Stuff I like

Trans-Texas Corridor

This massive project certainly has a large share of legitimate detractors--I find the eminent domain arguments interesting-- and seems as if it won't ever be completed, but it still hacks me off when some North-eastern urbanite derides it without even a modicum of research.  I posted my thoughts on his post and I'm expecting an interesting reply.

Is art overrated?

There was a post on Marginal Revolution that has been troubling me over the past few months.  I'm going to post most of it as I'm sure the idea of a blog on markets scares most away:

Of course there are great novels that have brought me a lot of pleasure...But the opportunity cost of reading a great novel is reading some other great novel, so if either of these had gone unwritten, I'd probably have some other wonderful book to recommend.

There's an important economic point here: The vast rewards that go to successful novelists can grossly overstate the social value of their work. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has sold over 6 million copies and almost surely earned its author over $20 million. But if The Da Vinci Code hadn't been written, some other now-unnoticed book might have taken its place as the blockbuster of the year, and readers would have been almost as happy.

Writing a book is not like growing an orange. If you grow the best orange in the world, the second best orange still gets eaten. But if you write the best book in the world, the second best book loses a lot of readers. So the market price of an orange is an excellent reflection of its true social value, whereas the bulk of Dan Brown's $20 million is only an excellent reflection of what he was able to divert from some
other author to himself.

I think there is a lot of truth to this and it worries me.  I've been questioning the true value of art  lately--mostly in the context of limiting government-subsidized tutition loans only for those who pursue degrees that are of the utmost value to our current society, i.e. those that pay the most--and this hits especially hard to the one medium of art that I truly love.  I haven't figured out exactly what's wrong with this idea or if there is anything at all, but its definitely something to chew on.

UPDATE:  I found a trackback on the above post that helped me figure out what was troubling me with it.  Here's the answer:

This is not true at all. The best book in the world, even if everyone agreed on what it was, affects only the last, marginal book chosen by each and every reader. Even if readers only read twelve books per year, the affected original twelfth choice would vary widely over different readers, having a very dilute specific effect on any one book.

Chalk it up to faulty analysis at the margin.  But its still kind of depressing to think that the opportunity cost of reading a great book is just the reading of another book.  One would hope it wouldn't be the watching of that same Law & Order episode for the sixth time only to realize twenty minutes in that you've already seen it and going ahead and watching it until the end despite. One would hope at least.

Law & Order Sucks

Its over.  Law & Order is garbage.  I just watched the recent episode where they have to overturn gay marriages in order to allow a witness to testify.  Once its overturned the witness refuses to testify in some civil disobedience act and declares he's being treated as a "second-class citizen."  Normally when they do some crap insertion of recent hot-button issues turned into a court case, fair viewing is given to both sides of the issue.  Not so in this case.  The only person who was opposed to gay marriage was some hick judge who referred to gays as "those people."  Every other character couldn't believe some people might be against it.  The DA who was merely wanting the testimony and could care less about the issue was accused of "selling out to the religious right." 

Its that kind of shit that keeps liberals marginalized in American politics.  Who could possibly be against it?  I mean, come on, we're talking fundamental rights here!  Could a thinking and caring individual possibly not be for it? Well how about the citizens of these states who overwhelmingly passed state bans on gay marriages in the last election: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah.  Some of those are gimmees, but Oregon too?  What's the excuse there?  Is Michigan not enlightened enough either? 

This is why I absolutely loath liberals.  I'm no fan of conservatives either, but at least they don't demean your opinion as idiotic when they disagree with you.  Bill Clinton was a philanderer and Bush is a dunce, right?  Now which one of those groups actually considers their criticism an insult?  I'll take moral self-righteousness over intellectual  self-righteousness any day of the week.  And are religion and moral codes really that weak of justifications for policy beliefs?  Is one group's conception of equality so true that there cannot exist a point of disagreement? 

Equality isn't some fixed standard either.  Its as relative as those claim morality to be.  My friends who are married pay less taxes than me.  Government is subsidizing my friends having sex under a socially acceptable banner.  How is that fair?  Where's my equality?  You ever see the way people treat single persons over the age of 50?  All the questions behind their back.  Is she divorced?  No.  Gay?  Nope.  Gerbils?  Has to be.  Government maintains a legal division by which others are judged and derided.  Isn't that the whole argument for legalizing gay marriage?  You're telling me thats not a stigma?  Now, hippies go forth and whine about the supposed need of government recognition of marriage at all and maybe you'll get me to put down my beer.  Maybe if the one-handers out there pushed  sappy examples of discrimination through media outlets and started guilt-tripping America they might actually get somewhere. 

I told myself I'd never post about politics and now thats out the window.  My hatred for anything political consumes me too easily.  We're all just a bunch of over-developed monkeys who invent concepts of justice and morality to feed our own sense of self-importance and then we're shocked when these fictions don't fit as tight as a jigsaw puzzle.  Stunner.  So since everybody is wrong I think its time for plan B.  I'll just become the second coming of Caesar.  First edict:  Bagel Bites Mondays.  Now thats social progress we all can get behind.