National Hockey League, National Football League, National... Senate League?

Let's take a break from the unoriginal blathering of Yours Truly and look more closely at what others have to say. Specifically, I'd like to direct you to a post from a mysterious young voice who goes simply by the name: Darrell.

This piece is a few weeks old, but it has some substantive ideas worth looking back in time for. Mr. Darrell talks of the different forms of rhetoric used by President Obama in pushing for his American Jobs Act and the deficit reduction proposal which would fund such a plan. The overarching idea emerges from this ending sentence though:

Congressional rhetoric is connected to the internal politics and tension that appears on the political battlefield called Washington, D.C.

That is a haymaker among sentences, but I'm not particularly opposed to the direction this punch is thrown in. American politics have almost become, by definition, a struggle between left and right, Democrat and Republican, Keynesian and Keynesian-opposed. To be sure, political disagreements are a sign of a healthy democracy. (The lack of such activity might suggest authoritarian rule, which most would agree is rather distasteful.) But what we have today resembles a professional sport with only two major teams and lots of corporate sponsors. In calling Washington a "battlefield," Mr. Darrell himself was appropriately using some clever rhetoric.

The American political system will probably always foster a competitive atmosphere like this, but, as Mr. Darrell aptly puts it, in a context like our current one, "compromises are hard to reach." If the vast majority of the American people view their role as a voter as choosing either Team 1 or Team 2, there really isn't much hope for finding a middle ground. The limits of a two-party system are frustrating: you essentially have two options, and in the case of the U.S., many become so glued to these two options that finding the third is akin to growing another arm.

Lightly walking through the White House's website, it's not hard to see that the President himself tires of congressional sloth. "WE CAN'T WAIT ON CONGRESS: THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW," declares the top of the home page. Mr. Obama's not so subtle criticism of blatant Congressional partisanship is far from unreasonable. Our friend Mr. Darrell cites a Harvard study revealing that a full 27% of Senatorial press releases between 2005 and 2007 were devoted to the noble public service of... taunting other Senators. The point, my friends, is this: When competition over political influence becomes just as important as upholding the responsibilities which that influence entails (namely, serving and governing our nation in a democratic manner), we have a problem, and that problem compromises our ability to solve other problems. Unfortunately, we have a lot of other problems right now.

On a lighter note: It would be amusing to see two teams of U.S. Senators dressed in Democrat and Republican jerseys duke it out on a basketball court or football field. "Durbin to Franken and it's STOLEN by McCain!"

Innovation Station

I would not like to be an engineer working for Apple. I have nothing against engineers, nor do I dislike Apple, but the company has set a precedent for itself which in my opinion will eventually become unsustainable. In essence, the iCompany has amassed a loyal following which demands innovation on a regular, literally scheduled, basis. With the release of the 5th generation iPhone, the company unveiled yet another one of its amazing feats of technological magic, but iPhone users have simply come to expect more. Concerns over the tardiness of the product compared to past releases were raised. Why didn't they do it during the summer? A few of my friends asked, "Why does it look the same?" Why can't it do this and why can't it do that? The crux of the disappointment stems around the question: why is it not the iPhone 5?

Why indeed? Apple has established itself as a major competitor in the smartphone industry by cultivating an air for its products: sleek, powerful, light on buttons and heavy on features. To maintain this reputation for its products while consistently releasing 'revolutionary' new gadgets... I'm not an expert but that sounds close to impossible. Yet they've done it for years now, under the leadership of the late Steve Jobs. The old adage that innovation stems from necessity holds true, except here the necessity is consumer demand. In this year's iPhone's case though, could it be that - say it ain't so, you must be joking - the company simply couldn't come up with a smooth version of the technology fast enough? If Apple doesn't live up to this image of itself that it's created, it risks losing a significant number of fans, an unacceptable outcome in the vicious modern markets, where myriads of companies can step up to replace customers' purchasing needs. How much pressure must Apple engineers be facing constantly, with the expectation of creating a vastly improved and simultaneously polished smartphone every single year?

Perhaps I'm being naïve. Competition is an aspect of virtually all industries in the global economy, and there are bound to be more companies than Apple which must rely heavily on constant innovation to remain competitive. But it still astounds me that consumer culture has grown into this - a persistent hunger for sleeker, faster, bigger, smaller, lighter, better. It's created a system similar to evolution, in which only the best products get bought so that the companies that provide those best products may survive to sell another day. The difference is that technological innovation is intentional while genetic mutations are random. But how far can innovation go? That's what worries me. Competition can only motivate; it's up to the actual players to figure out the innovating part.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Here's a great post, from the blog Sociological Images, which provides some data very relevant to my post the other day about the Occupy Wall Street movement. This particular blog was recommended to me by my English teacher and it often provides interesting ways to look at telling data.

Sibling Rivalry

Rough childhood. (Slightly disturbing footage).

A Spectre Is Haunting America

Let us go then you and I, to that famed metropolis of New York City, where hundreds have taken to the streets to protest corporate greed, economic disparity, and blatant special interest lobbying. There is little love in their song: "APATHY IS FOR ASSHOLES", "EAT THE RICH", "TAX WALL STREET LEECHES", and the even less subtle "FUCK GOOGLE" were only a few of the signs recorded by journalist John Cassidy in his post for the New Yorker about the Occupy Wall Street protests. How is competition reflected in this relatively peaceful (but not confrontation free) gathering?

Fundamentally, the protest illustrates an important component of conflict theory sociology: competition for limited resources among groups. From a straightforward viewpoint, the groups in play right now are simply separated by socioeconomic status. Participants hail from a variety of religious, political, and financial backgrounds, but you'd be hard pressed to find a Fortune 500 company CEO among them. Putting this situation into a simple model, we see the protesters constitute one group and their perceived rivals constitute the other - Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, and to a certain degree, rich people in general. The limited resource being contested is of course money, and along similar lines, job benefits and employment. "Why am I struggling to put my kids through college while Mr. MBA over there is struggling to put his Ferrari back in the garage?"

Is that all? People want more money because they've been pummeled in the race for wealth? I think not. Exacerbating the conflict is the narrative that many protesters have perceived. That is, the view that the rich caused this and the rich haven't been held accountable. Even worse, the rich use their money to influence the government so they can get richer. This is the simplest form of the story they see and admittedly, it is infuriating. The U.S. has a family income disparity rating of 45 on the widely used Gini index (the higher the number the more uneven the income distribution), coming in as the 39th highest in the world. For the #1 economy in the world, that's not something to be proud of. The effectiveness of corporate lobbying on the democratic political process is also rather shameful. A recent and decent example would be Rick Perry's support of HPV vaccination - initially, it seemed the governor had valiantly gone against his party on a matter he felt strongly about. But soon the familiar and ugly truth emerged as it was revealed that Perry had received extensive funding from drug giant Merck, manufacturer of the Gardasil vaccine. Do American politicians represent the people or the Mercks of the U.S.?

These are just a few of the realities which have prompted the Occupy Wall Street movement to Occupy Wall Street. Some of the other reasons are far too complex for a person of my limited knowledge to even approach, like the collapse of the housing bubble and the global recession as a whole . But the important thing to realize about the recent manifestations is this: the people aren't just protesting the outcome. They're protesting the system. To give a simple analogy, they are opposed not just to the rich winning the game of money-making by so much, but also to the rich breaking the rules to do so. Economic competition in the modern system is governed by rules which guide the competitors. Though businesses do their best to sidestep them constantly, the guidelines are still there. What Occupy Wall Street is saying, nay, yelling, is that their competitors are cheating - and thus winning unfairly.

Photo Credit: Paul Stein, September 26, 2011. Hosted link.