Sat 15 Sep 2007
Below I try to explain why my friends at TNG (or ar least a sub-group of five or ten who find the topic interesting) should focus on the alleged use of private jets for trustee meetings. I provide this advice, not because I worry about global warming and/or think private jets are bad, but because I think that such a project would help TNG achieve its own goals.
1) Private jets produce a lot of carbon. If TNG could do something about this, the benefits would be non-trivial, especially in the context of the College’s total carbon footprint. (As always, detailed numbers are welcome.)
2) This might succeed. Although tilting at windmills is fun, I could imagine TNG actually succeeding in convincing trustees to promise not to use private jets for College meetings. Progress is possible.
3) Think of the press you might generate! If TNG staged a protest (holding up signs near a trustee jet), they would certainly make the local news if not the Boston Globe. The news media love controversy. They love rich people. They love exposing purported hypocrisy. TNG can’t influence people unless it reaches them, and the news media is still the best mechanism for that.
4) Think of the possibilities for guerrilla protest! Blocking the entrance to the airport just as the trustee is arriving. Chanting outside the building where the trustees are meeting. The script writes itself.
5) It’s a regular event. Even if the protest fails this time (are the trustees in town this week-end?), you will have another chance in January and then in April. And then next year!
Again, my goal here is advice. If you want students from TNG to be quoted in the Boston Globe or interviewed on the Today Show, then a protest along these lines might do the trick. Swapping light bulbs, however useful, won’t.
September 15th, 2007 at 9:37 am
David dear, we don’t even know if any trustees use private jets.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Quoting:
“Again, my goal here is advice. If you want students from TNG to be quoted in the Boston Globe or interviewed on the Today Show, then a protest along these lines might do the trick. Swapping light bulbs, however useful, won’t.”
You goal is to agitate. To protest what you cannot win with reasoned argument.
To confront iniquity we must practice the will to ethics. For if you will not act morally in terms of the information (i.e., good science) you have been given, then you are a bystander, and not an innocent bystander.
To practice the will to resist is the second stage of dealing with tried and true swindlers. Strategies have myth behind them. It acquires a sovereignty all its own. To persuade people of the validity of any myth, they adopt the tactics of of the power religion. They steamroll all those in their way. They protest and agitate. The proper counter-measure to deception and the revolutionary tendencies towards terrorism is to learn what the truth is, and to resist that which opposes truth. To resist with the truth and setting good reasoned examples.
Next, exercise the will to self-education. Finding better information is more important than looking for whom to blame. Self-education is a process, not a means to an end.
And last, is the will to dominion. This is not the quest for power apart from ethical law, but the quest for authority by means of ethical action. Exposing and replacing those who work against ethical laws and ethical reasoning.
The various commanding empires of history, from Rome to the United States today, have not been preserved from grievous errors at their highest points. No party, religious group, or race, however confident of its cause and destiny, can afford the luxury of assuming that the righteousness of a cause a man affirms is identical with his own nature. The answer, on the other hand, is not mutual tolerance, for unity and brotherhood movements are either desertions of one’s position for the religion of humanity, or else they are hypocrisy. The answer is not to be one, but to be under law rather than to claim to be law incarnate. It is the course of common sense to see one’s real enemies as dangerous and evil, but it is also the course of wisdom to see oneself as a fallible, different only to the extent that virtue is operative in us.
Let us understand one thing: the only thing that can defeat a bad idea is a good idea. We have the best ideas in western civilization. We have through it, an understanding of freedom. Freedom works. It produces abundance. Socialism in all its forms produces poverty. It exists only because capitalists and governments have subsidized it with taxpayers’ money and controlled human resources.
Our objective should not be about carbon or methane, nor about chanting and thinking about gorilla protest, it should be about being the best that we can be, about creating, designing and developing the most productive plans our resources will allow us in a reasonable manner.
Hop to it.
September 15th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
“We have the best ideas in western civilization. We have through it, an understanding of freedom. Freedom works. It produces abundance. Socialism in all its forms produces poverty.”
O.K., but last time I check, Socialism is an idea of “Western Civilization,” as is communism, fascism, Nazism, etc.
September 15th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
umm…david. starting off with protests does not create a good movement. TNG needs to gather info (like whether or not private jets are used, what are other options, etc.) before it moves to protest. And that’s only IF they want to do so.
To protest without the proper preparation and organization would be disaster. With that prepatory effort, it’d be a great idea.
September 15th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
OK, but lets say we get some student leaders really into this, do our research, and determine that a campaign directed at trustee jet use is worth doing. We ask them to stop, they say no or ignore us, then we make a bigger stink, they still ignore us, and then, when we’ve arrived at the point where community opinion is with us and everyone knows the trustees are wrong… then and only then, we’ll hold a rally on the tarmac of the Williams/North Adams airport.
My question to you, David, as much for curiosity and our continued banter, is, at that point will you join us in the protest? I know you want to.
September 15th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
See “concern trolling” at:
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Troll_rating#Types_of_trolls
September 15th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
You are arguing/advocating in bad faith. You don’t believe global warming is happening and even if it is that it is harmful:
Moreover, you think global warming is not a matter of fact but a matter of partisanship (like optimal tax rates, I am assuming).
So what is your ploy here? Do you want global warming activists to look bad? You claim that the hypocrisy is what gets you, but no one other than you have “alleged” the use of private jets (though it is a perfectly plausible hypothesis). I am dubious that your advice to TNG is intended to advance the interests of the group.
September 15th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
John Stahl wastes are time with a link to this.
Please, get a clue. I am never claimed to be a progressive Democrat. I don’t pretend to be a progressive Democrate. Why do you waste our time with this?
(d)avid writes that “I am dubious that your advice to TNG is intended to advance the interests of the group.”
Why are you dubious about this? You think that I have some nefarious plot to offer stupid advice to TNG so that they look ridiculous? You really think that this is the kind of person I am? I like Morgan Goodwin. Why would I steer him wrong? Is that what you do when students whose goals you disagree with come to you for advice? Just asking!
The best analogy here is to the attorney-client relationship. An attorney provides the best possible advice to his client, even if he thinks that client is guilty or a bad person. Similarly, I provide the best possible advice to Williams students, even if I disagree with the goals that they are trying to achieve. Want evidence?
How about this multi-thousand word post on how to rally alumni to any cause? I am giving advice there to all students, whatever their goals might be. See also the link from above with my advice on how to get a student on the board of trustees. Again, I think that this is stupid. I do not want to see on student on the board. But I recognize that other students, or at least Jonathan Misk ‘07, might feel differently. Fine. My role is not, just, to judge their goals. My role is to advise them on achieving those goals.
Now, it would be great if there were someone else out there, smarter and more diligent than I, who was willing to do this. Are you? If so, start! Start explaining to students the best way to contact trustees or to reach out to alumni or to get newspaper coverage. With any luck, your advice would be better than mine. Until that happy day, then instead of wasting time questioning my good faith, you should devote your energy to either agreeing or disagreeing with the specific advice I give.
If I am right about X, then chime in. If I am wrong about Y, then speak up. Question the details, not the motivation.
Finally, it is true that we don’t know for sure whether or not any of the trustees use a private jet to travel to Williams. That’s an empirical question. But one of my roles here is to explain how the world works to people who don’t know as many centi-millionaires as I do. Centi-millionaires like private jet travel! I would my annual salary that more than one trustee has used a private jet at some time. Who do you think keeps NetJets is business? Poor people?
Has a trustee used a private jet to come to a meeting at Williams recently? That I don’t know. But I would bet a bunch of money that at least one has. Back in the day, they used private choppers! (I saw one land near Mission and was quite impressed.)
If you don’t think that it is highly likely that a trustee has used a private jet to come to Williams, then you don’t know a lot about centi-millionaires.
September 15th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
I can only assume that the advice you give your financial clients is better than your advice to students attempting to combat something.
By the way, who are the trustees? How many are centi-millionaires? Does anyone else use that term? Is “millionaire” such a low bar now that people are trying to differentiate? Does anyone use deca-millionaire or is that being petty and pedantic (like a child who is 7 and 3/4 years old)?
September 15th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Today’s prospects for financial success in America are such that any current Williams student(or his American intellectual equivalent), who cares a great deal about making money, who applies himself consistently and diligently to its pursuit, and who is not very unlucky financially, ought easily to become a multi- millionaire (but not necessarily a deca-millionaire or a centi-millionaire) in a normal lifetime - despite his very modest financial origins and very modest current financial resources .
September 16th, 2007 at 8:34 am
(d)avid has questions and I have answers.
I hope my financial advice is better than my protest advice! But, anyway, if you think my advice is bad, then give better advice. I think that a well-done protest of trustee-private-jet flying has a chance to get members of TNG onto the Today Show. You think it doesn’t? You have a better idea?
Here are the trustees. Here is an overview of trustee typology. Somewhere around 5 (more than 2 less than 12) have 9 figure wealth or more.
Yes, although I should probably drop the hyphen.
Yes. We are discussing trustees who use private jets. If you are just a normal millionaire, you can’t afford to use private jets that much. They are expensive!
And, not to make fun, but around half of the parents of current Ephs are millionaires. How else do they afford $200,000 in tuition without any financial aid. (A millionaire is not someone who makes a million dollars each year. It is someone with a million dollars in wealth. Almost all families who don’t qualify for financial aid have this much wealth, much of it in their house, retirement savings and so on).
Yes. The web is a useful place.
It would be interesting to have some estimates of family wealth among Williams graduates. Does anyone know what percentage of the legacies at Williams are on financial aid?
What is the distribution of wealth among, say, the 30th reunion class? Another great senior thesis!
My sense is that at least 10% of the class of 1983 is worth a million dollars. I would not be surprised if the number were more like 50%.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Thanks for the primer on wealthy people.
Better advice?
1) Do research on your membership. Why are your members in the group? What do they hope to get out of it? What are their skills? What is their comfort zone and how willing are they to go beyond that? Staging protests might be a good way of destroying the organization if that is not what members want to do.
2) Do research on the problem. I’ll assume that members of the organization know something about global warming and carbon emissions. But I would be surprised if they know details about Williams’ carbon emissions. What is the biggest source of carbon emissions? Where could the biggest gains be made? What are the costs?
3) Write up the research and present it to the administration. See what their response is. Perhaps they will sympathetic to mature and reasoned proposals. Maybe they will ignore it.
4) Educate the campus. If the administration agrees to make a change, trumpet the policy change. If the administration is truculent, then pound the drum. Op-eds in the Record are not a bad start.
5) Suppose that you decide displays of drama are the way to go (or would just be fun). Think about what would capture the imagination of the campus and make your point clearly. Protests that have no connection to the problem rarely succeed [Anecdote: some graduate students while I was at Yale wanted to protest the lack of a graduate student union. So the graduate students sat down in a New Haven street and calmly paid fines from the city. I still don't understand how this put pressure on the administration.] The protest should also be visible.
So let’s revisit David’s plan to blockage airports where trustees fly private jets.
a) It just assumes that protesting is something normally staid Williams students would want to do.
b) Blockading airports could very easily get you arrested in today’s high security climate.
c) The same high security climate may not lead to a sympathetic view from the public.
d) It isn’t clear when the trustees fly in
e) It isn’t clear where the trustees fly in (I would guess that many fly into NYC and drive up … or maybe Albany).
f) The airports are scattered and away from campus. Visibility for the core audience (Williams) would be lost. You’d have to hope that the national media picks it up. I suspect that the students would be arrested too quickly if they blockaded an airport like Westchester or Albany to make the news. You’d almost need to call local news stations ahead of time and orchestrate it.
However, I will grant David that the link between the problem and the protest is very direct.
September 16th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Excellent! As often happens here, Ephs of goodwill can iterate to agreement (or at least agreement to disagree). In this case, I second (d)avid’s suggestions of 1-4 above. All good stuff! Now, I actually think that Morgan (and other TNG’ers) have done most/all of these things already, but if they haven’t, they should. (d)avid gives good advice.
Also, on 5) above, I agree! I did not mean to suggest that blockading an airport was the best or only tactic. I agree with all of (d)avid’s points above. Blockading does not seem like a great idea (unless you had good info on when the trustee was heading to the airport and you just blockading him). So, we do not disagree on the tactical issues of that suggestion.
My point here is more strategic than tactical. Trustee-private-jet-flying is a great issue, egregious in itself and likely to generate significant press. I am not sure about the best tactics to use, but I think that the issue is a real winner.
Say Hi to Katie Couric for me!
September 16th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
First, a suggested exercise: compare the carbon load created by an individual traveling coach class via common carrier on a 50s-era jet (say, NWA’s DC-3s) to the carbon load created by an individual traveling charter on an at-capacity, 10-to-20 seat modern jet. (Then find out why the two figures are not proportional).
As for the trustees, I doubt any of them have more than fractional time on a leased service, if that. Several years ago, when Lucasfilm moved into the Presidio campus, it is said that George asked his COO to look into acquiring a corporate jet. According to the story, her reply was something like “you’re not that rich, yet.”
Looks like the EU (or at least one of its committees) estimates that commercial jet travel will represent 30-50% of the EU’s carbon output until 2050. If true…
…well, to ask a slightly different question, if carbon impact is your primary measure, how much sense does it make to change lightbulbs if the net effect of changing those lightbulbs is, over the next quarter-century, going to be less than one-one-hundredth the effect of Stetson-Sawyer?
September 16th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Dude, news flash: Katie Couric does not work for the Today Show (or the Boston Globe, for that matter).
September 17th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Morgan asks:
Yes. Although I am a global warming skeptic, I am fiercely anti-hypocrisy. I will gladly join a TNG protest against the use of private jets by Williams trustees when traveling on College business.