Quotulatiousness

November 3, 2014

Trekonomics

Filed under: Economics, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

In The Federalist, Robert Tracinski responds to last month’s Reason.tv list of the top five anti-libertarian TV shows with a stirring defence of Star Trek:

… there are occasional statements by our lead characters, particularly in Star Trek: The Next Generation, about how the economy has evolved beyond money. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this is an unfortunate bit of pseudo-science: “A complex, technologically advanced economy that runs without money, prices, and markets is like a starship powered by a perpetual motion machine.” There’s a more detailed takedown at Hot Air which asks: “Who Mines the Dilithium?

Some of this was toned down as The Next Generation got its dramatic feet under it and the writers gradually disentangled themselves from the mandates of Gene Rodenberry’s liberal utopianism. When you have to take an idea and project it into concrete terms, you quickly discover what really makes sense and what just doesn’t work. For example, having an empath as a part of the command team seems like a great idea — until you discover that she is only really capable of delivering the most banal insights. So that element of the story is downgraded. The same happened as Star Trek continued, particularly with the Ferengi, a race of galactic traders who start out as a crude anti-capitalist caricature (which borrowed uncomfortably from Nazi caricatures of Jewish bankers). Over the course of the franchise, particularly in Deep Space Nine, they were humanized (so to speak) and transformed more into lovable rogues, while Quark’s bar provided Deep Space Nine with its thriving commercial hub.

[…]

It’s important to draw a distinction between what a work of art tells you and what it shows you. In the world of Star Trek, there are a few, infrequent references in which we are told that the economy works (somehow) without prices. But the socialism all happens quietly off screen, and it’s not what the show is actually about. The show is about the culture and approach to life of those on board the Enterprise (or the other vessels in later spin-off series). And the culture of the Federation bears none of the hallmarks of a socialist society.

When people are provided with a guaranteed living, whether they work or not, they don’t generally devote themselves to self-improvement, the betterment of mankind, the writing of deathless poetry, or the peaceful exploration of the galaxy. Instead, they tend to stop working, striving, or putting forth any effort at all, not even the effort of changing out of their pajamas in the morning. To the extent they do work, since effort has been disconnected from reward, they tend to avoid as much effort as possible. In the Soviet Union, there was an old joke: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” And when rewards and advancement are no longer connected to a person’s productivity, they tend to be distributed according to an alternative currency of political pull. So all organizations end up being run by preening politicians, scheming bureaucrats, and drone-like functionaries who are skilled at pushing paper and going through the motions of production rather than actually producing anything.

What we are shown on Star Trek is the opposite. As Virginia Postrel has pointed out, based on a survey of her readers, the actual appeal of Star Trek is that it presents a kind of ideal capitalist workplace.

    In Star Trek, the work is meaningful; the colleagues are smart, hard-working, competent and respectful; the leaders are capable and fair; and everyone has an important contribution to make…. Deep friendships develop from teamwork and high-stakes problem-solving. It’s the workplace as we wish it were.

Vikings 29, Washington 26 – and Matt Asiata only scores touchdowns in threes

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

After a bad first half, the Vikings came to life in the final two minutes and then carried that momentum into the second half. The hero of the game was Matt Asiata, who scored three touchdowns, for the third time in his career (he also scored a two-point conversion). Chris Tomasson tweeted that Asiata scored the fourth most in a game in Vikings history (Chuck Foreman and Ahmad Rashad each scored 24 and Rich Karlis scored 21). Teddy Bridgewater threw for 26 of 42 gaining 268 yards and a TD pass to backup tight end Chase Ford, and the Vikings defence sacked RGIII five times to keep the game in reach.

Washington got a gift of four points after a terrible roughing the passer penalty against safety Harrison Smith (replays showed little if any contact between Smith and RGIII, but it kept a stalled Washington drive alive). Instead of settling for a field goal, RGIII found a receiver on the goal line on the next play for the touchdown.

Cordarrelle Patterson still seems to be in the witness protection program, with only one reception on seven attempts (some of which were badly placed throws by Bridgewater, but others looked like the fault was on Patterson), and he made some odd kick return decisions that didn’t pan out.

At The Viking Age, Dan Zinski pinpoints the game’s turning point:

The key play to turn the game came late in the second quarter when Robert Griffin III threw up a terrible pass that was picked off by Captain Munnerlyn. This set up the Vikings for a 20-yard TD from Teddy Bridgewater to Chase Ford to cut the Redskins’ lead to 10-7.

Trailing by just 3 going into the half, the Vikings knew they were in it. They came out in the second half with a commitment to run the ball down the Redskins’ throats and they got it done.

Norv Turner cranked up the two-headed monster of Jerick McKinnon and Matt Asiata in the second half, helping Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings find the offensive rhythm they had been missing throughout the first half.

With the running game working, Bridgewater was able to operate much more efficiently than in the first half. Bridgewater threw some bad incompletions early in the game but never lost confidence, still taking shots when they were there.

Though the pass protection was not especially great, Teddy showed his cool under pressure by delivering most of his short passes accurately and, most importantly, not turning the ball over.

UCLA students on the new Affirmative Consent rules

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf talks to actual UCLA students to find out what they think of the new rules for how they must conduct themselves in intimate situations:

Imagine serving on the campus equivalent of a jury in a sexual-assault case.

The accused testifies, “I thought I was reading all the signals right. Once we started kissing it felt like things progressed naturally, like we were both into it. Neither of us said, ‘Yes, let’s do this,’ but I definitely wanted to hook up. I felt sure we both did.” The accuser says, “I was totally comfortable when we started kissing, but as things progressed I felt more and more uncomfortable. I didn’t say stop or resist, but I didn’t consent to being groped or undressed. I wasn’t asked. I didn’t want that.” If both seem to be telling the truth as they perceive it, what’s the just outcome?

Last week, I spent some time at UCLA asking students about California’s new “affirmative-consent” law. In our conversations, I described the law and asked them whether they supported it or not. I also posted this scenario to them. I was surprised by how common it was for students to express support for the law and then to say a few minutes later that they wouldn’t feel comfortable convicting the accused in that example. But there were also students who opposed affirmative-consent laws and later said that they would find the accused guilty.

That conflict fit with a larger theme that ran through my conversations with undergraduates, from freshmen to seniors. Asked about California’s law, many supporters focused on how affirmative consent squared with their notion of what campus norms, values, and culture ought to be, rather than its effect on disciplinary cases, which they treated as a tangentially related afterthought. Opponents expressed abstract concerns about unjust convictions and due process, yet some felt that convicting the accused in that hypothetical would be just.

In short, forcing both sides to confront a specific scenario made them see a thornier issue than they’d imagined. And it increased the conflicted feelings of many of those who had no definite position.

QotD: Age differences in sexual partners

Filed under: Quotations, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Polar opposition in the sex-specific areas, then, is combined with resemblance in all other respects. The man will usually be physically stronger than the women, a sex-specific difference that makes them attractive to one another. But as soon as this difference becomes too great — as soon as the woman is so weak, or pretends to be so weak, that the physical difference can no longer be regarded as sex-specific — the stronger partner’s protective instinct may seriously interfere with his sex instinct. He may refrain from sex in order not to hurt his partner. If, in addition to being physically inferior, she is also mentally inferior, the weaker partner tends to become increasingly the object of his protection. The sex act — normally a kind of combat at close quarters — under such conditions involves considerable self-restraint, and loses something essential in the process. Equality on the intellectual level, combined with polarity on the physical, is therefore a condition sine qua non of full-scale love between a man and a woman.

A good guarantee for the necessary resemblance of the partners in the nonsexual realm is their belonging to the same generation. By a generation we mean the time span between the birth of an individual and the birth of its first offspring — about twenty to twenty five years. Sexuality is in any case for adults, but if one partner is more than twenty five years older than the other, and thereby belongs to the generation of the other’s grandparents, the chances for a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship are relatively poor. There are of course cases in which a particular person’s special dynamism can bridge this biological gap for a time, but such exceptions only confirm the rule. The frequent alliances between young women and men who are their seniors by more than a generation are no proof to the contrary; they always depend on the same factor: the wealth or social status of the much older man. If it were a biological mechanism that drove attractive young females into the arms of old men, a poor old pensioner might occasionally have a chance of marrying a rich young girl.

Esther Vilar, The Polygamous Sex, 1976.

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