That's so weird!

The government of Venezuela being boldly progressive has, over the past several years, taken greater and greater control over various economic sectors, among these the energy sector.

They have used all of their progressive skill & acumen, all of their socially-just compassion to provide low-cost power so the poor could finally enjoy a decent standard of living.

What was the result of these nobly-envisioned price controls?

Rampant shortages.(fn1)

If only there had been some way of foreseeing the possibility of this outcome. But, alas, this must be chalked up as an odd aberration, the root causes of which may never be fully known. At any rate, the solution is clearly more direct involvement by the government in energy production and, increasingly, consumption.

Because when the government sets out to provide something good for the people and, inevitably, destroys what was already there, the blame is never on the good-hearted, hard-working progressive overlords, but on the venal people greedily using too much. Thus Chavez has taken to berating his citizens for taking showers over 3 minutes and getting fat.

Don't worry, there are no lessons here for our own impending government takeover of health care. As I say, this is a weird, totally unpredictable one-off kind of event with no generalizable lessons. When our own well-intentioned, very smart & compassionate progressive overlords redesign a massive chunk of our economy for the betterment of the poor & everyone else it will be smooth sailing with no unintended consequences or highly predictable economic ill-effects. None.

fn1: I'd add that the NY Times is, predictably, completely flummoxed by this odd appearance of shortages in the wake of price controls. I'd point out this might be their ideology once again blinding them to reality but pointing out their manifold failings gets tiresome even for me at times.

Commonsense regulation

Obama has issued an executive order forbidding all federal employees from texting while driving government vehicles or while using government-issued phones in their own vehicles.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that in the coming days he will issue additional orders confronting such menaces as: stabbing yourself in the eye with a government pen or with your own pen while engaged in government business; blithely driving your government car into a lake or driving your own car into a lake while engaged in government business unless that business expressly requires the driving of a car into a lake; and, finally, jumping off a government bridge or off a private bridge while engaged in government business just because "everyone else is doing it".

While I'm sure that texting-while-driving is a rising menace, I wonder if the type of people who are prone to engaging in it are really the types to stop because they've been told it's against regulations. That is, if you are so stupid that you willfully disregard obvious and immediate threats to your own safety, will being told not to by an abstract regulation really stop you?

Also, if there are so many government employees who are, in fact, so stupid that they will place themselves in danger for no good reason but will stop if told not to, does this suggest that we might have some work to do on improving hiring standards in the federal workforce?

But perhaps I'm looking at that last point the wrong way. Maybe idiots who will follow instructions to the letter but are incapable of performing even the most basic independent thoughtful analysis for themselves are exactly who we need to carry out the detailed will of our government...

What 12-year Old Girl's Basketball, TE Lawrence and Computer War Games have in Common

I'm still under the gun with work-related stuff until next Wed., so posting will be fairly nonexistent until then.

I did just want to point out that Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker is stupid and approaches self-parody.

I don't have time to go through it point- by-point illustrating its manifold stupidities, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

I'll just tease it by saying that one of his main arguments is that men's college basketball way under-utilizes the full-court press. His primary support for this is that a parent-coach had a lot of success with it in his 12-year old daughter's league.

No, seriously.