Art, Current Affairs, Economy, Politics, Social Justice

Sacrifice

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A few bits on sacrifice from Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life, (Chapter 12) which I am reading now:

"… the master-slave dialectic implies that the mythic sacrifice of the
master embodies within itself the real sacrifice of the slave: the
master makes a spiritual sacrifice of his real power to the general
interest, while the slave makes a material sacrifice of his real life
to a power which he shares in appearance only."

and:

"The refusal of sacrifice is the refusal to be bartered. There is
nothing in the world of things, exchangeable for money or not, which
can be treated as equivalent to a human being. The individual is
irreducible. He is subject to change but not to exchange. Now, the most
superficial examination of movements for social reform shows that they
have never demanded anything more than a cleaning-up of exchange and
sacrifice, making it a point of honor to humanize inhumanity and make
it attractive. And every time slaves try to make their slavery more
bearable they are striking a blow for their masters."

This book and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War are the two books I am striving to finish of late.  Sigh… the Sicilian Expedition, about which I am reading, was yet another case of imperial overstretch.  Not like our current follies.

Government, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Social Justice

Noble lies or Glad we got that out in the open

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Irving Kristol, "godfather of neoconservatism", died on the 18th.  A friend blogged about this quote from Kristol:

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people.
There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate
for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and
truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion
that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a
modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."

Here he is expounding on the need for "Noble lies".  Glad we got that cleared up.  Nice to know the "grandfather of neoconservatism" thought it was ok for elites to lie to us lowly citizens.  Its for our own good after all.

Considering the last eight years of lies: Iraq has WMDs, we need to bail out the fat cats on wall street who save the economy, the planet isn't warming because of our emissions of CO2, housing prices will keep going up, the rich deserve their wealth, I'd rather some truth please.

The Reason magazine article, don't worry they are libertarians, that reports the previous quote has this little Kristol gem as well:

"If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the
majority of men cannot live without…let men believe in the lies of
religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of
sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among
themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the
philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded,
esoteric doctrine–for if the illusions of religion were to be
discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized,
with what uncontrollable anguish." (cite).

Seems to me that the Golden Rule of "do to others what you would like to be done to you" is pretty universal.  Whether given from a god, gods, or just something we developed in our long evolution, it doesn't much matter.  However, Kristol seems to believe "he who has the gold makes the rules".  How very Machiavellian of him.  I'll leave out the Dante reference.

Economy, Social Justice

You’ve been robbed!

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The Left Business Observer (LBO) just put out another useful issue.  There is great deal there about the state of the economy, the fact that most of the increase in consumption is due to the increase in health care costs, the attempts to fix health care, and whether the economy really is deleveraging from the debt boom we have been in for over twenty years.  Full with lots of good details while a quick read and pretty inexpensive to boot.

One thing I want to call out is one of the end articles on the rich.  Thanks to Doug Henwood of LBO, I am able to provide you with two of the graphs in the article.  By the way, the source data for the charts below comes from the IRS by way of economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.  See my previous post The rich continue to get richer to find a link back some of their papers.

The first graph I will share is the share of income received, I won't say earned, from the early 1900s to 2007 by those in the bottom 90%, top 10%, top 1%, and top 0.1%.  Remember that the figures for the top 10% include those of the top 1% and 0.1% and those of the top 1% include those in the top 0.1%.

Income_shares

The graph speaks for itself, but for the post World War 2 period until the late 1970s/early 1980s, income for the bottom 90% was about 2/3.  During Reagan, and later, the wealthiest 10% claimed a greater share of the income produced in the US, to the point that they receive about 50%.  The dip in the end of the series is the 2000 recession.  Clearly eight years of Clinton didn't hinder the trend of the rich getting more.  One other thing to call out is that much of the change in the income share of the top 10% is due to increases in the top 1%.  This will become obvious below.

What is not shown is the shares for those in the bottom 50% or even 20%.  Based on other things I read, my guess is that those shares declined as well.

The next chart shows the percentage gains in income by group for the periods of 1948-1973 and 1982-2007.  Both are 25 year time periods and the first period reflects the post-World War 2 economy while the later represents the last 25 years (since the data set goes up to 2007.)

Income_gains

Clearly the bottom 90% saw a doubling of their income in 1948-1973, but a much smaller growth in 1982-2007.  Even the bottom 99% did better during 1948-1973 than in 1982-2007. 

Clearly, the big winners were those in the top 1%, especially the top 0.01% who saw their incomes quintuple during the 1982-2007 period.

So if you aren't in the top 1% and you are wondering where yours went, you know who got it.

Ecology, Economy, Energy, Government

A Cash for Clunkers Review

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According to Toyota Tops List of Cash-for-Clunkers Winners (NY Times), 690,000 new vehicles were purchased with money from the Cash for Clunkers program.  On average, new cars got 25 miles per gallon (mpg) while "clunkers" got 16 mpg.  If the average person in the US drives 15,000 miles/year, then new cars will save 337.5 gallons of gas a year (937.5 gallons for "clunkers" and 600 gallons for the newer cars).

So did the Cash for Clunkers program pay off?  Lets try a back of the envelope calculation.

If we estimate that the "clunkers", without the program, would have been replaced within five years on average, then the total gas saved would be:

690,000 cars x 337.5 gallons saved per year x 5 years = 1,164,375,000 gallons saved

or about 1.16 billion gallons of gas saved.

Since about $2.9 billion was spent, that means that for every gallon saved, it cost the federal government about $2.49.  Increasing the average replacement time decreases the cost per gallon, while decreasing the replacement time raises the cost per gallon.

With gas costing $2.62 a gallon on 8/24 (see doe.gov), this is a slight savings.  The savings would grow should the price of gas go back to its high point of $4.00 in July 2008 or even higher when peak oil really kicks in.

Some (1 , 2) have estimated the true cost of a gallon of gas to be significantly higher due to such factors as the subsidies the government gives to gas, protecting the oil supply in the Persian Gulf, lost time in traffic and the environmental cost.  Estimates of the true cost of a gallon of gas vary between $5 and $15.  At those prices, Cash for Clunkers program was quite a good investment. 

However, whether the Cash for Clunkers program was as efficient at cutting our oil usage and pollution as other approaches such as home energy efficiency improvements, or increased ride sharing, public transit or bike paths remains to be seen.

Games, Social Justice

Data point: Diversity among Boston-area Tradable Card Gamers

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I took my son and his friend to a Yu-Gi-Oh! sneak-peak and Magic game day at Pandemonium Books & Games this last weekend.  They had fun playing the game with each other, another friend and a few of the other folks there.

One thing I noticed was how the composition of the players both confirmed and challenged the perceptions that such science fiction and fantasy oriented gaming is a white-male only activity.

It was certainly true that the players were overwhelmingly teenagers (or at least in their early 20ies) and of the seventy-five people I counted there, only four were women.

However, the ethic breakdown, albeit from my subjective observation skills and the few conversations I had, was:

8 African descent

28 Asian descent

18 European descent

10 Latino descent

1 Mixed descent

I found the ethnic distribution (though not the gender distribution) pretty refreshing, certainly compared to my work environment and even the Green-Rainbow Party.  While I was clearly in the top 10% in terms of age, I didn't feel much out of place.

I do not know if this data point reflects the true diversity of this group, but I found it interesting nevertheless.

Economy, Social Justice

The rich continue to get richer

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Paul Krugman calls out the latest income inequality numbers from Emmanuel Saez.  The nearly thirty year trend of increasing income inequality got noticeably larger during the Clinton & Bush II years.  And yes, that is the % of income claimed by the wealthiest 1/10000th of the US population.  The wealth values are no doubt even higher.  These values only go up to 2007, but my guess is that 2008 was even higher, and possibly 2009 as well.

Saez07 

If we look at just the top 1%, they claim 23% of all income and followed a similar path as the top 1/100%, though not as radical.  The top 1%, by the way, represents families with an annual income above $398,900 in 2007.  Who says we cannot pay for health care and close the deficit by taxing these folks more.

Download the data and graphs in Excel format.  Table 2 has a nice summary.

Games, Miniatures, When Imagination Fails

Microarmor game: Israel vs. Syria

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The local game club ran a Cold War Commander game last month.  It was Syria vs. Israel 1967 with modern equipment.  Due to a twist in the scenario, the points favored the Syrians who advanced on the Israelis in good order.  Syrian Taskforces 1&2 destroyed most of the Merkavas of Israeli Taskforce 2, while Taskforce 3 flanked the Israelis and routed their support elements without suffering a loss.  You can see pictures of the game on Flickr and as a slideshow.

It was my first time playing Cold War Commander.  CWC seemed to have far too many die rolls for too little effect.  Afterward, one group tried out a small engagement using GHQ's microarmor rules, while the other, including me, tried a smaller CWC game that we played to completion.  While I liked the order system of CWC, with a few mods, I still prefer Fistful of TOWS 2.

Games, Miniatures, When Imagination Fails

ACTA EA/ISA vs. Drakh Game

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We had an ACTA EA/ISA vs Drakh Game at the local game shop.  Since there were two of us, we first ran a small game of two Earth Alliance Chronos Frigates vs. two Drakh Light Raiders.  It took about four or five turns, but we ended with each side with a ship running adrift without crews, the remaining Raider undamaged and the last Chronos ailing.  You can see a picture of the final state here.

For the second game, another joined us and we ran a game where a Drakh taskforce was running from an heavier EA taskforce.  We split the EA taskforce among two of us and I ran the Drakh.  Earth had:

  • 1 Warlock Advanced Destroyer
  • 1 Marathon Cruiser
  • 1 Omega Destroyer
  • 2 ISA Whitestars

The Drakh had:

  • 1 Cruiser
  • 1 Light Cruiser
  • 2 Fast Destroyers
  • 3 Light Raiders

The game began with the Drakh Cruiser and Light Cruiser attempting to high tail it out, while the Light Raiders and the Fast Destroyers turned to engage.  The Marathon bore the brunt of the Raider fire, but managed to weather it.  One of the Raiders went down, and another was heavily damaged.  The Whitestars and other EA ships closed as quickly as they could.

By the second turn, Cruiser and Light Cruiser slowed down to engage the Warlock.  The Raiders ended up out of range of the Marathon, but the Fast Destroyers engaged the Marathon and scored the first Reactor Explosed.  Still the Marathon persevered.  Between the Marathon, the Warlock and the Whitestars, the Destroyers and Raiders went down.  Each of the Fast Destroyers suffered Reactor Explosions and were soon running adrift without a crew, trophies for Earth.  One Raider remained, practically unharmed by the Aurora fighters attacking it.  The Omega was not able to engage any targets.

The game ended there.  The two Drakh cruisers were going to try to outrun the Earthers, but with two thirds of their force gone, their chances look slim.

Pictures of the game are up at Flickr and viewable as a slideshow.

The musings of Jamie O'Keefe: pirate party activist, geek, father and gamer.