One More Day Alive

The law can’t – and shouldn’t – be our moral compass!

I love it when a totally ridiculous idea catches on and threatens to completely destroy civilization as we know it. It gives me something to talk about.

The case of the $16 house in Flower Mound, Texas which blossomed all over the internet recently is the perfect example.

Last year, Kenneth Robinson paid $16 to file a one-page claim to an empty, $340,000 home in the upscale Dallas suburb, then proceeded to move in furniture, hang a “No Trespassing” sign and invite television cameras inside for a tour.

Robinson based his unusual home ownership plan on a slight misunderstanding of the basic idea of squatter’s rights which exists in most states in some form or another and in Texas is called the law of “adverse possession.” Such laws allow that if someone uses some piece of property in a clear, obvious manner and no other rightful owner challenges that for a long time (in Texas its three years), then the claimant can take legal possession. 

Nowadays, it’s used mostly for disputes over common areas or shared driveways where one neighbor unofficially abandons their maintenance or use of their side, and the other just assumes responsibility and use. At some point the law says its makes reasonable sense that the assuming owner could claim such a shared space.

But it’s not intended to allow people to steal houses!

Robinson’s misunderstanding of the law didn’t stop Bank of America from evicting this scammer, and Robinson slipped out before sunrise on the morning of his requested court hearing, which he skipped, and refused to say where he was moving next.

But not before starting a website and writing a book about how you to can cheat your way into home ownership, and even offering training sessions for would-be squatters. And while he clearly was misusing the law, Robinson appears to have inspired imitators to move into Dallas-Fort Worth area homes, even while they were still occupied by their owners.

Since then Robinson has only issued a curt sort-a-kind-a apology stating, “It’s been a huge learning experience.”

But what I really hope is that enough people hear about this story and learn from it too – that whether or not something that is obviously unethical is possibly permissible through a legal loophole doesn’t make it right.

Within minutes after his story going viral, there was an avalanche of supportive comments from all over America for good ole Kenny trying to scam the bank out of their property, many protesting his eviction.

Now I am no fan of big banks to be sure. But right is right, wrong is wrong, and a rose by any other name doesn’t equal the right to steal a house in Flower Mound, Texas.

Stealing a house by some legal loophole is almost exactly the same, morally speaking, as all the shenanigans and unethical stuff that the banks, the mortgage companies, the hedge fund crooks and all the other white collar cronies did to get us into our current economic crisis.

Most of those guys didn’t really think they were breaking laws – just stretching and creatively misinterpreting the laws or finding ways around them.

And the funny thing is that good old Kenny’s response, “It’s been a huge learning experience,” seems to be the same lackluster apology that all those folks gave as well.

Too many people are trying too hard not to break the law nowadays, but forgetting about living according to any moral responsibility to their neighbors. What if tomorrow the government said it was alright to steal and kill, should we all go out and do it?Of course not! 

There are moral principles which we should probably try to live by regardless of the law (The Ten Commandments is probably a pretty good start regardless of your religious or non-religious background).  In this country schools, families, communities, and personal morality are supposed to keep us acting far more appropriately than the law – which is designed to be the lowest, minimum standard of acceptable behavior.

But if we all abandon any morality other than the law, than we are going to be forced to keep making more and more laws to try to stop every single possible sneaky thing that humans can devise to do to hurt or take advantage of each other. That would not only be completely unfeasible, but downright depressing. I certainly don’t want to live in a nation like that.

So maybe we all need to think a little less about making more laws to stop criminal behavior and more about how to get people to take a little more pride in how they behave and pay a little more attention to respecting their fellow human beings. Thanks Kenny!

One More Day Alive is the blog of Author-Columnist-Speaker Chris Benguhe

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Profit and public responsibility, or at least accountability, are not unrelated. In fact, maybe they are inexorably connected to each other.  But don’t just take my word for it.

The recent backlash over proposed new debit card fees by banks in America is the perfect example. The fact that those banks finally listened to the protestations of their customers is the best news yet for the future of America – and the future of capitalism.

Because the last two years have been a real test for business in America making many wonder if capitalism would survive the backlash of public protests.

But the reality is that outside of a few wacky extremists crying for outright socialism most Americans don’t oppose capitalism or profits. What they are fed up, and rightfully so, is the proliferation of unfettered GREED and the rise of an embarrassingly irresponsible corporate culture of selfishness!

Case in point: the debit card fee fiasco. This all began in September after Bank of America foolishly decided to try to nickel and dime the American public (the same American public who bailed them out with a huge stimulus just a few years ago) by adding a $5-a-month fee to use debit cards. Other banks soon announced they would do the same.

Within a few months there was a huge public outcry from customers with many threatening to leave en masse. All this finally made all the banks including Bank of America reverse their decision.

Now obviously these banks changed their minds because they realized that in this particular situation they stood to lose customers. And that would cost them more profit in the long run than they would make in the short run by adding the fees.

But maybe this is more than just an isolated case. Maybe it means that corporate America is remembering the bottom line of capitalism is not just dollars, but SENSE too – common sense that says that caring about people, about the world around you will improve your profits. That’s because people are more apt to work for and buy from companies that are nice instead of nasty.  It is proven time and time again.

Henry Ford, one of the greatest, and most successful, capitalists in American history – the father of the assembly line – purposely raised his employees’ salaries more than he needed to in order to enable them to buy his cars.  That wasn’t just because he was a nice guy. He knew it would create generations of Ford Customers that would inevitably in the long run earn the company much more than it cost in the short run. But the byproduct of that was he made a whole lot of employees happier and better off too, and he was probably the happier for it as well!

Now I do not think it is government’s responsibility to make these companies act morally. (The exception is when the whole game is rigged for instance in the case of collusion or monopoly.) We need free will and free markets in order for moral decisions to be possible. God does not make us do the right thing, and neither should government.  

I truly believe eventually the people will get tired of being taken advantage of, and they will rise up and make these companies do the right thing with the power of their wallets.

But if everything I have said is true then it begs the question: Why have there been so many short-sighted selfish companies in the last few decades in America? 

The answer is simple – stupidity!  If everyone (the companies, the employees and the consumers) prospers more in the long run, by running a considerate and socially responsible business, then only a fool would do differently.

But thank God some of those fools are beginning to wise up.

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By Chris Benguhe

Is humanity evil, and is it government’s responsibility to rehabilitate it?

Or is mankind innately good, and with the most basic of oversight and moral motivation will the majority of us choose to do the right thing, allowing government to focus on controlling only the most aberrant humans?

Maybe Michael Moore didn’t think about answering those questions before he concocted his attack on capitalism a few years back. But as President Obama attempts to “fundamentally transform” our nation by restructuring our economy, our society, and our national mindset hoping to ultra-regulate America out of immoral business practices and legislate morality with new social policies – these are a couple of questions which really need to be answered.
  
There are plenty of examples for the evil humanity argument. Over the last few years, we saw greedy hedge fund managers play a shell game with investors and invested funds.  We watched everyday people lie about income and fraudulently promise to pay more than they could afford, so they could have more than they needed in a nation seemingly obsessed with having more, bigger and better stuff.

Then we topped it all off with Wall Street financiers and Big Business bosses looking for government bailout packages, unions refusing to negotiate wages for the good of ALL the employees and the nation, and everyday folks all looking for what their country can do for them, instead of the other way around.

What do all these things have in common? They are all selfish and immoral. But was any of this really the fault of capitalism? Or was it actually quite the opposite, that these were all directly or indirectly the result of a combination of government intervention, greed and irresponsible stupidity and could capitalism save us?

To determine that, first we might have to get out from under the recent tirade of media maniacs deriding capitalism, to get a little background on how capitalism actually works.
 
You see, if you believe that human beings are inherently good, then you are also a fan of capitalism.  Because you also believe that people will eventually act in the best interest of society more often than not, when left to their own devices in a free market system. But when the system is played around with too much, for instance when government favors one industry, or group over another, such as the oil industry, or the real estate industry, or the auto industry, then it screws everything up. That stops people from doing the right thing, which they already wanted to do.  At least that’s the idea behind the philosophy of capitalism. It also leads way too many people to forget about what’s best for them and the rest of society because they are so busy trying to beat the system of government regulation.
 
Don’t take my word for it – listen to Adam Smith, the founder of modern capitalism.
 
Most unethical opportunists today point to Smith’s claims in his famous “Wealth of Nations” that self-interests alone are what make capitalism work. But Smith wrote another book. In his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” he explains “self-interest” includes the interest of the rest of society, since the social acceptance, status, and support of all affects the interests of the individual. He argues only a society which values social justice achieved through community and moral obligations can achieve prosperity.

In simpler terms any capitalist with a brain in his head knows that for him to prosper in the long run, so too must his neighbors, his community, his nation and his world prosper. Maybe the real problem is that a few too many of us capitalists forgot about that recently.

But Smith doesn’t stop there. He says not only “should’ we act morally, but free from the tyranny of government we “want” to act morally.
 
Says Smith: “However selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though they derive nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
 
That’s probably why despite the all the financial doom going on in America, Americans, left to their own compulsion to care gave over $300 billion away last year. None of that was caused by Obama’s stimulus package. It was given of our free will.

That, by the way, is another positive precept of capitalism – it fosters free will, which is a basic requirement for morality.  You cannot be moral if someone has forced you to do so. That’s the whole theological argument behind why God allows people to sin, because if he didn’t they could not choose to love Him and choose to do the right thing.

So maybe capitalism is a good thing, a moral thing. If so, then will less capitalism mean less morality? Or to put it more specifically, do we want government to tell our businesses and our people how to behave ethically ironically leading most of us to do the opposite?

Will such heavy-handed attempts simply enrage free-willed Americans making them less apt to act in accordance with their conscience? Will taking away our free will make us incapable of loving and respecting each other? A quick look back at the Soviet Union suggests so.

Do we really want to live in an Orwellian world where Big Brother forces us by dictatorial edict to do what it believes is right, or should we leave people alone to choose to act morally and let government concentrate on protecting the right to life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness?

We better choose now before the choice is taken away.

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Hope vs. Faith

Hope: Expectations for the future

Faith: Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Belief in a set of principles

“Don’t lose hope,” said the waitress to one of the regulars at a little cafe I frequent. The patron had just poured her heart out to the waitress about losing her job.  The property management company she worked for lost their shirt in the real estate crisis, and the thirty-something single mother of two got laid off. “Keep the faith,” I muttered as she left the cafe. She smiled and thanked me for my concern.

But can such platitudes offer any meaningful comfort or direction when we are at the end of our rope?

Unemployment is still in the stratosphere. Most economists say we had better get used to that because we won’t see that number coming down for years.

Foreclosures are still out of control and may see another rise. Experts say the worst of this is behind us – but that really doesn’t make anyone who has been foreclosed upon feel any better.

Oil and gas prices are through the roof.

Everywhere you look nowadays the papers are filled with stories of people struggling to make ends meet.

So what do we all do about it? Don’t lose hope and keep the faith? But what does that actually mean?

Well maybe hope –looking forward to better times to come – makes it easier to keep going. Psychologists and common sense tell us we can endure anything for a limited time, as long as the end is in site, and we know that better times lie ahead.

But how do we know that good times lie ahead – and how do we deal with the ones we got.

That’s where faith comes in.

Maybe hope without faith is missing the point of our lives – that there is a great value to finding some solace in the situations we are in – even the worst of them. 

If you believe in what you are doing and why you are doing it, you can endure more than you ever imagined.

But faith can help us find happiness within the experiences of our ordeals themselves and how we deal with them?  Because tough times make us realize the value of our lives can’t all be measured, understood or based on our prosperity, our fortune, misfortune, or end result at all.

Our value is wrapped up in the way we live, the people, the principles and the God we live for. And in turn those are the reasons to endure the toughest times life can offer – to keep going – for all those principles and people that we love.

And we will get through.  But when we do, we will have much more than our rediscovered prosperity?  We will have the knowledge and know-how it took us to get there.  We will have the confidence in our ability to weather tough times. Most importantly, we will know better what we value, and who.

We will all keep working hard.  Because that’s what Americans do. In fact, when the chips are down, you can’t beat our spirit, our ingenuity and our faith in each other, in ourselves, and in our God to see us through.

We keep going because we know that every day, every hour, every second that we spend helping spread God’s love through our own compassion, our understanding and our endurance gets all of us one step closer to making the Lord’s Prayer a reality – “Thy will be done – on earth as it is in Heaven.”

And I HOPE none of you give up on that.

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