Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Give them what they want

The university I work at is facing a prolonged budget crisis. A revenue source that the campus can draw from is selling what is called “pouring rights”. As the name poorly suggests, it’s about non-alcholic beverages. The university signs a contract with a drinks company, be it Pepsi, Coco Cola, Red Bull, whoever, and that company have exclusive rights. If Pepsi inks a deal and you prefer Coke, well that’s too bad.

At the recent budget meeting the pouring rights topic came up, and certain folks voiced concerns about the healthiness of the beverages sold. Incredible: we are facing a mathematical shortfall, and people can still find ways to virtue signal. As if offering healthier drinks will somehow make the university more money.

Despise capitalism all you want, but that’s the framework we operate in. Should California spend more on public educaiton? Sure, but until that happens, universities will do accounting just like any other private corporation. It’s not personal, it’s just business. You cannot spend more money than you take in.

I couldn’t care less if the university signs a contract with Coco Cola, and all the vending drinks are the tasty sugary stuff. If that is what generates the most revenue, then that is the way. The lone goal here is to make money.

And let’s not infantilize full-fledged adults. If you’re old enough to sign up for the military, then you’re old enough to make your own choices about what to drink and what to eat. College students don’t need to be coddled and restricted. If junk food is what sells, then by god we should sell all the junk food and take in that much-needed cash.

Besides… GLP1 agonist medications are thing now!

The math is not math-ing

The San Francisco Unified School District teachers are on a historical strike. Tomorrow will mark the third consecutive day that schools will be closed. As a member of a union myself, bully to those fighting for wages. We understand that in this economy, any increase will immediately get wiped out by inflation. Everybody knows this, except for the reigning President of the United States.

However, from a pure mathematical standpoint, it’s difficult to square away the conflict of a school district that is facing a 100 million deficit for the current fiscal year, and its employees asking for a raise. The math cannot possibly be math-ing here. If labor is already the biggest pie of the expenditure, and it’s set to increase in size, not decrease, that’s not a good start to balancing the budget.

Of course, the school district can increase revenue, but demographics is against that. There are fewer school age children in San Francisco than ever. Furthermore, those with the means to - hello, tech bros - send their offsprings to private school, rather than be at the mercy of SFUSD’s notorious lottery school assignment system. Short of the State of California adding more funding per pupil, you just hope the revenue pie doesn’t continue to shrink!

As a person who works at a public university, I am very familiar with the downstream pains of decreasing enrollment.

Nevertheless: if this were the private sector, asking for a raise when the company is fiscally performing poorly who never fly. You’d know better than to even ask. It doesn’t make sense to further jeopardize an already precarious situation. Salary increase is rather meaningless if the company itself doesn’t survive long enough for you to reap the benefits.

Public sector education is Lindy enough to last forever, right? That’s probably true. But again, it’s just simple math: it doesn’t make logical sense for a district that’s already in the hole - that they must climb out of, to make the hole bigger. Alas, if it’s like anything San Francisco has done previously, I’m sure it’ll be yet another tax measure on the ballot. Should we save BART, or should we save public schools?

No free marketing

You ever walk by rows of parked cars and noticed that plenty of them still have the dealership license plate frame affixed? That cannot be me! There is no way I am giving out free advertising space like that, no matter how excellent the deal was the selling dealership gave me. The positive Yelp review should be a good enough return gesture.

If I can safely de-badge my car - without leaving exposed holes in the sheetmetal, I totally would. Volkswagen should be paying me to advertise that the vehicles they make are worth buying.

A similar befuddlement happens when I see car enthusiasts put stickers of aftermarket part manufacturers onto their cars. Again, you would have to be paying me to have your company logo displayed and driven all over town. Unless of course I got that car part for free, then the gratis marketing is an appropriate quid pro quo.

I’m just saying: don’t give away something for free so easily! Think of the Uber drivers that run advertising boards on top of their cars: you think it’s for charity?

On the same principle, my mother has steadfastly refused to buy any clothing with logos on it. I’ve seen her seamstress hands painstakingly take logos off thread-by-thread, because the underlying shirt was bought on sale. It wasn’t a want of anonymity, but a purely business decision. If the world is run on advertising - see Google, Meta, etc, then us peasants should not give away marketing space for free.

If I ever start a YouTube channel, I’m taping up/blurring all branding, unless otherwise sponsored. Sorry, MacBook Pro: your signature Apple logo will have to go under the gaffer tape.

Ends to a mean

Isn’t the best part of a workweek day going home time? Our servitude towards money is temporarilyy over. The hours left truly belong to us. The world is infinitely our oyster.

At least that’s how it feels. No matter how many chores are on the list, or how much attention the child is asking for, anything is better than being at work.

Sometimes I walk by the mall, and I can see the literal relief of service workers at the end of their shift. Fold away that apron for the day and moving on to happy hours. Best of all, service workers truly do not have to think about work while they are not at work.

Not so lucky for those of us in the knowledge economy. The higher you are on the ladder, the higher your pay, and more responsibility you’ve got. There’s no turning off the work brain even when it’s time to go home, because a problem on that ongoing project still needs solving. So you’re going to thinking about it all through dinner, and for the rest of the evening.

That’s why they get paid a salary: a facade to avoid actual calculation. Perhaps if one is to add up all the hours that brain signal is being used towards work, the knowledge worker might not be that much higher paid on a per hour basis than the service worker. Especially in California where the fast food minimum wage is unusually generous.

But those are the tradeoffs. Sacrifices have to be made to make more money. Even the illegal drug dealer has to stand in the corner for many hours, risking police capture. Often times I think what I want is to be like Ralph Fiennes’ character The Menu: a plain chef making a plain cheeseburger. Nothing extraordinary, nothing status-seeking. Every day you leave work, you truly leave work.

Plus, He’d get paid at least $20 per hour here in California!

Price of doing business

I think we’re all so used to free shipping these days (thanks, Amazon) that when we actually do have to ship a package, the actually pricing and be rather alarming. Absolutely nothing is immune to the recent high inflation. Parcel delivery shall not be exempt. It begs the question just how “free” free shipping really is. Surely the cost is baked into the (hefty) margins.

That, or retail giants have such enormous economy of scale that they get a hefty discount from logistic companies. Meanwhile, peasants like us have to pay the full freight.

I erroneously bought a part for my VW GTI. In order to get a refund I needed to pay for shipping back to the seller. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the item weights eight pounds, and I had to send it all the way to the opposite American coast. UPS Ground - the cheapest option - was $55! That is quite insane. If the part wasn’t worth magnitudes more than that shipping fee, I would have simply eaten the cost, or resell it on eBay.

It’s just the cost of doing business.

There may or may not be a solid business reason for coffee chains to sell a cup of drip coffee for nearly $4 these days - I simply don’t care. Paying that much for a plain cup of Joe is inconceivable. Because I’m old enough to remember when it was under $2. $4 was fancy latte territory. Even if I can afford it, my conscious won’t allow me to pay that much for store coffee. Thank god that same $4 can still buy you a hot dog and a slice of pizza at Costco.

My Keurig coffee maker and compostable coffee pods from San Francisco Bay Coffee will suffice nicely until deflation happens. If it happens.

Stolen goods

An often forgotten marketplace to save some money is eBay. I recently had to buy some tools, and the same brand-new pieces were cumulatively $50 cheaper on eBay. Not a bad deal for me considering the only con is that I have to wait longer for shipping. Amazon really spoils you in terms of delivery speediness.

I do wonder how it is possible for an eBay seller to undercut the official vendor. Keep in mind: eBay takes a 10% cut the transaction before money hits the seller’s account. Either the margins are that enormous, or the tools must have been acquired via not so honorable means.

Retail theft is indeed a problem. At our local Home Depot, the expensive power tools and hand tools are locked behind security cages. Otherwise that would be an easy payday for some enterprising individuals who are willing to bypass the checkout counters. The best margins are when the cost of goods sold is zero!

I’ll be honest: it’s entirely possible the brand-new tools I bought on eBay were stolen. How can a buyer know for sure? The items were sold by anonymous entity with a username somewhere in the Midwest. Due diligence surely cannot be on the buyer. We’re all just trying to save a few bucks in this economy.

Which eBay is also great if you’re okay with second hand. I bought many a used replacement part for my Golf GTI. It doesn’t make sense to pay four times more for a new tonneau cover at the dealer when a used one from eBay works just fine. It’s going to get scratched up anyways, so who cares of it comes already pre-scratched.

The long and short of it

Lately I’ve been seeing lots of media about how online gambling is ruining lives. Our smartphones have become slot machines. Such easy access paves the way for some incredible degeneracy. No longer do people have to physically get on plane to Las Vegas.

But is it a problem that needs solving? As with any vice, there’s opportunity for going overboard. The few that would drink themselves into bankruptcy (or death) shouldn’t prevent others from enjoying alcohol responsibly. Prohibition only does to drive the vice underground. Organized crime benefits, while the drunkards remain.

Adults are making adult choices. Therefore they should shoulder the consequences (if any) of those choices completely. Yes, online gambling platforms are exploiting the heck out of our dopamine pathways. That’s not any different than buying Pokemon card packs and praying you get that rare one to sell online for a relatively massive return. I can assure you no one will have sympathy for the guy in the basement going into five-figure debt on what is essentially cardboard.

Besides, don’t we already have an escape valve for folks in heavy debt? The only thing that personal bankruptcy can’t solve is student loans. That’s the downside exposure for these gambling platforms: if enough of their users declare bankruptcy, the shrinkage may become untenable. And maybe, just maybe, stricter limits on bets would materialize.

That’s probably wishful thinking. The United States consumer will keep consuming longer than you can remain solvent.