A very nice essay by Keynes

Increasingly lately I've been thinking that what we really need to do is work less. What I mean by this is that, given that developed countries have reached a level of wealth where we can afford to fill our bellies many times over, and that climate change seems to be one of the greatest threats facing us, wouldn't it be better if we all worked a bit less on average. We can fit renewable light bulbs and turn our televisions of standby but the best way to reduce our carbon foot print is to reduce our consumption and if we're going to buy less stuff, surely it makes sense to earn less money and make less stuff. I know the protestant work ethics retort to this argument. It goes "How could you advocate a life of leisure when there are starving babies in Africa?" but we don't spend very much of our money of feeding the starving in Africa, we spend it on iPods and shoes and other shinies. Maybe if we got out of the cycle of earning more money to buy more shinies we'd take more seriously the idea of actually having a serious crack at alleviating poverty.

I've always felt a bit out of sink with the rest of the world for thinking this way. It always struck me as really odd that per capita GDP was so much higher than it had been in the past but people kept on claiming that we couldn't afford things. I always found it odd that during the 20th century hours of employment have increased even though hourly wages have increased. Last week I mentioned it to a fellow Cambridge economist and he mentioned a paper written by Keynes nearly 80 years ago about what the world would be like in 100 years time. Luckily some nice person put it on the internet.

Maybe it'll inspire you to take part in a very quiet revolution. Think about whether the shinies are really worth the hours of your life it takes to buy them. If they aren't, work less and enjoy life more.

Membership fees

Wasted quite a bit of time today being grumpy over the internet at someone who posted a rant about how materialistic 'western Judaism' by which he meant the small selection of Reform and Conservative shuls in the parts of the US he had lived in, were. It seemed to boil down to the idea that he felt that it was completely unacceptable for a congregation to charge it's members membership fees. He also claimed that any place of worship that was meeting its members spiritual needs wouldn't need to ask for membership fees because people would love it so much that the donations would exceed the needs of the church. In my experience, the only religious institutions which aren't strapped for cash are crazy brainwashing cults. The more I think of it the more I think that the difference is which extreme of two bad ways that people relate to religion and money I have seen.

The one he seemed to be criticising is the consumerist model. In this model you buy tickets to go to shul in the same way that you would be tickets to go to the cinema (often with special rates for students and the unemployed).* You don't regard the shul as a community which you are a part of but as a provider of a service you are purchasing. I think shuls which work along this kind of model also have a tendency to pander to the desires of this kind of congregant in terms of things like sermons which flatter rather than challenge, after all you want to provide a product the customer is willing to buy.

On the other hand, there is what I would call the delusional infant model. I this model, rather than being big and brash and upfront about money, you don't mention it at all. The place of worship has no expectation that its members will contribute a particular amount to its upkeep, the problem is neither do they. In this model members of a congregation think that they should get special brownie points for just showing up never mind paying to be there. They'll donate money, but see that as something above and beyond the call of duty which they should be praised for. The congregants have this idea that They should be pleased at another bum on seat so They should make sure that there's a church just the way they like it to entice them in without thinking through who They is. Delusional infant congregants can take a little bit of 'tough love' style reproach in sermons but they see it as an affront if anyone mentions money. They also tend to resent anyone who receives money from the church (i.e. it's employees) because they are in denial about how much work goes into keeping the church going and identify the clergy as the closest thing to the ill-defined They that they have contact with.

It reminds me a bit of deadbeat dads who try to buy their children's love and deadbeat dads who 'really love their kids' and expect that to mean that they shouldn't have to pay child support to their 'nasty grasping ex.** In both cases there's something really crucial missing, a genuine sense of being part of and responsible for a group endeavour. What Christians refer to a mature discipleship. I think a danger is that an attempt to move away from a consumerist model could just turn into a delusional infant model, if the only change is a removal of an explicit expectation of money. This isn't any closer to mature discipleship and at least with the consumerist model you could afford to mend the roof. In a healthy congregation people talk about money. There is an openness about how much things cost to run and what could be done if there was more money and members of the congregation understand that being a member of the congregation means contributing the time and money they can afford to ensure that it keeps going and can achieve what it wants to achieve.

So what does this have to do with membership fees? Well, the more I thought about it the more I realised that an a congregation with a healthy attitude to membership, the difference between membership fees and not having fees becomes almost semantic. It's useful to give people guidelines about how much to financially contribute. Telling the congregation that, for the congregation to run it needs to receive £x per person or y% of its members' income helps people get a better idea of what's reasonable to give. People who can afford less will give less, people for can afford more will give more. However, this doesn't seem that different to if a shul charges a fee of £x or y% of income in membership fees, but will lower the fee if someone can't afford it and welcome donations if people want to give more and would never turn away a non-member.

I like that my shul charges membership fees. As with Judaism in general, it's a way of knowing what's expected of you and it's a way of saying 'This isn't just somewhere I go. It's my shul and I want to contribute and take some financial responsibility for it.'

*I get the idea that the kind of shuls which work along this model tend also to be the kind where anyone can stand on the bimah as long as they're ordained or related to the bar mitzvah boy.

**Often these are the same deadbeat dad. That's very similar to the punchline of one of Ed Kessler's favourite jokes.

(no subject)

Whilst watching trashy TV last night ('Freaky Eaters: Addicted to Cheese' if your interested) I pondered a technique beloved of diet make over shows: the years worth of food in one room method. For those more discerning in their viewing, this is where the 'expert' takes the victim subject of the show into a room which contains all the food she eats in an average week/month/year depending how long a time period is required to make it look gross. This is supposed to shock the subject into changing her diet. The thing is, I'm suspicious that a years worth of anyone's diet in cold congealed form would look pretty disgusting. I have a pretty healthy diet but I might be put off by the sight of a years supply of beans and chickpeas.* One of their favourite techniques is to work out how much salt/sugar/fat there is in your diet and represent it with table salt/granulated sugar/lard. In this show they had a bath full of lard to represent how much animal fat she ate in a year. It looked gross but not much more gross than a bath half full of lard, which would represent the amount of animal fat it's healthy to eat in a year.

So, what have we learnt? One plate's worth of food is more appetising than 1095 plates worth of cold congealed food.

*Actually I think I'd really like a years supply of chickpeas nom nom nom. A years supply of the methane I produce having eaten them might suffocate me on the other hand.