Tag: social comment

4/20: A Capitalist’s Dream

grassOnce again, the world has survived 4/20.  Despite dire warnings, our civilization didn’t collapse in a hail of exhaled smoke last Saturday, Bob Marley didn’t rise from the dead and Satan isn’t rolling a FatBoy (or whatever they’re called these days) on a throne of broken skulls and pure evil.  However, even as the suburban kids and the 60s-going-on-70s grey hairs are putting away their inner Jesse James for another year, I’m struck by just how bourgeois the once mighty marijuana counterculture has become.  The telling feature is the 4/20 inner circle password isn’t exactly secret anymore.  It’s so seriously mainstream, it wears Mom jeans, drives a Prius and has a bad boy Celtic knot tattoo.  There’s something just a little sorry about the gangstas at the annual 4/20 rally covering their faces with bandanas to avoid corporate disapproval rather than prosecution.  Of course, these days, smoking dope is tantamount to breaking Dad’s ten o’clock curfew rule.  The cops really don’t care who smokes what anymore (tobacco has more prohibitions) and unless you combine your recreational drug use with kidnapping and/or arson it’s practically impossible to get arrested.

There’s no real harm in the solid middle class playing one-day-a-year outlaw on April 20th: knock yourself out!  However, ever since high school, I’ve thought it was hilarious that these bad-to-the-bone counterculturists are missing the one great irony.  The world of marijuana is, in fact, the last bastion of radical right-wing laissez-faire capitalism — and it works.

I don’t think anybody needs a primer on capitalism; it’s been the bogeyman since Western youth got the two Lennons (Lenin?) mixed up — back in 1965.  It’s the system that sophomores love to hate.  However, many of the same people who wouldn’t be caught dead endorsing the free market have been indulging in it up to their rolling papers for at least three generations now.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Marijuana is a huge international commodity.  Yet unlike all other agricultural products on this planet, it is devoid of government interference, intervention and/or regulation.  There are simply no governmental rules set up for the cultivation and sale of marijuana.  Therefore, there are no agricultural subsidies, no marketing boards, no tariff barriers, no packaging regulation and no other bureaucratic etceteras getting in the way of the dedicated business person.  In fact, as a commodity, the marijuana industry is governed, in its entirety, by the free market forces of supply and demand.  Not only that, but the price and profits of the industry are completely controlled by how efficiently the marijuana entrepreneur brings his product to market and how 4/20 at the University of Coloradoeffectively he handles his (or her) competition.  But wait: there’s more!  Taxation, the Holy Grail of all left-wing social planners and the bane of all free marketers is – OMG! — nonexistent.  The marijuana entrepreneur is not forced to share his profits with anyone.  If all this isn’t greedy bastard capitalism at its very best, I don’t know what is!

Now, here’s the kicker: not only has the marijuana industry survived for these many decades without government intervention, it has thrived.  The retail price has remained relatively low, the profit margins have remained relatively high and the market is stable.  Plus, at a time when the entire world is playing chicken with economic collapse, marijuana remains a growth industry.   Looks to me as if there’s some pretty convincing empirical evidence that, in fact, capitalism works.

So for all those “capitalism is worse than crap” wannabe economists out there: you might want to take a closer look before you run your mouth.  And for all those “I’m so baaad” middle-class muffins praying for the legalization of marijuana: careful what you wish for.  Once the government gets a hold of 4/20, the price will go up, the quality will go down and they’ll probably turn it into (3X – 2)/(6X + 8) — just to complicate things!

Animal Rights: So Very Wrong

dog2Where the hell is PETA when you need them?  Nowhere to be seen!  They’re probably going celebrity naked in the parking lot of some KFC in beautiful downtown New Zealand, protecting the chicken parts from the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices.  I’m not saying these folks are useless (they’re so close nobody has to say it) but it strikes me that they’re pretty picky/choosy about which animal’s right they want to defend.  While they’re jet setting around the world, taking their clothes off, I’m walking through a park in North America, seeing dogs (yes, more than one, and on more than one occasion) with nail polish!  The kicker is these aren’t perpetually abused Paris Hilton purse puppies; they’re regular dogs who stay, fetch and pee on trees.  I’m not heavily into anthropomorphism, but I don’t care how you slice it: forcing a trusting companion to look like an idiot in public is a violation of its right to a modicum of dignity.  If PETA isn’t going to do its job, what good are they?

In general, I agree with the Animal Rights people.  We’re sharing this planet with all manner of other creatures, and just because we’re the dominant species, that doesn’t mean we have carte blanche to kick them.  We’re civilized people, for God sake.  Our basic tenet should be “Do unto others…etc. etc.” and that includes no chasing them with guns, harpoons or pointy sticks and cutting off their body parts for tacky trophies, trendy lunches or hocus-pocus medicine.  It’s been a number of centuries since we’ve had to beat our food over the head just to eat it, and it’s time we realized that.

By the same token, I’m really tired of has-been celebrities making headline out of high profile attempts to deny what can only be called food’s natural destiny.  Now hear this!  The stated purpose of billions of chickens on this earth is to be extra crispy.  It’s the truth.  To all the vegetarians out there, good on ya.  However, millions of us are not of the faith; therefore, that chicken has to die for our culinary sins.  What the Animal Rights crowd doesn’t understand is the relationship between we humans and that chicken is not much different from our relationship to the cabbage in the coleslaw or the disodium ginaphinate (or whatever?) in the buttermilk biscuits.  We’re not friends, and we haven’t betrayed a trust.  Trying to square peg this into a moral round hole is a substantial waste of time, energy and resources.

This ultimately brings us back to my encounter in the park with the oddly-decorated Canis Lupus Famillaris.  While the Animaldogs7 Rights crew have been prancing around the world in God’s underwear, reading the ethical riot act to anyone with a camera, all over North America, canines are being treated like crap.  It might not be SPCA-worthy, physical cruelty – but so what?  If you believe, as I do, that dogs are smarter than we give them credit for, it can`t be anything short of psychological abuse.  Dogs are not supposed to wear nail polish.  Nor are they supposed to wear jewelry, hats, coats, scarves, those stupid little socks or idiot reindeer antlers at Christmas.  (Okay, if you and your Chihuahua live at the South Pole, bundle him up for walkies, but otherwise it’s none of the above.)  Doing any of these things to an unsuspecting dog is breaking an ancient, sacred trust.

I’m not going to revisit tens of thousands of years of canine/human coexistence — there’s no need.  Over the centuries, dogs have given their masters unqualified trust, but in recent history, many of them are being repaid by being forced to look ridiculous for a few gratuitous grins or a funny Pinterest image.  I don’t know what these dogs are thinking, but you don’t have to be Cesar Millan to know it’s unethical to take advantage of a subordinate when you are in a position of power.  Yet, PETA (People for the ETHICAL Treatment of Animals) could give a rat’s bum for these designer dogs because it’s not sexy and it’s not trendy and it’s not oh-so-sensitive.  It’s just a mutt with a pirate hat and an eye patch.  PETA, you need to change your name or get out of the multinational worthy cause business!

Apple: A Misguided Religion

Sometimes I think I’m the only person on this planet who’s fed up with Apple.  Yeah, yeah, yeah — I know!  They’re the uber coolest company of all time; they invented all the iCrap that nobody but your grandma uses anymore and oh (like I could ever forget) Stephen Jobs never wore a tie!  But for God sake’s, guys!  Get over yourselves!  You’re not a religion, no matter what your basement dwelling followers tell you.  In the real world, above ground, the only difference between Apple and every other Tom, Dick and Harry tech company is price.  Apple stuff is so wildly overpriced it’s a wonder anybody at the iStores, from manager to minion, can even look at themselves in a mirror in the morning.  Saying Apple is proud of their products is like saying Kim Kardashian is a media whore.  D’uh!

Normally, I leave Apple alone.  Way back in the day, I had a Mac — I loved it – but I grew up and outgrew my burning need to “share” odd photographs, soft core porn and my particular taste in music that week.  However, yesterday (believe me, the date doesn’t matter) Apple introduced yet another new iSomething and I wondered what it was.  Then, like a perpetual old fool, I took a gander.  Apparently, this most recent Galileo moment in electronic history is a new iPad, which looks so strikingly similar (inside and out) to the old iPad as to be the same machine.  In fact, aside from a memory tweak, it is the same machine.  Yet, despite this obvious sleight of hand, the reviewers were going onapple5 as if the da Vincis down at Cupertino, CA had just revolutionized computering in the 21st century.  According to them, this was the greatest human achievement since triple bypass surgeon — at merely twice the price.  Nor were they done!  After singing iPad 4’s (4.5? 5? 29?) praises until they got writer’s cramp, they went on for seven or eight more paragraphs in speculative hallelujahs about what Apple was going to come up with next.  It was like listening to Tom Cruise talk about L. Ron Hubbard.

I’m not very tech savvy, and I don’t want to go all Dennis Miller on the thing, but let’s stop for a minute and take a look at what we’re dealing with here.  Essentially, the iPad, in whatever number sequence Apple wants to give it, is an oversized, overpriced smart phone that doesn’t make telephone calls.  It’s as big as a turkey platter with more memory than any average human being can possibly use, a camera that can pick out nasal hair at 50 paces and solid walls of Benny and the Jets sound, if that’s what you’re into.  However, with a price tag that would bankrupt a Mexican drug lord, it doesn’t give you anymore battery life or connectivity than my $49.00 Samsung – which, BTW, fits in my back pocket.  iPads are so conspicuously large you can’t manipulate them with fewer than three hands.  Plus, even though they weigh less than lunch at Taco Bell, their side to side size dictates they don’t actually fit anywhere.  This sheer unbendable volume makes a mockery of their primary purpose – portability – and there are no other redeeming features, like a workable keyboard, to compensate for that.  In a reasonable world, iPads would be the new Betamax — with a commensurate consumer shelf life.  Unfortunately, we don’t live in a reasonable world.

apple3I’m not dissing Apple just for the hell of it.  I’m not a committed Android, Microsoft, Blackberry or anything else, user.  Honestly, I don’t know enough about what makes what work electronically even to have a choice.  However, I do know a con job when I see one.  For my money, when you have two items that look the same, act the same and were probably made in the same factory, but one costs more than three times as much as the other one…well…B. T. Barnum was definitely right.

It’s obvious; the real thing Apple is selling is “cool.”  So be it.  If you can sell the sizzle off a bad cut of meat, you’re a crooked jerk, but all the more power to you.  My problem is the boys down at the Apple clubhouse think they don’t put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.  And every time I mention it, I get the Stephen Jobs/Johannes Gutenberg lecture.  I agree; the guy was a genius, but that doesn’t give him (or his post-mortem company) the arrogant right to gouge everybody.  But what really burns my bacon is that even though most people outside the Apple cabal realize it’s not the one true path to enlightenment nobody is willing to admit it – except, maybe, me.