Brexit and Organizational Architecture - Why I'm happy about the UK leaving the EU.

I know, I haven't posted in a while, and looking over my prior posts... I had some shitty writing. Not shitty ideas just... really shitty writing.

I had a lot of commentary about a Facebook post I made indicating I was happy that Britain voted to leave the EU. Comments about fear mongering on both sides, the net economic impact, and the legal implications. I thought I'd share why I felt this was the best decision for the UK.


Every organization has a structure by definition, be it a small business, major corporation, non-profit or government. Within these structures information goes up the chain, while the action required for decisions come down the chain. The point at which decisions are made is called the point of "Centralization." There is no point of centralization that is necessarily better or worse, but each yields a different result. The most efficient is not necessarily just, the most just isn't necessarily economical, and the most economical isn't necessarily efficient.



Every organization has a structure. Basic corporate structure we're all familiar with. The board of shareholders, the CEO, and then various divisions and levels of management below the CEO, before getting to the very front line employees. This structure is actually identical to the structure of the US Government's executive branch. Congress is the board of shareholders and the President is the Chief Executive Officer, who pushes down orders to various management levels before you get to grunts like me. Smaller businesses still work the same way, though they may not have a board of shareholders, and only one or two management levels, depending on the size of the business.

Inside these structures, information travels. The front line employees share information about the state of affairs, and management can look on a macroscopic scale as well. But this information transfer is imperfect, and becomes further and further degraded as it travels up the chain of command. It's like a game of telephone, where the message becomes more and more distorted as it travels through people before its final destination. Often times the more levels of management, the more distorted this information becomes.

Within these structures decision authority is typically graduated such that the highest level decisions made on top, with progressively less decision authority going down the chain of command. Decision authority is the ability to make administrative decisions for the business. Keep in mind that Decision Authority isn't a matter of whether or not to award a customer a $25 gift card for some bad situation that the organization put them in. We're talking about decisions about how to run the business. I.e. how many people to hire, what jobs need to be performed, and how do we want them performed? Most of these decisions don't even happen until higher tiers of management. Front level managers are simply there to evaluate and ensure employees do their jobs. It isn't until much higher up that decision authority becomes salient in most businesses.

But that's MOST businesses, not all. There's nothing that says that front line employees can't make decisions about how a business should manage their affairs in any particular situation. This is where information travel within an organization becomes supremely relevant. Those front-line employees that aren't empowered to do anything, have the most information. They're the employees who see the situations first hand, absent any corporate bureaucracy that occurs while information is sent up the pike to those empowered to make decisions. They possess the greatest amount of information about how to improve production processes because they're the ones engaged in those processes. They see how others perceive the organization and possess the most information about how to improve that perception. With that amount of information about the process they engage in with an organization, they can ascertain the ideal solution.

So why don't they have the most decision making authority?

Because there would be little to no organization, and who knows what that employee defines as "ideal." Their "ideal" might not be the best decision for the organization.

By centralizing this decision authority further up the line, you create an organized approach to fixing problems and creating products, and focus the organization on a particular goal. This centralization process is what grants high level executives the ability to structure their organizations by moving this centralization process up or down as they see fit.

There's no one point of centralization that is the most effective however. Depending on your business, it may make sense to centralize decision making authority at a higher or lower level. You might even be forced to. I.e. the CEO of a body shop can't make every quote and parts purchase. Even the shop manager might not be able to and might need to rely on the expertise of a trained auto-body specialist. In another organization, decisions may have such gravity that a high level manager might need to approve every transaction they engage in, with lower level employees simply making recommendations. Car dealerships and investment houses work like this. This centralization process may create environments where questionably moral outcomes are produced. Outcomes that the high level executives didn't necessarily intend. I.e. The housing crisis where bad loans were being made then buried. Much of that happened at a low to mid level.

So the most economical or efficient solution may not be the most just. Like wise, leaving the decision making authority for low-rate mortgages to a group of personal bankers looking to help folks down on their luck is a bad investment model that won't really yield a profit. The most just solution may not be the most economical.


Alright so what the fuck does any of this have to do with the EU Referendum, Brexit or anything?

Well, I said before that every organization has a structure that follows this information path and possesses varying degrees of centralization. The EU (and the US for that matter) is no different.

The tendency of people in power, particularly in large organizations like the EU, the US or a major corporation, is to trend the centralization of decision making authority UPWARD. So taking decision making authority out of low-level hands, and progressing that authority further and further upward.

With government, this centralization process is called "Legislation." We pass legislation that impose rules which restrict the decision making authority that citizens have. At low levels, these are basic criminal and civil laws. You can't kill someone, you can't steal, you can't... etc. At higher levels these are decisions to go to war, and how to spend money administering the programs we've said are valuable. At even higher levels this is reallocating your income - We're taking X amount of your paycheck to allocate to this other function. In effect saying "you must spend these dollars on A, B, C thing, etc."

The EU has established its own bank, its own laws and now has plans in the works to create its own military. It is, as a large governmental body, trending the centralization of decision making authority UPWARD. Britain has 73 elected "Members of European Parliament" (an MEP). This is 73 out of 572. Their votes are weighted by population, but let's say for example, that they're not. Even if a 2/3rd majority was required (it's not) then Britain's entire vote could be numerically discarded... but that kind of doesn't matter. MEPs are simply an advisory board that agrees or disagrees and proposes changed verbiage. They can fast-track a piece of legislation into passage, but rejecting the legislation doesn't really matter. At the points that it does, their influence is nominal at best.

What this does is ultimately take the decisions out of individuals hands (who are the most informed to make decisions in our society) and place those decisions into hands of executives. Money and the decision about what to do with it IS power.

If I'm not painting a clear enough picture, basically what I'm saying here is that EU membership centralizes decision authority out of the hands of its member states.

It's what we see in the US, with the Federal Government. Federal laws are adopted regardless of the decisions made by individual states.

This is really the nuts and bolts of why I'm as Libertarian as I am. It's not simply "I don't believe government should meddle" it's more a matter of "You have more information and are better equipped to make decisions about the right and wrong course of action." Whether that decision has to do with Money, Religion, your Health, or whatever.

Mind you that I'm not an anarchist. As I said before there's some centralization that is valuable to certain standards of conduct - Don't kill. Don't Steal. Don't Rape. No violence, etc. Obviously any yahoo at a business can haul off and cuss out or hit a customer. That can't be stopped outside of physically restraining them, but we can set the standards for conduct and punishment, without removing the benefit of being the most informed to make a decision.

Moving in the direction of placing decision authority in the hands of those with the information is decentralizing. I argue that decentralizing authority as much as possible, is the most just, and typically the most efficient point for an organization like government. The most economical... not always, but if we're pulling on those three points alone, I'd argue that over the long term, this gives us the greatest net wealth on terms of social liberty, and material prosperity. The UK's separation from the EU is a movement toward decentralization.

Many of us who hold the most information about how to engage in our lives are also afraid of making the wrong decision or being responsible for that decision. Because of this fear, they vote in favor of centralizing information further up. This simply feeds the power hungry who seek to promote the trend of rising power. That's the "fear" meant when I echoed Sargon's video below that they "chose freedom over fear." Those who are the most afraid of making these decisions, are also typically the least skilled at making them. Mind you that I'm no expert at making good decisions. I just do the best I can, and would rather die by my bad decision, than someone else's.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Glass-Steagall (with some preface about how banking works, for clarity.)

So here's my take on Glass-Steagall... with some back-story.


There's quite a bit of misinformation floating around right now so I feel like it's necessary to clear a few things up.

Glass-Steagall was originally introduced in 1933 to try and separate banks and securities firms. The reason for this, was simply to keep banks from over-leveraging themselves and putting deposits at risk... I should go back further.

Where Banks make money.
Banks create an incentive for you to deposit funds at their institution through the payment of interest and the production of some kind of utility such as checking services and the like. With your deposits, they bet that you're not going to need to take ALL of your money out right away, so they loan those funds out to others as another service – Providing credit (liquidity) to borrowers be it a business or a person and for a multitude of things. Business loans for development, home loans, personal lines of credit etc. etc. They in turn collect interest on the loans which is how they generate a profit (and in turn pay for services they provide to you, the depositor.)

On a balance sheet, this means that the money you deposit is a liability to them (since you can take it out at any time) and a loan is an asset. Loans are traditionally backed by collateral that the bank can use to recoup its losses should someone default on the loan. Because of this, and the promise to repay a loan with interest, these loans are assets to the bank – They're expected future revenue.

A bank run occurs when people lose faith that their financial institution will remain solvent (that is, that you'll be able to get your money back if you want it) and so they all rush to the bank to take their money out. Since your money has been loaned off to someone else, only the first few people who get there and deplete what cash reserves they have will actually be successful and ultimately, you lose your money because the bank put it at risk. Over the course of over a century, banks have been finding new ways to increase their profit on the money you leave on deposit. One of those ways is through the purchase and sale of securities with your dollars. These could be bonds, stocks, default credit swaps, futures contracts, buying securitized debt, and other things.

So, Glass-Steagall. The point of the legislation originally enacted in 1933 was to prevent banks from also becoming securities traders, ultimately with the hope of limiting risk to the depositors and therefore, the risk of financial collapse. But what does financial collapse mean?

Well, typically we think of financial collapse as a decrease in overall liquidity. That is, people stop buying, start saving and holding wealth or buying assets because money itself is being exchanged for goods less frequency (two aspects, one is the availability of credit, the second is a decrease in the velocity of money – how often it's exchanged.) We mostly focus on the availability of credit... but not to consumers in the traditional sense. Since banks loan out your deposits to make a profit, banks will do so as long as it continues to be profitable. If the risk of issuing loans increases, it will cease to issue loans (a credit freeze.) Fewer loans means less investment by business on future projects, and also fewer home loans, auto loans, etc. In addition to this, banks are required by law to maintain certain cash reserves (in the case people do want to take their money out.) Often times if lending is profitable, banks will borrow from each other at the federal funds rate – They can loan money to you for a higher interest rate than they will pay to another bank.

When we hear talk about keeping the federal funds rate low it is usually a measure to ensure a high level of liquidity in the market place to promote lending which generally stimulates production in the economy (a rise in the GDP.)

It also increases risk (which on a large scale, results in collapse.)

I digress... Glass-Steagall's object as I mentioned before, was to prevent banks from over-leveraging deposits through securities acquisition. The issue with the legislation is that it wasn't very effective. It prevented banks from directly selling securities to individuals and also developing or owning a securities division of itself, but it didn't prevent securities firms from owning banks. The legislation was so weak, that by the 1960's basically no one paid attention to it anyway since there were so many loopholes. And then came GLBA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which basically eliminated the provisions of Glass-Steagall, in 1999.

Some folks in the media are arguing that we had no problems during the days of Glass-Steagall which is unfortunately false. Savings and Loan institutions are legally different from banks and were completely unaffected by Glass-Steagall. In 1983, we had a massive issue with S&L institutions that caused a (comparatively) minor collapse at that time. (Strangely enough, John McCain(R-AZ) was involved in the collapse with a group called the Keating Five. Now, he's one of the biggest advocates of renacting Glass-Steagall.) So, there's a lot of questionable info and theories about what it actually achieved.


Here's my issue. Glass-Steagall may be all well and good, but it doesn't solve the problem. Banks used to operate on what's called a “Lend and Hold” model. That is after they issued the loan, they'd hold on to that loan for expected repayment. If you went to a bank for a loan, they frisked you pretty hard before approving the loan because they wanted to be sure you'd pay it back. Over time, securities firms (and largely organizations like GNMA (Ginnie Mae), FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac)) started “securitizing” loans. That is they'd sell the expected interest gains to investors as part of an investment package; A “Mortgage Backed Security.” If you were an investor, you'd buy part of the loan debt with the expectation of getting paid interest and repayments of your initial principle. Over time, these mortgage backed securities began being sold and bought between investment houses and often times packaged and resold so many times that the original banker's risk analysis they performed when they issued the loan is unknown to anyone.

Since these banks were making money on loan origination fees (points) and then selling off the debt, there was no incentive not to double-check the potential borrower and it even created incentive to issue loans the banks knew were bad. This new model is called “Lend and Sell" and it's still how banks operate today.

So. To me the issue is securitization of debt. Glass-Steagall does claim to attempt to resolve much of that, but the bill would have to be ridiculously comprehensive and it would also come at the risk of damaging what I mentioned before – Liquidity. Credit availability would decrease, and it would decrease more for at-risk borrowers (read, the less wealthy and financially unstable.) That being said, I think the real solution isn't an easy one that a simple bill limiting the securities holdings of financial institutions is going to achieve. Especially when one of the largest organizations buying mortgage backed securities is actually a government institution that has been charged with mitigating the impact of toxic loan assets on the financial system, Ginnie Mae. Ultimately I am behind reenacting Glass-Steagall but I do not believe it will be a complete or even modestly sufficient solution, simply a step in the right direction.

Compare the securitization of debt, with an equity instrument like a stock. One is an at-risk asset by definition, the other is an ownership interest in a company. Both are securities, the difference is where and how the risk is held.

As long as at-risk debts can be securitized and re-sold there will always be an incentive for this "lend and sell" style of banking since that risk can be hidden from potential investors.

On Government and God; Why Every Form of Socialism Mirrors Religion.

I was inspired recently by Joseph Schumpeter's magnum opus, “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,” the first chapter titled “Marx the Prophet.” Many who read the book misunderstand Schumpeter's goal, as it seems as though he's writing of Marx in a positive manner. Yet his real intent is to convey that Communism bares a strange similarity to religious doctrines. In fact, all forms of socialism do and it's not just a matter of doctrine; They appear structurally identical as well.

The similarity between every form of socialism be it Communism, Fascism (National Socialism - Nazism), Social Democracy (Democratic Socialism,) is an underlying moral doctrine. Each version of Socialism we've seen throughout history has always promoted a specific moral ideology that carried with it the promise of a terrestrial paradise that will follow, if the doctrine is adhered to. “Don't sin, and you'll find heaven.” “Follow these rules, and we'll achieve prosperity.” It's the same basic premise as a religion that sets forth a series of rules that define a morality, and if followed will lead the believer to paradise.

Capitalism does not possess a moral doctrine. While it has often been taught that it is “immoral” (though a necessary evil) Capitalism is in fact amoral. That privative “a” (as in A-theist) indicating that Capitalism does not possess any intrinsic moral doctrine. Which means it is neither moral, nor immoral.

The second element is the structure. Every form of Socialism is administered (and must be administered, like religion) by a ruling body that organizes itself in a similar way to major religions. Take the Vatican, for example; The ruling body of the Catholic Church. The Cardinals (Electoral College) elects a Pope (the president.) The church itself is comprised of Diocese overseen by a Bishop. The Dioceses are divided into smaller communities called Parishes that are overseen by a Priest. Is this starting to look like a Government administering law? It is. And was. Organizations like this need a specific body to administer the moral doctrine – again, the advocacy of a specific moral ideology is the similar facet of religion and socialism.

I'm a big advocate of the Renaissance perspective. The notion that individual people can make their own decisions, take care of themselves and even find morality without some organized guiding policy found in either religion or socialism. I often find it hard to swallow that the so-called modern Progressives who believe that expanding the function of Government to achieve a moral goal is somehow a new idea, when it's the same thing that society has been peddling since Hammurabi. While it may be more ideologically liberal than the world was in the Dark Ages under the Vatican, it certainly isn't much different in it's application or goal – To impose a moral code on all of society, whether they want it or not.

Economics and Socialism - Why there aren't any "Socalist Economists."

Economics and Socialism - Why there aren't any "Socialist Economists."

I would like to hope that with this post, many will understand one of the problems with Socialism, as well as the reason why Economics is a bit less specialized and a bit more grandiose than simply plugging numbers into models and formulas all day.

At their heart, most modern Economists are Socialists. "But wait! Isn't the title of this about why there isn't any socialist economists?!" Right, we're talking about Economics, not Government. So in a manner of speaking "We are all Socialists now."

Joseph Schumpeter extrapolated on a concept that he called "Creative Destruction" with his book, "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy." The concept simply has to do with the destruction of some markets at the hands of technological advancement. The idea is that as we shift the burden of human labor off onto technology (which is its entire purpose) the necessity for human labor will diminish. If you were to throw this on a graph, it would have time on the X axis and employment on the Y. As time progressed through industrialization and technological development, we would see employment rise during industrialization and plateau while we advanced technologically. At the far side of the graph we would see a sharp drop which would represent the economic equivalent to Ray Kurzweil's Technological Singularity. (Strangely enough, they're related!)

So what I'm really saying here is that technology will progressively push us into a state where employment is less and less necessary - and that's not necessarily bad.

The socialism aspect comes in at the distribution of wealth and how the allocation of resources will work within a society. Given that Economics is literally the study of resource allocation, at that point of technological development, we're saying that less labor required = lower cost for goods. At an extreme, that would mean that food would be at or near free, simply because the cost to produce it is so small. (Economic Note: The reason why we outsource so much labor, is because employing US workers is ridiculously expensive. Goods can be sold cheaper (and so to a larger audience) if labor costs are reduced.)

So what's the issue? How Government gets involved. Most people without an Economic background (or those with Political Science degrees) would argue that this progression of technology and economics necessitates Socialist Government structures... and that's false. Labor parties are actually counter productive to the development of technology because they're trying to remain EMPLOYED. Same issue with Labor Unions. How does the quote go? "If you want jobs for jobs sake, sell all the heavy equipment and hire men with shovels." Basically "A job for all!" is diametrically opposed to the purpose of technology itself (minimizing or eliminating the necessity for human labor.)

Ultimately, the problem with imposing Governmental socialism on a society is that it compromises the method to which we achieve this goal of technological advancement and price decreases - The market. On top of that, it requires the use of force against others. Forcefully taking money from groups to provide benefits to others etc. Even if taxation seems okay to you, it may not be to others. A universally acceptable form of Government and Economy must be acceptable to all. Some cultures are less opposed to taxation and that use of force than others.

At the end, a market free from Government obstruction (Econ 101; every government action has unintended consequences) will ultimately yield the same end result that political socialists advocate, but it will do it without a controlling government forcing egregious human rights violations on its people.

On Compromise - Promoting Economic Growth.

I'll just be up front with my objective here. I'm about to pitch an argument for eliminating the social security, medicare and FICA taxes. Even if you're all for social welfare programs, please read on. I'm not proposing the elimination of those programs.


To start with some definitions. The Social Security, Medicare and FICA taxes are what the IRS calls the "Self Employment Tax." It comprises of a total of 15.3% of your taxable income. If you work as an employee, you pay 7.65%, while your employer pays the other 7.65%. If you're self employed, you cough up the whole 15.3%.

The tax on FICA and Medicare continues regardless of your income, but the Social Security Tax portion of it stops at about $108k. Simply, this is a tax on lower incomes.

What I'm suggesting here is that we eliminate those three taxes (Medicare, Social Security and FICA) and fund those programs through the income tax. Social Security Credits could be established through prior income tax receipts in the same manner we track social security tax paid. To offset the decrease in receipts (for the sake of compromise) increase tax rates on the upper income echelons, and possibly on net capital gains in excess of $250k (exclude dividends.) I haven't put much thought into the exact dollars and cents of where such income taxes would fade in, but you could start at the current social security phase out of $108k for (single filers, $216k for those filing jointly) and phase in a higher rate as you go up.

Why?
Well here's the theory. The objective is promoting economic growth, and even the most liberal economists know the best way to do that is to inspire business development. One of the biggest hurdles to the self employed and small business is dealing with additional payroll taxes, particularly Social Security, Medicare and FICA. Once a person reaches about $108k (it indexes every year) they stop paying those taxes anyway. So keep with the subtext here - I'm trying to promote and simplify business development for individuals and very small businesses, I.e. your "Mom & Pop" shops. Two things accomplished here would be freeing up the burden of those taxes on small businesses, and putting money into the portion of the population with the highest Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC, it gauges how likely you are to spend money. Poor(er) people are more likely to spend than save.)

For business, the elimination of these taxes means they no longer have to distinguish between an employee and a contractor, and would have MUCH less incentive to try and falsely treat their employees as contractors to dodge a quarterly payroll tax requirement. This would increase voluntary compliance as well as simplify enforcement measures.
On top of that, it would save businesses the 7.65% of payroll per employee tax they're currently paying, freeing up additional income for development, added employment, etc. etc.

For individuals some perspective is required. A person making $25k a year pays nearly $1500 annually in social security tax. With what I mentioned earlier on Marginal Propensity to Consume, you're putting those dollars back in the pockets of people who are more likely to spend it and for someone who makes as little as $25k in a year, $1500 is a great deal of money. To add to all of this, the added increase in economic growth could actually serve to offset some of the increase in deficit that such a proposal could potentially create (depending on how the other tax increases went into effect.)

This shouldn't make anyone think that I'm any more pro-tax that I have been in the past. My perspective is still that the only proper tax is no tax at all. However in the world of compromise, there are give and take elements that can evince a more proper method of thought. My motive in such compromise here, is both putting money where it will see the most benefit (and the pockets of employees is less my objective than the pockets of very small businesses) and also promoting out-of-the-box thinking that can demonstrate why repealing legislation can in fact, be as beneficial as adding more.

There's my thought of the day.

Balkanized.

So I resurrected my blog.

I've been going through a long period of questions within myself. Trying to mesh philosophy, core values I hold with social interactions, and trying to fend off the habits I occasionally get into in my employment. Certain levels of humor, and camaraderie is lost on me because I have to be so stone-faced at work. It inevitably bleeds over into my social life, and I realize I've become a bit of a machine. I'm hoping that writing helps a bit of that, but much of what goes through my mind is pretty hard-hitting and serious. I talk politics because I enjoy politics. In truth, I enjoy discussing politics - Though many of my peers just become enraged and frustrated at what I argue... as though some intellectual concept (only conveyed by education) is lost on me. I'll admit, I do find some amusement in it, though unfortunately sadness is the dominant reaction I hold in my discussions with the more liberal (as statistics go) friends I have. Strange, that it's so easy to segue into this post with that in mind. I will admit, I'm targeting specific people and groups with this, but it isn't a pejorative analysis. It's simply an observation.

Also I should mention that this post has been years in its mental development, short in its writing.


I mentioned a while ago that I intended to write a post about the word "Balkanize."
A few weeks ago, I watched a video on youtube from a guy (or channel) that goes by the name "VSauce." The point of this particular episode actually had to do with something we've come to know as "the friend zone" with regard to relationships. The episode was interesting for it's content and the subject it addressed, but during the episode it brought up a concept called "Cyber Balkanization." I'll write a little more about it as I segue this post through the idea. But it got me thinking about the word "Balkanize.

As I researched this word, not having practically used it in the past (though having a vague understanding of it's meaning) I realized that it very accurately conveyed an idea I had tried to get across to a friend about a year ago.

I had invited this friend to my house, to do her tax return and have dinner. As we got to talking, the topic of relationships and such had come up, probably because of another post I made quite some time ago, sharing my frustrations with the "fairer" sex. I had mentioned that I generally prefer "Small Town Girls" because they seemed a bit more "connected to reality." At least, that's how I put it. Unfortunately I didn't really possess the rhetoric to properly explain why at that point, and in retrospect, I think it may have seemed a bit pejorative, as well. I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to share the idea that I was trying to convey, and that particular episode of VSauce tied a few things together for me. Unfortunately  many of the things I try to share with folks don't come across in a very couth manner. It's not that I intend to offend.

VSauce's Post Here

So Balkanization, is basically the separation of a large group, into smaller, more distinct factions that often (but not always) harbor negative views of the other groups.

Typically, we use this in a social context to explain how factions of people separate and segregate themselves, often times due to religion, economic status, geographically (as the definition goes), etc. To me however, VSauce's explanation of the concept with regard to online interactions was particularly useful, in a social context.

Simply put, the idea of cyber balkanization is the notion that the online community is so immensely large and mostly anonymous that people who are online, tend to gravitate toward communities that reaffirm their ideas and beliefs. It even allows them to speak more freely than they would in a public setting, because they do not need to fear a negative reaction from others in conveying a controversial idea. - The internet has a bigger community for Nazis than you'll likely encounter elsewhere. Ergo, the balkanization occurs as people find themselves involved exclusively with people who agree with them, and there's no sense in forcefully putting yourself into an environment that might otherwise be socially hostile, unless you're a troll or just looking for an argument.

This got me thinking about real interactions between people in large cities. Is the same concept applicable in a large city where you can make similar choices, what about those you choose as friends? I thought about this with a specific group of people in mind, that I came across about 2-3 years ago. These folks were all very liberal, and pretty intolerant (despite their claims) of people who disagreed with their views. They were verbally hostile and while non-violent, you could generally expect some kind of under-handed ridicule or disdain from many of them.

After some thought, it occurred to me that the idea really is consistent, even outside the internet. People tend to gravitate towards others who share their same ideas, whenever possible. Now this group, while well meaning, largely refused to discuss politics with me (including the friend I had dinner with) because by and large, they became very emotionally charged and often times outright angry. Moreover, the context of the discussion was never open to new ideas, The nature of the rhetoric used and the subtext of the discussion was always "We need to correct your erroneous thinking, Joe." For as supposedly educated and liberal as these folks are, they were always very disdainful and closed-minded. Simply, civilized discourse and achieving mutual respect despite our ideological differences, was not possible because of their attitudes.

So, where does this get to small town girls?
I realized after some fuming about these friends and some thought on the idea of Balkanization, that big-city living drives that very same thing we find on the internet - A wider group of people to socialize with means that we can be more picky about those we decide to associate with. In a small town, there aren't as many opportunities for discretion, so if someone wants to socialize, they must learn to accept (not simply "tolerate") other people's origins, opinions and differences. In summary, the perspective of a person in a small town includes the whole of the town and those in it, as opposed to simply the selected group of people one associates with. As an unfortunately unfamous rap artist said "This society's deprivation depends, not on our differences but the separation within." That being said, small town girls have been more "socially adept" than folks in the big city, in my experience. Perhaps the distinction between male and female isn't necessary, but the context of our discussion was from my perspective. Small town guys? Not in the scope.

Might be worth analyzing the political trends in those small towns, with this in mind.

The Lament of Thought in a World of Emotion

Some times I yearn for lobotomy.
For then I would act on the heart of me.
Without knowing the consequences;
I could dive into seances.
Thinking a prayer could fix this dichotomy.

Yet as the story goes
I spend time with prose
My Saturday Eve just a doze.
There's no woman to woo;
No party to arrive at on cue.
Just a life with known consequences;
Which prevent what I do.

You see a pretty girl means
A lot of effort to preen;
Then a child to wean;
And a whole lot to clean.

After a while the fire will die;
We'll raise our hands asking "why?"
Without a thought about where our hubris may lie.

So with this in mind;
I can't help but pine;
That I'll never spend the time;
Knowing what I would find.

Though perhaps I assume;
and my thoughts just consume;
My solution - to patiently wait;
I don't want to believe that women are a matter of fate.