Hell Hath No Fury

I came across this quote and it really struck me as . . . as what? Profound? Confusing? Something, but I don't know what.

"No Biblical hell could ever be worse than the state of perpetual inconsequence." Dangerous Beauty

Or perhaps I have long been inured to being of no great consquence, but then I never aspired to be, or am I lying now? I never saw the movie.

Pod People, Part 2

More stuff I didn't write, but I really like it.

The commonly recited pros of having a healthy, educated, socialized population are: social stability; less desperation, violence and civil disobediance; presumably more development and social benefits by having a wider pool of talent to draw from.

But the drawbacks are: a wider pool of talent to draw from. This means more competition for the current priveleged groups. John McCain, for example, would be much better off if women or blacks hadn't been enfrachised.

These are basic protectionism arguments, applied to talent rather than international boundaries.

Additional point that is demonstrated by emerging economies: increased competition for resources. You can liberate/elevate a bunch of people, thinking they're going to become productive members of society and become an asset for you. But those newly productive people are developing tastes for gasoline and beef, and that's driving up prices for everybody -- not to mention generating environmental impacts. And as anyone who has gone from a driving a broken down Maverick to a new Toyota can attest, once you taste wealth and convenience, you will redouble your efforts to prevent backsliding.

Interesting if the legacy of Reagan and that lot will turn out to be, not the champions of "freedom," but rather, "the dimwits who let the rabble into the country club."

Think

Via Dustbury: So That Might Not Be The Problem

Via View From The Porch:Eloi Revisited

Carlos Marcello Conspiracy Theory

My son is giving a speech in class about Carlos Marcello and the assassination of JFK. I like conspiracy theories, the more far out the better. But this one sounds completely believable. I had heard of conspiracy theories about the assassination of JFK before, but they were mostly of the "second gunman" variety. And, you know, does it make any difference? All this rehashing of ancient history may be very entertaining for some people, but it is not likely to change anything.

I wanted to post my son's speech here, but he refused, so I being forced to write this myself.

Since I read my son's speech, I looked up Carlos on the web, and the few stories I looked at paint a pretty clear picture. It certainly seems much more probable that Carlos was behind the assassination than that Oswald acted alone. Besides, it lends support to my theory that drug money is one of the biggest forces in this country. It also makes it sound like the Republicans are dirty, or maybe they just have a better understanding of what the real power situation is. Look what happened to Kennedy when he tried to clean up organized crime. You don't imagine there is any connection between Bush being President and opium production increasing in Afghanistan, do you?

Pod People

From someone I know:

I heard this on the radio this morning, and found this from January. City letting homeless people live in their cars in designated areas. No more living like a hunted animal, hiding from the cops.

This is very generous of the cops, although it's perhaps inevitable -- when that many people are driven into the street, you are pretty much forced to recognize the problem.

But this is still a subsidy. Somehow, someone has to figure out a way to extract wealth from these people. These are people who are so marginal that they can't pay for housing (although housing is pretty expensive). There has to be a medium between extracting $500 a month from someone for a full-fledged apartment, and letting them live for free. How about a big parking lot, with ultra-low maintenance concrete showers and latrines, charge people $3 per day?

Indeed, as market efficiencies expand and people are increasingly forced into pods, this could give rise to "high-end" parking lots, with some trees and decent facilities, where mid-level people can park their living pods.

More thoughts on the inevitable decline:

• In the mid-century and postwar era, one could earn a good living from labor. This was due to sheer abundance of resources and opportunities, ie: a "boom-town" environment;
• Technology, efficiency and free trade have turned labor into a cheap superfluous commodity;
• When people are desperate enough they revolt. But the requirements to keep people passive are relatively few, and can be made cheaply (TV, shiny vehicle, salty fatty food).
• Will commodity prices, technology and efficiency, and profit motivations produce a world where people are living in pods, eating meals of starch and fat out of drive through windows, and staring at celebrity gossip on little glass screens? And not able to afford anything else?
• The current system where voters can "change the government" is good in principle. In reality, the government is entrenched and designed for continuity and expansion, not change and responsiveness. Thus, while voters can still register their discontent about the size of their pod or the starch content of their diet, those votes will only be met with rhetoric, viewed on the TV screens. We can't expect the underlying trends to change.
• Cost of health care will remain prohibitive. Good thing is, when people get sick, they are price-insensitive, and you can extract their last dime out of them. And often they die so they're not around to provoke outrage, people just forget about them.
• Is this really better than having a population of healthy, educated, confident people? I guess the theory is that a small minority of healthy educated confident people is adequate, they can run things and extract profit from the rest of the population, who are basically reduced to slaves. Lets all hope that our kids get a lucky draw.

Pen Crazy

Yet another little known world of devotees and collectors: fountain pens. My brother has been hanging around Fort Madison, Iowa, and discovered that it is home to the Shaeffer pen company. Shaeffer is now owned by BIC, but they still have a presence in Fort Madison. Once you find an entry portal it is easy to wander off into pen-land.

Saudi Oil

Saudi Aramco by the Numbers

Saudi Armaco World is a very odd publication, but the numbers and graphs do give you a sort of baseline on what is going on in the oil business.