OK, last week I promised a shorter (but not too short!) 'Goldilocks' version of the May 5th post, here goes:
"Early on in the pandemic, I heard the phrase 'food insecure' used to describe the challenge being addressed by an area food bank. And I was like, what's that mean, like you eat in private because other people make fun of your lunch? Seems like the pandemic would be a good thing for these folks, what with the distancing and all, and also thanks to whoever named my problem.
Turns out, 'food insecure' roughly means access to food, and access is a multi-layered factor that includes a physical consideration. In short, as usual I'm an idiot, there was more than met my eye, and there's obviously a context for when this phrase and its precise definition is important.
It wasn't important for the context I heard it, though, since it was about a food bank. For about six months, I spent a few hours a week at a food bank. We didn't ask clients if they were 'food insecure', we asked them if they were poor, using income as a proxy. On my last day, I realized I was making less money than the clients. To me, overusing expressions like 'food insecure' is just another way we hide poverty, the same we do when we use proxies instead of the real thing, and equate treating symptoms with curing the disease."
The above risks simplifying the issue, but I think the issue is simple. This is a funny feature of issues - when you forget to decide in advance that an issue must be complicated, it often turns out that the issue isn't complicated. And if you've spent some time addressing these issues at the grass roots instead of just talking about them from distance, you understand that the front lines don't have time for complexity, and why those who immerse themselves in complexity eventually retreat.
I think the simple issue is that at a certain level we all accept that some people will be in poverty, and until that thinking changes we'll address rather than solve poverty, likely through a proxy list of related issues. Further, these issues will become needlessly complicated as the distance grows between symptom and condition. Here's an example of my simple way - compare one map of Boston showing coronavirus rates by neighborhood against this list of Boston rents by neighborhood. I didn't crunch the numbers to the last dollar, the math is too complicated, but a simple glance suggested that the lower the rent, the higher the infection rate. My not so juicy conclusion - no money, mo' problems. But we knew that long before COVID-19, right? Not all of us, I guess.
The problem I wrote about a few days ago, my problem with Bernie - and I guess the problem that sunk him, since he's out of the race - is that income inequality is a massively complex issue, and therefore requires a massively complex solution. It's hard to campaign on complexity and, in the world of the Magalomaniac, feels like a losing strategy against a simple message. Now, I'm not suggesting a simplification of every issue to make it fit the strategy of a campaign - I'm suggesting a campaign strategy that finds the simple issues. Otherwise, we'll end up distilling income inequality into tax the rich, and although it isn't exactly an inaccurate summary of Sanders's plan, it creates some vulnerabilities in the position, namely why we would treat those who deserve their wealth the same as those who have essentially stolen it.
Here's a hypothetical example illustrating why I don't like seeing complex issues simplified for campaign purposes. Suppose tomorrow someone 'solved' coronavirus - maybe she invents a cure, or finds a vaccine, or merely translates Trump's suggestion to consume ultraviolet into some kind of salable, scalable inhalable. Whatever the detail, in this hypothetical today's problem is solved tomorrow. Let's call our imaginary savior Doctor TOA. How much wealth would Dr. TOA deserve? Does $50 billion seem too high? Actually, it seems too low, at least if you accept the premise of this article, which suggests the virus may cost us $2.7 trillion in lost value. Even if you think the estimate is too high, or flawed, or whatever, and want to cut it down to some arbitrary number - $500 billion - then $50 billion would be 10% of your made up figure. Another estimate I came up with is $121 billion, using total virus deaths as of today (242K, which means this number will increase by the time you read it) and multiplying by $500K, which the military apparently pays families of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan as a death benefit. So would my hypothetical Dr. TOA deserve $121 billion, the full (but approximate) value of human life lost to the virus?
Whatever the final dollar total, the tricky part comes next - could we then all agree not to include Dr. TOA when calculating income inequality in the future? The reason I bring this up is because the rich of the future will include people like Dr. TOA, and as long as we have The Not Rich, they will come up with an idea to tax The Rich. It's pretty easy to envision the debate, one side will note how we agreed at the time that Dr. TOA deserved the wealth - why change the rules? The other side will counter - tax the rich! And so it goes, and will go, on and on and on.
I'm not so sure my hypothetical is too far off the mark. In some ways, I feel like we are at that last stage I outlined above - on this list of the richest people in the world, I see wealth associated with Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. These companies didn't solve the equivalent of COVID-19, but much of our current social distancing is enabled by the successes of these organizations. Relatively speaking, they are probably deserving of their wealth, but I don't think this consideration is part of any proposed income inequality solution, probably because it's "too complicated". It should be. Talking about 'solving' income inequality without stating who deserves their wealth feels like a reckless shortcut, at least from a political point of view, because you'll have to either treat everyone the same (meaning you punish productive activity through taxation the same as you would greedy activity) or commit time in the future for deciding exceptions (inviting things like lobbying into the process, which might bring us back to square one).
Let's get away from the imaginary and look at a specific plan. One of Bernie's primary mechanisms for lowering income inequality involves taxing companies where the CEO to median worker ratio exceeds 50 to 1. As a theory, I love it, but I bet a lot of voters look at that idea and see utopia - namely, one where corporations meekly pay higher taxes and make no change to worker compensation. Right? Please, stop it - you lost every voter who believes a corporation would respond by laying off employees, or implementing widespread pay cuts, or slashing benefits to make up for the difference, or sending jobs offshore, or converting full-time salaries into contractor roles, or any other thing they've done throughout world history to dodge taxes. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who believes all this, yet still would have voted for him. Regardless of who wins in November (my guess: regardless of who wins, nobody is going to win) I'll have one lasting conclusion from this election season - if you feel compelled to run because of a complex issue, look for a simpler issue that gets at the same basic idea.
It's been about two full months since Super Tuesday, and I'm still shaking my head. This link on his website says it all - how does Bernie pay for his major plans? Who cares? Why is this the first link on his 'issues' page? Our national debt is over $22 trillion - why is funding suddenly an issue? The problem is that at a certain level we all accept that some people will be in poverty, and until that thinking changes we'll address rather than solve poverty, likely through a proxy list of related issues. One way to address this issue is to have a President who spends too much, but not too much, a steady pair of hands who has experience in an administration that only added somewhere between three and nine trillion dollars to the debt. The rest of us are bidin' our time until we're ready to address the real issues, those listed on Bernie's website - homelessness, funding and expanding social security, climate change, universal health care, and more.
The only way to pay for all of those things is for everyone to pay for them, each American contributing a fair share, but that's obviously not possible when the poverty rate exceeds 10%. We have to address that simple but significant issue first, addressing the income gap from the bottom end. The idea of working your way up, making a better tomorrow for you and yours, has long been the American advantage, what made America great and will make it so in the future. But it doesn't work when so many people are stepped on, as you do with the bottom rung. To make it any more complicated than that, to think the problem can only be solved with the loops, swoops, and bull of policies, percentages, and politics, makes a knotty issue of a poverty line. We're going to be stuck in this mess until a candidate comes along who can state the simple issue - a system that enables unlimited wealth accumulation while there are still people living below that line is a system where no one deserves their wealth.
Showing posts with label series - you lift from the bottom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label series - you lift from the bottom. Show all posts
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Saturday, May 4, 2019
you lift from the bottom, part five
In my previous post for this series, I mused a little bit on technology and the problem of it being considered synonymous with progress. But if technology is confused with progress, then I suppose it means it isn’t automatically progress. This left open the question - what is technology?
A few years ago I read a good answer to this question in Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters - "It's technique. It's the way we all do things." (1). A new technology bursts forward with an eager explanation for how to do something. I wonder if a wider adoption of this definition would change the way we thought of technology. What would happen if technology were understood as new methodology rather than accepted as yet another unambiguous signal of progress?
I think one immediate result would be an improved understanding of trade-offs. When technology presents itself as progress, the question of why is summarily dismissed. (What do you mean, why progress? Who would dare question progress? Why not progress, right? There is never going to be much debate over what everyone considers obvious.) But since the pre-adoption stage is when trade-offs are considered, the mentality of technology as progress often rules out a thorough analysis of trade-offs. Rather than debating whether a new technology should be implemented, deliberations instead focus on how to implement it.
On the other hand, if a new method is considered through a process of understanding its pros and cons, then it will only find acceptance when the sum of advantages outweighs the total downside. Each decision is made knowing a gain in one area comes with a loss in another. When new technology is accepted as a new choice among many methods rather than yet another example of progress, the question of why is considered before adoption (2).
Footnotes / half-baked whiskey rants
1. Examples of technology being the way we do things…
Instead of writing a check, we pay online… instead of cooking over a fire, we call Domino's... instead of riding a horse to work, we drive the car…
The relevant chapter from the book is published on his website.
2. The example of the music player…
Consider the recent rise of the portable music player. At some point, the options improved from carrying a portable boombox around on a shoulder (and annoying everyone) to having headphones plugged directly into an all-in-one phone, camera, computer, and – most importantly for this example – iPod. The progression included technologies like the Walkman, the CD player, and the brick-sized iPod, each addressing how someone might listen to music in public with minimum effect on the surrounding peace and quiet.
But it never bothered to address why someone might plug into a music player in the first place. It wasn’t for a better musical experience – a claim supported by the resurgent interest in record players and the endless touring from today’s artists (and perhaps proven by the general outrage whenever a ‘live’ performance is revealed to be pre-recorded). It wasn’t for health reasons – I imagine we aren’t far off from someone trying to organize a class action lawsuit against a major corporation for its role in accelerating hearing loss. It wasn’t for improving public life – unless you enjoy the daily spectacle of the temporary deaf crashing into the unheard occupants walking, talking, and just hanging out in our public spaces. To me, reader, the question of why remains open, and intriguing, in the case of the portable music player.
A few years ago I read a good answer to this question in Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters - "It's technique. It's the way we all do things." (1). A new technology bursts forward with an eager explanation for how to do something. I wonder if a wider adoption of this definition would change the way we thought of technology. What would happen if technology were understood as new methodology rather than accepted as yet another unambiguous signal of progress?
I think one immediate result would be an improved understanding of trade-offs. When technology presents itself as progress, the question of why is summarily dismissed. (What do you mean, why progress? Who would dare question progress? Why not progress, right? There is never going to be much debate over what everyone considers obvious.) But since the pre-adoption stage is when trade-offs are considered, the mentality of technology as progress often rules out a thorough analysis of trade-offs. Rather than debating whether a new technology should be implemented, deliberations instead focus on how to implement it.
On the other hand, if a new method is considered through a process of understanding its pros and cons, then it will only find acceptance when the sum of advantages outweighs the total downside. Each decision is made knowing a gain in one area comes with a loss in another. When new technology is accepted as a new choice among many methods rather than yet another example of progress, the question of why is considered before adoption (2).
Footnotes / half-baked whiskey rants
1. Examples of technology being the way we do things…
Instead of writing a check, we pay online… instead of cooking over a fire, we call Domino's... instead of riding a horse to work, we drive the car…
The relevant chapter from the book is published on his website.
2. The example of the music player…
Consider the recent rise of the portable music player. At some point, the options improved from carrying a portable boombox around on a shoulder (and annoying everyone) to having headphones plugged directly into an all-in-one phone, camera, computer, and – most importantly for this example – iPod. The progression included technologies like the Walkman, the CD player, and the brick-sized iPod, each addressing how someone might listen to music in public with minimum effect on the surrounding peace and quiet.
But it never bothered to address why someone might plug into a music player in the first place. It wasn’t for a better musical experience – a claim supported by the resurgent interest in record players and the endless touring from today’s artists (and perhaps proven by the general outrage whenever a ‘live’ performance is revealed to be pre-recorded). It wasn’t for health reasons – I imagine we aren’t far off from someone trying to organize a class action lawsuit against a major corporation for its role in accelerating hearing loss. It wasn’t for improving public life – unless you enjoy the daily spectacle of the temporary deaf crashing into the unheard occupants walking, talking, and just hanging out in our public spaces. To me, reader, the question of why remains open, and intriguing, in the case of the portable music player.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
you lift from the bottom, part four
I think technology is too often confused with progress. As a country, we commonly point to the introduction of a top-line technology as evidence of progress. We consider something like NASA as validation for all the hard work we do to move forward as a nation. Reader, thanks to NASA, we can send a white dude to outer space – and back! – without having Ed Harris sitting around and reminding everyone that failure is not an option!
But improving the technology of transportation and extending a trip beyond the limits of any voyage ever made before shouldn’t be confused with progress. This is merely technology and technology isn’t progress. I first had this realization a couple of years ago while volunteering at a food bank. I was thinking about why we bother sending men to the moon when half the clients we were expecting that day were vulnerable to the unpredictable delays of the bus system. Neil Armstrong never would have made it into space if he'd taken the bus to the launchpad!
Maybe I just don’t know, reader, maybe I’m just not clever enough, not ambitious enough, not wise enough, not STEM enough, not you-decide-what enough, to do the math and figure it out. I guess. Maybe I don’t understand how all the stuff we did to get to the moon – and back, most of the time, anyway – led to all kinds of advancements at home. The moon mission gets credit for inventing a whole list of impressive stuff - check out this link for ten examples. All those things are major achievements in their own right (the water purifier really stands out) and the application of these space-age inventions has meant miracles for so many in the ensuing years. It's kind of surprising, really, when I look at all those advancements that the famous line isn't 'Houston, we have a solution.'
But it’s also been a half-century since we humans first stomped around on the moon and, well, we still seem to have a lot of the same basic problems to worry about on Earth that we worried about back then. One invention that didn't make that top ten list was the end of hunger - it's true, reader, no one has ever starved to death in space. And I think this is great, it's great that no one ever starved in space... so maybe we can apply that solution at home, too? It's only been, you know, fifty years? Plus, what good is a cordless vacuum cleaner if you don't have any cookie crumbs to hoover up? Maybe we’re supposed to wait another five decades for all the crumbs to trickle down, for everything we greedily suck up at the top to dribble its way down to the bottom. I can wait, I suppose, but for how long?
But improving the technology of transportation and extending a trip beyond the limits of any voyage ever made before shouldn’t be confused with progress. This is merely technology and technology isn’t progress. I first had this realization a couple of years ago while volunteering at a food bank. I was thinking about why we bother sending men to the moon when half the clients we were expecting that day were vulnerable to the unpredictable delays of the bus system. Neil Armstrong never would have made it into space if he'd taken the bus to the launchpad!
Maybe I just don’t know, reader, maybe I’m just not clever enough, not ambitious enough, not wise enough, not STEM enough, not you-decide-what enough, to do the math and figure it out. I guess. Maybe I don’t understand how all the stuff we did to get to the moon – and back, most of the time, anyway – led to all kinds of advancements at home. The moon mission gets credit for inventing a whole list of impressive stuff - check out this link for ten examples. All those things are major achievements in their own right (the water purifier really stands out) and the application of these space-age inventions has meant miracles for so many in the ensuing years. It's kind of surprising, really, when I look at all those advancements that the famous line isn't 'Houston, we have a solution.'
But it’s also been a half-century since we humans first stomped around on the moon and, well, we still seem to have a lot of the same basic problems to worry about on Earth that we worried about back then. One invention that didn't make that top ten list was the end of hunger - it's true, reader, no one has ever starved to death in space. And I think this is great, it's great that no one ever starved in space... so maybe we can apply that solution at home, too? It's only been, you know, fifty years? Plus, what good is a cordless vacuum cleaner if you don't have any cookie crumbs to hoover up? Maybe we’re supposed to wait another five decades for all the crumbs to trickle down, for everything we greedily suck up at the top to dribble its way down to the bottom. I can wait, I suppose, but for how long?
Saturday, April 27, 2019
leftovers: you lift from the bottom, part three
In this post, I paused briefly to challenge you, clever reader, to ‘do the math’. And do the math you did, I’m sure, but just in case it was one of those days when time was short or you woke up and realized it was Monday or you just didn’t feel like it for whatever other silly reason, then lucky reader, I am here for you… and I will do the math!
Let’s say one of every five coaches is considered ‘good’. A good player responds to either kind of coach while a bad player only responds to a good coach.
A good player...
A bad player...
This roughly approaches my experience from high school. It just seemed like an unwritten rule that one out of every five teams was always tough to play. I assume now that these teams just had good coaches who elevated the performance of their worst players. The other four out of five teams were sometimes good and sometimes bad – it just came down to whether they had star players at the time.
A good way to see if a high school has a good coach is to see how reliant a good team is on teachable skills. At the high school level, most of the kids are either good athletes or they are not. Therefore, a good team with a superior level of athleticism might not necessarily be led by a good coach. However, if a good team is highly skilled in the sport, it is almost always a sign of good coaching (and at minimum a better sign of it than a team full of great athletes).
A similar logic should be used to assess any form of leadership. The surest way to identify the best leadership is to look at the teams or organizations under their command and determine how closely success is linked to the skills presumably taught or cultivated by the leader.
Let’s say one of every five coaches is considered ‘good’. A good player responds to either kind of coach while a bad player only responds to a good coach.
A good player...
1/5 chance of a good coach
4/5 chance of a bad coach
Improves under all coaches
Odds of improvement are 5/5
A bad player...
1/5 chance of a good coach
4/5 chance of a bad coach
Improves only under a 'good coach'
Odds of improvement are 1/5
This roughly approaches my experience from high school. It just seemed like an unwritten rule that one out of every five teams was always tough to play. I assume now that these teams just had good coaches who elevated the performance of their worst players. The other four out of five teams were sometimes good and sometimes bad – it just came down to whether they had star players at the time.
A good way to see if a high school has a good coach is to see how reliant a good team is on teachable skills. At the high school level, most of the kids are either good athletes or they are not. Therefore, a good team with a superior level of athleticism might not necessarily be led by a good coach. However, if a good team is highly skilled in the sport, it is almost always a sign of good coaching (and at minimum a better sign of it than a team full of great athletes).
A similar logic should be used to assess any form of leadership. The surest way to identify the best leadership is to look at the teams or organizations under their command and determine how closely success is linked to the skills presumably taught or cultivated by the leader.
Sunday, April 21, 2019
you lift from the bottom, part three
I started weightlifting for the first time in high school. When I think back to this time, what strikes me the most about the experience is how my strong teammates became stronger during the four years while most of the weak players barely seemed to benefit from the strength program (1). The progression in the weight room mirrored progression in other skill areas - a good player often improved under the watchful eyes of the coaches while a poor player remained poor despite being trained by the same coaches as those ever-improving good players (2).
My experience with high school sports was my first exposure to a fairly universal problem – it’s easier to help people closer to the top than those down at the bottom. I think some of this is explained by definition. A good player is good at most things (including being coached) so a coach can focus on improving just one or two deficient areas. In comparison, a poor player isn’t good at much of anything and therefore the coach must find a way to improve on almost everything. The latter is, simply put, a tougher coaching job, and tougher coaching jobs generally require good coaches. Unfortunately, just like there are more bad players than good players, there are more bad coaches than good ones. You do the math, reader.
Where is the universality of this phenomenon? I see it everywhere, reader, and I’m afraid a comprehensive list would waste all my remaining time. It applies to medicine, insurance, income inequality, mass transit, education, and more. Generally speaking, whenever a given field or endeavor’s results can be aggregated and averaged, the temptation to ‘lift from the top’ comes into play.
I think the local rental market is a good example. Let’s say a given neighborhood has eight units at $100 a month. Their tenants earn, say, $300 a month (and therefore spend close to the recommended thirty percent of income on housing). Then, a construction project creates a new building with two luxury apartment units. The rent for each unit is $200 per month. Two new people move into these units, each earning $600 a month (and therefore maintaining the same ratio of income to housing as their new neighbors).
Let's pause for a moment to review the neighborhood's aggregate metrics. After these new units are rented, the average rent has increased from $100 per unit for eight units to $120 per unit for ten units. The average income is up from $300 per tenant to $360 per tenant. Given that absolutely nothing changed for the eight original tenants, these changes in the aggregate metrics are quite significant.
The impact of these changes is felt in the next rental cycle. The landlords of the $100 units will look around and say to themselves – hey, pay in the neighborhood is going up and we should get a fair share because, after all, we provided and maintained these units that served the foundation for our tenants earning recognition at work! Only fools would continue charging below the market price! And so after leases expire, rents immediately increase, perhaps up to $120 per unit so that their tenants who are now on $360 wages per month maintain the same proportion of income to housing costs as they did prior to the rise in income.
Sounds good, of course... but did incomes rise? On average, of course they did, since the average income of all tenants in the area went up 20%. But only an idiot would care about something that was true on average (!) - in this carefully constructed example, no one is actually making more money than they did a year ago except for the landlords. And even if some folks do eventually get that raise - perhaps by citing those same aggregate statistics to their employers as evidence of rising costs of living - it’s highly unlikely their raises would approach the 20% mark imposed by the landlords. The most likely end result after a rental cycle or two with these new luxury units in place is that the folks who once paid $100 on a $300 income will now pay $120 on $300 - which is forty percent of income on housing costs and, for pretty much everyone I know, not affordable.
When people around here talk knowingly about ‘the up and coming Boston neighborhoods’, this is what they are actually talking about – the income redistribution to the rich that comes whenever real estate appreciation outpaces wage growth. If I were more of an alarmist I would use the b-word here (rhymes with 'rubble') - instead, I'll settle once more for acknowledging that most people are bad at math, worse at statistics, and completely hopeless with economics. Given these realities, I suppose I should be kinder about the ways people misunderstand the reality of Boston's rental market.
Of course, the problem with being bad at math is that you can just not bother doing the math, instead settling on 'talking' as a way of guessing at the truth often a calculation or two away. But why wax poetic about such a simple concept? Is gentrification so difficult to measure that all we can do is talk about it in the abstract? I have another b-word for that mentality (rhymes with 'horseshit') but who knows, maybe I'm wrong, just waxing prophetic, because in some long run and aggregated sense we're always on the same rocket ship, being propelled upward by these luxury units that stretch closer and closer to the stars, ever higher and higher, so close to the sun that soon enough whinging on will have no use at all.
Footnotes / a tempting thought / no spit-balling in the bench press area, please / wtf, math now?
0. I suppose some of them didn’t graduate at all…
Another application of the ‘pull from the top’ concept was the way my school system growing up seemed to operate – some of my classmates went on to Ivy League schools, the best undergraduate institutions in world history, while others barely scraped together enough passing grades to make it to graduation. The temptation here is to suggest factors outside the classroom played a big role. I get it. But does this really explain the huge variation? How much bigger can variation in an educational outcome get than one student going to Yale while her classmate drops out of high school?
1. Objection: speculation…
I know strength training is influenced by a lot of factors beyond a coach’s control – genetics, nutrition, things like PEDs, and so on (I repeat: I get it). But if these were such critical factors, why did the coaches continue having the weak players lift? The fact that everyone remained in the program despite varying levels of success implies a belief that additional strength training benefits everyone regardless of how much it benefited them in the past.
2. I say this because most of the worst helmet football players – the one sport I remember where nobody was cut – rarely got any better over the course of the year…
I wonder if this is why the worst players were cut during tryouts – this way, at least the coach wouldn’t waste everyone’s time by failing to improve him over the course of the season.
My experience with high school sports was my first exposure to a fairly universal problem – it’s easier to help people closer to the top than those down at the bottom. I think some of this is explained by definition. A good player is good at most things (including being coached) so a coach can focus on improving just one or two deficient areas. In comparison, a poor player isn’t good at much of anything and therefore the coach must find a way to improve on almost everything. The latter is, simply put, a tougher coaching job, and tougher coaching jobs generally require good coaches. Unfortunately, just like there are more bad players than good players, there are more bad coaches than good ones. You do the math, reader.
Where is the universality of this phenomenon? I see it everywhere, reader, and I’m afraid a comprehensive list would waste all my remaining time. It applies to medicine, insurance, income inequality, mass transit, education, and more. Generally speaking, whenever a given field or endeavor’s results can be aggregated and averaged, the temptation to ‘lift from the top’ comes into play.
I think the local rental market is a good example. Let’s say a given neighborhood has eight units at $100 a month. Their tenants earn, say, $300 a month (and therefore spend close to the recommended thirty percent of income on housing). Then, a construction project creates a new building with two luxury apartment units. The rent for each unit is $200 per month. Two new people move into these units, each earning $600 a month (and therefore maintaining the same ratio of income to housing as their new neighbors).
Let's pause for a moment to review the neighborhood's aggregate metrics. After these new units are rented, the average rent has increased from $100 per unit for eight units to $120 per unit for ten units. The average income is up from $300 per tenant to $360 per tenant. Given that absolutely nothing changed for the eight original tenants, these changes in the aggregate metrics are quite significant.
The impact of these changes is felt in the next rental cycle. The landlords of the $100 units will look around and say to themselves – hey, pay in the neighborhood is going up and we should get a fair share because, after all, we provided and maintained these units that served the foundation for our tenants earning recognition at work! Only fools would continue charging below the market price! And so after leases expire, rents immediately increase, perhaps up to $120 per unit so that their tenants who are now on $360 wages per month maintain the same proportion of income to housing costs as they did prior to the rise in income.
Sounds good, of course... but did incomes rise? On average, of course they did, since the average income of all tenants in the area went up 20%. But only an idiot would care about something that was true on average (!) - in this carefully constructed example, no one is actually making more money than they did a year ago except for the landlords. And even if some folks do eventually get that raise - perhaps by citing those same aggregate statistics to their employers as evidence of rising costs of living - it’s highly unlikely their raises would approach the 20% mark imposed by the landlords. The most likely end result after a rental cycle or two with these new luxury units in place is that the folks who once paid $100 on a $300 income will now pay $120 on $300 - which is forty percent of income on housing costs and, for pretty much everyone I know, not affordable.
When people around here talk knowingly about ‘the up and coming Boston neighborhoods’, this is what they are actually talking about – the income redistribution to the rich that comes whenever real estate appreciation outpaces wage growth. If I were more of an alarmist I would use the b-word here (rhymes with 'rubble') - instead, I'll settle once more for acknowledging that most people are bad at math, worse at statistics, and completely hopeless with economics. Given these realities, I suppose I should be kinder about the ways people misunderstand the reality of Boston's rental market.
Of course, the problem with being bad at math is that you can just not bother doing the math, instead settling on 'talking' as a way of guessing at the truth often a calculation or two away. But why wax poetic about such a simple concept? Is gentrification so difficult to measure that all we can do is talk about it in the abstract? I have another b-word for that mentality (rhymes with 'horseshit') but who knows, maybe I'm wrong, just waxing prophetic, because in some long run and aggregated sense we're always on the same rocket ship, being propelled upward by these luxury units that stretch closer and closer to the stars, ever higher and higher, so close to the sun that soon enough whinging on will have no use at all.
Footnotes / a tempting thought / no spit-balling in the bench press area, please / wtf, math now?
0. I suppose some of them didn’t graduate at all…
Another application of the ‘pull from the top’ concept was the way my school system growing up seemed to operate – some of my classmates went on to Ivy League schools, the best undergraduate institutions in world history, while others barely scraped together enough passing grades to make it to graduation. The temptation here is to suggest factors outside the classroom played a big role. I get it. But does this really explain the huge variation? How much bigger can variation in an educational outcome get than one student going to Yale while her classmate drops out of high school?
1. Objection: speculation…
I know strength training is influenced by a lot of factors beyond a coach’s control – genetics, nutrition, things like PEDs, and so on (I repeat: I get it). But if these were such critical factors, why did the coaches continue having the weak players lift? The fact that everyone remained in the program despite varying levels of success implies a belief that additional strength training benefits everyone regardless of how much it benefited them in the past.
2. I say this because most of the worst helmet football players – the one sport I remember where nobody was cut – rarely got any better over the course of the year…
I wonder if this is why the worst players were cut during tryouts – this way, at least the coach wouldn’t waste everyone’s time by failing to improve him over the course of the season.
Monday, April 15, 2019
you lift from the bottom, part two
The first thing I learned about weightlifting was to always lift from the bottom. The power of the idea was its universality. It applied to leg exercises like the power squat, full body movements like the deadlift, and upper body lifts like the bench press. In each, the correct technique was to push straight up from directly beneath the weight. The weight lifter who jerked or pulled risked injury, usually from the weight toppling over as a result of lost stability after the sudden movement.
As I do with all universal concepts, I eventually had my ‘Neo Moment’ and applied it elsewhere. It took a long time, around ten years, but I finally got around to it last year. I was chatting on Charles Street with a local guy I run into every once in a while. We were talking about the different neighborhoods in the area and sharing our skepticism that these were the ‘up-and-coming’ places everyone was making them out to be. How could it be when housing costs were rocketing up yet wages were holding steady? Who was paying for it? And in the midst of this, I realized that the answer was no one, no one was paying for it, because rising neighborhoods must lift from the bottom yet these places were clearly being yanked from the top.
I didn’t come to this conclusion because I understand real estate or development economics or frictional unemployment. I didn’t come to this conclusion after reflecting on the break-in many years ago at my apartment in South Boston – one of The Great Rising Boston Neighborhoods – and finally recognizing that a simmering undercurrent runs beneath any new development. I came to this conclusion because I’ve seen people get injured weightlifting. You can’t just pull from the top and expect everything below to follow – what usually happens instead is a dizzying rise met with a swift, painful fall.
As I do with all universal concepts, I eventually had my ‘Neo Moment’ and applied it elsewhere. It took a long time, around ten years, but I finally got around to it last year. I was chatting on Charles Street with a local guy I run into every once in a while. We were talking about the different neighborhoods in the area and sharing our skepticism that these were the ‘up-and-coming’ places everyone was making them out to be. How could it be when housing costs were rocketing up yet wages were holding steady? Who was paying for it? And in the midst of this, I realized that the answer was no one, no one was paying for it, because rising neighborhoods must lift from the bottom yet these places were clearly being yanked from the top.
I didn’t come to this conclusion because I understand real estate or development economics or frictional unemployment. I didn’t come to this conclusion after reflecting on the break-in many years ago at my apartment in South Boston – one of The Great Rising Boston Neighborhoods – and finally recognizing that a simmering undercurrent runs beneath any new development. I came to this conclusion because I’ve seen people get injured weightlifting. You can’t just pull from the top and expect everything below to follow – what usually happens instead is a dizzying rise met with a swift, painful fall.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
leftovers – you lift from the bottom
Let’s take a look at another set of major problems that might be more important than ending poverty – border security, immigration, and tribalism.
Call me crazy, but I think this immigration problem, this desire others have to come here, to move here, it isn’t going away anytime soon. Let’s first take a moment to acknowledge what an immigration problem really means – it means America remains a place people want to move to. Despite all our flaws, we remain the ideal for the many seeking a new place to call home. And every time we talk about making America great again, all we are doing is marketing ourselves to the rest of the world. It probably sounds something like this – sure, we used to suck yet you still wanted to move here... better get here soon, because we are about to become GREAT!
But if people moving here is really a problem and we want to keep them out, I suppose I should offer up a solution. What do I think is the best plan? A big old wall? Two big walls? Maybe Amazon builds a really long HQ2 along the border? With all the corporate security I deal with getting into work, I bet having an Amazon headquarters would do wonders to slow the flow of immigrants...
I think the best plan is simple - make Mexico great again. Didn’t this happen after World War II when we made Japan great again? And in the next seven decades, guess who didn’t move here? Japanese people. Why not? Because it was worth it to stay in Japan. MAKE MEXICO GREAT AGAIN!
Call me crazy, but I think this immigration problem, this desire others have to come here, to move here, it isn’t going away anytime soon. Let’s first take a moment to acknowledge what an immigration problem really means – it means America remains a place people want to move to. Despite all our flaws, we remain the ideal for the many seeking a new place to call home. And every time we talk about making America great again, all we are doing is marketing ourselves to the rest of the world. It probably sounds something like this – sure, we used to suck yet you still wanted to move here... better get here soon, because we are about to become GREAT!
But if people moving here is really a problem and we want to keep them out, I suppose I should offer up a solution. What do I think is the best plan? A big old wall? Two big walls? Maybe Amazon builds a really long HQ2 along the border? With all the corporate security I deal with getting into work, I bet having an Amazon headquarters would do wonders to slow the flow of immigrants...
I think the best plan is simple - make Mexico great again. Didn’t this happen after World War II when we made Japan great again? And in the next seven decades, guess who didn’t move here? Japanese people. Why not? Because it was worth it to stay in Japan. MAKE MEXICO GREAT AGAIN!
Sunday, April 7, 2019
you lift from the bottom
There’s a theme from a couple of posts I’ve written over the past month that I want to clarify today. These posts – about the invention of calculus and China’s goal to eradicate poverty – were similar in how they reflect my fundamental belief that societies move up when they are lifted from the bottom rather than pulled from the top. The more obviously unifying idea of these posts – that there is no more important task than ending poverty – is underscored by the theme of lifting from the bottom. I want to explore this concept a little further in a few upcoming posts.
I did want to touch on those two recent posts first, however, before moving on. The original idea of these posts was influenced by my own belief that there is no more important societal task than ending poverty. Is there a bigger accomplishment, reader, than lifting someone out of poverty, and keeping that person out of poverty for good? I think not. As is the case with most of my (many) strong opinions, I suspect I could be wrong about this. But until it’s proven otherwise, I’ll stick with my belief.
Let’s play Devil’s advocate for a moment, though, just to help me feel better about my conclusion. Is pollution and its connection to global warming more important than ending poverty? I think there is a case to be made here. If it turns out that an environmental catastrophe brought on by climate change wipes out a majority of the human race, the process of global warming will probably be looked back on as the most evil thing humans have ever done (assuming history will exist in a post-apocalyptic future, of course). However, when I look at the cause of climate change, it seems to me that the most significant increases in pollution come about to accelerate the rise out of poverty. Do the poor drive electric cars? I think if poverty ended, there would be less pressure to pollute as a means to increasing a society’s wealth.
How about rogue nations and the unpredictable nature of their crazed dictators? This is another strong candidate. If North Korea started nuking everyone, we would all regret not having done more to prevent it. However, I think one important reason we fear rogue nations is that we know their impoverished citizens have no choice but to support the hands that barely feed them. When starvation is a regular occurrence, people will support anybody who offers them bread and water. Maybe instead of tweeting at North Korea and trying to intimidate them with our military might, we should be sending planes over to Pyongyang and parachuting in all of our excess Wonder bread.
How about hate, discrimination, and intolerance? I think these are all big issues, perhaps each more important than poverty, and certainly with a different level of complexity. One thing I consider here is that these negative feelings require an internal system of winners and losers. Society’s casual acceptance of poverty makes it easier to understand others in this context because it starts to seem natural that there should be poor people in a world full of winners and losers. Further, by allowing others to remain in poverty, we subconsciously accept that poverty is caused by one’s own doing. We learn to discriminate anytime we accept the logic of idolizing winners and demonizing losers. Ending poverty would change this thinking in a big way by prioritizing equality not just in our rhetoric but also in the way we distribute our most essential basic resources.
Now, I should note that I don’t think getting everyone up to a basic sustenance level will solve all problems – ending poverty isn’t the magic domino that will knock over our other long-standing problems. However, I do think ending poverty will help simplify a lot of our current thinking about other problems that are much tougher to understand when so much of what they represent is influenced by the ever-present reality of poverty.
I did want to touch on those two recent posts first, however, before moving on. The original idea of these posts was influenced by my own belief that there is no more important societal task than ending poverty. Is there a bigger accomplishment, reader, than lifting someone out of poverty, and keeping that person out of poverty for good? I think not. As is the case with most of my (many) strong opinions, I suspect I could be wrong about this. But until it’s proven otherwise, I’ll stick with my belief.
Let’s play Devil’s advocate for a moment, though, just to help me feel better about my conclusion. Is pollution and its connection to global warming more important than ending poverty? I think there is a case to be made here. If it turns out that an environmental catastrophe brought on by climate change wipes out a majority of the human race, the process of global warming will probably be looked back on as the most evil thing humans have ever done (assuming history will exist in a post-apocalyptic future, of course). However, when I look at the cause of climate change, it seems to me that the most significant increases in pollution come about to accelerate the rise out of poverty. Do the poor drive electric cars? I think if poverty ended, there would be less pressure to pollute as a means to increasing a society’s wealth.
How about rogue nations and the unpredictable nature of their crazed dictators? This is another strong candidate. If North Korea started nuking everyone, we would all regret not having done more to prevent it. However, I think one important reason we fear rogue nations is that we know their impoverished citizens have no choice but to support the hands that barely feed them. When starvation is a regular occurrence, people will support anybody who offers them bread and water. Maybe instead of tweeting at North Korea and trying to intimidate them with our military might, we should be sending planes over to Pyongyang and parachuting in all of our excess Wonder bread.
How about hate, discrimination, and intolerance? I think these are all big issues, perhaps each more important than poverty, and certainly with a different level of complexity. One thing I consider here is that these negative feelings require an internal system of winners and losers. Society’s casual acceptance of poverty makes it easier to understand others in this context because it starts to seem natural that there should be poor people in a world full of winners and losers. Further, by allowing others to remain in poverty, we subconsciously accept that poverty is caused by one’s own doing. We learn to discriminate anytime we accept the logic of idolizing winners and demonizing losers. Ending poverty would change this thinking in a big way by prioritizing equality not just in our rhetoric but also in the way we distribute our most essential basic resources.
Now, I should note that I don’t think getting everyone up to a basic sustenance level will solve all problems – ending poverty isn’t the magic domino that will knock over our other long-standing problems. However, I do think ending poverty will help simplify a lot of our current thinking about other problems that are much tougher to understand when so much of what they represent is influenced by the ever-present reality of poverty.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
the country that ends poverty will win
One of my favorite podcast episodes in 2018 was a February More Or Less show about China’s bold plan to end poverty in the next five years. As usual, the show’s details were concerned with the plan’s use of measurements, metrics, and statistics. The main goal of the episode was to use these numbers to assess the plan’s feasibility and question whether the proposed time frame is realistic.
As I listened to the program, I had this stray thought – what would it mean if China does successfully end poverty? One thing I’m sure of is that if China succeeded, it would mark the first time in my lifetime that the USA was unquestionably outdone by a rival nation. Some of my worldly readers may protest – now Tim, hold on there, this isn’t the first time, remember World Event X? I could also see my patriotic readers make the opposite point – hold on there, Tim, America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, we never get outdone! And of course, I should tip my cap to the dismissive comedian – I’d rather be poor here than rich in China!
Well, my apologies, hypothetical readers, but though I would respect those protests and acknowledge the flimsy foundations upon which many of my opinions are often constructed, in general I think ending poverty should be The Number One Goal among all of our current world problems. This is a point I outlined in more detail in last week's post about inventing calculus. In my mind, every other noble crusade is either a subset of ending poverty or comes in among a group of important problems that are clear runners-up to getting the entire human race across the poverty line.
But regardless of where poverty falls on the priority list of world problems, as an American I’m simply disgusted by the idea that another country would outdo us in any way. We should be setting the example that China follows, not the other way around. But if they beat us to ending poverty then I would have no choice but to tip my hat to them and acknowledge an accomplishment that should have belonged to America.
I do not think others would share this reaction. I think many would learn of this and say something clever like “well, it’s easier to end poverty in China than in America”. For a lot of my fellow Americans, national superiority is taken for granted. Our place atop the world pecking order is not something to prove every day with our next great accomplishment but rather a position we are entitled to merely because of yesterday’s achievements. Our desire for greatness is simply too easily sated with trivial markers of relative superiority like Olympic gold medals, advancements in military technology, or complicated calculations of GDP. We’d rather release yet another blockbuster film about World War II and all the people we helped seven-plus decades ago instead of educating and empowering Americans to help people today. By allowing ourselves to become so easily distracted by today’s glittering objects, we fail to consider what we should be doing right now to win favorable reviews in tomorrow’s history books.
Well, have a listen to that podcast episode, reader, because here comes China. I suspect they’ve crunched the numbers and concluded that world power in a global capitalism means the country with superior ideas is eventually going to beat a country with a superior military. The math isn't complicated - China has three times as many people as the US, so if China can get each of their citizens up to the same idea generating capacity as an American, then China will be three times as likely as the US to come up with the next great idea. By aiming to end poverty, China is taking the first step toward unlocking their superior manpower and harnessing its full idea generation capacity.
China has studied the past and concluded that the surest way to get into a history book is to make history. They’ve concluded that the country with the idea that cures cancer, protects the environment, or feeds everyone will win the future. All they need to do is have one of their citizens come up with the ideas that they can sell to other countries. As I wrote a week ago, I think the best way to do this is to free people to spend as much time as possible thinking and creating. The first step to this goal is ending poverty.
Can America beat China to this goal? I don’t think so, at least not yet, because we don’t celebrate our leaders for reducing poverty with the same vigor we applaud their other accomplishments. Quick quiz – which President lifted the most people out of poverty during his tenure? Tough question, right? If you know the answer, you did the work on your own, scrappy reader, and I commend you, because I know you didn’t learn the answer in school. In school, they were too busy teaching us other things about our leaders, things having to do with landing on the moon or manifesting our destiny. These are important details, too, but maybe they should come after the students get the facts about how poverty changed under a given president’s leadership.
We were once the nation that showed the world how to apply the simple concepts of freedom and liberty to the world. Back when America was invented – a great idea that was envisioned, I should add, mostly by people who were not in poverty – a country writing down these ideas about freedom and committing to governing by these ideas was a big deal. The application wasn’t perfect – it mostly applied to white dudes, at least for a while – but slowly, the country has done better to make these concepts a daily reality for more and more people.
These days, though, the simple concepts are not enough. Most other countries have caught on to our little freedom tactic and we are now surrounded by nations whose citizens live with the same principles as us. Some of them – like China – are taking the next step and recognizing that no matter what the rhetoric, individuals who are mired in poverty do not enjoy the full fruits of freedom and liberty. The countries that are responding to this reality and aiming to end poverty are doing something as audacious in this 21st century as our Founding Fathers did in the 18th.
Will we let China beat us to this goal? It certainly looks that way. I don’t think we are even able to acknowledge that this is a goal. America is like a poorly trained weight lifter – given the choice, we always pull from the top rather than lift from the bottom. We’re just too accustomed to worrying about the result and unconcerned about proper technique. If America was a business, we would be really good at increasing revenue but not so good at controlling costs (1).
The way to beat China to this goal is two-fold. First, we must harness the uniquely American vigor, enthusiasm, and patriotism we’ve relied on in the past to accomplish far more difficult objectives. Compared to the Apollo program, getting everyone dinner should be a breeze. And yet, here we are in 2019 and the signs to the contrary are everywhere. Just have a stroll around Harvard University, one of the world’s smah-test places, and notice how it remains surrounded by homeless people. I know the wizards in academia are working on a lot of other more important projects but I think we'll have an easier time building up to new heights if we put everyone on a rock-solid foundation first.
The second step is a little trickier – we need to value the goal as a worthwhile ambition. It might be good enough to simply frame this in a nationalist way – don’t lose to China, end poverty first! – but I think deep down we as a citizenry must believe in the end of poverty before we can really achieve it. China has a plan and we don’t. China has a goal and we don’t. And although this plan and this goal might be a little out of reach, at least China has a start. But it’s important to remember that a plan and a goal imply an underlying idea that everyone believes in. I fear America doesn’t have this – or any – idea. I don’t think we in America even have a clue, quite frankly, about what it means to live up to our own ideals.
America has never been the home of the free and the land of the brave by sitting around and waiting for China’s example. But that’s where we are headed, it seems. I’ve heard a lot about how we’re bringing back Chinese jobs, one factory at a time, so that we can all fulfill the American Dream of working in a sweatshop. We've also been hearing for a couple years about how important it is to build a giant wall to keep who were born outside the country out. This is reminiscent of China’s foreign policy from hundreds of years ago – and their wall was much bigger, by the way. What can we copy next from China? Maybe its really complex writing system? How about giving communism a try? Or maybe being rubbish at basketball? Give me a break.
Hopefully, Beijing’s next great plan that we end up copying will do a little more good for the world and, more importantly, for America. This is why my fingers are crossed for China’s poverty initiative. It’s big, it’s ambitious, and it would be completely unfeasible for just about any other country to even consider. People once said the same about America’s plans. Let’s give the world reason to do so again.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. No, not a dig at the budget, or the deficit…
The analogy hinted at here breaks down when we consider what revenue really means in the context of the US government. I think it’s taxes and, well, when it’s considered that way…
But of course, as one of our presidents once put it, the business of America is business. So the analogy is there for anyone willing to do a little more work to iron out the rough edges. I’ll leave that task to you, motivated reader.
As I listened to the program, I had this stray thought – what would it mean if China does successfully end poverty? One thing I’m sure of is that if China succeeded, it would mark the first time in my lifetime that the USA was unquestionably outdone by a rival nation. Some of my worldly readers may protest – now Tim, hold on there, this isn’t the first time, remember World Event X? I could also see my patriotic readers make the opposite point – hold on there, Tim, America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, we never get outdone! And of course, I should tip my cap to the dismissive comedian – I’d rather be poor here than rich in China!
Well, my apologies, hypothetical readers, but though I would respect those protests and acknowledge the flimsy foundations upon which many of my opinions are often constructed, in general I think ending poverty should be The Number One Goal among all of our current world problems. This is a point I outlined in more detail in last week's post about inventing calculus. In my mind, every other noble crusade is either a subset of ending poverty or comes in among a group of important problems that are clear runners-up to getting the entire human race across the poverty line.
But regardless of where poverty falls on the priority list of world problems, as an American I’m simply disgusted by the idea that another country would outdo us in any way. We should be setting the example that China follows, not the other way around. But if they beat us to ending poverty then I would have no choice but to tip my hat to them and acknowledge an accomplishment that should have belonged to America.
I do not think others would share this reaction. I think many would learn of this and say something clever like “well, it’s easier to end poverty in China than in America”. For a lot of my fellow Americans, national superiority is taken for granted. Our place atop the world pecking order is not something to prove every day with our next great accomplishment but rather a position we are entitled to merely because of yesterday’s achievements. Our desire for greatness is simply too easily sated with trivial markers of relative superiority like Olympic gold medals, advancements in military technology, or complicated calculations of GDP. We’d rather release yet another blockbuster film about World War II and all the people we helped seven-plus decades ago instead of educating and empowering Americans to help people today. By allowing ourselves to become so easily distracted by today’s glittering objects, we fail to consider what we should be doing right now to win favorable reviews in tomorrow’s history books.
Well, have a listen to that podcast episode, reader, because here comes China. I suspect they’ve crunched the numbers and concluded that world power in a global capitalism means the country with superior ideas is eventually going to beat a country with a superior military. The math isn't complicated - China has three times as many people as the US, so if China can get each of their citizens up to the same idea generating capacity as an American, then China will be three times as likely as the US to come up with the next great idea. By aiming to end poverty, China is taking the first step toward unlocking their superior manpower and harnessing its full idea generation capacity.
China has studied the past and concluded that the surest way to get into a history book is to make history. They’ve concluded that the country with the idea that cures cancer, protects the environment, or feeds everyone will win the future. All they need to do is have one of their citizens come up with the ideas that they can sell to other countries. As I wrote a week ago, I think the best way to do this is to free people to spend as much time as possible thinking and creating. The first step to this goal is ending poverty.
Can America beat China to this goal? I don’t think so, at least not yet, because we don’t celebrate our leaders for reducing poverty with the same vigor we applaud their other accomplishments. Quick quiz – which President lifted the most people out of poverty during his tenure? Tough question, right? If you know the answer, you did the work on your own, scrappy reader, and I commend you, because I know you didn’t learn the answer in school. In school, they were too busy teaching us other things about our leaders, things having to do with landing on the moon or manifesting our destiny. These are important details, too, but maybe they should come after the students get the facts about how poverty changed under a given president’s leadership.
We were once the nation that showed the world how to apply the simple concepts of freedom and liberty to the world. Back when America was invented – a great idea that was envisioned, I should add, mostly by people who were not in poverty – a country writing down these ideas about freedom and committing to governing by these ideas was a big deal. The application wasn’t perfect – it mostly applied to white dudes, at least for a while – but slowly, the country has done better to make these concepts a daily reality for more and more people.
These days, though, the simple concepts are not enough. Most other countries have caught on to our little freedom tactic and we are now surrounded by nations whose citizens live with the same principles as us. Some of them – like China – are taking the next step and recognizing that no matter what the rhetoric, individuals who are mired in poverty do not enjoy the full fruits of freedom and liberty. The countries that are responding to this reality and aiming to end poverty are doing something as audacious in this 21st century as our Founding Fathers did in the 18th.
Will we let China beat us to this goal? It certainly looks that way. I don’t think we are even able to acknowledge that this is a goal. America is like a poorly trained weight lifter – given the choice, we always pull from the top rather than lift from the bottom. We’re just too accustomed to worrying about the result and unconcerned about proper technique. If America was a business, we would be really good at increasing revenue but not so good at controlling costs (1).
The way to beat China to this goal is two-fold. First, we must harness the uniquely American vigor, enthusiasm, and patriotism we’ve relied on in the past to accomplish far more difficult objectives. Compared to the Apollo program, getting everyone dinner should be a breeze. And yet, here we are in 2019 and the signs to the contrary are everywhere. Just have a stroll around Harvard University, one of the world’s smah-test places, and notice how it remains surrounded by homeless people. I know the wizards in academia are working on a lot of other more important projects but I think we'll have an easier time building up to new heights if we put everyone on a rock-solid foundation first.
The second step is a little trickier – we need to value the goal as a worthwhile ambition. It might be good enough to simply frame this in a nationalist way – don’t lose to China, end poverty first! – but I think deep down we as a citizenry must believe in the end of poverty before we can really achieve it. China has a plan and we don’t. China has a goal and we don’t. And although this plan and this goal might be a little out of reach, at least China has a start. But it’s important to remember that a plan and a goal imply an underlying idea that everyone believes in. I fear America doesn’t have this – or any – idea. I don’t think we in America even have a clue, quite frankly, about what it means to live up to our own ideals.
America has never been the home of the free and the land of the brave by sitting around and waiting for China’s example. But that’s where we are headed, it seems. I’ve heard a lot about how we’re bringing back Chinese jobs, one factory at a time, so that we can all fulfill the American Dream of working in a sweatshop. We've also been hearing for a couple years about how important it is to build a giant wall to keep who were born outside the country out. This is reminiscent of China’s foreign policy from hundreds of years ago – and their wall was much bigger, by the way. What can we copy next from China? Maybe its really complex writing system? How about giving communism a try? Or maybe being rubbish at basketball? Give me a break.
Hopefully, Beijing’s next great plan that we end up copying will do a little more good for the world and, more importantly, for America. This is why my fingers are crossed for China’s poverty initiative. It’s big, it’s ambitious, and it would be completely unfeasible for just about any other country to even consider. People once said the same about America’s plans. Let’s give the world reason to do so again.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. No, not a dig at the budget, or the deficit…
The analogy hinted at here breaks down when we consider what revenue really means in the context of the US government. I think it’s taxes and, well, when it’s considered that way…
But of course, as one of our presidents once put it, the business of America is business. So the analogy is there for anyone willing to do a little more work to iron out the rough edges. I’ll leave that task to you, motivated reader.
Monday, March 18, 2019
the calculus of idea generation
One of my favorite stories from the history of math is about Madhava of Sangamagrama. Know who he is, reader? Of course you do, for you are like all my readers, full of worldly knowledge, insight and wit! But just in case you’d like a brief refresher, Madhava is among those who invented calculus.
Now, I know what you may be thinking, reader – hold up, smart ass, that isn’t true, calculus was invented by Newton! And I concede the point because this is true, or maybe also true, for you may have insisted Leibniz invented calculus. Again, I acknowledge the rebuttals but emphasize that it is also true that Leibniz invented calculus. The point is that they all invented calculus, them and possibly a few other folks, each contributing in some way or the other to humanity's accumulating knowledge about what we know today as everyone's least favorite high school subject.
The big difference between Madhava and his European counterparts was their backgrounds. Newton and Leibniz were born in Europe to well-off families. They attended prestigious schools from young ages and eventually became educated enough to regularly collaborate with the world’s leading scholars on all the important subject matters of the day. Their lifetimes of study led to the insights and inspirations into big ideas that changed the world. All of this investment in these two men over the course of their lifetimes led to their crowning achievement – the invention of calculus, a title that remains in dispute in the present day.
On the other hand, Madhava likely came from distinctly humbler origins. I'm guessing he was born to a relatively poorer family than Newton's or Leibniz's for three reasons. First, he was born hundreds of years earlier than either man. Second, I assume the average Indian of the time was almost always materially worse off than a European counterpart. Finally, since I couldn't dig up anything about his background, upbringing, or adult life, I assumed that the lack of detailed records about him suggested the circumstances into which he was born were not as materially secure as those of Newton or Leibniz. Although I cannot definitely say for sure that my guesswork is reliable, I'm confident that the investment in his educational upbringing and the resulting resources and contacts that became available to him during his working years were nowhere near the level enjoyed by Newton or Leibniz.
All of this leads me to one big question - what does it take to prepare someone to come up with a great idea? The story of Madhava leaves me with some hunches about the relative value of natural ability and education in the context of idea generation but I'll leave calculating the exact proportion to smarter folks than me. Instead, I'll focus on something I know for sure after learning about the backgrounds of calculus's many inventors - a great idea can come from anyone, living anywhere, doing anything. It reminds me that no matter what we think we know about coming up with a great idea, there is always someone out there just waiting to prove everyone wrong.
Why is it important to understand where great ideas come from? Well, coming up with great ideas is how people create value. If the process of generating great ideas was perfectly understood, we would essentially be able to generate value on-demand and humanity would make massive strides forward. I’m not sure we are quite ready for this today but we can still do pretty well by seeking to understand the next best thing – how to reduce the time we spend waiting for the next person to generate the next great idea.
There are a lot of very well established beliefs about idea generation. Most suggest that great ideas come from great thinkers. These thinkers combine their brilliance with some mix of education and resources to maximize their natural intellect. But such beliefs don’t account much for the case of Madhava or for many others like him whose accomplishments rival those of the far better educated and connected. If Madhava could come up with his ideas despite lacking some of the advantages enjoyed by Newton or Leibniz, then surely education and resources aren't as important as some believe. At the very least, Madhava suggests the attempt to predict who will come up with a great idea based on education and resources alone is a fruitless exercise.
If we can’t predict the next person who is going to come up with a great idea, then what should we do? My humble suggestion is that we maximize the number of people who potentially might come up with the next great idea. I think a lot of folks share this idea and I see the manifestation of their beliefs every time society finds a way to extend or expand access to education. However, I look at this challenge from the other side because I believe people are perfectly capable of coming up with good ideas regardless of their background, education, or resources. So, I think we should consider what might have stopped someone like Madhava from inventing calculus.
Death, I think, is an obvious first choice. If Madhava had died at the age of twelve from an airborne infection or malnutrition or starvation, then he probably wouldn’t have made it into this post. Time wasting is another good candidate – if Madhava had walked six hours everyday to get water, for example, he probably would not have had enough time left in the day to invent calculus (though I suppose I can’t be fully sure - long walks are considered by some who voluntarily take them to be invaluable thinking time).
I’ll cut my speculations off here, reader, because I think the point is clear – the only thing that could have stopped Madhava from inventing calculus was the thing that probably should have stopped him in the first place – poverty. Now, Madhava might not have been impoverished in the relative terms of his day and perhaps that is all that he needed to power his intellectual accomplishments. However, this leads me to wonder how many other people just like him lived during his time that did not maximize their intellectual potential due to the restraints of poverty.
This detail is never pointed out in stories about improbable accomplishments. For every 'so and so' who overcomes the odds, how many others fell by the wayside just because they lacked some basic essential that many others take for granted? I shudder to think of all the great ideas that have probably disappeared into history’s black hole of irrelevance and obscurity thanks to solvable problems of resource distribution. Is the name of the person with the cure to cancer already etched onto a gravestone? Or perhaps crawling around in a junkyard somewhere, applying his or her considerable brainpower to identifying value in what others have tossed aside? Could the person with the potential to invent a solution for global warming be spending his or her day pulling scraps together for dinner? There’s no way to know the answer to such questions but I’m confident at the very least that we’ve wasted the potential of countless lives over the years by so casually accepting poverty as a poor person's problem.
It brings me to the lesson I draw every time I hear about someone who changes the world despite being born into poverty – allowing people to remain in poverty limits the potential for the entire human race. We currently have somewhere north of seven billion people on our little blue planet. In theory, any one of us could come up with the next great idea and move our entire species forward another step. In practice, though, with so many still shackled to needless poverty, the number of potential idea generators is far less than seven billion. When people in malaria-infested regions spend all day thinking about mosquitoes or people in the richest country in human history spend a couple hours a week standing in line at the food bank, we are asking some subset of our seven billion idea generators to spend their time coming up with solutions for problems like sleeping safely or affording dinner. This, of course, means a subset of our seven billion is not able to contribute to solving problems that we haven’t already solved.
There are far better arguments out there for why ending poverty is humanity’s most important collective goal. These arguments approach the goal from moral, ethical, or pacifist grounds. I’ll leave these arguments to those who can make the case with the passion, energy, or commitment that I feel such arguments deserve. I’ll instead conclude with my own relatively subdued point of view – since the next great idea can come from anywhere, we should make sure as many people as possible are secure enough to spend their time working on ideas. When we allow so many to remain in poverty, we reduce the number of people who are able to work on ideas, make it much less likely for great ideas to emerge, and ultimately limit the potential of the human race.
Now, I know what you may be thinking, reader – hold up, smart ass, that isn’t true, calculus was invented by Newton! And I concede the point because this is true, or maybe also true, for you may have insisted Leibniz invented calculus. Again, I acknowledge the rebuttals but emphasize that it is also true that Leibniz invented calculus. The point is that they all invented calculus, them and possibly a few other folks, each contributing in some way or the other to humanity's accumulating knowledge about what we know today as everyone's least favorite high school subject.
The big difference between Madhava and his European counterparts was their backgrounds. Newton and Leibniz were born in Europe to well-off families. They attended prestigious schools from young ages and eventually became educated enough to regularly collaborate with the world’s leading scholars on all the important subject matters of the day. Their lifetimes of study led to the insights and inspirations into big ideas that changed the world. All of this investment in these two men over the course of their lifetimes led to their crowning achievement – the invention of calculus, a title that remains in dispute in the present day.
On the other hand, Madhava likely came from distinctly humbler origins. I'm guessing he was born to a relatively poorer family than Newton's or Leibniz's for three reasons. First, he was born hundreds of years earlier than either man. Second, I assume the average Indian of the time was almost always materially worse off than a European counterpart. Finally, since I couldn't dig up anything about his background, upbringing, or adult life, I assumed that the lack of detailed records about him suggested the circumstances into which he was born were not as materially secure as those of Newton or Leibniz. Although I cannot definitely say for sure that my guesswork is reliable, I'm confident that the investment in his educational upbringing and the resulting resources and contacts that became available to him during his working years were nowhere near the level enjoyed by Newton or Leibniz.
All of this leads me to one big question - what does it take to prepare someone to come up with a great idea? The story of Madhava leaves me with some hunches about the relative value of natural ability and education in the context of idea generation but I'll leave calculating the exact proportion to smarter folks than me. Instead, I'll focus on something I know for sure after learning about the backgrounds of calculus's many inventors - a great idea can come from anyone, living anywhere, doing anything. It reminds me that no matter what we think we know about coming up with a great idea, there is always someone out there just waiting to prove everyone wrong.
Why is it important to understand where great ideas come from? Well, coming up with great ideas is how people create value. If the process of generating great ideas was perfectly understood, we would essentially be able to generate value on-demand and humanity would make massive strides forward. I’m not sure we are quite ready for this today but we can still do pretty well by seeking to understand the next best thing – how to reduce the time we spend waiting for the next person to generate the next great idea.
There are a lot of very well established beliefs about idea generation. Most suggest that great ideas come from great thinkers. These thinkers combine their brilliance with some mix of education and resources to maximize their natural intellect. But such beliefs don’t account much for the case of Madhava or for many others like him whose accomplishments rival those of the far better educated and connected. If Madhava could come up with his ideas despite lacking some of the advantages enjoyed by Newton or Leibniz, then surely education and resources aren't as important as some believe. At the very least, Madhava suggests the attempt to predict who will come up with a great idea based on education and resources alone is a fruitless exercise.
If we can’t predict the next person who is going to come up with a great idea, then what should we do? My humble suggestion is that we maximize the number of people who potentially might come up with the next great idea. I think a lot of folks share this idea and I see the manifestation of their beliefs every time society finds a way to extend or expand access to education. However, I look at this challenge from the other side because I believe people are perfectly capable of coming up with good ideas regardless of their background, education, or resources. So, I think we should consider what might have stopped someone like Madhava from inventing calculus.
Death, I think, is an obvious first choice. If Madhava had died at the age of twelve from an airborne infection or malnutrition or starvation, then he probably wouldn’t have made it into this post. Time wasting is another good candidate – if Madhava had walked six hours everyday to get water, for example, he probably would not have had enough time left in the day to invent calculus (though I suppose I can’t be fully sure - long walks are considered by some who voluntarily take them to be invaluable thinking time).
I’ll cut my speculations off here, reader, because I think the point is clear – the only thing that could have stopped Madhava from inventing calculus was the thing that probably should have stopped him in the first place – poverty. Now, Madhava might not have been impoverished in the relative terms of his day and perhaps that is all that he needed to power his intellectual accomplishments. However, this leads me to wonder how many other people just like him lived during his time that did not maximize their intellectual potential due to the restraints of poverty.
This detail is never pointed out in stories about improbable accomplishments. For every 'so and so' who overcomes the odds, how many others fell by the wayside just because they lacked some basic essential that many others take for granted? I shudder to think of all the great ideas that have probably disappeared into history’s black hole of irrelevance and obscurity thanks to solvable problems of resource distribution. Is the name of the person with the cure to cancer already etched onto a gravestone? Or perhaps crawling around in a junkyard somewhere, applying his or her considerable brainpower to identifying value in what others have tossed aside? Could the person with the potential to invent a solution for global warming be spending his or her day pulling scraps together for dinner? There’s no way to know the answer to such questions but I’m confident at the very least that we’ve wasted the potential of countless lives over the years by so casually accepting poverty as a poor person's problem.
It brings me to the lesson I draw every time I hear about someone who changes the world despite being born into poverty – allowing people to remain in poverty limits the potential for the entire human race. We currently have somewhere north of seven billion people on our little blue planet. In theory, any one of us could come up with the next great idea and move our entire species forward another step. In practice, though, with so many still shackled to needless poverty, the number of potential idea generators is far less than seven billion. When people in malaria-infested regions spend all day thinking about mosquitoes or people in the richest country in human history spend a couple hours a week standing in line at the food bank, we are asking some subset of our seven billion idea generators to spend their time coming up with solutions for problems like sleeping safely or affording dinner. This, of course, means a subset of our seven billion is not able to contribute to solving problems that we haven’t already solved.
There are far better arguments out there for why ending poverty is humanity’s most important collective goal. These arguments approach the goal from moral, ethical, or pacifist grounds. I’ll leave these arguments to those who can make the case with the passion, energy, or commitment that I feel such arguments deserve. I’ll instead conclude with my own relatively subdued point of view – since the next great idea can come from anywhere, we should make sure as many people as possible are secure enough to spend their time working on ideas. When we allow so many to remain in poverty, we reduce the number of people who are able to work on ideas, make it much less likely for great ideas to emerge, and ultimately limit the potential of the human race.
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