2008

There were 4 posts published in 2008 (this is page 1 of 1).

Machiavelli redux – I look back on me looking back on The Prince

Preface

I recently bought a new laptop and, as I transferred my old stuff to my new laptop, I found this unfinished blog post.  I’m pretty sure I initially wrote this some time in early 2006 (possibly late 2005).  I wish I had found this before the 2008 election as it would’ve been fun to revisit in light of the major issues that drove the election.  Anyway, I want to get this posted while I’m thinking about it.  I’ve copied it here unedited, but I’ve added an afterward at the end (it was unfinished and I wanted to wrap it up instead of leaving it so open-ended).

Me on Machiavelli on welfare and government redistribution of wealth

I’m just about to finish up Machiavelli’s The Prince. Last night, I went to dinner at my favorite local cafe and my server asked if I was reading it “for fun”, to which I replied, “I wouldn’t say it’s ‘fun’, but I’m between books right now and I had this laying around, so I figured I’d give it a shot.” Even in his introduction, the translator says that he’s not sure we can really “learn” much from Machiavelli, but that his writing is insightful, at least as far as the mysterious Machiavelli is concerned.

As I began reading, I couldn’t help but agree with the translator–I didn’t see myself learning a whole lot from this experience. That was true until about half way through the book when I stumbled upon his chapter on “Generosity and Parsimony”. There, I found what I thought was some interesting insight into today’s politics in America.

A brief summary of a tiny part of The Prince

Before I go any further, I should probably give a brief summary of The Prince. I almost wrote something like, “For those who haven’t read and have no desire to read The Prince…”, but that’s just fluff. Really, I’m summarizing for myself so I don’t have to ever read it again. Anyway, a “prince” is basically a “ruler” and Machiavelli talks about how princes come to power, how they maintain their power and some general rules to live by for princes as they try to maintain their principalities. So, his chapter on “Generosity and Parsimony” is another section designed to point out traits of an effective ruler.

Machiavelli essentially says that, although it may be immediately beneficial, giving lots of stuff to people to win their favor is ultimately a trap that will bury a leader. I think he’s talking about bribery, but he’s also talking generally about giving gifts and freebies to the populous at large. He contends that there are several problems with giving things to people to gain their favor. The first is that all the things given have to be taken from somewhere else: he’ll either have to give of his own possessions, which will eventually run out, or he’ll have to take from others and give of their possessions which will eventually make those “others” his enemies and will also eventually run out.

Once the giving stops, the populous, having been spoiled by his generosity thus far, would be discontented and he would lose favor with them. A couple clichés come to mind: “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” and “Ignorance is bliss”. If you give stuff to people, especially if they haven’t earned it, and you stop giving them that stuff, they’ll become very restless; if you never give them more than they need, they’ll never know what it’s like to have excess.

Back to my point

But I said this has to do with today’s politics, didn’t I? Here’s how: Socialism, welfare, unemployment and entitlement are all hot-button issues today. Right now, the two opposing schools of thought are: 1) We recognize that people have needs and we believe the best way to satisfy those needs is to give them opportunities to work, earn a paycheck and fend for themselves and 2) We recognize that people have needs and we think that those whose needs are fulfilled should help out those whose needs are not fulfilled. In a nutshell, it’s “bolster the economy and create jobs” versus “tax the ‘haves’ and give to the ‘have-nots'”.

Although he wasn’t talking directly about welfare, I think Machiavelli’s point is valid: giving generously to the “have-nots” by taxing the “haves” seems wonderful until the “haves” get sick of it and demand that the “have-nots” work for their wages. Of course, I don’t believe that people should starve because they can’t find a job, and I believe America is a country that shouldn’t let that happen. People will fall on hard times and our country is wealthy enough to help those people out until they can get back on their feet. But they’ll never get back on their feet if they don’t have any incentive to stand up.

A sidebar on Giuliani’s Leadership

A few months ago, I read Rudy Giuliani’s Leadership and I was very impressed with some of his political philosophies and tactics. Most impressive, though, were his results. He only briefly discusses his take on welfare, but I think it was a great philosophy: When people are without jobs, other citizens should be helping them survive. But, part of helping them “survive” is helping them learn a trade, find a job and get off of welfare. Giuliani’s system provided seminars, vocation training, job hunting and other resources to those on welfare and, as a result, he dramatically reduced unemployment. I think the most substantial tenant of his welfare philosophy was this: If you’re on welfare, we’re going to provide you with all the resources we can to help you find a job, but you only have a certain amount of time to draw benefits and then we’re cutting you off. His philosophy was to “teach a man to fish”.

Back to my point again (and some butchery of my own interpretation of Giuliani’s philosophy)

I suppose my real problem with an open-ended welfare system (and the same goes for strict socialism) is that the system is not designed to actually help anyone get off of welfare. Instead, the system is designed to endear those who are on welfare to the providers, and ultimately to provide votes for the providers. I think it’s easiest to explain this by going back to the adage I mentioned earlier. The adage goes something like this: “Cook a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” To take this a step further, say there were two businesses, each related to the fishing industry, but in different ways. The first business sells fishing gear–poles, lures, line, etc.–while the second is a fish restaurant. The first business would be most interested in increasing the number of fishermen in its area. This business understands that more people fishing means better sales for poles, line, lures and such. The other business would be interested in keeping people hungry for fish and would prefer that people spend their time at the restaurant buying and eating fish because the more people that eat fish, the more revenue they’ll get. More importantly, the latter would realize that it’s bad for people to learn to fish. If people are catching their own fish, they don’t need a restaurant to cook and sell them fish for a significant mark-up.

In both examples, the analogy would extend into the political world as “revenue” equals “votes”. Giuliani’s philosophy was to teach people to fish, but also to give them a couple vouchers to the fish restaurant so they can eat in the mean time. The opposing philosophy would be to have the general population provide unlimited vouchers to those in need so the needy can eat and aren’t motivated to learn to fish on their own (I wouldn’t learn to fish if I knew I’d get three square meals a day at no charge to me).

Afterward (and a bait-n-switch from welfare to populism)

As I read back over this post, I feel that maybe I was talking more about populism than social programs.  I was a little off on some of my terminology (I guess I know what I meant by “open-ended welfare”, though it seems like I could’ve worded that more eloquently), but I think was mostly on point.  The 2008 election was largely driven by populism: Obama ran on a fundamentally populist platform, focusing on “change”, “hope” and other feel-good words for the masses while remaining fairly opaque about himself, his own ambitions and his specific plans; he also focused on taxing the rich and redistributing wealth, creating tons of social programs and spending many billions of dollars while offering little by way of explanation as to whom would fund these programs. It could be many years before we know how many of his promises he’s able to keep, or the cost of trying to keep those promises.

But politics and elections are based on promises (empty and otherwise), so what differentiates normal politics from populism?  To me, the differentiator is not so much the target demographic, class or audience, but the advisability and feasibility of the ideology being preached.  Are we making these promises because they’re best for the country, and ultimately for “the people”? Or are we making promises because they’re the key to maximizing votes for this particular election?  Are we bailing out the Big Three because that’s what’s best for the industry and the country? Or are we bailing them out because we need to save some jobs in the short-term, and a lot of those jobs are union leaders and lobbyists in DC?

Back-to-back tourney wins: Poker and… Foosball?

I should write this down so I don’t forget about it.  We had a doubles foosball tournament at work today and my team won.  Then I went home for an hour or so and got ready to go play a couple of single-table ten-dollar poker tourneys. I hadn’t played with this group before, but they’re mostly guys that I know and it was a good time.  I won the first tourney and didn’t cash in the second.  I’m sure winning a foosball tourney and a poker tourney on the same day puts me in with some strange company.

iPhone!

Also, I bought a 3G iPhone today.  I woke up at 4:30 and got to the AT&T store at about 5:30.  We were in the doors at 8:30 and back out again by 9:15.  Of course, the iTunes crash prevented me from registering the phone for several hours, but I’m up and running now.  So far, I’m really impressed with the iPhone.  I still need to finish loading all of my music, but texting, surfing the web, using the iPod and GPS are all super useful and really easy to use.  The only thing I’m not excited about is my new $100-plus cell phone bill.

My week, sans the work: Part 2 – Las Vegas

On Wednesday evening, I headed west to Las Vegas.  As it turns out, I also arrive in Las Vegas on Wednesday evening since time stands still when flying west (in the States anyway).  This demonstrates Superman’s superiority as Boeing can merely cause time to stand still, while Superman can actually cause time to go backward. (NOTE: I will not check to see if Boeing makes a jet that flies fast enough to cause time to reverse when flying west in the States.)  A couple of friends were also in Vegas and had the good fortune (read, “have gambled enough”) to get two rooms comped at different hotels for Wednesday and Thursday.  I ended up crashing in a room at the Hard Rock for free my first two days in Vegas.  Wednesday night, I slept.

Thursday, I woke up relatively early (9) and did a few hours of work.  Then I wandered over to the Wynn and had lunch at Terrace Pointe Cafe.  It was excellent and I was full, so I decided to walk over to Bellagio and get some gelato.  I didn’t have any plans for the remainder of the day, so I popped over to Planet Hollywood Casino and played some $1-$2 No Limit.  I dropped about $85 over five hours (possibly accounted for by the $90 pot I lost after being about 90% to win when the money went in) and then went back to the Hard Rock to do a little more work and then get some sleep.  The next three days would be busy ones.

Friday morning, I woke up and did a couple hours of work and then checked out of the Hard Rock and into – let me finish – the Tropicana.  Actually, I just checked my bags at “The Trop” (that’s what the townies call it, probably because it’s a dump and doesn’t really merit more than two syllables) and then walked over to the MGM Grand to meet a friend for boot camp.  The friend is a poker pro who was teaching at a three-day WPT Boot Camp that I was to audit for the weekend.  (I don’t name-drop here, but her recent tournament winnings put her on a short-list for best female tournament player, and she’s probably moving up the same list for “overall” tournament player.  Google is fun.)

Within the first two hours of the camp, I’d already identified why my poker game has been so awful recently and decided it was time to update (and, in many ways, revert) my style.  In a nutshell, it was pretty obvious that I had regressed into a weak-tight style.  It quickly became obvious I needed to LAG it up a bit and play more (but smaller) pots against my opponents.  So far, so good.

The rest of the first day was good, but not as great as the first session.  I really enjoyed the other sessions (hanging out with people who’ve written books I’ve read has to be fun), but they were mostly high-level refreshers that didn’t resonate like the first session had.  My friend and I skipped out on dinner and met up with her fiancée and some of their friends for dinner at Antonio’s at the Rio.  The lasagna was good and I was entertained both during dinner, by the conversation, and after dinner, by the meticulous accounting required to verify proper appropriation of each penny on the check (including tax and tip, of course).  After dinner, we met up with another friend and went to see the new Indiana Jones movie (which was a colossal letdown and seemed more like a prank than a long-awaited fourth installment to the series).  I then went back to The Trop to officially check in and collapse.

As I was checking in, I began to realize that they may not have reserved a non-smoking room for me.  This was going to be a problem.  I first began to suspect something was up when the receptionist said, “Ohhhhhh…  you wanted a non-smoking room?” Then, clackity-clack-clack tip-tap tap-tap-tap … thunk.  She probably suspected I requested a non-smoking room because I had submitted the following “special request” when I booked the room on Expedia:

I absolutely DO NOT WANT A SMOKING ROOM, or a room that has ever been a smoking room, or a room that is near a smoking room.

She explained that they didn’t have any more one-bed non-smoking rooms.  I explained that I didn’t care how many beds were in the room so long as it wasn’t smoking, and hadn’t ever been a … (see above).  She said she was new, so she was going to get the manager.  The manager swooped in, tapped around for a few seconds and said, “We’re going to upgrade you to a suite.”  Bummer.  Wait, what?  Okey dokey!  (That was actually all in my head.)  Aloud, I said, “Ok.” as if to communicate that we both know they owe me that much.  She then explained that Vegas hotels can’t guarantee rooms like that.  But she also gave me an insider tip:  if I want to make sure I don’t get stuck in smoking, I should book the room, then call ahead to the hotel and tell them I’m allergic to tobacco and smoke.  That’ll land me on “the security list” and I should be good to go.  I’m getting a suite, suckas!

As I approached the suite, I saw a sign: THIS IS A NO SMOKING AREA.  I took that as a good omen, but was a little leery of the slight smokey smell that surrounded it.  The suite had most likely been furnished by bargain hunters who scored a bunch of stuff from garage sales in South Florida.  Most of the room was coral, teal and wicker.  I was curious what the smoking room would’ve looked like.  (Probably something like coral drawn toward earth tones via tar stains.)  It smelled a little like smoke, and would smell that way for the duration of my stay.  I assumed this was the result of 25 years of people ignoring the sign outside my door.

On Saturday, I began the day by bumming breakfast off of the boot camp.  Then the sessions began again and, again, there was one particular session that really resonated with me.  As before, the theme was “aggression” and it became even clearer to me that I had devolved into a weak-tight player (possibly the worst kind of tournament player to be).  After the day ended, I headed straight back to my hotel room to try out my newfound LAGgy confidence in some small multi-table tournaments.  Two things were almost immediately apparent: first, this style is obviously effective; second, this style seems pretty similar to what I used to play when I was regularly playing live tournaments.  (A third epiphany also began to dawn, but wouldn’t become completely clear until Sunday: it’s too bad I blew $1K in New Orleans because I didn’t have the slightest chance at actually winning that tournament.)  I didn’t cash in either of the small tournaments I played, but I easily built a big stack and was in great position to assume the chip lead when we hit the bubble.

…Ironically, one of the topics that came up frequently in my two favorite sessions was pre-flop raise-sizing.  The number of 2.5 Big Blinds was mentioned frequently, so I decided to take a look back at my posts from a couple years ago.  Sure enough, I had written two long posts (well, long if you ignore this one) called “2.5 is the new 3!”…

Sunday began the same as Saturday, but was more of a wrap-up day.  We had a couple of general sessions, then lunch, then a winner-take-all tournament that I didn’t play (because I was freeloading).  Before the tournament, my friend was kind enough to look over my hand-history from the $1K in New Orleans.  We both had a good laugh and I felt a little embarrassed at how obviously weak my play had been.  It wasn’t awful (she occasionally found something I’d done correctly), but it was pretty bad.  It was mostly good that it was so obvious to me how bad my play had been – that meant I had actually learned something over the past couple of days.

After my friend busted from the tournament, we milled around chatting with all the other busted pros (the pros apparently weren’t so great in this one) and then headed off the strip and back to her condo to kill some time.  We chatted with some other guests she had in town and then she decided it was time to teach me to play backgammon.  I remember seeing a backgammon board at a friend’s house when I was really young, but I don’t think I ever played the game.  Anyway, the first few games were a little frustrating (probably more for her than me) and she went up 5-0 in a match to 7.  But then I won four games straight to win the match 7-5.  Of course, I’m aware that I was a total luckbox, and that she helped me make good plays and avoid horrible plays… but it’s also nice to know that she died a little inside when a total neophyte crushed her.

After the longest-odds backgammon comeback in history (or at least my history, which includes only one match), we met up with a friend and went for sushi at Sushi Roku in Ceasar’s Palace.  After my friend was mistaken for a hostess (“One for the sushi bar.”  “What?”  “One for the sushi bar.”  “What are you talking about?”  “Oh, you don’t work here?  I’m sorry.”), we were seated at the least-attended table in the joint.  After receiving my latest lesson in the art of the chopsticks, we downed our meal pretty quickly and then jumped right into discussions on morality, politics, social faux pas and the like.  We also noticed that our server hadn’t been around in quite a while.

My friend was particularly frustrated by this (we had been trying to get the check for about 20 minutes and our glasses hadn’t been refilled in a while) and decided to use me as an instrument of passive-aggressive revenge.  Because she has no soul, she decided the best way to exact revenge would be to give our server a seemingly genuine, but completely fake, compliment.  I was offered a 20-dollar freeroll if I would, with a completely straight face, tell our server how much I appreciated her attentive service.  And she had to believe I meant it.  I mulled it over for a while (I possess a soul, and so this task would be more difficult for me to execute than it was for her to imagine), but decided I was freerolling and therefore only had my dignity to lose, but 20 dollars to gain!  I began thinking back to my acting classes to see if I could remember how to find motivation and get out of my head.  Mostly, I was concerned I would begin offering up my fake compliment and bust out laughing, which would make me feel awful (yes, worse than I would feel for passive-aggressively taking a shot at our only-slightly-English-speaking server).  No motivation became apparent, so I decided to look for the right opportunity and go for it.

I decided that opportunity would present itself when our server brought the check (assuming this ever happened).  Eventually, she brought the check, set it on the table and began to make a hasty retreat.  Before she could get away, I began:

“Excuse me.  This is my first time in Las Vegas and I am just about to leave to catch my plane home.” 
“Where are you going?” 
“Back to Florida.  But I just wanted to let you know that I had a great time here this week, but your service tonight has been really exceptional and is just a great way to end the week.”
By this time, it was obvious that she was a little skeptical of my kindness.  Of course, she should’ve been since I’m sure she knew she hadn’t paid us any attention for the last couple of hours.
“So, thank you for your great service tonight.  This was a great way to end my trip.”

I was so convincing that my soulless friend felt compelled to stop snickering into her napkin (I wanted to say, “stop snickering into her serviette”, but this is America) and say, “Aw, that’s so nice of you!”  This comment finished the job and clearly convinced our server that we were indeed genuinely impressed with her service.  I was paid my blood money and we began preparations to negotiate the check.  But while we were razzing the server, our friend had sneakily paid the check (apparently, the staff was very quick to retrieve already-paid checks), so I actually made twenty dollars at dinner (and forever lost a small piece of my soul).

From there, we went back by The Trop to retrieve my bags (checking out is substantially easier than checking in) and ferry me to the airport so I could catch the red-eye.  I’m pretty sure this is my first red-eye flight, but I’m realizing that one attribute of a red-eye is that they’re difficult to remember, so it’s possible I’ve flown a few before.  In about 45 minutes, we’ll touch down in Gainesville and I’ll go home and sleep the day away.  Back to work tomorrow.

My week, sans the work: Part 1 – New Orleans

I spent the last week traveling and blowing money. Only, not really blowing money, except for the traveling part. My first stop was New Orleans, where I played a $1K preliminary event at the WSOP Circuit stop. I’m not going to post a tournament recap because it was spectacularly boring. That said, I did record all my hands in a notebook so I could get feedback on them later (as in, I’ll literally discuss that later in this post). (While I’m abusing parentheticals, I might as well go ahead and mention that I’m writing this on no sleep as I kill time on my three-hour layover on the red-eye from Las Vegas to Gainesville. It’s very probable this will make no sense in any way.) Anyway, I ended up fizzling out of the $1K at the end of the third level.

Since I’d planned (or, more accurately, hoped) to be playing the $1K all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday, I was now left with about 36 hours to kill. Fortunately, I was in New Orleans, so killing time wasn’t a problem. A friend of mine was in town as well, so we basically tooled around town, stopping in for a snack whenever we got the urge. We mistakenly went to Cafe Du Monde hoping to grab an early dinner and were surprised when we could order only beignets and something to drink. When we arrived, we were surprised at how messy our table’s previous patrons had been. They had left mounds of powdered sugar all over the table, chairs, floor and anything else in the vicinity. Slobs. Of course, once we realized that you must order beignets, and that beignets come drowned in mounds of powdered sugar, we realized that all patrons of the Cafe are slobs. we ate our two orders of beignets (requesting one order for each of us elicited a snarky comment from our server, probably because one serving is more than enough for two) and decided to head over to catch an IMAX show.

I had never seen an IMAX show before, so I was pretty excited to see what all the hype was about. Unfortunately, the only show playing was some documentary ostensibly about whales and dolphins. In reality, it was mostly about how evil! evil! evil! humans are, and it was written to the tune of whales and dolphins. I decided it was most likely produced by PETA, or perhaps PETA’s sea mammals division (PETSM?). We let the guilt wash over us for a while, wondered what PETSM would have us do about our evilness (the “documentary” was heavy on the guilt, but all the useful suggestions about what we could do to help cure our evilness apparently didn’t make the final cut) and decided to go meet some other friends for dinner.

We went to dinner at a local place in the French Quarter (I don’t remember the name – it was pretty awful) and my PETSM-induced guilt caused me to order the fried catfish (they didn’t have Willie, Flipper or Shamu on the menu) on a plate of various other fried items. We ate quickly, spent about three hours awaiting the check and then felt awful (this time physically, to balance out the emotional feelings of awfulness from the documentary) for a while. I think we tooled around Bourbon Street for a few minutes and then I went to sleep.

Sunday, I woke up late, ate breakfast at a great place called the Coffee Pot and then tooled around town some more. Sunday evening, we had our mixer to kick off the work-conference that I would attend for the next few days. The mixer was a great opportunity to meet some higher-ups and watch co-workers get tipsy and go on tirades about how we could improve things at work. HINT: Workplace improvements recommended by the inebriated are typically not easily implemented.

The next three days were all work, work, work and were therefore too boring to mention here (I am aware that the bar for boredom is set pretty low here, and yet I refuse to lower it).