Levinson for Northeast Pennsylvania 2022
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This web site's purpose is to explore the viability of running for the 8th Congressional District in Northeast Pennsylvania in the November 2022 election. No campaign donations are currently being solicited or accepted.

Natural Law and The Constitution of the Universe

Universally beneficial progress occurs, in terms of high wages for workers, high profits for customers, and low prices for customers, when everybody involved follows non-partisan natural laws of human and economic behavior, or what Henry Ford called "The Constitution of the Universe."

"So, while the people are indeed supreme over the written Constitution, the spiritual constitution is supreme over them. The French Revolutionists wrote constitutions too— every drunken writer among them tossed off a constitution. Where are they? All vanished. Why? Because they were not in harmony with the constitution of the universe. The power of the Constitution is not dependent on any Government, but on its inherent rightness and practicability," (Ford Ideals, 1922)

These laws are like gravity; they are impartial, they are inarguable, and they work. Dr. Stephen Covey called it "natural law" while Hindus call it Dharma (The Right Way) and Asians call it Tao or Do ("The Way.")  The famous filmmaker Cecil de Mille wrote, "It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law." Hindus say that Dharma protects those who defend it and destroys those who go against it. Natural law is not legislated, but it is self-enforcing and there is no appeal from the consequences of going against it. Henry Ford wrote essentially the same thing while Rudyard Kipling's The Gods of the Copybook Headings is equally instructive. The Gods of the Copybook Headings (Kipling is referring to the maxims that students of his era copied to practice their handwriting) are these natural laws of human, physical, and economic behavior while the Gods of the Market Place are shortcuts that promise, and sometimes deliver, immediate gratification at the cost of long-term failure. Dutch tulip mania and, more recently, dot-com stock speculation are examples along with the Democratic Left's demand for a $15 an hour minimum wage. The latter can be engineered, and has been engineered in many workplaces already, but it cannot be legislated.

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Natural Law and Ubuntu

One historian depicted the ideal situation as follows.

"In antiquity the Worthy Kings made manifest the Virtue of the people and fully [sought out] the goodness of the people. Thus they did not neglect the virtuous nor demean the people in any respect. Rewards were not granted, and punishments were never even tried." (Sawyer, Ralph D. 1993. The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.) Rewards are not granted, nor are punishments imposed, because everybody recognizes the Right Way of doing things, and acts accordingly.

While "in antiquity" probably refers to a Golden Age that never really existed, this condition is in fact seen in modern workplaces where employees will, without the need for direction, act to fix quality problems, make improvements, or ensure customer satisfaction. The African principle of ubuntu also is highly instructive. Some people did an experiment with European and African children in which they offered a reward for the child who collected the most of something, possibly a fruit. The European children rushed eagerly to work, with each competing to be the best. The African children did not hurry at all, and the experimenters wondered if they had understood the instructions. When the work was done, however, they found that the African children had collected far more of the product than the European ones by cooperating instead of competing.

Universities that "grade on the curve," and businesses that rank employees, could learn something here about the dysfunctional effects of performance measurements under which one person's success depends on another's failure. If for example one college class has a limited quota of As and Bs, and another says everybody can get an A if they fulfill the requirements, students in the latter class will help one another learn the material with the result that all will learn more, on average, than those in the class that forces them to compete. The Army has exercises based on this exact model in which teams must cooperate to overcome obstacles, and participants are rated on the performance of their team rather than as individuals.

Once all stakeholders (Labor, Capital, and Customers) understand and apply these natural laws, they will work together for mutual prosperity. The simplest law is that, while we cannot get something from nothing we can, as Henry Ford said and proved, get something from what we wrongly believed to be nothing. Many if not most jobs contain enormous amounts of waste (muda is Japanese for waste), and removal of this waste allows simultaneous high wages, high profits, and low prices.

Contact 

Bill "at" levinson4nepa.com

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