Maersk Photo by Andres
Canavesi on Unsplash
89 What is the cost of progress?
Stories of costs
Travel
Senator Adlai Stevenson
III told us that it was easier to send a man to the moon than to
rebuild a neighborhood because there was no housing to tear down
on the way to the moon. Do you ever avoid the pain of parting
with the old to make room for the new?
The great interstate
highway system rolled through my hometown of Hood River, Oregon
on its way to linking the whole country with upgraded
transportation. The old highway to Portland required two hours to
traverse; the new, just under one hour. There was pain of
parting. The old road had been carefully crafted to maximize
scenic beauty and preserve natural features such as trees and
streams. Indeed, the highway commission saved most of the old
road and called it the scenic highway. Some stretches are still
maintained.
If some of the nostalgia
is preserved, why is there pain? The answer is purely economic.
Local merchants were said to oppose the construction because it
brought the discount merchants in Portland into direct
competition with them. People could easily drive there to do bulk
shopping for fall and school clothing and other items. On the
positive side, easy travel opened opportunities for short
business trips and other economic errands between the cities.
Money was still flowing, and more of it was earned because of the
increase in overall trade.
Today’s title respects
those who lost business to larger competitors. It reminds
us that a national boost can disadvantage some individuals. As in
the
article 82 discussion
of featherbedding, I always ask us to remember those who bear the
cost of progress. According to proverb, an
ill wind is uncommonly
bad if it does not blow some good to someone, that is, if nobody
at all benefits. The reverse applies: Almost no change is so
successful that nobody at all suffers from it. In that sense,
essentially all progress is a mixed bag.
Standardizing
Adopting standards is
considered important to science. The practice ensures uniformity
of the conclusions we reach and the facts we share. A quick
illustration is a line in the movie Apollo 13 where the engineers
must jury-rig a connection between a square conduit and a round
tube. One of them says, “Tell me this isn’t made by the federal
government.” Planning is important to keep all the ducks in a
row.
Our next transportation
example is the fascinating story of Malcolm McLean 1913-2001 whose
name appeared on over-the-road trucks before the company name
Maersk replaced it. He is ranked just under Robert Fulton in
importance in the shipping industry because of his dedication to
standardizing. Rising from truck driver to multi-millionaire
(with bankruptcy included in the sequence), he knew hands-on the
importance of making the parts fit together. It was his vision to
make containers that could ship end to end, not requiring
reloading by hand at each transfer point. Thanks to his genius
and perseverance, going from truck to rail to ship and back to
rail to truck all happened with only one loading and unloading of
a container. The most difficult part of his success was a whole
decade spent persuading the industry to settle on standard
dimensions.
Mr. Mclean’s success is
not to be measured in how much money he saved everybody. He did
not merely make a process more efficient. His revolutionary
concept created an entire new containerized shipping industry
that made the whole world more efficient with better
productivity, distribution, and simplicity.
Almost everyone grew
richer. Not everyone, you ask? Before the breakthrough, every box
and crate was put into a truck, then a train, then a ship by
people such as stevedores. Today, forklifts are still used to
load trucks, but after that point, gantries and cranes transfer
these uniform containers (truck trailers) onto rails and from
rails onto ships. The world-benefitting change eliminated
longshoremen. We are compelled to view their loss with due
respect.
Other costs were less
harmful because they increased employment instead of eliminating
it. The freight handling equipment needed to be fabricated and
installed. Ports and freight yards required rebuilding. Trucks,
trains, and ships had to be reconfigured and retrofitted to the
standards of compatibility. There were costs of retraining.
Before realizing the savings, the industry advanced huge
investments. Even the best of change can start out painfully
inconvenient! This is the price of progress.
Hamburg gantry Photo by Axel
Ahoi on Unsplash
What do we do about it?
Mental realism
I am deeply thankful for
improvements that touch all our lives. However, today’s thesis is
not praise for invention. Today we are discussing how humans
respond to changes. Of course, we ask Luddites not to stand in
the way. Beyond that, there are other pressing issues besides
“stubbornness.”
Some birds are said to
hop and fly from branch to branch as they approach the nest in a
memorized pattern. If one of the segments is blocked, the bird
must search for the missing nest. It has no function for spatial
reasoning that would mentally construct an alternate
path.
Humans have similar
limitations. If a change is too radical, it exceeds our capacity
to adapt. Decades ago, I proposed in a class discussion that if
an infant were placed in the family group of a different species
every day, that infant would never develop stable
self-recognition and personhood. A medical doctor pointed out
that a person who suffers change of spouse, career, and religion
all within one year is at serious risk of breakdown.
The Red Guard under
Chairman Mao in China was severely criticized for imposing change
faster than the populace could accommodate. For example, they
decided unilaterally that pets consume resources needed by
humans. They set about slaughtering all pets in the towns,
causing long-term detriment to the people. In contrast, Cuba,
with its intimate understanding of humans in hurricanes, led the
US in including family pets in evacuation plans. We are slowly
recognizing the mental health function of pets, and “efficiency”
to the contrary is now avoided.
Social realism
Next, we recognize a
mixed bag of benefits as exemplified by the longshoremen above.
We weigh effects relative to populations. How severe is the cost
imposed on how many people? Historical Luddites likely saw
themselves as preserving (fixed) livelihoods. Today we recognize
that taking away coal mining jobs increases the life expectancy
of the miners, but we do not instantly terminate them with no
replacement of income. We move slowly enough so that the new
clean economy can absorb them into its workforce. Progress is a
blessing if taken at the right speed.
This is the familiar
refrain stating that happiness requires cooperation. A mad rush
to the finish line is selfishness. Coordinated accommodation is
happiness sharing. We accept that we are not free until we
are all free. Let us likewise accept the same approach to
progress: when change creates clear suffering, it is the duty of
those who benefit to spread their advantage and alleviate that
suffering.
Proposal
A fence separates a pile of food from
three animals: a monkey, a dog, and a chicken. Several feet away
from the animals is a large hole in the fence. The monkey finds
the hole and reaches the food. The dog follows the example of the
monkey. The chicken persists in banging against the fence.
Sometimes the phrase
“monkey mind” refers to a penchant for mischief, but I suggest
minimizing the “unsettled and capricious” connotation and instead
referring the phrase to the capacity for creative invention.
Combining today’s monkey story with the sharing chimpanzee story
in article 73, I am
appealing to us to be the “monkeys.”
We may always have to deal with humans
who persist in denying the fence. The above explanations help us
empathize with the mental limitations that are brushed off as
“stubbornness.” By recognizing shortcomings including our own, we
can build the behaviors that set us free from our self-limiting
beliefs and implement progress to our common benefit. We
distribute the cost of progress.
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2020 Kent Busse
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