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.

Caught Up In a Vice

I read an article today preaching the dangers that alcohol poses to human health on a global scale, which suggested that the World Health Organization consider issuing some sort of mandate attempting to reign in the problem. According to the article, American alcohol consumption is relatively mild at an average 9.4 liters of ethyl alcohol per year (about two bottles of wine a week). However, in places like Moldova, the average is twice that, and people - beginning at age 16 - consume on average the equivalent of a bottle of wine every other day. Factoring in all causes of death that pass a laugh-test connection with alcohol consumption (including, e.g., cardio-vascular diseases, auto accidents, violence), the article opines that alcohol causes more deaths and represents a greater threat than any other factor to the human condition, including obesity and cigarettes. The kicker on the article is the suggestion that there should be an international convention on alcohol regulation, under which the problem can be addressed.

I'm sure you're not surprised to find that I think it's all a bunch of horseshit.

Humanity has been getting drunk since before the dawn of recorded time. Although the earliest chemically-confirmed beer traces (from Iran) are only about 3,300 years old, safe to say that man was drinking the sauce long before then. The consensus oldest surviving work of literature ever discovered is the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2100 BC. A central plot element is King Gilgamesh having to deal with Enkidu, who's causing problems for the good people of Uruk because - among other reasons - he's hammered. The oldest human residential site discovery by archaeologists is Jericho, near the West Bank, which dates back almost to the Holocene era, or about 11,000 years. Evidence suggests that the residents of Jericho were drinking beer at least 6,000 years ago. Some of the earliest non-literary written materials we've discovered include beer recipes and beer trade records. Some of the earliest religous records we've discovered, a Sumarian poem honoring the goddess Ninkasi, contains a beer recipe.

All in all, safe to say that man started brewing the brew about twenty minutes after he figured out how to use a container to store liquids. And we've been using containers to store liquids for a long time. Makes sense too: don't really need to find (or - ultimately - build) containers to store WATER. Why bother. That shit is everywhere. Build your hut by a river and you've got an endless supply. Booze, on the other hand, is worth holding on to.

This trend his persisted through the ages. Ever wonder why the cultivation of grains is so widespread in the world? Beans are just as nutritional and at least as easy to grow. Beans are also much MUCH easier to get from the field to the table, since the hulling process - google it - is relatively easy for beans, and much more difficult for grains. But fermenting grains gets you beer. Fermenting beans just gets you soy sauce or miso. Think it's coincidence that people have always leaned towards grains?

Most people don't realize that when Dr. Louis Pasteur was looking for a way to keep liquid foods from spoiling (pasteurization), he wasn't looking for a way to keep MILK fresh. Incidentally, his method of keeping beer fresh by heating it to kill the bacteria - perfected by Pasteur in 1862 - was being used in simpler form by the Chinese to keep wine fresh as early as the 12th Century, and had spread to Japan by at least as early as the 16th Century. Moving forward through history, see if you can separate the development of industrial refrigeration from alcohol production. 'Cuz you can't. Ideas to keep things cold were certainly there, but it was the need to make and distribute booze that got the ideas off the drawing boards.

People can (and will) talk endlessly about divinity and about angels meeting apes. But for my money, the desire for and act of intoxication is the second-most significant driving force in human social, economic, and scientific development, behind only armed conflict. And this extends far beyond alcohol, of course. Ever heard of the pharmaceutical company Merck? It spent 160 years as an uremarkable family-owned store-front pharmacy in Darmstad before they isolated morphine and started industrial production in 1827. They've done some other things since then. How about the beverage company Coca-Cola? Early (1886) recipes really had only three primary ingredients: water, cocaine, and caffeine. They did okay as a business. On the whole, does this trend really seem like something that you're going to have any success in halting?

Any attempt to reign in man's desire for and act of intoxication with booze is destined for failure or disaster. It's not going to work, except to help build empires for certain families (specifically including those with names like 'Kennedy' and 'Roosevelt.') If it does work, it just means that people are going to turn to even less healthy methods to meet the desire for and act of intoxication. Islam bans intoxication from fermented products. Think it's a coincidence that Muslim regions have been the world capital of opium production since the 7th Century, including (much later) recreational use? (The Koran, by the way, was developed and written from about 611 to 632.)

Of course, there is no cure for stupid, and no lack for either recycling of old ideas, or for crusaders wanting to save us all from ourselves. But how about if we try to focus on scaling back things we have a prayer on? Alcohol use (which somebody, somewhere will inevitably describe as ABuse, regardless of how moderate it might be) is part of the human condition. It predates metalworking ferchrissake, and is a lot more fun for the user. There's nothing the WHO might say or do that's gonna make even a little bit of difference.

The Election Year

I think it's awesome that American culture generates a billion dollars of commerce every four years, solely to use mass media to inform and educate the public about the merits of political candidates. Wonderful that we care so much about full disclosure and analysis of our prospective leaders that we go to the lengths we do. Seriously, try to get away from the political storm, even for a day, and even this early in the election year, and see if you make it. By the time November rolls around, we're going to know absolutely every gritty detail about the history and politics of the Republican candidate. Isn't our system great?

Ironically - and I think this is a point worth seriously considering - we might at that time know even less about Barack Obama than we think we know now. That seems like it might suggest something important, doesn't it?

Whatever. Political commercial season sucks, since no political candidate yet - despite cumulative millions spent on devising campaign strategies - has figured out how to make a decent political campaign commercial. (Which also seems like it might suggest something, eh?) Nothing like months of 30-second spots, ten times a day, of being told ugly details of someone you're never going to meet, and who your vote doesn't get elected anyway. (Google 'electoral college.') But its IMPORTANT that you listen to them as they talk about 'the issues.' Yay, us!

For what it's worth, and (hopefully) resolving my civic analytical duties regarding who gets elected, and why: Hythloday Today officially extends endorsement to... Mitt Romney.

Honestly, my political views - particularly regarding social services - are aligned substantially further to the right than his. But under the current political climate, there is no way that any of the further-right candidates would defeat Obama in November. I'm not a Gingrich fan to start with, but you only need to poke around a little before you realize the field day that the news media will have with him as an opponent to Obama. All in all, he's a worse candidate than McCain was, because at least you could be confident who McCain was really representing, and predict which way he would jump. Newt, not so much. Romney, in contrast, is going to get grilled on a lot of issues (read: the Mormon thing), but I think he'll hold up better, based on charisma, personal success record, and the ability to project strength and authority. Newt always comes across to me as slightly apologetic, which is not going to work.

And the bottom line is that Romney is the furthest to the left of the candidates from the right, which makes him able to court the largest segment of the vote. Those ads you hear about how Obama is praying that Newt wins the Republican nomination? They got a point. If Newt wins the nomination, Barack will be turning cartwheels in the hallways, because the absolute truth is that Barack will garner a hell of a lot more of that middle-ground split than Newt can possibly hope for.

Newt cannot beat Obama. It really is that simple.

Besides which, the new wave of social conservative theory really is the best reasonable hope for the United States right now. Any political science sophomore can tell you about the progression of the right towards the left over time. At this point, I honestly don't think Barack gives a shit what changes get made to Obamacare. He managed to move our system SUBSTANTIALLY to the left. As a political scientist, he also knows that it's almost impossible for the right to get that ground back. Things will be massaged, policies and programs might be axed, but some of it is going to persist forever. The United States has passed national healthcare. He gets to claim that legacy. That's been the steady-left shift that's been going on since 1776.

We don't have a lot of history to use as an analytic sample for the shift from republicanism to democracy (and I'm talking now about the literal political systems, not about the American parties, although I suppose it applies to them as well). But we got thousands of years about the broader shift towards liberalism, including the concurrent grown of socialist policies. Despotisms, to organized monarchies, to republics, and the first rumblings of true democracy; got libraries filled with that shit. And just looking at generalities, looks like a big part of the survival of nations comes from how those in control (typically the right; being in control is why they're conservative) manage that trend toward to left. Historically speaking, either the system changes to allow liberization to happen slowly and progressively (as has happened in the United States for over 200 years), or else you get sudden increasinly violent fits, fires, and riots when the pressure builds, and it happens suddenly. Personally, I think the best thing for us to do is to keep the progression going as smoothly as possible.

Along those lines, and for mostly economic reasons, the best thing for the United States right now is a centrist President. Somebody who can at least get everyone at the table to address the issues, and agree that EVERYBODY is going to need to give ALOT before acceptable solutions are reached. Get everyone on the same page, so even if the system does absolutely suck, and even if everybody knows you're completely full of shit, at least people know what the system is and what it's going to be. Get rid of the political uncertainty and start agreeing on what we both know the end result is going to be, so commerce can start happening with confidence again.

We're already totally fucked on the budget thing. Really: raise your hand if you ever honestly and realistically believed that the United States will EVER pass a balanced budget. Have you looked around lately? Are we really that far removed from 'Idiocracy' these days? We're not going to tighten our belts now, preemptively. We're going to put it if off until sometime later when we might finally be left with no other choice, no one else to blame, and no one else to rob. The best we can really hope for right now is to stop using up all the other choices, scapegoats, and victims so quickly. Let's keep ourselves a little time to find new choices, scapegoats, and other victims, like we always have in the past.

The United States government will continue to run in the red. But that's life. Lets acknowledge that our politics are going to run at a loss, and do what we can to get our ECONOMY strong enough for the excesses of our government be manageable. If we get politics stable, and get commerce running smoothly, it will be able to keep the flow going. Some bubbles will burst here and there (same as always), but hopefully not so seriously nor so frequently as to crash the system, and we will all keep whistling along until the (already worthless) dollar can be phased out for something else. All we need is to find that something else; something that we can bring ourselves to believe is more valuable. Which is actually a pretty tall order.

In the meantime, lets keep the system under control, limit the wars and the riots to something that can be contained, and we'll all just keep on keeping on, at least (hopefully) for the duration of my lifetime. By then, I'll have prepared my children to prosper in the course of their lifetimes, just like my parents taught me what I needed to proper in this one.

Mitt seems like the right guy to keep things under control for the next four years, while we all do the best we can and wait to see what happens next.

Survival of the Fattest

CB and I were talking about the insurance industry the other day, and she raised the point that nobody who's in any sort of sales or customer-service industry today has the slightest clue what's is like to actually have to work hard to get results. Really. There have been hiccups here and there, but the American economy has been booming for decades. People - even those who are conveniently labeled 'low income,' either for political or for other purposes - generally have no problems making ends meet, and squeezing substantial luxury into those ends.

This is not to say that there are no people in this country who cannot make ends meet, and who literally go hungry because there is no money left at the end of the month for food. Those people do exist, and in increasing numbers. But I honestly believe that's a fairly recent development. Up until very recently, you had to go WAY down to a very small percentage of the populace before you got to a demographic too broke to indulge in some level of luxury consumerism. Until recently 'poor' meant that someone's 40" TV was a projection model rather than a flat-screen, that they only had basic cable, and had to suffer through the inconvenience of a single car shared by the whole family. Tough times indeed.

Living on the recently-ended unending prosperity of unlimited credit limits, nobody really had to work to sell much of anything, including luxury goods. Nobody had to go out and court the public in any involved way to get goods to move. All anyone really had to do was make the goods or services available, and find a way to inform the public that they were available. Work hard to SELL something? Why bother? If Douchebag Consumer A, here before you at this moment, is unwilling to swipe his card to take a (whatever) home, no problem. Douchebag Consumer B, who will walk in the doors momentarily, won't hesitate for a second before adding a token additional amount to his already crushing credit burden, so he can take a (whatever) home. Regardless of whether he actually needs it, and sometimes regardless of whether he actually wants it, there's a good chance that he'd buy it, just because it's there, and with no need for any more of a sales pitch than putting on the shelf in front of him. That's how fat our economy was. To a large degree, it still is.

Take the pornography industry, for example. Talk about a discretionary expense; it's pure hedonism. If ever there was a economic niche that people would cut from their budgets, THIS IS IT. Yet even today it's a multi-billion dollar a year industry. According to some statistics, over $3,000 is spent on porn EVERY SECOND. This, coupled with other obvious points, and you really have to wonder. Like the fact that over 50% of Americans are technically obese, and the fact that people of hypothetically 'limited means' will pay $40 a month for a gym membership they use once a week. Mebbe this country might actually benefit from some LEGITIMATE lean times - not to be confused with the present - where we might be compelled to lose a few pounds, cut a few luxuries, and actually earn the money we spend as a society, rather than just piling up debt. While a slight necking down of NINJA and similar credit lines has supported more and more of that last point occurring, neither of the subsequent two points seem to be gaining any traction. There is no impetus for anyone to be lean and efficient to be successful, a situation which continues to persist.

With the general availability of credit, and with the government's ever increasing support of Robin Hood economics, I don't see how anything is going to change, and certainly not until there is at least one more substantial credit-market crash. We are so used to rampant consumerism, and so enabled to overspend by creditors (even today), that we as a culture are going to spend until we literally can spend no more. Seriously, the dollars in your bank account are of value only because every other currency on earth sucks even worse than dollars do. Every single asset underlying the value of dollars is horrendously over-extended. Strangely, the best thing to do in times like this is to actually have dollars on hand (cash). Let me know if you want to hear the reasoning.

I'm not sure I have any real point to offer from all this; the real reason I got launched onto this train of thought was from dealing with idiotic sales people and poor customer service habits that about here in Vegas. I'm sure its worse elsewhere, so I'm sure you have it locally too. Wouldn't it be nice if people actually treated you like they NEEDED your money and your business, instead of treating you like they're doing you a favor by deigning to accept your money and your business?

My Man-Crush on Christopher Nolan

I just watched Inception for about the 20th time. I suspect that it's going to become one of those movies that, when I see it's on, I can't help leaving the TV on that station to let it play out. Short list of movies that are like that. Thomas Crown Affair. Fight Club. How to Train Your Dragon. Jaws. Avatar. A few others. All of them masterpieces, and each in their own way. The only thing all of them have in common is, interestingly, great and distinctive musical scores.

What I love about Inception is the depth. The clear thought that was put into every angle, every character. I blogged what is now years ago about American culture, portrayed through movies, using Fight Club as the halcyon example of how action drama can be elevated to art, not just through violence, explosions, and camera tricks, but through depth and nuance that are sometimes hard to see. Fight Club has enough depth that a college-level literature course could spend a month on it. Inception has more. Even having had a few glasses of wine, I don't think I can adequately convey just how highly I think of these movies.

In any rate, Inception director Chris Nolan will be releasing another Batman movie in the not-terribly-distant future (July, 2012). Fairly little has been released about the plot and storyline. Christian Bale will be back as Bruce/Wayne Batman, and it will feature both major and obscure villains from Batman mythology: Selena Kyle (catwoman, played by Anne Hathaway) and Bane (played by Tom Hardy). Quite a lot of Nolan veterans in the cast, besides Bale and Hardy, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard. (Could be the booze, but I find myself contemplating Ellen Page in a Batgirl costume. Mebbe seen Whip It too many times. I have a thing for petite willful women, and Page would kick the hell out of Alicia Silverstone's air-headed version.) All in all, the only sour note so far has been that Nolan plans the movie as a vehicle to conclude his take on Batman.

While I have no doubt whatsoever that Nolan will continue to make excellent films - with a few inevitable side-steps along the way - I'm interested to see how he plans to tie a bow around his Batman universe. I expect it to be outstanding, hopefully enough to satisfy Batfans for the next 10 years or so. Nolan abandoning the franchise unfortunately means that Warner Brothers/DC will hire some over-hyped douchebag to take another run at directing the character for however long the public will buy tickets; whoever happens to be the current incarnation of Joel Schumacher, circa 1995. Len Wiseman is probably near the top of the list. Or somebody from his stable, like Markus Nispel. Fair to say that one or (if we're very lucky) two worthy follow-ups are likely, inevitably followed by a steaming pile of dog-shit that will bury further attempts at comic-book movies for a decade. One-liners and chase-scenes will be offered as substitutes for dialog and drama, with the usual results. Gotta love Hollywood, eh?

But we will get one more Nolan rendition of Batman. So. My prediction: the Nolan Batman storyline will conclude with some great pulling-the-wool-over-the-eyes. Some great deception or obfuscation, which comes at great cost to a central character, but which frees them at the same time. All of Nolan's films highlight the concept that ignorance is bliss, which must sometimes be inflicted on others. The stories convey that reality is subjective. They involve situations where creating (or adopting) the reality that is required involves sacrificing a reality that most people would call "real." Leonard Shelby found his happiness by choosing to ignore and leave behind the reality he has been seeking for years. Likewise, Dominic Cobb found happiness when (by implication) he stopped caring whether or not his reality was real in the grander sense (the significance of the still-spinning top is not that it's still spinning, but rather that Cobb is no longer watching to see if it topples). In The Dark Knight, the reality of Harvey Dent's end was intentionally concealed, at great cost to Our Hero. Both Insomnia and The Prestige likewise have pervasive themes of obfuscation and subjective interpretation of "truth" and "reality." Nolan LOVES the emotional impact of a character transcending reality, by disregarding it. The Dark Knight Rises will be the same.

In interviews, Nolan has asserted that - unlike in comics, where storylines necessarily proceed into perpetuity - movie franchises must have some reasonable closure. I like to think if anyone can wrap up Batman with a clever, impossible to follow twist (which leaves Batman alive, as there must ALWAYS be a Batman), Nolan is the man for the job. Ideally, Nolan will create a storyline that will be difficult enough to follow-up on that the inevitable next director will decide to approach the character from a totally different angle. But alas, the sort of dipshits who will line up for the Batman director job in Nolan's wake are not the type to try to do something original.

But hey, it's about time for us to move past superheroes anyway, since we've pretty much used that up. Seriously, if we're resorting to Thor and Captain America, what's next? Aquaman? Seems we've also been through wizards and dragons, pirates, vampires, zombies, slasher horror remakes, and space drama all within the last decade. Could be mistaken, but its been over a decade since The Matrix, so I believe we're due for some man-against-the-world martial arts action flicks.

The TwiHards

I do occasionally consider a change of career. Lately, I've been spending some time thinking about becoming a telephone psychic, since I can read a tarot deck, and since I learned that some of them charge $600 per hour. No, that's not a miss-print. There are people in the world who make $10 PER MINUTE to shuffle cards and talk on the telephone. I'm thinking maybe that could be me. Could even work out pretty well: I tend to come across pretty well on the phone, when people can't see me rolling my eyes, nor see the mocking expression on my face. This seems important, since those would be common occurrences when addressing people who accept and rely on advice from a deck of cards in the making of decisions. I think that career could be a real possibility.

Of course, I've always been candid about my intended fall-back career: writing B-movie scripts and trashy romance novels. This is the excuse that I offer for having recently picked up and read CB's copies of 'Twilight,' and the following works. Of course, I use 'works' in the loosest possible sense of the term.

My overwhelming response is to wonder at the success of that series of books. I have considered that the average high schooler can barely read, and that their emotional state renders most of them clinical sociopaths from the ages of 14 to 22 (assuming they outgrow it at all), but still. Endless drivel about how Bella simply looks at Edward, and has to take a second or two before she remembers how to breath? How she can't imagine life without him? Endless prattling about how gorgeous he is and how she really can't believe that he's into her? How of course she forgives him for everything he does, immediately, mostly because she doesn't think she deserves him at all? Really? REALLY? This is the sort of writing that earns the author millions?

I'm not sure why this should surprise me, but it kinda does. Maybe I'm a bit of a snob about my literary tastes( or maybe not), but these books are... awful, actually. I sincerely hope that Steph Meyer is one of those authors who thinks its hilarious that her readers are as devoted as they are.

I suspect that part of the issue is my admitted problems dealing with the teens-to-early-20s demographic as a whole. Hell, even as I was reading the books, it seemed a bit creepy to me that Edward, over 100 years old, was in love with a 17 year old girl. Okay, it was more than just a bit creepy, even (or perhaps, especially) when you consider that the author is Mormon and presumably open-minded about unions spanning generation gaps. I was a bachelor well into my 30s, and - living in Las Vegas - had pretty broad dating opportunities. It really didn't take long at all for me to adopt the firm guideline of a maximum allowable age gap of 6 years or so. Really, what were we going to talk about if I had finished law school before she finished high school?

Along those lines, what exactly is it that Edward and Bella connect over? Really, I'm curious. Reading both the language and between the lines, it seems he puts up with all of the drivel and bullshit that makes up her life as a 17-year old high school girl because she smells good. She puts up with all of his condescension, control-freak tendencies, and general douche-baggery (of which there is plenty), mostly because he's gorgeous. While I'm pretty sure that these sorts of arrangements underlie most if not all high-school relationships, I'm not sure that it's healthy for girls to be willing to commit themselves to such deals for all eternity.

So while all this strikes me as exactly the sort of thing that teenage readers would eat up with a spoon, it still depresses me that this is the sort of thing topping best-seller lists. And all in all, it really shouldn't surprise me that the Team Edward vs. Team Jacob debate really gained as much traction as it did. That's gotta be right up there with Survivor, American Idol, and Seinfeld in terms of contrived drama, with the added benefit of being expressed in small words, nearly all of which are known and/or can be sounded out by the target audience.

While real literary analysis is probably not warranted, I'm not going to be able to help myself from wading into the themes. Naturally, there is the almost-universal zero-to-hero angle you find everywhere from the Chronicles of Narnia to Harry Potter, but - interestingly - I think that's one of the more believable angles of the Twilight books. As someone who moved from a big city to a small town, I have no problem believing that a 5.5 to 6 in a big metropolitan pond suddenly rates an 8.5 to 9 in a small pond.

The close corollary 'I-can't-believe-something-this-good-is-happening-to-me' theme is there, in spades, and seems to be the driving force between the Bella/Edward thing as a whole. Seriously, if you took out the drama and dialogue (again, using terms loosely here) about how they REALLY DO love each other, and remove all exchanges where one is assuring they other they they really do want to be together, what all is left?

Answer: pretty much all that's left is another blatantly stereotypical meme: the internal and external conflicts over the wonderful-backup-boyfriend-she-doesn't-love. Oh, Jacob is so wonderful and always there and always saying the right thing and clearly, horrendously in love with Bella. As he is clearly the 'nice' one among her dateable prospects, he gets exploited mercilessly while she languishes over the gorgeous guy she loves. She doesn't WANT Jacob, she just NEEDS him for the actual emotional parts of a relationship, and to fill her pay-attention-to-me quota while Edward is off being dark and moody. This, of course, is all part of the love held for these books by young readers: pretty much every girl (or indeed, every PERSON) on earth will at some point have a hypothetically dateable prospect who loves them, who they don't love, but from whom they love attention. (Admit it, you've put some quality people in the 'friend zone' while you chased someone just like them, but not them. Doing so does not make you a bad person, it just makes you human.) So of course readers eat it up and keep buying books while Jake loves Bella and Bella loves the attention. And since he says he only wants her company, he's getting a positive quotient out of it, notwithstanding overt emotional leeching.

This, obviously, comports nicely with the teenage female world-view. While I haven't actually been able to finish the series quite yet (I can only take fairly small doses at a time before I start getting dry-heaves) I have no doubt whatsoever about how the Edward vs. Jacob thing is going to end. Spoiler alert: Edward is going to get the girl. But I also have no doubt that - part and parcel to final resolution - Jacob will either find his own true love, or die a monumentally heroic death; those are the only resolutions that a teenage female reader would accept. After all, Jacob has been a dutiful and attentive lap-wolf, and the only unforgivable transgression he ever made - other than being a genuinely nice guy - was that he's not as dreamy as Edward. Sadly, I think a heroic death is more likely, since Jacob finding his own true love would mean him finding someone he likes more than he likes Bella. That concept would be a tricky sell to the audience in a first-person narrative based primarily on the mood swings of the narrator. How to make Bella happy about not just losing the relationship that's actually based on personal interaction, but losing that relationship TO ANOTHER GIRL? Thus, I fear that while Jacob will go out well, he is not long for the world.

Reading these books has provided me with some interesting insights in the cravings of the book-buying public, which I confess I lose sight of occasionally. Clearly, any effort I might make to become any form of main-stream writer is going to require overcoming internal psychological barriers about what is and is not publishable quality, and about what I will and will not be willing to have my name attached to. If nothing else, these factors pretty much guarantee that I will be publishing under a pseudonym.

Responses?