It’s Only Gonna Get Worse – Page 9

Quote of the Week: Obama’s Next Move Towards Socialism

From CNN's Breaking News:

"EXCLUSIVE: President Barack Obama told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday that some of the country's largest corporations have signed on to a White House plan to boost the hiring of the long-term unemployed.

'What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say: Let's establish best practices,' Obama said in the exclusive interview…

Obama's move is in line with his pledge to use executive action on his agenda items that he hasn't been able to get through Congress."

The Frustrated CFO Comment:

Alrighty then! So, this is how we are going to deal with overpopulation and economic stagnation: Instead of cutting down government spendings, ceasing the preposterous fueling of the financial sector, ending the subsidies to failing industries, letting the stock market to finally adjust to its real value, providing incentives to domestic manufacturers for repatriating their productions from overseas, and reducing business taxes in order to reignite small-business growth, the President proposes to create a new form of Welfare, i.e. to force big-time employers to absorb long-term unemployed people - in exchange for some tax credits, no doubt.

Hmm… Not that I'm concerned for the overgrown business superpowers with their blown out of proportion stock values and unjustifiable multi-million-dollar executive salaries, but if they don't experience a labor-force deficit, why would they accept extra employees? That goes against every single principle of a market economy, even in its degenerative form we have right now! And where they are going to employ them? Walmart is planning on opening more super-stores? They are everywhere already. So is Apple. And Ford? Do you mean Ford Motor Company, the one that posts $5-$6 billion losses every year; the one in Detroit – the city declared bankrupt by US judge Stephen Rhodes two month ago? You must be kidding!

And how these companies are going to pay these people? I can't imagine the execs will let their ballooned compensations to be slashed by 80%. So, what then? Everybody, except for a handful of the privileged, will take the same percentage cut to accommodate the unnecessary additions? Let's make most people equally poor, so that everyone can be "employed" and bring home something? Wait a minute! Didn't somebody already tried this experiment? Oh, yes, communists in the socialist camp did! Worked like a charm: destroyed their economies and created hordes of lazy, unmotivated, and unskilled workers! Welcome to your future, people, courtesy of your elected leader!

The Frustrated CFO Presents: The FedEx Man Cometh

A Treatment for a Feature Short Film:

The present.

Brightly lit business office suite. The camera moves out of the reception area, along a large sign on the wall "ALISP International," and into the open-design space in the middle. There are a lot of boxes of various types around – file storage, heavy-duty cardboard with foam padding, etc. Some are sealed and others are half-packed. Office workers of both genders and different ages are busily occupied: most of them are at their desks, either working on the computers or talking on the phones, while a few are transferring files and folders from desk drawers and cabinets into the boxes. The company is obviously packing up.

PAIGE, 30, an accounting manager with plain but soft facial features, gets up from her chair, takes a huge pile of checks she just printed and walks into a private office with an open door.

Inside the office, the CFO, a middle-aged woman with an almost visible weight of responsibilities and problems on her shoulders, is at her desk. She is a hardened veteran of the professional work-force; one of those bitches who are said to have bigger balls than their male peers. A permanent scorn for humanity is set deeply around her mouth.

It looks as if her right hand is glued to the mouse, moving and clicking the thing in a seemingly erratic pattern, which causes rows and columns of data on the computer screen appear, disappear, reproduce, and rearrange themselves. There is a tower of empty boxes in one of the corners. Clearly, she didn't have a chance to start packing. The CFO doesn't stop her manipulations of cells even when Paige comes up to her desk.

The desk's surface is completely covered with documents and reports, yet appears to be in a sort of a neat order. Failing to find an empty spot, the younger woman asks, "Is it okay if I put them on this contract?" The CFO is her mentor and Paige feels guilty for giving her something else to do, as if those checks were intended to pay her personal bills.

The CFO stops torturing the mouse and looks up. "Actually, it will be great if you do that, because right after I finish this bullshit for the bank and sign the damned checks I will have to read that damned contract to make sure that our esteemed attorneys didn't miss anything," she says without any irritation, just matter of factly.

"Those RingCentral, guys, did they finally got what you wanted them to do with the phone system in the new office? I heard you spelling it out for them."

The CFO produces a funny sound – a combination of a sad sigh and a bristle of disgust: "People rarely disappoint me – most of the time they are exactly what I expect them to be."

In a gesture of a female camaraderie, Paige lightly rubs the CFO's shoulder and leaves the office.

The CFO goes back to her computer and continues manipulating the database at the same high speed. Her phone rings. She hits the speakerphone button without taking her eyes off the screen.

"Yes."

The reciptionist's voice singsongs out of the phone, "Gary from LinkNet for you."

"Okay."

The CFO keeps working, while a man's voice comes on after a click, "Hi, M."

"Hi, Gary. What's up?"

"We just checked the tracking information - the boxes are on a FedEx truck, out for delivery to your new address. I'm a bit concerned about nobody's being there. It's a bunch of pretty expensive stuff: uninterrupted power supply unit, firewall, network switch, backup…"

"Don't worry – I have a standing order with the building's management to keep all our packages in the mail room until we collect them. And I will be there Monday morning."

"Okay, and the next day we will come to install and connect everything. Just in case, we included your contact information on the label."

"That's cool. Okay, bye."

"Bye."

Same day, early afternoon.

A FedEx truck is moving down Broadway in NYC's Financial District, rolling closer and closer towards the Bowling Green Bull; then turns left a few blocks before the statue.

The FedEx truck is parked at the entrance of a steel-and-glass 30-story office building. The driver, a man in his early 30s in FedEx uniform, unloads several heavy packages onto his hand truck and rolls it through the building's service entrance.

Inside the building's mail room a young man, late 20s, is behind the counter. He is wearing a standard navy blue jacket of the NYC Service Employees International Union. He stares intently into a computer monitor, which emits barely audible, muffled moaning sounds. He mutes it as soon as the driver walks through the door.

"Wussup, man! Cold outside?"

"How you doin? Too cold. I got boxes here all going to same place… Lemme see…" Looking at the label of the box on the top, "Al… Als… Ali… Al…"

While the driver is trying to figure out the name on the label, the guy behind the counter strikes a few keys on the computer keyboard. Tenants' directory appears on the screen in front of him. Within seconds he exclaims, "Aliyes! Sixth floor, man!" He sounds very satisfied with the fact that he managed to find the company before the driver could read the label.

As the FedEx driver rolls towards the freight elevator, the mail-room dude clicks the mouse and the very quiet moaning comes back on. About five inches away from the guy's hand on the mouse, a sheet of paper is affixed to the surface with a tape strip. The letterhead indicates:

"From the Desk of Joe Funk, Building Manager"

The header below states in bold letters:

"NEW TENANTS"

"ALISP – Floor 17: Keep packages in the mail room" is the first entry on the alphabetized list that follows.

Same day, late afternoon.

The CFO is at her desk. With her glasses on, she is now reading "that damned contract," marking it with a pencil every once in a while. The phone on the desk rings. Again, she hits the speakerphone button without looking.

"Yes."

The receptionist's voice is hesitant – she is obviously unsure whether she is doing the right thing by passing this call to the CFO instead of fielding it away.

"There is a person on the phone… He says that he is from a company… Aliyes… and that he got your packages, ma'am."

The CFO takes off her reading glasses and looks at the phone as if it was a curious living thing. You can hear amusement in her voice when she asks, "My personal packages?"

"Yes, it seems so. He asked for you by name."

"Okay, put him through."

In a second, a man's voice comes through the speaker.

"M.?"

"Yes."

"My name is Bill. My company is on the sixth floor here at XX Broad. Are you, guys, in the same building?"

"We are and we aren't. We are in the process of moving in – the 17th floor."

"For some reason your packages were delivered to us by FedEx, and my secretary signed for them. She started opening them up without even looking at the labels. All this equipment seems expensive."

"It is quite expensive. Your company's name is Aliyes? Well, the first three letters are the same – that's as far as an average attention span can go nowadays."

They both laugh.

The man says, "It's a good thing that your name and number were on the label."

"I have to thank my IT Administration service for that."

"Look, we already sealed the boxes back - as good as new. Why don't you call John, the building manager, and ask him to open your office for us. I will have my guys bring it inside and I will personally supervise that nothing gets screwed up again."

The CFO's face changes and her voice is very earnest, when she says, "That would be great! Thank you so much. I am so grateful."

Indeed, she is grateful – she got lucky that someone with the common sense cut this chain of events short. The whole thing could've turned out so much worse.

Some Economists Say That a Robot Can Replace My Paige. For Real?

There are
quite a few optimistic economists out there who convinced themselves
that, even though the Industrial Revolution, which was responsible for the unprecedented economic development of the United States since the 19th century, is pretty much over, there is no need to panic and envision impending doom. According to them, we are yet to pull through. Do you know what will save us? Artificial intelligence and 3D printing, i.e. fucking robots and compressed plastic powder.

Ok, let's leave the 3D printing alone for now. I'm quite impressed with the replication capabilities of the so-called printers: the manufacturing of complex forms, moving parts and all directly from scanned or modeled images looks like magic; and I do think that this innovation will revolutionize toy-making and change sculpture forever. However, because the "printing" powder recipes are kept secret, I cannot really say anything about the quality and/or safety of the household items, tools, auto parts, etc. made this way. I hear the plastic guns shoot people dead pretty well, but what else is new?

I am more curious about the robotized future though. From the vantage point of the economists in question, 65% of American employees are engaged in tasks that they classify as "information processing" (sounds pretty arbitrary to me, but let's go with it) and these poor "dehumanized" worker bees will be replaced with super-efficient highly intelligent machines, who never get depressed because information is what they do. And it doesn't matter that the damn toasters will never be able to look at a plant and pick an appropriate tool to trim it (it's just something that cannot be programmed).

In case you are wondering, the other 35% will be occupied in professions and functions that require superior intelligence and talent: executive management (you wouldn't believe how many executive dumbasses I know, but whatever!), strategic planning, creative work, and of course, gardening (on account of the robots' deficiencies mentioned above).

Seriously though, I hope you agree with me that defining ALL tasks performed by office employees as "information processing" essentially turns these people into some sort of robots already, which creates an illusion that replacing imperfect human tools with slick intelligent machines is an efficient, easy, and necessary process. And yes, some of the office routines can be tedious and dehumanizing. Yet, the reality is that only in large companies, marked by narrow specialization, standardization, and redundancy, work can be likened to the repetitive conveyor operations. Everywhere else people multitask!

Ever since my doctoral studies of economics (many year ago), I had a problem with the pervasive tendency of theoretical generalization; with the application of the macroeconomic approach to microeconomic systems. Again, maybe such abstractions are somewhat pertinent to giant enterprises, but you and I know that every small business operates differently – none of them will fit into an artificially constructed etalon. It scares me to think that these pseudo-scientists possibly envision the future without any entrepreneurship at all – just fucking GMs, GEs, Microsofts, Starbucks, Smithfields, Apples, Googles, COSTCOs, and Carl's Jr. (Wait a minute, doesn't this ring a pretty loud bell?)

But what if this nightmare doesn't come true? (Call me a fucking optimist!) Imagine that 20 years from now small businesses still exist, but now they can be outfitted with highly efficient (and affordable!) intelligent machines available to step in as your trusted office workers. Let's conduct a mental experiment and see how a robot will deal with three (could've been 100) straightforward issues customarily handled by one of my most reliable and teachable subordinates of all time (I call her "my Paige"). In other words, let's see if a robot can really replace my Paige.

#1. A commercial customer has a $300K credit line. The total of the customer's open invoices is $265K. A $51K order for the product your company really needs to move is transmitted for the robot's credit approval. Of course, a discretionary flexibility is programmed into the algorithm (robot designers are not stupid) – it's 5% above the limit (remember, standardization is unavoidable with machines), making the total allowable credit exposure $315k. But approving the order would exceed it by a mere $1,000. The robot rejects it, denying its employer an opportunity to move the product, increase the revenue, make a nice profit. In addition, the relationship with a long-time customer is at jeopardy over a thousand bucks; and the salesperson is mad because he lost his commissions. And what are you going to do? Fire the robot? It cost the company a fucking mint!

#2. The operations department (also robots) needs to make sufficient room in the storage facility to accommodate the upcoming delivery of 5000 mt of a product from overseas. They transmit a message to Sales to start pushing the shit faster. Sales plea and beg customers to take as much product as they can – discounts and all kinds of other tokens of gratitude are flowing. One customer says that he can take a delivery on September 29th, but he doesn't want the inventory on his books just yet and the invoices must be dated October 14th (the "I do something for you, you do something for me" principle). This information is relayed to my accounting robot. It's perplexed: It's programmed to record sales according to the order terms; the terms in this case are Delivered; the proof of delivery transmitted into his system by the trucking branch states September 29th; yet, somebody is overriding his algorithm and forces the wrong date! SCREECH! SYSTEM FAILURE!

#3. The payments-to-suppliers program kicks in. The robot tallies all invoices that need to be paid – the total is $3.3M. Now, funds-sufficiency program kicks in: there is only $300K available on the account and the robot transmits a funding request to the CFO's all-in-one communication device installed into her left ear's diamond stud. The borrowing and investing functions are still done by the human CFO, because the risk of some crafty thief hacking into a fucking toaster is, as you can imagine, pretty high. The problem is that the CFO is in London dining with a Financial Director of a company her employer targeted for acquisition. She is trying to pump the stiff for some information beyond the official reports, and she just got him talking, and there is no way she can lose this opportunity on account of some payments. But the robot must do his job – he must be timely, the payments must be made. Yet, he sees that, if he actually makes the payments, the account will be overdrafted by $3 million. The conflicting algorithms are tearing the machine apart, literally – it short-circuits.

What? Are you telling me that the economists don't have these tasks in mind; that these are semi-managerial-somewhat-analytical duties? Guess what, Mr. Big-Shot-Futurologist? That's what's going on in small businesses with flat structures: Every sector of the value chain is manned by one executive/manager and a handful of her direct reports aka the "the information processors." No middle management. You cannot possibly reassign these minute but essential issues to CFO's and Controllers – that's just too expensive in terms of the compensation, wasteful in terms of the time taken away from more strategic obligations, and demeaning in terms of the moral incentives. And if I have to buy robots AND keep my subordinates for the semi-managerial-somewhat-analytical work, what kind of progress is that?

According to the US Census data, there are over 6 million companies in this country with less than 100 employees. Obviously, they are too small to see from the top of the theoretical mountain. So, in articles for academic magazines and thick manuscripts for Wiley publications, their diverse office workers first get bundled together with the narrow-niched redundant zombies of large bureaucracies, and then replaced by robots in one sweep of a Montblanc pen.

Just for argument's sake let's get back for a second to the scary possibility: The economists, politicians , and the big businesses paying for them actually erase small companies from the national map. The intellectual flexibility is ignored in the interest of standardization, and all of the "information processors" in the remaining giant conglomerates are replaced by machines. What kind of plans do the movers and shakers have for these 65% of American workers? How about their children, lately multiplying at the three-per-family rate? Considering the dramatically falling IQs of the general population, it's unlikely that they will be viable candidates for high-level managerial or creative work. So, how is the robotization going to make the whole nation wealthier in the same way the Industrial Revolution did? I see a more polarized society with hordes of people pushed below the poverty level.

But the biggest question I have for the big-time big-picture economists is: Where the fuck are you going to get the energy to power all those robots and their managing network servers?

Quote of the Week: The Shutdown

The Frustrated CFO's Preface:

I wasn't planning on dignifying this new chapter in the government's bullshit with any words at all, but yesterday, during my news-reading self-torture, I came across the short bit cited below. I don't always agree with this journalist's points of view. However, in this instance she appears to channel my own libertarian position on several key issues. I couldn't say it better myself, so here you go:

"This week was dominated by the shutdown.
It's as much a shutdown of the executive functions of the brain as it
is of the government. A monument to monumental stupidity, it's also a shutdown of possibility, and of whatever residual trust the public still has in the American political system. Even those doing the right thing by fighting it were reduced
by the sheer absurdity of the situation. All to try to reinstate a
sequester-level budget that is itself horrifically self-destructive
(note to media: the Affordable Care Act and sequester are the compromises,
and bad ones, at that). That's right — we've now sunk to a level in
which the merely horribly self-destructive is a goal that seems out of
reach. So our leaders play games instead of even attempting to address
the real problems, like the roughly 20 million unemployed or underemployed Americans. That's for August. The September numbers weren't released on Friday — because of the shutdown."

Arianna Huffington

The Huffington Post

October 6, 2013

Can’t You See? Google’s Hummingbird, or the Monopolization of Information

Every time the proverbial wool is pulled over the masses' eyes, this question materializes in my mind in a very specific way: Can't you see? Pumped with drugs, submerged into the water, and literally attached to a supposed crime-fighting machine, the main precog Agatha (Samantha Morton) pleads with Tom Cruise's John Anderton to see the truth: to clear his mind and look behind the foggy wall of deceit; to figure out what is right and what is wrong, who is a victim and who is a real criminal, where is the true justice and where is the pure greed for power and domination?

Can't you see? With their latest search-engine revamp (aka the Hummingbird offensive), Google is trying to deprive you of your basic rights (particularly those guaranteed by the First and the Ninth Amendments) and turn the last bastion of freedom, the Internet, into the same corrupt mess our tangible world has become – the wasteland, where the bigger your teeth and claws are the larger the piece of the pie you will grab.

Even though the implementation of the "hummingbird" algorithm was publicly revealed on the day of Google's 15th anniversary, it had been enacted several weeks ago. I noticed something new a month back: Like everyone else who writes, from time to time I go online to look for the best choice of words. For years, Thesaurus.com has been the first-listed result. It still is, but right above it (above everything) appears a lightly-bordered box with a Google-provided selection of synonyms, word origin, etc. Even on the 21" screen it dominates most of the initially visible space – you have to scroll down to see other results. If all you need is basics, you don't need to go to any other dictionary site – it's all right there, in the box.

Now, try to google, for example, Advil and you will see the same (only larger) box at the top, filled with medical information on this over-the-counter drug. Type 3D Printing in the search field, and you will get featured ads (powered by Google's AdSense) at the top and the hummingbird's box on the right with the top four choices for 3D printers from Google's Shopping. And don't be deceived by the fact that many of your searches don't bring back the ghostly box just yet – the knowledge base will self-educate and expand with incredible speed, just you wait.

They are not too shy about it either: In the midst of listing all the "innovative" features of the hummingbird algorithm, they freely speak about their strategy to squash the other online information purveyors. During the unveiling ceremony, Google's search executive Tamar Yehoshua constructed his demonstration specifically around queries related to nutrition. The first results were long lists compiled by Google and shown on Google's own site. No need to go to WebMD – one of thousands of online businesses dependent on the Internet users' ability to "find" them.

Wow! First, they started tracking your web patterns in order to "suggest" ads and rank search results according to your "tastes" (how are you supposed to find, buy, learn anything new, if Google keeps polluting your visual field with old, familiar shit all the time?), and now this?! They want to monopolize the Information Superhighway; they want to own your mind and hinder your psyche! This is much worse than anything Snowden has revealed about Big Brother. Can you imagine the breadth of opportunities for manipulations?

How about the unlimited possibilities for murky dealings? Just think of the fees you can charge a company for the right to be a part of Google's knowledge database, to be included into that top-of-the-page box. Judging by the experience so far, we will never know how much exactly: While making the basic AdSense pricing available to everyone, Google makes sure that it is impossible to find out how much it costs to guarantee that your ad or product always appears in the featured boxes, bypassing hundreds of others.

For many, Google's true intentions of global domination are obscured by gimmicks, oh, so attractive to the techno-savvy Internet users. You've got complex, multiword queries; you've got voice recognition with detectable accents – Google pretty much promises to come up with search results in response to your mumbling something in your sleep. Everybody's like, "Oo-la-la! Symantic search capabilities!" That's all great, except don't lead me straight to your own websites, bro, let me make my own choices!

What happened to Sergey Brin, who came here from the Soviet Union in 1979, at the tender age of 6? Didn't his parents teach him anything about the importance of personal freedom and the dangers of totalitarianism? And why? What, $24.5 billion is not enough?

I don't really know if the algorithm's nickname is an unabashed display of gall and an inside joke hinting at Google's true intentions, but I find its selection uncanny: Hummingbirds, pretty and quick, are essentially omnivores – sucking out flowers's nectar and praying on insects' protein, all in the course of one meal.

I sold my Google stock as soon as they monopolized the online advertising, and I wish I could tell you that I plan to stop googling, or use Maps. Unfortunately, I am not able to take such a pledge: no matter how hard other search engines try (and I would like them to try harder), as of this moment they cannot match Google's speed and range. Yet, I refuse to give into their tricks: I will not be boxed out neither by the AdSense tracking my Internet movements nor by the hummingbird's hijacking the top spot of the informational ladder. I will continue to exercise my freedom of going to the search results that I believe are relevant. What about you? Can you force yourself not to be lazy and bypass Google's conveniently positioned traps? Can you brush off that wool and see?

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