Pull out your phone and take a picture of something with it. View the image on your phone and then view the thing you took a picture of in real life. The camera image is obviously different, right? Cameras take images roughly the same way a human perceives vision. Light goes into a receptacle, that receptacle relays the information contained within the light to a processing unit, and then the processing unit then renders the information. What you see with your eyes is actually what your brain interprets you as seeing.
In that sense, even though the image quality in your camera is obviously inferior to what you see with your own eyes, even your own eyes aren't giving you the real thing. What you think is reality is just your perception of reality. When you view an image on your camera or phone, you're seeing another thing's perception of reality through your own reality lens.
That general principle extends beyond vision. Let's say you are contemplating an intensely polarized issue like gun control. Although there are nuanced views and middle-of-the-road compromises, we're not arguing from a standpoint of "gun ownership rights and regulations, go". We're arguing on the margins. The national conversation revolves around: should there be more or less regulation of gun ownership?
The issue is highly charged and complex. Various people are throwing various arguments, studies, and statistics at you and you're left to sort out what is right, what is wrong, and where to go from here. So what do you do? And how do you come down on the issue?
It takes a few things to establish an ideological position. The first is your perception of reality. What's going on? The second is your view on priorities. What's important? From there, you can craft your own idea of what reality should be like. That last part is ideology. There are poor people around me (perception). Being poor sucks (priority). Poor people shouldn't be poor (ideology). The process through which government bridges reality (the way things are) to ideology (the way things should be) is through politics.
The way this gets messy is when people don't view things the same way. There are an infinite number of vantage points. Some views get more light. Some have more a better view of the entire situation. Some views are from above. Some are from below. The way an urban elite Democrat views reality is vastly different from a rural working class Republican. In short, two people are looking at a photo and one sees a vase and the other sees a desk. It gets infinitely harder to come to an acceptable compromise when people can't even agree on what they see.
A lot of conflict in TV, books, and film is driven by the asymmetries that occur from two different viewpoints. In a romantic comedy, the lead character might view his/her love interest with a potential rival and interpret that wildly differently from what was actually going on (the love interest was just hugging their sibling). In a courtroom drama, the entire plot usually revolves around two people's recollection of what happened (the defendant's testimony versus the victim's).
The audience is privileged in that they usually get a much better vantage point than the characters. For example, we may know there's a serial killer lurking right behind that closed door at the end of a dimly lit hallway, but our plucky protagonist might not. Sometimes, the writer/filmmaker manipulates the audience with that assumption and turns it on its head in a staggering twist. Unfortunately real life doesn't work that way. We just get one vantage point. Our own. And in situations where more than one person is involved, it is almost always woefully inadequate to paint an accurate picture of what's actually going on. Each person has their own side to a story. But there's just one story.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
De Haut En Bas
Disclaimer: I really don't care about gay marriage. Given its importance to a certain segment of the American population and the fact that it doesn't affect me, I would definitely lend moral support to the cause. My personal opinion is that the government should get out of the marriage business altogether and leave it to religion. The state can have "civic/civil unions" which can incorporate 2 (or more) adults into a single entity where civic and economic matters are concerned. End disclaimer.
This morning, my Facebook feed was full of updates with friends changing their profile photo to an image of a pink equal sign on a red background. Oh, and the Supreme Court also began hearing oral arguments in Hollingsworth v Perry on whether to overturn California's Proposition 8.
The official line of the WSJ op-ed pages is that this is an issue to be litigated in the legislature, not the courts. A cynic might think of that as the cop out of a reasonably intelligent homophobe. But I think there is a legitimate argument behind it. Because when we're talking about the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, a lot of the times it comes down to personal opinion. And I think there is a lot of danger in accepting the majority opinion of 9 people as sacred writ (or more accurately, using them as a shortcut to get what we want, assuming that a majority of those 9 people share our ideology).
People make a big deal about equality before the law and the equal application of the law, but the fact is the law discriminates against various people all the time on rather arbitrary standards. Laws will treat you differently based on the color of your skin, how much money you make, how old you are, where your primary place of residence is located, whether you're physically impaired, whether you were born on the right side of an imaginary line, etc. There are nearly an infinite number of ways that will allow a law to treat two people differently from one another.
Whether it's just or not is based on its measure of support within the population and the policymakers of that jurisdiction. When it comes to Federal statute, at least 270 Federally elected officials (51 votes in the Senate, 218 votes in the House, 1 "vote" in the White House) must support the measure at one point in time. And frankly, I'd rather trust the collective judgment of 270 people than the collective judgment of 9.
On a state level, this gets even clearer. Some states, like California, allow plebiscites which enables the entire electorate to weigh in on a particular issue. For Proposition 8, over 7 million votes favored a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. It takes a certain kind of presumption to allow 5 votes to nullify 7 million (or 600k, if you want to count by winning margin), especially when there is no material stake at hand.
I say that because gay marriage is not a material issue. The arguments about tax and legal status are ancillary, because there is no real movement to force the government to divest itself from the institution of marriage in favor of a civil unions (which I support). It's an issue of dignity and respect. And we cannot, try as we might, dictate dignity and respect.
These are things that are earned and maintained every day with every social interaction. Imagine if there was a law that specified that there must be proportional representation in Congress based along the lines of nationally recognized racial groups (white, black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American). Such a law cannot stand because it offends the vast majority of Americans sense of legal propriety. And that sense is what gay marriage activists should try and shape. Not the sense of 9 Justices on the bench.
There was this quote I read a very long time ago (either in middle or high school). It was from a black civil rights activist (I think it was Douglass) but I can't find the exact quote. So I'm going to paraphrase it to the best of my recollection:
A Supreme Court decision to strike down Proposition 8 will almost certainly be premature and will create decades of controversy (much like Roe v Wade did to the issue of abortion). Gay marriage, like so many causes of social justice that precede it, is not supposed to be a duel to be fought amongst a select company. It's a bare knuckle brawl that must be won in the streets where progress is measured block by block. Only then will you finally gain the respect and dignity you deserve.
I know it is infuriating to hear this from a person who has no personal stake in the fight. But it is not possible for the aggrieved to gain immediate justice and reparation. It has never worked that way. Just know, in your long and hard fought struggle, that you are on the right side of history.
This morning, my Facebook feed was full of updates with friends changing their profile photo to an image of a pink equal sign on a red background. Oh, and the Supreme Court also began hearing oral arguments in Hollingsworth v Perry on whether to overturn California's Proposition 8.
The official line of the WSJ op-ed pages is that this is an issue to be litigated in the legislature, not the courts. A cynic might think of that as the cop out of a reasonably intelligent homophobe. But I think there is a legitimate argument behind it. Because when we're talking about the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, a lot of the times it comes down to personal opinion. And I think there is a lot of danger in accepting the majority opinion of 9 people as sacred writ (or more accurately, using them as a shortcut to get what we want, assuming that a majority of those 9 people share our ideology).
People make a big deal about equality before the law and the equal application of the law, but the fact is the law discriminates against various people all the time on rather arbitrary standards. Laws will treat you differently based on the color of your skin, how much money you make, how old you are, where your primary place of residence is located, whether you're physically impaired, whether you were born on the right side of an imaginary line, etc. There are nearly an infinite number of ways that will allow a law to treat two people differently from one another.
Whether it's just or not is based on its measure of support within the population and the policymakers of that jurisdiction. When it comes to Federal statute, at least 270 Federally elected officials (51 votes in the Senate, 218 votes in the House, 1 "vote" in the White House) must support the measure at one point in time. And frankly, I'd rather trust the collective judgment of 270 people than the collective judgment of 9.
On a state level, this gets even clearer. Some states, like California, allow plebiscites which enables the entire electorate to weigh in on a particular issue. For Proposition 8, over 7 million votes favored a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. It takes a certain kind of presumption to allow 5 votes to nullify 7 million (or 600k, if you want to count by winning margin), especially when there is no material stake at hand.
I say that because gay marriage is not a material issue. The arguments about tax and legal status are ancillary, because there is no real movement to force the government to divest itself from the institution of marriage in favor of a civil unions (which I support). It's an issue of dignity and respect. And we cannot, try as we might, dictate dignity and respect.
These are things that are earned and maintained every day with every social interaction. Imagine if there was a law that specified that there must be proportional representation in Congress based along the lines of nationally recognized racial groups (white, black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American). Such a law cannot stand because it offends the vast majority of Americans sense of legal propriety. And that sense is what gay marriage activists should try and shape. Not the sense of 9 Justices on the bench.
There was this quote I read a very long time ago (either in middle or high school). It was from a black civil rights activist (I think it was Douglass) but I can't find the exact quote. So I'm going to paraphrase it to the best of my recollection:
Black people comprise of one seventh of this country's population. And our country believes in the proposition that all men are created equal. If that is the case, should the black man not comprise one seventh of government, judgeships, or Congress? But you and I know that that is not reality and will not be for a very long time...Douglass advocated education as the liberator of black people. It was through education that blacks could gain the knowledge to take on good jobs and to talk to whites intelligently. Blacks could achieve equality, dignity and the respect through education. Because Douglass understood that you cannot alter the national consciousness from on high. You cannot legislate morality. And you cannot impose change to the bottom from the top. These things take staggering amounts of time and effort. And progress is never gradual, only occurring in fits and starts.
A Supreme Court decision to strike down Proposition 8 will almost certainly be premature and will create decades of controversy (much like Roe v Wade did to the issue of abortion). Gay marriage, like so many causes of social justice that precede it, is not supposed to be a duel to be fought amongst a select company. It's a bare knuckle brawl that must be won in the streets where progress is measured block by block. Only then will you finally gain the respect and dignity you deserve.
I know it is infuriating to hear this from a person who has no personal stake in the fight. But it is not possible for the aggrieved to gain immediate justice and reparation. It has never worked that way. Just know, in your long and hard fought struggle, that you are on the right side of history.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Empathy and Sympathy Do Not Make You Superior
My daily routine is pretty straightforward. I start my day with the Wall Street Journal. Then I move onto Slate. Then the Daily Beast (just for Megan McArdle, the rest is crap). Then The Atlantic. And I occasionally skim Time for anything worth reading. The op-ed pages of the WSJ could best be described as "business-only Republican". McArdle is a libertarian-ish type. The rest is "though-leader" progressive/Democratic.
And if there is one thing I've learned by reading the articles and essays that the latter group churns out, it's that they love to claim the moral high ground by emphasizing their empathy, sympathy, and capability to put themselves in another person's shoes. Because these people are able to envision themselves as powerless, poor, disenfranchised, and/or
We (the upper middle class) should support welfare programs for the poor because they're poor and being poor sucks. We (the American government) should distance ourselves from Israeli policy and help the Palestinians because they're powerless and Israel has all of the power in their bilateral relationship. We (the state) should support environmental policy because the effects of our nonrenewable energy production will have dire consequences for an unborn (and therefore completely helpless) future generation.
We have to do all of these things because we have power and other people don't have power. And it isn't fair if the people with power do things that further their own interests at the perceived expense of those who aren't powerless. That's why Democrat/progressives love railing against the policy of powerful institutions like American foreign policy, Corporate America, the old boy network that used to dominate southern state governments, etc.
Quoting Spider Man: "with great power comes great responsibility" (to use that power in a way that does not solely benefit the person with great power). This is the Democratic, PC-friendly way. This obsession to champion the voiceless, the powerless, and the penurious, does not make the Democratic Party better than the Republican Party. And it doesn't make Democrats and progressives better than Republicans, rednecks, and oddball libertarians.
Being sympathetic and empathetic does not make you morally superior if your beliefs and actions do not produce tangible results that benefit those you supposedly want to help. Poverty, especially black poverty, is a major issue of concern for the mainstream Democratic Party. But after decades of the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, and every other program meant to help the poor, the refrain among the left is that the rich are getting rich and the poor are getting poorer.
Given the fact that the liberal media trope that inequality is getting worse, despite an overall progressive tax code (please spare me your incantations of the exceptions of people like Buffett, Romney, hedge fund managers, etc) and Federal transfer payments and welfare programs comprising a near majority of the Federal budget, it seems that we have not had much success, under any administration or Congress, to help the poor and needy.
It is not enough just to care. That care must translate into action that effectively advances your cause. And if somebody who doesn't care inadvertently does something to benefit your cause, does it really matter if their intent wasn't with noble intentions? As House would put it, would you rather a doctor comfort you while you died or have a doctor mock you while curing you?
Frankly, I don't even think these liberal/progressive types are all that caring. They instead signal the fact that they "care" to others to burnish their ideological street cred. Most of these cultural and economic issues will resolve themselves without the heavy handed actions of the Federal government. And many Federal programs meant to achieve noble goals often have ineffectual or even counterproductive results.
We need to tame the "there ought to be a law" impulse whenever an injustice flashes into the news cycle. Because most of those laws, written in haste in order to satisfy a public used to immediate gratification, are usually pretty bad. The Assault Weapons Ban was completely useless and just irked gun owners. Sarbanes-Oxley imposed millions of dollars worth of regulatory hurdles and failed to prevent the next big financial scandal.
It doesn't make you superior just to show you care. You shouldn't back a bad law just because "we should do something and this is something". What makes you superior is having a good goal and achieving it.
And if there is one thing I've learned by reading the articles and essays that the latter group churns out, it's that they love to claim the moral high ground by emphasizing their empathy, sympathy, and capability to put themselves in another person's shoes. Because these people are able to envision themselves as powerless, poor, disenfranchised, and/or
We (the upper middle class) should support welfare programs for the poor because they're poor and being poor sucks. We (the American government) should distance ourselves from Israeli policy and help the Palestinians because they're powerless and Israel has all of the power in their bilateral relationship. We (the state) should support environmental policy because the effects of our nonrenewable energy production will have dire consequences for an unborn (and therefore completely helpless) future generation.
We have to do all of these things because we have power and other people don't have power. And it isn't fair if the people with power do things that further their own interests at the perceived expense of those who aren't powerless. That's why Democrat/progressives love railing against the policy of powerful institutions like American foreign policy, Corporate America, the old boy network that used to dominate southern state governments, etc.
Quoting Spider Man: "with great power comes great responsibility" (to use that power in a way that does not solely benefit the person with great power). This is the Democratic, PC-friendly way. This obsession to champion the voiceless, the powerless, and the penurious, does not make the Democratic Party better than the Republican Party. And it doesn't make Democrats and progressives better than Republicans, rednecks, and oddball libertarians.
Being sympathetic and empathetic does not make you morally superior if your beliefs and actions do not produce tangible results that benefit those you supposedly want to help. Poverty, especially black poverty, is a major issue of concern for the mainstream Democratic Party. But after decades of the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, and every other program meant to help the poor, the refrain among the left is that the rich are getting rich and the poor are getting poorer.
Given the fact that the liberal media trope that inequality is getting worse, despite an overall progressive tax code (please spare me your incantations of the exceptions of people like Buffett, Romney, hedge fund managers, etc) and Federal transfer payments and welfare programs comprising a near majority of the Federal budget, it seems that we have not had much success, under any administration or Congress, to help the poor and needy.
It is not enough just to care. That care must translate into action that effectively advances your cause. And if somebody who doesn't care inadvertently does something to benefit your cause, does it really matter if their intent wasn't with noble intentions? As House would put it, would you rather a doctor comfort you while you died or have a doctor mock you while curing you?
Frankly, I don't even think these liberal/progressive types are all that caring. They instead signal the fact that they "care" to others to burnish their ideological street cred. Most of these cultural and economic issues will resolve themselves without the heavy handed actions of the Federal government. And many Federal programs meant to achieve noble goals often have ineffectual or even counterproductive results.
We need to tame the "there ought to be a law" impulse whenever an injustice flashes into the news cycle. Because most of those laws, written in haste in order to satisfy a public used to immediate gratification, are usually pretty bad. The Assault Weapons Ban was completely useless and just irked gun owners. Sarbanes-Oxley imposed millions of dollars worth of regulatory hurdles and failed to prevent the next big financial scandal.
It doesn't make you superior just to show you care. You shouldn't back a bad law just because "we should do something and this is something". What makes you superior is having a good goal and achieving it.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Chasing Yield
Quick meta note. SimCity is now only taking up about half of my free time, and I foresee the usage rate dropping down to around a quarter very soon. So I do plan on churning out more articles. But this one's gotta be short.
The Wall Street Journal came out with an article that highlights investors' growing appetite with rental properties. Institutional funds have been pouring money into entire neighborhoods in order to collect rent. As the article notes, this reflects the insatiable appetite for yield that has driven capital into alternative investments since interest rates are so low.
If you're creditworthy, there has never been a better time to buy real estate. Interest rates are the cheapest they've ever been and that means things like 3.5% APR on 30 year fixed mortgages. That is absolutely incredible, especially when you consider the inflationary pressures later on down the line.
In short, the government is begging you to do something with the low interest rate environment they've provided for the past 4 years. I bought a foreclosed condo 2 years ago at a 4% APR 15 year fixed mortgage (which I thought was an absolute steal at the time).
This, I think, reflects the fundamental problem with the Federal government's current monetary policy. Everybody wants to kickstart economic growth by consumer spending, but the people with the money would rather chase yield.
The Wall Street Journal came out with an article that highlights investors' growing appetite with rental properties. Institutional funds have been pouring money into entire neighborhoods in order to collect rent. As the article notes, this reflects the insatiable appetite for yield that has driven capital into alternative investments since interest rates are so low.
If you're creditworthy, there has never been a better time to buy real estate. Interest rates are the cheapest they've ever been and that means things like 3.5% APR on 30 year fixed mortgages. That is absolutely incredible, especially when you consider the inflationary pressures later on down the line.
In short, the government is begging you to do something with the low interest rate environment they've provided for the past 4 years. I bought a foreclosed condo 2 years ago at a 4% APR 15 year fixed mortgage (which I thought was an absolute steal at the time).
This, I think, reflects the fundamental problem with the Federal government's current monetary policy. Everybody wants to kickstart economic growth by consumer spending, but the people with the money would rather chase yield.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Moral Clarity of Information Overload
A few months ago, one of my friends put me onto this new rapper named Macklemore. He's from Seattle and a lot of his songs have to do with society and its various ills. In one of his songs, A Wake, there's one particular verse that goes like this:
23 people sounds like a lot. But it sounds a lot better than 28 people per day. That was the per day rate of gun homicide in 2007. In 2011 it was 23. Gun homicides (in tandem with all homicides) have steadily decreased since the 1990s. The rate of homicide per 100,000 people per year in 1992 (when the Rodney King riots occurred) was 9.3. It's down to 4.7 in 2011. And 2012 is likely to see a decrease (once the data is released) as well. The homicide rate has halved in the space of two decades. That is an incredible statistic that goes overlooked in an era where individual tragedies are just as sensational, despite what Macklemore rapped in "A Wake".
It's quite possible that the bar has shifted for gaining media attention. You can't just be a career criminal who happened to get his ass beat trying to flee the cops and have it taped. In the words of Chris Rock (here I am again, quoting a third person now in this post), "if the police have to come and get you, they're bringing an ass-kicking with them". Nowadays, you have to be defenseless, presumably innocent, upper middle class, young, female, and/or attractive.
Some people have suggested that information overload leads to people taking the default choice. When it comes to attention, our default choice is apathy. Which is why your garden variety gun homicide gets no play in the national media. It happens 23 times a day, after all. But when there's a hook: the victim is a cute white girl, the transgressor is a celebrity, visibly crazy, or if the victims are multiple and many, that's when it gets media play.
But those hooks are isolated. They don't represent the norm of things. And public policy should be things that have a positive effect for the greatest amount of people. So it doesn't make much sense to craft policy that restricts the freedom of many in order to prevent an isolated incident. Letting exceptions write the rules invites nothing but bad, misguided policy.
There is a moral clarity in information overload. Because, oftentimes, doing nothing is the best route to go. We will never be able to flatten and eliminate the vicissitudes of life. Trying to do so ultimately creates more harm than good. Sometimes we have to accept the fact that shit happens and just move on.
Or Rodney King was getting beat onMacklemore is lamenting the fact that we've become so desensitized to violence. And this is going to be, at face value, a very unpopular opinion, but the desensitization is a good thing. The reason why is buried in another, vastly more famous quote:
And they let off every single officer
And Los Angeles went and lost it
Now every month there is a new Rodney on Youtube
It's just something our generation is used to
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.Give yourself a pat on the back if your mind instantly jumped to Joseph Stalin. When it comes to policy responses, policymakers should be looking at statistics. Not tragedies. Individual stories are tragic. Just look at Trayvon Martin or Newtown or Aurora or any other cause celebre involving gun homicide. These isolated events happen and that's when it grabs our attention. Meanwhile, every day where there isn't a sensational shooting garnering attention in the news cycle, about 23 people die from firearms in the US.
23 people sounds like a lot. But it sounds a lot better than 28 people per day. That was the per day rate of gun homicide in 2007. In 2011 it was 23. Gun homicides (in tandem with all homicides) have steadily decreased since the 1990s. The rate of homicide per 100,000 people per year in 1992 (when the Rodney King riots occurred) was 9.3. It's down to 4.7 in 2011. And 2012 is likely to see a decrease (once the data is released) as well. The homicide rate has halved in the space of two decades. That is an incredible statistic that goes overlooked in an era where individual tragedies are just as sensational, despite what Macklemore rapped in "A Wake".
It's quite possible that the bar has shifted for gaining media attention. You can't just be a career criminal who happened to get his ass beat trying to flee the cops and have it taped. In the words of Chris Rock (here I am again, quoting a third person now in this post), "if the police have to come and get you, they're bringing an ass-kicking with them". Nowadays, you have to be defenseless, presumably innocent, upper middle class, young, female, and/or attractive.
Some people have suggested that information overload leads to people taking the default choice. When it comes to attention, our default choice is apathy. Which is why your garden variety gun homicide gets no play in the national media. It happens 23 times a day, after all. But when there's a hook: the victim is a cute white girl, the transgressor is a celebrity, visibly crazy, or if the victims are multiple and many, that's when it gets media play.
But those hooks are isolated. They don't represent the norm of things. And public policy should be things that have a positive effect for the greatest amount of people. So it doesn't make much sense to craft policy that restricts the freedom of many in order to prevent an isolated incident. Letting exceptions write the rules invites nothing but bad, misguided policy.
There is a moral clarity in information overload. Because, oftentimes, doing nothing is the best route to go. We will never be able to flatten and eliminate the vicissitudes of life. Trying to do so ultimately creates more harm than good. Sometimes we have to accept the fact that shit happens and just move on.
Monday, March 18, 2013
The Taboo of Talking Money
Recently, I read two articles from wildly different websites. One is a pretty old article from a few years back in the New York Times about people who are obsessed about their net worth. The other is an article about the dynamics of power in social interaction in an internet humor website. Both are pretty good reads. And both of them touch on the same theme: our society has trained us not to talk about power dynamics between friends and coworkers.
I have two social circles. One circle is full of friends who are vastly less successful (as measured by traditional socioeconomic measures) than I am. And the other, all of my friends are upper middle class (college educated + career-track job). I don't mix them. The primary reason is because I don't want my friends in the latter group to think less of me for having unsuccessful friends. It sounds pretty shitty, but there you go.
When I hang out with my less successful friends, there is always a certain tension that hangs in the air. I never bring up my job. And I catch myself censoring what I'd like to talk about when the conversation moves towards money. When my friends ask me (probing delicately around what they really want to ask) about my financial situation, I answer truthfully without any accompanying context. They never flat out ask me the things they really want to know (how much money I make or how much I'm worth).
I hate it. It drives me crazy. I don't know anything else that is unspoken yet carries such a palpable feeling of dread and taboo. Collectively, we have all bought into the idea that America is free of class. So you're always going to rock the boat when you talk about the things that divide America in its shadow class system. So that means you can't talk about money and education (half of which is really a way to signal status) except when you're just dancing on the edges.
Which is frustrating. Because these issues shouldn't be confined to somber discussions at the dinner table (after the kids have gone to bed) and at the desk of your financial adviser (if you're rich/aware enough to have one) or reading about finance articles when you're alone. Because society has tied "success" completely to your job and your income (it's not enough to be a rich plumber), it's almost impossible to talk about what really matters: the importance of financial security.
What's worse, we're hardwired not to care about it until we need it the most. You're never as plugged into your finances until you've been laid off. And by the time that happens, for most people it's too late. This is something that even the upper middle class is mostly unaware about. Retirement is so far off into the future and we make plenty of money to satisfy our current needs and wants. Why bother doing a real audit of our situation?
I don't mean for this post to come off as a ridiculously self satisfied humblebrag. This issue means a lot to me. My parents never addressed money and financial security when I was a kid. But I remember the screaming matches late at night. That's something I wouldn't wish on anybody. And it's why I'm constantly evangelizing the importance of saving and investing.
I have two social circles. One circle is full of friends who are vastly less successful (as measured by traditional socioeconomic measures) than I am. And the other, all of my friends are upper middle class (college educated + career-track job). I don't mix them. The primary reason is because I don't want my friends in the latter group to think less of me for having unsuccessful friends. It sounds pretty shitty, but there you go.
When I hang out with my less successful friends, there is always a certain tension that hangs in the air. I never bring up my job. And I catch myself censoring what I'd like to talk about when the conversation moves towards money. When my friends ask me (probing delicately around what they really want to ask) about my financial situation, I answer truthfully without any accompanying context. They never flat out ask me the things they really want to know (how much money I make or how much I'm worth).
I hate it. It drives me crazy. I don't know anything else that is unspoken yet carries such a palpable feeling of dread and taboo. Collectively, we have all bought into the idea that America is free of class. So you're always going to rock the boat when you talk about the things that divide America in its shadow class system. So that means you can't talk about money and education (half of which is really a way to signal status) except when you're just dancing on the edges.
Which is frustrating. Because these issues shouldn't be confined to somber discussions at the dinner table (after the kids have gone to bed) and at the desk of your financial adviser (if you're rich/aware enough to have one) or reading about finance articles when you're alone. Because society has tied "success" completely to your job and your income (it's not enough to be a rich plumber), it's almost impossible to talk about what really matters: the importance of financial security.
What's worse, we're hardwired not to care about it until we need it the most. You're never as plugged into your finances until you've been laid off. And by the time that happens, for most people it's too late. This is something that even the upper middle class is mostly unaware about. Retirement is so far off into the future and we make plenty of money to satisfy our current needs and wants. Why bother doing a real audit of our situation?
I don't mean for this post to come off as a ridiculously self satisfied humblebrag. This issue means a lot to me. My parents never addressed money and financial security when I was a kid. But I remember the screaming matches late at night. That's something I wouldn't wish on anybody. And it's why I'm constantly evangelizing the importance of saving and investing.
Monday, March 11, 2013
The Times, They Are a Changin'
I'm not completely done with my SimCity binge, but I'm nearing some sort of phase where I can envision spending less than 95% of my spare time playing it. And when that time comes, I do plan on overhauling this blog and adding features. Stay tuned.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
SimCopter One Reporting Heavy Distraction
Hey, guys. SimCity just got released and essentially all of my free time is going towards playing this absurdly addictive game. I'll try and make updates during this time, but I simply can't guarantee anything.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
An Example of the Culture of Dependency
Over at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson (whom I've had a bone to pick with before) is again spouting nonsense about things he doesn't really know anything about. This time, it's about corporate profits. In a blog post provocatively titled "Corporate Profits Are Eating the Economy", he talks about how the profits of Corporate America have increased at a much faster clip than US GDP or wages.
His conclusion is extremely wrongheaded and highly revealing. His last paragraph reads:
This is the problem with perception that many "skill" workers have with the companies that employ them. They think that because the company they work at treats them well and gives them a good wage, that companies everywhere should do the same for every worker. But the reality is that companies only treat their employees as good as they need to. And when an opportunity exists for cutting costs, shedding dead weight, or shuttering entire divisions, you can bet that management will take it.
The reason why companies like Google pays its employees so well is because the employees they hire are extraordinarily talented. Their software developers are treated like rock stars because there aren't many talented developers in the labor market and Google is a company whose profits and reputation rest upon the utility of their software. Media companies like the Atlantic Media Company pay its writers well because they want good, reliable writers that are hard working and relatively sophisticated wordsmiths. Those too, surprisingly, are in short supply.
When times are good and profits are high, companies expand their payrolls and efficiency gets relaxed upon the altar of inertia: "who cares? Our stock is still soaring". But when times are hard, the McKinsey and Bain consultants come in, tell the corporate leadership that 20% of their employees are unnecessary, dead weight, or even counterproductive, and then payrolls get slashed until the company gets lean.
If you're fired or laid off, and if you don't have any (currently) relevant skills, the next job you get will pay substantially less than your former position. And when that happens, and people realize their emergency fund barely covers 1 month worth of expenses and start dipping into whatever meager savings they have (or start raiding their 401ks in a disastrously short sighted way to keep afloat), reality hits them hard. They had things going so well for so long that they assumed it would continue in perpetuity (or at least until they made the decision to voluntarily retire).
That kind of dependency is horrifying. Because you aren't depending on your friends or family. You're depending your very livelihood on an entity that, at the end of the day, only has eyes on the bottom line. That is sheer lunacy.
What so many people forget is that nobody deserves a well paying job. Your compensation is tied directly to how valuable you are to somebody else. And when disruptive technologies or market conditions suddenly make your labor less valuable to somebody else, you get laid off. So what were you doing during the good times? Saving money?
Hah! Yeah right. Like most Americans, you were taking out home equity loans to pay for kitchen and bath renovations or paying for new cars even when your 6 year old car was still perfectly serviceable for an additional 5+ years.
See
that? The personal savings rate hasn't been above 10% for 30 years. And
you're kidding yourself if you think saving 5% per year is enough to
get by when unpredictable events wreck your car, make you sick, or takes
away your job.
His conclusion is extremely wrongheaded and highly revealing. His last paragraph reads:
A growing economy and lower unemployment should eventually give U.S. workers a long-deserved raise (and so should rising labor costs overseas that persuade more companies to hire domestically). But improvements in technology and the ability of companies to hire locally as they chase worldwide demand are just two factors that should restrain any optimism we can keep corporate profits from gobbling up more and more of the economy. Workers still need help -- and they certainly won't find it in the sequester.When the Republicans rail against "the culture of dependency", this can serve as one of the most prominent examples. And the author doesn't even realize that he himself is living in dependency. He writes about the extraordinary growth of corporate profits and bemoans the lack of wage growth during the same period. Does he offer any solution? No. He hopes, vainly, that companies flush with profits will pass it along to their workers.
This is the problem with perception that many "skill" workers have with the companies that employ them. They think that because the company they work at treats them well and gives them a good wage, that companies everywhere should do the same for every worker. But the reality is that companies only treat their employees as good as they need to. And when an opportunity exists for cutting costs, shedding dead weight, or shuttering entire divisions, you can bet that management will take it.
The reason why companies like Google pays its employees so well is because the employees they hire are extraordinarily talented. Their software developers are treated like rock stars because there aren't many talented developers in the labor market and Google is a company whose profits and reputation rest upon the utility of their software. Media companies like the Atlantic Media Company pay its writers well because they want good, reliable writers that are hard working and relatively sophisticated wordsmiths. Those too, surprisingly, are in short supply.
When times are good and profits are high, companies expand their payrolls and efficiency gets relaxed upon the altar of inertia: "who cares? Our stock is still soaring". But when times are hard, the McKinsey and Bain consultants come in, tell the corporate leadership that 20% of their employees are unnecessary, dead weight, or even counterproductive, and then payrolls get slashed until the company gets lean.
If you're fired or laid off, and if you don't have any (currently) relevant skills, the next job you get will pay substantially less than your former position. And when that happens, and people realize their emergency fund barely covers 1 month worth of expenses and start dipping into whatever meager savings they have (or start raiding their 401ks in a disastrously short sighted way to keep afloat), reality hits them hard. They had things going so well for so long that they assumed it would continue in perpetuity (or at least until they made the decision to voluntarily retire).
Our country has a spending problem. People spent too much money when times are good and never saved any of it. And once things turned bad and stayed bad, everybody realized that their situation was far more precarious than they ever thought. Collectively, we are far too dependent on our jobs. It remains most people's only source of income. It defines people at a personal level (I am a software developer, not a person who just happens to develop software). And the fact is it can be taken away by a company so very easily.
That kind of dependency is horrifying. Because you aren't depending on your friends or family. You're depending your very livelihood on an entity that, at the end of the day, only has eyes on the bottom line. That is sheer lunacy.
What so many people forget is that nobody deserves a well paying job. Your compensation is tied directly to how valuable you are to somebody else. And when disruptive technologies or market conditions suddenly make your labor less valuable to somebody else, you get laid off. So what were you doing during the good times? Saving money?
Hah! Yeah right. Like most Americans, you were taking out home equity loans to pay for kitchen and bath renovations or paying for new cars even when your 6 year old car was still perfectly serviceable for an additional 5+ years.
 |
| Our country's relative decline, summarized in one handy-dandy chart. |
That is my actual net worth (courtesy of Mint.com)
at the time of this blog post. I'm 26 days from turning 25 years old. I
save and invest about 15% of my after-tax pay in my taxable brokerage
account. My 401k account gets a pre-tax 13% contribution (including the
company match). Another 8% after-tax goes into my Roth IRA. And every
month, I reduce the principal on my mortgage by 500 dollars. Almost half
of my take home pay is dedicated towards increasing my net
worth. And even then, I know that if I were to lose my job tomorrow, I
would still be in a terrible financial position.
I need about 10 more years of doing what I'm currently doing (employed at a career-track job, saving as I currently am) before I can realistically have the slightest modicum of financial independence. Because even though I am so much better off than the vast majority of 25 years old, it's still nowhere close to safety, or even relative comfort. My situation is only slightly less precarious than the average 25 year old American.
But if I continue to be lucky, and to be honest with myself, I can gain relative financial independence in about 15 years. Otherwise, I'll be just like any other American out there. One firing, downsizing, or injury away from a personal financial death spiral.
That is the kind of dependency that the vast majority of Americans find themselves in without even realizing it. If you asked a 25 year old what their idea of independence is, it's a job that allows them to pay for a cell phone and wireless plan, an apartment lease, a used car, food and groceries, and beer. A 35 year old's idea of independence isn't too far removed from that either.
So let's go back to Derek Thompson's blog post. He complains that corporate profits are too far removed from GDP and wage growth. My advice? Buy corporate equity and get some of those record profits for yourself. The barriers to retail investing have never been lower than they are now. Are you complaining about corporate profits? Guess what? You can buy a share of it. Open an account at Fidelity and deposit just 2.5k into a Roth IRA. You can buy 16 shares of an S&P 500 index fund (I recommend either IVV or SPY) commission free. You can use your tax return refund for it instead of buying that new flat screen TV and couch you had your eye on.
The majority of Americans are fortunate enough to be able to work their way into financial independence. There is only the culture of dependence holding them back.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Chalk Up Another "W" For Predictions
Today, I stand vindicated on Joe Flacco's contract negotiations. Just today, the NFL reported that Flacco's guaranteed amount over this 6 year deal is 52 million, barely within the 15% range I allotted for a 6 year deal.
Honestly, I thought Flacco's agent would have been able to get a better deal out of the Ravens. And while the headline number (120 million) seems impressive, the only thing that matters is the guaranteed amount because player contracts can get shredded or renegotiated to avoid balloon payments if the player doesn't pan out.
This puts me at 2 right, 1 wrong with a few predictions still outstanding. The Supreme Court is due to rule on Fisher v Texas sometime this year, so I'm going to expect at least 1 more vindication this year.
Predictions Outstanding: 3 (Marissa Meyer, Fisher v Texas, Michael Dell)
Predictions Vindicated: 2 (2012 Presidential election, this)
Predictions Erroneous: 1 (Romney Veepstakes)
Honestly, I thought Flacco's agent would have been able to get a better deal out of the Ravens. And while the headline number (120 million) seems impressive, the only thing that matters is the guaranteed amount because player contracts can get shredded or renegotiated to avoid balloon payments if the player doesn't pan out.
This puts me at 2 right, 1 wrong with a few predictions still outstanding. The Supreme Court is due to rule on Fisher v Texas sometime this year, so I'm going to expect at least 1 more vindication this year.
Predictions Outstanding: 3 (Marissa Meyer, Fisher v Texas, Michael Dell)
Predictions Vindicated: 2 (2012 Presidential election, this)
Predictions Erroneous: 1 (Romney Veepstakes)
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Real Time With Bill Maher: Counterpoints (3/1/13)
Good show, although the mid-show interview guest really sucked up valuable time from a moderately strong panel. Let's get to the topics covered and set the record straight:
1. Gavin Newsom says sequestration cuts may only amount to 2.5% of the Federal budget, but it is devastating to discretionary spending:
Unfortunately Newsom got the figure wrong. The sequestration cuts scheduled for the current fiscal year total 46 billion dollars, which represents only 1.3% of fiscal 2013. It's split mostly down the middle between non-defense discretionary spending and defense spending, slightly favoring the military. About 25 billion gets taken out of the Pentagon, which represents about a 3% trim across the board. The rest hits the Federal cabinets and agencies that most people view as actual "government" (rather than just programs that shuffle transfer payments from one constituency to another) and represents about a 5% cut across the board.
Only in government is a 1.3% spending cut viewed as a political disaster. In the private sector, managers will ruthlessly cut their departments and payroll down to the bone. And for the most part, they get away with it because it turns out that there are a lot of employees who are nothing but dead weight. As a personal anecdote, our department was tasked with finding around 5% in savings in the overall operational budget. We got rid of things like bagel Thursdays and froze hiring. There was some grumbling, but President Obama and the Democrats are trying to exaggerate the effects of sequestration.
I get that government bureaucracies are much less nimble than their private sector counterparts, but the government could easily shed a lot of its workforce and its redundant programs and the country would be no worse off for it. On the contrary, I think getting rid of unneeded government is a net plus because those dollars and workers then go back into the private sector. The opportunity cost of government is at an all time high right now. Policy wonks need to stop looking at the budget numbers and start looking at the regulations that make it impossible for top level bureaucrats to fire nonproductive employees or shuttering redundant and useless programs.
2. Bill Maher says Republicans can't chide Obama for deficit spending when Bush and Reagan ran up the national debt:
It's true that the national debt expanded greatly under Reagan. During the Reagan Administration, the national debt tripled from around .9 billion to about 2.7 trillion. What gets lost in translation is that a 300% increase in the national debt is misleading because what really matters is the debt to GDP ratio. During the same time, the country's GDP increased from 3.1 trillion to 5.5 trillion. When you look at the increase in relative debt, from 29% to 49%, it's only a 69% increase over the course of the Reagan Administration.
Granted, 69% still seems like a huge number. But it's a much better number than 300%. And it also needs to be viewed in context. Going to about 50% debt to GDP ratio isn't too bad. It's a healthy number when you look at Italy (120%), France (86%), Japan (an astounding 220%!), Germany (82%), the United Kingdom (86%), and the US' current ratio (105%).
In short, when the times change, the numbers take on different meaning. It's okay for a country to deficit spend when its overall debt levels are low. But it becomes increasingly dangerous when debt levels are already high. When you're playing football, down and distance drastically alter the options in your playbook. No coach would call a run on 4th and 15. But that's what we're doing now.
3. Bill Maher wants to cut the defense budget:
It seems like every other show, Maher is constantly ranting about the huge defense budget the US has. And while I agree that there is an extraordinary amount of waste in the budget, our military readiness will erode if we don't match cuts with reforms in the procurement and investment operations of our armed forces. During peacetime, we have 435 commanders in chief of the budget, and everybody wants military spending in their district. That stretches the procurement process in terms of both time and money. There are bogus regulations that make it impossible for the military's logisticians to efficiently utilize the resources given to them.
I would be fine with cuts in the defense budget if we could cut Congress out of the spending process. Otherwise, I don't like the fact that our military is shouldering a higher percentage of the sequestration cuts than the rest of the government. We could have halved the Social Security cost of living adjustment for 1 year and paid for the defense sequestration cuts.
4. Everybody wants to legalize marijuana:
I thought it was extremely arrogant and self-serving of Gavin Newsom for chiding politicians for not telling the public their private views on the Controlled Substances Act. It's so much easier for the former Mayor of San Francisco and the current Lieutenant Governor of California to come out publicly in favor of marijuana legalization than it is for a Senator like Lindsey Graham to come out for comprehensive immigration reform in a state like South Carolina.
I think the odds are about 50/50 for marijuana to get decriminalized at the Federal level within 5 years. And I hope it gets legalized at the state level. This is a political winner and as more and more old people die off, it'll become politically feasible to put an end to the War on Drugs.
5. Steve Schmidt hates the Republicans who identify with CPAC:
His rant about the out-of-touch angry conservatives at CPAC just nailed it. I have so much frustration over this element of the GOP, which has made it impossible for libertarians like me to call the GOP home. The fact is there are a ton of good things in the GOP platform. Chris Christie is popular within his home state because he takes the GOP's economic planks and leaves the social ones. It's time we shunted the prejudiced social conservatives to the side of the party or completely out of it.
5. Toyota Technicals are reliable:
Absolutely brilliant. It speaks to the prowess and incredible reliability of Japanese engineering. Although it also helps African warlords. But hey, you can't blame Toyota for putting out a quality product.
6. Snoop Dog (I refuse to call him Snoop Lion) got old.
1. Gavin Newsom says sequestration cuts may only amount to 2.5% of the Federal budget, but it is devastating to discretionary spending:
Unfortunately Newsom got the figure wrong. The sequestration cuts scheduled for the current fiscal year total 46 billion dollars, which represents only 1.3% of fiscal 2013. It's split mostly down the middle between non-defense discretionary spending and defense spending, slightly favoring the military. About 25 billion gets taken out of the Pentagon, which represents about a 3% trim across the board. The rest hits the Federal cabinets and agencies that most people view as actual "government" (rather than just programs that shuffle transfer payments from one constituency to another) and represents about a 5% cut across the board.
Only in government is a 1.3% spending cut viewed as a political disaster. In the private sector, managers will ruthlessly cut their departments and payroll down to the bone. And for the most part, they get away with it because it turns out that there are a lot of employees who are nothing but dead weight. As a personal anecdote, our department was tasked with finding around 5% in savings in the overall operational budget. We got rid of things like bagel Thursdays and froze hiring. There was some grumbling, but President Obama and the Democrats are trying to exaggerate the effects of sequestration.
I get that government bureaucracies are much less nimble than their private sector counterparts, but the government could easily shed a lot of its workforce and its redundant programs and the country would be no worse off for it. On the contrary, I think getting rid of unneeded government is a net plus because those dollars and workers then go back into the private sector. The opportunity cost of government is at an all time high right now. Policy wonks need to stop looking at the budget numbers and start looking at the regulations that make it impossible for top level bureaucrats to fire nonproductive employees or shuttering redundant and useless programs.
2. Bill Maher says Republicans can't chide Obama for deficit spending when Bush and Reagan ran up the national debt:
It's true that the national debt expanded greatly under Reagan. During the Reagan Administration, the national debt tripled from around .9 billion to about 2.7 trillion. What gets lost in translation is that a 300% increase in the national debt is misleading because what really matters is the debt to GDP ratio. During the same time, the country's GDP increased from 3.1 trillion to 5.5 trillion. When you look at the increase in relative debt, from 29% to 49%, it's only a 69% increase over the course of the Reagan Administration.
Granted, 69% still seems like a huge number. But it's a much better number than 300%. And it also needs to be viewed in context. Going to about 50% debt to GDP ratio isn't too bad. It's a healthy number when you look at Italy (120%), France (86%), Japan (an astounding 220%!), Germany (82%), the United Kingdom (86%), and the US' current ratio (105%).
In short, when the times change, the numbers take on different meaning. It's okay for a country to deficit spend when its overall debt levels are low. But it becomes increasingly dangerous when debt levels are already high. When you're playing football, down and distance drastically alter the options in your playbook. No coach would call a run on 4th and 15. But that's what we're doing now.
3. Bill Maher wants to cut the defense budget:
It seems like every other show, Maher is constantly ranting about the huge defense budget the US has. And while I agree that there is an extraordinary amount of waste in the budget, our military readiness will erode if we don't match cuts with reforms in the procurement and investment operations of our armed forces. During peacetime, we have 435 commanders in chief of the budget, and everybody wants military spending in their district. That stretches the procurement process in terms of both time and money. There are bogus regulations that make it impossible for the military's logisticians to efficiently utilize the resources given to them.
I would be fine with cuts in the defense budget if we could cut Congress out of the spending process. Otherwise, I don't like the fact that our military is shouldering a higher percentage of the sequestration cuts than the rest of the government. We could have halved the Social Security cost of living adjustment for 1 year and paid for the defense sequestration cuts.
4. Everybody wants to legalize marijuana:
I thought it was extremely arrogant and self-serving of Gavin Newsom for chiding politicians for not telling the public their private views on the Controlled Substances Act. It's so much easier for the former Mayor of San Francisco and the current Lieutenant Governor of California to come out publicly in favor of marijuana legalization than it is for a Senator like Lindsey Graham to come out for comprehensive immigration reform in a state like South Carolina.
I think the odds are about 50/50 for marijuana to get decriminalized at the Federal level within 5 years. And I hope it gets legalized at the state level. This is a political winner and as more and more old people die off, it'll become politically feasible to put an end to the War on Drugs.
5. Steve Schmidt hates the Republicans who identify with CPAC:
His rant about the out-of-touch angry conservatives at CPAC just nailed it. I have so much frustration over this element of the GOP, which has made it impossible for libertarians like me to call the GOP home. The fact is there are a ton of good things in the GOP platform. Chris Christie is popular within his home state because he takes the GOP's economic planks and leaves the social ones. It's time we shunted the prejudiced social conservatives to the side of the party or completely out of it.
5. Toyota Technicals are reliable:
Absolutely brilliant. It speaks to the prowess and incredible reliability of Japanese engineering. Although it also helps African warlords. But hey, you can't blame Toyota for putting out a quality product.
6. Snoop Dog (I refuse to call him Snoop Lion) got old.
Friday, March 1, 2013
The Breathtaking Arrogance of the Blogosphere*
Eight months after female journalists collectively gushed over Yahoo!'s announcement that Marissa Mayer would be taking the firm's top job, the long knives have come out over her controversial decision to require all telecommuting workers to start working in the office again. Feminists have soured on her. Clueless bloggers said her decision is wrong and back up their claims with anecdotes, meaningless PC drivel, statistical studies (that are not statistically relevant to Yahoo!). If you only read read the non-financial news over the past week, you'd be given the impression that Marissa Mayer was a terrible CEO and a bad person in general.
Luckily there was at least one person who had a modicum of reason. And it simply boils down to this: she's the boss and what she says goes. If you don't like it, work somewhere else. It takes an extraordinary amount of arrogance to say a CEO is wrong on a policy she crafted for her own company by citing the policies of other companies, who may or may not be in the same boat that Yahoo! is in.
I've already gone on the record stating that I don't think Mayer is going to turn around the ship. And it's not because I think she's not a good chief executive. It's because I think that Yahoo! just isn't in any good position to become a dominant tech company. They've been coasting on inertia for years, and their momentum slows down with each passing year. Their one claim to fame has been an okay search engine (since supplanted by Google) and a deal (since terminated) with Microsoft to make Yahoo! the default home page of Internet Explorer.
Mayer is trying to turn around the ship. And she's trying to do it by changing the corporate culture, trimming the copious amounts of excess fat, and by focusing Yahoo! as an online media site. The latter two are simply plans for a managed decline and the former is almost impossible. Culture can't be imposed from the top down, at least, not easily. It took Peter the Great decades changing Tsarist Russia into a modern European empire and while he was able to change the culture of his Royal Court (he was, after all, an autocrat), the serfs were still serfs.
Mayer is an autocrat in the sense that she can essentially rule by diktat. The board has given her quite a bit of leeway and shareholders have actually received her pretty well, as evidenced by Yahoo!'s stock price:
This is the fundamental problem with the blogosphere. Everybody has an opinion. And if you happen to work for Slate, The Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, or any other major media/news organization, you get paid quite a bit to share your opinion with the masses. But sometimes the bloggers are writing on matters that they have absolutely no expertise in. These people are nothing more than excellent students who graduated from top universities and then did a grueling, low-paid (or unpaid) internship in order to have a shot at becoming a salaried writer.
I'm essentially invoking the Vietnam argument. You don't know, man. Because you weren't there! Having a B.A in liberal arts from Harvard gives you no credentials to second guess a CEO. Knowing how to use an iPhone doesn't qualify you to wax poetic on Apple's stock price. Being a decent wordsmith doesn't make you a decent analyst. But all of those headlines and those opinions and those insufferably arrogant bloggers try and pretend otherwise.
Frankly, I'm sick of it. These are the opinion shapers of America, and they're doing the rest of the country a huge disservice.
* I realize and appreciate the irony.
Luckily there was at least one person who had a modicum of reason. And it simply boils down to this: she's the boss and what she says goes. If you don't like it, work somewhere else. It takes an extraordinary amount of arrogance to say a CEO is wrong on a policy she crafted for her own company by citing the policies of other companies, who may or may not be in the same boat that Yahoo! is in.
I've already gone on the record stating that I don't think Mayer is going to turn around the ship. And it's not because I think she's not a good chief executive. It's because I think that Yahoo! just isn't in any good position to become a dominant tech company. They've been coasting on inertia for years, and their momentum slows down with each passing year. Their one claim to fame has been an okay search engine (since supplanted by Google) and a deal (since terminated) with Microsoft to make Yahoo! the default home page of Internet Explorer.
Mayer is trying to turn around the ship. And she's trying to do it by changing the corporate culture, trimming the copious amounts of excess fat, and by focusing Yahoo! as an online media site. The latter two are simply plans for a managed decline and the former is almost impossible. Culture can't be imposed from the top down, at least, not easily. It took Peter the Great decades changing Tsarist Russia into a modern European empire and while he was able to change the culture of his Royal Court (he was, after all, an autocrat), the serfs were still serfs.
Mayer is an autocrat in the sense that she can essentially rule by diktat. The board has given her quite a bit of leeway and shareholders have actually received her pretty well, as evidenced by Yahoo!'s stock price:
 |
| Yahoo!'s stock price from mid-July to now. |
I'm essentially invoking the Vietnam argument. You don't know, man. Because you weren't there! Having a B.A in liberal arts from Harvard gives you no credentials to second guess a CEO. Knowing how to use an iPhone doesn't qualify you to wax poetic on Apple's stock price. Being a decent wordsmith doesn't make you a decent analyst. But all of those headlines and those opinions and those insufferably arrogant bloggers try and pretend otherwise.
Frankly, I'm sick of it. These are the opinion shapers of America, and they're doing the rest of the country a huge disservice.
* I realize and appreciate the irony.
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