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It’s about improving people’s lives. Miss ya, Paul!

If We Count Our Blessings

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While discussing a useful politics that actually points to ownership of the future developing around us, it’s useful to discuss what’s really wrong with what we have now.  This piece from two years ago does just that.

My concern is no longer with politics, per se. “Politics,” as we know it, has come to be so totally divorced from policy it is largely meaningless anyway. It’s primarily about identity, which is what far too much of language is actually about.

So let’s instead talk about politics, the art and science of human interaction.

I am far more interested in anger as the primary response to … well, everything. Every interaction, artful or not, seems to produce a lot of anger. The pathology of this pathological response is worth thinking through in many ways – if for no other reason than to cool it down.

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On a Personal Note

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This is a dark time for America. There is an ongoing attempt to obstruct justice, led by the Attorney General himself. Congress will have to act one way or the other in what is likely to become the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War.

Meanwhile, damage is being done constantly. It what appears to be a last-ditch effort, as if they know what is coming, Georgia and other states are passing highly restrictive abortion bans which are clearly unconstitutional. They seem to know that they will never have another chance.

For me to say, “Hang on, we’ll get through this” would betray the obvious privilege I have as a person who is not directly affected by all of this. And yet we know that this will pass one day, especially if we band together and make sure that it passes. On this, I assure you, I am with you. But I am also concerned by what might come next.

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Corporate Rule?

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The Honourable East India Company was chartered by Queen Elizabeth to represent the crown in all matters of trade with the nations of the far east in 1600. It was a simple beginning to what evolved two and half centuries later into the worst possible anecdote for corporate power unchecked. With its own army, it subdued the Indian subcontinent and forced China to import vast quantities of opium.

Corporations have a unique ability to transcend national boundaries. They represent opportunity as well immediate cash on the table. In a world opening up as never before they have the first foot in the door and an opportunity to create quick profits for everyone. They rarely set out to do evil, but with their unique position largely unchecked temptation lurks just behind every fair deal.

The example of the East India Company is not antique. History does not repeat, but it does rhyme.

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Anxious New World

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Before wisdom comes learning. Before learning comes observation. Before observation comes perspective.

Globalization, as we have all come to see it from our various cultures, is confusing at best. It appears chaotic even though it does have several key vectors of direction. These are increasing integration, increasing technology, and increasing need for resources. Somewhere between he cultural and political chaos and these strong directions there is a reasonable anxiety, often expressed very well in popular culture as dystopian fantasy. From the perspective of where we are today these forces appear to lead us off into something not just new but very likely out of control

Clearly, a different perspective or set of perspectives is necessary to produce the right observations which will lead to the appropriate learning and eventually wisdom. But what is that perspective?

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Huawei Criticism: Legit, or Fearmongering?

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Since the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO and daughter of the head of Huawei, the company has been in the news lately. Popular media has placed this story at the center of deteriorating relations between the US and China on both sides of the Pacific. In the US, the implications of Huawei acting as, essentially, an agent of the Communist Party of China have peppered the stories. In China, it’s all been another front on the trade war and effort to keep China itself down, yet again.

Which side is right?

Without a lot of context, it’s impossible to tell just what is going on. Huawei is indeed a fast rising company, and its connections to the government have definitely played a role in that. They’ve also played the free market game like any fast rising company by working incredibly long hours, poaching top talent (and their information), skirting around inconvenient laws, and slapping things together with blazing speed.

But, in the end, it’s not entirely Huawei which is the issue after all.

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