Soccer player Tesho Akindele tweeted this curious thought earlier today:
Public transportation doesn’t need to be profitable
Nobody demands that public schools, libraries, or fire departments are profitable
We understand that these things are an investment in the well-being of our society
Public transportation is an investment, not a cost
This phrasing is common, but the language is implicitly spun. No organization operates for long if it is not “profitable.” The questions are only who profits and in what way.
Like businesses, government agencies and nonprofits have employees and managers, who are often very well compensated. The differences come with customers and stockholders. Unlike most business activities, the customers of government and nonprofits often are distinct from the people paying for the products and services.
The other difference is that government and nonprofits aren’t expected to generate money as their residual value (that is, payments to stockholders). They are, however, expected produce some beneficial effect on behalf of taxpayers and voters.
A lack of clarity on these points often leads us to build incentives around and manage government and nonprofit institutions poorly. It also makes it too easy for those who do profit financially (those employees, managers, and non-paying customers) to obscure the need to provide social value.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Raimondo’s PR machine rolls on
- The “football club’s” PR team makes a play
- Is RI ready for the great pot unveiling?
- Emergency in the emergency rooms
- McKee’s first full time looms
Featured image colorized from a greyscale photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash.
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Guests: Darlene D’Arezzo, State of the State Host and Co-producer
Mike Stenhouse, Host and producer of In the Dugout; CEO of RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity www.rifreedom.org
Host: John Carlevale Time: 60 minutes
Description: Guests and host discuss a wide range of topics and concerns in their review of factors which have influenced midterm election results. Topics included RI statewide office outcomes; top election issues nationally and locally; political party strategies; political ads; campaign money; polarization and dominance by one political party; voting procedures; and the emergence of a new third party movement and much more.
Ed Driscoll points to a great post by Scott Alexander that investigates the aesthetic gap between the classic and the modern. Alexander starts with architecture and a “conspiracy theory”:
Imagine a postapocalyptic world. Beside the ruined buildings of our own civilization – St. Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal, those really great Art Deco skyscrapers – dwell savages in mud huts. The savages see the buildings every day, but they never compose legends about how they were built by the gods in a lost golden age. No, they say they themselves could totally build things just as good or better. They just choose to build mud huts instead, because they’re more stylish.
This is the setup for my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria. Its true believers say we are those savages. We live in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Art Deco skyscrapers, etc. But our buildings look like [ugly utilitarian blocks].
During my years observing Newport, Rhode Island, architecture while renovating old mansions and building new houses convinced me that, with architecture, at least, the culprit is the change in building techniques and the cost of labor. What makes a building look Wow! is gratuitous detail — embellishments, turns, outcroppings, columns, gables, arches, and so on, that the structure doesn’t really need in order to be functional.
There are two parts to the equation. The first is that labor could be had cheap. The standard for comfort was once much lower, as was the respect for workers’ human value, so a large construction project could afford to burn their time.
The second is the gap between the cost of ornate architecture and plain architecture. When you’ve got dozens (or hundreds) of men swinging hammers and sawing logs by hand all day, adding gratuitous detail is not that big of a deal. In contrast, when you’ve cut down the cost of construction by systematizing the construction, often using machines and doing much of the fabrication as if making a giant puzzle in a factory somewhere, details create a bigger gap.
If your dozens of inexpensive workers are doing things by hand, the extra cost of detail is a straightforward, linear calculation. When your on-site crew is using a crane to place whole walls on a foundation at a time, assembling many more, smaller walls in order to add detail can take exponentially more work.
As new building technologies have been integrated into our economy, different groups have absorbed the added profit in different directions. The relative cost of building has come down. The cost of labor measured against the actual work of the job has gone up. And so on. This battle for pieces of the pie has also added to the premium for detail, and aesthetics has not been able to compete.
In a sense. We aren’t able to build great architecture anymore, but it isn’t because we’ve forgotten how. It’s because our system makes it more difficult to do.
Featured image by Justin Katz.
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Such efforts are easy to dismiss as blame-laying, but it’s important for us to take careful stock of recent decisions, and the more gargantuan the effect, the more attention we should pay. So, put this on the list:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently reported a shortage of liquid amoxicillin, which is typically prescribed to children.
The FDA listed an increased demand for the antibiotic as the primary reason for the shortage. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists amoxicillin as a “first-line” therapy for most pediatric bacterial infections, there are alternatives that can be used instead.
We kept children isolated and then masked for more than a year. We shut down large parts of the economy. Both shortages of supplies and reduced natural immune responses were predictable consequences of that action.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- RI media fails on Lugo
- RI Co-Op fails in election
- Providence fails students
- RI government fails the sick and injured
- RIGOP fails to recognize reality
- Trump on the cusp of failing the test of seriousness
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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The timing could be better, with Rhode Islanders having no opportunity to change direction via the ballot box for two years, but we really need to learn the lesson of overcrowding in our emergency rooms. Namely, among all the various causes, the most significant is socialized medicine:
“We are seeing long visit waits at the local emergency rooms. This is not new; we’ve seen that year after year, and we are back into it again,” Ana Novais, acting secretary of the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) said Thursday. …
Novais said hospitals are also facing additional challenges, including behavioral health needs for both pediatric and adult patients, emergency department overcrowding, and a national shortage of health care workers. …
“Not every issue needs to be treated in the emergency departments. Many health issues can be treated quickly and effectively by a primary care provider, an urgent care facility, or in another community clinic,” said Dr. Philip Chan, Consultant Medical Director of the R.I. Department of Health.
True, we don’t have “socialized medicine” in the sense that doctors’ paychecks come from the government, but the number of regulations — from personnel certification to “certificate of need” regulations that limit the number of hospitals to mandated coverages in insurance plans to taxpayer subsidized health care plans — amounts very nearly to the same thing, at this point. And government control introduces two problems. First, this type of organization obscures the pricing mechanism, which only means the market is being organized without accurate information. Second, the political urge to please special interests and buy votes inevitably distorts decision-making, whether or not information is accurate.
So, the fact that professional licenses from other states aren’t immediately valid in Rhode Island is just one method by which established players boost the price for their services, but then this bump in pay comes into competition with the fact that the job can be very difficult in short-staffed environments. The fact that many people pay little or nothing for services means they have no reason to seek care in more-appropriate settings when they find others more convenient. And the fact that procedures are required to be covered adds cost to everybody’s insurance (increasing the drive to “get your money’s worth” by every means) and reduces the incentive to limit use of those mandated services.
Yet, articles like Alexandra Leslie’s WPRI link above treat crises simply as something that is happening, to which officials must find a solution. The solution is for officials to stop trying to find solutions! They will only make things continually worse until the system is entirely unsustainable.
Featured image by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash.
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Guest: Captain Randell Bagwell, www.facebook.com/Bagwellfarmofri
Host: Darlene D’Arezzo Time: 32 minutes
Description: Captain Bagwell candidly shares his life’s journey from boyhood; his early work experience and business endeavors, his first military experience when her was injured, discharged and later rejoined for his second Navy experience. This journey included work for Electric Boat and General Dynamics; marriage and parenthood; various business endeavors; and then a return to cattle farming but this time in Rhode Island. This interesting journey began in childhood and transitioned to young adulthood, and then to combat, followed by his return to civilian life and farming in Rhode Island, to his involvement and service to other veterans.
Michael Chaves of Love Solar
Dr. Shafman on pancreatic cancer
Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation on mail ballots
Featured image by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.
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Judge Joseph Terence Houlihan yesterday acquitted then-police officer Jeann Lugo of simple assault at the June 24 melee at the State House, finding that Lugo was trying
to break free from Rourke who was restraining him from entering the “melee” that occurred at the rally.
Kudos to Judge Houlihan for issuing this wise and thoughtful ruling.
Jeann Lugo was charged on the basis of a heavily edited video that did not show exculpatory events that immediately preceded the alleged assault; i.e., that his “victim” had just committed battery on him by repeatedly restraining him; or fascinating events involving his “victim” after it. In other words, there was never a basis to charge Lugo.
But the false and defamatory video created by Bill Bartholomew “starring” Jeann Lugo went viral. Hey, that’s all that matters, right? Truth, reality and the prospect of inflicting serious harm on someone are completely irrelevant to the “accomplishment” and satisfaction of your video going viral.
Bartholomew eventually posted his full video of the incident and melee, presumably after Justin Katz called him out for failing to do so. [edited]
By then, it was way too late. [edited] The harm had been done. Bartholomew’s first, [edited] false video led people – in Rhode Island, around the country and even certain brass at the Providence Police Department – to leap to an erroneous conclusion: that out of the blue, without provocation, a man had struck a woman; a white (wait, isn’t he hispanic?? shut up; he’s white in this case) cop struck a black person; a male candidate for public office knowingly struck his female opponent.
The mob had been riled up and was baying for accountability for the “star” of a false video. Lugo was criminally charged.
Never mind that charging authorities did so on the basis of a highly cropped video snippet, apparently failing or refusing to take five minutes to view the full video (credit: Tom Quinlan) of the incident. Never mind that if they had done so, they would have clearly seen the “victim”, Jennifer Rourke, giving better than she got, committing battery against Lugo, which led to his act of self defense, and then violently shoving another man.
I strongly reiterate my suggestions:
> Jeann Lugo should consider pressing assault charges against Jennifer Rourke.
> As should the man whom she violently shoved.
> Most importantly to deter the creation of other dangerously false viral videos, Jeann Lugo should consider suing Bill Bartholomew for defamation.
Meanwhile, very fortunately for justice, the judge presiding over Jeann Lugo’s criminal case looked at all of the evidence, including a video of the entire incident, not just a maliciously edited snippet of it, and allowed the facts of the incident rather than a mob ginned up by a false and highly misleading video to steer his ruling. Judge Houlihan is to be strongly commended for doing so.
[Featured Image Credit: screenshot from Tom Quinlan’s video of the melee.]
[This post was edited on September 18 to add the judge’s name and to correct punctuation in the ninth paragraph. Information in paragraphs 5 & 6 was corrected via strikethrough on September 19.]
