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Ernest Clines Ready Player One was a jukebox musical for trash culture of the 80s, a vision of a near-future dystopia where things were so bad, Zaxxon and Twisted Sister were classic works of art meriting serious scholarly attention. Life is certainly imitating art, at least as far as the dystopian nature of 2020 is concerned. So who wouldnt want to read a sequel?

Ready Player Two picks up in medias res after the events of the first book. Our hero, teen gamer Wade Watts, and his motley group of Internet friends have solved the mysterious riddles of one James Halliday, inventor of the OASIS, which is some sort of futuristic extra-cool Second Life for our environmentally-ravaged future. By virtue of finding the many Easter Eggs Halliday has hidden around the Internet and learning the minutiae of the movies and video games he loved, Wade has inherited his company and become the richest and most famous man in the world. Everything is swell! Except that Halliday has left Wade one more thing: an advanced neural interface which allows the user full sensory overload instead of the crummy old immersive VR experiences of yore.

I was awestruck by the perfect replication of all that interlinked sensory input, Wade enthuses, munching on a virtual apple, his olfactory system in kinetic overdrive. These were subtle, nuanced sensations that could never be re-created or simulated by a pair of haptic gloves.

Okay, so Proust this is not. In the hands of a more agile writer, there might be ripe potential for satire here; Halliday is, quite literally, a deus ex machina figure, constantly one step ahead of his billions of devoted OASIS minions. If it werent for Clines obvious affection for the sheer hubris of creating a virtual world in ones image, Halliday would seem like a mustache-twirling digital archvillain, a Bezos writ large.

Thats the overwhelming issue with the Ready Player Whatever universe: at no point does Cline question the wisdom of an all-encompassing monoculture that screeches to a halt around 1988, while technology evolves at hyperspeed around it. Ah, the good old days, he sighs, and writes another chapter about fucking Donkey Kong or whatever. Hes the Gamemaster Anthony of genre fiction, a clunky stylist content to wallop the reader over the head with a never-ending barrage of Remember when?s.

In Ready Player One, the main antagonists were the corporate suits of Innovative Online Industries, which was sort of a combination of a for-profit online university and an internment camp. By the end of the first chapter of Ready Player Two, our heroes have managed a hostile takeover of IOI and transformed themselves into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the worlds most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform, as well as releasing all of IOIs indentured servants and, presumably, creating a massive labor crisis. But they finally manage to pay off the national debt and donate hundreds of billions of dollars to solve world poverty, or something. So thats nice!

Their efforts to ditch this crappy planet and terraform the nearest habitable rock eventually fall by the wayside when an evil sentient AI springs the murderous CEO of IOI out of prison and forces our heroes to go on a lengthy fetch quest through VR time and space to retrieve the seven pieces ofoh, who cares. At this point you already know whether or not Ready Player Two is the book for you. It is not the book for me.

Cline had some legitimately good ideas the first time around. Theres potential in interrogating the nature of escapism in times of social upheaval. This time, though, instead of character development, hes chosen to double down on lengthy, dull descriptions of battle scenes and minutely-detailed virtual worlds. A complicated boss fight against Princeyes, Princeis crassly opportunistic even by the standards of posthumous tributes to Prince. A climactic showdown in Middle-Earth is as monotonous and impenetrable as The Silmarillion itself.

Add to that some of the most excruciating sex scenes in recent fiction and youve got the stuff of nightmares. We lost our virginity to each other three days after that first kiss, Wade reminisces. Then we spent the rest of that week sneaking off to make the beast with two backs at every opportunity. Like Depeche Mode, we just couldnt get enough. Oh, brother. Luckily hours of futuristic VR porn have cured him of that pesky bout of transphobia, and his own dalliance with omnipotence has provided him with valuable insight as to the human condition.

Cline muses, in full Jordan Peterson gets an Oculus Quest mode: Human beings were never meant to participate in a worldwide social network comprised [sic] of billions of people. We were designed by evolution to be hunter-gatherers, with the mental capacity to interact and socialize with the other members of our tribea tribe made up of a few hundred other people at most. Like so much of Clines writing, this is cheap introspection disguised as trenchant insight.

Maybe the freshman seminar-level Big Ideas of this book will make more sense when Steven Spielberg or whoever inevitably turns it into another expensive action-movie pastiche. The Ready Player One movie grossed nearly $600 million, and an adaptation of Ready Player Two cant be far behind. This book is criticism-proof; the people who ate it up the first time are just going to gorge on it again. They didnt even bother to send out advance copies for review.

When I finished reading it, I felt physically drained, exhausted after living in Ernest Clines head for nearly 400 pages of Animotion and Van Hagar, John Hughes movies and bad video games. I needed a break from the constant clanging drone of coin-op nostalgia. I stumbled outside to get some fresh air. Like Depeche Mode, I enjoyed the silence.

Read more here:
Ready Player Two Book Review - Book and Film Globe

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman once said that One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. When it comes to the $15 minimum wage hike supported by Joe Biden and many of his fellow Democrats, its becoming increasingly clear that the results will be ugly.

New reporting reveals that Chief Financial Officers at top American companies are considering raising prices, cutting workers hours and investing in automation to offset a potential rise in labor costs.

Companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., Potbelly Corp. and Texas Roadhouse Inc. are already doing the math to assess what a higher federal minimum wage could mean for their operations and cost base, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Some executives fear that increases to the federal pay floor would drive up wages across income classes, hurting profits and forcing businesses to find savings to offset higher spending on labor, the paper continues.

First and foremost, we can expect businesses to respond to artificially-high wage mandates by cutting jobs and reducing employee hours.

Why?This new reporting is bad news for low-skilled workersthe very group that a $15 minimum wage is supposed to help.

Well, labor is a product like any other. If the cost of soda was artificially mandated at $10 per can by the government, the simple fact is that consumers would buy less of it. When employers are legally forced to pay more for labor than it is worth in the market, they naturally and inevitably do the same.

By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market, famed economist Thomas Sowell wrote in Basic Economics. The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce or labor.

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, Sowell concluded. And that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage."

Ample evidence confirms these theoretical predictions.

For example, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that enacting a $15 minimum wage nationwide would destroy from 1.3 to 3.7 million jobs. Similarly, analysis from the Employment Policies Institute concludes that a federal $15 minimum wage would kill 2 million jobs.

These studies arent outliers. A research review by the Cato Institute concluded, The main finding of economic theory and empirical research over the past 70 years is that minimum wage increases tend to reduce employment.

So, its fair to assume that the warnings CFOs are offering about potential slashes in employment can be extrapolated beyond their specific companies. Proponents of a $15 minimum wage might intend to help workers, but they will inevitably and invariably put millions of them out of work altogether if their efforts are successful.

Meanwhile, other companies told the Journal they would pass the costs onto consumers by hiking prices. (Is that a win for the working class?)

And in an another twist, some companies said they would seek additional opportunities to invest in automation and eliminate their demand for labor altogether in lieu of paying mandated wages that far exceed a workers value.Lets hope that Joe Bidens minimum wage fantasies never become lawor workers will pay the price for his naivet.

Pool Corp., a distributor of swimming pool supplies, plans to ramp up investments in technology to offset the potential rise in labor costs, the Journal reports. The company would look to reduce manual processes such as product orders and certain warehouse operations.

[Automation is] the most significant investment that we can make...when it comes to lowering the impact of potentially higher labor costs down the road, Pool Corp CFO Mark Joslin said.

All of this is bad, bad news for workers. You know, the group that a $15 minimum wage is supposed to help.

So, lets hope that Joe Bidens minimum wage fantasies never become lawor workers will pay the price for his naivet.

Visit link:
Companies Are Preparing to Cut Jobs and Automate if Biden Gets $15 Minimum Wage Hike, Reporting Shows | Brad Polumbo - Foundation for Economic...

Lights, colours, and fireworks may not light up in profusion in the skies this year on Diwali due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the low-key, virtual celebrations that have been planned will be just as beautiful.

Most Diwali celebrations will be done virtually this year

Celebrities, founders, chefs, and entrepreneurs have different ways to celebrate Diwali this year.

Children are adapting to the concept of online learning

The entire education industry has been in a dilemma as to whether or not schools should be opened. Although there are advisories to restart classes, when it comes to our little ones, there is no room for any risk. The good news: youngsters are learning how to manage within the framework of the new normal and are doing their best to study with their virtual lessons.

Timeless fashion classics will always be popular during the festive season

Despite the fact that we are planning virtual meet-ups with family and friends amid the pandemic, the need for a festive range of clothes is always top priority during the festivals.

Make smart investments on auspicious occasions

Its that time of the year again when people flock to the stores to buy some yellow metal to add a touch of auspiciousness to Diwali. However, is buying physical gold still a feasible option?

Breakfast is the new lunch for intermittent fasters

As intermittent fasting becomes more popular, the first meal of your day must be healthy and wholesome.

This practice of two meals a day can actually help your body recover from chronic diseases. What matters is that you stay on course with food, sleep, and a healthy lifestyle.

Rajat Jadhav

Are your favourite writers Nicholas Taleb, Herman Hesse, Jordan Peterson and Matt Talibi? Is your hero of fiction James Bond? Is your dream journey a trek through Spiti Valley?

As for his motto, Put blinders on and keep going through hard times, he believes is the best way to conquer challenges and work towards a brilliant future.

Dont miss reading all about Rajat's greatest loves, hates, regrets, treasures, and more in his responses to our Proust Questionnaire.

More here:
Best of Weekender: India is finding light in the darkness with simple, small-scale celebrations this Diwali - YourStory

For the 102 English people aboard the Mayflower, this very week four centuries ago was one they would never forget.

After more than 65 days on a perilous, storm-tossed journey at sea, they sighted land (Cape Cod) on November 9, 1620. They dropped anchor on November 11. In between, they produced a document to establish what historian Rebecca Fraser describes as the first experiment in consensual government in Western history between individuals with one another, and not with a monarch.

We recognize that 200-word statement today as the Mayflower Compact. Its quadricentennial should be noted and appreciated by freedom-lovers everywhere.

Frasers observation is an important one. Previous statements and declarations in which freedom was a factor were agreements between an aggrieved people and the king or queen who ruled them. Magna Carta, for example, created a new relationship between English nobles and King John in 1215.

The Mayflower Compact, however, had nothing directly to do with the State. It was a private contract between the men among the Pilgrims and the men among the other half of the passengers, called strangers by the Pilgrims because they were placed on the ship by the sponsors in Britain to provide necessary skills to help the new colony succeed.

During the voyage, tensions between the Pilgrims and the strangers grew. When storms blew the ship off course and it became obvious they would land well north of Virginia, the strangers nearly mutinied. They argued that the wrong destination voided their agreement to assist the colony.

Compelled by circumstances (survival hung in the balance) to settle the issue one way or another, the passengers did the adult and civil thing. They put in writing a promise to each other to form a government of consent. Its laws would bind them all without religious or political discrimination. True to the longstanding customs of the day, women could not sign such a legal document but no evidence exists to suggest that if they could, they would have rejected it.

This short video from PBS provides some context:

Philosophers debate the legitimacy of the idea of a social contract. It is routinely taught in school these days that we are all bound by one, and that it demands our subservience to government. Personally, I cannot recall ever receiving my copy, let alone signing it. But if such a thing truly exists, the Mayflower Compact surely comes closest to its ideal. No one on the ship was compelled to sign, and the few who chose not to were either too ill to do so or were sailors intending to return to England.

Nathaniel Philbricks bestseller, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War, expounds on the Compacts significance:

What made the document truly extraordinary was that it applied to a group of people who were three thousand miles from their mother country. The physical reality of all that spaceand all the terror, freedom and insularity it fosteredinformed everything that occurred in the days and years ahead.

In the end, the Mayflower Compact represented a remarkable act of coolheaded and pragmatic resolve[T]hey put pen to paper and created a document that ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution as a seminal American text.

The passengers then elected a Governor and went ashore on November 11. A month later, after some exploration, they opted to sail west to set up their permanent home, which they named Plymouth. Fortuitously, if not miraculously, friendly Indians whose names we should honorMassasoit and Squanto in particularhelped the colony get through rough times. And the colonists learned an important lesson in economics early on when they rejected the starvation policy of communal socialism and embraced private property.

Personally, I love this story because it is so quintessentially American, so sublimely pro-liberty. Why? Let me summarize:

The Pilgrims fled religious persecution at the hands of a government. They made a deal with investors to privately finance a new settlement across the ocean. Half of the passengers on their ship did not share their religious views but together, the Pilgrims and the strangers put their differences aside and signed a social contract to establish a secular self-government. Then they made a peace with the local tribes that lasted half a century. They succeeded and prospered when freedom of enterprise and personal initiative formed the central bedrock of their new society.

In 1776, the American Declaration of Independence asserted that all men are created equal and that to secure their unalienable rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

To Americans who remembered the Mayflower Compact, this was a glorious echo from a century and a half before.

It is no exaggeration to say that the great American experimentthe achievement of self-government, rule of law and enlightened liberty for allbegan not in 1776 but in 1620. We are still on that same voyage and though occasional storms block and even set us back, we remain committed to the ideal.

That, I believe, is what it really means to be an American.

Text of Mayflower Compact

Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser

Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1645 by William Bradford

America Wasnt Founded on Slavery in 1619, But on Pilgrims Ideals Written in 1620 by Peter W. Wood

Remembering Warwick Charlton, Builder of Mayflower II by Lawrence W. Reed

Why the Pilgrims Abandoned Common Ownership for Private Propertyby Lawrence W. Reed

How the Mayflower Compact Laid a Foundation for American Democracy by Sarah Pruitt

1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project by Peter W. Wood

See the article here:
The Mayflower Compact: As an Idea, America Began in 1620, Not 1776 - Foundation for Economic Education

Last week, Oregon voted to decriminalize the possession of all drugs. Ballot Measure 110 passed with a whopping 59 percent of the vote.

Numerous other states voted to legalize recreational cannabis on Election Day as well, namely Arizona, New Jersey, Montana, and South Dakota. Across the board, voters struck down policies that supported the War on Drugs at every opportunity they were given.

But Oregons initiative is by far the most sweeping progression weve seen on this front to date. Its also different from actions taken in other states because the vote did not legalize drugs, but rather decriminalized them. This means it removed criminal penalties attached to the possession of drugs but didnt all-out legalize thema very important distinction.

Beginning February 1, Oregonians caught carrying small amounts of illegal substances will be met with a $100 fine. If they choose to not pay it, or if they are unable to, they can agree to a health assessment at an addiction recovery center instead where they may be prescribed customized treatment plans.

While Oregon might be the first state in our country to try this approach, it isnt an unprecedented strategy.

The ballot measure also expanded access to recovery treatments, housing, and harm reduction services, measures the state will fund through the reallocation of tens of millions of dollars from Oregons cannabis tax. Additionally, it redirects the money saved from not arresting, prosecuting, and caging people for drug possession to treatment services as well.

The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission estimates that Measure 110 will reduce drug possession convictions in the state by 90 percent. Ultimately, this directive removes drug use from the purview of the criminal justice system, and chooses to instead focus on treatment opportunities. For those reasons, the campaign found strong support in the states medical and healthcare communities, which have witnessed first-hand the abject failure of drug criminalization.

While Oregon might be the first state in our country to try this approach, it isnt an unprecedented strategy.

Portugals case study shows that decriminalization does not necessarily lead to higher drug use rates.

Almost two decades ago, in the midst of a heroin epidemic that was ravaging the country, Portugal decriminalized most forms of drug possession. Drug trafficking remained illegal, but drug users were viewed as ill instead of being treated as criminals. Instead of being imprisoned, drug users were taken before a drug court made up of psychologists, social workers, and legal experts who sought health-focused solutions when they were apprehended.

Data from Portugals experiment show it was an overwhelming success.

Arrest rates for drug-related offenses have dropped by 60 percent since 2001, while the number of people enrolled in treatment programs went up a reciprocal amount. Too, Portugals drug overdose death rate has plummeted, and HIV infections fell from 1,575 cases in 2000 to 78 cases in 2013. Meanwhile, Portugals drug usage rate has remained lower than the average use rates in Europe and drastically lower than those found in the US.

Portugals case study shows that decriminalization does not necessarily lead to higher drug use rates, as many critics claim. But despite the countrys success, others have been slow to follow in its footstepslikely due to the entrenched special interests working to keep these policies in place.

It has been said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, and America is no exception as we seem to be living in a Groundhogs Day of perpetually failing policy.

In the 1920s, alcohol prohibition led to an increase in consumption, the production of more dangerous beverages, a rise in organized crime, rampant corruption among public officials, a court and prison system stretched to the brim, and an increase in the crime rate. Sound familiar?

By every available metric, the War on Drugs has failed.

And yet Americans seemingly learned nothing from this period in our history and instead tried the whole charade again with the War on Drugs.

Of all our governments colossally bad ideas, the War on Drugs has stood out for its horrific disruption of the family unit, destabilization of whole communities, devastation of millions of lives, and utter inability to curb addiction in any meaningful way. And thats not even mentioning the fiscal and economic costs of this behemoth.

By every available metric, the War on Drugs has failed.

The country has spent well over a trillion dollars enforcing drug criminalization. In fact, its estimated the federal government spends $9.2 million every day just to incarcerate people for drug-related offenses. States spend another $7 billion or so a year.

We incarcerate hundreds of thousands of individuals for non-violent drug offenses. These people then cant work a job and contribute to our society while in prison, and they will have a hard time returning to a productive life when they are released.

These are people whose families and children struggle to make ends meet without their support. And most importantly, these are people who are not getting the help they need. In fact, a person is most likely to overdose in the weeks after they are first released from prison. The social costs of the War on Drugs are staggering.

Product bans merely limit the supply of a substance and the competition that can provide it, which in turn makes the price increase on the black market

And we do all of this for horrible results. Americans account for less than 5 percent of the worlds population but consume 80 percent of all opioids produced globally. Throughout its reign, the drug war has contributed to an increase in drug overdoses, led to the creation of violent drug cartels, fostered unemployment, and safe-guarded corrupt public officials.

Anyone can look at the current picture and recognize the War on Drugs has failed. But for those whove studied economics, the outcomes have been predictable and predicted for centuries.

Economist Frederic Bastiat famously wrote about that which is seen and that which is unseen in his essay The Law. When considering matters of public policy, most people consider only what they see and what they intend for an action to do.

In this case, nearly everyone acknowledges that drugs are harmful and that it would be desirable to rid our society of them. The intended goal of the War on Drugs has clearly been to eradicate society of an evil most agree upon.

Its important to remember the limitations of government.

But that which is unseen, all of the unintended consequences of an action, are what good and smart leaders think of when determining the law. When it comes to the drug war, the unintended consequences have far outweighed any intended good from the policy.

The economic principle of the seen and the unseen plays out time and time again when the government seeks to curb behavior through product bans, which we know do not work.

Product bans merely limit the supply of a substance and the competition that can provide it, which in turn makes the price increase on the black market and pads the pockets of the drug cartelsleading to criminal activity, abuse, and corruption. This remains true whether we are talking about gun bans, drug bans, or any other prohibition.

Its important to remember the limitations of government. Do we want people to stay away from drugs and choose treatment when they need help? Of course we do!

Does it help to force them or jail them should they choose not to?

Not at all.

Fortunately, it seems Americans are waking up to these principles, even as our leaders are slow to unwind themselves from the clenches of the drug war. Encouragingly, the coalition who successfully moved this ballot initiative in Oregon is poised to replicate it in other states in the near future.

If Oregon finds success on this pathway, and they seemed poised to, we can hope that others will follow suit.

Follow this link:
Oregon Takes the Lead on Ending the War on Drugs | Hannah Cox - Foundation for Economic Education