einstein's quest

Tom Friedman came to Duke last week and talked about his answer to everything. Essentially, he believes, there are five or six major problems in the world, and energy independence (cheap, renewable, plentiful electrons, he calls them) is the solution that will make them all go away. Some problems that he labeled were petrodictatorship (the idea that oil enhances powerful dictatorships and reduces freedom), climate change (duh), overpopulation, ( see climate change), and biodiversity. He had many problems, and a single solution that would take care of all of them. Killing six birds with one stone, you might say.

Well, it seems to me that that this six birds one stone idea should apply in many different areas. And it seems that there should be an overarching solution to the many problems ... infinite problems, one solution. Free trade purists have latched on to free trade as the solution that will cure all of the worlds evils - unfortunately, they are wrong, as free trade has proven itself over and over again to be a tool for the rich and powerful, exploiting the poor. Religious zealots have proclaimed that if everyone would just recognize jesus/allah/buddha/whatever other deity, as their lord and savior, then we would have heaven on earth. This is probably true. If everyone was just like Jesus, we would live in a pretty sweet (although sometimes very confusing) world. Unfortunately, nobody is just like Jesus, because nobody is God. We're all human, and we're greedy, we have trouble valuing anothers life as much as we value our own, we're xenophobic, we want many things, etc. And, you know, a lot of people don't believe in Jesus. Its illogical, makes no sense, its unanalytical idealism, and its vaguely southern.

Okay, so whats the solution to the problems?

it appears that the biggest problem is the distribution of wealth, and inequality. We have six billion minds on this earth. but only about 20% of them are actively participating in solution finding, because the other 80% of them have crappy educations, are females in an oppressed world, have underdeveloped brains because of severe malnutrition as a child, or have to spend their time working to survive instead of working to help others survive. But redistributing wealth is silly because it would just get unequally distributed again in the future, or it would piss a lot of people off, or it wouldnt work the same way communism didnt work.

So, what if money just didnt exist? What if everything were free? What if...robots did all the labor, and all humans had to do was consume responsibly, be educated, and every once in a while go update the system?

I guess you would have the problem of overconsumption. But we could just discriminate against fat people, and people who had ginormous houses and lavish things -- bc if money didnt exist, it would mean you didn't earn it -- it would mean you'd taken it away from the common good. It would be socially valuable to live responsibly. People could spend most of their time having fun, or working out, or reading, or watching movies, or whatever. They could still produce, for the social value of fame, they just wouldn't get paid to do it.

this all sounds like an economist's worst nightmare, i'm sure, but eventually we'll get to the point where robots do most of the work, and the person who owns those robots reaps most of the benefits while the workers who were replaced by the robots gets nothing. Taxing the shit out of that capital and redistributing it the poor is one way of dealing with the issue, but that makes people feel worthless and pisses off the robot owners. Lets just eliminate money.

Einstein spent his life on a quest to find the answer to everything. Douglas Adams, in a Hitchikers Guide, said the answer to everything was 42. Adams is one of the only people who has proposed a real solution. I say we take 42, we run with it, and we call it the elimination of money (only after, of course, we can automatize everything, and robots could legitimately produce and make everything we needed sustainably).

nappy leon

We're going to go get him tomorrow. isnt he freakin adorable? 

globalization and other worldly matters

I have this awful feeling that i'm going to find the next two years wordier and less number-based than I am accustomed to. I've realized over the last few years that I need data to function. It's like oxygen, or a good plot line. Even though we took a somewhat stupid personality test and it told me I was more convinced with words and verbiage, its totally not true. I am totally down with some good hard number-based facts. I think I'm really going to enjoy econ and stats, and hopefully I'll take a lot more econ as I progress through the years. 

Right now we're reading Stiglitz's Making Globalization Work and Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization in my Globalization and Governance class. It's interesting to read the free trade (bhagwati) debate vs the fair trade (stiglitz) debate. Both authors, in this case, want the same end result -- the elimination of poverty in third world countries, fair arenas in which to perform trade and commerce for all countries, and the proliferation of markets. Both men are economists, and their viewpoints aren't all that mutually exclusive to each other. However, Bhagwati adovcates free trade, and determines that when small farmers can't compete with big multinational farming corporations with their low, subsidized prices, that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should step in and clean things up. Stiglitz advocates a built in protectionist slant within the trade policy, protecting small, poor countries. He also discusses international trade more from the point of view of the US and discusses very specific trade policy failures and successes, whereas Bhagwati discusses ideas from a much more theoretical, international view. 

The problem with relying on the IMF and the World Bank to clean up inevitable problems has multiple consequences. First off, the asymmetries and financial crises are bound to happen under free trade. Bhagwati denounces shock therapy (sudden market liberalization and opening of trade borders) and describes it as a proven method for failure. However, going completely over to free trade would have the same effects. 

The analogy to US domestic policy would be similar to what we currently have in place. A capitalistic meritocracy, where everyone looks out for themselves and their prodigy, and then when individuals grow up and find themselves down and out, social safety nets like welfare and medicaid/medicare step in and save them. While theres nothing wrong with the social safety nets, I think we all know that those safety nets are overloaded. They were designed for emergency backup use, not for long term dependency. A much better solution to end poverty in the United States would be to make opportunity fair from the beginning -- revamp public school funding, give poor people better teachers, provide poor individuals with the tools to enter into a meritocratic system on a level playing field. Don't simply leave them in the dust, counting on them to grow up and eventually need to rely on social safety nets. 

Stiglitz's advocation to build in protectionist measures to trade agreements in order to allow poor countries to develop slowly and intensively makes much more sense. However, according to Bhagwati, these protectionist measures can not be too pervasive or their economies will fail and they will never be able to reach the exalted capability of trading completely freely.

 

new stuff

school starts tomorrow. I've been vacationing/preparing/moving for the last month or so and so I'm all out of sorts. i also dont have a steady internet access right now so its hard for me to do internet-y things. like, theres two sq feet of space in my house where i have steady internet access, and its on the left side of my bed. And the internet guy isnt coming til friday.

Evan and I have decided to get the most adorable puppy in the world, a tiny little 8 week old yorkshire terrier baby. We debated a lot about adopting vs buying from a breeder, and basically decided we wanted both a puppy and a small dog, and that when we had a real yard and less size constraints that wed adopt. We'll adopt for the rest of our lives, after this little guy. We're naming him Napoleon. =) and we're picking him up Friday.

Its been exactly a year since the first day of JVC last year and I'm embarking on a totally new, different experience. So much happens in one year, yet it feels like such a short amount of time...

I'm not in the mood to wax poetic about anything sooo i'll upload a photo of napoleon as soon as evan sends me one. 

Above the fireplace

Amanda and I have been cruising craigslist for free stuff to furnish our house with. So far, all we've got is a dining table and some lamps.

However, I've got to say that the most impressive addition to our domicile would be authentic Chelsea Boothe paintings. They're even autographed! We have four complete abstracts and will be making a trip to michaels for the framing and matting. Sooo excited.

Anyway, this got Amanda and I thinking about our wall hangings. We have an old school awesome fireplace with a huge mantle, and last night we decided that the most obvious thing to put there is a regal portrait of us in a really thick gold frame. Something similar to below:
Except that we would both be in it, and I'm feeling more of a rectangular frame, and we'll both be holding small froufy dogs. It'll be on a red background, and one of us will be holding a cigarette with the cigarette holder. And we're going to not do the dog-that-just-got-back-from-the-veterinarian look around the neck, but instead we'll opt for frilly white button down shirts and pearls.

I'm so excited!!!

more photos

I don't like it when people tell me i'm doing "good work." I'm kind of tired of hearing it and don't necessarily believe it either.  And also, if you can tell i'm doing good work, why aren't you doing any? because if you were you wouldn't think what i was doing was all that amazing. 

or maybe you would; i don't know, i guess being poor does kind of suck; but just because i'm sacrificing money and living like the american poor doesn't make my work any more special than it is. It just means i was naive about money at the beginning of the year. but millions of people do work that is way more significant and way more important and way more "good" than what i do. 

anyway. happy birthday evan! it is your birthday now in north carolina...1 am. well i'm late by an hour. but thats okay.

isnt my grandpa adorable?

Punishment

Obama supports death penalty for child rapists. This is going a little too far.

He describes child rapists and mass muderers as being deserving of the "ultimate punishment". This phrase bothers me. I dont think the purpose of jails and prisons is to dole out "punishment". Human beings don't have the right to judge, condemn, and punish. I've always thought that the only reason we have the right to construct jails and put people in them is to remove criminals from our society to protect people. Of course going to jail does suck and it has been conflated with and used for punishment, but the whole underlying justification for sending criminals to jail is more as a protective mechanism for society. We certainly have the right to defend ourselves, but we don't have the right to actively punish. At least thats how i see it.

Thats what the argument about the death penalty rests on. Just because someone commits a heinous act does not thereby give us the right to murder them. Eye for an eye was abandoned in the new testament, hellooo people.

Anyway. Just one disappointing statement by Barack Obama. I still love him.