Hiatus

With apologies to all my loyal readers I will be taking an extended hiatus to focus on some other projects.  While the posts that I have put together may seem to be stream of consciousnesses ramblings I have spent a fair amount of time both thinking about and editing them.  This does not mean they are either polished or wise.  However, I have joined two team efforts that require my time and attention and as consequence my blogging will have to go on hold.

All that glitters is not gold

I had a conversation recently with a senior manager in our company and I failed to articulate the concern I have with trade deficits.  After failing to present my concerns in a coherent way I felt compelled to do some research in order to better represent my perspective.  While doing some basic research on trade deficits I started with the assumption that there is  some boundary for any given country past which they cannot (effectively) print more money without sending the economy into a tailspin.  In fact the United States has blown past all of my supposed limits to this.  A rough estimate of our current cumulative currency deficit is approaching 13 trillion dollars which is nearly our annual gross domestic product of ~18 trillion dollars.   Faced with the equivalent of nearly a years salary worth of unsecured debt (the equivalent of credit card debt for an individual) where we apparently pay no noticeable interest I wondered why other countries don't call this debt due?  Finance is complex and in a currency race to the bottom it is sometimes to the advantage of other countries to hold our currency without caching it in.  After some research I discovered that for me the more compelling question was why we let ourselves as a country be so beholden.  In point of fact during my research I was faced over and over again with the mainstream view also held by the senior manager that trade deficits were in general a good thing.   TL;DR all of this is based on the fact that these planners never expect the currency deficits to come due!

Current trade deficits expectations are based on the expectation that other countries twill sell us goods in exchange for US dollars that are never converted back into their domestic currency.  If the currency was exchanged back on the open market this would force the dollar value down and our import purchasing power would drop (correcting the deficit).  In general one might see this as a good thing but I get suspicious of the whole "free lunch" scenario.  In fact the only way to buy more than you produce is to print money to make up the difference.  My view of the monetary supply is that it needs to grow sufficiently to enable gross domestic product. If there is more money than commerce the money supply would normally devalue.  If there is less money than commerce the purchasing power of the dollar would go up.  In this case the monetary supply for the US exceeds the GDP for the US by almost a full year.  As an added benefit of printing this extra money the market for these supposedly desirable dollars is held down so that our internal economy can still export some of it's goods and services.  All should be hunky dory right?  We have more stuff than we make and we get to keep our jobs.

How do other non-US dollar countries deal with this?  Net export countries are required to weaken their currency as well to maintain their net export status.  As the US dollar drops other countries must drop as well or be left with unused production capacity.   The ability to inject money into the economy in this fashion (Fiat) is only possible in a state controlled commerce situation like communism since the other mechanism is the currency exchange market.  Market based export economies are just forced to either find someone who will hold their currency as well or export more than they import lowering the standard of living for all citizens.  In fact it all starts to look like some gigantic pyramid scheme where each country is looking to find someone else to hold the bag.  I suspect that countries at the lowest end of this economic Ponzi scheme suffer the most.  Strangely, though I am also convinced that the lower and middle classes at the top of the pyramid also suffer.

My argument is this.  When people look at the massive currency devaluation practiced by almost all first world countries today they justify holding US dollars because as the total world dollar volume grows the productivity of american society grows as well (creating a perception that eventually the effectively devalued dollar will have a restored value - keeping the reserve currency of choice status for the US).  To me this is the crux of the US lower and middle class issue.  If the excuse for more dollars is that the economy is increasing and if those new dollars were gowing to the new sources of growth and productivity then capitalism would be rewarding effort.  However, in the US those dollars are being injected straight into the upper class.  I argue that the mechanism in the US of using cheap money to inject these new dollars into our economy is rewards people in ways that doesn't grow our GDP.  What is the evidence for that?  Since the late 1990s the general participation rate for employment in the US has dropped.  Wages for the US workers who remain employed have stagnated in the middle class and dropped for the poor.  Additionally the level of training required for middle class jobs in the US has skyrocketed.  The cost of this training is increasingly borne by that same US middle class.  All the while the measured GDP for the US has gone up.  In the United States senior management is using labor arbitrage available from the "currency race to the bottom" in the name of globalization to disenfranchise US workers and leverage a perceived productivity gain by hiring workers below a true closed market value.  If managers can maintain a sufficient number of unemployed american workers then employed workers will be forced to accept lower wages.  In truth there are consequences when senior managers do not follow this practice.  Treating workers as if they existed in a net neutral export economy means they instantly make their companies less competitive against companies with arbitraged labor.

How does it all end? (The link illuminates the financial transfer of money from savers to borrowers) Historically, currency wars have either ended with economic crashes where economies fall apart or world war or both.  By economic crashes I mean much greater in the US than either the crash of 2000/2001 or 2008.  Highly productive countries are very likely to turn this economic uncertainty into warlike actions.  Physical aggression allows for leaders to distract the population away from their economic sins and channel the nation into joint productivity.  If you win the war it also has the value of resetting the world economies to your standard, maintaining internal production in service of the war machine, and substantially injuring the losers economic stability.  

Is there some solution other than war and or financial ruin?  Yes, we can all operate at our maximum ability to eschew imports (exports are ok).  Individuals buying local will not correct the national trade deficit but it does do two things.  First, the people that we buy from will be rewarded as if there was a closed market.  Yes, that most certainly means reducing our standard of living for the same wages.  However our current greedy consumerism in the United States is causing a global crisis.  We live beyond our true means to the detriment of the whole world.  Second, establishing a local economy will create a firewall to any external crash.  When the world monetary system is in chaos, local economies can exist on barter and trust far better than far flung supply chains.  Add that goods imported into the US are actually worth far more in trade neutral US dollars than we are paying today in the absence of the governments power to control currency and import transactions common today will fall apart.  I suppose that the people buying land and gold as a hedge against the crash are not wrong but it will be the local economic relationships we have that will ultimately save us in the long run as it is hard to eat gold or laugh with land.

How should we respond to evil?

The title actually begs the question what is evil.  I mostly chose that word as a tie in to last months post but I intend to sidestep the question altogether and focus on the question "how should we respond to things we don't like".  This avoids the tricky value judgments associated with the principle that one persons trash is another persons treasure.  The news has recently presented several examples of people taking extreme responses to things they don't like.  As I live in the United States the news articles I have been faced with the most are the Orlando Night club shooting and the British politician killed for her position.  To be clear I believe deeply that these actions are unacceptable responses to things that the perpetrators did not like.  I have no desire to make a place for the violence represented by those examples in my life.  However, I am faced with reconciling the principles that I advocated in my post on social media  where I encourage everyone to make the maximum possible space for all perspectives and the pronouncement from the pro-immigration advocate Angela Merkel, whom I respect, that multiculturalism in Germany is a failed experiment.

In order to gain some perspective on the issue I spoke with a co-worker who is a gun rights advocate. (I am generally not, although my unique perspectives on the matter are probably the source of another post)  Specifically we talked about his perspective on what could have gone differently in the Orlando night club shooting.  He did mention in passing that if there were more opposing gunmen that the shooter would have had more trouble. (true) In actuality there was one off duty police officer paid by the club who was armed but he wasn't at the door screening people.  He was the reason that the gunman retreated to the bathrooms so quickly and he was also likely the reason that two additional officers showed up within 5 minutes but he wasn't enough to protect people in the bathrooms or bring a conclusion to the standoff in less than three hours.  He didn't have a good response to the concern I raised about drunk people with guns but  the point he did make was the "No guns allowed" club policy and the bouncer at the door was enforcing no guns meant that no armed presence was protecting the perimeter.  From a shooters perspective this made the club a "soft target".  The alternate solution to arming patrons would be to place armed guards at the boundaries of soft targets to ensure that everyone who could gain entry are adequately defended.  We also talked about gun control and what effect if any an assault weapons ban might have had on the shooters effectiveness.  He made two points.  First, the genie is out of the bottle.  The number of available privately owned assault weapons in the United States would arm most small countries.  Additionally, he makes the argument that two pistols with adequate clips would have worked just as effectively as the assault rifle used by the shooter.  He said that pistols would cause equal damage, be easier to conceal, and have more maneuverability in close quarters.  I find myself somewhat skeptical of this but he has significant experience shooting pistols and is qualified to describe their capabilities.  In the end I am forced to agree that in a world where gun ownership is at best marginally regulated then everyone should be allowed an equal footing.  The equal footing being to either allow all people to carry guns at all times or create armed guards around soft target zones who will protect these zones with their lives or better the life of the attacker.

To me perimeter guards on soft targets or a fully armed populace paints a picture of a society at war with itself.  I was thinking about this when the article from 538 came out showing that terrorism dropped in 2015 from 2014.  The article correctly states that terrorism is growing in the west but the amount of terrorist caused deaths in the west are dwarfed by the terrorism in Africa and the Middle East.  While Israel has a reputation for being an armed society most of the other countries in this region do not generally allow for an armed populace.  This means that a significant portion of the population in this area go around with a much higher chance of being targeted in a terrorist attack than I do and yet do not actively arm themselves in response.  I want to admire this attitude but I'm not sure I should.  I am unsure of how many of these unarmed people would arm themselves if it were allowed but do not feel they have that option.  Do people in that circumstance wish to be pitied?  Would they wish to be rescued if it meant being required to live as (poverty stricken) united states citizens afterward?  (the fate of american refugees)  In either case I wonder if I could stay in a country with that high a risk of terrorist attack?  In truth I feel for the victims and the families of the Orlando night club shooting and the victim and family of the British politicians murder but still don't feel personally at risk for that type of action.  I explain away the risk by identifying differences.  (Not life style or ideology but the fact that I don't go clubbing and I'm not running for office.)  I find that I cannot label either of these explanations brave.  Rather just the opposite is true.  I hide my head in the sand.  How would I act if I truly appreciated the risk?  I suppose that  I will run into gun violence at some point.  I definitely don't feel free to wander all times and through all corners of our society.

There is a third possibility, other than living in an armed camp or co-existing with violence beyond my control.  The third option is to create or find a society within which I could live without threat of violence.  Quite often anti-gun advocates state that this is the very thing they are working for.  At this point it almost feels like the theme music for such a platform should be provided by the Beach Boys.  Since this society would be a soft target would it be too soft to defend itself against outside influences?  Would this society necessitate controls on human thought and emotion to the point where I lost my ability to contribute as an individual?  While the idea of living inside a society without violence is appealing, all obvious mechanisms to enforce such a thing quickly provide a slippery conceptual slope to a society that I'm not sure I would like.  I suppose that if each person in a society were to voluntarily choose non-violence this would be the best case but how can you measure that?  How could you ensure future compliance with present attitudes in an ever changing world?  At this point the most obvious available current mechanism is the rule of law.  My perspective on this is the implementation of the rule of law independent of interpretation from principles.  By this I mean that we all bring some level of personal bias and deeply held principles or emotions to our reading of the Law(s) but as we are so wonderfully diverse that the implementation is better managed dispassionately.  If there is sufficient disagreement with either the law or the impact of its implementation and we only use the mechanisms provided by law to change the law we are still representing behavior within the law.  I believe this to be the best possible compromise society.

In the end I am forced to conclude that as we observe people attending a "soft target" night club where the gun exclusion is both enforced without threat of violence at the door and patrons are generally compliant with the rule we are observing acts of heroism.  I suppose in the selection of a nights activities it was not top of mind for the Orlando night club victims to select opportunities to preform an act of heroism but this choice represents the embodiment of the statement from FDR that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself".    Each of those Orlando nightclub patrons did select in a visible way to live their life in joy and not fear.  The British politician was specifically standing up for her beliefs rather than allowing her fears to block her contribution.  I do not think that the reality of their fear during the actions of the vile attacker(s) makes their heroism any less real.  I do believe that the world is a more peaceful place when advocates of peace advocate for support, peace, and welcome to the world around them.  This is no less effective in a positive direction than the negative influence of fear and violence brought by the preachers and actors of hate, anger, and exclusion.  Can both parties co-exist?  Despite some misgivings I suppose they must.  The alternative to coexistence is worse. In the end I think that the only realistic control that can be applied to a society is where individuals and groups have not agreed in principle is the rule of law.  Principles cannot and should not be enforced.  In some ways enforcement of principle through manipulation of laws may be the most pernicious of sins.  I didn't expect to end here when I started thinking about this but in a strange way I am advocating the status quo for the United States and most 1st world countries.  This does not mean that I approve of violence but that I believe the struggle for non-violence solutions should occur on an ideological and voluntary level as long as people are willing to abide by the rule of law.  Each of us who chooses to live, cooperate with others not like ourselves, and support the rule of law should see those actions as heroic.  While the effect is subtle I believe it to have equal power to hate and exclusion.

What is the root of all evil?

Money is often labeled as the root of all evil as a consequence we are often encouraged to think of ways to avoid money.  That has always seemed like an oversimplification to me and when I dug a bit I discovered that instead of money many people have labeled greed as the root of the root evil.  However, Dante only holds greed and other attachment sins as levels 2 through 4 in hell.  After further inspection I am even forced to acknowledge that greedy self interest has powered some significant economic advances in our world.  In fact many of the risks that people take and many of the second and third efforts that people make in contribution to our society are driven by self interest.  I'm even reminded that many of the broken economies we see in this world today were formed as experiments with the best intentions of elevating human endeavor to an altruistic plane.  I think there is a place in my heart that wishes there was an altruism based economy that was beating the pants off of capitalism but I'm not aware of any.  Even economies with some level of central planning must operate in a capitalist world and are to some extent enabled by the self interest external and internal to them.  As a consequence I have done some thinking on the role that money plays in our society.

My thought process began with a mental exploration of the ways we might live without money.  The measure I used for a successful non monetary economy was a theoretical attempt to build a cell phone from scratch.  I intentionally picked a highly complex technical task since I wanted to set the current measure of success within our capitalist society as a baseline required achievement level.  In the details of this measure I included that the phone would need to go from raw materials to working product using manufacturing facilities and design work all  implemented with no monetary exchange.  As I went down each of the possibilities to accomplish this I kept running into a barrier that I call the 'familiarity singularity'.  This singularity appears to exist at the point in any non-monetary based economy where participants are no longer able to know and respect all the other members of the economic group.  Anecdotal evidence appears to put this number roughly between 100 and 1000 people.  Past that point the necessary management of cooperation appears to always require a monetary system of some kind.  In fact in today's society where monetary drivers manage most of our daily activities it is rare to see groups of more that 5 people cooperating in a non monetary fashion for economic self support.  (Family structures) This may be a measure of social breakdown but I'm not so sure.  The alternative hypothesis is that monetary based economies are more productive and people are drawn to success.  In the end the massive amounts of disposable income generated by a benign capitalist system is often invested as socialization and non economic cooperation.  If this didn't happen we would be living in a terribly lonely and competitive world.

You might ask why we should feel the need to be so productive and efficient?  It may be that you feel this is the root of evil, this constant search for efficiency.  In point of fact this efficiency has been a saving grace for the world.  I believe the biggest risk of a technology rollback is a Malthusian Catastrophe resulting from a reduction of productivity.  We should not forget the lessons of the american dust-bowl resulting from single family semi-autonomous economies.  I believe that any substantial rollback in technology and therefore productivity and resource efficiencies from today's levels would result in a large scale human die-off event.  I actually think that I might have the skills to survive something like that but morally I am unwilling to advocate a path where large portions of humanity are required to die in order for the rest to live better.

So if money is the enabler of great things and capitalistic use of money helps avoid the (zombie?) apocalypse what exactly does it do?  I believe money enables 5 things that would not be possible otherwise.  Specifically,  these are five things that seem to need to be enabled together.  Supply and demand, futures, risk, taxation, and brokerage.  When I reviewed how self interest plays into those categories I discovered (known by others, new to me) something very interesting.  Using supply and demand as an example you can see that if the supplier is not attempting to get the very highest price for their wares or if the buyer were not trying to pay the very lowest price for said wares then there would be no mechanism to adjust the price without some outside control.  Obviously some of this fluctuation is also enabled by competition and innovation.  The price is additionally stablized when both the buyer and the seller have choice through brokerage and competition.  Brokerage, risk, and investing in the future all require rewards to give incentive for people to engage.

If we were to manage these elements by controlling the amount of reward for each of these roles through some central planning body in order to remove the contribution of greedy self interest we find quickly that enforcement is required.  Wherever there is enforcement of price controls corruption and black markets can also be found.  Externally motivated innovation also requires investment up front rather than on the back end.  This includes money paid for blind alleys not always rewarded in a capitalist scenario.  (risk is more efficient in capitalizim)  In my opinion the burden to society of enforcement, illegal activity, and poorly managed innovation quickly outweighs the short term benefit to the buyer of fixed pricing and the seller of fixed demand.

I acknowledge that self interest in supply and demand can go horribly wrong as demonstrated by Martin Shkreli and does seem to beg for some intervention.  Although, part of Martin's ability to behave so reprehensibly was enabled by a lack of competition in a very narrow market.  Unsupervised brokerage also has significant risk of damaging the economy as demonstrated by the mortgage crisis of 2008.  The other areas of monetary action are equally at risk of destructive action that is more damaging than helpful.  I do have some ideas about when, how and why intervention is appropriate but I haven't ironed them out completely.  The question of pure self interest appears to be stuck between the proverbial hell outlined by Dante and the hard place of an under-performing economy.  I suspect that there is another blog post or two there.  In the end there is, and I believe there will remain, a solid argument for the role of governments in a market economy and therefore taxation to support them.

So if there is no meritocracy or ideocracy that can replace greedy self interest as a mechanism to drive our economy forward what is a right thinking person to do?  Should we all just bite claw and scratch our way to the top of a large pile of money? (And by the way the meta question is how can I tell if I'm a right thinking person?)  I would argue that passively we can ask yourself if the monetary transactions we engage in are respectful of the other party as a minimum.  Just doing that allows us to inject some level of moral action in a world designed to only reward self interest.  Additionally, I believe that I have uncovered one additional measure that can be used to manage our perspective on money.  If we view monetary systems as the best mechanism to enable society then I would propose that each of the sub elements should also be judged on that merit as well.  The goal being to optimize society.  Using brokerage as an example we find that where there is a lack of brokers, transactions fail to occur at their maximum volume.  However in today's market place we have established a norm where brokers are rewarded as a percentage of the total transaction value that they enable.  In point of fact the specific contribution of brokers to society is bringing buyers and sellers together where that would not occur on its own.  If this action enables one or a million transactions it makes little difference in the work required by the broker.  In a strange twist of fate I think there is a self interested opportunity to offer brokerage as a service priced action rather than a percentage priced action which would leverage better return to society.  (Advertisement as a moral good!)

As I think about the 'good for society' measure I find myself amazed that the market has not self corrected this for brokers.  It is true that some brokerage actions apply to such small transaction volumes and transaction content that it doesn't make sense to broker them.   OK, but at the high end of brokerage transactions it is very hard to ignore that some people are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few days work.  The only way this would be possible is if other people decided to not offer the same service for less money.  The self interested market has failed in this case.  It has failed by the measure of providing value to the individual without returning equivalent value to the economy.   What is the right way to correct this?  As a vendor be the person that offers value for compensation rather than value for a percentage of the transaction.  I think that the market will reward people who take these actions since there is so much self interest on the consumer side.  On the consumer side your burden is to purchase actions or products not leverage or perceived value. Guerrilla capitalists arise!  

You might say to me isn't a percentage based pay scale just enabling a person to ask the highest price for services?  At a macro scale this is true but I think that by sub-optimizing for self interest alone we actually leave market opportunities on the table unrealized.  Additionally when sub-optimizing for self interest we also damage our society.  In fact I think that by this measure we find the true root of evil.  Only through seeking benefit to both yourself and society can we truly maximize the growth potential of the monetary system.  Is there some governmental role needed to enable or reinforce this focus? Probably, but we do not need to wait for governments to act since the market itself should be reward individual action.

A toast to happiness

This month I started to write 5 different blog posts. I haven't finished any of them.  They are all on different subjects.  I confess to being very distracted by several events in my life but as I look at the high level picture or what is common between all these starts I find the question why.  Why do we get up in the morning?  Why do we go to work?  Why do we strive.  At least for me personally the reason is not that the moments are all glorious.  In fact I have days and even weeks that are completely devoid of glory.  Psychology might say that the absence of glory is my own choice but in that absence I still get out of bed each morning I still go to work.  What is the reason?  In truth I'm not entirely sure what motivates me.  As a consequence I am definitely unsure about what motivates others.  I suppose that I could engage in some navel gazing and attempt to define my motivation .  I don't want to.  I want to determine how I should be motivated and work towards that instead.  In the end good things are done by people who strive.  Great things are done by groups of people who strive together.
After some thought I can only conclude that we must choose to strive.  In the best world I believe that the motivation for striving is not so much cause and effect as coexisting.  In other words I think we should strive and choose to be motivated when our striving succeeds.  Intentionally associating joy or happiness with striving is a choice we can all make.  An so I propose a toast to happiness and will invite readers to toast as well.  I propose to toast to happiness's both new and old.  I propose that we toast to large happiness's.  I would propose also that no happiness is too small for a toast.  I invite you to share you happiness in the comments.

Social Media - Oh My!

As I inferred in my first post I continue to try and select in my own mind my preffered way for a society of two or more to self organize.  I would like to believe that I prioritize practical solutions in this area and so part of my search includes engaging with society in established ways that seem to hold promise in areas that I am investigating.  Specifically I participate in the open source programming community and I volunteer with the local organization FreeGeek++.  As I have done these things I find myself fascinated by the ways that people collectively support some projects and not others.  Additionally, I watch the typical boom and bust cycles of these projects trying to understand why some people choose to engage and why most don't stick with it.  Yes, money is the great facilitator but it often forces a relationship on us that is sub-optimal.  Even the presence of money is not a guarantee of success as businesses in America have shown . Non-compensated endeavors therefore have the double burden of competing with compensated activities and must be compelling in both the end goal and specific opportunities to cooperate.  By participating in this environment I hope to find the most interesting and successful patterns.

The primary place to observe a cooperative project is through the various avenues of social media.  Often cooperative projects will even have more than one social media outlet.  As I peruse social media I would say that I am generally turned off by the vast majority of behaviors I find.  Even people that I admire sometimes fall under the spell of general snarkiness and derision found in most social media forums.  I suppose that removing a significant portion of our interactive communication, vision and sound, may make some people feel insulated from the consequences of their hatred when spewed in chat rooms and comments for news stories.  Vitriol like that is often perceived to be directed externally and therefore only damaging to the receiver.  While it does create a toxic environment for other members of the community I believe that it harms the sender most.  Respecting and valuing other people is hard in the context of our human imperfections and any time that we spend not working on improving our skills of respect we move farther away from the goal.  You might say, "my words are meant in the spirit of constructive criticism" and therefore even in the tone was harsh the intent was positive.  Therein lies the rub!

I have been intrigued by a couple of recent articles on radical candor and how it fits into the workplace but I have noticed that these principles are being used in the context of an employee / employer relationship.  Is there a way in social media to also be constructively critical?  I have come to the conclusion that the answer is no.  I based my conclusion on reviewing why decisions are made or actions are taken.  At the core, we are all individuals with very unique history, goals, and aspirations.  Even when we are participating wholeheartedly in a joint endeavor we generally all have a unique role to play with our own specific areas of responsibility.  These differences cannot be ignored for they form the basis for all of our decision making.  We often call this experience wisdom and value it greatly.  We must be very careful then when we observe actions and decisions especially in an unpaid relationship.  Constructive criticism isn't just received as a simple question of the narrow area of discussion but it carries an implied assessment of motivation as well as the whole background used in selection of a conclusion or action.  We may not even entirely realize the root of the emotions in our reaction to criticism.  It is not obvious even to ourselves that our subconscious is connecting all the dots in the decision to all of our history and knowledge.  It is patently ridiculous to believe that anyone truly knows what someone is thinking or feeling when they choose unless they have years of time.  (and even then we often get it wrong)

So if social media should not be used for constructive criticism should I then just emoji-hug everyone and depart?  I propose that social media can play a different role altogether.   To my mind what social media does best is to aggregate diverse ideas, values, and results for each of us to have easy access.  In truth all of this discussion of the best way to apply social media could be done in the context of common agreement on the optimal way we should cooperate.  If we aggregated the diversity of thought and then used a common framework to asses this range of ideas then we might supercharge our society.  In the absence of that common framework maybe we can work the problem in reverse.  I would like to take three common frameworks cooperation today and apply them to social media as it exists to find where it might be possible to leverage value.  To this point I would add that the optimal process for cooperation might be unknowable and that our very interesting future of cooperation is a journey of continuous improvement for which there is no end.

The first organizational model for inspection is the process based model of rigorously uniform societies.  In manufacturing they call this lean and the Toyota motor company has often been seen as the champion of this style.  This model should not be confused with 6-sigma process management no matter how much high paid pitch-men tell you otherwise.  The two are not completely mutually exclusive but they are very different areas of process focus.  All actions are managed from a central committee and while individual input is used it is only used when it can be vetted through a rigorous testing process.  In practice each element is in direct and continuous communication with all the elements around them and this does appear to match the social media model.  However, all communication in this model are defined and controlled to appropriate times and channels in service of a defined process.  This model can turn good processes into great processes and leverage the maximum return for the invested resource.  On the other hand actual innovation in this model is carefully planned and often produces fairly boring results.  I generally admire this style of management in large groups.  The issue is there is no place in this organization model for the diversity inherent in the social media today.  In fact communication in this model is a controlled process with rigorous rules.

The second organizational model is the command and control model.  When it is effectively implemented it often represents some blend of the process based model with some or a lot of flexibility placed in a few individual leaders.  Think of a quarterback on a championship football team.  As long as the 'flexible' leadership works within the capabilities of the organization and only calls for changes where the organization is capable and or works with the organization to build that capability during a period of respite where the organization can divert resources from output to change then this can be both a winning and efficient model.  The real time injection of flexibility also has a significant impact on the groups ability to innovate and adjust to changing circumstances.  This is the American business school model.  The Achilles heel of this method are found when the concepts outlined in a pre-depression era pamphlet are incorporated.  The failure occurs when leaders divorce themselves from the outcome and the process to achieve the outcome.  The message of the pamphlet being that if the action was not successful then it was the individual carrying out the action who did not invest sufficient effort not the mandate of the leader.  This assumption is fundamentally flawed.  When managers commit to the outcome but not the process it often produces different (potentially good?) results than the manager expects.  In this situation the manager is left to either fire the worker or work very hard to explain that this was really the intended result all along.  Who is in charge then?  Relating this back to social media you might propose that there is enough variety of opinion in this model to represent a social media environment.  I would point out that all of the versions of this are one way conversations and therefore more applicable to printed media than a global internet conversation.  (I am not unaware that unless people comment on this blog this is one way as well)

The final organizational model for review is nature.  This model is nearly pure base chaos with a heavy dose of natural selection returning the best.  Yes, this is a brutal reality at its base and of the three models it is the most resource intensive (read wasteful).  However, nature has given us some very beautiful things and in general humans have found a way to work within the system to be successful.  I would even argue that the core of our individualism is a biological drive to produce more options for natural processes to self select.   Not to be better than others as some would suggest.  While we may personally have our own best interests at heart the true value of diversity is not in the relative merit of each person but rather in the vast variety provided by all of society.  In the normal course of natural selection very narrowly focused mono-cultures will have die-off events when faced with cataclysm.    A diverse culture can often survive very large catastrophes.  As you can tell I believe this is the place where social media can shine.  The diversity of opinion is rich for innovation and unless all variations are investigated some potential will always be left on the table.  The genius of humankind (If we could be said to have one) is that we have learned to adjust our behaviors prior to die off events.  This ability to apply ongoing critical thinking and recognized personal value as we are exposed to new options is a form of natural selection that preempts necessity of nature to step in.  This model is the best fit for social media with it's diversity of opinions and it ability to respond to circumstances.

So if we are to leverage social media to it's fullest then what should be done?  If we follow natures model with social media then our interaction in general social media should be restricted to three types of postings.  One, post our own ideas and perspectives where we represent ourselves not our reaction to others.  The intent is to increase the diversity of the social media sphere.  Two, when responding to other postings we should limit ourselves to clarification questions or positive reinforcement of the perspective where that feeling is authentic.  The intent of this focus is to increase the content or reinforce diversity in the social media sphere not limit it.  Third, If we cull or block social media it should only be in the service of halting others who would artificially take on the role of natural selection.   I don't think this is done by spewing anger at them but where there is a mechanism have the posts removed or remove yourself from that forum with a gentle (general) explanation of why you find the forum inappropriate.  I still remember the old 70's commercial "don't mess with mother nature".  While the metaphor quickly breaks down, I still think if we attempt to artificially play the part of  natural selection with criticism, and are successful, then we will create a mono culture.  If we fail to cull ideas while using criticism then we will be rejected and no longer allowed to participate.   This is largely a loose / loose strategy.  Is natural selection the likely front runner for my preferred organizational model?  No, but I think allowing ideas to proliferate and live or die unimpeded by artificial selection is the best hope for arriving at good ideas.

postscript: I know that there are many animal kingdom examples of violence and attack.  You might say where is that expressed in your model of social media?  I would propose that in almost all of those cases from nature the violence comes from a place of exerting the animals natural self (eating for instance) and it does not come in the context of domination or forcing other animals to be like the attacker.  I would like to think that the capitalist marketplace is the human version of this violence and that a wolf would no more attempt to force a bunny to be a wolf than companies that buy each other are all that successful at the same task.

postcript (2016-4-13): I couldn't help adding this link since it embodies many of the ideas that have been thinking about.  It most especially embodies these ideas in the face of an alternate approach.

And so begins the Book of Jed!

• Why am I blogging?

I think I may be genetically predisposed to blog.  My brain is always spinning and as I observe the world around me I continue to see opportunities that are not realized, chances ignored, and rewards left on the table.  At some level I think I must be feeling the Sankhara-dukkha described in Buddhism, but I remain unconvinced that I should stop striving for improvement. The Greek philosopher Epicurus might even say that we only really know our 5 senses and that any expectation of actions from society which we seek, that is not certified by those senses, is at best an imagined model and likely to have errors. However, I continue to think that actions taken in the context of an optimized model has the potential of being trans-formative.  The scientist Heisenberg theorized that we might be able to affect things by just observing them.  As a detailed point there were some fallacies in his specific initial thesis but with regards to human nature the thesis is measurable validation in the Hawthorne effect.  I suppose that in my mind I would like to be offered the choice of observing the live cat in Schrödinger's thought experiment when both possibilities are available.  While I still sometimes choose the dead cat out of some perverse sub-optimized decision making I'm working on regularly focusing on the live one. 

• A Framework

The goal of this blog post is to lay out my current thinking on a basic framework for decision making in the context of interacting with others.  Aspirationally, if I follow these principles or even better participate in a community of others who also support these ideas I believe that many of my / the communities interactions will be improved.  In reality there is no community master plan in this post nor is there a defined path to economic benefit.  I think monetary or even societal benefit derives from a set of common rules that would exist above this framework.  The core intent of this framework is to provide value to myself and each practitioner independent of the society within which it is practiced.  I don't even feel this could rightly be labeled a flavor of morality since this framework is not predicated on the greater good by any definition. The elements are intentionally designed to not have external return on investment.  A proposed societal framework is an opportunity for another post when I circle in on something I feel passionate about.

My context for decision making also requires that the elements are ordered in a hierarchy.  Each incremental level is only valuable  in the context of proper support from the levels underneath.  The roof belongs on a house and the house sets on a foundation etc...  I have theorized four levels of interaction that I have assigned to words in English.  I say it in that way because I also have mentally assigned very specific definitions to these words. As I introduce the various levels I will attempt to also clarify the definition that I have assigned to the words. The levels in ascending order are respect, trust, teamwork, and love.

My version of the definition for respect is valuing life.  This includes plants and animals but our greatest social interaction with other entities falls in the human category.  Many people will define respect in a way that requires it to be earned.  In my definition respect is never earned it is only given.  When I require that the framework only applies to the actions of the individual performing them then it is impossible for others to influence these actions.  I agree that remembering the actions of others and the impact that it has on us and the world around us has value but I just don't think those actions line up with the concept I am representing here.  I believe that the discussion of relative merit of one action over another is better assigned to the concept of honor (or dishonor).  In this framework externally driven choices fail the requirements by definition.  I leave the comparison of the relative merits of this framework to other frameworks for the commentary or another post.

The initial response to this definition of respect may be that if I cannot withhold respect from other living beings based on their behavior without failing step one then at points in my life I may be required to respect murders and thieves.  Or worse members of an opposing political party or Man U. supporters. (Insert wry facial expression here)  I respond to this concern in two ways.  First, The minimum value of a murderers life to me is that I did not have to participate even collectively by taxation in murder myself.  I would even propose that that valuing that life which in the present is wrapped up in unacceptable actions could lead at some future point to great good perpetrated by that same being from within prison.  All potential future good is thrown away when I reject the objectionable present. Second, this definition for respect does not require that I allow that person to skip out on the punishment agreed to by society.  I am not even required by this respect to be in the presence of people making negative decisions that I cannot support.

In reality the vast majority of beings that we interact with are far higher in the spectrum of quality than thieves and murderers and yet we often insist that they justify their very existence before we acknowledge any value that they may have.  By doing this we have placed a burden on our interactions that is completely unsupportable procedurally.  To make matters worse, humans are intrinsically fallible and when rigorously extending a "proof of deserving respect" requirement I could logically conclude that we should all be hermits.  In practice we (correctly) do interact with others regularly but place on them an expectation of perfection that is not supportable.  The true damage of these "failures" is to ourselves as we live in continual anger and disappointment when (not if) others fail to conform to our mental requirements of them.  In practice even our own ability to respect others will not be consistent or universal.  It is a worthy lifetime goal to begin to show others we value their existence but we should begin where we are and grow from there.  The crazy thing is it can be as easy as saying hello to a stranger or just making eye contact and smiling.  By these small acts we can express the 'respect' that we have for their very existence.  When we implement this respect we place ourselves in a world where we have access to a near infinite supply of interesting and valuable people!

When defining trust I used the same framework restrictions I used to define respect.  Specifically I find it useful to define trust as placing ourselves in the physical or effective range of others actions and trust that we can remain sufficiently effective at achieving our own goals that we can allow the trustee to behave as they wish.  This requirement for freedom of action includes allowing others philosophical and procedural differences from us as well as the freedom to be fallible in executing their goals.  Like respect, trust must also be given without being earned and we cannot mandate some arbitrary philosophical framework or excellence in execution in order to deliver this trust. For most of today's society we have already placed ourselves in the effective trust range of hundreds of people.  You will immediately see that the difference between trust and respect is we often begin our self improvement journey under-respecting our associates and we may find that by this definition of trust we feel we have over-trusted our associates.  For people living in highly populated areas we are in the middle of the trust range of hundreds of thousands of people.  For example, when I get on the freeway each day to drive to work I find that I have chosen to trust around 50 random people driving close to me.  I trust that all of them will behave in such a way that we can all drive to our destinations in our respective vehicles without endangering each others lives or property.  The consequence of poor behavior in this situation can be catastrophic.  By this measure my trust in each of these strangers is extremely high.  Often on these drives I will be trusting people I have never interacted with before and might not ever interact with again.

It may be that upon reading this trust definition the conclusion would be to immediately begin our departure from our current society in order to seek a society of 'trust-able' associates.  This feeling may be exacerbated when I remind you that to implement this framework you must not only trust beings without restrictions on them but you must also respect anyone in whom you have placed your trust.  The balancing reward for the risk associated with trust is a worthy prize and must be considered when selecting when and where to place our trust.  The reward for trust is the ability and resources to focus on our own goals.  When we fail to trust in the people close enough for their actions to affect us, we are pulled from our own goals and find ourselves expending our efforts fighting to thwart or attempting to control others actions.  At this point I have given up self control to another without and in some cases specifically because I don't agree with them.  Without trust we loose our own freedom to act!  This is a precious resource that we should not give up so easily.  The nuance here is at this level of the framework we can select in whom and to what extent we place our trust.  Perfect implementation of this framework demands that everyone should receive respect, not everyone can our should receive our trust or all of our trust.  In the example of the murderer or thief we would respect but not trust them.  Our lack of trust is demonstrated by their incarceration.   (Which we had to expend effort to implement) Returning to the example of commuting, when I trust the other drivers in traffic and I respect their choice of traffic habits and imperfections in execution I am far more likely to arrive at my destination unharmed and calm than if I attempt to enforce my own driving style and emotional state on others around me.  I have just gained resources by that act and still achieved my overall goal of arriving at work.  I may have given up driving at my preferred speed or in my preferred lane but these do not even measure up to the risk of the injury and anger i could incur by enforcing the details of my preferred process on others.

As you may have surmised trust in the context of a society in true anarchy is likely unsustainable and the societal contexts for placing trust are relevant.  At the trust point and farther in the framework there is a bit of a chicken or egg problem that exists regarding the opportunity to implement these ideas and the enablers provided by our societal context.  On the other hand I strongly believe that implementation of the framework can enable society as well.  For the purposes of describing this framework I will not talk about any potentially optimized society to enable the framework, just emphasize that expanding our trust to the greatest extent that we can possibly sustain will bring to us the largest possible reward.   As highlighted in the highway example trust requires some compromise where it doesn't affect the overall goal.  Our ability to give trust can be strengthened with our capacity for compromise.  Additionally trust is the gateway to the next levels.  While each level of the framework is applied to smaller and smaller groups, if we fail to implement one level at all our ability to gain the rewards for the succeeding level(s) will be blocked completely.

Within the population of people that we have chosen to trust we can then select a group of people to cooperate with.  In this case I am referring to teamwork.  To take a different tack I will say that teamwork is not generally two people performing the same task.  Teamwork is not necessarily even two people agreeing on techniques to obtain an objective.  Teamwork at its simplest is two people finding a shared goal and agreeing to contribute individually in a way that exceeds the sum of the parts.  In most cases this represents a division of labor allowing each person to fulfill their section in the best way they are able.  The path to objectives is not always straight and continued communication is required to align with obstacles encountered along the way.  The freedom to implement each section should only be limited by the trust boundaries pre-existing in that relationship and any societal restrictions.  If the cooperation of two individuals does not produce superior results than one individual investing equivalent man hours it is not team work.  Among other desirable outcomes superior results can include finishing a task in a time based way where the earlier result has value over an equivalent later result.  Superior results can also include the output plus the increased ability of two people to work together after the project as compared to before.  Teamwork is where we supercharge our output.

Within our business and personal lives we have many examples of traditional styles of teamwork.  Many of these individual implementations do not strictly meet this frameworks definition of teamwork.  It should be noted though that often the failures are in the details of our own implementation not in the general team structure.  Additionally you might read this framework and say I have already engaged in a teamwork agreement where I may lack respect for my teammates, lack trust in my teammates, lack shared shared goals with my teammates, or even lack the freedom to implement my responsibilities to the team as I see fit.  First, especially in the USA where we desperately hold on to individualism at the expense of many other things, we should not forget that our responsibility to the team is for optimized output.  If the method we choose for contribution is a way that is less efficient than another method we are also capable of implementing, then the team (the other member at least) may correctly find someone else willing and capable of that more efficient implementation without violating the principles of teamwork.  If on the other hand we are producing in a way that meets our personal optimal output for our agreed-to contribution then our responsibility to the team is fulfilled.  This can be a soul baring introspective exercise to determine where and how we can improve our contribution.  In an environment of trust and respect, feedback from teammates can be invaluable as we make these decisions for ourselves.  This can be tricky,  have patience with yourself.

Often we are asked to measure ourselves and our performance against opportunities.  One possible way of perceiving our success is a measure of the teamwork opportunities enabled by the number and qualities of our skills that we use when engaging in teamwork.  A 'rich' person by this measure has more opportunity to engage with teams than they have time to invest to contribute to teams.  A 'poor' person will have fewer opportunities to engage in teamwork than they have time to contribute.  A truly 'poor' person in this context will often not have sufficient enabling skills to sustain themselves in a non-team based effort.  As a note; it is a paradox for the discussion on society that some narrowly but deeply skilled people are 'rich' by this context but do not have the depth to self sustain in a non-team environment.   It may even be said that this is true for a majority of the first world population.

Finally we come to love.  I want to be clear in this context I do not refer to romantic love.  For this framework love that I implement is the contribution in a teamwork style effort towards somebody else's objectives.  For teamwork to be successful there must be a shared purpose.  For love to be real the purpose should be entirely held by the recipient of the love.  Any self interest in the outcome of the effort turns my actions into teamwork.  For a truly optimized contribution to someone else's goal we must value their existence, trust their use of our contribution, sufficiently engage with them so that there is a common understanding of how to divide the labor necessary to achieve their goal and have no self interest in the outcome.   You cannot choose the outcome for a person to whom you wish to give love.  It must be their own choice. You cannot give them the output of their goal without them contributing as well because it is now just charity.  We must also contribute to love an output capacity greater than our personal consumption or love is unsustainable.  I suppose that the real question is why would I do this?  Up to teamwork I could be said to be driven by pure self interest.  I suppose that is why I chose the word love to represent this concept as it has some very fuzzy definitions.  In the end I have posited that to achieve truly valuable personal improvement where we exceed our intrinsic capacity as represented by a society of one we require objectives greater than those contributed by one person as well.