This is the season for high school and college graduations… and a time when the famous and semi-famous are often invited to provide inspiring graduation speeches.  I’ve never been asked to speak at any graduation, because I’m obviously not even semi-famous enough, but I’ve often thought about what I might say.

 Over the years, I’ve heard students, in responding to questions about what they intend to do, express sentiments such as “I want to be famous.” Or they want to be happy or rich.  The more idealistic among them want to do something meaningful or “make a difference.”  And, of course, all too often, graduation speakers talk about “these talented graduates” and how they can change the world.  They offer inspirational advice that implies close to instant achievement… and sometimes more.

 Now, perhaps I’ve been at the wrong graduations at the wrong time, but the ones I’ve attended, and there are more than a few, given the number of offspring we’ve had, often miss one of the most basic points.  I’m sure that some speaker, somewhere, has made this point, but I suspect that it’s fairly rare. 

 All the lofty aspirations too many students and speakers mouth are all results, and sometimes, as in the case of being happy or famous, they’re not even goals that anyone can attain directly.  There is no business and no profession that creates happiness or fame directly [Hollywood and the Internet notwithstanding], and there’s not a single profession entitled “make a difference.” To be happy, you have to take satisfaction in what you do in life and in the people with whom you associate.  That means acquiring significant expertise in a field, and that requires, usually, long and dedicated effort.  The same is true of relationships; they just don’t happen.

 As for doing something meaningful or making a difference, that generally requires even more education and years of effort.  In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell makes the point that in every field, to be successful takes not only innate talent but at least 10,000 hours of dedicated and focused high-level effort.  That’s 10,000 hours of practicing piano or singing, always trying to master more and more difficult pieces, not to mention needing a solid mentor and teacher. That’s 10,000 hours of writing computer codes, building your own hardware and programming it.  That’s generally a minimum of ten years of intensive application in a single field, most of it after finishing formal education.  Athletic success has to start earlier, of course, as does most musical performance, because muscles have to be trained as they develop… but it still takes 10,000 hours.

 So… all those lofty aspirations… those of you about to graduate can pretty much kick them aside unless you want to work with incredible dedication for the next ten years, and that’s just the beginning!  As for the less lofty aspirations, such as being happy, achieving them still requires an interest in and a dedication to something that you like doing that pays the bills, because, frankly put, no one stays happy long if you can’t put food on the table, clothes on your back, and a roof over your head.

 Talent, intelligence, and ideals are just the beginning of the beginning… and that’s something that’s not often emphasized enough.  Not that anyone’s going to ask me to give that speech.

Yesterday Ricardo Portillo died in a Salt Lake hospital.  He died from terminal brain injuries caused by a single punch to his temple.  Why?  Because he was a volunteer soccer referee and he had yellow-carded a seventeen year old for excessively rough play.  While he was writing up the yellow card, the seventeen year old walked up and punched him in the side of the head.  Portillo never saw it coming.  I’d like to think that this sort of violence and anger is unusual.  It’s not.

 Everywhere I look, I see a growing anger at authority, whether it’s the referees in sports contests, the police, the government, parents, or children.  And this anger is just like what happened to   Ricardo Portillo, in the sense that it’s all out of proportion to what seemingly generated it.  In Portillo’s case, the player wasn’t even ejected from the game; that takes a red card or two yellow cards. The soccer game wasn’t even in a tournament, just a routine local match.  Week after week, there are stories about angry sports contestants, and even more often, stories about out-of-hand parents and fans.  Referees in most sports take incredible abuse.  Why?  Why should they be targets?  They’re doing their best, and, in almost all cases, especially on the professional level, they’re impartial. 

 Every day, there’s another incident of “road rage,” where someone goes berserk, because of another driver’s behavior.  Sometimes, frankly, it’s understandable, especially when someone tries to cut in front of people who’ve been politely and patiently waiting, in order, but in both cases, that of the initial offender and that of the outraged offender, the individuals are over-reacting and wanting it “their way” regardless of the impact on others – and the results are often tragically out of proportion to the offense.

 We see the same thing in politics and political rhetoric. Day after day, I read and hear the violence in the words of all too many gun owners, everything about how the government will have to take their guns from their cold dead hands, about how the government is out to take their freedoms and their guns.  It’s absolutely senseless. The legislation about which they’re getting so enraged deals with banning one class of guns out of hundreds and limiting magazine size – and as many gun owners have pointedly told me, the magazine size makes little difference.  Obviously, this rage is fueled by fear, but exactly what is there to fear?  The politicians are so cowed by this rage that they aren’t about to do anything, and there has never been anything close to a national consensus, liberals notwithstanding, in the entire history of the United States, for outlawing all individual ownership of firearms.

 This rhetorical viciousness is everywhere, and it often goes beyond rhetoric. The anti-abortion extremists have gone so far as to physically threaten and even murder doctors who perform abortions.  Like it or not, there are two sides to the abortion debate, especially when the life of the mother is endangered, or she is a victim or rape or incest, if not both.  Yet vitriolic absolutist rage isn’t going to solve anything. It’s just going to engender more rage.

 The anger over health care is another example.  The issue is two-sided.  Failure to have health care destroys people and families… and some people simply can’t afford it.  Likewise, many small businesses face crippling financial burdens.  [I’ll admit I don’t have much sympathy for multi-billion dollar businesses like WalMart who hire tens of thousands of part-timers to avoid paying health care… and then cry poor.]  But the vitriol in the rhetoric is astounding.

 According to Theodore Roosevelt we need to struggle for “true liberties which can only come through order.”  He also stated that “The first principle of civilization is the preservation or order.”  There’s also the quote attributed to Jefferson – “Without order, there is no liberty,” but for all the truth behind it, I can’t find any evidence that he actually said it.

 On the face of matters, it would seem evident that without order, societies don’t work, and establishing order requires a certain amount of civil authority, but more and more, Americans, as well as others around the globe, seem to take umbrage when that authority applies to us – or those we support.  It’s all right to use drones against foreign terrorists, but not against American citizens.  Miranda rights are absolutely necessary for American-born citizens [read WASPs], but not for immigrants or foreign-born citizens.  It’s fine when the referee punishes a player on the other team, but not on “our” team, and especially not my son or daughter, and I can yell and scream and threaten the ref.  Or, I can text safely while driving, so that there shouldn’t be any laws restricting my ability to use electronic devices while driving, and I’ll get really angry if I get a ticket for it.  Or, if I’m a celebrity caught driving drunk, I can threaten the officer who arrests me.

 Regardless of who said it or who didn’t, liberty and order are inseparable in any workable society.  Without liberty, the most ordered society will fail, and we’ve seen that happen time and time in our lifetime.  Likewise, without order, there is no society… and no way to protect liberties – except for the strongest and most ruthless.

So why are so many people so enraged at attempts to maintain order? 

If someone had asked that question a century or so ago, in most places in the world there would have been one of two answers.  In the western hemisphere, or in those areas dominated by western hemisphere culture, the answer most predominantly would have been, “Of course.”  And in the remainder of the world, the answer would most likely been, I suspect, a variation on “Has it changed?”

 The problem with trying to answer that question today is defining what one means by “better.”  If we’re talking about general health, better nutrition, less deadly and widespread violence, then, in general, the world is a better place, that is, if you’re not in Somalia, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, parts of Africa… and similar locales. But other aspects of “better” aren’t so clear.

More people can theoretically read, if one defines reading as the ability to decipher the meaning of symbols in print… but, at least in the United States, based on what I and all too many others have seen in higher education, high level comprehending literacy and the ability to concentrate on written material has declined even as technical computer skills have increased. The retained knowledge database of most individuals has declined, most likely because any fact is easily found through smartphones or computers.  Better or worse?  That depends on the definition… and the priorities behind the definition.

 There are certainly more nations where citizens can vote, and according to various foundations, in general there’s more freedom, but given the political structures in many countries, that “freedom” often means little real choice, which means that matters may be “better” politically, but not nearly so much better as the Pollyannas claim.

 In the high-tech western nations, child labor is rare, and air and water pollution is far less than it was a century ago…but in all too much of the world, those conditions are likely worse.  Whether matters are better depends on where you are… and how high – or low – your income is.

 The problem with deciding whether the world is a better or worse place is that most of us decide based on where we live, and no one place is representative of the world.  More troubling than that is the fact that most of those who can make their views known about the state of the world are those who are anything but representative, because in a media intensive world, the vast majority of those who can even participate are the comparatively more affluent and advantaged. This isn’t anything new; it goes back as far as the invention of writing because, then, only the advantaged could write [and even the slaves who served as scribes were more advantaged than most others].

 In the end, it’s a good idea to remember that “better” is a comparative, and that it all depends on what is being compared by whom… and for what reason.

Absolutes?  I’m skeptical of them, if not downright hostile. Sometimes an absolute is a good guide.  After all, as a general matter of principle, it is not a good idea to go around taking other people’s things or shooting people. Or imprisoning them.   But… as I’ve noted on more than a few occasions, human beings have this desire for things to be black or white, absolutely good or absolutely evil.  We don’t live in a black and white world.  We live in a world filled with all shades of color and, for that matter, innumerable shades of gray, and we – and our societies – have to live in that world and, if we want even a modicum of civility and civilization, we have to create customs and governments that recognize that those shades and colors exist.

 The other day I got a posting on the blog insisting that the right to bear arms was a constitutional right and that my proposals to license and regulate firearms would negate that right because a constitutional right could not be restricted or taxed and still remain a “right.”  After I put my jaw back in place, I thought about the naiveté; the lack of understanding of what society is; the lack of knowledge about what the Constitution is and what it established, and what it did not; and the total self-centeredness represented by that comment… and the fact that all too many Americans share those views about “rights.”

 First, we need to start with the Constitution itself, and the first ten amendments, popularly known as the Bill of Rights.  The First Amendment states that the Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech.”  But more than a score of U.S. Supreme Court decisions have established that the freedom of speech is not absolute, especially where that freedom harms others or has the clear potential to do so.

 The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable” search and seizure and states that a search warrant cannot be issued without “probable cause,” but again, a number of Supreme Court cases have made clear that there are exceptions to those requirements, i.e., that the Fourth Amendment is not an “absolute right.”

 The same is true of the Second Amendment. One of the earliest Supreme Court decisions involving the Second Amendment was issued in 1875 and stated that the Constitution does not establish the right to keep and bear arms, but affirms an existing right.  A number of other Supreme Court decisions followed establishing the fact that the federal and state governments can establish reasonable limits on that right, and in 2008 the Heller decision stated “the right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose…”

 Those who object to the Supreme Court decisions in such cases often complain that the Court is perverting or destroying the Constitution.  Yet the Constitution plainly states that “The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court…” and that “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made…”  In short, like it or not, in cases of dispute about what is or is not Constitutional, the Supreme Court decides.

 Now… people can complain about such decisions, and they can try to change the laws or try to keep new laws on such subjects from being enacted, but what they cannot claim – not accurately, anyway – is that such restrictions are “unconstitutional.” Some will then reiterate the idea that any tax or restriction negates a “right.”

 What they seem to ignore or forget is that the entire concept of an unfettered “absolute” right is contrary to the entire idea of what we call civilization.  Of course, the fact that so many people want to assert their individual and “absolute” rights in so many areas suggests that civilization may itself be endangered. Take the idea of absolute property rights.  We do not allow individuals totally unfettered rights to property. A business or individual cannot dump whatever trash and toxic chemicals he wants into the river or stream that flows through his property.  As a society, we recognize, at least in theory, that many individual actions can adversely affect or kill others, and we attempt to restrict such actions because it is all too clear that there are too many individuals who will not restrict their actions for one reason or another. Now… one can complain that there aren’t enough restrictions or that there are too many or those that exist are too onerous, but the fact that some restrictions are necessary for any society to survive has been proven, as the founding fathers put it, “self-evident.”

 In the end, anyone who declares that he or she has any “absolute” right is merely declaring that their “rights” transcend the rights of others.  “Your right” to free speech through four hundred decibel speakers denies your neighbors right to a decent night’s sleep.  Your right to dispose of your wastes any way you want fouls the stream and denies those downstream equal rights to clean water.  Your right to smoke in close quarters endangers someone else’s health.

 Anyone who claims an inviolable absolute right either doesn’t understand the requirements of a civilized society… or puts what they think are their “inviolable rights” above everyone else’s inviolable rights.  Either way, it’s dangerous for the rest of us, not to mention being a form of narcissistic denial of reality.

In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic novel, Brave New World, the government keeps citizens in line with soma, a drug described as having “all of the benefits of Christianity and alcohol without their defects.”  The “original” soma, of course, was a legendary Vedic drink said to convey immortality.

 Personally, I wonder if the current candidate for “soma” might not be the IPhone/Android/whatever handheld electronic communications/entertainment device.  Everywhere I look, people are buried in those devices.  They walk totally absorbed in such devices through city streets and college campuses, cross streets and often get hit, ignore crossing gates and get killed by trains… or they text while driving or doing something else.

In nearby St. George, earlier this year, a fifty-year-old woman was speeding and texting. She hit another car, throwing it onto the sidewalk where it killed a man and so severely injured his wife that she had fractured bones all over her body, had to have her skull rebuilt, and suffered 15,000 stitches.  The texting driver has been charged with vehicular homicide and assault and faces up to 15 years in prison.

 Every single day in the United States, there’s another spate of accidents and fatalities or injuries resulting from texting or from using some handheld electronic device, despite the proliferation of laws against use while driving.  Yet, for all the publicity, for all the laws, the possible legal consequences or even death from usage in the wrong places, the near-total absorption in such devices by tens of millions of Americans continues.  Why?  It’s not as though people don’t know the dangers.

 Could it be addiction?

 Just look at people. If they’re not on the device, they’re always checking it, and when they get a signal that “something” is arriving on their device, their faces light up in anticipation.  It’s the sort of look that people in love once displayed upon seeing their significant other, and I’m not sure that even happens any more. More and more often, since Cedar City is a university town, we see couples together in public places. More than a decade ago, they use to talk to each other.  Now they’re silent, sitting together, yet totally alone, each on his or her electronic device, seemingly oblivious to their partner.

 And, as for those messages… well… lately some parents of young people who’ve died in accidents while texting have published those texts… and they’re all absolutely trivial.  There’s nothing earth-shattering, or even interesting.  Yet there’s obviously something more addictive about being electronically connected than being personally connected.  Otherwise all those couples would be talking to each other rather than texting someone else.  And, frighteningly, in some cases they’re actually texting each other.  This gets you closer?

 From what I’ve seen, the electronic communications craze isolates people.  The other day, my wife and I wanted to invite an acquaintance and his wife to a party.  We see them on and off, but when we tried to call them, we discovered both their landlines had been disconnected.  He didn’t answer his office line or the message left on it.  Nor did he even open the email offering the invitation. We still haven’t been able to reach them.  And frankly, I don’t think I should have to drive over to their house some three miles away and knock on their door to invite them.  Besides, they’re likely so engrossed in their electronic diversions that they might not even answer the door.

 This is far from unusual.  Several of our grown offspring have disconnected their landlines.  But the problem with all this is simple – no one can reach you who doesn’t already know your number…or your Facebook name or account [and, dinosaur that I am, I refuse to do social media].  If you’re so into your handheld device that you don’t look at anyone around you and aren’t accessible to anyone who already doesn’t know you… how can your circle of true friends and acquaintances do anything but shrink.  Given social media, the only online “friends” you’re likely to get are people who think exactly as you do.  And all that means is that social polarization and individual isolation are increasing with the growth and addiction to electronic soma.

 Orwell’s soma made the routine of his Brave New World bearable, and apparently the handheld device of choice is doing something similar for people today, but unlike the Vedic soma, reputed to convey immortality, the most likely outcomes of excessive electronic soma are social polarization, growing physical isolation and an early death because sooner or later the outside world will crash into you, or you into it, in some form or another.

These days, and for the past decade or so, in almost every venue of government and public works, the politicians and much of the public have extolled the virtues of operating everything from schools, universities, municipalities, and prisons according to the “business model.”   The current “business model,” as applied to government and public services, is based on application of capitalism and “no new or increased taxes’” for anyone or anything.  I honestly don’t know whether all these advocates of the “business model” are sincerely misguided or just uninformed idiots, but it’s time to put a stop to this nonsense.

 First off, I want to make one thing clear.  I am not anti-business, and I firmly believe that the only workable form of an economic system has to be based on capitalism.  That said, capitalism in its purest form is absolutely efficient, and absolutely merciless.  It rewards dedication, skill, luck or good fortune, and the advantages of position handsomely, and disadvantages those lacking in any of those qualities in proportion to their deficit.

 Moreover, in capitalism’s “purer” forms [i.e., those forms unregulated by government], as Americans discovered in the roaring 1890s and somewhat thereafter, such issues as ethics and fairness took a back seat, or were totally ignored, as a result of the quest for profit.  This is not an aberration.  Capitalism is the use of business (defined as the combination of ability, resources, labor, capital investment, and technology) to create a product or provide a service with the greatest differential between the cost and the price one can charge. If inferior or tainted resources are cheaper and the purchaser cannot tell the difference [and there are no laws to contrary, and sometimes if there are], someone will use those cheaper resources in order to maximize profits.  Period.  History has demonstrated this time after time.  We still see this occurring politically today.  If a company or an industry can influence Congress to obtain a tax break or a subsidy, then they have effectively reduced their costs and increased their profits.  If they gain an exemption from environmental rules, such as air or water pollution regulations, they gain a cost advantage, while shifting medical, health, and environmental costs to the general public.  

 The second distinguishing feature of capitalism is one so obvious that it is totally ignored in most economic and political discussion, and certainly in attempts to model public services and education along the lines of the “business model.”  Capitalism has no interest in providing goods to people who cannot afford them.  This is not cold-hearted, per se, but a fact.  A business will go broke if it cannot at least cover all its costs, and you cannot cover costs if you give goods or services away on a large scale or keep prices too low to cover costs, in order to provide more goods or services to those who could not otherwise afford them.

 The third distinguishing feature of capitalism, especially today, is that it must make a profit in the short-term.

 These three necessities for success in a capitalistic society are why capitalism requires some degree of regulation. The amount varies by the society and by political consensus, and how much corporate abuse the public will accept, but the necessity for some regulation is absolute.  These necessities are also why the so-called business model is an absurdity for providing such public services as education, police and fire protection, water, sanitation, and trash collection, not to mention environmental protection.

 Take education.  As we all know, or profess to know, education makes people better workers and benefits society as a whole, but the payoff from the investment in education is years, if not decades away… and contrary to what the proponents of emphasis on STEM education insist, one cannot tell which student benefits most from what education.  Attempts to “steer” education in a particular direction have invariably been, at best, marginally successful, if not disastrous, for societies.  Likewise, when the cost of education increases, the business model, particularly on the college and university level, is to insist on raising tuition, increasing class sizes, or eliminating classes for which demand is low.  The results are that: (1) some students are priced out of education or saddled with enormous debt that many will not pay (which in turn shifts the costs to society as a whole); (2) the quality of that education is diluted; or (3) certain skills and disciplines will not be taught at all, and future society will be impoverished as a result. That is the predictable capitalistic response to increasing costs, especially when “no new taxes” have resulted in state colleges and universities getting fewer and fewer resources compared to the number of students enrolled.

 If we take other public services, the same problem arises.  The current “business model” insists that municipal budgets must be cut, rather than increasing taxes. That means fewer police and firefighters, and slower response times and greater damages to people and their property.  In point of fact, that means that the costs are effectively shifted to those who can least afford the damages – capitalism at its purest, loss of goods and services for inability to pay.  This is particularly hard on the less advantaged when it is applied to vital services, such as food, housing, and health care.

 The result of applying the business model in this fashion is that, without public investment in those who have fewer resources, i.e., the poor and especially the working poor, the youth in those situations will have less opportunity to improve themselves, and this will contribute to the growth of income inequality.  Greater income inequality results in greater social unrest, and if that unrest becomes too great, violence becomes even more widespread.

 As one of the forgotten commercials said, “You can pay me now… or you can pay me later.” [And the cost later was enormously higher.]   But right now, the third aspect of this current business model is all that anyone considers – we want lower costs NOW… and the hell with what comes later.

 So… let’s hear it for the business model.

Now that the U.S. Senate has killed pretty much any attempt to place any meaningful controls on the use and sale of firearms in the United States, it’s time for a more objective look at the situation.  First off, there is no practical way guns are going to vanish in the United States, despite all the NRA and right-wing paranoia and concern about “big government” taking away guns.  It won’t happen.  Period.  Over 40 million U.S. households have firearms, over 320 million of them. Put in perspective, according to a 2007 United Nations study, fifty percent – half – of all the world’s guns were then held by U.S. residents, and since then U.S. gun sales have boomed.

Hard as those facts may be for some to swallow, U.S. guns are not going away and most likely never will.  Nor will measures such as restricting sales of certain types of weapons and ammunition, as commenters to this blog have noted repeatedly, be terribly effective.  At the same time, gun violence and accidental deaths and suicides caused by guns are epidemic. In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010. Yet, as others have pointed out, the U.S. does not have anywhere close to the highest homicide rate in the world or even the highest number of total gun fatalities, BUT we have an astoundingly high rate compared to any other industrial nation in the world, so much so that’s there’s virtually no comparison.

So… what can we realistically do? Besides nothing, which seems to be the position of the NRA?

 As I’ve been considering the issue of guns in our the great American representative democracy, it occurred to me that there’s one aspect of the whole Second Amendment mess that has been totally ignored – and that’s the issue of responsibility.  Oh, everyone pays lip service to “responsible gun owners,” but the actual issue of responsibility in practice has been totally overlooked.  My suggestion is that instead of futilely trying to ban firearms, we give some firm legal support to all those “responsible gun owners,”  and by doing so provide at least some attempt to restore the “rights” lost by all the firearms victims.

 Let’s look at it this way.  If you own a car and drive, you have to be tested and licensed, and if you’re caught driving without a license, you face legal sanctions. If your vehicle causes damages to others, even if you’re not the driver, you have a financial responsibility.  Now… let’s do a comparison.  Guns result in 31,000 deaths and over 70,000 injuries in the U.S. annually.  Vehicle accidents kill 33,000 people and injure close to 100,000.  We regulate automobiles and who can drive them and under what conditions.  We require insurance, apply criminal sanctions to grossly unsafe vehicle use, and insist on wide-spread driver education and training.  The result of all this is that since 1972 automobile deaths have dropped 41%.  Why not apply the same approach to firearms?

Do we want people who can’t see being able to own and shoot a firearm?  We don’t let them drive. Why should we let them have a gun [And please don’t tell me that’s unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court declares what’s constitutional and what’s not, and it’s said that reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms are constitutional.]  Why not require a firearms license?  And like a driver’s license, it could have categories.  If you want to drive a semi-trailer, you need more training and more insurance. If you want to have an arsenal of high-powered weapons, perhaps you need to be certified in handling them.  And the license, like a driver’s license, should require renewal.

 
A few other legal changes would also be helpful, such as licensing of weapons, just like cars – and forget all the screams about big government. Big government already knows all that about you anyway… and so does every major corporation, and I don’t hear any screams about invasion of privacy there. Besides, a nation that endorses social media such as Facebook has no right to claim privacy, anyway.

Perhaps we should also require firearms insurance, based on the number and class of weapons one owns, and a percentage of that premium could go to the various law enforcement agencies to give them the officers and equipment to go after real lawbreakers.  Perhaps we should impose an ammunition sales tax, like the gasoline tax that funds highway programs, in order to fund programs to support various aspects of firearms safety. There also ought to be a provision that if an owner doesn’t report the loss, sale, or theft of a firearm, and that weapon is subsequently used in a crime, the owner can be charged as an accessory after the fact.  None of these provisions should really trouble responsible gun owners.  I mean, after all, don’t they just require you to act the way you claim you should?  And make certain that anyone injured by your firearms, or their family, can be compensated, with, of course, an uninsured firearms operator provision as well.

And besides, it’s the American way – use a combination of required education, insurance, and financial responsibility.  More bureaucracy?  Of course, but it’s more than clear that simple solutions that have worked elsewhere in the world – like restricting firearms – haven’t worked here and won’t. So… we should do it our way, rather than doing nothing.

We all want our food to be safe to eat, the vehicles we drive to be mechanically and technically sound, the medicines we take not to be unduly hazardous to our health… and so forth.  But the problem we face is that as society becomes more technological and complex, the less an individual can do to assure that safety, and the abuses of business in the nineteenth and twentieth century have proved rather conclusively that businesses and corporations can’t be trusted to ensure the safety of their products and services, at least not without federal regulations and oversight [and, alas, sometimes not even then].

But beyond what one might call the “understandable” realm of government rules comes yet another level of safety… and that is the regulatory acts and structures we support and pay for as a result of the actions of crazies. To maintain safety from these crazies in a civilized society, we pay a huge premium, and one that shouldn’t, at least in an ideal world, be so necessary.  And, yes, I’m among the first to admit we do not live in anything close to an ideal world.

There are the crazies of greed, the scam artists, the ones who try to con money and assets from the gullible and the trusting, and those not intelligent enough to realize they’re being swindled. Another variety of the crazies of greed are the businesses who offshore the production of goods to places where there are no regulations, or very lax ones, on pollution, working conditions, and hazardous chemicals, and while, technically speaking, this practice may “save” us dollars in the cost of goods, it increases the costs and damages on the planet far more than what it “saves” us in lower prices.

Once I believed that it was the product-tampering crazies, those nuts who have injected toxins, poisons, and other harmful substances into foods, medicines, and the like, and who created a billion dollar industry of additional packaging that was totally unnecessary in a sane world… but then I realized that child-proof packaging is also necessary in a world where everything is presented as attractive.  Who would ever have thought that detergent pods would resemble candy?  But then, maybe that’s another facet of excessive corporate greed.

Of course, the emphasis on safety is selective.  We still allow sixteen year-olds possession and use of a two thousand pound plus potentially lethal weapon – the automobile – although we do require that the vehicle and operator be licensed and registered, unlike guns, where registration and licensing, in the USA, at least, are violently opposed

But I do find it interesting that the instance of thirty-some poisonings from tampered Tylenol more than twenty-five years ago spurred the eventual requirements of tamper-proof packaging on everything, and there’s not even a requirement for a gun owner to be licensed, when there are over 13,000 gun-related deaths annually in the USA.

With the firing of the Rutgers University basketball coach for bullying, the media and educational concern over bullying by teachers and coaches has intensified.  In the case of the Rutgers  coach, there’s substantial video evidence that he did indeed bully his players, not to mention engage in abusive and unprofessional behavior.  Likewise, there is a real problem in the educational system in students bullying other students.  Unfortunately, all the publicity about “bullying” is threatening to create a situation that may become in time, if not already, another serious problem.

 As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the tendency for students and educators to insist on teachers and professors providing “positive feedback” to students, regardless of whether such positivity is warranted, is already resulting in what I called the “Rah, Rah Cheerleader Effect.”  Now, more and more often, some students are deciding that any form of observation of their failings or any constructive criticism, even of the most egregious failure on the part of the student, is a form of “bullying.” 

 There is a clear distinction, at least in my mind, and, I suspect, in the minds of experienced and knowledgeable teachers and professors, between the abusive bullying behavior exemplified in the Rutgers basketball video and a quiet but firmly delivered statement about a student’s failure to do an assignment, to follow directions, or the errors committed by the student.  Yet all too many students today, in this era of political correctness and “anything negative will scar a child for life” equate almost anything that even suggests negativity with “bullying.”

 Human beings learn from their mistakes, and students are going to be handicapped in both future studies and in life if teachers and professors are restrained from honestly evaluating students because of a fear of being called “bullies.” Given the wide reliance on anonymous student evaluations by virtually all colleges and universities, this is anything but an unfounded fear, and what is worst about it all is that the teachers and professors who demand the most in achievement and excellence are the ones already getting comments about their being bullies. Studies of student evaluations already indicate that, in general, the most demanding professors get lower student evaluations than less academically demanding professors. For example, a recent controlled study at the U.S. Air Force Academy found that students who studied with more demanding professors got lower grades, gave lower student evaluations… and learned more.

 At a time when there is a real problem with bullying, especially student-student bullying, the last thing education needs is the problem of deciding that an honest assessment of a failure to meet academic standards is a form of bullying.   

U.S. worker productivity dropped in the fourth quarter of 2012, and overall worker productivity growth has lagged for the past several years, even as unit labor costs have risen. The economists’ explanations for the decline range from the lack of hiring to a surge in new hiring in the last part of 2012, as well as some highly technical considerations. Despite all the explanations and rhetoric, I have one basic question.  Given the continuing capital investment, the comparative stagnation of wages, and the vastly increased computerization and use of technology, why isn’t productivity a whole lot higher?

 Some economists claim that productivity isn’t higher because companies are trying to wring more work out of already overworked and tired workers, and that may well be true, but I think there’s another factor at work, and one that’s significantly larger… and completely overlooked by the statisticians, but not by actual middle managers, of whom there are probably too few these days.  What is that factor?  The on-the-job proliferation of personal technology use unrelated to the business at hand, and especially its use, overuse, and misuse

 There’s a fine line between use and overuse, but emails illustrate that difference.  Because emails have proliferated, many recipients either ignore more vital or important emails or are late getting to them because their electronic in-boxes are overflowing. Of course, that has created a greater use of Twitter, and that means more complex issues in emails aren’t addressed… or are delayed… or recipients just sigh and play a computer game.

 Two schools exist on the impact of social media on productivity, but the actual studies are limited.  On the one hand, the business research firm Basex issued a study declaring the productivity cost of workplace interruptions, primarily employee abuse and misuse of social media, at $650 billion a year, and a British study by Myjobgroup.co.uk, claimed a 14 billion pound annual loss to UK firms from time spent on social media. Another British study found that that, on average, employees spend almost 20% of their workweek  involved in personal online activities rather than on work. In 2012, Americans racked up 74 billion minutes, 20% of their time on social media sites, according to Nielsen/Incite’s Social Media Report for 2012, and it’s more than likely that a significant fraction of that time was on the company clock, so to speak.

 On the other hand, there are several studies claiming that blocking social media creates demoralized employees, retards communications, and actually costs industry billions annually.

 I’m not sure I trust anyone’s statistics completely, but I do know that I have to spend more time than I’d like scanning emails that purport to be useful and discarding them – and that’s not counting those in the spam file, which I also have to scan, because the filters still throw out mail I should be getting.  I also know local employers who continually are frustrated by finding employees on personal cellphones and social media sites when they should be working. My wife has colleagues who can’t get around to what they’re supposed to be doing because they’re always tweeting or on their cellphones.

 And when you have a whole generation of students who insist on continual communication, either through texting, tweets, or cellphones, I have the feeling that we’re not going to see a great deal of productivity improvement in the years ahead.

Last week thirty-five teachers in the Atlanta school system were arrested/indicted for cheating… that is, they were accused of changing and inflating students’ scores on the standardized tests that reputedly measure student achievement and thus determine teacher effectiveness… and bonuses. The district superintendent, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements, allegedly in order to obtain $500,000 in performance pay. She could face 45 years in prison, and prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her.  In addition to the 35 charged so far, another 143 were named in an 800 page report.  Of those named, 82 confessed to altering test scores.

 Now… I would be the last person to approve of such behavior, but, as my wife the university professor pointed out, there is a certain inconsistency, as well as tremendous hypocrisy, involved in these prosecutions, from the charges against individual teachers to the amount of the bail-bond set for the retired superintendent.

 Let me get this straight. Teachers and administrators rigged test scores to improve their salaries, and in some cases, merely to keep their jobs, because the teachers with the lowest student scores, regardless of the class composition, risked losing their jobs, and they’re being prosecuted.  That prosecution is absolutely necessary, sadly, as it should be. Over three years ago, however, mortgage bankers, investment bankers, and other financial institutions falsified the risk of trillions of dollars in mortgage securities and sent the country into the second worst economic recession in U.S. history… and not a single investment banker has even been charged.  In the case of the mortgage bankers, millions lost their homes, jobs, and savings, and entire communities were economically devastated, while in the case of the teachers, far more modest damage has occurred… damage limited to one school district in one metropolitan area…

 Well… some might say that teachers should be held to a higher standard.  But… if they should be held to a higher standard, why aren’t they being paid as well as mortgage bankers, who clearly haven’t been held to a high standard?  The average teacher doesn’t make a fraction of what those illustrious individuals who crashed the economy made… and still make.

 There’s no law against making bad economic decisions, others might claim, but there is a law against creating fraudulent test scores for economic gain.   Except… what about the fraudulent grading of bundled mortgage securities and derivatives that made the investment banks billions… money that was lost and never repaid?

 I don’t have much sympathy for the teachers, none, in fact, but I can understand why some of them did what they did.  We have a society that worships money, and little else, and in education, only the test scores and credentials, not the actual learning, seem to matter. Those teachers saw that only money, credentials, and numbers seem to count, as well as the fact that some of the highest executives in the financial industry benefited from defrauding the purchasers of bundled securities and got away with it.  Given that scale of fraud, what does it matter if test scores are fudged a bit?  Why should teachers worry about ethics and that sort of thing, if the government and the American people aren’t going to do anything about massive financial gains from fraud or even care about the lack of ethics exhibited by those financiers?

 Oh… and add to that the current mindset that teachers are absolutely and totally responsible for student learning.  Parents have no responsibility for providing a learning environment at home; communities have no responsibility for the safety of students; and students have no responsibility for trying to learn.  In fact, from what I’ve seen, only a minority of students will accept any responsibility for learning.  Oh… most will give the idea of their responsibility to learn lip service, but that vanishes with the first difficult assignment or the first novel distraction… and it becomes entirely the teacher’s problem.  Well… obviously those teachers in Atlanta decided that, if the system was rigged against them, they’d re-rig it… and they got caught.

 What will be overlooked is the fact that, in some states, almost fifty percent of classroom time will continue to be spent on testing or test preparation… and that’s an even greater corruption of education than upgrading student test scores, unwelcome as such alternations are and should be.  The other question that the Atlanta case raises is why it took so long to come to light.  If all these objective tests are so accurate, then shouldn’t it have been apparent from the start that there were obvious discrepancies between the test scores and academic performance? Oh… I forgot.  No one measures academic performance except by test scores.  Or is it that the tests aren’t that accurate?  Or that no one wants to turn away from the simplistic – and wrong – assumption that tests don’t answer all, or even a larger proportion – of the problems involved in education?

 The even greater problem is that, now, most teachers – and most of them are dedicated, honest, and hard-working – will have to live down another problematical example… and they’ll have to do it knowing that the biggest cheaters in U.S. history got away scot-free… and knowing that no one really seems to care… except to have another reason to blame teachers.

Once upon a time, baseball was the national game.  For some it still is.  Others, I suppose, would pick football… or basketball, or even NASCAR.  I doubt we have the consensus on a national pastime that existed a generation or so ago with baseball… and I happen to think that’s sad.  It’s also revealing in a way that I often don’t see discussed.

As baseball aficionados have told me, one of the most difficult tasks in any sport is hitting a baseball.  Ted Williams said something to the effect that failing to hit the ball seven times out of ten was a great success, and batting over .333 for a career is likely to put a player on the short list for the Hall of Fame.  In fact, since 1900, the highest season batting average ever was .424, by Rogers Hornsby, and he is the only hitter during that time period to bat over .400 for three separate seasons.  The last hitter to hit over .400 for a season was Bill Terry in 1930.  By comparison, the worst fielding record by an outfielder playing a full season was .842, and generally the top-fielding outfielders literally miss no catches… with an average of 1.000.  For what it’s worth, that suggests to me a certain parallel with life in that new initiatives [hits] fail most of the time, while it’s critical not to make mistakes [in other words, make every catch].

So why does any of this matter?  Because it’s indicative of how American culture and values have changed over the past century, and I have my doubts about whether those changes have been for the better.

Baseball is a game of skill, and while one can argue, as Billy Beane has done as general manager at Oakland, that certain skills are overrated and others underrated, skills do matter.  It’s also a game of timing and finesse.  Even during the “steroid scandal” period, even all those overmuscled “power hitters” couldn’t manage better batting averages, no matter how far they blasted the ball. It’s also a somewhat slower game [some would call it glacially paced] compared to the increased appeal of football, basketball, and even NASCAR racing.

More important, sadly, appears to be the increased level of mayhem or violence present in those three.  There have been so many career-ending injuries in football that the NFL has been forced to investigate and make some rule changes.  Recent medical studies indicate that a truly significant percentage of football players have brain damage from repeated impacts.  Even basketball, which was largely a non-contact sport when I played in high school all too many years ago, has become so much more violent that knee and back injuries are commonplace, and now we’re beginning to see broken bones  — as witness what happened to Kevin Ware of Louisville in the current NCAA tournament.  As for NASCAR, the crashes become more and more spectacular.

In short, in terms of the national spectator pastime, it appears that Americans have opted increasingly against skill and strategy, against a quest for perfection against the odds, and for speed and violence in all forms… and this emphasis is everywhere, in such seemingly unrelated societal changes as emails replacing letters, and then tweets replacing emails… sorter, faster, and with a higher percentage of vulgar/violent language.  Or even in the rise of mixed martial arts, even more brutal, violent, and faster than boxing or wrestling.

These days I get more and more comments from first-time readers about my “pacing” – that it’s slow. There are other long fantasy series, but more and more of them focus on action and violence, not to mention sex. Many television shows are using technology to fractionally speed up the action, by snipping pauses, making faster cuts, etc.

So as Americans turn from baseball… what’s next?  Gladiatorial contests?  The Hunger Games?  Or something even faster and more violent?

And what does it say about us?

Recently, the New Yorker had a feature article on Aaron Swartz, which featured some excerpts from his writing and interviews with people close to him.  The article/profile was both interesting and frightening, and extraordinarily sad, because it revealed a brilliant young man who never grew up, never truly understood society – any society – and, because he couldn’t understand it, found himself in a position, compounded by illness, where he simply could not cope.  What came through most clearly to me, although this was certainly not emphasized by the writer or by any of those who were interviewed, was the fact that Swartz had absolutely no understanding that society, or any organization or relationship, has limits.

He made a great deal of money very young, but failed to understand that, for most people, making money is anything but easy.  He quit jobs because he didn’t want to put up with the regimentation and requirements.  He got involved in the whole issue of copyright because he didn’t believe in limits… and then, according to the article, had actually abandoned much of that fight when it came back to bite him.

The plain truth of the matter is that any relationship, any organization, any society, any government – in fact anything that goes beyond a single isolated entity – has limits, and the more complicated the organization or group, the more limits that are required for it to function. Children who do not learn this young will always have problems; adults who have not learned this will either be hermits or anti-social outcasts, usually verging on having trouble with others and the law. As the old saying goes, your freedom stops short of hitting my nose… one of the most basic of limits.

Various societies have differing limits, and differing ways of imposing and enforcing those limits, but they have limits. Social and government conflicts are always about the types of limits, their structure, enforcement, and various other details, but not about the fact that limits are necessary.  Even extremists, such as “gun rights” types, aren’t arguing for no societal limits at all – they just don’t want limits over weapons, but most of them, I suspect, would have problems if all limits on everything were removed.  They just want a different set of limits. The same is true of religious extremists, extreme feminists, environmentalists, zealous developers, etc.

In turn, nature or the environment imposes limits.  Air-breathing creatures are not going to evolve in airless environments.  If you don’t eat, sooner or later you’re going to die.  Biology imposes limits.  Most human beings less than six feet tall are going to have a hard time being professional basketball players because smaller stature imposes limits, as does a lack of raw athletic ability.

Yet… in today’s western societies, particularly in the United States, there is less and less recognition of limits, and more and more of an attitude that anyone can do anything, especially in parenting and education.  Limits exist; saying that they don’t or acting as if they don’t is only a recipe for personal and societal disaster.  That doesn’t mean limits preclude success; it does mean that one has to understand where the limits exist and where they don’t, both in personal and in societal terms, and at times, how to find another way to success.

And that’s something that Aaron Swartz  didn’t understand that and too many people, especially young people these days, also don’t seem to understand, perhaps because too many of their parents don’t either.

Standardized objective tests appear to have become the agreed-upon criteria for evaluating the “effectiveness” of teachers and schools in educating students. Regardless of all the rhetoric, it’s fairly clear that such tests are more or less accurate in measuring the retention of selected facts and skills.  What the tests don’t measure is the ability to think or the ability to integrate and employ a wide range of knowledge and skills in resolving problems or creating something.  Beyond those shortcomings, which are considerable in themselves, the widespread and growing use of such tests raises other questions.

These so-called objective tests, implemented on a wider and wider scale, also have additional negative impacts – on the students required to take them, the teachers whose performance is evaluated by their results, and on society itself.

Several of the impacts on students don’t even seem to be recognized by either the proponents or opponents of standardized testing.  The first impact is the creation of a mindset that there is indeed a simple and objective answer to every question and problem.  The second impact is that it conditions the students to confine their thoughts and abilities to the simplistic scope of the problem presented.  The tests and the teaching to those tests create a compartmentalization of learning. There is, in my mind, a definite correlation between the continued growth of standardized testing and the growing inability of students to apply skills learned in one area in another.  The third impact is that linguistic and logical skills are suffering, in that students seldom have to marshal facts and ideas and create a logical written or verbal presentation of those ideas – especially on the spot.  What ever happened to the class essay that developed that skill?  It’s gone, in most schools, and so are the skills.  A fourth outgrowth of these combined problems is that more and more students literally require detailed step-by-step directions to accomplish various tasks, to the point where a significant percentage of those students have lost the ability to follow general directions or to look beyond the obvious for answers.

As for the teachers… first off, the increasing use of standardized tests has reduced actual classroom instructional time.  A student isn’t learning when the student is taking tests.  The second problem for teachers is that, if the teacher doesn’t spend some time teaching the students how to take the tests, as well as teaching to the tests, the students will get lower scores and in the short run, that penalizes both the teacher and the students.  But such “teaching” further reduces the amount of time available for learning other material.  The third problem is that teaching for objective tests reduces the intellectual scope of the subject matter.  This, in turn, fosters simplistic explanations, and simplistic explanations certainly contribution to social and political polarization.

In turn, the growth of simplistics and social and political polarization impedes political consensus and thus makes resolution of political and government problems increasingly difficult and contributes to simplistic mechanical/technical and short term business practices.

And, of course, there is the failure to acknowledge that it’s virtually impossible to create a truly “objective” test or presentation of facts in the first place, and this creates an illusion of objectivity that doesn’t exist in the real world. So, by all means, keep expanding the use of objective testing so that students know more facts about even less, without even the ability to recognize that… and then claim success in “reforming” and improving education.

When doing some research for the previous blog, I came across a New York Times article that cited a very reputable survey [the General Social Survey] that released data showing that the percentage of U.S. households owning firearms has decreased from fifty percent to thirty five percent over the past forty years. Needless to say, the National Rifle Association and others disputed this finding, claiming that since the number of firearms held Americans has increased from something like two hundred million to over three hundred million, there was no way that the number of households holding firearms could have decreased.

And… both the GSS and the NRA happen to be right.  Why?  Because although the percentages are correct, the U.S. population has increased by more than thirty percent, and the number of households has almost doubled [families having fewer children and more single person households are why the percentage increases in population and number of households don’t correspond].  That means that eight million more households have firearms than in 1970, but that the total percentage of households having them is less, and interestingly enough the youngest households have the lowest percentage of firearms, well under thirty percent, while older Republican households have the highest percentage (which just might suggest that Republicans either have more to steal or worry more about it being stolen, if not both).

The same kinds of claims go on in advertising as well.  One truck manufacturer asserts that it has more trucks of a certain type on the road than any other manufacturer, proving durability, while its rival asserts that its trucks stay on the road longer.  The first manufacturer produces and sells more trucks so that in fact it does have more trucks on the road, but the second manufacturer’s trucks do last longer. Assuming the statistics are correct, it does suggest that the first manufacturer is misrepresenting the meaning of accurate facts.

Inflation is measured in a number of different ways, using everything from a Gross National Product (GNP) deflator to various forms of Consumer Price Indices.  In recent years, the government has also used a Core CPI, which excludes “highly volatile” goods, such as food and energy, on the grounds that these items distort overall price patterns.  That may be, but over the last twelve months the price of food has increased [according to BLS measurements] 1.6%, while energy prices have declined.  The problem, as I see it, is that overall food prices, over time, at least over the last seventy years, seldom decline, while energy prices are currently low because the economy is depressed.  As the economy recovers energy prices will rise, and food prices certainly won’t go down, especially given the drought still pervading many U.S. agricultural regions. Likewise, a number of politicians are proposing that Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustments [COLA] be linked to a Chained CPI instead of the current CPI-W, on the grounds that the Chained CPI is more accurate.  It likely is, but that would mean that benefits would be decreased by some 3% over the next ten years, and three percent adds up to thousands of dollars for each beneficiary. The government is doing its best to present this proposed change in terms of increased “accuracy,” but it would mean Social Security benefits over time will be lower than they would have been.  Of course, opponents claim that the change cuts benefits, stopping there, and ignoring the fact that, over time, the system cannot pay those benefits unless the benefit levels are decreased or taxes are increased.

I could go on, but it all brings to mind the observation attributed to  Mark Twain Benjamin Disraeli:  “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

The other day I was reflecting about various aspects of the world, and it dawned on me that I’d never seen, heard of, or read about a mob rioting in support of anything moderate.  Obvious as that may seem, every incident of mob violence deals with extremism or a reaction to extremism, especially if one especially if one considers hunger, discrimination, or civil repression of form of extremism.

But what lies behind that observation goes much farther than that. One of the greatest “mob” events in U.S. history was the Civil War, and it was generated because the states of the Confederacy insisted on the “right” to enslave other human beings, certainly an extremist belief and behavior. Not only that, but the New York riot in reaction to the first national draft, for the Union army, still ranks as one of the most violent in U.S. history. A great number of mobs and riots in recent U.S. history have also occurred as a reaction to perceived extremism, such as those that followed the death of Martin Luther King or the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King.

Yet… there is a reason behind such “extremism,” and it seems fairly simple to me.  The most obvious example is that of the Civil War.  Slaves were property, and they represented a huge percentage of the wealth of the south.  Those who opposed the abolition of slavery felt that the federal government would confiscate their property – and they “rioted” to keep it, regardless of the ethics of enslaving human beings.  A huge percentage of the various civil rights riots in the United States, and more recently in France and elsewhere in Europe, resulted from resentment that the government and property owners were using their powers to economically oppress others in various ways.  Gun rights’ advocates fear government oppression, regulation, and confiscation – a loss of property and freedom.  Male extremist religious leaders violently dislike anything that will reduce their power – and increase the power of women and educated males, and this is certainly a factor behind anti-American mobs across the Middle East.

Extremism, of course, isn’t always exactly rational, either. Supporters of the individual right to own and bear arms have gotten consistently more violent and rabid in their assertions of those rights, and there’s been a lot of press about whether this represents a trend of some sort.  I’d venture that it does, but it’s not the kind of trend that I find particularly encouraging, not when the reaction is for gun supporters to start toting weapons everywhere and declaring that they’re under siege. Oh?  Despite all the political rhetoric, there are fewer restrictive gun laws today than in half a century, and yet we’re seeing a mob-type reaction to a few modest proposals on assault-type weapons and ammunition clip sizes…which may not even be enacted.

Abortion is another issue that generates great emotional reactions, and even though something like seventy percent of the American people believe that at least some form of abortion should be legal, those who oppose its legality create violent protests and have even murdered doctors.

Yet in most of these cases, those who struggle to keep their “rights” and “property” – or to gain them – seem to be in the position of asserting that their “rights” trump everyone else’s.  Property owners declare that they don’t want to sell to people of another ethnic group, even if the buyers meet their price.  Extremist gun owners seem to want the right to own and use pretty much any form of weapon ammunition or magazine that is available, despite the death toll on others.  Religious extremists insist that their views trump any other rights that might conflict with their views.  And the “civil rights” rioters think that their “grievances” allow them to trample all over the property rights of others.

It seems to me that a little more moderation on all sides would be in order, but then, that would be rational, and mobs don’t seem to form on a rational basis. I certainly don’t see any mobs forming to support moderation.  I wonder why not.

The Dow Jones recently surpassed its all-time high and has contined to climb, and the various other market indices are also near historic highs… and yet unemployment is still hovering just under eight percent; the real estate market in much of the United States is still languishing; economic growth is sluggish, to say the least; hiring hasn’t picked up much; there’s still been an inflation of percent over the past four years; and interest rates are at all-time lows [which is good for borrowing, and lousy for saving].

So why is the stock market roaring to new highs?

Because for anyone who is trying to save for the future there’s nowhere else to put the money without almost immediately losing some of its value.  If you put the money in a bank or under the mattress, it will lose almost two percent of its value every year… and for someone who might be trying to build up savings for a child’s college education or retirement, that’s not a pleasant thought.  Investing in bonds is even worse, because with interest rates as low as they are, bond values can only hold steady, if inflation remains low, or decrease in value drastically if inflation picks up.  Real estate is still depressed, and investing there is anything but flexible, since it’s hard to find buyers without taking a loss in the short-term, and it’s likely to be years before many markets recover.  But… many stocks do pay dividends, and the stock market has shown a remarkable recovery since 2008… so much so that many investment professionals worry that many stocks are now overpriced, but people keep buying.

Am I saying that the stock market will crash?

I’m not about to go out on that limb, not while the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into the various money and equity markets through quantitative easing (essentially a practice of buying financial assets to inject money into the economy and maintain the prices of those monetary assets)  and other indirect efforts.  So far, because of the comparatively depressed state of the economy, all that federal funding has not generated inflation, but it has given many professional money and fund managers the sense that the Federal Reserve will not permit any significant loss of value in those financial assets.

The question is just how long the Fed can keep doing this before the economy recovers enough for inflation to start increasing… and what will happen then?  Will the Fed be able to time the phase-out of QE so that we don’t have runaway inflation?  Or are we in a permanently depressed post-technological, high automation economy that will always require such monetary stimulation?  Or… has so much money been poured into the economy that a future runaway inflation is almost impossible to avoid?

As some readers may know, I was trained as an economist, and worked as one for a time, and I do follow financial trends fairly closely.  So do many others, many of them far more skilled than I am, but whether many of them will admit it or not, we all have great concerns about the long-term implications of this policy.  The problem, of course, is that without the Fed’s intervention, we’d still be mired in what would have turned into a second Great Depression – but then, if the Congress hadn’t totally deregulated the financial sector, we might not have been in such a huge mess in the first place.  In any case, what’s done is done, and we have to deal, as we can, with what lies ahead.

First, that means recognizing that the various stock market indicators are far more indicative of the fact that the other “investment” opportunities are currently only opportunities, in general, to lose money, although there are always some good opportunities in any sector, and that the equities market is the only place in the world where large sums of money can be invested with any hope of a positive rate of return… at least, for now.  But the market indices do not indicate robust economic health, and are, in some respects, more of an indication of desperation on the part of investors.

And that concerns me… especially since I – and many others – don’t see any viable alternatives, almost a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation… and one which the politicians are studiously ignoring.  But then, that’s what politicians do best.

Last week, I attended a university performance of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, considered by most scholars in the field to be one of his finest.  It was a university performance, but a good solid university performance with a full orchestra. An opera of this scale isn’t often performed in small university towns, especially ones in rural areas… for many reasons, and it was an ambitious performance with slightly “edgy” and colorful [but not scandalous or skimpy] costuming that evoked the feel of the period, but did not follow it precisely.  The opera was presented uncut, and with no “modernization” except for the not-precisely period costuming… and no special effects except for standard theatre lighting.

I’m not about to summarize the plot, except to say that it’s Mozart and Da Ponte’s [the librettist’s] take on Don Juan/Casanova, and that in addition to the glorious music, it’s a morality play, in that Don Giovanni gets what he deserves in the end. It’s a fairly long opera, if not nearly so long as Wagnerian operas, with two acts and an intermission running over three hours. It was also presented in two versions, alternatively with an English version on one night, and the original Italian on the next.  The audience, as it usually is for university productions, consisted of university students, some faculty, some high school students, presumably musically inclined, and a number of townspeople.

Now… I’ve more than occasionally noted the short attention span of all too many young people, particularly those of college age, and I’ve also expressed concern about their tendency to be, shall we say, occasionally somewhat less than ethically rigorous in certain areas. So… I wasn’t exactly shocked when, after intermission of the opening night of the English version, I noticed that several previously occupied blocks of seats were vacant as the orchestra began to play the opening to the second act.  Except then it struck me that those who had left were not college students, or high school students, or faculty, but older townspeople, many of whom are regarded as more “culturally” inclined.  They were the ones who either had the short attention spans, the lack of interest in a morality-based opera, the distaste for non-traditional costuming, or were bored by the glorious, but definitely long and intricate music. This is, alas, not something new. Reportedly, even the Emperor Josef, who was Mozart’s patron, complained that his operas had “too many notes.”

What was also most encouraging was that, when the English version of the opera ended, the students were the ones who leapt to their feet and gave the cast a standing ovation… and that’s something I’ve seldom seen in over twenty years of watching university opera programs. Incidentally, the music and theatre faculty who saw the opera thought it was a very good and solid performance (although they felt that the Italian version performed on Saturday was close to outstanding).  And, not surprisingly, the younger members of the audience actually raved about the costumes.

Watching all this not only gave me hope, but confirmed a number of things, at least for me.  First, for music and the arts to reach and move people, especially young people, doesn’t always require all the technological bells and whistles.  Second, closed minds and short attention spans exist in all age groups.  And third, any politician who thinks the arts should be eliminated from education has no business in politics and should be removed forthwith.

One of the most pernicious aspects of the change in secondary and even undergraduate college education over the past generation has been the emergence, and even dominance in some areas, of the “cheerleader” school of teaching.  The devotees of this approach to teaching seem to believe that all it takes for student success is unbridled enthusiasm and support for students, reinforced by liberal amounts of praise, whether deserved or not [and of course, many feel that no amount of praise is excessive… or if they don’t feel that way, still act as though praise cannot be overdone].  I read recently about one highly placed individual in the education world who was appalled by a poster/sign in a school that observed that success also required application and dedication by the student.

The problem with this “ultra-positive” approach is that students leave secondary school with vastly overinflated ideas of their own importance, and their own abilities and levels of competency.  The majority also lack any understanding of what intellectual work really is. These observations are not mine alone, but the results of scores of studies over the past ten years, and the findings, as I’ve noted earlier, are not a reflection on the innate intelligence of students, but upon their ability to apply that intelligence in a constructive and focused manner.

Every year that has passed over the last decade has seen a greater and greater percentage of students entering college who are, as one psychologist termed them, “teacups” who shatter when faced with difficult tasks, demanding courses, or just plain accurate constructive criticism of their work.  Almost inevitably, many of these “teacups” complain that teachers who insist on their doing college-level work competently and on time are unfair, even “bullies,” and that there are “better ways” to teach – meaning that they don’t want to be reminded in any fashion of their shortcomings or to be informed of how to improve.

Education is not only about learning to think, or learning the basics of society, or the skills that will lead to the student’s ability to function economically in society, but it’s also about learning that in the “real world” most people are supposed to do their jobs well without praise, that praise only comes, if then, from going beyond the expected.

I’m not saying that the enthusiastic cheerleading form of education doesn’t have a place.  It does, and that place is in kindergarten and first and possibly second grade, roughly.  But cheerleading as an overall teaching style needs to be phased out through elementary school. Again, this is not a rant against praise or encouragement; it’s a rant against teachers and parents who create unrealistic expectations on the part of students by cheering them on regardless of circumstances and the students’ own abilities and determination.

I’m also opposed to the total gloom and doom outlook – now often manifested, interestingly enough, by the proponents of “hard” education, i.e., math and science and computers, to the virtual exclusion of anything else, who insist that education must be practical and that students should not be taught the arts and disciplines in which jobs are scarce, or that students should pay more for such fields of study.  That narrow-minded approach ignores one basic thing – not all students are the same, and not all of them have great ability in those fields.  It’s one thing to point out realistically the difficulties faced in attempting a career in any field of art or music or even writing or other fields where there are far more graduates than jobs. It’s another to decide that certain subjects shouldn’t be taught because they aren’t currently that economically rewarding.  The one thing that is certain is that economics and politics and society change, and channeling education too narrowly is just as much a road to disaster as blindly encouraging students to believe that any of them can do anything, and that everything they do is wonderful.

I’m considered a fairly successful writer, but I can guarantee that, if most college students had their work criticized by teachers the way some readers criticize mine, or assessed accurately by employers, those students really would shatter.  Cheerleading has its place, and it’s in the sports arenas and early childhood education, not in high school or college courses… and it seldom, if ever, occurs  in the world  beyond education.

The other day I came across a blog that essentially accused the publishing industry of “corruption” and my own publisher, Tor, of “gaming” the system to produce artificial bestsellers.  While there is truth in the fact that Tor and indeed all publishers do their best to release titles in a way that will maximize the possibility that new releases make various “bestseller” lists, the idea [or at least this particular blogger’s idea] that the “big” publishers are somehow actively corrupting publishing is based on some serious misconceptions about bestseller lists, both in how they’re compiled and how well/poorly they reflect sales.

To begin with, the lists don’t represent total sales or anything close to that.  They represent sales in a given period, based on data from various – and often differing – sources.  Publishers Weekly now bases its lists on Nielsen BookScan numbers, which, in general but not always in specific cases, comprise about 60% to 80% of the major retail sales points, depending on which expert one talks to, but that leaves major gaps, such as Walmart, whose numbers aren’t included in BookScan.  The New York Times does not reveal its specific methodology, but has stated that its survey includes 4,000 bookstores as well as representative wholesalers. USA Today surveys some 3,000 retailers.  In the F&SF area, Locus magazine does its own survey of bookstores and publishes its own monthly F&SF listing, which, according to some editors in the field, may be more representative of the genre, depending on one’s definition of fantasy and science fiction.

But there are other factors to consider as well. While the BookScan sales numbers do represent actual sales, all “pre-orders” or sales made before the release date are tallied for bestseller numbers in the first week’s sales.  That means that a book that’s been listed at, say, 5,000 on the Amazon sales ranking for five months may well rack up higher numbers than a book that’s only been available for two months, and shows more pre-orders at any one time, but for a shorter period.  Then there’s the fact that books have differing readerships, and the audience buying patterns reflect such differences, so that a book that never makes the “bestseller” lists may actually outsell a one-time sensation over the course of a year… or twenty. Add to that the fact that the BookScan numbers don’t reflect sales at some large outlets and at a considerable number of independent bookstores.

There’s no doubt that publishers do try to game the system.  A publisher generally won’t schedule two possible blockbuster books from its own list in the same genre or with the same readership list in the same month or even the same season. They may set up special events just after midnight so that a book comes out in the first minutes of the next reporting week, maximizing possible sales for that one week.  Or they may try to generate huge-pre-orders, as it appears Tor did with the last book of the Wheel of Time.  Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t; and sometimes, even the publisher gets surprised.  No one at Tor, for example, had any idea that Imager’s Battalion would make The New York Times bestseller list, especially since it was released something like two weeks after A Memory of Light [the final WOT book].

Upon occasion, however, individual authors have also gamed the system, like the authors of a business book who bought something like 10,000 copies of their own book in targeted areas across the USA in order to get on the bestseller lists – and did. I don’t have any idea if they made back the likely quarter of a million dollars that cost, but maybe they did.  And so did the author of a book called Leapfrogging, but doing so required getting others [i.e., his business clients] to pre-order some 3,000 books… and that’s not all that different from simply getting 3,000 people to buy your book.  As a very practical matter, major publishers don’t “game” the system this way.  They’ll persuade, talk to book buyers, advertise, create fan groups and buzz, etc., but it’s rather obvious if your purchasing department buys on the market 10,000 copies of a book you just published… not that for high-priority titles they won’t do quite a few other things.

Because Amazon does make weekly BookScan numbers available to authors – just of the sales of their own books – I can compare what BookScan reports to what is actually sold, albeit on a greatly delayed basis, since I get author royalty reports only twice yearly, and those numbers are for a 6 month period ending four months previously. I think it’s fair to say that, while royalty reports may not reflect all books being sold in a period, they’re far more accurate that any bestseller methodology, and they certainly don’t have inflated sales numbers because I can be absolutely certain that my publisher is not going to pay me royalties for books that were not sold.

Based on that comparison, the sales numbers for my books that I get from BookScan through Amazon [sales, not their hourly ranking] only account for roughly 50% of actual sales, suggesting that I have significant sales in smaller retail outlets – and if those outlets are ones surveyed by the Times or USA Today, I’ll rank higher on their lists than on the PW list, which is in fact exactly what has happened on those few occasions when I’ve made the lists [near the bottom, I will confess, but it’s still very nice to be on those lists].

As for reader ratings, they reflect nothing more and nothing less than reader preferences, and have little to do with sales numbers, except that books that sell more copies usually have more reader reviews, but such reviews usually comprise less than half of one percent of the number of copies sold – except in the cases where authors have made a huge campaign to get their readers to write reviews [and in the handful of cases where desperate authors used multiple pseudonyms to pad their reader reviews].

So… the bottom line, so to speak, is that bestseller lists do reflect comparative sales, but only roughly, not inclusively, and only for a defined period of time… and publishers do their best to maximize the appearance of their books on lists… sometimes… but the information is far too scattered and imprecise for the kind of  wholesale “insider corruption” that is periodically suggested, particularly since the bestseller lists compiled by different entities with differing sources and methodologies seem to share a great many titles, if in differently ranked positions.  And while the cost of “gaming” the system by buying your own books can work… it’s far too expensive, even with the “multiplier effect” of being on the list, for most people or publishers to find it cost-effective over the long run.

In short, from what I’ve seen, there’s a fair amount of “gaming” on the part of authors and publishers but not, if you will, list “manipulation” or “corruption” on the part of either publishers or those who publish the various best-seller lists.