Reflecting on the Rittenhouse trial and verdict

I observed today that people's reactions to the verdict in this case is very reminiscent, to me, of people's reactions to the results of the last couple of presidential elections in the US. Each side had a perception of the events as they transpired in the lead-up, which was heavily skewed by the media reporting within the ideological bubble in which they resided. Each side thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and anything other than their desired outcome would be a catastrophic failure of the system; they could not fathom any other outcome being even thinkable. And in the wake of the actual outcome, each side's media outlets are skewing the coverage to feed the narrative which appeals to their base: either applauding the outcome as necessary and just, or deriding it as a symptom of a systemically broken country which need radical change.

Neither of these narratives are either correct or productive, imho.

Kyle Rittenhouse went to an area where people were protesting, armed, and convinced that the protestors were violent and dangerous, no doubt based on the narratives he was exposed to. There, he found protestors who were in deed violent and dangerous, in contrast to the left-wing narratives, with people who attacked him and threatened to kill him. When attacked, he shot bad, claiming two lives. The jury found that he either acted in self-defense, or there was not enough evidence that he did not act in self-defense as to warrant a conviction (and probably the latter).

Let me suggest something else, though: Kyle Rittenhouse was motivated to be there because he believed, at least in part, that the violent protestors would not be held in check by the police, and that other people's lives and property would be at risk. This belief has a strong basis in historical fact: in almost every charged protest in recent history, there has been an element of violence, threat to life and property, and a abandonment of defense from law enforcement. The police prefer to retreat and gather in numbers before confronting people, even people clearly engaged in criminal behavior. Time and time again, the police have allowed protestors to "run wild", destroying businesses and property, and often threatening lives. It's not hard to see how someone could be motivated to use that as a justification for confronting protestors with deadly force; there are instances of this also in virtually every recent charged protest.

I suggest that this is a larger problem than it might initially appear, though. The perception that the police cannot defend the people is what drives people to acquire guns, for example. It's what really motivates the opponents of gun control measures. It's what, at least in part, puts guns in homes, and lays the groundwork for domestic firearms incidents, and school shootings. The images of the police attacking innocent people, or conversely retreating in the face of violent protestors, is what drives people to feel they must be responsible for their own physical security. It is also the proximate cause for what drove Kyle Rittenhouse to put himself in the situation which ultimately resulted in the loss of two lives.

The police have a difficult job, to be sure, and the very real human instinct to get away from immediate danger, regroup, and attack from a position of strength. We may never get to the point where people do not need some responsibility for their own physical safety and security. But one thing we can do better, which might have saved two lives here, is insist that the police forcefully counter violent protestors and keep communities safe. It needs to be clearly unnecessary and unacceptable for a private person to show up to a protest, armed, and claiming to be doing the protection duties which the police are unwilling and/or unable to perform. If we did that one thing better, it would at least be a small step in the right direction.

Facebook's Lingering Business Problem

On March 25, 2014, about 7.5 years ago, Facebook announced that it was acquiring Oculus VR, the then-leader in the emerging market for VP hardware. Since then, Facebook has been integrating the technology, expanding the offerings, and generally touting the benefits of VR for the masses. Despite this huge investment and PR push, though, VR has not really moved beyond the domain of niche games, or into anything approaching mainstream adaption. Facebook persists in its push, of course, with their most recent offering being a pair of AR glasses reminiscent of Google Glass (which has since been essentially abandoned). I don't think they are going to succeed in their business goal, and I'll explain why I think this.

First, we should consider what their business goal actually is, because that may not be evident to everyone. I believe that Facebook envisions a market for VR/AR applications as an emerging business, in much the same way that smartphone apps were an emerging market when the iPhone was first released. Consequently, Facebook is spending a lot of money (in acquisitions and development) trying to get an early-mover advantage in this market, in an attempt to become the predominant platform through which people acquire VR/AR applications. Note that this is distinct from developing and/or selling hardware, although the two business propositions are interconnected; after all, Apple would not be able to make billions from it's app store without the hardware to run the apps on it. Fundamentally, though, I think the app store is a more attractive business proposition for them, as it represents a more durable advantage than just superior hardware alone.

Facebook has a problem, though. In order to expand beyond casual gaming, and into "lifestyle" VR/AR, Facebook needs people to trust the company to not abuse their personal information, and/or inundate their experience with annoying advertising. Without that trust, given an equivalent product offering, people will actively bias their purchase decisions away from Facebook. Moreover, Facebook will be unlikely to be able to sell their "VR app store" concept to any other hardware vendors, if consumers are actively dissuaded from purchasing products with a connection to Facebook. Their reputation will precede them, so to speak.

Unfortunately for Facebook, this is a very difficult obstacle for the company to overcome. Trust is hard to gain back once it has been lost, and Facebook has built the majority of its corporate value by abusing (or thumbing their nose at) trust. Moreover, their main business model is predicated on obtaining and selling people's otherwise private information; even if they can carve out a market segment where they promise not to do so (as they have with their AR glasses, to some extent), people are likely to realize that this state is almost certainly temporary, and bias decisions accordingly. Out of all predominant public-facing tech companies, Facebook seems the least likely to engender trust among their users, and for good reason.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook can overcome this challenge in some way. I do not see a viable path for them to do so, but I could certainly be wrong. As a company, they a betting big on being able to become the predominant portal for VR/AR apps; time will tell if that bet will pay off.

Thoughts on Advocacy in Businesses

This post is motivated by a number of recent articles about advocacy in businesses; specifically, different companies' approaches to such. Some motivating examples:

• Basecamp sees an exodus of employees after CEO takes stand against advocacy within the company: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx58vx/basecamp-employees-are-leaving-after-ceo-bans-politics-at-work
• Shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway are proposing advocacy-related proposals, which Warren Buffet is opposed to, saying he prefers his company not have top-down political mandates: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/business/dealbook/buffett-berkshire-climate-diversity.html
• Many companies are adopting internal advocacy programs, and/or devoting resources to such (eg: my current company has a pay-for speaker program for Diversity and Inclusion, with a new speaker for such every month, among other initiatives)
• The current political climate in the US is promoting the message that you are either an advocate for a cause or an implicit enemy of that cause, which is coercing businesses to take more explicit political positions, either through action or inaction

Now, I'm sure that (as usual) I'll have some divisive opinions on this topic, so let me start with one right out of the gate: what Basecamp's CEO did is not bad.

One could certainly argue about the merits of implicitly consolidating power in the C-suite (vs internal committees and such), but his fundamental argument is solid: if you have (and/or wish to encourage) a diversity of opinions within your organization, you cannot allow one perspective to steamroll all of the others (even if, and perhaps especially if, that perspective is the loudest in the metaphorical room). It's absolutely the case that, for example, a push for "Diversity and Inclusion" is one of the loudest in the corporate world, with implicit condemnation for any company which is not explicitly advocating for such (ie: if you don't have a D&I program, you're implicitly a racist/sexist organization).

But this is, fundamentally, political propaganda writ large. You do not need to pay advocacy speakers to come and preach to your employees about the importance of having female executive leaders in order to actually empower females to have leadership roles within your organization. You do not need to have committees meeting regularly to discuss how you can advocate for minority empowerment to actually employ people in minority groups in equal capacity to people in majority groups. In many cases, those efforts are far more virtue signaling and appeasing the loudest voices, as opposed to making tangible changes in business practices (if changes are even warranted).

In essence, what Basecamp's CEO is doing is no different than what Buffet said in response to the advocacy proposals: "I don’t believe in imposing my political opinions on the activities of our businesses." Admittedly, for Basecamp, the stance is much more disruptive, since previously the company was implicitly imposing political opinions on their employees, via committees, internal advocacy programs, and explicit organization political stances, but the sentiment is the same.

Moreover, the companies which are choosing to explicit curtail their internal political advocacy seems to be going about it the "right way", by and large. Coinbase offered buyouts for employees who disagreed with the direction, an implicit acknowledgement that one of the fundamentals of the organization had changed, and they would understand if employees felt that change altered their comfortability with working there. It's unclear if Basecamp is offering something similar, but they seem aware that the change may cause some people to leave, and accepting of that reality as an inevitable consequence of their direction (in the same way, presumably, as they would have previously alienated people who didn't believe in explicit political advocacy by the company).

Additionally, and perhaps tellingly, Basecamp is being slandered by many people as a result of this decision, with many comparisons to vilified right-wing organizations and movements (eg: "I guess they will recruit from Parlor now"). I know nothing about the actual politics of the company's leaders, but the implicit associations seem to be just more reflection of the divisive politics and the "with us or against us" prevailing mentality of such than any specifics of their situation. I think that sucks, personally: I think it's bad for the company, and I think it's bad for the country as a whole.

I would say also that these types of trends sometimes "sneak up" on people, myself included. I hadn't really considered how much internal advocacy for political causes my company does, for example, until viewed in the light of the stances that other organization were taking, and provocateurs were advocating for. It's easier to see the harmful effects of polarization and divisiveness in the individual ideological bubbles and spheres; it's harder to see the slow pervasive and insidious push of ideology within institutions, where people are more compelled to accept the messaging whether they agree with it or not. Moreover, it's often hard to articulate why this ideological creep might be bad, without being written-off as someone who is simply opposed to the ideology being pushed (indeed, such is the nature of the divisive politicizing system, and it will happen even if you actually personally support the ideological initiatives, as can be seen to play out in the NY Times article linked above).

Anyway, those are my thoughts, for what they are worth. I don't have answers per se (hence "thoughts", not "solutions to these problems"), although I think it's often informative to step back and consider the systems and effects we often take for granted in our society.

Thoughts on Biden's Budget Proposal / Tax Hike

I have thoughts on Biden's budget/tax plan (in a surprise to nobody). I'm going to just comment on a few highlights, and not the specific details, since the plan is still in flux.

The Good

The idea of upping the capital gains tax is something I have supported in concept for a long time. I do not buy the idea that people will keep money out of the economy if capital gains taxes are high, especially with real inflation consistently around 5-10% annually (and poised to be much higher in the short to medium term, as the economy picks up and the trillions in created money flood back into it). I think it makes for better socioeconomic policy to tax passive gains at a higher rate than earned income in general.

The Marginal

I don't have a strong opinion on raising the top marginal tax rate back to the pre-Trump level, and/or the specific tax rates in general. Of course these have a huge impact on people's take-home income, but tax rates should be set based on what's acceptable for the country to take from its people, not on how that wealth confiscation impacts individual people. Ideally this would be a relatively static amount, and the government would budget expenditures from there.*

* I'm aware that the government does this the opposite way, figuring out what they are going to spend first and then figuring out what accounting gymnastics and deficit spending are needed to backstop the spending proposals. That's one of the many broken-government things I'm powerless to fix.

The Bad

Once again, we have the Democrat staple of selective taxation, with arbitrary cut-offs for income, personal status, which state you live in, whether or not you donated to Democrat political candidates, etc. (the last one is probably made-up, but not far off from reality). I detest that the tax code is not flat and fair, and applied equally to everyone across the board. I am not super wealthy, and I would not be negatively impacted by the cutoffs in this proposal in any way... but I still hate the fact that they are there. Why the heck isn't the capital gains tax flat? Make it 25%, make it 50%, I don't care... just make it the same for everyone.

I would get rid of all the kickbacks, cut-offs, credits, exclusions, special cases, brackets, etc., and make one rate for earned income and one for passive income (~15% and ~30%, given current spending amounts). Let people deduct all state and local taxes (all sources and guises) against income for federal tax purposes. Done.

Anyway, those are some high-level thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

Thoughts on Trans Kids in Sports

Preface: This blog is called "It's Just My Opinion, I Could Be Wrong"... I feel like this is probably one of the posts which will earn the moniker.

There's an issue in today's society: people, and increasingly more young people, are deciding that the gender which they biologically have is not representative of the gender they wish to be. Now, before I even get to the main point of this post, in the interest of being more complete about my view on the baseline context, I'm going to break down that sentence, and clarify where I disagree with some of the "politically correct" views on the subject.

First, I think people have a biological gender (generally speaking). I'm aware, of course, that biological gender is not 100% binary: there are people with extra chromosomes, there are varying levels of expression of gender (and genes in general), there are a small percentage of people with somewhat more ambiguous gender, etc. However, the vast majority of people have a fairly objective and easy to quantify biological gender, and it's possible to establish a metric for what someone's binary biological gender would be (setting aside for the moment the question of whether or not such a qualification is beneficial for any particular discussion or purpose).

Second, I think the broad talking-point of "gender identification" could, and probably should, be encapsulated in the concept of what someone's wishes are. That is, while it may certainly be a "strongly held belief" that one is "internally" a specific gender, or "accidentally assigned" the wrong gender, or "destined to be" the desired gender, all of these are rationalizations of a desire to be a gender. And to that point, that desire can be fixed, or it can be fluid, as can be seen in case studies.

Side note: This is in contrast to, for example, sexual attraction, which appears to be "baked into" genetics, and not voluntary or fluid.

Side note #2: This is probably deserving of a larger topic, but I think gender identity is fluid in large part because gender identity itself is predominantly a social construct. Studies have shown, for example, that more people wish they were male in societal situations where males had more freedoms and/or societal respect, and visa versa in societal situations where females were more revered. This is not the only motivational factor for gender identification, of course, but it seems that most of the identification motivations are strongly associated with societal gender norms, and there would be substantially less feelings of "misassignment" if societal gender norms were more accommodating to the desired gender-related behaviors and traits.

So with that out of the way, we come to the main point: how should youth organizations, and in particular schools, handle trans kids who want to play sports? Well, some thoughts...

Sports are historically segmented by gender. This is not for political purposes, bur rather for practical competitive reasons. Genetics are not politically correct, and genetically male people are (on average) bigger, stronger, and faster than genetically female people. For purposes of allowing more fair and equitable competition, most sports leagues have separate male and female leagues as a result of this. This is, predominantly, to allow more inclusive competition for female players; without this distinction, most sports would be dominated by only male players, and female players would be entirely excluded at higher levels of competition.

In today's world of arbitrary gender-identity and hormone treatments, however, the traditional line becomes blurred. After all, we cannot simultaneously agree that a biological male who wishes to be treated as a female (and may or may not have chemical treatments to augment that wish) is a female, while excluding said person from activities which we reserve only for females. On the other hand, allowing anyone who wishes to identify as a female to compete in female leagues would obviate the purpose of female leagues (ie: as a way to allow genetically female participants to compete at the highest levels in the league); see the reason female leagues exist.

Thus, as I see it, there are two broad approaches to resolve this issue: we can eliminate female leagues entirely, or we can rely on biological gender to assign participation in such. The former is the cleanest solution to the issue (in terms of preserving gender identity and allowing the most equitable outcome), but it would eliminate genetically female persons from most competitive sports programs. The latter would require an acknowledgement of the biological gender among the people pushing for transgender acceptance, and a "stepping back" from the idea of full gender fluidity and actuality in the trans community.

I think the latter of those is probably preferable for the society. That is, I see the separation of sports leagues by gender as a societally beneficial program to allow more participation in activities and opportunity to have more competitive opportunities for people in such. I grant that gender is a fairly arbitrary distinction (you could just as easily have a basketball league for people under six feet tall, for example), but I think the preservation of those leagues is probably preferable to the dissolution of those distinctions and leagues entirely.

That opinion stated, I fully admit this approach would require a shift in how trans people are classified and perceived in society: there would need to be an acknowledgement of biological and "chosen" gender, with both designations factoring into treatment and qualifications. This is abhorrent to a lot of people in the trans community, who want to be fully accepted as their chosen gender, and I would regret any additional discrimination they might face as a result. However, I think it's probably the right solution for a lot of societal dilemmas which this movement presents, and very possibly a necessary step to get past those debates.

Finally, as alluded to before, my hope is that as gender identity in societal constructs becomes less prevalent, this issue of feeling like alternative gender identity is necessary becomes less prevalent. That is, I would hope that if people felt free to act as they wanted regardless of biological gender (affects, clothing, appearance, behavior, etc.), and society did not place expectations on any of those things based on biological gender, that would substantially reduce the instances of feelings of gender misidentification. This is, in my opinion, the good "longer term" solution to the societal problem: people should not need to feel like they need to be another gender, just to act in ways we currently associate with the other gender as a societal construct. At the point where we have true gender fluidity in a societal construct sense, then the biological gender distinction just becomes a way to have more inclusiveness in activities for which competitive level is biased by genetics (as opposed to a political fighting point), and that would be a much better state.

Anyway, as always, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.