I’m sure we are all anxiously awaiting the end of the election marathon. Of course, there are no guarantees that it will end election night, as demonstrated 16 years ago with a Florida recount. This year, there is the possibility of Evan McMullin winning Utah to enable a non-majority split of the electoral vote and sending the decision to the incoming House. Fun, fun, fun. So please keep your expectations low and carry-on.
I’m sure we can all think of ways that would work better for picking the nominees/president. I’m not going to offer a way to fix it; rather, I’m hoping we can find a way to maintain dialogue between people of different political “faiths” and work towards a community where we are less dependent on both industry and government.
I usually don’t shy away from talking politics, or rather, listening politics. The people with really hardened views usually don’t give you a chance to talk, but sometimes you can get the chance when you identify some common ground. I usually find that people who are planning to vote differently than I do actually care about the same things I do.
Admittedly, although less often, I do find people who are ideologically different, such as racists or people willing to trash the earth in the name of progress. Of course, there is way too much misinformation in the media on both sides, but that is not going to change, thanks to ad revenue. Not only are media/advertisers able to shock their audience into watching, they are also able to segment the population into better defined demographics such that they can “engineer” their ads/products to people who all think the same and thereby increase the likelihood of a sale. The media divide will continue and probably deepen, so it is up to us to talk/listen to each other because media has a vested interest in what gets communicated.
And just as we shouldn’t be fully dependent on media for our communication, we shouldn’t be as dependent on industry and government for our survival. I’m not a historian, but I’m willing to guess that the framers of the Constitution lived in a sustainable agrarian economy and were not dependent on government for day-to-day survival. Nor were they dependent on industry and just-in-time logistics.
As an engineer, I’ve come to notice “efficiency” blinders for our decision-making. And what’s not to like about efficiency or even lower costs? Reliability. In engineering, reliability and efficiency are often enemies, and we have to find the right balance point between them. Industry has lowered the cost of goods, but they have done so at the expense of reliability. Reflecting on these dependencies definitely engenders feelings of helplessness not so different from the election cycle. However, there are things we can do to make our communities more robust and stable. I will gladly pay extra for goods and services to keep the money in our community, support small businesses, and provide living wages. So when somebody says industry obtains lower costs by improving efficiency, what they haven’t said is that industry is lowering costs by making our community less stable.
Joe Criscione, President
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