Technorati approval delay

Technorati has historically had a wide range of final approval times. I started the approval process on this blog on the third of December. At the end of 2013, it is apparently taking 10 days to get through final approval. That's not awesome but it is tolerable. Good job reviewers.

Living Wage

Traditionally, the living wage argument starts and ends with the employer, will he, or won't he, pay enough for a person to live a dignified life on that wage? This strikes me as a bit strange because the chain of events leading up to that point matters tremendously. If the market clearing rate is above the living wage rate, the employer will tend to do so almost all of the time. He hurts his own self interest if he does not.

So who sets the market clearing rate on a particular job? It's a combination of the both supply of demand just like every other free market transaction. So why is the only moral agent on the demand side? Why does there never seem to be discussion on what happens on the supply side.

Mike Rowe, the protagonist of Dirty Jobs has noticed that a lot of these jobs pay very well and are actually in shortage. Salaries are good and there are a lot of open positions that go unfilled. He's actually created a foundation to promote these dirty jobs and a culture that values them because right now the problem of the living wage is exacerbated by a social stigma to getting your hands dirty and learning a trade. This social stigma not only causes those unfilled positions but also has follow on effects. The welding company that is short 10 welders can't take on certain work that goes elsewhere, often outside the country and jobs that do not require those specialized skills exit right along with that work.

So the guidance counselors that steer kids away from the trades, the school boards that killed off vocational training, the chattering class that devalues blue collar work, all of that is part of the living wage discussion but nobody is raising these issues so far as I can tell.

It leaves me with one great puzzle. Why?

Advancing by a sense of obligation

Seth Godin puts out an interesting take on mentoring. In his view of it, most advances due to mentoring happen because the person being mentored appreciates the time and effort the mentor puts in and stops blocking himself from going ahead. The self-sabotage that we all do to ourselves is checked because you are not only letting yourself down, but your mentor as well. This has the ring of truth to it.

Testing 'Share This'

Marginal Revolution has a neat article on central planning for parking and I thought I'd just pop it out in google plus which is where I hang out most of the time. I clicked on 'share this' thinking I'd find google plus but no joy. Instead I find a link for Blogger so I'm testing if it will go to the right blog.

Update: It worked right the first time. Next time though I think I'll put it on save as draft so I can get the labels right from the beginning.

Update II: Google plus was in there after all, but I like pushing it out through blogger (which does google plus itself) better.

Update III: Interesting, it seems like direct publishing doesn't trip the push to Google plus.

California abomination

Normally California allows you to fall behind 5 years on your property taxes before they will foreclose. California also has a type of special district called a lighting and landscape district that, well, pays for local lighting and landscaping. Each district sets up a formula for how much you benefit and that's the fee you pay. If you get behind on your payments and they've issued bonds in the district, they are allowed and obligated to start foreclosure in as little as 3 months.

Don't pay for police? You've got 5 years to make it good. Don't pay for the public space lawn service and look out. The landscape police will have you out of your house in no time. I'm sure that California communities with these things have impeccable lawn care.

Could bitcoin immunize the dollar against inflation?

Bitcoin currency fluctuation is rapid, large, and pretty much continual. This doesn't disqualify the currency for use, but it does incent people to be on their guard for opportunities and threats on the inflation/deflation front. This is very unlikely to change and without some sort of dominant swing provider of liquidity and sink of value, (akin to what the Saudis do for the oil market) we're unlikely to see the currency ever stabilize.

Now is this a good thing or a bad thing? I think it is ultimately going to be a good thing.

Most people, seeing this, will not dump all their value into bitcoin. They will put in single digit or fractional parts of 1% of their net worth as speculative investment. The roller coaster of BTC valuation is too quick and violent for anything else and the combination of global availability without limit and permanent, severe limits on supply make this a persistent condition.

The difference in outlook between when you are dealing with 10 or 11 currencies is very small. The difference in dealing with 1 or 2 currencies is much larger. There's an interesting, and useful state change that occurs, especially if one of those currencies is always fluctuating. You become much less likely to be complacent about currency valuation changes. Tools for dealing with your fast fluctuating currency will naturally migrate and expand their watch over your more stable, main currency. This reduces the possibility for central bankers to induce useful (to them) inflation where the value of the currency is leached away in an invisible tax that does not provoke generalized behavior changes in the population.

The tools are not yet there but are foreseeably going to be part of our 21st century wallets.

Uruguay improved drug policy, stupidly done

Uruguay legalizes marijuana. This is a smart thing to do, especially as now there is a growing body of evidence that marijuana is miscategorized as to its medical uses in the international drug control regime. But Uruguay does it by breaking its treaty obligations instead of withdrawing from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs which it would have been permitted to do under Article 46.

Article 46
DENUNCIATION

1. After the expiry of two years from the date of the coming into force of this Convention (article 41, paragraph 1) any Party may, on its own behalf or on behalf of a territory for which it has international responsibility, and which has withdrawn its consent given in accordance with article 42, denounce this Convention by an instrument in writing deposited with the Secretary-General. 

2. The denunciation, if received by the Secretary-General on or before the first day of July in any year, shall take effect on the first day of January in the succeeding year, and, if received after the first day of July, shall take effect as if it had been received on or before the first day of July in the succeeding year. 

3. This Convention shall be terminated if, as a result of denunciations made in accordance with paragraph 1, the conditions for its coming into force as laid down in article 41, paragraph 1, cease to exist.

Any drug reform laws inconsistent with the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs really needs to go through the treaty withdrawal process. Uruguay's method of drug reform is going to land it in unnecessary trouble.