You Can't Not Spend Your Way Out of Recession

I just came across a famous quote about how economic policy should work, a famous attack against the Keynesian system that is generally accepted as the way governments should deal with recession:

"You can't spend your way out of recession"

Although I understand the sentiment at a gut level (if your personal earnings went down, you're best response is probably to tighten your belt some), I genuinely don't understand the economic concept here. A recession is a period of time in which the economy shrinks, in which GDP goes down. GDP equals the amount of stuff produced in the country that somebody bought. Thus GDP is directly correlated with buying, which is really the same thing as spending. To quote Wikipedia, "In contemporary economies, most things produced are produced for sale, and sold. Therefore, measuring the total expenditure of money used to buy things is a way of measuring production." It's not like the productive capability isn't there - remember that since the economy is shrinking, it used to be bigger, proving that we have the productive ability on hand - so what's lacking is a willingness to spend. So the only way to get out of a recession is to spend, by definition, if only to get the wheels of production rolling again and to get the public to spend as well. Spending is a civic virtue, thanks to economics; we might as well accept that. You can't not spend your way out of recession. Which raises the question: why are so many politicians and members of the general public against recession expenditure increases when you can deduce that they are a good thing just from a few definitions and a little logic?

The Best Counter-Argument Yet

http://www.butimleaving.com/2009/10/atheist-douchebags.html

This is by far the best counter-argument to my views yet. I currently have no good response to it whatsoever, but I can't just ignore it since clearly I'm one of these "Atheist Douchebags" he talks about. However, before I start discussing this in earnest, please, for the love of the God that doesn't exist, read the damn article, and don't think I'm surrendering my position to a theistic viewpoint. God that would be terrible.

Anyways, the article makes a damn good point, and that is that I'm not helping the atheist/rationalist agenda with my blog as it is pure preaching to the choir and fuel for the theistic extremists. I am compelled to agree with him. Am I helping the rationalist agenda with this? Hell no! Of course not. I'm doing this purely to entertain other rational atheists, especially those with an extremist bent like myself. However, I hope that I am making up for this little guilty pleasure of mine with my personal interactions. After all, I live in America, a heavily Christian country. 2 out of 3 of my roommates next year are very Christian. My best friend is a Christian. I discuss religion openly and logically, and even though I do insult religious ideas on a regular basis, I feel like I'm at least respectful of the people themselves, if not the beliefs. A terrible atheist (I know several) is worse than a reasonable Christian (I know many), although better by far than a terrible Christian (the whole damn religious right).

In any case, if you read some of my posts, such as "My Offer", I hope I convey the fact that I am okay with reasonable religious people, i.e. those religious people who DON'T want to impose their religious values on the American people and for whom religion is personal. I still hate evangelists - it's indescribable how much damage they do to humanity. But scientific, rational people with a few irrational beliefs (like, again, my economist best friend) aren't harmful in the least - at least until he betrays me, as an evangelist once hilariously predicted.

In any case, I still plan to be angry. It's my thing, really, and I'm much better at anger (reasoned anger - using reason as a tool to express exactly why I'm so damn angry at [insert irrational belief here]) than I am at non-anger (even reasoned non-anger). I'm an entertainer (or try to be), not a crusader. So yes, I'll still blast theism and other crazy beliefs. Yes, I'll still work myself into a tantrum so that I'll be at risk of bursting a blood vessel. But I won't pretend I'm really helping so much. That, again, is for later. And maybe, just maybe, one day I'll win a convert, like I came so close to during high school. And then Hell will freeze over, and I'll ride away on my winged unicorn leaving a trail of fairy dust in my wake.

The AnthEmmys

If there's one form of music that I truly respect, it's the national anthem. All the patriotic pride and national power you can muster stuffed into one rousing tune. Which is why it totally sucks balls when we have preschoolers and pop stars singing our anthem. I feel no patriotic pride when I hear our anthem before baseball games or whatever with a pop star belting out the lines - where's the sense of unity you get with a choir, the sense of strength you get with a military choir? For crying out loud, I want to feel proud of our country, and Beyonce just doesn't make me feel like that (I feel something different when I see and hear Beyonce, but let's not get into the details of that). And, worst of all, although our anthem isn't bad per se, it's far and away not the best, so I figured I was bored enough to write a post detailing the all-time winners for anthems in various categories:

Category 1: Music:

The criteria for this are simple: does the music inspire pride in the members of that country and envy in outsiders? Does it convey a message of monolithic strength and unity? When I hear it, do I wish that I was a citizen of that country?

The Nominees are:

Germany - the iconic tune sung to "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles / Uber Alles in Der Welt" is inspiring enough for me to forget that that was the music under which my people were exterminated, and that is a huge damn feat for that music. Damn awesome tune.

South Korea - a rousing tune set atop a strong baseline; the result is a feeling of hope atop a basis of strength.

Russia - the tune that won WWII. Replaced the kumbaya-style Internationale with a strong dose of pure Russian manhood. Goes well with vodka.

Serbia - another song of slavic power. A massive thunk-thunk-thunk baseline to let you know that you're just inevitably going to be squashed like a bug, and that's it.

Honorable Mentions:

Israel - a stirring tune but too sad to achieve the 'bastion of strength' feeling you get from the above anthems.

Poland - the same as Israel, only in the opposite direction; while Israel's anthem was slightly too mournful to make the list, Poland's is too upbeat, and thus also misses the solemn "we will crush you" strength of the nominees.

North Korea - although a song fit for their "Dear Leader", it's too cookie-cutter and boring after the first few stanzas to stand up to the nominees.

The Internationale - amazing, but was replaced by something even better (see above), so it's unable to make the list.

And the winner is... (highlight next line to see answer)

RUSSIA. A tune deliberately composed to win a war, and does the job admirably. Bonus points especially for being sung by the manliest musical group ever to exist, the Red Army Choir, enough to eke out a victory over the still-fucking-amazing German anthem.

Category 2: Lyrics:

The criteria for this are simple too: do the lyrics motivate me to go out and crush some enemies of the state? Are they filled with a blood-curdling pride? If so, they win.

And the nominees are:

France - Come on, seriously? "They came and slit the throats of our female companions, so we'll water our fields with their fucking blood!" Fucking awesome. Don't mess with the hookers of the French, they'll kill you.

Poland - "Bonaparte showed us how to be victorious... March, March, Dabrowski, we're going to conquer all of Europe! We're going to fucking march all the way to Italy!" I've never seen a country declare in their lyrics that they're going to subjugate all their neighbors, less a country whose history is actually one of being dominated by everyone around them, but hell, what a spirit there.

USA - Summary: "You blew the hell out of our fort, but we didn't give up and you lost the war, so suck it Britain!" That's badass.

Soviet Union - Starts badass and gets better from there: "Unbreakable union of freeborn republics / great Russia has welded forever" and goes on to describe how they kicked the ever-living shit out of the Nazis.

Honorable Mentions:

California Uber Alles - Not really an anthem, but badass all the same: "Hippies won't come back you say / Mellow out or YOU WILL PAY! / Mellow out or YOU WILL PAY! / California, Uber Alles! / California Uber Alles!"

Borat's Kazakh Anthem: "Kazakhstan is the greatest / country in the world / all other countries / are run by little girls". The more shameless insults thrown at other countries, the better, and Borat understood this damn well.

And the winner is (highlight next line for answer)...

FRANCE. Come on, they explicitly declare that they'll water the fields with the blood of their enemies, and their chorus is a call to arms. No way anyone can top that.

Category 3: All-around:

Criteria: the best all-around anthem.

The nominees are... everyone nominated above.

And the winner is (if you don't know how to view it this time around, you're hopeless)...

SOVIET UNION. A badass tune with badass words from a badass country sung by a badass choir makes this anthem the best anthem ever.

Philosophical Fiction: why it must be either boring or bullshit

As you can tell from my "Story Idea" posts, I really want to be able to write good fiction. Not just entertaining fiction (although that already would be quite an achievement), but fiction that promotes my ideas - I'm taking more cues from Ayn Rand, which, although probably not that great a source for inspiration, at least means my methods will be tried and true; her most famous book espousing her (nutty) ideas and the one that shot her into the public consciousness was a novel: Atlas Shrugged.

However, this presents me with a problem. Most of my ideas are heavily anti-instinctual (since I see no need to fight for that which is already instinctual - I believe, and state, that people should maximize their utility functions, but I see very little need to press the point given that everybody does that anyways), and technologically centered. No aesthetic whatsoever enters into it. I fight to defy "one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic", while the human psyche affirms it. And that is the problem. Good fiction appeals to the human instinct; my philosophy appeals to logic. The two seem very difficult to reconcile. Let me illustrate with an example:

A while back I had an idea for a story (tentatively called 'Honor'). The plot concerned a young, enterprising sergeant in the SS at the beginning of the Holocaust who is repulsed by the ghettoes and decides to covertly help the victims. However, after he is nearly caught helping four people escape and two days later learns that the four were found and killed, he decides that to really help, he needs to be more than a sergeant. He then proceeds to work hard and try to please his superiors in order to quickly advance to such a rank that he can save as many people as he wants. He moves up the ranks through the years to become the second-in-command at a concentration camp by late 1943, with a reputation for grim efficiency thanks to his tireless efforts to secure his promotions. He decides that by far the greatest good he could do could only be done as a commandant of a camp, and continues to work alongside Nazi hard-liners in an attempt to achieve that rank. However, he never attains such a rank, is captured in a surprise Russian advance, and ends up hanged at Nuremberg since the only evidence as to his real views is the fact that he was a 'grimly efficient' second-in-command.

The only problem with this story is that I abhor the implied moral, which is 'changing a bad system from within is a bad idea' and that 'despite the good intent of your motives, working with the Nazis in order to eventually help victims is wrong', neither of which is true. He could have succeeded, and if he had, many more people would be alive. In effect, given the correctness of his assumptions, his decision was a worthy gamble. I could change the story to make him succeed, but I feel this lowers the emotional punch of the plot and turns the story into something very banal. I feel that I will have a hard time reconciling 'effective plot' with 'morals I wish to convey', which is why I probably won't even attempt to write this story (as opposed to 'Immortal', which I described in an earlier post) let alone actually succeed in writing it. And that's why I have such a problem with my stories - because good storytelling and rational morals mix like oil and water.

The Angry Hypocrite Despises his own Tribal Instincts

If you're familiar with my philosophy (and who isn't, really, given the world-renowned renaissance figure of towering influence that I am, with almost four followers on blogspot, and a couple dozen others who are nervously aware of the existence of this thing), you'll know that if there's one thing in the world I despise, it's the irrational instincts that happen to pervade mankind. Those instincts, at least for the social judgment aspects, have a deep root: tribalism. Tribalism was an attitude born from the days when you and your kin stuck close and fought together over scarce resources. Any outsiders were treated with suspicion at best and outright hostility at worst. However, even as civilizations began to develop and the logical rationale faded away, the tribalist attitude persisted.

Tribalism not only causes rifts on its own; it often exacerbates existing conflicts (or the converse, where other factors exacerbate tribal conflicts). Religions very often rise and fall along tribal lines, with the Arabs fighting to convert the pagan Berbers, the European Christians crusading against the Muslim Turks and Arabs, and so on. Even today, for example in Sudan (Muslim 'Arabs' fighting against Christian 'Blacks') and Nigeria, and the continuing ethnic distinction drawn between the Jews and other white races (far more culturally visible than the distinction between, say, the French and the Germans), religion and tribal animosities go hand-in-hand. In the end, it simply undermines rational thinking and promotes prejudices, which is bad for progress (I consider progress the only true good).

There are probably a few people who are naive enough to think that I succeed in my efforts to practice what I preach (the very existence of the blog actually attests that I don't; logically, if I harbor extreme opinions, I should try to keep them mostly to myself because of the risk of social stigma). As I already stated, this is unfortunately untrue. Every time the Olympics come up, I try to remind myself that according to logic, I ought to root for those countries that most closely resemble my values. And I partially succeed; for example, I always root for the Swedes and the Swiss during the Winter Olympics, mostly because I want prestige to go to a country whose government is very similar to the style of liberal democracy I support. However, the main problems with my logic appear when the Summer Olympics come around; I root for China, on the basis of half my bloodline and Israel on the basis of the other half. I know that the Chinese government is not exactly a paragon of freedom and democratic values; I know that the Israeli government, particularly those that have been unfortunate enough to be headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, are not exactly kumbaya-singing peace-lovingly rational and that they infuriatingly (given that I value Israel's security out of a tribalist sympathy for Israel) provoke the Palestinians and other Arab groups when there is a chance for peace. But I root for them anyway. And these sentiments are real, not just confined to the sports arena.

I'm currently trying to think how this tribalist problem can be countered. Unfortunately, it seems simply too deep-rooted to effectively combat. Hopefully one day we'll realize the importance of a united sentient front to spread life and thinking as far as we can. Until then, we'll be mired in that same old ugly thought: as the War Nerd so aptly put it, "My tribe YAY, your tribe BOO". What an infantile creed that is.

Open Mindedness, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the F-Bomb

Open-mindedness and tolerance is something of a creed where I come from, a major feature of my high school, where once every couple of weeks we were herded into an auditorium for a presentation from culture so-and-so so that we could appreciate their culture and respect them and all the bullshit that you hear from kid's shows that we're all just one big happy family. We were 'treated' to, among other things, a didgeridoo performance (the novelty wore off rather quickly), Irish folk dancing, religious plays, a propaganda piece about immigration (look at these charming Mexican people and the ignorant white people who want to keep them poor! - yes, showing the nutjobs that inevitably crop up on one side of a political debate counts as argument, I'm sure YOUR side has no nutcases) that actually ended with a song called "Yes We Can" that was (unsurprisingly) an outright campaign ad for Obama, and a particularly enlightening session where we were informed that there are ACTUAL CITIES (*gasp*) in Africa. This all added up to maybe 20 extra hours of sleep for me per year.

However, despite our almost cock-sucking respect for other cultures, we weren't open-minded in the least. I can virtually guarantee, with 99% certainty, that a colloquium on how illegal immigration could hurt the US would be booed out in less time than it takes to yell "Viva La Revolution!" while waving a Zapatista flag. On the political scale we were collectively somewhere between Vladimir Lenin and Mikhail Bakunin. A donor who donated money for an American flag on campus was roundly rejected by a school-wide vote (I, totally apathetic, abstained for reasons of laziness) because of our hatred for George W. Bush (I hate him too, but the flag ain't his flag) and American neo-imperialism that was destroying all the cultures we so loved. So I decided to do what few in my school seemed like they could: I decided to become open-minded.

But what exactly is open-minded? In "How to Be Open-Minded" on eHow, they give the following recommendation:

Helpful words and phrases: "That could be true"; "That makes sense"; "Looks like you're really strong in your beliefs"; "Oh,"; "Mmm-hmm"; "So do you believe..?"; "I can see where you're coming from"; "Well, that's a good point."

Wow, these phrases sure don't seem like they could be insincere. "Looks like you're really strong in your beliefs *cough* you fucking retard *cough*" Also, open-mindedness seems to be, in the mind of the author of this particular gem, being too much of an ass-licking dipshit to challenge or debate anyone's beliefs on the grounds that 'they deserve respect'.

wikiHow has this to say on the subject:

While waiting (in line at the bank, a coffee shop, a restaurant, the grocery store, or waiting for someone to pick you up, or a show on TV to start), ponder things, calculate, memorize. You can, for example, memorize digits of Pi (you can get to 50 in a matter of hours, 200 in a matter of weeks), try to remember all of your high school teachers' names, memorize Prime Numbers, get fast at reciting the alphabet backwards, the Greek alphabet (forwards and backwards), remember how many movies Tom Cruise has been in, try Doubling numbers, start at 1, to 2, to 4, to 8, till you get to larger numbers than you can handle.

Yes, open-mindedness apparently has some magic correlation to how many boring lists you're willing to memorize or your tolerance for performing amazingly repetitive tasks, usually of the sort that cognitively-challenged math-genius-wannabes and MathCounts competitors (they're the same damn thing) do 'for fun'. wikiHow also recommends that you:

Learn about different people and lifestyles. A great gateway into this is Wikipedia, where you can read articles on a wide variety of practices, such as Swinging, Wicca, Christianity, the Green Party, Conservatism, Communism, Anarchism, Sunnis, Discordianism, Tutsis, and the Yakuza. Consider how many members they have worldwide. Volunteer with an organization that works with a community of people you are unfamiliar with.

All I can say about this recommendation is, hell yes, I'm volunteering with the Yakuza.

And another pearl of wisdom:

Walk backwards through your whole house. (But be extra careful not to trip over anything, or fall down the stairs)

Actually, on second thought, if you take this piece of advice, feel free to fall down the stairs.

And finally,

Attend churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, trade union meetings, places of worship and meditation that you never have. Read about and learn how to recognize cults or cult-like behavior and avoid them!

Yes, it is open-minded to 'respect' various popular religions but to treat unpopular ones ('cults') with disdain and to avoid them like the plague. And anyway, aren't 'worship' and 'meditation' cult-like behavior by definition? wikiHow seems to be in the business of training robots rather than cultivating open-mindedness.

However, wikiHow's entries are merely puzzling; eHow's entry is my real target because this is what open-mindedness seems to be in the popular consciousness: being too spineless to debate out of fear of offending, regardless of your real feelings on the subject. My definition of open-mindedness doesn't come out of the seeming desire of the writer of the eHow recommendation to have every cock in the world in his mouth; it comes out of my experiences with my high-school colloquia, those sermons on 'open-mindedness' intent on showing how happy poor people are when they live under the rule of mystics (as put by a friend of mine when I was discussing with him the topic of my last post) and yet failed to consider real political movements within this country as worthy of 'respect', let alone discussion. The point of real open-mindedness is to be willing to consider logically any idea that comes before me. If logically it is unsound, I am then free to slander it to my heart's content. I took up this as my goal.

This is how I learned to be a real person again, how to disagree and disagree strongly with things, to ridicule and to blaspheme. I had a debate about the death penalty with another student at my school, where I argued that the death sentence is occasionally fully justified. She started off her argument with "it is more punishment to imprison them for life, isn't it?" hoping, I guess, to shut me up since obviously support for the death penalty stems out of a love for cruel punishment. I responded that cruelty wasn't the point, the point is deterrence (and I argue that life imprisonment and death are roughly equal in deterrence since it is impossible to imagine either) and removal of the offenders from any position from which they could harm society again. Her response: "But aren't we stooping to their level then?". First of all, no, what the fuck are you talking about, if someone steals something from you and you take it back, you're not stooping to their level, that should be obvious. Secondly, and more importantly, her argument is that the death penalty is wrong because it is not cruel enough and it is too cruel. This is a perfect example of what close-minded means: you cling to your precious opinions without examining them first, repeating flawed and self-contradictory arguments in a feeble attempt to shield them (by the way, I've heard many good arguments against the death penalty, just not from this person; the best I know of is that death offers no chance of correction if the verdict is erroneous). Phony, ass-kissing 'respect' for beliefs can only perpetuate this by encouraging people to consider their beliefs as inviolable, immune from argument, not answerable to the demands of reality. Arguing, blaspheming, ridiculing people's beliefs - that is what forces them to reconsider (unless, of course, they're idiotic assholes) and forces them to create a logical backing for their ideas. You cannot ridicule effectively what has a sound logical framework. "Ha ha ha, you believe that 1+1=2" carries no weight behind it, but "Creationists must be right - after all, whenever we discover a fossil b that fits perfectly into a so-called evolutionary gap from a to c, we have only replaced that gap with two gaps" is a strong argument against the 'God of the Gaps' mentality of Intelligent Design proponents.

My quest was for open-mindedness, first in myself (I take this ideal to extremes, even to the point of acknowledging that from a purely logical standpoint racism is totally consistent, even though empirically it is racist, tribalist societies that are the most backwards and that empirically prosperity seems to depend on culture and ideals rather than race - I consider myself a culturalist in that I consider many cultures to be inherently inferior to others, as opposed to a racist), then in others. I consider myself, as I have already stated, to have succeeded in being open minded. Now I attempt to do the same to others. And this is why I relentlessly taunt the beliefs I consider horribly, destructively wrong; why I never tell anyone I respect their ideas when I don't; why I feel proud that I am able to overcome my inherited liberal knee-jerk reaction and freely insult anyone; why my favorite word starts with an 'f' and ends with an 'uck' (hint: it's not 'firetruck').

It's liberating to be open-minded, the real open-minded. Try it out, spread the word, and fuck with any illogical bastards who cross your path (only be careful that you yourself are logical, otherwise it might be them who fuck with you). Together we can start the foul-mouthed revolution in the name of progress and reason.

Indigenous Cultures

If one thing has the ability to make me puke, it is hearing first worlders (especially those that own Priuses) talk about the 'beauty' and 'heritage' of this or that indigenous culture and lamenting the fact that greedy corporations are destroying them. Look at their idyllic villages, say the concerned first worlders. Look at their traditions, their language. They have been this way for generations upon generations, living in spiritual harmony. And the greedy corporations the Wal-Machts of the world, they want to take all this away for their lebensraum of the same cookie-cutter strip malls and factories! The bastards!

I hate the assholes who talk like this, the same assholes who protest WTO meetings and hate factories, the hippies who sit in the oak trees in Berkeley for two years to save them while the Amazon is being deforested, who despise foie gras while millions of domestic animals are starving strays roaming the streets of third world slums, who bemoan environmental degradation and third-world poverty yet oppose the development of GMOs, the one ready-for-use technology that has the potential to cure both, who vote for Ralph Nader and leave George Bush in charge, who write blog posts blasting the use of technology, who believe in spiritual communion with nature as if nature gave half a fuck about them, who value animals above people. They make me sick, the fucking hypocrites.

The cultures they talk about can be found almost everywhere that isn't the first world, from Tibet to Africa to the Indian Reservations (no, the Reservations are NOT what I'd call first world) to South America. These cultures have much in common: their mentality is almost always overtly tribal, they have pronounced 'spiritual traditions' (which usually take the form of either constructing and then destroying elaborate works of art or slapping on paint and dancing around a fire to drums and chanting). They have 'traditional medicine', typically administered by shamans, and there is always, ALWAYS, a massive concentration of power into the hands of a few chieftains and shamans (or, in the case of the most vile of these cultures, in Tibet, the Lamas) who rule by the 'will of the gods' or simply by fiat. These societies are poor, ignorant, illiterate, backwards. Their first world 'supporters' consider them 'beautiful' and 'inspiring', yet most fail to actually live in those societies and forget, above all, that these societies are composed of people and do not primarily exist to 'inspire' unimaginative people in tye-dye shirts and hybrid sedans with 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers on the back bumper (given the scum that are the Lamas - one of the happiest days of my life was the day I read about how a boy who was believed to be the reincarnation of one of the highest Lamas quit the order saying "It was like living a lie" - who take the wealth of the region, pour it into temples and prayers while the people lack access to basic utilities, the closest thing to 'Free Tibet' I can think of is a Tibet where the Lamas are all dead and the temples have been turned into tools to vamp up the tourist industry - did you know that pre-PRC-controlled Tibet was a feudal kingdom where upwards of 95% of the population were downtrodden serfs, or that in 1997 the EU was "putting pressure on the government of Nepal to make slavery illegal"?) The fact that every time an evil capitalist factory opens in the third world there are more than enough people willing to work there is proof enough that the people there are willing to trade in their picturesque huts for something better, even if it is minimum-wage factory work. Certainly factory work is not a pretty thing, but neither is rural poverty, and every nation that is wealthy and enjoys a decent standard of living - EVERY SINGLE ONE - went through a period of nasty industrialization before becoming truly free and prosperous nations. The people who build the factories are helping economies and livelihoods worldwide; the people who protest them are, in essence, fighting to keep much of the world mired in poverty.

What globalization is, then, is the process by which the third world increasingly comes to resemble the first world. If you bemoan this for the sake of beautiful cultures, you exceed even the greediest CEO for sheer selfishness, putting your desire for an idealized rural existence above the desire of thousands of people (for every hippie, there are thousands of third worlders) for three square meals a day. The more of these primitive, tyrannical cultures fall along the way, to be replaced by nascent democracies of educated citizens (or even to be replaced by any industrial society), the better. Good riddance to the chieftains, the shamans, the Lamas. It is industrialization, not tribalism, that has cured smallpox, made cars, and sent men to the moon. It is progress, not tradition, science, not art, and reason, not spiritualism, that has brought about, for the first time, places where the majority lives above the poverty line. And yet the beneficiaries of this technology and development that made the Prius possible seek to prevent others from enjoying it. They, not the corporations, are the truly selfish ones.