Elysium

Currencies

Posted by snow under Theory

Spending time with elderly people really highlights the change in demands and their price through our life. To them, time is hardly a valuable asset whereas happiness is the ultimate desireable. Money is sandwiched uncomfortably somewhere in between, pricier than time, but not quite worth as much as happiness. With them, days go by quickly and no task is more pressing than the tiny details of life.

Reflecting on my life, money is much less precious than time and happiness is an annoying necessity to keep productivity high. It would be interesting to graph these three variables over age and see how a person evolves through the span of a lifetime.

Beauty in Tragedy

Posted by snow under Theory

There is a certain beauty to tragedy or stife that’s very refreshing. If one delves a bit deeper, the root becomes apparent. It’s not the tragic calamities that are beautiful, but the tenacity and perseverance of life that is beautiful.

Take a look at a mother hen facing off with a dog to protect her chicklets, or a tree desperately trying to grow out of a jagged cliff. There is beauty because there is struggle for life, a cause we can relate to, something that makes us reevaluate the luxuries of our lives

I think people are not meant to live in a ‘utopian’ world. Rather, we were designed to struggle. Though we have all we need in life, we continually seek that fight to add to our lives and so we try to find purpose. If you look at our entertainment, it’s always centered around a ‘just fight’ or a fight for survival.

Unpriced Goods

Posted by snow under Theory

When we speak of bribes, we speak of detestable practices by the rich an corrupt to somehow hurt others. While this may be true, reflecting on it gives an interesting look on society.

Bribes are really payment for a service with a missing pricetag. If you think about it, everything in this world is available at a cost. Laws only serve to increase the price by one of two factors: 1. increasing the penalty of getting caught or 2. increasing the amount you have to pay under the table to do some things. If you think about things from this perspective, China is one of the most materialistic nations in the world where there are few barriers to arriving at the absolute price for goods & services.

So in this model, there’s a secret auction going on for positions of power, rights, and resources of all kind, some in public, others in private. The reason that the latter are so expensive is the same as with anything else, supply and demand. If man’s morals fail, and we cling to social stability, such would be the world.

The Benefit of Loss

Posted by snow under Theory

Our society puts such an emphasis on winning that ‘losing’ becomes something disgraceful, to the point that we are no longer learning from our mistakes. If you beat up a 2nd grader, you may feel good for a couple minutes (well, then again, maybe not), but only after getting your butt kicked by a secret assassin will you become stronger. Why?

Winning boosts one’s confidence, but not proportionately, one’s skill. Winning doesn’t tell you why you won or the weaknesses in the strategy you are using. It doesn’t tell you anything about all the ‘secret sauce’ others have out there in the world, it doesn’t give you anything than a sense that you are superior to the problem, person, or thing in question. Although confidence goes a long way, it can’t replace knowledge. Getting an A on your economics test doesn’t prepare you at all for a subprime meltdown, or even something as basic as valuing a company with skewed financials, or even what kind of bank account to put your earnings from your summer job in for a good return. Yet, it gives us a false sense of understanding the world proper.

This is my biggest gripe about the modern education system. It emphasizes so much on performance and benchmarking that it doesn’t teach students the proper way of learning. They are measured by how well they can memorize a set of data and how well they can regurgitate it into a particular problem. Learning in real life consists of seeing where one has made a mistake, having the courage to admit that one has made it, understanding why it happened and prevent it from happening again. The response to failure that the modern education system promotes is: you are inferior to everyone else n00b. People hide from their mistakes for shame, or subconsciously block them out when they should be embracing them as a chance to learn and become stronger.

The Necessity of Suffering

Posted by snow under Theory

To the pessimist, the human future is bleak. For all the advancements we have made in the last millenia, little has really changed: we no longer kill ourselves with sticks, but rifles. We still fight over resources, often resources we don’t need. The base instincts haven’t changed, though the way they manifest themselves have. Going along this line of thought, there is no real point to improving the quality of life for humans. Even if we expand into space, increase our numbers and wealth exponentially, we will never appreciate it because we will expect ever more luxuries and appeciate ever less. What then is the point when those centuries ago lived more happily than us now (albeit shorter).

Here is where suffering plays a key role. Suffering is like the shadow cast behind the object. If more light shines but there are no shadows, it’s hard to tell how bright it really is. Suffering from war, poverty, insecurity, oppression, grief, confusion, social unrest, or anything that breaks the established order of society makes us appreciate the true value of life and all that we have. Waking up with the reality that there is a chance that i may never see my loved ones again makes me appreciate and cherish them that much more. Consider the value of the last few months of a cancer patient’s life and the wonders some of these individuals have accomplished in that time.

So, those lost in wars, or those suffering cruel fates are a (unwilling) sacrifices that bring about greater happiness for the majority. It is the sacrifice of this minority that gives humanity hope, a clearer sense of values and a better appreciation for life even if it’s just for a single generation.

Economies of weather

Posted by snow under Theory

Driving through the storm last Sunday reminded me of when i first learned skating: shortly after starting to move, i’d skid around in an arbitrary direction until friction was nice enough to leave me stranded someplace awkward. My steering wheel did not so much command the car to go in a direction, but rather, suggested a direction that my car may consider sliding towards.

But weather can be a very lucrative business. The snow plows don’t make any money unless it snows while the airline business loses out massively due to delays and cancelled flights. One possible business would be: sign a contract with 10,000 plowsmen promising them a fixed pay no matter if there is snow or not. in exchange, they’ll have to work their usual shifts in the storms. We then sign another contract with the airline companies. They pay us upfront for a ‘snow insurance’. If there are no storms, we don’t pay them, but we’ll compensate them for flight delays or cancellations due to storms.

The profit comes in because: in the storms, the town pays us for the plow services, which hopefully will cover our payments to the airlines plus a profit (they both increase with more snow). If there are no storms, we pay the plowsmen with the money the airlines pay us (both constant). This exact arbitrage may not work out (since there’s no incentive for plows to pull double shifts if there’s a storm if they get paid a salary), but i feel there are definitely inefficiencies in this market.

Of Politics

Posted by snow under Theory

It’s funny in that ironic kind of way that the most obvious method of tyranny is the most ineffective yet the most obvious method of emancipation is the most effective form of tyranny. let me unravel that one. In a dictatorship, everyone knows who is in control, no arguments, you want change? you kill the king. Even if it’s the ministers administering the country, if you aren’t a puppet, you can change the country. Yet in a democracy, say a… dual party system composed of a house of commons, a senate and a supreme court, people are lulled into believing that they chose their governors, hence they are content to be ruled over.

The true way to control a person is to confine her reality, to put blinkers on her mind so that she cannot imagine a different world, or the truth. Take aforementioned two party nation for example. Who says there must be two parties? Also, the modern costs for having people even know your party name is so expensive, it essentially limits all competition to those that have the money. Imagine Uncle Jim’s burger joint in Lafayette Indiana competing with Mc Donalds.

If we believe that we have choice, and that the reality we are familiar with is the ONLY reality that exists, then we are priming our minds for slavery. In such a case, dictatorship is by far more preferable, people would at least try to think.