ghostwriter's posterous

Intent is Irrelevant

In our society, far too much weight is given to the intent of an action rather than the result of an action.  A person who gives money to a homeless man may intend to help him but the money will likely go to drugs and alcohol.  A mayor can institute rent control to help poor tenants but he will end up destroying the supply and quality of housing.  The leader of a nation can desire peace but his policy of endless diplomacy can actually encourage war.  Intention costs nothing and it's easy to express.  The overwhelming majority of humans intend to live peace and prosperity as opposed to war and poverty.  Yet peace and prosperity are quite difficult to achieve.  

Humans have not spent thousands of years fighting each other and grasping their stomachs in starvation because they had bad intentions.  They did so because we are flawed and our plans seldom turn out as we expect.  The most dangerous habit our society has is to look back at history and blame former misery on bad intentions.  It convinces us that simply having good intentions will solve our current problems.  

It is easy to view history's horrors as the result of bad intentions.  Burning witches at the stake and slave owning are horrifying by todays moral standards.  But morality evolves just like scientific theories.  Just as witch burning used to be normal, scientists used to believe that outer space was full of ether and that an atom was like a positively charged plum pudding sprinkled with negative raisins.  Doctors used to electrically shock or drain blood to cure their patients.  Knowledge in many fields that was once seen as normal looks ridiculous in hindsight.  Morality and science are based on experience and our experience will always be incomplete.  We are doing things today which we think are morally justified and people will look at them in 100 years and think they are barbaric.  Just as our understanding of particle physics today will eventually look barbaric.  Few people expect scientists to be able to explain every detail of the universe but many demand universal morality of our ancestors and our leaders.  Accusing a past slave owning society of having bad intentions or being evil is as ridiculous as accusing Newton of stupidity for not understanding Relativity.  Our present, flawed society will contribute to a notion of morality that goes back thousands of years and it will eventually make us look absurd.  This is how we evolve.  Viewed through our current moral framework, most of our intentions, like those of our fore-fathers, will be good.  But since our moral framework is flawed our good intentions will still lead to undesirable results.  The key is to learn from those results.   

The most stunning recent example of society weighing intentions over results can be seen in the transition from President Bush to President Obama.  People had assumed that all our problems were the result of Bush having bad intentions.  Candidate Obama was elected largely because he was seen to have good intentions.  He wanted diplomacy, Bush wanted war.  He wanted fair trials for terrorists, Bush wanted tribunals.  He wanted an end to NSA wiretapping programs, Bush wanted to keep them.  Yet over a year into office, Obama has kept all these programs and policies in place and shows no sign of stopping them.  The thousands of protestors that burned effigies of Bush are quiet even though their expressed source of ire is unchanged.  In fact a few days ago, almost all the programs Obama campaigned against kicked into action and nabbed the would be Times Square bomber on the tarmac of Middle East bound flight.  An army intelligence plane even intercepted a call from the pre-paid cellphone he used to make the flight reservation!  These stunning accomplishments are mostly the result of George Bush who was universally thought of as having bad intentions and was labeled a warmonger who "shredded" the Constitution.

The other problem with intentions is that they are very hard to know and impossible to prove.  Even people who have been married for decades don't always know their partner's intentions.  An individual is really only capable of understanding his own intentions and it's often in his interest to keep them to himself.  Therefore it is exceedingly difficult to determine the intentions of a president that you have never met.  A misdiagnosis of intent can also lead to wildly erroneous predictions about that leader's direction.  It is much more useful to look at a person's actions and results and determine whether you think those are good or bad.  Results can be interpreted differently but at least they are out in the open.  Debating what is going on inside a persons head is the height of uselessness.  

Few English speaking leaders in the past 100 years have had better intentions than Neville Chamberlain or Jimmy Carter.  But both of their good intentions almost ended their countries.  Thankfully - and at the last minute - they were followed by men like Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan who corrected their courses.  Yet  both Churchill and Reagan were seen as warmonger and cowboy-warmonger respectively.  Only at the last minute did the public realize the precariousness of their situation and see Churchill and Reagan's wisdom.  First off, neither was a warmonger, both believed in peace through strength.  So the public misdiagnosed their intentions.  Second of all, the likely results of their proposed policies were easy to predict.  Had the public not bothered intuiting and labeling Churchill and Reagan's intentions but instead tried to imagine the results of their policies, a lot of blood, sweat and money may have been saved. 

Today's political climate is frighteningly devoid of action and results analysis.  It is more important to loosely deduce a politician's intent and label him with a convenient name like Socialist or Tea-bagger.  Furthermore intending to achieve something is hardly seen as different from actually achieving it.  Barney Frank and Chris Dodd both pushed hard for policies that lead directly to the current financial crisis.  Yet they are now the ones in crafting the policies to fix it.  They are each doing a brilliant job of looking the part of the responsible scolder of Wall St. excess even though their actions say the exact opposite.  If we don't hold politicians accountable to the actual results of their decisions rather than the acts they put on, we are a society without a compass and we will founder.  Politicians on both sides of the aisle are realizing that its more important to look like they are solving problems than it is to actually solve them.

Having good intentions will not solve our problems.  We need to make the best decisions possible, measure their outcomes and learn from our mistakes.  Lying, cheating and stealing are not wrong because they violate some absolute notion of morality.  They are wrong because our ancestors experienced the negative side effects of those actions and they have passed this experience on to us.  We add to the body of experience and evolve as a society by observing the outcomes of our decisions, exposing patterns and codifying them in words, traditions and law.  Observing intention is a rare combination of impossible and irrelevant.  The more time we spend doing it the more sideways our society will drift. 

 

 

On MBAs

I recently overheard a conversation at a coffee shop that is quite common in the Bay Area. Three 30 year old male MBAs were sitting around scheming about what startup they can latch onto that will rocket them to financial success. They talk about hopping from person to person and group to group to reach the coveted status of being "SOOOO connected." It's as if they think they will achieve some sort of Nirvana by working themselves so far up the ladder that they end up clinging to the walls inside Larry Page's asshole. This nonsense and the habit of working words like connect, sync up, add value, skill set, strategy and execute into every sentence makes my skin crawl. But it is only a surface annoyance. What is so off-putting about MBA schmooze culture - besides the hairspray - is the lack of focus on what role they intend to play for what kind of company. They act as if a startup is there to serve them instead of looking for ways to serve a startup.

A startup is like a special forces team. In the Army's Green Berets people specialize in communications, languages, field medicine and demolition. Each role is critical to the survival of the whole. Each person goes through such extensive training that his teammates don't have to think about whether or not he will do his job. Special forces operators do not care much about saluting, rank or titles and people do not need to tell them what to do. They know that they are each useless without the other so they focus on holding up their end of the bargain. The result is a small number of people can autonomously inflict damage far out of proportion to their numbers. Startups are very similar. Tiny numbers of skilled people working together can build and sell things that upend entire industries.

So if you're going to be a part of a startup, you should focus on your area of expertise and how that is going to help achieve the team's goal. If that means you can sell, then get good at selling, if that means you can build then get good at building and if that means you can promote, then get good at promoting. The problem with the worst of the MBAs is that they have a sense of entitlement. They feel like they should be in charge before they've been a part of the team. In the military these rank seekers end up climbing "the regular army" ladder. And in business they end up as middle managers of big companies. No self respecting startup would ever put up with that much pomp and circumstance.

A startup's direction and momentum is a living thing that is bigger than the sum of each individual player. It becomes a force that guides you. It exerts far more influence on you than the time of day, the weather, your family or any part of the normal physical world. You form bonds with your teammates b/c you are all captive to the same shared vision. When VC's laugh you out of a room, or when you sleep in a tent at your friends wedding b/c you're too broke to afford a hotel room, that vision, and the teammates who share it, will keep you going. It becomes a religion - something you can't prove but know is there. For whatever reason, a large majority of MBAs don't seem to get this and it comes across as unforgivable sacrilege to founders.

Many MBAs see a startup as a way to make money and when they try to act like like they're into it, it feels like a cop pretending to be a drug dealer. They're just saying what they think you want to hear. Which is a shame b/c the vast majority of technical founders are clueless about sales, accounting, marketing, pitching and all the traditional MBA roles. Engineers have a lot of fun at the expense of MBAs but it's ultimately a shared loss. If MBA programs produced people who were ready to grab a shovel and team up with engineers, there would be so many more successful startups that it would make a measurable difference in the nation's GDP. Instead MBAs go on with their empty networking and engineers hide in their basements building products that never get discovered.

In the Green Berets, a demolition specialist needs to know that if he gets shot while wiring a bridge, the medic will be able to stabilize him and the communications officer will be able to coordinate a helicopter rescue. Likewise an engineer needs to be able to build a product knowing that once it's done there will be someone to ram it down the throats of every living customer or stand on top of a mountain singing it's praises through an alphorn. When a team has faith that the necessary roles are played by competent people with shared goals, they become capable of incredibly asymmetric victories. Partaking in this miraculous process is what startups are all about. The money and glory, in the unlikely event that it ever comes to that, is just a byproduct. And that "huge rolodex" that MBAs covet does not come from hours of meaningless "connecting" in coffee shops. It come from submitting your ego to a cause greater than yourself.

PS: I know a number of very grounded MBAs who "get it" as far as startups go. But so many don't, and they are so vocal about it, that it's safe to make this generalization.

It's the Price Stupid

If healthcare costs were one cent per American per year we would not be debating it.  That would mean $3M a year would insure everyone.  At that price, Obama could fund healthcare from a building flying the hammer and sickle and nobody would call him a communist.  But when prices get to billions and trillions people start to care.  

When politicians make expensive plans they get called socialists, communists, fascist or just plain stupid.  Some of the insults have a kernel of truth, some are exaggerations and some are outrageous. But, the validity of the insults is beside the point.  The point is that people don't like the plan and they're associating it with other things they don't like.  While not the most effective form of dissent, it is a predictable aspect of human nature and one that extends well beyond politics.  

I was once at a football game and a wide receiver, striding gallantly with arms outstretched, bobbled and dropped a 30 yard pass.  A man in the stands who was so fat that he probably had trouble touching his own penis yelled, "You bum!  You couldn't catch a cold you bum!"  There was no sense to it.  The receiver was a top notch athlete - certainly not a bum - and the walking manatee yelling at him was in no position remark on anyone's athletic prowess.  As depressing a scene as this was, I couldn't help but think that if the 49ers were winning it would not have happened. 

Think of the deficit as a scoreboard.  When it starts getting big fans start booing.   They say all kinds of senseless things but the point is they are mad b/c they don't like the numbers.  The deficit is bad and if Obama-care passes it will get even worse.  So picture a stadium where a home team is down by 21 points and their quarterback, pursued by wild clawing defenders, is haphazardly zigzagging backwards.  What does the crowd sound like when he's gone back 10 yards? 20 yards?  40 yards?  I'd say that when this down is over, Obama's healthcare dancing will be the financial equivalent sack for a 30 yard loss.  Worse, the quarterback is an expensive and cocky rookie.

Obama and the Democrats complaining about the folks from the Town Halls and the Tea Parties, is like a quarterback complaining about his crowd.  Win, and the crowd will be with you, lose and they'll boo you.  And right now winning in politics means saving money.  So one would think that Obama would just down the ball or throw it out of bounds and start thinking of how to get upfield.  One would think that his prime goal in the Healthcare bill would be to save money.  Because by saving money, more people would get insurance and the fans would be cheering wildly.  Instead he shuffles backwards, pumping his arm to non-existent receivers, looking perplexed and losing yardage.  

Obama-care is designed to give poor people insurance, not to save money.  If he wants people cheering for him again he should work on a bill that controls root causes of healthcare expense rather than one that expands upon them.  Tort reform and allowing health insurance policies to travel across state lines would be a great start.  Unfortunately for progressives this means an early end to their dreams.  Because even good progressivism is more expensive than bad conservatism.  

Barring the unlikely event of a good conservative appearing to save the day, I predict the next successful political movement will resemble Nebraska football.  There will be no standouts, no artistic athletic displays and no brilliant tactics, just a large faceless team that can move the ball 3.5 yards per down.  America just signed a "superstar" based on his interviews and highlight reels.  But his embarrassing fumbles will  soon make seasoned blockers and tacklers who show up for practice look sexy.  

That is why Republicans should make the price of healthcare the line of scrimmage.  They should not get fancy and try to sack him deep on the subject of "Death Panels" or attempt any argument involving healthcare statistics from Holland or France.  Socialist, his policies may be, but cost makes for a much simpler argument.  And controlling costs will control socialism.  It is just as well because right now simple is all the Republicans can handle.  Like a football player who mindlessly repeats tropes about "teamwork" during post game interviews Republicans should turn every interview into a matter of cost.  They should even go as far as to not answer interview questions and instead cite the latest Congressional Budget Office figures that predict near infinite debt.  Thankfully in this era of newfound thrift, it should be all they need.  And thankfully for us, it will make for better policies.  

Decoding Obama

There are two reference frames to view all decisions, the absolute and the relative. Say you are in a concentration camp and you are about to be executed. One executioner says he will hang you, the other says he will burn you alive. In this situation the first executioner is merciful relative to the second. But from the absolute perspective, you should not be in the concentration camp, no less getting killed, and both men are murderers.
 
In matters of politics it's best to look at both perspectives. The absolute assumes a world without political parties and lobbyists and the relative accounts for them. Politicians and voters should approach decisions first from the absolute and then from the relative. In other words, what is the ideal solution and how can we get as close to it as possible given the constraints of our partisan system?
 
Obama operates almost exclusively in the relative framework. When he sells any plan he frames it as a choice between A or B. "Change vs. the Bush years," "Obama stimulus plan vs. let the economy collapse" and "Obama-care vs. status quo." By avoiding the absolute framework he is able to make death by hanging look merciful or the most expensive bill in US history look sensible.
 
For all his political acumen he almost always uses the same trigger phrase for a relative argument:
"We have a choice" (this search only looks at whitehouse.gov)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=obama+%...

 
After "we have a choice" comes one thing that obviously horrible and another that's not as bad.  While not especially moral, it's a very effective sales technique and it relies on well studied weaknesses in human logic. Upon hearing those key words, it's helpful to zoom out to the absolute frame, ask what outcome you'd like to see, and then see how well it matches up to those two choices.
 
But Obama goes even further. He uses another disingenuous tactic called, "The Straw Man." When he manufactures a relative argument, he choses the opposing side carefully. He either invents or picks the least desirable opposition opinion and sets it up as the straw man to be defeated. Like bait and switch a straw man is always denoted by a trigger phrase:
"There are those who say" (this search only looks at whitehouse.gov)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=obama+%...

"There are those who say," should always be treated with extreme suspicion. Upon examining who "those who say" are you may find that they either don't exist, or that's not really what they're saying. Take the third link down, "There are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science."  Maybe in an upside down twisted corner of Bin Laden's cave you might be able to find someone willing to stand by the phrase, "we cannot afford to invest in science," but you won't find anyone saying that in American politics.  In fact searching for the phrase "we cannot afford to invest in science" only brings up Obama speeches.  With these handy decoding tools you are well on your way to understanding Obama's healthcare strategy.
 
The healthcare debate has been framed from the relative perspective with one choice being Obama-Care and the straw man being "do-nothing." However this time Obama manufactured everything rather clumsily. He made the bill so expensive that his straw man actually looks better than the bait. While no American, even the Republicans, think that the right thing to do is, "nothing," more than half think that nothing is better than sending us into debt comparable only to our debt in WWII. To most American's the healthcare issues aren't as pressing an issue as WWII so they think it's not worth risking the debt. Even as other more hideous straw men are brought in to replace, "do nothing," people still aren't biting. The opposition is now an irrational rabble, storming in to townhall meetings to just to spite the Obama. They are the lackey's of "special interests" (another unidentified foe) and you're either with us, or with them.  "Oh wait!  Sarah Palin just weighed in!"  It is a testament to Obama's rhetorical skills (and blight on the voters' savvy) that he won the election by making it a choice between a nuanced Obama and the black and white world of Bush - when he is the true master of binary manipulation.
 
Yet there are still "those who say" that Obama-care should pass. To them I would say zoom out to the absolute perspective. An ideal world would be one where people got the best healthcare in the world at an affordable price and poor people would be eligible for some sort of healthcare welfare. Contrary to popular belief, healthcare is not a right. According to our Constitution rights are things "endowed upon us by our creator." Since It is unlikely that our creator will endow us with health insurance plans anytime soon, it can at most become a government service. There are many ways we can achieve this without the drastic measures and unsustainable debt of Obama-Care.
 
Here are a few arguments from highly intelligent conservatives that you won't hear about in Obama's speeches:
 
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/07/health_care_reform_a_bet...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/21/taking_a_razor_to_the_pr...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/28/a_fix_well_likely_regret...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/21/medical_care_confusion_9...
 
Obama is a politician and as much as some may like him, we should approach his statements with suspicion.  It is up to us to see through the seedy sales tactics and search out the valid opposition opinions which are too often drowned out by his stardom.  Politics need not be a vending machine.  But if it is to be treated as such, it seems silly to get fired up over a choice between Cheese Puffs or Twinkies if what you want is an apple.

Real Conservatism

The Republican party has done so well in elections not because of Nixon's Southern Strategy or because nefarious white men smoking cigars in dark rooms manipulated events.  They have done well because conservatism is much easier to sell than progressivism.  Conservatism aims to conserve what's done right.  It is a philosophy that is rooted in the simple observation that most new things people try, relationships, companies or government programs do not work.  This makes the things that do work all the more precious.  Conservatives believe that humans learn slowly through repeated informed failure rather than through sudden inspiration.  Thus, they believe that government should evolve not through sweeping changes but through incremental improvements to what is already working.  It is not the most exciting political philosophy, but it has been the most effective.  

Progressivism on the other hand is often disgusted with the status quo and freely prescribes sweeping changes.  They believe that if they put the right people in power and they will be able to set the system up properly.  They believe that wars and poverty are the result of corruption and misunderstandings rather than an inherent aspect of the human condition.  Obama is the ultimate progressive.  His election motto was "change" and he pledged to "remake this country" during his inaugural address. 

It is absolutely wrong to attempt to remake this country.  The last four presidents presided over the largest increase in wealth in the history of mankind yet Obama blithely calls this "a foundation of sand."  To be sure, the economy has taken a major hit.  But conservatives expect economic downturns because that's how it's always been.  No matter how smart we are the market will always have its peaks and valleys.  Progressives see it, and most human pain, as an abomination that necessitates a total rewrite of the rules.  Obama's disregard for what's worked in the past and overconfidence in his ability to create will be his undoing and to some extent ours.  He's simply doing too many new things at once.  And all the boy genius "Tsars" rebuilding various branches of government or running banks and car companies will not be able to beat the stunningly bad odds for humans trying new things.  

At the end of this spending and remaking bonanza there will be a terrible hangover in the form of inflation and many new dysfunctional institutions.  Americans will be burned from attempting to fly too close to the sun and bruised from the fall.  They will need a responsible level headed party to clean up the mess.  So Republicans should just focus on laying a foundation that is boring and dead right.  They should not try to play the identity politics game and attempt to turn Bobby Jindal into the Zune to fight the Obama iPod.  They should focus on the fundamentals of conservatism.  For every weekly new initiative Obama unveils there should be a boring Republican quietly explaining how government should evolve like a coral reef; layer upon layer over long periods of time.  How should look at what has worked and what hasn't, make small changes and keep going.  They should be Marge Simpson in this video:

Out of vanity, Springfield bought the monorail and it went out of control and destroyed half the city.  And at the end they turned to Marge agreed that they should just fix potholes.  The Republicans should do the same.  They don't need to use gun rights or gay marriage to "rally the base."  Screw the base.  After this era of irrational exuberance the portion of the country looking for improvement rather than remaking will be much larger than any amalgam of demographic and related interests.  

The fact that Republicans may be our best hope is not encouraging.  They laid the kindling for Obama's bonfire with the spending and Neo-conservatism of the Bush years.  But they are more likely to figure their way back to the conservative ideology than any other party.  Winston Churchill spent 20 years talking about the danger of Nazi Germany.  It was tedious to hear him constantly cite stats of a German military buildup in Parliament while England wanted to hear about coexistence.  But when reality finally set in, his record made him the only choice for Prime Minister.  And he led Western Civilization back from the brink.  It will be a long road to a conservative recovery, but if they move slowly and deliberately as their ideology suggest, they will build something much stronger and more sound than the numerous Monorails Obama is currently constructing.  

Note: While Obama is not actually planning a monorail but he is pledging to build a high speed bi-rail network:
Did anyone ever even ask for that?

Charge us for California State Parks

Lots of California outdoor enthusiasts are outraged that 200 state parks may close due to the budget crisis. I've had a lot of great experiences in California's state parks and it would be a shame to see them go. But the financial reality that we as voters created forces us to make difficult choices. Police, fire fighters and educators are all going to be fired. Even prisoners might be released to save money. In light of such cuts it's really hard to say that a pleasant afternoon in a scenic area is worth more than a child's education or the safety of a household against fire and crime.
 
So instead of screaming "No!" We should find a way to pay for the parks we love out of our own pocket. Every year I buy a National Parks pass for $80. When I swipe my credit card I always say, "This is the best $80 I spend all year." California should just charge entry fees to state parks and offer people a season pass. I would pay for it and I know many others would too. Perhaps there could also be free passes for people willing to give up a weekend to maintain trails or clean beaches. This way we can take pride in knowing that we are paying for the state services we care about rather than griping and protesting like everyone else.
 
It's important to remember that we as voters created this mess. Through our direct democracy we have increased spending and not allowed tax increases. The solution is not to complain but to accept responsibility and either get spending down or accept much higher taxes. Californians are funny in that they want all sorts of government services but they look hurt and confused when you give them a price tag. And the ones that accept higher taxes don't realize that they will harm the dynamic, creative economy that keeps us afloat.
 
California is not some magical place where tradeoffs don't apply. It's astonishing the number or sentences in California begin with, "someone should _____" or "they should ____." "They" and "someone," is really us and we pay "them" from our salaries. Taxes are just and abstraction that trick us into thinking a "they" exists who solves annoying problems. If people actually had to swipe a credit card when they vote to increase spending, few spending measures would ever pass. So why not just remove the middle man? The environmental movement suffers enough from a reputation of complaining without solutions. We should get this one simple thing right.

Funemployment

With the economy taking a hit many of my friends who have been laid off are on funemployment. Funemployment entails taking lifestyle vacation instead of looking for a job. They usually fund it with a combination of a severance package, personal savings and government checks. I think it's a great thing to take time between jobs break free from the 9 to 5 scene. Changes in locations and patterns lead to new perspectives that influence your next major decision. Yet as a taxpayer I'm more than happy to fund unemployment but not funemployment.

Of the dozens of people I know on funemployment, some are going out to clubs every night, some are traveling and some are writing books. Some, by no means all, falsely sign papers showing that they are looking for a job and get monthly checks from the government. They maintain decent lifestyles and they can often go a year or more without having a job. One friend said, "I love funemployment! I thought I was going to lose my apt and move in with my boyfriend. But the government HAS to pay for it so now we have a house in New York and East Hampton." She said that she could ride it out for a year and with the new administration in DC, perhaps a year and half. I'm not going moralize about ripping off the taxpayers, but I think the government should should change its policy. It turns out that if you pay people do nothing, they don't do anything. People are people and we are wired to take the path of least resistance.

An animation of the American workforce would look like popcorn popping. It's very chaotic but there are patterns. Those that fall pop up quickly and those on top don't necessarily stay there. If the bottom of the jar is unemployment and the top is Bill Gates then job churn is the frequency with which kernels bounce off the bottom. A large part of America's success is because our job churn is so high. Businesses can create a position, hire someone and fire them if it doesn't work. Each job lost represents a failed test and each job kept is a successful test. Since humans learn best through informative failure, American businesses literally learn and adapt faster than those in other countries. So it is vital that we keep the the number of economic experiments high which means we want the popcorn to bounce fast. This process creates healthy companies and thus better opportunities for employees.  Our current funemployment policies are like smearing maple syrup on the bottom of the jar. They encourage people to stick to the bottom and take long vacations and rather than jumping to fill an empty position. This reduces the number of potential employees and thus the number of potential experiments. Beyond that people who come off of funemployment after a year or more are less likely to be up to date on their profession and they require retraining and refreshing.

Unemployment should not be fun. The bottom of the popcorn jar should not be sticky and sweet, it should be hot and uncomfortable. If someone is fortunate enough to get a great severance package or they have ample savings, they should obviously be able to do what they want. But if one wants to live off of other people's work, there should be a cost. Creating that cost is pretty simple. If you're getting paid by the government you should become a low end government worker. This means you clean the DMV, parks and sidewalks for one day a week. This will not only dis-incentivize funemployment it will also save the government money and provide a service to the citizens who fund the unemployed. One day a week will also give people plenty of time to look for a job. The tedium of low end government work would encourage people to pop back up with extra ferocity instead of working on their tan. It would keep those on the dole to people who legitimately can't find work rather than those who choose not to find it.

Note to my unemployed friends: I know that many of you are not taking government checks.

Gavin Newsom is a Terrible Leader

I don't spend a lot of time digesting San Francisco politics but now that Gavin Newsom is running for governor of California, he has crossed my radar a lot more. He is a terrible leader for a few simple reasons:

My first real encounter with him was after surfing in an oil spill at Ocean Beach. My friends and I noticed a brown tint to the normally white foam and I surfed past past a seagull that were so covered in sludge that he could not escape a wave crashing on top of him. When my friend emerged from a wipeout with a giant black slick covering half his face and neck we headed for the shore. It turned out that the night before a trade ship had hit the Bay Bridge and spilled bunker oil that spread into the ocean. I watched a press conference about it and all Gavin could talk about was finding out who was responsible and prosecuting them. The oil was still spreading and his prime concern was the eventual prosecution of the errant party. He should have been closing beaches and taking command of the cleanup operation but he was too busy pointing fingers. Real leaders are great at prioritizing an emergency. And in the first 16 hours he prioritized blame over safety.
 
My next encounter with him was a youtube interview I found on realclearpolitics.com. He was talking about the good fortune the Democrats have been having recently. He spoke with total confidence about the US march toward "progressivism" and made anyone who was not on board out to be a creature from the dark ages. He talked about how San Francisco, under his leadership, has led the charge and how the rest of the country should be right behind him. Government healthcare for all citizens and of unemployment benefits were his major talking points. With all the brave spending of taxpayer dollars that has happened under Mayor Newsom, you would think he would have some tangible results. You would think that he wasn't the mayor of a city with a homeless problem that is so over the top that it should be called a zombie problem. Drugged out lunatics are healthy enough to jerkily wander the streets and defecate on the sidewalk. They harass passers by for the sake of doing it. If they were muggers looking for money, that I could at least understand if not condone, but there is no sense to it. It's complete chaos.
 
Here are a few vignettes from my two years in San Francisco. Most of these take place in Pacific Heights, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the world. For some perspective, my modest accommodations are a few short blocks from the CEO of Oracle and a founder of Google.
 
1) While running in the Presidio a dirty, hairy man emerged from the bushes wrapped in a filthy blanket. He snarled at me like a rabid animal and picked up the nearest rock. He threatened to throw it at me and I walked backwards away as he growled and spoke in tongues. I had to redirect an old lady walking her French Bulldog who was coming his way.
 
2) I was walking at 2am on a weeknight and a huge, visibly intoxicated, man started aggressively walking towards me. I again walked backwards away and picked up my phone to call the cops. A car then drove up to the stoplight where he was standing and he tried to get in the back seat. The door was locked and he started kicking and punching it. The driver slammed on the gas and blazed through the red light. By that time I had the dispatcher on the phone and gave them the details. Another car pulled up and he did the same thing. I continued watching and relaying to the dispatcher from a half a block away. On the other side of the street a bus pulled up and he ran to flag it down. I could clearly see through the huge glass window that he did not pay a fare and the bus driver nodded and let him on. You see, under Gavin Newsom, homeless people ride public transportation for free. The cops showed up ten minutes later and I told them what happened.
 
3) After surfing at Ocean Beach my friends and I stopped at the local shop for some wax and supplies. On a sunny sat afternoon a homeless man was waving a knife at pedestrians, bikers, rollerbladers and all comers on a bike path. He yelled obscenities threatened anyone within a 50 foot radius. I called the cops, they came and when I got out of the shop they had released him.
 
4) My girlfriend can barely walk to work without getting harassed, followed and in one case assaulted. Her stories are so numerous that it would require another essay.
 
I have lived in DC at a time when it was more dangerous than Beruit in the 80's and I have spent enough time in NYC pre and post Giuliani to count as living there. Yet San Francisco is the only city I've seen where undead blabbering maniacs are allowed to roam free -- AND -- under Gavin Newsom, get paid to do it. I have called 911 more times in the last two years in SF than the other 28 years of my life combined. Gavin Newsome's policies may solve the psychological problems of the guilt ridden privileged, but they don't make the city better. And that's the metric by which he should be judged. Giving out healthcare and benefits is easy, controlling their unintended consequences is not. If poverty and crime could be fixed simply by giving people money and healthcare the world would have fixed it a long time ago. He thinks that the definition of success is to take money from the productive and sprinkle it on the unproductive like Santa Claus. California voters should not let this mentality go statewide.
 
An oil slick moves much slower than a terrorist attack or a pandemic so he's certainly not prepared to lead in a real disaster. And he struts around with his slicked back hair gazing in condescension at the cave men who haven't seen the progressive light without noticing that his own house is hardly in order. He hasn't produced results for San Francisco and he doesn't seem to be aware that results need to be produced. His policies may be cute their results may be edgy in San Francisco, but California is the 5th biggest economy in the world and the experiment should end here.
 
Footnotes:
Here is the video. Barf bag not included.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/03/05/gavin_newsom_on_health_care...