Maybe I'm biased, but in America we seem to have a pretty good system for dealing with fires. When your house is burning, the firemen come and put it out. Then afterward you sort out damages with the insurance. But the fire gets put out. No smoldering embers or gas manes left leaking. If there are you get to sue them.
I wonder what it would be like if fires were handled more like healthcare.
Your house catches on fire and the firemen rush over. They put out most of the fire, so it's not going to catch up again since things are so wet. But there's still a gas leak and some piles in the basement are still glowing. But your house won't burn down anymore, at least not right away, so they go. Then you have to sign some forms and see if you can get an insurance-approved fireman to put out the last few dangers. Because of paperwork he isn't even allowed to under the front porch, though you can clearly see a few flames already. But firemen are expensive and paying out of pocket just isn't an option. You've missed work and are behind on bills. Eventually you think you've settled all the billing and pretty much taken care of the fire. A few months later the house explodes and kills you. The insurance company refuses to pay or send anymore firemen to your house to get your children out.
Yep, the second example in which fires are handled by the free market, rather than those lazy socialist firemen, that sounds pretty good doesn't it?
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Fetuses are elderly
Have you ever noticed how anti-abortion activists often use pictures of babies? The general message they present is "Don't kill babies!" This is a message I can get behind. I have a niece now and she is amazing, and if someone were to harm her, I would perform a very late term abortion on whoever hurt her. I won't say I'm a fan of babies in general, but I'm certainly anti-baby-killing.
I'm pro-choice as well. Well, none of the very late abortions, those really are just killing babies. I would know, I was one, born nearly thee months early. So I can conclude that 6 months is definitely too late for an abortion. Six days isn't too late. Between those it's a fuzzy area that needs work. When is it a baby? I don't know.
Why are the pictures always of babies? Unless it's a late abortion, it's not killing a baby. In most cases it's an undifferentiated, nonviable blob of cells. That's not a baby. It is certainly the potential of a baby. But if they are defending potentials, why only baby pictures? Why no posters of teenagers? Or middle-age adults? Or the elderly? If they seek to protect potential, they appear to be ignoring 99% of human life.
I have a theory: Anti-choice activists don't actually care much about babies. If they did they might focus more on far bigger sources of dead fetuses, and dead babies: malnutrition, stress, war, and the expense of pre- and post-natal care. Instead what is at stake for them is contraception. They've fought against condom use, birth control pills, and whatever else you can think of. But those are look so harmless: a bit of rubber, a pill, not all that scary or easy to attack. Abortion is simply more convenient. It's a starting point.
I wonder if anyone would care so much about abortion if it wasn't a way of preventing childbirth. Would we accept killing people if it didn't give women control, but instead gave us cheap stuff? I think we would. We would! We only need to look at factory conditions overseas, or even here in some cases, to see that it is true.
I'm pro-choice as well. Well, none of the very late abortions, those really are just killing babies. I would know, I was one, born nearly thee months early. So I can conclude that 6 months is definitely too late for an abortion. Six days isn't too late. Between those it's a fuzzy area that needs work. When is it a baby? I don't know.
Why are the pictures always of babies? Unless it's a late abortion, it's not killing a baby. In most cases it's an undifferentiated, nonviable blob of cells. That's not a baby. It is certainly the potential of a baby. But if they are defending potentials, why only baby pictures? Why no posters of teenagers? Or middle-age adults? Or the elderly? If they seek to protect potential, they appear to be ignoring 99% of human life.
I have a theory: Anti-choice activists don't actually care much about babies. If they did they might focus more on far bigger sources of dead fetuses, and dead babies: malnutrition, stress, war, and the expense of pre- and post-natal care. Instead what is at stake for them is contraception. They've fought against condom use, birth control pills, and whatever else you can think of. But those are look so harmless: a bit of rubber, a pill, not all that scary or easy to attack. Abortion is simply more convenient. It's a starting point.
I wonder if anyone would care so much about abortion if it wasn't a way of preventing childbirth. Would we accept killing people if it didn't give women control, but instead gave us cheap stuff? I think we would. We would! We only need to look at factory conditions overseas, or even here in some cases, to see that it is true.
Friday, June 4, 2010
This is not Obama's Katrina
It's his Dust Bowl.
Once upon a time America was based heavily on agriculture, but by the 1930s was transitioning to manufacturing. Similarly, we are in a transition from oil-based manufacturing to a service economy, though still based on oil.
But perhaps not. The dust bowl drove millions of small farmers off their land and into distant cities where they sought non-farming work. This paved the way for industrial agriculture as small-scale farming became unprofitable and the former farmers found alternatives. We may see a similar shift. Unsustainable land use faded (though obviously not completely). Hopefully the same will happen with oil use. This could be the start of a green economy, whatever that means. Makes a great buzzword though.
The poorest and most vulnerable are the ones hit worst by the disaster, those who work directly off the land, or water. The fishermen of the gulf are losing their harvests, and the water in which they would fish, to the oil. Will this trigger a similar exodus? It is likely. But where will they go? A recession is not a very good time for hundreds of thousands of unemployed people to attempt to migrate into other occupations.
Both disasters were made by humanity. Well, the Dust Bowl was a combination of drought and poor farming techniques. It didn't help that the plains weren't naturally the best place for farming. Similarly the drilling was a man-made disaster, made worse by the location so deep.
Once upon a time America was based heavily on agriculture, but by the 1930s was transitioning to manufacturing. Similarly, we are in a transition from oil-based manufacturing to a service economy, though still based on oil.
But perhaps not. The dust bowl drove millions of small farmers off their land and into distant cities where they sought non-farming work. This paved the way for industrial agriculture as small-scale farming became unprofitable and the former farmers found alternatives. We may see a similar shift. Unsustainable land use faded (though obviously not completely). Hopefully the same will happen with oil use. This could be the start of a green economy, whatever that means. Makes a great buzzword though.
The poorest and most vulnerable are the ones hit worst by the disaster, those who work directly off the land, or water. The fishermen of the gulf are losing their harvests, and the water in which they would fish, to the oil. Will this trigger a similar exodus? It is likely. But where will they go? A recession is not a very good time for hundreds of thousands of unemployed people to attempt to migrate into other occupations.
Both disasters were made by humanity. Well, the Dust Bowl was a combination of drought and poor farming techniques. It didn't help that the plains weren't naturally the best place for farming. Similarly the drilling was a man-made disaster, made worse by the location so deep.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Steal back BP
BP's negligence has caused untold damage to America. We'll probably never know the full cost. And they'll probably never pay the estimated cost.
So fuck em! Let's seize all BP assets in America. All physical infrastructure, any patents based here, any accounts, stock, bonds, anything and everything. Let's take their suits after they get done lying to Congress.
We'll call it even and promise in the future to have a more effective means of containing anger.
So fuck em! Let's seize all BP assets in America. All physical infrastructure, any patents based here, any accounts, stock, bonds, anything and everything. Let's take their suits after they get done lying to Congress.
We'll call it even and promise in the future to have a more effective means of containing anger.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
White flight, anti-redlining, and the mortgage crisis
I had planned to start this post with the popular story, that the Community Reinvestment Act caused the mortgage crisis. The general story goes something like this: in the name of equality CRA forced banks to give mortgages to people who couldn't pay them back, leading to a surge in home prices out of proportion with income and inflation, peaking with the bubble that we just saw burst. And somewhere I'd seen the graph of home prices, incomes, and when CRA was enacted. It all fit. So obviously I had to prove it wrong.
So please accept this strange assumption: let's assume that the narrative which I disagree with is based on facts, but draws the wrong inferences.
Cancel that, this works. Sort of. It places the bubble at around 1995. But that doesn't fit the data so well. Let's not let facts get in the way of our opponents. Oh the comment makes me laugh.
Let's look at the other side of racism in real estate: where you can buy a home. Once upon a time people would write and accept contracts which stated that they would not resell the home to black people. This was an effective way of keeping white neighborhoods white. At about the same time that CRA went up, so did segregation contracts become illegal. Combine that with legislation for race-neutral lending, and suddenly black people can move into white neighborhoods.
If they can afford it. In fact there was not a flood of poor, uneducated, criminal blacks to white neighborhoods. Instead the black middle class, who wanted to go somewhere better and to get out of that mess, they moved. But why didn't they move to good black areas? Well, there weren't a whole lot, since race-based lending tends to bring down the middle class along with the poor who they are stereotyped with.
But white residents weren't entirely clear on the "middle class black people will not rape your daughter and rob your house while smoke pot" thing. So they left. Simple supply and demand, even without any discounting due to urgency, will drive down prices. That allows a lower class of black people to move in, driving down prices even more, bringing in more, and so on. Meanwhile the middle class blacks see that the neighborhood has gone to shit, so they leave too.
On the surface this would appear to cause prices to drop. On the contrary, it's actually a perfect scenario for both oversupply and higher prices.
Moving out means a new home, driving construction. There's also a rush, meaning the new houses will cost more. Meanwhile in the previous neighborhood the home values are plummeting, after they have been bought, resulting in upside down mortgages. Walk away from that and buy a new house.
Why would the banks give loans for this? Well sure the white people might seem to be overpaying and rushing, but they're responsible middle-class people who have been paying off their loans and have savings accounts and whatnot, so it would seem to make sense to loan money to them. The black middle class, well it is black, but it's middle class and they can't legally discriminate. As for the poor coming after, everything is so cheap, there's nowhere to go but up. It helps when you can just mislabel and sell off the loans if they don't look as good as expected.
So a wave goes out from the city, driving prices up at the front, crashing them behind, and creating the Alice in Wonderland scenario of overpriced homes, oversupply of homes, and a whole lot of unoccupied places.
This shouldn't be taken as factual, and hopefully hasn't, but just as a "maybe this is it?" theory. I'll have to do some more digging to see if it's actually worth anything.
So please accept this strange assumption: let's assume that the narrative which I disagree with is based on facts, but draws the wrong inferences.
Cancel that, this works. Sort of. It places the bubble at around 1995. But that doesn't fit the data so well. Let's not let facts get in the way of our opponents. Oh the comment makes me laugh.
Let's look at the other side of racism in real estate: where you can buy a home. Once upon a time people would write and accept contracts which stated that they would not resell the home to black people. This was an effective way of keeping white neighborhoods white. At about the same time that CRA went up, so did segregation contracts become illegal. Combine that with legislation for race-neutral lending, and suddenly black people can move into white neighborhoods.
If they can afford it. In fact there was not a flood of poor, uneducated, criminal blacks to white neighborhoods. Instead the black middle class, who wanted to go somewhere better and to get out of that mess, they moved. But why didn't they move to good black areas? Well, there weren't a whole lot, since race-based lending tends to bring down the middle class along with the poor who they are stereotyped with.
But white residents weren't entirely clear on the "middle class black people will not rape your daughter and rob your house while smoke pot" thing. So they left. Simple supply and demand, even without any discounting due to urgency, will drive down prices. That allows a lower class of black people to move in, driving down prices even more, bringing in more, and so on. Meanwhile the middle class blacks see that the neighborhood has gone to shit, so they leave too.
On the surface this would appear to cause prices to drop. On the contrary, it's actually a perfect scenario for both oversupply and higher prices.
Moving out means a new home, driving construction. There's also a rush, meaning the new houses will cost more. Meanwhile in the previous neighborhood the home values are plummeting, after they have been bought, resulting in upside down mortgages. Walk away from that and buy a new house.
Why would the banks give loans for this? Well sure the white people might seem to be overpaying and rushing, but they're responsible middle-class people who have been paying off their loans and have savings accounts and whatnot, so it would seem to make sense to loan money to them. The black middle class, well it is black, but it's middle class and they can't legally discriminate. As for the poor coming after, everything is so cheap, there's nowhere to go but up. It helps when you can just mislabel and sell off the loans if they don't look as good as expected.
So a wave goes out from the city, driving prices up at the front, crashing them behind, and creating the Alice in Wonderland scenario of overpriced homes, oversupply of homes, and a whole lot of unoccupied places.
This shouldn't be taken as factual, and hopefully hasn't, but just as a "maybe this is it?" theory. I'll have to do some more digging to see if it's actually worth anything.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Have some of my wireless
A while back I got into a bit of an argument with my brother regarding unsecured wireless networks. Most of what I concluded is that law should not be written by people with next to no experience in the field, as is most internet/electronics/computing law. He's a law school graduate and has passed the Georgia bar, so one can assume he has some concept of the relevant legal concepts. The problem is that there are almost no relevant concepts for this strange new world.
All current notion of theft involves exclusivity: what I have you don't have. In the physical world theft is very straightforward: you have what I own without my permission. In a digital realm, it's not so simple. I can have what is yours without you not having it. We can both have it. I didn't earn it, but I didn't deprive you of it either, so while there is clearly something wrong, theft is not the right word. Incidentally, I believe this is part of why the record companies have so many problems: they keep accusing people of theft when they haven't. Switching to calling it piracy isn't much help when we all think pirates are awesome, and pirates are thieves anyway.
To the point: I felt that it was not theft or trespassing to use an unsecured wireless network as long as the use was not reducing the effectiveness of the connection for the owner. If they were using it at something near capacity, then outside use of it would be limiting their service, and that would be theft: the bandwidth someone else has, they do not have.
I could think of no good analogies at the time, though I was confronted with many terrible ones. But finally I have it. Broadband connections are like a water pipe to the house which is always open, always running, and tends to spill out onto the sidewalk and evaporate. Most if it is excess, wasted.
There is one major problem with my assertion that use of someone else's network is not innately theft: we can't easily measure their usage. Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to ask a network and connection, "Are you busy?" But let's not stop there.
Here are the features I'd love to see:
Password/key to be 'inside' the network.
Guest access to 'outside' the network, but retaining internet access.
Outsiders could not see anything inside: no information on the computers, router, or anything besides remaining bandwidth and network name.
Insiders would have absolute priority. Outsiders would only get leftover capacity, so insiders are never slowed down.
Have this built in to every wireless router and make the default "No one without the key can use this network for anything". After all, people have the right to decide how their own resources are used. Instead the sharing would be an option, a way to make some use of excess or unused bandwidth without going totally unsecure with no password or priorities.
If you happen to run into a network like this and use it a few times, drop a dollar on their doorstep and a note thanking them for the generosity.
All current notion of theft involves exclusivity: what I have you don't have. In the physical world theft is very straightforward: you have what I own without my permission. In a digital realm, it's not so simple. I can have what is yours without you not having it. We can both have it. I didn't earn it, but I didn't deprive you of it either, so while there is clearly something wrong, theft is not the right word. Incidentally, I believe this is part of why the record companies have so many problems: they keep accusing people of theft when they haven't. Switching to calling it piracy isn't much help when we all think pirates are awesome, and pirates are thieves anyway.
To the point: I felt that it was not theft or trespassing to use an unsecured wireless network as long as the use was not reducing the effectiveness of the connection for the owner. If they were using it at something near capacity, then outside use of it would be limiting their service, and that would be theft: the bandwidth someone else has, they do not have.
I could think of no good analogies at the time, though I was confronted with many terrible ones. But finally I have it. Broadband connections are like a water pipe to the house which is always open, always running, and tends to spill out onto the sidewalk and evaporate. Most if it is excess, wasted.
There is one major problem with my assertion that use of someone else's network is not innately theft: we can't easily measure their usage. Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to ask a network and connection, "Are you busy?" But let's not stop there.
Here are the features I'd love to see:
Password/key to be 'inside' the network.
Guest access to 'outside' the network, but retaining internet access.
Outsiders could not see anything inside: no information on the computers, router, or anything besides remaining bandwidth and network name.
Insiders would have absolute priority. Outsiders would only get leftover capacity, so insiders are never slowed down.
Have this built in to every wireless router and make the default "No one without the key can use this network for anything". After all, people have the right to decide how their own resources are used. Instead the sharing would be an option, a way to make some use of excess or unused bandwidth without going totally unsecure with no password or priorities.
If you happen to run into a network like this and use it a few times, drop a dollar on their doorstep and a note thanking them for the generosity.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Environmentalist Suicide
Apparently today is Earth Day. Who knew?
A former friend of mine once said something incredibly stupid: She'd kill herself to protect the earth from her humanity. I believe this was caused by several factors. She had terribly low self-esteem, wasn't of anything close to sound mind, thought she was a druid, and didn't seem to value humanity very much. Her life was a sad story, which she liked to tell any time anyone else had a bad day and needed to vent. Got a bad grade on an exam? "I'm an orphan." Well fuck, that helps so much!
This is a fringe movement, those who believe that humanity should cease to exist in order to save the planet. I say cease to exist because they have different methods: murder, suicide, no next generation, so it's not quite accurate to say they want to destroy humanity or kill it. The thought behind the movement is that humanity is unnatural and harmful to the world and therefore must be removed.
I consider myself an environmentalist, but I consider the concept of 'environmentalist suicide' to be incredibly stupid. Humans are animals, naturally evolved like any other. We have as much right to exist as any other species, meaning that we have no right to exist but also do not deserve to not exist. Nature doesn't have morals, it just is. Survive or don't, that's it.
To suggest that humanity has less right to survive is based on the false notion that humanity is unnatural, that we break the rules. Bullshit. We're no better or worse than any other creature and we're all just trying to survive. The whales wouldn't die to save us (or at least have made no such indication), so why should we do the same for them? Does a wolf starve to death before it eats a rabbit? No. It eats the rabbit and doesn't question it. Instead it survives. Does the rabbit complain? No. It does what it can to survive and has a hundred siblings to carry on.
I'm not trying to justify all human action. It is equally stupid when people gloat about wasting energy and littering and going out of their way to destroy the world. Their kids need that world to live in.
There's a terrible situation of extremes. On one side you have those who don't consider any larger impact on the world and the next generation. On the other side you have the static world advocates. Who are the static world advocates? They are the ones who fight tooth and nail to not let anything change, who believe that any alteration of the environment is bad and should be stopped. They advocate taking a picture of the world and never letting that change. How boring. The irony is that they like to talk of biodiversity, when preventing any change means that we won't see new species, and so over time we'll have less diversity.
Evolution doesn't just happen. Something causes it. There is a balance to the world, which tends to remain unless upset. Humans are not the only cause. The world changes in temperature and air content and sea level and all sorts of things change and have changed without us. We should not fear changing the environment. It is not an antique to be locked away in a glass case and never touched. Certainly we should not break it, but we shouldn't be so afraid of some dust, or new paint, or using it as a pitcher rather than a vase.
Let's not get caught up in extremism. Humanity should not end. It also should not foul its own nest. We should not fear changing the world, but we should be careful to not destroy it. That means not destroying ourselves, for we are part of the world.
A former friend of mine once said something incredibly stupid: She'd kill herself to protect the earth from her humanity. I believe this was caused by several factors. She had terribly low self-esteem, wasn't of anything close to sound mind, thought she was a druid, and didn't seem to value humanity very much. Her life was a sad story, which she liked to tell any time anyone else had a bad day and needed to vent. Got a bad grade on an exam? "I'm an orphan." Well fuck, that helps so much!
This is a fringe movement, those who believe that humanity should cease to exist in order to save the planet. I say cease to exist because they have different methods: murder, suicide, no next generation, so it's not quite accurate to say they want to destroy humanity or kill it. The thought behind the movement is that humanity is unnatural and harmful to the world and therefore must be removed.
I consider myself an environmentalist, but I consider the concept of 'environmentalist suicide' to be incredibly stupid. Humans are animals, naturally evolved like any other. We have as much right to exist as any other species, meaning that we have no right to exist but also do not deserve to not exist. Nature doesn't have morals, it just is. Survive or don't, that's it.
To suggest that humanity has less right to survive is based on the false notion that humanity is unnatural, that we break the rules. Bullshit. We're no better or worse than any other creature and we're all just trying to survive. The whales wouldn't die to save us (or at least have made no such indication), so why should we do the same for them? Does a wolf starve to death before it eats a rabbit? No. It eats the rabbit and doesn't question it. Instead it survives. Does the rabbit complain? No. It does what it can to survive and has a hundred siblings to carry on.
I'm not trying to justify all human action. It is equally stupid when people gloat about wasting energy and littering and going out of their way to destroy the world. Their kids need that world to live in.
There's a terrible situation of extremes. On one side you have those who don't consider any larger impact on the world and the next generation. On the other side you have the static world advocates. Who are the static world advocates? They are the ones who fight tooth and nail to not let anything change, who believe that any alteration of the environment is bad and should be stopped. They advocate taking a picture of the world and never letting that change. How boring. The irony is that they like to talk of biodiversity, when preventing any change means that we won't see new species, and so over time we'll have less diversity.
Evolution doesn't just happen. Something causes it. There is a balance to the world, which tends to remain unless upset. Humans are not the only cause. The world changes in temperature and air content and sea level and all sorts of things change and have changed without us. We should not fear changing the environment. It is not an antique to be locked away in a glass case and never touched. Certainly we should not break it, but we shouldn't be so afraid of some dust, or new paint, or using it as a pitcher rather than a vase.
Let's not get caught up in extremism. Humanity should not end. It also should not foul its own nest. We should not fear changing the world, but we should be careful to not destroy it. That means not destroying ourselves, for we are part of the world.
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