March 25, 2005
$, the film
I just talked to my friend Mike Zandlo tonight, who's co-directing a documentary called "$." This isn't a film about "How America's Money Works" narrated by Donny the Dollar; it's an insightful, surprising, scary investigation into our economy, how it operates (and who operates it) and the unfounded assumptions and assertions we make about it everyday. Did you know that the Federal Reserve Bank is a corporation? That a cabal of rich pseudo-libertarians are buying plots of land (and new citizenships) in Panama in anticipation of a total economic meltdown in the US? That experienced financial gurus are building earth-homes in Oregon with similar dread?
I'm not a believer in end-time paranoia -- there were programmers building bunkers in Oregon right before Y2K also -- but that doesn't mean I'm not justifiably suspicious. Stevie Wonder wrapped up in a roll of carpet could see that our current economic system is unsustainable and that the future of our society, human society, world society, is dependent on a fragile, poorly understood Rube Goldberg machine of debt and usury.
Here's the trailer: http://www.alchemyfilmsinternational.com
Posted by chauncey at 04:46 AM | Comments (1395)
March 24, 2005
On efficiency
I woke up at 7AM today and it's now 8:30. I am on my third blog entry and have not gotten out of bed, showered or eaten anything. I am a model of robot-like efficiency.
I have, however, resolved to buy an economics textbook on eBay as I never studied it in college and the more I learn about it, the more it seems like exotic chaos theory than actual science. (Is it a science? I'm so poorly informed on the topic that I don't even know.) A possibly equally ill-informed friend told me that the Federal Reserve prints money on a regular basis, thereby further devaluing existing currency -- but don't they also destroy old/crinkled/written-on bills?
Biz-partner Wendell is working on a social software called Meetro, a severely scaled-back, location-based version of our Matador project that I predict will be significantly more successful. Matador was a myspace-style social software network that also allowed encrypted, decentralized, BitTorrent-style file-sharing: upon upload, files broke themselves into individually encrypted chunks and spread themselves to unused hard-drive space on the network. A great idea but several years ahead of its time in terms of productive public consumption, something we never bothered to consider.
During the thick of development a year ago, the software's big idea, to us, was the encrypted file-sharing aspect. Social Software Networks such as friendster and myspace were old news -- to us. We ignored the fact that every time we talked to potential investors, they were stymied by the very idea of SSNs -- and unsettled by the potentially litigious aspects of offering the public yet another file-sharing software. Always looking at it from an engineer's perspective, we failed to account for the newness of SSNs in the public consciousness and the continued public mistrust associated with file-sharing (not an irony anymore in America, where our moral outrage is almost always exceeded by our lust for getting away with something). We failed to roll out the product in manageable stages that would have allowed us to build, post, promote, refine. We won't make those mistakes again.
Posted by chauncey at 02:28 PM | Comments (738)
March 23, 2005
inflation
Just titling this post "inflation" will keep people from reading it -- it's a boring word that brings to mind Alan Greenspan, or maybe tires. Thing is, inflation is a dangerous beast. It means that the value of the dollar in your pocket is going down, that what you bought yesterday with $10 can only be bought with $11 today.
The signs have been out there for the better part of a year now: it costs more and more to buy the same stuff. A gallon of milk is now over $3, where a year ago it was about in line with the price of gas. Pricing milk the same as gas or cheaper always shocked me -- how could a liquid continuously pumped out by cud-chewing cows worldwide cost more than a finite supply of liquified, refined dinosaur remains? It's like pricing urine next to wine. Apparently someone in the supply chain rectified that logic issue but now everything -- milk, eggs, wine -- is more expensive because the raw price of our major energy source, oil, has skyrocketed. It takes fuel to transport things from place to place and that transport charge gets added into the cost of every single item we buy. But that's not the only factor burning down the money in your pocket. Here's the rest of the inflation salad -- pile on the toppings!
- Our trade deficit is the largest it's ever been -- ever. That means our goods would be cheaper than ever for foreigners to purchase, if we actually exported any manufactured goods. Heard about any new manufacturing plants being built in America lately? Um... no. Well, there *is* a new Hyundai plant I read about -- with its profits going back to Korea. The same way we exported our manufacturing facilities and jobs to Mexico after NAFTA, we're now becoming a third-world cheap labor hub for our economic superiors.
- Other nations that are major holders of our debt notes (China, Japan, South Korea) have been publically contemplating dumping some of them on the world market because their value is sinking so fast. Of course, this would result in the value of the dollar sinking even more rapidly. Supply goes up, demand (and value) go down.
- Notice the names of those nations that hold our foreign debt: China, Japan, South Korea. Try to find a consumer item in your home that isn't MADE IN CHINA (or TAIWAN). I have a Krupps coffeemaker but that's no guarantee it wasn't made by one of our gracious lenders. Because foreign goods cost more to us now (because the value of foreign currencies exceeds ours, except for the Chinese yuan, which is pegged to the dollar), foreign products cost more also. And nearly every non-food product we buy is produced overseas.
- And the cherry tomato on top: Bush's tax break has effectively drained the nation's coffers so that states and cities have had to cut services and raise taxes in order to continue serving basic community needs like police and emergency services (the costs of which have skyrocketed in the post-9/11 universe). The Bush administration's goal is to reverse or destroy every social program implemented since the New Deal -- they'll only succeed in destroying the economic fabric of the nation.
Consumer prices rose .4% last month, and the Feds raised the prime interest rate to 2.75%. As interest rates rise, home ownership will slow. People who jumped into Adjustable Rate Mortgages will start defaulting on their loans within the next five to ten years as rates rise. They'll have fewer options for bankruptcy thanks to Congress passing "tough" bankruptcy legislation that makes it harder for individuals -- the ones with overwhelming medical bills, for example, one of the primary groups of people who declare bankruptcy -- meaning that more of the middle class will end up part of the poverty-stricken slave class, forever indebted to credit card multinationals, giant insurance companies and Lovecraftian medical bureaucracies.
Remember Jimmy Carter? The oil embargo? 20% interest rates? We ain't seen nothin' yet.
Posted by chauncey at 05:31 PM | Comments (585)
March 22, 2005
Bob Geldof, Rock Homo
I'm glad that someone in the world agrees with me on this one (and in Africa, no less):
Posted by chauncey at 06:38 PM | Comments (1834)
March 21, 2005
Gamara lives
The lone reptilian survivor of a pet-store fire was found emblazoned with an image of Satan himself. The picture they have on CNN looks more like the goat's head from the inside of a pentangle to me but perhaps I'm just not looking at it correctly.
Why do people have turtles as pets? Anyone reading this have a reptile, or know someone who does? I can't emphathize -- are people drawn to them by a sort of scientific fascination, or because they think they're cute, or because they're an earthly conduit for Satan himself?
I hope nobody kills the little guy in some misguided effort to ensure the restoration of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube by eliminating what they think is Satan's Floridian form on Earth.
Posted by chauncey at 07:12 PM | Comments (910)