The Big Business of Hating Big Business: A Defense of Wal-Mart

There are plenty of places I out-and-out refuse to shop, but in the world of big, bad corporations, one name rises above the rest. Whether it’s destroying small communities, treating employees poorly, placing unfair demands on suppliers, or any number of other atrocities, Wal-Mart seems to do whatever it takes to put profits ahead of people. The specific stories of malfeasance and the sacrifice of human wellbeing are countless, and anyone who supports these behaviors with their money is just as guilty as Wal-Mart themselves. Oh, and one more thing; if you agreed with all this, you might want to hang around because the truth… It’s all bullshit.

Wal-Mart hate propaganda is a mix of half truth, complete lies and anecdotal stories that most people believe because they seem like they should be true. In this post, I want to dispel some of the negative stereotypes detractors commonly use, give the truth about Wal-Mart’s practices and show how free enterprise may have certain undesirable consequences, but in the end, we’re better off because of it.

I recently watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices—a film outlining the atrocities of the retail giant. In it, the film makers covered many of the general complaints about Wal-Mart and big business in general, and suffice to say, many of the points made were only half of the story, while some of them weren’t part of the real story at all. I’d like to compare some of the claims made against Wal-Mart with some of the truths about Wal-Mart by dividing each into categories.

Employment. Wal-Mart employs more than 1.3 million Americans. It is—and has been for some time—the single largest employer in America, not to mention the peripheral jobs that stem from Wal-Mart’s purchases and distribution. Cynics say that’s not the entire story though; they often claim that Wal-Mart is bad to employees, citing racism, greed and low wage jobs that increase social ills. It is hypercliche to hear of a down-on-her-luck mother of three who works one of her three jobs at Wal-Mart just to be able to live month to month. The following are a few true facts about Wal-Mart’s employment practices. The average hourly worker, not including salaried workers, is $10.51—nearly double the federal minimum wage of $5.85. Many people cite the fact that there are a number of Wal-Mart workers who are paid so little, they remain on welfare despite having a job. This is true; however, there is one very important caveat. This statistic includes part time employees. When part time employees are not included, less than one percent of full time employees still legally qualify for welfare. Wal-Mart has historically been dedicated to promoting employees from within the company. In 2004, literally 70% of all Wal-Mart managers started by working on the floor in a Wal-Mart. This is not to say many full time Wal-Mart employees don’t struggle to get by, but it’s not because Wal-Mart is driving them into the poorhouse with unfair employment practices.

Community. The most vocal of all general complaints against Wal-Mart is that when one is built in a small community, it destroys the small town quality of life. This, above all others, is the argument that people believe because it seems like it should be true. However, the truth is that the effect on small communities is mixed. When Wal-Mart expresses interest in a community, it is not untypical for a local politician to stand up and speak for everyone in saying the people do not want a Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart is pushing its way in. They say that small, local businesses are forced to close their doors because they can not compete with the large retailer’s prices and selection. There are a few considerations here. Throughout American small towns, whether a big-box retailer exists or not, main street is disappearing. Increased technology and communication, along with an increased number of malls and strip malls, have done much more to adversely affect small town way of life than Wal-Mart could ever dream. Another consideration is that Wal-Mart doesn’t necessarily drive small retailers out of business as much as it might force them to become more specialized—which, ironically, is made easier by this next fact. In a 2004 comparison, the average family of four has $2,000 more disposable income because of the money Wal-Mart saves them over the course of the year. This money creates opportunities for other smaller companies to provide services families could otherwise not have afforded.

In one interview, a local politician said something to the effect that, “Our Wal-Mart was built on a great piece of industrial land—land that I wanted to be used for industrial jobs!” I really don’t know how to respond to this, other than to say if you want a specific piece of land to be used for a specific type of job, then you buy the land and you create those jobs. If the captains of industry deemed this “a great piece of industrial land,” then it wouldn’t have sat vacant for fifteen years, as it did. People will always have a nostalgic view of the ways things used to be, and any time changes are brought about, there will almost always be a sense of loss. Whether this sense of loss results from an actual loss is not only unclear, it’s inconsequential. The loss of small communities and the increased popularity of big retailers is really an argument of the chicken and the egg: in some ways, the changing of small communities is what has led to the increased presence of retailers like Wal-Mart, rather than retailers destroying communities.

Profits Over People. When it comes to people, detractors will always mention the fact that Wal-Mart is incredibly anti-union. They claim Wal-Mart fights unions because they want to continue their horribly abusive employment practices. I kind of see this as a nonissue because 1) most of the “abusive” employment allegations are simply are not true, and more importantly 2) consumers don’t want Wal-Mart to deal with unionized employees—only unions want it. Consumers (in fact, workers themselves to a high degree) would not be best served by Wal-Mart’s adopting union labor. Unions are big business—for the unions themselves. At a very modest union due of $19 per month, if all applicable Wal-Mart employees were unionized, it would generate $296,000,000 per year in union dues. Union demands are then passed onto the consumer.

I should mention this as it directly relates to profits. While many of you do not know what this means because the companies for which you work do not participate, Wal-Mart participates in a very aggressive profit sharing program for vested employees. After tenure, many employees receive bonuses based upon the efficiency and profitability of their specific store and Wal-Mart as a whole.

Supplier Relations and Pressure. This really deals with two different complaints. First, suppliers are under constant and extreme pressure from Wal-Mart to make things cheaper and faster. This makes me laugh for two reasons. If you supply them products and are not comfortable with the pressure for timely, budgeted delivery, no one is forcing you to supply products to Wal-Mart. While it might mean significantly less production for your company, that is something for you to decide carefully. Second, in any supplier relationship, there is always constant, “unfair” pressure to reduce cost and production time. In some ways, your success as a major supplier lies only in your ability to deal with unfair demands for price and production. I couldn’t say if Wal-Mart is particularly worse about this than any other distributor, but I can say with resolution that unfair demands are sewn into the very fiber of the manufacturer-distributor relationship.

The second complaint about supplier relations is that Wal-Mart buys from foreign sweatshops that pay chicken scratch wages and support child labor. This, like most bad things, is something that seems far worse than it is, and to understand it requires us to understand context. It is true that some of Wal-Mart’s sweatshops pay workers as little as 41 cents per hour; however, when we understand this in the context that the average factory worker in China makes only $2.20 per day, the wage seems quite civil.

Child labor is much the same in that it must be viewed in the proper context. The simple fact that is few countries share the economic prosperity we enjoy in the developed world. In some countries, children are required to join the workforce in order to support their families. Sweatshops that produce goods may seem atrocious when taken out of context, but they are very civilized when compared with other options for children and unskilled youths. These manufacturers are not forcing children to work as much as they are providing a more civilized, better paying option to children who would be working regardless.

In contrast to the major complaints about Wal-Mart, there are a few things that are rarely spoken about. After Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart donated $20,000,000 in cash, more than 100,000 individual meals and 1,500 semi-trucks full of food, as well as the promise of a job to any person dispossessed by the hurricane. Wal-Mart also subsidizes the cost of more than 360 popular prescriptions, offering each of them for only $4 per fill. In 2004, Wal-Mart gave more than $170,000,000 in gifts to more than 100,000 individual charities.

By no means am I saying Wal-Mart’s existence brings about no negative repercussions. What I will say, however, is that the vast majority of negative repercussions brought about by Wal-Mart are effectively negative consequences of free enterprise. There will always be undone things companies or individuals could do to curb the marginalization of others, but to hold that against Wal-Mart in particular is ignorant at best. Wal-Mart is just an easy target because of their size.

Hope, however, is not lost. These negative repercussions of free enterprise are curbed by one very important thing—consumer freedom. If you don’t like something a private organization or individual is doing, you don’t have to do business with them. It’s not one person’s responsibility or right to speak for an entire community in saying, “We don’t want a Wal-Mart!” In the end, it always goes to a vote—the vote of the consumer dollar. If the community truly does not want a Wal-Mart, then members of the community will not shop there, and the store will close shortly after opening.

In the end, people like to hate Wal-Mart for a variety of reasons, but it really boils down to three justifications for personal shortcomings. Since Wal-Mart is owned by pigs, if I don’t own a part of it, I’m not a pig. Since Wal-Mart’s workers are unskilled and unsuccessful, if I don’t work there, I’m not unskilled and unsuccessful. And since the people who shop at Wal-Mart are of a lower socio-economic status, if I don’t shop there, I’m not a hillbilly. All of which are conveniently untrue, you greedy, unskilled, unsuccessful, hillbilly fuck.

American Ent-Idol -or- How American Idol Just Might Save the Planet

These days, it’s difficult to throw a washing machine without hitting someone who wants to tell you about global warming, the environment, universal healthcare, the dark side of Walmart, the dangers of disposable diapers, or a variety of other liberal causes. The causes themselves are largely interchangeable, with varying degrees of severity and legitimacy, but even when the causes themselves are legitimate, their "selfless" devotees most often are not. There are a few factors involved when it comes to the popularity of causes, but I specifically want to look at the increased popularity of liberal causes along side the increased popularity of American Idol. Namely, I want to look at the effects of the popularity of American Idol, the roles liberal causes play today, and how the rise of one is inextricably linked to the popularity of the other.

If you ask people why they like American Idol, you generally get an answer that is either about the wacky singers on the first few episodes or the people who, regardless of singing ability, legitimately believe they are destined for stardom. When the Idol auditions tour around the country in the first few episodes, the most compelling and entertaining people aren’t the ones who would like to be famous some day; rather, the most compelling and entertaining stories are from the people who believe they deserve to be famous some day. Two years ago, I wrote an post titled Entitlement Thinking: From Desire to Desert, and this issue of entitlement is what the whole premise and value proposition of American Idol is about: if you have talent, you deserve to be recognized. This alone, however, is not what makes the show work so well. The reason the show is successful and the reason this type of thinking is damaging in other arenas is that people are notoriously bad judges of their own talent. This is important to remember for later.

I will pause here to say that I don’t believe American Idol created entitlement thinking; however, I do believe American Idol exploited the entitlement that already existed in the music business in particular, and in turn, has created a snowball effect of entitlement. I believe there were a large percentage of would-be-entertainers who felt entitled to fame before Idol, with the difference being that it seems like every would-be-entertainer feels that way now.

There are two important things to keep in mind. First, the entitlement that American Idol perpetuates is not isolated to just Idol itself or even to the music and entertainment industry. It provides the premise for an entire genre of television shows, and it ultimately affects people’s feelings in other areas. In the end, any time people have talent or abilities, their desire becomes desert. Compounding this is the second, previously mentioned point that American Idol would be completely unentertaining if it weren’t for the fact that people are atrocious at judging their own talent and ability. These are both key factors when it comes to linking entitlement to liberal causes specifically.

Liberal causes make sense in light of the combination of rampant entitlement and poor self-evaluation for one reason above all else: nearly all Americans feel–at least on some level–that they are either intelligent, creative or that they understand concepts that others do not. The key here is that if people were legitimately intelligent, creative or understanding, they would not need liberal causes to fall back on, but because they are, in fact, most often none of those things, liberal causes serve as an easy way out.

Taking up causes requires no intelligence or originality, but they provide the subscriber with the appearance of being intelligent, original and often times creative. They incorrectly provide people with a feeling of importance and exclusivity because saying, "The world just doesn’t get it," about a specific liberal cause directly validates saying, "The world just doesn’t get me." Because most people are grossly erred about their self-evaluation, this transition provides an immediate solution to the problem that other people don’t seem to understand quite how smart they are. The argument basically follows this simple path. "I am smart. The world doesn’t recognize me as smart. Well, the world doesn’t even recognize a simple concept like (insert liberal cause), so if they don’t get something simple like that, no wonder they don’t get me!"

Liberal causes also serve as a scapegoat for failure. Causes encompass failure into their concept in as much as if participants fail at achieving anything, the problem is not with the participants themselves; rather, the problem is with the people who "just don’t get it." A key difference between this and almost any other arena is that there is no final measuring stick by which someone can be shown to be unintelligent or unsuccessful. The person who started off incorrectly assuming that they are something special can be entirely unsuccessful in their cause and still come away assuming they are something special.

To summarize, American Idol has exploited and perpetuated entitlement thinking. Because of people’s horrible self-evaluation, people often feel incorrectly entitled about their intelligence, creativity or advanced conceptual understanding. Liberal causes provide a backdrop for people to feel intelligent, creative and conceptually advanced without really being any of those things. Ergo, people are driven toward liberal causes because those are some of the only things that can act as validation for their entitlement without requiring any of the actual things they feel entitled about. Ironically, liberal causes serve the same function on a socio-political level that photography serves on an artistic level. This is one reason why many people who are into one are also into the other, but I digress.

So next time someone starts talking to you about whatever liberal cause they are hooked on this week, try to view them with the same love and understanding with which you looked at a guy like William Hung or the countless girls who wept all the way back to their trailers after Simon dropped the bomb on them that everything they built their lives around was a lie. "That... was... terrible. World pseudo-intellectual bullshit... ever!"

Photography as Postmodernism--or--Obscene Phone Pictures Do, In Fact, Make You an Artist

Philosophy and art may differ in their means of reflecting, expressing and transforming subject matters, but in many cases, they heavily influence one another. Different periods and movements throughout the history of art can be seen as direct reflections of various periods and movements of philosophy—so much so that we often define artistic periods by the philosophies they embody. Currently, photography is by far the largest, most accessible medium, and while there are many extemporaneous factors involved in the popularity of photography, its popularity makes complete sense in today’s philosophical climate. In this post, I want to explore the ways in which the popularity of photography makes complete sense within a purely postmodern aesthetic.

Fundamentally, photography is about perspective and interpretation. It doesn’t create or even transform anything as much as each shot provides a particular point of view. This ties in with postmodernism because the literal lens of the camera serves to provide a figurative lens for interpretation. Photography posits that everyone is entitled to their own interpretation, point of view or lens—both literally and figuratively—and the interpretations can not be viewed as right or wrong. With postmodernism, we often hear that not everyone is right, but no one is wrong. In photography, we have that same thing; not everyone’s end product will be the best, but we are unable to label any particular point of view as wrong, even if the photo itself could have been better.

Along side this is the photographic truism that everyone has something valid to contribute. Photography and postmodernism both posit that truth, insight and relevance can be found in all things, even if the things themselves are flawed. Even if one person’s photographs look better than another person’s, it doesn’t make the lesser person’s contribution meaningless. It’s not “what” you’re viewing as consumer but “how” you’re viewing it.

Which brings us to the next point that there is no objective place from which we can stand to take photos, much like postmodernism’s ideology that there is no objective place from which we can view and interpret the world. All places, both in photographs and in our lives, are subjective and open for interpretation or nuance. Value judgments such as beauty are reserved for the beholder or end consumer. In postmodern thought, there is no measuring stick for things like beauty and horror, and if something is beautiful to one person and hideous to another, neither person is wrong in his or her interpretation. With all art, the creator is never able to assign an emotive response to a piece, and no honest response can be labeled right or wrong.

Hand in hand with the validity of personal interpretation is the idea of adaptive reuse—or more appropriately, adaptive reinterpretation. Photography can show positive things in gruesome situations and vice versa. There are really two types of juxtaposition in photography, and each of them can lend credence to this idea. Physical items can be juxtaposed to show contrast, but more importantly, abstract ideas can be juxtaposed for a variety of reasons. Take, for example, a photo of a happy family being looked in on by a child who has clearly been abused, or a photo of a soldier coming back from a war, only to be met by protestors who are utilizing the very rights he sustains for them by shouting abrasive, hurtful things. Utilizing these techniques, photography is able to exploit or reinterpret preconceived notions about the subject matter in order for end users to begin to understand that their responses to the things around them are wholly up to them. It works to strip away (or at very least, bring to mind) the ideas of inherent or assigned values from every day things.

From a functional standpoint, the popularity of photography can be directly tied to the low price of admission—both financially and otherwise. On the financial side, literally anyone can go out and purchase a camera, albeit with varying degrees of quality. However, from an artistic standpoint, photography is attractive because of the low price of creative or skillful admission, not to mention the ubiquity of photo editing software. Sure, fine tuning photographic ability requires both creativity and skill, but anyone with a camera and an inkling of desire can become an artistic photographer. Functionally, this is the largest single reason photography is inextricably tied to postmodernism in as much as each of them is rooted in the idea that everyone has something valid to offer, regardless of background, ability, creativity or qualification.

The place where I get at odds with photographers is when they misunderstand my saying, “anyone can be a photographer,” with, “anyone can do what you do.” Inherently, this goes back to the issue of perspective for them because they view their photos as wholly different than anyone else’s photos, even if the subject matters are the same thing. The other place where I get in trouble with photographers is the issue of talent or creativity. Many times, photographers misunderstand my saying, “you don’t necessarily have to be talented or creative to be a photographer,” with, “there is no creativity or talent involved with photography.” Simply put, some photographers are creative and talented, but creativity and talent are not requisites for becoming a photographer.

To some degree, all art is about contemplation for me. Art works best when it has a cyclical or viral nature: the art itself elicits a particular response, resulting in an interpretation, which in turn results in another response or realization, which results in yet another interpretation (and often a reinterpretation of the art itself), and so the cycle continues between (re)interpreting and responding. In this way, art can truly be timeless if it is able to evoke responses throughout all contexts. The overall idea being that the interpretation and response to one thing leads to the questioning, interpretation and response to another. When art makes you question something on a visceral level, that questioning can become viral to the point where, “what makes art art,” eventually leads back to, “what makes me me?” While I don't believe the connection is that literal, it does function that way on different levels for different people. As for photography specifically, I think the entire spectrum of photography is fairly true to the spectrum of people who create it: the overwhelming majority is worthless but meaningful to someone nonetheless.

Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned Playing Minesweeper

First things first... I don’t like minesweeper. I really don't... I love minesweeper. It has some sort of simple and extremely addictive appeal to me, and I can’t really explain it to anyone. That said, through my years of sweeping, I’ve come to realize that minesweeper has a lot of things to teach us about life. Here are ten such things. If you do know know about minesweeper, or if you would like to know more about how the game works, this is a good resource.

1. Good things–not bad things–are most often what keep us from doing great things. There are four different levels of difficulty in minesweeper–easy, medium, expert and custom–and it is often great success or comfort at one level that keeps a person from mastering the next higher level. In life, most of us are not held back by our vices or legitimately bad things; most of us are held back from doing great things because we are content with doing "good" things.

2. There is no trick or gimmick to successfully getting started. In minesweeper, you begin games by randomly clicking to find openings from which you can work. In life, there is no playbook for becoming the person you want to become, and what’s more is that unless you make a conscious effort to dive in and work toward your goals despite not knowing your exact route, you will never accomplish anything you set out to do.

3. No matter how much you’ve honed your skills and no matter how well you’ve done in any particular situation, there will always be situations that are out of your control. Almost inevitably, you’ll get to the end of a minesweeper board with only a handful of mines to go, and you’ll run into a situation where you must blindly mark one mine between two boxes. Your past successes and your skill level have nothing to do with whether you win or lose the game. In life, sometimes we work very diligently and skillfully, only to find that the result of our particular situation is our of our hands.

4. In most situations, imperfect knowledge is all you'll have to work with. We can only use what we know to try and deduce things about that which we do not. Sometimes, we must assess situations and make the best decisions we can without being sure of the outcome, lest we get stuck and stay small.

5. While situations may seem to have purpose or design, they do not. Coincidences or patterns in the mines are purely consequential and are not indicative of an overarching design or purpose in the mine field. Sometimes things happen in our lives where we look back and impose a false sense of purpose or intentionality (mainly from God). These serendipitous situations are purely random and do not represent any design–divine or otherwise.

6. All aspects of our lives have an interconnectedness, varying greatly in degree. On minesweeper boards, the placement of each mine affects the entire outcome of the board and feel of that particular game. In our lives, all of the things that happen to us are linked together in a way that forms the narrative of who we are. In contrast to the previous point, this is speaking more toward the interpersonal relationships, the things that happen to us, and the ways we live. Everything we do affects every other thing we do, albeit in varying degrees.

7. Understanding things conceptually is important, but it is no substitute for experience. I could sit with someone and discuss concepts for various minesweeper scenarios. I could explain how a 1-2-1 on a straight edge will always indicate split mines, but at the end of the day, the best way for someone to learn minesweeper is to sit down and actually play. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in training or trying to complete our knowledge of a particular area rather than just jumping in and learning as we go. There is value in training and knowledge, but understanding how can be just as important as understanding why.

8. No matter what your skill level is or what you’ve accomplished, there is always someone–most times many someones–who are exponentially better than you. I don’t mean this to sound as negative as it may first appear. I say this in as much as it speaks to the importance of maintaining a healthy perspective on all things in life. I can sweep an expert minefield (99 mines) in around 115 seconds. The first time I broke the 120 second barrier, I really thought I had to be approaching the top of the minesweeper community, until I found out that thousands of people produce sub-80 second scores. In fact, the current world record is 37 seconds. Again, I don’t think we should downplay our accomplishments in life; I just think it’s important to maintain perspective about who we are and how much we have to grow.

9. Seemingly unimportant or inconsequential decisions sometimes turn out to be much more than what they appear and vice versa. In minesweeper, you never know which area will turn out to be the key to winning a game. Sometimes working on a small lead in a corner can open up an entire board, and working through a large opening in the middle can lead to no where. In life, we make meaningless, small decisions all the time, but sometimes those decisions can have larger consequences–either positive or negative–than we anticipated.

10. Recovering from failure is a process that is entirely up to you. In minesweeper, you start a new game by clicking the smiley face at the top. While it may not be as easy as clicking a smiley face to rebound after failure or tragedy in life, the point remains that how you let a situation affect you and whether or not you choose to recover quickly are both entirely up to you. If you don’t like something about yourself, only you can make the decision to make a positive change in your life. The smiley face will never click itself, but it will always be there as an option.

Becoming a Better Person

I manage to make a lot of people mad, putting myself into precarious situations to say the least. I like to push people’s buttons and say moderately inappropriate things because, ultimately, it just makes life more interesting and entertaining. I rarely intend to make people legitimately mad, and I am a fairly good judge of people’s thresholds. Until recently, I hadn’t ever thought about potentially deeper reasons for my acting this way, but in a brief moment of self-actualization, I think there may, in fact, be deeper issues involved.

It sounds like it comes straight from a text book, and I’m not sure the degree to which it applies to me, but I push people away from me and try to be slightly abrasive as a way to make me less vulnerable. The principle is simple to understand: if I behave normally around a person, he or she may like me or not. On the other hand, if I’m abrasive toward a person, I’m guarding myself against his or her being able to form legitimate negative opinions by forcing his or her negative opinion through something that isn’t genuinely "me." There is no vulnerability on my behalf because I’m not putting "the real me" out there for them to judge—I’m predicating their opinion of me based upon an abrasive projection. In addition to this, I do the same things, to a lesser degree, with those who are close to me, but I do it to test loyalty and honesty rather than to be less vulnerable.

This system is fundamentally flawed on a number of levels. First, after some time, there is no difference between the projected "you" and the "real you." If I’m an asshole as a projection, that’s one thing. If I’m an asshole as a projection for my entire life, that is no longer a projection. Second, in the case of people close to me, this doesn’t serve as a meter of honesty and loyalty; it serves to dictate responses to people rather than to provide an objective measuring stick. Last, being a generally hateful and hate-able person is far more undesirable than people possibly being dishonest with me. The reasoning is something along the lines of, "If I give people no option but to hate me, I’ll always have honest interactions because people do not fake hatred."

What’s fucked up beyond all belief is that I know these things, but I still continue to do them. Maybe I feel inadequate in some way, or maybe I just feel like the "real" me isn’t likeable anyway. Whatever the reason is, I know the consequences (in principle), but I continue to behave in these ways.

Recently, I had a falling out with someone who was my longest running friend in life. While the things I did and said to her didn’t stem from my subconscious desire to push her away, I said and did some things that were insanely hurtful to her—the types of things that are, for most reasonable people, literally unforgivable no matter how much I regret them. I don’t mention this for any other reason than to mention how fucked up it was on my part. The point is not that these things are related to my problem with being a generally bad person, but this incident had forced me to evaluate the ways I deal with people in general.

I have to stress that what happened with my friend was not my trying to push her away to test her honesty or to be funny, but what happened is inextricably linked to these other issues in as much as they both deal with the ways I interact with the people I truly love.

What’s the so what part of the story? The point is that I need to start actualizing that which I already know; there is never any reason to be anything but uplifting to the people around me—particularly people that I know and love. Hurting others for the sake of hurting them or for the sake of making myself less vulnerable is not only flawed, it’s damaging to me, and more importantly, to the people I interact with. Some of the specific things I’ve done can not be remedied, no matter how sorry I am. Going forward, I need to focus much less on myself and much more on the impact my actions have on other people. I need to make a conscious effort to build people up rather than pushing them away by exploiting their vulnerability. In the end, I just need to get over myself by not always putting myself first.

LOLsuits and Tort Reform

Aside from all the sensationalized, half-true stories about companies paying out millions in court settlements, complaining about the legal system and our litigious society is about as exciting as watching grass grow and about as novel as eating pudding. With that in mind, I don’t want to complain about anything, and I don’t just want to advocate tort reform; rather, I want to offer up a solution.

Just so everyone is on the same page, I’ll start from the ground up. When an injured party sues an offending party, they are seeking both compensatory and punitive damages. Compensatory damages are the actual damages incurred by the injured party: medical bills, time missed from work, legal fees, etc. Punitive damages are awarded to punish the offending party and are almost always the cause of settlement amounts that even make god’s wallet tremble. There are a lot of people who harshly criticize this system for a number of reasons, with two of them being of particular validity. First, punitive damages incentivize the process of suing someone in as much as if punitive damages were never awarded, no one would ever be able to receive a big pay day (notwithstanding their actual damages they would be compensated for). Second, in many cases, one person will receive a punitive settlement for the suffering of many. Suppose a toymaker manufactured a dangerous toy, resulting in the injury of hundreds of kids. One person brings suit against the company, receives a multi-million dollar settlement, and ipso facto, that one person gets paid all the money for the dangers that hundreds of children were exposed to. While class action lawsuits work to curb this effect by grouping injured parties together, the gross majority of such cases are handled individually.

What a lot of tort reformers miss is that punitive damages do accomplish some very important things, not the least of which is that they provide negative reinforcement for a company or person who would otherwise behave recklessly. In many cases, the only reason a potentially offending party would take a proactive approach to dissuading harmful, dangerous or otherwise illegal situations is because of the potential for large punitive damages.

In keeping true with nearly all political issues, the resolution is mind numbingly simple. Compensatory damages should continue to be paid to all injured persons on a case by case basis, just as they are now. The difference would be that punitive damages would go into a public fund that is used to benefit members of the community at large. In some cases, the specific funds could be used to give back to the specific community that was affected. This resolves the three large issues with punitive damages in as much as, 1) it does not do away with punitive damages that would continue to serve as negative reinforcement for potentially offending parties; 2) the legal process would be far less incentivized for people looking to make money by suing another party; and 3) all people—including the general public—who were exposed to the potential dangers would receive some benefit, rather than just one person receiving it.

Here are two examples of what I’m talking about. Big tobacco companies would compensate individuals for their actual damages incurred, but rather than having to pay large punitive settlements to those individuals, a fund would be set up in accordance with the determined settlement amount. That fund could be used to sponsor campaigns that educate and dissuade children from smoking. The fund could also provide assistance to people who are trying to stop smoking by providing free stop-smoking-aids.

A furniture manufacturer knowingly made desks that were faultily designed, resulting in a number of injuries, with one particular boy cutting off three of his fingers. The boy would be compensated, including compensation for lifelong damages and impairment, but rather than awarding that individual with a large punitive settlement, the settlement is put into a fund that would provide computers, school supplies and a variety of other school-related items and services.

In both of these examples, the offending parties were still being justly punished, and the victims were still made whole. The substantive difference is that everyone put at risk (the general public) benefits from the settlement rather than one individual. The end result would be that individuals would lose their incentive to bring frivolous lawsuits because they would be unable to personally benefit. In no time, the number of lawsuits brought in this country would drop astoundingly, and notwithstanding the shockwave through the legal community, there is literally no negative side effect.

This, of course, is very practical in principle, but entirely impractical in policy. Law and politics are inextricably tied together, and very few people in the legal community would like to see this happen. This is just another great example of why politics will always continue to be a game for suckers and Chinamen.

My New Obsession

Google Sketchup is a free program that allows you to do 3D drafting. This was my first project, and it took me about 7 hours, give or take. My only hang up is that the animated clips of your projects don't really do them justice. They kind of look cartoonish in video form.

Here is the exterior fly by.



...and the interior walkthrough...