Accompan–¡phhh! ¿Can you believe this cover exists? ¡It’s so bad!

Most mainstream economists–most notably Paul Samuelson, the most influential economist in the US, in his highly-influential college textbook, Economics–claim that economics can be split into normative economics, which includes issues such as income distribution, & ’bout which economist claim they should not discuss since it’s not objective, & “positive economics,” which mainly focuses on the “efficiency” o’ an economy, which is s’posedly objective.

This “efficiency” is based on a concept known as “Pareto Efficiency,” which is a case in which no change can be made that could improve one’s wellbeing without hurting ‘nother.

Already, one well-versed in English should see many problems with “Pareto Efficiency” being “objective” & “non-normative”:

1st, “wellbeing,” as well as the increase or decrease o’ such, is inherently subjective. Making any judgment ’bout whether anyone is made “better off” or not must inherently be normative, & thus “Pareto Efficiency” must be inherently normative.

Economists base their judgment on whether people are made better off or not based on a “competitive market” model that relies on many faulty assumptions that they themselves acknowledge are faulty–too many flaws to list, but I talk ’bout how inherently paradoxical the concept o’ a “competitive market” is in ‘nother article. The idea is that a “competitive market” naturally leads to efficiency through supply & demand: people get their wants served by getting money for serving other people willing to spend money & spending that money on anything they’re willing to spend money on. This is a s’posed “objective” system to serving subjective values.

This leads to a big conundrum: Pareto Efficiency not only relies on income distribution, but has an inherent bias toward the status quo income distribution. As we indicated earlier, economists claim that income distribution is inherently normative; economists acknowledge that they can’t objectively determine what is & is not an objectively-correct income distribution, thanks to the effects o’ all the chaos o’ the past (imperialism & slavery are only the biggest examples) & the fact that in a system o’ capital, one’s current income determines one’s potential for future income (one’s potential for investment is an obvious example).

But income distribution doesn’t only affect one’s potential for further economic gain, but also their ability to make purchase choices–to make what economists call “money votes.” It affects the distribution o’ commodity demand, which affects supply. If mo’ money went from people who eat meat to vegans, then obviously that would affect the profitability, & thus production, o’ businesses that sell vegetables & those that sell meat, to use an example as simplistic & made-up as those customary to economics.

As noted, the market’s Pareto Efficiency relies on supply & demand, & thus income distribution. Indeed, economists acknowledge this when they claim that income redistribution hurts efficiency. But this seems to assume that the status quo is the objectively-correct distribution–a claim that economists explicitly say that they aren’t saying, that is purely normative.

Indeed, Pareto Efficiency in general has a bias toward the status quo, with its talk o’ making people “better off” or “worse off” compared to the present state, giving an unfair bias toward the present state as the center for relation. In reality, the existence o’ any possible system o’ “Pareto Inefficiency” should inherently mean that the current system must be “Pareto Inefficienct” compared to that system. By definition, if one makes A better off by making B worse off, then going in reverse must make that B better off by making A worse off.

For example, economists claim that while a “competitive market” makes, for example, a CEO swimming in cash & goods better off by giving him e’en mo’ & a starving laborer better off by giving her the money to eat a’least 1 french fry a day (¡hooray for extreme examples!), income redistribution makes the latter better off by giving her the money to eat a’least 1 french fry a day but makes the former worse off by taxing ‘way a $ out o’ his billions, thereby punishing the possession o’ billions & making that CEO not want to make billions anymo’ in such envy o’ the woman who got 2 free french fries from the government.

But this all revolves round the current situation. If we flip things round–if we assume that the distribution o’ 2 free french fries for the woman & $1 short for the CEO as the center, & the $10 gained for the CEO & the single french fry gained for the starving woman¹–then we must conclude that to not redistribute income is “Pareto Inefficient” in that it makes the starving woman worse off than the CEO.

In fact, there exists no situation in which you could make everyone better off, since there will always be situations that can make someone e’en mo’ better off, & thus in contrast to that, the situation that makes “everyone better off” makes that other someone worse off.

Thus, the assumption that a “competitive market” that produces mo’ meat than veggies is mo’ efficient ’cause mo’ people want to pay for meat than veggies relies on the assumption that those who pay for the meat deserve the money they have to pay for it & that there aren’t people who, given money, would spend mo’ on veggies.

But there’s mo’: demand not only affects supply, but also price, & thus price is reliant on income distribution; & since GPD is based on prices, GPD is also reliant on income distribution–which means that assuming that certain prices or GPD are “objectively efficient” means assuming that the current income distribution is inherently correct. Since economists can’t do the latter, they can’t do the former. They can’t truly say that any prices are objectively mo’ efficient than others, nor that any GPD is objectively efficient compared to others.

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Footnotes:

1 As Samuelson would say, where I derived these totally scientific #s is a technological engineering question. So get to answering my questions, technological engineers; I don’t have all day.

A purple too minty to snatch,

so always it’s fading to black;

& all your strong crescent-shaped curves

are melted to coffee-desk burns.

& the firs disperse…

I tried every setting, but none

would work: neither higher exposure,

nor color enhancements. ¿So what

resource will for once offer closure?

“Photo-taking poser…”

& look, I did try to research…

but all I could find were e’en more

those idiot numbered lists churned

by hit-grabbing narcissist whores.

Straying from the core…

Inside I found mo’ settings &

then went outside to try again,

but found the crescent moon had left.

¿& don’t that just fuck me in th’ass

to death?

¡Ack!

The problem with feel-good ideas is that there’s usually a lack o’ standards applied to them, which encourages mindlessness like lead poisoning. This is ‘specially the case with a raw issue like suicide, a complex issue that has no easy rational answers, & yet has extreme consequences.

It’s quite easy to puke out irrational answers, but I doubt it’s easy to actually help someone with them, e’en if you put the pound sign before some mess o’ words mashed together to noncomprehensibility (I love how the internet is making us go backward in terms o’ linguistic development by making us forget how to use spaces). I already mentioned in a previous article wherein I seriously discuss this issue by making fun o’ a teenager’s 1st poem that proves the inherent badness o’ suicide with the famed “Missed Sunset Theory,” wherein I question the effectiveness o’ telling someone thinking o’ suicide, “Duh, don’t do it. Life’s sunny” & passing the buck to suicide prevention hotlines (which was the most effective, actually) & argued that talking ’bout suicide as a single issue was probably futile & only fed this abstraction to the point o’ mindlessness that makes anti-suicide rhetoric so useless.

¡But look @ how my prayers have been answered! Some shadowy figure named YOU’RE NOT FINISHED–whose name sounds mo’ threatening than calming: “DON’T YOU DARE COMMIT SUICIDE. YOU’RE NOT FINISHED. YOU GET RIGHT BACK HERE YOU SON O’ A BITCH”–offers a mathematically-tight proof that suicide is no good, man, in an article full o’ too many insipid Twitter hashtags for me to type here without needing to commit suicide myself in consummate shame:

I have heard (more than I ever want to) from some that suicide is freedom. Suicide is death, so that means if suicide is freedom, death is freedom (according to the math).

Actually, that’s a logical fallacy. Based on that same logic, we can prove that Stevie Wonder is god by showing the Stevie Wonder is blind, & love is blind, & God is love; therefore, blind is God, & thus Stevie Wonder is god.

I could also point out that to call this “math” stretches the definition o’ “math,” which is only 1 definition mangled here. Clearly YOU’RE NOT FINISHED is assuming that “is” means “equals,” & not “is 1 o’ potentially many examples o’,” as it’s clearly used here. It’s also true that murder is death, but no one would call that freedom. When people call suicide “freedom,” they’re focusing on the choice o’ death, the part that distinguishes suicide from other types o’ death. Hence why they say “suicide is freedom” rather than simply “death is freedom.”

Let’s unpack that for a second. To make sure I got this right I looked up the definition of freedom, knowing that word is objective. It can be interpreted to mean so many things to so many people. Three definitions stood out to me most:

Well, you failed there, unfortunately, before you e’en got to this point, & hereafter. Your “knowledge” that the word “freedom” “is objective,” for instance, is quite wrong. Anyone who knows anything ’bout language knows that it’s all, by nature, made up & therefore has no objectivity. “Objectivity” comes from concrete nature, not from people’s minds. That’s why it’s called objectivity–the focus is that it is a concrete object that can be sensed.

Notably, too, YOU’RE NOT FINISHED finished this paragraph wherein they claimed to look up the definition o’ “freedom” without bothering to provide a source, & then admits that the definitions they chose were simply those that “stood out” (can be used to back up the conclusion they already want to decide).

1) the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or physical restraint
2) exemption from external control
3) personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery

Note that these definitions are so vague (& to some extent simply repeats the word in a different way) that it could apply to any possible existence, making true freedom impossible. Only the 3rd entry is concrete ‘nough to be meaningful & it’s, tellingly, quite an open definition: pretty much every modern person in the western world would fall under that definition.

But that’s digression. Let’s look @ YOU’RE NOT FINISHED’s brilliant “math” theory:

When you die, you are confined to a coffin.. [sic] […]

Actually, your body is. By definition, if one’s dead, one doesn’t exist.

[…] subjected to people’s perception of you… […]

That’s true o’ being ‘live, too. Mo’ importantly, nowhere in the aforementioned definitions o’ freedom is there anything ’bout controlling other people’s perceptions o’ oneself. That would, ironically, be a violation o’ their freedom o’ thought.

[..] not at liberty to change and better your circumstances or live out your purpose.

Uh O: they’re breaking out into poem. I can already see the sunsets coming.

I don’t think I’d consider “better your circumstances” or “live out your purpose” to be precise ‘nough to be useful for a “mathematical” theory. Also, the rhetoric they use, putting the word “at liberty to” before it, could be used for anything. Indeed, that’s what that word-salad poem I made fun o’ before did:

• You’re not @ liberty to pick what song to play on the radio,
• you’re not @ liberty to pick your nose clean o’ snot,
• you’re not @ liberty to clean out your garage,
• you’re not @ liberty to kill yourself

(Note: that last 1 is actually a serious point–that “suicide is freedom” is self-contradictory, since suicide, ironically, eliminates one’s ability to commit suicide. [Granted, such logic would eliminate almost all freedoms, given the inevitable permanence o’ one’s actions, leading me back to my belief that nothing’s “free”] ‘Course, YOU’RE NOT FINISHED doesn’t bother with such technical nonsense, ’cause it’s clear that they don’t understand basic logic & would rather puke out flowery cliches ‘stead.)

[…] Not free to love and be loved. […]

Like these. Note that the freedom “to be loved” hinges on someone else, & thus the only way to ensure it is to eliminate someone else’s freedom.

[…] You’re gone. […]

(Laughs.) & ‘gain we see someone momentarily hitting a ’bout o’ self-awareness & admitting that their nonsense is helping no one, & thus anyone suicidal ‘nough to need to read this is probably doomed, anyway. Mo’ like YOU ARE FINISHED, ¿amirite?

All of those definitions, even the other two I did not list, […]

Wait, wait, wait: hold on. ¿What other 2? ¿Why aren’t you listing them? ¿Why bring up something that you refuse to e’en tell us? ¿Are you Fermat? ¿Did you prove the Theory o’ Suicide’s Badness, but ran out o’ room in the margin o’ your blog post to type it out?

[…] imply that you have to be alive to experience freedom which means that death could not possibly equal freedom in any circumstance, no matter who you are.

Literally the only example YOU’RE NOT FINISHED–god that’s a stupid name; it’s e’en dumber than “Careerealism” & “Post-Keynesianism”–that is relevant to the listed definitions is the 1st 1 ’bout being stuck in a coffin, which relies on the assumption that someone who choses to leave any consciousness or awareness o’ their body cares what happens to their body afterward, which is doubtful.

& now that I think ’bout it, you could just choose to have your body cremated or e’en frozen. So e’en the assumption that suicidal people have no control o’er their body after they die is obviously false.

This is like the “neoclassicalism” o’ suicidology–& just as useless for curing depression.

Spoiled brats whine ’bout how the evil idiotic public through evil democracy doesn’t give them what they, the supposedly superior elites, want, & while doing so prove exactly why the idiotic public shouldn’t listen to the e’en stupider elites.

Washington Post in particular had a stupid article on the issue, where they basically make fun o’ democracy by pointing out some random effects that could’ve had an effect on the results, but to which we have no evidence they do, & them simply stating that they don’t know why certain people supported a certain way. Maybe you could be actual journalists & ask somebody, dumbasses.

Indeed, e’en as someone rather skeptical o’ e’en referendums as instruments o’ democracy (see later), this article talking ’bout how people went to extreme depths to get to a polling station belies that idea that this was simply absentminded voting. Usually we criticize the vulgar masses for neglecting to vote. The only connection this article made to the “leave” side was that it characterized them as caring mo’–‘gain, without any evidence to back this up. E’en if that were the case, the fact that the other side didn’t e’en care that much could say something ’bout that side.

Meanwhile, “Ethicist” (read: person highly paid off heavily-tax-funded college for spewing mindless drivel) Jason Brennan was so riled up that he decided to write a whole book Against Democracy & decided to exploit Brexit as a way to whore his book to the mass media.

He claims that “[t]o have even a rudimentary sense of the pros and cons of Brexit, a person would need to possess tremendous social scientific knowledge. One would need to know about the economics and sociology of trade and immigration, the politics of centralized regulation, and the history of nationalist movements,” but that “there is no reason to think even a tenth of the UK’s population has a basic grasp of the social science needed to evaluate Brexit.”

Curiously, Brennan doesn’t bother to offer a slice o’ info, other than some anecdotal story ’bout dumb Britons Googling questions ’bout what the EU is–without any evidence that those same questions were posed by people who voted “no,” or were e’en people who voted @ all, or were e’en the majority. Possibly his lack o’ economic enlightenment on Brennan’s part is ’cause anyone who actually has read much economics knows how simpleminded it is ‘hind its pretty graphs & how much o’ an utter failure it has been @ predicting anything.

Indeed, London’s stocks have been growing, as e’en Krugman had to admit (while arguing that this will still have some disastrous consequences for some vague future). He then defends economists alarmist ’bout short-term consequences as essentially lying for the public’s good, since the public is apparently too dumb for subtle messages (so much for the enlightened elites guarding the public gainst their bad tendencies) for being well-intentioned, e’en if wrong.

Then we get this hilarious end, typical o’ Krugman:

Unfortunately, that sort of thing, aside from being inherently a bad practice, can all too easily backfire. Indeed, the rebound in British stocks, which are now above pre-Brexit levels, is already causing some backlash against conventional economists and their Chicken Little warnings.

Commenter ReaganAnd30YearsOfWrong gave the perfect response:

Krugman thinks economists still have credibility. Seriously.

But back to Brennan: he describes his point in the way most thorough scientists do: some clumsy metaphor ’bout a doctor who apparently knows nothing ’bout medicine & is basing his views on “prejudice” & “whishful thinking” putting a gun to your head & forcing you to use his treatment. That social sciences like economics & politics are significantly less certain than chemistry–hence why they’re called “soft sciences”–is apparently beyond this brilliant “ethicist.” He contrasts this with monarchy, which is apparently knowledgeable doctors doing such to serve their own interests (actually, that’s meritocracy; last time I checked, monarchs don’t have to pass civics tests to be born to the right family). He then offers some made-up “epistocracy” as a 3rd option–an option that he describes incredibly vaguely so that you have to buy his book to actually know what it is, which no one in their right mind would do. All he says is that it involves some reapportioning o’ voting power based on knowledge. Since what is & isn’t “knowledgeable” is ultimately decided by humans, that makes this a circular-logic affair–a brilliant basis for a political system (not surprising from a market thumper, since markets work the same way). Presumably, he implies that colleges–¡which produced such brilliant minds as Brennan, as well as Mankiw, George W. Bush, & pretty much every politician!–determine voting, which would make them electoral manipulators, if not outright oligarchs.

He then admits that he has no evidence that this system would be any better than “democracy” (it should be pointed out that Brennan makes an outright contradiction when he variously calls western societies “democratic” & “republican,” while, accurately, distinguishing these 2 concepts), &, in fact, has no evidence for anything. Essentially, this “ethicist” is just pissing into the wind (that must be the “horse-piss” Marx warned us ’bout).

He then concludes the article by complaining ’bout an unproven (a’least by him in this article) rise in “angry, resentful” “nationalist, xenophobic, & racist” movements that pad out their word count with redundant words, & claims that they are low-information voters, which he also provides no evidence for. He seems to imply that those who voted for Brexit are these stupid racist assholes–my own much mo’ concise term for what he said–without any evidence proving that Brexit voters were particularly racist or stupid–he only proved that some Britons became mo’ curious ’bout what the European Union was hours after voting, without any knowledge o’ what side those Britons preferred or whether these Britons e’en voted @ all, & without any evidence that these Britons were anywhere close to the majority.

Not included in this article is any serious look @ the reasons given for Brexit, though the internet, being the internet, is hardly free o’ it. For instance, Steve Keen @ that den o’ the resentful bigoted peasants, Forbes, offers some reasons–ironically, including the lack o’ democracy in the European Union. Brennan himself offers no economic insight on why Brexit might be bad; but considering he’s the writer o’ Markets without Limits, we can guess that he himself is a “low-information voter,” by his own definition, since not e’en the most raving market-thumper economist would e’er support such a thing.

But e’en the liberal critics o’ Brexit rarely talk ’bout the specifics o’ why Brexit would be so bad, other than that some o’ the people who support it happen to be racists, which is such an obvious ad hominem attack–‘specially for a college-educated “ethicist,” whom you’d s’pose would have a solid understanding o’ logic 101, which only shows how o’errated such “prestigious” colleges are when they turn out such dopes as Brennan. Rarely do they e’en discuss the questions o’ how democratic the European Union is or the way it limits deficit spending, or simply the fact that it has failed to improve Europe’s recessions & unemployment problems for almost a decade–&, in fact, has done worse than the US. This last criticism could be applied to economists in general, as well, although they could use the alibi that some governments ignore them, anyway.

Actually, sadly, the only coherent left-wing criticism o’ Brexit I heard was from a slap-dash website from anarchists (which, granted, still adhominems Brexit by pointing out people who supported it–ignoring that such corporate conspiracies as gay marriage have also been funded by rich people), wherein they point out that the assumption that austerity would’ve been prevented–or would be ended–by a lack o’ Britain involvement in the EU is foolish.

That’s a common problem I’ve seen ‘mong “free trade” supporters, & the fact that many o’ the people I’ve seen complain ’bout Brexit, such as Brennan, Krugman, & Noah Smith, ‘mong others, are big proponents o’ “free trade,” that may ‘splain this. “Free trade” pushers, in addition to applying an immensely propagandist & dishonest label (usually this is “free” for people with money, but quite restricting on governments to the behest o’ bigger organizations, like the EU itself, as well as usually involving stronger restrictions in terms o’ copyright), oft simply insult “free trade” skeptics rather than actually engage any o’ the ideas they present. I’m reminded o’ economist Charles Wheelan in Naked Economics–admittedly a book meant for the “dumb masses,” & thus dumbed down e’en further than Samuelson or Mankiw–essentially just criticizes skepticism o’ “free trade” as “they throw rocks @ windows,” in reference to the NAFTA protests in Seattle. Similarly, here, rather than engage critics o’ Brexit, they would rather depict them as the most vulgar o’ racists–e’en Steve Keen, who not only attacks racists in the linked article (which doesn’t mean much by itself), but also says he supports open immigration, while criticizing aspects that have nothing to do with race @ all. Which, in a sense, is simply a way for them to hypocritically demonstrate their prejudice gainst the average working class people–the depiction o’ them as resentful ignorant racists is an ol’ stereotype. But then, the major hypocrisy o’ western culture is the way it demonizes racism, but upholds rich supremacy, e’en though e’en economists admit they can’t prove that people who are poor did anything themselves to deserve it, & that one’s wealth is heavily influenced by aspects they can’t control, such as one’s wealth @ birth.

That’s the most mystifying part o’ so many o’ these laissy lib & economist “meritocrats” so critical o’ the “dumb masses”: these so-called “meritocrats” are usually dumber than the average person. That &, no different from Brennan’s monarchy doctor analogy, their true goal is to serve themselves, not the majority for whom they reveal they hold nothing but contempt.

To be fair, I thought The Atlantic’s article was rather balanced–as good a summary o’ the issues as you could probably do in such short space. They e’en mention what I think is a legitimate critique o’ referendums as a form o’ democracy: that narrowing questions to just “yes” or “no” still stifles & manipulates the public. (The Anarchist Writers page does the same, creating an odd situation in which moderate liberals & anarcho-socialists agree.)

I would actually say I have mixed views ’bout both the European Union & “free trade”–not the least o’ which being a less Orwellian name for the latter. For 1, one could point out that this “democracy” in regards to an international issue excludes others in the world, which is the ethical equivalent o’ a plot o’ private land within a country voting within itself to secede from its country so it doesn’t have to obey its laws. As The Anarchist Writers article points out, it’s simply the replacement o’ neoliberal superstitions with nationalist superstitions–& superstitions are still superstitions. Honestly, to call anything limited within a certain nationality “democracy” is as erroneous as calling voting ‘tween just a small elite “democracy”–it’s what we call “oligarchy.” The very definition o’ “democracy” is that it includes everyone; thus the only true “democracy” is international. Anyone who praises national democracy but criticizes oligarchy is simply a hypocrite, since they follow the same logic. & anyone who supports socialism–or a’least has skepticism toward income distribution–are just as hypocritical for assuming that the current distribution o’ nations is just simply due to historical tradition.

That said, forcing the public to not be superstitious–& I will agree that the masses can be superstitious–won’t fix anything, ‘specially since we can’t assure that the elite won’t be superstitious, as can be proven by their love for simplistic “economic” models. & that said, nor should one mindlessly support what the masses believe just ’cause they believe in it. That would be corrupt–a self-perpetuating circle o’ the masses following the masses simply ’cause the masses say so: a circle jerk.

But we already have the best solution that could already exist: democracy with freedom o’ speech. We let the majority decide & we try to urge & educate the majority as much as possible, without forcing gainst them.

But perhaps ‘stead o’ simply throwing ad hominem attacks @ skeptics & trying to crush public will when they dare to defy them, supporters could try to have a slight semblance o’ compromise & maybe such extreme rebukes gainst them wouldn’t happen.

But then ‘gain, the fact that the so-called experts refuse to be reasonable might just be evidence that having the public rely on them to help them is futile–‘specially when they think so li’l o’ the public. Quite the opposite, it shows that the public refusing to submit to the will o’ an elite that despises them so much is the smartest decision they could e’er make.

Or, as it’s called in Europe: Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island.

Since I’ve been talking ’bout ol’ Game Boy Advance, I might as well write ’bout the other games for which I have strange nostalgic stories.

Though my family had a Genesis, we only had a few games, & only 1 o’ which I cared ’bout & involved Sonic: Sonic 3D Blast. As strange as it’ll sound, this was the only Sonic game I’d played or known ’bout for a while, till playing Sonic 3 a few years later. I didn’t play any o’ the other ol’ Sonic games till I was a young teen, on some GameCube collection.

‘Cause o’ this, this game has still been rather embedded in my mind as the iconic Sonic game; & in particular, the “Green Grove Zone Act 1” song is to me the prime Sonic song, not the forgettable “Green Hill Zone.”¹ But in truth, just ’bout every song in this game makes me ooze with nostalgia.

Seriously, the 1st 30 seconds o’ this video encapsulates a huge part o’ my childhood. Also, look @ the rest o’ that video to see some fine cutscene animation. That shit’s Pixar-quality.

So, having grown up adoring this game as a kid, I was surprised when I saw so many people on the internet not like this game so much—in fact, thinking this game is shit & blaming it for all the embarrassing lameness, furry fetishes, & shoddy sprite comics that apparently later plagued the series.

Here are just a few review headlines from GameFaqs:

• You could’ve worked on a real 3D Sonic game instead, Sega.
• Not a blast. Not 3D. Not really even Sonic. What the hell is it?
• Close, but no Cough Drop [ed: ¿What the fuck does that mean?]
• Not quite a blast – more a snap, crackle and pop
• Where the franchise first jumped the shark – in glorious “3D”
• It’s okay, but not up to the usual standard
• I guess Sonic Isometric Blast was not catchy enough [ed: this is a good point, to be fair]
• The most ridiculously average game I will ever play.
• A Mediocre Effort From Sonic Team and Traveller’s Tales
• Play it for the bosses. The rest sucks.
• Picking up birds isn’t fun in this game.. [sic]
• A great game, if you like headaches
• The Controls Suck
• Mediocrity never tasted so bland

There’s e’en a hack o’ this game that lets you remove the Flickies, whom you need to collect from defeated enemies to go through checkpoints & exits in the normal game. ¿Why? That’s the whole point: without the Flickies, it’s just a lame straightforward line to the exit, with no challenge @ all.

This ‘splains why I liked Sonic 3D Blast mo’ than Sonic fans. Sonic fans apparently despise exploration—or anything that gets in the way o’ going in the straight line. This game’s also much slower than the 2D games, which does sort o’ go gainst the main gimmick o’ the series. Granted, I quite like being able to tell where I’m going, so I didn’t mind that too much. Also, to be fair, the 1st Sonic the Hedgehog game had quite a few slow platforming sections, too. I mean, it wasn’t as if “Labyrinth Zone” was a rocket race. That level also had obnoxious music that droned on for the million minutes you had to spend in it—fuck that level.

Looking back, Sonic 3D Blast is mo’ like a mediocre Mario game than a Sonic game, which is why I rather liked it as a kid, since I always preferred Mario to Sonic. That said, I’ll admit it hasn’t aged well. While the game’s not so fast, Sonic’s movements still are, which makes him feel slippery & hard to control, ‘specially if you’re used to Mario’s steadier controls. (‘Gain, to be fair, the 1st Sonic the Hedgehog game had this exact problem). The isometrics mixed with these controls make actual platforming sections a huge pain in the ass.

But I still stand by this game’s soundtrack is some o’ the best Sonic music e’er—2nd only to maybe the Japanese soundtrack for Sonic CD.

Recommendations:

• “Title Theme”
• “Menu Theme”
• “Green Grove Zone Act 2”
• “Volcano Valley Zone Act 1”
• “Diamond Dust Zone Act 2”
• “Dr. Robotnik’s Theme”
• “Rusty Ruin Zone Act 2”
• “Bonus Theme” (Admittedly not as good as “Special Stage” from Sonic 3).

I’d only recommend watching a speed run o’ this game, honestly, if you don’t have any strange nostalgia for it. Otherwise, you probably won’t give a shit.

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Paul Samuelson is the most influential American economist ‘mong people who have actually read economics (i.e. doesn’t include the average dope who claims Paul “Baby-Sitter’s Club” Krugman or Helicopter Milton Fucking Friedman as filling that role). He wrote the most influential American textbook, the creatively-named Economics, for half a century. Then he let some drunken slob William Nordhaus dumb it down by shoving in mo’ references to the need to maintain market freedumbs & other propagandist noise that gets in the way o’ Paul Samuelson’s sexy curves o’ relationships based on assumptions that he himself within the text admits are probably wrong.

Thus, we will getting this from the 1976 edition, a classic that was unsoiled from Nordhaus’s lecherous grip (&, as a bonus, cost only $5 on Amazon, as opposed to $200 mo’ than I’d e’er pay for a fucking economics book–¡just look @ how that price drop causes the substitution effect to come into place!) To be specific, we’ll look @ page 600 for 1 o’ Samuelson’s sadly underrated theories that proves the net productivity o’ capital:

To see this, imagine two islands exactly alike. Each has exactly the same primary factors of labor and land. Island A uses these primary factors directly to produce consumption product [sic]; she uses no produced capital goods at all. Island B, on the other hand, for a preliminary period sacrificed current consumption; instead, she uses some of her land and labor to produce intermediate capital goods such as plows, shovels, and synthesized chemicals. After this preliminary period of sacrificing current consumption pleasures in the interests of net capital formation, she ends up with a varied stock of capital goods, i.e., with a sizable amount of capital. Now let us measure the amount of consumption product [sic] she can go on permanently producing with her land, labor, and constantly replaced capital goods.

Careful measurement of Island B’s “roundabout” product shows it to be greater than Island A’s “direct” product. Why is it greater? Why does B get more than 100 units of future consumption goods for her initial sacrifice of 100 units of present consumption? That is a technological engineering question. To sum up, the economist traditionally takes the following answer as a basic technical fact:

There exist roundabout processes, which take time to get started and completed, that are more productive than direct processes. [All bolding mine; italics in original.]

A few points to note:

• In Samuelson’s fantasy archipelago, Island A’s resident feeds herself on dirt, while Island B magically makes shovels & synthetic chemicals through only dirt & her brute force.
• This “preliminary period of sacrificing current consumption pleasures” becomes threatening to the whole productivity o’ the operation if it leads Island B’s resident to starve to death before finally producing food–& considering how long it takes to make shovels out o’ dirt, that’s a likely scenario.
• Samuelson’s vague ’bout what “equal primary factors of labor” is, but I’ll assume it’s time spent working. Otherwise we might have to imagine someone not only creating shovels out o’ dirt, but also doing so while only holding said dirt up to their mouth & opening & closing their mouth–& I don’t think a simple time difference in scheduling these actions would change the outcome much, other than the aforementioned starvation problem.
• Samuelson spews random #s that have no basis in the 1st paragraph &, ‘pon asking rhetorically how he arrived @ those #s, turns that rhetorical question into a real question (something I’ve ne’er seen before, but intrigues me on a literary level immensely) by noting that “this is a technological engineering question,” which means that Samuelson essentially admits that his #s were completely made up.
• Samuelson “sums up” by simply noting that economists take some arbitrary, & quite vaguely worded, claim as a traditional given. Acute readers will note that this does not “sum up” this entire thought experiment so much as have nothing to do with said story. “To sum up my story, economists believe for reasons completely unrelated to my story @ all that there are some circular actions that take any real # o’ time–which is to say, they are any kind o’ actions–that are mo’ productive than just eating dirt.” (I may have misinterpreted something.)

  I don’t know why people bitch ’bout economics being “boring”: if you pay attention, it’s hilarious.

  Still, you can’t argue with his central point: if you had a choice ‘tween an island in which you just eat dirt all day or an island in which you can use magic to create all kinds o’ tools & chemicals out o’ just dirt, ¿why would anyone want boring ol’ Island A?

I shuffled my papers so much till they molded into millions.

“Just start with 1 true statement,” said Hemingway.

I stepped up to the microphone & cleared my throat:

I am amazed by how much I prefer the rain to the sun.

¿Was that too many words? ¿Should I have kept it to just, “I prefer the rain to the sun? ¿Would that have been punchier?

She didn’t look @ me. She continued staring down @ the pad in her lap & wrote.

“¿& what do you think makes the rain seem mo’ appealing than the sun?”

O, I dunno.

“Just guess. There’s no wrong answers. It’s your world: do what you want.”

Rain is less dry.

Rain isn’t dry.

It’s wet.

Finally, she looked up @ me. “¿& what makes that mo’ appealing?”

Well, I guess, I guess that it’s just that, that I,

I feel like I can feel it.

Then sun feels so distant,

its dry heat so half-hearted;

but rain touches me up close.

& yet, everyone adores the sun;

¿but who adores the rain,

who creates just as much value,

but gets li’l credit?

“¿You think it’s a li’l unfair, maybe?”

¡It’s injustice!

“It is rather drab, though, ¿don’t you think? All grays.”

¿Is gray not a color?

¿Does it not have just as many lights & darks as purples, greens, & reds?

¿Can it not cooperate with other hues just as much as they do ‘mong each other?

¿Have you forgotten ’bout cobalt? ¿Thistle? ¿Rusty red?

“I guess I had…”

& not all rain is gray:

some is black, some is purple;

some is the color o’ rocky oil,

dancing down thirsty storm drains;

some is patched with the brown, orange, red, & yellow o’ leaves;

some is solar yellow

in front o’ after-midnight streetlamps;

some is every rainbow hue @ once.

She flipped through a few papers.

“Yes, I’ve read you mentioning storm drains & leaves a few times before.

¿Is there anything else you associate with rain?”

Too many things.

Why, just last night I saw a chain link fence

that seemed to sweat under the collaboration

‘tween the rain & the streetlamps.

¿Who could imagine seeing such a thing?

“I mus—

¿Have you see—? O, sorry…

“No, go on.”

¿Have you seen rain stains in the street—

some hours into a cessation after a hard rain?

“No, I haven’t. ¿Do they look good?”

Unbearably beautiful.

“`Unbearable.’ You seem to treat the rain’s beauty as something o’ a tragedy.

¿Is that due to the world not appreciating it?”

Yes.

I don’t know why,

but I like the look o’ something so dreary but harmless—

so pitiful.

Rain’s cute,

the li’l guy.

I guess that says something wrong with me.

She shrugged. “There are many who feel that way.”

You don’t need to patronize me;

I know & accept that there’s something wrong with me.

“¿Why do you think you’re `wrong’ for liking something unpopular, like rain?

¿Didn’t you say yourself that ’twas unjust for other people to not appreciate rain?

Those are just ‘scuses for my refusal to make compromises.

I should learn to love the sun.

That’s how good people succeed.

“¿But didn’t you just criticize them for not compromising on their love for the sun?

Compromises have to go both ways, after all.”

…

It took me a while to realize she was calling my name repeatedly.

“I noticed you have trouble keeping from looking outside.

You just can’t get o’er your love o’ the rain, ¿can you?”

Yes, it’s like heroin.

It’s toxic.

“¿Do you think it’s toxic;

or is it that you think other people think it’s toxic.”

That’s what the winner’s say.

They’re winners for a reason:

they’re right, & I’m wrong.

If you can’t beat e’m…

“¿Who says they’re winners—

or a’least that they’re the only ones who are winners?”

They have money,

& they can get it doing what they want.

People respect them.

“¿But didn’t you say that people were wrong for thinking that?

I thought ’twas `unjust’.”

I take it back,

I take it all back—

the muddy foot tracks,

the crumpled leaves,

the bubbling rain water that looks like oil o’er the concrete…

Fuck…

“¿Is having money & respect worth giving up something you clearly love so much?”

¿What, is money just for decoration?

You can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t live without money.

The rain is struck down by Mammon’s thunder,

nightingales pale to the power o’ the pecuniary,

the steadfast bright star’s ‘stead fastly shot down by universal finance.

That’s why people like Keats & Shakespeare are dead so young,

their dusty work buried to mold,

only truly read by a few ol’ cranks,

while tossed blurry in cobwebbed corners o’ the average mind,

while the gold on which we all revolve shines stronger than all.

¡Yes! ¡Money is everything!

¡Rain is nothing!

Don’t patronize me:

just ’cause I’m a fool,

doesn’t mean you need to feed my foolishness.

Now ’twas time for her to pause in silence.

Finally, she said, “You’re dramatizing:

actually, if you look @ studies,

most people consider such things as aspirations, family, & friends to be mo’ important than money.”

They’re fools.

¿What would they know ’bout themselves?

The fact is that they can’t have any o’ those other things without money.

The average person thinks li’l o’ the sun;

but their lives revolve round its heat & its fuel for oxygen all the same.

“But you yourself said that the rain was just as necessary:

plants can’t live & make oxygen without rain, either.”

¿So?

“So, I ask ‘gain, ¿how can loving the rain be so bad if it’s an objective fact that rain is necessary for life?”

¿“So”?

¿“So”?

So, I can barely pay my rent, my student debt, my gas & car maintenance, these cloud-high sessions that my star-high insurance doesn’t pay for, & food;

¿Who gives a fuck ’bout rain when one has to worry ’bout getting ‘nough to afford this all?

“I’m sorry to hear all that.

It can be stressful to deal with so much in such limited time ‘lone, ¿isn’t it?

It seems to me that maybe that’s 1 other thing that might make rain so appealing:

it’s calming, ¿isn’t it?

In fact, your contrast there seems to explain it:

maybe it’s precisely ’cause rain’s so removed from all the stresses in life that you enjoy it so much.

Maybe what you’re looking for is a temporary ‘scape from the stresses.”

Yes, it’s like opium.

It’s toxic.

It’s a delusion.

You can’t ‘scape the stresses.

“¿Not e’en for a few minutes every so oft?”

&, ¿what, just turn off my mind every so oft?

“Sure. ¿What harm could it do?”

¿How would I do that?

“Just stop thinking ’bout the stresses for a moment.”

¡I can’t! ¡That’s the problem!

¿& what use is breaking off pieces o’ my limited time for something useless?

Successful people don’t do that:

they get rich doing what they want ’cause that’s efficient.

The point is that there’s a diametrical contrast ‘tween what I like & what is successful.

In this world where one’s career is one’s life,

one can’t afford to live like that.

“¿& why can’t you be successful liking the rain?

As you said, it’s necessary.”

I told you: people don’t value it;

& if people don’t value it,

they won’t pay for it.

While poetry ’bout the sun can sell bank,

¿who the hell wants to buy poems ’bout dirty ol’ rain?

“Well, ¿why can’t you convince people to buy poems ’bout rain?

If rain’s as necessary as you say it is,

there must be a market for them.”

But I just shook my head.

No, I checked.

Maybe in years gone…

But now…

But, god, did I love the sound o’ that pattering on my window…

I followed her glance up @ the clock,

having not noticed till now that ’twas ticking similar to the raindrops.

“Well, let’s schedule ‘nother session.

¿Would 2 weeks from now be good?”

I nodded, but my gaze was somewhere else,

my mind was somewhere else.

* * *

“Have a nice day.”

I raised a hand, but didn’t look back.

I stepped out the front door into the embrace o’ the rain.