Accountability...................

 

Without a level of responsibility to others, complacency tends to creep in more quickly.

-Ted Lamade, from this post

Responsibility and accountability - oh, no......

 

If Congress wants to reclaim the power of the purse it so proudly declares its own, it must take its responsibilities more seriously. Americans are right to be upset at its routine failure to perform its constitutional duties. Appropriating money is only half the job. Anyone can swipe a credit card, but ensuring that the money is spent properly is the inescapable responsibility that comes with the power to spend. You can’t have one without the other. If Congress wants control over the purse strings, it has to own the duty of accountability that comes with it.

-Casey Burgat

accountable versus responsible.....

 

“The quality of a decision increases directly proportional to the degree to which the person is responsible.

If I tell you to do something, you’re accountable but not responsible. Following a process makes you accountable, not responsible. Using judgment to opt out of the process makes you responsible. Completing assigned homework makes you accountable. Seeking out additional resources to deepen your understanding makes you responsible. Remembering your partner’s birthday makes you accountable. Consistently finding ways to make them feel appreciated makes you responsible.

Focusing on accountability does little to improve the quality of decisions. Embracing responsibility does.”

-from this Farnum Street post

The wonder of accounting..............

 Washington DC continues to spend much more than it gets in revenue.  In the Calendar Year of 2023, the federal government spent $6.3 trillion, but only collected $4.5 trillion in taxes.  This $1.8 trillion gap drove the national debt to $34 trillion in December 2023.  And it is only going higher.

One problem with these budget numbers is that government accountants, rightly or wrongly, lowered spending in 2023 by about $300 billion after the Supreme Court struck down a large part of President Biden’s proposal to forgive student loans.  That legal decision didn’t change the government’s cash flow last year in any significant way, but it did let the Department of Education “write up” the value of its loan portfolio by about $300 billion.  This, they counted as “negative spending,” which then reduced the official budget deficit.  So, while the reported deficit in 2023 was $1.8 trillion, the Treasury needed to borrow more than $2 trillion to make ends meet.

The high levels of borrowing are causing some investors to fear some sort of imminent and unprecedented snowballing of federal debt.  Continual borrowing will lead to skyrocketing interest rates (and higher interest payments), which will lead to severe problems in the financial system.

-as extracted from here

Accountability and the impartial other............

 Those principles have been taken as defining the field of "natural law," for the reason that their validity depends only on the idea of negotiation itself and not on the circumstances of the one who embarks on it.

      Something like this was surely at the back of Adam Smith's mind when, in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he argued for the "impartial spectator" as the true judge of our moral duties.  When asking myself what should I do, I entertain the thought of what another would think of my action when observing it with a disinterested eye.  If, as I suggest, morality is rooted in the practice of accountability between self-conscious agents, this is exactly what we should expect.  The impartial other sets the standard that we all must meet.

-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

One at a time...............................

   One of the most tempting questions to ask when we first learn the QBQ is "What can we do?"  The problem is "we" don't change.  Teams, departments, and organizations don't change.  People change, one at a time, through their own choices.

    I'm a firm believer in the team concept, but if we're not careful, we can end up substituting the language of teams ("we" and "us") for the language of personal accountability. . . .

     Personal accountability is not about changing others.  It's about making a difference by changing ourselves.

     Personal accountability.  The power of one.

-John G. Miller, QBQ!:  The Question Behind The Question

Fun with statistics.................

That vertical line at the end of the chart represents the money supply - a 450% increase.  Scary? Inflationary?  Maybe, but not so fast.  Morgan Housel weighs in with some context:

Money supply has increased from $4 trillion a year ago to $18 trillion today.

A 450% increase!

That’s something you might see in a third-world country with hyperinflation.

But before you dump life savings into gold and build a bunker, here’s the punchline: The huge majority of the increase you’re seeing in this chart is not money printing or new money creation.

It’s an accounting rule change. . . .

Of the $14 trillion increase in M1, $11.2 trillion (80%) came from an accounting rule change that shifted money from savings accounts to checking accounts.

Face to face............................

In human relations, risk avoidance means the avoidance of accountability, the refusal to stand judged in another’s eyes, the refusal to come face to face with another person, to give oneself in whatever measure to him or her, and so to run the risk of rejection. Accountability is not something we should avoid; it is something we need to learn. Without it we can never acquire either the capacity to love or the virtue of justice. Other people will remain for us merely complex devices, to be negotiated in the way that animals are negotiated, for our own advantage and without opening the possibility of mutual judgment. Justice is the ability to see the other as having a claim on you, as being a free subject just as you are, and as demanding your accountability. To acquire this virtue you must learn the habit of face-to-face encounters, in which you solicit the other’s consent and cooperation rather than imposing your will. The retreat behind the screen is a way of retaining control over the encounter, while minimizing the need to acknowledge the other’s point of view. It involves setting your will outside yourself, as a feature of virtual reality, while not risking it as it must be risked, if others are truly to be encountered. To encounter another person in his freedom is to acknowledge his sovereignty and his right: it is to recognize that the developing situation is no longer within your exclusive control, but that you are caught up by it, made real and accountable in the other’s eyes by the same considerations that make him real and accountable in yours.

-Roger Scruton, from this New Atlantis essay, Hiding Behind The Screen

Does this strike you as ironic...................?

Every time Democrats look at a problem, they think of a program. And while those programs often point the way forward, they need to focus their energy on convincing the middle class that they share their values more than just their economic interests. There is more to voters than their wallets. To do that, Democrats need to prove to them that they know the difference between right and wrong, and that begins with owning the terms accountability and responsibility. No matter how privileged, Democrats need to be the ones demanding that those who fall short be made to answer for their own decisions. Every one of us should have to live by the same moral and ethical codes. The nation’s elite shouldn’t have any special license to take the easy way out.


-Rahm Emanuel, as extracted from here


via

Skin in the game..........................

Besides antifragility, another theme Nassim Taleb has been stressing of late is "skin in the game": the idea that people who face the consequences of their actions are more likely both to learn and to behave responsibly, than people who are shielded from such consequences.


Of course, Taleb is smart enough and educated enough to know that this is not an entirely new idea, and that he is expanding upon the intimations of earlier thinkers here. Even so, it was interesting to see Michael Oakeshott sound this motif so clearly in "Rational Conduct":

"And politics is a field of activity peculiarly subject to the lure of this 'rational' ideal. If you start by being merely 'intelligent' about a boiler or an electrical generator you are likely to be pulled up short by an explosion: but in politics all that happens is war and chaos, which you do not immediately connect with your error."


Gene Callahan, as excerpted from here

On bean counting..................

..............................................Seth Godin asks a good question:

In a competitive environment, the key question is: What would happen if we did a little better? 

full post here

I don't even know where to begin...............

"Honest accounting is worth a lot in the long-run, even if the market won’t pay up for it in the short-run."
-David Merkel, as excerpted from here

Starting the day........................

"Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?"
-as excerpted from here.
thanks DK

It's "let's pick on the accountants" day...

first seven cartoons from here

Woe the economist....................................

quote via
cartoon via