The 2010s Aesthetic

Where did this come from? In video terms I'm talking about the slow motion, unrealistically graded, low depth of field, jump cut, steadicam look. Time lapse with sliders, drone shots. Add affected piano, guitar, and/or indie female vocal. Is this touchy-feely stuff because of Apple? I'll bet it is. Or maybe Instagram. Is your photo uninteresting but you want others to think it's meaningful? Add some vignetting, apply a film look, and maybe make it black and white. But can't lie, it works.

After years of this though, one wonders what the point is. There is no point, it's just noise. And this noise engulfs the only meaningful application of video and photography - to help tell a story. Not tell a story, but help. Otherwise viewers are making up meaning arbitrarily or in uselessly vague terms. Like there might be a photo of a worn out door in India. Oooh the stories it could tell! is the impression the photographer wants to give but I can't help but think "A picture is not literally worth a thousand words dummy, tell me what's going on".  No one on the planet, without the proper context, would ever hear The Great Gate at Kiev and deduce that the piece had anything to do with Kiev, a gate, or pictures at an exhibition. That's why contemporary classical music is so sterile whereas soundtracks, which help tell a story, aren't. It's why a straight up gallery of "award winning" photos is inferior to the photos in a National Geographic article.

The indie videographer and photographer crowd rarely tell stories and when they do, it's often subsumed under fancy technique and practiced faux-earnest narration. People in the future will look back, presumably, with the same bemused eye we look at kaleidoscope filter photos from the 70s. The photos they will be interested in, however, is the mundane slice of life back then sort of thing that I believe is the real draw for Bresson or Weegee's photos.

Or maybe I've unfairly implicated the purveyors of the 2010 aesthetic in a grand Sokal-esque conspiracy and I simply don't get it.

A closer look at flight costs

Youtube user Wendoverproductions covers costs associated with plane tickets in good detail although there's a lot of vocal uptalk in the presentation.

Looking at things from the passenger side, I think the earlier case I made suggesting that shipping from China is mostly subsidized might be wrong. If airlines are profitable with $80 ticket prices hauling around 150lb people across the country and fuel costs are a small fraction of actual expenses, then sub $1/lb shipping rates for freight seem reasonable.

Rockefeller problems

Just thinking about my previous entry on whether things are getting better or worse for the American middle class on an absolute scale ...

One of the themes the "things are worse" crowd brings up as evidence of the absolute decline of the middle class is the shift to dual income households. A comfortable family lifestyle with a single breadwinner was typical in the 50s. The Atlantic suggests that a comfortable middle class lifestyle today requires an income of over $130,000 - definitely not typical. That's not even typical for two income households.  So in that important sense, things have gotten worse.

Technological progress hides this decline. Without the increased productivity and technological progress, there wouldn't be any argument; a situation where one person was able to provide well for a family of four that changes to where two people are even less able to provide for that family is a disaster. But if workers are providing more goods and services than ever before, then one worker should be able to provide more for a family.

Intuitively, as material abundance grows, there is less need to work and greater financial security. In other words, if we had Star Trek levels of abundance, barely anyone needs to work whereas in times of extreme scarcity everyone is always working. Before the Industrial Age, for example, most people - children included - were working most of the day on farms.*

And yet here we are with increasing productivity but also having to work more just to maintain our living standard. It's something analogous to stagflation (what an ugly word) although it is more than an analogy since both problems share many of the same causes. Maybe I've written about them before but I'm sure I'll write about them again.

* That's one thing that history books don't really cover. There might be a small section on how peasants lived but the majority of the rest: battles, cities, kings, queens, inventors, philosophers, etc., represent only a tiny portion of the human experience. There's only so much to be written (but much more to be said) about toiling in fields and simple family life I guess. And in truth, the typical first worlder's life has more in common with city life and royalty than subsistence farm living.

Someone out there wondered whether it would be preferable to be a Rockefeller during their heyday or a regular American today.  Professor Don Bordreaux and the modern camp point to the amazing technologies and conveniences that are within the reach of typical Americans that even Rockefeller simply had no access to: advanced medicine, supermarkets, cheap air travel, better cars, instantaneous communication, access to incomprehensibly greater information and entertainment than ever before, etc. The Rockefeller camp, like Peter Schiff, point out that Rockefeller lived in a modern enough era that travel, entertainment, and access to information, were plentiful enough. Having Netflix is nice but not having to worry about financial security is even nicer.

If you are materialistic, Bordreaux is absolutely right. Materialistic has a negative connotation, but I mean a strong as opposed to a more indifferent preference for goods and services that are more varied, higher quality, and cheaper. It's this type of materialistic thinking that we have to thank for the standard of living we enjoy today. If you are more worried about status and stability, Schiff is right. Perhaps related: Bordreaux hates Trump while Schiff is more sympathetic (though not particularly supportive).

These are the best of times, these are the worst of times

An alien observing humanity over the past century would probably say that things have gotten a lot better for Earthlings as a whole. And it's hard to argue with the facts and figures from The State of Humanity or with Hans Rosling's interpretation of data for all sorts of metrics like poverty, disease, and access to basic necessities.

On the other hand, the May edition of The Atlantic has an article covering the deteriorating state of the middle class in America. However, the American middle class is, relatively speaking, the wealthiest large cohort in history so complaints about its situation are hard to take seriously. The middle class votes itself all sorts of privileges that undermine the poor and disproportionately take from the rich.

And is it really unreasonable for the American Dream, the idea that every generation will be better off than the previous, to end? And by better off, I don't mean only technologically better off which is almost a given, but also in relative income (which is an awful zero-sum way to look at things despite the popularity of angst over income inequality).*

Living memory has the US with maybe 5% of the world's population producing over a quarter of the worlds goods and services - largely thanks to being the only major power unscathed by World War II. As countries rebuilt and technology diffused, the relative position of the US will approach that of its population. Given the resources of the US, it's doubtful that American share of world GDP will ever drop to 5%, but the trend suggests that a resurgence in the relative position of the middle class is unlikely.

Given the political climate, it's clear we haven't really accepted our fate. The Atlantic is publishing an article next month about how the self-esteem movement has created a situation where happiness is only possible for the above-average. Unless you live in Lake Wobegon, this means most people will be unhappy. It's why Bernie Sanders complained about Romanians having faster internet and why Donald Trump says that they are beating us. 

This isn't unique to the US. Tall poppy syndrome, crab mentality, the Russian parable of the genie and the neighbors wish, and numerous psychological studies showing that inequality makes people unhappy suggest it's universal.

But internalizing and making policy out of our innate distaste for inequality is a mistake.

* Which is not to imply via the fallacy of affirming the consequent that inequality is desirable. The growth in inequality has been influenced by the largely ignored and even lauded crimes of inflation and cronyism.

Dictators: The Next Generation

So I read that Pinochet's successor died. I don't remember his name.

Then I got to thinking about other people who followed other dictators, e.g., Franco, Mao, and Stalin. The people who followed them were moderates. Is this a trend? If so, there has to be a poli-sci rule or effect that describes it.*

But maybe there is no significant trend and it's just a natural reversion to the mean. The appellation "extremist" suggests, if not a mathematical normal distribution, a situation where a normal leader isn't heavy handed.

Though, who is an extremist? The victors of the Second World War thought the Nazis were extremists; the Nazis themselves thought themselves the golden middle ground between right wing reactionaries and left wing communists. There's a weird self-congratulatory aspect in labeling others "extremist" as if only a partial understanding of the Aristotelian mean were sufficient for virtue.**

Or perhaps it's an availability bias. The Romans and Greeks who gave us the terms tyrant and dictator had a lot of experience with them. Even though my poor memory once again fails to serve, I have a feeling that authoritarian governments had a bit more staying power - partly because so much of the ancient world depended on slaves. But I do remember a general Western historical belief that Eastern states tended to be more despotic. I'd research the rulers around Tarquin, Solon, Nebudchadnezzar, Ramses, etc., but I don't feel like going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole right now.

Maybe there is a trend. It could be that the sort of person savvy enough to make it into the highest levels of government without being perceived as a rival are perceptive enough to know that strong leaders are prone to getting overthrown. Or perhaps strong leaders, who tend to be alphas, eliminate other alphas from possible competition and increase the likelihood of a more moderate successor.

Or maybe Freakanomics or some other pop science book I'd read had already covered this and my subconscious has fooled me into thinking I was on to something.

* Like the theory that suggests first past the post voting will result in a two party system. Or the dumb Internet "law" that suggests Hitler or the Nazis will inevitably get brought up in an internet discussion. Speaking of whom ...

** There's a story about an emperor who quipped something along the lines that: if it is an extreme of defect to father no children but an extreme of excess to father all the children in the empire, then it surely it is the virtuous middle to father half the children in the empire.

1-800-427-0459 also, Thanks US Bank!

Nothing like waking up to what sounded like a phishing phone call talking about fraudulent charges yada yada. Please call 800-427-0459. 

Googling the number led to a back and forth discussion of people alternately saying it was a fraud and it was legit. That wasn't too helpful except that fraudulent numbers usually result in a discussion that uniformly agrees something is a scam. In my mind, however, the people saying it was legit could easily be plants. There are plants on Yelp and Amazon that try to artificially drive up the credibility of a service or product so it's easy to imagine a fifty cent army doing the same for a phishing scam.

Fortunately there was some good advice in the forum suggesting to call the number on the back of your card. And that's what I did. They actually verified the number and their precrime fraud prevention unit blocked a number of spurious charges. I'm actually happy about that since disputing charges is a huge pain.

I'm curious as to how someone got my card information, though, since I'm very careful with it. Now from what I read, it seems the 800-427-0459 might be an automated third party fraud prevention service. However, the following does not inspire confidence

It's best to call the number on the back of your card anyway since the odds are much lower for a fraudster to have changed that. But it seems logical for the bank to at least list that particular number on their website since I ended up being transferred there anyway and had to go through the hassle of repeating personal information a number of times.

And while I'm happy that I'm not out hundreds of dollars from fraudulent charges, I'd gladly sign up for a service that required more thorough authentication. The card verification number really isn't sufficient given that anyone who has physical access for a few seconds, e.g. someone at a store, can use it.

Things like tokens, passwords, and biometrics, (what you have, what you know, who you are) impose higher transaction costs which can be large in the aggregate. They aren't foolproof and aren't a replacement for detective work - even if it's just big data analysis - but even one extra level of security would be a huge improvement.

April Fools

Browsing the web on April 1st feels like one giant "Island of Truthtellers and Liars" logic puzzle. But, no joke, there seems to be a promising treatment for amyloidosis in the pipeline. Nova writes about a virus called M13 which is adept at destroying amyloids, mis-folded proteins that are responsible for many symptoms of aging.

The company that is developing a treatment based on M13, NeuroPhage, is beginning human trials. Though, the FDA and biotech field being what it is, it's always best to remain skeptical. In business school, we had a founder at a biotech firm talk about how regulatory compliance imposed enormous, even fatal, costs on his startup. His particular firm had developed a promising treatment for AIDS which was essentially a cure.

In my mind, that's a home run. The superstar or unicorn that VCs are always chasing.

And yet, years later, AIDS sufferers cannot try it. Startups like his did not have the billions of dollars it costs to get a drug approved by the government. Normally, even this isn't an insurmountable hurdle if there is enough money to be made. If it costs two billion to get a drug tested with a fifty-fifty chance of passing, you need a very significant upside for such an investment to make sense. Given that profits are never guaranteed and that there are many other investing options that take on far less risk, a drug needs to be worth much more than two billion dollars to get investment.  

Unfortunately, AIDS is largely a third-world problem where the potential market does not clear the government-created artificial threshold for success. Advocates of regulation can probably point to situations where the FDA has saved lives by banning harmful drugs. Some people want more regulation and testing and some people want less. A utilitarian might want to find the balance that saves the most lives although such a number is impossible to compute. 

Thankfully, the constantly decreasing cost of travel and the lower barriers to biotech firms in regimes with less regulation will mean that promising treatments will still have a chance outside of the "capitalist" United States. Treatments, no doubt, that the nomenklatura will avail themselves of while expounding on the need for more regulation and the evils of corporations at home.