Feels Fake

I feel like I should say something about Charlie Kirk's assassination, but tbh I never paid attention to the guy. 

What I do find interesting is that the right is really getting spun up about it. I say 'interesting' because we already had legislators shot in Minnesota, and yesterday also marked yet another school shooting. 

Why is this any different? 

No, seriously. If you're actually upset about Charlie Kirk's assassination, were you also upset about those other shootings?

The responses just feel kind of performative and fake to me. I mean, if they were genuine than they'd also want to deescalate the violence. 

After all, deaths of people you care about is a natural progression of escalation and only a fool would think they wouldn't be affected too.

Rules of Thumb

 I figured I'd write some rules of thumb... guidelines for what to prioritize when deciding how to get from where we are to where we want to be.

These aren't in any particular order, but I'll start with the one I talked about earlier:

• Make decisions at the lowest level possible
• Lower levels should have the freedom to add on to, but not take away from policies and decisions made at higher levels

In addition, I'll add the following:

• Any policy that you don't want applying to yourselves is a bad idea (or needs refinement)
• Think of this as a specific version of the Golden Rule. If you think that more people should give up on higher education and focus on trade schools, consider whether you are truly okay with letting your children - or yourself- do so. If you want other people to go to a trade school, but you would be upset if your child gave up on a college degree in order to become a plumber, then maybe that says something. Maybe you're really just trying to stop other people from competing, or you want other people to do the jobs you think are beneath you. 
• It could just need refining, in that if you aren't willing to see you or your loved ones doing whatever... that means you're missing something critical about what you're proposing
• Seriously - if you wouldn't want to live under that policy, then you shouldn't try making others do so
• This applies doubly so for the fools who seem to think a great die off is a good idea. Like Prince Philip here. Fools like this always seem happy to hear about other people dying, but we all know that they don't want their own loved ones to die of disease. Or if they're truly okay with it, then you have to wonder about whether they truly loved anyone in the first place. Enough with these fantasies of making something good out of mass suffering, it's sickening.
• Empower people wherever you can
• A good parent helps their child grow into adults capable of making their own decisions. Your focus should be on helping people make their own choices, hopefully wise choices, rather than trying to impose yours on them
• Yes, sometimes that means they will make choices you disagree with. Either work on persuading people, or look at the incentives and motivations that prevent people from making better decisions. If that doesn't work, consider whether you're wrong. Or are missing something critical. Quit worrying about control, and focus more on leading and building
• A thriving middle class creates stability and prosperity
• This seems pretty self-evident, considering that's one of the things we consider when we assess a nation. Two much wealth disparity tends to mean a country isn't very stable, plus there aren't as many people with the money to buy things... so less prosperous. I'm making a point of it because we've had numerous reports on the hollowing out of the middle class, the growth of wealth inequality, etc... and yet the powers-that-be don't seem to take that seriously. They even support policies that make it worse.
• Nobody wants to die because they bought poisoned food
• This is a dramatic statement to describe a whole category of things. Basically the idea that people unknowingly suffer because unscrupulous businesses sell things that hurt them. If you don't want people solving that with federal regulation, make sure you have an alternative that addresses the root cause. 
• No, expecting unscrupulous businesses to go out of business as the public catches on is not a reasonable alternative. You can consider non-profit rating schemes or other alternatives, but then they will need funding and some method of accurately rating things. Basically it doesn't have to be the government, but whatever your alternative is will probably do similar things, so why duplicate the effort? If your 'de-regulation' leads to more people dying then the root causes for that regulation are just going to keep coming back. Don't expect people to just accept suffering when it's something we can prevent.
• You can't make good policy if you can't accurately assess your environment
• If you've mistaken the root causes, your solutions won't fix anything.
• If you don't assess the results of your policies, you won't know when they need adjusting.
• Everything depends on getting accurate and reliable information. If that information is considered a threat for some reason, then take a long, hard look at yourself. Trying to prevent us from capturing statistics on gun deaths or getting accurate information on climate change doesn't change the underlying truth, it just makes sure all your policy proposals are going to be bad because they're based on faulty information.
• Honestly, quit it.
• Nobody knows everything. 
• Good decision-making involves seeking out different sources of information. If you rely on only one source, then you won't make good policy (see the previous bullet point). Just make sure to evaluate those sources for accuracy and reliability, too.
• People are not robots
• First, that means they react better to stories and anecdotes than 20 page reports full of facts and findings. Keep that in mind when trying to persuate people
• Second, people will not always do what you expect. Be prepared for that.
• Third, this is why counter-intuitive policies sometimes work. It's like how a computer programmer who stops to take a break can come back and suddenly see how to program somethign that was stumping them... productivity is not just a matter of work hours. In fact, trying to force people to grind through some boring and tedious task can make them less productive then letting them have breaks. Learn how to manage people, don't expect them to act like robots.

I'm sure there's plenty more, but that's enough for today.

Side Note

 Coincidentally, I was reading a book (Learning Systems Thinking) and this section right here was remarkably relevant to my recent post:

We expect the people who build software to behave in predictable, procedural, top-down controlled ways. Our preferred communication style reflects these expectations—straightforward, concrete, and concerned with control.

I had not thought there was anything IT specific that was affecting this push for centralization, but that is perhaps because so much of my more recent IT experience has dealt with micro-services and distributed systems.

If the author is true, and I think they understand the programming culture better than I do, then perhaps the tech-bro foolishness is even more related to their original career than I thought.

Centralized vs Decentralized (Prequel to Rules of Thumb)

 I was thinking of some general rules of thumb to use when deciding what paths to take towards our future America, but I think I would have to spend too much time explaining one of the bullet points. So I'm going to go into that explanation first.

There is something almost organic about how groups or organizations develop, and I think they are affected by two countervailing trends.

It works a bit like centripetal and centrifugal force. For those of you who need a physics refresher, centripetal force is the force that moves something towards it's center and centrifugal force pushes something away from its center.

In a similar fashion, as collections of individuals grow, there's pressure to centralize it and a countering pressure to decentralize it.

There is no 'good' or 'bad' here. It's more a matter of strength and weakness. For example, centralizing can lead to consistency and interchangeability. Standardization. Picture nuts and bolts that are all standardized so that you can easily go to a hardware store and pick the right size, as opposed to having to custom-make each nut and bolt for whatever you're trying to use.

On the flip side, centralizing means losing flexibility and customization. It tends to create one-size-fits-all solutions, which may loosely fit most situations but are imperfect and don't do so well for more extreme or rare situations.

There's more to it than that, too. Consider organizational structures...

While we now have the technology that allows one person (like a CEO) to communicate with hundreds, thousands, and even millions of people at once... human limits prevent the reverse from being true.

By which I mean, that CEO can not easily read through and respond to everyone if they replied to his or her e-mail.

The reason I bring that up? 

It's because organizations generally require some sort of hierarchy. Not in the sense of 'better' or 'worse', but in the sense that one person can not directly manage everyone. There's a limit to how much we can manage at once, and part of the reason the military has the structure it has is that we know (through experience) that that limit is somewhere around 7 objects. A platoon leader may have three or four squads, a company commander may have three or four platoons, a battalion commander may have three or four companies, and so on and so forth.

When you add in additional units (such as a headquarters staff or attached special support units) each command will roughly be managing at that limit.

So... we need hierarchies and layers in order to properly manage large organizations, but doing so has it's challenges.

Each additional layer is another potential block in getting a task done. It's another place where someone might be away on vacation and a petition is sitting on their desk. Or maybe they deliberately block something they don't like. Basically, it can slow down the speed at which an organization can respond.

There's also an element of 'telephone' in play, and communication can get garbled as it moves through those layers.

So centralization tends to make an organization slow, inconsistent, and if too much is pushed towards the center than the center can get overwhelmed and start dropping things.

On the flip side, decentralization comes with it's own problems. Like lack of coordination. Situations where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and two groups might be duplicating the same work or working at cross-purposes.

The general solution, though this has it's own difficulties and is more suited to some situations than others, is to blend the different styles together.

That is - keep some form of coordination and centralization, but try to delegate and push decisions down to the lowest level possible. That also keeps some level of customization, improves response times, etc.

I think that's pretty much exactly what the American government is supposed to do, in an ideal environment.

Let decisions be made at the lowest level possible. Cities can do whatever the citizens of that city want, and if it's something that requires state-wide decision making it should be done at the state level, and if it requires nation-wide coordination it needs to be at the federal level.

That does cause problems sometimes. That's part of why you might have to brush up on state-specific laws when you move to a new state. But it also allows us to customize our lived experiences. Like how Illinois has legalized marijuana and Indiana has not.

The Constitution lays out what our Founding Fathers thought should be handled at the federal level, and they pretty much left anything else up to the states. 

That's part of why states run their own elections. And states decide the speed limit of their highways. 

But, as I think many of you may have noticed by now, there is pressure to centralize everything, and it's not just because it's inconvenient to have fifty different sets of rules.

It almost seems psychological. People want some decision made, and they almost naturally seem to want it made at the highest level possible. Or rather, they want some big and powerful person with authority to make the decisions and enforce it on everyone else. Which is great when they're making decisions you agree with, and terrible when they make decisions you don't... but the real problem is that you're putting all the decision-making on that one, single person.

And so people clamor for the federal government to dictate the minimum wage, or healthcare, or the legality of certain drugs, or speed limits, or educational standards. And they fight over who controls the power to dictate those things... rather than trying to empower lower levels to make their own decisions on such matters.

The funny thing is, this is what the conservatives I grew up with always seemed to complain about. That the federal government was doing all these things that weren't actually supposed to be handled at that level, and that these decisions should be left up to the states. (States rights... has it's own long and sordid history, and yet again we're touching on racism... but I'm leaving that for later).

What Trump and his allies are showing us now, however, is that they don't actually care about that. By which I mean - they are trying to use federal power to dictate what states should and shouldn't do. 

Big government at its worst.

They've shown this in other ways too. Like Florida trying to use state power to override city-level decisions.

There's more to this topic that I can't really remember right now, but it all feeds into one of the rules of thumb I wanted to mention - 

Let decisions be made at the lowest level possible. 

And a bit of a corollary -

You can add to, but can't take away.

For those who have never heard that before, that's another thing I heard in the military, and the gist of it is this.

A higher command may set a certain policy... like the policy on blogging back in Iraq. A subordinate commander can't remove any of the parts of that policy. They can't overrule their higher command and decide that their soldiers can disregard that part...

But they can add on to it.

The way I picture that is this:

We believe our citizens have certain inalienable rights, and that's at the national level. It applies to every US citizen, and no lower level of government can take away those rights. A city or state can't decide that they can restrict speech in a way that the federal government can not.

On the other hand, a city or state may decide for themselves that they want to fund public healthcare even if the federal government does not. We've already seen that with certain states from before the ACA.

States can add laws restricting the sales of alcohol on Sunday, even though the federal government does not.

This allows us to customize our rules and laws at a lower level, allows people to have their cities or states make decisions that differ from others... while also ensuring that national level decisions are enacted across the nation.

A few weeks back someone asked me why their city couldn't set up some funds to create an emergency stock of food and my answer was that there is absolutely no reason why they couldn't.

It's just that we have generally done such stockpiling at the federal level. I suspect that it's cheaper and easier to do so, since one large stockpile is probably easier to manage than thousands of them (as well as the inconsistency I mentioned above with decentralization - i.e. if you left it to each individual city than there's going to be duplication of effort, as well as some cities that never develop a stockpile in the first place).

Anyways, I wish people focused on this more... because there's quite a few policies we debate as a nation that I think we should really be asking - at which level of government should this decision be made?

And with slightly different nuance 'if we really want X, can we make it happen in our city or town?'

Purpose and Direction - More Musings

There's two ways of considering the path from where we are to where we want to be -

I can focus on the start (i.e. where we are), or I can focus on the destination and try to work backwards.

Focusing on the start is complicated - because that means having a clear-eyed view of where we currently stand. 

And there's not actually a lot of agreement on that, other than that - for whatever reason - we are dissatisfied.

Nobody is happy with the status quo. I don't think someone like Trump could get elected if people were happy with the current situation.

The problem is that everyone has their own ideas as to what's wrong and how to fix it.

I think that's part of why key moments in time are so chaotic, actually. The status quo has some inertia, it just kind of keeps going and going, even as problems continue growing without being addressed.

But once something finally breeches that wall? Puts a crack in the dam holding things back?

Chaos ensues. Only the truly arrogant believe they can control that chaos... over and over and over again we see unpredicted results once that status quo is disrupted.

Consider Iraq. Saddam was a horrible ruler, and his sons were even worse. But there was predictability and stability - of a sort. And our invasion disrupted that.

And we were not prepared for the chaos we unleashed.

Major disruptions to the status quo tend to come with a period of uncertainty, where multiple different forces and factions compete to influence and shape what comes.

It tends to be a messy and complicated process, sort of like how the French Revolution had the Reign of Terror and Robespierre, before Napoleon and many more years of turmoil.

The Russian Revolution also had quite a bit of unrest and violence after the death of their royal family, the Bolsheviks were just one faction in it.

Part of the reason I have so much contempt for the Boogaloo movement is that they don't seem to have any understanding or respect for the violence they're trying to incite.

They probably think that if the upset the status quo, they'll get to control what happens next. They don't seem to believe or care that they and their loved ones will suffer too.

I can and probably will dig a bit deeper into the 'here is where we are the start', but I wanted to explore things from the other end before getting bogged down in that.

Because if we look at our goal, we also get a better sense of what direction we should build in.

Our destination, to draw on all the sources I mentioned in a previous post and consolidate it a bit, is this:

• A nation where people have control over their own government. 
• That control can mean different things at local, state, and federal levels. I've got some rules of thumb I was thinking of that will touch on this in more detail, but let's just say that if people get together and decide that they really want a law, they should be able to make it happen. But that law might be more appropriate as a city law vs state or federal law. We benefit sometimes from having a national standard, but we also benefit by letting each city and state do things their own way.
• Where people can succeed through their own efforts. That success requires:
• Access to education and training
• Sufficient pay so that if you are willing to work hard you can pay your bills and save up enough for that education and training, or even just a nice vacation from time to time
• A meritocracy, where you can get promoted or get the training and education you need based off your own talents. (I can talk a lot more about that, too. But later.)
• Freedom 
• To state our opinions without worry that the president - or some other big and powerful individual - will punish us if they disagree
• To practice our faith as we wish - though with restrictions if that faith infringes on other people's rights (i.e. you don't get to use your religion to justify making other people do things they don't want to do.)

Working our way backwards from this, we can already see some of the challenges we'll have to face. We already know that our government is not truly representative. Since this is a quick overview I'm going to go into depth on that some other time, but there's been plenty of discussion about it already.

We also know that it's getting more and more challenging for people to succeed through their own efforts. Education is more and more expensive, housing prices keep rising, it's harder and harder for people to save up money... oh, and a meritocracy? lol.... yeah, sure. Funny how people like pretending that they succeeded by merit even as they keep supporting policies that block any real competition. Methinks they might not actually believe they're the best of the best.

And as for freedom - well, Trump really has had a chilling effect on that, hasn't he? 

I'm sure there's more I could add to this, it feels like I have to be skipping some key points somewhere. But you get the gist.

Purpose and Direction

The challenges I'm running into in writing this come from a variety of things.

First, for 'purpose and direction', I think we already have some fine goals laid out throughout the course of American history. 

- We are all created equal

- We all have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

- Slavery is flat-out evil. Anyone trying to minimize that or claim it isn't that bad is frankly lying to you, or doesn't know their history well, or doesn't consider the people who were enslaved to be real people. Like, seriously... historians risk serious mental trauma when they study it! 

- Martin Luther King, JR's 'I have a dream' speech is inspiring, and a worthy goal too

Let's also add in the American Dream, the belief that every American should be able to reach their full potential if they're willing to put in the effort.

Honestly, we've got a plethora of worthy goals to work towards... and it's very frustrating, to me at least, that so many people today are actively working against these. Can you truly call yourself an American, even?

But even though I know there are people questioning what used to be the American consensus here, I think there are still more Americans who agree with it than don't, and so writing out the reasoning doesn't seem like the best use of time. For now. 

What's more challenging, I think, is 'how do we get from here to there?'

That question brings up a whole slew of issues, too. For example - in pursuing our goals, should we work at the state level? National level? Local level?

Private sector or public sector? 

I can quite easily agree with the goal of creating an America where everyone can succeed by their own effort, but putting it into practice means figuring out how you're going to make it happen, and deciding if you're going to push for federal legislation or try some sort of grass roots campaign at the local level, or perhaps create a non-profit and try to get funding from other members of society.

It's complicated. At least, it is if you want to take advantage of our republican structure and let the lowest level deal with the issues they can. (I can give a whole long speech about Hobbes' Leviathan and the challenges and failures involved with that, but I've written about it before. I might revisit it when I finish mulling over this current question. Oh, and those challenges are exactly why this Dark Enlightenment push for a more centralized and authoritarian system is so stupid.)

And of course any good plan needs to take into account the current political situation and navigate a path forwards. Which means you have to figure out how to deal with the people who benefit from the current system...

As much as I like the idea of ranked choice voting, for example, and believe it's a more systemic fix for the terrible incentives of our current political system, I know that it'll be difficult to convince the people who benefit from the current situation to support any changes.

So any good plan needs to a) accurately assess where we are now, b) figure out how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, and c) do a good job of executing that plan. Build support, maneuver around obstacles, do all the hard work of monitoring and adjusting as needed to make sure we get from our current situation to our desired situation.

And it has to be clear and concise enough to be actionable, but not so detailed that it's inflexible and unable to adapt to circumstances.

Yeah... I'm going to need to think on this one.

Leadership Sleight of Hand

 I was thinking of yesterday's post, where I mentioned that leadership "provides purpose and direction", and have been mulling over the purpose and direction I want to see.

That, however, is a very large topic I'm not sure I'm ready to start. Or, well, I wanted to focus on something else first.

There are all sorts of anecdotes and pithy phrases on leadership, ones you may have heard before.

"Lead by example"

"Don't order anyone to do something you're not willing to do yourself"

"Mission first, people always"

But there's something a bit more foundational that I wanted to discuss. A bit of sleight of hand, you might say.

See - people will live up to your expections. (And down to them, too). This isn't just wishful thinking, either. If you weren't already aware, Harvard did a study where they told teachers they had identified students who were destined to succeed. And lo and behold! Those students did succeed. 

But there was no actual test, no real way of identifying who would succeed or not. The kids succeeded because the teachers thought they would, and so they supported the students more and it turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This applies to more than just school children, and I will also state that subordinates are pretty good at picking up on their leader's thoughts and feelings.

So if you think all your people are incompetent and lazy idiots, chances are you are always complaining about how you're surrounded by incompetent and lazy idiots.

But if you think your people are all talented and brimming with potential? You may just find that they are, in fact, quite talented and brimming with potential.

It's not just wishful thinking, or manifesting reality with your thoughts. It's because when you create an environment meant to help people succeed, most of the time people will succeed. 

Think of every single one of your people as someone full of potential. If, for some reason, they don't meet your expectations, then ask yourself -

• Did I clearly communicate what's expected of them?
• Did I give them the resources they need to succeed? The training, the tools, the funding, the time?
• Did I check in with them, find out if there were any blockers I wasn't aware of? Did I then work to remove the blockers I can?

I would say that for the vast majority of people, just providing those three things will lead to success. And as for the rest?

Well, now you know that they are a bad fit for the role. NOT 'incompetent', or 'lazy'. NOT incapable. Just that the role you hired for them isn't a good fit for their talents and capabilities.

And, if you've done it right, it shouldn't be too hard to document it for HR. What is a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) if not a way of documenting that you've clearly explained your expectations? Documented that you've given them the training and resources needed to succeed? Documented that you've met with them periodically and given them a chance to tell you what's going on with their life?

It's all a painful bureaucratic process that helps document what you should already be doing.

I also wanted to talk a little more about that third point, about blockers. This is probably where leaders have the most room for their own judgment, because blockers are not just things like 'the task relies on someone or something else'. It's not just trouble coordinating with an outside agency, or an inability to test some process because you're still waiting for approval to open the firewall, or some other obstacle within the company.

Blockers can also include "my employee is going through a divorce and unable to focus on work."

We all know that businesses expect employees to do their job regardless of whatever personal crap is going on, but it's also true that people sometimes have temporary situations that affect them, and they can still be valuable and skilled employees.

I've seen this in more tragic and dramatic situations in the military, as well as civilian life, and I will say that people remember how they're treated at times like that. They also remember how their fellow employees are treated.

That soldier who horrifically received news that his son fell into a river and drowned while he was in Iraq? And his ex's boyfriend jumped into the river after him and drowned too?

You'd better believe that getting that soldier back home as soon as possible was more important than any sort of contribution he could make in a combat zone.

And in a later civilian role - that employee who had a heart attack on our warehouse floor? Letting his co-workers take paid time off to process it, and having a grief counselor meet with them later that week was more important than trying to force them to meet business needs in the short term.

Blockers can also be personal issues, though how you handle them can differ depending on the time, situation, and company policies.

What I will say is that you won't get much loyalty by just haranguing people for not doing what you want.