Read Seth’s latest article.  Read it twice.  Now, I’m going to quote my favorite line:

“The obvious reason is that the person at this post office has no incentive to make a sale.”

The person at the post office and indeed the post office itself has no reason to make a sale.  If the post office loses 50% of it’s business nothing happens.  That is because you, the taxpayer, will provide them with a wheelbarrow of cash to fund their operation no matter what.  Imagine if the post office had to compete with FedEx to carry your mail?  If my neighborhood garbage pickup was competitive would they stop losing the lid to my garbage can for fear of losing my business?  Now imagine the (very likely possibility) all incentive is removed from providing you with health care, that the hospital is looking for any reason to get to no.

The people who think we need more, or different, or smarter regulations are missing the boat.  It is human nature, and the nature of life on Earth that would have to change in order for the USPS to have the same motivation as FedEx.  We can’t keep making rules contrary to our best interests and expect no consequences.  We cannot simply pretend there is no difference between working for incentive and “collecting a paycheck”.  We cannot keep claiming that while we can connect the world with technology, plan missions to Mars, and constantly push out our understanding of reality we “could never solve the logistical problem of of privatizing bulk mail”; that “health care will never work unless the government takes over.”  The folks who claim this is the case are looking for any reason not to Get to Yes.

Key Democrats criticized President-elect Obama's economic stimulus plan today.  John Kerry called it "A return to trickledown economics."  This development is fascinating for a number of reasons.

First and maybe least important - the unified Democratic party, the combination of Congressional seats, State Governors, and the Executive office all under Democratic control so feared by the Republicans doesn't appear very unified after all.  The infighting has started before inauguration.

Second, and slightly more interesting, is the fact that these particular tax cuts and so forth are absolutely not the platform that Obama ran on.  Is he and out-and-out liar, or is he only now recognizing certain aspects of reality regarding the true costs of big government programs?

Third, we must thoughtfully consider John Kerry's use of trickledown economics as a bad word in the context of recent history.

I won't (yet) try to argue that Trickledown, or Reaganomics, or Supply-side economics is the best system for raising the standards of living of the entire nation.  For now let's just examine the popular opinion as to the results of Reaganonmics.  It was called Voodoo Economics.  It has been claimed that it didn't work, that it could never work, that it was a laughable disaster.  Walking down the street, one would be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks of Supply Side Economics in a positive context.

Now let's just break this theory and it's opponent down into simple bite-sized notions.  Supply Side Economics states just what its name implies: that the economy does best over all by encouraging Production through whatever means.  Typically more freedom and less taxes is considered to be means of encouraging Production of goods and services.  Damon opens a factory in order to produce Glow in the Dark Towels.  The opening and operation of this factory including borrowing money, dealing with suppliers, marketing and advertising firms, hiring workers, buying land, contracting with builders, and so forth, will be a positive impact on voluntary business dealings between individuals.

In the other corner we have the Keynesian view, the view that Consumption and not Production is the best driver of the economy.  This encouragement to spend boils down to market distortions and wealth redistribution, but these are not bad as far as the pro-Keynes camp is concerned.  If the masses are unable or unwilling to consume, then the government must step in for them: spending everything it has and then borrowing more and printing money to keep on spending.    If the government can spend enough, we can float across tough times until individuals are willing to start spending again.  There are a lot more middle class spenders than factory owners, the thinking goes, and together their habits represent a much stronger force on the economy.  For now leave be the question of what the government should spend this funny money on.

Now we come to my point.  The original pre-crisis Obama plans involved some tax increases on the wealthy and a great deal of government spending on "building of infrastructure and green jobs".  Obama supporters praised these ideas, and the irony seems to have been lost on nearly everyone.

The notion of creating jobs and increasing prosperity by building infrastructure and creating goods and services is a Supply Side concept.  Contrast this with the idea of just giving every middle class American $1,000 on the condition that they spend it.  The idea that Production, not Consumption, will rescue the economy, is stolen directly from the so-called conservative side of the fence.  Why is Production the answer when the government is the producer, but not when private owners are the producers?  The answer is simple: because the Profit Motive has been removed.  The ethics of altruism tell us that it's moral to open factories and produce energy "for the benefit of everyone" but a private business engaging in the exact same activities and competing with others for profit is immoral, barely to be tolerated by a "progressive" state.

Obama has gone from government spending on infrastructure, which appears to me to be a smoke and mirror operation to reap the benefits of supply side production without calling it such, to an even more blatant supply side tactic: namely lowering taxes across the board and even on the wealthy. 

Whatever else he may be, Obama appears to me to be an intelligent and educated man.  He knows that big government welfare state policies can only be afforded by a wealthy nation and only then to the degree that they do not make the creation of wealth too difficult, too inconvenient, too undesirable.  At some point, he knows, the disincentive to produce is too great and the lifestyle enjoyed by Soviet Russia is the result.  He recognizes that when the chips are down, when there's no more wealth to "share", when printing even more money can't work, that only one thing will work.  He looks at American history and economic reality and sees that only by giving the freedom to engage in production and trade can creativity and hard work be unleashed, wealth quickly created.  Only by lengthening the leash given to this nation of smart and hard-working Americans will people take responsibility for their own actions and ultimately create enough wealth he can use to accomplish his redistribution goals later.

Obama supporters thought he would be a great redistributor, cashing in on our general prosperity in the 1980s and 1990s.  The .com bust, the Federal Reserve, and George Bush have beaten him to the trough though. 

It must trouble them to see him backing off his altruistic plans, but reality is the final arbiter in any clash of ideals.

It's had to believe it's been more than two weeks since I last posted, especially since there's so much going on in DamonLand.

Professional

Today was my last day at CarSpot, a place I'll really miss.  I've been consulting most of my career and mostly had shorter assignments - always ready to ride off into the sunset and tackle the next challenge.  My time with CarSpot both as a consultant and full-time employee represents my longest and most serious commitment to any business venture.   I grew a lot during these years, and I met a lot of great folks I hope to keep in contact with.  I've never seen such a large group of people all of whom were loving their job and work environment and so loathe to split the team up.  I met some fabulous folks at our parent company, AutoTrader.com, and I hope they stay in touch too.  I owe several of them a tour of my wine collection and some hearing loss in my home theater.

It's somewhat hard to get business of any kind done during this time of year with all the vacations and such going on; but I expect next week to be fairly busy. I'll be co-working from various locations in downtown Milwaukee, Brookfield, and Delafield next week if anyone is interested in meeting up.  Watch Twitter.

As for what I'm doing next, I will only say at this point that my Round 1 and 2 meetings are mostly done and that I have several things I'm excited about.

The Argentum Tela design surface project is going well, the currently working article [19] is about Undo/Redo support and Commands in Silverlight and is somewhat complicated but also a lot of fun. 

I'm also working on an entry for the Silverlight Write and Win contest.  I was going to just write some new articles and submit AGT in its current state but I thought that was kinda cheap and would require slight re-work to fit the contest rules.  My submission will be in the vein of Visual Tools though and I think it's pretty slick.  We'll see what the judges think.

I also have some other things to keep me busy, potentially related to my next steps: some heavy Entity Framework development coupled with a bunch of Dependency Injection refactoring, a purpose for HandWaver.com, coming up to speed on SharePoint, and other refactoring of side-project code and article writing.

Personal

We had an awesome christmas.  On christmas eve I shoveled snow for hours on end, on christmas day I cooked boeuff ala mode (French style pot roast in red wine sauce) which is at minimum a four hour task.  My daughter, who is incredibly awesome and creative (especially considering she's 5), got her daddy a true chef's hat as a gift.  Pictures of this will be coming as soon as my kitchen is presentable enough to take photographs in.

It's New Year's Eve and I'm sick as hell and so is my son.  This has ultimately resulted in us staying in tonight, I'm about to make a nice dinner for my wife and I to be followed by Champagne and some Kabinet style Riesling - I expect I'll be crashing right after the ball drops.  I love Champagne.  I often use Champagne, considered by many to be a special-occasion-only drink, to celebrate (wait for it) my love of Champagne.

Despite having a brand new house I find myself running around caulking little cracks here and there to keep the house warm.  It has snowed an outrageous amount this winter, and since I have been too stubborn to buy a snow thrower as of yet I've lost a non-trivial amount of weight through shoveling it all.  My neighbors, who totally rock, occasionally have pity on me and help me out when things get really rough.

Jen and I met seven years ago tonight!  My totally awesome Queen among Wives and I now have two kids and we're looking forward to a great 2009.  We consider New Year's Eve to be our real anniversary despite getting married on June 9th.  We met at a dinner party I threw involving me cooking and serving Champagne.  Some things never change!

The Terski got me into Seth Godin maybe a month ago.  Good stuff.  Marketing and Excellence in Business are becoming increasingly relevant to those who wish to get beyond Code Monkey status.  Not that there's anything wrong with being a code monkey.

While discussing one of Seth's recent posts with a co-worker, he made the simple observation that

"There's something wrong with the old school."

There's something wrong with the old school.  No shit.  He was talking about the music industry.  The auto manufacturers come to mind too.  So does the entire Real Estate industry.  So do a lot of things.

It should be pretty obvious to any reader that I'm in favor of laissez faire capitalism, and yet for a while I've been meaning to write something on what is wrong with business in America right now.  No, it's not greed.  It's not that there's not enough regulation.  It's not that there's not enough skilled workers in America.

Our corporate culture is in some ways broken.  I think there is a lack of vision, an out of touch quality, a laziness and a weakness in the leadership of many of America's big businesses.  In the past 20 years, more and more of us look at Dilbert and our first reaction is not to laugh, but to see reflections of our own work day in the pointy haired boss.

Out of Touch to the point of insanity

I'm still driving my Subaru WRX that I got in 2001.  It's a great car.  By the end of 2002, Subaru was importing around 10,000 of these per year.  This car is very Japanese, it's a 2.0 liter turbo-charged all wheel drive four door that's fun to drive and practical enough for me; I get around 27mpg.  Detroit's answer to the WRX and to the Lancer Evolution and the other cars that followed was more or less that Americans don't want cars like this.  Americans want Corvettes and Mustangs and SUVs.  Yet, the WRX, the WRX STi, the Lancer Evolution, the Nissan GT-R, and others show that Americans clearly do want cars like this.  The Ironic Icing on the Cake of Incompetency is that if you look at the overseas offerings from companies like Ford you'll find (wait for it) things like an all wheel drive turbo-charged car that sure looks fun to drive.

Instead of thinking and doing, Detroit spends their time and money lobbying the government to take choices away from you, to making sure the law protects them from having to change with the times and with consumers' wants.  Our engineers and workers are great, our leadership is killing us.

The music industry couldn't be more out of touch.  I don't think I even need to expand this point?

Status Quo vs. Innovation

As Seth pointed out in the already referenced story, a business with a strong brand will ultimately find itself with two choices.  It can use this brand to build the Next Big Thing or it can do its best to keep the Next Big Thing from happening.  Think about how hard the Music and Movie "content" industry has fought digital distribution.  Their price for losing this battle is that Apple Computers, of all people, is considered by many insiders to be "calling the shots in the music industry".

My favorite example in this realm is the Real Estate industry.  If you've ever bought or sold a house you probably have a vague notion that there is this thing called an MLS (Multiple Listing System) and this group called the National Association of Realtors.  Getting your home on the MLS means that if there's a buyer for your home, they'll find it.  You pay a 6% commission for this service.  Some brokers will work harder than others to sell your house, but you're really paying a fee to get into the MLS. 

From my point of view, the National Association of Realtors has spent most of their time in the past 20 years protecting this 6% commission model under the ostensible banner of "protecting consumers".  They even got laws passed in some states making it a legal fact that brokers had to charge a 6% commission.  Then Buyers Agents came along, representing the home buyer in this important transaction and they wanted part of the commission.  Then The Internet came along and companies sprang up who would charge a much smaller fee (less than $1,000) to get your home into the MLS (the most valuable thing a seller can do) but leaving you to do the work of actually showing your house to sellers.  The NAR and many local MLS franchises went to work outlawing the operations of these companies in order to protect the Old Guard and had a degree of success until the DOJ got involved. 

The net worth of most Americans is tied up in the value of their homes.  Suppose you have no debts and no assets but you managed to put 20% down on a $300,000 home.  Your net worth would be $60,000.  Commission on selling the home would be $18,000, or nearly a third of your net worth.  Despite how infrequently you sell your home, why would you want to give a significant portion of your net worth to brokers if there's a good alternative?

The Realtors had a captive and grateful audience.  They could have become the Internet Real Estate solution for brokers.  Instead, they tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle, they tried to hinder the online business models of their members in order to protect the status quo.  Brokers instead had to go outside the MLS, they had to pay technology companies to build their websites, to build the systems they use to communicate with their buyers and sellers, the systems that show homes on Google Base and other content aggregators.  The MLSs left this money on the table, and now they've lost it forever and they can expect to see themselves slowly decline in relevance.

Culture of Fear and Stagnation

There is an underlying current of fear and stagnation in many American businesses, especially the larger ones.  Managers and executives do not take risks.  They don't learn new things.  They spend their days solidifying their own power.  They have to force their employees to be at their desks between 8am and 4pm rather than advocate virtual offices because otherwise they'd have no idea how much work their employees were doing!  Your manager probably does not reward risk taking because their manager probably does not reward their risk taking and all the way up to the top.

Chances are your manager has been in his or her job longer than you, and they've got a career path to protect.  How much of the upper management at your company has been there longer than five years?  Longer than ten?  Is the company you work for providing incentive for and rewarding good behavior or are they rewarding people who Do Their Time and erect walls around their Empire?  When was the last time you saw an announcement go out in your company saying "Damon took a risk and he failed, but ultimately it was a good risk that could have payed off big for this firm" ?  You've probably never heard that at work.  You've probably at some time worked for a business that claims to to desire one kind of behavior but clearly rewards the opposite.

If your manager is new, are they shaking things up, bringing in new ideas and processes?  Or are they tripping over themselves in their hurry to appease the old guard?  How many of the policies you're supposed to be following at work are there because your manager/company is a afraid of being spied on, afraid of competition, afraid of being sued, afraid of having to change.

Does your manager reward smart risk?  Do they do the right thing even if it means putting their empire at risk?  Do they trust you to do your job once you've proven trust-worthy?  Do they try to give you what you need to be successful?  Be sure to tell them you notice.

What's the Answer?

None of this is to say that young people have all the answers, that "thinking outside the box" is always what's called for, or that all of our corporate leadership are frightened little empire builders.  My own manager is almost too future-looking sometimes.

Companies and individuals, big and small, are shaking things up.  Apple is forcing the music industry to change.  Tesla Motors is close to proving Detroit wrong.  Southwest is growing while other airlines flounder.  Despite ever-increasing regulation and taxes, America is still the most free nation in the world and that means opportunity.  What can you do?

• Don't do business with dinosaurs if you can help it.  Don't reward bad behavior.  When something new comes along that shows that someone "gets it", do business with them instead if you can. 
• Don't break the law or act unethically.  On some level, I think we all know that intellectual property is still property.  It costs millions of dollars to make a movie, so don't pirate them.  When breaking the law is your protest, the response is all too often more laws and less freedom.
• Don't work for dinosaurs.  This might be the hardest one to follow, and will in fact not be a real option to many of us.  Still, if you're a top performer, chances are you can work elsewhere even in the worst economy.  Work for someone who gets it, or start your own business.
• Encourage those who show good leadership when you see it in action.  Some Project Managers are only able to walk around and ask you what the percent complete on a task is.  When you encounter the ones who are really providing guidance and removing barriers so the project gets done make sure they know you get it.

Shake things up.  Do better.  Succeed.  There's something wrong with the old school.

So, I was at Drinking Right throughout election night.  It was a good time and I met various "right leaning" area bloggers.

As I had been saying for quite some time, unless the polls were outrageously skewed, Obama was going to be our next president.  Fairly early in the night, when Fox news an CNN called Pennsylvania for Obama, I said it was a done deal.

First, I am happy that the victory was decisive, much more decisive than the past couple for certain.  I'm glad to see that we won't be wasting time on recounts and "hanging chad" type nonsense.  I thought McCain's concession speech was gracious and appropriate; it may have been the best speech of his campaign.

Taking Obama on his word, I expect him to greatly increase the size of the government.  While my wife and I make less than $250,000/year I expect that # to change.  Through this and various other hidden items (such as the extra payroll taxes I previously identified) I expect my own tax burden to increase significantly by no later than Q2 2009.  The degree that his various other plans are implemented will be the degree to which we move towards Germany-style chronic 12% + unemployment and zero GDP growth year to year.  GDP typically grows even with your population plus a little extra for technology-driven per-hour productivity gains.  If your GDP is staying "flat" but your population is still growing 3% a year or so, that's a chronic decline folks.

We'll see what we'll see. 

The Republican Party and the Religious Right have taken some serious losses here.  I attribute this to the Republican Party hitching its wagon to the various would be Theocrats in the evangelical christian population and to laying down their former mantle.  The republicans clearly no longer stand for small government.  As many pundits are saying, it will be fascinating indeed to see what comes next for the GOP.  Will they

1. Try to return to small government, low taxes (without deficit spending), and some semblance of individual rights?
2. Simply move to the Left since a populist platform seems to be  getting democrats elected?
3. Decide that they didn't go far enough and that Sarah Palin and those like her are the future of the GOP?

Obviously I'm hoping for #1 but I wonder what the chances are.

This election season has taken far too many mental cycles for too long.  I'm glad it's over and I sincerely hope the nonsense about Obama being an assassination target is indeed fear mongering nonsense.  Among other things, America needs some stability right now.

Every once in a while, someone will post something that really resonates.  Seth Godin's latest post nails it. (emphasis mine)

Wealth is not created by financial manipulation, the trading of equities or the financing of banks. They just enable it.

Wealth is created by productivity. Productive communities generate more of value.

Productivity comes from innovation.

Innovation comes from investment and change.

The media lemmings, the same ones that encouraged you to get a second mortgage, buy a McMansion and spend, spend, spend are now falling all over themselves to out-mourn the others. They are telling everyone to batten down, to cut back, to freeze and panic. They're looking for stories about this, advice about this, hooks about this.

And of course, the paradox. If, in the middle of some sensible budgeting and waste trimming, we stop investing in the future, stop innovating, stop finding the breakthrough that leads to the next round of productivity gain, then in fact they're right, it does last forever.

I believe that we're on the verge of some exponential increases in productivity. Productivity in marketing as the waste of reaching the masses goes away. Productivity in energy as we figure out how to make a renewable process that gives us incremental units of power for free (think about the impact of that for a moment) and productivity in group work and management as we allow the network to do more than let us watch stupid YouTube videos at work. The three biggest expenses of most endeavors (the energy to make it, the people who create it and the marketing that spreads the idea) are about to be overhauled.

What a tragedy it will be if we let defensive thinking hold us back.

As Seth said in a previous article, a lot of successful, growing businesses were started right after 9/11.  I don't think Seth is anything like an Objectivist, but he does correctly identify that wealth is created by production.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/the-economy-the.html

I really will get back to technical blogging tomorrow, but politics are consuming too many mental cycles right now.

As I said here, one monumental failure of the current political "share the wealth" thinking is that they simply seek to avoid reality.  We cannot pretend that there are no consequences to taxing wealth.

From this article on Corey the well driller, it would seem that the current political Left feels that people who "fall through the cracks" because they didn't have health care are of utmost national concern.  People like Corey who finally turn a profit after 30 years of struggle and "fall through the other cracks" are not their concern.  After all there are precious few people in America like Corey the well driller and while we as a nation need them, politicians don't need their votes.

As I have said often enough in the past, our notion of the "wealthy" that we "need to tax more" is astoundingly unhinged from reality to begin with.  In addition to my previous thoughts on how horribly dishonest it is to say that Obama's plan will only tax those making more than $250,000 per year, there are some other concerning aspects of this mentality.

First, the plan is a broad stroke.  Even if one bought into the horribly flawed idea that we should tax these "wealthy" people we have used a poor metric with which to delineate them.  In, say, Missouri, $250,000 is a fortune because the cost structure there is cheap compared to other areas of the country.  In Wisconsin, $250,000 doesn't go quite as far but is still a very nice income.  In Manhattan where the cost of living is something like 400% higher than in Milwaukee, a salary of $250,000 may very well include plain old "working middle class professionals". 

The goals and methods of the would-be wealth re-distributors can be even more suspect (if such is possible) using another mathematical method of evaluation.  Let us suppose that the range of income in the United States is from $Zero to $5billion per year.  We have defined the "wealthy", the point at which we should take an extra pound of flesh from people, as $250,000/year.  $250,000 is .005% of $5billion.  If I'm making $250,000 per year and in the same tax bracket, in the same "Abused, eat the rich, they've got plenty" demographic as people making 20,000 times what I make what does that tell me about the nation?  If I'm middle management at an insurance company do I feel that those economic powerhouses are my Peers?  I'm in the same class as Warren Buffet and Bill Gates?  Really?

We have not only demonized Wealth in this nation, we have hijacked the term to mean "anyone making more than I expect I ever will".  Many employees no doubt consider their direct supervisors a member of this privileged upper crust, people who at best make perhaps 30% to 50% more than they do and are already being punished for it via higher marginal tax rates and loss of various categories of deductions. 

This populist class warfare goes hand-in-hand with another phenomenon unfolding over the past decades in America.  When Americans observe a candidate who is well educated, articulate, intelligent, and cultured, we call them an Elitist.  We say that it's bad to be an Elitist.  We say that the other candidate who has few or none of these desirable qualities is "more like me", "down to earth", "someone I could have a beer with", and we want them to call the shots instead of the Elitist.

We exalt the common and seek to elevate the mediocre to the level of the Good.  We have declared, as a nation, that those who Do have fewer rights than those who Can't or Won't.   We seek to punish our betters precisely because of their qualities that we ourselves have identified as Good and Admirable.

America is currently engaged, on all possible fronts, in a War on Excellence.

I read Obama's "Blueprint for change" plan from his website, all 64 pages of it.  I am not reading McCain's plan because at this point I highly doubt he'll be elected.  Regular readers know that I don't have a horse in this race, being neither a McCain nor Obama supporter.

My first observation about Obama's plan is that he seems to have everyone covered here, at least everyone who matters to someone who's most likely about to ride a populist vote into office.  Every special interest group has a message for them.  He has something to say to women, minorities, the poor, immigrants, the Green movement, the Labor Unions, people without Health Insurance,  people who can't survive on social security, veterans, people who can't pay their mortgages, the "middle class", people who want to go to college but can't, single parents, and farmers. 

Suspiciously missing is any statement to business owners small and large, to the people in this country legally, to Doctors and Nurses, to the people who are paying their mortgage, to the people saving for their own retirement, to the people who have health insurance, the people who did pay (and are still paying) for their higher education, to the people who saved, to the people who didn't make bad decisions during the housing bubble, to the people without credit card balances.  These people don't count.  These people can not be appealed to give up more of their freedom and offer more tax dollars to the government for the illusion of security.  These people are less likely to have usable sympathy for their less responsible fellow citizens.   No doubt we can expect these people to be sacrificed for the sake of providing for everyone in the first group.  But, wait, says Obama:  Any family making less than $250,000 per year can expect that their taxes won't go up!  Well, I've seen that said in the debates and such, but his plan has some sneaky ways around that fact.

• Currently we only pay social security taxes on income up to $97,000.  Obama's plan calls for removing this cap to help meet the obligations of Social Security.  So, if you make more than $97,000, you and your employer can count on a 13% tax hike on that income.  Obama is pretending this tax isn't a tax?
• Employers who can't or won't provide health care for their employees will be taxed (via payroll) so that their employees can participate in his Federal plan.  Some businesses may just absorb this new cost.  Some may not be able to and will pass it on to their customers, or from their employees in the form of smaller raises; some will have to spend less money elsewhere and hire fewer employees.  Lacking specifics on what "qualifying" businesses are, the plan seems to operate on the assumption that business owners are Fat Cats who have plenty of margin in their business to do anything we pass a law forcing them to do.  What about the additional cost in time and money of all the paperwork required to meet these obligations?
• Obama plans to raise the minimum wage.  Once again, he assumes that the money is just sitting there and needs to be spread around.  Business owners who can't or won't sacrifice their profits to accomplish this will simply hire fewer employees, spend less money rewarding the employees they already have, and pass the cost on to their customers.   We cannot simply declare the Mediocre the equivalent of the Good and walk away.

Like so many politicians, Obama is pretending he can make laws that will "spread the wealth" with no negative side effects.  We need only look at the chronic 12% unemployment rate in Worker's Paradise countries like Germany to gain insight as to where these policies will lead us.  Sure they have health care and 5-weeks of vacation, but the cost is a near-zero GDP growth for a decade and more than double the unemployment of our "broken" system here in America.  When we simply declare that people ought to behave a certain way without regard for Reality and Rights the historical result has always been bread lines and homes that aren't warm in the winter.

If I get time, I will post a more detailed analysis of the Obama plan, possibly before Election Day.

I have contacted my Federal representatives today to let them know I am firmly against the proposed $700 billion bailout proposal.  You should do the same.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/bPjNCxSc91M/article.pl

Read that, let it soak in, smile.  I have blogged about this before but I can't help giggling to myself.  I assume all the people who screamed for Microsoft to be fined, broken up, shackled with special restrictions (they have to run a lot of their plans by the DOJ), and forced to give up intellectual property such as Active Directory protocols to their competitors (IP that cost billions to develop) will now be screaming for the same thing to happen to Google.  Oh, and Apple is not far behind.  Apple has a great hit on their hands with iTunes, but they are being given an ultimatum in the EU to lower prices or face a full antitrust investigation. 

In case you're not following the irony, let me spell it out for you: Business B tries to compete with Business A in a free marketplace and ultimately is not as successful as they'd like to be.  Four main categories of options remain to Business B.  They can give up.  They can keep trying.  They can resort to illegal measures like kidnapping, blackmailing, and extortion.  But why resort to illegal measures when the legal measures are just as forceful, just as damaging, but perfectly above the board.  If Business A is big enough and Business B can find enough malcontents to help with legal funds, they can lobby the government to open an Antitrust suit.  No one states this better than Mr. Zuck in his DotNetRocks interview concerning the politics surrounding the OOXML debacle.  I urge you to give it a listen here: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=335

As Jonathan puts it, there are only three ways you can get yourself into Anitrust trouble in the US and the EU. As luck would have it, you must merely follow all three of these rules at once and you are safe:

1. Do not charge the same price as your competitors. This is Collusion and harms consumers.
2. Do not charge less than your competitors.  This is Dumping and harms consumers.
3. Do not charge more than your competitors.  This is Monopoly Rent and harms consumers.

Why would antitrust law involve a set of rules that are mutually excluisve and impossible to follow?  If you feel the intent of Uncle Sam is to "protect consumers" this is impossible to reconcile except perhaps by assuming the law is broken and not meeting its intent.  The law is not broken, and is precisely filling its intent. Without these laws, the bureaucrats would have a hard time marketing their sales as Thugs for Hire, but I'll come back to that.

Assuming a business wished to avoid Monopoly status at all costs, how might they go about this?  Are there objective measurements they can follow to avoid obtaining a certain market share?  Are there maximum profit margins they must seek to remain below?  There are, in many states, minimum margins certain businesses must observe.  A contractor in Wisconsin who marks up materials less than 6% will find themselves in court.  I suppose this is to protect consumers from the mental anguish resulting in determining how to spend that extra money?  Imagine that perfectly objective metrics existed for determining at what point Monopoly status is gained.  The business in question has only poor choices.  The business can opt to wait for the other shoe to fall, knowing that at any time their shareholders' wealth will be drained into legal defense.  The business can engage in self destructive behavior hoping to lose market share; if the business is a C-corp the agents are legally forbidden to do this and will find themselves in court.  Fingally, the business can start lobbying!  How might a Monopoly notification from our government look, anyway?

Google and Yahoo should not be investigated; Apple should not be investigated; Microsoft should not have been investigated.  There are already comprehensive fraud laws at the State and Federal level to protect consumers.  Beyond this, a business can only come to market dominance through a series of voluntary exchanges with clients and partners.  It is only the government, and not businesses, that can establish artificial barriers to competition.  Business owners have a right to their property.  Government power brokers will seize any excuse to violate or threaten to violate that right in order to furthur their own agendas.  Google, Apple, and Yahoo! are finding out that if you cannot pay the government Protection Money through the lobbyists, those that did open up their pockets will soon have access to all your hard work - either as it becomes public record entered into evidence at trial or forcibly taken from you by a binding judgement.  Just remember that by your willingness to infringe on the rights of others, you opened the door for the desecration of your own rights. 

I don't expect to hear public outrage against Google and Yahoo! ; only unpopular businesses receive this treatment.

Following the original Microsoft antitrust trials,  Bill Gates is famously quoted as saying "I should have spent more time in Washington".  This is to say, he feels he should have spent more time participating in lobbying and favor purchasing and less time running his business.  The power brokers in Washington wouldn't have it any other way.

“The Man creates - the parasite says ‘Where’s my share?’ ” - Bioshock

In cities all over America, state and local governments are continually demanding that working, home-owning citizens shoulder an ever increasing tax burden.  These taxes come in the form of state income taxes, gasoline taxes, sales taxes, and more.  No single burden is as heavy as the property taxes levied on home owners.  These taxes are ostensibly to provide services such as waste removal, public schools, and the like.  Beneath the seemingly benign veneer of Public Service is a rotten core of income redistribution, rights violation, and political pull for sale.  The offenses are particularly grievous in the theory and practice of Not for Profit Organizations (NPOs) in America.

NPOs are able to apply for tax exempt status, which tends to be universal in nature once granted.  Revenues generated in excess of operating expenses are not taxed, sales tax is not paid, and property tax on land and buildings owned by the entity is not collected.  Given the relatively large amounts of money, we will focus on property taxes here.

The first problem with this arrangement is that there is no solid rational or moral foundation for giving favorable tax status to one type of organization over another.  The fact that many NPOs operate charitable ventures as their primary activity does not change this.  The activities undertaken by an organization are the concern of the business, their clients, and owners as long as the business is not breaking any laws or violating anyone’s individual rights.  It cannot be rationally supported that it is “in the public interest” to redistribute income from for-profit businesses to NPOs so that they can run public-funded charities.  As Ayn Rand stated in The Virtue of Selfishness:

“…there is no such entity as “the public,” since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of “the public interest” with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others.”

The income redistribution happening in favor of NPOs is obvious.  No taxes of any kind are paid, and yet taxpayer funded services are still consumed by these entities.  Consider the example of a church in a small town.  Does the garbage still get picked up?  Will the fire department show up if the church is on fire?  Do the police answer 911 calls from the church?  Is there running water?  Is waste water treated?  All of these things are funded by property taxes and various extra fees on service bills presented to normal citizens who lack the political pull and legal knowhow to create a special status for themselves.  If a small city of 10,000 people containing various private residences as well as churches spends $100,000 per year on waste pickup services, the citizens who pay taxes are directly paying for the NPOs.  Citizens who belong to the churches likely don’t mind, but what about everyone else?  In the same example town, should the hindu(1)  family really be subsidizing the services consumed by the evangelical christian (1) church?  Should the atheist family be subsidizing either?  Of course not, except for the threat of force, no one would choose to pay.

In a true free market society, one would be able to opt out of any service provided by the government and also no pay for it, or ideally these services (fire, waste, etc.) would be provided by competing private enterprises who had to convince me to use their service with a solid value proposition. This is not the case in any municipality I know of, and it gets worse. As in every case where the government tampers with the market and takes away freedoms, there are unintended side effects that distort the original intention of the laws that had no moral foundation to begin with. Wealthy retirees in Milwaukee with legal and financial pull are forming communities within the city (2) in order to avoid property taxes.  If a resident having a heart attack calls 911, the costs associated for this necessary and life saving service will be passed on in the form of ever-increasing property tax burdens.  Because the tax exempt status is near universal and practically unconditional, it is not restricted to the core aims of the organization.  In the same example town of 10,000 and countless other municipalities across America, religious organizations are using excess donations to purchase large tracts of land for speculation.  A private citizen doing so would be saddled with a hefty property tax bill, thereby forcing them to carefully consider the risk and reward possibly by buying land.  The market is therefore severely distorted because the rules are not the same for all participants.  It is impossible for this situation to continue, as Ayn Rand put it:

“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

In the ever-escalating practice of making a smaller group of people support the lives of others, only evil can win and the process cannot go on forever.  Eventually, those who produce and pay will either opt-out of participating in this civilization or die as they are unable to sustain their own lives.  Where will the parasites get their free lunch then?  In the mean time, the happiness, goals, and values of some people are sacrificed to further the happiness, goals, and values of others.  This is a morally bankrupt practice and indefensible state of affairs.

The example town of 10,000 is in fact where I live and not a theoretical example at all.  In 2008 the property taxes for a 2,500 square foot home in this country town 35 miles from Milwaukee will work out to be around $600 per month.  There are no services to opt out of and no special status that most citizens could qualify for – the sacrificers must outnumber and out produce those collecting the sacrifices as a simple matter of mathematics.  The picture for retirement is particularly bleak and puts modern American life into perspective: a retiree could responsibly save for retirement over the course of their career, pay off their home mortgage, and still be forced to pay $600/month in today’s dollars for the privilege of having property that is already rightfully theirs.  Of course, the value of their home will adjust upwards for inflation every year, the actual tax rate can go up any time for any reason, and their hard earned savings can be eroded by the fiat currency policies of the Federal Reserve at any time by any amount.

One cannot help but feel that in America in the 21^st century, one does not actually own property, but rather one can lease it from the government for a non-negotiable and never ending extortion amount.

The root cause of these issues is the government’s ability to tax any group for any reason and for any amount.  Besides expanding government power far beyond protecting individual rights it creates an environment where some citizens gain a protected and elevated status and all other citizens are the losers who must pay the price for the lifestyles of others.  Citizens are free to use their time and money to support any cause they favor, in other words to work to gain and keep that which they value.  Waste removal services are free to give away services to a charitable institution favored by the ownership, and even though religious claims are not rationally supportable one must support the right of private citizens to donate to these institutions if they choose to do so.

Organizations with ideas that have merit will be able to succeed on their own, and those that do not will rightfully fail.  Stop using government force to make citizens subsidize protected organizations.

Footnotes

(1)    A note on grammar:  I have decided to refuse to capitalize names of religious bodies, etc.  Such habits only serve to reinforce the notion that religions are somehow special entities deserving elevated status and beyond rational criticism.  I do not share this opinion.

(2)    Please see this Milwaukee Magazine article for information on these communities: http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/currentIssue/full_feature_story.asp?NewMessageID=11063

In an article on Ars Technica, a lobbyist for the cable industry is quoted as saying that deregulation allows vendors to innovate faster and is a pro-consumer move.  The article’s author, however, cries that past evidence shows that deregulation has always brought higher prices to customers.  In addition, the absolutely abysmal customer service record of every major cable provider is pointed to as a need for government interference. 

I can personally provide a number of anecdotes to speak to the utterly shameful service and support I get from my own cable provider, but as is almost always the case when deregulation (free markets) is blamed for a supposedly undesirable effect, the ostensible deregulation is incomplete or tainted and therefore does not accomplish its aim. 

In the case of cable, consider the history.  Buried wire cable TV and Internet providers have had to deal with censorship and invasive oversight from the FCC and have been granted exclusive contracts by local and state governments.  These contracts usually take the form of the provider promising to build out the service to a high percentage of homes even if running wire there is not profitable and kick backs to the municipality in question in exchange for a guarantee that no competitors will be allowed to offer a comparable service in the same geographic area.  When Kyle McSlarrow says he wants deregulation, it would seem he wants to be free from any oversight, but of course keep the government’s barrier to any competition.

Removing any threat of competition, as well as allowing the cable provider to set their own prices, provides no incentive to offer good services at good rates and no incentive to help customers who are having trouble.  Right now, if I want better cable service, my only option is to move to someplace where a better provider is operating with their government-blessed monopoly.  Despite intense marketing spin to the contrary, Satellite is not an equivalent option in terms of bitrates, latency, and weather resiliency. Services such as Verizon’s FIOS and AT&T UVerse face an uphill regulatory battle at the State, Local, and Federal level as they seek permission to run fiber-optic wires into cities to compete with cable.

As usual the proponents of a Paternalistic State are quick to decry free markets as the cause of the issues that were in fact created with regulations.  If any company who wished to provide content was free to go out and negotiate with landowners to bury a transmission medium all the way up to individual homes, then we would see real deregulation.  Companies like Time Warner, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon would have to compete for the business of discerning consumers instead of competing for the favor of a small number of bureaucrats. Complete deregulation is the only sure way to drive innovation, bring down prices, and improve customer service.

Only complete and unconditional deregulation will set consumers free from high cable prices and bad service.

I couldn't leave this one alone:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/world039s-oldest-living-tree-discovered-sweden-15937.html

The first thing I thought of when I saw this, sadly, was not "wow, what an awesome discovery!" but "Wait, isn't the world only 6,000 years old?".  As much as it would be a tragedy to harm these trees, I think we ought to take a core sample and count the rings on the trees.  What would surely follow is the sound of one thousand "thuds" as the creationists trip over themselves to refute the fact that the age of trees can be determined by counting rings.  Or, as my friend put it "The devil planted that tree to confuse us and test our faith."

Johnny Appleseed was the antichrist.

A friend of mine sent me this link today, which was also waiting in my RSS reader for me: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080331-creative-irate-after-modder-spruces-up-vista-x-fi-drivers.html

Let me reproduce some of the most relevant parts here:

"We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards... by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards." writes O'Shaughnessy. "In principle, we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way.. .Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended."

He continues, "By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own... If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make."

According to Creative's own FAQ, sound cards from the X-Fi and Audigy families are incapable of decoding Dolby Digital or DTS, due to the fact that "these functions are not supported at driver level in Windows Vista." This isn't true.  When two of the driver files from a standard X-Fi card are replaced with two driver files drawn from a Dell-specific driver available at the company's support web site, DTS and DD decoding immediately reappear as options and function correctly. Creative might be able to get away with saying that DTS and DD decoding aren't enabled at the driver level for X-Fi and Audigy cards, but the functionality is clearly baked into the driver and is thus supported. Creative may never come straight out and say "It's Microsoft's fault that your cards doesn't work," but the Vista support pages are loaded with descriptions of how Vista's audio system broke Creative products. 

This, presumably, is the feature that ticked Creative off, though Daniel_K has enabled other features Creative didn't plan to support in Vista, including DVD-Audio. Anecdotal forum evidence implies that his drivers are of much higher quality and are more stable than those Creative officially provides, but Ars has not verified this. "

So, this is my opinion based on my understanding of US Law and what I believe to be Ethical behavior.  First of all, I don't believe it is legal for the programmer in question to do this.  When you purchase the Creative product, you are agreeing to their license terms by using the product.  This alone should be enough to allow free markets to satisfy any need that could possibly arise in this situation:

• If computer users do not wish to agree to any terms they feel are overly restrictive (not being able to hack drivers), they should not buy the product.  If companies lose sales because of this, products will arise to meet this demand.  The term "open source hardware" has been thrown around, where the platform itself is out there for people to implement their own software on top of.
• If consumers do not purchase sound cards because they can't understand the EULA and yet they understand they'll be bound by the EULA, the market can respond by providing simpler EULA.
• Taking this one step furthur, buying a pre-built machine from Alienware, for example, would implicitly require agreeing to the EULA of every single piece of the PC.  Again, if people do not buy as many computers because of this, the market can respond with PCs that are Easier to Own.

This is my logic concerning the compay's rights:

1. Few people would argue with the fact that a compay (like Creative) might want to offer different products, with different levels of Capabilities, at different price points.
2. The market self-organizes, with people who want the extra capabilities able to get them if they are able to pay for them.
3. Most people would have no issue deciding for themselves whether or not to buy the V6 Mustang or the V8 Mustang based on their own resources and how important more horespower was to them personally.  In the case of less-tangible Products such as software, it seems that people lose their ability recognize Property as Property, theft as theft, which I've written about before.
4. A company may determine at some point in it's product development lifecycle that it is cheaper for them to include the same hardware in both the less featured and the fully featured versions of the final product.  When R&D and Testing costs are taken into account this can have some surprising manifestations.  At some point many years ago I bought an Aragon Stage One preprocessor (made by Klipsch) for my home theater, this product retailed for $4,000 at the time.  Shortly thereafter I bought the Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1 computer speakers for perhaps $299 or so.  I found out later that the SAME processing chip was in each one, the good, expensive surround processing chip.  Klipsch had determined it would be cheaper to use the chip from the Stage One even though the Silicon was very expensive: it was already proven and could be implemented with almost no engineering work.
5. Creative should be allowed to turn on or off features in its Products via hardware or software as it sees fit.  The fact that the chip could do this but is "artificially" held back by drivers is an aspect of the agreement between the customer and Creative Labs, and is not a chance for people who disregard Intellectual Property rights to get something for nothing.  Whatever features are purposely crippled in this or that product are value-add features that Creative Labs intended to sell for money.

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/03/19/yaron-campaign-finance-oped-cx_ybr_0321yaron.html

I encourage you to leave comments on Forbes as well.

I found this "atheist prayer" via Friendly Atheist.  I enjoy Friendly Atheist, but I wanted to point out an issue with this post.

"Our brains, which art in our heads, treasured be thy names. Thy reasoning come. The best you can do be done on earth as it is. Give us this day new insight to resolve conflicts and ease pain. And lead us not into supernatural explanations, deliver us from denial of logic. For thine is the kingdom of reason, and even though thy powers are limited, and you’re not always glorious, you are the best evolutionary adaptation we have for helping this earth now and forever and ever. So be it. "

I suppose this is meant as harmless humor, and I probably wouldn't flip out if it had been entitled the Atheist Credo or something similar.  Let's not kid ourselves though.  Equivocation is one of the main ways the un-religious are attacked today.  Sam Harris absolutely called this one right.  To call the extreme skepticism of the possibility of the existance of a god on the same plane as faith is one of the more popular parlor tricks of the faithful today.  To call acceptance of empirical evidence a "kind of faith" turns my FlipOut dial up to 11.  The faithful are having enough of a hayday with ridiculous equivocation arguments as it is.  Do we really need to add ammunition by creating secular versions of old catechisms?  I think not.

¹prayer

Via slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/28/2342211&from=rss

Of course the states are going to say that MSFT needs to be monitored.  The politicians gain tremendous power by punishing businesses and restricting free trade.  As Google and other companies come testify for the states against Microsoft  I'm reminded of several quotes, and a little company called "Standard Oil"

First, the quotes:

"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." -- Milton Friedman

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
--Thomas Jefferson

Companies seeking to use government force to succeed where their own efforts in the marketplace have failed should be aware that what goes around, comes around.

Standard Oil:

I don't have the exact historical dates and percentages in front of me, but Standard Oil went something like this: Standard Oil had over 90% of the market for Oil in the United States at one time.  As the politicians and the public got behind the idea of Trust Busting, competitors to Standard Oil were slowly gaining market share, and the competition forced the price of oil down.  At the time the Standard Oil "evil monopoly" was broken up it had roughly 60% market share and the inflation adjusted price of oil was lower than it had ever been.  Politicians treated this as a great victory and it was sold to the public as a great victory.  The free market had already done what the goverment sought to do, and justice, property rights, and freedom were compromised to punish an "unpopular" company.

Thanksgiving has come and gone and I had an absolutely smashing time with my family, especially my dad.  The apple (me) fell perhaps a bit further from the tree (dad) than he would sometimes prefer: I'm a college guy and mostly a software nerd, he got electronics training in the Navy and is more of a hard core electronics nerd.  I write software and he fixes GE's MRIs.  MRI is just insane to read about: Magnets who's strength is measured in Teslas, titanium/niobium coils, and superconductive circuits that lose less than .001% of a charge in 1000 years.  Dad and I completely rebuilt my center channel since I had just ordered a new sqauker (mid-range horn) diaphragm, and he was very disappointed in my soldering job so all the solder points were re-done and the internal wiring was cleaned up with zip ties and such.  If I ever sell the thing I'll take a picture of the internals to show what a top-notch job was done.  As part of this whole effort, he diagnosed some possible issues with a free osciliscope I inherited: someone smart enough to fix insane superconductive electronics is pretty handy to have around.

Another place where the apple was flung far is metaphysics: I'm an atheist and my father was raised (and raised us) in variants of the Babtist religion.  A lot of red wine into the second night of the visit we had covered:

• Religion and why it has no bearing on my life and why that doesn't make me a bad human being
• Technology
• Wealth
• Relativity (space time, the train and some of Einstein's gedenken experiments)
• Health care: dad had a great (if depressingly Orwellian) observation about health care.  As the goverment gets more involved in our health care decisions, how long will it be before a helecopter flies through my neighborhood with a diffration horn  screaming "Time to wake up and exercise!!  Keep health care costs low, citizens!"   My solution: health insurance does not "work" using the current popular definitions of "work" without an army of healthy people bearing the costs for those who are not healthy.  Get the goverment out of the health care industry alltogether and you won't find yourself doing pushups at the point of a gun.

"You're not as far into la-la land as I thought" was my father's final judgement on my night of philosophy and politics.  I meet incredibly few Objectivists in day-to-day life, but the more scientific and rational someone's job is the more I find them coming around to my way of thinking.  The world is not populated by John Galts, we wouldn't recognize it if it were.  There are great masses of "Eddie Willers" who can be reached.  Recall Eddie Willers from Atlas Shrugged: 3rd in command, not a Prime Mover, always playing the supporting role to Dangy Taggart.  Eddie is rightfully counted by Rand as one of the heros of the book though.  He rides on the rails made of Rearden metal and he could never have created the metal, the bridge design, or the engines propelling the train, but he also does not seek to enslave the minds who did create these things.  My dad perhaps could not have invented the superconductor system in one of GE's MRIs, but he's smart enough to know what it took to make the thing and can fix the thing when it goes down.  He's smarter than 99.999% of the people out picketing for "universal healthcare." 

Inside a piece of technology like an MRI is a glimpse of the astounding effort, resources, and intelligence that it takes to make our standard of living possible.  I hope the scientists and engineers who work on them gain astounding wealth, and I hope GE makes hundreds of millions of dollars on MRI technology: it's the only reason this life-saving technology exists.

This story on CNN is a fun read if nothing else.

So these guys are going to meet to determine if the satirical Flying Spaghetti Monster is in fact a real religion.  What makes a "real" religion and how people who think there's more to our interaction with reality than rational epistemology are going to make this determination is anyone's guess.  Oh to be a fly on the wall...

On the surface this is a joke, but there may be something more sinister going on.  One of the favorite weapons of religious apologists these days is Equivocation.  I have observed and participated in debates where the apologist all too quickly abandons any attempt to defend the actual veracity of their supernatural beliefs but instead takes one of two approaches: one is to instead focus on all the good that has come from the faith of believers, the other is to claim that rejecting religion is just another form of faith, being an atheist is just a different cult, that aruing for religion to be kept out of our schools and goverment makes one "just another kind of fundamentalist.  In a small way, the religious declaring the following of the FSM to be a "real" religion seems to me an under the radar attempt at equivocation yet again, an attempt to rob the Flying Spaghetti Monster of it's satirical value.  An attempt, in other words, to furthur the view that there is no difference between believers and non believers.

The idea that being an atheist or rejecting specific religious claims makes one "just another kind of fundamentalist" seems absurd to me.  What dogma have we all embraced to assume that lightning in the night sky is not Thor throwing his hammer at Giants?  To quote Sam Harris "What dogma have we all embraced to not take the wishes of Zeus into account during our daily affairs?"  Usully, when arguing semantics, I start with the Dictionary. So, when consulting Merriam-Webster I learn the following:

fundamentalism

One entry found.

fundamentalism

So, looking at #2 put me into a conumdrum.  I am indeed a strict adherant to the basic principles that indicte if I try to walk out of the 3rd story window of my office here, I will accellerate towards the ground due to the force of attraction between my body and the earth.  Does this make me a "gravity fundamentalist", and my views on gravity deserve no more or less consideration than those of the "Intelligent Falling" movement?  Am I by denfinition a "Science Fundamentalist" or "Rational Fundamentalist"?  Religious fundamentalists make the claim that the words in their sacred texts are true in the most literal sense; these words do not change with the times, they are not metaphors to be interpreted and they are unchanging.    I make the claim that through rational observation of reality we can predict and describe the behaviors of the natural universe.  That, to me, is a difficult claim to argue with, and it it turns out to be incorrect, what are the alternatives? 

We may some day discover some "Unified Theory" that ties together relativity and quantum mechanics.  Rational people will welcome this as another leap in human knowledge.  Sure, there will be some people who cling to their old pet theories.  I don't see the words of the old testament being re-written to include equal rights for women, or the words of Isaiah prescribing the murder of children "toned down" to be better aligned with what we now know about morality.  That's why I don't like being called a fundamentalist.

{Edit: I should have gotten the rest of the way through my RSS reader this morning.  The same topic on Richard Dawkins's site: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1881,n,n}

I just received my copy of "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a new world" by Alan Greenspan.  In college I didn't follow politics with the interest that I do now, but one of my best friends was studying finance and is now a major analyst for Bank One (or whoever bought them) in Chicago.  Despite having a bit of a bleeding heart sometimes, he always spoke highly of Mr. Greenspan, commenting on his clarity of analysis and his cold, appropriate focus on facts combined with his incredible vision.  When I learned that Greenspan had become a member of Ayn Rand's inner circle many years ago, I thought it likely that solid moral principles (as well as a great mind) had been guiding his intelligent decisions throughout his career.  I consider Greenspan a rare example in today's political climate, and he may be one of the most well known confirmed Objectivists still alive.  I wonder if the anti-life religoius zealots in the then-growing Republican Right knew what principles Greenspan really stood for; despite being callled a "Republican lacky" for many years, I don't think Greenspan thinks much of the current neocon nonsense.  Read the book to see.

Via FriendlyAtheist:

There's a good chance that people's notion of "human solidarity" will triumph in the end, slowly but surely.

Milton Friedman, not strictly an objectivist, has some great quotes in Capitalism and Freedom.  Today, musing over my issues with UPS (didn't deliver my projector), Dell, Subaru (the local dealer not the car company that I still admire), and others, one idea from his book came back to me.  I'm going to slightly mis-quote this admirable thinker rather than dig through his book for the exact words of this quote, forgive my laziness:

"You can coerce people to be at a certain place at a certain time, and to perform a task in that place for a certain number of hours, but you cannot coerce people to do their best."

You cannot use force on people to get them to give up the best products of their minds. 

Priceless:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070506-science-may-be-the-new-political-litmus-test-for-rationality.html

The potential GOP presidential nominees debate their stance on evolution.  What is the role Rational Thought should play in our lives?  I find it entertaining (and sad) that several candidates had to re-issue statements clarifying their positions.  It seems one ought to know what one's convictions are.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/ap_on_go_co/congress_executive_pay

From the article:

 "The House voted Friday to give shareholders at public corporations a voice in executive pay packages that typically equal 500 times the salaries of workers at those companies. "

Last I heard, shareholders already have a Voice in what goes on in public corporations in the form of the various voting for corporate officials that is mandated by the SEC.  You elect board members and such that you feel represent your interests.  Oddly enough this is also our system of goverment.  I do think both executive pay and our public servants' performance and subsequent patterns of perpetual  re-election are disconnected from reality.  We keep putting people in public office who sell us down the river and we manage to forget this and put the same Senator/Governor/House Rep back in office the next time we have a chance.  Many executives pay are out of touch with their company performance: when an airline is going under and people's pensions are tossed overboard I don't see any reason to authorize "emergency bonuses" for key executives.  I understand the notion that you don't want these high level powerplayers who drove the company into the ground to suddenly quit but something about this doesn't sit right.  Many executives absolutely deserve what they have and I often point out Bill Gates or Warren Buffet as examples of leaders who are, well, leading.

The specifics of the bill are not in the AP article, but I wonder what this is actually going to accomplish?  Will I be forced to stop signing Proxy documents and go to shareholder meetings or cast remote ballots?  Direct Democracy, anyone?  The government is already placing a number of insane and costly requirements on public companies, we don't need any more nonsense.

We have all the tools we need to improve our nation: freely available information, access to our own bank accounts, and the right to vote are some of the more important ones.  We just repeatedly choose not to use these tools.

I dislike quoting actors and directors and the like because I generally consider them too out of touch with reality to have much to say that bears on my life or the life of anyone who doesn't live in a meticulously constructed fantasy world.  This NPR interview with Frank Miller (wrote the graphic novel the recent film "300" is based on) shows surprising clarity for "one of those hollywood people".  I'll post the same extract here as I read on The Atlasphere.  I am specifically talking about the notion of cultural equality:

From the interview:

NPR: […] Frank, what’s the state of the union?

FM: Well, I don’t really find myself worrying about the state of the union as I do the state of the home-front. It seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants … and we’re behaving like a collapsing empire. Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. And frankly, I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because of everything that isn’t working out perfectly every time.

NPR: Um, and when you say we don’t know what we want, what’s the cause of that do you think?

FM: Well, I think part of that is how we’re educated. We’re constantly told all cultures are equal, and every belief system is as good as the next. And generally that America was to be known for its flaws rather than its virtues. When you think about what Americans accomplished, building these amazing cities, and all the good its done in the world, it’s kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America, not just from abroad, but internally.

NPR: A lot of people would say what America has done abroad has led to the doubts and even the hatred of its own citizens.

FM: Well, okay, then let’s finally talk about the enemy. For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built.

NPR: As you look at people around you, though, why do you think they’re so, as you would put it, self-absorbed, even whiny?

FM: Well, I’d say it’s for the same reason the Athenians and Romans were. We’ve got it a little good right now. Where I would fault President Bush the most, was that in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn’t call the nation into a state of war. He didn’t explain that this would take a communal effort against a common foe. So we’ve been kind of fighting a war on the side, and sitting off like a bunch of Romans complaining about it. Also, I think that George Bush has an uncanny knack of being someone people hate. I thought Clinton inspired more hatred than any President I had ever seen, but I’ve never seen anything like Bush-hatred. It’s completely mad.

NPR: And as you talk to people in the streets, the people you meet at work, socially, how do you explain this to them?

FM: Mainly in historical terms, mainly saying that the country that fought Okinawa and Iwo Jima is now spilling precious blood, but so little by comparison, it’s almost ridiculous. And the stakes are as high as they were then. Mostly I hear people say, ‘Why did we attack Iraq?’ for instance. Well, we’re taking on an idea. Nobody questions why after Pearl Harbor we attacked Nazi Germany. It was because we were taking on a form of global fascism, we’re doing the same thing now.

NPR: Well, they did declare war on us, but…

FM: Well, so did Iraq.

I'm not a big GWB supporter these days but I agree with what Frank Miller is saying about culture.  The notion that we can't condemn people for holding onto barbaric practices like enslaving women and mutilating little girls because "that's their culture and no one's ideas are any better than anyone else's ideas" quite frankly has gotten old and will be the downfall of western civilization if not checked.  What's funny is that a nation like Iran or the various African nations engaging in what most of the civilized world regards as insane human rights violations can take the stage at the UN and condemn the United States for our various questionable practices.  Iran can blast the US for not sending enough troops to Darfur or something, meanwhile the world should turn a blind eye to its Barbarism.  This is why the UN is a joke in my opinion.  The international community has done a poor job of working out Standards for Participation.  You want to be in our club? (where our club is trade, assistance, etc)  You have to follow our rules, and our rules must include some fundamental standards for human rights within member nations.  The US is absolutely not without its flaws, but Murderers and dictators should not be able to take the stage at the UN to crticize civilized nations.

I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, flame on.

Note the strange silence after yesterday's elections.

Where are the broken voting machines and screams of foul play?
Where are the people turned away from the voting booth by scary people?
Where are the misleading ballots that trick you into voting for the wrong candidate?
The hanging chads?
The hacked-into diebold machines?
I guess those only happen when the republicans win the day.  How did we get through yesterday with only a single recount?  I guess those things only happen when the republicans win the day.  A republican victory, we should believe, is a sham, a proof of foul play, an abomination impossible to conceive.  A democratic victory is an affirmation, a proof of the righteous mandate of the people.

Oh well, back to writing code.

In Wisconsin here, we re-elected our Governor, and across the nation democrats are exhalted in their wins in House and Senate.  Somehow, I don't expect much to change.  The democrats have gotten more conservative and the republicans have started spending more money and thumping the bible.  They both serve the same corporate masters anyway.  Politics has turned into a footbal game beneath a 3-ring big top where team loyalty drives most discussion.  For my part, I don't vote for the DemoPublicans/Republocrats anymore.  I voted for 3rd party or independent candidates across the board yesterday.

My perspective on the democrat wins: I'm glad that flying cars, global happiness, unprecedented prosperity, meals in pill form, and universal harmony are just around the corner now!  I don't know which I shoud do first: go ahead and go out to spend $$ against the increased prosperity that is undoubtedly a few months away now, or maybe book my honeymoon in Iraq since it is probably about to be super-peaceful and friendly to westerners in a few weeks, or hell, I think I'll just go lick some doorknobs since the price of health care will be plummeting in a few hours, those doorknobs will be in Grand Central Station since the 85-cent-per-gallon-gas that's about to go on sale will make my roadtrip very affordable!