Privatization

 

Anything You Can Do

Anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you

No, you can't
Yes, I can
No, you can't
Yes, I can!

Anything you can be
I can be greater, 
sooner or later
I'm greater than you

Can private companies do better than governments?

Before 1998,  for 18 years I was employed by governments.  Since 1998, I have been employed by a private firm selling its services to those governments.  Thus I am not asking whether there are services that governments can obtain from private companies or else I would be a hypocrite.  But when I offered those services, the action was ultimately taken by a federal, state, or local government.

But there are services that are offered exclusively by governments, like armies, postal delivery, prisons, law enforcement, fire fighting, education, libraries, etc.  Should those services be offered by private companies?   It certainly seems like they are cheaper than government in many cases.  When I was in government service between 1992 and 1998, I served in an administration that was convinced that anything a government did, a private company could do better. IOW, all government services should be privatized.  This included road construction and road upkeep, which was my government department.  The government functions seemed to devolve to just purchasing these services.

But the USDOT took the step of saying, not with our money you don’t.  They took action to decertify our state transportation department because they felt that the procurement officers were no longer capable of telling whether their federal standards were being followed or we were simply being lied to by those private companies.  If those private companies were cheaper because they were smarter, then the government should of course pay to become smarter.  But if those private companies were ignoring acceptable standards, or paying their employees or contractors below fair compensation, or ignoring laws, didn’t this merely make the government complicit in those actions.  And there is that little thing called profit.  Public governments do not have to make a profit, private companies do.

Public governments also must offer services to all of its citizens, and not arbitrarily turn away anyone. Private companies can decide to not ever offer services to anyone, or only offer services under certain conditions. Like not delivering on weekends, or cutting hours.  Private armies can hire criminals.  Are those actions that governments should emulate?  They should be better, not just cheaper!

Winning?

 

Marianne

All day, all night, Marianne
Down by the seaside siftin' sand
Even little children love Marianne
Down by the seaside siftin' sand

My maternal Grandmother’s name was  Marjanna.  My sister is named Marianne.  This post is of course dedicated to them.

The icon of the French Republic is Marianne.  The comparable in the United States would be Lady Liberty.  The Motto of the French Republic is Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!

Those who believe primarily in Liberté, Liberty, are perhaps User Optimalists.  They believe that their own Optimal is paramount.  They believe in Winning.  They think that Winning is not the thing, it is the only thing.  They believe that a Tie is like kissing your sister and that second place is first loser.  At its worst this means winning at all costs including lying, cheating, and stealing.  Because of their beliefs it is difficult to find anyone to play with them.

Those who believe primarily in Égalité, Equality, are perhaps System Optimalists.  They believe that the Optimal of the system is paramount to their own Optimal.  They think everyone should get the benefits of winning, that everyone should get a participation ribbon, that everyone should take one for the team, and that no score should be kept.  They believe that a tie should have the same value as winning.  At its worst this places no value on winning.  Because of their beliefs, System Optimalists have no incentive to produce anything if it only can be taken from them and besides, they don’t like playing anyway.

Those who believe primarily in Fraternité, Fraternity, believe in the strength of brotherhood, safety in numbers, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  At its worst, they will give trust to other members of their fraternity which is not warranted, and fear anyone not in their fraternity. Because of their beliefs they are likely to want to produce value and oppose zero-sum games for at least for their own members.

Society needs all of those people. Society wants everyone to play; to produce, not only for themselves but for others.  It does so by instituting rules, which in game theory would be payout matrices.

User Optimalists would be happy with a payoff matrix, which in a classic game of two choices where you are rewarded for being different and penalized for being the same, of

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	-1	1
	Even	1	-1

System Optimalists would be happy with a payoff matrix where you were rewarded for being the same and penalized for being different, e. g.:

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	1	-1
	Even	-1	1

The problem is that while these matrices are fine for zero-sum Games, believers in Fraternity want something more than a zero-sum game, where only members of their own group can be a player, such as

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	1	1
	Even	1	1

None of these payout matrices is acceptable to all three groups.  A compromise is proposed where one choice is the preferred choice (in the example below, Odd).  It has the advantage of awarding the most points for a Win, less for a Tie, but still valuing a Tie more than a Loss, and is not a zero-sum matrix. It is  

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	0	1
	Even	2	1

But there is an interesting and simple winning strategy with this payout matrix.  A player always plays the non-preferred option in the first game.  If his opponent also chooses the non-preferred option, then that player gains a point. But if his opponent plays the preferred option, he gains no points and his opponent gains two points.  On every subsequent game with the same opponent, that player opts for whatever that opponent played in the prior game.  In this manner, if his opponent plays the preferred option again, then both players are blocked and get no points.  Let’s call this the “Tit for Tat” strategy. 

But if his opponent plays the preferred option in another game with another player, and that other player also plays the preferred option, then neither player gets any points.  Let’s call always playing the preferred option, the “Always Go For The Win” strategy. 

If person following the “Tit for Tat” strategy continues this strategy with another player who also plays the non-preferred option on his first move, they both get a point. But the “Tit for Tat” strategy gets no points in every game against players following the “Always Go For The Win” strategy.

After a large number of games have been played, players following the “Tit for Tat” strategy have the most points.  Those players may have won no games.  The “Always Go For The Win” strategy, wins more games, wins no games against those also follwing an "Always Go For The Win" stagegy, but it does not have more points. This has been tested repeatedly. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2021/05/tough-but-fair-beats-always-being-nasty.html

This payout matrix not only satisfies Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but society as a whole wins!

Journalists

 

A Day In The Life

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

Good or bad, we count on journalists to tell us the news.

“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. “  BTW Superman, whose Kryptonian name was Kal-El, was created by two Jews and is a thinly veiled retelling of the Moses story with a spaceship subbing for a basket in the bulrushes.

Journalists are supposed to be interested in the Truth, certainty, not merely in who wins, dominance.  Journalists are supposed to speak truth to power, not present both sides.

It is hardly surprising that 1/3 of the people support Trump.  The minimum number of players according to Game Theory is three.  ( yes, it may look like there are only two teams on the field, but have you forgotten about the refs?)  So 1/3 choosing Trump, and 1/3 choosing Biden, means that the battle for dominance is for the middle third.  

As a traffic engineer, I ask you to think about what happens when you encounter a “Lane Drop Ahead” sign.  The System Optimal solution would be to use the lane drop as long as possible and then seek a safe gap to merge into the continuing lane, a "rolling merge".  The User Optimal solution is to drive until the end of that lane being dropped and then force yourself into the continuing lane, regardless of others in that lane.

What happens is that neither the System Optimal or the worse case User Optimal solution is chosen by most cars.  Instead cars get into the moving lane as soon as possible and someone if necessary, usually a semi-tractor trailer truck,  blocks the lane which is being dropped.  This is called a Nash Equilibrium after John Nash, the subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6eK0yiw9t0&t=11s .  Only in this case, semis are blocking the lane, not the Blonde.

The 1/3^rd who want their User Optimal try to convince the middle to let everyone choose their own User Optimal.  That can include lying if necessary, in order to win a majority of that middle 1/3^rd.  But if the middle 1/3^rd knows that those are lies, then expect a Nash Equilibrium instead. But we are counting on journalists to tell them that they are lies.  “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own facts”.  Please journalists, fight for the Truth, Justice and the American Way. Be our Supermen.

Art

 

ARTPOP

A hybrid can withstand these things
My heart can beat with bricks and strings
My ARTPOP could mean anything

Is Art a hybrid, that is a combination?

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth—and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but then he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment the audience falls in love. -  Lady Gaga

Far be it from me to disagree with Mother Monster, because I don’t, but Art is Truth.  And Lies are the absence of Truth.  Truth is a combination of Reality and Imagination.  Lady Gaga has Imagination.  She does not tell Lies.  I think what Lady Gaga meant to say is:

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of reality—and then there's imagination. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this combination a truth, by sliding his imagination in amongst all the reality. The imagination is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment the audience falls in love.

Election Slogan

 

Save The Country

We could build the dream with love
And I got fury in my soul
Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal
In my mind I can't study war no more
Save the people! Save the children! Save the country!
Save the country! Save the country! Save the country!

Save the Country!

The Biden Campaign has seems to have decided on “Save Democracy” as its slogan.  That sounds like it is favoring the Democratic Party.  Should it be “Save the Republic”?

Republic, form of government in which a state is ruled by representatives of the citizen body. Modern republics are founded on the idea that sovereignty rests with the people, though who is included and excluded from the category of the people has varied across history. Because citizens do not govern the state themselves but through representatives, republics may be distinguished from direct democracy, though modern representative democracies are by and large republics.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/republic-government

The Biden election is being opposed by "republicans In Name Only", rINOs, who are afraid that the people will not choose as those rINOs have chosen. They do not want representatives of the people but representatives of only themselves.  When Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had given, he is supposed to have said “A republic, if you can keep it”.  This appears to be an election that will decide whether we can keep it.

Dominance or Certainty

 

Winner Takes It All

The winner takes it all (takes it all)
The loser has to fall (has to fall)
It's simple and it's plain (it's so plain)
Why should I complain? (Why complain?)

So Wall Street which is it? Dominance? or Certainty?

The Wall Street stock market is all about winners and losers, by dominance. But the stock market also hates uncertainty. You can’t have certainty in a contest with only two parties which will be decided by dominance.

The stock market is not certain,which is why there are Index funds and why a random walk of the stock market does better than day trading. Collectively you can achieve certainty. Individually you might achieve dominance but that is at the expense of allowing uncertainty. A contest where there are only two outcomes and two players can be 100% dominant, but that outcome is purely by luck, a random occurrence if the game is fair and the parties are equal. In this case the certainty that the dominant winner is the certain winner is the value of that outcome, 100%, multiplied the reciprocal of the probability of that outcome, which is 50%. Thus even though the dominance of the winner has been established, the certainty is only 50%.

The difference between certainty and dominance can best be seen in the jury system. A 7-5 jury vote indicates 100% dominance, but it is only 80.66% certain.  A 12-0 finding of Guilty, or Not Guilty,  remains 100% dominant, but the certainty has increased to 99.98 %.

Thus for a single stock transaction, you can be dominant or certain, but being dominant does not mean being certain. However being certain does mean being dominant.

Zero

 

Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental meditation
Transcendental meditation
Can emancipate the man
And get you feeling grand
It's good

Is zero transcendental?

In mathematics, a transcendental number is a real or complex number that is not algebraic – that is, not the root of a non-zero polynomial of finite degree with rational coefficients. The best-known transcendental numbers are π and e.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_number

While π and e might be the best known transcendental numbers, it is noted that hyperbolic trigonometric functions, which are expressed as functions of powers of e,  which is itself a transcendental number, are transcendental functions.  These hyperbolic trigonometric functions are also periodic in i*π,  i.e. repeat on the imaginary axis with a frequency of multiples of π[1], another transcendental number.   

Euler’s formula, e^ix=cos(x)* sin(x)*i, is also the coordinate transformation of a complex number from polar coordinates to rectangular, Cartesian, coordinates with a real and an imaginary axis, where the polar radius is 1.   It includes the rotation of the imaginary axis by an angle of x.  Sin(π)=0 means that the coefficient of the imaginary axis is zero.  Does that mean that there is NO imaginary axis?  That depends on whether that zero is absolute or relative. 

Absolute zero is the absence of the absolute, i.e. a temperature of absolute zero means that there is an absence of temperature.  By contrast, zero on the Centigrade scale does not mean that there is no temperature, just that the temperature is relative to a zero point on the scale, which in the case of the Centigrade scale is the freezing point of water.  IOW, negative numbers are allowed on a relative scale.

Transcendental functions are not expressible as a finite combination of the algebraic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, raising to a power, and extracting a root. Examples include the functions sin(x), cos(x), cosh(x), sinh(x), e^x, ln(x), etc., and any functions containing them. Special transcendental functions are the reflection of sin(x), which is sin(‑x) and is equal to sin(x) and the reflection of cosh(x), which is cosh(-x) and is also identical to cosh(x). This is not true of cos(x), tan(x), sinh(x), tanh(x), e^x, ln(x) and other transcendental functions.  They are not self-reflective, reflections of themselves.

Because cos(x) is transcendental but not self-reflective this means that Euler’s formula is also transcendental but not self-reflective. In that equation x can take on any value between -∞ and ∞.  Because Euler’s Formula is a combination of a self-reflective sin(x) and a non-self-reflective cos(x), but trigonometric functions are repeating, there are many solutions with a zero coefficient of the imaginary axis, i.e. a rotation of the imaginary axis of zero: even multiples of π, including zero, which have values of cos =1 as the coefficient of the real axis; and odd multiples of π which have values of cos=  -1 as the coefficient of the real axis. Since in this case zero is not merely the absence of an absolute, and is in fact multiple numbers, it must be a relative zero, not an absolute zero. An absolute zero is the absence of a transcendental .  A relative zero is not.

So is zero transcendental?  That depends on if that zero is absolute or relative.

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[1] Cosh, sinh, and related functions, repeat with a period of 2*π*i.  Tanh and related functions repeat with a period of π*i.