February 14, 2009
Random thought from the “remorse is 20/2” department
Seven years ago, we wagged our fingers at the crazy internet boom, and said “never again.”
Today, we’re giving the finger to the crazy real estate/finance boom, and saying “never again.”
In ten years, will we do the same for the coming government extravaganza?
(N.B.: 20/2 is the visual acuity often ascribed to Hawks.)
January 10, 2009
Porn Industry Asking for TART Money
Joe Francis, creator of the “Girl’s Gone Wild” video series, and Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler, will ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout, according to TMZ.
Why does the porn industry need a bailout? Because apparently even porn is getting smacked by the recession.
XXX DVD sales have taken a hit – about a 22% hit, according to TMZ.
I’m sure Larry Flynt is making a political statement, and his cohort, Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild, etc.) is just the sort of self-aggrandizing, profiteering nitwit to play the part and guarantee success.
I don’t know which would be sadder. If they’re actually granted the money, or if they’re not. Either way, the political statement will fly over everybody’s head.
February 17, 2008
Experience
Julia was in a bit of a pickle. She’d gotten herself and her children in far over their heads. Her job was paying just above minimum wage, her savings was nearly depleted, she was $100,000 in credit card debt, and what’s worse, her interest-only ARM payments had just ballooned the previous month and she would certainly lose her home soon.
Julia needed a roommate to help her with her payments.
She screened at least thirty people over the next few weeks. Some responded to her Craiglist ad, others were referrals from her co-workers.
Most of the applicants were too inexperienced. There was the handsome guy who knew a lot about money and was on his way to be an investor on Wall Street…but he was just out of college, and had never actually lived with anybody before. Julia needed somebody with more experience.
Finally, she narrowed the field down to three candidates.
First was Matt, the wealthy old guy who always dressed right and said old-fashioned things like “yes, ma’am” and “have a pleasant evening.” He admitted to a peculiar fetish for spying on young women when they slept, but he’d never actually harm anybody.
Second was Robert, the middle-aged divorcee who was also determined to turn his life around. And what’s more, he promised to pay her twice what she’d advertised, and all he asked in return was for exclusive use of the kitchen every evening between 4-10PM.
Third was Herbet. He’d been living with people for twenty years. He started off in petty theft, stealing pens and clothes hangers from his roommates. Later, he moved on to stealing underwear and taking hidden photos and posting them online. More recently, he’d been convicted four times of kidnapping each of his past four roommates. Julia couldn’t argue with his experience, and he promised that, within a year’s time, he’d be paying all of Julia’s bills for her–her mortgage payments, credit card payments, car payments, health insurance, everything. You see, he was good at playing the state lottery, and knew just when, statistically, he could expect a big payout.
Of course Julia chose the one with the most experience, Herbert.
She and her five children haven’t been heard from since. Likely, they’re out partying hard in the Bahamas thanks to her fine choice in roommates.
January 8, 2008
Politicians as Homeopaths
A quote I stumbled upon from Quackometer about homeopaths, which applies equally well to most politicians today (emphasis is mine):
I doubt we will ever see an X-Factor moment where a homeopath is forced to brutally confront the totality of their own delusions as they are exposed to a direct and uncompromising truth assault by a quackbusting Simon Cowell. Their emotional commitment to their healing fantasies is far stronger than their intellectual commitment to reason, truth and evidence. But I would have hoped that a homeopath’s disregard for truth was limited to the truths of science, however, events in the last week or two have made me wonder.
Apply that quote to politicians, particularly those who are “on a crusade,” or who find no personal meaning to existence beyond their political endeavors. Then run with the analogy in your own mind.
April 5, 2007
North Korean Train Tour
I’m home sick today, and found this interesting. It’s a clip from Japanese TV of a train tour of North Korea. Apparently they start out boarding in China and take a train to Pyongyang, then head out on a local train line to see a less idealized version of the country.
japanprobe.com has a good summary of the video for those, like me, who don’t understand Japanese. But really, everything you need to know is in the editing.
June 13, 2006
The Economics of (Oil) Prices, and Long-term Oil Strategy
There’s a short entry on the economics of prices by Walter E Williams. Williams responds to the argument that charging today’s prices for oil that was bought cheaper a week ago is “price gouging,” and offers up the following scenario:
If you were really enthusiastic about not being a “price-gouger,” I’d have another proposition. You might own a house that you purchased for $55,000 in 1960 that you put on the market for a half-million dollars. I’d simply accuse you of price-gouging and demand that you sell me the house for what you paid for it, maybe adding on a bit for inflation since 1960. I’m betting you’d say, “Williams, if I sold you my house for what I paid for it in 1960, how will I be able to pay today’s prices for a house to live in?”
Williams is correct on that point. Such accusations are usually made by people who don’t understand basic economics.
But Williams continues and asserts, like so many do, that the real problem with high gas prices is the U.S. Congress:
Opening a tiny portion of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas production, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s mean estimate, would increase our proven domestic oil reserves by approximately 50 percent. The Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, but like the Alaska reserves, they have been put off limits by Congress. Plus, the U.S. Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves estimates the world supply of oil shale at 1.6 trillion barrels, of which 1.2 trillion barrels are in the United States.
If I may put on my astute politician hat for a bit, I think arguments like that miss the bigger point.
The untapped oil under U.S. jurisdiction can be seen as a bargaining tool against Opec. Knowing that the U.S. could commit itself to using its own domestic oil supplies–and, if that were to happen, we’d really commit to it–means the U.S. can bargain for cheaper prices (if not exactly cheap prices) now. It’s a bit of a threat: if we extract more oil, we can ruin the economies of several nations and make life miserable for some of the shiek-kings in Opec.
But what would happen if the U.S. committed itself to this route tomorrow? Well, after a ramp-up period which would probably involve higher taxes to subsidize the endeavour, we’d have cheaper oil prices. Much cheaper. But for how long? 90 years? (ANWR is 15 years, and the others?) And then? Then the U.S. would be backed against a wall.
In the long term battle for freedom, we’d better have some tricks up our sleeves to maintain our independence when the going gets really tough. Using up our oil at the first sign of a little trouble means those opposed to liberty–which most of the Opec nations represent–have a leg up in the long-term game.
My prediction is as soon as we establish a viable, scalable, long-term unmonopolized alternative to oil, we will tap our domestic reserves to get us through the turmoil that would undoubtedly follow, knowing that even if we tap it all, there’s an out (i.e., the proven alternative that is being rolled out). I don’t expect that to happen in my lifetime.
At least, if I were an astute politician–or, for that matter, even particularly politically astute at all–that would be my strategy.
(Link via Catallarchy.)
April 19, 2006
The Value of U.S. Currency Over Time
Somebody by the name of Finster has produced a plot of the value of currency from 1665 – present:
This chart purports, in context, to show that the value of currency in the U.S. was relatively flat until the Federal Reserve Bank was created in 1913. I’m not sure if it does so accurately, and it seems there is controversy surrounding the use of FDI as a measure of currency valuation.
Apart from any controversy, though, I wonder if there is a less sinister explanation.
For example, the cliff does not appear until 1918, corresponding to the U.S.’s entry into WWI. Post-war, it recovers and again stays relatively flat, until 1940 or so, corresponding to WWII. (This is more apparent if you look at the Excel data series he provides.) Then it’s all down-hill.
But the latter half ot the 20th century is marked not only by wars and cold wars, but also by the industrialization of most of the world–even the backwards communist countries. Since the FDI (if my understanding is correct) measures the relative importance of the U.S. versus the rest of the world, that would also account for some of the erosion.
My curiosity has been piqued, however.
(Link via Catallarchy.)
March 4, 2006
Harry Browne Dies; Marital Arrangements and Freedom
Reason has Former Libertarian Party Presidental Candidate Harry Browne’s obituary. (Also see the Wikipedia entry.)
Three days after his death is not really the time to go into my own opinions (I’ll say I voted for him twice, but the second time I was cynical about it), but I found this comment on Miss Passey’s blog quite interesting:
As I recall, he was against marriage; not only that, but he believed that if two people lived together, only one person should own the home and the furnishings. This, he felt, would cut down on quarrells about what kind of furniture to buy, etc. Having little to no experience with real-life romantic relationships, I mentioned this to my inamorata as a good idea. She was shocked and outraged. “If you owned the home and all the furniture belonged to you, how would I ever feel it was my home, too? I would feel like someone just staying over all the time. I would feel like your serf.” I thought she was being irrational. (Of course I envisioned me being the one who owned the house and everything in it.) Years later I would wind up in a situation where one person–and it wasn’t me–owned the home and all the furnishings . . . and I realized my (by then) ex-girlfriend had been right! I felt exactly the way she said she would feel! I was a serf living in the master’s manor without any real rights in the situation–and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
This reveals so much about how those who have no power formulate opinions on how to use the power they don’t have. Many of the LP’s proposals fall into exactly this camp. It’s very much like how humans develop from adolescence into adulthood. It’s as if the universe made us to develop wild-eyed opinions on how we should behave early in life when we are powerless, specifically so that it could find new and entertaining (not to mention humiliating) ways of proving us wrong as we acquire autonomy. Sorta like how some television writers develop their characters.
Of course, American culture is steeped in serfdom–the idea that one spouse owns everything, and the other is utterly dependent. It’s still that way in Chinese culture (even in the states). Even the INS (er, DHSCIS) pretty much assumes this kind of arrangement.
It makes me happy I’m not a woman, since it’s usually the case of a 20-something woman marrying a well-established 30-or-40-something guy, moving into his house with his furniture and doing his laundry, and calling that a marriage. How could anybody be free and happy in such a relationship? (I guess many women are, it’s just an alien concept to me.)
Given our long history with these arrangements, it’s beyond me how this could have seemed like a good idea to an adult writing a book on freedom. Even if I know well the attraction it holds to the just-past-adoloscent mind.
Still, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World did turn me toward contemplation at the time (and helped spark a deep epistemological crisis within me a couple of years later), and mayhap is a large unacknowledged factor in why I’ve become increasingly apolitical.
(Not that I, uh, recall very much of the specifics these days except for the part about contracting instead of entering into an employee-employer relationship…)
