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Examine the books
Friday, September 28th, 2007 by Admiral_Coeyman My eyes have become attracted to an odd phenomenon in the environment around me. When Enron was reporting profits and taking losses, there were thousands of investors watching the company. These investors had a financial interest in keeping the company in line. Why did nobody notice the problem before the company died? I understand the hostile regulatory environment that punished investors for making the cheaters at Enron prove the figures that they were reporting.
Stand up philosophy is supposed to be light. I try not to get into anything that could cause trouble. That makes it difficult to write when I am in one of those rare moods where I think deep thoughts. This is one of those tirades. Honestly, I want to know why nobody peeks at the books.
We forgive third world debt without asking where the money went. The new resources go into the same things as the old resources. But my point is that we never ask how this transaction will connect to our desired goal. Starving people are never going to be fed by giving money to rich people in government. Helping the poor is our real goal, is it not?
So, why do we not examine the books? A solution that feels good is worthless unless it works. I am seeing a pattern here. We are told that we can fix a problem like poverty or failing education systems, with schemes that usually involve sprinkling buckets of dollars on those problems. When you look into these solutions, you see a great deal about the system, but nothing about how the solution will address the mechanism of the problem.
Maybe I am weird with wanting to know how a solution will work. It is not enough to address a problem. Troubleshooting is a matter of knowing how a system should work and then determining where the system differs from this working model. What has been occurring to me is that we spend a lot of our time coming up with solutions to problems that we do not understand. Nobody is examining the books.
