My musings on different political topics relevant to America today.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

How Walkmans, VCRs, and Netflix Changed the World

Society is undergoing a social revolution. You probably have noticed, and have partaken, in this revolution.  The defining embodiment of this revolution is that stereotype we all know, love, and in some sense are...the hipster.  The defining characteristic of the hipster is a rebellion against the mainstream, whether it be music, movies, or walmart.  This rebellion is seen as fighting against "the man", aka, the societal elite, and propping up the "little guy."  This is done of course, by listening to obscure music that no one else has heard of, by watching movies no one else has heard of, and by shopping at stores...you get the idea.

The point I will be making is that this revolution is more than just hipsters.  They are just the most visible embodiment of this revolution.  However in reality its already touching all of us.  Technology has driven the way, introducing new platforms to digest entertainment, and as a consequence, none of us listen to music or watch tv the same as we did ten years ago.  Technology has also democratized the process of production, allowing a vast infusion of new entrepreneurs into the entertainment market.  Technology is transforming entertainment in a way we are just beginning to understand, for better or for worse.  I will not only argue that technology has created a new mechanism for absorbing entertainment, but that this new mechanism will inevitably result in the extreme isolation of individuals from society as a whole.

Before the 1980's, music was inevitably a collective experience, and so was television.  There was only so much music to listen to over the airwaves and tv shows you could watch.  Music wise, all you had was the radio.  TV wise, there were only a handful of channels.  This meant that the likelihood you had listened to the same music and watched the same shows as your coworker, friend, etc. was very high.  Likewise the likelihood that you watched the same shows and movies around the same time was extremely high because back in the day, you either saw it or you didn't.  Keep in mind, before the 1980's, vcr's did not even exist.  Yes there was "portable" music in the form of records, but even then everyone around you had to hear it, there was no tuning other people out.  The natural tendency of this arrangment was a naturally unifying/coercive element on culture.  Local dialects and cultures all faded and were replaced by the image of America we were sold by Hollywood.

This began to change during the 1980's.  In the early 80's vcr players and walkman's came out.  Vcr's meant that people could for the first time record shows and rent movies, therefore they could postpone watching a show or movie until a time more convenient for them.  This meant that the likelihood two people had watched the same episode at the same time declined, therefore reducing their common experiences.  For the first time, people were having to tell eachother, "Don't tell me what happens, I haven't seen it yet."  In addition the walkman allowed people to listen to music without other people listening.  This meant that they could listen to music without having to worry about what other people thought about it.  They could now listen to whatever they wanted, without any worry someone may overhear and judge.

The trend then accelerated with the dawn of the internet.  Pandora, Spotify and other online applications allowed people to explore literally any kind of music the world had to offer.  In addition you can do this from the privacy of your laptop, with your earbuds, isolated in your own little world.  Likewise applications like Netflix, Youtube, and Hulu allowed you to explore and view any type of video content you desired, again behind the protective castle of your laptop and earbuds.

In addition the means of producing entertainment have become more and more affordable.  Now fairly affordable applications such as Garage Band and Final Cut Pro...and Blogger, allow you access to most of the tools the professionals use, and even the hardware is dropping steeply in expense.  Now literally almost anyone can go and make their voice heard.

This insane expansion in technology means that anyone can listen to anything made by almost anyone. This inevitably is resulting in a disturbing trend of individual isolation.  I no longer can have any certainty you like any of the music I like, or watch any of the shows I like.  The only thing I know is that you have access to the infinite possibilities for audible or visual entertainment that I do.  Now the only things we can more or less guarantee is that we have both seen the same blockbuster movies.  Indeed, even that will become ever less likely, as people's tastes in entertainment continually moves farther and farther away from each other.

This trend is referred to in Academia as "Social Differentiation."  People are becoming ever less similar in opinions, outlook, and tastes.  Why?  People all now have infinite choice over what societal factors influence them and which do not.  So people actually have more power to determine their own identity than they ever have before, and they are taking full advantage of it, isolating themselves from everyone unlike them.  Even when we connect with others, we will more and more only connect with others in the limited ways we are the same.

If you dispute that people will naturally isolate themselves from those unlike themselves consider this.  It is uncomfortable to make yourself vulnerable to someone else.  If you don't know what someone thinks about something, you don't wish to reveal it most of the time.  Whenever we are with people we don't know, we tend to gravitate towards the things we can connect on.  Just picture when you attend a football game.  Whats the first thing you do? You find your team jersey and put it on.  Why? You put it on to indicate to others you are like them.  The jersey is your key to the team community.  If you see by someone wearing the same jersey, you both can bond over your common allegiance to the team.  Likely you will both spout your opinions about the quarterback, and list all the stats you know about the other team, and will forecast your teams' chances of victory.  Nevertheless besides that, you probably will not talk about much more because it wouldn't be safe too.  You disconnect yourself from them the instant obvious commonality ceases to exist.

The point I am making with the above example is that its natural to hide facts about ourselves we are not sure others will accept, and that we naturally only reveal select parts of our whole based off how much we trust them.  An online community makes this even easier, because now people can opt out of community with people at their work, school, etc., and find people online that are just like them...or at least like them in a limited sense.  Since there will be an infinite combination of types of people, it will be a futile endeavor for someone to try to establish friendships based off a coherent identity.  Thus people will have select "friends" that they know for select interests.  A person may have their board game friend, their Alternative-Electronic radio friend, their volleyball friend, and their Walking Dead friend, but they will no longer just have friends.  Gone are the days people just had a group of friends they did everything together, listened to the same music, and partook in the same activities.

Technology has ushered in a new social order that appeals directly to our individual impulses, creating an entirely new social order.  The old social order, in which the media exerted a uniting and coercive influence on culture, is long gone.  Now, media simply serves as a means of self expression in an increasingly culturally chaotic world.  The common culture Americans once shared is disappearing, and now we can only hope to sometimes connect to our fellow Americans, whenever our common interests happen to intersect.  In a sense, we are all hipsters now, lonely hipsters living just a couple yards from each other, yet having nothing in common.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Magic: the Economic Gathering

Friday night I played the card game, "Magic the Gathering," at a comic book store.  If you ever played the Pokemon card game back in the day, then you pretty much can extrapolate from that how you play Magic.  However if you didn't, all you need to know is that its a card game in which players customize the cards in their deck then battle each other.  Much like playing Pokemon back in the day, what makes Magic fun is the community.  You can talk tactics and the pros and cons of your deck with several other ardent Magic enthusiasts.  Also like Pokemon back in the day, the community is large so you can always find events to go to and people to play against.


While playing Magic my friend mentioned that another game Warhammer 40k, was dying out.  He said that people were quitting the game because its too expensive, plus the ever shrinking community made it less appealing than Magic, whose community was growing.  He probably was over exaggerating his point, but afterward I checked online and the spirit of the two communities seems to justify his attitude.  Warhammer fans tend to be disillusioned at the company that makes the game, and continually complain about how expensive it is.  Meanwhile Magic fans are more like rock star groupies, endlessly fawning over how awesome the game is.

This comparison made me question why Warhammer was failing lately while Magic keeps growing.  Warhammer more or less fits the conventional wisdom that physical gaming will be taken over by digital, while Magic seems to defy it.  There are three main factors in my mind that seem to be driving their divergent fortunes.   First, Magic better adapted to the digital age, preventing the exodus of younger players.  Second, the recent recession and its gut wrenching effects on middle class income destroyed demand for higher priced commodities.  Third, I believe that Magic the Gathering is what Economists would call, and don't take this the wrong way, an "inferior" good.  I will further explain in the third paragraph after this one.
What Warhammer 40k looks like...expensive.

In terms of digital adaptivity, Warhammer actually did adapt...but in a way detrimental to the physical game.  A Real Time Strategy game was released, "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War," and it was very successful. 7 million copies of the game have been sold.  However the success probably came at the expense of the physical game.  In other words, instead of complementing the physical game it served as a substitute.  One, it did not take as much time.  In the physical game you had to customize your army and paint your pieces, which takes a huge time investment.  Meanwhile, in the digital game you are limited to only a fraction of the types of units in the physical game, plus all the "pieces" are already "painted."  Two, the game only cost around $50, while buying enough pieces to get started in the physical game, easily costs $200.  Thus instead of serving to draw people into the game, it probably drew potential younger fans away from the game, leaving only the most invested and hardcore Warhammerites in the fold.

Magic did not make the mistake Warhammer made when it released its digital version.  Part of this was unintentional.  None of the games that came out were smashing hits like "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War," and therefore did not challenge the physical card game.  However one game did come out in 2002 that was a hit in the magic community, "Magic: the Gathering Online." (For more about games based off magic, check out this wikipedia page: Magic:_The_Gathering_video_games)  It was essentially an online format of the physical game.  In addition, people could buy digital versions of the cards online.  Since the format was the same as the physical game, and the costs and time involved was essentially the same, it served as a complement  rather than a substitute.  Releasing this version was a stroke of genius, because It opened the door for younger online gamers to get involved and they eventually became consumers for the physical game.

The recession also had a clear effect on physical gaming.  Since the recession gutted the middle class, the typical Warhammer gamer now had less income to spend on his super expensive army.  Since war hammer, like most collectible community based games, slowly fazes out older units and implements new rules that force you to buy new pieces to stay competitive, it became very difficult during the recession to stay up to date, leading many to quit the game.  In the comment section of this article  (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/01/some-thoughts-on-gw-financials.html) a commenter summed this up nicely:
prices need to come down. People aren't buying the products - increasing prices and putting out a high volume of too-expensive, badly designed (rules) product won't get more people buying.
Meanwhile, Magic is fairly cheap by comparison.  You would really only need $30 to get started, and even though it can be an expensive hobby, as some players spend hundreds of dollars on it, the decision to spend heavily is a free choice after you start playing.  As one commenter said in response to this nbc article (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/20-years-magic-gathering-still-going-strong-not-just-middle-8C11044163):
Yes if you want to compete at the events you have to spend money, but if you have friends or groups in your area where people already have a ton of cards and are just looking for casual play that is a blast too. They'll usually be willing to share or have built multiple decks and loan them out at a get together to have more people to play. Just a search on places like Meetup and see what's in your area.
Meanwhile, in Warhammer, its  a prerequisite to playing.  The high barrier to entry prevented many from joining the Warhammer community, and since new expansions and new rules force even veteran players to buy new pieces, the barrier to entry is consistently reapplied to its members, new and old alike.  Combine the lower purchasing power that came with the recession with the high and constantly renewed barrier of entry that came with Warhammer, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Inferior and cheap...sounds like my type of game.
Lastly, the difference in the nature of the goods dealt the final blow.  Magic is, I believe, an "inferior" good.  By inferior I mean that its the Little Ceasar's of collectible gaming.  An inferior good that has demand for it increase as people's income declines because money the consumer's would have spent on higher end goods is spent on lower end cheaper goods instead.  Thus when the recession hit, many people decided to opt out of investing in Warhammer and other higher priced games like it and decided to take up Magic the Gathering instead.

Now this can all change.  Assuming middle class incomes are restored in the future, Warhammer may regain much of its lost following.  In addition Magic the Gathering may lose a lot of its following as gamers with boosted incomes decide to take up more expensive "higher end" games instead.  Nonetheless I don't believe this will likely happen unless Warhammer can change itself structurally to appeal more to younger gamers.  Its high barrier of entry prevents most new potential players from trying the game out.  In addition young players, without a complementary digital entry point, may not consider it for that reason as well.  Therefore I think even as the the middle class recovers (assuming it does) Magic's relative position, compared to Warhammer at least, will continue to remain strong.  

Sunday, January 12, 2014

The PhD Dilemma

I have been considering pursuing an Economics PhD.  However the more I have looked into it the more I have realized that the odds are heavily, and by that I mean HEAVILY, stacked against you that you will land a faculty job at a College as a Professor, let alone ever be tenured.  I am still weighing my options but I realize that a PhD very well may not be for me.  Many articles I read indicated that even if you went to a top notch school, your odds of obtaining a teaching job at a college when you finally finish your PhD program are slim.   There are bright spots.  Despite how hard it is to obtain a teaching job, those in the sciences have good opportunities in the private sector.  This unfortunately, is not the case in the social sciences, where you probably will not do anything directly related to your discipline unless you teach, or work at a think tank.  The unfortunate fact is that there is simply an oversupply of PhDs in the social sciences.  Thus there is insanely intense competition for the few jobs out there.  The average number of applicants for American history positions at colleges and Universities was 118 in 2011,  118!

While I studied this I started thinking.  I asked, what if this oversupply is not only affecting the poor penniless PhDs that are underemployed or unemployed, what if its affecting the whole institution of higher learning?  I had realized from studying up on it that it has been a persistent problem for several decades for there to be an oversupply of PhDs.  An oversupply of PhD's inevitably means that colleges, Universities, and think tanks, have an insane number of applicants to choose from for each position.  This of course meant that those institutions could probably find the "perfect" candidate more or less, and by perfect I mean someone that fits the mold precisely for what they want.

The best way to explain what I exactly I mean is to describe my own experience applying for internships at think tanks.  I applied to one think tank that is very conservative.  I submitted my resume and they prompted for my first interview.  The first interview went smoothly, but then came the second interview.  I put down on my application that I was interested in the politics of health care, and she asked me about that interest.  I foolhardily expressed exactly what I thought about it at the time.  I believed that government should mandate a standard policy that insurance companies must offer that would be the same across the board with every other insurance company (I didn't think it should be the only policy, just a benchmark for comparison).  I believed that this would help consumers better know what they were buying and which company had the best deal.  I drew off the life insurance market as the prime example of how this would work.  When websites opened up that allowed people to compare life insurance prices, the price of life insurance dropped because people could easily see which was the better deal. Since health insurance is more complicated, a standard plan should be offered as a benchmark to allow people to access the price competitiveness of identical policies.  I also believed there should be a basic mandate for catastrophic insurance.  This probably did me in for the internship.  I never heard back for a third interview.

Those types of internships, political internships, face stiff competition as well.  That stiff competition allows the institutions to be through going ideological purists, secular religious zealots, if you will.  The same, I believe, is happening to academia.  Its becoming a political game of saying all the right things to the right people, of stroking egos, and of hiding any misgivings you may have about the secular religion you have chosen.  After all, if you dare to misspeak and express doubt, then you won't pass the institution's litmus test, and will be automatically disqualified from consideration.

Indeed, while before achieving tenure gave a Professor security and then allowed him to go astray from the flock and think on his own if he wished, now only a very lucky few are ever given tenure, so now many Professors have to stress day in and day out that they might say something that will get them kicked out of the club.  The sad thing is that it was already unlikely that dissidents would be offered the job in the first place, but now the lack of tenure offerings guarantees that any dissidence can instantly be  squashed.

All of this combined means that there are tons of very smart people, but only the few that are the most narrowminded (in appearance at least) will ever be awarded a job as a Professor or on the staff of a think tank.  This is very unfortunate.  There is already plenty of arrogance in the ivory tower.  The ivory tower is notorious for viewing anyone without a PhD with disdain, as if the opinion of other's matters little unless they have a PhD as well.  This arrogance, coupled with narrow mindedness, could not possibly be a worse combination.  We have been seeing it openly on capitol hill, this pugnacious combination.  Behind the scenes, its been wreaking havoc in the ivory tower.


Here is one article I looked at that I highly recommend looking at if you are considering a PhD.  Its fine to go after it, but please, at least do your research first before jumping in to the fray.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/02/gains-history-job-market-may-mask-serious-challenges-those-seeking-positions






Thursday, January 9, 2014

The Crisis of Inspiration

I have noticed as I have dived into videography and photography this last year that it has rejuvenated my more artistic side that laid dormant for several years.  I had strangled the artistic out of my soul out of an idealistic pursuit of political activism.  I wanted to pursue the truth and to make others aware of the truth, whatever that truth may be.  I wanted to be a part of the change in our society by bringing awareness of social issues to the masses and highlighting the hidden factors that cause these injustices. Most on the political left never look at these factors cause their political analysis is skin deep, and refuses to consider that laws they support could in any way contribute to that injustice.  Meanwhile most on the political right refuse to acknowledge the injustice in the first place.  I wanted to bring up these connections and force the public to consider them when forming opinions.

However while I still wish to do this some day, I have noticed that in the process I have denied myself a means of expressing myself.  When I started videography and photography, it forced me to embrace a side of me I had denied since elementary school, my artistic side.  Secretly it has always been there, for I have always been a romantic of sorts, but for whatever reason I didn't consider ever embracing the inner romantic, but instead denied it and turned towards "realism", or "pragmatism", or whatever you wanted to call it.  I had been caught up in our society's habitual cynicism and sarcasm.  Any time something emotionally inspired me I had to put it down, joke about, and beat the life out of it to prevent ever embracing the "useless" side of me.  Romanticism in all its forms was taboo to me, and I fought it at every turn and turned towards harsh facts instead.


Now that I have allowed the inner romantic to flourish, and to allow my creative side to express itself to the fullest,  I feel more complete as a person, and I believe ultimately it will complement my goals in life as well.  You cannot just engage people's brains, you have to engage their heart as well.  There is much beauty in the world, and many powerful stories that can inspire, and many songs that are pleasing to the ear, and many amazing landscapes that engage us on a far deeper level than mere facts.  While facts are very important, they are not the whole story.  Afterall, no one does something simply because its the "logical" thing to do.  Emotions drive us at our very core.  When deciding what our career should be, who we should date (and possibly marry), where we will live, where we will go to school, the illogical plays just as much a role, if not more of a role, than the logical.  We clearly do not base all our decisions simply on what will maximize our personal material benefit, and neither should we.

Now this does not mean we can simply ignore reality, I am not saying that at all.  Nevertheless there needs to be a realignment.  Our culture used to be highly optimistic and inspirational, with the American dream at the center of that.  However now that we know its a "myth", and therefore discredited and useless, we should simply discard it and instead tell people that have a small chance at doing something with their lives, that the system is stacked against them, and without external help they have no chance.  I just don't understand the point of that.  While I understand statistically its a myth, telling people the system is set up against you is setting them up for failure right from the beginning.  It would be better to be both realistic, and inspirational, than the dead callous realism that we have injected into our culture.  If efforts are directed towards inspiring people to achieve more, I believe they will achieve more.  While people who try something may and will fail, people who don't try at all fail by default.

All of this is to say that I have rediscovered the creative artistic side within me that I had kept in a cage, and that ultimately I believe allowing the artistic and creative to flourish along side the factual and technical will help me in my goals, and that the romantic outlook that corresponds with the artistic is just as necessary for people as the "realistic" outlook that corresponds with the factual.  I hope only that others are inspired to inspire as well, because at the core of our nation's problems is, I believe, a crisis of inspiration.