Detailed Abstractions

Over at HBR Amar Bhidé has written an article discussing the housing market and subsequent crash (very interesting – entire thing here) and proposes that among the causes of the crash, a sort of self restriction had taken the market from a vibrant one to one controlled by centralized authority:

The modern economy creates and spreads unprecedented prosperity by drawing on the resourcefulness and enterprise of the many, not by blindly following the dictates of a few. Individuals today make and act on their own judgments to a degree that would have been unimaginable to our forebears….

In recent times, though, a new form of centralized control has taken root—one that is the work not of old-fashioned autocrats, committees, or rule books but of statistical models and algorithms. These mechanistic decision-making technologies have value under certain circumstances, but when misused or overused they can be every bit as dysfunctional as a Muscovite politburo….

His argument is one we’ve heard from the military and other agencies as well – what they needed was more human intelligence on the ground, not more technical complexity from high.

He continues:

…Consider what has just happened in the financial sector: A host of lending officers used to make boots-on-the-ground, case-by-case examinations of borrowers’ creditworthiness. Unfortunately, those individuals were replaced by a small number of very similar statistical models created by financial wizards and disseminated by Wall Street firms, rating agencies, and government-sponsored mortgage lenders. This centralization and robotization of credit flourished as banks were freed from many regulatory limits on their activities and regulators embraced top-down, mechanistic capital requirements. The result was an epic financial crisis and the near-collapse of the global economy. Finance suffered from a judgment deficit, and all of us are paying the price….

Even going so far as to invoke Hayek to make the case:

The great twentieth-century thinker Friedrich Hayek made the classic argument for decentralized choice in his essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” The stability of the economy depends on constant adjustments to small changes, he believed—“B stepping in at once when A fails to deliver.” No single individual has the knowledge to make those adjustments; rather, it is widely dispersed across many individuals. But information about “the circumstances of the fleeting moment” cannot be quickly and accurately communicated to a central planner. Therefore, individuals who have on-the-spot knowledge must be allowed to figure out what to do….

Adaptation to changes—the focus of Hayek’s article—is only part of the story. The success of the modern economy also depends on innovation. As it happens, decentralization beats central planning here, too. Innovations are unprecedented, one-of-a-kind developments. Even incremental ones require imagination. An innovator cannot simply rely on historical patterns in placing bets on future opportunities. Knowing what has worked before and what hasn’t is but a starting point. Innovation also requires considerable trial and error. Unforeseen technical problems—or customers not doing what they had told market researchers they would—demand recalibrations that combine on-the-spot observations and historical knowledge with leaps of imagination….

Of course like most writers who seem to espouse the virtues of decentralization, he still thinks some things need centralized control which don’t:

Technologically advanced societies couldn’t function without some centralized control, of course. Governments need to regulate how businesses drill for oil, develop genetically modified crops, and pick the paints they use in toys, for instance….

Either way, he goes on to argue that the financial industry, using mathematical formulas and statistical models, embraced a sort of top-down control giving rise to “Mechanistic Decision Making” & “Robotic Finance”.

This basic line of reasoning isn’t exactly new.  Wired had an article in February of 2009 (here) about the risk formula which killed Wall Street.  The formula worked well for 5 years as investors used it as a way to measure pooled risk in MBSs (mortgage backed securities), but the formula:

…still hadn’t solved all the problems of mortgage-pool risk. Some things, like falling house prices, affect a large number of people at once. If home values in your neighborhood decline and you lose some of your equity, there’s a good chance your neighbors will lose theirs as well. If, as a result, you default on your mortgage, there’s a higher probability they will default, too….

Now while both articles point to specific issues which helped the collapse, like most they conveniently left out all discussion in reference to the government’s role in perverting the incentives, but together I think they present an interesting challenge to those of us who believe in decentralization as a good (DA post on decentralization here).

& that is – can there be mechanisms put into place which actually help foster decentralized control since our history, both long term and recent, seems to indicate humans have a tendency towards centralized control at certain levels of complexity.

We see this through various disciplines such as anthropology, archeology, and history, that over the past 10,000 years or so, humans made a mass migration from the nomadic lifestyle which was practiced for nearly 200,0000 years, to villages, towns, and cities.

Using agricultural knowledge to help spur this transition, humans also started growing in population.  As more land became developed and could support more people, villages and towns grew into large cities & states.

With the advent of these new societal structures, came new power structures.  In nomadic communities, authority is handled from a tribal point of view.

This means that people don’t really have positions of authority which is spelled out by any specific power structure.  Their authority comes from their ability to influence.  So elders with specific knowledge are sought after for wisdom and help, without a formal power structure of say a judicial system.

With the growth of society, came the growth of power structures as they became necessary to handle the population explosion.  Things such as basic sanitation and clean water were large public work projects which required the control of enough resources (labor mostly) which heretofore had been impossible.

These beginning power structures, would eventually evolve into the world in which most of us find ourselves today: a world in which more of our daily lives are coming under scrutiny from centralized power structures.

& we’ve seen what these power structures are capable of doing, both good and bad.  While it allowed for greater sharing of knowledge through vibrant cities which pooled resources in denser areas, it also allowed for the pooling of resources for war.

Either way, in this case the centralized authority we can normally blame was there in multiple areas, but for this specific factor it was self imposed.

Indeed in looking at human history, it seems given some level of complexity we seek out centralized forms of control.  It might seem today as if humans would never pick governments and politicians as idiotic and with as much power as they have today, but these were gradual changes over generations.

Taken with the most recent example of self selected centralization, it may be we need to consider the possibility that humans tend towards this direction with or without institutions directly promoting centralized control.

More thoughts on complexity here

It the state of MO, like other states with large cities, St. Louis & Kansas City both have local earnings taxes.  Meaning, in St. Louis at least, by merely working inside the city limits of St. Louis, you have an additional 1% income tax.

Enter the voter initiative (whole thing here via ):

…Proposition A wouldn’t repeal the tax, but it would give residents in the two cities a chance to vote every five years starting in 2011 on whether to continue the tax. If voters approved a repeal of the tax, it would be phased out over 10 years, at one-tenth of a percent each year.

The measure also bans any other cities from enacting an earnings tax….

Seems pretty benign, though I’m sure legal challenges will surface if Prop A passes…. assuming of course Missourians are allowed to vote at all.

Enter Kansas City government with union backing:

KANSAS CITY (AP) — Kansas City’s city attorney has filed a lawsuit seeking to block a November ballot measure that would allow residents of Kansas City and St. Louis decide whether to keep their cities’ earnings tax….

A group called Let Voters Decide submitted the ballot measure after the petition drive. The suit was filed on behalf of acting Kansas City city manager Troy Schulte and Pat Dujakovich, president of the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO, both as private citizens….

What’s their main complaint?

…The lawsuit argues that the required elections would cost both St. Louis and Kansas City about $500,000, and neither city would be compensated for the cost.

According to the suit, Proposition A “becomes a de facto appropriation by voters statewide on Kansas City funds for the purpose of this (local) election.”…

But…

…Let Voters Decide spokesman Marc Ellinger said the measure wouldn’t require either city to pay for a local election if they just wanted to skip the vote and let the tax phase out automatically….

Please don’t get me wrong here, Kansas City might have a good legal basis for their arguments, but I’m unsure we should be living in a government which chooses to sue the state in order to specifically prevent voters from casting their ballots.

Maybe I’m off here, but I always thought for a law to be challenged it had to exist first, then harm would have to exist to give any client standing.

Of course don’t tell that to the President or Arizona either, but I’m digressing.

The point is only that when the government seeks to actively prevent your voice from being heard through ballot initiatives, people should be concerned.

Friday last week, I posted random links including a short story about the current Senate race between Carly Fiorina & Barbara Boxer (here):

…In what has to be either a sign of the end times or a sign of our bright future, Senator Barbara Boxer is in a tight race against former HP CEO Carly Fiorina…

While the true impact of the 2010 midterm elections is still ultimately up to a vote which hasn’t happened, the signs seem to all be pointing to good news based upon selectorate theory (DA post here):

..the theory is also powerful due to its simplicity.  It states that leaders will pay back those people that helped them become leaders in order to stay leaders.  This seems fairly intuitive and agrees with most understanding of incentives, but from here they can make predictions based upon the ration between what they call W, the Winning Coalition, and S,the selectorate or those who can affect who the leader is….

…The corollary with W/S is that when W is small as compared to S, the revenues spent will be mainly private and conversely if W is large compared to S, expenditures will be mostly public….

The basic idea is that the leader will use their power to pay back those who helped them get elected and the larger that coalition is, the less likely that money can come in the form of direct payoffs.

Now theoretically, in a free election system, W is 1/2 of S + 1.  IE – in order to get elected I need 50% of the votes plus one.

What happens however, if the voters through their actions artificially limit W?

How can they you ask?  Easily actually.

Every 10 years post census, each state will redraw district boundary lines based upon population numbers.  The problem is this “redrawing” isn’t done based on some objective science or even just basic math, but based on politics.  The way it currently works is the party in power redraws the districts.

Typically, the only ones who argue against these plans are the parties out of power.  Historically, the minority party would go to court, but courts have answered these challenges by stating that unless specific acts of discrimination or such can be proven, political redistricting is not something the court will actively change.

The reasoning is that voters have recourse already so the court is not necessary.  Their recourse is to elect those who redraw the district boundaries.

Now in states that change majority party from time to time, there are incentives for politicians to not gerymander individual districts too bad, least they be on the receiving end next time.

However, in states like CA or TX, where one party dominates, there are no incentives for the party in power to do anything but draw district boundaries in such a way as to ensure they can maintain power.

This is how we end up with politicians like Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi, who win their individual districts in landslide elections, but whose national approval rating is slightly higher than the IQ of a prune.

This is also the reason (here) “polls showing voter disgust, such as the dismally low congressional approval ratings, only show feelings.  The reality is even with rates of congressional approval as low as 16%, the rate for the election of incumbents is well over 90%.”

But his only works through voter ignorance.  The reality is voters are free to vote for whom they want.  Just because a district is redrawn to include mostly Democrat supporters, doesn’t mean those voters must vote for the Democrat.

We know the truth however for many voters is party loyalty and party identification are much stronger forces in their life than political analysis.

There are reasons for this as well, including the sheer complexity of the government itself.  This level of complexity means for a voter to be truly informed, a good deal of time is needed to sort through the information.  Time most people would rather spend with their families after work.  But I digress…. (read more about The Myth of the Rational Voter here via Cato)

The point is that while voters don’t have to vote party loyalty, the evidence is very strong to suggest they do.

Therefore - back to W/S as a ratio – if voters allow a district to always put a Democrat (or Republican) in that seat, they are effectively making the general election a formality whereas the real election is during the primaries.

This combined with the facts that primary voters represent a very small percentage of total voters & primary voters tend to be true believers, results is an artificial reduction of W in our ratio of W/S, ultimately reducing voter power.

While I tend to stay away from any predictions, the current trending of certain national Senate and Congressional races is showing a promising sign of reversing this trend for at least one election cycle.

Of course for now, these are only polls.  They only tell us what people think during a given time period and nothing more.  The true test for voters will be on election day:

Will voters stand up against incumbents?  Or will they do what they’ve done for the past couple of decades; complain about the worthless government while simultaneously voting to keep the same government?

Over @ Columbia Journalism Review, Greg Marx, has written a piece to let us all know that the 1994 political movement led by Newt Gingrich, the Contract with America, didn’t really do anything (read whole thing here).  The problem is, they have no real evidence to back up their claim and the evidence they use is either pure speculation or actually can be used as evidence to the contrary.

As a side note – I wish both the Republicans and the Democrats get new leadership which actively seeks to expand real freedoms and that would include replacing Mr. Gingrich.  My goal here is not to defend Mr. Gingrich, but to highlight suspect journalism.

My reply (with some minor edits):

Using Media Matters for proof puts your entire publication at risk. They are well known as being a highly partisan outfit and the research you pointed to in order to prove your point is no different.

The basic question being asked is: Did the contract with America affect the 1994 election?

Those people, like Media Matters, who wish to devalue Mr. Gingrich’s contribution point to one basic fact: only 30% of the voters knew. One thing they point to talks about exit polls, which does lend some credence to their argument, but everything else they point to lends absolutely no credible evidence to their answer.

Simply put, if 30% of the voters are aware of some political push, you’ve done something quite difficult. Most voters don’t know anything about politics, they only know about the most recent dust-up. Most voters in 2008 still thought Republicans were in charge of both houses of Congress.

Most voters don’t study things like Contract with America, or any of the other things non-profit groups might ask a candidate to sign, like tax groups asking for signatures against raising taxes. Most voters have no idea how many promises their candidates made and to whom they were made.

This does not mean that those who did know where not affected. & when elections have been very close historically, it seems odd you’d make the claim that 30% of the voting public knowing about a completely political movement meant nothing.

Maybe back out of the politics of it and think of it as a product sale. Republicans and Democrats are selling a product – themselves. Neither group knows exactly which advertisements, which communication strategies, and which campaign pushes help their vote totals, but they know they all help.

As the axiom is marketing goes: “I know 1/2 the money I spend on marketing works, I just don’t know which 1/2″

Lastly, even though you have no idea which 1/2 is working, if any CEO could get 30% of their potential client base to know specifics about an organizational push…. just wow. They’d live and die a very, very wealthy person and be sought out by every book writer and researcher to figure out just how that was possible.

For Columbia & Media Matters though – it’s just overblown.

In an email discussion with a very interesting new friend, an idea I’ve heard before came up:  Libertarianism is sort-of childish; a Utopian dream that’s nice in theory, but not practical in reality.

It might be trivial to write at this point, but I of course disagreed.  To be fair, I believe this is completely true on foreign policy.  Libertarianism seems like a domestic political philosophy only, but more on that in the future.

On the childish part – in some ways I can see why that perception exists as well.  I’ve jokingly said before the reason libertarianism has a bad name, is because of libertarians.  The cultural norm in libertarian thinkers who draw large numbers of readers seems to be to take one basic principle and stretch it to infinity.

For instance – it’s your property, you can do with as you please.  So you can put a brothel next door to an elementary school and the only recourse should be neighbors buying the lot to out price the brothel.

To many, including me, this is stupid.  The point in giving as many freedom to others as possible, simply can not include a dissolution of society itself by subjecting populations to things they don’t want.  Also, I think they already have this type of vision in local government using SOME zoning laws.

Additionally though, libertarians do believe in contracts.  So if a bunch of people bought tons of land, they could sell those plots with any caveat they want – even religious requirement.  By buying the lot, you are signing the contract and therefore willingly entering into that agreement with those constraints.

While I firmly believe this is possible, legal, and potentially preferable, it seems like that’s a community/town.  Their issue however with government control is one of the use of force, but I think that’s due to too much centralization.  Studies have shown, more decentralization, IE – more local control, leads to better outcomes (here).  What this would mean, if we were to ever take it seriously, is that while New York might maintain 18 million people for the economic possibilities that provides, government spending and programs should be on a much smaller level.

Please note – this doesn’t mean that no federal government should exist or that taxes should only exist on a very local level, just to say that smaller communities providing for their own fire, police, education, etc, etc, etc works better than 3 million people trying the same thing.  The idea is a state tax or federal tax would be required for things such as national defense, but the majority of expenditures should be directed more locally by a mayor or city manager at a much smaller level.

So it’s not that I believe the community should completely dissipate, it’s that I firmly believe that when the government gets involved, it actually distorts the system to the point where people simply don’t take care of themselves…. or their neighbors.   I think this is backed up by basic human behaviors and thinking as well as all of our uniquely “urban” problems.

One of the human conditions which helps this continue is that of group think.  By safely removing yourself far away from the negative results the government produces with its Wars on poverty, terrorism, obesity…. kids?  People can insulate themselves in larger communities due to increased anonymity by blaming society at large, instead of assuming any direct responsibility.

Listen carefully when people argue about police abuse, or crappy government inefficiencies with social spending, or politician’s lack of values…. they place blame it lots of places, but never on themselves and usually, oddly enough, never on the voters either.

Going further, the government exploits our fears with the media willing accomplices (Politics of Fear) into giving up more control to the government and thereby reinforcing the notion that the government is the answer, when it fact it’s people.

For instance.. violent crime is down a great deal since 1990 (uptick recently, but very small and declining again), but the reporting of crime has increased on average around 500%.  Thanks to multiple 24 hour news shows, combined with a finite amount of news, sensational stories about very rare events influences people’s fears about those events.

We humans aren’t that good at evaluating risk as it is, without doing so in a very methodical way, but with the government’s various wars on everything: AIDs, H1N1, Poverty, Terrorism, Obesity, Smoking, Drugs, Cancer…. kids?  All with the media willingly pushing these sensationalized news stories, people have exaggerated fears towards rare events and minimal fears towards much more likely catastrophic events (great video here ~20 minutes).

Add to this, a general lack of skepticism and critical thinking, most people never take the time to see if their fears, concerns, or core set of understanding of the world is accurate.  I believe this is due to a lack of appropriate priorities for most people, but more on that later.*

Looking at society, you can see the fear we have in our neighbors.  For example, in lots of neighborhoods in lots of places, people will more quickly call the cops on a loud neighbor than just walk over and ask politely.  We go to court when cutting down a tree that crosses property lines, we call the cops when we think the neighbor has too many dogs, we…. we just call the cops because people are scared of their neighbors.  & not because they know about the bunker with a year’s worth of rations and ammunition, but because we continue to allow our human frailty in risk assessment to be exploited by those only seeking more power.

Additionally, we willingly take away rights from others.  The most consistent comment from friends, colleagues, strangers who accidentally started a conversation with me…. but for those I did talk to around carry conceal laws during a vote in MO had, by definition of a binary question, one of two answers. Yes or No

The interesting part of the nos was almost all used the same basic reasoning when talking to me:  “You’re fine. It wouldn’t bother me a bit if you carried a gun, you were in the military and trained.  I just don’t know about everyone else.”  Other than showing a lack of knowledge of how little an electronic technician trains on weapons, I think it shows our general distrust of others.

Not surprisingly, even when confronted with the stats that prove FL, TX, and other states did not turn into the Wild West (not that the West was truly all that “wild”) where horn honks during rush hour turned into shootouts between soccer moms & insurance salesmen, were all safely ignored.

I guess the cognitive dissonance was too much to handle because stats like those in FL & TX demonstrate that our 99.9% of our neighbors who might get a carry conceal permit are not planning to emulate Rambo on the morning commute did nothing to waver the opponents.

With all that being said – I’m proffering the idea that in an odd, perverse, but easily understandable way, government involvement, even in very charitable actions, can actually reduce our incentive to live together peacefully and take responsibility for our communities.

*On the lack of priorities, I don’t believe all people should run out and research everything I know because I think everyone should read what I read.  I think the very first rule in critical thinking that all trying to be honest analysts have to understand is that like all other humans, even those trained and educated in analysis, will still have the same frailties in their thinking process.  Potentially less pronounced, but never completely mitigated.

Therefore, when writing that peoples’ priorities seem to be off, I think our failure isn’t with not reading what I read – but in being a well rounded person by honestly reflecting and actively deciding their core values.

As a corollary to that – I believe society is teaching people right now that this is a good thing. Valueless employees ask fewer questions and do more as their told without contemplating reality and what the decision’s effects most likely are. & Even if they do contemplate and know it’s wrong, they do it anyway. Therefore people who don’t make waves, get promoted. Those who ask pertinent questions, even if necessary and correct, get ostracized.

This is not only true of our business leaders, Bernie Madoff, Enron, MCI, but our politicians as well.  Unethical leaders leading secret lives, even the corrupt politicians among us, seem to get a reprieve from the voters… so long as you’re on their side and they’re not mean.

Additionally the leadership selection process seems perverted for the same reasons the leaders aren’t what we should expect.  Someone who is arbitrary, but polite and educated, is someone a lot of people like.   In a deep seeded wish to reduce not only any discomfort we might experience, but for civility’s sake try to prevent others’ discomfort, society has conflated the ideas of social skills with leadership to the detriment of society as a whole.

On the whole, it seems our desire for civility has the unintended consequence of making us less civil and more prone to failure.

In January’s edition of Wired Magazine, they detail an article about rail systems and advocate high speed rail as a solution for congestion.  The problem is identified correctly (here):

…Getting California’s train up and running will be expensive. But doing nothing would cost two to three times more. Why? Currently, gridlocked lanes waste $20 billion in fuel and productivity annually. And it’s only going to get worse. The Golden State is growing — quickly. By 2030, another 12 million people could be calling it home. Without an infrastructure overhaul, drivers can expect a 10 percent congestion increase every year. To accommodate the billion trips between cities that residents and visitors will make annually, the state would need to build 3,000 more miles of freeway lanes, five more commercial airport runways, and 90 more airline departure gates. The price: at least $100 billion. Oh, and all that construction wouldn’t alleviate traffic; it would simply keep pace with it….

The article goes on to detail rail as a solution, showing a brief history of rail in the US, including the really cool technological advancements in rail systems.  The main problem with the idea however, isn’t that new rail systems aren’t cool or that rail couldn’t become much faster and more efficient, the main problem, which they slightly acknowledge, is getting people to use it:

…To be cost-efficient, any high-speed rail system needs an ample supply of riders. San Francisco hopes to deliver them through a new million-square-foot terminal. Dubbed the Transbay Transit Center, it will connect the new rail line with nine regional transportation systems…

And

…No city epitomizes the insane appeal of driving like Los Angeles, whose citizens cling to their steering wheels even as they face the worst congestion in the nation. Will high-speed rail persuade them to give up their autos? Maybe. Ridership on the local rail system has increased to 306,000 on weekdays, up from 265,000 in 2007. A faster, cheaper trip — the high-speed ride between Ontario and LA will save the average commuter at least 85 hours and as much as $6,400 a year in gas, parking, and lost productivity — might pry even the most dedicated motorist out of the driver’s seat….

Looking historically though, they’ve made this argument over and over again and it’s always failed.  Due to constant regulation of the transportation industry, we’ve wasted billions and continue to poor billions more into this mess (from 2007):

Rail transit is a huge waste of money that harms transit riders and mainly benefits a few politically powerful interest groups, such as rail contractors, at the expense of ordinary taxpayers….

Thanks in part to the high cost of rails, transit systems in Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and the San Francisco Bay Area carried fewer riders in 2005 than two decades before….

…Due to financial stresses caused by the high cost of rail transit, San Jose cut its transit service by 20 percent and lost a third of its transit riders.

The mass transit system in Portland, Ore., carries only 7.6 percent of the region’s commuters, down from 9.8 percent before rail construction began.

The subway in Washington, D.C., is wonderful for tourists, but not commuters: Though the region gained more than 100,000 jobs between 1990 and 2000, the transit system lost more than 20,000 daily commuters….

& it fails for the very same reason most centralized planning fails – there is no one-size fits all solution which can magically come from government that will ever be better than what the market can provide.  Over thinking the obvious, that if rail lines could honestly save the average individual 6400 dollar a year, they should be willing to pay 4000 dollars a year to help fund it.

The simple truth is that government inefficiency will only increase the costs of rail overtime, increasing the subsidies and making a large portion of the population fund what a small portion of the population will use.  As Cato notes (here):

….Second [problem with highs peed rail], highway users paid for interstate highways, whereas high-speed rail will be almost entirely subsidized by general taxpayers who will rarely use it….

Why do “smart” people seem to espouse imposed solutions by default?  Well, as with a lot of scientific minded individuals and magazines, the search for solutions to problems becomes an end by itself.   This certainly helps when it comes to innovation – always looking for that next step or next increase in efficiency is extremely valuable ideal which helps many be successful.

Conversely, we also try to decrease known defects, a valuable skill in a fairly closed system, but I think a detriment to larger scale thinking.

Engineers, computer programmers, process engineers, CFOs, IE those in the industries where daily critical thinking tasks ask not only what we can do better, but also attempting to steam line, standardize, and reduce defects through control mechanisms, seem to be more prone than others to view imposed solutions as a solution default.

Indeed, in their lines of work, lots of systems are routinely imposed on clients, employees, and others with typically, minimal involvement from the end user. & often for good reason.  Allowing untrained users to have open access to say a client database would be too risky.  Allowing any employee to spend the company’s money on what they thought was a good idea, would be a huge preventable risk as well.

The difference however between these critical thinking endeavors is that they have somewhat of a closed system.  Sure, market dynamics affects the controls companies can exert on their clients, but the cost benefit analysis for decisions in these closed system will be much more accurate than a similar analysis for the market as a whole.

The idea of imposing these new systems through tax payer funds has a further assumption as well: if the market is currently in state A and many experts believe it should be in state B, that’s because the market has failed.  Inside of that assumption holds that we have the requisite knowledge to take literally billions of individual transactions which led to the creation of the current transportation system and with a few nifty math tricks and a good sales pitch from the experts -  impart a better solution than all those transactions managed to build.

& lastly, but not an inconsequential difference, is a company’s ability to control the results.   One of the keys to any systems update success, will always be in checking the results.

For instance, if I changed process X, hopefully to make the time spent on X lower on average or hoping to reduce defects in products for which process X can affect – I should be able to look back in time after making the changes and ask the question – did my solution work for the problem we attempted to solve?

This doesn’t seem all that radical and certainly seems like something our government could be doing now, but the historic reality is always the same.  Governments seek to grow by expanding power.  Governments by nature move slowly.  Good government is stable and therefore moves more slowly.

This means when the government proposes changes in X process to solve problem Y, they have a known tendency to exaggerate the benefits and obfuscate any attempts to prove that changes in X didn’t affect Y, by constantly shifting goal posts (example of just one, tiny government program employing this strategy  here – 2002):

…This is essentially the strategy that DARE, the country’s leading drug education program, has successfully used to stay in business for nearly two decades. One study after another has found that students who complete DARE (a.k.a. Drug Abuse Resistance Education) are just as likely to use drugs as students who don’t. Yet DARE claims it is constantly revising its curriculum, so any research indicating that it doesn’t work is immediately outdated….

In a classic example of not being able to see the forest for the trees, this default condition of believing in solutions which will be imposed for benefit of others might be well meaning, but still one of the largest logical & philosophical impediments to true freedom.

I guess to start any post about this, I should start with why people think I am.  The main reason I tend to side with Republicans is because of their stance towards free markets and smaller government.  I think they are overly concerned with porn, violence in video games & on tv (censorship leanings shared with the Democrats), stem cell funding (though as a libertarian I don’t think any research necessitates government involvement), and a number of other things.

Like most I suspect, I pick the one I dislike the least… though it’s a little more than that as the Democrats don’t even discuss economic freedom, only economic redistribution.

To my main point – the reason I’m not a Republican is because even in the last sentence, the Republicans may talk about economic freedom, relaxing overbearing regulations, moving towards smaller government, but all I’ve seen is a slower movement towards lesser freedom from the Republicans than the Democrats.

Case in point – in MO (here):

JEFFERSON CITY — Smoking would be banned in many public places statewide under legislation proposed Monday by two St. Louis-area legislators.

The bill, which has not yet been assigned to a committee, would ban smoking in restaurants, bars, shopping malls and gambling facilities, among other public places.

“We’re on three sides surrounded by no smoking states,” said Rep. Walt Bivins, R-St. Louis, the bill’s primary sponsor. “I just think it’s time we pass this for the health of all of us.”

Bivins and Rep. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, hammered out the specifics of the legislation with support from the American Lung Association and American Cancer Society, who have, in the past, opposed bans at the city and county level because they were too lax for the groups’ liking….

The article goes on to tell us that a few years back someone sponsored a similar bill that failed to get a hearing, but this one is likely to pass due to the overwhelming support of these types of bans.

So there you have it – take President Bush’s overwhelming need to increase social spending, the size of the government, and increased federal control (IE – NCLB), add it to this idiot’s complete misunderstanding of the basic RNC Platform (here):

…That is an urgent task because economic freedom – and the prosperity it makes possible – are not ends in themselves. They are means by which families and individuals can maintain their independence from government, raise their children by their own values, and build communities of self-reliant neighbors.

Economic freedom expands the prosperity pie; government can only divide it up. That is why Republicans advocate lower taxes, reasonable regulation, and smaller, smarter government. That agenda translates to more opportunity for more people. It represents the economics of inclusion, the path by which hopes become achievements. It is the way we will reach our goal of enabling everyone to have a chance to own, invest, and build….

I guess the State Senator forgot that part of economic freedom means that if I’m willing to invest a few hundred thousand to build a restaurant, hire people, deal with all the regulations associated with hiring/firing, food preparation, and the rest…then it should mean that I can control the legal actions which are permissible in my private establishment.

Just like the government has no right to tell me whether I can smoke legal tobacco in my home – neither should they have the right to tell me whether I can allow smoking in my private establishment.

The idea that somehow, by allowing the general public on my private property, therefore means I’m suddenly at the voter’s whims to what I can do with that property after I’ve purchased and invested in it, is nothing more than tyranny of the majority.

The simple fact those that support this legislation are usually unwilling to admit any possibility of the paraphrased truism: the government that can ban smoking can tomorrow become the government that can force smoking.

& there you have another genius that lied within our founding fathers.  A democracy, they understood, is nothing more than allowing 50.1% of the population to destroy 49.9% of the population for the former’s benefit.  So they made, a representative constitutional republic, where the main founding documents allowed free men to subvert any government which subverted their natural rights and setup a government constitution which didn’t empower the government, but limited it.

This wasn’t a social contract whereby citizens gave up their rights for security, but a social contract in which citizens allowed a monopoly on force so long as that force never subverted their freedoms.   They knew the government was needed for a common defense, international treaties, and other things, but also knew the tendency of government was always to grow more powerful, to control more, to subvert the rights & freedoms of their citizenry, all for their own ends… intention good or bad, it was historical reality.

Just like the iPod (trivially), which is beautiful in its simplicity because of the constraints on its design, the Constitution and the United States government is beautiful because it didn’t state what should be – but only what shouldn’t be.

The founding fathers, reflected in the document itself, never assumed they had the answers.  They only knew, through belief and faith, of what should never be.  No man shall ever be above another.  No leader shall ever be above the law.  To secure these things, freedom, justice, the opportunity for life, we propose a government which can not restrain speech, religion, association, press, expression, right to bear arms… and it cannot unnecessarily seize private property, remove an individual’s rights (incarceration) without trial, fair and impartial…

Yes – it was flawed.  The black man was 3/5 a person and couldn’t vote.  Neither could a woman.  It Pennsylvania you had to be a Quaker to be a resident.  Thank you William Penn, our founder of freedom of religion…

But I think somewhere, maybe, the founding fathers that really wanted to stamp out slavery in the constitution itself (Benjamin Franklin was the head of the first anti-slavery group), knew that to impart the true ideals of freedom that quickly would mean the end of the idea itself.

So they wrote the words – we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights – knowing they might have rang hypocritically hollow, but hopeful for the future that could be.

So Mr. Bivins and even Ms. Schupp, don’t call yourselves anything more than you are – big government statists, neither of you deserve any other designators.

Anyone remember when Halloween was about running around the neighborhood, staying up late, and eating too much candy?  Remember when selling lemonade was easy?

Well, thanks to how enlightened we’ve become, things like that are no longer allowed… by law in some places.

In Bellvile, IL the law encompasses ages of those allowed to trick-or-treat, whether children over 12 should be allowed to wear masks at all, and of course the all important curfew.

I don’t know about you, but it’s odd to me that this many ordinances are required for a fake holiday.  Even the explanation shows how little the mayor grasps what a police state this is becoming (@Fox2News):

…Mayor Eckert said “We had listened for many years to our residents, particularly seniors and single moms who said it was kind of scary many times when high school aged kids, people who are as tall as you and me, 6-feet tall, coming to their door late at night.”

“We firmly believe that trick or treating is for children, and when they get to be an age, if their parents aren’t sensible enough to tell them they’re getting too old, you’re getting too big, then we feel that the ordinance is in tact for our police officers to not have to tap them on the shoulder telling them to knock it off,” explained Eckert….

With all due respect to the mayor, I don’t honestly care what you “firmly” believe about Halloween.

Honestly, I tend to agree that 16 year olds running around for candy is stupid.  But I’m not sure that if parents allow their kids to do things I “firmly believe” are stupid equates to a government attempt to micromanage behavior on Halloween.

It’s instructive that the mayor doesn’t even seem to grasp the long term consequences of these actions.  Maybe someone should ask, “What if you firmly believed Halloween was evil?  Would you ban it altogether?”

Of course since they’re all busy dealing with youth crime, maybe they don’t have the time to answer.

It’s not kids and Halloween messing things up, but kids & unlicensed businesses.  It’s so bad in some places, that neighbor’s are calling the cops  (whole thing here):

…Juveniles, seven of them, on a quiet residential street, selling an uncontrolled substance: lemonade. A neighbor had dimed them out, and a Haverford Township police officer responded in a hurry. When he arrived at the two-story brick house on Maryland Avenue, he dutifully informed Dana Kleinschmidt, mother of four of the reputed offenders, who included 5-year-old triplets, that they were violating the law. They were selling lemonade without a permit….

Which in and of itself is dumb enough, but wait… after scaring little kids, it turns out what they were doing actually wasn’t against the law at all.  Enter John Viola, Deputy Chief of Police, to explain things:

…The responding officer – who was unavailable, whom Viola would not identify, and whose name and badge number were blacked out of the police report – invoked a township ordinance against vending without a permit. What the officer didn’t realize, Viola said, is that the law doesn’t apply to anyone younger than 16…

So there you have it – the War on Kids just had an innocent casualty due to a simple misunderstanding.  It’s just another  training opportunity really.

Or at least that’s as it appears.  In a stunning admission by the Deputy, he explains how they will continue to harass anyone they want, even if it’s not really illegal.  Seriously – how are they supposed to know the law?

…“The police officer would have no way of knowing this on the street,” Viola said. “He acts on information he has available.”…

It seems obvious to me, that if cops aren’t required to know the laws they are enforcing, we might have a problem, but I admit I’m not a cop.  I do recall something from school about ignorance being no defense, but I guess that’s only if you are charged with a crime, not if you’re being harassed for breaking a non-law.

Welcome to (NEW) America:  Home of the criminal, land of the state.