The False God of Productivity, The Red Queen of Profits and Fewer Jobs (A Potential for Social Collapse): More MBA Follies

This is offered both as another example of an MBA fallacy and as a response-in-agreement to a recent article in The Daily Beast that discussed the notion of how might the emphasis in the market place on increased productivity lead to fewer jobs ((Robert Shapiro. 'Robotic Technologies Could Aggravate the U.S. Problem of Slow Jobs Growth’. July 19, 2013). Mr. Shapiro poses a fundamental problem with 19th century industrial capitalism that was bound to eventually require our attention: in the headlong pursuit of maximizing profit by reducing labor costs among other factors, where is the boundary to how many people can be laid off before the system collapses? He notices that since 1981, recoveries from boom-busts have been slower and slower which he sees as a sign of technology-displaced, unrecoverable jobs:

In the four years, since the Great Recession of 2008–09 ended, private employment has risen at an annual rate of 1.4 percent. That’s 61 percent below the rate of job creation following the deep downturn of 1981–82, after which jobs rose at an annual rate of 3.6 percent. A similar disparity is evident between job creation in the first four years of the two most recent expansions that followed more moderate recessions. The 0.7 percent annual rate of job growth over the first four years of the 2002–07 expansion was 68 percent less than the 2.2 percent annual job gains seen in the first four years of the 1991–2000 expansion. Something has clearly changed.

Clue - the goal of productivity is 100% efficiency, 0% wasted resources and NO (human) LABOR COST (100% productivity is a theoretical limit). These objectives, especially the last, are built into profit-focused capitalism where the overall, effective goal (realized or not) is the elimination of labor cost which, believe it or not, translates to the elimination of human labor. This is an absurd idea but our current, 19th century industrial capitalist view of people as a faceless labor pool might soon lead to machines doing all the work... and no-one has a job.

An economic system needs consumers to buy product and consumers need money to perform their necessary function which is to shop. This is an interdependent system which existed for 1000’s of years before industrial capitalism. But this system might be in the process of breaking down. Why? Because basically this equation exists because of the fundamental difference between machines and humans - machines don’t eat, wear clothes, sleep, drive cars, prefer tastes, etc. - all those things which define the need for, and essence of, an economic market. Writing people out of this simple equation destroys the whole system. (Sorry, Mr Romney.)

SO, WHAT DOES ONE DO WITH ALL THOSE JOBLESS PEOPLE who don’t have money to buy products? The classic capitalist was not concerned and assumed the overall system had enough vacant jobs in another city, county, state or country to take care of his laid off labor while ‘he’ sprinted blindly toward more profit. But if this previously-assumed, always ready, labor sponge might be ending (saturated), what is to be done with redundant humans displaced by higher productivity? How does one regard and sustain humanity - unless the plan is to eliminate people which is an idea that hopefully no one takes seriously? Or, if it is in planning, it (depopulation) will be implemented with a smile or on a time scale of generations.

One solution to runaway capitalism (free-market style)is ‘managed’ capitalism whose first, or at least parallel goal with GDP, is to preserve society through sustained employment achieved by de-prioritizing profit, or rather redefining profit to include social utilization (preserve jobs), or maybe even to reduce human population by natural attrition such as people having one child instead of two or three - either by choice as the result of natural economic forces or by national policy (e.g., China). But then we'll face religious plus economic boundaries which is a deeply sensitive subject deserving a separate blog post. But, as for ‘managed capitalism’, nearly every industrialized country has such a system in some form, and even America has it although disguised in various ways to avoid upsetting fundamentalist orthodoxy of both religious and economic factions.

Absent a serious approach to looking for alternative paradigms to the classic 19th century industrial capitalism model for our and the global economy, we might at least pay attention to helping workers cope with the growing stress of working under increasing productivity pressure and increasing uncertainty about job security. And there is such a movement, the ‘Third Metric’concept championed by several thinkers including Arianna Huffington who is committing the weight of her online assets to conferences and other support venues to promulgate worker education in ways to combat stress. The Third Metric ‘way’ chooses to untangle the worker from the faceless pressures imposed by corporate life and survival through meditative techniques such as the currently faddish ‘mindfulness’ method (which is actually very ancient and a pillar of Buddha’s '8-fold Way’). This approach is helping many workers, largely women right now, but will hopefully lead to a national discussion about evolving new paradigms for redefining corporate profitability, social utility (contribution to social stability) overall success.

"LAGOM": A New Life Style for Post Recession Americans

This recession hasn't finished teaching us that American idol of Darwinian-capitalist pursuit of riches, where a neighbor in difficulty automatically becomes a "loser" to be put out of mind and forgotten, just doesn't cut it when "we" are coming close to becoming one of "them".

This recession is marked by a frightening prospect overnight conversion from plush to bust that can reach all levels, just ask Bernie Madoff's "clients". We all feel the anxiety of material failure, of being second, being the loser when we are nicely comfortable. It all doesnt make sense, we intuit, but who has the time to contemplate when we are so driven to materially excel and garner more than our neighbor in the race to see who next will be the winner, or loser.

The essence of this recession is the repeated lesson that wild frontier, laissez faire (self-regulated, NOT!) capitalism ala Ayn Rand is just a dream, actually a dangerous nightmare because it creates a false theater of false fronts, and actors in false face, where "dollars are the ultimate". And time after time all of these falsities come tumbling down killing the fortunes and hopes of many many people, families, countries. However, America is not down and out for good. We can move on to a higher level of maturity by adopting a life style of moderation, suitability (LAGOM) from one of the most advanced cultures on the planet, and perhaps the culture with the highest standard of living and certainly the first or second highest in cultural well being, Sweden.

The cultural happiness can be summarized in the following observation about purely economic success (which seems to be the current way America values itself):

For all its prominence, GDP is only one yardstick of economic performance and it is no guide to social progress. It simply indicates the market value of all goods and services produced in an economy. It takes no account of how income is shared out, or of how it is generated. Few would celebrate a boom in costly divorce cases – but it would be great for GDP.

America is ready for a new way of living life. It is in our best interest to try a new way of valuing life than material accumulations. That is to say, let's try on "Lagom".

"LAGOM" has no exact translation in English. But good translations of lagom are: "enough, sufficient, adequate, just right". Lagom is also widely translated as "in moderation", "in balance", "optimal", and "suitable", also "sustainable" as a way of life.

Lagom also carries the connotation of perfection through appropriateness.

The value of "just enough" can be contrasted to the value of "more is better". It is viewed favorably as a sustainable alternative to the hoarding extremes of consumerism

"Lagom" is said to describe the basis of the Swedish national psyche,..of consensus and equality. It is ... to be modest and avoid extremes.

Similar to Lagom" is the Middle Path in Eastern philosophy, and Aristotle's "golden mean" of moderation in Western philosophy.

So, America, let's have "Lagom" meals; "Lagomish" houses, cars, and visible material wealth in general.

Perusal on Our Search for Life: Questioning and Suggesting

Why are Earth’s scientific agencies and minds, or at least most that are popularly heard about/from, so focused on limiting our official searches for extraterrestrial life to “sweet zones” and “metal abundances” and such life-limiting scenarios? Do they know something they are not telling us? Are they that caught in such a deep human-centric paradigm trap? And why are uber-world class minds such as Mr. Hawking sounding the flight alarm that a super advanced life species might use their esoteric technologies to look throughout the universe to feed themselves, as if in their super-advancement of physics and space travel they had forgotten all about solving the food and waste disposal problem and we would be the prime roast, sushi, Tabuli or Muktuk on their ideal dinner menu? What is happening, or has happened, to promote such limited perspectives?

Has any one or body called for a scientific/common sense interdisciplinary team to hash out a set of prerequisites for ET life in any form? And how shall or do we define "life", exactly or broadly. A personal perspective is that our scientific communities should greatly expand the definition of life and consequently the physico-chemical settings for the creation and evolution of life. Likewise, as Feynman pointed the great range of magnitudes spanning the nano-to-galactic scales, advanced life could be several orders of magnitude different in scale from humans and still have enough manipulative distance in scale to develop technologies - and why exactly are thumbs needed when on earth we have such outstanding natural nano-scale engineering forms such as the the exuded, lacy exosceletal forms in the seas and soil, and even the many magnitudes smaller viruses?

What does seem universally required is a source of some kind of POTENTIAL (in the physico-mechanico-chemical sense, or in some other sense we are not yet advanced to be aware of), to drive the ORGANIZATION of life, i.e. to combat the natural drift of entropy which means a mechanism to counteract the normal, disruptive drift of ENTROPY, i.e. decay. This requirement does not self-define Goldilockian “sweet zones”, earth-chemistry or even species large enough for us to see (or a species might be too large to for us to notice its “organization”). Supra-large organization of SENTIENCE (life?) could exist with scaled up densities that might look to us at our scales to be mist, fog, dust, near-vcuum but actually might be equivalent to flesh and blood in function - which perhaps represents another requisite of life, a MEDIUM to support functions such as signal (INFORMATION) TRANSPORT? And what about maintaining a state of negative entropy (SURVIVABILITY and REPLICATION). These capitalized words seem part of the descriptive matrix representing life and are not limited to earth-like settings.

In retrospect, such a possible life form would not be interested in us and probably would not notice us as pertinent to its interests of survival, enjoyment of life or whatever other activities dwell in the realm of its activities. Perhaps we would be viewed as we view Nematodes in our soil.

With such an expanded view, the issues we seem terribly concerned about such as “ethics” or predation have little or no meaning. Finally the Drake expression which is in danger of becoming a sacred cow: the observed frequency of supernovas which are galaxy-wide scourings (life-ending) by immense gamma ray explosions seem to reset the time-for-evolution every 4.5 billion years or so, and perhaps the Drake expression needs to be reviewed with this thought.

Monkey Business Can be Good Business: Japanese Restaurant Trains Monkeys as Waiters

A Japanese restaurant has discovered that Macaque monkeys have a natural bent for pleasing customers.
Why publish this? Because much of everything else in current news makes just as much (or as little) sense. Are we arrived to a Neo-Dadaist comic book world? Have we morphed into kind of global unreality, a spoofing on life, a sense of final noir humor? Or, are we taking us less seriously? This could be a healthy sign, right?
Send comments (yawn).

Epic Discovery: China's National Radio-Astronomy Observatory Announces Monitoring of 'Dark' Satellite in Orbit Around Saturn -"Transmitting ..."

Epic Discovery: China's National Radio-Astronomy Observatory Announces Monitoring of 'Dark' Satellite in Orbit Around Saturn -"Transmitting the Universal Genetic Code"

Well, it remains to be seen if anything comes of this "announcement" on Daily Galaxy, April 1, 2011.

Hmm, April 1!

But here is an introduction to the "announcement" the DailyGalaxy cites:

China's Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) announced Thursday that the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has been monitoring signals from a previously unknown "dark" satellite in orbit around Saturn for the past 90 days. According to government officials, the signals appear to be the first verified transmission from an alien civilization.

China's leading astrobiologist, Dr. Xi Chang, a graduate of MIT, told Xinhua that "the sigal repeats itself continuosly in 2 minute long sequences and appeahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrs to be the four bases of the genetic code A,G, U and C that ribosomes must convert mRNA sequences into proteins and the twenty different amino acids that proteins are comprised of. Dr. Rosie Redfield, the newly appointed director of the Astrobiology Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, confirmed China's dicovery this morning. In a press release Redfield said that "China's discovery is monumental consequences and has been shared with the world's premier sciemtific instituions for vetting and peer review."

If this alleged announcement proves to be real and the "discovery" verified, the significance of this discovery is something this blogger had previously deduced from NASA's December 13, 2010 NASA "Mono Lake" press conference - that NASA is suggesting the DNA bioinformation coding is universal in the true sense, i.e., DNA is to be found throughout the universe as a basic format for life. From the "announcement:

"if confirmed this will be the first proof of extraterrestrial life in the universe and confirmation that our DNA basis for life may be universal throughout the known universe."

A joke? Real? TO be continued.

Japan's Earthquake and Energy Policy: In Development, Another Case of "MBA Follies" and Greed?

The consequences "Japan's" March 11, 2011, earthquake and resultant tsunami continue to escalate in destructive scope . And while the earthquake's aftermath has become bad enough in terms of human death and shock to the rest of the Pacific rim countries, this blogger feels there is not enough being said about what appears to is a often-miscalculated power, immensity and unpredictability of Mother Nature and the too often-proved puny, though maybe well-intentioned devices (emergency planning, engineering, "fail-safe" nuclear reactors, etc) and decision stratagems dreamed up by us humans to resist, control or merely delude ourselves about Mother Nature.

This propensity by humans to so often self-delude, in the form of corporate "decision making", is really an attempt, highly rewarded in modern times, to save money by implementing the "science" of risk analysis to justify less-costly design safety features, even when potential loss of life is factored in. Risk analysis in many cases these days is nothing more than using statistics to rationalize away the potential for grand scales of destruction of property and loss of life to occur, in that order.

Keep in mind that an unexpected or historically rare grand scaleharmful and property-destroying event or action can be judged ignorable, a riskable bet, if it is calculated by committee agreement or single-person (expert) consultation that northeast coast Japanese earthquakes and tsunamis are not related; i.e, they occur independent of each other and occur together no more than a certain few times in a hundred or even thousand normal events of one kind or the other. In other words, the expert belief/committee line is that tsunamis are not caused by earthquakes, nor vice versa. The key here is independent occurrence which statistically allows the company risk analyzer-statistician to multiply the two small probability percentages of each type of catastrophe rather than add them: for example, in 2011, if they are deemed independent, a 1/10 earthquake occurrence probability plus let's say, 1/8 probability of tsunami occurrence would yield a 1/80 (1.25 %) chance of both occurring at the same time; but if the two catastrophes are deemed related by cause and effect, their chances of occurring together is 22% (1/10 + 1/8; 10% + 12%). Obviously, statistical independence of tsunami and earthquake is better for lowering insurance premiums and building less costly reactors (fewer/weaker safety design features). This is why corporate committees will argue against unbiased analysts on behalf of independence of failure modes: independent-judged events will appear to have an ultra-small chance of occurring together and, furthermore, they will appear to be unrelated, i.e., not be linked as in cause and effect. (Which in this case is BS).

This blogger suspects in the recent March 11, Japan earthquake-tsunami case, the probability of an earthquake above 7.9 occurring together with a monster tsunami was probably game-matrixed to exec committees, supposedly including one of Toshiba's, as small enough so that the joint occurence could be virtually ignored. In statistical terms, the joint probability of earthquake and tsunami was, incorrectly, presented to be beyond estimated 2-3 sigma, or perhaps it could have been played with to appear to be even in the 6 sigma category which in modern corporate lingo is very convincing. This is how risk boundaries are set: smaller scale harm, etc. is something to plan for, i.e., within reasonable cost; large scale is something to statistically argued away and put aside...to let governments and taxpayers deal with while "to big to fail...", enough of this. Sometimes loss of life is the least costly risk: tho abominable, such a risk policy might not be an intentional crime but arguably non-existant statistics wise, until it occurs. Regardless of statistics that says a 3 sigma rule or even a 6 sigma rule. "6 sigma" would have an "impossibly" low chance of occurrence, history shows statistical improbability is not fact and statistical numbers don't walk around and prevent stuff from happening.

What does this analysis mean for the northeast coast of Japan? One of the most earthquake-prone, tsunami witnessed areas on the planet? Well, at the least it means reactor design should have had double or triple the safety features of a reactor intended to be located, say, in Iowa or in the Rhone Valley. Secondly, who in their right mind would locate a reactor close to the coast in that region of Japan. In less endangered, less historically earthquake-tsunami prone areas, one might suspect trade-offs of gain/reduced cost for reactor location, or mis-location. But in Japan? On the northeast coast? Enough. Let's say this blogger hopes all parties are in the final summations found to be pure and guiltless, tho perhaps not faultless, in their decisions. It seems better in the long run to be found to have made a sincere tho faulty decision than be found guilty of deliberate collusion to misrepresent.

In a former life chapter this blogger served as a NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) liaison and emergency administrator for a large academic research institution. So, this blogger has some background to speak about nuclear radiation safety, and especially about human foibles and self-delusions when it comes to playing around with radiation. Nuclear power, despite it's champions, is like juggling cyanide pills with gloves on and wearing a clown suit. "Stuff" does happen, believe it. And predictably, more stuff happens when we humans, behind committee curtains, manage to convince ourselves that because radiation can't be seen, heard, smelled, or tasted or felt we can relax and engage in distanced, impersonal risk analysis where consequences (human injury, disease, inconvenience and death) of systems failure/damage are weighed against safety costs.

Moreover, quite often the costs of failure consequences are least in cases of death; so it goes in the land of RA (risk analysis) and MBA Follies. The follies of risk analyses and consequences are already surfacing in this Japan earthquake: a Japanese engineer is quoted in BBC web site reporting March 14 as having made reference to cutting of corners in reactor design so that design safety factors to protect against earthquake and tsunami were not considered:

1422: Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima's reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis and the plant's builders, Toshiba, knew this. (BBC News- March 14, 2011)

First, note that engineer Goto uses the phrase, "against earthquake or tsunami" which "or" confirms this blogger's suspicion that an independent-model statistics were used to game out risk analysis, i.e, to justify the least costly design safety scenario.

Further, sadly but predictably, Engineer Goto's comments to the BBC should immediately raise expectations of near-future questions and investigations at several levels. And also predictably, by this blogger's opinion in the above paragraphs, there will be found at the bottom another case of MBA Follies - a risk decision based on a boardroom committee consensus that a major earthquake and earthquake-generated tsunami occurring together, though it might be strong enough to trash a just enough safety design, just will not happen.. or will be, based on mis-applied statistics, acceptably not likely so as to certainly not happen on our watch". Well, it did happen on somebody's watch and there will, or should, likely be consequences.

And as a final sub-thought in the above vein of Stuff is Still Coming, there is this headline from the March 14, HuffingtonPost web site:

LIVE UPDATES: 17 U.S. Military Personnel Test Positive For Radiation.. Recovery Efforts May Face Temperatures Below Freezing.. More Video..
Japan Asks U.S. For Help.. Costs To Hit $35 Billion.. Volcano Erupts.. Germany, Switzerland Suspend Nuclear Plant Approvals.. PHOTOS.. Robots Deployed To Aid Recovery Efforts.. HOW YOU CAN HELP

One suspects, sadly, these headlines, which are quoted from sources, might not turn out to be exaggerations.

But to the point: the reactors in Japan are rupturing, exploding and leaking radiation. Radiation is impacting emergency workers, surrounding populations (despite ever-widening evacuation zones) and spreading with help from atmospheric winds to ships at sea... and eventually will spread in perhaps more than just detectable levels to west coast America (Alaska, Canada, United States, Mexico, South America) and Russia. And let's not overlook radiation spread to other parts of Asia.

And let's give a few prayers that, so far, the earth quake region is apparently confined to the north east coast; although recent volcano activity in the south Japan area is raising questions.

This blogger chooses, as a privilege of speaking one's mind in a blog, to reduce the Japan earthquake and results to two major points: we can't overestimate the power of Mother Nature and her ability to exceed our imagination of what surprises She might bring to the table, and we should have long ago been committing a large amount of resources - tax incentives, research and money - to develop solar, wind, tidal, wave power, etc ... GREEN POWER. Nuclear power is, to repeat an often made point, a controlled, hopefully slowed down atomic bomb. And remember, it doesn't take but a small few reactor mishaps to screw things up locally and drift area wise for many years.

As to the WHY haven't we (humans and nations in general) been massively involved in developing and perfecting the use of green, passive power, Why haven't we been committing major resources to develop room temperature superconductivity, microwave energy beaming from space-situated fusion cells, etc.? This blogger proposes it hasn't happened because of an economic-ism malaise and paralysis that seem to have us locked in a petro-prison (this blogger's term).

This blogger has no miracle agenda since there are presumably far more capable technologists and politicians able to negotiate technical problems as well as negotiate the intricacies of "modern" political-industrial systems. But the need to move forward seems to shine briliantly in our eyes - it's past time to get off the pot and solve The Energy Problem with safe as well as reliable power.

2011, An Orphan Year

There is a feeling that 2011 will be a year of nothing special to remember but instead will be noted as a year when several significant things were planted to be harvested/manifested later. This blogger sees significant developments planted in 2011 in the areas of earth movement, England, global finances, American politics, global alliances, arts and weather.