American Oligarchs

I've been writing about Democracy 2.0 / Evolving Democracy for a while now.  I've been treating it as a purely academic exercise, because I've assumed that there would be no chance for anything like it being adopted in my lifetime.  I just wanted to leave a challenging idea behind for future generations to chew on, in the hopes that a revolution would occur someday, and that my ideas would help form the next new best government without resorting to violence.

I'm starting to believe that there will be revolution in America in my lifetime.  These two commentaries mirror my own thoughts on the subject:
Joseph Stiglitz details the extreme income imbalance.
Paul Farrell identifies the delusion of the Super-Rich.

Kareem Adbul-Jabar's recent Op-Ed in Time also mirrors my own thoughts on this.  Mr. Adbul-Jabar's Op-Ed is in response to the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.

"It's class warfare. My class is winning, but they shouldn't be."
     -Warren Buffet

Warren Buffet is right.  The rich are waging war on the poor.  Government is supposed to be the protector of the people; the mediator of class struggle. But the rich have infiltrated the government and undermined its ability to judge impartially.

Princeton University recently conducted a study of politics in America (summary - full results.)  The researchers concluded that America is no longer a democracy, but has transformed into an oligarchy--rule by the wealthy elite.

I hate the idea of America being an Oligarchy.  But if the shoe fits.....

I've been thinking about the right criteria for determining who the American oligarchs are:

Simply identifying the 1% or the 0.1% would get you a close approximation.  But the real oligarchs probably hide their assets in order to stay off of the Forbes list.

Tracking lobbyist spending will get you closer.  But the real oligarchs will not likely appear on that list--they have people who do that stuff for them.

Such a list has not been disclosed, but I'll bet every penny I have that the NSA has a "Do Not Track" list.  These are people that their government masters have told them are above suspicion.  Their phone calls are not recorded.  Their emails are not read.  Their license plates are not tracked.  All of the American Oligarchs are on that list.  How do we get a copy of that list?

What's in a name?

I thought I coined the term "Democracy 2.0".  That was in early 2004, according to a quick search through my old notes.  I didn't write that term on the internet until September 11, 2005.

I've run across the term in lots of places recently.  A Google search returns hundreds of hits--I got to page 20 without ever finding this blog.  A quick scan through those hits indicates that there is not one agreed-upon meaning of the term--beyond the most general idea that it is an upgrade of the process of Democracy.

I recently read Accelerando, by Charlie Stross.  He used the term late in the book.  The book was written as short stories, and that particular section was published in December of 2003.

Stross's "Democracy 2.0" was very innovative.  It was in a very different future where money was nonexistent.  Everything you wanted was free, because technology had progressed to the point that everything was so cheap to make that it wasn't worth the overhead burden of doing the accounting.  The only traded currencies were bandwidth and reputations futures--a futures market that traded reputations.

Control of the government was handled through the reputations futures market.  Everyone who wanted to be the president registered their candidacy.  A separate pool was created in the futures market for the reputations of the various candidates.  Anyone who wished to participate would buy or sell any of the candidates' futures.  And at a certain time the candidate with the highest-trading reputation future was declared the winner.

That's not what I was thinking of when I started using the term.

When I started using the term it was the title for a book I was writing.  The book was addressed to people who live under dictatorships.  The point of the book was to explain why we were waiting for them to free themselves, and to give them a vision for doing Democracy on their own terms.  Learn from our successes.  Don't repeat our mistakes.

I've since figured out that someone beat me to the whole "this is why we are waiting for you to free yourself, and this is how you can do it" book.  That book is Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  It's a free PDF that has been translated into dozens of languages and sneaked into just about every country in the world.  Every underground rebel faction has a well-worn copy.

When the dust clears Gene Sharp is going to win a Nobel Peace Prize for that book.

Dictatorship to Democracy is 93 pages.  The first 72 pages are dedicated to nonviolently overthrowing a dictator.  The last chapter covers establishing a democratic government that can last--4.5 pages.  The rest of the book is appendix and endnotes--14 pages.

I think that building a democratic government is harder than that.  These people are going to need more than 4.5 pages.

I wrote a long blog post the other day that had a reasonable outline of what I think a democratic government needs.  The central ideas are:
* equality under the law
* freedom
* capitalism
* goal-oriented
* measure your success
* experiment and innovate

Those last three points are unique to me.  I don't see anyone else out there, including the whole Democracy 2.0 crowd, talking about experimentation, adaption, and learning.  I call that evolution.  So I've started calling my particular brand of democracy "Evolving Democracy."

I'm coming back around to my original book idea.  Now I know that the first half of the battle is covered, I am free to focus on the second half:
* What are the key features of a democracy?
* How do you keep the people in control?
* What goals should you set?
* What should you teach your people?
* How should your government services operate?
* Who writes the laws?
* Who enforces the laws?

So much of what we do has evolved, and we don't ever think about things like why or how the judges and the police are kept separate.  You can't observe life in the US (or UK, or wherever) and figure out the first principles that democracy is built upon.

That's the book that I'm going to write.  I just need a name for it.

My new hero: Dr. Gene Sharp

Gene Sharp is a retired college professor.  He is an introvert, thinker, and writer.  His field of study is the non-violent overthrow of dictators and establishment of democratic governments.

His seminal work is called 'From Dictatorship to Democracy'.  It is available as a PDF for free.

The New York Times has a nice article describing his life and writings, and explaining how his writings ended up in the hands of the protesters in Egypt.  (I can't link it here because they have hidden it behind their paywall.)

Dr. Sharp's writings are primarily focused on the first half of the struggle--toppling the dictator.  My interest is in the second half of the struggle--building a democracy.

If I ever achieve my life's goal, it will only be because I was able to stand on this man's shoulders.

Told you so

The Independent is reporting that Mubarak ordered in the tanks and the army refused; and that this confrontation was the moment that the army decided Mubarak would have to go:

"But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters."

This is what I wrote on Monday the 31st, before that story broke:

"If I were a gambling man then I would place my money on the military reporting that they received the order to massacre, refusing the order, arresting Mubarak, and then seizing control.  This gives the military control and a large measure of goodwill.  Notice that they don't have to actually get the order to massacre, they just have to say they got it.  There will be no way for Mubarak to prove otherwise once he is in jail."

At this point I haven't heard enough promises from the military for democratic elections.  I would not wager on how long it will be before that happens.

More on Egypt and the revolutions in the Middle East

Of course there are a ton of articles floating by about Egypt and the Middle East.  Here are the four biggest, in my opinion:

1. 20 reasons why the world is burning
This article is required reading to understand why this is happening now.

2. The Muslim Brotherhood is saying it will not run a candidate in democratic elections in Egypt
I can't decide if this is genuine good news, or if the Muslim Brotherhood is simply biding their time.  On it's face, though, this is fantastic news.  If democratic elections happen in Egypt, and if the Muslim Brotherhood keeps this promise, then the next government of Egypt will almost certainly be secular (read: not radical Islamic jihadist.)

3. Saudi King Saud pressured Obama to support Mubarak
I predicted this one.  It is vitally important to Saud for Mubarak to not fall.

The real story in Egypt

I found a fascinating article by a western-educated Egyptian.  Click, read, and cry for all that they have lost.

My heart is in Egypt

My heart is in Egypt right now.  If I were free to go, I would have been there a week ago.  But I am not free to go.  So I will write this article instead, and explain what I would do if I could go.  Because I am American, they would not listen to me anyway.

If I were in Egypt I would find the people who wrote this protesters' manual.  I would hide with them in whatever closet they are holed up in.  And I would talk their ears off about what's next.

Transition to what?

Mubarak is trying to hold on to power and save his own life.  He needs the military to protect him.  He is giving more power to the military in order to get their help.  When Mubarak leaves, the military will be in the best position to take over.  Military dictatorships have a poor history of turning power over to democratically-elected civilian governments.  In the short-term, the protesters need to pay more attention to who will be in power after Mubarak leaves.

It is unfortunate that they began the protests without a a new constitution to offer, or a clear non-military candidate or two.  Now they need to find a core group of protest leaders to form a provisional government that will work with the military to administer free and open elections as soon as possible.  They will need to elect two bodies:

• A constitutional congress that will have no powers except to write a new constitution.
• A transitional government that will manage the country while the new constitution is being written.

The transitional government will be tasked with making as few decisions as possible.  Just keep the trains running and power on.  They should draft business people for these positions--people who want to go back to their businesses as soon as possible.

There are two basic types of government:

• Governments based upon people: dictatorships, kingdoms, secret police states, mafia states, etc.
• Governments based upon laws: representative democracies, police states

The stories I'm hearing about the protesters lead me to believe that they want to form a government based upon laws.  This means that the constitutional congress will be where all the action is.  That is where I would like to be--offering advise and helping them form a good law-based government.

Democracy is not enough.

I would bring three books with me to Egypt:

• The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek
• The Other Path by Hernando De Soto
• The Mystery of Capital by Hernando De Soto

What is the point of government?  Peace, safety, freedom, economic opportunity, and justice.  These are outcomes that only democracy can provide.  But there are many forms of democracy that fail to deliver.  Kim Jung Il and Adolph Hitler were both democratically elected and re-elected, after all.

So, what does it take to build a good government?

I've identified 7 features of government and 4 features of society that are required in order to achieve peace, safety, and the rest.

Government Features

Equality Under the Law

1. Every person who is excluded from having a voice in the government will have no rational choice but to oppose the government.
2. A government that can exclude someone else will eventually exclude me.
3. A government that can grant special status to someone else will exclude me from that group, and will eventually exclude me entirely.
4. If anyone is above the law then they will eventually establish themselves as dictator.
5. Corruption cannot be allowed at any level in government, because corruption favors the rich--the poor cannot afford to pay the bribes.
6. The rich gain and the poor suffer as the body of law grows, because only the rich can afford the legal expertise to remain innocent.
1. A country where everyone is guilty of something will devolve into a prison.
7. The rich gain and the poor suffer as the process of complying with the law gets more complicated (licenses, permits, and the like), because only the rich can afford the legal expertise to operate businesses.
1. The poor will be limited to operating in the grey or black markets, where they lack legal protection.
8. Corporations and religious groups are organizations, not people.  Organizations must be treated fairly, with respect to each other.  But organizations must be governed under a distinct set of rules specific to them.

Popular Control

1. Only the people may change the constitution.
2. The people define the government's goals, priorities, and long-term vision.

Protection of Rights

1. The primary purpose of government should be to protect the rights of the people.
2. A people who fail to understand and properly value these basic rights will achieve the bad outcomes that they deserve:
1. Freedom of Speech
2. Freedom of Property
3. Freedom of Religion
4. Freedom of the Press
5. Freedom of Assembly
6. Freedom of Vocation
7. Freedom of Contract
8. Freedom of Sexuality
3. Governments are not the only infringers on these rights.  Corporations and religious groups must be constrained to protect these rights

Limited Government

1. A government that can change the rules under which it operates will slide into corruption, allowing the rich to buy special privileges.
2. A government that can kill citizens will eventually kill me.
3. Governments are good at enforcing the rules by which everyone must operate--making and enforcing laws
4. Governments are very inefficient at delivering services.  
1. Some services can only be reasonably delivered by government, like military protection.  In these cases, the governments operations must be monitored closely for waste and corruption.
2. Some services could be provided by the free market, like mail delivery.  In these cases, the government contracting process must be monitored closely for corruption.
3. All of this monitoring is an expensive overhead.  The best way to reduce the overhead is to limit the scope of government.
5. Find creative ways to limit government spending.  Make them report everything they spend in clear terms.

Separation of Powers

1. Government is, by definition, a concentration of power.  Power corrupts.  Don't give any person any more power then you absolutely must, and don't let them hold on to that power any longer than you must.
2. There are certain categories of power within government.  These must be clearly and irrevocably separated:
1. Legislative: write laws
2. Police: enforce the laws
3. Judicial: apply and interpret the laws
4. Executive: manage the government itself
5. Ambassadors: official interactions with other nations
6. Military: defense and war
7. Measurement: measure and report the government's performance
8. Oversight: watch the watchers

Balance of Powers

1. The parts of government will have to interact with one another.  Each part needs to be reigned in by other parts.  Each line of power needs to be carefully laid out, to avoid any one part gaining too much power over the others, or to avoid having two or three parts forming a ruling coalition over the others.
1. Within those interactions there will be some natural power struggles.  These interactions must be planned out. For instance:
1. The police are completely subject to the judges when it comes to detaining and punishing wrongdoers.
2. The military is completely subject to the legislature to for funding.
2. Some un-natural power struggles need to be established, to keep any one part of government from gaining too much power.  For instance:
1. Military senior commanders must be approved by the judges before they can take office.
2. Executive branch officers are nominated by the legislature and confirmed or rejected by a jury made up of judges, police, and military personnel.

Regular Orderly Transition of Power

1. No one may serve in more than one part of the government at the same time.
2. No one gets to hold on to any power for an extended period of time.
3. No one gets to control how or when they will relinquish power.
4. When the people are unhappy, they must have a non-violent means for replacing the government and amending the constitution.

Social Features

Participation

1. Government must be watched, or it will devolve into corruption.
2. The people must tell the government what they want, or they won't get it.
3. Some people must serve in the government for a time, and then return to private life without gaining undue advantage in the marketplace from their time of service.

Criticism

1. The people must speak up when they have a problem with the government.
1. They cannot wait and let problems fester for too long before they do something.
2. They must continually exercise their right of criticism so they don't lose the right through lack of use.
2. Criticism must be public, so the public can weigh and judge the importance of the criticism.
1. Kooks will abuse the right to criticize, and use it as a platform for their craziness.  The public should be the judges of legitimate problems versus craziness.
2. The better your government gets, the more that legitimate problems will look and sound crazy at first.
3. The government must be strictly forbidden from silencing critics.
4. The government must have mechanisms for accepting criticism and making positive changes, when the people agree that the problem should be addressed.

Independence

1. The people must understand that the government cannot meet their every need.
2. The people must accept responsibility for the outcomes of their own lives, so long as they have been dealt with fairly.

Freedom-Loving

1. My freedom to swing my arm ends just before I hit my neighbor's nose.
2. People who are not dedicated to freedom will be too thin-skinned, constantly imagining that their noses have been hit.
3. Freedom will be constantly challenged by would-be authorities.  The people will have to continually defend freedom, primarily against religious authorities.
1. When a religion has the authority to enforce its will on non-believers then freedom of religion has been violated, and a religious kingdom has been established.  All non-believers are outsiders, and rationally must work to overthrow that government.

What's Next in Egypt?

Maybe the powers behind the scenes in Egypt already know all of this.  Even if they do know it, it will be incredibly difficult to pull off.  If the protesters are not simply massacred, then a military dictatorship is the most likely outcome of their present course.

If I were a gambling man then I would place my money on the military reporting that they received the order to massacre, refusing the order, arresting Mubarak, and then seizing control.  This gives the military control and a large measure of goodwill.  Notice that they don't have to actually get the order to massacre, they just have to say they got it.  There will be no way for Mubarak to prove otherwise once he is in jail.

Life in Egypt will go from bad to worse under a military dictatorship.

What's Next in the Region?

America has been a big supporter of Mubarak for a long time.  In response, Mubarak has been an ally of the US and Israel.  No matter what happens now, America and Israel are losing that ally.  This is a dark day for the US, and a terrifying turn of events for Israel.  Calling Obama "the President that lost Egypt" is somewhat unfair.  From the moment this broke out Obama has had no option for saving Mubarak.

American could have supported the rebels, but at the price of losing Saudi Arabia.  Doing that would not have likely won friends in the new Egypt, because America was the biggest military supplier of Mubarak's government.  And it would have been very difficult for America to denounce Mubarak, seeing as how they are giving him so much money every year.

It may not be Obama's fault, but the importance of this for Mid-East relations is still immense.  This weakens every state in the region.  The likely benefactor of that instability is Al Qaeda.  They will gain influence either by supporting existing countries or by supporting the overthrow of enemy countries.

Egypt has a fairly healthy current tradition of religious moderation.  Christians and Muslims have been living in peace there for a long time.  I pray that won't change.  But I'm afraid that religious freedom will be curtailed by the next government--no matter who runs it.

Saudi Arabia is already locked in its own civil war--the pragmatic king against his religious extremist cousins fighting through their proxies.  Saudi Arabia is the biggest domino in the region.  Egypt is the second biggest.  Iran is third, and already unstable.  Iraq was fourth, and still unstable.  Expect more wars and civil wars in the region.

Talks with Israel will be on hold until several of these major countries stabilize.  But when talks resume Israel will have no friends in the region.  There is really only one issue that the citizens of these regions can agree on, and that is hatred of Israel.  This period of instability would be a good time to get out of Israel.

What cannot be given?

Respect is only learned through toils, both physical and mental.  Hard work is the price of admission, and sweat is the only currency accepted.  Respect can only pour from the inner fountain.  Praises from the outside can only poison the ground of a soul.

Compassion is only learned through suffering, both mine and my loved ones'.  Suffering must be felt deeply and repeatedly before the message can be decoded.  Values, priorities, and desires must all bend in the stream of sufferings before the pain will subside.

Purpose is only learned through seeking, both inside and out.  Only diligent seeking can overturn every stone and examine every leaf.  What can be must become known before what should be can be decided.  Shortcuts are failures.

Discipline is only learned through temptations, both triumphs and failures.  But discipline does not come from the temptations, or from any other external source.  Discipline crawls out only from within.  It is tempered and forged by circumstances only if it first burns from within.

Humility is only learned through frustrations, both large and small.  Humiliations come from the outside, and attempt to destroy the spirit.  Humility blossoms and grows from within, and teaches how to transcend the frustrations and humiliations.

Life is a process.  Scrub away the dirt to reveal the value hidden within.

I cannot be given the things I already possess.  I can only scour my soul against the sharp edges of my trials to remove the mud and bandages, and discover myself hidden within.  I will bleed.  I will cry.  I will continue.

I will toil and suffer as I seek through temptations and frustrations.  I will wear away this stinking husk and discover myself, in myself, for myself.  And we shall see what I am good for, what I was made for.

Grammar and communication

English is a spoken language.  Maybe all human languages are spoken*.  Writing is just an afterthought.  It's a poor second cousin to speaking, when it comes to communicating.

When you speak to someone in person you are able to watch them and hear the intonations in their voice.  Humor, sarcasm, hyperbole, empathy, and a whole range of other emotions are carried by non-verbal queues.  The speaker winces and you feel her pain, even if her words don't communicate pain.

In technology terms, spoken communication is a relatively wide communication channel.  The words are one channel.  The body movements are another channel.  The facial expressions are another channel.  The pitch of the voice is another channel.  The pacing of the words is another channel.  And the listener is able to communicate back across many of those same channels at the same time.

When we write we are restricted to one channel, and we get no feedback.  You can't see the tears in my eyes as I type.  You can't see how long I spent formulating that sentence.  You can't see the emphasis I placed on one word.  And I can't see the look of recognition in your eyes that tells me that you are understanding what I am typing.

Grammar is our crude attempt to insert some of the information from the non-verbal communication channels into the stream of words.

Commas indicate incomplete thoughts.  Periods indicate completed thoughts.  Repetition indicates emphasis.  Brackets and dashes indicate asides for humor, emphasis, empathy, or any number of reasons.

I struggle with that.  I think in ideas, concepts, and frameworks.  I can work out streams of factual words.  I have a hard time expressing my doubts, questions, empathy, confusion, certainty, sarcasm, etc....  I can add many words to clarify every emotional nuance, but the word channel gets overwhelmed and lost in a sea of descriptive flourishes and asides.

I think that this is a large part of the reason why modern writing is so bloated and boring.

Read any good non-fiction book published before 1960 and you will get one complete thought in every sentence.  You won't get that same thought again in the next sentence, or in a sentence in the next paragraph.  The books are generally shorter, but they convey a massive amount of information and ideas.

Read any good non-fiction book published in the last decade and you can easily skip most paragraphs without missing any points.  Authors feel compelled to repeat themselves over and over again.  I think that they are often trying to add all of the non-verbal nuances.  But they are mostly just repeating themselves too much and becoming boring.

I need a new grammar.  Emoticons fail, but they are a step in the right direction.  I need a simple single punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm.  I need a simple single punctuation mark to indicate that I am in pain.  I need a simple single punctuation mark to indicate that I am skeptical.  I need a simple single punctuation mark to indicate that I am exasperated.  (sigh)

I think that this is part of the reason why humans learn better from real life stories than from dry lists of facts.  This is where I would like to go as a writer.  I would like to learn how to translate my dry list of facts into compelling stories.

Aesop was clearly one of the greatest geniuses ever, not just because of his wisdom; but because he communicated that wisdom in stories that people would read and could understand.  Amazing.

The nearest thing I have seen in the modern era is 'The Art of Profitability' by Adrian Slywotzky.  Adrian told the story of a mentor teaching business profitability to a student.  Easy to read and understand.

Fiction has its own mechanisms for conveying emotion.  I'm not proficient with those yet, but I understand them.  I actually think that fiction has become lazy, too.  Too many authors tell you what a person is thinking instead of showing you the non-verbal queues as they speak.  In my fiction writing I endeavor to never tell you what a character is thinking.  Characters act on their thoughts and feelings, even if the act is merely a wince.  That's how people are used to perceiving their worlds and understanding people.

The other side of good fiction is that it has the strength to tell the truth in ways that other writing cannot.  I was struck by this early analysis of Aesop, by Apollonius of Tyana:

"he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events."

* I'm not the first person to argue that language is spoken first.  I just can't find the articles I remember right now.  If you are very interested in that discussion then you can start with this article.  It argues that conventional grammar is applicable only to written words, and that spoken words need to be managed by their own separate grammatical rules.  Same problem, but opposite perspective and solution.

Writing

I like to write fiction because it forces me to think new thoughts.

I like to write non-fiction because it forces me to get to know the things I think.

I'm working on my other blog.  I wrote many of the simple articles.  I got to a set of articles that I could not tease apart.  It's becoming a short book.  (sigh)

Job search update

I'm looking for a business software start-up that needs to build their first services team.  I'm the person they need to build that team.

Business software means that I'm looking for a company that sells software to companies.

Services includes both technical support and professional services.  Most business software start-ups will decide they need technical support first, because the salespeople will get tired of doing technical support.  But some will decide that they need professional services first, because they can get paid for professional services (like training and implementation consulting.)

Here is my 'marketing plan', which describes the position/company that I'm looking for in more detail.

This is my resume.

This is my profile on LinkedIn.

This is my new blog.  I'm writing articles there that demonstrate my expertise in this field.

My resume and LinkedIn no longer connect to this blog.  Maybe some potential employer will find this one, but I doubt it.  Most people don't click the links that you put right in front of them, let alone go to Google to dig.

I'm going to empty my brain into that new blog for the next few weeks.  I'm not going to work on anything else until I run out of ideas for what to post there.  When that is done then I'll go back to one of my other side projects.  Posting on this blog will probably be light for the next few weeks, because I'll be writing on the new blog.

Please let me know what you think about the new direction, resume, etc.

Professional journalism

I love Wikipedia.  I link to it often for simple stories and scientific notes.  But Wikipedia has a huge problem.  It lacks professional journalistic ethics and backbone.

This article in the Village Voice is the best example I have found of Wikipedia's failure.  Warning: this article is primarily about a wealthy man committing incest with his daughter.  It's professionally written, but the subject matter is disturbing, even handled professionally.  But the end of the article outs Wikipedia for its lack of backbone.

I did search Wikipedia in order to confirm the accusations in the Village Voice article.

Professional journalism is dying.  That is a shame.  We should endeavor to find a way to maintain the investigative research and ethics of truth-telling that exists in some parts of the journalism animal.  We will all be worse off if that spirit dies.

Business as usual

I'm toying with another side project--something related to Democracy 2.0.  That's a long story.  Anyway, as I was brainstorming for that project I wrote this sentence:

Donating money has replaced voting in the American government.

I stopped there and almost cried.

Then tonight I came across this story.  What really strikes me here is that Alabama state legislators were arrested by the FBI today.  They must have been remarkably sloppy.  This is business as usual.  Sure it is unethical and probably illegal if you don't use the right words and signals--remember that the people who are accepting the bribes are the people who wrote the laws against bribery.  But no one gets in trouble for buying or selling votes any more.

This won't stick.  And it won't stop anyone else from doing it.

The Predictioneer's Game

I just finished reading 'The Predictioneer's Game' by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.  If you are interested in the future this is a must read.

Bruce is one part economist, one part social scientist, and one part mathematician.  He has developed a formula that describes the negotiation process.  He studies each party to a negotiation and assigns numerical values (0 to 100) to their positions, goals, and power.  Then he solves the formula and predicts the results of the negotiation.

His work is based upon game theory.  So he calls each negotiation a 'game'.  He gives examples of wars, negotiations leading up to wars, bidding wars, lawsuits, elections (and sham elections), multi-party political struggles, and car buying.  His explanation of how to get the best price for a new car is the most buyer-empowering process I have ever seen.  (Unfortunately it only applies to new cars.)

I find this approach very appealing.  He doesn't give away any of the formula itself.  He only explains the variables that he assigns as inputs.  Frankly, that's enough for me.  I don't want to do the math.  That's why we have computers.

He cites several examples of correct predictions.  The future predictions that he gives appear to be reasonable, and not obvious to anyone who does not approach the subject through this type of disciplined methodology.

He has posted an online version of his game.  So you can prepare a tab-delimited text file with a series of values representing each party of the negotiation, and then upload the file and see the results of the game.  He doesn't show you the formula.

Of course this is only a methodology, and not a guarantee.  He gives several examples when his predictions failed.  And it appears that he has a pretty good grasp of the failure conditions.  The biggest two failure conditions are outside interruptions (natural disasters, sex scandals, and other exceptional events that interfere with the negotiation process) and people who do not seek their own advantage (idiots and idealists.)  But these two issues are problems for game theory in general, and not unique to his methods.

There are a few modifications that I would like to see implemented in Bruce's formula and process .  The following won't make much sense if you haven't read the book.

Three Goals
His process only accounts for a single goal for each party.  I don't think that humans usually work that way.  I think that we usually have three different goals in mind:
* Ideal - The perfect state that we hope to achieve.
* Expected - The result that we expect to be able to achieve.
* Minimum - The poorest result that we are willing to accept.

The intervals between these goals affect the way that we play the game.  It's probably a fallacy to identify a 'normal' game.  But the most obvious case for these three goals would be that a person's Ideal goal is higher than their Expected goal, and both of those are higher than their Minimum goal.  In this situation a person is likely to negotiate and act in good faith.

If a person's Expected goal is very close to either their Ideal or Minimum goal, above their Ideal goal, or below their Minimum, then it will greatly alter their approach to the negotiation.

When a person's Expected goal is very close to their Ideal goal then they will shift into either a more flexible or a more rigid negotiating strategy.  Pragmatists will become more flexible in order to get the process over with quickly.  True believers, idealists, and other extremists will become more rigid as they get caught up in the fervor of reaching their Ideal goal.  (This might be the true test of an idealist.)

When a person's Expected goal is very close to their Minimum goal they will use a very rigid negotiating strategy and expend a great deal of time and energy on the negotiations.

When a person's Expected goal is lower than their Minimum goal they are going to either undermine the process, cheat, and otherwise act in poor faith, or they will expend a tremendous amount of time and energy in an incredibly flexible negotiating strategy.  For example, a dictator will not join a negotiation where they expect to be hanged as a result.  But a murderer who has been arrested will negotiate nearly anything to get out of the death penalty.

When a person's Expected goal is higher than their Ideal goal they are going to treat this negotiation as a means to an end to improve their negotiating position in some other game.  This is the ugly political process of giving votes on one issue to gain votes on a separate issue.

Context
Every negotiation takes place within a context.  Each participant has other concerns that they are concurrently negotiating (or expect to begin negotiating soon.)  The participants have an existing relationship, and expectations for a future relationship.  And there are other parties who are not directly involved in a particular negotiation, but who have an interest in either a resolution to negotiations or to one or more of the participants.

Each participant has many ongoing negotiations.  If this negotiation is not one of their top priorities then it will not get their full attention.  They will probably delay it where possible.  When delay becomes impossible they will adopt a very flexible negotiating strategy in order to get done quickly.

The more negotiations that a person has going on, or expects to have going on soon, the more likely they are to be willing and able to be very flexible in their negotiation strategy.  This is especially true when some of the other participants to this negotiation are also participants in other negotiations.  This is the type of situation where politicians trade votes.

When two or more parties negotiate multiple separate games, over time, they establish a relationship.  Each participant will form an opinion of the other participants, especially concerning their trustworthiness.  Participants who have a long history of negotiating successful games will be able to negotiate more flexibly with each other because of the trusting relationship.  And conversely, when trust has been betrayed in the past  then current and future negotiations will be less flexible.

When one or more participant wants to negotiate more games after the current one, then that person will adopt a more flexible negotiating strategy.  For instance, a businessperson who is attempting to establish a reputation and earn repeat business will negotiate more deeply than an established company.

Sometimes there are external parties who may choose to interfere with a particular negotiation game.  There is a near-unlimited number of possibilities here.  Friends, enemies, and parties to other negotiations (current or future) are the prime suspects here.  A mistress, for instance, may be content to remain hidden until the money and notoriety from exposure gets too great.  Or someone may see an opportunity to hurt an old enemy by interfering with a negotiation.

I'm not certain that all of these scenarios are worth codifying within the prediction formula.  But I believe that for important negotiations each of these possibilities should be examined as a possible tactic for improving one's position.  That type of strategic and tactical research is what Bruce's consulting company does.

Stupidity
Humans aren't always rational.  Sometimes people just fail to see an opportunity.  Sometimes people have hidden constraints that limit them from exercising an obvious negotiation tactic.  Sometimes people bluff.  And sometimes your estimations of their goals and values are simply incorrect.

This is something that the predictive formula should be able to test and adapt for.  Almost all negotiations take place over a series of rounds.  As each round concludes you can compare the predicted and actual positions.

It is not as simple as updating the formula with the actual values and recomputing.  Each variation needs to be examined and explained.  Those explanations need to be fed into the strategic and tactical plans for future rounds of negotiation.

If you decide that someone is bluffing then you need to decide if you want to extract more concessions from them, at the risk of moving their Expected goal above their Minimum goal and causing them to begin subverting the negotiations.

If you decide that someone has a hidden constraint and cannot ask for a concession that they need, then you can use that information to your advantage.  Maybe you can threaten to expose their weakness to coerce greater concessions.  Or maybe you can offer the concession as an olive branch, in order to gain the upper hand.

If you decide that someone is simply stupid then you can play them in order to gain greater concessions.  You can arrange the situation to make the stupid person look heroic while they make much larger concessions than they should.  Call this the Neville Chamberlain tactic.

Good men

I found a new website the other day.  It's a new magazine called 'The Good Man Project'.  It's focused on the positive and uplifting aspects of manliness.  Honor, integrity, strength, respect.  No lingerie photos.  No pro sports talk.

What does it take to be a good man?
son?
husband?
father?
employee?
boss?
neighbor?
citizen?

There is something of a liberal slant.  It's not religious at all.  But real men should feel right at home.

I have a few half-finished blog posts that I am thinking about submitting there instead of posting here.

Yes, I write on most days.  When you don't see a new post here it's because I couldn't finish the article I was writing.  I have no deadlines or goals other than my own need to produce and eye for quality, so I only publish a post when I feel it is done enough.

Communication

I dreamt that we were talking
as we sipped lattes in an quiet cafe,
and I told you my deepest fears.
You laughed.

I dreamt that we were talking
as we hiked a steep desert trail,
and I told you my hopes and plans.
You laughed.

I dreamt that we were talking
as we drove across a long lonely bridge,
and I told you my most painful regrets.
You laughed.

I dreamt that we were talking
as we bathed in golden sun on a sparkling beach,
and I told you how I love you.
You laughed.

I dreamt that we were talking
as we walked hand-in-hand along a forest trail,
and I told you my darkest secret sin.
You turned and walked away.

-Randy Miller
August 17, 2010

I write like.....

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I've never read Dan Brown.  But he has sold lots of books, so I guess it is a good thing.

Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

This article is from 2005, but I just found it.  As a wanna-be writer, it amuses me to no end.  As a Star Wars fan it warms my heart that someone found a plausible explanation for many of the stupid plot-holes.

"Adult in Training Youth Ministry Program" v0.1

I previously posted an idea I had for a Youth Ministry "Position Book".  One of the people that I had talked to about this remembered it, and he wants to help me take this project to the next stage.  So we're going to talk it through some more, refine it, and then present it to Dr. Wilgus when he is back in Austin in September.

Background:
Dr. Ken Wilgus is a believer from the metroplex who works as a youth and family counselor.  From his counseling experience he has put together a parenting action plan.  His big idea is that the whole point of parenting a teenager is that the parents need to actively prepare the youth for adulthood by granting the youth more and more autonomy and responsibility.  Dr. Wilgus calls these youth "adults in training" (AiT).

Dr. Wilgus has a great presentation on this.  He likens a teenager to an island nation that is being ruled from afar by the parents.  His vision is for the parents to begin granting the teenager limited autonomy in several areas of their lives:

• The clothes they wear.
• The music they listen to.
• Their hair style.
• Their friends.
• Their homework.
• and others.....

The idea is to give the AiT more and more freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it.  Parents are responsible for deciding the time table upon which an AiT gains their freedom and responsibility over each area of their lives.  The teenager learns how to make decisions, and grows up into adulthood before they leave the house.

Youth Ministry:
If that is the new model of parenting, then youth ministry needs to be adjusted to match it.  To a large degree, youth ministry is an extension of parenting.  And just as parents have to adapt and learn new skills in order to carry out this planned withdrawal, youth ministries will need to adapt in order to better fulfill their roles in this new plan.

The New Program:
I am calling this new youth ministry program the "Adult in Training Youth Ministry Program" (AiTYMP).  (If you come up with a better name, please share.....)  All of this is subject to change, but this is what I think the AiTYMP consist of:

• Focus on teaching the AiT decision-making skills.
• A published set of roles and responsibilities for the youth ministers, parents, and teenagers.
• A published schedule of when to cover the various social topics.
• A published outline of what will be presented on each topic:
• - The clear 'sin' boundaries found in Scripture.
• - The range of options that godly people could choose.
• - The youth ministry's recommendation(s).
• A presentation and workbook for parents whose kids enter the program.
• A course for youth ministry volunteers who will be teaching in the program.

Decision-Making:
When teenagers enter the program they need to be told on the first day that they will be learning decision-making skills in order to learn how to be an adult.  That is the point and focus of the program.

There needs to be an outline for how to make godly decisions.  Off the top of my head the outline looks something like this:

• Study Scripture
• Pray
• Seek godly counsel
• Flee temptations
• Defer decisions whenever possible (in order to keep your options open.)

There is a lot of meat in there.  Bible stories take on new meaning as lessons in decision-making and finding God's will.  Much of what the world tells us to pursue can be covered under the heading of 'flee temptations'. So we're not making a sea change in what is taught in the youth ministry, we're just re-organizing it and providing a larger context for making it meaningful to the teenagers' lives.

Roles and Responsibilities:
It is always important for everyone to understand their roles and what everyone else is expecting of them.  Here we have a beautiful opportunity to clarify this for everyone.  This should provide everyone with peace-of-mind and common vocabulary for the journey.  The roles and responsibilities need to be communicated to the parents, especially.  This is the first key way in which parents can be brought into the whole Adult in Training program.

Like everything else here, this is all subject to change.  But I think that the roles and responsibilities break down like this:
- Youth ministry volunteers:

• Teach the material.
• Offer godly counsel.

- Parents:

• Decide when an AiT is ready for a certain freedom/responsibility.
• Communicate this schedule to their AiT.
• Enforce consequences when an AiT fails to live up to their responsibility.
• Make the final decision on lifestyle options that may be practiced while the AiT is living in the parents' house.

- Teens:

• Communicate their desires for freedom/responsibility to their parents.
• Learn the material.

The Schedule:
If we wait and talk about an issue after the AiT has already faced the temptation then probably they will fail the test and succumb to the temptation.  That's why we have to teach and prepare the AiT before they face the various temptations.  This will be hard for most parents to accept.

But the youth ministry needs to present each topic before the AiT run into it out in the world.  That may mean that almost every topic needs to be covered very very early, in a very high level--because the world is throwing smoking, drugs, sex, rock & roll, pornography, and violence at the kids at a very young age.

This will cause a constant problem that may be the Achilles' heel of the program.  AiTs will be taught about every topic before the parents are ready to give them freedom and responsibility in that area.  There might be a few early bloomers and liberal parents, but for the great majority of cases the youth program will be the first place that the AiT hear about topics such as:

• pornography
• family violence
• drugs
• suicide
• etc.

The parents need to be brought up to speed on this before their AiTs enter the program.  The youth workers need to constantly remind the AiTs that they are teaching ahead of the temptations, and ahead of the time that their parents grant them the freedom/responsibility.

The Topics:
(You know the list.  I'll fill that in later.)

For every social topic that is covered, there are several key questions that must be discussed:

• What are God's boundaries (at what points are you sinning)?
• If there is room for interpretation on that boundary, then why do we interpret the way we do?
• What does temptation in this area look like?
• How do you know if you are being tempted to sin?
• If you have fallen to temptation in this area, how should you change your behavior to guard against continuing to sin?
• If someone you know has fallen to temptation in this area, how should you treat them?
• What are the types of options that you could choose, without sinning?
• What factors should you consider when making this decision for yourself?

The sin question is the other potential Achilles' heel of this program.  Every church is going to need to customize this program to suit their own beliefs.  Some families will bounce from church to church looking for a ministry program that agrees with them on every sin definition.

I think that a youth minister is going to have to take this program idea to the leaders of his/her church, and have the leaders of the church discuss and decide on those sin definitions.  A youth minister who is left defending definitions that he/she wrote will be out of a job quickly.

This is probably the part of the program that you are most skeptical about.  I agree.  Before we can say that we have a program at all, we are going to have to write up one or two of these.  I think this is the outline:

• Topic
• Relevant Scriptures
• Clear sin situations (we would doubt the salvation of anyone who argued these)
• Debatable sin situations (might be sin or could lead to sin very easily, but we would not exclude anyone from full fellowship over these.)
• Our congregation's suggested boundaries / lifestyle / practice for a sin-free life.
• Recommendations for someone caught in this sin.

The Presentation:
Parents should be urged to attend the program entry presentation.  Where I said 'published', above, I meant that the parents would be handed these items at the entry presentation.  This is what I was referring to as the 'youth ministry position book' in my previous article.

The presentation should be a short form of Dr. Wilgus's presentation.  The parents should be invited to participate in an adult learning community like the Parenting Adolsecents class, as a follow-up to the presentation.

Nakatomi space

I found an interesting article discussing a little-known aspect of urban warfare.  The author uses the Die Hard movie as a teaching example.  As an author of police and military fiction, this is something that I need to study further and use creatively.  If you are an author you might want to consider it also.