LifeGame

Washington Wins, The Future Loses

Ok. I am not usually prone to hyperbole, not am I a big fan of "News" programs: Fox, CNN, MSNBC, take your pick. Their job is to sell entertainment to their audience as it's represented to their advertisers. So let's go past those guys. My favorite one is CNN's "countdown" clock which turns an incredibly serious issue into a SuperBowl countdown timer... as if there is some concept of "winner" and "loser" here (hence, my selected title).

Let's look at what's going on here. I would bet about 10:1 that the absolute minimum compromise will pass at the last possible second preceded by a lot of aggressive posturing by party figureheads. Why? Because that's how you hedge for future elections. If a few minor senators on both sides cave at the last second (on both sides) they can always run on the "had to do what's best for America even if it wasn't what I wanted" ticket - which might work if you're a low ranking schmuck. The high powered guys, in the mean time, need to posture very hard and strong so they can run on the "I refused to bend to the other side" ticket.

Don't get me wrong... I think politicians are by and large good intentioned. I think underneath this posturing, most of these guys really DO want what's best for the country.

Here's the problem. We elect leaders every few years, not every few decades. The debt problem requires a multi-decade approach. How can people incentivized for a couple of years of performance possibly embrace a policy that requires multiple decades unless they are some kind of self-sacrificing idealists - who don't do well in US politics anyway. In reality, we don't really want to solve this problem... not right now; but we never want to solve it right now.

Imagine if you've maxed your credit cards and your rent is due. You don't have the money. Suddenly at the last second you get a bump in your debt maximum. Lucky you! It would be IRRESPONSIBLE to let your family go homeless when you have access to the debt. It would be inhuman of the bank to force your family out on the street and increase the chances that you'll never pay it back. And so this confederation of insanity meets to ensure that the debt will essentially never decrease.

Beyond this is something even more tricky. Despite all the posturing and "reporting" on the news, the major politicians do not really fundamentally disagree on some key issues.

Let's look at the spending breakdown:

 
Neither side has ever really talked about cutting defense, Social Security or Medicare. There is some debate around "Safety Net Programs" but even if that's completely slashed it doesn't really get us there. As for all the other "Infrastructure" programs... you know useless stuff like education, transportation and scientific research. You could kill every last one of those and we still would run up the deficit.

At least the democrats are saying that to continue spending we have to get more money (in their case from additional taxes).

The real problem here is not that the parties can't agree or that the Tea Party has radicalized the political system. The real problem is that there is no incentive for a long term, serious solution based on some mixture of reduction in spending (perhaps in the holy trinity of Security, Social Security and Medicare - Medicaid) and/or increase in revenue. We just can't have it all people - no matter what the advertisers that pay the news shows to sell their products tell us.

Where is the universe?

Perhaps a silly question... but I was wondering about it on my walk home today. It seems that in order for a "thing" to have a "place" it has to exist in comparison to some other thing that is in a different place. As we zoom out or zoom in far enough, this way of thinking about things breaks down.

The other way of thinking about it, I suppose, is that this is in itself just a linguistic trick. If we think of the universe as "everything" then by definition it can't be in a place relative to some other thing, since that thing would itself be part of everything. But this may have nothing to do with how things are outside of the world of linguistic trickery.

In any case, if the universe is "everything" then I must admit it was hard for me to explain or consider where the universe is... but it was also hard to consider that the universe doesn't have a "where" since everything that exists seems to occupy some kind of location - and yet without a relative point to compare something too, it's really hard to say "where" something is...

When I was your age, I was a bitter old man...

As I get older, I find it amusing watching my friends begin to enter that phase of their life where they don't understand what "kids these days" are doing. From what I can tell it hits along a few areas:

1) Music
2) Technology
3) A general feeling of disrespect

I remember quite clearly that when I was very young, older people didn't like the "modern" music, didn't understand the changes in technology and the corresponding horrible dangers, as well as how kids have somehow forgotten how to respect their elders... the wisdom passed down that somehow never seems to fully dilute despite the seeming decrease from generation to generation.

Instead, I think it's the other way around. I think it's these people that are getting older that are becoming out of touch, unreasonable, closed minded and bitter. I just don't see how kids having meaningful social relationships on iPads and mobile phones is necessarily worse than having them while playing games and drinking slurpee's at 7-11. I don't see why watching my 3 cousins play games and watch TV shows on their mini-devices is a lot worse than sitting around the tv in your room and playing Nintendo. I guess I don't get it. I'm not bitter or scared or worried about it at all. In fact, I think it's awesome to watch technology grow and how seamlessly kids just pick it up without fear.

We have to remember that it was people in their early 20s, fresh out of school, with not much prior experience that put people on the moon in the 1960s. It wasn't 40 year veterans of the airline industry. Those guys didn't have the creative imagination anymore... they didn't understand what "those kids" were doing either.

I am really looking forward to how things like work/life interactions change when the kids currently in middle and high school begin to run the world. They will be the first generation that has had a lifetime of meaningful social relationships that move seamlessly between the physical and the virtual. They will be the first generation that doesn't think it's a big deal at all... it's just what they do. Talk in school, text at home, update facebook and twitter. Look for interesting ways to exploit and manipulate the technology... hacking away to achieve the same goals that kids have been seeking forever: an understanding of the world they live in.

What's stupefying is how people who get older can't seem to remember that they were exactly the same way. Their parents didn't understand their technology either. I was lucky in that my parents were huge advocates of technology... so I never really understood the bitterness that grows in people as they age.

I love watching kids learn things and warp and mold things into their own creations. I'm really excited about what is coming in the next 20 years and I for one refuse to become some bitter old artifact clinging to a false imagined by-gone era of innocence and safety that was never there. This is the way it's always been. Each generation is pretty much the same as each other generation. Fast forward 50 years and the kids in high school today will probably be texting each other talking about how the "kids these days" just don't respect them anymore and what's with all this direct brain communication stuff. They just sit there all day glued to it, just sending thoughts back and forth... they don't even bother to type anymore! Plus, it's dangerous. Don't they know that some pedophile can just hack into their brains and steal all their innocence away? I tell you... where is the world going?