I just attended Andrew Yang’s presidential run kickoff meeting at the Impact Hub. It is either due to my stupidity or devine intervention that I went South West from 16th and Mission street Bart station in an attempt to reach the meeting place. I felt like I walked through a third world country. Every other storefront is jagged with halted construction, rusted and twisted metal gates, marijuana, street vendors selling Latino music CD’s (what?) Wrist watches and socket wrenches(what?) …. Then I turned around at the Armory realizing I went three blocks in the wrong direction. Wow…. I feel pampered never having experienced this side of San Francisco in the decade I’ve worked here.

Andrew Yang is running for president of the United States in 2020 as a Democrat. He is running on the slogan of Humanity First and proposed to introduce unviersal basic income (UBI) for American Citizens.

The Likable

He and I both great up on the east coast.

American educated American born American. Chinese American means good records keeping–won’t be wasting time on finding that darn birth certificate. He has good protestant work ethics–thats as best as I can imagine to describe the trait. It is remarkable that he is proud of his dad’s prolificity at IBM and GE. It shows an American success at assimilating and integrating family of Asian culture. I brag about my dad’s work all the chances I get too. He’s charismatic, has two sons and beautiful wife. Very nice!! Entrenpenurer, lawyer, very respectable. He is a rare breed of politicians who is both willing and able to express agreement with both Trump and Hilary Clinton on very large issues. That’s honesty and nonpartisanship. He seems very knowledgeable, drawing on Napoleon for Strategy and Summarian political mechanisms for Asian culture, being able to take lesson from past deeds by oneself or others is considered a great attribute. He watches American TV and movies as all Red-blooded Americans do and can communicate very complex societal structure and dynamics effectively using TV show plot contrivances and their memes. He has a data science or quantitative mind. For example he talks about Administrator-to-student ratio at colleges as an improvable metric. It is nice to hear some one talk about incontrovertiblelly measurable metrics when they talk policy. Very very nice.

The Economics and Policies

The UBI is to be covered by a new VAT to be leveed on American companies. Avery time American company adds value to material by transforming or combining it to make a product, the Value-Added is Taxed. The monies goes to American people $1000 per capita. The VAT will be less than European countries’ national VAT. (VAT can be a very interesting subject by itself without UBI)

His Economic theory needs exposition. Hopefully his book will disclose it well. He processes his fear of the dark side of human nature as the biggest problem UI will face. A person would join a local artisanal backery more freely because making a living is no longer a problem. But he could also buy drugs or guns with that money. He argued that UBI is pro-capitalistic in an interesting way.

Also, he is able to establish that UBI is not socialism or communism–those seem to require a greater degree of control of means of production by government than merely establishing UBI.

The Questionable

His message was oriented towards younger crowd tonight, and also… maybe hippies? San Franciscans, however, didn’t seem to appreciate it. There was a lot of questions about his basic premises, is UBI realistic, etc. We didn’t even get to the tougher debate questions like lack of: leadership experience in large organizations, military experience, foreign policy, diplomacy, clarity of his stance on the China-Taiwan Strait, and the Middle East. What about Obama care? What about the how of undoing Trump? These ought to be answered as the campaign continues.

One important question might be whether he is too smart to be the president? That’s a tough thing for me to say given the likables above. I don’t know that America voters wants a smart president–I certainly cannot imagine anyone really liking a super smart Asian kid who kicked your ass on the SAT and LSAT…, and then started a school to train kids to beat your kids at the same tests… I think Americans like to be the smart ones. I’m not sure Andrew can navigate this subtlety all the way to presidency… yet.

Also he might want to work on his euphorisms a bit. He stumbled while trying to express the condition of uncomfortable poverty when not employed… inelegantly… Other things like placing some unreasonable oppositions at a pole of the intelligence spectrum… Private citizens and holder of other jobs can do that but a presidential candidate cannot. IMMHO.

The question is then : will he be ready by 2020?

I wouldn’t be upset if he doesn’t prevail untill 2024.

Trump… May still have interesting things up his sleeves. I’m still cheering for that wall that Mexical pays for(like how China is paying for the tax cut). It’ll generate electricity using the sun light from the Mexican air space, and it justifies development of massive autonomous drone patroling system to protect the expensive equipment… or just really tall walls.. Amongst other things. There’s still a lot of interesting stuff in the Trump plan… and you sure as heck cannot change horse mid-race, right? That’d be like changing a jet engine mid-flight…

Discussion

and finally, while I want monthly free money and will end up voting for him if he makes it to the primary, I fear that I do so knowing he will lose. I am a huge wimp when it comes to these things. I don’t recall the exact post where I argue that white Europeans descendants should be leaders of the world because no other race has demonstrated they are able to lead the world to present day prosperity. Unconscious bias or not, I have never seen an Asian-American business or technology leader that inspired confidence and trust in me as many white European descended leaders do, no matter how successful they are–Yang is no exception, something always seems not right when they lead, maybe it’s the bone structure affecting the swagger? Maybe it’s the rate of blink? There is an inexplicable uncanny valley that must be overcome.

In similar thinking, I fear UBI may cause social instability in America. Those truckers who without UBI have to spend all their time looking for work and scraping together a living, will instead, under UBI, have the leisure of organizing protests and revolts. Why wouldn’t they? They should get two grand a month instead of one right? There’s some merits to all that communism craze–if you give free money or service to all people for free, you better be able to control what they produce very carefully. Without that control, there is no guarantee that the good will happen–unless you are an optimist and humanist and have faith that the good grace of god shall transpire–all at once.

I guess if there’re enough people with those believes, it could work…

Let’s see what Yang makes it in 2020.

Does any one ever wonder if the Statue of Liberty was really a secret spying device sent to spy America? Perhaps there is a secret compartment within which generations of French agents have bred and watched Americans and transmitted their collection of American secrets to France ! I mean, do they have to change the hands to make a big “L” gesture on the forehead or print on her crown the words “Trojan”?

But honestly, I’m having trouble producing thoughts other than these xenophobic conspiracy theories. For all the mean things president Trump says, he really has set my mind into a spiral of despair. What if America loses this trade war with China in Q3 of 2019? What if the measure to block use of Huawei equipment actually fails and America and it’s Allies end up buying a lot of Huawei equipment? This is a horrifying outcome. I hope Trump has a good technical advisor. This telecom technology is pretty esoteric, not every person walking on the street has the proper intuition to reason about them.

Of course, without cheap Chinese alternatives, American companies can charge a lot more money for their routers and firewalls and phones and tablets. But that’s only a secondary side effect that next president can deal with when ever he arrives in the Whitehouse.

I binged The Good Doctor season 2 to get my mind off of the stock market crash and fear of spies. It is wonderful to see a show about Californian hospital. Honestly, the problems addressed in season two are very real problems… Honestly, this had to be one of the most successful and diverse cast. Even more so than Trek Discovery. The other medical residents working beside Shaun, their attending, get a lot of screen time ! It’s like, the good doctor has his special place among a lot of special people and everyone is special in this hospital and yet it gels.

Let’s see, they found a Chinese-American Actress to play Dr. Lim and she actually has a dialogue in fluent Mandarin with a hospital in Beijing, very very nice! Thank goodness we are finally past that older generation of Supposedly Chinese-American actors that neither speak Mandarin nor English, and I’m really not sure about their Cantonese. I mean c’mon! Seriously? You can’t find a single fluent speaker of either language until 2019??! I can’t wait until Melendez breaks into rapid fire Spanglish with a Mexican doctor! Let this mosaic of culture speak proudly! (But for dramatic effect, perhaps they’ll have Lim do Spanish too)

The show put on display some things America, at least Californians face every day. A Chinese women shows up with a pump for heart. Said heart is Made in China™ and also installed there. In the real world, Either due to law or funding or politics or racism or general imbalance of talent, Asia often have us beat on the good stuff like making a heart that pumps blood with no beat, or, for a more real example, genetically modifying babies to be disease resistant. The show does it in a very smooth and apolitical way, intertwining it into the story, no shame and no envy, slight bit of curiosity, it’s just a problem to be solved. Just a reality to be faced. Just another 3rd world problem thrusted upon America.

I have blogged here some sentiments similar to those of dr. Han’s–he actually says it straight out: shouldn’t keep Shaun for Diversity sake if he jeopardizes patients and family management. He is not really an independent doctor with high rate of communication success like Hans expects. Moving Shaun to diagnostics (Dr. House’s department?) seems the sensible thing to do.

But the trouble is this: nobody is an independent person in the hospital system. They work as a team. If Shaun needs a team to function as an effective surgeon, then he is no different from other doctors all of whom also needs a team to fully function.

The rational thinker will quickly start upon the cost-benefit analysis and conclude that Murphy is more cost than benefit. The show clearly dismissed that believe and insist that Shaun is more benefit than cost. So given that premises, Shaun is a keeper. In real life, you don’t always get a clear cut definition. And there are a lot of people of lesser talent than portrayed Shaun who must also survive the same trials.

I am conflicted regarding this matter. On the one hand, Schaun was obviously a good decision. On the other hand, it seems more likely that the disproportionately abnormal character in question can be artificially propped up as a diversity puppet. Mindless drone controlled by puppeteer Glassman. Sometimes the diversity puppet even has to act out of her real personality in order to fit the profile of the puppet required for the situation.

And, as always, I do hereby disclaim that I judged or caused any real life situation similar or identical to what I describe.

But the saving grace of the show is that we are made to believe the other doctors who risk their careers to do “the right things” and to “help patients” and to “do no harm”, do these things in genuine sincerity, that they wouldn’t all take bull crap together. None of these very professional people have ever question his diagnostics and surgical skills. It also seems his success rate is very high–not as reported by his mentor and potential puppeteer, but as measured by alive and healthy bodies walking out of the hospital.

Which brings us back to the fact that his peers have all objected to and acquiesced to him being a doctor with underdeveloped social and emotional maturity.

Those facts being clarified, it seems the decision to fire Han to keep intact an excellently functioning team was a justifiable decision.

With the one possible objection that it was indeed the job of the president to lead Han and convince him of the matter presenting evidence and balancing liability in a reasonable way. It shouldn’t be stuffed in his face like that.

A disturbing image of Trump and Liu shaking under the table from WSJ front page article. Is there something going on that we don’t know about? What’s happening under the table?

Interestingly here’s the candidates for the EU election of EU Parliament for the Eastern Region… all that’s fun and joyous in politics today:

A couple of hours before the 25% tariff on all Chinese goods goes into effect… The flags yet wave by the highway 101 in silicone valley. (Above that Infiniti dealership)

Full steam ahead, whatever may come.

It’s been roughly a year since I published my Bias-Variance Decomposition of Human Inequality. I hope it has been enough time for others to have thought of it. If not, then surely these high-tech companies or their foreign counterparts will have hacked my notes and found out more about it.

For companies who believe the decomposition, actions can be taken in light of new thought.

For example, the companies that used to distribute information about disparity of average compensation between equality qualified but differently raced employees, they should now supplement that data with the Bias-Variance decomposed version of the disparity.

There is a lot that I can think of in terms of using this approach to inspect and indeed modify the monitoring of equal opportunity employment. But to start we must have transparency.

The one troubling concern is this: Most of the people who can produce this decomposition are actually very well paid and respected member of our scoiety. Those who are able to understand it are also on their payroll. I mean not to disparage minorities and the excluded population. But really, I don’t think most that suffer from variance-induced inequality understand it. I mean for pete’s sake, I daren’t do more than to blog about it in an obscure blog that nobody reads, since I may be called on to seek employment again someday to provide for my family. I fear retaliation by all who benefit from the inequality, including my own future self.

The reduction of intra-group variance in an effort to reduce uncertainty means the well-off become less well-off and the less well-off become better off. Increasing correlation has similar effect of worsening the well-off’s dispositions.

Alas, I write as I believe it, that Americans should treat Americans equally; American companies should provide equal opportunity for American employees, in the highest and best sense that we understand.

May the root be with us! May root save us all!