Systems of Survival

Jane Jacobs is better know by her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" but Systems of Survival is her masterpiece on morality. 

Different from her previous work Systems of Survival is written as a dialogue which is interesting in itself. Each character represent a different point of view and together they develop, through a series of socratic dialogues and research, a moral system that answers the initial quest of a systemic thinking about morality in practical working life. 

Jacobs calls these frameworks syndrome not as a type of illness but "it comes from the Greek, meaning 'things that run together'. We customarily use it to mean a group of symptoms that characterize a given condition." In other words these systems represent a whole set of precepts to address how people solve their living problems.

"My hypothesis is that we have two contradictory ways of getting a living; therefore we have two contradictory moral syndromes, one to suit each way and its derivatives."

"I've come to think of the two moral syndromes as survival systems, worked out by long experience of with trading, on the one hand, and taking on the other"

These syndromes are the Guardian and the Commercial

Moral Precepts
Guardian Syndrome	Commercial Syndrome
Shun trading Exert prowess Be obedient and disciplined Adhere to tradition Respect hierarchy Be loyal Take vengeance Deceive for the sake of the task Make rich use of leisure Be ostentatious Dispense largesse Be exclusive Show fortitude Be fatalistic Treasure honor	Shun force Compete Be efficient Be open to inventiveness and novelty Use initiative and enterprise Come to voluntary agreements Respect contracts Dissent for the sake of the task Be industrious Be thrifty Invest for productive purposes Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens Promote comfort and convenience Be optimistic Be honest

For Jacobs both systems or syndromes are natural and needed. However they can be corrupted by crossing the boundaries that separate them. Through a historic analysis the characters uncover these two syndromes, how the corruption made them fail and how has societies kept them separated.  Historically, to keep the two syndromes confined and moral integrity, we either use a cast regime or a rational moral flexibility. The group lean for an imperfect moral flexibility over the cast system.

"If it is true we're the only creatures with two fundamentally different ways of getting a living, it follows that to be as fully human as we can be, we should all be capable of using our two syndromes well. They belong to all of us because we are human, no other reason." 

"Every normal person the world over is inherently capable of both trading and taking..... But knowing when it's appropriate to use the one or the other approach, trading or taking, and how to do it properly - those things are culturally learned, mostly by imitation and practice."

Jane Jacobs' conclusions of Systems of Survival is that "the guardian-commercial symbiosis that combats force, fraud, and unconscionable greed in commerce life - and simultaneously impels guardians to respect private plans, private property, and personal rights. ... Perhaps we have a useful definition of civilization: reasonably workable guardian-commercial symbiosis"

Progress

Johan Norberg offers a recount of how the world is much better today than anytime in history. Progress covers different facets of human life. 

• Food 
• Sanitation
• Life expectancy
• Poverty
• Violence
• Environment
• Literacy
• Equality
• Childhood (Next generation)

In all of these Norberg lays out evidence on how, thanks to values of the Enlightenment and their implementation in capitalism and liberalism, life has dramatically improved. Only this system allowed amazing progress  while sustained a huge population growth.

"Between 1950 and 2011 world population grew from 2.5 to seven billion. This did not happen because people in poor countries started breeding like rabbits, as people sometimes assumed; it happened because they stopped dying like flies. But it did not take long until families started adapting. As parents came to realize that their children were less likely to die young, they stopped having as many babies."

There are still battles to win but instead of turning our backs to the causes of progress we should defend and embrace them.

Progress is a book about optimism, its Johan Norberg's invitation to move forward instead of sit to complaint and cry.

Permanent Record

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden

"The closest thing to science fiction I've ever seen in science fact" - Edward Snowden

The Future of Humanity

Michio Kaku is a physicist better know as a popularizer of science after his multiple TV shows, digital media presence and nine books. The Future of Humanity is his latest work (2018) and is a futuristic effort placed way ahead in the future.

With such long time frame, Kaku can speculate anything, but he cleverly connects it with the ideas of the present. This is the main take away from the book.

On one side The Future of Humanity is about unthinkable dreams, on the other the challenges that the laws of physics impose. "there is one thing that even alien civilizations will have to obey, and that is the laws of physics." 

With these yes-but and what-if games Kaku takes the reader to the farthest spots in the universe while explaining why leaving Earth is not as easy as Hollywood makes it seem.

The starting point of The Future of Humanity is that our species "sooner or later will face global crises that threaten our very existence", and hence we have the incentives to migrate to outer worlds. Despite the hazards that we may face, Kaku consideres the drive to adventure and exploration part of the human nature. Is it? maybe not but we can't ignore that we don't need the whole species to agree. with just a few entrepreneurs (i.e. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson) suffice. How difficult interplanetary transportation really is? How soon will it occur? How can it be, physically or just pure information? It is almost impossible to speculate about these questions without entering into more philosophical questions like what is consciousness  "Consciousness, I claim, is the process of creating a model of yourself using multiple feedback loops—for example, in space, in society, or in time—in order to carry out a goal."

For Kaku the Future of Humanity depends on our own civilization evolution. Unless we reach at least a Type I Kardashev civilization level intergalactic travel is only a dream. A Type I civilization will require new organizational rules. Our current models are incapable of such challenges. Kaku concurs with Elon Musk when he said:

"Elon Musk has speculated that, as civilizations master advanced technology, they develop the power to destroy themselves and that the biggest threat facing a Type I civilization may be a self-inflicted one."

The Future of Humanity has an optimistic tone. The broad range of innovations in healthcare, communications, energy, etc. that we see today are the seeds of a future that is still only possible in the minds of these futurists and entrepreneurs. Are we going beyond the limite of how much resources we can dedicate to a single quest? Kaku doesn't answer key questions like who will coordinate the necessary efforts? A global government? Who will pay of it? Not even the ultrarich have enough, is tax-payers money involved? What about other day to day priorities like deseases, poverty, etc. Who is going and who is staying? Who is up to decide? Is it wise to spend huge amounts of resources and energy in these endeavors?

Is The Future of Humanity to please the masses or is it a book to take seriously? Time will tell. 

Tiempos Recios

Tiempos Recios es una novela histórica ubicada en Guatemala del principio de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. La proximidad histórica, geográfica y personal a los hechos que dan marco a la novela sumado a la reconocida calidad de Mario Vargas Llosa la hace interesante de entrada. 

Literariamente, Vargas Llosa cuenta una historia rica en personajes, detalles, con movimientos bruscos de tiempo que a veces confunden al lector, pero no tanto como para asustarlo mas para mantenerlo conectado. Sobresale el esfuerzo del autor peruano por usar modismos chapines lo que hace que la historia sea aún más sensacional.

Tiempos Recios es más la historia de Martita Borrero la Miss Guatemala que nunca fue y del dominicano Johnny Abbes, operador del dictador Trujillo. Dos vidas complicadas que se cruzan con un interés común. La historia del Coronel Jacobo Arbenz, de la mal llamada Primavera Democrática, del movimiento de Liberación Nacional y el Coronel Carlos Castillo Armas, y la United Fruit Company van construyendo el laberinto por donde se desenvuelven las vidas de los personajes.

Si bien es cierto que Vargas Llosa hizo su tarea por entender los hechos de la época, él mismo aclara que no es su intensión narrar la historia como hechos verídicos. Es así que Tiempos Recios no es una respuesta al debate de lo que realmente ocurrió en Guatemala en aquellos años. No se puede negar la situación general del juego geopolítico de la época. Siendo una historia bien hilvanada y en un contexto próximo es fácil caer en la tentación de creer todo lo que dice. Según se sabe lo que entusiasmó a Vargas Llosa con la historia de la Guatemala del medio siglo XX fue su conexión con Trujillo y la posibilidad de hacer una especie de secuela de La Fiesta Del Chivo. Es comprensible que prefiera las teorías que refuerzan esta conexión. Para más información ver  Vida y magnicidio de Carlos Castillo Armas de Rolando Girón Romero.

Tiempos Recios nos recuerda lo complejo que fueron aquellos años, pero no por ello debemos olvidar que es una novela y por lo mismo Mario Vargas Llosa tiene licencia para llenar con creatividad los vacíos históricos, de elegir las interpretaciones que más ayuden a la trama e incluso a cambiar los hechos para mantener al lector pegado al libro. 

Humanomics

Vernon Smith, Nobel prize winner 2002, and Bart Wilson are renowned experimental economists. They faced an apparent contradiction when neoclassical utility maximization or Max-U model, that explained perfectly well supply-and-demand market experiments, failed in two-person games. Behavioral and experimental economists explained the differences ex-post as "social preferences".

Humanomics is a neologism in reference to the study of the human problem as both personal social and impersonal economic.

Morality is an emergent order based on the will of the people to seek praise and praiseworthiness and avoid blame and blameworthiness. "In Adam Smith's model of human social conduct, actions are governed by context-dependent rules based on experience and human capacity for mutual sympathetic fellow-feeling". In other words, humans have the capacity to extract the accepted rules by observing and feeling others around.

None of the authors, including Adam Smith, are experts on play but it is striking how they recognize and fit the role of play in children to understand the moral rule set.

"The child naturally wishes to gain their favour, and to avoid their hatred or contempt... and it soon finds that it can do so in no other way than by moderating, not only its anger, but all its other passions, to the degree which its play-fellows and companions are likely to be pleased with."

The capacity to understand the moral rules is context free but the rules in themselves are context relevant. Societies flourish when that mutual support is provided in the reciprocity of gratitud and friendship bound together in good offices of affection and esteem". Societies thrive when their rules promote cooperation, exchange and mutual respect.

One key takeaway from Humanomics is that human behavior follows some general rules on how rules are set, yet the specific rules are different based on time and context. Therefore, we can't use the same rule set to evaluate two different results. But we can identify some common denominators in functional system vs dysfunctional ones.

"When dealing with human beings, we must get comfortable with the imprecision of our humanity"

Smith and Wilson coded Adam Smith's ideas in a series of Axioms and Principles, summarized by Leonel Morales, "One aim in restating Smith's propositions as we do is to spell out the simplicity and universality with which he can be read".

Smith and Wilson proceed to analyze some classical games and see how these axioms and principles can explain the results, opposite to the failure of Max-U and behavioral economics. Finally they use Adam Smith's theory to predict the outcome of a new set of games. 

For the authors Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments is a better model to explain how people interact. The analysis also closes the apparent gap between the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. 

"His project in Sentiments is to address how moral conduct emerges out of human interactive experience to form a system of general rules that wisely order society. In Wealth he extends that system to markets and national economy to enable a better understanding of the sources and evolution of the economic order."

The Relationship Economy

The Relationship Economy is an interesting book, nonetheless a mix of Customer Service ideas and DiJulius Group advertising. 

DiJulius highlights the importance of customer relationship in all facets of business; customers, employees, leadership,  human interaction in general.

Some ideas worth highlighting are the importance of service as a true differentiation factor. Most vendors of any product or service meet pretty well the requirements of the market, hence what becomes the true loyalty driver is service. 

"Customer Loyalty is a result of the multiple micro-experiences a person has with a brand. It reflects the fact that not only is that business consistently brilliant a the basics, but also that it has taught all its employees to be present in the moment at each of its touch points." 

Another one is the FORD (Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams) technique as a tool to foster relationships.  "FORD represents people's hot buttons, what each individual cares about the most. FORD is what they are passionate about. It is the topics that make them light up."

A corollary of the FORD technique is accepting Kalina Silverman   invitation to skip the Small Talk for the Big Talk to connect with anyone. 

Some closing remarks worth sharing: "World-class service is not something you do or deliver; it is something that is in you, in all areas of your life".