Sip from the what?

This is in response to the “Illegal immigration like stealing” article in the college student newspaper from Friday. In it, the authors create the analogy of the United States being a library. I can go along with that but want to give you some details on just what kind of library that would be. So here are the ten rules of the library United States and its membership policy:

1. If you are born in the library, you automatically get a permanent and irrevocable membership card. Even if you take all the books, burn down the library, or do anything else against our rules, you won’t lose your membership. On the other hand, depending on badly you break the rules, you will be restricted to a special area or terminated.
2. If you are not educated, we don’t want you, unless you come here to learn, bring your own money to pay for everything you need and do leave after you are done learning.
3. If you are educated, we welcome you. Unfortunately, we only give out 65,000 membership cards a year. If you are very educated, there’s another 20,000 cards. Please take a number and sit over there, outside of course.
4. If you are related to one of the children born inside the library, you may apply for a permanent membership card as well. We’re awfully sorry, but there’s also a very long line so please do take a number and sit over there, outside of course.
5. If you want to marry one of our inhabitants, you may apply for a permanent membership card. Please do understand that you will have to have a different gender from the person you are marrying, that we will watch you to make sure you are a happy couple and, if you do happen to ge divorced within the first few years, you will have to leave.
6. From time to time, we will allow individuals who are not eligible for a membership card to stay inside the country without a card. There is no system to this and it just an expression of our mercy and benevolence. Please do understand that even in this case you will not be able to take a job or return should you choose to leave.
7. If you do not qualify so far, you may also come into the country permanently because you are a famous actor or actress and/or filthy rich. In that case, we will let you in and use the library’s resources at no additional cost because you’re very special to us.
8. If you are retired and filty rich, we have an entire state for you. Please follow the red carpet.
9. If you do not qualify and do succeed in entering the library against our wishes, we may or may not ask you to leave. Whether we do will depend on many factors too difficult to list here. Either way, you will live in fear and outside of the general society. If you have children, they will receive a permanent membership card. However, please do understand that you will not be able to receive one in that case until your child has reached 18 years of age.
10. In even-numbered years, you may find that there are proposals to adjust our membership rules. We are terribly sorry but please understand that these incidents are related to a very important national event in November. They have no bearing on you and will certainly not result in any significant changes to our policies.

I’ve been struggling for years trying to find out what I want to do with my life. I’ve always known that I wanted to do something significant, something that would leave a mark in the lives of others. When I started college, I was a computer science major because I mistakenly thought this would be my career. I was decently good at programming so why not, right? Only I never really got along with other computer folks and the instructors especially. Too many times they appeared to take their own field too serious, as if computer science had any value for its own sake. I quickly came to the conclusion that computer science wouldn’t be my thing and that I would have to find something else.

So I moved on to economics and political science. For some reason, economics had fascinated when I first learnt about it in High School. Call it the nerdy side in me but I found the idea of voluntary mutually beneficial interactions intriguing: that two people can exchange something and both be better off afterwards. At first I didn’t really think that was possible. Surely, if I hand my money to to the guy at the movie theatre, he would be off just as well as I am with my new ticket. What economics tries to explain here is that I’m totally forgetting the internal benefit of the transaction on both parties. The ticket is obviously worth more to me than the money I gave up for it because in addition to receiving a piece of paper, I also get the opportunity to watch the next awful Aeon Flux clone. And the movie theatre guy would rather have a lot of cash than a lot of movie tickets because you can’t pay rent for the place with those.

So I’ve just told you I’m a giant nerd. What does any of that have to do with helping people? Well, the cool thing is that all of this is happening totally voluntary. Nobody’s holding a gun to my head telling me to buy a ticket and nobody’s threatening to bust the movie theatre’s guy’s kneecaps if he didn’t sell the ticket to me. The only reason we’re both doing this is because we both thing we’ll benefit. That’s pretty powerful stuff because it basically means that, if we want to affect people’s behavior, we just have to make the desired behavior beneficial to them.

Poverty and disease exists because there’s someone who stands to benefit from it existing. Or who doesn’t benefit from it not existing, which is really the same thing. If we know what that benefit is, or if we can create some sort of benefit out of getting rid of poverty and disease, we’ve solved the problem. And that’s why I want to become an economist and go to grad school.

Does anybody have any idea how to put this in words a selection committee would wants to read and be ecstatic about?

This has been bugging me for a few days so, in order to share the pain, you can read about it here. The quest to learn about humanity’s suffering has been an adventure spanning many centuries. So, one would think that maybe eventually we would be able to understand human nature, both in the good and the bad. Well, turns out ‐ we do! What’s the worst thing humans have to endure?

Is it poverty where billions live with less than $1 a day in a living situation that can only be described as desparate? Is it torture and terrorism as a result of the countless armed conflicts, wars, rebellions, and other “military incidents” going on? Or maybe it’s inequality where the family or country you are born into or the kind of people you grow up with determine the maximum level of achievement you will ever be able to reach?

NO. It’s…..paying too much for cable television. dishtv has spent billions of research dollars and thousands of hours coming to the conclusion that there is nothing worse than paying too much for cable television. I wouldn’t usually suggest to anyone to pay attention to commercials but this time take a chance. You’ll see what I’m talking about. They have been on a lot lately. Voro, ergo sum?