This Is Very True...

Coming up with KPIs and other business metrics may be important for understanding your business, but people definitely start gaming the system to reach those targets, so it's important to be aware of more than just the metrics.

Anyways, this thread goes into it in more detail,adding in a lot of info I didn't know. 

Population Concerns in the News

This Twitter thread highlights the problem I have with all the 'we're not reproducing fast enough' articles I see in the news.

They really fail to see the connection here.

Like, sure.. I'll try to help out with your population concerns. How about making sure I can afford a kid? And take care of all these crappy issues people with power and money are preventing movement on?

You don't see how that's all related?

Maybe show we actually live in a society, and not just some sort of system for accruing wealth to the already wealthy instead of enabling a terrible system and then whining about how nobody wants to perpetuate it.

Edited to add: also, our demographics have been like this for a while, and the only reason we aren't facing an aging crisis like some other countries is immigration.

There are plenty of people in the world, the only reason this is a concern in the US is because of our immigration problems... And underneath that, I'm not sure for how many 'concerned' people pushing these stories, but I'm sure there's at least a few, is racism. 

These articles freaking out about people not reproducing are really more about white people not reproducing. It's Tucker Carlson's shitty replacement theory. 

Which is also a pretty crappy reason for having a kid.

So I don't know who keeps trying to make these stories 'news', but it's not. And I wish they'd fix themselves rather than waste our time on their foolishness. 

http://megelison.com/poor-in-tech

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-17/inflation-rate-2021-and-shortages-companies-panic-buying-as-supplies-run-short

Israel and Palestine

I've mostly been avoiding talking about Israel and Palestine, for a lot of the reasons listed in Trevor Noah's bit here.

What his video reminds me of, though, is this. 

Any solution has to help answer this question - "How, when there is this much bad history, do you build trust?"

Because if either side thinks the other side 'is just negotiating so they can gain a respite and rebuild their strength for the next round', there's really no reason to believe any negotiated agreement will last. 

Financial Scandals

This was an interesting read on the S & L crisis, and at some point I will probably try to learn more.

I'm just not sure when, not so much because of time constraints (there's that too) but because it's so depressing and hard to read yet another story about how horrible people act with impunity, and escape the consequences.

That's the part that makes it hard to have much hope for the future...

The powers-that-be seem more concerned with protecting these selfish and self-interested opportunists than actually making sure the system is the type of meritocracy they like to think it is.

Like, when you've locked in control and can escape IRS audits and criminal investigations... Can you really be surprised when the vast majority of people start feeling like there's no point in hard work (it just pays for someone else to get another yacht) and that the system is stacked against them.

On a somewhat related note - as a white person myself, I do not understand why other white people don't see and treat white supremacists as the threat to our system that it is. I'm left guessing that it's some combination of 'I'm not affected so it doesn't matter to me' and outright racism. But it's very... 

Disappointing. Disheartening. Distasteful.

Can I come up with more words starting with 'dis'?

Ah..  Disgusting.

But my disapproval aside, I just struggle with why they don't even see the problem.

(which means putting my rather visceral reaction into words.)

If I had to explain it best, it goes back to 'lead by example'.

As an officer in the army it is even more important that I do the right thing than it is for my soldiers. Because I'm in charge, because I set the example.

Because soldiers will pick up on hypocrisy and double standards in a heart beat.

You absolutely do NOT want to write up a soldier for a DUI and then caught driving drunk yourself (though that shouldn't be your reason to avoid something stupid like drunk driving. If you're not wise enough to get a designated driver, or call Lyft or Uber or a cab or a friend, then I don't know why you should be in any position of authority anyway).

There have always been people who think the other way. Who enjoy the perks and privileges of rank and use it to get away with things. (Like ordering their subordinates to do the tasks they don't want to do. Breaking the 'never order someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself' rule. There's good reasons why you don't always do various tasks, but it's also important to show that it's not because you think you're too good to do them. Also - the discomfort on your NCOs face when you take a buffer to a floor, and the way they increasingly try to convince you you don't have to is low-key hilarious).

Anyways, the people who think that way shouldn't be in charge of other people. 

Which is why I want any leader I respect to hold their top leaders to an even higher standard than the rest of us.

This S & L stuff, the way the IRS can't audit the really rich, the problems with stopping white collar crime...

Its all creates a system where the wealthy (like Epstein) can act with impunity while someone less connected will face the full weight of our legal system.

And if you don't see the problem with that, you're part of the problem. 

https://twitter.com/mattczeller/status/1391198873746649088?s=19

Random

Saw this today, and still kind of mulling it over.

Or rather, I'm thinking about how some segments of society really encourage working to this degree. How we're not really designed for it, how creativity suffers from the grind, etc.