I don’t see any way to interpret the NSA mess as strengthening the United States.
For our research at the Tau Institute, this means we need to take a look at the Press Freedom Index (PFI) and possibly integrate it (and possibly other measures) into our algorithms and rankings, because I don’t see how a US that appears to be substantially less unfree than we all thought can be analyzed in the same light as before.
This will be a semi-complex, semi-tedious process. The factors we integrate into our research are derived and reported in diverse ways. Our challenge is to create a composite index that weighs them rationally. Integrating the PFI will be no different.
Good-bye, America
Whether terrorist attacks have truly been prevented – and could have been prevented only with the known and still unknown NSA programs – the reality is that the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been shredded by the current and prior administrations.
I think the Third Amendment also came close to violation during the recent police/military shutdown of Boston, and I eagerly await the day for some insane Member of Congress (say, Sen. Diane Feinstein or Rep. Pete King) to start huffing and puffing about how the Fifth Amendment protects terrorists and weakens America.
Additionally, President Obama has been no friend of the First Amendment almost from the day he took office and started chirping at his media critics. Millions of Americans are convinced that he’s also a sworn enemy of the Second Amendment.
Taking a further look, it’s clear that the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth came under assault under the previous administration, and remain under duress. All this implies violations of the Ninth, and the Tenth looks like a quaint historical footnote.
That’s it. 10 for 10. The Bill of Rights are now as relevant as the Code of Hammurabi. James Madison weeps somewhere, as should we all. In the absence of enormous electoral outrage – and candidates to match – in 2014 and 2016, say good-bye to the United States of America as constituted in 1789.
So It’s Time to Update
I’m taking all this into account as I work with my colleagues to update our research at the Tau Institute. Operating from offices on a semi-restored college campus in Northern Illinois this past year, I’ve had some useful input from economists, mathematicians, and computer scientists as to how the factors we integrate into our Tau Index are weighted and interact.
You can google “Strukhoff Tau” or visit my personal website at www.rogerstrukhoff.sys-con.com to find the dozens of articles I’ve written about the research.
We are seeking to create a level playing field when examining the IT environments of 100+ countries. We mix in economic and social factors, as they impact how effective IT can be.
Our algorithms look at a number of publicly available measures – GDP, per capita income, cost of living, Gini coefficient, average bandwidth, broadband access, data servers, perception of corruption, and human development – to create an overall ranking as well as regional rankings and rankings by income tier.
We don’t weigh the factors in a traditional way – for example, by simply assigning a percentage of weight to each factor. The world is not really flat, and there are very few straightline measures that give an accurate picture of what’s going on in any particular country or region. Rather, I see a series of curves, slopes, and trajectories in how things work, and how they should be measured.
As an example, the Gini coefficient, which measures income disparity, is not plotted on a straight line, but on something called a Lorenz curve. Another example: The United Nations Human Development Index appears at first glance to be plotted on a straight line between 0 and 1, but its derivation includes several inputs, normalizations, logs, and geometric contortions along the way. These are just two examples.
So we use fractional exponents to create “curves of influence” that weigh the various factors on a relative basis. The perceptions of corruption index (PCI), for example, published by Transparency International, carries more weight in less developed countries than developed countries.
According to our calculations, it adds only 4.8% of the weight to Estonia, a country that does great overall but which could still lessen its corruption. It carries 10.7% of the weight in high-performing, un-corrupt Finland, but 20.2% of the weight in middling, corrupt Mexico.
As we project this factor on a curve, Mexico would improve its ranking with a better PCI, and the relative weight of the PCI would decline.
I’m happy to discuss all this with you at any time, and go into real depth about our numbers and how we derive them.
Something to Think About
Our preliminary work shows that if we were to integrate the Press Freedom Index into the mix, the United States’s overall ranking would not decline precipitously, primarily because the US is already a middling performer in our rankings. But it would lose more ground to Canada and many other developed nations that it already trails.
Meanwhile, Canada is already trying to lure educated technologists by offering a full citizenship program rather than the ludicrous indentured servitude of the US’s H-1B visa. Another country in the Americas, Chile (which already ranks higher than the US in our index and has a better perception of corruption), is encouraging technology startup through a direct government program.
Our research focuses on finding global leaders across regions and income tiers, identifying diamonds in the rough, and helping the laggards improve their situation. We are unbiased and agnostic when it comes to who “should” or should not lead. We have an additional office in Metro Manila and advisors from around the world.
The NSA revelations may not ultimately earn the wrath of the majority of the American people. If this turns out to be the case, then the future of the US will be even bleaker than it appears today.
Our data already shows that the United States is far from exceptional in our rankings, and I believe with all my heart that the verifiable Orwellian reality of the country today, if it does not change, will be its ruin, and our data will show this in the long term.
