Cult Smashers: Part Thirty Three

“This product is designed to spoof the algorithm’s that the social media companies use to push some influencers to the forefront and drag others down to obscurity. The conundrum that faces influencers is that they won’t get famous without being seen by a lot of new faces, but the AI won’t recommend people look at their site until they are famous. In ‘the wild’, there’s a considerable amount of randomness about who does and doesn’t become famous---and a lot of it just involves who get’s noticed first.”

“This need to get in front of the pack has created a lot of the looniness we see on-line. People generally have a bias towards the sensational and get bored by nuance. Moreover the folks who become addicted to ‘doom scrolling’ tend to be emotionally excitable types who enjoy the rush of being outraged about one thing or another. Given the simple set of commands that the social media corporations give to their AIs---namely ‘get eyeballs on screens and clicks on URLs so we can sell advertising’---the most efficient response by influencers is to pump up the emotion to ‘eleven’. And emotions don’t give a damn about the truth.”

“We are trying to develop a methodology to be able to create effective social influencers on command by using Audio Ketchup and the Voice of God, but we also have to jump the hurdle of becoming famous---and there’s no easy way to do that just by modifying our content. So instead we do it by creating artificial ‘virtual populations’ that we can tell to click on specific accounts. This trains the social media AI to see the site we are promoting as being ‘an up-and-comer’. If we can create enough artificial clicks, then the AI will start recommending the site to real people. At that point we hope that the “Ketchup” and “Word of God” programs will keep them and create a following of real people that follows the needed exponential growth curve.”

Nate looked perplexed. “How exactly does this program work?”

(At this point Sally returned and handed the two men ceramic cups of very good drip coffee from the computer lunch room. She had also found fresh croissants---cheese, chocolate, and, butter. It appeared that the Elders treated their chipheads well. Jokes were told, tension was released, and eventually the host brought the meeting back on focus.)

“We’ve infected a huge numbers of people’s home and work computers with a relatively harmless virus that allows us to use a fraction of it’s computing power to connect with a given social media system. To the algorithm it looks like someone has actually logged in and read/listened-to/downloaded content. (The viruses are designed to do this during ‘down time’---when someone is off at lunch, over night, weekends, at work, etc. Whenever the screen saver goes on, the bots do their thing. They have zero impact on the functionality of the CPU and it has no malicious effect on anything.”)

“These virus-controlled computers are called ‘bots’---a short form of ‘robot’. And when a person has control of thousands of them that she can control to do her bidding, we call that a ‘bot army’.”

“It’s routine for hackers to use bot armies to initiate ‘denial of service’ attacks on websites. What happens is they order their virtual soldiers to make the same demand on a website all at once. Since servers can only handle so many commands at the same time, organizations tend to know how many connections they can expect to have at one one time---and plan accordingly. A tidal wave of too many commands happening all at once will slow down and crash a server. Many businesses, political parties, government agencies, and so on, do an enormous amount of their work on line. And if a denial of service attack shuts down their ability to gather information, process financial transactions, connect with customers, etc, it can threaten the long-term viability of the operation.”

“The Word Made Flesh does same thing, but our aim isn’t to shut down the server and cause a denial of service attack. Instead, what our bot army attempts to do is convince the algorithm of a social media service---like FaceBook or YouTube---that a given posting on their system is a lot more popular than it really is.”

“We do this because the core problem with social media is that the prime directive of its artificial intelligence is to find that fraction of postings that encourages the readership to click on the most advertising. Please note, I’m not saying that the AI is looking for the best writing, or even the most popular---I’m saying it is just looking for the posts that create the most number of clicks on advertising. Clicks are where social media companies like FaceBook makes their money. And a very popular posting that doesn’t encourage clicking doesn’t make FaceBook any bucks. A very unpopular post that creates a high percentage of clicks/viewer doesn’t work either. I’ll repeat this point for emphasis: a post that is moderately popular but creates a high percentage of clicks will beat out an extremely popular one that generates a small percentage of clicks, and, a post that is unpopular yet creates a lot of clicks by the few people who see it.”

“It just seems to be a fact that what works best in the social media ecosystem right now are hysterical posts aimed at gullible people. Unfortunately for our political system and society at large, however, the people who fit into this category are also the ones most susceptible to conspiracy theories and authoritarian politics. In effect, social media is like a town hall meeting where the village idiots---and the grifters who prey upon them---always have privileged access to the microphone and the voting booth.”

“What the Old Ones are trying to do with Audio Ketchup, The Word of God, and, The Word Made Flesh is to drown out the grifters and the village idiots and replace them with a more accurate analysis of what’s really happening in the world. The hope is that this will ‘nudge’ humanity into something that makes more sense than the current insanity.”

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Part One of a Conversation With Dominique O'Rourke: Are Council Members Paid Enough?

With a municipal election on the horizon, I thought I'd put some effort into trying to bring out some of the complexities involved with being a Council member. Partially this will be about the business of Council, but I also want to discuss some of the political questions too. 

Ward Six Councilor, Dominique O'Rourke. Image c/o FaceBook, cropped by Bill Hulet.

To that end, I asked Ward Six representative Dominique O'Rourke if she'd be interested in taking part in a long conversation. I was glad she agreed for two reasons. First of all, she is a very articulate person with a lot of experience in previous jobs as a public relations expert and lobbyist in both Ottawa and Queen's Park. Secondly, as will become obvious in some of our later conversations, she and I don't really see the world in exactly the same way---yet I think we were still able to have a useful conversation. I'm not one of those people who believes that journalism needs to always show "both sides", but I do think that if people never engage with folks we may disagree with we run the risk of ending up with a society where the citizenry lives in their own distinct solitudes. And this is a very bad thing.

I consider this an important point that needs to be emphasized. People who talk about 'democracy' often tend to fixate upon the mechanics of voting, decision-making, constitutions, etc. But in doing so, I think they are missing the essence. Democracy is a cultural artifact much more than it is a specific organization that delineates things like the Electorate, Executive, Legislature, and, Judiciary.

That's because when we get right down to it, there are always individuals in a flow chart, and they always have the option of ignoring convention or even the law. We can certainly see this now in the USA. People generally believe that the people who lose elections need to leave office---but it only happens if the people managing the turnover of power agree that it should. "Settled legal precedent" only means something until a majority of Judges in the Supreme Court decide it no longer does. And in Congress the majority rules---but only if the people administering the voting system decide to not allow Gerrymandering and there's no arcane rule like the fillibuster that allows a minority veto over popular legislation.

Even Canada has suffered from this problem. One example that comes to my mind was in 2010 when the Governor General allowed the prorogation of Parliament when the Conservatives only had a minority of the seats and the Liberals had arranged enough support from the other parties to form a government. In effect, a political leader who wasn't the real Prime Minister (because he had yet to get the support of the majority of sitting members) was allowed to deny someone who did have majority support from assuming the position. This was something that went totally against all Parliamentary precedent and undermined Canada's unwritten constitution. The theoretical job of the Governor General was to protect this constitution, yet Michelle Jean crumpled under pressure.

So contrary to what your high school civics teacher may have told you (do they still teach civics?), the safeguard of democracy is really something much more intangible than either law or institutional tradition. It is transparency that allows voters to know what is really going on. It is the free flow of opinions that allows folks to learn to see the world a new way. It is the public square that allows folks who may understand things very differently from one another the ability to talk to one another. And it also includes the integrity of people in key positions who are willing to 'do the right thing' when 'push comes to shove'. Insofar as these things disappear, we cease to be citizens and become just atomized individuals. And at that point---no matter how things appear on paper---democracy becomes not much more than an empty husk. 

So I start out with a big thank you to Councilor O'Rourke for agreeing to become part of this conversation. By engaging with me, I believe she has done her bit to strengthen democracy in Guelph.

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I started off with a "softball" question because it was about something I suspected we agree---namely that Council members get paid too little money.

Cloudwalking Owl · Are Councilors Paid Enough? Part One

Council members in Guelph currently get paid about $47,500/year and the Mayor makes $152,500. Seeing this, the obvious first question to ask is How does this compare to other cities?

Luckily, I was able to find a 2018 report by the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario (AMCTO) that compares compensation of elected municipal officials across the province. First, here's an average of compensation ranked by population.

As you can see, Guelph Councilors make a little more than the average from other comparable cities (at least four years ago).

Now lets look at the break-down by cohort.

Again, looking at this chart, it would appear that Guelph Council is in the top 25% of income earners for cities of populations between 100,000 and 250,000. (Incidentally, the Mayor is in the top 18% also.) The point, of course, isn't how Guelph wages compare to other cities, but rather how they compare to comparable jobs in the broader economy. And I think it's accurate to say that for the amount of work a conscientious Council member should do, it's nowhere near what someone might expect for a similar position in either the private or non-profit sector.

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Wages are a funny thing, though. Ordinary people often find themselves using the word "fair", but I suspect if you talked to the average economist (or business tycoon) they'd suggest that we throw that concept out the window and instead rely upon "what THE MARKET will bear" to decide upon how much a person makes. I suppose the best illustration of this is the following map that I've often seen used as a meme on social media.      

This graphic has been repeated so many times I don't know which was the original.

The earliest citation of the above map I could find was 2013, but it still works for the point I am trying to make. In the USA sports teams---football and basketball---are tremendously important fundraising vehicles for universities. The assumption is that a coach can make or break a team, and since the teams are essential to the fiscal health of many American universities, competition to find the very best ones is often fiercer than to find great academics. And that's why the highest wages at universities often go to athletic directors instead of researchers. (Canadian universities have a very different funding model---so none of the above applies.)    

The dissonance between professor pay and coach pay in the USA is jarring, but in both the USA and Canada there is also a big distinction in payment between contract lecturers who just teach undergraduate courses and professors who also teach graduate students, sit on committees, and, do research. There are complexities to the issue that are beyond the scope of this article, but the best way to understand it is that professors at a university are expected only teach a few courses (three or four) a year. In contrast, sessional lecturers, are expected to teach three or four times as many courses in a year if they expect to make an income of something like $90,000/year. (According to Glassdoor the average annual salary for a professor in Ontario is a bit under $120,000 a year. Please remember that this is an average, not a median. I couldn't find a number for the median, and I strongly suspect that a small percentage of very well-paid 'stars' are pulling up the average.)

This is the theory. However, there are inducements baked into this system that lead to ridiculous outcomes. Even though universities often theoretically limit the number of courses a contract lecturer can teach in a semester, there can be strong inducements that push some people into teaching many more. For example, one anonymous source told me about his school theoretically limiting the number courses per semester to five, but instead people sometimes teach as many as twelve. I'm told that this crazy-ass, way-too-high workload doesn't seem to be about greed so much as fear of losing-out on future contracts, as anyone who takes a break from teaching a particular course often loses the right of first refusal to teach it the next time it's offered. (Ie: don't teach it this semester and you may never be able to teach it again.)

Again, we've left the realm of fair and are back into the world of being paid what the market decides is right. And in this case, the market has decided that getting the very best researchers is much more important than doing the very best job teaching undergraduates. And, I suspect, this is exactly the same reason why football coaches are paid more than professors in the USA. It's because a very good researcher can make a university a lot of money by bringing in research contracts from both government and corporations. 

Besides the impact of an impossible-to-sustain workload on lecturers, it is obvious that undergraduates are suffering from this system. As an undergraduate I had access to teachers that I would assume modern students could only dream of. But isn't this decline in the quality of teaching a 'market failure'---doesn't orthodox economics tell us that it will eventually self-correct?

The problem comes down supply and demand, but in a special sense. The problem is that some demand (ie: better research) is concentrated into a small number of powerful people whereas others are diffused into the hands of a large number of powerless people (ie: good undergraduate teaching). 

There are a lot of people who are qualified and would like to teach at a university. Moreover, undergraduates mostly haven't got a clue about the difference between a good course where the instructor has enough time to prepare and interact with students, and, a poor one where the sessional has to wear roller skates just to provide the bare minimum. More importantly, they really don't have much say in who gets to teach them once they've committed to a school. In contrast, there is only a small pool of corporate or government donors, who know exactly what they want, and, have ultimate control over who they do or do not support. This means that universities have a huge market incentive to cut costs on teaching and invest in research. The result is a small pool of highly-paid prestige researchers---and a faceless herd of poorly-paid, "disposable", contract lecturers who can only make a 'decent' living by putting in long, long hours.

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So what has this got to do with the salaries of City Council? I used the two examples from university to illustrate a much larger trend in society. Lots and lots of people get paid very poorly for jobs that are very important. We really noticed this in the pandemic when lots of folks who get paid not very much money were expected to risk getting a scary disease---the folks who work in extended care facilities, for example. We live in a capitalist society, and the religion of Adam Smith proclaims that we must allow the All-Mighty Invisible Hand free reign to allocate money without reference to the petty concerns of ordinary human beings. 

For those who worship at the altar of capitalism, the low wages for Council members makes sense. In every election there are always more people who want to get elected than there are slots to fill. And during elections prospective employees (candidates) never discuss wages with their potential future bosses (voters). 

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For reasons that I will get into in future posts, I'm experimenting with migrating from Blogger to Substack, and changing the name of this journal from The Guelph-Back-Grounder to Hulet's Backgrounder. I'm going to be publishing on both media for a while yet, but starting now I'm going to be sending out my alerts using a Substack link instead of a Blogger one. It's very easy to subscribe to Substack, and it's a lot less 'noisy' for readers. I think it's an improvement, but if there are issues, I'd really like to hear from you so I can fix them as they arise. 

Back to Council pay.  

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Cloudwalking Owl · Are Councillers Paid Enough Part Two

The complexity comes from the fact that the city isn't a business and Council isn't a board of directors. In fact, you could say that (contrary to the people who maintain that government should be 'run like a business') neither one should be seen as being part of the capitalist economy at all. Indeed, I'd suggest that they are functionally in opposition to the so-called 'Free Market'.

The oft-repeated observation is that we live in a society that follows The Golden Rule, which is defined as 'whomever has the most gold makes all the rules'. Indeed, that's exactly what capitalism is---rule by the class of people who own the most capital. But we aren't living in a pure capitalist society, instead the free market is supposed to be hemmed-in and controlled by democratically-decided rules that mitigate the worst excesses of the business class. 

Moreover, Guelph Council is supposed to be a representative democracy, which means that we are supposed to elect people who represent the interests and values of the majority of the citizenry. And that's where things get sticky. 

It's important for an elected official to be effective. That is to say, they need to be someone who is able to grasp the essentials of municipal governance so they can avoid becoming totally at the mercy of staff and lobbyists. That's what I think Dominique is emphasizing in our conversation. But at the same time, a Council member also needs to be a good representative of the citizens. And by that, I mean they have to be someone who can understand the needs of all the people. That's to say, the politician shouldn't be just a technocrat who understands how the system operates---she also needs to have a very visceral grasp of how the system impacts the lives of people.

Let's add one more complexity to the pot. 

Elected officials don't just have a responsibility to the people that elected them. They also have a responsibility to folks who not only didn't elect them, but couldn't elect them. One of the problems we have in dealing with the Climate Emergency is that the people who are being asked to make changes in their lives are not the same people who will be most affected by their decision to either deal with or ignore the causes of climate change. The young and unborn will bear the brunt, yet they don't have a say. It's the same thing with the housing emergency. People who already live in a ward get to elect the Council member, yet the people most affected by the decisions she makes are the ones who don't already have a place to live. This means that to be a good Councilor, someone sometimes has to be willing to judge issues on their own merits instead of following the opinions and interests of the people who voted them into office.

The housing emergency is not just about housing, it's about everything in a person's life. If someone has such an onerous rent or mortgage that they have zero 'wiggle room' in their finances, this means that they will not be able to save money for their retirement. (House ownership isn't really a good way to save money because as long as you live you will still need to own a home. And the price you pay for the home you live in when old will up in go-up in lockstep with the home you are living in now.) It will also mean that they will have dramatically-limited life options---they may have to work at several jobs, commute long distances, post-pone or avoid having children, not be able to upgrade their skills, not be able to take risks (like starting their own business), etc. Excessive housing costs are like a giant lamprey eel that sucks the blood out of anyone who has to pay them. They destroy lives and also communities. 

Another insidious thing about excessive housing costs is that they are often invisible to anyone who isn't personally suffering. Indeed, most homeowners I meet seem to see them as nothing but a benefit when the value of their home goes up in price. (In contrast, when I hear people bragging about how much their house has gone up in value, I tend to feel it as a kick in the gut because I immediately think about how this is going to affect anyone who doesn't already own a home. I also feel the same way when people brag about their vacation trips because all I can think about is the carbon emitted by the jet flights.) When your house goes up in value, folks often become mesmerized by the dollar amounts---totally oblivious to the truth that the increase is price is life-blood stolen from other people. If we understand this, perhaps it is a good idea that Council members should be sweating over things like mortgage payments and how they are going to send their children to school. Would it perhaps it would be a good idea to pay Council members such that they have to live on the median income of the city's people?

A quick Google search led me to the City of Guelph website which said that the median household income in Guelph is a little under $78,000/household. Since O'Rourke is already making $47,500 from her Council position, if we assume that her significant other is doing at least as well, the household already looks like it is doing better than more than half of the population.

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Since I'm already talking about the taboo subject of salary, if people can afford it, I'd like readers to think about taking a subscription through Patreon or leaving a tip with PayPal . (It's also possible to subscribe through PayPal). I put a lot of work into these stories, and right now I'm receiving a grand total of $73.50/month for them (plus the odd tip, which is always appreciated and is sometimes quite substantial). I know that there are a lot of people who are much worse off than me so I'm never going to move behind a pay wall, but I also know that there are also a lot of folks who are doing much better. I get about 1500 hits a month and have so for years, so I know that there are readers. If you think what I do is worth reading, maybe it's worth supporting too---.   

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Conversations about how much a person makes are generally considered 'in bad taste'. That's because it often runs the risk of devolving into envy. (That's probably what was fueling the anecdote I mentioned about a co-worker and what the Mayor used to be paid.) But there is another side to this that is also important. 

Groups of people who make similar amounts of money have a tendency to see some aspects of the world the same way. The important things are the economic drivers. For example, people who inherit a lot of money tend to take a dim view of inheritance taxes. 

In the case of the middle-class, people's two biggest capital assets tend to be their homes and education. I noticed this years ago when it became clear to me that the two things almost guaranteed to drive even the most left-wing liberals into becoming reactionaries were a perceived threat to the value of their house or the quality of their children's education. 

Poor people are different. The most important capital asset that they usually have are their family and friends. The importance comes from the fact that they are an important safety net during hard times. As my significant other says "a friend is someone who will allow you to sleep on their couch if your home burns down". 

These two worldviews are behind what each group fears when housing changes. Middle-class folks are terrified by the thought of intensification, because they fear it will lead to lowered property values. The poor are terrified by gentrification partly because it may price them out of the neighbourhood but also because the fear it will break up the community network they rely upon to navigate the particularly rough patches they expect to come along.

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I raise the issue about how one's life experience impacts their understanding of housing crisis more to explain than to prescribe. As O'Rourke points out, keeping the pay low is not going to guarantee that only poor people will run for office. Indeed, it may discourage many folks who've managed to claw their way out of poverty from taking the plunge. And the very well-off will have no problem at all taking on the job as a hobby. 

As a general rule I tend to follow the idea that if you seek equality you should pull low people up rather than try to push high people down. Starvation doesn't justify malnutrition. And just because there are people who are being pushed into dire poverty by low wages doesn't justify exploiting hard-working professionals by paying them far less than they could make in the private sector. 

Personal history doesn't really define a person anyway. History is filled with individuals who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths yet who did an enormous amount of good for poor folks (FDR?). There are also lots of examples of people had lived in extreme poverty but who's reign was a catastrophe for the underprivileged (Adolph Hitler?). Education, values and personality matter just as much as work and life experience.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty Two

The next stop for Sally and Nate was the tailor’s shop where there was a final test fitting. After that, they went to the technology “boiler room” hidden in the building that used to house a bakery.

There really wasn’t anything for the two of them to do there, but the thin bearded man sat the two of them down in his office and spend a couple hours outlining what his team had been working on and how it fit into Nate and Sally’s work.

“We showed you how the ‘audio ketchup’ program worked last time you were here. Now I want to tell you about two other programs we’ve developed. The first one actually writes scripts based upon artificial intelligence analysis of existing successful influencer websites. We call it “the Word of God” because we’re all smart Alecs here, and, because---well, you’ll understand when you start reading them.”

Nate was startled. “I’ve done a lot of reading on AI and I find it hard to believe that you have a program that can write convincing scripts---”.

“That’s right. The AI doesn’t write the script, it ‘polishes’ our submissions to it and offers the odd suggestion. And the thing to remember is that an artificial intelligence is anything but ‘intelligent’. It’s not a human being who writes something out based on her beliefs and objectives. Instead, it is an enormous, brute force pattern recognition system. It looks at huge amounts of existing, proven-to-be-successful scripts (by ‘scripts’, I mean transcripts of shows we’ve downloaded off the Web), and comes up with patterns that wouldn’t be recognized by a human being. On the basis of that, we ask the program to write new scripts based on some specific theme. Usually that means we submit a list of ‘hot button’ words and the program ‘free associates’ around them.”

“The result is generally a ‘word salad’ that doesn’t really mean very much. But we use it as a starting point and then pull out individual phrases or sentences that we think sound ‘meaningful’ and resubmit this to the program to try again, with the saved bits as the starting point. We find that if we do this over and over again, we usually end up with something we can use.”

Nate pursed his lips. “So you’re actually using human intelligence to direct a process where the computer is following patterns?”

“Yes, exactly. Hmm. Let me give you an analogy. The existing AI program is spawning so-called ‘influencers’ based on the prime directive that the social media company has built into it. Mainly, that’s increase the clicks that increases the revenue for the company. Natural selection has tended to choose people who support conspiracy theories. That’s natural selection.”

“But if you’ve read Darwin, you’ll know that he spent a lot of time studying different breeds of fancy pigeons. These are created by breeders using the process known as ‘artificial selection’. That’s when a breeder decides that he wants a specific trait and then chooses which parents to breed with one another to create a new variety. That’s what we are attempting to do with the Word of God---we’re artificially selecting for scripts that will exert a specific type of influence on society, instead of just whatever will create the most money for a company selling advertising.”

At the same time, the AI is also learning to add together the patterns it finds on the transcripts to the ‘feedback’ we give it. Your trainer told me that you are a bright guy. You’ve zeroed in this not being a true AI and instead recognized that it’s really a pattern recognition tool that we use to help write a specific type of directed reasoning.”

“The reason why we’ve brought you in for this meeting is that we need you involved in this ‘back and forth’ with the Word of God program”

Nate was startled. “Why me? I’m no expert on any of this stuff.”

“No, you’re not. But you won’t be the only person involved. And you need to be familiar with the process. The role we’re grooming you for in all of this requires that the script be compatible with the way you see the world and your own personality quirks.”

“Who exactly am I going to be working with, S---?”

Sally jumped in at this point, “Now remember---no names here. We have to protect the organization at all costs.”

Nate was abashed, “Oh, right. I forgot.”

The thin man smiled. “It’s OK. None of us really started out on this path by choice. But circumstances have led us to believe that this weird life we lead is the best way we can minimize the climate crisis---and whatever else is threatening the human race.” He grimaced thinking about why he’d devoted so much of his life to this weird project. “Suffice it for now that the Old Ones have an expert on this sort of thing that will help us come up with scripts. Once we have something we can use, we’ll get you to read them, run the result through the Audio Ketchup program so you sound incredibly persuasive to gullible people. And that now brings me to the third program we’ve developed.”

(At this point Sally got up from the table and announced that she had heard this all before, so she was going to make some coffee for herself. If anyone else would like some, she asked them to place their orders and she’d bring them back. Both Nate and the thin man both asked for some and she left the room.)

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty-One

Angus O’Flaherty was having a bad day.

The Republican-controlled state electoral commission had set up the voting districts in his state so that even though a small majority of state-wide votes usually went Democratic, there was always one Democrat Senator and one Republican---instead of two Dems. They did this by lumping all the safely-Republican districts into the ones that voted one year, and all the strongly-held Democrat districts into the next election. This meant that the Republican always won by a slight majority whereas the Democrats always got a super-majority. 

This meant that the key to winning elections was to get the Republican nomination, and Angus had built a primary vote coalition by adding together white nationalists, garden-variety racists, libertarians, small-government types, and evangelical Christians into a base that was large enough to dominate in nomination races. This was easier to do than naive people might think---since only about 25% (maximum) ever bothered to vote in the primaries.

O’Flaherty had put in decades to build-up his machine and it had re-elected him like clockwork for term after term. That’s why he had come to dominate the Senate Republicans and eventually the entire party. But now it was giving him hiccups. One of the nuttier leaders that had supported him over the years was starting to make a fuss, and he needed to tamp things down before they got out of control.

Pastor Ernesto Diaz didn’t have a formal title other than that of being the self-appointed head of the “Righteous Nation Ministry” or RNM. But he’d build a significant following both on-line and in bricks-and-mortar independent evangelical churchs all over O’Flaherty’s state. And the two groups had a real synergy. The boobs on line were too spread out to generally vote-in a politician in any specific district, but they were generous donors to Diaz’s ‘ministry’. And the money they gave allowed Ernesto to organize outreach campaigns that were able to unify all the independent churches that Diaz had been able to connect with. And the time and even money that he was able to commit to these small congregtions allowed him to organize them as well-oiled, very disciplined, local voting machines. The candidates that Diaz endorsed won nomination races!

But Diaz was a kook who believed that America was always meant to be Christian nation and that the government had a duty to force all atheists and adherents to another religion (plus, truth-be-told, liberal Christians too) into the status of second-class citizens. That meant mandatory Christian prayer at school, laws based on the Ten Commandments, abortion being totally illegal, refusal to accommodate any other religious observance, an end to gay rights, no more “women’s rights” legislation, etc.

In the past this hadn’t been much of a problem for O’Flaherty, because he’d always been able to keep enough distance from these folks that he never got tarred with this radical crap. That was because the base that Diaz brought in were disciplined enough to accept the notion that they had to hidden in order for their influence to work. They were patient people because they were generally outcasts in their own communities. Moreover, their own theology helped because it taught that they were a part of small “elect” or “remnant” of the faithful who were stuck in a irredeemably “fallen” world.

The problem came from the on-line community that Diaz was milking for funds. These people weren’t organized into disciplined, geographically-situated congregations. Instead, they were free-floating individuals who migrated to whatever group scratched their own particular itches. And Diaz had recently begun to learn how to motivate these folks for action. And that was a big problem!

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty

Nate came back to the car about one hour later.

Nate started to talk, but Sally put up a finger to show he should remember the awareness exercise she’d taught him to try to make an automatic habit. She finished reading the paragraph she was on, placed the bookmark, closed the book, and, put it in her handbag. Then she centred herself, took three deep breaths while he did the same thing. At that point she asked the obvious question: “Well, how did it go?”

“Hmmm. It’s certainly an adrenaline rush to pull a stunt like this. So I can see the addictive stimulus-response that said hooks some people into the lifestyle. I did the mental ‘enthusiasm pump’ you taught me to do. Once that had started, I was able to focus my attention completely at the person in front of me---again as you taught me. Then I manifested the ‘confidence-speak’ attitude that allowed me to persuasively lie to the person in front of me.”

Sally interrupted “But was it a lie? Or did your confidence-speak convince you of the truth too? At least at that particular moment.”

“Right. That’s a more accurate way to express how I felt. Whether or not what I was saying was true---it was emotionally true to me.”

“How did you frame your con?”

“When I found out it was a laptop, I decided not to lay it on too thick. I just mentioned that there was nothing wrong with it, it had never been used, I’d bought it as a gift and then found out that my sister had just purchased one just like it. I wanted to act a little nervous about returning such a big ticket item without the paperwork.”

“The woman at the counter said ‘no problem’. But when she took my membership card and tried to read it, it wouldn’t work. She looked at the card, rubbed the barcode, tried again, and when that didn’t work, entered the numbers manually. When this didn’t do the job, she asked a co-worker over to see if he could get it going. He couldn’t, and mentioned that there wasn’t any problem with the terminal. They both said they’d never seen or heard of this type of error before.”

“Bye-the-way, do you know how the card manages to look totally valid on the company website but says that there’s a temporary systems problem with my account?”

Sally snorted, “Don’t ask me. The Old Ones have some pretty gnarly chipheads, though. I suspect that they not only made a fake card but also hacked into the membership data base on the CostCo server.”

“Anyway, at that point I started to act like I was in a real rush. I complained that I was on my lunch break and I had just enough time to get the refund and leave. Moreover, I said that I’d never had a problem with the card before and I really needed the money right that moment or else I wouldn’t be able to get my sister a present in time for her birthday.”

“The woman behind the terminal repeated that she’d never seen this happen before. She asked if I could come back later. But I looked her in the eye and just said ‘I told you I have a time problem. What are you going to do to help me out of this spot?’, I also said that Costco says on it’s website that they don’t care about the receipts, so I didn’t bother to bring them---although I could dig them up if I have to---but I had had such a good experience with the company over the years that it never occurred to me that there would be a problem’. I also looked at my wrist watch, looked concerned, and, started subtly fidgeting.”

“Good. I’m glad you remembered to add in the body language.”

“When she started making noises about a supervisor, I repeated that I was under a tight deadline, I asked her to take the item out of the box. I told her I wasn’t trying to rip anyone off. She could see it was an item that Costco sells and it was obviously immaculate. The original packing material was all there. And I hadn’t even used it---the security tapes were all still in place so it was good enough to put back on the shelf right now. I just didn’t need it and wanted the money so I could get something else for sis.”

“How completely did you believe in what you were saying? Did you have a specific person in mind when you talked about your sister?”

Nate smiled. “Yes I did. Happy birthday, Sally.”

“At that point she asked if I’d be happy with a gift card instead of a reimbursement on my credit card. She asked if my sister had a Costco membership. I said ‘yes’ and she suggested that she would ‘bend the rules a bit’ and give me a gift card worth the full price. She’d keep my membership card, they’d figure out what the problem was, and, then mail it back to me. That way I could get back to work and my sister could choose whatever she really wanted or needed.”

“At that point I sighed and thanked her. She gave me the gift card, kept my membership, and, I came back out here.”

Sally relaxed into her seat. “So if you had a stolen laptop and a very special counterfeit Costco membership card, you just fenced it at the retail rate instead of having to sell it for half price or less through Kijiji or a pawn broker. You can either use the gift card yourself, or, sell it at only a little less than face price to someone else. Actually it’s a really safe grift---especially as a ‘one off’. But it did test you and I imagine it was pretty scary none-the-less.”

Nate nodded in quick agreement.

“Consider that your first ride on a bike---with training wheels, no traffic, and, me running alongside you in case you started to wobble badly. You did OK. Next time you’ll have a little more confidence.”

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

The Gasoline Tax Scam

Recently the Conservative government decided to help ease Ontario's problem with inflation by temporarily cutting the gasoline tax by 5.7 cents per liter. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about this with readers.

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First of all, let's look at how much gasoline costs have risen. Here's a bar graph that shows average Canadian gasoline price per liter that comes from the Trading Economics website. It's about par for the course that I could find in the mainstream media. 

The first thing to pay attention to is a subtle way the graph has been drawn in order to mislead readers. Take a look at the August 2021 bar. (It has the number "1.1" on top of it.) Now look at the June 2022 bar. (The last one, with 1.6 next to it.) Using a ruler to measure the bars on the screen in front of me, I see the former bar as being 150 millimeters tall and the latter as 900mm. Looking at their relative size suggests to the unconscious mind that in June 2022 gas cost six times as it did in August 2021. The fact of the matter, however, is that it only costs 45% more. This is an example in support of the idea that "there are lies, damn lies, and, statistics".

I've gone through statistics Canada data and created my own bar graph that will hopefully convey a more accurate picture of what's going on. 

The first thing to notice between my graph and the other is that my bars are representative of the total price of petroleum distillate whereas the ones from the other graph are designed to "sex up" the story, hopefully get it repeated on FaceBook, leading to more clicks on ads, and, therefore more profitable. (Don't forget, mainstream news is a business, geared towards making money, and, it does so by being entertaining---which includes stoking anger and fear---instead of informative.)

Beyond using a non-misleading bar size, I've increased the sample size from one year to ten. The idea is that it's important to put the present price increases into a larger context. Let me walk readers through my graph to illustrate this point.

Each bar in both graphs represent a month's average gasoline price. If you look at the first graph, you will see that it ends at June of 2022 and the one I made from Statistics Canada data goes to May 2022. The lowest price for the first chart is ten bars back from the end. Counting nine bars back from the end of my chart will take the view to the same place (it's bar number 77). If you go back another 12 months, you will find the lowest gasoline price in the last ten years (that's bar 65 or April 2020 when it was at $79.1/liter).  

The larger sample size illustrates that markets tend to bounce around. Sometimes things cost more, sometimes less. Right now the market is trying to correct itself from the pandemic (which isn't really even over yet) at the same time that the world's largest oil producer is under an embargo because it invaded it's neighbour. Surprise, surprise, right now the cost of gasoline is going up!

Once we've gained a little more perspective on the price increase, let's think about how much of an impact that 5.7 cents/liter gas tax has on the overall cost. If gasoline now costs as much as $2.00/liter, removing the tax is only 2.85% of the total cost. I might be a grump, but if something goes up by 45% removing a tax that only ads 2.85% to the price doesn't really help all that much.

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The next issue to think about is what inflation means for people. To understand this point, we need to understand the difference between "elastic" and "inelastic" demand. Elastic demands are ones that people can do without entirely or which can be satisfied by some sort of alternative produce. 

With regard to food costs, if the price of potato chips and soda pop goes up, people can just do without. If lettuce gets too expensive, you might find that cabbage is still affordable so you make coleslaw instead of Caesar salad.

Inelastic demand is the part of your consumption footprint that it's hard to do without. Both housing and transportation fit the bill---we have to have a place to live and the vast majority of Canadians live where they cannot walk or bike to wherever they need to be. And even if you wanted to find a cheaper place to live or way to get around, doing both requires a fair amount of long-term planning and may simply not be an immediate option no matter how much you would want them to be. 

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean that it's impossible. And this is especially true with regard to gasoline prices. It just requires a little forethought and long-term thinking. 

This is especially important with regard to transportation, because for the last few decades two contradictory trends have been working their way through the auto industry---ones that have a direct impact on the cost of gasoline. 

First of all, the energy efficiency of smaller cars has increased dramatically. Take a look at the first of three graphs I'm copying from a Conversation article. 

If you're having trouble seeing the numbers, click on the picture.

As you can see, between 2005 and 2013 there was a pretty substantial reduction in the liters of gasoline used to drive 100 kilometers (something like from 10 to 8, or 20%---that's the equivalent of a 20% reduction in the price of gasoline!) but this stalled and then started to go back up in 2015. What this means is that over the long haul, personal transportation is an elastic demand---you can cut the amount of gasoline you have to buy by choosing increasingly efficient types of vehicles. (I will ad the caveat however, that this only applies to people who have enough disposable income to pick and choose their ride. Poor people have to drive whatever second-hand car they can afford---which often means a gas-guzzler.)

Remember the "back-sliding" in fuel efficiency in the above graph that started in 2013? If you look at the next graph, you can see what caused it. (Hint, it had little to do with poor folks driving rust buckets.)

Even though trucks (which includes pickups, SUVs, and, vans in automotive discussions) have gotten more efficient than they used to be, they are inherently less efficient than cars. That means if a significant fraction of the population stop buying compact cars and switch to trucks, they are going to end up paying more at the filling station. And the difference between the two is going to be a LOT MORE than the 5.7 cents/liter tax the province levies.

So why have Canadians decided to buy gas-guzzling trucks instead of fuel-efficient compact cars? The simple answer is because they can afford it. The following graph shows the relationship between the cost of gasoline and the efficiency of the vehicles people drive. It's obvious that if the price of gasoline goes down, lots of people stop considering mileage when they purchase a vehicle, and, vice-versa. 

 

But that's just one part of the reason why people buy trucks. There's also a psychological issue at play. 

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Writing these articles takes a lot of time and effort. But I know that some people enjoy reading them enough to buy a subscription or toss something in the tip jar. If you can afford it, why not join them?  Paypal and Patreon make it easy to do. (Thanks Anthony for being so awesome!) And now you can also follow me on Substack---just look for Hulet's Backgrounder. 

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I grew up on a farm. We always had a pickup truck. My first paid gig as a kid involved growing sweet corn which my father took in the pickup to sell to a local grocery store. We used it to ship pigs to the slaughter house, move sand and gravel, the cement mixer and other tools, rubble, garbage, lumber, etc. It got dings, it got manure on it, it got scratched going down gravel roads and pushing through the bush on trails. It got muddy or dusty when I drove it out onto fields loaded with fertilizer. It worked just as hard as we did. But when we went to visit family or do something else non-work related, we drove the Chevy Chevelle (I know, that was a "muscle car" instead of a compact, but we bought it second-hand and my older brother was involved in the purchase.)

I am absolutely amazed at the extremely expensive, "tricked-out" pickups I see on the streets of Guelph. These aren't working trucks---they're fashion statements. Last week I saw one of these things drive over the onions in my boulevard garden because the driver was so far above ground that he lost track of where his wheels were. The beast looked something like the truck below.

The jpg file is actually labelled Cool Truck-Sexy Truck. (Give me a break!)

Not only did the vanity prop that crushed my chives and walking onions look like it had never done a day's work in it's life, it is also an inherently dangerous thing to drive. That's because---among other things---raising a truck like this pushes up the center of gravity (roll-overs on turns), lowers the ability of drivers to see around them (hence my crushed garden), and, towers over the "crumple zones" that are designed to protect other drivers in car crashes. And they get terrible gas mileage too.

So why exactly are people driving these ugly monstrosities? I cannot believe that it is for any other reason than because it projects the image of "masculinity" for people who can't think of anything more intelligent to waste their money on. This was driven home to me a few years ago when I saw a truck that had a set of fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch.

The advert that went with this photo said these "truck nuts" cost $70.

What is going on here? I suspect that it's because a fraction of the population use trucks in the forlorn hope that some of the luster of the "macho red-neck lifestyle" will rub off on them. If you think I'm pushing things too far, consider the following advert.

(Having spent at least part of my life doing the sort of things associated with these "truck tropes", I feel that it should go without saying that this is nostalgic nonsense. There's nothing "cool" about dangerous, hard, physical labour. It doesn't pay all that well and leads to osteoarthritis.)

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There's another aspect to this tax cut that I think needs to be shouted from the rooftops, but which I've never heard anyone mention in the mainstream press. There's an opportunity cost to any tax cut. 

Opportunity costs are what economists call any the things you can no longer do because you made a decision to do something else. So if you decide to take the kids to Disney Land and this costs $2000, that means you can't put that money into a fund to support them if they want to go to university. In the same way, if the government of Ontario decides to cut the gas tax for half the year, this means that they won't have that money to put into hiring more nurses for our hospital emergency departments.

Ontario has a tradition of using gasoline tax revenue to fund public transit. In the 2021-2022 year, for example, Guelph received $3,247,990 from the province that was announced as coming from our gasoline taxes. (There was a one-time 'top up' from general revenue this year because of the decline in gas tax revenue due to the pandemic---but this wasn't to increase the amount paid, just to maintain it in the face of a shortfall because people were driving a lot less than usual that year.) In total, gas taxes funded provincial transit that year to the tune of $375.6 million.

This has been going on for a while. In the 2019-2020 year Guelph Transit received $3,150,233, and all the province's cities received $321.5 Million in 2014 and $332.9 million in 2015 . Please note, I am not saying that the provincial government is going to cut the amount of money it puts into public transit, only that it will have to cut what it funds somewhere. (If it just borrows the money, that too is another cut. That's because the current Ontario debt is around $400 billion, and the interest charges that the government had to pay on it in 2020 was $13.3 billion---the fourth largest item in the budget. And remember that the interest rates were very, very low in 2020. They are now going up, which will make that number grow---even if the province were to immediately stop all borrowing. This means that unless the govt stops cutting taxes and begins to increase them, it has to cut programs in order to service the debt.)

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I understand and sympathize with some poor schmuck who is trying to make a few bucks making deliveries for Amazon or one of the food delivery services. That's why I rarely use either. But I have zip, zero, nadda concern about people whining because it's costing them more to run their SUV, jacked-up pick-up truck, or, Winnebago. These are people who have heard and read about the risk we are all running of heading into a runaway climate catastrophe, who have enough disposable income to choose unnecessarily expensive vehicles, and, yet still choose to buy stupidly wasteful ones. These people made their choices, which suggest they were indifferent to the impact of those choices on other people, and, are now paying the price for their insensitive, crass decisions. Karma's a bitch---learn from it.    

What I find despicable (yup that's the right word) is that the Conservatives have decided that in the face of the real problems that poor people (ie: the poor slobs driving worn-out cars to deliver Uber Eats because they can't get a better gig) are having, they didn't come up with a targeted program to help these genuinely distressed people. Instead, they just threw away badly needed government revenue because of the symbolic effect it will have on the middle and upper income members of the province. I say symbolic, because it is so small that it will have pretty much no positive impact on any of them.

That's what happens when you elect a combination of people who make their decisions either on the basis of ideologically-based ignorance or opportunistic politics. Could someone tell me why there are so many people in this province who support these boobs?

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!