Non licet omnibus adire Luxemburgum

“Not everyone is entitled to go to Luxembourg.“ Just like Corinth in the ancient Roman time, Luxembourg enjoys a more than average prestige among the European countries/ cities today. The Luxembourgers themselves would totally disagree with this. They are convinced their country is on the contrary very accessible and open to foreigners. We don’t want to deny that; yet the Luxembourgers seem to ignore they attract a privileged class of immigrants, who contribute to and benefit from the abundant wealth in Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a country of the happy few and this attracts the happy few. The presence of this class impedes less privileged classes to find easy settlement in Luxembourg.

On this March 3^rd, we spend some time to reflect on this beautiful low country in the light of Saint Cunegondis, patroness of Luxembourg. The protection she offers to Luxembourg is clearly based on a positive geographical Matthew effect. Rather than begrudge this, the surrounding countries have usually contributed to this positive evolution. Luxembourg has always promoted international cooperation in the Benelux and in Europe. Interesting is also the good internal collaboration between the political and economic actors, which led to a remarkable national industrial policy embedded in the cultural history of the country.

The language Luxembourgish is also worth mentioning. You find a famous example on the façade of a house in the old town: “Mir wëllen bleiwen wat mir sinn“. It means “We want to stay what we are”. It sounds very conservative, yet one should interpret this sentence correctly. The preparedness to change is also considered part of the Luxembourgish identity.

I refer to my earlier blog about Luxembourg.

Picture 1: Saint Cunegondis stained glass window in Luxembourg cathedral 6/12/2024 ©Wim Lahaye
Picture 2: „Mir wëllen bleiwen wat mir sinn“, house in the Luxembourg old town 6/12/2024 ©Wim Lahaye

The Re-emergence of the West

A century has passed since Oswald Spengler wrote his Decline of the West. Prophesies may become self-fulfilling, therefore I opted for a more positive title. Admitted, the Decline of the West is the only belief the political left and right seem to have in common. A cultural pessimism dominates the media, and there are indications other geopolitical powers support such pessimism through social media propaganda as they know it weakens us.

It is true that the West doesn't seem to get rid of the pain of postmodernism, which halted our belief in progress. And as belief creates the actual fact, non-belief destroys the actual fact. Very few European leaders (one of them was the Belgian prime minister) have sufficiently pointed to the fact that economic welfare is in our hands and needs to be re-established. This requires a sacrifice from all of us. In his book Against the Tide, Roger Scruton points to the fact that anything worth pursuing, requires sacrifice. The Left and the Right however, believe the sacrifice should be brought by the political opponents at the other side.

Here is the truth, not generated by AI:

1)      We will see more poverty entering Europe through migration. Whether that migration is legal or illegal, we may be able to slow it down a little, but we won’t be able to stop it.

2)      Some of us may open the door a little for humanitarian reasons, but the imported poverty is not an enrichment in the economic sense. Our economy falters and our integration capability is too limited. As a result of this, we will need to work harder for less money. Being human can be costly; don't deny it if you claim to be human.

3)      We will face more mental risks in life. Loss of jobs is the most bearable one of these risks.

4)      We will be more exposed to safety threats, be it physical threats, environmental threats, technological threats. Some of the upcoming threats we don’t know yet.

The re-emergence of the West will depend on our willingness to bring sacrifices. Clinging on to old certainties, such as untouched pension schemes, company cars, four holiday trips/year, not-in-my-back-yard vetoes against the industry etc… will only make the insecurity worse for the generations after us. It will turn us into a prey for other more autocratically led geopolitical powers. 

Picture: Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Centre, NYC 2015 ©Wim Lahaye

The Secret of Simple Sound World Economics

In this merciless world, we observe chaos, corruption, trade barriers, extortion and exploitation of the weak. We wonder if there exists any solution to the unsurmountable problems of world economics. We acknowledge there will always be shortages. There is simply not enough for everybody on this planet.

Puzzled by these questions and by feelings of guilt two thousand years ago, people asked John the Baptist what they should be doing. You would expect a very demanding list of charity related duties. The answer was astonishingly simple, minimalistic even. To the public officials, he said: “Don't ask more than what has been established for you.” To the soldiers he said: “Don't rob anyone. Don't extort or fine anyone falsely. Be satisfied with your pay.”

Especially the idea of showing satisfaction with your pay seems unworldly strange in this era of never enough. Showing satisfaction with your pay sounds like asking to be robbed.

Nevertheless: could we try this? And see where we end up in this chaos. In combination with modest generosity, this is the best simple cure for a sound world economy.

I refer to my blogs Temperance saves the World and to Economics of Good and Evil.

Picture: retable ‘The Life of John the Baptist’ from the Notre-Dame cathedral of Amiens 2019 ©Wim Lahaye

The Yerkes - Dodson Law

On this Blue Tuesday, we may want to have a look at yet another work performance theory, namely the Yerkes-Dodson law. In its most classical representation, it shows work performance on the Y-axis versus arousal (stress level) on the X-axis. The curve typically has an ‘inverted u’-shape or bell shape. For complex tasks, the stress level tipping point (maximum) typically occurs at lower levels of stress than for simple tasks.

The scope of validity of the Yerkes-Dodson law may be a point of discussion among experts, but we all feel it corresponds to our own experience. We need a little bit of stress to come to good performance – we call this ‘flow’. However, when stress gets too high, we tend to get anxious, superficial, confused and we lose our concentration.

In a certain way this law pleads against additional pressure and against multitasking. Multitasking may be required when individuals need to achieve a certain productivity for the money they are paid. Productivity has become a major concern in labour market policies. Nowadays, you couldn't afford giving an employee a single task, although it could be better for his stress level.  Multitasking increases the complexity of work and increases our stress level. We will inevitably end up on the lower right-hand sides of the curves and show relatively poor work performance. Stress and all related inefficiencies seem to be unavoidable in this valley of tears. It may make sense to spare our colleagues and ourselves from more.

Let us further reflect on the Yerkes-Dodson Law at work and at school.

I refer to my blog: The Disconnected Worker.

Picture: Afbeelding van Enrique Meseguer via Pixabay

Temperance Saves the World

Temperance is a virtue which doesn’t have a prominent place in economic textbooks. Yet the word economy refers to thrift and frugality. Economy allows you to be self-reliant and to survive with little means.

Our popular culture and our company culture seems to go the opposite direction, the direction of ‘never enough’, or is it simply greed? It is much easier convincing people to do something than convincing them not to do something. The reason is the imagined group loyalty. Pleading against something may be seen as a rebellious act, a result of laziness or complacency. Pleading in favour of something big is seen as positivity, energy, and good willingness. As a result, companies do too much and have a total lack of focus. Hyperactivity and Beschleunigung have become a plague.

Temperance is exactly what companies need now. Instead of asking what they should do, it may be worth asking what they should no longer do. The question is equally important in times of scarcity of resources. Leadership is also shown through temperance.

I refer to my blog: “Economic Justification in a Culture of Scarcity”.

Picture by Curtis Yancey via Pixabay

Work

James Suzman’s book title sounds to us like an order. This is exactly the subject of this book. How did we get to today’s attitude towards ‘work’, including our work ethic?

The author starts with nature. Work dissipates energy and increases entropy in accordance with the laws of nature. Strange things happen: male masked weavers (birds) make and break their nests endlessly for no other apparent reason than to show off for the female masked weavers. The energy they dissipate in doing this is in no relation to the functional outcome of their work.

The author then considers work in an anthropological view. Our ancestor hunter gatherers only ‘worked’ for meeting their instant needs. It is through the agricultural revolution that man started working for meeting his future needs and it is at that point that slavery originated. The author then describes the evolution of ‘work’ and its meaning in the industrial revolution with the intellectual contributions of people like Thomas Robert Malthus, Benjamin Franklin, John ‘Saint’ Lubbock, John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith.

The author points to a few aberrations in society’s attitude towards work. The agricultural and industrial revolutions have brought us to a certain work ethos and a corresponding belief in merit as the right measure for work reward. Yet the highest earners are not the hardest workers but the largest owners of assets, being thereby the largest receivers of dividends and bonusses. It is not the labour effort that pays off, but the market value of the ‘work’ one seems to offer to society. Other related aberrations are the silly ‘war for talent’ and the cases of karoshi in Japan.

The author also points to Parkinson’s law according to which work inevitably expands to fill the time available for its completion. Bureaucracies will always generate enough internal work to justify their existence. Many people don’t have meaningful work anymore but fill their time with the rope of their house mortgage around their neck. The author concludes that many of our core assumptions about economy and work are an artifact of our past and we could free us from them to imagine and create a better future.

I refer to my blogs: Ode to Industry, Full Time could be Less and Revolution is in the Air.

Space Trends in 2022

On this international day of human space flight, also called Yuri's Night, I am making an overview of the current trends in my work area. One of these, the competition between nations, was already discussed last week. A review article from two years ago was about the applications of satellites in everyday life.

Today's article got published on the Flanders Space website.

The photo shows the first launch of the space shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981. I turned sixteen that day and followed the event with great interest. (Columbia later made a fatal re-entry on February 1, 2003, leading to the end of the space shuttle program.) 

Picture from shutterstock.com

Ode to Craftsmanship

Knowledge is silver, but skill is gold. In the Middle Ages, new craft brought great wealth to the emerging cities. This is still the case in our current economy. Employers are desperately looking for employees with expertise. Craftsmanship is also beautiful. Gute Technik ist immer schön.

Craftsmanship is valuable because it takes talent, time, patience, discipline, and intrinsic motivation to acquire it. This is precisely what makes craftsmanship so rare: today there is too little time and patience to allow craftsmanship to mature. Due to skilled manpower shortage, young people must show craftsmanship immediately and get discouraged early. Let us revalue craftsmanship.

I refer to my blog: Ode to Industry and The Engineer’s Courageous Mastery.

Picture: shutterstock.com

Clearcutting the Earth

Multinationals bring great wealth to society. In and around multinationals, the most amazing discoveries and inventions are made. We have to recognise that. It started with the wealthy shipping “companies” in the seventeenth century and continues today with the big data companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook. We should be grateful for the material progress multinationals have brought us. 

Many multinationals have started using ESG (Environmental, Social en Governance) criteria in deciding what to do and what to don’t do. They realise their reputation as well as the Earth’s sustainability is at stake. What they don’t seem to realise well, is their impact on the ‘small ones’, the small suppliers, customers, labourers, etc.. In the animal world, big eats little and the same happens in industry. The small or poor ones can never properly negotiate with the big one. The big one determines the conditions, just like the elephant decides where he treads. The ants have to make sure they get away in time. The negotiation process between big and little is never really a negotiation process; it always ends with little accepting the conditions imposed by big. Multinationals have to become more aware of their tremendous leveraging power in negotiations and their huge impact on local industrial and agricultural ecosystems. This awareness could have saved us from our most bitter memories of colonialism. Alas, colonialism is still going on, in a different way than before. It leads us to a progressing geographical Matthew effect.

Negotiation should be done between equals, not between elephants and ants. Inequality induced by unfair negotiation is however not the privilege of multinationals! It would also be good if multinational shareholders started paying taxes, like we all do. All-mightiness is usually a bad thing.

See my blog on Globalisation, as well as my Dutch blog: De Kaalslag and Kwellende Rijkdom.

Picture from shutterstock.com

Full Time could be Less

A full time job takes roughly 40 hours per week. This hasn’t changed in the last 50 years. The idea is that you spend your best hours to your paid job. Most employers do not want to touch this principle. After all, we are in a global competition. Indeed, but we are also in a global competition to attract talented employees. Some of these may appreciate the advantage of shorter working hours. It may be a good time to consider this. There are several reasons to do that.

1. The first reason is the generalised use of PC and smartphone at work. It has increased our availability and our productivity. Yet the gain in productivity has not been redistributed to the computer workers, but rather to the company shareholders. I remember in the early eighties the day we watched as youngsters the first PC’s with colour screens. We were convinced a full day’s work behind such a screen would make a man totally mad. Today, we can confirm this is the case. The mental fatigue of eight hours work @ the computer is enormous. Computer work damages your health.
2. A second reason is macro-economic. J.M. Keynes was convinced households needed sufficient money to keep the economy alive. Without consumption, production serves no purpose and economy is doomed. Today, we can say: households do not only need money; they also need time to consume. With increased time spent in traffic, too little time is left for households to spend money. Our consumption level has become less money-limited, and more time-limited.
3. A third reason is the nature of our work. A lot of jobs are no longer useful or productive in the strict sense. Increasing the number of working hours doesn’t lead to increased revenue. Some people can become more productive by being less in the office. We have become stressed and overactive and we would probably perform better if we had more free time.
4. A fourth reason is gender equality. After 50 years, the gender equality has not been reached yet. Yet can it be reached, as long as both partners in a household spend + forty hours per week to a job? It seems impossible to do this without the help of grandparents and this creates another inequality.
5. A fifth reason, related to the reason above, is the increased complexity of running a household. More about this in my blog time and energy in households.

The trend is towards a vaguer line between work time and free time. Work time gets mixed up with private activities and private time gets mixed up with work tasks. This is not a good trend. It would be good to have a society debate about all this. This point was already raised in my Dutch blog: “De geschiedenis van de vooruitgang” and in "Hoe beloon je een werknemer?".

Revolution is in the Air

Last Saturday, the streets of Washington DC seemed to be the scene of a new revolution. The interviewees rejected the outcome of the presidential elections and claimed Trump had won. It was  difficult for Europeans to understand as there was no reason to believe in fraud, apart from the latest tweets of America’s funniest president ever.

The media presented the street demonstration as a big mistake, but they are insufficiently analysing the root cause of the people’s anger. The deep trouble of the lower social classes already became visible through the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which was essentially a political uproar. In this blog, we already highlighted the frustration of the middle class and even worse, the middle class’ complete lack of prospects for a better future. A lot of small entrepreneurs have lost their business to the benefit of large scale organisations, usually commercial chains. These large organisations are not run by charismatic leaders with a golden heart, but rather by entire platoons of MBA graduates, who don’t leave a single crumble on the table for external small supplier businesses.

In an article entitled “Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?”, The Economist pointed to an additional source of frustration or lack of prospect: the fact that even university graduates face an increasingly difficult time in maintaining their position or moving upward on the social ladder of the public and private administrative elites. The number of university graduates have risen considerably but the number of meaningful jobs for educated graduates have not grown accordingly. As a result, a growing number of graduates have no prospect of achieving what they were told to achieve. These ‘geese’ are wandering desperately through the social media in search of recognition, knowing that they will soon be slaughtered. As the Economist article mentions explicitly: “The feeling of resentment is particularly strong among people brought up to believe that they ought to be in the elite.”. It  will take another blog to discuss why we are so many.

The power is in the hands of a few large capital companies and their privileged lackeys. The question is if the three outsider groups described above will find each other for a common cause. Some kind of French Revolution is hanging in the air. It looks like we need to push the reset-button of our entire economy. This need has been described in Tomas Sedlacek’s book “Economics of Good and Evil”. In earlier times, such a system reset usually happened through war. The Corona crisis is not as heavy as a war, but it brings about some unexpected waves and it releases hidden frustrations. I also refer to my blogs Economic Justification in a Culture of Scarcity and Guy Fawkes Night.

Picture: Washington DC 1986 ©Wim Lahaye

Not back to normal, please

Never waste a good crisis. The corona crisis is a huge opportunity to change a number of things. Therefore, let us not get back to normal! Last month, 170 Dutch scientists signed a manifesto for more sustainability and social justice. The core of their manifesto consisted of five demands:

1. Replacement of the current economic development model, focused on generic growth of the BNP, by a new model, which distinguishes sectors that need investment (energy, education, healthcare) and sectors that should shrink because of their lack of sustainability (oil, gas, mining) or their role in the encouragement of overconsumption (publicity).
2. Development of an economic policy that aims at redistribution, one that foresees a basic income for all, progressive taxation, reduction of labour time and sharing of jobs. More recognition for jobs in health care and education.
3. Transition to a circular economy, based on biological diversity, more sustainable, local food production. Reduction of meat production. Employment with social justice.
4. Reduction of consumption and travelling, transition from luxurious wasteful travelling to more sustainable, essential and meaningful types of travelling.
5. Reduction of the debt for those who have been hit hardest: employees, small entrepreneurs and countries in development.

A lot of these points have been mentioned before in my blogs about sustainability and economy. Let us not waste this crisis.

The Optimisation Compulsion

The need for optimisation or continuous improvement originates from production management. There is even a production management method called OPT, which stands for optimisation. We have a general belief in society that optimisation is the foundation for success. Is that really true? Could our exaggerated optimisation rage also be the foundation of failure? Our optimisation tendency has turned into an optimisation compulsion. We tend to optimise just about anything, continuously, from the location where we produce our goods to the partner we share our life with. As a result, nothing is stable and we lose ourselves in endless transformation efforts.

Optimisation works well in a stable environment, where the parameters remain the same for a longer period of time. This is rarely the case, especially if everyone is already optimising everything. All optimisation efforts will prove to be pointless because the environment changes too rapidly, and you will need to change direction before you can complete your optimisation process, which is by definition also a transformation process. Our self-inflicted optimisation compulsion is based on  intellectual blackmailing: “If you don’t optimise, you will not reach the top; you will not make it. It is all or nothing. Therefore, if you don’t make it, it will be your own fault.” This is the typical reasoning in a society based on meritocracy.

I refer to my blogs: “Beschleunigung”, and in Dutch: “Hyperactiviteit” and “Vloeibare Waarden”.

Crony Capitalism and Comrade Communism

In 1992, Francis Fukayama wrote about the end of history and the last man. His thesis was that liberal democracies and free market capitalism finally proved to be superior to other economic systems like communism and socialism. The background in which his essay was written, was the Fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, after President Gorbashev had conducted a policy of Glasnost and Perestroika in the moribund communist Soviet Union. Francis Fukayama could be considered the ultimate counterpart of another famous intellectual, Karl Marx, born 200 years ago in the town of Trier.

Francis Fukayama was not all wrong. In Europe, all countries have moved to some form of liberal democracy and free market capitalism, although not all problems are solved. China, which was originally a communist regime, has successfully introduced capitalist principles, but doesn’t embrace democracy yet. In fact, the current Chinese model is so successful, a Chinese man told me, that the people are anxious to embrace democracy.

On the other hand, Francis Fukayama could not be right either. One reason is cultural. We live in an age of postmodernism. Therefore, if someone claims to have found the ultimate economic and political system, he must be wrong. Postmodernism, born from the disappointments of the 20^th century, denies any of us the right to proclaim a superior system. A pessimistic postmodernism resides deeply in all intellectual thinking of our time. In a certain way, postmodernism proved its correctness by noting the American capitalism, the purest of all capitalist systems, has gone astray as well.

On the one hand, the USA suffered a lot from the major financial crises in the economy. On the other hand, now that its economy is slowly recovering, the country is paradoxically opting for a more protectionist policy. But there is much more reason to be concerned about capitalism. Capitalism often evolves in a direction of crony capitalism, with a lot of government involvement and with similar tendencies towards corruption as in the comrade communism, which was so well described in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Capitalism also tends to graze all green pastures, leaving nothing but deserts behind. Capitalism is very bad at protecting general interests like the environment. But this can also be said from communism.

It seems like postmodernism may have some truth in it. All economic systems seem to bite themselves in the tail after a while and for all economic systems,  some form of ‘reset’ is required, usually preceded by social revolt. This is well described in Tomas Sedlacek’s book the Economics of Good and Evil. Other essays about economy  can be found by clicking the economy label below.

Picture: House where Karl Marx was born, exactly 200 years ago, in Trier, Germany.

The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker

The Effective Executive is perhaps the world’s most renowned management book and you will find plenty of references on the Internet. In this blog, I only wanted to share my favourite quotes:

• Establishing priorities, and concentrating your efforts on them, is a skill that requires foresight and courage.
•  There is one exception to the rule of building on strengths and covering weaknesses. Character and integrity do not accomplish anything by themselves. But their absence faults everything else. Here, therefore, is the one area where weakness is a disqualification by itself rather than a limitation on performance capacity and strength.

I refer to my earlier blog: “Seven Golden Rules of Management” and “The Knowledge-Creating Company”.

Economic Justification in a Culture of Scarcity

In this decade of financial crisis, we are increasingly forced to justify the living that we believe to earn. It started in 2008 with the bankers. The rich obviously have to justify why they make so much money. But don't think the poor remain exempt from the duty of economic justification. If they touch an allowance, everybody wonders if they ever contributed to society with decent work and how our social security model will survive with all these allowance right holders. Economic justification is not easy.

But even in the middle class, among those who believe to be hard workers, there is an increasing justification problem. Are we sure this hard work really contributes to the economic bottom line? Perhaps middle class people still earn too much for what they contribute. And the worst of all is, if they live too long, they ‘undo’ the positive contribution to society by requiring  too much pension and health care money in the second half of their life.  You may think I’m serious in this reasoning but I’m actually trying to prove the senselessness of this type of reasoning. Individual economic justification is not a good idea; it can’t be done well, and it is not fair.

Compare the optimistic 196x’s with the 201x years. Life seemed so easy 50 years ago. In those years, everybody expected to have a better life than his parents. Today we seem to live in fear that the economy turns its back at us. As indicated in my July-2017 blog, we have sunk deeper into the vicious circles of the Matthew Effect. It started in the 1980-ies when everybody started believing we needed more competition. As a result, we maintain a culture of scarcity, as if we were poor and as if everything has become scarce suddenly. The fear of scarcity has become self-fulfilling, the day the financial crisis erupted. We have become hyperactive and suffer from status anxiety. What we need is better and smarter collaboration.

The geographical Matthew Effect

We have seen in our blog about the Matthew effect that water always flows to the sea. This old Dutch proverb is meant to indicate something about people. The rich tend to get richer and the poor tend to get poorer. The proverb is however also true in a geographical sense: rich regions tend to get richer and poor regions tend to get poorer. This is in a certain way obvious: the wealth of a region is determined by the wealth of its people, therefore if the Matthew effect is applicable to people, it must also be applicable to regions. Perhaps we could call it the Matera effect, referring to the South Italian town of Matera, a town that once almost got deserted because of its poverty.

And indeed, we see this on a small scale, in towns, when some quarters flourish and others decay. In one end of town, crime rate goes up and real estate value goes down, in the other quarter, it is the opposite. We see, within the same country, regions that go extremely well, and others that go backwards. In the last presidential elections in the U.S., we have seen the envy of the Mid-West states against the pride of California and New York. In Europe, we see countries like Luxembourg that attract highly qualified people from neighbour countries. The best proof that being small is not a disadvantage for a country. On the other hand, we still see regions in the former Easter Europe that struggle to survive. In some villages, only older people are living; all younger people with talent have left the place for the more successful cities. 

Very often regional welfare differences within the same national state lead to independence aspirations for the stronger region. In times of crisis, the intuitive fear for a negative Matera effect (being sucked down by weaker neighbour regions) reinforces the pro-independence voices.

The geographical Matthew effect has such adverse effects nowadays because of the extremely high mobility of people, capital and goods. At times where the economy needed to be more local, the effect was modest because every region needed to have a minimum of self-sustainability. In times of globalisation, like this time, people, capital and goods are so volatile that some countries and continents are completely “out-of-economic-game”. This leads to numerous conflicts and refugee crises. By charging a fair price for our mobility, including a fee for the environmental cost of transport, we could re-invest money in areas that are being hit by the Matera effect.

I also refer to my blog "Poverty: Source of all Trouble"

Picture: the tanneries of the town of Fes in Morocco.

The Matthew Effect

There is an old Dutch proverb: “Water always flows to the sea”. The proverb indicates that money often goes to the rich, who need it least. The consequence of the rich getting richer, is also that the poor are getting poorer. This observation is made several times in the Gospel of Matthew, and is therefore called the Matthew Effect. “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” It seems like a kind of natural inequality. If you have a lot of something, you will get more of the same. The winner takes it all. Although it is clear that the observation relates to possession (so-called ‘talents’), Jesus applies it also to “knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”. It needs to be stressed though, that the Matthew effect is an observation, not a command to act in a selfish way. On the contrary, the observation contains an implicit warning: you should do your utmost to belong  to the happy few who deserve to be in the kingdom of heaven.

The Matthew effect has become a topic of increasing interest since 2008. Economists like Thomas Piketty have observed an increasing revenue inequality since the outbreak of the economic crisis. There is an increasing pressure for revenue transparency towards politicians and top managers. Basic income for all is on the table. The Matthew Effect also relates to the 80-20 Pareto rule: 20% of the world population is consuming 80% of the world resources and 80% of the world population only consumes 20%. The Matthew Effect can also be observed in the acquisition of power and fame. There is even a Matthew Effect in misery and feelings of misery: if you have a lot of misery (e.g. health problems or lack of confidence), you will acquire even more misery (more of the same).

The Matthew Effect term was originally coined by Robert Merton, who already observed that eminent scientists will often get more credit than comparatively unknown scientists. Later, the “Matilda Effect” pointed out that female research work tends to be ignored more often than male research work. Even if the Matthew Effect may not be well-known by name, we all have an intuitive knowledge about it. I believe the Matthew effect explains why we all do our utmost to belong to the so-called upper classes (as far as you can cynically measure it by bank account status), even up to the point of neurotic behaviour. We are simply too well aware of the consequences of entering the lower class' vicious circles. It also explains why we are so afraid to show more generosity.

I also refer to my Dutch blog: “Kwellende rijkdom” and to “Economics of Good and Evil”.

Picture: Saint Matthew and the Angel by Rembrandt van Rijn. This is a freely licensed work, as explained in the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

Ode to Systems Engineering

This blog is about society, not about engineering. It even contains a message for politicians. Our society faces numerous problems that are too difficult to solve with improvisation and “gut feeling”. Take one of the worst problems in society: mobility. This is a complicated problem. In fact, it is too complicated to have it solved by small party circles and commune politics. A city may decide to ban cars from the city centre and cause a terrible mess elsewhere, because people look for alternative routes.

Politicians don’t understand it would be easy to cut traffic jams in towns by 50% by moderately adapting traffic lights to cell phone movements. When you say this, some politicians believe the use of the cell phone movements are a threat to privacy, but they don’t understand how feasible and obvious it is to prevent this. Politicians still don’t understand sufficiently how detrimental company car policies are for our mobility, our environment and our economy. This is because they can’t assess sufficiently the impact of their decisions.

But wat is systems engineering then? To put it simply, you enter the complexity of a coherent piece of real life into a box and you call it a black box. You can study many things about this box: the inputs, the outputs, how it behaves and interacts with other boxes. Systems Engineering forces you to make a detailed map of the interactions between systems. You start understanding how measures taken on one system may influence others. You also start understanding feedback mechanisms. You notice that more of A does not always lead to more of B. We need more systems engineers in politics and we need more politicians who believe in systems engineering. INCOSE is an organisation that tries to standardise terminology and methodology in systems engineering.

It is not true that systems engineering is totally unknown outside engineering faculties. In fact, systems engineering is often used in a false and perverse way in social media.  A typical example appeared recently: do you know what would happen if everybody stopped eating meat? Then the Facebook entry sketches the most absurd short term consequences, obviously with the implicit message: we should not stop eating meat. The question whether we could perhaps start by eating less meat is not even raised. Similarly, non-believers in climate change like to sketch absurd images of what would happen if we stopped driving cars. I hate this nonsense on Facebook and Twitter.

I hope to see some real systems engineering in politics, press and social media. It all starts with intellectual honesty and integrity. I also refer to my dutch blog: “Intellectuele integriteit in het Industrieel Beleid”.

Ode to the Internet

In my blogs I like to highlight things we take too easily for granted. I like to stand in awe for so many achievements of science and technology, even if these have become daily commodities. Today is a good day to stand in awe for the Internet.

The fourth of April, the Roman Catholic church celebrates Isidore of Sevilla, who is the patron saint of the Internet, the computer users and the programmers. The reason is that Saint Isidore created his “Etymologiae” (Origins of words) a complete encyclopaedia of all knowledge of his time. This encyclopaedia reminds us very much of Wikipedia and the entire Internet, reason why Saint Isidore was appointed patron saint of something that only came up when the saints were -unfairly- being consigned to oblivion.

As we all like to complain, we often point out the dangers of the Internet: the spam, the numerous security threats, the attacks on our privacy as well as the risk of addiction and alienation from the people who surround us. Another major remaining problem with the Internet is the digital divide. The Internet is still not available everywhere at an acceptable data rate.

And yet we forget so quickly how the world looked like before the Internet. You had to write letters by hand and bring them to a post office. Later, you got the luxury you could push it through a fax machine. You had to call a friend or walk to a library to look up everything you didn’t know. Today’s students have immediate access to all world information through the Internet. (And yet they have to discover painfully that information is no knowledge yet. You still need time and patience to acquire knowledge.)

Another advantage we tend to forget is that we can now quickly send messages to several people at the same time without disrupting them in their daily activities. This was not possible 40 years ago. It has now become much more easy to cooperate from a distance, which allows various associations and groups of common interest to work together. The Internet, including the social media services, offers you a fast and cheap way to make yourself known and to express your opinion. Considering the flood of opinions, you may get the impression your opinion doesn't matter much. But it does! The Internet is a bad thing for dictators and a good thing for the freedom of speech.

And much more Internet is yet  to come! Not only will we connect the most remote places on earth, also cars, ships, trains and planes will be connected. Moreover, we will move to an Internet of Things.

On Saint Isidore’s web site, you can find the following prayer, which I could recommend. I pray it this 4th of April to safeguard my soul J

“we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter.”

See my earlier blog Ode to Joy 2.0 , in which I highlight more specifically the pleasures and inconveniences of social media. 

Picture taken in Seville Cathedral.