Suggested Discussion Outline

[johnkarls]

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The following outline is respectfully suggested –


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A. Comments About Specific Chapters of The Human Network

1. Introduction: Networks and Human Behavior
2. Power and Influence: Central Positions in Networks
3. Diffusion and Contagion
4. Too Connected to Fail: Financial Networks
5. Homophily: Houses Divided
6. Immobility and Inequality: Network Feedback and Poverty Traps
7. The Wisdom and Folly of the Crowd
8. The Influence of Our Friends and Our Local Network Structures
9. Globalization: Our Changing Networks


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B. Overview of The Human Network

1. Immobility of an American child born in poverty vs., for example, a Pakistani child or a Canadian child.

2. Americans’ perceptions of mobility radically different from reality.

3. Is homophily “the general tendency of people to interact with others similar to themselves” or, in other words, segregation based on such matters as gender, ethnicity, religion, age, profession, educational level, etc.?

4. Since homophily exists among hunter-gatherers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley based on such matters as height, weight and strength, is homophily nothing more than human selfishness in leaving behind anyone who is not “pulling her/his own weight” with those left behind by the top group exhibiting the same human selfishness in forming the second-best group, etc.?

5. Asian societies typically expecting older members to commit suicide when they “have become a burden” to the group – honor, which is all important, demands it.

6. Homophily and Lord of The Flies – a 1954 novel by William Goldring.

7. The famous 1973 Stanford U. Prison Experiment (pp. 112-113 of The Human Network) featured ever since in Psychology 101 textbooks and recent criticism NOT mentioned in The Human Network.

8. Re the validity of the thesis of Lord of the Flies and The Stanford U. Prison Experiment, did the world NEVERTHELESS experience a real-life NON-EXPERIMENT confirming the validity of the thesis with Nazi Germany?

9. Do you thank “basic human nature” has improved since the elimination of slavery? In the last 60 years? In the last 30 years?

10. Is this due to “political correctness” imposed by Hollywood and the media? Or is it due to older more-prejudiced generations dying off and being replaced by their more-enlightened offspring? Or is it due to something else?

11. Or are we just kidding ourselves and another Holocaust is just as likely today as 80 years ago?

12. After all, hasn’t the Iran Nuclear Deal been denounced from its inception by Israel’s elected government (which is now a “unity government”) because, in addition to the lack of “anywhere anytime” inspections and the lack of any restraints on developing nuclear-capable missiles, it GUARANTEES nuclear weapons for Iran by 2030?

12. Is the current population (per www.cia.gov > World Factbook) 8.7 million in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “One Bomb State” (his seemingly-favorite moniker for Israel)??? And does Ayatollah Khamenei still lead Iranian crowds in chants of “Death to Israel” (as well as “Death to America”)? Hasn’t Iran become even more belligerent ever since signing the Iran Nuclear Deal?

13. Even though the excuse of proponents of the Iran Nuclear Deal is that by 2030, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will probably be gone – isn’t it true that his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (Supreme Leader of Iran 1979-1989) was also just as fixated on the destruction of Israel? So why should we think for a moment that even if current-Supreme-Leader Khamenei is gone by 2030, the next Supreme Leader of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship would be any different?

14. If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (or his successor) succeeds with his fervent wish to destroy Israel, how much responsibility will any American bear who votes for a Presidential candidate who advocates returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal? Or who fails to vote?

15. Can such responsibility for such a New Holocaust be excused by such an American voter claiming (A) Oops, sorry – I voted for the Presidential candidate because of other issues, or (B) Oops, sorry – I didn’t realize that returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal would lead to the destruction of Israel as its elected government (now a “unity government”) has repeatedly warned would happen ever since the Iran Nuclear Deal was announced?

16. In this regard, it should be noted that Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party (aka Nazi Party) NEVER RECEIVED MORE THAN 43.9% OF THE GERMAN POPULAR VOTE before his dictatorship was established. And that was in the last free election on 3/5/1933, WHICH WAS THREE YEARS BEFORE 3/7/1936 when Hitler re-militarized the Rhineland (Germany’s industrial heartland) to prevent France from continuing to militarily invade the German Rhineland every few years to plunder anything of value as partial payment for the reparations obligation imposed by the victors of World War I. Accordingly, couldn’t the 43.9% of the German voters who favored Hitler in 1933 have been entitled to claim in evading any responsibility for The Holocaust – “Oops, sorry – I voted for Hitler in order to halt the French military invasions and plundering that were occurring every few years"???


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C. Two Methods of “Making Dramatic Changes” in The Human Networks of America

Prof. Jackson concluded The Human Network by positing that “making changes in people’s networks is likely a losing battle” – pointing out that “large-scale social engineering has a history of disasters” and offering only a handful of modest suggestions.

HOWEVER, our First Short Quiz noted that there ARE AT LEAST TWO WAYS FOR MAKING DRAMATIC CHANGES and invited everyone to think of others. The two ways which were addressed in detail by our Second Short Quiz were –

(A) Our 6/3/2020 Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign entitled “Addressing the Cause of Racism (vs. a Mere Symptom)” which called for educating the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste in “magnet schools” whose excellence in terms of faculty, programs, facilities, etc., would cause affluent parents to want their children to attend even though their admittance and continued enrollment would be conditioned on the affluent parents and their child tutoring and mentoring a classmate from America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste. Details are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1925&sid=ea91fc108 ... 39a22e4502.

(B) President Obama’s 7/16/2015 HUD Regulation which appeared to be aimed at forcing suburbs to construct “affordable housing” (aka “low-income housing projects”). It was repealed by the Trump Administration on 8/7/2020.

OUR FIRST SHORT QUIZ INVITED EVERYONE TO TRY TO THINK OF ADDITIONAL WAYS.

SO IF YOU HAVE THOUGHT OF YET ANOTHER WAY, PLEASE POST IT IN THIS “SUGGESTED DISCUSSION OUTLINE” SECTION OF OUR BULLETIN BOARD SO THAT OTHER MEETING ATTENDEES WILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO THINK ABOUT IT PRIOR TO OUR MEETING.


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D. Method One – Our “Magnet Schools” Proposal

1. Our proposal was modelled on a PRIVATELY-FUNDED “magnet school” program that would have served 10 million inner-city children if A SINGLE ONE OF THE 21 top governmental officials starting with President Obama and 43 news-media superstars had been willing to “lift a single finger” vis-à-vis a lawsuit against 15 of the world’s largest financial institutions for which the “question presented for review” in the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the appeal was –

“Can state court judges order their decisions which they know are diametrically-opposed to well-settled law, not to be published or cited (a strategy labeled ‘the segregated toilet’ in correspondence with 51 inner-city clergy who represent the 10 million inner-city children who have been disclosed from the outset as the ‘real parties at interest’ in this law suit) in order to flush away the rights of the 10 million inner-city children without disturbing the rights of first-class American citizens -- without violating the ‘Equal Protection of the Law’ requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?”

2. “Magnet schools” are designed to have such superior faculty, programs, facilities, etc., etc., that suburban parents will still want their children to attend even though there is a high percentage of inner-city children.

3. Indeed, our 6/3/2020 e-mail campaign made the point that if it were implemented at the university level, Harvard could probably push well past the 50%-minority level which is usually the barrier beyond which affluent parents typically lose interest – with affluent parents still clamoring to have Harvard admit their children despite a MAJORITY of its student body being African-American children.

4. The “I Have A Dream”® Foundation oversaw in the 1990’s 178 programs in 51 American cities, each of which programs adopted an entire third-grade class of an inner-city school (or third-grade cohort in a public-housing project), providing each child with a tutor and a mentor through high school graduation with a guarantee of college tuition.

5. And once it was realized that the tutors and mentors had become de facto surrogate parents who could inspire the Dreamers to take advantage of their opportunity, those IHAD programs in the 1990’s were typically able to achieve 90% H.S. graduation - college matriculation rates despite the class just ahead and the class just behind each Dreamer class typically experiencing SINGLE-DIGIT high-school graduation rates.

6. Accordingly, our 6/3/2020 e-mail campaign to the two presidential candidates (details at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1925&sid=74efd41a2 ... eeb082d4d1) requests each to support the creation of Federal Magnet Schools to serve each of the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste. We recommended that the admission and continued enrollment by each child of affluent parents be conditioned upon the affluent parents and their child mentoring and tutoring a classmate from America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste. We recognized that to accommodate all of the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste, the Federal Magnet Schools would have to serve 60% of America’s entire K-12 student population.


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E. Method Two – President Obama’s 2015 H.U.D. Rule Aimed At The Suburbs

[The 101-page Adobe.pdf file containing the text of the 2015 HUD Rule is available via the internet from the U.S. government’s Federal Register
at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR- ... -17032.pdf.]

1. The first paragraph of the HUD Rule text says that the Fair Housing Act “in conjunction with other statutes, directs HUD's program participants to take significant actions to overcome historic patterns of segregation, achieve truly balanced and integrated living patterns, promote fair housing choice, and foster inclusive communities that are free from discrimination.”

2. The first paragraph of “The Executive Summary” (also located on the first page of the HUD rule text) says that the legislation “provided, through the duty to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH), for meaningful actions to be taken to overcome the legacy of segregation, unequal treatment, and historic lack of access to opportunity in housing” but HUD had theretofore only required participants in HUD programs to undertake an analysis of impediments to fair housing that was generally not submitted to or reviewed by HUD."

3. The new 2015 HUD Rule (quoting from the Summary of Major Provisions of the Rule on the second page of the HUD rule text) –

a. Replaces the AI with a more effective and standardized Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) through which program participants identify and evaluate fair housing issues, and factors contributing to fair housing issues (contributing factors);

b. Improves fair housing assessment, planning, and decisionmaking by HUD providing data that program participants must consider in their assessments of fair housing—designed to aid program participants in establishing fair housing goals to address these issues and contributing factors;

c. Incorporates, explicitly, fair housing planning into existing planning processes, the consolidated plan and PHA Plan, which, in turn, incorporate fair housing priorities and goals more effectively into housing, and community development decisionmaking;

d. Encourages and facilitates regional approaches to address fair housing issues, including collaboration across jurisdictions and PHAs; and

e. Provides an opportunity for the public, including individuals historically excluded because of characteristics protected by the Fair Housing Act, to provide input about fair housing issues, goals, priorities, and the most appropriate uses of HUD funds and other investments, through a requirement to conduct community participation as an integral part of the new assessment of fair housing process.

Following which the Summary of Major Provisions explained -

“This new approach is designed to empower program participants and to foster the diversity and strength of communities by overcoming historic patterns of segregation, reducing racial or ethnic concentrations of poverty, and responding to identified disproportionate housing needs consistent with the policies and protections of the Fair Housing Act. The rule also seeks to assist program participants in reducing disparities in housing choice and access to housing and opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability, thereby expanding economic opportunity and enhancing the quality of life.”

4. The 2015 HUD Regulations required in Sec. 5.162 (entitled “Review of AFH” – aka “Review of Assessment of Fair Housing”) – which appears on page 88 of the 101-page Adobe.pdf copy of the text of the regulations available for download at the beginning of this Section E – that the plan must be approved by HUD or the jurisdiction will not be permitted to participate in HUD programs?

5. Sec. 5.162 also provided that jurisdictions will not be permitted to participate in HUD programs if, at any point thereafter, they fail to comply with their plans that were approved by HUD.

6. Would any suburb be able to survive without H.U.D. programs, except perhaps a suburb occupied solely by billionaires who can pay cash for their mansions?

7. The Obama Administration did NOT have enough time to demonstrate how badly it would have treated recalcitrant suburbs because the HUD rule aimed at the suburbs (its 101-page text in Adobe-pdf format is available for download at the beginning of this Section E) was not promulgated until 7/16/2015 so the Obama Administration had only 18 months before leaving office to begin the lengthy proceedings against the suburbs (including the time for suburbs to formulate plans, for the required public hearings on those plans, etc., etc.).

[The Trump Administration suspended enforcement of the HUD rule upon taking office and formally revoked it on 8/7/2020.]

NEVERTHELESS, it would probably be fair to infer from the universal uproar from the suburbs that the Obama Administration was going to employ every strategy at its disposal (whether actually or only arguably at its disposal) to force the suburbs into submission.


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F. Comparing the “Carrot” of Our Proposal and the “Stick” of Pres. Obama’s HUD Rule

1. Our proposal comprises a “carrot” that would entice affluent parents to have their children attend school with children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste.

2. Our proposal is DESIGNED FOR SUCCESS because each child of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste would be tutored and mentored by a classmate of affluent parents and those parents.

3. Pres. Obama’s approach was NOT even designed to provide the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste with a decent education –

a. It included nothing that would have even resulted in children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste attending the same schools as children of their affluent neighbors.

b. Even if the under-caste children attended school in the same building, they could easily be “tracked” into “special ed” classes.

4. Why do you think Pres. Obama appeared to want to use a “stick” approach apparently designed to cause hate and discontent? And designed to bring about so little success, if any?