OVERVIEW:
We are facing serious national and global problems on scales we never experienced. We don’t know what to do and what we try to do often falls apart a short time later. Currently we are facing so many problems, it is difficult to count them: here are some of them:
Housing crunch, financial markets instability, low dollar value, lost economic power, oil problems, erroneous energy solutions, failing infrastructure, domestic auto industry crunch, inadequate health coverage, bird flu, inadequate antibiotics, massive illegal immigration, global warming, Iraq war, Iran nuclear weapons, inadequate education system, lower real wages, and more.

What happened?
How can the most powerful and richest nation on earth be unable to solve almost any of its serious problems?

There are many reasons for it, some are beyond our control, such as the growth of India and China, or the unification of Europe, but many, I believe, are due to our national sickness of ignoring reality.
“National sickness” is a strong phrase, but I believe it is justified because this national weakness is ingrained deeply in our culture, it is wide spread, and prevails even in face of national crises. This deficiency in our culture causes our great nation, guided by an excellent Constitution, endowed by so many resources, and populated by earnestly good people, to fail in so many of our important efforts. These failures cause a lot of needless pain and suffering and can reduce our ability to remain a great nation. It also reduces our ability to contribute to urgent global improvements.

This weakness is not caused by lack of skill, or ability. The sickness is our highly ingrained unwillingness to look at reality, accept it, and develop realistic solutions according to it.
Of course every person sees reality according to his/her own background and wishes, but professionals are trained to separate reality from fiction in their field. Too many professionals, from politicians to engineers, teachers to financiers, rarely do it. In short we live in a dream world and believe that our self centered approach to life can be sustained indefinitely without real cost to all of us.

Take just one current example: any one with common sense and basic understanding of finance knows that if you sell millions of homes, with no money down, to people with limited incomes, many of them will be unable to pay their loans with a slight change in the economy. This will force the mortgage industry, loan speculators (many Edge Funds) and companies associated with it, to fail. Why the big surprise now?
Listen how they call these risky loans: subprime mortgage loans. Subprime? We lie openly to ourselves!

Here is how it typically develops:
In a meeting of engineers developing a technical direction for a project, each of the participants recommend a direction that on the surface seems to offers a practical solution. But when you evaluate the discussion without a personal bias you can see that the interest of the company is not on their mind, but how to elevate their ego or improve their position. In short, each one attempts to advance his own cause and not the goal of his employer.
It is not easy to recognize this bias since the discussion seems quite rational and factual, but the facts are selected to support the speaker’s point of view, and also are not the most relevant facts.
A company can not be successful for long if that is typical behavior. It may benefit the individual for awhile but not the company.
What is even more serious, often the person involved can not grasp his own bias if faced by it!

The same situation exists on our national level: Our 2007 federal budget is approaching three Trillion dollars; that is ten thousand dollar per every person in the US. (It does include Social Security and the various medical benefit programs however). We can accomplish tremendous amount of good with this huge resource, but our government and both Houses of Congress propose solutions and create laws that too often do not benefit the nation. They frequently do not even benefit the citizens that live in his district. They mostly benefit the Congressperson’s reelection. I had personal discussions with a number of Congresspersons and found that often their main motivator is the quest for power. (Of course, many are outstanding legislators.)
It is not surprising that the public rates Congress extremely low.

I have worked for many years in a variety of fields: electronics, several universities, environment, private industry, military industrial complex, national grassroots lobbying, and state government. The underlying behavior was often similar: private interests were paramount, not the task at hand, or the interest of the institution.

EXAMPLES: I would like to illustrate this issue by a few concrete examples from various fields that I was a major player in, and therefore deeply aware of the details and outcomes. Admittedly, I am talking often about my successes, but I like to give concrete examples, rather than theory.

Example 1.
When I was a manager of digital circuit design at Litton Industry (then a significant company in the military–industrial field) five senior people in engineering, including me, were asked to evaluate the key development project of the company. We listened to several presentations by the project manager and his key staff, and four of us approved the project. I, however, continued my investigation by digging much deeper into the facts:
I discussed privately with each key staff in great details the key steps in the project. I asked detailed questions such as: what were their goals, how far they came, what were the major difficulties, could they solve them, how long would it take, and more. In private they were reasonably open, and because I understood technology well they knew they could not distort facts because I would know it. I could then see the total project in its true details.
I presented my findings to top management and recommended to stop the project. Management agreed.

Why did the other well experienced senior staff come to opposite conclusion? Probably because they looked at the surface, listen to self serving presentations, and did not want to cause trouble.

Example 2:
As head of Research and Development I proposed that we design a specialized computer that would be produced by highly automated equipment. Two years later, during initial design by the Engineering department, I realized that the system would be too costly, and not competitive. I asked for a review and listened carefully to each of the five technical managers, and noticed that each proposed a design, in his own area, that was fascinating to him personally, but had nothing to do with our needs. I suggested they change direction and drop the high cost automated approach because we would produce only a few systems, but I could not convince them. Their typical answer was: but this was your own proposal. I answered that two years earlier it seemed a cost-effective approach, but not in our current situation.
During a review meeting I presented my objections and all key staff, including the VP in charge disagreed. The president, however, stopped the project, and told them to redirect it to answer all of my reservations. He was interested in company profits, they were more interested in satisfying their desires.

To redirect their effort I asked the VP of Marketing to present the company marketing plan. It was fascinating, even after the presentation they still were back to their old approach, ignoring everything they had just heard! And these were highly educated and experienced managers!
Only after I was quite forceful was I able to refocus their direction to satisfy the needs of company and customer and not their personal goals.
Mind you, I did not have authority over these managers, all I had was the power of logic and facts.

Example 3:
During my environmental studies at UCLA I specialized for a period in SO2 (sulfur dioxide) pollution and studied in depth over 50 of the most relevant research reports in this area. A friend at the ARB (California Air Resources Board) gave me a “request for comments” about setting a new SO2 standard and asked me to respond to it because only two insignificant replies were returned from one thousand requests the ARB sent to pollution specialists across the nation. He also gave me an advanced copy of a report by a private company requesting to significantly increase the permissible SO2 level in California. Because the three owners/managers of the company were previously high level, respected managers at the EPA (national Environmental Protection Agency) it was possible that their request would be accepted by ARB.
I studied their proposal to increase SO2 limits, and became outraged at their high level of deception. On the surface their report seemed rational because it was backed up by a large number of references, almost all of which I was very familiar with. The deception was that almost in all cases the use of the reference was false- there was no relationship between the point they were making and the reference. The references did not support their claim- period. Another way- they completely misrepresented the facts.
I wrote a detailed scientific report why the tight standard of SO2 should remain, send it to the ARB and discussed this in a meeting with some of my professors. They had difficulty accepting that those known individuals would use such a deception. UCLA gave me a budget to fly to meet with these individuals and discussed my concerns.
I flew to the ARB meeting in Sacramento and listened to the private company making its SO2 case, and during the intermission met with each of the three Commissioners present. Two agreed that the standard should not be relaxed. I discussed it with the third at some length and eventually he changed his mind and also agreed to retain the lower limit of SO2. ( I did not mention the misinformation of the company).
I then met at the office of the company in another city whose report I studied and presented my reservations about their misuse of research papers.
It took several hours of detailed discussion until the manager I talked with said that if it was up to him he would agree with me on these points, but it was not possible. He did not elaborate why, but, after careful observation it was clear to me that the company was doing poorly economically and had to “sell” itself to the coal industry that paid for their effort.
It was a sad case to observe and report to the faculty.
Conclusions: Even highly regarded professionals will falsify information if economic benefits are involved.

Example 4.
As part of my UCLA doctorate requirement, I developed on my own time a master plan for developing commercial wind energy in California. This was the first comprehensive plan anywhere and most wind energy developments in the world are following essentially this plan. There is nothing magical about it, it is simply a logical, professional plan similar to the many plans I have developed in the considerably more complex electronic field. When I was a manger of the Wind Energy Program for the California Energy Commission (CEC) I directed all our budget to accomplish the crucial first phase of this plan – to ascertain that wind power can be economically viable. Many people, even the US Energy Dept, wanted wind energy, but no one tried to measure its viability on a large scale before. When we finally proved over a number of years of field measurements in several locations across the state that wind energy could be a highly successful commercial power, I proposed that the electrical utilities in California would develop commercial wind farms. However, most of the staff and management disliked the utilities, and instead pushed the Legislature to give substantial financial incentives to any private company entering the field. No capabilities, minimal restraints were imposed to get such a large state support. Most of the operators were not technically qualified and the corporations they formed were organized to milk the maximum amount of profit with minimal government oversight. This resulted in large waste of state money and many failed companies. The owners made a lot of money but infrequently produced sufficient electricity to justify state support.
The result was that after the state incentives expired, wind energy nearly died in California, and a quarter century later it is still essentially insignificant, while globally, and especially in Western Europe, wind has become a significant, professionally run, clean energy supply.
If the financial support had been given to the utilities instead, which have been supervised tightly by the Public Utility Commission, the utilities could have developed efficient large wind systems. It would be economically beneficial to the utilities to generate low cost electricity and they had the capabilities to develop and run them professionally.
Many of the staff who pushed to provide this financial incentive to private companies left CEC and started their own wind energy companies. How many of them pushed for private ownership to benefit themselves I can not say, but conflict of interest can be suspected.

Conclusion: Narrow, emotional views combined with self interest essentially destroyed the potentially large amount of wind energy California could have enjoyed for many years.

Example 5. Social Causes- This was a great disappointed to me since initially I assumed that most people leading social causes would be inclined to be selfless, it was not the case:
During the nuclear weapon escalation period of the 80’s, I directed Target Congress a ten year national grassroots lobbying effort to pressure congresspersons in several states to vote against nuclear weapons. Our Board included Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, several leaders of Physicians for Social Responsibility, actor Mike Farrell, the Mayor of Sacramento and more.
We were working full time with minimal income, coordinating our effort with national peace organizations, doing our work in the background and giving them added membership and fame. I personally talked with thousands of people while organizing active branches in NJ, CA, PA IA, and supporting effort in other states. We worked with the leadership of Common Cause, SANE, the Freeze, and more and I met with most national leaders of the nuclear disarmament movement, and several Congresspersons and their staff.

Across the spectrum, our exposure to the nuclear disarmament movement left a bad taste in my mouth. The individual egos, and desire for power of many leaders of that movement was a very negative issue for most organizations. The smaller the power, the better the leaders performed. The most dedicated people were those who did it for religious reasons or deep social belief.

SUMMARY:
I must emphasize that most people at lower levels are eager to follow sensible directions and would go often beyond the call of duty to contribute to our national wellbeing. But poor leaders fail them.
In all organizations I have worked, in most projects I participated in, the ego of many participants minimized significantly our ability to solve problems, to achieve important goals.
This national self-interest sickness, as I call it, is damaging the nation and causing untold suffering since immense resources are wasted needlessly. (We do not have spare funds, our national debt is immense.)
In the past this excessive self interest might not have caused as much suffering as now because the amount and magnitude of our problems have increased significantly more than the opportunity and resources to solve them.
We should not tolerate this problem but attempt to change this at all levels.

This paper was long enough, took a lot of my time, and it is beyond the scope to suggest alternatives. I may do that at another time.

p.s. This problem is a global problem, but vary in intenesity.

Matania
8/07