The Dumbest Generation… Really?

    Ok, so the inspiration for this article comes from Cracked.com, but really it is an interesting phenomenon. Basically, the article talks about how technology took over in 2008. Two entries (Cracked likes lists…) talk about how the older generations (X, Boomers, etc.) perceive us. These perceptions have to do with the way we interact with our technology which is inherently different than one born before the internet does.

    Every time the media talk about websites such as Facebook or Digg is to either talk about how they are the future (really… they are the present!) or about how someone posted something stupid on one of them. The truth is that we communicate seamlessly using these types of technology. I always find it funny when people say that they "check their e-mails twice a day". We do not do that, our e-mails check themselves and alert us through various tools (well, the main ones anyways). It takes us five minutes to go through our new mails, Facebook events, RSS feeds, etc. We can be extremely prolific.

    From the outside, we seem to be losing our time. A digital immigrant takes a few hours to gather the information we get in minutes, therefore, posting several thousand messages on Digg or a message board implies a large amount of time lost but it is not necessarily true. Contrary to any generation before ours, we, from birth have been growing up in an environment where physical reality was just one part of our environment. The digital world is not just a tool to us. It is part of our very being.

    Now, the purpose of this post is not to say that we are perfect that all of our perceived flaws are actually strong points. No, in most cases, those flaws are still flaws. We do waste time on Web 2.0 websites or devices. We do procrastinate and some of us (not all!) are idiots. Those flaws are not, like some people seem to think, huge crippling problems plaguing our generation. They are the same flaws that have been there since the dawn of the human race. The difference is that, to offset those flaws, we are more efficient at using the nearly infinite pool of information within the web.

    To end, I just want to say that I can remember when I first started to use the internet. The children born today will not. For them, information will have always been free and available. I personally cannot even grasp how the world will change once they get in power.

    

Merry Christmas

Writing my next article is taking longer than I thought, but I want to take the time to wish you all a Merry Christmas: Western Society's most popular holiday! I could say that we shouldn't forget about those in need, but I'm sure that you aren't. This is why I'll say instead that no matter how bad we think it is right now, the future we can see from here seems to be the brightest in the history of mankind.

One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like. – Mohammad Yunus

Free Speech

Richard Martineau wrote about an Imam in the "Journal de Montreal" that was calling for the death of homosexuals, feminists and pretty much the whole population of the earth except for him. Now, while I do think that the Imam (who is apparently of Haitian descent) is downright insane, I also think he has the right to talk about whatever he likes. The thing about free speech is that you CAN be a racist and a bigot. You can even start a movement against free speech if you feel like it. That's the definition of being free.

On a related note, the grief against the imam was that he was inciting mail. Again, it seems to be technically true, but the guy was such a caricature that it's ridiculous to think that anyone with half a brain would take him seriously. Then again, this is just what the media did by giving him a tribune. Now, the whole of the province knows about his ideas; his message is being distributed widely. I think that collectively, we should stop caring about what such people have to say. The good thing about free speech is that while everyone can say whatever they want, you don't really have to listen!

Peace is also information… kind of

    In continuation with the post about violence, I figured I should talk about the opposite. There was some sort of information a government or ruling body could get from their population being peaceful. The thing is that, as more as I thought about it, it was not really the peace itself, but the absence of violence that was important.

    The absence of violence means that the population is content. When your policies are adequate and not revolutionary people won't complain too much. Humans seem to be hardwired against change, looking for familiarity and order on a world (and universe) that seems bent on creating as much chaos as possible. The problem is that we tend to view a peaceful state, one without demonstrations, strikes and the like as desirable. It is not.

    The majority of the population, taken as a whole will always prefer the status quo, provided that it fulfills their basic needs. The problem is that "status quo" in the case of a country or society really stands for slow decay. The society needs to adapt to an ever changing environment. This makes rules and laws which were salient when they were enacted obsolete or downright ridiculous at another point in time. As I said in a previous post, this dynamic society is also what makes leaders lose their appeal once their task, whatever that may be, has been accomplished.

    Complete chaos, although it might be attuned to the universe, is also unwanted. We are genetically engineered to live in order and a chaotic society would be uncomfortable for most individuals. This is why war-torn environment are so hard on the people living within them. The goal is to get a society that is not completely chaotic, but has some of that uncertainty factor within it, for that uncertainty is a "symptom" of a society adapting to its environment.

Historical Day

This is truly an historical day!

Stéphan Dufour has been acquitted

Violence is information

I could be talking about the latest elections in Quebec and the demise of the ADQ, but there is a lot of movement on that front. Also, I read something this week (sorry, I forgot who and which newspaper) about the use of violence as a political statement that I found interesting.

    The violence in Greece now is seen as the failure of the government to satisfy part of its population. The same was true with the riots in France a few months earlier. The result of a series of riots is always a will to make the reasons for people to riot disappear. What this means is that those that were rioted against will work as hard as they can to ensure that the rioters get what they want. Of course, some of the latter will be arrested and prosecuted, but, taken as a society, rioters win. Violence is an effective way to get a message across.

    Coming back to our neighborhood, Montreal-North's riot achieved more to put the problems of the population in the media than the efforts social workers have been putting in for years. I'm not sure this will translate into genuine change, but this became an item of concern for every level of government (not with the same importance, of course).

    The problem is that violence is scary. Unlike a peaceful march, you fear to lose something in a riot. This fear doesn't end with the end of the issue, but becomes pervasive to society. The rioters are labeled as violent barbarians and stigmatized in a way relative to the number and intensity of the riots. In the end, it is a question of gains versus losses. People intrinsically know this and usually will not get violent without a good reason: if you are cold and starving, losing a bit a reputation won't really make you change your mind. This is why, even though some riots have trivial surface reason, they always underline a deeper problem. They truly are a political statement.

A Coalition Government in Canada!

Ottawa has gotten interesting again. It is now completely overshadowing the current Quebec campaign and with reason: what may happen on December 8^th would be an historical event rarely seen in the Commonwealth. Now a lot of people have talked about how it would or would not be a good idea for the coalition government to happen so I'm not going to talk about that. Instead I want to talk about how this makes people feel in general about our political leaders.

    Stephen Harper's economic address was seen by the media and, by extension, the population at large as an underhanded tactic to let his ideology true and destroy his rivals. On the other side of the Parliament, the opposition is not out to gain power. Nothing short of that will satisfy them. None of the sides in this seem to put their people in front of their own interests. In my opinion, this is the kind of behavior that will, in the end, increase voter apathy towards our politicians. In the leader-follower dynamic, the followers are not in service of the leader. They are actually looking for the opposite: a leader that will fulfill their needs.

In my opinion, politicians have not been acting as leaders for some time now. Leadership is about setting goals and finding the best strategy to achieve those goals. Now, I think that deep down, most people go into politics because they want to make their area better. Therefore, what the differences between political parties are more about the tools than the goals themselves. Some politicians, however, paint their rivals as the devil. They are the ones that are the woes of the country and, for some obscure reason, want to deprive you of everything you worked for and make you miserable. A true leader would look at his rivals and find ways to work with them. The people know this. This is why, notwithstanding the power-grabbing idea behind it, the coalition government is somewhat alluring to the population.

We want to see our leaders work together for our greater good. I don't think anyone thinks that any one of the main federal parties only have bad ideas. We want to see they pool their strengths, form a parliament that would work as a team towards our greater good.

The evolution of Leadership (Part IV)

A republic would be perpetual that has the good fortune often to find men who by their example restore the laws to their original purity and force, (as we have said elsewhere), and not only prevent her from falling into decadence, but rather carry her in the opposite direction. –Niccoló Machiavelli

 

    This is the turning point. A leader has accomplished their task. They turned their company around; they won the war; they stepped on the moon. Now, they must adapt to the new environment they have created. Similar to Moses not setting foot in Israel, most leaders will not change. What we see in the corporate world is a sort of type casting of CEOs. We have people that are good at bringing a company back from the brink of extinction and others that are good at managing an already performing ship. Keeping a leader onboard without the right qualifications for the new tasks could be dangerous.

    Nation-States and societies should therefore choose their leaders looking at what they are looking to achieve rather than what they achieved in the past. Given our nature, however, we always try to relive the good parts of our past. As an example, I heard a man this week talking about Lévesque was a great Prime Minister in Quebec and how there was no one like him around during the current campaign. I do not know the person, and cannot really imply anything from his words, but usually when someone says something like this, they think that the leader of their choice would the ideal leader in the current situation. This is not true. Older political leaders always try to get us to look at their past and judge them on their successes. What we should do however, is look at their personalities. We should then look at our goals and at how those personalities would interact with those goals. We can then find the person that we think would be the best leader to get us where we want to go. Honor your heroes' victories by keeping them away from nearly certain failure.

    For the leader, however things are different. Assuming he wants to stay in power, the leader will have to prove to his followers that he is still the most qualified to lead them. To keep his followers, the leader will have to find out how their needs changed and set new goals that will fulfill them. He will still be able to build on his past success since, even though it is generally a good idea, it is human nature to transpose our past unto our future. After setting the goals, the leader should then find out what skills he will need to achieve them, and set out to gain those skills.

    Another avenue for the leader, depending on how much power he wields would be to bring the needs of the followers back to those that matched his skills. Basically, a government could decide to keep their people starving in order to prevent them from needing anything that they can't actually provide. It is an effective way to control a population, but it is not very conducive to growth. Another example of this would be a leader exaggerating a security risk, such as terrorists or problems with the health system, so that the people see him, who's met similar needs before, as the right person to lead them. Since it is not true, the leader can then simply change his lie and meet the security needs of his constituents.

    The last avenue for a leader facing a change in goals is quite simple: bow down and let someone else take power. This is the most altruistic choice and probably the best for the society the leader is in. It will unequivocally let the people understand that times have changed and that the goal they were looking for before has been achieved. It will let them define new goals and choose the person with the best skills to achieve this. The leader can always help that person or use the time that the other person has in power to gain the skills necessary to come back as an effective leader in the future.

The evolution of Leadership (Part III)

Nurture your mind with great thoughts…" - Benjamin Disraeli

 

    Followers and the situation operate on a continuum. Followers grow (at various rates) and what they are looking for in their relationship with the leader changes with time. A good way of looking at this is using Maslow's pyramid.

 

From http://steves.blogharbor.com

 

Basically, Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that if your physiological needs aren't met, you are not going to care as much about your safety needs. Basically, if you are gasping for air, you won't care too much about someone stealing something in your house. To link this with Churchill and Qin Shi Huang, the first needs people had were low within the pyramid. The British citizens were looking for safety during World War II, but after 1945, people wanted to give more meaning to their lives. The idea there is that the people that fulfill needs of a certain level are not necessarily able to help people looking for different things.

One of the things that changes is the level of involvement of a leader with their followers. People looking to fulfill needs at the bottom levels are usually highly predictable and are easy to influence. They don't usually take complex decisions and their leaders are very "hands-on". As you get up the pyramid, the needs get more personal. To Influence someone looking to self-actualize (self-esteem 2) you will need to know what their values and their goals are. It's much more complicated for a leader to influence one person who has fulfilled all the needs from the four lower levels than to influence many people looking for food. This is better shown using the Situational Leadership theory.

 

 

From http://www.jerry-cao.com/blog/

 

    The Situational Model states that one leader must adapt their style of leadership to that of their followers. In a company setting, this means that depending on the level of knowledge (or experience) and the level of commitment of the employee the leader will either be dictating his instructions, delegate the tasks to the followers, providing a more supportive role, or a combination of both. Adapting this to a society, you get a leader who is directing in war time, where quick actions are needed to curtail an eager enemy. The same is true in times of crisis such as famines or drought. This is linked to the two lower levels of Maslow's pyramid. When the basic needs of the population are met, the leader should then start to let his constituents govern themselves, taking a less active role.

    In the case of societal leaders, the problem is that, unlike within companies, the state at which they should be directing the people is nearly always undesirable. They are directing to initiate change and basically destroy the situation that prompted them to use this style of leadership in the first place. From this, to initiate lasting change, a person must believe in the change, nearly believing that the world will end if this change does not come. The leader gets emotionally involved with the change and publicly becomes the avatar of that change. When the change occurs though, it is now the time of the leader to change. Because of the constant motion of the situation the leader is in, the change he worked so hard to bring forth will become obsolete and another type of change will need to occur. The leader might think this is not the case and keep on going with his ideologies. This was true for Winston Churchill when he tried to keep the colonial British Empire alive. This was also true for the Parti Québécois within the last few years¹. From a societal point of view, it is simpler to choose another leader, one better suited for the task.

 

I will post about the leader's evolution in the last part… soon I guess…

 

 

 

¹ Yes, they haven't achieved sovereignty, but thanks in part to their actions, the standard of living of French Quebecers and place of the French language within the Canadian landscape have increased considerably.

The evolution of Leadership (Part II)

First off, I want to start by giving the link to another blog post which talks about the leader, follower and situation. This is where I got the idea to talk about Winston Churchill and his "downfall".

SimonStapleton.com

 

Part II – The Prime Minister

    We all remember Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill from his first term during World War II. As was the case with Ying Zheng, the situation was one of crisis. It lent itself to a strong, flamboyant leadership style. Churchill was an inspirational leader who was seen at the end of the war as a hero. However, in the 1945 election, he was defeated in a landslide.

    In 1940, Britain was already at war with Germany, but no real action (this is relative…) had been taken against Adolf Hitler's ambitions. By May, the current Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain had lost the confidence of the Houses that he could lead the country to victory. At that point, the Germans were invading Norway and were poised to attack France. The situation in the British Empire was not as bad as it would be a few months later, but everyone could sense that radical action had to be taken for the Empire to survive. . On the 10^th of May, Winston Churchill was appointed Prime Minister by King George VI.

Churchill had been part of the war cabinet during World War I and since the beginning of World War II and had considerable influence on all the parties in the House of Commons. He also had a lot of credibility with the various military leaders due to his time as First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War. Through his inspirational speeches, he was able to connect emotionally with everyone throughout the Empire.

    For his followers, Churchill became the very embodiment of victory in the face of adversity. Throughout his more than 4 years as the leader of the British Empire, he worked really hard to make sure his country would win the war; he worked equally hard to make sure that the people knew that this is what he was doing. He was unwavering against the Germans, rejecting the idea of an armistice in 1940. He managed to transmit this dedication to his followers, the military and civilians of the British Empire. This kept the British resistance alive and increased the confidence the people had in him. This is the kind the leader the followers needed in this particular situation.

    In 1945 however, the focus was completely different. After 6 years of war and 10 years of depression, the focus of the Empire was on reconstruction. People were wary of the war and Churchill's status as a hero became an impediment to him. While, in theory, the skills Churchill had displayed could have been useful during peace time, the image he had built of himself made him undesirable. Instead, Clement Attlee was elected Prime Minister for two consecutive terms. Through certain natural consequences, the second Attlee government only lasted a year and the hero Churchill was re-elected Prime Minister in 1951.

    While the cold war was going on, this was still a reconstruction time for the Great Britain. Attlee had been pursuing a rather effective dismantling of the Empire but Churchill was still following his WWII vision of a glorious British Empire. His violent reprisal of rebellions led to several foreign crisis for Britain. The colonial rule of Britain was coming to an end, but Churchill would not see that. He would say (and funny enough, this is similar to Chretien's thoughts in 1995 in Canada) that "he [would] not preside over a dismemberment". His success in the war had made him think that this was yet another battle that he had to win, while this was just the evolution of society.

 

I will be posting part III soon…

The evolution of leadership

For the past few years, it seems that my life revolved around leadership. I got involved in politics with the ADQ, ran for MNA, and started a Leadership Diploma at McGill. Throughout this time, I kept hearing about how lacking leadership was bad and how being a leader was good; indeed, most of the great men and women we look up to have all been great leaders able to use their tremendous charisma to change the society around them. To me their actions as change agents are what really defined them as leaders. Lately however, I started to wonder if the very things that make them effective at bringing forth change in the first place make them refractory to new change as time goes by. Now those who know me know I can't possibly start a text like this without going back in the past for an example.

 

Part I – The Emperor

    We are in the fall of 210 BCE. The first emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang had just died and the government was wondering about how they would assure the succession. The first advisor Li Si was trying to find someone with similar ideologies than that of the late emperor (and of course, someone who would keep him as chief advisor). Li Si managed to discard the prince Fusu, one of the emperor's sons who had been exiled by Qin Shi Huang earlier on. Instead, Huhai, the emperor's eighteenth son ascended to the throne and became known as Qin Er Shi (Second Emperor of the Qin Dynasty). The results were catastrophic. Within three years, the emperor had committed suicide. A few months later, his successor was toppled by rebellion which put a definitive end to the Qin Dynasty.

    The woes of the Qin after the first emperor's death could be partly attributed to the inability of his successors but a large of part of it was due to his policies while in power. These policies were based on his values which hadn't changed since the time where he unified the country. Ying Zheng, who would later become Qin Shi Huang, was a brilliant military leader. He was able to lead the army from the rather small Qin state to become the strongest force in the area. His leadership was undeniably effective. He was decisive, brutal and cunning. He took every opportunity he had to advance himself and his cause. His followers, his soldiers, relied on him because his tactics would give them victory and enable them to avoid death, or worse.

    When he took the mantle of emperor, his leadership style was still effective and making sure that the unification would endure. The reforms that he pushed needed a strong hand to see them through (and maybe another strong hand to push steel through their opponents). But gradually, his followers and the situation changed. Qin Shi Huang was no longer the leader of a warring state or a state in chaos. He was now the leader of a unified group of people that were starting to all themselves as brothers. His followers, who before were his army and his enforcers, were now mainly composed of his citizens. They were people who were not looking for glory but for comfort and his autocratic style of leadership was going against their needs. The very qualities that made him an efficient leader a few years before and made him able to instill the changes that were needed in order to create a country made him unable to adapt to the changing situation and better understand his followers.

The results were catastrophic for the Qin Dynasty, but China remained as one. Liu Bang, the rebel leader who toppled the third Qin ruler, became known as Han Gaozu, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty. The Han brought a new era of prosperity to the region lasted for more than 400 years. Their impact was such that the main Chinese ethnic group is still referred to as "Han Chinese".

 

Part II should be posted tomorrow…

The notion of Interculturalism

In Canada, we've had the idea of multiculturalism behind our immigration policies. The idea was a good one in the 80s, letting the newly arrived citizens adapt to the reality of Canada while keeping their cultures and their bearings. It enriched the lives of those already here, letting them learn about different people and customs. Here, in Quebec, it has come to be disliked by a lot of people as Quebecers, fearing their own assimilation, wanted to bring those immigrants into their own cultures, with the idea of making it stronger. The recent reasonable accommodation "debate" brought the problem back in the spotlight, with provincial party leaders asking for Ottawa to exempt Quebec from the multicultural policies of Canada.

For my part, I think that the two ideas, assimilation and multiculturalism, are retrograde in the 21^st century. In an age where you can virtually meet with people from anywhere for nearly no money, you do not need physical proximity to a culture to learn from it. In an age where your influence is not restricted to your neighbors and where the whole planet is affected by your actions, assimilating immigrants is not the best way to strengthen its culture. In the 21^st century, cultures must learn from one another to spawn new, autonomous cultural groups. The strength lies in amalgamation, where the mix creates something greater than the sum of both older parts. We have access to a tremendous amount of information from anywhere in the world. This makes the notion of national identity a rather weak, leaving the ideas of group and individual identities to fill the void. With Interculturalism, where cultures are mixed together, you ensure that those identities do not clash with one another, making intergroup and interpersonal relationship smoother. With interculturalism, you do not lose your values or impose them on anyone. You simply take from others, things that will add to your own values and enhance them. This gives you a better understanding of other people's positions and this is what enables you to interact efficiently with them.

Dupervil.net

My domain is up: http://www.dupervil.net

Coming soon…

This is a quick post to tell you that I'll be putting my website online soon. Stay tuned…

The secondary market and a new Retirement Savings Program

I was talking to the Taxi driver taking me back home yesterday. As these conversations go, we started talking about the politics and the economy. At one point, I said that losses in the stock market weren't validated until the stocks were sold. He replied that people using their RRSPs during their retirements have no choice but to sell to be able to use their assets.

This got me thinking. The stock market is a secondary market. It is set up so that owners of a company can sell their parts in a company to others that want to be part of the company's future. Well, that was the idea. What is happening now is that most people (and I'm included in this) buy shares of a company with the hope that their value will go up so that they will be able to sell them for profit afterwards. This is creation of wealth without effort¹ or real production.

The basis of capitalism is to create wealth through production. The idea is that the market will regulate what gets produced through supply and demand. The production is essential for the growth of a country but our economic system is based on the increase in money rather than physical or virtual products (IP or the like). I can't say the current financial crisis or the resulting economic slowdown was inevitable. I just think that from a political perspective, there should be a way to uncouple the economy from the financial secondary markets. We need to bring back the incentives on production. Also, we need to make sure that people's wealth doesn't disappear because of someone else's mistake.

The creation of a beefier savings program by the government, one that would give guaranteed returns as high as mutual funds, would help tremendously. This program would not need to be tax deductible like the current RRSP, but you wouldn't be able to remove the money before retirement or a certain age. I'm not sure such a plan would be profitable but the government is not there to make a buck. It is there to ensure that citizens live as well as possible.

 

¹There is of course intellectual effort in choosing the right stocks or mutual funds, but it is theoretically possible to make money by just picking random securities.

Andra Rush

It's been a long week for me and I hadn't been able to update. At any rate, I found out about Andra Rush this Monday during a Case Study. I found the story so incredible that I thought it was made up. It wasn't. Here is a little background on her thanks to Inc.com

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20040401/25rush.html

One part of the story not included in the article is that during the 2001 attacks she had a shipment of car parts to deliver to customers on the Manhattan Island. All the bridges were closed and I think most people would have just turned around and said: "I can't do it". Instead, she managed to find and rent a barge to make sure that her parts were delivered as she promised.

On Corporations and Taxation

I was reading last week a letter from McGill Economist Christopher Ragan published in the Gazette. He was saying that he would vote for whoever promised to remove all corporate income tax. The idea was that the owners are already being taxed on their personal income tax. Also, since companies are much more sensitive to tax fluctuations the corporate tax cut would have a greater effect on the economy than an equivalent general or personal tax cut.

To make a proposition like this work it seems that you would need to make sure that the owners (stockholders) of the company are Canadian. This led me to think about how you could implement differential tax rates for Canadian Vs Non-Canadian companies. Basically, you would have different tax rates for corporations depending on the level of their Canadian ownership. The more Canadian the company, the less tax they would pay culminating with 0 taxes for those with 100% Canadian ownership. This is one way to ensure that the income lost by cutting corporate taxes is recuperated afterwards.

    There are still many unknowns in this idea (to me anyways). The first is whether all of this is legal per our international agreements. We are part of several Free Trade Agreements and this could be seen as unfair competition. The second is whether or not this is even worth it. We must go towards more social services, not less, and there is no guarantee that the government will end up with more money in the end. It will increase the level of retained earnings in companies and the idea is that even these will trickle out in wages and investments. What happens, if those investments are made oversees? We could add an "Oversea tax" but that would increase bureaucracy and costs for the government. It might also end up preventing Canadian companies from setting up shop in other countries to become more competitive and better serve their target markets.

An Introduction in Creativity

I want to welcome all visitors to this blog. This is a political blog without politics. Its purpose is to generate ideas and look at their feasibility. This might sound cliché but there are no wrong ideas. We can gain something from any creative exercise!