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The_Boiling_Frog
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read my profile
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Name: Ryan "Bryce"
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Birthday: 4/13/1984
Gender: Male
Interests: Too many to list.
Expertise: Car Audio, Accounting, Automotive, Safety and Public Health
Occupation: Other
Industry: Other
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
7/8/2003
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| The Elephant and the Donkey
Once upon the time, an elephant and a donkey were out wandering near a river. They were good friends that hunted together and explored together. As they walked along the bank of the river, they could see on the other side of the river's edge - in the bushes there a grove of wonderful fruits to delight donkey's desires and elephant's excitement.
The river was too deep, of course for the animals to cross separately. So donkey said to the elephant, "let me ride on your back across the river. I can grab on to your big elephant ears as we ford the river, and I can stay dry."
To which elephant replied... "I don't think so, donkey. If anyone should see me helping you across the river like this, others will expect the same from me. I will carry you half the way, and the other half, you will carry me."
"That's ridiculous," said the donkey. "There's no way I could ever hold your weight on my frail legs, let alone breathe while under water. It would put me at great risk and great pain. Why would you want to do that to your friend?"
"I need to know I can trust you," said the elephant. "That you're not just using me for the fact that I am tall and can help you cross rivers. I am charitable only to those who deserve it, to those who show me charity in reciprocity. How do I know that you're not just taking advantage of me, and the opportunities I create for you?"
The donkey sat for a moment on a rock and thought for a moment. "I would be happy to reciprocate" said the donkey. "But my charity would never be able to equal yours. Your charity is grand, and all you have to do is lift a finger. Any small offering that I could muster in return would come at great pain to myself. Do you not see that your charity to me is a positive sum and my charity to you is a negative sum?"
"I get great value from helping others." The elephant snorted. "But my charity cannot be infinite. It should not be anticipated by everyone less fortunate than me."
The elephant walked over to donkey and patted him on the head. "There is very little I need from you, Donkey, and much you need from me. It follows then that I decide who deserves my charity, and I choose to base my decision on your willingness to sacrifice in kind for my benefit. This allows me to measure your loyalty. I do not wish to be charitable to disloyal people."
With that, the elephant climbed across the Donkey's back. Donkey held his breath and waded his frail legs into the water. About halfway through crossing the river, a cracking sound was heard and donkey screamed out in pain. Elephant climbed off, picked up donkey with his trunk and held him above the water the rest of the way across the river.
Later, the elephant helped donkey set his broken leg. They gorged themselves on the berries and fruits and wonderful delights the grove had to offer.
-TBF- | | |
| A lot of my friends are full-time students living on campus, with no jobs. They dedicate 100 percent of their resources toward two goals: earning their degree in business and building their resumes.
A degree and a good resume do open a lot of doors. But they only have validity within a certain context: the context of reaching out to the anonymous, like bait on a fishing line. You're fishing for someone richer and more powerful than you to discover an unfilled position in a big company, and sift through a pile of resumes. If you're lucky, he'll find yours, and decide to interview you
On the other hand, I still maintain a job in the working world. I've had about a dozen different jobs in my life, some of them paid pretty well. And not one of them required a resume or a degree. It was all through connections, knowing people who need things done, and knowing how to execute what they need executed.
I figured out long ago I don't want to work for someone else. I refuse to be a labor input on someone else's production possibility curve. Managers are always looking to squeeze as much as they can from their resources. That's not a good place to be.
A better place to be is somewhere where your resume isn't what got you in the door. Where you're not starting from scratch with people you've never met.
Why then, am I still in school? Why am I jumping through all these sheepskin-chasing hoops and building my resume? Well, I've had a lot of jobs where if I knew then what I know now, I would have handled the situation quite differently. Now that Economics has taught me to understand incentives, and statistics is teaching me how to estimate the world, I can allocate my time better, and optimize my skill set. I am in school to better myself, to learn more. I'm not here to chase a sheepskin and build my resume. I'm not in the market to get exploited. I don't need to go fishing for "connections." I just need to learn to understand the way the world works with greater clarity, and how to asses and solve problems. I want to learn to administrate an enterprise around an idea.
I am not here to be indoctrinated, dolled up, reduced to two pages of experience and crammed into a cubicle somewhere in the private sector.
I'll work for myself, I'll even work for other people if they pay me well enough. I've decided whaty I want my Business Card to say:
Ryan Brandys
Mercenary Executive
Pay me and I'll get it done.
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Ethical, Environmental, and Economic Analysis
of Electric Car Technology.
Purely Battery-Electric Cars have been around since the 1800's. We mostly see them today as short-range vehicles such as Golf-Carts, segways, and scooters. We also see Toyota and Ford offering "hybrid cars" with electric motors to supplement their gasoline engines. But the potential exists to mass-market electric cars to the commuting consumer market. Granted, electric cars are not for everyone. They will only serve the needs of 90% of the population. But the technology has evolved to a point where it is more than feasible to sell electric cars, and great effort is being made to hold back the introduction of the technology for political and economic reasons. This is a deeply unethical business practice.
When you compare an electric sports car such as the EV1 to a similar sports car running off a combustion engine, a few things stand out. First, the electric car has no exhaust, so it does not pollute the air as it drives around. The car is charged electrically at night when you plug it in to any 110 AC power source. Essentially, your car gets its power from your local power utility. Here in Illinois, about 65% of our electricity is generated by nuclear power. If you were to drive an electric car in Illinois, you could say its power is 65% nuclear.
Electric cars are cheaper to operate than comparable combustion engine vehicles. Typical consumer questions include: How far can it go on one charge, and what does it cost to "fill up?" To put it in perspective, try imagining a car with only a 7 gallon gas tank, but the gasoline only costs 60 cents per gallon. That's what it's like to drive an electric car. As long as you charge it every night and don't need to drive over 100 miles in one stint, you could do all your commuting in a zero-emission vehicle. That range might seem like a limitation, but realize that it could double with just a few years of R&D.
If you consider that every gallon of gasoline burned in a combustion engine adds 19 pounds of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere, suddenly it becomes deeply unethical for our society to burn fossil fuels when they are not the most environmentally efficient, or even economically efficient energy storage system available. The true scope of the choice between gasoline and electric becomes clear after you spend just a few minutes in Los Angeles: the American city with the worst air pollution. Roughly 40% of L.A. smog is caused by passenger cars. Roughly 80% of those cars don't need to run on gasoline to serve their passengers’ needs.
An electric car does not need a radiator, or a water pump, or oil, or an oil filter, or an oil change every 3000 miles. A technician can work on the electric motor without even getting his hands dirty, because nothing is being burned under the hood. While a typical combustion engine has about 100 parts, any of which could fail and many of which need constant maintenance, the electric car has less than twenty parts in its engine compartment that need any maintenance at all. The majority of the parts in an electric car will last for the life of the vehicle. The electric car does not need gasoline. It just needs a power outlet.
So why aren't there more electric cars on the road? Why has GM and Toyota and Ford and other car manufacturers pulled the plug on their attempts to sell electric cars to the general public? Well, the best answer I can give has a political component and an economic component. To illustrate, imagine a day when 50% of the commuting cars on the road are battery-electric vehicles. Think of all the people who make parts for gasoline engines, maintain gasoline engines, sell engine coolant and lubricant and fuel additives and radiators, water pumps, coolant hoses, antifreeze, and the other 80 components that electric cars don't need. Now imagine 50% of those people suddenly becoming structurally unemployed. Imagine your job is to sell oil filters and one day your market is slashed in half. Even if it the most viable alternative from an environmental justice point of view, a lot of people still have a lot to lose if electric cars become commonplace on the road. People are just too selfish: they can’t think long term.
The typical line that economics classes feed you is that whatever firm can provide the best product at the lowest cost ends up getting the lion's share of the profits in a market economy. That's the essence of competition, the essence of trade that spurs advancements that expand our GDP, expand our Production Possibilities Frontier and move society forward. However, in reality, this trend is the exception rather than the rule.
In the auto industry, we have an oligopoly. Not only is there is heavy horizontal price collusion between “competing” car companies, but there are very heavy ties between automakers and fuel companies. One system powers the other, so there's an understanding and a set of common interests, say, Between GM and Exxon-Mobil.
Just because a technology exists that is cleaner, more efficient, and cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to operate does not naturally move it to the forefront of consumer demand. It sounds unnatural for society to resist efficiency and social progress, and for that trend to occur, you need political pressure to hold back the naturally equilibrating market forces. You need to plant the seeds of fear and doubt into the minds of the American consumer. You need to promise them impossible futures with "hydrogen fuel cells" and fill their minds with disinformation. You need to label Global Warming as a myth and keep America addicted to oil.
Why would a company like General Motors do such a thing? Why would one of our oldest and most respected American companies resist change? Well, GM took sides on this issue in 1927, when it bought up one of the first electric car manufacturers and then shut them down. GM knows that they have a lot to lose (in terms of expensive upkeep revenues) if they produce a product that doesn’t need regular maintenance. Similarly, currently employed auto mechanics fear for the loss of their jobs. It is a fact that electric cars need less maintenance, and the maintenance they need is different than what the typical auto mechanic knows how to do.
Similarly, the oil industry has a lot to lose if the electric car becomes commonplace. Since 65% of Exxon-Mobil's revenue comes from consumer vehicles, they have good reason to suppress alternative energies. As long is there is oil in the ground, the people owning those oil fields want to make sure that society doesn't jump on the electric bandwagon and leave gasoline-based commuting "in the dust."
Critics say the electric car is not a feasible idea, that limitations in battery technology limit the range of the cars, that there is no demand for such a product. If that is the case, why has General Motors swallowed up and shut down every electric car maker it can get its hands on since 1927? Every time there is a new advancement in battery technology - something strange happens. When higher-yield Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries were developed, big oil bought the company and their patent, and closed down the facility. GM bought the patent to large-scale high-yield lithium ion batteries before they could be considered for the automotive market. They own the technology, and all they have to do is sit on it.
This month, Firefly Energy, a company out of Peoria, Illinois, developed a modification to a lead-acid battery to remove the inefficient lead plates and install a graphite sponge, with 200% more surface area and up to 10 times the power of a typical car battery. Right now, the military uses these batteries for silent-running electric tanks and weapons, but will not make them commercially available.
How can the power of capitalism hold progress back? How can greed and unethical corporate behavior be tolerated when our entire ecosystem is at stake and fossil fuels threaten to destroy our very way of life?
-TBF-
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| A corporation can have no moral worth
This argument begins with economist Milton Freidman's stockholder theory. Friedman's theory says the sole duty of a business is to increase its profits. That is its only moral obligation: to make financial returns for those who invest their money in the company. All actions taken by the corporation, even if they seem philanthropic, are always taken with the bottom line in mind. For instance, why would a cigarette company spend millions of dollars on teen anti-smoking ads?
Is it because they want to do good for the community? Not directly. If there is a payoff - like a more favorable public opinion - that has a theoretical dollar value that factors into the balance sheet, and often outweighs the cost of the advertising. Sometimes, it is in the best interests of the stockholders to also do good for the community.
The core of the issue is that corporations serve to protect their profit margins first, because profit is their “chief good.” Aristotle says that “happiness” is the chief good for the rest of humanity. Does that sound like a conflict of interest?
While corporations have been known to build parks and fund social programs, they can’t possibly be doing those things for the right reasons, for the intrinsic value of the good deeds themselves.
According to Kant, good deeds can be segregated into two distinct tiers. The first tier is the set of good deeds that were performed as means to an end. Kant calls this kind of good deed a "qualified good." The second tier is the set of good deeds that were performed for their own sake. Those deeds are ends unto themselves. This mindset, where people do good things intrinsically, is what Kant calls "good will."
So, is a corporation even capable of an act of "good will" ? Unless you count stockholder dividends as righteous deeds, the answer is no. For example, imagine you’re a stockholder who just made a lot of money investing in a company. You feel like a big shot for once. Kant says that being happy in this fashion will make you a total jerk, unless you are tempered by an internally mature good will. With the exception of certain stockholder meetings, the unfortunate truth is that the system is set up so that as a stockholder, you don’t talk to management all that often, and that means that you cannot imbue any of your good will on the will of the company. It’s a financially mediated relationship, so your money does all the talking. Further, you, as a stockholder, probably do not value money intrinsically. You value what that money will buy you: a new Lamborghini, a diamond necklace, or a pet mongoose. That’s why you’re investing your money: as means to an end. That is, at best, a “qualified good.” Suddenly, it becomes impossible for the company to be a moral agent, because the only loyalties it holds are to investors whose choices to invest are motivated extrinsically, and therefore devoid of good will.
-TBF-
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The Ultimate Medium
About a year ago, as editor of PLR, I wrote a short piece on what makes good art. I said, "Art is good if it uses the medium properly. Every art has a medium; every medium is made up of a set of logical tools. These are the tools that help bring the art into existence. Let's take a canvas painting, for example. The tools are a brush, jars of paint, a subject, proper lighting, an easel, and hours of free time. The rest is up to the human brain - to put the paint on the canvas and create the art. When evaluating art, the ‘human brain element’ is what's really on trial. But that brain must first master a medium before it can be appreciated.
The paint is either on the brush or it's not. It either makes it to the canvas or it doesn't. An artist might want to wave the brush in the air for hours, or thoroughly clean everything up when he is done, but those parts of the process won't show up in the final piece. The only way to make the dried acrylic relevant is to put it on the canvas."
So is a medium confining or liberating? The American existentialist philosopher Rollo May thinks you need to acknowledge the structure of medium and use it to your advantage: "If you set out to write a sonnet, you run up against all kinds of recalcitrant realities in the laws of rhyme and scanning, and in the necessity of fitting words together; or if you build a house, you confront all kinds of determining elements in bricks and mortar and lumber. It is essential that you know your material and accept its limits ... The pattern and the style in which you build your house are products of how you, with an element of freedom, use the reality of the given materials."
Could it be said that all human action is art? Every human choice is an action, executed by a brain, using its freedom to impact a medium. Is not life itself a medium? Our society, and all life in it, is still governed by the logical tools of reality and we are granted the freedom to mold our own realities.
While we use our mediums to express creativity, we must consider also how our mediums define us. They define what we work with, while our freedom and creativity determine the end result. Without medium, there could be no evaluation of these end results.
I begin to wonder what my end result will be. I am fluent in many literary mediums, software mediums, automotive mediums, mechanical and electrical engineering mediums, and soon, the economic and entrepreneurial mediums. I am majoring in Entrepreneurial Studies at UIC, and just now discovering what that really means. It means my medium is the economic context, my tools are land, labor, and capital, and somehow I must weave these together, according to the rules of business ethics, supply and demand, and opportunity cost analysis to paint a profitable picture, to design a functioning company, to spin my own sturdy thread in the fabric of our economy. I’ll be playing with the biggest tools society has. As I shift my focus from Legos to Liabilities, I acknowledge that I have found the ultimate medium - capable of influencing more than just the emotions of the audience, but their very quality of life. I will make it an honorable masterpiece.
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