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Math Class: Who are you?

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Many Paths

15 Monday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, psychology, sports

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AI, Business, competition, creativity, Democracy, Design, divergent thinking, family, innovation, learning, life, mental-health, sports, truth, writing

Many Paths

This is one of a series of posts about various tools of thought that are useful in a wide variety of situations. This particular tool is often called “Alternatives Thinking” or “Divergent Thinking.” I chose the name “Many Paths” because when I first posted this about seven years ago, I was in the middle of writing a trilogy called: “The Myths of the Veritas.” The new leader of the Veritas was known as “Many Paths” because she was particularly good at finding many possible alternatives to consider. Now, let’s see what this tool is and how it may prove useful to us.

The basic idea is simple. When we are confronted with a situation, we often “Jump to Conclusions” or “Spring into Action” before we have all the facts. Even when we have all the facts (which is rare), we also have a tendency to focus on our first interpretation or our first idea about how to handle the situation. This often leads to thinking of one (and only one) course of action. And, very occasionally; for instance, in some emergencies, that is the correct thing to do.

backlit breathing apparatus danger dangerous

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Even in emergencies however, our first terrified instinct about what to do can be dead wrong. For example, people see a small fire in their homes and immediately throw water on it. But if it’s a grease fire or an electrical fire, this is not a good course of action. Soon after I first began my dozen years as Executive Director of the NYNEX AI Lab, there was a fire in a nearby Stouffer’s Hotel. The charred bodies of a dozen IBM executives were found huddled in a closet. In the smoke and panic and confusion of the fire, they had apparently grabbed at the first door and gone into a dead end closet and they all perished there.

In daily life, there are a great many situations where a little extra thinking time would improve the outcome. For example, while working at IBM Research in the 1970’s, I drove about 10 minutes each way to work. At one point, I had a loose fan belt and my battery went dead. In a hurry to attend a meeting, I jump-started my car and drove to the IBM parking lot. Already late to a meeting, I went to turn off the car and just before I did so, I realized that I had not driven far enough to recharge the battery. So, I decided I’d better leave the car engine running for awhile. But as I gathered up my things and began dashing off to the meeting, I realized that it was insane to leave my car unlocked with the engine running! After all, someone could simply open the door and drive off! So, still in a hurry, I locked the car — with the engine running and the keys safely locked inside.

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Oops!

Most of us have done similar things. In some early experiments on design problem solving done at IBM, I found that when I asked people to come up with as many solutions as possible, they would generate ideas fairly quickly until they came up with one that they thought would really solve the problem. At that point, their idea productivity fell precipitously. It is hard for us to force ourselves to think of more than one good solution.

Why is this important? For one thing, conditions change. Something may happen that makes your first solution no longer apt. For another thing, there may be side-effects of your solution that make it unacceptable. Another common issue is that someone may object to your first solution for reasons you could not foresee. (See also, “Who Speaks for Wolf” as a way to help minimize that chance). In the context of invention and product development it is extremely unlikely that the first solution you come upon (and indeed even the first few solutions you think of) are novel. They are instead extremely likely to be the intellectual property of someone else. The most obvious solutions have likely already been patented and may already be in products or services that many customers are already using.

I have long been interested in observing people’s strategies and tactics in sporting events (See “The Winning Weekend Warrior”). One tactic that is overwhelmingly popular in tennis, for instance, is that the harder your opponent hits the ball, the harder you try to hit the ball. For example, someone hits a very hard ball while you’re at the net. You take this as an affront and think “I’ll show you!” Trying to hit the volley even harder means you take the racquet back farther. About half the time, the extra time it takes to bring the racquet back means you’ll mis-hit the ball or miss it entirely. On most of the remaining occasions, you’ll hit the volley too hard and it will go long. If someone hits the ball at you hard, what you need to do is simply block it back and guide it to the right spot. Trying to add extra power is unnecessary and too time-consuming. What is remarkable is not that you and I try to hit a hard ball harder. What is remarkable is that we never seem to try a different tactic!

There are many issues with focusing all your energy on the first solution you come up with. But the worst consequence is that you are overly invested in that first “solution” (which may not even be a real solution). This is bad in trying to solve problems in every domain I can think of and having others involved amplifies the badness.

For instance, let’s say that after 3 years without a vacation, you and your spouse finally have time for a nice two-week vacation. You want to visit Cuba for two weeks and your spouse wants to visit Vietnam for two weeks. If you each only comes up with one idea, you will almost always find yourself pitching for your idea, trying to convince the other person that Cuba is better while they will spend their energy trying to shoot down your choice and explain (patiently at first and less so as time goes on) why Vietnam is a much better idea. After many frustrating arguments that go nowhere, you may decide to compromise; e.g., you could visit an empty stretch of open sea in the Pacific Ocean half-way between the locations; or, you may decide to flip a coin. All this frustration and bad feeling might be avoidable. It might be that your second choice and your spouse’s second choice are both San Diego! But you’ll never even discover this because when each of you only thinks of one idea, what should be a collaborative problem solving exercise instead becomes a debate – a contest with precisely one winner and one loser.

man and woman wearing brown leather jackets

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One reason people may be prone to latch onto the first idea that occurs to them is that this is typically what happens in fiction. A TV detective gets a call that they must come alone and not tell the police but instead meet someone in an abandoned warehouse. For the sake of the drama, it puts our hero into obvious danger. They are outgunned and it looks like certain death for them. Then, due to their superior thinking, martial arts, dumb luck, or having a side-kick who followed them, they miraculously survive! Whew! But in real life, it’s almost always better to wait for back up and think through how various alternatives might work out.

Thinking of many alternatives will save you many headaches – at work, in your love life, in your recreational endeavors. When you force yourself to think of many alternatives, you will also be more open to the ideas of others. Over time, thinking of many alternatives whenever you get a chance will also increase your own creative potential. Who knows? You might even be chosen as the next leader.

For a leader, it is particularly important to consider many possibilities. Insisting that everyone get on board with the first idea that pops into your head will cause resentment and dissension. It will also make you far less willing to change to a different idea when circumstances necessitate it.

You may start a business and decide that you must be personally involved in every decision and with every customer contact. At first, when your company is small, this might work out wonderfully well. No-one knows the customer and the product quite so well as you do. But you are not God. You cannot be everywhere and know everything. If you never learn to delegate; never grow the capacity of your people; never take expert advice — you will drive yourself and everyone around you crazy. The very success of your business will guarantee its ultimate failure. Learn to consider many paths. You will be glad you did.

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The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Labelism

Wednesday

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Guns and Love

You Must Remember This

The Jewels of November

The Impossible

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We Won the War! We Won the War!

Peace

The Dance of Billions

The First Ring of Empathy

Travels with Sadie

Dog Trainers

The Iroquois Rule of Six

The Walkabout Diaries: Bee Wise

Madison Keys, Francis Scott Key, the “Prevent Defense” and giving away the Keys to the Kingdom.

12 Friday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, management, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

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Madison Keys, Francis Scott Key, the “Prevent Defense” and giving away the Keys to the Kingdom.

Madison Keys, for those who don’t know, is an up-and-coming American tennis player. In Friday’s Wimbledon match of July, 2018, Madison sprinted to an early 4-1 lead. She accomplished this through a combination of ace serves and torrid ground strokes. Then, in an attempt to consolidate, or protect her lead, or play the (in)famous “prevent defense” imported from losing football coaches, she managed to stop hitting through the ball – guiding it carefully instead — into the net or well long or just inches wide.

Please understand that Madison Keys is a wonderful tennis player. And, her “retreat” to being “careful” and playing the “prevent defense” is a common error that both professional and amateur players fall prey to. It should also be pointed out that what appears to be overly conservative play to me, as an outside observer, could easily be due to some other cause such as a slight injury or, even more likely, because her opponent adjusted to Madison’s game. Whether or not she lost because of using the “prevent defense” no-one can say for sure. But I can say with certainty that many people in many sports have lost precisely because they stopped trying to “win” and instead tried to protect their lead by being overly conservative; changing the approach that got them ahead.

Francis Scott Key, of course, wrote the words to the American National Anthem which ends on the phrase, “…the home of the brave.” Of course, every nation has stories of people behaving bravely and the United States of America is no exception. For the American colonies to rebel against the far superior naval and land forces (to say nothing of sheer wealth) of the British Empire certainly qualifies as “brave.”

In my reading of American history, one of our strengths has always been taking risks in doing things in new and different ways. In other words, one of our strengths has been being brave. Until now. Now, we seem in full retreat. We are plunging headlong into the losing “prevent defense” borrowed from American football.

American football can hardly be called a “gentle sport” – the risk of injury is ever present and now we know that even those who manage to escape broken legs and torn ligaments may suffer internal brain damage. But there is still the tendency of many coaches to play the “prevent defense.” In case you’re unfamiliar with American football, here is an illustration of the effect of the “prevent defense” on the score. A team plays a particular way for 3 quarters of the game and is ahead 42-21. If you’re a fan of linear extrapolation, you might expect that the final score might be something like 56-28. But coaches sometimes want to “make sure” they win so they play the “prevent defense” which basically means you let the other team make first down after first down and therefore keep possession of the ball and score, though somewhat slowly. The coach suddenly loses confidence in the method which has worked for 3/4 of the game. It is not at all unusual for the team who employs this “prevent defense” to lose; in this example, perhaps, 42-48. They “let” the other team get one first down after another.

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America has apparently decided, now, to play a “prevent defense.” Rather than being innovative and bold and embracing the challenges of new inventions and international competition, we instead want to “hold on to our lead” and introduce protective tariffs just as we did right before the Great Depression. Rather than accepting immigrants with different foods, customs, dress, languages, and religions — we are now going to “hold on to what we have” and try to prevent any further evolution. In the case of American football, the prevent defense sometimes works. In the case of past civilizations that tried to isolate themselves, it hasn’t and it won’t.

landscape photography of gray rock formation

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This is not to say that America (or any other country) should right now have “open borders” and let everyone in for every purpose. (Nor, by the way, has any politician of any party suggested that we do that). Nor should a tennis player hit every shot with all their might. Nor should a football team try the riskiest possible plays at every turn. All systems need to strike a balance between replicating what works–providing defense of what one has while also bravely exploring what is new and different. That is what nature does. Every generation “replicates” aspects of the previous generation but every generation also explores new directions. Life does this through sexual selection, mutation, and cross over.

This balance plays out in career as well. You need to decide for yourself how much and what kinds of risks to take. When I obtained my doctorate in experimental psychology, for example, it would have been relatively un-risky in many ways to get a tenure-track faculty position. Instead, I chose managing a research project on the psychology of aging at Harvard Med School. To be sure, this is far less than the risk that some people take when; e.g., joining “Doctors without borders” or sinking all their life savings (along with all the life savings of their friends and relatives) into a start-up.

At the time, I was married and had three small children. Under these circumstances, I would not have felt comfortable having no guaranteed income. On the other hand, I was quite confident that I could write a grant proposal to continue to get funded by “soft money.” Indeed, I did write such a proposal along with James Fozard and Nancy Waugh who were at once my colleagues, my bosses, and my mentors. Our grant proposal was not funded or rejected but “deferred” and then it was deferred again. At that point, only one month of funding remained before I would be out of a job. I began to look elsewhere. In retrospect, we all realized it would have been much wiser to have a series of overlapping grants so that all of our “funding eggs” were never in one “funding agency’s basket.”

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I began looking for other jobs and had a variety of offers from colleges, universities, and large companies. I chose IBM Research. As it turned out, by the way, our grant proposal was ultimately funded for three years, but we only found out after I had already committed to go to IBM. During this job search, I was struck by something else. My dissertation had been on problem solving but my “post-doc” was in the psychology of aging. So far as I could tell, this didn’t bother any of the interviewers in industry in the slightest. But it really freaked out some people in academia. It became clear that one was “expected” in academia, at least by many, that one would choose a specialty and stick with it. Perhaps, one need not do that during their entire academic career, but anything less than a decade smacked of dilettantism. At least, that was how it felt to me as an interviewee. By contrast, it didn’t bother the people who interviewed me at Ford or GM that I knew nothing more than the average person about cars and had never really thought about the human factors of automobiles.

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The industrial jobs paid more than the academic jobs and that played some part in my decision. The job at GM sounded particularly interesting. I would be “the” experimental psychologist in a small inter-disciplinary group of about ten people who were essentially tasked with trying to predict the future. The “team” included an economist, a mathematician, a social psychologist, and someone who looked for trends in word frequencies in newspapers. The year was 1973 and US auto companies were shocked and surprised to learn that their customers suddenly cared about gas mileage! These companies didn’t want to be shocked and surprised like that again. The assignment reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s fictional character in the Foundation Trilogy — Harry Seldon — who founded “psychohistory.” We had the chance to do it in “real life.” It sounded pretty exciting!

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On the other hand, cars seemed to me to be fundamentally an “old” technology while computers were the wave of the future. It also occurred to me that a group of ten people from quite different disciplines trying to predict the future might sound very cool to me and apparently to the current head of research at GM, but it might seem far more dispensable to the next head of research. The IBM problem that I was to solve was much more fundamental. IBM saw that the difficulty of using computers could be a limiting factor in their future growth. I had had enough experience with people — and with computers — to see this as a genuine and enduring problem for IBM (and other computer companies); not as a problem that was temporary (such as the “oil crisis” appeared to be in the early 70’s).

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There were a number of additional reasons I chose IBM. IBM Research’s population at the time showed far more diversity than that of the auto companies. None of them were very diverse when it came to male/female ratios. At least IBM Research did have people from many different countries working there and it probably helped their case that an IBM Researcher had just been awarded a Nobel Prize. Furthermore, the car company research buildings bored me; they were the typical rectangular prisms that characterize most of corporate America. In other words, they were nothing special. Aero Saarinen however, had designed the IBM Watson Research Lab. It sat like an alien black spaceship ready to launch humanity into a conceptual future. It was set like an onyx jewel atop the jade hills of Westchester.

I had mistakenly thought that because New York City was such a giant metropolis, everything north of “The City” (as locals call it) would be concrete and steel for a hundred miles. But no! Westchester was full of cut granite, rolling hills, public parks of forests marbled with stone walls and cooled by clear blue lakes. My commute turned out to be a twenty minute, trafficless drive through a magical countryside. By contrast, since Detroit car companies at that time held a lot of political power, there was no public transportation to speak of in the area. Everyone who worked at the car company headquarters spent at least an hour in bumper to bumper traffic going to work and another hour in bumper to bumper traffic heading back home. In terms of natural beauty, Warren Michigan just doesn’t compare with Yorktown Heights, NY. Yorktown Heights even smelled better. I came for my interview just as the leaves began painting their autumn rainbow palette. Even the roads in Westchester county seemed more creative. They wandered through the land as though illustrative of Brownian motion, while Detroit area roads were as imaginative as graph paper. Northern Westchester county sports many more houses now than it did when I moved there in late 1973, but you can still see the essential difference from these aerial photos.

YorktownHts-map

Warren-map

The IBM company itself struck me as classy. It wasn’t only the Research Center. Everything about the company stated “first class.” Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a trivial decision. After grad school in Ann Arbor, a job in Warren kept me in the neighborhood I was familiar with. A job at Ford or GM meant I could visit my family and friends in northern Ohio much more easily as well as my colleagues, friends and professors at the U of M. The offer from IBM felt to me like an offer from the New York Yankees. Of course, going to a top-notch team also meant more difficult competition from my peers. I was, in effect, setting myself up to go head to head with extremely well-educated and smart people from around the world.

You also need to understand that in 1973, I would be only the fourth Ph.D. psychologist in a building filled with physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, and materials scientists. In other words, nearly all the researchers considered themselves to be “hard scientists” who delved in quantitative realms. This did not particularly bother me. At the time, I wanted very much to help evolve psychology to be more quantitative in its approach. And yet, there were some nagging doubts that perhaps I should have picked a less risky job in a psychology department.

The first week at IBM, my manager, John Gould introduced me to yet another guy named “John” — a physicist whose office was near mine on aisle 19. This guy had something like 100 patents. A few days later, I overheard one of that John’s younger colleagues in the hallway excitedly describing some new findings. Something like the following transpired:

“John! John! You can’t believe it! I just got these results! We’re at 6.2 x 10 ** 15th!”

His older colleague replied, “Really? Are you sure? 6.2 x 10 ** 15th?”

John’s younger colleague, still bubbling with enthusiasm: “Yes! Yes! That’s right. You know. Within three orders of magnitude one way or the other!”

I thought to myself, “three orders of magnitude one way or the other? I can manage that! Even in psychology!” I no longer suffered from “physics envy.” I felt a bit more confident in the correctness of my decision to jump into these waters which were awash with sharp-witted experts in the ‘hard’ sciences. It might be risky, but not absurdly risky.

person riding bike making trek on thin air

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Of course, your mileage may differ. You might be quite willing to take a much riskier path or a less risky one. Or, maybe the physical location or how much of a commute is of less interest to you than picking the job that most advances your career or pays the most salary. There’s nothing wrong with those choices. But note what you actually feel. Don’t optimize in a sequence of boxes. That is, you might decide that your career is more important than how long your commute is. Fair enough. But there are limits. Imagine two jobs that are extremely similar and one is most likely a little better for your career but you have to commute two hours each way versus 5 minutes for the one that’s not quite so good for your career. Which one would you pick?

In life beyond tennis and beyond football, one also has to realize that your assessment of risk is not necessarily your actual risk. Many people have chosen “sure” careers or “sure” work at an “old, reliable” company only to discover that the “sure thing” actually turned out to be a big risk. I recall, for example, reading an article in INC., magazine that two “sure fire” small businesses were videotape rental stores and video game arcades. Within a few years of that article, they were almost sure-fire losers. Remember Woolworths? Montgomery Ward?

At the time I joined IBM, it was a dominant force in the computer industry. But there are no guarantees — not in career choices, not in tennis strategy, not in football strategy, not in playing the “prevent defense” when it comes to America. The irony of trying too hard to “play it safe” is illustrated this short story about my neighbor from Akron:

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Wilbur’s Story

Wilbur’s dead. Died in Nam. And, the question I keep wanting to ask him is: “Did it help you face the real dangers? All those hours together we played soldier?”

Wilbur’s family moved next door from West Virginia when I was eleven. They were stupendously uneducated. Wilbur was my buddy though. We were rock-fighting the oaks of the forest when he tried to heave a huge toaster-oven sized rock over my head. Endless waiting in the Emergency Room. Stitches. My hair still doesn’t grow straight there. “Friendly fire.”

More often, we used wooden swords to slash our way through the blackberry and wild rose jungle of The Enemy; parry the blows of the wildly swinging grapevines; hide out in the hollow tree; launch the sudden ambush.

We matched strategy wits on the RISK board, on the chess board, plastic soldier set-ups. I always won. Still, Wilbur made me think — more than school ever did.

One day, for some stupid reason, he insisted on fighting me. I punched him once (truly lightly) on the nose. He bled. He fled crying home to mama. Wilbur couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

I guess you got your fill of that in Nam, Wilbur.

After two tours of dangerous jungle combat, he was finally to ship home, safe and sound, tour over — thank God!

He slipped on a bar of soap in the shower and smashed the back of his head on the cement floor.

Wilbur finally answers me across the years and miles: “So much for Danger, buddy,” he laughs, “Go for it!”

Thanks, Wilbur.

Thanks.

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—————————————-

And, no, I will not be giving away the keys to the kingdom. Your days of fighting for freedom may be over. Mine have barely begun.

Where does your loyalty lie?

The Three Blind Mice

The First Ring of Empathy

Stoned Soup

Math Class: Who are you?

The Last Gleam of Twilight

The Impossible

Starting your Customer Experience with a Lie

26 Friday Sep 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, essay, management, Uncategorized, user experience

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Business, cancer, Customer experience, Democracy, ethics, honesty, marketing, scam, spam, truth, UX

I really need someone to explain to me the strategy behind the following types of communications. I get things in email and in snail mail and they start out with something like, “In response to your recent enquiry…”, or “Here is the information you requested.” or “Congratulations! Your application was approved!” More recently, I’ve gotten text messages giving my “secret code” (which I shouldn’t share with anyone) which will allow me to access my account with unexplained riches of cryptocurrency.

And…they are all LIES! I understand that sometimes people lie. And I understand that companies are sometimes greedy. But I do not understand how it can possibly be in their interest to start their communications with a potential customer with a complete and easily discovered lie. What is up with that? So far, the only explanation I can gather is that they only want a very small number of very very gullible (perhaps even impaired?) customers that they can soak every penny out of so the initial contact is a kind of screening device. ?? Any other suggestions?

In the eleven years since I first published this post, the level of lying and misdirection has only increased. It has spread like a cancer to every segment of American society. Perhaps that is not surprising given that the we have a convicted felon (for fraud) in the “Whites Only House.” Many politicians of the past have bent the truth (encouraged a certain “spin” on the facts). But typically, this has done in a way that’s hard to trace or hard to prove or is targeted to specific issues. The lie of “trickle down economics” is one that has transcended Republican and even many Democratic administrations for decades.

In essence, trickle down economics is the lie that by giving special breaks to the very wealthiest individuals and corporations in the country, it will increase their wealth but that increased wealth will actually benefit everyone because the very richest people will spend that extra money and stimulate demand and everyone will get richer. In case you’ve been asleep for the last fifty years, that’s a lie.

Increased wealth in America happened largely because of increased productivity. People invented tools and processes that were more efficient. Some of these innovations and improvements were due to inventions. Many of these inventions were driven by breakthroughs in science and technology. Other improvements were simply because workers learned how to do things better from experience and we as a people got better at sharing those improved ways of doing things. Increased productivity led to increased wealth which was shared by owners and workers. Profits went up faster than costs but so did wages. Nice.

Until about the mid 1970’s. Since then, productivity has continued to increase, but nearly all of the increased wealth has gone to the greediest people on the planet. Along with the lie of “trickle-down economics” several ancillary lies have been told over and over. One is the myth of the “Self-Made Man” which suggests that billionaires shouldn’t have to pay taxes because, after all, they earned their money by working 100,000 times harder and smarter than everyone else. Bunk. See link below.

Another ancillary lie is that we must pay CEO’s and people who own stuff lots and lots of money because otherwise they won’t invest their money in America or work for American companies. Again, balderdash. It’s been studied.

Another ancillary lie is that lowering taxes on poor people will only be bad for them because they will waste the extra money on drugs and cigarettes and alcohol and pornography while lowering taxes on rich people is good because they will spend their money on the fine arts and supporting charities and science. Nonsense. Of course, sometimes poor people will spend their money on “vices” and sometimes rich people are very charitable. However, there’s no general such phenomenon that characterizes all of these groups. Generally, rich people actually are less generous in their giving than poor people and the studies of Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational) show that they typically cheat more than poor people.

Politicians have been “spinning” or downright lying about the impact of their economic policies for quite some time now. Recently, however, the scope of lying has extended to everything. Putin’s Puppet doesn’t just lie about the impact of his economic policies (“foreign countries pay us for the tariffs I’m imposing). The Trumputin Misadministration lies about science, medicine, history, crime, geography, technology and everything else. It is a war on truth itself. Not only does the Misadministration itself lie; it wants to censor anyone who tells the truth.

Make no mistake. This is not simply a difference of opinion about how to govern. Fascism is a philosophy that replaces governing with absolute control. In effect, everyone in a fascist state is a slave. It destroys humanity and life itself.

To ignore the truth and refuse to admit to your mistakes is not just “anti-democratic” — it is anti-life. Life only exists and persists when it is able to sense what is happening in the environment and make adjustments based on that input. Logically, the only possible ultimate outcome of complete fascism is complete death.

But we don’t have to rely on logic alone. We have historical examples. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao sought absolute power and ended up killing millions of their own people. A dictatorship is a liarship and as such, it necessarily destroys everyone. If you think you’re safe because you’re male, or straight, or white, or “conservative” or rich, you’re deluding yourself. Nearly all of Stalin’s closest associates were destroyed by Stalin. The record of the Felon is the same. He’s betrayed his contractors, his business partners, his wives, his own VP, and even his decade-long rape buddy.

In such an ocean of lies as we now find ourselves, it may seem even more tempting for businesses and organizations and individuals to lie as well. “After all, everyone’s doing it!” No. The opposite. It’s more important than ever for individuals, organizations, and businesses to uphold the highest ethical standards; to be honest about and to learn from mistakes; to champion the truth and not to encourage the growth of cancer.

If you and your organization or team cave in to the current trend of lies, you will ruin your organization and your team — as well as your own personal integrity — for the long term. If lying for profit is the spirit you follow, you will hire dishonest people and honest people will quit. Your policies, your allies, your suppliers, your customers will not be conducive to having a productive and thriving organization. Of course, your reputation will suffer, but the disease is much deeper and more lasting than that. Now is the time to be more determined than ever to show honesty and integrity in your hiring, your management, your policies, and your choice of business partners.

————

Cancer Always Loses in the End

A Little is not a Lot

Try the Truth

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

As Gold as it Gets

The Orange Man

At Least he’s Our Monster

The Three Blind Mice

The Con Man’s Con Man

Absolute is not Just a Vodka

Customer Experience does not equal Website Design

20 Saturday Sep 2025

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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Business, Customer, Customer experience, Design, digital-marketing, marketing, Pen, problem formulation, User (computing), Web design, Website, writing

Website design is important. Let there be no mistake about that. That is an interesting and fascinating topic in its own right. What I am talking about though is much broader. You can have a very cool looking website; you can make it easy to navigate within that web site, but still make your overall customer experience totally SUCK! In fact, that seems to be pretty much the norm.

I am a customer. Let’s say I want to buy a pen on-line. Is it really necessary for me to create an account? Do I have to give you my e-mail and make up a user name? I can just about guarantee that the first N names I choose will already be taken. So I end up with some impossible to recall username like, PTERESWOODIRON465. Sure, I will write it down. Along with 43,235,309 OTHER user names I have. Then, of course, I need a password. Of course, I could make up something simple and easy to remember like PEN or even PENPASSWORD. How secure is that? Or, I could pick a password that I use on other sites. Even worse. Or, I can make up something really hard to crack and marginally hard to remember like trumpetpalmcandle. But I’ll probably still have to write it down because it will be YEARS before I go your site to buy another pen. Meanwhile, if you really suck, you are going to ask for demographic information as well.

Now, before we get stuck in the details of what the screen looks like that asks me for this information and whether to use a scroll down list for the state name, can we go back and ask WHY I really need an “account” to order a frigging pen? Of course, the dream of the site owners is that once I have an account and keep getting unsolicited email from them about all the wonderful deals they have on pens, I will be unable to control myself and buy another pen several times a day. NOT LIKELY! Extremely Unlikely, in fact. Here is my overwhelmingly normal pen buying behavior. I DON’T. I go stay at the Motel Six where they leave the light on for me and I take their pen. It doesn’t bother me in the least that it says MOTEL SIX on it. If it writes, I use it. This is not going to change because of your wonderful website design even if it is relatively simple to put in my username and password and then give the details of my upbringing. What I AM going to do is get so PO’d at the idea of yet another web account that I am not going to buy a pen at your site at all. I am going to go to Amazon where I already have an account and buy it there. If I’m really PO’d, I may even tell my friends what an idiotic company PEN INC (fictional name, I think) is for forcing me to create an account just to buy a pen for my nephew’s birthday. Even sadder is the fact that no-one in PEN INC will ever have the slightest idea that they not only lost a sale but created a really bad customer experience. — !PSI

Update addendum on Saturday, Sept. 20th, 2025.

As bad as is the customer experience outlined above, the Democratic Party has seemed to view that as a challenge goal: can we make something even worse. And–yes, they have succeeded! Don’t get me wrong; I generally do vote Democrat and I definitely don’t vote Nazi and I continue to contribute money, but certainly not because of the view that their “contributions consultants” apparently have of me. First, there is the sheer volume of requests which come through every conceivable crack in my electronic armor. Second, there is the degree of stupidity which they assign to me. E-mails are typically headlined with world-shattering news and any set of three e-mails will have at least five contradictions: “John Roberts destroys Trump!” “John Roberts is in Trump’s pocket!” “John Roberts resigns!” “John Roberts becomes POTUS!” etc. None of these headlines are true. It’s click-bait pure and simple. What they really want is money. Okay. Campaigns do take money. But don’t treat your users like idiots who will believe that all it takes is a five dollar contribution to take down the Trumputin Misadministration. It will take money but it will also take planning, coordination, and mutual trust. None of these is enhanced by scattershot e-mail, overblown rhetoric, and bad logic. If I wanted that, I’d be contributing to the Not-See Party (formerly known as the GOP).

Political parties may be the worst offenders, but they are not the only ones. On-line so-called news services are often nearly as bad. When I learned the very little I know about journalism, a headline was supposed to be constructed to inform the reader and the first paragraph of the article was supposed to fill in the most important facts. The rest of the article was meant to include more information in case the reader was particularly interested in that article. Instead, my so-called news feeds are filled with click bait headlines such as: Scientists confirm Life on Mars…; Gerontologists prove that immortality is simply…; Every Billionaire in America knows this simple trick…. And that’s it. That’s all you learn from the headline. If you pay to go behind the firewall and wade through the slog of pop-up ads and read the entire article, you will discover that the headlines should have been: Scientists confirm Life on Mars may be hard to find evidence of; Gerontologists prove that immortality is simply not feasible at this time; Every Billionaire in America knows this simple trick–don’t waste your time with on-line click bait.

Of course, the details of an e-mail or a website or a message make a difference to customer experience, but if everything you do is geared toward milking as much money from your user right now with no regard to what it means to your longer term relationship or credibility, your customer experience will suck even if you have a nice font and a good layout.

The Self-Made Man

Where does your loyalty lie?

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Dance of Billions

Destroying Our Government’s Effectiveness

Increased E-Fishiness in Government

26 Wednesday Feb 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, essay

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Business, Democracy, DOGE, health, leadership, life, politics, satire, USA

Increased government efficiency! Sign me up! That sounds great!

It sounds especially great if your billionaire-owned media companies keep reminding you that you are paying too much in taxes! Not only that! The national debt keeps going up, up, up and your kids and grandkids will have to pay even more in taxes. And, hey—if billionaires don’t end up paying any taxes, that actually a good thing because that way they can create lots of new jobs! And, besides, if they weren’t doing something worth billions and billions of dollars, why would they be so rich? Of course they deserve it! And, if CEO’s weren’t paid outrageous salaries, they wouldn’t even be CEO’s and some second rate person would just run the company into the ground.

It all sounds so plausible. Yet, every bit of it is a lie. But it isn’t just a bunch of lies that’s been told here and there by a few people. It’s been propagated over and over and over and over again for decades on various media and on social media. It’s been propagated on podcasts, and books, and pamphlets.

“That old lady doesn’t deserve to steal your one cookie! Watch out for her!”

Here are some things to consider.

The very greediest people in the world are not necessarily the most competent. Most jobs are actually created by small businesses, not by giant corporations. Giant corporations often outsource jobs to other countries where the labor is cheaper and where they don’t have to follow any pesky child labor laws or safety in the workplace regulations. Increasingly, giant corporations look to automate more and more jobs and to use AI to replace people.

Highly paid CEO’s have often run giant companies into the ground. Remember that on your next trip to Montgomery Ward’s or Radio Shack. Who else? Lehman Brothers, Bank of New England, Texaco, Chrysler, Enron, PG&E, GM, WorldCom and a host of others. But wait! GM still makes cars. I can get gas at a Texaco station. How could it be that they went bankrupt. You bailed out GM. Texaco went bankrupt, but the brand name was still worth something. Chevron owns the brand.

Also note that in countries where the CEO’s are only paid ten times the average wage of their employees instead of a thousand times as much, the CEO’s do just as good a job.

Are government agencies sometimes inefficient? You bet your life! And you know what else is sometimes inefficient? Everything! Small businesses are inefficient. Large businesses are inefficient. Medium sized businesses are inefficient. Your car engine is inefficient. Your body is inefficient. Your furnace is inefficient. Your stove is inefficient.

You know what is 100% efficient? Things in your dreams. Things in your imagination. I’m not only efficient in my dreams—my God!—I can frigging fly! When I play basketball in my dreams, I can not only jump higher than I ever have in real life, I can hover near the rim! It’s amazing how well I can play various sports when I dream about them.

(AI generated image of an oldster jumping high in a dream.)

But that’s not reality.

In reality, yes, you can improve the efficiency of systems. But to do so effectively, you have to understand the systems you are trying to make more efficient. Here are just a few of the things you need to understand.

You need to understand what the purpose of the system is. How is its performance measured? Who are the stakeholders? What are the different roles that people play? What formal processes and procedures do various people have to follow? What are the unwritten norms that people follow? These are often more important than the formal processes.

You may recall the scene from the movie A Few Good Men when the attorney points out that “Code Red” is nowhere in the manual. He implies that if “Code Red” is not in the manual, it does not exist. Tom Cruise points out the absurdity of this by asking the witness to point out in the manual where it lays out where the mess hall is. Of course, it doesn’t say that because people learn from others where it is.

In almost every complex organization, people find critical short-cuts and work-arounds to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. In fact, one of the things people sometimes do to protest idiocy on the part of management is to “Work by the Rule” which means they will not do the things they have discovered make things easier but instead follow the written rules to the letter which typically slows things down considerably.

During the 1990’s, management fell in love with something called “Business Process Re-engineering.” This is how it often worked (or, to put it more honestly, how it often failed to work). Management consultants would come in and talk to a few third or fourth level managers to find out how the work was performed now. The consultants would then construct a map of how things worked (often called the “is map”) and then, they would figure out a more efficient way to do things and map that out; the “to be map.” Then, it was the job of management to make people use the new “more efficient” process rather than the old process.

(AI generated image of the Trumputin Misadministration.)

That seems like a good idea—right? Well, yes, in a dream, it’s a good idea. But in reality, the third or fourth level manager hardly ever knows how things are actually done. Their mental model is a vast oversimplification. To understand what is going on in reality, you must observe the people actually doing the work and talk to them as well.

Below is a link to a satirical piece I wrote some time ago that imagines “Business Process Re-engineering” coming to Major League Baseball to make it more efficient. It is meant to make it obvious how silly it is.

But what DOGE is doing is much worse that Business Process Re-engineering. Even putting aside the obvious conflicts of interest and the illegality of what they are doing, they are going about “improving” things without even understanding the high level over-simplification of what is happening!

Imagine you slipped on the ice and broke your arm. Sadly, it’s not a simple fracture. It’s a compound fracture. This means your bone is sticking out through your skin. You are in a great deal of pain. But no worries! While you are going to the emergency room, a group of teen-age hackers go on-line and examine all your private medical records. They discover that you were vaccinated for smallpox, measles, mumps, and whooping cough. Not only that—they look through a sample of other records and find that more than 90% of the Americans who break their arms have been vaccinated for these diseases! Voila! The vaccinations must be the real cause of your broken arm!

(An AI-generated image for the following prompt: “A man has a compound fracture of the upper arm. The arm bone (the humerus) is jutting out of his shirt and his arm. He is bleeding.”)

These folks don’t know diddly squat about medicine, but they sure know how to hack into systems in order to get data! What they are not so good at, however, is making valid inferences about the data they find. You cannot conclude anything from the fact that 90% of Americans who break their arms have been vaccinated without also finding out about other things. For instance, you also need to know what percentage of Americans who have not been vaccinated have also broken their arms. Suppose it’s 95%. That might mean that vaccinations serve some protective function about bones. Or not. We need to look at other things too. But, let’s suppose that they do look at that and it turns out that only 80% of Americans who have not been vaccinated break their arms. See! See! Surely, that proves that vaccinations cause arm breakage.

Not so fast. You still need to look at other factors. Suppose that people who do not get vaccinated tend to die at a much younger age. That could easily account for the difference. All sorts of factors have some influence on the incidence of fractures. Just to name a few, it depends on the type of fracture; it depends on age; it depends on the prevalence of certain activities (people who ski, or paraglide might tend to break more bones than people playing chess); it depends on diet; it depends on weight bearing exercise. If you lift weights and go to the gym, you help protect yourself from fractures. Of course, separating out all these factors takes time and takes expertise. You can’t expect someone, not matter how brilliant a hacker they are, to find an answer.

But hey! We left you in the emergency room! Sadly, we left you there all by yourself. There are no human experts at the hospital, as it turns out, because the hospital was closed due to lack of funding. You happen to be unlucky enough to have been born in a rural area of the country. There’s only one nearby hospital and much of its funding has been cut. It has to operate with a skeleton crew. But, as it turns out, skeletons, ironically, don’t actually know that much about medicine. They are, after all, skeletons. And while a hacker might come to the conclusion that skeletons are much more efficient than flesh and blood humans (lighter, no caloric requirements), it turns out that they cannot move or think without other parts of the body. To make up for that, DOGE put in some automation and AI systems. But they didn’t have time to debug the system before moving on to the next project.

The last thing you experienced before passing out and dying from sepsis was this little snippet of dialogue with the AI system.

“Hello! I am the brilliant AI system called MUSH: Multi-User System for Health. I am here to help you with your medical problem! What seems to be your problem?”

“I broke my arm. Can’t you see? My bone is sticking out through my shirt sleeve.”

“Excellent! We’ll have that fixed in no time. Please put your insurance card in the slot provided.”

“I can’t. It’s in my wallet and I can’t reach it with my left hand. And I can’t move my right arm at all.”

“Excellent! We’ll have that fixed in no time. Please put your insurance card in the slot provided.”

“I need a human operator.”

“Excellent! We’ll have that fixed in no time. Please put your insurance card in the slot provided.”

“No, you don’t get it. I have an insurance card but I can’t reach it.”

“You have failed three times to insert your insurance card. Next patient please. I hope you will fill out a short questionnaire about your experience with MUSH: Multi-User System for Health.”

—————

Absolute is not just a Vodka

Running with the Bulls in a China Shop

The Truth Train

A Day at the HR Department

Business Process Re-engineering comes to Baseball

Dance of Billions

Process Re-engineering Moves to Baseball

25 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, COVID-19, family, health, management, politics, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

baseball, Business, Consulting, Design, efficiency, process, Process Re-engineering, sports, Trumpism, truth, work

[I wrote this satire when I was Executive Director of the AI lab at NYNEX back in the 1990’s. At that time, “Business Process Re-engineering” was a huge management fad. Here’s how it worked, in short. Consultants would ask top executives how their part of the organization worked. Then, the consultants would make a map of one of the processes of the organization. This was called the “As Is” map. Then, the consultants would simplify that to produce the map of the ideal (and supposedly more efficient) process. Then, the executives would pay the consultants a bunch of money and insist that their organizations stop using the “As Is” map and instead do things according to the “Should Be” map. In a few cases, there were some inefficient processes that were replaced with better ones. But in many cases, the “As Is” map was made based on a fantasy of what was going on in the organization. Unless the executive had “worked their way up the ranks” by actually doing the jobs, these “As Is” maps were almost certain to be ridiculous over-simplifications. Even if the executives had worked their way up, they could still be way off because markets change, technology changes, and workers change. Despite the fact that I wrote this about 25 years ago, to me, it seems much like the kind of ignorant and egomaniacal over-simplified mis-thinking that is rampant in the Trumputin Misadministration. So, I thought it appropriate to publish. (And, I miss baseball).]

Photo by Mandie Inman on Pexels.com

In a surprise move today, the take-over executive known affectionately as B. S. announced a take-over of the New York Yankees.

INTERVIEW ONE

B.S.: “The Yankees are facing new competitive pressures, and we will be bringing our management skills to the team to help them deal with those pressures and increase shareholder value while maintaining player morale and improving customer service.”

Reporter: “So, what exactly will you be doing?”

B.S.: “First, we brought in an outside Management Consulting Firm. Just between you and me, we paid them big bucks! But it was worth it.”

Reporter:”Worth it how? What will you be doing?”

B.S.:”Well, for starters, we’re downsizing the on-the-field team from nine to six players.”

Reporter:”Uh….did these management consultants actually know how to play baseball?”

B.S.”Probably. Maybe. I don’t really know. But that’s not the point. They are top-notch accountants. We plan to increase our operating efficiency 33%.”

Reporter:”Fascinating. Any other plans.”

DCA8FC9A-F229-4538-9EA2-D9E13D4796EB_1_105_c

B.S.:”We have to be willing to change, you know, flow with the times. Once, spring training made sense. But in today’s highly competitive economy, we won’t be able to afford frills like that.”

Reporter: “Cool. No training. That should save some bucks!”

B.S.:”You said it! We have to pay for our big executive bonuses somehow. After all, we deserve to make more money for … well … for being rich.”

Reporter: “Any other productivity measures?”

B.S.: “Well, this inventory of bats, balls, mitts — I mean that has just gotten completely out of hand. Sure, I suppose we should keep a bat for the team, but having all those individual bats? Nonsense. And, don’t get me started on mitts!”

Reporter:”No mitts? Won’t that decrease your fielding effectiveness?”

B.S.:”No, we have a Quality Process to improve our fielding effectiveness. Besides our management consultants pointed out that cricket fielders don’t use mitts.”

Photo by Alexandro David on Pexels.com

Reporter: “Well, Mr. B.S., I think the Yankee fans are in for a real — a really different experience this season.”

B.S.: “Thanks! And, believe me, Wall Street has already taken notice. The Market to Book value is up 10% already. Just wait till we move into the football market.”

Reporter: “Football?”

B.S.:”Sure. There’s no reason at all these ball-players can’t make themselves useful in the off-season by playing football.”

Reporter:”Well, with a few exceptions, it takes a different set of skills — and a different body type even to —“

B.S.:”B*** S***! That’s what those nambly-pambly unions would like you to believe. Didn’t you play football and baseball when you were a kid? Huh?”

Reporter: “Well, yes, but not at a professional level. I mean….”

B.S.”Well, we’re going to increase shareholder value. Period. End of discussion.”

Photo by football wife on Pexels.com

INTERVIEW TWO

Reporter: “So, B.S., how is your plan going?”

B.S.: “Great! Fantastic!”

Reporter: “So, you’re winning ball games then?”

B.S. “We are meeting all our financial targets for cost-containment. In fact, our top-notch accounting team has uncovered another big cost savings.”

Reporter: “Really? What?”

B.S.:”We’re going to outsource our pitching. No more high-paid prima donnas! Nope. We’ve found a vendor who can provide pitching for 1/10 of our current costs!”

Reporter: “Hmmm. I don’t know. They say, pitching is 80% of baseball.”

B.S.: “Exactly, my point, boy!”

Reporter: “Well, are you actually winning games?”

B. S. “I already told you, our costs are down significantly!”

Reporter: “Yes, but when you actually get out on the field, do you score more points than your opponents?”

B.S. “There are some temporary performance anomalies — mostly due to bad weather — and the lack of cooperation on the part of the Umpire’s Union.”

Reporter: “Lack of cooperation?”

B.S. “Yes, the Umpire’s haven’t quite adjusted to the new realities of competition. Once they make the proper adjustments to the strike zone, I have every confidence that we will be fully compatible run-wise with others in our segment of the league.”

tilt shift photography of a baseball referee

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Reporter: “I see….”

B.S.:”Meanwhile, we’re also improving and upgrading our capital infrastructure.”

Reporter: “You mean…the stadium?”

B.S.”Exactly. We’re replacing the concrete with much newer high-tech polypropylene glycol embedded styrene.”

Reporter: “Oh. Will you be replacing those hard seats?”

B.S. “Seats? Don’t be ridiculous. That would be way too expensive.”

Reporter: “Well, how will the stadium be different — from the fan’s perspective?”

B.S.: “Fans? Oh, fans. It will be a much more modern, more high-tech stadium.”

Reporter: “So, how will the actual experience of the fans be different?”

B.S. “Did I mention that our stock price has risen 5%? Wall Street knows what’s best for baseball!”

Reporter: “Perhaps, but according to our wire service, you lost last night to Cleveland, 26-0. That’s….”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

B.S.:”That’s a temporary aberration! I told you! The Umpires have got to get on board here. We’re only asking a proportional shrinkage in the strike zone to match our cost-containment figures. Our new policies are a success. We don’t need to be questioned by nay-sayers spouting statistics. This interview is over!”

INTERVIEW THREE

Reporter: “So, BS, I hear your team has surpassed the opening losing streak record of the Pittsburg….”

BS:”Bah! Our expenses are down! Our stock price is UP!”

Reporter: “How about the fans? How’s the attendance?”

BS: “Attendance? It takes time for our end users to adjust to the interface changes, but they will. After all, what are they going to do, take a ride to Seattle just to watch a live ballgame?”

Reporter: “Well — or, maybe across town.”

BS: “Get serious. It takes less time to get to Seattle. Anyway, we have taken some of the surplus and hired some systems analysts to help us out. We should be on a winning streak in no time!”

Reporter: “Wouldn’t it maybe make more sense to hire some — you know, outfielders, say?”

BS: “You obviously don’t know anything about business. That’s why they hired me. Ever hear of the expression ‘a level playing field’?”

Reporter: “Yes, but what … ?”

BS: “Well, we are not going to have one! Not much longer! Our system analysts have designed a system to tilt the entire stadium on command. So — in short, our ball-players will be hitting DOWNSLOPE while the opposition will be hitting UPHILL! Come on. Tell me I’m brilliant! And, we are moving the stadium to a place where the tax rate is less and the real estate is cheaper! Go ahead! Tell me I’m brilliant!”

Photo by Elina Sazonova on Pexels.com

Reporter: “Uh, you’re brilliant, but — ah — won’t your opponents object?”

BS: “Who cares? Our lawyers have combed the rule book and the UCC and NOWHERE does it mention anything about not tilting the earth!”

Reporter: “Well, maybe not specifically, but surely on the basic principles of fair play….”

BS: “Ha hah hahahahhh! Oh, you really crack me up! ‘Basic Principles of Fair Play!’ Oh, that’s rich. That’s realllllly rich. Yes. Good one. Listen, sucker, if you can get away with it, it’s what you do! Have you been asleep? Ever hear of tobacco companies? How about the Ford Pinto? Billionaire Milliken? Get real!”

Reporter: “Still….somehow, I always thought of baseball as a sport.”

BS: “Oh, right. And, I always thought of Howard Stern as Marilyn Monroe. Geez. Our profits will soar! Our profits will soar! Oh, so many plans. Fewer squares! Fewer innings! Fines for foul balls! Fines for run homes! Fines….”

Reporter: “Excuse me, did you say ‘run homes’?”

BS: “Yeah, those things — don’t you call them run homes — where the guy loses the baseball? Talk about waste!”

Reporter: “Those are Home Runs. That’s one good way to win ball games.”

close up photography of four baseballs on green lawn grasses

Photo by Steshka Willems on Pexels.com

BS: “Yeah, whatever. Maybe to you. To me, they are an unnecessary waste. Just like second square.”

Reporter: “Second square? You mean, ‘second base’?”

BS: “Whatever. That little square bag out there in the middle of the sandyfield.”

Reporter: “Have you ever actually played baseball?”

BS: “Me? I was too busy for frills, my friend. Too busy making my first million. And I did it through hard work and ingenuity. I did it in high school. It wasn’t easy either. Do you know how many of those little first grade brats you have to shake down for lunch money just to get a thousand bucks?”

Photo by mohamed Abdelgaffar on Pexels.com

Donnie Plays Bull-Dazzle Man

Donnie Learns Golf!

Donnie Plays Doctor Man!

Donnie Plays Soldier!

Donnie Visits Granny!

Donnie Gets a Hamster!

Myths of the Veritas: The Orange Man

The Truth Train

Winning by Cheating is Losing

Trumpism is a New Religion

The Pie of Life

24 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, management, politics, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Business, capitalism, Democracy, ethics, fairness, life, marketing, socialism

Photo by Nishant Aneja on Pexels.com

There isn’t just the one pie, of course. A decent bakery will have quite a variety. Pecan pie, warm, with some vanilla ice cream — the warmth and richness of the pie while the creaminess of the melting ice cream! Key Lime pie — sweet, sour, and a hint of exotic bitterness. Chocolate cream pie — is it really more of a candy or a pie? On occasion, I’ve made pies from scratch that are filled with freshly picked blackberries or raspberries. If you’ve never had one fresh out of the oven — barely cool enough to eat — you should really treat yourself. The same goes for apple and cherry pie!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Most people in their daily lives are generous. They find it’s more fun to share a wonderful pie than secretly steal every piece for themselves. Most people you know and most people I know realize that in order to get anything significant done, they have to work with other people. And, while I, like many people, love to play competitive games and sports, all of life is not a competitive sport. It isn’t about taking the most pie you can regardless of consequences.

In a zero-sum game, we imagine that there is only one pie. We have to split it and if you get more, I get less.

But is everything in life like that? Is anything in life really like that? Even competitive sports like tennis where one person or team wins and the other loses is not truly a zero sum game. There is the benefit of fitness and improving your game and the sheer joy of playing. And most of life is like that — including pies. When we think about how to split the pie, we may want to consider other things such as:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

How did the pie get there? What is the proper share for the people who grew the wheat? The miller who ground the flour? The truck driver who drove the flour truck to the store? How about the grocery clerk? The bagger? The person who cooked the pie? How about the person who tinkered around until she or he developed an excellent recipe? How about the people who had lived for thousands of years with the cinnamon trees and then had their villages and way of life destroyed so that the cinnamon trees could all be cut down? How about the people who cut the sugar cane? How about the policeman who protects the pie and the fireman who comes to save the bakery if it catches fire? How much should they all get?

Trying to “determine the fair share” by measuring everything and “calculating” it by formula would be endlessly tedious. The inefficiency and waste and lack of innovation in the former Soviet Union demonstrated the futility of detailed central planning. In many places, society has developed a system of exchange based on money. The idea is to let the market “decide.”

That system only works when people have approximately equal power and when they have equal justice under the law. When capitalism is combined with unequal justice, it quickly devolves into tyranny. Owners of corporations can get almost all of the pie for themselves and leave only enough crumbs for the workers to barely stay alive and eke out a living. To the extent that workers can be replaced by robots, it isn’t even necessary to give workers crumbs.

Suppose your young child is deathly ill with pneumonia and needs penicillin. Suppose I am the only pharmacy in town and the roads are closed so that the only way for you to get the necessary penicillin is through me. As the pharmacist, I may have paid all of one thin dime for the medicine you need. But, assuming you love your child as much as most parents do, I can charge virtually any price. Any price. Think of that. I can not only gain your car, your house, and every dime you own. I can also make you an indebted servant.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Imagine a world in which there are many employers and many workers. Each worker has many possible jobs they could do and every company has a choice among many workers. In such a system, there is some balance of power. An employer who pays low wages or who provides bad working conditions will find themselves without enough workers to get the work done and go out of business. Similarly, a worker who goofs off or insists on very high wages will not be hired. But do we have a balance like that? In a land of many small companies and many small family farms, there is some balance. But today? In many cases, there are a small number of very large corporations who together hold almost all the power.

If, in addition to the imbalance of workers versus owners, the rich owners have now bought much of the government. Legislation to protect workers and consumers is not even being brought to a vote in the Senate. The Trumputin administration is rolling back food safety regulations, air pollution regulations, water pollution regulations, and healthcare. The justice department and the US intelligence agencies — who used to be filled with nonpartisan experts — are being destroyed from within. Ultimately, it means that every penny of wealth created by workers can be stolen by the richest and most powerful people in the country. Even now, some of the richest corporations and people pay zero taxes.

woman in black dress holding balance scale

Photo by JJ Jordan on Pexels.com

Many of the corporations don’t really have competitors. They spend money on lobbying and advertising. They don’t want to spend money on innovation and invention because that changes the nature of the game and so — they could potentially lose their monopoly power. In other words, none of these people are spending much resource on inventing new types of pies. They are protecting the rules that give most of the pie to them. Similarly, companies buy start-ups of potentially disruptive innovations, not in order to integrate inventions into their product lines but to prevent those start-ups from becoming competitors.

Since most of us in America will soon be paying our tax bill, it might be time to consider this:

If you work two full time jobs in America, you can barely make ends meet and you will pay taxes on your earned income — not a lot — but more than some billionaires. If you are a highly talented writer, actor, consultant, scientist, and you work 80 hours a week, you might earn $200,000 a year and you will pay a lot of taxes on that money. On the other hand, let’s suppose that you inherited $10,000,000 and you invest $4,000,000 in the stock market. You will easily make $200,000 a year on that money while doing nothing for the whole year. You can spend your time watching TV, playing golf, or dressing up lizards. But your tax rate on the $200,000 you got for nothing except being born rich will be less than the talented person who works full time.

How we divide up the pie makes a big difference. And we are becoming less and less fair about that and — perhaps even worse — we are no longer putting as much resource into growing the pie and inventing new types of pies. Meritocracy is being replaced with cronyism and a “might makes right” mentality.

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While competition is a part of life, it is not the whole of life. Life cooperates with other life all the time and at every level. In our bodies, if we are healthy, the cells of every organ work together to promote life for the whole. In cancer, a few cells decide to suck all the resources into themselves. And — that’s what happening here in America.

How’s it going where you are?

Do you invent new kinds of pies? Do you help improve the recipes? Do you get a fair share? Or, do you find yourself fighting all day just to get a very little bit of a very large pie?

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Index for a Pattern Language for Teamwork and Collaboration

The Alliance of the ROI & the Z-Lotz

13 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, Uncategorized, Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Business, legend, myths, politics, religion, search, story, Veritas

Eagle Eyes chatted quietly with Easy Tears, and their conversation drifted easily among many topics. Suddenly Eagle Eyes stopped in her tracks. Her eyes spun to something sparkling among the rocks. She thought that perhaps it was merely a piece of shiny rock but as she drew nearer, she realized it was not a rock, or at least nothing like any rock she had seen before. Soon, the others drew near and stared down with her. Even the pups busied themselves sniffing its edges.

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A hand-sized ornament had drawn the attention of Eagle Eyes. It consisted of a perfect full-moon shape within which were inscribed three smaller circles. Every member of the search party found the ornamented piece intriguing. Apart from the pups, Shadow Walker touched it first. “It is of the same — or at least very much like — the circles of cold rock at the bottom of the wall door we moved.”

In turn, the others touched the cool circle of rock.

Easy Tears said, “Whatever this is, it gives me chills. It feels like touching…death, actually.” Lion Slayer picked up and turned it in his hands. “I see one. Long ago. My father’s father called it, ‘Tree Quarto’ or something like that.”

Hudah Salah whispered something into the ear of Lion Slayer. He nodded and said to the group, “Yes, Hudah remind me that this is a symbol used by the Z-Lotz. Grandfather showed us one when he tell us the Legend of the Unholy Alliance. I dream about it night before dawn, but then forgot when I … when I awoke.” He glanced at Shadow Walker.

Shadow Walker smiled, “When I woke you up. Sorry. What can you tell us of that legend?”

Lion Slayer frowned as he began. “The Legend of the Unholy Alliance” has been told in our tribes for at least six generations. I am not storyteller, but this symbol is supposed to represent the world – the larger full moon shape; and the three smaller full moon shapes represent body, mind, and spirit.”

Shadow Walker waited while Lion Slayer gathered his thoughts. Easy Tears broke in. “So, this is a symbol that the ROI like?”

“No, Easy Tears. It is a symbol of the Z-Lotz. That is where the unholy alliance comes. Far beyond our lands, the Z-Lotz ruled but they often fought with the ROI. At last, so the legend goes, the greatest leader of the Z-Lotz and the leader of the ROI had a parley. They agreed to stop fighting. The ROI care nothing for the spirit world, nor really for much of anything except to get more and more as fast as possible. They make deal. Z-Lotz agree to leave the ROI alone and not try to make them believe all the impossible things that the Z-Lotz believed.

“But in return, the ROI, promise to pretend to believe and wear the symbols of the Z-Lotz. In return, the Z-Lotz would not only leave the ROI alone; they would pretend that anything that the ROI did was commanded by Giant Sky Bear himself, which the Z-Lotz pretended to be able to talk to. In this way, the ROI were able to conquer many people’s by force and then teach these conquered people that it was their lot in life to be slaves because it was commanded by Giant Sky Bear. The ROI never believed it, of course, for they cared nothing for such things, but these lies proved helpful in convincing the slaves that there was no point in resisting because they would be struck down by the powerful claws of the Giant Sky Bear. The ROI gave the Z-Lotz many material gifts as well. Though the Z-Lotz pretended not to care about material gifts, they never refused any such gifts.”

Fleet of Foot thought perhaps Lion Slayer was finished so asked a question. “And, did the Z-Lotz actually believe this Great Bear in the Sky would really do that? Or, did the ROI? I am confused.”

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“Fleet of Foot, you ask good question, but we do not know. We do not know what they truly believe. I have never even met ROI or Z-Lotz. But when our legends are tested, they are generally accurate. I suppose that beliefs actually vary quite a bit among the ROI and among the Z-Lotz, but they all steadfastly pretend to believe such things and this allows them to manipulate people. At least that is what legend says. So, if our supposition is correct that ROI were stealers of children, and they are wearing this symbol of Z-Lotz, that would tend to be in alignment with legend. It does not prove it, of course. But it seems consistent.”

Eagle Eyes asked, “But do your legends say that the ROI make or use these cold, smooth, hard rocks?”

Lion Slayer glanced at his wife, and she shook her head. “Not that we recall. No. I am sure I would have remembered such a tale. Such a soul-sucking object, I would have recalled. Neither of us has heard of such before.”

Shadow Walker put the ornament into his knapsack and the six continued swiftly on their journey.

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