One size dont fit all. There are 3 ideal sizes for groups.
A group is homogeneous, it means it consists of people doing similar jobs.
A small group should have 4 members. A medium one should have 6 members. A large group should have 8 members.
A person cannot directly handle more than 7 people at a time effectively, provided that (i) the person has no secretaries etc, and (ii) he must do his own work (not related to management) too, and (iii) the people are part of same group i.e. doing same type of job.
The number 7 is already an overload.
At the other extreme, a person handling only 1 or 2 people is grossly inefficient. If a person has to command people then he must have atleast 3 people under him; its still unnecessarily inefficient but not grossly so, even handling 4 people is a waste.
When the number reaches 5 all unnecessary inefficiency is eliminated. 6 is full capacity, near-overloading but manageable, leaves no room for unforeseen circumstances because there is not even necessary inefficiency left.
A group can be either a direct action group, or a support group (these are 2 categories of groups). Shooters in trenches, for example, are members of a direct action
group. Medics, also in trenches, but not doing direct action, are members of a support group.
Members of a group, no matter the category, will be under command of a non-commissioned/non-gazetted officer, called supervisor (except when they are in a squad, then they are in command of a squad-leader who need not be an officer; squads will be in general smaller than groups, and will always be temporary, usually made for a sub-task only but can exist for entire task).
Supervisor of a group is same as an adjutant in an european army and a sergeant in american army.
There will be as many non-commissioned/non-gazetted officers as groups in a unit/team, plus a few more if attrition rate is high (high fatality rate in battlefield, high employees turnover rate in business etc).
All of the non-commissioned/non-gazetted officers in a unit/team will be under direct command of a
Commissioned/Gazetted Officer who will be the Commanding Officer of the unit/team.
Groups will have grades, depending on their types. Helper group will be a grade lower than the shooter grade, medic grade would be same as shooter grade etc.
Helpers will be
loaders/sweepers/tent-pitchers/utensils-washers/shoes-polishers/clothes-ironers
etc. Each members of a helper group is expected to do any or all of
above as need arise.
People too will have grades. Grade will mostly come with experience (other things such as quality and quantity of performance will be considered too, individually as minor factors).
In a group, members will be divided into 3 grades. The top-most grade will make an operative a first-line manager.
An operative is a worker that is not a manager, i.e. not have anybody
under his command (manager by definition is a person who have other
people in his command).
An officer can or cannot be a manager. Some officers will be managers, some officers will be operatives.
Officer can either be non-commissioned/non-gazetted, or Commissioned/Gazetted. Both of these can either be a manager or an operative.
Education will indicate commission-ness/gazetted-ness of an officer. For example all engineers and doctors will be gazetted, even though they will be operatives at start and some of them will become managers later on. Engineers and doctors have 4 years of formal education after inter/A-Levels. A NCO/NGO needs to have 2 years of formal education after inter/A-levels.
For sub-tasks, and in some situations for entire tasks, the Commanding
Officer will make squads from members of different types or same type or even same group. Examples of squads
are: a medic working with a helper when the sub-task is to bring wounded
solders to field hospitals, 2 medics working together when the sub-task
is to provide extended first-aid to wounded soldiers in trenches, 4
shooters doing surveillance, 2 helpers taking supplies (food, water,
ammunition, medical stuff) manually to trenches etc.
If a squad consists of members of the same group, or same type of group, then the most senior member of the highest grade people in the squad will automatically become the squad-leader. Same if groups are of different types but same grade.
If a squad consists of members of different groups, and those groups have different grades, then no member of
a lower-grade group can become squal-leader.
Squad will not automatically end at completion of sub-task, but need to be formally ended by the Commanding Officer. A squad will usually be ended at end of de-briefing.
Squad-leader will be temporarily incharge of the people in squad. All squad-leaders will report directly to the Commanding Officer.
The Commanding Officer cannot change above stated rules of choosing of squad-leader. He can, however, make and end squads, and choose which people to put in which squads.
Supervisors and squad-leaders will always come from the non-officer operatives, they will never be appointed directly.
Non-officer operatives include foot soldiers in army, labours in farms and factories, clerks in accounting
departments, salesmen in shops, surveyors in marketing departments, para-medical staff in clinics and
hospitals etc. They do bulk of the work when counted in number of hours
and effort, but never all the work and not always all of the most important
work.
Engineers, doctors, tank-men in army, pilots in air force, advisors etc are either officer operatives or officer managers.
There will be 3 to 7 operatives in a group; and 4 to 6 groups in a team/unit. An average Commissioned/Gazetted Officer will thus have 30 people under his command.
14 April, 2015
10 April, 2015
3 Is Elegant
A thing is elegant when it in addition of doing its duty effectively and efficiently also do it seemlessly i.e. it not looks like any effort is being put in though ofcourse a lot of effort is being put in.
Looking at something which is trying hard to hit its target (effectiveness) or trying hard to hit target spending minimum resources (efficiency) is hard on nerves. Its same as seeing thick pillars supporting a roof. The pillars are obviously trying hard. Its also same as seeing a complex pattern of arches supporting a roof. The arches though use minimum resources are still obviously trying hard.
The whole point of elegance is minimum visibility of effort. Supporting of roof is hard work and therefore do require trying hard but that effort can be made less visible for example by using better material in pillars thereby reducing thickness of pillars, increasing number of arches thereby reducing the complexity of the pattern of arches, making roof in shape of a dome thereby hiding the complexity of the pattern of bricks behind plaster etc.
Watching performance of an experienced artist, on the contrary, is an enjoyment because of the smooth flow. The performer himself enjoy giving performance.
Elegance in arts come only with practise. Its impossible for humans to be elegant in doing something they are doing the first time.
How is 3 elegant? Why only 3 is elegant?
You want anything that you use and depend on to be more than 1. 1 is sufficient for the need at hand but for future needs its wise to have some spare ones available because the thing may become unusable or unavailable. 2 covers most of these issues but not sufficiently so. Its good to have backups and alternatives but life is big enough to have even those fail frequently enough.
Like in computer programming every inherently solvable problem can be solved just by adding another layer of indirection, in real life every inherently solvable problem can be solved by adding another layer of covering. Therefore, keeping backups of backups reduce the frequency of issues to one in decades level, beyond that, by the way, is impossible for humans to flawlessly support therefore such problems are inherently insolvable.
Covering as much cases as can be humanly covered is effectiveness which is one of the three requirements of elegance. The other two are efficiency and seamlessness.
The only way to achieve efficiency is by increasing complexity. Overall resource consumption get reduced but mental effort get increased. The mental effort get increased because a system must be made and maintained. Maintenance means that some of the efforts are moved to future. Still the sum of all of the efforts including the mental effort over all of the times is less than the effort that was required before the increase in efficiency.
Efficiency always come by increasing the number of constituent parts i.e. by decreasing the size of each part. This has a cost associated with it. Its the cost of management of interactions between parts. More parts there are, more interactions between them. Very soon the system become too complex to be humanly manageable. We have to find a sweet spot.
Perhaps for small systems, 3 is the sweet spot number of parts. Its enough for backups of backups and still efficient because of manageable interactions between parts aka complexity. For large systems it really depends on what the system is trying to achieve. By small systems I mean maids in house, backups of data, exit-ways from a room, height of rooms for given heights of people using the room, widths of corridors and roads, light sources in room, drives in hard disk, types of disks supported by computer system, pairs of shoes of a person, types of entertainment near one's house, types of means of transportation, sea-ports in a country, cushions to absorb shocks etc.
Looking at something which is trying hard to hit its target (effectiveness) or trying hard to hit target spending minimum resources (efficiency) is hard on nerves. Its same as seeing thick pillars supporting a roof. The pillars are obviously trying hard. Its also same as seeing a complex pattern of arches supporting a roof. The arches though use minimum resources are still obviously trying hard.
The whole point of elegance is minimum visibility of effort. Supporting of roof is hard work and therefore do require trying hard but that effort can be made less visible for example by using better material in pillars thereby reducing thickness of pillars, increasing number of arches thereby reducing the complexity of the pattern of arches, making roof in shape of a dome thereby hiding the complexity of the pattern of bricks behind plaster etc.
Watching performance of an experienced artist, on the contrary, is an enjoyment because of the smooth flow. The performer himself enjoy giving performance.
Elegance in arts come only with practise. Its impossible for humans to be elegant in doing something they are doing the first time.
How is 3 elegant? Why only 3 is elegant?
You want anything that you use and depend on to be more than 1. 1 is sufficient for the need at hand but for future needs its wise to have some spare ones available because the thing may become unusable or unavailable. 2 covers most of these issues but not sufficiently so. Its good to have backups and alternatives but life is big enough to have even those fail frequently enough.
Like in computer programming every inherently solvable problem can be solved just by adding another layer of indirection, in real life every inherently solvable problem can be solved by adding another layer of covering. Therefore, keeping backups of backups reduce the frequency of issues to one in decades level, beyond that, by the way, is impossible for humans to flawlessly support therefore such problems are inherently insolvable.
Covering as much cases as can be humanly covered is effectiveness which is one of the three requirements of elegance. The other two are efficiency and seamlessness.
The only way to achieve efficiency is by increasing complexity. Overall resource consumption get reduced but mental effort get increased. The mental effort get increased because a system must be made and maintained. Maintenance means that some of the efforts are moved to future. Still the sum of all of the efforts including the mental effort over all of the times is less than the effort that was required before the increase in efficiency.
Efficiency always come by increasing the number of constituent parts i.e. by decreasing the size of each part. This has a cost associated with it. Its the cost of management of interactions between parts. More parts there are, more interactions between them. Very soon the system become too complex to be humanly manageable. We have to find a sweet spot.
Perhaps for small systems, 3 is the sweet spot number of parts. Its enough for backups of backups and still efficient because of manageable interactions between parts aka complexity. For large systems it really depends on what the system is trying to achieve. By small systems I mean maids in house, backups of data, exit-ways from a room, height of rooms for given heights of people using the room, widths of corridors and roads, light sources in room, drives in hard disk, types of disks supported by computer system, pairs of shoes of a person, types of entertainment near one's house, types of means of transportation, sea-ports in a country, cushions to absorb shocks etc.
07 April, 2015
How Taxes Should Be
There should be only 1 tax. This should be the amount paid to government to use those natural resources which are used directly by the economy. Its easy to identify them because market has set price for them. This is to distinguish them from indirect resources that are in so much abundance that they are freely available for everybody.
Economy uses natural resources either directly or indirectly. The ones used directly are land, minerals, bandwidths etc. The ones used indirectly are air, sunlight etc.
There are 3 factors of production: Land, Labour and Capital. Land, in strict economics terminology, includes all the natural resources, they are free gifts from nature. Labour is human effort, either physical or mental, to utilize those natural resources. Capital is tools, machines, raw materials etc used by labour to utilize natural resources.
Natural resources are for everybody, fruits of labour and capital are not. If a natural resource is going unused, any person should be able to claim its allocation to himself in order to utilize it. Today's world is a disaster because some people have taken all the natural resources: all the arable land, all the mineral mines etc, and left rest of the people with only the opportunity to be employees or slaves.
I have as much right on a coal mine in my country as you. If you are using it, you must pay me something because you are using my share in it. Since there are hundreds of millions of people like me in my country its impossible for you to pay us individually. You can, however, pay the government. The government will then use it on me in various ways such as security, welfare etc.
If you came across an empty plot and built your house on it then the building of the house is yours. I cannot take it away from you. Since its yours the government cannot tax it. The land, however, is not yours. You didn't built the land. The land is a free gift provided by nature to you, to me and to everybody in the country and equally so. Therefore, you must pay rent to government.
Government must never tax the fruits of labour. Its because it discourage labour. Labour must never be discouraged because labour is not only beneficial to the person doing it but its also beneficial to the entire economy, and even to the entire human race as long as the entire human race is connected somehow in the economic system of the country which in today's world we are. Its because a person cannot keep the entire fruits of his labour, some goes to make profits of others. Others such as suppliers and retailers.
A person can keep all fruits of his labour but only in very, very rare and therefore negligible cases. Those cases are always outside the economic system because in those cases a person necessarily get something directly from nature and necessarily consume it himself. When other people are involved some fruits of labour must be shared.
Capital is just stored labour. Natural resources are free gifts from nature so whatever other thing was used to make the capital is labour. The steel used to make a machine was freely available in land in some iron mine in its natural form. Its labour that converted that iron into machine.
Capital is one of the 3 factors of production but its not actually needed. Its just an enhancer. Production will be a thousand times low in absence of capital but will still exist. If all the buildings, machines, tools, furnitures etc vanish today we humans will make them again.
The only necessary factors of production are natural resources and labour.
As a person should be able to keep fruits of his labour, he should also be able to keep fruits of his capital because capital is just stored labour. If I was catching fish by my bare hands and you made me a net then I must give some of the fish to you. Government therefore should never tax capital. Thats the moral ground of argument.
Taxing capital discourages making and utilization of capital. This hurts production, by that entire humankind or atleast economy of the country suffers. Thats the material ground of argument.
Economy uses natural resources either directly or indirectly. The ones used directly are land, minerals, bandwidths etc. The ones used indirectly are air, sunlight etc.
There are 3 factors of production: Land, Labour and Capital. Land, in strict economics terminology, includes all the natural resources, they are free gifts from nature. Labour is human effort, either physical or mental, to utilize those natural resources. Capital is tools, machines, raw materials etc used by labour to utilize natural resources.
Natural resources are for everybody, fruits of labour and capital are not. If a natural resource is going unused, any person should be able to claim its allocation to himself in order to utilize it. Today's world is a disaster because some people have taken all the natural resources: all the arable land, all the mineral mines etc, and left rest of the people with only the opportunity to be employees or slaves.
I have as much right on a coal mine in my country as you. If you are using it, you must pay me something because you are using my share in it. Since there are hundreds of millions of people like me in my country its impossible for you to pay us individually. You can, however, pay the government. The government will then use it on me in various ways such as security, welfare etc.
If you came across an empty plot and built your house on it then the building of the house is yours. I cannot take it away from you. Since its yours the government cannot tax it. The land, however, is not yours. You didn't built the land. The land is a free gift provided by nature to you, to me and to everybody in the country and equally so. Therefore, you must pay rent to government.
Government must never tax the fruits of labour. Its because it discourage labour. Labour must never be discouraged because labour is not only beneficial to the person doing it but its also beneficial to the entire economy, and even to the entire human race as long as the entire human race is connected somehow in the economic system of the country which in today's world we are. Its because a person cannot keep the entire fruits of his labour, some goes to make profits of others. Others such as suppliers and retailers.
A person can keep all fruits of his labour but only in very, very rare and therefore negligible cases. Those cases are always outside the economic system because in those cases a person necessarily get something directly from nature and necessarily consume it himself. When other people are involved some fruits of labour must be shared.
Capital is just stored labour. Natural resources are free gifts from nature so whatever other thing was used to make the capital is labour. The steel used to make a machine was freely available in land in some iron mine in its natural form. Its labour that converted that iron into machine.
Capital is one of the 3 factors of production but its not actually needed. Its just an enhancer. Production will be a thousand times low in absence of capital but will still exist. If all the buildings, machines, tools, furnitures etc vanish today we humans will make them again.
The only necessary factors of production are natural resources and labour.
As a person should be able to keep fruits of his labour, he should also be able to keep fruits of his capital because capital is just stored labour. If I was catching fish by my bare hands and you made me a net then I must give some of the fish to you. Government therefore should never tax capital. Thats the moral ground of argument.
Taxing capital discourages making and utilization of capital. This hurts production, by that entire humankind or atleast economy of the country suffers. Thats the material ground of argument.
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