Rickshaw - A Children's Tale

Ribbon Falls, Grand Canyon - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

Although the rickshaw is not a uniquely American mode of transportation, it serves as an apt metaphor for the nation’s philosophical transition from its founding until the present. This unique rickshaw (USA) is large enough for a driver (President), navigators (Congress), and citizens who legitimately need assistance; it is propelled by taxpayers who pull the vehicle by long poles connected to the front of the passenger compartment.

For most of the country’s history nearly all Americans lifted and tugged on these poles which provided a rapid but often reckless journey. Sometimes the rickshaw took a corner too fast and toppled, but there were plenty of helpers to right the cart and send it along the way. If someone decided not pull, that was a personal choice, but he was not welcome to jump on the rickshaw for a free ride.

Immigrants clawed and scraped for the opportunity to grab a spot on the pole. They faced years of sacrifice, disappointments, and back breaking toil, but millions succeeded and made a life for them and their families that they only could of dreamed of in their traditional homelands; here they had opportunity. Assimilation rather than cultural diversity and one unifying language allowed a hodgepodge of cultures to form a functional, vibrant society. In contrast to the jingoism and ethnic strife of the Old World, E pluribus unum embodied the ethos that made America the most powerful and wealthy country in the world’s history.

Americans are a generous people and in contrast to many other cultures are willing to help others who are not members of their family. Private charity provides the benefactor a personal relationship with the recipient and insures assistance is used for the intended purpose. In the aftermath of the Great Depression progressive political forces determined the state was better equipped than the individual to assume responsibility for the welfare of their fellow citizens. Charity took on an entirely new meaning where every economic class, age, and special interest group became eligible for government subsidizes.

Early on, relatively few were allowed to release their grip on the pole and ride the rickshaw. The additional weight was minor, so progress was little effected. Yet as the years progressed, restrictions to the passenger compartment eased, and public assistance became a right rather than an act of individual choice and generosity. To keep their friends happy the driver and navigators forced the pullers to give them money, so it in turn could be redistributed to the ever expanding group of riders. The passengers loved the navigators in particular and made sure they were navigators-for-life.

Just like the rickshaws of southern Asia, more and more people with their goats and chickens piled on until the vehicle slowed to a crawl. About half of the country continued to pull, but the other half including some very wealthy people who used tax loop holes and political connections joined the party. It was not necessary to be a citizen to take part in the feeding frenzy, as illegal immigrants were welcomed aboard.

Nearly three years ago Barrack, a new and popular rickshaw driver, decided to spend trillions of dollars foolishly and invited more of his friends to take a seat with him. Axles bent and floorboards buckled as the crushing weight caused the inevitable result. As hard as we pulled, no amount of effort could keep the wheels rolling forward. The rickshaw slowed, stopped, began to roll backwards then collapsed. Barrack became angry, yelled at us to pull harder, and blamed us for not doing our share to keep his friends happy.

Blistered hands, burning lungs, and tired legs are no match for a wheelless load that is too heavy to drag across the ground. At some point most of the driver’s and navigators’ friends who really don’t need help should get off, help repair, and push or pull the rickshaw to get it moving again. There is a lesson my children learned at an early age: the drivers and navigators must burn their credit cards and stop spending more than their weekly allowance.

The Entropy of Charity

Maui Sunset - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Scott Sturman and Doug Goodman

A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Doug Goodman spent a career in Silicon Valley before becoming a high school physics teacher.

A number of United States Senators participating in a round table forum are asked to determine the more efficient way to dispense charity. Is it preferable for individuals to care for their neighbors or for the government to collect these charitable donations and redistribute them to those in need? Most of the discussants are attorneys trained to trust social and political systems and to use their formidable oratory skills to respond to the question. The consensus is the latter option which allows experts like themselves to determine who needs help and how to give it. Within the group is a rare commodity - a lone physicist trained to trust nature’s laws, who is also a United States Senator. He takes exception and uses a novel approach to address the problem.

The Senator from the Northeast begins. Senator, I have great respect for scientists like yourself, but the dispensing of charity is a social science. Numbers and equations confuse more than enlighten the average citizen, who is more comfortable trusting his feelings.

The Senator from the West Coast agrees. Your reputation as a scientist is impeccable, but you are new to this profession, Senator. When reading your preliminary argument you lost me as soon as you referred to natural logarithms. Resorting to mathematics and the physical sciences is not an appropriate method of analyzing a problem of this scope. Are you really serious when suggesting the laws of thermodynamics can be used to determine the best way to manage charitable acts? For the sake of the rest of the committee, would you be so kind as to review your proposal?

Thank you, Senators. You are correct when you say I am a newcomer to politics, but my constituents elected me because of my analytic approach to governance. They particularly are concerned about the inordinate amount of waste in government and feel technically trained individuals have novel ideas to correct problems which have plagued Washington for decades. Let me begin with an introduction to entropy and discuss how it applies to the distribution of charity.

Entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness. It can be thought of as an expression of unavoidable waste or inefficiency. Without additional work inputted into a closed system, entropy always increases. Think of a glass window pane falling to the floor. It shatters on impact as the object becomes more disordered. Sweep up the remains and throw them to the floor again, and the glass pain will not reconstitute to its original form, since entropy would have to decrease for a more random system to become more ordered.

Entropy (S) is defined as S = Kb ln(W), where Kb is the Boltzman constant, ln is the natural log, and W is the number of micro states of a system. The number of states is simply a measure of complexity. When making decisions based on entropy, W is the most important parameter since only it changes. When the potential states of a system increase, so does entropy or its by product – waste.

In theory systems can be designed to be 100% efficient by implementing stringent quality control, but they cannot avoid random events that lead to errors. Furthermore, the law of entropy dictates that once a mistake is made in any process, it cannot be corrected with 100% efficiency. Mistakes, which are inevitable in any organization, add to the loss of resources. When money from a donor is given to an organization that distributes it to large number of unorganized recipients, substantial sums are lost in the process.

Charity is defined as the voluntary giving of help to those in need or generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless. The problem is how to insure those legitimately in need receive the resources intended for them. As in physics, large, complex systems diminish the amount available for the intended recipient. The ideal solution is to personally administer charity to someone who is known to the benefactor. Little of the intended contribution is lost in the process, and the giver can insure that the donation is used for its intended purpose. Supporting local agencies staffed by people known to the giver is the next best solution. Established relationships insure that waste is kept to a minimum and the gift will be used appropriately. Even these agencies cannot operate without the costs of salaries, food and shelter, rents, and transportation, so the original contribution will be less when it is delivered to the needy. The farther the recipient is located from the giver and the more levels of organization necessary to distribute the charity, the more of the original gift that is lost in the process.

Government has the assumed the role of the country's primary charitable provider. However, its Byzantine rules, lack of personal contact with those receiving benefits, and political motivations make it the worst choice for this endeavor. Furthermore, the tax payer has no choice who will receive the benefits, how much will be given, or if the result will benefit the recipient in the long run.

For example, if I decide to give a needy person who I know personally a $100, I know the entire gift goes to that person, and I can establish certain stipulations to insure the money is not squandered. In certain circumstances cash may not be the best option, so I may elect to provide food, clothing, or shelter. I control how the gift will be used and monitor the recipient to determine if the act of charity is beneficial.

Now let the federal or state government give this same $100 to someone I do not know who lives hundreds of miles away. The process would make any physicist wince. The $100 derives from taxes collected involuntarily and transferred to the IRS or state tax revenue agency. Eventually, politicians and bureaucrats for whom I pay their salaries decide which people deserve the $100. However, by this time after the money has sifted through layers of bureaucracy it no longer worth $100. Its value has been reduced by those making a living giving it to other people, and by outright theft as the money slowly makes its way to the intended target. So let us say conservatively by the time it is received by the recipient the value is closer to $50. Yet there are other considerations. I may not agree with the cause or the type of charity the government sponsors, and I have no way of knowing the money will be spent prudently when it reaches its final destination. What's the $100 worth now - $5 or $10?

The welfare state came about once individuals forfeited the responsibility for administering charitable acts. Rather than relying on instinct and emotion, politicians should embrace the scientific method to reduce waste and deliver the right type of assistance to the right person in a timely fashion. My argument demonstrated how employing a fundamental principle of physics can yield vast rewards. To ignore the obvious encourages lawmakers to continue dealing with enormous social problems with pennies on the dollar.


QED