Official retainers vs young punks with swords: Depending on period, this was more or less true. A lot of our popular conception came from the very stratified Tokugawa period. However, in more lawless periods, swordsmen weren't necessarily people who had been trained from birth. They might be someone who stripped the arms from the dead/dying on a battlefield & decided that they no longer wanted to be a farmer. Armies were always hiring as one lord conquered a new province or needed to defend against an ally who switched sides.
Also, later in the Tokugawa period, the samurai's lords were going broke from having to feed all the children of generations of samurai who weren't getting killed off. So there was a lot of pressure to have ones retainers go out & win a duel or die trying.
To the death: Japanese swordsmanship has developed towards more towards the unstoppable counter-stroke than the perfect parry. I recall stories about duels between masters ending after single strikes with both dead. Certainly, in my training, parries are always followed by attacks, rather than returning to a safe waiting position.
]]>Since I never saw or heard that worrying, I therefore believed that it didn't happen. And it's that uncertainty that makes me feel like I'm bad at being an adult. Yes, consciously, I know I'm wrong, and that my parents probably worry about those sorts of things even now, but the confidence comes from the subconscious.
]]>My optimistic side is hoping that higher density, better mass transit, and fewer corn subsidies mean that it isn't as bad as the US.
]]>Engineers need to accept that management needs status updates on a regular schedule.
Managers needs to accept that engineers need uninterrupted time.
Engineers often work on their own schedule.
How should we reconcile these so that engineers can produce, but managers can avoid the cats all heading in different directions?
]]>There are significant efforts being made in some areas of government to deal with the not-my-department syndrome. In my office, we are working on a push to have Juvenile Probation & Foster Youth services work to find ways to better serve the kids under our care. Sounds obvious, I know, but it goes against the grain of a rationalist bureaucracy as described by Weber. It will likely improve the average situation for the kids, but also increase the variance, so some kids will potentially be worse off. Good? Bad? We shall see.
Not-my-fault: Totally happens here. Our Board of Supervisors fired a department head for failing to improve it sufficiently. Said department head is now suing, saying that he wasn't given sufficient support in his reform efforts. But he was successfully fired. I think we're lucky in that our population is better than many at paying attention to performance, and local government is close enough that people can see the failures more easily. We've also had some recent scandals that pointed out why you need to keep a well-funded internal audit department. (Never waste a good scandal)
good-ole-boy: I think this is very dependent on local political & organizational culture. Silicon Valley is heavily minority-majority. (72% minority, 37% immigrant, 52% immigrant or 1st gen citizen) My instincts say that minorities here have more money & education, so are more able to fight against discrimination. I have some concerns about there being glass ceilings at the executive level or in some more rewarding jobs (IT, for example). I also think that local discrimination is more likely to be unconscious conditioning that people feel guilty about when noticed. Still needs to be fought, but it makes the problem more solvable.
Here's an interesting database if you want to look at civil service positions across the US: http://www.metrotrends.org/commentary/race-and-local-government.cfm
]]>At the civil service level, the first fail mode is "person X is ineffective/unpleasant to work with/incompetent/retired-at-desk. It would take 1 competent manager 1 year full-time to fire them. We don't have 1 competent manager who isn't already busy. Work around them." The politicians who raise this as a problem tend to argue that the solution is no civil service protections for anyone, which just takes us back to the patronage system. I'll live with a few people retired-at-desk in exchange for not needing to be an unpaid campaign staffer (or donor, or relative) to keep my job.
Another fail mode is "conform to institutional bias." So police officers who think everyone is guilty of someone, spies who think that the way to protect the nation is spy on everyone & everything, etc. Fixing this requires long-term commitment to reform & institutional change from leadership. Until you get a really bad & obvious case, you don't get that commitment. Just changing the department head is usually what the electeds & appointeds usually do, and that isn't enough to change anything.
Finally, there are people who are just plain evil. In policing, they beat the people in their custody. In other cases, they may steal money from clients, sign up relatives or themselves for benefits inappropriately, etc. To the best of my knowledge, the incidence of evil isn't any worse than in the private economy. But, this may very widely across different governments.
Your local government might be run by an incorruptible, inexhaustible dynamo who's been term-limited out of national office and who creates a culture of excellence. Or might be run by someone who is stealing the citizens blind, and creates a culture of "take what I can before it all blows up." Or someone who thinks that shouting "waste & corruption" will magically result in things getting better, creating a culture that thinks "I know better than the electeds, so ignore them."
note, the "waste & corruption" guy might very well be right. But if they aren't willing to spend the effort to build support in the civil service (management & staff) for reforms, and to build a detailed plan for how to build systems to catch the waste & corruption, and make sure that those systems aren't more expensive than the waste it prevents, it won't fix anything. But if your goal is to get elected in the next legislature up, it's easier to just shout & get people mad without actually solving anything.
]]>Peter Principle. A competent leader is not the same as a competent manager is not the same as a competent (whatever the department actually does). So, using social work as an example, a social worker is promoted into management based on ability as a social worker, while the leaders are picked from the managers. So, you end up with many leaders knowing having a fairly good idea of how to do social work (based on the rules 10 years ago, maybe) but having little understanding of how the support systems work. (IT, Accounting, etc)
Don't have time to read everything, but it's all my responsibility. Most executives & other supposed leaders tend to want to make all the decisions, but don't have time to really sit down & understand the details of whatever they are being asked about, especially if the details come from a support role that they didn't grow up in. (see point 1)
What I don't understand how to do isn't important or difficult. Not understanding the specialist roles would be fine if they took the time to listen & learn what was important to those specialists. But instead, they make blanket statements that make little sense.
I.E:
If A, then do this.
If B, do this other thing.
If A & B do a third thing.
Great. What about neither A & B? (nope, never thought about that)
or:
How does the brand new in-home care payroll system handle a bounced check?
(actual answer was submit a ticket to technical support in Sacramento)
My friends in private industry assure me that this happens to them as well, but generally governments have stricter rules about not breaking the rules, so you can't just go around the boss who doesn't know what you're doing. (speaking at the civil service level, not the legislators or ministers themselves)
]]>I.E. if Johnson, May, or Farage can't get a majority, could Salmond, Sturgeon, or some other candidate cobble together a EU-friendly government between the SNP & various fractions of the other parties?
I assume that the fixed-term parliament act doesn't prevent the dissolution of government if no new PM can be chosen.
]]>Interesting choice of word there. My dad's an immigrant in my country. Been here 45 years, paid taxes all that time. He's designed roller coasters, windmill turbines, and mars rovers. He raised two sons, one also an immigrant. So, who are you to say he doesn't deserve a place where he's done all that.
A country is the people who live there, and the things they build, and the relationships they make. Without that, a country is dirt, nothing more.
]]>The big cities lose massive numbers of people, the companies that employ them collapse, and the countries that suddenly get a million folks who haven't been home for 10 years start rioting over social differences. A couple million female (insert country of choice here) professionals aren't going to get rid of sexism in (Country of Choice), but they certainly aren't going to be happy.
Oh, and millions of children wonder where their parents are. Alternately, millions of children are now living in a country where no one speaks the language and they don't have any friends, and all the schools are full. Oh, and a significant fraction had to pick which parent to follow...
]]>All while the EU is busy trying to solve the Euro & refugee crises. If Dave had come forward with a proposal to create a reform commission when the EU didn't have major crises going on, and did it humbly, he might have gotten somewhere. But "reform or I leave" isn't good diplomacy at any time.
]]>On the "I went there & people drive crazy there" topic, I feel that part of this is just not knowing how people are going to move. Drivers in an area are a sub-culture, just like any other community. They have expectations, and when you act differently, there's friction. The outsider interprets that friction as "people drive crazy there." Not saying there aren't objectively bad driving behaviors, but not every perceived bad driving behavior is one.
]]>From a very quick googling, the UK appears to offer the deduction for sale of home, and interest deduction on investment property.
But so does Germany. (mortgage interest offsets rental income, gain excluded if you lived there for a number of years)
So, primarily not tax incentives then?
But from what I can see, German real estate prices did not go through the boom that US, UK & other EU did since 1993. http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/182022-international-market-comparisons/
Wonder how much of that was due to reunification. If there was suddenly the entire east open to revitalize the housing stock, that would keep housing costs from rising.
]]>Looking anecdotally at my co-workers- government accountants at the professional & middle management level, so financially knowledgeable, well-paid, and with three major financial threats taken off the board: layoff, retirement, health care. With all of that, you'd expect them to be happy & secure. And, if they own a home with non-zero equity, they are. But if not, they are very concerned.
Without those 3 protections, it's really damn scary. Most USAians have nearly no savings, nearly no retirement savings, and depend on employers for health care. Now, add in that 35% of the USA are over 50, where it becomes very difficult to save up enough in time to retire. And, just as the boomers were getting to retirement age, we had the GFC to gut the primary store of household wealth.
So, the old have no way to afford retirement. The young have no way to save enough to buy a home because rents cost too damn much. And the middle is facing the choice between Junior & Dad getting to move back in.
And all of this trouble & uncertainty is bad enough without considering the increase in eldercare costs once the boomers are old enough to need part-time assistance. That gets insanely expensive.
OK, I've depressed myself. Someone cheer me up. Tell me that in sensible countries, it's better than this? Please? Lie to me.
savings: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-have-less-than-1000-in-savings-2015-10-06
retirement: http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=768&Itemid=48
]]>I'll give my opinion for contrast whenI'm not typing on a smartphone, sorry...
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