Truth, Justice and the American Way

 

Look Up in the Sky!

Yes, it's Superman – strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.
 Superman – defender of law and order, champion of equal rights, valiant, courageous fighter against the forces of hate and prejudice
who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for
truth, justice and the American way.

What so funny about Truth, Justice, and the American Way?

In previous blogs, I had suggested that there are four attributes that can be used as a framework for human behavior.  The fourth  attribute, perception of public property, is really just a subset of another attribute.  Those who believe in  an extreme User Optimization also will have a perception that public property is only their property owned jointly with other users of the public. Those with an extreme System Optimization will have a perception that public property is owned by the public as a user, as opposed to any individual user.  Thus there really are only three attributes that can be used to define human behavior, and those attributes in the extreme are the same as those supported by Superman: Truth, Justice, and the American way.

Truth is an aspect of the  attribute of Reality vs. Fantasy.  While it sound silly to say that a fictional character supports truth, it is that truth does not care what you wish it to be.  Wishing doesn’t make it so.  Those who want the truth,  and I am not a fan of Col. Jessup’s “You can’t  handle the truth”, have to deal with the fact that eyewitness testimony and memory are poor tools for uncovering the truth. Rashomon anyone? The ubiquitous nature of cell phone videos has made the truth much easier to discover.

Justice is not the spirit of the Law, not the letter of the Law. The Law is about your rights.  Justice is about your duty.  Laws are what an economist would refer to as shadow prices, which are imposed to make a User Optimal solution, closer to a System Optimal solution. Killing your competitors is an extreme User Optimal solution.  Not killing anyone is an extreme System Optimal solution.  Following the letter of the Law rather than the spirit of the Law makes one a Pharisee.

The American way, as it aspires to be, is inclusive where everyone is judged by their merits, rather than exclusive. The reality is that it is too often an exclusive caste system where people are judged by qualities over which they have no control.  Remember Superman fought again the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis.  Superman was created by Jewish children of immigrants.    Based on the fact that Superman was an undocumented immigrant brought to this planet and country when he was a minor, if undocumented immigrants are excluded from the society, then Superman, the ultimate DACA Dreamer, also has to be excluded from society.

If human behavior can be judged by three attributes: Reality vs Fantasy; Rights vs Duty; and Inclusion versus Exclusion; then we know where Superman stands….and I don’t mean with his hands on his hips!

Capitalism

The Name Game

Lincoln! Lincoln, Lincoln. bo-bin-coln
Bo-na-na fanna, fo-fin-coln
Fee fi mo-min-coln, Lincoln!
Come on ev'rybody, I say now let's play a game
I betcha I can make a rhyme out of anybody's name

What we call something unfortunately can affect how we approach something.

When my then two-year-old said that there was a bear in our backyard, I assumed that he meant a Teddy Bear.  My brother-in-law, who lives in the woods, had an entirely different reaction, and thought that it meant black bears were at his bird feeder again. Just saying bear is incomplete because it only focuses on one component. 

Capitalism focuses on only one component of free market economics, i.e. capital.  The name does not mean that capital is the only component of production in markets.   A production equation includes both capital AND labor. You can’t have production without both.  Labor can not be owned by another.  That is considered to be slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution abolished slavery.  Corporations are chartered by society to protect the assets of a producer from liability.  That includes both the assets of those supplying the labor and those supplying the capital.  Corporations, since they have been chartered by society, are considered to have free speech ( e.g. Citizens United).  But corporate boards almost exclusively represent the interests of capital, not labor or society.  Speaking, and acting, with unity is considered to be acceptable for capital, ( e.g. Manufacturer’s Associations, Chambers of Commerce, etc.), but is seems to be considered to be wrong when labor speaks and acts with unity, i.e. labor unions.

Free markets are a User Optimal solution, e.g. rights of the individual, but properly both capital and labor are users.  The ownership of labor and capital is what distinguishes free markets from socialism, communism, etc.  The ownership of capital by society, whether only in certain industries as in Scandinavian Socialism, or all industries as in Communist countries, must be considered, but so must the ownership of labor. In Scandinavian socialism, all labor is owned by individuals.  In total communism, all labor is owned not by individuals, but by the government.

If the ownership of capital and labor is how economic systems is considered, many “Communist” countries can not be considered to be Communist.  Considerable amounts of capital are owned by individuals and corporations in those countries. E.g. Jack Ma in “Communist “China is among the world's wealthiest individual. Controlling society does not mean owning capital.

Democracy is one manner of how society is controlled.  Capitalism is not democracy.  That is only one part of the name game.

Unions

 

King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

I work for the union
‘Cause she's so good to me
And I'm bound to come out on top
That's where she said I should be

Are unions always good for you?

Some disclaimers.  While I am a union supporter and my father was a long-time union member, during 1992 to 1998 I was Director of the Massachusetts Highway Department’s Bureau of Transportation Planning and Development. Thus I have also by definition been a manager and a bureaucrat.  So when I say that unions can also be bureaucratic it is not meant to be an aspersion on unions, managers, or bureaucrats.

While I was Director, I had to make a choice about hiring a new Geographic Information System, GIS, position. My choices were a person who was not a union member, had no work experience but had just graduated with a degree in  GIS versus a current employee who was a union member, had unrelated work experience and no GIS training.  I opted for the recent GIS employee.  Among her first tasks was to train the other applicant, who filed a union grievance that she should have been given preference in hiring.

After a year, the GIS employee left and the other previous applicant, whom she had trained, was promoted to replace her.  Some time after that the original union grievance hearing was finally held.  Remember that the grievant now held the position which she was grieving that she had been denied.  The outcome of the hearing was that the grievance was upheld and the current occupant of the GIS position should have been hired in the first place, but because the hiring was otherwise proper, she was owed no difference in pay for the interim, .  In order to complete the union grievance, the original grievant, who was the current occupant of the position, was effectively fired for a nanosecond and then immediately rehired.

Which just goes to show that unions can also be bureaucratic.  Yogi Berra should have been the union hearing officer because the outcome made as much sense as “ No one goes there any more.  It’s too crowded.”

In The Heights

Paciencia Y Fe

What do you do when your dreams come true?

I've spent my life inheriting dreams from you

What do I do with this winning ticket?

What can I do but pray

What are your dreams?

Having just watched In The Heights, can I offer a geeky mathematical synopsis of the movie’s plot.  Usnavi and Nina choose System Optimal solutions rather than User Optimal solutions.  Usnavi stays in Washington Heights to be part of that society rather than pursue his dream of operating his father’s bar in the Dominican Republic.  Nina chooses to return to Stanford, even though she is not happy at Stanford, because then she can be more successful in fighting for the rights of Dreamers.

John Nash, himself the subject of the Oscar winning Best Picture, A Beautiful Mind, showed that there is a difference between a User Optimal Nash Equilibrium and a System Optimal solution.  That is why the ending is satisfying. Because as a society we prefer System Optimal solutions.

“There is no I in Team.”
“I only regret that I have but one life to give for my county.”
“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.”
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
“Let me listen to my block.”  

Choose your solution for your block, not for yourself.

Return to Normal

 

Revolution

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait 

Will the return to normal be a revolution? 

Nature seems to prefer a Gaussian distribution.  The common name for a Gaussian distribution is a bell-shaped normal distribution.  One feature of a normal distribution is that the mean, i.e. average,  is equal to the median, i.e. the value where 50% is above and 50% is below. If the median does not equal the mean, then the distribution is called skewed.  Currently there is a perception  by many that income and wealth are skewed toward the higher incomes, higher wealth.

It is possible for a distribution to be a bell-shaped curve,  where the mean, median and mode are all equal but there is another attribute of a curve, the variance, e.g. the width of the curve.  We all became way too familiar with the phrase “Flatten the curve”, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A statistician might say that we were increasing the variance of the curve.  Having an extremely low variance is also something that nature abhors and why those that stand out in a crowd are often the first to be targeted.  A pedestal has a very low variance, width, and tends to tip over, hence the warning about putting idols on pedestals.

“Here lies a toppled god
His fall was not a small one
We did but build his pedestal
A narrow, and a tall one.”

The return to a normal distribution will come. That return can be gradual and planned, or it can be violent,  like the French Revolution.  How far from a normal distribution we stray, may determine how extreme the return will be.

Wide Streets

 

Why, Oh Why

Why don't you answer my questions?
Why, oh why, oh why?
'Cause I don't know the answers.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Is it ignorant to say you don’t know the answer?

During the famines of the 1780s in France, Marie Antoinette supposedly said “Let them eat cake” in response to hearing that the peasants did not have bread to eat.  The phrase was supposed to indicate ignorance, not cruelty.  The ignorance was not realizing bread and cake were both made with flour, and it was flour that was in short supply.  If there was no bread to be eaten, then there would also be no cake to be eaten. 

A recent article “On the High Cost of Wide Streets”  observed that streets that only need to accommodate a single car  can be much narrower.  But those streets were not designed to accommodate cars in the first place.  They were designed to accommodate fire and emergency trucks.  Are they used by cars in normal circumstances? You bet.  Can cars block transit riders? You bet.  When I was attending graduate school in Philadelphia in 1974, streetcars on tracks still shared the road with cars.  The blocking of streetcar tracks ( and the passengers on those street cars) by inconsiderate parked motorists might be illegal, but it happened way too often to be ignored.  The wide streets of Salt Lake City were laid out to accommodate U-turns by horse drawn wagons.  The wide boulevards of Paris were designed to allow cannons to clear barricades from a distance. Those street designs were not because of cars, but it was taken advantage by cars.  

Wide streets might be used by autos, but that does not mean that autos are responsible for wide streets.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Wide streets are designed for an extreme event, not an average event.  Wide streets may be less efficient, but nature and good design favors resiliency over efficiency.  Ask the efficient operators of supply chains how well the recent Suez Canal blockage worked out for them. Ignorance can be corrected by study.  Study why streets are wide, not the costs of wide street.

Lessons from the Pandemic

 

Garden Party

But it's all right now,
 I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone,
So ya got to please yourself.

Have we learned our lesson from the pandemic?

In previous blog postings, I proposed that human behavior can be defined by four attributes:

·       Rights vs. Duty: User Optimal solutions or System Optimal solutions

·       Nature vs. Nurture: Exclusive societies or Inclusive societies

·       Reality vs. Fantasy:  Facts or Alternate Facts

·       Private Property vs. Public Property: Ownership in common or by the public as sovereign.

After over a year of the COVID-19 pandemic it is possible to view how the natural world views these attributes.

Nature seems to favor System Optimal solutions.  Those who cared only for themselves fared poorly against the Virus, while those who were cared by others, typically against the best interests of those others, succeeded.

Nature seems to favor Inclusive societies.  The Virus did not seem to care about the wealth or status of its victims.  Presidents and paupers were all victims of COVID. You might be able to exclude members from your society, but you could not exclude the Virus.

Nature seems to favor facts. The Virus did not go away because anyone said that it did not exist.

Nature seems to favor no Ownership of Property . The Virus could be contracted on both public and private property.  The most successful societies were those who controlled how public property could be used. Social distancing; bans on non-essential usage; mask wearing; vaccination; etc. were required to use public property to prevent contracting, and/or spreading, the Virus.  Those who did not agree with these restrictions, could not use public property merely because they thought that they were co-owners of that public property.

In addition to nature's position of these behaviors. it is also worth noting that nature has also favored resiliency over efficiency.  The most efficient supply chains that depended on links that were no longer available were broken during the pandemic.  Those supply chains that had multiple, if less efficient, links were successful.

People whose basic needs for shelter, food, health care, etc. were able to protect themselves and others from the Virus.  Those who did not, continued to risk exposure to the Virus, despite the risk to themselves and others.

Let us remember the lessons of the pandemic, because it would please me if we never have to repeat the pandemic.