a diplomatic suggestion made when the current topic of discussion is tangential, irrelevant, inappropriate, or suited for only a subset of those present, as in “Let’s take the org question offline, we want to make sure we cover all the operations issues by the end of this meeting”; makes the bewildering implication that the current conversation is ‘online’; in modern parlance offline denotes something disconnected from the internet, but this phrase has nothing to do with the specific mode of communication and is frequently used during face-to-face interactions, which are already offline in that sense; see also parking lot and off-table
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Path dependence and the road not taken
Alternate futures
Posted on December 31, 2019
Job perks
Beyond the obvious global consequences, the upheaval of the Second World War was causing significant reverberations in the American labor market. Millions of workers who would normally have been filling jobs on the home front were instead deployed around the world as soldiers. For domestic businesses this meant intense competition for the people needed to sustain operations. In keeping with the basic predictions of Econ 101, limited supply in the face of high demand was inflating wages and prices all around.
As a response the federal government made unprecedented interventions in the economy, establishing detailed price ceilings and even rationing scarce goods whose main supply was redirected to the military. As the war progressed, Congress passed a law regulating the wages that employers could pay, specifically restricting increases. A minor term, tucked away at the end of the statute, exempted insurance and pensions from the definition of wages.
This meant that employers unable to distinguish themselves on salaries would have to find another lure to attract candidates. The nascent market for health benefits fit the bill. Providing such coverage became common, a trend that continued in earnest long after the war concluded. In 1954 the tax courts added their imprimatur to this practice by clarifying that companies could pay health premiums for their workers with pre-tax dollars, with no limits on generosity. Read more…
- In the first decades of the 20th century medicine was a domain of nostrums and quackery, including several patent medicines that created fortunes for their owners and even live on in surprising forms. ↩
- There are some exceptions. For instance a parsonage allowance covers housing for pastors who traditionally lived in spaces co-located with their church. ↩
- This potential to overthrow the status quo can be a feature or a bug, depending on your current relationship to it. ↩
- Unless you’re one of the parties uniquely positioned to wring money from the current janky setup. Given that the total cash pile is a few trillion dollars deep there are a lot of those. ↩
- Including unions, who have negotiated for juicy health benefits and are in no mood to see them devalued. ↩
- One absurd example can be found in hospitals’ “chargemasters”, mythical documents containing supposed pricing for everything that in fact have the barest tether to reality and are the source for those legendary $20-a-pill aspirins we occasionally hear of. ↩
- And if you’re not reading this on a screen, I cannot conceive of the circumstances that led to the involvement of paper. ↩
- Many have tried, most notably with the Dvorak keyboard layout. ↩
- Or maybe you chose the stable and sensible profession of truck driver, and self-driving vehicles come from nowhere to wallop your earning power in mid-career. Such are the fears of those advocating for things like universal basic income. ↩
- Turns out the market for monographs generated from close readings of obscure European authors is pretty small. ↩
bitrate
Posted on December 30, 2019
the amount of information being sent or received during a particular interaction, with an emphasis on the speed of transfer more than the absolute quantity; derives from telecommunications and computing, where the word indicates the number of digital bits a system can process in a given time; as jargon it can be used to subtly deprecate while sounding coolly technical, as in “It was a pretty low-bitrate conference, most of the keynotes were trying to imitate TED talks without a lot of new ideas”; by contrast a “high-bitrate” meeting provides significant valuable content in the allotted time, such designation being high praise and probably given by an engineer-type
heavy lift
Posted on December 29, 2019
work that will require significant effort and/or coordination between multiple parties for successful completion; can be used to draw attention to a task’s intimidating nature or ensure others are sensitized to its scope without sounding whiny, as in “Getting all the sales teams retrained on this new method by the end of the quarter will be a heavy lift”; used in a transportation context to denote complex logistics involved in moving heavy cargo; can also evoke a gym in which the lifter is attempting a significant weight; see also tough putt or tough row to hoe
The business of religion
And the religion of business
Posted on December 25, 2019
Come all ye faithful
Some of the devoted choose to meet in the early morning, braving the cold and arriving at their nondescript buildings in the pre-dawn darkness. The name on the sign outside might reference “soul” or “cross,” but there is nothing outwardly grand about these places. The real draw is the service about to start inside.
The congregants’ earlier interactions have acclimated them to social norms like dress codes, so they choose their attire with the fastidiousness of early Puritans. This leads to a generic sameness among the group—deviation would make one stick out, and this experience is not about the individual.1
As the session begins the leader takes a position up front, ready to guide the assembled congregants through a prescribed set of activities, both comfortingly familiar yet novel enough to maintain interest. The program is carefully choreographed, with moments of uplift and intensity interspersed with opportunities for deeper reflection. Upholding it all is a pervasive sense of belonging to a community united for a higher purpose.
Many in the West once gathered regularly with their fellow believers in church pews, but in recent years formal affiliation with a faith community has dropped off drastically. Yet it turns out these activities are still happening, just in new ways that obscure the forms being imitated. The inescapable human search for meaning and relationships has been co-opted by savvy entrepreneurs, particularly in the realm of fitness. Read more…
- In contrast to the drab colors preferred by those Puritans bright ones are acceptable, as long as they involve the latest tech fabrics. Outfitting participants has become a lucrative business on its own, hence the rise of brands like Lululemon. ↩
- Tough Mudder’s founder was a seatmate in my final semester of business school, and we once discussed what we were planning to do after graduation. He mentioned his adventure racing concept, which struck me as a really niche idea. The company has since had 5 million participants around the world. ↩
- These obstacles are descendants of those first popularized by televised competition programs like Survivor. ↩
- Or possibly injured, although the safety record of these events is pretty good. Massive potential lawsuits are reason enough to not stint on attention to this detail. ↩
- This evokes the practice of religious orders that practice mortification of the flesh as a form of spiritual purification. ↩
- The inevitable shakeout in the obstacle racing market is underway and competitors are disappearing. Spartan Race is apparently in the process of acquiring Tough Mudder, so the latter might eventually lose its logo. Those with it tattooed on themselves might not be thrilled by that. ↩
- Like a brand ambassador but unpaid, which for a corporate marketing department is the jackpot. It also does wonders for ROI calculations. ↩
- CrossFit refers to its gyms as “boxes”, presumably to highlight the gritty, utilitarian nature of their offerings, and also to provide more lingo that further marks out insiders. ↩
- These machines have traditionally ended up as expensive clothes hangers, a painful prospect given how expensive the newer equipment is. ↩
- And hobbled by mortality, meaning the long-term trajectory of physical achievement is always downward. ↩
view from 30,000 feet
Posted on December 20, 2019
a very high-level, preliminary, or cursory perspective on a particular situation, one that intentionally glosses over details to first consider the broader metaphorical landscape and develop a holistic understanding; derives from common flight levels for commercial travel, where most airliners fly somewhere above 30,000 feet; despite the unit of measure being uncommon outside the United States or the world of civil aviation, converting this to the view from 10,000 meters would be a bewildering faux pas, and similarly no one never speaks of the view from five or six feet, which might be more appropriate given the average height of a human being; there are multiple altitude variations of this jargon in use depending on intended nuance, and truly adventurous types may speak of the view from 50,000 feet
Quick wins and slow losses
The long game
Posted on December 14, 2019
Filing season
The federal structure that came into being with the birth of the United States was deliberately constrained on multiple dimensions. The new government did not levy income taxes on individuals, and as a result was funded largely through tariffs and excises for the first century or so of its existence.
As the nation matured, finding money for the expanding role of its central government became increasingly tricky. The extensive needs of the Civil War and the costs of the Union Army led to the passage of the very first income tax. It would be temporary, getting repealed a few years after the fighting concluded.
That left the federal government in a secondary role to those of the several states, which continued to be the primary actors.1 Reformers viewed its dependence on consumption taxes as regressive, and the brewing populist discontent characterizing what would be known as the Gilded Age of the late 1800s prompted calls for an income tax on high earners.
There was a hitch, as disputed language in the Constitution’s taxing clause meant the Supreme Court struck down Congress’s first passage of a general income tax. This was ultimately resolved only by amending the Constitution itself, a complicated procedure that by design only rarely succeeds. The Sixteenth Amendment firmly cemented income taxes as the principal national funding source.2 Read more…
- Per documentarian Ken Burns the country wasn’t grammatically considered a singular unit until after the Civil War. It was then that people changed from saying the United States “are” to the United States “is”. ↩
- This doesn’t faze a small group of tax protestors who continue to deny the Constitutionality of the federal income tax, an argument the courts invariably slap down, sometimes adding jail time for their troubles. Opponents of a proposed wealth tax may have more success. ↩
- Unfortunately these individuals have a keen interest in keeping the laws opaque and even growing their complexity, for in such messiness lies their income. ↩
- For shareholders who benefited from Boeing’s stellar performance the cultural problems did not prevent significant gains, which may be where some of the problem lies. ↩
- Unless you were eating at the Heart Attack Grill, an actual restaurant and temple of gastronomic excess that will bewilder future archaeologists sifting through the rubble of Las Vegas. ↩
texture
Posted on December 13, 2019
a subtle way of referring to details or specificity, generally used when discussing a more incisive level of analysis or precision that allows for the deeper understanding required, as in “That customer segmentation work needs a little more texture to be actionable”; evokes a surface viewed from a far enough distance that its more fine-grained elements cannot be visualized, or one so smooth that it does not provide adequate purchase; similar to granular; compare to provide color, which implies the need for a more compelling story
take one for the team
Posted on December 12, 2019
to perform some unpleasant task on behalf of others, or accept a consequence that falls disproportionately on the subject while benefiting the larger group; generally done from a sense of camaraderie and team spirit that one hopes will be appreciated and reciprocated when the time comes; rather than pretending that all is well, using this phrase acknowledges that some aspect of the situation is not ideal; the one who finds himself constantly taking one for the team may eventually seek a new team or sport altogether
Optimal choices, suboptimal outcomes
Captives to circumstance
Posted on December 5, 2019
Save yourself
Imagine a scenario in which the police arrest two people suspected of collaborating in a crime. They are held in isolation and each promised leniency if they will confess and implicate the other. If both stay mum the case against them will be weak, and conviction on lesser charges is the likely outcome. However, if each tells the whole story the government will have the testimony it needs to put both away for a long time.
The twist comes with the conditions attached to the third possibility: should one person reveal the details while his partner refuses, the confessor will get away with the lightest sentence of all, as the prosecution promises to shift the blame almost entirely to the other party.
In this situation each prisoner knows his best chance of reducing prospective jail time is to spill what he knows, regardless of what the other does. Unfortunately for him his counterpart also understands this perfectly, and since he will behave similarly the result will be longer sentences than if both remained silent and deprived the justice system of its needed proof.
This describes one of the most iconic problems in the social sciences, first codified in the 1950s and known since as the prisoner’s dilemma. In short, doing what seems best for you given the circumstances can in the end make you worse off as those around you choose the same thing. Like the tragedy of the commons, pursuing self-interest has consequences that run counter to what you ultimately prefer. Read more…
- A few of the world’s megacities are regularly in the news for air that has become so polluted that merely existing there is analogous to smoking an alarming number of daily cigarettes. ↩
- In the United States at least, they are in the aggregate choosing the former, which is why talk of a federal single-payer plan is now playing an outsized role in the Democratic party’s presidential nominating process. ↩
- Captured in the mafia principle of omertà, requiring absolute non-cooperation with the authorities, and in the less obscure and far pithier version “snitches get stitches.” ↩
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