The old lame lion in the jungle

First off, let me start with explaining a little about the title of the post. The old lame lion in the jungle. It does not exist. And its the classical validation of the Darwinian law of "Survival of the fittest". If its lame, a lion however fearsome wold not survive into pensionable age. Nature would ensure that. Now it a valid question on why I should be pondering about geriatric felines. The train of thought chugged out of the station when I saw a news article on the proposed labour reforms. I know capitalism is going through its mid life crisis and is still figuring out what has and could have gone wrong. There is enough articles, thesis and sundry kind of self  employment generating output that academia are wont to create. Joseph Stiglitz's views about the reform required in capitalism and Paul Krugman's scathing commentaries comes to mind. And they are very valid and pertinent observations. One of the keystones of capitalism is "creative destruction" as articulated by Joseph Schumpeter. I am no economist but what I could discern was that capitalism as much as it enables new enterprises also facilitates destruction of failing enterprises. And the ingrained logic is that by killing of failing enterprises it releases resources to create new efficient enterprises. Now I agree there is a social angle to this destruction and it could be potentially traumatic at best and catastrophic at worst but I intend to address that later.
One of the unwritten laws of nature is that inherently there are resource constraints. So it does make sense for these resources to be deployed optimally. If an enterprise is failing because of inherent systemic issues ( bad business model, huge unsustainable resource drain) and it continues to live on artificial support, it is diverting scarce resources from other requirements to make its transition into the above mentioned geriatric flatfooted feline. At a micro level, there could be sufficient motivation to keep it going (emotional , local relevance etc). But at a macro level, it could be bad logic.
To illustrate it let me recount an oft repeated story that only economists can conjure up.
Long long ago in a far far away land ( Spoiler alert: No Shrek here), there was a small town whose houses were all mandated to have glass windows as per the housing regulations. An ingenious enterprising father-son duo came into this town and saw an opportunity. The son would throw stones on the windows and the father would duly replace the glass and charge a small amount for the same. Now one may argue that this enterprise generated income for the father-son duo who in turn would spend this money in the town and thus boost the local economy. The economist's theory is contrarian. His supposition, and to which I agree, is that at the end of the year, the town has not added any new assets to its kitty since its scant resources (money) round tripped through many hands to maintain the status quo.
And that is why I think labour reforms are critical to growth and employment. You may argue how does hire-and-fire policy increase employment. There are enough studies to indicate that it actually increases employment. Eventually, enterprises becomes efficient, grow and employ more people. The ones that are bound to fail atrophy and do not grow but drain resources.
But humans do not live in the jungle. Differently abled geriatrics rightfully survive and thrive because humans can operate at a different level of abstraction.  The need for a safety net is paramount when India moves to the new labour regime. And that would be really a challenge given the economic realities of India and the propensity to leak public resources which is just another fancy euphemism for corruption. But it is a road that one needs to take. If India needs to grow it needs to unleash the animal spirits through enterprises and start up. Having worked and helped some of them, I can with some semblance of authority say that it is now or never. Labour reforms are but one component but critical nevertheless.

The Pyramid is a Sphinx

I have always wondered on the preponderance of the pyramid structure in the natural order of things. It is there for everybody to see. Be it the food chain or the food groups or even hierarchy be it in corporate or religious structures or even sports. So what gives? The property of a pyramid from a geometry standpoint is that it has a large base and then tapers off into an isosceles triangle. Structurally speaking, it is stable and does not keel over easily. For the New Age believers, the pyramid is supposed to have occult powers. But what got my attention is that the stable structure inherent to pyramid is extended to even abstract notions like hierarchy. Some of it can be rationalized as related to the ubiquitous Bell Curve or Normal distribution. Though  one differentiator is that outliers exists on both ends of the curve. The pyramid is quite rigid in that sense. There is that top of the pyramid and then there is the bottom. So why do these entities gravitate to a pyramid in the natural order of things. And it is at this point that I make my null hypothesis bereft of statistical data but just my opinion. Egalitarian concepts are very good but if you see the literature expounding on it, tends to associate it strongly with Utopia. And the GPS has failed to locate utopia as far as I know. As Scott Adams , the author of Gilbert famously said the path for humankind has been probably set by a miniscule portion of humankind with the rest of us trudging along willingly and many times blindly. For these people to set the path, they need to have followers to follow and that is how the pyramid has to be formed. One might say "Why a pyramid? Why not a rectangle". For starters, the decision making process has to  be sharp and not diffused. Too many people and we have the classic adage "Too many cooks spoil the broth" in active play. So a set of people will appropriate the decision making powers and arrogate themselves the right to define the destiny of the rest of the people. The same phenomenon can be seen even in the classic ecology based food chain. The tiger is the top of the pyramid, A forest can only accommodate so many tigers simply because the base of the pyramid required to accommodate a tiger would be quite big and too many tigers would require a base too big to be feasible. And that would probably answer the question "Why don't we see tigers and lions in the same forest?". Even in the structure of religious bodies, we see that the hotline to God is appropriated by a group of priests and then the rest of the base is excluded from dialling in directly. You have to go through the operator to connect. So is pyramid good or bad? Right off the bat, I would say nature supports it since we see it in nature so often. But is it good in artificially created pyramid structures. The answer is yes and no. In nature , the pyramid structure remains the same but the components that constitute the tiers of pyramid keeps on changing. So if the tiger is top of the pyramid, the dinosaurs used to be at the top some time back. The old gives way to the new. It renews the pyramid and gives it stability. Other wise we would have either ossification or putrefaction or in some cases both. The original caste system was based on that. It was division of labour. Then it got rigid and atrophied. And we are all aware of the ill effects of that. If a pyramid structure allows migration (both upwards and downwards) based on performance parameters then its a good thing. But to assume the pole position is a given based on birth, race, colour or caste would only weaken the pyramid. The structure would be rigid and when the earthquake of change comes in, as any self respecting structural engineer would testify, the rigid structure no matter how big are the first ones to fall.
And this brings me to the question "Is there an alternate to the pyramid structure?" I don't have an answer yet. And that is why the pyramid is like the legendary Sphinx. The answers are there with it but it refuses to speak. It just sits there.
 

The Theory of Height of Incompetence

There exists a theory of Height of Competence and Height of Incompetence. It summarily states that every person rises to the height of incompetence at the same time he rises to the height of competence. The clichéd example is that of Adolph Hitler. Hitler rose to one of the biggest demagogues of all time . Evil perhaps , but a great demagogue nevertheless. His ability to hold the mass almost bordered on mass hypnosis. Many a social scientist has earned his keep by analysing the effect of Hitler on the masses and convince them to ignore ,abet and even actively participate in mass genocide. In fact one of them coined a term "banality of murder" for the phenomenon. He galvanized a nation abjectly humiliated in WW1 into action and literally shook the core of the world order. And then he went on to rise to his height of incompetence as a military general/strategist. Against all sane advise he opened two war fronts at the same time (Britain and Russia). He met his Waterloo (ironic choice of word) in the unforgiving biting cold of Russia and thence hence the downfall. Incidentally a couple of centuries before that Napoleon Bonaparte attacked Russia in the peak of winter and effectively killed his expansionist plans. To wit, people who forget history are condemned to repeat it. So the height of incompetence can actually fritter away all the gains that the heights of competence that is accrued. Let me give another example albeit a muted one though. Sachin Tendulkar rose to his level of competence as a batsman but rose to his level of incompetence as a Captain. So much so he relinquished the captaincy and never took it even when it was offered on a platter.
So what is it that makes this dichotomy so antagonistic to each other. I have a theory to rationalize it though it has no basis in either empirical observation or academic research.
And there is one word to describe it. Hubris. Since one gains mastery of a certain domain , one assumes that the same success can be achieved in another domain. It might stem from sheer arrogance (which might be true in the case of Adolph baby) or it could be that the new scenario throws one off so badly that the skill toolkit acquired in the area of expertise is not relevant to the new domain (in case of Tendulkar, perhaps). But does it mean one does not use a skill set on one domain in another. I am not advocating that for one second. In fact may a breakthrough has been achieved through cross pollination. A classic example being the encryption techniques used for torpedo guiding in WW2 being adopted by musicians from orchestra experience. I am suggesting a little humility to the craft required for the other domain and the ability to listen. Success is a function of several parameters and some of them are specific to the task at hand. It means there is no free pass to success. It is equally important to understand one's strengths as well as weaknesses to get one's objectives. It is equally important to listen (and not hear) experts and internalize their ideas. I am not in favour of abdicating responsibility to the experts. As a leader, the buck stops with you and it is your responsibility to take that call. But it also does not mean you force the experts to abdicate their responsibility to you. And the core of it lies in the dictum "The monopoly of expertise does not reside with a single person"