Were GenX, and some of the "Oregon Trail" micro-generation, the last independent youth?

I think back to my original college freshman orientation. It was literally "no parents allowed." You stayed in some crappy, tiny dorm room with some other incoming freshman as your roommate. Some over-protective parents would get motel rooms (there were no hotels in college towns back then), to hover over their kids, but I remember them being turned away from the freshman orientation session and even the course registration stuff with the professors who served to help students build their schedules. There were no "family days" or "family weekends" that I recall. If you wanted your family to come visit you during a fall football weekend, you just arranged that on your own, usually during homecoming or some patsy game where your parents could get tickets cheap. Honestly the first time my dad stepped foot on my campus was for my graduation. My brother found a mobile home that he lived in then I lived in. I had friends who went and found their own apartments.

Once my brother moved on, I had to find a roommate to defray the costs of the mobile home, and I did that more than once. But we were such a high-trust society it was pretty easy. To my knowledge there was no contract.

I remember my best friend told me his parents were coming into town, and I asked what for? He said "My older brother is graduating." Parents just didn't come and visit. I had a friend who went to the Naval Academy. His parents dropped him off and didn't see him again until Christmas. Now I see parents of kids in the service academies and they have been back two or three times since dropping their kids off.

Why? What is the difference? The difference is this. For my generation, adulthood started at your 18th birthday, or graduating high school, or being dropped off at college. At some point after that, it got moved to graduating college, or more likely, starting your first job, or even something later. I mean, my generation would graduate college, interview, get a job, move to a new town, find an apartment, and start life, with maybe the parents helping them physically move. Almost everyone operated this way. Even without an internet. You went to the new town, stayed in a motel, went and got one of those "Apartment finder" publications, found a potential apartment complex within your budget, went to a pay phone, called them, and made an appointment. You brought your offer letter with you. Before that you went into a local bank and set up an account.

It is weird. When I completed college I had set up my own bank accounts, had transferred my car insurance to my name, sold that mobile home (of course my dad owned it so he had to be involved), etc. And we did this over the phone (there was no Internet).

So when I see people like Jonathan Haidt push for early childhood independence, to include pushing a 7 or 8 year old (or even younger) to go into a fast foot restaurant and order takeout food and pay for it, while mom waits outside in the car, I agree with it. I took my 10 year old to a toy convention today, and watched as more than one vendor gave him lessons in how to bargain. I used to hold some disrespect for the generation that followed mine, but as I have gotten to know more and more early Millennials, (the "Oregon Trail" micro-generation), I have found many of them are more like my generation, who preceded them by, in some cases, 15 years. 

We must instill independence into our kids. They are smarter than us, and more capable than us.

How Star Trek Changed Everything in Science Fiction

September 8th marked the 59th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of Star Trek. Literally five weeks to the day after I was born. Star Trek represents a cultural icon of the world I was born into. A world where anything was possible. Gene Roddenberry wanted to make a "Wagon Train to the Stars" type of series with weekly adventures on strange new worlds. But something made Star Trek very different. Prior to Star Trek, there were two types of television and movie space ships. Either ones that looked like pointy missiles (often modeled after the German V-2 rocket), or flying saucers. Interestingly, the space ships that were traveling within the solar system looked like rockets (the space ships from "Conquest of Space", "Rocketship XM", and "Destination Moon" for example), and the ones traveling outside the solar system were flying saucers ("Forbidden Planet" and "Lost in Space"). Also, most of these space ships had small crews, often less than a dozen. The largest space ship from that era the "Ark" ship from George Pal's "When Worlds Collide" which carried a crew and 45 passengers escaping the destruction of Earth. But Star Trek changed everything.

Instead of a small ship, Roddenberry imagined a ship on par with a large navy battle cruiser with a crew of 200 (later raised to over 400 when the series came out). While the U.S.S. Enterprise had a saucer shaped "primary hull", it featured a cigar-shaped (not pointy missile shaped) "secondary hull", and torpedo shaped engines on long pylons. 

The Original Series U.S.S. Enterprise. A unique design at the time.

There were television and movie space ships with engines on pylons at that time, so there may have been some inspiration for the Enterprise from elsewhere. But another interesting thing is instead of shiny metal like many television and movie space ships of the era, the Enterprise was painted light gray. So it looked like a navy ship. Most of the interior was utilitarian and gray, but the bridge and the sickbay were high tech with lots of lights and screens and gadgets. Nothing quite like the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise had been seen in science fiction before.

A photo of a few of the many stations on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, from the Neutral Zone Studios sets (more on that later).

"Forbidden Planet's" United Planets Cruiser C-57D had a pretty sophisticated interior, as did "Lost in Space's" Jupiter 2. But neither of these had the sophistication of the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, with its captain's chair, navigation and helm station, surrounded by stations that monitored all of the ship's functions. The bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise would influence many science fiction shows over the following decades.

The U.S.S. Enterprise became the real star of the show. It was so different, but felt very real. Roddenberry's focus on the humanity of humanity, showing the crew as very similar to 1960s people, but with a utopian twist that the Earth's problems had been resolved, and a diverse crew was also different than any preceding science fiction. Seeing people working through problems while serving on a ship that had a dual role of exploration and defense made sense in the Cold War world where the combination of diplomacy and military might was how the major powers influenced the developing world. The U.S.S. Enterprise was the backdrop, and it seemed real, like the exploring mariners of the Age of Discovery, and the military ships from World War II just twenty years before. Add to that the rapid pace of technology in the 1950s and 1960s and the idea humanity would be an interstellar species in 200 years seemed very plausible.

But Star Trek was the first to give the world the idea of giant space ship with a crew in the hundreds. That would give us space ships like the Imperial Cruisers of "Star Wars" and the space aircraft carrier from "Battlestar Galactica."

The U.S.S. Enterprise went through revisions, with "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" giving us a sleeker, refitted Enterprise. I remember one of my sons asking me if I could have any science fiction space ship, what I would want. I said: "The U.S.S. Enterprise." "Which one?" he asked. "The original" I replied. There is something about it. Being a kid and watching "Star Trek" in syndication. Dressing up as "Scotty" for Halloween. Building a lot of Star Trek AMT model kits. I remember getting an AMT U.S.S. Enterprise model kit for my 8th birthday, and feverously putting it together. The AMT plastic was horrible, and melted under the Testors glue. But the AMT kits were molded in accurate colors, so you did not need to paint them. Just put the decals on.

My younger son Eli got the Star Trek bug and got an original Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise display model that lights up and makes sound. Then Santa Claus brought him the 39-1/2 inch long Playmobil U.S.S. Enterprise which is very cool.

The Playmobile U.S.S. Enterprise, complete with small action figures.

I never had anything like that when I was his age. We also went to Neutral Zone Studios a a year and a half ago when it was still in Georgia (it has since moved to Ohio). Neutral Zone Studios has a blueprint accurate build of the original Desilu Studios Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise set. They used it to film fan films, including "Star Trek Continues", an eleven, full-length episode series that connects the end of the original series with the motion picture. Walking through the set was literally a childhood dream made real. Engineering, the Transporter Room, the Briefing Room, Sickbay, Auxiliary Control, the Jefferies Tube, the Brig, and finally, the Bridge.

Me and my sons Luke and Eli on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise at Neutral Zone Studios

A 100-inch LCD television screen as the bridge's main display depicted the ship in orbit around an alien planet. It just happens the original set's bridge main display screen was exactly the dimensions of a modern, 100-inch HDTV. It suspended disbelief as we stood on the "bridge" of the U.S.S. Enterprise and watched us in orbit around a CGI planet.

Star Trek changed science fiction. It made it less alien. Was it accurate? Far from it. We are more likely to have a ship like "Forbidden Planet's"  C-57D with a small crew rather than a gigantic space ship. We are more likely to have everything very highly automated. The robot surgeon at the end of Star Wars "The Empire Strikes Back", or the holographic doctor of Star Trek "Voyager" are much more likely than Doctor McCoy. "2001: A Space Odyssey's" HAL is more likely than a crew of 400. But Star Trek gave us license to believe a great future for humanity was possible.

And while Gene Roddenberry might seem the epitome of a secular humanist, the next to last episode of the second season of Star Trek was "Bread and Circuses." It featured a planet with modern technology but modeled on ancient Rome, with televised gladiator fights, and a resistance who were "Worshipers of the sun." At the end of the episode, Commander Spock dismisses the sun-worshiping cult preaching universal brotherhood because sun worshiping was a primitive religion. Communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, who had been monitoring the communications says "It's not the sun up in the sky. It's the Son of God." Captain Kirk replies: "Caesar and Christ. They had them both. And the Word is spreading only now." Back in the late 1960s, when you could still say that kind of stuff on network television. Happy "Star Trek Day", Live Long and Prosper, and keep spreading the Word.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

I recently stumbled across Smashing Pumpkins music video for "1979." The song was released in January, 1996, and by then I just wasn't watching MTV or VH1 any more. I own the two CD "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" album, but had never seen the video. The video shows teenagers doing teenage things in 1979. It is really well done. It reminded me of those GenX days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I turned 13 years old during the summer of 1979. Billy Corgan, who wrote the song, was 12 years old in the summer of 1979. We were not as old as the 15 to 16 year old kids in the video, but for those with older siblings, or who had older kids in the neighborhood, the scenes made sense. And for those who were 12 and 13 in 1979, not much changed between then and 1982 or 1983. For some reason, I remember 1979 well. That summer was the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years. Over the previous couple of years, I had started getting interested in music. I listened to the radio a lot, and to this day I think the period between around 1978 and 1982 produced some of the best rock and pop music of my life.

My parents divorced in the summer between my 3rd and 4th grades. Neither of my parents made much money. After several years of financial struggle, in 1979, my mom could afford to take me and my soon to be 16 year old brother on a real vacation trip. It would be our first trip to Disney World. This was back when you got a ticket book, with lettered tickets A through E. A tickets were for the least popular rides, and E tickets were for the most popular rides. The ticket book contained a number of lower grade tickets, but only one E ticket. You needed an E ticket to ride Space Mountain. There used to be a colloquial phrase "E Ticket Ride", which referred to a top-notch or exciting experience. We drove all day to Orlando, stayed in a cheap motel in Orlando that night, and spend the day at Disney World. I think we stayed at the same motel that night. The next day we drove to a booming suburb of Orlando called Altamonte Springs. Altamonte Springs is not "on the edge of town" from Orlando, but I thought of Bruce Springsteen's song, and the idea of suburbia. Suburbia is a theme of many of my generation's cultural media. "Valley Girl", "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", and "The Breakfast Club", all depicted GenX suburban life, beyond the "edge of town" which used to refer to lower income areas back when middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods were in town.

My best friend from 3rd grade, and my brother's best friend from 6th grade, who were themselves brothers, had moved to the Orlando area from Jackson Tennessee where we had lived during my 2nd and 3rd grade years. We planned to stay with our friends for three nights as I recall. Then we were going to go to the Kennedy Space Center, then the next day we would drive home. This was mid-August, and school would be starting soon. For both me and my brother, within minutes of reuniting with our old friends (we all had been pen pals of sorts after my parents divorced and we moved to Alabama from Tennessee), the brothers asked us if we smoked pot. I knew about pot, because I was in a grades 7 through 12 high school, and some students in the upper grades would occasionally get busted. And of course, Cheech and Chong were a thing. But the experience for both me and my brother was the potheads we knew were losers. They dropped out, got crappy jobs, etc. My still 12 year old friend (he would turn 13 in a few weeks) was obsessed with pot and pot culture. He unscrewed the top part of his record player so he could lift up the turntable and stash his pot inside the record player. He demonstrated, in a fumbling way, rolling a joint. His older brother was much more skilled. I don't recall ever seeing either boy light a joint, but I do recall watching them roll them.

That evening, at dinner, we learned that Altamonte Springs had grown so fast, they had two shifts at the school for each grade. One group of students went from 7am to 12 noon, then had lunch, then got on the bus and were home by 1pm, the other got on the bus at 11am, went to school, had lunch, then started classes at noon and went until 5pm. To allow for enough hours of instruction, they went to school through the end of June, and started back in mid-August, the Monday after our visit. Of course most students wanted the early shift so they would have all afternoon off. This was the GenX era of two working parents and latchkey kids, or divorced single mother homes where the mom worked full time. These kids had a lot of unsupervised, unobserved free time outside of school. They were "next-level" latchkey, and the proverb "the idle mind is the devil's workshop" certainly applied.

The next day, my friend introduced me to some of his friends, and we wandered over to the school, which was a short walk, and around the neighborhood. We ended up at one boy's house, a classic, one story three bedroom house. His parents were divorced, and his mom worked. It was just him and his mom. The master bedroom was his mom's, he had a bedroom, and there was a spare bedroom. He showed us the spare bedroom, which was on the south facing side. It had sheer curtains which let in most of the blazing August Florida Sun. The floor was covered in plastic planter pots with, well pot plants. And there was an ironing board with a row of potted pot plants. It was a grow room, a term I would not learn for at least fifteen years. My friend shouted "Score!" His friend said "Don't touch them. These are my mom's. She'll kill me if I took any of them." Obviously, his mom was a heavy pot user, and likely dealer. At this point, this place had become a dystopia. These were not the visibly loser 15 year-olds behind the gym counting down the days until they were 16 and could drop out, these were 12 and 13 year-olds who appeared mainstream. I wanted out. Now. Fast.

That evening my brother and I both came to the conclusion we needed to leave the next day. We had planned to possibly stop at some other tourist location if we had time. If I recall, it was an alligator exhibit we had seen a sign for on our drive down, and it was in Jacksonville or some place in northern Florida. So we begged our mom: Let's go to the space center tomorrow. Change the motel reservation. And then we can go to the alligator place, and if needed, spend the night in Jacksonville.

To this day, my memories of that experience are dark. Not the bright August Florida sun, but a filtered, hazy memory. Like an old, faded, yellowed Polaroid. Every memory is gauzy, and claustrophobic. What should have been bright, fun, and idyllic, is instead blurry, frightening, and dystopic.

I never spoke to my then soon to be 13 year old friend again after that trip in 1979. He went from pot to cocaine to heroin. By the time he was 15 he was in rehab. The next few years he was in and out of rehab, got into crazy occult rituals and Satan worship. His family eventually gave up on him and estranged him. I assumed he had probably died of an overdose, or was in prison. I got curious about six months ago and started aggressively searching for him online. I found him. He is married and apparently has a son and a step-daughter. I found his older brother too, and by just look at their Facebook friends, I guessed he is still estranged from his family. I didn't reach out to him. Maybe I should. But he served as a warning to me.

I remember my best friend from college telling me when he was 13 he had a friend who had emigrated to the U.S. from Central America. The boy would spend his summers with his grandparents. My friend flew down and spent a week with him in Central America. He was introduced to marijuana there. He was a year younger than me, so this would have been the summer of 1980. He never smoked it again, it was just a one-off.

Now, 45 years later, I serve in my church's middle school ministry as a small group leader of a dozen now 7th grade boys I have been with since June of 2023. In a few weeks, they will start their summer vacation between their 7th and 8th grade years. Last summer, we did a service event at a local nonprofit that provides rehabilitation for men who are suffering addiction. They run some thrift stores and we worked for several hours sorting donated clothing. The woman who manages the volunteers asked me if I wanted her to give the unfiltered story or the edited version they use for younger volunteers. I told her about my friend who became an addict at about the same age as most of my groups kids, and said "Give them the full version." About six months later, we gently covered the topic of substance abuse in our regular Sunday middle school session. Then I told the boys about my friend. And my high school co-leader told them about a middle school friend he had that started with alcohol and marijuana at 13 and got addicted to stronger drugs, but was now at 16 was sober and following Christ. That was kind of a "Scared Straight!" (another GenX reference) moment for the group.

Despite this, I think I have rose colored glasses on. This is still the thing that happens elsewhere, right? Not in the "Alpharetta Bubble", right? Not in schools where 50% of the kids are from high performing immigrant households, with the pressures to go to the best colleges, right? Probably not. Back in 2016, a local television news organization did an analysis of heroin overdoses in the metro Atlanta area and found they were centered on "The Triangle", the affluent norther suburbs of Atlanta, mostly white male teenagers and young adults, where the pressures to perform in high school alongside highly driven children of immigrants created extreme pressure, leading to the escapism of opioids, and addiction, and overdose, and death.

I have a fellow church middle school leader who is just finishing up with his group of 8th graders, but his youngest is his 9th grade daughter. Her peers are pressuring her to drink alcohol and smoke pot. Her father plans to transfer her to a different school this fall.

No, times have not changed. And as parents, teachers, coaches, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and yes, church youth group leaders, we need to be honest. Some of us, including me, are in denial. We were in denial. No more.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin as he exited the Constitutional Convention, in the then Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?", to which Franklin replied: "A republic, if you can keep it."

The United States federal government is an intentionally complex organization. The only small-d democratic institution in the U.S. federal government is the House of Representatives. In the early years of the country, some states had all Representatives elected at-large, rather than from districts.

Originally Senators were elected by state legislatures. The famous "Lincoln-Douglas debates", where Abraham Lincoln was challenging incumbent Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, demonstrates this. Lincoln had won his party's nomination to be their Senate candidate. But the purpose of the debates was to encourage the citizens of Illinois to vote for their state representative candidate from the respective party of Lincoln or Douglas. It was not until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913 that Senators were directly elected.

Then obviously, the President is indirectly elected via the ephemeral Electoral College. Indirect elections of the head of government and head of state are actually the norm in most of the world. In parliamentary systems, the only people who directly elect the person who ultimately becomes the Prime Minister are those in that member's district. The head of state for a monarchy is not elected, and Viceroys or Governor Generals are appointed by the monarch, usually after nomination by the Prime Minister. For President-Prime Minister nations, often the President is indirectly elected, as in Germany.

In many parliamentary systems, the upper house is not democratically elected, but is appointed. However, in most parliamentary systems, the power of the upper house is severely limited. The upper houses of federal systems of Germany and Australia are similar to the U.S. Senate in structure, with some differences. France is a rare exception in that the President is directly elected, but he or she shares power with the Prime Minister, and the cabinet positions come from the parliament.

Obviously, the Supreme Court of the U.S. is not democratically elected. The three part of the U.S. federal government, the legislative, executive, and judiciary serve as checks and balances on each other. There is no small-d democratic ability for the people to recall a president, senator, or representative, like there is an ability to recall a governor in some states.

The Constitution's original design for the state legislatures to elect Senators was to address the Anti-Federalist's desire for the state governments to have influence. The 17th Amendment came about because of corruption. Senate candidates often were people who could get nominated and elected through graft, similar to how ambassadorships are nominated today. While that was a problem, unfortunately the solution, direct election of Senators, has turned the Senate into a sort of "Super Legislature", instead of a distinguished upper body.

My point is simple. The people who wail, gnash, and rend their garments over "Democracy!", and claim other countries are "more democratic", are little more than useful idiots with little understanding of how complex organizations work or how the rest of the world works. There are a lot of things we could do to make our system "more democratic" while not requiring significant changes to our basic structure. The U.S. House of Representatives has been stuck at 435 members since 1929. The U.S. population is now 2.75 times as large as it was in 1929. Expanding the House of Representatives would make the U.S. "more democratic." Maine and Nebraska apportion their Electoral College votes with one EC vote going to the presidential candidate who wins each congressional district and two EC votes going presidential candidate wins overall at the statewide level. If such a system were implemented across all of the states, large states like California, Texas, Florida, and New York would have significant EC votes in play for both parties, meaning California would matter for Republicans, and Texas would matter for Democrats. Instead of "Swing States" we would have "Swing Districts" where only one EC vote was in play, and "Swing States" where just two EC votes were in play. Presidential elections would suddenly become much more small-d democratic. Combine a much larger House of Representatives with a nationwide Maine-Nebraska EC model and the presidential election dynamics dramatically change.

There are other changes. In my opinion, the Senate has too much legislative power, and and as a result is too focused on legislation and not its advice and consent role. The entire Congress delegates too much power to the Executive branch. In hindsight, lifetime appointments of judges may not be the best approach. Vox media proposed an 18 year term, where two Supreme Court justice positions would expire during each four-year presidential term. Ending the judicial filibuster was a bad idea, but at the same time, the extreme partisanship around judicial appointees is worse. Senator's terribly worried about being primaried because they voted to approve a presidential appointment is one reason direct election of Senators has created new problems. Of course, if a president had to nominate a prospective justice who could get 60 votes, there should be fewer ideological challenges. But never forget, it was the Democrats who pilloried African-American Clarence Thomas, and filibustered Latino Miguel Estrada and African-American Janice Rogers Brown. 

Ultimately, the answer for better, "more democratic" government is to reduce the centralized power and influence of the federal government in as many ways as possible. Federalism, subsidiarity, and localism are what makes democracy work. Putting more "democracy" in the central federal government will not make life better for the citizens. Potholes, traffic issues, crime, education, etc., these are local issues. Democracy starts at the city council member, not at the Senator or the President.

We Must Accelerate (e/acc)

[NOTE: 20 April, 2024. This started as an initial draft. I have made multiple updates to this post and will continue to.]

The middle-class in the U.S. is at risk. We often see information that shows the U.S. middle-class has greater wealth, including larger homes and more disposable income, than the middle-class in other western countries. But that is at risk of changing.

This raises the question: "What is the middle-class?" There are a number of definitions from a number of organizations. The Urban Institute defines it as 150% to 500% of the federal poverty level. This definition starts at the lowest level, and tops out at the lowest level. It is fair to say it includes the "lower middle-class" and excludes the "upper middle-class." The Brookings Institution used 20th to 80th percentiles of income. This starts at a point similar to the Urban Institute but goes much higher, and therefore includes what one might consider the "upper middle-class." Pew Research Center uses 67% to 200% of the national median income. This starts much higher than the Urban Institute or Brookings, but goes up to a similar point as Brookings, so it does not include the "lower middle-class" but does include the "upper middle-class." From these three definitions, we can roughly define a lower middle-class, a "middle middle-class", and and upper middle-class.

The first challenge for the middle-class is home ownership has become something only affordable to the upper middle class and wealthy.

The most recent data as of April 2024 shows the median monthly payment for a home purchase rose to $2,775, which requires an annual household income of about $120,000, which is roughly 1.5 times the median U.S. household income.

To understand this, the median monthly mortgage payment in 2021 was $1,001, according to Census housing data. This number represents the average of all mortgage payments, not just recent home purchases.

In 2021, the median monthly payment for a home purchase made that year was about $1,785, which required a household income of $76,500. How many people are making 57% more in 2024 vs. 2021? Housing prices really started shooting up in 2020. If you go back to 2016, the monthly payment for a home purchase that year would have been about $1,428 (requiring $61,200 annual income). If we go back to late 2011, not long after the historically low home prices coming out of the 2008-2009 collapse, a monthly payment for a home purchase that year would be about $1,140 (requiring $48,857 annual income).

The dramatic house inflation that spiked due to the decrease in inventory due to the pandemic caused construction halt, and now the high mortgage interest rates due to the current inflation, have combined to create a "double whammy." A doubling of costs over a decade, while the CPI has going up 32%, and wages have increased by 44%.

Here is something else to think about. If you follow Dave Ramsey's guidance, you should only buy a home on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage and not pay more than 25% of your take-home pay on total housing costs (mortgage principal and interest, home insurance, and property taxes). And make a 20% down payment. To be fair, when Ramsey talks about take home pay, he means gross pay less taxes and normal deductions like health insurance, but not 401k deductions.

What this comes to on average today, based on today's mortgage rates, is you should not buy a house priced more than twice your gross household income. Which means we could not afford the house we currently live in unless we made a 25% down payment, which would be $150,000. That is reasonable if one has a current home with significant equity they are selling, but not realistic if it is a first-time home purchase.

The area we live has gone from what was once probably a 75th percentile income region 20 years ago, to an 80th percentile income region 10 years ago, to a 90th percentile income region today.

To put that into perspective, you must earn 15% more to move from the 75th to the 80th income percentile, and then another 40% more to move from the 80th to 90th income percentile.

Unless something changes, in a generation, instead of three elementary schools within two miles driving distance from our house, there will be at most one, because families with young children will be priced out of the region. Instead of three middle schools and three high schools in the city there will be two, or perhaps just one. Prior to 1991, there were three elementary schools and no middle school or high school in this community. Students were bussed to middle and high schools to the west in the same county. In 1991 a middle school and a high school were built in the community. Rapid growth saw five elementary schools added between 1994 and 2000, another middle school added in 2001, another high school in 2002, another middle school in 2003, another elementary school in 2004, and another high school in 2008. From the way this growth was staggered, it is clear there were a lot of younger children in the community thirty years ago. The last school built in the community was a high school built in 2008. By this point the community had become solidly upper middle class, and many of the people moving into the community were middle aged people with high school aged children. That said, the local public school system is well attended by children of high earning residents living in very expensive homes. The middle school built in 2003 sits directly across the street from a very high-end country club. Directly across from the entrance of the school is the gated entrance and security guard building for this country club. And if you happen to drive by as school lets out, a steady stream of middle schoolers diligently walking across the crosswalk into the country club neighborhood. But yes, a 50 year-old corporate executive might have a youngest child who is a 6th grader. People are getting married later and having children later. But the other reality is the homes in this country club were in the $750 thousand to $1.5 million dollar range a decade ago, and now you probably will not find a home for less than $1.5 million in the neighborhood. It is a fact a decade ago a 40 year-old sales executive could afford a one million dollar country club home, especially given interest rates at the time. They would not be buying the smallest home in the country club, but a mid-tier home. But while the same sales executive today might still be able to afford a one million dollar home despite much higher interest rates because they earn more, the reality is the one million dollar homes cannot be found in the same country club, so they will need to step down to a less exclusive country club.

I remember a conversation relayed to me about my company's current worldwide executive vice president of sales. He bought into a large, expensive country club about ten miles north of where I live about a decade ago. This country club was famous because a former professional baseball player lived there. When someone made the comment the then lower-level sales VP must be doing good to be buying a home on that country club, he replied: "I have the least expensive home in the country club." Someone in the same role today he was in a decade ago probably could not buy into that country club today, even the least expensive home.

The same dynamic hits in lower income ranges and less expensive neighborhoods. It just keeps rolling down. The parents with young children will move further out into the exurbs, and suffer longer commutes, etc. Formerly solidly middle-class neighborhoods in the suburbs become exclusively upper middle-class.

A freezing in-place effect also occurs. The empty nester couple cannot afford to downsize because the higher interest rates make the less expensive condo's mortgage payment higher than the more expensive house they bought a decade ago.

Eventually inflation will come down, and interest rates will come down. As more housing is built, albeit in the exurbs, there will be downward pressure on housing costs. There might even be another housing price collapse like the one in 2008. All of this may correct some of the demographic changes.

However, the demographics of the area were already changing before the latest housing price increases and high interest rates. Registered students have been declining each year over the last several years for most schools. The decline is most noticeable at the elementary school level, but it is happening across the board. Given current housing prices, it is likely there will be demographic collapse of elementary aged children in the community over the next decade. This could be a temporary trough, or permanent.

The second reality is having more than two children with the intention of sending them all to college is increasingly becoming an upper-middle class or even upper-class idea.

Here is some back of envelope math to consider:

A four-year degree at in-state rates at a public university will cost about $100,000.

A four-year degree at out-of-state rates at a public university will cost about $180,000.

A four-year degree at a private university will cost between $250,000 to $365,000. Some private universities costs are on par with in-state public universities, while elite universities are north of $350,000 for four years.

The cost of a university education inflates at about 8% per year, compared to historic inflation of less than 3% per year.

From birth to college entry is about 18 years. So, you get to save for a child's college during a period 22 years, with money starting to be withdrawn four years prior to final maturity. Additionally, saving for college is like saving for retirement. You can invest more aggressively early, but need to invest more conservatively as you get close to the college years.

Over the last 20 years, the S&P 500 average rate of return has been 9.8% (with dividends reinvested).

The reality is, you would need to start with $100,000 invested at the birth of a child to have enough to pay for college when they enter college assuming a normal investment strategy. What this means is you will need to save about $8,000 per child per year in a 529 to completely pay for even an in-state public university education assuming no other assistance or source of funding (such as your child working during college).

Here is something else to consider. To to an out of state public university today costs more in real dollars than it cost to go to Harvard in 1985. As I note above, it will cost about $180,000 to send a kid to an out of state public university starting this fall. If Harvard's cost had grown only in step with CPI since 1985, it would cost about $170,000 to go to Harvard. This means the economic burden on sending a kid to a public university in a neighboring state in 2024 is higher than the economic burden to send a kid to Harvard in 1985. How many early GenXers know someone who went to Harvard in 1985? What kind of family did they come from? Probably very upper-middle class or more accurately, wealthy. The middle class are simply being priced out of college for their kids.

The current birth rate in the U.S. has collapsed to 1.62 births per woman and is lower the higher one goes up in income (and the likelihood of college attendance), so demographics is doing its part, but it portends a significant drop in potential college students in twenty years.

The idea of a commodity (education is simply information and the transmission of it) inflating at 4-5X the rate of CPI should be untenable in a modern society. It is unsustainable. Are people really going to pay $180,000 for an in-state, public university bachelor's degree entering college for the high school class of 2030? What about $325,000 for a public university in another state? Until we address this, we will face a higher education crisis of one form (unaffordability) or another (the shuttering of half of universities). It is already starting, with thirty colleges and universities shutting down in 2023.

Is there an answer? Yes. What is the answer? The answer is we must accelerate the adoption of the most deflationary tool we have access to, and that is technology. Technology is inherently deflationary. Second, we must accelerate the adoption of the most productivity increasing tool we have access to, and that is technology. Technology is inherently productivity enhancing. But there is a tremendous risk, and it lies with those who would "Pause AI." The simple fact is, in 2024, pausing AI is pausing technology. AI is a feature, not an industry. No new technology tool will be implemented without AI features. Those who would "regulate math" should be viewed with great skepticism, and a doggedly pursued using a "follow the money" methodology. Many who are proposing to regulate AI are simply developers of proprietary AI who wish to use regulatory capture to protect their markets.

Technology holds the promise to finally stop the maddening inflation in the areas where we see inflation at significant rates above the Consumer Price Index (CPI). For example, health care and higher education have inflated at a rate far above the CPI. One only need to look at textbook prices. We have a control group, other books, to look at. What is worse is most textbooks contain material that is in the public domain. Certainly new textbooks are needed for certain subjects. Computer science programming classes went from COBOL to C to Java and now Rust. But the content in English literature, history, introductory chemistry, biology, and physics texts do not change rapidly.

Education, at its core, is the transmission of existing information. Every other industry in the business of transmitting existing information has seen a collapse in costs. Witness the change in transmitting a document over the last 50 years. We went from postal mail, to overnight express packages, to the fax machine, to transmitting digital documents via email. Accelerating the transmission of information was also a huge productivity boost. And it was this measurable productivity boost in the 1990s when PCs, local area networks, wide area networks, and the internet created an economic boom that made the sleepy, wooded, once exurb with some scattered homes and a couple of new country clubs into the vibrant, middle-class suburb I now live in. My lifetime has witnessed this wealth explosion where middle class neighborhoods were once defined by 1,400 square foot three bedroom ranch homes and 1,800 square foot four bedroom split-level homes, to where middle class neighborhoods looked like the upper middle class neighborhoods of the 1970s.

Now we see the reverse effect. And we need to stop it. There are late Millennials and Gen Z who now have children of their own, and like the cohorts who came before them, want to live in a single-family home in a good, safe neighborhood in a good school district, without an hour-plus commute.

At the same time, while the trendy thing might be to follow the "one and done" philosophy and only have one child, or "two and through" and have two children, I know a lot of older Millennial families who have three and four children. When I run the numbers on college for my two kids, it deeply concerns me for them. The higher education establishment needs neutron bombs exploded over every campus. It needs a radical rethink. To be fair, for the elite universities, neutron bombs will not be enough. Break out the Castle Bravo bombs.

For many decades, the median universities imitated the elite universities. The "Harvard Case Method" became the norm for MBA programs around the world. Berkeley's David Patterson's "Computer Architecture" textbook was the standard for computer engineering taught in every engineering school. Education is simply the transmission of information. There is the information, the transmitter (the professor), the medium (the classroom at the university), and the receiver (the student). The only difference between MIT and State Tech is the quality of the human components. MIT gets the top one tenth of one percent of the high school students looking to study engineering, and has the top professors in the world. But it's the same laws of Newton.

I first noticed the potential of technology to accelerate education twenty years ago. I read an article about the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College's distance learning program. The U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College is a master's level program for Army Majors and other service O-4 grade military officers. A small percentage of top performers attend in residence. The rest attend via distance learning while continuing their full-time jobs. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, some innovate faculty members for the distance learning program determined the Internet, and Internet streaming provided a means to host and deliver live stream or recently recorded content. They were able to get top guest lecturers such as Colin Powell and Newt Gingrich. The in-residence school was incensed, because they could not get this caliber of guest lecturers, who would have to fly in Fort Leavenworth Kansas to speak.

The next realization was around 2017 or 2018. I attend a non-denominational, multi-campus "megachurch." I have been attending long enough I have seen the church multi-campus video system evolve. The church is unique in that they purchased a used high resolution video camera from NASA and used it to video the pastor speaking on stage and simulcast it to another auditorium in the same building where it was projected onto a 16 by 28 foot screen on the center of the stage at a one to one scale. The image on the center screen was life-sized, and had a high enough resolution to fool people into thinking the pastor was actually on the stage. This center camera was fixed. The 11 by 19 foot side screens in the main service, used for close ups, videos, etc. were also simulcast to similar screens in the second auditorium, but these used standard television cameras. When the church expanded to a second campus, the remote campus presented the same sermon series on a one-week delay, leveraging recordings of the main campus service. The recordings of the two video streams (main center screen and side screens) were time synchronized and required the use of hard drives for recording. The second campus had an identical projector and screen setup. By the time the third campus was added, WAN links had become powerful enough live transmission of the side screens was possible. A few years later, live network transmission of both the side and center screens were possible for both remote campuses.

Then the Georgia Board of Regents, which oversees all of the state higher education system of Georgia, consolidated many of the various university and junior colleges. Adjacent to my church's main campus was a remote campus for Georgia State University (a four-year institution), and a two-year junior college. These two institutions were merged, and the two adjacent buildings were combined into a common campus. Driving past them every Sunday, I thought: "There is no reason they cannot use the same technology our church does to "beam" a class from the downtown campus into the local suburban campus. Just have a graduate assistant in the local classroom to handle roll, test proctoring, etc." I thought back to my time as a undergraduate and graduate student in 1989 and 1990 when my university started a distance learning program using VHS video tapes. A handful of classrooms were remodeled. The classrooms were soundproofed, and cameras were added. One camera was in the ceiling, and zoomed into a drawing pad which replaced the transparency projector. Instead, it was projected via television onto a screen in the room. The VHS tapes featured a split-screen of the professor and the overhead camera. Two feeds. Just like our church. The technology is there. You do not need the life-sized center screen. You just need one camera on the lecturer, and one video feed of the whiteboard or PowerPoint presentation. Simply web chat would allow students in remote classrooms to ask questions of the professor. High quality digital video cameras today are very inexpensive. Internet bandwidth is cheap. SD-WAN over the Internet means dedicated WAN links are no longer required.

Education was ripe for a rethinking well before COVID. We have Khan Academy and other concepts. When the pandemic hit, and people could not go to testing centers for IT certifications, individual human proctors watched testing students via the student's laptop cameras to make sure they were not cheating. Today AI could easily do this.

The reality is, the Berkeleys and the MITs and the Harvards and the Georgia Techs could easily triple or quadruple their enrollment overnight if they wanted to. We could cut the number of professors needed in half tomorrow. We don't even need grad students as teaching assistants and proctors. Upper class undergraduates could do it for freshmen and sophomores, and master's students for upper classmen. We could have done this a decade ago.

Then there is the insane expansion of administrative positions in higher education. While every other industry has seen a collapse in overhead positions (just try to find a typing pool in the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company, or a secretary supporting a mid-level manager), higher education has seen an explosion of administrative overhead. In some cases, administrators outnumber academics at universities by three to one. AI could easily replace many administrative functions in higher education.

The ultimate goal should be to cut the cost of a bachelor's degree in half in ten years. That is a very reasonable goal. But it will probably also require a complete rethinking of the over a century university accrediting system. Accreditation is a form of regulation, and regulation is always an impediment to innovation. An obvious approach would be to, instead of accrediting universities, to accredit individual courses and curricula. I recall when my university was threatened with losing its accreditation due to violations in the athletic department (which should be the purview of the NCAA, not the accrediting association), and a loss of confidence in the university president at the time by some in the faculty (the university president being an administrative role, and not an academic role). This terrified the students, who were told if accreditation was lost, their degrees would be permanently worthless. What, pray tell, does the football team, or a university president getting on the wrong side of some professors, have to do with Aerospace Engineering?

Given the speed at which technology changes, and the requirement for lifelong learning, less formal education, more apprenticeship, and more on the job training make much more sense in the 21st century. One can argue the western university model is a millennium old. At a minimum, using the the original Morrill Land-Grant act, passed in 1862, as the start of the modern U.S. university system, our university model is over a century and a half old, roughly in line with the Second Industrial Revolution.

The time is ripe for a new experiment in post-secondary education. And that will require slaughtering some sacred cows.

AI and other technology will not build more housing, yet. But it can optimize traffic patterns, making more distant suburbs more valuable. We already go to the store less. I needed an Ethernet cable and got in my car to drive 25 minutes to Micro Center to buy one. Then, sitting at a traffic light I just ordered one on Amazon from my phone, and instead of turning left, I did a U-turn and went home.

What AI and other technology can do is make the upper middle class more productive and raise them to the upper class. What AI and other technology can do is make middle class more productive and raise them to the upper middle class. What AI and other technology can do is make the lower middle class more productive and raise them to the middle class. And it can take the working class and raise them to the lower-middle class. And it can do this while simultaneously lowering the costs of health care and higher education. It is a win-win-win-win-win-win situation. We are not taking jobs from anyone. With a 1.62 fertility rate everyone in the future is going to have a job. We might create so many jobs the federal government starts paying middle class people to have more kids. Imagine if the federal government offered free higher education to any second and third child born to a couple.

Acceleration of technology will simultaneously increase productivity and drive down costs. Accelerating technology is deflationary. Accelerating technology boosts productivity. This has been true since the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel.

We must accelerate.

Effective accelerationism is the only philosophy that hold a reasonable promise of returning the U.S. to an economic curve where the middle class thrive.

Effective accelerationism is not something just for the Silicon Valley tech lords or the venture capitalists. It is not just for software and computers. It is also for manufacturing and reshoring. It is for nursing and elder care. It is for teaching and pediatricians.

We must accelerate. Or the middle class will die. Home ownership will be reserved for the wealthy, the vast majority will rent their homes from Blackrock, the federal government nationalizes the failed public university system, and dictates who gets to attend. If you think university admission is political now, just wait until you have to contribute to your local U.S. representatives re-election campaign to buy your child a chance to attend the middling state technical university.

More on our "Rare Earth"

I recently saw a social media post that said the recent total solar eclipse is proof of a "fine-tuned universe." That led to someone saying they did not believe in a fine-tuned universe, which led me to realize the phrase "fine-tuned universe" is a turn-off to atheists and agnostics, because it assumes a "tuner."

It is important to note who has used the phrase "fine-tuned":

"The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life." - Stephen Hawkins, "A Brief History of Time"

Hawkins was agnostic at best, and more likely would be described as an atheist, yet he used the phrase "finely adjusted." What has changed is atheists have become more thin-skinned and defensive in large part due to the rise of the defiant "New Atheists."

Regardless, it makes more sense to use the phrase "Rare Universe" instead of "Fine-Tuned Universe." Because our universe does appear to have characteristics that make its formation rare. Of course, the idea of a fine-tuned, or rare universe has to be attacked by those who see rarity as a threat. Personally, I believe there is no such thing as an atheist, there are only those who believe in different gods. Many atheist cosmologists believe in a god of probability, to which rarity is their antichrist. Hence, they torture math to find a way to reduce rarity, or try to prove alternative theories such as the multiverse.

The cosmological multiverse is not the multi-dimensional multiverse of science fiction or comic books, but the idea the Big Bang, during Cosmic Inflation, expanded at such a rate it threw quantum proto-energy and quantum proto-matter particles out far, far beyond our observable universe, where these "clumps" of quantum proto-matter and proto-energy coalesced into a near-infinite number of universes. These other universes may have formed different physical laws as they exited their quantum state into a physical state. Certainly many would either collapse into a supermassive black hole, others would dissipate into a cold mist. Given a trillion-quintillion different universes, of course probability would suggest at least one would form that could support two trillion galaxies, and as luck would have it, it was ours.

But the multiverse theory does not change the fact our universe is rare, instead it accepts it and attempts to prove it. That our universe is not rare is untenable.

Scientists had to hypothesize dark matter and dark energy to explain the balance in our universe, even though neither can be directly observed.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, is not rare. Barred spiral galaxies are the most numerous galaxies, representing about 40% of the galaxies in the universe. However, about 10% of spiral galaxies are "active galaxies", either Seyfert galaxies or quasars. Some cosmologists believe the radiation bursts from active galaxies would prevent life from forming within those galaxies. Subtracting the 10% of active galaxies brings the number of non-active barred spiral galaxies down to about 35%, or roughly one-third of the galaxies in the universe. But why focus on barred spiral galaxies? Barred spiral galaxies are considered the most mature galaxies. The maturity of a barred spiral galaxy means it has enough Population I stars which would have enough metal content to have rocky planets. Population I stars are third-generation stars. It is unlikely for life-bearing planetary systems to develop around second-generation Population II stars, and impossible around first-generation Population III stars. Also, barred spiral galaxies have fewer spiral arms, and more space between their spiral arms, which means they have a larger galactic habitable zone, but even more important, it means there are more areas in the galaxy that are not so crowded with stars that interstellar cosmic rays and nearby supernovas would disrupt life on nearby planetary systems. If barred spiral galaxies offer the best opportunity for life-bearing planetary systems, then only about one-third of the galaxies in the universe have a high potential for life.

Our Sun is rare. It is a G-Type star. Only about 7% of the Milky Way's stars are G-Type. G-Type stars have the largest circumstellar habitable zone, a habitable zone distant enough that tidal locking is not an issue, and a low level of x-rays compared to other small star types. The location of the Sun in the Milky Way is also rare. We are in the "suburbs" of the Milky Way, nestled between the Cygnus and Orion spurs, between the two major spiral arms of the Milky Way. We are in a place dense enough to benefit from past supernovas to generate planetary nebulas, but far enough away from the much denser main spiral arms to avoid destructive supernovas and more intense cosmic radiation.

Our Solar System is a rare. It was seeded not only with metals from a past supernova, but also very heavy metals from a past kilonova (the collision of two neutron stars, an exceedingly rare event). Smelting metal is required for intelligent life to advance beyond the stone age. The presence of metals like tin and copper in the Earth's crust allowed metallurgy to develop. The presence of uranium in the Earth's crust made the atomic age possible. Our solar system has a very large gas giant (Jupiter) as the first planet outside of the habitable zone, which reduces collisions from asteroids, comets, and meteors in the inner solar system.

Our planet is rare. It is in the center of the circumstellar habitable zone, has a magnetic field, and has oxygen at an ideal level. It has an axial tilt that provides seasons. The Earth has a large satellite (the Moon) that provides tides and reduces collisions with asteroids. The presence of every stable element in the Periodic Table in the surface of the Earth is unbelievably rare.

Cosmologist Brian Keating, while on the Joe Rogan Podcast in August of 2023, posited the idea if there were eight factors required for life on Earth (in reality there may be tens of trillions), and each factor had a one in a thousand chance of succeeding (but in reality it might be one in a billion), the result, one over ten to the twenty-fourth power, is comparable to one opportunity among every star that ever existed in the history of the universe. Not one star of those currently in the universe, but one star in the entire history of the universe. The universe is currently on its third generation of stars.

It really does not matter if one believes in a cosmic creator or not, to know scientifically, that our existence, and the existence of any intelligent life in our universe, is extremely rare and fortuitous. And it all starts with the fact the Big Bang did not dissipate into a cold mist, nor collapse back on itself.

Brutal Efficiency

In a December 2006 interview with CNET, Sun Microsystems Chief Technology Officer, Greg Papadopoulos repeated the 1943 statement by IBM’s then CEO, Thomas J. Watson, that world only needed five computers. Papadopoulos was referring to the large service providers which were just starting to emerge. 2006 was also the year Amazon Web Services, now synonymous with cloud computing, released its S3 storage service and its EC2 compute service.

Papadopoulos also noted the large service providers, due to their scale and their investment in automation, were capable of driving “brutal efficiencies.” The web-scale services (web search, e-commerce, etc.) drove very high levels of utilization, and Papadopoulos believed the service providers would follow that model. That is exactly what happened with the hyperscale public cloud providers. They drive extreme levels of efficiency through secure virtualization and continuous capacity management. As a result, hyperscale service providers are now the standard for IT efficiency.

In the past, these levels of utilization and efficiency have been difficult to achieve in on-prem organization IT. VMware provided the hypervisor software that drove a wave of consolidation and efficiency improvements, but efficiency gains have stagnated since. The inability to operate on-premises organizational IT in a highly efficient manner is a large driver of moving on-premises software to SaaS providers, and on-premises compute to cloud providers. But in most cases, the costs of the “lift and shift” of heavy, traditional applications to the cloud proves more costly than operating them on-prem.

Another issue is current organization sustainability goals require new considerations about IT efficiency. In fact, in some cases, migrating on-prem software to SaaS, and lifting and shifting custom applications to cloud providers is just being done to outsource the electrical consumption for an organization so they better meet their sustainability goals.

But what happens when the two are in conflict? When the cost of running customer workloads in the cloud is higher than on-prem, but there is a desire to maximize the efficiency of IT to meet sustainability goals? The answer is private clouds and on-prem IT must operate with similar efficiency goals as public clouds. Another consideration is if an organization has real-estate consolidation initiatives that mean owned data centers go against the organization’s real estate strategies. This usually means owned IT resources are hosted in colocation facilities. Also, for those organizations looking to build a true hybrid cloud, there is the desire to move owned IT resources to cloud connected colocation facilities. But unlike an owned data center, where there might be plenty of available space, every square foot of a colo costs money. So, improving efficiency reduces colocation costs.

There is another factor driving the need for improving on-prem IT efficiency. Newer, denser CPUs and memory are consuming more power. Straightforward “one for one” replacement strategies will force either fewer servers per rack, or power and cooling investments in the data center. The cloud providers have no problem configuring servers with hundreds of cores and terabytes of RAM, then loading dozens of virtual machines from many different customers on the same server. But many traditional IT shops fear high consolidation ratios due to the “too many eggs in one basket” philosophy. Of course, the number of eggs that can be tolerated in one basket does grow over time, but not at the rate of Moore’s Law.

IT organizations need to look at VMs and servers the same way storage administrators looked at thin-provisioning on all-flash arrays. When less expensive hard drive systems dominated organizational data storage, it was easy to just thick provision everything. After all, it ensured performance and minimized issues and management efforts. But all-flash was considerably more expensive per TB, so thin-provisioning was necessary. Performance of all-flash was not an issue, so thick provision eager zeroed VMs, done to maximize performance as data in a VMDK grew, was no longer necessary. But it did impact management. Thin-provisioning was scary. What happened if something went wrong? What happened if there was a runaway data writing process? Could it fill the capacity of multiple thin-provisioned volumes and take down multiple apps? But for the last 8 years, all-flash arrays have been used and managed within IT organizations. At its optimum, it means a thin provisioned VM on a VMware datastore, on a thin provisioned LUN on the storage array. So, there is an experience base in “thin everywhere” and “thin on thin” (VMware thin provisioning on storage array thin provisioning) operations.

With each generation of CPUs increasing low-level virtualization features, and increased instruction level parallelism, both at a Moore’s Law rate that exceeds the growth of software ability to consume it, we should be seeing higher vCPU to core ratios. But increasingly, we are lower vCPU to core ratios due to the desire to avoid performance issues. While VMware memory sharing (transparent page sharing) is not used often due to security concerns, VMware memory overcommit features are safe and well understood, but are likely underutilized. While memory sharing is off by default on ESXi, it is on by default in VMware Cloud on AWS, as is ballooning and memory compression. VMware Cloud on AWS seeks to drive very high levels of efficiency. In essence, there are equivalents of “thin provisioning” virtual CPUs on physical CPU cores, thin provisioning virtual RAM on physical RAM, and thin provisioning virtual networks on physical networks. Another term for thin-provisioning in these cases is oversubscription, and we manage oversubscription with tools like QoS. Tools similar to QoS exist in storage (VMware Storage I/O Control, storage array QoS, etc.), CPU, and memory as well (VMware resource allocation shares, reservations, and limits, etc.). But we need deep visibility into storage IOPS, CPU usage, and memory consumption if we want to drive higher levels of oversubscription in these resources. But we must if we want more efficiency.

CPU, hypervisor, and network consolidation and virtualization features have increased dramatically over the last decade, affording business IT customers the opportunity to significantly increase consolidation, including higher vCPU to core ratios.

While lower than 50% CPU utilization at the host level is typical in VMware environments, it is also not unusual to also see VMs over-configured with vRAM. This often is due to ISV recommendations, which are often over-specified to ensure expected performance.

What is needed is visibility into the virtual and physical infrastructure to identify inefficient configurations, adjust them to eliminate inefficiencies and drive higher levels of utilization. A visibility tool must constantly monitor the environment, because after an initial “right-sizing”, reducing allocated resources to only what is needed, resource requirements may change and may grow, requiring later adjustments. The good thing is IT management tools have improved significantly over the last decade to allow efficient “as a service” approaches to business IT.

The incremental improvements in IT efficiency of the past are no longer sufficient. The potential for significant improvements in IT efficiency now exist. When properly implemented, the right tools allows both lower costs and the achievement of sustainability goals.