Danny Crichton

Democracy is supposed to provide a means of aggregating diverse views into a coherent, consistent outcome. However, what happens when activists, interest groups, special interests, and other organizations start to understand the policy process so well that government screeches to a standstill? Today, almost every political decision is blasted by some group - making it literally impossible to actually govern.

The response to this environment was in the New York Times:

The remarkably rapid progress of the tax revisions - without a public hearing or town-hall-style meeting - provided the most striking illustration to date of Mr. Cuomo's policymaking strategy: information is tightly controlled, negotiations are carried out behind closed doors and the debate is limited to just a few people.

The tactics, derided by government watchdog groups and some lawmakers, have proved highly effective during Mr. Cuomo's first year in office, as he has pushed, against long odds, to win passage of same-sex marriage, a property tax cap, a reworking of ethics rules and extensive budget cuts. And his efforts appeared likely to be rewarded again this week: The Senate approved the tax code changes on Wednesday night, and the Assembly was poised to follow suit.

While derided as anti-democratic, these sorts of tactics are beyond necessary in a media and political system that emphasizes outrage and focuses on the extreme. Ideally, we elect politicians to solve society's pressing problems through an open and fair process, where every citizen has the right to provide input and shape the final decision. Realistically though, open and transparent government rarely provides the environment needed for politicians to actually do their jobs.

This is one of modern laws of democratic politics: transparency prevents things from happening. If you want to shut down public schools, ensure that the data from

The issue of free trade is a contentious one in Korea. The passage this past week of the US-Korean Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was a win for the sitting presidential administration and the conservative Grand National Party, but led to much anger on the left. That anger became quite palpable in the final moments of the vote in the National Assembly when an opposition lawmaker threw a tear gas canister in the chamber, forcing lawmakers to flee.

Protests in Korea are a relatively common occurrence, and have been known to become quite unruly. Partly for this reason as well as other historical reasons, they are required to be registered with the government ahead of time. Protests related to imports of beef from the United States drew hundreds of thousands if not millions of protesters in Korea, and the verve of the organizing groups has not slowed down. The protest I observed in Kwanghuamun this past week were relatively peaceful when I was there, although later that night almost 50 police officers were in the hospital, having suffered injuries while trying to disperse the protesters. An unknown number of protesters were injured as well.

Normally when I write these Image of the Week posts, I include some snarky comments about random things I have seen/taken photos of in Korea. This week, in unusual form, I am going to avoid making any comments on these wonderful photos from the Seoul Lantern Festival. The Lantern Festival has been around for a few years (supposedly 4, although I can't verify that), and each year has increased in status, length, and sophistication. I have to say, this is one of the best public art displays I have ever seen, and I am glad that I accidentally stumbled upon it.

This article by New York Magazine has a relatively even-handed narrative of the man that is increasingly appearing to be the Republican candidate for President this year. Mitt Romney has an incredibly strong business background, and has truly reshaped the nature of modern American business practices.

It is the conclusion of his personality that bothers me:

It is arresting to imagine a Romney White House, inevitably filled with as many former Bain colleagues as each of his other public ventures have been: The ­PowerPoints, the 80-20 jargon, the clinical separation of decision-making from ideology, the detachment of those decisions from moral consequence, a persistent blind spot for people as people. It would represent the final ascension of a perfectly American type, one that has already remade the culture of business. I once asked a Bain colleague of Romney's how Romney thought of his own core competence. "I think Mitt thinks he's good at being Mitt Romney," the colleague said.

...

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that he has adopted a public persona that contains no detectable motives at all, one that is buried in objectivity, in data, in process. The best evidence of how important Romney's religion is to him could be how far he has kept it from view. But the character that remains visible is at once uniquely American and a little strange: a perfectly objective efficiency machine.

I just spent the past few days reading The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. In it, Halberstam describes the decision-makers behind the Vietnam War, carefully and extensively profiling every senior member of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. No one played as large and overarching a role as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara - business giant (former president of Ford) and

KAIST (which, like the SAT, officially means nothing, but at one point meant the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) was originally proposed as part of a US Agency for International Development mission back in 1970. That committee was chaired by Frederick Terman, Stanford's former provost and the "father" of Silicon Valley. It was charged with developing a plan for creating a university-industry hub that would spur Korea's knowledge industries and assist the country in its economic development plan.

For those interested, the full report has been posted by Robert Laughlin, a professor of physics at Stanford and a former president of KAIST. Below, you can see part of the influence on Terman on the school in the form of the lecture hall named in his honor. (Rumor has it that there is a statue of him on campus, but alas, I have not yet found it despite repeated attempts to do so).

Teryn Norris and Eli Pollak have written a strongly-worded editorial today in the Stanford Daily blasting the finance industry's recruitment of top students. To quote:

Why are graduates flocking to Wall Street? Beyond the simple allure of high salaries, investment banks and hedge funds have designed an aggressive, sophisticated and well-funded recruitment system, which often takes advantage of student's job insecurity. Moreover, elite university culture somehow still upholds finance as a "prestigious" and "savvy" career track.

Their solution is to encourage more students to pursue "socially productive careers in public service, entrepreneurship and scientific research." They also want universities like Stanford to develop systems to encourage interest in these "alternative career tracks."

I wish it were that easy.

I've analyzed the problem before, but I have since gone through the recruiting process myself, which included some of America's top banks. I would like to discuss the difference in recruitment between Bain & Company and the U.S. Foreign Service. I realize Bain is not an investment bank, but its recruitment strategy is for all intents and purposes the same as that of other management consulting firms and investment banks and provides a useful vignette.

Bain visited the Stanford campus early in the year to present their company's pitch, offering a selection of nice snack foods and networking opportunities with maybe two dozen of their consultants. Those interested in applying dropped a cover letter, transcript and a resume into Stanford's online career system, and decisions on interviews came back a week or two later. Interviews were held on campus for the first few rounds, and second-round interviews were held in the office you applied to (in my case, Palo Alto, located about 1.5

At one point, Sejong City - the new Multifunctional Administrative City of Korea - was going to be the capital of the country.

That is not going to happen now, even though dozens of agencies and government ministries are moving to the home a little less than a 100 miles from Seoul. Those moving include the Office of the Prime Minister, although it appears the PM himself is too smart to leave the political nerve center of Seoul for the quiet surroundings of Sejong City.

So, what does the new Multifunctional Administrative City of the 10th largest economy look like? Here:

We started with a tour of the museum, which includes your typical High-Tech Walkway™ and High-Tech Model of the City™. These were very well done though, so I have to give the planners credit.

After we got a tour at the museum for the city (they always have these super high-tech museums for these new cities), we got to watch the movie trailer for the city. With pulsing bass reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, the narrator told us how the "new Multifunctional Administrative City™ is going to revolutionize East Asia."

Snark aside, at least South Korea has goals and a vision for the future. In America, we get a former pizza man and his 9-9-9 special.

The death of Steve Jobs this week has certainly generated a lot of coverage and analysis. While the obituaries and retrospectives are typical surrounding the death of any notable public figure, it was perhaps surprising to see how much analysis was published on the man and his ideals. Some analysts thought Jobs' approach to Apple should be ported to America's politicians, who lack "vision" and imagination to solve our largest problems. Others posited that Jobs offered a new approach to management for the 21st century. These analyses are all fair, but they have all (as far as I can tell) failed to analyze one important question.

Why are there so few Steve Jobs in America?

Sure, there are disrupters and innovators, particularly in the technology space. I am not going to dispute that there are others today who can take the mantle of America's leading entrepreneurial visionary. But, I think many of us realize in Jobs' passing that we have lost one of the few people out there who saw things differently. Why is this the case?

First, I would like to point to the dangers of measurement. One of the quotes from Jobs that has been bandied about by the press a lot is this: "It's not the consumers' job to know what they want." It is truly a mesmerizing quote, and it reminds me of a similar quote from Henry Ford, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."

Both of these businessmen understood that not every change in technology can be measured by market research, sales figures and the like. When you are on the technological frontier, there are few roadsigns to tell you where to go - instead, business leaders