Malvina Burstein

On the 19th of November 2010 my friend Malvina Burstein passed away. She was a Holocaust survivor, though she was never in the death camps but was instead someone who did some heroic things during the time when the Nazis were killing nearly every single Jew they could get their hands on. I think of her everytime I visit her wife. Her grave is near that of my wife and I always say hi to her when I visit my wife. It has no headstone. I remember where it is because her husbands grave (Max Burstein) is right next to it. I always put a stone on it when I'm visiting her. And it makes me sad that she is forgotten, apparently by her own children and friends. But I do not forget her. I don't know what day her yartzeit is but today is close enough for this year. I'd been thinking of her and then I saw a memorial to another hero of that time who died this week and it reminded me of her while I was near a computer. Gariwo net summarizes her experience:

"Malvina was from Trebisow, in Czechoslowakia. When the village was invaded by the Nazis she closed her milliner's shop and hid in a cellar for one year. In 1942 she reached Budapest thanks to forged documents. Here she met other Jews." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

She told me she made a living as a seamstress. I think she said she made hats. She told me other stories too, including one story of one German Nazi officer who seemed to have a crush on her and how she was able to use that to help her stay alive. As she also told me (Washington Post Reports):

"A Jew could exist in Hungary at that time," she told The Washington Post in 1981. "I had illegal papers and no visa, but I got along. You had to keep well-dressed, look clean and neat, with nail polish and everything." [Post Article]

She had to act like she wasn't afraid. She seemed a fearless person to me. She smiled for us, she and my wife got along like mother and daughter. And My wife's mother ("La Suegra") loved her too. My Mother In Law didn't want to visit the retirement home however, she didn't want to move to one and those places gave her the heebie jeebies. So we'd pick Malvina up and bring her to the house or go to a restaurant. She needed to get out of the place. My Mother in Law could speak Yiddish with her. She adored her.

"One of them managed to obtain hundreds forged work permits for non Jews by ordering them on the phone from the national printing institute, by pretending he was a prominent industrialist. [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

He goes on:

"Malvina, who was smart and good-looking, accepted to run the risk of life to fetch these permits for three times, saying she was the secretary of the faked enterpreneur.[http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

The Nazis and their European Allies from every single country operated their project of murder by starting with dehumanizing and denying citizenship to Jewish citizens. Non citizens had nowhere to go but Gas Chambers. British, French and US colonies wouldn't take them. If they coud make it to Israel the British would put them in concentration camps on Cyprus if they captured them. Or sink their boats before they reached Israel. The Mufti of Jerusalem was in Berlin egging on Hitler to finish the job. Rommel's target was Israel. People forget this.

"Most of the people who received the permits survived and fled to Israel. After the war Malvina emigrated to the United States where she ran a quiet life in the shade. She spent the closing time of her life in a resting house in Maryland." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

My wife and I knew her from the Synagogue and we visited her frequently in the the retirement home she moved to when she left her house. Her house in Silver Spring was less than a mile from mine. One year we spent time during Sukkot in her Sukkose Shelter soon after we moved to Maryland from DC. My wife and I adored her.

"The woman who took 1,500 Hungarian Jews into safety during the Holocaust passed away at age 97." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

Malvina was also a good painter. Here she is with my wife and one of her paintings:

They sleep within feet of each other. I believe I have that painting and one other. She was a marvelous painter too.

I miss them both. I really want to get a memorial stone for Malvina however. I know she's there, but who else does? I've got more photos but I have to either scan them off of old fashioned pictures or find my backup disks. I think I'll blog on her every year til it's my turn to join my wife.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111906477.html

Further reading on the "homecoming" survivors got from non-Nazi Europeans:

Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48

When Malvina tried to return to Trebisow after the war she was treated vilely. She never shared the details with me but with another interviewer from 2005 she said (see above Beyond Violence reference):

"After the war, I traveled to see my house. We had a big house. I came back and the woman [the maid before the war who was the caretaker] hit me" and said "why didn't you die with the rest of the people"[http://books.google.com/books?id=hem3AwAAQBAJ&dq=Malvina+Burstein

Malvina called the police and "she hit me again in front of a policeman and he didn't do anything." Malvina wasn't the kind to be intimidated. She stayed long enough to get her house back, then "sold" "cleared" her house and left the country. I don't think she looked back. The choices were the USA or Israel. And for many USA had entry barriers. She married Max Burstein. Had children and lived (more or less) happily ever after.

Further Reading:

http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504844 (terrible picture)

E Pluribus Unum - We are stronger together

I can't resist arguing with trolls. Been doing it since the 90's when I didn't know what a troll was yet and had a friend who was a rational seeming Libertarian. Over time he revealed his underlying ideology as completely useless and distorted. At first I thought he knew what he was talking about and rarely challenged him, but eventually I realized that he and that entire ideology was full of snit. Those ideas put him in charge of a reform movement and then sabotaged that reform movement. I've since seen the same thing happen to the Occupy movement. I blame libertarianism for sabotaging reform efforts since the 70's. It's not that libertarians are bad people, but their ideology is an astroturfed ideology made up of astroturfed straw designed to subvert real change for the 99%. Other folks, thankfully can provide the details, but the point is that I have found that whenever I argue with doctrinaire libertarians I'm arguing with trolls. The core of libertarianism is extreme selfishness and individualism.

What they did do was to turn me back to rereading source materials. Been reading up on Locke, Paine, the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers. There are a lot of them and one can't read them thoroughly unless one does it over a period of time. I've come to be in love with most of the founders. Scoundrels, curmudgeons, romantics, sometimes corrupt. If I romanticize them it's not as paragons of perfection but as human beings.

We are stronger together.

Robin Hood and Liberty

There was a tradition of piracy that informed our country from before the first colonies were officially planted. And our democracy owes as much to pirates and Indigenous, Robin Hood and Blackbeard, as it does to the Athenians and Romans. Robin Hood legends aren't contemporaneous with the legends around the Magna Charta for no reason. In real life authorities steal, and law abiding citizens get painted into outlaw corners. The Yeomen with their bowmen won their liberties with their bows and arrows. Robin Hood embodies that fact. The core of democracy isn't the militia, it's the General Assembly that the institution of militia enables. Towns and yeomen couldn't demand rights just because it was the right thing. They could demand rights because aristocrats have their roots as military commanders and can't force people to fight for them without their consent all the time. It isn't the power of the militia to shoot at aristocrats or cut off their heads that protected common rights for citizens -- thought that helped. It was the fact that aristocrats depended on raising troops from among the common people -- and they had to make deals. When the Aristocrats forced King John to sign the Magna Carta they were making a deal of exchange with him, and they had to make deals with their commoners to have the force to enforce that deal.

Unity and Liberty -- Sectional Conflict

There has to be a balance between central government and local government or their is conflict. And it's a two way thing. Hamilton explains why we want a "union" rather than divided neighborhoods and tiny warring states in his early writings in the Federalist Papers. In Federalist 6, Publius (Hamilton) notes the purpose of a unified Federation is to prevent war between States, quoting Abbe de Mably:

"An intelligent writer expresses himself on this subject to this effect: 'NEIGHBORING NATIONS (says he) are naturally enemies of each other unless their common weakness forces them to league in a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC, and their constitution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors.' This passage, at the same time, points out the EVIL and suggests the REMEDY." [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed06.asp]

I suggest people actually read Hamilton in 6 through 15 as he explains the value of a Union to our liberties. We see how fractuous our country can be, without a Federal Union that factionalism would have been expressed in even more violent and bloody wars than we saw in the Civil War. More likely also we'd have central governments that live on conquest, funding their armies with loot drawn from the citizenry. We are trending towards something like that now, but that just argues for reforms. Hamilton's argument for Union was that Union provides a check on local jealousies and rivalries. Without a Union things would be far worse and ordinary citizens would have fewer liberties.

Unity and Liberty -- Local Tyranny

Hamilton argued that we needed a strong Federation to move the focus of government back to legislation for the benefit of the individuals of the commonwealth. Even in his time individual states tended to legislate for the benefit of the legistlators and the principle people of their state. Results such as the Whiskey Rebellion or Shay's rebellion come from legislation that disregards or even oppresses the majority of the citizens for the "private, separate advantage" of the few. And coercive states suffer that risk:

"The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist." [Fed 15]

We see this even with the "new" constitution he proposed. States treating some of their people like garbage and legislating for the benefit of local business barons rather than for the benefit of their commonwealth. But his remedy was in the power of a Supreme Court to uphold legislated rights and liberties and limit the power of states to fight one another or to oppress their own people. His entire argument about the history of intrastate conflict was to impress on the people the value of Union over disunion and civil war. We have either the choice of:

"COERCION of the magistracy, or by the COERCION of arms."[Federalist 15]"

We have seen the value of the "coercion of the magistracy" in remedies to segregation in the South and other misbehavior by state power against ordinary citizens. Our current civil rights laws reflect Hamilton's vision of replacing the risk of war and internal conflict with just courts. We can improve on this, but the benefits fo the principle involved are obvious. Hamilton reiterates this point over and over again. And in Federalist 22 he says:

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."[Federalist 22]

And it's pretty obvious that he saw the Federal Government as a collaborative Unity where the Federal Government would check the states and the people would check the Federal Government and oversee officers at all levels of government.

Unity and Liberty -- Militia

Hamilton worried more about the ineffectiveness of the militia than it's effectiveness. Armed citizens are helpless individually against a corrupt and centralized Professional Army. We fought the British and might have lost the war but for an organized and centralized Militia. Militia supplemented with professional training and reserve capabilities is the equal of professional armies in defending the country but alone it is inadequate even for that task. It can be inadequate for invading foreign nations -- but that is something anathema to the vision of our founders and of most of us. And Hamilton warned in Federalist 26 that prohibitions on Standing Armies are insufficient.

"The Bill of Rights of that State declares that standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to be kept up in time of peace. Pennsylvania, nevertheless, in a time of profound peace, from the existence of partial disorders in one or two of her counties, has resolved to raise a body of troops; and in all probability will keep them up as long as there is any appearance of danger to the public peace."[Fed 25]

Which is why we have a National Guard that requires the State Governor to get permission of the President to use it. The Story of Pa pre-Constitution is also why these "foreign entanglements" we have now are toxic. Eternal warfare is even worse than keeping a standing army in time of peace. And historically we've seen time and time again how folks who are very stentorian (loud) about the constitution when it is convenient, treat it like toilet paper when they are afraid of, say, minorities. Police used in SWAT formation against demonstrators are essentially a standing army being used to repress dissent.

"The conduct of Massachusetts affords a lesson on the same subject, though on different ground. That State (without waiting for the sanction of Congress, as the articles of the Confederation require) was compelled to raise troops to quell a domestic insurrection, and still keeps a corps in pay to prevent a revival of the spirit of revolt. The particular constitution of Massachusetts opposed no obstacle to the measure; but the instance is still of use to instruct us that cases are likely to occur under our government, as well as under those of other nations, which will sometimes render a military force in time of peace essential to the security of the society, and that it is therefore improper in this respect to control the legislative discretion." [Fed 25]

Hamilton as an elitist saw a revolt by ordinary farmers and workmen as alarming. But there are times when revolts should alarm anyone such as when insurrectionists start engaging in lynchings and "ethnic cleansing" such as happens in the South. At such times a non-representative militia is as likely to be an agent of repression as an agent of liberty.

"It also teaches us, in its application to the United States, how little the rights of a feeble government are likely to be respected, even by its own constituents. And it teaches us, in addition to the rest, how unequal parchment provisions are to a struggle with public necessity..." [Fed 25]

The revolts mentioned were popular insurrections and the people involved should have been able to elect leaders and overthrow the government with elections, but many of them didn't have the right to vote. In the end, even with military forces they won the right to vote and the government made at least some concessions to them. The reason that happened is that they were needed in order to make any kind of military possible. The people are a check on both Federal Government and State Government -- to the extent that they can assemble generally and develop some unity.

The value of Militia is their connection to democracy. The original militia muster, was also the time when ordinary people could assemble and petition for their needs. Local Democracy has always been associated with the need to defend the state and pay it's bills. We are stronger together and divided we are weak. United we guarantee our liberties at the same time we provide for the general welfare. Divided we fight, die, are oppressed and destroy the tools of our happiness.

Further reading; Please read the Federalist Papers!

The Garner decision illustrates need for Community Policing

The police cite the "Broken Window" theory when justifying police murders, but the Atlantic article they cite doesn't support the argument that police should be arresting people for minor crimes to prevent bigger crimes. The article was talking about how the way to prevent bigger crimes is to have community policing that keeps the locals feeling safe. As I noted in my previous post [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-broken-windows-theory-was-corrupted.html]. The Atlantic quote is:

"one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing."

The article talked about the importance of on the ground policing "community policing", where the purpose of local constabulary is to maintain order and not just to make arrests or enforce top down laws. The Broken Glass theory before being distorted was premised on the very obvious observation that. Broken Glass theory was about the important of not letting "untended behavior go on in communities because:

""untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle."

It was tendered on the importance of police and communities being "community."

"The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself. The police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control. On the other hand, to reinforce those natural forces the police must accommodate them. And therein lies the problem"

But of course the "Broken window" theory applied was opposite. Instead of focusing on the need for police to provide local order it focused on two roles mentioned in the article

Many citizens, of course, are primarily frightened by crime, especially crime involving a sudden, violent attack by a stranger. This risk is very real, in Newark as in many large cities. But we tend to overlook another source of fear—the fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.

And instead of regarding these people as citizens to be helped off the street and treated, the police began looking for ways to eliminate them. Sometimes literally.

Nevermind that the article was talking about the need for legitimacy, intimacy and involvement of police and being part of the community. The Atlantic article had talked about how even white police could patrol black neighborhoods if they knew the neighborhoods:

"The people were made up of "regulars" and "strangers." Regulars included both "decent folk" and some drunks and derelicts who were always there but who "knew their place."

The key is to respect the integrity of neighborhoods. And that is not what the police are doing. Choking citizens is not community policing. Though Staten Island is closer to community policing than what happened in Cincinnati or Ferguson.

I go into what I think we should do in more detail in The Neighborhood and the City The Village and The Town and We need local community government.

Sources:

http://www.lantm.lth.se/fileadmin/fastighetsvetenskap/utbildning/Fastighetsvaerderingssystem/BrokenWindowTheory.pdf

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-broken-windows-theory-was-corrupted.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-neighborhood-and-city-village-and.html

We need local Community Government

The Prince and I

The Prince and I

 

The prince and I shared a little time

As Six year olds do when in the adults world.

A child as smart as a whip with a winning smile.

And as always with such children,

I was blessed with his company.

 

He played video games with my children,

who are old adults now, this boy could be my grandson

...and I'd be proud.

Young, respectful, active, well behaved, not loud.

 

I gave him some attention as I give all my children.

But adult matters haunt my heart,..

I kept them private, my burden.

But we played a little. He shared his lego "gun"...

And "shot me" a few times, and I pretended to die.

But inside my heart felt like I would die.

A few days before, a boy with a toy was murdered by police.

A little boy who this boy reminded me of, I had to hide my tears.

It wouldn't have been fair to beat him with my fears.

 

If I could extend my heart to protect him I would

Boys like him will play with toy guns...

...but in our world it can be fatal.

His mother will never buy him a toy gun...

A "cop might shoot your eye out."

Elinor Ostrom and her 8 principles of Managing A Commons

Elinor Ostrom was a Nobel Prize winning economist who did extensive work on the reality & concept of the Commons. She died in 2012. This post is technical and is meant for wonks and for later reference. I'll be citing it in future posts. [Obituary in New York Times]

Eight Principles

The Economist writes a report on her that notes:

"IT SEEMED to Elinor Ostrom that the world contained a large body of common sense. People, left to themselves, would sort out rational ways of surviving and getting along. Although the world's arable land, forests, fresh water and fisheries were all finite, it was possible to share them without depleting them and to care for them without fighting. While others wrote gloomily of the tragedy of the commons, seeing only overfishing and overfarming in a free-for-all of greed, Mrs Ostrom, with her loud laugh and louder tops, cut a cheery and contrarian figure.[The Economist]

Elinor Ostrom did the work that is necessary for real progress. Where others prefer to make heros of heels, mythologize reality and form conclusions and then look for justifications, she used scientific method to analyze reality and draw generalizations that would help confront it. When premises didn't hold, she re-examined them. And the null hypothesis myth of a "tragedy of the commons" turns out to be such a myth.

Years of fieldwork, by herself and others, had shown her that humans were not trapped and helpless amid diminishing supplies. She had looked at forests in Nepal, irrigation systems in Spain, mountain villages in Switzerland and Japan, fisheries in Maine and Indonesia. She had even, as part of her PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the water wars and pumping races going on in the 1950s in her own dry backyard."[The Economist]

She saw examples of how folks used common resources well, and how they used them badly. But she saw commonalities for when it was used well:

All these cases had taught her that, over time, human beings tended to draw up sensible rules for the use of common-pool resources. Neighbours set boundaries and assigned shares, with each individual taking it in turn to use water, or to graze cows on a certain meadow. Common tasks, such as clearing canals or cutting timber, were done together at a certain time. Monitors watched out for rule-breakers, fining or eventually excluding them. The schemes were mutual and reciprocal, and many had worked well for centuries. [The Economist]

And:

"Best of all, they were not imposed from above."

What works best of all is local governance, not central governments:

"Mrs Ostrom put no faith in governments, nor in large conservation schemes paid for with aid money and crawling with concrete-bearing engineers. “Polycentrism” was her ideal. Caring for the commons had to be a multiple task, organised from the ground up and shaped to cultural norms. It had to be discussed face to face, and based on trust. Mrs Ostrom, besides poring over satellite data and quizzing lobstermen herself, enjoyed employing game theory to try to predict the behaviour of people faced with limited resources. In her Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University—set up with her husband Vincent, a political scientist, in 1973—her students were given shares in a notional commons. When they simply discussed what they should do before they did it, their rate of return from their “investments” more than doubled." [The Economist]

The key here is the principle of subsidiarity, but not in the top down hierarchical (and bureaucratic manner) that modern governments have organized by since the days of the Assyrian Empire, but this concept of "polycentrism" is the notion that local people know what is best for local assets and need to be respected.

“Small is Beautiful” sometimes seemed to be her creed. Her workshop looked somewhat like a large, cluttered cottage, reflecting her and Vincent's idea that science was a form of artisanship. When the vogue in America was all for consolidation of public services, she ran against it. For some years she compared police forces in the town of Speedway and the city of Indianapolis, finding that forces of 25-50 officers performed better by almost every measure than 100-strong metropolitan teams. But smaller institutions, she cautioned, might not work better in every case. As she travelled the world, giving out good and sharp advice, “No panaceas!” was her cry.

I suspect her worldview was as informed by the "Small is Beautiful" book by EF Schumacher as mine has been. [Economist] Indeed she was part of a tag team with her husband Vincent Ostrom who died in 2012

8 Principles for Managing a Commons

 

Ostrom has 8 principles:

Summary
Ostrom Principle:	The principles restated:
Principle 1:	Well-defined boundaries
Principle 2:	Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions
Principle 3:	Collective-choice arrangements: Representation and Participation in rules and decision making
Principle 4:	Locally representative Monitoring Officers
Principle 5:	Graduated sanctions; measured and just sanctions for misbehavior.
Principle 6:	Conflict-resolution mechanisms; informal adjudication locally and formal adjudication of disputes available
Principle 7:	Recognition of rights; those involved in managing something have a stake in it that needs to be respected. And people have a right to self government.
Principle 8:	Nested enterprises
Source:	http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art38/main.html

Principle 1. Define clear group boundaries.

The article "Ecology and Society" [http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art38/main.html] defines these 8 principles with some detail.

Actual wording: "Well-defined boundaries"

“This principle, as Agrawal (2002) notes, originally stipulated the presence of well-defined boundaries around a community of users and boundaries around the resource system this community uses. Each component helps to internalize the positive and negative externalities produced by participants, so they bear the costs of appropriation and receive some of the benefits of resource provision. Each component was coded separately, with community boundaries coded as principle 1A and resource boundaries coded as 1B (Table 3). There was strong evidence for 1A and moderate evidence for 1B. Pinkerton and Weinstein (1995:25), for example, state, “Exclusion of outsiders from fishing space was the main mechanism used by the villagers to control fishing effort. This is one of the most common and universal mechanisms found in community-managed inshore fisheries.” [http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art38/main.html]

This principle is key to providing orderly and fair access and usage of a common resource.

 

Principle 2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.

Actual Wording: "Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions"

The principle restates why we need to have local government involving locals. Ostrom uses technical language to note:

"Ostrom’s (1990:92) second design principle refers to the “congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions.” Like the first principle, this principle stipulates two separate conditions that Agrawal (2002) recognizes. The first condition is that both appropriation and provision rules conform in some way to local conditions; Ostrom emphasizes local conditions of the CPR, such as its spatial and temporal heterogeneity. The second condition is that congruence exists between appropriation and provision rules. We found very strong empirical evidence for both principles." [Ecology and Society Article]

To use legal language local rule is necessary to governing any well managed commons, and that includes local government of neighbhorhoods and business branches. These observations support the principle that local representative (Republican) government should be a right.

Principle 3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.

This too supports the notion that local government should be representative, "with consent of the Governed". Ostrom writes:

Principle 3: Collective-choice arrangements

"Ostrom (1990:90) states, “most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.” This principle is in the spirit of a large amount of literature on the importance of local knowledge in natural resource management (e.g., Berkes et al. 2000), in which local users have first-hand and low-cost access to information about their situation and thus a comparative advantage in devising effective rules and strategies for that location, particularly when local conditions change." [Ecology & Society]

Principle 4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.

Ostrom's Principle 7: Minimum recognition of rights

In the University article this is labeled as 7 and it "stipulates that external government agencies do not challenge the right of local users to create their own institutions. An external government agency imposing its own rules on a community managing a CPR may suffer from a government failure of the kind discussed by Hayek (1945) and Scott (1998) if the externally imposed rules do not correspond to local conditions." [Ecology and Society Article]

These principles imply that both outside authorities and internal authorities must be accountable to the people of the community.

Principle 5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior.

Ostrom: Monitoring

"Principle 4A stipulates the presence of monitors, whereas 4B stipulates the condition that these monitors are members of the community or otherwise accountable to those members. Monitoring makes those who do not comply with rules visible to the community, which facilitates the effectiveness of rule enforcement mechanisms and informs strategic and contingent behavior of those who do comply with rules. Empirically, principle 4A was moderately well supported, whereas 4B was very strongly supported by the case data."

Now "Monitors" is essentially two roles; that of enforcing order, and that of adjudicating minor disputes.

"Monitors may not perform satisfactorily if they do not directly benefit from improved resource conditions. Thus, it may be important that monitors are accountable to those who most depend on the resource. Gautam and Shivakoti (2005), who studied two forest systems located in the Middle Hills of Nepal, found that the ability of local users to oversee monitors’ performance affected resource conditions. In Jylachitti Forest, local users hired two people for regular monitoring and paid them through contributions from each member household. In Dhulkhel Forest, guards were also hired, but they were paid by local authorities. Whereas Jylachitti local users were engaged in supervising the guards’ performance in controlling timber extraction levels, this was not the case in Dhulkhel, where overextraction was becoming an issue by the end of the study." [Ecology and Society Article]

Monitors have to be of the community and benefit in some way from performing their jobs.

"We have already seen that people prefer to spend more time negotiating consensus than establishing and imposing sanctions. Solidarity in this case cannot simply be interpreted functionally as being directly about cooperation over the mechanisms of water resource management. It is comprised of complex networks of cooperation based on family structure, labour-sharing arrangements and numerous interrelated associational activities such as church groups, savings clubs, and income-generating groups. The village apparently most successful at collective action regarding water supplies was also remarkable for its other cooperative activities, for its success in agricultural production and for the frequency and cheerful creativity of its public social occasions. Cleaver (2000:374)." [Ecology and Society Article]

Complex networks collaborate and when they do that bonds societies and is not just a business decision.

Principle 6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.

(Study Principle 5): Graduated sanctions

Principle 5 stipulates the efficacy of graduated sanctioning systems. Sanctioning deters participants from excessive violations of community rules. Graduated sanctions progress incrementally based on either the severity or the repetition of violations. Graduated sanctions help to maintain community cohesion while genuinely punishing severe cases; they also maintain proportionality between the severity of violations and sanctions, similar to the proportionality between appropriation and provision rules from principle 2.

Fairness means that you have to give people a chance to participate and measure punishments.

Principle 7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.

[Principle 6 in study]: Conflict-resolution mechanisms

"Principle [7] states that systems with low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms are more likely to survive. Conflict over an exhaustible resource is inevitable in CPR management, necessitating the presence of established mechanisms for conflict resolution to maintain collective action. This principle was moderately well supported by the empirical data. In the acequia irrigation communities in northern New Mexico, for example, there is a long history of recourse to external court systems under different national regimes to resolve inter-community conflicts. Several agreements reached by territorial probate courts more than 100 years ago are the basis for functioning, modern water-sharing agreements today (Cox 2010)."

The purpose of conflict resolution is to "de-escalate" situations and make sure that the system functions in a win/win manner and is not a win/lose conflict situation.

Principle 8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.

Study Principle 8: Nested enterprises

"Principle 8 states that in successful systems, “governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises” (Ostrom 1990:90). As for principle 7, which also deals with cross-scale institutional factors, the empirical evidence for principle 8 was moderately supportive."

The idea that power should be centralized is so obviously counter-functional but in most actual governments is subverted by ambitious authorities. The best way to adjudicate this is to ensure that smaller systems are part of larger systems and that the relationships between the parties are well enough defined so that each party involved doesn't have incentive or time to infringe on others.

"Many scholars, particularly those focusing on pastoral and irrigation systems, have stressed the importance of nesting smaller common-property systems in larger and still larger ones, given the high probability that the social systems have cross-scale physical relationships when they manage different parts of a larger resource system and thus may need mechanisms to facilitate cross-scale cooperation (Lane and Scoones 1993, Niamir-Fuller 1998). Part of the motivation for this principle, then, relates to principle 1 (user and resource boundaries) and is stated by Hanna et al. (1995:20) as: “It is important to ensure that a property rights regime has clearly defined boundaries, and that to the extent possible, those boundaries are consistent with the natural boundaries of the ecological system.” It is not just user and resource boundaries that are important; a match between these boundaries may be important as well, and institutional nesting is an important way to accomplish this in many situations." [Ecology and Society Article]

This nesting is necessary in order to maintain proper relationship boundaries and reemphasizes importance of establishing clear ones in the first place. It is a principle of Federalism at it's best.

"One additional clarification regarding principle 8 is that the nesting may occur either between user groups and larger governmental jurisdictions, or between user groups themselves. Many traditional irrigation systems, for example, contain multiple levels of organization that mirror the branching properties of an irrigation system (Coward 1977). This is somewhat different from co-management arrangements between user groups and a larger government body, described in extensive publications (Berkes and Folke 1998, Berkes 2002, Yandle 2006, Cinner et al. 2009). Intercommunity connections can be thought of as horizontal linkages, whereas connections between multiple jurisdictional levels can be thought of as vertical linkages. It is our understanding that, when she formulated this principle, Ostrom (1990) was referring to vertical linkages. We would generalize principle 8 to include both horizontal and vertical linkages because they may accomplish similar functions." [Ecology and Society Article]

Ostrom is laying out a design for confederation, collaboration, constitutionality and republicanism that we need to pay attention to.

Further reading:

http://www.economist.com/node/21557717

Nobel Prize Page

Obituary in New York Times

She taught in Indiana.

I think I met her but I'm not sure. We lost a lot of people in 2011-2012

Paper that illustrates her 8 principles authored by 3 of her students: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art38/main.html

http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop/people/lostromcv.htm

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/story-vincent-and-elinor-ostrom

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons

Miles to go before I sleep

My Favorite poem, by Robert Frost is this one:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

 

“Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

 

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

Source: BY ROBERT FROST [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621]

I like a lot of Robert Frost's poetry but this one pops up in my mind whenever I feel discouraged, tired, or frustrated. Life isn't easy. Cold winds blow and the snow, or rain, or drought, hot winds or fire, all carry perils. It ain't easy. But life is a journey and we have promises we've made individually and other ones we made implicitly. Promises to our parents, children, grandchildren. Duties to fulfil, obligations to loved ones and friends. Our sense of "mission" or "purpose" is tied up with whether or not we are willing to commit to such promises and take on such duties. Virtue is when people live up to the promises of a role and actually keep those promises.

And so this little poem speaks to the need to go on and to a lot more than the need to go on. It would be easier to stay and sleep in the snow. Or to stay at home and do nothing. But if we did that, we'd never get the chance to stop from time to time and watch the snow fill up the woods with a lovely blanket and fill the world with beauty and wonder.

Why My late wife was a Master Teacher

My wife gave me more than 12 years of discoveries, and that is part of why she was a phenomenal teacher. Her students may not have liked everything about her (she was strict) but with her education was a constant discussion. Her way of teaching was to constantly learn. We'd attend conferences and museum presentations, author presentations and seminars; and she'd bring materials back to her classroom from those study venues -- and bring the students to them, when she could, herself. I think of her today as I realize I've learned a lot about learning and education from her. I'm trying to honor her, not just by keeping and sharing what she learned, but by continually learning and sharing what I learn myself. When you stop learning you stop being a master teacher. Long ago I saw that there were three kinds of teachers,

1. ordinary teachers who teach what some other teacher ordered them to teach.
2. Teachers who can teach other teachers.
3. And those who can teach the teachers of teachers.

My Wife was one of the third kind.