Resignations

 

We’re a Couple of Misfits

Why am I such a misfit?
I am not just a nit wit!
They can't fire me.
I quit!
Seems I don't fit in

Is quitting an admission of guilt?

The recent resignation by Jeff Zucker of CNN has certainly garnered a lot of comments.  However the comments may provide a better idea as to whether that commenter is playing a User Optimal strategy, which is the best strategy for the player, or a System Optimal strategy, which is the best strategy for society.  Just as a verdict of not guilty does NOT mean the plaintiff is innocent, https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2021/10/words-you-thinkthat-i-dont-even-mean.html, quitting is NOT an admission of guilt.   Society is interested in the truth, whether the accused is innocent or guilty.  The accused may only be interested in retaining his job.

If you follow a User Optimal strategy, you should Fight every accusation, whether you are Innocent or Guilty.  Even if that accusation is true and you are Guilty; claim “whataboutism” for your competitors (they did something almost as bad!); question the motives of those making the accusation (witch hunt!); or blame the ones who provided proof of your guilt (snitches get stitches).

If you follow a System Optimal strategy, you may Quit, even if you are Innocent.  Society has to devote Resources if you Fight.  If you Quit that means that society has to devote No Resources.  If you value society, and the cost to society is greater than your value of Retaining Your Job, you may Quit even if you are Innocent.

The problem is that there is a difference between Innocent and Not Guilty.  Society can NOT find you Innocent.  Society can find you Not Guilty.

The table of gameplay is is

Accused	Innocence or Guilt	Evidence	Society	Societal Finding	User Outcome
Fight	Innocent	No Evidence	Use Resources	Not Guilty	Retain Job
Fight	Innocent	Evidence	Use Resources	Not Guilty	Retain Job
Fight	Guilty	No Evidence	Use Resources	Not Guilty	Retain Job
Fight	Guilty	Evidence	Use Resources	Guilty	Lose Job
Quit	Innocent	No Evidence	Use No Resources	None	Lose Job
Quit	Innocent	Evidence	Use No Resources	None	Lose Job
Quit	Guilty	No Evidence	Use No Resources	None	Lose Job
Quit	Guilty	Evidence	Use No Resources	None	Lose Job

 

There are different standards for the court of public opinion, a civil court, or a criminal court.  There can be a finding of Guilty in the court of public opinion and in a civil court, and a finding of Not Guilty in a criminal court (remember O. J. Simpson?) There are three ways to retain your job if the accused plays Fight, which is his User Optimal strategy.  There is a guarantee that Society will Use No Resources if the User plays Quit which is his System Optimal strategy.

If you place a value on the resources of society, then it is possible to Quit and Lose Your Job even if you are Innocent.  If you place no value on the resources of society (which by definition  makes you a hater of society, a sociopath) then you can Fight to Retain Your Job, even when you are Guilty. 

If you are not only a User Optimist, but are also immoral, you can act as if a finding of Not Guilty is a finding of Innocence; a finding of Guilty does not mean that you Lose Your Job; and that Quitting means a finding of Guilt.

Advertising

 

Women Be Wise

Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don't advertise your man
Don't sit around gossiping, explaining what your good man really can do
Some women nowadays, Lord they ain't no good
They will laugh in your face, Then try to steal your man from you
Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don't advertise your man.

But there IS a time to advertise.

Emerson said “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door”.  I am loathe to disagree with the sage of Concord,  but if the world does not know that you have built a better mousetrap, then it will NOT beat a path to your door.  Building a better mousetrap, and marketing/ advertising  that mousetrap are different things. 

Leibniz developed Calculus contemporaneously with Newton. Alfred Wallace developed the Theory of Evolution contemporaneously with Charles Darwin.  Watson and Crick get the credit for developing the Double Helix for DNA, but they did not do it alone. Rosalind Franklin probably deserves a great deal of the credit.  In each case, the ones that we know just had better advertising.  Advertising something you want to keep secret, not a good idea.  Advertising something that is not a secret, probably a good idea.

Capitalism

 

The Last Time I Saw Paris

The last time I saw Paris, her heart  was warm and gay,
No matter how they change her, I'll remember her that way.
I'll think of happy hours, and people who shared them
Old women, selling flowers, in markets at dawn

Is capitalism the number of markets?

"When we toss out these big words, capitalism, socialism, they get ... sensationalized, and people translate them into meaning things that perhaps they don't mean," she told Yahoo Finance's editor-in-chief, Andy Serwer. "So to me, capitalism, at its core, what we're talking about when we talk about that is the absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental, and social cost.”  February 5th, 2020

This quote was attributed to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  I would like to suggest that the pursuit of profit is due more to the owners of capital seeking  a User Optimal solution as opposed to  seeking a System Optimal solution.  Profit is just a measurement in that User Optimal solution.   I am making a distinction between free markets and capitalism.  The two are often combined as in free market capitalism, but I would like to suggest that they are really separate and distinct.  Free market refers to many markets as opposed to a single market.  If a transaction can not take place in one market, then the buyer and seller are free to seek another market.  Capitalism, IMHO, is not how many markets there are, but who owns the profit from the production equation.

The seller’s production equation has traditionally been expressed as a function of capital and labor.  To be more precise, it is a function of capital, priced input materials, unpriced input materials, and the labor need to apply the capital to those input materials.  The amount of labor required is a function of the amount of output to be sold.  If less output is to be sold, then less input material is required and less labor is required.  Less capital is required too, but that is why there is a stock market so that a producer’s capital can be liquid.  But because there is a stock market that means that rather than lowering the amount of capital, it may be advantageous to the owners of capital to disproportionately lower the cost of inputs and labor as a way to seek their User Optimal solution. 

The problem with this is that the buyers are laborers and other producers.  Maybe not of that producer’s product but of other products.  If the wages paid for labor, or the prices paid for inputs, are reduced, then the buyer's demand equation will not be constant but will also be reduced.

The amount of priced inputs can be unfairly reduced if the producer is approaching a buyer’s monopoly, a monopsony. 

Unpriced inputs,  common goods provided by society, such as like fresh air, clean water, etc. can be consumed at a price without regard to their value with the false assumption that they are not only unpriced but unlimited.

If the return on investment of capital is low, a producer can decide to increase market share, at the expense of competitors, to maximize his share of the “profits” for that product.

Capitalism, socialism, etc., is who is the owner of the components of production as well as the as the outputs of production.  Free markets for buyers and sellers are NOT capitalism.  You can have free markets and ownership of some capital and/or products by society, i.e. socialism, and still have a free market as anyone in Scandinavia would be happy to attest. 

Free markets require truth in the transactions between buyers and sellers.  In the US we have regulated free markets because too often one party is NOT truthful.  A single market requires that the market is perfect. If that market is operated by humans, the temptation is that they will operate it for their own advantage, and not perfection. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal”.  “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

Inflation III

 

War

War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing, listen to me!

Inflation, huh, good God, What is it good for?

Persistent long-term inflation has been accepted as a fact of life.  But persistent long-term inflation is NOT a fact of life and accepting it does have consequences

Long-term inflation is NOT the inflation from the previous year.  In 1979, when I took out a 30-year mortgage to buy a house, the year-to-year inflation was 11.3% and the fixed interest rate of the mortgage reflected this.  By 1986 the annual inflation had dropped to 1.9% and I paid the costs to refinance my mortgage at the lower, fixed rate which was then being offered.  I could have refinanced to an Adjustable-Rate Mortgage, but then my monthly payments would not be fixed, but could increase if the Prime Rate offered by the Federal Reserve Bank also increased.  If the Prime Rate was high enough, then my monthly mortgage payment could exceed my monthly budget and I could lose my home.  My condolences to everyone who lost their home to subprime mortgages in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Lenders have tried to offer financial products, such as Balloon or Adjustable-Rate Mortgages, such that they are repaid in the dollars when the loan originated.  The problem is that what is the maximum payment that the borrower can afford when interest rates are low, or before the balloon payment is due, may not be affordable in the future.

There is a similar problem when monetary amounts are written into  the law.  A $7.25 per hour Minimum Wage might have been reasonable in 2009, but it is not so reasonable in 2022.  That is why so many statutory values now have Cost Of Living Adjustments (e.g. Social Security, Tax Brackets, etc.)  But there are still remain many statutory values that are only still appropriate if long term inflation is closer to 0%.

High long-term inflation rates, that are mistakenly considered to be the annual inflation rate,  benefit lenders, not intentionally but it does.  It benefits those who pay fines or amounts specified in law.  It does not benefit borrowers or the society that has agreed to the payments specified by law.  Reducing long term inflation and paying less attention to annual inflation would benefit everyone.

Inflation II

 

One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)

I got the routine, put another nickel in the machine
Feelin' so bad, can't you make the music easy and sad
I could tell you a lot, but you've got to be true to your code
Make it one for my baby and one more for the road

A nickel?  Really? Really?

The Seventh Amendment to the US Constitution, one of the Bill of Rights, reads:

“In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

Good luck trying to find a lawyer that is interested in a $20 court case. The filing fees are probably greater than $20!  But if those $20 are considered to be in US Dollars, USD, in the year the Constitution was enacted, that $20 in 1789 is worth $633.64 today.  The value of the dollar varies from year to year. That is what inflation and deflation is all about.  However in the long term before 1944, the value of money did not change very much.  Thus a law setting a penalty, a benefit, or mentioning any monetary value, assumed it would not appreciably change over time.  However beginning in 1944 with the Bretton Woods agreement, the long term change in money was inflationary but modest.  Beginning in 1971 with the Nixon Shock, the change in the long term value of money became inflationary and dramatic.

Any monetary value entered in law should note the amount is in the current year dollars.  Then if the value of money is changed, that value will also change.  If this had been the case in 2009, when the minimum wage was last enacted, the specified wage of $7.50/hr. in 2009 USD, it would be $9.75/hr. in 2020 USD. 

When Johnny Mercer wrote One for My Baby (and One More For The Road) in 1943, his nickel is now worth $0.81. If you could find a jukebox today, it wouldn’t cost a 2022 nickel in the machine to play a song.

Republicans II

 

We're Following the Leader

Following the leader, the leader, the leader
We're following the leader
Wherever he may go

If you are following the leader,
then you better also be sure he is going where you want to go.

Under the US Constitution there is a single representative per district voting system.  This system will ordinarily result in two parties according to Duverger’s Law.  These parties vie to elect representatives to lead the Nation, i.e. the tribe.  An individual can place his own interests first and not have any interest in advancing the tribe. ( “I like people who weren't captured” Donald Trump speaking of John McCain).  An individual can choose the best interests of the tribe but exclude other individuals from his definition of the tribe.  (America is a White Christian Nation, only if you exclude religions other than Christianity, and  races other than White from America. And as JFK can attest, Christian may not mean Catholic).  An individual can believe things that are not factual ( The Republican nominee in 1884, James G. Blaine, who, despite a reputation for corruption, had “very devoted followers within the party who would not believe any of the charges brought against him,” as  Mark Twain scholar Kay Moser puts it.)

If there are only two parties seeking to lead the Nation, and some individuals place their own interests above the Nation, choose to exclude individuals from the Nation, and seek to believe falsehoods, then they must join one of those two parties. The tragedy of today’s Republican Party is that in order to represent the Nation, they have embraced those who have no interest in the well-being of the Nation, seek to exclude others from the Nation, and/or chose to embrace falsehoods.  If Republicans are willing to embrace those individuals in order to numerically represent the Nation, then they do not deserve to lead the Nation.

Whoopi

 

Rocky Racoon

Her name was Magill and she called herself Lil
And everyone knew her as Nancy

What something is, not what you call it, is what is important.

On the Monday January 31, 2020 edition of the ABC show the View, Whoopi Goldberg ignited controversy when she characterized the Nazi Holocaust as “white on white violence” and characterized the banning of the Book Maus as not racism.  Technically she is correct, but I think that she would agree that both the Holocaust and lynching were genocide. Both are also casteism at its worst, even if one is religious casteism and the other is racial casteism.

Isabel Wilkerson in her book Caste, noted that the Nazis copied many of their laws from the Jim Crow South. Laws to discriminate on the basis of race are not very different than laws to discriminate on the basis of religion.  Classifying one as racist and one as religious discrimination is not as useful as calling both casteism.  Casteism includes all forms of discrimination: on race, sex, religion, gender orientation, language, nationality, immigration status, etc.  Caste is the ancient Hindu System of classes where the various Castes (classes) each shared the same race, the same nationality, the same religion, the same language, etc.  Caste was based only on the occupation of one’s parents, Caste is hereditary, and there is an inability to move between castes.

Discrimination is the issue, not on the basis for the discrimination.  Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg) and Joe (Hymie) Simon created Captain America who battled Nazism in the comics.  Jerry Siegel (Jerome Segalovich) and Joe Shuster, all children of Jewish immigrants, created Superman who battled both Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan.  Discrimination, as in Casteism, is not only against Truth and Justice but most importantly against the American Way.  The controversy should be discrimination, not what we call it.  A rose by any name would smell as sweet.  Garbage by any name would smell as rotten.