Please, Just the Evidence

Many policy issues are tractable, if not solvable, if we limit ourselves to the evidence and if we possess the collective will and unbiased capacity to serve the Common Good.

Just the facts ma'am.
― Joe Friday, Fictional Television Character

Robert Geyer uses a Hoylake Beach canvas to illustrate a compelling concept known as the Stacey Diagram. The Stacey Diagram is the brain-child of Ralph Stacey, a scholar who studies complexity and creativity in organizations.


Complexity and the Stacey Diagram from Brightmoon Media on Vimeo.

From the Agreement vs. Certainty axes in the Stacey Diagram, one might infer how governing bodies become mired in the quicksand of partisan groupthink and self-serving agendas.

The quicksand of partisan groupthink and self-serving agendas, particularly the quicksand that is the fact-averse and evidence-bereft terrorists who hijack rational discourse and media cycles by making outlandish, patently false, or inflammatory actions and assertions (e.g, Political Personality Sarah Palin or Russian President Vladimir Putin), consistently fails to serve the Common Good.

A governing body with the will and capacity to drive policy from evidence, rather than from a the dull blade of a partisan political ax, or from the battle ax of a power-brokering personal agenda, has much greater potential to elevate the Common Good.

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed. ― Woodrow Wilson

I Believe - October

This is the first of a series of I Believe posts. Each month I will post five things I have come to believe.

1. I believe public policy should, as a matter of fairness, smooth the jagged edges of fate. 
2. I believe a top-down hierarchy is inherently unstable - it assumes the ethical & operational infallibility of those at the top.
3. I believe the myth of individual exceptionalism undermines our society. American exceptionalism romanticizes the notion that we are a nation of individuals.
4. I believe when journalism is weakened, democracy is threatened. WikiLeaks just might counter the trend toward lapdog journalism.
5. I believe the roots of comedy are centered about human-kind’s collective fallibility (which explains why the best comics are not politically conservative).

Dude, Where's My Office?

Since taking my first gig out of grad school as an environmental engineer, the career landscape has changed -- for the worse.

To wit, few people talk of careers any more for fear of being snickered at by some cynical, beaten-down, itinerant knowledge worker.

Looking back, I realize I have wasted my entire professional life warming increasingly less comfortable chairs in increasingly smaller spaces for proportionally less compensation.

Today I ask you to mourn the hard-working middle class with me. I know, this ain't Rwanda. In comparison, our problems are small and surmountable

Yet you and I have observed 20-plus years of squeezing the middle class in the US into near extinction. I can't say "the squeeze" has been premeditated because I won't let myself degrade into a delusional conspiracy-theorist. More likely, the cause has been benign neglect. Benign neglect via anti-people government policy. NAFTA for example, and the systematic emasculation of regulatory institutions like the USEPA, have added nothing to the job pool.

Corporatist, conservative, anti-union & anti-people policies have eroded society's topsoil - the middle class. We should reverse this assault. What will we leave for our children and our grandchildren?

How do we reverse this trend so your kids and mine might be ever-so-incrementally more hopeful about the future?

 

Smooth the Jagged Edges of Fate

I recognize, and mindfully champion, the enormous role luck has played in my good fortune:

• a spouse who's my best friend,
• sensitive and intelligent children who exceed my expectations,
• a comfortable house in a civilized city,
• a viable small business,
• and so on.

More precisely, I recognize the role of dumb luck. Dumb luck because I am ignorant of what spring-loaded fate awaits my arrival.

Most of us embrace the notion that we're hard workers, so I don't belittle hard work.

The harder I work, the luckier I get.
~ Samuel Goldwyn

And I don't give short shrift diligence and persistence.

Diligence is the mother of good luck.
~ Benjamin Franklin

I am not yet willing to dismiss the influence that hard work, diligence, and persistence might have, however negligible, in realizing good fortune.

But lady luck is lady luck. Most individual achievements are traceable to chance.

Impressive as a corporate titan may appear, his success is truly testament to a thousand variables far outside his control. Good genes and attentive parents and a smart peer group and a legacy admission to Yale and perfect timing and much else.
~ Ezra Klein

We know empirically that pure chance is a significant determinant of material reward.

In his post The Argument Over Inequality, Ezra Klein suggests the myth of individual exceptionalism undermines society. I agree. American exceptionalism romanticizes the notion that we are a nation of individuals.

Tacit in the notion of a nation of individuals is that responsibility for organizations are preordained to be individualized (e.g., the buck stops here), and as a consequence run from a top-down structure.

A top-down hierarchy is inherently unstable - it assumes the ethical and operational infallblity of those at the top.

A pope is as corruptible as a pauper, if not more susceptible. A top-down hierarchy allows for an intellectually lazy, disengaged underclass. Further, it nurtures self-serving behavior in those in charge (e.g., see Enron scandal).

Klein retells the story of iconic inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his lesser known, would-be competitor, Elisha Gray.

On Feb. 14, 1876, Elisha Gray entered the U.S. Patent Office. Like Bell, he meant to patent a device for "transmitting vocal sounds telegraphically." Unlike Bell, the device in his patent actually worked. But Gray was a few hours too late. Bell's representative had come earlier in the morning to assert Bell's claim. In the log books, Bell is the fifth applicant that day and Gray is the 39th. And so it is Bell's name we remember. Meanwhile, Antonio Meucci, an Italian stage technician, had applied for a "caveat" -- a placeholder patent -- five years before either Gray or Bell. But lacking the $10 necessary to pay the patent office, his claim lapsed.

The recognition that luck plays a dominant role in an individual's fortune, or in a country's fortune, or in a society's fortune, or in an institution's fortune, deflates the insidious notion of exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism The perception that a country, society, institution, movement, or time period is "exceptional" (i.e., unusual or extraordinary) in some way and thus does not need to conform to normal rules or general principles.
source: Wikipedia.

Individuals and institutions are limited in the influence they have on their good fortune.

Like Klein, I believe that public policy should, as a matter of fairness, smooth the jagged edges of fate.