Social Engineering Risks

I had an experience this morning that once again leads me to think about social engineering, primarily here in Ontario under the Liberal auspices, though frankly the only real difference between the left, far-left, and right on these matters is the passivity of the effort. True conservatives engineer mostly indirectly, whereas true liberals and socialists engineer actively. (As a point of disclosure, the experience is that I have been walking my 5-year old into the school the past few weeks, and I have been asked to stop that and let her go in at the outer door with the rest of the class. The actual event is a shrug to me, as the only effect it has is to move the moment of separation slightly, while increasing the direct management load on the teachers. That being part of their job, I bow to the request with good nature, aware that ultimately it will benefit my daughter, and it saves me about 5 minutes in the morning. Frankly, it can’t make my present say-to-day life much worse, as it consists of being a slave to work, family and duty. A bit more abuse is irrelevant in the larger scheme.)

Some time ago the Ontario Liberal Party created full-day kindergarten, and essentially changed the structure of how children are reared. Ostensibly this is following the effort of Norway, which in its sum total assessment thus far hasn’t had bad results. Problematically, of course, Ontario (and Canada in general) is not Norway, and consequent to that the lack of integration of this effort with others shows some cracks that Norway hasn’t had to deal with. But those are for stronger stomachs to investigate and qualify. My real stepping off point is the general consideration about how this social engineering effort is coming into play in twenty years time.

A few observations and revelations first:

I am not one of those people who believes coddling children is particularly wise, but nor do I really believe it harmful in the long-term scheme of things. It does tend to form attachments, and attachments in balance are critical to maintaining the fabric of societies. At the same time, I am less than impressed when the burden of child-rearing is arbitrarily taken by a state, any state. The problem I see in that arbitrary claim of the responsibility is that it erodes the purpose of family. Now, I am not a “family first” type, and I have no religious inclinations, nor do I have much real belief that modern families re any better (or worse) than those of old. What I do know, though, is that indoctrination at a young age, even mild and initially formless, is a people-management mechanism, not a necessity. A child left to their own accord for a decade will still learn, will still excel if they have a natural bent in some field, etc. The sole purpose of “early education” is indoctrination, to address either a structural management issue or a social one. That has to be the case, because learning has absolutely nothing to do with “schools.” Knowing many graduates of University proves it.

What concerns me about all this is that when liberal engineers act, they tend to create extensions of the nanny-state syndrome, because parochial thinking stains political liberalism so deeply. The idea that the machine knows better than the mere human beings it claims to serve has been, and remains, a strong liberal view. This concerns me because historically this kind of renormalisation of society has led to a number of problems, the worst end of the spectrum being Nazi Germany prior to World War II, where the socialisation effort was so powerful it reshaped young minds to accept prejudicial tripe without any question. Now I am not suggesting modern liberalism is anything like the socialist roots of Nazism, but what I am observing is that once a mechanism is in place, its use is not restricted to the present. This has never been the case; it will never be the case; it is not humanly possible to refuse the inclination to encompass and control. By embedding the even earlier separation of parents and children into the mechanism of social control, the stage is set for the introduction of unperceived social risk.

My field for more than the last decade has been about practical risk management, and part of what I have learned in that time is that the risks most critical, the real game-changers, are the unperceived ones. BP in the Gulf is an example, at the core of it: no one really thought a blowout preventer would fail, so no one conceived any real solution if that happened 5000 feet under the ocean. Of course, that doesn’t shift the responsibility, or excuse the pathetic paralysis that was visible inside and outside the company. Nor does it excuse the short-sighted view that led to this environmental disaster. What it does, though, is illustrates the idea of the unperceived risk, and clarifies that we are not talking about “unknown” risks, but ones that are widely known the instant your blinders are removed, and can be both seen and managed by anyone who is looking. BP was struck by its narrowness of vision, not an unknown. At best it was unexpected; at worst it was absolute negligence at play. But probably it fell into the same realm as the social risks I can see coming from an incomplete, unmanaged, sloppy plan to indoctrinate youth before they have even formed comprehensive personalities.

What strikes me in the Ontario vision of education is that the engineers of the plan are so blindly ignorant of the potential risks of extending the role of the state to effectively eliminate early parenting. Rather than list a handful that come to mind, I’ll focus on the one risk I suspect will be the most complex one to manage – and it is not the risk that future governments use this indoctrination model to foist a nationalist stance upon us.

When you take young children and place them in regimental settings you are creating conformist beings earlier than ever before. It is fine to say that “play matters” (and right now that dictum is evident in the system), but there is no way to alter the side-effect of someone who disagrees with that coming along and enforcing more regular curriculum. And that will happen, when politicians pander to the obvious side-effect of earlier parental disconnects. “How do I know how my child is doing?” will eventually be asked at earlier ages, and the only way to offset the perception of a vacuum is to fill it. Eventually, “report cards” will end up issued as young as full-day junior kindergarten. And this will further detach the actual parents, whose authority is undermined by the disconnect and further obliterated by the false expression of connection of some “official” measure. This thread left to the reader to consider, I return to the risk of regimental thinking, which while fine in mundane applications has potentially deadly consequences in the real world.

Mankind is on the cusp of climate change, and regardless of why it is so, we have three choices how to face it: hide from it, pretending it isn’t obvious until it is far too late to even engage the problem; attack it aggressively with existi9ng ideas that have, for the most part, proven untenable as aspects of a solution; or breed an imagination in successive generations that allows them to tackle these vast, complex problems more effectively than we can. And yet we are increasingly churning out mechanisms to quash the imagination…and therein lies a deadly risk. A risk that is obvious, but ignored by reason of convenience.

I won’t belabour the idea, but offer it as grist for mental mills. I will leave one question to stand: When a society acts to detach the social compact between parents and children at earlier and earlier junctures, creating a mechanical and regimental substitute, what is the likelihood that children raised in that environ will be attached enough to preceding generations to act in accordance with the broader social need rather than the selfish one?

Bell Canada Customer Care

Okay, so the very title of this post is a form of sarcasm, since the idea of customer care is so foreign to any of these large corporations as to be laughable. Nonetheless, a short remark or two to alleviate some of the awareness I have once again had several minutes of my life stolen by these vultures.

Today I got the customary email telling me that my satellite TV bill was ready. I dutifully clicked…to find it was not, in fact, ready. As this is the sixth time in six months that I have got my “it’s ready!” email only to discover it was not, I decided I would contact bell and suggest to them that the email might best be sent after the actual bill was ready. After all, the customer is in this case saving them the cost of printing a bill. So, a little effort to stop wasting the customers’ time seemed warranted.

Well, my mistake was caring. I clicked on a support link to drop them an email, to find out that…well, you can click “contact us” in seventeen places (I counted) and never once can you get an email location to send a basic customer comment. (I’m sure one was hidden somewhere, but so well hidden it was inscrutable to me, and I wasted enough of my life looking as it was.) My options were to…call. Now, being aware that a call would cost me time sitting on the phone listening to crappy music, or static, I decided they can go stuff themselves on their own time.

Really, I should probably contact the Board of Directors and make an observation about the fundamental disconnect with consumers this represents, and thus the inherent loss of business over time, but they “care” in roughly the same fashion as their customer support cares…which is not at all.

Bell Canada, yet another company run by complacent fools, which will someday succumb to the basic problems clearly represented in their customer service model.

BP: Texas City, the Gulf, and Texas City Again

Do a Google search on Texas City and BP and you’ll come up with links aplenty to provide the references this post is hinging itself upon. The Gulf mess, if you have to search at all, is even easier to find. There are far too many sources to even bother citing single ones here.

Basically, in BP we have a company that is fairly representative not just of the oil companies of the world, but of all corporations. Now lest anyone think this is painting the lot with one brush, read on before taking that view.

So, about BP, with timing measured from the date of this post back:

• A few years ago, a number of ongoing problems at the Texas City refinery BP owns caused a series of explosions that killed 15 people, and injured 170 or so.
• A few months ago, the company killed 11 more people by continuing the same shoddy disrespect toward risks they face daily in the industry.
• A few days ago, we learned that at the same Texas City plant they were supposed to learn from (largest fine in history, I believe), BP is still so wilfully negligent that repeated recent warnings did nothing to prevent the failure of a piece of ill-maintained equipment that released untold quantities of toxic gases.

What do these things have in common?

Well, BP for one, a company that actions suggest has probably the worst internal culture one can imagine, where greed trumps everything. The old maxim that one should judge actions rather than words, is an ideal applicant to suss out just what BP’s real problems are. Then again, tuning in for five minutes to the former CEO claiming serial ignorance of all things BP is enough to make the point.

The other thing they have in common is this: they are events that reflect the natural evolution of allowing corporations to exceed a manageable scale.

Ultimately, like many other corporations, BP is so large it is not being risk managed operationally. The people making final decisions are so far removed from the operational realities, they seem incapable of making cogent decisions. And barring any evidence to the contrary, it is fairly easy to realise all corporations beyond a certain scale suffer the same problem. The farther the autonomous decision-makers are from operations, the less they understand the critical risks.

To make the point specifically for BP:

• At Texas City, the explosion was a result of ages worth of poor risk management, caused because the people who had to OK operational management activities were too removed to grasp the inherent danger in allowing poor and no maintenance. The workers knew. Some even tried to observe the problems. But in the end, million dollar problems cannot be solved by a handful of workers who simply don’t get paid enough to sacrifice to solve the problem. Of course, the choice to work on, killed and injured many of those same workers. If even one of the people who had the authority to fix the known problems had to go into that workplace every day and sit there, risking their life, the problems would have been fixed – but folks like Tony Hayward have no actual experience, knowledge, or skills. (This opinion of the man is based solely on Hayward’s representations at the Congressional hearing where he essentially proclaimed himself ignorant of all things related to BP. Should he wish to now dispute that claim, I suspect the press would skewer him worse than they were doing prior to his foolish public mismanagement of the Gulf crisis, but I welcome his comments below. I would note, having skirted criminal charges to this point, by being incompetent, it might be unwise to claim otherwise now.)
• The explosion on that rig, as evidence is already showing, was because production outweighed risk management to a degree where several dozen indications of integrity problems were simply overruled by bean-counters. The men killed that day, though, continued to work – and taking that risk cost them their lives. No one is clean when it comes to the circumstances that poisoned vast tracks of the Gulf, slaughtering animals indiscriminately, and destroying coastal economies. But then the likely outcome of their refusing the work, would have been being out of work – and the fact they proceeded means they knew that, and further reflects the industry standards. It certainly crystallises the view of BP’s true culture, where production needs (wealth return, better know as greed) generates a complete disregard for the resources used to extract the wealth. They could deny it, but the only explanation other than intent is total incompetence, which seems possible but would call into question the need for a safety review at every one of their facilities worldwide.
• Now, the fact that the same Texas City plant was allowed to belch toxins, mere years after killing and injury workers, boggles the mind. My guess is that the people signing cheques, again, work very far away and at least downwind. When inspectors, government inspectors, are issuing tickets against a machine for months, which then fails, there is no falling back on the excuse that minimal damage was done. The actual problem has nothing to do with loss severity, but with the absolute negligence necessary to explain why even government warnings, at a site where you previously killed 15 people, didn’t motivate change. Any company that is that wilfully ignorant of cause and effect is a danger to themselves, and to the planet.

In every case, the culture is the problem, because the culture defines the actions of individual workers. BP has a large-scale corporate culture where the decision-makers are either negligent or ignorant of risks (which is, itself, negligence) of operations, but where those same people are the only ones with authority to make changes. If BP were unique (Google accidents in the industry worldwide and you know they are not; or look at the coal mining disasters worldwide), it would be impossible to allow such a company to continue to exist – the risk is too high. The problem, is that if anyone with the authority to do the right thing bothered to (seize BP’s assets and dismantle them, while charging the entire executive branch with criminal negligence causing death), it would start a domino effect. No large multinational would be safe.

Of course, there is an explanation for this: in a large company, it is too hard to actually manage operations effectively under status quo systems. That, it must be admitted, is true.

But, who can change that? The very people who rely upon it to excuse their negligence.

This final paragraph is where I make an admission that this view, written here, is solely mine. I work for a company that deals with risk management every day. I see this nonsense excuse thrown up at every turn, to avoid change, because if the systems in place worked – then the responsibility would be unavoidable. It is a disgusting side-effect of companies being too big for our greater good.

The Invisible God

Anyone who knows me is well aware I’m not religious, and I never will be. At the same time, I’m not rampantly irreligious either, have read the Bible several times (and numerous other religious texts), and I think there is something potentially positive in faith. Believing in something is, to put it succinctly, not a bad thing.

Today I commented on a news article about the Taliban murdering a pregnant woman who was accused of an affair. Deplorable in every way, but hardly surprising. I remarked in the comment section of that article that the world was full of ignorant people who used belief in an invisible god to excuse their actions. (I paraphrase the comment her for clarity and brevity.) A reply to my comment from a Christian (an admission in their post), took me somewhat to task for my “blaming god for the disobedience of men.” I hesitated about whether to reply to that, but did, because it struck me how irrelevant communication is when we make assumptions about speakers we don’t know. Their assumption was that I was “blaming God,” when what I was actually doing was observing a fact: some ignorant people use faith as an excuse to commit atrocious acts. My observation, to anyone who really focuses on it, has nothing to do with a Christian or Islamic god, but was exactly what it appeared to be – a remark about how people twist faith to suit their own nefarious purposes. Not believing in god as defined by any religion I’ve come across, but not denying people the right to believe, I replied to clarify that it was a mistake, basically, to assume I was blaming a god, when I was merely making an observation. Hopefully, the person won’t take offence at that, though I added the observation it was a mistake to assume anything about me as a commentator, based upon what I had written, in the hope the message sinks in, the message being that rational expression, stripped of emotional and religious context, is not defining expression in the normal sense. It is just observation.

Observation is what makes me certain there is something deeply wrong in the fabric of Catholicism. I am not smearing the religion or its believers, when I question the Vatican’s destructive stance on homosexuality and children’s rights to live unmolested by people they are told to place their faith in. Now, a Catholic might argue I am painting the entire religion with the remarks I have sometimes made, but they would be colouring my views. Even when I have gone so far as to say, any body of people who condones such behaviour, or excuses it, is equally guilty as those perpetrating it, I am not bashing Catholics. I am, though, stating a fact about anyone who doesn’t speak out against it actively when given the chance. And all of this, has absolutely nothing to do with my beliefs about gods.

I think the phrase that offended in my comment off the Taliban post, or at least engendered the belief I must be god-bashing, were the words “invisible god.” It probably prompted the reply-writer to believe I was saying “does not exist,” though I was, in fact, saying, “cannot be seen.” I can’t generally see the air I breathe, either, and could refer to it as the invisible air, which tells you absolutely nothing about my belief system other than I admit to not seeing air. Being as I survive by breathing it, of course, I tend to believe it exists. For those of strong faith, I expect their belief in the invisible god (choose one, or several) has the same fortifying effect, at times, as does my taking a long draw of air. Who am I to harass them for their private beliefs?

But I can, I think, take them to task for making assumptions about my beliefs.

So, what do I actually believe? Well, I can say several things with certainty:

I believe people who rely upon faith over logic are making a mistaken assumption about their responsibility. Even if their is a god, of any form, I am certain that god would rely upon our choices to define our outcomes. God could not, and no evidence suggests in any religious text to state otherwise, be making every decision in the world. If so, then using Christian theology you run into an immediate problem – Christ died for nothing. We could not sin, and do no wrong, if god controlled our actions. Most Christians, I think, would even agree with that idea – that we have choices, and we make them, and the consequences are ours. The problem isn’t religious people who accept personal responsibility, but those who want it both ways, where they can be absolved without ever facing consequences of chosen actions, on some principle that it was god’s plan. God wouldn’t have a plan mankind could understand, if there was indeed a plan, and the arrogance necessary to think we could grasp the plan of a true creator being is deeply offensive to anyone of real, thoughtful faith. Logic dictates that we are autonomous beings, and that we interact for better or worse, and that we are responsible for outcomes. Let faith support without interfering with logic, and the world would be a better place.

I also believe though, that logic is not some panacea. By itself, logic is cold and hard, and leads to horrific and shameful acts. The Taliban, for example, is applying logic to kill women, to maintain a patriarchal hold on the region. Much the same way, the Vatican reshapes history to suit its lies about the priesthood regularly. That makes logic, like a handgun, a very dangerous tool. That is why I ascribe to the belief that logic, must be guided by some moral preconditions, whether religious or humanist. You cannot simply have logic exist in a vacuum, because logic has no way to value human lives, or even human conditions. It is a process-specific functional method of analysis, and nothing more. Yet, while I support the contention a moral framework is required to exercise logic safely, I do not, and never will, suggest religion provides one. Religion is, at its heart, a scam. Note that I am not saying god is a scam, or people of faith are foolish. I am talking about religion in two senses specifically. The first is the sense of religion as an organised system, which is not morally reliable simply because all systems suffer controller corruption. As soon as a priesthood and its attendant hierarchy become extant, all religion falters on the fundamental point of control. The second sense of religion I am talking about is the ritualistic sense, which is, after all, the whole core of religion. (To those who want to take offence, enjoy this aside: the vast majority of people claiming religion are lying to themselves, because religion requires ritual. If you are not practicing, you are not, strictly, religious, regardless of your faith.) Ritual cannot provide moral context, because it is a traditional and inflexible adherence to set rules, most of those rules created centuries ago. Moral structure is defined, as well, not by value-systems. Value-systems are constructs that nihilists created to excuse the need of morality. As to where we find moral systems, that I leave to much smarter people.

If I was to consolidate my beliefs about the invisible god, I would say this to people of faith: Do not rely upon the existence of god to excuse your decisions, because if you are wrong about there being a god you are an atrocity, and if you are right, you are a heretic at best, and probably worse. Rather, live a life that is focused on human compassion, try to understand the world as it is rather than as some fantasy believes it to be, and strive to make it better. Those goals, held close, will ensure that if there is a god, no offence is given. It is better not to believe in god, and live a commendable life, than to live a lie while claiming faith.

The United States and the Immigration Debate

I was recently pleased to visit Montana, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. It had been over a decade since my last visit to the USA. Other than the rather miserable border guards, the people of I met reminded me – universally – of why the USA is such a great nation. It has, everywhere, great people of all colours, creeds, and denominations. It has people who came from stock that settled a difficult land, who made a decision when they founded their government to forge a constitution that, however flawed, is as near human beings could make to a document to set the heart by. The only reason I would say you find better people in Canada is because I’m a Canadian; but national pride aside, my guess is an honest assessment might tilt toward the idea that Americans, generally speaking, are a more impressive group. It is possible in the USA to hate the government of the day, and it never affects the pride people take in their states, their towns, or their opportunities.

But I won’t be too rosy. Americans also have a basic problem or two, in that they have allowed a handful of selfish people to cloud their minds with rhetoric that is likely to destroy the American Dream, and the very people the country was founded to serve.

One of the hottest debates in Salt Lake City was about immigration, and as an outsider looking in, I could see both sides of the debate. I could also see the propensity both sides, at a political level, had to lie about the debate.

In a nutshell, the problem the USA has with immigration is that a number of states have serious numbers of illegal immigrants. Some folks view that as a corruption of the system, and an affront to the American Dream they cherish. Those honest believers in the problem of illegal immigration worry that illegal aliens are draining stressed services, contributing to crime, and otherwise damaging their towns, cities, states, and their country. They believe that those illegal aliens are taking away jobs that are desperately needed. On the other side are people who will say that the problem, first of all, is small (it is, technically); and they will observe that it is the opportunity, the dream, that makes many illegal aliens cling to their place in the country. They will observe that services most stressed are not really affected by the small number of illegal immigrants, because they don’t have the registration to qualify for those services. And, they will observe that crime does not really have a predominant immigration link. They will also state that the jobs these folks do, are ones that simply wouldn’t get done otherwise – service and backbreaking labour jobs.

As an outsider, I can tell you that the arguments of both sides have some validity, but that the way the messages are manipulated by the people with political agendas is a sickening disservice to both sides. Political Democrats are generally too naive about the issues of illegal immigration; and Republicans are using it to create a police state mentality that is not a service to any American.

When you argue this topic, as soon as the political shades are drawn, you lose sight of a primary consideration – these illegal immigrants are just people. You stop asking what motivates them, and as soon as that occurs you dehumanise them. The next step is that you qualify them, and anyone who doesn’t realise that means “by observable traits” is either grossly stupid, or lying to themselves. And by observable traits, at least now, the illegal immigrant problem is being cast as “the Mexican problem.” As soon as that kind of slippage occurs in any debate, you lose the rationale ability to resolve a problem, and you risk creating perceived problems, or, worse, treating symptoms.

So, here goes a few thoughts:

• Immigrants, being people, are motivated by the same basic instincts and desires that motivate citizens. If many illegal aliens are Mexican in origin, they are coming to the USA because the opportunity they perceive outweighs the risk. It isn’t important if their reasoning is true, but it is rational, and it is understandable. If every American concerned about this spent an hour considering an essential fact, they would recover some of the confidence that had made the nation so strong in the past. Why are these people coming? Because the USA is still capable of delivering such a vast opportunity it is worth risking everything to partake. Once, these folks who saw that would be considered real American stock. These immigrants are not leeches, they are people who are motivated by the very essence of what defined Americans in the past – they are grasping at a dream. That doesn’t excuse the illegality, but it does raise the question about whether these are the people one would be best to universally tar with a single brush. They people serve the country better by embracing them, and putting their desire to work for the greater good. Amnesty is foolish, of course, but methodical absorption is not.
• People on both sides in the debate are right, but neither political party is even close. One party is trying to dismiss the need for action to avoid offending the Hispanic community, without considering most American Hispanics are no more pleased than Caucasians or Blacks. The other is trying to inflame passions to push an agenda that has nothing to do with immigration, and everything to do with exerting controls and stripping away basic freedoms. Building prisons to deal with illegal aliens, or increasing enforcement, will not work, because America is a melting pot, and anyone who has ever stirred a stew knows that all carrots are carrots, and nothing superficial can cue you to which carrots have rotten cores. But it is human nature to cue to superficialities, so how else can you “enforce” more unless you profile? Until the debate is wrested from the rhetoric, everyone will lose.
• And when did Americans become afraid? In my lifetime, I have watched Americans (the people) consistently go from courageous, spirited people to a nation that seems to feel hunted. And I have watched people who treasure freedoms allow their own government to bastardise a constitution to create what is increasingly a police state, driven often by corporate agendas rather than social ones. To all those who point to 9-11 as a sign that America needs increased security, I would ask this, “At what point did the act of so few frighten so many to do so much to withdraw from the world?” The courageous America would have never fallen so far into fascism blindly, with bizarre body scanning technology and the like, for so little. And before anyone blanches at that statement, consider this: yes, 9-11 was terrible, an act or raw terrorism, but it was an act of a few. The correct response to terrorists is not to reform your society fearfully to try to make their atrocities impossible, but to thump the chest and laugh in the face of people who are so incredibly weak that they think an act of that type, craven cowardice, is enough to repress freedom. The America of the past would have stood and rejected a false security blanket, not let their own government cow them. Those people, the courageous, are the people to whom the solutions in this immigration debate would be obvious, easy, and equitable.

And what astonished me in my travels the most?

Well, the Americans I met were those people. Americans have not changed, at the heart of the matter. Americans are still capable of so much more. What is different is that the country’s systems, its government, has been allowed to rot in a sea of corruption and agenda, with one side manipulating liberalism while the other side manipulates religion, not to create change, but to maintain a status quo where the players in that system are granted great privilege by multinational masters who have no interest whatsoever in the wellbeing of the nation.

The Americans I met are the people who struggled past a racist legacy to try, even if sometimes failing, to build a fairer, better world. They are the people whose ingenuity created so much of what we take for granted in the world. They are the people who, when settling hostile lands, lived 12 to a single room, conserved everything, and conquered by way of that conservation and frugality.

When I think about that, and realise the people haven’t changed, I realise how truly corrupt all governments are becoming, corrupted by the influence of a few to the detriment of many. And it saddens me that the immigration debate is delivering what I fear is an advance display of the kind of changes that those interest cultivate. Will America use an excuse to expend enormous resources to project some show of chasing so few, to the betterment of the interest that will gain in that dumb-show? Or will Americans reclaim the debate, and realise that the only problem they actually have is a system that is not responding to their basic needs, reclaim their government, and return substance to the American Dream?

Immigration is about control for politicians, and control flies in the face of freedoms. Fascism is a slope, slippery and easy. My greatest hope lies, though, in the fact the people I met on my trip, not one of them, would allow that fall without a fight.