Some personal Facebook ’stats’ on healthcare reform

Some very crude sample statistics on voter reactions to the passage of healthcare reform legislation, derived from my personal Facebook account:

Percentage of connections who cared enough to comment: 1.7%

Opposed: 60%

Approving: 40%

With so few people posting, the results are not statistically significant, but they do line up with more credible poll findings: http://healthcarepolls.blogspot.com/2010/03/comparing-iwfpolling-company-and.html

Movies about gladiators

RIP, Peter Graves. From the inimitable ‘Airplane’:

You can watch a clip from ‘Zero Hour!’, the 1957 inspiration for ’Airplane’, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFjK6oqwsE

UPDATE 3/18/2010 – Unfortunately, Paramount has forced You Tube to take down the six seconds worth of alleged copyright infringement in the video above (really Paramount? Six seconds?). The audio clip is still out there, fortunately.

URLs:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/arts/television/15graves.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuoA-1uIT8o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFjK6oqwsE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hour!

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/dhgybmnhpp–You-Like-Movies-About-Gladiatorspeter-graves-awkward-questions-Airplane-gladiators-

Obama’s Approval Polarization: Man or Country?

Gallup has an interesting data point showing that President Obama’s “approval polarization” is the highest on record, going back to the Eisenhower administration:

A few thoughts spring to mind.

First, it’s the kind of thing that sounds “bad” at first blush. But is it? The top four polarization ratings belong to Obama, Clinton, W Bush, and Reagan. Is that bad company, as compared to a Johnson, Ford, or Carter?

Second, it appears that there may be a time trend at work in the data. If approval polarization has increased since 1980, then Obama’s approval gap might be more attributable to the U.S. political climate than to the man himself (there are plenty of factors that would lend support to such an argument). And note that of the last five presidencies, the one with the lowest first year polarization was the only one that ended after a single term. Admittedly, that last point’s a stretch, given the small sample size and the fact that the 1992 election occurred in the fourth year of GHWB’s presidency.  But it still supports that argument that this poll finding is more complicated than a first glance might imply.

On the ”sounds bad at first blush” phenomenon — my favorite is this line parroted by some cloudy headed thinkers: ”We’re the only species that drinks the milk of another species.” First, it would be nice to have a biologist confirm that nothing similar occurs in the animal kingdom, as symbioses are everywhere, and humans just happen to have the capacity (thumbs, brains, technological innovation) to do it exceptionally well. But second and most important, we’re also the only species that wears shoes, or belts, or underwear, or any other article of clothing (leather or hemp, you decide), drives cars, writes greeting cards, makes phone calls, worships formally, produces electricity, brews coffee, invents movements like veganism, writes and reads weblogs, pierces ears and other body parts, develops organizations like PETA, plays informal and organized sports, demonstrates outside corporations and furriers, goes to college, reads magazines, goes to concerts, buys housewares, hang glides, tells time, uses cell phones, base jumps, etc.  The list is awfully long. So being the only species that “does something” doesn’t mean that that something is necessarily bad. Likewise, it’s not possible to say that Obama’s polarized approval ratings are “good” or “bad” without deeper analysis.

URLs:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125345/Obama-Approval-Polarized-First-Year-President.aspx

Haggis Strikes a Blow for Trade

The U.S. has announced that it is lifting a two decades long ban on imports of Scottish haggis. Soon we’ll all look like Groundskeeper Willie!

Seriously, it’s nice to hear at least one piece of good news on the trade front. And believe it or not, haggis is very tasty (or quite lovely, when in Glasgow). Here’s Robert Burns’ ode to his national dish, with a handy side-by-side translation, courtesy of the World Burns Club:

URLs:

http://www.sphere.com/health/article/scots-jump-for-joy-as-us-plans-to-lift-haggis-ban/19330199

http://www.worldburnsclub.com/begin/address_to_a_haggis.htm

More Important Than Facebook?!?

Hold your tongue, internet security expert!

A Georgia mother and her two daughters logged onto Facebook from mobile phones last weekend and wound up in a startling place: strangers’ accounts with full access to troves of private information.The glitch — the result of a routing problem at the family’s wireless carrier… — revealed a little known security flaw with far reaching implications for everyone on the Internet, not just Facebook users.

In each case, the Internet lost track of who was who, putting the women into the wrong accounts. It doesn’t appear the users could have done anything to stop it. The problem adds a dimension to researchers’ warnings that there are many ways online information — from mundane data to dark secrets — can go awry.

Several security experts said they had not heard of a case like this, in which the wrong person was shown a Web page whose user name and password had been entered by someone else. It’s not clear whether such episodes are rare or simply not reported. But experts said such flaws could occur on e-mail services, for instance, and that something similar could happen on a PC, not just a phone.

“The fact that it did happen is proof that it could potentially happen again and with something a lot more important than Facebook,” said Nathan Hamiel, founder of the Hexagon Security Group, a research organization.

URLs:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100115/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_facebook_at_t_glitch

Happy 75th Elvis!

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock’n'Roll, was born seventy five years ago today. For fun, we’ve traced out a brief history of one of his best known songs, “Hound Dog”, that illustrates the richness, complexity, network effects, competitive forces, and social factors at work in creative industries: 

• “Hound Dog” was written in 1952 by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
  • Leiber and Stoller wrote another great old standard, “Kansas City” (we recommend Hound Dog Taylor/Brewer Phillip’s version, and Willie Nelson/Susan Tedeschi’s).
    • Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers helped catalyze the creation of legendary blues label Alligator Records, started by a shipping clerk of a label that refused to sign them.
• ‘Hound Dog” was first recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952, and was the first and biggest hit of her career, reaching #1 four years before the King’s recording was released.
  • Charles Sawyer, who interviewed Ms. Thornton in 1978, claims that her version inspired Elvis to record it.  His interview also includes Thornton’s memory of doo-wop artist Johnny Ace’s suicide – real life blues.  
• “Hound Dog” was reportedly recorded by multiple acts in multiple genres, including country, before Elvis gave it a shot circa 1955 (his recording was released in 1956).
• According to biographical sources, Elvis reportedly heard the song performed in Vegas by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys.
  • Front man Frankie Bello was an Italian American lad from South Philly; reportedly, the Bellboys were a solid Las Vegas act and enjoyed international support, but never caught on in the States.
    • Philadelphia’s The Roots faced the same situation of international platinum / domestic anonymity in the 1990s, but overcame it in a big way this past decade.
  • The Bellboys’ stage antics appear to have been a strong influence on Elvis’ still developing delivery and persona.
• Big Mama Thornton:
  • Got her first break in a Hollywood moment, standing in at the club where she scrubbed floors after the regular performer quit.
  • Reportedly lived a hard drinking life; then again, she outlasted the younger Elvis, who had demons of his own. 
    • The main difference might be that had Elvis survived, his financial situation would not have imposed any constraint on a desire to turn things around.
  • Is the namesake of the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York, which seems to have a stronger social purpose than Sir Denis Eton-Hogg’s Hoggwood summer camp for pale young boys (if you don’t get the reference, shoot us an email).

It’s safe to assume that the proportion of music fans who have heard, respectively, of Hound Dog Taylor, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Freddie Bell, and Elvis Presley follows a power distribution (familiarity with Elvis running very high, and familiarity with everyone else relatively low; you could also substitute income for familiarity). It’s tempting to suspect that race, ethnicity, economic power, etc, are the responsible factors, i.e., to simply ascribe Elvis’ relative popularity to human wickedness and shortcomings. However, power laws are observed across a wide range of natural and social phenomena, which raises some interesting questions and possibilities:

• In the US of the 1950s, social factors almost certainly meant that successful ‘cultural crossover’ of R&B required white artists to be the carriers. However, power laws limit the popularity attained by all but a handful of crossover artists, meaning that just one or a few would end up as the conduit.
• While we tend to think of ‘fairness’ as a socially determined good, to the extent that societies obey biological ‘laws’, its determinants might actually lie in natural phenomena. Vilfredo Pareto discovered this about ninety years ago, when he found that incomes across many different countries were distributed according to power laws, with a very small proportion of the population earning a very large proportion of total income. At least two recent books have given differing but fascinating treatments to this subject: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi’s Linked and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.
• If power laws are naturally occurring, then the proper objective for social justice or fairness would seem to be removing or reducing constraints that unfairly limit one’s opportunity to sit atop a power distribution, whatever field it’s in. But the odds of any one individual or entity occupying that position are quite remote. And the possibility of social policies doing away with power laws completely might well be zero.
• If we assume that power laws are at work in asset and securities prices, that lends support to the idea that there will always be undervalued and overvalued assets for an investor to select from. In Outliers, Gladwell raises an analogous argument about human capital. And the Willie Mae Rock Camp is a good example of how institutions can help society do a better job of identifying, developing, and valuing talent.

That’s deep enough. Happy Birthday to Elvis, and to David Bowie, Stephen Hawking, Charles Osgood, Soupy Sales, and everyone else born on January 8th!

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: Symmetry Capital Management, LLC is a member of the Amazon Associates program, and earns a revenue sharing fee of approximately 4% on qualified purchases made by clicking through from our website.

URLs:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100107/ap_en_mu/us_museum_elvis_presley_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiber_and_Stoller

http://popup.lala.com/popup/3675218809813776552

http://popup.lala.com/popup/432627077923496532

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hound_Dog_Taylor

http://popup.lala.com/popup/432627043551418906

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sawyer/thornton.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Ace

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJQ-fDb4M4s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Bell_and_the_Bellboys

http://www.theroots.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hound_Dog_(song)

http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608000152/Big-Mama-Thornton.html

http://www.williemaerockcamp.org/about.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452284392?ie=UTF8&tag=symmetrycapit-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452284392

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316017922?ie=UTF8&tag=symmetrycapit-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0316017922

http://www.famousbirthdays.com/

Those Damn Democrats

In a marked turnaround from 2008, a lot of pundits are predicting that Democrats will take a drubbing in 2010 midterm elections. Our view is that it’s way to early to call, as the economic mood in 2H10 will depend heavily on signals given (and actions taken) by President Obama, Congress, and the Federal Reserve in the first half of the year. But being opportunistic, the conversation gives us a chance to post this wonderful old chestnut:

Conference Board: Job satisfaction at record low

Disturbing findings from the Conference Board’s latest job satisfaction survey, which reached its lowest level since the survey began in 1987. Some endpoint comparisons:

Source: Yahoo, Associated Press, Conference Board

According to the AP article, these findings imply that the American work force could become less innovative, competitive, and productive over time. Potential explanations for declining job satisfaction:

Conference Board officials and outside economists suggested that weak wage growth helps explain why workers’ unhappiness has been rising for more than 20 years. After growing in the 1980s and 1990s, average household incomes adjusted for inflation have been shrinking since 2000. Also, compared with 1980, three times as many workers contribute to the cost of their health insurance — and those contributions have gone up. The average employee contribution for single-coverage medical care benefits rose from $48 a month to $76 a month between 1999 and 2006.

It’s difficult to know what forces and factors might be driving the underlying trends (lower pay, boredom, security, unhappiness with superiors) that are manifested in higher levels of job dissatisfaction. It would be helpful to have data prior to 1987, but accepting that as is, and assuming statistically significant and unbiased results, let’s consider them in the context of major structural developments of the past two decades. Two forces that spring to mind are productivity growth and economic globalization.

• Rising productivity could have a positive or negative impact. To the extent that it raises net income and/or free time, it should raise satisfaction. However, we’d have to have some idea of how the gains from higher productivity have been shared/divided among different industries, different types of workers (including in managers’ and executives’ compensation), different stakeholders (customers, creditors, shareholders, governments, society at large), etc. Further study might try to analyze whether declines in satisfaction have coincided with changes in the rate of productivity growth.
• Globalization has been a rising force since 1987, especially since the early 1990s, with undeniable effects on the structure of U.S. employment. And while education and retraining are reasonable responses, it’s important to consider that, relative to renovating an individual’s human capital, a job can be outsourced rather easily.
• We would also toss in the declining marginal competitiveness of our corporate tax code as a factor that, if it pushes capital investment outside of the U.S., amplifies the negative impacts of globalization (admittedly, this assertion requires that some qualifications be added to the role of productivity growth). The burden of corporate taxes has also been found under certain conditions to fall disproportionately on workers’ income.

Productivity gains can be shared among owners (share value and dividends), employees (income and benefits), executives (compensation), governments (tax authorities and and regulatory bodies), and society. The following table is a highly simplified back of the envelope tabulation, based simply on the annualized after-inflation growth rates in each of the following items, using a core PCE inflation rate of 2.7% per year (it doesn’t contain any direct estimates of productivity growth). Executive compensation data is fairly slippery — the low end is based on an amalgam of sources, and the high end is based on estimates of the ratio of average CEO compensation to average employee compensation (2006 ~ $400, 1980 ~$42, 1965 ~$20). Information on data sources is provided below.

For globalization, an overly simple proxy is returns to equity owners in developing markets. Brazil’s economy and Bovespa stock market index have been among the top performers over the period in question, returning almost 16% annualized the last ten years, and over 20% annualized since 1994; against an official annualized inflation rate over the past decade, we get a real annualized return around 9%, a figure that comports well with other emerging market return statistics.

We need to emphasize that this is a back of the envelope analysis that leaves plenty of questions unanswered. A more credible analysis would consider other potential forces and factors, formalize and scrub the data, and provide some meaningful statistical insights.  However, if we can at least assume that the ordinal findings hold up, then it’s a good start, and implies that the benefits of economic growth over the past decade or two have accrued first to developing economies and markets, then to equity owners and executives, then to public coffers, and only minimally to employees, which could help to explain rising job dissatisfaction.

Please note that we are not anti-globalization. But we do believe that developed economy countries can do a better job of designing and implementing policies that, while still friendly to trade and growth, can help mitigate the negative domestic impacts brought about by global economic development. We also believe that while health care reform is an important piece of the puzzle, closing the ‘compensation gap’ domestically would ideally be resolved in the private sector. However, the issue requires some enlightened executive and board leadership, and if history is any guide, the problem is most likely to be addressed via higher tax rates on top incomes. Finally,  if corporate taxes fall disproportionately on labor income, or amplify negative impacts of globalization, then they could be an indirect factor in job dissatisfaction, along with the more direct impact of payroll taxes and benefits costs.

===

Via a tweet from Laurie Ruettiman of the Punk Rock HR blog, there’s a video version of the AP story. Ruettiman also blogged about a new CBS series, “Undercover Boss,” that might contribute towards reducing job dissatisfaction (or not…time will tell). If you get a chance to watch the trailer she linked, it’s worth it (it’s a fun site to peruse too, see especially her short and sweet employee handbook). According to Ruettiman, Undercover Boss (like The Office, The Beatles, white boy blues, and the Mini Cooper) is another clever premise borrowed from the Brits.

Judging by the trailers, the show gives executives an anonymous, and thus open, firsthand view of their company’s line operations, and more importantly, some insight into the questions we raised above. In a year when corporate profits are expected to rebound nicely, a show like this could gain quite a popular following (of course, more cynical interpretations of corporate participants’ motivations are possible). If this allows a growing ’fair pay’ movement to take root, shareholders beware. With Wall Street’s social capital at all time lows, labor costs, including non-union labor, might be due for a trend reversal in the years ahead – though admittedly, that might not happen in the face of historically high unemployment levels. If it doesn’t happen, then current job satisfaction trends are more likely to remain intact, which, over the long run, will impose unwanted costs on us all.

DATA: According to one set of estimates (http://www.pay-without-performance.com/Core_Guay_Thomas-IsUS-CEO-Compensation-Inefficient.pdf, p. 65), executive compensation increased at an annualized nominal rate of just under 13% from 1993 to 2003, and another 13% in 2004 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2005/aug/04/executivesalaries.executivepay2). It declined 15% in 2007 and 11% in 2008 (http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/22/executive-pay-ceo-leadership-compensation-best-boss-09-ceo_land.html). If we interpolate conservatively (g = 0%) for the years 1987-1992 and 2005-2006, we get an annualized rate of 5.2%, which is in the ballpark of a study that found a 5.57% annualized increase from 1997 to 2004 (http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/pdf/10.2469/faj.v63.n3.4687). EBRI estimates that employee compensation costs grew at 3.3% annually from 1987 to 2004 (http://www.ebri.org/pdf/publications/facts/0305fact.pdf).

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES: Symmetry Capital Management, LLC (SCM) is a state registered investment advisor. The foregoing article is intended only for readers’ interest, amusement, and edification. It is not an offer to buy or a solicitation to sell any security, nor is it a recommendation to engage in any particular investment strategy. Any mention of public securities herein is purely coincidental, and no securities mentioned are owned by the firm’s clients, principals, or the firm itself. SCM participates in the Amazon.com Associates program and earns a small revenue sharing fee (~4%) on qualified merchandise for any “click through” sales from our website.

URLs:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Americans-job-satisfaction-apf-1483464009.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gps7Dx8cN4Q 

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EBVSP&a=00&b=5&c=2000&d=00&e=5&f=2010&g=m

http://www.bcb.gov.br/pec/metas/InflationTargetingTable.pdf

http://punkrockhr.com/undercover-boss/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fentity%2FWhite-Boy-Blues-%28Series%29%2FB000AQ2MUU&tag=symmetrycapit-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

The Curiously Gloomy Narrative Continues: Obama’s ‘Lack of Leverage’ over China

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting front page article on the various issues negotiated between China’s President Hu and our President Obama during the latter’s recent visit to China. The article’s title proclaimed that “Obama finds he holds little leverage in China”, noting:

President Obama today wraps up a three-day visit to China that has left him keenly aware of the limits of his administration’s leverage over this economic powerhouse on issues from currency-exchange rates to human rights.

That characterization sounds a bit too pessimistic to us, and it’s yet another example of the curiously gloomy narrative that has developed in the U.S. media around our relationship with China. We can assess the article’s assertion by comparing the issues that each President  brought to the table.

China would like the U.S. to: 

• Tighten Federal Reserve policy in order to support the value of China’s U.S. dollar and debt holdings, and lower inflation risks in China;
• Avoid raising barriers to trade between the two countries;
• And avoid seeking stringent curbs on CO2 emissions from developing economies at the upcoming Copenhagen summit.

Meanwhile, Jon Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador to China, was quoted as saying that the U.S. was focused on “key global issues”. President Obama requested that China:

• Allow its currency, the renminbi (RMB), to strengthen against the USD, and moving closer to a floating exchange rate regime;
• Expand human rights protections and limit state censorship;
• Commit to shouldering its share of the burden in combatting climate change;
• And help “contain the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.”

Look at those two lists and ask yourself which country’s well-being was most on the line. Hu’s requests were aimed at preventing major economic burdens from being imposed on China by entities outside of China.  But other than the impacts that a stronger RMB could have on U.S. exporters, Obama’s requests were aimed at the distinctly non-U.S. issues of climate change, nuclear proliferation, and China’s dealings with its own population!

For several years now, the media’s prevailing U.S.-China narrative has hung on the fact that China is a major holder of U.S. debt, and that this is somehow “unsustainable”. While the last decade’s rate of accumulation may be unsustainable, the current situation is more benign than many assume. And even if the situation were dangerous, China’s position is just as precarious as ours. That’s especially true when you compare productivity and per capita income levels in the two countries (military strength is also a factor), as well as secular and political shifts in the U.S. economy.

The story also tried to make something out of the fact that neither President Hu nor students attending Obama’s Shanghai townhall meeting showed much emotion. If that were a cultural anomaly in China, we might make something of it. It’s not, so we don’t.

All in all, there seems to be little basis for the claim that President Hu had the stronger hand.

URLs:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_stories/20091118_Obama_finds_he_holds_little_leverage_in_China.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/ap_on_bi_ge/climate

http://symmetrycapital.net/index.php/blog/2008/12/

Grantham v Greenspan (and IT vs John Henry)

Jeremy Grantham provides the investment industry with a unique and insightful voice. While we don’t agree with him on everything, we try never to miss his quarterly missives. In his latest, he absolutely trashes former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a man accustomed to more sycophantic and reverential treatment, given the 3+ laborious decades in which he used access to media and the halls of power to develop his global icon status and cult following. Using President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize as a template for ‘rewards that do not reflect just desserts’, he wrote of the former Fed chairman:

Alan Greenspan receives the title of Maestro in the U.S. and is knighted by the Queen for thoroughly demolishing the integrity of the U.S. financial system. He overtly ignored the great threat of bubbles in asset classes and, in fact, encouraged them. He Ayn Rand-ishly facilitated the progressive dismantling of governmental restrictions on financial behavior, he deliberately kept real interest rates at zero for years, etc., etc., etc. You have heard it before. Now, remarkably, in his very old age he has become imbued with the spirit of Hyman Minsky: “Unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises.” Now he finally gets it. Too late! In his merely old age, he ignored or abhorred Minsky, and consistently behaved as though markets were efficient and the players were honest and sensible at all times. But for all of the egg on his face, the Maestro continues to consult with the rich and famous, considerably to his financial advantage. In the good old days, he would have been set in the village stocks, and not the kind you buy and sell. And I would have been right there, Alan, with very ripe tomatoes.

If there were a Nobel Prize for irreverence, Grantham would deserve to win it, hands down. What we most appreciate is that his firm, GMO, is a well known institutional money management shop, yet he is willing to invest some of its hard earned capital in ’speaking truth to power’.

 —

P.S. By the way…determining the origins of the phrase ’speak truth to power’ provides a wonderful opportunity to witness the promise and perils of information technology. IT is just as adept, if not more so, at disseminating misinformation as it is at disseminating factual information. Just take a look at the variety of responses to the question, “Who actually coined the phrase, ’speaking truth to power’?” at this website: http://www.faqs.org/qa/qa-6697.html. Contrast that site with this academic paper, or this blog post. In both of those cases, the authors did their homework before making any definitive claims, which is the (desired) complement to talking out of one’s rear end – which unfortunately we human beings are rather prone to, especially in today’s busy world. The academic paper provides the richest understanding of the phrase’s history and likely origins, but it obviously required a good deal of work.

So clearly, it takes more than just plentiful information to expand the depth and breadth of human knowledge (in fact, more plentiful information by itself might have a negative effect on human knowledge due to the increased presence of misinformation). It still requires good old fashioned labor. What IT offers then is an analogue to earlier forms of physical capital. For example, sticks, then shovels, then backhoes have made human labor far more productive, able to dig the same number of holes in much less time than it would take with bare hands (digging technologies have also greatly expanded the types of holes that humans are able to dig).

Likewise, information technology allows scholars, investigators, reporters, etc to develop insights in less time than it would otherwise take, as data and evidence can be gathered and shared far more efficiently (it also allows them to perform data integration and analysis that would have been impossible for their predecessors). And just as some people are better with a shovel than others, there are differing skill levels among those who use information to study real world problems (there’s also wide variation in motives, which are not always apparent or fully disclosed).

So what’s the relevance of all this? Essentially, it means that while there’s no guarantee that IT makes life any better, there’s no doubt that it makes it different. And as with any major technological innovation, human beings have to learn how to cope with the results, and that involves trial, error, triumphs, and tragedies, with little assurance that the pain and the pleasure will be shared equitably. Put in general terms, change requires adjustment, and the costs (and benefits) of adjustment are borne (and enjoyed) in differing measures. For example, backhoes displaced plenty of capable shovel wielders, much as steam technology did in the steel drivers’  ballad “John Henry”, but the overall efficiency gains conferred by steam and later combustion power cannot be denied. But the tradeoffs shouldn’t be ignored either.***

With IT, the sudden surplus of information requires adjustments and new practices from all of us. And in a more general sense, if the pace of technological innovation continues as it has for the past several centuries, those adjustments will keep coming fast and furious, and coping effectively will require significant and ongoing adaptations by everyone. Fortunately, that’s something human beings are pretty adept at.

***In fact, the possibility that large scale dislocation has occurred as prevailing forms of capital favor certain skills over others shouldn’t be dismissed. For example, the increasing importance in the U.S. economy of intellectual capital (reflected in industries like law, medicine, technology, finance, etc) relative to physical capital (reflected in industries like agriculture, construction, manufacturing, etc) seems likely to increasingly favor the well educated over the less educated — something that census data certainly seems to bear out. And while educational initiatives around our “knowledge economy” are wonderful, most of the people being squeezed by these trends are well out of school.

URLs:

http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_ALL_3Q09.pdf

http://www.faqs.org/qa/qa-6697.html

http://www.quaker.org/sttp.html

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12869206/%E2%80%9CQuakers-Speak-Truth-to-Power-Bayard-Rustin-Race-and-Sexuality

http://eddriscoll.com/archives/010217.php

http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=symmetrycapit-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0300025815

PLEASE NOTE: Symmetry Capital Management, LLC is a state registered investment advisor. The foregoing information is for informational, educational, or entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to buy nor a solicitation to sell any security, or to engage in any investment strategy. Symmetry Capital Management, LLC is an Amazon.com associate, and may earn a percentage of any sales generated by clicking through to the Amazon.com website from links on our website.