Last Night's Lessons
My favorite liberal after Christopher Hitchens Sara helped me regain control of my computer. She had me crawl around in the Jefferies Tubes (Dooooork!) of my HP, until I clicked the right button. IE works, iTunes works.
Problem is now I have a world of 99 cent choices and I don't know where to begin. I looked at the menu presented and didn't know what I wanted...so I just clicked off until I could confer with The Divine Mrs. M. That's economics!
The fundamental problem of economics is dealing with scarcity: Guns or butter, what do you want? 99 cents really isn't much of a price - almost free really. I buy a 20 oz Coke for a penny more and it's gone in 15 minutes. I also have an iPod that handles 120 songs. This weekend I spent 2 hours ripping songs off my cds I want to hear while at the gym. I'm tapped at about 40 - I still have 80 more songs to go.
I look out my office window and can count 20 places where I can eat cheap. None sound interesting. It's like that Springsteen song.
We are closing in on a world without scarcity - at least for capitalist. Is this utopia?
Who cares: I finally have Radar Love without the other 14 songs that suck on that CD.
After the computer was fixed I went to help Daughter #1 with her homework. She said she only had spelling to study so that should be quick, but when I opened her book, she had reading also. She immediately broke down into tears. She forgot her reader! Punishment from teacher Mrs. P is lose of 5 funny bucks (I'm not sure how that monetary system works, but Mrs. P is the Fed Chairman and decides the level of liquidity of the system) and 10 minutes of recess time on "the Fence."
After 20 minutes of her weeping and my calm reassure, I came up with the following solution.
"Look, I'll have you read something harder than what you normally do, I'll sign the homework book as normal and what Mrs. P doesn't know won't hurt her."
But she'll know, she'll know.
"Then have her call me. I'm the one making this decision."
More weeping. I've introduced moral uncertainty and a potential conflict of authority figures into her mind.
"That's the only solution I have for you and I think it's not a bad one so that's the way it is."
More weeping.
I pick up the homework book and The Divine Mrs. M has already signed off on it - oh, I realize, - we were looking at the wrong week. This was from a month ago. There is no reading tonight.
I then tried a lesson on overreacting and making sure problems really do exist (a lesson I have yet to learn) but she didn't really want any of it. She wanted to know why I made the mistake of looking at the wrong page to begin with. The lesson she is learning is that Fraudian daddy is not God thing. Daddy makes mistakes. I thought kids learned this lesson early on, but apparently it takes a while.
Stay You.
Back to Main Page
Problem is now I have a world of 99 cent choices and I don't know where to begin. I looked at the menu presented and didn't know what I wanted...so I just clicked off until I could confer with The Divine Mrs. M. That's economics!
The fundamental problem of economics is dealing with scarcity: Guns or butter, what do you want? 99 cents really isn't much of a price - almost free really. I buy a 20 oz Coke for a penny more and it's gone in 15 minutes. I also have an iPod that handles 120 songs. This weekend I spent 2 hours ripping songs off my cds I want to hear while at the gym. I'm tapped at about 40 - I still have 80 more songs to go.
I look out my office window and can count 20 places where I can eat cheap. None sound interesting. It's like that Springsteen song.
We are closing in on a world without scarcity - at least for capitalist. Is this utopia?
Who cares: I finally have Radar Love without the other 14 songs that suck on that CD.
After the computer was fixed I went to help Daughter #1 with her homework. She said she only had spelling to study so that should be quick, but when I opened her book, she had reading also. She immediately broke down into tears. She forgot her reader! Punishment from teacher Mrs. P is lose of 5 funny bucks (I'm not sure how that monetary system works, but Mrs. P is the Fed Chairman and decides the level of liquidity of the system) and 10 minutes of recess time on "the Fence."
After 20 minutes of her weeping and my calm reassure, I came up with the following solution.
"Look, I'll have you read something harder than what you normally do, I'll sign the homework book as normal and what Mrs. P doesn't know won't hurt her."
But she'll know, she'll know.
"Then have her call me. I'm the one making this decision."
More weeping. I've introduced moral uncertainty and a potential conflict of authority figures into her mind.
"That's the only solution I have for you and I think it's not a bad one so that's the way it is."
More weeping.
I pick up the homework book and The Divine Mrs. M has already signed off on it - oh, I realize, - we were looking at the wrong week. This was from a month ago. There is no reading tonight.
I then tried a lesson on overreacting and making sure problems really do exist (a lesson I have yet to learn) but she didn't really want any of it. She wanted to know why I made the mistake of looking at the wrong page to begin with. The lesson she is learning is that Fraudian daddy is not God thing. Daddy makes mistakes. I thought kids learned this lesson early on, but apparently it takes a while.
Stay You.
Back to Main Page
posted by Howard McEwen, CFA at Friday, April 29, 2005
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