Mass disability measured: in 2016 40% of OECD workers could not manage basic technology tasks

It's hard to imagine how very simple much of our technology environment was in the 1980s. Much of what we interacted with was still understandable in simple mechanical terms. Early Mac OS Classic was vastly easier to understand and work with than anything we can image now; the closest analogy would be year two of the iPhone.

But even 8 years ago only a small slice of humanity could manage their technology environment (Jakob Nielsen from November 2016, thanks Matt Panaro for sharing.)

... The data was collected from 2011–2015 in 33 countries and was published in 2016 by the OECD... In total, 215,942 people were tested, with at least 5,000 participants in most countries... 

... research aimed to test the [job-related including technology] skills of people aged 16–65 ...

...participants were asked to perform 14 computer-based tasks. Instead of using live websites, the participants attempted the tasks on simulated software on the test facilitator’s computer. This allowed the researchers to make sure that all participants were confronted with the same level of difficulty across the years and enabled controlled translations of the user interfaces into each country’s local language ..

The tasks they chose were typical business worker tasks. The kinds of tasks that had lots of training back in the 90s. They never tried anything as tough as the HR software my legally disabled son has to work with at his minimum wage hourly job (we do it for him obviously).

Not all OECD members are equally wealthy but Nielsen reproduces a country-specific bar chart from the study. US numbers are not hugely different from the OECD averages; I've added US numbers based on squinting at the chart (numbers are done as levels, so as we move up the prior skills are assumed):

26% could not use a computer at all (US 20%)

14% could delete an email (US 15%)

29% could manage "reply all" or "Find all emails from John Smith" (US 35%)

5% could do "You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability." (US 5%)

They did not test the ability to maintain multiple malware-free home computers, iPhones, iPads and the like. I'd guess that's more like 0.1%.

Jakob Nielsen has been talking about "usability" as long as I can recall. So eight years ago he put this into the context of computer design and training. Which has been the mainstream interpretation of findings like this over the past 50 years of growing technological complexity. 

50 years is a good amount of time to wait for better software. Now we anticipate AI will monitor computer screens and guide users to complete tasks. 

But maybe better software won't help. After all, 40% of users couldn't do relatively simple software tasks. Maybe the problem is human cognitive limits.

I have coincidentally used that 40% number in a post rather similar to this the last time Trump won. Around the time that OECD study was published. Forty percent is my guesstimate of the percentage of Americans who cannot hope to earn the approximately $70,000 a year (plus benefits) needed to sustain a single adult in the low-end of American middle-class life. A life with some savings, yearly vacations, secure shelter, even a child or two.

Since at least 2008 I have called this global phenomenon mass disability. Every few years I see the basic concept emerge, typically with more euphemisms, only to be quickly forgotten. It's hard to fix anything when the the fix begins with a very unhappy truth. 

The unhappy truth is the complexity of our technological environment has exceeded the cognitive grasp of most humans. We now have an unsustainable mismatch between "middle-class" work and the cognitive talents of a large percentage of Americans.

There are things to do, some of which Biden started. We probably needed to have started on them back in the 90s. Perhaps Musk will have ideas. It's all on the oligarchs now.

Chaos times: American oligarchy

1. I was right about polling being worthless

2. At least Biden was spared humiliation 

3. Americans chose oligarchy willingly. 

4. Our feeble democracy wasn’t going to survive AGI (if we get it)

5. I think the inability of a large number of men and women to meet the always increasing IQ/EQ requirements needed for a middle-class life is the root cause. #massDisability

Now we enter the chaos times.

Muskism, Vance, AI and the American choice between oligarchy and an imperfect democracy

In advance of Nov 5 2024, some thoughts on  Muskism. Because I can't resist this kind of thing.

Musk and his fellow tech oligarchs more or less believe in the need to preserve a white tribe, eugenics, and the relative supremacy of a male pattern brain. But I don't think that's what is what is driving Musk's political agenda.

I think Musk is sincere about his stated AI beliefs. He expects at least the genius-in-every-pocket described by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. He believes American democracy will not survive the AI driven chaos to come. This challenge, Musk believes, will be far more disruptive than mere world war.

Musk and his tech allies believe that humanity's best chance is to be guided by a kind of aristocracy of wealth and (in his imagination) clear thinking intellect. Perhaps if we pass into a future AI golden age democracy might be restored, but that will depend on whether the SentientAsBestWeCanTell AIs of 2030 get the vote. The Muskites believe Trump is weak, dying, and will not finish a second term. He will be pardoned, given money and left to the side. Vance is their man. The tech oligarchs will steer America and the world through what lies ahead.

I believe Musk is correct about the AI chaos to come. In the old days we called this period the "technological singularity" -- back when singularity meant absence of prediction rather than a religious experience.

I don't, however,  think Musk and his billionaire minions are the answer to this challenge. I would prefer to give democracy a chance.

But does democracy really have a chance? November 2024 is the test. If Americans, knowing all they know now, having lived through a Trump presidency, still reelect Donald Trump -- then it's clear our democracy is not up to the much greater challenge of even collective climate geoengineering -- much less the AI transition.

If "Trump" (Vance really) wins in 2024 I will be sad. On the other hand, I will then accept that Musk was correct. If American democracy can't handle the Trump idiocy it will have demonstrated it is entirely insufficient for what lies ahead. In that case perhaps the oligarchy is the best we can do.

If Vance loses in a few weeks -- then we will see how democracy manages the chaos times. That's what I have voted for.

What is Great Replacement Theory?

 [Copied over from a tweet stream.]

So now I'm trying to figure out what Great Replacement Theory is. It seems to be one part true and one part sort-of true.

The true part is that we expect a low-melanin blond-red hair (LMB) phenotype to become less common barring genome hacking. That's been well expected since at least the 1970s (perhaps 1870s?). These are recessive genes and migration and differential birthrates mean they will become uncommon.

The sort-of true part is that libs like me don't care about this. It's not just that my white skin is a PITA (thin, burnt, premalignant), it's also that we have a lot more to worry about. Like civilization for example.

The mostly untrue part is that libs/dems are conspiring to accelerate the decline of the LMB phenotype.

It's true we hope the GOP's white nationalism will discourage "non-white" (whatever whiteness is) voters, it's true we encourage immigration as a generally good thing for a low birth rate America that has benefitted from attracting worldwide talent, it's true that we enjoy and appreciate novelty and diversity, and it's true that we think it would quite good if all this led to the GOP to morph into a non-racist opposition party.

But it's not true that this is an explicit conspiracy.  It is, perhaps, an emergent result of our not caring that much about preserving a particular phenotype, our interest in preserving human and American civilization and our affection for novelty and diversity. I can, however, see why people who are passionately attached to LMB phenotypes would confuse this emergent result with a diabolical conspiracy.

Biden's essential task is to help the Left Behind

This is the last in a short series of post that began on Nov 11, 2020, shortly after Biden won the presidency for the first time. Back then it looked like McConnell would hold the Senate. 

In the decades since that post Trump became more insane than usual, a deranged mob of Trump cultists invaded the Capitol building, the Dems took the Senate, and Biden won the presidency for the third or fiftieth time depending how one counts. Truly, I need to finish this series while we still have electricity.

In the first post I wrote about how I think about the Trump voter (and America). I divided the Trump voter up into the religious fundamentalist (sometimes Trump cultist), the despicables (ex: Hawley, Cruz, the WSJ reader), and the Left Behind. The NYT profiled a Left Behind on 11/7/2020 (emphases mine):

... Nick [a] 26-year-old hair stylist ... spent the past few months campaigning for President Trump, taking special satisfaction in offending Biden supporters...

... He did not go to college and prides himself on his independent thinking; he puts himself in the category of street smart, not book smart...

... He had never bothered to register to vote until 2016, when he first heard Mr. Trump debate on television, and saw a political figure who reminded him of himself....

... When Fox News began reporting polls showing Mr. Biden in the lead, Ms. Rocco tried tuning into One America News, the right-wing cable network, which predicted a convincing victory for the president. The Roccos got news from a variety of sources — TikTok, QAnon, the pro-Trump comedian Terrence K. Williams, the YouTube mystic Clif High. “I’m a conspiracy theorist, I guess, if you want to call it that,” Ms. Rocco said...

...  he reminded himself what kept him out there all these months: People had disrespected him. The Facebook group manager who had kicked him off. The neighbor who took his yard sign. Teachers who responded to his daughter’s enthusiasm about Mr. Trump with awkward silence.

“People who don’t like Trump, I honestly think they are very soft people,” he said. “That is why the world is becoming so sensitive today. Back in the day, you could throw a snowball at someone at school and everything was fine. Nowadays, a letter gets sent home: Your child is being mean.”

... His older brother, who he describes as the brainy one, took the other path, winning a scholarship to college. (He is the Biden voter.) But Mr. Rocco’s aspirations were staunchly blue-collar; he chose trade school and went to work at 17...

It's unlikely Nick would have done well at a four year college or succeeded as a knowledge worker. He could marry well, or find an inheritance, or show unusual entrepreneurial talent -- but more likely he's going to be the disrespected Left Behind. In today's America if you aren't a knowledge worker you're probably not going to make over $30/hr, and you're not going to make it into the middle class as an individual [2]. Even in countries with effectively free college this non-knowledge worker cohort is about half the population [2].

America can't survive as a democracy with half its citizens Left Behind. We'll have a January 6 every year -- only the mobs will be larger and have better weapons. Of all the threats we face, this is our greatest near term challenge. Even CO2 driven climate change is a lesser threat.

Biden needs to work out a solution for the Left Behind problem. The good news is that for this problem survival and politics align. The Left Behind are the core of Trump's base and the modern GOP, it's tricky for the GOP to block policies to bring the Left Behind into the middle class. And, after Jan 6, 2021, there's intense awareness of the danger posed by the Left Behind (though that will be quickly forgotten). 

Most importantly the Left Behind are not only white, they are also Black [3], Hispanic, Asian and any slice you like (though more men than women). Helping the Left Behind crosses political boundaries, unlike reducing college debt.

What policies can be put in place so that most non-knowledge workers can earn over $30 an hour? I've written of a few over the years, here's a partial list:

1. A $15/hour minimum wage. Put pressure at the base.
2. Subsidize employment directly, or provide direct cash support (family allowance and the like), or do a mixture of both [4].
3. Learn from Germany and from Quebec's manufacturing sector.
4. Reduce corporate scale, favor smaller companies that employ more blue collar workers [5]
5. Get creative about small business generation - including a national small business generator.
6. Do public works and infrastructure that generate employment. I've been told the pharaohs built pyramids so laborers had work between flooding of the Nile. (The US military is one model for non-college public works employment.)
7. Review all our tax, accounting, finance and labor policies and revise to favor non-college employment.

This is what Biden needs to focus on.

- fn -

[1] One trade worker and one service worker couple can squeak in it as long as they don't have child care expenses and as long as they stay together.

[2] See also my pre-catastrophe 2015 post on why I was a "fan" (heavy irony) of Trump or a recent post/pre catastrophe retrospective. I've been on this topic for a long time though my thoughts have evolved quite a bit over 17 years.

[3] Deep and pervasive structural racism means there's great potential for increasing four year college participation in Black America. I don't think there's anywhere near that potential for White America.

[4] I think subsidized work has significant political, cultural, economic, psychological, and social advantages over direct cash subsidies -- but I'm not adverse to experimenting. 

[5] "Blue collar" is a historic synonym for Left Behind.

My 2015 post on why Trump was a sign of a healthy democracy

I'm on the way to writing about what I think should be Biden's #2 priority (#1 is undoing Trump's executive orders). Three previous in this series include: 

1. How I think about the Trump voter (and America)
2. What is middle class and why can't half of American voters get there?
3. Biden's lost agenda

This fourth post is about something I wrote in 2015. Back then I thought Trump was a bad joke. I thought that American politics was a compromise between corporations, powerful (wealthy) individuals, and the voting masses. Clearly corporations and the wealthy would prefer many GOP candidates over Trump, and the masses alone would not be enough.

Yay masses.

Now, amidst the smoldering wreckage, I'm going to quote from that old misguided post (emphases added): 

Donald Trump is a sign of a healthy democracy. Really.

... I’m a fan because Trump appears to be channeling the most important cohort in the modern world — people who are not going to complete the advanced academic track we call college. Canada has the world’s highest “college” graduation rate at 55.8%, but that number is heavily biased by programs that can resemble the senior year of American High School (in Quebec, CEGEP, like mine). If we adjust for that bias, and recognizing that nobody does better than Canada, it’s plausible, even likely, that no more than half of the population of the industrialized world is going to complete the minimum requirements for the “knowledge work” and “creative work” that dominates the modern economy.

... This [never-college] cohort, about 40% of the human race, has experienced at least 40 years of declining income and shrinking employment opportunities. We no longer employ millions of clerks to file papers, or harvest crops, or dig ditches, or fill gas tanks or even assemble cars. That work has gone, some to other countries but most to automation. Those jobs aren’t coming back.

The future for about half of all Americans, and all humans, looks grim. When Trump talks to his white audience about immigrants taking jobs and betrayal by the elite he is starting a conversation we need to have. 

It doesn’t matter that Trump is a buffoon, or that restricting immigration won’t make any difference. It matters that the conversation is starting. After all, how far do you think anyone would get telling 40% of America that there is no place for them in current order because they’re not “smart” enough?

Yeah, not very far at all.

This is how democracy deals with hard conversations. It begins with yelling and ranting and blowhards. Eventually the conversation mutates. Painful thoughts become less painful. Facts are slowly accepted. Solutions begin to emerge.

Donald Trump is good for democracy, good for America, and good for the world.

"Good for democracy" except, of course, the white non-college masses spoke clearly back in 2016. An actual "President Trump" was unthinkable, but it happened. I do not underestimate him now.

So that part of the post did not hold up so well. But I stand by the part about making the never-college 40-50% of Americans a political focus. More on that when I write the fifth post in this series.

See also

• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes (Jan 2011)
• Rubio, Sanders and the President Gordon agenda (Mar 2016)

Biden's lost agenda

In the Fall of 2020 the American people decided to dump Trump. Americans didn't agree on much else; voters rejected significant change. Overall the result did not surprise me, especially given the summer riots and the "defund the police" movement.

Biden's agenda is mostly history. Except for the most important part. I'm going to get to that in a future post (it's not student loan forgiveness!), but first I want to reference the future America rejected. I'll use George Packer's summary in the Oct issue of The Atlantic (emphases mine):

America’s Plastic Hour Is Upon Us

... The scale of Biden’s agenda is breathtaking. At its center is a huge jobs program. A Biden administration would invest $2 trillion in infrastructure and clean energy. He proposes creating 3 million jobs in early education, child care, and elderly care—sectors usually regarded as “soft” and neglected by presidential candidates—while raising their pay and status. “This economic crisis has hit women the hardest,” Sullivan said. “These care jobs are primarily jobs filled by women—and disproportionately women of color and immigrant women—but they don’t pay a fair wage, and the opportunities to advance aren’t there. This is a big, ambitious, bold proposal—not an afterthought, but at the core.” Another $700 billion would go to stimulating demand and innovation in domestic manufacturing for a range of essential industries such as medical supplies, microelectronics, and artificial intelligence. Some $30 billion would go to minority-owned businesses as part of a larger effort to reduce the racial wealth gap.

Biden is proposing industrial policy—massive, targeted investment to restructure production for national goals—something that no president has openly embraced since the 1940s. His agenda would also give workers more power, with paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, a public option for health care, and an easier path to organizing and joining unions. It would more than double the federal minimum wage, to $15 an hour ...

Ok, that's the agenda that was. Wave good-bye to it, but don't give up entirely. There's something in there that can be saved.

How I think about the Trump voter and America

A few days ago I listed about 25 reasons that Donald Trump should not be President. Any one of them is sufficient by itself.

There are lots of lists like that. Every science and reality oriented publication in America had its own list. All opposed Trump. All recognized that beyond his venality and incompetence democracy was also at stake.

And yet ...  he almost won reelection. The GOP held the Senate. Dems lost some House seats. The polls were wrong again (I blame the iPhone for the polls - ask me why).

So what do I think about America in general and the Trump voter in particular?

America is what it has always been. Some decades it does better, some worse, but in general it's a rough neighborhood. We were born from slavery and genocide, we fight lots of wars, we don't have universal healthcare, we tolerate mass shootings of children, we have large majorities that support torture of prisoners, we fund public education with local taxation and college through massive debt, we tolerate systemic anti-Black racism, we allow suppression of Black voting, we reelected GWB despite his torture program and the misdirected conquest of Iraq. We did well with higher education and science for a while, but the GOP attacks on science have done grave damage.

We aren't the worst of nations. China, Russia, North Korea, Germany in the early 21st century ... there are lots worse than us. We aren't the best of nations. Canada, the Nordics, South Korea, most of Europe, Japan are all better. Among post-industrial nations we are probably somewhere in the bottom third, but I could maybe argue for being average. Which makes sense -- we are made of humans and we're big and diverse enough to have a representative sample. Our Presidential system and electoral college and our history drive us down a notch or two.

That's America. What about the Trump voter?

I divide the Trump voters into slices. The biggest and most important are the "White* Left Behind". They are a diverse group, but in general they do not have the cognitive traits to be a "knowledge worker". They did not attend college and college would have been a poor use of their time and money. They don't read newspapers, they don't reason out their vote, they vote based on tribe and emotion. They are more or less anti-Black racist but they don't think they are being unfair. They are desperate to work but there are few good jobs for them. Living in an increasingly high tech and complex world they are every day reminded that they can't keep up. They live on the edge.

Trump's genius was exploiting the WLB while showing them that they have real political power. I don't blame the WLB for voting Trump. They are as much victim as they are aggressor.

The religious fundamentalist is another slice. A complicated slice. For some religion is a shallow facade they may assume or discard as needed. Others have a deep conviction that to me shades into delusion -- but I respect delusion. The universe is a vast and terrible place dominated by violence and entropy -- we all need some delusion. If you believe that every terminated ovum is a murder, and you know Trump will suppress abortion, then that outweighs all his other crimes. You might even decide to worship him. 

I don't much blame the religious fundamentalist for voting Trump. They may be rationally choosing based on their fixed belief.

That leaves those who are not dominated by religious belief and who won enough of the cognitive lottery to be able to read newspapers, to remember what happened weeks or months or even years ago, and to make an informed decision.  They may feel that democracy is hopeless, that authoritarian rule is inevitable, and they want to be on the side of the winner. They may care only about their wealth and privilege and feel Trump will best defend them. They may be fully racist -- generally anti-Black racist rather than pan-racist. (Anti-Black racism is far from a White-only thing.) They may enjoy living in an authoritarian society where they are commanded by superiors and able to command the inferior.

They are the elite Trump voter. I blame them. They have chosen a wrong path. They can redeem themselves in future, but for now I cannot be their friend.

* As of 2020 American "White" may include Latino/Hispanic. That boundary has long been fluid.

The Trump I remember

It's Nov 6, 2020 and I believe Trump's presidency is ending. I look forward to forgetting him, but one day I'll be asked what all the fuss was about.

For that day, to remind me, here is what I know of him know:

1. The crimes for which he was impeached -- extorting a foreign power to attack a political opponent.
2. The crimes for which he was not impeached -- the collusion with Russia against HRC.
3. The obstruction of justice.
4. The personal corruption.
5. The corruption of government and of industry, including running a protection racket against businesses.
6. The casual racism.
7. The people who worked for him.
8. The anti-science -- from CO2 to COVID to the environment and beyond.
9. Inserting Christian fundamentalism into American government.
10. The constant lying. (He was paradoxically transparent however. An accusation was invariably a confession.)
11. His mockery of persons with disabilities.
12. The threats and the cruelty. Not least the separation of migrant children and parents.
13. The stupidity. He really didn't seem to know very much about anything beyond corruption and real estate.
14. The propaganda.
15. The destruction of the ACA without a replacement.
16. The complete disinterest in art, culture, and the humanities.
17. The destruction of government agencies.
18. A complete lack of honor, compassion, or decency.
19. COVID mismanagement.
20. QAnon.
21. The authoritarianism.
22. The pardons. (Remember Al Kinani)
23. The post-election conduct.
24. The record-breaking federal executions.
25. The Gallagher war crime pardon
26. The illegal destruction of government records. 

As of Nov 2020 McSweeney's has a list, NYT Magazine did an interactive summary, The Atlantic had many articles summarized in their Biden endorsement:

...he has divided our people; he has pitted race against race; he has corrupted our democracy; he has shown contempt for American ideals; he has made cruelty a sacrament; he has provided comfort to propagators of hate; he has abandoned America’s allies; he has aligned himself with dictators; he has encouraged terrorism and mob violence; he has undermined the agencies and departments of government; he has despoiled the environment; he has opposed free speech; he has lied frenetically and evangelized for conspiracism; he has stolen children from their parents; he has made himself an advocate of a hostile foreign power; and he has failed to protect America from a ravaging virus"

Was there anything he did that was good?

1. Accepting North Korea as a nuclear power. It was the only viable choice, but I'm not sure HRC could have taken it (esp. with a GOP Congress).
2. He understood the Left Behind -- the majority of Americans who will never be knowledge workers. I don't think my team gets this. He didn't know what to do for them, but he knew what they wanted.

Update 1/18/21 - adding Unthinkable from The Atlantic.

State of the COVID-19 Pandemic - Fall 2020

I've written only a few COVID-19 posts, mostly about masks and activities. Looking back at them today they hold up pretty well. This feels like the right time for a summary.

Obviously the American response has been pretty lousy. Given America's fissiparous culture and lousy record on things like managing gun violence and providing universal good-enough healthcare we were never going to do a terrific job, but Trump took us down a few more levels. The GOP's anti-science and anti-government stance has contributed as well, not least by underfunding the CDC for decades. It does suck that the disease is infectious before symptoms develop.

We will probably get a decent vaccine. Even if Trump, Xi, and Putin screw-up their national evaluations there will be a few nations that do it right. We probably won't get a great early treatment antiviral in the next year or two but our hospital management will keep incrementally improving and we ought to get a decent monoclonal. We are, despite America's almost incomprehensible incompetence, starting to see better masks in use. Masks that protect the wearer as much as they reduce spread. (We could have lightweight PAPRs for use by vulnerable teachers, but that's like asking for a warp drive.) We should get inexpensive antigen tests for use in school and home, and we'll probably figure out how to use them.

Our understanding of the American pandemic is not great. Data is getting harder to find for many states. That won't change unless Trump loses -- and even then it will take months to rebuilt. A few states may have good data collection so we will have to rely on them to sample pandemic progress. Universities and non-profits are trying to close the gap. Getting local prevalence data in Google Maps will help. There's still a chance states will adopt Google/Apple contact tracing (paging Minnesota, damnit).

On the bright side our knowledge of the innate immune system and of viral infection sequelae (myocarditis [1]!) is growing ten times faster than normal. Even in the QAnon world we can still do some science.

On the public front the situation is mixed at best. It will be a miracle if we don't see a big rise in numbers as winter settles in and we move indoors. Pandemic social and economic distress is amplified by the longterm issues of never-college income, information technology disruption, demographic shifts, and the legacies of American slavery. Remote work has been pretty successful though -- getting people out of air conditioned offices is a big deal.

Less unhappily, unknown sequelae aside, the vast majority of people under 40 with good innate immune systems seem to tolerate SARS-CoV-2 pretty well (though some will die horribly after months of struggle and the myocarditis thing is a bit worrisome). It also seems that a modest amount of ventilation dramatically reduces infectivity -- and, despite lack of public guidance and Trump's CDC sabotage, I think ventilation is improving. There don't seem to be big outbreaks in gyms or ice arenas for example -- though there's also no useful data. COVID-19 will become endemic, but over decades, as we develop true herd immunity, it will become more like the other coronavirae that we live with.

Between our various failures, residual strengths, and the peculiarities of COVID-19 much of America is more-or-less implementing some version of slow motion infection of the under 30 and more-or-less leaving the 40+ to protect themselves. The elite 40+ segment of Americans are learning to buy and wear user-protective masks, the non-elite are kind of screwed. But that's America in the year 2020.

- fn -

[1] Lots of people are wondering how common myocarditis is with viral infections. We've always known of viral myocarditis, but it's not like we did cardiac MRIs on everyone with a cold. The decrease in MIs during COVID precautions is certainly interesting. This review isn't perfect, but it's a good start.

Viktor Frankl - on expectations and the behavior of people

Viktor Frankl formed some of his opinions of human nature by surviving several concentration camps. After his release, in a few days, he wrote a book about his experience - Man's Search for Meaning.

The book has harsh critics. I read it and I think much of sees truth, though it also a book of another era -- an era in which "man" more or less included women. 

Today psychology, psychiatry, neurology and the sciences retain little of Frankl's life work. He could not grasp that meaning might exist in the absence of religion, or that responsibility could be assumed rather than fundamental. I believe, however, that he had a true understanding of the extremes of human nature for evil and for good.

YouTube (and the Ted site) have a video of a lecture he gave later in his life. From the Frankl Institute (with let another video copy!):

YOUTH IN SEARCH OF MEANING, 1972 [4:22]

Frankl speaking at the "Toronto Youth Corps" in 1972. See Frankl "at his best" as he vividly explains his theories, and even draws analogies to piloting an aircraft – a passion he had recently picked up.

In this lecture he talks about how one must "crab" an airplane to adjust for a crosswind (1:45).  To reach a destination you have to periodically turn into the wind. He expands the analogy to people:

If we take man as he really is we make him worse. But if we overestimate him ... if we seem to be idealist and are overestimating ... overrating man ... and looking at him up high ... we promote him to what he really can be...

... Do you know who has said this? If we take man as he is we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be? ... This was not me. This was not my flight instructor. This was Goethe.

From this it is a small Google step to the Goethe quote (in English):

When we treat man as he is we make him worse than he is.

When we treat him as if he already was what he potentially could be we make him what he should be.

 In the strange time of June 2020 I think this is worth remembering.

Gordon's platform 2020

It is my privilege to announce that I will running for the Presidency of the United States of America.

I understand that, as a foreign born dual citizen of the United States and Canada I am technically not eligible for the Presidency. On the other hand, America elected Donald Trump. Compared to him I’m eminently qualified.

My Presidential Platform is achievable and focuses on our core challenges as a nation and wannabe world leader ...

1. Free community college. This was, I think, part of HRC’s platform. Didn’t get much media coverage but just makes sense. Unlike free college, which is dumb. Quebec basically does this and it has worked very well for them. A lot of health care workers can be trained in 3 years of community college.
2. Restore ACA, including the individual tax penalties for non-participation, with a public option that leverages experience from Canada and Veterans Health Administration. Incorporate broad support for physical activity (aka exercise) in health care system. Attack agricultural subsidies for unhealthy foods and subsidize healthy foods. Move the dial on obesity and lifestyle diseases.
3. Restore Obama’s carbon control framework, not including a carbon tax. I love the idea of a carbon tax, but I’ve seen my fellow citizens. Some costs are better buried.
4. Increase employment income of the non-college. Reduce taxation incentives that favor automation (it will happen anyway, but slower is better). Create plug-and-play packages for small businesses that employ non-college. Provide subsidies for training in skills accessible to non-college. Extend the framework used for disabled employment to subsidize and support non-college work including public sector employment. Subsidize minimum wage. Tax breaks to employers that promote employment. This will be a core pillar of my administration.
5. Strong antitrust; promote competition among corporations and consumer choice. May include breaking up several MegaCorp.
6. Transit, bikes, walkability, parks, attractive infrastructure. Make car ownership optional. Require new motor vehicles to incorporate technology that makes pedestrians and cyclists safer. Require autonomous vehicles to meet strict standards for safety of the non-armored.
7. Taxes. Of course. VAT. Restore the "death tax”. Various forms of wealth tax. Tax soda and the like. Fund my platform, start to beat back dysfunctional wealth concentration.
8. Attack political corruption, particularly post-political employment, at every level. Public funding for elections including mandated free media time.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Vote for me. 

Whatever my name is.

Healthcare reform 2020: Public option based on the VA healthcare model

Medicare for All won’t work in 2020. We have an insurmountable path dependency problem.

We can, however, implement the ACA public option. It should be based on the VA model for healthcare delivery, which is basically the American version of the UK’s NHS. It’s not luxurious, but it’s more than good enough healthcare.

The curious psychiatric state of Robert F Kennedy Jr

Robert F Kennedy Jr showed up in a scrum of pro-measles whackos recently. It  me wonder how he got so nuts.

There’s an extensive wikipedia page for him, starting with a time I remember:

He was 9 years old when his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated during a political trip to Dallas, and 14 years old when his father was assassinated…

Despite childhood tragedy he was a successful academic and he’s done some decent work legally and for the environment. He seems to have started off the rails in the 80s:

In 1983, at age 29, Kennedy was arrested in a Rapid City, South Dakota airport for heroin possession after a search of his carry-on bag uncovered the drug, following a near overdose in flight.

By 1989 he’d started on vaccines — but not with autism … 

His son Conor suffers from anaphylaxis peanut allergies. Kennedy wrote the foreword to The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, in which he and the authors link increasing food allergies in children to certain vaccines that were approved beginning in 1989

By 2000s he’d jumped from immunizations causing his son’s anaphylactic disorder to immunization causing autism. He became "chairman of “World Mercury Project” (WMP), an advocacy group that focuses on the perceived issue of mercury, in industry and medicine, especially the ethylmercury compound thimerosal in vaccines”. It was a downward spiral from there.

Despite his vaccine delusions and troubled marriages he seems to have maintained a fairly active wealthy person life. He’s said to be a good whitewater kayaker.

Psychiatrically it’s curious. He combines fixed irrational beliefs (the definition of delusions) with relatively high functioning in other domains. He reminds me of L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. 

We need to keep him far from the political world.

Why the crisis of 2016 will continue for decades to come

I haven’t written recently about why Crisis 2016, sometimes called Crisis-T, happened. For that matter, why Brexit. My last takes were in 2016 …

• In defense of Donald Trump - July 2016. In which I identified the cause of the crisis, but assumed we’d dodge the bullet and HRC would tend to the crisis of the white working class.
• Trumpism: a transition function to the world of mass disability - Aug 2016. “How does a culture transition from memes of independence and southern Christian-capitalist marketarianism to a world where government deeply biases the economy towards low-education employment?"
• After Trump: reflections on mass disability in a sleepless night - Nov 11, 2016. "Extreme cultural transformation. Demographics. China. The AI era and mass disability. I haven’t even mentioned that pre-AI technologies wiped out traditional media and enabled the growth of Facebook-fueled mass deception alt-media … We should not be surprised that the wheels have come off the train.”
• Crisis-T: What’s special about rural? - Nov 16, 2016: "The globalization and automation that disabled 40% of working age Americans isn’t unique to rural areas, but those areas have been ailing for a long time. They’ve been impacted by automation ever since the railroad killed the Erie canal, and the harvester eliminated most farm workers. Once we thought the Internet would provide a lifeline to rural communities, but instead it made Dakka as close as Escanaba.”

How has my thinking changed two years later? Now I’d add a couple of tweaks, especially the way quirks of America’s constitution amplified the crisis. Today’s breakdown:

• 65% the collapse of the white non-college “working class” — as best measured by fentanyl deaths and non-college household income over the past 40 years. Driven by globalization and IT both separately and synergistically including remonopolization (megacorp). This is going to get worse.
• 15% the way peculiarities of the American constitution empower rural states and rural regions that are most impacted by the collapse of the white working class due to demographics and out-migration of the educated. This is why the crisis is worse here than in Canada. This will continue.
• 15% the long fall of patriarchy. This will continue for a time, but eventually it hits the ground. Another 20 years for the US?
• 5% Rupert Murdoch. Seriously. In the US Fox and the WSJ, but also his media in Australia and the UK. When historians make their list of villains of the 21st century he’ll be on there. He’s broken and dying now, but he’s still scary enough that his name is rarely mentioned by anyone of consequence.
• 1% Facebook, social media, Putin and the like. This will get better.

That 1% for Facebook et all is pretty small — but the election of 2016 was on the knife’s edge. That 1% was historically important.

Rupert Murdoch will finally die, though his malignant empire will grind on for a time. Patriarchy can’t fall forever, eventually that process is done. We now understand the risks of Facebook and its like and those will be managed. So there’s hope.

But the crisis of the white non-college will continue and our constitution will continue to amplify that bloc’s political power in rural areas. Even if civilization wins in 2020 the crisis of 2016 will continue. It will test human societies for decades to come.

Nasty flaw in Minnesota mail ballot process

There’s a nasty flaw in Minnesota’s vote by mail process.

When you apply for a mail ballot you are asked to provider either a SSN last 4 or License number or State ID number.

When you complete the ballot you are asked to provider either a SSN last 4 or License number or State ID number.

The two numbers have to match or the ballot will be rejected.

Hope you remember if you used your MN License number or your SSN Last 4 on the ballot application.

I tried testing for the identifier I used by querying my absentee ballot status, but it found the same status regardless of which identifier I used.

Are Trump-era Evangelicals closer to ancient Judaism than to Christianity?

It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to worship both Christ and Trump. But if you demote Christ and elevate Trump, both can have similar Prophet status. Prophets of a Chosen people can disagree and refine one another; they don’t have to be omniscient.

Culturally and theologically, the Trumpian Evangelical seems closer to ancient Judaism than to historic Christianity — but with an added emphasis on the ancient theology that wealth is a sign of divine approval and thus of virtue.

I wrote these in 2004 …

Georgia Takes on ’Evolution’ - The Decline and Fall of American Education

… If the evangelicals continued their steady victories, there will eventually be a public evangelical educational system and a private secular/other system. The private secular system would attract the educated elite, and they in turn would attract parents seeking social networks. The evangelical school system of 2010 could become a stigmatized backwater of ever growing ignorance (ok, so it might produce an incompetent President or two ...). 

The evangelical right can indeed win this war, but they may not like what they get. Perhaps they should reconsider ...

and (from an email to Nicholas Kristof back when we did things like that)…

Nicholas Kristof (NYT): The God Gulf - comment - The Yahwites and the Jesites

… I think you’ve skirted, however, a second great schism, between the "Yahwites" and the "Jesites". Both call themselves Christian, but they are as different as the Old and New Testaments -- and equally irreconcilable.

The Yahwites worship Yahweh, and draw their theology from the Old Testament -- a quintessentially Republican document. The Jesites follow a blend of the teachings of Paul and Christ, a doctrine that is more comfortably Democrat or even secular humanist. Mainstream Prostestant and Catholic churches, now in decline, lean towards Jesism; the evangelicals tend to Yahwism.

The Yahwites are in ascendance. In their doctrine God rewards virtue with wealth, and punishes his enemies with brutal power -- sowing salt upon the fields of the dead. The Jesites, always a minority, are in retreat. In particular the teachings of Jesus are so peculiar and demanding as to be almost unattainable for most humans. Jesites are always falling short of their ideal. Frustrating and not so marketable as Yahwism.

There is only a small theological gap between the Yahwites and the Wahaabi, so it is ironic that fundamentalist Islam should see Bush as their virulent enemy. Not the first irony in history.

American Evangelicism has been in free fall for years. One positive feature of Trumpism is that Evangelicals don’t talk about “family values” any longer. The laughter is deafening.

Gender and politics in America

My Twitter feed often ascribes GOP dominance at the state and federal level, and the patriarchal policies that follow, to male choices.

That is clearly incorrect. We know that 52% of white women chose Trump. In a white-women only election he’d have still won.

Today I wondered what overall gender differences are in voter turnout. The Center for American Women and Politics had some numbers:

They write (emphases mine) …

In every presidential election since 1980, the proportion of eligible female adults who voted has exceeded the proportion of eligible male adults who voted (see Figure 1) … The number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1964.

Women have a larger voice in our elections than men. In 2018 America race and education are bigger divides than gender. White men are deplorable, but white women are not a lot better.

Year one of post-imperial America

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. That was the end of Russia’s Empire, the end of the USSR. I was 30 years old. I may still have a newspaper from that day.

When did America’s empire end? It’s not so clear. Was it 9/11/2001 when the towers fell? Was it 3/20/2003 when the US split from its NATO allies and invaded Iraq?

Historians will decide, but I think most will settle on the election of Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, 27 years after the fall of the USSR. The symmetry is irresistible.

Both left and right agree, America is no longer a hegemonic power. The GOP’s collapse and Trump’s incoherence have made America a mighty but brainlessly blundering behemoth. The world has shifted from a unipolar to a multipolar system ten years earlier than expected. Everything frozen is in motion, from Korea to the West Bank. The sun has set on the American Empire, Putin’s revenge has been poetically perfect [1].

Was America’s Empire a good thing? I think the rebuilding of Europe and Japan was a good thing. I think containment of the Soviet Union was good. The long peace, without direct conflict between world powers, was good. Avoiding the end of human civilization was probably good too. Most of this came between 1945 and 1989 though. The record over the last 27 years has been more mixed. Perhaps the world will do better without America.

Where do we go now? I have given up on the prediction business. What I hope happens is that the GOP is swept from power on November 3, 2020. By then much of America’s federal government will be severely damaged or devastated, but we now know that our system was rotten and ready for a fall in 2016. After 2020, without the burden of empire, the United States can begin rebuilding. Like a city leveled by flood or earthquake, we can return better than we were.

- fn -

[1] Do read that Atlantic article. I’d forgotten Anna Chapman from 2008! Among other things we learn that Russia is justly proud of its astounding coup, but not entirely sure it was a good idea:

… The original aim was to embarrass and damage Hillary Clinton, to sow dissension, and to show that American democracy is just as corrupt as Russia’s, if not worse. “No one believed in Trump, not even a little bit,” Soldatov says. “It was a series of tactical operations. At each moment, the people who were doing this were filled with excitement over how well it was going, and that success pushed them to go even further.”…

… The head of the FSB’s elite cyber unit and his deputy were forced out; two other top officers from the unit ended up in Moscow’s most notorious jail.  “They’re now under incredible pressure both from the inside and the outside,” Soldatov said. “Sometimes,” says Michael Hayden, a director of the National Security Agency under George W. Bush, “you have successful covert operations that you wish hadn’t succeeded.” …

… What Russia showed in the 2016 election—and what it has continued to show in the election’s aftermath—is not so much its own strength, but American vulnerability: that it doesn’t take much to turn the American system on itself. “Covert-influence operations don’t create divisions on the ground; they amplify them,” says Michael Hayden, the former NSA chief. John Sipher, the former CIA operative, agrees. “If there’s anyone to blame, it’s us,” he says. “If we accept the stoking, it’s our fault.”

Weinstein, The Enquirer, Pecker and Trump - a curious set of friendships

From NYT essay on Weinstein and his enablers an interesting set of misogynistic relationships …

Weinstein’s Complicity Machine - The New York Times

… Mr. Weinstein held off press scrutiny with a mix of threats and enticements … He was so close to David J. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc., which owns The Enquirer, that he was known in the tabloid industry as an untouchable “F.O.P.,” or “friend of Pecker.” That status was shared by a chosen few, including President Trump.

Via Twitter, how Trump is fighting sexual harassment in DC.