All hail paterfamilias Obama!

Masquerading as eudemonistic soothsayers, the soon to be Obama administration strike me of late as condescending autocrats with noble intentions yet a dismal view of the citizens they aim to save. America voted for a president, yet unwittingly appointed a pontifex maximus. President elect Barack Obama has a demonstrated a chilling predilection towards paternalism. And of all the varieties, his seems to be the worst brand; not the comparatively benign demonstrative variety that most politicians trend towards, but rather the dangerous and miasmic type predicated on disimpassioned utilitarian calculations. He believes He is helping the plebeian masses, because only He - The Chosen One - can comprehend the complex world that swirls around and confounds us hoi polloi. He must protect us from ourselves, because left to our own machinations we will surely flounder. Cigarettes are terrible (it's OK for dad to smoke, but best not let the kids), so He will help us all quit by raising the already sizable taxes. (Am I the only one whose first inclination was to draw parallels between this and Kim Jung Il’s dictate that when he quit smoking, everyone in North Korea must also quit?) Trillion dollar deficits? No worries, who better to spend future generation’s monies than His team of the best and the brightest, all under the patria potestas of paterfamilias Obama. He has crunched the numbers – He used focus groups and survey data to pitch his stimulus plan to congress. Mark Twain once opined “there are three types of lies: lies, dirty lies, and statistics.” The governance of the next four years will be strikingly different from that of the last eight, if for no other reason through a shift in tactics from the first two varieties of obfuscation to the third type. Get ready to witness the world when a team of self-anointed Cassandra’s (this time with statistics!) takes charge. Perhaps if we are lucky, they can spare Troy from destruction.

Drunk on technology

I keep hearing that the US is falling behind in science and technology. So what? What are the opportunity costs of gains in science? Less literature and music? Less idle time for the young? Less time spent home with family? Less values? Less joy? In the extreme, we will have a generation that can create the wonders of the future, but have no moral bearings as to if and how they should. It seems that often it is not more technology that is needed, but rather less. The problems of systemic obesity in the US will not be cured through the further implementation of food science, but through its significantly reduced application. The world will not be safer if we continue to master the splitting of the atom, but rather will only be secure if we remove the Damoclean nuclear threat by obliterating the technology used to achieve the feat in the first place. The advances in risk management technologies have not insulated our investments from wild swings, but rather have acted antipodal to this desire, creating unprecedented volatility and uncertainty: created systemic risk. Everywhere I look technology seems to be at the root of our problems; the very same technologies developed a generation before with the intent of fixing the problem leftover from the previous technologies, and so on and so forth. We have become drunk on technology and the misbegotten hangover is just starting to commence.

The guy-girl friendship matrix

And yes, the solution is sub-game perfect.

Economics and my heart

But what units are the budget contraint in?

They did say please...

Statement of Purpose: (DRAFT)

I want to put together something that attempts to capture the zeitgeist of this generation. The technology, the digital voyeurism, the guilt, the nihilism, the private life and the shit that fills it, the rejection of the American dream: we do not want to produce more, to have more, but rather want only to loll around and love and be loved more. We dare to be ironic but are too apathetic to realize that we already are. We are a sham generation. We will be shorter, fatter, dumber, and poorer than those who came before, and will achieve this through increased hours, heightened use of technology, increased efficiency, and all the culminations of modern health and science. We pushed into office a president of change, and seemingly did it with ever giving a thought to what that meant. We no longer have the bible, but believe rather in the infallible invisible hand. The market it supreme. Hail the market. We just need to fix the market. The market did not fail us, we failed the market. This is the now and this where I want to intercede.

...wait, the wine glasses cost the entire month's rent?

With god on your side

“Religion [to me] meant the church of Rome. Quite conceivably it was an empty ritual but is was seemingly the only assimilative, traditionary bulwark against the decay of morals. Until the great mobs could be educated into a moral sense some one must cry out: ‘Thou shalt not!’” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Modern man has succeeded in throwing off the chains of Catholicism – the American church has shrunk, its authority waned, and congressional enthusiasm diminished – but in its place did not find higher callings or moral instruction. Instead religion was thrust into the marketplace. Now there are a thousand sects, and no one has a disagreement with their lord God. Where once the church imbued modesty and moderation, the modern church now praises the individual and tells them: ‘I agree, you are right!’ This is the problem. There is no thought, but merely people’s prejudices projected into the God construct. If you’re gay, you can have a God which embraces his queer sons and daughters. If you cannot stand the homosexuals, then there is a God who condemns them to hell. Like your wealth? There is a god for that as well. Want to forget the world and live alone in a cave? God allows that too. There is a God for everybody now who wants one. Christianity may have won out over paganism in the West, but monotheism is now dead. There are now as many gods as there are points of view, with each incarnation of the god of Abraham competing against the other for your soul. America is no longer one nation under God, but rather a nation of people living under their own, unique, all approving self-lords. Have it your way McLords.

I am curious into the entomology of the term ‘church-shopping,’ for I feel that the emergence of this phrase into the lexicon corresponds with some crucial tipping point in which the masses fell away from moral authority and begun to worship themselves; the seemingly logical progression of materialism and liberalism. There is now a private life, but only shit to fill it, but that’s OK, because God is on your side.

Prediction

Election day prediction: the candidate that spent the most money will win (again).