Thu Oct 26 18:18:18 UTC 2017
Time block
| Time (PDT) | Intention | Revision 1 | Revision 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0000 | SLEEP | ||
| 0030 | SLEEP | ||
| 0100 | SLEEP | ||
| 0130 | SLEEP | ||
| 0200 | SLEEP | ||
| 0230 | SLEEP | ||
| 0300 | SLEEP | ||
| 0330 | SLEEP | ||
| 0400 | SLEEP | ||
| 0430 | SLEEP | ||
| 0500 | SLEEP | ||
| 0530 | SLEEP | ||
| 0600 | SLEEP | ||
| 0630 | SLEEP | ||
| 0700 | SLEEP | ||
| 0730 | SLEEP | ||
| 0800 | Packing up | ||
| 0830 | Walk to work | ||
| 0900 | "Breakfast" | ||
| 0930 | Tired | ||
| 1000 | Email organization | ||
| 1030 | Tired and YouTube | ||
| 1100 | OpsLead Meeting | and PLANNING | |
| 1130 | OpsLead Meeting | ||
| 1200 | Lunch | ||
| 1230 | Lunch | ||
| 1300 | Buffer | ||
| 1330 | Buffer | ||
| 1400 | Buffer | ||
| 1430 | Travel to airport | ||
| 1500 | Get to flight | ||
| 1530 | Airport | and Reading | |
| 1600 | Airport | and Reading | |
| 1630 | Airport | and Reading | |
| 1700 | Flight | and Reading | |
| 1730 | Flight | and Reading | |
| 1800 | Flight | and Reading | |
| 1830 | Layover | and Reading | |
| 1900 | Flight | and Reading | |
| 1930 | Flight | and Reading | |
| 2000 | Flight | and Reading | |
| 2030 | Travel to friend's | and Reading | |
| 2100 | Hanging out? | and Laundry | |
| 2130 | Hanging out? | ||
| 2200 | SLEEP | Hanging out | |
| 2230 | SLEEP | Hanging out | |
| 2300 | SLEEP | Hanging out | |
| 2330 | SLEEP | Hanging out |
Thu Oct 26 22:59:51 UTC 2017
At SFO. On flight, I plan to only read so that I don't have to deal with laptop in cramped space. However, I want to finish all my notes so that I don't have a backlog, so, before boarding let's do that.
Thu Oct 26 23:00:36 UTC 2017
Basic Economics reading.
The book makes an important point that I thought of earlier. Maybe I even mentioned it. "Although economists often proceed by first explaining how a free competitive market operates and then move on to show how various infringements on that kind of market affect economic outcomes, what happened in history is that controlled markets preceded free markets by centuries".
Exactly. Free-markets, in the grand scheme of things, are a relatively-new beast. How to best raise a healthy market and what illnesses to look out for and what cures to administer are young, and being explored. It is far from a solved problem. This also goes back to what I wrote a couple days ago, "if some group of people are being oppressed under a system and that system doesn't correct that error quick enough, those people will turn to some other system willing to try to help them. Even if the adopted system is less efficient, and hurts everyone overall over the long run."
I should add, also, that often when a new thing is being implemented, even if that new thing is about equal with the old thing, or even slightly better, people using the thing will be more critical and will back-slip to the old thing at the slightest provacation. It's similar to something that a mentor described to me as the "10x better rule", Stephan. For people to properly adopt a new thing, it has to be 10x better, because the person selling it thinks its 3x better than it is, and the people forced to adopt it will think the old thing is 3x better than it is. Hence, needing the new thing to be 10x better before adoption occurs.
But I've gone off on a tangent. My main point is that capitalism is new, is still heavily flawed, and fighting to improve it can and should happen at any possible angle, including but not limited to political action.
Anyways, the book uses this point as a transition to talk about the over-regulation of industries via requiring licenses when they aren't really necessary. The book's prime example is taxis. Driving does not require a highly specialized skill, the book argues, and so artificially limiting taxis with limited licenses is bad.
This sounds like a good argument. But I, like many people, have watched the Simpsons. Specifically, I have watched the episode where the family goes to Brazil, mention the danger of taking unlicensed taxis, and then Homer gets kidnapped and ransomed (hilarity apparently ensues).
Could a license be for something beyond proof of capability of a skill? Could it be for safetly purposes relating to the nature of the work? Could it be that a flooded marketplace could attract bad actors whom could do criminal activity under the guise of legitimate business?
Now, I'm not properly versed in this arena (my go-to annecdote above was a fictional plotline in the Simpsons). Perhaps the litigation was explicitly bad for taxi licensing, but I think it's important to consider how different technology was when those rules were created. Nowadays, I would agree that licensing makes less sense for taxis, because there's an automatic digital tracking system keeping proper track of which car is registered with which company, and the company is telling you what car/person to expect, and there's plenty of means by which to add safety measures to the system without considerably hindering its growth.
Anyways, this is a small thing that I had a lot to say about. It wouldn't hurt to do some due diligence here, but I already have a lot of sources to find, this is just an aside.
So, there's a quote about Thomas Edison that... well, actually, the whole paragraph, read it: "The industrial revolution was not created by highly educated people but by people with practical industrial experience. The airplane was invented by a couple of bicycle mechanics who had neer gone to college. Electricity and many inventions run by electricity became central parts of the modern world because of a man with only three months of formal schooling, Thomas Edison. Yet all these people had enormously valuable knowledge and insights--human capital--acquired from experience rather than in classrooms."
So, this whole paragraph is extremely misleading, and stinks of painting history as the story of singular great men moving society forward as most just sat by and watched. Thomas Edison is an example I'm somewhat familiar with, he worked with, had rivalries with, and debatably stole from highly educated people in pursuit of control over the industry he "created". In reality, industries are created by a lot of people with a lot of different know-how (some of it from higher academia), and probably would fail to spring forth without most of them.
This is a dissonance I've noticed in the book before. Sometimes, it'll note the many moving parts and complexities behind progress, and other times it'll imply progress is this magical thing that'll just instantly happen if you let markets run amuck without political interference.
Anyways, Thomas Edison and the rise of the industrial revolution would probably be a good thing to find my sources on.
"Many unthinking people in many countries and many periods of history have regard financial activities as not 'really' contributing anything to the economy, and have regarded the people who engage in such financial activities as mere parasites." This is a fair point. Though, at the same time, these people often find themselves in positions of significant power, and the only famous powerful fiancial people are the corrupt ones. So, perhaps the people with the power should do a better job of self-policing and take proper responsibility for when they hurt the economy for their own gain.
Events like the 2008 finacial crisis largely caused by fiancial people who knowingly conned the entire world doesn't really help the banking reputation. Especially considering that no banker got any real punishment out of it. Trust is hard to build and easily broken.
And I am caught up on my notes. This book is due back in the library in 8 days (counting today), and I have about 350 pages to read. So, I need to read about 50 pages a day. I got a lot of travel time ahead of me, let's try to read 200 pages today.
Thu Oct 26 23:49:41 UTC 2017
Basic Economics. (Notes while reading.)
The book is trying to justify the high interest rates of payday loans. The explicit goals of these places is to trap already-poor people in an inescapable cycle of debt. Also, using higher processing costs as an excuse doesn't work when the industry itself is making much more money than traditional lending establishments.
Just ugh. I'm going to let John Oliver take it from here: