Who Shall Rule

It has been my observation that the American electorate, as a whole, has too facile a tendency to relegate responsibility for their well-being to anyone with a glib line, a string of credentials, and/or a cover story of presumed success, no matter how shallow the image or substance.

We are all tired, or at least most of us.  We’re tired of sending money and weapons to Ukraine for its survival. We’re tired of the Republican traveling clown circus.  We’re tired of Mr. Punk’n-head monopolizing the legal system and media coverage. We’re tired of Covid and the post-Covid hangover hanging over everything.  We’re tired of Democratic dithering and endless ineptitude. We’re tired of the Coming Recession, which by my recollection has been coming since 2016 and still hasn’t arrived. We’re tired of the coming tsunami of AI, which by my recollection has been coming for thirty years and still hasn’t arrived. We’re tired of waiting for EV’s to recharge. We’re tired of climate change, and it’s just warming up; not even cranking yet at full throttle. We’re tired of governing ourselves, much less our communities. Soooo tired! 

So, what we need, some would offer, is a good autocrat to order the world as we once thought only God could.  Except the Heavenly Father hasn’t seemed to be around much lately, and Mother Nature hates a vacuum.  So, somebody’s bound to step into the breach! 

With this in mind I offer you the following list of Exceptional People for selection of the position of autocrat-in-chief. there is still room and time for more applicants to the position, and write-ins are welcomed. The important thing is that you have a choice, not that your choice will matter.  The list is in alphabetical order because all prospective autocrats are equal until one ascends to the gold throne and weaponizes the Justice Department to round up the rest for termination with prejudice by the military. 

Make your pick. Here goes!

• Marc Andreessen
• Samuel Bankman-fried
• Jeff Bezos
• Sergey Brin / Larry Page
• Billary Clinton
• Tim Cook (by proxy of Steve Jobs)
• Ray Dalio
• Ron DeSantis
• Jamie Dimon
• Bill Gates
• Elizabeth Holmes
• Xi Jinping
• Charles Koch
• Leanard Leo
• Meghan (Evita) Markle
• Narendra Modi
• Rupert Murdock
• Elon Musk
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Adam Neumann
• Vladimir Putin
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Martin Shkreli
• Masayoshi Son
• Martha Stewart
• Lawrence Summers
• Oprah Winfrey
• The Brothers Winklevoss
• Mark Zuckerberg
• ( )

Really?!!  That’s your choice?!!

You may note that some candidates may not be immediately available to serve, but as long as they draw a breath, neither can they be discounted for future service.  In some instances, they have demonstrated a notable capability to leverage their own special gifts with a host of ‘Smart People’ they draw to their particular enterprise at the potential significant risk to the Little People who always bear the cost of their machinations.

You may wonder why I have chosen certain names and not others.  You may protest the inclusion of certain names based on your inferences of my intent in selecting them.  You may ask why I left the most obvious candidate, Mr. Punk’n-head, off the list.  You are entitled to do so.  For the moment, it’s still a relatively free country. 

Onward!

20231112

© Copyright 2023  All Rights Reserved

Autocracy, democracy, elections, megalomania

Random Thoughts on the Close of an Anomalous Year

I’m cleaning out the ‘mental attic’, surveying the mental shrapnel of a year which stands on its own in so many ways, and hopefully will not have a sequel,…except it likely will, because we haven’t yet found a vaccine to prevent it.

So, following are some mental odds and ends in search congruence wherever they may find it. I make no pretense of expertise regarding these subjects. But then, that no longer seems to be a requirement in public discourse, and is sometimes an impediment.

Killer Asteroids and Other Space Junk

I recently read about the plan to cue-ball an asteroid in a test of possible future defenses against killer asteroids threatening earth. It seems that the test, as described, has an extremely long shot at producing meaningful results, but then the folks planning it at NASA no doubt have a much better handle on the math and physics than I do.  And even a measurable response would be of value in anticipating the requirement of an effective effort. Good luck.

At about the same time, I read about plans to decommission the International Space Station (ISS) in the next five or so years, and the concern of risk that the plan to drop it into a designated ‘satellite graveyard’ in the Pacific Ocean might not go exactly as projected, given the ungainly nature of the structure, and the potential to scatter random shards of debris across the earth-scape. 

It set me to wondering. Wouldn’t it be better to strap a booster rocket to the space station, gently and gradually nudge it into higher earth orbit away from current satellite traffic, and then sling-shot it toward the sun for ‘final disposition’, loaded with cameras and instruments that might give us additional information on the target and its near-neighborhood?  Doing so would have a number of advantages.

• It won’t be the last hunk of huge hardware we’ll have to dispose of, with Jeff Bezos and his gang planning to build orbiting condos for those with a more exotic idea of ‘working remotely’.
• It is a good test case for engineering a solution closer to home before we must do so in more remote regions and to greater scale.
• Since the ISS is a joint project of the US, Russia, and the international community, it would be a great opportunity for a peaceful, cooperative venture to build confidence in our ability to work together to achieve something of shared interest.  It would also be an opportunity to engage the Chinese, since they bear a risk, and will someday have a similar need.
• We could gain additional scientific and technical knowledge and skill from the project.
• The projects will not put solar inhabitants at risk, or disrupt its environment.
• To this armchair space cadet, it seems a better alternative than dropping it in the ocean to join the great Pacific garbage gyre, or wherever it chooses to land.

Good luck.

Speaking of space junk reminds me of Elon Musk. Our Chinese friends have just complained to us that our resident teenager is cluttering up the near-earth neighborhood with toys that are disrupting adult traffic and risking harm.  Somewhat like our Russian friends did when they splattered one of their satellites to our consternation with the logic ‘it’s my toy; I’ll break it if I want to’ (more a libertarian mindset than communist). I wonder what our Chinese friends, who seem not to understand the concept of reciprocity, would be willing to offer in return for the Herculean task of containing a force of nature such as Mr. Musk; not that it isn’t in our own best interests to do so.

But the Chinese raise a valid question that has troubled me for a while. What international controls exist over space: near earth orbit, the moon, asteroids, Mars, Uranus, whatever? And, to bring it closer to home, our oceans? Who gets to decide and how? Right now, it’s like the Wild West, as we Americans like to think of it in our egocentric way.  Others might liken it to past colonialism of all brands by all ethno-politico-religious forces. We have enough history to know the result. Have we yet acquired enough intelligence to prevent it? If not, leave Mars alone until we do. We have plenty to do getting control of our earthbound assteroids before we can ever hope to control the celestial ones.  Good luck with that!

Electric Vehicles and Charging Stations.

There’s a loud hum in the socio-sphere of the need to accelerate the implementation of electric vehicles (EVs) and to electrify buildings in order to decarbonize the planet and prevent the worse consequences of climate change. One of the key tactics in that effort, aided and abetted by the recently passed infrastructure bill, is to sprinkle electric vehicle charging stations across the landscape like fairy dust to facilitate the progression of EVs.

I believe that climate change is real, and will be severe, and that we have set in motion a series of natural forces that have built sufficient momentum to run for the next twenty to thirty years, no matter what we do from this point on. And we’re not doing anywhere near enough to make a discernable difference in bending the carbon curve during that period. I believe that the decarbonization of the economy to the greatest extent possible is inevitable and beneficial, but we will not likely ever be ‘carbon free’ without radical impact on society that we are not now willing to accept as a society, efforts and wisdom of our climate warriors notwithstanding. In that context, I question the wisdom of rushing to electrify personal transportation at this time.

If I were king, or even president, I would withhold funds for EV charging stations and redirect them into three project areas. The first would be for battery capacity improvement and electric charging technology that would reduce recharge time to ten minutes, or something closer to filling your gas tank. I would seek to do that within the next five years. Once achieved, I would subsidize implementing these super charging stations into gas stations to evolve existing private sector infrastructure to a new but equivalent purpose while sustaining the gradual draw-down of demand for carbon fuels at those same facilities. No convenience store/filling station left behind. This has the multiple benefits of repurposing an existing facility to new use, evolving and sustaining it, while avoiding the risk of resource and effort of implementing an early-stage technology that will likely be replaced long before its useful life has ended, and after it has been implemented at great cost.  In my mind, the problem with advancing EVs is their limited range and long recharge time. Solve the recharge time, and range becomes less of an issue.  Concentrate the recharge resource in existing fuel stations and you eliminate the difficulty and cost of deploying enough charging stations to anticipated need.

The second project area would be to attack methane leaks wherever they may exist as the fastest way to impact causes of warming, given methane’s greater leverage on warming than CO2 from auto emissions. Without relevant data or knowing the relevant math, I would imagine that a much smaller investment in this area would have a much greater return than investing in EV charging stations today and for the next five years.

Third, before electrifying personal transport and pushing to retrofit existing buildings, I would make a major investment to bring the electric power infrastructure up to capacity and sustainability to the level of need that environmentalists advocate.  You know, the ‘horse before the cart’ kind of thing.  Novel, but it might avoid a bunch of unnecessary knock-on consequences of SOP.  Harden the grid. Expand the grid’s ability to handle multiple energy generating scenarios.  Distribute energy production to reduce exposure to damage of huge facilities (think ports and bottlenecks in transportation, or the Texas grid in 2021). Build in more ‘circuit breakers’ to prevent cascading power failures. BULLET-PROOF the grid from cyber-attack. Build in redundancies to assure resilience against any other type of attack. All of this adds to costs.  Corporatists will whine that it hurts ‘the bottom line’. But so does the mindless pursuit of profit at all other costs.

At no extra charge as a part of my year-end clearance, I’m including a bonus recommendation. I would advocate for a comprehensive system of carbon taxes, carefully targeted and escalating gradually over time to recognize the truth that our current carbon regime imposes social costs for which corporations receive benefits of avoidance, and the rest of us pay for the consequences.  An intelligently designed carbon tax will enable the so-called ‘free market’ to deal with a defect in our market economy that does not effectively match social costs with private profit in a manner that is fair to business and society. I would implement the tax selectively and escalate it gradually so as not to cause shock to the economic system and give all players (business and consumers) a chance to adapt to future prospects in their enlightened self-interests.

As an example of an early target, I would implement a carbon tax on delivery services like Amazon Prime ‘free same day delivery’ for non-perishable, non-essential items or any delivery involving carbon-based vehicles. Free same-day delivery is a convenience to a few with a social and environmental cost to society as a whole.  Carbon based vehicles add to that cost. The market place should incent responsible activity (by whatever definition) and disincent wasteful activity.  By contrast, our hedonistic society craves immediate gratification of whatever kind at whatever cost, preferably to someone else. (Now you can see why there is zero risk that I will ever ascend to being king or president.)

Environmentalists will complain that the above measures are too little, too slow, and will not stave off calamity. I would respond that calamity at some level is already ‘baked in the cake’, and the challenge now is to plan for it, adapt to it, and let the evolving horror motivate people to make the belated sacrifices that environmentalists have advocated for 50 years with insufficient impact.  At this point, the first imperative is to avoid doing stupid, and begin doing smart. But at this point, far too many people are too comfortable with stupid.  And that includes some environmentalists who refuse to deal with the reality we are in, in a manner that can effectively lead to the result they want.

Going Nuclear

Energy-wise, speaking of energy. Even some environmental scientists are warming to that. And I’m fine with it.  Anything to keep the lights on and the A/C and heat within reasonable parameters.  But for godsake, will someone tell me what we’re going to do with the waste? We’ve been mute on that issue for the life of the technology, and it’s not getting better; just bigger.  And it’s a little bit more serious that getting rid of plastic bags.  Just answer that question, and I’m good to go.

Acronyms and the Militarization of Language

We need to demilitarize our language, which has been overrun with a proliferation of acronyms that are so abundant, they’ve become redundant.  I have lately had to consult an acronym dictionary on numerous occasions to translate a reference into something that might make sense in context because the author neglected to define the acronym anywhere in the text.  And when I arrive at the dictionary, I often find a plethora of terms using the same acronym, but widely varied in meaning or context.

I blame the military for this. The scientific community may have preceded the military in the use of acronyms, but the military has made it sexy. The military saw the benefits and, as with nuclear weapons, proceeded to proliferate without considering the possible costs, and in effect created the Agent Orange of comprehensible communication.

I PREDICT THAT BY 2030 we will reach Peak Acronym, a veritable planet of Babel in which everyone is pinging everyone else with strings of characters that look more like computer programming code than human language. The progression to that destiny will be capped by the collapse of the internet and the power-grid as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ramped up to deal with a situation beyond human capacity, and is overwhelmed. Think the equivalent of the Port of Los Angeles, and little containers of meaning waiting to be off-loaded for processing. The Chinese will be instrumental in the global failure when they mistake the trend as an area for competition with the West which they must dominate.  They will bring the full force of their 3,000 character language to bear against our pathetic 26 letters. But they will not win; merely pushed humanity over the edge. Whatever.

We will have evolved from SNAFU to FUBAR. People around the world will retreat to their electrified caves (running on backup generators and scarce supplies of propane) to watch reruns of old movies of pre-1960 vintage in an attempt to reclaim distant memories of language lost.

Recommendation:  De-escalate the militarization of communication wherever possible.  Minimize the use of acronyms, even at the cost of a few seconds and more keystrokes.  And, when they must be used, please give future humanity and anyone who resides in the present outside your little specialist bubble a clue as to what the hell you are referring to by defining the term somewhere in text, hopefully at point of first use, or at least in an addendum detailing all acronyms included in text.  (Can you imagine love letters of the future?  Assuming there is still love that might need to be communicated beyond self.)

Just a digression, but I’m thinking ahead about my grandchildren and their grandchildren.  What follows Generation Z? Have we yet created a designation? Are we going to recycle the alphabet to A?  Regress to the Greek alphabet because it implies sophistication?  Or should we just go with those 3000 Chinese characters and not have to worry about another transition in generational designation before the next asteroid strike?

Gravity, Quantum Physics and Wall Street

Some day I’m going to read up on quantum physics and string theory so I can be somewhat conversant about the subject at the water cooler, whenever we return to The Office.  In the meantime, Newtonian physics and gravity as we know it by way of falling apples and the like works just fine for me.  But, when I think of the economy, and particularly that portion that works on Wall Street, Palm Beach and in Crypto-land, I have to wonder if maybe there is such a thing as a parallel universe?  Or, alternatively, will the markets reach escape velocity from Main Street’s gravitational pull? Or, on the third hand, will Newton win in the end and Wall Street falls to earth with collateral damage that dwarfs the impact of the ISS by several orders of magnitude?  None of us know for sure, which is why I still consider Power Ball a credible investment medium, and probably more honest than SPACs, crypto and NFTs.

I’ve been waiting for economic gravity to take down Wall Street for a long time, but must confess to my persistent error in assumption.  So bear that in mind when considering my prediction on the Acronym Apocalypse.  However, I’m much more confident about the Climate Change Catastrophe, with regret.  As for the economy, Wall Street seems to have created a protective bubble that has defied economic gravity, with a little help from the troika of the Fed, the White House and the Senate over the past dozen years.  But I still believe that either the sun or wind shear will eventually burst it, or humankind in aggregate, rejecting the cumulative insults of the economic order to its collective and individual well-being.

Summation:

I prefer to avoid hyperbole.  And I suspect any choice that is cast in binary form.  There are often more than two options in any situation.  But, at the risk of hyperbole, we are approaching an existential moment. Maybe next year, maybe later.  But it is waiting for us down the road. We must resolve a fundamental binary choice on which all other issues will rest:

        Are we a civilization of humans served by corporations?

        Or are we a civilization of corporations served by humans?

The choice should not be in doubt, or even exist. But it exists, and the result is very much in doubt.

We have much work to do in the New Year 2022 and beyond.

Onward.

20211231

© 2021 Integratedman

Gratitude

I am grateful that my family and close friends have survived the past year and a half without death or major illness in the pandemic.

I am grateful that my family has had the means to survive the disruption with minimal impact.

I am grateful that a portion of my taxes serve to help those less fortunate by no fault of their own to hang on, however tenuously, and hang in for a better day.

I am grateful for the medical professionals who guided me safely through this pandemic as they struggled themselves to navigate its fog.

I am grateful for state and municipal governance that made basically sound decisions when it really mattered, and put human life above budget and profit.

I am grateful for a community and state that basically banded together to do the right thing to protect ourselves and each other in our personal and community conduct.

I am grateful for a work environment in which management took initiative to make it safe and productive.

I am grateful to live in a country which, in spite of its many imperfections, retains the capacity to face the errors of its past, and the hope to create a better, more equitable, and just future.

I am grateful for a family who remain my greatest source of wealth and the only one that matters.

I have much to be grateful for, and on this day I hope you do too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Onward!

20211125

Copyright 2021

Groundhog Day Meets Déjà Vu All Over Again

This period we are experiencing reminds me of 1964 – 68, when American cities were churnin’ and burnin’, and the beginning of the AIDS crisis.

We have learned NOTHING!

Or, we have forgotten what little we may have learned.  We are a society of studied tunnel vision and willful amnesia.

The black community has every right to be enraged, but rage alone will not solve its dilemma; only intensify it, playing into the very forces of racism and bigotry that have defined its existence for too long.

The white community can no longer stand by in various hues of dispassion, disdain, fear, anger, and mindless racist hatred, and say ‘it’s not my problem.’  It’s our problem. If we did not create it, we have allowed it to persist with efforts that were inadequate in time, resource, or understanding to solve it.  We tried throwing money at it.  That didn’t work.  And when that didn’t work, we said ‘enough’, when we should have been saying ‘why’.  But if we ask ‘why’, that requires a conversation.  And a conversation may lead to answers that neither blacks nor whites want to hear.  So instead, we talk at each other, if we talk at all.  And the anger and distrust ferments, until it erupts.

At some time in the mid-seventies, as the US was going through its nervous breakdown, exhausted by Watergate, Vietnam and a deteriorating economy, I had an epiphany regarding the death of Martin Luther King.  It occurred to me that the timing of his death had particular significance in the context of the political evolution of the country.

At the time of King’s death, he was no longer just leading a movement for civil rights for people of color.  He had transcended that limited vision.  He had crossed the Red Sea and arrived at ‘The Promised Land’, so to speak.  More aptly, he arrived as an invading moral force, speaking no longer only to black people about their own plight, but to all people, black and white, about their shared plight.  Poverty knows no color line.  And coffins imported from Vietnam were being delivered with increasing frequency to black and white neighborhoods.

King spoke of economic issues, and of the moral issues of Vietnam in terms that were color blind.   And white people were beginning to listen as intently as black.  And not just white liberals.  And that was very clearly dangerous to the power structure.  And that’s when he died.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  I have no facts.  But events are consistent with the revolving plots and rhythms of history. You might say, there was ‘probable cause’.

There is an important theme in this observation.  King became most influential when he saw the plight of black people in broader terms, and spoke to the broader audience who shared that plight in terms they could understand, and identify with…and embrace.   Obama understood the same, which is how he became president.  And undoubtedly mindful of King’s fate, which may be how he managed to survive his two terms.

And so to the Black Lives Matter contingent, I would offer this observation:  It should dawn on you by now, but apparently has not, that until all lives matter, black lives don’t matter, and will not.  ALL LIVES MATTER! Until all lives matter, No lives matter. Black, gay, women, the poor, the elderly, children, the infirm, immigrants, Muslims, Chinese…,white people.  No   lives   matter.  It’s that simple, and that frightening.

***

How about AIDS.  As we live the COVID-19 experience, it reminds me of a combination of the Vietnam Syndrome and the beginning of the AIDS Syndrome.  I’m referring in both cases to their social dynamic rather than the military or medical.  Our society remained significantly indifferent to both as they were devolving.  And when escalating news accounts began to impose on our consciousness, we evolved from indifference to denial.  But as the number of coffins mounted and began to arrive closer to home, if not in the home, we could no longer deny what we should have paid attention to much sooner.

Our approach to COVID-19 seems too similar.  The shock of March and April is wearing off much too quickly.  We were denied the luxury of indifference this time by the speed of the onslaught, but we are quickly embracing denial:  ‘It’s just the old folks.  It’s just the infirm; an ‘inevitable’ culling of the herd, a natural biological process.’  ‘My village isn’t New York City’. ‘We’re not Italy’.  Facile rationalizations to shed caution and discipline, and go back to what we want.  A return to the programmed American mind:  ‘I know my rights.’ ‘You can have it all.’  ‘Sometimes, you’ve gotta break the rules.’

We’re well versed in our rights.  Not so much in our responsibilities: for ourselves, to each other, as a society.  Responsibility is the flip-side of Rights on the coin of freedom. If we choose to indulge our frustrations and exercise our rights without regard to the responsibilities for managing this evolving dynamic that will transcend our normal micro attention span, we will revisit the horrors of the AIDS endemic magnified.  It will batter our defenses of denial, one by one.   Or, I could be wrong.  To quote one of Ronald Reagan’s cherished heroes: ‘Are ya feelin’ lucky?  Well, are ya, Punk?’

***

I’m the son of a cop.  As you might imagine, I’m observing recent events with great discomfort.  Cops are a tribe; one of many ‘professional’ tribes like lawyers, doctors, academics, except they have guns.  Always have been a tribe.  Always will be. Their profession exists on the edge of society, separating the ‘civilized’ society from the jungle with the ‘rule of law’.  Except it’s never that simple.

My father had an interesting take on his profession, delivered to me from time to time in one-line asides to various conversations that gave me insight into ‘life on the street’.  Once he observed: ‘You go to court for law, not for justice’.  This followed a trial to which he was called to testify on an arrest.  The arrest was a pro-forma affair that was necessary by law although the circumstances were, shall we say, contentious.  From my father’s perspective, the defendant’s case was essentially compromised (thrown, in the vernacular of the tribe) by his own attorney, with the result that law was rendered, but not justice.

On another occasion he talked about an incident in which he was called to  a house in a poor neighborhood on a case of risk to a minor.  The child was very young.  The mother was clearly a risk. The mother was arrested; the child placed in foster care.  My father observed that, although he was doing what was both required by law and in the best interests of the child, he knew the child would grow up hating cops for taking away what the child regarded as his ‘security’, bad as it was.  No winners here.

I once asked him if his gun was sufficient protection for the risks he faced in certain situations.  He said that it was not the gun that protected him but the badge. He quipped ‘The badge says that I belong to the biggest gang in town, and if you mess with me, you mess with the gang’.   But he added in a more solemn tone that resonates today: ‘the badge only protects me as long as the society respects it.  When that stops, the gun won’t be enough.’  Today’s smoldering ruins of Minneapolis’ 3rd precinct station attest to the truth of that statement.

So with those words in mind, and with the benefit of knowing from countless stories that what we see in the news is rarely the whole context, I am nonetheless greatly disturbed…no, horrified…by what I am witnessing evolving on our streets, and the demeanor that has become all too common among all too many police forces.

But it’s not just the cops.  When I asked him one day to describe his job, he quipped “Our job is to fix whatever society can’t handle by other means.” On another occasion he responded to a similar question by saying “My job is 10% law enforcement and 90% social work.”  Put those two together and you have the driver of today’s problem.  When society becomes dysfunctional at its most basic level, the cops get called…to deal with the vagrancy, the disorderly conduct, the outbursts from mental illness, the family strife, the thefts of shear desperation in a society where the bridges to safe alternatives are steadily collapsing.  Call the cops.  And eventually, it affects and infects the police force as well.  The good cops leave, the standards for their replacements decline. The supervision tolerates behaviors that may have been unacceptable before if there were higher standards.  Cops are no different than any other organization under economic and leadership (political) stress.  Except they have guns.

So we are at a moment when the thin blue line is yet again a boundary between chaos and order.  The unanswered question of the moment is: are they the defending edge of order or the leading edge of the chaos to come?  Initial reports are not encouraging.  But the important point to understand is that the police are not the problem; merely the tip of the iceberg.

Onward!

To what, I don’t know.  But going back is not an option. Standing still can be fatal. Moving forward is the only credible option.

20200601

Copyright © 2020, All rights reserved.

The Economy or People?

The debate continues to rage.

Do we save the economy or do we save people from COVID-19?

Do we save the economy or do we save people from COVID-19?

Do we save the economy or do we save people from COVID-19?

As if it was a binary choice.

The titans of the economy and their political echo chamber most forcefully pose the rhetorical question with the refrain:

The cure must not be worse than the illness.

The cure must not be worse than the illness!

The cure must not be worse than the illness!

The answer is brutally simple.  The People ARE the Economy, Stupid!*

* (with appropriate acknowledgement of original core content to James Carville)

The economy is the net sum of the actions and aspirations of people.  Obviously, it does not treat all people the same, but all people are a part of the great accounting equation. People produce the goods and services which other people buy.  Debilitate people in their capacity to participate in the economy, and you debilitate the economy.  Simple as that. You don’t need an algorithm or big data to noodle that out.

The Economy, in this instance, does not get to choose who lives and who dies, or how many live or die, or how debilitated the survivors will be physically or financially.  For now, the virus has all the cards and is dealing them as it chooses. So the cry of the economic elite to return the economy to operation is an act of profound ignorance of the situation, indifference to consequences, callous calculation of the cost to others, and likely all of the above.  But in the long run, it is unlikely to be a benefit to the few if this situation gets out of hand.

In fact, the ability of the great mass of people to participate in the economy has been steadily debilitated for 40 years before COVID-19.  It has been documented in the growing disparity and concentration of wealth, and the steady erosion of government and civic capacity to the benefit of the wealthy.  And then, along comes COVID-19 to administer ‘a stress test’.

The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt might serve as an interesting analog to the conundrum of ‘Economy vs. people’.  Consider the good ship The Economy.  It provides protective service for a hefty fee.  Fifteen percent of the crew are now identified with the virus.  1 dead, 6 hospitalized, one in ICU at this time.  Should the ship sail with risk of further spread of the virus in its crew, or stay in port until the situation stabilizes?

Consider that the ship is unlikely to have any senior citizens, whom the lieutenant governor of Texas regards as expendable, and relatively few with compromising chronic medical conditions that would make them unfit for service. They are among the most able of our population, physically.  They are also a diverse group of specialties; and, while many are cross-trained for redundancy, none of them are truly expendable without impairing the capability of The Economy.  Three specialties in particular come to mind:  nuclear reactor specialists, cooks and pilots.  Nuclear reactor specialists are relatively few and not easily replaced.  Cooks work in tight quarters, are relatively few with unique talents and serve a ship of 4400 human energy plants that can’t fight well on an empty stomach.  Pilots cost a couple of million dollars to train and years to train to capability. No unit of that inventory can be replaced quickly or cheaply.  So conserving these and other critical resources becomes critical to the success of The Economy.  The Brass can order the ship to sea, but the virus will not necessarily salute and debark. You can’t defeat your enemy until you understand who or what your enemy is.  We do not yet sufficiently understand how our enemy operates to be able to defeat it.

This example is likely to offend the sensibilities of the economic elite, well insulated in their illusion of wealth, but harboring deep, subliminal fears that the basis of their wealth is threatened by the unwillingness of people to put themselves at risk to support it.  The notion  that people are obliged to support The Economy is symptomatic of addiction to wealth that obscures the mind of the wealthy to the true foundation of what they take for granted.

Time for another exercise.  Mr. or Ms. Executive, remember the days of your youth when you stood on a beach as the tide came in, barefoot, before the tasseled loafers.  Remember how each receding wave would extract a few grains of sand beneath your feet, until you lost your balance.  Today, you stand on the veranda of your Hamptons estate gazing out at the ocean, contemplating the economic tsunami you fear is coming.  You know how destructive a tsunami can be.  You’ve experienced a number of storm surges, but never a tsunami.  You know the tsunami will knock you down unless you move farther inland and to higher ground.

The truth is that before COVID-19, you’ve been losing ground for years, largely because of the short-term, short-sighted mentality of yourself and your cohort. The grains of sand that you stood on were people.  Ever so gradually, the tides of change have been dragging them out to sea.  The sea wall that protects your estate from erosion, call it the government at all levels, sits on those same grains of sand, and is collapsing for lack of maintenance against steady erosion.  But all along, you’ve been pocketing ‘the savings’ at their expense.  And now, the tsunami is coming for you.

The capitalist economy of the United States has become progressively dysfunctional  over 40 years, and we are now about to witness the cumulative impact of its obsession with the pursuit of profit above all else.  It has manipulated the political processes to steadily dismantle capacity for resilience. It has eroded institutional safety nets and shock absorbers to leave the greater public exposed.   It cowers in its luxury towers, wringing its hands over where to deploy its accumulating cash reserves among the market turmoil that its short-sightedness and manic self-interest have created.  We have a system that can’t produce decent affordable housing; affordable health care; efficient and sustainable transportation; that wantonly places the safety of our food supply and environment at risk; and yet has the audacity to declare itself the giver of all things!

The economic elite, with relatively few exceptions, know only one god. Their prophet is profit.  They worship at the alter of the holy trinity: The Dow Jones, The S&P and The NASDAQ; three pillars of notional wealth that have departed reality.  An economy built too much on paper and pixels, but agnostic of fundamental human needs which should be its intrinsic justification.

There will be a ‘culling of the herd’ as a result of this disaster.  Many businesses will fail, and many should.  All of the zombie corporations that should have laid down and died a long time ago, except for the possibilities that they could still be milked just a little longer, may finally come to rest.  Grocery stores’ bare shelves are great indices of what ordinary people regard as important when they see life through an existential lens.  Will this lead to a re-calibration of value and priorities in the future.  One might hope.  And others might fear a just but unfavorable verdict.

Corporations will fail. Their bones will be picked by the vultures and repurposed.  But people must survive, because their physical and economic capacity and stability will be the basis on which the economy  will resume. The economic elite can not pick and choose who is expendible and who must be saved.  The virus holds those cards, as it has shown.  But the executive elite can put us at unnecessary risks if its self-serving priorities are allowed to prevail.

COVID-19 has provided the United States with a critical test which it has substantially failed at this point. The adequacy of remediation is the only remaining question. If this was war, we would spare no expense or effort or imagination to prevail. This is war, only this time, the objective must be to preserve life, not to take it.

But there is a greater question which COVID-19 prompts, but cannot answer.  Are we a nation of people, served by corporations?  Or are we a nation of corporations, served by people?

That question must be answered soon by the people, while they retain the means to do so.

Onward.

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Copyright 2020 All rights reserved.

 

 

 

The Humbling of One Ugly American

A meditation on ‘shit-holes’, given relevance by our Commander-In-Chief.

In the early eighties, I made my first trip overseas, to Europe specifically, on business for a multi-national company.  I traveled there with a colleague whom I had just met a week earlier. She was a US citizen of Mexican origin, educated in Canada and with a BA in French and an MBA in finance.  The first thing notable about her was an elegant dialect that seemed an amalgam of her Spanish, French and English education, blended seamlessly into one.

 

We arrived in Portugal and traveled to Oporto on our first day.  After settling into the hotel, we met to take a walk and get acquainted with our surroundings.  We walked the cobbled streets of Oporto among the shops and vendor carts and I slowly began to absorb a new reality;  a sense of ‘old Europe’ quite different from my experience.  At one point, she asked me what I thought of the place.  I said, “I can’t decide whether it’s quaint or a dump.”  As we continued to stroll through the streets, we passed produce carts.  At one point I observed how unappetizing the produce looked.  Without missing a beat, and in her understated, elegant way with a tone of mild but powerfully delivered condescension, she replied, “That’s because the good stuff is shipped to the US as a cash crop”.  She not only explained the circumstance of my observation, but revealed my ignorance in fact and attitude.  We laugh about that episode to this day as I often reflect back on that experience in our conversations about current events.

 

I wish I could say that was my only instance of American hubris.  But it was most definitely the beginning of my education in the myth of American Exceptionalism.  In the days that followed, we traveled to the Douro region, the port wine growing region in Portugal where our company maintained a house.  In this particular village, our residence was one of three, all owned by port wine-producing companies, which had power and indoor plumbing.  As we descended on winding roads into the valley, one could observe thousands of little plots of land with houses and working gardens, surrounded by vaster commercial vineyards.  If my sense of Oporto was like going back 80 years in time, the Douro was like traveling back yet further.  What I perceived at first was poverty.  But upon further reflection, I have come to understand that what I saw was a vastly simpler and humbler way of life defined by its own circumstances which were quite different from the ones I had always assumed were universal up to that point.   I would not trade my circumstances for theirs, but I gradually came to understand that I could not look down on their circumstances without questioning the justification for my own.

 

My colleague departed early from our assignment to attend to other matters, and for the next few days, I was left on my own to explore the streets of Oporto in my spare time.  I was struck by the number of bookstores that I saw among the shops, and displayed prominently in the windows of many were ‘do-it-yourself’ books.  It suggested to me a people and a culture that had not yet entered the ‘service’ economy, where individuals were still their own primary resource for meeting their needs. It suggested a less sophisticated economy on the one hand, but a more resilient one on the other.

I wandered into a neighborhood store and saw a shelf of aseptic milk, unrefrigerated.  I had never before seen that in the US.  It was a product of necessity in Portugal, where electricity was expensive and home refrigeration at that time was probably much more limited.  But it made perfect sense for them, and I wondered ‘why don’t we do this too?’

I could recite other instances in my brief experience in international business where I made comments or assumptions that were utterly ignorant of a greater world and its varied circumstances, but I gradually came to understand that, while we may live on varying planes of material well-being, there is an underlying plane of human values that is universal, and on which we can relate, and must.  When we speak of ‘shit-holes’ as our Commander-in-Chief has so chosen, we demonstrate our own ignorance of the world’s realities, many of which include our own wanton conduct in contributing to their circumstances in pursuit of our narrowly conceived and often unjust goals.

 

I remember my political science professor observing that the US won World War II not by brilliance of strategy, but by overwhelming the enemy with sheer material and human resources.  My father, a private in a combat engineering platoon of Patton’s Third Army put it a different way.  “We made fewer mistakes than they did.”  Yet, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, our material might and superior training did not and are not winning the day, and likely will not.  We are fighting in the terrain of human values; a battle-scape that our mythology asserts we should win.  But we’re not.  That should give us pause for thought, but it hasn’t.  We still see ourselves as WWII conquerors and saviors of the world order.  And we confer upon ourselves the right of preserving that order in our image and to our liking.  It is not working, and will not.  We have reached the limits of our advantage.  We have squandered much of our advantage.  And, though many at the top of our particular national pyramid cannot see it or refuse to acknowledge it, we are sliding into 2^nd world status in many areas, and 3^rd world in some.  Without a mid-course correction of some dramatic scope in our national psyche and values, it is now conceivable that we will reach escape velocity from the orbit of material prosperity and national unity.  The Portugal I remember may come ever closer to the America of our future experience.  But Portugal has evolved and prospered.  I am no longer so certain that we will.

 

I am reminded of another moment in my undergraduate experience.  I worked with a colored lady in the university library reserve room.  She had a high school education, but had obviously earned a doctorate in life’s lessons.  She wore a smile that radiated the warmth of the sun, but betrayed traces of weariness of a life that had its challenges as well as its gratification.  One afternoon as we both sat at the reserve desk observing the antics of some of my peers, she remarked with a weary but warm smile: ‘Honey chil’, there’s ignorant and there’s stupid.  Ignorant is curable. Stupid is forever.”

We might contemplate that truth as we reflect on our president, and ourselves.

Onward.

20180114

Copyright 2018  Integratedman  All rights reserved.

Facts may be optional. Reality Isn’t.

“People that say that facts are facts — they’re not really facts . . . there’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts. And so Mr. Trump’s tweet amongst a certain crowd . . . are truth.”     Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump surrogate.

Last month, I was mildly disturbed to learn from the media that my profession of auditing, as well as the professions of science and journalism and medicine and to some degree law, have all been rendered irrelevant by a society that has elected to disregard fact and truths that emanate from facts, and embrace opinions posing as truths and  rooted in thin air,  grown in the hothouse of anger and ignorance.

Such was the result  of the election postmortem in which the Forces of Trump declared that facts no longer matter.  It’s what people choose to believe, by whatever means they come to their beliefs, dubious or otherwise.  You have to give them their due; their election results have validated their hypothesis, at least in the short-term.

But in the short or long-term, ‘truths’ must ultimately reconcile with reality, or they are not true.  Reality trumps belief.

I’m not worried about job security.  But my job and those of my colleagues in various organizations and capacities become more difficult when we operate in a world where our stakeholders demand the facts they want to hear to comport with the beliefs they cherish, rather than the facts they need to know in order to define the truths that will sustain them.

My profession of auditing is about reconciling ‘truths’ as have been reported  in financial statements to supporting facts, and reconciling those facts with reality.  Reality is the key here.  It is immutable.  It can be ignored for only so long, but eventually, it dominates.  See sub-prime mortgages, LIBOR, pension plan assumption of returns s on investment versus realized returns, unemployment statistics versus household income, the Boomer generation’s retirement aspirations versus asset accumulation, military budget versus military power effectively and conclusively applied, health spending versus health outcomes.

Let’s do a brief overview of the information ecosystem as it has evolved with human-kind.  In the beginning, all that humans needed to know confronted them directly and often overtly without any subtlety or obfuscation of intent: hunger, climate, illness and injury, bigger predators, or more aggressive predators of kind from two caves down the road.  Threats were immediate; responses were immediate or irrelevant; outcomes were immediately determinable and of little interest to anyone but the subject and his immediate dependents.

But we evolved, dare I use that term.  We learned from  experiences that informed our understanding of our environment, limited as it was, and we explored options. Our experience became intelligence, accumulated information that we could draw upon with the same utility as stone tools.  Intelligence gradually replaced emotion as our considered response to events that confronted us.  And as intelligence grew, we concluded that we could control events to our preferences rather than be at their mercy.

Eventually as we became more complex societies, probably due to facing more daunting challenges that could not be overcome alone, we determined the need to share information. Our languages and means of communicating evolved with the scope of our experience and the sphere of our social engagement.

Information at this stage became more symbolic as it was shared beyond the bounds of an individual’s personal experience or observation and confirmation.  And the more symbolic it became, the greater risk that  it diverged from the reality it represented.  So if I had two shiny rocks in my hand, I knew I had two shiny rocks in my hand.  But my shiny rocks might not be the same as the fella’s downstream, and without some reliable way of differentiating them and explicitly communicating what each of us has, we really haven’t communicated very much.  Facts matter.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Trusting that you can see where my primitive example is going, I won’t belabor it, but will get to the point.

Our sustainability  as individuals and as a  society is based on an informational paradigm that goes something like this:

Sustained existence depends on productive action against forces of decline and deterioration.

Productive action depends upon proven theories or ‘truths‘ of how the universe works (scientific law and principles, public policies, law, social customs, business models).

Truths depend upon a system of facts and logical relationships among those facts that inform actions which understand reality and reliably achieve intent.

Facts are symbolic representations of realities that we seek to understand  and communicate in order to relate to them in intended ways.

Reality is immutable, irrefutable,  and will ultimately trump (small t) all else.

But over time, a problem has developed with this paradigm. As our world has become more complex and our spheres of dependency have expanded, we have depended on ever-growing networks of intermediaries to give us the facts that we depend on for truth and guidance for actions that we hope to take for our sustainability, and hopefully our prosperity beyond the barest requirements of our existence.  And to repeat, those facts are symbolic representations of reality, not to be confused with reality itself.

So what could possibly go wrong with this?  First, we may not gather all the facts we need.  Second, the facts we gather may be imperfect representations of the reality they purport to represent. Third, the intermediaries we rely on for facts may be incompetent or deceitful in providing information we can relay on. Finally,  we may choose to exercise concerted ignorance to the facts that do not comport with our preferred beliefs or ‘truths’.

When facts are compromised or disregarded, our sustainability is at risk. When the truths on which we take action no longer comport with reality, there will be a collision between our expectations and reality, often referred to with the euphemism ‘unintended consequences’.

    *    *    *

We should distinguish between truths and opinions.

Opinions can exist free of facts, dangerous as that is.  Truths cannot.

Truth:   “the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality”

Opinion: “a: belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge b :  a generally held view”

For example, I may have an opinion that my pension fund will be able to meet projected obligations based on an assumed rate of return of 8% over time, but if historical facts inform that I am only earning 3%, and known information does not provide credible basis for a prudent person to reasonably expect that 8% or better will be achievable in the foreseeable future, then my opinion on the assumed rate will not matter against the truth of realized (real) rates of return.

Short form:

Facts do not always fully or accurately represent reality.

And Truths and Opinions are not always supported by complete and accurate facts.

But truths and opinion without complete and accurate facts will inevitably collide with Reality.

And Reality will always win.

I hope we have enjoyed this respite from facts in 2016.  2017 awaits, as does Reality.

Onward.

20161231

In our next exciting episode: Escalating Ignorance in the Information Age

Hindsight is Foresight Foregone

It’s not that we can’t see the future; it’s that we don’t bother.

Granted, none of us can predict it, nor do I presume that some magic algorithm applied to some special pile of Big Data can ease the Fog of the Future.

In part, it’s laziness. Here in the USA, we’re predisposed to the here and now and me, and the rest will sort itself out.  As indeed it does.  But often not as we hoped.

In part it is because we know from abundant experience that too many pious prognostications by proselytizers of progress have turned to sink-holes of time, effort and money.  So why bother.

In management we have evolved the discipline of ‘risk management’ which is part institutionalized experience and part pseudo-science.  ‘Risk management’ is somewhat of an oxymoron like ‘military justice’, ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘virtual reality’. It trades on a figment of truth to create the illusion that it is more than it is.

Risk management has some level of foundation in its effort to deal systemically with known and knowable risks, but today’s world is increasingly subject to unknowable risks for which there is no statistical basis of quantification of either loss, cost of prevention or remediation.   But that’s not the real problem.

Many in my profession of accounting and auditing gravitate to the  ‘risk management’ mantra, and strive to incorporate it into their mission statement. After all, if you can’t be a ‘risk taker’, being a ‘risk manager’ or a ‘risk something’ is the next best thing. It’s sexier than mere accounting and auditing.  And besides, there’s plenty of precedent for the need for ‘risk management’ given the losses that businesses have incurred for themselves, and more frequently for others in their carefully contrived relationships.

But, truth be told, even the growing cadre of risk management acolytes have trouble peddling their wares to the C suite where hype and hope too often trump (no pun intended) reality and even the crudest calculations of probability.

Let’s take a few examples out for a test drive:

•  Does anyone see any problem with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Larry Paige and the other space cadets filling the skyways and byways with their latest magical brain-farts without benefit of adequate regulation and incubation for proof of concept within laboratory controlled settings, much less in the free-fire environment of that freaky place we call the ‘real world’?
• Is the latest episode of the Theranos melodrama really a surprise?  Or was it the highly probable outcome of a flaky premise sold to incredibly greedy people willing to believe and suspend critical judgment?
• And let’s not beat unduly on Theranos. It’s just one of a number of Unicorns in the magical kingdom of Silicon Valley and other tech redoubts where people with more money than brains can throw it at the wall, hope that something sticks in the lottery of high-tech chance,  and praise themselves that their failures are really essential tuition and down-payment for future greatness.  In their magical kingdom, failure is virtue.  In the real-world, failure gets you fired.
• Where is China going, and where is it taking us?  The West lost that gambit four decades ago with an essential, but ill-conceived opening of relations.  The drive of corporate greed for access to a billion consumers overtook any attempt of western governments to modulate the normalization in a manner that would minimize the foreseeable disruptions we have experienced economically and strategically.  Accordingly, China has grown into an unruly adolescent (in modern world terms, its considerable historical lineage notwithstanding).  Given its desperate economic and environmental constraints, and it’s likely belief that its salvation is in expansion, military conflict with its neighbors and the West seems inevitable in the near to intermediate term.  Trump and China should easily understand each other: a coercive bully that believes he\it has a right to dominance on its terms without obligations to others. I suspect that this is in part an act China has found it can get away with because, unlike with Trump, no one has yet drawn a firm line in the land, the water or the air that they are prepared to defend (although we are beginning to with questionable allied support). Corporate executives are now marveling at how they could possibly have lost their technological edge (which they often willingly gave away in many cases for access to that one-billion consumer market)  and now are losing the market itself in a tightly controlled totalitarian environment where the ‘rule of law’ is more a farce than even a mere political fig leaf of cover.  Who’d a thunk?
• Was the Shell Oil retreat from the Arctic really a surprise,  or merely unfettered stupidity colliding with reality?  When we have so much evidence of failure to properly engineer and install  and monitor and regulate and mitigate such ventures in much less hostile and much more stable environments, what would make any prudent executive or government think that Arctic exploitation would be just another hole in the ground?  Did BP’s experience give anyone in Shell’s HQ pause for concern?
• How about them GMOs?  Scientists are complaining that the average clod on the streets is unjustifiably suspicious of the risks of GMOs.  But when we look at the recent history of our ‘conventional’ food supplies, the engineering of obesity, the evisceration of regulatory oversight and quality control, is there not reasonable cause for concern by the public of what will next be foisted upon them in the guise of progress at their ultimate risk and cost?  This is actually a case of the person on the street exercising ‘risk management’ in the suspicion that those in the Corporate suite will not. At least, not in the consumer’s behalf.
• And then there’s fracking; a mindless grab for resources beyond any exercise of prudence, with costs to society measured only in financial terms to date, with studied ignorance of the collateral environmental, social and economic costs beyond the measure of defaulted securities.

There are a number of simple questions that executive management could ask itself and save a lot of grief when contemplating a new venture or circumstance, or coping with an existing or intractable situation  (like Palestine):

• Has the situation ever happened before, and what can we learn from it.
• Are there any parallels, if not direct precedents, to this situation that can give us a clue of dynamics and outcomes?
• Do we understand the context (historical and present circumstances) of our intended act, and do our assumptions take that context into account?
• Have we tested our assumptions about what should happen if we take this action?
• Have we defined performance standards for our expectations that will give us quick feedback if we’re going off the rails of our expectations.
• Have we asked ourselves how the opposition/competition/stakeholders/regulators are likely to respond, and have we taken appropriate steps to address reasonable concerns.
• What could possibly go wrong, and what’s the worst that could happen….?
• ….and if it does, what are we prepared to do about it?

These are so simple, they don’t even deserve to be sexified as ‘risk management’.  They’re basic management, or even common sense.  Yet the frequency with which they are ignored and often even disdained by the supposedly educated meritocracy has numbed us of any sense of amazement.  Rather, it has implanted a cynicism and contempt and suspicion of all forms of authority: legal, moral, scientific, political, religious, social that accounts more for the rise of Trump, Sanders and Br-Exit than any conventional political explanation.

We could go on, but I’ll trust the point is made, if not accepted.  In the corporate, government and personal world, risk-taking trumps risk management more often than not, and often with predictable consequence.

It’s not that our capacity for foresight is so bad.  It’s that we don’t bother to seek answers we know we’re probably not going to like. And when they’re thrust upon us, we often find ingenious ways to ignore them rather than to deal with them.

So, to say that hindsight is 20/20 because we have the benefit of knowledge that is not previously available is at best half the truth.  As often as not, we just don’t give a damn.

*  *   *

Word of the day:  de-escalate.

Onward

20160710

 

The Bully-In-Chief and the Naked Empress

You would think that a society that has spent the past ten years wringing its communal hands over how to deal with school yard bullies and their consequences would recognize one in the man-child Donald Trump, and have a clue of how to deal with him.  Obviously not.

Most interesting is the self-inflicted dilemma of the Repugnantlan Party; those stalwart wearers of flag lapel pins,  supporters of our troops and police, champions of right to life until born, true believers that they have a monopoly on patriotism, self-appointed protectors of the constitution that they are systematically raping in the name of God, country and free enterprise….They stand trembling in the shadow of Trump.  Ironically, the shadow is less than the man, but the Repugnantlans are less still in their collective incapacity to confront this breathing amalgam of narcissism, arrogance, deceit and rank ignorance, and say to themselves and the society that they presume to lead “This man does not represent our values, and we will not lend our Party’s label to his twisted and destructive enterprise.”   Or something to that effect.  But that apparently demands more courage than they can collectively muster.

Nor were the alternatives all that attractive.  A party that has embraced a thinly disguised agenda of bigotry, religious zealotry, misogyny and elitism under the brand Conservatism, and thus done severe damage to the meaning of that term; that same party has looked desperately in its wings among the kooks and Hucksters, and mini-narcissists in waiting, for an alternative to the Enfant Terrible, to no apparent avail.  Short Form: they’re screwed.

The question before the Repugnantlans is: Do we face a firestorm at the convention in the effort to save the party?  Or do we face a firestorm at the voting booths and watch the party be bludgeoned into dust, at the possible tangible loss of Congressional majority.

Given the level of courage and integrity currently in evidence in the party leadership, it is conceivable that they would rather suffer the risk of defeat in the less frightening confrontation and anonymity of the voting booth, than to risk the physical, in-your-face, mano-a-mano confrontation that is promised by Thugs for Trump at the convention.

And as disturbing as all this is in what it says about the state of Party leadership, what is even more disturbing is that there is a constituency that is big enough to give Trump this power.  The question is: is this a constituency of mini-bullies supporting a master bully in their greatest fantasy of power, or as some observers suggest, are Trump’s followers mostly very angry people who see Trump not so much as their leader, but their hammer to render a failing system to the dustbin of history. A similar speculation has been rendered of Bernie Sanders, who is beginning to sound more like Trump in his prognostications for the coming Democratic Convention.

Then there’s the Demo-crass.  They have a different kind of fear, or should.  They face the risk that fewer people will turn out for Ms Inevitability, a.k.a ‘Hillary Don’t-Cry-For-Me-Argentina Rodham-Clinton’, than the die-hard crazies who will turn out for Trump.  On paper, she should have this thing licked.  She’s got ‘credential’s.  She’s engineered the back room of the Convention.  She’s got an enviable Rolodex ( because, as she acknowledged in the prvate computer server grillings, she’s not particularly tech savvy) and the financial backing.  What she lacks is credibility.  Not necessarily an insurmountable problem for a politician.  But she has such an incredible knack for shooting herself in the foot, that it’s totally reasonable for the average person to wonder if she can be trusted with nukes.

In one of her rare moments of candor, she acknowledged after the Florida primary that she is ‘not a natural politician’,  like her husband or Obama.  So why is she running for the position of Politician in Chief?  Is it because she’s a superb, wonky tactician like her husband?  Uh-huh!  When the press were battering her phalanx of flacks, she carefully sequestered behind her security wall.  When an attack was needed, she sent out Bill.  When credibility was needed, she grasped for Barack’s coat-tails, and when that was inconvenient as in the case of the Pacific Trade agreement, she let go.  She claims to fight for the underdog, but what has she ever won for the underdog of substance? Health care, voting rights, better treatment of women anywhere in the world?  She claims experience, but where is the wisdom?  Health care? Libya? the Russian Reset? Syria?  Is her wisdom and pragmatism possibly hidden in that gold-plated speech she gave to Goldman Sachs which remains more closely guarded than her official emails as Secretary of State.  Could it be that if that text ever saw the light of day, it would reveal her to be as shallow and vacuous as the Mitt-ster?

Hillary is nothing but an avatar of women’s and minorities aspirations, but without the substance and quite possibly the will to deliver more than pious platitudes. A candidate whose image quite likely has to be re-invented every two weeks by her army of ‘advisor’s who are still groping for a credible product, isn’t much of a vehicle for progress.  An individual who has struggled against as improbable opponent as Bernie Sanders, in spite of all the advantages she amassed for her presumed coronation, must be profoundly lacking in substance.  A person, whose chief praise in recent weeks is that she has broken many barriers, but always seems to do it the hard way, is not a strong credential for endorsement.  I can’t really picture myself pitching my wares to a prospective employer with the line:’I git it done, but always the hard way’.   Endurance is fine, but competence would be better. She is the Demo-crass equivalent of Jeb Bush.  They  could make an awesome fusion ticket of irrelevance and incompetence.

On any rigorous assessment of substance, Hillary is an empty suit.  Indeed, the Empress has no clothes.

Hillary’s only claim to viability as a candidate is that, next to Trump, she looks at least sufferable, and may almost pass for presidential.  But even that may not be enough to save her if the terminal boredom or revulsion of so many independents and many in her own party is enough to deny her the critical margin for victory.

And then there’s the wild card:  The Republican Convention is July 18 to 21.  The Democratic Convention is July 25 to 28.  What if the Repugnantlan Party finally found the testicular fortitude to deny Trump the nomination on merits (or lack thereof), and installed Romney as the plug-and-play answer?    A contest between two equally brittle avatars.  But on surface, it is conceivable that Romney, an executive in private and public enterprise, could appear to have more chops than Ms Inevitability.

The Demo-crass High Command would have to assess  very quickly which old horse has the better chance.  The Demo-crass will be in the same convention dilemma as the Repugnantlans of reconsidering the ‘presumptive’ nominee, but the Repugs will have gained first mover advantage, which Mitt, the consummate capitalist, knows is critical.  Could the Hillary Horde pivot quickly to a new opponent and a new strategy?  Not likely, if two presidential campaigns are compelling evidence. Could the Democratic Party?  Probably not a prayer.

Can Elizabeth Warren save the ticket?  She would likely carry the ticket.  But if I were her, I’d be extremely wary of signing on to the HIll ‘n Bill show.

Onward.

20160612

 

Fracking Idiocy

Having dealt in my prior two posts with Climate Change idiocy, (and there’s so much more fertile ground to be tilled on both sides of that subject) I’d like to turn my attention today to Saudi America’s continuing delusion of energy independence.

The news of late in the energy arena continues to be of energy abundance and resultant low consumer prices, with some necessary casualties in the oil patch.  Peak Oil is dead.  Fracking will set us free.  Except in Denton, Texas and a growing number of Texas towns that see fracking as an insidious oppression, joining folks in Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and North Dakota and other places where the wildcatters have run roughshod, aided and abetted by local officials whose greed is comparatively modest in scale, but no less deleterious in effect.

Being an accountant, I try to marshal my humble skills to understand events as they are, and not as they are presented. Among the core tenets of accounting is the principle of substance over form.

So what is the substance of our current fracking bonanza?  Have we unleashed unlimited energy wealth?  No.  Hydrocarbons are still a ‘non-renewable’ resource in the sense that we are depleting them far faster than natural processes can replenish them, and at some point, we are bound to hit a wall.  That it may not be in our lifetime does not absolve us of the moral and ethical obligation of stewardship for future generations. (Moral obligation. Such a quaint notion.)

Do we have an abundance of energy?  No, we have simply found a way to exploit a limited resource faster than before. And in absence of any regulatory discipline of the markets, save the Saudis who are NOT our friends, we have driven down the price of a precious resource by exploiting it unconscionably and creating an illusory abundance.

But aren’t the low prices of the  moment good for consumers and the greater economy, even at the expense of the oil industry?  Yeah,  like sub-prime mortgages and liar loans.  But what about the blow-back that will follow, when the closed-in wells and abandoned rigs don’t snap back to production as fast as prices in the inevitable shortage that will follow?  Remember the boom/bust of the 80s. Or any other period in the history of the industry, which is riddled with boom/bust. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, how long can the consumer expect to benefit at the expense of the industry whose own foolishness has made that benefit unsustainable for both?

Another thing that accountants like to do is to match revenues with expenses.  As I have maintained in prior blogs, if we were to do so with the extractive energy industry, energy prices would be much higher than they are, and we would be conserving much more than we do.  The price of oil and gas does not reflect the burden on the inadequate infrastructure that bears the strain of the current boom and will likely be left severely depreciated without adequate economic recovery when the bust occurs.  It does not reflect the costs of social and environmental degradation, which the industry will not likely clean up before it leaves town. It is consuming water at a voracious rate, frequently in places where it is competing with agriculture and basic human consumption for priority of an exceedingly scare resource.  And while water is a renewable resource, that is not the case for much of the millions of gallons of fracking cocktail that are being permanently sequestered deep in the earth because it is too toxic for recovery and recycle by natural or technological means.  Unless of course another New Madrid quake manages to un-sequester those wells back to the surface, or close enough for unpleasant consequences.  Even folks in Oklahoma and Ohio are beginning to have second thoughts.

No, we don’t match revenues with expenses in the near term, or over the long haul. The energy industry is taking the profits up front, and deferring the knowable costs and plausible long-term contingent risks for others to bear; and in many cases, the ‘others’ bear the costs disproportionately to the benefits they hoped to derive from royalties, or jobs, or tax base or whatever other mirage was flashed in front of them.

Most interesting is how fracking seems to elude serious scrutiny for the economics that underlie the current surge in production.  It is generally known that fracked wells deplete much faster than conventional plays, and that for a company to continue to generate growth in revenue, it must continue to frack new wells faster than the older wells are depleting.  This is often referred to as the Red Queen Syndrome, the need to keep running faster and faster just to stay in place.  It is not a winning game in the long run.  This is a form of ‘kiting’, a term in auditing for a particular type of serial fraud that usually ends badly for the perpetrator and his victims.  Or one could call it a Ponzi scheme and still be close to the truth.

I have to wonder if the major producers backed away from a significant push into fracking because they saw too clearly both the economic folly and the potential long-term contingent liabilities that would befall them with their perceived deep pockets.  Hit-and-run wildcatters don’t worry about the long-term.  So where do the majors go to replenish their depleting reserves?  Deep ocean.  The Arctic.  Russia, a fun place to do business if you don’t have the stomach for Iraq.  Do they take these risks because there’s an abundance of oil and gas to be had under reasonable conditions?  No.

So it may be true that the earth has an abundance of hydrocarbons waiting to be exploited.  But when you add the true costs of exploitation, in every sense of that word, you no longer have cheap and abundant energy.

We have the technical capacity to rape the planet from pole to pole.  That is not in question.  The question is what will be left that is worth the energy.

Onward.

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