There is a law somewhere about rewards and punishments. It states that there are three dimensions of the outcome of an action:

• positive or negative
• immediate or delayed
• certain or uncertain

The most powerful motivator is positive, immediate, and certain. The second most is, I think, negative, immediate, and certain.

For sure the weakest motivator is an outcome that is negative, delayed, and uncertain.
“Wait till your father gets home” comes to mind.

Supposedly we get the kind of government we deserve. I am not sure I believe that. I don’t think the conscripts in Viet Nam deserved the government that sent them there, nor the PTSD veterans of failed experiments in regime change (Iraq, Afghanistan, and others.)

We get the government, and economic system, that we allow to be built up around us over years, decades even. It’s the ‘boil the frog’ technique. Each little bit of dismantling of protection for the common citizen goes more or less un-noticed. (I might remark here that the dismantling of protections that led to the 2008 crash also went under the radar for too many of us, although there were lots of warnings from newspaper columnists like Paul Krugman.)

So now our American friends have an electoral system within an economic system that systematically (pun intended) robs the poor to pay the rich, and lobbies the voters with some of that money. (I might mention the redrawing of voting boundaries in Texas, which is credited with W’s second term victory by some. There are a lot of ways to use influence to magnify that influence.)

So now we are six weeks, more or less, from the ‘moment of truth.’ But the actual reward / result of the American election will be delayed a couple of months more, and will unfold for perhaps four years or so. The effects may last indefinitely. Canada cannot possibly be immune to this, nor can any other ally or trading partner of the USA.

I predict that the result of the election of the next president of the United States of America will be delayed, and negative. Right now it appears to be uncertain as well.

Which means, given the ‘law’ I started this entry with, we won’t learn much from it.

Is that what we deserve? (That’s not a dumb question.)

I haven’t done a Laws List post for ages. My personal ‘list’ is quite long, and reflects a lifetime of employment and (cynical, sometimes) observation of business, people, and politics. So here are a few quickies:

• One is the magic number. In electronic data processing, if you have the same information in two places, they will get different. Even more daunting, if you have them in different presentation formats, you will have instances that cannot be converted to the other format.
  This generalizes. Anything that can be updated, should be in one place or have one master instance which is used to update the other copies.
• Never tryst a salesman. They are trickier than they appear.
  This generalizes. Don’t screw around with any being more powerful and less socially constrained than you are.
• Spaghetti code should be replaced. You won’t get much argument in the data processing world: a program that has been modified into utter confusion can’t easily be maintained, and eventually rewriting more than pays for itself. Once intellectual control – the ability of a reasonable brain to understand the material – has been lost, you don’t really know what you’re doing when you make changes.
  This generalizes. Law is spaghetti code, and requires expensive experts to tell those subject to its bizarre execution gymnastics, exactly what is happening. As for knowing what you’re doing while making changes, I’ve seen quotes of legislators who, when asked what a law they just passed meant, replied: “We’ll have to wait and see what the courts decide.”
  That, to me, sounds like, “Run the program and see if it crashes; if not, check the results.”
• Subways, subways, subways. I’ve covered some of this in a later post. What the ‘law’ might better state is, mantra-like statements aren’t necessarily statesman-like statements. This generalizes, but if you absorb any news during campaigns or debates, you already know about that.
• Check the accounting before the bonuses go out. The recent example of the Toronto, Ontario, Canada Pan Am Games is a case in point. Bonuses were awarded for being on time and under budget. After the bonuses were awarded, additional costs were exposed for us taxpayers to cover.
  This generalizes in many cynical directions. The WHO is a friend of the IOC and says it’s perfectly fine to have thousands converge to, and return home from, and area with Zika virus infections and heavily polluted watersports venues.
  The IOC, and all games-controlling organizations, promise wonderful benefits, bonus their executives, and leave, usually, the host nation and city with debt and unused one-time facilities.
  And they seem not to care about any fall-out.

Any convenience becomes a necessity. This idea appears in the Unabomber’s Manifesto. Actually, it generalizes thus: anything that is always present, becomes a necessity.

Some examples from biology may clarify this view.

Oxygen was, originally, a poison, and mitochondria are derived from specialized bacteria-like organisms that could use oxygen to create safer forms of chemical energy.

Milkweed sap is toxic to insects. However, monarch butterfly larvae developed an immunity and carry the toxin as adults. Thus birds learn that monarchs taste bad and leave them alone.

The viceroy, and other Batesian mimics of monarchs, benefit from looking similar to an insect that can eat a plant they cannot. They have evolved to copy enough of the monarch’s pattern to benefit from it. Clearly the mimics have no idea of how this selection is acting on them, generation after generation.

So, anything that is always present, becomes a necessity. On to point two.

Don’t do bailouts if you’re not prepared to keep doing them. Like a blackmail victim, by being always present, you become a necessity.

In particular, don’t bail out your adult children. To do so begins serving, and it’s a life sentence.

Training wheels create dependencies that can be overcome. Provided there is social force and motivation to do so.

NGO (Non-Government Organizations) can become training wheels.

There is an anecdote in one of Fred Reinfeld’s wonderful chess books. Apparently a neophyte is astride a spirited horse. In its antics, the animal somehow got one of its own hooves stuck in the stirrup. Said the tyro on looking down: ‘If you’re getting on, then I’m getting off!’ Reinfeld’s point was, in a chess game, amateurs give up space because their opponent decides to occupy and control them – perhaps an open file, or a key square in the centre.

Similarly, timid governments give up being active in areas where others are possibly able to out-do them, even if only temporarily.

Time to tie this all together, eh?

In countries like Haiti, NGOs are like training wheels. They are always there. They create dependencies. The government looks down and says, if you’re getting on, I’m getting off.

NGOs in Haiti have been spectacularly unsuccessful. It’s been four long years of limited progress. Here you can find one example of what it’s like there. Let me give you a few facts from this imho self-serving web page:

• cholera incidence has dropped 50% (not to zero? Why not?)
• 817,000 Haitians still need humanitarian assistance

Clearly the Haitians have no idea how the politicians and NGOs are selecting their living conditions for them.

Real governments should take off the training wheels. Responsible governments should be aware of the poisoned apple and not accept ineffective aid over and over again. Organizations that really want to help should, as part of their charter, state  their goals to include these:

• to generate self-sufficiency in the aided country
• to make themselves, eventually, unneeded, in the aided country

Instead, it’s a culture of training wheels, and of delegated responsibility.