People Keep Emailing Me, asking for Long-Winded Diatribes That Go Nowhere

You may be one of the other lucky few early 20 somethings that wakes up facing at least 16 waking hours of open space. Its freedom, really, having that much time, and you can spend the entire time conceivably doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and thinking about doing nothing. This is also ample time allowable to contemplate the complete triviality of our lives and feelings. I don’t mean this in that pussified “my life is so sad and despicable and filled with despair and longing for better times,” kind of way. I mean I think its kind of cool, that whole acknowledgment that in 70 years, you can either have an impact on the people of the world, or not, and it won’t matter anyway.

There are a ton of really smart fucking people that have already lived, some were even nice enough to write down their thoughts and document things and pass it along the generations as screeds of wisdom, for the next set of intelligent animals to use to better themselves as they scrape along in their own lives, hopefully made easier and more manageable thanks to the ancients. But where are we now?

I’m not lamenting our situation – far from it. I try, but its pretty ridiculous to conceive of how much suffering and hours and thought came and went in the world to bring us to this point, where I can wake up, play with my computer, practice doing something artsy that might not make me money, ever, and still be okay. Thank god I have some sort of vague direction or goal. I can’t imagine what the fuck it must feel not like to have ANY idea what you like to do. Even if its completely pointless and stupid. We have lots of time.

So now what the fuck do we do? Its great having the casual luxuries unimaginable even a century ago. Civilizations have worked really really hard to bring us to this point, not without folly, not without collosal fuckups, but always aiming towards something vaguely better than what they had. In purely practical terms, two of those things were capitalism and the establishment of rule of law that permitted it to exist without deterioration into a clusterfuck of anarchists. Those two things have brought us more materials goods, and with them, the means for building better lives with more options, than anything else in history. What really bums me out is how quickly these ideas are being frittered away, power is being GIVEN to a governing body.

I don’t really care who is president, I don’t really care what defines a republican or democrat. What bothers me most is the quick deferrence and TRUST people seem to put into these governing bodies. I’m not talking about “who will do a better job? A conservative or liberal?,” I’m saying the concept of government as it handles large swathes of the economy – its a broken and outdated concept.

Its intuitive, I guess.

“We’ve got X problem and Y class of people with Z skin color are getting fucked. Bring in a group of smart, persuasive people to fix it.”

Done. Solved.

If it operated that simply, don’t you think the whole collectivist thing would have worked?

Take the inverse:

“We’ve got X problem and Y class of people with Z skin color are getting fucked. …So um, let’s leave it alone, let the incentives that have produced what we have so far remain intact, keep relying on selfish individuals to provide goods and services in exchange for money, let the thing build and our overall standard of living will rise and this will solve the initial X problem with Y class with Z color while making it unnecessary to infringe on the lives, rights, and personal ambitions of those who are NOT those people.”

In a fit of emotional rage,  which do you think would be taken seriously?

I guess the problem is psychological. One type of mind prefers to deal with things one way, and the other another way.

A mind that tends to prefer decisions to follow emotional reactions is often quick to side with the most persuasive, intelligent and moral sounding voice in the discourse. Somebody charismatic that can properly channel the basic and primitive emotions of gobs of people into something that may sound at once grand, beautiful, complex, and visionary. Somebody brilliant and sympathetic that can take the veneer of substance and wrap it around horseshit, essentially. At some level, they may literally believe that their personal degree of emotional investment actually validates their views.

“How can I be wrong if I feel so strongly about X and care so deeply?”

The other type of mind is reflexively distrustful of strangers that claim to operate for their, and others’ benefit without some sort of other motive. These types of minds may secretly want to believe and follow and be part of the crowd and fit in, but instinctively shy away from that. They spend most of their lives feeling like it is they, themselves, that are completely insane.

“Okay, okay…just shut up for a second. Let me think about this…”

They want to understand. Understanding the inner workings of something for them brings the same value as “belonging” and “being part of a larger purpose” does for others. It takes a lot of effort and mental stubbornness to not buy into the emotional, and it takes even more real physical effort to do the work necessary to understand what is really happening, why it might not be a good thing, and how to counteract it.

Randoms

1.

“It might be nice to be the kind of person that other people wouldn’t feel threatened deferring their judgement to. People hate being told they are wrong. Be the kind of person people don’t mind being proven incorrect with.

Of course, this is easier when the person you are deferring your judgement to has some insanely precocious intellectual abilities that set them apart enormously from “regular” folks. Oddly enough, the mere existence of an incredibly huge “innate ability gap” will often make these regular folks feel unthreatened, because they now have a more legitimate excuse for their own failings (that being a lack of equivalent innate ability in some area), rather than having to muster up the self-awareness and ego blow of admitting their ideas are just retarded.”

2.

“If you think about sex a lot when you’re younger, can that trigger an earlier activated pituitary? Anybody?”

3.

“One of the things that is starting to amaze me these days is how utterly similar subjects/topics/areas of interest are. At some level in your growing expertise on a subject, you will begin to develop parallel conceptual relationships between the current subject at hand and the subjects you’ve already mastered. The single, most pervasive and common principle you will notice between these subjects, aside from the fact that they are hard to master, but that they are so insanely complicated that your budding intellect and its realizations will slowly make it apparent that you really don’t know even remotely little about the subject – or anything really.

Even after “mastering” the subject for practical purposes, you would have to essentially become god, with the ability to reach your tentacles of insight and understanding into every facet of existence. Or the universe, or something. And remember that the universe is expanding (last we checked anyway), and so this principle reaches infinity.”

4.

“…there is a dearth of people in power who understand the most basic principles of human freedom and the accompanying accountability. We focus on welfare now, admittedly a good thing, but often at the expense of maintaining economic freedoms and allowing them to raise the overal quality of life over time, which is ironically what helps the poor the most anyway.”

Don’t They Get It?

Forget politics for a minute – I have a lot of trouble understanding why the notion of applying simple rules and regulations to something already heinously complex will result in anything other than a catastrophe.

Has anybody in Washington ever bothered to study economics?? Even the basic kind?

Has anybody in Washington ever bothered to understand the concept of incentives in government versus incentives as citizens? And why understanding their differences is crucial to understanding the real consequences of the policies executed?

Why would anyone want to give more power and money to these people? What else could they do for the public that the public itself couldn’t do on its own? Has anyone taken a look at government programs and how they are run? Do people enjoy themselves at the DMV or something? What the hell is going on?

Are people just lazy? Do people say “Oh, that sounds like a lot of work and expertise that I don’t have/don’t have time or money to get. Let’s just hand it off to the government and assume it will work out.” I mean, I can sort of understand this, it seems to make sense intuitively, but come on. It also seems intuitive that all girls, everywhere, are insanely attracted to me because I am special and brilliant. Thanks, intuition. You’ve led me to my masturbating alone in the dark night after night.

What I really can’t understand, is a given person’s blind faith in the power of these people. They are there to be liked. Fine, but can we at least CONSIDER that when they are busy “borrowing” a trillion dollars from the next generation of kid/adults that are allegedly on their way to turning into brilliant and high-yielding artists raised in privileged environments with nothing but degrees in “cultural studies” and a ridiculous sense of entitlement? These are the people you will be taxing the shit out of in 30 years, government. Good luck and Godspeed.

Government Funding for Artists is Idiotic and Irresponsible – Part 1

I keep reading about how the federal government wants to slash funds for arts and entertainment in the USA, and how horrible this is, and how insensitive and stupid this is, and how important the arts are to society, etc. etc.

Am I the only one that thinks this is actually a good fucking idea?

“But you’re an artist Brett, and one who makes very little money, at that. How can you say this with a conscience??!!!

Let’s say I produce some awesome art in the next decade. That’s a decade of hard-earned work at something questionably remunerative at best, and financially crippling at worst. Let’s say that my “reward,” that being a given number of fans or other artists willing to pay me for the product of my output, is something like $500,000 per year.

I’m going to be taxed on that money, to fund other artists who MAY OR MAY NOT produce artistic works that are valuable enough for the public to want to pay for on their own. The art produced by these subsidized artists could turn out to be shit. It may turn out to be great too, but then if its that good why do we need a government to get involved?

“WHO CARES, ART IS BEAUTIFUL AND BLAH BLA…!!!???” – say politicians that are more interested in getting elected and looking benevolent than actually doing anything worthwhile.

Why is it the government’s job to hand out money to artists? Why is it MY job once I have money, to hand the government money to then filter through an inefficient and ridiculous bureaucracy, to then hand it over to artists that might end up producing shit that people might not find valuable enough to pay for on their own?

Beyond all that, who CARES IF YOU SUCCEED AT YOUR ART? In reality, no one. Its a creative and spiritual pursuit that’s been around since humans lived in trees. Before we got “funding,” and all sorts of other bullshit. So why do we build up government infrastructure in this stupidly vain attempt to put a price on the “priceless?” If it can’t succeed on its own merits, then why the fuck should everyone be forced to pay for it anyway?

On the contrary, what if I make art that doesn’t sell? Well, presumably the reason it didn’t sell was because it a) sucked and therefore didn’t deserve to be financially rewarded (sort of similar to say, um, a badly run business) or b) nobody knew about it/marketing efforts failed/the Republicans didn’t help (sort of similar to the qualities of, um, a badly run business). Why are the arts treated differently than a fucking business in this context?

I know, I know. “HOW DARE YOU COMPARE SOMETHING AS INVALUABLE AS ART TO A BUSINESS ENTERPRISE. ART IS PRICELESS AND UPLIFTING AND ESSENTIAL TO A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY…”

No, its not. Its sexy and cool and some of the most profoundly gratifying hard work you’ll ever put into something. It IS priceless in a sense, by then why trivialize it further by giving a bunch of idiots in Congress the power to meddle with it?

Thomas Sowell Pt. 1

This will be the first of many posts about economist, political columnist, and author of a ton of books dating back to the 70s – Thomas Sowell. Sowell grew up in Harlem, moved out at 17, and joined the army and served in the Korean war. When he came back home he got his undergrad, graduate, and PhD at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, respectively.

Not really surprisingly, his initial political views were Marxist, and it was only the experience of working a government job where he came to understand the inherent flaws and misaligned incentives that tend to come with any government run operation. So, like a lot of people who end up being conservative or libertarian-leaning later on in life – he was on the left in his younger days. I defy you to name me examples of people where the opposite scenario worked itself out.

He picks on the very core of our inherent biases as people, and filters them through an economic lens – and this allows the people who read him to see and understand the motivations and various manifestations of knowledge that inform political movements, social movements, government policies, and simply the mindsets of sets of people that make daily decisions.

Under what constraints and limitations as human beings do we operate under? What IS sufficient knowledge required to make a given decision? Why can (and do) so many unintended things happen when a decision is made, despite the highly plausible pretenses that were the impetus for the decision in the first place? Why does money forcibly changing hands in the form of taxes, subsidies, and other regulations tend to have a longterm and disastrous net effect on an economy, and ultimately serve to benefit no one – save for the people that were elected to execute the initial policy?

These are the kind of thoughts that are neither popular, nor easy to think about and work through. We have been grown up in such a luxury that we can directly benefit from an economic system we know nothing about – and that ultimately is very dangerous. If we don’t know how our current system works and how it gave us what we have, we can’t really know or comprehend movements, ideas, or people that may threaten this system in the name of ego-stroking and ambiguous and ill-defined language designed precisely to numb our docile little minds into subservience.

Needless to say, I love this shit. It runs directly counter to prevailing ideas and wisdom, but man, does it teach you how to think and organize information. You know when you defragment a computer and it reorganizes all the files and data so  that when you make a command, the thing runs more smoothly? Reading Sowell is like doing the same thing with your mind.

As I’ve said before, leave the details for someone else. Instead, learn to think about and understand the details you WILL come across in abundance, so you can more smoothly discard obviously bad ones and further explore the good ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

The Vision of the Anointed

Knowledge and Decisions

(^^ This one is very very difficult to get through (its taken me a few weeks to get through 60 pages), and I would suggest starting with something lighter like his “Controversial Essays” books, but this book really helps you understand his points from the ground up, and will GREATLY enhance your understanding of economics)

Oh, Contribute? (Pt. 2)

No, instead let’s milk money

from people that have become successful

within the very system we hate,

and use it to further our agenda

Oh, Contribute?

Oh, me contribute? No, you see the system

is broken, so why contribute?

Besides, how can I feel good about myself

unless its me and my limitless compassion

versus systemic rot and corrupt overlords?

Nothing more noble

Because there is nothing nobler

in this world, than finding ways

to spend other peoples’ money.

Liberal Arts Major

Thank you liberal arts major

the world is now so much clearer

The infinite wisdom, grace, and compassion you’ve bestowed

on my benighted and unknowing little head

Who knew that the highest concentration

of evil in the world, is the Republican party?

I didn’t, until you came along

Wait, What?

From the Economist:

“Not everyone believes in Barack Obama’s promise to change Washington. But at least the faces will change. Should he win the White House, Mr Obama will bring in a new team to run the federal government, the Oval Office, and the Democratic Party…On domestic matters, Mr Obama has assembled a team of sharp academic economists who premise their work on his supposed ability to sell sophisticated policy. Most prominent up until now has been Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor…[his] record suggests neither the hostility towards globalised capitalism nor the desire for large-scale redistribution that conservatives, spooked by tales of Mr Obama’s left-wing voting record, might fear: Mr Goolsbee is a problem-solver who favours such unsexy proposals as altering American tax forms…As of this week, though, Mr Obama’s newly appointed economics director is Jason Furman…a staunch free-trader who once praised Wal-Mart and has favoured lowering corporate taxes.”

Wait, what?

Obama’s voting record has been one of the farthest left throughout his career, and he wants to use a UofC professor and a “staunch” free market guy as part of his economics team?

Chicago School economists are known for favoring free-market economics. Because of this, they are relative outcasts in the academic world where free-market views are often dismissed as cold and callous attitudes.

Precisely the kind of people that are probably going to vote for Obama – young, far-left-leaning activists, idealists – are precisely the people that studied schools of economic thought that couldn’t be more OPPOSITE of those views held by UofC academics. The people who like Obama should technically be at odds with his decision to appoint two free-market economists.

If Obama’s doing what I think he’s doing, it’s this:

He is putting himself in a position where he can masquerade as a benevolent and hyper articulate liberal, while at the same time using otherwise conservative economic policies that actually work.

Free-market policies work best, but they are counter-intuitive and less than glamorous to talk about. So he quietly appoints free-market advisers. He’s basically using conservative policies to ultimately boost a liberal image.

All this being said, the fact that Obama selected two free-market guys for his team might not even mean a whole lot. He might not listen to them. Either Obama knows that free-market policies work, and thus appointed people with those views as advisers, or Obama wants to create the illusion that he is more conservative than his voting record would suggest, in order to please Republicans.

I hope it’s the former.