Looked at one way, automobiles are a virus. The would not exist in the form we know if there were not roads. I still have some questions about how this happened:
Why were railroads developed first? - Well, for one thing, rail roads were invented before locomotives - as an improvement over running carts on the rutted mud trails that passed for roads back then. Before this innovation, you needed pack animals to really haul cargo. (‘Teamsters’ drove the ‘team’ of animals.) And to travel swiftly, you needed a horse. Adding rails didn’t make pack animals obsolete - riding on rails reduced friction. But then, someone realized they could take advantage of machines to pull the load. And the machines they had were stationary. Suddenly it is possible to have cable cars. As with most technology, some minority desperately needed the improvement, and then once the improvement was visible, everybody else came up with new reasons to need it.
But don’t forget efficiency: A mine operator could splurge on a big honkin’ steam engine. The power needed for all the tough jobs was so great that efficiency didn’t seem to matter. The kind of engine that was small enough to fit in your cart but powerful enough to move it just didn’t exist yet. Even the locomotive was a stretch - until efficiency reached a certain point. They had to machine the parts a lot more accurately, and improve on the design a bit. Then it seemed possible. So in the march toward small efficient engines, you reach the locomotive first. Not so small or efficient, but enough power to pull a few train cars.
For a while this means that railroad demand is much greater that car-road demand. Carts are still being pulled by pack teams, and the muddy roads are good enough for hoof and wagon wheel.
Early adopters or automobile technology remind me of the computer kit builders of the 1970’s: Not a lot of infrastructure or support - just a loose network of hobbyists. Calling the Internet an “information superhighway” is really apt, because just as the early personal computers weren’t quite ready to surf the Internet, those early autos wouldn’t have fared too well on the Interstate.
My thesis - if it can be said that I actually have one: We built roads with trucking in mind, and automobiles took advantage. I always love the term ‘Motorist’. It suggests that these are people who believe in ‘Motorism’. And, that’s not so far from the truth. One of my friends has been suggesting that I read the Robert Moses biography. Perhaps it will explain Motorism to me.
In one possible scenario, rail does all the long-haul and heavy lifting. Roads are for local deliveries. With the rising price of Diesel fuel, there has been a lot more interest in this model. The railroad companies that were not run out of business may still have a future - but for me the irony is clear: The price of Diesel doesn’t have any effect on the efficiency argument. If trains can haul the same load with less fuel (must be those rails reducing the friction, huh?) then the price of the fuel is irrelevant.
But then, trucking is profligate because it can be. We must tend to value the flexibility as a fixed cost - and it matters less as those variable costs go up. I still can’t understand why cross country trucking would be so popular.
There Seems To Be, um… Something Wrong With My Lifestyle
I enjoy driving. I think I know why other people enjoy it too. But, I can’t see myself driving three-four hours a day to commute to work. Force me to do something, and suddenly it’s not so much fun anymore.
I am also fascinated by highway design and traffic control. If you get me on a roll, I’ll start laying out all sorts of neat interchanges and flyovers.
There’s just something about cruising down that highway, isn’t there? People enjoy that freedom; that individualism; that self-determination… Of course, you know it’s all an illusion, right? You can reach those speeds because we poured so much money into constructing the highway system. We shrank distances, but we’re pretty much at the end of the line. How much faster do you think we’re going to go? Rocket cars for everybody? Think it through. And, anyway, you’re probably stuck in rush-hour traffic on the Beltway.
The big obstacle is in baggage. Cars are perfect for luggage. No need for porters to get you on and off trains; No need to find storage lockers while you go do your thing in that faraway place. And you can still reach your toothbrush, because it’s not being shipped to your destination to meet up with you later.
I figure whatever future you’ve got is going to include a lot less travel. But look on the bright side: that travel will probably be more accommodating. Remember how you could take a lot more luggage on a train than you can on a plane?
Despite the “oil shocks” of the ’70s, my family drove to Ohio and back each summer when I was a kid. We lost nearly three whole days driving out of the one week we spent there. It must have been easier than flying with two kids, a pet and a vanload of luggage (yes, even for one week).
People are still going to want to go places, even if they can’t. I don’t know what we’ll do about this. We are scattered, and some times we don’t want to be scattered. We always just assumed that it would be possible to meet up. So what if that’s not true anymore? Maybe travel will become a luxury good. Maybe most of us will be scraping for tips from a wealthy few who had some reason to come to our neighborhood.
And cities are the key to survival: Not necessarily the megacities you could imagine. You’re more likely to see a pattern of small, dense settlements, not so far apart. Every city has a footprint, much larger than the foundations of its buildings. Cities are organisms that need to eat, breathe, and excrete waste, so just like the animal kingdom, enormous size comes at a cost - and with some ingenuity.
Okay, So You’re Probably Not Convinced About the Virus Thing Yet…
It is not so easy to see it - I look at city streets first: It seems like a plague of automobiles. And, as I mentioned, if you want to carry stuff with you, the subway is not convenient. Between commuters and the locals who appreciate the freedom and convenience, I assume that automobile traffic will plummet with rising fuel costs. This will leave mainly the working vehicles. Deliveries. Their jobs will be easier without all those cars in the way. (Maybe the bikes will become a real menace, though…)
The empirical evidence suggests that as we build more roads (in the misguided attempt to alleviate traffic), traffic increases. Work backwards to crappy little roads with less traffic. It doesn’t go back forever - an original reason to have the roads is for trucking. But with really high fuel prices, I think this logic will break down. New traffic will not leap in. New roads will not have to be built. This suggests automobiles were simply taking advantage of the existing infrastructure.
Why it’s hard to see is because in the intervening years, motorist advocacy drove the roadbuilding agenda. A feedback loop is created. The virus also has tools to alter the host. Use the existing machinery to it’s own advantage; Start managing the factory to produce a more parasite-friendly environment. But that won’t last forever: First there is stasis (death is a kind of stasis), then new facts may come into play. And, cheap energy is one of the things that supports our stasis. It could become really expensive to build and maintain roads. And, the short roads in town will probably survive that reality longer than the long roads out in the country.
Posted in urban-studies, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:22:00 GMT
I was amused to see this YouTube clip of Mr. Pink’s thoughts on tipping from Reservoir Dogs. Via kottke.org.
It can be difficult to have this discussion with people, because emotions tend to run high. I’m not really complaining about the state of affairs. People tip bartenders and waiters in this country. But it is always interesting to me how discussions are suppressed - I’m a devil’s advocate kind of guy, and I believe everything ought to be open to discussion. If I wanted to change the entire model of how people in the service industry are paid, do you think that I could do it? I suspect not.
From an economic standpoint, it’s a fascinating issue. Employers are willing to abdicate some measure of performance evaluation to the customers. This trade-off should be worth real money to the employer. They still fire you if you drop a lot of trays full of expensive food, but they don’t have to analyze your customer service skills.
In the clip, Pink says “If if’s such a lousy job, they can quit.” I won’t say it that way, but it’s not so far off. What are the possibilities?
There are jobs in restaurants because people insist on going out to eat. The market provides competition in service, quality, and price. Every business is caught between the market for their product/service and the market for their raw materials (usually including labor, but not capital so much since it’s a fixed cost). Drastic changes in the supply of inputs or the demands of customers have an effect on the quality, service, and price. In some situations, new entrants will rush in, and in other situations, they’ll be dropping like flies. Workers, businesspeople, and customers will adjust - customers by adapting with subsitute goods, and workers and businesspeople by entering other markets. You don’t spend all your life in one market, a typical day is a blend of several.
But this process doesn’t flow so smoothly. People run restaurants because they identify themselves with that business. People work as waiters or bartenders or chefs for the same reason - and often because they actually enjoy it (even if I do get to hear endless complaints from my friends in that line of work). In other words, there is some friction or latency in adapting to changing markets. If you lay off an auto worker, they spend some time unsure of what to do next. And maybe they retrain for something else - which can take years. Most people are not ready to jump into the next career at a moment’s notice - or gradually one by one as the balance shifts.
Now specifically: To Tip or Not To Tip, what’s the difference?
If I go out to eat, and purchase a $100 meal, then tip $15, it is actually a $115 meal from my point of view. Meanwhile, the waitress is making less than minimum wage, as the government considers tip money to be real income - even though I might choose not to tip. There is no law that says I must tip the waitress, but there is a law regarding minimum wage. For some reason, a concerted effort to not tip the waitress can cause the restaurant break the spirit of the minimum wage laws. I never could figure out why the job doesn’t just pay more. And, reward good workers with pay raises. Isn’t that how it works everywhere else? Wage disparity is supposed to be an index of how valuable the worker is. (Not how hard they are working! - we didn’t say anything about that.) In a perverse situation, hard work might not be worth more to the employer. And, the effort might be misguided anyway - not exactly what the job called for.
I generally get upset over anything that distorts price. If it’s going to be the same money, then we need to have the same basis for valuing workers. I personally witness many instances where tip money makes the worker beholden to the customer in ways that do not exactly benefit the business. If you tip well, the bartender sometimes pours you free drinks. Apparently, this is so common that there is an allowance for it, and the bartenders are encouraged to report it - it builds an intangible good will with customers (but it’s sort of hard to measure - do they really spend any more money? Maybe the consistent ability of a bar to draw customers makes it a happening place… Nobody goes there anymore - it’s too crowded.)
Posted in bar-scene, employment, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:29:00 GMT
I am one of those people who think that high gasoline prices are a good thing. You have probably guessed that I do not drive a car. I know some people who do drive cars, and who rely on them quite heavily.
This is not my opportunity to stake out a radical environmentalist platform. I just think we’ve organized our world wrong.
Beside all this are the price manipulations. I will usually trust markets to find the correct price of a commodity, but there are other issues at work: Taxes that vary by state. Oil companies that may or may not be in collusion. Extravagant and destructive uses for fuel (ahem!, NASCAR). These are the things that bend markets. And, I suspect that $4 for a gallon of gasoline is quite low. We will probably look back at this time in history and say we didn’t know how good we had it.
Some people are just determined to keep driving. They can’t really be blamed, though. Somebody spread their world out over a vast expanse. I wouldn’t presume to tell people they should never leave their square mile. But, I do think that making it expensive to do will cause a change in priorities. At first it will be painful: A lot of people don’t have much going on in their square mile. There may not be a grocery store. Or employment of any sort. That sounds like a mistake to me. How can people stand to drive so much? I like to drive. But not every day. And, I hate to commute. It is time wasted, whether or not you pay for the gasoline.
I live in a city. I grew up in the suburbs. I would never go back there. As it is, the city is bad enough. Suburbs are absurd. I can imagine making the city better, but I can’t imagine making the suburbs better. Some days my city seems weirdly hollow and empty. If you thought cities would be crowded, you don’t live where I do. In part, I blame the automobile, but it is a side effect of the road infrastructure necessary for truck deliveries. The public space is practically all road. In my daydreams, I think of burying all the roads, just like the water and sewer pipes. We need those roads, but I don’t want to have to look at them - just as you wouldn’t run the sewer pipes down the middle of the road, and have to climb over them to get anywhere. I like having a grocery store across the street, with the grapes from South America and whatnot, but some day one of those 18-wheelers is going to run me down backing into the loading dock.
Human communities need density. There have to be some other people nearby. Try to imagine for a minute that we used our energy and industry creating livable cities.
Come to think of it, suburban development is just like drilling for oil. The faster you do it, the quicker that resource runs out. Are you going to be pleased with how you spent that resource, or are you just going to be pleased that you had the opportunity to make a quick buck? We have this terrible history of racing to use up our resources. Actually competing to see who could destroy it all quickest - rewarding the ‘winners’.
For all the people who think that some new technology will solve all our problems - can we start talking about how that is going to happen? All the past solutions came from people who started working on the problem before it was a crippling disability. Science and technology are often driven by a kind of intellectual play: Not intended to be solutions to anything. In other words, we stock our shelves with solutions. If we stopped doing that, would you notice? Alternative fuels are a good example of this. But if you think this process extends to the gross phenomenon of matter, I think you are mistaken. When we run out of rural land to redevelop as suburbs, what is the next step? Glass domes? Moon colonies? Drain the oceans? There are sure to be solutions proposed.
Posted in urban-studies, ontology, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:10:00 GMT
A couple of months ago, my sister and I listened to Doug Fine talk about harvesting free grease behind fast food restaurants in New Mexico for his bio-diesel pickup truck. Ever since that day, I’ve been extra sensitive to headlines about this subject. I predicted (kind of a no-brainer) that as gasoline prices went up, the pressure to substitute bio-diesel would cause discarded restaurant grease to become more highly valued. You can actually see this in a Simpson’s episode. Homer is surreptitiously pumping out the grease from the elementary school cafeteria when Groundskeeper Willy discovers the theft. His punchline is something to the effect of “My Retirement Grease!”.
…And whatever happened to the recycling craze? Glass, Cans, Newspaper, etc. used to fetch a price if you trucked them in. That meant you could get free pickup for this variety of trash, because for the trash company, the disposal would pay for itself. The issue here is the phase-change from that situation where you’re just happy to get rid of it to that situation where you will kill to protect your precious resource. Like Willy.
Today I see this headline in Fark:
Old and busted: Stealing copper for resale as scrap. New hotness: Stealing grease for resale as fuel
The article itself is a little more interesting… It’s not ‘thieves’ so much as it is a war among companies. Maybe. The occasional freelancer could float through this story unnoticed. “Slick Florida thieves haul off grease”.
The thing that really interests me requires taking one step back…
Stealth Facts In Predictable Journallism
Fark excels in the witty alternate headline. Which is maybe why the potential for deception in the actual headline is so clear in my mind. There is a pithy way in which either of these headlines can tell me “Read no further - You already know the story”.
But of course, if I didn’t read the story, what would be the point of journalism?
But of course, I don’t usually bother, so journalism IS pointless, yes?
There almost needs to be a truce: I can agree to pay attention as a reader, if the writer can agree not to bury fascinating things in the story that the headline just doesn’t capture. What ever happened to the pyramid style in newspaper articles? I should be able to stop at any point, confident that I am only giving up on a finer layer of detail, not missing some crucial twist. Journalism was always supposed to function as a resource for the time-challenged.
My hope is that facts and ideas can be indexed. Headlines currently serve the semantic role of index. The minutia of life should be no different from scholarly work in this way: There is no telling when any of this information might turn out to be important.
Posted in writing-craft, economics, media-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:16:00 GMT
It can be hard to tell, with the mountain of books I have in my apartment, that there are a few real gems in there that are more important than the others. “Ways Of Seeing” is such a book.
It’s a slim Penguin volume. I was shopping at one of the long gone Olsson’s stores one afternoon, and probably flirting with the manager, when I spotted it. The book is the companion volume to a BBC series from 1972. The essays talk about the status of great works of art in the age of mechanical reproduction and communications technologies (conjuring up Walter Benjamin), the treatment of women as subjects in the era of paintings as wealth and ownership, and the uses of art in publicity (I would say ‘advertising’) to make us insecure enough to buy and fuel the consumer society. So, that’s a lot. For the moment it’s the advertising chapter that interests me the most, but they are all related.
There is a picture in the book of Piccadilly Circus. A current photo looks a bit different, but you still have the Coke, TDK, and Sanyo billboards. I’m used to thinking of Times Square or the Ginza in these terms. I notice that in Washington DC, we don’t have anything like that. Soon maybe Gallery Place - I’ve got the pictures to prove it.
In the background, I have all sorts of thoughts and opinions about independent versus corporate retailers, the destruction of small towns, and the value of local economies.
“Publicity is usually explained and justified as a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers - and thus the national economy. It is closely related to ideas about freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of enterprise for the manufacturer. The great hoardings and the publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate visible sign of ‘The Free World’.”
All right. But I still have one question: If I see Coke for sale in the store, why do I need a neon sign to remind me of its existence? As a consumer, I am still free to make choices without advertising. Today, I am unable to mask my contempt for marketing. Every kind of product is a little different. I could buy a coke every day, but I couldn’t buy stereo equipment or a car that often. Is is really the advertising that creates the free choice of the consumer? Would that free choice really wither away without it? More specifically to the quote: does advertising really benefit the most efficient manufacturer, or just the one willing to spend the most money on advertising?
[…]
Just thinking about the site - the place with the billboards and the neon signs -
Posted in urban-studies, economics, books, media-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:21:00 GMT
I was thinking about the problem of confusing tools with luxuries. It’s the gadget culture of the computer age: People who need information technology the most are the people who can afford it the least. The advantages conferred by computers, smart phones, organizers, etc., will continue to go disproportionately to the people who are already the best informed and organized.
And why is that? Because each one of these tools also functions as a decadent luxury item. I can play games all day on my laptop, I can browse frivolous websites that track celebrity gossip, or chat mindlessly on the phone with friends. It is an inescapable marriage of power and convenience. Hammers and wrenches lacked that kind of entertainment value. We have never been at such an advantage over the world - And we have never had the power to blow it quite so efficiently.
It didn’t have to be this way. Maybe it all comes down to self-discipline. If I lived a monastic life, maybe I could ignore the time-wasting (ahem!.. entertainment) capabilities of my gadgets, but that won’t change the fact that much of their value now relates to those capabilities. As the kit-computers of the techno-geeks have become the streamlined consumer electronics gadgets, the utility functions have been dwarfed. It’s still possible to use most micro-chip based devices as a tool, but the social reality is that few people do. The manufacturers even do what they can to downplay those uses (self-sufficiency doesn’t generate new pay-per-view download charges!). Talk up self-discipline all you want, but it’s not so simple when it looks like everybody else is having so much fun. It’s like trying to meditate at a party.
Today, if you made a computerized tool that couldn’t entertain, nobody would want it - it would be subject to supply and demand just like everything else. Since computers are general-purpose, and you can add software to do anything you want, there is extra work involved in reducing capability.
I often look at new product announcements - like the iPhone - and see only the frivolous. They sell the frivolous end. They’ve been writing software for decades to enhance the time-wasting aspects. Because that is what will improve sales. I refuse to believe that this is a more productive society - or at least I worry that the crash is coming soon.
I also have to consider my personal problems. That’s where the self-discipline really matters. It isn’t likely that I can make much of a name for myself espousing a puritan view of technology (would it sell?). It’s easy enough to spend all this money on ‘tools’, protest that the money is well spent, then use my ‘tools’ to entertain myself. It’s positively delusional.
Like any normal person, I’ve stuck a balance. It’s an unstable balance, though: I’m constantly in danger of slipping all the way down to the 0% efficiency mark. It may be an even deeper current in society that makes possible the ‘enjoyable job’. I’m frequently reading anecdotal evidence of people who have constructed a career out of doing something fun (and, this deliberately ignores all professional sports). Some of my hobbies might find a place in the sun, and I engage in them as an enjoyable refuge, no doubt. But it’s an interesting hybrid category, is it not? The hobby. Like people who take stamp collecting seriously… Obsessive research and acquisition, subordinating other pleasures to what is ostensibly unpaid work. It seems like a dead-weight loss to me on a good day: I can’t figure out how it enriches society, even inadvertently. In an economic reality, this is a kind of stolen time. No enjoyment seems enjoyable enough to me to justify the real costs. We fall all over ourselves to report how much money is involved in the entertainment industry, but isn’t it a phantom? Are you trying to tell me that we wouldn’t have spent that money on something else? That we would have saved it?
Posted in economics, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 27 May 2008 15:23:00 GMT
I just finished “Traveling Light” today. I was really happy with how the book was constructed. She hit me where I was weak: Statistics. And, just coming off of reading “The Shape Of Things To Come” with its tour through different critiques of America, the possibility of our government distorting economic indicators really stung. Just the slightest error in the numbers for inflation carried year to year has a big effect on ‘reality’, if you even believe in such things - Underestimate prices, and you overestimate GNP/GDP/GDI (choose your favorite), and you tamper with the very definition of growth or recession. As life gets harder for the common man, how can you believe it? - the news says everything is doing so well. It is notoriously difficult for one person, or a handful of people, to grasp the economic conditions for everybody. And, that goes especially for the affluent, who wouldn’t notice anyway.
Posted in books, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 24 May 2008 02:54:00 GMT
Am I reading too many books?
Am I reading too many books at once?
Well, perhaps I just found the right book to read: Richard A. Lanham’s “The Economics Of Attention”. I was at Reiters today - part of a nice day journey of walking and riding buses. I got up earlyish and went to do a load of laundry. When I got back, I wanted to vacuum so I’d have an especially clean surface to fold colthes - but my roommate was still asleep. So I decided it was time to go on an adventure. I’ve been reading “Utopia Parkway” all afternoon, punctuated by a visit to Reiters, a bowl of chili and a glass of beer at Hard Times Cafe in Clarendon, a look at the new configuration of the Courthouse Olsson’s, and another visit to the Dupont Olsson’s. Let’s see thats… Three bookstores and a chili joint. Fabulous.
Lanham says something startling on the very first page of the introduction: Economics is about scarcity, so the notion of an ‘information economy’ is absurd. Information isn’t scarce. But, attention is scarce, so aren’t we really living in an ‘attention economy’?
I can’t go back, can I?
Suddenly it’s so obvious. I’ve been dancing around this idea for the longest time now without noticing it. All that information makes the choice harder - the choice of what to pay attention to.
I can see now how I am taking the information too seriously. Getting exhausted trying to pay attention to all of it - or at least as much as I can.
Mt. Pleasant
The road was closed in front of the apartment building that burned the other day. I’ve been going to a laundromat three doors down. There’s a Bank Of America, a Dollar Store, then the Laundromat. I tried to get up even earlier to avoid crowds, but it worked out okay. That laundromat is long and narrow, making movement difficult. There is always somebody in your way. Happily, I read my book and finished up quick. The dryers are much more modern than the other place I went to (it closed), and everything is in good repair. That place reminds me of the Starbucks complaint: There’s no small. (But who would want it anyway…) The ‘small’ machines are labeled “Double Load”. Which is absurd. Most people seem to be doing about three of those “Double Loads” at a time. I have to be careful not to bring too much - because my bag would never hold enough to fill two machines, and I would feel cheated.
Sorry I’ve got no photos from the fire. I was thinking about how spectacularly unphotogenic the Mt Pleasant Street was today. At sunset it might have provided a dramatic view. The whole place was just so drab. I should have looked for quirky macro closeups of temporary fence or something.
K Street
I selected Clarendon as a destination. It felt like I hadn’t been over there in a while. I could get a gustatory treat like a bowl of Hard Times chili or an inky black espresso from Murky. One of the older buildings has been demolished - no doubt for the inevitable march of hi-rise condominiums. I still marvel at the transformation that place has undergone. I thought it was a wasteland before, but I just wish something more interesting could have been done to it. It’s basically becoming a new kind of wasteland.
Clarendon
At noon I walked into Hard Times and sat at the bar. My waitress was forgetful. I ordered a glass of Magic Hat Number 9, and it turned out there were two sizes. Neither size was a pint. I wanted onion rings with my chili, but I bit my tongue and she suggested a house salad. Much better for me than onion rings. We went over my chili order a few times, and it came out wrong. I asked for Cincinnati with beans, onions, and tomatoes. Her mistakes created a power of suggestion - she eventually read it back right, but I got chopped jalepeno instead of tomato. Then, half way through my cornbread, she warned me that she thought my piece was stale. I hadn’t noticed. But, now that you mention it… She apologized and said she’d bring me another fresh piece. That never arrived. I tried to eat the chili slow, but couldn’t stop myself in time. Although she forgot about the cornbread, she tried to get me to stay longer with a beer on the house. How could I resist? I just kept reading my book.
About this time I start to notice that a lot of people are wearing green. A young woman came in and sat near me at the bar and proceeded to fiddle with her mobile phone. Not so much as a telephone, although she did eventually make some calls. I discovered that her and her friends were on their way to some music festival I couldn’t identify. Girl number two arrived to explain that she was late and her boyfriend was looking for all day parking back in the residential neighborhood because the garage they expected to use is temporarily closed for construction. My guess is that the music festival - at RFK stadium, and therefore on the same subway line as the station on the corner - had something to do with Irish music, and that everyone there would also be wearing green clothing.
But as I walked to Olsson’s, it was uncanny. There are a couple Irish-themed pubs on the way, and every single person was wearing green. Arlington is not DC. I don’t know why I needed to be reminded of that.
That Olsson’s was recently sawed in half. I helped prepare by delabeling books on a return and moving heavy shelves. They decided the cafe was too much trouble, so the landlord agreed to reduce our space (and rent), and find a cafe of their own. They settled on “Corner Bakery”. After spending so many days at that store waiting for my girlfriend who worked there, or attending music or book events, doing late night inventories, or just shopping… Seeing the reduced space is quite depressing. Much of the front is too congested - although I suppose it will prevent thieves from running out the door easily. I’ve been coaching them with equipment problems over the phone, but I failed to realize just how much the cash counter/information desk had been modified. That explained a lot.
Posted in economics, DC-roaming, olssons, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:21:00 GMT
It is important to keep in mind that THINGS are not so much made as transformed. Materials, and substances are all mainly chopped down, slaughtered, or dug up. Energy pours down on us from the sun where it can be captured, or left to drive the engines of weather, or be stored in chemical bonds. Gravity packs in it, creating purer forms like diamonds and oil, and most atoms can be coaxed to release nuclear energy noticeable as heat under the crust and in reactors.
Earth’s energy income is all solar energy. That’s all we really have. But we weren’t around for the first few billion years, and quite a bit of stored energy exists. In a pinch we could figure out how to convert all that mass into energy, a la Einstein, but the math is quite simple: use energy at a faster rate than it arrives, and we’re using up what is stored, whatever unimagined new methods we come up with to release it. Like an inheritance, we can spend as much as we like, but no new sources are coming our way.
The energy budget isn’t even the big problem. It’s the peculiarities of transforming it. I think you’ll be surprised to see how badly we can trash this planet and still “survive”, but what about the quality of life? You are really going to have to judge for yourself. We may never be healthy again. All that ingenuity might keep us hovering at the brink of death, with lots of great life support required to balance the scales. I won’t go so far as to say people won’t have fulfilling lives, but it probably won’t be the life you and I are used to.
You might have fallen for the party line: Big powerful machines that seem invincible. But that’s all for show. In reality the systems to deliver food and fuel are fragile, just in time affairs. The process of buying and selling to make a profit despite competition demands cleverness. It is a juggling act on the grandest of scales, and it can only stop abruptly.
The remedies are loose coupling, redundancy and reserve. We know some tricks for making systems more reliable, but they are all being spent in stretching those systems to their very limit. This is how we keep escaping the box Thomas Malthus put us in: We conjure new capabilities, and those new capabilities allow us to grow in size and consumption until we’re back in the box. But we escaped before, so we will surely escape again!
All our cleverness allows us to operate on thinner margins. Closer to the edge. It’s not at all conservative. Conservative would mean including a lot of insurance and risk management, a lot of backup and redundancy; And, it would cost a lot to do, which must be the main reason we don’t.
Posted in economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:34:00 GMT
I love to do my book shopping from the returns pile. This tells you a lot about me: Any book going back to the publisher is like a puppy about to be put to sleep. Now, granted, some puppies are not that cute to begin with… but of course, almost all of them are !!!!EXTREMELY ADORABLE!!!! And doomed. These puppies are doomed. If I can save a single puppy…
Wait. We were talking about books.
Our warehouse does the big publisher returns, but they’re a bit overwhelmed right now, so in the interest of not losing the books going back to the tiny publishers, one of my office mates has taken command. The few, the proud, the unsold academic titles.
Well, one little book went missing. And when it was found, the other books had already been sent back. I didn’t even know this yet - I looked on top of a filing cabinet when I went across the hall to say hello, and there was “Dancing With Giants: China, India, And The Global Economy”, a World Bank publication in connection with the Institute of Policy Studies. It was only $22.95 - I guessed something more along the lines of $40. So how could I refuse? Turgid economics papers full of tables and graphs forecasting the future roles of two extremely fascinating countries. Yummy! A good counterweight to all the lay-reader prose I’ve read about India and China recently.
I’m saving the world one puppy at a time. Except we’re still talking about books, not puppies.
Posted in writing-craft, books, economics, olssons | 2 comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:08:00 GMT
