A visual Representation of how a reorganization changes processes

This is a visual representation of a business process - inbox and the steps it takes to accomplish it when a person knows it and they have finally optimized the process to get the job done as long as any management level does not dictate a "one size fits all" approach to every problem.

And the 2nd image is the after the new efficient organization has been implemented.

Here is the same process after a reorganization of the business to meet the needs of management to fit their perceived method of accomplishing the same existing task.

Evolution of CS, CIS, MIS, & IT

Medieval

Remedial

Reboot

= IT

 

 

CS = Computer Science

CIS = Computer Information Systems

MIS = Management Information Systems

IT = Information Technology

 

Follow the Money

What I find real annoying about all the town hall / radio talks that went on about paying for health care is that the real question comes down to a very simple fundamental point: How much taxes do we extract from the 70 million people who actually PAY SOME taxes in order to support the 40 million NEW people that the President wants to cover with (free) health benefits to them and to support the 40 million tax payers who pay NO federal tax and who also will be given free health benefits - i.e: be forever be ENTITLED to get something for free since OTHER people will be paying for it - it is always great to have a majority of people voting to extract money from the minority in a "democratic" fashion.

This means the government must ensure that 70 million people who ALREADY pay for their own health benefits must also support 80 million people who will not pay any toward it at all - so it effectively means you HAVE to tax those 70 million people AT LEAST an amount equal to what they pay in private insurance in order to cover those 80 million new people.

And since every good "progressive" based system will create a sliding scale of new taxes, some people will have to pay new taxes to support 8 people while some at the lower end will pay enough only to support a ".1" new person in order for the math to ensure that enough money is collected to balance the amount that WILL be paid out to pay for medical costs.

Right now "rich people" is any couple (or business that flows taxes though a schedule C income tax method) who GROSSES over $250,000 a year - which is like 80% of all "small" businesses. It would mean each one of them would HAVE to pay at least $13,000 more a year in taxes to cover the medical COSTS - REAL costs not the insurance rate - that WILL BE provided to 80 million new people. Think about a very simple fact of life: if there are only 2 million women in that group of 80 million who can have kids over the next 10 years, and 200,000 a year have a kid which costs $12,000 in total medical costs to have, that alone means $2 BILLION 400 MILLION dollars would have to be collected just to pay for this group of people having a kid. Add in that if 79,800,000 each year go and have a doctor visit for just routine stuff 4 times a year - that adds in $3,000 in normal expenses (dental, medical, psychological is all covered) that alone means $2 TRILLION 394 BILLION dollars needs to be collected each and every year to cover all those people for just ROUTINE stuff. And the plan ENCOURAGES preventive medicine and doctor visits - and now you can see why many people do not want the government to mandate and collect taxes even if OTHERS run this whole program. If someone makes the argument that $3,000 is excessive - try and find a full coverage medical plan for $3,000 a year. Eyeglasses alone can cost $400 a year for visits and new glasses. A simple trip to the ER and broken bone could run $2,600. I'm talks REAL COSTS here - not per individual. Remember - insurance is spreading RISK to a large group of people expecting that a percentage will have problems and the insurance company is BETTING that it can take in enough money to cover the expenses of those who have problems. And the costs will ONLY go up due to the way the rules that the Government implements and forces others to follow by design is inefficient.

 

Why Open Source is not in Government more than it is

Business systems are built around ensuring that people pay for what they use - and if something fails to perform they can be taken to court and made to pay for that failure. With Open Source there IS NO WAY TO enforce payment for failure to live up to promises since NO ONE person or firm owns the code - no one to sue. Imagine a group of people all getting together and building a car then giving it away. If a tire falls off and the person driving it gets killed and none of the builders can EVER be held responsible would you buy use car knowing that if anything breaks its YOUR fault and no one can pay for the faulty assemblage of it?
Open source is like that car - if it causes you problems there is no one to blame and you just have to live with it. To continue the car example you can ask the person who bolted on the wheel how they did it, but they may or may not respond, even be findable, and may not help you if you discover the problem before it fell off - since they just helped its not their problem and they are NOT making any living off of perpetually helping people.
The government ALWAYS insists that the firm be held accountable and payable for bad products - which is the main reason Open Source has not been fielded in any meaningful way - if it fails to work as designed no way can any money be recovered for lost time in trying to use it or people be forced to pay in rebuilding destroyed data, or other problems caused by using it. There is no liability trail at all. The lawyers will hate it! <:)

 

Publish Or Perish! - Google Book Scanning - A solution

If the rights holders are so loath to let Google scan and then publish the books for searching - and displaying partial results or giving the people an opportunity to purchase and download it - then the universal copyright laws that ALL nations have signed (The Berne Commission) should have a new clause inserted that Google (or any other company that intends to do the same)  will notify the copyright holder that it intends to scan those books in copyright but out of print - and if the owner objects THE OWNER must then publish a new run of that book worldwide (10,000 minimum copies) within 6 months and advertise that it is now available again to all the nations (and people) who are part of the copyright treaty- and Google does not get to scan it. If they refuse to publish it - then Google gets to scan it.

If they are SO worried about losing money - then they need to publish it again and make that money. If they refuse to publish - then it shows that the book is really "economically worthless" and it should be in the public domain - or at least parts of it accessible via a public method.

Some of the works being published now will never make it into the public domain for 125 YEARS!  If an author writes a book at age 30, lives to be 80, the copyright still exists for another 75 years = 125 years under copyright. So much for the "limited time" that the original copyright convention had. 125 years out of 2000 is a short time - but since most people die before 80 . . .

Tom Philo

The Smart Grid- A better way to charge you more for the same service

Think of the smart grid like the highway system - there are peak times (traffic jams) and times when it seems the highways are deserted (2 AM till 5 AM). And the smart grid is going the way LOTS of cities want to regulate your travel: you go to work during peak traffic times we will charge you more to get there - the implied idea is that you will go to work when it is convenient for THEM to lessen the traffic and not for you .

So your job opens at 8, we want you to travel at 5:30 to avoid the extra rush hour toll fee for using the road that you paid for. Social engineering.

With the "smart grid" it allows them to charge you for peak usage during the day - because now they CAN. Umm peak demand for air conditioning is between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, lets charge more to people to turn down the demand to cool down their house when it is the hottest park of the day - because we can.

We're not going to build more power plants (never mind that 50 million more people will be in the USA in 10 years or so, we can conserve our way out of this problem) but charging extra money to try and get people to not use the air conditioning when they need it to most will work! Complain? Forget it, the regulators say this is proper and we can do it - and we can earn another 10% above what we would have - because its good for society! (And now add in the government overhead to help the low income people afford this extra costs so 80% of the others will end up paying even more to pay for this subsidy and the 100%+ government overhead costs to run the program).
And with no extra power on the grid - remember no new plants - then they WILL lower the voltage down to all to (likely around to 98 or so to keep the system from collapsing. Wind power? Sure, on the hottest days there is usually NO WIND so they sit idle. At least the birds won't hit them.) Equipment that is designed for a certain voltage will run less efficiently and will electrically internally fail faster.
It will mean a few hundred billion dollars spent to allow the government to tell the utilities that they can charge more during peak times to change social and natural behavior - and of course the Government will get more since they tax on income (sure, I want to pay 20% more for clean energy!) and if you charge more people during peak time for something they need to use then, which allows the Government to get more money.

Just don't eat dinner between 5 PM and 8 PM when electrical demand is high since that is when most people cook, start cooking all your meals after 8 PM to save electrical costs -  its not our problem you don't get enough sleep since you have to get up at 4 AM to avoid the tolls that kick in at 6 AM. Oh yes, don't turn on your lights during the winter. Demand is high because people want light in their houses then.

They are going to micromanage you life in your house now - and the roads have been the proving ground.

National Health Care Ideas - A Financial perspective

At lunch today we talked about the ideas being floated around about universal heath coverage  being talked about by President Obama - and others.

 

Now all of them are talking about "reform" - which from what I have experienced usually means more expenses for most tax payers.

 

Let's run some numbers:

 

There are roughly 315 million people in the USA.

At any given time  50% of the population are below 18 - thus they don't count as taxpayers and legally are not responsible for themselves - thus moneywise they contribute an insignificant amount of money in taxes - earned income credit etc almost always refunds back all their income tax (Social Security exempt of course).

That removes 126 million people leaving 189 million payers.

At any given time 25% of the population falls within the retired social security / Medicaid / Medicare groups - thus wiping out 78 million people who could support a national system - both by law which dictates they fall into that system and if not they would be eliminated by their low fixed retirement income which would put them within 2x or 3x of being at the poverty level (see below) (no, I am not trying to double count them like Congress does when they do their accounting.)

That leaves 111 million people to pay.

All progressive ideas of "fairness" now come into play: poverty level, close to poverty level single parents, head of household etc all end up getting exempted from having to pay since they earn so little and that then wipes out 40% of the remaining possible payers into the health system leaving only 67 million people to pay for themselves AND the other 248 million people that would be in a NATIONAL system.

 

Since the average cost a month for a family of 4 in private insurance is (low end) around $200 a month per person - that means each person working would have to support themselves AND 5 other people in order for everyone to be covered! Each working person would have to pay $1000 a month to have a national health program FULLY funded.

 

Now of course the scaling would likely work out that starting a 3x poverty level each person starts to pay so that at 5x poverty you pay fully for yourself each month and at 6x you pay for yourself and someone else, 7x you and two other people scale up to likely a cap that at $500,000+ a year you pay for yourself and 10 other people. (so you pay $2,000 a month in health benefits to support yourself and 9 other people who earn less than you do.)

 

And of course everyone gets the same medical benefits.

 

Now if you have a DUAL system where private insurance (actually it more like heath benefits, you don't just occasionally use it, they want people to use it all the time) then if you wipe out the people who already have private insurance and do not have to pay into the system then you have around 20 million people supporting 248 million people and the price per month goes WAY UP. So the only way to have it is to force EVERONE to pay into the system - and why pay twice when you only get one benefit? That is what would kill large scale private insurance as we know it today - it would become supplemental and only the 10x poverty level people could afford to pay another insurance premium above what the government would take to have private insurance / doctors etc to visit if they need to.

 

 

After all, that is what having a fare (benefit) system is all about - but no one wants to talk about the payments required into the system of OTHER people to get that "fair" system.