Black Friday

As a current witness of some crazed Black Friday shoppers, I feel only obligated to blog about the Black Friday frenzies that only seem to keep escalated with each year. This website shows some very revealing videos about the crowds in Walmarts across America this year. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/28/walmart-fight-black-friday_n_4357939.html

The fact that Black Friday now starts at 6:00 pm Thanksgiving night shows how important materialistic items are to our culture. Our day of "thanks" is cut short to go out and buy more things. Ironic isn't it? I remember when Black Friday deals actually started on Friday, then slowly but surely the deals and shops started opening earlier and earlier. Most shops opened at 12:00 AM just last year, and now Walmart has opened its doors as early as 6pm and most other stores at 8:00pm. The most surprising part of this shopping days is the injuries that result. According to USA today, there has been several very serious reports of injuries. At what length will people go to get that cheaper flat screen, IPOD, etc? One example of violence includes a police officer who was injured trying to reduce tensions between two shoppers in a Walmart parking lot. At what lengths will people go to get a marked down item and why do people reach this length?

Michael Hurd offers and interesting approach to some behavior witnessed during Black Friday. He says it is a combination of both crowd psychology and entitlement. Crowd psychology refers to breaking of rules because one sees others doing it. Entitlement shows that people act the way they do because they feel entitled to a cheaper item for whatever reason that might be. It might be that they struggle finically and feel like they deserve this break in prices. Michael Hurd's explanation for Black Friday offers a different approach than the usual "America is very materialistic" argument. I personally think it is fun to go out on Black Friday, but there is a line I will not cross. I will not break rules, injure others, get to caught up on getting one item, or let Black Friday take away from my thanksgiving. Honestly, I just steer clear of Walmart.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2013/11/29/black-friday-police-violence/3783467/

http://www.drhurd.com/index.php/Daily-Dose-of-Reason/Society-Culture/What-Black-Friday-Violence-Means-and-Doesn-t-Mean.html

Freakonomics: Minimum Wage

I have read the entire Freakonomics book before and am a huge fan on how Levitt and Dubner explain "the hidden side of everything". This blogpost did not disappoint as again I found it interesting how a Chris Baltman explained the minimum wage dynamic. He presented the question of whether minimum wage increases unemployment by citing sources for both Indonesia and Depression-stricken America. One of the reasons minimum wage increases worked in Indonesia and not America is because Indonesia has a much bigger under the table, informal employment market. When minimum wage increased it moved informal employment to formal businesses sectors thus increasing the demand for products on a scale of those products who are reported excluding under the table markets. They saw increased demand in localized businesses. Indonesia also has more room for improvement as they do not already have some of the new technologies that could help their market. Indonesia has much more room for new policies, increased wages, stricter labor laws, etc. America has already seen much of the reform that came to Indonesia in the 1990s. This explains why different things work for different countries. Countries are in different stages of development, have different policies, or have yet to implement new policies. Also, markets from different countries vary. They have different natural resources, different governments, different capital, and different trading agreements (tariffs).

The Uprising of Twitter

Twitter has becoming a very happening thing to do in society. You cant escape the twitter craze whether you are a teenager constantly tweeting or simply watching TV hearing "follow this [@fillinblank] on twitter". Twitter went through an approximate 6month waiting period to go public. This is huge for the company. In this process they are getting their net worth and setting fluctuating prices for the stock market. The price went up about $5 in just one week. The information is constantly changing. Twitter is also in fear of what happened in the Facebook "debacle". This whole process is nerve racking for any company even though a failed IPO does not seal a company's fate. Although other social networking sites have seen trouble, I feel as if Twitter is different. (Myspace is basically nonexistent and facebook took about a year to bounce back). Twitter is more intact with this instant source of information kinda of world we live in than other social networking sites. People are constantly giving updates on their lives and following is like the new exchange of phone number. It has also "definitely contributed to the acceleration of the news process and helped to expand the availability of information sources to a wide range of people." Twitter sees revenue from advertising and has seen so much expansion outside the United States. It is so much different than other sites which relates to the immediate success in the website's public debut.

These articles have also brought up another very interesting aspect about economies. I am no economist, but was very intrigued by the power of consumer laid out in these articles. Everything is worth how much consumers are willing to spend. It is exactly how markets are created and the principle behind the supply and demand curve. No company will truly no how much its worth until it goes public and then the companies will see exactly how much people are willing to pay for their stocks.

Bigfoot

For the matter of the shooting, three men were taken into custody and one to the hospital. It seems as this shooting was an accident and that their dishonesty to the police caused their arrests. An interesting aspect that this shooting brought up was bigfoot and our belief in the supernatural. Time and time again in history we have explained what we do not know through what is later regarded as crazy stories. Humans have this want to always establish a cause and effect relationship even when we do not have the appropriate means to do so.This has resulted in stories such as Apollo's chariot making the sun rise, etc.  It seems if we are in a way upset when scientific data refutes our bizarre explanations. Humans also want to believe in something greater than themselves that can explain the things we do not know. It offers as a money source for those who keep the myth going, and a "fun" story to go along with. 

I do not find it surprising that religion and belief in the paranormal are negatively associated. This negative association is due to the fact that religion already has explained so much of what we cannot answer through the belief in one God or for some religions multiple. The bottom line is that humans do not want to be in the dark, we want to know why things are the way they are and form a cause and effect relationship. Our bizarre stories are these answers and regardless of their sanity I will forever believe in the monsters underneath the bed. For me more because it offers so many memories from my childhood. That might hold another reason humans hold onto monsters, unicorns, ghosts, etc. We like the memories and fantasies that can come with them. 

Espionage, tensions in Germany

When I think of allies I think of allies in the terms of America's friends. When I think of friends I think of trust, honesty, and reliability. I do not feel the need to spy on my friends as I trust them. Spying would only create a rift in the relationship as they would become weary of my motives, etc. This is exactly what is happening between American and Germany at the moment. It also does not help that Americans can not come up with a reason for their espionage acts. When asked, a clear answer was not given. Just because we have the resources to do something, does not mean that we should proceed to do so. This was wrong and a breach of trust and contract. I can see where we were coming from in saying that we were looking for terrorists but we should have seeked out an okay from Germany or should have simply asked for their knowledge on the current dilemma. America violated an agreement and is now seeing repercussions in the form of tensions. 

On another note, I only agree with parts of Matthew Yglesias's five part plan to fixing the economy. I especially disagree with step 1. We should not allow the federal reserve to print more money. This will only deflate the dollar anymore. Our dollar already does not hold much value. Printing more money is never the answer, it only leads to inflation. If I had it my way, I would see our dollar return to the gold standard. There would be more worth to the dollar and not a constant ability to print more money when the going gets tough. I agree with raising wages by simply lowering housing taxes. This will result in a stimulation of the economy. People will be more willing to spend if this happens and government would eventually see the money they saw in housing taxes in different forms of taxes. Except that this way the money coming from housing taxes is being poured into the economy as well. 

Tensions in Moscow

The ethnic tensions in Russia is a classic example of the lack of tolerance that exists within cultures. The Muslim/migrants tension with Orthodox Christians in Russia can be related to the Pashtun and Hazara tensions that exists within Afghanistan. It can be loosely related to African American and White tensions that existed in the 1950s. There is many more classic examples of this throughout world history. This lack of tolerance for different beliefs, etc. breaks apart countries and forces people to live in fear. These tensions happen because people tend to want to force their beliefs onto others without consideration of what other might think as right. Opinions play a huge part into the lack of tolerance that exists in this world. Migrants in Moscow are afraid to walk the streets at night. They are also afraid to use public transportation systems. While that dynamic is horrible, migrants need to learn to better assimilate. For example, they should stop at red lights and not give people of Russia a reason to hate them. They should abide by basic laws, by no means change their beliefs, but respect the societal structure of Moscow. As they are migrants they should act like guests and not act "as if it their home". 

The Moscow Riots are a domino effect. Many in Moscow are angered by labor migrants are are demanding increased police control. Police are arresting more, thus resulting in increased tensions. The bottom line is that both groups "must learn to live with each other." Maybe the people in Moscow need to look at the labor migrants and thank them for the oil related economic boom. Maybe the labor migrants need to thank the people in Moscow for sharing the city. They need to meet in the middle and be hospitable, thankful for eachother, and tolerant of the different religions. 

Golden Age of Television

When assigned the topic "Golden Age of Television", I immediately thought of some of the classic TV shows we've all grown up watching. Such television shows include Happy Days, Seinfield, Friends, and of later years Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Even Stevens, and Lizzie McGauire. To me each show listed is as good as every other show listed. I had a hard time picking an exact golden age of television in my mind. When reading the article, I found out, instead, that when referring to the Golden Age of Television they were talking about the criticism that has helped further develop the television shows we watch today. Critics are writing about "the conventions and politics of reality TV, they are critiquing aesthetics and assumptions of channels like Food Network and HGTV, they are advocating for under-seen programs and agitating for greater racial, sexual, and gender parity at the networks responsible for this century's television revolution." This article talks about online criticism versus hard copy criticism as well. I tend to trust paper criticism more because almost anybody has access to posting on the internet making the sources distrust able.

I found it very interesting when the article mentioned the aptitude of shows to produce series about either a gangster, murderer, businessperson, hero, anti-hero, etc. People want entertainment, they do not necessarily want the main characters that would most accurately resemble their lives. People want to see excitement, action, and comedy that could otherwise lack in their own lives. They want to see the gangster, murderer, and hero not so much the your everyday business person.