5 reasons why watching the debates sucked

did you watch the debates? did you wish the candidates would just speak their minds instead of repeating their stump speeches and dodging questions? actually, the candidates have no choice but to act this way, and here are the 5 reasons why.

1 Not enough people watch the debates

soon computer

58m viewers equals less than 20% of the population. that means most of us were politics junkies looking to observe how things pan out rather than make up our minds - we already have. think this debate was for you? think again...

2 the debates are a ritual performed for the media

oh yeah

most voters will read or hear about them the on the next day through second hand reporting by some media outlet. that means that it doesn't really matter what is said but who produces the best sound bite and the best optics.

3 the media doesn't like complexity because viewers turn it off

i feel like...

talking about the issues can lead to complicated arguments weighing the pros and cons of a proposed solution, while viewers switch off. this is not a recipe for success in the media, which is all about eyeballs on commercials. so instead, the media concentrates on gossip-like news like who looked more statesmanlike or nervous and who looked into the camera more. expect it to be trotted out by talking heads and self-appointed experts ad nauseam. this concentration on secondary messages leads to...

4 candidates are afraid to be branded "divisive"

yeah, right

doesn't almost every sports store have merchandise saying "the other team sucks"? divisiveness is as American as apple pie, yet the word has strong negative connotations. for some reason, voters are uncomfortable with conflict, although the conflict of ideas is what it's all about. that means that when Romney talks about how he worked across the isle as a governor, Obama can't reply that he tried that, and republicans threw away the invite. and when Obama talks about his grandma having worked and paid into social security so that she could then draw from it when she needed it most, Romney can't reply how much he hates moochers that are "unwilling to take responsibility for their lives."

5 debates are for the undecided, aka the uninformed

huh?

seriously, if you still don't know by now who you prefer, you just haven't been paying attention. that's just the kind of person who'd get swayed by the kind of gossip dominating the media. unfortunately, this voting block is what swings the electron, so all messages we will be seeing will be at their level.

how the US is like a working mom - thinking through tax enough already

or TEA, as the popular tea-party acronym goes. lowering taxes for jobs is on everyone's mind. so let's forget for the moment about roads, public transit, hospitals, schools, universities, and defense and look at the incentives.

humans of course respond to incentives, and constantly look for ways to cut corners. that's ok, we all do it, and so changing tax rates to make people behave in a certain way is a reasonable path of action. now what if i am at the receiving end of such changes? if i had a steady high income from a business, let me just think through what i would do, given different tax rates.

1. 
   do you want this
   Éminence Grise
   i pay low taxes: great! i love it! i take my cash home, pay a little tax and spend spend spend on lovely things like champagne, travel, and big cars. maybe i always wanted to have a boat or a private jet? in any case, my money goes to the income of luxury companies that make things i like. their employees work there to have the big name on their resume, not for the money, so they don't make that much but oh well.
   
   if you design mass-produced items, cell phones, laptops, TVs and the like, or advertise cheap goods for the mass market or you work in agriculture: sorry, i've got nothing for you. you'll have to wait until my money trickles down to you from those underpaid makers of my luxury goods. oh wait, they are underpaid, so it won't. sorry, at least i tried.


2. 
   or this?
   ubergizmo
   you tax me more: aaaargh!!! now i have to devise ways to keep that fat wad of cash that comes my way every month. what to do? oh, yes deductibles. let's see. company car. check. luxury office. check. ... ok, if i must, i'll reinvest some of it into the company, buy some new laptops and office chairs, hell, maybe i'll even hire someone. and to find someone to hire in a competitive jobs market, i have to pay them more. now i'm producing more. how do i sell it? perhaps hire an advertising company and make my products a little cheaper. wait, now i don't make so much money, so maybe i'll hire a consultant to help me streamline the production process, buy some new machines to automate. now i produce even more. hm, maybe i can find new markets in asia?

see what's happening here? the incentive is not the tax, it's the deduction. i want to avoid taxes, so that my income stays in my company and under my control, so that i can one day pass it on, for cash or to my kids. in the process, i have jump-started a whole host of business activity, while providing a product to a mass market for a good price.

you be the judge which kind of world you want to live in. i for one would vote for option two. and to everyone who claims that high taxes make companies go bust: no company pays the nominal tax rate, as everyone knows deductibles. it's not the government that makes companies go bust, it's competition with more efficient companies (which, incidentally, operate under the exact same tax conditions).

so to republicans and tea-partiers who claim that low taxes on high incomes create jobs, please remember that the bush tax cuts have been active all along. see how many jobs that gave us? low taxes only help to take the money home and put it on a big pile, not to reinvest it. and to those who say we can't afford the deficit, let me answer with a simile:

lady liberty
work it. mom!

the US is like a working mom who, after a busy time at work, finds that her company struggles in the downturn. she comes home unemployed and goes through her finances to see what her options are. after all, she has put aside some money every month for such a case while she still had a job. to her horror, she finds that all her savings have been spent on booze and coke by her alcoholic ex-husband who still likes to hang around. but the kids need to be clothed, fed, and driven to school, and so our formerly working mom has no choice but to take a loan on the house to get by. and throw that good-for-nothing ex out of the house. in 2012.

get your technology stolen - and make a career of it

we love technology. we use it every day to travel, communicate, live, eat, drink, have a nice life. but clouds are brewing over our consumer paradise. aren't we are all noticing that more and more of the products we hold in our hands are made in fewer and fewer countries? turn over any object in your home, how many have "made in china" printed on their back? there is much concern in the west that this means that one day we will no longer be able to compete and lose our jobs. i am more optimistic than that, and here is why:

1. what many forget is that this is nothing new. the ancient romans loved to rant about how their jobs were taken away by the cheap labor in persia...
   currently, aided by smart joint-venture laws, it is china that is absorbing a lot of technology from the west.
   does that make it ok to point the finger? well, only recently, way into the 20th century, the US loved to steal technology from germany (steel manufacturing, machines, chemistry, pharmacology [aspirin], or more recently, wind turbines). in the late 19th century, germany stole technology from britain (steam engine, steel, railroad) and finally, from the 14th up until about the 18th century, all europe just loved to steal technology from the americas, india and... china (agriculture, drugs, weaving, silk, porcelain, explosives). all civilizations had jobs and technology "stolen" from them at some time. was it really that which made people suffer? or was it perhaps bigger socioeconoic issues, industrialization, and the willingness of governments to go to war? in spite of this, did the world's civilization really stop? or did it instead move inexorably ever forward?
   
   
   
   want to buy one? yeah, didn't think so.
   [froogle.google.com]



2. will the world end or will we just adapt, innovate, and live happily ever after? as an educated, intelligent individual, do you want to invent once, then watch while your employer lazily makes a ton of cash with your invention? well, it won't happen, and that's unavoidable, if you like it or not. instead, you will need to continue innovating feverishly to stay ahead. and that's what makes your employer need you, that's what makes your career.
   
   
   
   innovation.
   [netflix.com]

so it seems that thanks to competition, the salt in the soup of capitalism, be it fair or unfair, you have a career. don't worry about technology passing hands. technology that exists is yesterday's technology that you just gave to your employer. it's the technology in your head and short time to market that gives you your livelihood, if you play it right. maybe one day, you will invent "amazing new product X" out of a combination of existing technologies that no-one else had the imagination and creativity to combine. will it be useful? YES! will the owners of those technologies want a piece of the pie? sure, but let your lawyers work out how to share the proceeds. they have families to feed, too. at the end of the day, all the bickering in the media is about which multinational corporation makes more money. do you care? or do you care about division of labor giving you the best product at the best price, and competition moving the market ever forward to give you new, amazing possibilities to enhance your life every day? and, who knows, maybe, just maybe, lift untold millions of people up to a standard of living that is enjoyable rather than the struggle they currently endure?

[that said, you should steer well clear of actually helping that natural process of dissemination of technology, as that would make you have negative value to your employer and you would be out of a career before you could even consider the legal implications. no, this post is not a call for action, it is to make you realize that you have nothing to worry about.]

UPDATE: for an interesting u-turn on the china blame game, check out this TIME article from Jan 2010 blaming foreign investors for american bankers' lack of discipline and, on the opposite end, this recent TIME article saying that china is doing what anyone would do. after all, if your trade balance is doing just fine, is your currency really that undervalued?

Why is health care reform so hard?

pain relocation, ever popular
jokefile.co.uk

imagine you are a health insurer. how would you go about business?

let's look at the market: demand is insatiable. don't we all crave to be at our best health imaginable? when an illness threatens our lifestyle or even life itself, aren't we prepared to pay any price? especially if it's not our money we're spending... at the same time, supply of care limited is due to cost and man-power. sweet! health care is a prime example for a tragedy of the commons, ripe for some enclosure action.

meanwhile, what is happening in politics?

although it is an open secret, no-one wants to hear that health care is limited, which is why any attempt to put this into plain words has met with angry responses with no regard for the facts.

while holding a supermajority, democrats seemed to want to appease the republican minority by giving up the public option, along with an endless string of other health care concessions.

at the same time, the right is asking democrats to show even more bipartisanship or just abondon reform altogether.

how come?

let's once more picture you as a health insurer. you get to internalize revenue from the employed (kthx), "externalize" costs from the elderly and poor through medicare and medicaid (phew!), while retaining the privilege to get rid of the costly, by managing to rescind contracts with half of the chronically ill (yesss!).^* you can do anything, short of causing civil unrest. infinite demand, high prices and throngs of customers left behind? i smell an oligopoly. right now, doing business in the US is a health insurer's dream. perfection. that means, any changes to the system whatsoever would increase costs for insurers and lower their margins.

now getting majorities requires negotiations. but there is nothing that insurers and the politicians they fund want in health care reform that reformers could trade in for things they want in it.^**

in the age of profit maximization irrespective of the consequences on society, the way to maximize profits for insurers is to keep everything just the way it is. this is why we have been hearing "no", "no", and "no" to meaningful reform from senators funded by the insurance industry (most if not all R and a fair number of D).

there is a way out. Bush passed his agenda with budget reconciliation and so can Obama.

knowing that, there are two options for democrats:

1. push through health care reform with maximum impact, taking effect asap, and hope that voters see the positive effects so clearly that they won't allow republicans (who haven't made themselves known for bipartisanship under Bush) to reverse it next time it is their turn, or


2. pass a toothless, helpless paper that does not change anything or even worsens voters' plight, and lose many elections to come like the lame duck majority that would make them.

^*the economic basis of record health insurance profits

1. internalizing revenue any money coming in the healthy, working insured are pure profit. they are internalized, i.e. made the insurance company's own.
2. externalized cost from elderly and poor the aging and poor need more costly healthcare, due to age-related, diet-related, and general life-style related illnesses. late onset diabetes and intestinal cancer from poor diet, lung cancer from smoking, heart disease from both, are only the most common illnesses that are more prevalent in these groups. private health insurers have, through medicare and medicaid, no part in these costs, which are therefore externalized to them, as they are paid by the community of tax payers.
3. rescission this should be a household word, as it characterizes the current malaise of health care like no other. as described elsewhere, insurers use excessively complicated forms to provoke erroneous applications that allow them to terminate the insurance of many of their customers. of course, they do not do this for those customers that make them money. only once a customer develops a chronic illness, the application is revisited and errors are found. this has allowed insurers to get rid of as many as one in two of their chronically ill customers! even before going for termination of the contract, many well-known cases show that insurers will use any pre-existing condition, however unrelated, as an excuse to deny coverage.
   in plain english: private health insurers suck you dry while you have a job and you are healthy but they deny paying for your treatment or outright dump you when you need them most.

^**not even tort reform. everyone, including republicans, knows that tort only accounts 1% of healthcare premiums. health care costs need to be at least halved to be on par with other developed countries though (let alone expanding coverage). so demands for tort reform are just a spanner thrown into the works of health care reform.

conservative reformers vs. left-wing conservationists

Seeing recent election results in other countries, does it appear that Europe's conservatives are the better socialists? At least that's what the recent New York Times article, "In Bad Times for Capitalism, Socialists in Europe Suffer" says.

In 1957, the German conservatives went into the federal election with the slogan "No Experiments". This was at a time when massive economic changes made every political move an experiment anyway, but I digress. In 2009, the slogan "We Have the Strength" - intriguingly, a loose translation of Obama's "Yes We Can" - hands German conservatives a big win.

"No Experiments" can still be heard from conservative politians, although the failure of financial markets makes the need for reforms obvious. Record bailouts, carried by conservatives and liberals alike, show that this need is recognized and met. What then makes "No Experiments" so successful?

Germany has turned grayish-black

To quote the NYT article,

The Socialists have, in this contest, become conservatives, fighting to preserve systems that voters think need to be improved, though not abandoned.

This statement makes some big assumptions on what voters think, but be that as it may. Could it be that socialists have turned from reformers into defenders of the social support systems' status quo because they were gullible enough to allow conservatives to tell them what not to think in the wake of the collapse of the eastern bloc? Not to speak of the unrelenting onslaught of the neo-liberal reform agenda that seems to preclude any extension of these systems since Reagan and Thatcher dominated the west. After conservative outrage at the thought, German Social Democrats (SPD) excluded cooperation with the Left Party (a coalition of western socialists disappointed by their party's right-shift and eastern post-communists). By doing this, the SPD made themselves an impotent appendage of the conservatives. At the same time, they failed to recognize that, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, conservatives give post-communists much less credit for their ability for democratic reform than they gave their own former Nazi members only five years after the war.

The NYT article further quotes Giovanni Sartori as saying

The Socialists can’t adapt to the loss of their basic electorate, and with globalism, the welfare state can no longer exist in the same way

This statement is, however, based on the assumption that society as a whole values profits higher than lifestyle. Seeing as, even in the boom before the bust, only the highest 10% of German incomes saw an increase*, the purported view that socialists are losing their basic electorate is a myth. A bank teller is no less a worker than her manual labour compatriot, even though she might over-ambitiously vote like her bank's CEO. The real question is, through what deception do conservative parties manage to coax a majority to vote against their own interests?

To reclaim their voter base, left-wing parties need to liberate themselves from the denkverbot/crimethink laws set by conservatives and find common ground with partners in other parties everywhere. They need to build their own forward-facing reform agenda adapted to modern conditions, giving the common man chances to profit from the efficiency gains of globalization just as much as the corporation. The discussion among socialists in the coming years will be interesting. It remains to be seen whether the right wing of the SPD will relinquish the power they have easily.

Food for thought, if corporations sell movie dics so cheaply in east asia, why can't you buy them at asian market prices over the internet and play them in your player in the west? (Technical answer: because they have a region code. How is it that region codes are ok?)

* Sources:
Einkommen stagnieren - nur die Reichen werden reicher
Die Mittelschicht schrumpft
Studie: Aufschwung an meisten Haushalten vorbeigegangen

as healthcare debated, oil lobby chips away at restrictions

under the green banner of energy reform, the oil industry is at it again, as if to demonstrate that no-one should ever take their eyes off the ball, ever.

today i saw another article of the "did you know" type, linked by a friend (thank you). this time, it is about the dependence of the US on foreign oil. the avid reader will know that I am sceptical of such articles.

consequences of oil
production (canada)

i feel that it's worth putting this article in perspective. it purports that restrictions on US domestic production unnecessarily drive up cost (and US trade deficit). in truth, if those restrictions were lifted, the savings would be in the sub-percent range, while the environmental and health costs would be enormous. a large part, as the graphics shows, is already imported from canada, where, the environmental damage caused by the extraction of oil from tar sands is readily visible.

at the same time, advances in efficiency are made out to be noticeable, when in fact they are more than eaten up by the insatiable hunger for auto-mobility, always-on electrical devices, and air conditioning caused by America's love affair with living in the deserts of the south. (not to mention the consumption of limited water supplies.)

at the end of the article, the rhetorical question is asked

Until we find the renewables capable of replacing fossil fuels, oil and gas will remain the world's most important commodities, meaning the US will continue to import great volumes from overseas. But just how reliant is the US on the importing of foreign oil?

so as take-home message, are we to understand that the oil industry is too big to fail? seriously???

this, by the way, is one of two similar articles on the main page of the same online trade magazine right now (the other talks about how US trade balance would be ok of it weren't for those pesky oil restrictions). while they seem to provide factual information, they downplay some and talk others up, so all they really do is contribute to the smoke-and-mirrors, drill-baby-drill campaign of the oil lobby.

do you think the articles are informative and harmless? well, let's compare this to a situation we are better acquainted with. say you swing by your pharmacist's on the way home to get some cough-drops, and since you'd be bored on your train ride, you pick up their free magazine. in it, you find a gushing article about this new drug for your cough. back at the pharmacists the next day later you ask about it, and find that it is ten times as expensive as your cough-drops. do you really believe it will cure your ailment ten times better? well, we all know that these articles in trade magazines are written, and paid for, by marketing companies. so why should we be more trusting when it comes to reading articles on subjects that touch on the political?

i matter, and so do you

no, this is not about a new product called iMatter. :) you know what it's like - you get a youtube link in your email or see it on facebook. it is a presentation of interesting facts that you haven't seen in this combination yet, and it gives you pause to think. i want to discuss a perspective popularly used in these videos. in particular, i have a beef with it.

this example is titled "did you know". on the surface it sums up the awesomeness of existence. at the end of it though, it doesn't sit well with me because it leaves me feeling a little overwhelmed and powerless.
well, "did you know" that more than 50% of the statements in this video are either unsubstantiated or just plain wrong? have a look and read on to see what my take is on it.

"did you know"

why do i bother writing about this?

i think the video tries pretty hard to make us feel insignificant, and i think this is misleading. there is much that every one of us can and needs to do. we need motivation to start doing something, not an awe-inspiring argument suggesting that that would be pointless. because we seem powerless, are we now free to feel good about our inaction? no, we need to act, get involved in all of this.
each of us matters. i matter. you matter.

am i being too earnest? isn't this video just harmless fun? advertising works by repetition, and if a point is just repeated enough, we start believing it. i think we need to be more critical with entertainments like this because they do transport a message. we should be careful not to take these opinions on board, because that's what they are.

have you had similar experiences? have you used something for entertainment and later found out that it was much more than that? i'd like to hear of your experiences, email/message me, or comment below if you want.

read on if you are interested in a scene-by-scene discussion of the statements made in the video.

my comments in detail

1. "china will soon be the #1 english speaking country" - that would take 25% of chinese speaking english. while so many might have had english at school, i doubt they speak it with any fluency.
2. 
   Hyderabad street scene
   "india has more honor kids than america has kids" - this statement contains a number of logical fallacies. #1 - IQ and education are not the same thing. #2 - we don't know what 25% means in absolute numbers. sadly, US honors level is likely reached only by the top 5% or so in india (my estimate). after all, fewer than 40% of adolescents in India even attend secondary schools, and illiteracy is still common in rural areas.

are we supposed to feel threatened here? india and china were the first to suffer in this crisis economically and they are still developing educationally as well as industrially. china tries desperately to outgrow rising unemployment caused by urbanisation. india has barely started this process. if you remember the 80s, remember how everyone thought back then that japan was taking over. this was followed by twenty years of japan's problems catching up with it. natural resources, education, and business infrastructure simply can't keep up with 10% growth rates. i have no doubt that they will level off.
both countries need western nations' support to grow their economy and educate their population, without repeating our unsustainable mistakes.

3. "if myspace were a country, it would be 5th largest" - put it in perspective; if the customers of unilever were a country, it would span the entire world. the same goes for most consumer products. does that mean there are many worlds? no. the impact of the internet is still comparatively small. if a youtube video generates 5 million views in a month, it is a blockbuster. in comparison, let's say only half of the american population watch the news twice per day. that's 300 million views per news item - in only one day! in the same vein, by the way, i have no illusions about the number of views i get with what i'm writing here... :)
4. 
   logarithmic graph of inventions
   "we are living in exponential times" - always have been, since the day stone tools were invented. new technologies struggle at first, coexisting with their predecessors, then grow exponentially until they explode into view and finally are everywhere. this was true for agriculture, architechture, book printing, the railways, the automobile, hence also the computer. it's nothing special, and the facts listed later in the video are mere consequences of it.
5. "exabytes of unique information" - mostly in video and audio. that's been around since the 19th century, the only difference now is that it is digitized and hence you can now count the information.
6. "half of what [students] learn learn in their 1st year ... is outdated by the 3rd" - that would be a very poorly designed class. a good lecturer makes sure skills are taught, not technical manuals.
7. "supercomputer with brain power in 2013" - maybe with as many transistors as we have neurons. but the power of the brain is not in the neurons, it's in the network. every neuron is in itself a powerful analogue circuit, and has 10000 connections. we are very far from such capability.

now these are just trying to make me feel inadequate. i can keep up easily, thanks very much, because at the end of the day, technology is for me, not the other way around. if it doesn't suit my needs or is too difficult to operate, i can do without it. history is full of technologies like that. 95% of the data avalanche will be forgotten, the important thing to remember is to ignore it. :) remember that famous singer from the 1890s? neither do i.

8. "X songs were downloaded illegally during this presentation" - whatever. all estimates along the lines of "music industry lost trillions" are bogus anyway because those who download songs either can't afford to buy them or just want to have a listen before actually going out and buying them anyway. in the 30s, records were free, as promotion for live concerts. in the 80s, music videos were free, as promotion for records. today, both are sold, in spite of technology. the music industry should quit whining and come up with a viable business model. and no, they can't keep growing to the point where everyone spends 50% of their income on their ringtone-ready products, there are other things in life.

as a scientist, i know that, for all the available computing power, we still struggle to understand some of the most basic processes in nature, since we lack even more computing power, and smart ways to use it. so bring on the "human brain simulation", i might actually employ it for something useful.
as a layman, i object to the assumption that other countries will take over. remember trade for mutual benefit? everyone can do better in the future, if things are done right. there is no reason to feel threatened - unless you want to rule unilaterally, that is.

the worst interview guest ever?

just a therapeutic posting to overcome my disbelief. and so you can see which tv shows i really follow. ;)

1. U isn't the only naturally occuring element that decays. by far. everything heavier than lead does. (the first one discovered, actually by Marie Curie, was radium.)
2. "the periodic table goes higher but this is where it ends." huh? how about "the higher ones are man-made"?
3. an atomic nucleus consists of protons and neutrons (not electrons)
4. neutrons were shot at atoms not "to see what would happen" but to study their internal structure and to produce heavier elements
5. "they" were Enrico Fermi, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner?
6. all it takes to make things happen in only 10 years is money. how about politicians spend it more wisely?
7. you can't just pick up these centrifuges from your local diy store, and it takes tons of uranium to get one pound of enriched product
8. throwing the stuff at someone isn't so far off - contamination from depleted uranium ammunition is a big problem in war-torn countries.
   

so many issues and missed chances in one eight minute interview.
his book? i'll stick to wikipedia.