Commenter Thread

I don't understand why one wouldn't be helpful to anyone one works with, or anyone at all. Just, why not?
During my time as a manager, our center (~100 people) was assembled from various parts of the old Bell System, and charged with delivering the legally required changes to the local telcos' networks. Half of that staff came from a part of AT&T where the working philosophy was, "You advance your career over the bodies of your colleagues." Most of the meetings I went to was for the purpose of keeping those *ssholes from stabbing us in the back.
I could understand it somewhat. Their part of AT&T had a zillion different levels and salary was closely tied to level. If you didn't get one of the two promotions from "junior assistant flunky" to "assistant flunky" in your organization this year, you didn't get a raise. I came from Bell Labs where almost everyone not in an administrative position was a "member of technical staff". Salaries for MTS covered a spread of perhaps 8x: an MTS with 35 years of experience and demonstrated brilliance might make 8x what a starting MTS made. More than 8x in special cases, like winning a Nobel prize :^)

The nice part of my job was that it was in the position to tell the owners of the batch jobs, i.e. the application programmers, to actually fix the damn things, so the ops folks didn't have to keep dealing with problems. Ah, the power!

One of my first contract jobs was third shift application support in the data center at ATT. Some COBOL batch jobs blew up each night, mostly data errors or JCL typos.
The operations folks loved that I would tell them what the problem/fix was, so they had a better idea of what to tell the next support person. When it was quiet I would sit in the op center and help, with them telling me what to do I loved that job

What russell said.
Plus, some people are sufficiently insecure that they are afraid not to flaunt their nominal superiority (or at least superior position) by being obnoxious to everybody else. Remind you of any current Presidents?

Just, why not?
because some people are jerks and enjoy throwing their weight around.
for whatever reason.

I don't understand why one wouldn't be helpful to anyone one works with, or anyone at all. Just, why not?
Early in my banking career I was in a position where I had a fair understanding of a new convertible bond system being rolled out, and of convertible bonds themselves (it doesn't matter it you don't know what they are). A colleague in the USA (I was in London) was responsible for getting things set up in the new system: I helped her a lot. Later it transpired that her husband became a megabucks trader. I got skiing holidays in Aspen as a result.
But if I hadn't, I would still have wanted to be helpful.

I haven't logged on to a computer since I retired
When I retired one of my goals was to spend as much time as possible around living things.
So far, so good.

Thanks ! Not?

russell, GftNC, thanks? Turns out I'm pretty good at it. Other than one day to do my taxes I haven't logged on to a computer since I retired. Phone handles it all

these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
Being nice to (not just junior) administrative staff is the right thing to do. Assuming one is, or aspires to be, a decent human being.
But this is why it is also a useful thing to do. Those administrative staff are the ones who know how to navigate the system in order to get things done. Including the back channels that can dramatically reduce the time and effort required. Or get something done at all.
I would hope that anyone who has worked in a large organization would know that. But experience shows that remarkably few do. Including at the senior levels, where it is not obvious how they get their jobs done without knowing. (Perhaps theur Administrative Assistants grease the wheels for them...? That would explain why such staff frequently follow the executive from job to job, rather than remaining where they are to work for the new guy.)

Connected (ever so slightly) to the discussion about being "polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people"
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage
One of my favorite academic papers about organizations is by Ruthanne Huising, and it tells the story of teams that were assigned to create process maps of their company, tracing what the organization actually did, from raw materials to finished goods. As they created this map, they realized how much of the work seemed strange and unplanned. They discovered entire processes that produced outputs nobody used, weird semi-official pathways to getting things done, and repeated duplication of efforts. Many of the employees working on the map, once rising stars of the company, became disillusioned.
I’ll let Prof. Huising explain what happened next: “Some held out hope that one or two people at the top knew of these design and operation issues; however, they were often disabused of this optimism. For example, a manager walked the CEO through the map, presenting him with a view he had never seen before and illustrating for him the lack of design and the disconnect between strategy and operations. The CEO, after being walked through the map, sat down, put his head on the table, and said, "This is even more fucked up than I imagined." The CEO revealed that not only was the operation of his organization out of his control but that his grasp on it was imaginary.”
For many people, this may not be a surprise. One thing you learn studying (or working in) organizations is that they are all actually a bit of a mess. In fact, one classic organizational theory is actually called the Garbage Can Model. This views organizations as chaotic "garbage cans" where problems, solutions, and decision-makers are dumped in together, and decisions often happen when these elements collide randomly, rather than through a fully rational process. Of course, it is easy to take this view too far - organizations do have structures, decision-makers, and processes that actually matter. It is just that these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
The Garbage Can represents a world where unwritten rules, bespoke knowledge, and complex and undocumented processes are critical.
I've been thinking about this a bit, and how one overcomes it or at least works around it.
About Cheez Whiz's comment about David Brooks (and the pointer to Driftglass) with the tag David Brooks, definitely worth a look)
his wikipedia entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
has this
As an undergraduate, Brooks frequently contributed reviews and satirical pieces to campus publications. His senior year, he wrote a spoof of the lifestyle of wealthy conservative William F. Buckley Jr., who was scheduled to speak at the university: "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping." To his piece, Brooks appended the note: "Some would say I'm envious of Mr. Buckley. But if truth be known, I just want a job and have a peculiar way of asking. So how about it, Billy? Can you spare a dime?" When Buckley arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Brooks was in the lecture audience and offered him a job.
Don't know if it is sucking up to Buckley, or something else entirely (each word is a different link), but the story seems strangely apropros.

Yes, I agree with Cain's Third Law (any further ones welcome), and with wj, russell and Marty. Treating people of every degree as people, and equals worthy of respect, is one of the most foundational rules for living a good life. Any personal benefits which accrue, while welcome, are a purely secondary matter.
Marty - congratulations!

I spent 30 years in Operations at a software company in San Jose (Manufacturing Software Engineering, a job title with an odd history). It was where revenue recognition happened, the rubber met the road, and as I put it, I implemented other people's bad ideas. All the stories above ring true to me.
Re: lukewarm David Brooks. When that name comes up I will always refer to Driftglass, who was tracking Brooks before it was cool, and has the receipts. Go back to Brooks' early days at the Weekly Standard and you'll find a man the opposite of lukewarm. He's become much more moderate as the checks kept rolling in from the Times, Yale, Aspen, Davos, etc. but the anger still remains, as Paul Simon once sang.

Showing a basic respect for people, no matter their station in life, is a pretty good path to take through life. Costs nothing, builds trust and connection. Makes that good serendipity flow. Even if there's nothing in it for you, personally, it's worthwhile.
People respond to being seen and heard.
Congratulations on retiring, Marty!! As my brother-in-law says, you have entered the promised land. :)

Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day.
As Marty suggests, it can have big benefits for you, too. And not just admin folks. Perhaps the best thing I did, as someone (at least nominally) in Systems Programming, was to spend time with the computer operations people and listen to them.**
Operation folks get no respect. Even if the Systems Programmers are polite enough to them in passing, it's strictly superficial. But I found that they knew far more about the state of the systems than any monitor could tell me.
As an early warning system, they were unbeatable.
All it took was spending some time occasionally hanging out in Operations. Not only would they tell me, and show me, where things were deteriorating, after a while they would reach out when something didn't look right. Made my job a lot easier, and improved my performance too. I kept doing it, every place I ever worked.
It was helpful enough that my boss push the other members of our team to do the same. Pushed pretty hard. But they just couldn't be bothered to walk ten yards, go thru a door, and visit. I never understood it. I was willing to fly from San Francisco to Phoenix and spend a couple of days talking to all three shifts. But they just wouldn't budge.
** I still remember the first time that, as a very junior Systems Programmer at Bank of America in the mid-70s, I happened to be passing thru Operations and overheard somebody griping about something which was making their job difficult.
I did a little digging when I got back to my desk, found they were right, wrote it up, and got it fixed. Because, after all, I was in a position to get something done. Next time I was in Operations they were waiting for me. With lists! Because they'd found a channel where their problems would get addressed.

"Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day."
Being nice to lower level admin people somehow allowed me to have a career. As I needed emotional/environmental calm to function I somehow ended up lucky enough to get that support from the admin people. It was odd but they recognized how much I needed routine to deal with chaos and were always there to maintain it. I did, in turn, appreciate and respect them. And as I recently retired I find they are really all I miss about work.

Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
"Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day." I once asked the waiter, when it was dessert time and based on a hint on the menu, if they had any single-barrel bourbons. She literally lit up, and started through the choices and their relative merits.

Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
I suppose I should have written them down :^) They cover a wide range of topics, eg, "To the extent that the limits of technology and the budget will support, put the tricky parts in software." Following that one came close to getting me canned. What saved me was that it eventually got pushed high enough up the chain that my SVP could say to the other side's SVP, in front of the CEO, "But Mike's solution worked and we met the politically-sensitive goal. We're 18 months past the court-ordered deadline and your solution still doesn't work."

How high the floor and how to deliver it are open for discussion; anyone who argues against a floor is arguing for the pitchforks and torches to come out eventually.
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?

Absolutist free-market ideology and anti-government rhetoric have poisoned the minds of too many. Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics and his "nine most terrifying words" got "nice" people to buy into what it becoming a klepto-techno oligarchic feudalism.
I don't know how to convince people that they've been talked into becoming modern-day serfs when they blame everything on wokeness, immigrants, and what they think is socialism.

I distinctly remember GOP complaints (not just the WH imbecile*) that any insurance that is not a net win for the person insured is a scam (and those who pay more in than they get out are losers). In particular, if one does not get out (much) more out of social security/medicare/medicaid etc. than one has paid in, the system is a rip-off and thus needs to be abolished (iirc in favor of a private system that ideally guarantees that only those that run it get anything out of it, i.e. overhead should be at minimum 100%).
*I first mistyped that as imbevil ;-)

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the oblique correction on Revelation specifically, I'll try to take that on board.
I've ranted about libertarian shortsightedness in various comments, as well as discussing health care as well as the problems with the US system, but never combined the two. Reading stuff from Volokh about the ACA makes me wonder how a libertarian can imagine any system of provision of health care or insurance on any kind of general basis. Which then has me wonder how you could have any kind of compromise with someone who thinks that provision of care by society could never been taken as a positive right and that it was coercion to force people to take insurance.

Hungry people don't stay hungry for long - RATM

We can afford, as a country, to simply give every person enough food to live on.
Hayek, writing in either the 1920s or 30s, said the US was so fabulously wealthy there was no reason anyone should want for adequate food, shelter, or medical attention. And that clearly the state had a role in providing those.
One of Cain's Laws™ says that modern societies need to establish a floor under outcomes, not just opportunities; not doing so will end badly. How high the floor and how to deliver it are open for discussion; anyone who argues against a floor is arguing for the pitchforks and torches to come out eventually.

Required disability insurance for seamen, too. But not farmers, or artisans, or merchants, or anyone else.
I'm sure a general public interest can be construed in there - most foreign trade was conducted by sea - but why just them?
Perhaps it was too difficult to assure an adequate number of people willing to be cod fishermen. That kind of insurance may have been seen as necessary to keep a major export industry going strong. No need for the carrot for other jobs.

Means testing requires an administrative state and the collection of a lot of very gameable data. I'm pretty sure it would cost less to mail the check to Bezos than it would to try to exclude him in order to keep the money only in the hands of the needy.

My personal take on what we typically call "welfare" programs - food stamps, Medicaid, etc. - is that they are best thought of as insurance.
Everybody pays in, but you generally only get a return if you need it. And needing it generally means you've come into some kind of bad luck. Or maybe done something stupid, but I'll leave it to a better mind than mine to try to define the fine line between whether bad luck and folly.
Most of pay for car insurance, health insurance, liability and fire insurance on our homes if we have them.
If you're lucky, you never get a dime back. But you're a dope if you complain, because sometimes you're not lucky.
And yeah, if sending Jeff Bezos a couple hundred bucks a month for groceries is somehow gonna make folks quite complaining about it all, I can live with that.
As long as he pays in at a rate comparable to his wealth and income. ;)

The tariff thing is idiotic. Not because tariffs are always or inevitably bad, but because they are being applied to correct a problem (trade imbalance) that is not necessarily a problem in the first place.
Not to mention that they are being used more to extort foreign policy goals (or, see Brazil, to benefit Trump's personal pals), rather than having anything to do with, you know, actual trade issues. Even if done by someone with a clue, that's a terrible use.

If you are going to give out food stamps, make sure that you cut some for Jeff Bezos.
That's actually not a bad idea. We have a hodgepodge of programs to support poor people, especially children, to attempt to get them enough to eat. They're better than nothing. But expensive to run, overlapping in places, and less than effective.
We can afford, as a country, to simply give every person enough food to live on. Maybe not prime rib every day, maybe not the junk food they love, but enough decent quality food for them to live on. Quite possibly for less money than we now spend, not least because we ditch the overhead of determining eligibility. If you're breathing, you're eligible.
Now most likely people like Bezos and Musk, or you and me for that matter, won't bother to collect the benefit. We can eat basically what we like without it. But still, it's worth doing.
Not that I'm optimistic about getting such a thing enacted. But the fact that it's not politically popular doesn't negate it's merits.

How the "general welfare" clause's interpretation has changed since the Constitution was written
It's interesting to consider the philosophical differences between, for example, Hamilton and Madison. Or between Jefferson and Adams. Etc.
But sometimes it's even more informative to look at what the early Congresses actually passed as law.
Before the US Code was compiled in 1926, laws passed by Congress were first published as a single document, then compiled into the United States Statutes at Large. They're available online at the Library of Congress (just follow the link). They're not as easily searchable as the US Code - the laws are just listed in chronological order as they were passed - but as casual reading they're really interesting. They give an insight into what the kinds of things that occupied the minds of Congress in the first 150 years of the nation.
A lot of the stuff is clearly in the general interest of the nation at large. And a lot of the stuff is of interest to, at best, only certain regions or industries.
The Second Congress, for example, seemed interested to a remarkable degree in the cod fisheries. Which was obviously of great interest to New England. And, which was a significant export industry at the time. But I'm not sure anyone south of Massachusetts got much out of it.
Required disability insurance for seamen, too. But not farmers, or artisans, or merchants, or anyone else.
I'm sure a general public interest can be construed in there - most foreign trade was conducted by sea - but why just them?
The difference between what people say and what they do can be illuminating.

"Academics are supposed to discover and promote counterintuitive, nonobvious ideas."
There's an old trope among (non-academic) lawyers that lawyering amounts to trying to prove that your ideas are NOT original. This may be outdated now, in light of the cavalier attitude toward precedent exhibited by the SCROTUS. (R for Roberts).
I am entirely with lj on this:

Jesus was mad at those who stayed in the middle, and on that point (and probably that point alone) am I Christ-like.

Y'all may have gathered as much from my rant on "deMAGAfication". No steroids involved there, BTW.
Wikipedia tells me this Ilya Somin character is a young (age 52) Jewish immigrant from the old USSR, which surely explains some of his views. But I gather he's not as opposed to Christianist fascism as I am. His lukewarm attitude toward "intuition" is, IMO, nothing but elitist arrogance.
Especially when it comes to justice (as opposed to The Law), intuition is all we have. Even if you intuit a deity whose edicts are not to be questioned or even interpreted, you -- a human being living among other human beings -- rely on "intuition" to define justice, or more specifically INjustice. Intuition is malleable, of course, and reshaping people's intuition is the overarching goal of the Vast Right-Wing Noise Machine.
This coming Saturday, August 23, there is planned a "March for Jesus" in Boston. Dollars to donuts, this is part of the VRWNM campaign to shape public intuition. If I had it in my power, I'd put up a huge billboard of my "What Color Is YOUR Jesus?" meme on the Common, just for the day. It would be interesting to see whether the marchers intuit a Scandinavian White, a Deportable Brown, or an Artificial Orange Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
--TP
PS: I am pleased to see that russell correctly calls it "Revelation" -- no "s".

Well, I suppose it all comes down again to the concept of purity. It would be great if everyone saw and agreed with the analysis of the underlying problem as laid out by russell - don't forget that I always said he should be ROTU.
But since this is unfortunately not the case, I believe the next best thing is to make aspects of the case to the greatest number of people, whether rich or poor, left or right, and hopefully among them some with power to influence the course of policy.
I know next to nothing about David Brooks, but he writes opinion pieces in the NYT, still one of the most influential media outlets in America, particularly I would have thought among the rich and powerful. If it takes such a piece from such a source to get part of the issue across to even a fraction of the currently unconvinced/unaware, this seems to me worthwhile.
Meanwhile, if Brooks is condescending, a narcissist, an adulterer, or the conscienceless discarder of a longtime wife for a younger woman, this seems to me irrelevant to the analysis of the problem of segregation, societal fragmentation and inequality. If we are quoting Jesus on this matter, didn't he also say Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?

How the "general welfare" clause's interpretation has changed since the Constitution was written, and the impacts those changes have had on the country.
Evolution of "General Welfare" Clause

How the interpretation of the "general welfare" clause has changed since the Constitution was written, and how those changes have impacted the country.
Evolution of "General Welfare" Clause

To piggy back on JanieM's criticism there: It has obviously not occurred to him -- or if it has, he declines to believe it -- that "benefitting someone in some way" might well benefit everyone else too, even if only indirectly. But then, some people don't seem to think that a happier, healthier populace could possibly be good for everyone. (For what definition of "good," he might ask...)
The general sense that I get of him and many other libertarianish folks is that every time they look at a public good, they start trying to convert it into smaller piles of private goods for which they can find deserving owners. It's the oft-quoted Thatcher bit about there being no such thing as society.

And as to this passage that lj quoted:

The power to spend money for the "general welfare" is a power to spend for purposes that benefit virtually everyone or implement other parts of the Constitution, not a power to spend on anything that Congress concludes might benefit someone in some way. The Supreme Court disagrees, and so do most legal scholars.

It has obviously not occurred to him -- or if it has, he declines to believe it -- that "benefitting someone in some way" might well benefit everyone else too, even if only indirectly. But then, some people don't seem to think that a happier, healthier populace could possibly be good for everyone. (For what definition of "good," he might ask...)
And then of course we get back to my longstanding question of: whose money (water, air, land, wealth of any sort) is it, anyhow? Does it belong to whoever grabs the most, or can the rest of us band together (as a government, perhaps) and insist on a relatively fair distribution?

Okay, I'll see what I can do about the archive link. Ugh.
(Fixed, I think.)

Russell is a far better man than I in thinking that David Brooks is “nice.” But then again, when I was in my early teens, “nice” was one of the more damning judgments you could make about a person.
I haven’t actually read a full Brooks column for years. The links below provide a good snapshot of why. (AKA life is too short.)
From just last night at BJ, where Anne Laurie calls him a “blog favorite chew toy."
One about how he plays fast and loose with (or is just plain ignorant about) statistics.
(Innumeracy is endemic among journalists and opinion-havers, but that’s a topic for another time.)
From the archive (since I don’t have a login to the Times), a column he wrote halfway between the year he was divorced from his wife of long standing and the year he married his intern (much gossip about that online, but Wikipedia has only the dates):
https://web.archive.org/web/20150304114417/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/opinion/david-brooks-leaving-and-cleaving.html
(Sorry about the bare, margin-busting link. I couldn't get the embedded archive link to work right in the comment box in the time I had available to play with it.)
Given that the alleged "paper of record" saw fit to print that moralizing, self-serving drivel, an over-the-top take-down doesn’t come amiss.

There's a lot to unpack in this post, it goes in so many directions. Or maybe more accurately, affords so many points of entry and engagement.
Some random thoughts.
The tariff thing is idiotic. Not because tariffs are always or inevitably bad, but because they are being applied to correct a problem (trade imbalance) that is not necessarily a problem in the first place. And as the article calls out, they are being applied without any particular insight into their real effects. And, applied chaotically and unpredictably, which is anathema for business planning.
Shorter me: these guys have no idea WTF they are about. Other than perhaps setting the stage for case-by-case exceptions, shakedowns basically, in exchange for favors.
Which would be in character for the folks involved.
I though this, from Somin, was... odd:

Academics are supposed to discover and promote counterintuitive, nonobvious ideas.

Really? I guess there's a sense in which this could be so - doing actual research and investigation into a subject could lead you to conclusions that are non-obvious to the casual observer. But it seems like that should be a possible (but not necessary) outcome of academic work, rather than its point.
Maybe Somin just like being contrarian.
I first came across the message in Revelation to the Laodicean church in a Sunday sermon when I was a kid. Our minister was exhorting his pretty comfortable middle- to upper-middle-class suburban Long Island Episcopal flock to be a bit more serious in their pursuit of spiritual life.
I'm not sure how all of that was received by the congregation, to be honest. The phrase "OK, but can we please just go to lunch now?" may have crossed a few minds. But for whatever reason I still remember it, 50 odd years later.
And what I still take away from it is what I think of as the moral hazard of privilege. Or, if privilege is too strong or loaded a word, of being comfortable. Of having enough, and not having that be at any particular risk.
I think about that a lot lately. Especially as we see the violence (both threatened and real) and persecution being unleashed on anyone in our country who is "suspiciously brown".
The folks behind this are basically lawless. We can't really rely on the law and the courts to curb what are flagrant abuses of power, because the courts are often deferential to them, and even when they aren't, these guys just don't give a shit.
At some point it may be - likely will be, unless there is some meaningful change in regime - for ordinary people to intervene. In whatever way.
Which will not be without risk. Risk of jail, risk of violence, risk of harrassment in a variety of forms. It's not an idle threat, as anyone old enough to remember e.g. the J Edgar days will recall.
Which puts people who live in some degree of comfort - material sufficiency and safety - in a difficult place. Because they have something to lose.
Cue "Bobbie McGee" here.
Our privilege (those of us that have it, which definitely includes me) can make cowards of us.
And that thought weighs on my mind a lot lately.
I see that I still appear to be in the grip of steroid inspired verbosity, so I'll end there.