Contrary to popular opinion, the only thing new about political correctness is that it's been given a name. It's been around since pre-history and I suspect it will be around at least that much longer. All these writings are copyright 1998-2001 by Bruce Giese. I can't speak for the photos.
I got into a discussion with another US citizen about boycotting stuff made in places that employ child labor. Their argument was that in buying products from these evil, human rights abusing empires, we only encourage them more. For those who make arguments like that, I ask only that you think about the issue rationally. No one wants child labor to exist. But the real questions are, why does it exist and how does it end?
In 1900, in the United States, child labor was fairly common and there were protests against it by the wealthier people who were enlightened enough to see the evil of it and by the children themselves. I doubt if it did any good, though. Child labor in the United States today is almost non-existent. What happened?
The United States in the 1800s, and every other country which is now going through the transition from agricultural to industrial based economy, tends to take a while to rid itself of several undeveloped traits. These traits are ingrained in the economic workings of society and take at least one generation to end. And, when our children had to work in our country, we remember them as chores and the family business/farm. These were good for children. We "fondly" remember our humble history of a struggling people, forgetting how hideous it was for many. But of course, when some other country's children have to struggle in their country during the same cycle of development, by God, it's child labor and it must be stamped out. Can we stop child labor by making Nike fire all of its children workers? Not unless you consider starving them to death a viable option.
If you really want to end child labor, you should go out of your way to buy products made by children. That's the only way their country will be able to develop, get some money, and grow a middle class. Nothing ends child labor faster than money because every group of people, no matter how stupid or backward they may seem, loves their children.
UPDATE: This used to be considered heresy and evil when I wrote it.
Someone had even voiced concern over my immortal soul. Last night
I heard a report on NPR (National Public Radio, of all places) which advocated
this exact same point. In fact, it sounded a bit too much
like my argument. Hmmm....
ANOTHER UPDATE: Once again, National Public Radio addressed the same
point.
2 days, 3 hours, and 17 minutes from now, several interstellar spacecraft will begin arriving on the same planet we happen to be living on. They will call themselves Xyzzy and they will be an advanced people with better technologies, better organization, and a very well established culture. At that time, we will realize that a lot of these aliens have been living amongst us for a long time, but we simply didn't realize it and we weren't really exposed to their wider culture and civilization. Oddly, these aliens will claim to have lived here for more than 20,000 years, during the dawn of the age of humans (which they say ultimately gives them the right to re-colonize Earth). But they were ruthlessly driven off the planet by yet another group of aliens from some other planet. The people of Xyzzy have spent all these tens of thousands of years being persecuted all over the Milky Way and have finally come back to the land that they believe God has given them: Earth... more specifically North America. And they have decided that New York City will be their capital (which should be fine because American culture considers Washington DC as it's governing location, not New York). They allow us to have lower Manhattan and they seem peeved that we even try to keep claims to that. Apparently Wall Street sits on top of the ruins of their original capital building.
For whatever reason, these people of Xyzzy end up being granted most of the area of the United States by an intergalactic governing body, with Americans being granted the remainder (and the Xyzzy people point out that we should be happy with it because up until that point, the intergalactic governing body had actually granted North America to someone else entirely). And they also say that Mexico and Canada should absorb any excess Americans because, after all, we're essentially all humans anyway.
Americans being what they are, some of them decide they don't particularly like these Xyzzy people suddenly being in control of much of the country. This is made especially difficult because many of their customs are in direct conflict with many things Americans believe in. But it only looks stupid trying to complain because, after all, the Xyzzy culture is much more advanced (the typical sarcastic response is, "and your point being???"). Americans and people from other countries pathetically wage war against the Xyzzy who quickly ends up with the remaining part of the USA under Xyzzy occupation. Doh! And to make matters worse, Xyzzy keep creating new settlements all over the place. The Xyzzy people can feel justified because humans in general would all be fighting each other if the Xyzzy people weren't around.
Worst of all, the Xyzzy often treat Americans as second class citizens, partly due to the Americans' extreme lack of politeness when dealing with the Xyzzy. At best, Americans can choose to adopt the strange culture of the rest of the galaxy and perhaps blend in a bit. But forget about democracy, capitalism, and all the other things we thought were strong and good. The Xyzzy and the rest of the galaxy have us beat hands down with much better institutions. You're certainly welcome to retain your American-ness and remain inferior.
Despite the orders of the intergalactic governing body, the Xyzzy continue to occupy all of the USA. It's funny because that same governing body harshly enforces many of the other orders it makes, to the point of causing much suffering among innocent people.
Right or wrong, many Americans become disillusioned with the whole process and start fighting in the only ways they can: suicide bombers. The Xyzzy people frantically try to strike back, but how can they? Even when offered a darn good peace plan, lots of Americans continue fighting (proving that Americans don't deal in good faith). Maybe those uncooperative Americans are racist; maybe they unrealistically think they can restore the world to what it was before. But they continually undermine the process of both sides living in Xyzzyland, they foolishly cling to the notion of an "America", with 50 states. I put the word "America" in quotes because, after all, everyone in Xyzzyland knows that it's a totally artificial delineation from only 200 years ago.
Xyzzy people can reassuringly point to the movie Independence Day as proof that American culture is inherently violent and hateful of extraterrestrials.
Whatever. There's no doubt in my mind that we Americans would make terrible Palistinians. We would be much more violent, much more idealistic, and much less willing to reach comprimise. If some of us started causing harm to innocents on the other side with suicide bombing, I know that a lot more Americans would cheer with a lot more enthusiasm. A lot of us would feel that killing innocents is not right, but given the rampant levels of patriotism/anger/hatred, we'd probably wisely keep their mouths shut.
If you view things from the xyzzy analogy above, I believe it becomes easier to figure out ways to lessen the violence. Make the new situation as inclusive as possible. America itself is a fairly good example (but one that Israel could probably never follow). We've had so many infusions of massive numbers of people from different cultures, but we usually did so by adapting our country to include them, rather than either forcing them to be like the rest of us or by keeping them segregated... (and when we did try to keep a large group of people segregated, it certainly turned out to be both a very bad and unsuccessful idea).
I was amazed years ago when I was talking to a rather burly Israeli guy who told me that he believed Israel should no longer be a Jewish state. At that time, it made no sense to me why he would believe such a thing. But I'm beginning to see his point.
There must be something like a thousand ethnic/religious/tribal groups in the world. Each of those thousand groups has been offended/harmed/terrorized/dissed/insulted by at least 5 other ethnic/religious/tribal groups within the last 5,000 years and they will all hold a grudge for the next 5,000 years. If you try to be a good neighbor and help one of them, you will be offending/harming/terrorizing/dissing/insulting at least 4 out of 5 of their enemies. Thus, any attempt at a good deed will be punished four-fold over the next 5,000 years.
One reason a global super-power will always be hated is because there's simply no way they can keep track of all 5,000 different groups. It's like being popular in school. Everybody expects you to remember everything about them or else they'll call you a snob. Every fricken country in the world expects you to be their best friend and hate whoever they hate.
You don't see Japan whining about being crammed on a bunch of tiny islands without any natural resources (well, at least not in the last 50 years). If your wealthy buddies and family members who ran off to America send you back a bunch of money, don't squander it on pipe bombs or ACME explosives to get even with the 5 groups that offended/harmed/terrorized/dissed/insulted you. Use your money to create business, industry. Build, don't destroy.
It might be tempting to point at the United States right now, but in all honesty, the USA pretty much ignored repeated terrorist acts until it got way out of hand and threatened our very existence. At that point, we don't plan on whining about it for the next 5,000 years. We plan to beat the crap out of the guilty parties and then walk away. You can call America a bunch of drunk cowboys, but when drunk cowboys get in a fight, they move on with the morning's hangover.
But seriously, the best way to deal with those 5 ethnic/religious/tribal groups that piss you off is to work hard, get wealthy, and terrify them with a massive trade imbalance.
I happen to know that Americans would prefer to watch big screen TV, drink beer, and totally ignore the rest of the world. If you don't believe it, just ask Canada. We try very hard to maintain justice, but we're only human... and we can't keep track of all 5,000 groups out there! Feel free to find some other superpower (such as China) to help out next time. I'm sure they will be fair and just and friendly and clean up after they're done.
If you don't believe me, next time you neighbor has their stereo turned up too loud, just walk up to one of your police officers and punch him/her in the stomach really hard before bringing the issue up. When the police officer puts the handcuffs on you instead of your neighbor (imagine that?), just point out that he/she wasn't paying attention to your needs and not understanding the complex political situation like he/she should have been.
This is just so plainly obvious, I can't imagine what much of the world is thinking. European leaders are backpeddling, much of the Islamic world is wiggling around pretending there's no problem. It makes them look very irresponsible. If you act that way, don't be surprised if the USA acts accordingly. Those involved will be all pissed off at us for the next 5,000 years for going over there like an angry parent with a paddle. Get over it.
The top series of photos is an anonymous person in New York City who unfortunately chose a less-than-ideal path through life. The bottom series is a not-so-anonymous person who is currently the wealthiest individual on Earth. Had you met these two individuals in jail in the first photos, you'd never guess how events would unfold.
Why is that?
I believe it has to do with internal expectations. People have expectations of themselves; a reference, a target, a sense of what they must become. We can ask ourselves the question "To be, or not to be?" all day long, it won't make any difference. Now you might argue that each of those individuals above was assisted greatly by pure luck. To some extent, yes.
I suspect most people couldn't understand either of these two individuals. What intelligent person could ever allow themselves to be repeatedly bludgeoned by society and obviously sinking into indignity for decades? On the other hand, who could be driven so intensely to win so much and for so long that they end up with tens of billions of dollars and still remain fiercely focused against all would-be competitors? I suspect there's some serious mental wiring irregularities in both of these people.
Warren Buffett (who happens to be good friends with the guy above), suggests that to make society fair and just, we should consider ourselves as contestants in an "ovarian lottery." You get to decide all the rules that will govern our world forever and ever. You can make any laws you want. Punish or reward whoever you want. Tax whoever you want, however much you want. Make anyone absolute king. But here's the catch: You must do this before you're born and without knowing who you will be. You might end up being either one of those people pictured above. More likely, you'll be someone much more ordinary and mundane.
So what rules do you choose?
I believe you need to let Bill Gates be himself. There are lots of people in the world who mysteriously work very hard at creating wealth and improving the world in their own little ways. By all means, don't get in their way. Also, you don't want to live in a world where one or two bad decisions will ruin your life (i.e. you're going to have to let both Bill Gates and the other anonymous person out of jail and not punish them for life). But you need some mechanism to protect people who seem to be wired to repeatedly make "bad" decisions.
How do you "help" people who are messed up?
Fortunately, there are people wired to focus on assisting people who repeatedly make bad decisions. They will happily spend their lives doing this. Maybe there aren't enough of them, maybe they don't get paid enough to do it, maybe they aren't managed effectively, I don't know. They're out there.
Does that mean Bill Gates doesn't care?
Strangely enough, most of the overachievers of the world transform into something we call philanthropists later in life. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (who is nearly as wealthy as Gates) are already poised to follow in the footsteps of such greats as John D Rockefeller. And Rockefeller had a much bigger impact on society than most people realize. These are the people who will look harshly and realistically at the world and apply their billions where they will have the best impact. Buffett and Gates, like Rockefeller a hundred years earlier, will probably develop many innovations in charity. And the impact will probably continue long after their deaths. Perhaps part of that impact will be that more of those who enjoy assisting messed up people will do so.
It is a fundamental human instinct to turn back to improving society after achieving our measure of success, whether that measure is perhaps a woman who manages to eventually escape the brutality of the streets or a multibillionaire who intensely works at innovating benevolence by advocating an "ovarian lottery" viewpoint. I believe governments have never been and will never be very good at it. The best a government can do is to create rules that will encourage this kind of behavior. Our government can set rules that either further encourage or discourage Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to be philanthropists.
That's why Warren Buffett and many other very wealthy people are fighting against a repeal of the inheritance tax. Removing the tax would lessen the incentive for charity since it would discourage the common practice of wealthy people leaving most of their wealth in the form of charitable foundations. These foundations are important investments in society. We all can do our part to encourage others to make the world a better place.
We also want to encourage wealth based on the merits of what we do,
not simply being born to the right parents. As Buffett has said,
he will ensure that his children and grandchildren will be able to choose
what they want to do in life, yet not give them so much that they can choose
to do nothing.
Vote against repealing the inheritence tax.
The above quote is based on a Motley Fool post by an adult who suffered immense brutality from "bullies" in school. There are many others, such as this columnist at the Detroit Free Press. It captures the essence of what's wrong with this picture as far as the public school schootings are concerned.
We live in a civilized country that firmly believes in the concept of equal justice under law. When a crime is committed we don't allow citizens to retaliate. We don't allow parents of children killed by drunk drivers to kill the perpetrator, even when they're found guilty. Society will destroy itself that way and we will end up living like barbarians, a whole lot poorer... everyone. However, in return for giving up the right to retaliate, society has an implicit covenant to protect all people and uphold the law to the best of its ability. That applies to everyone from the President down to the most retarded, drooling, and feeble individuals.
When a large group of people violate the civil rights of another large group of people, we get incensed about it and fix it. But when a small group of children violate the civil rights of another small group of children, we look the other way: "they're just bullies." Well, slavery and lynchings were once a folksy tradition that was a lot more universally accepted. But we don't tolerate it any more.
Rationally and objectively, it would be unwise for teachers/parents/administrators
to allow children to push other children to the point where their lives
are no longer worth living. And I hope no one would possibly entertain
the idea that the kids who bully them can't be stopped....
People used to think that "inner city" [euphamism alert] schools
were violent until kids started going on killing rampages in good wholesome
suburban schools. The problem with this newly publicized form of
violence is that, unlike the bullying that leads up to these shootings,
it is impossible to stop.
First, It's impossible to stop an intelligent, patient, premeditated killer who does not value his own life (yes, I do mean to use the word "his"). Unfortunately, a metal detector is not going to stop one or two heavily armed gunmen from entering a school when they are not terribly concerned for their own safety. In fact, nothing short of a maximum security prison is going to stop someone like this with any certainty.
Now here's the really bad part: Imagine if those heavily armed gunmen have spent huge amounts of time training for such an attack in an extremely similar setting, using a simulation, against other people who are also training for such an attack. A simulation where the participants go through hundreds of scenarios attempting to survive just long enough to cause a maximum amount of damage to others. Such a simulation exists and tens of thousands of people spend large amounts of their spare time on it. I am one of them, I have been one of them for three years, and I almost always win at it.
I was trying to explain to someone recently (before the shootings) just how terribly effective this sort of training can be. As an example, I briefly looked around and, based on the building's architecture, I quickly detailed a strategy that was clearly lethal but not at all obvious to the untrained.
When you get a black belt in the martial arts, there is always an emphasis on control and responsibility. If you learn to be a marksman with firearms, there is almost always the same emphasis. The problem is that multiplayer combat games such as Quake and DOOM can teach nearly anyone to be the equivalent of a black belt in going postal. And there is no one around to put an emphasis on control and responsibility.
Video games are not dangerous because they encourage kids to kill in real life. Even stupid people aren't that stupid. Video games are dangerous because they train kids how to kill in real life. I honestly believe that those murderous kids could have easily killed many more people if that had been their intent.
This may sound like nonsense, but I believe that the reactions to the shootings among those who are in other schools around other possibly unstable kids will actually tend to lower the chances of future shootings. The way to see this is to try assuming the opposite. Yes, in the near-term future, there will be witch hunts targeting kids who are "different".
UPDATE: I recently read an interesting article about a teenager who was involved in a automobile police chase. The kid struck a police officer who had thrown one of those tire damage strips across the road and was standing on the side of the road waiting to pull it back after the car being chased ran over it (puncturing the tires). The kid driving the car had spent a lot of time playing the violent Grand Theft Auto video games and easily recognized what was going on. Apparently in the video game, you always drive around these strips when they appear in the road. The kid driving the car claimed he was astonished that the police officer was standing in the direct path of the car (from the video game perspective): on the shoulder of the road. From the kid's perspective, the police officer might as well have jumped out in front of the car, forcing the driver to choose between running over the officer or into a ditch or something.
The point I'm trying to make is that training works, whether it's training soldiers to overcome their fear of killing in order to fight a war or training children how to effectively elude a police chase (or kill large numbers of people in a shooting rampage). I don't think children are more likely to commit crimes because of video games, but I do believe the video games will make them a lot more effective at it. This is the danger we now face.
I can recall many years ago when you could find anything and everything
in New York City and nowhere else. Two things have changed. The first is the efficient distribution of goods
and services. Just as Wal*Mart trampled over inefficient small retailers, lots of other mass
retailers have done the same. Petco and Petsmart, Costco, Sports Authority, and a lot of other
"category killers" have squashed a lot of the uniqueness that was out there in the world. And
most of the truly valuable unique things have been successfully duplicated... everywhere. The original McDonalds
restaurant was an amazingly efficient octagonal oddity that existed nowhere else in the world. Now
you actually have to travel to the far reaches of the wilderness to find a place that doesn't
have a McDonalds or Coca Cola or.... It seems that Willy Wonka has gone global with a vengence.
The second big change is due to the Internet, cable television, the VCR and DVD player, and other forms of
information distribution. We can browse a bookstore online (Amazon.com) which is bigger than any physical
bookstore anywhere. And what's more, we can see other people's reviews of almost every book in the store.
The compilations of information made possible by the Internet are unprecedented. It's very difficult for any
physically located entity to provide better information than the global online networks that now exist.
So what happens when we can get all the information in our homes and exotic places like the Taj Mahal are
now simply Westernized tourist attractions? The answer is that that there's a lot less motivation to go
anywhere in particular. Another answer is that any place which still have any true uniqueness about it
becomes all the more desirable... except that most of them are now
extremely dangerous places.
Another big change that's occuring is the geographically distributed workplace. I talk more about this later on,
but it's a very noticable trend. I've already seen multiple examples of satellite office locations opening
simply because of someone's need to be in a particular place as a result of non-work related reasons.
A long time ago, there was a massive migration of people from the rural areas into the cities because of
the industrial revolution. The reason for those people to be packed together in one place really no longer exists.
When you consider that high profile places like New York or Washington DC are now targets of terrorism, it seems
only natural that the migration of people reverses and people spread out again: not just to the surrounding suburbs, but to
remote places where the cost of living is very low. If nothing else, the cost of terrorism insurance will push the trend.
Another topic for rambling is going to be the end of the unspoiled great outdoors. Increasing populations and increasing wealth,
the shrinking wilderness, the massive use of land mines around the world, our ever increasing expectations of safety, and other
things are making it increasingly difficult to find that isolated place away from it all.
I believe the net result of all these changes is that "where it's at" is no longer a physical place like the big city.
It's either a particular interconnected group of people in an arrangement I like to call a "neighborhood" or it's a website/database
somewhere.
I've realized this year, in the 2000 Summer Olympic Games that I don't like the olympics anymore. It doesn't have anything to do with the commercialism of the games, the rampant use of performance enhancement drugs, the increasing professionalism of the so-called "amateur games", the loss of the cold war rivalries, or the strange areas of competition that have little following.
I suppose the natural result of offering such huge fame and glory to so many people is that a class of atheletes would emerge that will do anything to win, including destroying themselves. When I see them, I have no inspiration whatsoever. I would not want to sacrifice so much for so little and I'm slowly losing respect for those who do.
Yes, it's amazing that people can do these things so well. I just can't see why anymore.
Once upon a time there lived in a poor section of Mississippi a little girl named Elie Gonzales. Elie's parents were divorced but she lived with her mother. One day, her father kidnapped this little girl and ran off to a wealthy suburb in Belgrade, Serbia. On the way there, the father died but the little girl was taken by the Serbian police to the father's relatives in Serbia. The US Government demanded that the girl be returned to her mother in Mississippi. The Serbian Government demanded that the Mississippi was a bad place and the little girl should stay with her distant relatives which included a older male cousin who had grown very fond of the now 6 year old girl. The girl's distant relatives claimed that they were very rich and could buy the little girl more toys than her redneck mother could ever afford. A corrupt judge awarded custody of the girl to her great uncle whom she never before met.
Every day there was carefully orchestrated news footage
of supporters in Belgrade "praying" for the little girl not to return to
her mother. In the United States there was also news footage of the
mother and high ranking U.S. Government officials trying to persuade the
Serbians to return the little girl to her own mother. The little
girl sometimes would appear and would tell people that she was afraid to
return to her mother because of the bad United States Government.
...I would have a great idea for an incentive program. It goes like this: Each employee recieves half of their pay in cash, and half of their pay as dividends in a sort of human stock. Except that each employee would have to take their stock and trade it for stock in other employees. In other words, you sell your stock to other employees and you end up owning none of your own stock, only stock in other employees of your choice.
There would be a stock market inside the company which kept track of each employee's stock value, per share. The number of shares would be arbitrary so that no one knows your actual salary. The company would publish your stock's book value in terms of dollars of salary per share of stock and based on this information other employees would determine whether your stock was a "good value" or not. Employees with great future prospects would trade at a premium. Problem employees would trade at book value. In either case, when you own stock in an employee, you receive the book value portion of their salary plus the amount goes up when they get a raise or promotion.
Now here's the catch: When the company gives out raises, half of the raise goes to increasing the payouts of your stock (now owned by your co-workers) and you receive the other half of your raise in additional stock at book value. If your stock is selling at a premium, your raise is worth more. If your stock value is low, your raise is worth less (because it can't buy as much of other people's stock).
What are the advantages of this odd incentive plan? It involves
an employees peers in determining their pay without introducing any unwanted
competitive anti-team pressures and without allowing the peers to know
anyone's actual pay. It also motivates employees to evaluate each
other's performance which then provides a quick feedback to the employee.
If you want to know how badly you screwed up an account, just check your
stock price.
I've decided that, contrary to popular opinion, children should be given strict rules for making their most important of life's decisions: what to do for a living, and whom to marry. Kids have all kinds of freedom. They can wear funny clothes and choose their friends and decide what kinds of stupid things they choose to do. And they should be allowed to choose whatever they want to do for a living and whoever they want to marry, but subject to four rules.
Whatever happened to the long string of great artists, musicians, and scientists who represented the long great march of modern Western Civilization? It started in earnest with Leonardo da Vinci and seemed to reach a peak with Beethoven, van Gogh, Maxwell, Darwin, and others. Then it seemed to end in the mid 20th Century.
When I read the scholarly science/engineering trade journals nowadays, it makes me want to puke. The same goes for high art and contemporary "classical" composers. Or watching money get wasted on building a space station. What has happened to our great pioneers?
I believe the answer is that we still have groups of people who have assumed the role of the next generation of great artists and scientists, but they don't realize that the next areas to pioneer don't look anything like the last ones. These are people who are still trying to find ever more startling and heretical forms of art, building a better and more worthless space station, solving ever more irrelevant math problems. Llike watching a group of alchemists during the Renaissance, not realizing that the important action lies somewhere else.
How else can you explain some of the terrible IEEE Transactions papers, various unmemorable forms of art in the last 20 years? Remember performance art? remember chaos theory? remember post-modernist art? As far as I can tell, pretty much all of the great artists and scientists have gone into industry and are assuming very different roles, more like settlers than pioneers.
If everyone in the USA were to become an economist, the USA would become much less materialistic. We would study the value of all our things. How much do we value one night's sleep, one week of life, a few minutes of happiness, a sense of well being? Each of these has an exact value to us, whether we realize it or not. And we value them according to... well... our values. It's actually very easy to figure out how much each is worth by asking yourself, for example, how much would someone have to pay me to give up one night's sleep. (The value fluctuates just like any currency exchange)
If we asked these kinds of questions of ourselves more often, we might stop and ask ourselves if we're paying too much for some of the things in our lives or if we were passing up some real bargains.
In other words, some people are irrationally materialistic because they don't know the currency exchange rate between dollars and their own intangibles.
UPDATE: Well, it looks like my request for a roadster production car came true (PT Cruiser).
Here are my predictions for the next century, and I suppose the next 1000 years while we're at it. These are predictions of things that will become more valuable as time goes on....
First, let's look at what happened during the 1000's...
Driving home from work tonight, on a 3 lane interstate, the road split, with two lanes on the left and one lane on the right with the usual orange barrels separating the two. Approaching this split, I was driving near three other cars all travelling at about 75 mph. One of them decided at the last minute to switch from one side to the other. It was clear that it was far too late to switch and, sure enough, the car slammed into the barrels and then came carreening out of control towards the rest of us. We all ended up skidding around trying to keep from colliding for what seemed an eternity. In the end, no one hit anyone else, but our adrenaline was at peak levels (at least mine was). Fortunately, I train for such high adrenaline situations via online games and was able to think quite clearly during the whole thing.
A while back, I watched a video of several pedestrians trying to cross a railroad track in front of an oncoming train. The first few walked quickly across. You could see the increasing indecision in each successive one until finally, one last person wavered and then made for a quick dash across before the train came. The most amazing thing to me was how poor their judgement was. That last pedestrian didn't even make it to the center of the track before being hit by a very fast moving train. What was going through that person's mind? Did they mindlessly "go for it" without thinking of whether it was even possible? In the last second of that person's life, did they realize what a terrible mistake they had made? This person should definitely receive the Darwin award for improving the species. Yes I do feel terrible for that person, but not enough to blur my own judgement.
If you wonder what is wrong with these people, I believe it's the inability to accurately assess risk. They seemed to view extremely high risk situations in the same way as running a red light: Hey, nobody ever gets caught.
I just wonder if we have removed so many of the high risks from our
society (especially due to the epidemic of liability lawsuits) that people
have lost the ability to recognize them when they occur. As if we
are becoming more and more stupid over time. The logical conclusion will
be a class action suit against the liability law profession for creating
this dangerous situation where people can no longer accurately assess risk
in their everyday lives.
My 10 year old son wanted to get one of those posters of dogs playing poker. Don't ask me why, maybe he's gaining an appreciation for fine art. I was on Ebay, looking for good paintings cheap; nothing beats a good painting to make you feel cultured. However, they're generally either crappy or expensive or both. But there's always hope for a rare find.
Interrupting my quest, I searched all of Ebay for "dogs playing poker" and sure enough, someone was selling a set of 8 prints (like I really need eight of them). I checked it out and some damn fools had bid the price up to 32 dollars. These are prints we're talking about here. And they're used. Not signed and not framed. So I grumbled and bid something like 40 dollars which held the high bid. No surprise there. The auction closed in about a day, so I figured I'd check it every now and then until the closing.
Next day I was surprised to see that someone had actually submitted a higher bid. Doh! Must have been an accidental mouse click by someone laughing at the picture. By this time, my son and I had pretty much decided to buy these prints and even strip the wallpaper in his room and paint it in preparation for its transformation into an art gallery suitable for 10 year old boys. I resigned to actually raising my bid to 50 dollars and regained the lead with 7 hours before the closing bell.
With victory nearly at hand, we drove off to Home Depot and purchased paint, brushes, rollers, wallpaper stripper, and various other domestic toys. We returned and checked the auction: we still held the winning bid.
Later that day, we had to venture off again and I made sure that we would be able to return at least a few minutes before the auction's close just to be safe. Before walking out the door, I raised the bid again just to be absolultely certain of clinching the prints. By now, I think I was allowing a maximum bid of 70 dollars telling my son, "No way is anyone else dumb enough to bid that much for Dogs Playing Poker."
We returned 10 minutes before the close, checked the auction, and nothing had changed. I raised the bid to 100 dollars just to make sure no sleazy person would bid 1 dollar more at the last second. I'm thinking that, hell, I've just spent 100 dollars on painting supplies, why not? We counted down the minutes to 1 minute. Then we counted down the seconds. 50... 40... 30... 20... 15... 14... Suddenly, someone outbid us. Decision time: Do we go that extra few dollars here, or let it all go now. I raised it to 110 dollars. Auction closed. We were now the proud owners of these eight different gambling canine prints for the nominal price of 109 dollars... with a 6 dollar shipping and handling fee.
Ok, I figure I can look at this two ways. I can feel like I just paid about 5 times too much for used, unframed prints of freakin' dogs playing freakin' poker! Or I can say that we'll look back on this and laugh every time we look at those prints on my son's walls, knowing that I can boast to guests, "I paid over a hundred dollars just for the prints."
During this whole ordeal, I started becoming suspicious about these prints. Afterwards, I checked up on the guy who almost outbid me and found that he had purchased well over a hundred other items at Ebay auctions; most of them collectables. This guy is probably not in the business of throwing money away. So I searched the web for "dogs playing poker" and after a while discovered that the prints are worth "about 75 dollars each". We just nabbed about 600 dollars worth of stuff for 109 dollars.
Wow, another true story involving my son. We were in one of those arcades that gives out tickets which can be refunded for worthless prizes. I was trying to teach my son a valuable lesson. As he was about to squander his last arcade coin on one of those kiddie slot machines, I asked him what outcome he expected. He said he expected to lose. Well, there was nothing more I could say. Sure enough, he hit the jackpot and won hundreds of tickets and I'm the father of a future compulsive gambler.
As for myself, I learned never to gamble. Throughput my entire life, I've happily laughed in the face of foolish risky opportunities which, a collegue of mine estimates would have netted me about 40 million dollars. Actually, that was just one foolish risky opportunity. There were others which would have paid back somewhat less and there were some which would have been losses. Overall, I would have been a multimillionaire (so far, I fall considerably short of that target). Did I learn the wrong lesson?
I've figured out there is a difference between gambling and investment and it's quite easy to explain: If you look at a gambling casino, there are essentially two sides of the gambling transaction. There are the truly foolish gamblers who visit the casino, and there are the truly smart investors who own the casino. Both sides take risks. Both sides could win or lose on every spin of the slot machines. The only thing which separates them is a probability difference of about 3 percent.
That is the difference between gambling and investing.
UPDATE: Since writing this, I've realized that my son is not ever going to be a compulsive gambler due to one simple fact: Although he is more than willing to gamble away my own money against terrible odds, he is never willing to gamble away his own money (i.e. "Let's use your money to buy this next round of tokens" generally results in a cold blank stare whereas "...to buy this really neat toy" merely opens up the negotiations). I think children are a lot more rational than we give them credit for being.
It's kinda like if I'm in the US Department of Giving Stuff Away, I'm
more than happy to hand out government "entitlement" money to people...
and I won't even care what they do with it. However, I'm not likely
to hand out thousands of my own dollars to panhandlers on the way home
from work.