Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Right now the U.S. has some of the world’s highest income tax rates, a tax deduction for charitable contributions, and, perhaps not coincidentally, the world’s fattest charities (e.g., college presidents making over $1 million per year, some heroes at other types of charities as well).

Today is “Giving Tuesday”. If you give $100 to charity, your fellow taxpayers will chip in maybe $40 of that. If the Republican tax rate cut goes through, on the other hand, though the charitable deduction is preserved, tax rates have been cut to the point that perhaps your fellow taxpayers will be on the hook only for $25. If part of the fun of giving to charity is giving away other people’s money, will donations be cut to the point that managers at non-profits have to sell their houses in the Hamptons?

One could argue that by leaving U.S. citizens with more of what they’ve earned, they’ll buy more of everything, including the bragging and feel-good rights that come with charitable donations. In that case, donations to charity should go up. I’m not sure that I buy this. Aristotle pointed out that one of the problems with Plato’s proposed elimination of private property was that it prevented people from enjoying the feeling of being charitable. The modern equivalent of that is the welfare state. Since the government is supposedly doing everything for everyone, what hope is there for a private individual to “make a difference”? This attitude is on display in a comment to What can we do to help Houstonians?: “We can let our elected representatives know we support appropriate aid for those affected and are willing to pay the taxes necessary to make that happen.”

Readers: What do you think? Giving Tuesday 2018 will be bigger or smaller than this year?

[You might ask about my personal plans. After about 40 years of giving cash to 501c3s I have decided to stop in favor of more personal stuff (possible exception: charities where I actually know the managers and that they aren’t diverting donations into their own pockets, e.g., End of year charity idea: Kids on Computers). From my aviation page I offer to run helicopter tours for charities to auction. And then I find it satisfying to help out individuals, such as the children of this friend who recently died, or the neighborhood K-12 students whom I tutor, or the Harvard and MIT students whom I teach as a volunteer. It strikes me as bizarre that we’ve all come to accept a system where if Amanda Citizen helps Joe Needy directly, she has to provide all of the cash herself whereas if Amanda Citizen gives money to Big Charity that in turn promises to help Joe Needy, the rest of us taxpayers will kick in 40 percent (and then Big Charity will skim at least that 40 percent off the top to pay employees). Plainly the 501c3s are good at lobbying, but why don’t citizens complain about politicians being owned by charities in the same way that they complain about politicians being owned by other special interest groups?]

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Through the mid-1960s, Hollywood stars were famous for engaging in what was considered immoral behavior at the time, e.g., divorcing a spouse so as to have sex with someone richer or better-looking, having sex with a lot of different people without being married to any of them, abusing drugs or alcohol, etc. Nonetheless, people flocked to the movies and watched TV avidly, even those who strongly disapproved of this behavior.

Then we went through a period where the rest of America caught up to Hollywood in terms of discarding old ideas regarding morality. Ordinary Americans began living the divorced and drug-assisted lives that formerly had been the exclusive province of the immoral Hollywood elite. Certainly there was no moral issue then about going to the movies and watching people who shared one’s amoral outlook.

Now we’re back to perceiving at least certain people in Hollywood as engaging in immoral behavior, notably sexual harassment or “sexual misconduct.” Unlike in, say, the 1950s, however, we’ve decided that we cannot implicitly condone this behavior by watching movies or TV shows in which these comparatively immoral people appear. Studios and TV networks are killing movies and shows after allegations of misconduct become public.

I’m wondering if it is time for a virtue committee for Hollywood. Instead of individual studios or TV networks having to make decisions about who gets blacklisted and whose works must go into the memory hole, a society-wide decision can be made by trained committee members. Without the virtue committee it will be tough for a studio to rehabilitate someone without risking a boycott by a Facebook mob. The virtue committee can shield businesses from having to make and defend their (subjective) decisions. The virtue committee can serve as a central place for a disgraced accused harasser to figure out what penance will be required before rehabilitation. This will be a lot better for investors. Right now they lose everything that they put into a movie if, for example, the director is accused of doing something with an actor.

This can be like the MPAA rating system. Instead of rating completed films, however, the virtue committee will rate the off-camera behavior of people in Hollywood.

Readers: What about this idea? Most important: who has such exemplary virtue that he or she should be nominated to serve on this committee?

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Our media is full of reports of who was victimized by whom, e.g., through being touched in some way or because X had sex with Y without informing Z (see Jurvetson). These kinds of reports were previously easy to find by walking down to the local family court and looking at the files or sitting in on a hearing or trial. Claims of abuse are pretty much standard in any kind of divorce litigation despite the apparent irrelevance to the subject matter (who will have to pay how much to whom).

A friend sent me this story about Roy Moore representing a grandmother in a 1991 custody lawsuit against a mother. The mom who was on the losing end of the lawsuit has now come forward to allege that her butt was grabbed by Moore. Thus we the public are now asked to evaluate the kind of claim that formerly only family court judges had to hear.

I’m wondering if a society will come to resemble its family court, maybe with a 20- or 30-year lag. The European countries generally have low cash stakes in their family courts (e.g., having sex with a dermatologist will not yield the spending power of a dermatologist). Are Europeans less interested in hearing about X grabbing Y’s butt 25 years ago?

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Selling airplanes to the rabble hasn’t been profitable since the Collapse of 2008. Cessna has been following the money upmarket at a breakneck speed by deemphasizing its historic leadership position in light jets and developing larger business jets. (Note that “breakneck speed” where products require FAA certification means “over maybe a 12-year period”.)

The Cessna Longitude, currently flying around for demonstration purposes but not yet fully certified, showed up at our local airport the other day (photos). If you have $27 million, 8 friends, and a co-pilot (the aircraft requires two pilots), this is a beautiful machine indeed.

Despite being approximately $27 million short in the funds department and 6-7 people short in the friends department, the Cessna sales folks were extremely gracious and I was able to talk to some of the engineers and test pilots as well as the real prospective customers, some of whom had flown the aircraft.

My high-level impression is that it has become tough to innovate on performance or cost. The latest bizjets are not dramatically faster or cheaper to run than designs from 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. Thus a lot of the innovation and competition will be around passenger comfort. Cessna, which has a great track record in interior noise control, says that the plane should be roughly 6 dBA quieter than the Bombardier Challenger 350, its nearest competitor. A friend who operates Gulfstreams and high-end Embraer jets said that the in-flight Longitude was “amazing” inside, “like riding in a Rolls Royce going 50 mph. You can talk in a normal tone of voice. It is like wearing noise-canceling headsets the whole time.” The cabin altitude at FL450 (about 45,000′ above sea level) is 6,000′ rather than the conventional 8,000′. The Longitude has a conventional aluminum fuselage, as opposed to composite (plastic), so making it strong enough to handle the higher pressure differential adds weight and reduces the passenger capacity, but why would you want a bunch of commoners cluttering your jet anyway?

The baggage compartment is accessible while in flight. The seats fold almost completely flat for sleeping (though they don’t have footrests that extend so some kind of jet bed will be required for airline-style first class sleeping). Fit and finish is amazing, comparable to the Gulfstreams that I’ve been in (in the hangar, not as an invited passenger!). A Global Express pilot agreed that Cessna has caught up to the industry leaders in the fit and finish department. He said that the airplane had a great control feel.

The cockpit is a beautiful place, but I can’t figure out why there is so much of it. The Garmin G5000 includes seven sizable LCD displays, four of them functioning as controllers for the three biggest. My first reaction: “It looks like a programmer was told to replicate electronically every gauge or instrument that was in a B-29.” There is a massive pedestal in between the pilot seats and this is covered in switches and levers. This is an advanced jet, but why should we need all of this in a clean-sheet design? Suppose that one had a heads-up display with airspeed, altitude, and a big arrow pointing toward the direction where the plane is supposed to be headed. How much more is truly critical? Why does one want separate gear and flap handles? Why not have the airplane figure out that we’re on downwind or base and offer to configure the airplane appropriately? Maybe there should be some emergency control for flaps and/or gear, but if a $500 DJI drone can land itself why can’t a $27 million jet that can display georeferenced approach plates figure out when it is time to lower the gear on an ILS approach? The computers are displaying vertical speed. Why can’t they call “positive rate” and raise the gear after take-off? Similarly, why can’t the computer call “V2 plus 10” and retract the flaps after take-off?

Separately, the virtual reality flight from Teterboro to Paris was a great experience. As VR gets better I am wondering why any American will work. Why not chill out in the (means-tested public) house, tour the world’s most beautiful places by VR, play games with friends by VR, and get off the sofa only either to (1) use one’s EBT card to pick up some free-range carrots at the local Whole Foods, or (2) use Medicaid to see a physician regarding a sore “VR butt”?

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American newspaper front pages are substantially devoted to stories about sexual interactions among various people whom we might have heard of (or at least one of any given pair). If we assume that what’s in the news is what Americans are interested in then we must conclude that American adults are tremendously interested not only in who is interacting sexually with whom, but also in the precise details of those interactions.

Previously, stories about celebrity sex would be relegated to interior sections of the newspaper. Adult residents of the U.S. talking about other adult residents would give only brief summaries of the sex acts, e.g., “X slept with Y.”

Was there ever a group of Americans who had the time and interest to follow others’ sexual interactions in detail? A group whose life was so intellectually unchallenging and devoid of serious responsibility that they had time to contemplate these tales, evaluate them for truth, and discuss the details of who did what to whom and which exact body parts were involved?

High school students!

Ergo, American adults are the new high school kids.

Readers: Agree or disagree?

Related:

• Are women the new children?

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After a week that included a Tuesday experimental steam oven spatchcocked turkey experiment (mostly failed), a Thursday steam oven intact organic turkey dinner (slightly overcooked), and turkey leftovers for the rest of the meals, we took the kids to a safe turkey-free environment: dim sum. It then occurred to me that I have never seen turkey on a Chinese restaurant menu in the U.S. (or in China, for that matter, but mostly I cannot read menus in China!).

Big question for the night: Why not?

It is plainly possible to raise turkeys outside of the U.S. Turkey shwarma is popular in Israel, for example (taste-off). But even if the Chinese don’t want to cook turkey in China, why wouldn’t a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. add turkey to the menu? Is it possible that turkey is simply bad?

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A friend is in a Facebook group for au pair host mothers (“HM”). She told me that one of the things that they do is attempt to supervise the sex lives of the au pairs, who are nominally adults (18-26 years old). How do the host mothers have time to do this? “About 90 percent of them don’t work, but they have au pairs so that they don’t have to do anything at home either.”

Here are some excerpts from one thread:

So I’m *that* HM who is trying to help my AP1 start online dating. [emoticons] Another AP in our cluster told her about Tinder–she showed me she installed it on her phone. [more emoticons] … does Tinder give our exact location? Is it dangerous? Young/hip HMs, any advice about better options?

Neither young nor hip, but agree that my single friends/coworkers prefer Bumble. Way less sketchy.

[response about how good Bumble is for same-sex dating]

Does anyone know if Tinder actually gives out a location or just says “in the area”?

[from a current plaintiff/future cougar] Once my divorce finalizes in the next 3-6 months, I’m happy to be a guinea pig and turn over my written analysis. If I’m not killed. By Tinder that is… Joking. [smiley Emoticon]

So our one Au pair for sure would meet for random hookups but never talked about it and I never asked. … her friend who isn’t a good friend was gabbing to me about her “adventures”. … It’s really pretty common for people who like to hook up…which is a good deal of the population apparently.

We had 2.5 rematches due to boyfriend craziness. AP1 had the breakup meltdown. AP5 had the longdistance meltdown, and AP6’s lifegoal was to find a husband and get married within the first 11 months (and she did!).

One site that I DO have an issue with is seekingarrangement.com. I’d never heard of it before I found out that my AP was using it. [Facebook helpfully supplies a “Sugar Daddy Dating” headline and photo underneath.]

gross

So gross

Related:

• Au pair to green card (using the Violence Against Women Act)
• Angelika Graswald Life Insurance versus Child Support net present value calculation (Latvian au pair turned murderess)
• “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage” (depending on the state, an au pair may be able to make a lot more money than by going on seekingarrangement.com)

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Teach for America started out, I think, with the idea of improving the education received by Americans, especially those from poor families. But the organization now weighs in on the immigration issue: “Teach For America Urges Congress To Pass The DREAM Act”. The press release says “The Trump administration announced today that the DACA executive order is being rescinded. The reversal of DACA runs counter to our core values…”

I wonder if this means Teach for America has discovered that Americans are too hard to teach. Thus they’re now advocating organizationally for as many immigrant children as possible?

Related:

• Smartest Kids in the World Review
• Michelle Rhee (unionized teachers’ nemesis is a Teach for America alumna)

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(and no costume required)

I wonder if this story about a venture capitalist at the TED conference will boost demand for tickets:

Steve Jurvetson, who started his career in Silicon Valley as a wunderkind founder of one of its marquee venture capital firms, has become one of its highest-profile investors, … But on Monday, he crashed to earth way more swiftly than his career had rocketed skyward two decades ago.

His partners at DFJ spent a weekend pondering his fate, sources said — first placing him on a leave of absence last Saturday, then voting him out on Sunday, and then finally informing some of the firm’s top limited partners at a golf-filled gathering, along with some portfolio companies, on Monday.

“He’d sort of create a soap opera for himself,” said one of the women who dated Jurvetson, who requested anonymity to protect her career. “He lied to us.”

The pair carried out a consensual affair as Jurvetson’s marriage wound down, the woman said, and saw one another about once a month. They would sometimes attend professional conferences together, but she described their relationship as “one hundred percent personal.” She said she also saw other men at the time.

A second woman who dated Jurvetson told Recode she was searching for career opportunities in venture capital and startups. The woman, who declined to give her real name out of professional concerns, said she only later realized he was also dating the first woman, although she herself was also seeing other men in what she described as an off-again, on-again relationship with Jurvetson.

Several of the women met one another at the TED conference in Vancouver, where Jurvetson is a regular, in the March of 2015, one of the women said. That conference is said to be a flashpoint in the Jurvetson drama, as several women dating him discovered that they were not alone in their personal involvement with the investor.

If the environment at TED gets too hot, where can this guy meet some more career-oriented women?

Jurvetson, meanwhile, spent his week trying to move on. He attended Tesla’s glitzy truck unveiling by Musk on Thursday evening as a VIP.

Maybe this will revive interest in law school:

DFJ’s external investigators at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett discovered from at least two women…

(i.e., a fully trained lawyer can get paid to do the kind of “investigation” that was formerly standard for high-school sophomores)

Readers: What do you think? Does this suggest that TED is more debauched than Burning Man?

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“F.C.C. Plans Net Neutrality Repeal in a Victory for Telecoms” (nytimes):

The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

“We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the F.C.C. fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone,” Erin Egan, a vice president at Facebook, said in a statement. “We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle.”

In some ways this is a yawn because it takes us back to where the Internet was for decades. But, on the other hand the Internet didn’t always have the addictive services that it has now.

What if Verizon were to offer a plan to businesses that limited access to non-work sites, e.g., Facebook, to 15 minutes per day? That would be illegal under the regulations adopted recently, but legal if the current FCC revokes them.

A lot of companies, of course, run firewalls that block Netflix, Facebook, et al., on their wired and WiFi internal networks. But if the company provides a phone with unlimited LTE data maybe there is no current practical and legal way to stop employees from spending time on these services during the workday (because the handheld device gets Internet service without going through the company’s Facebook-blocking firewall).

[What do my Facebook friends say about this return to the 2014 rules? “This is huge. This is terrible. This is the beginning of the end. This is fascism. … This is the beginning of censorship the likes of which we have never seen.”]

On the third hand, how would it be possible for Internet providers to block particular sites as the New York Times suggests? If consumers are using a VPN service (example) then how would the ISP have any idea which sites were being visited? Even if consumers aren’t using a VPN service, wouldn’t censoring sites expose an ISP to the risk of losing lucrative municipal monopolies? Time Warner doesn’t want a city council deciding to allow Verizon FiOS to compete, right? Why give politicians a chance to take money from Verizon, give Verizon a license, and say that they’re doing it in the name of free speech?

Finally, why would we expect a change to net neutrality laws to result in significantly higher rates paid by consumers? If the Internet providers are monopolies (which they are in a lot of places, including Cambridge, Massachusetts (part of Komcast Kountry)) and they’ve read an Econ 101 textbook they are already extracting the maximum $$ from consumers via their Triple Play plans.

Related:

• How many times do we have to pay for the same Internet service? (net neutrality)
• Wikipedia on the history

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