Category: One-handed!

I have read The Economist since 1989, and the past 30 years have been good for its mission of promoting liberalism (i.e., the rights of individuals to decide their destiny without impinging upon that of others as well as the value of promoting diversity and competition in the search for “truth” and innovations that will promote the general welfare) and thus for humanity’s progress, but this progress and those ideals are under attack.*

In this week’s issue, TE’s cover article says “Success turned liberals into a complacent elite. They need to rekindle their desire for radicalism.”

You should read the whole article, but I am going to give my own reasons for the importance of this mission  because (1) I have supported this mission for decades and (2) everyone needs to consider the implications of life in a non-liberal world.

First, I am a (classical, not American-style) liberal because I am aware of my limited knowledge and desire for freedom, and thus willing to assert the limits to others’ knowledge as well as their right to be free of my influence. I have for years collected examples of where “power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely,” so I am humble ab0ut the potential for top-down “solutions” and fearful of the tendencies of (so-called) leaders like Trump, Putin, Orban and Erdogan as they rally their followers to smash various opponents of the majority. (Here’s a paper on aid failure; here’s one on how groups cooperate or not.)

Second, I feel as if we’re in an era that most resembles that of of 1920-1933, when popular misery supported the rise of fascists of the left and right, as well as populists who promised easy answers to tough problems but ended up inmpoverishing or killing their followers while immiserating millions of defenseless and vulnerable minorities. The strengthening currents of authoritarianism dressed up as nationalism or, somewhat more transparently as majoritarianism, not bode well for our species. This article, for example, explains how “China and Russia are very different powers with different strategies, but they share the objective of targeting free and open societies to make the world a safer place for authoritarianism.”

I am writing this from Madrid where two artistic exhibitions have been coloring my thought. First, there is an exhibition of Russian Dadaist arts, which date from the 1920s and mostly highlight the ridiculous situations that Russians found themselves in during the early years of their revolution, which turned from proletarian optimism into fascist slaughter, starvation and terror. The second images are of Picassso’s Guernica, which he painted in 1937 in reaction to the  firebombing slaughter of innocent civilians by Nazis aligned with Franco. That painting, which is credited with “highlighting the need to forever remember and prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians,” seems remarkably relevant right now, at a time when Assad is barrel-bombing innocents and Aung Suu Kyi sits on her hands as Myanmar’s army slaughters innocent Rohinga citizens. I could write more about Venezuela, Turkey, Nigeria, and other places, but you get my point.

Liberalism as a philosophy is simple. It dictates humility, diffusion of power, and cooperation, but these ideals are unpopular with people who feel threatened and politicians who promise easy fast gains.  Sadly, those groups are ascendant as they were in the 1930s, and they do not yet see the obvious connection between their simple-minded, zero-sum view of the world and the obvious fact that attacks lead to counterattacks, and thus cycles of righteous conflict. (Check out Israel and Palestine for a long lesson in that futility.)

My one-handed conclusion is that our turn from faith and practice of liberalism will promote intra- and inter-group conflict at a time (climate disruption) when we should be joining in efforts to protect ourselves from our collective mistakes. Sad.

Addendum (20 Sep): This article is worth a read: “China and Russia assessed that Western liberalism and freedom undermine authoritarian rule. Indeed, many Western policy makers saw this as a desirable side effect: It may be good news for the Chinese and Russian people, but it is bad news for their regimes. And so, China and Russia began to push back.”

---

* I forgot to add a comment on how US politics has played a major role in this deterioration. In 1989, the Wall fell and the Warsaw Pact countries left Soviet influence. In 1991, the USSR itself fell apart, freeing the Baltic countries to pursue their freedoms while leaving most of the other dozen republics to struggle with reform, corruption and authoritarianism. These moves were helpfully supported by George HW Bush as well as Clinton, but the lack of an “external enemy” led Republicans (under Newt Gingrich) to turn to dirty politics as a means of gaining domestic power. Those shenanigans (including the impeachment of Clinton before the House) previewed the gridlock that plagued Obama’s years. Perhaps the worst “luck” was the (fraudulent) election of George W Bush in 2000, which gave power to an incompetent who invaded Iraq (for no good reason), failed the people of New Orleans after Katrina, reversed progress towards a global agreement on climate change, and fueled the economic bubble that led to the Great Recession, which hurt the average person but protected bankers from their own failures. Obama did a heroic job with the shit-sandwhich he was given, but the Republicans spent all their time undermining him rather than helping the country and its vulnerable people. Sadly, their strategy enabled the election of Trump, who has got to be the worst person ever to sit in the White House (and I’m including Jackson, Nixon and Bush 2). Given the current clusterfuck in the US, I am sure that we’ve yet to see the worst of Trump’s presidency. I certainly hope that the damage is not too deep and that those responsible are punished, but that justice will only recover 1% of the damage Trump and the Republicans are doing to the US and the world.

Burning man opens its gates today to ~70,000 burners and virgins, eager to express themselves, participate and enjoy the dynamics of one of the world’s most inclusive, radical and innovative communities.

Many people are changed by Burning Man, the vast majority for the better but some for the worse. As a glass-half empty kinda guy, I want to talk a about Burning Man’s constitutional failure to protect the innocent.

To put this in context, consider Burning Man’s 10 Principles, most of which boil down to “let everyone do what they want, no matter how weird you might think it is.”

But these ideals of “radical inclusion” do not touch on the most important element of freedom. i.e., freedom from being harassed by those “radically” photographing, approaching, and touching others without their consent. Assault (menacing approach) and battery (actual physical contact) are, of course, banned at Burning Man in exactly the same way that they are banned in the “default world,” but they are not explicitly called out as inappropriate in the 10 Principles, which is why there have been more reports of sexual harassment, unwanted groping and rape at Burning Man.

Most Burners are aware of these issues, and the Bureau of Erotic Discourse (B.E.D.) has been active for years in promoting consent before engagement, but those efforts have not been adopted into the 10 Principles that are plastered all over Burning Man, featured prominently in the handbook sent to all ticket buyers, and so on.

My one-handed conclusion is that the Burning Man Organization (the Borg) must revise its constitution to add an 11th Principle: “Consent is more important than your radical expression, so ask first and anything other than Yes means No.”

(I’m taking a break from a multi-day painting project to write this. The irony!)

Most people juggle a mess of overlapping, conflicting time demands arising from a variety of obligations and desires. Running at 110 percent means that there’s always something waiting to be done. (Social media makes this problem worse because it’s common for “a quick scroll” to absorb so much time that you’re not only late for your next to do, but stressed because you “haven’t had a breather” between tasks…)

The problem with piecemeal, jammed schedules is that people have a hard time devoting a block of time (3-4 hours) to a topic, let alone finding 3-4 hours on short notice for an urgent topic. 

Thus, we see an equilibrium where everyone is rushed, each task only gets a little attention, and it’s much harder for a group project to advance in a timely manner. Indeed, it’s much more common to have a three-person project drag on over several weeks instead of getting done in a few hours. The delays are mostly around coordination, because each person, as they turn to the project, needs an update from others, which means delay and confusion before they can even start, let alone send their part to others. In these conditions, transaction costs are high and the whole process annoying. (Trans-disciplinary communication among academics can be particularly bad due to jargon and work norms, let alone philosophical disagreements.)

There are two ways forward from these issues. For individuals, it’s to cut back on casual tasks, leave gaps empty for a breather, and set aside empty blocks of time each week. (I can’t remember where, but I read a few months ago about a very successful person who had blocked out two free days per week.)

For groups, the issue is worse because the person with the worst agenda is going to set the pace for everyone else, losing even more time and annoying even more people. 

I thought of this topic two months ago while at a conference with 700 economists in such a hurry to get to their presentations or find one of 25 parallel sessions that they hardly had any time to think, let alone extend serendipitous meetings into the conversations they might deserve.

So my suggestion for groups is that they go for a “hackathon” concept in which everyone works only on one topic for 1-3 days. The key elements — presence, communication and deadline — will aid success by setting expectations, collecting all decision makers and aiding problem solving.

I suspect that every company, academic department and family could get a lot more done by scheduling 2-4 “hacks” per year, with details (fix a nagging problem, design a new idea, etc.) decided as the date approaches. These hacks will be more productive because everyone will be there, the deadline will force attention onto ugly issues, and progress will motivate everyone to keep pushing for the next step.

My one-handed advice is to set aside more “empty blocks” for yourself and schedule a block for your family or work. 

Do you see anything familiar here? How do you get stuff done?

Women have come a long way in the past 100 years: “receiving” the right to vote, “being allowed” to work outside the house, “having the choice” of pregnancy. Some of these rights have been “taken” but the majority has been “given” by men who are not always happy to be losing power.

Men still tend to dominate aggressive professions such as sports, business and politics. Although competition in those professions can be helpful, it can also bring destruction, cheating, and social misery. * 

I’m not going to argue on the exact blend of social and biological characteristics inherent in gender, as that mix is irrelevant in comparison to the outcomes of gendered behavior.

What’s interesting (and my point) here is that women’s rising political and economic power should (will?) lead to different dynamics around cooperation and competition. This is not just me saying “mommies are better” but a predictable outcome of gender socialization and evolutionary biology.

Women, for example, do not take as many risks as men because they do not care as much about the additional mating opportunities that come with wealth and fame. Less risk also means more cooperation since risk is an individual pursuit (think “first to the top of a mountain” or “grabbing the job”) and cooperation a collective pursuit.

Coming from a different angle, it’s also possible to view risk and cooperation though the lens of motivation, rewards and punishments. When it comes to group activities, it’s sometimes hard to know who has done what for (or against) the interests of the group. In these circumstances, a strong intrinsic (internal) motivation to cooperate is valuable, since there’s no need to invoke extrinsic (external) rewards or punishment for free-riding. In a co-authored paper on this topic, we found that women paid more attention to collective actions than men, meaning that they are more likely to cooperate when that goal is publicized. (Men are also cooperative, but not as sensitive to cues of where and how to do so.)

I’ve taught a course on cooperation in the production of collective goods for a few years now (I’m starting again in a few weeks), and I looked up the student grades, to see if more men or women were rewarded for cooperation (or penalized for free riding) by others in their group. Ignoring many statistical caveats, the raw data looks like this:

	Rewarded	Penalized
Male (37 total)	35% (n=13)	65% (n=24)
Female (52 total)	48% (n=25)	52% (n=27)

These numbers support the idea that women in these groups were more cooperative than men, but let me add two caveats. The first is that rewards and punishments were zero-sum, so it would be impossible to have 100% within a group but not impossible to have 100% here (e.g., groups are 50% free riding men and 50% cooperative women). Second, students knew that they would be graded for their cooperation (extrinsic motivation!), but there’s still quite a gap between men and women.

My one-handed conclusion is that a larger share of women with political and/or economic power is going to result in more cooperation and more punishment for defection. That will be good for the commons of our societies, the environment, and humanity in general.

---

Ps: My mother died over 30 years ago, but her birthday recently passed. In my experience growing up, I received more care from women than men, who tended to focus on money (and themselves). #checkyourbias

* Addendum (15 Aug): “The average age of admission to a trauma center is about 22. It used to be 90 percent male. Now, it’s only like 84 percent male. Women are becoming as stupid as men.”

After a few years (and 22 revisions), our paper* has been published!

In “Water civilization: The evolution of the Dutch drinking water sector” Bene Colenbrander and I trace the history of policy, technology, and cultural changes that took the Netherlands from a country with no drinking water infrastructure to one with a world-class system.

The abstract explains:

Dutch drinking water companies now deliver safe affordable water to the entire population, but this result was not planned. It emerged, rather, from an evolutionary process in which various pressures on the commons resulted in changes to drinking water systems that addressed old concerns but uncovered new problems. Our analytical narrative traces this problem-solution-new problem pattern through four eras in which a common-pool dilemma is addressed by a private-good solution (1850-1880), a club-good solution (1880-1910) and a public-good solution (1910-1950) before returning to a private-good solution in the last 1950-1990 era. Actions, like the dates just given, were not always exact or effective, as the process was shaped by changing social norms regarding the distribution of costs and benefits from improved water services. This Dutch history is unique, but its insights can help improve drinking water services elsewhere.

This academic paper of 36 pages might seem irrelevant for a non-Dutch reader or daunting for a lay reader, but we suggest you give it a go. For non-Dutch, there are lessons on the difficulty of change and how interest groups fight over money and public health. For non-academics, this paper explores  the complexity of changes that took over 100 years to implement. 

One of the paper’s key features is our model describing how drinking water service could be described as one of four types of “economic good,” depending on conditions. This model is not new, but our application to this history is novel and (we think) helpful in explaining how various barriers arose or were overcome. It took quite some time to make it simple and many words to describe how it works, but we think that readers can learn a lot from the model, which can be used elsewhere. We hope you agree!

My one-handed conclusion is that it’s always difficult to implement systems that benefit all at a cost to a minority, but also that there are many cases (as with drinking water) where implementation creates net benefits. The difference between communities that can change and those that cannot is the difference between life and death, between development and failure.

* You can download a PDF from my personal site or get it via the publisher’s webpage [paywall/login].

I was a bit surprised to hear (from one of my students) that China banned the import of “low value materials” for recycling in the country in July 2017. This move has raised panic in many countries that had been using China as a “dumping ground” but also some head shaking among economists who prefer to see more, rather than less trade, as trade allows countries and people to specialize in what they do best (“comparative advantage”). 

I think those reactions are not as important as two other points. 

First, it shows that the Chinese government is willing to “stand up” for its people, by blocking the import of garbage. That perspective might be slightly distorted by nationalism and NIMBYism, but it is probably more popular with citizens than efficiency or potential job losses in the recycling industry. (It’s also popular with proponents of the “circular economy” who want to see more local management of inputs and waste outputs.)

Second, I don’t think there will be many job losses, as this move fits into a trend of “greening” China that has been developing over the past decade. This trend might be invisible in the statistics for air quality or coal consumption, just as it is perhaps over-emphasized in the massive deployment of solar and wind power, but there’s clearly something going on. In this case, I see an “interesting” (not accidental) confluence between the sudden drop in international demand for Chinese recycling services (via the ban on imports) and a growing desire to clean up China, which translates into a domestic demand for recycling. The ban, in other words, might be part of a plan to shift Chinese productive capacity towards domestic consumers.

For evidence of an intentional shift, I’ll note that China has been placing less emphasis on export-led economic growth and more emphasis on the domestic-driven sort (since the 2011-2015 Five Year Plan), meaning that an increasing share of firms and workers are now selling goods and services to fellow citizens rather than internationally. *  

How far do they want to go? Guess…

My one-handed conclusion is that China’s ban on imported waste is part of its ongoing policy of improving life for its increasingly wealthy citizens who demand better, cleaner lives.

---

* Read PDF reports from McKinsey (2009) and the Demand Institute (2015)

If you were walking along the path on an island in Gothenberg’s archipelago, you might have thought you’d run into another selfie-mad idiot, but that’s me doing a TV interview on drought in the Netherlands.

Only a few seconds of that interview was aired (I show up at 2:40), but my main points — that farmers and nature would bear the brunt, unlike citizens who would still have 24/7 drinking water — have been showing up in the news, along with some interesting infrastructure implications:

• A Dutch farmer nearly “lost his crop” because his fruit were too small for “commercial distribution.” People might need to get used to smaller fruit with (maybe a benefit) more taste.
• Many of Amsterdam’s bridges are “locked open” because their metal parts have expanded in the heat. Near me, the bridges are getting hosed down with (canal) water all day to try to reduce heating.
• Rivers flowing into the Netherlands have less water, so barges can only take partial loads, which means that shipping costs and barge congestion are rising.

My one-handed conclusion is that heat waves and drought, which are getting worse with climate disruption, are going to cause a lot of trouble for people as well as lower our standard of living. (I just spent €50 on a fan that I could have spent on wine!)

I am a big fan of statistics, facts and data, and the internet has made quantification easy, fast and cheap. In fact, I think a little too easy, fast and cheap for our own good (or my own good).

As you know, you can get market data by the second, count your “friends” on social media, see precisely how much something you’ve done is “liked,” or even check your bank balance as you ride an elevator. 

As a blogger, I can get data on how many visitors come by my site, which posts are viewed more often, where these visitors come from, and so on.

Except now, on this blog, I do none of those things that I used to do at Aguanomics. I dropped tracking to reduce flows to the “data dragnets” deployed by Google (via their free “Analytics” service), Facebook (via their “like” button) and other services. I also chose ignorance for my own sanity, as I have no real way of using the data to write better posts (I don’t use advertising, so I don’t need to refine garbage clickbait posts), and I can’t really get a quality feedback from quantified activity. 

As evidence (for myself), I can think of the many terrible articles on topics I know that get 1000x the reads/likes/shares on other sites, along with dozens of ignorant, simplistic, and trying-to-be-helpful-falling-on-deaf-ears comments. I can also remember “Ask Me Anythings” that I’ve done on Reddit that had 300 to 5,000 upvotes. Those votes disappointed and thrilled me, respectively, and they did reflect different degrees of engagement, but they did not perhaps represent failure or success to readers. If anything, I had more time to give better answers in the “slow” AMAs than I did in the popular ones, where the same question was asked ten times, and I struggled to give short answers to everyone.

We all know that it’s taboo to “talk salary” with friends, family and co-workers because those conversations rarely go well. Maybe it’s nice to know that you make more than anyone, but does that knowledge actually mean anything? Are you happier? Healthier? What about your relations with work colleagues? At my university job, we know we make roughly the same salary because we’re on a bureaucratic scale, and that knowledge removes at least one source of friction that might exist at a job where people are paid based on their negotiating skills, the boss’s prejudice and/or some quantified dimension that may not correlate very well with your actual contribution. 

When I give grades to students, I see exactly the same dynamics: They give too much attention to the grade (especially when nitpicking to raise it) and  too little attention to my comments on what they did right and wrong and how to improve. They resist when I say “grades don’t matter,” as they know that many graduate schools and hiring departments will judge them by their grades, but maybe that filtering indicates that study or work in those places will involve an endless chase after even more grades or KPIs? 

I’m rather happy and relieved to lack data on how popular this new blog is, as it leaves me free to think more about what to write. I am happy to be off Facebook (and, soon, Twitter), as I don’t need to worry about how many likes my latest brainfart post gets, or from whom, or in comparison to the paid popularity of some “thought leader.”

It’s no accident that (sane) people ask “do you love me?” when they need some attention instead of “how much do you love me?”, as it’s easy to be pleased with “yes” and far-too-easy to be disappointed with “7.8.”

My one-handed conclusion is that we need less, not more, quantification in our complex, multi-dimensional, and unique lives.

What quantification would you banish to improve your life? Why don’t you?

The debate over the gender-pay gap has raged for years, and we know quite a bit about it. This 2017 paper, for example, indicates that the gender gap has been shrinking while the motherhood gap has persisted.

I’m not here to question these findings or the “fairness” of the gap, but reflect a little more on motherhood, risk and productivity.

As a first step, let’s agree that men tend to take more risks than women, on average. These risks might be good for society (inventions! discoveries!), but they can be bad for individual men (death!) or their firms (bankruptcy!), so risk will be relevant to firms, profits and productivity.

Turning to motherhood, we know that it’s predictable (at least in the last few months that might lead to maternity leave), that it’s likely to reduce a mother’s availability for the job, and probably going to lead to even less risky behavior by a mother who wants to take care of herself, her child(ren), and family.

Employers might pay women less for their predictable chance of having children but fail to reduce men’s pay for the unpredictable risks they bring…

Taken together, we can suppose that employers might pay women less for their predictable chance of having children but fail to reduce men’s pay for the unpredictable risks they bring to the firm. The list of such risks is long and stereotypical: lying salesmen, heart-attack stress, over-aggressive purchases,  bad hires based on hunches, sexual harassment, etc. These risks are hard to predict or plan for, so they are more like uncertainties (“known unknowns”) than risks that can be insured against, which means that firms may be “paying too much” for the generic male employee.

My one-handed conclusion is that the risk of a woman having a baby might  be correctly priced in terms of a wage discount while the risk of errant male behavior may not be correctly priced, meaning that men (especially those who are younger, childless and/or aggressive towards their careers) may be paid too much, relative to the risk they represent to the firm.

---

Note: This post also links to my earlier post on “pondering” because women — in my experience — tend to wait and ponder before acting while men rush into action without as much reflection. (Got an angry email to send? Write it today but send it tomorrow, after a good sleep and careful reread.)

If you’re reading this, then you are probably subject to the forces of the “attention economy,” meaning that we have enough money to get by but not enough time to get to all the good stuff that passes our way.

(If you’re worried about money in the sense of “can’t pay the rent,” then stop reading and go cancel some subscriptions — recurring payments are the number one way that people “waste money. If you’re worried about time and are here, then thanks for “spending time” on this blog!)

In most cases, people with a lack of time tend to be flustered at the slightest delay. A traffic jam, lost pencil or new email can throw their whole day off. 

If that sounds familiar, then this post (and maybe this blog) is for you.

When I was getting going here, I told readers of my newsletter that I was thinking of putting more emphasis on “slow thinking,” but I was worried about that phrase. I wrote:

Slow seems to indicate lazy or waiting around. Thoughts?

To this, CC replied: 

I like to refer to ‘slow thinking’ as pondering – which seems to be a ‘dying art’ of sorts.  As a ponderer, I find that I have to be deliberate in isolating time to allow my mind to explore an idea/concept/thought, beating back the daily ‘timing alarmed’ tasks and demands of the ‘instant results’ society so many of us exist within. Take your time, David; the results will be more fulsome and clear for you… And then for us as you take the time to share with us.

For this reply, I thank CC,* and here are a few of my thoughts on this topic and how I intend to write here.

First, it’s difficult to think at all when you’re always in a hurry. I used to say the Dutch are “precisely casual,” and I still think that is true, but it’s awful hard to have a conversation that’s not “on the agenda.” Their (national) habit of stuffing each day means that mistakes lead to panic and innovations are unwelcome.

Second, I am constantly stimulated with new ideas when I go on vacation, read a book, or spend a few hours in conversation. It’s hard to pursue these activities when my to-do list beckons, but they deserve respect. At the moment, I am on holiday in Sweden, and I’ve seen lots of new things and talked to a variety of people. All of these experiences confront my “settled” view of the world, sometimes pushing me to rethink habits, sometimes exposing me to ideas I dearly need.

Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve had a number of wondering conversations with my father. Sometimes he drives me nuts (he’s a fan of Fox News) but sometimes he keeps me going for hours with an odd comment or question. These conversations — and many others with a variety of strangers — have helped me explore new ideas and reconsider “settled” truths.

Last week, for example, I was chatting with someone on China’s recent ban on importing plastics (and other “low value”) waste for recycling. At first, I thought that this was China’s way of standing up for itself as a nation unworthy of others’ garbage, but then I realized that China’s ban created an opportunity for it to increase recycling of its own plastic garbage, as there was now a lot of spare capacity looking for inputs. This shift was an exact parallel to China’s recent shift in emphasis from exporting goods to meeting domestic demand. Where was the supply for that demand coming from? The exact same industrial base that had grown so large (and efficient) in the decades of exporting to other countries! I’m not sure if there’s any master plan at work here, but it sure makes more sense to me than other explanations. 

Third, I here’s two cheers for writing by hand, reading on paper, and talking without an agenda.** This recent article on typesetting says it well:

Technological innovation, in the conventional sense, won’t help us slow the publishing process back down. Slowing down requires better thought technology. It requires a willingness to draft for the sake of drafting. It requires throwing away most of what we think because most of our thoughts don’t deserve to be read by others. Most of our thoughts are distractions—emotional sleights of the mind that trick us into thinking we care about something that we really don’t—or that we understand something that we really don’t.

I could write a lot more on this topic, as I am endlessly fascinated by the many dimensions of my thought, the thoughts of others, and the mysteries of the world around us, but I’ll leave it there. 

My one-handed conclusion is that everyone needs time and space to expose themselves to doubt, wonder and exchange. Do you have enough time to ponder your thoughts, your actions and your world?

---

* CC happens to have the same initials as my friend Connie Cahlil, who died a few years ago of cancer. Connie was not only a dear friend, but a smart woman who confronted her illness with wisdom that she shared with the world as she slowly faded. If you want to read her stuff, then start here. (In fact, you’ll have to end there, as her blog is no longer online. The internet will remember you only for as long as you pay your content provider.)

** Don’t get me wrong, I think agendas can be very helpful, but not if they dominate your life, 24/365! Everyone’s mind needs free time to unwind and build new connections.