It’s The Gasoline, Stupid!

May 8, 2012

As we Americans find ourselves maneuvered into high gasoline prices, high prices that seem to be on their way to exorbitant prices, we really need to try putting transportation fuel prices into some kind of a context.

The current fuel predicament arises in part from President Obama’s desire to swiftly move all of us from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources which would also presumably be cleaner for the environment.  It is a rational and desirable goal, and as the world’s energy demand continues to rise, it will become necessary.  Unfortunately, the President has not thought about a transition path that could lead us to that goal down the road.  He continues to believe that if the U.S. government can make gasoline, diesel, kerosene and coal prohibitively expensive, we will all switch to alternatives for electricity generation and transportation before we are bankrupt.  The President’s logic would be OK—if  viable alternatives existed today.

President Obama has applied himself to learning political theories that appeal to him, tactics for implementing those theories, and how to smile and deliver appealing speeches to an undiscerning electorate.  However, a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  A majority of us are embarrassed for the President whenever he states technical “facts” that are so obviously incorrect or wishful thinking at best.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment, though; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

Our clumsy, government-mandated attempts to reduce gasoline consumption in this country would be laughable if the problem were not so serious.  The best example is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirement put upon vehicle manufacturers by a long-forgotten Congress and President.  Since the 1930s, efficiency of internal combustion engines has improved by about one to three percentage points at best; in contrast, differences in individual driver techniques result in a range of fuel burn of about 30%.  What the politicians have created, then, is a shell game the manufacturers must play—knowing that the net result is higher transportation costs for everyone.  (The only sure way of significantly improving fuel economy is to significantly reduce vehicle weight—with side effects of smaller cars and safety compromises.)

A more recent political sleight-of-hand is the ethanol mandate.  The energy potential of ethanol (when burned, not when swallowed) versus its energy cost of production from corn is only 1.63; other experts argue that the ratio is closer to 1.26.  But the unintended consequences of subsidizing corn-based ethanol are worse than its puny fuel value; the inflation of corn costs are being felt in cattle food, swine food, poultry food, and everything else from corn that is in our food chain.

The future of alternative fuels, however, is not totally bleak at this time.  Transformation of used cooking oils to diesel fuel is cost-effective, but obviously limited in its volume (long term, though, straight vegetable oil extracted from any oil-containing plant appears to have a future for diesel and turbine engines).  But what is needed right now is a strategy to husband our limited and expensive fuels—gasoline, diesel, and jet aircraft fuel (essentially, kerosene)—and use each in its highest and best application.  Another fascinating possibility, for railroad transportation, is a return to steam; convert diesel-electric locomotives to steam-turbine-electric, using coal for fuel.

A promising transition path toward sustainable energy sources was recently recommended by oilman T. Boone Pickens.  In his current-technology plan, we would switch autos and trucks to CNG, compressed natural gas (there are already more than 100,000 CNG vehicles running in the U.S.).  Pickens would also concurrently accelerate the implementation of electricity generation from wind turbines. The rate of CNG conversion and wind-power increase would be dependent on non-trivial infrastructure expansion.  New transmission facilities are necessary for getting electricity from the wind turbine locations to the national grid; and CNG-filling capabilities for trucks and autos are yet to be installed in most existing fuel stations (for personal vehicles, an affordable filling apparatus can be installed in the garage of any house that has natural gas).

In short, the plan Pickens laid out would essentially eliminate the need for gasoline and diesel in surface transportation (with a few exceptions such as diesel-electric locomotives and diesel-powered ships).  It makes so much sense that we are tempted to ask:   had just a bit of the trillions of dollars of stimulus money spent by the federal government in the last three or four years been directed to appropriate tax incentives, how far along in a Pickens-like plan could we be already?

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Pink Slime: A Harbinger of “Soylent Green”?

March 19, 2012

You may not have paid any more attention to “Pink Slime” than I have (most of us have some limit to the number of incipient catastrophes that we can track simultaneously).  In case you missed Pink Slime’s 15 minutes of fame, the facts are few and the description is mercifully brief.  When beef is slaughtered and a carcass is trimmed, there is some amount of fat, connective tissue, bloody effluent and miscellaneous bits of meat left over that were formerly used only for pet food.  But a clever technologist figured how to collect the stuff, treat it with ammonia to kill various microbes that are frequently present, and form it into little squares to be added back to ground beef; the price of ground beef is considerably higher than that of pet food ingredients.  Until this hamburger meat additive caught the attention of the media recently, we consumers were unaware of its existence.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ground beef with Pink Slime filler of 25% or less is perfectly safe.  The name, Pink Slime—obviously a pejorative—tells us that there are some people who don’t think much of the stuff.  In fact, some literate food scientists originally called it “Soylent Pink” but fear of criticism, intellectual property theft lawsuits, or worse, triteness, caused the Soylent reference (book and 1970s movie) to be dropped.  Needless to say, the manufacturers of this ground beef additive have a completely neutral marketing name that provides no hint of its ingredients.

Now there seems to be a bit of political correctness coming out of the slime:  McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell and other large chains fairly quickly foreswore Pink-Slime-impregnated hamburger meat in widely distributed press releases.  It is likely, now that Pink Slime has been exposed to the light for a short while, that additional restaurant chains and big-name sellers of ground beef will follow.  But in the meantime Soylent Pink is still alive and well in our land; and the two main producers of the stuff continue to find enthusiastic customers.

We in the western, more-or-less-civilized world are apparently narrow in our repertoire of palatable foods.  Even before exploring foods common to strange lands (insects, reptiles, etc.), we Americans demonstrate sensitivities to taste, aroma, texture, color, temperature, and—especially—the thought of certain foods.  As children grow up, their tastes change a lot, as we all know.  But the picky eaters discussed here are adults (in age, at least).

At one company where I was employed we had a coworker who was extremely limited in what she would eat; in the years I knew her she never tried anything outside of her never-changing menu.  When we selected a restaurant for one of our periodic department lunches it was a challenge to find an acceptable eating place (but she was a good sport, and on several occasions had coffee only with us, just to enable a little variety for the group).

Because I grew up in a single-parent household, my sisters and I had for much of our lives a limited menu:  that which was inexpensive and plentiful.  As a result, when I began taking business trips (across the U. S. and beyond) there were a lot of dishes to which I had never been exposed, e.g., steaks tender and not cooked until dead, dead, dead.  Within my narrow expense account limits (especially at the airline), a new world of taste sensations awaited.

Today, very few of my food-learning experiences are worth the time it takes to tell them.  Suffice to say that subjects included escargot, rattlesnake, elk, bear, chocolate-covered ants, fried grasshoppers, haggis, Scotch eggs, freshly-shot wild Belgian hares, numerous types of organ meats, and undoubtedly lots of stuff mercifully forgotten today.  My memory tells me that only a very small minority were sufficiently repugnant to put on the never-give-it-a-second-chance list.  But there was one consistent lesson: don’t let the thought of a new food get in the way of actually trying it.

Luckily, I didn’t cringe at the thought of “grass-finished beef” (or grass-finished buffalo); in the past couple of years I had an outstanding steak from grass-finished beef, raised by a local rancher to the chef’s specifications (and a year or so later an excellent buffalo steak, from the same source).   Soylent Pink versus Grass-finished Beef provides some interesting contrasts and a peek at our emotional responses to “almost taboos”.

Pink Slime represents an edible food, irrespective of its palatability,  whose potential value to human nutrition was previously not available.  There seems to be no concern among the experts as to the taste of hamburger meat containing this additive.  But there are two primary objections:  (1), it is relatively new and potential long-term effects of the antimicrobial chemicals are unknown, and (2) the thoughts of “bloody effluent”, “connective tissue” (?), and “miscellaneous” (??) send our imaginations into negative overdrive.  It is likely that a significant fraction of Americans would rather quickly assign Pink Slime to the same category of food as Scorpions and other such third-world delicacies.

Grass-finished beef (often mistakenly called grass-fed beef), however, should not conjure up strange things.  Grass is the natural food of cattle (although the designer of the unique bovine stomach is rarely given sufficient or frequent accolades).  All cattle are grass-fed for most of their lives; grass-finished cattle have eaten nothing but grass, clear up to the point of maturity when they are slaughtered.

Most of the beef products in the U.S. that we see in supermarkets and that we enjoy in restaurants come from cattle that have been shipped before maturity to feedlots where the animals are fed a grain diet specifically formulated to add fat quickly (beef cattle are sold by the pound to purchasers).  The beef feedlot system is peculiar to the United States and is not utilized elsewhere.  But it is a fact that today many large-scale beef purchasers need a balance of lean and fat meat (primarily for ground beef) that is not available domestically; therefore, more and more grass-finished lean beef is being imported from New Zealand and other countries.

Each side in the grass-finished versus grain-finished debate seeks to convince us that their product is superior, just like politicians.  The U.S. cattle feedlot industry has an enormous investment to protect, so we are more likely to be confronted with their side of the story, which is, essentially, “better taste, more tender”.  The (smaller number of) producers of grass-finished cattle try to get their story before the public:  “better taste, lower fat, more Omega-3, healthier”.  Third parties not associated with the raising of cattle or the processing of meat occasionally get a few of their worries out to the public:  corn utilization and price competition for it (because of ethanol subsidies); environmental concerns about feedlot operations; and humane treatment of  the animals.

But perhaps the media will perceive sufficient controversial content of this story to (inadvertently) introduce more of us to a “new” food alternative—grass-finished beef.  Bon appetit!

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CFLs: Not Ready For Prime Time

March 1, 2012

In their infinite wisdom, a Congress and a President decreed that Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs, CFLs (and, perhaps, their cousins, light-emitting diodes, LEDs), are what we all need, and all that we need.  To ensure that we are are not tempted to dawdle, waiting for things that actually meet our real needs, the same know-it-alls mandated that incandescent light bulbs be classified as Contraband Most Noxious, like DDT, heroin and Republican Senate bills.  As the incandescent bulb pipeline, now down to just a dribble, dries up completely, we will have to learn to improvise more and do without more:  Edison bulb, R.I.P.

I started out, as is my scientific bias, giving them a try, early on.  Light fixtures that were difficult to reach and lights that were turned on for a large part of each day were the first choices.  Ordinary outdoor bulbs, most of which are yellow because of insects, turned out to be good buys.  This small number of bulbs, with a cost of slightly more than four times that of incandescents, saved a tiny amount of electricity and lasted four to five times longer.  Also, the few difficult-to-reach fixtures promise less ladder risk and effort.

The next logical places to try CFLs were those places where more light was needed from existing fixtures (those at their total-bulb wattage limit); commonly this was a step up from a 60-watt or 75-watt bulb to a brightness equivalent of 75 or 100 watts.  So far, so good; even with the greater lumen output the net energy consumed was still less.  In this four or five year period, our total investment in bulbs had been sixty or seventy dollars—a very affordable risk.  There was even one new wrinkle, our first CFL with the now-familiar spiral, pigtail tube; aside from being a bit snug in some fixtures, these funny bulbs worked about as well as the others.  In fact, the only negative so far was having to get used to the delay period between turning a light on and its achieving full brightness—momentarily frustrating but not a big deal.

Finally the time came to make a real commitment:  proceed bulb by bulb until the last incandescent had died, or go all-in and spend the several hundreds of dollars to finish the paradigm shift.  My count, as I recall, of remaining light bulbs in common ceiling and wall fixtures was 31 or 32 (specialized light fixtures were temporarily ignored—more about them later).  The count of bulbs in the various floor and table lamps in the house was about 16, bringing the total number to be replaced to approximately 50.  A quick guesstimate of the total cost was somewhere in the range 0f $250 to $300.

A rationalization that Washington bureaucrats would force the change sooner or later provided an excuse to avoid any real cost-versus-worth calculation (acquisition cost, electrical current cost, estimated bulb longevity, etc.).  So, with $350 of CFLs in hand, The Great Changeover began.

By this time, prices had come down noticeably (and the bulbs were mostly marked “Hecho en China” or “Hecho en Third World Peoples Republic ____”).  The primary driver of the lower cost was thereby explained; as would become apparent later, another reduction would also be explained.  There were a few nuisances involved in The Great Changeover, including replacement of rheostat switches with common off-on switches (dimable CFLs were not readily available at that time, or even today, for that matter).  However, all seemed to go well with the ceiling and wall fixtures.

Lamps, of any kind, were another matter.  The snug fit of CFLs in some fixtures was actually a harbinger of obstacles to come.  In general, lamps which utilized a “harp” attachment method for their shades needed the largest harps that could be found (another Obama tax?) at Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, or on the Internet.  But the harp surprise appeared miniscule in comparison to the Three-Way Bulb Education.  Like most gullible consumers, I began with the assumption that three-light-level CFLs would replace their incandescent predecessors just as the single-level ones had.  Squeezing those fat CFLs into the harps was just a minor annoyance; however, the performance of those three-way CFLs turned out to be a major disappointment.

Even today, some ten or twelve years after our first compact fluorescent bulb experience, three-way CFLs are not just disappointing—they approach the level of ripoff.  As a bulb which can be set at any of the three switch settings for three different levels of light, the three-way CFL can be counted on to perform like its incandescent predecessor—for one to two months.  It will then be a two-level bulb for another short period, before it becomes a single-level bulb, just like a an ordinary CFL bulb in the lamp.  However, the designers, manufacturers and quality controllers must have at least a little charity in their hearts—the remaining level is frequently the highest of the three original choices.

The economics of three-way CFL bulbs might best be described as a Charity for Incompetent Third-World Manufacturers.  Starting with the three-way bulb cost of at least double that of an ordinary bulb, when we add the new harp cost to be amortized (about the same as two of these expensive bulbs) they are about as cost-effective as the federal government.  Even the single-level CFLs from Third World Inc. have proven to have a noticeably shorter life on average than the earlier CFLs, which must have been actually manufactured in the U.S.  A believable explanation, agreed upon by a number of bloggers on the Internet, is that quality control has not yet been discovered by those third-world manufacturers who are enabling the mandate of that now-forgotten Congress and President.  The Japanese government recognizes excellence in quality control with a (W. Edwards) Deming Award.  I suspect the countries where CFLs are turned out by the billions have an Alfred E. Neuman (What, Me Worry?) award for manufacturing incompetence.

Back to a less emotional area, the specialized light fixtures in my house remain filled at present with incandescent bulbs (and I hope no one rats me out to Inquisitor General Holder).  The kitchen designer for our kitchen provided general lighting, plus task lighting for those areas where the cook toils:  range top, sinks, counter top work surfaces, etc.  The task lighting fixtures have switches convenient to the work area that each illuminates.  Those fixtures are “can” lights that may be positioned as needed along a track and can be aimed to get light to the precise spot that needs it.  The bulbs are spot lights, in order to focus intense light where work is done.  But a few Internet searches has yet to turn up a CFL spot light bulb (although a flood light is available).  Needless to say, the price of specialized CFLs represents another big increase; if they last no longer than ordinary CFLs, no rational person would ever buy a second bulb.

Another specialized fixture area applies to most households:  the light bulb in your oven (and possibly in your refrigerator, in high-vibration areas, etc.).  Has anyone asked if their smart phone processor chip will operate at 450°F?    However, I’m sure that those arrogant members of Congress, that arrogant President, and all of those arrogant staff people involved remain certain that they have prescribed for us the only light we need and all the light we need.  Do we need to hear it again, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you with your lighting”?  Or did he say lightning; or in government-speak is there any difference between the two?  Shame on us for letting those con men (and con women) maneuver us into this position!

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Barack Obama, Alchemist In Chief

November 7, 2011

Individuals who have convinced sufficient Americans to vote for them to be President usually have carried adequate-to-outstanding academic credentials.  President Obama is no exception, having a Bachelor’s degree, plus a Juris Doctor’s degree (from Harvard, no less).  But a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

We humans, like a lot of other animals, learn through experience.  As those experiences have been recorded for posterity, each new generation of researchers, as the saying goes, stands on the shoulders of those who came before.  In ancient times, long before the seeds of modern science were planted, alchemy was accepted as a legitimate scientific pursuit.  The best-known purpose of alchemy was its goal of converting base metals such as lead or tin into noble metals such as gold and silver.  That goal eluded its searchers for millennia, but it was thought to be possible, awaiting only a “right stuff” thinker who could accomplish what had proved impossible for so long.

Today the average person thinks of alchemy as a play toy of the incorrigible ignorant.  Although essentially true, that’s not a totally fair assessment, since alchemy was one of the seeds that lead toward modern science.  One alchemy-like problem we see today is the achievement of controlled nuclear fusion, like the controlled fission used in nuclear power plants.  But, unlike the efforts of those early alchemists, research that some day might lead to controlled fusion (the holy grail of energy sources) is being conducted by the world’s top scientists with supercolliders, supercomputers, and all of our modern research tools.

President Obama does not seem to understand that the alchemy of the middle ages cannot be made to work, in spite of his rhetoric and his desires.  It appears that his ingrained ideology and ignorance of (or contempt for) physics, mathematics and engineering makes him an easy target for confidence men.  It is painfully evident that our President believes that almost instantaneous elimination of fossil fuels is achievable via political fiat.  The President is not alone in his beliefs; many in his administration have the same fuzzy beliefs and the same contempt for those “little people” of science who can’t seem to understand what is wanted of them.

So we see billions and billions of our taxpayer dollars being donated for seed money in economically questionable renewable energy initiatives.  A recent winner in our energy folly lottery is the late lamented Solyndra company that filed for bankruptcy in early September.  At this point there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Solyndra, aside from poor management and possible lack of due diligence.

Poor decision-making and overconfidence are seen from time to time in totally private initiatives, those with no taxpayer money at risk and no political favor rewards (see Diogenes and Technology Breakthroughs).  Such examples just remind us that there is risk inherent in all business ventures.  Venture capitalists understand risk management very well, but still they continue to finance new startups regularly.  However, when the venture capital is taxpayer money (which belongs to no one) due diligence has, or should have, a completely different definition.

The use of tax monies to finance business startups is generally regarded as inappropriate, but there may be room for debate on that subject.  However, no debate should be required about risk management where public moneys are involved.  Most of us believe that investing taxpayers’ money in the finest, invisible, fabric from which to make the President’s new suit should be held up to considerably more scrutiny than its counterpart private investment.

But worse than questionable investments of our money is the President’s belief that if he can starve us of electricity from coal-fired plants, we will be forced to turn to wind or solar.  Unfortunately, our President doesn’t understand or believe that there is no replacement in sight for the electricity currently derived from coal.  Or perhaps he thinks we won’t mind the absence of power at night, when solar cells produce nothing and wind turbines produce little.

We voters are a little late in vetting our President’s technology awareness and competence (and also vetting his candidates for appointment to positions related to technology).  Our recourse at this point is to do our best to make sure that potential future Presidents do not have significant technology blind spots or contempt for technologists.  It would help if we could demand more technology familiarity from the media; technology-challenged reporters and anchors seem to be the norm.

My suggestion is to support candidates for President only if they are on a technology level of George Washington or better (or Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, or…).

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Wind Gifts And Other Homages

October 10, 2011

Sociologists and legal scholars have written extensively on the elements of a caste system present in the U.S. and its relationship to ignorance levels.    My wife and I have lived, worked and raised our children across a number of states, from the middle of the plains, to the Gulf coast, to the Pacific coast, and on to the Atlantic coast.   Somehow, in all those locations, in all those years, I failed to see or even think about castes.

But recently my wife and I operated a small resale shop, along with our partners.  It was located on a minor but important state highway that traverses most of the width of our state.  Our experience in the resale / collectibles business in a low-population part of a low-population state have enabled a tiny view of this caste system at work in America.  It just took a while to see it.

The distribution of work in our partnership was simple; the women took care of merchandising, pricing, negotiating and handling sales while the men did the routine physical labor.  Upon opening the shop the women were busy opening blinds, turning on lights, moving mobile displays into their locations and all the other things necessary to actually sell merchandise.  Meanwhile the men were putting up the portable signs along our highway frontage, setting out eye-catching banners and flags, and similar deeply intellectual duties.

My last routine, daily-opening duty was to gather the day’s offerings of wind gifts and other homages that had been faithfully contributed by members of the lower castes.  This activity, which is not especially fulfilling nor completely unpleasant, stirs up mixed emotions.  These gifts and little rewards, that people of the lowest castes distribute to those they perceive as belonging to higher castes, are remarkably diverse.

Many of these honorariums must have involved a significant expenditure for those in the lower castes, even before the cost and/or effort of delivery is considered.  Others may have been free castoffs, stolen, or have cost very little money.  Every color in the visible spectrum is represented at one time or another.  They are made from an equally diverse range of materials; however, plastics, paper and glass are best represented.

The specific distribution techniques remain a bit cloudy.  This is mostly the result of the lower castes’ preference for anonymity.  Some are delivered in the daytime, most are delivered after dark, but the majority are delivered clandestinely.  It is as if the Untouchables and other low castes don’t even want to be seen by their presumed higher-caste recipients.  It is quite rare to actually see one of the timid low-caste donors in the act of delivering a gift, and he or she always disappears as quickly as possible.

It appears that differing distribution choices divide these honoraria into two general categories.  The preferred delivery technique, it appears, is a nonspecific-recipient technique that takes advantage of the wind (of which our state is blessed with plenty).  If a gift has a very low total weight, or has a rather large area-to-weight ratio, these low-caste donors have learned to toss them up-and-away into the wind.  Mother Nature’s delivery is efficient, although not particularly effective; only some fraction actually reach an upper-class beneficiary—many just rot away unseen in high grass, weeds, scrub timber and brush.

Our share of that fraction of wind gifts that actually reach a recipient still provide an abundant sample of materials, colors, textures and designs.  They are also sprinkled with well-known brand names, particularly McDonalds, Burger King, Frito-Lay and other food providers.  One category of wind gift producers is especially well represented—tobacco companies.  It seems that low-caste people don’t have the means or education to select innovative or unique gifts for those of us they consider upper-caste.  Therefore, colorful wrappers of all kinds of products predominate—candy bars, chewing gum, and so forth.  Each day reveals a never-ending variety of these simple, inexpensive offerings.

Those gifts which are too heavy for the wind are placed, or possibly tossed, onto the property of a selected recipient.  Those gifts made of glass are in this category; some fraction arrive intact, but the remainder are unfortunately broken in the delivery process.  The variety of colors and designs of the labels on these glass gifts is quite large, but the colors of the glass itself is essentially limited to three—primarily brown, with the remainder divided between green and clear.  Brand names, although well-known, are somewhat limited—Budweiser, Millers, Coors and a few others.

Aluminum cans used for beverages, both beer and soft drink, have the characteristics of both hand-delivered and wind-delivered gifts.  If a can is completely empty it can be wind-delivered; but if it has more than half a swallow of liquid, it must be placed or tossed.  Therefore it is difficult to tell if this type of gift was intended to be hand- or wind-delivered.  As I collected these pitiful little gifts, I always had a sense of guilt over the knowledge that the low-caste donors are unaware of the potential monetary value of aluminum cans.

But my greatest sense of guilt came about because of our limited means to properly display all the gifts.  Rather quickly I had to start storing them in a 55-gallon drum, and I feared that the donors might see me and think I didn’t appreciate their homages.  That 55-gallon drum could easily be mistaken for a rubbish container, and I certainly did not want to break the hearts of those poor little, miserable people.  It’s bad enough for the low castes to know that they are the bottom of the barrel, and the thought of them believing I would put their carefully delivered gifts in a trash barrel was heart-breaking for me.

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Unsinkable Medicare, Diminished Capacity Epidemic

June 1, 2011

At the time the Titanic was launched, many people—inside the steamship lines and outside—truly believed the marvelous new liner was unsinkable.  However, in hindsight, it turned out that a number of decisions were very questionable:  insufficient lifeboat capacity for the Titanic’s passengers and crew, insufficient testing of a new lifeboat davit design, insufficient emergency drills for the crew, inadequate lookouts posted for the conditions, etc.  With an “unsinkable” mentality it is possible to see how such decisions might have come about.

Ironically, there was also a serious flaw in the Titanic’s design, one that significantly contributed to the rapidity with which the ship sank after the collision with an iceberg.  It is has been speculated that the “unsinkable” mindset was one of the reasons the design flaw was not identified before the accident.  But we must remember that the technology of the Titanic was “modern” in comparison to what came before.  Just like today, many people had arrived at that state of mind:  “The latest and greatest must be better than anything that came before”.  Complacency derives from overconfidence.

One hundred years later, we are becoming aware of another “unsinkable” mentality, one that will result in hundreds of times more victims than the Titanic catastrophe unless serious design flaws are recognized and unless corrective actions are taken in time.  In 1965 many people either believed that anything which a modern government dreamed up could be trusted to have been thoroughly and completely evaluated and tested, or else they were convinced (like me) that “it doesn’t apply to me so I don’t have to worry whether it’s competent or crazy”.  Thus a piece of legislation that should have been laughed out of committee into the rubbish can became the law of our land.

This legislation, which looked, sounded, and felt like it was designed by a committee of lunatics, suffered all of the possible ills that a committee is capable of creating.  It started with a failure to perform a basic analysis of the problem it was supposed to solve.  Therefore it fit perfectly into the category of gratuitous solution to an undefined problem, and things got worse from that point.  Since the hard part (the problem definition) had been skipped, that left each individual on the committee free to indulge in all kinds of legislative fantasies.  But, as in the Titanic catastrophe, there was a serious design flaw, a terminal flaw.

This design flaw came about, according to some number of observers, because of the demands of a powerful, world-class-egotistical politician.  This might be true, but in most cases blaming any serious problem on a single personality is usually too simplistic.  But, because I am one of the many who did not perform my duty as a citizen to at least peruse the law, I certainly can’t comment on incompetent politicians.  It does not make me feel a bit better to know that the number of us who failed to catch such an obvious design flaw must be in the millions.  Most of us, I suspect, were guilty of overconfidence—trusting that “someone” was looking out for us.

So Medicare has been sailing along, essentially blind, for more than 45 years; it is a miracle that it didn’t hit an iceberg long ago.  Given our good fortune to date, we might be tempted to add lots more lifeboats, redesign the davits, schedule more emergency drills for the crew, etc.  However, all those initiatives cannot make up for the fatal design flaw.  Medicare was built upon the premise of absolute government monopoly in health care of citizens above a certain age; and the law made sure that no enterprising senior citizen could find a way to acquire private health insurance in order to get around the law.  One small irony is that the only thing that has allowed Medicare to stay afloat this long is the legislative “adjustment” which added optional private Medicare-Complement health insurance.  As we all should have learned by now, government does nothing well, is remarkably inefficient, and too often is completely ineffective.

So what keeps us from applying the lessons of history and designing an effective health care strategy for senior citizens?  It appears that a serious epidemic of diminished mental capacity raging through the ranks of us who are no longer youth-challenged is one significant barrier.  The word “apparent” must be used because there is yet to appear any reliable reporting of this medical phenomenon.  All we have are anecdotes, like town hall meetings where senior citizens present exhibit dementia symptoms such as lambasting honest efforts by their political representatives to forestall the coming financial collapse of Medicare as reported by the Medicare Trustees in their latest report.  The seniors seem to be saying, “I don’t care if Medicare ceases to be—changes frighten me!”  Politicians across the entire political spectrum must be perplexed.

A concomitant barrier to fixing Medicare is the political value of frightened or diminished-capacity elder citizens.  Evidently the Democratic National Committee still sees value in one of their favorite political stratagems;  the Committee is advising Democrats to continue accusing Republicans of planning to precipitously terminate Medicare and kill Grandma.  A number of Republicans seem to have been shocked to see how well this orthodox Democratic demagoguery works during our apparent diminished capacity epidemic.

With Democrats’ perceived political success of painting themselves into a Medicare-status-quo corner, and Republicans having second thoughts about trying to develop a workable and affordable health care strategy for older Americans, the President, Senate and House might just opt for dropping this hot potato and letting Medicare go spectacularly bankrupt.  We have watched the federal government for years pass laws and implement programs without worrying about  how to financially sustain them in the future.  Perhaps it now appears to progressive politicians that they can let Medicare fail abruptly and then successfully blame the catastrophe on their opponents.

Obamacare suffers from the same design problems as Medicare—no rigorous effort to define the problem, only the shallowest lip service regarding how to pay for it, and the entire house of cards dependent on the biggest federal bureaucracy ever imagined.  To add insult to the injury, Obamacare also strips the financially-failing Medicare of $500 billion of its funding.  Is it possible that the progressive politicians are maneuvering toward the mother of all bankruptcies—that of the United States—to blame upon their opponents?

So far the the only big loser in the Medicare / Medicaid / Obamacare morass is common sense.  The same six or eight relatively simple steps to make health care more affordable, accessible and effective will work for all of us.  We have all had the opportunity to learn this short and simple list of effective health care improvements (although, like my Medicare inconsideration in 1965, many of us haven’t taken the time to do so):  Health insurance available across state lines, irrespective of company or customer location; at least as much transparency in health care as there is in the retail auto business; ongoing health maintenance and disease prevention information and training available for people of all ages, etc.  Simple; problem solved.

Now all we have to do is figure out a way to provide progressive politicians with the perception that  constituents with good health could have political value.

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Posted by thedrake01

Let’s Play 20 Questions

January 26, 2011

When I was in grade school the boys (and occasionally, but rarely, a girl or two) would play a trivia game we called “Twenty Questions”.  This began around the time of advanced intellectual achievement, say the fourth or fifth grade.  The winner was almost always one of two or three boys.  Each had a large knowledge base of common information and each could be counted on to be up on current affairs.

The rules, which varied a little from time to time, were simple.  A questioner was expected to actually know the answer to his or her question.  A respondent’s answer was judged as correct or incorrect by the whole group; in case of a dispute, that particular answer was held in abeyance until someone checked an appropriate reference book.  The individual who answered the most questions was the winner; ties were not unusual, requiring more games to find a clear winner.

As we went on to junior high school, that “expected-winner” circle grew larger.  By the end of high school that group comprised a dozen or so.  Of course, we were not playing 20-question games by that age.  We were actually having intellectual discussions, with a possible hint of “can you top this” competition.  I have said for many years that I learned more from my fellow students than from the faculty in high school—a good portion of it in these discussions.

What I miss today is the confidence that an answer to almost any question could be found within that small group of people proven to be very knowledgeable.  However, at this point I would be interested in presenting only those questions for which I have yet to discover any satisfactory answer—answers I really don’t know.  The internet and its search engines are good at overwhelming us with unmanageable volumes of data, but finding useful information in that pile is much more difficult than locating that old needle in the haystack.

A few of the questions active at the moment in my fickle, impatient and deteriorating memory include:

1.      Given the entire history of Marxist movements, can a dedicated Marxist believe in tomorrow (exempting tyrants who use Marxism only as a sales pitch)?

2.      Have the courage and dedication shown by Bill Cosby and Juan Williams been shaken by the “Black Leaders” noted in Williams’ book, “Enough!”?

3.      Why does the public, by and large, go on accepting computer operating systems which have deficient security architecture and remain susceptible to hackers?

4.      What is the fraction of our citizens who place their faith in government rather than in God?

5.      What is the fraction of our citizens who have assumed responsibility for their own health, as opposed to expecting the medical community and/or the government to be responsible?

6.      Is the Supreme Court the weakest link in the United States Constitution?

7.      What would our founding fathers have come up with if they had decided that class envy was a sufficient basis for a theory of government?

8.      Are there any reliable statistics available on how well labor unions fare if membership is voluntary, as opposed to compulsory?

9.      If a Wikileaks-type had gone around shopping the Normandy Invasion Plan to newspapers and radio broadcasters in March of 1944, would the New York Times and the Washington Post and NBC Radio have broken their necks rushing to scoop each other?

10.  Is the 10th Amendment to the Constitution having a resurgence in believers?

11.  Is a flat tax so elegantly simple that devious politicians and true-believer collectivist partisans are unable to grasp its simplicity, effectiveness and fairness?

12.  Has anyone polled us Social Security and Medicare welfare dependents to find out what fraction of us understand that these “Entitlements” constitute an unsustainable Ponzi Scheme?

13.  Why have we not repealed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, just like we repealed the 18th Amendment, once we figured out that it did not work nor accomplish the desired result?

14.  Did the Founding Fathers have the same low opinion of, or contempt of, average American citizens that the left-liberal leaders of today exhibit?

15.  When did the concept of profits as a reason and motivator for business start being vilified in the U.S.?

16.  Why has no one coughed up the cash to hire pollsters to find out how many of us would really prefer a Hugo Chavez-type of government in the U.S.?

17.  Why does the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum continue to lead all other museums in attendance, year after year?

18.  If baseball is the American pastime, why does auto racing attract so many more fans?

19.  The classic hamburger had four ingredients in the bun (mustard, meat, onions, pickles); whose monster burger has the most ingredients today?

20.  Is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a truly authentic American innovation?

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Posted by thedrake01

Running To Equilibrium

December 1, 2010

One of the most significant of all the presents given to me by my wife over the years was a membership to Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s Aerobics Activity Center in Dallas.

A year or three earlier, my wife and I had begun to take our health seriously, when we arrived at that thirty-something age where we had acquired a little perspective on our family’s journey through life. My wife had bought Dr. Cooper’s new book, “Aerobics”, and it convinced both of us of the need to be serious also about getting adequate exercise of the right kind.

But the vagaries of corporate machinations abruptly intervened and we rather suddenly found ourselves relocated to another city.  My wife was submerged in new schools, new doctors, new merchants and all the other explorations required for family survival in the new city.  I was similarly consumed with starting over from the bottom as a result of being on the “losing” side of a corporate merger.  Somehow exercise didn’t seem to have the same sense of urgency for a while.

But, bless my wife’s curiosity, vision and persistence, she discovered that our exercise guru and health mentor was practicing in Dallas and doing more than just urging us all on to better fitness.  So one of her real estate commissions gave me entry into the Cooper Aerobics Activity Center.

The prerequisite required physical also included the first of numerous treadmill stress tests that I have experienced over the years.  Based on the results of the physical exam and the stress test, a personalized exercise start-up program and regular program were developed. The objective was to improve from my initial fitness level (“fair”) up to a “good” (or “excellent”) level, to be maintained indefinitely.

The great contribution from Dr. Cooper’s research is the quantification of “how much exercise is enough”.  The relatively simple Cooper point-count system covers most forms of exercise that any of us might engage in, with a broad range of performance-level groups.  All we have to do is keep track of our exercise points and make sure we are getting the minimum or recommended amount of exercise.

My conditioning program (for beginners with fitness level of less than “Good”) was a walking program that worked up to three miles a day, across a six-week period.  The end point, as I recall,  was three miles in 42 minutes—a brisk but comfortable pace.  But the next phase, which would become the “regular”, “routine”, or “maintenance” program of lifetime fitness did not come so easily.

Five miles at a very brisk walk (army “forced-march” pace) was a little more difficult, but I managed to get to that level.  If I could maintain that program for five days a week it would yield the number of exercise points recommended to maintain optimum fitness.  It was then that I had to come to terms with the amount of exercise versus the time expended.

Ten to fifteen minutes of clothing change and warm-up; one hour of very brisk walking; five to ten minutes of cool-down;  and shower and re-dress added up to about two hours a day—ten hours added to my normal work week.  After checking the Cooper Point Count tables for Walking / Running, I figured that I could get the required exercise in three days a week if I could improve to an average of something less than ten minutes per mile.

My transitioning from walking to running introduced me to a new problem:  building too large an oxygen deficit.  The standard advice from the exercise experts was to run for some distance (the point where I would be getting seriously out of breath); then walk for some distance; return to a run, and so on.  But, for me, it didn’t work the way I expected.

When I was out of breath, the walking distance (and time) took a lot longer in practice than in my mental planning.  Adding insult to my ineptitude, I also ran out of breath sooner in the subsequent running segment, and the process spiraled downward from there.  I realized that some other solution had to be found, or just live with the 10-hours-a-week cost of exercise.

Somehow, a vision of running as if in a slow-motion moving picture came into my head.  I thought about it for a minute or two, and decided to give it a try, irrespective of how silly it might look.  The value, I reasoned, was in keeping to a running gait and avoiding a change back and forth between walking and running.  I tried running with a sort of shuffle step, barely getting each foot off the ground, and landing on the heel.  In practice, it reminded me of the advice given me by my ice skating instructor many years earlier, “You want to achieve a smooth, gliding motion”.

Surprisingly, it worked.  I was able to “run” at my slow motion pace for two full miles, stopping then only for fear of overdoing it (even though I had been walking for five miles daily for some time).  In less than two weeks I was “running” five miles, at a pace of about 11½ minutes per mile.  But I wasn’t sure I could speed up to reach the required pace.

I decided to keep at my now-comfortable “slow motion” pace for a couple of weeks, to be sure I was ready to start working on improving my time.  Several days later, at the end of a really comfortable run, I was mystified:  my watch indicated a full minute and a half per mile improvement—about a 10% reduction.  Because I was still maintaining my slow-motion pace, with no intent of speeding up, I figured that I must not have set my watch properly at the start.  But the next day brought the pleasant confirmation that I was actually running faster, without any noticeable extra effort.

A follow-on strategy emerged:  don’t push—just go with the flow, not straining my cardiovascular system or my leg muscles.  If something felt like it was being overused at the moment, consciously slow down; try to maintain a “comfortable” pace at all times.  I thought of this process as “running to equilibrium”.

Over the initial months that I concentrated on this new approach, it worked better than I could have envisioned.  The bottom line, which still amazes me when I look back through my running logs:  a reduction from sixty minutes for the five miles, down to thirty-seven minutes (without any conscious effort to run faster).  Thereafter, for quite some number of years, my regular exercise program was to run six miles (which took 45 minutes,  plus or minus), three days a week.

When I think back to that difficulty of building up the cardiovascular and muscular stamina to run for a reasonable distance, I believe that what made “running to equilibrium” work for me was simply the tempering of my impatience to achieve a given result.  Is there a deeper, broader implication for “running to equilibrium”?  I don’t know, and after putting down more words than the subject seems worth, I think I may have already over-thought it.

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Bernie Madoff: Social Security Savior

November 15, 2010

As everyone knows, and as everyone except very left-leaning politicians will admit, Social Security is doomed unless it undergoes significant reform.  As everyone also knows, and the majority of us will admit, a significant fraction  of all “discussions” of Social Security reform really boil down to emotional diatribes.  Devious politicians, extreme left partisans, and diminished capacity citizens own the Social Security hot button outright; they have patented, copyrighted and trademarked Social Security Reform®.  With this body of expertise, vested interest and irrational passion dedicated to prohibiting any discussion of Social Security futures, there is no human being of sufficient stature, strength and persistence to bring about the “adult conversation” so desperately needed.  Except one:  Bernard Madoff.

Bernie Madoff’s business model was identical to that of our Social Security system—in all respects save one.  Social Security is legal, only because a number of Representatives and Senators, and a President, made it legal, irrespective of ethical or right-and-wrong considerations.

Charles Ponzi, although not the originator of the business model used by Madoff, is the person who became notorious for his 1920 large-scale use of it.  Today’s slang for that business model would be  “scam” or “con”; but in Ponzi’s time the word used was “scheme”.  Ponzi’s error, we now know, was that he failed to assemble sufficient Congressional conspirators and then provide adequate incentives for the President to sign a bill into law.

The Wickipedia describes a Ponzi scheme:  “A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. … The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments to investors”.

The Social Security Administration angrily denies that there is anything other than a superficial resemblance of Social Security to Ponzi schemes.  The difference they point out is that a Ponzi scheme operator must find a never-ending stream of new sucker-investors in order to provide sufficient funds for the periodic payments to earlier investors.  Social Security, in contrast, (they say, somewhat gleefully) has an absolutely endless supply of U. S. tax dollars;  Congress and the President will simply increase tax rates—right up to 100% and beyond—as necessary.

Bernie Madoff pushed the envelope of his Ponzi scheme farther than anyone in history.  The best guess of U. S. prosecutors is that Madoff bilked his investors out of $25 billion directly, and about $40 billion in lost potential earnings.  Like all Ponzi operators, Madoff made periodic “investment earnings” payments to his earlier account holders, using cash just received from later, newer investors.  Was any of the money from Bernie’s clients actually invested?  Not a penny.  Was any of the $25 billion recovered and returned to those who had been swindled?  Not really (although assets from Bernie’s extravagant lifestyle were seized, sold, and provided a tiny fraction of restitution).  Have investigators figured out where the money went?  If they have, that information has not been released.

I wouldn’t presume to know more than the Social Security administrators, so I’ll take their word for it that the National Ponzi Scheme is not a Ponzi scheme.  Social Security income is withheld from each worker’s paycheck; that seems OK.  In addition, an equal amount must be added by the worker’s employer; that seems odd (like not telling the employee that his witholding is actually double), but I guess that’s OK also.  Every quarter employers remit that money collected for Social Security.  For some number of years there was, as one would expect, more than enough money coming in to make payments to the early enrolled beneficiaries and have some left to be building a fund for future retirees.

Has any of the money ever been invested?  That’s an interesting question, and all answers seem to have significant political philosophy content.  However, there are no common, income-producing  investments like stocks, bonds, real estate mortgages, etc.  But with a combination of government accounting methods and a dash of political philosophy, one might stretch a little and use the word “investments” (which look to us ignoranti like the government moving money from one pocket to another and then claiming interest from the first pocket).

If there was an excess of revenues over expenditures in previous years, does anyone know where it all went?  Actually, yes.  As an accounting gimmick to obscure the government’s ever-increasing expenditures, it was “loaned” to various government agencies.  But it is to wonder where any agency could get the money to “repay” its loans back to the non-existent “Social Security Trust Fund”.  But not to worry.

Bernie Madoff to the rescue!

Bernard Madoff proved to the world that he is a genius at stealth accounting methods, clever and innovative bookkeeping, and navigating around auditing reefs and barriers.  In short, he showed us that he is more than a match for those like the gang of evil geniuses who forged the stealthy and convoluted “Health Care Reform Bill” (in 3000 or so pages).

The President should parole Mr. Madoff, on condition that he will lead a Presidential Social Security Reform Commission. The Commission’s charter will be to develop, and describe the details of, a true reform to the present Social Security system.  Orders to the Commission  must be clear and simple:

1.     The reformed system  must not resemble a Ponzi scheme whatsoever

2.    The system must use Defined-Contribution instead of Defined-Benefits

3.    Tax monies will not be used to pay any normal retirement benefits

4.     The system must be actuarially sound

5.     Implementation must be designed for minimal-to-no impact on current retirees and tolerable impact on near-term future retirees

Madoff will select one third of the Commission  members; the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House will each select one of the remaining thirds.

The President should dip into his slush funds as deep as necessary to adequately fund this Commission, enabling it to seek out highly qualified experts to participate as necessary in the effort.

When the Commission successfully completes its mission, the President can commute Bernie’s sentence.  Congress, in gratitude for the solution to the United States’ most serious existential problem, could appropriate $65 billion to make all of Madoff’s victims whole ($65 billion is pocket change compared to the multi-trillion dollar liability of the old Social Security system).

What then, for Madoff?  He may be free at that point; but Bernie must continue serving a life sentence of having to live like the rest of us non-billionaires.

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Posted by thedrake01

United States Defense Paralysis

August 9, 2010

The Law of Unintended Consequences

William Shirer’s “The Collapse of the Third Republic” is well worth re-reading today.  The situation facing voters in the United States in the upcoming election remains eerily similar to that which French voters faced just before World War II.  Major political parties maneuvered, like boxers beginning a fight, to find openings to deliver mighty punches.  Political strategists planned the test flying of slogans and key-phrase campaign ideas (“sound bytes”) that might resonate with factions of the parties.  Secondary parties and splinter groups scurried about like hound dogs sniffing for a bone while avoiding being trod upon by major players.

In France, the parties had names like the Agrarian Party, the Communist Party, the Labor Party, the Popular French Party, the French Socialist Party, the Radical Party, the Radical-Socialist Party, the Rally of the French People, and the (plain old) Socialist Party.  Additionally there were some number of pacifists and anti-war zealots.  Today these names must have an almost comical ring to American ears, because we are familiar and comfortable with our Democrat and Republican, along with our Liberal, Conservative, Communist, Socialist, Libertarian, and other parties accredited in some states—not to mention the conservative, liberal, and socialist wings of the major parties, plus those ever-present anti-war agitators.

Then, as now, each of the factions of each of the parties worked hard to advance its single cause or address its two or three key issues.  Many of their issues seem trivial to us today.  But we must remember the world situation with Germany, Italy and Japan at the time.  It appears to us that French politicians argued for pet projects as if their implementation would make Adolph Hitler just go away and also cause Japan to decide it had plenty of rice land after all.

Political warfare between the Ins and the Outs has not changed much to this day.  Parties on the out always seek to embarrass the party in power, and entrenched “In” incumbents use the full power of the state to diminish or destroy rival parties and individuals.   Then as now, any scandal or rumor of scandal is considered a legitimate weapon.  Statistics, as always, allowed politicians to stretch; bend; fold, staple and mutilate; chew and otherwise mold truth to fit their visions.  Of course, The Fourth Estate played its game, toying with facts or evidence in order to titillate its voyeur’s palate and aid its favorites.  In short, the political game in France in the late 1930’s was played much as it is today in the United States.

But there was an ominous overtone to the rhetoric, one heard today possibly only with a seventy-year hindsight of history.   The line between legitimate scrutiny of dealing with dangerous adversaries, and the subtle sabotaging of defense measures, became blurred in the minds of some of the players.   After all, most politicians were well aware of the military facts:  France had overwhelming superiority in men, guns, tanks and front line fighters in Europe.  Therefore, measures that would embarrass the country, at a cost of some small benefit to Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin, perhaps didn’t seem particularly dangerous.  Leaking sensitive secrets also must have been viewed as just part of the game.  Besides, if the end justifies the means, anything which benefits our party must be fair.

But the French electorate’s failure to recognize the gravity of the situation and to evaluate political promises within the context of fundamental priorities cost them dearly.

Germany sent 34 divisions, two thirds of which were poorly trained, ill-equipped and minimally supported reserves, against 85 fully armed, front-line French divisions.  Examination of the German High Command documents after the war led to an understanding that Germany never thought it could seriously challenge the French army.  The invasion of France was actually a diversion, intended to minimize France’s contribution to the defense of Poland.  Germany planned to sue for peace and withdraw, once their conquest of Poland was assured.

But the inadvertently deadly results of single-issue politics and a dreamily disengaged electorate were to paralyze the French government and its world-class military.  Hitler was handed a never-expected plum in the most unlikely military defeat in the history of modern warfare.

Can American voters understand the gravity of a multi-dimensional war, declared by non-nation states, against the concept of personal and economic liberty and the concept of rule by secular law?  Will they realize that the Islamic extremists find the idea of personal freedom abhorrent?  Can they figure out before it is too late that Islamic terrorists will be satisfied with nothing less than our deaths―all of us?

Will the various single-issue groups inadvertently decide to poison the well if their issues don’t prevail?   Will the all-important pet political issues seem trivial seventy years from now?  Could our government and world-class military suffer a paralysis such that The United States could cease to exist as a country?

Yes, it would be good to read “The Collapse of the Third Republic” (and its predecessor “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”) at this time.

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Leadership Perceptions

July 3, 2010

The removal of General Stanley McChrystal from his Afghanistan command  filled the news and talk channels for one news cycle with a lot of perceptions of “leadership”.  From the knee-jerk commentators (is there such a thing as “reporter” any more?) we get a picture where the Top General says “Frog!” and immediately all the Colonels jump, the Majors jump, the Captains jump, the Lieutenants jump, and all the enlisted personnel jump—down to the lowest Private.

But from the perspective of my short years in the U. S. Army, that’s not quite how it works.  Had any of these reporter-commentators  known what a Warrant Officer is, they might have allowed that Warrants occasionally do have a streak of independence.  Moreover, any reporters who had actually served a full term in the military could have known the power of Sergeants (non-commissioned officers being the backbone of the military).

Strictly speaking, a “leader” is one who has a following, and that following must be voluntary (think Mahatma Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Jesus, …).  The voluntary followers are attracted because they believe the leader is more often right than wrong.  Very simple.

Informal use of “leader” today applies to almost anyone who occupies some position above the very bottom within a hierarchy.  A Corporal may be a leader of Privates.  A Sergeant frequently leads Corporals and Privates, and so on.  The owner of a company may place his son in the position of President of one of the company’s divisions; the son is called a leader.  We citizens occasionally exercise our voting privileges and elect a person to fill a position in a unit of government; that person is often referred to as a leader (Mayor, Governor, etc.).  These are examples of appointed leaders, not quite fitting the pure definition of leader with voluntary following.  But these appointed or self-appointed “leaders” are the most numerous, and they are the leaders we will most commonly encounter.

However, we shouldn’t disrespect an appointed leader just because he or she doesn’t meet the strict definition of having a voluntary following.  In fact, there is commonly some sort of merit process by which a leader earns the appointment.  Moreover, the merit process is usually believed to include evaluation of a seldom-mentioned individual quality—the ability to consistently accomplish tangible, measurable goals.  As all of us (or most of us) find out sooner or later, the quality of, or rigorous application of, this merit process varies as widely as does human fallibility.

Think of the company owner mentioned above who appoints his son to a leadership position; the owner may or may not have evaluated his son’s record of accomplishments.  Likewise, we voters not infrequently appoint incompetent or corrupt candidates to political positions that they should never have held (and we all get to painfully watch them fail, at our expense).  But these anecdotes are not an indictment of the promotional merit process.  It’s likely that in almost every failure of an individual in a leadership position, the process error was failing to thoroughly evaluate available facts before promoting that individual.

If we examine the leadership merit process and General McChrystal’s military career, it really appears that he truly earned his leadership positions, from West Point through four-star general.  The bottom line seems to be that McChrystal proved often enough that he could get the job done.  In fact, it appears that the only goal he fell short on was that of keeping a petulant and thin-skinned boss happy.  We can sympathize with McChrystal, but a great many of us have also faced that requirement of understanding the boss’ frailties and keeping him or her as happy as possible.

Astute bosses realize the value and rarity of people who have a knack for getting things done.  Such bosses evaluate the cost-versus-worth of managing a “difficult” employee whose saving grace is a solid record of real accomplishments.  But not all bosses are so astute.  Some bosses are also fickle; we voter-bosses are notoriously fickle.  After Winston Churchill single-handedly dragged Britain to victory and helped save the western world from the National Socialist German Worker’s Party leader, British voters promptly fired him and elected a questionable replacement.

What lessons should we take from the McChrystal debacle?  First, we need to stay focused on what’s important—making sure that what needs to be done is completed.   Second, if we are required to evaluate an individual’s fitness for a position, as we voters regularly do, we must peer through the smokescreen of “qualifications” to see if this person has ever really accomplished anything tangible or worthwhile.  Third, (for public servants) we must have the courage and the persistence to give both boss and subordinate the value of our common-sense advice.

We can’t help General McChrystal at this point, other than to thank him for his service to our country.  But we can avoid putting another incompetent “boss” with absolutely no record of accomplishments of any kind into a political position where that individual’s failure is inevitable.

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Immigration Reform: A Common Sense Look

April 30, 2010

Arizona’s new immigration reform law has energized a substantial percentage of the protest-prone crowd to paint their faces and come to the ProtestFest.  This is not the only state law of its kind, and it’s far from the first to attract emotional objectors.  Oklahoma implemented a similar law in 2007 (which continues in effect today), and at that time all of those we would expect to protest did show up for the festivities.  According to print and TV news reporters at that time, about 60 – 70 percent of the participants were Oklahoma residents, with the remainder coming from the normal emotional storm locations.  If Texas and two other states pass a similar law in the next few months, the protesters may find themselves stretched thin.

The first thing we notice in the brouhaha is the childish arguments between individuals who each claim to have read the law carefully and then proceed with a classic four-year-old’s “Is so!” / “Is not so!” circular debate / riot.  But what we never see is a journeyman-level PROBLEM DESCRIPTION (unless we count “I’m unhappy”, “I’m uncomfortable”, or “I’m constipated”).

The problem, vexing as it may be, is actually simple to define and equally simple to solve.  I do have to admit, though,  that there are two derivative aggravations that tend to hamper the implementation of any solution.  But watch carefully for the problem definition, to avoid overlooking it.

PROBLEM DEFINITION:  The United States needs entry-level / low-skilled / semi-skilled workers that it cannot supply from its citizen population.

We have known since the early 1970s that a labor shortage was coming.  The mathematics of declining birth rates and an expanding economy made the shortage inevitable; it was not a question of “If”, but one of “When”.  The solution at that time was just as simple as the solution today.  But those aggravations (about which, more later) discouraged the development and implementation of a simple solution then.  Like any problem, the longer we looked the other way, the easier it became to ignore it.  Now we find ourselves tossed about in a whirlpool of claims, counter-claims, and misinformation; it’s getting more and more difficult to see the forest because of all those trees getting in the way!

The objective of our solution is to fill those vacant job positions with willing workers.  Because those workers will, for the most part, come from third-world countries whose laws and standards are not up to our levels, it is necessary to be at least a little selective.  We can, assuming we are able to overcome the aforementioned aggravations, add a minimum level of reasonable and proper requirements for entering our country and joining our labor force.  The cooperation of the worker’s home country and the worker’s U. S. employer is an essential part of immigration reform.

ONE, the U. S. must require prospective guest workers to fill out a U. S. application form in his or her home country.  The U. S. must also negotiate with the various home countries to perform minimal processing of the applications—attest to the accuracy of the data entered, and assure that the applicant has no criminal record.  The home country must also obtain a biometric ID (finger prints or retinal scan) to be a permanent part of the application.

Applications may be presented at any official U. S. port of entry, where U. S. personnel will re-verify identification of the applicant, process the application, and issue a provisional guest worker permit / ID.  The applicant may then legally travel to the location where he or she expects to find a job.  A little database help in matching job openings with prospective guest workers would be nice, but it’s not required for immigration reform.

TWO, the employer must re-verify the applicant’s ID, check on the validity of his or her permit / ID, and if the worker is hired notify the government (who will remove the “provisional” status).  When a guest worker quits or is laid off, the  employer must again notify the government (and status of the permit will revert to “provisional”).

The two steps outlined above accomplish essential objectives of immigration reform:  (A) We know who the guest workers are; (B) we have a degree of assurance that they have no criminal past; (C) they possess documentation which authorizes them to be in the U. S for the purpose of employment; and (D) we know where they are employed and we know if they separate from that employment.  Legislation to  implement these two steps might be styled as “The Workable Green Card Law”.

What about a path to citizenship?  How do Green Card holders today go about applying for and completing the requirements for citizenship?  What about the families of these new guest workers?  How are families of Green Card holders treated today?  What about enforcement of the rules for employers?  What about dealing with questionable cooperation of the home country governments?  The point is, we can make any law as complicated and convoluted as Congressional staff can dream up; but why include more in one understandable law than is absolutely necessary?

Assuming that the solution presented above is not too simple for our legislators to grasp, what are those aggravations to implementation?  One is the Democratic Party; the other is U. S. labor unions.

The Democratic Party has specialized in wooing special-interest groups, especially government-dependency groups like Social Security recipients (a group to which I belong) and Medicare beneficiaries (another of my groups).  The illegal immigrants in the U. S. today are predominantly from Mexico and Central and South American countries.  Therefore they represent a “two-fer” special interest group—illegals, and Latino culture.  Because many of them work for minimum wages in the U. S., they could also be a “three-fer” group, with government dependency on the public assistance available to low-income families.

With estimates of illegals ranging from 10 million to 18 million, the Democratic Party is going to insist on provisions in any immigration reform law that will turn them into another rock-solid, 90%, voter-group windfall for the Party (as quickly as they can be made able to vote).  Do not expect the Democrats to give up easily when such a lucrative prize awaits.

For the labor unions, it’s a numbers game also.  Just like their current legislative initiatives to make unionization of private companies easier (“card check”), and to force all public employees in the U. S. to be unionized, the unions are not going to ignore the potential plum these illegals represent.

While the Democrats and the unions bob and weave, maneuvering for a political knockout, the rest of us will sit on the sidelines and watch the current Arizona-bashing exercise.  I suspect it will proceed just like the Oklahoma law:  the hysteria will wear itself down; the feared civil rights violations will not occur; the protesters will gravitate toward a fresh emotional appeal elsewhere; the media will bend its (short) attention (span) to some other extravaganza; and the police will continue doing their duty as usual.  In Oklahoma, the reduction in crimes by illegals was modest but measurable, and in Arizona the same will be true (but starting from a much higher level of illegal immigrant-related crime).

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Health Care Costs: A Common-Sense Look

March 17, 2010

Information overload is an insidious hazard today.  We are swamped with waves of health care data from print media, broadcast media, and the various forms of Internet-based information sources.  That’s bad enough, but all of us (except for recluse people who hide in caves) hear plenty from our friends, neighbors and acquaintances on a daily basis.  How can we possibly take the time to diligently ferret out the communication errors, myths and misinformation?  The bad news is we can’t; but the good news is we can develop our own personal coping strategies.

Right now, the best testing ground for misinformation inoculations is The Great Health Care (or, Healthcare, if you prefer) Debate.  As I noted, we have enormous volumes of data coming at us from all directions.  Common sense tells us that a significant fraction of that data is just plain wrong.  We don’t have to be conspiracy theorists to understand that the dissemination of some part of the bad information is intentional, coming from both amateur and professional propagandists.

Since the majority of us don’t have ready access to people who are truly knowledgeable about current health care requirements and practices, we must turn to our asset most-despised by politicians and partisans—common sense.  My own knowledge of the health care system is very limited:  a long-time interest in the application of information technology to the practice of medicine, and more than ten years as an information technologist for a regional health insurance company.  Like many people, I hear a lot of questionable health care “information” that just doesn’t sound right; and I have learned that trying to get to the truth can be time-consuming and often frustrating.  At those times I am reminded of an admonition by world-class problem-solver Dr. Gene Woolsey, paraphrased as “before you try a smart-alec solution, try the dumb-bunny one first”.  I believe Dr. Woolsey must be an advocate for common sense.

We can be certain of only a small number of easily-verifiable facts about health care costs:  (1) usage rates and total costs are higher when there is a third-party payer (health insurer or governmental health program); (2) costs have gone up faster than the rate of inflation for a number of years, and out-of-pocket costs for the insured may have gone up even faster; and (3) a remarkable number of advances in medical technology have become routinely available over the past 40 years, and the cost today of bringing new medicines and other medical technologies to market is accelerating.  Beyond these three items, there is mostly speculation and competition between the various political factions to see what group can be most vilified—health insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, pharmacology laboratories, or other players in health care.

THIRD-PARTY PAYERS TAKE IT IN THE NECK

The first fact in the list above is the most difficult to get our hands around, and it is where the most potential for dramatic reduction in costs is hidden.  It will also be the the most trying and time-consuming to bring into line.  It’s not so much that there’s something sinister involved as it is just human nature.  My favorite illustration of this human vulnerability was the time when our family was taking old friends and their middle-school-age son to one of our “special occasion” restaurants.  When our friends’ son ordered lobster, his father almost autonomously gasped, “Vince”!  Vince calmly and innocently responded, “It’s OK, Dad; Mr. Drake is paying”.

I have to admit that I have also been guilty.  All of my employers provided very good health insurance, which covered periodic physical exams / checkups.  In one city where we lived, I had an excellent primary care doctor who lived and breathed health maintenance and disease prevention.  On every visit the doctor spent the time with me to discuss lab results, review my general health, and make any recommendations for further improvements.  But on at least two occasions, the doctor ordered very expensive tests, “just to get an advance look for any emerging changes; and your insurance covers the test”.  I really didn’t think to ask about medical necessity, sense of urgency, total cost, or more cost-effective alternate tests.  Each time, the results revealed absolutely no signs whatsoever of problems; so I went away relieved, pleased, and giving no thought to charges against my employer’s health care account.

Overuse, waste, and fraud are all much higher where there is a third-party payer, and Medicare is less diligent in prevention, detection and prosecution than are private insurers. Visualize my thoughtless health care experiences, and then multiply them by the millions of people whose health costs are paid by insurance companies or government programs.  You then have a feel for the enormous amount of over-use, waste (including purely defensive-medicine costs), and even outright fraud.

Unfortunately, almost all of us bear a measure of the guilt.

THE MYSTERY OF HEALTH CARE COST DETAILS

In a routine visit my dermatologist recently removed two small moles from my chest, and he sent the tissue to the lab for biopsy (because of melanoma in my history).  When I received my Explanation Of Benefits (EOB) statements from Medicare and my private  Medicare Supplement carrier months later, I was shocked to see the lab fees.  Just two days earlier I had heard a similar story of a routine physical exam, told by a well-known television journalist, and his lab fees exceeded $10,000!  So now I’m in the process of replaying my dermatologist visit, looking for actions I might have taken and questions I should have asked (like “what is the most common lab fee for this service?”).

My doctor is cost-conscious, and he has discussed cost-effectiveness of therapy options on several occasions; but I doubt if he keeps close tabs on cooperating medical providers, including lab technicians and pathologists, who each have a share in my well-being.

I think we all may have to learn how to be good multi-level shoppers where medical care is involved.  But I don’t look forward to the detective-and-auditor efforts necessary to identify and deal with all those medical providers whose cuts of the action show up on my health care statements.  Nor will I enjoy trying to get my health insurers to help me to become a wiser medical services consumer.

TECHNOLOGY IS A TWO-EDGED SWORD

Those of us who are not so youth-challenged can remember reading about Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in Scientific American and other popular technology publications.  After explaining how MRI worked, the articles went on to suggest the marvelous potential advantages for health care.

Eventually we were reading about production use of these rare machines.  Like many technological innovations the MRI was initially  hyper-expensive and difficult for most medical institutions to justify.  I can remember driving an elderly relative an unusual distance, at an unusual time of day, for an appointment at the nearest facility with an MRI.  Predictably, there were calls for rationing such an expensive tool, made by both politicians and insurers.  But truth and common sense won out in the case of the MRI.  As with all new technologies, MRI hardware and software costs came down across time and capabilities are continuing to increase.  Today the MRI is taken for granted as an extremely important tool in our medical arsenal.  (But we have to keep in mind that the cost of the medical specialist personnel involved in MRI efforts have not gone down like hardware and software costs.)

The MRI story is an almost perfect example what we can expect to see repeated over and over,  including introduction of new medicines.  We are going to have to learn what fraction of total health care costs are due to new technology, and we are going to have to come to terms with its cost-versus-benefits balance.

SO WHAT CAN WE ACTUALLY DO?

There are two things that all of us can do in the health care misinformation war:  (1) Maintain a healthy skepticism about any and all health care information until we have satisfied ourselves that it is correct, using our common sense plus any trusted sources of health care expertise that we have developed and tested; and (2) keep our elected Representatives and Senators aware of our beliefs and desires concerning proposed legislation—by Email, phone, letter, smoke signals, or whatever works best.

WORKBOOK EXERCISES

There are a number of areas where the information, or propaganda, doesn’t seem to compute.  Here are a few to ponder.

1. Health insurance companies are the villain du jour; but are they really the bad guys in cost escalation?

A.  Many Americans get their health insurance through their employers, and virtually every company with 1000 or more employees is self-insured (with a number of companies as small as 100 self-insured).  For all of these employees, the employer determines the cost, what is covered, what is excluded, and what rules guide the policy-administration and claims-processing contractors.  The employer is also the final authority in appeals.

What is the total number of employees, and covered family members, with this type of health insurance?  What fraction of the total number of people with health insurance does this number represent?

B.  How many people already have health insurance that provides family coverage for children up to the age of 25?

C.  Most of the 50 states have have high-risk pools for liability insurance for drivers with bad records (DUIs, moving violations, etc.).  Is there any reason why high-risk pools could not be used for health insurance for people with preexisting conditions?

D.  When all health insurers operating under the Blue Cross Association rules were not-for-profit companies, the best of them had overheads around nine percent; that is, 91% of total premium dollars went to pay claims.  What is that number today for all health insurers?  What is the average profit margin for health insurance corporations (reported in federally required corporation reports)?

2. Can health insurance be extended to an additional 30 million people at no additional cost (or even less cost)?

A.  By how many trillion dollars are the Medicare / Medicaid programs underfunded at present?

B.  By how many trillion dollars is Social Security underfunded at present (related to health care only by demands on tax monies)?

C.  Are there sufficient medical personnel to handle a 30-million person jump in patients?

3. After liability insurance premiums for light aircraft and aircraft parts manufacturers rose to become more than 30% of the cost of a new airplane, the general aviation tort reform bill was signed into law in 1994.  Although this was a fairly narrow law for limited liability of certain classes of aircraft manufacturers, the language had broader implications.

The Trial Lawyers Association opposes any attempt to cap the “pain and suffering” amounts in medical liability lawsuits.  But is there any reason, other than the objection of lawyers, that would preclude passage of a medical tort reform bill that could cut the legal and defensive-medicine costs of medical care by more than $350 billion per year?

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Social Security Fix: One Recipient’s Perspective

February 26, 2010

My wife and I both receive federal government subsidies—Social Security, and Medicare Parts A and B (and we both have approved private Medicare Supplement insurance policies).  However, neither of us intended to arrive at retirement age with a significant dependency on government largesse.  I guess I might whine that the private retirement programs (duly authorized under U. S. law) in which I participated operated with an assumption of Social Security benefits added in order to arrive at the desired / required total retirement income.  I could also complain that Lyndon Johnson made certain that we would not be allowed any alternatives to Medicare when we reached age 65.  But I knew what the rules were, and I have no one else to blame.  I also understood, as most Americans do, that Congress and the President can radically change or eliminate any federal program in less than a week’s time.  My only explanation for our resulting situation is that I allowed my gullibility index to rise, wanting to believe that Ponzi-scheme retirement and make-believe medical “insurance” programs would actually work.  But that was yesterday, and today is today.  The question now is:  How big a bullet will we have to bite to re-enter the reality world, and how might we do it?

The monster Entitlement programs in the United States, Social Security and Medicare / Medicaid, are at present $63 Trillion or more underfunded.  They are also growing.  Several agencies within the U. S. Government continue to characterize these programs as “unsustainable”  (see Trustee Report at http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html).  Ominously, the  “health care reform” entitlement is in the process of coming on line, and an “education” entitlement is being threatened for the near future; each of these programs will continue to add multi-billion-dollar annual costs.

Today, Social Security is the most expensive single item in the the total United States budget, with Medicare and Medicaid coming in a distant second.  Either program dwarfs the cost of the third-place Department of Defense.  Interest on the national debt, aggravated by the imbalanced costs of Social Security and Medicare, is at least a temporary third; because it has been running neck and neck with the Department of Defense for some time it may now have permanently captured third place.

Perhaps it is time to stop trying to invent exceedingly clever, and obtuse, solutions to the impending financial implosion of these entitlements, and begin looking for believable common sense solutions.

Although the technical solution to the Social Security problem is relatively straightforward, it will be the most politically difficult of the financial disasters to avert.  As a trigger for emotional outbursts, discussions of Social Security have no rival; this has been true almost from its inception as a “temporary” program in the 1930s, nearing the end of the Great Depression.  Political parties, and many individual politicians, have worked diligently over the years to capture the value of this emotional potential for their own benefit.  This is obviously a situation where ordinary Americans, using their common sense, might generate better ideas than the political know-it-alls in Washington.

First, we need to review what’s wrong with Social Security, keeping in mind its intended purpose.  The simple but very real problem is that Social Security is a legal Ponzi scheme which works exactly like Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion scam.  It depends on an endless, growing supply of new workers’ payroll deductions every 90 days in order to pay current beneficiaries.  Social Security, like all Ponzi schemes, must collapse of its own weight some day.  That day is very close now, with all the postwar Baby Boomers arriving at Social Security age.

A concomitant problem has been the government’s insatiable, desperate need for more and more money.  Whereas we have heard references to a “Social Security Trust Fund” in the press and mouthed by politicians, there is no  such actual fund, nor has there ever been one.  The excess of revenues over current benefits payments, beginning not that many years into the program, have been systematically “loaned” to various other government agencies over the years; the result  is a gigantic (and worthless) bundle of IOUs from those agencies today—not a trust fund.  We are within a few years, in a normal economy, of revenues being less than benefits costs.  Should we arrive at that point,  there will be no option but to immediately begin reducing payments to all covered retirees, disabled persons, and those receiving survivors’ benefits.

Defining a secure and workable replacement for Social Security is not a complex task.  We do, however, need to keep in mind the distinction between the Disability part, the  Survivor part, and the normal Retirement part.

The solution is actually so simple and elegant that it greatly offends those members of Congress who have a deep, religious belief in massive, complex, convoluted programs which only devious politicians could claim to understand (but which have worked so well for years in attracting us gullible voters).

This easy solution is to arrive at a point where a private retirement plan has completely replaced Social Security retirement.  An actuarially-sound, 401K-like plan, with strengthened safeguards and idiot-proofing provisions solves the problem nicely.  In fact, it is the appropriate replacement for the 75-year-old temporary plan that is barely hanging on today.

The usual first response to suggestions of a private plan is “look what happens to 401K plans in a down economy”.  I consider this a legitimate before-thinking-about-it concern.  But a little thought brings back into our minds the fact that government tax revenues also shrink during business slowdowns, recessions and depressions.  In fact, the tax revenues that pay current beneficiaries today, including my wife and me, are at this moment less than the benefits being paid out. Of course, we expect tax revenues to increase substantially when the economy returns to normal.  But it is nonetheless true that in the meantime our Social Security checks are currently partially funded with money borrowed from Japan, China, et al.

A personal disclosure might be appropriate here.  I “retired” twice from companies where we had 401K plans.  The timing of my retirement left something to be desired in both cases;  the value of one 401K plan dropped by 16% and the other by 38%—caused by dips in the economy that were becoming apparent within days after I had notified my employers.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper.  Both times I was the victim of rules, set between my employer and the mutual fund manager, regarding the amount of advance notification required.  Both times the rules did not permit a decision reversal once the process had started.  These arbitrary rules were obviously designed for the potential benefit of my employer and / or the fund manager.  Those experiences made me a champion for  strong safeguards and idiot-proofing provisions built into the new plan (and they are would be appropriate for today’s 401K plan).

What would be the government’s role in this new private retirement plan?  The government must do what it is constitutionally designed to do:  create and  enforce laws to protect citizens and their possessions, including these new retirement accounts owned by each individual worker.  Realistically, the government would have to make participation in an approved retirement plan mandatory for all income earners (as with Social Security) and to require an actuarially correct minimum contribution, with optional contribution increases  allowed and / or encouraged.  Today’s mandatory contribution to Social Security is the total of the amount deducted from employees’ paychecks plus an equal amount added by their employers—about 15% of an employee’s gross salary, in round numbers.  Is 15% too much or too little?  I don’t know, but an actuary and  financial planner team should be able to give us a definite answer.

Replacing the disability and survivor parts of Social Security with private replacements should also be reasonably simple.  We have had, for many years, very affordable term life insurance and long-term disability insurance policies available from private insurers (frequently provided today as an option in employers’ benefits packages).  Participation in an approved version of both types of insurance would also have to be mandatory.

Please Note: We learn from the Bible that “The poor will always be with you”.  Several thousands of years of history seems to reflect what the Bible has told us.  Therefore we can expect that some number of people will, no matter what, arrive at an advanced (retirement?) age without any financial resources.  As a society we will, as we have always done, take care of such people through private and public charities and through welfare / safety net programs.  But this activity has no relation to well-planned retirement programs.

Even with the thousands of details to be worked out, a Social Security replacement program can actually be as simple as I have described.  The first  part of the implementation would also be simple; just enroll new workers in the new plan, never to be touched by the phasing-out, old Social Security program.  With a robust economy and higher tax revenues, the government might also be able to transfer accumulated contributions of some fraction of the more recent Social Security participants, enabling them to select and enroll in a private plan, with no loss. But for current retirees and those workers who will retire in coming years the implementation can not be quite so simple or totally painless.

In a fairy tale world the U. S. government would just continue writing Social Security benefits checks until the very last enrolled person died, ending his or her retirement benefits.  But in our real world, all of  the money “stolen” from the “Social Security lock box” by the government over all those years will become an up-close-and-personal problem.

For a little perspective, consider that sixty years ago there were 16 active workers contributing to Social Security for every retiree; today there are just 3.3 workers per retiree.  In fact,  only our growth in worker productivity—translated to growth in real income—over those sixty years has allowed us to get this far with the national Ponzi scheme.

It doesn’t seem likely or possible that the U. S. will have a hyper-boom economic period, with extraordinarily high tax revenues, that continues unbroken for the 30 to 40 years necessary to get past the peak payout years of Social Security as it phases out.  Therefore we are faced with some combination of reduced benefits, delayed benefits, and higher Social Security taxes to get us over the hurdle.  There are narrow limits to reducing benefits and raising taxes, so a very political optimization will be necessary.  However, if the tax-and-spend disease of Congress and the President does not abate, and they continue adding even more entitlement programs, all bets are off.

We can solve our Social Security entitlement problem with a combination of political will, consultation with world-class problem solvers, and judicious pain management of those affected.  We current recipients may be the first to feel pain, but there will undoubtedly be sufficient misery to touch all participants.  However, one very small group will suffer disproportionately more:  the politicians who have made careers out of scaring old and ill-informed Social Security dependents.  I believe these politicians will  be doubly dismayed when some common-sense ideas for also taming Medicare are revealed in the near future.

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Diogenes and Technology Breakthroughs

February 7, 2010

Tradition says that Diogenes walked the streets of Athens with a lantern, “looking for an honest man”.   We don’t know if Diogenes ever discovered a man he considered “honest”.  But if the political world of his time resembled that of the United States today, it’s safe to say it would have taken a while.

In our current political times Diogenes would also have needed a very bright light and unlimited years to find the technology breakthroughs that a number of our politicians imply will occur imminently.  For example, according to these politicians a battery technology breakthrough is very close, one that will enable affordable electric vehicles with the power and range of today’s cars and trucks (and railroad engines and airliners?).  It is to wonder if the new batteries will also be so capable and so cheap that they can store sufficient energy to make up for those nighttime hours when solar electric generators produce zero watts and wind generators produce almost none.

However, I long ago legitimately acquired a skepticism about “imminent technology breakthroughs” .  For the major part of my career in information technology my job was to seek out and stay abreast of potential technology advancements that might affect my company’s competitiveness.  A part of that effort involved regular visits to the various research and development labs of computer and communications technology leaders.

In many cases our company was a long-standing customer (or potential valuable customer) of these technology giants.  So there was always an underlying, but usually very subtle, sales and marketing appeal which we took in stride.  But in return for our access to these scarce and valuable technology researchers (I met at least five Nobel Laureates in those years), we provided a first-hand assessment of the technology improvements which we thought would most help our company—accurate and targeted market research which the manufacturer could not obtain any other way.

While occasional technology reviews included pure research areas, the majority focused on applied research projects.  Pure research tidbits usually involved some interesting phenomenon of physics,  recently discovered by the research scientists, which might have interesting product possibilities some day.  Applied research projects which were demonstrated and described, however, represented potential near-term products we might readily use.

Across those years of trying to stay abreast of practical state-of-the-art technology, there were quite a number of  “imminent technology breakthroughs” implied or hinted at by our hosts.  But eventually we learned not to hold our breath for very long.  In fact, the single most important technology advance of all those years was in a somewhat obscure area of computer manufacturing—not particularly sexy or intriguing to the average person.

It should be pointed out that computers and communications, and especially their underlying solid state electronics technology, are not the only areas where imminent technology breakthrough seductions occur.  The airline I worked for paid dearly for at least two “breakthrough” airliners which never met their predicted performance levels (anybody remember the Convair 990 or the BAC 111?).  The oil company I worked for lost millions and millions when it decided that a chemical process technology was sufficiently close that it could skip a pilot plant trial, and go directly to full-scale production.  The successor to that oil company had a division that was the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic solar cells; the company invested untold millions in anticipation of an imminent breakthrough which would make solar cells so cheap they could be used as the roofing materials for homes and businesses.

Nowadays I am hard-pressed to take the politicians too seriously when they tell us that it will only take a few trillion or so in government “investments” to realize quick breakthrough results from “green” energy technologies.  I also can’t forget our government’s bungling of the Super Collider particle accelerator project about twenty years ago.  It was at that time the leading edge of particle research in physics, an effort that might lead the way toward  the holy grail of energy:  controlled nuclear fusion.  But after 12 to 15 billion dollars had been expended in the construction of this facility the project was scrapped.  The cause of the sudden termination was an essentially intra-party squabble between Congress and the President, likely over distribution of  pork between certain states.  Recently the European Union brought online a similar type of accelerator, the Large  Hadron Collider, with about a third of the power planned for the now-abandoned Super Collider.

My U. S.  Congressman is a Blue Dog Democrat who takes the “trillion here, trillion there…” seriously, and his approval of boondoggle projects is not likely to be easily bought by the House leadership.  Our two U. S. Senators are also fiscally alert and not likely to be seduced into wasting more of our money.  Even so, I will periodically remind them to continue to look out for our tax money (trying my best not to be condescending or preachy about whatever imminent technology breakthrough is being used as bait for gullible citizens).  I recommend you also diplomatically nag your Congressman and Senators from time to time.

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