Friday, August 02, 2002
Just because your music sucks doesn't mean you can't listen to mine
Because I can't think of anything to write about at this hour, I'll list some albums I'm looking forward to.
Coldplay - Rush of Blood to the Head (damn good band)
Deftones - Lovers (I have no idea when)
Team Sleep - ??? (see above)
Chevelle - Wonder What's Next (they are not Christian rock!)
Silverchair - arg forgot (as Daniel Johns gets fatter, the band gets better)
A Perfect Circle - ??? (Come on MJK, record those vocals).
Right now I am listening to: The hum of 3 computers.
Because I can't think of anything to write about at this hour, I'll list some albums I'm looking forward to.
Coldplay - Rush of Blood to the Head (damn good band)
Deftones - Lovers (I have no idea when)
Team Sleep - ??? (see above)
Chevelle - Wonder What's Next (they are not Christian rock!)
Silverchair - arg forgot (as Daniel Johns gets fatter, the band gets better)
A Perfect Circle - ??? (Come on MJK, record those vocals).
Right now I am listening to: The hum of 3 computers.
Thursday, August 01, 2002
eBay: The World's Online Marketplace
Some may feel that eBay.com may be bragging a little bit with their slogan, but with closer examination it appears the eBay could be Capitalism perfected.
Ok, this post is so going to scare certain majors away but try to stay with me.
You have all heard of eBay, and a great deal have met its baby website: half.com, but the implications of these two sister sites is phenominal. On eBay, as most of you know, you bid on items, just like in a real auction. On Half.com you just buy stuff, but from independent sellers, just like the ones that stock up eBay.com.
Ok, you're thinking: "That's great Matt, but what does have to do with perfecting a free market?" Well, it all has to do with property rights and honesty. No doubt at some point in your high school career (this is assuming you've done all that) you were introdued to Communism. It sounded like a nice system, but you all figured out really quickly that the only problem with equal distribution as that internet human corruption would eventually topple the system (i.e. people like to steal things and screw other people over for their own good).
Unfortunately the same goes for Capitalism. For a perfect free market society, property rights have to be properly enforced (if anyone really wants to know why, e-mail me). The only entity fully capable of this is the government. But wait, doesn't this remind you of something? For Communism to work you need someone to distribute the wealth, thus needing a government, which opens the way for corruption; well the same goes for the other end of the economic stick. Whenever there is a government, for all the good it can do, there is always a certain amount of corruption, and when there is corruption, business men can get around silly things like properly enforced property rights (i.e. Enron, Worldcom..Qwest /7Ride the lightning baby /7).
Anyway, this prevents capitalism from getting any closer to the economist's fantasy world of ceteris paribus, and thus nullifying the concept of a "perfect system." Human nature defies a perfect free market in the same way that it defies total equality.
Some of you might have had to take microeconomics once in your life. In these classes, your free market obsessed grad student may have made the point that governments don't need to put restrictions or create watch programs because the consumer can regulate business just as well (i.e. if someone sells a faulty product, people will stop buying it, if a certain airline crashes lots of planes, people will stop flying it). Although it made a certain amount of sense, this belief often left us wondering if that's how things would always really work, especially with today's corporations doing most of the dirty stuff behind out backs.
What does any of this have to do with eBay? Well eBay maintains exact property rights and prevents corruption because of the way its sellers are presented to the consumer. Let me explain: When you search for an item... lets say.. a computer game, on eBay (or half.com) you are presented with the username of the seller, some info about that seller, including the seller's rating. This is based on little reviews given by the consumer after receiving the product. Most sellers have excellent ratings, meaning that they took their payments and quickly and correctly shipped the exact item that the consumer thought they were getting. Basically, by looking at the seller's info, a customer can instantly know whether or not this is a good buy.
Although eBay takes a little bit of a commission from the seller's earnings, they don't actually mess around with the payment, so there is no chance for corruption on the governing level (i.e. eBay preserves safe and easy transfer of funds while maintaning property rights) and the seller wouldn't dare screw over someone with a product, because they know that one bad review can bring down the whole house. That's right, bad reviews count worse than good reviews.
So now you have a self-regulating economic market that is controlled by the consumer, who maintains a distant relationship with the actual site of eBay (just having a typical account with basic info) leaving no room for corruption, as the only two parties that are relatively close, the sellers and eBay, don't regulate the system to nearly the extent that the consumer does.
Not only does this system work, for the most part, flawlessly (every now and then there is a bad apple, but it usually involves people ordering from others with either no or really bad ratings), but it also offers standard, often new items, at cheaper prices than most internet retailers. And it preserves the quaintness of the small business. That's right, despite the assumption that consolidation always leads to a lower price level, here we see a group of individual/small stores offering a cheaper and more effective service than, shall I dare say, amazon.com
Listening to: The Deftones - Digital Bath
Some may feel that eBay.com may be bragging a little bit with their slogan, but with closer examination it appears the eBay could be Capitalism perfected.
Ok, this post is so going to scare certain majors away but try to stay with me.
You have all heard of eBay, and a great deal have met its baby website: half.com, but the implications of these two sister sites is phenominal. On eBay, as most of you know, you bid on items, just like in a real auction. On Half.com you just buy stuff, but from independent sellers, just like the ones that stock up eBay.com.
Ok, you're thinking: "That's great Matt, but what does have to do with perfecting a free market?" Well, it all has to do with property rights and honesty. No doubt at some point in your high school career (this is assuming you've done all that) you were introdued to Communism. It sounded like a nice system, but you all figured out really quickly that the only problem with equal distribution as that internet human corruption would eventually topple the system (i.e. people like to steal things and screw other people over for their own good).
Unfortunately the same goes for Capitalism. For a perfect free market society, property rights have to be properly enforced (if anyone really wants to know why, e-mail me). The only entity fully capable of this is the government. But wait, doesn't this remind you of something? For Communism to work you need someone to distribute the wealth, thus needing a government, which opens the way for corruption; well the same goes for the other end of the economic stick. Whenever there is a government, for all the good it can do, there is always a certain amount of corruption, and when there is corruption, business men can get around silly things like properly enforced property rights (i.e. Enron, Worldcom..Qwest /7Ride the lightning baby /7).
Anyway, this prevents capitalism from getting any closer to the economist's fantasy world of ceteris paribus, and thus nullifying the concept of a "perfect system." Human nature defies a perfect free market in the same way that it defies total equality.
Some of you might have had to take microeconomics once in your life. In these classes, your free market obsessed grad student may have made the point that governments don't need to put restrictions or create watch programs because the consumer can regulate business just as well (i.e. if someone sells a faulty product, people will stop buying it, if a certain airline crashes lots of planes, people will stop flying it). Although it made a certain amount of sense, this belief often left us wondering if that's how things would always really work, especially with today's corporations doing most of the dirty stuff behind out backs.
What does any of this have to do with eBay? Well eBay maintains exact property rights and prevents corruption because of the way its sellers are presented to the consumer. Let me explain: When you search for an item... lets say.. a computer game, on eBay (or half.com) you are presented with the username of the seller, some info about that seller, including the seller's rating. This is based on little reviews given by the consumer after receiving the product. Most sellers have excellent ratings, meaning that they took their payments and quickly and correctly shipped the exact item that the consumer thought they were getting. Basically, by looking at the seller's info, a customer can instantly know whether or not this is a good buy.
Although eBay takes a little bit of a commission from the seller's earnings, they don't actually mess around with the payment, so there is no chance for corruption on the governing level (i.e. eBay preserves safe and easy transfer of funds while maintaning property rights) and the seller wouldn't dare screw over someone with a product, because they know that one bad review can bring down the whole house. That's right, bad reviews count worse than good reviews.
So now you have a self-regulating economic market that is controlled by the consumer, who maintains a distant relationship with the actual site of eBay (just having a typical account with basic info) leaving no room for corruption, as the only two parties that are relatively close, the sellers and eBay, don't regulate the system to nearly the extent that the consumer does.
Not only does this system work, for the most part, flawlessly (every now and then there is a bad apple, but it usually involves people ordering from others with either no or really bad ratings), but it also offers standard, often new items, at cheaper prices than most internet retailers. And it preserves the quaintness of the small business. That's right, despite the assumption that consolidation always leads to a lower price level, here we see a group of individual/small stores offering a cheaper and more effective service than, shall I dare say, amazon.com
Listening to: The Deftones - Digital Bath
Holy crap I am so freakin oblivious.
Like if Milla Jovovich ran up and kissed me, I probably would think she just tripped. It's sad. Guys like me (and there are a lot of them) just don't get it, and we never will. So forget about all your plans! Get this, I went on a date with a girl one summer... and she asked me to pick a movie. Since I am a moron I didn't realize that we were actually going on a date... I thought it was just a friendly... outing?
So I picked Evolution, which is the worst bloody date movie on the face of the earth. Actually, no, I take that back, later I took the girl to see Scary Movie 2....... Anyway, I show up at her house, and meet her parents. Her dad said something of the effect of "hah, good luck with her" which left me wondering why someone's father would say this to one of his daughters friends. In the theater, during the middle of the movie, she sticks her freaking hand out on the arm rest, palm up, so we can do the whole holding hands thing. Me, not knowing that we were on a date, stared at her hand for a minute, then returned my attention to the movie. She was bewildered. When I dropped her off at her house I gave her the stiff tree hug that tall guys like me are famous for giving, then left. Oh boy, did I suffer the wrath of an unpleased date later.
But that is my point... a great deal of guys are oblivous to the attempts of the opposite sex... and so they get angry when we don't understand what is happening. And who suffers?
For the oblivious guys out there, you can seek treatment. They have help centers where you can be exposed to typical female behavior and learn how to read those signs.. but that would take out all the fun out of it, wouldn't it?
Tonight's quote "In some cases, she likes the guy she gives the most attention to, in others, she's a lesbian."
Right now I am listening to: Alkaline Trio - Mr. Chainsaw
Like if Milla Jovovich ran up and kissed me, I probably would think she just tripped. It's sad. Guys like me (and there are a lot of them) just don't get it, and we never will. So forget about all your plans! Get this, I went on a date with a girl one summer... and she asked me to pick a movie. Since I am a moron I didn't realize that we were actually going on a date... I thought it was just a friendly... outing?
So I picked Evolution, which is the worst bloody date movie on the face of the earth. Actually, no, I take that back, later I took the girl to see Scary Movie 2....... Anyway, I show up at her house, and meet her parents. Her dad said something of the effect of "hah, good luck with her" which left me wondering why someone's father would say this to one of his daughters friends. In the theater, during the middle of the movie, she sticks her freaking hand out on the arm rest, palm up, so we can do the whole holding hands thing. Me, not knowing that we were on a date, stared at her hand for a minute, then returned my attention to the movie. She was bewildered. When I dropped her off at her house I gave her the stiff tree hug that tall guys like me are famous for giving, then left. Oh boy, did I suffer the wrath of an unpleased date later.
But that is my point... a great deal of guys are oblivous to the attempts of the opposite sex... and so they get angry when we don't understand what is happening. And who suffers?
For the oblivious guys out there, you can seek treatment. They have help centers where you can be exposed to typical female behavior and learn how to read those signs.. but that would take out all the fun out of it, wouldn't it?
Tonight's quote "In some cases, she likes the guy she gives the most attention to, in others, she's a lesbian."
Right now I am listening to: Alkaline Trio - Mr. Chainsaw
Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Deism should be religion of choice in Africa, because the rest of the world, after creating what is today modern day Africa, has stepped back to see what will happen.
I was watching CNN headline news yesterday... or rather I had it on in the background as I was doing immensly interesting things. The funny thing that CNN does is determine the overall importance of news by placing it in different parts of the screen. Not so important news goes on the scroll bar, while the important stuff is read by the anchor. Well yesterday, the guy was explaining how millions of dollars of tax revenue was lost to New York because of the 9-11 incident, and on the scroll bar...... there was text mentioning the fact that war in the Congo has killed several million people. We lost our way a long time ago when millions of deaths were reduced to scroll bars and nothing else. Did you know that that war kills more people every day than the number of people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center?
On a brighter note, Rwanda and Congo signed a peace accord the other day, so a good deal of the fighting will stop, but not the starvation. We are so obsessed with the little problems... routing out a couple thousand terrorsts.... planning a war with a country that no one is talking about (more on this later). AIDS is going to kill roughly 70 million people in Africa over the next 20 years. Pardon mi español but that is a shitload of people. If 70 million people died in the US, we would be reducing our population by roughly 25%. What is the US doing to help this crisis? Absolute zip. Some of you make ask why we should help people in another country far away.... because we are pretty much the only people who can, but we are too obsessed with keeping our drug companies fat and happy to crack down on them and make them start pumping out some seriously cheap generics for that contintent.
Well that is my rant for today, I hope you enjoyed it, here are some links to make you rethink your position. Read them for your sake.
The latest AIDS conference.
Mandela for AIDS drugs.
Point/Counterpoint: Nigeria
Point/Counterpoint: Hunger
Right now I am listening to: Drugstore & Thom Yorke - El Presidente
I was watching CNN headline news yesterday... or rather I had it on in the background as I was doing immensly interesting things. The funny thing that CNN does is determine the overall importance of news by placing it in different parts of the screen. Not so important news goes on the scroll bar, while the important stuff is read by the anchor. Well yesterday, the guy was explaining how millions of dollars of tax revenue was lost to New York because of the 9-11 incident, and on the scroll bar...... there was text mentioning the fact that war in the Congo has killed several million people. We lost our way a long time ago when millions of deaths were reduced to scroll bars and nothing else. Did you know that that war kills more people every day than the number of people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center?
On a brighter note, Rwanda and Congo signed a peace accord the other day, so a good deal of the fighting will stop, but not the starvation. We are so obsessed with the little problems... routing out a couple thousand terrorsts.... planning a war with a country that no one is talking about (more on this later). AIDS is going to kill roughly 70 million people in Africa over the next 20 years. Pardon mi español but that is a shitload of people. If 70 million people died in the US, we would be reducing our population by roughly 25%. What is the US doing to help this crisis? Absolute zip. Some of you make ask why we should help people in another country far away.... because we are pretty much the only people who can, but we are too obsessed with keeping our drug companies fat and happy to crack down on them and make them start pumping out some seriously cheap generics for that contintent.
Well that is my rant for today, I hope you enjoyed it, here are some links to make you rethink your position. Read them for your sake.
The latest AIDS conference.
Mandela for AIDS drugs.
Point/Counterpoint: Nigeria
Point/Counterpoint: Hunger
Right now I am listening to: Drugstore & Thom Yorke - El Presidente
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Whoa, welcome to the first post. I'd better think of something interesting to write about... quickly. It is a Tuesday night, as you can probably see. I'm bored, as usual. This is, after all, the famous town of Myrtle Beach. Last night I went with my friend Justin to go see Austin Powers In: Goldmember. Very funny, in the typical AP tradition, but not quite as good as The Spy Who Shagged Me, in my humble opinion.
Another good movie I saw, con mi amiga Elizabeth, was Road to Perdition, Starring Tom Hanks, this is one of the most difficult characters he's ever played: the silent, stern, hitman father, but he pulls it off magnificently. It's a damn good movie, although it won't let you leave feeling warm and fuzzy all over...far from it.
As far as what to expect from this site... it won't all be recap of the life of the greatest redhead to ever be born. Oh no, it'll feature lots of opinions, features, reviews, etc. Maybe even some guest speakers? Hmm. Think on this the council and I will.
Right now I'm listening to: Aphex Twin - Pancake Lizard
Another good movie I saw, con mi amiga Elizabeth, was Road to Perdition, Starring Tom Hanks, this is one of the most difficult characters he's ever played: the silent, stern, hitman father, but he pulls it off magnificently. It's a damn good movie, although it won't let you leave feeling warm and fuzzy all over...far from it.
As far as what to expect from this site... it won't all be recap of the life of the greatest redhead to ever be born. Oh no, it'll feature lots of opinions, features, reviews, etc. Maybe even some guest speakers? Hmm. Think on this the council and I will.
Right now I'm listening to: Aphex Twin - Pancake Lizard
