Category Archives: Bureaucracy

This is a very clear explanation of what went wrong with the US Housing market over a very long time.

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Big problems rarely appear from nowhere….this piece from the American Interest  jives with many other articles, puts it in a longer context.

Fannie, Freddie and the House of Cards

By Mary Martell

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively the two largest “GSEs”, or government-sponsored enterprises) have engaged in a broad range of residential mortgage activities for many years.1 The economic disaster of recent times has drawn considerable attention to Freddie and Fannie, which is not surprising considering the role that the mortgage sector of the U.S. banking system played in that debacle. Together the two institutions hold or pool about $5 trillion worth of mortgages, and so sketchy were their operations that in September 2008 the U.S. government had to bail them out and place them in conservatorship to keep the entire mortgage market from imploding. While the U.S. government has by now been made whole by TARP-assisted banks, it is not clear whether the billions of dollars provided to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac afloat will ever be returned to the U.S. Treasury.”

Read the whole thing

If it all happens with virtual #’s do you hear the ‘Earth shattering Kabooom’?

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Economist blog Free Exchange discussing current Euro(pean) implosion…. A quote “from the International Strategy and Investment Group, explain the political dynamics: Papandreou’s motives are understandable: So far the opposition has provided no support for the measures that he has been forced to push through, and he and his party have been left alone facing the public anger. The opposition’s tactics are in a sense similar to those used by the Portuguese opposition earlier this year. There the opposition forced the government to fall, took over power, and promptly implemented policies very similar to what the previous government was going to do anyway. Papandreou knows that story, and his decision can be interpreted as a refusal to be the victim of the same game.”

The Gov’t is here to help…relieve you of your (fill in the blank)

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This Forbes piece is in violent agreement with yesterday’s post. I guess more and more people see the problem the way I do…though I don’t think the gentlemanly solution is going to get us where we need to be, but might keep the problem from getting as bad as quickly in the future when the people have taken their eye off the ball to deal with other important issues.

Why 5 Years?

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‘Musk has a great point.’ when doing projections, part of my job, I know that I ‘should’ be able to project a couple of years into the future with at least some expectation of being close, but after 18 months you know it’ll be wrong. You can forecast five years out in general terms based on ‘momentum’ but you know that all you are doing is a version of ‘Moores Law’ which is more a market roadmap than anything else. This is more about tech-base support than anything else, and a form of jobs program, one that is needed at some level. But maybe a bit more flexible approach can be found.

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Not saying ULA is doing anything wrong, this is just old style mindsets setting policy.

Be Here Now

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How did we get here? Why is this happening now?

The Here and Now is a phonograph needle tracking the wobbles in the groove that all our yesterdays laid down.

 Is there a way out?

There is only foreward there is no going back.

 There is a Destiny which has the control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.   (From)

GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Mrs. George William Fairfax, Sep. 12, 1758

 

Not sure I agree at an individual level all the time, but on the aggregate in the immediate time frame I would.   Perhaps its like this: Science tells me that most of my actions are planned a significant fraction of a second ahead of my consciousness recognizing what is going on.  It is impossible to change what you do not know is coming but if you plan ahead you can control what happens at a future point in time and space.

And what we do individually and locally does matter nationally and globally, at least a little and if not now then sometime in the future. 

Does that mean I demand “Word Gov’t Now!” how stupid do you think I am? 

We need more self-control, personal control, local control and less regional control, national control and global control.  We do need norms and some way of enforcing them for such things as : life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and such easily debased things as contract enforcement, property rights, ecological cost accounting, financial cost accounting…a few others…maybe

But….the old bureaucratic model, relying on a plethora of relatively well paid trustworthy functionaries to enforce norms is becoming unaffordable.

Laissez-Faire – let it be – management doesn’t work, it doesn’t work in regulation either.

Why has the US Constitution remained important for more than 200 years?  Because its simple, basic, lays out fundamentals and leaves the rest for interpretation but by being fairly simple, constrained and pragmatic it is actually possible to interpret it to cover very large sets of cases. 

We have to get over the belief that you can make life perfect if you can just tune your laws/regulations/rules just right and get the humans out-of-the-way.  We used to know better, I think that most scholars know better.  But somehow many folks have come to believe that if not all, then the one specific law they care about can be perfected, and since they care about it passionately they push it forward, usually through a system that has no time to really understand the consequences of this law when combined with that law and this social reality, etc.  And with each law becoming more complex because of fiddling to tune it to perfection, the way they interact becomes utterly unknowable. And the law becomes harder to obey and easier for smart lawyers to subvert.

So….

So where do we go from here? 

Start to build down the complexity we have built up at every level, what about:

  • For every new rule, two old ones have to be eliminated and no double dipping?
  • Limit the length of any law/rule/regulation to two double-sided 8 1/2 by 11 sheets one inch margins typed in 11 point Times New Roman with the option of an extra sheet of readable graphics?
  • Eliminate mandatory this, no tolerance that, rules that have become a pox on our society?
  • Make Judges accountable to other Judges and the Bar with impeachment by the people an option?

You can think of more, I know you can!

 Cheers

NaNoWriMo Post something or other: Five and the Base

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Five opened here eyes and looked at the base spread out across the grays and browns of the asteroidal body it had been planted in.  She didn’t know which base it was, she was fairly certain that it was one she hadn’t seen before.

“We are shedding the kids Commander.” Mother said in Five’s head. A glance showed the twenty roughly similar pieces of rubble that had trailed behind the slightly ovoid blob that was Watcher Sixty five thousand, five hundred and sixty-five were diverging and forming up to make their way into the repair and update bay.

Five looked back at the base. she was looking into the side, though at first glance it was like a city of tall skyscrapers seen from directly above, all sharp edges and spires poking out of the asteroidal body.  The gravity generator spikes speared  ‘down’  from the asteroid.  Mother and Five continued towards the ‘sky scrapers.’  as Five wondered where the word skyscraper had come from, it tasted familiar, but it elicited no definition tag from the tac glossary. 

Mother’s target was now very obviously the ‘bottom’ of the structure, dark blocks with massive lattice structures between above and around them.  That was the BlankBank, like every BlankBank in every other base.  There Five would find her sisters and be able to exercise, eat maybe, think, even sleep, “Perchance to Dream?” a voice not her own or Mother’s seemed to whisper.

“Uh, Mother?””

“Yes dear?”

“Uh did you, hear something?”

“No dear.” 

They were both silent during final approach.  From what Five could see there were at least ten other Watchers docked.  That seemed a lot and if each of the Banks had the same number that would be a Hundred at this base alone, and several thousand more out on their long looping patrol orbits.  Seven minutes later Mother entered a bay and docking arms reached out to snag the camouflaged fighter. Continue reading →

What is the meaning of the word Customer?

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cus·tom·er   /ˈkʌstəmər/  noun    

  1. a person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron
  2. Informal. a person one has to deal with: a tough customer; a cool customer.

From dictionary.com

Origin: 1400–50; late Middle English; see custom, -er1; compare Middle English customercollector of customs < Anglo-French; Old French costumier,cognate with Medieval Latin custumārius;see customary

American Psychological Association (APA):

Customer. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved October 19, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Customer

Chicago Manual Style (CMS):

Customer. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Customer (accessed: October 19, 2011).

Modern Language Association (MLA):

“Customer.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 19 Oct. 2011. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Customer>.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE):

Dictionary.com, “Customer,” in Dictionary.com Unabridged. Source location: Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Customer. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com. Accessed: October 19, 2011.

BibTeX Bibliography Style (BibTeX)

@article {Dictionary.com2011,
    title = {Dictionary.com Unabridged},
    month = {Oct},
    day = {19},
    year = {2011},
    url = {http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Customer},
}

 OK?  

So I have a discussion about this word with someone, they insist that when it is used in company documents the word customer means the corporate entity the counter party (other person) represents and not that person, and moreover that at work I am representing the company not myself.

The word  corporation  ( ˌkɔrpəˈreɪʃən/ [kawr-puh–rey-shuhn]  noun :an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.) is clearly a person in the eyes of the law. 

So I get that we have caught bureaucrati-itis or tech-speak-itis from lawyers and MBAs and use the noun ‘Customer’ when referring to the organization/people we do business with.  The use of the word Customer is a reasonable short hand personalizing while generalizing the business relationship vice the more functional terms of buyer, contractor, purchaser, user, etc.   And its also obvious that I represent the company not myself when on company time and talking business. 

But when I read a direction that says Customer I assume that this means the person and company since one or both could be within the meaning of the word.  The word is singular and while intellectually I realize a Corporation is a person and the person I speak with only represents that company there is clearly good reason to think that the intent of the instruction is aimed at the person and company.

In fact in business development we are supposed to know both the company and its stated goals / objectives and the person/people we interlocute with because it’s critical to building a relationship. In fact we always speak of the customer as the person @ the company when getting down to details and putting plans together.

So why is it that when I suggest that at the point of direction we use the word company (which was the intent of the direction) and not customer (which I think could mean the company or the person or both) do I get crap?  

Is it because the word is the safe lawyer one?  Is it that the processes we are so proud of mainly aimed at covering the company’s and maybe the bureaucrats ass rather than being easy to use/understand?  Is it also possible that they understand that ambiguity is in fact in the interests of some folks because it provides more opportunities to pin a scapegoat if something goes south?

Sorry a long a wordy rant on a stupid topic I know. 

But I hate it when I hit a walll when I’m quite willing to accept the other persons viewpoint as valid while they see my point of view as stupid/invalid/worthless. I don’t like being any of those things….though I’m sure I am every once in a while….but of course not on this topic.

Sigh…I still need to go and do some meditation techniques I guess, good night.