"Rubble doesn't cause trouble." -- John Derbyshire
The political news has been monotonous lately, and I'm disinclined to dwell on matters as tawdry as philandering Congressmen and combative Attorneys-General, so here are a few more chunks of concrete from the wreck of the recent past. Mind the asbestos!
1. Conversations I: Torture.
CSO: Fwughmp!
FWP: I've never heard it put quite that way before.CSO: It's just this damned post-nasal drip.
FWP: A nasty affliction. Among non-lethal nuisances, it's one of the worst.CSO: Think someone somewhere is working on it?
FWP: You never know. There are people researching why toddlers fall off their tricycles.CSO: Say, what about applying for a federal grant?
FWP: Well...maybe, but the research might be put to evil purposes. Which would you rather endure? Post-nasal drip or being waterboarded?
CSO: Forget I said anything about it.
2. Conversations II: Fashion.
My diminutive (5' 0.5") Vietnamese-American sweetie Duyen, probably the smartest shoe addict in America, stunned me yesterday with a declaration I never expected to hear from her: In her opinion, women's high heels are getting too high. This led to the following exchange:
FWP: Coming from you, that's a revelation. Do you think they're too high to walk in at all?
DK: That's never been an issue with the really high ones. A woman wearing high-high heels doesn't expect to walk more than a few dozen steps in them.FWP: So what's the issue, then?
DK: The proportions. The shoes are starting to look grotesque. They don't flatter the wearer. The proportions are all wrong.FWP: The thick platforms?
DK: That and all the crap the designers hang on them.FWP: The implications are disturbing.
DK: What do you mean?FWP: You're going to need a new way to squander your vast fortune.
DK: I'd have to anyway. All my closets are full.
The laws of physics win again -- in two domains at once, this time.
3. Matters fictional.
Just yesterday, Ol' Remus and I were exchanging thoughts about contemporary science fiction -- neither of us thinks much of most of it -- and it occurred to me that part of my loss of interest in what other SF writers have been producing arises not from craft -- most contemporary genre fiction is written better than that of fifty years ago -- but from a pandemic exhaustion of imagination.
The speculative genres' major tropes have repeated almost without variation over the decades since Gernsback. While the improvements in their craft have been considerable, few SF writers seem capable of coming up with anything genuinely new. The fantasy genre seems equally bereft of novelty. As for horror, please! Being compelled to read one more novel about vampires, werewolves, or zombies might send me into a killing spree of my own.
This struck me in part because, as old people often do, I've been returning to old favorites lately. I've recognized virtually every SF, fantasy, and horror motif of importance in books fifty years old and more. Those older novels lack much of the precision, grace, and flair I've come to expect from newer works, but the newer books very seldom innovate in matters of plot and genre-motif.
For one whose principal pleasure comes from the printed word, this is particularly disturbing. So, Gentle Reader: have you any recommendations of new writers and works for an old SF / fantasy aficionado? Books that genuinely bring something original into those genres? My reading stack is getting thin!
4. Shortages.
Milton Friedman said on more than one occasion that "Economists don't know much, but we do know how to create shortages and surpluses." [From Free To Choose] He went on to explain that what gives rise to a shortage is the compulsory fixing of the price of a good below what people are willing to pay to "clear the market." An old gag has some point:
Elderly Shopper to Butcher: How much is your ground beef?
Butcher: $4.99 a pound.Elderly Shopper: That's outrageous! Why, across the street they only ask $2.99 a pound.
Butcher: Then why aren't you buying it across the street?Elderly Shopper: They're all out of ground beef.
Butcher: Well, Madam, when I was all out of ground beef, it was $2.99 a pound here, too.
Demand, that all-important microeconomic concept, isn't just "what people want;" it's "what people want and are willing and able to pay for it." Which brings us to the subject of medicine and medical insurance.
At this time, the Affordable Care Act has decreed fixed prices, de facto, for medical insurance. Those prices are well beyond what many Americans are willing or able to pay for coverage. This has given rise to a "shortage:" a large pool of uninsured who would not be uninsured in a free market. The effect will be compounded as insurers raise their premiums in response to the skew of the insured pool further toward persons whose ages and conditions imply elevated payouts. We've already seen average increases of about 12% over the past six months; there will be more.
But a shortage of a widely desired good is never unaccompanied by another phenomenon of governmental price fixing: a black market.
I've wondered for a while now what form the American black market in medical insurance will take. Insurance is a kind of bet, and we certainly have black markets in gambling of other sorts. I predict that this one will be no exception...and I tremble to think what that will mean for the enforceability of the black-market insurer's obligation to pay for the contracted coverage.
To live outside the law, you must be honest. -- Bob Dylan.
In a black market, honesty develops from the ugliest and most violent imaginable processes, though they're no less necessary for that. That doesn't make the prospect any prettier.
5. Bread.
Please, Gentle Readers, keep the bread-price quotations coming. The ones I've already seen are most illustrative, but I need as comprehensive a set as possible to continue the assessment of actual (i.e., as opposed to federal-fantasy) inflation (i.e., dollar deterioration). On your next shopping trip, just jot down the price of a pound loaf of Pepperidge Farm (or whatever the first-echelon commercial bread is in your region), and attach it to the post below as a comment.
Thanks in advance.
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