Category: Audience

Notorious RBG

Like everyone else, I’ve been consuming the articles about the life and work of Ruth Bader Ginsberg who recently passed away after 27 year on the US Supreme court. I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about her until recently. But there are three things I will take away from how she lived her life.

After graduating from Cornell in 1954 she married her husband of 56 years. A few years later she followed him to Harvard Law School.

The law dean reportedly invited the nine female students in the class to dinner and asked, “How do you justify taking a spot from a qualified man?” Ginsburg said she gave “the answer he expected”: “My husband is a second-year law student, and it’s important for a woman to understand her husband’s work.”

She was willing to make the sacrifice of sucking up a personal assault if it’s that what it took to get where she wanted to go. What if she had stormed out and held a protest and rallied a march? Would women be better off today? Instead she bowed to the expectations of her time, in order to forge ahead. She was strategizing a war plan where emotion pull many people into a street fight.

After she graduated with a law degree from Columbia, she had a difficult time landing a job with a law office. It is apparent that claims of a meritocratic system was (and still is) constrained by social norms. But Ruth Bader Ginsberg must have looked at the employer pool as a group where not each and everyone had to want to employ her. She just needed one job, one employer. And that was a courtship with the U.S. District Court.

Once again, instead of being distracted by an individual or a small set of individuals that blocked her path, she had faith in the larger community. She kept looking for where she could trade her skills instead of trying to convert each objector. She was an optimist.

When it came time to converting opinions in the court room, where she had earned stature and prominence, she used perspective. She brought the claims before the male judges in the form of claims made by men, that way they would not be biased by gender. She wrote the story in a way that they could see the work for what it was.

There’s been some really interesting work done by the scholar Cary Franklin about the men Justice Ginsburg represented when she was at the ACLU, and how when she was bringing them before male justices, the male justices had trouble believing that these guys actually wanted to take care of their elderly mothers or their children, because it was so foreign to them. So in some ways what she was doing was quite challenging to them. But at the same time, being a canny strategist – showing that men had skin in the game, and that they too were harmed by gender inequality – enlisted a broader range of allies for her.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a women who played the long game. And it has paid off in spades for all women to benefit. She is a true feminist.

Here is a nice photo essay of her life.

Here’s the deal 101

Our local NBC news outlet recently ran a story about an elderly couple receiving help from neighbors after being criticized for not keeping up the exterior paint on their home. It totaled $67,000 worth of help. There is no name given to this transfer of money. When a private party helps themselves to $67,000 from their employer it is called embezzlement. When a politician helps themselves to $67,000 from their campaign fund it is called corruption.

The old school explanation for this activity is to denote it as a form of charity. But is it really a gift? Neighborliness is a term that shows up on surveys. But what does that mean? I see this exchange between the neighbors of Gloucester is the most basic transaction in a economy of groups. Let’s pull it apart.

It all started with an anonymous note left for the couple which read, “Please Paint Me! 😦 Eye sore – Your Neighbors. Thanks.” Although clearly written by one individual, the message is presented as a community concern. Signed, your neighbors. You’ve probably heard this type of chatter before. A house on a main road is dilapidated, or decorated with eccentric siding. Comments like, ‘I really wish someone would do something about that place.’ Or, ‘Some people are bringing down the neighborhood!’ So although one neighbor wrote the note, thoughts of this nature were undoubtedly mulled over by many a passerby.

A personal residence is deemed the bastion of private property, and property rights are a keystone feature of our economic system. But the note indicates that there is a hazy area not reflected in the legal deed, filed in the county records, which spells out the owners names. The area residents feel they have a right to demand that the exterior meet their expectations. This is not a novel idea. In fact cities even have ordinances which address the exteriors of properties regarding thresholds for debris removal and grass mowing.

The couples’ daughter took to social media to voice her response to the note. She points out that her parents had lived in community for the past 50 years. And that during this long history they had maintained their home, and hence contributed many years of service towards an acceptable streetscape. “My family for many years took care and maintained this house as best they could…” 

The reason for the disrepair could happen to anyone, it was an act of nature. The article reports that “Marilyn, 72, developed multiple sclerosis about 30 years ago and is mostly confined to her bed, and Jimmy, 71, recently recovered from a quadruple bypass…” Health concerns take time and resources away from the couples ability to comply with the norms of the neighborhood.

Once the word got out about the need, once demand for goods and services was established, a voluntary response from the community resulted in a $67,000 balance in a GoFundMe account. Currency is very liquid, yet these funds are not fungible. As the report confirms the money is “to be used for new siding on their home, new windows, roof and stairs.”

There is no reporting of free riding or extortion, even though funds are seemingly extracted from a greater group to a private party. Nor is this activity portrayed in a religious or moral sense. The voluntary transfer of resources to improve the exterior of the home is held together by a communal objective, one that the recipients contributed to over. This transparent and voluntary activity is the most basic transaction in economy of groups.

“People look out for each other in Gloucester,” he said. “If somebody needs some help, we just get together and do it. It’s all just very heartwarming.” What I hear him saying is that Gloucester is a town with a free an open economy. And yes, that is heartwarming.