Efficiency, poverty

Today, I'm writing you from a law firm, where I'm temping to the tune of $21/hour. The lawyers write their little bios, they get emailed to the manager, she prints them out, and then one of five temps (including me) goes to a little web form and types in the info.

As much as I harp about the inefficiency of the whole click 'n' drag paradigm, this has been by far its most spectacular failure yet. For example, today's project is to go through every bio and replace /U.S./ with /US/, and /D.C./ with /DC/. Since we only have a feature-rich and easy-to-use web interface, it takes about 25 temp hours=$525. If there were any sort of direct access to the files (i.e., a command line), you could teach somebody perl from scratch and guarantee that nothing gets overlooked in maybe 20% of the time. Later, when you get the note from one of the lawyers that (not making this up) bar regulations prohibit the use of the word /expertise/, so every instance has to be replaced with /experience/, re-running the script takes no time at all. Part of why I'm temping is that I want to feel like I'm adding value to the world instead of just filching, but I'm just not getting that feeling here.

But fortunately, it's not my project, so I can vehemently not care about how inefficient it all is. I have a spreadsheet which calculates how long I've been here and how much I've `earned' (before & after taxes). I can use it to calculate how much it costs to remove one period (50 cents), or what I'm charging for a single trip to the bathroom ($2.09). Fortunately, I'm a luddite, so I can get a command prompt on my home computer and write this while I wait for windows to pop up in the background.

It helps that the law firm breaks no stereotypes. When I first got here, I had to sign a fifteen page waiver before I could sit down and start clicking on things. The lawyer bios themselves alternate between dull lists of topics or cases, and boasting about how large the corporations are for which the lawyers have worked. Here's one: "Recent actions include [...] defending international financial companies against purported class action [regarding mishandling of retirement funds]." I guess, technically, somebody has to do it. Few of them are attempting to smile in the little black-and-white photos, since `friendly' is not the number one priority of the web site.

They do get points for a lot of asylum and immigration advocacy. One guy talked about how he's been instrumental in gathering evidence against President Bush in the September 11 inquiries, but the managers put a big X through the entire narrative, so that's gone from the public record.

The WB The other thing I've been working on while waiting for the web interface is a new proposal for the World Bank. I first met with one of the Bank managers about two weeks ago, in the lobby of their building on H & PA. I had been told that the building is really amazing, with a waterfall in the fifteen-story lobby and a big sign in gilt lettering above with their motto: `Working Toward A World Without Poverty'.

The guy I met with, a manager in what stood out as a beautiful suit, was very quick to point out that the WB had bought a set of existing buildings and renovated them into what I saw here, so it was among the cheapest office buildings in DC. Since the WB is a non-profit established by international treaty, it's tax exempt on the profits it doesn't make, so I suppose taking up land doesn't cost them anything. [This is, by the way, a huge problem for Columbia in general: all of the prime real estate keeps getting taken up by people it can't tax.]

He bought me a coffee and forced a cookie upon me. We joked about how SBUX has fifteen different types of coffee, only one of which indicates anything about fair trade. Every trash can has recycling bins, and I didn't get the impression that people ignored them the way they do here at the law firm. As with many people in DC, he advised me about making my product less academic and more focused on the final product, which in this case would be results about immigration's effect on the poorer countries of the world. They're interested in the effects on the developing world of proposed taxes on remissions to home and the brain drain (if any), and getting a better handle on immigration from one developing country to another (south-to-south migration, he called it).

He forwarded my abstract around, and it wound up on Ali's desk. When I met with Ali the other day, he also failed to break any stereotypes, in his tie and short-sleeved dress shirt. He talked about supply and demand, and I thought about how infrequently I think in such terms (which is not a good or bad thing, just different). His office is in a different building, on the twelth floor, which gives you a really fabulous view of the city. The walls are half-glass, so that when standing, you have a panoramic view of the city, but when sitting you have enough privacy to pick your nose. The conference room looks down to the tidal basin, surrounded by cherry blossoms, and the Jefferson Memorial.

The project is to work out policies to dry up the black market in the EU. This becomes an immigration project pretty quickly, and the model I've put together could be readily applied. Ali was very excited and he sent me a half-dozen emails over the next two days about data we can get and things we can do. I like the approach, giving a justification for opening up immigration which has across-the-political-board appeal. So I've revised the proposal while here at the law firm.

So that's my life. Sorry if it was a bit too verbose there, but I've got time on my hands here. Update: one of the lawyers just informed us that /US Court/ is "very wrong" and should be /U.S. Court/. So you get two blogs today. Happy birthday.