Hello, and welcome to Senior Moment. My name is David Refsin, and I am your host. Senior Moment is about seniors and for seniors. I am very pleased to have as my guest today Ed Orzakowski. Ed has written a book about the life of a man named Donald Vitkis and his journey from hell to a productive member of society. Ed, welcome to the show. Thank you, David. Glad to be here. So, tell me a little bit about some of the early years of your life. You did a lot of teaching, but talk a little bit about that part of your life. Well, I grew up in the Florence section of Northampton, and I went to Northampton High School, UMass, and I graduated from there, and I met my wife in first grade. So our first date was the junior prom in high school, and we got married after we got out of college. I didn't know what to major in at the time, because I didn't realize what interest or talent I had in writing, so I was briefly an engineer for about 10 days. My son did the same thing, and he's a writer, so it doesn't change. So, you taught for a long time? I taught for 35 years at Quabog Regional High School, which is a two-town district, Warren, in Westbrook Fields, near Sturbridge. And was literature or writing part of that? Yeah, I taught high school English. I was chairman of the department, and writing was part of the program, college composition, but this was a time when elective programs were beginning in high school. So I had a short story course, journalism, novels, and writing. Is that what kind of led you into your own idea of writing? I'm not sure it led me into it. Well, I guess it did. It prepared me for it, anyway. I had done some writing of just short articles for newspapers or letters to the editor is really probably how it began.  I've been subscribing for a long time. I enjoy reading about writing. I enjoy learning more about the craft. And I had worked part-time in radio as a newsman and also began a journalism class where I taught. So all of it kind of steered me in that direction. If I'm not mistaken, you also had some connection with Straw Dog's Writers Guild. Well, I'm a member of Straw Dog Writers Guild, yeah. And it's a great organization. Well, it's based in Northampton, but we have members in a wide area. And what's good about it is that you're just with other people who have a common interest and also get a lot of good tips, too. Right. That's what I was just thinking, probably more than anything else. There's somebody who's written a book and will talk about that in a little bit to give you some ideas how to proceed or things of that nature. I think that would be very helpful. Writers groups are invaluable. I've been in three or four different writers groups and they all have a different nature to them because of the membership that people are in that particular group, but they're all very helpful. Okay. Certainly the majority of reason why we're here has to do with the history of a place called the Belcher Town State School.  And maybe you could talk a little bit about the history of the school. Okay. Belcher Town opened, I think, in 1922. And originally it was intended to be a place where people with mental handicaps, not necessarily mental illness, but mental handicaps, something that people were born with, could go to and be out in the country and perhaps a healing kind of environment and be schooled and prepared for some kind of a job or life on the outside. So it began with some very idealistic goals. But over time it was understaffed, overcrowded, and under-budgeted, which led to eventually a lot of problems of abuse and neglect, and particularly into the 1940s and 50s in that era. One of the things they talk about in your book is that kids mostly would come into the facility, they would evaluate them, and whether it was true or not, label them as, again, the words back then, mentally retarded with very, very low IQ. And it's kind of wondrous to see, in fact, was that really true all the time, especially with the tools they had back in the 50s or 40s or 60s. And I think Donald is one of those kind of people who came in at a young age, and we'll talk about Donald in a minute. So in 1972, my understanding is Benjamin Ritchie, whose son was a patient at the school, Bobby, filed a lawsuit, I guess, with the State Department of, was it health? Well, at that time it was called the DMR, Department of Mental Retardation. And that was in 1972. And when Ben realized what the conditions were like, where his son was sent, first of all, he was sent there because the DMR school system wouldn't take him. There was no special education back then. So it was common for people to be sent to Belcher Town State School. And when Ben found out what the conditions were like, he began working with other parents. There was an organization called the Friends of Belcher Town, parents mostly, to bring goods that were not available.  And then they began fundraising. And eventually the lawsuit came about, and it was a class action lawsuit with organizations of parents and guardians from other schools as well, like what was called Munson State Hospital back then. Right.  They only let you into the visiting room. How do you think Benjamin found out about the conditions there? Do you have a sense about that? That's a good question. I'm not sure. Well, what I do know is that when he did find out about the conditions, and when he got into the lawsuit, Judge Toro, Joseph Toro was a federal judge. He and Ben and a few other dignitaries toured Belcher Town. And as soon as Judge Toro saw what the conditions were like, he said, okay, I don't even need a trial. This is, he issued a consent decree, and that ran from 1972 to 1992, and the same judge had oversight of it all those years. They went through several judges prior to that. I'm not sure how many, and the same thing with attorneys until they finally found one, Beryl Cohen, who was a state representative at some point, or senator, I'm not sure.  It just wouldn't have happened. So now we're talking 1972. The lawsuit has been filed. The judge sees what's going on and realizes this is not a good place for folks to be. So things start to change both internally, meaning was it hiring more staff? Was the policies of how they dealt with these folks change at that time? Well, I'm sure there were physical plant deficiencies that were improved. The conditions were, as you said, people were not allowed, visitors were not allowed to be on the visiting room. So I never saw what the place was like. I learned about it from people like Donald, who told me what it was like. So it would have been a gradual process of improvement. I've begun writing a book about a woman who grew up there that I met as a result of Donald's book. And she was there about 10 to 12 years after he was. And she tells me by the time that she was there, it wasn't a great place by any stretch of imagination, but things had improved. The life wasn't as regimented as it was when Donald was there. So my understanding as part of the decree was to actually eventually close the school down, but it took a lot of time to get the folks who were patients in there into other places or facilities. I'm not sure the original intent was to close it. It was to improve it. And then over those 20 years, eventually it did close. And you're right. People began being moved out to other facilities. There was one here in Amherst called Sunrise Avenue that I think still exists. That's where my sister-in-law went when she got out of Elterton. So it took a while for things to get to, you know, final closure. I'm assuming that what happened over those 20 years between 72 and 92, did they possibly not take any more folks into the state school? That's right. And so eventually the population started to get whittled down. Right. Right? And they went out into community housing or small venue situations. Maybe an unfair question, but I'll ask. Anyway, how did it turn out for these small programs? Did the judge in the court see that this was a beneficial situation for the patients? Well, yes. And you know from Carolyn, maybe a little bit about that. There was resistance from communities, not necessarily here in Amherst, but in other towns people didn't want this kind of home being built in their neighborhood because they feared what the residents would be like. So eventually, well, I've lost track of what the question was. I may have a senior moment. That's okay. No, no, no, that's okay. It's in these small community settings. Somebody like Carolyn, did she thrive in those settings? I mean, was it obviously a better place than the state school was? It was a better place. For one thing, it was a brand new facility. Okay. But part of the problem was that many of the staff that had been at Belcher Town, probably the bulk of the staff, were relocated to these other homes. Okay. And it took a long, long time for the mindset of workers to change. It wasn't just something that happened overnight just because you've got a new facility. So in some cases, these places were like many Belcher Towns. So the instances of abuse and neglect still might occur. And it was through, it's the reason why, that is a reason why parent organizations like Advocacy Network and the Friends of Belcher Town exist. And they still do. It's to some extent. They still do. Okay. Now we're going to talk about part of why we're here. Ed has written a book called You'll Like It Here, which is kind of a crazy title when you hear what this is all about as you've been hearing. But I wanted you to talk about how your chance encounter with Donald Vittges happened and subsequent interaction with him. So maybe you can address that. Okay. Well, through my, because my sister-in-law, Carol, was a resident at Belcher Town, my wife Gail and I became involved as eventually coal guardians in Advocacy. We joined at, back then it was called, I'm trying to think of the name, but it wasn't Advocacy Network. It was some name prior to that. But anyway, she and I both got on the board and we met Benjamin Ritchie, who was for all intents and purposes, he was a driving force. And Ben had written his own book called Crimes Against Humanity, which was a chronicle of the lawsuit because he wanted this to be sort of a guide or a textbook for other organizations to follow if they wanted to initiate kind of a lawsuit like this. And he was invited to speak at Holyoke Community College.  And after Ben's presentation, this man came up to me and said, you know, I grew up at Belcher Town State School and I've been looking for someone to write my story. And it turns out that Donald was the one who had invited Ben. Donald was the oldest, I think at the time, he was 62 years old, a student at Holyoke Community College. And he was getting his associate's degree and he was involved with the psychology club there, I think. And as a result, he invited Ben to come to speak and that's where we met. Now, one of the other things you told me about Donald before we get into your interaction with him is that he worked for 30 years in a print shop. So on one level, the state school couldn't have been any more wrong about this young man who they said had a 41 IQ and yet as time went on in his life, he was able to accomplish a lot of stuff given what his background was in terms of those years. I mean, he went from forced home to forced to home when he was a young boy. So that in itself was trauma producing in and of itself. So tell me a little bit. Now you've met Donald Vittges and he says I want somebody to tell my story and you said yes, obviously. I didn't say yes immediately. About that time, I'm not sure I had retired from teaching or not, but it was pretty close to that time. So, you know, I thought, well, this would be an interesting project. Little did I realize what it took to write a book and what I had to learn how to write a book first, which is one of the reasons why it took about six to seven years to produce a book. But it was certainly a worthwhile experience. Tell me about sort of the interview process.  And he starts to relate what happened to him, basically. Right. It turned out, it was almost like, I'm not a therapist by any means, but it turned out that it was helpful for Donald to be sometimes when he was telling about a very difficult experience at Belcher Town and he might begin to cry. And I'd ask him if he wanted to continue or not. He said, yes, I do, because this is good for me. And first of all, he wanted the story told, but also it was beneficial for him to get the story out. It's, when things like that happen, getting it out is very cathartic in a lot of ways and it really can be sort of life changing in a way that he doesn't have to kind of keep holding on to it and allow to express what really happened. Right. Well, you mentioned the 41RQ. He was tested when he was three years old when he was still in the foster care system and got that result. So when he got to Belcher Town, he was labeled a moron because these were not just slang terms, they were clinical terms, categories according to your IQ.  And moron was at the top of the heap. And because he was told so often that he was a moron, he began to believe he was or had doubts about it at any rate. And even when he was, after all those years of working and when we got the book out, he would appear at training sessions for the Department of Developmental Services in Northampton. He had been invited to speak there to new people coming into the system. And that's the way he introduced himself. I'm Donald Vitkus, a former moron at Belcher Town State School. At least he said former. Right. When he did these workshops and even in terms of your meeting with him, was he articulate? Did he really...? He was articulate. He was a little rough around the ages. Of course. And very outspoken. He always resisted. He hated authority of any kind, even his own son who became a policeman. He hated that concept. He loved his son, but hated the idea that he was a cop. And he was a very moving kind of experience. I didn't realize that what kind of a friendship we would evolve over the years. That wasn't the original plan or design. But through learning about intimate experiences like this, it just happens. And whenever he spoke at book signings, that's who people really wanted to hear. They didn't want to hear me so much. I wanted to hear Donald. And he was always amazed at how he would rise to the occasion because he was beginning to have seizures. But he really looked forward to these reading events. So you said you had what developed into a long-term friendship with him. So here he is sort of revealing his heart to you in a lot of ways of what's really going on. And obviously that struck a chord with you on many different levels. So was he pretty precise about what happened to him? Was he pretty detailed about his experience at the state school? Yes. I'd have to ask him questions because I want to flesh out something, a conversation or where it occurred or exactly what happened. And it might take a while to get all that information. But his memory was very detailed, very sharp about exactly what happened. Those kinds of things you don't forget. How old was he when he finally got out of the school, do you know? He was turning 18, which was the time of the Vietnam War. Right. So he had been registered for the draft by a social worker, I presume. It was classified 4F, which meant unfit to serve mentally or physically and he knew what it meant in his case.  He went down to the draft board in Holyoke and convinced them to change his status. You know, a lot of guys were trying to keep out of Vietnam. Yes, I know. But he didn't think that they would actually take him to Vietnam or into the service. He just wanted the label removed. So it was like an identification for him in applying for jobs. So he didn't serve in the military then? He did. Oh, he did? He ended up getting drafted and he served a year in Vietnam. Oh, my goodness. And I always tell one of the ironies is a couple of things. For him, being in the service was, he liked it. And he said it was easier for him than it was for a lot of other people because he had already been accustomed to that regimented lifestyle, do this at this time, wear this. And another thing that I'd like to mention is that he carried and operated a machine gun or a submachine gun when he was in Vietnam. Years later, when he was living in Granby, he applied for a gun permit and was denied by the police chief because he had been institutionalized.  Right. Probably killing people. Probably. And learn how to deal with weapons clearly as a result of the war. Right. And you would think he would have been an OK candidate for that situation. Well, Belcher Town was on his record. Right. So here he is. He gets out, I'm going to guess, around 1920, something like that out of the Army. Maybe a little bit later. Well, he got out of the Army in the 70s. Right. But I'm saying how old was he? Was he like 19 or 20? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said 1920. No, no, no. I'm not that old either. Yeah. He would have been about 19. And so what happened to him at that point? So here he is. He gets out of the Army. Also, a little surprise, maybe just a side thing. Why didn't he continue with the Army? He didn't have to go to Vietnam anymore. But since it was a place that he liked the regimentation, and he liked that thing, why didn't he continue with it? I'm not sure why he didn't continue. I never asked him that question. He didn't want to make it a career.  He just wanted that label removed, the 4F label. But it turned out for him that it was beneficial. He always credits the military for teaching him a lot. So what does he do when he gets out? Now he's whatever, 19, 20 years old? Yeah. Well, he searched for jobs. And he worked for a couple of different places and ended up working at, it was called West Vacco Envelope. I believe it was in West Springfield. And that's where he worked for all those 30-plus years as running a printing press. So he didn't bounce from job to job. He kept a job. Not to say he didn't have difficulties there because of his past. But he kept that job until the company moved to Mexico. And through NAFTA, he got training, and that's why he went to Belcher Town, excuse me, to the whole community college, where he had wanted to study computers because he had an interest in computers. But somehow he was steered into being a human caregiver. That's how he got his degree. And he gets married? He got married. He was married a couple of times. He had a son and daughter in the first marriage. The marriage didn't last because there were conflicts, partly because of his background. His job, he always said, was to go out and earn money. That was it. Whatever nurturing there was or parenting there was, that wasn't his job because he didn't know how to do that. He wasn't capable of it. He couldn't even hug his own kids because any kind of physical encounter at Belcher Town meant abuse or restraint. So there was a time when his wife was out and he was caring for his son at home. This was in Holyoke. Across the street one of the buildings was on fire and his building had to be evacuated. And he had to carry his son at arm's length because he couldn't clutch him to bring him downstairs. Pretty amazing story about this man. It really is how he goes from literally hell to be a functioning member of our society to being children and a job and serving in the armed forces. And he never gave himself enough credit for that. No, I understand. And how wrong these folks were when they tested him when he was a little boy to where he wound up. Ed, this has been a fascinating journey. So I want to thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you for asking me to be here. I also want to thank Amherst Media for sponsoring the show and the folks who helped produce it. I know Faith is one of the producers. I want to thank her. So with that I hope you'll join me for the next session of Senior Moment. Thank you very much.


Welcome to a new precious plastic instruction video. So today we're gonna build the plastic extrusion machine. Basically this machine poops a line of plastic. This is a little bit like those old toys we had when we were a kid. When you had some clay and you could squeeze it into little shapes and forms. Only this time we're gonna do it with plastic. And you can use this technique to make raw material like 3D printer filament or granulate. Or you can find another creative way to use it. In this video we will guide you step by step how to make the machine. You can download all the technical information in the blueprints. And if you have any questions or something is unclear feel free to post the topic in our forums. Let's get started. Alright so this is the machine we're gonna build. It consists out of six different components. We have the hopper, the barrel, the nozzle, the barrel holder, the framework and the electronics. And we're gonna start off making the hopper. This is where the shredded plastic goes into the machine. Let's build the hopper. We finished up the hopper and now we're gonna make the barrel. This is a crucial part of the machine. This is where the plastic gets heated and compressed. As of this barrel are based upon the universal plumbing system. So this should make it easy to find a tool set like this to tap the wire. Here we have the barrel and inside this barrel there will be an extrusion screw. But before we're gonna add it a brief lesson on extrusion screws. So here we have an industrial extrusion screw. It's a big one and it's expensive. What these things do is that they transport plastic from this side to here. However this one is conical which means the gaps here are bigger than here. So while it's being transported it's also being compressed. So you can build a pressure. But like I said these things are expensive. We find a more affordable way to do this which still works properly by using a wood drill. And this goes inside the barrel. Make sure the pipe you use for the barrel is completely smooth from the inside. So the screw fits in perfectly. And as you can see when we turn the screw it will transport the material forward. Tap when connecting the hopper holders. Already attach them to the hopper and then you can put this one on. So when you weld it you're sure you have the right angle. The barrel finished and the hopper fits perfectly. We finished the hopper and the barrel and now we're gonna make the nozzle. This is why we can control the output of the plastic. So we finished up the nozzle and it looks pretty badass. And now we're gonna connect it to the barrel. You can just screw it on here. Make sure it's really tight. And this screw is used to adjust the flow of plastic that comes out. And this one right here determines the shape of the plastic. So for instance for this one we made a small little round hole. But you can also make a cross or a flat one or a lot of holes. And we like to use this nozzle because we can adjust the flow of plastic that comes out. However since it's built upon the universal plumbing system you can easily change this nozzle for another one. And we recommend to play around with these things because there are many options possible. Pick something that fits your needs. We finished the hopper, the barrel and the nozzle. And now we're gonna build the barrel holder. It's pretty simple but it's needed to hold the barrel together on the framework. Pretty straightforward. Just some metal tubes and angles. So we're gonna weld this all together and then it should be ready. Alright so we finished the hopper, barrel, nozzle and the barrel holder. And now we're gonna build the framework. It looks like a lot of work but it's quite easy. Hey Anne. It's been over half a year. We painted everything and connected together. And then the last step is to connect this one to the frame. And we like to put it with the nozzle slightly out. But you can put it here or here. It doesn't really matter that much. So we're gonna connect it and now we're gonna wire up all the electronics. Almost done. We finished the hopper, barrel, nozzle, barrel holder and the framework. Now the last step is the electronics. We're gonna make this metal box and wire up the temperature controllers and the motor. And then it's all ready. Okay so first thing we need is a temperature controller. And they come in different shapes and sizes.  And we like to use this one. We will attach this cable which measures the temperature which he will understand. They will connect a solid state relab to this with this heating element. So temperatures measured, controlled and then sourced to this little band heater. We're also gonna connect a switch and a little light. Then we're gonna wire it up with some cable, connect everything and attach it to the machine. This might look super complex, but it's quite doable if you follow the schematics. This looks super complex, but it's quite doable if you follow the schematics. These are the heating elements for the extrusion machine. And these three are connected to this controller and this one to the top one. That's because the nozzle wants to be slightly higher temperature. And this is the thing that measures the temperature. So we're just gonna connect this in the heater. Alright, so after we finished up the heating elements we're gonna look for the motor. This should do it. We found a slow powerful engine on the scrap yard. If you need to know the specifications, it's in the blueprint. Right now we're gonna connect it. Extrusion machine is ready. We did a few tests, everything works. But before we're gonna show you how it works, we would like to add a small suggestion. So currently the nozzle decides the amount of plastic that comes out. However, a better way to do this is by having a controllable engine. Now there are different ways how to control the speed of an engine by different controllers or regulators. And these things tend to get complex and expensive. But if you have one lying around or you understand how it works, we highly recommend it. If not, just use motor with a fixed speed with this nozzle and you're good to go. So here we have our extrusion machine. Before we're gonna extrude some plastic, we first need to heat it up. And we're just gonna turn it on and we're gonna set the temperature. The temperature depends on the type of plastic you're gonna use. So make sure to set it properly. And then we wait about 10 minutes and we will extrude some plastic. The machine is heated up and as you can see the nozzle is slightly higher temperature than the barrel. That's because this makes it easier for the plastic to flow out. And now we're gonna turn on the engine and put some plastic in. That's a smooth line of plastic. So it always takes a while before you have the right extrusion settings. But once it's going you get this nice line of fluid plastic to create new things. It might take you a while before you find the right settings between your temperature, your nozzle and your speed. And it also depends a little what you want to make. For instance, this lampshade requires a higher temperature than this 3D printer filament to make. But to help you get started we added some reference material in the blueprints. So you should download that and tweak a little bit yourself and you should be good to go. Thank you for watching the video. I hope everything was clear. If it wasn't feel free to post the topic in our forums. And one thing to note is that the machines are built in a modular way. Which means you can always upgrade or repair them. But also customize them to your needs. So if you happen to make a hack or customization we would absolutely love to see it. Because in this way we can all work together to create better machines. In the next video we're going to make molds and show you how to create things with these machines. And for now, thanks for watching. Good luck with building. I hope to see you in the next precious plastic video.


Okay. Let's get started. Welcome everyone. So this is a talk on increasing productivity by uncovering costs of delay. And some of you might know me from the other work I'm doing which is on scaling agile, which is what I do for 14 years now. And distributed agile is something that I do for, I guess, 12 years. So this is also where my two core books are about. However, today I want to talk about which relates mostly to the book that I wrote together with Johanna Rothman. And we are at this moment updating it and providing a new version of it. And it's called Diving for Hidden Treasures. It's the name of it, finding the real value in your project portfolio. So cost of delay is the topic. And I thought a little, it can't work if I don't switch it on. Okay. I thought a little agenda with me, which is I want to first set the context of what I'm talking about here. Then I want to talk a little bit about metrics. And then about half of the session is the analysis of cost of delay. Oh, and I forgot the most important thing, I guess. I'm not sure if it's so important. But my name is Yuka Exstein. I didn't say that. And probably the pronunciation is also something that's difficult for some people. And I'm based in Germany. So that's where this strange name is coming from. Okay. So. Good. We start with the context. So if we say here, well, I'm saying that we want to increase productivity. That means that we need to measure productivity somehow in order to know if we increase it or not. Right? So what we have to talk about here in terms of the context, what does it mean if we measure something, first of all? And the thing is, and I can imagine that some of you have experienced this as well already, as soon as something is measured, you can also tweak it so that the numbers are giving the results everyone is looking for. Right? So there is, I'm not sure if I have the right translation because I know it's in German or in English, but I never trust a statistic you haven't tweaked yourself, something like this. So this is the key problem if we are measuring productivity. There's only, I believe, one way to get around that, and this is ensuring that everyone knows what we are measuring, why we are measuring it, and what do we do with those numbers. And whenever one of these things is missing, then we will fall into that trap very likely that the numbers are tweaked, and so they are useless. So just to give you maybe really a quick, simple example, but I have seen that and it still sticks with me, this was the quality assurance that, well, we want to measure the unit test in that system. Right? And so they had a typical QA like, they started coming with their checklist and running around and checking off, okay, there's a unit test or not, and you could really see unit test went up really great. So then I started looking at the unit test and, well, there was a lot of things stuff happening in those tests. However, at the very end, the last line was always assert true-true. Okay, so for the ones who do not know about unit test, so this just means the test will always pass. There's no way of failing. And so it doesn't really test much, right? And the thing was for the developers, they thought, well, we are writing those tests for the QA, and not for ourselves. So it was not clear for them or to them what purpose is behind that measurement. So this is really the core thing about being careful about what you're measuring. And the best is you discuss what's the goal with the whole team, with everyone who is involved with that measurement, and then come up with a measurement jointly. So it's like everyone who is involved or impacted by that metric, that they will measure it to know what the metric is and will measure it together. And therefore, they're also happy celebrating it together whenever those numbers are getting up or down or whatever you want to achieve here. So that's the first thing about the context. The other thing, which is a little bit related to that, well, whenever you start measuring something, it means you make something transparent. And whenever you make something transparent and you are in an environment that's not trustworthy, then that transparency turns out into something that's more like control. And as soon somebody recognizes that, again, we have the same thing as I said before, the numbers will be tweaked and the measurement is used. So measuring something in a not trustworthy environment will give you the wrong numbers. So that's what I have about the context here. Now, speaking about metrics, and I know because it's only 45 minutes, I have to look at my watch regularly, speaking about metrics. So what do we want to measure? So I first want to point out some things that probably come to your mind as well as I did to mine. Well, this is a good number for maybe measuring the productivity and then knowing how to increase it. So one thing that might come to your mind is the burn down. The most important thing about the burn down is it's a tool for the team, and it's not a report to somebody external to the team. So it's a tool so the team knows can we keep the commitment we gave at the beginning of the sprint. So we said we want to finish, no matter how you measure that, we want to finish that many story points or that many stories or that many tasks. So however you do that, it doesn't really matter. It is for the team to know how well are we doing along our way through that sprint and can we keep that commitment. And so it's not a means for measuring productivity. It's a means for the team for knowing what they need to do in order to get their stuff done. So this doesn't help. What about the next thing that Robert B, you're wondering already why I'm not talking about that, the velocity. Well, velocity actually and I'm really an absolute deep believer in it is unlike productivity. Velocity has nothing to do with productivity. Velocity is a capability planning tool and not anything how you measure productivity. And I give you one example and you might have seen that too. So as soon as you start looking at velocity in a way that it would be productivity and you say like oh the velocity has to go has to go up because well you want to be more productive therefore it should go up. Well then people would start estimating the points higher. So again you start tweaking the numbers because it's not really helping and but even more critical and I guess I will come back to this more often in this talk as we might measure only what will be done but not what kind of value we are providing. And that's the most important thing. I was providing a value for the market and in terms of our business strategy. Okay so what else can we measure? We can start to measure and that's one of the things that I find helpful the average cycle time. So how much time do we need in order to have a story from when it's planned so it's in the to-do state till it's really done and this on average which could also be used as a planning time however when the story is really done it should most of mean that it provides a value however it's not always like that and therefore my advice here is not looking at only well how many start you know how long does the story take on average from to-do in progress to be reviewed done whatever your faces are there in between or states are in between but also look in advance at what kind of value will that story provide and then measure on average based on that cycle time how much value do we produce on average over that period of time from to-do till done right. So that's a really different approach and it requires as well from everyone to look at value before we start implementing something because normally we look at only well the estimate how basically it's the same question that we have asked before we started with Edge also how much does it cost that's the same thing as if we ask a team well can you do a planning focus on that and what's your estimate at least that's how often we dealt with it and the more important thing than any kind of estimate is to look at what value would that story provide and given on given that also knowing then what priority it has have and once we have implemented deliver deployed it what value did we actually deliver. So the key thing here is what I think it was just cutting payments coming up with that it's outcome versus output so it's not productivity doesn't mean that we create a lot of stories and implement a lot of stories it means we create a lot of value and that's the outcome outcome with which is something that will create an impact with our customers within the market planning after we have deployed it and you probably have heard that as well so the typical story that we share is work the work processor system that it has like the Pareto rule that 80% of the functionality is not used and we are only using like 20% of the functionality so the same thing is true for whatever we are implementing so we might think this story creates such and such value but we are not measuring it afterwards so it's this is related to also lean startup right lean startup we think about how we measure so what will be used by the customers but even there we are not necessarily measuring okay does it really provide that value and this requires from us to come up with different kinds of tests so we have to create tests that are built in the story so we can also get the results from the market if the story is really used and if it's worth to maintain and support it over time or if this is more a cost factory here so is it really the value we thought of okay um what else well cycle time I want to come back to this you remember this maybe I go back so that was the cycle time thing right and this is only a part of the truth and if we look at productivity the real truth comes to if we look at the whole value stream and if we look at the whole value stream something completely different might come up and the example that I have here and I'm I fear it's not visible in the back because the color is too light well the thing is we have a line here and on top it says it's the work time so we are working on something and on the bottom of this horizontal line it says it's the wait time so nothing is happening and now if we are not starting as we did with cycle time well the moment when it is scheduled in for a team to work on it so it's on the board right like on the storyboard sprint board um but whenever that regress first came into our company so whatever somebody has heard in the market well it would be really cool if you would have that teacher or it's a customer complaining or it's someone figuring out according to the business strategy we really would need this that would be cool so that's the first time that I call it a regress at that point in time because we don't know yet if it's a story if it's really something big small whatever we haven't really looked at it this is coming in and typically this is only like a kind of a second of a time and then comes a long wait period so in this case it was like a four week wait period till we got to an approval which took about an hour okay and then we have another wait period which was one and a half week and then we had two weeks where we did something like gathering environments more or less it's finding out okay what's really behind that what are maybe the stories in it and who would work on that in which product project would fit in and all of that and then we have another six weeks of wait time and then we have to sign off from the customer in that case it came from the customer so we need to know if it's really what you want well and on and on and on and then finally at some point we are there right so this means we have lost already a lot of time here so it's almost three months till we get started somehow right so if we talk about productivity we should also look at that part and not only what's happening inside development so that's my message here so if you really want to make a change here okay so this is was the context the metrics and I believe now I come to the real the analysis analysis of the cost of delay and this goes back mainly to that great book of Thomas Reinerson on flow well the difficulty with this book is I on the one hand I highly recommend it it's a great book there's a lot of great stuff in it however I also have to warn you it's a half brief so it's really whoever has other people here who have read it is it a half brief no not for you yeah it's a lot with mathematics and yeah yeah it's great it is a great book but it's not like you you really like that so it really costs some effort to read it so that's that's one of the things where this goes back to then manage your project portfolio is what Jonah Rothman wrote and then kind of our johannas and mine translation of that book into like okay what does this practically mean is then what we have condensed there in our book I want to start with a definition that johanna came up and I really like that so cost of delay the definition here is it's the way to think about the very new you can lose plus the cost of continued development right and I guess the first example is already one which probably doesn't come as a surprise but it really strikes them makes that point clear in the best way possible which is this one as soon as you have work in progress so here we mentioned that the red bar is okay this is all that we have to do and then this is all that we have in progress the green one is all that we manage to deploy so as soon as you do have broken progress it's a revenue you lose it doesn't make any revenue it just sits there plus you have to continue development because it's broken progress right so it's really the the best way of understanding what cost of delay really means and um I I only can recommend to you to measure that regularly so what is your work in progress because I see too often that we like to ourselves and you think oh but this is done or that's kind of for 80 done or something like that so this is from a real um a development effort that I was out of the pardon and you see it really bad it's really bad well we got better over time it was much worse here we got better but it's still it's very bad but you really want this like a slice like that that's working progress and not something like that however if you are not like honest to yourself you will never learn it and again remember if um people don't trust in that and they feel like they will be punished once that's visible the data would look different because we trust to find stuff that's done okay that's one of the things another thing um I see too often as well is multi-projecting multi-projecting or even if you don't like the term project I know there's a lot of discussion about that so even if you work on different products in parallel you have the same thing so given um I make it really simple here given we have three projects each of the projects will last only two months so it's really short or it can also say it's just three products and they last two months each okay if we if we work on one after the other we would make the first time of revenue so thinking of the cost of delay right after two months because the first product would be done and then after four months more revenue comes in with the second product and after six months again with the third one however if we work in parallel the first time we theoretically can make any revenue is after six months so we lost already a lot just by working on the stuff in parallel and for whatever reason people in especially large organizations believe that if they start with multi-projecting they will be faster however they are not they never are and they will always lose money by doing so and please note that with this way of working in parallel on several products I still I haven't calculated in task switching and for task switching the research says we will lose about 30 of our productivity if we switch tasks so I really wonder how much money all the companies have that they can afford that and still I hear that well there are some economic and financial and whatever crisis everywhere well but there is a lot of there that we can just mine and ensure that we use it right just by giving up on that stupid thing multi-projecting and not really doing like one thing after the other so multi-tasking is it's another definitely cost of delay even if you are like within one product and you just pull out people all the time same thing another thing another cost of delay and this shows I think at best the query theory if you work with experts on a team and I see this most often with people starting with agile so you will have a cross-functional team and you plan the stories but the stories are planned for individuals because every individual on your team is an expert for something and of course I know that the system that's built that's so complex that there's no way to deal with that right so we have to have the experts and every expert is like okay I really know that stuff and that guy next to me have no clue about that I know that this is what we all think however as long as we think that way if we are really honest we have no control on priority and I hope I can bring this point across here so given this example so we have a team with like five people every one of them is an expert and we schedule the stories in the stories are prioritized now the problem might be that here the the expert sitting in the middle is the one having a problem because the story he's working on is really hot so he has to explore stuff research blah blah blah and so we take time and time and time and the thing is whatever has been planned in for that guy is queuing up now everyone else keeps working on their stuff well whatever they are working on is of lower priority than what's stacking up here right and it's not in our control if we prioritize those stories or if they're important or an urgent or whatever the way how it works on that is based on who expert is struggling and who is not so only if we are able to really work together on the same stack we are able to really work according to the priority we came up with so we are really controlling it and we can see what we are working on and yes I know at least in my cases and maybe you are better than that in my case it's very often it's not that everyone can do everything however one thing is we can strive for that that's at least one thing we can do and the second thing is well maybe if not everyone can do everything then at least everyone can do three things and everything can be done by at least three people on the team so in this way spreading it out the knowledge so actually if you look back at what etchel is about it's a lot about knowledge transfer wherever you look at so if we estimate together if we have the daily stream together if we plan together if we do pair programming it's all on knowledge transfer so use that and not stick with expert okay another thing another cost of delay which might sound strange which is quality well first of all we all well want to be proud of what we are working at so which means we maybe want to stick to glean code we want to ensure that there is no technical that we want to ensure that what we are building is absolutely false tolerance what we are doing here and maybe also that the system is so flexible that we can deal with different eventualities that might come up or not and that's good I'm not saying that this is the best thing however what I'm saying is well there are cases where I see it's more like a ghost framing what we do instead of looking at quality or putting it in other words it's sometimes more that we are not taking into account what kind of quality is really asked for so we are ignoring what the market and the business strategy is really asking for and if we do that then it gets difficult so because we provide more than somebody is paying for and this gets us into trouble so what we have to be aware of as well first of all maybe it's the other way around making the people who are requesting a story aware of like what the quality will cost and how important that is so that's probably the first thing and then if there is a decision for whatever reason that we need not that quality but a different one then we have to be aware of that and develop accordingly and although this might sound really bad for you I don't know I have seen companies really struggling with that and especially if you are in a startup market you want to enter a market then it's often much more important to have some functionality out there so that people can see okay this is where you're heading then waiting till it's really high qualitative on the other hand you might be in a market that's really kind of a solid market if the quality is not good then you would lose your customer so the thing is you have to know what's required and the answer is not always the same so as I said as this is so there is not a recipe however we should be aware of what's really requested so that's my my key point here and that's why quality can be a cost of delight now another thing and maybe now some people in the uh scrumptious field will hate me for that I don't know and this is a cost that I am seeing is about what I call not starting and not starting is sometimes expressed by using a sprint zero so people are afraid of starting with sprint number one but schedule in the sprint zero where they think well we have to set up this and that and then ensuring that everything works together and on and on and most often that's not the worst thing most often the worst thing is that this sprint zero is prolonged and prolonged so there's another one and a zero abc or whatever maybe it's called zero so in in my understanding the but what I see the most often here is that people are really afraid of really starting and just my advice as well first of all you're losing value here and you are not you're delaying the the revenue with that so that's the one thing the other thing is well why not just jump in the water and get starting started calling that sprint number one and just ensure in that sprint number one that you set up the infrastructure and sure that it's working by maybe it's only a hello world and a test approving it but you have the full path of it and you can measure what you've done in those two weeks so often I think just by the ladle of the zero it people start to I don't know not really trying to measure it and working part of something that's the one thing about not starting and maybe you are happy with that but the second one and which is also very well known in the scrum world is the definition of ready which I find is really a very difficult thing and for the people who don't know that definition of ready means well if we think a story is not ready for implementation we have to create it in a way or rather most often the way to implement it the product owner has to ensure that it is defined in a way so we can implement that so that's the idea of the definition of ready a story is ready for implementation now the thing is the ready for implementation what does it really mean or what does the story really mean a story means it's a token for dialogue nothing else so we are not talking about the specification here it's not a requirement spec that we are coming up here with and where we can say oh we check this this this and this is not there and therefore well we can't work on this this is one thing so it's a a token for dialogue nothing else the the other thing is what I see most often with the definition of ready that we start again that ping pong game that we know from the non agile role which is like there are the people who know about the business the product owner and here are the developers and now the product owner says oh I really want that story so I pass it on over there and imagine there is like a a wall in between so it goes over me so it's there so the story is there and then the developer says no no no that's not good enough it's not a con the definition of ready and so the story goes back over that wall and tips again with the product order and you can do this for a long time and again it's a cost of delay you are not creating any revenue on that time during that time so again um the dialogue I was uh talking about just a sentence ago the thing is if we think the story isn't ready it means we have to collaborate in order to make that ready so it's not that it goes back over the wall to the product owner it means we have to sit together to make it so that we can work on it and not delaying it by throwing it back and forth so maybe that's the one thing you take with you and my hope from that target whenever you see the definition of ready please reflect on it if you really need it and if you use it in a way that's really helpful or if you use it in a way where you are delaying the implementation and the delivery and you're creating more cost of delay maybe you are using it in a way that's helpful I don't know but most of the times I see that it's really a big delay and I'm good okay and the the last thing I'm having here is repeating mistakes um well repeating mistakes and you want to talk to you about the cows well the thing about the cows is it goes back to an idiom and I first use a different idiom that we are using in German in German the idiom says we can't sharpen the saw because we have to saw and I learned that idiom in Texas where it goes we can't build the fence we have to chase the cattle and that's why I have those cows here so if we run after the cows we cannot build it the fence right and that's what I mean with repeating mistakes most often we keep on doing stuff and we are not reflecting maybe we do have a retrospective maybe we don't have a retrospective so but even I see that if people are doing a retrospective they are not doing it properly like they're doing just a plus minus collection of stuff or they are not really looking at stuff like where is our cost of delay here so what you need to do from time to time to really look at what's hindering delivery here and maybe it's the build time that's too long maybe it's the test taking too long maybe it is that you have too many manual tests here whatever it is so look at this and ensure you work on that to make it happen because otherwise you are creating a big cost of delay and and really the the retrospective and I hope with the with the cows that stick to you that's the biggest leverage you are having in order to get over this and actually this is also why I have this as the as the last kind of analysis thing for the cost of delay this can help you with all the things I talked about earlier so if you have that chewing problem because you have too many I called them experts before but you can also call them like bottlenecks or knowledge silos or whatever it is so that's something to work on on a retrospective the same as to well maybe we are gold framing here and this is why we are not delivering sometimes I see gold framing also something that same as not starting it a fear of delivering and that's why we keep on well it's not quite ready yet it's cool so of course it's also the the okay so so in summary so one summary is you're producing a cost of delay whenever you are not shipping it's as clear as that and and again I really think the broken progress is the thing that brings that point the best across as long as stuff is not shipped and no matter what it is so it could also be that you're releasing only every six months the stuff sits here it's not creating any revenue and it's the continued development that's going on so again it's a cost of delay if you're not shipping the other leg and in summary about what what we talked about here is well first of all think about the metrics so you have to have a trustworthy environment in order to really know what you are measuring is really some data you can deal with and you know that you are more productive than you have seen before the the second thing is measure the value you are creating and not just the stuff that gets out of the door because producing stuff is not really helpful either it can also be late later on and then analyze and eliminate your cost of delay no matter what they are as I would like the broken progress most obvious on the expert the multi projects and multi-tasking the quality perfection thing that delaying off the star definition of ready and repeated mistakes and I was trying to speak very fast so we have we are safe for you and which is even better what I hope for we have some time for questions so maybe I say thank you first so thank you and if you want to take a picture up there's a link we created a discount a coupon for that book on link up so if you are interested to learn more about that so that's the link for it and as I said we are working on it right now so when if you download it now probably you will get a different version tomorrow but you still get it okay any questions yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah I first want to check was this uh hearable at the back the question the point yeah I see but okay um so the first thing is not the real advice how to get over it it's more like how you can figure this out very early and it is you find this out in the daily scrum if people are standing there and they are all bored and if you hear ever so often well we don't know what that daily scrum is for it's a waste of time and it really is a waste of time because they don't share anything with each other and so whenever I'm part of that team and I'm reporting on well this is what I've achieved since the last time we're standing there and and that's what I want to achieve till next time it's meaningless to you because you're working on something completely different so it is a waste of time and the the thing is probably at the very start a lot of things have been missed so one thing is there is no common goal for that team so it's not that we are achieving something together and it's not that as a team we have estimated it together in order to learn what we want to build here and so this is these are already ways of how to work on that right so coming up with the goal and estimating it together planning together it's not that I plan for my story it's at least that three people of the team plan together for that story right and then also we work together on that story so so these are the things and if if you are in the state you are in right now actually I would make a focused retrospective with the topic on knowledge transfer so what can we do and first pointing and well the best thing is really kind of using those classical retrospective questions what's working already and maybe there are a few things that you discover well here and there something is already working and you can leverage that and keep on working with that then what might be easy for us to implement and change so we have that knowledge transfer and then what's what's difficult and what seems to be impossible so these are at least for me often the classical four questions when I when we have a problem like that very good cool well done good other questions in the back yeah yeah so you mean how to measure the value after we delivered both okay so before we delivered so there are a few things that come together so one is the expected revenue we are making with that feature all and the expected savings we are making with that feature can be true as well right and these are the the two key things then what comes with that as well as like how does it support our strategy our business strategy so this is um you might have wondered already why I'm saying this now is the third time also and the thing is it's kind of something that was my most recent learning probably that for too long I was focusing on customer and market value only and this is just one part of it the other part is also how does it fit in our business strategy right because it might mean we serve the market very well but we run out of business because of that but could happen so um that's the the one thing the other thing is um how do you define that so there are different strategies one maybe easy strategy that I I used was using just like planning poker but to use not estimation points but value points right and we had the people who could decide on that so of course you need also somebody from the from the technical part there but it's mostly business people coming from different angles and saying okay in the same way as you do planning poker poker on what's the value that's really behind that story so that might might already be an easy one another thing and that's more what um but Johanna has in her managed career project portfolio thing and you could also think of you have extra amount of money and and you you can't define X let's say a hundred thousand US dollars and you split the that money over if you will we are staying with one product over your stories and it's not possible to spend the same amount of money twice so even if you have like a hundred thousand US dollar and you have only two stories so it's exaggerating but you understand the thing you couldn't have two sources with 50 000 right so one can be 51 and the other one is then 49 so you cannot spend the same thing right so this is one way of ensuring the value is very clear and you are thinking about it in advance and then after the fact it's more like how is it how often is it used and the customer feedback of course as well as you mentioned aha yeah yeah yeah so that's a very good point so the thing is then the key answer is you need also cross functionality here so they need to talk so it will not work if you have the business dropping on that by themselves they have to work together um well is that true i see that oh it would be like one minute okay so is it a quick question otherwise okay so we we take it offline okay thank you very much


This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. This weekend we're featuring a talk Jeff recently gave at a meeting of America's Future Foundation on the topic of why smaller is better. Jeff discusses radical political federalism, the Swiss model, and how every aspect of human life is becoming more decentralized, except governance. I wanted to start out just talking about a conversation I had recently, a good friend of ours from Switzerland named Claudio Gras was in Auburn visiting Claudio is a hardcore libertarian and a big gold guy he helps people he helps rich people put their physical gold and other physical assets in storage vaults in Switzerland where they're totally outside the banking system so you get you get a sense of what kind of guy he is and so we were talking about the Swiss federalist system the system of subsidiarity and it started at dawn on me more and more as I spoke to him something that I already knew and that we all already know instinctively but we don't always know clearly and that is that as we try to persuade people and as we try to win hearts and minds it's easier if we do that with fewer people right we're always wondering what's the best way to spread liberty what's the best strategy for libertarians well maybe it's smaller political subdivisions as opposed to trying to win over these big countries like America with 320 million people and so after talking to Claudio I took some time on the Swiss government's website and that's one of the handouts here on Swiss federalism and it's just unbelievable because our our Constitution gives lip service to federalism wasn't followed for very long we really only followed for a few decades but what really struck me about the Swiss government's website was the humility of this website there's so much hubris in American politics we expect these national politicians to have the answer for everything under the Sun and so you're reading this website and you realize how like humble it is it says well basically anything can be done at the local level we don't touch and we push all decision-making down and the principles of subsidiarity is what governs us and I was thinking can you imagine having hearing Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump last year on the campaign trail in you know in Jackson Mississippi or in Anchorage or in Miami or any place saying you know it's great thank you all for being here tonight I don't really know Anchorage or Jackson so what we're going to do is we're going to let you guys decide that to the extent possible so knock yourselves out and thanks very much you know this is just unthinkable in American politics we expect our federal politicians to be these omnipotent masters of health care and budgets and taxes and environmentalism and global warming and it's just an absurd system when you've got 320 million people but what what I really liked about this handout on the Swiss government's website was this this clause here in a sentence says federalism makes an important contribution to social cohesion I was thinking about that I thank God we could use some of that in the United States right now I mean we're so divided politically and there was so much nastiness really following the rise of Trump and then the entire unbearable 2016 campaign and then now since Trump selected and I think we could actually learn quite a bit from the Swiss when it comes to social cohesion and and maybe the number one lesson we could learn from them is that smaller is better and and that's not only true politically but also in terms of social cohesion and peace and that's something that's really struck me and it's something I think we don't think about enough as libertarians so there's this unpleasant undercurrent to American politics especially since Trump won the election and there's actually people on both in the left and the right talking seriously about using the word civil war and using the term secession and these aren't just people on the on the extreme fringes saying these kinds of things even people who are more mainstream conservatives and liberals the one article I would recommend to you is from a guy named Angelo Cotevilla and he wrote an article in the Claremont Review of books called the Cold Civil War now he's not a he's not a crazy guy or an Atlantis guy he he's what I would call a doctrinaire conservative on the left there was a seminal article in the New Republic called Blue Exit I don't know if you heard about this it came out in March of 2017 it was very strong to saying look these red states are crazy it's time for us to turn our backs on them it's time for us to go our separate ways and this is the New Republic this isn't some radical part of the left but but really a mainstream part of it and and of course since Trump won our friends on the left have discovered federalism and states rights in spades and they're talking about sanctuary cities and this kind of thing so let me give you a quote from this gentleman in the New Republic he says we won't formally secede in the Civil War sense of the word we'll still be a part of the United States at least on paper but we'll turn our back on the federal government in every way we can just like you've been urging everyone to do for years and devote our heart and resources to building up our own cities and states and I thought to myself that's a threat I'll take it you know it sounds a lot like Switzerland as a matter of fact so I thought I would pose to you guys a little bit of a thought experiment I don't know how familiar any of you are with the San Francisco Bay Area but I've lived there myself my wife has lived there when we were first dating we live there and we've we've actually lived there in two different times so the San Francisco Bay Area is made up of about 8 million folks in about nine counties and these are some of the bluest counties in the country they reliably vote 80 or 90 percent for Democrats and not just Democrats but Pelosi type Democrats you know very left-wing in outlook so imagine if we allowed those nine counties right here right now a wide degree of localism and subsidiary like the Swiss system imagine if those counties could decide right here right now without needing any federal governance not needing any federal laws to have the whole panoply of what most people on the left right want right now which would be climate change regulations progressive taxation maybe limits on income some kind of universal health care system within those nine counties may be very strict regulations or even prohibitions on firearms free public housing free public education make Cal Berkeley free you know would anyone in this room really object to this now we might say you know that's not going to work because for instance free public health care carries all the wrong incentives for people to over-consume and underpay and that and that there's no rational price mechanism same thing for education etc so we might say that technically that's not going to work or pragmatically that's not going to work but would anyone in this room object to them trying it or having it for themselves and my answer is is absolutely no and I don't like this idea that people in the San Francisco Bay Area have to fear the election of some what they consider redneck senator from some southern state like this guy we're apparently going to elect in Alabama yeah the former Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore I mean people in in blue states and blue cities actually that that's that that causes them fear and apprehension what kind of system is this for 320 million people you have to worry about some state three two or three thousand miles away electing someone and really at the end of the day Americans are governed by about 535 knuckleheads in Washington DC and about nine sport supreme court justices if you go back to colonial times and the number of us representatives and extrapolate forward to modern day there should be about 10,000 members of Congress unless you're really out in rural area your member of Congress live within a mile or so of you should see him or her at the grocery store they should kind of know you and they should kind of a little bit fear you in terms of in terms of having to see you after casting some vote but the system we have now every member of Congress has about 700,000 constituents it's not working and I think the Swiss system works a lot better so let's let's think about this in terms of what we see happening right now in Catalonia this is a this is a very serious situation where the central Spanish government has federal police and they're sending those federal police in violently to suppress elections to tear down polling stations to to seize ballot boxes this kind of thing this is really pretty unprecedented I happen to know a fair number of libertarians who live in Europe and I also know three or four really dedicated Spanish libertarians and they're even split on this someone like no no no Jeff you're all wrong the people behind this or left wing and they want to have a real sort of communist Catalonia they want to be really aligned with the EU their socialist and mindset and they're gonna have people are gonna have less freedom so this isn't libertarian this result is not there's nothing libertarian about this and you're out to lunch and then there's other Spanish libertarians I've talked to said no you know what I'm in Madrid let them go I can live with this but what I'd like to suggest is that there's there's a difference between the principle of secession and the question of whether secession in any given circumstance is a good idea right it's two different things one's a principle one sort of a factual question you know but Catalonia is not some back water this isn't some economically depressed part of Europe or part of Spain this is a an economically vibrant region that also happens to contain the city of Barcelona which is one of the great capitals of Europe if not the world so this isn't an academic question now it's not up to us it's not up to us as Americans and non interventionist to decide for them but I think we should embrace the idea that smaller is better when it comes to governments and political arrangements I think anytime a central government gives up power and turf whether that's over the number of human bodies they profess to govern or the number of kilometers or miles that that it holds sway over I think that's a good thing and I think the proof of this is in the pudding because central governments in Madrid in Brussels the EU in Washington DC they resist it so mightily whatever I see central governments resisting something with all their might it leads me to believe it's probably a good thing you know at some point we'd we'd buy I would imagine most of us in this room would say we ought to have seven point five billion self-governing autonomous humans on earth right now we have about 195 countries at some point we got to have 196 at some point we got to have 200 at some point we have 300 we're a long way from seven and a half billion but you know I personally think that we ought to be supporting the principle of subsidiary and secession whether or not the facts on the ground the history the ethnography the language whatever it might be argues for or against Catalonia and the outcome there so as libertarians our response to this nasty politicization of society that we really saw ramped up in 2016 is to make politics matter less correct it's to we do this by making government matter less by making government less powerful and thus less fearsome and in lowering the political stakes and the political rhetoric and the political hatred we want to create a system where people in the San Francisco Bay Area don't have to fear some redneck senator from Alabama but how we do this how we get from A to B you know it's been a tough question for libertarians I'm sure Rand didn't do as well as most of us might thought he was going to do in in New Hampshire or otherwise in Iowa Gary Johnson didn't do very very well as libertarian candidate ended up not getting into the debates but you know there's more to it than that we've become obsessed as libertarians or as liberty-minded people with this idea of national politics and figuring out how to create some 51% electoral majority to change society and in the current reality that comes out to about 65 million people that's a lot of hearts and minds and I think because of this we have risked we've lost sight of what's really this undercurrent that the dominant trend of our age which is radically decentralized systems and as I mentioned I think for libertarians smaller is better and I think for progressives and conservatives smaller is better too this isn't a zero-sum fight that we have to engage in necessarily as a matter of fact I think we ought to be doing the opposite we ought to be looking at win-win solutions so if we think about the last two big revolutions in society the agricultural revolution the industrial revolution these are actually somewhat centralizing in effect agriculture cause people to stop being nomadic to get food and come together on the farms and to work in agricultural concerns the industrial revolution took people out of rural areas and brought them into cities and big firms and big factories like General Motors and brought them together geographically into cities so those were both centralizing revolutions but at the digital revolution the revolution we might say started you can say it started in the 70s but I think it really got going in in force in the 1990s the digital revolution decentralized us it moves the world in the other direction and really every aspect of human life that we can think of is becoming decentralized commerce think of firms like Amazon all over the world business hierarchies are becoming flatter and decentralized IT not only information technology but the spread the dissemination of information itself money and banking becoming highly decentralized even even group affiliations and loyalties are becoming decentralized because if you have a particular interest or a particular hobby or particular desire or love you can connect now with people all over the world you're not just limited to the libertarians who might be in your town or the people who like your hobby might be in your town or you're looking to buy used car you no longer just stuck with the used cars in your town you've got the internet you know and this has really been the trend of our times I mean you know you go to the what do you call the freestyle machine at the fast food place you've got you know 150 different combinations of sodas just unbelievable so if we think of information as the new product of the digital age then it's increasingly dispersed so this revolution is a little bit different the digital age not only disperse us but it it changes the way organizations work and that includes government you know you think of decentralized networks like Google or Amazon and then you think of the old hub and spoke models that would particularly of governments and empires think of the British Empire in India and all of its colonies whereas today we think of servers and information and networks are kind of more clusters of lights or almost like spider webs they're more like Hulu or Netflix as opposed to you know the big three networks that we all remember from our childhood and they're they're kind of static programming so why is you know why is Google Google at least in terms of its management style well because it uses flat management it has decentralized teams that work on things and companies that do that at least at the moment are prospering and companies that are old line and they're thinking like we might look at GM they had to be bailed out or we might look at IBM which is lost it's the luster it had in our parents and grandparents age Google's Google because it uses decentralized management so the digital age if I had to put it into one word is the age of disintermediaries right both human and technological a disintermediary is anything or anyone that eliminates the middleman the middleman being the intermediary in a process so this is really the central theme of the digital age so that's why we now have peer-to-peer transactions like uber you know there's no dispatcher there's no taxi company per se we have Bitcoin which doesn't require a central bank or a state propping up a central bank Google it's sort of an either intermediary we're finding out some more and more bad things about Google but still there's no library involved there's no professor standing between you and all the information at your fingertips on your phone or whatever via Google so now without any real intermediary we have access to almost all the world's accumulated knowledge in a little device in our pockets it's amazing if you think about it or that ladies and gentlemen it is decentralization at work so if we think about the Catalan people who are who are marching in the streets right now they view the Madrid government as an unnecessary intermediary that they need to eliminate and secession for them is the process of disintermediation so at least until they replace the devil they know maybe in Madrid with the with the devil they don't know in Brussels but in in the midst of all this change of all this decentralization only one part of human life's going the other direction governance I mean it's almost unbelievable when you think about it that we allow this only governments are becoming more hierarchical and more bureaucratic we think in the United States the trend over the last 100 years have been to federalize more and more of what used to be done at the state and local level we think of Europe what used to be done in national or regional countries is now done at Brussels in the in the under the European Union or it's done in Frankfurt in the European Central Bank as opposed to independent central banks we see this this centralization in all areas of government in even in quasi government organizations like the United Nations like the International Monetary Fund these are not only centralizing federally in a certain country they're actually centralizing supernaturally amongst different or she said say supernaturally across different countries so globalism is the order of the day for governments and why on earth should libertarian support this I don't know if any of you read Michael Malice or know who he is he appears on Fox News sometimes he wrote an article he says only politics remains binary so with politics it's always either or it's always zero sum and it's always win-lose and we don't accept this in the marketplace it's amazing that we accept it in government so I want to make a distinction though when that when the political class talks about globalism as a good thing what they mean is political globalism and this is this what I would consider illiberal doctrine that what's what's good for x politically is necessarily good for y and it's it's always you notice a world run by people just like them it's never about you and what they mean by by globalism is sameness they mean universal political arrangements that are all going to culminate in what they see is kind of an approved social democracy model with with not with only nominal national sovereignty and diminishing national sovereignty but the problem with this is that political globalism is actually quite illiberal and it can even veer towards authoritarianism because it reduces the ability of the average person to have a say and how they're governed political matters increasingly are decided some place far away it's the opposite of uber and bitcoin and google so if some poor if somebody in Jackson is trying to fight a fight with the city council you know fighting that fight at the city level versus the state level versus the federal level becomes harder and harder at what's what happens when they have to fight something at the international level is their voice stronger no it's clearly weaker so in the sense of political globalism I would argue that it's illiberal and it's something we ought to oppose now this is this form of globalism is not at all what literally grand misa is met by globalism and he talks about he saw it as this economic phenomenon that actually emphasizes the differences between places not the sameness the differences expressed in the division of labor in specialization and comparative advantage between places of China can make a t-shirt for five bucks and get it to Walmart let them do it we don't need to create a $10 t-shirt in America just because I mean this is this is what Mises met by globalism was trade and trade is based on differences different comparative advantages between countries and people because if we're all the same then we'd have no reason to trade with each other we're all the same goods and services the same expertise so Mises saw the right to self-determination as the highest political value which if we allowed it to happen if we allowed the world to express itself the way the Swiss allows its cantons to express themselves what we'd have is real diversity not this phony baloney diversity that they talk about in terms of globalism so if we the people in this room if we think that people should be free as individuals to make their own choices even choices we might think are bad then they must also be free to do so as groups I think it is consistent argue and that extends to places like Catalonia so again we're talking about political globalism you know I'm not worried about globalism that arises through the marketplace whether it's economic or cultural or social to the extent these things represent market preferences to the extent the world just says hey certain things really are better we all like Diet Coke we all like Honda Accords that's fine but when these preferences are sort of installed instilled or installed in countries by nefarious mechanisms like NGOs then then I think we have a real cause for concern so you know talking to a meal earlier and knowing what I've known over the years about AFF they actually AFF to the for those who are familiar actually has a beautiful building a townhouse that they own in Dupont Circle area of DC where they hold events you know presumably the reason you're involved with AFF is because you care about about creating a more libertarian and more prosperous society but we've all struggled I think with the question of what's the best strategy what's the best tactical approach to go about this and if the answer this was crystal clear we'd we'd presumably all be doing it but there's always costs involved I'm sure a lot of you're familiar with the great Thomas soul whenever when people ask him a question he always says well compared to what that's always the question not just for us but for opponents where there's always questions that we always have to think about choices and costs involved and respond to this sort of utopia trap that we sometimes find ourselves in when people are questioning libertarianism so we can boil it down I think to really two basic choices there's a great book written in 1970 by sociologists and social theorist named Albert Hirschman it's called exit voice and loyalty little thin book about 180 pages I'm curious if anyone's ever heard of it it's one of those sleeper books I really recommend it's a little dry but it holds up really well or what's that's almost that's 45 50 years now 1970 exit voice and loyalty by a guy named Albert Hirschman so the theme of the book is that all organizations including governments tend to deteriorate over time that they their product of their service gets worse and this this of course tends to make customers unhappy or citizens unhappy which leaves them like it leaves us with two basic choices which are voice and exit either change things to make them better or leave them so you we voice our displeasure or we exit and switch to a competitor to the extent that's possible but you know loyalty tends to slow this process down loyalty to the brand to the monarch in previous centuries to the state it tends to postpone our willingness to exit it's a form of political inertia but but on the other hand the idea that we have a voice or the possibility that we have a voice to change things the possibility of exiting makes our voice more important so these two things kind of work in tandem voice and exit we all understand this with consumer products we like to think that we have choices but governments for an awfully long time have gotten away with murder both literally and figuratively because they've only given lip service to to voice while exit which means expatriating leaving the country historically has been very different very difficult for all but the most wealthy people in any given society but i think the digital age the decentralized age stands to change this profoundly and i'm optimistic about that i'm i'm encouraged about that so within this framework of voice and exit i'll leave you with with sort of the three choices we might ever three very basic choices of how we might go about making things better for ourselves and the first of course is politics and you know i understand we all have felt the desire to scratch this itch and the the thing about engaging in politics it gives you something tangible there's a filing deadline there's fundraising there's a primary there's election you you go work for rand paul in his campaign that you have you have sort of tangible primaries and tangible votos and these things whereas just promoting liberty in other ways that has a sort of vague and unsatisfactory field doing but the thing about politics is it's a really really difficult as you all know the odds are stacked against us in a million different ways not only in in what's a damnably difficult two-party system but also in the money game and just the situation in washington i mean you know when i worked for rand paul he he basically used to see it as an educational tool but when it comes to really getting bills passed or preventing bills from getting passed you know we send some good people to washington like commas massie and rand paul but it's it's a very difficult environment and you have to remind yourself that we've had a century of progressive victories you know that's the baseline in which we operate the progressives won the 20th century they won central banking they won social insurance they won the welfare state they won the interventionist military state by progressives i don't necessarily mean left i mean left and right progressives people who want an activist government and so that leaves us now a hundred years later where the sort of the the debate is always framed as what should government do about x so when that's the question liberty minded people are already on their heels because we don't accept that framework that our question is should government even be involved in x uh so we shouldn't kid ourselves about how difficult the political environment really is at least at the national level so the second approach that a lot of us use is certainly the one the mis institutes chosen to use is education winning hearts and minds now this is a little less tangible as a more vague than engaging in politics and having races but you know a lot of people would argue that this is is really what matters that politics is downstream from culture anyway so you might as well roll up your sleeves and get to work i mean it's a long game it's not necessarily for people in a hurry and there's really two ways to to view the education game top down or bottom up the top down approach was was promoted by Friedrich Hayek who said well here's what we ought to do we ought to get liberty minded scholars ought to invade academia and start to win over academics to our point of view and those academics will will set the stage and create the ideas for a media class below them to disseminate information to the masses so it's kind of a top down approach and and if we look at academia in the 20th century now 21st i don't think it's working you know there's a flaw in Hayek's thinking and that is that academics have self-interest too just like the rest of us and and for most of them the system works and they have an interest a self-interest in perpetuating it writing these dopey academic papers that nobody reads but that's how you get tenure that's how you advance that's how you become a department chair and and they're kind of comfortable it's a pretty good gig if you can get tenure so the top down approach hasn't worked so well Murray Rothbard argued for a bottom up approach he said hey let's not be afraid as libertarians to be populist in our thinking and and that rubs a lot of people are on way because we we like to think of ourselves as more of an intellectual movement and a movement that's based on ideas but but if we think about a populism isn't an ideology per se populism is a tactic you can imbue populism with whatever you want and i would argue that Ron Paul used populism very skillfully in two different senses one he said get out of iraq get out of the middle east now that's a populist message that resonated with people who were sick of these wars who didn't see an american interest in them anymore and saw the amount of money and the amount of carnage we were spending um so that was certainly a populist message the other populist messages he used to great effect was and the fed that's not complicated that appeals to the average person i mean does the average guy or gal understand the mechanics of how the fed operates and how it enriches certain people at the expense of probably not but is since when is that a crime i mean most monetary economists can't explain to you the mechanics of how the fed operates so you know simplifying things and approaching the masses and using populism i think can be a great approach just just think think of it this way when when elites get that way when elites become elites because they're state connected then being anti-elite is a okay right think think of pharmaceutical cartels think of aig and the bailouts it had as a monster insurance company after 08 crash think about wall street bonuses that are based on phony baloney uh equity market prices or just think of equity markets in general and and uh crazy real estate spikes in places like Manhattan and San Francisco um i would argue that we ought to be a little more open to a common touch and to a populist argument within within the parameters of what we know to be right so we've got politics we've got winning hearts and minds and then we've got the third approach which is secession decentralization subsidiary localism nullification basically trying by hooker by crook to apply a swiss model to our lives so this we would call exit as opposed to voice now exit can take a lot of different forms it doesn't necessarily mean in the digital age that people have to physically segregate themselves um it doesn't necessarily mean we have to have a violent conflict or a secessionist movement or that a certain region of the united states has to break off from the rest i mean there's there's a lot of ways short of that that i think people can succeed uh digitally uh just like you and your neighbor don't have to have the same cable package or the same cell phone provider it's not that hard to imagine a world 20 or 30 or 50 years now where you and your neighbor have one one of you ops in the social security and one of you ops out one of you ops in the medicare one of you ops out there's a million permutations that we could think of for this but i think that at some point we have to recognize that walking away from washington dc literally or figuratively might be more attractive to us than trying to win over that 51 percent electorate uh also known as 65 million people so in closing can this is what conservatives and progress has spent the 20th century arguing about political universalism even libertarians spent the 20th century to the extent they had a voice arguing for universal political principles we all believe in universal principles of self-ownership private property basic individual sanctity but political universalism's a different can of worms and what we're finding in the 21st century is that what we imagine to be universal norms and attitudes are not as widely agreed upon as we might think and in a really a hyper connected digital age i think elites are going to find it increasingly difficult to make the case for globalism against this this tide of secessionist movements breakaway movements populist movements i think libertarian should embrace this i think they should embrace this reality and reject political universalism for a not only a tactically superior and more palatable vision but maybe even a morally more palatable vision of radical self-determination so with that thank you very much subscribe to mises weekends via itunes you stitcher and soundcloud or listen on mises.org and youtube