Are More Guns the Answer?

Some people think that the answer to our problem with guns is more guns. Gun sales are booming after the tragic Newtown shootings, and some people say "Arm the teachers."
That makes no sense to me. One, it's just an arms race, as we had between nations during the Cold War; and, as some of the world's leaders had the sense to realize, that does not make anyone more secure. Quite the contrary.Some people think that the answer to our problem with guns is more guns. Gun sales are booming after the tragic Newtown shootings, and some people say "Arm the teachers."
That makes no sense to me. One, it's just an arms race, as we had between nations during the Cold War; and, as some of the world's leaders had the sense to realize, that does not make anyone more secure. Quite the contrary.
Second, if I, for example, owned a gun, and someone invaded my house, I'm sure I'd get shot before I successfully shot the intruder.
Third, the United States is not the world. Look at the rest of the developed world, where there is neither the rate of gun ownership nor anything like the rate of gun violence that the United States has. As far as I'm concerned, that says it all. People in other countries believe the United States is still the Wild West; and, as far as our attitude toward guns is concerned, they are right.
Here is a quote from the web site Bloomberg View ("Concrete Ways to Turn Back the Gun Lobby"), which says it perhaps better than I can:

[T]he widely successful push to bring guns into schools, churches, bars, sporting events -- essentially every public venue in American life -- is part of a narrow political campaign that romanticizes and fetishizes firearms, all the better to sell them. In all of these instances, we are told the right to carry a gun is paramount to all others, including an employer’s right to maintain a safe workplace.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Workers' Rights, Workers' Power

It might be only a slight exaggeration to say that there have been a rash of anti-labor measures enacted by governments recently.

First there were the measures in Wisconsin that were initiated by Governor Scott Walker which stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

A few days ago in Michigan that state's Republican governor signed two bills, notably so-called right-to-work legislation, normally understood as undermining organized labor because it specifies that workers in factories do not have to join a union nor pay union dues.

And now today the Mayor of Chicago has signed a new labor contract for the janitorial employees at Chicago O'Hare Airport. This new contract is with a labor vendor who employees non-union labor.

It's commonly known that by many measures the power of unionized labor in the United States has been declining. For one thing, the percentage of American workers who are labor union members has been steadily declining for decades.

These latest developments may not be totally surprising but I think they occasion some thought about labor in America.

First it must be said that the labor movement improved working conditions for workers in factories, which was often brutish and unsafe. Through the efforts of labor unions, the work week was reduced and government-enforced safety standards for the work place came into being.

It was far more through the work of unions than through the generosity or conscience of employers that the American worker attained a working-class standard of living that was the highest in the world. (I suspect that nowadays some European countries equal or possibly even surpass that living standard.) On the other hand, workers are paid much less in the so-called Third World countries; and just as according to the laws of thermodynamics heat will flow from higher to lower, so work flows from higher-cost to lower-cost countries, so that not only American but Japanese and European manufacturers are having their goods produced in China. So, if you were minded to focus on the American worker's role in this—which most likely would not be fair—you could or say that the American worker has priced himself out of the world marketplace of labor.

Thinking about the import of new laws mentioned above, my thought was that we are creating a new class of the immigrant-laborer. But after just a moment I realized that this is not at all a new development. For over a hundred years it's been immigrant labor which has worked at the least-skilled jobs. Once it was in factories but now it's more likely to be janitorial, farm work, or perhaps in restaurant kitchens.

So the nature of the low-paid, unskilled work whose ranks are peopled by immigrant laborers has changed. But still I want to reflect on labor.

First, a disclaimer of sorts. If you want to look at "blood," then I am to be suspected of not being a friend of labor. My immediate ancestors were the factory bosses who would move their production to another state to avoid having to have union workers.

And I have written about some of the things that I blamed on union work rules: for example, one can see many jobs in progress where it looks like one person is working and three, four, or five men are standing around doing little or nothing.

In Great Britain you could argue that unions have undermined the success of British industry. The joke is that 15 minutes after starting work, the British worker pauses for a tea break. English auto factories were plagued by labor unrest and poor quality of production. Just as one example, the famous German car company BMW bought the English company that built Rover and Land Rover. After some years they failed to turn it around and sold it for $1.

So maybe it's bad if unions have too much power. Maybe that happened in England. Maybe it happened in the Unites States. (One needs to remember the era around 1950 when John L. Lewis was head of the powerful United Mine Workers and his union, or railroad unions, could cripple the country.)

But I for one would not like to see all the power on the part of the employers, either, even if that would not mean a complete return to unsafe and exploitative conditions in factories and other work places.

Maybe what is needed is a fine balance of power between labor and management. But I fear that recent or current conservative and Republican states and local governments are not aiming for a balance but want to turn back the clock and eviscerate workers' rights as much as they can manage.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Guns--Yet Again

It's happened yet again: another mass shooting in the United States. I'm getting tired of writing about these things.
What kind of sick, crazy society is it in which these things can occur? What kind of sick, crazy society permits it?
I wish I could say you never hear about these things occurring in other countries. It's almost true. Within the last couple of years there was a mass killing of 47 people by a man named Breivik in Norway—even peaceful Norway; and I believe there's been one in New Zealand.
But when something like that occurs in another country it is even more shocking and startling because it is rare almost to the point of being nonexistent. Nothing of the sort had ever happened in Norway before, and nothing of the sort has happened since.
Yet here in the US it seems we have this kind of thing occurring every few months.
It should be clear to nearly any one that the problem is the gun culture* in the US. There are too many guns among the population, they are too easy to get, and crazy people can get guns, even so-called assault weapons.
The US state in which I live, Illinois, has been the only US state out of 50 in which it was not legal to carry a concealed gun out of doors. And now that law has just been overturned by a court. This means that if I should piss off some stranger—and yes, I've done that—I might well get myself shot.
If that happens, please, somebody, say "He told us so."
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* Maybe I should define what I think "gun culture" means. It means a lot of people think guns are a good thing, want to own a gun, want to shoot a gun (at shooting ranges). The argument goes, I need a gun to protect my person and my property.
Well, if literally everybody owns a gun, then maybe you do need to own one, too. That, to me, conjures up an image of some kind of dystopian world that I don't think I'd want to live in.
On the other hand, if nobody owns a gun, you don't need one.
The US is quickly becoming a country where everyone owns a gun. And with this concealed-carry business, well, that's not a world I ever thought I'd have to live in.
Update, December 14, 2012. The above was written after, and prompted by, the mall shooting in Oregon. Therefore, it was written before still another shooting, that of some 26 school children and teachers in a Connecticut elementary school.
Regrettably, these killings almost surely will continue until there is a very loud public outcry, an outcry loud enough to drown out the pro-gun voices of the National Rifle Association, which is very powerful and has been hugely successful in opposing gun-control measures.
Personally, I would even favor repeal of the Second Amendment (the infamous "right to bear arms" amendment), although I'm pretty sure that is not going to happen any time soon.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

The Value of People Skills

I think the most important ability a person can have is understanding people, or to be more precise, understanding human behavior.

The people who have this ability may become managers, politicians, car salesmen.

Maybe politicians and car salesmen are not people that you unequivocally admire. Still, having those abilities can make for success in life—not only in a career but also success in interpersonal relations.

I'm talking about an ability that consists of knowing, for example, what to say and what not to say. Knowing how people are going to react if you say or do such-and-such.

Some people, perhaps because of their childhoods, grow up with, as we put it, poor social skills. A book came out maybe 10 years ago which talked about "social intelligence." It's undoubtedly true that there are different types of intelligence. Many people who are very intelligent according to some measures are strong in many types of abilities but deficient in social intelligence.

There is Mensa, the "high IQ society," of which I was a member for 34 years.. While I have met many people in Mensa who seem to be ordinary people, there is no doubt that there are the geeks—that is, people with a lot of ability in computers, mathematics, and so forth--and stereotypically, Mensa members may be short on social skills. These types may be happiest working alone, doing work in which they can enjoy the luxury of not having to interact with other people constantly.

Sadly, though, that type of work situation might be rare. I was reading how the solitary inventor—an Edison, for example—has been replaced by the research lab which, of course, means an environment involving many people and thus a need for interaction among people.

In some research settings, I know that possibly quite a bit of eccentricity is tolerated. Because it's recognized that these people have rare abilities which must be prized, people in such organizations often enjoy a considerable degree of freedom, and in many matters they are left alone, permitted to dress as they want and often to keep the work hours that they want to.

Still, even those organizations have their managers, and university academic departments have their department chairs. Probably those who have better people skills are sought out for promotion to managerial positions.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Pathetic Little Mankind

Man has achieved some incredible engineering projects. He has rerouted and dammed rivers, moved mountains, dug long canals, and split the atom, releasing previously undreamed of force. These things tend to make Homo sapiens believe he can master Nature and do just about anything.

But periodically Nature puts on a show that should humble us. There are plenty of natural forces that we cannot predict, let alone control. Storms, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. If you just look at still photographs and video of cars, boats, houses, even big ships lifted and moved by the tsunami in Japan a year ago or the more recent Hurricane Sandy, you see how man's creations are pitiful little toys in the hands of natural forces.

Many of man's achievements of the last century or so have caused not just complacency but hubris, the feeling that we can completely master Nature and reshape the earth and our world when and where we choose. And then Nature says, Pitiful little man, you need to remember who is boss, and see what power I can exert over you.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

J.J.J. (US Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.)

I don't have much sympathy for Jesse Jackson, Jr., the Democratic US congressman from Illinois who, in recent news, resigned from Congress. He'd been on medical leave from his Congressional position for some months, plus he is under federal investigation for alleged misuse of campaign funds for personal purposes.

First, he was not serving in his Congressional job for some six months but would not level with the public. At first his people would only say that he was on "medical leave" and "fatigued." Then they told us he was depressed. At one point the news was that he was an inpatient at the Mayo Clinic. Finally they said he was suffering from bipolar disorder.

When they said he was depressed it was supposedly over his failure to get the Senate seat vacated by Obama. And his being in the shadow of Obama. Well, I don't want to say that being depressed indicates a lack of character but those statements made him sound like a cry-baby.

He should not have run for re-election last November. Now the public has to bear the expense of a special election.

Even aside from the allegations of wrong-doing, I think this man should be ashamed of himself. He has not served the people well nor has he been a credit to his name. (His father is the famous civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.)

Update, August 15, 2013.
By now JJJ has been sentenced to three years in prison--a punishment some regard as a slap on the wrist. All the while, he is going to be collecting $8,700 a month for his "disability" (bipolar disorder), plus he gets a "partial pension" as a result of his Congressional seat. The two add up to very nearly $150,000 per year. Nice rewards for being a crook. Not even to mention the money he got improperly, and for which he is being punished. By comparison, I have been scrupulously honest all my life and never earned half that much per year. But, as the man says, who says life is fair?

Double Header (Two Subjects)

Two matters, first General Petreus. I haven't figured out what to call, or how to summarize, the second subject.

The United States is currently experiencing a scandal similar to those which have rocked one or two European countries over the last few decades.

General David Petraeus, who had been the commander of Allied forces in Iraq and more recently the director of the US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), is involved in a scandal involving a mistress and possible conveyance of sensitive national information to others.

I think he should be called General Betray-Us. Okay, I'm just trying to be funny and have actually not formed a strong opinion in this matter--which is good, as the facts are still emerging.

Personally, I hate all things military, so I don't like generals. That includes General Motors, General Mills, and General Electric.

On another subject, yesterday I had a visit with my doctor—or to be more precise, one of my doctors, since when you get to my age you're likely to have numerous doctors, including various specialists. This one is an internist and my "primary care physician."

His practice has some new practices (no pun intended). They're very high-tech and have embraced various computer and database tools.

So, for example, the doctor writes up a summary of my visit on a laptop, and upon leaving I was presented with a copy of the write-up. This is what is so interesting: I read it and have to say, Yes, everything is true; but it all sounds so different, as he writes it, from what my experience was—mainly what I said I want or don't want.

There has to be a more general lesson here: experience can be quite different, depending on whose eyes it's filtered through. Remember that when you have a disagreement with your spouse or with a friend.

copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein