Tag: insights

Categories
culture meta

Wandering

I thought about the value of wandering as one of our neighbors walked past our house this afternoon. He was just out for a walk with his daughter and their dog. There are many possible reasons that might have prompted the walk, but arriving at a specific destination or in a specific time was obviously not a major concern.

I was reminded of similar walks that our family has taken over the years – like our first Christmas soon after we moved into this house when the girls wanted to go for a walk and we met a bunch of our neighbors for the first time after their Christmas mornings. There is so much that we can gain from having times when you do not have a specific goal to strive for and you are free to follow a whim or prompting that you could not plan in advance.

Categories
life

Things Unknown

It’s amazing how an difference so small that we can’t even predict it can very noticeably change the outcome of a standardized process. I saw this in action today while baking cookies.

Laura and discovered that the cookies cooked differently on the two cookie sheets we have. We could put the dough on one cookie sheet and place it in the oven and then fill the second cookie sheet and place it in the oven. We could then take the second cookie sheet out when its cookies were done and
remove the cookies before the cookies on the first sheet finished cooking. Same oven, same batch of dough, different cookie sheets (though they were both the same size – there were no differences to make us think they would cook differently).

As I thought about that it struck me how often  there are small differences that we can’t account for in advance.I suspect this is one of the reasons that standardized programs run by large bureaucracies are so universally inefficient.

Categories
politics

Our Crisis in Foreign Policy

Frank does a good job discussing One Lesson From Two September 11th Events. He is completely right to ask:

What will it take for America to learn a similar lesson–that if we expect to be respected and not feared, that we must give respect? Why does America think it is better than the rest of the world, and that we don’t have to abide by the same rules and morals when dealing with the rest of the world? If we learned and practiced this one simple lesson, we would once again have the respect of nearly everyone. As it stands, they would spit on us if they didn’t think we’d drop a smart bomb on them for it.

Our crisis seems to be that the loudest voices in foreign policy seem to be those on the right who think that war is good for our popularity here at home (they’ve been proven wrong since we went to Iraq) and those on the left who think that spreading our money around the globe will make us popular internationally (they were proven wrong on September 11th, 2001). The fact is that both courses to action lead us to be resented. If our foreign policy was not bad enough, our domestic policy does the same thing as we insist from both camps that we must have the highest standard of living in the world. The fact is that we need to work hard and respect others and just take the standard of living that results from our hard work.

Categories
politics

Economies of Scale

This news is disturbing but hardly surprising – our existing entitlement programs are unsustainable in the long term. The more I think about it the more I realize that this is like a lesson I learned as a child about ants. There’s an old movie that depicts 25-foot tall ants attacking people. What I learned as a child was that ants could not exist at that scale.

Ants at their existing scale are extremely strong. They can carry many times their body weight with their little exoskeletal bodies. Ants at the scale depicted in the movie would collapse under their own weight. As it turns out, people are the same way. I remember watching a documentary on giants and one thing that really caught my attention is that they have extra health problems because of their size. In fact, their life expectancy is decades shorter society as a whole because their organs tend to fail trying to maintain bodies that are larger than human organs are meant to support.

What I am realizing now is that the same principles of scale hold true for governments as well. Large, intrusive governments are unsustainable over time. The larger a government is, meaning the more it tries to do for citizens, the shorter it can remain stable. Either it must be scaled back or it will collapse. In our case we are staring at the possibility of economic collapse, but sometimes the collapse is a societal collapse.

If you want more proof that there exists a natural law of scale just remember that all the largest elements that have been “discovered” in the last few decades have actually been manufactured in labs. Without exception they rapidly decay into smaller elements because atoms larger than Uranium (weight 238 au) are not sustainable.

Categories
life

Teaching and Learning

I have heard it said that you learn more by teaching something than just by learning or doing it. As I was preparing today for a lesson I caught some new insights into why that is. For one thing, the time taken to prepare what you are going to teach is much longer than the time that will be taken by a student in the lesson. Another factor that makes this true is that what you end up teaching in the actual instructional setting is not precisely the same as what you had prepared in advance. The teacher benefits from the preparation as well as anything new that comes in the lesson delivery. The students only get whatever came during the delivery time.

Categories
culture

The Law of Abundance

I have thought for a long time about the basic premise of capitalism and economics. Thanks to the discussion on Wealth is Always Distributed I have decided to write down my thoughts on the subject.

Economics are based on the assumption of scarcity. My observations lead me to believe that the only real scarcity is a scarcity of effort, and a scarcity of time. Even when we consider those two scarcities we do not actually have any shortage of resources with which to meet our needs as a society.

This thinking has led me to what I call the Law of Abundance. This law is illustrated in Each Little Bit Helps from last year. I think the law could be stated that we could accomplish anything (besides defying the laws of physics) if people would just get in and help make things happen without asking the questions of scarcity – Is it going to be fair? Will I get paid for my work? How much will it cost? The only question that is asked under the law of abundance is – Should this be done? Once that question is answered then the work moves forward. Questions of efficiency (such as maximizing profits) are laid aside (although answers about efficient means are still welcome).

I admit that this law of abundance is not very useful on an individual, day-to-day scale. As an individual I have to eat and provide for my family so I am not always free to just jump in and do things without regard to what’s in it for me. I am very interested in the development of my community, but unless someone can pay me for it I can’t devote all my time to those efforts – I must still remain gainfully employed. (I’m lucky enough to enjoy my gainful employment but that is not the topic of this post.)

Where the law of abundance works is things like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. When we operate under this law of abundance we do not let fields lay fallow in order to receive a government subsidy or prop up the price of the crop we could have been producing. Instead we produce the crop and get it into the hands of those who need it. In essence, production becomes more important than profit. We do not avoid hard work so long as the work has value. We would rather have grain rotting in bins than stomachs rotting with hunger while there is any way to provide food.

We often see an attitude similar to this during times of crisis when people pull out all the stops and just make things happen without prejudice, favoritism, or concern for financial repercussions. I argue that we should operate in this mindset more – always where possible. The key is to make sure that we are careful about getting the right answer to the “should it be done” question.

Categories
culture

Formalism and Details

I have been thinking about the merits of formalism in our laid-back society. I wonder how many people even have a basic understanding of parliamentary procedure or know what Robert’s rules of order are. I suspect that more people are familiar with the details of table manners than are familiar with the details of how to run an organized meeting.

I studied Robert’s rules of order when I was starting as the president of a graduate student organization. Before that I was aware of the general structure of parliamentary procedure but not with the details. Now, as I question if these are dying arts, I start to wonder what we might gain by making people more knowledgeable about these kinds of formalisms. In the world of text messaging is there something to be gained by putting more emphasis on the rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation.

I really would like to know what other people think about this. What is the value of the details? Are we losing those skills in our society?

Categories
culture politics

Wealth is Always Distributed

I’ve been thinking about the whole distribution of wealth thing and I begin to wonder if it is really a problem. What happens when Alex Rodriguez gets paid $25 million dollars a year? (I pick him because I know his salary)

I have heard arguments that if we tax the rich too heavily they will not be motivated to compete – in my mind, there’s no difference between $25 million and $20 million a year – both are more than I can spend so why would I work harder to earn more money if I am already drowning in the stuff. Then I realized something – these guys probably learn really fast how to spend more money than I can imagine because they have it. If I’m making $2 million a month but I have managed to acquire $1.8 million a month in expenses and I can see another $400,000 a month that I could spend my money on, then I am going to be motivated to try to earn $2.2 million a month.

What I realized is that the very wealthy are spending large amounts of money and that money provides work for the rest of us. If someone buys a mink coat for $100,000 dollars I might say that no coat is worth that price, but where does that money go? It does not go into the fur – it goes into the economy. It arrives in the accounts of the store that sold the coat, but then it is used to pay bills, sales commissions, coat makers, mink farmers, mink food producers, etc. Someone will complain, “but they don’t spend all of it, some of that money goes to corporate profits.” Corporate profits are used to produce more goods, pay investors, or expand businesses. For those who want to argue that “investors” tend to be the already wealthy I reply that they are busy spending their money one way or the other. Those people who would hoard their wealth eventually die and pass it on. Somewhere down the line it will still get spent – and there’s no need to worry about the detrimental effect of hoarding – even if Bill Gates were to sit on all his Billions (as if most of his money were not already tied up in charitable causes) it would hardly even register on our national economy.

When someone argues that there is a problem with some people having more wealth than others they do so with an assumption that there is a limit to how much wealth is available. Even if that were true (and I’m not sure it is) that is only a problem if there is not enough wealth to provide for everyone. We all know very well that there is plenty of wealth available to meet the basic needs of our entire society with much to spare.

Wealth is not about cash, it is about cash flow – to be wealthy all you really need to do is flow less cash out than in. Because of the flowing nature of wealth we need not worry that someone else has it, all we have to do is find a way to the waters edge by producing something that others find valuable enough that they flow cash through us. In fact, the worst thing that could happen economically is to set up a system which gives some people incentive to not produce anything.

Categories
culture

Buildingblocks of Community

As I think about the components of an effective community I thought it would be valuable to list what I think are the essential parts of an effective community. I will try to define them just enough here to make it clear what I am thinking. If anyone finds anything I have missed, or a definition that they think should change, please let me know.

Perhaps I should start be defining what I mean by “community.” I am specifically thinking about a city or town, in other words a physical community of people who live within some defined proximity. Despite that, I believe that the elements of a community that I am considering are applicable to other kinds of community such as a business, or a virtual community.

Government – a body responsible for defining the community and the rules that govern the community. The government of a community would be responsible for arbitration if community members have a dispute about what is acceptable within the community.

Communication – a way for community members to share information about the community, to voice their opinions, or to record events of significance.

Commerce – something to facilitate transactions between members of the community in an organized way so that those transactions are recognized by other members of the community when necessary.

Entertainment – a means of promoting informal interaction between community members which is not focused on commercial repercussions (although there may be commercial elements to the interactions).

Ritual – a celebration of community identity. The purpose of ritual is to solidify the community identity and help members remember the purpose and/or history of the community.

Categories
culture

Information Processing

Thanks to Joshua for pointing to this quote from Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural skepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make.

This goes hand in hand with an argument that some people have heard me make about our “information society” as we call it. In a society so full of information sources the great challenge and skill is to be able to identify which sources are accurate or trustworthy. That is the skill that we need to have and that we need to pass on to our children. If Adams was right about humans being naturally hard-wired for this then we should do just fine.

The whole piece was published in 1999 which has given us 8 years to prove that he was right on target. Go read it.