The rise of ‘Unions’ – Part 1

December 20, 2008 — xanthippa

This is part of The Big Picture series of posts – my attempt to explain what is happening in the world around us.

Trade Unions  (labour unions) had been a puzzle to me for years:  I could not reconcile their stated goal, their self-proclaimed ‘raison d’etre’, with their behaviour. 

For years – while a teen, I watched my parent’s employers and their attitudes towards their employees.  My mom worked for a large crown corporation – a union shop – while my dad worked for a huge, multinational hi-tech company (no union). 

I had learned in school that unions were there solely to protect the employees from the ruthlessness of the employer – yet, my mom’s militant union constantly bullied her and caused her incredible stress.  Even when the union was not planning a strike – there were a lot of tentions raised by them in everyday life at my mom’s work.  And whenever the union ‘pushed’ the employer, the employer ‘pushed’ right back, leaving the employees stuck in the middle.  It was stressful, to say the least.

Contrast that with my dad’s employer:  they had first class benefits (my mom often used my dad’s ‘family member’ plan, when her own union-won plan would not cover things), they had much higher salaries (OK – so it was a high-tech company, but even their secretaries were better paid than the secretaries at my mom’s work), there was hardly any discord or any of the ’employer-employee stress’ that was present at my mom’s work.  There were family picnics and all kinds of ‘family stuff’ at my dad’s work (like summer jobs for employees’ kids, if they wanted them) that were completely unthinkable at my mom’s work.

It seemed to me that while my dad’s non-unionized employer motivated their employees with the proverbial ‘carrot’, my mom’s unionized place of work employed what could only be called a ‘double stick’ – one weilded by the employer, the other by the union.

Since then, I have worked a number of jobs – two of them unionized.  I have had good employers whom I would go to the end of the world for – and bad ones, whom I would like to leave at the end of the world.  And, I have started a number of small businesses which employed people – so, I guess I have had a ‘job’ as the employer, too.  Yet, I must admit, that my two unionized jobs were by far the most stressful environments – way more stressful than figuring out how to meet payroll in difficult times.

So, why unions?

Of course, history answers that one – that is a no-brainer! 

Yet, I cannot but think that the very reason why unions came about is also the reason why they are no longer a positive influence.  It all has to do with the whole ‘Scaling up of communities‘and ‘scaling up of caring’ rant I have been on lately… 

What started up as a small group to protect the rights of its members grew – and grew – and grew…  until it became too big to ‘care about’ (represent) each member of the union as an individual.  Just as we have seen with states, the ‘scaling up’ of any organization requires the introduction of governance structures which necessitates replacing ‘caring’ and ‘social bonds’ with ‘rules’ and ‘procedures’.

That is exactly what happened with unions!

Instead of being a small, yet ‘caring managable’ sub-group which represented each member, unions became a separate organization of its own – there are now even ‘unions of unions’, umberella organizations which organize the unions ‘from above’ and remove the ability of individual members to affect significantly the course of the union’s actions!  In effect, the unions have now become an additional layer of highly bureaucratized management which battles with the employer’s management structure for power over the employees…

And all because the unions grew to a size where they lost the ability to ‘care’!

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Scaling up ‘caring’

December 18, 2008 — xanthippa

We all care deeply about our ‘loved ones’ – be they family or friends, or even pets.  We also want to be loved and respected.  We thrive in the knowledge that someone cares about us – not for what we are, but for who we are.

This is a very strong human need.  Some would point out that this need is not unique to humans – all ‘social beings’  share it:  and they would be right.  Our pets agree to adopt us as much as we adopt them.  And we are all aware of inter-species bonds in nature, too.  But, I am off on a tangent again…  This post is part of the current discussion of ‘The Big Picture’, which is focusing on human society in particular – so I will limit this look to humans…

In the Scaling up communities segment (to which I will be adding more posts), I have tried to look at how the process of living in ever-larger social units – communities – has necessarily affected the way we organize our societies, how we interact and govern each other.  Yet, this scaling up of communities has also affected us on very personal levels:  how and whom we interact with and what our expectations of ‘caring’ are, of others and of ourselves.  And that is what the posts ‘congregated’ here will concentrate on.

 

Back to The Big Picture

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Scaling up communities

December 16, 2008 — xanthippa

This is a series of posts which are part of The Big Picture – or what is happening in our society.

We can only care – truly care – about a limited number of people at any one time. 

Yes, we can ‘care’ about ‘all of humanity’ and ‘all on Earth’ and ‘all existence’ – but this type of caring is very philosophical, because we cannot possibly know every human being, or every being, or every ‘thing’ around us!  But, we care about all these issues in a more detached way than we care about our parents, kids, or closest friends.

Why?

Perhaps the answer is in how our brain is structured:  the Dunbar number is just about the limit of our ‘Monkey Sphere’ – the better we know someone, the deeper inside our Monkeysphere they get.  This is the reason why the death of a loved one affects us more than the death of someone we have never heard of before – and whose name or specifics we do not know.  My take on this is in Scaling up communities – Part 1. 

As our small, primitive communities grew to larger ones – culminating in our current political structures, called states.  These are much larger than our original communities, so we have had to find new ways of administering our societal structures.  I explored this in Scaling up communities – Part 2.

Yet, our modern ‘states’ are just social and philosophical constructs – and are unable to ‘affect’ anything without the aid of people who act on their behalf.  In Scaling up communities – Part 3, I look at the general concept behind being ‘an agent of the state’.

What happens when the state contracts a class of citizens to perform a certain collection of tasks on its behalf?  Scaling up communities – part 4 looks at what happens when a whole class of citizens who deem themselves ‘independant professionals’ are contracted by the state – as in the case of physicians in a state which provides socialized medicare – and how these professionals are not free to act according to their conscience while they are forced to be nothing other than ‘agents of the state’.

The story is ‘to be continued’ – and updated as it is continued.

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Scaling up communities – part 4

December 12, 2008 — xanthippa

As part of capturing The Big Picture of our society, I have been examining the benefits and costs of scaling up of our communities.

In Part 3, I looked at the establishment of governance structures as a necessity to administer our societies which have scaled up to become states.  The people who enable the governance structures are, in the core meaning of the term, ‘agents of the state’.  (The lead-up posts can be found here:  Part 1 and Part 2.)

The moral dilemma which agents of the state face is simple in its mechanics, but complex in its resolution.  Perhaps it cannot really be satisfactorily resolved – only ‘put up with’, or managed, in one way or another.  And, in a way, this dilemma is also the ‘last check’ on the power of the state…

There is an inherent dichotomy between being an individual – with individual moral views and opinions – and being an agent of the state whose very purpose is to carry out the will of the state.  This cannot be easy, as it is unlikely that every agent of the state will agree with every single policy of the state – yet, it is their job to implement them all.

An ‘agent of the state’ is anyone who is directly hired by the state (civil servant) or who is officially licensed (contracted) by the state to deliver a service on behalf of the state.   (In this series of posts, I use the word ‘state’ in its core meaning:  it could mean provincial, municipal, federal, state, or whatever other political unit has sovereignity of a specific geographic area within a specific sphere of influence.)

This is not the ‘licensing’ – as in certification, where the state accredits someone to practice in a specific field on their own – like, say, plumbers or electricians.  Plumbers and electricians (etc.) may be ‘licensed’ by the state, but their clients contract them privately, not to deliver a government-mandated service.  (There are exceptions, where the state may hire private contractors also licensed to practice by the state, but that is ‘special case’.)

It is a different kind of ‘licensing’.  This kind of licence contracts the licencee to perform services on behalf of the state:  it is this ‘on behalf of the state’ which makes such a licensee an agent of the state. 

When delivering services to its citizens, the government is bound by a different set of rules than a private citizen, or a private business, is (or, at least, it ought to be).  A private contractor may bid on a job – but is not obligated to enter into a contract to pave someone’s laneway in pink interlock brick, if pink annoys him. 

The government already has a pre-existing contract with each citizen to deliver certain services in return for the taxes already levied upon its citizens.  Once a citizen chooses to exercise their part of the contract, the government is obligated to deliver such services.  And, the person who has accepted to be the government contractor is obligated to deliver this.

To put it into different terms:  if I run my own soup shop, I may need a business licence – but it is my shop and I pick what is on the menu.  If, on the other hand, the government got elected on a promise to provide 5 specific kinds of soup in soup kitchens, free to every citizen once a day, and if I get contracted by the government to run a soup kitchen, I cannot then turn around and say I will not make pea soup (that being one of the 5), because it is against my convictions or conscience or whatever!  Either, I open my own shop, and run it pea-soup-free – and get paid by my clients.  Or I accept to be paid by the government, in which case I will indeed be serving pea soup. 

This, of course, translates into areas much more controversial than pea soup….which, by the way, I rather like. 

Socialized healthcare, for instance, is one such area:  each and every physician who does not hand a bill directly to the patient (or their insurance company), but is paid by the state – each one of these physicians is an agent of the state.  And, each and every one of them is obligated to serve pea soup – or prescribe ‘the morning after’ pill, or perform abortions, or whatever other medical procedure the government has agreed to provide to its citizens, as long as the physician is profesionally qualified to perform such services. 

Yes, I know – many of my conservative readers may not like this.  It seems repugnant to many of us that a physician who is opposed to abortion on demand may be forced to prescribe ‘the abortion pill’…. 

I agree – it is WRONG. 

But it is not wrong because the government is forcing the physician to ‘act against their conscience’.  The government is doing no such thing:  the physician had agreed to abdicate his or her personal convictions or beliefs when he or she accepted to act as an agent of the state!

So, the fault does not lie with the demand that agent of the state actually deliver the services they are contracted to. 

The fault lies in forcing physicians be the agents of the state in the first place!

If a physician has a private practice, there is no way a government should be able to compel him or her to perform a procedure the physician does not want to – whether through moral convictions or because the doctor is having a bad hair day.  Independant professionals ought not be compelled to perform services against their will.  

But, it is a completely different situation if the physician is an ‘agent of the state’ … 

If the agents of the state refuse to carry out the very tasks the state has mandated – ones necessary for the state to fulfill its contract to its citizenry, that state will cease to function.  If not remedied, the state will cease to exist. 

This is the ‘last check’ on the state which I mentioned earlier:  by refusing to carry out the will of the state, should the action be too abhorrent, its agents can indeed bring about the end of such a state!

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Scaling up communities – Part 3

December 9, 2008 — xanthippa

We, humans build communities.   As our societies grew, since the dawns of history, so did the size of our communities – and we reaped a lot of benefits from this.  Yet, the ‘scaling up’ process -while raising our standard of living – has some costs associated with it, too…

Part 1  of this series looked at the significance of Dunbar’s number (about 150):  the number of people who comfortably fit into our Monkeysphere (that is, the people we relate to as individuals, rather than statistics).  This is about the maximum size of our community, before we start ‘scaling up’ by perceiving ‘others’ as concepts, rather than individuals….the reason why the suffering of our parent or child ‘touches’ us more than that of a stranger.  

In Part 2 , I tried to demonstrate how scaling our communities up meant heaving to sacrifice some of our individuality (having to interact with more people than can fit into our Monkeyshpere – and whose Monkeyspheres we cannot fit into) but that the benefits of this,  specialization and greater productivity, benefits us by allowing us to reach a higher standard of living.  The side-effect of this scaling up of communities is the emergence of governance structures.  

Here, I would like to look at one of the many implications of scaling governance structures up – and the emrgence of a specific group of people to administer them:  the ‘civil servants’.

I cannot remember which king is said to have uttered:  ‘I AM the State!’ – perhaps there were many.  Yet, most ‘states’ (and here, I use the word state to mean a political association with sovereignity over a defined geographic area) today are not ‘a person’. ‘State’ is a concept which only exists when real flesh-and-blood people act as its agents. 

In other words, a ‘state’ cannot ‘do’ anything ‘physical’, because it is not a corporeal being in and of itself.  A ‘state’ cannot pick up a stapeler, or a gun – or write a constitution.  It is individual people, the agents of the state, who act on behalf of the state:  they carry out the actions necessary to establish the state’s existence and perform the physical actions needed to fulfill the obligations of the state in the social contract between it and the the polulace which created it.

As we have already seen in the earlier parts, as we, humans, get more successful at ‘community building’, our communities get bigger and we can no longer decide each ‘common position’ in the same way we used to:  we no longer know every other member of our society personally, so the methods of the ‘smaller scale community’ are no longer applicable. 

By ‘scaling up’ our communities, through our social contract, we have chosen to give away some of our individual decision-making choices and agreed, in certain areas of our life, to abide by the decisions that ‘the group’ has arrived at.  The group may choose to accept the decisions of its leader, or each citizen may be able to vote on every desision, with the majority opinion becoming binding on the group – or any number of other methods…but that is not the point of this post.

The point I am making is that once this ‘group decision’ is achieved on a specific topic, it becomes the ‘law’ (OK, I am simplifying the process – but not the principle) or ‘policy’ of the ‘state’.  This ‘group decision’ is implemented/enacted/put into practice/fulfilled through the governance structures of the state – with ‘the civil servants’ acting as ‘the agents of state’ who carry out the actions necessary to enact (enforce, fulfill, etc.) it.

In democratic systems – and I am specifically referring to our ‘Western Democracies’ – it is not likely that every citizen will agree fully with every ‘law’ or ‘policy’ of the state.  And, in our Western systems, that is a good thing, because it is through open debate that we grow.  (OK, so this bit is more theoretical, lately, than most of us would like, but in principle…)

And this is where we run into a real problem, a bit where the ‘scaling up’ of our community creates a moral dilema:  what happens when the civil servants – the very agents whose actions are the only means for the state to act in order to fulfill its social contrats with its citizens – what happens when these agents of the states personally disagree with what they are obligated to implement?

While they are ‘off the clock’ as private citizens, they have every right to be the individuals they truly are.  Yet, while they are acting as agents of the state – what should govern their behaviour?  Their inividual views and opinions, or the policies/laws the society has agreed to accept? 

Difficult question, to say the least.

IF they should follow the ‘social contract’ mindlessly, they risk becoming the very agents of injustice, of ‘tyranny of the majority’ – and atrocities like the Holocaust could NOT have happened without ‘agents of the state’ refusing to enact immoral policies, blindly putting into practice the unthinkable.  Never again!

On the other hand – what happens if the majority of the citizens approve a just law, yet one which is not favourable to the civil servants?  What if it is designed to protect a minority – but not a minority that (for some unknown reason) the majority of civil servants do not respect?  Or, what if it is meant to curb the intrusion of civil servants into citizens’ lives?  It is not unprecedented that most of the agents of the state would be morally opposed – or, at least, personally unwilling – to bring these policies/laws into practice…

So, where does the balance lie? 

At which point should the civil servants set aside their individuality – and their morality – in order to perform the will of the group?

Difficult question, to say the least.

Without the civil servant’s denial of their individual morality, while acting as agents of the state, the state cannot effect its will – and so it will effectively cease to exist.  Yet, without applying their ‘morality’ to their actions, the civil servants may be empowering immoral laws or policies.

Where does the balance lie?

In my never-humble-opinion, the civil servants are the ‘last check’ on the state:  they cannot but evaluate their own actions based on their personal morality.  Yet, while they are acting as agents of the state, they may not act upon this personal morality.  It is up to them to weigh the balance between continuing to act as agents of the state – or not.  If they choose to no longer act as agents of the state, they must abdicate their role of ‘agent of the state’….

In other words, if enough civil servants resign over moral objections by refusing to enact the will of the state, the state will cease to exist.  This must be a heavy weight on the conscience of each and every civil servant!

Return to ‘The Big Picture’

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Scaling up communities – Part 2

December 1, 2008 — xanthippa

In Scaling up communities – Part 1, I explored the theory that we, humans, have a limit of how many people we can feel connected to as individuals – before they turn into a faceless abstraction.  This number, known as Dunbar’s number, is about 150 – but it is more popularly known as our ‘Monkeysphere’ (plus it is more fun to say ‘monkeyshpere’!).

When we ‘scale up’ the community we live in – the people we daily interact with – to be more than about 150 people, they cannot all fit inside our ‘monkeysphere’ – so we need laws in order to interact with each other.  This is an excellent coping mechanism for scaling up our communities, but it comes with a price:  we are sometimel left feeling like we are a number….because, for all practical purposes, that is what we have become.  By creating laws that are applied uniformly, we have given up much of our individuality in the eyes of the law.

This is not a complaint – rather, an observation. 

As our communities grew, we could make them more efficient by specializing in what we happen to be very good at.  Since sharing a meal together is such a universally bonding human experience, let’s return to that metaphor. 

If there are only 2 people, they may both work together to cook a soup.  But, when you are preparing a meal for 50 people, not all can aid in the soup preparation (the old adage about too many cooks spoiling the soup comes to mind).  So, some will make soup, others will make other things.  Even among the soupd-cooks – some will chop the food and only one will get to stir, so-to-speak.

In other words, scaling up creates both specialization and segmentation of the group.  This, in itself, is not a bad thing – it all depends on how it is done.

As people have larger and larger tasks that need to be co-ordinated, more rigid governance structures need to be established in order for the scaled-up activity to succeed.  Aside from Who holds the power within such a community, more complex governance structures had to evolve.  After all, the person(s) in power needed agents who made their commands happen.

In other words, we are talking about the emergence of civil servants – the agents of the state.  (OK, so I skipped a few steps along societal evolution by jumping from small groups straight to nation states – but the principle is sound.)  Because these people were not acting on their own behalf – but on behalf of the state (whether this was a king or a chieftain or a democratically elected government), they had to separate their ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ behaviour.

I know I am not expressing this as accurately as I would like – please, indulge me in another try.

When the community is small, it is usually possible to arrive at a course of action that most people agree with – and all put into practice.  We may not all like it, but this is the decision of our family (extended family) so we go along…we may not want to play pictionary, but being the only one sulking in the corner would spoil it for everyone else so you suck it up and give it your best…or help hunt down the mammoth instead of wandering off looking for apples, depending on your exteded family.

Since the group is small and every individual knows each other, it is likely that most moral issues are also approached from a common direction.  Yet, if there are some serious disagreements – in a very small group – they are settled by either dominance assertion or split of the group.  This does not scale up that easily…

As the community becomes as large and complex as a state, the variety of experiences within it is going to be much differentiated among the different members.  Therefore there will be much more of likelihood that people will not all agree with each other on questions of morality.  Different states have varying methods of arriving at a concensus (and for allowing a variation from concensus to exist), yet, they all share the need for their civil servants to continue to behave as agents of the state. 

In other words, in a large state, it is very likely that there will be a civil servant who does not think that it is a good idea to add fluoride to the water supply.  Yet, if that state decides that fluoride will be added to the water, and that civil servant happens to be working at the water plant, that civil servant must put aside his personal view and carry out the will of the state.  In a free country, there is always an alternative – the civil servant may choose to quit his job and become a tailor instead.

The point is that, while he is acting on behalf of the state, the civil servant must carry out the will of the state, not his own will – or resign. 

When you think about it, the ‘resign’ bit is a built-in control:  if the order of the state is too evil, civil servants will resign en masse because they will refuse to carry it out.  This will disrupt the governance structures to such a degree that the state will cease to exist, as nobody will be willing to act on its behalf.  Which is pretty much what happened during the ‘velvet revolution’ and similar events.

And, of course, this is one of those costs of scaling up our communities which we do not usually think about.  Yet, the more people we contract as civil servants, the more people will have to put aside their personal opinions and carry out the will of the state.

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Scaling up communities – Part 1

November 28, 2008 — xanthippa

In the earliest dawns of civilization, humans lived in what we would consider extended families.  These formed the small communities the members of which relied upon each other for survival.

Anthropologists tell us these groups could range from as few as 20-30 people up to about 100-150, depending on the circumstances of that group.  If the group grew larger, it would split into two related groups.  The reasons for this were simple:  in the dawns of our civilization, a specific area could only support a group of a certain size.  This size varied, based on climate, fertility of the land, argriculture and/or hunting opportunities and techniques, and so on.

According to the latest theories, it was under conditions like these that our brains came to be ‘set’ in their current state – and that is why we can feel individually connected to only so many people before they become just ‘statistics’.  This number is called the Dunbar’s number, but the whole concept is really well explained in an article by David Wong called ‘What is the monkeysphere?’.

In a nutshell, the ‘Monkeysphere’ is the collective name of the people we think of as ‘individuals’ – these are the people we are able to ‘care about’ as ‘themselves’, not as just ‘some people out there’.  The more we know about a person, the ‘deeper’ into our ‘Monkeysphere’ they burrow.  It is exactly the same phenomenon which allows us to know that there are hungry people in the world, even kids, and still be able to sleep at night – but show us a picture of one child and tell us its story, and we’ll line up to adopt it and send money to support it.

The reason why this is so interesting to me right now is because I am looking at how we, humans, organize the communities we build. 

While we live in small groups, we can rely on customs and conventions to set our ‘rules’ of behaviour.  We know each other, our idiosynchrocies and can deal with each other by resolving conflicts one on one, with the group being the refs.

Once we live in a community larger than Dunbar’s Number, not all our neighbours can fit into our Monkeysphere… so, we resort to making rules and laws and appointing judges in order to get along.  This is all fine – except that we loose some of the caring which bound the community together while all of it was within our Monkeysphere.

And that is the key in understanding so much of our human interactions…

An employer who does not deal with individual employees who sneak into his Monkeysphere, but with a ‘faceless union’ – well, such an employer will see negotiations as a business transaction, nothing else.  And employess who do not work daily with their employer, but are isolated from the employer by a dam of ‘human resources’ officers – well, they will not perceive a person:  there is no way for that employer to get into their Monkeysphere!  (Yes, there are layers of complexities, but this is a useful reduction tool.)

This works with governments:  small governments interact with their citizens directly – they are inside their Monkeyspheres (that WAS the goal of ‘representative government’).  As the government is scaled up, the Monkeysphere cannot stretch so much – so the citizens become a statistical collection, not inidividuals to care about as individuals. 

In other words, as we become more successful and form larger and larger social groups, we loose the ability to treat each member of the group with as much caring as we would treat an extended family member.  This can leave us all feeling a little ‘disconnected’, at least, at times.

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Who holds the power – Part 1

November 27, 2008 — xanthippa

As the MSM bring heart-wrenching newsfrom Mumbai, I cannot but look back to the earliest history of humanity…  Acts like these are despicable and horrible and unequivocally condemnable!!!

Yet, it leads me to ask, within our human social groups, how do we decide who holds the power?

We, humans, build communities.  It is one of the secrets of our success.

Yet, this sets up natural competition on two different levels:  within each community and between various communities.  Unless we understand the ‘simple’ dynamics of these basic competitions – and the psychology underlying them – we cannot hope to understand the complex dynamics of what is going on globally.

Competition within a community

Perhaps it is fitting that I raise this today, when many in the US are celebrating Thanksgiving…  Like most holidays – secular or religious – families, extended families or ‘social families’ (you know, including neighbours and friends…) get together.  And, many mental health professionals tell us that it is precisely these social get-togetherness which can cause some serious ‘stressors’ in people….

Why?

Because we are forced into ‘togetherness’ with people we both love, like, dislike and cannot stand – and we must smile and be ‘civil’ throughout the duration of the festivities.  Sometimes it is easy – and truly enjoyable.  At other times – it can be pure torture!

In order for us to get along, we must know our ‘pecking order’ within the social community in question.  Most of the time, this is just fine.  But it depends a lot on the other people within the group…

We have all met people who are so inadequate, they cannot feel good about themselves without putting down others – right?  They come in all ages, both sexes…  And they can poison the atmosphere of any festivity – especially if they are in a position where we owe them respect due to their role in the social group, or if the ‘senior’ members of the group do not set out clear expectations of behaviour. 

(You don’t need to be an Aspie, like I am, to feel the stress of these situations!)

I am not an expert on psychology (sic), so I will not try to offer some deep insights here.  All I am hoping to do is to call attention to this dynamic – present in our social groups today – and ask you all to imagine how these relationships must have resolved themselves when we, humans, lived in social groups (tribes) of about 30-150 members…. and when every day of our lives, our very hope of survival, was very much like the careful social balancing act we need to perform during holidays and their related social get-togethers.

So, who holds the power within a community?

While we usually set up a lot of social rules about who holds the power within a community (and, here, now, I am discussing a small, autonomous community of under 150 people), the truth of the matter is that the person who controls others holds the power. 

The ‘why’ can be variable – customs, religion, consensus…  It is interesting as a question on its own, but it is never nearly as clear as the ‘how’ that person controls the rest of the community: this is usually very constant (especially when we look at the history of the dawn of our human communities).

The means of controlling a community always involves access to food and protection of lives.

The shaman may successfully intercede with ancestors to send plentiful game for a hunt – or to send rain for a good harvest.

The successful chieftain will negotiate with neighbouring tribes both the boundaries to be respected, and the marriages and trade to take place.

OK, so I am not a historian or an anthropologist, either, but I have asked several historians and several anthropologists a lot of questions about this…  and, greatly simplified, in my never-humble-opinion, it appears that we have always allowed individuals whom we trust to protect our lives and ensure our food supply to control our little social groups.

Perhaps it is less obvious in today’s world – but there are still signs of it in our social customs.  Consider the honour of ‘head of the family’ being the one to carve the turkey:  this is a symbolic ‘control of the food supply’, whether we know it or not.  Or what ‘social prominence’ is given to what female, along with the ‘honour’ to provide what dish…  I know in my own extended family, the woman who gets to make the apple pie is the ‘top dog’ of the day….

Of course, ‘Black Friday’ is a study in chaos theory – or, perhaps, in ‘group competition’ dynamics….  Yet, if you are enjoying some major social interactions over this US Thanksgiving (or during the many upcoming Christmas parties), look around and think about our customs and how they relate to our group dynamics…. and how we know who is in charge when.

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Government ‘standardization’ and ‘big business’

November 24, 2008 — xanthippa

Perhaps it is no surprise that most ‘big businesses’ could not exist (or become so ‘entrenched’) without the willing or unwitting support from governments.

I am not talking about the big bailouts of banks or car manufacturers during times of financial uncertainty.  While I think these are very ill advised (certainly in the current form), they are not the subject of this post.  To get there, we need to go quite a bit back in time, to when the Western world was enjoying quite stable economy.

Since my background is in technology, I will concentrate on this aspect – though my sources are pretty convincing that this is indicative of an overall trend within both the US and Canadian governments, in multiple fields.  And, to be honest, the ideals are very good!  So, let me get to the meat of the story…

Long time ago, when computers were just becoming the thing in innovation (yes, the buzzwords of the day were ‘automation’ and ‘co-operative’, then ‘innovation’; later along came ‘synergy’…. if you have had any contact with the language of ‘bureaucrateese’ (and much of it has been aped by the mainstream media (MSM) – albeit, with a 6-12 month delay), you know exactly what I mean.  We’ve worked our way through ‘centers of excellence’ to ‘best practices’; from ‘co-operation’ to ‘collaborative efforts’; from ‘synergy’ and ‘quality initiatives’ to ‘governance structures’ and ‘connectivity’. 

I hate buzzwords!!!   But that is besides the point.

When ‘office automation’ first became possible with the use of desktop computers and intranets, we saw an incredible spark of creativity.  People came up with creative ideas, started small companies and developed solutions to specific problems – and governments bought the solutions.  It made life better for everyone!

But, as time marched on, it became apparent that different government departments actually had to interface with each other.  Now, all these original solutions presented a bit of a problem – they were not really set up to interface with each other.

It was a natural maturation of the system that governments started to standardize their equipment across all the departments.  One central decision was made as to the system to be used, then all the departments had to do their best to try to fit their applications into it and migrate their operations onto this centrally approved platform.  It is not a perfect system, but at least the right hand knows what the left is doing, so to speak.  And, since this central solution was so big and important, it was natural that the bureaucrats making the purchasing decisions understood that only the biggest and most important players in the marketplace would be sufficiently large to provide the solution.  Obviously!

The effect of this centralization process on all the small hi-tech companies which had sprung up to develop the specialized applications for the various departments was predictable:  it dried up their marketplace completely. 

The result? 

Those ‘little guys’ who became ‘authorized re-sellers’ of the ‘big guys’ products survived – by turning into remoras… with limited horizons.

Other ‘little guys’ who managed to diversify to applications for the private sector suffered a lot of growing pains, but some of them made it.  Not enough of them survived – and their growth was much slowed down, as they did not have the steady support of the government contracts which allows some risktaking in developing new niches.

I quite understand the requirement for standardization of the government systems.  I have no complaints with this!  HOW it was achieved – that is another story! 

Not only did the government (my knowledge of the  Canadian government practices in this area is quite extensive) failed to support the development of emerging small to medium sized companies (these companies are necessary to keep the industry evolving and healthy), they actively undermined them. 

I have seen cases where the small/medium sized Canadian company bid on a government contract – and satisfied all the requirements in the RFP (request for proposal).  Now, for a large project, a company like this may invest several thousand dollars (depending on the contract, it could run high into 4 digits) in preparing the proposal with which to bid for the contract.  The costs are both in development of the solution (after all, you need to propose a solution!) and in the manpower to prepare the document itself.

And, I have also seen technically superior, more cost effective bids from small/medium sized Canadian companies rejected, on the grounds that on page 53 of the proposal, there was a misplaced comma – or the French translation was not gramatically correct.  A large multinational corporation would win the contract…

It pains me to even write about it – but I have seen this happen over and over and over.  Governments prefer working with one large company rather than supporting the growth of a healthy domestic industry in that field.  This is not a healthy attitude – for the government, for the emerging companies and the industry, but most importantly, this attitude has incredibly detrimental impact on the citizens.

Why?

By granting a ‘preferred vendor’ or ‘pre-approved vendor’ status on one or two large companies, the government can exercise incredible control over them.  Worried about loosing their profitable monopoly (or near-monopoly) status, these companies become willing to do just about anything to keep their biggest customer, the government, happy!

Let’s consider the scenario I described in this post, where the City of Ottawa government granted one large multinational company a monopoly to provide internet service to all the ‘rural Ottawa’ residents.  They kicked a number of smaller ISPs already present in parts of this marketplace out – legislating them out of business.  Really.  And the folks running the city thought this was a thing to be proud of!

Now imagine that someone ‘at the City’ lets it be known to the monopoly holder that all internet traffic must be monitored ‘to prevent hate speech’….  Do you think the ISP will put his monopoly at risk, or set up filters on the network that would ‘monitor and report’??? 

Big business enables ‘big brother’ to have eyes….

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Controlling who provides our internet access

November 21, 2008 — xanthippa

Several weeks ago, a popular Ottawa openline radio talks show host was going ballistic over what had happened to his internet access.  He lives in the rural part of the city (the City of Ottawa contains both the urban and much of the surrounding rural area).  And while people in many parts of the rural region could not easily get high-speed internet connections, he happened to live in a largish village that had that service.  For years, he was very happy with his internet provider.

This changed.

One day, his ‘regular’ provider – a small, local company – simply went away and was replaced by a big company.  And his internet stopped working ‘right’.  No problem – when there is a change, things are bound to happen… he had no problem with that, as long as things got fixed.  The new provider had a 24-hour support number (so far so good) where customers could report problems and have them dealt with right away.

So, he called the number.  Automated answering system – understandable, so our host goes through the menues.  And more menus.  And more menus.  After over an hour of this, he gave up…

I cannot recall the exact details of this – but I do recall the basics.  And his lines lit up with callers eager to add their own horror-story about the terrible service they had received from this particular provider.  Many were upset that they had no choice to remain with their other providers – there were several, if I am not mistaken.  Yet, all had, simultaneously, dissappeared and were replaced by this one large company whose service was at best poor and customer support mostly non-existant.

What happened?  This is the background to the story:

The City of Ottawa had received complaints from rural residents about the fact that they could not get high-speed internet access.  (This would be referred to as ‘pressure from below’.)  Being a very responsive government (when they want to be), the city councillors decided to solve this problem.  Since the council is made up of people many of who had never held a non-political/public service job in their life – they came up with a somewhat predictable solution:  give one internet provider a monopoly right over all the rural region of the city in exchange for ‘hooking everyone up’!

They put it out to tender, then selected a large international heavyweight with a prestigious name to provide the service.  Very proudly, they announced this success in a press release!  Now, everyone is equal! 

Did you follow what just happened?

Yes, getting a high-speed internet service is a good thing – even for people who choose to live out in the countryside.  I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is that the way the City of Ottawa government chose to solve this robbed the rural Ottawans of their rights!

THEY GRANTED SOMEONE A MONOPOLY!!!  And what is more – they effectively forbade companies already providing a commercial service to their customers from continuing to provide this service!

And they are proud of the evil they had committed!

In my never-humble-opinion, it is exactly governments like these that were the reason that beautiful-sounding word, ‘defenestration’, was added to our language!

But consider the mindset at work here:  ‘the government’ is, by definition, a monopoly.  People running this particular government (the majority, anyway – enough of them to outvote the ‘rest’) have no experience outside of the ‘government monopoly’.  They truly and honestly think that monopolies are the best solution to just about every problem.  And then they implement ‘solutions’ such as these…

But this goes beyond just meddling by an incompetent government.  It is a real-life, managable-scale example of how governments and monopolies (or their variations) support each other.  The bigger the government, the bigger the companies – the more tangled the strings get.  But they are there!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »
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