The Daily Cannibal |
| Playing Poker With the Maverick Posted: 30 May 2012 02:45 AM PDT
 Sometimes a flush is not a bad thing.... I had lunch today with an interesting character we shall call the Maverick, as he seldom seems to hew to the conventional wisdom. This habit has served him well over many years, with the occasional misfire, such as an ill-advised venture into the Middle East financial markets just before the various Arab Springs put an end to that particular boom (and by “ill-advised,” we mean precisely that. He listened to “someone who knew,” but alas, they did not.). I wondered aloud what he was up to these days. He has in the past been a partner at a major Wall Street firm (back when it still had partners), built his own business into one of the most successful operations in its area, and managed a hedge fund family whose assets at their peak were in the billions. Now he is semi-retired, but his restlessness keeps him engaged in various enterprises, some philanthropic and some not. The Maverick finds the energy question compelling. He now operates two small funds that invest in various forms of energy that are distinctly non-green, in that they are profitable without subsidy or tax incentive — but that was not the topic of today’s discussion. “It’s a gold rush,” he said, referring to the grand contest (now only in its initial stages) to determine the energy sources of the future. “And you know who makes money in a gold rush?” Well, gold miners, I assumed. “No. Most of the miners die broke. The people who make the money are those who sell the picks and shovels. They can’t lose.” He then described a large investment he had made in a small company. It makes bearings. These bearings, which employ a proven but obscure technology, will reduce the friction in the wheels and transmission of a full-sized car to such an extent, he says, that the car could be moved by one hand of one person pushing on it. More practically, if installed on a tractor trailer, they will improve the fuel efficiency of the truck by one gallon per mile. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Well, a big rig tractor trailer only gets about 5 miles per gallon. Saving a gallon a mile translates into a 20% efficiency improvement. Further, these bearings require no lubrication, eliminating the cost in both labor and oil that lubrication entails. “So I don’t really care whether the truck burns gasoline, or diesel, or LNG, or propane, or cooking oil salvaged from the fryers of McDonald’s. Let someone else go prospecting for that gold. I’m here to sell them the picks and shovels.” The applications to passenger cars are just as dramatic, but the cost is currently prohibitive compared to trucks. But economies of scale could well solve that problem, and, given a chance, probably will. Imagine the impact on our fuel consumption if every car and truck in the country used 20% less fuel. And there you have it. Will this venture make the Maverick a large profit — or will it turn into another empty office in Dubai? He doesn’t know, but he’s willing to take the risk. He’s willing too take the risk because he sees a chance to take excess capital (that many would argue he shouldn’t be allowed to have in the first place) and invest it profitably. Why can’t the government do this? Well, the people who invented and manufacture this technology have no lobbyists. They do not make campaign contributions. Do you think they can get anyone in Washington to listen to them? But the Maverick, somehow, found them. Capitalism has many flaws, and many critics, but this is capitalism at its best, taking advantage of government at its worst.
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| Posted: 29 May 2012 10:01 PM PDT
Thanks to The Nation‘s Chris Hayes and the online world that pointed me to a segment on his late-night MSNBC show, I finally feel less alone with these thoughts. Imagine – an intelligent discussion of the use the word “hero.” Actually occurring. On television. Hayes, a bespectacled reporter who (fortunately or un-) looks very much the part of the liberal intellectual, opined thus: “It is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the word hero. Why do I feel so uncomfortable about the word hero? I feel uncomfortable with the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. And I obviously don’t want to desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that has fallen. Obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is tremendous heroism. You know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that’s problematic, but maybe I’m wrong about that.” Hayes himself then articulated an opposing argument: “The argument on the other side of that is, we don’t have a draft. This is voluntary. This is someone making a decision to take on a certain risk of that. And they’re taking it on because they’re bound to all of us through this social contract, through this democratic process of self-governance in which we decide collectively that we’re going to go to war…And if the word hero is not right, there’s something about it that’s noble, right?” Naturally, a batch of right-wing media blowhards manufactured a controversy over these carefully phrased points made by Hayes on the eve of Memorial Day. The egregiously false accusations found in responses by the likes of breitbart.com’s Kurt Schlichter and a clueless person by the name of Warner Todd Huston at Wizbang – prime examples of ignoring what was actually said and flying off the handle just to cause a meaningless tempest – were ably summed up and refuted by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic. But why did the comments of Hayes and his panel of guests please me so? Well, my discomfort in this matter comes not only from the word “hero” but also from the assumption that honor and some kind of valor inhere by default in military service. Hayes noted that because the U.S. military is all-volunteer, an element of nobility goes into any enlistment, yet a sense of duty or national pride is by no means the only motivator for signing up. For many, economic reasons are important, even primary. Some enlist to follow a family tradition of service. For others it’s the simplest possible resolution to the complexities of an indecisive youth. None of this takes away from any courageous or noble behavior that ensues, but the mere act of joining the military does not necessarily make a person extraordinary, any more than dying in combat necessarily makes one a hero. Fundamentally, this isn’t (mainly) about words. It’s about patriotic duty and personal responsibility, morality and honor, war and peace, life and death. We ought to be able to discuss these things thoughtfully, on the air or off.  |
| Are Republicans Just Plain Evil? Posted: 29 May 2012 06:17 PM PDT
So says Times columnist Paul Krugman, describing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee. New Jersey (which Mr. Krugman flatters with the sobriquet “the McMansion state”) Governor Chris Christie fares no better:
I confess, my first thought was “tubby,” but it turns out Mr. Krugman had a different word in mind: “bully.” A bully, apparently, is someone who disagrees with Mr. Krugman’s constant demand for more subsidy and greater government spending, and further, has the temerity to disagree strongly. We can see how this may upset Mr. Krugman, as he has made plain his intolerance for dissent from views that are at best opinions, but which he insists are “settled science.” Including those “crucial nutritional aid programs,” whatever that may mean. Does he refer to the mountains of “healthy food choices” that our schools throw out every day because their students won’t touch them? Still, it seems a pretty long reach to accuse the Republican candidate for president and a senior member of the House of deliberately seeking to harm babies. Sounds a little shrill, doesn’t it? Some might counter that shrillness in defense of broccoli is no vice, but this shoe seems to fit only one foot:
When it comes to a fondness for invective — and fiscal phoniness — Mr. Krugman has outdistanced Governor Christie by an impressive gulf. And his “McMansions” crack did not made him any new friends in Jersey, either, although it does illuminate somewhat the sneer that so often lurks behind his snarls.  |
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