Two Short Thoughts

I was looking at Levine's book (not actually reading it, you understand, because I don't have time to waste on that kind of drivel), when I had two thoughts about government.

Thought #1: If you desire a society based based upon the rule of law, then you have to have a government to erect the legal framework and then enforce the laws hanging off that framework.

Thought #2: Those who rail longest and loudest against any form of government tend to be those same predators who the laws are supposed to control. In other words, when you hear someone bitching and moaning about "government", mark that person as someone you would not want taking your back in a fight...

Hmmm....

it's been months, so let us talk about books and records

Damn, I find that I have about 6 drafts in my Blogger file which I have never gotten around to posting. The problem here is that most of those posts are like newspapers. More than a couple days old and they're not good for much more than wrapping fish...except that blog posts don't even have that last little bit of utility. So, with a certain amount of regret, I checked off most of 'em and hit the "delete" button."

I am making this a mission...instead of giving up something this Lent, I am doing something intentional and positive: I am going to write 20 minutes a day. I am going to write 20 minutes a day and post it here. I am already 12 days behind, but that is because I really didn't decide to make this my Lenten discipline until today. OK, better late then never, eh?

Now, having gotten that off my plate, I have a request for any and all who happen upon this note. In the future, whenever you feel the need to buy a book, first go to Amazon and check to see if there is a Kindle version. If there is, no other action is required. However, if there is not a Kindle edition, please click on the link that requests a Kindle version. The more clicks Amazon gets, the more pressure publishers will feel to put out digital versions. I ask this because I am finding that I like reading the digital versions better than I like reading them in their traditional printed-on-a-paper-page format. I truly believe that books in digital format will be the next form of mass-market distribution.

Mass market paperbacks were once seen as anathema to "legitimate" publishing. Paperbacks were the province of genre hacks. They were good for potboiler science fiction, murder mysteries and romance novels. Serious authors of serious books didn't publish in paperback format. At least not until publishers saw how well paperbacks sold and finally figured out that paperbacks made them more money in the end. Well, I think that digital format books will do the same. All it will take is for the publishers to devise a form of digital security that makes it about as hard to steal content as it is now to scan and then digitize the pages of a book. It simply takes too much effort to scan and then digitize a book to make it seem attractive to jerks who get their kicks that way.

Look, the same thing is beginning to happen in the world of mp3 music files. I was a big Napster user when it first came out. When it was origninally shut down, I puttered around out in Gnutella space, mostly on Limewire, but it wasn't the same. On Limewire, I mostly downloaded mp3 versions of music I already owned on old vinyl records. I don't have an iPod, so I don't use iTunes, but I do use Amazon. For $0.99 per track I can buy individual tracks which I like without having to buy a whole cd. So now I budget myself for about $5.00 per week for new music. I get to pick and choose; I am assuming that the creative artist gets some of this--that the parasitic leeches in suits don't usurp all my money--which makes me feel like I'm doing the right thing. And, $5.00 a week is not an exorbitant amount to pay for music I like. Also, I support a listener sponsored online radio station (RadioParadise.com) which also means I send something on to the creative people who create my music. I still go down to the boxes holding all my old records every now and then to see if there is anything that rings a bell...that I would like in digital format. If there is, and I have it on vinyl, then I'll go out to Limewire to see if somebody has a digital copy. I would make my own except I don't have a turntable anymore. And, besides, its too much work.

I would actually really like to be able to buy tracks directly from the artist, bypassing the suits who suck off the talents of the truly creative completely. I would think that 50-cents a track would be a sufficient price which would probably give the artist 3 or 4 times as much income as they get from the record industry which exists only to exploit their talent. Today musicians don't need the hugely expensive recording studios of old. Some cheap foam soundproofing, a PC, a couple microphones and one of the music-studio software packages and a garage band can put together tracks that are as good as those coming out of most record label studios--at least in digital quality. Now, a good sound engineer and a good producer can make a huge difference, but they are not completely necessary. Besides, let's face it, most producers aren't all that good.

What I'm getting at is that it is cost-effective for me to pay for individual tracks, because, again let's face it, on most albums/cds there are only a couple tracks, at best, that I really like. The others, for the most part, are just fillers. In fact, I can only think of a couple albums/cds that had more than a couple songs, and those were either "greatest hits" or concept albums like "Tommy".

*sigh* I have digressed. My point was that when digital books can be had for a couple bucks apiece, there is no real incentive to copy them illegally or to seek copies of books that were made illegally. There are a lot of books which are free for the taking out there because they are in the public domain. A person could build a huge digital library for relative little cash outlay. Sure, there will always be a market for physical books. There are probably as many good reasons for physical books as there are readers. However, like the paperback, digital publishing is a new technology whose time has come...or, at least, is about to take off. There are some books I want in physical form, but there are even more which I would be just as happy owning as electronic ones and zeros. So, urge publishers to make digital copies available. And, if they could make them available in an open source format so they could be read on any one oa the e-readers out there, that would be better yet.

I have made up about 4 days of my Lenten discipline with this post. More tomorrow.

Facebook

I joined MySpace a couple years ago, but never really did much with it. For the most part, I only used it to keep up with a couple of the young people I work with and some of my younger relatives. However, over the past year, I have hardly ever logged in to my Myspace account. And I certainly didn't have a Facebook account (mostly because it started as a college thing and I wasn't anywhere close to being a college student), but that has changed. So, Christmas day I opened a Facebook account for myself. And who are my friends? Well, my sister is one (but she is a Facebook member because she has a large family on her husband's side who she has to keep track of), and my friend Ted is another. And then there are my daughter and a number of nieces and nephews. I have looked for other people I know, and they aren't there. People of my generation, or at least those who I know, are not computer people. They don't see the computer as their friend; as their window onto the world.

So, I have a Facebook page and, as soon as I can find a picture that does not make me look like a pedophile, I'll post it...maybe I should scan one of those old pictures the kids were looking at over Christmas...my son (who does have a Facebook page although I don't think he uses it very much) said I look like Tom Sellick (sp?) so one of them might be usable. But that is not what I wanted to really talk about. I would love to use Facebook or one of the other social networking sites to keep up with both new and old friends...except that, as I said earlier, most of my generation doesn't do this. I get to play with the "kids" or I don't get to play at all. The latter is unacceptable (I love to play), so I will have to be satisfied with the former. And my children, nieces and nephews (and the odd cousin) will have to deal...

What does this tell you?

Today, Friday, December 5th, the powers that be announced that the U.S. had lost over 500,000 jobs in November. On that news, the stock market went up a couple hundred points and home mortgage rates went up as well. What does that tell you about what the wealthy think of the rest of their fellow citizens?

Discuss this amongst yourselves...

Some thoughts on Thanksgiving Day

I am currently reading Tom Friedman's new book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded", and, while I haven't finished it yet, it has already given me a couple flashes of insight. First, I was reading his description of an address he gave to the China "Green Car Congress" in 2007. In this address, he was talking about the production of clean energy, but that is not what I suddenly saw. What I saw was that Mr. Friedman was describing a form of warfare; a struggle between countries for dominance. In the past this type of struggle has routinely been carried out by those quaint military contests we call wars. In the future, while we maintain a military presence, it appears that the actual contest between countries will be moved to the stadium down the street where economies vie for primacy. In case you hadn't noticed, right now China is, as Mr. Friedman describes it, "cleaning our clocks."

As Friedman so aptly states, we do have the opportunity to reverse this trend over the next few years. If we jump aboard, in a big, big way, the "green energy" (for want of a better word) revolution, we could end up selling this technology and associated hardware/software to the rest of the world. This could very well reverse the flow of money from "out" to "in", and we could go from the world's biggest debtor to being a creditor. And that would constitute a win in the ongoing war between global economic players

Yeeesssss...(fist pump)

The price of a gallon of regular gasoline just hit 1.999 at our neighborhood independent station. This means, I'm sure, that somewhere in this part of New Jersey, I can get the Subaru's tank filled for somewhere around $1.90/gallon if I wanted to search for it. On the other hand, I shouldn't have to fill it until Saturday, by when the price could be down under $1.90/gallon at most of the local stations. I just checked one of my old car diaries (you know...a calendar where you keep track of what you spend on your car and when you spent it), and it tells me that we haven't seen prices this low since before 2004. Oh wait...we haven't seen prices this low since just before Bush took office. I wonder if anybody else thinks that this is just a little suspicious, hmmm?

Addendum (12/12/08): The price of a gallon of regular gas is down under $1.60/gallon. While I am chortling a little, I am also beginning to get a little worried about the signals the market is sending us. At this price, all those people who had parked their Hummers and Tahoes and other huge SUVs will be tempted to start driving them with abandon again. Also, all those investors who were thinking about investing in green energy systems are now probably rethinking their plans. At best, they are most likely putting them on hold until oil prices stabilize for a couple months. I know that's what I'd be doing.

I think that now would be a good time for the government to establish a floor price for gasoline. Let's call it $3.00/gallon for regular. If the price goes below that level, the US Treasury will get some added funds which Congress could use to support new energy technologies and mass transportation systems. If the price stays above $3.00/gallon, then there will be ample incentive for innovators to exploit that price in a competitive manner. Finally, we will all be encouraged by the cost to drive a little less, and that, too, is a good thing. As far as I can see, it is win-win-win with the only losers being the oil cartel and oil speculators. And that is an even better thing...

Oh yeah, speaking of cars...

The price of gas at the local independent gas station (used to be a Getty, still has the Getty sign, isn't a Getty, though) is posted at $2.079 per gallon for regular. Now, I have been privately predicting that the price of a gallon of regular gasoline will be under $2.00 by Thanksgiving. I think the prices are right on to hit that target. I also think that, although we American's have reduced the amount of gasoline we are currently using, that reduction does not amount to a 50% cut. The price of a gallon of regular is now more than 50% less than the highest price I paid last summer (a Mobil station up in Mayfield, NY: $4.259/gallon). What this tells me is that the prices we were paying last summer were the product of speculators getting rich at our expense. I think it is time we did something about those people. They are wolves preying upon the rest of us, and they need to be stopped.

What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa

That was the famous misquote of Charles E. Wilson's actual comment before the Senate during his confirmation hearings after being nominated to be Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense. Although his actual statement was much less arrogant, the statement does have some validity. I read somewhere that every employee of the Big Three Automakers supports some 12 jobs out in the economy. And those are just in the local communities. If you add in all the jobs in the automotive sector of the economy, and all the jobs that those jobs support, the automobile supports at least 50% of the US economy. Now, if the Big 3 go toes up, it will not mean the endo of all those jobs in the automotive sector because other economic entities will step in to pick up some fo the slack. However, most the actual production jobs will end up off shore, and that will mean a huge hit to both the viability of our economy and our balance of payments deficit.

I gotta tell you that I get hugely irritated with jerks who go off spouting shit about letting the evil Automakers crash and burn without giving any thought to either the consequences of letting them die, or what would be needed to bring them back to vigorous health. A healthy automobile industry supports both jobs in the general economy plus their stock underpins a huge portion of investment capital in this country. I'm not talking about speculators (or, to use the current euphemism "traders") here. I am talking about all those pensions and retirement funds that have a huge chunk of Detroit's stock. If Detroit goes down, a good portion of the American workforce is going to see their hopes for a comfortable retirement go down with it.

So here is the real dilemma: Trying to rescue the American economy is such a hugely complex undertaking, that there is no way for mere mortals to actually come up with a set of plans that are guaranteed to work. Anything that we, as a society working through our leaders, do will be, at best, a dice roll--or, rather, a series of dice rolls. Some of them will work; will be sevens. Other initiatives will not accomplish what we hoped they would, and, for those, the best we can hope is that they are neutral...that they are not fatal mistakes...snake-eyes or boxcars. We can't let the sheer overwhelming complexity of the task freeze us, because that too is a dice roll.

I don't know what we should or shouldn't do, but I do know that we have to do something. My preference is to take actions that support the industry but do not reward the people who got us to where we are today. Personally, I think that the executives of the Big 3 should all be required to take a 5 year pay cut...to what the average line worker makes...as a condition of any help from the public sector. They are the geniuses who saw the SUV a cash cow. Now let them taste some of what they brewed. But no matter what, we must do something that attempts to work for a positive outcome.

This is the snake that swallows its own tail.

We are completing today a process that began at least two years ago as Hilary Clinton began ramping up her run for the presidency. And, make no mistake about it, almost as soon as today's results are tabulated and verified, somebody out there will begin planning his/her campaign in 2012. It has always been true that presidential hopefuls started running, by speaking at political dinners and such almost as soon as their current nominating convention folded up the tents and went home. But today, the political campaigns are even more overt and ubiquitous. The newly elected sitting president has barely moved into the White House when he starts feeling the hot breath of the wannabe's on his back.

And while I don't expect it to be any different this year, especially from the Republican side, I think that the titular head of the Democrat Party has to back away from the tactical race he has run for the past year plus, and give some thought to defining just exactly what it means to be a Democrat. In other words, I think it is time to give some thought to political philosophy. The thing is, now this is possible without boring the hell out of the general populace. The Democrats have a number of email databases which connect directly to the active and involved rank and file. If Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton and other party leader could devote some time to actively working out and discussing just exactly what our ideals are, and give some straight talk about what an elected official can and cannot accomplish, I think that the shift in the body politic towards the Democrats could be solidified.

As I mentioned in the previous post The National Republican Trust has been airing some blatantly racist ads these last few days of the campaign. They have proven to me that the Republican Party is truly morally bankrupt and that it needs to be engaged in rational debate at all levels. I am sure that a majority of that party's rank and file will move to other political alternatives when they see how badly out of touch with this country's basic idealism the Republican leadership actually is.

Of course, to look at things another way, the Democrats have maybe three years to show substantial progress in cleaning up the mess left by George Bush, or they will most likely find themselves out on their ears and a new party assuming the reins of power.

An absolute low...

The National Republican Trust PAC is airing an advertisement that, in effect, states that Obama is guilty of radicalism simply by his former association with the pastor of the Christian Church he was affiliated with. Now, Rev.Wright is surely outspoken in his condemnation of the racism that has been rampant in American culture. However, just because he is outspoken in his disgust with the hypocrisy of white America, it does not follow that Obama shares that level of outrage. But, let's face it, Obama is part of the black community...just as he is part of the white community...and, as part of that black community, he must have feelings about how people of his ethnic heritage have been treated in this country.

No, that Republican ad is not only dirty politics, it is blatantly racist in its appeal. That, for no other reason, should make the demise of the Republican Party one of the primary goals of all Americans of good will and open hearts. This kind of evil has to be found, exposed to the bright light of public scrutiny and then expunged, root and branch, from the body politic.