Is being nice to others that innovative? Or is it simply being human?

How the U.S. Constitution and legal immigration helped me see, and keep, things in perspective. As facilitated by people. Nice people.

If you read this you must have it pretty awesome already. A computer, electricity, Internet. You got things. You've been helped to get where you are. Others suffered for you too. And kept giving anyway.

Give back. How innovative can that be? Or is it simply the human thing to do?

The Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Great invention. Keep it safe for posterity. Others kept it for you. And for the world.

Litigation success and our way of life

What would you rather drive, a "Selden Automobile" or a Ford? or "the value of good litigation"...

Imagine the world without the success of this (mock) opening statement and the rest of the trial in a Court of Law one hundred and some years ago. Would you even be able to afford a vehicle?

(This below is an Assignment in the Creighton University School of Law Trial Practice course, by Adrian S. Petrescu, completed and delivered in front of a mock trial jury, on February 10, 2016)

In the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan

George Selden,                           )           CI_NNNNNN_--1904

       Petitioner,                            )

v.                                                 )           OPENING STATEMENT

                                                    )           OF RESPONDENT

Henry Ford,                                )

       Respondent.                         )

Mr. Henry Ford grew up on a farm. He had two brothers and a sister. His parents owned the farm and needed Mr. Ford's and his siblings' help on the farm ever since he (and they, or each of them) could stand and talk. It is the way farms have been run during those times in the 1870s. Mr. Ford took care of horses, and hooked up the ploughs and all other farm machinery to horses and as he grew up he worked the land. He would plough the land, seed it, and harvest it. Then he'll take the grain to the mill. The land of the Fords was large enough for them to build their own mill. Little by little Mr. Ford took a liking of all the machines he was working with. He started fixing them when they broke and he started improving on them to make them more resilient and more productive. When the first steam tractors came in, Mr. Ford's father acquired one right away. It was Mr. Ford who was in charge with the operating and maintenance of the family's Case steam tractor they acquired and used on the farm.

Little by little Mr. Ford got more and more interested in tweaking with machinery. In early 1894, at the age of 31, Mr. Ford was working as a mechanic in Mr. Thomas Edison's Edison Illuminating Company. He started in 1894 to build his quadra-cycle in his mother's summer kitchen. He was so excited about the prospect of his four-wheeled cycle working with a "gasolene powered engine" that he forgot to calculate in advance how was he going to get the quadri-cycle out of the kitchen once it was completed… Mr. Ford completed the quadri-cycle in 1896.

1896 Quadri-cycle completed, in Mr. Ford's mother's summer kitchen

He did have to take down the wall, but he did get the quadri-cycle out of the kitchen eventually.

1896 Quadri-cycle completed

Mr. Ford over time moved to improve significantly on his original quadri-cycle. He designed a vehicle that was more commercially feasible. He manufactured a prototype of that other vehicle. He further went to Cleveland and Chicago and studied thoroughly the most advanced hog slaughterhouses. He inferred from studying how they take a hog apart into pieces in the shortest period of time possible that he can do the same in reverse when building an automobile. That he can build an automobile just as a "reversed slaughterhouse," one that builds something, instead of dismantling something.

Mr. Ford started Ford Motor Company three times until it got to be successful. The company is successful because Mr. Ford employs skilled workers, trains them, and pays them twice as much as anyone else in the business of making automobiles. Because Mr. Ford makes automobiles on an assembly line, he can make many of them faster than anyone else in the business of making automobiles. And he can sell them cheaper, including to his own workers, who can afford them at the price Mr. Ford sells them and with the wages the workers are paid.

You heard from Mr. Selden's attorney, Mr. Smith, that Mr. Selden owns the U.S. patent no. 549,160 for a Road-Engine (the 160 patent).

U.S. Patent No. 549, 160, issued Nov. 5, 1895

Mr. Selden is an attorney. He went to Law School at Yale University. Mr. Selden's father was an attorney. While Mr. Ford was tinkering with machinery in his childhood, Mr. Selden was learning how to better use words.

At no time before Mr. Ford completed his quadri-cycle, or before he studied the hog slaughterhouses to apply that know-how to building automobiles, did Mr. Ford get to know Mr. Selden, or did Mr. Ford get to see or read Mr. Selden's 160 patent.

You heard that patent law is very similar with real estate law and the law of trespass. That infringing on a patent is the same as stepping onto someone else's land or entering into their house without the owner permission. You heard and you will hear that Mr. Ford trespassed onto Mr. Selden's property that is Mr. Selden's 160 patent.

At no time did Mr. Ford see an automobile that was built by Mr. Selden, either before Mr. Ford completed his quadri-cycle or before Mr. Ford designed and completed the Ford automobile that was assembled at the Mack Avenue plant in July 1903.

Mr. Ford didn't ever see an automobile built by Mr. Selden because there has never been any automobile ever built by Mr. Selden. Mr. Ford drove here today in an automobile that his company built.

Mr. Selden doesn't build automobiles. He doesn't employ workers to build automobiles. Nobody has ever driven in a Selden road-engine. Nobody has ever fed his family with money that Mr. Selden paid him for building a Selden automobile. Mr. Selden is an attorney. He is not an automobile maker. Mr. Selden sells the rights to his patent to others who build automobiles. Those others, who make and sell their own automobiles, licensed by Mr. Selden, make automobiles that cost up to three to four times more than Mr. Ford's automobiles.

You heard that Mr. Ford trespassed onto Mr. Selden't property by manufacturing and selling an automobile without a license from Mr. Selden.

In fact, Mr. Ford went to see Mr. Selden to ask if Mr. Ford could license the 160 patent from Mr. Selden for Mr. Ford's automobiles, even though Mr. Ford did not inspire himself in any way from Mr. Selden's piece of paper filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Mr. Selden refused to license the 160 patent to Mr. Ford. Seemingly, Mr. Selden may have feared that Mr. Ford was producing too many automobiles and selling them at too low of a price. Mr. Ford had tried his best to get Mr. Selden to license him the 160 patent and Mr. Selden refused to do so. Mr. Ford is not an attorney. He is a builder of automobiles. Mr. Ford certainly didn't want to break the law. But nor does Mr. Ford find that he broke the law at all. He invented his automobile without any inspiration from Mr. Selden. Meanwhile, Mr. Selden doesn't build automobiles but just wrote about them and then is selling the rights to said writing, the 160 patent, to unsuspecting automobile makers who build automobiles.

Mr. Ford stands tall on his own property. He built his property himself. He just forgot to go to Washington D.C. to ask for a slip recognizing his rights to his own built property. When he finally went to get that slip, Mr. Selden was already there saying that he, Mr. Selden, had all the slips taken from the government already, and there were no more slips available for, or to be had by, Mr. Ford. Mr. Ford doesn't trespass on anyone else's property. That is so because Mr. Selden does not own any property. He doesn't have the land, nor did he build a house on land that he doesn't have. All he got was a slip from the government that some or any land that others will own and use belongs to Mr. Selden.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, Mr. Ford stands in front of you today and asks for your help to allow him to continue to do what he likes to do, to build automobiles and sell them at affordable prices to everyone, including and most importantly to his own workers. Supporting Mr. Ford here is going to send a strong message to people like Mr. Selden, and an even stronger message to people who will follow in Mr. Ford's shoes, those who build things and create jobs and make those jobs pay as much as business sense allows, so that the products made and sold improve the lives of all the workers who make them. We thank you for your time.

Ford Motor Car, 1903: Advertising

(note reference to assumption of responsibility regarding alleged infringement of the Selden patent)

What kind of law will you practice?;)

It took me some thirty years to get to being in law school. It is never too late to follow a dream. Many ask me these days "what kind of law will you practice?" just as I've asked over the years all of my many students whom I recommended for law school.

I will practice good, better, the best law!

Law School teaches you what is the law.

My Ph.D. in Public Policy previously taught me how to assess best what the law should be. And how, and how feasible is it, to get there.

The two views are certainly not the same. Not only that, but they often clash quite a lot.

Once the law was the law before Standing Bear v. Crook. Now it is much much different. Standing Bear was a person all along before the law "evolved" and recognized that Standing Bear was a person in front of the law. That alone, however, does not revert for the modern Ponca the implications of Johnson v. McIntosh, does it?:(

Once the law was the law before Hernandez v. Texas. Now it is that no longer. The accused had the right to a jury of his true peers all along before the Warren U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Hernandez who were truly his peers. The law did evolve then and there too.

The law was once the law before Loving v. Virginia. The Lovings had the right to marry before the law "evolved" and let them.

The law was once the law before Brown v. Board. Any black person had the right to go to school in the same schools before the law "evolved" to allow it. As my friend answers that "what race are you?" question: "I am human!" Of course!

The law evolves slowly and only in small increments. But overall it evolves toward natural law all the time.

I want to practice tomorrow's law. Tomorrow's law is natural--"always has been like that"--law. I want to practice good, better, the best law.

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D.
InnovationTrek
ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu
ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Innovation ideas in Government for earning exponential return?

What technologies could government invest in to earn an exponential return?

(thank you to Noah Reandeau for his question from back in 2008)

As Noah rightly pointed out, it is hard to quantify a return of government "investment". To just mildly qualify some assumption, while it is true and demonstrably so (thus even quantifiable) that every dollar invested in early childhood education or preventive medicine offers an exponential return, the return is in money saved, and not necessarily _earned_ by governments.

Governments however do not ever save money, they just _may_ collect "less" tax revenue, thus giving tax payers the chance to pay "less" taxes for (presumably) the same or better government services. The last part gets so fuzzy, that it is rarely if ever possible to assign weights to factors having determined the changes in taxation policies or budget priorities alone, so forget about tracing back "savings" as ROIs.

Shifting money spent on prisons and policing and welfare to spending it on quality of life improvement projects becomes the return on investment in early childhood education Noah, the original question author, seemed to be suggesting.

The same with preventive medicine. Healthy people make a happy and productive workforce. People advance in careers, have increased incomes which get taxed more, while also making employers better profits/profit margins which again get taxed more, but which also allow for further investments and thus sustained economic growth, and the government again taxes more...

It's been said for two decades now that Internet (from back in the dial-up era) was one of these areas of exponential return on government investment. Now the hype is all broadband in rural areas. I may agree and disagree with both. I disagree because wires or fiber optic do not change anything, services available over the medium do. So if broadband in rural areas improves the equity of access to education/knowledge or (preventive) health care of rural residents, then the technology would qualify under a positive for your question. Yet, if we stop at deployment of fiber alone and do not match said investment with an even larger one in making new targeted services available to beneficiaries, that investment in broadband alone becomes almost meaningless in terms of your question (exponential government ROI) [2015 update: we thankfully see that happening at mass level, but it is mostly from private initiative of hospitals, HMOs etc.]

The problem, as always and as you know better than I do, is that often government officials are usually naturally reluctant to tackle long term policies or problems, as on those it is always hard to see immediate results while in office or seeking reelection. Federally sponsored R&D in pharmaceuticals has been among those you ask about for years now, yet depending again whom you ask. Many military technologies later declassified and adapted to civilian use are among those too. We both read and write over the grand-grandchild of a former DARPA network turned the Internet, with huge exponential government ROIs, which have even enabled President Clinton to balance the budget during the .com bubble of the late '90s. How more quantifiable than that can we conceive something to be? Before that satellite tracking technology, again civilian disseminated in the meantime (as almost everyone has a GPS in their pocket/car these days--those firms get taxed), and did I say airplanes? For today,bioengineering, human genome research etc. the list is too long... I believe it is much easier to quantify ROIs on the latter cases, past, present, or future (when we find them)... Just my two cents, Adrian"

[note: I wonder if this is a good place where one can introduce personnel hiring practices and the second story with my Bulgarian friend, namely the one whereby his expert proposed strategies for a personnel and administration position dealing with working environment and health and welfare did not get him the position, but the person getting the position may have gotten it due to being an internal hire, even in spite of the other "equitable hiring distribution" policies of the hiring institution.  Would said story qualify as addressing one of the many factors that may lead to high ROI projects/problems not being tackled well/often enough? What is the private/public sector variance on this likelihood, if there is any?]

(C) Adrian S. Petrescu, 2008-2015

The Art of Innovation

A few pages from a great book by a good friend of mine… Enjoy…

What I wish for Christmas...

What I want for Christmas…

 

1.      more wisdom in the world, large and small, surrounding us, so that…

 

1.1.         … national leaders can listen to each other, to expert constructive critics, and to the people they represent in their decision making,

1.2.         … organizational leaders recognize and value human capital and promote true creativity and innovation conducive environments,

1.3.         … scientific icons and knowledge self-proclaimed gurus recognize their own and everyone's ignorance and take honest steps to proactively seek production and/or utilization of new knowledge,

1.4.         … religious leaders stay truthful to their own preaching and act in ways that truly promote mutual understanding and respect among everyone,

1.5.         … political leaders stay truthful to their role of representing those who entrusted them with their vote and ultimately their lives,

1.6.         … business leaders stay honest and dedicated to both customers (or potential future customers) and shareholders alike, and not just to self-interest,

1.7.         … people are more appreciative of each other and manage thus to stay happy and to induce happiness in those around them by simply sharing a smile, a listen, and a good word whenever, wherever, and with whomever

 

2.      less censorship, direct and indirect, anywhere and everywhere, and by anybody and everybody,

3.      less surveillance anywhere and everywhere,

4.      less waste anywhere, everywhere, and by everybody, including much less waste of human capital by sub-optimal resources allocation in human capital markets,

5.      more compassion and mutual respect anywhere, everywhere and by anybody and everybody,

6.      more art and culture and less consumerism,

7.      more empathy and understanding and less ordering and imposing,

8.      more self-realization objectives achieved by everyone everywhere and less pride in "great" purchases supposedly making us look "better,"

9.      more time to simply take pictures of nature and smile, and more fridge magnets of places we've visited,

10.   much more application of Carnot's views in thermodynamics to the entire world, so that we strive as a global society to achieve "close-to-Carnot-ideal-efficiencies" in everything we do, from love and affection, through education, to acting as economic, social, political and cultural actors.

 

Adrian S. Petrescu, December 2014

Epistemologic Question asked of Colleagues Economists, and Three Proposals in European Parliament hosted Committee of the Regions Plenary

European Commission DG ECFIN Annual Research Conference 2010--nice part of Speech by Commissioner Olli Rehn, Brussels, European Commission, November 22, 2010

European Parliament hosted Committee of the Regions Plenary, 2010--modest question, Brussels, October 5, 2010