Rural System's

The Rural System and Ranging Underlayment:
Decent Work, Decent Lives

This is an appendix about our concept of "the good." in the proposed Rural System for staff and management. It is really a statement of policy-like objectives discussed throughout the resign documents and committee meetings. Perhaps it should be placed up front and not seemingly diminished as an appendix. I have placed it here for the same reasons that I prefer not to discuss my personal religion. If what it is does does not show clearly, then there is hardly any need for discussing it.

There are several layers behind the way staff and participants in Rural System work or do business. No one is told what to believe or think or what attitudes to hold, but we like to communicate our intent and direction as well as the merging of those layers for our staff as well as customers. I provide this appendix, suggesting that the system as designed and its intentions can be tested against the statements here. I believe they are consistent and, if not, adjustments need to be made over time. That is part of the reason for this appendix.

Staff and participants will be encouraged to have these ideas collectively as a code of conduct that landowners and citizens can expect from us while working with all aspects of Rural System. It attempts to express, even in a limited way, what we stand for and believe in, and how we operate and address public, client, and personal concerns. We try to extend our limits and correct quickly our failures in living and working to this creed.

We do not hide that we are profit oriented but we hold that longterm bounded profit, a key phrase, is an index to how well we are improving and sustaining the environment and the quality of life for rural people of the region dependent upon their communities and that environment … all together. We allow citizens ways to participate in restoring, producing, and managing the rural environment and in gaining personal and family profits (net gains) from doing so.

We understand quality performance as that which

• has clear requirements and standards, definitions of "the good"
• measures production conformance and customer satisfaction
• seeks conformance to these requirements and standards
• seeks ways to prevent non-conformance and defects
• avoids secondary, often unseen and undesirable costs and consequences of production
• seeks ways to reduce the difference between benefits delivered and customer expectations for those.

Quality is never accidental; it is always the result of intelligent effort. John Ruskin, English historian

Following the adopted sequence of topics, we guarantee courteous, prompt work to deliver cost-effective, practical services, that meet your objectives ... and we work hard to help you clarify and articulate those objectives.

Our products are of high quality, safe, reasonably-tested while often being innovative, and we guarantee them and are willing to provide reasonable returns or replacements if there is significant dissatisfaction. We have select products grown under superior conditions devoid of known toxic agents.

We offer many, diverse opportunities and seek to meet your personal as well as group needs and interests within the rural context.

We seek out and offer special views but work to achieve a lasting, diverse pastoral and forestal viewscape. We seek to impede destruction of scenes that are important to many people and to build a regional visual "personality" or spirit.

We move reasoned ideas into testing and prototypes where we can find risk-taking investors.

We move observations and data to information and seek to build a workable knowledge base for improving models leading to decisions and action throughout the rural region with its evolving needs and challenges.

We encourage developing places and times for reflection for (at least) they can provide inspiration. Inspiration also comes from opportunities provided for observations of plants, animals, natural systems, and scenery as well as special behavior of individuals and groups.

We know that there are individuals and "loners" but we know of the needs for relating, for help, for teamwork, and for many religious, cultural, and recreational reasons. "Community" has expanding meanings for us. We work for planned synergism. Thus, we offer many memberships providing secure opportunities for and knowledge from such associations.

Events combine benefits, but a few can be singularly spectacular, at least for individuals. Special lectures, tours, and group meetings on "the green" seem likely events but electronic conference calls and Internet exchanges may be true events when they take on special meaning and discovery for some people.

Memory seems personal, but some of us hold that it is a shared thought or process. We work to provide products, services and opportunities that produce pleasant, perhaps exciting, consoling and helpful memories. We work on developing memory skills but also on helping people gain images, art, and tasteful small objects that focus and assist in pleasant or useful recall.

Our concept of Decent Work includes actions and attitudes of:

• being efficient with energy and time
• having sufficient resources for a quality life
• minimizing waste
• maximizing embodied energy
• sharing expertise
• using sampling concepts reasonably
• being gentle on the land
• achieving and maintaining health, both physical and mental
• having concern for children becoming fully human
• being or being supportive of superior parents and parenting
• discouraging the typical harmful effects of the many-job family
• high literacy, always learning
• being diversified
• avoiding conspicuous consumption
• engaging in meaningful physical and mental work
• gaining full control of impulses (aggression and immediate gratification)
• displaying appropriate manners and attention to shame
• being supportive of and assisting others
• having standards, minimal and non-negotiable
• enhancing conditions for tomorrow's citizens
• being clear about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness

Operations

Seeking long-term sustained profits from the land requires retaining and building its productivity as well as its many benefits for diverse potential users of private lands. To this end, generalizing, the staff tends to develop highly-related programs, reflective of the above dimensions of decent work, that include:

• treating each unit of land as unique
• encouraging appropriately long timber rotations
• making site-specific timber production prescriptions
• preserving and enhancing visual quality
• reducing water-borne road sediments
• diversifying logging techniques
• using relevant information about surrounding areas
• avoiding losses in numbers of animal and plant species
• protecting and increasing soil productivity
• protecting included wetlands
• encouraging mixed tree species and mixed product production
• enhancing wild plant and animal populations
• reducing waste of all kinds
• engaging in many types of energy conservation
• engaging in spatial as well as temporal planning
• converging on reasonable levels of accuracy and confidence
• adding value to products, opportunities, and services of the land

Governing thoughts and concepts
1. We have a strong bias toward modified "general systems theory" and its usefulness as an aid in organizing and communicating within the complex enterprise. Modular subsystems with a common objective and set of policies can excel in natural and rural resource management.
2. Those principles of biology and ecology shown to allow species and systems longterm survival, can be used to advantage within Rural System.
3. We attempt to share ideas and knowledge, test the goodness of some of them on the land, and gain energy for the fight ahead for an environment fit for humans. Rural System can be considered an experiment, a test of the soundness of an entrepreneurial paradigm for sustained natural resource management.
4. Land is a working platform with unlimited opportunities for producing ideas, products and services The platform or "factory" must be tended very carefully if it will improve and sustain profits
5. Dynamic and chaotic social and environmental conditions, as well as resources undergoing predictable transitions, can be estimated and profits sustained if managed with computer optimization as a whole system.
6. Major fossil energy shortages (of various types) will occur within 20 years and such shortages can be the source of major profits if preparation is made for those conditions.
7. A "rationally robust strategy" (Giles et al., see References below) needs to be used in rural resource management.
8. Ranging, comprehensive diverse outdoor recreation and tourism, can excel in a region with evidently increasing quality of rural life and natural resource management.
9. We link the results of successful diverse economic development to the requirement that a sound index to such results (not necessarily the processes) must be stable or increasing.
10. We link sustaining the desired conditions achieved to having designed, diverse, managed ecological systems.
11. Having a rural concentration for efficiency and effectiveness, we work with influential transborder, urban, and transfrontier systems and seek cooperation.
12. We attempt prompt, courteous service. Old manners, the basics, remain good for our potential and current customers ... and for us.
13. We welcome suggestions for improvements and attempt to offer incentives for making them and rewards for those that become part of the profit-base of the total enterprise.
14. Our facilities and appearance are safe, clean, and attractive and are part of our marketing base.
15. We provide progress reports and timely information as well as results for customers.
16. We maintain confidential records to enhance our competitiveness. We share information with loyal cooperators.
17. We compete with equals or lesser enterprises, concepts, and agencies. Competing with known superiors is irrational; competing with equals only assures wins half the time.
18. Discrimination may be part of competition.
19. We do not "discriminate" in any of our programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital or family status. We actively seek to find employment opportunities for people who seem disadvantaged by circumstances beyond their control or major influence.
20. We do discriminate on the basis of ability; performance, dress, and appearance leading to profits; attitudes leading to group cohesion and positive synergistic results; and creative work linked to the objectives of the enterprise.
21. We engage in restoring physical and biological systems of rural areas and restoring (including preventing decline) associated quality of life of families and communities.
22. Information is a primary product, and we rarely provide it at zero cost.
23. Ability to do synthetic work is a resource that we sell. The results can also be sold. Empowering others (as with a computer program) to do work is more important than providing information.
24. Research results in theses and dissertations and government reports (e.g., NTIS) are rich "mines" from which wealth can be gained. Mining them is one of our tasks in the cold and dark.
25. We check into the fair trade provisions of cooperating companies and individuals and their products (clothing, crafts, coffee, tea, cocoa). We'll attempt to avoid including those not in compliance.

Decent work is a decent concept. Mark Levin, Director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Cooperative Branch, Geneva, Switzerland, described the results of thoughtful work on the idea in a paper in the Owners at Work newsletter of the Ohio Employee Center. The idea of decent work includes employment for people where there are conditions of freedom; not having discrimination or harassment; being provided sufficient income to satisfy basic economic, social, and family needs and responsibilities; having adequate social protection for workers and their families; and being able to have a voice and participate in decisions about the work place. These seem highly consistent with long-held tenets of people of the cooperative movement - people who strive for the traits of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others; honest dealings with fairness and accuracy, and accountability in local as well as the international trading and financial marketplace; reliable quality and fair prices, honest dealings with non-members; and a unique level of openness throughout the organization. The values of social responsibility and caring for others reflect concern for the health and well being of individuals within communities.

Seems decent.

There are insights about the role that the community plays in the success of any enterprise such as Ranging and Rural System (security, support, landscape, setting, infrastructure) and thus the opportunities for appropriate and fair participation. As we seek to describe desirable conditions of work together, we find they are much the same for life itself and when fully developed, become a description of the good life for each of us. We have found premises of social humanists consistent with much writing in the rural systems realm (Free Inquiry, PO. Box 664, Amherst, New York 14226-0664 (Spring, 2001). We encourage thoughtful work with the following premises for ongoing efforts within Rural System. Discussions and suggestions for revisions are welcomed. We are particularly eager to see the rationale for excluding any one premise.

• We create opportunities for decent work and income in rural areas through enabling investment and through developing opportunities for gaining or improving skills, particularly for self-employed people and for micro, small, and medium enterprises.
• We work to create a positive, participatory culture.
• We resist speculative financial markets and move toward a real economy based on savings, investment, and creativity that generate solid companies and quality jobs.
• We promote social entrepreneurship and socially-responsible investment funds (e.g., limiting linkage between pension funds and stock markets).
• We protect the value of savings.
• We seek to relax perceived limits on local or national economic growth with environmental regulation, encouraging investment for developments with results that can be sustained using new environment-friendly technologies.
• We are committed to discovering truths and to applying reason to understanding the universe and to solving human problems.
• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek departures in our thinking.
• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence.
• We invest in information technologies and enable poor people, regions, and countries to access these.
• We believe that discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
• We enjoy life here and now and seek to develop our creative talents to their fullest.
• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
• We discourage explaining the world in supernatural terms and looking outside nature for salvation.
• We are committed to and work to see practiced the principle of the separation of church and state.
• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and work to implement and effective democracy as a major way to protect human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
• We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
• We place policy options on a sound footing by promoting dialog among workers, employers, and representative voices of society.
• We encourage open and free flow of communication and offer training and inducements to develop involvement in the enterprise (an ownership culture with knowledge of objectives, financials, production, and efficiencies).
• We engage in participatory management where possible.
• We attempt to secure justice and fairness in society and to eliminate discrimination and intolerance.
• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.
• We support the disadvantaged and the handicapped and support assisting them to be able to help themselves.
• We attempt to protect and enhance the Earth and its resources, to preserve it and its productivity for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, and responsibility. We think our ethics are amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
• We are cultivating moral excellence. We participate in the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
• We seek realistic alternatives to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and for sources of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
• We believe in and work toward the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

Working with employee teams a code of ethics is being developed. The first draft is as follows:
The Rural System employee recognizes the impact of his or her work on society as a whole, on subgroups of society including geographic or demographic minorities, on future generations, and on social, economic, environmental, or technical fields of endeavor. Obligations to society, primarily working through Rural System, shall be paramount when there is conflict with other obligations. The Rural System employee recognizes that he or she has been hired to deliver needed benefits to the corporation and its leadership and objectives expect quality work and professional conduct. He or she is seeking to do the "right thing," rather than simply avoiding illegal or inappropriate acts. Ethical responses include the following.

Do the best work possible

• Be objective, use due care, and make full use of education and skills
• Practice integrity and not be swayed by the demands of others
• Provide full, clear, and accurate information
• Strive to do what is right, not just what is legal
• Do no harm
• Contribute to the community
• Make information widely available
• Strive for broad employee and citizen involvement in problem definition, data identification, analysis, and decision making
• Donate services to community organizations with broad positive influences
• Be qualified for the tasks accepted
• Keep current in the field throughreading and engaging in professional development
• Identify risks and the potential means to reduce them
• Define alternative strategies to reach employer and customer objectives and if possible, and the implications of each
• Document work so that it can be used by others. This includes program documentation

Develop and hold professional relationships

• Call attention to emerging public issues and identify appropriate responses based on personal expertise
• Call attention to unprofessional work of others. First take concerns to those persons; if satisfaction is not gained and the problems warrant, then notify additional people and organizations
• Admit when a mistake has been made and make corrections where possible.
• Hold information confidential unless authorized to release it
• Avoid all conflicts of interest with clients and employers but when they are unavoidable, disclose any conflict of interest
• Avoid soliciting, accepting, or offering any gratuity or inappropriate benefit connected to a potential or existing business or working relationship
• Accept work reviews as a means to improve performance
• Accept decisions of employers and clients, unless they are illegal or unethical
• Help develop security, backup, retention, and disposal rules
• Acknowledge and accept rules about the personal use of employer resources. This includes computers, data, telecommunication equipment, and other resources

Be honest in representations

• State professional qualifications truthfully
• Make honest proposals that allow the work to be completed for the resources requested
• Honor contracts and assigned responsibilities or report inabilities as soon as noticed
• Be forthcoming about any limitations of data, software, assumptions, models used, methods, and analysis.
• Deliver an hour's work for an hour's pay
• Describe products fully
• Be forthcoming about limitations in information, processes, structures or assumptions
• Become part of one or more professional communities.
• Respect the work of others
• Cite the work of others whenever possible and appropriate
• Honor the intellectual property rights of others.
• Accept and provide fair and potentially useful critical comments on professional work
• Recognize the limitations of one's own knowledge and skills and recognize and use the skills of other professionals as needed. This includes both those in other disciplines and professionals with deeper skills in critical sub-areas of the field
• Work respectfully and capably with professionals in other disciplines
• Respect working relationships and avoid interfering in employer/employee and client/contractor relationships
• Deal honestly and fairly with prospective employees, contractors, and vendors
• Publish or otherwise communicate results so others can learn about them
• Volunteer time to professional educational and organizational efforts: local or national
• Support individual colleagues in their professional development, giving special attention to underrepresented groups whose diverse backgrounds will add to the strength of the profession.

Perhaps you will share ideas with me about some of the topic(s) above .

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Rural System
Glossary
Robert H. Giles, Jr.
April 1, 2006