Tag: communities

Poised on the edge of the AI Knife

Successful people recognize crisis as a time for change. ~ Edwin Louis Cole

…And so do successful communities.

Many of our communities are already in crisis. In our larger cities, too many men have given up, spending their days in drugs and isolation. There are too few opportunities for them – even for college graduates – to begin or to restart their careers. Many cities are being hollowed out by companies and residents fleeing grime, crime and poor governance. Falling birth rates (“Peak population”) and corporate flight have left behind empty homes, schools and commercial buildings.

For some cities, this flight has become a vicious cycle. People leave because of a declining quality of life – increased crime, deteriorating schools, limited opportunities. The local government’s tax base shrinks; business revenue becomes spotty and some businesses leave or go under. This causes more people to leave; and the cycle continues until there’s no one left who can leave.

In my last post, I looked at the potential impacts of AI on individuals. In this post, I look at the potential threats to communities inherent in AI. I’ll also suggest steps a community can take to prepare for AI’s impacts.

Impacts

Communities with large job losses due to AI will see losses in all of their community capital portfolios. These will be similar to those already being experienced in our larger cities. Local government will see immediate loss of income and sales tax revenue. Since many of the displaced workers are high earners, the tax revenue lost will be greater than the fraction of jobs lost. Businesses – especially small businesses like restaurants and shops – will struggle. Eventually property taxes will also fall, leading to less funding for schools and ultimately a poorer quality education.

The diminished need for commercial real estate may lead to a deteriorating downtown. Most seriously, the community’s social fabric will begin to unravel. More anti-social behavior and crime; more drugs; fewer volunteers for those things that enrich and enhance a community’s character. And on top of it all, an increased demand for those services that make up a community’s safety net, especially mental health services.

One other somewhat more speculative impact: AI may accelerate the drop in birth rate. It appears likely that more men will lose their jobs than women. Women – especially college graduates – are already having problems finding suitable partners; it is a recognized cause of the falling birth rate. This potentially could be the most severe impact of the AI revolution on our communities and society.

But let me quickly add that some communities will be relatively unaffected, or at least will not feel much pain for years, if at all. Communities whose economy is concentrated on “high-touch” jobs are unlikely to see much impact. Communities whose economy is reasonably diversified may be “safer” as well – there will likely be some jobs available in non-AI impacted industries to buffer some of the AI job displacement.

Communities whose businesses tend NOT to be early adopters of new technologies may also fare better. As with any new technology, AI’s first impact is to destroy old jobs. However, history suggests that eventually new jobs are created. Organizations which wait to adopt new technologies can then move their most valuable assets – their employees – from the old no-longer-needed jobs to the new ones. Those communities that will fare best are those that prepare. If well-prepared, they may even prosper.

Diffusion of AI

The job losses at software firms and others immersed in the “digital economy” have been well-publicized. Communities with clusters of these firms are already feeling AI’s impacts. However, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, overall AI is primarily being used as a tool to support normal business processes, i.e., a productivity enhancer.

Despite strong substitution at the task level, overall employment effects are modest, as reduced demand in exposed occupations is offset by productivity-driven increases in labor demand at AI-adopting firms.

Thus, most communities have not yet had to face AI’s impacts, but just how much time do they have to prepare? Answering that is a little complicated – there are a few factors to consider.

  • Knowledge. As I noted in my last post, massive amounts of data are often needed for to develop an AI “bot” to replace a human. As I know from my own experience, the necessary data are often stored in various forms and various places, not least of which is in workers’ minds. And sometimes the data is contradictory. Extracting, rationalizing and codifying all of this can be a daunting, time-consuming – and expensive! – task.

  • Implementation and other costs. Often lost in the hype, there are real costs associated with using AI to replace humans. The most obvious is the cost of developing the AI “bot.” It has been relatively easy to develop AI to replace programmers and some others in the digital world: the AI developers have had access to virtually all of the data they needed and know the business. Development of algorithms is simple when you’re expert in the domain.

    But when you don’t know the business, it becomes much more costly and difficult to implement an AI solution. There is a translation step, converting domain-specific knowledge and jargon to something the AI developer can use. And the AI bot will also have to be able to translate its knowledge back into domain-specific jargon to be useful to humans. This requires at least some human involvement, and specialized expertise probably not available in most organizations.

    There must also be extensive testing to ensure that AI is not “faking it to make it.” For example, a recent news report spotlighted a legal case in which a lawyer had submitted an AI-prepared legal brief which had references to non-existent precedents. Anthropic is being honest when it says “Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.”

    Another important cost is the loss of capital when turning people out the door. Last year, American companies spent over $100 billion on new employee training, about $1000 per new employee. We are seeing AI reduce hiring of new employees, but more experienced employees are being retained. These people have not only been trained to do a job, but also to do it in a way that “fits” the rest of the company. Procedural knowledge can be gained to develop a bot to do a job (at a cost!) but cultural “knowledge” is much more difficult to capture.
  • Return on investment. In the short term, the benefit of AI is a reduction in cost. Salaries and benefits are always an organization’s major cost; reducing them helps an employer’s bottom line. But that return may be fools’ gold if AI cannot do everything the human could.

    In the longer term, AI may begin to pay larger dividends in terms of developing more effective corporate strategies. However, this requires that an organization’s AI becomes more attuned to its corporate structure and culture. We still don’t know how rapidly this can happen.

Suggestions for communities

Vulnerability. The most important first step for a community is to develop an understanding of possible impacts. Tufts University working with Digital Planet have developed a useful resource for this (https://digitalplanet.tufts.edu/ai-and-the-emerging-geography-of-american-job-risk-page/). They have determined vulnerability to AI by job, by industry and geographic region. The report itself has several interesting graphs and tables, and links to an interactive map. However, communities should concentrate on the Excel data sheet (e.g., there are some transition errors between the spreadsheet and the map).

But don’t use the report blindly. The spreadsheet has three different projections based on how rapidly AI is penetrating a community’s economy. If the community is already feeling the “AI Monster’s” bite, it would be wise to use the Median or Fastest Time data. Communities should also temper its projections based on local knowledge. For example, my community is becoming a center for cyber security study and practice. The Excel sheet predicts a 5% loss of jobs due to AI (Median time progression) but doesn’t consider the jobs that are coming in. Thus, my best guess is that AI will have relatively little negative impact on my community’s workforce in the next five years and may boost productivity.

Response and recovery planning. If the community believes it’s highly vulnerable, it should treat this as a Wild Thing – an extreme event similar to a natural disaster, or a pandemic, or a Recession. That should prompt emergency planning for response and recovery.

For extremely vulnerable communities AI’s bite can become an existential problem. A Whole-of-Community problem requires the entire community to solve it. The first step in planning should be to get all of the stakeholders working together. These may include:

  • The business community. Some businesses need to be involved because they are laying off people; some because layoffs will impact their business; and some because they may be able to hire those laid off. The latter are especially important: the specific qualifications they’re looking for should be articulated.

  • Educators. One of the most important unknowns right now is how to retrain and re-employ those laid off. This is a very different mission from traditional education of the masses (This is summarized nicely in https://dcjournal.com/to-prepare-for-a-future-with-ai-we-must-educate-differently/). Institutions of higher education that are in close contact with local industry are probably best equipped to build bridges between workforce reskilling and the needs of local businesses who may be able to hire those displaced by AI.

    Educators can also act as a source of information about best practices. Many of them are tuned into professional networks and have personal contacts spread across the country. They can provide innovative ideas that the community can include in plans.

  • Local government. As noted above, local government has a great deal to lose to the AI Monster’s bite. It should act as a convenor of meetings and facilitator of plan development.
  • Workforce representatives.
  • NGOs. Those laid off will eventually have to rely on the community’s safety net. NGOs are a large part of that in every community. However, many communities have NGOs that can play a part in reskilling or that can help the displaced to find new jobs.

Strengthen the safety net. Early on, vulnerable communities must determine what “safety net” services are going to going to see increased demand from displaced workers. Once known these communities need to determine what they can provide. And if they find insufficient capacity to meet demand, they should prepare for the consequences.

Education becomes an important of this safety net. This requires rethinking our approach to education; moving from a “once-and-done” model to life-long learning. I’ve written a lot about education over the years: it is essential that we prepare our kids to be able to learn and to want to learn even after they finish their formal schooling. Even before the advent of AI we were told that new workers were going to switch jobs several times over their working life, putting a premium on old dogs’ ability to learn new tricks. AI’s coming provides a crisis that spotlights the need for this change to happen.

I don’t know enough to go beyond this … and I’m afraid no one else does either. But what I believe is that every community can and must determine its own vulnerability and then develop its own plan. What we’ve seen from the federal government and some state governments is erection of barriers – a lot like old King Canute ordering the tide not to come in. And about as successful. But I also believe that a community that works together can weather the storm of layoffs and eventually reap the benefits of the new jobs AI will create. Successful communities will recognize the need for change and adapt to what’s coming. Some others will muddle through. And – I hope only a few – some communities will not recognize the approaching monster until they are devoured.

The AI monster will get you if you don’t watch out

All we need to do is make sure that we’re in a position to benefit from uncertainty and volatility instead of being harmed by it. ~ Nassim Taleb

If you’re confused about the impacts of AI, you’re not the only one. Some predict that AI will destroy civilization as we know it; some predict that AI will revolutionize our lives. Some say that our jobs will be gone; others that we’ll be able to do those jobs better, and there will be lots of new jobs we haven’t even conceived of yet. The one thing each of these seems to have in common is the impact that AI is currently having on the speaker, i.e., the impacts are seen only through the eyes of the beholder. Certainly the impacts of AI are both highly uncertain and highly personal.

As both Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra have said (in almost identical words!), prediction is difficult, especially about the future. So I won’t try to predict AI’s ultimate impacts. Undoubtedly they will be profound, and compounded of good and bad. But I will provide some facts to help think about AI’s impacts, and how to adapt to them. For one thing is certain: the more adaptable we are, the better our chances of avoiding being devoured by the AI Monster.

Impacts on individuals

As a few of you know, I was involved in some of the early attempts to deploy AI in the real world, in the 1980s. At that time, the practical emphasis was on development of “expert systems.” These required gathering the knowledge and experience of experts in a given field, and converting it to a set of rules along the lines of “If some condition, then do this.” And the results were sometimes impressive. For example, a psychological diagnostic system was developed that was as good at dealing with psychological trauma as human therapists.

A lot of the current effort in AI is still this: replacing the “man-in-the-loop” for foreseen situations with a set of rules. The major difference is that our increased computing power and the advent of Big Data are allowing developers to vastly increase the scope of what is “foreseen” and our ability to act swiftly. As a result, we have self-driving cars with accident rates below those of human drivers. We have “apps” that write computer code more rapidly than human programmers, and (if not now, eventually) with fewer errors. AI has growing capability to diagnose diseases, to dig through case law to find relevant precedents, even to point to promising areas for research.

This is due to the evolution of AI from task-based – if-then rules based on a defined body of knowledge trained to act; to generative – systems able to change themselves in response to new knowledge. This is often called “machine learning.” App-adaptation might be a more apt term.

This makes it seem like the doom-and-gloomers are right. The AI Monster will devour us all. Well, not quite; it’s complicated. And if you’re going to escape from the AI Monster [maybe] lurking in your closet, you need to look at your situation through several different lenses.

• Current employment. The most quoted unemployment rate in the US is currently at 4.3%. Personally, I find labor force participation more meaningful; for 25-54 year-olds it’s about 84% (pretty high). Conversely, it is in the 60% range for those 16-24. This implies that level of experience is important. If young people aren’t being hired to do a job, or, worse, those with experience are being laid off, that’s a sign that the job is in jeopardy.

• The job itself. It’s almost become a truism that AI won’t displace those in the “high touch” professions (e.g., family services, sales) for a very long time. But even there, many of the more routine tasks in health care (e.g., reading x-rays, billing) are being taken over by AI. On the other hand, many knowledge workers are at extreme risk. It seems like every week thousands are being laid off by one of the Big Tech companies. Whatever the field, jobs requiring flexibility, especially those developing policy or strategy, are likely safe for a very long-time.

• Cost-benefit. Generative AI systems are expensive to develop. They require massive amounts of domain-specific data, tremendous computing power, and extensive testing. And lots of electricity and air conditioning as well! The greater the complexity of a given job, the less attractive it becomes for AI – the costs may outweigh the value of displacement.

I asked both Claude and ChatGPT (two of the leading AI apps) “What will be the impact of generative AI on future jobs in the US?” Both gave lengthy responses. Claude’s was better written, and I found more generally useful:

The pattern with previous automation was that it tended to displace routine physical work — assembly lines, data entry, basic bookkeeping. Generative AI breaks from that pattern in an important way: it’s targeting cognitive and creative work first. Paralegals, junior analysts, radiologists reading scans, software developers doing boilerplate code, copywriters, customer service agents, financial advisors doing routine portfolio management — these are all in the crosshairs in the near term.

Jobs with the highest short-term resilience tend to share one or more of these traits: they require physical presence and dexterity in unpredictable environments (plumbers, electricians, nurses doing hands-on care), they depend on genuine human relationship and trust (therapists, certain kinds of sales, clergy), or they require highly contextual judgment in novel situations (senior executives, certain researchers, emergency responders). …

The most likely scenario is not a clean “AI takes jobs, new jobs appear, equilibrium restores” story. What’s more probable is a bifurcation: a class of highly-educated, adaptable workers who use AI to become extraordinarily productive and well-compensated, and a much larger group of workers displaced faster than they can retrain, in a demographic environment that offers fewer natural correctives than past transitions. The demographic plateau softens the raw unemployment numbers, but doesn’t address the human cost to specific workers and communities.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, gave a similar answer with two interesting twists. First it provided more detailed impacts for important sectors (e.g., tech and IT, government, education, manufacturing). ChatGPT also looked at the impacts of AI over time. In the short-term, it predicted job losses, some increases in joblessness and reduced hiring of new college graduates. In the medium-term (3-10 years), ChatGPT saw restructuring of existing jobs (skill in using AI becoming embedded in many jobs) and the rise of new categories of jobs (e.g., “prompt engineering,” data governance, AI trainers and testers). In the long-term (10+ years) ChatGPT weaseled out of prediction and instead fuzzily pointed toward a bifurcated future.

From all of this, let me offer the following guidance to all of you worried about becoming a victim of the AI Monster.

  1. No matter your profession or vulnerability, become familiar with AI tools. AI is here to stay. And it’s getting better at doing routine and non-routine tasks. If you can use it, it will increase your value to your employer/customers/clients. More importantly, using AI tools can actually increase your job satisfaction.
  2. Work to redefine your current job to require more non-routine problem-solving. This will help you to further develop AI-complementary skills: learning, planning, creativity and decision-making.
  3. Continually increase your knowledge about how your job/profession plugs into everything around you. Most importantly, focus on your own personal value proposition. But be brutally honest with yourself: if you’re mired in the routine, your value-added may not be high, i.e., you may be vulnerable.
  4. Increase your value. Certainly, taking on more responsibility is one obvious way. Perhaps more importantly, increase the complexity of what you do, especially if your work is largely repetitive or routine. If you can’t, best brush up your resume, and your skill set (see #1). If you can, find a way to apply your skills in a “high touch” environment.
  5. An important way to do both #2 and #3 is to expand your own personal network. Try to determine how people with your skills are used elsewhere. Perhaps more importantly, become a linchpin: a conduit for useful information. Involvement in professional societies can help you do this.
  6. Develop a “Plan B” for yourself. Identify where your current skill set might be of use. Continue to expand your skill set (again, see #1).

Impacts on communities

Claude’s response quoted above points out that AI will impact both individuals and communities. In my next post, I’ll explore potential impacts, and suggest things communities can do to better buffer themselves against potential harm.

Thanksgiving

Duty, Honor, Country — motto of the US Military Academy

Those of you who have had to listen to my [often] interminable war stories know that I was an – indifferent – soldier. In spite of that, I have always had the utmost respect for those who have made the military their career. That is especially true for those who accept and try to live up to Duty, Honor, Country.

Duty bespeaks their commitment to service, and their acceptance of the responsibility for that service. Honor means that they carry out their duty to their Country with integrity and faithfulness. It also signifies that they have a code of living, a set of standards that that they try to live up to. Simply put, they try to do the right thing even when no one is looking.

Sadly, it often seems that Honor is no longer valued in our world. Many who try to live up to a set of standards see those standards – indeed, any and all standards – demeaned as old-fashioned and of no use in the modern world. The honorable are seen – even derided – as anachronisms; curiosities from a bygone age.

And yet, at this time of year we see the volunteers loading boxes with toys for children who otherwise wouldn’t have any. We see ordinary people serving meals to those without family in soup kitchens and church basements across the country. We see the Salvation Army’s bell ringers collecting money for the Army’s shelters and other services.

We see these ordinary people, and we recognize that they, too, are abiding by a code. They, too, are serving, with fidelity. And if they, too, had a motto, it might be:

Duty, Honor, Community

Yin and Yang

The essence of Yin and Yang centers on the tension between two halves of a whole that are both divided and connected. – Angellia Moore

A few thoughts on “opposites” …

• This Chinese ideogram represents crisis. It is often misrepresented as a compound of “danger” and “opportunity,” but, in fact, that is the nature of a crisis. Crises are tipping points – the danger is that we fall into the muck. But they also provide us with an opportunity to become stronger.

We have seen examples of this in communities. Charleston and the SC Low Country was devastated by Hurricane Hugo. But out of Hugo’s damage rose a revitalized downtown with new amenities – the Aquarium, parks – and a new spirit.

• Scott Manning – one of the sharpest people I’ve ever encountered – recently reposted a note about the limitations of most studies of disasters. The note pointed out that too often they focus on the successes and failures of standalone events. His point is that we need a more integrative approach.

And he’s right. But I would also go a step further. Currently, we treat community development and community resilience (writ large) as two separate entities. Yet both are focused on strengthening the community. Both require investment and community attention. If successful, both increase a community’s adaptive capacity. But in practice, they seem to be at odds. To me, the synthesis of these not only makes sense but ultimately is essential if our communities are to Win Tomorrow.

• Charlie Kirk’s murder has brought out the best and the worst from both Left and Right. Kirk was a smiling Socrates, puncturing ideology-inflated beliefs. He was sometimes smug, sometimes condescending (and often annoying!) but – I believe – sincere in his beliefs, especially his faith.

On the Left, Bernie Sanders made an excellent video deploring political violence. But the celebrations of Kirk’s killing in the social media feeds from so many on the Left were disgusting. Similarly, the calls by some on the Right to doxx some of the worst offenders on the Left were equally disgusting. We can’t fix intolerance with more intolerance.

• One essential difference between “liberalism” as she is today and “conservatism” is their differing views of mankind. Most liberals (at least the ones I know!) have this view of mankind as a sort of tabula rasa, waiting only to be filled with good and right opinions leading to good and right actions. “Good and right” is determined by reason, and there is this optimistic belief of a sort of spiralling up as we gain more knowledge, ever redefining “good and right.” This leads to naive constructions such as native Americans as Noble Savages, and “mostly peaceful demonstrations,” and our rights are given to us by the law.

Conservatism, however, views humans as inherently flawed. We humans seldom behave rationally (although we rationalize a lot!). Though each of us may rue the fact, emotion and our subjective values drive most of our actions. I think there is also an echo of “history rhyming” that runs through conservative thought – that we can use our history as a guide for future action. I believe it is in this way we should understand the wisdom of Edmund Burke: society as “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

• A personal problem. I am as close to a First Amendment absolutist as you’re likely to find. Although I’m not religious (I don’t believe in Church-ianity) I respect those who are. That means that I’m against any repression or persecution of those of faith. Catholic organizations should not be forced to pay for abortions or birth control, IMO. Sincere evangelicals should not be forced to support gay marriage, IMO. Sincere people of faith should not be forced to do anything that violates their faith – full stop.

But here’s my dilemma. If we can “make no law prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, how can we stop the barbarism of genital mutilation by Muslims? How do we stop the abomination of Sharia Law being imposed in any community where Muslims are a majority?

Of course, our Founding Fathers never conceived of an America that was anything but Christian. The virtues inculcated by their Protestant forebears were embedded in the social contract that is our Constitution (Of course, many of those virtues are now under attack under the anathema of “White Privilege”). But Muslims come from very different cultures. While Christian faith communities are no longer trying to eradicate each other (at least in the West), Shia and Sunni are still at war with each other in many places, as well as killing Christians.

The only way I can resolve my dilemma is through visualizing a Yin and Yang. Yin is moral law, establishing what we must be and do as a good person, i.e., inner-directed. Yang is Man’s law regulating our dealings with each other – protecting the weak, establishing equality under the law, i.e., outer-directed. As Moore’s quote indicates, there is a natural tension at the boundary between Yin and Yang. It’s where my dilemma resides.

More importantly, however, the whole – Yin and Yang together – is greater than either by itself. Their tension forges a society of good people doing the right things by each other. Without Yang, we get the barbarism I abhor. Without the Yin, we get ever-changing laws without a firm basis, reflecting the whims of whoever is law-giver that day.

This is a little philosophical for a Friday afternoon, but I’m afraid it is an uncomfortable reflection of what we are becoming in the Western world. Our moral compass is becoming more and more demagnetized – many of us are having trouble finding the “True North” to guide our conduct. Without that compass, then our rights will be guaranteed to us only by the Law (h/t to Senator Kaine), changing whenever the law changes.

We see this already in the British laws censoring free speech, and allowing Muslim “grooming gangs” to harass (and much worse) young British women. We see a manifestation of this in the US, where a judge gives an attempted-assassin a slap on the wrist because he/she is gender-confused.

Without the union of Yin and Yang, there can be no real basis for a community. Instead, you have groups of individuals with no purpose greater than competing for power. What one builds, the other tears down. As difficult as it is, we must restore the creative tension of Yin and Yang to save our communities.

Winning Tomorrow

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but Tomorrow is ours to win. — Lyndon Baines Johnson

As many of you know, I have spent much of my later-career years focused on communities, especially community resilience. The “resilience” that I and my colleagues have talked about goes beyond the conventional “bouncing back” from adversity – survival – to include seizing the opportunities inherent in any “change” whether adverse or not, i.e., thriving.

But this put us in a somewhat awkward position: virtually all of our funding was coming from sources most interested in “surviving” crises. If you think of the Chinese ideogram for crisis, it is made up of the symbols for “danger” and “opportunity.” Our funding tended to focus us on mitigating “dangers” and on recovery when they overwhelmed communities, with much less attention to seizing opportunities.

Now that I’m self-funded (ahem), I’m trying to bring balance back into my own thinking and writing. As a part of this, I’ve struggled to find something that better captures our conception of “resilience.” If the purpose of a community is to provide the quality of life that its members want, then a community should be continually striving to meet or exceed that goal. I was searching for a way to express that idea when I stumbled across the quote for President Johnson. 

Winning Tomorrow – the American Dream for communities! The American Dream is the essence of what makes America exceptional. It is inherently aspirational. It is built on a belief that anyone – even the poorest among us – can rise above even the humblest of beginnings to achieve a better life with hard work and persistence. Just as we as individuals work to make the American Dream a reality for ourselves and our families, our communities should work to make themselves better, more livable, places to work, play, and raise a family – they should aim to Win Tomorrow.

Certainly, achieving that purpose is complicated by the sea of changes in which our communities are immersed. Winning Tomorrow means that the community will continue to move forward no matter what challenges they face in the future. Communities are open systems. People are moving in and out of them continually. Today’s acceptable quality of life may not satisfy the community’s residents 10 years from now. Neighboring communities will also change. The community may be struck by a Wild Thing, resulting in loss of life, in damage to infrastructure, or to businesses closing. The state or federal government may enact new regulations altering community processes. And, of course, the community’s infrastructures and dispatchable capital will degrade over time if not maintained.

A community Wins Tomorrow if the community’s quality of life steadily improves over the long term. The community successfully adapts to its stressors before failure occurs. If the community fails (e.g., if it is devastated by a Wild Thing), it rapidly recovers, and regains its upward momentum.

It takes self-investment to Win Tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean mountains of money. It does mean institutional capital to make decisions and to implement them; human capital to take action; and social and cultural capital to sustain the effort.

Some of you cynics may scoff at this: “Mine is a poor community with few resources.” The American Dream doesn’t care where you start, or how poor you are. If you work hard and smart over the long haul, you can create a better life. In the same way, even the poorest of communities can Win Tomorrow, using what they have to take small steps that become bigger steps that ultimately become transformative.

In that sense, Winning Tomorrow is a journey, not a destination. It is not a one-time exercise but rather a continuing effort to make Tomorrow better than Today for the entire community. Efforts to Win Tomorrow should last for decades – ideally never ending. Winning Tomorrow mostly consists of incremental changes to individual community systems.

I know this may seem like what my good friend Warren Edwards calls the “Square Root of Ether” – an intellectual exercise with little practical merit. In my next post – It Began with a Bull – I’ll tell the story of a dirt-poor community who started its journey with nothing but a leader who cared about his community and the community is still working to Win Tomorrow.

Looking beyond the flames

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are. ~ Cal Thomas

The ongoing wildfires in California have shone a light on one of the too-seldom recognized flaws of Democracy. The only real form of accountability for poor performance by elected officials is to vote them out. But what if there isn’t a viable opposition? What if the Public is not well-informed?

There should be no question in anyone’s mind that poor governance and incompetence are the root causes of the human tragedies in LA. The first duty of any government is to assure its citizens’ quality of life. At the community level, that means law enforcement, fire protection and support of a viable economic life. It doesn’t mean towing away anyone’s vehicle without appropriate notice for possible violations unrelated to the car (as is being done in Chicago, New York and other big cities). It doesn’t mean ignoring the deaths and destruction caused by black-on-black crime. It doesn’t mean accepting petty crime (so corrosive to community). It doesn’t mean cutting millions from the fire department’s budget while funding less fundamental functions.

There is a sad litany of poor performance by the politicians that led to this. A few examples:

  • Having ~100 emergency vehicles out of commission because they need maintenance – but not having the mechanics to work on them.
  • The Mayor of LA going to Ghana on a boondoggle – in spite of extraordinary warnings from the National Weather Service that a fire disaster was looming – before the fire.
  • Empty reservoirs and not a single new dam – even though the state’s voters had approved a $7.5B ballot initiative for more water storage – in 2014!
  • There is evidence that arson was the cause of at least one fire – caused by a homeless person. In spite of spending billions, the number of homeless continues to rise.
  • Water not being pumped because there was too little pressure – but that’s OK because at least 300 water hydrants had been stolen and not replaced.
  • Not having a scheduled controlled burn – because it might make somebody look bad if it went wrong.
  • Sending supposedly “excess” equipment to Ukraine – and then not replacing it.

There are many, especially on the Right, who blame the “progressive” policies pursued by the Democratic leadership, both locally and at the state level. It is easy – now – to recognize the folly of effectively incentivizing petty crime, for example. But the failure of governance in California ultimately is really not a Red vs Blue issue. It is a corruption issue. Most simply, when one party has been in power for a long time (whether GOP or Dem) and has no real opposition, corruption is the result. As Lord Acton said, Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not that Democratic politicians can’t govern, it’s that they have been in power in California so long that governing is immaterial to many of them.

Their dysfunction is an extreme example of Pournelle’s Iron Law. Idealists start movements to right wrongs, to make life better in their communities. Over time the idealists get pushed aside; their places are taken by the bureaucrats and hacks. These may pay lip service to the founders’ visions and ideals but their real aim is to perpetuate their power and the perks that come with it.

In a sense, most of us are a little complicit in their sham. Too many of us accept the hacks’ lip service for intention; or vote for them because, well, we always have. We don’t go beyond the honeyed words to see the toxic acid corroding our communities. We are too caught up in our own day-to-day struggles to actually understand why things seem to be going so wrong. We believe the media’s half truths (“mostly peaceable demonstrations”) because to doubt is to risk being cancelled. Or maybe we take the coward’s way out, soothing ourselves with the “certainty” that we can’t make a difference anyway, can we? Whatever the reason, the corrupt incompetents remain in power, almost certain to be overwhelmed by the next crisis.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Poor opponent or not, vote the jackals out; don’t reward incompetence! If what you see doesn’t match what you’re being told – by either the politicians or the media – then suspect you’re being lied to. Dig at it until you get at the truth – and then act on it. Most importantly, don’t vote based on loyalty, or to just go along – vote for who is going to do the best job. If they don’t live up to your expectations, vote them out. And if none of that works, then vote with your feet – leave.

It might seem that I’m playing the Blame Game, but actually I’m not. I’m looking forward to how we can best help the devastated rebuild their shattered lives. Those of us thankfully muttering to ourselves “There but for the Grace of God…” are faced with a moral dilemma: how can we best help our friends in California recover?

Do we trust the recovery to the incompetents who contributed to this horrendous human tragedy? Do we find another way to get the funds needed for rebuilding and recovery into the hands that need them? Do we deny the funds so badly needed (no one seriously believes we’ll actually do this) to those who need housing, jobs; because we fear that the incompetents will fritter those funds away? I offer no answers but the questions demand them.

Trends – maybe

“I don’t set trends. I just find out what they are and exploit them.” ~ Dick Clark

In previous posts, I’ve highlighted trends that will likely impact our communities. Dick Clark’s quote is particularly relevant to communities. A community needs to be ready for the trends that are impacting them, or may impact them. If the trend is negative, a community should take action either to minimize the impacts or to be able to rapidly recover. If the trend is positive, the community should be ready to exploit and accentuate it, if possible.

The fly in this ointment is that we sometimes think we see a trend when there may not be one at all. We humans are pattern-seeking animals. We owe our survival as a species to our ability to recognize slight changes in familiar scenes; our ability to recognize strange whispers intruding on the rhythms of our lives.

In this post, I’m going to look at two different potential trends. One of them already seems to be impacting our communities. The second may be real or not. Only time will tell.

Peak Population

According to the United Nations, the rate of growth of the global population peaked at 2.3% in 1963. Since then it has decreased to today’s 0.84%. The UN projects that the global population will peak before the end of the century (~2080) with a very high probability. Recent model developments are indicating that the UN model is very conservative; peak population may well occur decades sooner. The Eurozone, China, Japan and Russia have all already peaked. The African population is set to continue to expand throughout the rest of this century, but not enough to overcome the declining populations elsewhere.

Peak population appears to be driven by two entangled factors. Compared to 1990, women globally are having one less child. In countries with declining populations, the birth rate is simply too small – below the 2.1 births per woman – to maintain the population. In large part this seems to be a consequence of greater prosperity. In richer countries families don’t need childrens’ work to sustain themselves. In richer countries women are more likely to be working. Life expectancies are greater in richer countries.

In fact, life expectancy is increasing globally – the UN predicts that about 1/4 of the world’s population will be 65 or older in 2080. By 2070, people’s longer life spans will result in over hslf of the world’s deaths occurring after the departed has reached age 80 (compared to only 17% in 1990). In the US by 2035, the number of people 65 or older will exceed those 18 and younger.

As the UN points out, the only reason the US has not peaked (and probably won’t) is immigration. Without immigration, the UN projects that the US population would slowly decrease from today’s 340+M to 245M by the end of this century.

An important global consequence of this trend is what it implies about climate change. All of the scenarios built into our climate models assume that global popuation will not peak (at around 10.5 B people) until early in the 22d Century. Fewer people mean fewer emissions. Thus, adjusting these models to account for fewer people may drastically alter the expected climate impacts.

In the US, the consequences of this trend will vary greatly depending on the community. Communities that rely on exports to Eurpoe for their economic vitality may find that their markets are shrinking due to the decreasing population. Competition for these markets is already intensifying. However, the growth that will occur in the developing world, particularly Africa, in the next decades means that there may be new markets to exploit.

Communities that do not have a significant immmigrant population may stop growing or even contract. Longer life spans are already increasing the demand for elder services (pet care is an interesting example); these communities may not have enough people with appropriate skills to satisfy that demand. These communities may also start to hemorrhage higher paying jobs. Companies requiring a technologically adept workforce may leave because of a lack of skilled workers.

In fact, the Peak Population implies that human capital will be at a premium. We are already seeing this in a decline in the ratio of those employed to job openings – now less than 1. A part of this is the Baby Boomer generation leaving the workforce. This increased demand for workers implies that wage-induced inflation is likely to persist.

However, this does not necessarily mean that our economy will decline. Gross Domestic Product is the working population multiplied by their productivity. If AI is able to increase productivity enough, our economy may even thrive.

As we’re already seeing in our stores, immigrants bring with them a demand for products we have seldom encountered before – food, fashion, and entertainment. They also potentially bring with them severe demands for community services – schools, medical facilities, transportation and welfare. While our new President may be able to stem the flow of immigrants, he won’t be able to stop it.

Peak Population will likely have a significant impact on Higher Education. The declining number of students will place great pressure on colleges and universities to survive. This will place a premium on their reputations and “branding.” Institutions of Higher Education likely will begin to react more forcefully to acts of student hooliganism.

Other possible consequences:

  • Greater demand for workers may well mean greater career volatility as workers go after a wider universe of opportunity.
  • As the well-to-do elderly die or dowsize, there is likely to be a glut of McMansions in some communities. This should drive prices down so that middle class families can afford them, but this will have impacts on the tax base of local governments and schools.
  • Immigration into the US, is already impacting the country culturally and socially. Peak Population is likely to accentuate these impacts, both positive or negative.

The 2024 election and political realignment

We’ve had entirely too much theorizing over what our election meant or didn’t mean. Four things stick out to me:

  • Trump got slightly more votes than in 2020, meaning he got about the same proportion of the electorate in 2024 as in 2020 .
  • Much of the theorizing (scapegoating?) revolves around percentages, not the absolute number of votes. Since the total number of votes cast in 2024 was well below that of 2020, Trump’s percentage of the total vote was bound to be higher.
  • Trump’s coalition (his mix of the voters) changed. He picked up more votes from blacks, hispanics, and blue collar workers than before. Conversely, his proportion of white votes went down slightly, continuing a larger trend.
  • Harris got 10 M less votes than Biden. She ran an abysmal campaign, and was a worse campaigner. A lot of Dems just stayed home on election day. The telling stat – to me – is that Harris was unable to get out as much of the urban Dem vote as Biden did. She reached only 80% of Biden’s total in Chicago (Cook County) and Philadelphia, and 75% in New York (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens).

All of this suggests that the demise of the Dem Party has been greatly exaggerated. Ultimately you have to give people “a reason to believe.” The Veep never did. Had Biden withdrawn sooner so that the Dems could have had a more “primary-hardened” candidate, they might have won.

Is there a trend toward political realignment of our country? A certain – “maybe.” Definitive conclusions about party realignment will have to wait for more detailed analysis of the absolute vote totals. I suspect that it will be a definite “Yes” in only a few states. Ideally this election might mark the beginning of the end of “identity” as an important factor in our elections. We can only hope.

Ecological vs engineering resilience

The goal of resilience is to thrive. – Jamais Cascio

Both Claire Rubin and James Brooke were kind enough to forward to me a short piece from The Conversation, by Prof A A Batabyal of RIT (nice that someone is looking out for me!). Although the short essay started by looking at “sustainability,” it was really focused on “resilience.” In particular, Batabyal contrasts “ecological” resilience against “engineering” resilience.

He uses a lake and a bridge as exemplars: the former for ecological resilience (as defined by Hollings) and the latter for engineering resilience (as defined by Pimm). The bridge has only one stable state; the lake has more than one stable states. As the Prof points out, Hollings’ definition boils down to how much stress an ecosystem can withstand before it restructures. Pimms’ definition of resilience relates to how fast a system can return to equilibrium.

The Prof then points out that most socioeconomic systems – such as communities – “exist” in multiple states. Thus, Hollings’ definition should be favored. I disagree, for several reasons.

First and foremost, Hollings’ definition and the panarchic framework it leads to is not very useful for a community trying to become more resilient. The definition requires us to observe a system under stress and then watch it change. The amount of stress needed to force the system to change is its “resilience.” If I’m a community professional, in essence this implies I have to let the community fail before I can gauge its resilience! Of course this is nonsense – but it does point to the difficulty of predicting a community’s resilience using this approach.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is knowing whether a community has restructured. Take New Orleans after Katrina as an example. There were several differences in the Before and After:

  • The city’s population dropped by a third.
  • Several new civic organizations were put in place.
  • There were measureable changes in the performance of important community systems (e.g., student performance improved).
  • Much of the sleaze in the French Quarter disappeared.

Did these indicate a change in structure?

Then there’s the “resilience-to” problem.In practical terms, we know that a community generally doesn’t have a single “resilience.” Rather a community’s resilience depends on

  • The stressor. A community may be able to deal with a great deal of economic stress, but fold like a house of cards in the face of a pandemic.
  • The speed of stress. A community may be able to adapt to a high level of stress spread over time but unable to tolerate the same stress experienced as a rapid shock.
  • The amount and type of damage, and the resources available for recovery.

Pimm’s concept of “engineering resilience” has the advantage of seeming more like what people think of as resilience. As the result of a Wild Thing – some sort of extreme event – a community loses capacity or functionality. Over time, the community recovers from the Wild Thing and regains its capacity. The time required to regain its functionality is the community’s resilience. Bruneau et al’s concept of resilience is very consistent with this idea.

From a community’s standpoint, community systems are either functional or failed – they either do or don’t meet the community’s demand for their function. After the damage wrought by a Wild Thing, the community at large doesn’t really care whether the health care system, or the system providing electricity are structured the same as before. They only care whether they can obtain the same (or better) health care as before the Wild Thing. They only care whether they can get light when they flip the switch, or air conditioning when it’s hot outside. Community professionals are most concerned with determining how soon after a Wild Thing the health care system is functional; how soon the lights can come back on after power is lost.

The stress testing approach* that Jennifer Adams and I have developed provides community professionals with a way to gauge this type of resilience. To summarize, community professionals postulate a particular Wild Thing – type, intensity, timing. This leads to a prediction of the damage the Wild Thing will cause. This in turn leads to a prediction of which community systems will fail. The resilience of each system is then determined by the use of dispatchable capital over time. The resilience of the community is inferred to be the resilience (time to recovery) of the last system to recover.

Community professionals and communities themselves want to know how resilient they will be to Wild Things before they occur. Simply put, Hollings’ approach to resilience may be useful in explaing what happened to a community as a result of a Wild Thing after the fact. It’s not very useful to community professionals trying to determine their community’s “recoverability” before a Wild Thing strikes. There is a certain inevitability to the “ecological” resilience approach when applied to communities. If sufficiently stressed, they will fail and restructure. When and how and to what is unanswered. Measuring the “engineering” resilience of communities using stress testing methodology gives community professionals answers they can work with, and is more intuitive. The approach can indicate paths to reduce damage and community system failures. It can also point to which additional resources could speed the community’s recovery from a Wild Thing. Ultimately, it can make recovery surer and more rapid – and communities more resilient.

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* M. J. Plodinec, “Stress Testing of Community Resilience to Extreme Events,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 18(2), 151-176 (2021).

The Pursuit of Happiness

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Almost a quarter of a millennium ago today, 52 brave men ratified what has become perhaps the most important document in the English language. Largely written by a shy, red-headed Virginian, with a few significant changes by Ben Franklin, it was at first merely a justification of our breakaway from Great Britain. As memories of the Revolution have dimmed, this sentence has come to be seen as one of the foremost statements of the rights of Man.

The key phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” harkens back to John Locke’s political philosophy of Life, Liberty and Property. By changing “Property” to the “Pursuit of Happiness,” Jefferson lifted the document from the humdrum to the profound. This phrase signaled that, at its best, our nation would be aspirational, reaching to be more than it was before.

We are told that the ratification itself was somewhat somber. And yet there were lighter moments as well: Hancock’s bravado in signing so boldly so that King George could read his signature without specs; Franklin’s half-playful admonishment that the signatories should all hang together or they would certainly all hang separately.

But afterwards there was a giddiness, a sort of Divine Madness, that gripped almost all of the signatories. John Adams wrote to Abigail that the signing would be cause for celebrations of that day for all time and everywhere. Some freed their slaves – their major source of wealth – because they could not fight for liberty while denying others freedom. It was almost Shakespearean. In fact, in some ways the Bard presaged this. Read Henry V’s speech to his “band of brothers” before Agincourt, to see how great words can inspire great deeds.

And in signing the Declaration, the signatories did, in fact, become a band of brothers, a sort of community – a group of individuals and organizations bound together by geography and self-interest.

As in any community, there were disagreements, sharp words, and views that sometimes could not be reconciled. Some members, at some times, pursued their own self-interest to the exclusion of the community’s. Some forgot that the pursuit of happiness was for all men; one’s rights ending when they impinge on those of others.

But above all else, this community, this band of brothers bequeathed to us something profoundly important – the purpose of a community. Above all else, a community’s purpose is to facilitate the pursuit of happiness of all its members.

At their best, this is what communities do – provide a quality of life so that their members can pursue their dreams. At their worst, communities allow their quality of life to diminish, or sometimes degrade it themselves. We see this in so many cities blindly “defunding the police,” empowering the criminals and preventing the innocent from pursuing their happiness. Most severely impacted are those who most badly need help. We see this in district attorneys and other law enforcement agencies in some cities selectively enforcing the laws, in effect denying the rights of some to pursue happiness. We see this in our partisan politics in some communities, where each side denies the humanity of the other’s adherents, to deny them their right to pursue their dreams.

But lest we lose hope, let us remember that our Revolution did succeed. The promise of the Declaration is embedded in our Constitution. Our Civil War, our support of Freedom in Europe during and after the World Wars, and the gradual clearing away of the dross of governance and government that has empowered the disenfranchised to pursue their dreams are all evidence that those glorious words of the Declaration still echo in our hearts and minds and communities.

Is resilience an illusion?

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice. ~ Stephen Covey

Last month, Claire Rubin – knowing my obsession with great interest in all things Resilience – sent me a link to a blog by Professor David Alexander – Resilience is an Illusion. After reading it the first time, I promptly went on vacation for two weeks, still pondering Alexander’s provocative post.

Surprisingly, I agree with much of what Alexander wrote, while disagreeing with his conclusion (obviously!). His view of Resilience is that of Hollings – a sort of Nietzschean eternal recurrence. This was originally focused on ecological systems returning to a stable state after a disturbance. Alexander quite properly points out that Change has become inherent in our lives. Instabilities of many types abound, often coupling with strong underlying trends. He concludes that Resilience “can only be attained by constant adaptation, which is a case of pursuing an ever-receding goal.” Thus, for him, the illusory nature of Resilience. He closes by advocating that we focus instead on vulnerabilities – identifying and reducing them.

Personally, I’m really uncomfortable with the Hollings view of Resilience (and his and Lance Gunderson’s overlying Panarchy concept), especially when applied to communities. I have two fundamental problems with the concepts: time and agency.

Even if this eco-construct is completely accurate over the long-term (e.g., it has been applied to the Roman Empire’s rise and fall), it is descriptive rather than predictive. If I’m a community leader worried about my community’s future, it adds nothing to my understanding of what’s happening next week, next month, next year or even next decade.

Similarly, while the concept is useful in describing the evolution of ecological systems, it seems to assume that over the long-term communities are essentially passive. Awash in a sea of influences, a community thus resembles a ball in a multi-dimensional game of ping-pong, unable to dodge any of the paddles aimed at it.

This ecosystem conception of Resilience when applied to communities (or any type of human society) ignores the fact that they are made up of humans. As implied by the Covey quote above, we think, we dream, we aspire, we create. While we cannot completely control our Future, we can envision what we want it to be and steer our lives toward it.

To put this in terms of the Law of Community Momentum, this ecosystem concept changes the Law from “A community’s trajectory will not change unless some force changes its path” (i.e., trajectory is destiny only if you take no action) to “A community’s trajectory will not change.” Alexander ultimately seems to accept this while calling Resilience illusory.

In fact, I strongly agree with Alexander that community resilience requires – demands – that communities adapt to their changing contexts. Alexander seems to despair of their ability to do so. I don’t. I believe that if a community’s leadership can stare into the abyss of the present clear-eyed and without ideological blinders, they can find a path to a better future. And if they are committed to their communities, they will take it. We have examples of this – Charleston, SC, taking advantage of Hurricane Hugo’s havoc to build a stronger, more livable city. We have Pittsburgh and Charlotte – each reinventing and reinvigorating itself – in the face of crumbling economic foundations. In each of these, we have leaders who cared about their communities enough to step up and act. Each of these a case study for the reality of Resilience. Resilience illusory?  Absolutely not!