Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Out in California they are gunning for a President McKinley statue
Damn. McKinley has been dead for better than 100 years. Some anarchist shot him in the back, shortly after he got elected president. He didn't live long enough as president to do much that got into the history books. But the California SJW's are agitating to pull his stature down. They must be out of things to do.
Capitalism or Communism?
Winston Churchill once said "The vice of capitalism is that it stands for unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery." Socialism being a politer word for communism. Why is this?
Communism was invented to "level the playing field" by taking everything and dividing it equally and sharing it equally among all the people. The biggest down side of Communism, why even the Russians gave it up in 1989, is it gives no incentive to anyone to work hard. Why work hard when you get paid the same for slacking off? Other downsides come when ordinary fallible people take up the divide and share business. Being fallible, these people skim plenty off the top for themselves before doing any sharing. Since nobody works very hard, there isn't much to share in the first place.
Under capitalism, people are allowed to own stuff (land, houses, factories, everything) and to keep the proceeds. By hard work, or genius, it is possible to become wealthy, powerful, and important. This motivates a lot of people to work really hard, take risks, invent stuff. The overall result is a never ending fountain of material wealth, food and drink, clothing, shelter, toys for children and grownups, all at decent prices, and vast quantities. Aided by capitalism's law of supply and demand which efficiently matches production with demand. The entrepreneurs who create all this goodness get to keep a goodly share of it, but there is enough that everybody gets some. Compare the standard of living for ordinary people in communist places like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, with the standard of living in the United States. This is why the United States has an illegal alien problem whereas the Communist countries have long lists of people wanting to leave, and not permitted to.
This is what the Cold War was about, the Russians wanted to convert the entire world to Communism and we wanted to keep the entire world capitalist. We won, and the wonder of our victory is that we managed it without touching off the Last War with the Soviets.
Communism was invented to "level the playing field" by taking everything and dividing it equally and sharing it equally among all the people. The biggest down side of Communism, why even the Russians gave it up in 1989, is it gives no incentive to anyone to work hard. Why work hard when you get paid the same for slacking off? Other downsides come when ordinary fallible people take up the divide and share business. Being fallible, these people skim plenty off the top for themselves before doing any sharing. Since nobody works very hard, there isn't much to share in the first place.
Under capitalism, people are allowed to own stuff (land, houses, factories, everything) and to keep the proceeds. By hard work, or genius, it is possible to become wealthy, powerful, and important. This motivates a lot of people to work really hard, take risks, invent stuff. The overall result is a never ending fountain of material wealth, food and drink, clothing, shelter, toys for children and grownups, all at decent prices, and vast quantities. Aided by capitalism's law of supply and demand which efficiently matches production with demand. The entrepreneurs who create all this goodness get to keep a goodly share of it, but there is enough that everybody gets some. Compare the standard of living for ordinary people in communist places like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, with the standard of living in the United States. This is why the United States has an illegal alien problem whereas the Communist countries have long lists of people wanting to leave, and not permitted to.
This is what the Cold War was about, the Russians wanted to convert the entire world to Communism and we wanted to keep the entire world capitalist. We won, and the wonder of our victory is that we managed it without touching off the Last War with the Soviets.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
It's the Post Office's problem
President Trump was bashing Amazon the other day. Among other things, he said the US Post Office is losing $1.50 on every parcel Amazon sends by mail. And it's all Amazon's fault.
I beg to disagree.
If the Post Office is losing money on Amazon's business, it's up to the Post Office to either improve efficiency, or raise prices. It isn't Amazon's duty.
As a matter of fact, back in the 19th century, when Congress authorized the Post Office to offer Parcel Post, the original legislation demanded the Post Office set rates high enough to cover costs. Probably because Congress didn't want to subsidize the big mail order companies of the day, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. Sixty years later some business writer commented that the Post Office would never offer much competition to Fedex and UPS because of it's inefficiencies and high wages.
I beg to disagree.
If the Post Office is losing money on Amazon's business, it's up to the Post Office to either improve efficiency, or raise prices. It isn't Amazon's duty.
As a matter of fact, back in the 19th century, when Congress authorized the Post Office to offer Parcel Post, the original legislation demanded the Post Office set rates high enough to cover costs. Probably because Congress didn't want to subsidize the big mail order companies of the day, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. Sixty years later some business writer commented that the Post Office would never offer much competition to Fedex and UPS because of it's inefficiencies and high wages.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
I'd like to be just a plain American
All those questionaires that want you to classify yourself as white, black, Asian-American, hispanic, purple with polka dots, are offensive to me. I want to check off an "American" box. All those other categories are just fodder to fuel divisive identity politics. I don't want to be classified as one or another identity group. I am an American, and my sympathies lie with my country, not my narrow identity group.
And, while the Democrats are busy finding new identity groups, and talking them up, they don't actually promise these identity groups anything while campaigning. No promises of special treatment, special tax breaks, extra funding for pet projects, nothing. I don't see any reason for the identity groups to vote for the Dems, there is nothing in it for them.
Trump on the other hand has lowered black unemployment to the lowest level on record. That oughta be good for something.
And, while the Democrats are busy finding new identity groups, and talking them up, they don't actually promise these identity groups anything while campaigning. No promises of special treatment, special tax breaks, extra funding for pet projects, nothing. I don't see any reason for the identity groups to vote for the Dems, there is nothing in it for them.
Trump on the other hand has lowered black unemployment to the lowest level on record. That oughta be good for something.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Vermont wants to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Sounds cool. But what the newsies call "AI" is really just well programmed computers. In the programming world, "AI" is a flexible sort of programming, where decisions (if-then branching) can be done with less than 100% positivity of the evidence. And "AI" can be written to find it's goals by looking at data, which is more flexible than having the programs goals written into it by the programmers.
But when you get right down to it, what they are calling "AI" is really just programs running in microprocessors. Modern programming is more flexible than the early FORTRAN programs that handled well understood problems like printing up the payroll checks.
Long talk on Vermont public radio about the wonders of a Vermont state program to regulate "AI". They don't have it yet, but this program was pushing the idea. Since "AI" is really any programming, we are talking about regulating every product with a microprocessor in it. Which is just about everything these days. Your microwave, your automobile, your cell phone, your TV, your FM radio, just about everything that uses electricity. Do you really want to give a state commission the power to regulate just about everything? I don't.
The free market is perfectly capable of controlling computer programs on the market. Look at what's happening to Facebook over some data breaches. Same thing will happen to any product or company that offends the broader market place.
But when you get right down to it, what they are calling "AI" is really just programs running in microprocessors. Modern programming is more flexible than the early FORTRAN programs that handled well understood problems like printing up the payroll checks.
Long talk on Vermont public radio about the wonders of a Vermont state program to regulate "AI". They don't have it yet, but this program was pushing the idea. Since "AI" is really any programming, we are talking about regulating every product with a microprocessor in it. Which is just about everything these days. Your microwave, your automobile, your cell phone, your TV, your FM radio, just about everything that uses electricity. Do you really want to give a state commission the power to regulate just about everything? I don't.
The free market is perfectly capable of controlling computer programs on the market. Look at what's happening to Facebook over some data breaches. Same thing will happen to any product or company that offends the broader market place.
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Pacific Rim, (a movie)
Youngest Son was up for the weekend. He wanted to see it. I had never heard of it before. This was the opening weekend. So after skiing on Saturday, we went to the matinee in the mighty metropolis of Lincoln NH. It was playing, but by the time the end was reached and the credits rolled, we were the only two people in the theater. It must have done better somewhere, the Wall St Journal mentioned it in their weekend movie box office piece.
It's a giant robot movie. Same general idea as the Godzilla movies, except it's robots stamping on the high rises in down town Tokyo instead of Godzilla. The robots, who got much of the screen time, looked like CGI, rather than modelwork, and they were pretty good, they moved smoothly, they even had facial expressions (on robots no less). The robots were big enough to have two man control rooms inside them. The crew made the robot move by moving their arms and legs. When the human crew ran inplace in the control room, the robot would run down a Tokyo street. What was left unsaid is how the two man crew coordinated between them selves. Like what happens if one crew member swerves left and the other swerves right? The movie opens with a lot of robot on robot violence. The robots are all painted the same color, and don't have national insignia painted on their chests, so it's hard to tell the good robot from the bad robot. About the best I could do was assume the robot that walked away after the fight was the good robot and the one that lay broken on the ground was the bad robot. Later a bunch of sea monsters surfaced in the harbor and all the robots fought against them.
None of the cast was anyone I had ever heard of before. There was a little love interest, a very young chick, assigned as co pilot to the leading man's robot. I never did catch any of their names. What little dialog ensued between young chick and leading man was of the "Keep a stiff upper lip" sort. What ever sort of relationship they might or might not have enjoyed, it wasn't a lovey dovey one. Two good points, the camera man kept the camera on the tripod, no shake the camera shots, and he put the lights on, no pure black scenes. And the soundman did a decent job, most of the dialog was audible and understandable.
According to Youngest Son, this was a sequel to a previous version that had been wildly successful in China. So that made a sequel, hoping to rake in a bit more money. Far as I can see, it was aimed at 12-14 year old boys.
If this is the future of Hollywood movies, it's gonna be a tough year at the box office.
It's a giant robot movie. Same general idea as the Godzilla movies, except it's robots stamping on the high rises in down town Tokyo instead of Godzilla. The robots, who got much of the screen time, looked like CGI, rather than modelwork, and they were pretty good, they moved smoothly, they even had facial expressions (on robots no less). The robots were big enough to have two man control rooms inside them. The crew made the robot move by moving their arms and legs. When the human crew ran inplace in the control room, the robot would run down a Tokyo street. What was left unsaid is how the two man crew coordinated between them selves. Like what happens if one crew member swerves left and the other swerves right? The movie opens with a lot of robot on robot violence. The robots are all painted the same color, and don't have national insignia painted on their chests, so it's hard to tell the good robot from the bad robot. About the best I could do was assume the robot that walked away after the fight was the good robot and the one that lay broken on the ground was the bad robot. Later a bunch of sea monsters surfaced in the harbor and all the robots fought against them.
None of the cast was anyone I had ever heard of before. There was a little love interest, a very young chick, assigned as co pilot to the leading man's robot. I never did catch any of their names. What little dialog ensued between young chick and leading man was of the "Keep a stiff upper lip" sort. What ever sort of relationship they might or might not have enjoyed, it wasn't a lovey dovey one. Two good points, the camera man kept the camera on the tripod, no shake the camera shots, and he put the lights on, no pure black scenes. And the soundman did a decent job, most of the dialog was audible and understandable.
According to Youngest Son, this was a sequel to a previous version that had been wildly successful in China. So that made a sequel, hoping to rake in a bit more money. Far as I can see, it was aimed at 12-14 year old boys.
If this is the future of Hollywood movies, it's gonna be a tough year at the box office.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Personna Non Grata (PNG)
The US and its allies are getting some press coverage by kicking Russian "diplomats" (intelligence agents actually) out of the country over the poisoning of a retired Russian spy and his daughter in England last week. We used to do this pretty often during the cold war. I assume the Russians will retaliate shortly, probably by kicking a bunch of allied diplomats out of Russia. And, after the shouting dies down, both sides will replace the expelled diplomats/intelligence agents with new people.
Back before electrical communications (telegraph, telephone, radio, and such) the whole system of diplomacy, ambassadors, diplomatic immunity, extraterritoriality of embassies, the diplomatic pouch, and so on was developed. A country's ambassador, knowing that communication with his national capital takes weeks, acted on his own say-so in matters such as declaring support or opposition to host country's military moves, (invading or being invaded), hiking tariffs, arresting your nationals, fitting out warships for use by a rebel movement, anything. Nowadays, the ambassador doesn't do anything until his home government sends him a cable. We keep the diplomatic system up partly from habit and largely for the intelligence it can gather. There is a lot of very valuable legal intelligence that can be gathered simply be reading the local press, and buying maps and books.
Back before electrical communications (telegraph, telephone, radio, and such) the whole system of diplomacy, ambassadors, diplomatic immunity, extraterritoriality of embassies, the diplomatic pouch, and so on was developed. A country's ambassador, knowing that communication with his national capital takes weeks, acted on his own say-so in matters such as declaring support or opposition to host country's military moves, (invading or being invaded), hiking tariffs, arresting your nationals, fitting out warships for use by a rebel movement, anything. Nowadays, the ambassador doesn't do anything until his home government sends him a cable. We keep the diplomatic system up partly from habit and largely for the intelligence it can gather. There is a lot of very valuable legal intelligence that can be gathered simply be reading the local press, and buying maps and books.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)