Deadweight Loss

The news has discussed the "economic recession" much lately, in terms of unemployment, GDP, and spending rates. I prefer the term "economic correction". These figures are not measures of prosperity. In a time of war or disaster, unemployment would be low but it would not be prosperous. In a debt bubble GDP and spending might be high, but it would not be prosperous.

Prosperity is the goal, and how do you maximize prosperity? Someone might compare the governments of Somalia and the United States saying "Somalia has anarchy. Look how poor they are. The US Government makes us prosperous." Except it's because America is bountiful that we've prospered, mostly despite the government.

So hold on to your Keynesian worship of central banks and Marxist contempt of the bourgeoisie. There is just one simple economic concept I wish everyone would ponder: "Deadweight Loss".

This simple relationship of the demand-supply curve shows that when an interference restricts price or supply, the market will not perform at equilibrium (where consumers pay producers a negotiated price for goods). Demand will not meet supply. A market inefficiency is introduced with any such interference, e.g.: subsidies, taxes, licenses, permits, regulations, price caps, etc. This is waste, aka "deadweight loss" (yellow chart area). The money taxed or taken is also surely to be spent on a subsidy elsewhere, creating further deadweight loss.

Folks go on about "social goals", but let's refute any bullpucky about "government investment". Government is taxation, force, and special interests. Politics is my gang vs. your gang, so drop the humanistic spin because charity works just fine in free markets too. Check yourself and the chart again if you truly hold faith in government "fixing the economy". The point to take home is that government makes the economy as a whole less efficient and therefore less prosperous. The path to prosperity is free markets.

Violence against the State

Imagine a colonial slave tried to escape the plantation, and in a violent struggle killed his master who tried to stop him. Is this unethical? No, the law was unjust and therefore anybody enforcing the law deserved equal force used in self-defense.

Take for example the final scene in Star Wars, when rebel Luke Skywalker blows up the Empire's Death Star. Audiences cheered. There were surely many stormtroopers and maintenance crews killed in the explosion who merely took that job for their technical skills, even though they didn't shoot the planet-death-ray. Did they all deserve to die? Not necessarily, but working in a support function is not innocent either.

In my estimation, those who are most closely supporting the arm of the law are the most guilty. If you are a lawmaker, you are the most unjust. If you are a cop or judge or juror enforcing the law, you are also unjust. If you are a clerk or paper-pusher, you might possibly evade some blame by ignorance of the law. However, if you are a voter who supports the unjust law... you are more guilty than that clerk just doing their job.

If the drug laws are unjust (and they are), then if a cop busts into my home to lock me away, am I justified defending myself with equal force? Absolutely I am. Sadly, the odds would be against me... but it would be the exact same as the colonial slave trying to escape the plantation.

So, violence against the State is just. This is because the State itself is violent. It has a monopoly on violence which it abuses towards unjust laws about non-violent acts (e.g. drugs, prostitution, tax-evasion, etc). There is only one reason I do not wage war against the State... it's because I'm selfish. I care too much about my kids and family, and my own life to undertake such a brave yet self-destructive mission against overwhelming odds.

A couple years ago Joe Stack flew a plane into an IRS building. Joe Stack flew his X-Wing straight into the Death Star. Today, Tax Day April 15th, I will make a toast to that american Luke Skywalker and his last brave kamikaze flight. News headlines will always draw Joe Stacks as disturbed radicals, and those shot by police as a criminals. They give cops and soldiers free pass for murder. I know better. Sometimes that cops victim was just someone suffering from addiction who desperately wanted not to be locked up. (Rest in peace, DD)

The only way to reduce the unjust violence is to have just laws. If you don't support this, you share guilt for the blood of innocents on both sides.

Top 10 Manliest Men of Television

10) Al Bundy - His life sucks, but he stakes his claim and bears it like a man.

9) Fred Flinstone - He works hard at a blue collar job, and makes sure there's time for bowling and the Water Buffalo Lodge.

8) Crixus - He gives his fellow gladiators hell and is always pissed off.

7) Captain James T. Kirk - Sure he's over dramatic, but he hooks up with green alien broads. At least he doesn't like Shakespeare and Earl Grey Tea like that Jean Luc Picard. His middle name is "Tiberius".

6) Kenny Powers - High on ego, utterly crass, and has a jet ski.

5) Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli - While actor Henry Winkler is totally unmanly, the Fonz kept his peers respectfully fearful of him at all times.

4) Ron Swanson - A libertarian boss of a government office. His brain has big balls.

3) Charles Ingalls - Works hard, has heart, and does right by his family and friends. This guy is why I have my daughters call me "Pa".

2) Don Draper - He's got the skills and he knows it. He works hard and plays hard. Rarely loses his cool, if ever.

1) Walter White - Former high school teacher turned bad ass, for his family's sake. This guy kicked cancers ass. He kicked the cartels ass. He uses his brain and always wins.

Ode to the SheevaPlug

I love my SheevaPlug. It is the geek's dream gadget. You can flash linux kernel images onto this thing's internal memory and leave it always on due low-watt consumption (low power ARM processor, and lack of moving parts... no fans, no drives).

There's a network port. I prefer to SSH in for some shell command-line action, but you could connect install VNC and remote GUI (if you're a pussy).

It has a USB port, which could receive a USB hub for additional devices (cameras, external drives, you name it...)

You could run a home-automation server, or install a LAMP environment for web hosting. Personally, I'm running heyu(X10), MySQL, Tomcat, postfix, and getmail with a webcam attached, and a whole bunch of scripts and cron jobs. I'm hosting two small domains, and adding one more soon.

You can even run it off an SD card, so you could clone and swap out cards with custom linux distros based on your needs.

Well, there's a free advertisement (f you speak geek)... but maybe this company will read this one day and out of the goodness of their hearts send me one of their newer models. (hint hint)

Summer of the Yard

When we moved into our new house in March it was nice to have a bigger yard, but it was 90% weeds - those nasty prickly kind too. So my goal was to have the yard transformed and family friendly before the next winter.

Libby was scared of the lawn at first... stickies! ouch!

Planning the yard seemed nearly as much effort as all the digging and hauling involved. I drove my wife crazy with my obsession with choosing the right trees. I sketched out several drafts, and ultimately tried to balance a few goals:

• Optimal seasonal shade and trees (I used suncalc.net)
• Balance of lawn vs low-maintenance/low-water area
• Variety: a rock garden, flower garden, vegetable garden, play area

An early plan draft

After considering seeding it myself, we opted for sod since the weeds were so pervasive and we wanted things to start quickly. In retrospect that was the right decision, since I only finished the yard with gravel in October. 

Sod was the most expensive step, but what an improvement.

Next, I focused on planting the trees. We got a few from the Sacramento Tree Foundation, which provides free shade trees (for SMUD customers). I chose a red maple to be the central shade tree. We also got a crape myrtle and chinese pistache. We had a pesky 30ft cottonwood tree cut down that was stupidly planted 2ft away from sprinkler valves. While planting I learned quickly that my soil has a lot of river rock, which made every hole to dig painstaking (not to mention my accidentally busting a couple sprinkler lines). The rock came in handy for borders later though.

Tetherball pole? I'm not sure what this was for, but dug it out

Planting the red maple, this sucker grows like a champ.

Next up, the playground. This was simply some leveling, weedblock, and 4 yd3 of playground wood chips from Hasties. The quicker I can get ground covered, the sooner I can stop nearly poisioning myself from Round-Up exposure trying to keep weeds down!

That's a lot of wheelbarrows.

Libby checking out progress.

Now, with more space... I was able to score a sweet deal on this little playset. I edged the playground with some red landscaping logs, then staked and tied them down with durable sisal rope (seems to be holding so far).

Now came preparing the other half of the yard.

• Flower garden
  I planted the crape myrtle, and purchased a flowering cherry tree (my wife's personal choice). I covered the area in mulch... and my wife plants some bulbs and flowers later.
• Rock garden
  I planted mostly with varieties of juniper here, aiming to create a oval/semi-circle shape. In the center, I planted a hollywood juniper which I trimmed and bound with wire to train it with some bonsai-style interest.
• Vegetable planter box
  Nothing but some giant lumber boards from Home Depot nailed together and buried in the ground. Also to be covered this up until planting next spring. 

Placing the junipers

Ready for gravel... planter box, and (soon to be) rock garden.

Finally, the last step... gravel. I started off the edges, then hiring two guys cheap off craigslist made spreading gravel easy-peasy.

That's even more wheelbarrows.

It felt great to get the last square foot of ground covered, and to rest assured those weeds were suffocated underneath a summer of hard work. There's still a lot of growing left for the young trees and bushes, and definitely more finishing touches to come next year... but it's been a great change for the yard. 

Open Letter to Sacramento County Leadership on AB 144, Bearing Arms

I have sent the notice below. Since Jerry Brown has made open carry illegal in California, if I carry a weapon I will exercise my 2nd Amendment right via concealed carry. Furthermore, I will not be applying for a permit to exercise my constitutionally protected right.

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TO:

 SupervisorSerna@saccounty.net,

 JYee@saccounty.net,

 SusanPeters@saccounty.net,

 MacGlashanR@saccounty.net,

 NottoliD@saccounty.net,

 daoffice@sacda.org,

 info@sacsheriff.com

--------------------------------------------------

2nd Amendment of US Constitution: 

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 

With Jerry Brown signing AB 144 into law, effective January 1 2012, open carry will be illegal in California. 

Whereas open carry previously fulfilled the means for a US citizen to bear arms, after January 1st, the only legal option remaining in Sacramento will be to pay fees and apply for a CCW license on a "may-issue" basis. 

This is in conflict with the 2nd Amendment, and I request that Sacramento resolve the conflict in it's existing policy. Charging an application fee and list of prerequisites is not compatible with a constitutionally protected right. I will no sooner apply for a permit to exercise free speech.

Sincerely,

--Signature---

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My Religion

9 out of 10 americans believe in God. Then again, only 4 in 10 believe in evolution, so you can't put faith in numbers. So, what's the truth about religion? Is there one true faith, or are they all bunk? There's so many variations... polytheism, or monotheism which could involve theism, deism or pantheism. Most people seem to adopt their parent's faith. Other people call themselves "agnostic", either to dodge the scorn of "athiest" or to play it safe in case Hell is real. So what's the truth about religion... not whether it's good or bad, but whether it's correct?

Let's consider a few options:

• Theory A: One religion is true. All the folks from other religions, and especially athiests, have got the fundamental nature of the Universe completely wrong. (South Park suggested an answer)
• Theory B: Many religions are true. There are all kinds of gods and creation scenarios for each culture in history.
• Theory C: No religions are true. They were all made up and existence can be explains by natural phenomenon.

While Theory B would be pretty awesome, theories A and C (the theories most people subscribe to) would beg the question: "How could the other guy believe that?!".  Having studied psychology, I'm going to tackle the greater question, why 9 in 10 americans might falsly choose to believe in higher power:

Reasons why people may believe in religion:

• Cognitive
• Difficulty explaining experience: e.g. natural events, consciousness, where we came from
  (courtesy of Bill O'Reilly, see 1:40 for the classic exchange as example)
• Anthropic principle/fallacy (i.e. self-aggrandizing that "man just be the center/meaning of the Universe")
• Emotional
• Fear of death
• Avoidance of hell
• Comfort of a protector, greater power
• Social/Cultural
• Transcribing value systems and traditions into transferable lessons
• Advertising moral integrity to others, by publicly proclaiming that one fears supernatural punishment for bad behavior
• Proliferations of organizations based upon self-replicating memes: i.e. believe this or you will suffer forever

So, theory A or C? One true religion or none? My conclusion relies upon the most important deductive method: Occam's Razor. Also known as the Law of Parsimony, is that among a set of theories, the one requiring the fewest assumptions is the correct theory. We've gained enough knowledge of our natural history to refute old creation myths. Some religions have thrown out what doesn't fit, and adapted by coming out with "Intelligent Design" theory. The common theme in the history between Religion vs Science has been the fallacy of the anthropic principle, that man is the meaning/purpose/center of the Universe. This isn't just believing that Man was created in God's image, or that Apollo's chariot drive the sun each morning. Copernicus' true and simplified sun-centered model of the solar system struggled against the charges of heresy and idea that man is the center of the universe (and Ptolemy's previous church-approved geocentric model which devised complex epicycles of planets ensure earth was the center). Human knowledge has always expanded in one direction: realizing that reality is larger than man. Today, physicists debate the nature of dark energy and dark matter, and  speculate about the age and size of the Universe after their "Big Bang". People still struggle against the anthropic principle, and I predict astronomists' CMB will one day be known as the shadows on the wall of another ptolemaic Plato's Den.

As a child, I often wondered "How could there be an end to the  Universe?" Because if it's finite, then numerous more assumptions must be made: why that size? What's beyond it? Where did it come from? Similarly, if one believes in god or gods, one must ask where they came from... and so forth. Therefore, Occam's Razor prescribes one rational truth: the Universe must be infinite in every way: time, space, dimensions, permutations. The Multiverse is a physical reality. No creation is required nor possible for infinity, because 8 "just is". God becomes extraneous in an equation where natural science explains evolution of the human animal, because: Infinity > God.

This is my religion. To fathom it is a religious experience, implying how utterly insignificant each of our lives and concerns are. When I've sat in a dentist chair having my teeth cleaned, I've actually used the Multiverse as my personal zen-tao koan to find my happy place.... because the Multiverse means you have and will exist again, in the same way the monkeys will type Shakespeare. By the same token, a replica of me has, is, and will again write these exact same words in a blog somewhere else in the Universe. As mind-blowing as the implications are - no faith is required here, just logic and reason. 


My post leaves out a major topic of religion: morality. However, ethics also are an exercise in reason, and I will refute anyone who says that religion is required for a source in morality. For more on that, read my previous posts on the Golden Rule and altruism.

Anyways, maybe John Lennon had it right after all...