"How fortunate for governments
that the people they administer don't think."
-Hitler-
"Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
-Albert Einstein-Old
Updates....
2/12/19 (21:18)
monopsony has been getting
a bit of play the few years or so. basically it's the idea that employers
can have a monopoly on available jobs and can use that monopoly of employment
power to drive down wages. one area it applies to is the UFC. fighters
aren't unionized and the best among them make a lot of money and the UFC
itself makes lots of money, but the majority of the fighters make relative
peanuts. on the other hand, at least in that example, they may be the sole
buyers of that kind of labor, but where would those fighters be without
the UFC? a low wage UFC fighter may make only a few thousand per fight
and may only get a few fights/jobs a year. this is seen as a bad thing
by many, but, again, what would happen if the UFC didn't exist? there would
be no buyer of their labor and instead of fighting for a few thousand bucks,
they'd make nothing. or maybe they'd fight in the backyard wrestling circuit
which is possibly illegal, doesn't have insurance, and pays even less.
so, the UFC may not be the best or most equitable employer, but they're
adding value to all who work for them as best i can tell.
there's a pretty funny
scandal in virginia right now. the governor (D) was outed as having had
a picture of himself in black face. he originally copped to it. then he
denied it and said he's not sure the picture was him, but that he was in
black face when he was dressing up as michael jackson. at first the Democrats
were okay with this. they can look good by getting rid of him and the Lt.
Governor is black so he'll be a step up in the diversity competition. then
it was revealed that the Lt. Governor was accused of sexual assault. #3
in line would be the state AG, but he admitted that he, too, has dressed
up in black face. so now the Democrats are thinking they should just stick
with the Governor and ride it out. this is hilarious.
principles only matter
if you follow them when it's inconvenient. otherwise it's just sanctimony.
the Democrats proved here that they're no different than the Republicans
when it comes to the issue of the acceptability of dressing in black face
30 years ago. this isn't equivalent to Kavanaugh.
another time this came
up was with al franken. some Democrats felt good about themselves when
they pushed him out and others were conflicted because he was a pretty
good guy who did a bad thing and maybe he should be given a pass. but even
those who felt really good about kicking him to the curb knew that the
Democrat governor would pick a suitable replacement. the marginal choice
was not between Al Franken and a Republican. it was the choice between
Franken and a generic Democrat. there was little cost in making that decision.
there's been a lot of talk
about diversity these days. diversity is great. i generally look to nature
for wisdom on big picture things and one thing you see a lot, over and
over again, is that diversity increases fitness and survival. one thing
that is missing in this talk about diversity, though, is diversity of thought
about what diversity means. pretty ironic, if you ask me.
Ask 10 people what diversity
on the Supreme Court means and I'm willing to bet that the vast majority
of them are going to mention race and gender among the first two or three
things. Race and gender are nice enough metrics of diversity and necessary
to some extent in a body such as the Supreme Court, but they're not the
alpha and omega. The other thing people would probably say (I'm guessing
older people) would be religion. There's only been one Catholic president
and never an atheist or Muslim, so religion is still something that comes
up when discussing diversity. Next might be ideological diversity, but
no one actually wants that. They want liberal justices or conservative
justices (whichever they happen to be).
Relgion-wise all the 9
justices are either Catholic or Jewish. How is that diversity?
What I'd love to see, though,
would be some diversity of education. There are 9 justices on the court
now and all of them went to either Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. 9 justices
all went through the educational process of just 3 schools. Rehnquist,
Kennedy, Souter, Blackmun, and Scalia all keep to that trend. Everyone
since 1990 has been to one of those schools except 3: Marshall, O'Connor,
Stevens. How is that diversity?
How about net worth? Only
Clarence Thomas isn't a multi-millionaire. RBG (liberal darling) is the
richest with a net worth up to $25 million.
How about regional diversity?
They're all from large cities and at one point I think 4 of them were from
NYC and 6 (?) were from the tri-state area. RBG, Kagan, Sotomayjo, Scalia,
Alito,