Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The mystery of the economics pie

The pie metaphor is a favorite with economists. "The pie is only so big" they say.

They mean there is only so much of a resource. We can't give away something that doesn't exist.

But that metaphor fails to answer some super key questions.

1) Who made the damn pie? Certainly it wasn't economists or bankers or rich folks or professors or politicians out there breaking their backs to harvest the wheat that made the crust or the fruit that makes the filing. They've never gotten their hands dirty making the actual fucking pie, now have they? Sure, they've pushed around papers. But that is the pie eating equivalent of tucking their napkin into their shirt, not making the pie.

2) Humans are remarkably good at making the pie bigger when they need to. In darwinian speak this is called adaptation. When we run out of one kind of pie, we make another kind. Oh look, it's winter and there are no fricken berries for a pie, I guess I'll make pumpkin instead. Adaptation is why we have things like clothing and houses and the internet and language after all. But we can't make pies that feed everyone? We deserve extinction if we really are that stupid.

3) Why does the pie get divided unevenly to begin with? Who fucking cuts a pie like that? It is easier and way more efficient to cut the pie into equal sized pieces than it is to cut out a tiny slice for the poor folks and hand the rest of the pie over to the rich.

4) What if you hate pie? I hate pie. I am on team cake. You know the thing about cake- you can make way bigger than you can pies. At least I think so.

This ridiculous little exercise has been meant to show you that 1) economists are mostly self righteous asswipes who don't understand the value of cake, 2) question everything, just because a bunch of douchenozzles has been saying the same thing for 300 years doesn't make them right, 3) the longer I am away from the internet the less respect I have for the learned class.

Next time you might get a super bitchy screed on how the "creative class" is made up of a bunch of fauxgressive fucksticks who wouldn't know how to creatively problem solve their way out of a paper bag.

Shoplifters of the World

unite and take a bow.

In honor of this post at StumpLane I was going to post a video of the fabulous Smith's song.

But the fricken rural library thinks Youtube is the work of the devil and has blocked access. They also hate chat programs and small kittens, so I am told.

So here's a link instead. Go get the song stuck in your head and then head out to your nearest big box store and steal me something useful. Like internet access that doesn't suck or an easy to use commenting platform or a laptop that I don't have to liberate (i/e steal) from an equally poverty ridden relative. Or even just dinner. I am dying to make my world famous chicken wings, or tuna salad, or something.

While I was out....

We have always been at war with east no west no all of Asia. And now we are bombing Yemen and independent reports say that there is no way to get out of Afghanistan in 18 months.

A dude without a passport, whose own dad has warned the authorities that his son is a danger, tries to blow up a plane over Detroit (really- like the Motor city doesn't have enough problems)and only fails because of dumb fucking luck. Seriously folks?

I won't even get into the debacle that is health care reform, except to say that every word in "health care reform" is a misnomer.

I did read a really good mystery novel called "Origin". And I had a good dream last night for the first time in forever. Of course then I got up and trekked with Wonder to the Anti-social Insecurity office at the crack of ass after Other Cousin used ALL the fricken hot water for her shower. 80 gallon hot water tank, people, and I'm taking a cold shower.

So I stole Other Cousin's lappy and made for the free library wi-fi to figure out this
whole comment change over bruhahah. And fuckles my friends.

First- Echo won't even open comments on the library wifi. So I can't really go installing a platform that I- blog mistress extrodinaire, cannot use.

So maybe Disqus or IntenseDebate will work? But both require a serious commitment to internet time (like an entire days worth) and some code monkeying in order to import comments from haloscan.

And I have like 2 days to figure out wtf I am going to do now. Seriously- I need a code monkey. Usually I crunch through this shit on my own but I simply do not have the kind of computer access I need to be doing major blog overhauls at the moment. Help me code monkeys, you're my only hope?

Feckles.

So my little chicadees, what's news with you?