Category Archives: Globalization

Feeling Good vs Doing Good

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It seems these days I’m often pissing off friends and family for suggesting something that, frankly, is pretty obvious.     Most of what passes as “doing good” these days are activities that make the feel-gooders feel good about themselves, their community, and life in general (that’s fine of course), but don’t do much to make the world a better place.    It’s fine to engage in things that you enjoy that do not contribute to the greater good, but it is very important to recognize the difference, and not to conflate feel-good stuff with actual do-good stuff.

Real good comes in many forms, and thank goodness their are a LOT of people doing real good all around us.  Friends and neighbors working and volunteering in health care, teaching, law enforcement, and hundreds of other public service jobs,  NGOs  building schools all over,  Church groups teaching, etc, etc.    Many of the folks doing that stuff are heroic, braving all kinds of bad conditions to bring health care, education, food, and good will to those who need it most.

But without even pointing out those obvious ‘feel good’ activities I’m going to hope we make better progress than we seem to be *re-defining* what it means to “do good”.

Those of us in the middle and up classes here in the USA enjoy historically unprecedented standards of living, and even those on welfare here in the USA live well by any reasonable global standards.    Bringing this higher *standard of living* to the small numbers in the US and the huge numbers in other countries who do not benefit from our system is the greatest moral challenge of our time, yet I can’t help but think that the many “feel gooders” (and even worse – the political spenders on both sides of the political aisle) are distracting us and redirecting resources very inefficiently to projects that will have little significant positive impact.

As always, hoping folks chime in with their views about this, and for what it’s worse I’d agree that blogging is probably NOT an example of doing much if any good!     Maybe I’m my own best example of the problem?

Misplaced compassion … kills

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One of the most obvious things I assert is also the thing that bothers people the most.   It’s that most of us tend to fret or show  compassion over trivial or questionable things while we ignore the catastrophic circumstances that plague so many people around the world.

A great recent example is the effort to “find Paco”, a dog that was “lost” by Delta Airlines during a trip back to (the UK?) from Mexico.     As with most stories like this, the perception  at first glance is heart wrenching.    But then the facts clear up why this story is ridiculously overblown.

Paco was a stray, picked up by a tourist couple, who then had him shipped home.   It appears he escaped from his cage while on the tarmac in Mexico City and  (I’m speculating here) headed back to the places where he’s more comfortable living.    Sad for the couple, but hardly all that newsworthy, especially given the apparent outrage against Delta.

Delta’s offer to credit the couple only $200 for a lost pet was obviously a stupid move on their part, but I resent that people don’t get all the facts out there when trying to push these stories to a gullible public.    If you are a compassionate person you MUST IGNORE PACO and spend your time thinking about the daily deaths of thousands from Malaria, rotovirus, and lack of clean water.    Yes that task is more than  overwhelming, but the whimpy “Find Paco”  sentiment that people think makes them a “compassionate person” does nothing of the kind – it hardens them to the plight of millions who live in conditions we could largely fix if people would pay as much attention to that as they pay to missing stray dogs in Mexico.      (How?   If the developed world cut defense and entitlement spending by about 10% we could rebuild most of the developing world’s infrastructure  IN ONLY A FEW YEARS.     The strategic benefits alone would be staggering, but military enthusiasts are too blinded by irrational post-cold-war thinking while entitlement enthusiasts are too busy sending subsidies to the American lower and middle class, who contrary to our constant whining cost far more in bureaucracies and benefits than we pay for  (can you say “National Debt”?)

The millions spent sending poor Free Willie back into the wild also comes to mind (he died soon after, lacking the skills needed to survive).       Did people seriously think Willie would be happier in the wild?    It was as if their *need* to fight against captivity programs trumped the animal’s own well being.

So instead of fretting over things that don’t matter much, why not pick your favorite extreme poverty charity and help out – then you can feel good…. AND actually do some good too!    Here’s a start:   http://twitter.com/charitywater

Obama’s ONE mistake may be his ONLY mistake, but it’s still a BIG mistake.

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How is Obama doing?   I remain a big fan of how Obama has approached international diplomacy, basically speaking softly without putting down the carrots and big stick that America probably needs to wield to avoid international meltdowns.   (We could do this carrot and stick work much more cheaply using more carrots and less sticks with new school technology, media,  marketing and innovation, but that’s another post).

In fact it is hard to imagine what Obama critics would be saying if  Obama had actually failed at something (aside from massive spending, a very legit concern.   But spending cuts require BOTH  entitlement and military cuts first, and that’s not going to happen because neither right or left will accept smart spending.     That Government that spends best, spends least.    There are few if any exceptions, and all the founders are rolling in graves right now as they note how bureacratic insanity has inflated budgets to unsustainable levels. Yet the Tea Partiers fret over the trivial spending on stupid things and ignore the massive waste, fraud, and abuses within our 550 billion annual defense budget – clearly the obvious target for massive reforms since it does NOT sustain infrastructure, it only (theoretically) protects it.

The Obama Record:   Obviously too early to say but the results so far are remarkable:

* Economy stabilizing after potential catastrophe.

* Most banks to repay all bailout money (a story that should be headlines, but does not suit the naive agendas of tea partiers, left wing, or even mainstream folks. Geitner’s plan is not completed, but appears to have been masterful.

* No major terror attacks in US or even internationally.

* Iraq improving.

* Afghanistan unclear, but early signs of improvement.

Aside from the very important and reasonable criticism that we may have simply bought our way out of all this with massive spending, what’s the beef of the critics?     They predicted economic collapse and international terror at unprecedented levels.   We’ve had neither.   Obama’s doing fine.

We should have worked harder to balance current federal and state budgets with massive military and entitlement cuts, but the Tea Party raving fringe combines with the Democratic spendthrifts and won’t allow that obvious solution.

Without massive military spending cuts, we have a completely unsustainable spending pattern. Until the fools that pretend to be conservative recognize this totally obvious fact, the US remains economically challenged.

P.S.  Sorry kids, my generation is spending your money.   A lot of it you’ll have to repay with huge future taxes and/or massive inflation.   And you don’t even know it.   Cya.

Does your Storytelling Trump the Truth?

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One of the greatest confusions of my life has been watching otherwise very sharp folks descend into a sort of silly crazed madness – or at least incoherency – with respect to complex topics like politics, economy, global warming, etc.

AT THE VERY LEAST a thinking person should realize that we generally don’t have enough data or enough experiments to draw firm and certain conclusions about most complex topics, yet most of us seem to want to do exactly that.     I like to think I’m open minded about most things and generally happy to entertain even the most skeptical views of ideas I hold dear, but I’m sure I fall into this incoherency sometimes too.   However I try to insist to myself that I’m going to let the facts drive my conclusion rather than create stories and then fit in only those facts that support them.

Happily I think I …. finally …. understand why smart people can believe such dumb things, or support their views so strongly without regard to a reasoned analysis of all the information.

Storytelling trumps the truth !

It is not clear to me why we humans are so enamored with stories as opposed to data analysis, but clearly we have a huge preference for the storybook versions of things.     This is fun and entertaining when it comes to films, theater, music, and reading stories to your kids.    Unfortunately our storytelling obsession often gets in the way of good science, politics, and economics, all of which are best driven by cold hard facts and cool, rational interpretations of that data.

The storytelling obsession is SO powerful in fact that I often have people argue with me over something that is downright totally obvious if you view it rationally for even a moment.    It’s the idea that we should all work very strongly against politically motivated spending patterns and try to prioritize spending so we spend where it does the most good.    Most people will initially agree with this, but as soon as you say, for example, that we should take money AWAY from keeping comatose folks alive and put that money towards prenatal care in the Bronx (or, heaven forbid, Africa!),  many people do the descent into irrationality and say things like “well, what if it’s your friend who is in a coma?”.      If you say we should cut the defense budget they say (irrationally) “But how will we protect ourselves”, as if spending and protection obviously go hand in hand.      Stories allow us to spin and bend the data and analysis to our own agendas, and this is not a healthy process.

Many will relate personal stories or create stories to describe scenarios where – in some limited set of circumstances – they would have been hurt by a system that did not prioritize things in their way.    OF COURSE we will all have times when a rational system does not meet our needs!    This happens all the time.    But political / storytelling  spending – which is now rampant – will in all cases virtually guarantee we have suboptimal allocation of resources.

The answer is that a rational person recognizes that we’re all in this together and we need more rational rules about spending and we’ll all need to live with (or die by) those rules.    Sure there can be processes for exceptions to the general rules, but it’s simply not rational to suggest, as many do, that “we should always spend all the money in the world to save every single person”.

I think see these storytelling effects best on the far left and right of issues.    These can be political where President Obama is portrayed as a conservative corporate stooge by the incoherent left and a communist non-citizen by the incoherent right.   Neither view lines up with any but a delusional view of reality, yet both are fairly popular (and incompatible) ideas.

On a global scale we see religious fanatics use storytelling to weave their madness and bring continued instability to many regions.     I’d argue that a major challenge for many nations is to abandon leaders who are primarily charismatic storytellers in favor of resolute and analytical problem solvers.    Ideally you’ll find people who are both and in my opinion Obama may fit that bill if he can extricate himself from old school Democratic party economic delusions.

David Brooks on Charlie Rose, Tea Parties, Defense Spending Cuts.

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David Brooks is one of the most thoughtful pundits practicing punditry, and I especially enjoy him on Charlie Rose where he’s not having to counter Mark Shield’s silly and often irrelevant points made on PBS’ “The News Hour”.     Despite the obvious ideological differences, even President Obama isn’t immune to the intelligent observations of Brooks, who has met several times with the President.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/10852

I especially enjoyed his point about the wisdom of *moving slow*.    I tend to be in the group that says “let’s try something new and bold”, but Brooks makes the case that slow, gradual change is the best course and one of the reasons for the great success of the American experiment.    He also seemed to feel this was by design – the founders wanted checks, balances, and thoughtful innovations rather than radical ones.      One could reasonably say that the US was born, revolutionarily, from a movement that advocated huge change in a short time, I think it’s also true that the founders recognized their own limitations and the limitations of government, which was why our new republic was designed more to temper the powers of Government and the ruling class than to enhance them.    This point is currently lost on many Americans but soon it’ll be clear to most that big Government is going to fail us … again.    Not out of bad intentions, rather from what the founders understood so well –  Government that governs best, governs least.

Unfortunately it’s the Tea Party movement that has become the main advocate for small Government, but the Tea Party folks are carrying the baggage of two unsustainably dumb ideologies along with them.    The first is their hypocrisy with respect to spending.  There are calls for cuts in entitlement programs (important) and also for trivial things that don’t matter (dumb), but Tea Party has NO calls for the necessary large cuts in defense  spending – one of the few big ticket budget items that eventually MUST be cut and SHOULD have been massively cut years ago.      We spend over half the global military spend – about $550,000,000,000 each year – and the return on this extraordinary investment is not even clearly positive.     Massive military responses often spawn more ferocious counterinsurgencies, so the idea that we must “root out” terrorism or face greater terror is unproven.     We don’t have enough data to know how our trillions in anti-terror spending will shake out so I’m not advocating anything here other than cuts in spending, which at least free up funding for things that have a proven return on investment.   [NOTE – Brooks and Obama would disagree with massive cuts in defense budget, though I think one of the great military minds of the century, President Dwight Eisenhower, is rolling in his grave watching how his predictions about the rise of a “military industrial establishment” have come true and, along with entitlements, have completely broken our bank. ] The second huge problem with the Tea Party movement is their remarkable enthusiasm for intolerance.   Sara Palin?   Tom Tancredo?   The people who are now clearly speaking for many in that movement are generally not very bright or capable, and also they are frequently using the kind of confrontatational, intolerant speech that should have been abandoned long ago, though it’s also true that the American left – now in power – is reaping some of what they sowed with the huge disrespect they showed the Bush Administration.

Ironically the solutions to many American problems are very clear, we just don’t have a party that reflects what we need which is a small and innovative government and a smart and innovative private sector.    Liberals need to abandon so much “hand holding” and demands for big Government and conservatives need to abandon their love of massive defense spending and social class warfare.

Nope, not holding my breath!

Mark Cuban’s Stimulus Plan is a good idea

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Always enjoy Mark Cuban’s  kick-butt prescriptions for economic success.   Sure he oversimplifies, but  like most successful entrepreneurial folks Cuban understands what a remarkable number of people do NOT understand – innovation drives our economy forward in powerful ways and our current bureaucratic-heavy approaches to the economy too often stifle innovation in business while failing to inspire innovation in Government (which is almost an oxymoron).

I was especially interested in this comment, something I’ve believed for many years:

There are exceptions, but more often than not, the stupidest thing a business of this size can do is borrow money.

Cuban:

Like the administration before it, the current administration seems to have no concept of what it takes to start, run and grow a small business. None. Here is a hint. If you want to see more jobs created by Small Businesses and entrepreneurs REDUCE the amount of paperwork required. Dramatically simplify the tax code. In other words, if you REDUCE THE OVERHEAD of small business, you effectively create capital for them through reduced costs.

Not only do you improve their financial position, but you reduce that great big time suck known as dealing with your accountants and lawyers. The more time wasted with “professional services”, the less time spent doing your job. This seems to be a concept lost on government. One last thing. It appears to be a goal of the administration to free up loans to small businesses. For the sake of this comment, let me re-define Small Business as those companies with fewer than 20 employees. There are exceptions, but more often than not, the stupidest thing a business of this size can do is borrow money. Its stressful enough for a small business in these times to be profitable. Add to that stress the need to repay a loan and success becomes far more difficult. If we want to accelerate the formation and growth of these small businesses we need to first reduce the costs imposed on them by the government (at all levels) and then simplify and reduce the costs of raising capital. Forget government loan guarantees. Make capital gains on investments up to $1mm in small companies tax free. Make this process paperwork free for the small business and a 1 page form for the investor. Thats how we will see economic and job growth in this country..

I’m not convinced paperwork is the key thing to focus on but it is certainly a valid concern.    One of the great ironies of our “pretty successful” American experience is the failure of so many to insist on better government accountability with respect to the massive spending.    People very correctly are outraged when big business screws up, but often businesses often pay the penalty they should pay for major mistakes:  the death penalty.     Bailout issues aside for now one of the reasons for the vibrancy of the American economy over some 300+ years has been our somewhat ruthless reliance on the survival of the fittest businesses.

As we move into a new era of much great Government involvement in business, I sure hope we find ways to limit the damage to American’s engines of innovation – small businesseses.

Cost Benefit Analysis and the Environment

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One of the most interesting topics right now is how to allocate risks and costs with respect to environmental problems like climate change.    I’m having an email discussion with my good pal John and thought I’d bring some of that online for others to comment:

RE:  Cost Benefit Analysis and Environment:

John’s:  It is very easy to distort their definitions towards a point of view rather than towards something necessarily valid.  Not that cost/benefit is never useful.  It is very useful when the costs and benefits are relatively simple to define.  Unfortunately costs from environmental degradation and benefits from efforts to change behavior are very difficult to delineate.  In the end through the early environmental movement persistence and intelligent thinking about clean water and air prevailed over those who used cost/benefit analysis.

Joe:  Very good points except I’m not at all convinced about your last sentence.   I used to agree with that but (without enough research) I’d say we needed cost benefits and failed to do them, leading to massive spending or bans on things that had little impact on the overall quality or simply shifted industrial damages to poor countries.   I’ve lost a LOT of respect for mainstream US environmentalism because I think it is not a global perspective and it’s mostly emotional rather than analytical, leading to bizarre policy and spending recommendations that don’t line up with long term planning and well being. Kyoto – now partially discredited even in environmental camps as an ineffective and bad approach – is an excellent example of how emotion drives policy.

Although there is enough right wing froth to confuse the analysis, another example of emotion trumping reason seems to be the Silent Spring / DDT ban which as far as I can tell will eventually be seen as one of the greatest and catastrophic (in terms of lives lost) errors of environmental thinking – though it would be very hard to model/evaluate the damages to ecosystem if we’d kept spraying.  Still, the facts suggest we had a moral imperative to keep using DDT which would have saved *tens of millions* who have since died from Malaria.   If those had been US kids there is NO WAY the ban would have stuck.
The same imperative – I would argue – that should focus us on malaria and malnutrition while we should largely ignore climate change.
You are certainly right about Lomborg being a lightning rod for controversy, but I’d encourage you to look at his TED talk or other writings.   I’d suggest he’s a very clear thinker, pilloried unfairly by the vested interests of an increasingly entrenched climate and environmental bureacracy.    It’s not logical to think that the public sector is above all economic and political influences while the private sector is a prisoner to them.  Both are compromised, which is why the clearest voices come from people like Lomborg who have no dog in the fight other than “optimizing human experience”.   We can disagree about how to optimize things, but I want to hear more from people who have no stake in how we allocate resources.   That leaves out industry scientists …. and NASA as well, leaving us with thin pickings.    Still, I’d argue strongly – very strongly – that the best policy recommendations are coming from the economists who are looking at both costs and benefits.

Comments very welcome!

Developing World Statistics – are probably not what you thought.

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This fast paced presentation presents a cleverly graphed view of several important global development statistics. Dr. Hans Rosling is working to teach us all to work more with the data and less with our preconceptions about the ways of the world, especially with respect to approaches to health and poverty reduction. His site / project is www.GapMinder.org

Changing the world, one PR firm at a time

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The CES 2010 pitches are coming in strong now as John and I get ready to cover the year’s biggest technology event over at  Technology Report.

I was so happy today to see one of them signing off saying they were a proud supporter of the Room to Read Project, which is a major effort to work towards world wide literacy and education.   Readers of this blog know I’m a huge fan of that kind of project, and one of the reasons I’m very optimistic about the world’s future is that for I think the first time in history it’s become very, very “fashionable” to support global poverty reduction efforts in even the strongest bastions of capitalism (e.g. big time PR firms).

Now, cynics will suggest – correctly to some extent – that part of the motivation when capitalists support charity is to benefit from the positive buzz.    However I’m fine with that, and furthermore I’m *glad*  to see potential win-win economic relationships develop around charities like this.

Have a Merry Microloan Christmas

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This year I won’t be giving out more than a few tiny token presents to my friends and family, but I will be giving some of the best gifts I have ever given.   The Nobel prize winning efforts of the Grameen Bank have sponsored the poor with small loans to start businesses, and this tactic has proven to be one of the most effective poverty-fighting measures ever developed.

I hope you’ll consider gifts to Grameen or other charities as part of your happy holidays as well.     Grameen’s founder started the project with $27 business loans to poor businesses in India.      These were interest loans but historically have had a nearly 100% repayment rate.    The spectacular success of Grameen has also inspired other charities to approach development with more of an eye to entrepreneurship and small business and less of the “top down” mega project bureaucracies that have run into many problems as locals resisted them.     Small Business, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship is near and dear to the heart of many in the USA and I hope you’ll join me  in supporting Grameen with some green this Christmas.

Think about it –  $27 loans that often will positively reshape the lives of  entire families from this point forward.

More about Grameen.   If you are feeling *sassy*, you also might want to click to the right on the Grameen logo and donate via the Grameen page I just set up for a Christmas Campaign.     Frankly, if I was presented to this by anybody but a  friend I’d be a little concerned that the money would wind up at Grameen – they use a URL that is not easily recognizable as secure and connected to them.    But don’t let that deter you – just give at the Grameen Website in that case.