Moments of Truth

Back in December 2008, President Obama made nominated Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel prize winning physicist, to head up the Department of Energy. This is a clear example of the president's ability to raise the level of competence of our government by using his keen insight and intelligence to select talent for key spots. The problem is that Mr. Obama can't project his intelligence to his colleagues in government.

Today, Wired reported that the congress knocked out 245 million of the 280 million that Dr. Chu requested for new research hubs to tackle the deep problems of energy. In one part of the article, Mark Muro, a Brookings Institute Energy R&D specialist is quoted:

“It is unusual for a change oriented secretary to get his wings clipped to this degree,” Muro said. “Since when is Congress supposed to be deciding what the best technologies are?”

It is these "Moments of Truth" that will define how successful Mr. Obama will be in changing America's future -- as always, the most serious challenges will be from within our own borders. They are the challenges of political infighting, lack of vision, and shocking ignorance.

Consumer Spending?

Whether one looks at the mainstream press on consumer spending, or the long time warning signals in the alternative press on consumerism, the idea that a focus on consumption will save the day is weakening. Even if we leave aside the challenges of measuring societal utility we need reliable cost information in order to optimize resource allocations under any market based system.

Since we currently ignore negative externalities, both environmental and social we are in essence subsidizing consumption. With an increased focus on ideas from Full Cost Accounting and Green Economics we will see quite big shifts away from mass consumerism -- some countries are much closer to this but even in the US we may be seeing the early stages of our fellow citizens beginning to intuit the costs and reduce consumption across the board. Society will need to adapt to these shifts as unabashed and outlandish consumption become increasingly ridiculed.

Capitalism In Crisis

Capitalism is a remarkably simple and powerful mechanism for allocating resources in human society. It's best successes thus far have been when it is applied in a carefully controlled way by a strong government that adheres to "rule of law" standards for all citizens. Unfortunately, free market zealots have allied with powerful forces in western society towards a distinctly anti-regulatory, even anti-government, model for society that is literally destroying the fabric of modern life before our eyes.

Beginning with the Reagan Revolution (which to a large extent succeeded in overthrowing our government) our way of life with respect to controlled capitalism has been threatened. If Capitalism in the American form defined post-WW II is to survive, then it must create well being for most citizens and sustain a robust middle class. This is impossible when nominal Unemployment (U3) surpasses 7-8% with acceleration unseen in decades. As the fallout from George W. Bush's celebration of Reaganism continues to take it's awful toll the American people will be forced to devise a new understanding of Capitalism. They will push western leaders like Barack Obama to move to a hybrid approach blending in new elements from Democratic Socialism and broad progressive approaches.

What is ironic, is that people who would consider themselves our strongest adherents of pure Capitalism have done the most to provide the finishing touch to it's demise as a credible model for society.

Thanksgiving At Walmart

Black Friday is an older term more recently used to describe the first day when many retailers expect to begin running a profit for the year. This year a deadly incident at Walmart makes the title Bloody Friday perhaps more appropriate. While capitalism is clearly still a force for optimization in our society it's both tragic and scary if it's the sole basis for our economic hopes ...

The Peace Dividend

Retired generals and RAND agree that it's time for the US to lead the way to a nuclear weapon-less world. In general, the US must reduce its military expenditures and claim the elusive Peace Dividend that we've wanted since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The reality is that hundreds of billions of dollars can be cut from the budget if we end the expansion of our nuclear program. If we also end the war in Iraq there are hundreds of billions more to be used for building a new vision for our country.

Al Gore's Call To Action

Al Gore's recent op-ed piece in the NY Times is a resounding call to action. Of course, he has the credibility to make a call to action on climate change and a new direction for alternative energy research in this country. A recent TED video showcases Al Gore's work in this area very well. Now, all that's needed is an understanding that the fiscal stimulus that would result from this plan can help resolve America's economic woes.

The End of Work and Democratic Socialism

Automation is relentlessly tearing into the base of labor and will continue to do so as computing costs continue to plummet. At the same time, there is a growing understanding that machine learning effectively turns computing cycles into better, more efficient, decisions. These forces increase the optimal ratio of capital to labor so that companies can increase production by increasing their allocation to capital equipment. This is a gross oversimplification but the results are everywhere around us: increasing outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor markets or automation. Decreasing demand for labor will reduce incomes in the modern world -- few public policy analysts would dispute this basic fact.

Understanding of this fundamental change in the composition of modern economies is relatively widespread and popularized in works like Jeremy Rifkin's "End of Work". If anything, this is the most immediately pressing issue we face even considering energy and global warming. As I write this unemployment in the US has been measured at a 14 year high and that's just the beginning. An immediate retooling to an environmentally sustainable economy coupled with a move to a four day work week in many industries could buy us more time to reorient the economy to adjust to less work and more people. For most countries, the best answer will be some form of Democratic Socialism as so well articulated by American Senator Bernie Sanders who caucuses with US Democrats but is the first socialist elected to the Senate. And, it is also likely that some countries will turn to Fascism to protect small groups from the pain of groundshifts in the world economy.

U.S. National Debt: 53-Yr High

An update to a previous post and a new record for President Bush (finally something exceptional) that he can add to his legacy.

A Prediction About "Failin' Palin"

Pretty obvious from Sarah Palin's recent interview with Katie Couric that she's not a serious candidate for Vice President. But perhaps that was never the full intention. I predict that she will step down for "family reasons" and be replaced by a more serious candidate. Meanwhile, McCain gets credit from his base for nominating someone suitably or certifiably "evangelical christian right" while still leaving open the slot for a serious candidate. I predict they will move before the VP debate giving the Republicans maximum time to prepare for Biden while minimizing the Democrat's ability to prepare for their candidate.

The National Debt

Predictions do not include the current bail out plan which would add 5-7% to that red line on the far right of the graph.

Honoring Sacrifices By Grabbing Cash With Both Hands

Over the past five years the Iraq War has required supreme sacrifices from young men and women predominantly drawn from the lower middle class. It has seen the largest use of defense contractors in the history of any US War. Much of it without sufficient oversight or contract review. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has also overseen corruption and fraud in the financial and housing markets lead in part by his appointee, an incompetent former neighbor, that will likely cost nearly a trillion dollars to fix with a disastrous bail out proposal. The image of real estate brokers, speeding around in SUV's with yellow "Support The Troops" ribbons, selling homes to people who can't afford them, while hundreds of thousands of "Troops" languish in Iraq, is sickening.

Responsiblity, Criticism, and Feedback

Some people are not cut out to be husbands or managers -- both roles require you to take on commitment and responsibility in the face of frequent, and often irrational, personal criticism.

On the other hand, being a teacher or mentor also requires one to take on commitment and responsibility but is relatively free of personal criticism unless things go horribly wrong in which case the criticism is probably deserved (i.e. a rational response from others). Even in this case, for a committed teacher, setbacks to the student, when due to insufficient coaching or instruction, are often deeply felt personal failures and thus a natural source of feedback.

At the extreme range it could be said that scientists or mathematicians never need to be personally criticized -- they actively seek out negative feedback from the physical world or formal systematizations of it in order to make intellectual progress.

The Joy of Tar Pits

There are some imaginative ways to spam -- instead of filtering it or removing it just provide lots of email addresses for them to target. Even more ingeniously we can use honey pots and then tar pit the spammers when they try to send email to those addresses. For more information check:

All the email addresses of my club of folks who love to buy cheap stuff online!

Especially if you are a spam harvester :)

Religion Debunked

Big Brother Has A Name: Michael McConnell

The only safe way to guarantee privacy is simply not to collect it. Unfortunately, it's mostly too late for that approach. Increasingly, we see mentions of Google's technology cropping up in discussions around infringement on civil liberties.

Google maintains data on each individual user and his or her activity across the vast portions of the internet instrumented by Google. It's time for Google to invest in privacy preserving technology commensurate with the investment they have made in collecting the data.

Good articles on digital identity management can be found on the web. A key researcher in the field of security engineering is Ross Anderson. Folks who care about civil liberties should call for Google to make specific investments in privacy preserving technologies today.

Spin: Bring Democracy to America

Spin has been around since 1996 but is easily viewable on the google video (but strangely not on youtube as of this writing). The most debilitating aspect of Spin is how clearly candidates like Larry Agren can be systematically excluded by the popular media. Though to a slightly lesser degree this is happening again with Dennis Kucinich (except for the UFO comment).

During one recent Debate on CNN Kucinich there were many times that Kucinich received strong applause and audience support for excellent answers. However, no mention of that was shown on any major media outlets -- it was a striking oversight on the part of the media. It's also anti-democratic since it does not use audience reaction to help decide how much exposure a candidate should get for his or her views. In short, no matter how good a candidate does, mainstream media is free to ignore him or her unless other media outlets cover them. Since media is so concentrated a candidate can be effectively left out of the national debate.

The Global Warming Debate

Americalism: The Road To Hell

American capitalism (Americalism) as a model for the global economy is sharply flawed. Today's NY Times article on NYC manhole covers made in India provides a crisp example of American Capitalism meeting third world desperation. Desperate people will work (even proudly) in horrific conditions in order to survive; as a testament to the strength of the human spirit, it is profound. Equally profound, is the human greed and ignorance necessary for companies in the modern world to exploit the most basic human needs in order to get a bargain. A more reasonable model is partnership: companies should work with the third world providers to provide decent working conditions under independent oversight -- they'll only save 20-30% instead of 40-60% but will be a force for positive change instead of actively enslaving people in hellish working conditions.

Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and the American Presidency

Dennis Kucinich owns the progressive platform in mainstream American politics. As an example of what we could achieve and the kind of society we could have he is simply amazing. But, looking carefully at the media framed polling statistics and how little discussion of his overwhelming support in the last Democratic debate it's clear that he doesn't have the necessary support. This is no accident -- Mr. Kucinich is not representative of the American people -- he is a visionary and this is "no country for" people (let alone leaders) of that type.

Barack Obama is also not completely representative: he is keenly intelligent and discerning, brave, at times kind, aware and respectful of the global community, etc. But, as Andrew Sullivan points out in his recent Atlantic piece, he is perhaps the best possible candidate to repair a huge divide in our country that has critically impaired our ability to participate in the world community.

Another Great Krugman Column: Fearing Fear Itself

Once again Paul Krugman makes a devastating case against the republican party's attempt to make fear itself the campaign issue. One quote in particular ties in the argument and contrasts the situation with that of FDR during the run up to World War II:

And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, “I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism.” Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

Why are the republicans so willing to cast away the American tradition of self-reliance and collective courage under adversity that we demonstrated during World War II?

Progressive Society By A Thousand Steps

Building a progressive society is a process of a many small steps guided by a simple theme of making efficient and even elegant use of our resources. Building a progressive society means eschewing irrational greed and extravagance or conspicuous consumption. It means sharing the resources in a reasonable manner and taking joy in community solutions that work well for everyone.

Public Enemy Number One

According to a media matters almost 15 million Americans listen to Rush Limbaugh which defies the imagination. Corrupt and vile personalities like Rush exist in all modern democratic countries -- it's one of the hallmarks of a being a modern democracy that people, no matter how crazy they are, can speak their views in public. But, the sad fact is that in any other modern country Rush would have a tiny audience like all the other rabid right wing fringe movements -- here in America he can justifiably be called a popular celebrity.

Dangerous Visions of a Skeptical Environmentalist

Because the conservatives are hungry for ways to weaken the arguments for changing our destructive lifestyles people like Prof. Lomborg will always be in the news. Although his books Chill Out and The Skeptical Environmentalist has been convincingly defeated scientifically it is still popular and getting him speaking engagements on all the popular shows and forums. Based on his background he can make an argument for including him in the discussion but the quality of work merits very little else -- certainly not the vast public attention he has received. Politicization of such a critical issue is a frightening reality of the modern world.

The Daily Cost of our War in Iraq

The American Friends Service Committee is running a very nice campaign to try and communicate the costs of the Iraq War in terms of tradeoffs. Their analysis and accounting are both sound and simple enough that anyone can understand it. Essentially, we are spending an average of around $720 million dollars a day for this war -- can there be any more poignant statement that anyone can make about it? We don't have to agree on morality or values or ethics to be unified in our condemnation of the war -- we just have to understand what we are giving up to fight it.

No (Healthy) Child Left Behind

Bush's veto of a bipartisan bill to expand health insurance for children highlights his continuing and offensive disregard for the American public. But, it's a belief shared and strengthened by a small but powerful quasi-right wing movement in this country to avoid helping our citizens. For example, Fox News continues it's stream of attacks on some form of universal health coverage. Meanwhile, even the mainstream press in the U.S. confirms that Americans support universal health care by a margin of two to one.

The Real Rudy Giuliani

It's very important for voters to become aware of the actions and positions taken by their candidates.

Live The American Dream: Vote Kucinich!

Even a casual look at income distribution in the United States suggests that the overwhelming majority of people should vote for a progressive democrat. Here are the percentage of households earning less than $75,000 by race:

• 68% of white households
• 83.1% of african american households
• 80.6% of hispanic households
• 71.1% of total households

Living the American Dream requires a relatively high income because of the high costs of housing, education, and health care in the U.S. A progressive democratic platform, such as that proposed by Dennis Kucinich, is the only one that will reduce those costs significantly and allow families with relatively low incomes to experience the American Dream. Further, Dennis Kucinich is really the only major candidate who has actually applied progressive ideas to a significant city. The real mystery is why more people with relatively low household incomes don't see that he's their only hope in 2008.

Voice of Reason

Paul Krugman is a national treasure -- for years he has been quietly and clearly explaining complex issues in economics and public policy. Now, finally, the New York Times has removed the paywall from his wonderful columns.

No End In Sight

A new film on the Iraq War and the American Occupation. From the synopsis and IMDB:

The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraqs descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insiders tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the spring of 2003), Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner (in charge of occupation of Iraq through May 2003), as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers and prominent analysts. NO END IN SIGHT examines the manner in which the principal errors of US policythe use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government and the disbanding of the Iraqi military largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today.

Impeach Cheney and Bush

Some people question the wisdom of spending resources to investigate and perhaps impeach Dick Cheney and George Bush for their actions over the past six years. At the same time most people would agree that the legality of those actions is in question or at least that reasonable people could have serious questions about the legality. If we are to hold our government to the highest standards and avoid the corruption that plagues most other governments we must be vigilant and expend resources on oversight and investigation. Regardless of one's political party we should all agree that investigating our government when questions arise is one of the most important things we can do to preserve and improve our way of life. Visit www.afterdowningstreet.org/cheney for more information.

Liberation or Occupation

As the US involvement in Iraq loses popularity within Iraq it transitions from a "Liberation" to an occupation. The more cynical among us have viewed it as such since it was first proposed by this administration. New poll figures show that 71% of the people of Iraq want the US to withdraw its forces within one year. As those numbers grow Americans will have to accept that this is a hostile occupation.

Solutions for Failed States

An excerpt from the afterword of Noam Chomsky's Failed States (from ZNET):

One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: "They present solutions, but I don’t like them." In addition to the proposals that should be familiar about dealing with the crises that reach to the level of survival, a few simple suggestions for the US have already been mentioned: (1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; (2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols; (3) let the UN take the lead in international crises; (4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting the grave threats of terror; (5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter: the use of force is legitimate only when ordered by the Security Council or when the country is under imminent threat of attack, in accord with Article 51; (6) give up the Security Council veto, and have "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind," as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centers disagree; (7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending: health, education, renewable energy, and so on. For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the US population, in most cases the overwhelming majority. They are in radical opposition to public policy; in most cases, to a bipartisan consensus. To be sure, we cannot be very confident about the state of public opinion on matters such as these, because of another essential feature of the democratic deficit: the topics scarcely enter into public discussion and the basic facts are little known. In a highly atomized society, the public is therefore largely deprived of the opportunity to form considered opinions.

Now what?

Perhaps a picture will help President Bush understand our problem occupying Iraq?

A python sits on a road after swallowing a pregnant ewe in the village of Kampung Jabor, about 200 km (124 miles) east of Kuala Lumpur, on September 5, 2006. The six-metre reptile weighing 90 kg (198.5 lbs) was too laden to move, making it easy for firemen to capture it, said a local daily newspaper. (yahoo news)

Ministry of Truth

George Orwell's 1984 probably says most of what needs to be said about ABC's new docu-drama -- explicit government control is not necessary when enough money is on the side of one viewpoint.

Is Communism the Rational Choice for Most Americans?

Communism might be the rational choice for most voting Americans. Some simple calculations with data available from the IRS tax return statistics for 2003 reveals that the average income is about $47,600 which is approximately in the 72.8th percentile of the distribution. In the simplest terms this means that a bit less than 72.8% of the households would benefit by voting for left wing candidates that support income redistribution or other social welfare oriented policies. Even mild forms of redistribution (entirely absent from right wing or moderate political platforms) would benefit the households in the lower 72.8%.

Perhaps the American Dream is to blame -- many people overestimate their standing in the percentiles and still others hold out the hope that they will some day join the top 1% of earners. However, these optimists are in for a painful reckoning: income mobility to the highest reaches has drastically stagnated according to this careful analyis by the economist magazine in 2004. Essentially, the top 1% is a fairly exclusive club -- and because they are actively and effectively discouraging new members the overwhelming majority of Americans are better off voting left.

Critical Mass

With North Korea threatening to test long range missiles we can see the biggest consequence of the american war in Iraq: the defensive capability of the US has been critically weakened. Protecting the country from direct attack, in this case North Korean long range nuclear missiles, is the primary duty of the commander-in-chief. Unfortunately, the high cost of the war and the large commitment of our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan put us all in danger from countries with the means and will to attack us with WMDs.

Al Gore for (world) President

It's time for us to think about having a world president -- how about Al Gore? He has experience co-running two successful terms of the American presidency and he's got a clear plan and the will to solve the big problems (even though GW Bush refused to ratify Kyoto it is still a striking success.)

After watching his documentary on global warming one can see why the powerful interests in the country are afraid of him: he's got the passion and the facts to make a conclusive argument that Bush's anti-environmental program is a threat to planetary survival. Once enough people find out how dangerously corrupt and irresponsible the republicans have been we could see a permanent end to right wing politics in America.

Dance of the Honey Bees

The example of foraging honey bees communicating good locations for the next hive has become well known. The analog for our learning system is voting for candidates to lead our swarm. Two factors that break this system were illustrated in the 2000 election. In the 2000 election, one bee (Al Gore) proposed a new hive consisting of a healthier balance between the environment and the economy; meanwhile, the second bee (George W. Bush) was proposing increased protection for money interests.

First, the huge impact of campaign finance (later found to be riddled with pervasive corruption) has acted to artificially boost the signal from our second bee. Second, even though the swarm chose the first bee (Gore won the popular vote) the swarm ended up following the wrong bee. In retrospect, this seems to have been a catastrophic error -- an error brought about by a the combination of a breakable system (via state level manipulation of the electoral college votes) and the will to break it. It's too bad we've proven ourselves less fit for survival than the common honey bee.

US Out of Iraq Now!

There is no one who would voluntarily take the loss this family in Iraq has suffered when their pregnant daughter was shot and killed by US guards; thus, no one can credibly support this war any longer. It's time for all of us to call for the help of the United Nations to help repair the terrible damage we've done to Iraq. We can use our super bases in Iraq to house genuine UN peacekeeping forces to bring multilateral stability to the middle east.

This incident and the recent massacre of Iraqi civilians by US Marines are evidence that we are out of control and capable of grievous evil. Though most people have understood this for a long time and opposed the war in the first place now it's plain for anyone to see. There can be no further excuse for ignoring our culpability in bringing terror into the lives of innocent people.

"Any more questions about my strategy?"

Actually, people often say: "If you want it done right, do it yourself!" Ahem, I think that idea is especially appropriate for civilian war leaders ....

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

I'm not sure this lady should be our chief diplomat -- she may not have the best temperment for this job!

Support the NRA ... or else!

Should this man be allowed to own a firearm?

American Democracy, Citizenship, and War

During a citizenship oath ceremony I observed today there were three videos shown and one included the very famous image of American soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima during World War II. The image is very powerful and elicits the feeling of America as a mighty superpower victorious over its enemies. But the story behind the photo is more representative of American democracy as it really existed.

First of all, the flag raising shown in the photo was a reenactment. The second photo was taken shortly after the original battle flag was first raised. The third picture shows a rag tag group of soldiers carrying the flag upto the hill where it would be eventually be raised. This is much closer to the truth of American democracy which often concerns little-known and little-celebrated people slogging through the mud and finding a way to get the job done.

System Sensorship

The internet has helped democratize the united states. After a satirical political commentary was given by Stephen Colbert at a dinner attended by George W. Bush the mainstream news (information channel for a lot of the population) tried to dampen or jam the signal dismissing it as "not funny," etc. However, the video was quickly picked up and made available to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. In this way, the internet acts as a distributed sensor array that detects interesting or surprising signal and provides a strong counter to official or state supported "de facto" censorship. To be effective and robust, learning systems require responsive sensor arrays.

System Defense

The internet community demonstrates how a system can evolve its own defense system. Currently there is a campaign to maintain protection (Network Neutrality) against corporate control over the information we can access over the internet. For example, here's a snippet of html being propagated that helps increase awareness of the threat to the system.





Of course, the system's defense must be implemented through the legal system that currently acts (more or less) as a medium for both the corporate interests and the internet; but, from a system learning perspective, that can be described as the environment within which learning takes place.

Homeland Security Humor

Inspired by the folks at AMERICAblog here's my entry for the homeland security web site captioning:

1. Hands off the office supplies! They are needed by homeland security personnel!
2. If hurt and attended to by a red cross aid worker lie perfectly still.
3. In case of contact lens loss, crawl around until you find it.
4. Chemicals may create fumes.
5. In case of exposure to chemical fumes, choke yourself!
6. No more fish!
7. Avoid driving into explosions!
   
8. Viagra: it's not just for men anymore...
9. Homeland security takes priority -- no money left for less important stuff.
   

Profitable Environmental Concerns?

A common attack on environmental or ecologically sensitive political groups is that they are anti-growth. But, environmental concerns and growth in total profit can and should co-exist. The key is to understand the notion of cost of goods sold -- essentially, profit is revenue minus costs. Two ways to increase profit are to increase revenue by increasing demand and consumption of our goods and services or reduce costs of those goods and services. Currently, our companies are only required to report and calculate a small fraction of the true costs of their products and services.

One simple idea to address this problem is to have companies assume all responsiblity for the products they produce and to pass these costs onto the consumer. There are many models like this in the field of Industrial Ecology -- with specific instances like the Burnside Industrial Park model.

For energy products and services there's also the notion of calculating true gasoline prices. Of course, estimating these costs is difficult -- but, if we accept the need for a large group of specialized professionals working much like actuaries do in the insurance industry then it's not an unreasonable investment. The essential notion is that once we know the total costs of our industrial and transportation activities we can achieve growth in profits by steadily using speciality industries and new technologies to reduce the total costs of our industrial activity.

Media War

As CNN moves further to the right they take on attack dog duties for the white house. Here a CBS reporter named Lara Logan responds to the charges that her negative coverage aids the terrorists. Watch Lara Logan refuting the charges of negative coverage aiding the terrorists.

Bashing France's Unemployment Rate?

It's become pretty fashionable to bash France for it's labor laws and to point to it's unemployment rate as prima facie evidence that their system is inferior to ours. But why look just at unemployment rate? I would like to present a broader set of indicators -- let's compare France to the US taking popular statistics from Nationmaster:

1. Murder rates: US has a rate 2.5 times higher than France.
2. Murder rates by firearm: The US has a rate 5.5 times higher than Canada -- France's rate was so low that it fell off the charts.
3. Rapes rates: The US has a rate 2.16 times higher than in France.
4. Assault rates: The rate of criminal assault in the US is 4.31 times higher than in France.
5. Suicide rates for males: Score one for the US -- men in France and nearby Luxembourg and Switzerland all have rates around 30 in 100,000. In the US the rate is just 19.8 per 100,000. I guess men in France and Switzerland more often aim their destructive impulses at themselves.
   
6. Life Expectancy at Birth: People in France live more than two years longer on average than Americans.
7. Percentage of Life/Ill Health (Men): Men in France on average spend 8.7% of their life in ill health (#23) while those in the US spend 10.8% (#9).
8. Percentage of Life/Ill Health (Women): Women in France on average spend 11.4% of their life in ill health (#16) while those in the US spend 13.5% (#6).
9. Gini Index: France ranks low on the list for this popular measure of income inequality (#86, between Switzerland and the Netherlands) while the US has a much higher level of inequality (#31, between Costa Rica and Kenya)
10. Drug offences: Drug offences occur at a 2.15 times higher rate in the US than in France.
11. Population below poverty line: The US has 12% of it's people living below the poverty line while France has 6.5% -- that's close to 20 million more human beings living in poverty.
12. Military expenditures: The US spends six times more on the military than France.
    
13. Cannabis use: The percent of it's citizens that "toke up" is 12.3% for the US and 4.7% and 5.24% for France and Netherlands, respectively. In fact, the US ranks third in the world.
14. Energy use per person: People in the US lead the world at 8.35 Tonnes Oil Equivalent while those in France are ranked 10th at 4.25 (#10).
    
15. Prisoners per capita: Maybe the US is better at catching criminals -- with 715 per 100,000 people in prison it leads the world (#1). France falls far behind at just 95 per 100,000 (#95).
16. Very proud of their nationality: The US is number one in the world with 77% responding "yes" while France falls far behind at 35% (#12)
17. Net Happiness: Percent of people saying they are quite happy or very happy minus the percentage that report they are not very happy is 84% for both countries making them #13 and #14 in the world.

All these statistics including employment numbers are subject to interpretation and often mean different things in different contexts. Each person should select a set of indicators that they personally care about and not just settle for what the business columnists decide is important.

Risk and the US Economy

Risks to the US Economy seem to be piling up now -- here's several to consider:

1. Housing market collapse could cause a major recession because of bankruptcies, reduced spending, and reduced profitability.
2. Major attack on a US city (or prolonged low intensity terror campaign across many cities) would result in loss of confidence in government, reduced spending, profitability, price drops in real estate, etc.
3. US invasion of Iran to prevent them from setting up an independent oil trading exchange. This would be expensive and require hundreds of billions of dollars since the US is overextended militarily and already borrrowing heavily. Increased borrowing leads to higher interest rates and recession.
4. Iran sets up and independent oil trading exchange to break away from US sanctions and creates separate oil deals with China and Europe. Diversification away from dollar to euros brings about a weakening of the dollar and higher interest rates resulting in a mild US recession or severe if the dollar weakens significantly.
5. Bond market crash results in higher interest rates and a US recession -- senior bond traders are seeing the need to diversify away from US Bonds. Higher interest rates cause a reduction in borrowing and consumption.
   

Of course the risk of more than one of these events happening is also present. The effects would be sharply compounded if, for example, we enter a serious recession and initiate a costly invasion of the Iran or get attacked again.

The common denominator in all these risks is an over-consumption driven economy which creates risks in two ways: first, it puts us at odds with the rest of the world since we consume a highly disproportionate amount of the resources (especially oil;) second, it makes our economy especially vulnerable to threats that disrupt personal consumption patterns.

Humor is non-Markovian

The recent violence and outrage over the cartoons depicting Mohammed have caused a lot of questions to be raised about the nature of "free speech" verus "hate speech." A friend recently proposed the idea that the cartoons represent "hate speech" making the violent reaction more understandable. In general, it seems to be okay to "make fun" of oneself or one's own religion or culture. However, there seems to be a line for transmitting humor across cultural bounds. When crossing those bounds humor and ridicule become something that could be perceived as stemming from hate and/or fear rather than humor.

Humor, then, seems to be non-Markovian. Simply put, the message itself does not contain enough information to fully characterize the effects on state. One needs to know the path of the message to accurately predict the change in state that will be brought on by the receipt of the message. Thus, a message that starts off as free speech can be perceived as hate speech based upon it's path including most importantly it's source. In short, the information in the message can not be meaningfully isolated from the transmission path.

Our notions of censorship should be revised to have a more nuanced treatment that considers the transmission path -- heuristically, there have already been legal precedents around hate speech and shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre -- both of which could be cleanly described using the notion of transmission path.

Hunting for Answers

Some logical questions arise when considering the recent Cheney hunting incident. Most are documented now in various places but how does one hunt with the vice president? Presumably the secret service would do anything to prevent a "hunting accident" if the target was Cheney himself. How do they actually do that? Do they require everyone else to keep their guns in the lodge? Is there a "no pointing guns at Cheney" rule? Presumably, one is supposed to keep the gun pointed away from others and to have a clear line of sight to the target and background as a standard hunting practice.

One older study I saw for national accident statistics in the US showed that accident rates for hunting were only about 8 per 100,000 participants. And, because of secret service involvement we can assume that a hunting party with the US Vice President would be far safer (say ten times?) The odds of a hunting accident would be expected to be very low perhaps even lower than 1 in 100,000. Some have suggested alcohol could have contributed to the accident and Cheney's two DUI convictions when he was younger certainly don't rule that out. However, it's probably not that exceptional for wealthy texans to drink and hunt so the incident still presents an event so unlikely as to warrant a deeper investigation.

Magic Bullets (A Probability Chestnut)

A friend's interview question: suppose you are forced to fight a duel but you get to fire all your bullets first. You have your choice of configurations: you can fire two gold bullets that each have a one half chance of hitting or three bronze bullets that each have a chance of hitting of one third. Which package should you choose? In general, for which value of n should you choose n bullets that each have a one in n chance of hitting?

In general, you want the probability of at least one hit to be as high as possible; the formula for this probability is simply: 1 - (1 - 1/n)^n so for gold bullets you have 1 - (1 - 1/2)^2 = 1 - 1/4 = 3/4 chance of hitting; with bronze that chance falls to 1 - 8/27 = 19/27 (imagine a silver bullet that always hits and your intuition might help you select the smaller n)

The more interesting question is to determine the limit of this process? Or, what is the probability of hitting with n type n bullets as n goes to infinity? Since we need lim (n -> inf) (1 - 1/n)^n we use the identity: exp(x) = lim (n -> inf) (1 + x/n)^n and take x = -1 to find that our limiting probability is 1 - exp(-1) or about 63.21%.

What's the best option?

A friend asks an interesting question about in-the-money stock options struck at two different prices: which ones should you sell first? Suppose the two types are high strike price (say H) and low strike price (say L) and the current price of the stock (P) is higher than both. You can make this decision by considering your regret after your decision.

First, note that if the price goes up after you sell the intrinsic value of both options goes up the same amount and you are indifferent between the two choices. However, if the price goes down then you might care which set of options you sold today (i.e. you might experience regret) so let's see what happens. If you sold the low strike options and the price falls you lose a maximum of (P - H) per option. But, if you sold the high strike options then if the price falls you can lose a maximum of (P - L) > (P - H) since L is lower than H.

In many decision or learning problems you seek the solution that minimizes your expected or average regret. But in this case the decision has a special and very useful property called stochastic dominance: the regret of your decision is less than or equal to the regret of any other decision in every future state of the world.

Do you, uh, RSU?

Your employers want to reward you with $10,000 worth of long term equity incentive to work harder. Previously, they offered you stock options struck at the current stock price but now they're offering you Restricted Stock Units (at Google they're probably called Google Stock Units). The difference is that stock units are actual shares of stock that become available after some future time. Options can be exercised at some future time for the positive difference (if any) between the price at the future time and today's price.

The difference is leverage. Say your employers' stock is worth $100 today. More or less they can offer you 100 stock units at today's price; but, with options with a value of say $10 they can offer you options on about 1000 shares. If at exercise time the stock price has doubled the stock units are worth $20,000. However, the options would be worth $100,000 = 1000 x ($200 - $100) and would you would make five times more money. Of course, there's no free lunch. If the stock loses half it's value instead then the options can't be exercised at all (they are "under water" and mathematically almost worthless) while the stock units are still worth $5000.

The break-even point occurs when r > v/(p-v) after the exercise date, with r being the percentage gain in stock price, p is the price of the stock, and v is the value of the option.

Gini Inequality Index

The Gini Coefficient of income inequality (lower means less wealth concentration) is an important guide to the character of any society. Currently, the US at has a ratio close to 0.41 neighbored by Cambodia and Turkmenistan -- further it's ratio of top 10% to bottom 10% income is almost sixteen while no country in the top 20 (by lowest Gini Coefficient) has more than nine; Denmark, Japan, and Sweden, top the list with ratios less than 0.25 and have relatively higher taxation. As we move further and further from public programs that safeguard basic living standards we can expect these ratios to worsen (they're measured as of 2000). For all the attacks we see on taxation here in the United States, quality of life seems to be positively related to it.

Adorned By A Moron

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H. L. Mencken

Management Science

Managing software organizations is a serious endeavour. Management hierarchies are frequently both broad and deep. Perhaps it's time for something new. Think for a moment about the expense of highly paid, highly stressed, managerial personnel who frequently were productive technical resources before their "promotions." Google, for example, is widely cited as having an extremely "flat" organization, but how do they do it?

How about a flat organization in the form of two groups of people: architects and developers. These groups commmunicate via a single pool of projects. The architects have the job of decomposing problems into applications, components (and dependencies) needed to satisfy organizational requirements (e.g. business products, scientific research, etc.) Developers have the job of subscribing to projects and acting as contributors or leading contributors. There are no restrictions on who can subscribe to the project. With regards to tactical project details one popular discipline is Extreme Programming.

Project specifications are done by architects but of course poorly specified projects (e.g. "should take a week to write this transaction server") will likely be undersubscribed until the specifications become more closely aligned with the project requirements. Basic project dimensions could include time sensitivity and impact "Short timeline, high impact" and architects price the projects accordingly -- once again, projects with inappropriate prices will likely be under or oversubscribed so that the actual points that accrue to the contributors fluctuates accordingly.

The point is that everyone works with only leading contributors responsible for organizing communications to both clouds and managing deadlines. Relatively simple reporting tools track who's working on which projects and how much time is spent on various projects. Bonuses and raises are divided equally amongst contributors based on project points and actual contributions measured by directly surveying all of the team members.

Minimum Wage

There are lots of detailed arguments for and against raising the minimum wage. One of the popular arguments against it is the claim that it hurts small businesses. That's not really a logical claim since all businesses that pay minimum wages would be affected the same per employee. While a small business paying minmium wage is paying more for each dollar of goods/services produced (modulo productivity gains from better paid employees) all of his potential customers that earn minimum wage suddenly have more income to spend on consumption of goods and services. Since any given small business employs only the tiniest fraction of the affected workers the increase in demand for his goods can yield increases in revenue many times higher than his cost increases.

Managing a Baseball Team

From my friend and academic advisor Prof. Stuart Dreyfus:

The owner buys the manager a computer and loads it with data. Comes the last of the ninth in final world series game with the bases loaded and 2 outs and the manager ignores the computer and sends up a pinch hitter. He makes out (as most batters do) and the team loses. Owner calls in manager.

Owner: You're fired. How could you use a pinch hitter with a lower average than the scheduled batter?
Manager: Yes, but he hits 30 points higher than the scheduled batter against right hand pitchers.
Owner: (After consulting computer): Yes, but not in day games like this was.
Manager: (after consulting computer): But he's better than scheduled batter in day games against right handers when the wind is blowing out, as it was.
Owner: Except in the ninth inning (after consulting computer)
Manager: But he's better with 2 outs in the ninth, as it was. (After consulting computer)
Owner: But remember the bases were loaded. (Consults computer for pinch hitter's record against RH pitcher in day games with wind blowing out in ninth with 2 out and bases loaded and discovers it has never happened) O.K., you're not fired, but throw away that damned computer, it's of no use when you need it.

Moral: Intuition about relevance is necessary, even when facts are available.

Middle East "Risk"

It's not a terribly profound suggestion that the Bush-Cheney regime is trying to control the middle east oil reserves much like a player of Risk strives to control important regional blocks. One look at a map should should be enough to give a hint for the next target -- hint: it's situated between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bring Democracy to America

A friend of mine recently challenged my bumper sticker bearing this slogan. He said "What do you mean, we have democracy!" The slogan means that there are people like me who would like American democracy to be incontrovertible: auditable, standardized, fair to all socio-eoncomic backgrounds, representative, and significantly free from undue corporate and financial interests; even a casual internet search will reveal that there have been credible doubts raised in these areas. Like charity perhaps we should say: Democracy begins at home!

"Freedom Isn't Free"

This slogan's on the tongue of lots of people today but it seems to me an illogical idea. Is the idea that our society must pay for freedom with a blood sacrifice from our young people? Or does this mean that we need a standing army to defend us? Maintaining an army seems to be uncontroversial if it serves to prevent invasion and to further our humanitarian (not corporate) interests around the world. Can a state of being that requires the prolonged conduct of anticipatory, preemptve, and illegal, war in any meaningful sense be called freedom?

Things Fall Apart

With apologies to Chinua Achebe here's a simple pattern that seems to be operating: large groups of people what to break up into a larger number of smaller groups. Call it an increase in social entropy. Empires fall, colonies gain independence, unions dissolve, states secede, etc. In Iraq now there are forecasts that it will become de facto three separate regions according to Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish loyalties. In the USA there is a high degree of polarization across fairly clear lines -- most polls show highly correlated answers along issues like abortion rights, capital punishment, unilateral war, etc. Perhaps the next civil war in the USA is closer than we think but without a figure like Lincoln perhaps it will just be a bloodless change. And, the Civil war can still be justified as a necessary tragedy since one can say that only the full power of the United States could have defeated the axis in World War II.

Capitalism and Resource Allocation

Capitalism uses prices to determine allocation and prices depend on the interplay between supply and demand. In classical economics increased prices lead eventually to more supply which then causes downward pressure on prices. Walking down the street I find an interesting relationship between time and the size of new homes -- as a neighborhood becomes more desireable the size of homes increases over time making fewer and fewer homes available(*)

Perhaps the existence of positive feedback loops in economic markets means that capitalism is not a workable design for growing human societies. In a world where progress means more people with the resources to expand their lives capitalism gurantees that important resources will become scarce.

(*) Positive feedback effects such as these have been documented in a new body of research described in such books as Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop.

What is Fairness?

Say you are designing a new system for people to use -- for example, a voting system. With a big enough group of users it's provably impossible to satisfy all the users with a single system or set of general procedures. However, you can require the system to be fair. What does this mean? It means that all reasonable measures have been taken to prevent the system from being corrupted. For example, in creating voting systems requiring a permanent audit trail would seem to be a minimum -- funny that this isn't the case for national elections in the united states. Another basic requirement would be standardization -- that is, the same system applies to all users; again, this requirement isn't met in the united states where different states have different voting rules and practices. For example, in Florida the voting system allowed them to strike voters from the registrar if their names matched those of convicted felons. Auditability and common standards are surely not too much to ask for a system as important as voting.

A Humanity Index

For a measure of humanity let's look at an equal part social justice (use a measure of Relative Poverty = percent of population living at 40% of Median Income) and an equal part prosperity in the form of Per Capita GDP (2002). I'll standardize the numbers using mean and standard deviation for the countries of interest.

Also, I'll combine the standardized score for 40% RP for the elderly and in general into one number (most of us care about how we'll live when we retire.) Children's index was not generally available and most of the numbers were from 2000. So, it's one half prosperity, one quarter general relative poverty, and one quarter relative poverty for the elderly. And, using 40% since it's the lowest available value with good data (would prefer 25% which is used as a standard in other studies).

Source for the poverty numbers is http://www.lisproject.org/keyfigures/povertytable.htm. Source for the GDP/Capita is the Human Development Report at http://hdr.undp.org/reports/

The Wisdom of [independent] Crowds?

In his nice popular work The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki makes the case that groups of independent assessments or votes are often more consistently accurate than even the most expert judgements. However, he conditions this conjecture on the independence of their assessments. One wonders if the pervasive advertising expenditures in recent elections (e.g. 2004) breaks this independence assumption enough to offset the wisdom of the American voting public.

Solution <=> Formulation

My conjecture is that any real world problem can be solved if and only if (IFF) it can be correctly formulated. This may seem preposterous because it says that correct formulation is both necessary and sufficient for the existence of a solution(*)

It's a bit sneaky because often the challenge is that we don't have the means to correctly formulate a problem. However, the conjecture could be useful as a warning to groups attempting to solve problems before an adequate formulation has been agreed upon.

(*) Of course, for the special case of deduction from axioms, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is the definitive counterexample -- but I argue that these aren't "real world" problems since they live in the restricted domain of mathematical logic.

Learning Systems

A central component of machine intelligence is the ablity to learn how to do tasks by interacting with intelligent entities. A very difficult aspect of this is that the learner needs to decide which inputs to incorporate and which to defer or ignore. For learning systems the inputs are typically associations between states and decisions (e.g. querys and urls, documents and classifications, etc.). In an organization in which a decision maker receives reports from many parts of the organization and must decide to act on a small set of these inputs.

Large systems often use some type of voting or democratic approach in which the input with the most support dominates. In organizations managers frequently depend on a few key advisors whom they've learned to trust. However, often a single key report from a small or obscure group contains key information that would rapidly speed learning or improve the effectiveness of a given decision. The grand puzzle for learning systems, including both human organizations and machine intelligence, is how to most effectively integrate information from all sources in a system.

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence strikes me as a very compelling art form. Perhaps there should be a school of belief along the lines of "Strong" and "Weak" AI called "No" AI. For example, I don't subscribe to the idea that machines will someday be "spiritual" or human-like in any significant manner. Nor do I think they will perform at human level for even restricted tasks. However, I do understand and believe that the pursuit of AI requires creative and inventive thought of the highest order and can yield useful or valuable byproducts(*).

In working with Stuart Dreyfus and Hubert Dreyfus for a time I gained wonderful insight into some of the deep limitations of AI. One of their interests was in debunking AI so that fraudulent claims couldn't be used to get government funding. They felt that such funding was wasted and didn't serve the public good. However, I would claim that for a government that can waste hundreds of billions of dollars attacking and subjugating other countries occasional outlays of ten or twenty million are insignficant in the calculus of public spending.

(*) "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn," Mr. Gates responded, "that is worth 10 Microsofts." (Quoted in NY Times, Monday March 3, 2004) from the home page of Tom Dietterich

Probability Threads

One reason I've heard for why we won't detect other intelligent life is that it evolves, develops sophisticated technology, and winks out so quickly that it's emissions have long since passes before another system develops life capable of detecting them. The idea is that once a civilization develops technology capable of causing extinction (e.g. nuclear or biological warfare) it's only a matter of time before it's used. For example, say there's a 0.1% chance each year that a self extinction event is triggered (this is probably a low estimate for time periods like the 60's) -- the probability of at least one event occurring in 5000 years is 99.33%.

Introducing a simple dependency in the string of events (i.e. a thread) can have a drastic effect on the extinction probability. For example, suppose the probabilty starts at 0.1% but has a 1% decay rate each year -- i.e. it drops slightly to 0.099% the following year and so on -- then the probability of at least one extinction event falls to just 9.52% over a 5000 year period. Given a much more complex or even nonexistent structure for the sequence of probabilities it would be impossible to model the transitions and would require us to think about the series of time periods as a single entity.

Intelligent Communication

Look at the post from earlier today: I'd like to have shared this directly with Greg Egan but he doesn't publish his email address. What's needed is a way for him to publish an address that he can check at will but that has no association directly with him. I should just write "Send to Greg Egan" and my post should be visible to him.

The enabling technology would be a powerful categorizer that allows people with related fields or known interest areas to be sorted higher to the top of the list while spammers or unsolicited or nonrelevant contacts are shuffled to the bottom or rejected.

Death and the Multiverse

Here's a Greg Egan type of idea: assume the many worlds interpretation is correct and that a human being's consciousness can only really focus or localize in one universe at a time. Maybe when a person dies in one universe their consciousness instantaneously changes focus to a "nearby" parallel universe. That person registers a "close call" but breathes a sigh of relief and continues living their life.