Original Cin

I wish I could receive an award based on what was expected of me. With incentives like that, I suppose I’d promise the moon.

“If Today Was Your Last Day” offers better advice to an immortal than to someone who will die tomorrow. Here are some of the things in the song that would make more sense to do if you had thousands of years or longer rather than just one days left:

“Leave no stone unturned….try to take the path less traveled by…“

If you’re going to be around for a while, the cost of exploring new ideas, going new places, and trying new techniques is low — you can always go back to what you know works. On the other hand, let’s say you spend two hours of your last day on something that doesn’t work — you’ve just wasted over 8% of your remaining time.

“…Leave your fears behind…”

Possibly makes sense for fear of things that might result in death, possibly not, but let’s put that aside for now; if you’re immortal and you screw up in a non-fatal way, you have a lot of time to set things right socially, emotionally, physically, whatever. Suppose everyone thinks you’re worse than Hitler because of a faux pas. If you’re immortal, you can change their minds, or at the very least work on a new identity. For the last day scenario, you’re reputation is pretty much sealed; whatever you do that so terrible will be on the evening news, and you’re not going to have enough time to organize a press conference for a rebuttal. Non-lethal physical injuries are even worse — a broken leg will dramatically change the types of activities someone with lots of lifespan can do, but they have time to heal and can still have a full life in the meantime. Break a leg on your last day, and you’ll be in terrible pain for the rest of your life and not doing much of anything.

“…say goodbye to yesterday?“

I suspect immortals would definitely have to get a bit less starry-eyed about the past, simply because they’d have centuries of it after, well, a few centuries.

“Donate every dime you had…”

This one is tricky, but I think massive donations make much more sense if you’re going to live a long time rather than if you’re going to die in the very near future. If you’re going to die soon, it makes sense to try to get as much fun (utility?) out of the remaining time as possible, and it’d be easier to do that with a lot of money. No need to worry about what happens about anything you can’t spend as long as you have a halfway decent last will, which might even be something you could throw together with some online software and a couple friends in a pinch (NOT the right way to do things at all, this is something that shouldn’t be rushed, but I’m assuming someone with only 24 hours left is not going to spend hours talking to a lawyer, and people have gotten away with far more unusual things for wills) — you can still give gobs of money to charity. On the other hand, if you’re immortal and give all of your money to charity or someone random, it’s no big deal — wait a few years, and you’ll have plenty again, as long as you maintain some sort of reasonable income stream; if you don’t include illiquid assets that generate an income stream as “money,” this gets very, very trivial.

“And would you call those friends you never see? / Reminisce old memories?”

If I were going to go out in a day, no. The last thing I’d want to do in an “every second counts” situation like this is leisurely go over old stuff with kinda-friends. I’d much rather do new, fun stuff, as quickly as possible, with the friends I see most often. But if I had all the time in the world, sure. Friends are valuable, and improving a friendship has benefits into the future. The immortal has a future (the long now?) to consider — not so if it’s your last day.

“Would you forgive your enemies? …. Would you make your mark by mending a broken heart?”

Same thing as the friends. There’s a harm to having enemies and an unhappy ex or two or more into the future, but unless you think someone will try to sabotage your last day if you don’t reconcile with them, it doesn’t make much sense to waste time on them. That, and you might very well be depriving them of an after-funeral celebration if you call them and let them know all is forgiven.

“And would you find that one you’re dreaming of? ….fall in love if today was your last day?”

Relationships take time to build. You can bonk in 24 hours and maybe get dinner, go on a date, or role-play a deeper relationship; an actual lifetime romance takes… well, a lifetime.

“You know it’s never too late to shoot for the stars”

If you’re going to die in 24 hours, then, yes, it is too late to shoot for the stars. Writing a novel, building a skyscraper, founding a colony at sea, developing a new form of intelligence, or literally shooting for the stars in a rocket are all things that take time. Not a big problem for the extended lifespan, which is why we should support research toward life extension.

Found this online:

…Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard’s Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. “If you’re more physically active, you’re going to get hungry and eat more.” Gortmaker, who has studied childhood obesity, is even suspicious of the playgrounds at fast-food restaurants. “Why would they build those?” he asks. “I know it sounds kind of like conspiracy theory, but you have to think, if a kid plays five minutes and burns 50 calories, he might then go inside and consume 500 calories or even 1,000.” – John Cloud, “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin”, Time

Why assume a conspiracy theory? It’s easier to suppose that fast-food restaurants (basically McDonald’s) that had play areas were more successful, and are therefore common today. Actually, if this is the case, as soon as any fast-food chain has play areas for kids, or even locates by a public park, the outcome seems pretty well inevitable, intentionally and conscious conspiracy or no.

Capital Day.

Seen on The Economic Way of Thinking, the blog From ABBA to Led Zeppelin:

Based off of the James Hetfield lyricsin the song Master Of Puppets, describe why someone would continue to engage in behavior that is self-damaging, expensive, and time consuming.

My brain hurts, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the question posed.

The big news that I’ve seen lately on several blogs is that fewer people are taking the GRE; I think I saw it at Marginal Revolution first. Anyway, posting at both this blog and FanCruft have been slim lately because I was studying for both a calculus exam and the GRE. I did great on both of them. Some thoughts:

• I did, in fact, get very, very discouraged by an experimental section where I had to guess at most of the answers, although I realized it was experimental about halfway through the next section. (An unlikely alternative: what I think was the experimental section was the real deal and I’m the luckiest person alive, having solved dozens of problem by guessing). Experimental sections suck.
• Studying made a huge difference. When I first took a GRE practice test, my quant score was only average. After reading about the GRE for a few months and doing a lot of practice problems, the next time I took a practice test, I got an average score for people trying to get into master’s programs in econ. My actual score on the test was above average for everyone that said they were hoping to get into a econ program. I used an ebook version of GRE Prep Course by Jeff Kolby and Scott Thornburg; I only got about halfway through the math section and only glanced at the verbal section on the book, but I’d still highly recommend it. (I’m getting my “averages” from ETS’s own PowerPrep)
• On a related note, reading about the format of the test actually helped a lot. Among other gems in the book; some types of problems on the test will yield faster to a “brute force” attempt where you plug in numbers than trying to solve them the “right” way. Since this is dangerous if you do it wrong, see the book for details.
• I decided that I wanted to go to grad school long before people were complaining about the current economic conditions. I am not easily swayed by minor, impersonal statistics in my grand plans. Maybe the fact that applications to take the GRE are down is a sign that, unusually, other people aren’t for a change either.
• Alternatively, maybe most of the people who would normally go into grad school are under the impression that GDP will increase by 10% overnight once Obama is sworn in, and the world will instantly be filled with candycanes, gumdrops, and
• On the flip side, having less competition to deal with can sometimes be a good thing, and I’m pretty sure this is one of those cases, so I like the news I’m reading about fewer people taking the GRE.

1985—Madonna’s tumultuous love affair with noted Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith finally ends after a loud public spat about the merits of heterodox institutional economics
- “Madonna’s Rocky Romances,” The Onion.

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
- Richard Feynman

Via here.

[W]hen someone asks you for $700B for reasons he can’t clearly explain, you hang up the phone.

- Bryan Caplan, “Paulson as a High-Pressure Telemarketer,” EconLog

A new blog by Casey Mulligan has a good explanation of the current noncrisis:

There was a time when people believed that the Sun and stars revolved around the Earth. Of course, now we know that the Earth is not the center of the universe, or even the center of our little solar system. In the somewhat more recent past, economists thought that the non-financial sector in a modern economy revolved around financial markets, despite the facts that only 4 percent of the workforce was employed in the financial sector (including insurance and real estate), and even today that sector employs only 6 percent of the total. President Bush and supporters of the recent massive Wall Street bailout plan still believe Wall Street to be the center of the entire economy.

As seen on Marginal Revolution

Corfam – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The 1966 Chilean issue of Reader’s Digest claimed that by 1983 there would not be enough leather from cows, demand exceeding supply by 30%.

If it sounds too good to be true… not that I would necessarily call something that creates unemployment “good”.

Obama sounds populist themes in Virginia bus tour – Yahoo News

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 14 minutes ago

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Democrat Barack Obama is sounding tough populist themes on the campaign trail, pledging to create union jobs to build energy-efficient cars and to end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas.

Jevons Paradox, anyone?

A simple example: cost and speed pressure means that when you get your car serviced, it’s unlikely you’ll be greeted by the mechanic himself, wiping his hands on a greasy rag, telling you exactly what he did to your car. Instead, you’ll get a difficult to decipher printout.

Why not use the technology to give more?

The mechanic can have a simple digital voice recorder. As he works, he can describe each thing he’s testing and what he finds. You can then email the digital file to Iowa, India or Israel, have it typed up and beautifully formatted and waiting for the customer when he returns. How can that not be worth the $1.50 it would cost?

- Seth Godin, “Old marketing with new tools“

I’ve been doing some research on Flash games, and found someone with a lot of sense on the subject, but he doesn’t know much about capitalism:

Capitalism: Some people pointed their finger at me saying I am doing “capitalism”. Let me explain one thing: monetizing a Flash game is not capitalism. It’s almost an utopy that reminds me the early 80’s when lonely programmers in their rooms/garages made games that we still play today, in some retrogaming sites or with new fancy graphics.

Some people have a generally dim view of capitalism, especially in Europe. But still, this is capitalism. You use capital (human capital in the form of existing libraries and programming tool, and the physical capital of computer systems), you create something useful to other people, you make money off of it. Simply operating at a smaller scale within the market doesn’t magically make you a non-particpant in the market.

My roommate and I were talking about this topic – The Motley Fool on “What’s Wrong With Mutual Funds?“:

Here’s our oft-repeated fact that you should get through your head: The average actively managed stock mutual fund returns approximately 2% less per year to its shareholders than the stock market returns in general. That means that before your dollar even gets to the fund manager to invest, his company has already taken two cents off the top.

I disagree with the Motley Fool on a fair number of things, but they’re spot-on here regarding the average fund.

The Skeptical Optimist takes a humorous look at energy policy:

Q: But to encourage entrepreneurs, scientists, and companies to get moving a lot faster towards that superbattery breakthrough, the government will need to set up some kind of new incentive, won’t it?
A: Of course; I’ve been trying to tell you all along that government energy policy needs to change in a big way.

Q: How about something like an “X-prize” for a new superbattery? Maybe a few hundred million dollar prize for the first entrepreneur, or company, or group of scientists to come through with the new technology?
A: Uhhh… No, no, we couldn’t do that. Uhhh… that’s McCain’s idea… obviously just a “gimmick” (…according to these talking points they sent me…).

Arnold Kling writes on Econlog:

…like Charlie Brown getting ready to kick a football, we seem to have an infinite capacity to believe that it will be different this time. We think that the next top-down design introduced by government will work fine, it will never degrade, and we won’t find ourselves ten or twenty years down the road wondering how such a mess was created.

Obama Turns FDR Upside Down – WSJ.com

….the economic well-being of the country is not measured by how much taxes the government can collect, or even the size of the deficit. Rather, it is measured by the country’s productive capacity. Our theoretical entrepreneur’s 11.2% decline in taxable income reflects both less effort on his part and a less efficient use of his income in order to avoid confiscatory tax rates. Or, to put it directly, Sen. Obama’s plan would reduce an entrepreneur’s after-tax profits by $70,000 – $56,000 in lost profits and $14,000 more in taxes – just to produce a net revenue gain to the government of $14,000.

It is shocking to think that we have a presidential candidate who would make the private sector $5 poorer in order to make the government $1 richer. More likely, given the calculated political design of the proposal, no one in the Obama campaign told the candidate about the economic, ethical or historical consequences of his suggestion.

Via Thinking on the Margin via Greg Mankiw.

McCain calls for building 45 new nuclear reactors

Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030…

This is a concrete plan that will do more than shuffle the pie around.

I was talking with my friend Jeff today, and we were discussing the economy. I mentioned that GMU Professor Bryan Caplan has pointed to the falling dollar at EconLog as a cause of rising gas prices. The article at US News pointed to by Caplan has a more detailed explanation, but, alas, no charts….