Jonathan Brun

Comment battre Denis Coderre

Depuis trois ans, Denis Coderre est maire de Montréal. M. Coderre est un politicien extrêmement habile qui a réussi à rallier de nombreuses personnes incluant plusieurs conseillers de Projet Montréal. Il faut avouer que M. Coderre a amélioré la ville et il semble un bien meilleur maire que son prédécesseur, M. Tremblay. Malgré cela, les failles dans sa façon populiste de gouverner commencent à apparaître. Ses initiatives telles que l’ouverture des bars jusqu’à l’aube ou l’interdiction des pitbulls se font démonter devant les tribunaux. Des contrats à des amis de M. Coderre, des votes rapides sur de gros contrats de TI ou encore l’espionnage des journalistes de La Presse commence à illuminer les vraies priorités de Denis Coderre.

En contrepartie, Guillaume Lavoie est une personne posée qui prend le temps de réfléchir avant d’agir. Je dirais que la meilleure façon de comprendre Guillaume Lavoie est de consulter le Collège néo-classique qu’il a cofondé et qui offre des cours sur la rhétorique, les grands textes philosophiques et divers enjeux qui permettent de « se faire une tête en comptant davantage sur sa culture générale, sa capacité d’analyse et de liens avec le contexte historique…». Selon moi une capacité à réfléchir dans un contexte dynamique et avec une vision à long terme est la qualité fondamentale d’un leader.

Pour battre un politicien populiste, ça nous prend quelqu’un avec des croyances profondes. Un populiste pourra toujours battre un technocrate de l’establishment, nous venons de le voir aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni. Il faut offrir une vision claire et précise. J’ai pu connaitre Guillaume à travers mes travaux à Montréal Ouvert et notre lutte pour les données ouvertes et il a été parmi les premiers conseillers à nous appuyer. Il a vu, justement, que les données ouvertes permettent à la ville de prendre de meilleures décisions et de mieux consulter le public sur des enjeux importants. Je pense que Guillaume offre une vision claire de la ville qu’il souhaite avoir : transparente, démocratique, sécuritaire et bien gérée et ce, au bénéfice de tous les citoyens.

Sans transparence, nous n’avons pas de démocratie. Guillaume a d’ailleurs très bien expliqué dans une lettre à La Presse la contradiction entre des conseillers qui ont un pouvoir de vote, mais qui n’ont pas l’information nécessaire pour voter de manière informée. Les documents qui accompagnent des contrats de dizaines de millions de dollars peuvent être donnés aux conseillers quelque heures avant le conseil ou même pendant une réunion de conseil! On ne peut pas bâtir une ville moderne, démocratique et bien la gérer de cette manière. Chaque année la ville dépense environ cinq milliards de dollars et si nous n’améliorons pas notre façon d’octroyer les contrats, nous ne nous sortirons jamais de nos chantiers de construction, de nos nids-de-poule ou de la corruption. Todd Park, l’ancien directeur des technologies du gouvernement américain a dit: « les deux problèmes fondamentaux des gouvernements modernes sont l’approvisionnement et la gestion des ressources humaines ». Sans résoudre ces deux immenses failles, les gouvernements ne peuvent pas avancer.

L’Allemagne et le nord de l’Europe sont les champions de la gestion gouvernementale et de la qualité de vie. Un élément commun qu’on retrouve dans ces pays est une réflexion et analyse approfondie pour tout changement de politique. Cette démarche et son contraste avec les façons de faire au Québec qui est, franchement ‘broche à foins’. Le manque d’analyse des budgets et des décisions dans le secteur public est très bien expliqué par Bill Gates dans un TED Talk. En bref, sans un changement de notre façon de penser les politiques publiques, nous ne pouvons pas espérer que les choses changent. Guillaume Lavoie offre de faire les choses autrement.

Shifting the Narrative on Wealth, the State and Deserving People

In the excellent talk below, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former Finance Minister lays out the compelling case for basic income. One of his key points, which basic income advocates should take to heart is the imperative to shift our social narrative on work, labour and the creation of wealth.

Yanis explains how we currently view the State and the private market as separate entities, when in fact they are one and the same. Without one, you cannot have the other. To convince people that a basic income is the logical and ethical thing for society to do, we must reframe the discussion as a dividend for the members of a society that produces wealth. There is no such thing as private wealth. All wealth is built upon the contributions of others – past and present. Without the invention of the internet and computers, I would not have my current job or company and without government, the internet would not exist – nor would the other private companies whose technology we use. Whether we like it or not, all wealth is communal. This point is also convincingly argued in Peter Barnes book, With Liberty and Dividend’s for All. If all wealth is created communally, then its benefits (or profits) should be distibuted to the community that created it. That is how dividend’s work for shareholder’s in a company and that is how a basic income could work.

Basic income advocates must also confront the other hard truth about a basic income: it is given to all and there are no deserving and undeserving members of a society. Not only is there no easy way to determine deserving vs. undeserving people, the very concept of designating some as deserving creates a power structure where bureaucrats can determine who is helped and who is not. I remember seeing a few years ago, in Toronto, a fantastic ad about why a punk on the street could not get a job. The ad was between the subway lines and about 10 ft from the viewer. It read, “Why can’t street kids get a life?” followed by large block of small text that could not be read from a distance, but presumably has a complex explanation, followed by “That’s why.” Life is complicated. A basic income would be a dividend for all members of a society to improve their chances in life – all while removing some of the arbitrary power government currently has.

Lastly, Vanis makes an excellent point that the wealthy already receive dividends and their children or relatives who did not earn the wealth are not terribly deserving of those dividends. Why does Paris Hilton deserve a dividend, but a kid from a working class family does not deserve one? In fact, both of them should have a dividend in the form of a Basic Income. I put this argument and others to a skeptical earner of a dividend, Stephen Bronfman who inherited money from his father’s business successes. Though he was unconvinced the beginning of the talk, he came around to being open to the idea by the end and I hope to fully convince him soon.

The time for basic income is coming, but to get us there we will need to shift the narrative we tell each other and our children about the origins of wealth and who deserves it. Wealth can only be created if there is a state and the rule of law and the more wealth we inherit, as a society or as an individual, the more wealth we can create. A society with inventions and discoveries to work off of, will create more wealth than a primitive society starting from scratch. Without calculus or antibiotics, today’s civilization cannot exist. A basic income is the fairest and simplest mechanism for us to create wealth while ensuring everyone can fully participate in society and reach their full potential.

On another note, Yanis Varoufakis book on the EU and the Greek crisis is fantastic : And the Weak shall Suffer what they must?. It provides clear (if opinionated) economic insights into the challenges of international monetary systems and the fundamental contradiction of a common currency between export nations (i.e. Germany) and import nations (i.e Italy). Canada overcame this challenge of export provinces and import provinces with a strong redistribution system between the provinces called ‘Equalization Payments‘. Québec has received about 5 billion dollars in annual transfers for the past decade, helping avoid the social and economic collapse as we see in Greece today. If you are interested in the history of the gold standard, Bretton Woods and the current impasse in the EU, the book is well worth the read. Also see his discussion with Chomsky on this topic and others.

Liberal Party of Québec or Bust?

What will it take for anglophone Quebecers to vote for a party other than the Liberal Party of Quebec? That will be the question of an upcoming evening of discussion between anglophone, francophone and unidentified Quebecers on May 4th. For over 40 years, Québec has been divided into sovereigntist and federalist parties, with the Liberal Party of Quebec holding power for the vast majority of that time thanks, in part, to a core base of voters who have no other option.

While massive emigration hit the province after the first and second referendums, those that stayed remain stuck in a frustrating situation of having to vote for a party that has been unable to turn our economy around. Despite numerous majority governments, the Liberal Party of Quebec has failed to create substantial economic growth, they have been tainted by corruption and their most recent proposals sound like more of the same. To believe that by electing the same people year over year, tied to the same interest groups, we will have a different outcome smells of insanity.

Yet, who to vote for? The PQ and Quebec Solidaire are proudly sovereigntist at all costs and the CAQ proposed a temporary 10 year moratorium – hardly comforting. Some of us have gotten angry, others stopped voting and most just tune out in frustration. Yet this behaviour of tuning out of Quebec society leads to a reinforcement of the two solitudes and a lack of fresh ideas and new blood into institutions that desperately need different perspective. Michael Sabia, from Ontario, has successfully led the Caisse de Dépot to outperform the markets while investing our pension money in Québec and abroad. Our crown corporations such as the Hydro-Québec, Loto Québec, SAQ and others are in desperate need of fresh takes on their mandate as they stagnate and fail to improve. The same can be said of our government and public institutions. Quebec still receives seven billion dollars a year in transfer payments, has lower economic growth and a lower family income than almost anywhere in Canada.

It is time to change and it is time for the anglophone and allophone communities to seek different electoral options than the Liberal Party. Because the Liberal know they have these votes locked up at every election, they have little incentive to invest in the concerned ridings – mostly on the island of Montreal. Ever wonder why Montreal has so little political power, run-down schools, and poor roads? Simply travel to the swing ridings in the suburbs and you will see where your tax dollars are going. Until anglo and allophones start to have options other than the Liberal Party, the situation is unlikely to change.

There are rumours of an Québec NDP and of a new party tentatively titled ‘Orphelins politiques’. Neither of these are likely to take power soon. The other option for engaged anglophones may be to infiltrate a non-sovereigntist party and attempt reform, the CAQ or PLQ being the only options. There are no easy solutions. Yet, inaction on this critical issue of a viable political party that can rally anglophones, allophones and francophones and that is not called the Liberal Party is likely the only way to change things or force the existing parties to change. Until then, we will remain on our little merry-go-round that takes us nowhere productive.

[:en]Montreal Stores around the World[:]

[:en]
The economic and political power of cities is on the rise due to changes in the economy and continued migration to urban areas. Montréal, like other cities, must continue to invest in itself if it hopes to compete on the global stage.

As a born and raised Montrealer, I may be biased. Though our city has much to offer, we are often cast in the shadow of larger cities such as Toronto, New York, and Paris. To compete for investment and tourism dollars, Montréal must focus its attention on its killer features. Of course, I think most will agree that we need political and economic reform along with more devolution of power from the province to the municipality and an integrated transportation system to efficiently move goods and people. But beyond reforms, we need something essential to our growth – investment. The quickest path to more revenues is more people, leading to higher property value and more economic activity.

If we want Montréal to become a strong city, it must advertise its specificities on the competitive world stage. We cannot and should not compete with major financial centres such as London, Hong Kong, New York or with the mega-cities of Mexico City, Istanbul and Shenzhen. Montreal is unique in many ways and we should advertise that uniqueness to attract business and tourism. I propose that we capture and bottle the unique Montreal flavour, creating a physical presence for others to taste and visit at home: Montreal Stores.

One simple solution to some of our economic woes is to drive more tourism dollars to our economy. With a 320 million person country next door and a strong US dollar, this should be a straightforward proposition. Instead of promoting ourselves through closed off Canadian Embassies or Québec delegations, we should build on success in the private sector and perhaps the greatest retail experience of all, the Apple Store. An Apple Store lets you test their new products, get consultations on the best products for you and even attend courses, lectures and musical events centred around the company’s products. A Montreal store would follow a similar model.

Having recently visited to New Orleans, I was struck by the number of Americans who traveled to New Orleans to visit the old French Quarter, listen to Jazz, drink cocktails and enjoy fantastic food. Montreal has many of the same cultural and culinary attractions as New Orleans and we are as close to the United States as one can get. The same American tourists who visit New Orleans for a modest amount of diversity and culture are the same tourists we want to visit Montreal. Curious Americans who want some culture, but might not be inclined to travel to Europe or Asia can come to visit us, in Montreal.

To promote our unique attributes and drive tourism to our city, Montreal should establish store fronts in cities around the world (even Canada). I would start with a storefront in the busy tourist filled French Quarter of New Orleans. The same tourists that travel to New Orleans are ones who would be thrilled to come to our Jazz Festival and enjoy our amazing choice of restaurants. This storefront, with an operating cost of a few million dollars a year could be modeled the Apple Store. Instead of iPads and iPhones, we would promote our music, innovation, language (french!), culture and food. The side-by-side promotion of our cultural uniqueness with our high tech industry and generous tax credit system might even incite some companies to open offices here. The goal of each Montreal Store would be to generate more revenue through tourism than it costs to operate, which strikes me as an easy target. The stores could host and promote Montreal musicians, innovative companies, art and culinary showcases to lure new people to our island city.

These tangible stores would help Montreal promote itself as a cultural and business hub for US tourists and businesses. Of course, we must also engage in a number of reforms here at home, but bringing US dollars onto our island would provide some key financing for our other projects. It’s time that Montreal take the bull by the horns and unabashedly promote itself as the fun, francophone and high tech hub that it is.[:]

The Shortcomings of Data Analysis

Over the past year, my belief that more information can lead to meaningful change is waning. One thing is certain, more information in open and digital formats has tremendous potential to improve society, companies and lives – but it has limits. No amount of information will solve homelessness, poverty, environmental pollution or other serious problems that we are facing.

The Open Data mouvement of which I was an active part and still play a role in remains very important. Yet fundamentally, it can only lead to incremental improvements to a system that is arguable broken at its roots. Take for example the debate around homelessness, an emerging trend is the comparison of costs between the medical, policing related to their existence with the cost of offering housing, money and assistance. Social scientists have crunched the numbers and clearly demonstrate it is more cost effective to house a person at taxpayer cost than to let them live on the streets and land up in the hospital or in jail. This analysis was made famous by Malcolm Gladwell’s story of Million Dollar Murray and has since been confirmed by other studies and used by the city of Cleveland in its recent attempts to end homelessness. Yet, should we be making these types of decisions based on monetary costs?

Harvard professor Michael Sandel has repeatedly argued that we have strayed too far down the path of financialization of our decisions (The lost art of democratic debate). I would go further and argue we have relied too much on data analysis and not enough on morality. If we were to look at statistics on the state of black youth in the United States, where over 60% get arrested once in their life (more sad stats), we could almost say that they must be genetically prone to a life of crime. Of course, we know it is rather their social environment and state discrimination that has led to this horrifying statistics. The latter decision is a moral one that returns to the idea that all humans are created equal – this is not based on any data analysis, but rather on our deep rooted morality and centuries of struggle for social justice.

The list areas of society where we have turned towards data analysis instead of meaningful debate and morality is long. When I worked as an environmental consultant, we conducted life cycle analysis of products. The goal was to determine the impact of a product on the environment by determining the impact of all of its components – ressources, transport, waste collection, etc. We could then compare alternatives and try to piece together a less impactful product by swapping parts or changing transport methods. When asked how he achieved massive cost savings in rocketry, Elon Musk, todays greatest industrial innovator, stated that they reason from first principles (lecture). Instead of simply building on existing rocket technology and doing data analysis, they returned to basics and ask fundamental questions. Elon and his team asked, “what are the lowest possible costs, based on physics, for rockets to be built and launched?”. Returning to lice cycle analysis, what I found after two years of work was that the best way to reduce the impact on the environment of products is not to swap parts but rather to return the original design, and rethink it from the ground up. That is a much harder task.

Fundamentally, this inability to analyze complex systems and determine solutions from data analysis is tied to chaos theory and complexity (and quantum mechanics, but that’s another rabbit hole). Systems – human and technological – are so complex that true innovation can only be done through deep reflection. Another interesting example of the failure of algorithms to solve problems is search and rescue technology used to find sailors who have been thrown overboard. In this great article about a fisherman who was thrown overboard, they describe the use of a computer algorithm to predict his location based on the weather and ocean currents. After days of searching, they returned to the old methods and eventually found him. The fisherman had latched onto a lobster cage, which altered his path dramatically. The algorithms could not possibly have taken that into account. I am not saying that all technology is bad or that we should return to stone tablets, but rather that we should not think that we can simply outsource thinking to computer algorithms or data analysis.

This thought was discussed by Noam Chomsky at a recent presentation at Google. He was asked about data analysis, AI and innovation through statistical analysis of things like search terms and large data sets. He responded that deep insights about things such as linguistics, his field of expertise, were not and cannot be brought about through statistical analysis of language. Rather, innovation in understanding language is done through insights that are then confirmed by data, not the other way around.

A last example of the failure or upcoming failure of data analysis is the idiotic trend towards smart cities. Adam Greenfield wrote a highly insightful book entitled “Against Smart Cities (buy)”. Greenfield explains how certain governments are attempting to build systems that monitor and calculate everything in a city from the size of policing forces to street size and resource allocation. Even Montréal is going down this path with their recent Smart City initiative and their restructuring of funding based on mysterious algorithms developed by bureaucrats. This tactic has been tried and has failed. Just in Montréal, top-down planning based on ‘data’ led to things like the Mirabel airport that is now scheduled for demolition (link) and car centric monstrosities such as the Parc-Pine interchange (photos and details). Those two situations took statistics – the number of flights (link) to Montréal and the number of cars in Montréal – and simply extrapolated them based on years. Both failed to account for changing economic conditions, regulatory frameworks and physical limitations of auxiliary infrastructure. The point here is that no matter how much data you have, there is inevitably important data that you do not have and can never have. It is therefore imperative that your decisions be based on logic that has been challenged through debate, not just data.

If we should not make large decisions based on data, it follows that large data analysis or access to more data is not likely to lead to meaningful positive change. At best, we can hope for incremental improvements or optimization. When I began working in the Open Data mouvement, I thought more access to data could actually change power politics. But, now I am rather less certain. Data is necessary, not not the enough. In a capitalistic society, like ours, money is power. If we want to empower people we need to give them actual power, which really means monetary capital. In a great article by Adam Greenfield, he stated quite eloquently that technological or even structural changes in resource allocation will not liberate individuals, he said:

“My mistake in the past — and, in retrospect, it’s an astonishingly naïve and determinist one — was to think that emergent networked forms of shared resource utilization might in themselves give rise to any particularly liberatory politics of everyday life. Experience has taught me that such notionally transformative frameworks as do arise very readily get appropriated by existing ways of valuing, doing and being; whatever emancipatory potential may reside in them swiftly falls before path dependency and the weight of habit, and the gesture as a whole comes to nought.” Link

This thought is echoed and backed up by mountains of data in the recent best seller Capital in the 21st Century. At the end of the second part of the book, Thomas Picketty clearly states “Si l’on souhaite véritablement fonder un ordre social plus juste et rationnel, fondé sur l’utilité commune, il n’est pas suffisant de s’en remettre aux caprices de la technologie”. This basically translates to “If we want to truly change the social order and make it more just and fair, based on common utility, it is not enough to rely on technological innovation”. And while he is talking about the ability of new technology to change the old order, the argument could easily be extended to data. No amount of data will bring about a just world and it remains unclear data even bends the arc of history towards justice.

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P.S. These are the reasons I want more deep, challenging debate in society and why we have started the Fight club politique http://jonathanbrun.com/fightclubpolitique

A couple more links bibliography

How Politics Makes us Stupid – and More Information will not help, it will hurt

TED talking of Stephen Pinker and Rebbecca Goldstein Animation on the power of reason

GE rebuilding a home heater made in China (NPR)