Some Thoughts - by nikhil

11:44 pm - Why I haven't posted in a while

It's been several months since my last post, which is sad, but it's because I've been working on building a new blog that provides better support for publishing photos. The good news is that the new blog is just about ready, after putting several weeks of work into it.

I've been frustrated by not being able to easily publish photos using LiveJournal or any other blogging service out there, so after a bit of research, I decided to flex my perl hacking skills and add the feature to MovableType.

Not only does my new blog display photos, it's easy to upload photos (via a plugin to iPhoto) and they're displayed in a right-aligned column right next to my text posts for convenient viewing. The photos are also integrated into the RSS feed, so even if you only read my blog via a feed reader, you can still see the full albums of photos that I publish. It also features inline commenting and other nifty javascript tricks.

Check it out at nikhil.superfacts.org.

This is officially my last post to this blog, and I'm planning to start migrating my livejournal posts to my new blog soon.

Let me know what you think about the new design! Note that it does have some bugs: commenting is very slow, the "Next Set" feature doesn't work, and there are some visual snafus here and there.

01:13 am - 2 Degrees of Self-Reference - Talking about talking about talking

One thing I've noticed lately is that people can generally handle up to two degrees of self-reference on a specific topic:

No self-reference: The topic on its own (e.g. "Talking")
1st-degree self-reference: Reference the topic (e.g. Talk about "talking")
2nd-degree self-reference: Reference to the reference (e.g. We can talk about how people behave when they talk about "talking")

That's enough to make the head spin, eh?

Most human brains seem to have little difficulty understanding a single self-reference, also known as the "meta-level" (e.g. thinking about thinking). They have quite a bit more difficulty grasping a second self-reference (e.g. thinking about thinking about thinking), though it is possible after some thought (pun intentional). However, any more levels of self-reference leave the mind twisting in it's own twists.

The question is, why is that? Why can most human minds only handle a maximum of 2 levels of self-reference? Could it have something to do with human consciousness? If we're able to dive deeper into self-reference, does the truth about existence and reality become clearer? I don't have any good answers to these questions.

A similar pattern of 2nd-degree self-reference occurs in computer science, though anything of greater self-reference is very uncommon:
1) The object (e.g. a data structure)
2) A pointer to the object
3) A pointer to the pointer to the object (also known as a handle)

In a way, though, this discussion is a 3rd-degree of self-reference (a discussion that discusses discussing discussing), and the cycle can continue infinitely. I guess the real question is whether each additional level of self-reference introduces new information. No new information seems to exist when discussing self-references beyond the 2nd-degree.

Current Mood: thoughtful

12:28 pm - Eli Lilly

UPDATE: According to a statement by El Lilly, the papers that BMJ received regarding Prozac's negative effects were given to federal regulators in the 80s and 90s. So unless further news surfaces, it appears that Eli Lilly is cleared from charge #1. Issue #2 below (buying a court verdict) still remains, which is despicable but not as damning as both issues together.

ORIGINAL STORY:
I just read an article about how Eli Lilly, the company that makes Prozac, did two extremely unethical things:

1) Eli Lilly hid evidence in 1994 that Prozac causes increased levels of agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, and aggressiveness. SSRIs like Prozac have recently come under scrutiny as potentially increasing the risks of suicide in young adults. It seems that Eli Lilly knew that Prozac could cause similar behavior in all patients, including adults. They knew this at least 10 years ago, and told no one. A report describing this was sent anonymously to the British Medical Journal recently.

2) Eli Lilly nearly got away with buying a court verdict in a related case in 1994, and would have if not for the vigilant judge on the case. Eli Lilly was sued by the family of a man named Wesbecker who shot and killed 8 co-workers and wounded 12 before killing himself in 1989. The man had started taking fluoxetine (Prozac) one month before the shooting.

The plaintiffs in the Wesbecker product liability sought to show that Eli Lilly withheld negative study data from the FDA and that fluoxetine tipped Wesbecker over into a homicidal rage. Lilly won a 9 to 3 jury verdict in late 1994 and subsequently claimed that it was "proven in a court of law... that Prozac is safe and effective."

The trial judge, Justice John Potter, suspecting that a secret deal had been struck, pursued Lilly and the plaintiffs, eventually forcing Lilly in 1997 to admit that it had made a secret settlement with the plaintiffs during the trial. Infuriated by Lilly's actions, Judge Potter ordered the finding changed from a verdict in Lilly's favour to one of "dismissed as settled with prejudice," saying, "Lilly sought to buy not just the verdict but the court's judgment as well."

• Alimta, a chemotherapy regimen to treat patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma who are not candidates for surgery
  
• Symbyax, for bipolar depression
  
• Cialis, for erectile dysfunction
  
• Stratterra, a nonstimulant, noncontrolled medication for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, adolescents, and adults
  
• Forteo, for osteoporosis patients that stimulates new bone formation
  
• Xigris, for adult severe-sepsis patients at a high risk of death
  
• Evista, for the prevention and treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis
  
• Zyprexa, for schizophrenia and acute mania associated with bipolar disorder
  
• Humalog, an insulin product
  
• Gemzar, for pancreatic and non-small-cell lung cancer
  
• Humatrope, therapy for growth hormone deficiency
  
• Prozac
  
• Humulin, human insulin
  
• Ceclor, an oral antibiotic
  
• Iletin, an insulin product, available since 1923
  

11:06 pm - Book Notes: Mohammad Yunus' Banker to the Poor

Muhammad Yunus - Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

I borrowed this book from my friend (thanks Sumit!), so I couldn't underline the book (like I normally do). Instead, I've written up these book notes.

This is an excellent book that I highly recommend. It's a quick read and it's the first book I've read that sounds confident about eradicating world poverty in the next 25 years.

- "There are many ways for people to die, but somehow dying of starvation is the most unacceptable of all. It happens in slow motion. Second by second, the distance between life and death becomes smaller and smaller, until the two are in such close proximity that one can hardly tell the difference. Like sleep, death by starvation happens so quietly, so inexorably, one does not even sense it happening. And all for lack of a handful of rice at each meal. In this world of plenty, a tiny baby, who does not yet understand the mystery of the world, is allowed to cry and cry and finally fall asleep without the milk she needs to survive. The next day she may not have the strength to continue living." (vii)

- Yunus started the Grameen Bank, a bank in Bangladesh that pioneered the use of micro-lending to improve the lives of the poor. Micro-lending is a type of lending where very small amounts of money are lent at reasonable interest rates (low double-digits annually). Borrowers are extremely poor and often use the money to buy materials that they use to create a product to sell, such as using bamboo to make stools. Without micro-lending, the borrower would often borrow from moneylenders who charge exorbitant interest rates (as high as 10%/week), which allows the borrower to make enough money to survive but nothing more. In this way, micro-lending allows borrowers to break out of their work slavery to improve the lives of themselves and their families.

- "Grameen" means "rural", as the Grameen bank is devoted to helping the rural, landless poor

- The Grameen Bank serves 2.5M people in Bangladesh

- Yunus, an economics professor, started focusing on poverty after thousands of the poor moved to urban areas looking for food during a famine in 1974

- "Analyses of the causes of poverty focus largely on why some countries are poor rather than on why certain segments of the population live below the poverty line. Socially conscious economists stress the absence of 'entitlements' of the poor. What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-two years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the processes of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. As a result, poverty continues." (35)

- Definition by the Consultive Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) and the Microcredit Summit Campaign Committee: a "poor" person is someone who lives below the poverty line, and the "poorest" is someone in the bottom half of those below the poverty line.

- In the Grameen microcredit scheme, the bank will not lend to you until you're part of a group of 5 borrowers. If you fail to repay the loan, the entire group suffers because they won't receive future loans. This social pressure is in part responsible for the high level of repayment.

- Also, prospective borrowers must be trained in the rules of the bank for seven days and then pass a test. Only after this ordeal are they given a loan.

- Under Grameen I, borrowers are required to deposit 5% of their loans into a group fund which any member can borrow from interest-free. In 1998, the group fund exceeded $100M, more than the net worth of all but a few Bangladeshi companies.

Grameen repayment system:
- Loans last 1 year
- Installments are paid weekly to bank workers who come to the village of the borrower
- Repayment starts 1 week after the loan
- Interest rate is low (20% for income-generating, 8% for housing, and 5% for higher education)
- Repayment amounts to 2% of the loan amount per week for 50 weeks
- Interest payments amount to 2 taka / week for every 1000 taka of the loan amount

- They've found that lending to women does more to improve a family's well-being than lending to men (73)

- Bank managers are hired straight from college and are tasked to set up a new bank in a village and run that bank (highly entrepreneurial)

- Bangladesh has a 120M people in an area the size of Florida. Instead of telling poor countries to limit population growth, Yunus thinks that international agencies and governments should focus on improving the economy in general and the condition of the poor in particular.

Grameen's 16 Decisions (135):
1) We shall follow and advance the 4 principles of the Grameen Bank - discipline, unity, courage, and hard work - in all walks of our lives.
2) Prosperity we shall bring to our families
3) We shall not live in a dilapidated house. We shall repair our houses and work toward constructing new houses at the earliest opportunity.
4) We shall grow vegetables all year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.
5) During the plantation season, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible
6) We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize expenditures. We shall look after our health.
7) We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.
8) We shall always keep our children and the environment clean
9) We shall build and use pit latrines
10) We shall drink water from tube wells. If they are not available, we shall boil water or use alum to purify it.
11) We shall not take any dowry at our sons' weddings; neither shall we give any dowry at our daughter's wedding. We shall keep the center free from the curse of the dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.
12) We shall not commit any injustice, and we will oppose anyone who tries to do so.
13) We shall collectively undertake larger investments for higher incomes
14) We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help him or her.
15) If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any center, we shall all go there and help restore discipline
16) We shall introduce physical exercises in all our centers. We shall take part in all social activities collectively.

- Most hand-outs endeavor to train the recipients; Grameen bank hands out cash without any attempt to provide skills training.

- According to Yunus, "the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty." (141)

- Yunus believes that credit should be considered a basic human right

- Aid workers, such as those from the World Bank, are usually promoted based on how much money they disburse, not the impact of the disbursement on the quality of life. Because of this, they often spend a lot of money that doesn't even make it to the country's poor. According to a research institution in Bangladesh, of the $30B Bangladesh has received in foreign aid over the past 26 years, 75% was NOT spent in Bangladesh (it was spent on equipment, commodities, and consultants from the donor country).

- $50-55B / year is given in international aid to countries, and only 25% is actually spent in the country

- Rather than base success on changes in GNP (gross national product), international aid's success should be based on positive measurable change in per capita income of the bottom 50% of the population

- To improve the World Bank, Yunus would move the HQ from Washington DC to Dhaka, so that 1) improvements would happen faster given the close proximity to poverty, 2) people who aren't 100% devoted to fighting poverty would leave, and 3) it would reduce costs

- Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (Grameen replication program in Malaysia) services 42,000 families, half of all Malaysians living below the poverty line

Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), a Grameen replication in the Philipines:
- 70% of borrowers are landless and own houses worth less than $550
- 97% of borrowed money is used in income-generating activities
- Borrowers' average rate of return is 117% (144% for people who borrowed 5 or more times)
- Loans generated 163 days of employment for borrowers each year and 84 additional days for family members
- Labor productivity is 36% higher than the prevailing wage rate

- There are 65 Grameen replication projects in 27 countries, which have disbursed $444M in loans to 1.14M poor people

- Goal to reach 10M borrowers through replication programs by 2005, for which the Grameen Trust will need $2.2B

- The Grameen People's Fund - raising $100M for the Grameen Trust, which lends to replication programs, by getting 1M people to donate $100 ($142,000 raised so far)

- Welfare laws in the US create disincentives for welfare recipients to work. If they earn a dollar, it must be reported to the welfare authority and a dollar will be deducted from their next welfare check. Welfare recipients are also not allowed to borrow money from an institution (thought this law has changed in Illinois). This holds back microcredit, because borrowers are afraid after they calculate the amount of welfare money and insurance coverage they would lose if they became self-employed. Additionally, if a poor person receives benefits from a charity program, the charity program may not allow the person to be self-employed.

- In 1996, Grameen borrowers were elected to 6% of all elected government positions, which proved that once they grew in self-esteem they would readily express their opinions

- Grameen Bank Bangladesh has 2.6M borrowers and loaned $3.9B since it was started. $3.6B has been repaid, with a recovery rate of 98%. 95% of the borrowers are women. It has 1,181 branches, works in 42,127 villages, and has a staff of 11,777. The Bank no longer borrows money, as it's fully self-sufficient. The bank has made a profit every year except 1983, 1991, and 1992

- Some borrowers' capacity to borrow, invest, and repay had increased 50x in 10 years

- Grameen's goal is to make their villages "poverty-free", which means that each family has to
1) have a house with a tin roof
2) have beds or cots for all members of the family
3) have access to safe drinking water
4) have access to a sanitary latrine
5) have all school-age children attending school
6) have sufficient warm clothing for the winter
7) have mosquito nets
8) have a home vegetable garden
9) have no food shortages, even during the most difficult time of a very difficult year
10) have sufficient income-earning opportunities for all adult members of the family

- "There is little doubt that the free market, as now organized, does not provide solutions to all social ills. It provides neither economic opportunities nor access to health and education for the poor or elderly. Even so, I believe that government, as we now know it, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement, the justice system, national defense, and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a "Grameenized private sector". a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over its other functions." (204)
- I'm not sure I agree with Yunus on this point. He received most of his initial funding from government sources, so I would certainly add "credit" to the list of services the government should provide. Additionally, it's not clear to me that social services like public education, museums, and social security, while not in the best shape by far, will be in better shape if the government backed out entirely. Yunus later argues that the government should control policies that incent entrepreneurs to get involved, but they should not actually provide the services. This seems like it could work.

- Yunus believes that hand-outs only "increases their misery, robs them of incentive and, more important, of self-respect."

- "Somehow we have persuaded ourselves that the capitalist economy must be fueled only by greed. This has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Only the profit maximizers get to play in the marketplace and try their luck. People who are not motivated by profit making stay away from it, condemn it, and search for alternatives. We can condemn the private sector for all its mistakes, but we cannot justify why we ourselves are not trying to change things, not trying to make things better by participating in the economy. The private sector, unlike the government, is open to everyone, even those not interested in making a profit." (205)

- Yunus proposes 2 changes to capitalism:
1) View every single human being as a potential entrepreneur, so that every person has the choice to be an entrepreneur or a wage earner. Today we view most people as wage earners, which affects the incentives and services that we offer them.
2) An entrepreneur maximizes two things: a) profit and b) social returns, subject to the condition that profit cannot be negative (often called the "double bottom-line"). Today, corporate law in the US requires maximization of profits and nothing more.

- Grameen Generalised System (GGS, or Grameen II) offers a basic loan and a flexible loan, if the borrower undergoes hardship and needs a different repayment schedule, etc. Loans can also now be for any duration, as designed by the staff member. It also includes a pension plan that the borrower must pay into if they take a large enough loan, and from which they get disbursements after 10 years. There is also a loan insurance program in case the borrower dies.

- 70% of all outstanding loans are from borrowers' savings deposits.

Branches can now receive stars, with the goal of having all branches becoming Five Star branches:
- Green stars for 100% repayment
- Blue stars for earning a profit
- Violet stars for generating a surplus of deposits over loans
- Brown stars for ensuring 100% of Grameen children are being educated
- Red stars for taking 100% of their families over the poverty line

- The goal of the Microcredit Summit of 1997 is to touch 100M families with microcredit by 2005 (26.8M people living on less than $1/day received microcredit from 1996-2001)

- Every day, 35,000 children die from hunger-related diseases

- 20% of the world's people live in extreme poverty

- Yunus' final message is that we need to encourage social entrepreneurs to eradicate poverty in the first several decades of the 21st century. This is feasible, just as slavery, apartheid, and smallpox have been eradicated. Poverty will be something that one only sees in museums.

11:09 pm - Book Notes - Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People

Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends & Influence People

I highly recommend this book to everyone. It's one of the top 5 books I've read in the past year. I've already used his advice numerous times in my dealings with people, and found that I'm already more effective at encouraging people to get things done (though I still have a long way to go). Below are the basic principles, though it's the example stories that he gives in the book that are most convincing. Numerous times I found myself smiling after reading one of his anecdotes, thinking, "Damn, that was clever and brilliant."

Part 1: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1) Don't criticize
2) Praise
3) Arouse desire

Part 2: Six Ways to Make People Like You
1) Be genuinely interested in people
2) Smile
3) Remember names
4) Listen intently
5) Talk to your audience's interests
6) Make them feel important

Part 3: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
1) Avoid argument
2) Never say "you're wrong"
3) When you're wrong, admit it
4) Begin in a friendly way
5) Get the person saying "yes, yes"
6) Let the other person do the talking
7) Let the other person think the idea is hers
8) See things from the other person's point-of-view
9) Be sympathetic to the other person's ideas & desires
10) Appeal to nobler motives
11) Dramatize your ideas
12) Throw down a challenge / encourage competition

Part 4: Be a Leader
1) Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2) Provide negative feedback indirectly
3) Talk about your mistakes before criticizing
4) Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
5) Let the other person save face
6) Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise"
7) Give the other person a reputation to live up to
8) Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9) Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest

10:27 am - Santa Claus and God

I think the myth of Santa Claus can be seen as training for children to believe in the Christian God. There are numerous similarities:

1) They both instill morals by using fear and gifts. Santa knows "if you've been naughty or nice" and will get you more gifts if you've been good. God knows all of your sins, and if you don't do good and believe in Jesus, you're damned.

2) They both do the impossible. Santa rides on a sleigh through the sky and pushes his way down the chimneys of chimney-less houses. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. In this way, Santa is like a god, able to do the impossible.

03:18 pm - 12/4/2004 Weekly Report

Last 2 weeks:
* Worked on Google Desktop Search
* Started reading Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People (great so far)
* Went home to L.A. for Thanksgiving
* Went to Sierra Madre Congregation Church with Becca and Lindy
* Donated CS Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to in-store Barnes and Noble "Buy a book for a child" program

This week:
* Work on Google Desktop Search
* Finish How to Win Friends...
* Start Joseph Stiglitz - Globalization and Its Discontents
* Find out about acting classes
* Bike 20 miles around Lake Merritt

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10:52 am - 11/20/04 Weekly Report

Last 2 weeks:
* Worked on Google Desktop Search
* Got my car back and put some great new tires on it (BDGoodrich Traction T/A) - I highly recommend them, very sticky and made me feel much safer in my car.
* Identified 3 web-based data input sources for Super Facts
* Finished reading Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven - OK, though a bit long and not as good as Into the Wild
* Went to church at Bethany United Methodist

Next week:
* Work on Google Desktop Search
* Read Manufacturing Consent and The Nature of International Society
* Respond to an email about parecon, an alternative economic system
* Thanksgiving!

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12:13 pm - 11/7/04 Weekly Report

Last week:
* Worked on Google Desktop Search
* Finished reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone - Excellent book. Best book I've read in the past 6 months. Highly recommend it.
* Continued reading Manning's The Nature of International Society
* Continued work on Super Facts - researched sources and improved metrics

This week:
* Work on Google Desktop Search
* Continue work on Super Facts - identify data sources
* Continue reading The Nature of International Society
* Do sit-ups and push-ups and run everyday
* Get car back from shop

12:09 am - Book Notes - Mark Juergensmeyer's Gandhi's Way

Mark Juergensmeyer - Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution

* When resolving a conflicy, we should imagine a solution that includes the best features of both sides of an argument so that we create a "win-win" situation
    - each side has some portion of truch in its possession

* We should incorporate the solution into the struggle itself - the way you fight and the goal for which you are fighting are the same

* Redirect the focus of a fight from persons to principles

* Ways of resolving a conflict:
1) Forced victory - removes the person but the underlying conflict between principles remains
2) Accomodation & compromise - let each side win a little, but each side loses a little as well
3) Arbitration & law - judge which side is right, but often neglect the truth in the loser's position
4) Satyagraha (*best*) - attempts to find a new position, more inclusive than the old ones, and moves into it

* No doubt in Gandhi's mind that one could find the right way to act in any situation

* Truth is those things that defend life, enhance life, allow life to flourish, and bring lives together in harmony

* "Violence" includes any coercion, be it physical, verbal, or emotional, and violence should not be used to solve a problem. If you try to use violence to win a peaceful end, you will fail, Gandhi argued.

* "No action which is not voluntary can be called moral."

* Noncooperation is a potent force for breaking the structures of authority

* 10 basic principles:
1) Do not avoid confrontation
2) Stay open to communication and self-criticism
3) Find a resolution and hold fast to it
4) Regard your opponent as a potential ally
5) Make your tactics consistent with the goal
6) Be flexible
7) Be temperate
8) Be proportionate
9) Be disciplined
10) Know when to quit

* Necessary prerequisites to a Gandhian solutoin:
1) The eagerness for a harmonious outcome
2) The determination of both sides to stand by the truth
3) The ability of both to imagine other options

* Double advocacy - the idea that one should attempt to argue for the truth of both sides of a dispute

* Create counter-structures to those you seek to abolish

12:01 am - Brief Book Notes - Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Upton Sinclair - The Jungle (1960 Signet Classic)

* This book was critical in the creation of the FDA and USDA and other gov't policies to enforce better working conditions in the meat-packing industry and slaughterhouses.

* Some good quotes:

"His notes are never true, and his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and scratches on the high; but these things they heed no more than they heed the dirt and noise and squalor about them - it is out of this material that they have to build their lives, with it that they have to utter their souls." (12)

"To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat - and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going." (18)

"Had he not just gotten a job, and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine?" (36)

".. the man who minded his own business and did his work - why, they would 'speed him up' till they had worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter." (64)

"It might be true that, strive as he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go down and be destroyed! The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those who were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them! It was true, it was true - that here in this huge city, with its stores of heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and be destroyed by the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever they were in the days of the cave men!" (118)

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03:56 pm - Mind Control via Precise Thought Insertion

Alarm, wake up, take shower, brush teeth, put in contacts, put on clothes, put on shoes, pack bag, drive to the train, take the train to the shuttle, take the shuttle to work, do work, read email, go to meetings, eat lunch, go to meetings, read email, do work, leave work, take shuttle to train, take train to home, drive home, take off shoes, take off clothes, consider dinner, make dinner, eat dinner, read, write, talk, listen, take out contacts, brush teeth, jump into bed, check alarm, sleep...

That's what I do on an average weekday (weekends are a bit more varied).

But what do I think about during all that time?

On any given day, we each have 57,600 seconds (960 minutes) of time to use the most powerful tool known to human beings - our conscious minds. That means we can have several thousand thoughts during the day. What do we think about during each of those seconds? How many of those thoughts are shared with others?

Seems to me that our thoughts behave like leaves blowing every which way in the wind. One second, they're flying in one direction, only to be deflected by an up-swell to jetty off on another current. So the question on my mind is, what is the wind?

The wind can be almost anything from our surroundings: the roses outside the window, the black Mercedes that just drove by, the tightness in our shoulders, the dog barking outside. Each of these stimuli may introduce a new thought into our heads, which may set off a chain reaction of relationships and other new thoughts. Thoughts inserted in this abstract way will be different across different people. The roses may remind me of American Beauty (the movie) but may remind you of last Valentine's Day. And there isn't any clear actor who is doing the actual thought insertion.

There is one thought-insertion mechanism that is particularly precise and powerful: language. Whether written or spoken, language is the most effective way to achieve precise thought insertion and thereby mind control, for what is our conscious mind but a series of conscious thoughts?

During any given day, an individual is exposed to hundreds of advertisements - on billboards, magazines, TV, radio, newspapers, Internet, mail, email, and every other medium I've missed. The principal purpose of these ads is to get us to think or act in a specific way. The most reliable way to do this is to insert thoughts inside our heads, and achieve subtle mind control.

As you read this blog, the thought-stream in your head is dictated precisely by the text on this page. In effect, I, as the author, am inserting thoughts inside your head and controlling your mind, if only for brief periods of time. If you really listen to someone when they speak, your thought-stream is again dictated precisely by what the speaker is saying. What happens to those thoughts after they get inside is of course dependent on the individual's unique state of mind. And the insertion may be less precise if the individual is distracted, sleepy, unfocused, or day-dreaming.

Note that writing also provides positive feedback to the author's mind, because as he reads and revises his writing, his thoughts get repeatedly inserted and refined in his mind. Note also that art also functions to insert thoughts, though not very precisely.

Nonetheless, in the vast majority of people, language is the most effective way to achieve mind control through precise thought insertion.

Is there any way to block or slow-down such thought insertion? People commonly use a couple techniques: skimming instead of reading the text on a page or not really listening when someone speaks. Both of these techniques blur the thought-insertion and reduce its effectiveness. Advertising, esp. written advertising, is more difficult to blur. Just by reading the billboard, you've given up control of your mind for a few seconds.

Effective personal mind control that is immune to insertion of specific thoughts is hard to achieve. I'm not advocating that we should have closed minds, but rather ones that are selectively, consciously open. I've found that meditation and exercise can help hone one's personal mind control.

I guess in it's young state our minds aren't actually solely our own but a shared space for communication and influence. As we learn, age, and grow, it becomes more important to understand the thought insertion effect if we want to regain control our minds as our own.

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11:59 pm - 10/31/04 Weekly Report

Last week:
* Worked on Google Desktop Search
* Continued reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone
* Started reading Manning's The Nature of International Society
* Responded to Brian Dominick regarding Parecon

This week:
* Work on Google Desktop Search
* Finish reading Bowling Alone
* Continue reading The Nature of International Society and Manufacturing Consent
* Continue work on metric and algorithm definition and mock-ups for Super Facts
* Do sit-ups and push-ups everyday
* Get car back from shop

02:46 pm - Voting in the Nov 2004 Elections

Here's how I'm planning to vote in the 2004 November Federal, California, and Local elections. Some of these are complicated, but this is based on the best understanding I have so far:

FEDERAL AND STATE
* President and VP - DAVID COBB & PAT LA MARCHE, Green (focused on universal health care, education, a living wage, sustainable development)
* US Senator - MARSHA FEINLAND, Peace & Freedom (focused on good education, universal health care, less aggressive foreign policy, human capital and community - see candidate statement)
* US Representative - ELLEN TAUSCHER, Democratic
* State Senator (D 7) - TOM TORLAKSON, Democratic
* State Assembly (D 15) - ELAINE SHAW, Democratic

CALIFORNIA BALLOT MEASURES (PROPOSITIONS)
1A - YES (protect local revenues)
59 - YES (increase public access to govt meetings)
60 - NO (tough one - voted for 62 instead)
60A - YES (revenue from sale of excess land used to pay off bonds)
61 - NO (don't need more debt to remodel hospitals, as long as they work)
62 - YES (would increase moderate candidates on general ballot)
63 - YES (tax rich to expand mental health services)
64 - YES (if I see someone doing something wrong, I should be able to sue them even if I don't suffer any loss)
65 - NO (no one is supporting this anymore - 1A replaces this)
66 - YES (limit three strikes to violent and serious crimes)
67 - YES (we need to keep our ERs up and running)
68 - NO (no longer supported by anyone)
69 - NO (we don't need a DNA library of all felons)
70 - NO (native american should not have to pay taxes to the CA govt)
71 - YES (stem cell research will help people)
72 - YES (businesses with >20 employees are required to provide health insurance)

LOCAL ELECTIONS
Supervisor 3rd District - MILLIE GREENBERG
Walnut Creek City Council - GWEN REGALIA, GARY SKREL, CHARLIE ABRAMS
BART Director - GAIL MURRAY
AA (BART Earthquake Safety Bond) - NO (BART survived the last quake just fine)
J - YES (expanding transportation increases economic activity, which is good)
City Clerk of Walnut Creek to be apponted? - NO (don't need to give city more power taken from its residents)

Leave a comment if you think I'm voting the wrong way.

Working for effective change will happen by voting your conscience, not your fear. - Janice Jordan

12:56 pm - 10/23/04 Weekly Report

Last week:
* Worked on Google Desktop Search
* Started reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone
* Continued reading Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent
* Responded to Michael Albert and Brian Dominick regarding Parecon
* Purchased superfacts.org domain

This week:
* Work on Google Desktop Search
* Continue reading Bowling Alone and Manufacturing Consent
* Continue work on metric definition and mock-ups for Super Facts
* Do sit-ups and push-ups everyday
* Get car fixed

11:22 am - Opening a Dialogue: What I think we should do to improve our economic system

What follows below is a letter I've been working on since July. I recently finished reading Michael Albert's Parecon: Life After Capitalism. He proposes an alternative economic system to capitalism, and though I didn't agree with many of his points, I think we share many of the same values. Interested in opening a dialogue with him and others about improving our economic system, I sent him the following letter:


October 3, 2004

Dear Michael Albert,

I recently finished reading your latest book, Parecon: Life After Capitalism. I really enjoyed reading it. I had several comments about the book and our current economic system, which I wanted to share with you. Further, I had several questions about the participatory economic system, which I was hoping you could answer.

I hope that this letter fosters a productive dialogue between us.


My Motivation and Goals
Over the past several months I've begun to realize that though capitalism is the best, scalable economic system that we have, it isn't good enough. In my mind, it's biggest flaw is that it doesn't require that people's incentives be in line with their values. Frequently, people will take actions that are contrary to their values because the incentives are high enough. For example, a mother may work 15 hours a day and never see her kid because she's trying to get promoted. She may sacrifice a good relationship with her child in exchange for greater material wealth. As another example, a typical cost-conscious consumer will purchase the cheapest item available even though the low price may be due to the fact that its producers receive no health care, a low wage, and poor working conditions.

I've been trying to conceive of a new economic system where one's incentives would be in line with one's values, and it was with this background that I excitedly began reading your book.

Fundamentally, I believe that you and I both share the same goals. We both agree that we should live in a world that supports equity, self-management, diversity, solidarity and efficiency through cooperation and healthy competition. The first several chapters that articulated these goals were fantastic.

In my mind, we need an economic system that also includes the following values:
1) Respect for all people
2) Freedom and independence for all people
3) Empowering and diverse work for all people

I think we need a system where people not only do what they enjoy, but also do what they are best at which is also best for society as a whole. Sounds like a win-win-win situation that we need to create and perpetuate. It would also be nice to have a system that maximizes the motivating potential of non-material incentives, such as trust, friendship, and esteem.

Ideally, this system would also produce a high quality of life that includes the following:
1) Universal Food, Water and Power
2) Universal Education
3) Universal Health Care
4) Universal Employment
5) Universal Insurance
6) Ethical Foreign Policy

What follows includes various comments and questions I had on parts of your book. All page numbers reference the 2004 paperback edition of Parecon published by Verso.



Human Behavior and Materialism
"... in any economy individuals rationally orient their preferences toward opportunities that will be relatively plentiful and away from those that will be relatively scarce." (54)

I don't think that this is always true. For example, it's the preference for the expensive, scarce product that gets many people up in the morning. Big houses are scarce, but nearly everyone wants one. Diamonds are scarce, and nearly everyone wants them. Striving to realize an individual's preference for a scarce product yields high levels of satisfaction for many people.

Existing generations crave material wealth so much, it seems, that I see it being nearly impossible to give up. Whether it is socialized or natural doesn't matter; the fact is that it exists, and I see a transition to a less materialistic society as being nearly impossible and possibly not even worthwhile. Parecon may still be a materialistic society, but I don't think it would flourish in that way. Also, "fun" is a highly valued behavior, and it is tied very closely with materialism, thought it needn't be.

Question: How do we allow for "fun" in a parecon?



Capitalism and Markets
I agree that "markets don't necessarily measure the value of outputs in tune with the outputs' true social benefits." (60) Your example of the value of plastic surgery vs. the value of a clinic in a poor community is an effective one. As you say, markets don't account for the negative or positive external effects of some goods, leading markets to "mis-measure contribution in systemic and socially harmful ways." (61) Not accounting for externalities is a self-enforcing positive feedback system, which leads to even greater unaccounted-for externalities as consumers purchase more of these "cheap" products.


"In sum, capitalist globalization produces poverty, ill health, shortened life spans, reduced quality of life, and ecological collapse." (4)

I think that this is an inaccurate and unfair assessment of capitalist globalization. Clearly the life span within developed countries has increased over the past several centuries under a capitalist system, as has the typical person's material wealth. I agree that our environment was abused during this time, and I think it's reasonable to expect that now that we've achieved a great deal of wealth, it is time to address the needs of the environment. To put it another way: I would never fault someone for cutting down portions of the rain forest if he needs the wood for survival, heat, or shelter. But once we've achieved an adequate standard of living and the rain forest is now being used for wants beyond the needs of human survival and health services, it is clear that the environment should be prioritized above these wants. With respect to poverty, I also disagree with your statement. The number of people living on less than $1 per day has dropped from 35% to 12%, adjusted for inflation, in the past 20 years, according to a recent Institute for International Economics report. Clearly they still live in poverty, but I think it's inaccurate to say that this poverty was produced by capitalism. Rather, capitalism has overall produced a net reduction in poverty, but clearly more should be done.

Question: Do you have evidence that, over a long period of time (>20 years), capitalism has resulted in an increase in overall poverty?


"There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down." (34)

I don't think this is true. Profits can go up in a variety of ways that don't force wages to go down. For example, profits may rise if revenues rise, or if new technology is used that increases the profit margin of each product sold.


"That is, the lack of concrete qualitative information and the obscuring of social ties and connections in market economies make cooperation difficult, while competitive pressures make cooperation irrational." (66)

I don't think this is true. Competition can also encourage cooperation between some groups, though perhaps not between all groups. For example, a company competing with a market power, such as Microsoft, is incented to partner and cooperate with other companies who are competing with the market power, even if this reduces their mutual competition. Successfully competing with your largest rival can be a greater benefit than the cost of not competing with your lesser rivals. Also, cooperation can breed dependence, which is another way to compete with a strategic competitor (e.g. this is why Google encouraged Yahoo to license Google's web search technology even though they were competitors).

I agree that markets are not just a funnel for greed but also a system that perpetuates greed.


"In each market transaction one party gains more only if the other party gains less." (67)

I don't think this is true. Win-win situations exist. For example, one party may offer technology to another party to increase their productivity, whereby both parties gain by each gaining more. If the technology company earns more, it will produce more productivity technology. And if the technology-receiving company earns more by purchasing the technology, they will continue to purchase more technology because it's in the company's best interest.


"In short, in a realistic world of unequal economic power the most effective profit maximizing strategy is often to maneuver at the expense of those with less economic power so as to re-slice the pie (even while shrinking it) rather than to work to expand the pie." (73)

I don't think this is true. Most companies want to grow, and the easiest way to grow is if the market in which the company operates grows. If the market grows, the demand grows, which means the company can just continue doing what it's doing and sell more of its products because their is a larger audience. Jockeying to take market share from competitors in the same market or different markets, thereby reducing the size of the pie, is frequently a much more difficult and daunting task. I guess it depends on the maturity of the market. If the market is young, growing the market is easier. If the market is mature, than you may be willing to destroy your competitors at the expense of shrinking the pie, assuming you get more customers overall.


"Anyway, anyone who knows anything about business in capitalism knows that upper-level workers spend much of the time they are not worrying about protocol, daydreaming, gossiping on the phone, and worrying about interoffice competitions." (195)

This is not necessarily true, and depends on the office. Where I work (Google), executives tend to work harder than anyone else.


"What determines availability in capitalism? The aims and motives of owners, a fact which significantly restricts options." (212)

Consumers also have great power over what is made available. Both influence each other - I don't think it's just a one-way street.


"Moreover, too often material reward is merely an imperfect substitute for what is truly desired: social esteem. How else can one explain why those who already have more wealth than they can ever use continue to accumulate more?" (250)

They may enjoy their work and it may earn them a lot of money, so they accumulate more of it.

Research and development are not under-supplied in a market economy, as you suggest on 251-252. I would agree with you if you said that those funds could be spent on more socially-valuable R&D, such as micro-lending research and technology for low-cost water purifiers.


"Once upon a time people chafed at the idea that slavery would be abolished and their 'freedom to own slaves' eliminated. We believe the logic of justice requires the pareconish restrictions on 'individual freedom' just as the logic of justice places restrictions on the freedom to profit from private ownership of productive property or of slaves." (256)

Effective analogy, but not sure sure it's appropriate. When one person's freedom impinges so directly on another's, such as with slavery, this is clearly immoral. However, it's not equivalent to one person's freedom indirectly impinging on another's, such as through job selection or property ownership. I think we're abusing the meaning of the word "freedom" in this case. We shouldn't confuse "freedom" with "ability" or "skill" or "talent". "Freedom" guarantees an opportunity, not a result from that opportunity.



Summary of My Thoughts on Parecon
Here are my thoughts on the principal tenets of parecon:

1) Social rather than private ownership.
I'm not sure this is better, since it removes the greatest incentive that people have to work, the materialism of private ownership.

2) Nested worker and consumer councils and balanced job complexes rather than corporate workplace organization.
I think councils are inefficient. Balanced job complexes do seem worthwhile.

3) Remuneration for effort and sacrifice rather than for property, power and output.
I think you should remunerate for output, effort, and need (more about that below). I think you should also limit the financial benefit gained by owning the means of production if possible, though I don't think this is a requirement.

4) Participatory planning rather than markets or central planning.
I think participatory planning will be very inefficient, because it encourages bureaucracy.

5) Participatory self-management rather than class rule.
Decision-making power dependent on impact of the decision on you seems worthwhile.



Parecon: General Issues
"If we examine not the rarified world of perfect models, but the real world of actual social processes, the case becomes stronger because the fall-off in achievement in parecon as we move from theory to the real world is quite modest, but the fall-off in performance of the other models is huge and destructive." (146-147)

Questions: How do you know? How are you comparing the difference between theory and practice to achieve the theory? How do you know that parecon is better? Have you tried it on the scale that other social economic models have been tried?


"A parecon would not have the type of 'boom and bust' cycles that plague market economies." (206)

Question: Why not?


"Although additional participation by citizens requires that more of their time go to managing collective consumption than under capitalism, it is less time than they previously spent compensating for the ills induced by profit-motivated decisions." (211)

Question: How do you know?

It seems to me that they would take equivalent time, though most people would find profit-seeking more rewarding.


"In a parecon you do not rise in the eyes of your neighbors or peers due to owning more, but for your personal qualities and achievements." (250)

Questions: How are you going to change what is perceived to be human nature, that is, respect for material wealth?

Questions: How is the actual implementation of parecon going? Are there other locations outside of South End Press where people are experimenting with implementing parecon?

Question: How would war be financed in a parecon?

Questions: What about the free-rider problem? If no one had to work in order to survive, wouldn't the free-rider problem incur costs so high that it could place the entire system in jeopardy?



Parecon: Remuneration
"To reward and punish people for things they cannot control violates the same basic tenet of social justice that says it is unfair to pay differently according to race or sex." (37)

I think that this is also untrue. People will be rewarded or punished for various things in their lives, some of which is genetically determined, socially determined, or determined by free will. Discrimination is wrong only when it is irrational. Discrimination based on skill level is completely moral and just: if one individual can do the job better than the other, there is no good or moral reason why the more competent person shouldn't be offered the job. Sexism and racism are defined to be wrong only when people are punished primarily because of their race or sex, not their ability. Arguing that a person should be rewarded even if they are not the best performer because the best performer has an innate advantage is unfair, in my opinion. If we care about performance, the best performer should be rewarded to encourage future performers.

Of course, certain groups of people have certain skill sets due to their access to education, so I firmly believe that access to education should not be limited if you have a lower skill set. Affirmative action helps level the field and enforce greater social justice, and I support it.

The argument of "control" is a tenuous one. The nature vs. nurture debate is far from resolved, so it is unclear to say what exactly a specific person controls about their behavior.

Questions: Does a genetic disposition to work hard mean that they should receive less, because they have an inborn talent to work hard? How are we to even know this? Is a decision to go to medical school, induced by parental and social pressure, under an individual's control?

The line is blurry, so I believe that in practical terms it is difficult to implement this dubious morality, and it may even be immoral.


"To use the terminology of economists: in a market system with effort-governed wages, goods made directly or indirectly by labor whose effort wages were higher than their marginal revenue product would sell at prices higher than their real costs, while goods made directly or indirectly by labor whose effort wages were lower than their marginal revenue product would sell at prices lower than their real costs." (63)

I don't understand why MRP is relevant here, or what your definition of "real costs" is. If prices are primarily dependent on wages and not on demand (value of output), it makes sense that prices will rise if wages rise, and fall if wages fall.

Question: Why would misallocation and misvaluing of goods increase compared with today if we enforce wages according to effort/sacrifice?


"If payment is equal for equal effort, there is no incentive for people to train themselves to be most socially valuable." (233)

I completely agree, though I don't think parecon addresses this.


"If the allocation of duties, responsibilities, sacrifices, and rewards are fair, and is seen to be fair, as in a parecon, one's sense of social duty will be a more powerful incentive than it is today." (234)

Question: Why?

Today I see individuals give back to their society or university mostly when it is blatantly clear that they benefitted hugely from that experience and their wealth today is in some part owed to the people who helped them in the past. An example of this is when a wealthy alumnus donates a library to his alma mater. Not sure how a parecon induces this feeling of debt.

In a parecon, individuals are incented primarily to work longer, not to work smarter, which can lead to overall inefficiency in work over time, as innovations are repeatedly passed up.

Overall, you advocate remuneration based on effort, sacrifice, and need, rather than one based on output or inborn talent or skills. Therefore, remuneration would mostly be a function of hours spent working and intensity per hour work. However, what if work duration and intensity are not always consciously controlled? Rather, it could be the result of inborn talents or social circumstances such as available resources, education, childhood environment, and socialization. I would argue that work duration and intensity are less consciously controllable than you think. This contradicts your belief that remuneration should not be based on innate talent or uncontrollable circumstances. Instead of remuneration based solely on effort, I believe that we should have a system where remuneration is based on output in addition to effort and need. There are too many situations where you could spent a lot of effort trying to produce something that few want, which leads to lower social benefit than producing something that many want. Seems like remuneration should be based on the social benefit of your work as well as effort and need, which helps create a compassionate society.

Questions: If your sum marginal revenue product is higher than everyone else's, which means that you contributed more than anyone else, don't you deserve more? Isn't that fair?

Remuneration should partially be based on impact of work, which can be approximated by looking at the marginal revenue product.



Parecon: Balanced Job Complexes
A balanced job complex sounds great, though I'm not sure it should be a requirement for everyone who works. If someone excels at a specific task (such as a physicist) and the overall social benefit would be lower if they didn't spend all their time on it, I don't think they should be forced to have a balanced job complex. The overall social good or value that would be generated would likely be decreased, though it's hard to know for sure.

Having a balanced job complex removes a significant incentive: people work harder knowing that it will pay off with a better job in the future.

Question: Won't the removal of this incentive result in a drop in productivity?

Maybe not, because it would increase initial productivity because workers will be more happy and satisfied with their work. This effect is probably more significant, so balanced job complexes should increase productivity overall.

Another significant assumption that you make is that everyone prefers creative tasks over rote tasks. I don't think this is necessarily true, as some may excel at rote tasks or prefer them because they are easy, or for some other reason.


"So the workweek would go from about 40 hours to 13, in that scenario, over 40 years, with no loss of fulfillment or in output earmarked to engender socially beneficial progress." (243)

Questions: How can you be so sure that socially beneficial output would have remained unchanged? Also, what are the social consequences of a 13-hour work week? What would people do with all of their time? Will they just consume more?

Often people who don't know what to do with their time exhibit greater levels of depression because they lack meaningful activities in their lives.

I think that individuals should be able to choose how much they work as their productivity increases. Also, the benefit of competition is more on focusing effort than on increasing effort, though it tends to do both.

Question: How do you think we should balance the costs and benefits of working more or working less as our per hour productivity increases?



Parecon: Councils and Planning
I think that the market as a mechanism for allocation is the best system we have so far, and using councils instead would dramatically increase inefficiency such that overall social benefit would be reduced.


"To enjoy output responsibly, in contrast, consumers ought to consider what they would like to have from the social product, either as individuals or in collective association with their family, neighbors, or others." (91)

Question: Do you really think that consumers would participate in such considerations, seeing how we do nearly none of it today (e.g. low voter turnout)?

Question: How do you arrive at the decision-making process?

Given a group of passionate individuals, deciding on how to decide is often the most difficult and contentious step, so I don't think you should assume that there will be agreement on the mechanisms of the decision-making process.


"Participatory workers must weigh the gains from working less or using less productive though more fulfilling techniques, against the consequent loss of consumer well being. Likewise, participatory consumers must weight the benefits of consumption requests against the sacrifices required to produce them." (123)

Question: How do you get people to plan?

Thinking ahead and planning is a task that takes a good deal of effort.

Much of the participatory planning process assumes a) that individuals know what they want, and b) that individuals want to plan (128). Consumers don't always know what they want. For example, it's difficult for someone to predict that they want a car or cell phone or computer before it's been developed and made available at a reasonable price or before their friends have one. Further, planning requires great effort and forethought, which most people don't do. You can look at our consumer credit debt (~$2000 per household on average) as evidence of our general reluctance to plan.

Participatory planning also doesn't account for fads and trends, requiring consumption of such items for much longer or much shorter periods than before. If the fad is popular during the budgeting process, society may over-allocate resources to its production. If the fad is popular 6 months after the budgeting process, it may never see the light of day.


"To these ends, in participatory planning, when the residents of a smaller council propose some desired collective consumption (a pool or a changed energy delivery mechanism), the proposal has to not only gain support in their own council, but must also be delivered to more encompassing councils above. So a proposal may go from a neighborhood up to a town and then to a city, a county, and so on, and likewise it may go from a state to a region and on to a country." (140)

To me this sounds like the tyranny of the masses, the inefficient bureaucracy. This doesn't sound empowering at all, but very unempowering. My neighbors and I have to consult with basically the whole world (exaggerating of course) if we want to build a pool? Not only is this unempowering, it sounds incredibly inefficient.

Questions: How exactly are indicative prices calculated and revised? What happens if you don't fulfill your production promises? I assume you lose consumption privileges? How are people incented to weigh the social costs of their consumptive actions?


"There are no competing companies producing products, only 'product industries' creating diverse styles and qualities of goods for different purposes, all with the intention that everyone get what best meets their needs." (217)

Without competition, I don't think that the best products will be produced.


"It is hard to see any way facilitation board workers (whom we call facilitators for short) could gain by maliciously biasing data even if they went about their work without supervision." (222)

Why? Maybe they want to increase the quality of their job complexes? If we are committed to implementing a parecon, we need to closely examine the new incentives that will lead individuals to do unexpected things in a parecon. Another example: those who decide job rotations or balancing are incented to give their family and friends better rotations or balances.


"Decision-making authority can be assigned in proportion to how decisions affect people." (230)

This may lead to the rise of special-interests, which are a small group of individuals who gain much more per person than the rest of society loses per person, and thus are incented the most to see that decisions go in their favor.

Another goal should be to reduce the overall time spent running the economy (I think we agree here). However, in a parecon, more time would be spent in meetings simply because you would have to meet with more people, since more people would be involved in more decisions. Enforcement of democratic decisions is not necessarily less time-consuming than enforcing autocratic decision. It depends on the individuals involved.

Parecon advocates conducting economic affairs, such as allocation, consumption, and production, primarily with economic councils. However, this seems like a recipe for inefficiency and reduced productivity. It took the California government several months to agree on a budget this year, and that was a negotiation between a small number of people. If everyone was involved, the length of the negotiations would be much longer and likely take more than a year.



Strategy for Improving Our Economic System and Society
Rather than revising our economic system and starting with something radically different, I think that we need to use our current system to achieve our goals. I think this is an achievable approach for improving the world.

Private property is a powerful incentive, and envisioning a society where it will no longer exist will just generate opposition to the more laudable goals of this project.

Removing inheritance of wealth does not guarantee equal opportunity for the younger generation. They still benefit from their parent's wealth, and the opportunities of better education, opportunity, and contacts that continue even if the actual wealth is removed. This issue would quickly polarize people against parecon because it feels unfair and unjust, so I think it should be dropped. I also don't think it would accomplish much by way of increasing equal opportunity.



Transition to Parecon
Questions: Why would individuals choose to give up a materialistic lifestyle for the lifestyle that parecon provides? How do you propose funding a parecon if the wealthiest have little incentive to join? How do you remove ownership of the means of production? How do you make public the existing private educational institutions? Why hasn't this been implemented yet? What is standing in our way?



Return to Capitalism
It seems like savings and intelligent investment would return the world to uneven wealth distribution and a capitalist economy. The argument against the emergence of black markets is that society just wouldn't allow it, but this seems unrealistic. And even if there is no money, their will be some other form of exchange. As long as there are more desperate individuals out there, monopoly power on labor will also not be possible.

Questions: How does parecon prevent people from maximizing profits, surplus or revenues? What happens if people save in a parecon, and then use those built-up savings to return to a capitalist system? How does a parecon prevent that, if at all? Won't some individuals also pursue black markets in areas where parecon does not provide what individuals want? Also, won't money make a comeback since it's the most convenient and efficient medium of exchange? How are you going to prevent scabs from breaking a strike?



What We Should Do
I think we need to make incremental improvements to our current capitalistic system. These should include focusing our time, energy, and money on the following areas:

1) Incentives: We need an economic system that incents shared self-interest, maximizing the win-win situations that can exist in the world. People's incentives should be in line with their values.
2) Consumption: We need to include externalities in the price of goods and provide more information to consumers so they can make more informed consumption decisions. (See the description of Super Facts below)
3) Production: We need to require a living wage, health care, insurance, educational services, and safe and respectful working conditions to employees that produce goods.
4) Allocation: Since we haven't thought of anything better, we should use the market.
5) Values and Needs: We need an economy that furthers people's values and meets people's needs.
6) Decisions: Individuals should have decision-making input proportional to the impact of that decision on that person.
7) Supporting Institutions: We need institutions that support the goals described above.



Super Facts
Super Facts is a way to inform consumers about information beyond prices when they are about to purchase products. Super Facts is essentially an extension of the Nutrition Facts found on food items, but relevant to social conditions and applied to all products, not just food.

Every product sold would include a Super Facts label, which would list the following:
- A grade for the human impact that creating the product had, which would be lower if the company used sweatshops, child labor, or other poor practices.
- A grade for the environmental impact of the product, which would be lower if the company harmed the environment in the production, distribution, or disposal of the product.
- Whether the product included animal products or not, for the vegetarians out there.
- The political and philosophical stance of the company that created the product (e.g. progressive, moderate, conservative, pro-life, pro-choice, etc.).
- The actual parent company of the product, so that companies with poor reputations couldn't hide behind sub-brands.
- A URL where the consumer could find more detailed information about the product.

Just as restaurants get graded by the health department, products would get graded by the Super Facts Organization. These grades would be automatically generated based on information on the Internet and manually created based on other information. Of course, many companies may not be willing to include a Super Facts label on their products, but as the program gets more popular, the conspicuous absence of a label will effectively represent an admission of guilt.



Continuing the Dialogue
In addition to email, I've also snail-mailed a copy of this letter to you and published a copy of this letter on my blog (www.livejournal.com/~nbhatla).

I'm looking forward to hearing back from you soon and kicking off this dialogue.



Warmest Regards,

Nikhil Bhatla

09:51 pm - 9/7/04 Weekly Report

Last week:
* Worked at Google
* Finished reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
* Started reading Alan Lakein's How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life and Mark Juergensmeyer's Ghandi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution
* Finished 1st draft of letter to Michael Albert about his book, Parecon

This week:
* Work at Google
* Finish Ghandi's Way and Lakein's book
* Finish 2nd draft of letter to Albert

btw, here's a link to my RSS feed: http://www.livejournal.com/~nbhatla/data/rss

12:32 pm - Consuming Today

"Think of the whole country as a big household, and the whole nation [or world] as a big family ... What do we see? Half-fed, badly clothed, abominably housed children ... and the money that should go to feed and clothe and house them being spent on bottles of scent, pearl necklaces, pet dogs, racing motor cars, January strawberries that taste like corks ... the nation that spends money on champagne before it has provided enough milk for its babies, or gives dainty meals to Sealyham terriers and Alsatian wolf-hounds whilst the infant mortality rate shows that its children are dying by the thousands from insufficient nourishment, is a badly managed, silly, vain, stupid ignorant nation."

- George Bernard Shaw

01:15 am - Giving whenever asked

A couple of weeks ago, Becca and I were coming back from Berkeley on the BART. After a few stops, a man got on and announced to our car that he didn't have enough money for the fare to Ashby, since he bought too many donuts. He held up a plastic bag filled with his donuts as he said this. He was wondering if someone could spare $2.10. Almost everyone on the car ignored him, some giggled (how could he spend all his money on donuts!), and he was able to get nearly a dollar total from a couple people that he asked directly.

People felt awkward about the whole thing, and the man transferred at the next station. I learned from another man sitting behind me who talked to someone on the other train, that the man made the same announcement on the train he transferred to.

I guess the question is this: why do strangers feel awkward when someone asks them for help? Even that word, "stranger", seems to imply that the people you don't know are somehow weird, strange, or untouchable. Perhaps it's not so much the asking, but the way of asking. If I was in the same situation, I would probably just ask a few people individually rather than make an announcement to the whole car, and I would probably be able to get the money I needed.

So then really the question must be this: when someone we don't know asks for help, why are we so afraid of giving it? If they're so desperate that they're asking strangers, they can probably really use it.

What if you were to give help every single time you were asked? What if you gave every beggar a quarter? It would probably not put too much of a hole in your pocket.

It seems that the bigger concern is not this cost but the thought of what the beggar might do with the money. He may spend it on drink or drugs, and we certainly don't want to support that if we can help it. But he may also really need the money, say for food or transportation. Let's say that 25% of all beggars actually need the money for what they said they need it for. Is giving someone the $25 that they really need worth the cost of supporting someone else's drug addiction to the tune of $75? I'm not even sure if the "25%" number is even accurate, but I think it's a reasonable question.

And I think I'm inclined to say that yes, a 75% strike-out average is worth a 25% home-run average.

Maybe I should try saying "Yes" when asked by a stranger for help next time, and measure my strike-out to home-run ratio.

12:26 am - Notes from Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor

This is a summary of notes and quotes from Ben Graham's Intelligent Investor. I think these are only from the first 50 pages or so, since I got tired of taking these notes. I read the book several months ago, and I figured I should just post these notes now since I'm unlikely to make more progress on them.

* Buffet's advice: "What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework."

* The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists

* One should not buy because a stock or the market has gone up and one should not sell because it has declined

* Enthusiasm on Wall Street almost invariably leads to disaster, though it may be required for great accomplishments elsewhere

* Limit yourself to issues selling not far above their tangible-asset value. Tangible assets include a company's physical property (like real estate, factories, equipment, and inventories) as well as its financial balances (such as cash, short-term investments, and accounts receivable). Among the elements not included in tangible assets are brands, copyrights, patents, franchises, goodwill, and trademarks. Tangible asset value can be calculated using the balance sheets in a company's annual and quarterly reports; from total shareholder's equity, subtract all "soft" assets such as goodwill, trademarks, and other intangibles. Divide the fully diluted number of shares outstanding to arrive at book value per share.

* Defensive investor stock-bond balance: Never hold less than 25% or more than 75% of your investment in bonds. The same goes for stocks. The simplest choice is to maintain a 50-50 proportion between the two, with adjustments to restore the equality when market developments have disturbed it by as much as 5%. You may choose to hold 25% in stocks if you feel the market is dangerously high, or 75% if you thought that the market was a bargain.