Responses to 7 Arguments Against Net Neutrality

This list contains simplified versions of the many different tactics people use in order to combat the concept of Net Neutrality. I've written previously about the topic of Net Neutrality and why it is necessary, but I was unprepared for opposition because I figured that people would understand and sympathize with me. This time I won't be so optimistic. I have been reading many discussions on the internet lately where people are debating the topic of Net Neutrality and it astounds me to see the amount of misinformation being passed around. It's lesson time:

Claim 1: Net Neutrality is a ploy by the Obama administration to control the internet.
Using this argument means you're aware of a proposal given earlier this month by the FCC to enforce Net Neutrality. There is absolutely nothing in the proposal that purports any sort of control of the internet. It was drafted with 6 tenets (listed in a previous blog entry) that were very clear about one purpose: keeping the internet free of influence from the ISPs that support it. As of now, we have not seen any legislature to determine what the "hidden agenda" of the Obama administration is. The FCC drafted the proposal and then handed it off to lawmakers to create the actual policy. Once that comes out, we will be able to make accurate judgments. Until then, this claim is blind speculation and blatant disinformation. It is an attempt to kill a motion before it can even be brought before the public.

Just so that we're clear: the only bill that has been proposed so far is John McCain's. It is a preemptive strike (a Republican specialty) against a threat that doesn't exist. It uses a straw-man argument to push the agendas of the only entities that could conceivably be opposed to the concept of Net Neutrality: corporate ISPs. The FCC proposals are guidelines and requests for legislature that has yet to be drafted. It is blatantly irresponsible to speculate on the terms of the bills that they will spawn. Jon McCain's bill, if passed before any of the resulting legislature is voted on, would prevent their necessity, which would be a shame for democratic discourse.

Claim 2: Some websites are more expensive to surf than others.
It is astounding how many people actually believe this argument and as a technology expert, I see it as my job to set the record straight. Take it from someone who has worked as a network engineer: high bandwidth sites such as Hulu and YouTube are not more expensive for you to surf. Data transfer restrictions are a function of an ISP's lack of infrastructure. In more technologically advanced countries like Finland, data transfer is not even measured for the purpose of charging or limiting. Rather, connections are charged based on their maximum throughput rates. In other words, you pay rent based on the size of your apartment, not how much crap you keep inside of it. Finland, by the way, is a socialist country and has one of the lowest cost-per-megabit rates in the world.

Claim 3: People in favor if Net Neutrality are government-loving sheep.
It is unfair to tie people who are informed about what Net Neutrality is together with people who actually believe John McCain's claims. I am willing to wager that 99% of everyone who is in favor of Net Neutrality also opposes government control of the internet. It is unfortunate that opposing John McCain's insidiously named  "Internet Freedom Act" suddenly means you're FOR what he's going against. As explained in my response to Claim #1, John McCain's argument is a straw-man. He's basically arguing against an opinion that doesn't exist. Besides, you don't want to use this argument because by inversion, it means you're an unpaid pro-corporation shill.

I also feel that the term "Net Neutrality" is being purposefully dragged through the mud by using this argument. For veterans of the internet like myself, Net Neutrality has always meant ONE THING: equal access rights for all. By using disinformative straw-men to attack the wrong argument, further meanings have gotten attached to the term: pro-government, freeloader, Obama-apologist. Net Neutrality has never meant anything more than equal access rights. Please don't hijack an established term in order to turn its long-time supporters into something they are NOT.

Claim 4: Competition will ensure better quality and more innovation.
Before anyone can claim this, they should first be able to prove that the US infrastructure can surpass the capabilities of other countries. Once again, look at countries like Finland or even Japan to see what is possible with internet connectivity. Their superior connection speeds were not achieved through competition but by public funding. The corporations in the US are fat and lazy, perhaps because they are used to responding more to competition than user demands. This does not mean that creating a competitive market is the best thing to do. Rather, splitting up the giant corporations into smaller, more agile companies seems like it would be much better for consumers.

Claim 5: The Internet runs on private lines that belong to ISPs, they should be able to manage their networks how they like.
The internet would not exist without public funding and the allowed use of public land. It is not a stretch to require companies that utilize public land to act on good faith for the people. Furthermore, ISPs are compensated for the use of their networks by subscribers, governments and competitors already. Net Neutrality would not dictate how to manage a network beyond very simple guidelines to protect YOU (the consumer) from being screwed over. Why would you oppose this?

My friend Dan put it much more eloquently than I can: If you're against Net Neutrality then you must really like getting (bleep) raped. The government is trying to protect your virgin (bleep) on this one, and because it's the government doing it, you're saying, "How dare you intrude in the right of that company to bend me over and shove its massive throbbing corporate (bleep) into my unlubricated (bleep)!"

Claim 6: Users can "vote with their wallet" if an ISP steps out of line.

There are many things wrong with this statement. First, as anyone who has lived in multiple cities can tell you that there are areas where there is only one choice of ISP. Second, an ISP's power over traffic is not limited to its subscribers; any traffic traveling through its network is subject to its rules. So, you can be subscribed through one of the good guys, but your data packets still need to make their journey through the interconnected networks, dodging around obstacles and barriers put up by the bad ISPs. This results in a slower internet experience no matter how fast you can download. The only way to ensure low latency and high speeds is to enforce cooperation between all ISP entities.

Claim 7: Internet access is a luxury, not a necessity.

This is capitalism at its worst. Countries in Europe have already declared that broadband Internet access is a basic human right. This is the direction where we should be headed. If you don't believe as much, I can't change your mind.

(Addendum: Added Nov 03)

Claim 8: Given a free market, new technologies will arise that make Net Neutrality concerns obsolete.
It is certainly true that necessity is the mother of invention, but that doesn't mean that inventions arrive in a timely fashion. Is it really necessary to destroy what we have if only to eventually come up with something better? To compound this, the concept of circumventing the current network structure is a tall order. Free markets only work if there is a realistic point of entry for all parties. In this case, you can forget the possibility of a dark horse coming out of nowhere to revolutionize the Internet. If we do get a challenger, it will come in the form of a heavy player from the software industry: possibly Google or Microsoft. Either way, it is more corporatism.

Through the Hue of Your You-Colored Lens

Disinformation: A brand of information, not necessarily false, but rather misleading, misplaced, irrelevant, incomplete or superficial. It creates an illusion of knowing something while it actually leads one away from knowing.

When you think about it, information is fairly subjective these days. Every news source and every blog has a different perspective and you get to decide which source you're going to listen to. Even when you venture to read a story from a different source than your usual, its conflicting point of view forces you to make up your mind about if what you're reading is true, or at the very least consciously re-balance its terminology against its background politics. As our world becomes saturated with information, a battle for your trust in intellectual authority has begun. What's most disturbing is that truth is not important anymore. Instead, the vendors of our information's context use other appeal to help you digest their branded message. This all happens completely apart from reality. This is the age of the Internet.

You too can have your opinions heard on this network of nearly infinite reach. With not even a certification to your name, you can reach out to thousands of people. High tide has come and the flood of democratic Internet participation has begun crashing through the levies and sandbag walls. And as the waters of free, unencumbered speech carry us into the streets where only experts once walked, we pierce the air with our rallying cry: Democracy to information! We extol our wisdom, adding that we are not professionals, but we did stay at a Holiday Inn Express the previous night.

The masses now control the truth. It is said that he who wins the war writes the book, but the war is just a matter of which web address you type into your browser. With democratized content, users decide what gets seen and what gets buried; what gets shared and what gets ignored. Depending on what site you visit, you get a different story. Entire representations of opinions can simply starve to death on social news sites, which give their users the power to make dissenting points of view vanish from consideration with a single click. The result is myopic tunnel vision, the perpetuation of unchecked conviction, and a cage match between back-patting and debate. In by the good graces of the predictable social media public, all information associated with a favorite subject is on the fast track to recognition with little check for sincerity or validity. The information is not the goal; your attention is.

In 2003, FOX News argued in court for its first amendment right to report lies and misinformation. It won. Corporate news entertainment has disenchanted us and driven us into the arms of independent, unchecked and volatile quasi-information pumped out in droves by blogs across the expanse of social media. This stupidity can result in a loss of $4 billion off one corporation’s market cap because of an unchecked newsletter commenting on a bogus internal missive. It can also contribute to the loss of a primary election due to unverified claims of party infidelity. When the mission is to be the first to break a story rather than be accurate, mistakes made by the forerunners are perpetuated by the stragglers and nobody apologizes.

Is this where the future is headed? News that was designed to be shouted back at? Go on, give your opinion, they'll run a supplemental piece on it. This all isn't to say that news has ever been exactly what we want it to be, but there does not seem to be any noticeable movement in the right direction. At the moment, we are reveling in the sound of our collected voice. We are patting ourselves on the back, acknowledging the freedom of expression, unburdened by the presence of the truth. We would like to believe that we are champions of revolution, but we're not changing anything. Rather, we are clearing more ground for the battle of ideologies to rage on.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Couples Edition)

Attraction is often a tricky concept to corner. Some people look to the stars. Some people play mind games. Some people just snap together like Legos. As the process of courtship goes, our emotions for each other grow and our economical evaluations about one another blur into feelings until one day we find ourselves with a home in the suburbs and a little crying baby in our lap. At many points along that line, we reminisce about all the things that drew us together in the first place: the racing heart when he introduced himself, her exhilarating scent, the wild stay-up-all-night sex, the realization that nobody could ever replace the other. We call it magic, but nature can be seen hard at work at every stage, doing its best to make sure we end up with the right person so that we can raise a smart, healthy family. And you were about to claim all the credit yourself...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 10 things you did not know about sexual attraction:

1. Being in love with someone reduces the appeal of other potential partners¹. Nature uses love as a tool to ensure that relationships last beyond courtship and mating, into and past the child-rearing phase. To test this out, a study was done to measure the pull that committed individuals felt toward other people of various levels of attraction. Subjects in two test groups were first primed to think about either extreme happiness or about their love for their partners. Next, both groups were subjected to rapid-fire bursts of images depicting very attractive people and normal-looking people. The researchers measured the reactions of both groups and concluded that the group primed to think about happiness paid the same amount of attention to the attractive and normal-looking photos, while the group that was primed to think about their love paid substantially less attention to the attractive photos. The reminder of their feelings for someone made them oblivious to the attraction of other romances. Knowing this, let's not jump to the conclusion that love is all we need. There are many other factors that go into attraction...

2. Your immune system determines how much you are attracted to someone else². Here comes the science. It all begins with your personal scent; your aromatic essence. Your immune system creates proteins that your body uses and then secretes through your sweat glands. Bacteria on the surface of your skin then break down the proteins and this turns into your own signature perfume. On the receiving end, we find the aroma of compatible immune systems pleasing. If the other person's immune system is diverse enough to yours, your children will grow up with the benefit of a wider variety of resistances. (If you're wondering how that works genetically, it is because the immune system genes can be co-expressed.) There is no ideal scent because we all have a different immune system and this does a bit to level the playing field for everyone who isn't Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie.

To explain this point further, it should be noted that similar immune systems discourage each other from bonding. As we know, siblings mating together can result in the passage of recessive genetic defects and weakened immune systems. Even in non-related couples with similar immune systems, the occurrence of cheating increases with the percent of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes that the two people share³.

3. Gay men enjoy the scent of other gay men, but not of straight men. Talk about gay-dar. This was tested in a blind study where natural scents were collected from 4 groups of subjects: heterosexual men, homosexual men, heterosexual women, and homosexual women. Each individual scent sample was combined with the others of their group to create a generic example scent representing the sexual orientation. The second stage of the experiment had other members of those 4 groups actually smelling the combined samples. The results of their sniffing: "Heterosexual men, heterosexual females, and lesbians preferred odors from heterosexual males over odors from gay males; gay males preferred odors from other gay males⁴." Another interesting result was that gay males preferred odors from straight women over straight men. This provides some solid evidence of homosexuality being a natural occurrence, but unfortunately the people who refute that don't listen to science in the first place.

4. Babies can evaluate attractiveness, even at under a week old⁵. Beauty is not always in the eye of the beholder. Nature has a fairly simple standard of eligibility: symmetry. Even birds with more symmetrical tail features get more action than those with physical quirks. These values are not learned, either; they are evident within us as soon as we're born. In an experiment, researchers first had adults rate pictures of people based on their attractiveness, then they presented these pictures to newborn infants. The babies spent much more time looking at the attractive pictures than the less appealing ones. This still does not explain why Oscar the Grouch is so popular.

5. Women have more orgasms with men who have symmetrical bodies⁶. As with babies liking more symmetrical (thus more attractive) faces, it should be noted that attractive men are more suitable mates. As uneasy as that sounds, a simple survey was done that found 60% of women had orgasms with their partners, but among the respondents whose partners were more symmetrical, the rate was 75%. Those with more asymmetrical partners? 30%. We're not saying that symmetry is the only factor here, but it is an indicator of the many other qualities that go into evolutionary eligibility. For starters, an attractive male is more likely to be confident and more dominant, and that plays into lovemaking considerably. To compound matters further, orgasms help women feel more attached to their partners. Bachelors: you're playing with fire when you tease the orgasm god.

6. Looking an attractive person in the eye makes the brain anticipate a reward⁷. We've all felt that thrill when our eyes meet those of a really hot woman or man. We know it is a bit of anxiety, but what kind exactly? I would say it is a lot closer to watching your bowling ball roll down the lane than, say, the first day of school. The ventral striatum is an area of the brain that starts to spark when a reward is expected. This is the area that scientists notice gets a lot of play when people look at others who are attractive to them. The potential for social interaction gives the brain a little push forward. This is when you introduce yourself and start a conversation.

7. Humans are more likely to choose between two similar partners instead of considering a third, unique choice⁸. This is a very profound concept when you see it in action. In an experiment, pictures of two different-looking yet attractive people (Tom and Jerry) were displayed along with a third picture. This third picture was variable; half of the time, the third picture was a slightly modified version of Tom, only uglier (Tom's evil twin). The other half of the time, it was an "uglified" version of Jerry (Jerry's evil twin). When asked to choose between the three pictures, survey subjects more frequently chose Tom when his evil twin was present and they chose Jerry when his evil twin was around. The lesson here is that we need a standard of comparison to decide if something is good or not. We're able to determine that Tom is a better choice than his evil twin, but we don't know how Jerry stacks up because he is the orange to Tom's apple. It is suggested that in order to ensure success at the bar, you should take a slightly uglier version of yourself as your wingman.

8. Kissing may have evolved from "pre-chewing" by mothers for their infants⁹. Kisses are very special to us and are a huge part of the courtship process. A lot of information is exchanged with a kiss: smell, taste, body language. In fact, 59% of men and 66% of women reported having been attracted to someone, but losing interest after a sub-par first kiss¹⁰. But how did kissing become so important in the first place? One theory is that the intimacy of a kiss could have evolved from the act of a mother masticating food and passing it off for their baby to eat. If this idea suddenly makes kissing a little less attractive, you can think of it as a symbolic gesture of nurturing and care. There, all better.

9. Women are just as quick to be aroused as men, they just are not as aware¹¹. We've all been told that we need to pre-heat the oven before we can start cooking. The truth, however, is that women heat up just as fast as men. Not only that, women become aroused by a wider variety of sexual imagery than men, including pictures of animals mating. Thermal images show that blood rushes to their genitals, but they are not always quite conscious of this until they are closer to their peak arousal¹². When timed in comparison with men, it was found that both sexes reached peak arousal within 10 minutes. To add even more stereotype-busting quality to this point, it was found that when looking at porn, men spend more time looking at faces, while women let their eyes wander to genital areas just as much as men do¹³.

10. Monkeys will pay for porn, too¹⁴. Do you think there could possibly be a market for this? When offered the chance to view pictures of female monkey bottoms in exchange for their fruit juice, male rhesus monkeys emphatically paid up. There was no comment in the study if the monkeys got excited enough to spill their rhesus pieces all over their cage or not.

Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for the SEX Edition! As usual, I will leave you with some bonus facts:

- Twins can come from 2 different fathers.

- Sexual scents activate the pleasure center of the brain rather than the olfactory center.

- Darker males tend to have healthier sperm as a function of the amount of folate in their body.

- Plastic surgery has existed for centuries.

- Women smell better to men when they are fertile

- The more attractive the man, the more short-term sexual partners he has.

- Women work to be more attractive while they're fertile, even when married.

- "Spring fever" is caused by the body slowing melatonin production when the sun comes out after a cold, dark winter. Melatonin aids sleep, but also suppresses moods.

Sources:
1. G. C. Gonzaga, M. G. Haselton, J. Smurda, M. S. Davies, and J. C. Poore, "Love, Desire and the Suppression of Thoughts of Romantic Alternatives," Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (2008): 119-126.
2. C. Wedekind, T. Seebeck, F. Bettens, and A. J. Paepke, "MHC-Dependent Mate Preferences in Humans," Proc Biol Sci 260, no. 1359 (1995): 245-249.
3. C. E. Garver-Apgar, S. W. Gangestad, R. Thornhill, R. D. Miller, and J. J. Olp, "Major Histocompatibility Complex Alleles, Sexual Responsivity, and Unfaithfulness in Romantic Couples," Psych Sci 17 (2006): 830-835.
4. Y. Martins, G. Preti, C. R. Crabtree, T. Runyan, A. A. Vainius, and C. J. Wysocki, "Preference for Human Body Odors Is Influenced by Gender and Sexual Orientation," Psychological Science 16 (2005): 694-701.
5. A. Slater quoted by A. Gosline, "Babies Prefer to Gaze upon Beautiful Faces," New Scientist, September 6, 2004.
6. R. Thornhill, S. W. Gangestad, and R. Comer, "Human Female Orgasm and Mate Fluctuating Asymmetry," Animal Behavior 50, no. 6 (1995): 1601-1615.
7. K. K. Kampe, C. D. Frith, R. J. Dolan, and U. Frith, "Reward Value of Attractiveness and Gaze," Nature 413,no. 6856 (2001): 589.
8. C. Sedikides, D. Ariely, and N. Olsen, "Contextual and Procedural Determinants of Partner Selection: On Asymmetric Dominance and Prominance," Social Cognition (1999).
9. D. Morris, The Human Zoo (1969).
10. S. M. Hughes, M. A. Harrison, and G. G. Gallup Jr., "Sex Differences in Romantic Kissing Among College Students: An Evolutionary Perspective," Evolutionary Psychology 5, no. 3 (2007): 612-631.
11. M.L. Chivers, G. Rieger, E. Latty, and J. M. Bailey, "A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal," Psychol Sci 15, no. 11 (2004): 736-744.
12. T. M. Kukkonen, Y. M. Binik, R. Amsel, and S. Carrier, "Thermography as a Physiological Measure of Sexual Arousal in Both Men and Women," Journal of Sexual Medicine 4 (2007): 93-105.
13. H. A. Rupp and K. Wallen, "Sex Difference in Viewing Sexual Stimuli: An Eye-Tracking Study in Men and Women," Hormones and Behavior 51, no. 4 (2007): 524-533.
14. R. O. Deaner, A. V. Khera, and M. L. Platt, "Monkeys Pay Per View: Adaptive Valuation of Social Images by Rhesus Macaques," Curr Biol 15, no. 6 (2005): 543-548.

March To Your Mailbox

Political gatherings have never sat well with me, particularly because they more closely resemble tantrums rather than persuasive action. Tonight, I found words for that idea that I was never really able to push out of my mouth before. Through the testimony of Congressman Barney Frank to a stationary video camera, filmed for the benefit of the Reddit.com community, it all came together. Political demonstrations are populist circle jerks that rouse emotions, but do little to influence the members of Congress. Why? Because a Congressman votes on behalf of his constituents and in a political rally, he has no way of knowing if the mass represents the opinions of his (or her) voting public.

The problem with marches is that when they're over, many people may feel like they've done their part and leave it at that. Frank's solution to this is to instead influence people to get involved on a local level by contacting their Representative and Senator to voice their opinions. Write letters and let them know that they'll only get your vote if they support your cause.

So what good are rallies? As I said, they are populist circle jerks. Take that however you like. Even in stories like that of Harvey Milk, where frequent and rousing public assemblies are used to gather momentum, the only decisive action happened when the ballots were counted, putting a man into office who could really represent.

I leave you with a 6 minute video of Barney Frank answering a question regarding his disdain for public assembly. It is not a matter of freedom of speech. It is a matter of actual political process.

Net Neutrality: Why You Should Care

America could easily mistake its head for its ass. The fact that some subjects are even debatable shows not only the gullibility of humanity, but the insidious influence that power-hungry corporations have over the officials that we elect into office. The two main debates of the moment are that of healthcare reform and that of Net Neutrality. As a rational, compassionate, middle-to-lower-class, independent consumer, these two initiatives get a giant thumbs up from me; they address exactly what I am concerned about as an individual and as a society. Healthcare reform has been in the news for months now and you've probably already made up your mind about it, so I am going to focus this article on Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality is the policy of preventing data providers (companies who own the cables, routers and switches that internet traffic flows through) from arbitrarily restricting or redirecting traffic to or from any source. In other words, AT&T is not allowed to prevent you from accessing its competitor's networks and websites, nor is it allowed to charge you extra for accessing bandwidth-heavy sites like YouTube or Hulu. This is a good thing. In fact, if you read over the 6 tenets of the Net Neutrality proposal (more on that a little later), you'll be left scratching your head and wondering why anyone with a conscience would ever oppose such decent terms.

The answer to that is money and power. AT&T and Verizon, along with many of their fellow ISPs and the politicians that they contribute money towards are all against Net Neutrality. This is because it is a policy that prevents them from capitalizing on the prime real estate that they've already staked out now that the internet has established itself. What you need to understand is that Net Neutrality has always existed in principle and now these companies are trying to repeal it through litigation and misinformed debate. Do not be fooled into considering their point of view because you will get nothing in return.

The necessity for Net Neutrality transcends convention. Whether you believe in socialism or capitalism, Net Neutrality should appear to you as the lifeblood policy of our society's future. Privatizing internet traffic will lead to stagnation, much the same way privatized healthcare has cannibalized itself in search of profit over service. The internet has become a huge part of our civilization, but its reach and utility is still in its infancy. Handing control of the traffic flow to a self-interested corporation is tantamount to selling the internet's soul. The internet owes its rapid growth and innovative environment to the policy of Net Neutrality, but as the companies that own the networks that support the internet's backbone seek to exert more control, we find ourselves vulnerable to the greed and misuse of power that we have come to expect from giant, faceless corporations.

Beyond all of the rhetoric that one can use to paint a bleaker picture, we can use logic to understand the opposition. For instance, John McCain, who admits to not even being interested in computers or the internet, who could not be a worse candidate to extol the plight of network sovereignty, has proposed the sinisterly named "Internet Freedom Act" that seeks to give all the freedom to the service providers while shafting all of the consumers (that's you and me). Even a staunch capitalist can see the flaw in this design. This is an example of a senator who cannot, by virtue of his own admittance, understand the effects of what he has proposed beyond their financial and political implications. We know that we cannot let people who do not understand the internet create policy to govern it. Furthermore, we can assume that someone so unfamiliar with the territory he is treading upon has been coerced there by parties interested in using him as a mouthpiece.

Let's go over the Net Neutrality policy, just so that we're all on the same page. Here are the 6 tenets of Net Neutrality that the FCC has come up with and I think you'll find them all astoundingly reasonable:

Under the draft rules, subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not:
1) prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the user’s choice over the Internet;
2) prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice;
3) prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network;
4) deprive any of its users of the user’s entitlement to competition among network providers, application providers, service providers, and content providers.
5) A provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner.
6) A provider of broadband Internet access service must disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this rulemaking.

Here's the summary: FCC says, "Hey ISPs, don't fuck around with your honest users." The response? "But we want to."

This cannot be put any clearer: if you oppose Net Neutrality, you are EVIL. You are either a power-mongering fiend or a complicit pawn.

I offer this information not because I think you don't support Net Neutrality, but because I fear that many people may not be aware of how important it is. They may have heard about it before and dismissed it as some nerdy debate. It goes beyond any geeky point of contention. Net Neutrality affects how much you pay for utilities, how you talk to your friends, how you use the internet, how new interconnected technologies are developed and how our civilization grows around this amazing network of ideas. If you never thought to before, speak up and do not let our future fall into the hands of the parsimonious degenerates who only want control.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Male Edition)

The Female Edition of this article was well-received and it got me excited to start working on this, the Male Edition. Turning my focus to the obscure factoids related to male sexual biology was certainly fun, but something bugged me throughout the process. In comparison with the attention that women get when it comes to scientific studies, men are neglected. The very fact that there is no universal or scientifically accepted way to measure the size of a penis should tell you all you need to know about that. Furthermore, studies on penises are usually done on patients for sexual dysfunction, rarely on subjects who are perfectly healthy. With that said, I think I have 10 really interesting facts that you might like hearing about. Here we go!

1. Humans have the largest penises out of all primates. In fact, the animal that you'd expect to have the largest, a gorilla, averages a 1.5 inch penis. You don't want to be hung like a gorilla. So, how did humans come to possess such large sex organs? It could be a result of our upright progression. Our postures allow a multitude of sexual positions which cannot be performed without a large enough willy.

2. Penis sizes vary across ethnicities, races and regions, but condom sizes are standard. This increases the overall HIV risk of cultures with smaller or larger than average penises. A survey done a couple years ago concluded that over 50% of Indian men have penises about an inch shorter than the international standard used to size condoms. A bad fit for a condom means that it is more likely to break during intercourse or that men will completely forgo using them out of frustration. This factoid shines a little light on societies with high rates of HIV, bringing another element of concern to the cause of safe sex. Before you can get people to wear condoms, you have to make sure they fit.

3. Humans might get "boners," but we don't have penis bones. Other mammals do, though. Chimpanzees, dogs, cats, bears, and whales all have penis bones. They're there to facilitate quick mating, allowing the male to penetrate without an erection. Just insert tab A into slot B a few times and it's done. We should be happy that we don't have them because we like to have fun. However, the absence of a bone will not prevent the penis from actually breaking. That can certainly happen and it is most frequently reported in the instance of an overzealous woman on top suddenly putting her weight awkwardly down on a semi hard-on. If this happens, get thee to a hospital.

4. Blue balls is caused by blood trapped in the pelvic region, unable to drain out. When a man becomes aroused, the veins in his pelvic region expand with the release of nitric oxide through the blood stream. Conversely, the veins leading out of this region contract, trapping the blood inside. When an orgasm occurs, everything gets relaxed to its normal state, but when the body doesn't get what it is expecting, things can get painful. The blood becomes starved of oxygen, which is like early necrosis. Thankfully, the body doesn't stay fooled for long and relaxes itself before things get out of hand.

5. Testicle size in relation to body size is directly correlated with average promiscuity of the females of a species. The more promiscuous, the bigger the balls. Think of it this way: if you know there's competition, you're going to bring more soldiers to the battle. Larger testicles produce and store more sperm, allowing males to compete in an arms race of microscopic proportions. Chimpanzees are all about free love, and because of this have quite large testicles. Gorillas, meanwhile, are generally monogamous, experiencing very little sexual competition, thus they have very small testicles (That's strike two for gorillas). Humans fall between these two species, as you might expect.

6. From the start, less than 15% of a man's sperm is even healthy enough to reach an egg. Like an Ironman race, out of 150 million sperm released in the average ejaculation, only a small portion are even fit enough to cross the finish line. The rest are deformed, unable to swim, double-headed, sickly or even dead on arrival. This is just fine because only a perfectly healthy sperm is able to penetrate an egg. Actually, a man is quite lucky if even 15% of his sperm is healthy enough (Dr. Harry Fisch, Columbia University Medical Center), but there are ways to improve that...

7. Sperm from men who watch hardcore (man + woman) porn swim faster than sperm from men who watch lesbian porn. Sexual competition does more than recruit more swimmers, it strengthens them, too. (Leigh Simmons, 2005) Witnessing the act of copulation gets the competitive juices flowing, preparing sperm for a fight. The result is more, healthier and stronger sperm released with each ejaculation. Lesbian porn does not produce the same virtual environment because there are only women in view and the brain interprets that as "more for me!" Further evidence of this can be found in comparison with other primates, where Chimpanzee sperm swim significantly faster than (you guessed it) gorilla sperm.

8. Semen is designed to subdue a woman's immune system so that it doesn't attack the sperm. As sperm make their way from the testes, out through the urethra, they are combined with several fluids from different glands. These fluids do many things like neutralizing acidity or even energizing the sperm. The most interesting elements of semen are prostaglandins, which act like a Jedi security force, waving their hands and convincing the female's immune defenses not to destroy the hapless sperm. These are not the droids you are looking for.

9. Women can be allergic to semen. When informed of this, a friend of mine insisted that he personally test his wife for allergies as he rushed out the door. It's true, though. There can be proteins in a man's semen that set off allergic reactions, causing itching and burning. Fortunately, there is a way to reduce any allergies to semen that one might have. Through frequent and repeated exposure, a person can become desensitized and lead a normal life. Remember that the allergies can relapse, so it is important to keep treating them. (Of course, if the allergic reaction is more serious than just itching and irritation, a doctor should be consulted.)

10. Pythagoras believed that semen was a "clot of brain containing hot vapour." No wonder we can be pretty stupid when we get turned on.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the experience as much as I did while writing it. As a reward for your attention, I have a few bonus facts for you:

- 2.5% of Italian military recruits have micropenises.

- In "stretched penis" measurement studies, Koreans get the short end of the stick.

- 85% of women are satisfied with their partner's size, but only 55% of men are satisfied with their own penis.

- The clitoris is the only single-purpose organ in the entire body, out of both men and women. Its only purpose is to give a woman pleasure.

- Women are more likely to experience discomfort during sex with a circumcised male than with an uncut partner.

- There is conflicting research against the effect of circumcision on HIV contraction rates. This is mostly because research is non-standard, comparing men of different education levels and living standards.

- Male honey bees mate only once in their lives. Their penises break off inside the young queen with the force of their ejaculation and they fall to the ground where they starve to death in a matter of hours. This all takes place in mid-air, by the way. The next male comes along, pulls out the last penis and blows his top soon after.

Stay tuned for the Couples Edition.

(A big thanks to Sharon Moalem for his book "How Sex Works")

Illogic As an Argument for God

I just had one of the most bizarre conversations about the existence (or lack thereof) of god. The person who I was talking with had a very unique explanation for why he believed that god existed. It was one that I had never heard before and it certainly hurt my brain a little to consider it. The argument was derived from mathematics, assuming that existence itself was akin to a mathematical equation with an end result of 0. That is, for every thing that we can determine with logic, we have a value of 1. Thus, by definition, we must also have an illogical and unobservable -1 to balance it out.

We can imagine 1; that is easy: the value of something existing is 1 and the value of something not existing is 0. Can we imagine -1? Only as a subtraction for a quantity, but not as an actual state of existence. However, in this argument, -1 is god, the balance necessary to reconcile the equation of existence. This is a compelling concept, but who says we need to view the world as an equation anyways? After all, mathematics is a language, not a system. We use it to describe our world in the most comprehensive way possible, but it is not always useful for every situation.

The language of mathematics is always evolving and, like any language, reflects the culture that employs it. The Babylonians, in 300 BC, used base-60 (same as our time measurement system) and invented the concept of 0 as they created the first written notation for a figure that represented nothing, or the absence of all things. Roman numerals have no 0, this is because a symbol's value is determined by the other symbols around it. This all goes to show that our modern system of math is just one of many ways to look at the universe and is not necessarily the defining lens of clarity that we seek. To tie the existence of god to math is just another way of filling the gaps in our knowledge with the assumption of a higher power.

We won't stop there because the argument is not dead yet. Even if we don't use math to debunk this, we should still address the concept of a -1 existence. Singularities are discontinuities in logic, points along the logical scale that don't seem to follow the rules that all the other points do. To explain how singularities can be found in our interpretation of the world, let's look at black holes as we currently understand them. We cannot know for sure what is at the center of a black hole, but we can apply mathematics and quantum physics to their evidence to derive theories. For example, we know that black holes condense space itself because of their light-distorting properties when observed in front of other cosmic objects. These same mathematics lead us to the conclusion that at the center of a black hole exists a singularity where matter is condensed to an infinite density, with infinite gravitational pull and zero volume. If you think about it, zero volume is another way of saying that something doesn't exist, but that is not actually the case. When it comes to black holes, matter is just condensed beyond the means of explanation that our current systems provide.

This missing link in our understanding is another crack for theists to slip the existence of god into. That is why the argument is referred to as "god of the gaps." It is yet another idea borne of our lack of understanding rather than what we do understand.

Many thought experiments use the doubt employed by "god of the gaps" to shake our understanding of what we already know quite well. By stating that something cannot be observed thus allowing infinite possibilities, these experiments attempt to make us think two things: that what we have learned through science is not reliable and that reality is in the eye of the beholder. But science is reliable enough and no matter what anyone observes, there is only one reality.

You might have heard of Schrodinger's cat, but a more basic example of that conundrum is the timeless question: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it make a sound? This follows the idea that something only exists once it can be observed, and until that point any number of alternate possibilities could be true. In my opinion, this is only a question asked by the truly neurotic thinkers. Science exists to help us make predictions about the future based on past observations. So yes, if I know anything about the world, the tree did make a sound. Observe one that doesn't make a sound and then I'll start thinking. And the cat? It is and has been whatever it is observed to be.

But I'd like it to be thought dead, along with the argument.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Female Edition)

I've collected these little bits of information in my research into sexuality and I thought they'd be interesting to know. This is the female edition, with details normally pertaining to those of the fairer sex.

1. The average age of puberty in females has dropped from 17 to 12 over the last 150 years and there are 3 correlated theories as to why. First, the increase in daily stress that modern society forces children to be aware of is linked to the onset of puberty (known as the psychosocial acceleration theory). Second, the increase in frequency of girls who grow up around unrelated men (not their biological father or brother) influences the trend further (American Journal of Human Biology, 2006). Third, the problem of childhood obesity is a clear factor in the onset of puberty, with the amount of fat on a child's hips signaling the reproductive system to kick into gear.

2. Humans are the only mammals whose breasts are prominent when they are not nursing. All other mammals' breasts expand when they are nursing and contract when their young grow past that stage. The reason for this could be that we need that extra fat for emergency nutrition OR...

3. Human breasts may have developed to mimic buttocks. We know that the preferred mating style of most mammals is from behind, where the shape and color of animal buttocks is a beacon of fertility, but as humans grew to walk upright, our mating style changed too. Thus, the female breasts mimic the shape of buttocks (a theory by Desmond Morris) as we perform coitus face to face. It's no wonder we find both equally arousing.

4. A mother's breast milk changes in composition to suit her infant's age. The age-specific "formula" of breast milk helps the infant develop with the right nutrients needed at its stage of development. This is actually something that Swedish doctors know already, as breast milk banks in Sweden collect, categorize and distribute their milk by infant age. This makes you wish other countries would catch on to this trend like they did with Ikea.

5. There is a 5% chance for a human to be born with a 3rd nipple. They usually develop along the "milk line" which runs from the armpit, through the chest and down to the inner thigh, but they can occasionally pop up anywhere. Lily Allen has one. So does Mark Wahlberg. In the case an owner develops breast cancer, it is most likely to occur around the 3rd nipple. (New England Journal of Medicine, 2005)

6. Women with a large size differential between breasts are more likely to develop breast cancer. "Asymmetrical breasts could prove to be reliable indicators of future breast disease in women and this factor should be considered in a woman's risk profile." (Breast Cancer Research, 2006) We humans are attracted to symmetry and health, so it is convenient that an off-balance pair of breasts might turn a man off.

7. Women with wide hips and thin waists are, in fact, more fertile. Their bodies contain 30% more of the hormone estradiol than average (Ellison & Lipson, 2004). Estradiol plays a huge part in the sexual development and functioning of a woman and 30% more means that a woman is about 3 times more likely to get pregnant.

8. Curvy mothers have smarter kids. With data from the National Center for Health Statistics, two scientists discerned that women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 7 or 8-to-10 tend to have kids who score higher on intelligence tests. This is most likely due to the prevalence of fatty acids that help develop a fetus' brain. (Lassek & Gaulin, 2007)

9. The occurrence of pubic lice ("crabs") has reduced since the Brazilian wax became popularized. It makes a lot of sense, too. Just like deforestation kills animals that live in the woods... That isn't to say we should all get "ripped" immediately. Pubic hair is very important for the emanation of your personal scent because it fosters the organisms that break down your sweat into an aroma. Pubic hair is also a natural signal for fertility. You know what they say: if there's grass on the field, play ball.

10. In the 18th century, there was another term for vagina: "hey nonny-no." Can't wait to hear that one on the street.

Here are a few bonus facts:

- Most girls do not actually ovulate until a year or two after their first period. Right now the common misconception is that once you start your periods, you're fertile.

- The protein responsible for signaling puberty in girls is called "kisspeptin," named after Hershey Kisses.

- The average breast size has increased from 34B to 36C over the last 10 years.

- Males can lactate under extreme starvation.

- Newborns can also lactate because their bodies are flooded with hormones passed on to them from their mother.

- Tampons were a hard sell in the 1920's until marketers developed a way for women to pay for them without talking to a clerk. Thus, it became one of the first self-service products in American retail history. (Heinrich & Batchelor, 2004)

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something. Stay tuned for the Male Edition.

I'm not racist if I never mention race.

One of the funny quirks about today's society is the subject of race. Everyone has a race, just as everyone has a nose, but nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody wants to make race-based observations and definitely, nobody wants to joke about racial themes. That is because if you do wax humorous about race, you risk the possibility of being labeled a racist. However, isn't the point of humor to shed a little nervous light on our silly prejudices and baseless stereotypes? Why should the bearer of that message be named as the racist? As a fan of offensive humor of all types, I find it rather amusing when people get angry at racial implications that weren't intended to be offensive at all.

In 2008, the Spanish national basketball team posed for a photo with all members using their fingers on their faces to make "slanty eyes" as a gesture of camaraderie with the Chinese, who were hosting the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Naturally, reaction to the photo was akin to as if someone had shot a panda. The gesture, in thought, was cute, but the Spanish people don't have the same racial sensitivities that everyone else does. In that sense, the Spanish are a lot like the Aussies in a recent comedy skit fiasco. Upon hearing of a Jackson 5 parody performed by white men in blackface makeup, the American media went nuts. Though lacking in any humor that is meaningful to Americans, the skit was not aimed at them. It was simply a cultural schism that those who were ready, willing and able to be offended easily ignored.

Pulling a file from the "everyone thinks it, but can't quite put it into words" department, let's take a look at how the touchy subject of race looms over our heads when we have to deal with it as a matter of fact. In a study where subjects were asked to categorize photos of people by binary characteristics (2 options for skin color, gender, age range, hair color, background color, etc.), all participants were very accurate with their color-based categorizations. Then, when asked to rate their ability to classify photos based on the same characteristics, white subjects in the study tended to purposefully underestimate their skin color categorization skills. Of course, they rated their ability to nail the other color-based criteria rather high. That is to say, they wanted to appear color-blind, but not completely.

Color-blindness only gets us so far, though. Sometimes you just need to get straight to the point, but even that depends on who you're talking to. In a follow-up study, a group of white participants were partnered with confederates of either black or white skin. The participants were given the task of asking questions to their confederate about photos of people they were both looking at in order to identify, out of a group of six, which photo the confederate had quietly chosen. Participants with white confederates were more likely to mention race as a descriptive element when trying to get a positive answer. When partnered with a black confederate, the white participants danced neatly around the skin color issue while using other traits to nail down a choice.

When we fear being labeled, it changes our mode of communication. It makes us less efficient and more suspect. There is irony in that, because someone who is overtly sensitive to their own mentioning of race can in turn be seen as a racist who is just trying to save face. We should probably just drop the pretense. Relax. Take a deep breath. Say it: "Black." What does it mean? Nothing but a color.

By the way, what did the Nazi say to the black Jew?
"Get to the back of the oven."

Source:
Color Blindness and Interracial Interaction

It's a stereotype because it's true. It's true because it's a stereotype.

If I were to suggest that your actions and moods are influenced by stereotypes, you'd probably blow me off, claiming to be much more intelligent and open-minded than that. Your claim would likely be true; most people are smart enough to avoid stereotypes when we consider them up front. The catch is that, as human animals, our reliance on stereotypes is not always linked to our intellect, but our behavioral instincts instead. Moreover, stereotypes not only derive from our clumsy discoveries (blondes are dumb), they also shape our actions no matter how much we vehemently deny them. To put it simply: stereotypes are both observations and self-fulfilling prophecies. Because of this duality, being both the cause and the effect, stereotypes can become an ouroboros that encircles and perpetuates many of the nagging counterpoints against our individuality.

A good friend of mine, Floreta, recently wrote a blog entry about Asiaphiles; men who are attracted to Asian females primarily because of their exotic looks and supposedly subservient dispositions. Being Asian herself, Floreta has been subjected to many come-ons that she perceives as motivated by this stereotype. She also makes the distinction that these Asiaphiles are typically Caucasian. She goes on to assert that the majority of white male & Asian female relationships are dominated by the male, with the female fulfilling her submissive role. Anecdotally, I cannot argue with this, as I am a white male whose two past relationships with Asian women figured me as the dominant half. This concept really only gets interesting when you consider which side is responsible for the justification of this stereotype.

One could argue that white men only chase after Asian females because of this stereotype, but it could be just the fact that Asian females are more attracted to white males than any other ethnicity. Statistics reported by the free online dating site OK Cupid suggest that there are some serious racial considerations going on when users decide whether or not to reply to messages sent by admirers. Asian females were most likely to respond to a message sent by a white male than to messages sent by any one else, and by a large margin. While the average response rate for Asian females to the 8 other ethnicities was a touch above 22%, white males received a return message from them 29% of the time. How about the other way around? Though all males were typically more eager to respond when receiving messages from females, white males were flaky in comparison to other ethnicities, responding at a lower rate than males of different heritage. Asian women received no special favors, landing right on the expected return rate from all males (41% from white males, 43.7% across all male ethnicities); no better and no worse than the rest of the crowd. It would be foolish to extrapolate a wide-birthing assumption from these out-of-context one-dimensional numbers, but we can acknowledge that Yellow Fever has not reached the epidemic stage.

Let's play the fool anyway in order to get some sense out of these numbers. When a white male sends a message to an Asian female, what makes her so much more likely to respond to him than to anyone else? Could it be that white males are just more tactful? Ouch. Maybe Asian women really are submissive and they recognize white males as the right balance to that. Hmm? It seems that no matter how you spin this, there are going to be some "racist" implications. The real question is this: is the stereotype true, or does the existence of the stereotype influence ordinarily rational people? To explore this, I'm afraid I have to keep picking on Asian females. Sorry.

We know that stereotypes are based off of some truth, but why is it when we really look at an individual, many of the stereotypes that could apply to them do little to actually describe that person's behaviors? That is because the keys to stereotypes are expectations. Here is where it all comes together. In a study of how expectations set the stage for our inevitable submission to the whims of stereotypical behavior, Margaret Shin, Todd Pittinsky and Nalini Ambady from Harvard University performed a mind-blowing experiment on (You guessed it!) a group of Asian-American female students. As we all know, Asians are great at math, right? Subsequently, isn't it true that women are not? What happens when you combine the two? Being that our test subjects each possessed opposing stereotypical traits, you could logically expect one of two things to happen during a math test: either the stereotypes would cancel each other out or the universe would collapse on itself.

Our experimenters decided to risk the destruction of our world as we know it and went through with the test. They divided the group into two equal parts (subgroups A and B) and administered a pre-test survey to the subjects. In subgroup A, subjects were asked questions that brought their gender identity into consideration ("List 3 reasons why you prefer single-sex dorms."). In subgroup B, subjects were asked questions that brought their ethnic identity into consideration ("Did your grandparents speak any other language than English?"). These questions were not pointed affairs, but subtle guides to prime the minds of the subjects for subsequent tasks. After this survey, all students were given the same math test to complete. Subgroup A performed decidedly worse than subgroup B. Do you hear that? That's the universe collapsing.

When primed with a gentle reminder of their female identity, the students adjusted their approach to the task, acting up to the expected performance for their role. Likewise, when primed with thoughts of their Asian heritage, the students reacted in kind, but with a different result. (It is also worth noting that most of the studies I found while researching this article centered around women and their lack of math comprehension. This is an amusing irony that not only do scientists fail to exhibit individualism in their observation and study of stereotypes, but they perpetuate the stereotype by labeling it the de facto poster child of stereotype studies.)

The takeaway here is that stereotypical behavior can be activated in us by our expectations of a situation. The existence of these stereotypes do not just describe us, but also prepare us. So, the big answer to our question of the source of the Asiaphile stereotype could very well be the stereotype itself. All other situations considered, we do a lot of things without thinking and stereotypes are what guide us toward making the safe (in the survival sense of the word) decisions without taxing our brain too hard. They are the marks that line the highway of our mind, guiding us smoothly in a single direction. When we actively defy the stereotypes, hoping to find a better path... then we're off-roading, baby!

Sources:
1. Floreta's Blog
2. OK Cupid Stats
3. Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance

Understanding Capitalism

When considering a system of government or economy, we often start by wondering how we fit into the picture. When we consider democracy, we might imagine our voice contributing to a positive change. When we consider capitalism, we might imagine our ambition paying off with wealth and comfort. This is how we decide what is best; we choose the option with the greatest potential. What we usually fail to consider is how these systems will be utilized by the whole of our community and what their long-term effects will be when assayed through changing times. When a country's constitution is drafted, or a religion's holy book is written, there are no clauses included that restrict interpretation. Rather, individual meaning is gleaned from the documents as viewed within the context of the situation of the interpreter. That is to say; though we may utilize the same system, we all have our own definition of how we fit inside it and how it applies to us. When we combine our divergent views into the practice of a single system, weaknesses in that system begin to show.

Capitalism is a system like any other; built on rigid ideals, defined by exact language, accepted for its merits and interpreted in a million different ways. As far as positives go, most everyone sees capitalism as a shuttle toward prosperity. No other economic system provides the promise of as much wealth to such a broad public, asking only for vigilance and ambition to get there. It is easy to get swept up in the gospel of a free market, where you see yourself as responsible for your own fortune and nobody else's (unless you decide to be). However, outsiders tend to make different observations about capitalism. It is seen as a class-based kill-or-be-killed proposition where the excess of a few at the top translates to staggering financial casualties of many at the bottom. The difference is perspective and one must admit that it is difficult to see the big picture when you're a part of the scenery. The personal bonds that people create with their choices can blind them to flaws in their reasoning, so we must offer these choices up for evaluation every once in a while to be assured. This is an evaluation of capitalism.

When we make the judgment that capitalism is the best system in the world, do we consider it with or without regulations? This rhetorical question can be answered if you like, but it is meant to draw attention to a very important reality regarding capitalism: it must be regulated. Without regulation, the flaws of free enterprise rip wide open, becoming deep wounds from which pours the blood of the mass's financial investments into the maw of a hungry upper class of bankers. To understand this point, we must accept the reality that the party with the largest share of a market can influence the rest of the market's participants. If no precautions are in place to prevent manipulation, and if there are no negative consequences for doing so, it is understood that an entity interested in self-preservation will take the most ensured route to survival: domination.

We should be assured that regulations do exist; we would be foolish not to have them. If free enterprise requires competition, and monopolies are anti-competitive, then we know they must be prevented from forming. There are more intricate dangers to be wary of, though. Consider the importance of consumer trust. Because all participants in a market are interested in protecting their own assets while increasing their worth, firms that offer assistance with managing or acquiring worth are the atlases whose shoulders support the dreams of millions of small-time investors. Regulations (or their perceived existence) help consumers to trust larger and more powerful institutions. Though these companies are entitled to a profit for their role, protections must be in place to prevent them from tightening the screws on their investors once they have their money committed. The dramatic deregulation of the market that took place in the late 90's created an opening for lenders to provide inappropriate loans to many individuals and increase interest rates to an unfair degree. What the average consumer sees as following is a market crash and an economic downturn, but the banks who provided the irresponsible lending saw something else; a bailout proposed by the same governing body that initiated the deregulation in the first place. By now we're quite aware that capitalism is a dangerous game.

With all this focus at the top of the pile, we're left to wonder if those at the bottom actually have any of the freedom that a "free" market would purport. Even worse, we seem to have let our market values take over our political values. After all, in a democratic republic, it is the people who give power to representatives and ideas. Why, then, are actions taken, by those we've elected, to reinforce a staggered industry instead of a staggered populace? Following the bailout, the banks have covered their losses while the consumers remain in debt. The answer to this is a bleak reality that needs to be faced; capitalism is not democracy. As explained earlier, in capitalism, those with a larger piece of the pie have more influence. One man, one vote; it can outlaw gay marriage, but it can't protect you from foreclosure. I have to ask, hypothetically, which is more important to prevent?

Debt is already a dirty word, but most people see it as a result of personal irresponsibility. There is little sympathy for those who are in debt because they got themselves into that mess. This is one example of how market-enforced individualism can cloud us from seeing the bigger picture. Debt is more than just owing money; it is indentured servitude. It is a life-crippling quicksand pit that can turn an errant charge into thousands of dollars owed beyond what was originally needed. When you consider the lifestyle changes that come with debt (tightening a budget, foregoing simple pleasures, an increase in anxiety), you may realize how destructive usury can be. Then consider that debt is not always a choice. 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were a result of medical bills¹. These are thousands of families thrust into the servitude of banks simply because a member got sick. While this also reflects poorly on the US health care situation, it is none other than capitalism that drives the health insurance industry toward profit through rejection of coverage.

Beyond the ugly side of capitalism that we've seen for ourselves, there is more that remains hidden, working deep within our minds. Capitalism is more than just an economic system, it is a mindset. The tension that a competitive free market creates amongst its participants erodes cordiality and replaces social considerations with calculated evaluations of risk. An off-hand example of this can be observed in reality TV, where contestants are placed into social situations with the very opponents they are trying to defeat. Their interactions seem decent enough, but once they get on the confessional camera, their plotting comes to the surface. Think it doesn't affect you? Consider an experiment done with the parents of children who utilized after-school teacher supervision in Israel². Before the experiment, parents were only occasionally late to pick up their children and when they were, social norms made them rather ashamed of doing so. The experiment involved enacting a monetary penalty on parents who were late, hoping to curb the tardiness that existed. This actually had the opposite effect. Parents were more late more often because now they could decide exactly how much their time was worth to them. It turned time into a market and the parents made calculated decisions about it. The kicker? When the penalties were revoked, the tardiness continued anyway. Why? Because once you switch a situation from social norms to market norms, it is very hard to revert back to proper cordial behavior. Capitalism turns any thing it can into a market.

A society based on constant treading for economic footholds is exhaustive and deceptive. After all, while we're working hard to stay above the surface, we remain at the mercy of those with more money and power. Additionally, the competition that everyone claims is healthy for innovation and quality can also be destructive. Let's address both of those points by looking at executive salaries at publicly held companies. In 1993, regulators forced these companies to reveal the salaries of their high level executives, hoping to bring a sense of shame to those who already took more than their fair share³. As you can expect with hindsight, all this did was create another level of competition amongst those executives. Their salaries launched into the stratosphere, fueled by the increases that their peers received. Now executives make about three times as much as they did before their compensation was made public. This is money that would be better used to improve the processes of the company or to better compensate the employees that make it hum along smoothly, but instead it goes toward yachts, helicopters and mansions. Meanwhile, these are the same executives that pull the trigger on massive layoffs that dramatically increase company profits because its biggest liabilities are its employees. The only people who really enjoy a dog-eat-dog world are the ones that can't get eaten.

As a capitalist, you are an individual. You look out for number 1. You build your nest-egg and you protect your own. Of course, if you acted any other way, you'd be a damned socialist or even a god-forsaken communist. But this individualism that capitalism promotes can lead to isolation. As you play the game and work your way through the rat race, its not hard to feel a sense of pride for all the work that you put in. You believe that everyone else should work as hard and if they don't, they deserve any misfortune that society shoulders them with. This is isolation; a man as an economic island. There are no mechanisms in capitalism beyond paying taxes (which are actually more socialist if you think about it) that really encourage communal empathy or result, through induction, in sharing. Thus, if the opportunity arose, you might find it easier to take advantage of your neighbor or a stranger for economic gain because you do not depend on them and damn it, you earned it. A lack of obligation to the rest of society can easily beget corruption.

But you're not dishonest. You might argue that the sanctity of capitalism only suffers where the rules are bent, but that the world is largely an honest place. You would be very very wrong. We're all a little dishonest and it adds up in a big way. In fact, white collar theft accounts for more monetary loss than all other crimes combined. Furthermore, you probably can't say with a straight face that you've never embellished a little or rounded up to the nearest hundred when calculating your tax deductibles. We all cheat to a small degree. Not too much; not so much that we feel like criminals, but just enough to the point where we feel we deserve our gains. Worse yet, there are ways for us to completely lose sight of all ethics by simply obscuring the monetary effects of our actions by a degree or two. To explore this, we will use two example experiments humbly borrowed from Dan Ariely's brilliant book, Predictably Irrational⁴:

Initially, we want to establish whether cheating is common or not. As a control condition in our first experiment, there was a 50-question multiple choice quiz taken by a large and random selection of students. They were paid 10 cents per correct answer. The average score with no possibility of cheating was 32.6. The second condition, tested on a different selection of students, allowed them to cheat a little by having the answers revealed during the quiz. Understandably, scores rose by an average of 3.6. As you see, people will cheat when given the opportunity, but only by a little. What if the cheating is only low because the chance of getting caught is high? Let's see what happened when the possibility of being caught was removed. The third condition allowed students the same level of cheating, but they were also instructed to shred their answer sheet and verbally report their score to the proctor. The result? The cheating remained constant: an increase of 3.5 correct answers from the control. Even with the opportunity to laugh all the way to the bank, people will stop themselves for their own sense of decency. The fourth and final condition of the experiment removed the stigma of a watchful proctor. Maybe that's what was keeping them "honest." In addition to all the conditions set before, students were now able to simply withdraw their earnings from a jar without any verification. The level of cheating remained the same, though. Dishonesty exists, but it doesn't get out of hand because nobody wants to be the bad guy. That is, until we're able to obscure the effects of our actions from our conscience.

We've established that people will cheat when given the opportunity, but only by a small amount. This doesn't explain the corruption that we see in capitalism today, so the experiment has to be modified a little to bring it more in line with the conditions of the market. More to the point, people don't trade cash for cash; they trade for stocks, for futures, for derivatives. They talk in another language, using words like "points" to obfuscate the actual money behind the trades. You might be wrinkling your nose at how ridiculous the notion is that by calling one thing by a different name, we hide its value, but the second experiment was designed to prove just that. In it, the same conditions of our first experiment were set to establish a control, with cheating at a minimum but still existent. For the real twist, one vital change was made to the reward collection process: students declared their score in exchange for simple tokens, which were then brought to a cashier where they were cashed out for actual money. Suddenly, our students became geniuses because not only were they scoring higher than the control, nearly all of them were hitting above 90%. Obfuscating cash by a single degree of separation opens the dam and suddenly taking a little extra turns into taking as much as possible.

The implications of these findings are staggering when you realize that everyone has the capacity for compartmentalizing their honesty in such a dramatic fashion. Fueled by one realization, let's take it a step further and apply this "theory of dispassionate separation" to the social realm. We all share a common bond under the umbrella of a capitalist society, but the size and diversity of our population can work against us. As established, capitalism creates a class system, but it is important for all but the highest class to realize that we're all in this together. If you were to line up everyone in the US in order from richest to poorest, you would find that the front 1% of the line has more wealth than the last 95% combined⁵. That is a whole lot of people and a whole lot of votes that can potentially be rendered ineffective, if capitalism continues to convert democracy into a market. One thing that stands in the way of those 95% realizing that they need to work together is the fact that they are, in fact, very divided amongst unrelated social boundaries. From the liberals to the conservatives, from the blacks to the whites, from the atheists to the believers; it's easy to feel culturally separated and thus unrelated and unaffected. Like a token to a dollar, this degree of separation is a cognitive void through which corruption can slip and take over. Worse than letting bad things happen is actually becoming a vessel through which the status quo is enforced simply because of social prejudices or obligations. Do not let capitalism take you for such a ride that you're waving its dollar-stamped flag in the face of your own financial independence.

Even if we pull together, our status amongst the lower classes renders us potentially helpless in the face of major economic distress. Without substantial wealth to rely upon, lower classes are affected the most during periods of downturn while the upper classes not only stay afloat, but also profit further from the flailing of the poor. Money gets tight, loans are issued, bills don't get paid, houses get foreclosed, banks own more land. This being the case, there is actually very little incentive for the upper class to put in effort to avoid recessions. You could even argue that recessions and depressions are looked forward to. They economically subjugate the lower classes, with banks feeding off of misfortune and enslaving into debt most future wages earned by these people. And you thought we were all in it together.

Maybe all these warnings are a bit too cautious. Let's daydream for a moment and imagine capitalism as a wild mustang, galloping across the countryside with no fences and no wranglers in sight. Let's dream: capitalism unfettered and untamed. Capitalism Gone Wild. Though we keep referring to competition in the free market as a component to capitalism, there is an endgame to every competition; one victor, the last man standing. This goes for all instances of capitalism. Without restrictions to keep things in check, every component of a capitalist society will be overtaken by a single dominant entity. Along the way, these entities will amalgamate into a conglomerate. You've seen examples of this before in futuristic fiction where seemingly all aspects of life are provided for by a single brand. Continuing on, individual markets will merge until there is a single world market and during its rise, countries will also merge into a single world government. This is not good. This is the opposite of competition and beyond the justification of any conspiracy theory, there is a sound explanation of why we should avoid this at all costs.

It starts with a simple observation: small, isolated societies develop and evolve faster than large integrated ones. Why? Because bureaucratic agility is easier to obtain with smaller populations. An example of this would be the comparison of a small committee in making a decision versus bringing a discussion up to a congregation of 250 civil representatives. The fate of a fully integrated society is stagnation. Furthermore, comparison is a necessary utility for decision-making. If there are no alternative choices (eg. brands, governments, religions) then there is no progression, no intelligence, and no freedom. Any economic system with this hypothetical (and albeit extreme) logical endgame is inherently flawed. If we want to continue using capitalism as our main economic theory, we must treat it as a flawed system and enact several broad-sweeping measures to keep it from fulfilling its own destiny. Anything that falls short of change at this point is a victory for greed and brings us one step closer to the tipping point, past which we will no longer be able to wrest control of our society from this dangerous ideology.

(My name is Andrew Gonsalves, I live in New York City, and you can reach me at: develdevil -at- gmail -dot- com)

Sources:
1. Himmelstein, D, E., et al, Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study, American Journal of Medicine, May 2009.
2. Ariely, Dan, "Predictably Irrational," 2008.
3. Ariely, Dan, "Predictably Irrational," 2008.
4. Ariely, Dan, "Predictably Irrational," 2008.
5. Wolff, E. N., "Recent trends in household wealth in the U.S.," update to 2007: "Rising debt and the middle class squeeze," 2009.