Biology motifs occur in government funding scenarios

 

Biology motifs occur in government funding scenarios

I have not published any blog entries for slightly over three years.  It seems somewhat sad that so many people have now flocked to Facebook.  I did so myself, but have decided to set it aside, since I continually encounter people supplying way too much moral signaling without taking any real moral action.  At least blogs allow for a some developed thoughts now and then.  I wasn't even sure I could still post things, but apparently Blogger still works. 

So then, on to a small observation.   Since I've had a significant (and voluntary, self-selected) career change from working in the academy (teaching Philosophy and Logic for about 25 years) to working in government (doing administration and software architecture for a little over a year), it is hardly surprising I would have a whole new set of thoughts and ideas to blog upon.   

I have noted that lots of money in government attracts what I'll call 'apex scavengers'.  These are people who run organizations that only seek to bilk money from the government, especially from programs that either are not well-run or are inadequately monitored.  These types of people seem to be exemplifications of what otherwise happens in standard biological ecosystems.

Where animals die in the wild, and their carcasses are there for the picking, any given ecosystem has specialized scavengers who successfully feast on such items. Ecological interactions have strong selective forces driving the evolution of populations where such interactions as predation, parasitism, competition and mutualism arise.  But those forces do not simply act in isolation.  The environment induces variations in conditions, resource availability, and biodiversity that may shift specific interactions over time.  

The same thing appears to happen in the government system of money flow and distribution.  Over time, governments divert and expend monies on new programs.  Specialized scavengers try to find money that is not well monitored, and the ones that figure out ways to bilk the system arise quickly. Such "entrepreneurs" can be both difficult to detect and difficult to counter. Those who do it well, and can sponsor whole business to perform such bilking are what I call 'apex scavengers'.  It's not simply that they steal money; instead, they figure-out loopholes, trade upon legal vagaries, and probe for weak compliance monitoring; and, subsequently they build whole institutions and social-connections to perpetuate their scams.  

What shall I call such financial scavenging? Money one derives from tax evasion is called gray money, as for example when one takes illicit deductions or hides funds in an offshore bank. Gray money is similar to, but distinct from, black money, which is the revenue from an outright criminal enterprise, such as drug dealing. But those terms do not quite seem right.

I would suggest cinereous money. 'Cinereous' is a color, ashy gray in appearance, either consisting of or resembling ashes, or a gray color tinged with coppery brown. It is derived from the Latin 'cinereous', from 'cinis' (ashes), and has a nice sound pun with the word 'sin', which term itself is somewhat ambiguous between having explicitly immoral intentions, or just participating in, and being compromised by having "dirty hands" which draw profit in ways not foreseen by those who planned the system. -- thus the "coppery brown" color symbolism.

I have noted the presence of a lot of cinerous money being taken by apex scavengers. Inevitably when my office approaches them, they will bluf, snap, growl, and very occasionally go on the offensive to scare us off.  But lions fight hyenas every night in Africa.  The lions win; but, there's a never-ending stream of hyenas. 

O.