The airport, to some, can be a fairly confusing place. How are people shaped by this rather unique environment? How do airports control movement, and how do they balance our demands for safety while constructing a space which ensures some feeling of privacy? I direct readers to take a look at Ventriloquism, where Duncan provides great insight into the relationship between people and place, this time focusing on the airport.
One thing in particular digs at me. Regarding lighting, I always found it odd that airports resort to indirect lighting which illuminates rooms in such a way that makes any given point in any given day indistinguishable from any other. They flood rooms such that shadows are absent and exposure is distributed without any relevance to one's geographical position in a room or the actual time of day. This seems surprising, considering the dominion
So, don't you find it odd that a space which is so dependent on clock-based efficiency would create an environment that is essentially timeless? Lighting not only disrupts one's sense of position but also of time in such a way that can have profound effects on the way a person functions biologically and psychologically. In Athens, I spent a night at the airport in a room void of natural light, something that many rooms in this particular airport lacked. If you've ever done something like this, it has a profound effect on how the body operates the rest of the day (that is, it doesn't). By manipulating the body's exposure to light at odd intervals, you can greatly disrupt sleep-wake cycles (genetic studies done with flies and mice confirm the biological clock factor). Sleeping directly under artificial light takes a noticeable toll on the body as it tries to accommodate its need for sleep and the environmentally induced desire to stay awake.
I know, I know. Nobody is really supposed to sleep in airports; they are, as Duncan mentions, for movement and efficiency, which are antithetical to the act of sleeping. However, if you happen to fall asleep and don't know for how long, nothing other than a dizzying configuration of monitors can give you any insight into WHEN you are (such was the case at Heathrow where I narrowly made my flight). In that respect, airports seem to be a vacuum of space. Goods are duty-free, it has no time, and as Duncan deftly observes, subtle variation in spatial configuration confuses feelings of geometrical position within it. Although it is your gateway to anywhere, the airport is nowhere, such that a person awaiting a flight in Barajas (Madrid) could feel as if they were flying out of LaGuardia (New York). Time reinforces that notion of nowhere, since time-zone differences become irrelevant when inside the airport it's zero hour regardless.
I have no conclusion, it merely reflect on the observations of another and try to answer the various questions that those observations induce. I must say, turning off this light in my bedroom at 3:30AM, I'm just happy that my home is somewhere.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
And the Feds come marching in...
Megan McArdle of The Atlantic responds positively to a Gary Becker piece virtually absolving banks of their responsibility (moral, mostly) in the sub-prime mortgage debacle. Both the article and the response offer fairly predictable reactions to the issue, choosing to fall back on economic theory rather than investigate and refine how the issue came about in the first place. Becker thinks that even those who didn't fully understand what they signed up for would have signed up had they actually known the terms anyways. Somehow, they both translate this into a moral victory for banks. However, they may have missed the point.
The greatest flaw in macro-economic theory is its amazing reluctance to adequately address issues of decision-making that occur at the micro-economic level. What bankers did is sell people sub-prime mortgages to less adept borrowers the way that used car salesmen sell lemons, backed by the same incentive - commission - that spoils the free market assumptions of perfect information (the individual dealers have an incentive to sign people up regardless of their ability to pay, since their pay neither fluctuates with the quality of a borrower nor do they absorb any of the responsibility for their repayment). However, unlike cars, dealers can sell borrowers on mortgages stacked in 30 pages of fine print and a world of promise, and cars are regulated by the government, financial packages, however, are not.
What's even MORE interesting, however, is that neither even questions WHY people at an individual level would be willing to entangle themselves in these contracts. Becker only alludes to how little access to credit for poor and minority borrowers made the availability of sub-prime attractive. Truth is, the REASON they would be willing to accept these loans is because they do not get offered the same resources anywhere else. And, ironically, reckless and misguided speculation on Wall Street drove CDO prices (collateralized debt obligations) through the roof compared to their real risk-value. This drove banks to offer sub-prime credit more and more as the financial packages they sold to investment firms increased in value. People just had to line up and sign.
Furthermore, saying that government intervention is a bad idea completely misses the point. Wealth in this country for middle class and poor persons in the U.S. means owning property. Mortgages are write-offs - therefore subsidized by the Gov - (rent payments are not), and loans for these are backed by the federal government. If you're a lender, the government practically shoves borrowers through your door. What government has failed to do is manage financial packages the way they manage other commodities, ensuring that they comply with minimum standards of responsibility. Clearly, their profitability made the idea of government intervention a nuisance at the time. But had such an effort been made, it might have kept Wall Street from shitting itself, and kept more people in their homes.
Thing is, economics is correct in saying that people respond to incentives, but most people who use economic theory to justify alienating government from ensuring the market functions correctly fail to recognize that it has been the investors and the bankers that have unevenly benefited from the system of incentives established by the government to push the economy merrily along. Artificially low interest rates, a lack of regulation in the public borrowing sector, as well as inadequate oversight of market offerings to the public all contributed to these incentives. We're all just greedy bastards I guess.
The greatest flaw in macro-economic theory is its amazing reluctance to adequately address issues of decision-making that occur at the micro-economic level. What bankers did is sell people sub-prime mortgages to less adept borrowers the way that used car salesmen sell lemons, backed by the same incentive - commission - that spoils the free market assumptions of perfect information (the individual dealers have an incentive to sign people up regardless of their ability to pay, since their pay neither fluctuates with the quality of a borrower nor do they absorb any of the responsibility for their repayment). However, unlike cars, dealers can sell borrowers on mortgages stacked in 30 pages of fine print and a world of promise, and cars are regulated by the government, financial packages, however, are not.
What's even MORE interesting, however, is that neither even questions WHY people at an individual level would be willing to entangle themselves in these contracts. Becker only alludes to how little access to credit for poor and minority borrowers made the availability of sub-prime attractive. Truth is, the REASON they would be willing to accept these loans is because they do not get offered the same resources anywhere else. And, ironically, reckless and misguided speculation on Wall Street drove CDO prices (collateralized debt obligations) through the roof compared to their real risk-value. This drove banks to offer sub-prime credit more and more as the financial packages they sold to investment firms increased in value. People just had to line up and sign.
Furthermore, saying that government intervention is a bad idea completely misses the point. Wealth in this country for middle class and poor persons in the U.S. means owning property. Mortgages are write-offs - therefore subsidized by the Gov - (rent payments are not), and loans for these are backed by the federal government. If you're a lender, the government practically shoves borrowers through your door. What government has failed to do is manage financial packages the way they manage other commodities, ensuring that they comply with minimum standards of responsibility. Clearly, their profitability made the idea of government intervention a nuisance at the time. But had such an effort been made, it might have kept Wall Street from shitting itself, and kept more people in their homes.
Thing is, economics is correct in saying that people respond to incentives, but most people who use economic theory to justify alienating government from ensuring the market functions correctly fail to recognize that it has been the investors and the bankers that have unevenly benefited from the system of incentives established by the government to push the economy merrily along. Artificially low interest rates, a lack of regulation in the public borrowing sector, as well as inadequate oversight of market offerings to the public all contributed to these incentives. We're all just greedy bastards I guess.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
?
Over the last few months I have tried to familiarize myself with the inner-workings of the Blog community. To some, Blogging in its many forms, YouTube and PodCasts included, have been regarded as a number of things. For some, the blog is the great hope for the democratic revolution that the internet once promised at its inception. For others, it serves as a marshland of marketing potential that capitalism will inevitably suck dry. Not to say that I'm against capitalism; on the contrary, I possess an entrepreneurial spirit, driven by the same incentive-based reasoning that defines post-Renaissance humanity. Or democracy. Or creativity. Or whatever.
To phrase it precisely, "whatever" is the subject of these posts, really a reflection of the very things that induce me to "consume". Creativity, information, hypocrisy and argument. So as blogs have filtered, debated, and prioritized the randomness of life in the interest of sensibility so will I.
Experience is the great vehicles for the intellectual and creative consumption in life. So let me ask you, what the hell are you doing reading this? Or, better yet, what the hell am I doing writing this? Ice cream awaits.
Kyle
P.S. Shout out to Duncan. http://voicethrowing.blogspot.com/.
To phrase it precisely, "whatever" is the subject of these posts, really a reflection of the very things that induce me to "consume". Creativity, information, hypocrisy and argument. So as blogs have filtered, debated, and prioritized the randomness of life in the interest of sensibility so will I.
Experience is the great vehicles for the intellectual and creative consumption in life. So let me ask you, what the hell are you doing reading this? Or, better yet, what the hell am I doing writing this? Ice cream awaits.
Kyle
P.S. Shout out to Duncan. http://voicethrowing.blogspot.com/.
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Subtle? Not so much. Uncommon vocabulary for an artist on the verge of the mainstream? You bet. Then again, maybe it speaks volumes about how far we've come in discussion of America's role on the international stage, where stakes are probably highest in the 3rd world. After all, you can't be against anything we do internationally without being inherently anti-America. Sri Lanka born, she knows poverty and violence first-hand. In that respect, we're all ignorant, so I find it compelling that stories and opinions have found an audience through entertainment. Sadly, MTV is compelled to neutrality and advertiser/stock-holder subservience, who either ignore or intentionally avoid the immense educational value that visual and audial ideas like "Paper Planes" brings to the mainstream public forum.