Gigs Shrugged

I’ve been a libertarian for a while.  Mostly small L, but the party guys don’t bother me too much, even if I do think they are a little extreme.  It used to be the case that libertarians would tend to defend the idea of “intellectual property rights”, after all, something with “property rights” in its name surely is something worthy of libertarian defense.

In recent years though, it seems there has been a shift.  Increasingly, libertarians are recognizing that “intellectual property” is largely government tinkering with the free market, similar to price controls or anti-gouging laws.  It’s not a clear cut case either way, however.  Creative output is the fruit of someone’s labor, after all.

I noticed this shift a while back, and it seems that others have too.  Today I got the Mises Daily email, and it included a book review for “Against Intellectual Property” by David K. Levine and Michele Boldrin.  Being good capitalists, mises.org themselves are offering the book for sale.  I have not yet read the book, but its existance in the bookstore of mises.org is a strong sign of the times:  “Intellectual Property” has lost yet another former ally.

For the first time ever, the Second Life Peak Monthly Cash Flow economic statistic has shrunk in seven out of nine income categories.  In the two other categories, it remained nearly flat.  Residents with significant L$ income of over $200 per month dropped from 4377 to 4277, a loss of 2.2%.  The November data indicates continuation of the slowdown that was first seen in October’s data.

Linden Lab has also censored the data regarding islands lost per month, claiming that it wasn’t an accurate reflection.   The massive loss of islands is a direct result of Linden Lab’s disasterous price increase on Openspaces.  December data will likely be worse, continuing the Second Life recession.

I just finished a site for the dramatic kitty video.  So cute hehe.

Fuck Apple for starting this idea that PC=Windows.  Fuck Microsoft for running with it.  Hundreds of Operating Systems run on a PC.

I have been watching the money supply closely, getting email alerts when they update the data.

Today they just added “recession bars” to mark the current recession.

St. Louis Fed: Series: BASE, St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base

The recession bars go back to about November 2007 up to today.

Of slight note is also the monetary base has leveled off at 1.5 trillion, contracting very slightly over the last couple weeks.

This is still an increase of 76% in the last 11 months.

A critic writes:

Apparently, economic systems have something akin to wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics - sometimes their behaviour can be accurately predicted using very simple laws, other times they are chaotic and emergent.

That’s actually true. The pricing problem is hard and likely computationally intractable in a central management paradigm. It requires omniscience to solve 100%, and damn close to omniscience to even do a decent job.

There is a way to get relatively high pricing efficiency though, by distributing the task among every consumer and every supplier in the market. It’s not 100% efficient, but it is the method that incorporates the most amount of information, and does so in near real time. It is probably the oldest emergent system in existence, and it is subject to the normal failures that plague all emergent systems. But it does work, and can achieve very high efficiencies.

As an example, a national size power grid is an emergent system that sometimes behaves chaotically (cascade failures). It’s a relatively simple emergent system that is easier to manage and predict, compared to some.

A single electrical generator in that grid is much easier to predict. It is governed by the relatively simple laws of electromagnetics and physics.

That’s the definition of emergence, that on one level, the system is made up of simple and predictable interactions, but on the macro level, it’s much more chaotic, and exhibits complex interaction.

Ever since I (re) joined the NRA, renewing my very old membership, I have been spammed mercilessly by the NRA.  I am getting email advertisements from LifeLock, from “Special Editon Books”, and for a while, persistent phone calls every couple days, even though I told them each time to put me on their Do Not Call list and to stop calling.

They have it appears at least 6 different mailing lists, and if you unsubscribe from one they just create a new one for the next “exciting offer” that they want to sell you and automatically opt you in.

Here’s some of the email spam I’ve gotten from the NRA:

• NRA Breaking News on 2nd Amendment Rights  (an ad for a book by Les Adams) (Special Edition Books)
• NRA brings you health insurance for less than a latte a day (NRA Endorsed Insurance)
• NRA & LifeLock- Exclusive Discount for NRA Members (NRA Special Offers)
• NRA & LifeLock Partner to Protect Your Identity
• NRA & LifeLock partner to protect your rights
• NRA Members ONLY! $600 Value! Get 4 Months FREE
• NRA’s Marksmanship Primer - Get yours for hunting season!
• Cool New NRA Gear!  (NRAStore)
• No Risk NRA  Wines - Only $6.99 & Free Shipping (NRA Special Offers)
• It’s $40 Below at the NRA Store!  (NRAStore)

This is in addition to paper junk mail in my mailbox.  I just wanted to support the 2nd amendment.  I didn’t sign up to be flooded with advertisements.

“There is no need for the federal reserve to monetize any of this borrowing … I do not expect additional inflationary consequences from this”  - Bernanke’s testimony to congress, 9/24/08

The initiatives call for the Federal Reserve to buy up to 600 billion dollars in mortgage securities with another 200 billion dollars allocated for asset-backed securities to help get credit to consumers.

In an unsurprising move, Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, continued their slide toward Disney-like fasism, this time removing virtual skin vending machines that demonstrated child avatar skins, complete with baked-in underwear.  This is stuff no worse than anyone can see in real life at a public beach.

This is apparently a policy change, as it was enforced against two separate sellers of non-sexual child avatar skins, and was reviewed under appeal and upheld.  The policy cited was:

“Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of
sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve
children or minors are never allowed within Second Life.”

I do wonder about the Lindens involved, if they consider a skin texture vending machine a sexual act.  Maybe they should seek treatment for this fetish for virtual vending machines.

1. Wish Cris would change the status tag to “Banninated”
2. Watch threads devolve into flame wars…  Without my help!
3. Sleep.  Lots.
4. Go Grocery Shopping
5. Cook more (bacon)
6. Worry that people I respect might have taken those deliberately outrageous posts seriously
7. Work on that project that I really should be working on but I keep putting it off
8. Actually log on to SL (gasp)
9. Rotate my canned foods
10. Write a lot more blog posts, like this one!