Understanding Freebies, Ice, and Evil

The New Business Model is $0.00. Economics as we know it is in for a drastic revising: how do you do business in an environment of “free” as in free music, free movies, free newspaper, free information…?

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

The rise of “freeconomics” is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore’s law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

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Brace yourself not for global warming but for an Ice Age!? Was it too early making warnings for hotter weather or are we underestimating the dynamics involved in global weather?

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

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Closer to home, this might help our understanding: how good people become evil and a food for thought about heroism:

Heroes have to always, at the heroic decisive moment, break from the crowd and do something different. But a heroic act involves a risk. If you’re a whistle-blower you’re going to get fired, you’re not going to get promoted, you’re going to get ostracized. And you have to say it doesn’t matter.

Most heroes are more effective when they’re social heroes rather than isolated heroes. A single person or even two can get dismissed by the system. But once you have three people, then it’s the start of an opposition.

So what I’m trying to promote is not only the importance of each individual thinking “I’m a hero” and waiting for the right situation to come along in which I will act on behalf of some people or some principle, but also, “I’m going to learn the skills to influence other people to join me in that heroic action.”

EDSA

With respect to EDSA People Power, I am ambivalent. Yesterday’s celebration wore the same ambivalence in appearance: a celebration that has to tread with care in identifying exactly what to laud, what to ritualize, what to uphold— from among a treasure trove. Twenty two years since, we now know there is something about it that is both laudable and dreadful: EDSA People Power is a moral tool that could win you freedom from bad government– or a contrivance to undermine institutions, well, depending on which side of the political divide you stand. Thus, this is a celebration where you could not endorse the entirety of the historic event but only the “spirit” as alone it would conform to the agenda on hand and the idea you find agreeable for your purpose. Noteworthy is the awkwardness of government representatives picking out such a slim theme in “unity” and omitting the much-larger revolt aspect of EDSA, lest it be “misunderstood” as abetting another one. The President’s absence could be out of fear that her presence would so highlight one supreme irony and set off the same sentiment that sparked the original cause. On the other hand, in the case of the opposition, while it has wider room to wiggle in and out, it too must walk with caution for the very fluid dynamics of power could readily lead to a sudden reversal of roles.

The world-renowned EDSA 1 had set the precedent. Thus, for all intents and purposes, EDSA 2 is EDSA 1’s daughter by virtue of inspiration. And, should there be an EDSA 3, it would be the grand offspring. Question is: when is people power People Power and not a Mob? My oversimplifying mind tells me if you hated Marcos in 1986, it was People Power; if you liked him, an ugly Mob. Same with Estrada in 2001.

EDSA is a consequence of utter failure of institutions to muster trust of society at large. Presently, the trusting cognizance being encouraged on our institutions is either naïveté or a calculated invitation to a trap. In such a scandal as the NBN-ZTE deal, appeals like “Go prove your case in the Ombudsman” sound pretty much like “You have any problem? Go tell my mama!” mouthed by a school bully after a kick on your groin. Such is the attribute of backward societies. In them institutions are mere ornaments; poor attempts at mimicking modernism without the proper social infrastructure and orientation, they all fall flat; where there are undue demands imposable on the instruments of the state, they are held captive to the machinations of the powerful and influential so that their interest is served and not that of justice.  Let’s settle this one in the proper forum, say the landlord to his aggrieved tenant, all the while making mathematical computations, jogging his memory of friends in high places who could make arrangements with the arbiter.  The tenant, respectful of institutions, prepares his case dutifully, hopeful the forum will give him his proper due…

As it is the nature of justice to seek its satisfaction in its all-encompassing glory, when the ends of justice are ill served, it must find settlement elsewhere and force its way out like steam that must come out from an airtight kettle, or it would explode—

–Hence a phenomenon like EDSA.

Or revolutions.

“Letsmoveon” Is A Virus

Ricky Carandang laments: Why is it so hard to do the right thing in this country? and in exasperation likens the Philippines to Bizarro World.

When I was a kid, I used to read a lot of comic books. I remember in one of those comics, Superman travelled to Bizarro World, where everything was the opposite of what it was supposed to be. Wrongdoing was cheered, while ethical behavior was punished. Is Gloria Arroyo’s Philippines the real life Bizarro World?

He cites the case of Romulo Neri who first broke the story of a multi-million dollar corruption in the NBN-ZTE contract and who has since shut his mouth for reasons now quite known and subsequently Jun Lozada who is now being harassed left and right, from up and below, apparently by the government,  after disclosing much more anomalies in the same contract. He also points to Governor Panlilio of Pampanga who has since multiplied his province’s earning by tenfolds from quarrying since replacing the Lapid’s, suggesting plunder of earnings in the past, and now being threatened with recall. There’s also the businessmen from MBC who, after uttering much of their sentiments about the wrong things in government, they are presently threatened with tax audit– which should not be a “threat” in itself if not for the timing and the tone.

If I may add, we could count in many more: General Gudani, General Danny Lim, General Miranda, Senator Trillanes, the rest of the so-called Magdalos, other reformists on the run, etc. And for what reasons are they now in prison and the rest in hiding?

To be sure, we have varying standards of good and bad, mediocre and outstanding, genuine and fake, assholes and brains, bootlickers and performers; but let’s try putting some personalities side by side and do some comparative science. Try sit side by side General Danny Lim and General Hermogenes Esperon, for example, and ask yourself who’s the better man. Try Secretary Ignacio Bunye and Senator Trillanes, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales and Colonel Querubin, Secretary Sergio Apostol and General Renato Miranda, The Big Fat Man and Jun Lozada… Who among these fellows easily belong to the Dark Side?  Who’re the bad guys and the good guys?   Then, you take a look at who’s holding the levers of power and running the government– and who’s on the run. When the good guys are on the run or behind iron bars, and the likes of Justice Raul Gonzales run the government, need anyone wonder why it’s so hard to do the right things in this country?

My comment of Ricky’s blog, ( now edited):

Ricky,

These are signs we are a seriously sick society. If you should find analogy in a sick man, it’s the cells causing the disease trouncing the good cells and our immune/defense system itself aiding the bad cells.

When the moral guardians looked away because they believed GMAs cheating was justified and all subsequent wrong-but-justified acts were allowed, to reinforce her legitimacy, they have inadvertently done something truly ruinous: make an open endorsement of a set of values that could be violated at will, such as, in this case, honesty. Who among our moral guardians could say when these acts are wrong and justified or plainly wrong? Now, if the highest official of the land could do that, heck, why couldn’t the rest do the same and find succor in the original rationalization, or find justification on their own. “Let’s Move On!” is a disease, Ricky.

(Emphasis on the last sentence is mine, for this entry).

In the very restive days following the explosive “Hello Garci” scandal, various sectors equally stubborn and powerful,  and seemingly well-meaning, have taken the line: Let’s move on! The assertion was straightforward: we should let this source of friction pass because all these unrest and agitation being generated were unduly destabilizing society, jeoparadizing our prospect for economic development, which is more paramount in the scheme of things.  Left unspoken, of course, was this: Anyway, her closest rival FPJ, an actor, an undergrad, would not have been a good President, while this one has a PhD in economics; another thing– he’s dead, for God’s sake!

Too bad, the”Hello Garci” tape had most of the elements of a “hand caught in the cookie jar”crime– hence “caught in the act”. What could one do indeed?– in it, she sounded so much like her talking to Garci asking assurance for a margin of a million , or so. Accused of such a monumental misdeed, if you knew enough of human nature, you should at least expect a vehement denial, but only a long period of disturbing silence followed. Then one fine day, she said sorry; for what reason she said sorry, she would not say but need you have a degree in law or rocket science to interpret the mysteries of the world on occasions like this? Then came along a series of official edicts which attempts at everything but clear the air of suspicion. Anyway, my favorite act is still Secretary Ignacio Bunye’s “I have two discs” caper–for so brazen, so breathtakingly shameless an insult it wants foisted on human intelligence.

Something should be said of a transgression “caught in the act”. In another blog entry, I have argued that being humans we allow a wide margin for acts of lying and cheating in the manner we conduct our everyday affairs.  After all, we all cheat on our parents, our siblings, our lovers, friends, and acquaintances, in various times in varying degrees for reasons both benign and malicious.  It is part of this game we call life.  In politics, we allow even wider a playground.  But here, we draw the line where an act of misdemeanor is all too manifest, for the senses even in their most pliant mode could only take so much beating and reshaping. You get “caught in the act”, there could be no more denying; all denials would be rendered ridiculous and foolish unless, to make things fit where they don’t or events occur where they couldn’t, the universe undergoes a fundamental rearrangement and the rules of logic, a major revision.  Now, a transgression “caught in the act” is a transgression confirmed, firmly established, if not in accord with legal rules, at least in conformity with the public’s notion of unquestionable guilt . You let  one such manifest infraction pass, you have one big problem. For a wrong unpunished is a wrong acquiring approval, with thumbs up high, therefore, from hereon, allowed, authorized–  a transgression no more. Now finally, this– you give approval to one, you give approval to all. Then before you know it,  what used to be evil becomes the norm and good behavior as we knew is then an anomaly, unacceptable and punishable.  That is when you see moral offenders lording over society and the good guys taking all the whipping as when you have a nincompoop like Sergio Apostol blabbering over on TV calling all and sundry destabilizers who would not buy the government line of thinking while one proud recipient of a Medal of Valor is in solitary confinement for no reason.

There’s a new virus, it’s name is Letsmoveon.  It’s of a new strain.  In other times, it was called another.

Where’s Your Proof?

What do I think of Jun Lozada? I think here was one man sucked into a vortex of events too powerful to escape from. It seems “heroism” is one you cannot choose; the event chooses you, as in suck you into it, if you fit the moral purpose of that event. Lozada himself seems reluctant to be one for he has own sins haunting him as well, no moral ascendancy to speak of. It was more about survival. He weighed his chances in. Having had a preview of things yet to come, right when his name began cropping up up to his bungled “rescue” at the airport, he saw his fortunes are in better hands with the Senate. Heck, life is in danger any which way you go, might as well be a hero.

A confluence of events beyond the control and mice and men? More like the impending collapse of a structure not properly built, beautifully painted walls made of plywood nailed on rotting woods, without firm foundation, just a semblance of a magnificent house from afar. Or a deck of cards collapsing on a wind blowing. Such is the nature of fraud and every fraudulent system.

I have re-learned along the way, as I followed the unfolding events, that the noble counsel obligating proof before pronouncing guilt of one is as much an advisory how to commit a crime– leave no proof behind! Watch and listen how lately these phrases have again been resurfacing: where’s the proof? is there any that could stand in a court of law? could it prove a crime beyond reasonable doubt? what sort of man is the witness? Noble thoughts. Valid concerns. For indeed, there could be no worse injustice as accusing and convicting an innocent man of a crime. Slow down. Look at the pieces of evidence with an impartial mind and eyes if they point to the guilt of the accused without question before you send him to prison. But sometimes you wonder whether the motivations are well placed or not. What’s on the mind? It is one thing to have genuine concern for an innocent man being convicted of a crime he didn’t do; it is another to cheer a criminal mind’s ingenuity and jeer at the victim’s lack of foresight. I do not know where the blame should go, if it should be the law or our own human nature. Have we given up for good our natural instincts to discern our environment and supplanted them with knowledge that neither explain nor propose? If my own personal light be any guide, when something is wrong somewhere, or something’s right, an inner ‘voice’ tells you so. You feel it so because it strikes an agreeable chord, else, a discomfiting one. Don’t we anymore see hints when a man is guilty or not, hostile or friendly? As humans we are yet all biological creatures fitted with natural sensing power as a means of survival in this world. We ignore them at our peril. If you so come face to face with an innocent man, there are telltale signs you could not disregard. So with the guilty ones. Certain things in the universe are by their nature so manifest, so obvious, so distinct, and so glaring so that insistence of imperceptibility or doubt or vagueness could only be explained by insanity, blindness– or malice. I wave here a red hankie, ask you it’s color, you insist you see blue– you must be color blind. I show you a blue book, ask you what it it, you insist it’s a black crow I am holding– you must have some kind of disorder somewhere. If you should come to me looking for a job, I’d refer you instead to a doctor. Should I come to know you hold sway over a powerful office, I should seek cover very quickly: here’s a mad man with a fully loaded Uzi on his hands!

But where did we ever get the idea that social disputes could only be resolved in a court of law? When the courts fail to satisfy the natural yearning for justice and fairness, disputes find their settlement elsewhere. I find it presumptuous of the law profession to insist that only judges of the court of law could render justice to a question of conflict. The courts are institutions whose functions were once in the hand of one man in more primitive times. Then as now, when the administration of justice fails, quarrels explode, disorder ensues. You wonder why one side would insist on other venues, look where the failure lies if not that the courts do not inspire confidence justice would be served.

Which calls attention to one thing: why does it leave you cold when administration allies insist that the investigation be wrapped up now and submitted to the courts for resolution. You wonder, what’s the motivation? Well, it is one thing to wish a just resolution to a long-pestering conflict with dispatch in the hands of a trustworthy institution; it is quite another to wish for an arena where the decision makers could be manipulated to one’s favor.

As for me, once in a while, I take my cue from my own inner counsel…

Updates on My ArtBlog

Visit my artblog. I have since made a few changes with blogger.com’s new add-on features. It looks better now, I think, with more clutter on the right panel. The title of the sample art work on this post is “The Wrecking Ball”. I wasn’t thinking of Joe de Venecia when I did this one.

Of the Things That Make Us Happy and Discontented

Over at MLQ3’s blog there is an interesting debate over media rights and responsibilities, right to life and to happiness, the right to liberty and the right to know, and so on and so forth. It’s an offshoot of the Manila Pen incident when Senator Trillanes, General Danny Lim and company holed up in that plush hotel after walking out from a court trial and from there called for the ouster of the incumbent President. The events come all blurry now but for the sight of journalists shoved into buses hands tied in some plastic devices. I guess I was on my way home cooped up on a bus when the herding of media people occurred. Hours before that I was predicting Trillanes and Lim would be bombed to kingdom come by the government and die heroes. They did not: they surrendered along with the rest so quickly, which made everything look comical–and tragic.

Now the debate is: did the members of the media acted as they should or did they cross the boundaries? Depends on where your sentiments lie, really, I pointed out to MLQ3 in the comment box. You like the status quo— media inappropriately crossed the boundaries. Your sentiments align with the reasons inspiring the rebels’ rebelliousness— media only acted as it should. They could debate about principles of this and that to death; in the end it would boil down to where one’s sentiments find peace, and for that matter, to other motivations that make one happy. Reason why I regard the debate quite superfluous. In the world of reality, most of the time I think we first define where our hearts and minds sympathize, or perhaps where we see our interests align, and thereupon we search for principles to explain ourselves— not the other way around. You think this government is illegitimate, all arguments about its right to protect itself is rendered nonsense, so-called duly constituted authorities by necessity not duly constituted but instruments of an illegitimate authority, hence, fair game for hide and seek, for hit and run, for all acts of defiance and mocking. You think this government is legit, or your interest is favored by accepting this government is legit, exact opposite plays out, plain and simple. When DJB argues that the right to life is higher than the freedom of the press, he is arguing from the perspective that this government is legit and therefore has the right to defend itself. All challenges must respect that legitimacy and the rules that preserve the order of things recognizing that legitimacy. In that sense, Trillanes and Lim are nobody but ordinary destabilizers no different from criminal elements like the Abu Sayyafs or Al Qaeda rogues. You do them favor by whatever means and imputation, you are part of the crime, the line you draw between the law-abiders and enemies of the state is crossed.

My fascination with debates is the same fascination I have for lawyers. Which comes first in the order of priorities, for a lawyer at least: the principles arrayed in the client’s favor— or the fee? If I pay you enough to make you wealthy and the effort so worthwhile would you supply a good argument for myself, even as it would run counter to your very own convictions?

In the end, I think it’s all about the things that make us happy and make us mad or sad. Are you offended by lying? If in cheating you lose your soul but gain the power to shape the course of things and set things aright, would that be alright? How much would you exchange for your dignity and honor? Ten thousand pesos? One hundred million pesos plus house and lot and a retirement in luxury? Or do we wish our values on others only out of want for company for the misery that came with this thing called dignity if only because we do not have access to that which made them corrupt and abominable, but nonetheless wealthy beyond reasonable imagination? Or are you one of the very very rare who find happiness and bliss in being upright despite penury? in being virtuous despite the mocking? in being righteous at all cost?

But then, come to think of this, as a friend once posed in one rowdy philosophical discourse provoked by loads of alcohol– is it not being selfish to stay immaculate and tidy if in being so you must go in isolation, like: here is our house, dirty and dusty, filthy and messy, in dangerous state of decay– how the hell do you suppose you could help clean up and put that house of ours in order while keeping yourself impeccably groomed, your shirt still immaculately white after the chore? Hmmm…

I should stop here before I begin quarreling with myself…