I sympathize with Glenn Beck’s issues with Google. I have another issue with them. When I introduce search criteria anymore, the ranking of returns is biased according to what Google thinks I want to see. For example, it is assumed things that have to do with Asheville are more important to me than others. Google isn’t the only entity making assumptions about what is going on in my brain. If I have to search for a particular type of hat for work, all of a sudden, ad spaces on my computer screen and email boxes become bombarded with temptations to buy hats.
I’m not so upset about spyware. My dissatisfaction stems from my training. I went to a science school, and they trained us to be objective. We were supposed to become aware of human foibles that introduced bias. Now, Google has discovered that those foibles actually help people zero in on what they seek.
One of those foibles is flocking. Since I started reading the staff reports of Asheville City Council about a decade ago, it was with much consternation that I found I could never identify the items that would be newsworthy. Everything I thought was an affront to the principles on which this country was founded was brushed under the rug. Furthermore, I tended to read text literally, unable to see the specific intentions of whitewashing by city staff.
Now, people who are on the mailing list of a particular city councilman have a way of finding out what is important. People who put a lot of stake in the reports of mainstream media outlets also get their priorities straight, as far as history is concerned. This week, for example, I thought the public would be a little stirred up about the camel getting his head in the tent with a request for taxpayer funding of sick and bereavement leave for domestic partners.
When the camel was just jockeying for some nose room, I recall the mayor looking as if she swallowed her gum when she found out a LGBT employee had a baby with her girlfriend at taxpayer expense, took leave at city expense, and then broke up with said girlfriend. Now, the message is: If taxpayers could care less about a certain lifestyle but really don’t want to subsidize it, well they can just take a hike.
You’ve heard enough about foreclosures and unemployment. Maybe now that Congress voted to keep the middle-class tax cuts and the president will receive total credit for not vetoing the legislation, people have some discretionary income they would prefer to give back to the government. Water rates may go up in Mills River, and they probably will. That is because the game is rigged. Government has the taxing power, and until people get serious about terminating political careers for those who tax them until it hurts, whatever government wants, government will get.
Then, there was the second reading of the ordinance deemed reactionary and targeted specifically at a developer who tried to build on his property in accordance with the UDO, while salvaging design costs sunk by a political council decision. Forgetting common courtesies forbidden the federal government, like due process and no ex pos facto laws, city staff fast-tracked stop-gap measures. The mayor felt a lawsuit in the air, a settlement or court-ordered payments not being exactly timely while the city is bent on partnering to squeeze money out of whatever it can because its budget is tight enough. Staff seemed to sneer at the “tone” of organizations opposed to the amendments it proposed and went along wholeheartedly with the organization that agreed with them. Persons employed in government are prone to embrace ideas that vector power away from the public sector and into their little fingers.
But being on the right side of justice gets no traction these days if the herd can be convinced that a skewed advantage is preferable. Even Plato knew Democracy was biased in favor of the most influential cults of personality. Lone wolves crying for protection of liberties can go to the crazy farm and get medicated or educated – or perhaps it is best to ignore them.
According to those in the know, the real story this week is Ingle’s wants to build another store. They want to build at a site where WalMart* attempted to build a few years ago. Property rights don’t exist in Asheville anymore. Community viewsheds and traffic-induced (stretched?) threats to child safety take precedence. People want jobs, but they don’t want big-box jobs. They want government to exercise its long arm, bestowed on them by majority vote, to regulate what remains of large corporations out of the city. Either that, or big boxes could raise prices enough to cover all the litigation and redesign the city wishes to impose, pay living wages, and hire extra workers. Then, due to some arcane principle formerly known as cost recovery, consumer costs and thus the living wage will go up. But it is not a good idea to think of second-order consequences. Those who speak loudest only want to satisfy what’s in it for them in the here and now. The rest is known as unintended consequences. It can be paid with money government ments out of the aether. Farmers, truckers, and other producers can get paid with their own increased tax contributions to support the big-box’ greater payroll and lower prices. Fire burn and caldron bubble.
By definition, disagreeing with popular delusion and the madness of crowds should always give one spikes beyond 2 standard deviations of the mean on their MMPI’s (or whatever the modern equivalent may be). The criticisms are along the lines of, “C’mon, I read one paragraph, why won’t you drop the in-depth reports you’ve received from scores of front-line experts to agree with me? You’re so unreasonable.”
