Well, my two blogs have been a noble experiment. As much as I’d love to believe that regular blogging will bring me millions, it just isn’t true. Maybe some people can knock off a hundred blog entries a month, but I’m hard-pressed to do one or two. So I’m shutting down my Business Rants blog. My other blog may go away soon, too, in favor of my not-yet-launched journal tracking my upcoming 3-year Experiment in changing the way I make my basic business decisions.
I’ll be mentioning the Experiment Blog in my newsletter shortly before it all goes live. You should sign up for my newsletter anyway, since it’s very low volume and infinitely interesting. (It’s where I put my real effort in creating new content.)
Cheers!
Posted by Stever as Misc at 11:16 AM EST
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This isn’t a business rant, except that businesses seem perfectly happy to sell their services in undermining the democratic process.
This video of a congressional oversight witness testifying that he actually wrote vote machine tampering software for a congressman in 2000.
Those of us who care about vote tampering have known for a long time that there’s no way to secure electronic elections. In fact, in the video, the witness says that the only way to make sure voting machines were accurate is to review the source code.
Actually, even that isn’t good enough. A good programmer can design an algorithm that will do the required tampering as a by-product of seemingly necessary code. An even better programmer can hide the code completely in a way that is completely, utterly undetectable even by a very, very careful source code review.
In short, voting machines aren’t secure unless they’re backed up by a complete paper trail that is independently tabulated. And if we’re going to back them up with an independently counted paper trial, why not just use paper ballots to begin with?
… and by the way, if your business engages in such shinanegans, shame on you. You have the ability to do business in this country only because the system has worked to provide the world’s most stable economic development platform. If you’re tampering with that out of greed, you don’t need more money, you need a good ten years in therapy for sociopathic behavor …
Posted by Stever as Misc at 1:07 PM EDT
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I’ve been reading about rising gas prices, falling home values, and the rest of the sad story we’re currently in. (Note: virtually all of it could have been avoided with wise forethought and appropriate action on our part. But it seems to be human nature that regardless of level of civilization, we’re just not hardwired to think more than a few days into the future.)
I notice a relentless sense of optimism surrounding the discussions. “Wah, gas prices are bad, until supply recovers…”
But wait… Our American infrastructure, our roads, our houses, our markets, our food production and distribution systems, all physically embody the assumption of cheap oil forever. It’s not just buying a more fuel efficient car; it’s about living in a subdivision that’s 50 miles from work. Even a fuel efficient car will start to cost.
The reality is that if gas prices go up, so does everything. Everything is transported, manufactured, or made out of petroleum. So oil costs more, everything costs more. We’ve never before been in a situation where everything just got more expensive, fundamentally. It’s tough to imagine what that might look like.
Some more food for thought:
- What if there’s no way to bring back oil supply, much less cheap oil? What happens then?
- What if we can’t develop and deploy alternative energy soon enough to replace oil?
- What if global warming can’t be slowed or stopped (and there are already 40 years’ worth of greenhouse gasses still working their way to the upper atmosphere, so a total reversal of CO2 production today would take 40 years before it would have any slowing impact on global warming)?
My early training was as an engineer. We were trained to think up all possible contingencies, plan for the worst, and hope for the best.
As far as I can tell, human civilization is facing several potentially catastrophic trends, all at once. And not only are we not planning for the worst, we’re not even mentioning it.
So in the interest of stimulating discussion, here are some thought questions:
- Assume a falling global production capacity as oil rises in price. (And currently, no alternative source can replace all uses of oil for anywhere near as cheaply.) What would an economic system look like when we can’t assume more production each year? Would growth still be considered the basic measure of health? If not, what would?
- Assume oil at $8/gallon, with wages falling in buying power across the board as oil gets scarce and basic commodities cost more. What kind of physical infrastructure would we have to create to continue to survive?
- During the transition period, when we’re shifting from the cheap-oil infrastructure to the new-way-of-living infrastructure, all our money and energy will be going into a shift to new infrastructure that doesn’t directly create new goods and services. (Remember: wages are stagnant, so people can’t afford to pay for all this on their own.) How do we fund the transition?
- What if global warming causes sea levels to rise 20 feet? Would our rescue busses wait, as they did during Katrina, for someone to pay them to help people escape? If not, how would our economic system provide for such a massive dislocation? And if it couldn’t, how would the survivors dispose of several million decomposing bodies?
Just a few thoughts…
Posted by Stever as Community, Misc, Oil at 8:16 PM EDT
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Shouldn’t we hold business to the same standards as a 13-year old boy? Do we really worship business so much that we don’t even expect it to have teenage standards of conduct, must less adult?
Sometimes, business equals death. And we don’t care. Want to commit murder? Incorporate. Then, it’s easy.
I read three news stories today:The Florida Supreme Court threw out the tobacco company hundred-billion-dollar penalty because, as RJ Reynolds spokesperson David Howard notes, “The damages would have been crippling to businesses… It was excessive. … As a matter of law, punitive damages are not intended to put people out of business.”
If you recall, the reason for the supposedly-large award (really not very big compared to the total Tobacco company revenues altogether), is that it turns out … whoops … tobacco companies knew their product was addictive, had lied about it to Congress under oath, had deliberately created campaigns targetting children, and knew full well that their addictive, teenage-targeted product killed people.
Surely they’ve learned their lesson. For example, consider today’s study just released, estimating that 1 billion people will die this century from Tobacco-related causes.
CUT TO: A 15-year old boy found guilty of killing a playmate. He gets 26 years in jail, effectively destroying his chances at life. That means his entire prime is spent behind bars. All the years in which he could build a base of education, experience, etc., get taken from him. Effectively, any chance he has of a productive life is over.
I guess I just don’t understand why the double standard. Perhaps I’m the world’s worst Harvard MBA, but shouldn’t businesses be subject to penalties as least as severe as individual penalties? Or, given how much public infrastructure they take up (most of the justice department is corporate law, for example), shouldn’t they be held to higher standards of conduct?
Tobacco destroys value. It kills people. People are valuable (don’t believe me? Lose a child. Then you’ll understand). The medical costs of Tobacco company actions is born by individuals and insurance companies. Those costs aren’t allocated back to the company. This pricing misallocation leads the companies to false profitability.
Now add in executives who lie, falsify uncomfortable scientific data, deliberately target teenagers for addiction and death, and then lie to Congress about it. How should we react? Apparently by worrying that “we might cripple the business.”
I say: euthanasia. Terminate it. Lock it up. Deprive it of oxygen. Slaughter it. Force it to spend its prime eating gruel until it’s good for nothing. Disassemble it. Disperse it. Scatter its parts to the winds, until some other enterprising entrepreneur uses those resources in a way that’s healthy to society, as well as being healthy to the owners. And what about the shareholders? They lose. They get nothing. Because they invested in a company that destroyed value. And they, as owners, deserve to take responsibility for their actions.
But that’s not what we do. Instead, we celebrate profits and breath a sigh of *cough cought* relief that business is safe, even as we’re dying by the billions.
Posted by Stever as Ethics at 3:14 PM EDT
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The LA Times reports the Supreme Court will be hearing a case on whether the goverment should act to stop global warming.
They’ll be hearing the case in the fall. It will affect whether California’s rules take effect in 2009. Is anyone other than me scared about this?
Twiddling Our Beaurocratic Thumbs Could Kill Us
First of all, go watch In Inconvenient Truth. It’s pretty clear that global warming is an exponential growth process. That means that the longer you delay, the faster things build up. And unfortunately, human beings are atrociously bad at dealing with exponential growth. Our brains consistently underestimate how fast exponential growth happens.
Here’s an experiment: imagine a lily pond with one lily. It takes a day for the lily to reproduce, so tomorrow, there are two lilies. The pond is big enough so it will be totally full of lilies in 30 days. When is the pond half-empty? Answer: on the 29th day. For the first 28 days, the lilies look harmless. In fact, they don’t even cover half of the pond. Until finally on the 29th day, we say, “Gee, it looks like those lilies are sure growing. Maybe we should trim them back in a couple of days.” Too bad at that point, we don’t have a couple of days. We\’re toast.
The same thing may well be the case with global warming. By the time things get serious enough so we get off our butts, we may be on day 29. Things will only look half-serious, but we may be just a day or two away from no more lily pond.
That’s why the 2009 date is a bit troublesome. It could well be way too little, way too late.
No One Except the Government(s) Can Take Action
And Constitution or not, if it’s not the Government’s role to address global problems, who will? The market? How? While we like to pretend the Market is some all-knowing sentient being, the Market is nothing more than the daily decisions of lots and lots of people engaging in short-term financial transactions. Do we really expect that those people will start valuing low-CO2 technologies more highly than existing technologies soon enough to stimulate enough growth to change the entire world’s production and distribution systems? Not likely. Policy doesn’t move that fast. It took over a decade after the Ozone hole was discovered to ban CfCs. And that was a single chemical. With global warming, we’re talking about the entire way we think about producing and transporting goods. That makes CFCs look like child’s play.
Global warming is real. Call MIT’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department and ask. They’ll tell you about the real debate: whether warming will be 3 degrees or 15 degrees by 2100. If 3 degrees, we may be looking at “just” a 20-foot sea level rise. If 15 degrees, today’s adults may be the last human generation to die of old age. Human caused or not (scientific consensus: at least partially, if not wholly, human caused), we have to do something about this and something major.
Some think global warming is nothing but a fake story cooked up by scientists to get funding dollars. Get real. Scientists may be geeks, but they’re damned smart geeks. If they wanted to attract money, they’d make up stories about up-and-coming cancer cures, hair regrowth breakthroughs, immortality, and seven-hour erections that don’t require medical attention. Global warming isn’t going to be the ticket to riches.
So call your Government to action. We need leadership on this. Only Governments have the scope, resources, and ability to act without need for profit to tackle a problem like this. They did it with the Manhattan Project in World War 2, this just might be the time for another big push.
Posted by Stever as Misc, Oil at 1:10 AM EDT
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Hey, I’m going to be on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams on Tuesday night, June 20th. Dawn Fratangelo and I will be discussing how to deal with email overload. Make sure to tune in!
Posted by Stever as Misc at 12:54 PM EDT
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Today’s Metro had a full-page display ad claiming that Father’s Day is getting Screwed. It explains that even little Groundhog Day gets more attention. At the end of the two-page missive, the way out of this painful quandry is happily revealed-buy HBO DVDs. Whew! What a relief that the holiday will not go neglected.
But this public service does not go far enough. Let’s be very clear: a big part of why Father’s Day is being neglected is that we’re spending our money on the Fathers themselves.
One of the worst forms of this poor judgment is, for example, budgeting. Some people look at recent inflation figures and boyir that for most of us, real income has continued creeping downwards. So they think they’re doing dad a favor by not spending his hard-earned money on frivolous mind-numbing entertainment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dad’s needs are beside the point. The needsof the holiday are what matters. Or, more accurately, the needs of the company who realized there’s a holiday whose commercial aspect still has no natural ‘owner.’
I would like to respectfully point out another holiday that is even more neglected than Father’s day. It is Stever Day. A little known, lonely holiday, it is traditionally celebrated by sending large aims of money to Stever, or buying his products or services. It is a floating holiday that occurs by remarkable coincidence on the very day you read this. So get out those credit cards. Though I would never ask for money myself, the holiday is lonely and desperately craves your immediate attention.
Posted by Stever as Misc at 6:28 PM EDT
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Money! If you have it, you’re a worthwhile human being. If you don’t, well, then, you suck.
So says the cultural undertone at Harvard Business School. At least when I attended HBS, there was a subtle attitude of money = worth. You’ve simply got to be an investment banker, consultant, or Fortune 500 CEO, or your life is wasted. No one says it out loud, of course. In fact, many who most deeply embody that thinking would proclaim that self worth has nothing to do with money. Some would actually believe their own denial.
At the five year reunion, the undercurrent is: who’s making how much, doing what? The competition is on! Everyone smiles graciously, while making sure that everyone else knows Life is Perfect and Success Has Arrived.
The ten year reunion, rumor had it, would tone down the hyper-achievement. And so it did. Somewhat. After all, we were just coming off the internet bubble and had several hundred-millionaire-and-above classmates who’d cashed out in the frenzy. So much of the conversation was still about money.
Our 15-year reunion starts tonight. They claim that finally, this reunion isn’t about the money, but about life and family and friends. So this morning, I receive a letter from the HBS development office listing every classmate who gave more than $10,000 and the dollar range of their contribution.Am I the only person in the world who finds this crass and tacky? What’s the point? For low-income classmates to stare at the list of well-off doobies and realize that they (the low-incomers) will never get their name on the Big Board as being a major donor? For people who have served on committees, taken an active interest in the school, etc. to realize that it’s the size of their endowment contribution that counts, not the size of their commitment to the school? Or is this simply a reminder that if you don’t give, you aren’t worthwhile, so give give give, because look how much your classmate Alan gave.
I’ll tell you what. Your worth as a human being is related exactly, precisely, to YOU. You aren’t one bit more valuable because you have, give, or receive money. Bill Gates gives millions to cure maleria? That’s nice, and not to be discounted. But it doesn’t make him a better person. It simply shows that if you’re worth $100 billion, you can give $40 billion to your foundation and still be the richest man in the world. It would be rather like a middle-manager giving $10,000 to charity or to HBS. It gets noticed, but it isn’t exactly sacrifice.
So go build your worth as a human being by being a better one. Find ways to make the world better for your having been here. Find your potential to do something great and go do it. Climb Mt. Everest. Invent renewable, clean energy. Smile at your children. Love your friends.
And for goodness’ sake, if you insist on believing that your worth is related to how much money you give, fine… give it to someone who aspires to Be Themself in a Grand Way. It will go a lot farther than sitting on the wall of an ultra-rich institution, a monument to ego and endowment.
Posted by Stever as Community, Misc at 8:03 AM EDT
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A drafting teacher gave his teenage class an assignment to write an essay on who they would like to murder and how they would do it. He’s been allowed to keep his job, as he’s apparently an upstanding guy and this was simply a lapse in judgment.
Excuse me? A lapse in judgment? What other lapses are on the horizon? This is one case where I’d favor complete dismissal. This is not a man I want anywhere near a school. Some lapses in judgment simply demonstrate a shameful lack of self-control. And shame on the principal, the teacher’s unions, and the school for keeping this principal in front of the classroom.
(Imagine if he’d asked the students to write an essay on who they would like to have sex with, and describe it in detail. He’d be fired so fast it would make your head spin!)
One has to wonder if public schools are even worth bothering to try to save any more…
Posted by Stever as Misc at 12:35 AM EDT
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Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday Dear Stever…
Happy Birthday to Me.
“Happy Birthday, Stever!!”
—Automated email sent by a website I’m registered with
Unlike most of you, I’ve been using the Internet(1) since 1977. All my middle-school friends were people I met online. Until tenth grade. After moving to San Diego and making some real, live friends, it was a revelation: people are a lot more fun in person than they are online. Life since then has been an ongoing search for community, companionship, and friendship.
People made fun of me as a geek thirty years ago. Today, they’re where I was, and I have no sympathy whatsoever.
It’s my birthday. What did I get? A bunch of e-cards. If you’re someone who sent one, I appreciate the thought. Sort of. Here’s what goes on in my head when I get an e-card:
Ooooh, I feel so … loved. Someone took time for me! They browsed a web page, clicked their mouse, and typed my email address. In some cases, their automated Birthday service even sent the ecard automatically. Wow! What a warm fuzzy feeling! Technology lets them be my friend so … efficiently. That’s the point of life, after all, to be efficient. The alternative is almost too horrible to contemplate. Did you know, in the olden days, they would have, say, picked up the phone and dialed(2) ten digits. It would have meant lifting a finger instead of just moving one up and down, but that’s OK. They’d probably just get my voicemail anyway. After all, who has time to talk on the phone any more?
And this, gentle readers, is what passes for friendship in lovely 2006. Next year, if you’re tempted to send me an e-card, don’t bother. I won’t feel loved. It will just clutter up my inbox and waste my time(3). If you want to show you care, get out a pen or pencil and write me a postcard. In hand-writing. And use my name (spell it correctly, please). Do anything to show that it’s really you writing, and you’re deliberately, purposely writing to me.
I don’t want a relationship with your automated Birthday Mailer.
I don’t want cheerful, Arial 10 greetings with optionally bolded text and a link to your 6 favorite BLOGs.
I don’t want a cute animated “Happy Birthday” logo.
I want human connection. Is that too much to ask? In 2006, the answer would seem to be Yes.
— Stever
(1) Then, the ARPANET. I used MIT-MC (no domain names back then), which ran ITS (The Incompatible Time-Sharing System).
(2) Now I feel old. For all you millenials, phones used to have dials instead of buttons. That’s why we “dial” a phone.
(3) I’m in hour 2 of trying to figure out which firewall, spam blocker, and cookie collector is preventing my Dad’s JacqueLawton.com eCard from displaying. Just think, if I’d known in advance this would be so hard to view, I would have just called Dad. But now it’s too late. I have to go set up for my birthday party. All my time, used up by the card. No time left to talk to Dad. Is there a relationship here? Sure. It’s between me and JacqueLawton’s embedded Flash Object. We’ve spent more time together than I spend with most humans. If I ever talk to Dad again, I’ll have to remember to thank him for introducing us.
Posted by Stever as Community, Misc at 3:30 PM EDT
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