Phone Performance Art

You may recall this incident.  It was obviously pretty extreme.

But my own experience just now cancelling my Wall Street Journal subscription wasn't much different.  I called to cancel, and of course it's a bad sign that you have to call.  It would be easier and faster, and cheaper for them, actually, if you could cancel on the web site.  So the only possible explanation is that they think that they can harass and intimidate you into not cancelling.  The people on the phone are hired thugs.

Knowing this, I was ready. Still, it took a little more than 21 minutes to get the job done.  I won't go through the entire conversation, but it went like this (several times):
________________________________________
WSJ Thug:  "Can you tell my why you want to cancel your subscription?"

Me:  "Absolutely not."

WSJT:  ... (clearly has been trained that silence is power)

Me:  ...(has known for a long time silence is power)

WSJT:  "But we want to make sure we provide the best service we can to our customers.  We want to know how we could do better."

Me:  "That makes sense.  Tell you what, give me your fax number.  I have a contract [rattle piece of paper near phone, audibly] for consumer service consulting.  $175 per hour, four hour minimum, payable in advance.  As soon as I get your check or money order, I'll be happy to answer your questions for up to 4 hours."

WSJT: ...(not sure what to do, because this is not on his script).

Me:  "Or you can let me talk to your supervisor, right now.  Just forward this call to your supervisor."

WSJT: ....

Me:  "Or, you can cancel my subscription."

WSJT:  "I can't cancel your subscription.  I need to ask why you want to cancel."

Me:  "And I'm happy to answer that question.  But I told you I need a check for $700 first."

WSJT:  "Why would we pay you?"

Me:  "Why would I provide your free customer service consulting?  Do YOU work for free, pumpkin?"

WSJT: ...


[We went through this exchange, almost verbatim, just repeating things word for word, three times. Finally...]

WSJT:  "Okay, I'll cancel the subscription.  But what if I offer you the lowest rate, $16.00 per month?"

Me:  "Are you going to cancel my subscription?"

WSJT:  "That's up to you, sir.  I'm offering you the lowest rate!"

Me:  "No, it's not up to me.  I asked you to cancel the subscription 20 minutes ago, and you have been harrassing me and refusing to do what I want.  So, it's clearly up to you, not me."

WSJT: ...

Me:  "Tell  you what.  I'll offer you a discount.  Just $150 per hour, three hour minimum.  So you can send me a check for $450, and I'll answer your questions.  Otherwise, please put me through to your supervisor."

WSJT: "Well, the reason we aren't going to send you a check isn't the cost.  We don't want to do that at all."

Me:  "And that's exactly how I feel about your newspaper.  Why would a discount change my mind?  Would you please cancel my subscription?"

__________________________________________

He finally did.  Remarkable.  I wish I had thought to record it.  The aggressive thuggery is really out of place at a newspaper that presents itself as professional.  I will certainly never subscribe to any WSJ products again.

MSNBC jumps the shark

Consider this description of an MSNBC report:


MSNBC co-host Touré thinks the main reason Senator Mary Landrieu (D., La.) and other red-state Democrats are moving forward with bills to delay Obamacare is that they’ve been “gerrymandered” into safe seats. 

He explained on The Cycle that vulnerable Democrats such as Landrieu, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas have to deal with appealing to right-leaning constituents because of their . . . situation. “We see red-state Democrats who are dealing with the challenge of living and governing in a gerrymandered world,” Touré said. 

Um...he does understand that those are all SENATORS, right?  Elected from states?  The big things on the map, the ones with the state lines set by federal statutes of territorial admission?  

I mean, it's one thing to claim that problems in the House are caused by gerrymandering.  (They aren't).  But...the Senate?  Really?  I understand that MSNBC doesn't hire commentators with an IQ over 80, but this is embarrassing.

Grand Theft Educ

Angus already mentioned this.

But you may not have read the story. Excerpt:

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates.

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students.

Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.

The only way the teachers' union, the AFT, can keep a lid on this is to keep parents "away from the table." The solution, as I said when I ran in 2008, is means tested voucher. The wealthy have choices now. It's the poor folks who need help.

As it is, we are just putting people in jail for "stealing" what all my leftoid friends assure me is a public good.

ATSRTWT

China Has Problems

In 1990, I interviewed for a job at A. Tuck Business School, Dartmouth College. At lunch, someone brought up the need for business schools in the U.S. to adopt Japanese methods and teaching techniques.

Ever adept at making people like me, I snorted. "Japan is a giant economic bubble," I said. "And the only way that they have growth is by implicitly taxing their consumers with protectionism and diverting private saving into public investment. We ought to look at what Japan is doing, both publicly and privately, and do the exact OPPOSITE. Their growth is fake, and their business methods are short-sighted." (To be fair, I had gotten this view from my mentor Murray Weidenbaum; it was not original)

The reaction from the Tuckwads: Crickets. Utter disbelief. Would have been much better if I had loudly farted and then said, "Middle C! I usually can't hit that note!"

Finally, the Ass. Dean said, "(ahem). Dr. Munger, that would be a rather controversial opinion in these halls. We are trying to learn more about Japanese methods. I'm not sure you are really well versed in the latest research." (He was a Brit; just imagine the condescension ladled on to these words.)

No, I didn't get the job. But here is the growth path of Japan's economy:
Hey, Dean, you mother Tucker, bite me! I hope you lost your 180 thread count bespoke button-down shirt, you idiot!

All that is prologue (and yes I have been badly wrong on a dozen things in the meantime). Anyway, here is my current view:

China's growth is fake. Not as fake as Japan's, because the China doesn't have a zombie financial sector. That's because they have ZERO financial sector, at least in the sense of being able to generate liquidity on a consistent scale. And the threat of nationalization rules out private offerings of publicly traded stock.

It is true that they are producing mountains of stuff. But what they are doing is taking all private saving and expropriating it, converting it into capital for more semi-state-owned factories.

The problem is that there are three reasons wages can go up. (Real Wages are shooting up, over much of China, by the way. Perhaps an index number problem, since an increase from near zero is a big percentage, but still.).

Wage Increase Reason 1: Production process becomes more capital intensive.
Wage Increase Reason 2: Skills and human capital of workers increase
Wage Increase Reason 3: Unions such as UAW or SEIU steal higher wages, driving employment offshore, and devestating the economy. Minimum wage laws work, too, though they mostly harm the poor and economically marginal.

Now, the US chose #3 in northern states ranging from Mass to Mich, and everything in between. And now those states look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. So, that is a bad idea.

I had been under the impression that China was struggling along under Reason #1. But this study suggests Reason #2 is bigger than I would have thought. Interesting.

"The Contribution of Human Capital to China's Economic Growth," John Whalley & Xiliang Zhao, NBER Working Paper, December 2010

Abstract: This paper develops a human capital measure in the sense of Schultz (1960) and then reevaluates the contribution of human capital to China's economic growth. The results indicate that human capital plays a much more important role in China's economic growth than available literature suggests, 38.1% of economic growth over 1978-2008, and even higher for 1999-2008. In addition, because human capital formation accelerated following the major educational expansion increases after 1999 (college enrollment in China increased nearly fivefold between 1997 and 2007) while growth rates of GDP are little changed over the period after 1999, total factor productivity increases fall if human capital is used in growth accounting as we suggest. TFP, by our calculations, contributes 16.92% of growth between 1978 and 2008, but this contribution is -7.03% between 1999 and 2008. Negative TFP growth along with the high contribution of physical and human capital to economic growth seem to suggest that there have been decreased in the efficiency of inputs usage in China or worsened misallocation of physical and human capital in recent years. These results underscore the importance of efficient use of human capital, as well as the volume of human capital creation, in China's growth strategy. (Nod to Kevin Lewis)

The point is that China is going to run up against a captial constraint, and may (this is delightful) actually follow the Marxist predictions about industrial capitalism. Marx didn't understand capital, but neither do our Chinese friends. Unless the Chinese can get huge amounts of liquidity to feed the need for physical investment, wages from increased human capital are going to start to squeeze them really bad. And there may actually be the worker's revolt that Marx predicted for Western Europe. Except it will happen in a communist country, precisely because it is not capitalist enough to have common stock offerings.

Texas, California, and P-Kroog

Angry Alex sends the link for this joke, and commentary from P-Kroog, falsely comparing TX with CA.

Reminds me of this joke, which I heard in Idaho. You should know, if you don't already, that thousands of Californians have moved to Idaho, largely to avoid the stupid government in CA. Of course, those Californians bring "stupid" with them; unfortunately, it's contagious.

Four women in a car. Front seat, woman from Kentucky, woman from North Carolina. Back seat, woman from Idaho, woman from California.

Woman from Kentucky looks down at her drink. "I'm from Kentucky. I'm really tired of bourbon; we have SO much bourbon. It's just obnoxious and useless. Enough is enough!" And she throws the bourbon out the window.

Woman from NC is driving, looks down at cigarettes. "I'm from North Carolina. Tobacco everywhere, people smoking. Tobacco is just obnoxious and useless; enough is enough!" And she throws the pack of cigarettes out the window.

Woman from Idaho looks around, reaches across and opens the other door....and kicks out the woman from California.

There are a lot of locational preferences that I understand. But California.... I just don't get it. You people who claim to like it: STAY. HOME.

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Don't Blame the Police

This is really dumb.

But don't blame the police: it is the LAW. Cops don't get to pick which laws to enforce. I have argued this before...

So the lady in the article who says cops are wrong, is wrong.

And the lady who says, "Get rid of the chess tables" is an even bigger doofus. How is society made better off by destroying existing chess tables that are heavily used?

The problem is the stupid law. You can't even run on the grass, in the park, unless accompanied by a minor.

The thing is that the freqeuncy of child molestation or abduction by strangers has plummeted. It is NOT, simply not, an actual problem. This paper, in 2004, debunks a number of myths. And stranger abductions have gone DOWN since then.

The problem is nanny-fascist city council members, all over the country, who give in to pressure to make up ridiculous new laws.

(Nod to Anonyman)

The Culture that is Japan

Only in Japan could a zenophobic hate group be named "Citzen's Group That Will Not Forgive Special Privileges for Koreans in Japan".

Their actions aren't as obtuse as their name though:

The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.

Their reason?

Well their leader "defended the protests at the Korean school in Kyoto as justified to oppose the school’s use of a nearby public park, which he said rightfully belonged to Japanese children."

And would you like to see what this monster looks like?



Japan is a deeply weird place.

Do NOT jaywalk in Seattle

Especially if you are female and African-American!

Check this video of the buzz-cut white cop winding up and punching a girl in the face!

Of course the cop union says the action was "justified".

WTF????

Now they finally have something to fight about

From today's NYT:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

People, this could make the Dutch disease and blood diamonds look like kid's stuff, no? We have already seen all the years of violence, all the corruption and now there is actually something valuable in play. Kudos to the NYT reporter for recognizing this:

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts.

Not to mention how it will affect the US and our willingness to keep soldiers fighting and dying there.

Another other shoe drops

The scandal broke in North America, then re-erupted in Europe. Now it's Latin America's turn to proclaim the joys of Catholicism:

The detention of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 has added to the scandals hitting the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, even as Chile's bishops asked pardon Tuesday for past cases.

The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa — and two other Brazilian priests — have made headlines throughout the world's most populous Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual abuse by priests around the world.

Latin Americans priests have faced a cascade of accusations of abuse of minors.

A priest in Chile was charged recently with eight cases of sexually abusing minors, including a girl he had fathered.

Chile's bishops' conference issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for priestly sexual abuse and vowing a "total commitment" to prevent it in the future.

YIKES!