Jordan Visco had an interesting post discussed at Hacker News where said he was starting to consider giving to beggars. I found this interesting because I’ve typically given to beggars in the past and I’m starting to think I should stop.

Jordan wondered what would happen if every time someone begged, people would surround them and give them what they need. One person commented that we’d probably see a huge increase in begging if this were to happen.

A few people said they don’t mind giving money even if it gets used on alcohol or drugs with the logic that if the person’s life was that bad, they were happy to do anything that would make them feel better for a while.

It is all interesting discussion and well worth reading. The problem is that most people don’t make a decision based on a desired longterm outcome. Lets say you find someone asking for money for “food” and you give him $5 based on the belief that he will spend the money on food not alcohol or drugs.  So your desired outcome is for him to not be hungry for 3 hours. If he is actually hungry and the money gets spent on food, all you’ve done is push back the problem 3 hours. Still you’ve helped a fellow human who was in need and that isn’t something we should take lightly.

But what if that person is actually making several hundreds of dollars every day? Have you helped reinforce that begging is more lucrative than getting a real job? If that is the case you may have done some real harm to society.  Maybe not a lot of harm, but you’ve been part of creating something that we probably don’t want.  However, there is no real way for you to know who needs the funds and who is just milking public generosity.  Or is there?

What if a city got together and decided that to help beggars, one organization would provide people with work in exchange for lodging, clothing, a meal, food voucher, or even cash.

They could pickup trash in the parks, rake leaves, etc. But the point wouldn’t be so much to get valuable labor for the money. The point would be to give them a way to earn what they need. Even if there was nothing that needed done and everyone was just asked to sort red and blue marbles into two separate containers for an hour in exchange for lunch, it would be giving them something to do in exchange for their meal.

I recognize that some homeless people have mental problems. However, if they have enough mental capacity to show up where there are other people, ask for money and then spend that money on something, there is some task that they could do.

What would a community look like if anyone who was hungry, knew they could go work for an hour and get a meal? What if citizens stopped giving to the beggars and instead would help arrange transportation to get them to the work center? I doubt if a “professional” beggar would stick around for long.

This isn’t such a new idea. During the depression, some communities paid people to turn over the bricks that made up the roads so the less worn side was on top. My hometown’s football stadium was built by WPA workers as part of a program that hired the unemployed.

When we give someone free handout after free handout, we do them a great disservice. Most people understand that regularly giving wild animals easy food can teach them to stop scavenging/hunting on their own and eventually kill the animal. Why are we willing to do the same thing to fellow humans?

The problem is that giving someone a few dollars is more about making ourselves feel good than it is about helping them. It is a lot easier to give someone a five dollar bill than it is to try to find a solution that helps move them toward self sufficiency.

WPA programs were not without criticism in their day. Some employers felt that people working for WPA learned poor work habits. WPA wasn’t necessarily known for having highly efficient workers, so sometimes it was harder for a WPA worker to get a job somewhere else because employers assumed they were accustomed to working in a lazy manner.

But compared to what we have now, even this would be an improvement. Just the shift from thinking “people will give me free money” to “I can work for the things I need” is a huge step forward.

As a society, we aren’t going to be able to create a solution overnight. Handing out a few bucks here and there can make us feel like we’ve “done our part” and keep us from trying to come up with better solutions.

So will I give to the next person who asks?  Probably. Even thought I know I may be doing harm, right now I don’t know of another solution that will solve their immediate problem. But I’m going to try to be very conscious that the short term benefit is part of a system that is (often) doing long term damage to the individual I’m trying to help. Our options right now come down to choosing what (we hope) is the lesser of two evils.

Giving money is easy. Actually helping is very hard. There are solutions, but it is going to take some concentrated effort by people who are really concerned about making things better in the long term.

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My Sprint Android Nexus S had a problem with the time zone change last night. Not only did it set the time back by an hour (possibly based on the carrier signal), but it also switched from Central Time To Mountain Time. I am able to fix the problem by unchecking the “Automatic – use carrier supplied values” and manually specifying central time, but if I recheck the “Automatic” box it changes back to mountain time.

It seems as if Sprints Carrier signal accidentally started sending out a different timezone instead of sending out time code and saying it was CDT. So basically the Android clock fell back by two hours instead of one.

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I have an Apple wireless keyboard where the batteries slide into a tube. The batteries corroded and I can’t get them out. The only part of the battery that can be seen is the bottom of one of them. The plastic is black and the metal has two small bumps on it about the size of a pin head.

After comparing this to all the other batteries in the house, it appears that Duracell is the only brand with a black plastic casing on the bottom end and those two little bumps. After a brief call with Duracell, they are sending me a box to ship them the keyboard and they claim they will either repair or replace it.

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When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. ~ Warren Buffet

I love this management quote from Warren Buffet.  You can’t manage your way out of bad economics.  The truly brilliant management team knows this and will work to change the economics of the business first.

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. ~ Peter Drucker

This is a funny management quote, but unfortunately very true.

Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds. ~ Colin Powell

This management quote is too easily forgotten by managers eager to try out all their new ideas. In fact, part of the idea of management is to create systems so people become interchangeable.  While this might work for some businesses, it is only useful if you don’t need creativity and ingenuity.  Those are things the people bring to the table and you can’t get simply by creating another process or plan.  Seriously how useful is it to have a plan that says, “come up with something brilliant.”  It doesn’t work that way.  Leaps forward only come from having brilliant people.

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• A judge ruled that the health care law is not constitutional.
• Americans adopting kids from other countries is at a 15 year low.
• The last IP addresses should be allocated a bit later this year, helping highlight the need to switch to IP6.
• The company that owns CliffNotes is working with AOL to create web video versions including 60 second versions to watch on your mobile phone right before taking a test.

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A bunch of people are upset about the new scanners the TSA is using and upset about the new “enhanced” pat downs.  I can understand.  After reading a bit about both of them, it doesn’t sound like something I’d like to run my family through. However, the suggestions I’m seeing for how to deal with it are ridiculous. Right now a bunch of people are planning on opting out of the x-ray machines the day before Thanksgiving which is going to create a huge travel nightmare.  This might get some media attention, but it is going to take something that is moderately inconvenient and make it very inconvenient for a whole lot of people.

I don’t see how this approach is going to get the TSA to suddenly change their mind about things. It isn’t like the slow down is going to greatly inconvenience them–or at least not the people who actually make decisions for the TSA. Maybe the media attention with prompt changes, but that still seems like a round about way to try to create change.

If you really want to see changes made to the way TSA is treating people, there are three things you need to do.

1. Talk to your congress person

Let your representatives and senators know what you think and what you’d like to see changed. These are the people making the laws.  They are only going to know what you want if you tell them. Complaining to your friends doesn’t count–your congress person doesn’t hear that.

2. Write the airlines

What if you could hire someone with lots of resources to take your concerns and try to get laws and procedures changed? Well you can and it won’t cost you anything. Airlines have a very big interest in getting you to fly. I don’t think most of them care what TSA does as long as people keep flying.  However, if they feel they are losing money, they are going to start pitching a fit, hiring lobbyists, and doing whatever else they can to get the procedures changed.

Write them a polite short letter saying that you were planning on flying somewhere and decided not to because of the new security procedures. Remember, it isn’t their fault, but let them know they are losing customers because of this.

Letters carry disproportional weight in most businesses. I have seen businesses go out of their way to change things based on a single letter. There is something about a physical piece of mail that makes companies take it much more seriously than a phone call and just a few letters can make a big impact.  It might not happen right away, but imagine this: After a poor quarter the CEO asks his team, “why are sales down?” and someone answers, “well, we have all these letters from people saying they don’t want to fly with the new security procedures.”

3. Write the airport

Airports are competing for business too and although most aren’t going to have the resources of an airline, they are still worth contacting. If you don’t want to walk through the x-ray machines, write a letter to airports that use the machine letting them know that you are using a different airport to avoid the machines.

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According to Charles Rangel, he has spent $2,000,000 of campaign funds to defend against charges that he violated ethics rules.  Now he says he is out of money and his lawyers have dropped him.  He walked out of the panel hearings saying he doesn’t have a lawyer and isn’t being treated fairly.

The funny thing is, when you ask “what is the worse that can happen” it doesn’t seem that bad for him.  If he is found guilty he probably won’t get booted from the House.  He’ll probably just get a public reprimand.  This may be why he can’t afford a lawyer.  The consequences are low enough that he doesn’t want to spend any of his own money on it.  Now that he has exhausted the money others have given him he feels he is “broke” or at least broke when it comes to spending money to avoid a reprimand.  I have a feeling that if he were defending himself from going to prison, he might be able to find the money or perhaps well that vacation property he has been accused of not paying income taxes on.

It would seem that this would be a pretty easy thing to look at the facts and see if he violated the rules or not. I think he’d save face by simply working with the committee to try to get things over with as quickly as possible instead of drawing things out and spending all of this money on it.  It seems he’d benefit from having less media exposure instead of more.

Here is a crazy ballot initiative being voted on in Washington State:

This measure would require the Seal of the State of Washington to be changed to depict a vignette of a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached to the lower intestine of a taxpayer shown as the central figure. The seal would be required to be encircled with the following words: “Committed to sucking the life blood out of each and every tax payer.” The illustration would be selected from submissions submitted by taxpayers. (source)

How would you vote on that initiative? :)

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Brett’s story about a kid trying to sell him a newspaper subscription reminded me of this experience:

We were living in Grand Rapids Michigan in a nice neighborhood of the type that the Grand Rapids Press would love to acquire more subscribers.  The phone rang and caller id showed the call was from Arizona. I didn’t know anyone in Arizona at the time, but I answered anyway.

Me: Hello?
Them: Hi, I’m calling people who don’t subscribers to the Grand Rapids Press to see if they would like to start receiving this wonderful newspaper.
Me:  Hm.  Well I don’t know.  Is the paper any good?
Them: Oh yes, it is fabulous.  It is really something you need to get to be informed.
Me: I see.  Tell me, what state are you in?
Them: Arizona
Me: Have you ever read the Grand Rapids Press?
Them: No.
Me: Then how do you know it is any good?
Them: Well I’ve heard about how wonderful it is from the people I call on the phone.
Me: Didn’t you just say that you were calling people who aren’t subscribers?
Them: Yes.  Thats right.
Me: Then how would they know if the paper was any good?
Them: Ummm…

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With the Commonwealth Games finished in India, everything came off much better than many were expecting.  However, India isn’t getting the public relations boost they were hoping for when the won the rights to host the Commonwealth Games back in 2003.
Much of the work was finished at the last minute and there was a great deal of negative press about whether or not the infrastructure would be complete.  Several top athletes decided not to come after the widely reported concern about the filthy living quarters and there weren’t nearly the number of tourists as they were expecting.

In the end, most of the events went smoothly.  The venues and infrastructure was completed and the sanitary conditions sound like they were resolved.  There was a a problem with the computer system that handled tickets and several events had a lack of spectators while being listed as “sold out”.

Unfortunately the lack of preparation made front page news, while the last minute sprint to get everything done didn’t get nearly the same amount of publicity.  Overall, it will probably help India’s reputation.  There were no major catastrophes at the actual event, so they were able to pull everything off successfully. The negative PR probably isn’t going to help India get the Olympics anytime soon, but the experience of working under a global spotlight along with the infrastructure that was put in place will probably help them move closer to that goal.

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