Technology Can’t Substitute for Developing Human Potential

Image via Shutterstock

I attended the 2016 edition of the New Cities Summit last week. New Cities has a lot of tech firms involved, so no surprise this year’s focus was “the age of urban tech.”

Interestingly, a lot of the people there were skeptical of technology. Not necessarily that it wouldn’t work or couldn’t deliver the things that people say will. But rather that the human and other aspects of the city can easily get flattened or objectified by tech.

For example, I participated in a roundtable discussion about the human centered smart city. Many people seemed to think that was an oxymoron.

For example, we could think of using tech to fight obesity in urban populations. We’d measure the success of this in obesity rates.

But this all but excludes the people themselves as humans from the equation. Rather than focusing on building people’s capacities as human beings, instead this could use technology, regulation, “nudges,” to de facto manipulate people’s behaviors without having to change or develop them as people. This is technology as a form of social control.

Aristotle taught that the goal of life was human flourishing, which involved a person cultivating his virtues or excellencies.

If I manage to lose weight because of tech, does that contribute to my flourishing as a human being and developing my potential?  In some sense yes. I’m perhaps better of healthy than unhealthy.

To the extent that I’m using a tool that enhances the development of my capabilities, perhaps I’m even developing virtue. A barbell is a tool that leverages but doesn’t replace my workout.  Some forms of digital technology would certainly be in this mold.

But a lot of what we think of as urban tech doesn’t fall into this.  An example might be a smart fridge that monitors my food and makes decisions to substitute lower calorie or healthier items for me.

This is good in a sense, but in this case it is more substituting for the effort of personal change or struggle. And it doesn’t care about me as a human being apart from my “data”.

I see no reason why we can’t use technology as a tool. But to the extent that we believe we can solve human problems through technical solutions instead of human ones, we are treading into potentially dangerous territory.

We can’t lose sight of developing the human potentialities of ourselves and our neighbors.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/30/technology-cant-substitute-for-developing-human-potential/

Ed Glaeser on America’s Jobs Crisis

Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser is also a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Insitute who gives our annual James Q. Wilson lecture. This year’s talk was on the “End of Work.”

Glaeser agrees that we have a jobs crisis in America, with a large number of people disconnected from work.  He sees this as a much more critical problem than income stagnation, since long term unemployment has much greater personal and social consequences. While he doesn’t claim to have the answers, he suggests we need to paying people to work instead of not to work, and stop penalizing lower income people if they do work or increase their wages.

This is talk is a tour-de-force and is highly recommended. The lecture itself is about 30 minutes.

If the embedded video doesn’t display for you, click over to watch on You Tube.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/29/ed-glaeser-on-americas-jobs-crisis/

Smaller Opera Companies Do Marketing Right

On Site Opera Production of Marcos Portugal’s “Marriage of Figaro”

My post on opera’s missing audience development gene ended up getting some viral pickup. One particularly interesting follow-up resulted.

I got a card in the mail from a group I’d never heard of before called On Site Opera. They are one of the many smaller companies in the city that do smaller, more innovative productions.

In their case, they produce lesser known works in various venues that they source around the city that they feel are particularly appropriate, then embed the audience into the performance. Hence the “on site”.

They are doing a three year series of alternative settings of Beaumarchais’ famous trilogy of plays. This year was a version of the Marriage of Figaro by Marcos Portugal, staged in a West Village townhouse that served as Count Almaviva’s manor.

They sent me a card inviting me to the event, along with a cocktail reception beforehand.  There was even a nice handwritten note from the General Director on the back.

Aaron, are you saying that they gave you free stuff and now you’re writing about them?  Yes, yes I am.

I want to point out the pretty savvy marketing that went into this. First, reciprocity is one of the key principles of persuasion, hence the idea that you have to “give to get.” They obviously understand. That’s one reasons book publishers give free review copies to people, and critics often are able to attend performances for free. So far, this was just standard operating procedure (in case you didn’t know).

But they also clearly saw that my original piece hit a nerve, and saw an opportunity to both promote themselves and to try to create a loyal patron in the form of Your Truly.

Obviously being small gives them the ability to do things that big companies can’t. But I want to highlight some things about their superior marketing techniques.

One comment left on another site about my piece was from someone who said she donated thousands of dollars per year to a particular opera company, but didn’t feel appreciated. She noted that this company insisted on scanning her donor card every time she used their patron lounge.

This is where the data driven marketing approach breaks down. Obviously this company was trying to collect data on engagement. The problem is, when you insist on scanning someone’s member card, you’re broadcasting at maximum volume the message that “We don’t know who you are.”

For the average guy like me, I don’t expect major organizations to personally know me, but you’d think even the biggest companies would treat people who donate thousands of dollars per year like a name not a number. (Front line personnel at major opera companies often actually pull this off. The bartenders at the Met and Lyric do a good job of recognizing regular attendees, for example).

At On Site, however, when I got there I was greeted by name by someone who had never seen me before. I happened to catch a glimpse of the papers she was holding. It not only had a list of names, but thumbnail pictures of the people. They must have googled me up and downloaded a pic, along with everybody else too.

Little things like this make an impression.

The General Director also multiple times mentioned that the show had sold out in three hours. My date asked why he did this. It was no accident. Another key principle of persuasion is scarcity. We want things that are perceived as scarce. It’s another bit of evidence that they know how to hit the levers of persuasion.

Obviously these guys have no trouble selling tickets. I think a number of these smaller companies are so popular it’s hard to get tickets. But they aren’t resting on their laurels and are still pedaling hard to get the word out.

In my original post I talked about how Tony Hsieh had set out to create a “WOW” experience at Zappos, by doing things like giving out surprise complimentary upgrades to overnight shipping.

Well, On Site Opera created a WOW experience for me – they even called the next day to see how I liked it. Am I likely to buy tickets in the future? You bet – if I can get them.

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the opera was great too. Their approach is highly intimate settings. There were only 50 people there. As we walked in, the performers where mingling and greeting us in character. The setting of this elaborately decorated townhouse (which is an event space at 632 Hudson where I could definitely imagine hosting a party) was perfect. The audience got to be involved at points, such as when they distributed small cups of madeira to toast Figaro and Susanna.

Listening to an opera in a small room gives a completely different, and revelatory experience. It’s sort of like hearing chamber music in an actual salon after only having experienced it in an auditorium before.

The plot was obviously familiar, though there was a sense of dislocation when expecting a Mozart aria and hearing something else entirely.

This must have been quite an effort to pull off. It’s the North American premier of the opera, so none of the performers knew the parts already. Somebody had to translate it into English, and re-orchestrate it for an eight piece ensemble. That in addition to the ordinary business of putting on a production.

For more details on the music, you can also read reviews in the Times and Parterre Box.

This performance also highlighted for me another advantage of New York City. It was sponsored by the Portuguese consulate, and the Consul General of Portugal was there. Foreign countries are always interested in promoting their culture abroad, and NYC is the location of choice in the US.  The vast number of foreign missions here is a source of funds most cities’ cultural institutions can’t easily access. It’s another example of how the rich get richer.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/27/smaller-opera-companies-do-marketing-right/

Vote For Brexit Explodes the Myth of the Global City-State

Image via Shutterstock

The UK has voted to leave the European Union.

The Brexit campaign was revealing because it was based on the exact opposite of the urban triumphalist vision that so often dominates the discourse.

Globalization doesn’t respect borders we’re told. Cities, not provinces or nation-states, are the real actors in the global economy.  Some have fantasized about the Singapore model of the city-state as ideal.  Virtually all mayors express great dissatisfaction about their national governance arrangements. Benjamin Barber even wrote that mayors should rule the world.

The ultimate vision of this would be an independent, polyglot London, arguably the world’s most truly global city, bestriding the global economy like a colossus.

Yet most of the London establishment – and 60% of Londoners themselves in the vote – strongly supported the Remain option. They warned of disaster for London if it lost access to the EU single market.

This more or less demolishes the arguments for the city-state. If London, the world’s ultimately global city, can’t thrive without access to a continental scale de facto state in the EU, there’s little prospect anyone else can either.

It’s telling that so many city leaders hate their state or national governments, but love supra-national governments like the EU.  The shows that their real desire isn’t to go it alone in the marketplace, but to create replacement governance structures that are more amenable to their way of thinking, that constitutionally enshrine their preferences, and are insulated from democratic accountability.

What’s more, if London suffers because it loses access to the single market, it shows that borders to matter to globalization, and that states and quasi-states like the EU very much can exert control on global flows. They are not simply helpless in the face of the global marketplace.

Of course when I say these arguments are destroyed, I only mean that the people advancing them don’t really believe them themselves. We will find out in a real life test to what extent those ideas are actually valid. Will London’s unparalleled global orientation, talent concentrations, unique and specialized functions enable it to thrive outside the EU? Or will it take a permanent hit? (This assumes, of course, that Brexit actually does happen).

If London does actually continue thriving in the long term, then that would actually back up the city-state idea to some extent, as London will have gone from being part of a gigantic state to a much smaller one. That might suggest that a further devolution to a greater London city-state might be viable after all, if highly unlikely.

But if London can’t recover from the inevitable turbulence around Brexit, this would show that not only do cities need to be part of states, they need to be part of very large and powerful ones.

If you think about it, history suggests that is the case to some extent. London is London because it was the capital of the British Empire. Dittos for Paris and Moscow, both imperial capitals. New York isn’t New York just because of its own characteristics – though those do play a role – but because it is the most important city in the world’s most important country. Shanghai and Beijing are coming on strong because they are in China.

In any event, the city-state theory is going to get something of a trial run, if an imperfect one. Ironically, that real life trial will come over the objections of the city itself, and much of the urbanist class who otherwise preach urban independence.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/24/vote-for-brexit-explodes-the-myth-of-the-global-city-state/

Chicago’s Advantages

“Chicago sunrise 1” by Daniel Schwen – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

When I wrote that Chicago is the duck-billed platypus of American cities, I noted that there were a lot things about Chicago that were unique – both good and bad – putting it in a class of its own and making it hard to compare Chicago with other cities.

Today I want to put together a starter list of some of the positive distinguishing factors about Chicago. This doesn’t include things like a downtown construction boom because lots of places have one of those. If Chicago’s boom is big, well, it’s a big city. I only want to put something on the list if it is truly distinguishing, or perhaps something limited to only one or two other places.

I’ll create a starter list. Feel free to share yours in the comments, and if I see any ones I agree make the cut, I’ll promote them to the home page.

• Cheap – least expensive major urban center in America. A middle management level couple can afford a very nice condo in Chicago.
• Only globally important financial exchange in America outside NYC (the CME Group)
• Only full slate of globally renowned cultural institutions outside NYC
• Only large scale, transit oriented central business district outside NYC – and with a skyline to match
• Fantastic architecture
• Not only does Chicago have great skyline, it’s got great vistas of the skyline even from within the city (something missing in NYC inside Manhattan)
• It’s the alley capital of America
• Improv capital of the world, and one of only three major training locations for comedy in the US (with NYC and LA)
• Incredible lakefront park system
• Most car friendly urban big city in America (traffic is bad, but much of housing stock comes with a parking spot, and there are plenty of stores you can drive to – great for families)

There are probably some things like food and music scene were you can rate Chicago as in a league above most cities, but it’s tougher to make that case since you can get great food everywhere now, etc.

Share your thoughts in the comments because I don’t want to leave anything out.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/21/chicagos-advantages/

George Will Fantasizes About President Mitch Daniels

Mitch Daniels (left) visiting the Indiana National Guard (photo via Indiana National Guard Flickr)

George Will said, “Purdue has the president the nation needs” in his column last week.

Purdue’s president is former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who flirted with running for the Republican nomination in 2012 before opting out.

It’s worth revisiting Daniels 2012 consideration of a run to see that his policy focus would not have played this cycle, though his political style held key lessons Republicans failed to learn.

Daniels entire focus in 2012 was on the problem of the federal debt – “the new red menace” as he called it. Daniels was concerned that soaring debt threatened the financial future of the younger generations.  He even caught a lot of flack for saying social issues should be tabled in order to focus on the country’s fiscal future.

Today the debt is at $19.3 trillion. But no one seems to care. Hillary Clinton doesn’t care about the debt. Trump talks about it, but clearly it’s nowhere near the center of his agenda or appeal.

The debt has more or less disappeared as a motivating issue in national politics – at least temporarily in an era of ridiculously low (or even negative) interest rates.

Fundamentally, the Daniels policy agenda, whatever its merits, would have been dead on arrival in 2016.

Daniels got two things very right politically, however. Things Republicans paid a high price for missing.

The first is the downgrading of traditional family-values social issues. Trump has said that he’s pro-life, etc. But nobody is fooled. Trump is a big city social liberal.

In fact, Trump arguably has a better record on supporting gay rights than Hillary Clinton. For example, someone recently dug up a 2000 Donald Trump interview in the Advocate where he said:

I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. It would be simple. It would be straightforward. We don’t need to rewrite the laws currently on the books, although I do think we need to address hate-crimes legislation. But amending the Civil Rights Act would grant the same protection to gay people that we give to other Americans — it’s only fair.

Could anybody have imagined Republicans nominating someone who said this back in 2012?

While Daniels may have been early in terms of Republican politics, he saw that social issues were losing their potency and were ready to be downgraded.

The second item is not related to his 2012 flirtations directly. But it spoke to his appeal as governor that likely would have carried through to any presidential run. Daniels always made sure to maintain his relatability to the working class.

Mitch Daniels is a multi-millionaire who built himself a very nice home in Carmel, Indiana. But he never retreated into an upper middle class/wealthy bubble.

While running for governor, he made a point to visit every single county in the state three times, riding around in an RV. Instead of staying in hotels, he made a practice of sleeping in the homes of average Hoosier families. He made a point of eating pork tenderloin sandwiches (Indiana’s signature food) wherever he went. As governor traveling the state, he frequently rode around on his Harley Davidson. He was of course a noted fiscal conservative, who publicized stories of his frugal ways with state government they way that Bill Clinton (another politician who never lost his touch with the common man) used to make sure people saw him eating McDonald’s.

The end result was that Daniels gained grudging respect from many Democrats, and was very popular with both upper middle class Republicans and the rank and file working class.

Donald Trump used both of these vectors, the dumping of traditional social values issues and a strong connection to the working class, to great effect.  George Will may love Mitch Daniels, but he himself clearly failed to appreciate those key lessons that Daniels had to teach.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/19/george-will-fantasizes-about-president-mitch-daniels/

How Scott Adams Used His Insights on Winning to Create Dilbert and Predict the Rise of Trump

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
by Scott Adams

Like most folks I always thought of Scott Adams as a cartoonist.  He created the iconic comic strip Dilbert, an important cultural lodestone to my generation of corporate tech people.

What I didn’t know what that he would also be the most prescient political pundit of the 2016 election cycle.

I think it’s fair to say that the Donald Trump phenomenon caught almost everyone unawares. But a few people saw it coming. One of them was Adams, who on August 5th of last year wrote, “I’m watching the Donald Trump campaign for president with the same amount of amusement as everyone else. The only difference is that I think he has a legitimate shot at becoming president. You’ll choke when I tell you why, because you’ll agree.”

Adams has personally disavowed Trump and endorsed Hillary Clinton (for his own protection).  He’s still predicting Trump in a landslide.

Amongst the people who called Trump in advance, Adams is distinguished by going into great detail about why Trump is so effective. He calls Trump a “master persuader” and has a huge master persuader index of blog posts in which he breaks down point by point what Trump is doing.  He says that “Trump’s successful use of persuasion will rewrite your entire understanding of reality.”

When someone is highly successful, maybe we might want to understand what he’s doing. This applies to Trump (even if you want to stop him), but in this case I want to look at Adams himself, a serial failed entrepreneur who managed to rise from corporate middle management to wealthy cartoonist plus also correctly called out what was going on with Trump.

Adams didn’t come to the pundit business by chance. He had already been looking for ways to market his insights, one of which was his memoir/self-improvement book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

I gave it a read to see what lessons it might hold, and there are some interesting ones. His “book tease” is:

Goals are for losers. Your mind isn’t magic. It’s a moist computer you can program. The most important metric to track is your personal energy. Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. Happiness is health plus freedom. Luck can be managed, sort of. Conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way). Fitness is the lever that moves the world. Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing.

I want to briefly talk about three things from the book that are particularly useful: systems vs. goals, the “talent stack” concept, and the key early tell for whether something will be successful.

Have Systems, Not Goals or “Passion”

One of the biggest pieces of advice you often hear is to set goals, write them down, etc. Adams doesn’t like goals. For one thing, most of the time you’re in a place where you haven’t accomplished your goals. You’re still a failure, still deficient, so you feel bad about yourself. And if you achieve your goal, then what?

Adams also pooh-poohs the idea that passion leads to success. I recently did a podcast on how passion is a choice. Adams says that passion is a product of success, not its cause, and that most successful people are lying about it anyway.

Passionate people who fail don’t get a chance to offer their advice to the rest of us. But successful passionate people are writing books and answering interview questions about their secrets for success every day. Naturally those successful people want you to believe that success is a product of their awesomeness, but they also want to retain some humility. You can’t be humble and say, “I succeeded because I am far smarter than the average person.” But you can say your passion was a key to your success, because everyone can be passionate about something or other. Passion sounds more accessible. If you’re dumb, there’s not much you can do about it, but passion is something we think anyone can generate in the right circumstances. Passion feels very democratic. It is the people’s talent, available to all. It’s also mostly bulls**t.

Instead, Adams says we should concentrate on setting up a good system, because good systems create the best chance of us finding success in the long term. Good systems tend to produce the best outcomes over time.

So rather than setting a goal such as “I want to lose 15” pounds, instead you focus on creating a system whereby you have a healthy lifestyle, eat right, exercise, etc. Do that and over time you’ll probably weight less, look better, and be healthier too. (Adams is strong when he notes that health and fitness are foundational to success in all areas of life). And he notes, “I prefer simplicity whenever I’m choosing a system to use. People can follow simple systems better than complicated ones.”

The systems concept works in concert with his other ideas.  For example, Adams “system” for his diet is eating whatever he wants, whenever he wants. But he has “reprogrammed” his brain to be vegetarian, so that he is eating mostly healthy. (Look at the header photo on his twitter account. I personally do not recommend vegetarianism).

Build Your Talent Stack

His other maxim is that every skill you learn doubles your chances of success. So your focus should be creating a “talent stack” of skills at which you are solid, not trying to become a world class expert at any one thing.

He uses himself as an example. He was technologist, but not world class. He’s funny, but not a professional stand up comic. He can write, but isn’t winning awards for his Great American Novel. He can draw, but isn’t a great artist. But put it all together and you get Dilbert.

I can relate to this concept. I noticed about two years ago it seemed like all of the skills I had learned over my entire lifetime – consulting, finance and accounting, writing, technology and data analysis, public speaking – were finally all being applied effectively to the domain of urbanism. I was using stuff I’d learned in completely different contexts, but applying them in a new domain. And like Adams, I’m solid but not the absolutely best in any of them.

The skills Adams rates as most important (presumably targeting a business context) are:

• Public speaking
• Business writing
• Accounting
• Design (basic level)
• Conversation
• Overcoming shyness
• Second language
• Golf
• Proper grammar
• Persuasion
• Technology
• Proper voice technique

He says persuasion (Trump’s forte) is the master skill.

Thinking about this, the application might be that if you are already pretty good at the current skill you are using most, maybe it’s better to add a new one to complement it than to focus on increasing your level of expertise.

I agree there’s something to this, but it helps to have something of a “calling card” skill that sets you apart. This is the idea of being “T-shaped,” or having one deeper skill complemented with breadth in lots of skills.

Things That Will Succeed Have the “X-factor” From the Beginning

Adams is a serial entrepreneur who seems to like starting and investing in  businesses for its own sake. (Why else go into the restaurant business when you’re a cartoonist?)  Most of them failed. He made an observation about the things that worked vs. the things that didn’t that resonated with me:

The pattern I noticed was this: Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way. What you rarely see is a stillborn failure that transmogrifies into a stellar success. Small successes can grow into big ones, but failures rarely grow into successes….You might be tempted to think that sometimes an idea with no x factor and no enthusiastic fans can gain those qualities over time. I’m sure it’s happened, but I can’t think of an example in my life. It’s generally true that if no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be.

This has certainly been true in my experience. My blog acquired an enthusiastic core, if small, audience right out of the gate. Conversely, my Telestrian app had little initial uptake, and it never really turned into a successful business. So I shut it down over a year ago.

Looking at what I’m doing now, the podcast that I launched has been averaging over 400 listens per episode, which is actually better than I thought would happen. On the other hand, I signed up for Instagram about the same time, and have only 70 followers. This would tell me that podcasting likely has a better future for me than Instagram.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is an easy read, has a lot of useful advice on how to be more successful, and also lets you learn a bit about the man behind Dilbert. (Among other things, Adams all but lost his voice for nearly three years).  And since this came out a while back, there’s absolutely nothing about Donald Trump in it.

Where the book struggles in my view is that Adams throws so much stuff at us in such a short period of time, it’s tough to digest and tough to figure out how to apply it for someone who is just starting out. Just look at that list of recommended skills alone, each of which is daunting in its own right.

Still, if you set up a system that is able to incorporate new elements one at a time over time, over the long term you’ll build quite a repertoire competencies. I may in fact do a podcast on that very topic in the near future.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/16/how-scott-adams-used-his-insights-on-winning-to-create-dilbert-and-predict-the-rise-of-trump/

How Did Los Angeles Fall So Far Behind San Francisco?

The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles
Michael Storper, Thomas Kemeny, Naji P. Makarem and Taner Osman
Stanford Business Books

San Francisco and Los Angeles were identical economic performers in many ways in 1970.

Yet since then the two regions have widely diverged, with San Francisco becoming in some ways America’s premier economy, while Los Angeles became a stagnated sick man whose leading businesses continue to move to Dallas.

What happened?

This book is an academic investigation of that question. While somewhat dry by its very nature, it’s also very accessible and a illuminating for the way that it reviews and tests all of the leading theories of what makes cities successful against these two case studies.

This book is a must read for the economic development professional or civic policy leader. It’s accessible review of the literature on economic development and the various economic schools of thought is worth the price of admission alone.

I recently reviewed the book for City Journal. Here’s an excerpt:

The authors offer another reason why Los Angeles failed to keep up with its neighbor to the north. Unlike the Bay Area, which pursued a “high wage specialization strategy,” Los Angeles, in the interest of social justice, deliberately focused on lower- and middle-tier economic sectors. “Los Angeles’s leaders generated a low-road narrative for themselves, while Bay Area leadership coalesced around a high-road vision for their region,” they write. Such decisions have consequences, many of which are demographic. Had Los Angeles followed the same path as San Francisco, Southern California would have attracted far fewer working-class Latinos. The authors don’t directly state this, but it’s a clear implication of their findings. It’s logical to conclude that any region looking to replicate San Francisco’s success should take an exclusively high-end focus—social justice be damned.

Click through to read the whole thing.

 

 

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/14/how-did-los-angeles-fall-so-far-behind-san-francisco/

Take Care of Your Microbiome and Your Microbiome Will Take Care of You

Our microbiome is the trillions of bacteria that live in our intestines. That sounds icky and like something we’d want to get rid of.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Our microbiome – also called our gut flora or intestinal microbiota – is critical to our health, and plays a key role in digesting food, our immune system, and a lot more. Some research even suggests that it plays a key role in obesity.

Long ignored, there’s more and more research into and press about the criticality of our microbiome to our health.

For example, the New York Times ran a major piece in the Sunday edition a couple weeks ago about the link between our microbiome and the rise of autoimmune diseases:

The world today is very different from the one our immune system evolved to anticipate — not just in what we encounter, but in when we first encounter it. Preventing autoimmune disorders may require emulating aspects of that “dirtier” world: safely bottling the kinds of microbes that protect the Russian kids, so we can give them to everyone and guide the “postmodern” immune system along a healthier path of development.

The basic idea is that as we live in increasingly sanitized environments, eat highly processed food deliberately kept free of bacteria, and load up on antibiotics at the drop of a hat, we damage our microbiome in ways that have contributed to all sorts of health problems.

I started looking into this a bit over two years ago. I was sold that there’s something to it, even if the jury is still out on all the science.

So I changed my diet to focus on microbiome health and reducing chronic inflammation. And I saw the results in my own health.

I used to have low-grade allergies basically year round. Not anymore. And since I don’t have a runny nose all the time anymore, I rarely get colds either. It’s a double win.

I also saw a reduction in some mild psoriasis (an auto-immune skin condition).

And I haven’t had any gastrointestinal distress, “food poisoning,” etc. in over two years.

Now, I won’t claim all of my health improvements came from just my microbiome, as I changed a lot of things and got huge results. But I’m convinced it was an important part of it.

I touted this to my mother, who tried it out and has reported great results too. (Obviously our similar genetics help).

After seeing that NYT piece – one of many I’ve come across lately – and hearing my mother’s results from replicating what I do, I decided to put up a blog post about it.

How I Eat For Microbiome Health

The great thing is that the basics of taking care of our microbiome are simple.

We just need to do two things: eat good bacteria, and feed it.

Eat bacteria!?! Yes. We focus so much on avoiding bad bacteria that we often fail to take in the good bacteria that keeps our microbiome healthy.

We use anti-bacterial soaps, thoroughly wash and scrub every single piece of food, etc. That’s part of our problem. We may have become too hygenic.

In fact, the biggest hurdle to focusing on microbiome health may be psychological. We have to get over our fear of “germs.”

I’m not a doctor or scientist. It goes without saying this is not medical advice. I’m just telling you what my personal diet is, why I chose it, and what results I’ve gotten.

The beauty of this is that with the exception of probiotic supplements, which are optional and I don’t take all the time anyway, this is all just food. Delicious food, too!

There’s nothing like getting to eat stuff that tastes great and is also good for me.

Probiotic Supplements

I get my bacteria from three main sources: probiotic supplements, fermented vegetables, and farmers market produce.

Probiotic supplements directly supply good bacteria into your system. I use Prescript Assist and AOR Probiotic 3.  They contain different strains of bacteria so I use both.

The nice thing about these is that they are just regular pills. They don’t need to be refrigerated or anything like that.

There’s some debate on whether or not probiotic pills actually make a difference. But you don’t need to take them continually, I figured I had nothing to lose.

Theoretically, once the different strains are established in your gut, you don’t need them anymore.

I take one bottle each of these per year at this point. The other 11 months I do not use probiotic supplements.

Fermented Foods

The second great source of good bacteria is fermented foods.

What’s that?

It’s old school stuff like raw sauerkraut and kimchi. Not only are these healthy and low-calorie, they are also very tasty.

You’ll find raw kraut in the refrigerated section of your grocery. I buy mine from the Divine Brine stand at my local farmers market. That’s it in the picture at the top. (They also have a fantastic caraway seed version).

Apparently it’s pretty easy to make your own kraut at home, though I’ve never tried it.

For kimchi I insist on home made.  The Korean lady at my local Asian market in Indianapolis use to make me industrial sized containers of it for under $20. Unfortunately I’ve not found a convenient supplier in NYC, so I’ve been out of the kimchi game for a while.

Farmer’s Market Produce

Lastly, my favorite source of bacteria is produce from my local farmer’s market. Lots of bacteria straight from the soil.

Not only that, the taste of fresh veggies can’t be beat. I can barely stomach lot of store bought stuff like tomatoes. The taste alone of something like fresh tomatoes, strawberries, or sweet corn is worth the price of admission.

Call me crazy, but I generally eat the stuff from my farmers market without washing it. I don’t want to lose the bacteria.

I guess in theory I could get sick. But if so, it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t get too carried away. If there’s actual dirt, etc. I actually do rinse it off.

Even if you aren’t ready to get that crazy, the superior taste alone makes weekly trips to your local farmers market a must.

There’s only a limited time of year when fresh from the farm fruits and vegetables are available. That limited time is now, so now is the time to take advantage of this.

Potato Starch

Once we get the bacteria, we need to keep it healthy. Our regular food will do this to some extent as it passes through the digestive system. But I also eat prebiotics – bacteria food basically.

For me it’s pretty simple: potato starch.

Potato starch is high in so-called “resistant starch” that your body doesn’t easily digest itself, thus passing through for bacteria to feast on. In fact, some probiotic pills come packaged with potato starch.

Potato starch, which you can buy in a grocery store, is dirt cheap. I order Bob’s Red Mill potato starch by the four-pack case. See the pic at the top.

I take two tablespoons of potato starch per day.

One tablespoon I mix with a tablespoon of psyllium husk power (dietary fiber) with about 12oz of water in a blender bottle. If I’m taking probiotic pills, I take them at the same time as this shake.

The other tablespoon I mix with my daily protein shake.

Potato starch also comes in handy for thickening sauces, gravy, and such.

My understanding is that potato starch can cause gas if you take in more than your body can handle. I would start small (maybe even 1 teaspoon) and go from there. That’s what I did initially.

I’m not going to argue that this is the one true way to eat. But this is what I personally do.

It’s very low maintenance, mostly involving eating stuff I already enjoy like farmers market veggies and sauerkraut, stuff that most sources would probably tell you are already good for you for other reasons too.

As it happens, I believe these are also great for microbiome health. I’m very, very happy with the results more than two years on.

PS: I do still wash my hands regularly – let’s not take it too far.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/12/take-care-of-your-microbiome-and-your-microbiome-will-take-care-of-you/

What Happens When There’s Nobody Left to Move to the City?

Following up on the Pew study that found many states will face declining work age populations in the future, I want to highlight a recent Atlantic article called “The Graying of Rural America.” It’s a profile of the small Oregon town of Fossil, which is slowly dying as the young people leave and a rump population of older people – median age 56 – begin to pass on.

Like the Pew study, this one has implications that weren’t fully traced out.

There’s a lot of urban triumphalism these days, as cities crow about Millennials wanting to live downtown and such.

But the dirty little secret is that a lot of these places have been growing their youth populations by hoovering up the children of their hinterlands. To the extent that urban population growth is dependent on intrastate migration in these states with declining working age populations, at some point there are just plain going to be a lot fewer youngster to move to the big city. That will start to crimp urban population dynamics.

Indianapolis is a poster-child for this.  About 95% of the metro area’s net migration has come from elsewhere in the state of Indiana since 2000, according to IRS tax return data.

Looking at the future, about half of the states counties (49 out of 92) are projected to actually lose population by 2050. Here’s the map from the Indiana Business Research Center.

Projected population change in Indiana counties, 2010-2050. Source: Indiana Business Research Center

The entire state is only projected to add 100,000 15-44 year olds by 2050. Even if 100% of them, or even more than 100% of them, are in Indianapolis, this still implies a fairly modest growth rate.

Given the projected demographics of its migration shed, we should expect Indianapolis to start seeing a falloff in migration. In fact, we are already seeing it. Indy was previously the Midwest champ in net domestic in-migration, but recent Census Bureau estimates show a fall-off.

Here’s what the IRS migration data says about net migration into Indy metro from the rest of the state.

Net migration into metro Indianapolis from the rest of the state, 1991-2014. Source: Aaron Renn analysis of IRS county to county migration data

There was a spike up starting around 1997, the dawn of the dotcom era. This more or less corresponded with the rise of the city talk. (Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class came out in 2001).

During the 2000s, Indianapolis was the Midwest growth champ, and killed it on net domestic migration. This graph helps explain why.

But starting around 2010, inbound migration from the rest of the state has fallen off. I don’t want to claim this is entirely demographic related. Migration declined nationally during the Great Recession. And there were some methodology tweaks in this data during that time. But we can see already in the numbers what happens to metro growth if migration from the rest of the state slows down.

At some point, the decline of rural and small manufacturing counties is going to have to show up in the migration numbers to cities like Indy. Other cities that draw primarily from a national base – like Nashville or Dallas – will be less affected.

But cities that are dependent on a regional migration shed need to start doing the math on how the decline of their hinterlands will affect them.

The collapse of rural and small manufacturing economies may have been good for cities in the short term, but those cities might discover down the road that they ended up eating their seed corn.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2016/06/09/what-happens-when-theres-nobody-left-to-move-to-the-city/