Random Thoughts on Various Subjects

1. DONALD TRUMP AND LINDSAY LOHAN

Donald Trump wanted to moderate a GOP debate. Lindsay Lohan's pictures for Playboy have leaked online. What do both of these things have in common? It shows the absurd lengths celebrities will go to in order to stay famous and within the public eye. This shit is a total circus.

Ron Paul and others were right to tell the Donald to fuck off with his debate. Yet, there is Newt Gingrich tonguing Trump's balls. That should tell you what kind of politician Newt is. The thing that blows my mind is that Newt is considered a mainstream candidate while Ron Paul is considered "fringe." And you know the Donald has to be pretty low when you consider that Ron Paul has no qualms about appearing on Alex Jones or the Daily Show.

Donald Trump is essentially a self-promoter. Everything he does from hosting a debate to running for President to questioning Obama's birth certificate are all meant to achieve one goal. This goal is to always be present in the public eye. This is fame purely for the sake of fame. Trump is famous for essentially being famous.

People ask me if I am famous, and I always use the same quip. "I am famous for being unknown." I just think the question is stupid, and I laugh at it. The reason people ask me this question is because I have a cool sounding name. Even at work, my nicknames are "Hollywood" and "The Show." But I am a nobody. For me, any self-promotion is for the sake of the ideas and the work. It takes humility to sell yourself in much the same way that it takes humility to become a streetwalker prostitute.

Some people are narcissistic and crave attention at all costs. I've never understood this. I think it comes down to substance. This is why you hear many famous people talk about being fake. It bothers them. Some famous people are focused on the work and fame is a byproduct of this. For instance, Roger Waters clearly wanted to make music and a lot of money. But, then it came at a cost that horrified him as he became something he hated when he spit on a fan. It isn't all peaches and cream. When I see the tabloid press going through some celebrity's trash, I think how wonderful anonymity really is.

Fame is a fascinating subject, and I will need to give it more consideration in a future project. I think it can be a blessing and a curse. I also think there are various strategies for dealing with it as well. So, could this be a future book? I think it could be.

2. HIGGS BOSON

The famous "God particle" may actually be discovered anytime now. The rest of the world could give a shit, but it is exciting stuff for the geeks. Right now, the most exciting science I see happening is in the world of astronomy and physics. Those guys are getting to those fundamental questions of where it all came from. I can't read any of this stuff or watch a documentary on it without having my mind blown. I can't grasp this amazing shit. Basically, the Higgs boson is the particle that gives all other particles in the universe mass. Without it, nothing as we know it would exist. The universe would be truly formless and void. Essentially, by discovering the Higgs boson, physicists are discovering the closest thing we have to God.

3. OCCUPIERS

The OWS movement is petering out. Occupiers are a fucking joke at this point. From public defecation to essentially being lazy unemployed pieces of shit with a Marxist agenda, the general public has come to regard these worthless fucks for the human garbage that they are. I can't believe anyone would even dare to compare these people to the Tea Party.

There are really just two groups in this country and the wider world. You have those who work and get shit done. Then, you have those who don't work and try to get over. Occupiers are firmly in the latter. This is clearly goats and sheep type stuff here as this divide as this mentality extends from the highest to the lowest rungs of society. Some capitalists are like Steve Jobs who make things people want to buy. Others are like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs who engages in a massive fuckover of anyone and everyone. Some people are humble but hard working. They perform real jobs. Others have no jobs except for the length of time it takes to qualify for unemployment.

I encounter this divide all the time in my day-to-day life. I immediately sort people into producers and parasites. I don't want anything to do with parasites. I hate them. Occupiers are merely parasites in search of a host, and we are supposed to feel sorry for them because they never found their host. Fuck that.

4. ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE HIGHER ED BUBBLE

Economist Milton Friedman dedicated his life to championing vouchers for kids to attend private schools. By Friedman's reckoning, choice in the area of education should yield higher quality. The higher ed bubble shows that this reasoning of Milton Friedman is flawed.

Both public and private universities have shown a marked decline in the quality of education they offer. The same phenomenon occurred in the housing bubble as contractors slapped together structures in a vain attempt to satisfy the artificial demand. For some odd reason, greater availability of funds and credit do not automatically result in better products. Most of the money going to universities now are not going to hiring more professors but to university administration. Private schools for kids collecting voucher money wouldn't be any different from my point of view.

For Friedman, everything was about choice. His famous work, "Free to Choose," was a paean to the choice philosophy. But enabling greater choice does not automatically lead people to make better choices. Friedman believed that it did which is why he was fine with garbage like the negative income tax or school voucher programs. On the basis of this reasoning, we should champion welfare and subsidies because they allow people to make better choices. The evidence shows this reasoning to be flawed.

My perspective is more about "Forced to Choose." This is quite different from the Friedman philosophy and even sounds a bit tyrannical. But it isn't. The fact is that when people are presented with two choices between adversity and comfort, they are almost always going to choose the more pleasant of the two choices. So, kids fresh from high school flush with federal student loan cash don't pick schools with the strictest academic standards, the harshest professors, and the best reputation for turning out the finest graduates. They pick the party school and opt for a soft major to go along with it. Remove the student loan cash from the equation, and the students have a much different choice before them. They are no longer free to choose, so they are going to pick schools that are cheaper and offer the best return on investment. The fact is that adversity often leads to better decision making. There is nothing inherently superior about being free to choose. It is only superior relative to having no freedom to choose. As bad as the current higher ed system is, it is better than our public school system because of choice.

I believe that better choices come from starker choices. For instance, I make pretty frivolous decisions about what to do with my time right now. I wouldn't make those same decisions if I knew I would be dead in three months. Similarly, a person collecting unemployment checks is going to be much more selective about the jobs he seeks than someone one week away from eviction. No matter what, any public or outside subsidy of choice is going to result in poorer choices. This is the kernel of malinvestment. Artificial abundance leads to poor decisions.

There needs to be a certain level of austerity and hardship in a society to make it flourish. In terms of education, hardship makes better students. The reason homeschooled kids and those enrolled in Catholic parochial schools do so well has something to do with this austerity. College used to be tough because of high standards and having to work and live in poverty to be able to attend. But it was better.

Libertarianism is accused of being cold hearted and without compassion. We need to make things easier for them to be better. Many libertarians are cowed by this argument. But the reality is that hardship is necessary for a robust and healthy civilization. This does not require an artificial hardship like the neocon fasctards argue for. Remember, Athens beat Sparta. But there should be natural hardship such that you are free to choose but also free to suffer the consequences. Messing with this balance is not going to make things better but worse.

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