A fundamental problem that needs correcting more so than all the others

My career has, from its very start, been one where making money depended on maximizing the use of my time. It was that way because as a public auditor and later as a management consultant, billable hours drove revenue generation.

Among the key success factors are practitioners knowing very well (1) the subject matter under consideration, and (2) what matters, when, to what extent and in what regard, both to one's own firm and to one's clients'. They must because when one knows "what's what," one doesn't waste one's time or one's clients with inconsequential discourse. It's about being prepared for the task at hand. Some may call it "having done one's homework," some of which, of course, one did years or decades before. We called it "portfolio," "coming with portfolio."

Whatever one calls it, it's clear the US government has too many elected and appointed principals who lack portfolio for the job they hold. That is a huge problem that amounts to "the blind leading the blind and the sighted." IMO, it's the inadequacy we must rectify before we attempt fixing other ills.

Part of the problem is subject matter ignorance. It's hardly apropos to hold against someone their ignorance about XYZ esoteric or complex topic when they first take their Congressional or Presidential seat, and, very shortly after taking their seat, they must deal with that XYZ topic. However, being thus ignorant means they need to work late rapidly getting portfolio on XYZ. It also means they must fully and efficiently avail themselves of their well-informed aides' input and guidance about that XYZ topic.

Another part is willful ignorance. This ignorance results from having access to the time and information resources, along with knowing one must address XYZ esoteric or complex topic and not, for whatever reason, availing oneself of the time and resources to quickly and fully obtain portfolio.

A last part of the problem is the ignorance of oblivion, which flows from insouciance toward one's world. Many folks "suffer" this, but many who do can "afford" to. Folks living on "autopilot" -- they're employed in low-responsibility roles, collect their pay, go home and find ways to spend/use their pay -- can, to a good degree, just let things happen and pay little mind to most of them. People entrusted to make business/corporate and public policy decisions, however, haven't that luxury, and would-be policy makers don't either.


Now, some readers may recall the Zuckerberg/Facebook (FB) hearing. If you missed it, here it is.



If one prefers to watch specific senators' inquiries, CSPAN offers the the hearing thus partitioned.

The FB hearings illustrate the nature of the problem. Multiple senior senators asked multiple inexcusably benighted questions. The hearing didn't sneak up on them; there was no excuse for their naivete about Internet basics, FB, advertising, and the Internet and Internet platform business models.

Some of the questions senators asked:

• Grassley --> Mr. Zuckerberg, a magazine i recently opened came with a floppy disk offering me 30 free hours of something called America On-Line. Is that the same as Facebook?
• Hatch --> How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?
• Kennedy
  
  
  • ~2:02 -- He demanded that one be able to control one's data and delete one's content. Zuck responded:
    • You should have complete control over one's data, and frankly, one always has had that, FB or no FB.
    • ~2:20 -- "You already can delete some or all of your data." (paraphrased) The senator then asked Zuck to work on "expanding that" capability.
      • WTF? There's no place to which FB can expand one's data deletion capability, unless FB allows one to delete other people's data!
      • That "expand upon" remark, however, illustrated not subject matter ignorance, but profound stupidity! No matter the context, there is no "expanding" on "everything" and "all." (1 - 1 = 0; it's all gone. Toddlers understand that concept, even if they can't do the arithmetic.)
  • ~1:05 -- He described the FB user agreement as a part of the privacy problem and declared that the UA is too complicated to be comprehended. It wasn't and still is not.

And, of course, if leaders don't understand computing tech, they're not in a position to envision ways to use to to solve other problems. Too, computing tech isn't the only complex problem many elected leaders likely don't understand. Health care, climate change, and the economics of trade, labor, and immigration economics are others.

Simply put, we need to stop electing people who don't know "**** from Shinola," and we need to actually and rigorously vette/test candidates' acumen and work ethic about temporally important topics.

I think that is a good point, but I also think that having so many politicians that do not to listen to subject matter experts is one of the bigger problems. It would be pretty hard to find someone that has a strong base of knowledge about several different issues. We should test candidates on their willingness to listen to experts more.

MrPeanut said:

I think that is a good point, but I also think that having so many politicians that do not to listen to subject matter experts is one of the bigger problems. It would be pretty hard to find someone that has a strong base of knowledge about several different issues. We should test candidates on their willingness to listen to experts more.

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Red:
That too is a material part of the problem. (I alluded to as much in my OP.) Too, were elected office holders -- it's not just senators; I merely, for the sake of keeping the OP to one post, used senate hearings to illustrate the point -- to heed their advisors' input, the problem would be somewhat attenuated.

Xelor said:

Simply put, we need to stop electing people who don't know "**** from Shinola," and we need to actually and rigorously vette/test candidates' acumen and work ethic about temporally important topics.

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Vetted by whom, pray tell?

For my part, I disagree. I elect politicians on the basis of the principles they will uphold while in office. Not their technocratic knowledge. The fact that elected representatives know not of what they speak is of little consequence to me. Many Democratic lawmakers do not know **** from Shinola about firearms. Many of our newly-elected congressmen and congresswomen know nothing about basic economic theories. So long as my congressmen and women protect my Constitutional rights from further encroachment and constraint by the government, I could not care less how embarrassingly clueless they may sound regarding any one particular subject of temporally important topics.

Felis Leo said:

Vetted by whom, pray tell?

For my part, I disagree. I elect politicians on the basis of the principles they will uphold while in office. Not their technocratic knowledge. The fact that elected representatives know not of what they speak is of little consequence to me. Many Democratic lawmakers do not know **** from Shinola about firearms. Many of our newly-elected congressmen and congresswomen know nothing about basic economic theories. So long as my congressmen protect my Constitutional rights from further encroachment and constraint by the government, I could not care less how embarrassingly clueless they may sound regarding any one particular subject of temporally important topics.

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Pardon me but you're saying that you don't mind handing Captain Hazelton (Exxon Valdez) command of the bridge on the ship of state, or Krusty the Klown the keys to Air Force One?

The digital divide is real and it impacts our daily lives in significant ways.

Checkerboard Strangler said:

Pardon me but you're saying that you don't mind handing Captain Hazelton (Exxon Valdez) command of the bridge on the ship of state, or Krusty the Klown the keys to Air Force One?

The digital divide is real and it impacts our daily lives in significant ways.

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Certainly, many things have an impact on our daily lives. And perhaps Senators Hatch and Grassley are embarrassingly behind the times. But I'll tell you this much, Checkerboard Strangler: I'd trust these old fogies safeguarding my rights over some borderline Nietzschean Ubmermensch like Zuckerburg and those who think and behave as he does.

The ignorance on display by old men in the Senate chamber is certainly entertaining, but that should in no way take away from the fact that Zuckerberg is a gigantic piece of ****, that Facebook is a parasitic organization that treats its users like laboratory test animals in a country without animal rights laws, that they outright lie about their advertising campaign effectiveness in order to sell more advertising, and that every day Facebook takes privacy and anally violates it without permission and without notice.

MrPeanut said:

I think that is a good point, but I also think that having so many politicians that do not to listen to subject matter experts is one of the bigger problems. It would be pretty hard to find someone that has a strong base of knowledge about several different issues. We should test candidates on their willingness to listen to experts more.

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Blue:
To the extent you mean "it'd be hard to find folks who have a strong base of knowledge about several different issues and who are willing to suffer politicking," I agree.

The problem there, which is really a problem with the electoral/political landscape, is that it's hard to find folks who have such knowledge and who are willing to suffer having to politic and obtain people's electoral approbation. For example, in my field, professional services consulting, there are literally hundreds of thousands of folks who have multi-industry/multi-subject expertise or near expertise, either of which would be reasonable, and a fundamental understanding of economics. But here's there reality for those people:

1. The finish undergrad and start working at $80K - $100K, give or take on either end. At that point, they're too "green" to know much about much.
2. Six years later, they have worked on a a bundle of projects, learned a good deal about a few industries, and they're earning ~$120K - $170K. At this point, they're seeing where their careers can go and they're basically on "autopilot." They're also a bit young to give up the wage growth and the benefits, along with the, relative to politics, low-stress and low-BS work life. After all, at any given time, they only need to "impress" about 20 people, and they only need do that with regard to something they're quite good at doing and that they enjoy doing.
3. In another four to six years, one makes partner and that means ~$400K/year, give or take. One's living a nice lifestyle, but one's not earning/earned so much that one can afford to take a 50%+ pay cut, unless, of course one's spouse is raking in the coin.
4. As the years go by, the pay gets better, the ease with which one can perform very ably increases and one's an expert/quasi-expert in several areas as a result of having worked across several industries; however, one's lifestyle has kept apace with one's earnings, so again, the pay cut would be devastating. The life and the money's great (~$600K - $800K+, depending on what one's doing and how one has directed one's career), but not so great as that of folks earning multiple millions per year, so one still can't take the pay cut without compromising one's family's lifestyle.

I presume by now you get the point. It's roughly the same for most folks, consultants or not, who are hard working fast learners having careers that expose them to the details of how multiple industries operate and who, though that exposure, can come to elected office being reasonably well informed, if not very well informed, about several disciplines/fields.

Academics are another class of workers who obtain deep knowledge in one area and reasonably deep knowledge is a host of "adjacent" areas. For many of them, however, the pay issue is less the problem than is the "BS issue." The life of an academic doesn't generally portend to pay above $500K/year, but it does offer a very solid upper middle income lifestyle, and it's a lifestyle that, from a work standpoint, relative to politics, is very low on the "BS scale." I mean really, what does one do? Teach a few classes, put up with a bit on inter-/intra-departmental BS about this or that arcane aspect of pedagogy and university administration, and spend the rest of one's time researching whatever interests one to research, whereafter one writes a paper telling everyone what one found in one's research. That's not a bad lifestyle; in fact, it's a damn nice one that has lots of discretion.

So what do we get instead? Career politicians. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, provided they avail themselves, as do consultants, of the opportunities to get portfolio before opining and deciding on matters of far greater importance than any consultant will ever decide/opine upon.

Cardinal said:

The ignorance on display by old men in the Senate chamber is certainly entertaining, but that should in no way take away from the fact that Zuckerberg is a gigantic piece of ****, that Facebook is a parasitic organization that treats its users like laboratory test animals in a country without animal rights laws, that they outright lie about their advertising campaign effectiveness in order to sell more advertising, and that every day Facebook takes privacy and anally violates it without permission and without notice.

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Hear, hear.

That these Senators do not comprehend the complete nature of the monster that they face does not mean they do not understand that Facebook is indeed their adversary.

To add on this (though this may be TMI), my wife uses a pregnancy and period-tracker app whose data was bought up by Facebook. I think that is something to definitely grill Mark Zuckerburg on (if indeed he ever shows up for such a hearing again). I suspect it was done so that Facebook could help directly marketing products and services to new mothers. To say that is creepy and intrusive beyond measure is the ultimate understatement.

Felis Leo said:

Hear, hear.

That these Senators do not comprehend the complete nature of the monster that they face does not mean they do not understand that Facebook is indeed their adversary.

To add on this (though this may be TMI), my wife uses a pregnancy and period-tracker app whose data was bought up by Facebook. I think that is something to definitely grill Mark Zuckerburg on (if indeed he ever shows up for such a hearing again). I suspect it was done so that Facebook could help directly marketing products and services to new mothers. To say that is creepy beyond measure is the ultimate understatement.

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Yeah, I would be unhappy to learn that Facebook was in control of an app that monitored any of my health stats. I confess...not proudly...that I did the 23-and-me thing. My worst nightmare is that 23-and-me is bought out by Facebook.

And anybody who uses Whatsapp because of its end to end encryption is a bloody fool. I do have it because it's vital for certain basic functions, but trust me, nothing personal or important is getting communicated over that thing.

Edit: Okay, my worst nightmare isn't Facebook buying out 23-and-me. It's actually nuclear war followed by mutants hunting me for food. But you get the point.

Felis Leo said:

Hear, hear.

That these Senators do not comprehend the complete nature of the monster that they face does not mean they do not understand that Facebook is indeed their adversary.

To add on this (though this may be TMI), my wife uses a pregnancy and period-tracker app whose data was bought up by Facebook. I think that is something to definitely grill Mark Zuckerburg on (if indeed he ever shows up for such a hearing again). I suspect it was done so that Facebook could help directly marketing products and services to new mothers. To say that is creepy and intrusive beyond measure is the ultimate understatement.

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Oh, and check it: they own Moves:

Moves App

Facebook acquired Moves App back in 2014 and the company which owned it, ProtoGeo Oy. ‘Moves’ is a motion-tracking app which automatically records any walking, cycling, or running you do. On top of this, it can tell you the distance you’ve walked, how many steps you’ve taken and how many calories you’ve burnt.

Moves use sensor and location information to not only track your body movements but also to track where you are. It means that users can look back at their day and see exactly how much exercise they took at different parts of the day, and where on the map this occurred.

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Which Apps Does Facebook Own? - Overpass Apps

I googled this because I use fitness apps, and I suddenly had a very bad feeling. No, I don't use Moves, but if Facebook buys the apps I do use that would seriously suck.

Felis Leo said:

Certainly, many things have an impact on our daily lives. And perhaps Senators Hatch and Grassley are embarrassingly behind the times. But I'll tell you this much, Checkerboard Strangler: I'd trust these old fogies safeguarding my rights over some borderline Nietzschean Ubmermensch like Zuckerburg and those who think and behave as he does.

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LOL Zuck isn't an elected official.
I'm just arguing for some kind of a standard IN our elected officials.

Nietzschean Ubermensches aside, we have had computers and internet (as we know it today) for nearly a quarter century.
You don't want a gentleman from the horse and buggy era warning Bob Lutz of GM that he'd better damn well design his 2019 Buick horseless carriages so that they can still accommodate wooden spoke wheels just because he has lobbyists who represent the old wheelwright union and you don't want Senator Hugo Heironymus Hornblower IV from Maine telling the chairman of General Dynamics he'd better damn well include steam engines on a submarine.

Another member here, I believe jnug. He has a ton of experience in communications tech:

jnug said:

"Whoever gets elected as POTUS next, has to have at least a good basic working understanding of modern tech, enough to understand what their advisers are even talking about."

The Congress does not know what it is talking about in digital wireless. The Administration does not know. The President does not know. None of them have a clue. It has been years since the FCC even knew what we were doing in Digital Wireless basically resigning itself to tagging along behind what the industry wanted because they flat could not really do more than that. We had to explain virtually everything to them like they were 5 year olds.

The FCC is proud of itself because it sort of understood WiFi. uuuuuuhhhhhh, I'm impressed.

The technologists were in the main stripped out of the FCC during the Reagan years and for the most part never returned in the depth and breadth required. For 20 of the 35 odd years of my industry career, they took what we gave them and were darned glad to have it. We are in a bad bad place with regard to government understanding of wireless technologies. If I had to venture a guess, governmentally we are worse off in that regard than we are in Cyber. Everybody thinks deregulation is a great thing until it becomes overzealous and then the payback is nasty. Its generally only a matter of who it is that gets to PAY BACK.

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I think he put it neatly in a very nice nutshell. He mentioned cybersecurity, which I daresay is at least if not MORE important than a person's data on Facebook. Cybersecurity extends all the way up to and into national security.
During the most recent government shutdown, 80 percent of the federal contractors responsible for OUR NATION'S cybersecurity were furloughed and 80 percent of federal cybersecurity employees outside of the military were furloughed.

Do you think Senator Grassley has or had the first clue what that meant?
I'm not a Nietzschean Ubermensch like Zuckerberg and I know what it meant.
It meant we had unzipped our fly, dropped trou and were bent over with our butt cheeks spread.

I guarantee you one thing:

The Russians aren't allowing crusty old fogies to determine THEIR cyber-espionage policies in the Duma.
And neither are the Chinese.

Xelor said:

Simply put, we need to stop electing people who don't know "**** from Shinola," and we need to actually and rigorously vette/test candidates' acumen and work ethic about temporally important topics.

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Ain’t gonna happen. We don’t have the constitutional framework to disqualify anyone that meets the constitutional requirements.

BTW, I’d blame the staff for not teaching the senators whats what, unless they were sandbagging.

Hah Checkers! I see I’m living in your head. LOL.

Felis Leo said:

Vetted by whom, pray tell?

For my part, I disagree. I elect politicians on the basis of the principles they will uphold while in office. Not their technocratic knowledge. The fact that elected representatives know not of what they speak is of little consequence to me. Many Democratic lawmakers do not know **** from Shinola about firearms. Many of our newly-elected congressmen and congresswomen know nothing about basic economic theories. So long as my congressmen and women protect my Constitutional rights from further encroachment and constraint by the government, I could not care less how embarrassingly clueless they may sound regarding any one particular subject of temporally important topics.

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Red:
What do yo mean, "Who?" Voters, of course.

When candidates campaign at or host a "town hall" at one's church, school, community center, fundraising event, etc., voters need to grill and challenge candidates roughly as professors grill/challenge a PhD and masters degree candidate who's defending his/her thesis or dissertation.

Ask them questions; refuse to accept BS "dance around it" and other "non-answer" answers; push back and see what they say. Mostly, the questions should focus on how they will approach doing their job; however, for any field/discipline on which the candidate has attested to being a "pro" of sorts, sure, press them on the subject matter to make sure they really are a pro. If the candidate says s/he's a "pro" on, say, agriculture, let your neighbor who is a farmer do the pressing. If the candidate is a "pro" on, say, plumbing, if you're a plumber, you should do it and your neighbor should let you have the floor for that part of the "round robin." Everyone can ask questions about the candidates overall vision and press for clarification or edification in that regard.

When I chat with candidates at campaign events, I tend to sit back for a bit and listen to what the candidate volunteers and subsequently says to other voters. Then I chime in with my own question, which more often than not is one that forces the candidate to account for some sort of conflicting objectives. Generally, the form of my questions is: "Given that you acknowledge "this" and that "such and such" is immutable, how do you reconcile "ABC" and "XYZ?" We may go back and forth for a couple to five minutes, but I try to ask something that, based on what I'd heard before my turn, augurs to be germane to everyone, just as folks' questions/exchanges that precede and follow mine are (usually) germane to everyone.

I don't need "perfect" answers (because that's asking too much in that sort of setting and re: the types of questions I pose), but I need answers that are coherent and well informed enough, along with being not too straining of credulity and not evasive, that lead me to conclude that regardless of whether I agree on every specific detail, I can feel confident that the candidate is of good character, reasonably well informed, notably "smarter than average bear, Booboo," and has a solid approach to problem solving/work.


Blue:
Oh, my....

chuckiechan said:

Ain’t gonna happen. We don’t have the constitutional framework to disqualify anyone that meets the constitutional requirements.

BTW, I’d blame the staff for not teaching the senators whats what, unless they were sandbagging.

Hah Checkers! I see I’m living in your head. LOL.

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Red:
How much "constitutional framework" do you need? Show the hell up at, or host, campaign events now, while the bulk of candidates are willing to talk to small groups for extended periods of time as part of their efforts to develop "grass roots"/word of mouth support. Go to/host/coordinate as many of them as you can. Once the electoral cycle hits "high gear," when whatever candidates remain are doing only auditorium-to-stadium sized (or $50K+/per invite) events, most folks will have missed their chance to meet the candidate and really get to know what s/he is "about."

Does that mean one'll likely find oneself "getting to know" candidates who don't make it to the final heat? Yes, it does. But it also means one'll have had enough interaction that one can be confident about the choice one makes.


And mind, I'm suggesting the above especially to folks who live in "important" locales. I live in DC, which isn't important to any candidate, thus they mostly don't do campaign events (the kind that're free or low dollar) except when someone is willing to host/sponsor a fundraising event -- Dems know they're going to win DC and GOP-ers know they won't win it, which is why they mostly don't do early "low key" campaign events here. I do my best to go to the early ones when the "napkin" is cheap ($1K - $2K).

By the time "so and so" is the clear "heir apparent," the "napkin" costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, frankly, I'm not at all keen on paying that much; plus, at that price point, I'm just someone who can pay, not someone who candidates feel the need to talk to, because people having actual name recognition are also going to be there. It doesn't matter if I get invited to George and Amal's event; I'm not going because there's no sense in my trying to compete for attention with a bunch of movie stars. I can write a check, which is what everyone there can do, and, to a candidate at that point in a race, that's all the good I am in that sort of setting.

It's much the same in other locales that are, like DC, very heavily one way or the other. But for folks who live in places that matter electorally -- Iowa, NH, SC, TX, FL, OH, PA, MI, etc. -- one needs to get out there and meet the candidates while they're in their "before they were big" phase.

Checkerboard Strangler said:

I guarantee you one thing:

The Russians aren't allowing crusty old fogies to determine THEIR cyber-espionage policies in the Duma.
And neither are the Chinese.

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Red:
TY.

And TY for saying something that goes directly to the core theme of the OP. Someone above posted about "technocrat" something or other. I just thought, "Okay, he didn't get the point."

Cardinal said:

The ignorance on display by old men in the Senate chamber is certainly entertaining, but that should in no way take away from the fact that Zuckerberg is a gigantic piece of ****, that Facebook is a parasitic organization that treats its users like laboratory test animals in a country without animal rights laws, that they outright lie about their advertising campaign effectiveness in order to sell more advertising, and that every day Facebook takes privacy and anally violates it without permission and without notice.

Click to expand...

Red:
Be that as it may, none of that is the point.

The point is that we have people in high elected office who don't know what they hell they're doing/working on/talking about, and that, along with the fact of folks voting for such literal, with regard to today's issues that need addressing, know-nothings, is the problem. What we saw in the FB hearings is merely one manifestation of the problem.