflicted, as the Orca is amazing but so is the sea lion.

You see, this Master was talking about how all the VCs were “toast.” He went on with intensifying energy: “We are not going to give them any more money. They didn’t perform. We can invest the money better directly, put it to more productive use. If a company isn’t making money, then it doesn’t deserve funding.” He mentioned all the major names in venture capital and how they themselves would soon be flung like bloody toys by the real powers that be, cut off from oxygen—meaning they would be cut off from his (and he did say “his”) capital.

He is not alone, really, in this view. There are those that still look at the whole Internet Bubble as justification that capital was “wasted” and that the orgy of easy money produced some sexy but not real businesses. A former CEO of a big-box retailer I had dinner with was certainly lodged in this mindset, enjoying the satisfaction of feeling superior—the Internet Bubble had burst and the world was safely back into the box, or box stores, if you will. He said that Apple, although “sexy,” wasn’t a real company like Microsoft. I tried not to choke on my food, then asked why the market had recently valued Apple over Microsoft. It was fashion, again like the Internet Bubble, was the reply, and all one had to do was look at who had more cash. It was interesting to me that an American manufacture of hardware had surpassed a software company in market cap and that the cash difference at the time was $16 billion versus $20 billion. This was an argument over profitable companies and not even Web 2.0 dreamscapes, but it illustrates a mindset.

I have always been an idea person, frequently in the role of asking for money for some start-up or film or other project. In our society, those who need capital are the lesser ones and those that have it superior, until an idea works and becomes a Facebook or Apple or Genentech. I value, and I think society should value much more, those that see an idea and say, “Here is my money, my firm’s money, let’s try to make that happen.” They take the risk, and when it works, everyone wins—investor, entrepreneur, and society. When it doesn’t work, we as a society still gain from that experience.

We are awash with cash in the world today; something like $82 trillion in global financial assets. There was $70 trillion before the recent financial crisis, and the bigger, safer banks run by the Masters of the Universe did manage to reduce that number by half. Since then, the world rushed back with value creation, and now the Giant Pool Of Money (a phrase I love, from Planet Money/This American Life) had grown to an even larger-sized ocean of $82 trillion. Amazing.

That money, though, isn’t doing what we really need it to do. It is trapped in really big funds that need to invest really big amounts into relatively “safe” investments. I was looking for $30 million for a deal recently, and the biggest problem was that the request was too small—“Thirty million? We need to look at deals north of $250 million for it to make sense” was a common response.

And therein lies the real problem we have today. It isn’t efficient to move money to small deals—be it investment in a new start-up or small business lending. The big pools of cash need big places to invest, while our economy needs smart people taking smart risks, accepting the fact that some of those projects won’t work. Or we can wait for the big pool of money to get larger and so pressured that it forces another idea like CDO’s and other exotic derivatives to be conjured so that the pressure can be released and big chunks, ocean sized chunks worth of cash can move and those moving it can get paid a small bit that ends up being a huge number—and Wall Street can keep paying out $170 Billion in bonuses or more a year. I don’t begrudge success at all, I applaud it—but this success and wealth concentration comes with a high price to our society. When those that founded Apple, Intel, Google and so forth earn huge rewards, so do their investors and society is enriched by greater employment, less income inequality and the creation of opportunity building infrastructure.

The Internet Bubble decade from 1990 to 2000 was an amazing time in the United States. Venture capital investment went from $2 billion a year to a level where, in one quarter in 1999, $200 billion was put into VC funds and thus into a whole host of ideas. It was a rush of money thrust toward the Idea People, and they did what Idea People do—they pursued their idea to see if it would work. Some ideas did; most did not. But in the process, the world changed, and for a decade, capitalism truly joined forces with democracy as never before. If you were able to write your idea on a napkin, you might just get a million or ten to see if it worked. What ensued was the one of the most prosperous times in our country’s history. It fueled the largest growth of the middle class, produced a federal budget surplus, and allowed unprecedented fluidity in the job market. Was capital wasted? Sure—does an oak tree “waste” thousands of acorns to sprout ten oaks and build a forest? Yes. But jobs were created, wealth was created, infrastructure built and taxes paid.

But the adults, the Masters of the Universe, want to terminate those that fueled this boom, the VCs and the Idea People behind them, and put the capital to “productive uses.” If they knew what ideas were productive (if anyone knew what would be productive), then it would be easy. It isn’t. Risk has reward and failure as bookends. When you make a mistake in a start-up, it may be individually painful, but the financial ecosystem handles it with aplomb; make those mistakes that were amplified by the Masters, and you have the entire world economy in a tailspin (from which we are still recovering).

The response to this financial wreck? The Masters want a system where they, a very few, decide what is and isn’t working. This is about as wrong as when government tries to make the call. Regulation, you say? Well, that is a whole other subject for another discussion.

I came to finance via ecology, so I always default to what has worked for millions of years. Nature is successful, it is brutal, and it is wasteful. Nature is a market economy. Efficiency is the first sign of an unhealthy ecology; one species doing extraordinarily well is an outlier of disease, perturbation and decline, and is also a sign of an unhealthy economy. Profits are inefficient, venture capital (or any risky) investment is inefficient—but it is healthy.

In the guise of “regulatory reform” and “prudent investing,” the giant pool of life-sustaining capital will slosh around, trying to find a way out of the Master’s dam; meanwhile, the Idea People will dry-land farm until the next monsoon.

By: Douglas R. Eger

“I can’t believe you’re a Republican.…” It wasn’t intended to be an insult, but when she leaned forward and delivered it, it seemed as if being a Republican was akin to being a child molester or murderer, and one should feel shocked and unnerved to actually sit next to one. However, the subtext was the unsaid compliment: It’s because you seem so normal and a good person and someone I could like, not like the enemy you’re supposed to be.

Meeting for the first time, one friend delivered the above comment to the other. Since we were at dinner after the screening of a film about child soldiers in Uganda (somehow a “liberal” cause), a Republican obviously shouldn’t have been there. This was like snow in July in DC—just wrong. It goes both ways, of course: Democrats are really just communists in socialists’ clothing and they too must be feared, nay defeated, or we will lose whatever greatness the country once had.

And therein lies the most profound danger of political parties: the “them and us” profiling and prejudice that would never be accepted anywhere else in our society.

Parties live for Battleground States, Red/Blue Divides, liberal or conservative labels and litmus tests. In a party system, you need to beat the other side—label them, demonize them, destroy them—not just win. It is not primarily about governing or ideas or solutions—it is The Game, the ideals being team mascots.

What it certainly isn’t about is choice, something you would hope for in a democracy that claims to adhere to free market principles. In Cuba and China, you can vote for the party, or not—that is your singular choice. But here, we are fortunate—we can vote for either party. Double your pleasure, double your fun. In a world of almost endless product choices, innovation and creativity, we get two choices. Red or Blue. Chicken or Fish. Friend of the bride or friend of the groom.

Imagine if major corporations each had two factions within, caught in endless battle (sometimes the Red team’s gaining ground, sometimes Blue) and that The Fight was the objective, far more important than the product or service delivered. They would all fail and soon be out of business. Yet we take this as standard operating procedure for governance.

Even the President of The United States (all states) had to stand up like a coach after his team lost the big game and confess to the press how it felt to lose big in a midterm election: “Now, I’m not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like I did last night.” And in NFL action today….

This is our President who is supposed to represent all of us, not this party or that party. But each and every politician lives in a two-party world—a win or lose mentality. No matter that we have major issues to contend with; what’s important is the box score: how many seats in the House, how many in the Senate, Governors’ races…who will have the power to lord over the other “team” until the next election?

The only time partisan rancor does get put aside is during extreme emergencies. Something must happen quickly, urgently. Unfortunately, that something is usually a not-well-thought-out reaction (since we’re not used to having the teams play for the same side), ripe with unintended consequences. Even if that something is right, it will soon enough be contorted into ammunition for pounding the other side once “normal” resumes. But, such is the nature of parties.

Because we seem to have always had them, maybe we don’t see them for what they really are or believe that there is an alternative. Instead of thinking Democratic Party or Republican Party, perhaps we should be thinking National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) or Communist Party of the Soviet Union to see the hazard. The vitriol commonly spewing forth from our own party leaders, fanned by “the country’s 24-hour politico pundit perpetual panic conflict-onator” (comedian Jon Stewart’s brilliant description of 24-hour cable news), is perhaps the truer nature of political parties than the seemingly benign perception we have been led to believe we can’t live without.

Which should beg the question: Why do we have political parties in a democracy anyway? Political parties, after all, are about consolidating power and forcing adherence to the “party line”—an anathema to the ideals of representative governance.

Maybe the Nazi and Communist parties were the outliers, and it’s just the confluence of the digital revolution (cable news and the Internet generation) that turned our own good parties into bad actors. It’s a new thing to have angry, nasty, incessant partisan fighting. Or is it? Perhaps the badness of parties has been around for awhile longer, as in George Washington longer [bolded and bracketed items are the author’s]:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations [Red State, Blue State; North vs. South]. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty [Hitler, Stalin, Mao].

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it [Tea Party].

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms [news scroll: ALERTS that are not alerts], kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

“There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”

—George Washington, part of his 1796 farewell address to the nation after not accepting a draft to a third term.

The warning in 1796 would seem worth heeding today, as our political parties grow daily more dogmatic, led by increasingly extreme factions pushing one-dimensional characters to the stage as acceptable candidates. The absolute and limited choice of Red or Blue is particularly dangerous at a time when the country has a desperate need for problem solving and leadership.

In a democracy, shouldn’t we be able to look at individuals and decide who best represents us without a brand name behind them—R or D? Shouldn’t all politicians be independent and able to represent nuanced ideas/solutions or proffer accurate statements of the real problems?

Then again, how would we know who to agree with as an electorate? With no brand affiliation, we might have to pay attention to the individual, the idea, and the proposed solution. That might take more than a 30-second TV commercial with patriotic music to herald the good politician followed by sinister music, odd mood shots and black-and-white photography to depict the obviously evil opponent.

Maybe the problem in government isn’t all about money, or ideology, or voter apathy. Maybe we need to try something drastic, like a democracy without party intervention.

It certainly couldn’t be worse than what we have today.

By: Douglas R. Eger

TSA full-body scans, U.S. military, explosives, and unemployed dogs. The connection:

The U.S. military has spent $19 billion on advanced methods to detect explosive devices to discover that the most effective technology has been with us for thousands of years—the canine nose. It turns out, a dog and human handler are 60% more effective in finding explosives than the latest and greatest technology, according to Lieutenant General Michael Oates, the commander of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO).

Two to three million dogs enter shelters each year and 60% are euthanized; ergo, at least 1.8 million highly efficient and cost effective explosive detectors (and wonderful dogs) are destroyed each year.

Given the recent uproar over full-body scans (overblown with media hype as it were), the concerns expressed do point to the fact that very expensive radiation-emitting scanners are not wildly popular, nor is the intrusive pat-down alternative. In contrast, a K9 detection team can do a walk-by sniff and you’re on your way.

I for one enjoy seeing the Beagle Brigade run by U.S. Customs and the Department of Agriculture to search out contraband fruits, vegetables and drugs. At train stations in NY and DC, dogs routinely patrol for explosives while passengers mill about. It is one of the joys of train travel: you don’t have to pass through security, unpack, disrobe and be subject to a scan.

We should have more dogs employed, less destroyed. In the process, high-quality human jobs (dog trainers, handlers, caregivers) would be generated, less outrageously expensive technology would be required, and we could take one giant step forward to better security, less intrusive screening, and more employment—for dogs and people.

A win-win, I would say.

By: Douglas R. Eger