"Pandemicised" circles of thinking

Some meanderings to while away four minutes on your imaginary holiday beach.

The last 18 months have been pretty awful for most people. Never in my life have so many people around the world been impacted by a single topic or event. COVID-19 certainly got our attention in a huge number of ways. It’s also curious that the other truly global event unfolding is climate change – also biological and systemic. OK, so I am not a historian, but other previous global events that come to mind are few but include Spanish flu, SARS maybe, the South Sea Bubble, Nuclear meltdown in Russia and Japan, Krakatoa erupting and spreading detritus globally and possibly previous Ice ages. Maybe the Wall Street Crash and the depression that pretty much followed everywhere as well. There are bound to be dozens of other global or quasi global events that my limited brain cannot recall. Now however we can all see, pretty much in real time, on multiple platforms, what is unfolding globally. Our vision is pretty much global all the time. Provided we have unfettered access to high-speed communications then we can almost always take macro views – if we wish to. What was local in its extent is now global.

Of course, half the world doesn’t have ready access to high-speed communications and has much more simple needs of enough water and food to survive, rather than worry about what is happening say with all the mice and snakes on the other side of the world in Australia. If it were in Africa those plagues of animals were running riot in (not locusts), it would solve a famine crisis overnight. (Mice and snakes may not be haute cuisine but they are protein). But it is not and there is no pragmatic and obvious way of curing either problem. It’s akin to the Palestine-Israel problem. There is a simple solution “You have that bit of land there, and we’ll have this bit here, and then we can stop killing each other”. But that is not going to work for hundreds of reasons practical and/or philosophical. The end result of being able to see the world’s problems but not really be able do anything about them must make us collectively more depressed. It is certainly a regular source of sadness and often burns up much thought.

The more we see and understand then the more we can do surely? That is partially true and can be much more true on a relatively micro level. Let us knock off some important but relatively small stuff – eradicating smallpox for example. Micro in the overall scale of things and crucial for millions – just not billions. Things we can all see, however? It makes me wonder if the more that we see the more one has to make unpleasant choices. Do I give my ￡10 to buy treatment for ailing and mistreated donkeys in Cornwall, or dig a well in an African village? It’s not a choice I like to make but I do. Some things hit a nerve one day and not another. This got me thinking about the whole problem eradication/charity issue. It is not essentially fair that some well-meaning charities get very little when others, for whatever reason, get a bigger slice of the residual pie. I wonder if there is a mathematical way to allocate available resources to charity based on some global notion of utility and need – where it will do most net good? Not just some random personal choice.

With all the computing power in the world, and with advances in AI, it is not impossible to theoretically imagine a system that takes in data on perceived needs and matches it to available funds. That should at least prioritise where our money does most good. Even if we ran these “funds engines” on some other form of topical or regional level then surely it would be better than charities spending billions on attracting new funds through advertising and wasted mailshots. There has to be a better way to allocate scarce resources. Rather than rend the earth asunder by bitcoin mining chewing up all available power, can we not somehow agree that there are some more pressing problems and direct earth’s resources better?

Then of course my reverie was rudely interrupted by reality. What about choice!! I want my pennies to go to XYZ. I am not giving money to ABC. Take this on a personal or national level and one sees quickly how there is a huge conflict between needs and desire to help. Of course, this is all supposed to be covered by our governments on our behalf, up to a point. Government taxation is in part the successor to the tithe that the church used to run (and pretty much abused to the benefit of the religion rather than needs of the time).

Death and taxes. The two certainties of life. Ultimately death will get you but not necessarily taxes. Lots of skulduggery and professional advice, evasion and avoidance will always go on. It seems like we never have enough revenue for government. Taxation is a highly inefficient process, massively complex and often imprecise. Layer upon layer of sticking plasters over time effectively mask how government funding actually works. Surely this is a prime candidate for simplifying and automating. Say let’s take 15% of everything that everyone earns and for a company that means the same. I think this is close to the flat rate model often discussed. Now take a slice of that government please – say 10% of the 15% we gave you and allocate it to charitable causes based on need. Simply premised, but because it is horrendously complex to get from now to there, does this mean that we don’t try? I guess so – we can see the impact of changes in just one market at a time – so we just give up. Too big to deal with.

If things are too big, then classical project management teaches us to break them down into manageable discrete components. Take the macro view to figure out broadly what to do then analyse the death out of data and information to make sure the detail can actually be delivered. So, reflecting on the issues above – perhaps the answer really is deal with what you can control, do the smaller bits that you can definitely scale and deliver. So how big is too big and what is small enough? That’s where prior experience comes in. We did it this big before so having learned some things we could go 25% more comfortably? So over time we can do bigger and bigger stuff better and deliver smaller stuff much better over time. That assumes we can learn from our experience and errors. How do we do that – we teach and train, people and AI. This means that lifelong learning and propensity to learn are perhaps key attributes for the vanguard of change makers? That, and unfettered access to great repositories of experience and history.

This points to the internet and the world wide web as even more powerful factors in using resources of the world better than imaginable. (Not the piles of ineffable crap we put on line). Technology is finally getting to grips with data analysis and trend spotting and complex calculation. Maybe this means that the global view will in fact become “processable” and maybe even actionable. What it certainly means, and we can see this already, is that with better technology for some, and not for others, wealth distribution becomes skewed. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, the common factor is data and understanding and “multi-billionaireism”. When individuals are bigger than countries – there is a problem of income distribution. If there is a problem with income skew, then it is probably also not fair.

Quite often when writing my train-of-thought pieces I find myself going in circles and often arguing against myself. As I get older I seem to becoming more socially conscious as well. I started this off with the pandemic and end with billionaires. The “train” does not end with a conclusion but just poses loads of questions. The world does seem a little like that today. So much stuff and so little shared understanding. When I reflect on what I do for a living I do, however, become ever more certain that people skills, the ability to empathise and communicate at all levels is key. To that today I have also added the continual propensity and desire to learn. I used to think that was a little self-indulgent and self-serving but now I think it is essential to being useful and thus successful. To that end I am going to devise some questions that probe an individual’s capacity to learn. Where I start on that is a little harder as I have no idea. So better get to some learning and also stop asking unanswerable questions!