Proof most people have a 'fairness' streak

Or, how people act irrationally

There was an interesting social experiment crafted in the early 20th century, designed to show how people related to others on the subject of economic 'fairness'.

The experimentor would place two people in a room together. The rules of the experiment were these:

The two people would share $10 to be given to them. Person A would determine the split of the money, i.e. who of them would receive each percentage, determined solely by Person A.

Person B would then decide whether to accept the percentage split decided upon by Person A. If Person B did not accept, neither person would receive anything. Both parties were aware of this potential outcome.

The results of the experiment (which can be repeated today with much the same results) showed that people valued what they perceived as fairness more than financial gain. For example:

Even if Person A decided on a 90/10 split, that is to say Person A would receive $9 and Person B would receive $1, the rational economic decision for Person B would be for them to accept it, since they would receive $1 as opposed to receiving nothing by rejecting the deal. However, on the few instances where Person A did make such a lopsided proposal, Person B rejected the deal overwhelmingly.

Even more interesting, a vast percentage of people representing Person A proposed splits either 50/50 or very close to the middle split. This showed that either Person A would not take advantage of their power in choosing the split, or that Person A knew that by taking advantage of that power, Person B would punish them by rejecting the offer, presumably because Person A felt that this is what they would do if the situation were reversed.

This is a good example, I believe, of social conceptions of equality overpowering the desire of financial gain.

Note though, that when this experiment has been done in different societies around the globe, the outcomes varied widely. In various parts of the world, Person A would indeed offer a 90/10 split, and more times than not, Person B would accept the offer. These acceptance percentages went to nearly 100% when Person B was told that Person A was of a higher social class than Person B.

Food for thought.

2nd week of May, 1770

It was 239 years ago. Lieutenant James Cook, in charge of HMS Endeavour on a voyage of science and exploration, had just spent time charting the coastline of New Zealand for the first time in history. His charts would be so precise that they would be used by mariners until the mid 20th century. Determined to follow his orders to find the mysterious 'southern continent' if one should exist, he sailed west, maintaining the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere.

It was inevitable that he would rediscover a land whose borders and shores with which no living man was familiar. He had found the east coast of modern day Australia. Named New Holland at the time, an excerpt of Cook's journals follows:

Sunday, May 6th, In the evening the yawl return'd from fishing, having caught two Sting rays weighing near 600 pounds. The great quantity of New Plants &c M Banks and D Solander collected in this place occasioned my giveing it the name of Botany Bay.

Cook would go one to chart the east coast of Australia, get caught in the maze that is the Great Barrier Reef, and sail home a year later. He would return to the South Pacific twice more, charting and exploring new lands until finally meeting his demise in Kealakakua Bay in Hawaii.

Truly one of the greatest explorers in history, James Cook would go on to inspire a short lived science fiction television show and a long lived series of movies about exploration. James Kirk would borrow a quote from Cook, and though the words were slightly different, the meaning stayed the same.

James Cook wrote in his journal that he:

"...had ambition not only to go farther than any one had been before, but as far as it was possible for man to go."

His determination, intelligence and fortune held him in good stead until that bad day in Hawaii. During his three voyages he sailed more than 70,000 miles in a wooden vessel which, for the bulk of their time at sea, would move no faster than a man could walk.

Patience. A virtue, indeed.

Tatoos

When I was young, which wasn't all that long ago, the only people who were branded with tatoos were sailors and bikers. While I can't say I ever admired them, tatoos served a useful purpose in that they let me know the person wearing one was either military or someone whose sister you didn't want to date and then forget to call. No thought was given as to whether the tatoo was attractive or not, it simply served as a warning to others that the tatooed was a person to be given a wide berth.

But for some reason, the popularity of tatooing has grown exponentially with the younger population today. Everywhere you look, teenage girls are bending over, revealing their 'tramp stamp', the tatoo just below the small of the back, presumably put there for the viewing pleasure of their 'beau du jour'.

I suppose I' m just old-fashioned. I can't see how permanently disfiguring one's body can be seen to be attractive. The purpose of the tatoo is still the same, however. To make a declaration to the viewing world. It used to be that a person got a tatoo to be considered a 'rebel', someone outside of mainstream culture. Nowadays, it's the in thing to do. In the past, people got tatooed to show that they were different, and often times to show that they cared little for the opinions of the general public. Now, it seems like it's done for no other reason than to conform with peer pressure. It's an announcement that you are part of the group.

Does this phenomenon show a change in cultural thinking? In the Seventies, tatoos made a statement that you were independent, didn't need or care about society and valued individuality. In the Oughts, it seems like collectivism is being valued and prized, that fitting in means more than standing out. This seems to be born out by the direction that voters have taken in regards to their preferred government. The hive, or sheep mentality is in full effect.

Overall, I think I preferred the biker tats of the bygone era. At least with those guys, you knew where you stood. You stood behind them, and preferrably at a distance. Of course, nowadays, you still stand behind the tatooed. It's just, with tramp stamps, you stand a little closer.

Econ 101: Opportunity Cost

One of the principles of economics that confuse people to no end is actually fairly easy to understand. Opportunity cost is simply the idea that, if you use your resources to obtain something, you can't use those same resources to obtain something else.' It seems that the United States Congress, the people who actually hold this nation's purse strings, can't quite grasp the concept, either.

It's easy when dealing with numbers as large as the U.S. budget to assume that there's money for everything. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is what lead to the U.S. budget being as large as it is. And in the end, the amount of money is finite (supply), while the amount of wants(demand) is infinite. So we can't afford to buy everything after all. American politicians seem to think that they can give the majority of people something for nothing, simply by taxing the rich minority. That will only work for so long.

This makes it all the more important to choose prudently what we spend our money on. If we make 400 dollars a week and go out Friday night to blow $50 on booze and another $100 on a hooker, one could make the argument that we were being less than responsible with our money. But our rent is only $100 a week so we've still got some money left over for unimportant things like lunch. And at least it was our money with which we were being irresponsible.

Now let's say we, as the U.S. government, make 6 trillion dollars a year. That is, we took money from all our citizens (only the ones who make more than a certain amount, anyway) for no reason other than we are the U.S. government. Now, we've got this 6 trillion dollars sitting in our lap, and every now and then we dump it on the floor and roll around in it, and it comes time to spend it. There's a knock at the door. We get up to answer it and lo and behold it's Jim Anyman, saying that for only 30 million dollars he will perform a study to determine why prisoners don't want to be in jail. That seems like a sensible outlay of money to us (does it, really?) so we hand Jim 30 Million and tell him to report back to us when he figures out this Gordian Knot of a stumper.

That 30 million dollars was much lower, as a percentage of income. than the $150 a week we blew on booze and floozies. Does that make it a more responsible expenditure? At least for the $150 we got drunk and laid. Although, from a certain point of view, I guess we got f**ked by Jim Anyman, too.

If you're in the mood for a horror/thriller sometime, do yourself a favor. Get a copy of the U.S. Federal Budget for any of the last 10 years (or any of the last 40, for that matter) and take a look at what expenditures the Congress authorizes. Don't look at the costs as a percentage of the overall budget. Look at it as, how much space would that much money take up if I had it in $100 bills.

This country was once known as the 'Land of Opportunity'. I suppose it still is. After all, Jim Anyman got 30 million dollars for his 'study'. And there's thousands of Anymans making money off the Federal Government. Just remember, it's our money they're spending, and we're footing the bill with opportunity cost.

Republicans vs. Democrats

It's been clear for years that both political parties have been moving away from the center and attempting to cater to their more extreme bases. The Democrats seem to be unsatisfied with anything less than socialism and the Republicans seem sure that if you don't believe in God and support G.W. Bush then you don't deserve to live in this country. These are the politics we've been used to for at least a decade.

But recently it's been even more skewed than usual. With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the majority of voting Americans spoke and spoke loudly. The trouble is, I'm not sure they know what they're saying.

President Obama's campaign slogan of 'Yes We Can' doesn't actually mean much. And it doesn't seem to address the much more important question, "Should we?". In fact, the slogan 'Yes We Can' along with 'Hope' seems to me a ploy that teeball coaches use to encourage their 6 year old players. It seems that President Obama really did want to try and bring people together with a unifying theme to his candidacy. At the very least, Obama wanted to push his popularity up to the point where he had plenty of political 'capital' to spend. But to spout platitudes such as these just seems cheap. But hey, people bought it by the millions. P.T. Barnum was right.

Surely Obama knew that as long as he didn't screw anything up that he would be elected president. The writing was on the wall at the end of the Bush presidency. McCain was 4 years too late (at least). The Democrats had won handily in the Congressional elections of 2006, clear sign that the people wanted a party change. The media certainly thought Obama would win. They did everything in their power to all but ensure it. By the tone of their voice, the viewpoint of their stories and the selected coverage, much of the media seemed to be the biggest cheerleaders.

And the Republicans had to have known there was practically no way they were going to win. Naturally, they used what little ammo Obama gave them, such as the famous Preacher speech, but there really wasn't that much there for them to use. Obama had been in the political field for so short a period of time that he hadn't accumulated many skeletons in the closet.

But when the elections were over and Obama sworn in, not too much changed. Our budget deficit nearly tripled, and we threw billions (trillions, eventually) at companies that should have been allowed to fail, but a lot of that happened under Bush's watch. Obama simply raised the stakes.

We're still in Iraq, and will be for the forseeable future. Yes, there's a timeline now, but there was a timeline before, it simply wasn't made public. So not much of a change there. We are putting more troops into Afghanistan, though. I see that as a good thing.

We're still not doing anything about North Korea except stamping our feet on the ground and telling them that they just aren't playing nice. So I don't see too many things that have changed.

But we might see a lot of changes, and soon. Arlen Specter's flip to the Democrat ticket is plainly a move to save his political life. He realized that there was no way he would win next year in the Republican primary, so he decided to switch parties. Of course, I've said Specter was a Democrat for years. The most amazing thing regarding this whole broohah is this: With Specter giving the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, and the Minnesota race still in the courts, do you know who could give the Democratic Party a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? Al Franken, that's who.

Now, I'm sure Al's a nice guy. I liked his writing when he was with Saturday Night Live. But do we really want him being the decider as to what passes through the senate? We'll end up with lutefisk on every plate.

With a filibuster-proof Senate, Obama may decide it's time to make Hillary happy and push through socialized medicine. Talk about a lot of people out of jobs. Oh, and taxes will go up, but don't worry, it'll just be on the top 20% income earners. Hmm, I wonder if they'll keep their money in this country when that happens...

In short, it seems that Republicans and Democrats are the same. Except when they're different. I have just one question for all: What the hell are the Libertarians doing? Get off your asses, people!

First things first...An Intro

Welcome to my new space. Here I try to make some sense out of the nonsense that passes for news these days. We will discuss hot topics, current events, politics, religion and just about everything else that pisses people off when you don't agree with them.

We'll be open to suggestions here, too. So if you have a special hot-button issue that is really bugging you, bring it up here and we'll cover it in the next daily blog. After all, the customer is always right, most of the time.

One of the little 'extras' that you'll get with my blog is fancy artwork. I'm a bit of a photographer hack, so from time to time I'll intersperse my diatribes with my own pictures. Why? Because I can. After all, it is my blog.

And off we go! I will try and update this every day, and all you have to do to find out what we're talking about today is move on to the next post...