Brainstorming

We had a team building exercise based off of improv comedy, which made an odd sort of sense because the attitudes it takes to do great improv are some of the same skills it takes to do great - and creative - brainstorming and team building.

One of the rules that stuck with me was 'Yes, and...' The idea being that you don't try to challenge or dismiss someone's ideas, but build off of them.

Which is useful when it comes to brainstorming, as you shouldn't start off trying to poke holes in the ideas. Yes, the ideas probably will have some sort of problem. You can address that as you flesh out the plan. It's more important to throw the ideas out there and get people sparking off of each other... you can refine them later.

So, as just an example, I wanted to throw out some oddball ideas for socioeconomic systems. I mean, I keep saying there are more options than just 'capitalism' and 'communism' right?

This is a big, blank board where you can throw all sorts of ideas out, addressing any part of it. How people make money, manage property, etc.

Right now, though, I wanted to play around a bit with stocks and finance. That is, you would seriously need to get an expert when it comes to refining here, but there's a LOT of possibilities.

Consider, if you will, that rich people are generally supposed to be able to live off the interest of their principle. (That's my understanding, at least. Never spend your principle. Invest and live off the proceeds. It'd be fun to try it myself if I had a large enough principle to begin with, but ah... well.)

Anyways... why can't that work in other ways? We've got social security for retirement, and a lot of the libertarian sorts who are trying to do away with that. Companies that have gotten rid of pensions and want us to use 401Ks...

So imagine, if you will, that everyone born has a fund started with a set amount... and it has 18 years to mature. Upon reaching the age of majority, everyone gains control of their fund. They can let it wait (if the stock market is particularly bad, for example), or cash out, or transfer into some other investment opportunity. They can use to to fund college, or buy a house...

The point of the idea isn't to say we 'should' do it, as we'd have to consider where the money comes from, whether it would be national or state or locally funded, and how much is appropriate to start the fund off with. The point is really this - it takes a lot of resources for people to be successful in life, and 'winning' doesn't mean much of anything when too few people have the chance to even compete. If you want to believe in the American Dream, believe we're a meritocracy, it would help if we didn't have such huge disparities in resources. If everyone has a fund that they can use (or blow), then you've got a better case for saying people 'deserve' to be where they are. I'm not saying you've made the case, mind you, but it would have fewer of the problems that people keep glossing over in our current system.

So what if everyone had a starting fund? The rich would still have a ton of advantages, but at least the less well-off would have a real chance to change their circumstances.

By the same token - 401Ks give employees a stake in their company (well, okay. 401Ks don't have to be stock in the company you work for, but many do offer good deals on that. Like matching stock purchases). The company does well, and their retirement fund looks better.

That's got some interesting points from the 'we're all stakeholders in the business, and we all want it to succeed' perspective, but it doesn't exactly give the average employee any sense of ownership in their company.

Or rather, they might see some benefit when it comes to retirement, but in my experience a) none of them have any real ownership or say in company decisions, b) when you do get asked to vote on some sort of proposal, most have no real idea of what the question is, what the stakes or, or what the right answer is and c) it's hard to feel like the work you do really has an impact on it. Especially in a large organization, where one group might do particularly well and another particularly bad. Is the stock price reflecting the sales team? Or the supply chain? Or the engineers? How does a picker in a warehouse feel like their efforts matter, when they work their butts off but one of the other departments doesn't meet their goal and the bonus is less than it would have been if everyone had been on target?

It also seems to me that stock prices are more about gambling and perception than an honest evaluation of expected earnings... but again, that's my non-expert opinion.

What if we did focus on those earnings more? Or rather, what if the quarterly earnings off of a stock were apportioned in such a way that the return was equivalent to what a salary would be. That the price was less about speculation, and more about the fact that one stock returned $2.00 in the first quarter... and could be expected to do likewise for the foreseeable future, and so a low-wage employee might need to own about 3K stocks in order to make a living off that quarterly profit.

What differences would that make in how a company organized itself? What would be the pros and cons of such a system? It'd prob mean a ridiculous amount of stocks would have to be allocated to employees, but there'd also be more of a sense of ownership and 'my company's success leads to my success'. Would it cause more problems in terms of uncertainty? Or improve some of the disconnect between people who are 'just there to earn their wages' and the ones truly trying to make the company succeed? Would it be easier or worse to get rid of salaries and hourly rates?

Idk, I'm just throwing out oddball ideas, but it doesn't work as well without someone to bounce them across.

The Consent of the Governed

When thinking about what society *could* be, rather than how it is, our founding documents provide a very compelling story.

"All men are created equal", expanded to include women, ofc. And including non-white men and women, who may not have been specifically excluded in the Declaration of Independence but were often excluded in practice.

"Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness."

Our Declaration says Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness are 'among these' unalienable rights. That means it's not a complete list.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." So pretty much the social contract, and a nice neat explanation of why we have a government in the first place. Not to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, but to secure our unalienable rights. It is supposed to be people focused, and it's legitimately depends on serving the people. Which leads directly to the very next sentence in our Declaration of Independence -

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem mostly likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Early Americans often called our government a 'Great Experiment', an attitude that I think we've forgotten over the years. It embodies a willingness to try different things and keep on trying until we figure out what works.

Like many human endeavors, there's what we state publicly and what we actually put in practice - and there is dissonance between the two. But the Declaration of Independence, when taken seriously, is a powerful tool that helps define our nation.

All men and women are created equal - whatever race or creed. All are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - at the very least. Our government should be designed to secure those rights for all, not just for the few.

And if what we're doing isn't working, then we can create laws, or constitutional amendments, or even (though preferably not often or easily. As our Declaration says "Prudence... will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes") changing it entirely.

I like to think what I'm writing is entirely in keeping with American traditions, from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution. I don't really think it's radical, or foreign... though I have to wonder about that sometimes. Too many people seem to read the same documents I do and use them to justify beliefs that seem to directly oppose everything I understood about what we stand for.

It's very annoying.

Moving along, though. Let's talk a bit about 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'.

Life is fairly obvious, though the argument over the death penalty shows that even that isn't cut and dry. 'Pursuit of happiness' also seems... well. Nobody seems to be trying to prevent us from pursuing happiness, and it's not like the Declaration gives any guarantees about finding it. (Though we do have a heckuva lot more research now on what, exactly, tends to make people happy.

Still, liberty is what we tend to argue over the most.

For good reason.

It's easy to think of liberty as - well, freedom to do whatever you want, really. But we generally don't have such freedom, and it's not just because of government... or because we need a job and have to follow corporate norms.

We are part of a society. And being a member of society has it's own set of obligations and requirements. I suppose that's part of what made The Good Place an interesting show. It asks us "what do we owe each other?"

Maybe back in the day you could find a remote farm out in the middle of nowhere, and not have to worry about what anyone else wanted... though tbh, even then there was generally some sort of community, with various expectations and obligations. There's a lot of research on farming communities, for example, and how they tend to cooperate to help each other out. There may even be a practical justification (if I help you harvest your crops when you're sick, or your machine broke, then you'll help me in the future when I have a similar problem), but in general it's done because it feels good. As the happiness research I linked to above shows, ties to each other (and our community) generally give us all warm fuzzy feelings.

Oh, and some farms may have been *mostly* self-sufficient, but they often still needed to buy plows (as one example), and sell their produce, and various other things that still tie them to a society and community at large.

Which is part of why it's not pure mysticism to say we're all connected to each other. What happens to one person can affect us all. (Particularly right now, as we're all affected by somebody who was infected by a bat.)

What do we owe each other? What obligations do we have as members of society? And how does our concept of 'liberty' play a role in that?

Continued

I think of public, private, and non-profit organizations as a category that covers the bulk of our socio-economic organizations...

And I'm not giving any 'one true way' to organize them, in part because... well.

It's like this. If you keep a 'servant-leadership mentality', or a 'shepherd taking care of their flock' mentality, then your focus on the general welfare of your people will guide you to whatever answers you need. And those answers may change, depending on the time, place, and circumstances.

Although it's quite funny, there's an element of truth to the old SNL skit:

People don't always know what the 'best' way of doing things are. They just know that something isn't working, and they want you to fix it.

That's a strength and a weakness, ofc. All sorts of people are offering their solution to the problem, and some of them are pretty awful as far as solving the problem. Or they come with long term consequences. Whatever.

I think that's part of why history has shown, repeatedly, creative solutions to the problems of the day (which can then play a role in creating the problems of tomorrow, often as not). All our norms and institutions, all the rules and 'proper' way of doing things, can get swept aside in an emergency as people demand 'fix it!'

Whoever rises to power at that time generally has to find some way of tying their reign to the earlier precedents. Hence Augustus calling himself "first among equals" even as he changed Rome entirely. Charles Martel initially served as a 'power behind the throne', didn't claim the throne after the official ruler died (but was pretty much too powerful for anyone else to take over), though he set the foundation for his son and grandson to rule.

Anyways, point of all that was this. Don't get too hung up on what 'should' be done via the private sector, or public sector, or non-profit. If something is an issue, people will scream 'fix it', and maybe (eventually) someone will step up to the plate.

The government ends up taking on a lot of things because when something isn't working, someone generally says "there ought to be a law", and lo and behold a law is passed.

Take OSHA for example. Businesses showed (yet again, and repeatedly) that they cared more about profits than creating a safe and secure working environment for their people. People died, or lost limbs, or eyes, or were poisoned by radiation or black lung or brown lung or any number of ills. So someone said "this isn't right, there ought to be a law", and now we have OSHA.

There are other ways of handling this, ofc. I'd be willing to consider 'cutting the red tape' and simplifying things... but my way would prob be even more harsh.

Basically, I'd say there's just one law. One regulation.

"Provide a safe and secure working environment for your people."

And there would be a website with guidelines on what is considered the industry standard. It could even be run by the private sector, or a non-profit... if they showed they actually cared about employee safety.

But here's the thing... if anyone, any single employee, is hurt or injured on the job because the company didn't create a safe working environment, I would want Every. Single. Person. in that chain of command fired, and the company slapped with a fine so big that it actually hurt. None of this 'slap on the wrist' stuff that they can make up in a few hours of sales. Because here's the thing - if you care that little about your people, you shouldn't be in business.

And if the managers know so little about working conditions that they're unaware of those conditions?

They shouldn't be managers, either.

So no OSHA inspections. No miles and miles of safety regulations to skim through. But if you get it wrong, if you don't bother to look up proper safety guidelines and don't implement them?

You're out of a job, and your company might be out of business, too.

So whatever. Private sector, public sector, non-profit, I don't care. If you're not making sure your company is providing a safe working environment - Fix it.

That's the overarching thing to keep in mind for all my future posts.

A Start

I don't know that there truly is an 'ideal system'. There are systems that prioritize certain things over others, and they'll be better suited to some things and less suited to others.

There are definitely certain touchstones to American life - the American Dream, the Protestant work ethic - but there's also a strong support for local community. For helping those small mom and pop stores, for taking care of our own. (And there's a sense of sadness for how big box stores have pushed out those locally owned businesses, even as everyone still goes to shop there.)

There are people who point out the problems with these, ofc, but I wanted to focus on something else.

Namely - that we've grown so large and populous that it's hard to feel like our federal (and even state) government is truly ours any more. At the local level, sure... it's still "government of the people, by the people, and for the people"... but most of our national figures are too distant for us to truly know, evaluating their performance is time-consuming and difficult, and it's hard to feel like they really represent us.

Which is a problem, because that's part of how government stops being 'what we've decided we want to have happen' and starts becoming 'what that group over there is imposing on us'.

Some of the support for 'small government' is, I think, a reaction to that.

But we do still need government, on some level. Or rather, we could get rid of government... and then decide that we really do need great roads, and interested parties might get together to build a road... and decide on some sort of structure for making decisions on where to build the roads, and how to fund them. And maybe insist on a membership fee, or have some sort of administration to decide on tolls and hire some people to enforce those tolls...

And you've pretty much just reinvented government. You've given it a different name and, perhaps more importantly, you've done it in a way that makes you feel like you have control. Since you voluntarily joined your 'Organization for Highways and Byways', and voluntarily pay the membership fee. Maybe you grouch about some idiot that you think shouldn't be in charge of the organization, or dislike the decision to build a highway in a specific place, but it was still something you've voluntarily agreed to participate in, and you willingly pay your membership dues.

This is, I think, the first and most important point. Government is meant to serve us, and it should help us do what we want it to do. We, as a society, have to decide on what that is. What laws we want it to enforce, what benefits we want it to provide (or not), what budget we want it to have.

It's not the only way of making things happen, of course. Some things can be handled quite well by the private sector, and non-profits can take care of people without any sort of rule or legislation.

We've got a lot of tools in our kit bag here, so I kind of want to discuss the pros and cons of them.

For example:

Non-profits can do great work, however... their aid can be inconsistent (one organization refuses to help homosexuals, for example. Another only serves another segment of society), and people can and do fall through the cracks.

Many of them are also wasteful, spending other people's money on things that don't actually support their stated mission, which means they can donating to them can be more of a vanity act that actually funds con-artists and grifters.

Plus, some of them aren't really effective at what they're trying to do. There's an entire book talking about how aid to Africa often made things worse.

But perhaps the most important issue is that non-profits rarely have the level of resources they need. If we, as a society, want to have non-profits handle all the things we don't want government to do... if we want them to help people get the training they need to find a good job, or help them out during a period of unemployment, or fund the arts, or whatever... then people need to fund them in large enough levels to make a difference. If you don't want your tax dollars going to a government food stamp program, then you either are okay with people starving or you'd better step up to the plate.

Apparently that's part of why many religious organizations wanted the government to help during the Great Depression. The need was so great that they had no chance of keeping up with it.

That doesn't mean that government is always the right answer, btw. When you have the power to give, you also have the power to take away, and you have to think carefully about how that could be abused. Consider, if you will, the complaints that the federal government is playing games with the ventilators and PPE everyone needs during this pandemic. That governors who flatter the President enough (and are generally of the same party) tend to get more of their requests filled, and the ones who don't are left short-handed.

Do you really want the government to be able to deny you ventilators, or PPE, or food stamps, or whatever... because someone in charge has decided that certain people don't deserve it? Maybe they think homosexuals don't, or Christians don't. Or people who use drugs. Or people who speak out against the Republican party. Or people who don't kowtow enough...

In some ways, having the government provide grants and aid to non-profits is a fairly clever way of diffusing that power. It helps given non-profits the resources they were lacking, while preventing the government from having as much direct control over who gets the aid and who doesn't. Of course, there's still problems with coordination, keeping people from slipping through the cracks, and it still gives some of the non-profits the exact same potential for abuse that the government had. It's just that if there are multiple non-profits serving a community, the chances are better that someone denied aid at one can find help at another.

You can do the same sort of analysis for the private sector. Corporate philanthropy is great and all, and I do wish they weren't so short-sightedly focused on stock prices and other things, but when companies start getting into housing, or transportation, there's great potential for abuse. Like the company towns of old - do you really want to give businesses that level of power over you?

Most of this post may sound rather pessimistic, at first. I'm not trying to say that they're all bad options, so much as pointing out things to consider when proposing alternatives.

I think there are alternatives, plenty of them. We just have to be aware of some of the complexities involved, and things to look out for when designing them.

Update, and More on Decision Making

News has been - mixed.

Still an awful lot of illness and death, though it does appear that enough of us have been staying home to help flatten the curve. I really like the graphics on this site, as I can play around with linear vs. logarithmic, as well as looking at the nation as a whole, specific states, and rates as adjusted to the population. (Speaking of, New York sucks up most of the attention - for good reason - and a bit on Louisiana, New Jersey, and follow up to Washington and California, but I don't seem to hear much about states like Connecticut or Massachusetts? Which seems to be getting hit rather hard for the size of their population?)

Anyways, yes... the logarithmic graphs do show that the rate of growth in the US is slowing. So of course we already have people who want to say it's all over, and asking when we can open back up.

Going back to the 'learning from other people's experience' bit I'd mentioned in a previous post, it looks like every state that starts relaxing their countermeasures has immediately had to tighten them back up. That is, if it's not accompanied by mass testing in order to know which areas are safe to ease restrictions on.

Basically, I won't believe it's time to open back up  until a) we have a vaccine or effective medical treatment b) enough people have recovered from the virus to give us herd immunity or c) we have widespread and easily accessible testing to catch any outbreaks and isolate them before they spread any further.

None of which seems to be happening yet, so whatever.

I do find it amusing, though, how state governors are stepping up to the plate and making it crystal clear that the presidency isn't actually as powerful as we make it out to be. I mean, Trump talks about ordering the country to open back up... but he only really ordered it to (partially) shut down after most of the governors had already done so. I guess he's doing a great job of shrinking the federal government and turning the clamor for states' rights into a real possibility. I just never expected that from an administration that has shown such authoritarian tendencies. I feel like there's a lesson there, somewhere? Something about incompetence empowering anyone willing to step up to the plate?

I don't know, we'll probably be years sorting out all the consequences of these last few months... and the next few, as well.

Anyways, I did want to add a little bit more to my analogy yesterday... on stakeholders, and pizza choices, and decision making.

I deliberately used the term 'stakeholders'. It came from a book on managing healthcare organizations that we used in school a decade ago, and I thought the material was applicable to all sorts of organizations. (That's the same one that talked about the problems with creating a blame-based culture, and how removing blame made it easier to fix problems. Like changing the coloring and/or size of pills so that it's harder to mix them up and give the wrong dose.) The book discussed how a good quality organization would take into account the needs of all the stakeholders - doctors, nurses, administrators, insurance companies, and of course patients and the medical needs of the community at large.

This stakeholder concept is important, I think. To bring it back to my pizza ordering analogy - every member of the group has a stake in the decision, and should be treated accordingly.

I consider certain strategies threatening to the whole, because they undermine that decision making process.

To continue with my pizza analogy, it's like if the majority of the group decided to 'screw the vegetarian, they can either eat what we like or starve' and insist on getting the meat lovers and supreme pizzas.

Or if one person said "Pepperoni is by far the superior pizza, you all are wrong. I'm going to make sure the order is pepperoni, because I know what's best."

It's not so much the policies or desires themselves, you see. It's the lack of empathy, the willingness to accept that anyone else's wishes matter. And it's the arrogance.

There are numerous examples, from both parties, but the most recent ones that spring to mind were the Republican attempt to create a coronavirus relief bill that did nothing to people who didn't pay any taxes. That is, people living off Social Security, disability, or just plain didn't earn enough to pay taxes that year - like college students - would get nothing.

I have heard people claim over the years that Republicans think the poor are lazy, and other such things, and I had sort of dismissed it as hyperpartisan hate. Or rather, I'm sure there are some isolated rich people who live in so much of a bubble that they honestly believe that, but I had thought it was just a small and isolated fraction and that the people forming policy would know better.

If there is nothing else the last few years have proven to me, it's that our system is far more fragile (and there is far greater rot) than I ever had believed.

It's not just about the bill itself, you see. It's that in the midst of the global pandemic they were seriously trying to save comparative pennies (when you consider how much they were willing to give to corporations and big business) by stiffing the least among us. Like they don't have any empathy at all, don't even see these people as human.

"Whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me".

I guess the Republicans would stiff Jesus, too.

The second one? The second one was when the North Carolina Republicans seriously tried passing legislation on 9/11 while the Democrats were out. I mean, it's not just the short-sightedness of the strategy...

It's that when you get so focused on defeating the 'other', when you start demonizing Democrats or Republicans and acting as though they are somehow unAmerican, you are forgetting that at least a third of your fellow citizens agree with and chose to elect these guys.

Like, there are clearly politicians and policies I don't agree with, and I definitely think some of them are BS-ing and conning their constituents, but I acknowledge that there are many Americans who see something worth voting for... and that we have to take their concerns seriously, and address them.

Their concerns may not be what the politicians claim they are, of course. I don't think Trump, for instance, would have gotten the support he had if the Democrats and Republicans hadn't shown they were in the pockets of our growing oligarchy, but that's a whole different story. The point is that catering to one third of the American population, and acting like another third is somehow the devil... is NOT a good thing for the free marketplace of ideas, or negotiating amongst stakeholders, or much of anything beyond the short term satisfaction of riling up your base and scoring a few cheap victories.

Maybe you get the sausage pizza of your dreams, but the cost and long term consequences are too high.

Some Thoughts of a Socio-Economic Nature

The news is, yet again, pretty darn awful. Nothing dramatic enough, I suppose, but it also means the same old tired squabbling on social media. (Wasn't there some sort of quote, talking about how some people are able to learn from other people's experience, and others just have to experience it for themselves? I'm not sure how much of it is that, and how much of it is good old fashioned denial, but there are a lot of people that still, still, seem to think we're all overreacting.)

Anyways, I figured I'd write a bit more about my earlier topic, and I figured I'd start with something to show just how complicated all of this.

Someone once discussed how (lack of) access to credit and loans and things can have a negative impact on people trying to get out of poverty. Just think of how bad black communities were hurt when banks flat out refused to provide any mortgages to their communities, and how hard it made it to buy or maintain a home.

So lending can be important, and people don't want to lend you their money if they're not going to make a profit on it... so we have calculations of 'risk', and it effects the interest rate that you get. High risk people get higher interest rates, so that the people willing to lend them money actually get some sort of benefit out of doing so.

That's all pretty standard economics/finance, whatever. And since access to credit is so important, for a variety of reasons, this can be a good thing.

But there's a flip side to this. Consequences that ultimately make this a less palatable solution. Because the result of that policy is that someone living in poverty, with low credit, will often have far higher bills than someone who can easily afford it.

For example, I know someone who bought a used car. One worth far less than my brand new (at the time) Ford Escape... but because of her credit history, the interest rate was enough to make her car payment almost the same as mine. And she was working two or three jobs just to make ends meet, and struggling to get by.

Oh, and since her car was used, it was less reliable. Which meant she also had to worry about whether an issue was covered by warranty, and getting it to the shop, and possibly not being able to make it in to work and keep those two or three jobs. All while paying almost as much as I was.

There's a wide swath of research that talks about similar problems. How someone who is homeless, for example, might wind up staying at a hotel for a week or so... which ends up costing them even more than rent or a mortgage.

If we think about it from a capitalist point of view - well, they generally don't talk about in terms of human cost, do they? Still, it doesn't change the major point, which is that if you try forcing people to limit the interest rate to something 'reasonable' one side effect will be that credit will dry up entirely for those who are considered the most risky.

I'm not throwing all this out there to provide an answer, yet. I wanted to show how complicated each and every issue can be, and that there are valid points to be made for various different perspectives.

Oh, and btw, I find it interesting that usury was a big thing in the Bible, one that most Christians really ought to care about, and yet nobody ever really talks about it anymore. Just further proof of how far the most politically active have fallen from the core of the New Testament (i.e. social justice, helping the poor and needy, etc).

This is not me advocating to reinstate laws against usury - multiple religions have banned it, and yet it somehow keeps happening in some form or fashion. Probably for the economic reasons I layed out earlier.

I lay the problem out there like that, because this is pretty typical of any challenging issue. There are multiple perspectives, multiple stakeholders... And also multiple potential answers. Each with varying strengths and weaknesses.

It's part of why I focus so much on decision making, and the processes we use in order to resolve issues.

It's a bit like, well... ordering a pizza for a group of friends. One person is vegetarian, one prefers meat lovers, another likes Hawaiian pizza, and a fourth prefers a supreme. Or sausage and mushrooms. Whatever.

Each group will negotiate their pizza order differently, and come up with different solutions. Maybe they order two or three smaller pizzas, maybe the person who prefers a supreme isn't that attached to their choice, and is okay with the meat lover pizza. Maybe they get one large pizza, and make half of it cheese and half meat lover.

What's decided on tends to depend on a variety of factors - how much money people are willing to spend, how attached they are to their preferences, and so on and so forth.

I mostly went with the 'nice' options, where this group of friends is trying to find a solution everyone can accept. Which means the negotiating process can take a ridiculously long time, and people may not get things exactly the way they want, but in general everyone's preferences are taken into account. 

You could also have someone say "I'm paying for it, so we're getting what I want. You can take it or leave it."  You can also have one (or two or three people) dominate the decision and refuse to accommodate the others. Maybe they decide to get half Hawaiian and half meat lover's, and screw the vegetarian.

To bring this back to loans, interest rates and usury... you can have people say "it's my money, I'll loan it to who I want, and if you put a cap on the interest rate I just find another way to make a profit off my capital." or you can have others say "making people who are already struggling pay ridiculously large interest rates is wrong, we don't care about your side of things. We're making it illegal to charge more than 10% interest."

Either way, it doesn't really fix the problem. Just means one side or the other is able to dominate the debate, and push the option of their choice.

I suppose this is where I should throw out some brilliant answer that gives the best of both worlds, but again... I'm writing more about the process. The answer can be different for different places, it's the process that really matters.

I'd rather see about facilitating discussions between those stakeholders, and various levels of community, so they can find their own answer. Maybe the residents of one city refuse to cap the interest rates, but decide to come up with their own non-profit program to help those with poor credit. Or maybe they do cap the interest rate, but offer some sort of incentive to lenders in their community to make up for it.

Empower the lowest level possible to come up with their solution.

These solutions, and discussions, can honestly be any mix of public, business, and charity... the point is that the community as a whole comes together to craft their own.

There's a lot more to it than that, but I've written enough for one night. Stay safe, and stay home as much as possible!

Some Thoughts On, For Lack of a Better Term, Chibitinaism.

I posted a while back that I thought there were more option than just capitalism or communism. I don't like people narrowing our options down to two like that, but at the time I didn't really explore the idea any further.

I recently thought about it again, oddly enough because of some Twitter discussions that were inspired by the recent request for COBOL programmers in New Jersey.

For those who choose not to click on the link - COBOL is a 60 year old programming language that almost nobody programs in any more. The ones who did have long since retired, and we're all using newer languages. But (for those unaware of how tech operates), there is a lot of legacy code that was written in COBOL, and never changed. Mostly because the bugs have been worked out, it's reliable, and it's pretty expensive to rewrite working programs in another language.

There are more problems than that, ofc, but this popped up in the news because of the pandemic. Or rather, because the record demands being placed on New Jersey services are stretching the capabilities of their old systems to the limit, and they need people who can help modify those systems.

In COBOL.

This twitter thread has some excellent discussion on the pros and cons of modifying vs. rewriting such legacy systems, and I thought many of the same factors apply to changing our socioeconomic systems.

That is, a book I read some time ago talked about the attempt to design a great new city - Brasilia - and the challenges that came with it, and I think some of the same issues apply. You could possibly make a similar argument for China's Cultural Revolution, or Russia's attempts to change the peasant system.

I'd recommend reading the twitter thread yourself, but I'll give the gist of it here - old systems may look confusing and outdated, but that's in part because of the way they grew and adapted to fix problems you probably never even heard of. Remaking it from scratch takes significant time and effort, and (perhaps more importantly) you often see the same bugs that were fixed in the old and messy code reappear. In other words, your new, cleaner, more modern code tends to be more buggy and less reliable.

I linked the discussion because this is not all in black and white. There are times where it might be better to throw out the old and start all over, especially since there may be limitations built into the old code (due to the constraints on technology at the time) that might be taken care of in the rewrite. Plus, well... as New Jersey's request for COBOL programmers shows, there's a very real risk that you will lose everyone who understands the original code... and that can make it very hard to maintain or update the system.

Since I brought technology into this, I'll also mention some of our current trends. Namely, making things more modular. It makes it easier to fix things behind the scenes without having to change your application in twenty different places. Or you can write your code in whatever language you want, and still have it communicate with parts of the application that were written in something entirely different. (It makes for a very confusing and complicated place, one I'm only just beginning to get a grasp of, but even though it's a real pain to deal with I get why we're going in that direction.)

So where am I going with all this?

As current events show, there are some serious issues with our current system. Or, to use a more vernacular phrase, "We got problems."

There are some people who want to just throw it all out and start over. There are others who hope to modify or tinker with the existing system (though many have very different ideas of what to modify, and where, and how.) We have some people arguing that the pandemic proves we need Medicare For All, and there are others who are taking the chance to cut payroll taxes (and maybe, depending on the details, in an underhanded way try to stop social security and medicare).

I lean towards the 'try to modify the existing legacy systems', which is part of why if the Republican party hadn't proven how much they've lost all their moral bearings in the past couple of years I might lean more towards being a conservative, but I also see the burden of trying to work within existing structures.

They do rather limit what you can do, after all, and make it harder to get creative.

So I figure I'll post some things, maybe start off a series, discussing my thoughts on the topic. And although I am most definitely NOT saying we should throw it all out and start over, I think it's useful to try and envision what we'd create if we could do that.

It gives me something to work towards, some idea of what changes would need to happen in order to get from here to there.