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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

People, not Guns

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Guns. There is currently no more emotional issue in the US and nothing that polarizes more. You’re either in favor of guns or you aren’t, and if you’re in favor of them the ownership of a gun is probably viewed as a fundamental right. There isn’t much room for compromise.

Into this debate we have a nearly constant litany of shootings, sometimes with legal weapons and sometimes not. President Obama has decided to act where he can, more or less working on tightening up the existing background check laws and enforcing them more uniformly and rigorously.

There was a time when gun advocates called for us to “enforce existing laws” rather than write new ones, but even this action is controversial. But it shouldn’t be.

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Humanity, Boiled Away

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How can we sum up 2015? In many ways, it’s the year when people everywhere exploded. On the right, the pent up frustration and anger felt by people losing their privilege in a rapidly changing world lit up, ultimately crystallizing in the campaign of a certain rich person whose name will not be used. On the left, anger that bled onto the streets from black bodies killed by authorities sometimes ignited, burning cities and flaring up the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

The numbers? Economic growth sputtered along just over 2% in real terms, and 5.2M jobs were added – good enough to finally raise the Fed Funds Rate. But these once critical figures waned in importance. This year, people demanded attention.

Yet as much as this was a year about people, not numbers, the explosions make it hard to be hopeful about “humanity” – which is to say decency and respect.

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Joseph’s Journey

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Joseph was wandering, a stranger in a foreign land. He wanted nothing more than a refuge for the evening when he came into the public house full of people already for the night. It was nearly Christmas – a night when it wasn’t good to be loose in the cold alone and afraid.

But unlike his namesake, he had no family in tow and was not following a star. Joseph came that night to a bar lit up with neon beer signs to guide him.

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Stop & Count Our Blessings

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The snow came overnight, the first real blanket of white this year. It arrived with the Winter Solstice as if some weather fairy took pity on us for the earthy brown we’ve sullenly marched past the last month. “Minnesotans need this to be in the mood,” the fairy must have said, and made the grey air clump up solid and sprinkle down.

It has been that kind of year. Normal people would be thankful for the warmth, but those who are used to magic expect more than a climate of easy survival. The cold is supposed to invigorate the northern world, bringing a stinging cheer which says, “Keep it moving, you have work to do!”

The rest of this season said to us, “It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s time for a nap. It’s time to stop.” And now, with the sprinkle of white melting around the edges, we will shortly.

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Starts With an Idea

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When Martin Shkreli was arrested the internet erupted with a dark sense of joy. Finally, the most hated pharmaceutical and finance guy in America was going to get justice – if not for raising the price of drugs 5,000% but for an unrelated ponzi scam.

This came up during People’s Economics, the discussion groups which represented a kind of “Barataria Live”. Our section on High Finance asserted that the complex and overlarge finance system inherently encourages this kind of bad behavior, which is to say that any regulation or law you might write is irrelevant compared to the kind of damage guys like Shkreli can do before they are caught.

Two interesting thoughts came out of this and subsequent discussions which provide logical ways for us to get past this problem and move to a better future. And there may be more.

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