Sometimes seen as the ultimate question, the question of the purpose of life is something that nearly all humans think about at some point during their lives. Well, I have the answer.
First, it depends. It depends on what you believe in. If you believe in God or some other Supreme Being, the purpose of life is dictated by your beliefs in the nature of that being. If you don't believe, then the purpose of life is dictated by the nature of life in the universe.
Christianity (specifically, the mainstream modern "neo-Christianity" that subscribes to things like the Nicaean Creed) believes that God put humans on Earth to test them. The purpose of life is to prove yourself worthy of living with God forever. Most of neo-Christianity believes that this eternity consists entirely of singing praises to God forever. The purpose of life for the neo-Christian is to avoid eternal punishment in hell, so you can spend eternity singing and perhaps playing harps for God's personal enjoyment.
Islam has similar beliefs to neo-Christianity, except with a bit more flexibility in the afterlife. Islam claims that the righteous will receive rewards in this life, many of which are promised based on specific actions. Since some of the promised rewards are wealth, influence, and worldly honor, it is clear that part of the purpose of life as established by Allah is living a comfortable life in his service. After this life, the righteous Muslim is promised eighty thousand servants, seventy two wives (modern interpretation extends this to be husbands for women), and a house built of gems. Clearly, earning a comfortable after-life (that includes "carnal pleasures") is also part of the purpose of life for the devout Muslim. For the Muslim, the purpose of life is to avoid eternal punishment, so you can live comfortably in this life and for eternity.
Older oriental religions focus on living with your ancestors after this life. Living comfortably and honorably is the purpose of life. Honoring your ancestors is important, because family is the most important thing. The honor of the family is the honor of the individual. If an individual is dishonorable, the entire family is dishonored. The purpose of life is to bring honor to your family and to live comfortably doing so.
Some religions believe in reincarnation. Those religions typically believe in some kind of eternal progression. The quality of each life lived determines the starting point for the next. In Buddhism, the ultimate goal is enlightenment, which allows one to break the cycle of life and death and ascend to a higher state of being. This is done through meditation and conquering the ego. For Buddhists, the purpose of life is progression through learning and overcoming worldly desires, ultimately leading to enlightenment and ascension to a higher state of being.
For Mormons (a type of Christianity but not of neo-Christianity), the purpose of life is to realize Christ's commandment to become perfect like God. The end goal of life is to become like God. To do this, Mormon's believe that they have to prove themselves worthy (just like neo-Christian religions), but it goes one step further. Mormons believe that the purpose of life is learn to be like God. This includes things like learning to raise children and teach them about God. It also includes gaining specific knowledge. For Mormons, the purpose of life is to learn to be like God and prove themselves worthy of being like Him.
If you do not believe in God or some other kind of Supreme Being, life still has a purpose. Some say that the purpose of life is whatever you want it to be, but that is a lie. There is always something bigger than you that dictates the purpose of life. If it is not God, it is nature. Atheism offers what is perhaps the least individualistic purpose of life. The first and primary purpose of life is self propagation. Nature does not care about the individual, it cares about species, but only those species that can survive, and it cares about the system as a whole. Nature is about the collective. A species that does not contribute cannot survive. If there is no God, the purpose of life is to sustain and propagate life. For the individual, this means first, reproducing. If an individual cannot reproduce, then the second purpose is to help those with similar genetics to reproduce and survive. If there is no possible way the individual can contribute while alive, then the purpose of life is to die, to free up resources. The law of nature is survival of the fittest. Fitness is determined by how effectively an individual and a species can support and contribute to the system. Unless you can live forever (in which case, the purpose of your life is whatever you want it to be), the purpose of life if there is no God, is to contribute to the system by reproducing and by helping to ensure the survival of the rest of your species at any cost. Any self defined "purpose" beyond that will only be put up with by nature so long as it does not interfere with the real purpose of life.
Ultimately the purpose of life comes down to what you believe. If you choose not to believe anything, it is completely impersonal and utilitarian. If you do choose to believe in something, then the purpose of life will be what you believe it to be. If course, only one of those beliefs (or lack thereof) can actually be correct, so there is ultimately one true purpose of life and many false ones. That gets into the question of which religion is right, though, and that is outside the scope of this discussion.
30 December 2015
30 October 2015
Spelling or Grammar
The question came up the other day at work of whether a certain class of spelling error should actually qualify as a grammatical error. This is the class of spelling errors where the misspelling is actually a valid spelling of a different word. The specific example given was the words "there," "their," and "they're." Because these words all sound the same, it is quite common for inexperienced writers to use the wrong one. One person argued that this is not a spelling error, because the word written is the correct spelling of a different word. The argument was that the writer actually used the wrong word, and thus the error was grammar, not spelling.
Before we can answer this question, it is essential to understand how grammar and spelling fit into language as a whole. Spelling is simple. Spelling is the pattern of glyphs used to represent words in written language (much like spoken language uses patterns of sound). In some languages, symbols have specific meanings. Using the wrong symbol might dramatically change the meaning of the writing. In other languages, symbols represent sounds. In these languages, using the wrong glyph might change the meaning of the writing, but the misspelled word will still sound very similar to the intended word, so readers might be able to determine the intent of the writer from context. In some languages (notably, English), only patterns of characters have meaning. Characters may be loosely associated with sounds, but the pattern is often more important than the sounds. In these languages, spelling and context are both important to the written language, and the sounds are most frequently used to determine how an unfamiliar word sounds (often mildly incorrectly). By definition, spelling is purely the realm of written language. It has no connection to spoken language aside from its use in recording it as written language.
Grammar is about structure. The grammar of a language determines the order of words and where certain kinds of words go within that. It can also dictate where words with similar meanings are used, for example, "is" is used with singular subjects and "are" is used with plural subjects (in English, contextual grammar covers possessiveness, plurality, gender, and tense; some languages include social status in their contextual grammar). Grammar does not cover using the correct word, except where the correct word is dictated by structure or context. For example, if a person says, "I am going to Grandfather's house," when they really meant to say, "I am going to Joe's house," no grammatical error was made. The person just said the wrong word. Misspeaking is not inherently a grammatical error. Grammatical errors occur when words are used out of order or when a synonym of the appropriate word is used in the wrong context ("is" vs "are" or "his" vs "hers" for example).
Now that we have a basic understanding of what spelling and grammar are, let's look at the original question again. The author has written some text. Perhaps he accidentally wrote "there" when he meant "their." On the surface, it looks like a simple misspelling. The catch is that author did use a valid spelling of another word. To the reader, the author used the wrong word. Is this a grammatical error? It is not. This is not even in the realm of grammar (he could have written "truck" and it would not be a grammatical error either). The new word may be used in a grammatically inappropriate place for the word type, but this is merely a symptom of using the wrong word. It is also not a context sensitive synonym of the correct word. The problem is not with grammar. The author used the wrong written word. The author probably regards it as a misspelling of the intended word. To the reader, the wrong word was used. Even in the spoken language though, it would not be a grammatical error. In fact, in spoken English it would not be an error at all.
In spoken English, "their," "there," and "they're" are the same word. They are the same word that just happens to have three different meanings. In spoken language, we differentiate based on context. Words with multiple meanings are incredibly common in spoken language. Some written languages differentiate by using different spellings for the different meanings. This is so common we have a word for it. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently. In other words, this problem does not exist outside of the written language. It is only a grammatical error if the correct word is an incorrectly used context specific synonym of the word actually used. The actual word used was a totally unrelated word, in the written language, which means it cannot be a grammatical error.
I could continue to discuss the different options, but this just brought up something else we should look at. The written language and the spoken language are different. The spoken language has a single word with three definitions. The written language has a different word for each of those definitions. The fact is, they are not the same language. In fact, they don't even use the same senses. One is conveyed through sound, while the other is conveyed through light. They do use very similar grammar (grammar in the spoken language tends to be looser, but aside from that they are the same). The author is not merely writing English. The author is translating spoken English to written English. It also turns out that the author does not know written English as well as spoken English. The consequence is that the author used the wrong word when he translated. The author knew the meaning of the intended word in spoken English, but while he did know the three words it could be translated to, he did not know the meaning of those words. He guessed and picked the wrong one.
The actual problem is not spelling or grammar. The language construct may have been grammatically incorrect as a result of using the wrong word, but the problem is still not a grammar error. The error was mistranslation. It was covered up by the assumption that spoken English and written English are the same language.
10 October 2015
Distributed Labor
There is this free game called Foldit. This game is about folding proteins, and it has been used to quickly solve a problem that scientists have been working on for years. The best part is that all of the work put into solving this problem was free. In trade for challenging entertainment, gamers solved a protein folding problem in 3 weeks, that scientist were not able to solve in 13 years. This 3 weeks worth of labor was worth more than 13 years worth of wages paid to the scientists trying to solve the problem, and it was done entirely for free.
Now, I have discussed this before, so I will only mention it briefly. There are tens of millions of unemployed Americans. Many of these people are on some kind of welfare, and at least one of welfare options for the unemployed requires them to continuously search for jobs that largely do not exist. In short, they are being paid to waste their time on a fruitless endeavor.
Even worse is the assumption that we need these people to work to maintain our economy. I want to be clear here: In the U.S., we produce 5 times the food we need to survive. In fact, we produce pretty much everything necessary for survival in huge excess. When unemployment was around 11% late last decade, we still produced far more than we needed. The fact is, the 5.5% of unemployed people looking for employment in May don't need to work to keep our economy going. No one is going to starve or even be mildly inconvenienced by the fact that these tens of millions of people are living on welfare instead of working for a living. They are far more important as consumers than as laborers.
Instead of forcing them to go out looking for work that does not exist, I propose we try something else. I propose that we replace the looking-for-work requirement with a requirement to play games. At least some of this time should be spent playing games like Foldit (they should play other games as well, because greater variety will help them to become better problem solvers). Instead of trying to get unemployed people to find mundane work that is little more than a waste of time solving trivial problems, we should leverage this untapped resource of enormous amounts of labor solving real problems that will save lives and help us to solve the truly important problems.
The cost of welfare is nothing compared to the value of this work. We are talking about an enormous resource that costs a fraction of the price of professionals. This would free up scientists to do work that no one else can do. It would dramatically accelerate the advance of science and technology. And the best part is that our taxes spent on welfare would be producing far more value than forcing people to look for non-existent jobs.
Instead of trying to fight for eliminating welfare, which would cause the greatest economic collapse in the history of the world, let's fight for making participation in productive games replace the worthless job search requirement for getting welfare benefits.
Now, I have discussed this before, so I will only mention it briefly. There are tens of millions of unemployed Americans. Many of these people are on some kind of welfare, and at least one of welfare options for the unemployed requires them to continuously search for jobs that largely do not exist. In short, they are being paid to waste their time on a fruitless endeavor.
Even worse is the assumption that we need these people to work to maintain our economy. I want to be clear here: In the U.S., we produce 5 times the food we need to survive. In fact, we produce pretty much everything necessary for survival in huge excess. When unemployment was around 11% late last decade, we still produced far more than we needed. The fact is, the 5.5% of unemployed people looking for employment in May don't need to work to keep our economy going. No one is going to starve or even be mildly inconvenienced by the fact that these tens of millions of people are living on welfare instead of working for a living. They are far more important as consumers than as laborers.
Instead of forcing them to go out looking for work that does not exist, I propose we try something else. I propose that we replace the looking-for-work requirement with a requirement to play games. At least some of this time should be spent playing games like Foldit (they should play other games as well, because greater variety will help them to become better problem solvers). Instead of trying to get unemployed people to find mundane work that is little more than a waste of time solving trivial problems, we should leverage this untapped resource of enormous amounts of labor solving real problems that will save lives and help us to solve the truly important problems.
The cost of welfare is nothing compared to the value of this work. We are talking about an enormous resource that costs a fraction of the price of professionals. This would free up scientists to do work that no one else can do. It would dramatically accelerate the advance of science and technology. And the best part is that our taxes spent on welfare would be producing far more value than forcing people to look for non-existent jobs.
Instead of trying to fight for eliminating welfare, which would cause the greatest economic collapse in the history of the world, let's fight for making participation in productive games replace the worthless job search requirement for getting welfare benefits.
09 October 2015
Why You Shouldn't Trust Your Psychic
Everyone who frequents psychics and fortune tellers knows than many people don't believe in that kind of clairvoyance and divination. They have a few friends, family members, or acquaintances who tell them what an idiotic waste of money it is. It does not phase them though. They keep doing it, and they keep believing it. I want to show you why you should not trust your psychic even if you are positive that he or she can actually see your future.
First, a disclaimer: I don't believe that psychics or fortune tellers can actually see your future or talk to your dead ancestors. Harry Houdini tried to find one that could, and he managed to prove a great many of them to be frauds. He never found a legitimate one. Statistically speaking, this is evidence that even if there are legitimate psychics, they are extremely rare, even among those who claim to be psychic. Most psychics are merely good information gatherers. They learn as much as they can about you, which gives them enough information to guess at your future with better than average odds. This said, I am going to approach this from the point of view that most psychics are legitimate.
Let's start by discussing why your psychic tells people their futures. Is it for money? A psychic needs to make a living, and most psychics charge money for a "reading." Even those that don't charge directly are generally getting paid for it. For example, a psychic on a television show that gives free readings on the show is still getting paid by the network. This covers most psychics, but maybe there are some that are doing it for fame instead of money. They might give free readings, but they are doing because they want your respect and admiration, and because they expect you to tell your friends about it, increasing the psychics fame.
Now, is this really a problem? It is. Imagine this: Your psychic is doing a reading on you. She sees you acting in a play that someone is recording. She sees that recording end up on YouTube. Now, she knows that you are interested in acting (she is a legitimate psychic, of course she knows). Unfortunately, she does not see any acting in real movies in your future. The thing is, if she tells you, "In your future, you will act in a few plays that will get on YouTube, but you won't actually be in any real movies," she will almost certainly loose your business and your respect. She has a serious dilemma. She can tell you exactly what she saw, and loose income or fame (and if she does this for everyone, she might end up homeless or with a bad reputation), or she can say things that are technically accurate, but which she knows you will misconstrue to mean more than it really does. So, she tells you that she sees you working in the movie industry. (It got recorded and put on YouTube, so that makes it a movie, right?)
Another major problem is moral dilemmas. What happens if your psychic reads your future and discovers that you are going to make a mistake in a few days that will ultimately cause hundreds of people to suffer and die? What if she also sees an alternate future where you die before the mistake is made, and the disaster does not occur? Does she tell you the real future, or does she lie and tell you something that will end in your death? What if one of her family members is affected? What if the choice is between you causing hundreds of people to die or one of her family members dying? How can you be certain that she is not going to choose the path that causes you harm? What happens when a real psychic runs into a serious conflict of interest like this?
This brings up the last major problem. A real psychic knows how you will be affected by what she tells you. This means that she has some control over your actions. Perhaps there is no future in which you would murder someone. That would mean that she could not tell you anything that would cause you to commit murder. Maybe there is a future in which you would loose your job and become homeless. Maybe there is a future where you would cheat on your spouse. Maybe there is a future where you would end up on jail for several years. Maybe there is a future where you would end up seriously addicted to meth or heroin. Maybe one of these futures comes out far better for the psychic, and she chooses to tell you things that will cause you to end up in that future. In other words, when you are getting a reading from a psychic, you could be letting that psychic control your future.
What it comes down to is that it does not actually matter if your psychic is legitimate or not. If she can truly see the future, she knows how you will react to what she tells you about it. If your reaction to the truth would be harmful to her, she will misrepresent it or even lie about it. She may leave out important things, because you would react badly. She might tell you something that will cause you to act in a way that would harm you. Knowing the future is a huge burden, and it is one that is incredibly easy to abuse
Before you trust your psychic, ask yourself this: If she had to pick between saving your life and saving the live of a member of her family, who would she choose? If you cannot trust her to choose you over her family member, then every time you get a reading, you are putting yourself on the edge of that cliff and making a bet that her family member is not there with you.
First, a disclaimer: I don't believe that psychics or fortune tellers can actually see your future or talk to your dead ancestors. Harry Houdini tried to find one that could, and he managed to prove a great many of them to be frauds. He never found a legitimate one. Statistically speaking, this is evidence that even if there are legitimate psychics, they are extremely rare, even among those who claim to be psychic. Most psychics are merely good information gatherers. They learn as much as they can about you, which gives them enough information to guess at your future with better than average odds. This said, I am going to approach this from the point of view that most psychics are legitimate.
Let's start by discussing why your psychic tells people their futures. Is it for money? A psychic needs to make a living, and most psychics charge money for a "reading." Even those that don't charge directly are generally getting paid for it. For example, a psychic on a television show that gives free readings on the show is still getting paid by the network. This covers most psychics, but maybe there are some that are doing it for fame instead of money. They might give free readings, but they are doing because they want your respect and admiration, and because they expect you to tell your friends about it, increasing the psychics fame.
Now, is this really a problem? It is. Imagine this: Your psychic is doing a reading on you. She sees you acting in a play that someone is recording. She sees that recording end up on YouTube. Now, she knows that you are interested in acting (she is a legitimate psychic, of course she knows). Unfortunately, she does not see any acting in real movies in your future. The thing is, if she tells you, "In your future, you will act in a few plays that will get on YouTube, but you won't actually be in any real movies," she will almost certainly loose your business and your respect. She has a serious dilemma. She can tell you exactly what she saw, and loose income or fame (and if she does this for everyone, she might end up homeless or with a bad reputation), or she can say things that are technically accurate, but which she knows you will misconstrue to mean more than it really does. So, she tells you that she sees you working in the movie industry. (It got recorded and put on YouTube, so that makes it a movie, right?)
Another major problem is moral dilemmas. What happens if your psychic reads your future and discovers that you are going to make a mistake in a few days that will ultimately cause hundreds of people to suffer and die? What if she also sees an alternate future where you die before the mistake is made, and the disaster does not occur? Does she tell you the real future, or does she lie and tell you something that will end in your death? What if one of her family members is affected? What if the choice is between you causing hundreds of people to die or one of her family members dying? How can you be certain that she is not going to choose the path that causes you harm? What happens when a real psychic runs into a serious conflict of interest like this?
This brings up the last major problem. A real psychic knows how you will be affected by what she tells you. This means that she has some control over your actions. Perhaps there is no future in which you would murder someone. That would mean that she could not tell you anything that would cause you to commit murder. Maybe there is a future in which you would loose your job and become homeless. Maybe there is a future where you would cheat on your spouse. Maybe there is a future where you would end up on jail for several years. Maybe there is a future where you would end up seriously addicted to meth or heroin. Maybe one of these futures comes out far better for the psychic, and she chooses to tell you things that will cause you to end up in that future. In other words, when you are getting a reading from a psychic, you could be letting that psychic control your future.
What it comes down to is that it does not actually matter if your psychic is legitimate or not. If she can truly see the future, she knows how you will react to what she tells you about it. If your reaction to the truth would be harmful to her, she will misrepresent it or even lie about it. She may leave out important things, because you would react badly. She might tell you something that will cause you to act in a way that would harm you. Knowing the future is a huge burden, and it is one that is incredibly easy to abuse
Before you trust your psychic, ask yourself this: If she had to pick between saving your life and saving the live of a member of her family, who would she choose? If you cannot trust her to choose you over her family member, then every time you get a reading, you are putting yourself on the edge of that cliff and making a bet that her family member is not there with you.
01 October 2015
The Supreme Court and the Author
There is a popular tv show currently airing called Once Upon a Time. In one particular season, the group of main characters (including the villains) seek out a man known only as The Author. This is the man who wrote the story the characters are all living in, and the characters believe that he has the power to change it. They all have some agenda they want to author to write into the story. The villains want their "happy endings," and the heroes want to protect innocents from the harm this would cause.
Eventually, they discover that The Author has been trapped somewhere, and they release him. He turns out not to be the wise story writer they all thought he was. Instead he turns out to be this guy who is totally self centered and cares more about entertainment than anything else.
The charge of the author was that of a recorder of history, not that of a story teller. When he was selected, he was given a magic pen, and he was instructed to use it to witness and record events as they happened. The pen, however, had the power to change and direct the story, which power he was forbidden to use. He violated his charge when he decided that he knew better. He found the story to be dull, so he used the magic pen to tweak and direct it. He used his power to reshape the world the way that he thought it should be, without any regard for the great many people he harmed in the process.
Now that you know about The Author, let's talk about the Supreme Court. The stated mission of the Court is to interpret law. In general, this is the mission of every court. The Supreme Court specializes in it though. Interpretation is when the meaning of something is translated into a format that is easier for a given person or group to understand. When text or spoken language is interpreted, it is converted into the language of part or all of the audience, so they can understand it. It is necessary to interpret law because English is an ambiguous language, and much of U.S. law was written so long ago that the meaning of the language used has changed. So, the job of the Supreme Court is to determine the intent of the law, as it was written.
The Supreme Court is like The Author. It's job is not to create or change. It's job is to take existing text and interpret it into spoken language, understanding, and action (The Author's job was essentially to interpret observation of events into text). In both of these cases, accuracy is paramount. It is an essential part of the job, and violating it can result in a great deal of harm.
Like The Author in Once Upon a Time, the Supreme Court's power extends beyond its mission. The Author had the power to direct events instead of merely accurately recording them. The Supreme Court has the power to direct law instead of merely interpreting it. Accuracy is so important in both cases, because its violation has serious real-life consequences. As the highest court, there is no recourse if the Supreme Court does not accurately interpret the law. In fact, even Constitutional amendments cannot overrule the Supreme Court, because ultimately, the Supreme Court gets to interpret what they mean. If the Court decides that an amendment does not apply to a certain situation, then it does not. The Court's power gives it the ability to act as a legislative body, in addition to its stated role as a judicial body. The Court has the power to decide the meaning of laws, which gives it the power to warp and twist any law to mean what it wants.
Now, as with The Author, the Supreme Court does not have to abuse its metaphorical magic pen. The fact, however, is that it does. This is becoming ever more obvious, as the statements accompanying rulings offer justifications almost entirely based in the personal opinion of the judges. They explain that it is Constitutional or not, but they never actually explain how the Constitution played any role in the decision. It is about morality and ethics. It is about how the decision might affect economic, or about fairness to minorities involved. It is never about how a specific part of the Constitution allows or forbids something. Like The Author in the television show, the Supreme Court is using its power to control and direct the story to fit its own personal desires and opinions. This is as blatant an abuse of power as using a magic pen to force people to commit horrible atrocities to make the story more interesting.
Unfortunately, the solution used to prevent abuse of power in the television show is not possible in the real-life situation. We cannot just break the magic pen, to force whoever happens to be The Author to write with a mundane pen that cannot change the story. The Supreme Court is necessary, and its responsibility to interpret law is inseparable from the inherently abusable power necessary to fulfill that responsibility. What we really need is ethical judges that we can trust not to abuse that power. What we need is people with a real education in and understanding of the origins of the Constitution. We need judges who are willing to search records and writings of people who wrote and influenced the document, so they can gain a more full understanding of its intent. We need judges who trust the Democratic process enough that they will not give into the temptation to allow their own personal opinions to influence their rulings, even when they don't agree with the results.
For a Democratic government to be successful, it must trust the people it rules. Representatives, elected or appointed, need to stick to their appointed tasks, even when they believe that their way is better.
I believe that the entire Supreme Court needs to be replaced with honest judges, however, this is not an easy task. This position is a life-long position, and the Constitution carefully (and wisely) protects Supreme Court Justices from being easily ousted, to prevent political abuse. Unfortunately, it also makes it difficult to oust the corrupt judges that have been appointed. Beside that, how do we find authors who won't abuse the power of the magic pen?
Eventually, they discover that The Author has been trapped somewhere, and they release him. He turns out not to be the wise story writer they all thought he was. Instead he turns out to be this guy who is totally self centered and cares more about entertainment than anything else.
The charge of the author was that of a recorder of history, not that of a story teller. When he was selected, he was given a magic pen, and he was instructed to use it to witness and record events as they happened. The pen, however, had the power to change and direct the story, which power he was forbidden to use. He violated his charge when he decided that he knew better. He found the story to be dull, so he used the magic pen to tweak and direct it. He used his power to reshape the world the way that he thought it should be, without any regard for the great many people he harmed in the process.
Now that you know about The Author, let's talk about the Supreme Court. The stated mission of the Court is to interpret law. In general, this is the mission of every court. The Supreme Court specializes in it though. Interpretation is when the meaning of something is translated into a format that is easier for a given person or group to understand. When text or spoken language is interpreted, it is converted into the language of part or all of the audience, so they can understand it. It is necessary to interpret law because English is an ambiguous language, and much of U.S. law was written so long ago that the meaning of the language used has changed. So, the job of the Supreme Court is to determine the intent of the law, as it was written.
The Supreme Court is like The Author. It's job is not to create or change. It's job is to take existing text and interpret it into spoken language, understanding, and action (The Author's job was essentially to interpret observation of events into text). In both of these cases, accuracy is paramount. It is an essential part of the job, and violating it can result in a great deal of harm.
Like The Author in Once Upon a Time, the Supreme Court's power extends beyond its mission. The Author had the power to direct events instead of merely accurately recording them. The Supreme Court has the power to direct law instead of merely interpreting it. Accuracy is so important in both cases, because its violation has serious real-life consequences. As the highest court, there is no recourse if the Supreme Court does not accurately interpret the law. In fact, even Constitutional amendments cannot overrule the Supreme Court, because ultimately, the Supreme Court gets to interpret what they mean. If the Court decides that an amendment does not apply to a certain situation, then it does not. The Court's power gives it the ability to act as a legislative body, in addition to its stated role as a judicial body. The Court has the power to decide the meaning of laws, which gives it the power to warp and twist any law to mean what it wants.
Now, as with The Author, the Supreme Court does not have to abuse its metaphorical magic pen. The fact, however, is that it does. This is becoming ever more obvious, as the statements accompanying rulings offer justifications almost entirely based in the personal opinion of the judges. They explain that it is Constitutional or not, but they never actually explain how the Constitution played any role in the decision. It is about morality and ethics. It is about how the decision might affect economic, or about fairness to minorities involved. It is never about how a specific part of the Constitution allows or forbids something. Like The Author in the television show, the Supreme Court is using its power to control and direct the story to fit its own personal desires and opinions. This is as blatant an abuse of power as using a magic pen to force people to commit horrible atrocities to make the story more interesting.
Unfortunately, the solution used to prevent abuse of power in the television show is not possible in the real-life situation. We cannot just break the magic pen, to force whoever happens to be The Author to write with a mundane pen that cannot change the story. The Supreme Court is necessary, and its responsibility to interpret law is inseparable from the inherently abusable power necessary to fulfill that responsibility. What we really need is ethical judges that we can trust not to abuse that power. What we need is people with a real education in and understanding of the origins of the Constitution. We need judges who are willing to search records and writings of people who wrote and influenced the document, so they can gain a more full understanding of its intent. We need judges who trust the Democratic process enough that they will not give into the temptation to allow their own personal opinions to influence their rulings, even when they don't agree with the results.
For a Democratic government to be successful, it must trust the people it rules. Representatives, elected or appointed, need to stick to their appointed tasks, even when they believe that their way is better.
I believe that the entire Supreme Court needs to be replaced with honest judges, however, this is not an easy task. This position is a life-long position, and the Constitution carefully (and wisely) protects Supreme Court Justices from being easily ousted, to prevent political abuse. Unfortunately, it also makes it difficult to oust the corrupt judges that have been appointed. Beside that, how do we find authors who won't abuse the power of the magic pen?
27 September 2015
Sometimes Violence is the Answer
A piece of common rhetoric heard in schools since I can remember is that "violence is never the answer." In the US, Teachers and even parents start teaching their children this as soon as they are old enough to talk. You should never hit anyone. If someone hits you, you tell an adult. You don't hit back. There is always a better way. You can talk about it. You can run away. You can ask for help. You should never act violently, because violence is never the answer.
This is a bold faced lie. Sometimes, violence is the answer. Finding an adult to help is fine when you are a kid, but what happens when you are the adult? The police probably won't get there in time. If you don't hit back, you could be permanently maimed or even killed. You could try to talk it out, but in real life, the other guy is rarely willing to talk about it once it has gotten this far. If violence is not the answer, there is no answer, and you might as well give up and let the guy who does believe that violence is the answer destroy you.
Violence is never the ideal solution, but sometimes it is the only solution. The United States did not gain its independence by talking about it. It did start the process diplomatically, but it was also prepared to fight, because the representatives of the various colonies fully understood that Britain was prepared to use violence to prevent independence. At this point, there were two options: Submit to tyranny or use violence. Since the problem was gaining independence, submission was not a valid solution. In short, violence was the only answer.
This cliché, "Violence is never the answer," is a problem. The problem is that in real adult life, sometimes violence is necessary. When an adult who has been indoctrinated with this rhetoric faces such a situation, it becomes incredibly dangerous, because the only options are to act violently or become the victim. The problem is that few adult Americans know when violence is appropriate or necessary, which means that a vast majority will become the victims. Worse, those that are not the victims are the oppressors, because they don't understand when violence is not appropriate.
Sometimes, violence is the answer. It is never the ideal solution, but sometimes it is the only solution. Instead of lying to our children, and telling them that violence is never appropriate, we should be teaching them the circumstances in which violence is appropriate. Some children will figure out that violence can solve problems for them, and if we don't teach them when violence is an appropriate solution, they will harm others by using it inappropriately. When we preach that violence is never the answer, we are putting those who want to obey the rules at a severe disadvantage.
Let's teach our children the truth. Let's teach them that sometimes violence is the only option. Let's teach them that sometimes it is even appropriate to throw the first punch. While we are doing this, let's also teach them when violence is appropriate. If we teach our kids that it is better the give up than to act violently, we are ultimately making them slaves to those who are willing to use violence. Instead, we should teach them that violence can be appropriate in self defense, when no other reasonable option exists. Truly free men and women do not just give up when their freedom is threatened. They fight for that freedom, even when the only option is violence. Sometimes, violence is the answer.
This is a bold faced lie. Sometimes, violence is the answer. Finding an adult to help is fine when you are a kid, but what happens when you are the adult? The police probably won't get there in time. If you don't hit back, you could be permanently maimed or even killed. You could try to talk it out, but in real life, the other guy is rarely willing to talk about it once it has gotten this far. If violence is not the answer, there is no answer, and you might as well give up and let the guy who does believe that violence is the answer destroy you.
Violence is never the ideal solution, but sometimes it is the only solution. The United States did not gain its independence by talking about it. It did start the process diplomatically, but it was also prepared to fight, because the representatives of the various colonies fully understood that Britain was prepared to use violence to prevent independence. At this point, there were two options: Submit to tyranny or use violence. Since the problem was gaining independence, submission was not a valid solution. In short, violence was the only answer.
This cliché, "Violence is never the answer," is a problem. The problem is that in real adult life, sometimes violence is necessary. When an adult who has been indoctrinated with this rhetoric faces such a situation, it becomes incredibly dangerous, because the only options are to act violently or become the victim. The problem is that few adult Americans know when violence is appropriate or necessary, which means that a vast majority will become the victims. Worse, those that are not the victims are the oppressors, because they don't understand when violence is not appropriate.
Sometimes, violence is the answer. It is never the ideal solution, but sometimes it is the only solution. Instead of lying to our children, and telling them that violence is never appropriate, we should be teaching them the circumstances in which violence is appropriate. Some children will figure out that violence can solve problems for them, and if we don't teach them when violence is an appropriate solution, they will harm others by using it inappropriately. When we preach that violence is never the answer, we are putting those who want to obey the rules at a severe disadvantage.
Let's teach our children the truth. Let's teach them that sometimes violence is the only option. Let's teach them that sometimes it is even appropriate to throw the first punch. While we are doing this, let's also teach them when violence is appropriate. If we teach our kids that it is better the give up than to act violently, we are ultimately making them slaves to those who are willing to use violence. Instead, we should teach them that violence can be appropriate in self defense, when no other reasonable option exists. Truly free men and women do not just give up when their freedom is threatened. They fight for that freedom, even when the only option is violence. Sometimes, violence is the answer.
Architects and Web Designers
One day, a man went to an architect. He asked the architect to design a building for him. He wanted the building to have a fairly professional layout. He wanted people to feel compelled to come inside upon seeing the building. He asked the architect to make sure that people would not get lost in the building, and he wanted people to feel comfortable in the building. The goal of the building was not just to have space inside it. It would represent the business, it would sell the image of the business, it would make passersby want to come in, and it would make visitors want to buy the services and products offered by the business. The architect sketched up some simple drawings, and the man was impressed. He told the architect that was exactly what he was looking for, then he left to let the architect work on the official blue prints.
The next day, as the architect was working on the layout for the first floor of the building, he got a phone call. It was his client. The man explained that he wanted to make a few changes to the design sketched out the day before. The architect did not mind too much, since most of the changes were on the second and third floors, and he had not gotten to them yet. He told the man he would make the requested changes, and then he got back to work on the first floor.
A few days later, the client came in to take a look at the progress. The architect was almost finished with the room layouts, and he was working on some of the structural details. The client was impressed with drawings, but he wanted a few rooms moved around. A bathroom was too close to a certain office for his liking, and he wanted the elevator moved to the other side of the hallway. The architect started to object, but the man was adamant that the changes be made. It took the architect the rest of the day to figure out how to move the elevator without causing structural problems, and moving the bathroom required adjustments to the plumbing that would ultimately be much more expensive than the original layout. He did as the client wanted though, after all, the client way paying him for the work.
Early the next week, the architect met with the client again. The designs were almost ready to turn into construction blue prints. The client was quite pleased, but he told the architect that he thought something was missing. He said the design did not quite "pop." He got some copies of the design papers, and he asked the architect to hold off on the blue prints until he had time to look over the design papers.
The next day, the architect got a call from the client. The client had shown the design papers to his mother. She did not like certain parts of the layout on the second and third floors. She also thought that the elevator and the stairwell should be moved. The architect tried to explain that the requested changes were impossible. The structural integrity of the building depended on supports being in specific places, and moving the stairwell and the elevator to the requested locations would interrupt essential supports. Further, moving the bathroom on the second floor without moving the ones on the first and third floors would require a complete rerouting of the plumbing, which would take at least a day, and it would very likely cause chronic plumbing problems for the building. The client politely explained that this was not his problem. He had hired the architect to deal with these problems, and that is what he was paying him for. He then said that he had an important meeting and hung up the phone.
The architect was left with a dilemma. He could rework the designs to create the incredibly unsafe building the client was set on having. He would get paid, and the client would be happy. Of course, within a few weeks after construction, the building would collapse (assuming it did not collapse during construction), the client would be liable for millions of dollars in harm to employees and customers, not to mention the cost of cleanup, and the architect's reputation would be destroyed. Alternatively, he could drop the client, risk not getting paid for the work already completed, and still get a reputation hit when the client complained about the situation to all of his acquaintances. For what it is worth, at least he did not have to worry about the client making changes to his work without telling him (this does happen to web designers).
While I know of no client stupid enough to do this kind of thing with an architect, somehow many people think it is appropriate to do with web designers. The main difference between a web designer and an architect is that the web designer often does the design and the construction, and the liability for a botched web page is much lower than for a collapsed building. Aside from that, however, the jobs are very similar. When a person hires an architect, it is because the architect is trained to understand the limitations and best practices of building design. The architect knows where the best place to put bathrooms will be. The architect knows how to position various rooms to minimize the costs of plumbing and wiring. The architect knows how to work the design around essential structural supports. Clients don't second guess architects, because the cost of a mistake could be enormous.
Web design is very similar. A good web designer is trained to understand how to make a web site attractive and easy to use. A good web designer knows what to avoid and what is likely to drive away customers. A good web designer can design a web page that will represent your business the way you want people to see it. Web design is not just about coding a web page. It is about marketing the image that the client wants. It is about making the business attractive and professional. When a client interferes in this process, it wastes the client's money and the web designer's time, and it results in an inferior product. A web designer should be treated like an architect. A poorly designed web site can loose an enormous amount of business. If a client is paying a web designer, the client should generally leave design decisions to the designer, unless asked. And, the client's mother (or other friends or family members) is never an appropriate source of design advice (if you trust your mother's web design education that much, hire her to make the web site).
I want give some guidelines in dealing with a web designer.
First, ask for examples of the designer's work. If there is something you don't like about the design, ask about it. It may be specific to the situation, or perhaps it was a client decision. If you don't like the designer's style, find another designer.
Second, don't go for the lowest bidder. In the software industry in general, and especially in web design, you get what you pay for. If you hire the lowest bidder, expect to get the lowest quality, and don't expect it to be finished on time. It is better to interview several web designers, discuss what you want, and look at examples of their work. Once you have narrowed down the list, it might be appropriate to pick the one that charges the least, but never blindly pick the lowest bidder.
Third, trust the designer. Seriously, you could easily hire a bunch of high school students, teach them HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and they could make a web site for you. The result would be awful, it would drive away customers, and it would be a horrible waste of money, even at minimum wage. Hire a web designer, and trust the designer to do the design. If there is something that bothers you, feel free to discuss it, but sometimes the answer is just no. You might not like it, but the site is for your customers, not you. It does not matter how much the site "pops" for you; if it does not look professional to your customers, it is not worth it.
Fourth, never ever complain that it does not "pop." Popping is not a thing. Web sites do not and should not "pop." What you think of as "popping" is probably one of those things that web designers learn in college to never do, because it makes things hard to read, unprofessional, and sometimes may even cause seizures (totally serious here).
I also want to briefly talk about why a professional site is important. A while back, I saw a web site for a local student apartment complex. It was clearly made by someone with little or no design education. Following is the impression a poorly designed web site for an apartment complex has on me.
First, it is clear that the company either does not care about its image or is too cheap to pay for a decent product. If it does not care about its image, then I can only assume that it also does not take very good care of its apartments. I mean, if a company cannot be bothered to take the effort to hire someone to make a professional web site, what must I assume about how the insides and outsides of its apartments? Likewise, if it is too cheap to pay for a decent web site, then I can only assume that it is paying the lowest possible price for things like maintenance. How high does it wait for the snow to get in the winter before it is willing to pay someone to plow? If I have a plumbing problem, are they going to get a professional plumber to fix it, or will the maintenance guy just do something that will make it good for a few days before it has problems again? What about pest control when the ants start getting inside?
Second, it is obvious that the point of the web site is to get a marketing advantage, not to honestly represent the company's product. A company that is not willing to put some effort into a professional web site is a red flag in my book. A poorly designed web site says "I want the business, but I am not willing to work for it." It tells me that the company wanted the exposure that comes with web presence, but it also tells me that they care more about their own pocketbooks than about their customers. Admittedly, sometimes they just don't know better, but frankly, it is not worth the risk.
Third, and this applies specifically to apartments, the highest quality renters are the most likely to notice the above two. In short, I would expect an apartment complex with a poorly designed web site to have lower quality renters, which means apartments are not going to be in very good condition, I can expect more noise than I would in other apartments, and I may have to deal with rude neighbors.
What it all comes down to is that no web site at all is better than a low quality one. A low quality web site is likely to attract mostly low quality customers. If you are fine with that, design your own, trample all over the web designer you hired, have your high school student with no design education do it, or get family members without any design education involved. If you want to attract higher quality customers though, you will need a high quality web site, and that means hiring a good designer and getting out of the way.
If you treat your web designer like you would treat an architect designing an expensive building, you will almost always end up with a better product than if you start enforcing your own design choices. If you are paying someone to design a web site for you, get out of the way, and let them do their job.
The next day, as the architect was working on the layout for the first floor of the building, he got a phone call. It was his client. The man explained that he wanted to make a few changes to the design sketched out the day before. The architect did not mind too much, since most of the changes were on the second and third floors, and he had not gotten to them yet. He told the man he would make the requested changes, and then he got back to work on the first floor.
A few days later, the client came in to take a look at the progress. The architect was almost finished with the room layouts, and he was working on some of the structural details. The client was impressed with drawings, but he wanted a few rooms moved around. A bathroom was too close to a certain office for his liking, and he wanted the elevator moved to the other side of the hallway. The architect started to object, but the man was adamant that the changes be made. It took the architect the rest of the day to figure out how to move the elevator without causing structural problems, and moving the bathroom required adjustments to the plumbing that would ultimately be much more expensive than the original layout. He did as the client wanted though, after all, the client way paying him for the work.
Early the next week, the architect met with the client again. The designs were almost ready to turn into construction blue prints. The client was quite pleased, but he told the architect that he thought something was missing. He said the design did not quite "pop." He got some copies of the design papers, and he asked the architect to hold off on the blue prints until he had time to look over the design papers.
The next day, the architect got a call from the client. The client had shown the design papers to his mother. She did not like certain parts of the layout on the second and third floors. She also thought that the elevator and the stairwell should be moved. The architect tried to explain that the requested changes were impossible. The structural integrity of the building depended on supports being in specific places, and moving the stairwell and the elevator to the requested locations would interrupt essential supports. Further, moving the bathroom on the second floor without moving the ones on the first and third floors would require a complete rerouting of the plumbing, which would take at least a day, and it would very likely cause chronic plumbing problems for the building. The client politely explained that this was not his problem. He had hired the architect to deal with these problems, and that is what he was paying him for. He then said that he had an important meeting and hung up the phone.
The architect was left with a dilemma. He could rework the designs to create the incredibly unsafe building the client was set on having. He would get paid, and the client would be happy. Of course, within a few weeks after construction, the building would collapse (assuming it did not collapse during construction), the client would be liable for millions of dollars in harm to employees and customers, not to mention the cost of cleanup, and the architect's reputation would be destroyed. Alternatively, he could drop the client, risk not getting paid for the work already completed, and still get a reputation hit when the client complained about the situation to all of his acquaintances. For what it is worth, at least he did not have to worry about the client making changes to his work without telling him (this does happen to web designers).
While I know of no client stupid enough to do this kind of thing with an architect, somehow many people think it is appropriate to do with web designers. The main difference between a web designer and an architect is that the web designer often does the design and the construction, and the liability for a botched web page is much lower than for a collapsed building. Aside from that, however, the jobs are very similar. When a person hires an architect, it is because the architect is trained to understand the limitations and best practices of building design. The architect knows where the best place to put bathrooms will be. The architect knows how to position various rooms to minimize the costs of plumbing and wiring. The architect knows how to work the design around essential structural supports. Clients don't second guess architects, because the cost of a mistake could be enormous.
Web design is very similar. A good web designer is trained to understand how to make a web site attractive and easy to use. A good web designer knows what to avoid and what is likely to drive away customers. A good web designer can design a web page that will represent your business the way you want people to see it. Web design is not just about coding a web page. It is about marketing the image that the client wants. It is about making the business attractive and professional. When a client interferes in this process, it wastes the client's money and the web designer's time, and it results in an inferior product. A web designer should be treated like an architect. A poorly designed web site can loose an enormous amount of business. If a client is paying a web designer, the client should generally leave design decisions to the designer, unless asked. And, the client's mother (or other friends or family members) is never an appropriate source of design advice (if you trust your mother's web design education that much, hire her to make the web site).
I want give some guidelines in dealing with a web designer.
First, ask for examples of the designer's work. If there is something you don't like about the design, ask about it. It may be specific to the situation, or perhaps it was a client decision. If you don't like the designer's style, find another designer.
Second, don't go for the lowest bidder. In the software industry in general, and especially in web design, you get what you pay for. If you hire the lowest bidder, expect to get the lowest quality, and don't expect it to be finished on time. It is better to interview several web designers, discuss what you want, and look at examples of their work. Once you have narrowed down the list, it might be appropriate to pick the one that charges the least, but never blindly pick the lowest bidder.
Third, trust the designer. Seriously, you could easily hire a bunch of high school students, teach them HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and they could make a web site for you. The result would be awful, it would drive away customers, and it would be a horrible waste of money, even at minimum wage. Hire a web designer, and trust the designer to do the design. If there is something that bothers you, feel free to discuss it, but sometimes the answer is just no. You might not like it, but the site is for your customers, not you. It does not matter how much the site "pops" for you; if it does not look professional to your customers, it is not worth it.
Fourth, never ever complain that it does not "pop." Popping is not a thing. Web sites do not and should not "pop." What you think of as "popping" is probably one of those things that web designers learn in college to never do, because it makes things hard to read, unprofessional, and sometimes may even cause seizures (totally serious here).
I also want to briefly talk about why a professional site is important. A while back, I saw a web site for a local student apartment complex. It was clearly made by someone with little or no design education. Following is the impression a poorly designed web site for an apartment complex has on me.
First, it is clear that the company either does not care about its image or is too cheap to pay for a decent product. If it does not care about its image, then I can only assume that it also does not take very good care of its apartments. I mean, if a company cannot be bothered to take the effort to hire someone to make a professional web site, what must I assume about how the insides and outsides of its apartments? Likewise, if it is too cheap to pay for a decent web site, then I can only assume that it is paying the lowest possible price for things like maintenance. How high does it wait for the snow to get in the winter before it is willing to pay someone to plow? If I have a plumbing problem, are they going to get a professional plumber to fix it, or will the maintenance guy just do something that will make it good for a few days before it has problems again? What about pest control when the ants start getting inside?
Second, it is obvious that the point of the web site is to get a marketing advantage, not to honestly represent the company's product. A company that is not willing to put some effort into a professional web site is a red flag in my book. A poorly designed web site says "I want the business, but I am not willing to work for it." It tells me that the company wanted the exposure that comes with web presence, but it also tells me that they care more about their own pocketbooks than about their customers. Admittedly, sometimes they just don't know better, but frankly, it is not worth the risk.
Third, and this applies specifically to apartments, the highest quality renters are the most likely to notice the above two. In short, I would expect an apartment complex with a poorly designed web site to have lower quality renters, which means apartments are not going to be in very good condition, I can expect more noise than I would in other apartments, and I may have to deal with rude neighbors.
What it all comes down to is that no web site at all is better than a low quality one. A low quality web site is likely to attract mostly low quality customers. If you are fine with that, design your own, trample all over the web designer you hired, have your high school student with no design education do it, or get family members without any design education involved. If you want to attract higher quality customers though, you will need a high quality web site, and that means hiring a good designer and getting out of the way.
If you treat your web designer like you would treat an architect designing an expensive building, you will almost always end up with a better product than if you start enforcing your own design choices. If you are paying someone to design a web site for you, get out of the way, and let them do their job.
The Web is Horribly Broken
The World Wide Web, the part of the internet that focuses on presenting data in a document-like format, is horribly broken. It is completely inadequate for its job. The evidence is the enormous number of hacks that are almost essential to producing professional quality web sites in a reasonable amount of time. I am talking about the plethora of general purpose frameworks that are constantly being produced, used, and often discarded.
The foundation of the web, HTML, is a document formatting language. It was designed as a simple encoding for text documents that would allow for headers, paragraphs, and simple text formatting. The single unique and interesting thing about HTML was the ability to include links to other documents. HTML was designed for research papers, and research papers tend to reference other research papers, so linked cross references made things considerably easier. Generally speaking, HTML did an excellent job of this.
The web took HTML and attempted to use it for applications it was not designed for. As time went on, it was quickly discovered that web pages needed more interactivity than research papers. Since that time, HTML has undergone many revisions and additions, but even with HTML 5, it is still based around a design intended primarily for presenting research papers (though much more impressive ones than the original HTML). Perhaps the most dramatic addition to HTML was JavaScript, which allowed web developers to add programmatic elements to web pages. This is when web pages gained true interactivity.
Unfortunately, this was still not enough. JavaScript gave programmers the tools to make highly interactive web pages, but it did not do much more than that. It turns out that there are several specific types of interactivity that are needed more often than even many built-in features of HTML. Very few of these have been added to HTML or other parts of the Web Standards though. The result is that web developers started to roll their own using JavaScript. The problem is that now we have hundreds of popular "frameworks" (the name given to libraries of features that probably should have already been included in the official standards). Frameworks tend to come and go. Many are poorly designed, hard to use, and don't work well, though developers rarely realize that until something significantly better comes along to make it obvious. Some frameworks have become so popular that nearly every web site uses them, and tutorials for other frameworks just assume the reader is already familiar with and using them. The vanilla web is so severely inadequate that every modern, professional web site uses at least a few frameworks as hacks to get the functionality that is essential to the modern web.
This is a problem. Frameworks are heavy. They use a lot of bandwidth to load (I can hear web developers reading this saying "its only a few kb"; unfortunately, only a few kb quickly adds up to gigabytes or even terrabytes on a high traffic web site). They are also slow. Despite the extreme levels of JavaScript optimization in modern browsers, interpreting JavaScript is still significantly slower than using capabilities built into the system to comply with web standards. Frameworks are problematic for everyone. Even if there were people who rarely visited sites that use them, they would still have to deal with the general congestion caused by various frameworks being downloaded billions of times a day. Unfortunately, they are also essential, because they provide absolutely necessary functionality that HTML and other standardized web technologies are missing.
The cause of this problem is simple: Web standards are lacking essential functionality necessary for effective use of the web. Unfortunately, this problem is nearly impossible to solve. Standards are inherently complicated. Technology standards cannot (or at least, should not) be legislated, because no one with sufficient political power is educated enough to have any business getting involved. Standards are standards because a significant majority agrees on them and follows them. This necessarily results in a slow release cycle, because each release requires a consensus among a large number of parties. (This slowness is why pure democracy cannot work for governments.) When a specific part of a standard cannot get a consensus, it is set aside for the next version, which means that cutting edge technologies almost never end up in the version of the standards where they are most needed. Instead, a faster, more agile approach is necessary, and that is where frameworks come from.
Frameworks are an unfortunate but necessary part of the standards cycle. For something to become a standard, it is important to ensure that it is of general usefulness and reasonably necessary. When a framework becomes so popular that everyone is using it and no one can do without it, it is clear that the features it adds (at least, those in common use) are both generally useful and necessary. When multiple frameworks provide the same popular feature, it provides many examples of how the feature could be implemented, which is valuable in establishing a sane standard. In short, the world of frameworks is the world where standards evolve and compete for survival of the fittest. The features and implementations that survive and thrive for long enough will eventually become web standards.
What it all comes down to is that the web is horribly broken. It is being propped up all over the place by hacks that are more politely known as frameworks. It is missing enormous amounts of essential functionality. The worst part is that it will never catch up. The fact, however, is that the current system results in good, sane standards that can be relied upon. Frankly, it is pretty amazing that the web works at all. After over 35 years of competing computer operating systems, we still cannot expect a program written for one to work on any others. With the modern web, using frameworks, a developer can reasonably expect a web site written for one modern browser to work with little or no adjustment on nearly all modern browsers. The web might be horribly broken, but it works amazingly well despite that.
The foundation of the web, HTML, is a document formatting language. It was designed as a simple encoding for text documents that would allow for headers, paragraphs, and simple text formatting. The single unique and interesting thing about HTML was the ability to include links to other documents. HTML was designed for research papers, and research papers tend to reference other research papers, so linked cross references made things considerably easier. Generally speaking, HTML did an excellent job of this.
The web took HTML and attempted to use it for applications it was not designed for. As time went on, it was quickly discovered that web pages needed more interactivity than research papers. Since that time, HTML has undergone many revisions and additions, but even with HTML 5, it is still based around a design intended primarily for presenting research papers (though much more impressive ones than the original HTML). Perhaps the most dramatic addition to HTML was JavaScript, which allowed web developers to add programmatic elements to web pages. This is when web pages gained true interactivity.
Unfortunately, this was still not enough. JavaScript gave programmers the tools to make highly interactive web pages, but it did not do much more than that. It turns out that there are several specific types of interactivity that are needed more often than even many built-in features of HTML. Very few of these have been added to HTML or other parts of the Web Standards though. The result is that web developers started to roll their own using JavaScript. The problem is that now we have hundreds of popular "frameworks" (the name given to libraries of features that probably should have already been included in the official standards). Frameworks tend to come and go. Many are poorly designed, hard to use, and don't work well, though developers rarely realize that until something significantly better comes along to make it obvious. Some frameworks have become so popular that nearly every web site uses them, and tutorials for other frameworks just assume the reader is already familiar with and using them. The vanilla web is so severely inadequate that every modern, professional web site uses at least a few frameworks as hacks to get the functionality that is essential to the modern web.
This is a problem. Frameworks are heavy. They use a lot of bandwidth to load (I can hear web developers reading this saying "its only a few kb"; unfortunately, only a few kb quickly adds up to gigabytes or even terrabytes on a high traffic web site). They are also slow. Despite the extreme levels of JavaScript optimization in modern browsers, interpreting JavaScript is still significantly slower than using capabilities built into the system to comply with web standards. Frameworks are problematic for everyone. Even if there were people who rarely visited sites that use them, they would still have to deal with the general congestion caused by various frameworks being downloaded billions of times a day. Unfortunately, they are also essential, because they provide absolutely necessary functionality that HTML and other standardized web technologies are missing.
The cause of this problem is simple: Web standards are lacking essential functionality necessary for effective use of the web. Unfortunately, this problem is nearly impossible to solve. Standards are inherently complicated. Technology standards cannot (or at least, should not) be legislated, because no one with sufficient political power is educated enough to have any business getting involved. Standards are standards because a significant majority agrees on them and follows them. This necessarily results in a slow release cycle, because each release requires a consensus among a large number of parties. (This slowness is why pure democracy cannot work for governments.) When a specific part of a standard cannot get a consensus, it is set aside for the next version, which means that cutting edge technologies almost never end up in the version of the standards where they are most needed. Instead, a faster, more agile approach is necessary, and that is where frameworks come from.
Frameworks are an unfortunate but necessary part of the standards cycle. For something to become a standard, it is important to ensure that it is of general usefulness and reasonably necessary. When a framework becomes so popular that everyone is using it and no one can do without it, it is clear that the features it adds (at least, those in common use) are both generally useful and necessary. When multiple frameworks provide the same popular feature, it provides many examples of how the feature could be implemented, which is valuable in establishing a sane standard. In short, the world of frameworks is the world where standards evolve and compete for survival of the fittest. The features and implementations that survive and thrive for long enough will eventually become web standards.
What it all comes down to is that the web is horribly broken. It is being propped up all over the place by hacks that are more politely known as frameworks. It is missing enormous amounts of essential functionality. The worst part is that it will never catch up. The fact, however, is that the current system results in good, sane standards that can be relied upon. Frankly, it is pretty amazing that the web works at all. After over 35 years of competing computer operating systems, we still cannot expect a program written for one to work on any others. With the modern web, using frameworks, a developer can reasonably expect a web site written for one modern browser to work with little or no adjustment on nearly all modern browsers. The web might be horribly broken, but it works amazingly well despite that.
01 September 2015
Sales Tax Parity
The subject of whether states should be allowed to legally obligate retailers based in other states to collect sales tax has been something of a hotbed recently. On the conservative side, the claim is that brick and mortar stores suffer, because they have to collect sales tax, while online businesses only have to collect tax if they have a physical presence in the state. The liberal claim is that sales tax tends to stay low enough that normal price fluctuations for many goods make a significantly bigger difference. If this is true, then the claims that people can usually find products for cheaper online, because the sellers don't have to collect tax, is unfounded. There seems to be several important details that are ignored though.
The first is shipping. Brick and mortar stores ship everything to a central location. This allows them to take advantage of bulk rates for larger shipments. The customers then come to the physical location, eliminating any obvious outward shipping costs. Online retailers have to ship to their own location, and then they have to ship to individual customers. They cannot get bulk rates on the outward shipping, because the destinations are residential and the products are individually packaged. Depending on the particular product, shipping can easily be much higher than even the highest state sales tax (as of 2014, the highest state sales tax was 7.5%). This does depend on the particular product. A diamond ring worth $5,000 could cost $5 to ship, skipping things like insurance, and even with insurance, the price barely approaches 1% of the value of the item. An online retailer would definitely benefit from not having to collect sales tax. Most products, however, do not have such a low shipping cost to value ratio. A vast majority of lower cost products cost enough to ship that shipping can run as high as 50% to 75% of the value of the product, and for products worth less than $20, you can easily end up paying several times the cost of the product in shipping. The important fact, however, is that a vast majority of products you can buy online cost more shipping than sales tax would cost (and, in case you want to discuss free shipping, someone is paying for it; usually it is worked into the price of the product or other products commonly purchased with that product).
The second detail is the fact that a vast majority of online retailers are small businesses. In fact, there are many times more online businesses at this point than there are brick and mortar stores. What this means is that forcing online retailers to collect tax is going to do far more harm to small businesses than the current situation, even if the claims about taxes and pricing were true. The big argument right now is that small brick and mortar stores deserve a fair playing ground, but the comparison is always against huge online retailers like Amazon. Amazon does not have lower prices because they don't have to charge sales tax. They have lower prices because they operate at a much larger scale than small businesses. Compare these small brick and mortar stores to small online businesses, and you will find that the big pull for online sales is not price. Prices for small online businesses are often comparable, if not higher than small brick and mortar stores. People shop online for niche products because they cannot find a nearby brick and mortar store selling what they want. Forcing these small online businesses to collect sales tax is going to bankrupt many of them, not because of lost sales, but because the extra work involved is too expensive. We are not talking about collecting tax for one state here. Online businesses will have to keep track of sales from every state with sales tax. They will have to keep track of what state what tax collection goes to, and they will have to do all of the tax paperwork for every state they sell to. Brick and mortal stores only have to collect tax for the state they are located in. Online stores will have to deal with that on a grand scale. It is beyond absurd to expect small businesses to do this.
The third ignored detail is the purpose of sales tax and of taxes in general. Brick and mortar stores cost the state money. There are law enforcement costs associated with protecting the physical property of the business. There are costs associated with utilities and traffic. The tax is actually paid by the customers. Just like the businesses, the customers cost the state money. It is reasonable for a brick and mortar store in a state to be required to collect sales tax, because all parties involved in the transaction owe a debt to the state for protection, social programs, and state administration. In online transactions across state borders, this is not the case. Customers living in a given state might owe the state, but the seller does not. If the seller owes anyone, it is the state that the seller is located in. Placing the burden of collecting sales tax for other states on the seller is unethical, because the seller is entirely unaffiliated with that state. It comes down to the same thing as before: We are talking about forcing millions of small online businesses to collect an manage tax for a huge number of states. Now, a bunch of one person businesses suddenly have to keep track of tax rates for every state.
To help understand the magnitude of forcing online businesses to collect sales tax for all states, consider the following. In the U.S., only 5 states do not have sales tax. That is 45 states that do. State sales tax rates range from 7.5% to 2.9%. Changes in state sales tax rates are fairly common, so an online business would have to keep close track of when state tax rates change and by how much. It would have to track 45 different values, and it would have to keep a close watch on the other 5 states as well, because there is no guarantee that they won't suddenly decide to add a sales tax. It would also have to keep track of where each sale came from, how much tax was charged, and when it was charged (in case of rate changes). It would have to sum all of the taxes for each state every year, and it would have to do tax paperwork for 45 states every year. This is the kind of work that most businesses have to hire a tax lawyer for. Small businesses cannot afford a tax lawyer, and if a small business owner was skilled enough to keep up with all of this, it would probably pay better to get a job doing it exclusively. In short, dealing with taxes at this level is a full time job, and small business owners already tend to work 60+ hours a week. This is not just economically unwise. It is downright unethical.
The real problem is that forcing online businesses to collect state sales taxes does not increase fairness. It removes an imaginary inconvenience from brick and mortal stores, and it utterly destroys online businesses. Brick and mortar stores only have to track sales tax for one state, making online businesses track sales tax for 45 states in no way makes things more fair. It cruelly eliminates a huge section of the competition for small brick and mortar stores, and it dramatically increases unemployment.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-and-local-sales-tax-rates-2014
The first is shipping. Brick and mortar stores ship everything to a central location. This allows them to take advantage of bulk rates for larger shipments. The customers then come to the physical location, eliminating any obvious outward shipping costs. Online retailers have to ship to their own location, and then they have to ship to individual customers. They cannot get bulk rates on the outward shipping, because the destinations are residential and the products are individually packaged. Depending on the particular product, shipping can easily be much higher than even the highest state sales tax (as of 2014, the highest state sales tax was 7.5%). This does depend on the particular product. A diamond ring worth $5,000 could cost $5 to ship, skipping things like insurance, and even with insurance, the price barely approaches 1% of the value of the item. An online retailer would definitely benefit from not having to collect sales tax. Most products, however, do not have such a low shipping cost to value ratio. A vast majority of lower cost products cost enough to ship that shipping can run as high as 50% to 75% of the value of the product, and for products worth less than $20, you can easily end up paying several times the cost of the product in shipping. The important fact, however, is that a vast majority of products you can buy online cost more shipping than sales tax would cost (and, in case you want to discuss free shipping, someone is paying for it; usually it is worked into the price of the product or other products commonly purchased with that product).
The second detail is the fact that a vast majority of online retailers are small businesses. In fact, there are many times more online businesses at this point than there are brick and mortar stores. What this means is that forcing online retailers to collect tax is going to do far more harm to small businesses than the current situation, even if the claims about taxes and pricing were true. The big argument right now is that small brick and mortar stores deserve a fair playing ground, but the comparison is always against huge online retailers like Amazon. Amazon does not have lower prices because they don't have to charge sales tax. They have lower prices because they operate at a much larger scale than small businesses. Compare these small brick and mortar stores to small online businesses, and you will find that the big pull for online sales is not price. Prices for small online businesses are often comparable, if not higher than small brick and mortar stores. People shop online for niche products because they cannot find a nearby brick and mortar store selling what they want. Forcing these small online businesses to collect sales tax is going to bankrupt many of them, not because of lost sales, but because the extra work involved is too expensive. We are not talking about collecting tax for one state here. Online businesses will have to keep track of sales from every state with sales tax. They will have to keep track of what state what tax collection goes to, and they will have to do all of the tax paperwork for every state they sell to. Brick and mortal stores only have to collect tax for the state they are located in. Online stores will have to deal with that on a grand scale. It is beyond absurd to expect small businesses to do this.
The third ignored detail is the purpose of sales tax and of taxes in general. Brick and mortar stores cost the state money. There are law enforcement costs associated with protecting the physical property of the business. There are costs associated with utilities and traffic. The tax is actually paid by the customers. Just like the businesses, the customers cost the state money. It is reasonable for a brick and mortar store in a state to be required to collect sales tax, because all parties involved in the transaction owe a debt to the state for protection, social programs, and state administration. In online transactions across state borders, this is not the case. Customers living in a given state might owe the state, but the seller does not. If the seller owes anyone, it is the state that the seller is located in. Placing the burden of collecting sales tax for other states on the seller is unethical, because the seller is entirely unaffiliated with that state. It comes down to the same thing as before: We are talking about forcing millions of small online businesses to collect an manage tax for a huge number of states. Now, a bunch of one person businesses suddenly have to keep track of tax rates for every state.
To help understand the magnitude of forcing online businesses to collect sales tax for all states, consider the following. In the U.S., only 5 states do not have sales tax. That is 45 states that do. State sales tax rates range from 7.5% to 2.9%. Changes in state sales tax rates are fairly common, so an online business would have to keep close track of when state tax rates change and by how much. It would have to track 45 different values, and it would have to keep a close watch on the other 5 states as well, because there is no guarantee that they won't suddenly decide to add a sales tax. It would also have to keep track of where each sale came from, how much tax was charged, and when it was charged (in case of rate changes). It would have to sum all of the taxes for each state every year, and it would have to do tax paperwork for 45 states every year. This is the kind of work that most businesses have to hire a tax lawyer for. Small businesses cannot afford a tax lawyer, and if a small business owner was skilled enough to keep up with all of this, it would probably pay better to get a job doing it exclusively. In short, dealing with taxes at this level is a full time job, and small business owners already tend to work 60+ hours a week. This is not just economically unwise. It is downright unethical.
The real problem is that forcing online businesses to collect state sales taxes does not increase fairness. It removes an imaginary inconvenience from brick and mortal stores, and it utterly destroys online businesses. Brick and mortar stores only have to track sales tax for one state, making online businesses track sales tax for 45 states in no way makes things more fair. It cruelly eliminates a huge section of the competition for small brick and mortar stores, and it dramatically increases unemployment.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-and-local-sales-tax-rates-2014
19 August 2015
Child Support
Today, I just want to point out a major flaw in the U.S. child support system. I have a friend who divorced her abusive husband very shortly after getting pregnant. I am not going to bore you with the stories of the emotional abuse from him and his family during and after the birth, but I will mention that the husband was provided with DNA evidence that the child was his. Recently, some five months after the birth, he finally announced that he has no intention of paying child support (prior to this it was always "next month I will start"). She has been raising their child on a very small income with no support from the father for almost half a year, and she is currently in a very difficult financial situation as a result. Child support laws won't even give her any recourse for another month, and she is will still not see any of the money for another 2 to 3 months. This is not a unique story. There are children all over the U.S. who have been financially abandoned by their fathers, and the children and mothers have to suffer for almost a year to see any justice.
U.S. child support needs some massive revisions. First, fathers should not be paying directly to the mothers, and they should not be paying through a middle man that only forwards the payment if it is received. This is essentially the state telling mothers and children that they can just rot and die if the fathers don't pay. Six months is far too long to wait before taking action. Who deserves survival more, a deadbeat dad who abandoned his kid, or the kid who did nothing wrong?
It would only take one thing to make a huge difference: Instead of mom only getting the money if dad will pay it, the government should do the paying. The government should pay mom her child support every month, on time, and in full. Then, the government should send dad the bill. If dad does not pay, mom should not have to report him or file for recourse. In fact, she really should not even have to know. If the government wants to wait six months before garnishing wages, that should be its own business, and it should feel the sting of a light pocket book, because the government made the law, and the government can afford it much better.
Before closing, I want to avoid some misunderstandings. I realize that sometimes moms abandon their children when the fathers get custody. This applies equally to them. I presented this way, because a very vast majority of divorces find the children with the mother, while the father is ordered to pay child support.
The point here is, regardless of which parent has the child, it is beyond cruel and irresponsible to leave the financial support of the child entirely in the hands of someone who's commitment is questionable. If the government is going to order that child support be paid, the government should be responsible for enforcing that order in a way that does not cause suffering for the child. If the government is not capable of forcing all payments to be made in full and on time, it should take on the responsibility of making the payments regardless of whether the debt has been paid, and it should take sole responsibility of collecting the debt. We no longer live in an era where doing this is far too expensive to be feasible. It can and should be done, because we are not just talking about the well being of our children. We are talking about our future society. If we cannot make sure that our children do not have to suffer in poverty needlessly, our nation is going to go backwards, not forwards. Even if you are too selfish to care about this, consider who is going to care for you when you get old, when a vast majority of Americans are in poverty.
U.S. child support needs some massive revisions. First, fathers should not be paying directly to the mothers, and they should not be paying through a middle man that only forwards the payment if it is received. This is essentially the state telling mothers and children that they can just rot and die if the fathers don't pay. Six months is far too long to wait before taking action. Who deserves survival more, a deadbeat dad who abandoned his kid, or the kid who did nothing wrong?
It would only take one thing to make a huge difference: Instead of mom only getting the money if dad will pay it, the government should do the paying. The government should pay mom her child support every month, on time, and in full. Then, the government should send dad the bill. If dad does not pay, mom should not have to report him or file for recourse. In fact, she really should not even have to know. If the government wants to wait six months before garnishing wages, that should be its own business, and it should feel the sting of a light pocket book, because the government made the law, and the government can afford it much better.
Before closing, I want to avoid some misunderstandings. I realize that sometimes moms abandon their children when the fathers get custody. This applies equally to them. I presented this way, because a very vast majority of divorces find the children with the mother, while the father is ordered to pay child support.
The point here is, regardless of which parent has the child, it is beyond cruel and irresponsible to leave the financial support of the child entirely in the hands of someone who's commitment is questionable. If the government is going to order that child support be paid, the government should be responsible for enforcing that order in a way that does not cause suffering for the child. If the government is not capable of forcing all payments to be made in full and on time, it should take on the responsibility of making the payments regardless of whether the debt has been paid, and it should take sole responsibility of collecting the debt. We no longer live in an era where doing this is far too expensive to be feasible. It can and should be done, because we are not just talking about the well being of our children. We are talking about our future society. If we cannot make sure that our children do not have to suffer in poverty needlessly, our nation is going to go backwards, not forwards. Even if you are too selfish to care about this, consider who is going to care for you when you get old, when a vast majority of Americans are in poverty.
17 August 2015
UFOs and Other Improbable Things
Humans in general seem to have a very stubborn skeptical streak that is often taken to an extreme. I am not just talking about UFOs. I am talking about a large range of "supernatural" claims for which there is significant supporting evidence. I am also talking about scientific claims sometimes even backed with fairly strong evidence. Humans like to reject anything that seems improbable, despite whatever evidence exists. Ironically, this extends to religion, but it can go both ways.
First I want to discuss UFOs. Personally, I am a skeptic, but I am not a militant skeptic who gets verbally abusive when people think differently. Several years ago, I watched a show on Discovery about UFO sighting and ancient evidence of alien visitors. It changed my perspective entirely. Now, I am not saying I suddenly believe in all of the alien visitor theories or anything, but I certainly don't think that everyone involved is crazy. The thing is, there are a lot of people who claim to have observed alien activity. These are not just run-of-the-mill crazies either. There are astronauts, scientists, politicians, and military leaders who claim to have observed evidence. Further, there are incidents on public record that not only have no explanation, but the records also state that those present claimed to have observed alien presence. These incidents are not only on US records either. There are recorded incidents from a range of countries, some of which had limited contact with other countries at the time. The number and consistency of the claims is staggering. Further, there is potential evidence of records of alien visits from a rather large number of ancient societies, again, with an amazing level of consistency. The consistency of the records and various evidence is far greater than even the consistency among world religions over time and distance. In short, the evidence supporting the theory that aliens have visited the Earth in the past, and may still be visiting regularly, is many times stronger than the evidence supporting the existence of Jesus Christ.
There are plenty of other "supernatural" theories that most people summarily dismiss without ever considering supporting evidence and lack of opposing evidence. Alternative medicine is largely dismissed because of lack of evidence that it works, but because no one has seriously tested it, the lack of evidence is practically meaningless. There is equally little evidence that it does not work. Bigfoot has still not been disproved, largely because everyone searching wants to believe. Without unbelievers getting involved, because they thing the whole thing is crazy, we cannot have evidence against it. Things that are not supernatural are subject to this problem as well. Many people don't believe that global warming is even real, despite some pretty solid evidence, largely because they don't want to believe. They cannot see the rising temperatures with their own eyes, so they call those who believe crazy. People seem to dismiss inconvenient ideas regardless of evidence, when the perceived probability is low.
Religion is affected by this problem as well. Over the last several millenia, humans have used religion to explain things that they could not otherwise explain. They attributed things they could not control to God, and sometimes they attributed things that were inconvenient for them to control to God. Now, it is getting more common for people to summarily dismiss the idea of religion, despite claims from many civilizations that, while less consistent than alien theories, still have many common threads. It is not unreasonable to be skeptical of religion and even to disbelieve in God, but it is completely unreasonable to deny any possibility that God could exist. The supporting evidence for religion may be weak, but the opposing evidence does not exist at all!
The point of all of this is that believing the evidence supporting alien visitors is more rational than believing that all of the believers are crazy people. There is no call for insulting people who are basing their beliefs on actual evidence, especially when you have no evidence that they are wrong. And, if you are religious, consider that the evidence supporting alien visitors is far stronger than the evidence supporting your religion. Personally, I remain skeptical, but I am not so deluded as to assume that anyone who believes differently is crazy.
First I want to discuss UFOs. Personally, I am a skeptic, but I am not a militant skeptic who gets verbally abusive when people think differently. Several years ago, I watched a show on Discovery about UFO sighting and ancient evidence of alien visitors. It changed my perspective entirely. Now, I am not saying I suddenly believe in all of the alien visitor theories or anything, but I certainly don't think that everyone involved is crazy. The thing is, there are a lot of people who claim to have observed alien activity. These are not just run-of-the-mill crazies either. There are astronauts, scientists, politicians, and military leaders who claim to have observed evidence. Further, there are incidents on public record that not only have no explanation, but the records also state that those present claimed to have observed alien presence. These incidents are not only on US records either. There are recorded incidents from a range of countries, some of which had limited contact with other countries at the time. The number and consistency of the claims is staggering. Further, there is potential evidence of records of alien visits from a rather large number of ancient societies, again, with an amazing level of consistency. The consistency of the records and various evidence is far greater than even the consistency among world religions over time and distance. In short, the evidence supporting the theory that aliens have visited the Earth in the past, and may still be visiting regularly, is many times stronger than the evidence supporting the existence of Jesus Christ.
There are plenty of other "supernatural" theories that most people summarily dismiss without ever considering supporting evidence and lack of opposing evidence. Alternative medicine is largely dismissed because of lack of evidence that it works, but because no one has seriously tested it, the lack of evidence is practically meaningless. There is equally little evidence that it does not work. Bigfoot has still not been disproved, largely because everyone searching wants to believe. Without unbelievers getting involved, because they thing the whole thing is crazy, we cannot have evidence against it. Things that are not supernatural are subject to this problem as well. Many people don't believe that global warming is even real, despite some pretty solid evidence, largely because they don't want to believe. They cannot see the rising temperatures with their own eyes, so they call those who believe crazy. People seem to dismiss inconvenient ideas regardless of evidence, when the perceived probability is low.
Religion is affected by this problem as well. Over the last several millenia, humans have used religion to explain things that they could not otherwise explain. They attributed things they could not control to God, and sometimes they attributed things that were inconvenient for them to control to God. Now, it is getting more common for people to summarily dismiss the idea of religion, despite claims from many civilizations that, while less consistent than alien theories, still have many common threads. It is not unreasonable to be skeptical of religion and even to disbelieve in God, but it is completely unreasonable to deny any possibility that God could exist. The supporting evidence for religion may be weak, but the opposing evidence does not exist at all!
The point of all of this is that believing the evidence supporting alien visitors is more rational than believing that all of the believers are crazy people. There is no call for insulting people who are basing their beliefs on actual evidence, especially when you have no evidence that they are wrong. And, if you are religious, consider that the evidence supporting alien visitors is far stronger than the evidence supporting your religion. Personally, I remain skeptical, but I am not so deluded as to assume that anyone who believes differently is crazy.
10 August 2015
Fax it to Me
In the past two weeks, I have been asked to do something involving fax twice. One was a bank, asking for my employer's fax number. The other was Medicaid asking for a fax with ID and car insurance information. Whenever something like this happens, it makes me wonder, "Do you realize that fax was obsolete over 10 years ago?"
My parents got their first scanner around 2000, and they were a bit behind on technology. This did not totally obsolete fax, because dial up internet was still common, and it could take 30 minutes or more to upload a half decent scan. Back then, modems often came with software for faxing from a scanned image, mostly for backward compatibility. This was faster than email, because the image quality could be dramatically reduced, but few people ever used this technology, for the reason I am going to discuss next. By 2005 though, internet speeds and computer technology had outstripped fax to the point where it is no longer worth wasting the money on the machine and the extra phone line.
The second problem is that even when faxing was still cool, normal people did not have fax machines. I can understand the bank asking for my employer's fax number. They may be behind the times, but there was a time when most businesses actually used fax machines. Even small home businesses often had fax numbers. The thing is, fax machines were never household appliances. When Medicaid asks for a fax of anything from someone they provide insurance to, they are asking that person to find a business that still uses fax, and get permission to use it to fax information (and keep in mind that Medicaid patients almost certainly cannot afford the hardware and the extra phone line). The thing is, even copy stores, where normal people used to go when they needed to send a fax, don't typically have fax machines anymore. Their copiers can almost certainly email a scanned image, but fax machines are ancient technology, even to them.
The absurdity of it all is astounding. There are still businesses that buy fax machines and spend money on extra phone lines for faxing, when they could just be using the scanners that come built into their printers, and the email programs on the computers that they are already using. Some printers even have an option for emailing a scan directly, without even needing to open your email program.
The moral of this story: Don't assume that someone you need information from has access to ancient technology that has been obsolete for over a decade. They probably don't. If you can't be bothered to use the modern technology you already have to replace expensive processes no one uses anymore, you are probably a burden on society that needs to be put down and replaced with something that can keep up.
My parents got their first scanner around 2000, and they were a bit behind on technology. This did not totally obsolete fax, because dial up internet was still common, and it could take 30 minutes or more to upload a half decent scan. Back then, modems often came with software for faxing from a scanned image, mostly for backward compatibility. This was faster than email, because the image quality could be dramatically reduced, but few people ever used this technology, for the reason I am going to discuss next. By 2005 though, internet speeds and computer technology had outstripped fax to the point where it is no longer worth wasting the money on the machine and the extra phone line.
The second problem is that even when faxing was still cool, normal people did not have fax machines. I can understand the bank asking for my employer's fax number. They may be behind the times, but there was a time when most businesses actually used fax machines. Even small home businesses often had fax numbers. The thing is, fax machines were never household appliances. When Medicaid asks for a fax of anything from someone they provide insurance to, they are asking that person to find a business that still uses fax, and get permission to use it to fax information (and keep in mind that Medicaid patients almost certainly cannot afford the hardware and the extra phone line). The thing is, even copy stores, where normal people used to go when they needed to send a fax, don't typically have fax machines anymore. Their copiers can almost certainly email a scanned image, but fax machines are ancient technology, even to them.
The absurdity of it all is astounding. There are still businesses that buy fax machines and spend money on extra phone lines for faxing, when they could just be using the scanners that come built into their printers, and the email programs on the computers that they are already using. Some printers even have an option for emailing a scan directly, without even needing to open your email program.
The moral of this story: Don't assume that someone you need information from has access to ancient technology that has been obsolete for over a decade. They probably don't. If you can't be bothered to use the modern technology you already have to replace expensive processes no one uses anymore, you are probably a burden on society that needs to be put down and replaced with something that can keep up.
08 August 2015
What's Wrong With Socialism
Socialism is a pretty big deal to conservatives. It is treated as the devil. Socialism is treated like tyranny. It takes away freedom and destroys fairness. It eliminates the will to work. Really though, what is actually wrong with socialism? Why do most conservatives fear it? Why do people think that it is a threat to freedom?
The answer is sadly simple: Taken to its logical end, socialism results in communism, where all wealth is equally distributed, everyone owns everything, thus no one owns anything, and there is no ownership, thus there is no motivation. Socialism as seen in the USSR is frightening, because, aside from the corruption aspect, it resulted in all of the things that most conservatives fear about it. It nearly eliminated personal freedom entirely, and it reduced motivation to work so far that it caused serious economic problems. This extreme socialism realized the darkest fears of conservatives.
There is a major problem with this fear though. During the earliest times of this nation, after it had declared independence, but before it became the US, a similar problem was observed with democratic republics. Contrary to popular belief, our founding fathers did not base the design of the Federal government entirely on the democratic republic of Athens (or similar governments of that era). Much of that design was based on existing colonial governments of the time. Different colonies were trying out different versions of democratic government, though nearly all used some form of republic. One problem that came up a lot was too much democracy. I believe the colony was Virgina (I might be wrong; it's been a while; there may also have been others). One colony created a legislature that had absolute power. The governor did not have veto power. The result was a very high level of democratic representation, which resulted in a very high level of democracy. The end result of this was that at one point, many farmers were having a difficult time paying their debts, so the legislature of this colony (mostly farmers, elected by farmers) passed a law suspending all debt payment for farmers. The result was catastrophic. With no legal guarantee for debt payments, lenders stopped lending. Those owning existing debts found relief, but those lending were quickly in serious financial trouble, and without anyone willing to grant more loans, the economy of the colony suffered very seriously. This was not the only problem. Different colonies experimented with different balances, all with different results. When the founding fathers drafted the Constitution, they based the Federal government on what they had learned from all of these experiments. The President was given veto power, to help avoid problems like the Virginia situation. Congress was divided into two houses, partially because many states with a single legislature still had problems with too much democracy causing unwise laws to be passed, and partially because the state governments wanted more direct representation in Federal government (this last part was demolished when Senators became elected by public vote, instead of appointed by state governments). In short, too much democracy is no better than too much socialism. In fact, there are other historical cases where democratic governments have quickly destroyed themselves, because there was nothing to prevent the majority from ignorantly passing self destructive laws. Historically, democracy was such an epic failure that many of the founders of this nation even questioned the wisdom of a democratic government, because they feared this would happen with the US as well.
Any form of government taken to an extreme will result in problems. Isolating all governmental power in a single person has proven problematic almost constantly throughout history. Democratic forms of government have historically never lasted very long, because they tend to become very unstable as size increases. On paper, extreme communist socialism sounds like an excellent idea, but in practice, we have seen only disaster. In the US, we are seeing fairly extreme capitalism (extreme compared to most of history) recreating the feudal systems we thought we had thrown off long ago.
The problem is not socialism. The problem is extreme. The type of government matters less than how far it is pushed. In the US, we have gotten by for far longer than most governments throughout history have managed to stay stable, with a system combining democracy, republic, capitalism, and various amounts of socialism. The US is not purely democratic. It is not purely a republic (the Supreme Court is not elected by popular vote, among other things). It is not purely capitalistic (we regulate fairness and safety to some degree). It is not purely socialist. It does have elements of all of these though. None of these need to be feared, so long as they are not taken to extremes. Extreme democracy will result in voters making decisions that they are not informed enough to make. Extreme republic will result in so much politics that no one will have time for anything else, not to mention still having voters making decisions that they are not qualified to make. Extreme capitalism will result in a caste system including slavery, though perhaps less overt than the chattel slavery we are all familiar with. Extreme socialism will result in exactly the same things that happened with the USSR.
The fact is that the only extreme we are really close to is capitalism. We don't need to fear socialism, because we are so far away from it that we are suffering problems from the opposite extreme. The fears about socialism are well founded, but they should be fears about extreme socialism, not about socialism in general. Fearing socialism is about as logical as fearing democracy. In either case, there can be too much of a good thing, but too little is just as destructive. What we should really fear is imbalance. Right now, the imbalance is against socialism, not toward it.
What's wrong with socialism? The same thing that is wrong with capitalism and democracy: too much is a bad thing!
The answer is sadly simple: Taken to its logical end, socialism results in communism, where all wealth is equally distributed, everyone owns everything, thus no one owns anything, and there is no ownership, thus there is no motivation. Socialism as seen in the USSR is frightening, because, aside from the corruption aspect, it resulted in all of the things that most conservatives fear about it. It nearly eliminated personal freedom entirely, and it reduced motivation to work so far that it caused serious economic problems. This extreme socialism realized the darkest fears of conservatives.
There is a major problem with this fear though. During the earliest times of this nation, after it had declared independence, but before it became the US, a similar problem was observed with democratic republics. Contrary to popular belief, our founding fathers did not base the design of the Federal government entirely on the democratic republic of Athens (or similar governments of that era). Much of that design was based on existing colonial governments of the time. Different colonies were trying out different versions of democratic government, though nearly all used some form of republic. One problem that came up a lot was too much democracy. I believe the colony was Virgina (I might be wrong; it's been a while; there may also have been others). One colony created a legislature that had absolute power. The governor did not have veto power. The result was a very high level of democratic representation, which resulted in a very high level of democracy. The end result of this was that at one point, many farmers were having a difficult time paying their debts, so the legislature of this colony (mostly farmers, elected by farmers) passed a law suspending all debt payment for farmers. The result was catastrophic. With no legal guarantee for debt payments, lenders stopped lending. Those owning existing debts found relief, but those lending were quickly in serious financial trouble, and without anyone willing to grant more loans, the economy of the colony suffered very seriously. This was not the only problem. Different colonies experimented with different balances, all with different results. When the founding fathers drafted the Constitution, they based the Federal government on what they had learned from all of these experiments. The President was given veto power, to help avoid problems like the Virginia situation. Congress was divided into two houses, partially because many states with a single legislature still had problems with too much democracy causing unwise laws to be passed, and partially because the state governments wanted more direct representation in Federal government (this last part was demolished when Senators became elected by public vote, instead of appointed by state governments). In short, too much democracy is no better than too much socialism. In fact, there are other historical cases where democratic governments have quickly destroyed themselves, because there was nothing to prevent the majority from ignorantly passing self destructive laws. Historically, democracy was such an epic failure that many of the founders of this nation even questioned the wisdom of a democratic government, because they feared this would happen with the US as well.
Any form of government taken to an extreme will result in problems. Isolating all governmental power in a single person has proven problematic almost constantly throughout history. Democratic forms of government have historically never lasted very long, because they tend to become very unstable as size increases. On paper, extreme communist socialism sounds like an excellent idea, but in practice, we have seen only disaster. In the US, we are seeing fairly extreme capitalism (extreme compared to most of history) recreating the feudal systems we thought we had thrown off long ago.
The problem is not socialism. The problem is extreme. The type of government matters less than how far it is pushed. In the US, we have gotten by for far longer than most governments throughout history have managed to stay stable, with a system combining democracy, republic, capitalism, and various amounts of socialism. The US is not purely democratic. It is not purely a republic (the Supreme Court is not elected by popular vote, among other things). It is not purely capitalistic (we regulate fairness and safety to some degree). It is not purely socialist. It does have elements of all of these though. None of these need to be feared, so long as they are not taken to extremes. Extreme democracy will result in voters making decisions that they are not informed enough to make. Extreme republic will result in so much politics that no one will have time for anything else, not to mention still having voters making decisions that they are not qualified to make. Extreme capitalism will result in a caste system including slavery, though perhaps less overt than the chattel slavery we are all familiar with. Extreme socialism will result in exactly the same things that happened with the USSR.
The fact is that the only extreme we are really close to is capitalism. We don't need to fear socialism, because we are so far away from it that we are suffering problems from the opposite extreme. The fears about socialism are well founded, but they should be fears about extreme socialism, not about socialism in general. Fearing socialism is about as logical as fearing democracy. In either case, there can be too much of a good thing, but too little is just as destructive. What we should really fear is imbalance. Right now, the imbalance is against socialism, not toward it.
What's wrong with socialism? The same thing that is wrong with capitalism and democracy: too much is a bad thing!
07 August 2015
Single Payer System
I want to discuss why a single payer system for health care is better than insurance. I am not going to go into ethics or what people deserve. Instead, I am going to focus on value and efficiency.
First, it is important to fully understand what insurance is. On an individual level, insurance is a bet. The house bets that an event will not happen. The gambler bets that it will. For the customer, flood insurance is a bet that there will be a flood that causes more damage than the cost of the insurance. For the insurance company, it is a bet that such a flood will not happen. On a group level, insurance is a form of welfare. It is essentially a means for distributing costs (you have probably heard of distribution of wealth; well, insurance is a way to balance distribution of debt). When the insurance company looses a bet, the money used to pay for the losses comes from the money all of the other customers are putting into the pot. As gambling, insurance is no different from any other kind of gambling. The house always wins, and they want you to spend as much as possible, which is why they offer so many different options. As welfare, insurance is actually pretty awful. Imagine a welfare system where those administrating it constantly skim the poor box. This is more than just compensation for work. Insurance companies have CEOs, other extremely highly paid management, as well as shareholders who walk away with the house winnings. No well designed welfare system goes to such extreme efforts to avoid helping anyone, just to walk away with the unused funds.
In short, insurance makes extremely poor and inefficient welfare. It makes excellent gambling, at least for the house, but unless gambling is the whole point, insurance is actually pretty awful. Economically, there is one useful thing that insurance provides: jobs. Of course, paying people to spend 40 hours a week digging random holes would provide jobs as well, and those jobs might actually produce real value (good exercise for the employees, if nothing else). Work for the sake of jobs is just plain stupid. If work does not generate actual value, then it is not worth doing.
The better solution is real welfare. Real welfare is not gambling. Done well everyone wins. Real welfare minimizes work, to maximize the help it can provide. Real welfare does not have executives that are paid more in a month than most people make in a lifetime, and it does not have investors who ultimately get paid from the work of others.
It is very clear that our current health care situation in the US is unacceptable (despite Obamacare). Aside from reducing costs (which not even the government seems interested in), the only way to fix this situation is to spread the cost of health care out. Insurance is a very poor way of doing this, because insurance is more about gambling than welfare. Long term, the costs of insurance on the economy are far worse than the long term costs of welfare, despite the loss of jobs associated with eliminating health insurance companies. Economically, a single payer system is superior in almost every way to what amounts to mandated gambling.
First, it is important to fully understand what insurance is. On an individual level, insurance is a bet. The house bets that an event will not happen. The gambler bets that it will. For the customer, flood insurance is a bet that there will be a flood that causes more damage than the cost of the insurance. For the insurance company, it is a bet that such a flood will not happen. On a group level, insurance is a form of welfare. It is essentially a means for distributing costs (you have probably heard of distribution of wealth; well, insurance is a way to balance distribution of debt). When the insurance company looses a bet, the money used to pay for the losses comes from the money all of the other customers are putting into the pot. As gambling, insurance is no different from any other kind of gambling. The house always wins, and they want you to spend as much as possible, which is why they offer so many different options. As welfare, insurance is actually pretty awful. Imagine a welfare system where those administrating it constantly skim the poor box. This is more than just compensation for work. Insurance companies have CEOs, other extremely highly paid management, as well as shareholders who walk away with the house winnings. No well designed welfare system goes to such extreme efforts to avoid helping anyone, just to walk away with the unused funds.
In short, insurance makes extremely poor and inefficient welfare. It makes excellent gambling, at least for the house, but unless gambling is the whole point, insurance is actually pretty awful. Economically, there is one useful thing that insurance provides: jobs. Of course, paying people to spend 40 hours a week digging random holes would provide jobs as well, and those jobs might actually produce real value (good exercise for the employees, if nothing else). Work for the sake of jobs is just plain stupid. If work does not generate actual value, then it is not worth doing.
The better solution is real welfare. Real welfare is not gambling. Done well everyone wins. Real welfare minimizes work, to maximize the help it can provide. Real welfare does not have executives that are paid more in a month than most people make in a lifetime, and it does not have investors who ultimately get paid from the work of others.
It is very clear that our current health care situation in the US is unacceptable (despite Obamacare). Aside from reducing costs (which not even the government seems interested in), the only way to fix this situation is to spread the cost of health care out. Insurance is a very poor way of doing this, because insurance is more about gambling than welfare. Long term, the costs of insurance on the economy are far worse than the long term costs of welfare, despite the loss of jobs associated with eliminating health insurance companies. Economically, a single payer system is superior in almost every way to what amounts to mandated gambling.
03 August 2015
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
A landlord sues a tenant for not paying rent four months in a row. The tenant says the rent was paid on time each of those months. The landlord's lawyer asks the tenant for some proof that the rent was paid. The tenant, who is representing herself, says she was not given receipts when she paid the rent, and it was paid in cash, so there are no bank records of the transaction aside from withdrawals for amounts that represent rent as well as some bills. Because there is no proof the rent was paid, the judge rules that the tenant has to pay the landlord the value of four months rent.
An employee blows the whistle on an OSHA violation where he works. A week later, he is fired without cause. He knows that there are anti-retribution laws specifically intended to protect whistle blowers, but he cannot afford a lawyer, so he walks away. He ends up unemployed for over 6 months, because his previous employer lies about his character when called for references. He knows he could sue for slander, but again, he cannot afford legal representation, so he just deals with it.
A small video game company comes up with an awesome new game idea. Partway through public beta testing, a major game company files a lawsuit against them for patent infringement. The lead designer knows the element in question has been used before, and that it was in a game much older than the large company's patent, but he cannot recall what that game was. Settling out of court would destroy the company, essentially turning it into a slave of the larger company, so they opt to hire a lawyer. When the lead designer still cannot remember the name of the game that used the element in question, the judge rules that the small company infringed on the larger company's patent. Ultimately, the legal costs cause the small company to go bankrupt.
These three stories have several things in common. The first is that the rich prey on the poor. In the first story, the landlord uses the legal system to rob the tenant. In the second, the employer sends a message to its employees, that retribution will be served for reporting labor law violations. In the third, the big company destroys potential competition using a patent that is not technically valid. The second thing they have in common is that none of the defending parties have adequate legal representation. The first two have no representation, and the third does not have sufficient legal representation to do the necessary research to find the prior art that would invalidate the patent. The third thing they have in common is that the defending parties are all assumed to be guilty unless they can prove their own innocence. In short, justice is not met, fair legal representation is not available, and the principle of innocence until guilt is proven is violated.
In criminal trials, the U.S. Constitution mandates a legal right to legal council for the defendant. U.S. criminal courts provide court appointed lawyers for defendants that cannot afford to pay for their own. This is protected as a legal right. This right is not extended to civil law though. This is a problem. In the above three situations, sufficient legal council was a necessary part of a just outcome, and without that, justice was not served. In the first, a lawyer might have been able to gain access to the landlords financial records to search for evidence that the rent was paid. In the second, the lack of legal council was the pivotal factor that ultimately prevented the victim from even pursuing the issue. In the third, better legal council might have been able to find the prior art that the lead designer could not. Even in civil cases, fair legal representation is necessary to ensure justice, but in the U.S., only criminal defendants are provided with legal representation.
U.S. law does not actually mandate the idea of innocence until guilt is proven. Taken together, several Constitutional amendments are interpreted to mean that this principle should be followed, but this really comes down to ambiguous phrases like "fair trial." Further, these amendments apply only to criminal cases, not to civil cases. This is also a problem. Many civil cases place the burden of proof on the defendant. In other words, the defendant is assumed guilty unless she can prove innocence. Typically this is a matter of convenience, and it has nothing to do with justice. It is more convenient for a defendant to produce proof of payment than it is for a prosecutor to prove that payment was not rendered. It is more convenient to ask the defendant to provide proof of prior art or proof that an idea is common knowledge or otherwise not novel or unique than it is for the prosecutor to prove that no one has ever had the idea before or that the idea is particularly ingenious. The fact, however, is that doing these things places the burden of proof on the defendant, making the defendant legally guilty unless she can provide proof that she is not. Not only is this common in civil cases, it is a problem in a majority of civil cases involving wealthy prosecutors suing poor defendants, who cannot afford legal representation.
In the recent past, these two things have been established all over the world as fundamental human rights. It is widely recognized that trying someone without adequate representation is unfair and morally wrong. Likewise, it is also widely recognized that the accuser bears the burden of proof, not the accused. In fact, this was well understood even in some ancient cultures, where an accuser could be put to death, if proof of the accusation could not be established.
The fact is that there is little difference between criminal and civil law. Both are intended to prevent or mitigate harm. The only difference is classification and penalty. In criminal law, the state acts against the suspect. The suspect is judged by a jury based on codified legal standards. If the suspect is found guilty, a penalty is selected based on a set of codified standards. The punishments all restrict the freedom of the convict. In civil law, an individual or organization acts against the suspect. The suspect is judged by a judge based on personal opinion and legal precedent. If the suspect is found guilty, the judge determines a penalty based on the request of the prosecutor and the cost of the damage. The penalties typically take the form of fines paid to the state and remunerations given to the prosecutor. The actions prompting a lawsuit can be nearly identical in many cases, with only minor differences. For example, if you accuse me of stealing money from your pocket, I will go to criminal court. If I live in your apartment building, and you accuse me of not paying my rent, I will go to civil court, despite the fact that the harm caused may be identical. Both cases amount to theft. The circumstances of the theft are different, and this is used as justification to provide counsel for one and not the other and to assume initial innocence in one and initial guilt in the other. The differences between criminal and civil cases do not justify refusing to provide fair counsel or assuming initial guilt.
Civil law needs two things desperately: Fair representation and innocence until guilt is proven. These two things are essential parts of a fair justice system, and without them, justice cannot be served, regardless of whether it is criminal or civil court.
An employee blows the whistle on an OSHA violation where he works. A week later, he is fired without cause. He knows that there are anti-retribution laws specifically intended to protect whistle blowers, but he cannot afford a lawyer, so he walks away. He ends up unemployed for over 6 months, because his previous employer lies about his character when called for references. He knows he could sue for slander, but again, he cannot afford legal representation, so he just deals with it.
A small video game company comes up with an awesome new game idea. Partway through public beta testing, a major game company files a lawsuit against them for patent infringement. The lead designer knows the element in question has been used before, and that it was in a game much older than the large company's patent, but he cannot recall what that game was. Settling out of court would destroy the company, essentially turning it into a slave of the larger company, so they opt to hire a lawyer. When the lead designer still cannot remember the name of the game that used the element in question, the judge rules that the small company infringed on the larger company's patent. Ultimately, the legal costs cause the small company to go bankrupt.
These three stories have several things in common. The first is that the rich prey on the poor. In the first story, the landlord uses the legal system to rob the tenant. In the second, the employer sends a message to its employees, that retribution will be served for reporting labor law violations. In the third, the big company destroys potential competition using a patent that is not technically valid. The second thing they have in common is that none of the defending parties have adequate legal representation. The first two have no representation, and the third does not have sufficient legal representation to do the necessary research to find the prior art that would invalidate the patent. The third thing they have in common is that the defending parties are all assumed to be guilty unless they can prove their own innocence. In short, justice is not met, fair legal representation is not available, and the principle of innocence until guilt is proven is violated.
In criminal trials, the U.S. Constitution mandates a legal right to legal council for the defendant. U.S. criminal courts provide court appointed lawyers for defendants that cannot afford to pay for their own. This is protected as a legal right. This right is not extended to civil law though. This is a problem. In the above three situations, sufficient legal council was a necessary part of a just outcome, and without that, justice was not served. In the first, a lawyer might have been able to gain access to the landlords financial records to search for evidence that the rent was paid. In the second, the lack of legal council was the pivotal factor that ultimately prevented the victim from even pursuing the issue. In the third, better legal council might have been able to find the prior art that the lead designer could not. Even in civil cases, fair legal representation is necessary to ensure justice, but in the U.S., only criminal defendants are provided with legal representation.
U.S. law does not actually mandate the idea of innocence until guilt is proven. Taken together, several Constitutional amendments are interpreted to mean that this principle should be followed, but this really comes down to ambiguous phrases like "fair trial." Further, these amendments apply only to criminal cases, not to civil cases. This is also a problem. Many civil cases place the burden of proof on the defendant. In other words, the defendant is assumed guilty unless she can prove innocence. Typically this is a matter of convenience, and it has nothing to do with justice. It is more convenient for a defendant to produce proof of payment than it is for a prosecutor to prove that payment was not rendered. It is more convenient to ask the defendant to provide proof of prior art or proof that an idea is common knowledge or otherwise not novel or unique than it is for the prosecutor to prove that no one has ever had the idea before or that the idea is particularly ingenious. The fact, however, is that doing these things places the burden of proof on the defendant, making the defendant legally guilty unless she can provide proof that she is not. Not only is this common in civil cases, it is a problem in a majority of civil cases involving wealthy prosecutors suing poor defendants, who cannot afford legal representation.
In the recent past, these two things have been established all over the world as fundamental human rights. It is widely recognized that trying someone without adequate representation is unfair and morally wrong. Likewise, it is also widely recognized that the accuser bears the burden of proof, not the accused. In fact, this was well understood even in some ancient cultures, where an accuser could be put to death, if proof of the accusation could not be established.
The fact is that there is little difference between criminal and civil law. Both are intended to prevent or mitigate harm. The only difference is classification and penalty. In criminal law, the state acts against the suspect. The suspect is judged by a jury based on codified legal standards. If the suspect is found guilty, a penalty is selected based on a set of codified standards. The punishments all restrict the freedom of the convict. In civil law, an individual or organization acts against the suspect. The suspect is judged by a judge based on personal opinion and legal precedent. If the suspect is found guilty, the judge determines a penalty based on the request of the prosecutor and the cost of the damage. The penalties typically take the form of fines paid to the state and remunerations given to the prosecutor. The actions prompting a lawsuit can be nearly identical in many cases, with only minor differences. For example, if you accuse me of stealing money from your pocket, I will go to criminal court. If I live in your apartment building, and you accuse me of not paying my rent, I will go to civil court, despite the fact that the harm caused may be identical. Both cases amount to theft. The circumstances of the theft are different, and this is used as justification to provide counsel for one and not the other and to assume initial innocence in one and initial guilt in the other. The differences between criminal and civil cases do not justify refusing to provide fair counsel or assuming initial guilt.
Civil law needs two things desperately: Fair representation and innocence until guilt is proven. These two things are essential parts of a fair justice system, and without them, justice cannot be served, regardless of whether it is criminal or civil court.
31 July 2015
Mass Destruction
Long ago, there was a small country consisting primarily of a few large islands. It sometimes had wars with nearby countries. During some periods of time, it owned small parts of a large nearby continent. During other periods, it was limited entirely to its islands. As time passed and the world changed, larger countries started to assert authority over smaller ones. Several countries began to work together to maintain the status quo. These countries eventually decided that this small country of the large islands should not have any territory outside of the islands. Even when this country did manage to regain territory outside of the islands, the other countries intervened and gave that land to its enemies. This small country began to feel mistreated. On the world stage, it was marginalized. It was treated as a vassal, not as a sovereign nation. Its leaders began to feel frustrated.
Eventually, an opportunity arose for this small country to assert dominance over its neighbors. Too long had the land that once belonged to it been controlled by others. A war of epic proportions was brewing. There were other countries that had grown tired of the iron fist of the alliance that was attempting to rule the world. The small country recognized that the timing was perfect for it to show the world that it was a sovereign nation, not some submissive vassal. While the war proceeded on other fronts, it could retake the lands it had lost so many times before. The leaders of this country made one fatal mistake though. They decided that a show of force against their most prominent oppressor would be appropriate.
A devastating attack was planned and carried out against an important military establishment. The attack had two intents. The first was revenge for decades of oppression. The second was the strategic destruction of forces that might be used to intervene in the recapture of their territory. Unfortunately, they underestimated the power, determination, and brutality of their oppressor. Full scale war was launched against them. The naval fleets of the oppressor far outmatched those of the small country. Because the war did not have strong support from the civilians of the small country, and even its soldiers were beginning to loose morale, the government felt it necessary to force many of its soldiers to fight. The only way they could successfully destroy the enemy ships was by flying air planes directly into them. In desperation, pilots were welded into the cockpits of planes and ordered to crash into enemy ships or be executed. In reaction to this, the oppressor used advanced weapons to destroy two major cities. Over 100,000 civilians were brutally killed in these attacks. Only around 20,000 military personnel died in the attacks. The small country was ultimately not allowed to retain any recaptured territory. The oppressor maintained a military presence in the country for many years afterwards.
Before or after this time, there has never been a country so brutal as the oppressor. When the Romans attacked their enemies, they gave civilians the opportunity to swear allegiance to Rome, instead of killing them. There have been countries that have murdered their own civilians for various reasons, but no other country has caused so much death and destruction, so callously, in such a short amount of time. Even the oppressor in this story has condemned the wanton murder of civilians in wartime.
Now, the oppressor lives in fear of others who have developed the advanced technology used to cause this mass murder of innocent civilians. Other countries have discovered and developed this technology, many out of fear of the oppressor. The oppressor, more than ever, still believes that it has the right to dictate how other countries should use this technology. It has persuaded or manipulated other countries into destroying their technology for this weapon. Those countries that refuse are punished with embargoes and other economic sanctions. And, this is all despite the fact that the only country that has ever used this technology to cause harm is the oppressor. Many have developed it, but only one has ever been brutal enough to actually use it.
In case it is not obvious, the oppressor is the United States, and the small country is Japan. The advanced technology is nuclear explosives. To be clear, I am not trying to justify anyone here, and I am not trying to demonize anyone. I am trying to provide some perspective to what happened between the US and Japan during World War II. Most Americans do not fully understand the situation. They believe that Japan attacked without provocation, and they do not understand the massive civilian toll of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were not attacks against military targets. The US deliberately killed over 100,000 innocent civilians as a show of force. Support for the war among the Japanese civilian population was weak enough that the government felt it necessary to spread propaganda to its own people to increase support. Killing the civilians had no strategic military value. It was entirely a show of force.
Japan did not attack us unprovoked. Bad feelings had been building between our countries for a long time, and it was almost exclusively our fault. Russia, China, Korea, and Japan had been fighting over land for centuries. Japan had, at multiple times in the past, held territory currently owned by all of these countries. Starting in the early 1900s (maybe earlier), the US and European nations began to intervene in disputes over these territories, consistently awarding control to everyone except Japan. Japan was treated as an invader, despite the fact that they had a legitimate, though not exclusive, claim to these territories. Japan's sovereignty was regularly subsumed by US mandate. They were our enemy before the war started, because we treated them like a vassal. We made Japan our enemy, and that is why they chose to attack us.
To date, the US is the only country in the world to actually use a full scale nuclear weapon against an enemy target. Further, these were not tests. We had already extensively tested them, and we were fully aware of the damage they would cause. The reason Pakistan, China, India, Korea, Iran, and many other countries want nuclear weapon technology is because they fear that we will use it again. Of all of these, only Iran's motives are significantly suspect. Pakistan, China, India, and Korea have all had nuclear weapon technology for some time, and if they had wanted to use it against us, they could have already done so. There is some fear that terrorists in Pakistan will manage to steal or capture the country's nuclear weapons, but that fear seems to be subsiding, as we are making progress against the terrorists.
The point here is that outside of the US and the European Union, the world has good reason to fear the US. We go around telling sovereign nations what to do, and if they seek reprisal, we murder their civilians in massive numbers (from their perspective). We try to control sovereign nations by imposing economic sanctions against them when they don't obey our commands. We try to keep them weak by preventing them from developing weapons as powerful as our own. From our perspective, we just think we are protecting ourselves. We justify murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians by pointing out that we might have lost a few thousand more soldiers if we had not done it. From their perspective, we brutally murdered many of their peaceful and innocent civilians to prove a point that could have been proven better by destroying a military base or two. We used a weapon on their civilian living spaces that left fallout that is worse than even salting the earth to prevent crops from growing (admittedly, we did not know the full effects of this when we did it). We did billions of dollars worth of damage to non-military structures. To them, what we did amounts to mass murder and mass vandalism. When other countries develop nuclear weapons, they are not doing it so they can nuke us. They are doing it so that we know that they are powerful enough to do equal damage to anything we do to them. They are setting up a mutually assured destruction, because they know that if we value our own lives and they have nukes, then we won't nuke them. The only defense against nuclear weapons is to have your own, and since we have them, they know that they must have them as well, if they want to be able to defend themselves against us. And, they cannot trust us, because we have used them before.
Again, the point here is to provide perspective. It is easy to say that what we did was an absolutely horrible war crime, and by today's standards, that is totally true. We also need to keep in mind, however, that most of the people who made that decision are no longer alive, and it is easy to make bad decisions when you feel desperate. Further, I was not there, so I cannot judge the thought processes that went into the decision. I personally think targeting military establishments would have been a much better decision, but I am not going to condemn those that thought otherwise. I still think that those who do condemn us are not being unreasonable though. Regardless of the justification, what we did was abominable.
Eventually, an opportunity arose for this small country to assert dominance over its neighbors. Too long had the land that once belonged to it been controlled by others. A war of epic proportions was brewing. There were other countries that had grown tired of the iron fist of the alliance that was attempting to rule the world. The small country recognized that the timing was perfect for it to show the world that it was a sovereign nation, not some submissive vassal. While the war proceeded on other fronts, it could retake the lands it had lost so many times before. The leaders of this country made one fatal mistake though. They decided that a show of force against their most prominent oppressor would be appropriate.
A devastating attack was planned and carried out against an important military establishment. The attack had two intents. The first was revenge for decades of oppression. The second was the strategic destruction of forces that might be used to intervene in the recapture of their territory. Unfortunately, they underestimated the power, determination, and brutality of their oppressor. Full scale war was launched against them. The naval fleets of the oppressor far outmatched those of the small country. Because the war did not have strong support from the civilians of the small country, and even its soldiers were beginning to loose morale, the government felt it necessary to force many of its soldiers to fight. The only way they could successfully destroy the enemy ships was by flying air planes directly into them. In desperation, pilots were welded into the cockpits of planes and ordered to crash into enemy ships or be executed. In reaction to this, the oppressor used advanced weapons to destroy two major cities. Over 100,000 civilians were brutally killed in these attacks. Only around 20,000 military personnel died in the attacks. The small country was ultimately not allowed to retain any recaptured territory. The oppressor maintained a military presence in the country for many years afterwards.
Before or after this time, there has never been a country so brutal as the oppressor. When the Romans attacked their enemies, they gave civilians the opportunity to swear allegiance to Rome, instead of killing them. There have been countries that have murdered their own civilians for various reasons, but no other country has caused so much death and destruction, so callously, in such a short amount of time. Even the oppressor in this story has condemned the wanton murder of civilians in wartime.
Now, the oppressor lives in fear of others who have developed the advanced technology used to cause this mass murder of innocent civilians. Other countries have discovered and developed this technology, many out of fear of the oppressor. The oppressor, more than ever, still believes that it has the right to dictate how other countries should use this technology. It has persuaded or manipulated other countries into destroying their technology for this weapon. Those countries that refuse are punished with embargoes and other economic sanctions. And, this is all despite the fact that the only country that has ever used this technology to cause harm is the oppressor. Many have developed it, but only one has ever been brutal enough to actually use it.
In case it is not obvious, the oppressor is the United States, and the small country is Japan. The advanced technology is nuclear explosives. To be clear, I am not trying to justify anyone here, and I am not trying to demonize anyone. I am trying to provide some perspective to what happened between the US and Japan during World War II. Most Americans do not fully understand the situation. They believe that Japan attacked without provocation, and they do not understand the massive civilian toll of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were not attacks against military targets. The US deliberately killed over 100,000 innocent civilians as a show of force. Support for the war among the Japanese civilian population was weak enough that the government felt it necessary to spread propaganda to its own people to increase support. Killing the civilians had no strategic military value. It was entirely a show of force.
Japan did not attack us unprovoked. Bad feelings had been building between our countries for a long time, and it was almost exclusively our fault. Russia, China, Korea, and Japan had been fighting over land for centuries. Japan had, at multiple times in the past, held territory currently owned by all of these countries. Starting in the early 1900s (maybe earlier), the US and European nations began to intervene in disputes over these territories, consistently awarding control to everyone except Japan. Japan was treated as an invader, despite the fact that they had a legitimate, though not exclusive, claim to these territories. Japan's sovereignty was regularly subsumed by US mandate. They were our enemy before the war started, because we treated them like a vassal. We made Japan our enemy, and that is why they chose to attack us.
To date, the US is the only country in the world to actually use a full scale nuclear weapon against an enemy target. Further, these were not tests. We had already extensively tested them, and we were fully aware of the damage they would cause. The reason Pakistan, China, India, Korea, Iran, and many other countries want nuclear weapon technology is because they fear that we will use it again. Of all of these, only Iran's motives are significantly suspect. Pakistan, China, India, and Korea have all had nuclear weapon technology for some time, and if they had wanted to use it against us, they could have already done so. There is some fear that terrorists in Pakistan will manage to steal or capture the country's nuclear weapons, but that fear seems to be subsiding, as we are making progress against the terrorists.
The point here is that outside of the US and the European Union, the world has good reason to fear the US. We go around telling sovereign nations what to do, and if they seek reprisal, we murder their civilians in massive numbers (from their perspective). We try to control sovereign nations by imposing economic sanctions against them when they don't obey our commands. We try to keep them weak by preventing them from developing weapons as powerful as our own. From our perspective, we just think we are protecting ourselves. We justify murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians by pointing out that we might have lost a few thousand more soldiers if we had not done it. From their perspective, we brutally murdered many of their peaceful and innocent civilians to prove a point that could have been proven better by destroying a military base or two. We used a weapon on their civilian living spaces that left fallout that is worse than even salting the earth to prevent crops from growing (admittedly, we did not know the full effects of this when we did it). We did billions of dollars worth of damage to non-military structures. To them, what we did amounts to mass murder and mass vandalism. When other countries develop nuclear weapons, they are not doing it so they can nuke us. They are doing it so that we know that they are powerful enough to do equal damage to anything we do to them. They are setting up a mutually assured destruction, because they know that if we value our own lives and they have nukes, then we won't nuke them. The only defense against nuclear weapons is to have your own, and since we have them, they know that they must have them as well, if they want to be able to defend themselves against us. And, they cannot trust us, because we have used them before.
Again, the point here is to provide perspective. It is easy to say that what we did was an absolutely horrible war crime, and by today's standards, that is totally true. We also need to keep in mind, however, that most of the people who made that decision are no longer alive, and it is easy to make bad decisions when you feel desperate. Further, I was not there, so I cannot judge the thought processes that went into the decision. I personally think targeting military establishments would have been a much better decision, but I am not going to condemn those that thought otherwise. I still think that those who do condemn us are not being unreasonable though. Regardless of the justification, what we did was abominable.
13 July 2015
The Problem With House X
X is typically some kind of technology. Maybe it is an operating system. It is commonly an office suite. In graphics, it is probably an image editor or a suite of image manipulation tools. In businesses with any kind of tech department, it is a programming language. House X always seems like a good idea to the management who imposes it. Sometimes it even seems like a good idea to the victims. In the long run though, it tends to cost the company more money, reduce job satisfaction, and reduce productivity. House X, whether anyone ever realizes it, frequently costs far more than it saves.
Probably the two most common house Xs are operating systems and office suites. The operating system is usually Windows, except in the graphics industry, where it is Mac OS X. The office suite is almost always MS Office, though Word Perfect has some market share as well. The excuse for picking a house X is that it will avoid compatibility problems if everyone uses the same thing. If everyone uses Windows, tech support will be easier. If everyone uses MS Office, there is no file format drama. These are good reasons for supporting a house X, but without looking at the costs, an informed decision cannot be made. If a business forces all of their workers to use Windows, a good portion of employees will loose some productivity. There is no perfect user interface, and different employees will have an easier time with different ones. Some might be more familiar with one or the other. Some might have an easier time with resources in one place than another. Forcing everyone to use a house OS is bad, because it limits productivity of those who are less experienced and less comfortable in that environment. For office suites, cost is a major factor. Forcing everyone to use MS Office is going lock the company in. The regular upgrades necessary to keep up are extremely expensive. The software is so complex that expensive training will be necessary with each upgrade. The user interface stuff applies as well. The company could save tons of money encouraging employees to use simpler and less expensive software. The file format problem is easily solved by either requiring a specific file format or by requiring document submissions to be in PDF format. This is much better than limiting employees to something that is going to have very high long term costs, and it is much better than limiting employees to something that many will have a hard time using.
The worst house X is not OS or office suite. The worse house X is programming language. The reason is that different programming languages have different strengths and weaknesses. There is no general purpose programming language. Low level languages can do anything, but they tend to take longer to develop in. High level languages tend to be designed for specific purposes, and for those purposes they are much faster to develop in. For other purposes though, they are often much slower to develop in, and they are also often harder to debug when used for other purposes. Programming languages are like tools. A programmer that knows many languages has a lot of tools in the box. A programmer that knows few is much more limited. The problem comes when a CTO that knows few or no languages decides that the company would be better off if it did everything in one language. It turns out that most CTOs have only heard of one programming language, and they think it is the perfect language for everything. That language is Java, a language made for networking household appliances.
Java's one benefit is that it will run on most platforms (which would matter more if the company did not already have a house OS). There is really nothing that Java can do that there is not another language that can do better. When a company selects a house programming language, it is like discarding all of the tools in box except for the duct tape. Duct tape is extremely versatile. It can do nearly anything. In a pinch, it is awesome. You also don't use it when you have another tool that is better. Duct tape can do almost anything, but there is nothing it can do that something else cannot do better. It is an excellent emergency solution, but nothing more. Java is like duct tape in this way. It can do almost anything, but it cannot do anything especially well. Imagine a carpentry company that takes away all of the tools and leaves the carpenters with only a hammer and nails. Maybe they could carve nice wood work with those tools, but it would take forever, and it would not be as nice as it would have been with a set of chisels.
In general, house X is a bad idea. Sometimes it is necessary, and maybe the benefits outweigh the costs. Most of the time, it is a "good idea" coming from someone who is not qualified to make the call. When solutions are chosen dynamically by those qualified to choose, the right tool for the job is far more likely to be used. When an unqualified CEO or CTO chooses a house X, it prevents those more qualified from using the right tools, which results in major costs to the company that are totally unnecessary.
What it comes down to is: If you think you are educated enough to make the call, then why do you need that IT department in the first place? If you are going to hire people with focused education in other areas than your own, trust that they are more qualified to make decisions in that domain than you are. If you don't, you are going to end up with a bunch of Java programmers that don't have any other tools or education outside of Java, and that is going to result in crummy software that takes too long to write, because no one competent wants to work for you.
Probably the two most common house Xs are operating systems and office suites. The operating system is usually Windows, except in the graphics industry, where it is Mac OS X. The office suite is almost always MS Office, though Word Perfect has some market share as well. The excuse for picking a house X is that it will avoid compatibility problems if everyone uses the same thing. If everyone uses Windows, tech support will be easier. If everyone uses MS Office, there is no file format drama. These are good reasons for supporting a house X, but without looking at the costs, an informed decision cannot be made. If a business forces all of their workers to use Windows, a good portion of employees will loose some productivity. There is no perfect user interface, and different employees will have an easier time with different ones. Some might be more familiar with one or the other. Some might have an easier time with resources in one place than another. Forcing everyone to use a house OS is bad, because it limits productivity of those who are less experienced and less comfortable in that environment. For office suites, cost is a major factor. Forcing everyone to use MS Office is going lock the company in. The regular upgrades necessary to keep up are extremely expensive. The software is so complex that expensive training will be necessary with each upgrade. The user interface stuff applies as well. The company could save tons of money encouraging employees to use simpler and less expensive software. The file format problem is easily solved by either requiring a specific file format or by requiring document submissions to be in PDF format. This is much better than limiting employees to something that is going to have very high long term costs, and it is much better than limiting employees to something that many will have a hard time using.
The worst house X is not OS or office suite. The worse house X is programming language. The reason is that different programming languages have different strengths and weaknesses. There is no general purpose programming language. Low level languages can do anything, but they tend to take longer to develop in. High level languages tend to be designed for specific purposes, and for those purposes they are much faster to develop in. For other purposes though, they are often much slower to develop in, and they are also often harder to debug when used for other purposes. Programming languages are like tools. A programmer that knows many languages has a lot of tools in the box. A programmer that knows few is much more limited. The problem comes when a CTO that knows few or no languages decides that the company would be better off if it did everything in one language. It turns out that most CTOs have only heard of one programming language, and they think it is the perfect language for everything. That language is Java, a language made for networking household appliances.
Java's one benefit is that it will run on most platforms (which would matter more if the company did not already have a house OS). There is really nothing that Java can do that there is not another language that can do better. When a company selects a house programming language, it is like discarding all of the tools in box except for the duct tape. Duct tape is extremely versatile. It can do nearly anything. In a pinch, it is awesome. You also don't use it when you have another tool that is better. Duct tape can do almost anything, but there is nothing it can do that something else cannot do better. It is an excellent emergency solution, but nothing more. Java is like duct tape in this way. It can do almost anything, but it cannot do anything especially well. Imagine a carpentry company that takes away all of the tools and leaves the carpenters with only a hammer and nails. Maybe they could carve nice wood work with those tools, but it would take forever, and it would not be as nice as it would have been with a set of chisels.
In general, house X is a bad idea. Sometimes it is necessary, and maybe the benefits outweigh the costs. Most of the time, it is a "good idea" coming from someone who is not qualified to make the call. When solutions are chosen dynamically by those qualified to choose, the right tool for the job is far more likely to be used. When an unqualified CEO or CTO chooses a house X, it prevents those more qualified from using the right tools, which results in major costs to the company that are totally unnecessary.
What it comes down to is: If you think you are educated enough to make the call, then why do you need that IT department in the first place? If you are going to hire people with focused education in other areas than your own, trust that they are more qualified to make decisions in that domain than you are. If you don't, you are going to end up with a bunch of Java programmers that don't have any other tools or education outside of Java, and that is going to result in crummy software that takes too long to write, because no one competent wants to work for you.
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