Obsolete Professions

One of the more interesting things computers are doing today is making professions completely unnecessary. The internet allows objects to be duplicated again and again at essentially no cost. This means that once enough of something has been created there is no motivation to create more. Reproducing old product is just so much cheaper.

A great example of this is porn. There is enough porn on the internet that it just isn't possible to reach the end of it, even if you never pay a dime. The result? The porn industry is essentially dead. It never will be sble to produce significant amounts of new porn more interesting than what it made in the past decade. 

Another similar problem has occured with photography. Photographers are having a terrible time in recent years. There are already tens of thousands of pictures of sunsets already taken. Why would anyone pay for another one if all those already exist?

Music and movies don't have it quite as bad. Live shows will always keep the most talented musicians around and, unlike porn, new movies are likely to be more interesting than old ones. Still, the problem is quite similar. Every new song produced has to compete with decades of recorded music. If it is not better than most of it in some way it will get ignored. That is an absurd standard. Musicians must be better than today's musicians, as well as those in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s and so on. Many people will just choose to listen to that music instead of modern music leaving a small audience who is mostly unwilling to pay.

However all of this is likely to make life better for people. When I was a teenager many of my friends blew most of their money on music. Now they can download music, and buy something else instead. This is much like the movement of the economy away from agriculture. Lots of money that used to pay for food now pays for other goods. 

The problem is, what to do with all the workers these industries supported. All those porn stars are in need of a new profession. I imagine someone can think of a way to make money off of them, but I have no idea what sector of the economy it will be in.

Parrots

Apparently there are thirteen species of parrot living wild in Southern California. I still have yet to see one though. I suspect that now that I know they are here though I will see them everywhere.

China is still really poor

There has been a lot of talk about the rise of China. And it has been quite impressive, China has been improving quite a lot in the past thirty years. One simple statistic really shows where things stand. Wikipedia has a nice list of GDP per Capita for every country in the world.

The United States: $47440
China: $5900

This isn't a close race yet.

The real question that list brings up is, where the fuck is Brunei?

Long division

I was in Vancouver when a construction guy asked a question similar to "what is 1200 divided by 15" it was 5 am so I pretty much ignored the question. But it got me thinking.

"15 times 100 is 1500, so the answer is less than 100"

"1500/2 is 750 so the answert is more than 50"

"750+750/2 is 1125, so the answer is slightly more than 75"

"1200-1125 is 75, 5 times 15 is 75, so add 5 to 75 and the answer is 80."

I checked the calculator, sure enough. I can do long division in my head! I tried more obscure problems and the same technique works, the only hard parts being mistakes in addition, and converting remainders into decimals. My accuracy rate is only about 75% and it takes a minute or two, but I can do it. I don't know why this surprised me as much as it did. Long division has always been something I relied on calculators to do. But it is pretty clear that a few weeks of practice and I could spit out answers almost as quickly in my head.

Too much free time

My job gives me vacation time at the start of each year. So far I hadn't looked much at it since I would like to get out of debt before I go do much. 

I decided to look at what I have saved up the other day. It works out to 170 hours! That is four weeks and a day. Some I will probably just save for next year, but I have no idea what to do with a full month of paid vacation time. I guess I should start being less stingy about using them.  

401(k)

One of the nice things about working is I now have a new toy to play with, a 401(k). For years I have payed quite a bit of attention to theorizing about investment, so now it is time to try to put some of that knowledge to work.

The first rule I decided on is not to move around money I have previously invested. I easily fall victim to one fad or another, and some of them are probably correct, but I just don't think I can decide how well my investment strategies were for at least twenty years. So ill leave money put to see how the strategy I picked worked. Any attempts at timing the market,  or changing the ratio of investments will only be done with new contributions. 

I ended the year at $3400 after including matching contributions and this years gains. While I have moved around my future contributions a lot I have mostly stuck with two rules: diversify as much as possible, pay as little in fees as possible. 

As of now I am at:
Bonds 19%
Large U.S. Stocks 33%
Mid U.S. Stocks 27%
Small U.S stocks 1%
International Stocks 20%(12% Asian 8% European)

Mostly I would look at the expenses for every fund in the category and pick the cheapest one. So the U.S. Large and Mid Stocks are all in Index funds. The bonds are mostly in a really cheap Vanguard fund, and so on.   

Birthday concert

I happen to get my birthday off of work this year... MC Frontalot has a new album coming out in 26 days... By coincidence he will be playing in San Francisco the night of my birthday. I will have to consider that.