Short Articles on Society & Social Justice
#224 – Deploying Machine Learning in the fight for kindness
May 29th, 2020
“It’s harder to be kind than to be clever. It’s the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice.” Bezos, in a commencement address in 2010 to the graduates at Princeton (his and Mackenzie’s alma mater). Sources: 1 (speech full text), 2 (reflection), 3 (article CNBC)
Enter machine learning algorithm UR-V2 (Unfriendly Robot, version 2) deployed by the widely used professional coding forum Stack Overflow. What does it do? For those who are clever but who don’t chose kindness, or, who are, shall we say, in the early stages of their kindness development journey, UR-V2 is an artificial intelligence to help clever folks be a better version of themselves. Think of UR-V2 as your little kindness angel, or in the console metaphor of emotional intelligence provide by Inside Out, we may need to add Kindness as a new sixth member to the crew of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust.
The UX stats from Stack Overflow following deployment of UR-V2 are interesting. After the initial, expected, and quite passionate debate over free speech vs. appropriate environment, the code was deployed, and the latest survey shows a 15% improvement in site atmosphere perceived by its users. Is it any worse off for false positives? Not as far as the data can tell. Is there a risk that over-zealous policing makes clever contributors turn away from the site? This will be the point to watch as UR-V2 evolves and logs more time “on the beat”.
In the meantime, it is worth a moment of reflection for those who are clever, in every profession and walk of life, who are resistant to making the effort to be kind, that they may find themselves gradually replaced by those who are BOTH clever AND kind, a guided social evolution that makes Stack Overflow a notable exception to other social media platforms.
In the resurgent debate around fact checking, censorship, and free speech that is current in the Twitter-sphere and US politics, this action by Joel Spolsky/Jeff Atwood and the smart folks at Stack Overflow is a pioneering experiment hopefully gets the attention of Jack Dempsey (Twitter) and Marc Zuckerberg (Facebook). It is perhaps the next obvious step in what we have already tacitly accepted in rather successful machine learning policing of our inboxes from spam.
#219 – Thomas Picketty: A New Look at Inquality in the 21st century
May 18th, 2020
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and Capital and Ideology are the labors of French / former MIT economist Thomas Picketty who, over the two decades since he began studying economics, has gone from centre-left to radical-left as he built the world’s first and most detailed Wealth Inequality Database (WID). What he has learned on the Economics of Inequality will ring especially loudly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic that has ripped aside the curtain hiding what has been quietly facing us all – that the world is now more unequal, and accelerating this inequality, than ever before.
Article: Wired.
#216 – COVID-19 Endgames
Apr 8th, 2020
- What if asymptomatic carriers of COVID is indeed 81%? This is the number estimated from the first study of a completely enclosed population, the passengers aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It should make it easier for the virus to continue to be transmitted as lockdown measures are eased, but also hasten unplanned “herd immunity” as more are likely to have had it than we currently realize.
- The pace of economic recovery is going to be super slow. Consider the survey of key service sectors in the US in May:
Source
The recovery of US economic activity vs. normal levels for a sample of service sectors in May.
- Coronavirus is a whole body disease impacting the lungs, heart, blood vessels, liver, kidneys, gut, brain, and eyes.
- Evidence that Vitamin D deficiency increases susceptibility to COVID-19
- The 6 weeks Nov 17th – Dec 31st
- The first 100 days – Dec 31st (27 cases, 0 dead) to April 8th (1,426,096 cases, 82,020 dead) (CNN timeline)
- Dec 31st, 2019 China informs WHO of a new illness that had infected 27 with 7 critically ill.
- Jan 9th – first death in China (9 days from WHO report) of a 61 year old man with severe underlying health conditions.
- Jan 21st first case in US (Washington State)
- Jan 22nd Wuhan travel lockdown [lasts 11 weeks to April 2nd].
- Jan 31st first cases in UK.
- Feb 19th first death in Iran
- Feb 20th first death in South Korea
- Feb 22nd first death in Italy and lockdown in Lombardy (N. Italy) [11 weeks later is May 9th]
- Feb 29th first US death.
- Mar 5th first UK death.
- Mar 8th Italy expands lockdown to 14 northern states.
- Mar 17th France goes into nationwide lockdown
- Mar 22nd first two cases in Gaza Strip
- Mar 23rd UK goes into lockdown [11 weeks later is Jun 8th].
- Mar 24th India ges into lockdown [11 weeks later is Jun 9th].
- Mar 27th Boris Johnson gets COVID-19
- Mar 30th US states issue stay-at-home directives.
- April 2nd Wuhan lockdown eased [10 weeks later].
- April 5th Boris Johnson enters hospital (9 days later)
- April 7th Wuhan travel lockdown ends [11 weeks later]. Wuhan/Hubei emerges from lockdown 76 days late (11 weeks, 2.5 months, Wed Jan 22 – Wed 8 Apr) It can end!
- April 8th, 2020 – 1,426,096 confirmed, 82,020 dead, epicenter moving from China to Italy to Europe to US.
- May 6th, 2020 – Europe starts emerging from lockdown, led by Italy, approx. 2.5 months from first lockdowns.
- The lag in metrics — it takes at least 30 days from catching coronavirus to a resulting death to be reported (best case).
#215 – COVID-19 Preparedness Pack
Mar 22nd, 2020
- Must View: COVID-19 Metrics Deck – Financial Times
- Roundup News: Guardian Live
- Deprecated: COVID-19 Dashboard, Johns Hopkins University, latest numbers & interactive map by country & region, Professor Lauren Gardner, et.al., from Jan 22nd (43,141 worldwide cases 23rd Jan, 307,278 cases 22nd Mar, with 1.2 billion daily requests for the map’s data, 2.4M cases 20th April — notice the acceleration: 7x growth in first two months, 7x growth in past month. Prediction: 8M infected by May 20th best case if worldwide lockdowns are effective in slowing spread.) Good news — May 25th, worldwide cases are 5.5M, the spread is slowing.
- Must Read: Getting along with family and elderly parents during lockdown.
- Must Read: Make your own hand sanitizer
- Must Read: How the Pandemic will end., by Ed Yong, Mar 25th, 2020, Atlantic. This is grim reading but it seems well within the range of possibility.
- Must Read: Imperial College of London’s paper (PDF, 20 pages, 1 page excellent summary), Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, Neil M. Ferguson, et.al., Mar 16, 2020
- Must Skim: Summaries of all 10 Report findings from the MRC Centre for Infectious Disease Analysis (CIDA) at Imperial College London, from 17th January (Report #1) when there were only 3 known cases outside Wuhan and an upper estimate of 4000 cases in Wuhan, to 20th March (Report #10) when the pandemic is worldwide, several countries are in lockdown (Italy, Spain, France), with many more countries within and outside Europe having already launched harsh suppression measures (social distancing and home restrictions, mandatory closure of schools, universities, and non-essential services such as restaurants, bars, pubs, public transportation). Current known mortality rates: 1% under 50 years, up to 15% 80 years+.
- Must Read: Timeline – what happened and when, Johns Hopkins University
- Must Read: COVID-19 Basics, from Johns Hopkins University (how it is spread, how long it lasts on surfaces, more about social distancing measures)
- Must Read: In younger infected, death can come through a blood clot inducing a stroke. Treatment is possible if the clot is removed within 6-24h. Do not delay calling an ambulance if this affects you or a loved one.
With the additional time indoors, what are you watching? If a little gut-punchingly relevant cinema is to your taste, here are a few titles:
- World War Z (2013), Brad Pitt
- Last Days on Mars (2013), Liev Schrieber. (And then heck, for a trip further away, Passengers (2016), Jennifer Lawrence, Laurence Fishburne)
- I am Legend (2007), Will Smith
- This list by Vulture, shares 68 pandemic movies. Binge away!
#214 – Coronavirus – When things change and can never go back
Mar 20th, 2020
There are pivotal moments in history when things change after which we cannot easily go back. the aftermath is often unimaginable, and alters the arc of history. Here are a few in the last 20 years: (1) September 11th, 2001. Airline travel was one of many things that changed permanently. The decision of George W. Bush’s U.S. to pursue Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (that fateful yellow cake mobilization at the UN) set in motion a series of destabilizing events that led ultimately to demise of Iraqi control of large areas of its territory and the rise of Islamic State. (2) The collapse of Bear Sterns in 2008 as part of the sub-prime mortgage driven financial collapse was another. The Great Recession that followed arrested growth and brought an austerity to the West that has laid heavily on millions, sowing in turn the economic discontent that, among other drivers, has fueled the rise of nationalism, the Tea Party, Donald Trump, and Brexit. (3) And now we have COVID-19 that began quietly in December 2019 and has exploded into a global pandemic from February 2020. We cannot tell the story of the aftermath now, but there are a few possibilities if the self-isolation is prolonged, and if infection returns for second and third waves in countries where the first wave subsided.
- How Coronavirus started – Scientists track down the virus to bats (96% match), Sky News, March 18th, 2020
- H1N1 (Influenza Type A, or common flu) has had two previous pandemics: 1918 Spanish Flu which infected 25% of the world population of 2.0 billion people, with a 10-20% mortality rate, and 2009 Swine Flu which infected 10-20% of the world population of 6.8 billion people, with a 20-40% mortality rate.
- This is how the Covid Pandemic is going to end in the U.S., Atlantic, Ed Yong
This may force:
(A) change in how we value societal contributions and wealth inequality. The person milking the cows, packing and delivering packages, the teller at the grocery store, the dock worker unloading bags of grain, teachers holding the line in schools, garbage collection workers picking up rubbish so we don’t get diseased neighborhoods — all of these less visible contributors to our society that in the old system were less valued, these are the ones that will be keeping our civilization propped up. Will this lead to a restructuring of the economic system? There will for sure be opposition, but this may be the moment that forces the issue.
The inadequacy of the social safety net in Britain
Poverty kills people
How the wealthy stand to win again in the post-COVID crisis, Gary Stevenson
(B) change in how we create and supply food. Each person with a garden may well need/be required to cultivate a basic local food supply: grains, legumes, herbs, vegetables, fruits, perhaps supplemented with chickens (for eggs). Instead of moving lawns and fields, and putting the grass into mulch, we may switch to goats that at least convert grass into milk and cheese. Instead of processed foods, we may opt for local processing, e.g. home milling machines for turning dry rations into flour in 60 seconds or less.
UK panic food buying puts £1B of extra food in British homes, but creates shortages across the nation.
3M people in UK are part of households where someone is forced to skip at least one meal because of insufficient access to food.
Famine and hunger epidemic predicted for developing countries that are unable to maintain food supply chain and do not get sufficient aid, 250m at risk of death due to starvation.
Mountains of food waste in corporate farms in the US even as food bank lines get longer
(C) change in how we think about finances, freedoms, and government responses to crises.
- In France, Macron suspended rents and mortages for a month.
- In China, the government locked down cities, deploying the military to enforce strict compliance.
- Italy was too slow in locking down, and its death toll at 4,800 (Mar 22nd) surpasses China’s at 3,200.
- In the U.S., Trump has tried denial and disinformation losing precious time to get a jump on the infection.
- US: incitement to disobey: what happens when the elected president incites his supporters to gather in definance of his own federal government’s social distancing guidelines, in calls to “liberate states”.
- UK’s Johnson government headed for “herd immunity” as Plan A, and then struggled to switch to a credible Plan B after maths modeling showed Plan A to be a catastrophic misjudgment, inexplicably dismantling track and trace, leaving Care Homes lightly protected, and allowing mass gatherings and sporting events to continue (each one of these has been shown to have contributed 30-50 additional deaths)
- After Italy and Spain’s troubles, the rest of Europe moved fast, and the result is that Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg bent the curve as fast as S. Korea did.
- How Corona Virus will destroy the economy, Ruchir Sharma, March 16th, 2020, New York Times
- Lockdowns in Wuhan (January), Italy (Mar 8th), France, Spain, UK…; Manchester Evening News, March 19th, 2020
- Half Measures – Will the tenderfooting in UK be viewed kindly in hindsight?, Mark Steel, UK Independent, March 19th, 2020
- UK: what happens when those who are elected to undermine the state are faced with leading it in the hour of its crisis. (Guardian, 20th April)
- Monetary Theory debates: Should governments with sovereign currencies essentially print money to pay for the pandemic bailouts (Modern Monetary Theory), or issue interest-bearing bonds (Classic Monetary Theory)?
- Incompetence in Government heads leading COVID response:
(D) change in how we work and care for children. With the suspension of schools for possibly several months, and widespread self-isolation, families with young children and two working parents are facing the realities of managing it all.
(E) deceleration in global warming as economic activity crashes during cities in lockdown, leading to almost immediate drops in air pollutants and emissions, the results of which were visible within 1-2 weeks from satellites in the sky.
Emissions fall as cities go into lockdown, Matt McGrath, BBC News, Mar 19th,2 020
(F) people turning on each other
Racial profiling against Muslims in India risks targeting 200m people.
In the E.U., despite the coming together of individuals and local communities, the European Union has been unable to show institutional solidarity and a common unity.
In the U.S., federalism is under pressure as the central government trades accusations with states about “stockpiling” needed supplies and withholding these from worst hit states.
Across the world, domestic violence is increasing as relations fray in families thrown together for extended periods of time. Coping skills, emotional resilience, and the ability to communicate effectively and get along has never been greater within family units.
(G) change in rights to privacy and surveillance technology
Testing and contract tracing are the two known ways of combatting coronavirus spread. But with that comes the conundrum of avoiding surveillance while yet being able to rapidly contact all known contacts of anyone who tests positive. Singapore launched and open-sourced TraceTogether. Goole, Apple, and European governments have found it harder to agree on how to do this.
(H) will there be a change in how we view competence in our politicians? This one I am not so sure of.
Whether one, all, or more strands form the aftermath, one thing seems clear already. 2020 will likely join 2001 and 2008 as the year when everything changed.
#212 – Coronavirus may be the first serious decelerant to globalization
Mar 3rd, 2020
Globalization has been accelerating for almost 50 years, since 1976, when the last ties to the gold standard were removed, freeing monetary policy from commodity restrictions. In those c.50 years, gold pricing has gone from c.$40 per troy ounce to over $1000, a 25x increase reflecting the expansion of capital.
Governments across the world have established free trade agreements and reduced tariffs and other barriers to the movement of goods and people.
At the same time, transportation and telecommunications advances have shrunk the globe meaning that now people and products can go from one side to the other in a matter of hours rather than weeks or months previously.
This combination of capital expansion, free movement, and technological advance has powered a businesses juggernaut, aligned primarily toward a global, just-in-time supply chain, and optimized on the assumption that it is stable.
Coronavirus is the first real challenge to the global order. Containment measures that involve shutting down cities are having an immediate and devastating impact on economic productivity, sector by sector. Satellite imagery shows that pollution above China has become almost non-existent in the past two months as economic activity has been forcefully restricted.
But what happens now to the grind of the economic clock: millions of people will have bills come due, payments to make, debts to pay, rents to pay, food to buy. If containment measures spread across the globe (as many expect they will), the economic toll will start to drive large numbers of people into bankruptcy and create financial upheaval.
What happens next will be eye-opening. Some options: companies without sufficient product flows will reduce advertising, impacting revenues in advertisers, manufacturers will see slowdowns in order pipelines and not need as many workers, retailers seeing slowdowns in inventory, footfall, and willingness/ability for consumers to spend, will start to contract, and may also reduce staff. The rise in unemployment and general wage insecurity will lead to constricting of demand, further impacting orders, purchasing, and contributing to a vicious cycle.
Related reading:
1. Coronavirus and the disperate dilemna
2. History of Globalization
3. Globalization examples through history
4. Bubonic plague, the best known example of a global pandemic spread by trade. First in c576 AD killing 50 million people over 2 centuries, second c.1375 AD killing 50 million people, third in the mid 1800s with more limited deaths (est. ~200k).
5. History of the Gold Standard
6. Why the US abandoned the gold standard.
#210 – How Coronavirus was fanned into an epidemic by the desire to maintain the facade that nothing was wrong
Feb 11th, 2020
The highly visible writhings of western democracy (Trump impeachment, Brexit, Berlusconi trial, Salvini’s succession), provides a sharp contrast with the disciplined progress-oriented Chinese political system. The rise and spread of Coronavirus shows the “Achilles heel” of the Chinese system: an overriding obsession with maintaining stability.
This article [1] is grim reading, showing:
- how the epidemic started, like Sars and Ebola, in an illegal wildlife trading market,
- how warnings from medical authorities were ignored and the same medical staff were reprimanded for spreading illegal rumours,
- how, despite reporting the situation to the World Health Organization (WHO), Chinese officials allowed three separate mass gatherings to occur in the outbreak region of Wuhan, including a state sponsored government banquet for 5 million
- how, in the continued attempt to maintain normalcy, this stream of infected humanity was allowed to disperse back to their communities across China and around the world, after which officials quarantined and shutdown a nearly empty city
Reading:
[1] Coronavirus: China and the virus that threatens everything (Feb 11, 2020)
[2] (#59) Ebola: how culture and politics affect this deadly disease (Sep 11, 2014)
[3] Italy: the rise of Coronavirus in Italy(Mar 11, 2020) The problem is that we see the infection curve follow a similar pattern in Italy, suggesting the mathematics of interaction and infection rate dominated the spread, and was much less disrupted by Italy’s actions than we thought.
[4] US: how capitalism and the threadbare welfare state may make the U.S. much the vulnerable country in the world to Coronavirus. Deductibles and co-pays may discourage Americans from getting checked, no illness pay in 39 states may discourage Americans from self-quarantining, limited testing kits in hospitals and a decentralized for-profit health care system may mean the U.S. is unable to contain the early spread even if it would like to, Trump’s attempt to maintain the facade of normalcy is as opposed to the facts as China’s was.
[5] How China and Singapore have been able to cap the further spread of COVID-19 (Mar 15, 2020) Since the early reluctance to admit the problem, China has since mustered all its muscle to slow and stop transmission growth – quarantining of cities (57M people), forced closure of schools, factories, workplaces, public transport, mandatory temperature testing upon entering a building, mandatory use of a face mask, building of two new hospitals in a week, bolstering of 5G internet to facilitate remote working, forced changes in banking to remove financial penalties associated with payment delays.
#203 – The 21st Century “Great Challenge”: How to distribute wealth and opportunity beyond privileged places and people
Sunday 10th November, 2019
The recent history of Milan (Italy) is the story of mega-cities across Europe (London, Paris, Munich, Barcelona, Madrid) US (Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston) and around the world (Istanbul, Rio, Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai, Bangalore, Dubai).
Between 2000 and 2016, Milan increased its share of Italy’s GDP by 17.7% compared to the next largest growth city Rome at 4.4%, while almost everywhere else in Italy growth reversed as the Italian economy flatlined. There are are similar statistics in the rest of Europe. Prosperity has continued without much change but limited to a few mega-cities.
But the majority of people in Europe (and the world) are not in mega-cities. What happens is the broad disenfranchisement of liberal policies in the majority of the population that cannot see the advantages of these policies, where growth is in decline, services are crumbling, where there is a flight of youth, labor and capital, and no replacement for the industrial productivity that may have provided jobs and wage security in the 20th century.
Roberto Camagni, Professor of Urban Economics in Milan, summarizes the essence of the problem of the past 20 years (emphasis mine):
“It was big cities like Milan, not nation states, which benefited most from the great wave of integration that came with the European single market. The city provides financiers, lawyers, designers, artists, culture, everything required to be a modern international hub. It has a monopoly on the high-end services that command the highest prices, [but] the rest of Italy has to pay those prices. The problem is that this miracle in Milan only really involves the million or so people at its very heart. The city has shaken off the industrial hinterland that made it great in the 20th century. In the end this creates a problem of dignity for other places..”
The above quote is eye-opening, and explains why Brexit, Johnson, Trump, and other nationalist policies are now at the height of their power. The people are angry. Wealth creation and opportunity are no longer serving them as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. The middle classes are aging and increasingly abandoned. These are structural problems in education, transportation, housing, and access to social services, that have been decades in the making, and that keep opportunity away from the disadvantaged. These problems are amplified by out-of-touch behaviour of elites, the place of individualism above social consciousness, societal preoccupation with materiality, and a media driven culture of self-focus that raises concerns of narcissism.
Inequality in US and UK tops Western World, BBC, May 14, 2019
Further Reading: The ten articles below, selected from the past five years (2014-2019) provide food for thought.
(1) How the mega-cities of Europe stole a continent’s wealth, Julian Coman, Nov 10th, 2019, The Guardian
(2) The Pitchforks are Coming – How the Economic Order will Fall, Nick Hanauer, July/Aug 2014, Politico Magazine (#35, June 27th, 2014)
(3) People Vote Mainly on Identify, not Policy (#200), Thu 31st October, 2019
(4) The disproportionate impact of public policy decisions on UK North and South: a case study of the Beeching Report of the 1960s on UK National Rail (#196), Sun 6th October, 2019
(5) The stagnation of educational attainment (in the US) over the last 30 years (#12), 23rd April, 2014
(6) Rising Economic Inequality in the U.S. – the facts from the Federal Reserve (#60), 17th Oct, 2014
(7) In Bad Faith: the Effects of Austerity on Britains’s Brexit Vote (#192), 17th September 2019, and The Debate on the integrity of the IMF’s position when Greece voted against Austerity (#77), 5th July, 2015
(8) Those who get left behind: Homelessness and Indifference (#127), 6th November, 2017, Low Pay Culture Traps People in Poorly Paid Jobs (#124), Oct 19th, 2017, and The Bard Prison Initiative (#82), 7th October, 2015
Solutions?
(9) Mission-oriented state investment as an alternative economic narrative to entrepreneurial capitalism (#201), Thu 31st October, 2019
(10) What happens to attempts at rival economic narratives? They will likely be vilified by proponents of entrepreneurial capitalism. Example 1: Mission-oriented state investment in Cuba or the Exploitation of doctors?
#202 – Mission-oriented state investment in Cuba or the Exploitation of doctors?
Sun 10th Nov, 2019
Cuba funds the full education of all its citizens including doctors, no loan debt to repay, and then takes a large % of their overseas salary should they choose to work overseas, where there they earn 10-15x more than what they would make locally. Is it a smart way for Cuba to distribute wealth and opportunity widely through its society, or is it exploitation?
Quote 1: “I don’t believe that they are being exploited. They are earning significantly more than they would earn at home. They have been trained in a socialist system, have paid nothing for their medical training, and understand that the superior amount paid to the Cuban government is used to subsidise the healthcare system back in Cuba.” – John Kirk, professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, Dalhousie University, Canada.
Quote 2: “I believe we should help everybody. Based on that, yes it is fair, because I know that the other amount is used to support our health and education system … but if you think only of yourself, of course it’s not fair.” – Cuban doctor at the Cuban hospital in Qatar
Quote 3: “I felt like a slave” on discovering that other doctors in the country were being paid more than him. “We were doing the same thing and earning far less than them.” – A Cuban doctor who defected from the Cuban program.
Article: Mission-oriented state investment in Cuba or the Exploitation of doctors? – The Guardian, Fri 8th November, 2019
#201 – Mission-oriented institutions, and state investment, a rival narrative to entrepreneurial capitalism?
Thu 31st October, 2019
Mariana Mazzucato is an economist who has traced the origins of the greatest innovations in the West, and found that they (iPhone, Internet, Touchscreen, Windows, Google search), almost entirely, have their origins in state investment (National Science Foundation grants, Small Business Innovation Research funds, DARPA grants, etc.) The Entrepreneurial Engine narrative, she finds, is an ahistorical account promoted by businesses to lobby for lower taxes and regulation. But the real engine for growth is state-investment through mission-oriented institutions.
Wired Magazine article, 8th Oct 2019
#200 – People vote mainly on identity not policy
Thu 31st October, 2019
Looking back on British electoral politics, I am struck by an observation on identity politics made by Tony Blair made ahead of the 1997 election that saw New Labour winning a record majority in Parliament. He said (Blackpool, 1996):
“I can vividly recall the exact moment that I knew the last election was lost. I was canvassing in the Midlands on an ordinary suburban estate. I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I’ve become a Tory. He was not rich but he was doing better than he did, and as far as he was concerned, being better off meant being Tory too.
In that moment the basis of our failure – the reason why a whole generation has grown up under the Tories – became plain to me. You see, people judge us on their instincts about what they believe our instincts to be. And that man polishing his car was clear: his instincts were to get on in life, and he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose.”
(Tony Blair, 1996, Blackpool campaign speech)
He went on, of course, to describe why New Labour was about helping people to get on in life. But the memorable point was made. It is the instinctive perception of what a person or party is after that pulls peoples’ votes.
This December’s election in Britain will be the second in which the politics of identity is radically different from the usual Left/Right split.
#196 – The disproportionate impact of public policy decisions — how the Beeching report sowed the seeds of the unrest and inequality between North and South England that (at least in part) has led to Brexit
Sun 6th October, 2019
In 1963, the Beeching Report made the historic decision to trim the UK’s railway network into essentially a London-centric, North-South feeder system. The ability to travel East-West between towns in England, without passing through London, was severely reduced. Why did this happen? The cuts were deemed necessary in order to allow the then nationalized Railway service to operate profitably, ahead of privatization. Arguments about bus and road networks compensating did not come to pass, and the result has been small towns and villages especially outside the London orbit becoming isolated, opportunity drying up, and social demographic changing.
Alongside the article #192 (Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?) that looks at UK’s decision to join the second Iraq war 15 years ago and the Austerity policy that followed soon after, we can place this as an antecedent almost 60 years earlier, before Thatcher’s decisions in the 1980s to gut the industrial and coal mining heartland of the English North.
UK Rail Network, 2019 vs. 1963 (Beeching Report)
Related Reading:
- The Beeching Report and Brexit
- Maps of current UK Rail Network
- The Beeching Cuts to UK Railroads, 1963 vs. 1984
- #192 – Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?
- Thatcher, the “New Tories”, and Brexit
#192 – Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?
Tue 17th September, 2019
The release this weekend of the memoirs of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has kicked off a flurry of retrospection on the events leading up to UK’s fateful Brexit vote in the summer of 2016. In this opinion piece (The Guardian, Mon 16th September), John Harris traces a direct connection from the austerity program of 2010 to the Brexit vote in 2016.
What drove austerity policy? The empty Treasury from the Blair/Gordon Labor governments certainly gave the newly elected Tories a ripe opportunity to significantly roll back the state through austerity. But what caused the empty Treasury? One might point to the fall of the financial markets in 2008 following the subprime mortgage lending crisis and the collapse of Bear Stearns, leading to the prolonged Great Recession. Or one might point to the military adventurism of Blair’s Labor government in 2003 backing Bush’s infamous (and catastrophically expensive) War in Iraq.
It is ironic that the decision of a Labor government to overrule the will of the people and enter the catastrophic and financially ruinous second Iraq war (based on accusations that neither Parliament nor the public believed), may in the end have led ultimately to the public ultimately thrice betrayed (New Tories under Thatcher, New Labor under Blair, Austerity Tories under Osborne) voting for change in the form of the only meaningful change that was in their grasp: Brexit. The connection between the last two is that public taxes were spent prosecuting that failed war followed by bailing out the subsequent failure of banking regulations and irresponsible financial leadership.
It seems that missteps taken 12 and 18 years ago have come home to roost, i.e. those same people whose will had been ignored and whose taxes had been spent irresponsibly, voted to take back a control that had clearly not been theirs for some time.
Article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/16/david-cameron-brexit
#190 – What causes a “normal” recession (one not driven by a financial crash)?
Sun 18th August, 2019
Number of Recessions Americans have experienced (by age).
It’s been a while since the last “normal” recession which one could argue occurred in the 80s. In the 90s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Asian savings crisis interrupted the normal cycle, leading to the telecom and dot com bubbles of the late 90s, which burst in 2001, leading to the subprime mortgage bubbles of the 2000s, which burst in 2008, leading to the current slow recessionary recovery that has been going on for the past 10 years.
What’s on the horizon now is, worryingly, not a financial crisis, but rather a bunch of old school trade and tariff shocks looming with the US / China Trump trade war, and the upcoming Brexit trade disruption.
How should a “normal” recession be countered? Through deficit spending by the government to counteract the fear-based constriction of the macro economy based on the anticipation of the slowdowns.
But deficit spending as a tool has not been used by governments since the 80s, as this article by Dan Davies (Guardian contributor) explains.
Recommended Reading:
- Guardian: A Normal Recession?
- New Statesman: Why we are facing a coordinated global slowdown that will long and deep
- Washington Post: What the next recession may look like judging on the statistics of the past 11 (since World War II)
- The list of 33 business cycles (recessions) since 1854: 16 from 1854 to 1919, 6 from 1919 to 1945, and 11 from 1945 to the present.
List of 33 business cycles (recessions) from 1854 to present
#187 – What is Art? It is connected intimately to hope.
Sun 29th July, 2019
What is the meaning of Art? “Art is about opening up to possibility. Possibility links to hope. We all need hope.” – Kojiro Umezaki ’91, The Silk Road Ensemble. The Music of Strangers.
References
BBC Documentary: Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (90min) – Watch here
Wired Article: How Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble Got Its Spectacular Sound
The SilkRoad Project: a global musical collective
Silkroad Artists and Productions (Wikipedia)
The Silk Road Ensemble: The Music of Strangers
Where Hope Takes Root, by Aga Khan IV
#183 – Virtual Currencies – Facebook’s plan with the Libra Association
Tue 25th June, 2019
The opportunity for Facebook and a handful of partner companies (Visa, Mastercard, Vodafone, Uber) is clear: build up a customer funded reserve of government bonds and national currencies, where interest accumulates for the association, and ordinary users gain transaction free management of ability to buy and sell.
What lies beneath is the accumulation of power and the ability to influence macroeconomic policy on a scale that is bigger than all central banks together.
This article presents how this might play out.
The Atlantic, Eric Posner, 25th June 2019.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/dont-trust-libra-facebooks-new-cryptocurrency/592450/
Facebook’s proposed Libra cryptocurrency
#180 20190323 – The tragedy of Brexit in 52 cartoons
#179 20190323 – Leadership is an Amplifier
#162 20180912 – Will Brexit happen?
#151 20180810 – Animals and Emotions
#141 20180520 – The Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan
#136 20180413 – Does the U.S. have a mob boss as President?
#132 20180330 – Aluminium Age – Material Abundance & Toxicity
#129 20180312 – Influencing ideology
#128 20180309 – Equality in the home – Sharing the Mental Load
#127 20171106 – Homelessness and Indifference
#124 20171019 – From Low Pay, to Living Pay and Beyond
#123 20171019 – Culture Matters
#120 20171004 – Theresa May’s spectacle
#117 20170921 – Raising Successful Children
#89 20160121 – The (Re)Rise of the Blowhard Culture in American Politics
#84 20151207 – Corruption free governance
#82 20151007 – Social Justice: Those Who Get Left Behind – The Bard Prison Initiative
#78 20150718 – The Stream has changed The Web
#76 20150626 – The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice (Martin Luther King Jr.)
#65 20141207 – Donating to Wikipedia: Time & Knowledge also needs your support
#60 20141017 – Social Justice – Rising Economic Inequality in the U.S. – Facts from the Federal Reserve – Change is coming.
Change is coming. Read the discussion.
#55 20140927 – Getting Older – “It will happen to all of us”
#040 20140709 – Playing the long game – Football coaching
#35 20140627 – The Pitchforks are Coming — how the economic order will fall
#32 Transparency and Openness as key leadership values – Scrutiny and Criticism as the antidote to Secrecy and Corruption
22nd June, 2014
Transparency and Openness are key values driving greatness. They apply equally in engineering, science, corporate leadership, and politics. At root is a culture that embraces the accountability that comes from challenges and acknowledging the responsibility to provide adequate explanation.
To be sure, autocracy is more efficient, but openness and transparency are more robust, attract better talent, are more inspiring, and create longer-lasting environments in which innovation can thrive. Our hypothesis is that in the long run, groups that adopt these values will out-perform those that do not.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer, Chief Scientist of the Manhatten Project in the 1940s, spoken on 6 Mar 1950 in an address “The Encouragement of Science” given at the Science Talent Institute, Washington D.C.
#12 20140422 – The Stagnation of Educational Attainment in the U.S. in the past 30 years
Arguments over prosperity have always depended heavily on which statistics were being ignored. This article makes clear that there’s a graver concern: “educational attainment over the last 30 years has risen far more slowly in the U.S. than in much of the industrialised world… [Whilst] Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have literacy, numeracy and technology skills that are above average … Younger Americans, those between 16 and 24, are not keeping pace, [and] rank near the bottom amongst rich countries, well behind their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan, Scandinavia…”
This points to a much more serious condition that is difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.
In the U.S., the organization, the 74 Million.org is a non-profit looking at issues that keep over 50% of America’s under-18 youth below the age appropriate educational attainment levels.
Article: The American Middle Class is no longer the world’s richest, New York Times, 23rd April, 2014
#11 Parenting and Prioritization: Phones – New reasons to worry about an old problem
21st April, 2014
This article from NPR offers anecdotal evidence of parents prioritising their phone over their children. Wake-up call for the introspective.
For the children’s sake, put down that smartphone, Patti Neighmond, April 21st, 2014, NPR (National Public Radio) US
#6 An audio tour of British Isles accents
April 4th, 2014
A beautifully crafted audio tour — listen to the diversity in British accents. There’s no regression to the mean going on here!
Voice done by dialect coach Andrew Jack
A video coaching British English “received pronounciation”.
#2 20140317 – The long view of European history in video of border changes
#1 How does our basic humanity stack up when faced with an unexpected challenge?
February 20th, 2014
How will strangers react to a shivering boy with no coat?
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