Healthcare

A quick search on Google revealed common reasons for high healthcare costs.  What's funny is that none of these mention the costs of providing care for the uninsured.  I don't know if it's rolled up into administrative costs or what.  I decided to try to do a little comparison, but I know that (to a certain extent) I'm comparing apples to oranges.  For example, this article, written in 2010, says that medical malpractice lawsuits cost about $55.6 billion a year, or 2.4% of the nation's total healthcare expenditure.

Interestingly enough, this article says that in 2013 unpaid healthcare costs for the uninsured totaled $84.9 billion.  This one, on the other hand, has no obvious date for the article (the article beneath it says Jun 2017, but given that this one says 'President Obama' I think it's obviously older) and says that unpaid uninsured costs totaled $42.7 billion.

Regardless of the exact number, I think it's safe to say unpaid costs of the uninsured is comparable to the effect of malpractice lawsuits in driving up the costs of health care.

Now, since 1986 we have laws saying that public and private hospitals alike are prohibited by law from denying a patient care in an emergency.  For good reason, I think.  I know I don't like the idea of living in a world where people die because a hospital refused to treat them.

But that means that hospitals must treat the uninsured, and they aren't getting compensated for it.  Which means they wind up transferring the costs to those who can pay (since hospitals have to pay their staff, and buy medical supplies, etc.)

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that we already pay for the uninsured.  It's just obscured by our complicated system.  Nobody says "this portion of your copay is for the uninsured."  And, heck, with insurance most of those costs get paid by the insurance company anyway.  We see it in higher premiums (since insurance companies stay solvent by making sure that more people pay for insurance than they pay out in claims.  Higher costs means they need higher premiums to compensate for the more expensive payouts)...but most of that gets taken out of your paycheck directly.  If you're so lucky to have an employer that provides healthcare, that is.  Good luck for the self-employed (and with the gig economy, there's more of them out there) and for people in minimum wage jobs where they cut your hours rather than pay healthcare.

And as for death panels - we may not have people meeting to decide who lives and who dies, but the same effect happens anyway.  It's just obscured by the lack of deliberation.  Who has insurance, and who can afford treatment...those things dictate who lives and who dies just as much as any death panel.  It's just, again, our system obfuscates the decision so that nobody can really blame anybody.  Oh, you didn't have insurance for a kidney transplant, and your GoFundMe didn't raise enough money?  Oh well, it sucks, but that's just the way it is.  (Yes, that's sarcasm).  It's not a death panel, nobody's deciding you don't deserve to live.  Except, in a way, they are.

So everyone agrees that our current system sucks.  And, as repeated deliberations in Congress show, nobody quite has an idea on how to do things better.

Or rather, there are ideas...and they are shot down immediately because of our current political climate.

Of course, one solution is to take advantage of our republican system (i.e. push options down to lower levels.  Empower the states, or cities, or county governments to come up with their own health insurance plans.  It lacks consistency, it means there'll be gaps between the states or cities or counties that create great plans and the ones that say 'tough luck'...or the ones who just can't afford better.  But it does take the decision away from the federal level and pushes it down to a level more closely tied to a community, so people can feel it's their decision.)

I do want to talk about single-payer healthcare for a bit, but I wanted to address the political climate first.  Or perhaps both at the same time.

When I was in the Army, we had Tricare.  And yes, there were issues with it.  When I was taking the Captain's Career Course, our instructor had had a personal tragedy a year or two prior.  He'd been deployed to another country, and while he was away his daughter died.  I think it was something that looked like the flu initially, but wasn't.  Horrible tragedy.  Anyways, one day one of the students had an issue with the healthcare system and our battalion commander took steps to address it.  Our instructor, obviously thinking about his daughter, stopped class for a bit to discuss the system.  He said that the pressure might make things better for a bit, but that our hospital just didn't have enough people...the staffing wasn't there...and any improvement could only be temporary.  He then dismissed us for lunch early and said to go spend it with our loved ones.

I wanted to point out his comment - the hospital just didn't have the staffing and resources to take care of everyone properly.  See, in our current political climate there's a strong tendency to, as Grover Norquist says, "cut government in half..., to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  And some of the complaints about incompetent government are actually blaming the government for programs that just don't have the resources to do what they're supposed to do.  You starve them of funds, make it impossible to do what they're supposed to, then blame them when they predictably fail to do so.

Which is not to say "government good: spend, spend, spend!"  I'm not advocating that.  I'm just pointing out that defunding the government and then complaining it's incompetent and using that to defund it even more is kind of stupid.  (Or brilliant, if you're trying to drown the government in a bathtub.  Stupid of people not to see through it, though.)

As for government incompetence - I grew up believing that privatization was better.  That competition in  business would force efficiency, and that government programs were inherently less efficient.

I've kind of grown a more nuanced view since, for a variety of reasons.  First, I want to point out that the military (which so many conservatives praise) is, yes, a government organization.  It's got it's issues, it's definitely not the most efficient.  Good luck trying to understand the military budget.  Yet there's very real dangers to privatizing it...and most people don't find the military incompetent at it's basic purpose.  Or rather, the soldiers are trained, fight, and resourced well enough (once they got past Rumsfeld's 'go to war with the army you have' crap) and incompetence at fighting wars has more to do with poor strategies and higher level decisions than any real question about the tactics, techniques and procedures of the troops themselves.

My first real challenge to my views on privatization came from studying for my Master's in Public Affairs.  (Yes, higher education, which study after study shows is tied to more liberal views.)  Basically I learned that in certain situations privatization didn't actually improve the product.  If the only market for a service is the government, there's not really any business competition...so all the inefficiency and waste just gets passed on to those privatized companies.  Except now the government also has to deal with contract management.  You don't just hire a private business to perform a service and forget about it!  You have to monitor that contract, make sure things are being done to standard.  Now, instead of an inefficient public agency you have a public agency trying to manage the contracts of inefficient private businesses.

The second challenge came from working in the private sector.  From what I've seen, businesses are not necessarily any more efficient than the public sector.  Particularly a large corporation...it has some of the same challenges as a large public organization.  As for competition...businesses can get by for a while without improving their efficiency, and public organizations can improve their efficiency tremendously when they're trying to do as much as they can with a limited budget.

At the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that it didn't matter to any great degree whether you're talking about public or private organizations...what mattered was having good management.  Good management, in either sector, will result in better and more efficient service.  (The public sector does struggle to compete for good management, of course, though what it can't pay in wages can be made up for in a feeling of service...so I'm not going to say that the private sector always gets the best managers.)  Regardless of public or private sector, you have to provide the resources to get the results you want.

Now, there's some good reasons to question whether it's the government's place to provide certain goods and services.  Yet once we, as a group, have decided to have those services we need to provide the resources to do it right.

Anyways.  To bring this back to single-payer healthcare, the criticisms I've heard of it come from a couple of reasons:

1. An unwillingness to fund it (i.e. don't raise my taxes to pay for your healthcare!!!)  Since we're essentially paying for that healthcare anyway, I think it's short-sighted to say the least.  Especially since our confusing system has a lot of waste in it, in terms of hospitals hiring people to work with multiple different insurance companies to process claims as well as uninsured people postponing care until an emergency forces them to it...resulting in much more expensive treatment passed on ultimately in our healthcare premiums.  Whether it's higher taxes or higher premiums, you're paying for the uninsured as is.

2. A disbelief that the government can do anything competently (i.e. "government isn't the solution, government is the problem!)  I somewhat addressed that above.

and

3. A sense that single payer healthcare smacks of socialism.  What a blast from the Cold War past!  As the article I linked to shows, or another one here, a single payer plan is not socialist.

And yet, round and round, our conservative Congress is determined to rollback the ACA and will probably never seriously discuss single payer healthcare...which means whatever they come up with will probably suck for many Americans.

Some Critiques of Political Viewpoints II

Republicans like to paint Democrats as the party of "big government" and "ivory tower elites".  Although a look at the Democratic platform doesn't flat out say "we want bigger government", most of the Democratic goals would require government involvement - legislation, regulations, etc.

I don't quibble with Democratic goals so much as the methods they use to get there.  There are two pieces to this.  One - that as an educated individual myself, while I can sympathize with the frustration at trying to convince people to support a plan they don't know much about, a democratic system requires continuing efforts at education rather than trying to impose 'what's best for everyone' from the top down.  Too often there's an unstated attitude of "we know what's best for you, and if you're too stupid to see it then we will just have to find a way of making it happen anyway." (Not saying it doesn't happen with conservatives, either.  It's just that right now there's a lot of talk about anti-intellectualism, and it's mostly associated with the conservative side.  And most people on the liberal side dismiss that critique out of hand.  I think it's worth pointing out why people might be disposed to disbelieve elite opinion.)

James C. Scott has an excellent book calling Seeing Like a State, that discusses some of the issues and challenges that occur when a government tries to engineer a society from the top down.  While I do think education is good for something, it needs to be coupled with a sense of humility and an awareness of the complex environment you are working in.  Otherwise you end up with Brasilia, and the unplanned Brasilia that grew up to compensate for the flaws in the planned one.

I'm not saying you should give up planning entirely, just leave room for the unplanned and unexpected...and don't get so tied to your idea of some utopia that you fail to account for the real world.  Sometimes that obstacle to your plan is actually something, once you address, that can make it better.

Speaking of obstacles that can make things better - here's some of the issues with big government.  First - these are not necessarily issues of today.   It's just that it's important to consider what potential there is for harm further down the road.  Particularly if someone unscrupulous winds up in charge.

When you have the power to give, you also have the power to take away.  That's part of why there's been more recent research into the problems with giving out rewards.  They can become so normal and expected that NOT getting a reward seems like a punishment.  So any government benefit also increases the government's ability to make your life difficult under certain circumstances.  Maybe you'll be deemed ineligible for that student loan you need, or food stamps, or what-have-you.  This is part of why I kind of prefer the government policy of giving grants to non-government organizations.  In that sense, people don't feel like it's the government deciding whether or not they get assistance...it's a non-profit.  And if there's issues with one organization (like it's religion-based and won't help someone who is LGBTQA or whatever the acronym is these days) or some other issues, there are other options.  The more options the better.

(The downside to that, of course, is that there's not necessarily a lot of coordination between these agencies.  So one person may not get any help, and another may draw on two or more organizations to get more help than others.)

One of the results of the recession is that more of these types of organizations are struggling to make ends meet as government grants shrivel up.  (Big Brothers Big Sisters is well enough known that I don't think it's doing too bad, but I do think it still felt the effects.)

In addition to having the power to give (and take away), there's just something impersonal, dehumanizing, and ineffective about bureaucratic government involvement.  Filling out hundreds of documents.  In triplicate.  Meeting some impersonal and over-worked government employee who doesn't see you as a person.  Waiting in line or on the phone for someone knowledgeable to help steer you to the next step.

These things don't generally build relationships between people, either.  Or they do by accident, if someone happens to be in and out of a government agency so often that they get to know the people there.

Relationships matter.  It's relationships that lead to real change.  An organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters can make a difference in someone's life because you're building relationships with them.  Waiting in line or on the phone for some by-the-book impersonal bureaucrat doesn't.

In a way, this reminds me of a change I saw with the Indiana BMV.  (I find it funny how some states call it a BMV and others call it a DMV.  Either way, it's the place you go for your driver's license and vehicle registration.)  When I was a teenager, the BMV was just about as awful as every depiction of bureacracy you've ever seen.  You'd have to plan for a wait of an unknown period of time.  Service was s l o o o o w w w.  If you didn't have the right paperwork, which you might now know right away, the entire trip was wasted.  The employees took forever on the computer, there seemed like a lot of forms to fill out, and if I recall correctly you had to wait for your license to get mailed to you.  And received a temporary license until then.

Last time I went to the BMV (and it's been a while, since I now live in Illinois) there was a world of difference.  Someone checked that you had the right paperwork up front, processing was fast, the lines were short, and overall it was just a much better experience.

It's like...you can make the system better.  If you provide the right resources.  A case worker swamped with more cases than they can handle is just not going to be able to offer up timely and personal service.

People complain about feelings of entitlement, government dependency, and ingratitude.  How much of that comes from dealing with a bureaucracy?  If you have to wait for hours (or days) for assistance, and you deal with a different bureaucrat every time, and fill out paperwork until you're sick of it, you will have a much different experience from working with a person who knows you, has your best interests at heart, and is helping you take advantage of those resources in order to make your life better.

This, btw, is not something that necessarily has to be government provided.  As I said, there's numerous non-government agencies that provide services to those in need.  I'm putting it out there more as a goal for the level of involvement required.  And to suggest that we get to that level by empowering local communities and taking advantage of our republican structure, rather than have some centralized federal government try doing it all.

(This leads to some interesting discussions on centralization, decentralization, and nested hierarchies but that's a topic better discussed another time.)

Some Critiques of Political Viewpoints

I do believe most political positions gain the support they do because they speak to some truth, or at least a partial truth.  The problem comes from applying those truths to the wrong situations, trying to make grand sweeping statements, and (of course) our tendency to confuse our own self-interest with the public good.

So I did want to discuss some of the problems with common political positions, though I've kind of cycled through which ones and where to start.  One day it's the liberal side of things, the next it's the conservative.  (I used a rather general term here, because critiquing the Christian conservative movement is different from critiquing the Libertarian movement, as is critiquing other more liberal positions.)

I wanted to start with a hypothetical allegory:

Imagine a 10 yr old boy learning to cook.  He just loves sweets, and making brownies or cookies whenever he wants is appealing.  But, like most of us, he absolutely hates doing the dishes.  So after mixing up the batter, licking clean the beater, and scraping it all into a pan to bake, he decides to just throw away all the dirty dishes and buy new ones.

He can afford to do this, after all.  So those dirty dishes get thrown in the trash, and perhaps wind up in a landfill.  Or perhaps they get sent somewhere for recycling, and people sort through the trash and find a way to reuse these perfectly good mixing bowls, beaters, and spatulas.  Sure, they're dirty...and the bits of food left on them have started to mold.  But someone can take the time to clean them off and find a use for them.

Meanwhile, the boy is creating demand for new mixing bowls and beaters...since every time he decides to make a sweet he is buying new cookware.  (Granted, one boy by himself might not do that...but if enough other boys do the same, it would.)

You could argue that this is good for business - it makes money for the mixer, beater, and spatula factories.  It employs people to meet the demand.  It may even help employ people further down the supply chain, with whoever is sorting the trash and recovering useful bits.

Though, at the same time, the resources used to create those mixers, beaters and spatulas could perhaps be used to make something else.  And the people employed by that business could perhaps find jobs in a different industry.  The higher demand for mixers, beaters and spatulas could lead to a price increase that makes it harder for some families to buy them (they would, of course, wash their own dishes and reuse them.)  And the people at the other end, the ones who sort through waste to find useful products, could probably find a different industry as well.

And if you asked him to do the dishes (after years of throwing them away and buying new dishes instead) would throw a fit about how what you're demanding is bad for business.  He can't make as many brownies or cookies if he has to wash the dishes every time!!!  And what about the people who are employed making those dishes?

All of which may, superficially, be true.  And, on another level, is a lie.

At the end of the day, you still have a spoiled rich kid who doesn't want to clean up after himself.

(Btw, do take a look at what happens to some of our waste when we're done with it.)

Thoughts on Political World Today

I've wanted to post something for a couple of weeks, except I couldn't find the words.  Everything I rehearsed sounded either too accusatory (i.e. you're what's wrong with the world!  Everyone should listen to me!!!), too naive (i.e. Why can't we all just get along?), too cynical/defeatist (i.e. it is what it is.  Accept it and move on.  Quit expecting better from people.)

Or it was just noise, noise in a tumult of noise, noise done just to make noise.  Noise that nobody will listen to, or hear, when surrounded by so many different thoughts, opinions and beliefs.

And yet I kept wanting to post.  To post something.  So I figured I'd sit down, start typing, and see what comes out.

I heard a story some time ago, allegedly a Native American legend though I wasn't sure if that's just something people said to make it seem wiser.  (A quick google search found this, so according to the site it really is Native American.)  You can follow the link for the prettier story-telling version, I just wanted to dwell on the main point.  That within all of us is the potential for great good and great evil, and that what determines whether we're overall good or evil is the traits we encourage.

I said 'overall' because people are complex creatures, with a mix of both...so if/when God decides to pass a final judgement on all of us, however He weighs our souls, it's to be hoped that the good we do outweighs the bad.

I've talked before about things that make us seem smaller.  Uglier.  Though it seems strange to apply such physical adjectives to something you can't take a picture of, most people know exactly what I'm talking about.  It's like...we all know that pettiness is ugly, and that seeing one person act petty can encourage another person to act petty, which just makes things uglier all the way around.

Yet knowing that and resisting it are two different things.  Calls to "take the high road" sound grand and noble, but often makes people feel defenseless and powerless against the ones who take the low road.  Like, if taking the high road is so grand, why does it mean doing nothing when someone is lying about you?  Or calling you names?

Of course, when you step back and look at other people, and how they interact, you can see why taking the high road is better.  Just listen to an argument, or read comments on the internet.  Trolls may be disruptive, but they're not persuasive.  It's just ugliness, breeding more ugliness.

Most religions and cultures seem to know this, and to encourage us to be our better selves.  Using the Native American legend above, they encourage us to be more compassionate.  Loving.  Generous of spirit.  They encourage us to build connections to one another.  The story of the Prodigal Son, who is accepted back with open arms by his loving father even after he squandered his inheritance.  The Good Samaritan, where a kind traveler took care of a Samaritan - Samaritans were despised and looked down upon by the Jews of that time - and that being kind was better than the supposedly holy priests, who passed the Samaritan by rather than risk the impurity of touching a dead body.

We have this tendency to think along tribal lines.  Our friends and family are our tribe, and we want them to succeed...and we want to dehumanize and fight the alien 'other' that threatens us and ours.  Christianity (and most major religions, I believe) try to make us develop a wider sense of tribe.  To apply the kindnesses we do to our loved ones to a larger group...to all of humanity.  To strangers, particularly despised strangers.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself."  "Judge not lest ye be judged."  "How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?"

I was kind of horrified when someone on facebook shared an article explaining why the parable of the Good Samaritan doesn't apply to refugees.  It's like...how twisted!  What a way to take a story that is clearly about our need to take care of each other, especially when that 'other' is despised and disliked, and twist it around to make it seem like it's perfectly okay NOT to take care of a despised and disliked group today!!!

How...ugly.  It shrinks the soul, when religion (at it's best) is supposed to enlarge it.

People are so afraid...and angry....and it feels like we're headed into a time of scarcity, where you'll be lucky to take care of you and yours.  Who has time to think about being generous and helping others, when we're worried about paying our student loans, getting a good job, taking care of our medical bills, and paying our rent or mortgage?  Who has the time and energy to fund music programs at schools, when we're living paycheck to paycheck?  Hell...I'm taking a bit of a gamble right now, going back to school.  I think it's a risk worth taking, and I should be able to find a good paying job afterwards, but how long will it take?  And will I find something that pays well enough?  Or will I struggle to make ends meet for years, possibly decades, on end?

So I look at the issues of the day, at the people who are screaming and yelling out loud, and there's just so much anger and fear.

Now, don't get me wrong, anger and fear are not inherently bad.  They can let us know when something big is going on in our lives, and give us the energy to do something about it.  I suppose it's like the mentality of those of us who deployed to a combat zone.  I've heard people say they could never do it, that they'd be too afraid of what would happen.  And yet over a million people die in car crashes every year.  Would you stop driving your car because of that?  Or maybe we should all just sit in our homes, safe and sound...work from home, order food for delivery...except that still isn't enough to make us safe.  Home is where the greatest accident risks occur.

The world is not safe.  You can not make it safe.  You can not keep out the things that make us afraid.

What you can do is decide what matters enough to you, and work towards them.  Despite the risks.

And you can mitigate some of them, though you have to be careful about that.  Rockefeller, for example, helped mitigate some of the risks in the oil industry by smoothing out the rocky market (prices skyrocketing and crashing have a horrible impact on businesses)...and yet he also created a monopoly that in some ways unfairly hurt the market and others.

Insurance developed as a way to mitigate and control risk...we'd rather pay a smaller portion every month, then pay nothing and get walloped with a horrendously expensive medical bill.  Insurance helps smooth those risks out, and yet we find healthcare prices rising out of control and insurance companies play a role in that.

A perfect functioning market is, frankly, hell on human needs.  The 'perfect' economy where a company hires a worker when they need and fires when they don't is majorly disruptive for employees, who can't plan their expenses around such insecurity.  You can't take out a car loan or a mortgage if you have no idea what you're going to make from month to month.  (I suppose technically you could, but it's very risky and you'd probably have to pay a horrendous interest rate.)

It has costs to the businesses as well, in terms of training new employees and whatnot.  Ford's willingness to pay his employees well helped his business because he had less turnover, which is horribly wasteful.  But it also means that sometimes a business has to pay employees even though they don't need all of them (and who knows if that slump is temporary or the new normal?)  Btw, this was one of the issues we saw with the contract labor we hired at our last job.  It's supposed to give the business more flexibility, hire when we need and fire when we don't...but people don't work like robots.  The temps tend to be less motivated, and for good reason...we don't really have a lot of incentives for them.  Most of our leadership team would rather have one good full time employee than two or three contract/temp labor.  Of course, this could also have just been our perspective...the business apparently thought it was still a better trade off, whether because they didn't have to pay for healthcare and retirement plans on the contract labor or because they still believed it was easier to fire them as needed, I don't know.  From my perspective, it sucked.

Anyways.  Insecurity can lead to fear and anger.  We can do some things to address it.  Fear and anger can let us know when we need to be more alert, when we need to pay close attention...but we should control them, not let them control us.

Letting fear and anger take us too far just causes bigger problems down the road.

I think Frank Herbert was right, "fear is the mind killer".   And all I see from the right and left is screaming, fearful and angry people. 

School Update

As a young lieutenant (butterbar) I remember attending my first meeting at my new unit, and realizing I understand hardly any of it.

The military is full of jargon, acronyms in particular.  I had finished the officer basic course with an understanding of most of the acronyms related to the Patriot missile system (AMG, ECS, etc)...and still wound up bewildered by much of what was discussed at this meeting.

So I jotted down every unfamiliar term in my standard/required notebook, and afterwards asked someone what each and every term meant.  Eventually I got familiar enough with them that I, too, could participate in a meeting that would be incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the lingo.

This is actually fairly standard, in my experience.  New unit, new set of acronyms.  It was almost worse when I deployed, because the terminology changed entirely in the few months between when I left Tikrit and returned to Baghdad.  (EJK wasn't something I'd used a lot during my first tour.)

Some of this had to do with the rapidly changing environment, though I suspect some of it had to do with other factors.  Soldiers often joke that someone re-named an existing concept just to get a bullet on their review...

In addition to the lingo, there was always some new sort of system to learn.  BAT.  Palantir.  And in civilian life there was Red Prairie and SAP.

The result of all that is I've got great confidence in my ability to learn new things...and it's almost always the same.  

First, it's almost all new.  You have to jot down anything you don't understand, and ask questions, and ask questions, and ask questions.  Eventually things start fitting together, and you start understanding more of whatever-it-is.  

I brought all that up because, yet again, I'm learning something entirely new.  I have three classes this summer - Computer Programming II (Java), Incident Response, and Malware.  

The malware and incident response classes tie together really well.  On the one hand, I'm sure the material would be easier if I'd already had the Intro to Operating Systems class (registered for fall)...on the other hand, I kind of like doing it this way.  It means when I do get that class, I'll have a basis in security before I even start...and in some ways the material won't be quite as new, so that class will actually be easier.

But for now, I have found myself looking up details on various topics, just to make sure I understand the point.  (Like Windows registries.)

I feel like I've learned a lot already.  And I also feel like there's a LOT more to learn, still.  I've also been doing some side reading.  Part of the immersion process that will help speed things along to the point where I can mentally map out everything.  Some of the material is good, though disjointed or old.  (The Cuckoo's Egg was good for someone completely new to the field, but he's writing about something really really old and somewhat obsolete by now.  Stealing the Network is a bit above my current skill level, though I read bits and pieces in the interest of building those mental connections.  I feel somewhat similar about Practical Unix & Internet Security, which I originally worried was too old to be relevant but saw someone recommend it as still pretty useful info.  I like it, I am learning quite a bit...and some of it is still definitely over my head.  It'd probably help to learn more C or C++ programming)

It's interesting to see just how much hacking and computer crime has evolved.  I think I still had that mental image of some geeky white (male) teenager trying to show how cool he is by hacking into systems.  There may have been quite a bit of that in the past, and they probably still exist today - though not necessarily white, or teenaged, or male.  Still, they'd be the mad scientists/wizards who are able to invent new techniques for getting into a system.

The real issue is that they've managed to industrialize the process.  The mad scientists/wizards create toolkits that anybody can use, even if they hardly know how to program at all.  People who didn't have to spend years picking up the necessary skills.  Now anybody and their grandmother can exploit a vulnerability in order to conduct an attack.

No wonder cyber defenders are getting overwhelmed.

Anyways, in terms of the learning process I'm still very much at the beginning.  I think a cyber security expert has to know the system just as well as (if not better than) the hackers.  Which means assembly language, operating systems, network protocols, processors, macros, and more.

American classism

I thought the commentary on this article was interesting, mostly because the rather common "this doesn't apply to me, I earned it" posts don't mention whether they are sending their children to elite schools, or supporting their children in extracurriculars designed to help their children get into an elite school.  Which means that even though their achievements may not be an example of the problem, they aren't really addressing the issues the author brings up.

Coincidentally, I came across another article this morning that ties into this really well.

Addendum

All too often, changes in history come from one group trying to compensate for or repair the weaknesses of the system in their time.

Those repairs often enough just create the weaknesses of the system for the next generation.  For example, our monoculture of industrialized food production developed as a way to feed the growing population.  Pesticides, etc were used to solve that problem.

Now, we consider the consequences of those steps bad...and there are people trying to solve it instead.

Or, to take this back into a history/political science realm -

The Mamluks were originally slave boys raised to serve the Islamic caliphate (similar to the janissaries, I think).  They eventually took over the caliphate, and I'm sure each step of the process was a natural reaction to the system at that time and weaknesses of the sultans.

Julius Caesar, whose murder by the Roman Senate is rather famous, took the steps he did in reaction to the system at that time.  Actually, if I recall correctly one of the reasons he crossed the Rubicon was because he was about to lose the protection from prosecution that came with his proconsulship.

(After a bit of hunting I found my reference, from The Romans From Village to Empire)  If Caesar became a private citizen, as per normal procedure, he expected his enemies would use that time to level so many legal charges against him that it would mean his political ruin.  You could argue that too much political litigation drove the eventual destruction of the Roman Republic.

These sorts of patterns seem to happen over and over again, which is perhaps why I find it more interesting to see how various leaders surmount the challenges of their time in order to help prevent this (seemingly inevitable) slide into destruction.

And how, once you do find a way, can you get the support for your ideas in the face of all those other people who are so darn certain that they know better?

Or, to put it another way, how can we truly Make America Great Again when we've got Trump and Hillary and all these other wannabes promising to do so, and generally missing the mark.

Wisdom, Virtue, and Changing the World

My brother and I have had various debates and arguments over the years, one of which I like to think about from time to time - 

The only real virtue is wisdom.

I thought that was a real quote, but nothing comes up in Google...and the various discussions of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates don't quite seem to capture it.  Which makes me think I condensed one of our debate points down to something that is, perhaps, oversimplified.  I think the closest quote related to this point of view was Plato's - "all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom"

The point is that, without wisdom, all our virtues stop being virtues.  Courage becomes foolhardiness, boldness becomes recklessness, and so on and so forth.

I periodically remember this point because I don't think there's any one perfect system.  And every time I try to think of a better way, of something that would help fix the issues I see, I wind up thinking that what we really need is wisdom.  That our system only works when people are wise enough not to exploit the inevitable weaknesses, or rather wise enough not to exploit them to the point that the system breaks.

That is a rather broad and vague statement, mostly because nobody knows when a breaking point is until well after you've passed it.  Yet it captures something I worry about, with what I see going on today.

The whole concept of someone obeying "the letter of the law and not the spirit" is to show how you can exploit loopholes in legislation to such a degree that you completely subvert the intent. 

Sometimes this is considered wise and cunning (and is actually a trait prized by hackers, who exploit loopholes in code).  And yet, flaunting the spirit of a law betrays the weakness of the system.  It means that the system either has to tighten up the law, closing those loopholes, or demonstrate on a daily basis that it can't, and that people can get away with things that go against the entire point of what was legislated in the first place.  It is...dissonant.

Which is, to a certain extent, inevitable with any human institution I suppose.  Going back to an earlier post, if the system has checks and balances that keep it in place it's probably not worth worrying about too much.  Yet when things get out of hand, when everyone is a lawyer or hacker looking to exploit the loopholes in the system, I think it does become a problem.  Sort of like if morality is subjective (or relative), then there's no point trying to argue something is good or evil, since the terms become meaningless.

I actually started thinking about something different, this morning.  I remembered a point I had made, about the decision making done when I was assigned to the New York National Guard, versus the professional way I would have expected it to have been handled.  

See, when determining which unit would control a building, I'd expected the interested parties to lay out their reasoning (i.e. why they needed the building, what their alternatives were if they didn't get the building, etc.) and when all the information was presented to the key players they'd decide on the best course of action.  All of it based on the needs of the unit as a whole.

I was rather disillusioned and disgruntled to realize, in this unit at least, that instead it was more a matter of trying to pull one over on others.  Sneaking something into an opord, only to have someone else figure out what was going on and get it squelched before it was ever published.  

I know politics is kind of inevitable when we're talking about people, and yet I still expected something...more professional.  Something that considered the needs of the unit as a whole, instead of requiring games played with almost no regard for what was best for the team.

That assignment made me think I was overly idealistic, perhaps.  And that being angry about it just made me less effective, with pretty much no impact on the ones who continued playing games.  Annoying, when there is so clearly a better way, but it's one of the things I didn't have control over...and a junior officer isn't going to make field grade officers 'see the light' and do things differently.  Hmm, okay, I possibly could if I worked on influencing people in the long term, though that's debatable.  Even if it was possible, though, I didn't have the long term to work with.

I was thinking about all this, because I've repeatedly mentioned my disappointment with the system today.  The system that gave us Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton for 2016.  The world just seems to get crazier and crazier every day, and there's no real force for...well, sanity.  Just the constant aggravation of choosing between the lesser of two evils, hoping that the negative traits of what you choose will not be bad enough to make you regret that choice.

Yet I'm concerned that any attempts to make things better will wind up in failure...mostly because we're lacking in wisdom.  That the same powers and influences screwing things up are the ones who would be most influential in affecting any changes, and will just find a way to screw things up in a different way.  

Actually, that's sort of what I'd noticed about the early Progressive attempts to break the control of party bosses.  The party system found ways to maintain control despite Progressive attempts.

And yet, somehow, those cigar smoke-filled rooms did seem less influential.  For a time.

Wisdom.  Easy to say, hard to define.  It's the sort of thing you only notice after the fact, and even then someone may second guess later.

Public Participation

I thought this was a good article -

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/9/15768314/public-participation-cant-save-american-democracy

Mostly because it asks a key question.  Since many citizens don't have the time or interest to educate themselves and make wise decisions, arguing for better participation won't fix our problems. (though I will still encourage everyone to vote, and we will probably see some reactive actions that sort of hold political parties accountable.  It's just that it happens so late, and the parties are horrible at figuring out what they're being held accountable for in the first place.)

I am so frustrated with our current system /efforts, yet I don't know how to get the support necessary to actually make things better.  Especially when we've got all the Trump issues on one hand, and various articles making it clear that Hillary Clinton is just not going to GO AWAY DAMMIT!!!

It shows that the system somehow continues to empower the wrong people, and (as is all too often the case) once you reach that level of support it's all too easy to maintain it, which shuts out or down better options.

Further Musings

I'm veering rather heavily into speculation now.  Based, again, on some personal rules of thumb w/regards to human behavior.  That, and some things I picked up while studying counterinsurgency tactics and whatnot.

We have a tendency to lose sight of our goals and focus too much on the opposition.  Going back to Iraq, for example, there's a world of difference between "kill all the terrorists" and "protect the local population so they can support us in defeating the terrorists".

When you focus on killing the terrorists, you can get the pernicious "whack-a-mole" problem we faced back around 2004/2005.   You can kill them off in one area, only to have them creep back in as soon as you leave.  Or, as the French learned in Algeria, you can create insurgents faster than you defeat/capture/kill them.

With regards to guerrilla warfare, I like to consider what life is like for the average non-political farmer.  They probably don't care too much about who is in charge, as long as they can grow their crops, sell the crops, and feed their family.  Preferably in peace.  Guerrillas and the government want that farmer to take sides.  The guerrilla would love to have food, the ability maneuver through those farm fields, and the surety of safety that comes from knowing the farmer won't give them up.  The government would also like the support of that farmer, since the farmer can report any guerrilla movement they see.

The guerrilla is trying to tap into some sort of grievance against the government.  If that grievance is widespread and shared, they may see significant support from that (not-so-apolitical) farmer.  If not, then the government probably is getting plenty of tips and is right on top of the guerrilla.

If the support for the guerrilla is widespread enough, they can probably grow into a revolutionary movement and overthrow the government.  If the support is not there, the government can keep them in check.

When the non-political population is more divided, things get tricky.  They may despise a corrupt or incompetent government, yet not support the violence and disruption of the guerrillas.  Or there may be some other dynamic.

Anyways, it seems to me that guerillas, at some point, may have to make a choice on how to sustain their support.  In our own revolution (which did use some guerrilla tactics) the revolutionaries risked losing more and more of their voluntary militia-men as support waned.  The Battle of Trenton gave an important morale boost, since that victory helped sustain support.  Anyways, if that victory hadn't occurred, the revolutionaries would have faced a tough choice to let their volunteer militia of mostly farmers to go back home and farm, or to try and keep them there against their will.  I don't think anyone was going to try and keep them, but I bring that up because in a different choice has been made elsewhere.  Child soldiers, for example, are taken against their will and forced to fight for one side or another.

Going back to that apolitical farmer, if the guerrillas don't have enough support to get food and other essentials, they sometimes will harrass the local farmers and take what they need. (Alternatively, they can give up, starve, or find resources somewhere else.  Like through criminal activity or somesuch).  They'll often justify it as saying "we're fighting on your behalf" and "you'll be better off if we win", but that apolitical farmer generally can't trust that, and sees the guerrillas more as violent thieves taking what they want.

That's when counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare starts getting ugly.  The population is beset on both sides, by brutal government loyalists and just-as-brutal guerrillas.

If one side could win hearts and minds, to use what has pretty much become a cliche, it could create a turning point.  Unfortunately, both sides tend to focus more and more on killing each other then on creating the kind of system that would draw support from that apolitical farmer.  To go back to our whack-a-mole example, US troops would come in and kill the insurgents...and move on.  Then the insurgents would come back and kill anyone who cooperated with us, and terrorize the population so much that when US troops returned nobody would support them.  It wasn't that the entire population supported the insurgents - the insurgents killed and terrorized many of their own people - but when we were more focused on killing the insurgents then on protecting the people we were never able to get the kind of intel we needed.

Anyways, same dynamics play out elsewhere.  Albeit less violently.  With regards to information warfare and psychological warfare, I don't want to underestimate such things, but I also don't want to exaggerate them too much.  I think it's a bit like marketing campaigns - I know that not all ads work, and that many of the ads that do work only work because I'm already looking to buy something like it.  Or was unaware that a certain product existed in the first place.  Take Barnes & Noble coupons - they work, partly because I know I will buy books anyway and prefer to buy them when I can get them at the cheapest rate...but I'm probably going to buy books anyway.  The coupons do get me to buy more than I otherwise would have, but it's not really against my will...it just changes my budget calculations on how much I can get.

Hmmm.  Not sure I put that right.  Okay...on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter I generally scroll past any of the in-app ads without wasting my time on them.  Like Tumblr has an add for Wayfair.  Maybe if I was looking to buy furniture I'd click on it, I've used Wayfair before I think, but I'm not looking right now so I don't bother.  And I personally dislike the "episodechooseyourstory" ads...wish I could block them.  Not sure if that's just a bad campaign, or that the data for targeting me is terrible.  Thing is, if the ad isn't something I'm already interested in it's not going to work very well.  If it's a good ad, I might remember that company if/when I am in the market for something.  Car ads, for example...I definitely don't plan on buying a new car any time soon, but maybe next time I do I'll remember a particular brand or model because of a commercial.

If the CIA or Russia have success, I think it's for similar reasons as those ads, and those guerrilla movements - they are tapping into some sort of widespread grievance that already exists.  If it didn't resonate, if average people didn't feel like whatever-it-was matched their experience, it wouldn't get much support.  From that perspective, the Democratic focus on Russian involvement is a bit of a boondoggle.  Yes, it's scary and the implications are concerning, but Russia couldn't have affected the election as much as the Democrats suspect if there weren't other things going on.  I'm not saying to drop the issue entirely, but I am saying that Trump's election highlights a problem that probably had an even greater impact than Russia - namely that neither party seems to represent the average American any more.

Most Americans did not like Trump or Hillary.  But the parties are so focused on fighting each other, especially with the often irrelevant echo chamber of stories in the mainstream media, that there is a massive untapped potential for support.  I don't want to say "in the middle", because it's true that most Americans lean more towards one end of the political spectrum or the other.  It's just that most don't really feel like either party represents them.  That is part of what Trump tapped into, though I'm not too pleased with the results.

So to get back to the article that started all of this - I think there's some truth to it.  I also think the effects of information warfare and psychological warfare are sometimes exaggerated.  I think a lot of influencers don't realize this, so some of the debates over truth, facts, etc. reflect a mistaken idea about what will work...but this is such a new arena that nobody really knows yet what will and won't work.

And even if, in the long run, some of this will backfire...it still is making a mess of things today.  Like my earlier post about cybercrime, and how cybercrime can grow like a cancer if it's not kept in check...the free-for-all in this new arena can have negative effects regardless of whether a specific tactic is successful or not.  That is, some people are saying "if they can just make you distrust your own news sources, and not know what to believe, it's as effective as making you believe something that isn't true."  Even if people eventually sort out the fact from the fiction, if it takes too long to sort out, if the confusion is too widespread, and if success breeds success, things may get out of hand...and the fears of information warfare and psychological operations might not be all that exaggerated.

Continued Musings

I'm not sure how to clarify my thoughts on this one without going into my own personal rules of thumb.

For example - I don't know anyone who wakes up in the morning and says "I'm going to be an evil person today".  Seems sort of self-evident when you put it like that, but the implications are deep.  That means, for example, that climate-change deniers are not saying to themselves "I'm going to pretend that climate change is not an issue so that I can make money, and screw everyone else!"

Any counter-argument that assumes they are greedy and deliberately lying will not be very effective, since it doesn't match their own experience as to why they  believe what they do, and why the people they know came to the same conclusions.  You can call them names all you want, but you're pretty much just preaching to the choir, and maybe even doing some virtue signaling or trying to overwhelm the opposition with a show of strength.  You are not persuading anyone to change sides, and you're not really engaging in debate.

Given my own experiences (with conservative and liberal relatives of various stripes), I would say they are sincere in their beliefs and are not malicious or deliberately hurtful.

If everyone is trying to do the right thing - in their own minds at least - and aren't trying to screw everyone else over, then why do we have such wildly different opinions on things?

That's where it gets complicated, of course.  Some of it has to do with our tendency to confuse what's good for us with what's good for everyone.  Some of it has to do with life experiences, and the lack of familiarity with what life is like for those are different (i.e. living in a bubble.  How can someone who is rich, and surrounded by rich people, understand what life is like for those who are poor?  And vice versa, but we generally aren't as concerned with that.)

And then there are those who, for whatever reason, have learned to justify less than ideal behavior.  There are people who deliberately lie, cheat, and steal.  I doubt they think of it that way themselves, though.  Like the con-artist's code, they find a way of making it seem like everyone else deserves what they get.

Finally, there are those who believe that the ends justify the means.  The ones who don't see themselves winning in an open and honest market of ideas (either because they believe their opponents won't let them, or because they believe people are too dumb to know what's good for them) and basically will justify doing whatever it takes to win in the face of it.  These are, in some ways, the most dangerous ones.  You see it with terrorists, who believe murder and violence is justified if it leads to their honorable goal (anarchy, Catholic rule, Islamic Caliphate, etc.)

Yet that same mentality can be used to justify less violent acts.  Like spreading misleading information.  Conducting a character assassination.  Manipulating public opinion with twitter bots, paid internet trolls, or a well-placed person in the media industry.

I don't know how often political adversaries have convinced themselves of their arguments first (and are simply spreading things they believe in, as well), versus cynically manipulating people with arguments they don't personally believe.  IMHO the former fits in with human biases of one sort or another, whereas the second is more problematic.

Taking An Idea Out to Look At

I start my summer classes tomorrow, and I'm kind of excited about the material.  I'll be taking three classes - the second computer programming class, a class on incident response, and a class on malware.  Should be fun.

That's not why I'm writing today, though.  I came across an article this morning that I really wanted to blog out my thoughts on.  Mostly because, if I don't blog, they seem to jumble together and not really amount to much other than "it's complicated".

The article is discussing the mechanics of what it says is a "full-on psychological war".

I almost shared this to Facebook and Twitter, but a couple of things stopped me.  First, most of the examples in the article were discussing Trump.  That means that anyone who is a Trump supporter will focus more on that, instead of considering the tactics listed and what it means.  (Articles like this all too often seem geared towards the people who already agree with them, unfortunately.  I'd love to see the same article, except with examples related to holocaust denial.  There are still enough Americans who remember grandfathers or fathers from WWII that they know holocaust denial is a bunch of crap.)

The second reason is that I don't think this 'war' is as one-sided as the author makes it sound.  That's mostly from some impressions I picked up during the 2016 election, though.

Despite those issues, I think this touches on a very real problem.  It...feels like a good explanation for what I'm seeing and hearing today.  I remember when I was in Iraq, noting one of the big issues there.  There was an incident (or maybe not), where Sunni insurgents killed some Shi'a and strung their bodies up on a lamppost.  One source said his friends saw it, while many other residents said the claim was nonsense, and aimed at inciting more violence.

So here's the thing.  Our media has it's biases, and if you are careful you can sometimes read past that.  But for the most part if an event happened, both sides reported that it happened...and the bias appears in their interpretations and explanations.  And, in some cases, with disputes over unclear facts.  That's part of why reporting that the police shot a black man is such a difficult topic.  Nobody disputes that the police shot the guy, they dispute whether it was justified or not.  That report from Iraq, however, had a very clear dispute regarding the facts.  Either bodies were hung from lamp posts, or they weren't.  One side is lying.  There is no middle ground, there is no way to reconcile this in order to account for  different perspectives.  Either it happened, and the local Sunni are so supportive of the insurgents that they lied about it, or it didn't happen and the Shi'a in the article was willing to lie instead.  (Or his friends lied to him.)

In some ways, I feel like things have degenerated to a similar state.

That's mostly where I've gotten so far.  I'm going to eat brunch and probably write more afterwards.