The Economist Misses the Point

This has been a tough year in many ways, and many familiar solaces have had to be discarded for the duration of the pandemic. That has made the pleasurable things that we can still enjoy all the more important, and one of those is reading. My weekly periodicals have assumed an even greater role in my health and sanity, not least because of their honest and detailed coverage of the pandemic itself.

 

The Economist is the best. For me it is the Amazon of journalism. It follows a relentless pursuit of clear and worthwhile goals, and as a result steadily builds competitive advantage to trample rivals in a self-reinforcing loop. As quality local newspapers, then national newspapers, then TV news channels have retreated towards celebrity flimflam on the way to obsolescence, The Economist strides forward vacuuming up market share. The BBC is clinging on, and a few quality papers are still strong, but the depth of their coverage compared with ten years ago has declined. Who now have people on the ground in many African countries? Who can give a thoughtful and content-sourced article on Nagorno Karabakh? Who can write beyond the propaganda to document how China is truly developing? Increasingly, there is only one player in town.

 

The Economist can still be annoying, notably their persistence in retaining some MI5 jerk to contribute cold war rubbish once per month or so. The review of Scott Anderson’s CIA exposé The Quiet Americans plainly required much iteration with internal censors.

 

The weekly feature writers are generally excellent, most notably Chaguan in China. Bartleby is plainly a cynical old fart like me and I am in awe of his self-deprecating humour. Lexington manages to retain some decorum and distance amidst the chaos of current US politics.

 

For me the weakest of the regular features tends to be Free Exchange. These contributors give a sense of intellectual snobbery and orthodoxy. Most of the others seem to be curious and to a more diverse range of inputs. Having said that, this week’s Free Exchange challenging conventional wisdom comparing policies to respond to climate change was excellent.

 

But the Free Exchange article Which Market Model is Best from a couple of weeks ago to me typifies the former less curious Economist. The article started well by describing emerging models of capitalist economies, describing LME’s, CME’s and PME’s, the initial letter referring to limbering, coordinated and political. Think the US, Germany and China as archetypal examples.

 

The article then compared the performance of the archetypes during the pandemic, finding much evidence to support the guiding principles behind the various models. LME’s rely more on individuals and markets rather than institutions, so initial responses were often haphazard, while on the other hand most of the game-changing innovation is coming out of LME’s, with the UK given a particular shout out. CME’s appear more organised in the face of a challenge like the pandemic, able to forge a more coherent strategy to keep ahead of a crisis, while their innovation is more likely to be incremental. PME’s can mobilise radical actions quickly with compliance, as China’s ruthless suppression of the pandemic exemplifies, but it was in China that corruption and fear allowed the pandemic to take hold in the first place.

 

These are all good arguments, but the article completely loses its way when it decides it should issue awards, declaring which of the models is the best within the context of the pandemic. Old dogmas kicked in. Whereas many Economist contributors have started to regularly challenge LME orthodoxy, such enlightenment has yet to reach the Free Exchange office. Incredibly, first prize in the pandemic was awarded to LME’s.

 

This is stretch worthy of a Trump campaign advert. Surely we have to start with the figures. Where are the most preventable deaths occurring? Where is civil society most under strain? LME’s remain an unholy mess, even six months or more after initial outbreaks. Compare the US and Canada, the UK and Germany, Brazil and Uruguay and The Philippines and China. True, raw competence, context and luck play a part, but it is hard to argue that many LME’s are relatively safe, calm or fair places just now.

 

If Free Exchange had not started from intellectual categories like innovation, and not felt constrained by seeking arguments to justify a pre-determined first prize, it might have provided more useful insight. An examination of why more people are dying and suffering in LME’s might have been more effective.

 

LME’s tend to lead to high and growing inequality, which is an important root cause of pandemic failure in a number of ways. An unequal society often has a large minority living in cramped conditions with no savings and restricted access to medical care. These communities as a vulnerable economically as there are from a health perspective, and have less opportunity to comply with guidelines to restrict virus spread.

 

Then there is the looser concept of a coherent society. LME’s emphasise individual agency and downplay the role of government and institutions. It is no surprise that “we are all in this together” rings less true and that trust in government guidelines is low, leading to low compliance. Empathy for those of different tribes can vanish.

 

Arguably, simple competence becomes an issue in LME’s over time. At least I could argue that while marketing might become stronger, patient project management can suffer. It is more likely in LME’s that medical and other technical competences are allocated towards capital accumulation of citizen’s welfare.

 

I also trust an economic recovery more in a CME than an LME, although that has yet to be proven. LME’s crave growth driven by consumption, and that requires everybody to spend. Even before the pandemic, this could only be sustained by ever-increasing personal debt, and a sudden shock has seen the edifice crashing down. It will take more than a few stimulus checks to rebuild; indeed arguably it will not be possible to rebuild at all without discarding some LME shibboleths.

 

The most damning argument that Free Exchange could make against PME’s was that corruption and nepotism would make any innovation untrustworthy. It is a fair point, and I certainly won’t rush to take a vaccine only approved in China or Russia. But, as Kamala Harris said on Wednesday night, if Fauci tells me a vaccine is safe then I’ll be first in line, but if the recommendation comes from Trump, count me out. It is not only PME’s where trust becomes fatally eroded.

 

I like the model classifications, and Free Exchange is right that they can produce insights. Like all models it is incomplete and has fuzzy edges: an incompetent PME or one without civic goals will always perform worse than a CME or LME with competence. Many economies will be hybrids and evolve over time.

 

Still, the method of taking an important issue and using it to compare outcomes between models and analyse root causes can be powerful. The Economist generally does this well, but not when the winner is declared before the analysis starts. Free Exchange, you can do better. Get out more.   

A Word in Your Ear

 For as long as I can remember, I have been somewhat deaf. My right ear performs well, but my left one significantly less so. I can’t remember what first triggered me to realize this, because it is possible to live with partial deafness without being aware of it, a bit like living with a weakened sense of smell: the only gauge I have really is myself, so as long as there is no change, how can I tell of any disability?

 

One of my favourite books is Deaf Sentence by David Lodge. Funny and touching, the book chronicles exploits of a character of about my age, and I can empathise with all of it. I recommend it as reading for anybody who might be deaf or who interacts with somebody who is – I suppose that encompasses most of us.

 

More men have hearing impairment than women, and for most it is correlated with ageing. I suppose I am rather lucky that my hearing appears very stable.

 

The clearest symptom of deafness is in some ways the opposite of what we might assume. True, it can be revealing when somebody struggles to make out what you are saying. But I find that usually deaf people talk more loudly than others.

 

Have you noticed how you always shout into your mobile phone, especially when outdoors? We all do, and on a subway carriage it can be both annoying and funny to witness people screaming into a device. Our bodies are reacting to a difficulty in hearing the other end of a conversation. Somehow we assume that the other side is talking too quietly, so we react by talking louder ourselves as a signal to them. In my experience, most of the deaf people I meet are the ones who habitually talk louder. I include myself on this list.

 

One sad effect of the pandemic has been to exclude us from the old people’s home where we volunteer. There nearly everybody is deaf, simply because they are so old. They can’t hear, so they shout. Often I will serve a table of residents with their dinner and walk away but continue to hear their conversation clearly. They might not be so candid if they knew I could hear them. It may be true that I have no idea how to serve a sandwich, but most of them would be ashamed to tell me to my face, yet that is what they are effectively doing.

 

Hearing is a poor relation among the senses, at least compared with sight. We are all encouraged to test our eyes regularly through our lives, and technology has evolved to offer effective, though overpriced, remedies. I took Lasik eye surgery about fifteen years ago and would also recommend that. By contrast, most deaf people don’t even know they are deaf, and until recently hearing aids were awkward, ineffective and very expensive.

 

I am happy to report that this is changing, and I’m delighted that eighteen months ago I checked what was available, something I’ve done from time to time for a while. The diagnostic process was efficient and my doctor was kind enough to whisper that I should visit Costco, of all places, to buy a hearing aid. Specialists are still charging thousands, but Costco has the same or better technology and better service for a tiny fraction of the price. My single hearing aid was $800, not trivial but perhaps my best investment of the last few years considering the benefits to everyday living. I love it, and it is so unobtrusive that the only people who ever notice I am wearing it are other people who use hearing aids.

 

For me, a singer, the biggest benefit was in how I was able to hear music in a choral setting. I had always experienced that I could hear the singer on my right loud and clear, sometimes too loud and too clear, might sound from the one on my left was barely audible. I expected the hearing aid to remedy this but it did far more. The actual effect was a bit like the difference between listening in mono and stereo. The whole sound came to life for me thanks to my hearing aid, and I am convinced it has made me a much better singer.

 

All of this is preamble. The pandemic has been tough for all of us, but spare a thought for those of us who are hard of hearing.

 

The pandemic will have made it obvious to most of us how much we listen with our eyes. But listening has become so much harder lately with everybody wearing masks. Firstly, the mask itself obscures the sound of the talker, especially clarity of consonants. Next, we often have additional hurdles such as standing farther apart and Perspex screens. But the worst part is that we can’t read the lips of our interlocutor, but have only our ears to rely on.

 

For the most part I suppose I am no worse off than anybody else because my hearing aid corrects most of the deficiency. But the correction is not total, and in the summer I sometimes did not wear my hearing aid, because the one thing it does not like at all is moisture, and humid weather makes ears and everything else more moist. None of this helps outdoor dining, with all its ambient noise. Furthermore, I suspect I am a better lip reader than most people, simply because I have had more recourse to using it than people with perfect ears, so my disadvantage in not seeing somebody else’s mouth may be greater.

 

I have noticed one other disadvantage. I’m sure anybody who wears glasses have noticed how masks make them fall off more, simply because there is more clutter on the face and around the ears. Now imagine adding a hearing aid to that equation! I’m so happy to be singing again, with a mask on, as volunteer cantor at a local church. But I’m sure the congregation are taking much amusement from the sight of me trying to stop my glasses falling off, as my left ear is completely overloaded with devices and objects.

 

I concede this has been a very convoluted way to relate a modest anecdote. But there may be a few other takeaways available.

 

Firstly, now may be a very good time to establish if you are a bit deaf. Understanding through a mask is a handicap for everybody, but do you find you are really struggling? If so check your experience with others and test out different things, such as standing to favour one ear then the other. Ask people if you shout down your phone more than most people.

 

If you come away with some doubts then get a hearing test. In most developed countries the costs have come down and the remedies have improved.

 

Next, try to be tolerant of people who are struggling to understand what you are saying. And try to annunciate consonants more clearly than usual. I promise you we are doing our best and it is not easy.

 

Next, I wonder if there is an opportunity here for producers of masks and of spectacles. Asia’s experience suggests that masks are here to stay in our lives. I see people putting effort into fashion, but not yet into design.

 

Finally I wonder if deafness is part of the cause of some other things we are witnessing. I watched the gruelling and depressing Presidential debate on Tuesday. True, they were not wearing masks, but here were three old dudes standing farther apart than they usually would. I wonder how many of them are a bit deaf? I wonder how many even know? Certainly they were shouting enough. Biden in particular seemed a little slow to pick up what was being said in the cacophony.

The Pandemic: Winning the Second Half

 When a soccer team is losing heavily at half time, it is traditional for the coach to use the half time team talk to motivate his team to win the second half. It gives a target and can avoid heads dropping, at least until the opponents score yet again when battle resumes.

 

Humanity has certainly conceded many goals in the first half to the Coronavirus. Perhaps now we are close to half time and ready to regroup and accept some sage advice from our coaches. One part of that surely has to be to look forwards and not backwards. There will be plenty of time for recriminations after the outbreak is over, and plenty of opportunity to win the second half, because we know our opponent better by now and can adopt smarter tactics.

 

A key prerequisite for the coach is to define what winning is. A defensive minded coach might argue to minimize deaths. But this can be fine-tuned. Excess deaths compared to normal is a better target, not least because it avoids the effortful need to accurately assign each death to Coronavirus or something else. We can be smarter too if we measure something like excess healthy years lost, because surely the death of a centenarian, tragic though it may be, is more harmful than the death of an otherwise healthy child.

 

This might satisfy our defensive minded coach. But what about the offence? It may be that we can take steps to reduce excess healthy years to nearly zero, but at what cost to our economy and future well-being? There is a valid argument to risk a little on defence if that enables our children to resume learning or more of our poor to resume earning, for surely those things will help us in future matches. It might even help immediately if we can avoid mental health or drug issues. The question becomes a balance: what is the appropriate policy enable humanity to thrive somewhat, while keeping excess healthy years lost low?

 

By now we have a lot of data. And based on the data I find myself playing more offence than defence. This virus requires a defence, but science and experience and improved behaviour have helped. Last week The Economisttabulated what had been a theory of mine for a while. The 2020 ‘flu’ season in the southern hemisphere has barely existed. It stands to reason. The vulnerabilities to ‘flu’ are similar to those for Coronavirus, and by training ourselves to minimise the new virus we reduce the incidence of ‘flu’ as well.

 

Before 2020, I certainly never bothered with washing my hands so often or was careful about what I touched or from where I ate. I happily shook hands and hugged and would never have dreamt of wearing a mask. I sang loudly and often, spreading droplets generously, and would have to be very sick before choosing to stay home. Well, that is most of us, and it stands to reason, at least to me, that fewer folk will suffer ‘flu’ as a result.

 

Then there is the risk from the virus itself. In March and April it is no wonder so many New Yorkers who picked up the virus went on to die. The hospitals had few effective drugs. And contagion was so rife that we were told not to go to hospital at all unless we had been very sick for several days, so by the time many people arrived they were beyond cure.

 

Now medicine has worked out that steroids are effective, especially early on. So long as an outbreak is relatively contained, there is enough capacity in hospitals. For most of us, our odds are pretty good. And many of those for whom the odds are not good reside in nursing homes or can be a focus for isolation.

 

We are all waiting for a vaccine, and of course an effective widely-available vaccine would be wonderful, but I think we are talking up the vaccine too much. It will probably end up like the ‘flu’ vaccines. It will take a long time for most of us, many people seem likely not to take it, and it won’t work for everyone anyway, especially as the virus mutates.

 

Luckily. There is much that we can do with a vaccine. So long as outbreaks are contained relatively quickly, we don’t need to abandon our offence completely. Given the ‘flu’ benefits and the medical advances, excess years lost seem likely to remain quite low, so long as the most vulnerable are isolated. I suspect we are already close to a situation where the risk from driving our car on the highway becomes lower than the risk from Coronavirus.

 

This assumes that outbreaks are contained, and by now we have a good idea how to do that too, though practice in many countries remains woeful. Why is it such a hardship to wear a mask, and wear it properly? The politicians who have equivocated on this truly have blood on their hands. If everybody avoids crowds and wears their masks and maintains good hygiene, we can otherwise live normally, except where there is community spread.

 

Avoiding community spread is all about testing and tracing. Again, there is good practice available and woeful project management in many places. We took a test in August, and received our result thirteen days later. That is almost worthless. It has taken far to long here and elsewhere for reliable tests to be readily available and return results quickly. If that is in place, then contact tracing can be effective too.

 

Can we do this even better than current good practice? I think the real game changer is less about a vaccine and more about an instant test, one we can self-administer like a pregnancy test. This is how professional sports have been able to resume, and it would be wonderful if that sort of test became available to all of us. Then we could do almost anything, even sing or party or go to the theatre. For if even a thousand people enter a clean space, they can do whatever they like if nobody has the virus already: they will all exit virus-free as well.

 

Perhaps singing and parties and theatres are not top priority, though it would certainly help the mental health of many if they were. But school certainly is a top priority, and so is work. Many people will work from home in future, so it should be possible now to handle the resumed demand on public transit and in offices and retail establishments. This would be a good moment to increase the taxes on car use, to influence more people to return to public transport rather than use their car or even buy a new car.

 

With cases rising around Europe this prognosis may appear over-optimistic. For sure there will be outbreaks, and local governments must quickly snap back quarantine measures when these become too dangerous. But for most of us, most of the time, we can confidently move towards normality, thus improving our mental and economic health.

 

Critical to all this is public health messaging that is clear and consistent. We can acknowledge that, while the virus remains deadly to some, the overall impact on lives lost no longer justifies extreme measures. Most importantly, everybody must play by the hygiene rules, notably wearing a mask, and strictly following periodic orders to stay at home. A focus should remain on provision of frequent tests with rapid results, and the possible game changer of the self-administered test.

 

In some places the first half performance was so bad that winning the second half would be a daunting challenge. How can a public trust leaders who have equivocated on hygiene? In these places, sadly including the one where I live, restoring that trust has to be the only priority, and that precludes more nuanced messages about opening up.

 

But elsewhere, even when two or three down at half time, ways are opening up to win the second half. Whisper it softly, but that might even include some fun. After the drubbing of the first half, we surely need that.

 

Even if the second half is won, the end result of the match will be defeat. Most obviously, that is reflected in the mourning that has touched most of us over lives taken to early. But the pandemic had exposed other fundamental weaknesses in our team, from urban design to care for the elderly to underclasses and precarious jobs and health care systems. The time to address these failings will be with us soon enough. But for now let us win the second half.

Staying Positive in Covid USA

 I have to confess to being rather down on the USA lately. It is not the first time I have succumbed to this emotion, might it might be the strongest case so far. Never before have I found myself mentally counting the months until we might return to Europe.

 

The causes are obvious. We are all living through a pandemic. We see suffering around us and our own lives are restricted compared with normal times, while our fear of the virus does nothing to improve anybody’s behaviour but adds stress as we consider our mortality.

 

Living in the USA amplifies these causes and adds additional ones. Having lived through April in New York, the anxiety might be a bit higher. And the range of opinions and responses to the risk among individuals can make us angry. It really isn’t that inconvenient to wear a mask in public, and most people in most other countries don’t seem to equate it with an assault on liberty.

 

These attitudes are the real stress multiplier when expanded to include the whole, toxic, political environment. The lost opportunities here are a terrible human tragedy, acted out in real time and on a relentlessly downward path. I will have a pain deep in my stomach from now until the election, and probably afterwards depending on the aftermath.

 

The hardest part to reconcile is that regardless of the result, somewhere above fifty million people will vote for a man so lacking in competence and humanity as to be a caricature. He does not try to hide his personality and the results are obvious to anybody with the slightest curiosity, yet fifty million people will actively seek four more years of it. Fifty million.

 

When Hillary used the deplorable word in 2016 we all winced and knew it was a horrible error and also thought it was plain disrespectful. When I am in a good mood I still think that, but increasingly I have to stop myself thinking the same way. We can all see the ghettos and the homeless and the abused and the guns and the pitiful education and the broken healthcare and the greed and the filth and the potholes. We can all the narcissism and the gangsterism and the incuriosity and the hubris and the hypocrisy and the bullying and the recklessness and the callousness and the corruption and the lies and lies and lies. Fox News makes a token effort to obscure some of it, but surely it does not take more than a child’s intelligence and curiosity to look past that? Fifty million!

 

So I feel myself becoming negative, and that is not healthy for me or for anybody else. I am always at my most snide when feeling negative. So I need a campaign to restore positivity.

 

Let us start as usual with counting blessings. It is shaming how simple this is. All my issues with Covid are luxury first-world problems. True, all the reasons to savour living in New York City have vanished for the time being. But I can make rent. My family are thriving and we are enjoying each other’s company. I can live a comfortable, even complacent life. While so many have lost so much, I cannot complain about restaurants being closed or choirs being on hold. The US is making horrible mistakes, but I don’t have to worry about what I write or think, not yet at least, and I can always leave if I feel like it.

 

Next is to highlight the positive things that we still have. NYC has lost its culture for a while but its diversity is still intact. I can’t attend the US Tennis Open or the Mets in person, but sport on TV is back and the US does sports very well.

 

We are also locked out of our volunteering while the residents of the home are at such a risk, but we can go to church again. There is something very comforting about a quiet hour meditating along with wonderful people. It is healthy to actively appreciate things we came to take for granted.

 

There are other things I can do to fight the negativity. Now outdoor pools are closed again and the pool in my gym will not open soon, but at least now the weather is conducive to walking again. Too many hours on the couch each day is never a positive thing.

 

Taking on a bigger project also makes sense. I did this at the start of the pandemic by writing something substantial, and now I can return to that and improve it with another draft. Reading is always an enjoyable education.

 

But I can also return to my long-term goals and use those to find new priorities. Early music is on hold for now, but I can at least study and listen to it more. Slow projects are limited when most of our time has to be spent at home. But there is still some scope for enlightenment. Simplification has almost been forced upon us, but I can look for opportunities to simplify that are less temporary.

 

The scope from these three themes is somewhat limited and obvious, but the fourth one has rich scope. I have a goal to seek out kindness. And I am realising that a lot of my negativity comes from a shortage of that kindness.

 

In part, this comes back to the politics. I can’t change the atmosphere, but I can retreat from it. Everything I see and read makes me angry, so I can help my own health by seeing and reading more. I already avoid the pitfalls of social media, but I can also further restrict my TV diet.

 

There is more I can do to seek out kindness in my everyday life. I have come to realise that a lot of my appreciation of church, choirs and volunteering comes from the soaking up the kindness of the people I encounter with these activities, which in turn makes me kinder, or at least less unkind. It is comforting to believe that these things will all return, but I need to do more to fill the gap. There are opportunities with family. I have to be active in seeking these out and finding other things.

 

Negativity creeps up on all of us for time to time. It is a particular risk just now, with the pandemic. The risk is higher in the US because of the politics. So we will do well to look for ways to counter the negativity. The solutions will differ for all of us, though there will be common themes, such as counting blessings, remembering goals and fighting lethargy. Reducing twitter time would probably help most people too.

 

We can also help each other, even if our usual channels have been cut off. I have always valued and admired people who have a sunny aura, and recognise my own tendency to bring clouds. For the next few months, I will try to be a little bit sunnier, and a little bit kinder.

Is West still Best?

 I was brought up to believe that the form of capitalist representative democracy practiced in nations such as my own was not only the fairest and the freest but also the most effective system available to man. I used to believe it. Now I am not so sure.

 

Of course the terms and definitions involved here are ambiguous and emotionally charged. It is amazing how the word socialism has become so toxic in the US, for example, despite few people understanding what it means. Democracy, authoritarianism and dictatorship certainly have overlaps and also examples within each category that have little in common. The same can be said of capitalism, socialism and communism. There are also features of each of the models of power that are incorrectly ascribed to the economic models, and vice versa.

 

Exhibit A to support my comfortable hypothesis that west is best was always the USSR. It was a rather ambiguous example while I was growing up, because we were simultaneously supposed to believe that the soviets were both inefficient and dangerous. But then came 1989 and the utter wreck of the soviet-led communist economies became apparent for all of us to see. QED.

 

In case there was any doubt, we could quote exhibit B, the Reagan Thatcher revolution of the 1980’s. Everyone could see that this had its downsides, but we could not deny that the privatisation of state companies was a masterstroke. Just imagine how the Internet and smart phone eras would have progressed if the stodgy old telephone service still existed!

 

There have been other exhibits from around the globe. India was stuck until it started to unleash free markets. Venezuela shows what happens when socialism is unbridled. Comparing North Korea with South Korea is pretty conclusive.

 

The logic seemed pretty watertight and the west duly crowed for a while, with The Economist among the cheerleaders. But over the last twenty years the dominant idea has started to fray around the edges. Might we all be wrong?

 

In the case of the power systems, democracy usually avoided the very worst outcomes. Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s purges and Pol Pot are not great advertisements for dictatorships. But we should remember that Hitler was elected into power in a democracy, and more recently so were Salvini and Orban and some unsavoury characters closer to home. Democracy was perfectly happy to defend slavery, and a partial democracy led to apartheid.

 

Singapore is an interesting example to defend a rather autocratic regime. Lee Kuan Yew might have had more difficulty implementing his housing and developmental policies in a true democracy. Perhaps Dubai can be claimed as a similar example. Still, there are also many counter-examples to knock the gloss from authoritarianism.

 

The arguments for different economic models are more nuanced. A starting point has to be that the power of markets and free capital and joint stock companies has been the primary driver for unprecedented global development since 1945. 2020 will start a historical blip, but the global trend in poverty reduction is truly impressive.

 

Meanwhile, the form of communism practised in the USSR led to stagnation and misery. But we should be too sweeping. The USSR was characterised by brutal rule by an elite focused only on maintaining power and using corruption as an everyday weapon. Marx did not envisage such constraints, though he might have supported five year plans and fell central control, and they did not work out too well.

 

A capitalist system with property rights, company law, predominantly market mechanisms and the encouragement of innovation had a good track record until recently. But the most capitalist economies have been largely stagnant since 1980, all the while suffering increasing inequality. Meanwhile most of global growth has been generated by a notionally communist economy, China. The Economist and other westerners have sniffed at China throughout its rise, belittling its products, methods, expertise and much besides, but have been blindsided again and again. China often messes things up when it tries something new, but it learns quickly and succeeds in the end.

 

The Economist tried to define China’s chosen economic model for the coming years, and concluded that it is a powerful one. State companies compete with private ones under arcane rules giving both a chance and allow a mixture of overarching strategy and entrepreneurial fire. Infrastructure has been modernised, and next will come finance, seeking to remove dependence on the US. Health and education reforms are following, but even the starting points are arguably stronger than many in the west. The latest index of top universities has Chinese institutions marching up the league table. Everyone must pay fealty to the communist party, but that is ideologically light nowadays, in most cases simply a commitment to play within certain boundaries and not be corrupt.

 

This new hybrid model is rather interesting, and The Economist feels right in paying it some respect. One way to look at competing economic systems is via an analogy with sports. In soccer, debates rage all the time about the respective merits of a back four and a back five – the way players are deployed around the pitch. Many ideologues declare one system better, just like we do for capitalism. But the reality is subtler.

 

Each system has advantages and disadvantages. A team can succeed with either, so long as it has a strategy and applies it consistently, for example recruiting players to fit the chosen method. The method itself should be rather adaptable, depending on the talent available, current fashions and opponents, and the rules in force. Every system should evolve.

 

When I compare the economic prospects of the US and China over the next twenty years, naïve commentary starts by pointing out that one’s system is inherently superior, perhaps because it has done well in the past or because we are fans of that team. But any deeper analysis suggests the Chinese are poised to win big.

 

One team has a clear strategy. One team is investing in talent. One team plays to the limit of the rules but does not think it is above them. One team has a couple of greedy players, several fat and lazy old ones and others bought on the cheap and paid nearly nothing. One team looks forward and innovates and respects its competition. One team has a head coach who grabs power but does seem to care about more than whether he looks good wearing a mask. Can we really believe that the one on the losing end of all these comparisons will win anyway because they are playing with a back four?

 

But a back four system can still win. Germany seems to be doing OK, and it doesn’t have to suppress a chunk of its population to do so. So how is Germany different to the US? It protects its institutions, values competence and competition (to an extent). But it can be argued that at the core, the difference is a long-term drive towards equality of opportunity. As a football team, it values teamwork, and it is hard to win for long without that.

 

Perhaps US capitalism is now on a path like the USSR, condemned to cycles of instability from terminal inequality. Increasingly, order is only maintained by feeding the beast of inequality and suppressing the cries of the rest. Institutions crumble, congress enacts nothing, and greed, spin and lobbying win out, all different manifestations of corruption.

 

I am not defending the brutality around the periphery of China, and nor am I writing the USA off, because it still has considerable strengths even if it has just spent four years actively undermining them. But if I compare a hungry young Chinese person, trained to work, targeted at nationally valuable sectors, able to apply fantastic infrastructure and banking, with a US filled with entitled, corporeal, undereducated, angry kids looking to make a quick buck in corrupt finance or law, it feels like watching the recent Bayern Munich-Barcelona soccer match. It finished 8-2. And a Bayern player scored one of the two.   

Mad Men and Old Boys Clubs

As life temporarily without some social pleasures drifts along, we have been spending some evenings watching Mad Men. We are enjoying it, and, like all the best TV, it prompts useful thoughts, notably about what a similar series created in the future and our own times might look like.

 

The long-running series was written from 2005 and covers the 1960’s in New York. I love the writing. It is not sensationalist and is notably patient, letting characters and storylines develop slowly and being ready to divert into all sorts of plot niches. It is a thoughtful commentary on its time. Sadly, I find some of the acting to be unworthy of the material.

 

The overwhelming impression from the series is how everybody’s life choices are circumscribed by the accident of their birth and by stifling societal norms. The executives are nearly all male, white and born to affluence. They are privileged yet largely blind to it, often feeling entitled to even more than they have. They are thoughtlessly lewd towards all women, objectifying the entire gender. To them women are eye candy and sport, until they are married to one, at which point nothing changes in the attitude towards other women but the wife becomes a housekeeper and mother and a source of abuse and resentment. It is galling to see this attitude portrayed in such a naked way.

 

The white women mainly appear happy to go along with the expectations. They strut around the office competing on looks and coyness, hunting a husband to make them secure, after which they become suffocated in the world of child rearing and dull pursuits, in fear of the social opprobrium from divorce while turning a blind eye to their spouse’s serial infidelity.

 

Anybody challenging these norms is in for a tough time. Divorced women are ostracized. Even though contraception is hard to obtain and men demand sex all the time, and woman getting pregnant is ruined. Heaven help you if you happen to be gay or disabled. Promotion for the men comes more from social status than merit. Most couples are unhappy, but keep up appearances relentlessly.

 

These are the included strata. We see glimpses of other strata, be that uneducated men or all blacks. They know their place and had better stick to it or they will soon be on the street and no doubt rejected by their own kind too. To the included, the excluded are barely visible.

 

Part of the story is how one woman challenges the expectations simply by being kind and honest and just a little bit ambitious. She has partial success, but suffers in many ways on her journey, from her family, male and female colleagues and her own doubts.

 

It is also how noticeable how everybody drinks and smokes all the time, even in hospitals or on planes. With sex and gambling, most people will have some form of addiction or other mental illness, but it all swept under the carpet of expectations.

 

I find the picture painted to be quite realistic. New York and the advertising business might be on the extreme end of examples, but most flaws will be evident anywhere and in any vocation.

 

The first takeaway is to challenge any temptation for nostalgia. True, this world was simpler, but it certainly wasn’t fairer or kinder or happier or more productive. Anyone campaigning for a return to this form of society has either been duped or comes from the tiny demographic that the norms were designed to serve.

 

The depiction can help us to be tolerant of older people. Biden may have been overly physical when he started out and far from woke, but we should be careful judging him against standards that were very different then.

 

The show also helps me realize not just how far we have come but how messy the process of change had to be. It is no wonder that entrenched groups have fought every step and also that people have struggled to embrace their new emancipation, because we all lacked education and role models to guide us. It has not helped that lawmakers largely still come from the privileged former world and laws have failed to keep up with modern needs. Employment, schooling, welfare and much besides still assume a model of a dominant male and a child-rearing housewife. I sometimes wonder whether Mitch McConnell and others have ever met anybody that doesn’t have a nanny.

 

We can also reflect how in much of the developing world the norms of 1960’s Americas still apply today, overtly or covertly. This is a source of continuing hardship for many, and a massive development opportunity for humanity.

 

The show brilliantly depicts how most of the glaring flaws are simply invisible to most characters, and I can see how this has been true of myself. I look at my Cambridge matriculation photo of 1979 and wonder why I never noticed how white and privileged it is – heck, we even thought we were progressive when we started admitting women!

 

Taking that thought further might be the most fruitful opportunity from watching Mad Men. Things that are wrong but engrained are often invisible to us unless we work really hard to challenge ourselves. So what is it about the developed world in 2020 that still holds us back or perpetuates inequality and misery? If Mad Men were written in 2050 and set in 2020, what would it reveal?

 

I am sure it would have a lot of fun with the large devices everybody seems wedded to. I suspect equivalent for the smoking would be watching everyone take their life into their hands driving cars, something that by 2050 will seem unconsciously reckless. Guns could see similar treatment: they simply should not be present in a civilized society. As for social changes, I hope that humanity will no longer suffer the blight of homelessness, and I can hope for progress on mental illnesses and addictions.

 

But, just as in Mad Men, I suspect the clearest revelations will be about Old Boys Clubs. In 1960 our lives were proscribed and conformance was almost mandatory. By 2020 conformance has become optional but the constraints from birth have barely loosened.

 

Rich kids, usually white, have more stable homes, better education, inherited wealth, an abundance of second chances, and faces that fit. The upper echelons of most professions are stuffed with these privileged brats. I was one of them. My kids are numbered among them too.

 

Wealth taxes and leveled up education are the two biggest imperatives, but there are still countless other less visible blights that a new Mad Men could reveal. How can we still tolerate freemasons? How unfair are alumni preferences for colleges? How stacked are most recruitment processes? How over-protected are the unionized occupations?

 

Who you know and where you come from still matter far too much. Mad Men helps us to see how we have progresses, but also how far we still have to travel. The slowest change will come in the least visible areas. Sexism, ageism, racism and discrimination against disables and gay people has reduced and will reduce further, but these are just the visible areas.

 

We have only reached series three, so we are about a third of the way through Mad Men. I suspect I’ll stay hooked until the end. And hopefully the show will continue to spark useful thoughts as well as straightforward enjoyment.  

In Praise of Indecisiveness

 Many of us have spent the last four years pondering why anybody would ever consider voting for Donald Trump. The charge sheet is so full and indisputable, the outcomes so tragic, the values so evil, surely everybody must be able to see through the bluster by now.

 

But it hasn’t happened. There was a moment a month or so ago when it felt like the house of cards may be tumbling, but the approval share and voting intentions seem to be trending back into the narrow band they have followed throughout the presidency. The base is still largely loyal despite everything.

 

Johnson in The Economist offered a new twist on the conundrum in his article last week. He or she was discussing how we form spoken sentences. Unless we are reading a script, we are always talking and speaking at the same time. During a sentence, we know what we want to say but sometimes our words take us into a cul de sac. Then we always have to think about the next sentence, so we will often pause, or fill in time with “like” or “you know” or just sounds like “um”.

 

For most of us, the general impression we leave is one of indecision. But this is one of many ways in which Trump is different. His way of filling space while planning the next sentence is to repeat the last one, which serves to emphasise is point. And if he finds himself in a cul de sac, his tendency is to plough right through it. That is how he ends up using nonsense words like “bigly” – he has messed up the sentence construction, needs an adverb to close out, so just invents one. Most of us would pause, um and ah, and backtrack to earlier in the sentence to have another go, but Trump famously has no reverse gear. According to Johnson, these habits, natural or learned, have an effect of appearing decisive. People might laugh at “bigly”, but they take away an impression of somebody who is confident and driven and decisive.

 

Compare this with Joe Biden. His mind does seem to be slowing up a bit, so he ends up in a lot of cul de sacs. And his method of filling space is to ramble. Often his stories and his sentences go off into the weeds and lose clarity of message, not to mention becoming boring. He can deliver a scripted speech, he can also hold an informal crowd, but sound bites are not for him.

 

So Trump is able to come across as strong and decisive, partly because of his manner of speaking, and partly because he simply never backtracks or apologises, just digging himself into deeper and deeper holes of lies, somehow with impunity. Why is it that strong and decisive might be such important attributes to a segment of the electorate?

 

There are some situations where decisiveness is critical. If there is extreme urgency then a decision is required. Also, if there is gridlock or stalemate, then a decision can break the deadlock. Furthermore, simple, clear-cut situations can benefit from clear, aggressive decisions, especially where the decision maker has obvious power and resources.

 

Herein lies the clever part for Trump’s team. They have spent cultivating a climate where a segment of the electorate perceives exactly that environment. Most of the discussion on Fox News is not about Trump or anything he wants to do, it is all about urgent threats. Some threats are external, like caravans of immigrants or plotting Chinese, while most are internal, in the form of the evil Democrats who would destroy everything given even a sniff of power.

 

This narrative creates urgency and it also creates simplicity, in the form of a crusade for good against dangerous enemies. Fox has to do nothing to play up gridlock, for that is there already in congress. And the resources of the US are also obvious – adding to the impatience when a problem can seem intractable.

 

Fox and Trump have even more of a following wind with the core supporters. An important American cultural trait is liberty and a sort of frontier mentality. America is also home to Hollywood, where stories are always simple, where using power pays dividends and where the good guys always win. This is an attractive backdrop for people who may be struggling with complexity in their own lives and may be lashing out for others to blame.

 

I believe that in most situations decisiveness is a positive disadvantage, especially as a core characteristic or a leader. Somebody anxious to show up as decisive as a goal is likely to follow a whole series of damaging strategies.

 

Decisiveness works against collegiality and expertise. It prizes loyalty over competence. A need for decisiveness can oversimplify a challenge and show a lack of flexibility or agility when a situation changes. If a situation is nuanced, or the range of stakeholders is large, if a team is required to decide and then implement, or if there is plenty of uncertainty and negative consequences of poor decisions, then indecision is just what the doctor ordered.

 

Barack Obama was famously indecisive. I once heard him explain that every problem that reached his desk was difficult, precisely because easy problems were already solved by others. Perhaps Obama took his strength of analysis too far, but in somebody carrying around a box with a big red button that is fine by me.

 

I find indecisiveness as a underrated quality in all leaders. If I think of my heroes, a lot of them placed great store on data, teamwork, a willingness to challenge assumptions and to change ones mind, and a dose of humility. Most of the other kind of leader gets caught out in the end, whether it is in politics or business or religion or anywhere else. Simplicity is good when it is not really just an excuse to be slapdash.

 

I have never studied it in depth, but the fourth letter in a Myers Briggs profile measures something akin to decisiveness. J people like to simplify challenges and move forward, while P folk are happier trying to cope with uncertainty. As a proud P, I always found it rather simplistic when J was associated with leaders. The classic business leader is ENTJ – extrovert, intuitive, thinking and judging.

 

I often wondered whether ENTJ really were good leaders, or just the leaders we tend to become landed with. It certainly feels quite a masculine and unforgiving style.

 

Back to Trump, he is a case study of why extreme decisiveness is a fatal flaw in a leader. Administration competence, never high, is now threadbare. And the most important evidence is to look not at decisions but to outcomes.

 

The Coronavirus is an obvious example, but I find China to be a more compelling one. In the case of China, what is sold as decisiveness is in reality little more than bullying and bluster. There has been no consistency, no strategy and no follow through, and the outcome is a China that has done precisely nothing to fix legitimate grievances and which has only become stronger in relation to the US. It did not have to be this way, and, to be fair, Trump and his cronies are not alone in lacking a clear strategy. But the outcome is a new cold war that may linger for generations and make us all poorer in every sense.

 

It is a tempting strategy for the Biden campaign to demonstrate these terrible outcomes to the electorate, but I am not sure it will work. The Fox crowd is not listening and is only interested in simple sound bites, and is anyway convinced that, even if Trump’s outcomes have been less than ideal, the Democrats would do far worse. The decisive aura can overcome many obvious failures.

 

I recommend a more aggressive strategy, focusing on the man not his decisions. Decisive leaders collapse quickly when they are no longer seen as strong personally. He is old, he makes many mistakes, everybody around him hates him and Coronavirus has shown him up as highly fallible. He also is easily bated. I think I would be using Kamala and Michelle to rattle his cage as hard as they can. I think he will self-destruct even in the eyes of his base.