The Hunger Games

Back in the dark, drunk days of high school, I had an class where we read Much Ado About Nothing. If you're not familiar with it, it's a Shakespeare drama about several parallel love stories in early16th century (or so) Sicily, notably the Claudio/Hero and Benedick/Beatrice pairings.  Claudio/Hero is VERY storybook. They swoon at the sight of each other, and spend a lot of time gazing longingly at each other's flawless beauty. The usual melodrama. In the entire play, there's only about a dozen lines or so in which Claudio and Hero actually say anything to each other. Contrast Benedick/Beatrice, both of whom are entirely too sharp, witty, wordy, and self-impressed for their own good. They start out hating each other, get tricked into admitting that they love each other, and spend the entire duration exchanging hundreds of lines of sharp, lively banter.

I distinctly remember the teacher in the at-issue 11th grade English class commenting on the chances of long-term success for each of those two relationships. B/B will clearly have no problem going on into perpetuity with with joking banter, teasing, good-natured insults, and perhaps the occasional full-fledged knock-down-drag-out-yelling-match-followed-by-amazing-angry-make-up-sex. On the other hand, C/H... Are they ever going to talk at all? What's going to happen when they actually have to interact in a way OTHER than just longing for each other?

Based on my (admittedly limited) sampling, most tweeny dramas are based on straight-ticket Claudio/Hero relationships, with similar relationship trajectories. I've posted in the past about how if you took out all of the Bella/Edward dialogue about how they really do love each other and really do want to be together, there's no other dialog left over. Edward puts up with Bella's drama, pretty much exclusively because she smells nice. Is that shit going to last when she's no longer a potential menu item? What else is there? Ever read/watch The Vampire Diaries? What exactly does that Elena chick have going on that these incredibly powerful, wealthy, gorgeous vampires are falling over each other for her? Imagine yourself as an immortal vampire in a teenage body. You've spent the last 100 years or so more or less continuously in high school. (Let's conservatively guess that Stefan - 162 years old per wikipedia - has had at least fifty trips through 12th grade prior to his current gig.) And now here's a little brunette chippy. Yeah, she's cute, and yeah, she's a dead ringer for a girl who screwed you over once up on a time. But cheerleader princesses usually go from smoking hot straight to battered handbag, sometimes before 30. In the end, how is this Elena chick anything more than just another high school small-town cheerleader princess?

This is what our young readers (and sometimes not so young) feast upon. Yay for us! Yay for the future!

But as always, there is hope. I just recently spent a week in the Bahamas with some of the inlaws (my sister in law SHE HULK, and her husband SUSHI CHOPS), over which I re-read Stranger in a Strange Land, and then polished off the Hunger Games trilogy. While I could do on and on about any noun listed in that sentence, I'll try to limit this post to commentary about Hunger Games.

I liked it, and I note that it follows the usual lines for a successful fantasy fiction work: a vivid world  (similar enough to ours that we relate, but different enough to be interesting) in which empathetic characters interact in a way to elicit an emotional response from the reader. But the emotional response elicited from these particular books is hardly something you'd expect to be as successful as it has been.

While the soft-core trashy romance seems to have infinite space on its bandwagon, the Hunger Games really don't fit in that category. These are not romance novels in any meaningful use of the term. I like what it says about our young adults that books are being bought and read from OUTSIDE the 'Teen Supernatural Romance" section of the bookstore. While there are distinct love interests, and the conflict between the various love interests is a central and recurring theme, its not the whole story.

Also, the central relationship is definitely not Claudio/Hero. There is impetus behind the romantic angles other than simple "Oh he's so dreamy!" While most of the dialogue is internal (par for a first-person narrative), our Hunger Games Heroine actually has conversations and interaction with her love interests. Amazingly, she does not quake and tremor or feel her knees grow weak when she feels their eyes upon her. Rather, she looks them in the face and treats with them as an equal. Bella Swan acts exactly like a self-centered idiot teen girl, ignoring all other factors (including the fact that Edward is a GIANT douchebag) to try and make the fairlytale work with the first guy she's ever been with. Elena Gilbert acts exactly like a self-centered idiot teen girl ignoring all other factors to pursue her own eternal fairytale, since at 17 and confronted with All This, she knows exactly what she wants. (Except for quite WHO it is she wants. Go figure.) In contrast, Katniss Everdeen does have this little situation of multiple suitors where she can't decide, but she hates the drama involved, and really can't deal with it right now anyway. She kinda has some other important shit going on, what with feeding and protecting her family, a pesky national revolution, and saving her own sweet ass to get to a point where whatever choice she makes actually matters

Also unlike pretty much every other popular tweeny heroine, Everdeen is a legitimate badass. Bella's appeal to Edward is that she smells nice. I'm not sure what Elena really has going for her that ropes in these guys who should know better (my theory involves beer-flavored nipples), but God knows what it might be. Everdeen has confidence, competence, and will. Actual skills that she uses to save her own life, and the lives of others. If you're a Heinlein fan, Katniss Everdeen and Friday Baldwin are nearly the same character, just at different ages and in different worlds. Her appearance has pretty much nothing to do with her love life, and not just because she spends substantial portions of the book dirty, starving, burned (by acid or by fire), bleeding, and/or generally beat to hell. She's gorgeous because she fights through all that shit, fights well, and takes shit from nobody along the way.

She is in no way a princess, and her character has points that are directly shocking (like where she relates in all seriousness her regrets about her failure to drown her sister's cat). But interestingly, the hardness of Katniss' character does not make her inhuman. Rather, her hardness comes across as the necessary solution to the world she inhabits, which is much MUCH harder than you'd ever expect to see in a tweeny bestseller.

The overwhelming sentiment you'll get from these stories is that these books are fucking DARK. A dystopian police state. Serfdom and enslavement. Starvation. Graphic death in more or less literal gladiator games. (Google 'Minotaur myth.') Murder. The story the presentation are NOT cheerful. They're downright macabre. And unlike pretty much every fantasy fiction adventure work ever written (very few exceptions, but they do exist), the Hunger Games series gets one thing absolutely right: people who spend any appreciable time in combat end up batshit, irrespective of whether they're among the killing or the dying. The Hunger Games' central characters - including Katniss, all her strength and capability notwithstanding - do in fact go insane over the course of the series, from constant exposure to the gladiator games they're forced to play.  Under constant fear, stress, and worry over their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they get bent, or outright break.

Stark though it is, I find this a hugely refreshing change from fiction's usual treatment of death and dying, particularly among the Hunger Games' young-adult target demographic. We're talking about the generation raised on action movies that put "First Blood" to shame, as well as graphic video games, like Grand Theft Auto. (That's the one where you steal cars, kill people, and enjoy regular blow-jobs from hookers.) These are things kids have been raised on recently. Of course, GTA - as the halcyon example - was never intended for exposure to anyone underage, especially when it was first released way back in 1997. But at least one member of everyone's social group had (or has) an older brother, inattentive parents, or both. You remember him. Hell, sometimes the only reason we tolerated that kid at all was BECAUSE older siblings or absentee parents granted him access to shit like Grand Theft Auto. Result: glorification of violence and/or killing. While I don't subscribe at all to the video-games-lead-to violence school of thought, it's tough to argue that gore is glorified to unhealthy levels these days, and it's not unreasonable to believe that such things may tend to desensitize people to violence and the actual effect of violence on the human psyche. (Google 'On Killing,' by Dave Grossman.)

Hunger Games, I have no doubt, draws at least some of its success from the suspense angle intrinsic to life and death human combat. The effects of such things on Katniss is a central part of her development. But she's a participant against her will, and the violence is in no way glorified. Quite the contrary: we see lots of 'good guys' - central actors and likable characters - shuffling off the mortal coil, occasionally in slow, painful fashion. All in all, I suspect that Hunger Games presents its young-adult readers with something they've never really experienced in fiction before: a passable take on watching friends and family members being killed. It's quite well done, and very much NOT what you'd expect to find in the 'young adult' section.

All in all, I liked the stories a great deal, especially the portrayal of a female lead as a capable, rational victim of circumstance, rather than a swooning princess helpless beneath circumstance. The stark hardness of the characters and the world is unsettling, but the exact opposite of glorification.

If I ever have daughters, they will be openly and repeatedly forbidden to read the Hunger Games until they're at least 16.

That's the best way I can think of to guarantee that they'll read it as soon as they can sound out the bigger words.

Time For Atlas To Shrug It Off

About five minutes after somebody first suggested the idea of systematic governmental welfare programs, detractors started hypothesizing about the catastrophic end-game of such programs in any real republican system. If the electorate is given entitlements beyond the specifically enumerated benefits of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," where do such entitlements end? What's to stop voters from granting themselves (either directly, or through proxy granted to elected officials) ever larger benefits, the cost of which must be bourne by the taxpaying public? Why bother to work for a living, when you can simply vote for a system which requires others (who do work) to provide you with whatever you need?

Of course, the response of the Left to such a suggestion has been to scoff. Come on, dude. Get real. Look how much wealth there is in our society. We just need a small portion of that to guarantee a stable life for everyone. We're not talking about providing a free ride to everyone; we're just going to help out those who really need a little bit of help. A society where those on welfare can literally out-vote and out-spend the remaining public? No way. Never going to happen.

Well, it's happened.

Our good friends over in Greece are in the process of finding themselves a new government. The process has been underway for quite a while, and shows no clear signs of resolving. What's happened is that over the last fifty years or so, Greece has trended socialistic to the point that a substantial portion of their economy is funded by taxes, most notably the pension plans for large blocs of voters. You know: the money that people depend on for food, shelter, and so forth. Over time, the voters (again, either directly or through proxy) have awarded themselves a whole lot of relatively cushy lifestyles, the costs of which must necessarily be satisfied by whatever portion of the country can be gotten to pay taxes. This was not a problem when economic times were booming, especially the way things boomed in the 80s and 90s. Plenty of money to fund those programs (and buy those votes), and while such spending would not be sustainable into perpetuity, by then somebody else would be in office. Let them find a solution. So long as they don't touch the pension programs for retired political officers (and they won't; they're relying on that too), who gives a damn.

Then we broke our global credit system.

At this point, there's no longer enough money in the Greek tax system to pay for all of the things that the Greek government has promised to its voters. It's not close. Actually, it hasn't been close for quite a while. Greece got by for longer than anyone suspected by cooking the books, incurring debt, and deficit spending, but they appear to have drained that well. Those fucking tightwads in Berlin are refusing to put in one little extra hour of work every day for the rest of their lives to fund pensions for early retirement of Greek citizens.  They're refusing to shell out for police, fire, and politician salaries in Athens. At this current juncutre, the Greek government has to find ways to deal with all of the obligations it's taken on to its people, and also find a way to deal with all of the billions that it already owes to others; debt incurred in sustaining benefits for as long as it did. Of course, the politicians who are making these efforts expect to be well paid as well, both during their terms in office, and into perpetuity after their terms end.

Some efforts have already been made, which might actually work, given a decade or so. Underfunded, unable to pay for basic civil services (much less the comforts promised to its people), and no longer able to get anyone else to agree to pay for those things, Greece agreed to a stark set of economic adjustments, in an attempt to get its national economics out of the red. In return for adopting such austerity measures, the rest of Europe (mostly Germany) agreed to chip in to keep the Greek economy afloat during the time it took to get healthy. It was a shitty solution for everyone, but it kelp Greece solvent, and kept Greece - a member of the euro-zone - from totally fucking over the currency market of the whole continent. It might even have worked, at least well enough to keep us all chugging along until the threat of economic chaos across a dozen nations could be defused.

Alas, it doesn't look like it's going to work out that way, since this ended up being an election year in and around Athens. The voters - handed the dirty end of the austerity stick - are pulling their support from politicians who brokered the austerity deals. An ever-increasing mob is rallying behind political parties which overtly support the recanting of those agreements. (As above, those agreements are the only reason the rest of Europe is eating a loss to keep Greece afloat.)  All Greek political parties are pluralities, and none of them seem able to forge a coalition sufficient to take charge under the Greek republican model. The country is seeing unemployment at about 20%, suicides are up 40% this year, high taxes and tougher times are projected. Oh, and the public suffering from all this will go to the polls on June 17 to take another run at electing a government.

Into the current social climate, throw two opposing political parties. One group of politicians - the ones in support of austerity - more or less sell the position that "yeah, we need everyone to take several big bites of this shit sandwich, so we can keep our current government and economic system." The other group of politicians are saying "Fuck austerity. Fuck the politicians. Fuck our national debt. Fuck the rest of Europe. Vote for us, and we'll abandon this austerity thing and get things back to the way they were." Whether or not either party is capable of coming through on their promises matters even less there than it does here in the U.S. Care to wager on who's going to ultimately prevail in Greek politics?

My money (ha ha) says that the Greek voters elect leaders who will scrap the austerity deals. This will ultimately result in all loans to and from Greece being devalued. Down to zero. Nobody in any financial market will give any credit to an instrument backed by a guarantee of payment from Greece, and all outstanding obligations to Greece will be "money down a rathole" investments, and - where possible - cancelled. Lots has been said about how this will effect global economic markets. Suffice to say that it will not be fun. Governments and banks around the world will replace the "Value owed by Greece" figure with a big ZERO. Books will no longer balance, and there will be much chaos and gnashing of teeth. Not a whole lot to do to stave this off, or to prepare. But since it's the credit system that's at risk, might be a good idea to have a wad of cash on hand. (Dollars. Not Euros.)

Inside Greece, the abandonment of austerity deals will mean the death of most pension and entitlement programs (which have no funding absent the deals), but those programs aren't working so well anyway. At this point, its not like the voters have a whole lot more to lose.

Personally, I don't see any way out of this except for a Greek national revolution, either overt or implied, with a critical and necessary step for recovery being acknowledgement of bankruptcy, and abandonment of some or all prior financial obligations. The Greek government cannot sustain its debts, and cannot meet its obligations. The Greek government has nobody left to fuck over except the Greek citizenry, who are clearly not on board with that game governmental game plan of austerity measures and reneging on prior promises. The Greek people are not going to take that, just so they can keep their current government. All in all: time for a new Greek government. Barring the appearance of some politician  who will get everyone on the same page and sell austerity by sheer force of charisma (Satan?), the Greek political/economic system is either going to fall apart completely, or be controlled by a leadership that tears it apart intentionally.

So yeah. Turns out that some of those political theorists were right. Given opportunity to vote themselves more benefit and entitlement than their economy can sustain, people will vote themselves more benefit and entitlement than their economy can sustain.

For Sale: YOU.

For-Profit business operate because people will pay them money for something that they can provide. So ask yourself: when a company provides you something for free, how do they continue to turn a profit? The answer is pretty simple: when a company's business is based on something they give you for free, the product that they are actually selling is YOU.

There must necessarily be a thrid-party to that business model to provide the funding that makes possible the services rendered to you "for free," and that third-party rationally expects to get something out of it. Most cot-coms over the course of dot-com-dom have been based on this sort of business model, where online services are provided to the public at little or no cost, and where commerce depends on income from a third party - almost always described as "advertisers." Since most dot-coms have ended up as investment disasters, one can safely assume that, almost always, this business model sucks. The fact of the matter is that it's tough to provide the clients (meaning: the ones who pay money to the service provider, IN NO WAY TO BE CONFUSED WITH YOU) which a role in the process that the clients are willing to shell out long-term big-bucks to enjoy.

 This is not to say that it can't be done. Take the halcyon (and in many way, the only) great success story among the dot-coms, Google. Their business model provides its clients (again, this does not mean you) with something they will pay shit-bags for. To put it concisely, Google has become a 21st century oracle. The single greatest middle-management enterprise in the digital age. It's a fixer. Comes at you with a big smile, steers you towards whatever it is that you're looking for, all for free. Thanks anyway man, but you don't need to tip for the service; it's just what I do.

 Google makes billions on kick-backs from the businesses it directs you towards.

 I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. Google is in NO WAY like a cabbie who collects a Ben from the strip-club door-man for every car-load of asian businessmen. Nope. All the payments from the clients to Google are legitimate business transactions, drawn from dedicated "advertising" budgets, and are fully acknowledged and taxed.

 But the end result is the same: money changes hands when the service provider (Google) steers business (you) towards the client (not you). Those client pay so Google will send you their way. Any they pay a lot, because if Google is not directing the product (you) towards them, its directing the product to the competition. When a Google user types in "best pickup," how much would GM pay for the top spot on the list generated in response? How about Ford. Let the bidding begin.

 Keeping this in mind, consider that everyone’s good friends at Facebook just made a shitbag of money. Facebook (hereinafter ‘FB’) went public in a big way, marking a big step along the way to world-domination. Of course, a lot of the commentary that surrounded the IPO involved either the company’s founder, or were about FB's models for profitability. Articles, almost without fail, comment on Mark Zuckerberg’s propensities for hoodies, and compare FB’s IPO with that of Google. Sometimes in the same paragraph. As for the hoodie thing, I don’t see why it gets so much play. Hell of a lot less pretentious (and a hell of a lot more comfortable) than a black turtleneck. Add in that most of Zuckerberg’s detractors – all the way back to the dipshit twins from Harvard – were dress-shirt and khakis types. If you were set up so that you needed NOTHING from ANYBODY, tell me you wouldn’t be dressing comfortably. As a guy who has to wear suits – even occasionally – let me assure you that they fucking suck.

Turning to actual business models for Facebook, there’s the never-ending comparison to Google. Most dot-coms (meaning: pretty much everybody except Google) boomed at the IPO, and then crashed pretty sharply. As middle-managers almost by definition, most dot-coms don’t produce anything except some form of service (mostly providing access to you for a paying client). Add in that the services they provide are typically driven by discretionary trendiness, and almost always lack the stability of a long term business plan. Take Zynga, for example. Raise your hand if you really thought that Zynga games was going to fly as a long term business entity, much less as a decent investment? Their only customers are the grass-root public, and each transaction nets them a grand-total of a few bucks. More importantly, their business model is utterly dependent on two things: the tastes of the fickle public, and that publics’ supply of disposable income. If either or both wane, business plummets.

 With such an unsteady business model, there’s almost never any guarantee of long-term income. The company can almost never afford to pay out a decent dividend when they can’t even project sales for the following quarter, much less the following fiscal year. At that point, the only way the stocks of those companies have any attractiveness to major investors (meaning: mutual funds and banking houses that buy thousands of shares at a time) is if the stock has some value as a commodity in and of itself. This value as a commodity is why dot-com IPOs have an initial boom. It's trendy, and people want to own it because its cool, regardless of whether it's worth anything.

But eventually, the day-traders get over how shiny and cutting-edge the business’ name is. Dropping the fact of their ownership of that stock stops impressing people at the wine-and-cheese mixers. At that point, even the day-traders realize what the major investors knew from the get go: no matter how much they personally love whatever service the dot-com provides, their portfolios are better served by investing in companies that do more than push ones and zeroes.

 Facebook has followed this trend, opening at about 38, and quickly loosing substantial value. It's currently at about 31, and people who know what they're talking about say that it should stabilize somewhere around that price. Alas, it turns out that Facebook is only worth about $80-billion, rather than $100-billion.

 The big question is what the future holds for FB. The financial success of FB depends on FB allowing paying third-parties to participate in your interaction with your friends, in such a way that the third-parties will pay for the participation. The question is: is Facebook going to develop a business model to sell its product (you and your friends) to paying clients. Unlike Google, it can't provide its clients (still once again: not you) with an ongoing stream of product (you). FB is simply not in the business of facilitating commerce, through which it might win some sort of financial kick-back. Facebook provides - at best - a way for their clients (not you) to either chime in or to listen in on your various (mostly social) FB endeavors.

Under current advertising models and trends, FB can't prove a form of interaction that people will pay a whole lot for.  Banner ads, for example, generate almost no commerce, and so do not garner FB substantial income. If FB started bombarding users (even moreso than currently) with those sorts of ads, users would start to sour. Any more direct involvement in your interactions with your friends would probably just outrage people.

"Hi, this is Jeff at Hyundai USA. I couldn't help but overhear your online chat session with your sister, when you mentioned that you needed a new car. Have you considered the new Ultima? It has the best warranty in the business, you know."

NO FUCKING WAY.

Absent a decent profit stream from banners and other foot-note advertising, and absent a viable model of more effective advertising to push, FB will have to look into other ways to profit.  In the end, businesses are not going to shell-out big bucks for the ability to stand in the online crowd and hold up signs while you post about the amazing cheeseburger you just had (#killedit!).

This leads to the possibility of selling a product alternative to the ability to chime in. If clients won't pay for the ability to CHIME in, maybe they'll pay for the ability to LISTEN in. Facebook knows every bit of information you've posted on it. It knows every bit of information you've EVER posted on it. How much do you think that information might be worth, to someone, somewhere?

 But don't worry. I'm sure FB won't get greedy. Those are personal details. Private, and FB knows it. I don't think anyone will object to Facebook selling information on broad demographic, and that sort of over-arching analysis. Tracking of trends and fads, market analysis, but certainly not access to and analysis of individual persons. Or races. Or political groups. Facebook will keep those details sacred. Certainly, Mark Zuckerberg would NEVER consider the value that might be realized by selling access to all the things we put up on his servers. Never. He's way too nice a guy to ever do anything like that.