After my encounter with an excessive plethora of unexpected internet viruses, and the comments from readers, my wife the professor made the observation, “The law hasn’t kept up with the internet.”  We both laughed, because it is so obvious as to be totally laughable.  It’s also laughable in a sadder way because it’s become apparent that the law will never be able to keep up with the internet… and quite possibly with other aspects of advanced technology.

For years now, a number of high-tech companies have been trying to protect themselves with not only patents, but with secret and secretive production processes, sometimes, I’ve been told, forgoing patent protection because they believe that a patent is a roadmap for a competitor.  At the same time, we have so-called genetics companies trying to patent genes obtained or derived from people and other organisms, which suggests some fairly frightening future scenarios.

Then there’s the growing reliance on high-speed information technology and information transfer.  As I’ve mentioned earlier, nanoseconds matter in the world of securities trading, and the fact that they do requires almost total reliance on high-speed computers and sophisticated algorithms.  The federal government is pushing for standardized electronic medical records, and pretty much every state government, every major corporation, and every federal department and agency is becoming increasingly reliant on such technologies.

And yet, this increasingly complex and interdependent web of information makes both our economy, as well as its underlying infrastructure, and thus not only our economy, but every industry and service, ever more vulnerable to technological disruptions, the causes of which could range from massive solar flares to inspired hackers, dedicated and sophisticated cyber terrorists, foreign computer operatives, and unexpected algorithm failures or applications.

We don’t have a legal structure that is designed to deal adequately with either massive electronic misfeasance or malfeasance, and even if we did, we don’t have the means to track down even a fraction of the perpetrators, let alone a way to legally and physically punish them.  And it’s highly unlikely that we ever will. This is not a problem unknown in human history.  In fact, in a sense, we deal with it every day, because no government anywhere can monitor all its people all the time and deal with all the possible violence they could commit. Historically, social codes have been far more important than laws… but social codes only work well with populations that share common values, which raises the overwhelming question, so to speak – what happens when neither laws nor social codes are able to restrict wide-scale information hacking, cyber-sabotage, intellectual property piracy, and out-and-out information systems terrorism? 

It’s clear that some organizations can muster the technology and skills to thwart or counter such; it’s also clear that most of us can’t, not on a continuing ongoing basis. Nor, at present, do most nations have adequate back-ups and alternative infrastructure and communications systems ready to take over in the event of information system failures on a national scale.  Yet the push for greater information technology integration continues, again fueled by promises of lower costs and greater efficiencies… or at least greater efficiencies until everything collapses.

Why isn’t anyone looking at this problem seriously?  Because, of course, it’s too expensive to resolve… and I fear that when people suddenly realize that something needs to be done, it will be far too late.

…and I’m angry, not quite raging rip-down-walls-mad, but close. Despite two different reputable anti-virus systems, both current, some virus or perhaps more than one, has rendered it useless, so much so that I had to turn it over to computer professionals for rehab.  All the files I need, except one, are backed up, and I can reconstruct that one, if necessary, but the time, money, and inconvenience resulting from this sort of event are more than a little irritating.

And for what?  So that some cyber-psycho can get his or her kicks out of destruction, out of wasting people’s money and time?  Or so that some sociopath can make other people’s hardware and software unwitting tools for some grand nefarious project that will victimize even more people?

I’m fortunate; I have back-ups; and I can afford repairs, but there was a time when this sort of thing would have thrown a huge monkey-wrench into life and family finances… and that’s still true for all too many people.

I’m definitely not a Luddite.  I like technology.  But as I’ve posted before, computer technology opens whole avenues of mischief, crime, and destruction.  It also has destroyed borders in so far as criminal activities are concerned.  Among other misperspectives, the right-wing opponents of immigration reform have totally missed the boat on crime.  Thanks to computers, a lot of the criminals outside our borders don’t even have to enter the U.S. in order to victimize Americans.  Without immigration reform, all we’re doing is making criminals out of those who came here to find work and opportunity and keeping the brightest of the rest of the world from coming here.

Computer viruses, worms, scams, identity theft, and the like are all part and parcel of crimes at a distance, where the perpetrator doesn’t see or have to face the misery he or she has caused, usually is never apprehended, and even if caught is seldom punished in any degree of relation to the harm caused.  It’s just another aspect of the technological desensitization of society, which includes rampant violence in every form of entertainment, sensationalistic news, computer/video games glorifying crime and violence, and the possibility of drone attacks all over the world.

Me, I’d just settle for an active virus-defense system that would immediately wipe the computer of anyone sending me such a virus or worm.

One of the functions that government performs best, in the sense that it is a function that can seldom be performed on a societal-wide basis by any other entity, is the one that citizens often have the least understanding of and/or the least willingness to support, with one or two notable exceptions.  That function?  To keep bad things from happening… or from getting worse once they happen.

Examples of such are police protection, trash collection, clean water, and effective sewer systems.  All of these are well-accepted government services with a large element of prevention embodied in their function. Other preventive government functions are not so well understood or accepted.

At one time, environment standards were fought tooth and nail by industry.  Now various industries fight new or tighter emission standards, but those standards are designed for one function – to prevent the emission of pollutants that harm people, and without those standards we had rivers where nothing could live, and some that even caught fire, air that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, water supplies containing virulent carcinogenic chemicals… and so forth.

More than a few people have complained about the massive federal government spending on counter-terrorism, now estimated at $150 billion annually, just in the United States.  In 2011, the most-recent year of the Global Terrorism Index, there were 4,564 terrorist incidents that led to 7,473 deaths.  In the United States, there were actually more terrorist attacks in the 1970s than in any decade since – although the 9/11 attack was the deadliest in U.S. history – but since 9/11 the overall numbers of successful terrorist attacks have continued to decline, almost certainly due to increased security measures and, some would say, a certain restriction on personal freedoms.  But consider this.  Since 9/11, only 37 people have died from terrorist attacks and assaults in the United States.  While this apparatus hasn’t prevented those deaths, how many others has it prevented?  How can anyone tell? 

Vaccination is another area of prevention, although some parents still don’t understand vaccination or the need for it, but that’s an area where some quantification does exist. For example, even today, according to the World Health Organization over 100,000 people die every year from measles, yet there have only been few hundred cases annually in the United States over the past several decades, all of which occurred in unvaccinated individuals.  Before the development of the vaccine, there were often close to a million cases a year in the U.S., and as many as 7,000 deaths.  More recently, nearly a million people died world-wide annually from measles in years before 1999, when more wide-spread use of vaccines became available.  Yet in recent years, there have been parents who insist that the vaccine is more deadly than the disease, despite long-standing figures that shown mortality from measles ranges from one death in a thousand cases in healthy and well-nourished individuals to as high as 300 in a thousand (30%) for weakened or malnourished individuals.  By comparison, severe side effects from the vaccine are less than one in a million, and fatal side effects so low that they cannot be quantified.  For all that, some parents still insist that their child is safer without being vaccinated.

Another area of successful prevention is that of automobile safety. The all-time high in automobile deaths was almost 55,000 in 1972, when the population was a third lower than it is now, but by 2011, that had dropped to 32,367, the lowest total in 60 years. Since 1960, the number of vehicles on the road has tripled and population has increased by 50%, yet automobile fatalities per 100,000 people have been halved.  The cost?  Adjusted for inflation, the cost of an average new car is roughly 140% higher than that of a 1973 new car, when the first significant mandated federal safety standards were imposed.   Assuming that no such standards were implemented, a conservative estimate suggests that we would have seen roughly a half-million more deaths than actually occurred, and most likely at least as many additional injuries. The problem with trying to quantify the costs is that it’s impossible to determine how much of the reduction in fatalities comes from improved design and how much from safety features and other factors, such as seatbelt laws.  That preventive measures have had a huge impact isn’t even in doubt, but we still have thousands of deaths a year because drivers don’t wear seatbelts, either because they don’t think it can happen to them or because they’re exercising a perverse form of civil disobedience.

Similar questions arise in healthcare.  Some critics have pointed out that the largest cause of death in the United States is heart disease, followed by cancer, strokes, and hospital infections.  Yet the most effective form of prevention is a healthy life-style, particularly avoiding obesity, tobacco use, and excessive consumption of alcohol while engaging in regular exercise. For all that knowledge, over forty million people still smoke, and over 30% of the population is obese, while excessive consumption of alcohol is a problem faced by at least 15% of the population. The cost of a single day’s treatment in a hospital for someone with a suspected heart attack can easily exceed $5,000 and the course of treatment for an actual heart attack can run many times that, and we – or our insurance carriers, or both – as a nation spend an estimated $500 billion in healthcare expenditures that could be greatly reduced if more people made, or were able to make, a greater effort toward a healthier lifestyle.

Some kinds of prevention, such as requiring vaccinations, drastically reduce death rates and costs for a tiny fraction of just what burial costs would be.  Others, such as automobile safety features, are still obviously cost-effective, but both are effective because the prevention is not only required, but it can be largely implemented.  Basic environmental standards are clearly cost-effective, but regulators and attorneys continue to argue about the need for tighter or additional environmental regulations and whether they improve health and the environment compared to the cost to those who must comply.  Nonetheless, some kinds of prevention can only be accomplished by government.  No individual, for practical purposes, can prevent air and water pollution or require automotive safety standards, or clean drinking water and safe sewage disposal.

In healthcare, the matter is even stickier.  Healthcare providers – or the government – cannot not only not require people to adopt a healthy lifestyle, but are greatly limited in requiring people who maintain unhealthy lifestyles to pay their full share of the additional healthcare costs required by such individuals. In fact, the current direction of U.S. healthcare is away from requiring individual responsibility, even as a host of government regulations require it in other areas.

Prevention — who pays for it?  Who should?  How much? And to what degree should people be made personally responsible for their own failures to prevent the preventable?

A recent Associated Press news story highlighted a fact that we all know – CEO pay has been going up again ever since a brief two year decline following the initial 2007 economic meltdown, and is now at its highest level ever.  In 2012, according to data from Equilar, an executive pay research firm, the “average” CEO made $9.7 million, up 6.5% in 2012 from 2011.  By comparison, the pay for all U.S. workers rose an average of 1.3% per year over the last three years.

Even more interesting is the fact that the two highest paid CEOs were from the entertainment and media industry, with the highest compensated CEO raking in just over $60 million [not including deferred stock compensation].  In fact, five out of the top ten were in entertainment and media.  Another interesting fact is that the area with the highest average CEO pay is health care, while the lowest is that of public utility CEOs, not that they’re exactly impoverished with an average pay packet of $7.5 million.

There are a number of conclusions one might draw from this, but the one that stands out, at least to me, is that the highest paid executives come from the field that provides the least tangible value to its consumers.  We need food, water, shelter, power, heat, and medical care.  We don’t physically need packaged entertainment.  While everyone complains about the costs of health care – and in most cases those costs are far too high – especially when one considers the pricing model of the pharmaceutical industry, where U.S. consumers foot the bill, and the rest of the world gets lower-cost prescription drugs – health care does provide a tangible benefit and has improved our lives.  I’m not sure we can say that about the U.S. entertainment industry.

But entertainment – and today’s media is in fact entertainment, including almost all so-called news – obviously fills a psychological need – and one for which people are willing to pay – and one that is extraordinarily profitable – just like the illegal drug industry.  Come to think of it, there’s a certain similarity.  Both have products that make their consumers feel good, and both have negative long-term effects… and the content of both is essentially unregulated… and both are highly profitable for those at the top.

And like it or not, how we as a culture spend our money and reward those who provide goods and services says more about us than we’d like to admit.

Last week the head of the Utah State Board of Regents proposed pay hikes for all of the college and university presidents in the state system, as much as by 24% in one case.  The reason cited was that the state has trouble keeping good university presidents.  The past two presidents of the University of Utah now make far more heading large universities elsewhere, and the president of Southern Utah University is leaving to take the head position at Eastern Kentucky University at double the salary he made in Utah.  Keeping Utah education “competitive” makes sense, so far as it goes.  The problem is that it stops with the upper administration.

Faculty salaries at state universities were frozen from 2008 to 2010, and faculty members have received raises of one percent per year for the past two years, with another one percent increase scheduled for the coming school year.  This wouldn’t be all that bad, given the current economic climate, except for the fact that the salaries of existing faculty members have been frozen for something like six of the last twenty years, and annual raises have exceeded 2% only in about three of those twenty years – and faculty salaries on average are in the lowest twenty percent nationwide.

A number of Utah universities have dealt with the salary cap by filling the positions of departing or retiring faculty, partly by hiring more adjuncts and partly by setting a much higher salaries for new faculty, so that longer term and more loyal faculty effectively get penalized… and so that good professors who don’t have to worry about spouses’  jobs or family connections have a tendency to depart for greener pastures, none of which helps improve faculty morale or higher education.  

Yet the Utah legislature, which continually touts education as a priority, spends so little per pupil on elementary and secondary education that even Idaho – the next lowest in the United States – spends nearly  20% more on each student than does Utah.   Utah’s public school spending per pupil is 43% below the national average, and the fact that it has the most crowded classrooms is just one reflection of that.  So is the amount of remedial help high school graduates need when they reach college.

The same sort of mentality applies to the legislature with regard to higher education as well. There’s a great deal of lip service, but a real reluctance to provide funding.  And when university presidents raise money from private donors for needed facilities, the legislature balks at providing the funding for operating and maintaining such facilities.  At the same time, part of the universities’ annual state funding is based on enrollment growth.  So… let’s get this in perspective.  They want more students with less funding for each student, and they require tuition increases, adding to the burden on students, while underpaying faculty, effectively forcing universities to court donors for funds to build needed facilities that the legislature doesn’t want to maintain  … but they want to reward the university presidents.

Does that sound familiar?  Of course.  It’s the current big business model.  As one critic suggested, Utah really shouldn’t be applying the “big business” model to education, not if it wants to improve education.

But then, does the legislature really want that… or just to create the impression that it cares about real educational improvement?  After all, it’s easy to pay the CEO more… and much, much harder and more costly to fix the larger problems.

Human beings have always been creatures of the present, as exemplified by the old saying, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.”  Admittedly, that was originally a soldiers’ mantra, but it is beginning to appear that it’s become almost a way of life now, especially in the United States.

The most obvious aspect of this is texting and tweeting, where people literally risk death to get largely meaningless messages right “now.”  Emails have replaced letters, and a plethora of text abbreviations have proliferated because so few want to spell out phrases – or can – and the result, regardless of protests to the contrary [which have also proliferated], is that language has been not only truncated but cheapened as more and more electronic communicators adopt simplistic abbreviations, rather than attempting to take the time to express their own feelings in their own words.  But then, it may be that they’re simply incapable of doing so.

But there’s another physical problem created by the “now” nature of the internet.  More and more, those who use it are turning from text to visual images, not to mention the various real-time streaming features, all of which consume enormous amounts of bandwidth.  In less than a decade, even with all the planned expansions, the entire internet/world-wide-web is likely to come to a screeching overload/traffic jam halt… unless tens of billions of dollars are invested in new and expanded infrastructure or some new compression or routing routines are adopted.  Even so, the speeds of today may soon be a thing of the past.

As I’ve noted a number of times, the business/corporate sector has been totally co-opted by the “now.”   Long-term planning is 18 months.  The value of a corporation is strictly based on current stock prices, revenues, and sales, and at the slightest whiff of news – good or bad – that value instantly changes. Corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to gain an advantage of little more than nanoseconds in securities trading.  Yet, over the past few years, we’ve had several “flash crashes” in the stock market, the last one resulting from hacked phony information fed from an AP account.  And yet, for all these warnings, the need and desire for “profit now,” has resulted in even greater reliance on high-speed, algorithm-based computerized program trading… putting the global banking and financial system at even greater risk.

We have an national infrastructure crisis, with millions of bridges needing repair, a national power grid that has become increasingly overloaded and fragile, scores of cities with inadequate highway and public transportation systems, an air traffic control system that is already antiquated and susceptible to disruptions, a hundred nuclear power plants with nowhere to dispose of their spent nuclear fuel,  civic water systems losing billions of gallons annually to leaky pipes and conduits – and a political system that won’t deal with any of it because the politicians are too fearful of a public that opposes any tax increases now, regardless of the long-term costs and implications.

As more than a few readers have noted, we also have a parenting problem – because far too many parents don’t want to deal with the present “unpleasantness” of disciplining their children, and because we have too many those same parents not wanting anyone else to impose restrictions on those children, we have marginal, if that, discipline in far too many schools, and far too many young people growing up with little or no idea of the conduct requirements necessary to obtain and hold a job – such as showing up for work every day and on time.

Although everyone pays great attention and lip service to education, the emphasis in practice is almost totally on the present.  How do we raise test scores?  How do we get graduation and retention rates up now? Or at the collegiate level, how can we change education so graduates get jobs now?  Everywhere is the complaint that the cost of higher education falls too heavily on the students, but what is the reaction from state legislatures, who used to fund a significant share of the costs of state universities?  No one wants to raise taxes now; so we’ll hire more part-time adjuncts at near starvation wages and continue to raise tuition.

And what are the other proposed popular solutions to problems in education?  Let’s reward teachers for improvements in testing, graduation, and retention.  Just where is the emphasis on critical thinking?  Or the discussion of what kind of education is relevant for what types of learners?  Or what type of education will foster the ability to allow students to keep learning once they’re out of the education system, something that’s particularly relevant given that, according to an NCES study, 40% of  Americans are either functionally illiterate or are only able to read on the most basic level.  Other studies show that from 33% to 42% of all college graduates will never read another complete book after graduation.

Another aspect of the “now” culture is the inability or unwillingness to look at the implications of current “now” trends.  The other day my wife walked into one of the largest department stores in Salt Lake City, a store that is one of hundreds of a national chain, and walked out, unable to buy anything because “the computers are down.”  What happens when sales and inventory, and even climate control [the air conditioning was “down,” too] are tied into systems that, because of their increasing complexity, are more prone to fail?   Last month, I had to re-schedule a doctor’s appointment because, when I got to the office, I was informed that the doctor couldn’t see me – or anyone else – because the computers were down and no one could access my medical records.  That’s not a big problem for a routine check-up; it’s a huge problem if the emergency room’s access to records goes down.   Banks are trying to become more efficient by greater reliance on electronic banking and ATMs.  What happens when there’s a power failure or a computer failure?  Or a terrorist hacking of the financial system – especially when so many Americans, especially those under 30 or so, don’t even carry any cash and instead rely on their debit or credit card – or their IPhone – to pay for goods and services?

A recent article in the New Yorker featured an interview with the head of the FBI’s cyber-crime unit.  The upshot was that, with a literal handful of exceptions, essentially every single computerized system in the United States is vulnerable to current “spear-phishing” information piracy.  This includes power plants and power distribution systems, air traffic control, public utilities, and all corporate headquarters, including high tech and defense contractors. Even classified plans, such as those for the F-35, the advanced strike fighter, have been pirated, most likely by the Chinese government.  And yet, computer systems security is woefully underfunded at a time when everyone is using more and more computers for more and more information transfer.

Unless matters change, and quickly, I worry that the “now” generation may well end up having neither a “now” nor much of a future.  But then, the future’s not now… so almost no one seems to worry as much as I do.

Over the years, in the military, business, and government, I’ve watched those who’ve been successful, and, especially in larger organizations, or government and academia, an inordinate number of those who’ve been successful in getting advanced have been shameless self-promoters whose acts and accomplishments are far less than what they represent and almost invariably less than those of at least a few of their colleagues.  So why are such individuals so successful?

First, they deceive themselves into believing that they’re better than they are, and having done so, they have no doubts about themselves, unlike more honest and introspective colleagues.  This puts the more honest competitors for the same position at a significant disadvantage. Moreover, often those who might well do a better job, and often have in fact done so, are reluctant to be ruthlessly self-promoting because, first, that kind of self-promotion usually results in denigrating others [subtly, of course, in the case of highly skilled self-promoters] and involves a certain degree of intellectual dishonesty.

Now… there’s nothing wrong with blowing one’s own horn, because, all too often, if you don’t, no one else will. But all too many superiors tend to assume that if someone doesn’t blow their own horn, they have no accomplishments to tout… or that if they tout those accomplishments honestly or modestly, such accomplishments are less that those touted with the equivalent of a full brass band.  And, in all too many organizations, quiet and honest self-promotion gets lost in the din.

Shameless self-promoters are also usually masters at minimizing the accomplishments of others, and the best do it with praise, showing a certain “generosity” that suggests that maybe those accomplishments weren’t that great, but that the individuals are devoted and work hard.

The shameless self-promoters tend to offer simplistic and excessively optimistic solutions, and then blame others when the results don’t materialize, again with that “generous” deprecation, such as “the team tried hard, but…” or “the finance types are good people, but they just don’t understand.”  The combination of self-centeredness and simplicity appeals to many harried superiors, because far too many of those superiors don’t want to hear of difficulties, needs for more resources, etc.

The shameless self-promoters are extraordinarily adept at “sucking up” to those above them who can help them rise in the organization and politely ignoring those who cannot… but once they’ve reached a level where those who once helped them can no longer do so, the self-promoter will quickly and quietly move away and find others even higher up to whom he or she can address praise and interest.

Now… there’s no secret to this general pattern or formula of behavior.  It’s been noted for generations.  What I find so amazing is that it continues to work, generation after generation, in culture after culture.

From what I’ve observed, and from what history reports, the majority of violence wreaked in human history has been primarily caused by two kinds of people – by those who are mentally unbalanced, either temporarily or permanently, and by those with extreme views of some sort [and some might claim that extreme views are a form of mental imbalance, but I’m not in that camp]. Since I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I’ll forgo, at least for now, in commenting on mental instability, save that there appear to always have been those who are mentally unstable, and make a few observations on extremism.

To begin with, extremism leading to violence always seems to manifest itself in beliefs of some sort.  These beliefs may be religious, political, social, or even in some other secular area.  This does NOT mean that all extremists are prone to violence, but it does mean that the tendency to violence is far more prevalent in those with extreme views. I’ve certainly met some fairly extreme vegetarians and environmentalists.  I’ve even met a few, believe it or not, extreme pacifists. Certain religions at certain times seem to have created more extremists prone to violence. 

I’d submit that extremism is usually an offshoot of fundamentalist tendencies in an individual’s belief structure, again whether religious, political, or secular.  Those with fundamentalist beliefs of whatever sort share the conviction that adhering to a simple, basic, belief structure is the only “right” way.  Such fundamentalists can be violent and vicious, sometimes against others who believe only slightly differently.  One has only to look at the Hundred Years War, the internecine violence in England in the time of Henry VIII and his immediate successors, the present violence between various Shiite and Sunni factions in the Middle East.  This can occur along political lines as well.  The Tea Party faction of the Republican Party has been merciless in trying to weed out moderate and liberal Republicans.  I’ve been attacked fairly violently for suggesting a few restrictions on gun ownership, and I’ve in no way proposed taking away all guns.

So why do so many “fundamentalists” of all sorts get so angry – and sometimes violent, especially when challenged?

Someone I respect, who has great insight, suggested that it is because everyone has a core set of beliefs, and that those who become most violent are those who, first, identify most strongly with a simple and basic set of beliefs, and second, feel threatened by those who do not believe as they do.  I also think that such individuals are easily angered when they feel others do not “respect” their views.  The last factor is economic.  Often, extremists feel that those who do not respect their views will force them to conform or even take either “rights” or property from them… or they feel that such others already have.  This last case was clearly a factor in the rise of both Communism and Nazism, where the political leadership tied the both real and perceived hardship of the people to specific groups who became the focus of group violence.  Certainly, income and social inequality, real and perceived, have fueled a great deal of extremism  

Do extremists with tendencies toward violence become attracted to fundamentalist extremes, or do groups with fundamentalist extremist views influence their believers toward violence?  Or is it even possible to separate the two.

What is clear from a reading of the present, the past, and history is that there have always been extremists, and that the majority of violence comes from them… and that they go to great extremes [of course] to justify their both their views and their acts as being necessary for either the greater good or for self-defense.

What else is new?

This is the season for high school and college graduations… and a time when the famous and semi-famous are often invited to provide inspiring graduation speeches.  I’ve never been asked to speak at any graduation, because I’m obviously not even semi-famous enough, but I’ve often thought about what I might say.

 Over the years, I’ve heard students, in responding to questions about what they intend to do, express sentiments such as “I want to be famous.” Or they want to be happy or rich.  The more idealistic among them want to do something meaningful or “make a difference.”  And, of course, all too often, graduation speakers talk about “these talented graduates” and how they can change the world.  They offer inspirational advice that implies close to instant achievement… and sometimes more.

 Now, perhaps I’ve been at the wrong graduations at the wrong time, but the ones I’ve attended, and there are more than a few, given the number of offspring we’ve had, often miss one of the most basic points.  I’m sure that some speaker, somewhere, has made this point, but I suspect that it’s fairly rare. 

 All the lofty aspirations too many students and speakers mouth are all results, and sometimes, as in the case of being happy or famous, they’re not even goals that anyone can attain directly.  There is no business and no profession that creates happiness or fame directly [Hollywood and the Internet notwithstanding], and there’s not a single profession entitled “make a difference.” To be happy, you have to take satisfaction in what you do in life and in the people with whom you associate.  That means acquiring significant expertise in a field, and that requires, usually, long and dedicated effort.  The same is true of relationships; they just don’t happen.

 As for doing something meaningful or making a difference, that generally requires even more education and years of effort.  In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell makes the point that in every field, to be successful takes not only innate talent but at least 10,000 hours of dedicated and focused high-level effort.  That’s 10,000 hours of practicing piano or singing, always trying to master more and more difficult pieces, not to mention needing a solid mentor and teacher. That’s 10,000 hours of writing computer codes, building your own hardware and programming it.  That’s generally a minimum of ten years of intensive application in a single field, most of it after finishing formal education.  Athletic success has to start earlier, of course, as does most musical performance, because muscles have to be trained as they develop… but it still takes 10,000 hours.

 So… all those lofty aspirations… those of you about to graduate can pretty much kick them aside unless you want to work with incredible dedication for the next ten years, and that’s just the beginning!  As for the less lofty aspirations, such as being happy, achieving them still requires an interest in and a dedication to something that you like doing that pays the bills, because, frankly put, no one stays happy long if you can’t put food on the table, clothes on your back, and a roof over your head.

 Talent, intelligence, and ideals are just the beginning of the beginning… and that’s something that’s not often emphasized enough.  Not that anyone’s going to ask me to give that speech.

Yesterday Ricardo Portillo died in a Salt Lake hospital.  He died from terminal brain injuries caused by a single punch to his temple.  Why?  Because he was a volunteer soccer referee and he had yellow-carded a seventeen year old for excessively rough play.  While he was writing up the yellow card, the seventeen year old walked up and punched him in the side of the head.  Portillo never saw it coming.  I’d like to think that this sort of violence and anger is unusual.  It’s not.

 Everywhere I look, I see a growing anger at authority, whether it’s the referees in sports contests, the police, the government, parents, or children.  And this anger is just like what happened to   Ricardo Portillo, in the sense that it’s all out of proportion to what seemingly generated it.  In Portillo’s case, the player wasn’t even ejected from the game; that takes a red card or two yellow cards. The soccer game wasn’t even in a tournament, just a routine local match.  Week after week, there are stories about angry sports contestants, and even more often, stories about out-of-hand parents and fans.  Referees in most sports take incredible abuse.  Why?  Why should they be targets?  They’re doing their best, and, in almost all cases, especially on the professional level, they’re impartial. 

 Every day, there’s another incident of “road rage,” where someone goes berserk, because of another driver’s behavior.  Sometimes, frankly, it’s understandable, especially when someone tries to cut in front of people who’ve been politely and patiently waiting, in order, but in both cases, that of the initial offender and that of the outraged offender, the individuals are over-reacting and wanting it “their way” regardless of the impact on others – and the results are often tragically out of proportion to the offense.

 We see the same thing in politics and political rhetoric. Day after day, I read and hear the violence in the words of all too many gun owners, everything about how the government will have to take their guns from their cold dead hands, about how the government is out to take their freedoms and their guns.  It’s absolutely senseless. The legislation about which they’re getting so enraged deals with banning one class of guns out of hundreds and limiting magazine size – and as many gun owners have pointedly told me, the magazine size makes little difference.  Obviously, this rage is fueled by fear, but exactly what is there to fear?  The politicians are so cowed by this rage that they aren’t about to do anything, and there has never been anything close to a national consensus, liberals notwithstanding, in the entire history of the United States, for outlawing all individual ownership of firearms.

 This rhetorical viciousness is everywhere, and it often goes beyond rhetoric. The anti-abortion extremists have gone so far as to physically threaten and even murder doctors who perform abortions.  Like it or not, there are two sides to the abortion debate, especially when the life of the mother is endangered, or she is a victim or rape or incest, if not both.  Yet vitriolic absolutist rage isn’t going to solve anything. It’s just going to engender more rage.

 The anger over health care is another example.  The issue is two-sided.  Failure to have health care destroys people and families… and some people simply can’t afford it.  Likewise, many small businesses face crippling financial burdens.  [I’ll admit I don’t have much sympathy for multi-billion dollar businesses like WalMart who hire tens of thousands of part-timers to avoid paying health care… and then cry poor.]  But the vitriol in the rhetoric is astounding.

 According to Theodore Roosevelt we need to struggle for “true liberties which can only come through order.”  He also stated that “The first principle of civilization is the preservation or order.”  There’s also the quote attributed to Jefferson – “Without order, there is no liberty,” but for all the truth behind it, I can’t find any evidence that he actually said it.

 On the face of matters, it would seem evident that without order, societies don’t work, and establishing order requires a certain amount of civil authority, but more and more, Americans, as well as others around the globe, seem to take umbrage when that authority applies to us – or those we support.  It’s all right to use drones against foreign terrorists, but not against American citizens.  Miranda rights are absolutely necessary for American-born citizens [read WASPs], but not for immigrants or foreign-born citizens.  It’s fine when the referee punishes a player on the other team, but not on “our” team, and especially not my son or daughter, and I can yell and scream and threaten the ref.  Or, I can text safely while driving, so that there shouldn’t be any laws restricting my ability to use electronic devices while driving, and I’ll get really angry if I get a ticket for it.  Or, if I’m a celebrity caught driving drunk, I can threaten the officer who arrests me.

 Regardless of who said it or who didn’t, liberty and order are inseparable in any workable society.  Without liberty, the most ordered society will fail, and we’ve seen that happen time and time in our lifetime.  Likewise, without order, there is no society… and no way to protect liberties – except for the strongest and most ruthless.

So why are so many people so enraged at attempts to maintain order? 

If someone had asked that question a century or so ago, in most places in the world there would have been one of two answers.  In the western hemisphere, or in those areas dominated by western hemisphere culture, the answer most predominantly would have been, “Of course.”  And in the remainder of the world, the answer would most likely been, I suspect, a variation on “Has it changed?”

 The problem with trying to answer that question today is defining what one means by “better.”  If we’re talking about general health, better nutrition, less deadly and widespread violence, then, in general, the world is a better place, that is, if you’re not in Somalia, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, parts of Africa… and similar locales. But other aspects of “better” aren’t so clear.

More people can theoretically read, if one defines reading as the ability to decipher the meaning of symbols in print… but, at least in the United States, based on what I and all too many others have seen in higher education, high level comprehending literacy and the ability to concentrate on written material has declined even as technical computer skills have increased. The retained knowledge database of most individuals has declined, most likely because any fact is easily found through smartphones or computers.  Better or worse?  That depends on the definition… and the priorities behind the definition.

 There are certainly more nations where citizens can vote, and according to various foundations, in general there’s more freedom, but given the political structures in many countries, that “freedom” often means little real choice, which means that matters may be “better” politically, but not nearly so much better as the Pollyannas claim.

 In the high-tech western nations, child labor is rare, and air and water pollution is far less than it was a century ago…but in all too much of the world, those conditions are likely worse.  Whether matters are better depends on where you are… and how high – or low – your income is.

 The problem with deciding whether the world is a better or worse place is that most of us decide based on where we live, and no one place is representative of the world.  More troubling than that is the fact that most of those who can make their views known about the state of the world are those who are anything but representative, because in a media intensive world, the vast majority of those who can even participate are the comparatively more affluent and advantaged. This isn’t anything new; it goes back as far as the invention of writing because, then, only the advantaged could write [and even the slaves who served as scribes were more advantaged than most others].

 In the end, it’s a good idea to remember that “better” is a comparative, and that it all depends on what is being compared by whom… and for what reason.

Absolutes?  I’m skeptical of them, if not downright hostile. Sometimes an absolute is a good guide.  After all, as a general matter of principle, it is not a good idea to go around taking other people’s things or shooting people. Or imprisoning them.   But… as I’ve noted on more than a few occasions, human beings have this desire for things to be black or white, absolutely good or absolutely evil.  We don’t live in a black and white world.  We live in a world filled with all shades of color and, for that matter, innumerable shades of gray, and we – and our societies – have to live in that world and, if we want even a modicum of civility and civilization, we have to create customs and governments that recognize that those shades and colors exist.

 The other day I got a posting on the blog insisting that the right to bear arms was a constitutional right and that my proposals to license and regulate firearms would negate that right because a constitutional right could not be restricted or taxed and still remain a “right.”  After I put my jaw back in place, I thought about the naiveté; the lack of understanding of what society is; the lack of knowledge about what the Constitution is and what it established, and what it did not; and the total self-centeredness represented by that comment… and the fact that all too many Americans share those views about “rights.”

 First, we need to start with the Constitution itself, and the first ten amendments, popularly known as the Bill of Rights.  The First Amendment states that the Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech.”  But more than a score of U.S. Supreme Court decisions have established that the freedom of speech is not absolute, especially where that freedom harms others or has the clear potential to do so.

 The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable” search and seizure and states that a search warrant cannot be issued without “probable cause,” but again, a number of Supreme Court cases have made clear that there are exceptions to those requirements, i.e., that the Fourth Amendment is not an “absolute right.”

 The same is true of the Second Amendment. One of the earliest Supreme Court decisions involving the Second Amendment was issued in 1875 and stated that the Constitution does not establish the right to keep and bear arms, but affirms an existing right.  A number of other Supreme Court decisions followed establishing the fact that the federal and state governments can establish reasonable limits on that right, and in 2008 the Heller decision stated “the right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose…”

 Those who object to the Supreme Court decisions in such cases often complain that the Court is perverting or destroying the Constitution.  Yet the Constitution plainly states that “The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court…” and that “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made…”  In short, like it or not, in cases of dispute about what is or is not Constitutional, the Supreme Court decides.

 Now… people can complain about such decisions, and they can try to change the laws or try to keep new laws on such subjects from being enacted, but what they cannot claim – not accurately, anyway – is that such restrictions are “unconstitutional.” Some will then reiterate the idea that any tax or restriction negates a “right.”

 What they seem to ignore or forget is that the entire concept of an unfettered “absolute” right is contrary to the entire idea of what we call civilization.  Of course, the fact that so many people want to assert their individual and “absolute” rights in so many areas suggests that civilization may itself be endangered. Take the idea of absolute property rights.  We do not allow individuals totally unfettered rights to property. A business or individual cannot dump whatever trash and toxic chemicals he wants into the river or stream that flows through his property.  As a society, we recognize, at least in theory, that many individual actions can adversely affect or kill others, and we attempt to restrict such actions because it is all too clear that there are too many individuals who will not restrict their actions for one reason or another. Now… one can complain that there aren’t enough restrictions or that there are too many or those that exist are too onerous, but the fact that some restrictions are necessary for any society to survive has been proven, as the founding fathers put it, “self-evident.”

 In the end, anyone who declares that he or she has any “absolute” right is merely declaring that their “rights” transcend the rights of others.  “Your right” to free speech through four hundred decibel speakers denies your neighbors right to a decent night’s sleep.  Your right to dispose of your wastes any way you want fouls the stream and denies those downstream equal rights to clean water.  Your right to smoke in close quarters endangers someone else’s health.

 Anyone who claims an inviolable absolute right either doesn’t understand the requirements of a civilized society… or puts what they think are their “inviolable rights” above everyone else’s inviolable rights.  Either way, it’s dangerous for the rest of us, not to mention being a form of narcissistic denial of reality.

In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic novel, Brave New World, the government keeps citizens in line with soma, a drug described as having “all of the benefits of Christianity and alcohol without their defects.”  The “original” soma, of course, was a legendary Vedic drink said to convey immortality.

 Personally, I wonder if the current candidate for “soma” might not be the IPhone/Android/whatever handheld electronic communications/entertainment device.  Everywhere I look, people are buried in those devices.  They walk totally absorbed in such devices through city streets and college campuses, cross streets and often get hit, ignore crossing gates and get killed by trains… or they text while driving or doing something else.

In nearby St. George, earlier this year, a fifty-year-old woman was speeding and texting. She hit another car, throwing it onto the sidewalk where it killed a man and so severely injured his wife that she had fractured bones all over her body, had to have her skull rebuilt, and suffered 15,000 stitches.  The texting driver has been charged with vehicular homicide and assault and faces up to 15 years in prison.

 Every single day in the United States, there’s another spate of accidents and fatalities or injuries resulting from texting or from using some handheld electronic device, despite the proliferation of laws against use while driving.  Yet, for all the publicity, for all the laws, the possible legal consequences or even death from usage in the wrong places, the near-total absorption in such devices by tens of millions of Americans continues.  Why?  It’s not as though people don’t know the dangers.

 Could it be addiction?

 Just look at people. If they’re not on the device, they’re always checking it, and when they get a signal that “something” is arriving on their device, their faces light up in anticipation.  It’s the sort of look that people in love once displayed upon seeing their significant other, and I’m not sure that even happens any more. More and more often, since Cedar City is a university town, we see couples together in public places. More than a decade ago, they use to talk to each other.  Now they’re silent, sitting together, yet totally alone, each on his or her electronic device, seemingly oblivious to their partner.

 And, as for those messages… well… lately some parents of young people who’ve died in accidents while texting have published those texts… and they’re all absolutely trivial.  There’s nothing earth-shattering, or even interesting.  Yet there’s obviously something more addictive about being electronically connected than being personally connected.  Otherwise all those couples would be talking to each other rather than texting someone else.  And, frighteningly, in some cases they’re actually texting each other.  This gets you closer?

 From what I’ve seen, the electronic communications craze isolates people.  The other day, my wife and I wanted to invite an acquaintance and his wife to a party.  We see them on and off, but when we tried to call them, we discovered both their landlines had been disconnected.  He didn’t answer his office line or the message left on it.  Nor did he even open the email offering the invitation. We still haven’t been able to reach them.  And frankly, I don’t think I should have to drive over to their house some three miles away and knock on their door to invite them.  Besides, they’re likely so engrossed in their electronic diversions that they might not even answer the door.

 This is far from unusual.  Several of our grown offspring have disconnected their landlines.  But the problem with all this is simple – no one can reach you who doesn’t already know your number…or your Facebook name or account [and, dinosaur that I am, I refuse to do social media].  If you’re so into your handheld device that you don’t look at anyone around you and aren’t accessible to anyone who already doesn’t know you… how can your circle of true friends and acquaintances do anything but shrink.  Given social media, the only online “friends” you’re likely to get are people who think exactly as you do.  And all that means is that social polarization and individual isolation are increasing with the growth and addiction to electronic soma.

 Orwell’s soma made the routine of his Brave New World bearable, and apparently the handheld device of choice is doing something similar for people today, but unlike the Vedic soma, reputed to convey immortality, the most likely outcomes of excessive electronic soma are social polarization, growing physical isolation and an early death because sooner or later the outside world will crash into you, or you into it, in some form or another.

These days, and for the past decade or so, in almost every venue of government and public works, the politicians and much of the public have extolled the virtues of operating everything from schools, universities, municipalities, and prisons according to the “business model.”   The current “business model,” as applied to government and public services, is based on application of capitalism and “no new or increased taxes’” for anyone or anything.  I honestly don’t know whether all these advocates of the “business model” are sincerely misguided or just uninformed idiots, but it’s time to put a stop to this nonsense.

 First off, I want to make one thing clear.  I am not anti-business, and I firmly believe that the only workable form of an economic system has to be based on capitalism.  That said, capitalism in its purest form is absolutely efficient, and absolutely merciless.  It rewards dedication, skill, luck or good fortune, and the advantages of position handsomely, and disadvantages those lacking in any of those qualities in proportion to their deficit.

 Moreover, in capitalism’s “purer” forms [i.e., those forms unregulated by government], as Americans discovered in the roaring 1890s and somewhat thereafter, such issues as ethics and fairness took a back seat, or were totally ignored, as a result of the quest for profit.  This is not an aberration.  Capitalism is the use of business (defined as the combination of ability, resources, labor, capital investment, and technology) to create a product or provide a service with the greatest differential between the cost and the price one can charge. If inferior or tainted resources are cheaper and the purchaser cannot tell the difference [and there are no laws to contrary, and sometimes if there are], someone will use those cheaper resources in order to maximize profits.  Period.  History has demonstrated this time after time.  We still see this occurring politically today.  If a company or an industry can influence Congress to obtain a tax break or a subsidy, then they have effectively reduced their costs and increased their profits.  If they gain an exemption from environmental rules, such as air or water pollution regulations, they gain a cost advantage, while shifting medical, health, and environmental costs to the general public.  

 The second distinguishing feature of capitalism is one so obvious that it is totally ignored in most economic and political discussion, and certainly in attempts to model public services and education along the lines of the “business model.”  Capitalism has no interest in providing goods to people who cannot afford them.  This is not cold-hearted, per se, but a fact.  A business will go broke if it cannot at least cover all its costs, and you cannot cover costs if you give goods or services away on a large scale or keep prices too low to cover costs, in order to provide more goods or services to those who could not otherwise afford them.

 The third distinguishing feature of capitalism, especially today, is that it must make a profit in the short-term.

 These three necessities for success in a capitalistic society are why capitalism requires some degree of regulation. The amount varies by the society and by political consensus, and how much corporate abuse the public will accept, but the necessity for some regulation is absolute.  These necessities are also why the so-called business model is an absurdity for providing such public services as education, police and fire protection, water, sanitation, and trash collection, not to mention environmental protection.

 Take education.  As we all know, or profess to know, education makes people better workers and benefits society as a whole, but the payoff from the investment in education is years, if not decades away… and contrary to what the proponents of emphasis on STEM education insist, one cannot tell which student benefits most from what education.  Attempts to “steer” education in a particular direction have invariably been, at best, marginally successful, if not disastrous, for societies.  Likewise, when the cost of education increases, the business model, particularly on the college and university level, is to insist on raising tuition, increasing class sizes, or eliminating classes for which demand is low.  The results are that: (1) some students are priced out of education or saddled with enormous debt that many will not pay (which in turn shifts the costs to society as a whole); (2) the quality of that education is diluted; or (3) certain skills and disciplines will not be taught at all, and future society will be impoverished as a result. That is the predictable capitalistic response to increasing costs, especially when “no new taxes” have resulted in state colleges and universities getting fewer and fewer resources compared to the number of students enrolled.

 If we take other public services, the same problem arises.  The current “business model” insists that municipal budgets must be cut, rather than increasing taxes. That means fewer police and firefighters, and slower response times and greater damages to people and their property.  In point of fact, that means that the costs are effectively shifted to those who can least afford the damages – capitalism at its purest, loss of goods and services for inability to pay.  This is particularly hard on the less advantaged when it is applied to vital services, such as food, housing, and health care.

 The result of applying the business model in this fashion is that, without public investment in those who have fewer resources, i.e., the poor and especially the working poor, the youth in those situations will have less opportunity to improve themselves, and this will contribute to the growth of income inequality.  Greater income inequality results in greater social unrest, and if that unrest becomes too great, violence becomes even more widespread.

 As one of the forgotten commercials said, “You can pay me now… or you can pay me later.” [And the cost later was enormously higher.]   But right now, the third aspect of this current business model is all that anyone considers – we want lower costs NOW… and the hell with what comes later.

 So… let’s hear it for the business model.

Now that the U.S. Senate has killed pretty much any attempt to place any meaningful controls on the use and sale of firearms in the United States, it’s time for a more objective look at the situation.  First off, there is no practical way guns are going to vanish in the United States, despite all the NRA and right-wing paranoia and concern about “big government” taking away guns.  It won’t happen.  Period.  Over 40 million U.S. households have firearms, over 320 million of them. Put in perspective, according to a 2007 United Nations study, fifty percent – half – of all the world’s guns were then held by U.S. residents, and since then U.S. gun sales have boomed.

Hard as those facts may be for some to swallow, U.S. guns are not going away and most likely never will.  Nor will measures such as restricting sales of certain types of weapons and ammunition, as commenters to this blog have noted repeatedly, be terribly effective.  At the same time, gun violence and accidental deaths and suicides caused by guns are epidemic. In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010. Yet, as others have pointed out, the U.S. does not have anywhere close to the highest homicide rate in the world or even the highest number of total gun fatalities, BUT we have an astoundingly high rate compared to any other industrial nation in the world, so much so that’s there’s virtually no comparison.

So… what can we realistically do? Besides nothing, which seems to be the position of the NRA?

 As I’ve been considering the issue of guns in our the great American representative democracy, it occurred to me that there’s one aspect of the whole Second Amendment mess that has been totally ignored – and that’s the issue of responsibility.  Oh, everyone pays lip service to “responsible gun owners,” but the actual issue of responsibility in practice has been totally overlooked.  My suggestion is that instead of futilely trying to ban firearms, we give some firm legal support to all those “responsible gun owners,”  and by doing so provide at least some attempt to restore the “rights” lost by all the firearms victims.

 Let’s look at it this way.  If you own a car and drive, you have to be tested and licensed, and if you’re caught driving without a license, you face legal sanctions. If your vehicle causes damages to others, even if you’re not the driver, you have a financial responsibility.  Now… let’s do a comparison.  Guns result in 31,000 deaths and over 70,000 injuries in the U.S. annually.  Vehicle accidents kill 33,000 people and injure close to 100,000.  We regulate automobiles and who can drive them and under what conditions.  We require insurance, apply criminal sanctions to grossly unsafe vehicle use, and insist on wide-spread driver education and training.  The result of all this is that since 1972 automobile deaths have dropped 41%.  Why not apply the same approach to firearms?

Do we want people who can’t see being able to own and shoot a firearm?  We don’t let them drive. Why should we let them have a gun [And please don’t tell me that’s unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court declares what’s constitutional and what’s not, and it’s said that reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms are constitutional.]  Why not require a firearms license?  And like a driver’s license, it could have categories.  If you want to drive a semi-trailer, you need more training and more insurance. If you want to have an arsenal of high-powered weapons, perhaps you need to be certified in handling them.  And the license, like a driver’s license, should require renewal.

 
A few other legal changes would also be helpful, such as licensing of weapons, just like cars – and forget all the screams about big government. Big government already knows all that about you anyway… and so does every major corporation, and I don’t hear any screams about invasion of privacy there. Besides, a nation that endorses social media such as Facebook has no right to claim privacy, anyway.

Perhaps we should also require firearms insurance, based on the number and class of weapons one owns, and a percentage of that premium could go to the various law enforcement agencies to give them the officers and equipment to go after real lawbreakers.  Perhaps we should impose an ammunition sales tax, like the gasoline tax that funds highway programs, in order to fund programs to support various aspects of firearms safety. There also ought to be a provision that if an owner doesn’t report the loss, sale, or theft of a firearm, and that weapon is subsequently used in a crime, the owner can be charged as an accessory after the fact.  None of these provisions should really trouble responsible gun owners.  I mean, after all, don’t they just require you to act the way you claim you should?  And make certain that anyone injured by your firearms, or their family, can be compensated, with, of course, an uninsured firearms operator provision as well.

And besides, it’s the American way – use a combination of required education, insurance, and financial responsibility.  More bureaucracy?  Of course, but it’s more than clear that simple solutions that have worked elsewhere in the world – like restricting firearms – haven’t worked here and won’t. So… we should do it our way, rather than doing nothing.

We all want our food to be safe to eat, the vehicles we drive to be mechanically and technically sound, the medicines we take not to be unduly hazardous to our health… and so forth.  But the problem we face is that as society becomes more technological and complex, the less an individual can do to assure that safety, and the abuses of business in the nineteenth and twentieth century have proved rather conclusively that businesses and corporations can’t be trusted to ensure the safety of their products and services, at least not without federal regulations and oversight [and, alas, sometimes not even then].

But beyond what one might call the “understandable” realm of government rules comes yet another level of safety… and that is the regulatory acts and structures we support and pay for as a result of the actions of crazies. To maintain safety from these crazies in a civilized society, we pay a huge premium, and one that shouldn’t, at least in an ideal world, be so necessary.  And, yes, I’m among the first to admit we do not live in anything close to an ideal world.

There are the crazies of greed, the scam artists, the ones who try to con money and assets from the gullible and the trusting, and those not intelligent enough to realize they’re being swindled. Another variety of the crazies of greed are the businesses who offshore the production of goods to places where there are no regulations, or very lax ones, on pollution, working conditions, and hazardous chemicals, and while, technically speaking, this practice may “save” us dollars in the cost of goods, it increases the costs and damages on the planet far more than what it “saves” us in lower prices.

Once I believed that it was the product-tampering crazies, those nuts who have injected toxins, poisons, and other harmful substances into foods, medicines, and the like, and who created a billion dollar industry of additional packaging that was totally unnecessary in a sane world… but then I realized that child-proof packaging is also necessary in a world where everything is presented as attractive.  Who would ever have thought that detergent pods would resemble candy?  But then, maybe that’s another facet of excessive corporate greed.

Of course, the emphasis on safety is selective.  We still allow sixteen year-olds possession and use of a two thousand pound plus potentially lethal weapon – the automobile – although we do require that the vehicle and operator be licensed and registered, unlike guns, where registration and licensing, in the USA, at least, are violently opposed

But I do find it interesting that the instance of thirty-some poisonings from tampered Tylenol more than twenty-five years ago spurred the eventual requirements of tamper-proof packaging on everything, and there’s not even a requirement for a gun owner to be licensed, when there are over 13,000 gun-related deaths annually in the USA.

With the firing of the Rutgers University basketball coach for bullying, the media and educational concern over bullying by teachers and coaches has intensified.  In the case of the Rutgers  coach, there’s substantial video evidence that he did indeed bully his players, not to mention engage in abusive and unprofessional behavior.  Likewise, there is a real problem in the educational system in students bullying other students.  Unfortunately, all the publicity about “bullying” is threatening to create a situation that may become in time, if not already, another serious problem.

 As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the tendency for students and educators to insist on teachers and professors providing “positive feedback” to students, regardless of whether such positivity is warranted, is already resulting in what I called the “Rah, Rah Cheerleader Effect.”  Now, more and more often, some students are deciding that any form of observation of their failings or any constructive criticism, even of the most egregious failure on the part of the student, is a form of “bullying.” 

 There is a clear distinction, at least in my mind, and, I suspect, in the minds of experienced and knowledgeable teachers and professors, between the abusive bullying behavior exemplified in the Rutgers basketball video and a quiet but firmly delivered statement about a student’s failure to do an assignment, to follow directions, or the errors committed by the student.  Yet all too many students today, in this era of political correctness and “anything negative will scar a child for life” equate almost anything that even suggests negativity with “bullying.”

 Human beings learn from their mistakes, and students are going to be handicapped in both future studies and in life if teachers and professors are restrained from honestly evaluating students because of a fear of being called “bullies.” Given the wide reliance on anonymous student evaluations by virtually all colleges and universities, this is anything but an unfounded fear, and what is worst about it all is that the teachers and professors who demand the most in achievement and excellence are the ones already getting comments about their being bullies. Studies of student evaluations already indicate that, in general, the most demanding professors get lower student evaluations than less academically demanding professors. For example, a recent controlled study at the U.S. Air Force Academy found that students who studied with more demanding professors got lower grades, gave lower student evaluations… and learned more.

 At a time when there is a real problem with bullying, especially student-student bullying, the last thing education needs is the problem of deciding that an honest assessment of a failure to meet academic standards is a form of bullying.   

U.S. worker productivity dropped in the fourth quarter of 2012, and overall worker productivity growth has lagged for the past several years, even as unit labor costs have risen. The economists’ explanations for the decline range from the lack of hiring to a surge in new hiring in the last part of 2012, as well as some highly technical considerations. Despite all the explanations and rhetoric, I have one basic question.  Given the continuing capital investment, the comparative stagnation of wages, and the vastly increased computerization and use of technology, why isn’t productivity a whole lot higher?

 Some economists claim that productivity isn’t higher because companies are trying to wring more work out of already overworked and tired workers, and that may well be true, but I think there’s another factor at work, and one that’s significantly larger… and completely overlooked by the statisticians, but not by actual middle managers, of whom there are probably too few these days.  What is that factor?  The on-the-job proliferation of personal technology use unrelated to the business at hand, and especially its use, overuse, and misuse

 There’s a fine line between use and overuse, but emails illustrate that difference.  Because emails have proliferated, many recipients either ignore more vital or important emails or are late getting to them because their electronic in-boxes are overflowing. Of course, that has created a greater use of Twitter, and that means more complex issues in emails aren’t addressed… or are delayed… or recipients just sigh and play a computer game.

 Two schools exist on the impact of social media on productivity, but the actual studies are limited.  On the one hand, the business research firm Basex issued a study declaring the productivity cost of workplace interruptions, primarily employee abuse and misuse of social media, at $650 billion a year, and a British study by Myjobgroup.co.uk, claimed a 14 billion pound annual loss to UK firms from time spent on social media. Another British study found that that, on average, employees spend almost 20% of their workweek  involved in personal online activities rather than on work. In 2012, Americans racked up 74 billion minutes, 20% of their time on social media sites, according to Nielsen/Incite’s Social Media Report for 2012, and it’s more than likely that a significant fraction of that time was on the company clock, so to speak.

 On the other hand, there are several studies claiming that blocking social media creates demoralized employees, retards communications, and actually costs industry billions annually.

 I’m not sure I trust anyone’s statistics completely, but I do know that I have to spend more time than I’d like scanning emails that purport to be useful and discarding them – and that’s not counting those in the spam file, which I also have to scan, because the filters still throw out mail I should be getting.  I also know local employers who continually are frustrated by finding employees on personal cellphones and social media sites when they should be working. My wife has colleagues who can’t get around to what they’re supposed to be doing because they’re always tweeting or on their cellphones.

 And when you have a whole generation of students who insist on continual communication, either through texting, tweets, or cellphones, I have the feeling that we’re not going to see a great deal of productivity improvement in the years ahead.

Last week thirty-five teachers in the Atlanta school system were arrested/indicted for cheating… that is, they were accused of changing and inflating students’ scores on the standardized tests that reputedly measure student achievement and thus determine teacher effectiveness… and bonuses. The district superintendent, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements, allegedly in order to obtain $500,000 in performance pay. She could face 45 years in prison, and prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her.  In addition to the 35 charged so far, another 143 were named in an 800 page report.  Of those named, 82 confessed to altering test scores.

 Now… I would be the last person to approve of such behavior, but, as my wife the university professor pointed out, there is a certain inconsistency, as well as tremendous hypocrisy, involved in these prosecutions, from the charges against individual teachers to the amount of the bail-bond set for the retired superintendent.

 Let me get this straight. Teachers and administrators rigged test scores to improve their salaries, and in some cases, merely to keep their jobs, because the teachers with the lowest student scores, regardless of the class composition, risked losing their jobs, and they’re being prosecuted.  That prosecution is absolutely necessary, sadly, as it should be. Over three years ago, however, mortgage bankers, investment bankers, and other financial institutions falsified the risk of trillions of dollars in mortgage securities and sent the country into the second worst economic recession in U.S. history… and not a single investment banker has even been charged.  In the case of the mortgage bankers, millions lost their homes, jobs, and savings, and entire communities were economically devastated, while in the case of the teachers, far more modest damage has occurred… damage limited to one school district in one metropolitan area…

 Well… some might say that teachers should be held to a higher standard.  But… if they should be held to a higher standard, why aren’t they being paid as well as mortgage bankers, who clearly haven’t been held to a high standard?  The average teacher doesn’t make a fraction of what those illustrious individuals who crashed the economy made… and still make.

 There’s no law against making bad economic decisions, others might claim, but there is a law against creating fraudulent test scores for economic gain.   Except… what about the fraudulent grading of bundled mortgage securities and derivatives that made the investment banks billions… money that was lost and never repaid?

 I don’t have much sympathy for the teachers, none, in fact, but I can understand why some of them did what they did.  We have a society that worships money, and little else, and in education, only the test scores and credentials, not the actual learning, seem to matter. Those teachers saw that only money, credentials, and numbers seem to count, as well as the fact that some of the highest executives in the financial industry benefited from defrauding the purchasers of bundled securities and got away with it.  Given that scale of fraud, what does it matter if test scores are fudged a bit?  Why should teachers worry about ethics and that sort of thing, if the government and the American people aren’t going to do anything about massive financial gains from fraud or even care about the lack of ethics exhibited by those financiers?

 Oh… and add to that the current mindset that teachers are absolutely and totally responsible for student learning.  Parents have no responsibility for providing a learning environment at home; communities have no responsibility for the safety of students; and students have no responsibility for trying to learn.  In fact, from what I’ve seen, only a minority of students will accept any responsibility for learning.  Oh… most will give the idea of their responsibility to learn lip service, but that vanishes with the first difficult assignment or the first novel distraction… and it becomes entirely the teacher’s problem.  Well… obviously those teachers in Atlanta decided that, if the system was rigged against them, they’d re-rig it… and they got caught.

 What will be overlooked is the fact that, in some states, almost fifty percent of classroom time will continue to be spent on testing or test preparation… and that’s an even greater corruption of education than upgrading student test scores, unwelcome as such alternations are and should be.  The other question that the Atlanta case raises is why it took so long to come to light.  If all these objective tests are so accurate, then shouldn’t it have been apparent from the start that there were obvious discrepancies between the test scores and academic performance? Oh… I forgot.  No one measures academic performance except by test scores.  Or is it that the tests aren’t that accurate?  Or that no one wants to turn away from the simplistic – and wrong – assumption that tests don’t answer all, or even a larger proportion – of the problems involved in education?

 The even greater problem is that, now, most teachers – and most of them are dedicated, honest, and hard-working – will have to live down another problematical example… and they’ll have to do it knowing that the biggest cheaters in U.S. history got away scot-free… and knowing that no one really seems to care… except to have another reason to blame teachers.

Once upon a time, baseball was the national game.  For some it still is.  Others, I suppose, would pick football… or basketball, or even NASCAR.  I doubt we have the consensus on a national pastime that existed a generation or so ago with baseball… and I happen to think that’s sad.  It’s also revealing in a way that I often don’t see discussed.

As baseball aficionados have told me, one of the most difficult tasks in any sport is hitting a baseball.  Ted Williams said something to the effect that failing to hit the ball seven times out of ten was a great success, and batting over .333 for a career is likely to put a player on the short list for the Hall of Fame.  In fact, since 1900, the highest season batting average ever was .424, by Rogers Hornsby, and he is the only hitter during that time period to bat over .400 for three separate seasons.  The last hitter to hit over .400 for a season was Bill Terry in 1930.  By comparison, the worst fielding record by an outfielder playing a full season was .842, and generally the top-fielding outfielders literally miss no catches… with an average of 1.000.  For what it’s worth, that suggests to me a certain parallel with life in that new initiatives [hits] fail most of the time, while it’s critical not to make mistakes [in other words, make every catch].

So why does any of this matter?  Because it’s indicative of how American culture and values have changed over the past century, and I have my doubts about whether those changes have been for the better.

Baseball is a game of skill, and while one can argue, as Billy Beane has done as general manager at Oakland, that certain skills are overrated and others underrated, skills do matter.  It’s also a game of timing and finesse.  Even during the “steroid scandal” period, even all those overmuscled “power hitters” couldn’t manage better batting averages, no matter how far they blasted the ball. It’s also a somewhat slower game [some would call it glacially paced] compared to the increased appeal of football, basketball, and even NASCAR racing.

More important, sadly, appears to be the increased level of mayhem or violence present in those three.  There have been so many career-ending injuries in football that the NFL has been forced to investigate and make some rule changes.  Recent medical studies indicate that a truly significant percentage of football players have brain damage from repeated impacts.  Even basketball, which was largely a non-contact sport when I played in high school all too many years ago, has become so much more violent that knee and back injuries are commonplace, and now we’re beginning to see broken bones  — as witness what happened to Kevin Ware of Louisville in the current NCAA tournament.  As for NASCAR, the crashes become more and more spectacular.

In short, in terms of the national spectator pastime, it appears that Americans have opted increasingly against skill and strategy, against a quest for perfection against the odds, and for speed and violence in all forms… and this emphasis is everywhere, in such seemingly unrelated societal changes as emails replacing letters, and then tweets replacing emails… sorter, faster, and with a higher percentage of vulgar/violent language.  Or even in the rise of mixed martial arts, even more brutal, violent, and faster than boxing or wrestling.

These days I get more and more comments from first-time readers about my “pacing” – that it’s slow. There are other long fantasy series, but more and more of them focus on action and violence, not to mention sex. Many television shows are using technology to fractionally speed up the action, by snipping pauses, making faster cuts, etc.

So as Americans turn from baseball… what’s next?  Gladiatorial contests?  The Hunger Games?  Or something even faster and more violent?

And what does it say about us?