Economic Growth

I have read that the growth that has fueled the economy we have today may be coming to an end. These bloggers/authors all seem to be suggesting that we need to accept that and act accordingly. The focus now must be on sustainability, not growth.

I read more from Thomas Friedman, the author of the "World is Flat". He also wrote "That Used to Be Us"  along with Michael Mandelbaum, who is a leading foreign policy thinker. This book was more of a wake up call and a bit less optimistic than The "World is Flat".  They describe four challenges that we face: 

1. globalization
2. the revolution in information technology
3. the nation’s chronic deficits
4. our pattern of excessive energy consumption. 

While they do offer solutions, with the current political climate, it is difficult to believe the solutions will be implemented.

The 2012 election is very much about restoring the American economy but it is hard to see that happening regardless of the outcome. Friedman and Mandelbaum do believe that the recovery of American greatness is within reach. They show how America’s history, offers a formula for prosperity that will enable us to cope successfully with the challenges we face. 


 
Building on the success of his book, "Does IT Matter?" Nicholas Carr wrote "The Big Switch. " This looks at how a new computer revolution is reshaping business, society, and culture.

Another book with a similar theme, "The Third Industrial Revolution, " author Jeremy Rifkin discusses how internet technology and renewable energy will merge to create a powerful “Third Industrial Revolution.”  He paints a picture where hundreds of millions of people produce their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and share it with each other in an “energy internet,” just like we now create and share information online.  He believes it will create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and bring us a new paradigm of human relationships. This change will facilitate a move from hierarchical to lateral power and will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.

 
Michael Lewis in "Boomerang"  takes on topics like European sovereign debt and the International Monetary Fund,  making them comprehensible and fascinating. He gives us a guided tour through some of the differing places hard hit by the fiscal crisis of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland. He suggests how different people for very different reasons made grave economic errors with the cheap credit available.  He is literally an economic disaster tourist as he travels to these countries to understand what went wrong.  Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted money for everyone with little work.  The Germans wanted to be even more German and the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. He also includes California and Washington, DC in his financial tourism.   Lewis also wrote, "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" which was a bestselling 2010 book.

 
In "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas" by Matt Miller suggests that there are 6 dead ideas.  

1) each generation can expect a rising standard of living  

2) free trade is always good  

3) employer-provided healthcare benefits are the only way 

4) tax rates are too high  

5) local school financing is good and 

6) free market outcomes are just and fair.  

The author contends only top business executives can spearhead new ideas since power-driven politicians are incapable of such leadership. He suggests that the skill and speed with which people cope will be the key to success and those slow to adapt will be punished faster and more harshly.


And finally, I read "Republic Lost" by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig. His focus was on what is wrong with the political system, in an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government. With recent changes in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, our trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.
His book describes how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left, Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He reveals the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that the average reader can understand. He ultimately calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.  While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it.

 

 

Great Conversations

My goal for this blog has always been to try to reframe ideas so that my reader might see a new way to proceed out of the quagmire where we often seem to be stuck. To gain inspiration, I have been reading a lot of books written in the last couple years. And I plan to continue that trend. But with a recent gift of a new Kindle, it has made it easier for me to also read the classics so I joined an online group called  Great Conversations.

Right now, we are reading William James and that was a great place to start as I have some history reading James. I have particularly enjoyed his writing on the topic of habits. We all make New Year's resolutions to change our "bad habits" and exercise more, eat better, or strive to be more forgiving and kind.  We usually think of changing our way at the local level. And in many cases, we do not undertake the change at all because old habits are hard to break.

Nationally, as Bill McClellan, a journalist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, pointed out, we have become like a dysfunctional marriage. We are more interested in proving the other party is wrong than in really solving any of our problems. And a divorce might be necessary for the sake of the kids, but it is virtually impossible. So our best bet may be to go to counseling and see if we can change our bad habits.

One of our bad habits involves throwing around economic terms that no one really understands, capitalism, socialism, free markets, or communism. It is hard to discuss new ideas unless you have the language to do so. We have images associated with these words that scarcely reflect the reality of what those terms mean in terms of our own economic realities. I challenge us to take each sector of our economy and examine what part the government plays and how things really work. Then perhaps we can come up with new words. Agriculture in America is hardly an example of capitalism or free markets at work nor is it truly socialism. Food is our most key and elemental need. When we do see free markets at work, i.e. the movement to buy organic, we still see a dangerous mix of government regulation and profiteering.

We need to expand our language to describe new models and we need to create new habits when discussing and governing. If we don't, we will forever be stuck in the past and some group/country/sector or movement that is able to form a new paradigm will pass us by.

I think there are the limits on the Occupy Wall Street protestors ability to affect lasting change. They do not have the ability to articulate a different vision than their current reality and they are following in the footsteps of all the other talking heads and using the habit of anger instead of building a new way of approaching politics.

 

The art of being wise is
the art of knowing
what to overlook.

William James
Principles of Psychology

Reality is Broken and Why Games Make us Better

This book by Jane McGonigal has forever changed the way I look at the time spent playing games. During college, I spent untold hours playing Galaxia on an old-fashioned video game console in the lobby of my dorm. The reason that I finally stopped was that I was so good, I could just play for hours  and had to intentionally miss just so I could stop and go on with my day. Since then, I haven't been much of a gamer. I did play Mafia Wars on Facebook and we do have Wii which has been fun but not really addicting. Wii Fit ended up being just like joining a gym, something I tried to avoid. 

At any rate, this book makes a number of very interesting points. First, that the engineers that design games could be considered happiness engineers. No one else has studied happiness to the same extent. Games provide more satisfying work than most of our jobs allow. She focuses on the MMP RPG types. These are massive multi-player, role playing games. They also provide social connectivity and the chance to be part of something bigger than yourself.

She outlines some of the benefits of alternate reality games which are designed to make your real life better with games like Chore Wars. We all want to be able to level up in life and games make that so easy by defining clear goals and immediate tangible rewards. As a matter of fact, good games are defined by goals (providing a sense of purpose), rules (which are composed of un-necessary obstacles), a feedback system and voluntary participation.
 
She describes a number of games that build temporary communities out of total strangers. She also suggest that in an effort to attain happiness, the self help movement causes people to try too hard. Happiness is best approached by not trying so hard. She suggest that a hack can be our best approach when trying to better tune our lives. Making real change is difficult for us but a hack, where you spend just a short time each day engaged an activities that can ultimately lead to real change can be a better approach. Games make it easier to try out good advice. She was even able to get healthier using a game that she invented herself called Super Better. Compared to games, reality is unambitious. Games can help us define epic goals and tackle major social missions.

 
Games can help us build collaboration superpowers. We are in the age of human impact on the earth.  Good games that can help us solve real problems are just starting to surface. These games are often called "god games" such as "The Sims". The most epic god game yet is called "Spore". But there is also an epic game with real world consequences,  called "World Without Oil".  A large scale game, studies found that game participants often became what have been termed, SEHI types, or super-empowered-hopeful individuals. SEHIs don't wait around for someone else to save the world but believe they can do it.

The author's ten year forecast group also looked for a word that describes the overall solution structure and coined the term, superstruct. The group then launched a massive multiplayer forecasting game by that name.

The four traits that define a superstruct are:

1-brings 2 or more communities together to solve a problem
2-the problem is big or complex
3-a superstruct harnesses the talents, resources, skills, and activities of each group
4-it is fundamentally new, an idea no one has tried before

There is even the concept of a long game, one that is played over generations.  
This book really challenges some of my assumptions. At work, as we are hiring a number of young college grads and this book gives me a different perspective on how to manage this new generation. They are digital natives and have game based childhood experiences? 

And finally, this book also left me feeling a bit like I could be a SEHI. I cannot help but keep my eyes open for opportunities to build the right superstruct and see if my communities can change the world.

Practical Wisdom

• Where are we going?
• Who gains and who loses? and by which mechanisms of power?
• Is this development desirable?
• What should we do about it?

In "Practical Wisdom" , Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe take on the topic of wisdom.  Aristotle distilled the concept in his classic book, Nicomachean Ethics. It is about figuring out the right way to do the right thing in a particular circumstance. We need to develop certain characteristics, like loyalty, self-control, courage, fairness, generosity, gentleness, friendliness, truthfulness, perseverance, integrity, an open-mind, thoroughness, and kindness. It is not always about being nice, it is about doing the right thing, even if it hard.

With wisdom, comes meaningful work, and happiness. The 6 virtues are courage, humanity, love, justice, temperance, transcendence, knowledge, and wisdom. Eventually, we can find authentic happiness.

 

The Watchman's Rattle

 

This book, "The Watchman's Rattle"  by Rebecca D. Costa is one of the most view altering books that I have read in some time.

The basic premise starts with the idea that the point where a society can no longer "think" its way out of its problems is called cognitive threshold. Historically, this is when most great societies collapse, i.e. the Mayans.  Society can advance when there is a balance between two human needs, belief and knowledge. But when things become too complex, beliefs take over in the forms of super memes. A meme is any widely accepted information, tradition or theory. For the Mayans, the idea that human sacrifice would solve very complex problems started to make sense when knowledge took a back seat.

She describes 5 super memes that are causing our world to fail in our attempts to solve very complex problems, such as climate change, terrorism, economic collapse, hunger, water shortage, over population among others.

1-Irrational opposition   It is easier to be against something than to offer a solution. I often see this with the anti-abortion groups. They never offer up any real solution but just oppose, oppose, oppose. But in general, this seems to be rampant in all political discourse today. Anti-gay marriage groups are another classic example. They define their selves by what they are against.

2-The personalization of blame   If a terrorist gets through security, the fault goes back to an individual, not the systemic root cause. Again, this is easy, get rid of the "person" and you are good to go.  That also happened with the economic collapse and the failure of the automakers, it must be the fault of the CEO alone. No one wanted to look at the complex situation that led to the collapse.

3-Counterfeit correlation   Raising taxes causes job loss. Really? or does it correlate. Knowing the difference is pretty important.

4-Silo Thinking   This comes from too much specialization. No one keeps their eye on the big picture.

5-Extreme economics  Everything cannot be solved with economic solutions. What about human kindness?

So, what do we do? How do we avoid the path of all prior civilizations?

1-Acknoweldge the patterns of collapse

2-Guard against super memes

3-Buy time using venture capital models which include parallel incrementalism. This means trying lots of different things at the same time, some will work and some will fail. That is how venture capitalists make money, they invest in lots of ideas and a few of them turn out to be so successful that it makes up for the failures.

4-Developing our brain power that will ultimately result in insight that leads to solutions.
And there are lots of things we can do to improve our brains, some very simple such as walking on un-even surfaces. That sounds dumb but it is really a challenge and not something you can easily program a robot to do because it so complex though we do it easily. It challenges the mind in a similar way to puzzles, like crosswords or sudoku.
 
In conclusion, we need to challenge our brains to make new connections, think of things in new ways and perhaps our planet will have an epiphany, an Ah-ha moment that changes everything.

And that is what this blog is all about. We need to avoid the polarized political discourse. And instead frame things in new ways. This is NOT the same old stale liberal vs conservative arguments of the past.

Born on the wrong continet

When I was growing up, I had a great appreciation for how lucky that I was to be born in America. That feeling has never left but as I have grown older, I have also realized that we have our faults. No place is nirvana and no place has quite the same sense of options you perceive when you are young. As you grow older, the US has some major drawbacks. Because we do not have the kind of social democracy that you find in Europe or the safety nets that you find in certain other places, we lose some of our freedoms as we get older. Once you are my age, the ability to start all over again and reinvent yourself is not quite as easy. I could stand to have a few more assurances like guaranteed health insurance.

Most of Europe and Canada have had gay marriage or civil unions for years. They have all kinds of things in place to guarantee equality and opportunity for all. So when we say that we are the home of the free, well we have our limits.  I have married the person I love and the government continues to find fault with that choice so I don't get the few safety net protections that are in place. Neither do my friends that are single.

In Germany, you will still find worker engagement in running the companies that employ them. They have more vacation time, shorter work weeks and yet a higher actual level of productivity  I can believe that because while I see others and myself work crazy long hours, I often wonder if we really get that much done after about 35.  From there, productivity diminishes a great deal.  By 60 hours, we are all pretty useless. But many, many folks still feel compelled to work 50 + hours weeks.

I am still patriotic in the sense that I want what is best for me and my fellow citizens but I took the blinders off a long time ago.  It is time to look around at other economies and see what works and what doesn't. I would also like to see us manufacture more like the Germans. They produce more high end items that do not directly tie to killing or blowing up anyone. It is also important to consider the rest of the planet. We are all human beings after all and the more global our world becomes, the more obvious it should be that we are all in this together.

Health Insurance

I was talking to someone at work the other day, someone that didn't know how close I was creeping up to age 50. He suggested that what we really need is for the baby boomers to retire and open up a number of jobs and advancement for the next generation. This would provide openings for the newly graduated. I don't disagree.

What is keeping the older crowd in place is two things. First, their retirement accounts have yet to rebound and the fear has pushed a lot into safer places than the stock market so the growth is even slower. The second problem is that it is virtually impossible to get health affordable health insurance from the age  of 50 to 65. The health care package is in jeopardy. So what can the older crowd do except keep on working.

This is an issue that has to be addressed. We need to find a way for the 50-70 year old group to work without clogging up the works for the younger crowd. This is a group that is still vibrant, ready and willing to stay in the workforce and can provide value. A group that needs to keep building up their retirement funds. But also a group that is ready to look at more time off, a need for a slightly lower level of stress, a need for more flexibility as they are often caring for aging parents as well as grown children. We need a new paradigm. My mother, like many of the WWII generation, got early retirement in her fifties that came with a guaranteed income and health insurance that lasted until SS kicked in. Those days are over.

Globalization

Someone forwarded me an e-mail today suggesting that when I call a help desk, if I get a non-US based person helping me, I should politely ask for an American. But there is a catch. Do we like our inexpensive gadgets? Do we really want to pay more? It is even possible that once this foreign help desk person raises their standard of living that they will buy some of the more advanced gadgets that are produced here.

But there is one thing that I think we should pay more for and as much as possible, consume from local sources, Food! So I brought up Barbara Kingsolver earlier. While we may not all want to actually produce our own food, which is a lot of work, I do see value in her experiment as a writer. It was to answer the question "Can I eat only locally grown foods for a year?" It would be interesting to see a return to the real family farm, the kind that grows vegetables and produces animals and therefore is sustainable. We should be willing to pay more for food, not computers. And if we were, and the number of local farmers increased exponentially, we could provide jobs as well as become more healthy.

Is this advancement or is it going back to the past? This is one I struggle with?

Reflections on the tragedy in Arizona

I have been worried since President Obama took office that we would see a resurgence of the vigilante anger we saw during the Clinton administration. It was the same fuel that brought us the Oklahoma City bombing and now this. Oklahoma City did not fundamentally change the ugly discourse in this country but I do wonder if this time, we will see real change.

Many optimistic predictions for a new progressive cultural shift, the very reason I hopefully started this blog, tell us that things will be at their worst right before shift takes hold. I hope that this might be it.  I will never understand why health care reform causes such fear. Clearly the paradigm of work has changed so why should one of the key ties to the workplace, i.e. benefits packages such as this not also need a re-examination. Is the plan that was passed last year the final solution to a very difficult issue? No, but it was a first attempt at a new paradigm and one that I believe would benefit the average American.

And yet somehow, there is all this anger. I see Sarah Palin and her target map, and here we are today. Another crazy, unspeakable act has led to such loss. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the completely innocent little 9 year old girl that lost her chance to live was born into this world on Sept. 11, 2001, the day the same kind of irrational anger and fear took away so much life.

Anger Management

When I first started hearing about the tea party, my first thought was that an anger management program could help. As you can see from the links below, I was not alone in that idea.

Anger Management provided

We all have experienced times where something sets us off and we lash out in the wrong direction. While I try to avoid day to day politics on this blog, I do think this topic should be considered when we look at the barriers to advancement. Why are people so resistant to new ideas such as a single payer health care system or changing the tax structure?

I think it is because change often impacts the folks who once thought they had it made and removes all their old safe assumptions. So if I started out 25 years ago thinking that the paradigm of getting a certain kind of good job, living with some level of mortgage, car payment and credit card debt was the ideal way and now that has all changed, I am angry at where I stand today. Perhaps I even thought I could pick a career and work in that field until retirement. When some of your assumptions don’t pan out, rather than start with a whole new slate, most people opt to at least hang on to what they know of the past. That is why people who most need the safety net of universal health care are at the same time adamantly opposed. I know one thing, if there is any hope that we can solve our issues in a new economy, it is critical that people can change jobs or start their own business without jeopardizing their access to health care.

my first thoug