Today in Facebook: the Rotary 4-way test

I was drinking tea and dropped in on newsmedia and FB this morning. My friend A. had posted a link to this article at WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/09/house-modernization-committee-bipartisan-collaboration-lessons/

I had no idea any of that was going on, and was encouraged by it [ETA: but see below](I find everything out months and years late, it turns out), _and also_ it refers to the Rotary 4 Way Test. Which despite decades of reading including a lot of business advice and self-help _and knowing Rotarians_ and pretty sure having attended at least one Rotarian function and having found Rotarians to be annoyingly Christian, individualistic in orientation and Republican as voters, _had never heard of the 4 Way Test_.

It is, obviously, in wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four-Way_Test

If you can read that and _not_ see a really odd but valid perspective on Buddhism, well, you’re not me. Which is fine! Anyway. This is a good lens! I will be experimenting with it.

ETA: OK, here’s the “see below”.

I had not read the entire article yet when I posted this initially, and by the end of the article, I was saying things that if I’d been in public and overheard or if I posted them here, I’d probably be in a whole lot of trouble, because free speech protection is extensive but not _that_ extensive.

Timmons is talking like some of the Republicans who Hillary Clinton worked with used to talk. And Clinton got into a ton of trouble electorally for being willing to talk to people. So fundamentally, if you tell me that a bunch of white guys, _led by someone from Tacoma_, got together and decided to apply Rotarian techniques to getting along better and were really _happy_ that they could get so much accomplished _but in the end couldn’t even get these things done_:

“Others, including a recommendation to create more bipartisan gathering spaces and a particularly clever one to allow dual sponsorship of bills across the aisle, have gone nowhere — so far.”

Well, I’m not encouraged at all. OK, I am encouraged. We are still headed _directly_ for a really, really, really big, damaging encounter that a lot of people will have to reckon with. You know, sort of like what happened in that Dominion case that Dominion finally allowed Fox to escape from in exchange for admitting what they had done and paying a helluva lot of money. That kind of damaging encounter lies in our Congressional future still, and will keep happening, in much the same way that Dominion’s cases against other individuals continue to roll forward. The temporary modernization committee has indeed demonstrated that the people we elect to Congress are capable of getting stuff done when they have frameworks for working together. Sure. However, we _don’t_ have frameworks for working together _on purpose_. One side of this partisan debate absolutely opposes going forward with changes that have been happening in our country (notably, where people live, and how many people are in this country) for a hundred years. And also, by the way, oppose an even longer timeline of changes regarding who is counted as a (whole) person. Timmons is described as having a recurrent nightmare until he had a hard conversation with his republican colleagues.

There’s a _type_ of person who can’t sleep until they have a hard conversation with someone. And all I can say about that is, what kind of conversations do you normally have with people? If it takes a recurring nightmare to get you to say something _to your own team_, I find your lack of authenticity deeply uncomfortable to be around.

ETAYA:

Having said all that, I have in my own head a timeline of how change ripples out through a group of people. There are some weirdos — sometimes including me — who try a totally new thing because It’s Shiny or it holds out hope of mitigating a long-standing problem or whatever. Depending on how that goes, and what those people say to their friends — OFTEN including me — a bigger group of people will give it a go. The first group, driven by shiny and/or intractable problems in their lives (or problems with obvious solutions that they are not willing to pursue yet or whatever), has already moved onto the Next New Thing. If that second rank sheep — frequently me! — likes the results they are getting, they’ll enjoy an increased differential success in life compared to people who have NOT adopted the new thing. Their friends — and people who fucking hate their guts and want what they have — will be the next to adopt the change. And so on as the change ripples through society, moving from Gadget to Fad to Trend to Normal to Earnest Young People Try to Convince Stodgy Olds to Middle Aged People Try to Convince the Entrenched to WTF is Wrong With You, You Yokel Start Wearing Shoes Already. We are at Middled Aged People Try to Convince the Entrenched. WTF is Wrong With You You Yokel is next.

I watched a TRMS and 3 and a fraction Alex Wagner’s last night to catch up on what I didn’t watch while on vacation, and Jordan Klepper said something he attributed to Adam Kinzinger about how orange guy will lose adherents when he’s on stage and has pooped his pants.

Now, I’ll definitely understand if you laughed, because honestly, pooping is always hilarious when it is not you having the eliminatory issues. And _I am really okay with targeting orange guy this way if it’s a quote from a Republican_. And also, laughing at medical issues is not cool. Laughing at things that happen when you are old is not cool. If there’s disability involved, not cool. I won’t be starting to watch Klepper and/or the Daily Show. And also! We are at Middle Aged People Trying to Convince the Entrenched, shading into WTF Is Wrong With You You Yokel.

Recession risks

I don’t normally talk about recession risks here and nothing I am about to say should be considered advice of any sort whatsoever, except possibly that you should try not to panic, even if everyone else around you is, because panic is not helpful, altho careful observation, knowing your values and making plans with the people you care about and care for IS helpful.

Anyway.

We’ve had some inflation, mostly because pandemic/supply chain/deciding to abruptly move everything online at first temporarily and then more permanently. Also, all of the above created an environment in which people were _accepting_ of inflation, so people raised prices to make more money, and also workers said, hey, pay us more because all of the above.

Then the Fed said, okay, that was NOT transitory, so we’re going to raise rates until everyone calms down. Raising rates pressures everyone who is lending money at low interest rates and needs to borrow money at higher interest rates. Some of those people promptly folded (or were folded), but the banking industry as a whole is under pressure as long as interest rates are rising. While rising interest rates did reduce some demand (tech companies laid some people off, some startups ended, etc.), it has not yet reduced _enough_ demand, because we’ve been underbuilding housing so there is a lot of pent up and generational demand as people who put off having kids/buying a house are now doing so.

The Fed will quit raising interest rates when they arrive at their target rate of inflation. We could arrive at that target rate by an increase in supply (China production being all the way back, for example, and more people entering the work force would help, however companies are now aware of single country sourced production as an existential risk and will continue to distribute production in 3 or more locations and that will keep costs elevated for a while and maybe forever) OR a decrease in demand (people quit consuming as much) or some combination thereof. Every in-person retail operation that goes under frees up a little labor to go do something else. Every tech person laid off becomes someone who could help smaller companies hire the talent they need to automate. Etc.

Here’s another thing that could do it: a bond market crisis. If the bond market had a complete meltdown, and news media focused exclusively on that for a little bit talking up and generally stoking the belief that a recession _with layoffs broadly_ was imminent, _that_ could all by itself incrementally reduce demand enough to make inflation stall completely. In conjunction with the massive amount of multi-family housing that will be coming onto the market in the next few months and a total collapse of commercial real estate, the Fed might not have to raise rates further AND might let them reduce rates a bit, taking a lot of pressure off of banks.

Want to know what might cause a bond market crisis? Failing to raise the debt ceiling.

I am _not_ advocating for failing to raise the debt ceiling. I am noting that if the Republicans insist on driving off that cliff, we should _definitely_ all get really mad at them. And also enjoy the reduction in inflation that lets interest rates come down while we talk about what a weird thing it was that we had that massive crisis and yet still such low unemployment.

Monday: walks! Marmalade, phone convo

I walked with R.

I walked with M.

I did the 3 mile loop by myself listening to an Odd Lots. I got a call from A. while on the walk. Nice, long, phone convo.

Lots of decluttering described in a separate post. In the course of the fridge/freezer declutter/cleaning, I pulled the chopped orange peel out and set it up for the overnight marmalade soak.

I need to make more waffles.