Lack of Imagination

Sometimes I think that much of the anti-capitalist sentiment comes from a severe lack of imagination. People don't believe that the future is possible because they don't understand how the future can overcome today's problems.

This post from Slashdot will hopefully illustrate my point a bit more clearly.

If everyone started watching '24' or 'CSI' on video iPods or streamed over the Internet — instead of on TV in their living rooms — these top-rated shows would probably go the way of 'Cop Rock.' This is because Nielsen Media Research cannot collect data about what people watch on handheld video-viewing gadgets or from PCs streaming network TV shows. While Nielsen estimates around 90% of TV viewing still happens in homes, it's this burgeoning 10% that TV networks and advertisers are desperate to delve into.

Quite obviously, if more people were watching TV from the internet then they wouldn't depend on Nielsen to tell them who was watching would they? In the slashdotter's view of the world, all that great TV that only gets watched on computers and handhelds would get canceled because the ratings would be terrible.

What they fail to realize is that networks know precisely how many people are downloading content from the internet and as the percentage of people watching that way increases they will discount the effect of Nielsen on their decision making.

The problems of today will not be the problems of tomorrow. We need to simply trust that the people of tomorrow will know how to deal with them a lot better than we do.

How Do You Define Yourself?

I got a bit unlucky today and caught some of Terry Gross's interview with Alan Chanmbers, President of Exodus International. (brief aside: Is there a mainstream interviewer that is any more softball than Terry? She had on two people that are polar opposites; yet, from the interview you would have thought she was in love with both of them. Yuck)

Exodus is, from what I understand, a group of ex-gays that are trying to get other gays to not be gay anymore. Isn't it a little odd to define yourself by what you are not? I can understand wanting to change your lifestyle - that's prefectly peachy. But why then spend the rest of yourlife telling everyone that you are no longer who you used to be?

It just doesn't make much sense to me.

No Fly List

The no-fly list isn't very accurate.

60 Minutes, in collaboration with the National Security News Service, has obtained the secret list used to screen airline passengers for terrorists and discovered it includes names of people not likely to cause terror, including the president of Bolivia, people who are dead and names so common, they are shared by thousands of innocent fliers.

Yawn. I'm guessing that its not really supposed to be a real tool. Its just a way for the agencies to show that they are doing something and for people to think that their politicians and government are doing something.

This is, in effect, no different than the stupid random searches at NY subways or giving haz-mat suits to a fire department in rural Alaska.

The government has no real incentive to provide effective security - they only have to provide the appearance of effective security. When the appearance of security appears to be more secure than actualy security you will end up with appearance every time.

Unless, of course, the breach of security has real costs for those supplying the security - which it does not.

Wasting Time

Suprisingly, the government wastes a lot of time.

Government Computer News is reporting that a 15-page Inspector General's report on time wasted by workers at the U.S. Department of the Interior has raised such a stir that the Dept.'s own servers have seen major slowdowns due to excessive downloads of the report.

The IG's report, entitled "Excessive Indulgences: Personal Use of the Internet at the Department of the Interior," estimates that an average of 104,221 work hours per year are wasted by DOI employees alone, simply by those perusing Internet gaming sites. The report cited thousands of collected logs from users' computers showing workers spending between eight and fourteen hours at a time on gaming sites.

There are two ways to look at this. First, give them even more ways to waste time so that they don't actually enforce any of the stupid regulations (or create new ones). Or, they have too much free time on their hands and start getting rid of headcount and reduce their budget.

The fact is - this probably is about par for the course. Americans that have access to computers, in general, spend a lot of time surfing. Shh. Don't tell anyone - I'm actually at work right now and don't get paid to blog.

I'm also not convinced that this is a new phenomena that spawned with the internet. I used to spend a lot more time chatting with co-workers and taking smoke breaks and other such nonsence than I do now. People have never hunkered down for 8 straight hours (minus official breaks) to work. Why anyone expects anything else from government escapes me.

Politician Dance Party

One of the coolest things about capitalism and technology in general is that it bring you stuff that you didn't even know that you needed. Or stuff that you didn't even realize was possible.

Imagining eliminating lying politicians.

Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.

Politicians have yet to appreciate the impact of the online world, which will also affect the outcome of elections, Schmidt said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday.

He predicted that "truth predictor" software would, within five years, "hold politicians to account." People would be able to use programs to check seemingly factual statements against historical data to see to see if they were correct.

Could this actually be possible? Would we be able to see at a glance the accuracy of a politician's speech? Services like FactCheck.org and the like provide some of this, but it takes individual effort and desire to go that far.

I say hook up this service to a strobe light and pin it to every politician's lapel and through a dance party. Even with fact checking I doubt most politicians would be able to help themselves.

MetaBlogging

I have added a Feedburner RSS feed to the site. I can't redirect the existing feeds since I host on Blogger, but you can subscribe to the new feed by clicking here: Subscribe to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ...

I'm not getting rid of the other feeds, but I will be changing them to title only after about a week to make sure the new feed works ok.

If you have any problems with the feed or have any general comments about the layout/functionality of the blog stop by in the comments and I'll see what I can do.

Skip This Post If You Don't Like Football

After the embarrassing defeat on Monday night football, I told a friend of mine that if the Packers don't bench Carroll for good then they don't deserve to win another game.

The guy can't cover. He can't tackle. He can't follow the damn rules. Putting anyone at corner would be better than Carroll.

Turns out they did one better and released his sorry ass.

I don't have many good things to say about the Packers coaching staff. And it may not have been a good business decision, but I am oh so happy I will never have to curse the name of Ahmad Carroll anymore.

Can Reed Persuade Me To Jump Left

Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, responds to Kos's Libertarian Democrat screed over at Cato Unbound.

First, personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand in hand. We won’t have more of one unless we insist on more of the other. Government is not the first nor the most important agent of responsibility, but its example matters. An irresponsible, unaccountable government of any size poses a far graver threat to individual freedom than a responsible, activist one.

I can agree with that.

Second, markets can be the most effective engine of individual opportunity, but only if they are honest ones, tempered in the public interest. Third, government must be an engine of individual opportunity as well, or else it will end up imposing a crushing burden of privilege and bureaucracy.

So far so good.

In a country like ours, the more likely threat to freedom is not government conspiracy, but government ineptitude and bureaucracy.

Wow! This guy really knows libertarians.

Unlike George Bush and the Republican Congress, we’ll give you accountable government that lives within its means. But we want government to do something useful, not just sit there.

Wha- huh? Never mind, he is just as clueless as Kos. The problem with government isn't the people running it, its the incentives that they have to do it right.

Incentives are the one thing that liberals simply do not understand - they think that everyone would just do the right thing if you just explained to them what the right thing is. The real world just doesn't work that way; I really hate to say it, but it's true.

If the best that he can come up with is "Bush was a liar, but we really mean it" then their hopes to enlist libertarians to the Democratic party is a wasted effort.

Dildos Make Headlines

I was suprised to see that the Supreme Court's decision to not grant cert to Ignacio Sergio Acosta v. the State of Texas was frontpage news on nearly every news source.

Sure, sex sells, but why is a ban on selling dildos a major news development? What I was not suprised to find was not a single news story explained that SCOTUS denying cert is not an implicit affirmation of the case.

The Supreme Court decides not to hear thousands of cases each session and when they do reject hearing a case it isn't because the case was correctly decided - its because they felt there were more important cases that needed to be dealt with in a limited amount of time.

Why anyone would be suprised that dildos are less important than abortion, the environment and affirmative action I have no idea. I guess nothing is more important than painting the Supreme Court as an ultra-conservative monstrosity that is going to seek to control every aspect of our lives.

News Flash! Congress already does that - we don't need a court.

Maybe This Wall Is a Good Thing

Arnold Kling points to some early signs of negative consequences of cracking down on illegal immigration.

Carnes ended up with less than 100 workers and fell two weeks behind, with bits and pieces of the fields unpicked. His income fell about $150,000, a significant loss.
...
Illegal immigrant workers who used to travel the country picking different crops as the seasons changed are hesitant to migrate for fear of being caught.
...
The problem is now reaching crisis proportions, food growers say. As much as 30 percent of the year's pear crop was lost in Northern California, growers estimate. More than one-third of Florida's Valencia orange crop went unharvested, Regelbrugge said.

This actually may be a good thing. People do not understand what they cannot see. Many (if not most) of the people that oppose immigration do so on the mistaken notion that immigrants take jobs away from native workers. Actually imposing the real costs of strict immigration could have two positive impacts.

First, it will (hopefully) illustrate the positive impacts of immigration. Importing low-skill labor means keeping costs low for the rest of us while the importer workers get a higher standard of living. A win-win if there ever was one.

Second, as rising prices or shortages start to cause real pain for consumers and growers alike there will be a push to liberalize immigration rules. Something that all supports of immigration would like to see anyway. Interestingly, we will see, in no uncertain terms, whether many on the right are really only concerned about the "illegal" part of illegal immigration.

A third, and I think highly unlikely, option is that low skill workers already in the US will flock to rural America to pick fruit when the wages start to rise. I'm not holding my breath.

Update: I missed another option, which is probably the most likely of all - the farmers will simply automate picking, replacing labor with capital. This mitigates my enthusiasm for a lesson to be learned by quite a bit.