Month: October 2012

My 2012 Presidential Ballot

Reason posted Who’s Getting Our Votes: Reason Writers’ 2012 Presidential Picks. It’s worth a read. For fun, I’ve answered the questions here.

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1. Which presidential candidate are you voting for and why?

Gary Johnson, because he is the only candidate offering anything resembling a defense for the liberty and rights of individuals. I disagree with his support for a national consumption tax, but overall, he’s interested in economics based on economics, not politics. Liberty has to start somewhere.

2a. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding economic freedom, including things such as industrial policy, free trade, regulation, and taxes?

Romney, but only because I expect he would have a friendlier Congress to his political trading. Obama’s policies will probably be worse, if not by much, without consideration for what he might get passed. If I thought a Romney administration would do anything on fixing or repealing Obamacare, my answer would change to Obama.

2b. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding social freedom issues such as gay marriage, free speech, school choice, and reproductive rights?

Romney, even though I’m not convinced he’d get too much accomplished there because of what he could push through the Congress.

2c. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding foreign policy, military interventions, and the global war on terror (including domestic restrictions on civil liberties)?

Romney, because he’d see the extra powers Obama has taken after the newly-assumed powers of the Bush years and add his perspective. Obama would likely extend what he’s doing without the creativity of a fresh eye.

3. Who did you vote for in 2000, 2004, and 2008?

Gore (because I didn’t understand my politics), Kerry (because Bush needed to go), and Barr (because I was a trusting moron). If the choice was Barr instead of Gary Johnson this year, I’d vote for myself.

4. Apart from the presidency, what do you think is the most important race or ballot initiative being decided this fall?

The various marriage equality issues to cement cultural change before DOMA gets to the Supreme Court, although marijuana is critical to reveal popular support for this liberty issue. Perhaps further wins will force changes at the federal level, regardless of who wins the presidency. Since that is unlikely, I’m going with marriage equality.

5. Reason’s libertarian motto is “Free Minds and Free Markets.” In contemporary America, is that notion a real possibility or a pipe dream?

Pipe dream. The citizenry isn’t getting any dumber, but the public perception that it is creates more entrenched support for government control everywhere, including the economy, speech, and personal choices in general.

The NHL Is Dumb. The Lockout Is Dumb.

As I wrote earlier in the week, I love hockey and the NHL. I want to watch games every minute of every day. I watch old games on NHL Network during the summer, even when I know the outcome. It’s a fantastic sport. I wish more people watched.

The NHL is currently working to guarantee fewer people watch. It’s engaged in a lockout of its players, its second lockout in eight years and third in eighteen. It was the second major professional sports league to cancel its championship, the first to do so as a result of its own actions¹. It’s the only professional sports league to cancel an entire season (i.e. 2004-2005), which didn’t even happen during World War II. This shameful fact is an indictment on the league’s negotiating skills and tactics. We’re again learning how putrid the league is at both. The former is probably defensible. The latter is not.

As we’d already lost the first two weeks of the 2012-2013 season, the NHL made a surprise proposal to the NHL Players Association on Tuesday. It offered an attempt to save the full 82 game schedule for all teams and what seemed to be an excellent start to resolve the core economic differences between the two sides. A few days have now passed. The league now says its offer was not its starting point, but its finish line. Its tactic is to require capitulation. Whether that happens now or in August 2013, the league provides no reason to believe it cares when. It appears quite ready to destroy another season if that means “winning”. Past evidence suggests that wouldn’t be fatal, or even significantly damaging. The past’s applicability to the future is open for debate here. The league appears indifferent to fatigued diehards and the growing-but-fragile fan support it’s gained in the last few years from a resurgence of big-market teams.

Reports indicate that the league recently received pressure from its major sponsors and television partners in Canada and the United States. This, to me, is the most interesting aspect of the continuation of the lockout. Obviously everyone wants a healthy business going forward. And the league’s sponsors want to be associated with a sport that is stable, exciting, and growing. They had a chance to continue getting that from the league until its proposal shifted from an opening offer to its final offer without announcement. The league is so determined to get its deal that it will accept an unnecessarily damaged, smaller revenue stream from its victory. This is idiotic. Its sponsors will attach their brands to a league that embraces upheaval, ruthlessness, and repeated disregard for its customers. We’ll find out how willing and committed they are to supporting that combination in the post-lockout NHL, whenever that arrives.

I doubt sponsors will feel the same level of enthusiasm they’ve shown in recent years if a deal can’t be reached by Thursday. That failure would likely mean a large chunk of the season being axed next Friday. (Missing the Thursday deadline would also mean the season will likely die.) The league is about to find out how much of its projections is hubris. As I wrote before, the diehards will be back whenever the league returns. That includes lifelong fans and more recent converts like me. The league is correct on that. I wonder how much revenue it expects from me if that happens. It will get my $170 or whatever it will charge for the Center Ice television package because I am out-of-market for the Blackhawks and I like watching other teams. But I bet the league thinks I will also still want t-shirts and jerseys and other branded merchandise. I will want them. I will not buy them. The League’s revenue will not be zero. But its revenue will not be what it was before. It will get the smaller revenue base it deserves. I am foolish. I am not a complete fool without any respect for myself.

The league takes the support of its fans for granted. It thinks we’re stupid. It’s told us for several years that the league is growing and experiencing record revenues. It said so earlier in this now-extended off-season. Yet, now it also demands immediate givebacks from the players because teams can’t survive without them. It wants us to ignore that more than half of the cumulative losses experienced by the weaker teams last season belonged to the Phoenix Coyotes, a team owned by the league itself. On average the teams losing money are losing just under $2 million each. (This is based on reported numbers. Possible accounting tricks are not considered for the validity of this loss.) If team owners can’t absorb a $2 million loss for a few years as the league transitions to a more stable economic structure, they shouldn’t be involved in this high risk, high dollar business. As a fan I want my team and the league to be healthy. I do not want to be treated as though my only involvement is to hand over my money as often as possible.

I’d resolved myself to the reality that this lockout would cost a significant chunk of the season. Then, the league worked to win back support by making an offer. I’m optimistic but I do not appreciate being used in what is now an obvious ruse to win an irrelevant PR war the NHL deserves to lose worse than it was losing it on Monday. I’m not interested in subjective notions of fairness. A 50/50 split is no more fair than a 57/43 or a 43/57 split. Context matters. Fairness here is negotiating honestly and striving to satisfy as many goals as possible. The owners want a 50/50 split. The players want their existing contracts honored. Great, there’s a deal to be made. But the fans are lost in this equation. We are customers, not equal participants in the product. We want hockey. There are many ways for the owners and players to get – or get close to – what they want. Fans have no involvement to get we want. We have only the power of the dollar after the fight is over, whenever that might be. It should be by Thursday. It probably won’t be. The clock is unforgiving against a battle of egos. If/when I lose, most of the dollars I’ve spent in the past will remain in my wallet.

In the end the owners will win this lockout. They have all the power. I don’t much care where they end up. I care a lot how – and when – they get there. They should start asking themselves what they’ll win if there is no deal by Thursday. They should ask this without first using their assumed answer to beg the question. Fifty percent of nothing is no better than fifty-seven percent of nothing. Without a deal that enables a full season, everyone loses.

¹ Major League Baseball lost its World Series in 1994 due to a players strike. Current NHLPA executive director Don Fehr was the players’ union chief at the time.

In The Top 1% of Artificial Narratives

I’ve seen a series of animated gifs about J.K. Rowling and taxes floating around for a few weeks. Here is a screenshot, because copying the gifs would make this post too clunky. The series is summarized this way, from Hank Green’s Tumblr:

wilwheaton:

geardrops:

fauxmosexualtranstrender:

sandandglass:

Total respect.

I love her.

She donates so much she went from “billionaire” to “millionaire.”

MAD respect for that.

Listen to J.K. Rowling, and put your money where your mouth is, 1%.

I think there really needs to be a cultural shift among the wealthy. It’s very inspiring to hear Jo telling it like it is.

I get the message. I disagree because it endorses a specific solution to a problem. Even if we pretend that the solution is effective, it’s more concerned with enacting a specific solution. It’s an effort to bludgeon opponents with a silly, nonsensical political narrative.

As Forbes wrote:

New information about Rowlings’ estimated $160 million in charitable giving combined with Britain’s high tax rates bumped the Harry Potter scribe from our list this year.

Hank Green’s position above is a lot more subtle on this, although I think it fails to address whether the perceived necessity isn’t a red herring. J.K. Rowlings donated $160 million to charity. Other wealthy individuals also donate to charity. Should these charitable donations be sent as taxes to governments to distribute as politicians deem appropriate? Would the charities that received Rowlings’ $160 million donations receive donations from the government in the redistribution of taxes? And why should we assume that the government doesn’t have the necessary tax revenue to fund such necessary expenditures if unnecessary (or unjustified) expenditures ceased?

The 1% narrative works to fit problems into a solution rather than addressing the problems with whichever solutions are effective for each problem.

My NHL Lockout Theory

I’m a huge hockey fan. I dabbled in watching the game in the early ’90s. I’m a Chicago Blackhawks fan today because of Jeremy Roenick in 1990. However, in those pre-Internet days, I didn’t have sufficient access to either the rules or broadcasts to appreciate the game. My southern hometown didn’t get an ice rink until I was in college. I slowly faded away from the game. I regret that now.

Thankfully, in 2009, I discovered adult beer league hockey. I joined a team and finally grasped the rules and, more importantly, the beauty of the game. The strategy, the flow, even the simple sound of skates cutting through ice… All of it is amazing and fills me with joy. I can’t drop hockey again.

That history makes the current NHL lockout frustrating. I love NHL hockey. I watch every Blackhawks game, and a significant number of games beyond that on the Center Ice television package. The league is betting on the fact that I’ll return. And I will. There is no doubt on that. The league won’t lose me. Although I’ll likely buy less merchandise, if any, for a while to punish the league and the players, I’m not going to watch less.

At Backhand Shelf, Justin Bourne explores this in depth. I agree with it all. Here’s the gist:

Friedman never directly says it in the piece, but I think the implication is exactly what I’ve been trying to put into words for awhile now: Gary Bettman is overestimating hockey fans passion for the NHL (my words, not his). Something about the current mess made me tag this post with both “final straw” and “camel’s back.”

Bettman has seen the fans come back time and time again during his tenure, and is unwisely taking the fans for granted once more.

What he doesn’t realize, is that hockey fans love hockey, not the NHL. The love the Stanley Cup, but it doesn’t belong to the league. The love pond hockey, which is why the league’s heart-string twanging nostalgic playoff commercials are so widely beloved. There is no loyalty to some “shield,” the way Roger Goodell refers to the NFL. There’s hockey, and goddamn is it a terrific game.

Even if the league does get it figured out and only a half-season is missed, I’ll call it now: the fans aren’t coming running back this time (unless it happens like, soon-soon). There’s only so many times you can abuse someone before they snap. Some people have shorter fuses than others, and I’ve talked to people who’ve gone from anger to apathy this time, which as Elliotte implies, should be petrifying for the NHL.

Exactly. However, I disagree with the generally-accepted underlying theory that the NHL lockout is evidence that the league takes for granted that a floor exists where the league will always have certain fans and their money. I think it’s something worse. Despite record revenue growth and reason for optimism, the league believes it is near its ceiling. Instead of viewing this as greed, the stupidity of a second lockout in eight years makes sense if the league’s owners believe they are fighting for a larger piece of a revenue stream that has neared its maximum.

The most telling fact for my theory, I think, is the recent television deal with NBC Sports Network. It’s a ten-year deal. I can understand why the league would want stability. And they reached a new high in annual value for that deal, at $200 million per season. The deals for other leagues make that look like pocket change, but for the NHL, it’s progress. But if they believed that the league will continue to grow at approximately 7%, give or take minor currency fluctuations between the U.S. and Canadian dollars, why lock at that rate for a decade? And why lockout now when a missed season would merely tack on a free season in year 11 for NBC Sports Network? I’m certain the owners know that the free 11th year could instead bring them far more in present value than the $200 million they’ll get this year if they don’t play hockey. I think they don’t believe the NHL can grow enough to generate a significant jump in 2022. We’re near the maximum the sport can produce as a permanent niche for entertainment dollars.

Or I could be wrong and the NHL, Commissioner Gary Bettman, and NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr are egotistical lunatics indifferently destroying the league for their own short-term need to win at all costs.

310 Million Individual Nations

Author John Green hates Atlas Shrugged with a White-Hot Passion. I don’t mind that he doesn’t like the novel. All tastes and preferences are unique to the individual, after all. But that’s also the flaw in his analysis.

He writes:

1. Atlas Shrugged is a novel of ideas. The plot exists only so that Ayn Rand can lay out her set of philosophical beliefs. So it’s the kind of book that makes you feel smart because you “get it,” but the story itself is paper-thin and is carefully constructed to explain and celebrate Rand’s objectivism. I have an inherent problem with novels of ideas, because I think they fail to do most of what is interesting and useful about fiction, but I particularly dislike them when the ideas are bad ideas.

I am not an Objectivist. I recognize common ground with it but am not particularly fascinated by the label. I also agree with his assessment of Atlas Shrugged, to a small degree. Rand was hardly a perfect novelist. And I don’t like novels of ideas that are about bad ideas. But Atlas Shrugged is not about the idea Mr. Green thinks it is.

2. The philosophy of objectivism is absolutely repugnant to me (and also does not hold up to scrutiny). The philosophy of selfishness is all built around the idea that the person ingesting the philosophy feels special (i.e., that we all identify with John Galt), and of course we do all identify with John Galt, because we all feel that the world is against us and we are secretly a unique flower that could bloom brilliantly if only we did not have to carry the weight of other, lesser people.

The “philosophy of selfishness” is accurate enough as a descriptive term, but not when we use the word selfish as the pejorative in common meaning. The novel doesn’t push the idea it’s so often accused of endorsing. It isn’t an ode to “Fuck you, I’ve got mine”. Selfishness in a Randian view is compatible with all sorts of actions associated with altruism. The difference is force. The unrequited correct form of altruism inspires force to achieve this correct form on the odd belief that humans would devolve to “Fuck you, I’ve got mine” if not for this push of force.

Or, as Timothy Sandefur explains more eloquently in his response to a straw-man attack on Ayn Rand in Slate:

Slate proclaims that evolutionary psychology shows that Objectivism is wrong because evolution favors “altruism,” which the article question-beggingly defines as “helping others.” Of course, Rand never claimed that helping others is wrong. What Rand said was that you do not live for the purpose of making other people happy. There is a big difference. Objectivism has always held that there are often perfectly good reasons to help others who are of value to you. And what evolutionary psychology actually shows is that Rand was on solid ground making that claim. What the evidence shows is that humans (and other animals) often help those who are close kin to them or are in a position to help them—so-called “reciprocal altruism.” The confusion arises because the term “reciprocal altruism” is a contradiction: if it’s reciprocal, it’s not altruism. I defy anyone to show me where Rand said that “lending a helping hand” is a bad thing.

(The rest of Mr. Sandefur’s post is worth reading.)

Personally, I donate money and a considerable amount of my time for a cause from which I will never personally achieve the benefit I advocate. My efforts can benefit others. I do it because it’s the right thing to do. But here’s the thing that separates this from the mistaken idea presented in Mr. Green’s analysis. I put my money and time into this specific cause because it’s what I care about. My efforts help people, but at the core, I am being selfish. Should I therefore stop?

I have also been told many times that there are “more important” issues to deal with. Perhaps. How effective do you think I’d be toiling away on a task that matters only in the abstract nature of altruistic sacrifice? I’d punch the clock for my obligation, and not for very long, rather than think and write at all hours and travel the country and stand in cold rain during protests. I value what I’m doing and why I’m doing it more than the costs.

I don’t feel the world is against me, either. Badly mistaken in critical ways, yes, but there is no conspiracy. We don’t live in a perfect world.

But the fact that when we read Atlas Shrugged we all identify with the elite is itself evidence of the book’s crappiness, because either A. only extraordinary people happen to read Ayn Rand, or B. we all feel extraordinary, because we are so busy being our multitudinous and complex and extraordinary selves that we do not imagine other people as being as complex or interesting or extraordinary as we are.

I suspect everyone who reads Atlas Shrugged identifies with the heroes. (Or misunderstands which characters are the heroes?) But this isn’t the fault of the book. The people who identify with the heroes who are like the villains are wrong in their self-awareness and understanding. This is not a critique of the book’s underlying idea. When Dustin Brown tried to drink from the wrong end of his water bottle, did that indicate a mistake in the design of the water bottle?

We all act selfishly. This is not bad. The world would not devolve into chaos if we recognized this. “Good” will still occur. It is human-nature, and should be celebrated.

If I could find my copy, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars contains this correct notion of selfishness in its characters’ actions. Regardless, I recommend the novel. It’s a fantastic story.