Wow, this was the election that woke up white, er "traditional" Americans. The party, literally and figuratively, is not about them any more. I should say us, as I am as I fit the demographic.
I was raised in Utah so I came late to the racial integration issue. My parents had lived in the South and Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s, as my father was a government surveyor and engineer. They told me a number of stories with racial overtones. Actually, they ran in many directions, as my parents absorbed some social blows from being Mormons from Utah. My grandmother was a poet. She wrote a number of poems in dialect, many in what is termed "Negro" dialect. I don't know of the propriety of such a term now, but that is what they were called. My mother taught us a number of poems and stories that made use of many dialects. They were overwhelmingly enjoyable and, I think, oriented toward understanding and acceptance.
I remember in the 1970s or 1980s watching the movie High Road to China with Tom Selleck. I liked the show very much, but from what I understand, I was in the vast minority in that. The point is, about halfway through the movie it came to my attention that an inordinate number of brown people were being killed. Scores. In the face of this, Mr. Selleck's character and the others were conspicuously unscathed.
This election involved some famous, even funny responses to the democratic reality. "Taking back the country" really does not look like a viable plan. The fact is, you are not going to be able to "out-baby" the minority races. That demographic fact was established long ago. As an aside, it is more than a little ironic that the representative of the dwindling establishment in the U.S. presidential election showed himself as a world-class paterfamilias while his opponent, representing the burgeoning classes, not so much.
The "givers" vs. the "takers" dichotomy in the minds of the "whites" with regard to economic benefits also faces difficulty. There was a moment in one of the television broadcasts when it was lamented that "brown people" also "want things" and see government and politics as was of getting them. This conjured up, surely, images of the purity of capitalism vs the dank ugliness of socialism, as it were. Socialism won. Capitalism lost. Lazy minorities will thus be able to cream off the excess work products from hard working, hapless white people.
The tide will thus have turned; slavery will thus have reversed itself. Those whites who are left will need to look for another haven to be free. Could that be Canada? Uninhabited islands of the South Pacific? The latter is not likely if only because of the rising sea which just gobbled up the New Jersey beach. Its not just that they are not "like us" (wink, wink), "they are ... lazy".
We need to revisit the concept of laziness. Yes, this is a white people thing, too. In an era where technologies bring unprecedented levels of productivity, what does laziness mean? Unfortunately, this has become an existential question, as a person's social standing is determined by what he or she does. It isn't necessary that the job be done well. Scott Adams has become famous due to his ability to depict the truth couched in comedy. Indeed, the pointy-haired manager often is clueless.
When we consider the various concepts around which economic activity is rewarded, we find a good deal of leeway when it comes to work effort. For one thing, we can measure energy expended, you know, foot/pounds of energy expenditure, joules of energy, physical measures of activity. I had an owner of a company make reference to this as a measure of whether people were contributing. This has been called the "asses and elbows" approach to productivity. Is this what the white people mean when they saw that the brown people are not working to suit them?
When it comes to the expenditure of joules, there aren't very many of us that are working very hard. Certainly there are professional athletes, whose efforts are curiously protected by monopolistic fiat of Congress, a governmental corruption of pure capitalism that we somehow don't mind. Socialism in the service of capitalism, I think. We are a curious breed indeed.
Of course, there is the grand definition of work, the Megamind definition. We love this, the industrialist worker that makes all the wheels turn and the accounts balance. This is mental work, good work. In fact, the last few decades have resulted in an integration of brown and white in terms of the professions, perhaps not all, but most.
I know that many of our time have forgotten the sages of the past, particularly with regard to management of enterprises. That world has long suffered from the "next big idea" syndrome, which itself is fueled by the business press' desire to present ideas about how they can do better. The problem is that in the roller coaster of managerial ideas, real science and its implications have been muted. The point is, W. Edwards Deming wasn't simply presenting nice ideas in his time. He was presenting groundings for a science of management, an elixir for the problems outlined by Scott Adams and his Dilbert crew.
Dr. Deming famously said that the biggest problem faced by enterprises was "best efforts". This is to say that the biggest problem with regard to productivity and prosperity is people that don't know what they are doing within organizations but that do it with great vigor and in many cases with endowed authority. In this light, work becomes counterproductive. Work in this sense becomes the enemy to good economic and social outcomes.
Can you see the political and societal implications of such an insight? We need more merit in our meritocracy, merit defined as the reasonable application of effort. There is great waste in the misapplication of energy and of resources. In a sense, it can be said that we have an over-employment of resources and of people. The "best efforts" people that Dr. Deming mentions may be educable in their current state of employment, but it is possible that they are wielding power in places they shouldn't even be. Responding to the requirements of a demand-driven employment model, many of them are likely faking it, applying themselves to tasks as they are presented to them irrespective of their inherent talents.
I watched a typical recitation of the requirements of our demand-driven approach to employment a couple of days ago. The presenters were outlining what subjects people should study to get employment and where they should move in order to contract such work. I see no problem with this in principle, as the labor market is well-served by taking on market characteristics. The problem is in how late in the game people are being forced to make such decisions. The commentators were making comments about useless college degrees and the need to make drastic adjustments to resumes and job histories in order to meet the demands of the market. Another problem is the inherent loneliness of the process. People must engage in what the employment people refer to as the "crosswalk" when crossing the divide between their talents and interests and what is generally available in terms of jobs in their general geographic area.
A bigger loss to society than personal "laziness" is the inability to benefit from the inherent talents and skills of the people. Oddly, we reward the efforts of people who don't do their jobs very well when they could make major contributions in other ways that are not similarly rewarded. This is an enormous source of waste. The educational system is definitely a contributor to this dilemma. There is a concerted effort to identify and reward only a certain subset of talents at the expense of the rest.
What if the educational system and associated employer organizations were oriented toward recognizing and nurturing talents of all kinds early in our lives, associating talented children with experts and educators in their unique areas of skill in a lifetime association? This is to say, if musically talented individuals were brought together with others with similar endowments based on verifiable data, recognized by leaders and educators in those specific areas. The same for literary, athletic, scholastic, mechanistic, philosophical, mathematical, and other areas of human endeavor. A general education would also be needed, but a much more involved process of integration, once again, guided by personal data with regard to inherent talents and abilities, would ground people in their careers and areas of endeavor throughout their lives. When career and life adjustments were needed, they would be more grounded in a community of like-minded people to help them improve on their talents and enhance their contributions.
Dr. Deming's "best efforts" people live in a state of delusion. By association, it can be said that they suffer thus. If they are not overtly aware of their state of at least partial insanity, they likely suffer from mental or physical trauma of some kind. Regardless, resulting chaos leads to stress, to chronic aberrations that affect their mental and physical health. There are direct associations with hormonal imbalances, for example, and many disorders, including heart disease, metabolic syndromes including obesity and diabetes, and cancer. Equally important, they are missing out on the lives they could be living where they could be excelling, receiving ongoing reinforcement, and being happy generally. I recall the story of a high-powered executive who, when informed of his high chances of death from stress-induced heart disease, moved to the country to concentrate on playing the cello.
The economy as currently understood is deeply delusional. White people, as it were, have pulled the economy deeply into what even they would call socialism, but in the name of capitalism. It isn't capitalism, though markets are involved. Capitalism in the true sense would destroy the very enclaves of wealth that the white people are trying to protect. Capitalism is steeped in commercial revolution. The fact is, fear shouldn't be grounded in the darker races, but in the possible efforts of entrepreneurs that could, and theoretically should, render the old industries in their wake.
Of course, if Dr. Galbraith were to have his way, and Dr. Deming for that matter, it would be the corporations themselves that usher in the new order. They have the resources. They have the knowledge. In some cases this is happening. In others, there is little progress; indeed many of them go to great lengths to forestall meaningful progress. Among other things, this phenomenon can be attributed to ... wait for it ... laziness. This is a laziness of another kind. Rather than instigate a new program, for example, it might seem easier to talk to a senator and get a bill passed that makes the program unnecessary, at least for the time being. This kind of laziness is often of the cerebral kind. People in authority can tend to get "slotted" in the way they think, particularly when they feel threatened by change.
Problematically, given current expectations, we are not seeing an overwhelming desire on the part of private businesses to hire a lot of people. As it turns out, talented engineers and production experts are good at automating things. This is what they do. From their perspective, why should they arbitrary hire people that they do not need, that actually will often "gum up the works" with "best efforts"? All other things being equal -- apart from the fact that the people in question do not have jobs -- isn't the economy better off by empowering the engineers and production experts to exercise their talents to the max? Ok, and environmental engineers, too. I don't want us to start an environmental discussion right now other than to say that good production is not wasteful.
That person that would "move to Cleveland" or someplace to get the job that they were not necessarily suited for because it was available and no one was willing to pay for their true talent (that may may not even be aware of because the school system chewed them up and spewed them out when their weren't math geniuses) could have better things to do. Appropriately identified and coached, especially early in life, that person might be a perfect counselor. Maybe a forest ranger. Perhaps a biologist, with innate talents perfect for the job. Perhaps a brilliant painter or a social commentator. Maybe a comedian. It is possible that that person would be the very best president the country has ever seen. We could certainly use one of those.
How to pay such people? Let the "talent guilds" help to decide. They should be encouraged and supported. This is to say that we should be encouraged and supported. Let's look at this question, white and brown together. This is the question on which our future prosperity is to be determined.
