Rohit's Realm

Did Law School Kill the Realm?

2009-06-28T10:47:12-07:00

It is hard to know what has suffered more in the (school) year just past, my personal life or this blog. Needless to say, however, both have suffered dramatically. And while my personal life was never much to write home about—and therefore its faltering nothing to lament—the same cannot be said of the (formerly) illustrious Realm. Once a glimmering bastion of douchebaggery and misanthropy, all that remains today is a fetid cesspool of occasional despair and compulsory self-loathing. It is, in short, a shadow of its former self.

What villainous scoundrel vanquished this most worthless of Internet havens that so poignantly failed to display the utter pointlessness of human existence? Certainly law school would be a worthy contender for this dishonor. Between soul-crushing journal work and lunatic decisions to take four to five substantive courses per quarter, the past year rarely left me with time to pontificate on the meaninglessness of existence. There just was not enough time to appreciate my own material worthlessness. But, I submit to you dear readers, a most dreadful proposition—one that is far worse than the aforementioned. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit that, at least in part, I have failed to write this past year not only for a mere lack of time but also for a loss of inspiration.

With the amount of reading, writing, and (faux) arithmetic (also known as economics) that the past year demanded, also came a decided creative dullness that I could not wake from, no matter how hard I tried. Certainly the crushing work load did not help, but even while working (more than) full time in San Francisco (and traveling frequently), I still managed to keep a steady posting rate. And that's not even mentioning college, where I damn near killed myself trying to squeeze in everything in four years.

Is it just the law? Does the precision and repetition of it all just drive people into a left-brain funk from which they cannot emerge? I find it all rather sad, to be honest. Some of the best writers I know are my classmates in law school. And while no one is going to shed a tear if I stop writing (I suspect a few will rejoice, while most do not even care to notice), certainly it would be a downright tragic if others more talented than I were to be driven into the same somnolence that has consumed me solely because they chose law as a career.

Since second year ended, I have tried to rediscover the muse, but it has been to no avail. In New York the past few weeks, work kept me more busy than law school had in the spring. In London this past week, law school occupied my time even when work did not. The only reason I am writing this right now is because I have a five hour train ride from Edinburgh back to London (and wireless!). I would like to say that this is the post that marks my return, but I would be lying if I said so with any degree of certainty. Where this site goes from here is a mystery, even to me.

Maybe it is only appropriate: maybe the Realm will live, surely it will (eventually) die—at this point, I honestly could not tell you when the death knell shall sound. In that way, the situation is no different than my life (or yours, for that matter). Maybe I (you) will live, surely I (you) will die, and in the end it won't have mattered at all. It is always good to have some perspective.

Congress Hates Me (and the Poor)

2009-05-19T08:21:59-07:00

Damn. It has been a long time since I last posted. This has been a rough nine months (more on this later) for this blog, but as the school year winds down, I thought I would ease back into writing, with the goal of resuming my normal productivity levels soon. While the meaninglessness of life is certainly a topic to which I will return, I thought that today I would focus on something a little less cerebral: credit-card legislation making its way through Congress this month.

Defenders of this legislation have couched their rhetoric in fiery imagery of abuse and exploitation, invoking again the equivalent of mustachioed subprime mortgage banker of yesteryear (by that, I mean 2007, when the apocalypse was not visible on the horizon). Greedy corporate executives working at evil banks, it seems, have been tricking honest, hard-workin' 'Merican folks into taking out credit they could not afford and then charging them unfair fees and penalties. And since we generally believe that abuse and exploitation are a Bad Thing™, why shouldn't our saviors in Congress step in and impose blanket restrictions on the evil credit card companies?

Plainly speaking, because it will screw me over. True, there is abuse and exploitation in credit cards, and certainly, no one can credibly deny that those with less education or less capital bear the brunt of that exploitation and abuse. And to the extent we can, we should stop the trickery and deceit that (apparently) runs rampant.

Stopping trickery and deceit, however, is a far cry from capping interest rates (as many have proposed). Higher interest rates for riskier borrowers is not an abusive lending practice; it is a fundamental tenet of capital markets. If there is less chance that you will recover the money you lend, you charge a higher interest rate to compensate for that risk.

So, when credit card companies are restricted from charging the interest rate that would compensate for a particular borrower's risk profile, they are left with only two options: (1) not lend at all to that borrower; or (2) charge less risky borrowers (like me) more to compensate for the risk they cannot offload due to the cap on interest rates. In practice, credit card companies will probably do both, as the Times (bastion of conservatism that it is) noted yesterday.

Neither of those results, in my mind, is desirable, but the latter is leaps and bounds more offensive than the former. The problem with the first option, of course, is that the riskiest borrowers tend to be the poorest, so when credit card companies start denying credit (because they are unwilling to take on a risk without adequate compensation), the poorest will be disproportionately affected. No one is going to offer risky borrowers a rate the market will not bear absent a subsidy. And, that is exactly what the second option is—a subsidy from the middle class, who have a low risk of defaulting on their debt, to the poor, who have a high risk.

Ultimately, the inescapable truth, terrible though it may be, is this: really risky borrowers should not be getting credit at all. The only way they can is (1) if they are charged higher interest rates, or (2) if someone less risky subsidizes that risk. When you take away first option via legislation, only the second option is left. And if we are limiting options, we should be certain that the ones left are superior to the ones limited. Responsible people subsidizing irresponsible people does not sound like the better option here. Isn't that what the subprime mess was about fundamentally? People buying stuff that they could not afford and others subsidizing them.

This is my true frustration with economic populism. Demagogues always win points for it with the (much loathed) unwashed masses, but in the end, it is those unwashed masses along with the middle class that get reamed while the rich escape unscathed (in this case, for example, the rich will be unaffected because they have enough assets such that they do not need credit). Something to think about the next time some asshole gets in front of the cameras and starts babbling on about corporate greed and the like.

Go Big or Go Home

2009-03-27T20:21:23-07:00

Greetings from Ocean Springs, Miss., where I am wrapping up a week of Spring Break of Service, working for the Mississippi Center for Justice. Tomorrow, I head to New York, N.Y., for a brief visit and Sunday, it's back to the grind in Chicago. I will have more to say about this trip in a future post (and photos to show!), but I thought I would take this entry to address first my extended absence from the Realm.

No, the blog is not dead, though it does feel strange writing tonight, considering how long it has been since I last wrote anything nonlegal. The immediate reason for my absence is as clear as it is uninteresting: I decided to take five classes in winter quarter, and compounded with journal work, was left with almost no free or down time whatsoever. Why I decided to do that to myself, however, is not as easy a question to answer.

My general (facetious) response to that question thus far has been that I am simply maximizing the value I derive from the tuition I pay. Frankly, however, that response is total bullshit. There is no external value to taking more classes—no one cares how many classes you take, only how well you do—and indeed, if anything, it is a net negative because it allows one less time to study for each exam. The value, therefore, if there is any to be found at all, must be in the form of personal edification. But at what cost, and to what end? After months of killing myself, I am not so sure I have answers to either of those questions.

What I am left with, then, is absurdity and a mantra that I have always adhered to in most everything I do: go big or go home. Why do something if you're not going to do it all out, right? That sentiment remains logical in my mind, but I struggle in reconciling it with the knowledge (again acquired the hard way) that all out is not always worth it (as it probably was not last quarter).

Coming down to Mississippi this past week was useful in putting things in perspective. The realization that I had literally done nothing besides work for the past three months was disconcerting. Even in the darkest days of adding value as a consultant, I always found time to, say, read books or update this blog. It made me realize I need to make a change.

In that spirit, I have decided to take fewer classes and join a legal clinic (though any helping of people arising from my clinic membership will obviously be incidental—I would not want to compromise my reputation as a feckless corporate stooge). Hopefully it will allow me to spend less time at the (loathsome) library and more time enjoying the nonexistent Chicago spring. More importantly for you, dear readers, I should be thinking and writing about things other than the law again. Self-loathing and mediocrity are back—with a vengeance.

Doom and Gloom: The Existential, the Principal, and the Asinine

2009-02-14T14:22:54-08:00

The length of time that has elapsed since I last posted an entry might have led some of you to fear (or rejoice?) that this blog had met its earthly demise with a whimper of disaffection, disinterest, and apathy (much as its owner will soon meet his own mortal demise, no doubt). But fear (or rejoice) not, naysayers and haters, for it is not death but dormancy that encumbers the Realm in these dark, despondent days of wintry cold and ever accelerating economic decline. The subject which rouses me from my somnolence, moreover, is not likely to provide any solace to those among the downtrodden or defeated, for today is St. Valentine's Day, and I see it as my duty in life to neutralize the misplaced feelings of love or happiness that are likely today to pervade (and pollute!) a world decidedly lacking in neither.

Considering, however, that I have made it a habit of posting biennially on this most critical of holidays (for more, see entries from 2005 and 2007), I do not concern myself today with dead plants or (the inevitable failure of) relationships. Indeed, my purpose in this post is greater than both the worthless assholes wallowing in self-pity over Single's Awareness Day and this worthless asshole (yours truly) perennially wallowing in existential angst (and, of course, cheap beer and perfume).

The doom and gloom of the past few months has started to wear on me, as I suspect it has for many, and in ways different than those I have known in the past. What explains this difference? The key, I think, is the distinction between the existential, the principal, and the asinine, and I explore each in turn below.

The Existential

Though the existential sources of distress and despair are probably the most abstract, I begin with them because, in many ways, they are also the most salient for those of my ilk. For us, fortunate enough to not lack in what I earlier deemed fundamental (such as food, shelter, and housing), the existential questions are probably the easiest to understand, though perhaps most difficult to answer: Are these people I hardly know and barely like really my friends? Do I really care for my significant other, or is that I just care not to be alone? Why did I end up married to this person for whom I harbor nothing but mild disdain? What the hell am I doing with my life?

Certainly, at one point or another, I have asked myself one of the above questions, and in truly dark times, perhaps I will ask all of them. Depressing though these questions may be, they evince feelings of despair that can nonetheless be ignored—or, at the very least, contained. Take me for example: I am probably perpetually consumed by low levels of existential despair, and yet, still manage to trod along in my (necessarily futile) existence, mediocre, hopeless, and lonely, though it may be. When the source of despair is fundamental as opposed to existential, however, the abyss is no longer so easily dismissed.

The Principal

The financial upheaval of the past year and subsequent economic downturn is precisely the type of event likely to induce fundamental despair. For my generation, it marks the first time, I think, that the glass may truly not be half full. Certainly, for those subscribing to my dire outlook on life, the glass has never been anything but empty in terms of metaphysical success. But even for us curmudgeons, I do not doubt that there was ever a concern about material (that is, money, cash, hoes) success. Failure in that sense has never been either an option or a likelihood.

Now, however, nothing is certain. I find myself consumed by much more primitive and troublesome questions than whether I have any real friends: Will the economy recover? Will I have a job upon graduation? Am I too leveraged? Was it a mistake to leave the working world after only two years?

To be sure, things are not all that bad right now. Being in school has allowed me to avoid much of the unrest, and despite all the hysteria, I do not yet believe the apocalypse is upon us.¹ For all we know, the recently approved artery-clogging pork may yet bring about economy recovery, though with an increasingly rabid and populist Congress leading the charge (unions! corporate greed! welfare! 'Merica!), I am cautiously pessimistic.

Whatever the reality, however, the grim prospects and dire uncertainty that looms strong is in itself sufficient to evoke despair that is not as easily ignored or contained. The knowledge that I am destined to a meaningless and futile life, while depressing, is nothing compared to the possibility that I might end up awash in a cesspool of bummery, with no job, home, or sanity. And it is the latter sort of concern that has formed the cloud of despair that hangs above me (and many others, I think) today.

The Asinine

The division of despair between the existential and principal does not, however, explain the entire universe of what ails us. As with everything else in life, the asinine has its place. For as we revel in the doom and gloom that marks Valentine's Day, 2009, there are surely some people too insouciant to be troubled by existential concerns and too stupid to be unsettled by principal ones. These dredges of society are the ones crying themselves to sleep over their single status and whining about how love has continued to elude them, no matter their best efforts. To deign to engage these morons, in my opinion, is sheer lunacy in the first place, but for those more sympathetic than me, I offer two explanations by which one might console their friends consumed by asinine despair.

First, given the abysmal state of the human condition, no matter how worthless one is, some despicable person out there of the preferred gender is probably more worthless such that a romantic transaction would be efficient. The problem for our moronic friends, then, is not that love is eluding them, only that their standards are too high, and if they wish to be encumbered for Valentine's Day next year, a simple downgrade of prerequisites would do the trick.

Second, it is possible that our moronic friends' perennial solitude on Valentine's Day is truly reflective of the fact that they are so consummately worthless that no person, no matter how awful, would ever desire to spend February 14 with them under any conscious circumstance. There is very little that can be done in this circumstance beyond the drastic. I leave it to your worthy discretion, dear readers, whether to recommend this course of action to your friends consumed by asinine despair.

No matter the despair one finds themselves in today, however, whether it be existential, principal, or asinine, there is always solace in cheap beer, cheaper perfume, and darkness. In other words, shitty 4 am bars, here I come! Who's with me?

^ ¹ Then again, 2012 is not far away. If we have two more quarters of negative GDP growth, I am buying guns, ammo, and canned food.

In Defense of “Unfriending”: Asset Liquidation on Social Networks

2008-12-26T10:52:20-08:00

Yesterday's Journal had an interesting page one article (subscription required) on a subject that, I suspect, will hit a little too close to home for far too many otherwise self-assured twenty-somethings: getting unfriended on social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn (or, I suppose, MySpace, if it was frequented by anyone but degenerates and pedophiles). The article, as its title suggests, takes the position that an unfriending¹ is (or ought to be) perceived as some sort of personal affront or rejection, perhaps even rising to the level of getting dumped by a significant other. I, however, am not convinced. Though I too have experienced unfriending in the past, certainly not each instance invoked the same level of emotion—nor should it have. Considering the wide variety of individuals, ranging from value-added to deadweight, that compose one's relationship portfolio these days, a reasonably well-connected individual cannot be expected to react equally to her vague acquaintance and her boyfriend of five years dumping her on Facebook on the same day. How, then, might we go about understanding this very real phenomenon and the emotion, great or little, that it evokes? Recent events in the financial world, I believe, provide a nice parallel from which we may derive some lessons.

Though it is hard to imagine the days before Facebook stalking was a national pass time (and poking an erotic gesture), social networking in its current manifestation entered the mainstream only a little over five years ago. Its ascendancy, first marked by the Friendster craze in the 2002–2003 time frame, and followed by Facebook some time thereafter, corresponds to the advent of the housing bubble during the same time rather well. And much as that bubble burst, wreaking havoc near and far, so too, it seems, is this one poised to deflate.

Rather than destroying trillions of dollars in wealth and hundreds of thousands of livelihoods, however, this bubble's collapse comes not as a bang, but a whimper. Social networking, unlike the complex and inherently un-valuable securities and derivatives of the housing bubble, may be here to stay, but gone is the irrational exuberance of friending, i.e., asset accumulation, that marked its heyday. Ever so quietly, an important realization seems to have permeated the collective unconscious of all but the most oblivious: perhaps, just maybe, more is not better when it comes to friends.²

Certainly the same could not be said of the heady days of 2004 and 2005. Back then, more was not just better—it was an end in and of itself. Social networking, it seemed, was nothing more than a popularity contest, replete with online equivalent of the awful head nod problem (which I complained of some five years ago). I distinctly remember being shocked when I came across an individual with over 1,000 Facebook friends the first time. These days, such people are a dime a dozen.

By 2006, however, the craze seemed to have started to abate, at least amongst my social circle. As early as December 2005, I made a fuss of having only seen/talked to about 4 percent of my [roughly 300] ‘friends’ in the last month. Since then, my friend count has increased dramatically, currently hovering around 500.

To think that this bloated relationship portfolio is optimally sized, let alone weighted, is preposterous. Considering how few individuals add value in this miserable charade we like to think of as life, at best, the portfolio is too heavily invested in commodity friends, and at worst, inundated by deadweight. And what is the appropriate response to this bloat? Asset liquidation, or in less douchey (but certainly more inarticulate) parlance, unfriending. While such liquidation is not an endeavor that I have undertaken myself, it is one that has been on my list of things to do for a long time. There is no reason to carry assets on one's books that have no value, especially when one considers the potential liabilities associated with letting people view one's profile.

Which brings me back to my original contention: not all unfriending is a personal rejection, nor should it be considered so. True, if one of my value-added assets dropped me, I would be miffed, and with good reason. But, to be frank, it would probably take me a couple weeks, if not months, to realize I had been dropped given the size of my portfolio. And if that is indeed the case, was that asset really all that valuable in the first place? Perhaps not.

Ironically, the effect of ever-growing relationship portfolio bloat is probably to eliminate the value-add category of relationships at the expense of commodities and deadweight. With access to a greater number of individuals, the value any one can provide over all others diminishes accordingly. Having long ago accepted my commodity status in this world, the availability of more commodity friends is a Good Thing™ (an increase in supply will naturally drive down costs). Those of you who naïvely continue to cling to notions of being value-added (much as I, ascending from a small town, cling to my guns and religion), however, might not feel the same way. So much the worse for you. It is the truth regardless.

So, dear readers, embrace the commoditization, and go forth and unfriend with impunity. In the immortal words of Michael Corleone, It's not personal, [dear readers]. It's strictly business.³

^ ¹ God, I should kill myself just for typing out that ghastly abomination of the English language.
^ ² Delusional people who continue to believe in the power of personal relationships might think that having fewer close friends is superior to having many acquaintances. I neither subscribe to this viewpoint as a general matter, nor take it above: having more friends is bad for the simple reason that it is harder to vet out deadweight.
^ ³ Well, except when you dump your girlfriend on Facebook; that may be personal.

Year in Review, 2008

2008-12-22T09:03:41-08:00

Another year has come and gone, and no doubt neither you nor I have anything to show for it. Such is always the case in this necessarily futile enterprise we sometimes call life. And with the economy in the tank, the blind materialism that usually serves us so well cannot even be of much solace. At a time like this, holiday cheer is hardly called for, and that is precisely why I have issued another holiday card—my fourth.

Those for whom I have a valid e-mail address should have already received a link. Those who did not may find a non-exclusive list of possibly reasons why not here. In any case, see the card here. I hope the new year for you is one of less failure and misery than the one that has past. Happy holidays!

Death and Taxes

2008-12-21T19:40:25-08:00

In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
—Benjamin Franklin

The deafening silence on this blog over the last month has been most unbearable, and for this reprehensible failure—one of many over the past month, rest assured—I sincerely apologize. Rather than dwell on the past, however, in this entry I look to the (equally dismal) future. In doing so, I hope to move closer to resolving a central paradox that has haunted this blog for much of its six-plus year existence, namely the constant assertion that love is futile while marriage is a value-maximizing transaction. How can one go without the other?

Cynics among the crowd may be inclined to scoff at this purported paradox. Of course marriage can be value maximizing while love is futile, they might be apt to argue, for the two are totally unrelated. To a certain extent, I would be inclined to agree. As my now paradigmatic criteria for marital bliss suggest, love is hardly required for a successful marriage—income and brand are all one needs. This eminent logic notwithstanding, I still believe that the resolution we seek is slightly more complex—it is not that love is irrelevant to a discussion of marriage, only that most people's definition of that word is severely misguided. This brings me to everyone's favorite topic, and certainly my own in the past few months: income tax.

Long ago, as a senior in college with the prospect of income on the horizon, I explored the tax benefits of both marriage and adoption. Alas, neither turned out to be workable solutions at the time (I was 21!), but what I then called a viable definition of love did emerge from that analysis: a person you like enough to have a couple tax-deductible dependents with. Voilà! The missing piece! Taxes.

If there is anything I learned this past quarter in law school (and it might very well be the only thing), it is that taxes have real-life implications on people's incentives in undertaking transactions. In other words, even if a person would be inclined to engage in a particular transaction, say marriage, in a world absent taxes, she might not do so if the tax implications render it to be a net negative venture. The result can be perverse—in that same example, the criteria of dual income and brand management may be met, and yet, the transaction would still be a loser due to taxes.

Indeed, given what little I understand of the tax code, that perverse result is precisely what is likely to occur when both couples earn roughly the same amount and are in high tax brackets in a phenomenon known as the marriage penalty. This awfulness runs squarely contrary to the criterion of dual income, and in fact, encourages large spousal income discrepancies to minimize taxes. Quite plainly, therefore, brand and income cannot be all that one looks to when one seeks to tie the noose; a consideration of tax postures is also necessary.

This is where love comes in. If we were to define love as any instance of dual income where the hated marriage penalty was counteracted by corresponding benefits (e.g., deductions for dependents, household economies of scale, half-rent, etc.) such that the transaction is still advisable, we need not decouple love from marriage. Indeed, love would be a prerequisite to marriage (much as it has always been in the eyes of idiots everywhere)!

For me (and I suspect, most of you), however, this presents a new problem. While income discrepancies in both directions will lead to a tax-favored situation—I mean, love—I am unwilling to accept an income discrepancy that leads me to have a significantly higher income than my spouse. (Talk about the definition of no-value-add!) Thus, it is with a heavy heart that I must announce that my criteria for marital bliss are no longer simply brand and dual income, but brand, love (i.e., tax-favored status) and GTE (greater-than-or-equal) dual income.

Conveniently, this now allows us to categorize all potential partners into three rather well-defined buckets:

Category	Criteria	Usage
Dead Weight	No Brand, No Love, No Dual Income, or some (ugly) combination thereof.	Lonely Saturday nights (at the Hangge Uppe).
Relationships	Brand, Love, LT (less-than) Dual Income.	Long-term relationships to gain social credibility and avoid lonely Saturday nights (see above).
Real Deal	Brand, Love, and GTE Dual Income. The holy grail!	Someone to take home to Mom.

Another variable to integrate in my distributed stable marriage algorithm, no doubt.

Too Elite Is Plebeian

2008-11-18T07:45:06-08:00

To those even marginally familiar with the unholy marriage of irrational vitriol and consummate self-loathing that is the Realm, the notion that the author of this most futile of sites is often branded an elitist ought to be tautological. Indeed, as I myself wrote a few years back, Rohit's Realm was formed on the steadfast pillars of anger, cynicism, bitterness, and elitism, and to change that would be to deny the very essence of my being; I am nothing if not angry, cynical, bitter, and elitist. And while this sentiment rings as true today as it did three years back—the only thing I continue to hate more than the dirty, unwashed masses is myself—a recent thought has left me in a most tremulous of dispositions. Is there such a thing as too elitist? (Perish the thought!) And, if so, is not that state just as plebeian as not being elitist at all? (No! It cannot be!)

Perhaps I ought to step back. Given my constant state of mildly tempered misanthropy, it might seem that I would encounter few opportunities to question the virtues of elitism, let alone my own embodiment of said virtues. As with most truly infectious and debilitating ideas,¹ this one overcame me not by frontal attack but by slowly festering until it had overcome my subconscious and left me in a state of inconsolable cognitive dissonance. The infection was precipitated by a seemingly innocuous discussion a few days back in which a contemporary television program, Gossip Girl, was mentioned. The problem was not so much that I was not able to follow the discussion—I do not watch the program, which, in and of itself, is not a big deal—but that I had never even heard of it. What?

I realize that this sounds rather ridiculous, but in my defense, I do not watch television—at all. In fact, I do not even own a television, nor have I in the past two years. This is not so much a function of a political stance (for example, TV rots the brain!), but rather, priorities. I have very limited time and something had to go; television, adding little value, did not make the cut.

My Internet consumption, though more extensive, is almost entirely limited to what interests me: news, politics, science, technology, and the occasional meme.² In short, I have virtually no connection to the dirty, unwashed masses beyond the occasional glance at the cover of a tabloid at the supermarket, and until last week, was blissfully untroubled by this state of affairs.

The extent to which I have become fundamentally disconnected surprised me, however. Is television still this crucial to dissemination of popular culture? If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, the answer must be a resounded yes. This brings me to the normative question: is this sort of disconnection a Good Thing™? Does it comport with the noble goal of elitism?

It is, of course, difficult for me to analyze this point given my own position, but my intuition suggests that there is some point of attenuation at which the (few) benefits of engagement with culture begin to outweigh the (many) virtues of unchecked disinterest with crass and common pursuits—and perhaps, as it stands now, I have passed this point of attenuation. To be better than the masses, logic suggests, one must at least have a cursory knowledge of what it is that defines the masses at any given time. Otherwise, how could one ever know that he or she is indeed better?

Two more considerations counsel in favor of this intuition. First, departing full-speed on the better than thou train inevitably leads to absurd and puerile results. Pursuit of an ideal for the sake of itself is rarely a value-added venture. A brief look at the futile lives of theoretical mathematicians or despicable hipsters should be sufficient proof. Second, in some rare cases, a bastion of guilty pleasure might even emerge. A good example of this would be the television series The OC and The Hills. While the former, though completely over-the-top and melodramatic, was nonetheless a sort of self-aware parody of itself, the latter has claims to nothing beyond the vapidity of American existence that is to be both condemned and loathed. On their face, the two shows seem similar—and similarly uninteresting. Had I chose to disengage entirely, I would have never seen the difference.

The irony of this sorry situation is not lost on me—nor, I hope, on you, dear readers. In my bid to be more elitist, I am going to have to engage with the masses. My only hope is that in this endeavor, the pendulum does not swing too far the other way; it is a delicate balance, this elitism stuff!

That said, where should I begin? Gossip Girl? Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

^ ¹ See, for example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848). In the spirit of Big Game Week—and 'Merica—better dead than red! Go Bears!
^ ² <Insert joke about hardcore pornography and deviant sex.>

On a Serious Note

2008-11-04T11:44:30-08:00

For those who have grown weary of my incessant inanity (blah, blah, I hate myself, blah), there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Well, actually, not really, so long as you continue to subscribe to this blog, but for something more substantive (read: boring), check out my first contribution to The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog. I have been assigned to cover the Crime and Punishment Workshop, so you can expect biweekly posts on the Faculty Blog on this subject in addition to the usual pursuit of nothingness for which the Realm is well known.

Electoral Efficiency

2008-11-04T07:31:26-08:00

Election Day 2008 is finally upon us, and after forty-five frustrating minutes waiting in line at my polling place, from 6:30–7:15 a.m., I can now attest to having fulfilled my civic duty. Since it is almost a near certainty that my vote will not matter in the least,¹ I thought I might post on something other than my political persuasion (as I have in years past). Thus, rather than ranting about stupidity of the despicable masses, I will instead discuss the grossly inefficient process we like to follow to gather the worthless opinion of said masses, and how we might improve our—and their—sorry lot. And for those cynical readers out there, I will have you know that disenfranchising large swaths of the population is only part of my brilliant solution.

I begin as I must with this simple proposition: given that most people's votes do not matter, and further, that we as a society would like to encourage people to vote, the last thing we ought to do is to make this process difficult. Unfortunately, as experience every two years demonstrates, the election process in the US is mind-bogglingly inefficient (in addition to corrupt, and possibly, futile). The question that ineluctably follows from this observation is: why? Why are we so encumbered, or more suitably for the Realm, which group or groups of assholes is to blame for this inefficiency?

My status on Twitter this morning presented the initial conundrum well: 6:30 am, and lines out the door at the poll. Who to hate more? Chicago, for gross inefficiency, or the masses, for gross ineptitude? At first blush, those inclined to misanthropy (as I am want to be) might assume that the greater blame is to be placed on the unwashed masses for their demonstrated ineptitude in being unable to fill out a rather uncomplicated ballot. This theory is not without its merits. The masses are indeed pretty fucking dumb, and certainly, at least some of the endemic delays must be attributed to, among other things, their thinly-veiled illiteracy and their cerebral powers that mimic lifeforms far below humans on the evolutionary tree.

Upon further investigation, however, one is inclined to conclude that the greater blame likely lies with the system itself, not the worthless masses that toil within the system. For example, my experience at the polls this morning was a case study in idiotic behavior. To begin with, there was a huge bottleneck wherein one rather old and slow dude searched through a massive binder of names while three other people sat around behind the desk. The process of finding your name and signing the card took about three minutes on average. Next, you were sent to a guy whose only job was to hand you the ballot and marker, but who somehow managed to be slower than the first guy. Finally, three other people were lurking around the polling area, and seemed to only exist to interrupt the first two guys with asinine questions, further delaying an already inefficient process. Add to that old people who could not hear, stupid people who could not read, and dirty people who clearly had not showered in days, and it was all I could do to simply not leave after two minutes.

Things need not be this way. Simple fixes would go a long way in resolving many of these inefficiencies. For instance, why the binder of papers? I can understand not wanting electronic voting machines (for reasons I will not discuss here), but is there any reason not to have electronic voter rolls? Inevitably, the data is in a computer somewhere. Why then print it out for Election Day? Why not just equip each site with a computer? Good for the environment, good for my sanity.

Next, why only one guy doing the check-in? This is a solved problem! In San Francisco, the names were divided by last name, such that one person had half the alphabet and the other the other half. Why is this so difficult? Indeed, with four people sitting around doing nothing, would not it be easier to divide the alphabet in four?

The inefficiency created by the old, the stupid, and the dirty is more problematic. Ideally, these people would recognize their woeful ways and simply end it all. Absent that, however, they must be accommodated, but no one said in the same location. Would it really be all that difficult to set up two lines, one for experienced voters and the other for newbies and tools? Self-selection can be a powerful force, and anecdotal evidence suggests it works rather well in other arenas (for example, airport security lines).

A more dramatic solution to this latter problem might be to simply force encourage all such slow individuals to vote early. Everyone wins this way. Those who have little time to spare, and thus favor the proximity of their own polling location, may do so quickly on Election Day. Those with nothing but (other people's) time to waste, either because they are old, or because they are worthless, may do so before. The people speak, and the debacle that is American democracy continues unencumbered.

Without doubt, most of what I propose above is likely to run afoul of the law. That, however, should not deter us in our good fight. If history has taught us anything, it is that we ought not let silly things like the law get in the way of efficiency. Anything else would be un-American.

^ ¹ This brings up an interesting aside. To date, I have never been in a location on Election Day where my vote would mean anything at all. I spent my first six years of eligibility in California, which has as good a chance of turning red as Palin has of composing a grammatically sound sentence, and am now in Illinois, which could not turn red even if it wanted to due to massive unchecked corruption. I likely do not want to live any place my vote might matter. That probably means that place sucks.