Whoa, That Was Weird

In the middle of today's fartlek workout, I felt a sudden sharp pain in my calf.

"Uh oh," I thought, "That could be the end of all of this..."

But it was just momentary fear. While I decided it was probably not a good idea to finish the duration of my my fartlek workout, I was able to run home, making a grand total of 40 minutes of running.

Not bad for sustaining a minor injury along the way. Never let fear stop you!

Inflation and the Debt Ceiling

CH, a faithful Stationary Waves reader, asks the following question:

If we don't raise it, we crash the US economy and several world wide economies, right?

Never one to shy away from a direct question, I will answer that question with the discussion below. In the interest of doing justice to both sides of the issue, I will refrain from the usual yes-or-no-plus-snide-remark that such discussions usually entail. Hold on to your hats, folks, it's going to be a verbose ride...

Part One: Restating the Question
The "debt ceiling" is an arbitrary number the United States Congress set for itself to ensure that the government would not engage in an unsustainable level of borrowing. Borrowing beyond this number (i.e. "raising the debt ceiling" to a new value) does not guarantee that the government will explode. Nor does staying within the boundaries of the debt ceiling guarantee that the government is solvent. It is nothing more than an arbitrary guideline.

You can think of it like what happens when you go out binge-drinking with your friends: In the back of your mind, you have some preconceived idea of what "too much to drink" is. Drinking beyond that level will not guarantee that you will be hospitalized with alcohol poisoning. Nor can you guarantee that drinking less is a "healthy amount of alcohol." It is mostly just your conscience speaking, and so it is with Congress and debt.

Therefore, CH's question isn't really whether the economy will collapse if we don't raise the debt ceiling. The real question is this: The US government is at risk of losing its credibility as a creditor and becoming completely insolvent - What will make us lose our credibility fastest: increasing the debt ceiling or defaulting on our debts?

Part Two: Increasing the Debt Ceiling
The most immediate threat associated with raising the debt ceiling is the signal it sends to lenders. By taking on debt in excess of our entire nation's ability to create a year's worth of wealth for more than 300 million human beings, we are effectively saying to lenders, "Give us money today, but it is unlikely that you will get your money back any time within the next decade."

Ask yourself, would you lend a large sum of money to anyone who gave you a clear signal that you wouldn't get your money back for many years to come? The answer is either "No" or "Yes, but only if I had money to burn and was allowed to charge a usurer's interest rate." Neither answer bodes particularly well for the US government.

But it doesn't stop there. When the government takes on debt, they simultaneously increase the money supply. This increase is called "inflation." Inflation hurts ordinary people.

You can think of it as though we are sharing a blueberry pie, just the two of us. You get half, and I get half. Then, two of my good friends show up and - because I am the government - I decide that they also get to have some pie. But rather than giving them some of my pie or baking a new pie to ensure you get the same sized piece you always had, I decide to carve your piece of pie into three pieces and give divide it equally among you and the newcomers. The result is this:

1. The newcomers get more pie than they otherwise would have.
2. You now have less pie than you used to.
3. There are more of us than there are of you, and we can always out-vote you when it comes to future pies.

As you can see, when you understand the true nature of inflation, you note that it robs from people who already have money and pays out the resulting booty among special interests.

So to summarize thus far, raising the debt ceiling reduces our financial credibility as a borrower while simultaneously devaluing the money held by ordinary people. The only people who gain from this are special interests who manage to get paid by government spending and entitlement programs - at the risk of a total monetary collapse.

The stakes are pretty high.

Part Three: Defaulting on Our Debt
If hinting that we don't plan on paying our debts in the near future sends a bad signal to our lenders, you can imagine what kind of signal it would send if we were simply not to pay them back at all. Obviously, that would reduce our credibility as a borrower instantaneously.

On the other hand, we'd save ourselves from the evils of inflation. (Or, more accurately, we'd save ourselves from future inflation. Unfortunately, the inflation already incurred by existing government debt won't go away until we've paid that debt back.)

Part Four: Uh-Oh. Now What?
Defaulting on our debt causes certain doom; increasing the debt ceiling causes certain doom. We're not just caught between a rock and a hard place; we're pretty much screwed.

At this point, you might want to start listening to Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Andrew Napoletano, and others, when they suggest that the United States is on the verge of a monetary collapse.

A monetary collapse occurs when people no longer have any faith in their fiat currency. They expect the future value of that currency to be much lower than the current value. As a result, the premium they charge for future payment (i.e. "originary interest") climbs higher and higher - right up to the point where no one can offer anyone else a sufficient amount of future money to convince anyone to lend, invest, or even to receive bi-weekly paychecks. Left without any means to secure future goods and services, people have no recourse but to purchase whatever they can today, right this minute, before the value of their cash-on-hand reduces even further.

Ludwig von Mises called this "the crack-up boom." He lived to see one in Germany. He'd know.

If we don't want to instigate a crack-up boom, then we want neither to increase the debt ceiling, nor to default on our debts. The good news is, that's entirely possible.

Part Five: The Solution
You don't have to read a five-part blog diatribe in order to understand how to fix this problem.

The US Federal Government is currently spending more than it can on wars, social programs, advertising, employee pensions, travel budgets, foreign aid, property management, and god-knows-what-else.

We can solve our debt problems by not spending this money anymore. Stop the wars. Stop the welfare. Stop the subsidies. Stop the advertising. Stop the legislating. Sell off the unused real estate and other assets. Cease foreign aid and foreign affairs meddling. Shrink or eliminate civil service pensions. Give Congress a pay cut. Trim the fat.

See how easy that is? Problem solved.

If that sounds funny to you, keep in mind that I am totally, completely, literally, entirely, 100% not kidding about this. It is my belief that unless the US government downsizes its operations, slashes budgets and payrolls, sells off assets, and eliminates funding, our country will have a monetary crisis.

So the next time you want to talk to me about the importance of the social safety net, you might want to ask yourself if you're prepared to ruin the country and your own savings account in order to try to make it happen.

Motivation and a Projects-Driven Lifestyle

Not long ago, I adopted a new approach to accomplishing the objectives I set for myself.

The Problem
Like many people with a wide variety of interests that they take somewhat seriously, I often found myself short of time. It started getting difficult to, for example, record an album, plan a series of gigs, write articles, and work out hard, while still meeting my day-to-day obligations such as household tasks and, uh, going to work. Not being able to "do it all" is a problem we all face from time to time. This problem compounds itself the more seriously one takes one's hobbies.

The primary obstacle in "doing it all" is that whenever a significant amount of time is dedicated to, say, working out a lot, that steals valuable time away from writing a great piece for Mises Daily or practicing, writing, and recording new music. One begins to feel that the things one loves to do are in competition with one another. For myself, I began to feel that if I sat down and practiced my guitar technique, I was "wasting time" because it didn't produce anything particularly tangible. In contrast, any time spent writing produced an article; any time spent working out improved my blood glucose levels and overall health; any time spent recording produced an mp3. Unfortunately, everything soon felt like a waste of time. I couldn't finish any mp3s, because my technique wasn't up to par; therefore, time spent recording was a waste of time. I couldn't train for a marathon, because I couldn't set aside enough time to put in the proper miles; therefore, time spent running was a waste of time. And so on, and so forth... It felt like a vicious circle.

The Solution
The solution I devised was to break my hobbies into manageable chunks in the form of projects. (I'm not the first to devise an approach like this. Perhaps the clearest expression of this concept is Frank Zappa's "Project/Object" idea.)

Rather than focusing on what I want to do "in general," I instead decided that I needed a paradigm shift. I know conceive of all my objectives as a series of projects. The major advantages of projects is that they are associated with specific deliverables. Focusing on these deliverables costs nothing, because there is an associated end point. It becomes a matter, not of opportunity cost, but of inter-temporal substitution. This has the rather amazing effect of clearing items off my plate and also allowing me to accomplish more of them.

One way this happens is like so: Because I have made my current workout regimen my primary focus, I know that I cannot seriously dedicate large amounts of time to recording my upcoming Solaris album. As a result, the time I spend on it now is far more precise and focused. On top of that, I don't feel bad about stealing 30 minutes here and there to practice my guitar technique, because the tradeoff between that and recording has disappeared - recording is off the table until I run my marathon.

Furthermore, something new and surprising has arisen from all of this: Ryan Ruins Requests. Unable to dedicate sufficient time to a serious recording endeavor, I found myself recording covers as an additional form of practice, and my output has grown as a result!

The first such project (consciously conceived as a project-as-described) was the Prime Numbers show I played last November. We had a limited time to prepare and rehearse our material, and I had a lot of other things going on at the time. I made the strategic decision to focus on the show, and we pulled it off beautifully. Once finished, I quickly dedicated my efforts toward a second project: finding a new job, which I managed to accomplish in just three months.Next, of course, came my 18-week undertaking of training for the Montreal Marathon. It's safe to say that I haven't accomplished this many things in this short a time period in a long time - if ever.

The Challenge At This Point
Nowadays, I find the major challenge with the Projects-Driven Lifestyle is that when a particular undertaking spans a large enough period of time (like eighteen weeks, for example) Motivating oneself to see it through to the end can be somewhat daunting.

I have recently discovered this about running. My goals and desires haven't changed, but it's getting to be quite difficult to push myself to the top of my game for eighteen solid weeks. It seems like such a short period of time, but of course even seconds can feel like an eternity when they involve hard physical effort.

I may not have devised the perfect solution to this challenge, but of course I'm still working on it. My current theory is that I can likely just sally forth with the discomfort, and it will be over before it drives me totally crazy. At that point, I'll be able to start on my next major project, which will be Solaris.

Ryan Ruins Requests: Episode III - Return of the Suck

This one goes out to faithful Stationary Waves reader RR, from Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks, RR, for your dedicated reading... and requesting!

I can't take credit for the drum track on this one. The magic of these drums goes to other faithful Stationary Waves reader WW. 

Say, that gives me an idea... If you'd like to contribute to the next Ryan Ruins Requests, add a comment and let me know.

The One I've Been Waiting For

That's the trailer for the new movie Delhi Belly. As faithful blog followers already know, I am a big fan of Indian movies. They seem to have a more genuine level of substance to them than American movies. Wait, hear me out... I know they're formulaic and silly, but when I watch them, I never doubt for a minute that the filmmakers and actors genuinely enjoy what they're doing. That's what I mean but genuine.

Compare that to the all-colored-lenses-and-explosions school of American filmmaking that seems to be dominating the industry these days. A great camera shot is a great camera shot, true, but most people don't watch movies for the cinematography; they watch for the story.

Delhi Belly at last provides American fans of Indian movies like myself with a movie to point to that is everything a movie should be, no matter what country it's from. It is the first Indian movie I've seen that can legitimately compete with mainstream American cinema without caveats. The fact that the majority of the dialogue is in English rather Hindi only serves to underscore this point. If you've been looking for a great heist movie without any of the typical cliches and worn-out characters, I think this is the one for you.

It's also far more lighthearted than its nearest American competitor. That lightheartedness is an unsung strength of Hindi cinema in general. In the meat-and-potatoes, Shah Rukh Khan-style movies, that lightheartedness can translate into pure, saccharine cheesiness. In a more serious film like this, it provides a comedic backdrop for a movie that would otherwise be a full-on action film. 

I highly recommend this excellent movie to anyone, anywhere.

Boettke Gives Stiglitz a Chance

A recent post of Prof. Boettke's over on the Austrian School economics blog Coordination Problem asks how best to respond to Joseph Stiglitz' argument that the free market has completely failed and we need government to save us.

Well, gee whiz. Any takers? We might as well be asking how best to convince Jefferson Davis to become a Yankee.

I am joining this discussion late, but I want to point out that principles of debate date back to ancient Greece, where it was well-known that debate is pointless when there is disagreement at the "definition stasis."

Free marketeers share none of the core definitions with statists like Stiglitz. No response can be crafted, because we'll just get bogged-down in discussing what a "free market" is, what "success" or "failure" of said "free market" is, whether "right-wing ideology" is the same thing as a "free market," etc.

There is no point. You can't hold legitimate discussion with someone with whom you hold absolutely no common ground.

The Inevitable Facebook-ization of Google+

Why is Google+ destined to become Facebook?

I am not pessimistic about many things in life, but if there is one human propensity I can count on, it's human beings' desire to ruin every social blank slate with all the same crap that lead us to our fresh start in the first place. I've seen this so many times, I have learned to bank on it.

The first time I remember noticing it was in the eighth grade, when I started my second year of junior high school in a brand new school. This new school consisted of students who were formally attending one of three or four other schools. So when we all got thrown into a brand new school with no existing social structure, what we witnessed was nothing short of amazing. Nerds friends with jocks, beautiful people laughing with ugly folks, all-encompassing open-mindedness. When you break down the walls, people suddenly become good, friendly, and open-hearted. Fancy that.

I don't have to tell you that by the beginning of my ninth grade year, that phenomenon was over. Once the social structure constructs itself, the good feelings that lead to its construction disappear, and people go back to excluding each other judging each other, hating each other. It's kind of depressing.

I'm also old enough to have noticed this phenomenon occur on the internet. When I was a kid, and the internet was first getting started, you could wander into a chat room and meet all kinds of interesting people. It was really cool. Those were carefree days. Anyone could say anything; sometimes others would laugh, sometimes others would argue, but it always had a certain spirit of open-heartedness about it. It was that spirit that brought more and more people to the internet. In the 90s, there was a general feeling about the internet (among young people, anyway) that it was "a place to go where you could be yourself." Remember The Matrix? Sure, it's anachronistic by today's standards, but that movie was huge because it captured this feeling perfectly.

And yet, after about ten years of development, the internet became... pretty much like the rest of life. People started becoming guarded and stand-offish, protecting their words and their privacy. So we had to start over again with a new community without walls or social structure: MySpace. MySpace died before it ever became the corporate advertising machine that we know today. It died because our walls came up. A few spooky episodes of Jenny Jones was enough to ruin it completely.

So then there was Facebook, and we started all over again. This time, it seemed right. People were doing what they do best: posting silly pictures of themselves, putting up funny anecdotal status updates, and generally being the kooky species that we are. Then what happened? We had to put everyone on "limited profile" and make our profile pages into business resumes.

Don't get me wrong -- I get it. I understand why this happens, and that there are a million good reasons for this. Indeed, I'm not really lamenting the fact that people guard themselves more closely in a wider circle of people than they do among close friends or total strangers.

The problem is that we seem to want to break down the walls between us, and yet we keep putting them back up again. Frankly, I think fear is driving this. We're afraid to be who we are, so we try to be who we think people want us to be. None of us are comfortable enough in our own skin to say, "Look, this is who I am. If you don't like the fact that I have a tattoo of a gibbons ape on my buttocks and hang out at whiskey bars on Saturdays, too bad!"

But that's exactly what we need to start doing. We need to grow more comfortable with ourselves. In doing so, we become far more accepting of other people, and we learn, grow, and maintain a genuinely positive community, whatever it looks like.

Why do we insist on turning everything into junior high school?

I've Worn Out My Shoes

A few weeks ago, I bought a new pair of Saucony Grid Flex running shoes. I violated many of my own rules regarding the tools because I was interested in Saucony's new apparent commitment to branching out on its core line with some innovative shoe designs. Simply said, I wanted to give them a try.

Like many gimmicky running shoes, they initially felt superb! I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they felt "broken in" on my second day of running with them. I was incredibly encouraging. A lightweight shoe that provides excellent cushioning, and yet can keep up with the impact and mileage to which I subject them is hard to find indeed.

Alas, it was too good to be true. I may have owned them for about a month, and now the souls are worn straight through.

Gimmicky running shoes aren't quite "there" yet. We end up spending twice as much for something that is either a bad-fitting shoe, or one that wears out all too quickly. I am still a huge fan of Saucony's core line of products, but I'll be steering clear of the gimmicks when I buy a new pair of shoes this weekend.

Bangla Word of the Day

To lay (as in eggs)
Paara

পাড়া


"I laid an egg!" 
Ami aekta dim paarlam!
আমি একটা ডিম পাড়লাম !


Note that this word employs a harder "R" sound than many other words. Compare this version of "paara" to "para" (to be able to): পারা 


Finally, a note on the transliteration I'm using: Because Google's transliteration feature automatically converts P-A-R-A into পারা, I have chosen to use the double-a to differentiate. 

Fear and Exercise

If you run, you have almost certainly been asked, "How far do you run?" I am not really sure why non-runners consider this question topical. In my opinion, the idea that someone runs any distance with regularity - even a very short distance - is more significant than the particular distance they choose to run. In my opinion, the more pertinent question is, "How often do you run?" Nonetheless, we runners frequently find ourselves describing how far we run.

A common follow-up to that first question is some variation of the following exclamation: "If I ran that far, my legs would fall off!" Upon hearing this, I usually like to mention something you may have heard before: that human beings are designed to run; it's evolution. At this, my non-running friends typically engage in a variety of hand-waving explanations for why - no, really - they're unique in that running is particularly bad for them, whereas it's perfectly okay for people who are "naturally gifted" at running.

(Naturally gifted? But what did they think I meant by saying that we humans are designed to run? I suppose it's only a "natural" gift if it belongs to only a few of us.)

At this point, it becomes obvious: They are afraid to run.

Now let's turn the tables. I certainly know plenty of runners who are convinced that they could "never" bench press their own body weight. I know - I used to be one of them. Then I met a good runner friend of mine, call him DC, who could bench press nearly double his body weight, and could still run further and faster than I could. What was my excuse? I furrowed my brow and proclaimed that I couldn't understand his ability to lift weights.

But by then it was obvious: I was afraid to lift.

Another friend of mine insists that Crossfit training is stupid and dangerous. People "get hurt" and the trainers "don't care." Similarly, people insist that training programs like P90X and Hyperfitness are "crazy" or "insane" and loudly proclaim that it's all a dumb gimmick, that real people don't really redefine their bodies and reinvent themselves as fitness demigods.

The naysayers are afraid. This is a tragedy.

It's a tragedy because physical fitness - and indeed, life in general - is about pushing the limits, testing oneself, finding out what one can do. Another way to say this is this:

Trying is the only obstacle between something good and something great.


Yesterday I was running 600m repeats at 4:25/mile pace as part of my marathon training program. When the going got tough, I remember that for me running is a game of mind over matter. As I started running progressively slower and slower repeats, I calmly reminded myself that my body was only failing because I was afraid to push through to the end of the workout. Knowing this on a logical level helps one overcome the emotional indulgence of going slow.

Try it yourself, next time you don't think you're capable of finishing a tough workout. Tell yourself that the only thing standing in your way is fear. Then, brush that fear aside. It's easier than you think. Exercise is not particularly fearful. (Really - think about it. It's not scary.) Logically you know this to be true. So when you get tired, don't let your fear get the better of your mind. It really is mind over matter. Conquer your fear.

Then, go out and apply the lesson you've learned to your life in general.

Bangla Word of the Day

Bhuley (jai)
ভুলে যাই 


"I forget"


Bhuley must always be used with the verb "jawa" (to go). Therefore, the phrase "I forgot my keys" would be translated to "Amar chabi bhuley giyechhi." ( আমার চাবি ভুলে গিয়েছি | )

This Is Music

On Tuesday, July 5th, 2011, Soundgarden headlined the Ottawa Bluesfest music festival as part of their reunion tour. Having spent the majority of my lifetime as an avid (some might say rabid) Soundgarden fan, yet having never seen them live before, I would not have missed this experience for the world.

Stage techs were still conducting their final sound check as I took my place in the crowd in front of the MBNA main stage on the Bluesfest grounds. 200 yards away, an enormous crowd of Ottawa scenesters were fighting each other for the best place to drink their beers in front of the Claridge Stage, where The Flaming Lips were rolling around in a plastic bubble, shooting confetti into the crowd, (still) protesting the presidency of George W. Bush, and employing in other such cheap tactics to cover up what I've known about that band since the first time I ever heard "Tangerines" on the radio way back in 199X: They suck. The scenesters didn't care. For them, being able to say they were at a Flaming Lips concert is worth more than the music itself and, unsurprisingly, they made their way over to a smaller stage after the show to take in the moody irrelevance of Tegan & Sara.

I mention this because, even an hour before the show began, it was clear by the construct of the crowd that the Soundgarden concert would be different. While the come-to-be-seen scenesters are mostly 30ish government workers who drive Honda Fits and intellectualize beer, those who staked out a spot on the grounds for Soundgarden were my old friends from Generation X. The crowd grew thicker, yet peaceful and polite. Friends chatted about other concerts they had been to recently. I ran into my old pal, Laura, and caught up a bit. This wasn't a scene, it was a group of music fans. I took a deep breath and got ready for the show.

And with a massive cheer to the opening chords of "Black Rain," there it was: the reason we were all there. Having formed some thirty years ago, the band has aged visibly, which only served to make the timelessness of the music itself that much more obvious. Every kick drum hit shook my chest physically, every devlish guitar tone bore into my brain, every soaring vocal melody set a note to my spirit, every twisted bass line wrapped itself around me physically and pulled me into the music...

But it wasn't until the signature opening drum fill of "Ugly Truth" that the magnanimity of what I was seeing and hearing hit me with its full force. At first, the rest of the crowd didn't seem to recognize it. They cheered quickly and easily to hits like "Outshined" and "Black Hole Sun," but many of them were slower to remember the B-sides. But the rhythm of "Ugly Truth" is unmistakable, and its massive-yet-spacious, weaving, odd-timed groove dropped my jaw as I realized the beautiful truth of what I was experiencing. Exactly why Soundgarden is the legendary band that it is hit me like a ton of bricks.

You simply cannot understand these songs until you hear them live.

The key ingredient to Soundgarden's artistry is the inexplicable way they manage to channel a unified stream of incredible music while still retaining the individuality of each group member. Chris Cornell was in full-on rock star mode, darting across the stage, entreating the audience to sing and participate, wailing into the microphone, and hitting those notes flawlessly, while his guitar tone was decided guitar junkie. His boutique guitar amps and vintage guitars produced a sound that was very much everything you read about on Harmony Central. In contrast, Kim Thayil played coolly at stage-left on his trademark Guild guitars and his unavoildable Mesa amplifiers. Yin and yang. Ben Shepherd, meanwhile, was playing his Fender basses as always and - again, as always - producing a sound that no other bass player has ever managed to produce: a twisted, almost alien tone that is heavy yet tender, evil and lonely, yet somehow soft and haunting. He's not one for stage showmanship, but that in itself is part of the show. And behind it all lie the massive grooves of Matt Cameron, who somehow manages to blend the crushing blows of a John Bonham with virtuosic rhythmic complexity. And hearing him play those beats live reveals what you can never know from listening to the albums: He's improvising those beautiful, precise, and hard-hitting fills, no matter how composed they sound.

Wave after wave of incredible music washed over me. Then, two hours later, it was over and I was back in the real world, where The Flaming Lips are more socially signficant; where politics takes the place of lyrical expression; where beer and marijuana are the real reasons people show up at rock concerts.

But for two hours, at least, I had the opportunity to experience real musical art, by artists who still know that no matter what gimmicks are employed by other bands, no matter how many times hairy scenester rock fills the air and gets sandaled feet tapping to show that they really get it, man, true art can never be replaced.

Friyeee Dayeee Friyeee Dayeeee!!!

Here's a special "guest edition of Ryan Ruins Requests." (Actually, it's completely unaffiliated with me. Just the awesomeness of some friends here in town.) Check it out, I give it my full stamp of approval.

Happy Independence Day

Forget what the haters say. Independence Day is the one and only day we as a society have set aside to commemorate liberty from tyranny. Surely, no matter what you think about the comparative liberty in Colonial America, we can all agree that liberty and love are the most precious of human ideas. Today, I celebrate both.

Happy Fourth of July.