The Elephants in the Room -- Three Rooms

There are four elephants in three rooms that the world pretends not to see. I'm not sure what your and my voices might mean, but I urge you to raise yours -- to your editors, your Congress-person, your Senators. I will if you will.

Two elephants hang out in Kashmir. India and Pakistan are increasingly hostile and irrational, each whipping up religious intolerance against the dangerous "other" to marshal patriotic and nationalistic support for their regimes. Both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear warheads mounted on long-range ballistic missiles. The one is infested with terrorists; the other with fascist intolerance.

Another elephant lurks in an Ukranian room. Russian troops have taken the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. According to the IAEA they are running it sloppily, holding Ukrainian operators at their stations under the barrel of a gun, working them understaffed and overtime. The cooling water reservoir has been drained, the power supply jury-rigged. Were cooling to be disabled, Europe and the world might face a catastrophic nuclear melt-down exponentially worse than Chernobyl's.

The fourth elephant is in an Israeli room. Israel is the only mid-east nuclear power; they reputedly have an inventory of warheads that sit on long-range missiles, smaller tactical warheads in air-delivered bombs, and nuclear artillery shells. Their center is Dimona, in the Negev, just 30 km south-east of Be'er Sheva and even closer to the Jordan/West Bank border within easy reach of Iranian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Saudi, or Yemeni rockets. And given the rage Israelis are in, . . .? 

The world leaders are acting as if they do not see these elephants, but they must. I cannot believe they do not. But what are they doing??? 

That's what I have written about, to my two Senators and to Adam Smith, my Congressional Representative and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Call out these elephants, demand action -- at least, talk about them. How is the world to tie them down? Who can tranquilize them? Alarms need to be rung -- perhaps our voices can set them off. 

Have you ever written your Senator or Representative? As we used to say at Kenner: It's easy, it's fun! Go on the web; give it a try. You might be surprised. Enough small voices can add up to a thunder that cannot be ignored. (Just ask Seahawks' opponents playing here in Seattle.) Let's get started.

September 24th

The rains have arrived.

Again, summer ends. Red and

yellow leaves delight.

 

Seahawks, Dawgs, Cougars,

cozy woolens re-appear.

Sol flees south once more.

 

Curled by the fire, those 

melancholic blues: these mark

true Seattleites.

 

I'm told Old Sol will be gone in 250 million years; I expect I will be too.

What the Two Irelands Have to Teach Us

Ann and I have just returned from three weeks on the island of Ireland -- wonderful weeks among wonderful people. We come home with great memories and sobering lessons to be learned.

Yes, it’s green – The Emerald Isle, more verdant than our Emerald City despite fewer trees -- its tidy pastures delineated with hedge rows in the north, stone walls in the south.

Yes, it has bewitching ruins of castles and towers and abbeys.

Yes, it has vales and loughs, strands and cliffs, fast running streams and salmon. (Above: Lough Leane, Killarney, County Kerry. Below: The Cullenough at Ennistymon, County Clare.)

And yes, the Irish live up to the stereotype of voluble, funny, and pub-loving; they value smiles and wit and their pint of Guinness. 

No, she's not Irish; 100% Swedish

But look and listen carefully, dig a little deeper, and valuable, moral lessons emerge – for us, for now.

First, Persistence: after the Romans left Britain in 400, Ireland became the bastion of Christianity and learning.  Irish monks were the missionaries who helped Charlemagne light his Dark Ages. The Irish were to be trodden down for the next 800 years by Anglo-Normans, by Henry VIII’s new Anglicans, by Charles I’s “planters”, by William’s Protestant rentiers, by planted Scotch Presbyterian capitalists, and by a potato virus. Yet the culture has been kept alive, not just to survive but to thrive and through the most successful diaspora in history, to spread the culture and its values throughout the western world.

Second, Sectarianism: sectarian identity politics is a hardening of community arteries that kills. The civil war of 1919-1921 was a war over a glass half-full, a war in which Irishmen seeking independence step-by-step killed and were killed by Irishmen seeking independence quickly. It was a vicious sectarian war of refusing compromise, of not listening to one another, of terrorism, assassination, and assault. Over 2,300 were killed and thousands of more injured. 

The Silent Stormont

Sectarianism infects Northern Ireland today. The Stormont, their parliament, has not convened for two years because Unionists refuse to sit with the majority Sinn Fein; Westminster must govern the so-called independent, 4^th country of the United Kingdom.

      

One of hundreds of gates between Unionist and
Nationalist neighbors

The gates of the 20’ high “peace walls” that separate Protestant Unionist from their Catholic Nationalist neighbors are closed and locked each night at six. Orangemen still flaunt their identity by flying the Union Jack in profusion and by organizing marches through Catholic neighborhoods to commemorate a 17^th C battle. 

Meanwhile, the Nationalists flaunt their victimhood through murals to their martyrs of The Troubles. 

The Special Powers Act enabled arrest and incarceration on suspicion, suspension of habeas corpus, search and seizure without warrant, suspension of the press, and so on; the SPA is still on the books. 

The violence of “The Troubles” may have been suspended through the patient mediation of Bill Clinton and George Mitchell and the battle-fatigue of Jerry Adams and Ian Paisley, but the underlying sectarian-identity politics of distrust and disdain fester. 

The other side of the sectarian lesson is what the Republic has built by working to rid itself of sect and to become a secular society. It has loosed the grip of the authoritarian church, rid itself of publicly-funded parochial schools, mandated school uniforms to erase class, protected abortion rights and approved gay marriage, reduced income inequality through progressive, step-flat taxation, made coalition government work (and produce a huge budget surplus), and welcomed foreign direct investment and immigrants (100,000 last year on a population base of 5½ million) with minimal dislocation and resentment. The Republic’s GDP/person is higher than ours and the highest in the EU.

Third lesson: Community: Ireland is a communal culture built on four solid legs – family, home, pub, and the GAA.

·       Family means loyalty, sharing, caring vertically, i.e., generationally, and horizontally, i.e., across legions of aunts, uncles, cousins, and seconds. Celebrating, caring for one another, and grieving together.

Home dinner with Paula and sister Helene'

Home is treasured; The Republic's home ownership rate @ 71% exceeds the average of the EU and that of the US. Homes are neat and well- kept. We never saw junk and cluttered yards. Graffiti and homeless sleeping on streets is rarely seen.

At end of day, people from all walks repair to the pub for a pint and a “chat”. A chat is a real conversation -- listening, trading news and views, arguing good naturedly. After dinner, folks return to the pub maybe once a week to enjoy, perhaps to make or dance to music with their neighbors. The pub is the beating heart of the community.

It doesn't look like it, but 9-year-old Grace is 
teaching me Women's Irish Football.

The GAA: fourteen hundred clubs make up the Gaelic Athletic Association. Ballyshannon, for example, a town of 2,300, supports 400+ members from 8 to 80 playing handball and rounders for adult recreation and exercise, and Irish football, hurling, and camogie for club, town, and county honors. The All-Irish football and hurling championships are the national sports’ super bowls, played in Dublin’s Croke Park before crowds of 80,000-plus. It’s all amateur: no paid players, no millionaire coaches, no arrogant owners, no professional money machine.  

So, what do these two Irelands – the dysfunctional Northern and successful Republic -- have to teach us?

To me, the lessons are clear. Don’t give up on the idea of America. Reduce sectarianism and restore civility. Demand and help create a pragmatic government that works. Build on shared interests and shared commitment to the American experiment a fair, tolerant, welcoming space in which each person can work to realize his or her or their aspirations.

We should aspire to live up to the apt and lovely Irish saying, “There are no strangers here, only friends you have not yet met.” [1]

---

[1] This popular saying is persistently mis-attributed to the national-treasure poet, playwright, and author William Butler Yeats. There is no evidence that Yeats ever said, wrote, or published those words. But as our friend Sean Buckley likes to say, “never let truth interfere with a good story.”

                                                       

What I Have Come to Believe

From The Lake Hotel, Killarney, County Kerry, Republic of Ireland.

As this 9/11 approached, the start of my 90^th lap around the sun, I have been ruminating on what I have come to believe. Years ago, at General Mills, Bob Blake, our Director of Advertising, and Larry Gibson, our Director of Consumer Research, taught me that acts, i.e., one’s behaviors, result from one’s beliefs. Our questions then were what do they – our prospects – now believe and what do we want them to come to believe so that they will act as we wish? This pertained then and subsequently to purchases of packaged foods, toys and games; to selection of restaurants and to choice of hotels and resorts.

Now, the questions pertain to me.  

Well, what have I come to believe?  

I have come to believe 

• in ambiguity and uncertainty; that I can hold two incompatible beliefs simultaneously.
• in a spirit that animates all forms of life in a web of inter-connections.
• that there are no intervening “Gods”; that I am responsible for intervening in the fates and forces, the karma, that appear to direct my life.
• that some life forms being more complicated, genetically and structurally, than others does not mean one form is any “higher” or superior.
• that a person is more than a bundle of cells; that perceptions, memories, likes and fears, and  relationships with others make a person.
• that other life forms can also achieve personhood.
• that it is wise to suspend disbelief.
• that conversation is a universal solvent.
• in community: I may not go as fast, but I go further.
• that empathy is the necessary “glue” of community.
• that my freedom of choice is not unconditionally free; it comes with obligations to my community and to my fellow man.
• that I should embrace diversity even to the detriment of efficiency.
• that we humans are wired to discriminate differences, to identify and classify; that my challenge is to learn to act despite my tendency to discriminate.
• that I should support reduction of inequality; extreme inequality breeds dysfunctional societies. 
• in equity: not necessarily equality, but fairness and accommodation to needs and talents so that access to education and economic opportunity is available to all.
• that governments can accomplish desirable things in concert with individuals and communities.  
• that corporations are accountable to more constituents than just shareholders. 
• in competitive capitalism with ground rules and constraints on concentration of wealth and  market power.
• that democracy means everyone has a voice, none more than another’s.
• that the real value of our Constitution and our rule of law is to protect minorities from diktats of the majority.
• that I must strive to do onto other persons as I would have them do onto me.
• in acknowledging, apologizing, and making amends for mistakes and wrongs done to others.
• that every enterprise and person should have a mission; that articulation of my mission provides   a guiding rudder to me.
• that affirmative evil exists and must be confronted by a community.
• in incrementalism; that radical change carries within it seeds of misjudgment, unintended             consequences, and resistance and rejection.
• that pragmatism trumps ideology or theory; I believe in what demonstrably works, step by step.
• in children: that we are guardians of their future opportunities; that we have borrowed this earth from them.
• in love.

It's Summer in Seattle

Summer: Seattleites are out of doors. Some choose mountains to hike, the Cascades or Mt. Rainier, but for many it's water that calls. Perhaps swimming in Lake Washington, or jigging for salmon on the Sound, or floating and fly casting the Yakima, or in the San Juans searching for Orcas, or crewing on Green Lake. But for others, it's The Tuesday Evening Duck Dodge on Lake Union. 

Every Whichway

If you are lucky enough to have a brother-in-la-la -- Tom and I are married to a Big Sister and a Little Sister  (but as they grow-up, they are getting along better) -- who lives with Jan in a houseboat on Lake Union and has a 1953 Chris Craft Cavalier tied to it, you get invited out for ahi and clams and a ride into the heart of The Tuesday Duck Dodge. 

It's Summer in Seattle!

For Ann and me, what's not to love?

Everybody's in the act

(Click on a pic for a gallery of larger images.)

 

(note the dog)

That's Eddie's Cocktail-napkin Monument

 

Goodnight, Seattle

How Bad is Being Big?

 The Editor

The Economist                                                                                                                             via email

Re How Bad is Being Big? July 15^th issue.

Your article examines market concentration, churn in share, and “excess profits”. As you point out, bigness per se is not illegal in the US nor is reaping large profits. Lower costs to consumers and customers have been the overriding rationale for approving mergers and acquisitions. But I counter that bigness, particularly via acquisition, is inherently anti-competitive. I favor disapproval of further acquisitive growth and break-up of oligopolistic industry structures.

I base my view on 31 years as a denizen of large corporations and 16 years of consulting with small and independent businesses on how to outperform large competitors. Early in my career, I watched a frustrated FTC wrestle with oligopoly in a consumer-packaged foods market. Their point was that we did not have to conspire or collude to manage prices; knowing who would follow whom gave us the leverage we needed. But under anti-trust law, oligopolies are not illegal.  Later on, in another consumer product market,  I helped consolidate an industry and amass market share through purchase of 14 companies around the world. Later, as central marketing services provider to diverse members of our conglomerate, I provided a range of professional skills and assets, as market and consumer research, distribution leverage, syndication of media content, public relations and advertising expertise, systems development, purchasing and so on. Finally, with a different corporation in consumer and business services, I helped it grow and dominate through internal development, acquisition, and franchising.

What competitive advantages accrue to the large? Lower cost of capital than available to the independent. Ability to recruit promising talent from leading graduate schools. Special skills support such as risk management, quality control, distribution logistics, system development. Basic research that leads to product and service development. Supplier leverage and purchasing clout. Marketable shares with which to acquire. The list goes on and on.

Bigness is an asset. This is not to say the behemoths do not stumble. They generally are not nimble and lose agility. But don’t we often we see one enter a market second and use their inherent advantages to overwhelm and rise to #1? Bigness is inherently anti-competitive.

Is Demography Destiny?

For the most part, yes, though not entirely.

I’ve been fascinated with demography since early in my marketing career. In 1961, Teddy White published Making of the President, 1960. I read it for its political drama, but I was startled by to realize that these political strategists knew a lot more about their voters than we MBA marketing geniuses knew about our own customers.

My career as a marketer – first of consumer foods; then of crafts, games and toys; and subsequently of hotel and travel services – has ever since been grounded in demography. For example, by digging into the data, I helped our Star Wars toys displace Hot Wheels to become the top selling boys’ toys for four seasons. Later on, in the hotel business, it was casino operators who showed me they knew more about their gamblers than did we about the travel patterns of our hotel guests. I adapted Caesar’s Palace’s software to get a better handle on our guest patterns, leading to challenges to room design and décor. My fascination with demographic and behavioral data has been a constant ever since.

I began preparing this talk two weeks ago, playing with some population pyramid data, but the New York Times beat me to the punch with a long article in this week’s Sunday Magazine. For those of you who read the article, bear with me. For the rest, my intention is to pique your curiosity about demography, about population patterns, and to stimulate your thinking about the world your children and grandchildren are about to inherit. It will be a very different world than that we have grown up in and grapple with today.

Is Demography Destiny?

For the most part, yes, though not entirely.

After all, the basic elements, i.e., persons, of the near future of a population are already on the ground; we can count them. What do I mean by “near future?” The next seventy-five years or so.

The number of middle-aged we can count and these, in due course, will become retirees and elders, with attendant demands for pensions and costly health care. Witness Japan, now the oldest industrialized nation in the world, and shrinking in size. Their salad days as the world’s 3^rd largest economy are over.

The number of the world’s children already on hand is known; these kids will become tomorrow’s labor forces, will form families and become consumers – if they have incomes to spend.

The number of pre-school and teen-age girls is already known: they will become women of child-bearing age. The portion of them that will be educated, will live in cities, and the number of children they are likely to bear is changing, changes demographers are watching carefully, for birth rate change is proving to be the wild-card in forecasting future population patterns. I mention urbanization and education: – no surprise – the more citified and educated women become, the fewer children they choose to have.

So yes, within some reasonable range of uncertainty, demography is destiny. Demographics cannot foretell wars or pandemics or famine or drought or floods of course, but hints at potential instability are to be read in the data. Take for example, Nigeria, already Africa’s most populous country, where a huge portion, 43% of the population, is under 15 and will soon enter the work force. If Nigeria succeeds in attracting foreign direct investment and creating jobs, they will be the growth engine of Africa. But if Nigeria fails to generate employment for this huge cohort of literate young men, over one in five Nigerians, these young men will likely turn rebellious, spread social disfunction and crime, and send forth to Europe wave after wave of migrants.  

What else is to be found in today’s data? (Note: these population pyramids are depictions of today's profile by age and gender. The forecast curve at the right shows where such a profile is headed.)

·       That the world population will top out in 2087 at 10 billion, 430 million. Do we know that for sure? No. But given what we do know, that is the best forecast. It was but 3 billion when the Club of Rome was predicting disaster.

 

·       India is the country of the future. Should your grandchild’s trust or 529 Plan portfolio include shares of Tata or Reliance or the State Bank of India?

·       The Chinese economy will not surpass our US economy. At the end of this century, China’s likely will still be 2^nd largest in the world and ours will still be #1 – assuming we can avoid war or famine or pandemic.

·       Why? Because our magic sauce is immigration. Our population – our labor force and consumer base – is healthy because we take in immigrants, which China, Japan, and most of Europe don’t; so long as we prevent Trump or DeSantis or some other jingoist from closing the gate, we will continue growing even into the 22^ndC. China’s and all of Europe’s economies are aging into gerontocracies of expensive dependency. Health care and pensions drain their discretionary investment capacity. 

·       Turkey will become the largest country in Europe even if the rest of Europe were to staunch its decline. Were you a member, would you vote to invite a populous Muslim Turkey into the EU while Germany, France, Italy and Spain shrink?

·       Russia is on track to lose 1/3^rd of its population by the end of the century while the former Soviet Republic “stans” will, in 2060, be 50% larger than Russia.

 

 ·       Add in Afghanistan and Pakistan: these central Asian nations will total 685mm people, nearly twice the size of the US – and will still be growing in mid-22ndC.

 

·       In 2100, 40% of the world will live in Africa. Just 4% in North America. What demands on us can we expect? Should we continue to be the world’s largest arms dealer when who knows on whom those weapons will be trained?

 

Some of you, I know, are thinking, ‘well so what? I can’t change these demographics. I haven’t any power to wield here. I’ll be dead and gone. What does this matter to me?’

Ask yourself, instead, ‘what does this mean for my children and grandchildren? What attitudes and values must I encourage? How should I be preparing for their financial security? To what cultures should I be introducing them? What should our schools be teaching? How can I best help them meet whatever comes in the remains of this 21^stC?’

I hope I have intrigued at least a few of you enough to open https://www.populationpyramid.net/ and browse through it at leisure, moving your cursor to select countries and sliding over the curves, and asking – what might this mean to my kids and to theirs?

Demography is not necessarily destiny, but it’s the best tool we have to anticipate what’s over that horizon. And there is plenty of change coming our way. Pay attention.