October 2014 – Page 14

25 Stories About Work – Industrial Decay

December 7, 2014October 3, 2014 by Carl from Chicago

I was recently on a plane doodling and thought of some funny / interesting stories from 25+ years of working and traveling. So I decided to write them up as short, random chapters of a non-book with the title of this post. Hope you enjoy them and / or find them interesting. Certainly the value will be at least equal to the marginal cost of the book (zero)…

Somewhere in a Northwest Indiana formerly industrial city, the ’90s…

We had a utility client in Northwest Indiana. The city used to be a large industrial town but had been hit hard by various plant closings and also the rout of the US steel industry in the ’70s and the ’80s. A friend of mine joked that you wouldn’t be surprised to see a dinosaur walking around the abandoned ruins of the nearby towns and city. For some reason I thought that was really funny after working there for a while.

At our client they had multiple buildings that were connected by walk ways that were sometimes rounded or with all around glass. We called them the “habitrail” just like the hamster homes you could buy for your pets.

The work onsite at the client was grim. I was given the least exciting areas to audit, the balance sheet and plant accounting. The balance sheet had assets that were not documented that were stagnant for years. At that point in auditing all you did was to re-word the notes from the prior year accounts and then put them back in this year’s file. After just a few hours as a novice auditor I pointed out that the notes didn’t make sense and started to do a bunch of new analytics when they told me to stop and just gave me something else to do. This is where you get the joke

Why did the accountant cross the road? Because they did it last year.

If you tell that joke to an accountant I am telling you they will laugh their heads off. It isn’t really funny to anyone else but it sums up the drudgery of what auditing used to be.

One day the partner came out. Now we were all packed in a grimy little room. These were also the days when you could smoke like a chimney in the office and we all wore wool suits so I might as well have smoked 3 packs a day too. I stunk. It was after noon and I was hungry and I broke the silence by asking if we were going out to lunch. The whole room swiveled their heads at me and I got a tongue lashing later from the manager. I wasn’t supposed to talk or ask any questions while the partner was on site. Live and learn.

Driving to Indiana from downtown Chicago was a long effort. The air conditioning in my car wasn’t great so I’d usually just drive in a T shirt and change when I got near the facility. One time I was pumping gas in a gas station nearby when the auto shut off didn’t work and I got gasoline all over my suit. That did not make for a pleasant afternoon of work.

Another time when I was pumping gas a deranged, toothless local came up to me with his arms waving.

Don’t sign the deed! he screamed. Don’t sign the deed!

I didn’t.

Cross posted at LITGM

Regulatory capture is normal, and that’s the problem

October 3, 2014 by Chicago Boyz Archive

You must read this excellent piece by Megan McArdle, It’s Normal for Regulators to Get Captured. “regulatory capture is not some horrid aberration; it is closer to the natural state of a regulatory body.”

This is true. That is why the entire modern administrative state has to be re-thought, re-configured and replaced. It does not work, it never worked, it cannot work.

The regulatory state is the defining feature of the Industrial Era, America 2.0 state. It needs to be shut down, wrapped up and replaced.

This does not mean return to the law of the jungle. It means making laws that actually align incentives with desired ends, as imperfect as that always is.

Worthwhile Reading & Viewing

October 2, 2014 by David Foster

The festival of lights in Thailand

Three Irish girls win the Google Science Fair with an approach to bacteria-enhanced crop growth

Two versions of “Oklahoma” at Bookworm, with discussion

10 Disney cartoons from the 1930s, with link to an article on the evolution of Disney’s cartoons over several decades

The lost art of political persuasion. This piece at Ricochet argues that politicians are now less about converting the opposition and persuading the undecided, and more about activating those who are already members of their choir.

Bill Whittle thinks it’s time to talk about some good news (video)

A recent study suggests that empathy can lead to scapegoating

Book giveaways during WWII contributed greatly to the popularization of reading and the subsequent growth of the publishing industry.

This article by a Wharton professor argues that “emotional intelligence is overrated” and, specifically, that it is overrated in sales. He cites a study in which hundreds of sales people were tested both for emotional intelligence and cognitive ability, and their sales performance subsequently tracked…with the conclusion that cognitive ability was more than 5X as powerful as emotional intelligence in predicting sales performance. (Actually, I’m pretty sure that the importance of cognitive ability and the importance of emotional intelligence both vary greatly depending on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to, and also on what kind of resources the salesman needs to leverage within his own organization.)

America 3.0 Course at U. Cal. Irvine — Additional Reading

October 2, 2014 by Chicago Boyz Archive

As I noted in yesterday’s post, I team-taught a course on America 3.0 at U.Cal.Irvine last Spring. We considered asking the students to read some additional material beyond the sections of the book we assigned. However, we decided that the book was enough and we did not want to overload under-graduates. The following is the proposed additional material we considered assigning, with links.

Week # 1. America 3.0: Introduction 

Week # 2. America 3.0: America in 2040
IP in a World Without Scarcity by Mark A. Lemley.

 The students should read Section I, part C — pages 10-24. This article covers three major sources of disruptive change: 3D Printing, Synthetic Biology and Bioprinting and Robotics. Of course, they may read the entire article if they wish. The question of the law and regulation of these new technologies is a huge area to be explored.

Week # 3. America 3.0: The American Family

Duranton, Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe .

See, table page 2, map on page 8, regarding the Absolute Nuclear Family.

The World Values Survey Cultural Map of the World.

Why Americans are the WEIRDest People in the World.

25 Stories About Work – Plains Blizzard

December 7, 2014October 2, 2014 by Carl from Chicago

Somewhere in Iowa, the ’90s…

I was an auditor for a long since merged together utility. We used to fly in and out every week, leaving Sunday night (in your suit, in case your luggage was lost by the airlines) and leaving the office at 5pm Friday and driving to an airport 3 hours away to arrive home about 10pm Friday. We did this every week for the “busy season” which lasted about 3 months or so.

For Thanksgiving weekend one time we left on a Wednesday. A giant storm was coming up over the plains as we drove across Iowa into Nebraska where the airport was for flights into Chicago. At the time we didn’t really have cold weather gear, we just had long wool coats and leather gloves to go over our suits. We didn’t even have boots, just work shoes.

We stopped at a gas station and the wind was really whipping across the plains. When I got out to pump gas I was almost knocked flat on my back. While shivering in the car after pumping gas I told them we ought to turn back and just give up for the night and stay in Iowa.

I was the lowest ranking guy so I was overruled. There were obvious reasons why everyone wanted to get home for Thanksgiving and away from work in Iowa.