BIG DATA? .... Use It EVERYWHERE .... or don't bother applying it anywhere

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

[Serf] hunting is now a matter of ‘big data’ and not how well [serf's] perform at an interview

Is anyone else underwhelmed by this advice? Applying Big Data to achieving even more wealth & income inequality?

There's a puzzle here. Why can't these same logicians apply systems logic to all steps leading to aggregate output? Such as ounces of prevention, not just pounds of system cure?

If they were really capable of a bit more imagination, they might think of applying their BEEG EMPLOYMENT BRAINS and BIG DATA methods to preventing systemic social ills inexpensively, not just hideously expensive ways of supposedly repairing them.

How, you ask? Here's how. To have more novel inventions, and even faster cultural evolution, we could use a LOT more people adequately self-employed, i.e., finding it easier to HELPFULLY generate their own income from their co-citizens. That's better than just helping small numbers of oligarchs maintain a pool of starving, desperate serfs, on hand for whenever the slow-thinking Central Planning feel that docile "workers" are needed.

There's an accumulating list of suggestions for how to maintain cultural aggregates with more distributed net income, and hence far more aggregate agility - and adaptive resiliency.

1) no FICA tax?
2) no medicare tax?
3) significantly lower income taxes on labor
4) cure the monomaniacal fixation on the "deficit in fiat"
5) reduce the micro-regulation of micro-businesses? [Ya think?]

6) And, of course, start prosecuting some of the Control Frauds?

7) And, start regulating at least SOME of the larger banks again.

8) But all that presupposes an electorate that can select at least a FEW intelligent + honest politicians - and KEEP selecting similar ones.

9) So as a capper, we need methods for re-shaping this electorate into one that views aggregate policy as a logical process, and a straightforward science to practice?

10) We have enough people who know HOW to do that, but they're not the same people who know yet HOW to get this electorate to LET us do that. Too many specialists & too little shared context awareness. We need a small-scale skunk works demonstration? Somewhere where it's possible for even a few aware people to QUICKLY allow a local electorate to allow itself to excel?

11) We need specialists who can humble themselves just enough to work WITH people who can and want to get elected, and themselves have enough humility to do whatever is needed. Organizations are defined as collections of specialists who can also look past the distributed inexperience (and egos) of themselves and others, and work for big outcomes, not just settle for Pyrrhic personal victories. Do those who know how to do specific things want their country to be successful ... or do they want people to know that they were right? In a large electorate, EVERYONE is inexperienced about something. That's what diversity means. The good part is that it's so easy to find people to work with and hence for one another. Teamwork works. The bad part? We're all conditioned to criticize - and be impatient with - people who don't specialize in what we specialize in. Teamwork works ONLY if members actively look for ways to cooperate on big outcomes, while patiently ignoring irrelevant details and minor frictions. That means looking beyond personal frictions, as a matter of rote.

   (That's another - simple - subtlety about systems, which we could, in our schools, easily teach to every 10 yr old ... but don't.)

None out of 11? That's bad. So far.

How bad? That always depends on how long does it take a mulish aggregate to reorient to continuously changing context.

'Bout as fast as aggregate 2x4s appear - in the form of unexpected system shocks? Shocks can be very dangerous & violent. If that is the ONLY fallback tool we rely upon to trigger adaptations, one of these days the USA mule may not survive a reawakening.