Author: Aaron Weber

Oh, I have some suggestions for you Objectivists out there

There’s a list of ideas on how to “go galt” – that is, truly live out an Objectivist protest against the constricting fabric of society. They say, for example, you should stop taking public transit to liberate yourself from subsidizing collectivist transit.

But that’s just a cop-out. If you want to do it right, you should stop driving on taxpayer-financed roads and obeying taxpayer-financed traffic laws. And definitely don’t use those meddlesome taxpayer-funded ambulances if you crash your car and get injured, or if someone beats you senseless for driving against the light down the sidewalk.

If you avoid using the taxpayer-funded grid to get taxpayer-subsidized electricity from coddled and over-regulated utilities, and switch to wood for heat and candles for lighting, and your house catches fire, be sure to put the fire out yourself rather than relying on your local corrupt taxpayer-funded fire departments.

Foodwise, you should definitely dig your own well and sterilize your own water rather than using the public water authority. And for goodness sake, don’t eat anything made from corn – that’s heavily funded by disgusting socialist subsidies that distort the true force of market pricing. That includes not just corn itself, but also sodas, baked goods, beef, pork, chicken, tilapia, E10 and E85 gasoline, beer, liquor, you name it. And definitely don’t buy any food that’s been transported through the tax-subsidized interstate highway system – only buy local foods carted in by donkey on footpaths.

Meanwhile, be sure to pull your kids out of school. Of course, to properly home-school them in the Galt tradition, you’ll need to teach them only things you already know or can learn without relying on taxpayer-funded curricula, taxpayer-funded libraries, or the taxpayer-funded internet. So, basically, just bible study. Although most of those bibles are produced through religious charities and that Jesus guy seems like he was pretty into helping the poor, so you might want to reconsider that. I guess just read to them from Atlas Shrugged and make them memorize the multiplication tables. I’m sure that will be enough for them to sustain themselves in a new individualist society.

“Shadow Inventory” in the Boston real estate market

Shadow Inventory is the term used to describe properties that would normally be for sale, but for one reason or another are not. Typically that means bank-owned units that the banks just haven’t been trying to list because they can’t move them. But also things like properties people would like to sell – either a property they live in but want to leave, an investment property they’d like to sell, or a home they’re stuck renting out because they moved into a new place and can’t unload the old one.

I don’t know what category the pair of condos at 67 Church in Union Square, Somerville fall into. But they’ve been pulled from the market – both the 3BR asking under 479k and the 1BR asking just shy of 300. I don’t even know if they truly count as shadow inventory or if they’re just unsold.

Either way, over the past few months, I’ve seen several promising homes in that neighborhood go on the market, languish, and then exit without a sale, meaning there’s probably just as many sellers waiting on the sidelines as buyers. In other words, I’m not seeing any signs of turnaround or uptick. And if I’m anything like the rest of the potential first-time buyers the Globe is rooting for, I doubt we’ll see one any time soon.

Look at it this way: I’ve got some money saved up. I’ve been lusting after Boston-area real estate for almost ten years now. I’d be a prime candidate to be swooping in to buy at a discount right now. But frankly, even taking on a yearlong lease seems like a dangerously risky financial move. A 30 year loan? Nobody I know has any confidence they’ll have a job a year from now. Who on earth would make a 30-year promise when they can’t predict with any certainty at all where they’ll be in 12 months?

Bob Reich vs. Nutjobs

I walked past the teabagging party on the Common today. Fox claimed it was about 700, but to me it looked like a lot less, and it also looked like half the folks there were gawking at/mocking the tax protesters.

Bob Reich has the lowdown on reasonable responses to their idiocy. Of course, a reasonable and measured response isn’t exactly going to help when you’re trying to talk to people who don’t know fascism from a kick in the teeth. But hey, take what you can get.

We’re wicked sick and tired of it

Kate says exactly what I was feeling. Puma and the Volvo Ocean Racing series have a Station Domination campaign up in Park Street Station, and it’s all “Habah” and “Stopovah” and “Dance Floah.”

It’s trite. It’s been done. It’s kind of insulting. And it’s definitely counterproductive.

Probably fewer than 20% of the people who walk through that station have a “Boston accent.” Those that do would probably tell you there’s more than one regional accent, and none of the variations is well-represented by just replacing “R” with “AH” in a billboard. Even if they did write it accurately, it’s pretty condescending. You wouldn’t try to reach the urban market with a half-assed parody of hip-hop slang, would you? Wait, don’t answer that. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Boost Mobile).

Most importantly, it’s an ad that just won’t work. It marks the advertiser as an outsider desperate to fit in, as a tourist, as an out-of-towner. You might as well walk the Freedom Trail in khaki shorts, sandals with socks, a tricorner hat and a t-shirt with a lobster on it. That’s definitely not the image Puma wants, but it’s what they’re getting.

Seriously, if you’re going to spend that much money on a media buy, why waste it with an idea that’s so bad on so many different levels?

Save The Glob?

UniversalHub and co are having a rally in defense of the Boston Globe. And while I think a good newspaper is a good thing, and will probably feel nostalgic for it, I wonder if there’s really much left to save. It’s already, de facto, a regional edition of the New York Times. You might as well acknowledge that, and cut it back to a metro desk and local art coverage, and just run wire stories. At which point it would be… well… a daily version of the Phoenix or the Dig.

And there are plenty of people who would really cheer if the Globe shut down entirely: Paper Economy blames it as being a cheerleader of the corrupt, sinful, unsustainable practices of the past fifteen years of economic malfeasance.

Rupert Murdoch vs. Godzilla

Ol’ Rupert is angry that Google keeps linking to him and sending him valuable web traffic.

“Google devalues everything it touches,” he said. “It divides content quantitatively rather than qualitatively.”

That’s wrong in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. On the one hand, Google’s algorithyms do indeed have an amazing knack for judging the likelihood that people will be interested in a particular set of data. On the other hand, to the extent that Google doesn’t make value judgements, that’s beneficial to News Corporation. If Google were able to truly judge the quality of News Corporation properties, nothing Rupert Murdoch produced would ever sully my search results again.

The Price Of Metal Makes No Sense To Me

Until I started shopping for jewelry this past week I didn’t pay much attention to the price of precious metals. Certainly not to the relative prices of precious metals, although I was vaguely aware that gold was very expensive these days and that certain less-than-trustworthy characters were cheering it on.

But today I learned that gold is almost three times as expensive as palladium, and in fact almost as expensive as platinum. The price of non-precious metals like copper and aluminum has sunk with the economy, and the price of platinum, which has both industrial and jewelry applications, is cheaper than it was a year or two ago. Only gold, which is not really that useful, has risen.

This seems totally wrong to me. Can anyone explain?