Category Archives: Culture

Health Industry not immune from AI

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The ViVE health tech conference was held in South Florida this week, with some clear themes emerging. All the worrisome things like privacy, intimacy, database diagnostics, venture capital investments and automated insurance-diagnostics-limited-options all were on the table. Oh, by the way, meet your new floor nurse (on the left conversing with a physician). Warm, caring, compassionate human nurses will be missed.

Mariner visited a sick friend today and barely could climb through cables, monitors, banks of wall plugs and the patient‘s arm loaded with tubes and monitors. The only visitors to the room were a social worker and nurses who tended sheets and cleanup generally.  Mariner felt like he was in the switch room in Matrix – with Big Brother watching through squinty backlit eyes.

The automated nurse will roll into the room. Through electronic receivers, (she?) will read all the stuff running in the room, the demeanor of the patient, turn around and roll out. While it wasn’t clear in the description, it is likely the nurse also can automatically modify doses and other treatments. One must make a choice whether to trust more a robot using database generalizations for treatment, or a human doctor influenced by unusual circumstances or moral convictions.

But on to the big picture: the confrontation between medical automation, the fractured perception of benefits for a job world that is dramatically changing, the vagaries of capitalism, and elected governments with their heads where the Sun don’t shine.

Just to assure the reader that there WILL be change, the Republicans are pushing two bills that would eliminate Social Security and Medicare. This in a world where a relative of mariner’s broke their ankle and was billed $40,000 and a world where mariner was offered a prescription for $10,000 per month. The Republicans are attempting to remove government cost from a runaway capital gains medical system but don’t care if the cost wipes out financial security for anyone unlucky enough to need medical care.

As abstruse as it may seem, our governments should look at ways to disassociate medical benefits from salary/age altogether. It’s another post to discuss that Presidential candidate Andrew Yang advocated a $1,000 dole to every citizen but there is an imminent shift coming to the US workforce because of artificial intelligence and a significant benefit at risk is healthcare.

As usual, mariner is quick to provide a metaphor.

The metaphor is about how customers tip restaurant waiters and waitresses. If a waiter works in a restaurant similar to Denny’s, breakfast may cost as little as $5.00. If the waiter receives a 20 percent tip, it amounts to $1.00. If the waiter works the lunch shift, the meal may cost $9.00 so a 20 percent tip would be $1.80 – for the same amount of work and skill. If the waiter works the dinner shift, dinner may cost $14.00 so the 20 percent tip would come to $2.80 – for the same amount of work and skill.

Consider the tip to be a healthcare benefit. If one is lucky enough to have better insurance, the fears of health liability are less worrisome. However, metaphorically speaking the vast majority of folks serve breakfast and face devastating circumstances from illness or assisted living.

As it turns out, artificial intelligence will move hundreds of thousands of folks into breakfast tip amounts and therefore healthcare is a much larger, much more moral issue than it is today.

The fat cats wanting to invest at the Florida conference would not like to have standardized healthcare costs – like Social Security and Medicare.

Incidentally, both mariner’s children worked in restaurants. They told mariner never to tip less than $5.00. It has something to do with awarding dignity.

Ancient Mariner

Happenin’s

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֎ Women – Economist Magazine released statistics that rank nations by whether the circumstances are better for working women. The United States ranked 20th.

֎Russia – With the world glued to the crisis in Ukraine, are Americans troubled by the geopolitical scene? Even before Russia invaded the country, 52% of Americans said the conflict in Ukraine is a critical threat to U.S. vital interests. Negative perceptions of Russia are at a record high, with 85% of Americans viewing the nation unfavorably — up from 25% in 2003 and slightly edging out China at 79%, although China still is most likely to be viewed as the U.S.’s greatest enemy.

֎ China – The Chinese government is scrubbing the country’s internet of sympathetic or accurate coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is systematically amplifying pro-Putin talking points. Chinese media outlets were told to avoid posting “anything unfavorable to Russia or pro-Western” on their social media accounts, and to only use hashtags started by Chinese state media outlets.

֎ US Supreme Court – In a victory for Democrats, the Supreme Court has turned away efforts from Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to block state court-ordered congressional districting plans. In separate orders late Monday, the justices are allowing maps selected by each state’s Supreme Court to be in effect for the 2022 elections. Those maps are more favorable to Democrats than the ones drawn by the states’ legislatures. In North Carolina, the map most likely will give Democrats an additional House seat in 2023.

֎ Atlanta Georgia – Researchers say a large spider native to East Asia that proliferated in Georgia last year could spread to much of the East Coast. The Joro spider’s golden web took over yards all over north Georgia in 2021, unnerving some residents. The spider was also spotted in South Carolina, and entomologists expected it to spread throughout the Southeast.

Researchers at the University of Georgia said in a new study it could spread even farther than that. The Joro appears better suited to colder temperatures than a related species.

֎ Airbnb said it would offer free housing to up to 100,000 people fleeing Ukraine. This is not the first time Airbnb has provided free housing. Last summer, the company also gave free, temporary housing to Afghan refugees while tens of thousands of people fled Kabul.

Airbnb is already getting a ton of support for Ukraine. As of Sunday, CEO Brian Chesky said that more than 11,000 hosts signed up to offer their homes to Ukrainians in need.

֎ Grocery stores – The humble grocery store might soon be a thing of the past. The new Whole Foods location in Washington, D.C., is showing off its techy side: It’s run by tracking and robotic tools like Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. Cameras — not employees — follow you around while you’re shopping. When you walk out of the store, Amazon emails you a receipt, which tells you how long you shopped and how much you owe. If this sounds familiar, it’s because a lot of this tech already is used in Amazon Go convenience stores, but this is one of the first times it will be used in a 21,000-square-foot store.

֎ Mariner’s County, Iowa – Mariner recently wrote a post about the idea that government should manage ‘dignity’ rather than defensive procedures that protect ‘rights’. Mariner identified the rich citizens and the old citizens as the problem but perhaps the government itself may not be aware of the dignity its citizens deserve. Recently, mariner’s wife, a post graduate degreed librarian with over thirty years experience in research, had great difficulty determining which district in the county she and mariner were part of. Here is her accounting:

I googled districts for our County and got their website.  It did not list the Districts.  I googled for our County Iowa district maps and found cities and towns but could not find districts.   I googled supervisors of our County, Iowa and got a very straightforward explanation of who the supervisors are, their terms of service and the districts they serve, but no indication of where those districts are located.  I googled my city and got a list of services for residents, and government information for new residents–but no district map.  I eventually found a site but even now, going back, I can’t retrace my steps to find it again.

Now here’s the thing–I am a reasonably literate person with access to a computer and some skill in research.  I found it very interesting and frustrating that this information is not readily available to citizens.  I am sure that I am not the only one who does not know what district I live in.  Is it some kind of secret?  And why would it be a secret in a land where the government is the people–not the parties, not the people in power, but everyday people like me.  I don’t want to think that it is because the parties in power are just as happy to keep everyone else out of the loop.  I would think they are eager to share the information if only people would ask.  But how many people are going to call their local supervisor, who they don’t even know, and admit they don’t know the most basic information about their government?

I suggest that the everyday people need more civic education if we are going to understand our government and vote responsibly.  In this world of multimedia resources at our fingertips, isn’t it interesting that I have to struggle to find out what district I live in?  —

Does the reader know the specific county voting district they live in? Their district representative’s name? Does the District care if you don’t?

Ancient Mariner

Is ‘Dignity’ the actual engine supporting ‘Democracy’?

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Mariner is reading a book, Dignity in a Digital Age, published recently and written by Congressman Ro Khanna (D-17th District CA, AKA Silicon Valley). Rep. Khanna takes a two-fold position to resolve much of the unrest that disturbs politics, society and industry in the United States. First, he proposes that the formation of national policy be loosened from Washington D.C and spread among the population. Second, Khanna proposes that the intended purpose of the nation, its industries and society in general is to use the democratic process to promote dignity rather than to protect by legislated procedure.

This last point caught mariner’s interest because, along with many others, he believes Donald came to power because the labor class was not part of the success story of the United States. Despite personal business success, career prestige and a critical role in daily life, without a college degree American society felt labor careers did not represent success in life or have critical importance to society.

A major contribution to this prejudice occurred under Reagan economic policies which allowed corporations to send labor jobs to other countries with lower production costs and otherwise disassembled the financial security found in guaranteed full retirement, labor representation and other benefits. To this day, Labor makes less versus the Consumer Price Index than it did in 1980.

Back to the first point that national policy should be influenced more directly by the citizenry, it is true that policy influence has been drawn to Washington like gravity draws a rock to the ground. Now under the influence of an entrenched plutocracy, it is money that reflects dignity rather being a voting citizen. Khanna spends much of his book philosophizing about how all the components of society should help shape major policies. Mariner feels philosophy alone will not do the trick.

Under the original Constitution created in 1778-9, the Federal Government had to manage a nation with vast, unknown, empty spaces. The population of the Nation was 38.5 million. Today it is 331 million with fifty local governments. Yet the US Senate retains its original configuration of two senators per state. State governments are allowed to modify Federal elections – a necessary authority before trains and before organized Federal agencies could manage locally.

In 1780 the life expectancy was approximately 50 excluding 15 percent child mortality. Today government leaders live well into their eighties – far beyond the life expectancy of their childhood culture, which is approximately 60 years. Between the blindly rich and the culturally blind, it is no wonder no one knows how to promote dignity.

Mariner feels that before Congressman Khanna can modify policy influence to represent a cultural dignity, shudder, cringe, a Constitutional Convention will have to rewrite an outdated Constitution. If the convention does occur, thank goodness the old Constitution says we are allowed to own and bear arms!

Ancient Mariner

 

Democracy

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The issue is the precarious balance of democracy in the world’s most noted democracy. Serious, lengthy articles are beginning to appear in several web news and print sources led by an Atlantic Magazine article written by Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former U.S. senator and secretary of state and Dan Schwerin, a co-founder of Evergreen Strategy Group. He served in the White House and the State Department. Here an opening paragraph:

“The scope of that wider struggle was on vivid display on February 4. In Beijing, the world’s two most powerful autocrats—Putin and China’s Xi Jinping—cemented their deepening alliance. In the United States, where American leaders should have been unified in championing democracy against these aggressive adversaries, the opposite happened: The Republican National Committee formally declared the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021, to be “legitimate political discourse.”

That the Republican Party continues their irrational support of Trumpian autocracy should warn the electorate about attacks on the way the United States operates. The Republican Party has not dropped Donald but has embraced him for the 2024 election. Ten states have shifted power over elections to partisan agencies. Gerrymandering continues to rob citizens of the principle ‘one person, one vote’. The IRS has been stripped of employees to the extent the agency can’t afford to investigate the complex returns of the oligarchy. Under the guise of budget, the US Post Office pulled hundreds of mailboxes off the street during the 2020 election. During this century both political parties have failed to protect the average citizen from venture capitalists who have destroyed thousands of low income homes so that expensive apartments and businesses have space to build. Children are open targets for murder because gun laws have been quashed. For the past fifty years the culture of police departments has shifted from a peacekeeping force to a military force.

The health industry continues to limit the number of doctors that can complete studies each year. Pharmacies are charging Americans four to ten times what they charge other nations. The oil industry has essentially shut down climate change intentions. And on and on . . .

Let’s face it. The United States is broken. Not only is it broken, autocratic interests are intent on taking the nation down for good.

Not since the Civil War has each and every vote been so critical to save the principles of a free democracy.

Ancient Mariner

Contemporary Experiences

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֎ Mariner had his first conversation with a relative of Nadine. Her name is Marisol; he had a chat with her today about Medicare coverage. Mariner didn’t see her face because it was a chat format but she understood context well enough to narrow the conversation to his specific question. Essentially, Marisol did mariner’s internet search for him. She sent mariner to a specific web address that answered his specific question. Hmmm, mariner wonders what she looks like . . .

֎ Mariner reads several websites that study America’s culture and its values. He noticed that two different sources were doing in-depth studies on how Americans feel about their personal quality of life in today’s unsettled society. The websites get their information through polling and interviews.

The redundant point from both sites is that there is a firm separation between citizens with college degrees and citizens without college degrees. College graduates are far less satisfied with the state of affairs in the world and in the United States – to the point that they have little confidence in satisfactory lives for their children and for their own retirement.

For their future, citizens without college degrees felt more comfortable with their personal circumstances. Both websites made assumptions about the source of satisfaction for each group: College graduates tend to work at jobs that are entwined in broader aspects of the economy and with multiple perspectives on society; further, the graduates feel an obligation to pursue a continuous effort at achievement [mariner recently used the term ‘aspirational’ as an earmark of the Democratic Party].

Citizens without a college degree tend to be employed in skill-based jobs that are more important to the immediate environment, e.g., not requiring a perspective beyond the current task. Gratification for work well done is more easily at hand and does not require the pressure of continuous aspiration.

The firm separation between the two groups is manifest in the evolution of the Democratic Party from one representing labor and socialized policies to one of pursuing success, leaving the labor tenets behind in favor of continuous achievement. Continuous achievement is very close to capitalism’s mantra about profit – grow or die. Hence the modern Democratic Party has a pink shadow. This self-importance may also be a reason that non-white citizens are not particularly eager to join the party.

Back in the day the United States had five legitimate political parties. Is a new one in the making?

Ancient Mariner

 

Back to the old stuff

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֎ Who will the democrats pick to run for President in the 2024 election? Perhaps the chart below may eliminate some guessing.

֎ Putin, like Donald, can’t back down. So it is an economic battle between Russia and the West. It is tragic that Vladimir thinks an old fashioned bullet war will net him anything; so many people will die unnecessarily. Russia isn’t the only country with cyber interference – the West is just as prolific at cyber warfare as Russia is. Mariner is waiting for the West to disable Russia from within. Sanctions can have an effect but shutting down Russian utilities, oil production and military communication can deliver serious blows.

Despite the intimate involvement of European nations because of proximity to Russia, the US dollar represents 40 percent of Russia’s foreign trading. If the US can shut down trading involving US dollars, that can have an impact.

All this said, stay tuned to the news (try NPR, PBS and NEWSY).

֎ Xi Jingping must be tickled to death to watch Vladimir test America’s resolve and response to Putin’s bullet war. As we read, China flies constant sorties of fighter jets across Taiwan and has warships well within Taiwanese waters. Mariner worked in Taiwan for a while and knows Taiwan has the same resolve as Ukraine.

Given the destructive, global influence of the Covid pandemic, the persistent worsening of weather in the southern states and the Caribbean, and the challenge of conflict on both oceans, the US is stretched thin on the world stage. This is no time for Trumpian shenanigans or internal wars between political parties.

Sadly, the 2022 elections are fraught with infighting and populist attitudes. Things are not as stable or as dependable as we may think. We need one nation – focused on crises of the moment and staying ahead of a rapidly changing culture. As mariner often suggests, don’t vote for anyone past 55.

Ancient Mariner

 

Mariner’s Fantasy

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It is interesting that no one in the organized world knew there was a North and South America. Then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, both were discovered by a western world of Christian white people. Their new toy of land riches, etc., was taken from the natives with brutal force, genocide, property theft and a prejudice against the color of the indigenous peoples – what is called today Eskimo, Native American, Latino, brown, Mexican, Puerto Rican and South American. A prejudice that remains strong today.

So much for Christian doctrine.

Leaping forward over centuries, South America still remains a second class continent. China is dabbling in debt-sensitive trade with several South American dictatorships that are struggling but China’s motives are to control the economy and resources without regard for the national interests of these nations. Oil, reversed growing seasons and lumber, along with some important minerals, have kept South America civilized but the Northern Hemisphere remains the center of power and commerce in 2022.

The enemy of progress for both continents is racial prejudice. The embers of those violent years of discovery remain smoking today. That prejudice is still held by that same race of Christians that stole their world from them. Talk about the need for reparation!

In today’s world, the Northern Hemisphere is old and frazzled. New technology has made traditional politics irrelevant. Over the centuries the Northern Hemisphere has consumed its resources to the point that capitalist nations are socially stressed and authoritarian nations are failing except for the oligarchy.

Before it is too late, mariner’s fantasy must begin. Imagine the power of a United Continents of America. Imagine an economy that stretches from Wainwright on the Arctic Sea to Tierra del Fuego on the Drake Passage; an economy using the same currency and modern trading concepts that unify nations as partners and not as competitors.

Instead of immigration brutality at our border, pay the tickets for the brown people to go back to their country and help them establish a shared economy that will eliminate massive immigration in the first place.

Mariner fantasizes.

Ancient Mariner

China is an Enigma

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Vaguely, mariner remembers a children’s story about an ogre that was so big no matter what he did, it caused a disaster. A sneeze would wipe out several homes; a snore would have the effect of an earthquake, etc. So it is with China.

China has the national size to pursue Uighur-Muslim genocide in the southwest, nation killing in Hong Kong, worldwide espionage on the internet and bullying the South Pacific in the southeast. China’s strategy in world trade is similar to US private equity – outright ownership.

Nevertheless, China has its own interior issues just like the United States. Its population is restless; there are severe labor shortages; the political oppression of Peng Shuai (tennis) hints at unstable human rights management. So it may be interesting to get democratic boogeyman George Soros’ opinion on China:

— SOROS BETS ON XI’S UNRAVELING: Billionaire investor and philanthropist GEORGE SOROS said in a speech Monday at the Hoover Institution that Chinese Xi is threatened by internal dissent. Soros said that’s fueled by financial system stresses, demographic challenges and the mounting social and economic costs of Xi’s “zero-Covid strategy.” “Xi Jinping has many enemies … [and] there is a fight brewing within the CCP,” Soros said.

Still, a hiccup in China is similar to an eruption of the Tonga volcano.

The reason that China has any offense at all on the world stage is because Xi Jingpin doesn’t have a nationally elected Congress; he has an obedient, internally selected national congress.

Mariner’s perception of good or bad relations with China is that China is that storybook large ogre where anything is capable of global disruption.

A new twist is the mutual crying shoulder relationship between Russia and China over the West – especially the United States. Both nations have identical confrontations with the West: Ukraine, Taiwan, trade balances, embargos and global leadership competition; not to mention the competition for communication dominance. What should concern the west is the lack of government elasticity in authoritarian nations. Like bullies, tension has a break point driven by just a very few individuals, e.g., Donald. Subtlety is not available; fair is not a win.

Ancient Mariner

Unsettling Times

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Mariner has nagged about the decline of government, economics and society for 23 straight months, not counting other ideological issues and the always inadequate electorate. But in the last six months, setting Covid aside for the moment, the nation’s core stability is increasingly stressed. The U.S. is faced with fragile situations by Russia wanting Ukraine and China wanting Taiwan. Still the U.S. struggles with deepening populism and citizen violence.

There is a good chance Congress will fall to an oddly deranged republican party which will not be able to hold together a deepening distrust by the nation’s citizenry. Note the following chart from Gallup, an annual exercise reflecting citizen satisfaction:

Most of the satisfaction scores don’t represent a trend – it’s more like driving over a cliff.

Things seem not to be finding their way out of the maze yet.

Ancient Mariner

World of Work

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One of the many, many disruptions in today’s society is the new phenomenon of ‘work from home’. The traditional model leveraged the natural human behavior to associate in cliques, extended families and tribes. Coming to a common workplace emulated these natural behaviors. The political structure also fit into a tribal model where a few members were recognized as leaders (Managers). Virtually all workplaces had a tree-like structure that distributed tasks and functions under the guidance of the managers.

Thanks to the interruption of the Pandemic, which forced lockdown, and the new power of the Internet and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which eliminated many human tasks, people suddenly found themselves at home all day. The natural tribal environment was gone; the social benefits of human gathering was gone; the ability to oversee policy and function was greatly weakened.

The opportunity to work from home became a benefit for many workers. Salary and benefits were no longer limited to financial criteria and working conditions; suddenly a major benefit included whether one could work from home.

Aside from large empty office buildings, which were a massive financial overhead, businesses also felt the negative impact of dispersed workers who were not in a controlled environment. ‘Work at home’ still distorts the statistics on employment versus unemployed and is a new headache for service oriented businesses.

This issue is a new phenomenon. Managers haven’t been trained in management techniques for isolated workers. Below is an interview with a personnel manager who proposes methods to optimize the modern workforce:

Being interviewed by Protocol Braintrust (on-line news service), Julia Anas, Chief People Officer at Qualtrics, Made good recommendations:

“When evolving culture, especially in a virtual environment, there are key actions leaders should take.

“Identify your core values and the impact you want to have on the world, unifying your employees — from executives to individual contributors — around these values. At Qualtrics, we call these TACOS: Transparency, All in, Customer obsessed, One team and Scrappy.

“Pair experience data — what your employees are thinking and feeling — with operational data — how they are performing — to design and continuously improve work experiences.

“Be purposeful in how you connect with your employees and what works for them.

“Lead with empathy. Employees want to feel a sense of belonging and connection with the people they work with, and it’s critical for leaders to foster a culture that prioritizes listening, understanding and meeting people where they are.”

Organizing a workplace using empathy and other sociological values is a new phenomenon. Tribal structures are missing and must be replaced with a new worker-centered philosophy. Employees who make good managers may have to be less authoritative and more conciliatory in their methods.

We will watch how this ‘evolving culture’ emerges.

Ancient Mariner