Graduation rates, market coverage rates, rate of return, RBIs, batting averages, the Dow Jones or S&P Index, bestseller lists, consumer ratings, ACT , SAT, other school test scores…  We’ve gotten to the point in American society where numbers seem to define everything – especially success.  And if you can’t quantify it, then either it’s not worth doing… or there’s something wrong with your analysis and understanding.

I’ve seen article after article talking about the need to increase retention and graduation rates in education, both from high school and from college.  I can’t recall a single one emphasizing the need to improve students’ ability to think, to write and speak coherently, and to complete tasks well and on time.  The emphasis is all on the numbers – how many and what percentage graduate and with what degrees.  My wife has taught at the same university for twenty years, and today, if one looks at test scores, the students are far brighter than those of twenty years ago.  Yet twenty years ago, students who could not write a coherent essay were a small minority; today, those who can are the minority.

Today’s students cannot only not remember facts critical to their field for more than a few days, but even when given those facts, most cannot create a logical structure with them.  But the numbers say they’re brighter.  So do their grades, as a result of rampant grade inflation, another effect of “numbers” emphasis. Yet regardless of what the numbers say, more practical evaluations indicate that that basic measures of education, like thinking, reading, writing, retaining knowledge and being able to use it effectively, are actually declining. But what’s happening in education is symptomatic of an illness that pervades all of society.

Look at business.  Companies are graded almost exclusively on the numbers, to the point that if a company’s reported earnings drop a few pennies per share for one quarter, the stock price may drop dollars.  And those same companies pursue profits to the extreme, often taking enormous risks to add a few percentage points to their rate of return, even when those rates of return, as in the case of hedge funds and investment banks, were among the highest in finance and industry.  Those “numbers” weren’t enough, and those oh-so-brilliant business types pushed for higher numbers… and crashed the economy.

In sports, athletes are paid on their numbers, and the sports sections are filled with tables and stories dealing with those numbers.  Is it any wonder that there are doping scandals, when only a few percentage points, or seconds, or some other numerical differential that is comparatively small, equates to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars’ difference in compensation?

As a not-quite-side note, what I also find amazing is that for all this emphasis on numbers, the vast majority of people who emphasize them don’t know what they mean or even whether they’re relevant, not to mention the fact that millions if not billions of dollars are spent, or cut from spending, based on projections of future numbers, projections that are almost always revised and often far too optimistic.

Rate-of- return, return-on-investment – those can mean anything, depending on how the underlying figures are juggled.  Which is more accurate, ROI based on the cash value of the investment at the time it was made… or the present value of that investment, and if it’s the present value, which of a half dozen measures of inflation are you using to determine it?  What does an increased rate of high school graduation mean when the students who are graduating have a lower rate of reading comprehension and mathematical understanding [NOT test scores on those subjects]?  Does it mean that nothing has changed, except that more students have a piece of paper?

The problem with chasing numbers is that the numbers become more important than what they’re supposed to measure. Years ago, I came across an analysis of the results of a college degree, and one of the surprising results, at least to the analysts, was that the college or university from which one graduated was far more predictive of future success than was class ranking.  Likewise, the early and even the present studies of the value of a college degree are missing the point. When the first studies in this area were made, college graduates were in fact a small percentage of the population and an academic and social elite. That these graduates made more money over a lifetime had less to do with their having a piece of paper than their having mastered the range of skills necessary to obtain that piece of paper… and the study about which college trumping comparative class rank actually supports that point of view.  Elite colleges require elite students and demand they achieve more, so much so in some cases that students in the lower levels of an Ivy League-level school may well learn more than all but the very, very few in the majority of state universities.

Test scores don’t measure those differences well, because tests have gotten better and better at measuring innate intelligence, rather than applied intelligence… and it’s applied intelligence in the end that determines success, just as it’s the effectiveness of applied capital and personnel that determines corporate success over time, not this quarter’s or this year’s accountant-adjusted profits.

The best “numbers” usually go to the best statistical liars, and it’s well past time to get back to looking at the qualities and quality [or the lack of it] that the numbers are so good at distorting… or not measuring at all.

One of the most basic problems with a market economy is that it values goods and services essentially on their cost of procurement and not upon their importance to society, or even to survival.  For survival, for example, two of the most basic goods are air and water.  Without air, we would die within minutes, without water, within days.  Yet in any market economy, there is no charge for air, and an ounce of gold, which has no intrinsic value at all, will cost somewhere over $1,500, while an ounce of the most expensive bottled water might cost five cents [fifteen cents in New York], and tap water, in my area, costs about a tenth of a cent a gallon.

The same discrepancies occur in paying for services.  Both society and individuals can exist without hedge fund managers, who are, as a category, about the highest-paid individuals in U.S. society, and who collect salaries/bonuses in the million dollar plus category.  On the other hand, firefighters, police officers, and teachers, who are vital to an organized society, have among the lowest salaries of skilled professionals because they are public employees and considered easily replaceable.  What essentially determines those relative salaries are two factors – how much income an employee generates and what it will cost to replace him or her.  This is the bottom line of the business model so often touted these days by politicians and business people.  And from a profit and economic basis, it makes sense – but only from those bases, and often, only in the short-run and only to the specific organization.

What market economics ignores is the value provided by those “cheap” and “replaceable” people. Without teachers, those high-paid hedge fund managers would be even harder to find, because there wouldn’t be enough educated people to spare any for complicated financial dealings.  Without firefighters, sanitation workers, police officers, and other public infrastructure employees, cities as we know them in the Europe and the western hemisphere would become uninhabitable… or at the very least, warrens of filth, squalor, and crime.

Even within the business community, the heads of companies often do not know the return on their investment in their employees.  A year or so ago, I ran across a study on retail stores that concluded most large retail establishments would be more profitable if they hired more staff, rather than less.  It’s anecdotal, but my wife and I came up with five separate occasions in the last month or two when we went somewhere to purchase a specific item… and left without purchasing it because we couldn’t get service, not even a polite, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”  I’ve watched people walk out of restaurants because they sat there for five or ten minutes without seeing a server.

Now… the latest “buzz” in education is the need for more professionals in the STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics] areas, and politicians have even proposed charging students more for university courses in curricular areas where there are fewer jobs, such as the performing arts, history, and philosophy.  But, of course, I haven’t seen any move to raise tuition or cut faculty salaries in law and business, where we now suddenly have far more graduates than jobs for them.  The fact is that a society needs a wide range of abilities and skills, and the scarcity of skill or a job shouldn’t be the only factor in determining what it pays.

But then, to pay more for people who provide vital functions, in order to get better individuals in those fields…. how shocking… how… uneconomic… how at odds with the business model.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but when people talk about rich, I get an image of someone who has a 10,000 square foot mansion or an enormous penthouse in Manhattan, or their own private jet, who drives a car that costs more than our house and whose vacations are often on private islands or on yachts the size of a Navy destroyer.  That’s what it means to be rich.  And I think most people have similar ideas.

That may be why more than a few people I know were incredulous when President Obama declared that couples who make more than $250,000 a year were “rich.”  The general consensus among them was that families that made $250,000 were comfortable, even in some cases fairly well off, and possibly upper-middle class… maybe.  But rich?  No way.

One couple pointed out that while their house was paid for, it had taken 20 years, and that it wasn’t exactly a mansion, but a raised ranch of 3500 square feet with a modest two-car garage on a half-acre lot in a nice neighborhood, but certainly not one filled with mansions or even McMansions… and that she and her husband had only taken one vacation in the past ten years, and that their cars, a four year old GM Denali and a twelve year old RAV, while also paid for, were not exactly luxury vehicles… and that the rest of their possessions were similar… and that what they had saved for retirement might provide them with a comfortable but even more modest lifestyle than what they now enjoy.

Another couple just laughed. They both work in Manhattan, and their combined income, I’d estimate, is probably a little over $200,000. They can’t afford to live in New York itself, not in anything other than a shoebox, and instead own an 1800 square foot co-op apartment – definitely not a luxury one — in the suburbs north of the city and commute to work by train.  Again, they’re certainly not starving or impoverished, but any reasonable person might find it difficult to insist that they are on the borderline of being rich.

I could give example after example of similar instances, of couples making $200,000 – $300,000, who may be well-off, but are anything but rich.  They don’t own a Mercedes or a Rolls-Royce.  They don’t travel first class on the Queen Mary, or have luxury skyboxes at the Superbowl, or millions – or even tens of thousands of dollars – stashed away in Switzerland.  And they don’t squander money on anything.

Now, I know that the IRS statistics say that only something like two percent of the population makes more than $250,000, and only one percent makes more than $450,000, but those numbers can be misleading.  To begin with, there’s a significant difference between income and wealth, and between sources of income.  For example, compare a businessman or a doctor, or a two income family that makes $250,000 a year to an heir or heiress getting the same income from sitting on $20 million in tax-free municipal bonds.  A couple that averages $200,000 in income for 40 years would have to save 25 % of their pre-tax income every year [and closer to a third of their after-tax income] to put away two million dollars… and even with compounding of those assets, they’d likely only provide a retirement income of $50,000- $75,000. That’s certainly comfortable, but rich?  And even with Social Security on top of that, it’s barely middle-class in places like New York, San Francisco, and other high-cost cities.

Rich at $250,000 a year?  I don’t think so, not unless someone can explain how you can have a mansion, a Mercedes, and a private jet on that… and not end up in jail for theft or tax evasion.

Several weeks ago, and perhaps it was longer, one commenter made the astute observation that technology magnifies everything, both the good and the bad. I think that’s definitely true, but, based on reflection and more recent observation, I have the definite feeling that it magnifies some things more than others – and incompetence is one of them.

What’s the basis for this conclusion?  Human nature… and the fact that incompetent actions have a multiplier effect, and when that multiplier effect is magnified by technology, incompetence has a disturbing tendency to spiral into ever greater incompetence because, at least at present, most computer systems are designed to carry out instructions with great efficiency and speed, and if the instructions or the programming are flawed, the magnification of difficulties or ineptness can quickly result in enormous problems.

The great financial meltdown and the ensuing recession from which we still may not have emerged is one very good example. Without computerization and sophisticated software, the development and management [such as it was] of securitized derivatives, CDOs and the like, simply would not have been possible.  Add to that the consolidation of the banking and mortgage industries, and their centralization with decisions being made by a few, again a situation not possible without high technology.  Follow up with sophisticated and high tech profit models, and top off with nano-second securities trading technology.  At that point, we had a highly concentrated and centralized structure where bad decision-making, a lack of competence in understanding what those computer models meant, and a poor understanding, if any understanding, of some basic economics could combine to bring down the entire economy.  And that is exactly what happened.

The lithium-ion battery fiasco with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, which could easily have become a disaster, is another example of how technology misused, I venture, can multiply incompetence. Several aviation battery specialists have made the observation that lithium-based batteries have a tendency to overheat if, first, the individual batteries are too large, and, second, if their architecture [i.e., the way in which they are arranged and interconnected] is not well-designed, and, third, if they are overcharged, although so far the third condition does not appear to be a factor.

There are also innumerable simpler forms of technologically multiplied incompetence with often disastrous results, such as the simple combination of cell-phone texting with the operation of an automobile, particularly when the operator’s skills are marginal, in the case of teenage drivers or of tired or distracted drivers.  Or the 80 to 100 car pile-ups that seemly happen routinely anymore because of the combination of incompetent driving [driving too fast for the conditions] in fog or snow. Somehow, I doubt that there were ever hundred-carriage pile-ups.  And how many product recalls have we experienced because of manufacturing or design failures multiplied by the technology of mass production?

Incompetence in data-processing/computer systems is another area where a small incompetence can be multiplied a million-fold.  As I noted in an earlier blog, Delta failed to renew its online website security system, and for two days thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of customers could not make reservations. A software error in the Utah Medicaid system allowed hackers access to personal information of over 700,000 thousand people and the Social Security numbers of more than 280,000 individuals.

Now, the optimists will say, “But look what good technology does.”  I’d agree, but technology’s greatest asset, these days, seems to its efficiency in replacing people, and cutting costs, far more than multiplying benefits.  Yet those people, especially good competent people, are, for lack of a better term, often the circuit-breakers who stop the magnification of incompetence.  So, at present, technological systems are optimized for, if you will, magnification of whatever they do.  That means doing more with fewer people and less oversight and supervision, since one of the areas of employment that’s taken the biggest hit is middle management… and that includes people who can actually solve problems.

Just look at computerized telephone answering systems. If your inquiry doesn’t fit in the proper “box,” it may take what seems like forever to get an answer – if you can at all… and that’s another form of incompetence, magnified by technology.  Now… I may be overcritical, but, all in all, I’m seeing incompetence and outright criminality magnified far more than benefits.

What about you?

Why are so many, if not most, of the news stories about things going wrong, about murders, serial killers, earthquakes, child molesters, kidnappings, and the ugly side of life?  Why does most television/satellite entertainment focus on crime and other forms of ugly sensationalism?  Why do reporters and so-called journalists attempt to get the dirt on anyone and everyone?  Why does almost every public figure have to worry about photographers with telephoto lenses catching them or their children in a private or embarrassing moment?

The simple answer is, of course, that these things sell better, and better ratings mean higher advertising dollars, and because the United States, in general, values more dollars above everything else, the entire media spectrum is looking for the most sensational stories and views. And almost invariably, ugly is more sensational than beautiful – with the one exception of beautiful people, usually women, and usually depicted in ways that are close to pornographic.

But there are a few other reasons, I think.  One is that “ugly” is easy.  Doing something well is difficult.  Creating something inspiring and beautiful is anything but easy. There are ugly stories everywhere, and capturing them doesn’t take that much effort.   Just look at the news  — ugly, violent, ugly, and, oh, yes, one feel-good story for dessert. As far as dramas and comedies go, writing shock-value, in-your-face episodes takes far less talent than does writing something sophisticated or nuanced.

Obviously, that’s not anywhere near the entire reason, because writers and producers wouldn’t produce such well-packaged and expensive productions based on the ugliness in life and human nature if they didn’t sell.  So… why do they sell?

Because people want to feel good about themselves, and in this dumbed-down mass media world in which we live, writing and producing anything that requires thought on the part of the audience limits that audience because people who truly think are in the minority, and when one requires the majority to think, they either get unhappy or bored because they can’t understand it, or angry because it’s not what they like.  Yes, there are some shows and movies that do exalt and display excellence, but all too many of those get poor ratings or are slotted for niche times and markets.

Then, too, there’s the problem of identification.  Characters in mass entertainment can’t show too much excellence – except in the area of sex and mayhem – because people can’t identify with excellence, except, again, in sex, athletics, and violence.  Most people know they aren’t excellent and don’t want to be reminded of that fact.

Now… these are facts and traits that have existed with people for tens of thousands of years, and certainly for the last few thousand. So why are things so bad now?

In some respects… they aren’t any different from what they always were.  Even in the western hemisphere, we’re not all that far removed from torture and executions as public spectacles, and certainly, we’re no strangers to the violence of war.  What has changed, however, is that the media have depersonalized the ugliness that occurs while simultaneously removing it from life.  As someone who has seen people die in front of me, and, in other cases, almost die, I can say that such personally experienced violence and death hits one with a far greater impact than anything that can be depicted on a screen, large or small, as witness the amount of PTSD cases created by war or sustained violence.  By depicting such violence and ugliness as entertainment, presenting it as a step removed from personal experience, if you will, even while calling it real, or a reality show, the media have diluted the impact.  So… in order to increase the impact, they compensate by increasing the ugliness or in-your-face components… until people get used to that, and then they do it again.  And this bleeds over, literally, into other areas.  Baseball was once America’s pastime and favorite sport. Now, the favorite sports are the ones that are far more dangerous and violent, and some sports that were largely about skill and technique, such as basketball, have become often violent contact sports.

In any case, for whatever the reasons, ugly is easy… and profitable, and that’s something I find disturbing and sad.

Apparently, at least eleven U.S. senators and a number of news organizations are concerned about the U.S. use of drone aircraft to kill individuals or small groups whom the Administration determines are a threat to U.S. security. Like most thinking individuals, I believe in checks and balances and Constitutional limitations on the power of any one branch of government, having witnessed and lived through periods of both Congressional and Administration abuse of power, not to mention having concerns about that potential from the Judicial Branch.

Two particular concerns raised by these individuals, however, concern me just as much as the possibility of Executive Branch abuse of power does. The first concern is the idea that an American citizen abroad plotting terrorist activities is somehow different from any other individual plotting terrorist activities. A related concern that has been expressed by some is that the memos being sought allow the president the “power to kill” any American anywhere with no oversight and no legal process. The second major concern is the idea that somehow drone attacks away from the battlefield are in themselves wrong.

What has led to these concerns is that the nature of war and conflict have changed, or rather war has changed, perhaps regressed, from an almost formal pattern of conflict that prevailed for centuries to a wide range of the use of force, including the possible use of everything from terrorism and counter-terrorism to the possible employment of nuclear weapons on a civilization-destroying basis. And neither tactics, strategies, nor legalities have totally kept pace.

All that said, I’m sorry, but a terrorist is a terrorist, regardless of nationality.  There may be very good reasons to limit drone attacks on individuals, but whether the target is an American or a foreign national is not one of them. At the same time, allowing the precedent of targeting an American citizen without due process raises another question.  When and where does an American citizen become an enemy combatant?  Saying that the president or the armed forces cannot attack or kill an American citizen plotting terrorist acts against Americans and others without a warrant is ludicrous, but allowing the president or the government authority to kill expatriate citizens, or other citizen, or for that matter foreign nationals, without defining the conditions that justify such actions could easily allow the “legal” transition to a type of police state.

The question of allowing drone attacks is, at least to me, somewhat less problematic.  There certainly are areas and places and individuals against which drones should not be used, for any number of good and legal, not to mention moral, reasons, but in a world where terror can and has struck anywhere, where terrorists and those supporting them do not limit themselves to a defined battlefield and never will, the idea of limiting the use of drones to a defined battlefield is not only absurd, but also runs the considerable risk of resulting in the killing of not only more soldiers but more civilians.  If one cannot use drones away from the battlefield, then what are the options left to the government?  Terrorists do not respond to negotiations, if indeed, they could even be found for such negotiations; they just want their demands for power met, and virtually every terrorist group ends up killing and oppressing others when it obtains power.  If drones cannot be used, then governments must either do nothing or use other means of force, and that usually means either economic sanctions or boots on the ground, both of which fall disproportionately upon the innocent.

Both of these concerns, if carried to extremes, reflect a certain naiveté, if I’m being kind, or a willful blindness in the service of ideology, if I’m being more honest.

Is there that much difference between someone who shoots someone in a gang war or a robbery and someone who shoots innocents in pursuit of political power?  In either case, people are dead because someone wants something and believes they can get it in no other way.  And in the United States, we have plenty of American citizens, unfortunately, who kill to get something, whether that something is fame, glory, material goods, revenge, or to take their anger out on others. While we do have means to deal with such individuals, assuming we can discover and apprehend them, those mechanisms do not operate overseas, and many countries, especially in parts of Asia and the Middle East, are either actively or passively endorsing terrorists.

The Senate is right to look into the policies adopted and employed by the military and intelligence agencies, but to insist on pre-conditions that exempt all Americans from actions to preclude terrorism or those which may effectively leave our government with no effective way to deal with terrorists in certain countries is anything but wise.

There have been a number of stories lately about the Millennial Generation, loosely defined as those young adults born between 1982 and 2004, and one author has even written a book claiming that the Millennial Generation will be the next great generation.  Let us just say that I have my doubts, but I could certainly be wrong, since that generation has another five to six decades to allay my concerns.

What I do know, however, is that a significant proportion of that generation has an enormous and largely undiagnosed problem that has gone largely unrecognized.  Oh, some of the symptoms of that problem have been widely reported, but these “symptoms” are seen as separate problems, rather than as a manifestation of a far larger problem.

One of those symptoms was reported in a four-page feature spread in The New York Times last Sunday.  It was all about a once-promising young man who ended up overusing a popular attention-deficit disorder drug [Addarall] and who ended up committing suicide at age 24.  The young man had never been diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder and clearly did not.  He had been focused as a teenager, excelled academically, and had gotten a full academic scholarship to a good but not Ivy League caliber college, where he was his college class president and played on the baseball team.  But… in college he had a tendency to procrastinate and then attempt to write papers and cram for exams at the last moment, and that tendency worsened as he progressed in college, and as he relied more and more heavily on drugs such as Addarall.  He wanted to be a doctor, but he didn’t score well enough on the MCAT exams to be accepted at top-flight medical schools. After college, and as adult, he visited doctors and convinced them that he was indeed ADHD and needed Addarall and other attention disorder drugs.  He became violent upon occasion, then paranoid, and depressed and then swore off the drugs for a brief time, which abrupt withdrawal caused even more problems and likely led to his suicide.

What does this sad story have to do with the Millennial Generation?  To me, it’s emblematic of a generation that has far too many members believing that everything can be accomplished instantly and with little real work. Real work, either physical or intellectual, requires focus and concentration… and neither are being taught or instilled to the degree necessary among the younger generation.  No…for all too many of them, it’s the mouse-click, easy button generation.  If you don’t have the self-discipline to study, take a pill to focus your concentration.  If you don’t want to do real research for that paper, use the internet the night before, doctor your plagiarized copied words, fake the references, and turn it in the next morning. If you don’t want to do the hard workouts to stand out in sports, or if they aren’t enough, try various steroids.  If a student can’t or won’t concentrate, all too often the first option is ADHD drugs. If a student, or anyone, is depressed, the first option is usually anti-depressants.

The use of ADHD drugs has become epidemic.  According to the Times, over 14 million prescriptions are filled monthly, and usage by young adults in the age range from 20 to 39 has almost tripled in the last five years.  In addition to that, over 90% of the media-reported school-related shooting incidents involve students or former students on anti-depressants.

Now… to be fair, it’s certainly not entirely their fault, perhaps even largely not their fault.  We have a media culture that extols instant celebrity and instant accomplishment…. and the parents of that generation have made it worse by insisting that an child can do anything if they just “want” it enough. You want to sing professionally?  Don’t bother with years of studying voice and music; just get on “American Idol” or “The Voice.”  You want to write the next great bestseller?  Throw it together on your computer with spell-check and grammar check; get some friends to read it; and then self-publish it as an e-book. The media and the internet are filled with ways to reach instant success.  Then add to that a generation or two of “any child can do anything” and “no child left behind” and incredible numbers of parents who believe that their child can do no wrong, not to mention educational curricula on the primary and secondary level that have become, except in a comparative handful of schools, watered down, and top it off with astounding grade inflation all the way through college and even graduate school, and you have a generation where far too many leave school with vastly inflated ideas of their own competence and often no idea of what real work requires. They also have no idea that there are many things they cannot do, no matter how much they “want” them, and no matter how hard they may try.

What all of this praise, the instant success myth, and the wanting ignore are the hard facts.  Only a few high school athletes will ever become professional athletes, and even fewer become stars.  Only a minuscule percentage of “gifted” school-age writers will ever become best-selling authors.  Medical schools have become so competitive and selective that only the truly gifted and hard-working will be accepted to the best, and even mixed A and B grades will likely disqualify most applicants – unless the A grades are in the hard sciences.

And once a young person enters a profession, it doesn’t get easier. Only a comparative handful of lawyers ever make “big bucks.”  Perhaps one in a thousand junior executives makes it to the top.  Most professional singers sing in clubs or in second or third tier performance venues, hoping to make enough just to keep singing. And for most of those who do eventually succeed in any profession, it takes years of hard and dedicated work, and more than a little concentration… not a mouse click or an instant prescription for something to improve concentration or feelings.

That message isn’t being delivered… and the failure to do so has already caused untold misery… and a toll that we haven’t even begun to count.

Before my wife and I were married, over 21 years ago, she informed me of a number of things, telling me she didn’t want me laboring over any misconceptions about her.  She was totally and brutally honest about herself… and that forced me to do my best to do the same, and what we said will remain between us – mostly.  She did tell me that she was required, by her job, or at least by every job she’d had in twenty years, to be a pack-rat. She also told me that, any time she threw the only copy of something out, or any prop item, she invariably needed it, even if it hadn’t been required for years… and that turned out to be true in the first years of our marriage, and I’m not about to go into details, except to say that she was right.

The past twenty years have confirmed that she was absolutely right.  She’s had to keep a copy of every program on which she has sung, every journal article or review she’s ever written, all the documentation on every opera or musical theatre performance she has directed, all to prove, time and time again, in the name of accountability and proving qualifications, that she can do and has done what she’s done. Part of this was due to the endless tenure process and part has been because of post-tenure review, and part has been because of accreditation reviews, and part because of changes in college deans… and so forth.  Part is because she teaches singing, and because certain sheet music, particularly in the area of classical music, is getting harder and harder to find, and because different students have different needs. So, over the years, the numbers of file cabinets holding sheet music have expanded.

But, unhappily, and sometimes humorously, it doesn’t stop there.  Because she directs a grossly under-budgeted university opera program, our basement storeroom has become over the years the “auxiliary” prop and set storeroom, containing those items she has personally purchased for productions. Most have been used at least twice and some time and time again, but they don’t go to the Music Department storeroom because that storage area isn’t secure and smaller items vanish.  And, frankly, she doesn’t want to spend her own money twice for things the university should have purchased in the first place.

When we moved, or attempted to reduce our volume of stuff in every summer’s “spring cleaning,” I’ve asked more than once if we really need this 1920 telephone or three battered but ornate boxes, or the three canes, or the closetful of dresses not in her size, or… and the answer is invariably, “No. I’ll need that sometime.” And so I nod and replace it and try to find a way to make more space for the props and other items she purchased personally for the last semester’s show.

For the most part, except for the times she’s borrowed my fedora or my Stetson, or my old trench coat, or the time she used the lower family room furniture, all the items are generally part of her pack-rat collection and go back in the storeroom after each production.  Last summer, however, when we were cleaning the storeroom, I came across the old leather briefcase that she’d bought me for my birthday years ago – the old battered one that she’d replaced with a new one the previous fall and thought, “We don’t need this.”  And I threw it out.

Two days ago, she called me from her office and said, “You remember your old leather case… the one I gave you before the latest one…  It’s perfect for the show.  I need a battered leather case…”

Like she said, you never need it until you’ve thrown it out.

Authors come in all flavors, interests, and abilities beyond their skills as wordsmiths and storytellers… and we tend to follow our own work in different ways.  Because the closest “real” new bookstore is more than 50 miles away, I tend to watch how my books are sold and presented on B&N.com and Amazon… and it’s truly eye-opening at times.

Given the changes in the bookselling marketplace, I was particularly interested to discover just how my latest book – Imager’s Battalion – was selling, at least comparatively.  So I’ve followed it daily, and I’ve discovered some very interesting things.  First, the advertised price of the hardcover has varied almost daily on Amazon, from over $18.00 to $17.00 as I write this, although there was a time when it could have been pre-ordered or ordered for under $17.00.  Barnes and Noble’s hardcover price seems to follow that of Amazon, if with a bit of delay.  On the e-book side, from what I can tell, Amazon and B&N.com both originally listed the ebook version at $14.99, prior to sale, but for the past week Amazon has been selling the Kindle at $13.49, while the Nook remains at $14.99.

Recently, a number of news stories have suggested that on-line retailers are sending out targeted advertisements to existing customers based on their previous purchases and what they have bought or browsed on-line.   And because I have browsed my own books online, I have gotten “recommendations” from Amazon as well, but I discounted reports that on-line retailers were offering differential prices to customers – until two weeks ago.   That was when I received an email from a reader telling me that, much as he loved my work, there was no way he was about to pay $19.00 for the Kindle version of Imager’s Battalion.  I couldn’t believe this and sent a return email politely pointing out that on the Amazon sites [U.S. and Canada] the price was nowhere near that high. In return, he sent me a copy of an Amazon solicitation sent to him, which did indeed offer the Kindle version at $19.00.  In turn, I sent it to Tor, and was informed that it was a genuine Amazon communication and that they were looking into it.  So far as I know, they still are, but it may be with the anti-trust lawsuit by the Department of Justice, they feel they can’t comment.

In the meantime, the reader informed me that he had gone directly to the main Amazon website and purchased the ebook for the far lower price there.

Now… it’s been acknowledged that users of search engines, especially of Google, get different results from the same inquiry, based on the browsing patterns of the user, and it’s now fairly apparent that Amazon has the power to offer different prices to different people – at least on their direct mail solicitations or “recommendations.”  And exactly what is there now to prevent them from offering different prices to different customers seeking to buy the same item on the main website?  Given that there’s no way to tell exactly what the “true” base price is, isn’t this essentially the practice of monopoly?

With the “agency model” proposed and still used by a few of the publishers, at least readers had some confidence of what the price might be.  Now… it appears, Amazon is trying to get the highest price possible based on past purchasing patterns of individuals… rather than the lowest price that they’re claiming in support of their opposition to the “agency model.”

So… tell me again how supporting Amazon and DOJ against the publishers and their agency model is going to reduce monopoly pricing in bookselling and provide low prices to all consumers?

I sometimes feel as if almost everyone in the United States takes not only the laws, but the Constitution, if not most of the foundations of our nation, out of the context in which the framers set them, all the while screaming about rights that the founders never envisioned.

The state of Utah, and a number of other states, have been attempting in various ways to circumvent federal rules and regulations established under laws passed by Congress, and the rationale for these acts is that Congress is acting against the Constitution, but Article VI states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”  In short, federal law supersedes state law.  And, if the Supreme Court declares a law Constitutional, then it is. Period.

You may not like the law.  You can certainly lobby and try to persuade Congress to change it, but state laws cannot overturn a federal law, except by a successful appeal to the Supreme Court… and yet a number of state legislatures have passed or attempted to pass laws in contravention of federal law.  Doesn’t anyone remember the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, caused because a handful of states insisted that state laws preempted federal authority?

As a side note, interestingly enough, there is a section of the Constitution which states that Congress shall have the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This does suggest that the Founders did not believe that information should be “free.”

I just read about a lawsuit in which the plaintiffs contend that they have the right under the first amendment to inundate a website that they oppose with such a volume of internet traffic that it results in denial of service and renders the website inaccessible to others.  Come again?  You have the right to use your freedom of speech to deny others theirs?  I don’t see this in the text or the subtext of the First Amendment, which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Now the case in point sounds extreme, but how would that be, in practice, much different from the impact of the Citizens United decision, which essentially said that, if you have enough money, you can buy up the airwaves to the point where you deny others the right to express their views.  The Founders, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson and his mistrust of the power of massed financial interests, never envisioned a modern communications system where “free speech” is not free but purchased by the minute.

Likewise, there’s the bit about an “establishment of religion.”  In the context of the time, and even in the language, it’s clear that the founders did not want Congress establishing any religion.  Yet lawmakers have attempted and in some cases been successful in legislating religious doctrines into law, in issues such as abortion, evolution, and in school curricula and even public school textbooks.  Yet these same legislators are all too often the ones who complain that “liberals” or others are thwarting the intent of the Constitution.

Then, there’s the second amendment to the Constitution.  The words are fairly simple: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”   How does context matter?  To begin with, at the time the amendment was adopted, “arms” that could be used by the people consisted of swords or sabres and single shot pistols and rifles.  Anything larger or more deadly, such as cannon or warships, was clearly the province of governments.  In addition, although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment does convey an “individual right” to keep and bear arms, it has also held that such a right exists primarily as a right of self-defense.  Both historical context and law would strongly suggest that it is stretching the Second Amendment, if not smashing it, to contend that it conveys an inviolable right to any kind of weapon an individual wants to possess, the National Rifle Association notwithstanding.  And, in fact, the previous ban on assault weapons was held to be Constitutional.

Now… all of this won’t persuade anyone who thinks differently about these and other issues, but for the record, I’m suggesting that the actual words of the Constitution and the context in which they were adopted do indicate what the Framers had in mind… and not what we’d like to hope they had in mind.

The sad case of Aaron Swartz, mentioned and debated in previous blogs and comments, underscores a question that I and others have doubtless had for years:  Why is it that so many individuals and organizations are astounded by, or perhaps oblivious to, the side-effects and/or unintended consequences of their actions?

Swartz clearly did not understand the implications and ramifications of his actions, and, while we can never know, I suspect that the consequences of his actions literally overwhelmed him.  Do I have proof of his lack of understanding?  Not in the legal sense, but when one attacks the legal basis of the American entertainment industry, the print and publications industry, not to mention precedents clearly set forth in the U.S. Constitution, as well as later established legal precedents of more than a century and commits a crime or two in the process of doing so, even minor ones, and then insists that one should not spend a single day in jail… that does suggest at the very least a certain naiveté, that or incredible arrogance.  But then, by all accounts, Swartz was a genius, and many of genius are both naïve and arrogant.

Yet lack of understanding of consequences isn’t limited to naïve geniuses. Why were so many in the financial community offended and surprised by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and the support it generated, at least for a time, and for the continuing level of anger and distrust?  Let’s see… you essentially defrauded banks and mortgage holders with your securitized CDOs and other financial gadgets and crashed the economy into the second worst recession/depression in a century… and you’re surprised that so many people got upset?

What about the National Rifle Association and its members?  Do you really think the people who are skeptical of home arsenals with semi-automatic weapons with 30 or 100 bullet magazines are going to react happily when, just after 20 innocent school children and 6 teachers are gunned down with those kind of weapons, you issue statements insisting on the freedom to carry assault type weapons and propose armed guards in every school in the country at a time when schools are having to lay off teachers?  Why don’t you just throw barrels of gunpowder into the fire you lit?

Then there is the U.S. Congress… that august body that has, for the past fifty years, essentially spent more than it has collected in taxes in all but a handful of years… and now, suddenly, doesn’t want to borrow any more money to pay its debts, and is talking about cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits, as well as unemployment benefits… and can’t get its act together… But the members wonder why the approval rating of Congress has dropped to something like 24%., and the ratings of the leadership even lower than that, when each of them insists he or she is just doing what his or her constituents want.

Amazon decided several years back that it was going to dominate the book market, especially the ebook market, no matter what, through predatory pricing. Didn’t Amazon think the publishers might react?  They did, and decided on the agency model.  Amazon’s share of ebooks dropped from 91% to something like 61%  and, in turn, Amazon funded “citizen initiatives” in California and elsewhere, and lo and behold, the Department of Justice has taken action in favor of predatory prices to keep book prices low, at least for bestsellers and for the moment. But didn’t the publishers have any idea that the huge pressure for free or low-cost ebooks would have a consequence?  Macmillan and Apple apparently do, from their acts and statements, and understand that the DOJ suit is political, rather than based on true antitrust grounds, but they’re taking a huge risk. The other publishers caved almost immediately…and clearly don’t see, or care, that if Amazon and DOJ win, we’ll see another significant round of bookstore closings,  yet another major factor contributing to the continuing decline of what I’d call serious pleasure reading.

The Affordable Health Care Act was the result of a health care and insurance system that left nearly fifty million Americans unable to afford health care.  Didn’t anyone think that sooner or later, some politician was going to try to do something about it?  And now that it’s law…employers are laying off workers or reducing their hours because they don’t want to comply with the requirements.  Didn’t anyone think about that?

Outside of the big and the obvious, unintended consequences are everywhere, and I’m certain all of us can relate individual examples which we’ve witnessed.  There are instances everywhere – but why does it happen so often?

Because, in all of these cases, and in all the others with which I’m familiar, those who made the decisions or pushed the projects, or the like, that caused the side effects and consequences are so deeply locked in their view of the world that they either cannot see another view or dismiss that view as wrong or incorrect. If you will, most people are locked in their own bubbles, at least on the matters that mean the most to them.

Sometimes that’s because they believe so deeply in what they do that they cannot see beyond those beliefs.  I’ve known and talked to enough NRA members to know that the vast majority believe that they cannot truly be safe without weapons to defend them and their homes and loved ones. They believe that they and those who believe as they do are the only reliable bastion of protection – and, sad to say, in some cases they’re probably right.  But that same culture that has made guns so available has also made millions of weapons available to those who should never have them.  The freedom to own personal firearms has had the side-effect of making them available to those who should not have them… and I’ve not seen anyone in a high position of power point this out, although I’m certain more than a few people have.

Greater freedom and the lack of effective oversight, in the form of deregulation, led to greater abuses by the banks and investment bankers.  Why should anyone have been surprised?  The same sort of problems occurred in 1929 and even earlier.  The reforms of the 1930s were enacted for a reason, but after almost eighty years, the lure of greater profits and growth was stronger than the fading knowledge of history, and that’s not surprising, because each generation of human beings has always known that it is smarter and knows more than the preceding generation, just as each older generation knows that the youngsters have learned nothing and respect nothing.

But what’s common to both is the feeling that the inevitable consequences of actions, both wise and unwise, won’t affect them… or not too severely.

During the discussion and issues raised by the issues surrounding copyright over the last two blogs, I realized that literally for years I have been pointing out that piracy is decimating the ranks of the midlist authors, but without explaining how this works in practice. I’ve heard all too many readers say words to the effect that, “my reading a pirate copy here and there won’t make any difference.” Unhappily, when thousands of readers take the same view, the results can be rather dramatic.

The example I’m going to give is based on the experiences of several midlist writers who are no longer midlist writers because no publisher will now publish their new books [unless they’re doing it under a pseudonym, which I know is not so in any of the cases I know].

Let us say that a midlist author named Aubrey [and if there is an author named Aubrey in this situation, I apologize, but I’m picking the name because I don’t know one] has sold five books. The first book lost money, but not a lot, and got good reviews. Based on that, Aubrey’s editor convinces the publisher to buy the next book, with an advance of $15,000. That book sells just over 6,000 copies in hardcover, and 15,000 in paperback, so that Aubrey receives slightly over $23,000 over essentially two years. But Aubrey works hard and can manage writing a book and a half a year… just enough to scrape by after paying her agent 10% (he’s cheap; most cost 15%). The sales on the next two books go up a bit, but only slightly, to perhaps 6,500 hardcovers, but the paperback sales drop off to around 12,000 copies on the third book (which is exactly what has been happening over the past 10 years), leaving Aubrey with about the same income, and to 10,000 copies on the fourth, which drops the income from the fourth book to less than the second book. At this point, the publisher is getting worried, because his break-even point is based on selling 5,000 hardcovers and 15,000 paperbacks. But since Aubrey’s hardcover numbers are above the break-even point, and the publisher and editor like Aubrey’s books, Aubrey gets a contract for book five. By now, ebooks have really come into play, and Aubrey’s fifth book only sells 4,500 hardcovers, and 1,000 ebooks at the initial price. From the publisher’s cost point of point of view, that’s close to the equivalent of 5,500 hardcovers, but the paperback sales drop to 6,000 copies plus another 1,000 ebooks at the paperback price. The 6,000 paperbacks are below a cost-effective number to print. That drops Aubrey’s income for that book to around $18,000. Unfortunately, Aubrey’s sales trend is down, and the publisher has lost money on the last book. Given those trends, much as he and the editor like the books, Aubrey doesn’t get a contract for the next book.

The result is that the publisher’s revenues drop some 20% on Aubrey’s books, and Aubrey’s income drops to zero. The readers who have switched from hardcovers or paperbacks to pirated editions of those books can say that the publisher’s revenues didn’t go down that much and the authors and publishers are still making plenty. No… the best-selling authors are, but the reduction in less popular midlist titles means a greater reliance on the best-sellers and the generic look-alikes.

This isn’t fantasy, or even science fiction. I could name at least five authors who have gone through similar scenarios over the past several years. In general, hardcover/’initial ebook sales have not declined that much, and, in fact for the big-name authors, those hardcover sales may have held steady or increased, but the farther an author is from the first few spots on the best-seller list, and the more unique a little-known author is, in general, the greater the decline. This also explains the rise of generic look-alike books, such as urban fantasy chick-lit, vampires, action-thrillers, etc. For mass-market paperbacks, pretty much everyone’s sales are significantly down, and some big-name best-sellers, while hitting new highs in hardcovers, are seeing sales losses in the millions in paperbacks.

For the struggling midlist author, the near-stable hardcover sales just aren’t enough to cover the huge decline in mass market paperback sales. Of course, there are always new authors, but, frankly, most of them follow Aubrey’s pattern, except more quickly these days.

Paperbacks used to be where readers picked up “new” authors, or those they had not read, that and the libraries, but library budgets and acquisitions have been drastically slashed, so that all too many only acquire the best-sellers, and not enough paperbacks of midlist authors are being printed these days to filter into used bookstores or to be widely traded by friends. The ebook situation doesn’t allow for easy browsing – except through pirating – and the result is, in general, the domination of the market by the established and popular, and their imitators, leavened by the occasional pop-flash writer, while the talented midlist writers, the ones who produced good books, or unpopular great books, are slowly vanishing. Some keep writing on the side, for small presses or self-publish, but because they must make a living doing something else, their output drops even farther… and they continue to lose readers until every wonders, “What happened to Aubrey [or whoever]?”

If pirated ebooks only resulted in a turnover of authors, one could say that it’s a matter of taste and the market should prevail… and, of course, in one way or another, the marketplace will. But the problem is that the turnover in “new” authors is accelerating because it’s more and more difficult for new authors to distinguish themselves and establish a presence, and a growing percentage of those who do aren’t necessarily the best writers – they’re the best self-promoters and the best at imitating whatever’s popular… and, as I’ve said before, even excellent imitation is never as good as good original work.

But then, given how little time so many people have to read anymore, maybe a lot fewer people really want to read good original work that makes them think.

Comments over my last post show just how personal perceptions can color views of matters, especially of law. So… let’s talk about law. In general terms, criminal law is the codification of those offenses which society has termed unacceptable and which the governing authority has codified and promulgated, defining the offense and prescribing the penalties or range of penalties for violating that law. Law is not an “ideal”; it is a code. Nor does that code always agree with what many citizens feel it should be, or even what many people thinks its provisions mean. That’s one reason for courts, and why the U.S. Supreme Court has the power to review laws passed by Congress, or by state and local governments.

Initially, copyright infringement was strictly a matter of civil law, but copyright violations became so egregious in the late nineteenth century that in 1897 Congress enacted the first very narrow criminal penalties for copyright infringement, but in less than a decade it became clear that a more comprehensive approach was required, and the first broad law criminalizing a range of copyright infringements was enacted in 1909. Since then, various provisions have been added to criminal copyright law, including the No Electronic Theft (NET) act in 1997, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

As is noted by most good property law scholars, “property” is not legally limited to tangible objects, but much of the controversy over copyright infringement or theft of intellectual property lies in the fact that the vast majority of people do not place the same emotional value on the copying of an ebook or a music download as they would on someone taking a physical copy of the same book or a music CD from a store without paying for it. Yet current law places the same value on theft of a digital book or an authorized digital copy of a song as of a physical book or music CD. And it should, because for the bookstore, the wholesaler, and the author, that “free” copy represents a very real loss. It is a foregone sale, just as the theft of a physical book or CD represents a foregone sale. Admittedly, in the case of the book, the physical book costs somewhat more to produce, but the bulk of the production costs do not lie in the printing and binding of even the physical book, and the ebook is priced lower because the physical costs have been deducted.

In the case involving Aaron Swartz, what seems to have been overlooked in many of these comments is the law itself. In 1997, Congress passed the No Electronic Theft (NET) act. Those provisions, as codified in 17 USC § 506 (2)(2000) provide criminal punishment for reproducing or distributing, “including by electronic means, “during any 180-day period, of one or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works having a value of more than $1,000”. What is often overlooked or ignored is that while looking at or reading a copyrighted work electronically is not a violation, actually downloading a work is, under law, the reproduction of that work.

Like it or not, the physical facts in the case are not in dispute. Whether or not Aaron Swartz intended or did not intend to further distribute the more than four million articles he downloaded, it is absolutely clear that he electronically reproduced at least one copy of each of those articles and that those millions of articles had a sum total value of more than $1,000. He also did this under “guest” privileges used fraudulently, because, at the time, he was neither a student, nor did he register honestly when using the MIT system. Under the U.S. Code, that is against the law.

Whether the law is “right” or not is a totally separate question. If one wishes to live in a nation of laws, then there is the obligation to live by those laws, although, at least in the United States, there is certainly the possibility of changing that law. If one violates those laws, however, there is always the risk of being prosecuted. Aaron Swartz did not believe in the laws, as written for information, and violated them. He was prosecuted.

Should he have been prosecuted in the way the government did? How could the government ignore the illegal copying and downloading of more than four million files once it was brought to the attention of the Justice Department? Not to prosecute would have been an invitation to others to indulge wide-spread downloading and hacking/copying. Just as clearly, no one at MIT understood the significance of the case when they reported it.

Nor do the legal scholars who write articles and briefs attempting to distinguish between “minimal” incremental harm created by personal copying and larger harm created by “commercial” pirating. Admittedly, any individual’s personal copying of electronic articles or books represents minimal economic harm to the copyright holder, but when thousands of individuals, or tens of thousands, download torrent e-book editions, or journal articles, or anything in mass, that individual minimal harm becomes a significant collective harm to the copyright holders… and as I’ve noted repeatedly, that harm is reflected already in sales figures.

But… the Justice Department cannot very well go after tens of thousands of individuals… if it could even locate them. All government prosecutors can do is to go after large instances of illegal copying and downloading… and Aaron Swartz was one of the largest.

In this case, if there is any party responsible for Swartz’s suicide beside Swartz himself, it is not the federal government [and I’m no fan of the Justice Department], but MIT. MIT already had a trial program for open reading access to most of the files, one that, ironically, MIT made permanent after Swartz’s death. If they wanted to punish Swartz, they could have revoked Swartz’s access and any other privileges. They could have filed a civil suit against him or sought damages. From what I can tell, they did none of those. Instead, acting as so many university bureaucrats do, they passed the buck to the Justice Department. Then… when they realized what might happen, they begged and pleaded that DOJ not prosecute. What would have happened if DOJ had dropped all charges or only given Swartz a slap on the wrist? I can just see the headlines – “DOJ Caves to MIT” or “Feds Ignore Reddit Exec’s Piracy.” Obviously, DOJ could see them as well.

There are stories that suggest Swartz had attempted to get a plea bargain, but that DOJ refused any plea bargain that didn’t involve jail time for Swartz, and that Swartz didn’t believe he should serve time for something he didn’t see as wrong. What Swartz – and some commenters here – didn’t understand was that the law is the law, and that following personal feelings of right and wrong which conflict with the law often has a very high price… as it should, because, otherwise, everyone’s personal feelings would be above the law… and that is a recipe for anarchy.

It’s one thing to use those feelings – and those of others who share those views – to change the laws, and that can be constructive, but to flaunt the law and believe that there should be no significant consequences…?

In the end, however, given the outcry over cases such as that of Swartz, and the political pressures, those who want intellectual property cheaply, or for free, will likely win out in any venue where the product can be duplicated almost effortlessly and cheaply. The result will be that “popular” culture will sink even below mediocrity and that the vast majority of work of originality and quality will either be drowned out or lost in the flood of cheap presentations, or funded by wealthy patrons, as music and novels were in the late eighteenth century, or offered in some involved high-technology way that cannot be easily copied, thus making billions for a handful of media empires. Research will dwindle and be limited to the corporate sector in those areas where corporate security and “trade secrets” can offer some modicum of protection. All this cannot help but have a negative impact, both in terms of national productivity and creativity, because “free” does not pay for either productivity or creativity — or the support services they require — and very few people or organizations can afford to produce or create for free.

This past weekend, this site was hijacked by a shady payday loan outfit. It’s the second time this has happened in the last six months, which I suppose, by internet standards, isn’t too bad.

In a related development, Aaron Swartz, who was the co-founder of the information-sharing website Reddit, committed suicide last Friday at age 26. He was considered an Interrnet folk hero for his efforts to make online content “free.” The definitive reason for his suicide is unknown, but he had a history of depression and was facing 13 felony charges, including wire fraud, computer fraud and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, as a result of illegally downloading nearly five million articles from MIT computer archives with intent to distribute the articles on file-sharing websites. His family and friends have issued a statement to the effect that Swartz was trying to make the Internet a better and fairer place.

Also last week, a number of those of us who are science fiction writers received an email invitation to speak at Bexley College in London, offering transport, publicity, and an honorarium. Of course, Bexley is a technical school and unlikely to support a seminar on “The Mystery of Life and Death,” not to mention that the “professor” listed on the invitation doesn’t exist. Needless to say, word spread quickly about this scam.

What I would like to know is exactly how stealing five million articles or hijacking my website for potential gain for a payday loan site has anything to do with making the Internet a better or fairer place. Or for that matter, just how ethical is the cry that “information wants to be free”? How does the epidemic of internet plagiarism do anything to teach students the value of information… or about intellectual honesty?

With the growth of the Internet, the amount of confidence schemes has increased exponentially, and so has the number and breadth of scams, a huge percentage of them targeted at the most vulnerable individuals in society – the less educated [not that some very highly educated people have not fallen for them], the elderly, those in financial trouble, or those who are simply too trusting. While the few big-time information thefts make headlines, even many of those are never resolved, and the perpetrators remain unknown, and it’s just about impossible to make more than the tiniest dent in the volume of successful internet scams and swindles… and, as for piracy… forget it.

No matter what anyone says about pirated and torrent-downloaded books increasing sales… I’m sorry, but the overall figures in the book industry [at least in the field of fiction] give that the lie. Sales are down, and in some areas, such as mass market paperbacks, they’re down at lot, and as I’ve noted previously, ebook sales are far from making up the difference.

Pirated copies of books, movies, and music are theft, pure and simple. Just because someone thinks that the price of a movie, book, or music CD is too high doesn’t justify theft. We don’t justify theft of any other good on the grounds that the price is too high, and we don’t say that other goods that are not essential for physical survival can be stolen because the prices are too high. Moreover, allowing or exalting the theft of information or other intellectual property effectively states that those who create it don’t deserve the same protection as those who produce other goods. Now… some will say that information/entertainment isn’t as vital. Oh… when our society is based on information? And don’t tell me that a Coach handbag, or a Rolex watch or any other counterfeit luxury product knock-off is more important than information or entertainment.

All this brings up the questions: Is the Internet really a force for good? Do its advantages outweigh the drawbacks? And even if it does have a net benefit to society, does it, in its current form, excessively [a matter of judgment, I know] enable dishonest behavior and acts? More important, what, if anything, are we going to do about it?

Over the past year or so, I’ve noted a disturbing trend in newspapers and other media, and that’s the reduction, if not the disappearance, of coverage of books in local media. Oh, The New York Times still has its weekly book section, and the Washington Post still covers books, but coverage has virtually disappeared from many other city newspapers.

Likewise, bookstores continue to vanish. We lost the only “new book” general bookstore in Cedar City this past year, poor as its selection was, and we’re left with a decent used book store and a religious bookstore that carries no non-fiction or general fiction [except for a few “approved” religiously-themed fiction books]. Neighboring St. George lost its only general new independent bookstore, leaving only a single Barnes & Noble, despite the fact that the area has tripled in size over the past fifteen years and has something like 150,000 people. The Salt Lake City area has lost close to ten bookstores in the last five years, and that’s a pattern replicated in most major cities. Sales to Amazon and Barnes & Noble online don’t come close to making up the difference.

Even more to the point, impulse book buying has been decreasing, and will continue to do so, simply because there are fewer and fewer locations that offer that opportunity, and most of those that do tend to cater to existing book buyers anyway. As I’ve noted previously, every shopping mall once had at least one mall bookstore, often two, and I knew a few that had three. Now, it’s more like every third mall – usually the ones located in or near high-income housing – has a large Barnes and Noble… or sometimes a nearby Books-A-Million… and no other book outlets.

John Picacio – the award-winning F&SF artist – has made an interesting observation about this – that the lack of places to browse books – even for people who will buy print books online or e-books – is reducing the number and variety of book titles sold, and that every brick-and-mortar bookstore that closes reduces the variety and availability of titles sold.

Manga, anime, and series “lite” books are taking over a larger section of existing bookstores. Low-cost [i.e., “cheap”] e-books are becoming the new “penny dreadfuls.” And in F&SF, so-called critical readers and publications tend to ignore books that have wide readership, regardless of quality, and focus on books that explore narrow themes in “innovative” ways, again, regardless of quality.

More than one editor has commented to me that, at least for F&SF, it’s getting harder and harder for mainstream F&SF publishers to get even their leading titles reviewed in Publishers Weekly. Part of that may well be that PW cut the rates it paid reviewers and those who now review, for less money, are more interested in their choices than in what’s actually being read. And Locus, which bills itself as “the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field” routinely ignores “popular” authors in the field and, for years, ignored the very top F&SF best-sellers until, rumor has it, one author’s publisher threatened to pull all advertising. That’s been denied, I understand, but I have my doubts about the accuracy of the denial.

What all this is creating is, to my way of thinking, not only the well-observed shrinkage of the book market, but also a continuing and growing fragmentation of the book-reading market. And please don’t prate on about e-books and self-marketing. Only comparative handfuls of such books ever achieve significant sales. More importantly, they don’t maintain or expand the number of book-readers.

In fact, already the rates of e-book sales are beginning to decline, and e-books, even including pirated editions, are not replacing the sales lost in the paperback market. Moreover, while Americans – and presumably, the rest of the world – are reading more on electronic devices, early research is indicating that they’re reading a larger and larger percentage of shorter prose, e.g., magazines and newspapers. Of course, that goes along with the other impact of the great electronic age – the shorter attention span of the younger generation and the quicker onset of “boredom.”

For all that, I’m certain that at least some good authors will continue to appear and be published… that some technically good authors will be best-sellers…and that lots of shallow adventure and sex-driven will continue to sell in every genre and field. What I’m not so certain about is whether being truly well-read will really mean as much as it once did, or that those people who think they are well-read will actually be that – or perhaps being “well-read” will become synonymous with “reading the well-written obscure and irrelevant.”

As in all things, time will tell.

There are more than a few myths about Social Security, and I’ve seen very few analyses of the program based on facts relating to individuals, as opposed to the program as a whole. Since I’m actually past the age where I could take benefits, I decided to look into some of the assertions made about the program.

One is the claim that Social Security will go broke soon. That’s a total myth. In 2012, the program did pay out more in benefits than it collected in FICA taxes, but given the present surplus in the trust fund, even with no changes, the program will be able to pay current and projected benefits until approximately 2030. That means that some changes need to be made, but that a crisis is nowhere near imminent.

Second is the claim that beneficiaries get more than they paid in through taxes. Some beneficiaries do – those that live a long time. But Social Security, despite assertions to the contrary, is in fact based on fairly sound actuarial principles. For example, the life expectancy at birth of men in my age group was/is roughly 67 years. That means that about half the men have died before they can collect full benefits. If they have surviving spouses, the spouse can collect a survivor’s benefit, or take any benefit she has in her own name, but not both. In effect, that results in a significant amount of benefits not being paid, roughly 25% less for survivors than for the man, plus the effective forfeiture of the spouse’s own benefits. If the woman is the major breadwinner, the math is essentially still the same.

Then there’s the issue of what is meant by “taxes paid,” because a dollar in taxes 45 years ago was worth, according to the BLS inflation calculator, roughly seven times what a dollar is worth today. As an exercise, I went through my own Social Security records and recalculated what I paid in taxes in terms of current dollars. That means that the current value of my FICA taxes is 71% higher than the dollar amount recorded by the Social Security administration. It’s not 700% obviously, because the closer to the present time that the taxes were collected the less the total inflation of the value. While figures will vary for each beneficiary, the value of FICA taxes in current dollars (which are the ones in which benefits are paid) is going to be much higher than the official statement of taxes paid. Even so, more than half of Social Security beneficiaries who retire at the age for full benefits will likely receive more than they paid in, but that only amounts to 25-30% of all those who have contributed, because 70-75% (roughly) will die either before receiving benefits or before the amount they collect exceeds the amount they paid into Social Security.

The idea behind Social Security was not absolute financial fairness, but to insure that those Americans who did live past a physically useful working age would not live in poverty after they stopped working. This is, of course, why some politicians are pushing for means testing of those who receive benefits as a way to reduce the “cost” of benefits. The problem with this is that it’s based on inaccurate assumptions, not to mention totally punitive. One proponent of means testing cites the fact that a significant percentage of the elderly have incomes over $40,000, and should therefore receive either no benefits or reduced benefits. The average Social Security benefit is approximately $15,000 annually. On average, about 40% of an elderly couple’s income comes from Social Security. Roughly 20% of individuals/couples over age 65 could be considered “financially comfortable” [making more than average family income], but about half of those would drop below that level without Social Security benefits.

Means testing, if done accurately, will also have a minimal effect on the current funds balance. Why? Because less than 5% of the population has incomes high enough that they could live comfortably without benefits and without working. Considering that 13% of Americans are over the age of 65, and less than half of one percent of them are wealthy, amounting to less than 300,000 individuals, the “savings” from confiscating their Social Security benefits would only reduce annual Social Security outlays by about one percent. Any real savings would have to come from people who are “financially comfortable,” but far from wealthy, and why should those people get absolutely nothing after having paid into the fund for a lifetime? It’s one thing to tax their payments; it’s another to deny benefits… and it might even be unconstitutional under “equal protection.”

All this means, as usual, is that any adjustment in Social Security is going to have to fall on all beneficiaries… and can’t be foisted off on one small group.

Apparently, the last minute legislation that the Congress approved contains a few special interest goodies, mainly for the financial industry, including one that defers any income earned overseas from corporate taxation so long as the money remains outside the USA and one that benefits Goldman Sachs especially. So, at a time when everyone’s Social Security payroll tax deductions go up two percent, a good $1000 a year for the average family, financial America gets a continued tax break.

Not that this surprises me in the least, because we have the very best Congress money can buy, and we have it because the reformers of the past century were successful. It’s an excellent example of how the best intentions can have the worst results, a real-life political example of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. It’s also an example of what can happen when good ideas are carried to extremes.

Many years ago, when I was a young and more idealistic Congressional staffer, political parties really mattered. They were more than affiliation labels, which is what they’ve largely become today; they were a source of political power. They were significant funding sources, especially compared to today, and there weren’t that many other organizations, except perhaps unions, that had that kind of influence over members of Congress, although technically both unions and corporations were prohibited from direct and indirect contributions to candidates.

Because enforcing these prohibitions and other campaign laws was difficult, in 1971, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act, requiring stringent disclosure requirements. Then following Watergate and reports of serious financial abuses in the 1972 Presidential campaign, Congress amended FECA in 1974 and set limits on contributions by individuals, political parties and PACs. One of the more important provisions was that which limited national party contributions to $5,000 per election to candidates for the House of Representatives and $43,000 to Senatorial candidates.

With the reduction in funds from national and local political parties and the prohibition and increasing scrutiny of moneys that had formerly still passed under the table, and with the aid of the development of computerization, most candidates and federal elected officials began to build independent fundraising and electoral support organizations, and, in effect, corporations turned a blind eye to scores of their executives contributing, technically in a legal fashion, to campaigns of those who favored corporate interests.

Then in 2010, two court decisions, Citizens United and SpeechNow, changed everything. Together, the two decisions, essentially on free speech grounds, removed the limits on the ability of organizations that accepted corporate or union money from running electioneering communications and held that Congress could not limit donations to organizations that only made independent expenditures, that is, expenditures that were “uncoordinated” with a candidate’s campaign. As a result, anyone could spend any amount of money on advertising for or against any political issue and against any candidate, or for any candidate, provided there was no communication or coordination with the candidate. Add to that the fact that, of “regular” contributions to candidates, roughly 50% of campaign contributions come from large individual donors, and it’s difficult not to see why the financial community has a disproportionate influence on legislation… and gets special tax breaks.

What’s overlooked, however, with all the money issues, is a second issue – that of carrying good ideas to extremes. The Citizens United and SpeechNow decisions essentially rested on the premise that restricting expression of opinion through restricting campaign-related advertising was unconstitutional because it restricted free speech under the First Amendment. No one wants free speech restricted, but what about the problem of my free speech – or yours – being drowned out by hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate paid advertising? Isn’t that a de facto restriction of free speech?

The same issue is raised by the question of restriction of assault weapons. Does the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment allow others to cut short my pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness – or that of innocent school children?

As we are seeing – and some seem to refuse to see – carrying principles to extremes can have unintended, and dangerous, consequences. But then, that’s true of carrying anything to extremes, a fact of which tea party members and ultra-leftists remain blissfully unaware.

This semester my wife’s university “upgraded” its computer system. The email speed and storage is improved. Pretty much everything is un-improved… or worse. As the head of the voice and opera program, my wife has to keep tabs on the schedules of a good hundred or more students. The former system allowed her to access multiple class schedules at once, allowing her to assure that students were registered in the right sections, which is always a problem, because the section numbers refer to the professors and the levels, and the registrar’s office seems to think that any professor can teach any student individual voice lessons and has a habit of assigning some students randomly – even when the students know and present the right section numbers. The new system only allows access to one section at a time, which more than doubles the time it takes her to make sure students are assigned where they belong. The old system allowed her to see whether an email had been opened, very useful in determining whether students and colleagues actually read what had been sent. The new system does not. In addition, the new system is different enough that it takes time to learn all the differences in necessary features. The verdict? A lot of lost time for everyone for little improvement overall, and significant drawbacks for people with administrative duties.

This isn’t limited to academia. At least every month, if not more often, when I’m talking with my editor and ask for information, it takes longer, because the computer system has been changed or “up-graded.” I asked other editors at the publisher… and they all rolled their eyes, not at my editor, but because they have noticed the same thing. Now… none of them can describe any aspect of the changes that makes their lives easier, but the changes go on and on.

I’ve noted, in past blogs, the continual changes in the Microsoft Word program, the vast majority of which merely add complexity for the sake of adding features… and some of which, such as the grammar checker, are so much worse than previous versions that using it will actually make bad prose awful and good prose far worse. And to top it off, you can’t turn off the grammar checker without turning off the spellchecker. Now… I understand that the latest version of Windows is going to smartphone icons, which will make using Windows easier for all the people who really don’t use it for anything particularly serious and add time and frustration to those of us who are tied, for occupational reasons, to Word and Windows. Another example of the hideous combination of American industry’s “one-size-fits-all” attitude and the need for a continuous illusion of progress.

I don’t mind true improvements in technology… but new “upgraded” features that do the same thing as older versions and new interfaces that don’t improve function, but still have to be learned, are a waste… and they’re anything but progress. In fact, they’re worse, because they present the illusion of progress. They also impose unnecessary costs on business and users because updating is required in order for “my” computer to read “your” files and documents, and the updates make lots of money for Microsoft and other vendors, but usually don’t generate commensurate income for most computer users.

Yet almost anyone who complains about these illusions of progress is considered a dinosaur or a troglodyte.

John Boehner has now passed, if that is the appropriate term, Nancy Pelosi, in public opinion as the most ineffective and least well-liked member of either Congressional or Administration political leaders. Although Speaker Boehner is far from my most favorite politician – the term “favorite politician” being an oxymoron for me – the current disfavor with his actions and behavior is not entirely of his own making. It is, in fact, the result of a Republican party that seems to have forgotten – or wishes to ignore – both the role of government and the role of the Congress in making government work.

Again, I’m not going to blame the Republican party entirely, because the same attitude exists, if to somewhat lesser degree, among the Democratic Party. The fact that the attitude is less virulent among Democrats has nothing to do with virtue, but because, at this point in history, the Democrats embrace a wider constituency and have to look at a slightly wider range of alternatives in order to maintain what power they have, while the Republican Party has essentially divested itself of all who are fiscal and structural conservatives but who oppose the more fanatic aspects of the GOP true believers and certainly all moderates.

The result is that the GOP has become the “party of NO” – no tax increases, no abortion, no immigration, no gun control, no health care for the working poor, no corporate taxes, no unions, no equal economic rights for minorities and women, no gay marriage, not to mention denial of global warming and evolution. At the same time, much of the Democratic Party believes that almost any new government program is a good idea, particularly where the disadvantaged are concerned. Neither outlook is viable.

No matter how many poor and disadvantaged there are, even if we confiscated all the wealth and income of the top two percent, as I’ve pointed out before, it wouldn’t support government for a year. Government programs can’t expand, not unless other government programs are eliminated or curtailed. Right now, we can’t even fund the ones we have, but that’s because, in the past, both parties have agreed on taxes that were too low to support the programs that Congress had already created. Likewise, the mindset of denying reality that underlies much of the GOP agenda won’t work.

But Boehner is in an impossible position. The GOP essentially won’t compromise on taxes, and no compromise is possible without that. Obama has offered some compromise, but the GOP wouldn’t even accept Boehner’s alternative tax increase just on families making over one million dollars a year, let alone Obama’s compromise of $400,000 [incidentally, that’s just about the cut-off for the top one percent]. The fact that Boehner won’t even call the House into session unless the Senate acts, despite the fact that the House could take up an already Senate-passed bill and amend it, is another indication of his inability to pass anything remotely resembling a compromise and his unwillingness to admit it.

So… unless Obama caves in to the GOP, which looks unlikely, or the GOP looks at reality, which is equally unlikely in the next few days, going over the fiscal cliff looks most probable, although I, and most Americans, I suspect, would prefer less excitement.

Last Sunday, The New York Times had a front-page story on the problems faced by students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. While the story highlighted the specific problems of three minority females, my wife the university professor sees the same problems played out by white students in a state university with a very small minority population. Despite an apparent proliferation of loan and aid programs for students of modest means or less, the graduation gap between economically poor students and those of more affluent means is now wider than it was thirty years ago. Although the graduation rates of most ethnic/economic subgroups have improved, the rates for those of means have improved far more than that of those from poorer backgrounds.

Why has this happened? There are a number of reasons, and the Times article, frankly, didn’t emphasize nearly enough some of the root causes. The principal reason, from what my wife and I see, is that the growth of tuition has outstripped the growth of available grants and scholarships. The reason for the growth of tuition at state universities is not, contrary to popular opinion, because of high salaries for full-time faculty, not at a time when most state institutions have been freezing salaries or holding raises to one or two percent, or reducing full-time professors and replacing them with part-time adjunct faculty, but because for almost a generation, state legislatures have been reducing the funding of their public institutions at the same time as enrollments have continued to increase. Higher enrollments require more buildings and larger classes, or more classes taught by less qualified instructors… and, most important, higher tuition.

At my wife’s university, and at all the public institutions in the state, funds for scholarships and grants, even federal grants, have not kept up with the cost of tuition. If colleges and universities offer full-tuition and room-and-board scholarships, then the number of available scholarships goes down as tuition rises. If they offer the same number of scholarships, then those scholarships no longer cover tuition and room-and-board. Either way, that means that economically disadvantaged students must either borrow funds or find part-time or full-time work. My wife has watched student after student become swamped with debt or spending so much time working that they cannot spend the time to study and to succeed academically. In addition, all too many have other problems created by their past, such as poor study habits and even worse judgment. More affluent students also have these problems, but they often have personal safety nets, such as parents who can support them while they waste too much time learning with bad study habits and behavior that detracts from academic success.

In addition, in many fields, merely taking classroom courses isn’t enough for future success. For example, in the hard sciences, students need to take laboratory courses, and those are invariably later in the day – and often students who work find themselves in an impossible situation. If they try to follow an educational path that would pay more in the future, they can’t work the hours they need to pay for that education, yet taking a more “standard” curricula ends up giving them a degree with a major in a field that is already glutted. The majority of students who succeed in music and the performing arts – and many do, despite the rhetoric – are those who not only take the classes, but who do all the extra activities, which include performing and rehearsing long hours, often without credit. This becomes almost impossible for students who are entirely self-supporting, except for the one or two that come along every few years who are truly brilliant and gifted, and even for them, it is close to impossible.

But each year the situation has become worse as the legislature funds less and less, and tuition climbs, and professors’ incomes are frozen, and more adjuncts are hired, and poorer students work longer and longer hours and get deeper and deeper in debt.

All of this doesn’t even take into account the fact that primary and secondary schools are failing to instill certain basic skills required for both academic and occupational success. When more than a third of all students graduating from secondary schools do not have the writing skills to compose – without electronic aids – a single coherent paragraph, and when the majority lack any semblance of analytical skills, it’s no wonder that students who are preoccupied with finding the money to even attend college are dropping out or failing in huge numbers.

But the great debate remains about how federal and state taxes are too high.