"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Amidst the collapsing scenery of Wall Street, we seem to have lost sight of just about everything.

Secretary Paulson's now-infamous original bailout proposal is actually only three pages long, free of financial and economic jargon (with the possible exception of the possibly ambiguous “Mortgage-Related Assets”), and freely available online at a number of sources. But for those still not inclined, Sections 6 and 10 contain the money shots: “The Secretary's authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time,” and “[The subsection of the US Code concerning the Public Debt] is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.” Although the proposal is mundane, there is something valuable to be learned by reading the relevant US Code itself; observe the many incremental amendments made over the past quarter-century, each a stark reminder of the government's wholesale willingness to increase its own line of credit.

Socialism? In my United States? Surely not. (This is not entirely sarcasm; in a situation like this, successful democratic socialism would have at least managed to nationalize the profits, too, rather than just the risks.) But if we excoriate the bailout, we should probably offer a proper defense, too.

The much-discussed $700 billion figure is itself an arbitrary and manufactured figure; all the remaining sub-prime mortgage in the country still left uncovered post-Fannie and post-Freddie are collectively only worth half a trillion dollars, so unless Paulson plans to expand to beyond the sphere of mortgages, the figure is also necessarily too high. The bailout is also not an ordinary cash outlay, but rather what might be considered a very large and very poor investment funded by the public debt, and depending on the determined value of the mortgages, the taxpayers will likely receive some return for their investment. In fact, depending on the valuation, a slim chance remains that the government might ultimately realize a profit. The deepest argument in favor of some kind of intervention, though, is that the bailout may simply be unavoidable to avoid catastrophe.

But not only is this not necessarily true, the bailout in its current iteration is rather just reinforcing the existing problem by presenting a terrible moral hazard. In bailing out the bankers, we're giving them an incentive to continue—and more importantly, we're not offering them an incentive to stop—their cavalier lending, positively ensuring future misbehavior. Just as important as the fact that millions of Americans are caught up in web of bank deceit and their own stupidity is the fact that millions of Americans are not; millions sought to live within their means, took out responsible loans, are in the process of paying them back. Why should we punish the prudent and responsible by rewarding the disingenuous and irresponsible, at the cost of the former? It seems that we self-evidently shouldn't. And what about inflation? What about the debt? What about corruption?

The bailout will pass through in some form—with some oversight and strict limits on executive pay for rescued lenders—and hopefully, we've at least learned that if a corporation becomes so large that our national interest is significantly aligned with its own, it has become too large. Wall Street is just lucky it didn't ask me for my opinion; cold fronts in Hell aside, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer seems to share my sentiments. “Capping executive pay is piffle,” he wrote in a Friday op-ed, “What we need are a few exemplary hangings.”

Well put. Burn, baby, burn, I say; sometimes chemotherapy is the only choice.

Gullibility

Every so often, one is given a gentle reminder of why hucksters, frauds, and snake-oil salesmen continue and are able to continue to ply their trade, and why the Randians not only claim to be rational in their egoism, but also claim to know why and how. As a race, we are credulous, impetuous, transparently self-serving, thoroughly forgetful, and sometimes all of the above. A while back—time and setting withheld, for everyone's protection—I found myself second in a long and impatient line. The customer in front of me, presumably a middle-aged professional of some kind, had just handed over his credit card when the clerk asked: “Are you a member of our platinum preferred program?” The customer answered proudly in the affirmative and surrendered this card, too.

“I'm sorry, sir, you're only a gold member, not a platinum one,” the clerk then said, without a trace of irony.

“Well, what's the difference?” Humiliation emerged.

“More privileges...in general,” he replied tersely.

“Um...how exactly does one enroll for such a program?” Humiliation threatened.

“You have to qualify,” he answered, more loudly.

This was the sounding of dignity's death knell; the customer tried to backpedal, mumbling “well, if only I'd sooner known about it...” reddening and glancing throughout the growing line behind him, almost apologetically, “if somebody had simply told me...” His wincing expression admitted a dual realization of both embarrassment and an embarrassment about this embarrassment, a pain everyone in line shared and understood but did not attempt to assuage. His eyes searched the crowd for validation, but no one offered it; this membership hierarchy business was clearly nothing more than a revenue-raising racket. Everyone knew this. But how many of us knew it only with our own platinum membership cards already secure in our wallets? After a few silent, awkward moments, the clerk returned the system's result: he did, indeed, qualify. Relieved, the customer upgraded his membership without the slightest hesitation or knowledge of what that actually entailed, collected his sparkling new platinum card, and hurried away.

How had they reduced this presumably distinguished man to such a gullible fool? After admitting I didn't have a card of any kind, I posed this question to the clerk, to which he responded: “After a certain amount of time, you naturally become more efficient at it. No one wants to be a second-class citizen, especially not when he thinks he's sitting in the middle of first-class.”

“And is this how you get them not to use their coupons, too?” I couldn't help but ask.

“You know, if you're really so concerned, why don't you just go start a customer's union?”

In 1899, economist and enfant terrible Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class, a book-length critique of American-style consumerism. And although economic thought has ultimately moved beyond him, even in modernity his famous concept of “conspicuous consumption” remains a part of the lexicon. The expression describes a social phenomenon in which rational consumption habits are deliberately undermined for the purpose of displaying wealth or status, and allows for the existence of a “Veblen good,” a theoretical entity named in honor of the economist that contravenes the law of demand and whose demand actually rises alongside its price. These maneuvers, even when they're performed with hands above the table, still seem like a magic trick. The question is apparently not what we will sacrifice in the name of peer pressure, but rather, what we won't. Petty sarcasms aside, I would still never dare start a customer's union; I know I can't even count on my own support.

Honor Among Thieves

In light of the fact that most individuals in our society abide by our laws and pay their taxes, doesn't our approach to copyright infringement seem a bit surprising? The fact that our ordinary behavior constitutes robbery is not really debatable—an artist has his or her product for sale, we procure it through electronic back channels and use it without offering any reciprocation—yet inexplicably, the majority of people do not consider this to be wrong. How exactly do we live with this contradiction?

The first and most common way is by making extralegal emotional appeals, pairing Robin Hood ethics with a side of blame-the-victim: “of course it's 'theft,'” such a person might say, air marks and condescension in full force, “but the RIAA are greedy, blood-sucking corporatists,” and if they're feeling economically self-righteous, they might append “and we're teaching them a lesson.” I'm sorry, but “I just have to get that Jonas Brothers' cover of “Hello Goodbye” out of my head” is not cause for vigilante justice. (And what are you doing listening to that garbage, anyway? Your mother would be doubly embarrassed.)

The second way is cleverer, and denies the immorality of it outright: “of course it's 'theft,' but in downloading music, I'm not actively denying anyone else the right to listen to that same music, or denying anyone revenue.” The fact that it has become a liquid kind of “club good”—in economic jargon, a excludable but non-rivalrous good—does not make an essential difference. If you haven't paid for the good or service, you don't very well deserve to benefit from it, do you? No one accepts such transparent arguments when they're given by someone trying to justify stealing similarly-taxonomized cable television. There is nothing paradoxical about the results of everyone refusing to pay their dues: the club goes bankrupt or cuts back accordingly, and if you think this won't or couldn't happen, you obviously haven't turned on the radio recently.

The third way is the easiest to handle, and certainly the easiest to understand; “of course it's 'theft,' but there are a nation of us, and we don't care. Condemn us at your own risk.” Fair enough, but the RIAA has proceeded to do just that, and I wouldn't expect the “honest thief” rhetoric to convince anyone, least of all the judge.

Now, some of the RIAA's positions are incomprehensible and absurd—for instance, their simultaneous approval and disapproval of ripping one's own CDs—and they've done a terrible job in lobbying their cause. They've earned themselves a reputation for sparing supernodes while litigating grandmothers, and intentionally inserting malware into their products. All of this predatory behavior, meanwhile, has been largely futile: illegal downloading has ascended into the mainstream from its inception, and their proponents have been almost universally ridiculed and ostracized. But what has Lars Ulrich done, other than fight for his and others' right to get paid for their own work? Acts like Radiohead are only willing to fight from the other side because they already have—with the help of the industry infrastructure, mind you—a legion of devoted fans who were going to buy In Rainbows regardless of its price.

The zeitgeist holds the key: the record industry is changing its tune, slowly drifting from the album-single paradigm and toward a faceless, loveless polluted sea of singles and YouTube clips. We get what we deserve; we see those who steal cable as sitcom fodder, but we see music pirates as defensible, because we do so with our index fingers primed.

A Man's Right to Choose

Some kinds of arguments are best introduced as thought experiments: suppose there existed a painful, unnecessary, possibly injurious rite-of-passage that has persisted purely by way of its constant reiteration as a social institution. Would you elect to have such a procedure done on yourself? On your friends? On your family? In the United States, we laugh with pity at the savages who thrust their hands into mitts filled with fire ants or “elongate their necks” with rings. And everywhere else, they laugh at us when we circumcise our boys.

The affirmative arguments form a fittingly short list: there are no genuine points for non-therapeutic circumcision in the United States other than the artificial one that most American males have traditionally gotten one. But this point is tremendously robust, and an entire discipline—sociology—speaks to it.

The list of inherent objections looms much larger. Not only is the procedure itself painful, there’s a chance of sustaining injury, disfigurement, infection, or any combination thereof. In being uncircumcised, there isn’t much risk of serious infection in our hygienic, antibiotic-enlightened modern society, and there is a marked loss of sexual sensitivity and pleasure for both parties. (The preceding is a piece of evidence that those of fundamentalist persuasion once used as justification and might actually commute to the paragraph above.) The procedure itself is quite irreversible, which is apparently an important consideration for some men; a simple Google query yields an entire foreskin restoration subculture, with detailed instruction on how to—I mention with a shudder—set the weights. And the most pressing argument: surely in this freedom-loving country, the value of consent is worth the price of adulthood circumcision. About the nature of his own penis, does it not stand to reason that a man should be allowed to argue his own case?

But honestly, the case doesn’t even need to be proven at all; circumcision in the developed world does not usually have its basis in medicine. Even the AMA now discourages it as a matter of routine, and throughout most of the rest of the world, it has all but vanished. Thus, it remains an prominent institution in the United States only because of a silly but strong norm. So how can we rid ourselves of it? The tempting solution, of course, is to lean on tort law or to criminalize the practice entirely, but because of lobbying and Establishment Clause concerns, even with religious exemptions this isn’t plausible. And moreover, for two reasons it’s not even necessary: not only is it disappearing on its own, it’s difficult to argue that it’s even traumatic.

On the first, even twenty years ago—when our parents had to make the decision—circumcision was still practically universal, but a change in the zeitgeist has come; the data are in, and the practice is dwindling, a trend that seems likely to continue in light of immigration and our increasingly globalized culture. And on the second, even those in the circumcision-as-mutilation camp are hard-pressed to conflate it with something as vile as female circumcision, its grisly cousin; aesthetics aside, a properly circumcised penis remains perfectly functional. Speaking anecdotally, it just hasn't made much of an impact on my own life, and I suspect in moments of similar candor most of my peers would probably agree.

What can be extrapolated from such mixed conclusions? A simple maxim; non-therapeutic circumcisions are clearly unnecessary and somewhat barbaric, but—and of course I would save this for last—we must not make a mountain out of a mohel.

The Fairest Vice

What exactly can one make of the vice presidential candidates?

Joseph Biden is a logical, if slightly conventional selection. Due to his long and illustrious career as a senator, he carries a good deal of automatic name recognition, has diverse experience in foreign policy, and is a fearsome debater. He does, of course, also occasionally have lapses in tact; most recently, he made headlines by memorably describing—of all people—Senator Obama as an “articulate and bright and clean” African-American, a slippery kind of qualification which although strictly true probably had racial overtones. To some, this is precisely Biden’s charm; he’s an ordinary, plainspoken guy with a degree from a state school, a conventional upbringing, and the manners to match. And as far as proper political affairs are concerned, his inclusion does shore up support in some critical areas, namely among those who were concerned about Obama’s lack of experience in foreign policy, those who were concerned about his lack of experience in general, and those who had concerns about his so-called “elitism.” On the balance, Biden completes the ticket as well as did anyone else in the selection field.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is something of a baffling choice. One’s immediate analysis is almost embarrassing in its simplicity; is it actually possible that the GOP has blown its vice president pick to pander to disenfranchised women angered by what they saw as Hillary’s active exclusion from the process? It’s always important to remember the immense sophistication and nuance of the GOP political machine and their proven track record, but what else could it possibly be? Ms. Palin’s dossier certainly doesn’t suggest otherwise; she’s inexperienced, nullifying their own mantra, and she’s a governor sequestered in a non-contiguous state with little influence over national policy in an election of senators with national experience. And although she is rather popular in her home state, she has virtually no name recognition in the rest of the country and is currently under investigation. So supposing the vagina gambit to be the case, this stupid and transparent maneuver fails for two reasons: not only will Hillary’s supporters never flock to McCain en masse, he has lost his own critical opportunity to rally his native constituency.

On the first, neither McCain nor Ms. Palin represent the political interests of Clinton’s prospective voters. No woman who considers herself a Clinton feminist will cast a ballot for a duo who don’t favor coverage for contraceptives and don’t support abortion rights. The so-called “disenfranchised” will continue to complain vociferously, and a few might even abstain in November, but those who cross the aisle will do so in small numbers. With her gracious Wednesday night speech, Clinton herself saw to that. And on the second, he has lost his only opportunity to mute the objections of his detractors on the far right, who remember his moderate, “maverick” rhetoric. Selecting someone with strong conservative credentials was the only way to avoid a severely depressed evangelical vote, and he effectively sealed it. Palin has some conservative positions, certainly, but not all of the correct ones, and not in the preferred tradition. The ticket remains without genuine credibility.

Based on all of this, I can only make the following conjecture: Palin was obviously not a departmental selection, and was certainly not the choice of the mainstream GOP consortium. Senator McCain must have made this choice largely—if not entirely—by himself, relatively free from outside influence. Romney, Pawlenty, Ridge, Lieberman, and a host of others, despite their weaknesses, are much better and more qualified choices. Palin is at best an unorthodox choice, and at worst a fatal mistake.