A Good Day

So, a couple days ago the John Sanford novel "Holy Ghost (A Virgil Flowers Novel)" came available on Amazon, which means my copy arrived yesterday. I started reading it about 3 pm and finished around 11 pm (there was a trip to the Walmart and dinner to cook in there too). Virgil finds himself assigned to look into a shooting in a small town that might - or might not - be related to a recent religious "miracle". Events cascade one onto another, with seeming solutions to the case(s) dying faster than the victims.

What a wonderful way to end the long dry spell of pleasure reading this summer has been.

Do recommend.

And, there will be a new Lucas Davenport novel ("Neon Prey") releasing next April 23 to look forward to over the winter.

I think I can set things up so I can re-read all of the Prey novels in succession - maybe starting next March - so that I finish the most recent book ("Twisted Prey") the day before the new one arrives. There are 28 novels in the series so far; managing to keep myself to a rate of only 4 books a week should fill the bill nicely.

John Ringo's next Black Tide Rising novel "The Valley of Shadows" is scheduled for release on Nov 6, with S. M. Stirling's (reportedly) last book in the Change series "The Sky Blue Wolves" coming on Nov 13 ought to take care of the reading Jones for that month.

WEB Griffin's latest in the Clandestine Operations series "The Enemy Of My Enemy" comes out Dec 11, and David Weber's next Safehold novel "Through Fiery Trials" arrives Jan 8, followed by book 2 in Larry Correia's Saga Of The Forgotten Warrior series "House Of Assassins" on Feb 5.

Mar 5 brings us to book 2 in the John Ringo/Gary Poole Black Tide Rising anthology "Voices of the Fall", with May 7 bringing us S. M. Stirling's second title "Theater of Spies" in his new Alternate World War series.

These next 7 months or so offer so much to look forward to.

Considering The Proposition: How Jeff Bezos Can Hire Humanity

Since first submitting How Jeff Bezos Can Hire Humanity for consideration as a contribution to the book Visions for a World Transformed, I have had further thoughts I would like to add.

The first of those being that the published concept isn't a stand-alone. While Jeff Bezos likely could finance such a thing, and build a profitable company therefrom, the idea makes better sense as a principal component of a larger, more mutually supportive structure.

Secondly, the idea of Universal Basic Income itself makes better sense as a profit-making venture rather than as a purely tax funded endeavor. As I have already given previous attention to the first part, here follows some thoughts on the second.

UBI is by no means a new idea. The one change from all previous efforts I would insist upon is that UBI be primarily a mechanism for funding a national health insurance system for US citizens (if you don't live in the US, please feel free to initiate an identical program in the country you are a citizen of). To this end, all current financial support mechanisms currently available to some citizens, some of the time, is re-directed to funding issuance of One (1) Primary Share of UBI to every United States citizen (and ONLY US citizens as that condition is legislatively defined in [entirely arbitrary date of] the year 2000). This share entitles the citizen to unlimited health care for the citizen's lifetime, and has a per share face value of US $12,000.00. Each Primary Share is paid by the US government in lieu of any other financial benefits or payments that a citizen might previously have become eligible for (Social Security principally, but ALL other financial supports are explicitly included) Said Primary Share of UBI has a lifetime equal to that of the citizen who owns it. When the citizen expires, the share value escheats to the general UBI fund. When a new citizen is born, the US government issues him/her a UBI Primary Share. When a new citizen is otherwise created, part of the citizenship process is purchase (at face value, though there ought to be a mechanism whereby such share may be granted in whole or part) of a Primary Share of UBI. In addition to Social Security, all US military pensions of every description will be replaced by UBI shares.

For the sake of example; stipulate there are 300 million US citizens and each year 15% of them spend US $10 million on health care. 45 million x US $10 million = US$450 million that UBI total investments have to generate in order to cover this expense. Assuming 300 million citizens individually own an average 200 total UBI shares, and an annual 2.5% return on share investment of US $50 billion, I think we can afford not to exclude ... well, pretty much anything anyone wants health care-wise.

Additionally, there will be created as part of the UBI development and implementation process the category of Supplemental Share of UBI. Each Supplemental Share has a face value of US $1,000.00. Any monies a citizen might have become eligible for previously to the creation of UBI, and not applied to purchase of the Primary Share, is applied to the purchase of Supplemental Shares. Unlike Primary shares (which apply only to paying US citizen's health care treatment), Supplemental Shares are a means of earning income. Sales of Supplemental Shares are open to any investor from anywhere on - or off (looking right at you Elon Musk) - the planet, and are the permanent property of the purchaser, who may dispose of them when and as s/he likes. Supplemental Shares pay an annual dividend (on a to-be-determined schedule) of 1.5% of the face value. Citizens (or anyone really) are encouraged to invest in Supplemental Shares as extensively and often as they are able to. These initial "calculations" only apply to existing citizens at the time of UBI initiation, so a mechanism whereby parents of new citizens may affordably build a Supplemental Share fund for their children during their legal minority years will have to be considered and included in the UBI development process.

For the sake of example; stipulate that the "average" annual Social Security payment is US $20,000.00 and that the "average" period of claim is 25 years (age 65 to 90). The sum is US $500,000.00. Minus the Primary Share value of US $12,000.00 and the "average" now-living US citizen receives 488 Supplemental Shares of UBI. US $15.00 x 488 = an annual payment of US $ 7,320.00. Add to that initial purchase any other financial payments a citizen might be eligible for, and it will likely still be necessary to create an age-related discount for those between the stipulated ages at the time of UBI creation (although a mechanism to include private pension funds into Supplemental Share purchases would also prove useful I suggest - a tax reduction inducement to private pension fund providers to apply the actuarial total of expected pension payments in full at the time of UBI creation might prove helpful as well).

For UBI to be a profit-making venture (which it must be to pay dividends), the initial investment of UBI funds will be applied to the establishment of a US national electrical generating capacity of 5 terra-watts (in excess of the national generating capacity in the year 2010). The only means of doing so at this point in human history is by means of nuclear power plants (which are always subject to replacement with fusion power plants should that technology prove out as a stable power source). To permit quick development of this strategy, the President of the United States, in the capacity of Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces, will direct that these power plants will be constructed to a pre-determined design of 1,000 KWe on all existing US military reservations within the United States (to include all US territories) as a matter of National Security. Existing electrical power distribution business entities will be invited to bid on distribution of this energy at such a price per kilowatt as will exceed the forecast UBI funding requirements. Additionally, construction of a sufficient number of nuclear plants that burn "spent" nuclear fuel will also be directed as part of the power plant project (the subsequent unburnt fuel having a half-life measured in a few hundred years instead of thousands).

Additional UBI investment possibilities seem certain, but unnecessary to this presentation.

Further refinements of both the employment and the UBI parts of this strategy need to be considered, but the basics of the concept are in place. The Bezos Planetary Employment Office, working with the UBI Fund management, ensures all humans (assuming successful replication of the UBI model planet-wide - initially throughout the United States) with the means of attaining an education, applying for a job (or funding for a self-employment circumstance), training for future occupational opportunities, managing personal finance (to include UBI share management), personal health care (explicitly to include Healthy Life Extension technologies and therapies), and no doubt as many other applications as will seem likely to make the Agency shareholders (many - even most eventually - of whom take the form of UBI share investments) a regular financial profit.

Strategy Principles In Abundance

This isn't really a book review, more an observation on the ideas expressed by the authors of the book, but I encourage everyone to buy this book and study what it has to offer.  Not just read it; we all need to figure out how to personally apply as many of the concepts briefly examined there-in as we ultimately prove able to.  It's that important.

In the book, the following statement is made:

"... global living standards will continue to improve regardless of the horrors that dominate the headlines."  A Note From The Authors, pg X

Stripped of its context, this is a re-statement of a basic strategic principle that can be expressed in a digital context as information =/= knowledge.  Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler are making the explicit point that the examples of failure notwithstanding (and however horrible in practice), humanity is - and they contend has historically always been - on an inexorably rising trend of improving conditions of life.  They make this point in support of the concept of exponential growth applying to more than just our tech toys; that all of human existence is improving on the identical, inter-connected and interdependent scale as well.

In Chapter 1, Our Grandest Challenge; The Lesson Of Aluminum, pg 3-4, they make the observation:

History's littered with tales of once-rare resources made plentiful by innovation.  The reason is pretty straight-forward; scarcity is often contextual."

 A more intuitive explanation of the strategic principle of "position" I have trouble imagining.  Advancement of position is always measured against both your present condition and that of others too.  From this it can be seen that position is also always an unstable and temporary condition; a momentary measurement of a fluctuating placement within a dynamic and unceasing process.  The author's contention that this is a context that is much more subject to direct individual influence - and that our steadily improving technology only increases that degree of influence - is potentially sufficient to justify the cost of the book all in itself.

"... one of the better responses to the threat of scarcity is not to try to slice our pie thinner - rather it's to figure out how to make more pies."   Chapter 1, Our Grandest Challenge, The Limits To Growth; pg 9

 In rhetoric, there is a technique I've seen identified as framing the argument.  By delineating the boundaries within which discussion is limited, the outcome of the exchange can be predictably controlled.  Classical strategy has it that you must control the context of possibility as to which positional advancement tactics are permissible.  Strategy has an internal ethic, but this is as akin to morality as a kiss is to rape (they're both inter-active human behavior, but ...).   Holding up the potential for less pie per capita may well be ethical behavior, but the more moral positional advancement is to actualize the capability for more of us to make pies instead (hopefully so as to offer some to us all at less cost per bite).

"One reason abundance remains hard to accept is because we live in an extraordinarily uncertain world, and decision making in the face of uncertainty is never easy.  In a perfectly rational world, when given a choice, we would asses the probability and the utility of all possible outcomes and then combine these two to make our call.  But humans rarely have all the facts, we can't possibly know all the outcomes, and - even if we did - we have neither the temporal flexibility nor the neurological capacity to analyze all the data.  Rather, our decisions are made based on limited, often unreliable, information, and further hampered by internal limits (the brain's processing power) and external limits (the time constraints under which we have to make our decision).  So we have developed an unconscious strategy, a problem-solving aid for just such situations: we rely upon heuristics."  Chapter 3, Seeing The Forest Through The Trees, Cognitive Biases, pg 29

 In the world we actually live in, some 3,500 years ago someone developed a methodology that assumed both uncertainty and the absence of complete (or even reliable) knowledge upon which to base decisions.  Upon occasion I have the amusing conceit to think that Sun Tzu may well have been simply the most observant guy of his fellow humans behavior to have ever existed, and that his famous treatise may in fact be the oldest surviving example of an effective job application known to human history.  That bit of hubris notwithstanding, I do know that the principles of strategy he recorded offer a far more consistent and broadly applicable standard upon which to base decision making then any possible format of qualified guesses possibly could reliably achieve.  I'm not dismissing heuristics, knowing what you don't know is valuable; maybe a conscious strategy would be a better choice, that's all.

I firmly believe that we are capable of developing technology that deliberately applies the principles of classical strategy to our knowledge base so as to vastly improve our individual capability to quantifiably apply that to our decision making process as a matter of routine.  If all of our major choices (those which we spend time and effort deciding - the ones not having an intuitive answer immediately apparent) were the result of a data search of all pertinent information, ranked by a series of hierarchies to arrive at a select number of choices with predetermined probabilities of result, then we all become much more capable of providing for our individual wants and needs through our own arrangements.  This presents an obvious source of conflict of course.

Diamandis and Kotler seem to be comfortable in the belief that networks of users of technology will accrete naturally.  While true enough, this position leaves the direction of such growth far too susceptible to destructive (or merely oppositional) forces influence.  My belief is that such user networks deserve nurturing and promotion in their growth process; in direction, in speed and in the very nature of that growth.  People should be be made aware of the increased possibility for their personal development, be directed to the means of doing so achievable from their circumstance and taught the philosophical values and standards appropriate to the safe usage of technology.  I will write more on this in another post, but I believe Peter Diamandis in particular needs to re-evaluate his apparent position on the development of networks, both in light of the individuals safety as well as the effect such networks have on peaceably ..., err, encouraging political hierarchies to modify existing legislative structures so as to better allow for ease of technology advancement that undeniably disrupts historical technology-based social and economic arrangements.  I submit that such networks can provide a reinforcement of the efforts exerted by organizations such as his own X-Prize Foundation in achieving positive societal change.

On Strategy

The invaluable Al Fin blog has a post up titled The 48 Laws Of Power ... which lay out in synopsis fashion the 48 "laws" of strategy as defined by Robert Greene.  In the comments I pointed out how contradictory Mr. Greene's "laws" are and was invited by the Al Fin blogger to point out other works that I think better describe the precepts of strategic thought.  In an effort to avoid tl;dr in their comments at least, I opted to do all that here instead.

You takes your blog fodder where you finds it I suppose.

For the purposes of this post, I stipulate that Mr. Greene wasn't practicing original scholarship, but attempted to combine different schools of strategic thought into one book (as suggested in the same Al Fin comment stream).

There are basically two formats to presenting strategy, the classical circular structure and the western tradition of linear thinking.  Both have their advantages in detail, but the classical structure - while initially confusing to modern cause-and-effect thinking - offers the more coherent format over the broadest range of application of the fundamentals of the subject.

In the western tradition, strategy is commonly regarded as either a military or political function (and frequently some combination of those).  Clausewitz wrote to a military audience about the force multiplying benefits of logistics as a separate military specialization, particularly as applied to field artillery in support of infantry in both fixed as well as mobile operations.  Necessarily, this involved some examination of the requirements of obtaining political support of what a modern soldier would immediately recognize as a combined arms unit (then a rather novel concept).  Military units are structured for top-down command and are plotted in a pyramidal format.  Not coincidentally, strategies for using such forces are also laid out in the same limited context format.  This may produce effective combat units, but it seriously warps the applicability of the underlying concepts in other applications.

Students of strategy are remiss if they ignore Clausewitz though, his study of strategic principles in a tightly focused application is still the seminal examination of how such processes improve even a highly structured environment, particularly during chaotic events.

In the more overtly political arena can be found that other primary source of western strategic thought, Niccolo Machiavelli.  The Florentine's third book The Art Of War is more a philosophical study of the strategy of warfare than of actual strategy, its titular claim notwithstanding.  Taken together, The Prince and The Discourses offer a much better study of the justifications behind many strategic principles, but even these don't spend nearly enough narrative on the structure and inter-related nature of the actual principles themselves.

So we come to Sun Tzu.  Frankly, I find most translations of his The Art Of War to be nearly as inscrutable as the original text.  As a result, I cannot recommend strongly enough the work of Gary Gagliardi (pronounced "gah-lar-dy").  The Amazon page dedicated to his work has a decent bio of his qualifications along with (big surprise) links to many of his books examining how classical strategy applies to achieving understanding and success in a variety of ordinary human activity.  As a starting point, I recommend The Golden Key To Strategy or possibly The Bing-Fa, Martial Arts Strategy for those more inclined toward or experienced in martial arts either military or sport.  Almost any of Gary's business-oriented books will take the reader through the identical principles in that setting, as will The Art Of War + The Art Of Love in a personal context.

As can be seen, my assertion that classical strategy applies to all aspects of human activity isn't quite as unlikely as might be supposed.

Anyone just beginning a study of classical strategy would benefit from Gary's website, but the basic insight that classical strategy is conceived and presented as a circular whole, that chapter 1 takes off from the principles described in chapter 13, will help a reader new to Sun Tzu experience at least somewhat less initial confusion.  Classical strategy is  - pardon the seeming hippietude - a holistic concept that requires recognition that every principle is moderated and empowered by the context within which every other principle is applied.  It's not as confusing as all that might make it appear, but it can seem complex at first acquaintance.

My thanks to Al Fin for the inspiration to flail away on my favorite hobby horse; I call myself a student of strategy mostly because I long ago recognized I will never master the subject.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I suppose I should mention that I first started blogging at Gary's old strategy site (see here for an archival sample of my supposed insight :)), but I have no involvement with his current site or work nor do I receive compensation from any sales he may garner from my recommendations of his work, FTC disclaimer, yada yada, etc ...

http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2012/06/48-laws-of-power-and-other-secret.html

Hot Off The Presses

RobertaX is test marketing a novelization of her sf stories I Work On A Starship. I've read several installments over the last couple years (or so; who keeps track of their casual reading schedule?) and I must say the lady has the story-teller's gift.

Definitely worth a double sawbuck; go check it out.

Reading List

I am currently reading REVOLUTIONARY CHARACTERS - What Made The Founders Different by Gordon S. Wood. Consisting of a series of relatively brief essays, this book briefly examines the actual individual as recorded in primary source documents and the subsequent historical treatment each has cumulatively received; the combination of which reveals the often contradictory understanding of both the person and the legacy's influence on modern American life.

One of the themes I find myself repeating on these pages is that of the importance of "context" to attaining understanding. Of anything; person, place or event whether historical, current or hypothetical. Mr. Wood makes excellent effort to provide the context both for the historical subject and the subsequent treatment each has received over the intervening centuries of scholarly examination. How we view their respective legacies and interpret their relevance to present concerns continues to influence modern society. This book offers a quickly achieved degree of perspective on the attributes of America's formative generation.

When we allow ourselves the odd moment of impartial honesty, I suspect that even the most ideologically driven of us are willing to acknowledge the complex nature of those who inhabit and motivate our world today. Even so, we all need to acknowledge that those men (and the women who interacted with them) who connived to create our country were also complex and inconsistent too. No matter how compelled we might feel to use some aspect of their contribution to justify some position we seek to advance, we should acknowledge the contextual circumstance that inspired the original. Should such prove to lessen the argument we promote, perhaps a better argument needs crafting rather than yet another casual historical revision or misstatement. Revolutionary Characters offers much insight into achieving better understanding of the people and concepts which created the United States and how that entity subsequently evolved into the country we populate today. I recommend it strongly.