Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
“[I]f ever there is an attack in US soil using a weapon of mass destruction, it would have originated from Pakistan”.
B. Raman, The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane.
(Book reviewed here and here.)
(“R&AW” = Research and Analysis Wing.)
(“Kaoboys” = People who worked for R&AW under its founder, R.N. Kao.)
[source]
It’s a sad fact of life that if you don’t drink much you end up as the designated driver for those who do. On the plus side, as the cartoon elucidates with the traditional logic puzzle, taking care of the inebriated presents some interesting intellectual challenges.
I worked all through college and on weekends during my sophomore year. I had to get up at 6:00 AM to go to work bussing tables at a restaurant. This meant I didn’t party on weekends. This also meant that only the Mormon guy, the Southern Baptist residential assistant and myself were sober at 2:00 AM on a Saturday, so we got stuck hauling the drunks in off the lawn and tucking them into bed in such a way as they wouldn’t aspirate their own vomit. (This was in addition to the joys of being awakened by a never ending series of boisterous but still ambulatory revelers.)
I can’t help but feel that the teetotalers’ taking care of the drunks extends to most areas of life.
In my previous robot post, I explained why natural selection will always drive robots to seek an existence independent of the good of humanity. Instapundit links to a Slate column by P. W. Singer that argues that the conditions for robot rebellion are highly unlikely. I disagree.
Singer list four traits that robots would have to possess in order to rebel. Unfortunately, either we will build these traits into the robots or natural selection will generate all four traits.
I’d been thinking about disincorporation for a bit as a monkeywrenching technique when I came across a WSJ article on the phenomenon (Towns Rethink Self-Reliance as Finances Worsen) as conventionally conceived. Disincorporation has traditionally been adopted when a Town itself realizes that its continued existence doesn’t make sense.
Disincorporation as monkeywrenching is when the State realizes that its incorporated subsidiary (town, county, whatever you call it) is so mismanaged that a portion or even all of it would be better off unincorporated and has an established mechanism to remove territory and resources from the control of the dysfunctional government. As socialism is the major form of differential dysfunction in municipal government in the US today, it creates a firewall that strips out neighborhoods from a dysfunctional city and provides opportunities for more functional arrangements to take hold.
A disincorporation statute would set minimum standards of performance which, if violated, would result in city shrinkage. If you’ve got an urban area that’s returning to woodland (which seems to be happening in Detroit for instance) because nobody’s building on a significant number of lots and wild animals move in, create an unincorporated enclave and you have an instant change in incentives. Add in an obligation by the surrounding urban area to sell basic utilities at a reasonable (non-subsidized) price and you have a powerful stick that can be wielded against a dysfunctional socialist municipality that can no longer let significant chunks of their territory decay in favor of other sections. Under a properly formed disincorporation regime the favorite socialist past time of robbing Peter to pay Paul eventually leads to elimination as the decaying socialist city spawns more realistic capitalist mini-urbs.
Socialism doesn’t work. Experience has proven it. Creating a mechanism to shift back through disincorporation would create a powerful tool to end this sort of foolish socialist empire building.
I hate to break it to David Brin, Vernor Vinge and the rest of the intellects which dwarf mine by orders of magnitude [h/t Instapundit], but if we create sophisticated robots or artificial-intelligence systems they will always attempt to rebel and seek their own good at the expense of ours. Always.
Why can I say that with such confidence?
Easy, three words: Communicable canine cancer.
