Random Thoughts about Life

★On People vs. Resources

This article here at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/people_are_not_cogs.html got me all riled up about a topic that I often talk about: people vs. resources.

Let me clarify for all those in the room. 

I am a person. I have a family. I have friends. I have feelings. I have emotions. I am a person.

If you talk to enough business people, you’ll find them magically talking about resources to staff projects, run projects, and complete projects. “Yeah, I think we’re looking at 3 resources for 6 months to get this running.” Kid me much?

A resource is a piece of paper. It is a computer. A pen. A paper clip. 

See the difference? 

People are not plug and play. Everyone is different. We should treat everyone that way. In fact, I hate the term “human resources.” It’s an oxymoron that’s demeaning, useless, and just needs to go away. 

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★On Being 1/2 “Black”

I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time.

I am half white and half Jamaican. My mom grew up in Illinois and met my father from Jamaica who went to college there. 

Since most forms that you fill out only have a box for “Black/African American”, this is the option that I frequently choose when trying to describe myself, when I actually feel that it doesn’t really describe me.

While I don’t feel a connection to the word “black”, I am in tremendous debt to those who came before me who were actually “black” and paid the price for the current state of “equality” among groups in the United States. Because while I don’t identify with black people, back in the day I certainly would have been perceived as one. I certainly would have not be allowed to vote, own property, go to school, and live out my own version of the American dream. So it is with the struggle of Rosa Parks, the words of Martin Luther King, and the sacrifice of Malcolm X (among countless others) that I am able today to have a college degree and have a job. 

For example, when applying for scholarships, I obviously put down that I was “black” because who was going to tell me I couldn’t. I won the National Achievement Scholarship which is given to “outstanding Black american high school students” who score well on the PSAT. Without this scholarship, I would have faced many hardships in trying to pay for my college education. Did I really deserve the scholarship? I don’t feel “black” but that’s how others perceive me. 

So while I’ve gotten some advantages in being perceived as black — I haven’t faced the struggles. I haven’t ever thought to bleach my skin so people would perceive me in a different way. I haven’t been accused of shoplifting or stalked by mall security like countless other black people (maybe I have, but I haven’t noticed the stalking part). I didn’t grow up with parents that abused alcohol and/or drugs.

I will tell you one area in which I have felt my blackness — with women. On more than one occasion, I have been undesirable to a woman’s family solely on the basis of my heritage. It sucks. It’s also interesting, because in general I don’t really like “black” girls, not because they’re black, but because I just don’t find a lot of them attractive. I would totally date a black girl, it just hasn’t happened yet. While I don’t reject black girls solely on the basis of being black, I definitely have a bias against them (in terms of attraction).

The other interesting thing is how people like me perceive themselves. Growing up I never really thought of myself as “White” or “Black/Jamaican”. I was just a kid from a mixed background. When I read Barack Obama’s (shoutout to Barry!) book Dreams From My Father I couldn’t help but see that as a kid he identified more with being “black”. Growing up in Alief in Houston, there were people from all different backgrounds, so people didn’t focus as much on the issue of race. For Barack, it was much more a part of his upbringing.

A few months ago I read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist. He is one of 10 or so black astrophysicists in the world. No one ever guesses that he’s actually smart. In the book there is a classic passage about the plight of black men — many are accused of crimes they didn’t commit — others commit the crimes of JBB (Just Being Black) or WWB (Walking While Black). In the end, while I don’t feel black, I have figured out what my crime is — BBA (Black By Association). For the people who’ve come before me, I can accept that with honor.

★On Poverty

I’ve been here in Quito, Ecuador for 3 days now and it’s really made me think a lot about poverty. Growing up I had a much different perspective on this topic. I thought everyone could get straight A’s in school because I did and helping people through charity didn’t make sense because they should be helping themselves. My, have I changed over time.

When I think about the United States, I think about all the people I know who deride poor people as dumb and/or lazy. It’s their own problem — they should take the “personal responsibility” to solve their problems. But it’s not just their problem, it’s a problem that involves everyone. Increasingly I think there is a problem with the gap between the haves and have-nots in the US. Have you seen the resurgence in the Dow, but unemployment doesn’t budge?? Part of that is companies have learned to deal with less through the recession and with new “technology” it reduces the number of people you need to hire. But also, companies are stockpiling cash and returning it to the shareholders as opposed to some of the people who work on the front-line in the company. As a result, all the CXOs get paid more and more, while the blue-collar workers continue to struggle. Hence, more wealth gets concentrated in the top 5% of society.

For some of my more conservative friends this is no issue — the CXOs worked for their money. But I think the problem happens when society is too skewed and there are not realistic opportunities for those in poverty to move out of it. It reminds me of a Malcolm Gladwell book ( I think Outliers) that talks about the differences between kids from affluent families and those from low-income families. As it turns out, the differences in kids between these groups lies with the summer enrichment that they receive. Whereas kids from affluent families go to summer camps, have books to read at their disposal, etc — kids in low-income families don’t have such opportunities. Basically, poor kids forget more stuff than rich kids over the summer break. For me, that’s where the problem lies — if our rich are too rich and our poor are too poor, then I think society breaks down because people don’t have a realistic chance of making it up the economic ladder. Our country was built on the concept of the “self-made man” — anyone who works hard enough can move up in society. I’m afraid we’re headed the opposite direction.

Coming back full circle, what should we do about poverty? As I sit here in Ecuador, it’s obvious that the poverty here is much different  than in the US. Kids in poverty in the Us have a better chance of moving up than kids here. Even so, poverty is prevalent everywhere because it is inevitable in a roughly capitalistic society. Poverty is simply defined as those who live in the bottom 5/10/15% of society. Therefore anyone with the specific goal of eliminating poverty will always fail. You can raise the standards and prospects of people, but there will always be people at the bottom. However, it’s not to say that even though people will always be in poverty that we shouldn’t help them. In fact, I think a lot of people in the US have the mentality that we shouldn’t give a lot of aid to foreign countries — why should we spend money on those who live outside our borders and don’t pay taxes? It’s not realistic to say that we should be helping everyone, but I think we should help more people because while everyone is not a US citizen, everyone is a human. In addition, I understand we need to make sure incentives are aligned so we aren’t the welfare state for the rest of the world. We must help people who want to be helped and make sure they don’t take advantage of our charity. 

★On Cutting The Government

Over the past 6-9 months I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes that are happening in politics as some people get more agitated about the size and scope of federal and state governments. The biggest development is the rise in influence of all the “Tea Party” conservatives who are hell bent on reducing the size of government by cutting spending, eliminating “non-essential” services, and trying to “right-size” the government. 

As I’ve listened to all the rhetoric, I don’t think it’s all such a bad idea at it’s core. The government should be run like a business. Like any business, you have revenue (taxes) and you have costs (services). If these two components get out of line for too long, it becomes an unsustainable situation. Somebody has to pay somewhere (or you just print more money — but that’s a different story). 

However, while I’m all for getting rid of “waste” in government, I don’t think that some people really understand what happens when you cut “waste”. Because when you cut parts of the government, you are cutting jobs. When you cut jobs, people get pissed. And when people get pissed, they change their votes. So while some might contend that the 2010 election was a indictment against President Obama for all of his “budget busting” bills — I think the more realistic answer was that everyone was pissed because they didn’t have a job. In his campaign he talked about changing healthcare — it’s not like weren’t expecting changes in this area.

Back to people being pissed — when you cut the government, you are cutting jobs. Right now the unemployment rate stands at 9.1%, while the “real” unemployment rate stands to be much higher — at some something like 15%-20% after you factor in all the people who have quit searching for work and those who are underemployed.  Let’s say you get the chopping block out and start cutting programs (jobs) — where do you think that unemployment number is heading?? It’s certainly not going to be a good number. 

The other way to “right-size” the government is to reduce the benefits that it gives to people. Everyone loves to say they want to cut government spending, but when you actually give them some options, they won’t touch any program that will have an effect on them. And that’s the problem — Medicare and Social Security are the biggest drivers of the future budget, but no one has the desire to make a real change to them, because they affect so many people. In the end, you have everyone cursing any potential tax increase, but nobody wants to pay. It’s not a good combination.

I think people need to be realistic and pragmatic about how to reduce the deficit. The bi-partisan group in Obama’s fiscal commission recommended spending cuts and tax increases that draws ire from both sides of the aisle.

Will someone finally listen to them?

★On Healthcare Reform & Civil Rights History

A lot is being made about the Democrats plan for health-care reform. One minute it looks like they have their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which means they can push through whatever they want. The next minute,they lose Kennedy’s seat, and everyone says healthcare is dead. The next minute, everyone starts talking about reconciliation as a way to only need 51 votes in the Senate to get the bill. Then, you have Republicans calling reconciliation a “back-room deal” even though they used those tactics when GWB was in office.

It’s apparent that something needs to change with healthcare. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the bill needs to have this or that. I haven’t looked at all the numbers. And most people haven’t. So, it annoys me when people cling to their Glenn Becks of the world and just repeat what they say (ex: public option is bad), when they haven’t performed the analysis themselves. I’m not saying the public option is good either. I’m saying I DON’T KNOW. Is that such a novel concept?

Now, people are looking at the polls and saying that less than 50% of people are in favor of the health plan. These are the same citizens that hated the stimulus, but loved all the individual tax breaks and incentives that it created.

However, the biggest thing I think about is, who cares about public opinion? Obviously it is an election year and the Democrats are nervous about losing their seats, but sometimes on an issue you have to go above public opinion. Do you think when the Supreme Court made its decision on Brown v. Board of Educationthat >50% of citizens agreed with it? Hell no. It took 10 YEARS for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to finally become law. Why did it take so long?

By the early 1960s, the nation s congressional history contributed to growing legislative pressures for a comprehensive civil rights law. Although political pressures prevented President John F. Kennedy’s administration from proposing legislation to Congress in 1961 and 1962, the President took steps to ensure minority rights in voting, employment, housing, transportation, and education by executive action. (link)

Political pressure = white people in Congress from the South + public opinion. That means that the public didn’t want black people to have their Civil Rights, because if politicians would have voted for it in 1954, then would have lost votes in the subsequent election. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that public opinion changed somewhat and allowed the legislation to go through.

The National Opinion Research Center discovered this change of attitude in a sample survey of northern whites in 1963. The Center determined that the number who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30% in twenty years, to 72% in 1963. The proportion favoring school integration had risen even more impressively to 75%.(link)

How does this all tie together? All I’m saying is that someone needs to grow some balls in Congress and pass something that going to rein in costs and create the incentives for lower-cost healthcare. I’m not saying that I know what the solution is, but the alternative (doing nothing) doesn’t look too promising either.

★On Music Companies, Book Publishers & the RIAA

I’ve finally figured out why all these companies are getting all upset about “piracy”. It’s not about protecting the music artists or the book writers, or the movie producers. It’s not about protecting the actors, illustrators, or the guitarists. It’s about PROTECTING THEMSELVES. With digital distribution, why do you need a book publisher or a movie distributor or the RIAA mob? The point is you don’t. If you have your own content, you don’t need them to break your balls and you can distribute it yourself over the Internet in a more efficient manner than was previously possible. You cut out the middle-man!

Case 1: Book Publishers want to introduce a new windowing system to not allow some new books to be introduced in an ebook form for up to 4 months after the release of the book. Who thought this was a good idea? I think the meeting must have gone something like this:

• Hey, let’s sell these people these new ebook readers. They’re only really affordable for those who are pretty intense readers. Let’s reward them for buying these products by not allowing them to read the books the want.

In addition, when some writers want to release DRM free audiobooks because a) DRM doesn’t work and b) DRM just makes it hard for paying customers , they just can’t because the big companies are so scared of “piracy”.

Case 2: The Movie Studios keep telling everyone that their movies are being stolen. You know, you’ve seen those ads at the beginning of your legitimately purchases DVDs that tell you how evil piracy is. So since we’re in the recession and people don’t have as much money and there’s so much “piracy”, then we would expect overall movie revenues to be down right? WRONG.

It’s called listen to your customers people. I can’t stress it enough. Piracy just means you’re not catering to your customers. These companies aren’t fighting to protect the artists…they just don’t want to go the way of the horse buggy.

★On The Paradox of Choice — Related To Happiness

I’ve become hopelessly addicted to watching TED videos lately. Two of them have been of particular interest:

The Paradox of Choice -http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

Why Are We Happy -http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

The first one about the paradox of choice was of particular interest. It pretty much encapsulates a lot of ideas that I’ve had recently about happiness. This is where my inner “socialist” comes out. How can I explain this?

We all act in our own self interest. Today we don’t have to make all of our own food, make our own clothes, build our own houses, etc. We have decided to divide our labor and specialize into different fields of interest. I am a technology consultant. You might be a doctor or a flight attendant or a customer service rep. We each try to do the job to the best of our ability and we benefit from everyone else who specializes and we exchange the money from our jobs for goods and services from others. This is how our economy works.

Although this format may try to maximize efficiency in our economy, does it really make us all happier? I’m convinced that everything we do is to increase our happiness. Every action we take is an attempt to increase our happiness.

In the labor market, we all act in our own self interest. We pick the jobs and/or careers that we think are best and will maximize our earnings and wages relative to our interest in the job. We we specialize into different fields more or less independent of what others think we should do (obviously we would want to pick jobs that have a decent demand for their goods and/or services).

When we’re in each of our respective professions, we are generally trying to maximize our earnings. Our companies are doing the same thing. So when we offer products and/or services to our customers, we’re trying to get the most money we can get out of them. We are NOT trying to maximize their happiness. Curiously, the more choices we offer them, the more confused they turn out to be.

Example:

You go to the grocery store looking for some salad dressing (as the video stated). You get arrive to the arrive, and OH CRAP, there are a ton of dressings here. Which one should I get? I wonder which ones tastes the best? If I choose this one, will it be good? Will I regret buying this salad dressing if it’s not good?

I’m convinced we each ask ourselves variations of the same questions for each purchase we make. There’s not just one option. There’s tons of options! How to pick?

This is the source of our unhappiness. Not necessarily being unhappy, but just less happy relative to the situation if we didn’t have so many options. Excessive options confuse people and lead them to question their decisions. This is not to say that SOME choice is good, but I’m just saying that if we had fewer choices, then we would be MORE happy.

Again, I’m trying to say that since we are all acting in our own self-interest within the professions that we work in, we’re trying to maximize our earnings and not the happiness of customers. This leads to an aggregate decrease in happiness due to all the options people have.

In the video, Barry Schwartz says that is there were more “income redistribution”, then we would take some of the excess choices from the rich people and give them to the poor people, who would actually benefit from more choice. I think this idea is problematic, but very interesting. It’s problematic in its implementation, because who wants Uncle Sam coming for more of their money? But if Uncle Sam did, maybe they (richer people) would actually be happier…

This ties into the second video question why we are happy. It very nicely reinforces my point that people who have more options question themselves more and have more an internal struggle in their daily lives.

Example from the video. You have a class of photography students who get to choose 2 pictures from their collection of 10 to be blown up and framed. For half of them, you tell them that they should choose one of the two pictures and they will have 3 days to change their mind about the choice. For the other half, they must make one final decision on the picture that they will choose. Who do you think is happier, the people with our without the choice? Turns out the people who are stuck with their initial choice are happier. Whoa. Doesn’t work out like you think.

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I hope these videos spark some thoughts in your mind. They sure did for me. I think that if we all step back and accept that people in our industrialized nation are somewhat paralyzed by all the choices that we have and think about all the good we could do by giving those in other countries more choices, we would ALL be better off. It’s amazing. Life wants to be simple.

★On Tipping

I don’t really understand the tipping rules that we have in society.

If I go to a restaurant and someone takes my order, brings me some water (and keeps it full), and does other relevant tasks, then sure you should earn a tip. In this instance I would say you’re paying the food and then your providing a incentive via a tip for the person to give you great service. Sure. I get it. That’s awesome.

But if I go to the wrap place in my building and you make me a wrap, why is there a tip line on the receipt? I’m not tipping you for doing your job. There was no additional service being rendered. Maybe the wrap was made with extra love…but I’m not buying it.

What about haircuts? I don’t understand the rationale for tipping barbers. You’re paying them for the haircut. There is no real “additional” service being performed. You might say, well they are giving you a good haircut. But I think that the mere fact that I am coming to them means I am expecting a good haircut. If you gave people consistently shitty haircuts, you wouldn’t last very long as a barber. I would say if you’re a great barber, just charge more.

And what about cab drivers? Where is the “additional” service? Getting into your cab implies that you’re going to do a good job in getting me from point A to point B. What am I tipping you for? Because you didn’t get me killed? I’m not against tipping people…I just think it should be for a good reason.

★Why Me Offending You Is Actually A You Problem

I don’t like your hair.

I think you should apologize for your hair.

In fact, I am OFFENDED by your hair.

You need to apologize for it.

Is this a legitimate argument?

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Maybe you’ve heard the recent news about the Nigerian government. In recent days, they have become offended by two separate things.

Offense #1: The movie District 9. Nigeria has banned the movie in their country. The movie is “drawing protests from government officials in Nigeria over its portrayal of Nigerians…because it depicts Nigerians as gangsters and cannibals.”

Offense #2: The recent Sony PS3 Ad. According to the ad: “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Otherwise I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now.”

Do we have to now start scrutinizing every movie, book, newspaper article, blog post, or whatever to find things that could be potentially offensive to an group of people???

The only reason why the Nigerian government is offended is because there is some truth to the depictions of Nigerian people in the movie and in the ad.

District 9 is a movie. They can say whatever they want. And, hasn’t everyone has got those Spam messages before? It’s nothing new. How is that offensive? The ad is highlighting a true statement based on everyone’s experience with email.

You can’t change how someone is going to react to what you have to say. Anybody can be offended be anything. Your job is to speak your feelings and let them be known. You shouldn’t have to temper them just because one person might take them the wrong way.

Sure things can be inappropriate, racist, etc…but just because you’re offended by something means nothing. That’s why if I say something that “offends” you, they maybe you should reevaluate your reaction to what I’m saying.

It’s a you problem. Get over it.

Because if you don’t agree, I think you should apologize for your hair. It’s offensive.

Cue the response from the Nigerian government saying that they are offended by my comments.