The Middle

 

Stuck in the Middle

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.

But the middle is where you want to be.

The eternal debate always seems to be between the right vs left, whether that is monarchists vs. lower case r republicans; capitalists vs. communists; conservatives vs. liberals; libertarians vs. progressives; red vs. blue; etc. One side are User Optimalistsm, UO. The other side are System Optimalists, SO. But humans are individual users (UO) that form a society (SO). No side should win, or we have no society, and not thus no society to protect individuals from each other.

Mathematics/game theory provides the guidance that when individuals form a system they seek a Nash Equilibrium. Some users will achieve less than their own User Optimal, but all members of the System will be at Equilibrium,  will achieve the same value.

While this may sound like an unfamiliar concept, you probably have experienced it if ever you have driven in a lane drop in traffic, due to construction, work zones, accidents, etc. The System Optimal solution is for the lane which continues to move at capacity and for traffic to continue to operate in the lane that is being dropped for as long as possible until there is a safe gap to merge into the continuing lane. This is called a rolling merge. In fact few travelers have ever experienced a rolling merge. This is because an individual vehicle can always continue in the lane which is being dropped and then force its way to the head of the still moving lanes, because “don’t you know who they are.”  To prevent last-second lane jumpers, most other vehicles  move into the continuing lane at first notice. Also some vehicles will block the lane being dropped to block any attempts at lane jumping. This is neither a User Optimal free-for-all nor a System Optimal rolling merge, but somewhere in-between where individual Users function as if they were a System.

It is neither winner takes it all, nor everyone wins, but the team wins because some team members are willing to take one for the team. Neither extreme wins, but the middle wins.

Batman

 

I Am the Walrus

I am the egg man
They are the egg men
I am the walrus
Goo goo g'joob

I am the Batman, goo goo g’job.

I got excited when the National Renewable Energy Lab featured a story about the Gotham Knight. https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2024/unleashing-the-power-batman-project-revolutionizes-battery-manufacturing.html. I should have realized that the project named Batman was short for Battery Manufacturing, and not the Gotham  Knight . Before that realization, my question was which Gotham Knight, the one before the Reagan presidency when Batman merely captured crooks for the Gotham  City Police Department OR the Batman after that time where his opponents were insane (at least according to his  morality) and were confined to Arham Asylum. It is the former Batman that was nearly cancelled, not current popular one. But there is another humbler meaning for batman that I would like to suggest is also more in keeping with the pre-1980s Batman.

That is an orderly to an officer in the British Army. It is derived not from the creature of the night, but from the term bat, the French word for a pack carried into battle. A batman managed an officer’s bat. In which case Alfred the butler is the batman to the current Batman.

A famous batman is Mervyn Bunter in Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Bunter was Lord Peter’s batman during World War I and remained with him after the war to manage his affairs. Despite being only his valet, Bunter is Lord Peter’s friend. Lord Peter admires Bunter’s efficiency and competence in virtually every sphere, and trusts him with his life. We all need a batman like that. I hope that the National Renewable Lab’s project has that batman in mind, and not the current Batman who is all about imposing his point of view by dominance.

Consistency

 

The Life I Lead

I run my home precisely on schedule
At 6:01, I march through my door
My slippers, sherry, and pipe are due at 6:02
Consistent is the life I lead! 

Be consistent. 

When faced with a road with too many cars for the capacity of that road, the expectation is thar the government which operates the road will excpnd the capacity of that road.  The expectation is not to eliminate some of the cars around me. Why they when faced with an immigration system where there are too many immigrants for the processing system is the response that government should eliminate immigrants, not increase its ability to process immigrants? To be consistent why is the correct response increasing supply in one case and decreasing demand in the other case. Shouldn’t it be the same response in both cases?

But understand when there is an attempt at a joke. I remember a public meeting when I was asked a question about how to deal with traffic congestion. I factiously tried to emulate Swift’s Immodest Proposal by saying that people should shoot the tires of vehicles that they did not recognize. I remember then being asked without any sense of irony where would one get ammunition for one's gun and could one get exemptions from our state’s gun laws. I learned to be consistent in my humor too!

Distribution of Wealth III

 

Adventures of Robin Hood Theme

Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
With his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood!

Where is Robin Hood when you need him?

According to the Global Wealth Databook published by USB, the world has become wealthier but more inequitable in the distribution of that wealth. In 2000, that databook reported that the adult population of the 164 markets, mostly countries, was 3.8 billion and the wealth of those markets was 118 Trillion of US Dollars. In 2022, the most recent year reported, the adult population increased to 5.1 billion. a growth of 42 percent, but the wealth had increased to 450 trillion of US Dollars. Even adjusting for inflation, this is equivalent to $256 trillion in 2000 US Dollars, a growth of 117 percent.

The distribution of that wealth also became less equitable. The ratio of the mean to median wealth per adult is a good indication of the equitable distribution in each market. That index has been weighted by the size of the population of each market. On that basis the weighted Equity Index (the ratio of the mean to the median, weighted by the population for each market in 2000 is as shown below.

It changed to that shown below in 2022.

While the extremes in the smaller markets of Bahrain, Bahamas and Brunei dropped in the intervening years,  the total inequity increased, and the variance in in the distribution of wealth also has increased. The Equity Index in the United States changed from 4.7 in 2000 to 5.1 in 2022. This ratio of the mean to the median is NOT changed by restating in inflation adjusted dollars. It appears that as total wealth increased, this has been accompanied primarily by an increase in the variance of the distribution of that wealth.

Distribution of Wealth II

God Bless the Child

Money, you've got lots of friends
They're crowding around the door
When you're gone and spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give crusts of bread and such
You can help yourself, but don't take too much

Mama may have, papa may have 
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own
God bless the child, the child that's got his own 

How much wealth is enough to be your own? 

God bless the Swiss. I had the feared that the Global Wealth Databook published annually by Credit Suisse would be discontinued after Credit Suisse was taken over by UBS. In fact UBS has published the 2023 book. And this Databook has wealth information by country by year from 2000 to 2022. Thus it is possible to not only see how wealth is distributed among the population of a market, but it is also possible to see how this distribution has changed over time. For 2022, the book reports mean, median and total wealth and adult populations for 164 markets which are primarily countries ( Hong Kong SAR,  and Taiwan are reported as separate markets from Mainland China, despite China’s’ territorial claims; some markets are not reported because there is no data, e.g., Sudan, South Sudan, etc.). This means that at least for this year it is still possible to examine how wealth is distributed in most markets.

“Sadly” the United States, based on the ratio of the mean to the median wealth, has lost ground as the market/country with the most inequitable distribution of wealth in the world. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/04/distribution-of-wealth.html   

While Bahrain and the Bahamas are still the most inequitable counties, again they are very small markets. But the United States has lost ground to other small markets such Lesotho, Brunei, Suriname and even to the large market of Brazil. If the mean to median is weighted by the share of population, the United States has only the third most inequitable distribution of wealth after India and China. But this ranking is almost entirely because of the size of India and China’s populations. The Top 10 Most Inequitable Markets ranked by weighted inequality of wealth (mean divided by median) are

Market	Share of Adults	Share of Wealth	Weighted Mean /Median Wealth
India	18.1%	3.4%	0.80
Mainland China	21.7%	18.8%	0.60
United States	4.9%	31.1%	0.25
Brazil	3.1%	1.0%	0.16
Indonesia	3.6%	0.7%	0.13
Russia	2.2%	1.0%	0.10
Nigeria	2.0%	0.2%	0.09
Pakistan	2.5%	0.2%	0.06
Philippines	1.4%	0.2%	0.06
Bangladesh	2.1%	0.2%	0.05

where the mean wealth per adult that is closest to the median wealth per population remains Iceland. But this is not surprising in a country with arguably the oldest democratic body (the Althing)  and where almost everyone is related to everyone else on the island.

Brains?

 

If I Only Had A Brain

I could while away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers,
Consulting with the rain;
And my head I'd be a scratchin'
While my thoughts are busy hatchin'
If I only had a brain.

Does the Scarecrow already have a brain?

In the movie The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow demonstrates that he has a brain, but he is given a diploma to prove that he has a brain.

"Oh No, Scarecrow!  Math from the Wizard of Oz     by JW Gaberdiel

At the end of The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow receives a diploma and then immediately says,

“The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUCZXn9RZ9s

This is unfortunate.  It sounds a lot like the Pythagorean Theorem: 

“The sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.”

However, Scarecrow’s version is wildly and devastatingly different from Pythagoras’ version. "

https://www.metro-arts.org/ourpages/auto/2015/5/14/58561904/Scarecrows%20Math%20from%20The%20Wizard%20of%20Oz.pdf

Actually neither is correct.  Gaberdiel assumes that the Scarecrow was talking about a triangle on a Euclidean, flat, surface.  What the Scarecrow should  be saying if the surface is hyperbolic is

 “The product of the hyperbolic cosines of the legs of a right triangle is equal to the hyperbolic cosine of the remaining side."

The squares, square roots, and the Pythagoras’ Theorem for right triangles only apply on Euclidean, flat, surfaces.  It is true because on a flat surface, cos(c)=cos(a)*cos(b), where a, b, and c are the sides of a right triangle,  and this is equivalent to Pythagoras Theorem.  On a spherical surface, such as the Earth, the formula is cos(c/R)=cos(a/R)*cos(b/R) where R is the Radius of the special surface.  When a, b, and c are very small compared to R , i.e. as R goes to infinity, the limt is cos(c)=cos(a)* cos(b), which is Pythagoras’ Theorem.  But as any airplane pilot will confirm, a Great Circle Distance is not solved using Pythagoras’ Theorem.  If the surface is hyperbolic, not spherical, then Pythagoras’ Theorem is also not correct.  The correct formula is cosh(c)=cosh(a)cosh(b). The Scarecrow may have been given a diploma, but to be correct he also needed to get an imagination, the component that makes a function, and the surface it is on, hyperbolic.

Warehouses

 

A Horse In Striped Pajamas

Look there daddy, do you see?
There's a horse in striped pajamas
No, that's not what it is at all
That's an animal people call a zebra
I see, but it still looks like a
Horse in striped pajamas to me

Is a warehouse store like Costco a warehouse or a store?

This sounds like a silly question, but it is not.  If you are looking at that warehouse store from the perspective of a user, then whether it is a warehouse, or a store, is immaterial to you.  You are a customer of that warehouse store, not a competitor. If you are looking at that warehouse store from the perspective of a producer then that warehouse store has no intention of using the goods that it purchases from you. They are only a customer, not a competitor.  From the perspective of a user they are a seller, and from perspective of a receiver, they are a re-seller. 

This makes a difference in economics and other modeling.  Are you calling that warehouse store a  warehouse industry, whose function is to store goods until the user needs them, or are you calling them  a wholesaler, whose function is to compete with other retail stores.   I can get it for you wholesale.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics which uses the North American Industrial Classification System classifies them as wholesalers, not as warehouses.  So you might call them a warehouse, but someone might call them wholesalers.  They are both, if you don’t expect them to behave like a horse that is getting ready to sleep, then it is just a name, not the function. And a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!