Failure To Commit, To Decide

 Ran across this tweet, which sounds interesting. 

Excited to share this new work with @beckyj1 in @ASR_Journal! We examine how local organizations sort people to ration scarce social benefits. We analyze the case of prioritization in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program (1/12)https://t.co/AAlR8Z8AdN

— Simone Zhang (@simonezhang) January 30, 2023

 

Drawing on >1000 local waitlist prioritization policies and interviews with local housing officials, we find many local housing agencies don’t set explicit priorities to determine who accesses a voucher sooner. This is especially true in rural, conservative communities. (4/12)

— Simone Zhang (@simonezhang) January 30, 2023

 My guess is part of this is the costs of deciding priorities.  It requires a conscious decision, which many people find difficult. Being in a rural area raises the odds that the potential decider knows some of the people who will be affected by her decision, and the people affected know who made the decision so there's the risk of emotional confrontations. 

It's also possible that there's no one decider, which raises the possibility of conflict among the deciders.  The outcome can be similar to Congress; which Congress can dodge the decision by kicking the issue to the bureaucracy, local deciders can dodge the decision by leaving it up to first-come, first served. Both tactics give the advantage to those who have the ability and expertise to navigate the bureaucracy.

Me and the Deficit--Raise Taxes!

 NYTimes has an article on how social issues and the deficit play with Republican voters. The point is the Tea Party was very concerned about spending; now voters are less concerned.  (I'd quibble a bit with Cohn's analysis: I think a lot of the Tea Party emotion was over the idea of socialism, specifically pushed by a black president, not so much a concern for fiscal conservatism.)

Anyhow, I find myself not in the mainstream of Democrats--I'm much more concerned about deficits and the rising cost of interest on the debt than the average elephant, and much more in favor of raising taxes as a way of handling it than most anyone.  I wholeheartedly support boosting the IRS budget to collect taxes, but I'd also raise taxes on those above $100K. 

Does ChatGpt Mean End of Wikipedia

 Some see ChatGPT as a threat to Google.  Might well be, but won't it be equally a threat to Wikipedia? Humans, being lazy, don't really care about accuracy and objectivity; give them a story whichs seem coherent and it will be good enough.

The Crystal Meth of Purpose

 Elliott Ackerman in his book Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning, uses the phrase:

"the crystal meth of purpose".

The book is a group of essays on his trips to Iraq, Turkey, Syria, getting close to the ongoing fighting among Syrian rebels, ISIS, Kurds, Iraq forces, and remembering his days as a Marine in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

His point is that combat with your unit provides a purpose which, at least in his experience, is both addictive and not to be found in civilian life.

I never was in combat. Over my life I've known times where I did have a purpose, one which was at least somewhat addictive.  I suspect I'm easily addicted,

The Former Guy Gave to Growers

 Via John Phipps, who retweeted it.  I was trying to find his skeptical piece on vertical farming, but found this worth reading.

My new report for @ewg just released today: Under Trump, Farm Subsidies Soared and the Rich Got Richer https://t.co/oL6xw2OTAS

— Anne Schechinger (@Anne_Weir1) February 24, 2021

Over the years different administrations have stretched the authorities granted under the CCC act and Section 32.   

[Update: One chart from the piece:

What Was I Thinking?

 Damned if I know.  As I age, my short term memory is going. It could be upsetting--you have something in your mind, and a couple seconds later it's gone. So far it's not happened often enough to be really upsetting, so I'm using my time-tested super-power of denial to carry on. 

Self-Driving Cars and Ecology, or "Where's the Running Board?"

 NYTimes had an article on Tesla in its Sunday magazine. Its emphasis was on the problems in the self-driving software.  

Tesla claims that based on accidents per miles their cars are much safer than those driven by people.  That may well be true, but I'd love to see a test where the drivers and conditions are randomly assigned.

I think one problem is the lack of sound data--apparently each company which is trying to implement such software maintains its own data, presumably for competitive reasons. But even if the data were public, there doesn't seem to be a basis for comparison.  The testing being done uses drivers who aren't at all reflective of the overall population and is done on roads and in conditions which aren't representative of normal driving. 

As it stands the testing being done is also unfair to Tesla and the others.  What do I mean?  The current ecology of drivers, roads, and conditions has evolved over a long history. An experienced driver has expectations based on her experience, and operates on their basis. I imagine it could be modeled as a circle in a Venn diagram. Imagine 60 years from now when almost all cars are self-driving.  That ecology will have "drivers" with somewhat different expectations, cars different than todays--notably quicker to to react, and roads which will have been modified for better self-driving. In our Venn diagram, the circle for the current ecology and the circle for the self-driving ecology will not be identical; they'll overlap in some areas.

Today when we judge self-driving software we're judging it by the current ecology, not the ecology of 60 years from now.  It's like cow-catchers on locomotives or running boards on cars--both were things needed by the early rail and automotive systems, but not by the current ones (though it turns out our trucks and SUV's still need them).  It will take time for the ecology to evolve; for drivers to gain experience with the cars, for the cars and software to improve, for the roads to be modified, for the insurance industry to adapt and the laws to change. It will be evolutionary.

The Honor System for Records Management

 A recent newspaper article (Times or Post?) noted that enforcement of the Federal Records Act is entrusted to the honor system. What does that mean?

 When I joined ASCS it had a Records Management Branch in its Administrative Services Division. It had been strengthened as a result of Congressional scrutiny of the Billie Sol Estes scandal.  (The investigators found that ASCS didn't have a good system for filing correspondence and policy papers.) 

The focus of the branch's work was establishing and maintaining a system for filing correspondence, and prescribing a filing system for offices originating policy decisions. Once established the routine was almost self-executing.  New secretaries would be shown what to do: original and carbons, yellow is official record, green is addressee folder, etc.  In my view there wasn't any explanation of the rationale for the way it was designed.

The records management people in the agency were effectively outsiders, people who might show up occasionally, but without any day-to-day contact with the workers   If that was true for fellow employees of ASCS, it was doubly true for the people involved with records management at the departmental level, and quadruply true for the employees of the National Archives and Records Adminstration.

How might this translate to the Executive Office of the President? On the one hand there must be a greater consciousness of the importance of records, given the constant scrutiny by journalists and investigators and the looming historians.  On the other hand the office has a lot more going on than any agency.  On the third hand, at the end of an administration I imagine it's like when you decide to retire, you zero in on the future and care much less about the wrapping up. Finally, your boss couldn't care less about records. 

[Update: given the discovery of more documents in Biden's places and today's discovery of documents in Pence's place, I think my "third hand" is well supported. I suspect you'd find a few classified documents in possession of a lot of high, and not so high, officials.]

Silos, Innovation, and the Internet

 I remember the burst of enthusiasm surrounding the discovery that the Internet/WWW could be used for business.  Soon it became mandatory for every business to have its own website. Expertise in doing sites was short, so some found a profitable business in creating websites.  I still hear their advertisements from time to time.

Normally I prefer to do business in writing rather than talking, so that meant I was happy with this innovation.  And more and more I found the businesses with whom I wanted to deal had websites.

In the past few years, though, I've tried to deal with businesses who have websites but who don't respond when I send them an email or fill out the contact form on the site.  Sometimes I've reverted to calling them, but usually they lose my business.

What's going on?  I've no proof, not even any data, but my suspicion is it's part of a general parttern:  when an organization has something new to do they:

• may contract it out, or set up a new group to do it.
• they rarely look at how it could impact or improve their existing operations--it's easier to keep doing what is familiar and comfortably within their knowledge and capabilities.
• once the new function (in this case a website) is set up, the initial enthusiasm which evoked the decision, money, and time needed to creat it tends to ebb, especially if the website doesn't show immediate payoffs.
• the end result is the website becomes a dusty relic of some bigshot's pet project  

You perhaps can guess that I think some of this applies to past initiatives by ASCS/FSA/USDA to change the way they operate. 

Indeed, I think it's part of the way our government works.  Part of the life cycle of government initiatives.

[In summary: often the way organizations innovate is by addition, not substitution, which leads to silos.]

Contrarians--Genetic?

 I've long experience with contrarians--my sister was one.  I lean that way myself.

I wonder whether it's genetic or cultural?  Do "tight" societies , presumably ones less welcoming of contrarians, have fewer, or any at all?  I'd assume there might be an evolutionary basis--seems as if the species could benefit by having a few around, just as it presumably benefits by having a few left handers around.  On the other hand, while I'm a confirmed right handers, I was able to train myself to use the mouse left-handed when I was getting carpal tunnel pains.