Nothin' but used up porno and Ayn Rand

I like what Ayn Rand has to say.

When I was in Lithuania, I ended up tipsily debating a friend of mine on a couple of topics, including abortion and gay marriage. Ironically, in the feel-bad rainbow of political issues, those two are pretty low on my list. That's right, I care most about security (of course) and the economy (doubly of course).

This friend of mine was trying to convince me that if I learned anything from Ayn Rand, I should know that everything is black-and-white, and that I should say that either abortion is entirely wrong (as he believed) or entirely right in all cases. The fact is that while I don't really care about abortion as a political issue, I do have some philosophical things to say about it. I certainly do not believe that either of the above statements is true. Abortion is indeed tricky, and I am the first to admit it. The fact is that you can't say that an issue like abortion is entirely black-and-white, no matter how many fucking pages John Galt's speech is.

Furthermore, I think that in cases like abortion, where the debate is highly charged by morality, religion, and other touchy-feely non-objective stuff... it's intellectually lazy to believe that everything is black and white. It's so easy -- you can just convince yourself that everything in the world is black and white. So long as you choose white, you are always right. Well woo hoo for you, you've put about as much thought into this as you put thought into the decision to crap in the toilet instead of on the hood of your car.

I am by no means dumping on my friend for believing what he believed. He actually tried to cite some data to support his case, and make his argument empirical as opposed to philosophical or emotional like the drones who pass as activists in this political climate (he was saying that in Lithuania, some overwhelmingly large percentage of women who considered an abortion were glad they did not have one). I respect that. I think he was making a conclusion based on an incomplete data set, but still, kudos for making a real argument.

Anyways, I'm getting a little tangential, so back to the point. Where I do buy into Ayn Rand, part and parcel, is economically.

Specifically, I can't help but think about Ayn Rand every time I hear anyone from the Obama camp talk about economics. I was watching CNBC today and Larry Kudlow totally smacked some commie "fair economics" nerd with the shovel of fallacy. It was extremely gratifying because the whole conversation started out talking about Obama's tax plan. Gradually, Kudlow pressed the guy harder and harder, and just as they were about to go to commercial, the pinko came out with the word "fairness." There's the crux of what these people want -- they want things to be faaaaiiiirrrr...

Let's all be fair. Let's be fair to all the poor people who just can't seem to get ahead. Tell me, though... what is fair about taking almost half of a person's income? What the hell is fair about that?! I don't care what income bracket that person is in. Taking almost half of a person's earnings (as the Obama plan advocates, for households with over $250k in income) is wrong. Anyone who wants to refute that can try, but I don't understand how you can, in any logical way, say that it's okay for a person to be working January through June just to keep the government from throwing them in prison.

This is where the Ayn Rand stuff kicks in. People aim to make money. They put in work to make money. So, what's the fucking point if the government extorts half of it out of you? If you remove the possibility of making scads of money, you remove the incentive for innovation. The majority of people in this world don't do things because they are good for everyone else. People do things to benefit themselves.

The best part is, that's not a bad thing. I think I've talked about this before, so I'm not going to rehash it.

Something else that has come to mind, though, is about this whole rich-people-are-evil thing that our culture has bought into. I'm not that old, so I can't say "back in the old days," or anything. But I do think that I've been politically aware long enough to recognize changes. I think that in the past year or so, I've heard a lot more people bitching about the super-rich. But it's not just "Those rich guys should give more to charity," or "rich people should put their money to use helping their fellow man." This implies that rich people should change their thinking and that society as a whole should expect them to be more altruistic. Oh no, now it's changed to "Who needs all that money?" or "Why should someone earn that much while I can't afford a flat-screen TV?" This sentiment is different because it's more comparative -- why should someone else be living better than me? The implicit assumption here is that the government should be redistributing wealth so that I can have the money to buy that flat-screen I've always wanted. That, my friends, is communism.

Also, Kudlow raised another point that I hadn't thought about that much before. Rich people are not only the biggest earners, they are also the biggest spenders. Companies that cater to the needs of the above-average wage earner employ thousands if not millions of people.

If the Obama people get their way, they'll be sucking more money out of the rich people's pockets, sure. But rich people are going to think twice now before buying that rocket car or solid gold house. What does that mean for the doorknob polishers on the construction sites of solid gold houses? Or the guy who sticks on the sweet flame decals at the rocket car factory? They are not super-rich. But now, demand for their product is decreasing because rich people have less money to spend on ridiculous items. Jobs will be lost because of lagging demand. No one thinks about that though. I know this is an absurd example, but stick in something more believable -- like a worker at a high-end casino or a carpenter for a luxury home builder -- and the example still works.

Obama keeps preaching change, hope, recovery from this mess that Bush put us into. Yeah, okay, so we're supposed to recover by taking money out of the market (where both bazillionaires and decal applyers alike are working hard, motivated by their desire to make money) and putting it into the hands of the least efficient corporate entity in the country?! The government has no incentive to efficiently use that money. If the rocket car company doesn't use its money efficiently, it's going under. The government? Pff. It's been mismanaging the country's finances for years, but it sure as hell isn't going anywhere. Hell, if some small-cap defense company was caught earmarking money to research a potential "gay bomb," investors would put its stock price in the toilet and some very senior-level people would be thrown out on their asses for being retards. The government was caught doing something like that and the worst consequence is that they have to see the public ridicule on the Daily Show.

The fact is this: Obama wants to take money out of the most efficient wealth distribution system ever devised by man and put it into the least efficient corporate entity in the country, where any potential good will be shunted away by Congressional meddling, graft, and outright idiocy. Some recovery plan.

In the meantime

I've been pretty busy with the move to my new apartment at IU, so blogging isn't super-high on the list of priorities. Rest assured, though, Lithuania pictures will be posted soon. I just have more pressing concerns, for example, finding a desk for my computer (rather than the floor) and a desk chair (rather than my subwoofer).

In the meantime, though, I've got a couple of pretty hilarious links to share.

The first link below originally was shown to me by either Moomi or the Busquit King, I can't remember which, but there are two parts (both more or less the same thing but equally awesome).
Neg's Urban Sports -- Burger Bowl-Off
Neg's Urban Sports -- Stag Hunt

Enjoy!

Pictures!

... but not of Lithuania yet.

I feel like I can't put up pictures from this summer until I finish putting pictures up from last summer. So, two more albums are up on Picasa of my Russia trip in 07.

God, I am the worst at this...

Why I thought I'd be deported

Some of you may have been aware of some uncertainty regarding my status as I passed through Russia on my way home.

Let me just start by saying that I knew there would be issues going through Russia. I went with Aeroflot because (a) it was the cheapest and (b) I already have a lot of frequent flyer miles with them, and I look forward to one day getting an upgrade to business class or even a free trip altogether.

On the way there, as you know, the money-grubbers at the Russian Consulate told me I'd need a transit visa. Needless to say, no one even looked at it on the way there. $200 out the window, all the more galling since I overpaid in the first place.

So, for the way back... I wanted to be on top of things. I asked our Consular people if I should get a visa. They called the Russian Consulate and dermined that I should have a visa. They cc'ed the email message over to the section that has the travel guy in it. This section would write a note telling the Russian Embassy to get me an effing visa, and not to fuck around since this was the American Embassy asking. The managers in that office delegated the task to the travel person, who responded to the whole email emphatically saying that no visa was required. The justification for this was that transiting passengers who stay on the same airline and don't leave the airport do not need visas. This was two weeks (ish) prior to departure.

The issue with this is that I was not sure if I was all on one airline or not. The flight from LT to Moscow was with FlyLAL, the Lithuanian airlines. They have a codeshare with Aeroflot, so while I had an Aeroflot flight number and ticket, the airline itself was not technically Aeroflot. This made everyone think that I wasn't in fact staying on one airline the whole way through.

Fast-forward to the Thursday before I leave (on the following Monday). Just in case the borscht hit the fan, I figured I should have the number of the American Embassy in Moscow. There, right on their website, American Embassy Moscow made a point to say that anyone transiting Russia for any reason should get a transit visa. Cue the freakout. It was 4:36 PM.

I called the American Embassy Moscow and tried to get them to tell me it was okay to transit Russia without a visa. They would not tell me that, saying it was completely at the discretion of the person at the passport control. Panic mode. Over to Consular. We get the travel guy to start on the note. Over to general services. Yell at them about how the visa was inevitably going to cost a lot of money... money I had long since spent, leaving my bank account more ore less empty.

Back to Consular to complain, saying that I don't have the money to expedite the visa processing, and even if they had expedited processing, it would have to be same-day on Friday or I'd have to change my ticket (another 150 euros). Really mad at this point because I do not have the money for this. Everyone seems to "understand my frustration," but clearly no one was ready to pony up. My rationale was, two weeks ago, the travel dude told me I'd be fine. Only through my own vigilance was I able to see that I needed a visa (at this point I still fully believed that I needed a visa).

As I was running around, I ran into a guy at my department. He was waiting for his wife to finish work. I vented to him, about how unhappy I was about receiving so little support from the Embassy. His wife exits the Chancery in the midst of this and we have a good, calming discussion. It is agreed that the best idea is to have Marius, our Lithuanian investigator and super-nice guy, call the Russian Embassy and figure out once and for all what the deal is.

Man, I'm kind of sick of writing this post. StumbleUpon is much more interesting, and this I'm finding is actually not that interesting. Long story short, I sat in on a conversation between our investigator and the Russian Embassy. He was speaking Russian and knew my whole situation top-to-bottom. I listened to him, and while I could never have spoken as well as he did (being a native speaker), I certainly understood everything and helped him present the whole situation.

I suppose the only real reason for writing this is so that maybe someday if someone is wondering about the same issue, they will find my site. In this case, I actually found that the Russians were acting far less paranoid than most people thought they were, including our Embassy, the Moscow Embassy, and all my friends. Be it known. If you are on the same airline, even if it's a codeshare, and you are flying in and out of the same airport (can be different terminals), it appears as if you do not need a transit visa. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.