EditWednesday, January 29, 2003
On Time Preference, Touchtone Terrorists, and the Process of DeSilasation
As intelligent and as upright as you probably think I am, I, like everyone else, have at least one vice: provoking others from behind a wall. When I was in fifth grade about, my friends and I made prank calls to 800 numbers like 1-800-22-Molly, the number of the Appletree customer comments line. I got off to these so hard that I could barely complete a call without laughing.
And then came the Internet.
Since I hadn't grown out of this phase, I took to chat rooms, especially those associated with zone.com. And I was indeed a bandit. Amoung the more tasteful things I did were:
- reveal what cards people had in their hands
- play in ladder rooms (in which you're supposed to be on the ladder before playing, else they don't get credit for their games) without being on the ladder, insulting everyone, and then announcing the news after the two-hour game
- prod a girl into thinking she deserved certain things to happen to her
- deny the Holocaust
- use names like WelfareLuvr, JewsRus, and TaxesRok
But that came to an abrupt halt when one time I ticked off the wrong person. I won't get into that (email me or IM me at JohnSharp9 if you really want to know). But suffice to say, it let up for a while, until I rediscovered mIRC, and later ran into a bit of trouble with my university.
But anyway, what does this have to do with the topic? Well, from watching Comedy Central's Crank Yankers and their featured group, the Touchtone Terrorists, I've found a way to enjoy irritating others without actually causing a marginal increase in the anonymous annoyance of others.
And about time preference? I'm getting to that, hold your horses. After listening to a lot of tracks of the Touchtone Terrorists that I found on Kazaa (and promptly erased in 24 hours) I noticed the following pattern:
(TT1, 2: Touchtone Terrorist member 1,2; C: Caller whose call they intercepted; note that one of the methods this group uses it to get people to mistakenly call them instead of calling others, and pretending to be a certain company)
TT1: Customer service, how can I help you?
C: Is this [company]?
TT1: Yes it is.
C: Well, [describes problem]
TT1: [Does something extremely offensive like swear at caller, vomit, act drunk]
C: Is this really [company]? Let me speak to a supervisor.
TT2: [fake supervisor] This is [], the supervisor, how can I help you?
C: Yes, I'm really upset at the people working there...
TT2: [you deserved it]
C: [swears] *hangs up*
What always strikes me in these calls is how quickly the people begin to ponder if this is really the company they were trying to call. Currently, standards of civility are such that antics like this stand out like a sore thumb. Now, they don't (always) hang up upon suspecting they're being played. However, at the rate we're going, rising time preferences and all, this rudeness won't make such a contrast with existing customer service... and the calls will get longer, and funnier. A silver lining, I guess.
Real Terrorists
They hate us for our freedom, right? Our free markets, etc? Well, Honk Kong and Shanghai have in fact, more freedom, which is of course, why Middle Eastern terrorists keep announcing:
Death to Hong Kong, death to Shanghai. I wish the Boxer Rebellion massacre actually happened.*
Keeping out of other nations' business will do a lot more for protecting Americans from terrorists than even the broadest police state. But then, that's not quite the goal, is it?
* parody of "Death to America, death to Israel, I wish the Holocaust actually happened
comment [0] :: Posted at 11:39 by Silas :: link
Monday, January 27, 2003
Some People Still Think the Earth Is Flat!!!!!!
Yes, as I was made painfully aware recently by my webmaster David. For a good list of links to sites about this BS go here, and for a good introductory article, the one David sent me, go here.
Oh my God!!!! Where to start, where to friggin' start! Can't anyone just take these guys on a ship or something? "Okay, we're going east... haven't fallen off the edge yet..." Can't someone say, according to your maps, which are distorted, the distance from here to here should be twice the distance from here to here. Let's measure it. Nope, you're wrong. These people have the audacity to claim that if the earth were round, the surface of an expanse of water would be curved.
IT IS CURVED, YOU RETARDS!
Watch any ship coming into port, you idiots.
What I find particularly dishonest is some geocentrist among them that say "Oh, the sun goes around the earth, but all the other planets go around the sun. You're wrong to say all the planets go around the sun." These morons don't realize they're saying the same thing as their "opponents." Speaking in terms of relative motion, the only kind that makes any sense, those statements are equivalent. You could even say everything "orbits" the earth if you choose the earth as your "fixed" frame of reference. However, the only meaningful statements are about those relative motions that are simple. Other planets "orbit" the earth in an extremely erratic manner. If you only want relative motions that are nice and elliptical, you have to say everything orbits the sun. But this does allow you to correctly say that everything else orbits the sun, and the sun orbits us ... but you're still a weasel.
At least we can all take solace in the fact that most of the links are dead: thankfully, flat earthers aren't finding any steady stream of revenue to promote their garbage.
comment [0] :: Posted at 00:24 by Silas :: link
Sunday, January 26, 2003
The Superbowl: *Yawn*
I found two things interesting about the Superbowl:
1. Both teams have a pirate mascot.
2. The commercials!
Other than to note that, I'm not going to waste your time with any trivialities that other bloggers have said about it, how it "unites us" or whatever. You're welcome.
Now, for stuff that might interest my highly educated blog readership: today was Open House, which is where all the clubs on campus advertise themselves in one building, and have representatives there to tell about the organizations.
At these events, the College Libertarians performs "Operation Politically Homeless." This is where we hand out the World's Smallest Political Quiz, which is often unfairly maligned as being biased by some. Today the problem seemed to be people getting tripped up by the negative phrasings of the questions: "repeal drug laws," "repeal minimum wage laws," etc. Plus, a couple hot girls came by that didn't understand what "subsidize" means. *sigh* But at least we got a lot of people on the email list, even if we had abysmally few quiz takers.
To the hardcore ancaps out there asking why I'm in this "statist" organization: bugger off. No, they're not complete anarchist, but who cares? If they help get the anti-state word out, they're friends of mine.
comment [0] :: Posted at 22:31 by Silas :: link
Saturday, January 25, 2003
Personal Post: Pandering to Parents
Well, some of you might have fallen under the impression that I would just write about politics and economics on this blog. How wrong you are! Today I'm posting to say that my parents are making a semi-surprise (two and a half hours' notice) visit, their first after I moved into my lovely new apartment. So, I spent basically the whole time cleaning up the place and it no longer looks like it's in the "transitional" stage, nor does it look like a tornado came through. I probably would have done this earlier, but I guess you could say my time preference was too high (okay, no need to roll your eyes).
Anyway, they said they'd take me someplace to eat, so as long as someone else is paying, I put off eating, so now I'm very hungry and my mind is starting to drift. Hey! Don't question my value tradeoffs! But that's about all I should write with my brain at its current functionality...
comment [0] :: Posted at 15:27 by Silas :: link
Friday, January 24, 2003
More on Hoppe, Time Preferences
Please read the title of this post slowly so as to avoid being disrespectful of Mr. Hoppe.
Several readers wrote in on my last post, which is surprising since this is such a small upstart blog. One characteristic complaint, borrowed from a reader named Todd, was that
I definitely agree people are becoming less civil, but I don't see what this has to do with democratic government or time preference.
Todd, and the others who wrote in, have a good point. In my last post, I didn't explain the connection. I mean, I figured it was quite a long blog post anyway. But here's the argument:
Democratic government allows A and B to bad together to legally loot C, A and C to loot B, and B and C to loot A. Whichever one actually happens, goods are transferred from the losers to the winners. And presumably what was taken had value, otherwise there would be no desire to take it. Since the looted recognizes that he is powerless to stop the looting, since "most" people recognize it as legitimate (and if he's a liberal, even he does), he will predict that future endeavors to produce valuable things (which yield monetary and non-monetary returns for him) will have lower returns. This in turn means that present goods will have a higher relative value, and the time preference of the victim will systematically rise.
The looters, on the other hand, realize that they can procure goods by simple theft rather than work. This means that the returns on longer production cycles fall realtive to the returns on shorter production cycles (such as voting yourself money). The looters' time preference also rises.
This establishes the link between democracy and time preferences, but what about time preferences and civility? The answer is that generally, civilized behavior benefits in the long term, while uncivilized behavior benefits in the short term. Writing "thank you" notes (which I haven't finished...) is a low time preference activitiy: it costs you now but increases your chances of receiving gifts in the future. On the other hand, mugging people may "score you" some goods now, but will easily lead to your imprisonment in the future. Those that mug, then, generally don't look as far into the future, meaning a higher time preference.
And why does time preference continue to increase until the existing stock of capital is consumed under democracy? Well, taxes and spending in a democratic system have what controls engineers (among others) like to call "positive feedback," which, despite its name, is a bad thing. It refers to a situation in which deviations from a desired point (such as "no taxes") drive the system farther from that point. (An example of negative feedback would be a rod hanging from a loose pivot. If the desired point is with the rod hanging in the vertical direction, then the farther rotate the rod away from that point - assuming it has less than a 90 degree angle with the vertical - the greater its tendency to return.) As described above, the more public spending programs there are, the greater the incentive to get your money that way rather than producing something someone wants. Thus begins a downward spiral of decivilization.
One interesting figure cited in Hoppe's book is that as late as the 50's in London, over 75% of all murder suspects committed suicide just before they were arrested by police. By the 70's, that fell to 25%. All I can say is, you must have a pretty strong moral code if you'd rather die than live while others know you killed someone. I predict that as time preferences rise, which they are now, less and less shame will be associated with crime so that some day it will be uncommon for armed robbers to wear masks during their crimes. You heard it here first.
comment [0] :: Posted at 18:27 by Silas :: link
Thursday, January 23, 2003
On Time Preference, Bathrooms, and the Process of Decivilization
Editor's note: this was to be posted on Tuesday, but after spending over a half hour on my post it was deleted. I gave up in despair, and am retyping the post today.
Recent bathroom developments at my university have disturbed me. There are three of them:
1. In the largest computer lab's bathroom, there are now signs above the urinals advising folks to "please flush when finished" or something to that effect.
2. In a library bathroom, there is a sign on the mirror advising patrons that the university police and library staff may periodically monitor the bathroom due to some recent ongoing misuse.
3. In the same library bathroom as the above, I saw inside a toilet in one of the stalls, a little container of pins (those colored pins you use to put up a poster perhaps). There is no way it could have accidentally fallen there: it was placed so that someone would have to (painfully) take it out.
I know, I know, "yuk Silas, blowing your first real post on bathrooms?" Well, sorry, but this really sets me off. I notice the custodial staff cleaning each bathroom at least once a day.
Face it folks: we all know there's absolutely no reason the bathrooms should have to be cleaned that often. I, for one, have never left a bathroom, public or otherwise, in such a way that, if not cleaned in 24 hours, there would be unbearable problems. And it's not that hard, guys. Freaking flush. Sorta kinda try to aim, for the love of God. We're all paying for the fact that some morons don't know basic bathroom manners. More specifically, I am paying for stuff you are doing because you're an idiot (if this applies to you). ( I would absolutely HATE to be a janitor, having to clean up the collective mess of people making 5, 10 times as much as me because they can't be bothered to have, you know, standards of decency in the bathroom.)
Luckily, if you subscribe to Austrian economics, or more specifically, have read the works of Hans Hermann Hoppe, you know exactly what broader, long-term trend these declining standards of decency are part of: rising time preference. In Hoppe's book, Democracy, the God that Failed, he outlines exactly how democratic governments promote short term behavior and shorter planning cycles, leading to rising time preference and all the problems that come with it: poor conduct, capital consumption, crime and violence, recklessness, declining interest in the arts and sciences, and malinvestment. (Time preference is the term referring to how soon you want satisfaction. If you prefer instant gratification, you have a high time preference, and if you can handle delayed gratification based on the expectation of greater future returns, you have a low time preference.)
Time preferences have steadily risen since the fifties. Luckily, in America, we're still making off like bandits on the existing stock of capital, and the supply is still growing, though at a slower rate. Don't expect any of this to reverse until the public identifies democracy (referring here to a form of government in which majority vote can allow money to be legitimately stolen from the minority, not in the Misesian sense of self-rule) as an ethical fraud, and practical nightmare, and endorses a private property order.
Plan your escape route. I see the Special Economic Zones of China such as Shanghai or Hong Kong as one excellent alternative once the democratic birds come home to roost. My friends and I are planning a short vacation/expedition to Shanghai this summer to check things out. Expect to hear more about this in future posts.
In the meantime, could you guys nevertheless buck the trends, and at least flush?
The title of this blog is modeled after the first chapter in the Hoppe book mentioned above: "On Time Preference, Government, and the Process of Decivilization."
comment [0] :: Posted at 19:48 by Silas :: link
Monday, January 20, 2003
comment [0] :: Posted at 23:05 by Silas :: link
The Blog Begins!
Thanks to the hard work of David, I now have a blog. This is the first post, in commemoration thereof. Look forward to a lot of hard-hitting, blunt analysis from this curmudgeonly graduate student.
comment [1] :: Posted at 22:49 by Silas :: link
Test Post
TEST
comment [0] :: Posted at 22:12 by Silas :: link