Tess Checks her Math

Tess, on track to own a controlling interest in the world, is both musical and a mathematician; both are one to her. She sees numbers and notes in a symphonic synesthesia. When she relaxes on the battlements with her flute, the whales surface, and seem to dance in accompaniment, with the seabirds. Yet, she is also "good with numbers," and reasons as such. Startled by Brexit, and the new nationalism, she reviews her prior, well advised logic.

1. Buy companies in the rust belt
2. Move jobs to China
3. Break the union in the US plant
4. Reincorporate off shore and pay no taxes
5. Reinvest philanthropy in China where the money is made and where 100 lives can be saved as cheaply as one in Flint
6. Optimize profit
7. Fund a PAC to maintain the political status quo
8. Optimize across all countries to do the most good because "All lives have equal value" (Gates Foundation) and "Talent is evenly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not" (Chan Zuckerberg Charitable Initiative).
9. Look for synergies across bottom lines, i.e., if owning a social media platform in Silicon Valley where programmers command high salaries, use social impact investing to fund a start up to train programmers in Africa to earn one dollar a day; good for them, good for profit at social media firm, good for profits on African startup, on balance good for the world, even after adjusting for wage declines in Silicon Valley. (C.f.,the first program funded by Chan Zuckerberg Charitable Initiative.)

Why then are some of the ignorant, the low information voters, those left behind in the "Big Sort," by IQ and SATs, and by the movements of the market, calling for a return to a time when they did better? Do the Alt Right, Black Lives Matter, Trump or Bernie voters, the followers of Le Pen, simply not understand that when the economic pie gets bigger, and we optimize for human good worldwide, and for the owner's share of the pie, that the interests of the dispossessed at home cannot be weighed in the balance more than a life in India, China, Mexico, or Afghanistan? Isn't it all math, after all? The pie is bigger, owner's share is growing, certain losers suffer. Innovation, Disruption, Creative Destruction. All in all, the totals of human happiness worldwide are trending up. Metrics have been checked. The math is sound. The altruism is maximally effective. What is the problem?

Comments

[Humboldt Pi]

Stability + (Innovation*(Disruption+Creative Destruction)) = {{{{SEA CHANGE}}}} & spare change

[Humboldt Pi]

Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change

[Phil Cubeta]

With so little to offer, it is a wonder you are still allowed to vote.

[Humboldt Pi]

The useless are a burden we gladly bear. Nothing could scale without them.

[Phil Cubeta]

No progress without Dumpsters on every corner.

[horslink]

When she relaxes on the battlements with her flute, the whales surface, and seem to dance in accompaniment, with the seabirds.

Hey, they do that when I play my pennywhistle, too! :-)

[horslink]

Here's a cool song for Tess, Mr. Pi and Ms. Egger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17yWeynOfOI

[Phil]

Two of a kind, then. A cross class alliance.