Context Matters

The pipe dream that less regulation is better and that market pressures will make everyone behave has been the most damaging thing to the country in the past 30 years.

You have to ask yourself, if the market is so effective at self regulating, why did regulations ever get instituted in the first place? The context matters.

I'm happy to remove regulation whenever possible. But you have to prove to me that the problems that caused the implementation of the regulation in the first place somehow have another factor keeping them from happening yet again.

Here's one example - the smog deaths in 1948 in PA. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103359330 Market pressure didn't have any impact on this company to keep it from polluting.

For Financial, think of the Savings and Loan crisis in the 80s and 90s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis

A related recent example is Rand Paul and the idea that the market would pressure private businesses not to discriminate. If that were true, why didn't that come to fruition in the 100 year after the abolition of slavery? Business owners are not logical profit optimizing machines. Just like everyone else they're flawed human beings that will do things that don't make sense and can hurt the community or in this case a subset of the community.

BP's catastrophe in the gulf is another example. Often when short cuts are allowed and can increase profit (even as they increase risk) they're taken. And with a legal cap on damages, what the heck! That even sweetens the deal towards risky behavior.

Because the people who run these institutions are human and some are unethical (and there will always be some who are unethical) the only way to protect against it is with sensible regulation.

There are many, many more such examples, and believe me, I understand there are some regulations that overreach (note the use of sensible above!). But you should never just remove them without considering the original context and the goal otherwise it's just history repeating...

Life Plan - Win the Lottery!

My middle son in 7th grade was complaining a bit about some kids in his math class being distracting and annoying. So he starts a rant about how stupid they are. Now for kids, falling into self-rightousness is very attractive and I always try to temper it when I hear it sprouting up.

So as I push back on this a little, he decides to give me an example.

He tells me how this one kid related his life plan. That he was going to drop out of high school, get a job and then win the lottery and be set for life! So I asked (knowing the answer already) "Good grief, how many people does he know that this has worked for?" And he responds with an emphatic, adamant "EXACTLY!"

So then he goes on to explain how he has a plan, AND 4 back up plans as well. I'm not sure I remember these all correctly, but it went something like this.

1 - Go to college and become a computer graphics artist and work for Blizzard.
2 - Get a law degree and become a lawyer.
3 - Learn Japanese, move to Japan and become a Manga artist
4 - Another option I can't remember...
5 - Become a professional Cello player and join an orchestra.

I had no idea he'd been putting this much thought into it, and it was great to know he recoginzed how idiotic that one kid's life plan was as well. As he gets closer to college it will be interesting to see how his ideas on this front evolve, but it's really great to see how diverse the possibilities he's thinking of are as well.

So I'll keep working to keep the self-rightousness in check, but I'll probably have to find a different example to make the point with. :)

Crimes and Misdemeanors

So this is my last post that is part of my September challenge. So I'll definitely be taking a bit of a break after this to recharge a bit! But still, it's been fun!

So the last movie I will write about on this Wednesday is Woody Allen's 1989 picture Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Personally this is my favorite dramatic (but at times funny as well) Woody Allen movie. It revolves around many themes I'm interested in, and really leads to a satisfying conclusion.

I think some may not like it, perhaps those who believe there is a certain order in the universe, karma if you will. But this film reflects the reality of the human condition, the real consequences of our actions and the results of our aspirations better than almost any other movie I've seen.

And so this is one of those movies I always love to show someone if they haven't seen it before, and then you get to talk about it again and again afterwords. Those are truly my favorite movies, the ones that start conversations, discussions, and debates.

I don't want to spoil it too much, but here's the initially lighthearted trailer that gives you glimpses of what is at the dark heart of this movie. Give it a watch, you'll either like it, or it will bug you like crazy, but I doubt you'll be neutral about it.

My last September ramble

Whew - it was a heck of a month to take a daily blog writing challenge.

Having my job situation go through such an upheaval and my commuting substantially change made it even more of a stretch to write a blog entry every day.

A few days I was at a loss at first for ideas, but most of the time I could think of something to write about. The hard part was that often I thought of something to write about that just couldn't be done well in one day.

So I'm looking forward to going back to a slightly different publishing schedule, but I should maintain the habit of writing every day.

Although I write and publish these blogs out on the web, ultimately they're for my kids to read when they get older. By publishing them instead of writing privately, it drives me to make the pieces cohesive and meaningful. (At least I hope that's the result!)

So one last film to write about tomorrow, hmmm. Still thinking about it.

But thanks Elsa and Laura, for the challenge. I think it was worthwhile to give it a go. Just one more day!

I want to grow up to be...

When my oldest son was around 6, we were chatting and suddenly he said to me...

"When I grow up I want to be a woman!"

On the outside I remained calm, but on the inside I'm going - whoa! Where is this coming from?

So I asked as naturally as I could "Oh, why's that?"

He said - "So I can work where you do!"

"Oh!" I said, feeling a great deal of relief. And I explained "There are plenty of men who work were I do, so you can grow up to be a man and work there too."

"Oh, OK, then I'll grow up to be a man!" he said.

I still smile when I think of this, and I absolutely cannot wait to tell him this story later. I'll have to pick my timing well. :)

How long will it take?

There's an old Abbot and Costello joke where Costello describes a problem he's having. I've always liked this joke because of what it's playing around with mathematically.

Costello tells Abbot he has a problem. That he likes this girl, but she's only 10 and he's 40, she's 1/4 his age. So of course he can't have anything to do with her yet.

But if he waits 5 years, she'll be 15 and he'll be 45, so she'll now be 1/3 his age. Still not good.

But if he waits another 15 years, she'll be 30 and he'll be 60, she'll be just 1/2 his age!

So, he wonders, how long does he have to wait before they're the same age?

:)

The relativity of years

Just a short philosophy post today.

I always remember summers seeming to last forever as a kid. As I've gotten older it seems the years fly by. I decided a long time ago it had something to do with the proportion of time you had already lived.

When you're 5, a year is equal to 1/5 the life you've already lived, so it seems relatively long. When you're 50, then a year is just 1/50 of what you've already lived and so by comparison seems much shorter.

A history professor I had told me that was a mathematician's answer, perhaps meaning it wasn't a very appealing explanation. Personally, though, I always got a kick out of thinking of it this way.