GREAT NATION

I'm sorry that no one will ever get to read my erudite article on why America is a great nation. It got blown out of the water today by a Republican Congressman.

Y'all wanna know why Merica is a great nashin? We got th' pick-a-tha litta! Hit took curge to git heah!"

Ah well.

PRODUCTIVITY? WHAT'S THAT?

My old boss told me once, “When someone calls you with an opportunity, be assured that it is his opportunity. Words have a way of allowing a skewing of their definitions, depending on the situation and intent with which they are used.

The word that bothers me today is productivity, which in the socio-economic context correlates with increasing the amount of product you can get out of a person or a work force. It is measured by the change in the ratio of the value of things produced to the cost of the labor needed to produce them.  Improved productivity in theory adds to personal and national well-being that results from growth in income. Theorists argue that the benefits are more real income, enjoyment of leisure, lower cost of goods and services, and improved housing and education. The truth of this is subject to question in the practical world. With the prices of automobiles at ten times what they were in 1970, gasoline at over  four dollars a gallon, food prices buttressed by subsidies because producers can’t compete with foreign sources, a few raised eyebrows at this contention might be justified.

Attention to productivity improvement goes far back in history. James Watt got things really rolling in England in the late eighteenth century with his improvements on, and production of the steam engine kick-starting the Industrial Revolution. In current context it involves organization of work, attention to cost structure, adoption of accepted business processes, knowledge management and information technology, and improved and automated equipment. In many cases software with broad application is adopted for process upgrades.

The claim of increased income for workers at a time of rising productivity is open to question, as wages have shown no growth for more than a decade, and even some reduction. While  productivity assessment works for most fields of effort, including wholesale trade, retail trade, medical, food supply, etc, it is handiest to look at the manufacturing segment, as that is where data is most readily available and where productivity seems to get the most attention. It is where the claim of increased income for workers begs the question: Is this for real? A startling piece of information generated by the labor department for the year 2009 compares the dollar per hour cost of labor for 18 nations, including 12 European countries, Australia, Canada and Japan. Norway ranked the highest, at $53.89 per hour. Spain  was last at $27.24 per hour. The United states ranked fourteenth at $33.53 per hour.  This tells us that the benefits of increased productivity are more likely in profits that are distributed to owners and shareholders and not to workers.  

Since not much has changed in the socio-economic picture in the last three years, a review of more recent years would likely show similar results.  In the first quarter of 2012 in the manufacturing sector productivity rose by 5.9% and unit labor cost fell by 4.2%. From an efficiency standpoint that looks great, but a lowered labor cost indicates that workers are not benefiting. The reality is that managers improve productivity by cancelling pensions, medical plans, retiring older workers who earn more,and making fewer people work harder. It is no surprise that workers complain that they have to work harder to keep their jobs. 

When a widget manufacturer raises his work force efficiency to produce more widgets for the same labor hours, or accomplishes the same by installing automated machinery, he can boast about improved productivity. If the market can absorb more widgets, workers are assured of keeping their jobs. But if the market cannot absorb more widgets the work force gets reduced. Either way, the widget manufacturer wins, but the latter case is bad for employment.

What should one read into it when the President announces that productivity is up but the unemployment picture is still unsatisfactory? How does improved productivity correlate with employment numbers? Did improved productivity result in wage increases? Is it helpful or harmful?

In a benevolent commercial and industrial society, the profit that improved efficiency generates is heavily distributed to workers in the form of higher wages, medical insurance and provisions for a reasonably comfortable retirement. If wages are held stagnant, the economy isn’t going to improve. If improved productivity benefits the worker, then good things happen. There is no better way to stimulate the economy. But management that operates in this manner is at a disadvantage with respect to competition, which explains its rarity.

Rising productivity is deemed to be good. Why must this be accepted? No one can say what will be enough. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Here) foresee human brains as adjuncts to far more powerful external computer brains, automated factories that can supply all human needs, that can replicate their machinery and even replicate themselves. But they give short shrift to the spiritual side of humans that propels them to be individually creative and productive.

In these few words, I have only touched on this complex word..... productivity. I could have written instead about productivity in baking bread. Should I use the bread maker, which is speedy and doesn’t measurably improve my life and produces something that tastes like bread but doesn’t look like bread? It will free me to do something else, say, water the plants..... or should I do it the old fashioned way, and spend the time kneading dough in serene contemplation, anticipating golden brown loaves that look like bread, lifted from the oven?

LETTER TO JOHN BOEHNER

Honorable Congressman John Boehner
Speaker, House of Representatives
1011 Longworth  House Office Building
Washington, Dc 20515 -3508

Dear Speaker Boehner,

In the light of your recent approval of an important meeting of Sectarians in the Capitol building...... Our House, an enduring symbol of a Constitution that requires separation of Church and State, I would guess that future historians will mark you as a man of poor judgment who somehow managed to rise to a position where good judgment is fundamental to leadership

You knew that the participants, to a man (and woman) are of a mind  to break down that wall and proclaim that at last, this is a Christian nation. Others need not apply.  It was a near victory lap for them,....something close to the flag raising by soldiers at Iwo Jima.

I cannot imagine how you can ever live down this colossal blunder.

Sincerely,


Edward Hujsak.

A MATTER OF UNDERSTANDING

I don’t know. I like to think that I was the instigator of this idea, but I could be wrong. Ideas have a way of spawning simultaneously in minds around the globe, as if transmitted on an undefined wave through an as yet undetermined medium.

It happened, one day some years ago, standing in line at the cashier’s in Ralph’s grocery store, that I found myself behind a cart holding a young child with big round eyes, obviously a bit under the weather. I watched a little hand pass under a runny nose then slide smoothly along the handle of the cart. Something told me that this needed a little attention.

Upon returning home I wrote letters to Ralph’s headquarters and to the Chlorox company stating my concern that grocery store cart handles could be among the worst transmitters of disease in the community. I heard nothing from either party, but imagine the warmth in my heart upon discovering, a few months later, a Chlorox hand wipe dispenser at the entrance to Ralphs, mounted on a crude stand, with the message: “Hand Wipes for Your Convenience.”

It seems that the idea took hold, as in the ensuing years the dispensers at store entrances appeared at more and more places, even at Home Depot. They appeared in various designs, which indicated more than one entrepreneur was involved. I imagine it has gone national, maybe international (Aha! I am a job creator, and not even a one percenter! Maybe the sycophants who proclaim the rich are job creators are in error!).

But it has become clear that my work is not yet done. “Hand Wipes for Your Convenience” merely begs the question:  Why do I need clean hands to shop? (What a dumb idea). 

Humans respond poorly to indirect or implicit instructions. “Hand Wipes for Your Convenience” is like saying “Powder Room” for “Ladies Restroom.” That took considerable training as “Powder Room” was historically where they kept kegs of gunpowder.  Signs that are explicit work best, like “Cross” and “Don’t Cross.” Exit”, with an arrow. No Parking. You get the idea. Good signs get results. Of course it brings to mind the oft repeated tale about P.T. Barnum’s method of emptying the arena for the next wave of customers with the sign: “This Way to the Egress.”

So it’s time for another letter to Ralphs and Chlorox.

Gentlemen: You must change your sign to read “Hand Wipes for Germ Free Cart Handles.” 

That ought to do it.

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND COAL BURNING CARS

Systems engineering draws together different disciplines within the engineering field and is concerned with organizing and integrating a project, taking into consideration virtually everything that makes it function as planned throughout its life cycle, including attention to risk reduction, impacts on the surrounding territory, logistics, performance, etc. To illustrate: a manufacturer of, say a ready-to-operate rocket (or a car) delivers his finished product at the loading dock, The buyer of the rocket (user) must then deal with transportation to the launch area, payload integration, design and maintenance of a launch platform, provision and loading of rocket propellants, flight control software, range safety and a host of other operations to make the rocket lift off and deliver a payload to a promised location. That would be the user’s system. Lots of independent functions that have to be organized and integrated in the most efficient way possible.  But this operator may be servicing an even larger system, like the International Space Station, a product too of system engineering.  In recent years, largely due to the growing complexity of products, systems engineering has also been widely applied in the design of products, like a rocket, a car. or an e-book. It focuses on the nature of customer needs and desires, as well as functional aspects early in the process. It establishes a management plan for achieving the objective of a finished product.  It proceeds with modelling and actual design followed by prototype construction, development and proofing tests, production, quality control, packaging and delivery. 

We’re going to hear a lot more about systems engineering. The applied discipline is only seventy years old. We’re not yet at the point where world governments have the insight to recognize the  global significance of systems engineering to keep Earth livable long into the future.....in one word: sustainable. Sustainability is the capacity to endure. Essential elements are long term maintenance of responsibility, with environmental and social dimensions,  stewardship and the responsible management of resources. The tendency seems always to capitalize on opportunities the easy way, disregarding the consequences.

In the case above where the product is a car, there was little awareness in the industry and in political circles trumpeting the wonders of the electric car, that a little more systems engineering would have been beneficial. When the power for operating a car originates in a power plant hundreds of miles away, the electric car in fact turns out to be quite different from the energy saving wonder that automotive producers would have one believe. Converts to electric cars believe they are doing a good thing. They have a car that goes and they are making their contribution to the environment. Advertising tells them that they are right on both counts, but only the first is true.

Plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars that have been developed and marketed might have been banned had they been subjected to end-to-end analysis of energy consumption. Such an evaluation would have demonstrated that they do not improve the energy picture, and in fact are detrimental, as well as unhelpful for environmental improvement. Electric cars, unless their batteries are recharged by renewable energy sources......photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biofuels..... are little more than coal burners. They are less efficient than the worst of gasoline powered cars.

System engineering could have delayed construction of nuclear power plants until safe storage of nuclear waste was concurrently provided; there would not be mountains of tires and automobile junkyards scattered around the country; disposable dry cells would be outlawed, as there is no trustworthy system for disposal of their toxic contents, and providing power in this manner is a colossal waste of resources. (How much more elegant... a generator on an exercise bike where you can recharge all your household batteries).

About three-quarters of the electrical energy in the United States comes from coal fired and nuclear plants (50% coal and 20% nuclear). Both operate at around 30% thermal efficiency although a few newer high-tech coal burning plants are demonstrating higher efficiencies. Transmission losses from the generator through the grid and terminating at the car’s battery approximate 10%. An electric car is at best 85% efficient. At a little over 20% overall energy efficiency, the electric car hardly compares with gasoline powered cars, which are closer to 30% efficient. Of course, a thorough analysis would show that there are regional variations. Some parts of the nation depend solely on coal generated power. Some are a mix of power generated from several sources that can show better thermal efficiency. Power transmission losses are however unaffected.

Were fifty million plug-in’s and hybrids to hit the roads, there would be a huge upswing in both coal and natural gas consumption.  Renewable sources would rise too, but would likely remain at 30% of the total power generated. It’s hard to compete economically with coal. Total energy consumption would far higher than if automobiles were to continue to operate on gasoline.

An electric car design that would reduce total energy consumption would consist of a drive motor on each wheel, a moderate complement of batteries, and an internal combustion engine that operates at constant speed at its point of highest efficiency and functions only to charge the batteries. Such an engine could be much more efficient than conventional gasoline burning engines, for which a 40% operating efficiency is still an elusive target. It thus would result in overall reduction in energy consumption. Such cars could boast a thousand miles between tankings. For that matter, there are European automotive Diesel engines that already fit the requirement. These engines could evolve easily into burners of various types of biofuels.  

Yesterday a mature juniper tree, its roots humping up my sidewalk, was removed from my front yard. As I watched the workman’s truck depart for the city dump, loaded with greenery, I imagined thousands of such trucks arriving at city dumps every day across the nation. Potential biofuel, destined to become buried or chopped into garden mulch. Is it that much of a stretch to imagine driving your electric motor powered car to a station at the entrance to the city dump and tanking up with biofuel?

Systems engineering can keep the planet livable, for all species. There is no other option. Should a time arrive when it is necessary to pray for miracles, it will be too late.

GENEROSITY AT THE PUMP

GENEROSITY AT THE PUMP


Gasoline prices are excessively high, but do you know that the price you run up at the pump is not all that you pay for that tank of gasoline?

Oil companies are awash in cash. Some find ways to avoid paying any taxes at all, and as a group  they manage, through the services of skilled lobbyists, to get the government to give them money, lots of money, described as subsidies.

Gasoline consumption in the United States is around 135 billion gallons a year.
Oil company subsidies average about ten billion dollars a year.

Let’s see.... it’s simple arithmetic.

Ten billion dollars is a trillion cents. Divide that by 135 billion gallons and you get .74 cents a gallon. In other words, each time you tank up ( a modest 14 gallons), you tip the oil companies just over a dollar.

Feel better now?

NATURE'S GOVERNORS AND THE HUMAN DILEMMA

                                     
If you own a 1903 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (as I do, but Wikipedia will do) you can learn all one needs to know about Nicholas Otto’s invention of the internal combustion engine during the last decades of the nineteenth century.  Like James Watt with steam engines, he built on developments by preceding inventors, arriving finally at the four cycle engine that underpins most of today’s petroleum fueled power plants (Otto’s early engines burned hydrogen!).

Photos of early engines, steam engines too, taken from the right perspective, will show appended to the engine two or three metal balls, usually shiny brass spheres about the size of tennis balls, on a vertically spinning shaft, contrived with linkage so that with increasing speed, centrifugal force will cause the balls to move radially outward from the spinning shaft. Within the linkage, this movement is used to control the speed of the engine. When there is added load on the engine, it wants to slow down. That causes the balls to retract radially toward the shaft, and mechanical linkage to the fuel supply increases fuel flow to the engine. Similar devices were used to control the speed of steam engines. On some single cylinder engines, called one-lungers, the design provided for saving fuel by skipping firing for several strokes before firing again to keep the speed constant. A big flywheel on the side of the engine provided the momentum to keep the engine smoothly rotating. It was not an unpleasant sound, across the countryside..... a  green John Deere tractor  going chuff, pause, pause, pause, then chuff chuff chuff chuff when it had to work harder.

These spinning brass spheres were called governors. For good reason.... they governed the speed of the engine to respond to whatever load was placed upon it. They still do, but have evolved to improved, often computerized methods. The governor for the automobile engine, however, is the linkage between a person’s brain and foot, responding to whatever the condition is on the road, or the driver’s sense of urgency, thrill, or other emotions.

Nature provides for governors in vast variety to control population. The seasonal movement of lemmings, who reproduce prodigiously, reduces the population by mass migrations across waters. It is a culling process, where the strong emerge to produce the next generation. The rest are fish food.

When deer get numerous, nature’s design is for wolves to move in. In many cases, however, the natural course of events was gummed up by interference of hunters, historically capable of wiping out entire species. Only recently has there been an awakening that mandates humans working with nature if the natural world is to be preserved. There is a moral imperative to act the part of governors.

Nature’s governors are quite remarkable in their variety and flexibility. During my early years when living on a dairy farm there was a period when our barn was infested with rats. There was plenty of food, and the manure pile beneath the barn, fermenting and providing a warm environment, was a perfect place to bear and raise young ones. One day a pair of owls moved in, staring down from the rafters. They hardly had to move to snatch up the next dinner. Three stray cats also took up residence. In short order both parties took care of the rat problem. In the springtime, when the none-too-pleasant job of shoveling the manure beneath the barn was upon us, we noticed a pair of long, gray-hued snakes slithering along the back of the dung pile. Eventually we came upon empty rat nests. The snakes had dined heartily, it seemed, on all the young ones.

Therein lies the problem of large numbers of rats in highly populated areas. Food is plentiful and  nature has been literally squeezed out of opportunities to govern. Natural processes are thwarted. Rat population control has devolved into whatever means humans can devise to keep the problem manageable, with poisons and other practices whenever there is public complaint of a large infestation. Humans and rats grudgingly coexist.

Nature’s ways are both elegant and subtle if left to itself to perform its on-going symphony. But Nature can be helpless when the balance is upset. An impressive example was the introduction of European rabbits to Australia in 1788, and again in 1859 and 1866. Just a few dozen rabbits. In Australia rabbits had no natural enemies. Some rabbits soon went feral and the ensuing problem of millions upon millions of rabbits on the loose has not been fully solved to this date and has resulted in unprecedent ecological disaster for countless other life forms.

 Nature has also struck out on the human scene. Methods available to Nature for population control don’t work on humans. If there was once a natural governor, it turned ineffective centuries ago. The last time there was a real scare was in the 1300’s when the Bubonic plague struck China, and then migrated west along a trade route that led to the Black Sea, where further carriers were believed to be rats on merchant ships. Starting in Mediterranean countries around 1347, the disease spread north to include England and the Scandinavian nations. By the time the black plague, as it came to be known, had run its course in 1352, Europe’s population of 75 million was reduced by a third to 50 million.  But world population, then at about 360 million, was diminished by less than ten percent. In current times, when a deadly virus appears an advanced medical profession around the world immediately takes up the attack, to understand it and to mitigate its effect.

Everything now works to preserve and grow human population. In my lifetime world population has doubled,  and nearly doubled again. The totality of the human mind, the psyche, is to preserve life regardless of cost, but remains blind to an aspect that obligates it also to preserve quality of life. Reproduction and preservation contains darker elements in some areas of the world where children are a commodity to be sold into the workplace and girls into early marriage. Children are their parents’ survival and retirement packages.  Wars have no overall effect on population growth. All the wars and political turmoil of the twentieth century barely made a dent in world population.

There is evidence that humans could self govern, as in more advanced nations birth rate has dropped to levels that maintain steady populations. This appears to correlate with higher levels of intelligence and improved quality of life. So perhaps that is where humanity should head. It would mean major shifts in thought process and abandonment of allegiance to the Good Book, which is okay with wars, relationship between slaves and their masters, retribution, accumulation of riches, concentration of power and superiority of men over women. It would mean ignoring Papal advice that there is no such thing as coincidence, that all is in God’s plan, and commit instead to the reality that we are on our own.

But it would be difficult. Even today, in an advanced nation, we have the spectacle of wannabe Gods who proclaim that an embryo, from the moment of conception has all rights, the same as when born. Where did that come from? In the light of day it appears to be the mischief of those who cling the notion of male superiority over women..... males who were shattered upon learning just a few decades ago that there is an egg involved. 

There is an uncanny parallel between the rabbits of Australia and human occupation of the planet. Ravages on the environment, at tragic cost to other living forms correspond to consumption oriented societies, exploiting resources at a rate that foretells misery for future generations. Paradoxically, humans will eventually devise a governor for the rabbit population. (Scientists are trying to develop viruses to accomplish this. Nothing else has worked).

With humans the solution arguably lies in education, universal improvement of quality of life,  and adoption of mindsets that vilify excessive accumulation of wealth, along with eliminating existing concentrations of private wealth. Movements are underway. There are budding worldwide organizations like GTI Perspectives (www.gtiperspectives.org). That organization is beginning to develop something called “The Great Transition.” This is also the substance of admonitions in lectures by sages like the Dalai Lama, who sees more clearly than most the human dilemma.

As yet, the human scene lacks a dependable governor. God is detached, and we’ve not yet found our way.