Joey thinks about prices

     The other day I was shopping somewhere... I can't recall anymore, I just remember looking at prices with my friends and one of them said, "These prices are so unfair, this is wrong."

I'd never pay so much for shoes.  Why, these aren't worth the gold they're made of!

     This attitude that its somehow immoral to charge a high price for things really bothers me.  For almost every product or service there is going to be people who say that they charge too much and its immoral to line their pockets while gouging people for their hard earned cash.  There's four problems with this attitude.  I'll tackle them in order of relevance (least to most).

     First: people tend to confuse two things when they're talking about unfair prices.  The first is the cost of production.  The second is the actual value of the item.  People believe they shouldn't have to pay anymore for an item than the retailer did.  And at face value, that seems fair and right.  But lets explore deeper.  First of all, the only correlation between cost to the buyer and cost to the seller is this: the cost to the buyer can never be cheaper than cost to the seller (this isn't actually always true, with fire sales and stuff, but for anyone trying to make sustainable money, this is a fact of life).

     People don't want to pay more than the seller paid, and that's an understandable reaction.  However, there are costs totally independent of the cost of buying the item.  For instance, a retailer has to pay their staff, their rent and utilities, their property and business taxes (Its ironic that most people who are gung-ho about high prices being immoral are for bigger government, when our huge government causes the prices of everything to go up immensely.  This is a tangent, but I once explained to my friend that the loaf of bread he purchased had already been taxed more than ten times by the time he paid the sales tax on it.  Just imagine if Uncle Sam hadn't taken its eight percent cut ten times).  Basically their are hidden costs to the sellers, so its unfair to just scream too high without knowing anything about their business.
     There are items for sale that literally cost the seller nothing, but go for hundreds of thousands of dollars (I'm thinking stuff like signed baseballs, historical documents passed down through families, that sort of thing), and we don't declare that immoral.  After all, who's buying it?  Another rich guy, so we think its fine.  Basically, an items value is determined by what we, the consumer will pay for it.  In the case with my friend saying the item was too expensive, she still bought it.  It was clearly worth that much.  She just wanted it for cheaper.

        Second: I think its human nature to always want stuff cheaper, regardless of whether its a fair price or not.  I work at a thrift store, and, I kid you not, I have people routinely try to haggle the price of things that are going for literally less than a tenth of their new value.  These items are generally in good shape, with small amounts of ware, but people want them for cheaper.  People try to haggle ten dollars down to five dollars.  Five to four and will walk out without a deal if I don't capitulate.  "Fifty cents?" they say, "How about twenty-five?"  I hate these penny pinches.  I feel like screaming at them, "Is this argument we're having worth twenty-five cents!  AAAUUUUGGGGHHH!"  But, that aside, people always want to pay less.
     I say its human nature, but I'm not so sure anymore.  I think a lot of these people are part of the entitlement crowd.  They think they deserve to have everything for free or cheap, because they're poor.  That's some kind of messed-up, ass-backwards logic.  Where I come from, poor people have less, and that's the primary motivation to get off your butt and make some money.  I'm straying off topic, but that's one of the things I hate most about useless entitlement programs.  They don't address anyone's problems, they don't make them healthier, or provide anyone who's starving with food (Okay, I will concede in a very, very tiny minority this isn't the case), they just make them more comfortable in their poverty.  Which makes them more, not less, likely to stay poor their whole lives.
     Anyways, the point I was trying to make here was this: no matter what anyone charges, someone is going to complain its too much.  So that alone should invalidate most of those complainers.

 Third: at what point did it become immoral to make money?  Don't we all go to work to make money?  "Yes," you say, "but we only make enough money to live on.  They gouge others so they can live like kings!"
     "Alright," I say, "you're telling me you donate all your extra cash, and turn down raises when they're offered?  To do otherwise would be immoral, right?"
     Flustered, you say, "Well, its all a matter of degrees!  I make enough to keep myself fed and clothed, and a bit more for a tiny amount of luxury.  Its nothing compared to what those filthy-rich scumbags rake in."
     "A matter of degrees indeed!" I reply.  "There are people in west Africa who literally starve to death every day, to them, you live like a king.  Your argument holds no water.  Just like your cup.  You're soaking wet!"
     *You're soaking wet*  "Damn!  You've foiled me again, Joey!  Someday I'll defeat you, despite your wild handsomeness and unbridled, rugged charm!"
   
     Fourth: so in the beginning of this article my friend said the prices were too high, and it was wrong.  My reply?  "You don't think they have the right to charge what they want for their products?"  Guess what?  That shut her up.  Beyond anything else, to say that an individual or a company doesn't have the right to charge whatever they think their products are worth is not only misguided, its evil.  Its a creeping, insidious evil, because, like many of the devils best work, it seems good at face value.  It seems like you're standing up for the little guy.  In truth you're appealing to the government (or even worse, the ignorant masses) to assault someones right to act as they choose.

     Now, I know I'm going to get a lot of people who bring up two things.  First will be evil monopolies who gouge people for life's necessities and beggar those who can't keep up.  I'm not talking about those.  That's a straw-man argument and everyone should know it.  I'm against monopolies, but guess what? There are no monopolies in America-except the government, and it kind of shows with high prices and crap service.
     People will also bring up the pharmaceutical companies who charge an arm and a leg for prescription medicine.  While it costs them just pennies to produce the pills.  I actually just read an email forwarded by my dad about how over-inflated their prices are and how generic brands aren't any better.  I haven't anything to say about the generic brands except "see above article."  I do, however, have a very clear perspective on expensive prescription drugs.
     First off.  There is a myth that pharmaceutical companies gouge the patients because it makes them rich.  Ha ha.  Your ignorance at once delights and enrages me!  It turns out, Every Jackass Who Blithely Passed Along This Misinformation Without Doing Any Research Or Due Diligence, that pharmaceutical companies barely, and I mean by tiny margins, make their money back from the drugs they sell.  "Oh, but Joey, it costs them pennies to produce a bottle of drugs that they charge three hundred dollars for."
     That's true.  However, the real cost to the pharmaceutical companies is developing those drugs.  Forbes has a great article on this, explaining how most pharmaceutical companies are actually losing money each year. The average cost to develop a new drug is four billion dollars.  They have between six months and seven years of exclusivity to sell their drugs before the generic guys can make their own.  Then they make only a fraction of what they were making.
     They aren't making bank in this business.  They're barely surviving.  And the next time you think about criticizing them for gouging cancer patients who've already drained their bank accounts to pay for operations, why don't you ask yourself this: "when's the last time I developed a drug to help cancer patients?"

Joey thinks: why all the Edison Hate?

So I've observed a strange phenomenon over the past few years.  When I was young (like 10, I think) my parents provided me with a series of cartoons called something like great American heroes (it was produced by the same guys who did The Living Scriptures).  One of the episodes was all about Thomas Edison.  It was about how he invented the light bulb and the struggles therein.  It was pretty inspirational stuff.  He tried over ten thousand different filaments to make his incandescent bulb work.

Shown: Tommy and the Cronies

     When I was a kid, Thomas Edison was a hero.  Parents hoped their children would end up like him, he was the inspiration of inventors and forward thinkers.  Even people who objected to his ethics (the man electrocuted a giraffe in public once, though to be fair this was years and years before any kind of animal rights movement started), had to respect him.

     Sometime in the last ten years that's changed.  Oh, maybe you haven't been exposed to the movement personally, but lately every time I hear about Edison, its very, very negative.  Specifically, all anyone can talk about is how great an inventor Nikolai Tesla was, and how the evil, dirty, backstabbing, unscrupulous Thomas Edison broke his will to invent, stole all his money, and made him die a penniless popper.

     I think the first time I became aware of this movement was on an episode of Myth Busters (don't get me started on Myth Busters) where they tried to get some of Tesla's untested experiments to work.  Of course none of the experiments worked.  If they had any value they would have already been tested and either refined, or discarded.  This total lack of success did not stop them from taking time off to talk about how bad Edison was.

So much talent, experience and douchebaggery all rolled into two guys.

     At this point I should put forth the disclaimer: I don't hate Tesla.  In fact, I have no problem with him whatsoever.  I acknowledge that he was a brilliant man, and was quite likely Edison's equal, possibly his superior, in the realm of science.  I do, however, have a problem with people who blandly and ignorantly call Edison the Devil, while worshiping the ground Tesla walked on.

     Since then I've seen Edison hate on How Stuff Works, Cracked.com, Epic Rap Battle of History, and the Internet in general.  Type in Edison VS Tesla in Google and you'll be bombarded with articles about what a piece of filth Edison was and what an absolute saint Tesla was.

     So, what changed?  Their story is the same as it was ten years ago.  History hasn't changed.  So obviously it was us, but how?  Well I thought about it for quite a while.  And I now know what changed.

     You see, no one really hates Edison for Edison.  They hate him because he beat Tesla.  They say he used underhanded tactics, he never really invented anything, just refined already invented things, and used dirty business practices to put Tesla out of business.  I read a fine article the other day by Alex Knapp of Forbes called Nikolai Tesla Wasn't God, and Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil that disproves most of these.  I could try and emulate his article, and disprove these, but instead I'll link to his, since I could never do such a good job as Knapp does.  Just bear in mind that most of the criticisms are exaggerated, if not outright fallacious.

     Here's what people really, really hate about Edison.  He was a winner.  He won, and he won, and he won so hard that some people lost.  He knew what he wanted and he went for it.  Tesla was brilliant, and he was kind, but Edison was a winner.

     Over the last twenty years, Americans have started to hate winners.  All of this has its roots in class warfare.  It used to be that rich people, if not admired, were at least respected.  People looked up to them as a way to live; as a goal to achieve.  But the government has been trying to change that.  After all, its easier to tax a group of people who are seen as villains, rather than the hardworking producers that they are. So for as long as I've been around, the government and the media have been preaching the Gospel of Envy.  The Gospel of never being satisfied with what you have.  The Gospel of hating those who have more.  They've preached that when someone gets something, it inherently takes from us.
     This isn't entirely false (after all, only one team can win), but is entirely harmful.  Envy is possibly the worst thing you can inject into your life.  It eats you up from the inside.  It makes you hate those who deserve no ill will.  It sours everything good in your live.  After all, how can you be happy with what you have, when someone else has more?

     Winners are villains in this world we live in.  When Edison won, Tesla lost.  All these things people come up with are just excuses.  You can find reasons to hate anybody if you look hard enough.  Well, look no further.  If you're going to win, someone else has to lose.  That's not just a byproduct of a broken society or some other BS.  It's a fundamental law of nature.  It's what makes some species survive, and some die out.
     There is a great deal of value in the compassion that comforts losers and helps them to achieve in life.  There is NO value in punishing winners.  Its so backwards and harmful.  And yet that's what we do all the time.  There's no good reason to hate Edison.  If you have personally been drawn in by this foolishness, recant your ways and come towards the light of reason and intelligence.

Joey thinks about race and racism

This week may be controversial.  It's really a message of love, but some people only want to see hate.

     So this week I've been thinking about racism, which I often do.  Its a bit of an enigma to me.  I've never been personally the victim of racism, which I guess kind of makes me less qualified to talk about it than others, but I still have my thoughts on it, and I think they're about as valid as anyone else's.

     I watch a cartoon called The Boondocks about a little black boy named Huey, his brother Riley, and his Granddad.  The show pulls no punches on racism.  It uses the N word frequently, and seems to have a pretty low opinion of popular black culture (I.E. the kind popularized by "gangsta" rappers and whatnot).  The show is funny, but I also find it interesting to watch.  I'm always wondering who the target audience is for this show.  I'm not sure.  Anyways that isn't important.

Shown: Hilarity

     I was talking to a black friend earlier today and I mentioned how the show had pretty much desensitized me to the N word.  He cut me off and said "Look, man, I'm cool if you say negro, or even nigga, but if you throw an er at the end of that nig, I'll probably pop you in the face."  I'm pretty sure he was saying that to assure me that I could say nigga around him without feeling awkward.  But instead I had this thought.  What is the difference between an A and an ER.  Really not much, but for this young man the difference would be worth (probably not really, but he most likely thought so at the time) striking his friend over it.

     Now all forms of the N word are an ugly word to my ears.  I don't think its kind to say it, and I don't think there's really ever a good reason to say it.  It represents a time when true racism existed, and I don't mean the petty, almost pretentious racism we have today.  I mean the purest form of racism; truly believing that one race was utterly inferior to another.  However, it's just a word.  If I was telling my friends about a time I heard a guy call a black guy the N word, I would feel obligated to say N word, not the actual word.  On the other side, if I heard someone call an Italian a Spic, or a Chinese a Chink, I would use those words.  Why?  Because while they're both ugly words, out of context they won't offend anyone just because a non Chinese or Italian said it, and if the word did offend them, it would be offensive coming from anyone.  You could argue that Blacks were oppressed and attacked more than Chinese or Italians, and maybe that argument is valid, but I don't think so.

    I hear this a lot.  I hear that special consideration has to be given to Blacks because they have uniquely suffered at the hands of the white man.  I don't think this attitude is helpful for anyone.  I think its actually quite harmful to all sides.  I have four reasons.  

     First of all, its divisive.  By saying Blacks have been wronged, and Whites have something to make up for, you're automatically separating us into different camps, opposed armies in a war.  I can't say nigga out loud in a crowded place and my black friend can.  Because of this divide we can't ever be equal.

     Second: its flawed logic.  The idea that I have anything, ANYTHING to make up for towards my black friends is not only preposterous, its immoral.  If my great grandfather was a convicted felon, I would not be held responsible for his crimes.  If I was distantly related to Adolf Hitler I wouldn't be expected to tip-toe around Jews and never say Nazi.  And furthermore, if I was punished for the crimes of my father, it would be wrong!  When is it right to punish someone for another's sin?  Never.  Its never right.  It may be necessary, which it unfortunately is in our society because of stupid men's actions, but its never right.

     Third: I'm a staunch believer that anything that can be proved to be true about individuals can also be applied to societies.  Here is a firm belief I have always held about both physical and mental deficiencies: you are doing a great disservice to anyone by coddling them.  If a man has only one arm, lowering your standards on a driving test will not only produce an unsafe driver, it will also stunt the growth of that man.  If you expect a child with dyslexia to fail at every class in school, that child will fail at every class in school.  And if you give special consideration to a particular race because of past crimes, than that race will in time require that special consideration to function, though in reality they don't require it and never did.

     Fourth: this may sound kind of weird, but its racist.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines racism as  "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."  Treating Black people different from other races is seeing one of them unequal to the other.  And that is racism.

     So, assuming anyone reads this (which I kind of doubt will happen), people will try to bring up arguments about how bad slavery was, and other people will rush in to defend "my" (I put it in quotations because my argument is certainly NOT that slavery wasn't all that bad) argument by saying that chattel slavery in Africa was as bad if not worse.  And all of this will obscure the point I'm trying to make.  Which is this: we should all be equal.  We should have the same opportunities in life, and we should be able to say the same words.  We shouldn't treat each other differently because of the color of our skin.  No one should, not blacks, not whites, not Mexicans, not Asian, not Latins, not anyone.  And the people who claim to be the strongest supporters of Blacks are doing the most harm by dividing us where we stand and making us into separate factions in a war, instead of one people who can love each other as equals and brothers.

Joey thinks about table-top role-playing games

So, I've been thinking.  I play a lot of table top role playing games, and introducing people to RPGs is always tough.  It's not hard because I'm ashamed of my hobby.  It's hard because no one really knows what it is.  If I say I'm into RPGs, most people assume I'm speaking about video games.  Even if I lead off with "Have you heard of D&D?" most people say yeah, but they've only kind of heard about it.  They don't really know what it is.
     I think it would be helpful if two things happened.  First off, we could decide on a clearer terminology for distinguishing between table top RPGs and video game RPGs.  Second, I think that Roleplaying games in general deserve a wider audience.  There's no reason for them to be so niche.  Sure they're tougher than video games, but they're tons more rewarding as well.  Video games cannot give you the same satisfaction as RPGs.
     Anyways, this isn't really about what we can do for RPGs, its discussing what RPGs are, which is kind of something I can do for RPGs, I guess.  RPG of course stands for Role-Playing Game.  So lets dissect it.  First of all, its a game.  That was easy.  Then there's the role playing part.  To understand exactly what role playing means, we need to look a little bit at the history of it.
     Gary Gygax was an avid war gamer.  Basically he played a type of game called wargames, wherein you had miniatures representing your armies, and your opponent would have miniatures representing theirs, and you'd follow established rules and have your armies fight.  Gygax designed a particular wargame called Chainmail.  Chainmail was wargame like the others, but it was a fantasy game, based loosely off of Tolkien s Lord of The Rings, with orcs, elves and dwarves, as well as dragons and whatnot.

That guy on the horse is so screwed.

     He played and worked on that for many years, and eventually came up with an interesting idea.  Instead of controlling an army of elves or orcs, why not just play as one?  After all, there was mass war combat in the Lord of The Rings, but there was also an adventure with a small party.  So he sat down and started designing a game where'd you'd play as a single character.  He worked with a good friend of his named David Arneson.  Together they designed the first role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons (now referred to simply as basic).

Left Gygax: Right Arneson.  Obviously in their later years.

     So, what made it so radically different from other games was that you took on the role of a single individual.  You pretended to be Kael' Thas, the Elf Fire-Mage, or Deorn, the mighty Dwarf Fighter.  You took on their persona, and acted out in the game world.  You pretended to be a hero, just like when you were a kid, only now you were doing it as an adult, with other adults.  And the best part is discovering that its still as much fun as when you were a kid.  At it's heart, RPGs are a game of make believe.  We make believe that we're a hero, and that we're on a noble quest.  In my opinion, there are few things better to spend your leisure time on.

And some much, much worse...

     So, we understand the name, and the very heart of the game, namely, role playing.  But what is the game really like?  Well, lets talk.  So, I'm sitting at a table.  I'm at the head of it, and four of my best friends are sitting around it with me.  A laptop is in front of me, on it is a program I use to run combat, as well as a website to help me look up rules quickly.  Everyone has a character sheet in front of them (That being a sheet with all the quantified abilities of their character, as well as a general description).  Everyone has a stack of dice and a pencil too.  The mood is quiet, maybe even intense.

Note the intense mood.

     I describe the environment:  "You're in a pitch black room.  The walls, writhing in shadow cast by your guttering torches, seem to close in on you.  A sound behind you and you whirl to see only a mouse.  Just a mouse.  If the ancient Dwarf's information was correct, than behind this door awaits the ancient necromancer, entombed in his own fortress."  Now at this point comes the important part.  I say "What do you do?

I just wanna go home.

     The team takes a moment to confer, wherein several plans are put forward and dismissed, finally the Rogue offers to pick the lock and scout ahead on his own.  Well, what happens?  The door contains a deadly trap that will decapitate the rogue, and sets off an alarm, which will raise guardian undead to fight off the intruders.  Will the Rogue set off the trap?  Will he detect it and disarm it?  Well that's mostly up to the Rogue's player, but also somewhat to chance.
     The second most important part of the game is what we refer to as the "Core Mechanic."  Basically it means rolling a d20 (twenty sided die), adding it to the rogues perception skill, and seeing if that's higher than the difficulty class I set for the trap earlier.  If its higher than he detects the trap and may try to disarm it.  If its lower than he opens the door, happily ignorant of the trap seconds before a scything blade neatly decapitates his happy head and his team is torn to shreds by hungry undead.

For about two second I pitied that Rogue.  Now I envy him.

     However the scene turns out, the game keeps going.  Either the team succeeds, and they kill the necromancer and loot his corpse, or they get a TPK (Total Party Kill) and make new characters, hopefully trying something easier this time, or at least learning from their mistakes.  Whatever the case is, the game continues.
     I love RPGs.  I love the idea of them, and I love the reality of them.  I've never had someone play in my games, and really give it a fair shot, and come out not liking it.  Most of them who were skeptical ended up loving the game as much as I do.  And some of them I still play with from time to time.  We still remember great moments in the game together.  Like the time a single deranged hobo managed to incapacitate an entire team of skilled investigator.  Those are great memories, and there will be more great memories made with new friends.  After all, the road goes ever, ever on.