Do What You Have To, Not What You Love

Posted: May 8, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Musings | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Some of the worst advice I have ever heard is “do what you love for a living”, or alternatively “do something you would do even if you weren’t getting paid, and then find a way to get paid doing it.” This advice is generally given either by people who are miserable in their own life choices and wish they had found a way to make this fantasy come true, or else it is the sort of illusory advice given by type-A personality entrepreneurs who would find success in anything they do because they are so driven they WILL succeed, even if they have to grab success by the throat and chokehold it into submission.

There are two inherent flaws with this advice as I see it, and I’ll break them down one at a time. The first is the fallacy of “do what you would even if you weren’t getting paid”. I honestly don’t know many people who have a passion for something that extends far enough to cover a career. Sure, plenty of people think they do, but that’s because they don’t have the time to really see it through, or else they don’t really make an honest effort at it. I’ll give you a couple examples: My Dad loved golf; I love video games. If he had the time, I think Dad could have played golf for a good four days a week, at least for a month or so. Then he would have started cutting back, because golf is tiring. As for video games, at my peak I was playing World of Warcraft like it was a second job – a part-time job. I played, I kid you not, at least twenty hours a week (after I quit I found time to start blogging. Not a coincidence.) When I would take a staycation from time to time, I would play upwards of forty hours a week in a single binge… and then lay off for a few days, because I needed a break. I then went back to my original routine.

The problem wasn’t that either Dad or I stopped loving what we did, it’s just that at some point most people can’t sustain the passion for something sufficiently to make a career of it. Those who can often do, or else they dedicate their lives to finding ways to incorporate that something into their lives in other ways, either though volunteer work or hobbies. Notice how at no point in that entire set of examples did I mention skill or demand; those would be elements of problem numero dos.

My biggest aggravation with the breezy advice “do something you would do even if you weren’t getting paid, and then find a way to get paid doing it” is the “then find a way to get paid doing it” part. As if it was that simple. In many cases, the things people love to do people are already getting paid to do. Let’s go back to my previous examples. There are already people getting paid to play golf. They’re called professional golfers. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of them (Tiger Woods, anyone?). There are even, to the best of my knowledge, golf pros at pretty much every country club in the nation, and every one of them is a much better golfer than my father was on his best day. Believe it or not, there are even professional video game players. Any one of them could romp me without paying attention. In the face of this, how does a simple person come along and just “find a way to get paid doing it”, especially when so many others want to?

Here’s my take on work: work is what you do to make the money you need to enable you to do the things you love. That doesn’t mean you have to hate your job; in fact, if you do hate your job (not just had a bad day, but actively hate your job and dread going in each day), seriously, quit. Find another job first if you must, but you might actually find being unemployed better for your mental and physical health. I did. But if your job is tolerable often that’s as good as it gets, and there’s nothing wrong with that; chasing the rainbows that someone else is offering will only make you miserable when you have no need to be.

If you can make money doing the things you love, hey, bonus. If you are one of the lucky few who gets paid doing what you love, do yourself and the rest of us a favor, keep your mouth shut about it, because nobody wants to hear it.

Three Hours I’ll Never Get Back

Posted: April 1, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Politics | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again, one that most Americans hold near and dear to their hearts: tax season. By most Americans I mean “nobody I know”, and by “near and dear to their hearts” I mean “please kill me now”. I’m old enough to remember having to do my taxes by hand on paper (and I was educated in the Bonsall School of Finance, where the only rule is “don’t get caught”), so I have to admit that the idea of online filing and doing things on computers still makes me smile. It’s more like the smile you get when the morphine finally kicks in, however; it’s not that the pain is gone, just that something is covering up most of it.

Why does it have to be this way? Believe it or not, I am not like the stereotypical libertarian in that I acknowledge that I’m going to have to pay at least some taxes; after all, I value some of the services I receive from the government, and I don’t get to pick and choose (although whether I should is a different argument). But I know plenty of people who are gung-ho about government 364 days out of the year, and come April 15 they will scheme just as hard as I do to weasel out of paying a cent more than they must. Sure, some of it is good old-fashioned greed, which I can both respect and admire, but there’s more to it than that. On some level, I have to believe a certain amount of it is just animosity against a ridiculously complex tax code.

I’m not about to turn this into an argument for a flat tax, because that’s as much a moral argument as it is a political or economic one (and frankly there’s no such thing as a serious economic argument when it comes to taxation, at least as long as we keep spending more than we’re taking in, even in the good years). But I am going to take the opportunity to rail against the sheer ludicrous amount of social engineering packed into the tax code, particularly considering how much of it is either (a) ineffective or (b) inefficiently done.

Consider: every deduction, every credit, every line item manipulation away from baseline percentage of income is an attempt by the government (read: politicians) to incentivize people towards or away from a specific kind of behavior. This has nothing to do with the amount of services you consume (otherwise why would we offer a tax deduction for having children?) and, while I am by no means an economist, I am not aware of a school of thought that shows how such a Byzantine approach would stimulate the economy (a free market approach would cut taxes across the board; a Keynesian approach would be to have the government spend the money; the time spent finding the deductions is a deadweight loss either way).

I’ll give a couple examples. First the ineffectiveness, for which I’ll use the home mortgage deduction, the third-rail of tax policy. Everybody loves this one, because it makes home ownership easier for everyone, right? I mean, as long as you file taxes, you get to write off your home mortgage interest, so that makes the house cheaper in the long run. Everybody wins! Except it doesn’t really work that way, because everybody knows about it. And by “everybody”, I mean the people selling the homes and in particular the real estate agents. You really think they don’t jack up the price of the houses knowing you can right off the interest? When’s the last time you went looking to buy a house or for a home mortgage loan and they didn’t make sure to mention that, even in passing? The write-off gets absorbed into the price paid, and what you are left with is… well, you’re no better off, and if they ever do get around to repealing it, you’re stuck holding the bag, which is why nobody even dares to suggest it. Which is why it’s ineffective; nobody is more likely to be able to afford a house, because the market has just responded to the change and absorbed the benefits before the fact.

As for inefficiency, let’s look at something like the way teachers who buy materials for the classroom can right off a certain amount. It’s a small amount ($250), and you need to keep receipts, just in case. This is one of many small deductions meant to encourage what is considered “good” actions in society, and one that I’m actually not going to argue against (because seriously, how can you?). But we expect teachers to be aware of it, to claim it, and to make sure they know exactly how much they spent, just in case, because heaven forbid they get a whole $250.

As an alternative, since the government knows your occupation, why not just give them the $250? I see three possible outcomes here. Worst case scenario, they don’t buy any classroom supplies all year and they get a small bonus for being a teacher. Oh no, we just incentivized people to be teachers. Damn shame that. The second possibility is they buy classroom supplies up to but not beyond $250. They might pocket a small amount (see above), but the real benefit here is they don’t have to keep receipts and they don’t have to make that marginal choice about whether it’s worth it to pick up the supplies for the kids. Possibility number three is they spend more than $250, in which case either they itemize, keep receipts, and go the full troublesome route (if they spent enough), or they just decide “the heck with it” (which they may be doing already) and eat the loss on the extra. If they are doing that anyway, at least this way they don’t have to lose as much money and they get a sense that the rest of us are behind them.

The worst part of all of this is that this sort of Byzantine tax code is more regressive than any other, more visible taxation. Not only do the benefits more easily accrue to the well-heeled (do you know a lot of poor people who can afford to donate 10% of their income to charity?), but even those benefits that can be claimed by the lower income brackets are hard to ferret out. You either need to have the time to spare and the education to find them (unlikely), or the money to afford someone who can do it for you (even more unlikely). The benefits end up in the hands of the wealthy and the tax preparers.

While I oppose using the tax code in any way for social engineering (mostly because I oppose social engineering), if it’s going to be done, let’s at least do it well. There are easily dozens of examples that can be found through a cursory search where the government has more of the required information than we do, from electric car ownership to wetland ownership. Either simplify the tax code by getting rid of all of it and let the people decide what they truly value, or put the burden back where it belongs, and let the people have their time back.

What’s Bad for the Goose

Posted: February 15, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Earlier this week, Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent piece excoriating many Democrats for supporting the infamous “DOJ kill list memo”. While I agree and sympathize with the point he made, I would like to further expand upon it: I would like to shame all politicians who have not come out against these tactics on both sides of the aisle. They are reprehensible and should be stopped. The fact that they haven’t is, for me at least, further proof that they are neither right nor left, but more concerned with advancing the power of the State, even unto the point of controlling (or ending) the lives of every man, woman, and child they can get in their sights.

The means by which they have done so are particularly reprehensible. To quote Mr. Greenwald:

[T]his document helpfully underscored the critical point that is otherwise difficult to convey: when you endorse the application of a radical state power because the specific target happens to be someone you dislike and think deserves it, you’re necessarily institutionalizing that power in general. That’s why political leaders, when they want to seize extremist powers or abridge core liberties, always choose in the first instance to target the most marginalized figures: because they know many people will acquiesce not because they support that power in theory but because they hate the person targeted. But if you cheer when that power is first invoked based on that mentality – I’m glad Obama assassinated Awlaki without charges because he was a Bad Man! – then you lose the ability to object when the power is used in the future in ways you dislike (or by leaders you distrust), because you’ve let it become institutionalized.

When you take away liberty or give power to the state for any reason – because someone said something you dislike, because someone used guns irresponsibly, because some people drink too much or smoke too much or eat too many doughnuts, because there are bad people in the world and the system is preventing us from keeping our children safe from them – you are not simply giving up that liberty once; you are not giving power to the state for only the uses you have in mind. Power is like a bottomless box of matches, and those you have given it to can light as many fires as they want.

My friend and I discussed this policy over lunch the other day, and how it was a vast expansion of executive power. In less than twenty minutes we worked out a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government that would preserve the purpose of this doctrine while providing some modicum of oversight. After we congratulated ourselves for our brilliance, I pointed out to him that neither this nor anything like it would ever happen. When he asked me why, I posed the age old question, “Cui bono?” (“To whose benefit?”) It’s a familiar question among lawyers, and politics is full of them. Neither side really wants to reign in this sort of power, because they want their guy to have access to it; or, to go back to Mr. Greenwald, “To endorse a power in the hands of a leader you like is, necessarily, to endorse the power in the hands of a leader you dislike.” This is the weakness inherent in the State.

Conversely, to endorse a liberty in the hands of a person you like is, necessarily, to endorse that same liberty in the hands of a person you dislike. We are forever caught in this tension; do we entrust power to an elite of those we distrust, or do we entrust the power of freedom, and all the danger that comes with it, to the masses? The truth is that bad people do bad things, and the more freedom they have to move and act the more bad things they can do. But the more we take away their ability to do harm, the more we take away our own ability to do good; and the only way to do either is to give even more ability to do harm to a handful of people who have proven only two things categorically. First, they believe they know better than you what is best for you, at all times and in all situations. Second, the rules can and should be set aside when they become an insurmountable obstacle to the goal at hand, not because the rules don’t matter, but because the goal is more important, because the end always justifies the means, and because there is no law so high that they cannot see above it.

The Meaning of Education

Posted: February 11, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: MNSHW, Musings | Tags: , | 4 Comments

She’s got a taste for it now. There’s no stopping her. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, My Not So Humble Wife.

No parent or educator is trying to teach kids that money will make you happy, but I think we are inadvertently doing just that. Early in elementary school children are inundated with the importance of going to college. In middle school, the grades where I teach math, kids worry about taking the right classes and getting good grades so they can take college credit advanced classes in high school and get into a good college.  It’s a huge focus of their little lives. The problem is when you ask them why college is such an important goal, their reasoning leads to an unhealthy place.

I’m nearing the end of my Master’s in Education and became interested in student motivation. I wanted to know why students felt education was important and what inspired them to succeed in school. So I conducted some simple interviews with a variety of students both officially and unofficially. I asked a simple question, “why is education important?”, and unfailingly it lead to the same basic discussion:

Me: Why is education important to you?

Student: It’s important so you can go to college.

Me: OK, Then why is going to college important?

Student: …<hesitation> So you can get a good job?

Me: And why is getting a good job important?

Student: …….<more hesitation> So you can make good money?

Me: Why is making good money important?

At this point most students became visible uncomfortable, shifting their weight, looking around, and fidgeting. While some students might eventually shrug and say they didn’t know, the majority said that making good money was important so they could have the things they want, some said that’s what it means to be successful, while others said it was important so they could be happy.

Truth be told, I was asking these kids some really hard questions. Questions that they had probably not even considered before and that many adults would struggle with. That said, I’m worried that kids are getting the point but missing the message.

Have you ever thought about why you want your kids or family to go to college? Hopefully, it’s not just about getting a job that pays enough for that McMansion in the burbs. I want my students to pursue a college education so they will have choices. Having an education means that you have the opportunity to find a vocation that you feel passionate about instead of having to take any job that presents itself. Yes, it’s important to be able to support yourself but a college education gives you a better chance at enjoying the process of earning a living.

So next time you’re talking to your kids about college make sure they know that getting a good job means getting a job they will enjoy or that is important to them. That college gives them the chance for expanding their choices for the life they want to live. That it’s not about the money, it’s about living a life they will find fulfilling.

Constructing Identity

Posted: February 8, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Musings | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

The other night I was in my “Literature of the Asian Diaspora” class (it’s amazing what qualifies for an English degree these days) when we started discussing the origin of the term “Asian American”. Apparently the first academic use of the term was in the 1970s at UCLA (although it may have been in use colloquially among the civil rights movement in the 1960s before that) as an alternative to the arguably pejorative “Oriental” (I take no stance on the issue, but I understand the argument).

The point I raised in class, and my professor seemed to agree with me, is that “Asian American” is a constructed identity. Setting aside any flippant comments about there being no such place as “Asian America”, there is no “Asian” culture. There is Japanese culture, Korean culture, Chinese culture, Indian culture, and a host of others too numerous for me to name or even be aware of. Each individual named under this broad, constructed identity of “Asian American” does not partake of the same cultural background, any more than every person of European descent comes from the same cultural heritage.

I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit over the last few days, mostly because I find it something challenging to relate to. On the one hand, as I have mentioned before, I come from perhaps the most common of backgrounds, and face few of the challenges that an Asian American or other racial minority would face in America today (although from what I have read it’s a far different story in Japan or elsewhere in Asia, so at least it’s not a global phenomenon). On the other hand, the concept of trying to construct an identity for oneself is something I believe everyone struggles with, and as the world is changing perhaps faster than ever, it is something that we each continue to struggle with.

For myself, I can look back over my life and see how my own sense of self has changed drastically in just a short (or so it seems to me) twenty years. When I was 15, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be a world famous actor, working the stage with both grace and abandon on Broadway and beyond. Fast forward a decade, and after one of the worst years of my life I was burning almost every bridge I had, leaving Richmond and unsure of anything except that I would never, ever be a professional actor. I kept my hand in on a few amateur shows in school after that, but my heart wasn’t really in it anymore. Jump ahead another decade, and I had been married for three years to the love of my life, who I hadn’t even met when last we checked in, and working at the job I currently hold.

Each step of the way my sense of self changed, but it was a gradual change, with the occasional jarring moment of realization. At no point did I wake up and say “today I’m going to decide I no longer want to be an actor”; it was something that accumulated, just like the choices, opportunities, and yes, even the mistakes I have made all along the way have led me to the place and person I am today. Perhaps that is what we call the process of “growing up”, or perhaps it is something more. I don’t know if being a straight white male means that process has been easier or harder for me, because I have no basis for comparison. I can say almost unequivocally that having bipolar disorder (undiagnosed before I was in my mid-twenties) certainly provided its own unique challenges, but again I can’t speak to how my life would have been different otherwise, only that I do not doubt it would have been.

As I have reflected on my life and how it has changed, and as I have considered how I have constructed and re-constructed my own identity, I have only come to one certain conclusion. I do not want to be viewed as a heterosexual, or a Caucasian, or male, or as someone with a mental disorder, or as part of any other group. I only want to be viewed as me; unique, individual, hopefully ever-changing and evolving and yet always recognizably Bob.

Why 90% of Everything is Crap (And That’s OK)

Posted: February 6, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Musings | Tags: , | 8 Comments

The other day I made the mistake of listening to the radio. Not NPR, like I normally do, but an actual music station. I won’t call them out, but you can pretty much pick one at random and get the same experience I had. Half of the songs were absolutely terrible dreck released in the last year, another forty percent were absolutely terrible dreck released sometime in the preceding twenty years (really, how many times a day can you still play Metallica’s “The Unforgiven“?), and about one song in ten was actually worth listening to.

At first I thought this was just a sign of the times. Then I thought I was turning into the grouchy old man down the street (“when I was a kid…”). Then I got home and tried turning on the TV and was almost blinded by a commercial that included some monstrosity named “Honey BooBoo” and I thought the Apocalypse was nigh. After washing my eyes out with salt water and taking a glass of 100 proof consolation, I gave the matter some deep thought. Surely the world hasn’t changed so much from the heyday of my youth, the glorious and wonderful 80’s?

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) I was unable to kid myself for long. The 80s were terrible. Sure, they brought us the death of disco (for which we should all be eternally grateful), but they also brought us parachute pants, breakdancing, MC Hammer, and closed out with Vanilla Ice. TV wasn’t a whole lot better: for every A-Team there was a Manimal; for every Remington Steele there was an After-M*A*S*H. Sure, we had the birth of MTV, but that just meant we were subjected to nonstop playing of hair metal icons like Ratt and Cinderella. And it all seemed like a good idea at the time.

The point I’m trying to make here is that 90% of everything is crap, and that’s okay. The good stuff survives, and the bad stuff is cast aside. Sure, everyone remembers classic albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, but how many people (outside of hardcore Pink Floyd fans) have even heard of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn? While there are those who would argue Piper is a great album, I’m not one of them, but history will decide. As a comparison point, I find it difficult to believe that Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms didn’t have a huge number of contemporaries. Why don’t we hear about more of their works, or know their names? And yet we hear so much about how great classical music is compared to so much of today’s music. The great work survived, and the less great work… didn’t.

And it’s like that in most fields of endeavor. The arts are the most easily recognized for this, but it’s the same way with technology or social movements as well. We try all sorts of things, and the truth is that most of it either doesn’t work or isn’t well-received. Sometimes it takes a while for things to catch on, and some things are slowly recovered from the past (people are notoriously slow to adapt to new ideas), but overall we do a decent job of filtering out the bad stuff from the good stuff; it just takes a while.

Now if I can just get that one station to stop playing Metallica.

Taking Credit

Posted: February 1, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture | Tags: , , , , , | 7 Comments

I heard on “Marketplace” a report about how Millenials are supposedly engaging with debt, particularly credit card debt, in a very different way than previous generations. Basically they spend on credit cards until the cows come home, and then expect they can just pay it all off when they get jobs. Of course this leaves them saddled with crippling debt when they come out of college, and they are paying off debt much slower than previous generations.

I will be the first to admit I do not have the facts in this case, and I wouldn’t want to challenge those assertions without any facts. However there are some claims I do find somewhat specious, particularly the logic of “if we project that out to the end of their life using life expectancy tables, we will see that they will die with credit card debt” (direct quote there), since it assumes behavior will remain consistent over a lifetime that does not tend to remain consistent. I also notice there is a prescription slipped in there ever-so-subtly that I recognize from my own early college career, and one that has never fallen out of favor over the last twenty years: “banks need to stop giving out credit cards so generously” (again, direct quote).

Now, there is a certain temptation to turn this into a harangue about Millenials merely aping their elder statesmen and spending money they don’t have, paying as little as they can get away with and whistling past the graveyard until their credit rating gets turned to ash, but not only would that be too simple, I don’t think that’s really the case. I think this is more another example of same story, different generation. As I mentioned before, people were sounding the alarm bells of students having easy access to credit cards and not paying them off twenty years ago, and how college kids would ruin their lives with crippling debt, and you know what?

They were right. Here’s my story.

I was young and stupid. I got my hands on easy credit, and I used it. Oh boy, did I use it. If there was a way I could charge something I did, and the idea that it would bite me in the ass someday involved a vague and foggy “someday” I couldn’t seriously conceive of even if I could be bothered to think about it, and I was too busy having fun to even do that much. Until.

Until it caught up to me. The party ended, and I had to pay it all back. With interest. I had to move back in with my parents (more than once), I had to face the collection agency calls, I had to rebuild my credit score, I went through the whole thing (although fortunately I never had to declare bankruptcy). It wasn’t easy, and it had its costs. I have never owned a new car (not that I would choose to), I had to wait a lot longer than any of my friends to even buy a top of the line computer, and I had to pass up on a lot of fun that plenty of other folks my age got to have, because I had already had my fun and the piper came a-calling. Truth is, if I hadn’t had help from family and friends, I might not even have gotten off as lightly as I did.

But who dug that hole? Was it the credit card company? Was it the bank? I don’t remember them pulling out the credit card whenever I stepped into 7-11 for a pack of smokes or went out with my friends and said “I’ve got this one, guys.” I had what economists call a “high time preference” and what my mother calls “bad judgment”. My time preference has changed (or my judgment has improved), largely because of those experiences (not digging myself into the hole mind you, but digging myself out).

If we start saying to credit card companies and banks “you can’t give credit cards to this class of people based on their age” or “you have to charge higher minimum balances regardless of what your actuarial tables say” what we’re really doing is replacing our version of judgment for theirs. Yes, in some cases that will be better judgment, but not all. We don’t know what the local circumstances are for each individual. Maybe this month they just don’t have the extra money to go around; there could be an emergency, or hell, maybe this month they just feel like having an extra pizza.

Or maybe they just make bad choices all the time, and sooner or later it’s gonna catch up with them. If you take away the chance to make bad choices, you take away the chance to learn from those bad choices. I’m not saying everyone does, and I’m not saying everyone will. But in the absence of opportunity, nobody learns.

And what about the ones who didn’t make the bad choices? I had plenty of friends who did just fine, who didn’t go into debt, and who managed their money well. Should they be punished for my sins? At what age will they be “old enough” and “wise enough” to handle credit? When they have a spouse to take down with them? A family?

There are people who get hurt under the current system, it’s true; sometimes through no fault of their own they get screwed. But that can be said about any system. Before we blame the system and say “it’s got to go! We have to change it!”, we should consider: is it really worse than the next best alternative? The current system also provides many young people with a chance to establish credit history, manage cash flow, and begin to build a life.

And some of us even learn a lesson in spite of ourselves.

The Social Consequence of Gay Marriage

Posted: January 25, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 5 Comments

This post is a long overdue promise to The Frazzled Slacker outlining my views on gay marriage. All opinions are my own. No legal advice is intended or implied. Not taking my advice is a good idea in any case.

So at long last the Supreme Court is addressing the issue of gay marriage. I for one am thrilled, since it’s about time we get some clarity and put this issue to rest once and for all, as we have with other contention issues before.

All joking aside, I do think it’s time the high court stepped in. We have a plurality of answers on this question in different jurisdictions, and it is a matter that has implications both nationally and across state lines, which is a proper role for the Supreme Court. More so, it is a civil rights question, in that the heart of the matter is to what extent the State can and should regulate the institution of marriage.

And that right there is the first point I believe needs to be made in this debate, and one that seems to be lost in much of the heated rhetoric. Before anyone makes demands about what should and should not happen, we need to draw the lines very clearly: this is, and should remain, strictly about the role of the State in the institution of marriage. No person or group’s personal beliefs should impact, or be impacted by, these cases. If a particular religious organization wants to refuse to marry a gay couple, they should maintain the right to do so; it is theirs to decide, in the same way they can decide not to marry a straight couple on any grounds (IMNSHO).

With that out of the way, we are led to the question of “what exactly is the role of the State in the institution of marriage?” As I understand it, the State has traditionally had a handful of roles, and in recent history (the last hundred years or so) has taken on a few additional roles as well. Once we define those roles, it should be relatively easy to tease out the question as to whether or not (a) homosexuals share those rights with heterosexuals, (b) whether heterosexuals would suffer any significant harm in sharing those rights with homosexuals, and (c) whether society writ large would suffer any harm from allowing homosexuals to exercise those rights.

The traditional roles, as I understand them, are to encourage child rearing, social stability, and guide the process of inheritance. End of line. The additional roles that the government has taken on have been to grant certain rights such as tax benefits, Social Security benefits, and various and sundry other spousal benefits such as visitation rights, next of kin in medical matters, etc. to married couples.

To the first question: do homosexuals even have these rights? According to the state of Kansas, a lesbian can be a single parent, so by logical extension, a homosexual can have parental rights. While Kansas has in this case proven they prefer not to encourage child rearing, one would think it would be desirable to support couples that prefer to rear children together rather than attempt to sue someone in an iffy court case, and that’s of course assuming there was no proper waiver and doctor present to even allow a lawsuit to move forward.

As for social stability, setting aside the obvious counter-argument that rhymes with “fifty percent bivorce rate” there is the simpler counter-argument: given a choice between encouraging couples to be monogamous and stay together rather than NOT encouraging them to do so, when your purported goal is a more stable society, why wouldn’t you?

Finally, the question of inheritance is, again, simple on the face of it. Any individual has the right to assign their estate as they see fit in a will; simply assuming that next of kin would be the logical beneficiaries in the absence of such is a grace and mercy to a bereaved family, as well as relieving an overburdened court system. Insisting that one segment of the population does not have that right and must go through an onerous process by virtue of who they love is demeaning and unbefitting of a civilized society.

Most spousal benefits are in the same category as inheritance; they can, with time, money and effort be resolved through other legal means (power of attorney, etc.). It is simply demeaning to insist that one segment of the population is required to climb an extra hurdle because they have a consensual relationship between two adults that others do not approve of (c.f. miscegenation). The only exceptions are such things as Social Security and tax benefits, so I shall address them as such: are homosexuals exempt from paying Social Security and other taxes in ways I am not aware of, or do they receive other special benefits to compensate them for their inability to access these benefits?

Moving on to the question of whether heterosexuals would be significantly harmed by sharing these rights with heterosexuals. That’s a bit of a tricky one, because there are two important words there: significant and harm. Would I be “harmed” if someone else were paying lower taxes? Arguably, yes. Would it be significant? If they did so in large enough numbers, maybe. Does that mean I should be able to deny them their rights? I do not see how. True harm is if I were to lose something I were otherwise entitled to, and I am not entitled to having first claim on someone else’s life, their labor, or their choices, so long as those choices do not interfere directly with my ability to make choices. And seriously, I don’t see how homosexuals choosing to marry impacts any heterosexual’s choices, unless they have secrets they aren’t sharing (in which case the statement is still valid).

Would society suffer any significant harm in allowing homosexuals to exercise their rights? Again, it depends on how you define society and how you define harm. Considering the potential good outlined above, and the societal purposes that marriage serves in the first place, I see no evidence that expanding the civil tradition of marriage could bring. There will be those who will not be able to accept this gracefully, and they may even commit violent acts in response. This would not be a direct result of allowing homosexuals to exercise their rights; this would be a result of people who are unable to accept change attempting to use violence and fear to coerce others when all else fails. There is a word for that: terrorism. It should be dealt with as such.

In the final analysis, there is no good reason to continue to deny a significant portion of our population the same rights that the majority have enjoyed for so long. The Supreme Court should step in and, as it has a few times in its long history, strike down the laws of oppression and let liberty carry the day.

I Will Choose a Path That’s Clear

Posted: January 18, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Musings, Politics | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recently on Facebook I’ve been having a spirited (but civil!) debate with a friend of mine regarding gun control. Unsurprisingly at some point relatively early in the discussion my argument incorporated the issue of defense against tyranny, which is an argument that I stand by. He actually pivoted from there to a surprisingly apt and unusual comparison, one that I have not before seen, invoking the specter of 1984 before I could, but then he made the point that “Brave New World illustrates that humanity can be lulled into submission into serving the interest of a minority by luxuries and promoting self interest.”

It was a different tack, and one that at least took our discussion in a new direction, but it also got me thinking. One of my great loves is dystopian literature (although the sub-genre of cyberpunk is my favorite), and obviously I have given more than a little thought about what shape society takes both now and as we move into the future. So as we continue forward, which is the move likely totalitarian prospect: the iron hand or the velvet glove?

Historically I would say it’s both. Consider one of the most successful (if you can use the word without being offensive) totalitarian regimes in history, the Nazi regime. By combining a rule based on fear and oppression with strong economic growth that gave the “approved” majority of the populace not only the necessities they had been denied but the luxuries they craved, the Nazis turned Germany from a failed state into a powerhouse virtually overnight. I’d have to do a lot more research than I’m ready to right now to call this a thesis, but it does provide some (disturbing) food for thought, if anyone has a strong enough stomach for it.

The iron hand is easy to fear, and just as easy to dismiss. We always assume we’ll see it coming; after all, why would we allow someone or some government to drag people out of their homes in the middle of the night, lock them up for no reason, torture them, or execute them without good reason? We’re good people, we live in a good society, we’re better than that. But then, all it takes is one bad day; one evil act. Then the world changes.

On the other hand, the velvet glove seems far more likely. Stories of people giving in to addiction, vice, and other temptations are as old as… well, stories, and the idea of the guy who controls your hunger controlling you has a great deal of appeal. But consider the recent Occupy movement. Here is a case of rebellion against a system that tried to control the populace by controlling luxury, Big Business in cahoots with Big Government (and the system fought back). Keep in mind plenty of Occupy supporters were not the homeless, the starving, or folks who struggled their whole lives to make it day to day; they were college graduates, middle class and above, theoretically bought and paid for.

So what do they both have in common, and how is it that tyranny in any form finally does manage to take hold? If the neither the iron hand nor the velvet glove is sufficient unto itself, how do they succeed together? Is it simply that “one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away” is enough to confuse people? I wonder. Perhaps it’s more complex, or perhaps it is simpler than that.

According to the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. It’s an interesting philosophy, but what if it goes further than that? Can it be posited that nobody can truly be governed without their consent? After all, you can put a gun to my head but that won’t make my body move; you will simply be putting me under duress. If it is sufficient duress, I will take action, but it is still my action, not yours. Your action was coercing me in the fist place. Coerce enough people and you have a tyrannical government, but it is by the consent of the governed, even if that consent is given under duress.

Viewed in that way, we are always standing between Scylla and Charybdis, between totalitarian oppression and totalitarian luxury. The only thing that prevents it is our exercise of free will, a refusal to allow ourselves to be ruled by others. So long as we view certain things as right and others as wrong, and we hold to those principles in the face of opposition (even unto death), we can and will stand against tyranny. That is the cost of freedom. The cost of society, of civilization, is learning to live with each other, to find the reasonable compromises between my ideals and principles and yours, such that we can live together without my bowing to your tyranny or you bowing to mine.

As soon as I get that one figured out, I’ll let you know.

Free Spoiler Zone

Posted: January 9, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Internet | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments

I am the internet’s worst nightmare.

The other night I was listening to Marketplace on NPR (I love Kai Ryssdal, I may have mentioned this before) and I heard a fantastic commentary on the issue of spoilers. Beth Teitell made an excellent case about how we’re all setting ourselves up for spoiler disappointment while at the same time becoming more sensitive to spoilers.

I am the worst of the lot.

Just the other week I finally watched Jekyll (2007) from the BBC on Netflix. Note the year on that one. If someone had told me any of the salient plot points before I watched it, I would have been beyond infuriated, but really, it’s been around for over five years. How could they know? More importantly, why should they care?

This is typical for me. I watch movies months after they leave the theater (with rare exceptions), and I’m usually several weeks behind in my TV show watching. I’ve been known to run away from conversations I’m not even party to with my hands over my ears screaming “NO SPOILERS!” like a lunatic, and that’s just in real life. On the internet I’m far worse.

But the truth is we can’t avoid spoilers, nor can we reasonably expect to. Part of the fun of pop culture is that it’s popular (hence the “pop”), and we want to talk about it. Denying people that just so we can enjoy things on our own schedule is selfish. At the same time, expecting everyone to be able to invest their entire lives in keeping up with everything worthwhile all the time is just silly, too. It’s not like we’re still in the age of single-screen movie theaters, three TV channels, and nobody to talk to but the people in our small towns.

Therefore, I am declaring a Free Spoiler Zone.

It works like this: there is a statute of limitations on the right to declare “NO SPOILERS!” Once the statute of limitations has passed, it is incumbent on each individual to either be in the know or to guard themselves; prior to that proper decorum requires the asking of “Have you seen…” or a similar inquiry before discussing anything, as well as a reasonable warning to anyone joining the conversation. This should help alleviate the distress being caused by our over-saturated, media hyped world, and allow us all some peace.

The rules I suggest are as follows:

1. An absolute moratorium on any communications within 24 hours of an event. Don’t even talk about it; you don’t know who is in earshot. I don’t even want to hear “OMFG THAT WAS SO GOOD!” or “Meh, this week’s episode was okay.” Let me find out for myself, especially if I’m in a different time zone.

2. Barring sporting events, reality TV, or  other “real time” entertainment, any electronic communication for the first week must be preceded by the phrase “SPOILER ALERT”. If it’s real time entertainment, after 24 hours you take your chances, but please, don’t be a jerk; if you know someone TiVo’d it, don’t ruin the big game.

3. For all other TV shows, every in-person conversation must include “Have you seen…” or some other socially acceptable form of spoiler alert for one month. After that, you need to either clear out your DVR or climb out from under the rock.

4. For movies you get one month of nobody says nothing. Then all bets are off.

5. Actual news events are exempt from these rules. News should be shared.

6. Feel free to share political shows, commentary, debates, et al to your heart’s content. You deserve what you get.

While I am willing to negotiate on the length of time involved in each rule, I truly believe that following these rules will improve our lives. Everyone will have a free and fair chance to enjoy their quality entertainment without fear of having it ruined, while at the same time encouraging and enhancing the sort of interpersonal relationships we’re losing for fear of not being able to share our love of the great and diverse culture we all enjoy.

However, I am declaring one category of entertainment completely off-limits to spoilers (by special request from My Not So Humble Wife): books. I actually have to agree with her on this one, for a lot of reasons. People read at different speeds, borrow books from each other, and most of all we want to encourage more literacy, not less. Besides, I haven’t finished the Illiad yet, and I can’t wait to find out how it ends.

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