Sunday, May 24, 2020

making policy-article 2 of 2 today


MAKING POLICY
( article 2 of 2 today )
Aesop over at Raconteur Report blogspot is a very good blogger ( rants never ending ) and it looks like a rather good medical professional ( he doesn't strike me as a braggart, so I'm going by his position and experience which seems substantial ). But what he is makes him unqualified for some things. You NEVER get a professional to make policy, unless that policy is his profession. A perfect example of that is a military General trying to make political decisions. Eisenhower and MacArthur were both high ranking military leaders and hence politicians ( but I submit to you that both were better at politics than war-unless you gauge success the Soviet way, with cannon fodder count ).
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But Eisenhower KNEW he was a politician, whereas MacArthur THOUGHT he was a General ( that is what his paycheck said, anyway ). The one knew there is a lot more to war and leading a country than just throwing around atom bombs, and the other only knew how to win a war ( again, according to his limited understanding. Remember, this was one of the douches that murdered the peaceful protesters for the war bonuses ) at any cost. When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You need to set policy for hammers, not allow hammers to dictate policy.
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Look at the old TV show MASH. It has been a few decades since I watched an episode, but if memory serves Hawkeye was the hippie peacenik surgeon, and most of the comedy was with his foil the Major who was a military kiss ass. As a medical doctor, his contention that the war had to be stopped because it served no purpose, in order to do his job of saving lives. Should he have been making policy? Of course not! No matter how great of a doctor he was, he had no knowledge of foreign policy or other areas that were the purview of politicians.
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Politicians know how to do one thing, and that is how to allocate resources so as to continue the wealth pump that paid them. Business leaders are the same. Their job is not to make policy with wage parity to keep the peace, or to strengthen the national security with their industry or anything else. It is to make money. The only problem with business leaders is when you either do not regulate them or when you allow one in a political position. Politicians only screw things up when the wealth pump no longer strengthens the wealth pump, but those who hijacked it.
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You need generalists, Big Picture folks, to oversee the experts, or the system fails. Experts have tunnel vision. They have to, or they are not all that good at one thing. Just like you cannot blame men or women for a problem the other is better at solving, and both must work in harmony, so experts and policy makers. You cannot make a good policy without knowledge, but too much knowledge limited in scope is as worthless. Aesop is a great medical guy. He should stop right there. Yes, he listens to other experts, such as experienced war fighters for survival advice, but even then he is blinded by professionalism over generalists.
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And I don't mean to single out one voice, just that he is one I read daily ( which speaks highly of him, as my time is limited and I must triage my reading. I can intensely dislike someone and still value what they have to say. I value Aesop. I also find much about him worthy of disagreement ). A LOT of what the military does is dangerous to survivalists. You've heard the list before, so I won't rehash. They have valuable experiences to share, but little should be emulated.
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If you ONLY value the advice of professionals, you lack broader perspective. Whenever Aesop spouts off belittling anyone who wants to reopen the economy, because now he is on Aesop's turf and Aesop knows how to save lives and lifting the lock-down goes against that, my jaw drops in wonder. How, pray tell, is his beloved medical industry to survive without the larger surrounding economy supporting it? Medical is a BONUS. In resource scarcity, medical care is not guaranteed. I won't even get into his blindness to the flaws in the system, a barber telling everyone to get a haircut ( that is a widely shared flaw, so no need to get personal ).
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Just focusing on available resources, medical care is not always available. Even now, medical care is being withheld, surgeries needed for longer life but not immediately life threatening if withheld, are being denied because medicine isn't coming over from China. No amount of stacked Conex containers as emergency stockpiles are going to last you a year of normal use ( if we assume shortages began last year as many were not available here and instead were being used in China to combat Swine Ebola ). That solves the JIT problem, but not the trade and economic issues. It doesn't address the energy issues, as a lot of this is the indirect result of THAT triage, for decades now.
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Sometimes, to solve a problem, you cannot solve it perfectly. You must sacrifice perfection to gain system wide functioning. It doesn't matter if closing down the economy saves everyone. If you are starving or freezing to death while homeless, it doesn't matter if you survived a ten times the risk of the normal flu of dying “pandemic” before that. When you focus on winning the war against a virus, and ignore the trade war, or asymmetrical war on your empire, you still lose.
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This is not to disparage any expert ( although many times I call BS on their entire profession anyway-I still understand the drive, dedication and accomplishments of the practitioner ). It is to call into question focusing too much on specialists at the expense of the generalist. Of focusing wealth on ones chosen profession ( “why do I care if you lose your job while locked down? I'm still employed” ) and ignoring the rest of the system that delivers your wealth. The problem with tunnel vision.
( .Y. )
( today's related Amazon link click HERE )
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note: On Tubi, there is an EMP TV series.  Now, relax, Francis, and lower your expectations.  It is female-centric ( I think it is more a fundamentalist view, although I could be wrong-I've only watched two episodes.  Past the first opening scene of Strong Powerful Women Executives, I didn't get a sense of PC, and saw hints of traditionalism ) and it is a very slow burn.  The budget isn't minuscule,  yet noticeably lower ( with decent production ).  But I found myself enjoying it.  "Daily Bread"
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31 comments:

  1. re:
    Lind's "Fourth Generation Warfare"

    Bison,
    Your mention of 'asymetrical' jogged a series of cascading suppositions in my Sunday just-woke line between sleep and day awareness.

    Of course!
    Yesterday, I read the phrase 'the chinese won the New Cold War before Americans realized it was going on'.

    And SeaGypsyPhilosopher Ray Jason admonishes us, the planet population, to automatically distrust anybody in power or seeking power.
    Their brains are wired different from 'normal' folk.
    Another descriptor is 'psychopath'.
    Psychopaths lack the ability to emphasize.
    Your examples of those traitorous thugs MacArthur and Patton and Eisenhower turning military-grade machine-guns and artillery on peaceful campers is perfect.
    Theirs was the only course; any other choice would destroy them from the inside out because they are wired to destroy 'it' if they cannot control 'it'... whatever 'it' is.
    Then TheMainStreamMedia idolizes them to conceal the agenda of the MalignantOverlords.
    Their agenda?
    Total power, total control of each individual on this particular planet.
    A mass-produced centralized linear progression on a fluid and often counter-intuitive bunch of innovators.

    For every living thing, Darwin's Law will always be in effect:
    The quickest to adapt will prevail.

    Can you imagine the frustration of TheRulingElites?
    Every new attempt at global conquest is automatically thwarted by our innate determination to avoid individual conquest.

    The puppets:
    Fauci.
    Adhamon.
    Gates.
    And thousands of other puppets in the kabuki.
    Will the puppet-masters crank it up another notch?
    After crashing the entire economy of this particular planet, what remains in their arsenal?
    What would quench their cravings for total control?
    But, then, after they accomplish total control, the hunger keeps gnawing at their insides.

    I think their goal is suicide.
    Each of my discussions with a progressive socialist marxist politician -- and in Eugene Oregon, 99.999% of everybody is a politician -- convinces me again of their suicidal intent.
    Their deadly seriousness is the give-away.


    I am vastly amused.

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    1. Your analytical abilities are rather impressive, half asleep. I only hope upon full awakeness you revert to being distracted ( "squirrels!" ) so I might lack serious competition. :)

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    2. I disagree. I disagree with your premise and conclusion
      while a salient point is being made/re: motivation.

      https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/why-the-ptb-are-not-concerned-about-the-general-population-during-the-shtf/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-the-ptb-are-not-concerned-about-the-general-population-during-the-shtf-robot-oligarchy

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    3. It is my contention that technology has not advanced since the computer chip. You might even say, since the transistor. Everything since then is just tweaking the same tech. Miniaturization helps power consumption, but that savings is negated by the widespread adaptation of chips in everything. Which almost never works as well as analog. It works great in robotics, but not as far as anything human powered. All this talk about robots, AI, and similar "New New Things Sure To Revolutionize Everything" is pure Silicon Valley investor propaganda. 65 year old tech is not aware of any more advances, we already shot our wad there. And do I really need to remind anyone, energy decline. You don't replace the old infrastructure with new, in energy decline. We never got our flying cars, our meal-in-a-pill, our too cheap to meter nuclear power. And we aren't going to do any of that, or anything else now. In case there is any confusion, this quarantine lock down just did more to arrest labor costs than ANY robots ever could. The states going bankrupt did more to keep the cost of civil servants down more than a robo-dog-cop ever will.

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  2. Thanks for the perspective, I’ve been out of Aesop’s domain for over a month due to our governors decree. Aesop fails to think of his ‘brothers and sisters’ in arms in healthcare that are sitting at home, unable to make a paycheck.
    Aesop reminds me of a younger version of myself working in the ER. The world revolves around him. I also think he’s young in the field because it seems he can’t compare this outbreak to other, worse bacteria and viruses.
    I’d rather have covid then TB or a variety of other conditions.

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    1. I started reading him years ago as he was covering Ebola. I think if anything, he does assume the very worst. That is good in one way, but bad in another. I know his heart is in the right place, so excesses are allowed.

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    2. I too stopped reading him a month or more ago, I just couldn't take any more of his smug, authoritarian presentation. He seems to suffer from the "little man" effect and the anonymity of the web lets him escape (briefly) the tortured reality of that horror. Srsly, why do I want to read someone that is so insulting. Same with Denninger, though I'll admit I have been back to his place a time or two. But not Aesop's. Hell, I was mostly tired of A's shit when all he did was make mostly rude comments on WRSA.

      WRSA doesn't do comments any more and that's a shame because in all good blogs some of the best info is frequently found in the comments section. Take away the comments and it's like eating steak with all the fat cut off - kinda dry and flavorless and less satisfying, if you catch my drift. I'm just kinda getting burned out on everything tech. I've been submerged in it too long and am suffering from daylight depravation. I'm still around, now and then, in the meantime I'm enjoying life as I can. Yes, I shot about 300 rds of various calibers this morning and right now my hands smell like hoppes 9 - dood cologne.

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    3. I'd imagine with limited Internet "play time", you have less patience with BS ( which is why I'm surprised you come back here-Ha! ). I hope you are checking out John Wilder. Tries to keep it light and fun, while still sneaking in ponderables.

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  3. Making policy, or the control of the managers or leadership must be held in an even tighter circle of control to ensure the agenda or mission is carried out, without some field commander having progressive thoughts of his own, or an errant bobble head political hack going off the reservation deviating from talking points or policy agendas. The more control orientated a system is developed by humans the more redundant and overlaping control mechanisms must be used to keep things functioning. Just as there were party officers attached to military units in the combloc eras to ensure adherence to party policy to the letter, there is as much subtle and overt controls of individuals involved in making policy in so called free societies. The technocrats or 9% straw bosses throw their weight around as part of the job descriptors, but have red lines and electrified third rails that must be adhered to, or else.

    Modern management in various entities have to hurriedly check all the e-mails and correspondance for early clues, then huddle up with herd mates for other indicators. This is just so they have a half ass grasp of what the general interpretation is of next, new, evolving, modified policies are at the current time.

    Soon all of the human fallibles will be removed from the equations once everyone is fully assimilated into the borg. The a.i. device (alexa) will advise humans of the policy. Adherence and enforcement of the policy will be just as simple, and much more brutally efficient once progressive and free human daydreaming thinking nonsense is erradicated. Stay frosty when handling policy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thinking for ourselves never solved any social problems! :)

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  4. I stopped reading Aesop after he wiped out over 40 comments that disagreed with him. ALL of them were respectful...not a single attack on him personally.

    There was a time when people took responsibility for their own health and if you slowly killed yourself via drugs, alcohol, gluttony or drawing the short stick in the genetic lottery...oh well. Now we have to save everyone from themselves...repeatedly and at any cost. Accidents can be excluded even though racking up bad karma points isn't the fault of the genpop either.

    The only way out is to let the systems fail...ALL of them as they are nothing more than empty shells masquerading as silver bullets.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I guess that would be like me deleting anyone who disagreed with Peak Oil. That would make the comments section pretty easy! Of course, in his defense, he is writing/researching for free. As such, why abusing yourself making the same arguments over and over again, to those not comprehending? I can completely see his point. Me? I take your money, it is my job to be a teacher ( I know that sounds condescending. I don't mean it as if I'm smarter. Just a better connector of dots with far more time and motivation ) so I must be much more patient.

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    2. Speak to or write for the readers. Not profanely harping >at or typing >at a voluntary visitor reader of some chap's soap box web site. The nuances and inflections in style is as much a turn off as being physically malodorous. Astute well read Minions can discern the differences. Stay frosty with the free speech.

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    4. I find myself deleted for seemingly no reason on blogs. I think it is scorched earth "our tribe only" triage.

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    5. 1:05-I'd be a terrible con artist. I have no idea of those nuances. Of course, perhaps they are intuitive and we all know?

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  5. I'm highly impressed with your post today. Very well done, sir.

    Idaho Homesteader

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    1. As one of the only three people to tolerate my fiction, your vote counts. Thank you.

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    2. I agree w/ Anon...your post is what I would call
      "professional"....points made are excellent and
      writing style equally so.

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    1. Cheap! Mine cost $130, no bolts or nuts or washers. They were for my grand plan moving the NOL out to my land, our first year together. One guess how that worked out.

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    2. Anybody care to put a protractor on one of the plates and try to determine the angle of the slope? Not the angle between the "spokes", which should be about 72 degrees. But the angle of the slope that allows the dome to maintain a sort of "round" look. I have some 16 ga galv sheetmetal, an angle grinder with plenty of wheels, a drill press, a 3lb hammer, and an 18" length of railroad track I use as an anvil. I can draw that hub in Autocad and get all the angles exact, then cut the metal to size, then create a template/form out of hardwood, and pound the sheetmetal into shape. But I have to know that slope angle. Thanks. PS, I have more time and materials than money. Besides, I like to do stuff. Beating the shit out of an anvil does wonders for lowering blood pressure and keeping my ass out of jail from wringing some crybaby necks.

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    3. I imagine your sources of stress are going to radically multiply here very soon, if the public ever wakes up the the feces storm unleashed.

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    4. Isn't it just simple trig?
      Just different angles and lengths till u find a size (height and length) that's fits ur criteria for a living or storage space.

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    5. Well yeah, trial and error. Make a couple and test fit, then pound some more if they don't. While I do like to make stuff I prefer to do it the easy way if possible, and knowing the slope angle of the plate would help a lot. Don't know how simple the trig stuff is cause I never learned it, and now in my golden years don't 'specially want to. I know, I know, I should have payed attention in skool but in math class Jennie was sitting at the next desk and them golden thighs just looked to dam appetizing to ignore, so I took my F grade as a badge of manliness. Simple me, not knowing I'd want to make a chicken coop 50 years later....

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    6. Even if Hilary had been sitting next to me, I'd have flunked math. Crap just ain't right. Luckily, I was quiet in class and always got the benefit of the doubt in most classes of this sort ( Algebra, biology, German ), at least the first semester. D and an F is still D-, good for completing the required course. I'm sure I'd have to drop out today. Not that there are any jobs I need a degree for. Unless I change my name to Juan.

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    8. DG, do you have a speed square?
      Or, just measure the length and the height of the angled part and I can figure the rest. I'm going to look online for pix of the plate and see if I can find a side view that can possible let me try to determine it. Thanks.

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  7. You have knocked it out of the park again. I'll miss your wisdom when they take the internet down.

    Health care theoretically could be 100% of GDP. I mean, if it saves just one life it's worth it.

    Like yourself, I became an avid reader of Aesops blog around eBolachan. Why until the weekend I had an Ebola tab on my browser for all the preps I needed to have secured... and didn't. If I had of I'd have been the smartest prepper in the southern hemisphere.

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    1. Ebola preps are easy. Flame throwers, and fire proof house.

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