As I feared, Patriots and Tyrants is the last episode of Jericho, at least as far as its life on network television goes. As there is with any show that has a small but dedicated fan base, there are rumors that the show may still be picked up by some cable network or another. Having been disappointed by such rumors in the past, I choose to simply consider the show over, and if it happens to return, then I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Better that than bitterly disappointed.

Patriots and Tyrants served as a pretty good ending for the show, I think. At the end of last episode, Jake and Hawkins headed for Cheyenne to recover the last of the bombs from the attack that cut Jericho off from the rest of the world at the beginning of the last season, while the Jericho Rangers were still in hiding from Beck, who had declared the town to be in a full-fledged insurrection. This episode did an excellent job of tying up the major plot threads from the season and bringing us to a good stopping point, but it also leaves the world of Jericho open for more stories in the future — they won’t be continuations of the existing stories, but new stories that happen to involve some of the same characters.

I’m now 90% certain that next week’s episode will be the series finale for Jericho. I’m sorry about that, but at least we got this seven-episode stretch to wrap up the storylines. Some shows never get that opportunity, leaving fans to make up their own endings to the story.

Last season, Jericho moved at a slow (but steady) pace, letting viewers really get a feel for the situation that the town’s citizens found themselves in before changing the status quo. This season, though, the creators don’t have that luxury, and it’s putting an unfortunate strain on the show’s quality. Don’t get me wrong; I liked Sedition just fine, but the show is starting to feel more like a quick summary of events where we only get to see the most pivotal scenes than an actual television series.

Spoilers follow.

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J.D., at Get Rich Slowly, published a guest post (by Loretta B.) yesterday about Time Banking:

Time-banking is built around the basic concept of earning and spending hours. Everyone’s skills, whether they are a medical professional or a house painter, are worth one “time dollar” per hour. The hours that you earn are stored in a “timebank” and can then be redeemed for any service of your choice from any member of the timebank. That is the thing that I like the most about time-banking — it is a great equalizer.

My local timebank is called Community Exchange (CE.) I think that is a perfect name, because the people I have met though the timebank have become my friends and neighbors.

This is an interesting idea, especially for volunteerism, because I can see how it would help to bring a community together, as well as allowing people to ask for help without feeling guilty about doing so (as they would simply exchange the “favor” later on). That said, time banking is nothing more than small-scale, voluntary communism. This commenter disagrees:

Jeffeb3 Says:
March 13th, 2008 at 11:13 am

OMG, OMG, Communism. Communism is evil! OMG!

The worst parts of communism are not present in this time sharing. Anyone who thinks so should go research communism. Communism involves _Taking_ away the wealth of the wealthy, and _Giving_ it to everyone equally. Communism favors the whole over an individual. Time sharing favors the individual. Early communist leaders starved their own people to increase collusion. Time sharing gives people with desired, but less monetarily valued, time an opportunity to pay for other people’s time. Communism’s final stage involves converting the entire world into communism. It’s fundamental idea of communism, Time sharing isn’t even close.

It also really bothers me that people think that socialism is going to destroy the country. The US has never been capitalist. Look at schools, police, the army, fire depts, even politics. These services are paid for by all, and used by some, explain how that is capitalism?

Try to be less Mcarthy, and more friendly.

The fact that timebanking is a form of communism doesn’t bother me, because communism isn’t inherently evil. As long as it’s small-scale and completely voluntary, I have no problem with it (nor do I see any issues with having a communistic bartering system that exists inside a society that is mostly (though not completely) capitalistic).

I am a bit confused about how time banking doesn’t involve a completely equal distribution of wealth. Time is the only resource that is distributed at an equal rate to everyone in the world. No matter what country they’re from, no matter what family they’re born into, no one gets more than 86,400 seconds per day. If those seconds are the currency with which individuals can buy goods or services, then wealth is distributed perfectly evenly.

There are two reasons that communism breaks down when it is large scale and/or non-voluntary. The first reason is alluded to in Jeffeb3′s comment: it is inevitably poorly managed^[a], either due to ineptness or greed.

The second reason communism doesn’t work is that it stifles the work ethic. The problem with making everyone’s time equal is that while individuals may be seen as “equal but different”, the tasks those individuals perform are not equal (I’ve mentioned this before here). An hour of cooking hamburgers is not the same as an hour of firefighting is not the same as an hour of dog walking is not the same as an hour of performing medical evaluations. If we attempt to reimburse individuals for the same amount regardless of the activity they’re performing, individuals who would ordinarily be driven to perform high-risk or high-skill tasks have no incentive to perform those tasks.

To look at it another way, imagine three artists. The first artist can, in the course of three hours, work hard and paint a impressionist work that inspires great emotions even if you can’t recognize the subject. The second artist can paint to the best of his ability for three hours and paint a recognizable (but not inspired) rendition of pretty much any subject. The third “artist” spends three hours mixing paint and barely touching his canvas, and turns out something that resembles the artwork of a five-year-old child^[b]. In our current system, the first two artists’ work is almost always more valuable than the third (which of those first two artists’ work is more valuable depends on the beholder, I think), but in a communist society, all three artists’ work is valued equally.

I believe I’ve said this before, but the simplest reason that communism doesn’t work is that it expects human beings to be something besides human beings. In order for communism to work well, we would have to be perfect, because our bad qualities can destroy the entire system. On the other hand, capitalism works very well, because it uses our bad qualities to generate good outcomes. It does not require us to ignore self-interest for group-interest; it uses self-interest to meet everyone’s needs^[c].

Reading through the comments on J.D.’s site, you’ll see criticism of capitalism. Many of these criticisms center around the fact that it doesn’t promote charity^[d], but it doesn’t have to. Where Communism uses our good qualities and is destroyed by our bad ones, capitalism makes use of our bad qualities and is enhanced by our good qualities. Systems like the time bank (or “pure” charities, for that matter), which can function perfectly well within a capitalist economic system, highlight this.

1. Unless you’re trading your time for someone else’s directly, large-scale communism will need some management [↩]
2. Not to criticize five-year-old children, but if you don’t have an emotional attachment to the young artist, their artwork isn’t worth much. [↩]
3. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [↩]
4. There’s another criticism that capitalism can devolve into a system where the rich exploit the poor, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. A capitalist system is best served when everyone is productive and doing well. [↩]

I’ve missed my Lost posts the last couple of weeks, so here are my thoughts on The Constant and The Other Woman before Ji Yeon airs.

Both of these episodes were very good. I know a lot of people seem to be disappointed in The Other Woman after The Constant, but I think that The Other Woman was exactly the sort of episode that needed to follow a mythology-heavy episode like The Constant.

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Readers of this blog may or may not be aware of this, but I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey. If you’re not familiar with him, Dave is a radio talk show host and author whose focus is primarily on personal finance advice. As he says at the beginning of the radio show, he believes (and teaches) that “debt is dumb.”

Recently, I heard (about) someone complaining about Dave. The complainer said that they couldn’t believe Dave had gotten rich and gained a huge following simply by telling people that spending less than they earn would help them get out of debt and build savings^[a]. Not long before I heard that, I was talking to my dad about Dave, and he asked how he could fill a three hour show daily giving that advice. My answer? He repeats himself a lot.

The advice that Dave Ramsey gives is, in general, simple common-sense advice, but it isn’t easy advice. For me, at least, I find that it’s easy to build a budget. Before I built this one, I had built a budget several times over the last few years, but this is the first time one has stuck. The reason prior budgets didn’t stick was not because the budgets were complicated, but because it isn’t easy for me to stick to them. I imagine that I’m not unusual in that regard (though I will readily admit that I am unusual in other areas). Even before I was able to make it work for me, I could see that sticking to a budget and paying down my debts would work — I just found it hard to do.

According to the Dave Ramsey article at Wikipedia, Dave has been criticized for giving simple answers to complex problems. It’s strange to me how anyone would argue with the simple fact that spending less than you earn and using the overage to pay off debts will get you out of debt. Just because someone finds that they are unable to exercise the discipline to follow Dave’s simple plan doesn’t mean that the plan doesn’t work — it simply means that the individual in question didn’t follow it^[b].

We see this effect in other areas, as well. President Bush recently urged Congress to pass a bill that would increase the amount of money spent fighting AIDS in Africa^[c]. In order to get this bill passed, Republicans had to compromise with Democrats to remove an earmark that would have reserved some portion of the money for abstinence promotion.

Given that individuals who abstain from consensual sex and drug use can drastically reduce^[d] their chances of getting HIV/AIDS, why would we remove this earmark? Many people will tell you that abstinence education doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean abstinence doesn’t work. It simply means that, even when the advice (“Don’t have sex outside of a monogamous relationship with someone you know is uninfected”) is simple, people won’t follow it unless the advice is also easy. Depriving yourself of something you really want is hard, and many individuals simply aren’t interested in that.

A lot of people do not want simple solutions to their problems. They want easy solutions. What’s more, because they don’t want to face this fact about themselves, many people will claim that the simple solution doesn’t work, even in the face of evidence that it does.

1. This is paraphrased, incidentally. I didn’t hear the complaint directly, and am not even directly quoting my source; my memory isn’t that good. [↩]
2. I’m not saying that’s necessarily the end of the world — J.D. at Get Rich Slowly often describes what worked to get him out of debt, but he’s quick to admit that certain aspects of his plan (or Dave Ramsey’s) may prove to be stumbling blocks for some people. He’s not hung up on following his process; he wants everyone to find what works for them. [↩]
3. Because it’s outside the scope of this post, I’m not going to discuss whether or not we should be paying for this; A Field Guide to American Politics, the podcast from All American Blogger, covered it very well a few days ago, and a quick search of the internet will probably yield plenty of conservative/libertarian blogs talking about it. [↩]
4. They don’t quite eliminate the chance completely, since tainted blood or non-consensual sex would still transmit the disease, but neither of those are a significant percentage of how the disease currently spreads. [↩]