In the wake of ANOTHER bailout...

I've absolutely had it with CNN and every other news network... you know what... strike that, it's not even their fault this time - it's the stupid election that's brought our imbecilic politicians into the national spotlight blathering on about their half-baked plans to "fix the economy".

So let's get a few things straight right off...

1. We are in extremely troubled economic times in the United States
2. Government almost single-handedly created the mess we are in by setting up the conditions and applying the pressures on (especially) the housing/investment banking industries for it to become inevitable.
3. There is not now, nor has there ever been a free market in the United States. As such, it is impossible for any of our current crisis to have been caused by the market - let alone "too much economic freedom", which is laughable at best.
4. What politicians label "deregulation" is not, and as far as i'm able to tell, has never been anything but special favors being granted to certain companies or industries and is not at all an increase in freedom - merely a government-imposed and unnaturally lopsided arrangement of corporate power.
5. And worst of all, our two "leading" candidates are economic morons...

John McCain: Has admitted that he knows very little about economics and is mistrustful of the market - is now blaming investment banks for the economic downturn. Also still believes that the "fundamentals" of our economy are strong, yet has policy prescriptions that will crush any ability to return from this slump.
Barack Obama: Especially based on his current rhetoric, seems to actively despise the very concept of economic freedom - blames Bush's failed economic policies for current market crisis... and though he's not entirely wrong there, he doesn't seem to realize that Bush's policies are in reality almost perfectly mateched with his own ideology (only the presentation is different... and perhaps the specific people benefits are directed to).

That's the set up... but there's so much more...

First off, anyone in the news or other media who says anything about either a "failure of the free market" or "deregulation caused these problems", is either a liar, stupid or just plain ignorant... there has never been, in this country or any other, a free market in any greater sense than the youthful trade of baseball cards (and even that sometimes involves some thuggery), and I'm not really sure what anyone could possibly be referring to when they speak of "deregulations" in the United States.

I have yet to see a single instance, in my lifetime or looking back on history, where an industry was given more freedom to run their operations without government interference rather than less. What people typically seem to be referring to is actually government subsidizing an industry, granting special rights to some companies within an industry or giving certain companies other special assistance, often as a result of sweetheart deals with corporate lobbyists & "corrupt" politicians. However, since the politicians are really functioning in exactly the capacity one might expect with the power we have granted them, I do find it a little hard to call them corrupt... and I certainly can't blame companies for doing whatever is within their (quite legal) power to make sure that their businesses get those deals instead of one of their competitors.

In each instance however, these deals always come with increased government meddling, so I challenge anyone to come up with an example of government actually deregulating an industry in a meaning ful way - a relevant example of this might have been to get the government out of the business of setting interest rates (which I know is way out of bounds in our country's love affair with Keynesian philosophy), and letting banks set their own rates for borrowers and also allow them to decide what level of risk they felt was acceptable.

I can almost guarantee you we wouldn't be in the condition we are in today had that been the case.

But instead, the Fed sets interest rates incredibly low, and politicians harass banks into lending large sums of money to high-risk borrowers in some kind of populist, "everyone should own a home!", love-in. So what do banks do?? Umm... right... they lend money out left and right. And of course, if you're a low-risk borrower, you can now get access to a HUGE loan!! Hooray... But... Realtors know all this. And they know that now, because of the way the lending structure works and that people can get larger loans to buy homes with, they are able to start charging significantly more for the homes they're selling. This creates a bit of a feedback loop as the price of housing skyrockets beyond any reasonable inflation rate (and far and away beyond the ability of any average income-earner to payfor it all), and banks keep lending to virtually everyone. Suddenly, we're left in a position where all our nation's banks (not just the major ones) are wildly overextended, and have taken on the burden of loaning to people who they should have known wouldn't be able to pay them back. But you can't really blame the banks since they were doing what they were told to do by the government and the Fed's interest rate policies combined with the FDIC guarantees made it not only possible, but actually desirable for banks to do so... Besides, never underestimate the pressure that government is able to wield over businesses, the way things are set up now - do what they say and you might get some tax-breaks, subsidies, special zoning rights, and other treats... go against what they say and you get taxed more heavily, strong-armed by policy, trapped with other legislation and probably a big fat IRS audit.

Point is, it's wrong to blame banks.

It's also equally wrong to blame borrowers. How can you blame a layperson for wanting a home? Or a car? Or hell... even a flat-panel TV? If we blame the borrowers then we're blaming people who want to improve the quality of their lives (perceived or actual) for doing something that any rational person would do given the options presented to them.

Borrower: "What's this you say? I can buy a home with no money down and only pay a small interest rate for the next 4 years??"
Bank: "Why yes sir, but of course the interest rate will be variable and could change later on."
Borrower: "Well, that's not for a few years right, I'll be doing better at work then and right now my family will be able to have a nice home... we'll do it!"
Bank: "Great, sign here..."

Now... I'm not saying that there aren't banks out there who deliberately obfuscated exactly how variable these rates were and much like credit cards, I have to imagine that they all came up with hidden fees and other surcharges designed to take advantage of people's ignorance of bank policy and the impossibiilty of being able to comprehend the legalese that is the fine print of all the agreements we sign. It's certainly a bit unfair from an information standpoint - lord knows I know that all too well from my personal experiences with creditors and with fraud policy. If my folks are reading this, they know what I mean better than anyone.

And of course... some people were just willfully ignorant, not doing their homework or doing the math before accepting agreements that they shouldn't have accepted. Again... I've also been guilty of that in the past. Though... I'm 25 now, most of my financial indiscretions happened between the ages of 18-22, and granted, many of them are still haunting me in a big way, but the thing is... now I know better. So I can't imagine being a 50ish man and still making such foolish decisions.

But if anything, this whole thing shows us that we all need to be looking out for ourselves and not expecting some massive bureaucracy to protect us. Government created the conditions for these problems to exist and though they always claim that they are overseeing it all, look at how many people slip through the cracks. Without the meddling in the first place though, none of this would have happened!!


So my question is, when will the asinine narrative end and the American people (and really, citizens of the world) wise up!? I'm so outraged right now I can't even properly form the thoughts to express what I want to get across. I need to break this down... We've had 80 years straight of expanding government, deficit spending, an increasing national debt and a Marxist central bank "managing" our economy in defiance to both the very idea of freedom and any truly rational economic thought and a market so crippled by complex taxes, regulations and government meddling in private affairs that I seriously wonder why 99% of the large companies haven't just left for greener pastures by now.

The obvious answer to that question is of course that very very few countries are any better than the US - and the ones that are, are quite often unattractive for other reasons... like Singapore (shout out to James!), where even though the economic conditions might be a bit better, no one likes the idea of being caned for littering.

But seriously... between all that, the development and gross expansion of the unconstitutional income tax (no the 16th Amendment did not establish an Income Tax, it established a corporate profits tax... but then not one, but two supreme court decisions were blatantly ignored by the actually greedy politicians and shazam... here we are!), the destruction of our currency into a fiat, faith & bond based one, and the constant attempts by everyone in government to dominate our economic choices and destroy liberty, how is it surprising to anyone that we're in a rough financial position now?

Yet here we are in September of the year 2008, two months out from yet another presidential election and the only two viable options are both people who think that an egregious expansion of what caused the mess in the first place is somehow going to be a miraculous cure.

The narrative for politicians is just too rich isnt it? Blame corporations - no one likes them anyway, blame banks too - those jerks!... Use it all as a pretext to expand your authority, your power and all the rights and "privileges" that go with it.


This all makes me really want to just disappear, get off-grid, off-radar and go spend the rest of my life with no ID on the beach of a small island in the South Pacific. I wonder how to make that happen... any ideas?

Art. Reason. Liberty...

I'm now blogging in effectively 3 places... Here, Facebook and my brand new "Tumblr", which was created at the behest of my friend Ronen. The Tumblr is currently the most interesting one to me to be honest, it was designed to throw together some of my thoughts in a more brief format along with pictures, video (if I ever had internet access good enough to upload video clips) and audio (...likewise) files. The multimedia features of the Tumblr are a lot like some of the other sites that have proliferated around the internet recently like Flickr and such, designed to provide a medium to share media with family and friends. However, Tumblr makes short-form blogging incredibly easy - which makes it perfect for my current gig, as well as a myriad of other sorts of little projects.

But what about the other two blogs? Well... first of all, Facebook is a parrot of some of the things I write for this blog that I wish to share more publicly with my friends - and a place where I post links to various interesting news articles and such that I discover and read day-to-day. This blog is, and will remain, a repository of much more in-depth conversations (most often with myself) and more personal issues that are related to my life and interests. Sometimes that comes in the form of bitching (or as Ira always says, "kvetching") about work, about relationships, about friends, about politics. Sometimes, those things might offend people - indeed, it already has...

For example; several months ago I re-posted my comments expressing disgust with the citizens of Nebraska for failing to vote for a legislative spending limit which was tied to tax revenue. I could not believe that even the people of a generally "conservative" state (whatever that means anymore) wouldn't see the value in preventing their own government from engaging in the kind of grotesque deficit spending that has really destroyed states like California. Naturally - a few of my old friends from Nebraska were insulted that I was so harsh in my views and was essentially questioning their foresight & intelligence. Of course they were. So what?

Likewise, sometimes I might bitch about my job... Considering it's literally the only thing in my life right now, it's pretty unreasonable to expect that there won't ever be any complaints. To be honest, if I didn't talk about that from time to time, at the moment, I'd simply have nothing at all to talk about ever. But this does bring up an interesting question... Your employer pays you to do a job. Because your employer is paying you, they are generally in a position to make requests of your time and to ask you to do said job in a specific way. That's fine. But does that mean that one completely gives over all individuality and ability to speak your mind on your own time in your own space? Then again, is the internet a public space? I pay for my own website, which hosts this particular blog... I own this space for all intents and purposes - as much as anyone owns a house (sure, I pay $10.00 a year to keep the domain name... but if you own a house you pay taxes every year to keep that too, right?). Furthermore, this site isn't linked to my websites' main page... which means that the only way you'd know where it is if I told you where to find it. I've told very few people... I'm not seeking out random readers, though I certainly don't mind if I get a few. But what does it mean if I bitch about my friends, or my job, or anything else through this medium?

Honestly... Nothing!

No... really... Nothing. Does it mean I don't love my friends? Does it mean I hate what I do for a living? Does it mean I hate all Nebraskans?

No.

Of course not... what it means is, I am - for this moment in time - feeling or thinking a certain way about a certain thing. Free speech really doesn't mean that much if you are afraid to offend people, afraid that someone might misinterpret it or that you might lose your job. The important thing is to speak the truth, as you see it. And often.

Don't withhold information from people because you want to keep a position of authority or to maintain some false sense of superiority. Don't strategize or posture in order to get people to like you or pretend that you have one feeling or another, or no feelings at all on a particular subject. Just be honest.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of problems in the world stem largely from people being dishonest, withholding information and being partially trutfhful in the name of preserving some type of status quo. In the end, all that path leads to is a bunch of worthless secrets and a stagnation of progress - which is borne largely through the exchange of ideas, often oppositional ideas. It's also incredibly disrespectful to the people you're speaking to... as if they can't handle your honest opinion?? To do otherwise comes down to nothing more than a petty power-play... an information cold-war.

Interesting to study if you're John Nash I guess, but practically speaking, makes for a crappy world in my opinion. (Uh oh, there I go offending someone again!). So getting back to the point... blogging. What's the point of recording your thoughts if they're not going to be honest? What's the point of contributing to your own on-going memoire if you're going to gloss over the salient moments, the strong feelings, and the big ideas? What's the point of any of it if you're just going to be coy and hide from yourself?

If there is a point to that, I'm sure it's not a one I would want to make... I'm no nihilist. I won't pretend to be. I have thoughts, ideas, concerns, comments, complaints, and compliments about a wide variety of topics - some taken from my own life, and some drawn more broadly from the world at large. And that's what this forum is and always was meant to be for! The Tumblr can be about my travels, the day-to-day side of what I do for a living, where I am, who I've met and what I've just seen... but this one is just about ideas. It's about art, reason and liberty... the the broadest usage of each of those terms. It encompasses my world. It will continue to do so...

And that, as they say, is that.

Some Things I've Learned Traveling

Over the past year, I've been away from home already about 120 days. By the end of the year, I'm looking at around 180. Next year, according to one of the nebulous statements I've heard about our contract, we're apparently supposed to be on ships a minimum of 240 days.

For those of you who are counting, 240 days is 65% of a normal 365 day year. Since that's just "on-ship" time, and doesn't include the travel days, a conservative 20 of those brings my time away from home up to 71.2%... Now. The reality is, a 365 day year isn't an accurate measure of time gone considering that any normal, "full-time" job works a 40-60 hour work week and typically only 5 days out of every 7, and of course, Holidays are also excerpted from that. So with a 5 day work week, we'd be looking at 270 days, minus say 10 days off for holidays and maybe a paid sick day here and there is, based on my arithmetic, 260 days of work per year.

Again... one process of simple math later, I find that now based on a more accurate set of numbers, I find that suddenly I'm gone alternatively 92.3% of the year... or... factoring in travel days...

100%


Let's recap... In my interview in October, I was told that the requisite travel would be 50-60%. By any measure, assuming the number of days we're "required" to be on ships hasn't changed in the contract since they signed it before we got hired, then the majority of my interview was either a misrepresentation or an outright lie.

Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity or carelessness.

...is a paraphrase of a fine rule of thumb I often observe when making assumptions about people. It's hard to stick to within the entertainment industry, but still... I suppose it is rather likely that what really happened is just that no one higher up than myself bothered to do the math. That seems likely since no one within miles of the entertainment industry seems to like crunching numbers.

Now, the real question is - "Ok, Sean. What are you going to do about it?"

...No clue.

At any rate, the experience hasn't been without benefit.


For starters, I'm away from home for 37 days this round... which is far too much, but on the positive side, I'm visiting 13 countries. A few of which I haven't been to before. I'm on my way to Oslo, Norway at the moment, which is cool. I've already iterated on any number of blog-type forums the places I'm going to this trip, so I really don't need to do that again. But the truth is, the travel has at least been interesting.

It's also managed to solidify my real-world understanding of economic policy. Without succumbing too much to confirmation bias, I think the majority of what I already believed was exactly correct. This is often one of the bonuses of running your beliefs through a very stringent critical review process - even internally, the ability to make counter-arguments to yourself (and have friends who are capable of challenging you as well) until you're satisfied that the logic is sound, the premises make sense and the supporting data is valid. Besides which, let's be honest, most of it is basic common sense.

For example - London, like many of its European counterparts is a city of extremely high taxes in a country of high taxes. As I drove from London to Harwich, a town about 85 miles Northeast, I passed the time chatting with my driver. He was a very nice guy named Dave, who owned the taxi company and liked to go to Florida for motorcycle rallies. He mentioned that Harwich is growing as a bedroom community for London... few people can afford to live in the city-limits anymore. But more importantly, business are leaving London quickly. Higher corporate taxes have pushed businesses to find alternate places to hold offices, as they do everywhere. Far from governments free-loading on the backs of businesses wealth, they only manage to push them away. Add to this the cripplingly bad math of socialist health systems, cronyism, mercantilism, and the impossibility of "good" central planning, the reality of Europe is that it really is a horrible place to live overall.

In spite of the recent downturn in the value of the US Dollar, which has precipitated a subsequent decline in the standard of living in the United States, our purchasing power is still comparable (at least nationally) to England's, which is easily the highest of any part of Europe. This means that as much as we've experienced a decline (and believe me, I think America is in some of it's worst economic times in terms of real-value that it's seen in a long long time), it's still a better place to live than anywhere in Europe.

Social freedoms aren't much better over here. I guess in that instance it just comes down to a "pick your poison" sort of argument. You want to be able to drink at 18? Cool... move to Germany. But then, you can't get a driver's license til you're 18 either, so you won't really be that mobile as a teenager. Sure, that might not matter much to you if you live in Berlin - but try living without a car in Warnemunde or someplace even more rural. If you live in Amsterdam, apparently you can enjoy marijuana (if that's your bag... zing!), but if you are a cartoonist, you might be persecuted or fined if you "offend" someone... muslims perhaps. Personally, I tend to prefer the speech guarantees to the US over being able to smoke pot. I suppose that's not surprising since it's something I've never done nor plan to ever do, but the main point is that with free speech I can (and do) argue for it's legalization, whereas the pot-smoker's in the Netherlands have less power to argue for freedom of speech. Not all freedoms are as fundamental as the ones built into the Bill of Rights.

Even with the extreme hits it's taken over the past 60+ years, it, combined with the remnants of a much more free economic system are still keeping us afloat.

I get so sick of socialists yapping about "market failures" and how government always needs to step in and "fix" things. I have yet to see a failure of the market to provide necessities and amenities for people - certainly not one that was caused directly or indirectly by governmental action, whether that action was "beneficial" to certain businesses thus providing artificial (monopolistic) support destroying the ability for anyone else to compete on a level playing field through subsidies and protections, or through excessive taxation, hindering regulations and political biases, the failures are those of government. There are no clearer examples of that on a day-to-day basis than ambling about in Europe.

...can't wait til I go to St. Petersburg.


On the flip side of my sort of negative comments, my extensive travels have confirmed another one of my deeply held beliefs, in general. People are basically the same, everywhere you go. We all have the same sorts of needs and desires, and by and large, people are just really good. That makes me smile. It also means that whatever stupid governments do, and how poor mobs are at making large-scale decisions... individuals are fantastic. They're interesting, often smart, unique and typically worth meeting, everywhere you go. Makes me feel like the world is probably alright - no matter how bad it might seem from time to time.

That's been a wonderful aspect of my travels. And I have a few more places I need to see. Australia/New Zealand. More of South America. Antarctica... and... Asia, which I'm not going to get to for a bit yet.


But... it's also excedingly tiring, and I can't keep doing this without a raise. Let's see what happens in December and January.

Speaking of work... think it's time to go do some.