Following on from my last post, investors now see Estonia and the Czech Republic as safer investments than Japan. The financial markets are in disarray over there. Like I said before, this disaster is awful but they were in a precarious financial situation before. Some people will be tempted to call the financial meltdown an unfortunate consequence of the earthquake. The smart money says that they had made themselves pretty bad off before the earthquake, they were simply pushed over the edge. We’ll see how they handle this, we might need to take notes…
The videos and pictures from Japan are unbelievable. Buildings and cars being tossed around, who knows how many people have been killed. The recovery is just starting and it could take a while to go back up and running again.
Japan has been in the economic doldrums for a decade and a half. They have continually tried to “stimulate” their way out of the mess only to find themselves with no economic progress and mounds of debt. They have been going along, just keeping a stagnant economy for a decade, and now this happened.
How often do we make a budget and tell ourselves that “This looks fine, as long as nothing comes up…” The thing is, something always comes up. The car breaks down, you need a new bed, you have to leave the country suddenly because of an insurrection outside of the city, you get diagnosed with MS, etc. A budget that is actually good will take into account the unexpected expenses. If you are just getting by and then something comes up, you could be in trouble.
Japan hasn’t been involved with any struggles against any “existential threat” that might endanger their country. They, like many states in the US, were simply going along doing what they thought was expedient to avoid certain short term pain. They had been up to their chins in debt, is the level going to rise over their nostrils now? This natural disaster has revealed just how shaky their economic situation has been.
We can learn a lot from Japan. The US economy is doing OK, not great, and there’s a lot of rot and underhandedness just under the surface. There will also be a lot of debts coming due in the near future that we are not prepared for. We’re skating by, but it wouldn’t take much to push us under. I doubt any, even large, natural disaster would do it, but maybe a big spike in oil prices could. The way things are going over in the middle east, it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. The Saudi military is now in Bahrain, the US administration has had to go out of its way to claim that it isn’t really an invasion…. There could be any number of other things that happen, we’re in no shape to deal with them. This is why keeping debt down is so important on both a personal and national level. Having some surplus for just in case is just good sense. Spending everything you take in and then some leaves you vulnerable to any number of problems. We’ll see how Japan deals with this added burden, and I hope we never will be in their economic shoes.
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Japan and the broken window fallacy
If I hear one more “At least this disaster will spur japan’s economy” quip I’m going to scream. If massive destruction is so good for economies, why wait for natural disasters? We should go around blowing up houses and destroying infrastructure on a regular basis in order to keep the economy going…
Bastiat spelled out why this is silly way back in the 18th century. If a window is broken, the owner has to replace it. While the window guy benefits, the owner is only where he was before, but is now less well off after having paid for the window. Spending money just to get back where you were before will never be the way to prosperity. It is part of the “not seen” aspect of economics that is too easily overlooked and usually is.
I know that I think differently than a lot of people do when it comes to things like economics, politics, and religion. What strikes me is the reactions I get from people. There is a common belief that if someone has deduced things logically, they must be right, and therefore I must be wrong. They confuse making sense for reality.
Imagine if told someone that parallel* lines can intersect and in some cases must intersect. If that person were in an argumentative mood, they might point out that the very definition of parallel lines forbids them from crossing. If this were a political, economic, or a religious point, more times than not I would be dismissed as an idiot. I’ve gotten that reaction fairly frequently. What I almost never get asked is why I might think that way. It turns out there’s a whole bunch of other types of geometries out there, as soon as you put lines on curved surfaces, basic rules of geometry get changed.
The point is that both I and my mysterious debater can logically defend why my view is right or wrong. The efficacy of logic is limited by the initial conditions or beliefs you start with. If you think you live in a Euclidian world and I think I live in an elliptic world, we are never going to come to any agreement or understanding if we rely on logic to stake out our claims.The same thing goes for any other world view you can think of. Once you believe you know the basic underpinning of your world, everything else follows logically.
Most people do what “males sense” to them based on their beliefs. If you try to point out that any given view they have is incorrect or, too often these days, tell them that they are stupid, you won’t get anywhere because they are a long ways down the causality chain. If you want to convince them to change their mind about something, you need to go to much deeper. When I talk to people about religion, economics, and even politics, I am usually pointing out that we don’t live in a Euclidian world despite appearances and how much sense it seems to make. It takes time, but ultimately you have to convince people you live in a better world than they do if you want them to come around to your way of thinking. It may not be a great way of scoring quick points, but it does give them some things to think about. That can lead to real conversations as opposed to slogans and name calling.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to not do any of this. Gotta keep telling myself that it’s worth doing. I think it pays off long term, if only for my mental health…
* I am using Euclid’s definition of parallel. Loosely, that is that if there is a line and a point off that line, there is only one line that can be drawn through that point that does not intersect that line. That’s Euclid’s 5th postulate, we call it parallelism. In elliptic space, there can be no parallel lines as Euclid postulated.
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Budget gnashing of teeth
I’ve started seeing posts about how one team wants to “slash” the budget, leading to the impoverishment of millions because of cuts to to head start, planned parenthood, housing vouchers, NPR, etc. Of course the other team is yelling that the other side isn’t cutting enough. I’m going to split the difference and say that one side isn’t cutting much of anything, and the other side is making totally inconsequential (to the deficit) cuts. What needs to be addressed is Medicare, the Military, and Social Security. Everything else is window dressing. Predictably, neither side want to go near those things so what we are left with is political theatre.
Budgets at all levels are in pretty bad shape. What I’m hearing from the left is that tax cuts are what’s causing the deficits, and of course the right is blaming spending. Spending is, of course, the root of deficits. While both tax revenue and spending go into making a deficit, only one side of that equation is done to people, backed up with the threat of jail time. So I think there is a moral argument to cut spending as much as possible vs. raising taxes. Why folks seem to think it’s OK to take money from someone just because they have it has never made much sense to me. And that isn’t even taking into consideration the consequences of having too high an income tax…
This all reminds me of the contortions people go through to lose weight. They will try various pills, diets, etc. when we all know what will lead to weight reduction, less food and more exercise. We’re going to need more taxes and less spending. Taxes are going to have to go up across the board, not just on the wealthy. Similarly, spending cuts are going to have to be across the board of the big three programs, at least on the national level. It’s the perfect solution, no one will be happy. What people want is more stuff as long as someone else is paying for it, and so that’s what politicians promise. That, in a nutshell, is how we end up where we are now.
I’m not sure what will be more effective, getting the political will up to stop eating so much and exercising more, or letting things go until we need bypass surgery/gastric bypass surgery. If the monetary system collapses, there will be enormous pain and suffering, but hopefully some sort of lesson would be learned. Plus, it would get our debt off the backs of subsequent generations… I’m sure that over time, the same mistakes will be made as long as fiat currency/fractional reserve banking is the norm. I worry that if the current lawmakers buckle down and do something sensible (not that I’m holding my breath) it won’t last long, probably only until the economy goes on another Fed induced boom. SIGH.
Do you remember what I was blogging about in September? Silver was $17 an ounce. It’s over $37 an ounce now. The longer the lawmakers quibble and nibble around the edges of the problem, silver and gold will continue to go up in price. Or is that the currency losing value? Just saying….
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Music…. ahhhh…
OK, so I finally got my stereo hooked up. I had been listening to it for quite a while up in my tiny room, but I now have more room to spread out. Setting up was delayed for a week because I needed some more speaker cable. Plus, I wanted proper connections on the ends of the wires. The binding posts on my current amp are a bit of a pain to use with bare cables.
Anyway, got it set up and I’m really enjoying it. I now have a decent set up for the first time in… 5 years? My God, it’s been a long time. Things are a little different with this system though. I am streaming my music either from the internet or my computer through my squeezebox player. I switch tracks with my iPod touch, it’s the ultimate remote really. I have full access to every song in my library, plus all of my internet radio stations, and I can also control the volume. Here’s the kicker, the only way I could set it up involves the listening position to be in my bed… I don’t think I could imagine a better set up:-)
The speakers are about 9 feet apart, giving me a pretty big sound stage. I still need to fiddle with the distance from the wall a little to tame the bass. Listening again is just sumptuous. No, this isn’t perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better than I’ve had in a long time. All of my music is pretty compressed, it was all ripped into the computer for portable listening. I need to go dig up my CDs, rip them in some sort of lossless format, and then get rid of them. Do people still buy used CDs in bulk anymore?
I’m also starting to fantasize about getting tubes back into my system. I own a really nice set of amps, but they are a bit large. Last year, out of the blue, a friend gave me a 300b based amp. I got a chance to listen to it a couple of times and I’m totally in love with it. Plus, it’s a lot more compact than my current amps. Of course, my regular amps use $10-15 dollar tubes, this one uses 150-900 dollar tubes…
With a new computer in my future, I think I will try running the server software I need for the squeezebox off of it. If that doesn’t work, I might invest in a dedicated music server. Once I have the tube amp and some decent source material, I think things will be as good as they are going to get for the foreseeable future. I plan on spending lots of time relaxing, listening to music into the wee hours of the night:-)
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This is why I love my job
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The new iPad (I love my job)
They’ve done it again. This one looks like they kept all the good things and added a few more. The software they are coming out with is amazing. Garageband is an 8 track recorder with lots of instruments built in. Remember those old Tascam 4 track cassette machines? For 4.99 and a $500 device you can do full 8 track recordings. In college, I would have killed for the video editing capabilities that iMove for the ipad has. It’s 5 bucks, 5 dollars! The new covers for the iPad are ingenious, can’t wait to see how they actually feel and work.
They showed a video during the keynote that really summed up why I love what I do. It showed a lot of people getting a lot out of their iPad. Autistics learning to communicate, kids learning in school, doctors using them to explain things to patients, and a lot of old fashioned fun. You might think it’s corny, but being able to show people the possibilities that these devices have every day is what keeps me going. How many times a day can you blow people’s minds? How many times can you hear “wow” a day? I sell possibilities and fun, what other job can do that?
This is going to be the year that I get my Apple on. I’ve got a new computer in my sights, an iPad will come, and I’m probably going to get an iPhone as well. Every time Apple announces something new, I get excited. Yes, I want the shiny new things, but the real excitement comes from showing other people what these things are capable of. Tomorrow’s another day at work, hooray!:-)
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All moved in
I moved into my new room/apartment yesterday. It’s 3-3.5 times bigger, I have my own “bachelor kitchen” and my own bathroom. I’m already wondering how I lived in that cramped little room for so long… I can now use my bed for just… sleeping. It was the only furniture I had in the last room. There wasn’t any room for anything else so I was on the computer, watched TV (on my computer), ate, talked on the phone, etc. all in my bed. Now I have an actual comfy chair plus a desk with another chair, and even a tiny eating area. I’m going to be able to set my speakers up more properly than before.
I am now in the basement. There is a huge sliding glass door on one end of the room, but it is under the deck. That, plus the dark panelling really do make this room a bit of a cave. It’s also a bit chilly in here too. While I might need to make use of the space heater for the next several weeks, the summer will be soooo much nicer down here. it was routinely 10-15 degrees cooler down here last year.
All in all I really like the new digs. I can stretch out, I’m pretty well separated from everyone else in the house, and it’s much quieter than I anticipated. Yes, I’ll be paying a bit more in rent, but it’s money well spent. Here’s to better living!
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LastFM
LastFM is an internet service that tracks what you listen to and creates a “station” based on it. It’s great, I love it. My personal station is amazing of course but just as valuable is the station from LastFM that recommends things for me based on my personal station. I’ve heard some interesting stuff that way. I can also tune into my friends’ stations too, and that’s a blast. LastFM is one of my most frequently listened to stations on my Squeezebox, and I “Scrobble” (send lists of music I listen to to LastFM so they can adjust my stations) from my iTunes library on my computer and from my iPod.
They have just gone to a subscription plan for folks using streaming devices (like a Squeeebox) and mobile devices. It’s all of 3 bucks a month. So did I pay up? Damn right I did, $36 a year is well worth it to me. Honestly, between LastFM and Slacker, I really wouldn’t be broken hearted if my music collection disappeared. I might have to add a classical service too, that’s about all that’s missing now. I hope that my subscriptions will really pay off once I get my iPhone, streaming that in the car will be a major coup…
If nothing else, the internet has been an incredible boon to my music enjoyment. It keeps getting better and better and I constantly get exposed to new stuff along the way. LastFM is still free if you want to listen on your computer, check it out!