Ceilings are Stupid

Gravity is a confirmed phenomenon and has been for centuries. Ceilings will inevitably be pulled downward, thereby removing their ability to be above our heads. In other words, ceilings are self-destructive, their very nature of being above us being what causes them to be pulled down.

Some have suggested using vertical supports to hold up the ceiling. Even if we could imagine such a structure maintaining itself, it only worsens the underlying problems. Regardless of the structures you design, gravity will pull them downward and adding vertical supports to maintain a floating ceiling will only increase the downward force. Any objective physicist can see the data: more mass, regardless of how well-placed, always results in more downward force.

Ceilings, for all their theoretical usefulness, are merely a pipe dream of those who would waste resources by attempting to subvert the natural laws of the universe.

Necessary Evil isn't always necessary or evil

Lately I've come to dislike this term. I understand what it is trying to convey, that we need something, despite disliking it.

Let's start with evil. Evil. Focus on that bit for a moment. Evil is what we use for people like Hitler and Satan. It doesn't mean "mean" or "inconvenient".

Pair this with the necessary bit and it becomes somewhat horrifying. Evil is necessary? What sort of horrifying situation are we dealing with? Are we throwing an infant overboard because we need to take a water filter on a life raft? Or is this the normal functioning of society, in which case we're living in a twisted dystopia.

Maybe I should relax. Clearly the "evil" in question is generally just some sort of inconvenience or something that we mildly dislike. In that case, we're dealing with something that we don't like much, but which keeps things working.

Now this just sounds like whining. Can you imagine designing a building and using this term to describe the need for vertical supports? Ugh, the stupid floor can't just fly and we need to waste all this metal to hold it up. That's so evil! And necessary!

And thus we get to government, that perennial "necessary evil." Ask yourself this, if you regard government as evil, yet necessary, what is wrong with you? Are you personally so horrible that you need something to keep you in check? Or is government to deal with those other dangerous people, in which case, you have a really sad view of human nature. Rather than confront either their worldview or their actions, people decry the "necessary evil". Call it evil to preserve your sense of moral direction, then call it necessary to excuse your active or passive support for it.

Alternatively, maybe these "necessary evils" are not evil, and at times not necessary, but are instead slightly annoying aspects of society and economics that keep things functioning, but rather than attempting changes that would render them unnecessary. For example, hiring people is the most effective way to remove them from the welfare state, pulling them out of Medicaid and unemployment checks. But instead 'job-creators' prefer to demand subsidies for hiring and training, then not hire anyway and decry the burdensome welfare state.

So next time you're tempted to use the term "necessary evil", ask yourself, is it? Is it evil? Is it necessary? And if it is both, can you do anything about this terrible arrangement? Sometimes you cannot, at least not alone.

Unemployment insurance isn't a poverty program

This is in response to Unemployment Benefits Decrease Poverty? Really?!

I'd propose an indirect mechanism, which can therefore explain how the correlation can fail to emerge. Unemployment insurance acts as a stabilizing force, allowing families to maintain their lives despite unemployment. Under normal circumstances this would be a temporary effect, tiding them over until they find a new job and begin paying back into the system. In this way, unemployment would have a slight impact on poverty by means of giving people money, but the larger effect would be on maintaining demand, thereby keeping the economy growing. It would therefore have the effect of smoothing out some problems so that free markets can reduce poverty.

This falls apart in a sustained recession. If there are too few jobs to find, then the insurance will no longer be stabilizing the economy. It will instead be propping up people's lives, without being of much benefit to economic growth. In summary, unemployment insurance is a brilliant idea if we're in a short downturn, but not in a long-term economic malaise. It may still be morally justified to help people, but it is not a recovery program.

Of course merely bashing a program isn't of much help. From that we'd conclude that the correct decision is to simply end it. That would crash the economy and ruin many lives. Or end them. It is always good to remember that people can starve to death or die of exposure. Lack of proper nutrition will have a life-long impact on a child.

What are the alternatives then? Or what are the supplements that can be used to improve the program?

First, it is always good to have people in the same place as jobs. Government could offer increased benefits to people who move to areas with lower unemployment or pay some moving expenses. The housing problems don't help, since they may make people feel or actually be stuck in their present locations. Increasing the mobility of labor would decrease unemployment. Economic improvements tend to compound. Lower unemployment will cost fewer resources at all levels of government, while also bringing in greater tax revenues. Even with the buffer of unemployment insurance, we can expect some rise in demand from a family with income than one without, boosting the economy further.

Eliminating rules such as the minimum wage, protections for unions, and workplace safety would make employees less expensive and therefore would encourage hiring. However, in a weak job market and without collective bargaining, there is no guarantee that workers will be paid enough to survive on.

Encouraging hiring would help as well. This could come on the demand side, so that employers see greater benefits from hiring. However, demand-side boosting requires a massive expenditure and we've not yet seen the political will for a sufficiently large stimulus. Alternatively, giving everyone a bunch of currency, using inflation to cause a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, as opposed to the poor to rich movement we see with most monetary policy, would provoke a backlash from the politically-influential group known as "rich people".

Employers could receive tax benefits for hiring, such as from a pass on payroll taxes. However these tend to be deficit-increasing as the economic growth and resulting revenues don't offset the tax expenditure. The employment boost may end when the tax subsidy ends, and such subsidies tend to encourage hiring for low-wage jobs to game the system. If done at the state level, then it is merely part of the pirating of jobs with no actual economic benefit, an absurd practice known as "tax competition."

Rather than making hiring more profitable, government could use policy to make firing less profitable. A tax on layoffs would add an incentive to retain workers, though the retention would be proportional to the size of the tax, and would reduce business flexibility. It is good, after all, to be able to get rid of workers who don't produce as much as they are paid. Furthermore, if the tax were too high, then we could expect hiring to be reduced due to uncertainty about the need for labor.

Reworking the money supply for explosive economic growth

Make uranium the currency. It sounds crazy, and it comes from an imaginary physicist, so it just might be. But it also might be true, as things in physics often are. Let's set aside the problem of deflation, since the half-life is so long, or the inherent stupidity of making our currency based on a physical substance. Let's instead focus on the positive aspects.

While we might not expect people to trust banks, we can expect them to use banks. No one wants a lot of uranium sitting around their houses, not even terrorists. On the trust front, we can expect that banks would be more highly-regulated. While its easy to wave away responsible regulation on the grounds of "economic freedom", something that they made up on the spot, there is also the issue of terrorism. While the scale of the threat was also made up, it is scary and explodey and both of those are strong motivators. Therefore we can expect that people will use banks and will trust them to not explode.

In the event that the banks do explode, making big explosions, with the usual destruction of property and killing people, is illegal. This means that in the event that bankers blow up the economy again it will likely be accompanied by an actual explosion. Those are much easier to prosecute, since people have more of a tendency to admit that they exist. Fewer people would be claiming that the Federal Reserve or Elders of Zion caused the explosion. That's a good thing.

In the event that the banks do not explode, then the bankers will get to learn the other meaning of liquidator: those who worked on cleaning up the debris from Chernobyl and who suffered tremendously from the resulting radiation poisoning. This may seem to petty spite, and it is. Since when does policy have to be based on being nice to people?

Then a few decades later people will claim that The Wizard of Oz is about expanding the money supply to include strontium-90. Obviously that's stupid, because the half-life is far too short for it to be a sound foundation for the money supply.

States are not people

It seems that we cannot go a day without someone, somewhere, talking about sending a message or punishment to some country. They talk about it as if the country is a person. Even if you pretend that punishment is an effective way to guide the behavior of individuals, does that translate to punishment affecting states?

In the case of a representative government it is conceivable that a punishment actually hits the wrongdoers. If the majority voted fora  particular policy or representative, then the punishment, usually in the form of bombing, would then seem to be hitting those responsible: the people themselves. In other words, a representative state may not truly have civilians, because the civilians are the ones who decide to commit the crimes.

This is obviously ridiculous. Even in a perfectly ideal representative system there will be dissenters, yet bombs do not distinguish. Therefore the punishment is harming the innocent.

If the system is imperfectly representative, perhaps with some members holding more power than others, then the problem of innocents being harmed is increased further. Then there is the issue of the unknowable. While representatives can be elected or voted out, they have a great deal of freedom of action. Some actions may not be noticed, or even actively covered up (such as the time-capsuled tax recommendations). Representatives may act in ways that we not expected. For example, even those who opposed the selection of President Bush wouldn't have known that the US would be attacked on such a larger scale that a large war became inevitable. No one voted for his war or human rights record, yet as a representative of the people, he was allowed to do so.

Moving along this continuum of representation, we eventually get to the dictator. He dictates, as the name implies. While he may have some support, it would be absurd to suggest that his actions are sanctioned by even a plurality of citizens. In this context, punishment that does not directly target the dictator, or rogue elements (as I suspect are part of the cause of the brutality in the Syrian crisis), will be targeted.

There is no state to punish. There are instead individuals. Yet we somehow never manage to go after them. We instead cling to the notion that leaders are to be revered, held above the masses, even as those masses are slaughtered in their name. This isn't to suggest that something like the Syrian crisis could be resolved by killing Assad & Co. There are wider forces at play and a few deaths won't fix that. Yet killing even more people, civilians or military, won't fix it either.

It often feels as if we're living in some sort of awful Bond parody, where the villain is displeased with a subordinate and expresses it by glaring at him until he quakes in fear, and then kills someone else. Terrifying...

Men apparently like being told what to do

Lately I've been trying to try inverted perspectives. "What if the person asking for directions were white rather than black?" The idea is to directly confront the possibility of a bias. If detected, it will also dictate how I'd act without the bias.

So there I am, reading a bit of Slate when I get to this. Note that I tend to skip over writer names when I start an article and only check back if something seems particularly odd. So no bias checking to do on that bit. But on the article itself, I tried some flipping. Here's a bit from the original:

My husband even says, “Men like it when women tell them what to wear, because we don’t know.” Telling your man to shave, in other words, is not so far off from telling him that dishes left by the side of the sink eventually have to make their way under the water, etc. Listen to the outtake from the commercial, where Kate, Hannah and Genesis discuss what they were up to. “We have to help guide you along,” Kate says. Not much threat there.

Nothing bad there, right? I was a little bit annoyed though. Here's the re-write that I'm picturing:

My wife even says, “Women like it when men tell them what to wear, because we don’t know.” Telling your wife to shave, in other words, is not so far off from telling her that dishes left by the side of the sink eventually have to make their way under the water, etc. Listen to the outtake from the commercial, where Kyle, Harry, and Joseph discuss what they were up to. “We have to help guide you along,” Kyle says. Not much threat there.

Stupid women! Don't you know how to shave? You're gross! Just look at all that... woman hair! In places! Here honey, let me help you out there: The dishes go in the sink, not to the side. Ha, you women aren't so great at this housework thing, are you? Dumb bitch.

Of course it won't be perfectly mirrored, so the inverted perspective will yield odd results. Men don't have a history of being chained to housework or being treated like barely-sentient dopes who need to be told how to carry out basic functions. Women, as well as many racial and ethnic minorities, have had that history, and so recently that it is only forgotten to the extent that we forget all sorts of stuff, individually.

Nevertheless, I don't particularly like her claim earlier that: "These Gillette ads feel harmless and funny. No one really thinks that Kate and Hannah and Genesis are doing these men any damage." To that I say, fuck you! That's precisely the problem with this sort of damage: no one thinks they're doing any damage; it's all so very harmless. Except of course when it adds up and feeds into a larger trend. Thankfully, we're not yet at the point where it has all added up into harm, but why start?

Fraud is not a first amendment right

Lance Armstrong lied in his memoirs about his use of performance-enhancing drug. Some buyers in California are suing for fraud, claiming that they'd not have purchased the book had they known it was fictional (or not purely non-fiction / not clearly indicating what was and what not true). Somewhat predictably, the publishers are pretending that this is a first amendment issue.

They are, of course, full of it. The right to make a false claim is not in dispute. Fiction is constitutionally protected. So is non-fiction. Fraud, however, is not. If I offer to sell you X and deliver Y, then I am committing fraud; that is illegal. I do get to claim that my lie was protected speech, and in fact it is protected speech in the sense that I get to say it, but that does not mean that I am magically immune to the consequences of committing fraud.

Lance Armstrong has every right to lie about what he has done. He does not, however, have the right to sell those stories with the claim that they are true, no more than you can market a product as containing a particular ingredient when it in fact does not. The Bill of Rights is not a license to throw integrity out the window.