If we have smaller government…

...will smaller corporations follow?

I thought a recent article in the New York Times had a headline linking Jeb Bush and “small government”.  At the time, I only saved the link.  When I revisited the link, the article didn’t have that headline but one about his emails as Governor of Florida.  (“Emails from tenure as governor of Florida show Jeb Bush’s agenda and goals”, 2014-12-25).

He did campaign on promising to make Florida state government smaller. He did set a goal of cutting the number of state employees in half.  “And while he did not slash the number of state employees by half, he did privatize thousands of public jobs.”

The problem with promises of smaller government is that often little discrimination is made between what government services are important and what services are superfluous.  It reminds me of Senator Rudy Boschwitz and his call for “across the board cuts”.  Are we going to cut understaffed court systems as well as grants to the arts?  Many people will step in with increased donations to the arts, but how many are willing to donate to the court systems?

What services did Gov. Bush cut?  Could these cuts have resulted in longer wait time for developmentally disabled individuals to receive assistance?  Did he cut law enforcement?  Would this have resulted in more traffic crashes because irresponsible drivers had more chances to hurt other people?

What about the privatizing of public services?  Who are these companies responsible to: the people or the shareholders?  If prisons are privatized, do the companies have an incentive to help inmates re-integrate with society?  Or do they have an incentive to maximize profits and feed and house prisoners at the lowest possible cost without any concern about recidivism?

What is it that makes some people automatically assume corporations will always do better than government?  Have they considered that both corporations and governments are run by people?  And what do people do too often?  Make mistakes.

Deadly mistakes like air bags that kill people and brakes that don’t work.

People lie too often.  Government officials tell us about weapons that don’t exist.  Corporations tell us that their projects will create jobs and will not harm people or the environment.

Two of the favorite punching bags of government critics are the Departments of Motor Vehicles and the Postal Service.  Sorry, but my experiences with either have been almost always positive.  Sure, I have to wait in line sometimes, but I console myself that the clerks will treat me as if I were the only customer.  And the last words of a postal clerk are “Anything else?”  Our usual postal carrier trudges through the snow and cold, and she can still greet us with a cheery smile.

Most of my interactions with large companies are generally positive, but the number of things that go wrong is far too many.

I have accounts with several corporations for various services from online newspapers to cell phone service.  I make payments to many of these by automatic payment through my credit card. Some of these have been sending me emails that my card has expired!

This was beginning in December and into this month.  Strange!  My card has an expiration date of 01/15!  My bank verified that means 1/31/15.  I’ve called or emailed a few about this.  I said I would probably not receive a new card until mid-January.  How can I update it without an updated card?

My new card arrived this past week!  Hurray, I won’t be receiving these messages for another three years.

But…

I spent half a morning updating half the auto-pay accounts.  I wrote some of this while waiting for Virgin Mobile to give me the next page of ???  I lost count.  Each took over a minute to load.  This is corporate efficiency?

Ah, Virgin Mobile accepted my card.  No, it did not!  It doesn’t like the old card number that is displayed with mostly asterisks.  I replaced that with 16 digits all jammed together.  It didn’t like that.  I can’t remember all that happened but finally I had a screen that had the updated info.  Except my choices now are to cancel or pay now.  I would pay automatically on the due date.  I cancelled.  When the next page finally came up it looked like I was all set, but the expiration date wasn’t included.  Then I was waiting  for the page “Edit info”.  The expiration date was NOT updated.

Then I was watching the wait circle go round-and-round for “Contact Us”.  Ah, it finally loaded.

I received an email from Virgin Mobile a couple of hours later.  The representative listed five straight-forward steps.  Why didn’t I see the first step?  Did I go off to another page where that step was not shown?  I don’t know, and I’m not going to double check now.  I do know that all was not peaches and cream.

“Terms and agreement” had a check-box for acceptance, but it was not obvious.  It was partially hidden by text.  I finally got all the steps done, and was told that it would take fifteen minutes to reflect the change in my account.  I bet it wouldn’t take them fifteen minutes to notify me if I had run over the limit on my credit card.

I could rant on about some of the other problems of two days updating only a few accounts.  Some went smoothly; other were almost as bad as the Virgin Mobile experience.

I do know some people who would not even attempt this task.  They would find an expert to do it for them.  With all the research in the last thirty years that has gone into human interface and ease of use, one would think that large corporations with their “efficiency” would be experts in this field.

Mel wonders if there is a Moore’s law for software bugs: every 18 months, the percentage of errors doubles.

Free market and education

From an undated note on my desk:

Inspired by a letter in the Wall Street Journal (1983-05-05) extolling free enterprise in education.

The free market is not an ideology in itself; it is a realization of a philosophy of diversity of ideas.

The trouble with our free enterprise is that goods and services are judged solely on how much somebody with money (or other barter) is willing to pay.

Lessons in governance

"Clearly, the ability to solve problems, much more than sustaining some sort of ideological leadership, is now the key to the Communist Party’s legitimacy."  - C. Cindy Fan, "Don't Expect Big Changes", "Dawn of a New China?", "Room for Debate", New York Times, 2012-11-23.

Could this statement be equally valid if "Communist Party" were replaced with "Republican Party"?

Have Republican defections gotten a big boost?

Former Florida Republican Governor Charlie Christ has come out in support of Barack Obama.  See
"Here's why I'm backing Obama", Tampa Bay Times, 2012-08-26.

Once upon a time I was active in the Republican Party, and then it nominated Ronald Reagan over John Anderson.  I did keep voting for Bill Frenzel, Rep., 3rd District, MN, until he retired.  And I voted for Arne Carlson for governor when he replaced the Republican candidate who behaved inappropriately in a swimming pool with teen-age girls.

And the Republicans have gotten even worse.  If they really looked at Ronald Reagan's ability to compromise, they would consider him a "Marxist".

I keep hoping the current Republicans will self-destruct and be replaced by a common-sense party based on facts rather than ideology.  Meanwhile, I feel compelled to vote for Democrats even though they try to cater to too many narrow interests.

The fallacy of "right" and "left" – A must read

Robert Reich wrote a very interesting blog about his "counterpart" on the "right", David Frum, leaving public radio's Marketplace as a commentator for the "right". Frum didn't think he could "represent" the "right" anymore. Reich wrote that such labels don't lead to what's best for America.

See "The Triumph of Dogma", Robert Reich, 2011-10-14.

Quote of the day: On Flexibility

"Those who stay flexible and realize the world is dynamic are better judges than those who pretend it's built on certainties."
- Morgan Housel, The Motley Fool, "How to Know When a Talking Head is Full of Hot Air"

Although Housel is writing in the context of those making stock market predictions, it can apply to many other situations.  Just think of all those who think tax-cuts will solve all of our problems and of all those who think that more stimulus will solve all of our problems.  The real fix is probably some combination of the two applied in the proper areas and at the proper time.

He recommends "Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It?  How Can We Know?" by Philip Tetlock.  Read Housel's article for a quick summary of Tetlock's reasoning.

Neither the Duluth Public Library nor the UMD Library have this book, but the UMD Library has three political psychology books of which Tetlock is a contributor or an editor.

Little things can save our empire

I saved a few articles about education that take a different tack from all the grandiose schemes that are current and was going to write a summary. Then today's Star Tribune had several op-ed pieces that stressed some of the same old, same old ideology: blame the teacher's unions or put the schools under control of mayors.

As usual, I keep reading new stuff that takes time from writing about old stuff I had read. As I went through the list of articles for today's Yahoo! Finance, I was struck by the title "Collapse of the American Empire: Swift, Silent, Certain".

I think our national arrogance ("leader of the free world"), military overreach, and short-term ideological thinking do contribute to the possibility of our soon being surpassed by the likes of China, India, and Brazil.

One thing that can keep us going for a long time is our history of innovation, innovation that is often falling victim to ideology. As long as we run our schools on ideological principles like "No Child Left Behind" and control from larger and more remote political entities, innovation may be stifled.

To get more innovation, we have to educate children for creativity, not passing tests.

I finally finished Eric Booth's "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator". The more I read, the more I understood he was talking about education in general. If we don't engage students in creativity, all the rote learning in the world will only turn out automatons. See "Teaching: putting in or drawing out?"

Then I read three revolutionary articles on education: "Scholar's School Reform U-Turn", "Building a Better Teacher", and "Why you should read Diane Ravitch's new book".

The first is how Diane Ravitch, a respected education historian who was in the first Bush's Department of Education, has changed her mind on some of the conservative standard views on education, including No Child Left Behind. If you want to get some idea of her independence, read her "The Language Police".

The second is a long New York Times Magazine article centered on a charter school founder who learned that teachers aren't being trained in the little things that really matter. The most striking paragraph was:

"When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once."

The third is a short review of Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System". The review gives a good summary of the ferment that is going on in education circles, a ferment that could give us a truly Great American School System.

More about being a psychiatrist than a Muslim?

I don't normally read Gary Kohls' column in the Weekly Reader, but the headline for his column this week caught my attention - "The Fort Hood Murders/Suicide and the Taboo Question", Reader Weekly, 2009-11-12.

Kohls proposition is that modern psychiatrists rather than talk with their patients in depth prescribe too many psychotropic drugs. These drugs can often lead to delusional, self-destructive behavior. Worse yet, some psychiatrists use these drugs themselves. Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan's behavior prior to and on the day of the killings reflects many of the symptoms of psychotropic drug use. Kohls claims that many of the shootings over the past decade have been related to psychotropic medications.

Kohls cites "Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime" by Dr. Grace E. Jackson and "The Fort Hood Shooter: A Different Psychiatric Perspective" by Dr. Peter Breggin, Huffington Post, 2009-11-08.

Kohls doesn't write it but Dr. Breggin does, "… Major Nidal Malik Hasan was driven by religious ideology."

Which came first, the ideology or the drug-induced delusions? Was the delusional behavior overlooked because of "political correctness" in the Army?

BTW, I've noticed "political correctness" in news reports, "the alleged shooter". For crying out loud, if two cops are shooting at a guy running loose with a gun, how can he be an "alleged shooter"?

Dr. Breggin writes that too many Army psychiatrists are nothing but pill-pushers who are letting soldiers into combat by suppressing their symptoms and creating greater problems for them in the field.

Then Dr. Breggin reduces his own credibility by touting his book on "How to Live Like Our Heroic Founders". Not that some of them didn't live exemplary lives some of the time, but…

Whatever the biases and credentials of those commenting on the Fort Hood case, it should get more attention than some media coverage and a military or civil trial. Organizations and professions need to look long and hard at their practices.
This case should get more attention than some media coverage and a military or civil trial. Organizations and professions need to look long and hard at their practices.

Assumptions and presumptions about President Obama's speech to schoolchildren

I coulda tole ya so! If Obama plans to give a major speech, there will be thousands who "know" that he is going to promote some "evil ideology" in it. Now "everybody knows" he is going to promote "socialism" to "vulnerable" school children.

Never mind that he plans to encourage students in their education. Given the above, we certainly need many more educated citizens.

However, no matter how innocuous or how important a Presidential speech is, is it fair to presume that large numbers of schools are going to change their schedules, turn on their radios and TVs in every classroom at the same time and listen to a speech by the President of the United States.

Wouldn't it be far better to desseminate it on YouTube? If word gets out among kids that it is a great speech, it will be viral. There will probably be far more kids watching it with undivided attention than were told by their teachers to listen.