Book Review: The Address Book by Deirdre Mask

While browsing books on the shelves of a Barnes & Noble, on a whim, picked up a paperback copy of The Address Book - What Street Addresses Reveal about Identify, Race, Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask. Interesting light read. As an African American descendant and scholar (Law School followed by academic career in US & UK) the topic must have been quite important and intriguing to the author. She has put in an earnest effort, visiting multiple countries, offices, universities and personalities to gather the material and has put together the book in an entertaining flow. She seems to have thought of it as a vast, comprehensive work that covers history, geography, civilizations, continents and so on, but it comes across as a fun, light and fluffy work. 

Her opening line on the introductory chapter is catchy enough, "In some years, more than 40 percent of all local laws passed by the New York City Council have been street name changes." You'd never think so much of the NYC council time will be spent debating street names. This goes to show how emotionally connected these names are, as different groups seek to commemorate or fight against a given name. There are also parts of rural US (e.g. in the state of West Virginia) the local citizens, not used to having regular door number and street addresses, resist attempts to give them proper addresses, as they they it will lead to government surveillance. She then moves on to illustrate how slums in Kolkata, India that don't have addresses struggle to receive many government services (such as mail delivery or emergency medical care) and what an NGO (Non Government Org) called Addressing the Unaddressed is doing to create GPS coordinates based Go Codes that can be used to locate specific residences within the slum. Seeing the YouTube video I have linked might give an idea of how difficult giving regular street addresses to these houses could be. In the next chapter she has discussed the the famous Victorian era London Doctor John Snow's efforts to locate the source of a Cholera epidemic (it was a water pump) and how UN operations in Haiti resulted in their Cholera epidemic as recently as 2010 and the role of street addresses played in these root cause investigations. 

Subsequent chapters on Rome, London, Vienna, Philadelphia discuss how street addresses and house numbering was invented over the centuries and how it helped and hurt Governments and people (which delivery of services might be good, being able to identify all the Jewish homes during second world war is bad). She has taken the pains to travel many of these cities to get a personal account of the details for her story telling endeavor. There are lots of interesting factoids spread around the book. Japan uses a city block naming convention, treating (unnamed) streets as just empty spaces between those blocks, Korea gave street names to its streets moving away from the Japanese imposed conventions to modernize itself similar to western nations but has names that are often misleading (e.g. bunch of streets in an area named after precious stones may make you think that is where perhaps the jewelry stores are but has no such relevance), Iran, South Africa, Florida and other places struggling with racist pasts or using the street names to stick it to the countries/cultures they hate and so on. 

In New York city, you can actually buy pretty much any address you want. So, in order to make their property appear more posh, real estate developers like Trump pay the city and own prestigious sounding address (e.g. 1 Central Park West, while it should have been 15 Columbus Circle). Thus there are so many Park Avenue addresses that don't actually exist on Park Avenue! You can imagine the confusion such numbering/naming causes when an ambulance need to get to a dying patient fast! This is bizarre in a city like New York, compared to a slum in Kolkata, both struggling with addresses. 

Since I knew and have written about What3Words years back that is specifically works to provide a clean address to every point on the surface of the planet, I was hoping she wouldn't miss it while writing this book. To my satisfaction, she didn't and has visited there office to understand the technology and has written about it. But she is skeptical since this is a privately run business that will be interested in monetizing the solution they have developed while she believes being able to write down a regular address as your own, emotionally connecting to it, learning all the neighborhoods near it, all have lot more significance to human beings than the mere utilitarian values an address provides. A very easy read.

-sundar.

Book Review: Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama

Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama is volume 2 that follows the Origins of Political Order - From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution book (Volume 1) I was writing about almost one year back. For continuity's sake, I am keeping that previous book review email below. As I mentioned then, Neeran Karnik, an old friend of mine whom I have never met in person , recommended Volume 1. I liked that one so much that I ordered this second volume right away. I was reading some other books in between and this being another tome, it took an eon to read and digest. As the subtitle of the book states, chronologically, it covers developments From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, bringing us to the present day, thus completing the series. 

The consistent flow (though it may sound a bit academic to most readers), the panoramic views and the encyclopedic views Fukuyama brings to this work is quite satisfying similar to the first volume. First part of the book (The State) discusses different dimensions and models of political development, looking at Prussia, Greece, Italy, US for differing models that evolved over the centuries. Clientelism, patrimonialism, patronage all being typical early models, author discusses how the Spoils System (where victor gets the spoils) slowly gave way to impersonal, efficient systems that started appearing in parts of some nations (e.g. Forest Management, Railroads in the US). 

In part 2, we get to explore the effects of geography (related to Jarad Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel), availability of minerals/natural resources on state formation. When he explores how China evolved over the centuries, his discussions on the difference between Rule of Law (where the same set of laws applies to everyone consistently) Vs. Rule by Law (where a set of laws are used by the ruling class to rule over the rest of the population), how strong the Chinese state is (compared to other countries like US or India) were all quite insightful and engaging. It is worth bearing in mind that once we are used to one system, we will try to evaluate and understand all other systems using our system's prism. Thus, while to US scholars China may look like lacking a lot of rules/laws, he argues that the Confucian model of governance that is at the root of Chinese state, believes that it is impossible to write out clear rules for every situation that will pop-up anywhere in the country. Instead, that fa model expects all the involved parties (citizens, Govt officials) be setup with guiding principles they internalize and believe in, so that they can come to the correct decision under any scenario without a specific rule being there to guide them. Good to see such alternate models being discussed earnestly, without being looked down like an average Westerner may tend to do. 

Part 3 discussed why and how the idea of liberal democracy spread around the world. He skillfully covers every region in the world (Africa, Arab Spring, India, America, Nordic countries) as well as time periods. His conclusion is that despite what many in the West may believe, the liberal democracy as it understood today, is not a state every system is bound to reach as they evolve and mature. It certainly requires work, push/pull, guidance and leadership to get there and maintain it. In the final part 4, author discusses political decay, as in different parts within a country starting to deteriorate in the quality of services they provide, rules they try to follow and goals they try to achieve. While he takes pains to say that he is not arguing that a country like US is moving towards imminent collapse, he argues at length that it has become a vetocracy, where different segments of the country/Government can veto each other (as they routinely do now) preventing rational decision making to propel the country forward. One simple example of this decay could be seen in the 500+ reports (more than one per day) the US Department of Defense has to produce to satisfy various laws/rules that have been put in place with no coherence/streamlining, as different entities controlling the department works at cross purpose! 

Book reminded me of two business school analysis papers published over the decades. First one analyzed GE in the late 80's wondering how/why it has become so successful and concluded that it is because each VP in GE is given complete control of their division that they run. They run their division like an independent company, deciding what products to make, how to sell, what profit margin to maintain and so on. This level of independence was determined to be the cause of their success. Decades later, more recently, there was another paper that analyzed why Apple is so successful and concluded that it is because they are so well integrated that the products and services are able to provide such a smooth and seamless experience to end users. For example, the VP of the iTunes store is not allowed to even change the color of the iTunes website since it is managed for consistency by UI department! Since GE is no longer as successful a company as it was 40 years back compared to current Apple, does the old paper become nonsense? If we go back even further, in the early 70's there was a business analysis done on Sears to determine how/why they are so successful that concluded that all of its employees knew exactly what their role/duties are and they did it well, which is what seems to be their secret to success. But Sears is bankrupt now! Looking at all these three papers, I can't help thinking that whether it is a company or family or a whole country, you can't function in a vacuum and so need a reasonable framework. Any reasonable framework will work well, as long as you have bright, happy members that believe in the organization, its goals and work together well! With so much of   enjoyable analysis, this book says the same thing in different ways.

Fukuyama insists from the beginning that he will not prescribe any solutions to the problem of decay, as he is only trying to study the issue and present it in its entirety. In general, scholars or institutions trying to help a country improve, will provide a set of standard prescriptions in every scenario as a panacea, like improving transparency, moving towards stable democratic rule, having a clear set of strict rules that are consistently followed, spending resources in a way that doesn't benefit one small section of the population but the entire citizenry, etc. Instead, the author presents the graph below to give an overview of what needs to happen in a bit more nuanced fashion. As the graph shows, a country with all its institutions can range from a low-capacity state to a high-capacity state (Y-axis). Orthogonally how much autonomy is given to functionaries (X-axis) can be plotted. He then lists some of the big countries in various quadrants. 

Countries are not shown as points but ovals, since different parts of the same country may fall in different parts of the graph. While the general goal is to keep moving on the bidirectional arrow towards the top-right quadrant, depending upon where a country currently is, it actually might have to make its rules more strict/prescriptive at times, to improve the confidence citizenry has on the government and loosen them as the institutions in the country becomes more capable, mature and less corrupt. A country like Singapore found on the top-right of Fukuyama's chart may make it look like it has made it. So, I did look at this graph and other arguments he presents with skepticism and suspicious eyes. But while he talks repeatedly about the "Getting to Denmark" notion, he does point out the flaws in the Singaporean system, positive aspects of Indian institutions and so on, thus painting an unbiased big picture overall as a true scholar should. 

Just like the first volume, this will also take time to read & digest if you are not skimming pages. But if you are interested in this topic, I certainly do think it will be worth your time.

Regards.

-sundar.