Tune My Heart

Today, after church, we spent a healthy chunk of the Lord’s Day engaged in something that would definitely not have fallen under the Old Testament Sabbath rules: cleaning poop off of our week-old chicks. Newly-hatched birds, you see, often wind up with a problem called “pasting up.” This means, essentially, that their excrement clings to their rear end and eventually seals the exit off. Left alone, pasting up can lead to death and expose the vulnerable chick to all manner of mean-spirited teasing.

To remove the offending material, we pinch at the mass with a damp cloth, hoping to soften it sufficiently that it’ll fall off. Unfortunately, this process can often end by pulling the baby down out of the bird’s little rear, exposing it to all manner of mean-spirited teasing. This seems to be a no-win situation.

With this round of chickens, we had only a few significantly pasty butts. Several of them, however, were monstrous, as if the chicken were trying to grow a second head. We did our best to gently pull the offending mass off without dousing the shivering little critters in water. We failed. At present, we have four birds struggling to recover from the trauma we inflicted on them. They’re sequestered in a plastic basket to keep the others from trampling them. I’ve provided them with a bit of feed, but they’re showing no interest in eating. Periodically, I pick each one up and give it a drink of water. I’m hoping that time and a nearby heatlamp will allow these four to rejoin the flock.

As I watch these four kids, heads slouching and eyes half closed, I’m all too aware of my inability to sustain life. Yes, I can provide the heat, food, water, and protection that these chicks require to have a shot at recovery, but I cannot make the heart continue the beat, the lungs continue to respire, or the life force to stay within that little feathery form. I’m reminded of Hebrews 1:3Hebrews 1:3
English: World English Bible - WEB
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In their Wilderness experience, the people of Israel learned time and again not to rely on their own capabilities but to trust in God. They couldn’t swim the Red Sea or fight Pharaoh’s army, but they could rely on God’s protection. They couldn’t feed themselves in the desert, but they could eat God’s manna, even receiving a double portion on the sixth day of the week. They couldn’t fight in their own power to take the land of promise, but they could (and eventually did) go into the land in the power of God to sweep across the land like a tidal wave.

What does all of this mean? Does it mean that I should go turn off the brooder lamps for my chickens? I don’t think so. Does it mean I should leave the chicks to their own devices when the perils of pasting up start to mount? Definitely not. I think it just means that I need to recognize that, despite my own hard work caring for my flock, the true miracles–the miracles of white meat, brown eggs, and little yellow chicks–will be worked by God.

I’ll let my Sabbath-breaking guilt go now. After all, pasting up is probably the poultry version of your ox falling into a ditch. But I won’t let this message go today.

The phone rang–or rather vibrated–at 6:35 this morning. I didn’t recognize the number, but answered anyway. A pleasant voice on the other end identified herself as the Bates City Post Office with a box of chicks for me. She could have simply said, “This is the Bates City PO” and then been silent. The chirping in the background would have told me what I needed to know.

After four months in a poultry-deprivation state after the unpleasant “dog events” of the fall, we’re back in birds. Fact is, we’re knee-deep in birds. We ordered 100 Buff Orpingtons, receiving 109 out of the hatchery’s generosity, and 10 Golden Duckwing Phoenix, for Livie to raise into exotic show birds. Right now, 119 day-old chicks are chirping around the end of our garage, pecking at the letters on the newspaper beneath their feet and pooping everywhere.

I have to say a word about that hatchery. There’s another hatchery, let’s call them Bubba McBubba Hatchery, from Iowa. I’m sure they’re nice folks, and I have dealt with them previously, but Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, Missouri has my business today. They’re the closest thing to local for me, residing in the same state, but that’s only one advantage. Cackle does not plaster their ads around magazines with the same promiscuity as McBubba. As a result, they’re able to offer a marginally lower price. I think of McBubba as the Geico of hatcheries. Geico apparently spends $800 million a year in advertising. This gathers them a lot of business and perhaps economies of scale, but it doesn’t mean that they offer a better product. McBubba’s ads don’t do me a bit of good. They don’t produce a better chicken, nor even a better price. And all 119 of those birds arrived alive and vigorous. I’m all about Cackle.

With this single parcel from mid-Missouri, we’ve obtained for ourselves the means of production. We can produce eggs, chicken meat, and, perhaps best of all, more chickens. On the other hand, we have not become self-sustaining on the chicken front. I don’t foresee a time when we’ll be able to feed our chickens from our own produce, but that’s okay. Owning the means of production does not mean becoming utterly independent from the rest of the world. It means becoming a part of the production cycle beyond simply supplying the raw material known as labor.

Do I get all of that out of 119 chirping birds? Yes, but much more importantly, I get the joy of watching these creatures grow up and do what God created them to do (and selective breeding made them much more efficient at doing). The calendar may say that spring is another three weeks off, but at Shamayim Hill, it has officially arrived and is hanging out in my garage.

As noted last week, we ordered chickens recently. Today, March 1, is the blessed day when 100 Buff Orpington and 10 Golden Phoenix chicks will be pipping their way out of the tiny, dark, lonely enclosures that held them, only to be dropped into a crowded, dark, decidedly communal enclosure that will bring them to Shamayim Hill from Lebanon, Missouri.

The brooding zone in the garage has been readied. The starter feed is purchased and sitting in the trunk of my car. The watering founts are ready to be filled. I’m simply giddy with anticipation. Hopefully, photos will be forthcoming in a day or so.

If you’ve read my previous postings over the past few weeks, you’ll know that I’ve been pretty well consumed with the arguments within Hillaire Belloc’s The Servile State. The thumbnail version of this book goes something like this: capitalism being naturally unstable, it will tend to transform into a system where the non-owners are legally required to work for the owners, while the owners are obligated to provide for the well being of the non-owners.

Belloc also suggests that another possible outcome is the re-institution of slavery, but dismisses this possibility. The Christian morality underpinning Western society, he suggests, would not countenance such a move even if it were desirable.

Although Belloc exhibited a healthy dose of prescience in this 1912 book, understanding the true of collectivism, for example, he seems to have missed the mark in the aspects of the servile state. He did not foresee, apparently, a world in which the dispossessed not only are not required to work for the possessed but are frequently paid for not working. On the other hand, he seems to have predicted far too much generosity on the parts of the capitalists, who not only do not take of the dispossessed but actively work against them in many cases. One can hardly imagine the offering of crippling consumer debt as the act of a benevolent patriarchy.  On the other hand, this “care” needs only appear to be in the best interest of the average person. Consider the welter of laws, programs, agencies, and other apparatus, mostly located in the government, designed to save the average person from bad outcomes.

• We provide Social Security for those too impecunious to have saved for retirement.
• We provide state-paid health care to those with the least potential productivity.
• We mandate the wearing of seatbelts.
• We restrict the consumption of tobacco.
• We provide unemployment benefits.
• We call automobile executives before Congress when a few of their cars–remarkably safe cars, by and large–demonstrate some design flaws, apparently to protect the rank-and-file from these pesky vehicles.

I could go on. The capitalists are not expected to care for the dispossessed. They are instead expected to pay the taxes that allow the government to care for them. For the most part, corporations can off-shore jobs, downsize, rightsize, union-bust, and otherwise treat their employee relationships like a Hollywood marriage to their hearts’ content. Their role  is to generate the taxes, either directly or indirectly, that allow the sugar-daddies of the government to provide this supposed protection, claim political success, and maintain power, prestige, and position. So apparently Belloc had that part right, so far as the United States in 2010 goes, but what of that other side of the equation, the compulsion to work.

What Belloc could not reasonably foresee in 1912 was the staggering explosion in productivity that the twentieth century witnessed. As I write these words, U.S. unemployment stands just below 10%. That’s high, but let’s imagine for a moment that we were to cut out all of the absurd, unproductive jobs that did not exist in 1912. What if we cut out all of the bank employees, investment professionals, insurance shills, and other financial artists? I’m not suggesting that 100% of them ought to go, but we could certainly do without the ones who spend their time attempting to sell products and services that simply are not needed. What if we were to suddenly unemploy everyone who works in cable television, in television production, in advertising and marketing, in the diet and exercise industry, and in other technology-induced jobs in our sedentary society. Again, I’m not suggesting we eliminate all of these people. I’m instead suggesting that we don’t need nearly as many of them as we have and Belloc could not have foreseen the swell in unproductive employment.

On the other hand, Belloc did not foresee the staggering reduction in hands, feet, and eyes required to bring in an agricultural crop. He did not imagine the behemoth machinery that allows a single farmer to cultivate not scores but thousands of acres. He did not imagine the automation that robotics and computers would bring to our workplaces. He did not foresee the power of telecommunications and efficient shipping to take work away from our shores and place it in Taiwan, India, and Malaysia.

In short, the lack of work, one partially hidden by the millions of nonsense jobs performed by Americans, in our society makes the compulsion to labor unnecessary. If we tried to force everyone to do meaningful work, we’d all be working four hours a day. Because of this lack of work, Belloc’s compulsory labor has not materialized, or perhaps it has simply morphed over time. The typical American does work at the most indispensable job in our culture: consumption.

During the nearly two years of the so-called Great Recession, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard consumer spending described as the fuel for our economic engine. There was a time when American economics ran on agriculture, on manufacturing, or on trade. Today it runs on spending. Your job, whether you know it or not, is to consume. That act will keep the money flowing into the corporations, the taxes flowing through the government, and the supposed largess and protection of the state flowing to mere mortals like you and me.

At the risk of sounding like a communist, I’m going to go back to Hillaire Belloc’s thoughts in The Servile State for another serving. I should point out that while these words might make me sound like a communist, nothing could be further from the truth, something I hope will be clear by the end of this little ramble.

In the book, Belloc argues that the natural outcome of a capitalist system is for those who own the means of production to eventually operate under a different set of rules from those who do not own those means. Those rules, he suggests, will wind up making the dispossessed subservient to but protected by the capitalist. I have to wonder, a year-plus after the historic bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009, Belloc would still feel the same way.

Let’s imagine two entities, a bank and an individual, facing a fatal financial situation. When an individual reaches bankruptcy, creditors have a claim, controlled by the bankruptcy court, on the assets of the person. I can’t expect to walk away from bankruptcy–not that I have any intention of ever going there–hanging onto all of my assets. If I owe $150,000 and have $100,000 in assets, it seems only reasonable that those to whom I owe money would get at least that 2/3 of the debt. Creditors do not have to keep me solvent in order for my $100,000 in assets to have that value. They’re going to take the money and run.

Now let’s go back to our banks, which the government so kindly kept afloat. Why did they do this? Banks are fairly transparent entities once you get a look at the books. Their assets and liabilities are pretty easily valued and reasonably liquid. That’s considerably different from, say, an automobile company. Bonds, deposits, and loans can be much more clearly evaluated than can research in the pipeline, brand loyalty, and factory equipment.

When various huge banks were declared “too big to fail,” the government was declaring them worthy of operating according to a different set of rules. Essentially, the powers in Washington said this:

You’re too big to fail. Therefore, we’re going to loan you buckets full of money at a ridiculously low rate. You pay it off as soon as you can and then everybody will be happy. Sure, you’ll be back raking in obscene profits long before the common people have stopped suffering from this mess that you’ve created, but that’s okay. You’re too big too fail.

What they might have said is this:

 Go clean out your office and take the sign down. We’ll cover your stupidity, but we’re going to take everything of value that your company possesses. We’ll sell off the things of value to financial institutions that maintain some scruples. We’re freezing all of your personal assets until we can assure ourselves that you haven’t profited illegally from this debacle. Have a nice day.

Had our government taken this tack, my guess is that a few of those monster banks would have said, “Oh, maybe we’re not in that big of trouble after all.” Others would have crumbled, but so what? Were the assets of Bank of America worth more just because Bank of America remained in business? Were their liabilities less toxic because they kept their sign up? I don’t think so.

Where Belloc seems to have missed in his predictions is in failing to recognize that cronyism and mutual back-scratching can outweigh the tendency toward the servile state. What we have today is a system where a few people own the assets and seem to feel no compunction about selling the masses down the river in order to preserve their profits.

Perhaps Belloc would say that I’m reading him too simplistically. Perhaps he’d think that the transition to the servile state is incomplete. Regardless of whether Belloc was right or not, his call to a distributivist economy should speak to us today. When I’m mortgaged to this or that bank, I’ve consigned myself not only to be dispossessed of the means of production but to have a negative capacity for production. Even my future labor, the only thing I have to sell, I’ve already given away. The more that I take back the means of production, the more I can rise above the tug of war between the capitalists and the proles.

Workers of all nations unite? Nah! Workers of all nations head to a farm.