After some interesting Twitter discussions about healthcare reform last week, I began to think about the conservative right position against universal/socialized/single-payer/public-option healthcare in America. Since the Republican party has so inextricably linked itself with the increasingly odious politically evangelical Christian movement in order to win elections, I'm rather insulted at the hostile reaction our Republican political establishment has shown towards any option that doesn't allow private insurance companies to bankrupt ordinary Americans with high premiums and denial of coverage on financial grounds. No one in favor of some form of public option for healthcare is under any illusion that the program won't be costly. I personally feel that it should likely be expected to cost the country a metric fuckton. If there was ever a government program for which deficit spending is a necessary evil, it's providing healthcare to every citizen regardless of ability to pay. Better to lose a dollar saving a life than to spend fifty cents taking a life in war. But the argument I'm so often hearing against healthcare is the "I shouldn't have to pay so some lazy bastard without a job can get healthcare."

Let's cut the bullshit. For the record, you are already paying for the lazy bastard without a job to get care at the emergency room. The law does not allow emergency rooms to refuse care to anyone. When that "lazy bastard" gets care at the ER, he does so on the hospital's dime if he cannot pay. The hospital passes that loss off to the people who can pay - if you have health insurance, that's you and your insurance company. You pay higher costs at the hospital, the insurance company charges you a higher premium, and healthcare costs continue to balloon well past the normal rate of inflation. Of course, just calling that person who can't pay a "lazy bastard" assumes that the ER isn't the only healthcare outlet for the working poor, who often can't take afford to take time off of work to visit a doctor during banker's hours.

But continue to call anyone who receives any kind of government aid a "lazy bastard" if that's what helps you sleep at night knowing you are condemning working mothers with three kids as shiftless drains on society. Forget the fact that not only do you receive government benefits for paying insurance premiums (it cuts down on your taxable income - so in effect, it's a tax credit) but your employer does as well (who also gets deductions for providing health insurance). We can quibble about the amount of benefit you receive in comparison, but don't act like you aren't sucking at a government teat just a wee bit.

The most galling part about hearing someone who claims to be a Christian criticizing a universal program as forcing them to pay for "lazy bastards" is how dissociated that attitude is from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm no Christian - I find organized religion odious. Nor am I a Biblical scholar, but having grown up with Baptist and Assembly of God teaching, as well as having done my own reading, I can safely say that your attitude would make baby Jesus weep.

Jesus did a lot of healing in his short time as wandering prophet. He healed lepers, cripples, whores, the poor - you know, pretty much every shitheel he could find. If you believe the stories, he even cured a zombie (or created one - we don't know if Lazarus developed a taste for brains). I don't ever remember Jesus asking for a co-pay, or checking for an insurance card. He didn't even moralize about your life choices, or refuse to help someone who might have been gay, or had an abortion, or didn't vote Republican. He didn't ask if you were crippled from birth and therefore might not be eligible for MessiahCare™. Perhaps the disciples forgot to mention Jesus easy payment terms, or the fact that he took checks, debit or credit cards for service. No, Jesus healed the sick with nothing more than a few words about his father and a helpful life lesson. Maybe he asked for a loaf of bread or a fish for his posse, but even then, he was the original Discover card - give one fish, get five back in his handy Fish Back™ program.

If Republicans/Conservatives want to claim they are Christians and that our nation is a Christian one, founded on Christian values, it's time to put up or shut the fuck up. Jesus didn't charge a co-pay. Of course, neither the government nor healthcare professionals are Jesus; they can't practice medicine without some costs. Jesus had no drug costs, his time was free and his materials were divine. But the philosophy is what's important here. Jesus wanted to heal the sick, regardless of whether they were "lazy bastards" or working members of society, whether they were moral followers or the dregs of immorality. The government may not be Jesus, but they damn sure should aspire to one of the basic tenets of the founding of America: every citizen has the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," all of which is difficult when one has to choose between crippling bankruptcy or crippling sickness.

It's almost like the political establishment expects everyone to get their healthcare from this guy.

Labels: Corporate Corruption, Government Corruption, Government Idiots, Health Care, Politics, Religious Corruption

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For those wondering about my decreased output over here, it's because of my serial cyberpunk blog novel, called The Know Circuit. It's a sequel to my first blog novel, Under the Amoral Bridge, and is being updated twice weekly, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Today's update brings the story into Chapter 13. Keep watching this space for my more personal, non-fiction writing, and watch The Know Circuit for my science-fiction.

Labels: Literature, Science-Fiction

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I find it hard to believe that some members of the Republican party are functional human beings. While I will be criticizing Republicans in this post, I must make the disclaimer that I do not believe this form of mental retardation is unique to conservatives, Republicans or right-wingers. But the particular display of idiocy I am criticizing in this case comes from unnamed Republicans.

President Obama is challenging government agencies to shave $100 million in total off of their upcoming expenses. While admirable, I'm not entirely sure such an amount is worth the hassle, when the budget he's proposing totals $3.5 TRILLION. After all, those savings won't even reduce the part of that number to the right of the decimal point. When you're budget is in the trillions and much of that is added deficit spending, does any number that doesn't end with the word billion even matter much?

That isn't the galling part. The true outrage comes from critics of this budget. Beyond the hypocrisy of Republicans criticizing deficit spending after 8 years of deficit spending under a Republican president, four of those years coming with a Republican majority, the true extent of cognitive dissonance is apparent in their particular criticism.

Republicans have accused the president and the Democratic-controlled Congress of wasteful spending, saying Obama's $3.5 trillion 2010 budget plan carries too much deficit spending and too few tax cuts.

I can only respond with a "LOLWUT?" It's called math, you mental midgets, look it up. You can't criticize deficit spending (spending money over and above the tax money received) while at the same time calling for cutting more taxes. If you cut taxes, you have less money to spend, thus creating GREATER DEFICIT SPENDING. Is this really that hard a concept? It shouldn't be to anyone who passed third grade arithmetic. Perhaps we need a new law: No Congressmen Left Behind.

Criticize the President all you want. But if you can't even create enough mental heat to light a piece of flash paper soaked in kerosene, please join the other useless fuckers in line at the Shut the Fuck Up Kitchen. They serve retards extra helpings.

Labels: Government Idiots, Politics, President Obama

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What do I see in the New York Times online edition? Some promising news about the upcoming battle to provide Americans with healthcare, of course. It seems that the major health insurers are now ready to drop their objections to covering people with pre-existing conditions. How big of them to show a readiness to work with Congress after decades of obstructing any progress on universal healthcare based on the objection that people with chronic conditions were unprofitable and thus unworthy of coverage.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see the insurers softening their stance. This country needs universal (GASP SOCIALISM!) healthcare in the worst possible way. Our economy has suffered greatly for it, our businesses are getting gang-raped by the onerous cost of making sure their workers are well enough to come to work, and families are one goddamn disease away from total financial ruin. But make no mistake, this was not the insurers being magnanimous, nor is it a signal they are really ready to give up the gravy train fed from the bone marrow of cancer patients.

This is an industry realizing that their customers have had enough and they aren't going to take this shit lying down anymore. Well, the ones that can still stand, that is. For whatever his flaws and failings may be, Pres. Obama is committed to providing every American healthcare, and the amount of public hostility towards insurers as well as the shift in Congressional party makeup makes the writing on the wall clear in gigantic, 90-point Helvetica type. Your money-siphoning days are over.

Of course, these insurers are still opposed to a government-run health care system. They are opposed because if a government system is run in competition to their own, the chances are they will lose most of their business. Not because the government system will automatically be better (though it certainly couldn't be much worse) but because that system will likely be CHEAPER, and these companies have never really had to compete on price to individuals. Sure, they'll offer group discounts to businesses, because that money is guaranteed. But individuals? They've never wanted to have to compete for individuals, because those are nickel and dime customers. It's harder to please them, the margins are terrible and the industry has spent almost 40 years pissing them off. I can almost guarantee that if offered a chance between a cheaper government-run system and a private insurer, the cheaper option would win out for 70% of the population. With that kind of competition, what are insurers going to offer customers for the higher premiums?

All they would have at that point is better doctors (very subjective), lower wait times and... well, what else do they have? Their entire business model would have to change, and they might actually have to market themselves. It's a lose-lose proposition.

But within their willingness to work with Congress on dropping the pre-existing condition restrictions is a fun little poison pill. They only want to do it if Congress can mandate that every American must be covered by insurance. That means they want to pull the same crap the auto insurers did years ago - i.e. make everyone have to buy coverage from the insurers. At that point, their pool of healthy customers is large enough that it offsets the need to help the deadbeats with Parkinson's. And of course, they would resist any government intervention in pricing policies.

Let me be blunt, health insurance industry. The free ride is over. In whatever form it finally comes, you will not be able to keep things going as they are. Whether it takes 20 years and goes through three Presidents and multiple changes of Congress, the American people are fed up with your bullshit. You'd better get a head start now, because there's an angry mob right the fuck behind you and they won't stop until they get what they want.

Labels: Corporate Corruption, Health Care, Politics, Privatization

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Two bits of interesting news came my way in the last day, both of which reinforced a thought I've had for a while now. The video game industry has been doing it wrong, it being unit pricing. I am known as one cheap bastard, this I will confess. My initial reaction to the announcement of the XBox 360's release was that the console was too expensive, and I was practically apoplectic at the PS3's insane release price point. The fact that games for both those systems are $10 more than their predecessors and their competitors on the Wii makes me even more stabby. PC Games have thankfully not followed suit, hovering between $40 and $50 for a new release - a price I rarely pay. But in such trying economic times, when many people are worried about losing their jobs and their homes and much of the video game industry is quivering in fear of impending layoffs and forced relocation and consolidations, those numbers are a pretty big spend. The times are dire and entertainment is one of the first things cut. So why are games so goddamn expensive?

The industry would have you believe that the high price points are a vital necessity due to low sales, and for PC games, they may be right. However, the entire video game industry has continued to grow and despite the shitting itself layoff reactions many of the publishers have been having lately, the numbers seem to say the industry as a whole is doing ok even with flat sales. In times like these, businesses are more concerned with not losing money as opposed to growing profits - keeping the lights on as it were. Generating revenue at a break even point is success - anything more is gravy, anything less is dire. This is the time to examine long-held beliefs about the way to do business and see if there's a better way. I believe that the better way forward is in lowering unit prices on video games.

I realize that is heresy to some. After all, the industry model is that most of the money to be made on a product (excluding recurring revenue products like subscription-based MMOG's) is made in the first two weeks to a month. If a product isn't a hit in that time, it's a failure and any sales after that are just residuals. Entire studios have folded because their product didn't immediately fly off the shelf. The early adopter customer is forced to pay a premium, while the lollygaggers get the game on discount six months or more from release. If there are more of the former than the latter, success. Thus, we have price points in the $50-$60 range.

Gabe Newell of Valve has put paid to the notion, however. During a DICE keynote, he threw out some interesting numbers relating to discount sales they've run on Steam lately. Last weekend's 50% off sale of the hit product Left 4 Dead produced an astounding 3000% increase in sales - and those numbers outstripped the release date sales of the product. The huge holiday sale on Steam which saw some products discounted as much as 75% saw even more jaw-dropping increases. To quote:

10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
25% sale = 245% increase in sales
50% sale = 320% increase in sales
75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

Notice those numbers are not units shipped - those are REAL DOLLAR SALES INCREASES. That's money in the bank. We can certainly assume that some of that increase is attributable to the fact that these are SALES - everyone loves a sale. But even if half of those increases are due to the lowered price point, that's a monumental difference.

Let's take the 50% price point reduction. If the game sells for half price ($25 instead of $50), the company makes half as much money per unit sold. If that 320% increase in sales is halved (assuming half the purchases were because of ZOMGSALEFEVER!), that's a 160% increase in real dollar sales over the $50 price point. So you make 1.6 times more revenue than you made at the higher price point. Revenue keeps the lights on, keeps the employees paid and funds future development. Even if you only made the same amount of money at the lower price point but you shipped more units, the upshot is that you had more people buying videogames. And that means you have more potential FUTURE customers - not only of new products but of expansions to the product they just bought?

The second bit of news is not a surprising one. Gamestop, that by now monolithic shitheap of a company that has nevertheless become just about the only exclusively video-game brick and mortar merchant out there, is still making money. In fact, their 2008 sales showed an increase of 24% over their 2007 sales, and this was with the economy dropping a deuce for the last six months of the year. This was without any new console releases and one of the worst Christmas seasons in memory. They predict that 2009 will be even better even with the economy in tatters. How do they do it?

Used games. That's right, as fucked up as that system is, as disgusting as it is to sell a returned game for $5 off the new game price only a week after the release even though they "paid" half the retail price in trade, the system makes Gamestop money. Lots and lots of money. It's what has not only kept them afloat, it's made them blockbuster profits. The simple reason is that people like me can't or won't pay those insane price points for a game. The last game I bought with my own money at full price was Warhammer Online for the PC. I'd rather wait a few months until it's gone down to about half the release price (and for PC games, when the game has been patch-fixed) and either buy it used or at a discount. I'd wager there will be more like me as the economy worsens.

Certainly there are other mitigating factors than price. For Valve, the success of the Steam platform and its concurrent efficiencies (no physical product, cheaper distribution costs, ability to stockpile a huge backcatalog) can certainly contribute to the ability to sell products for less. Digital distribution is something console video games are only now getting into with Live Marketplace, PSN and WiiWare titles. And no matter how cheap a game is, it still must be a good game to succeed. But for the future of the industry, I think now is the time to take a hard look at the price point assumptions and distribution methods that have led the industry to the point it's at today. While it has made the industry money, that doesn't mean it isn't currently broken.

Labels: Video Games

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So Raging Douchebag Week got cut short and it's been a quiet month on this blog. Bruce Sterling linked a story involving cloned goats on my Twitter this morning, and I felt the need to share. Not just goats being cloned, but an extinct species of goat being cloned from frozen skin cells. We can rebuild them. We have the technology. Of course, they die shortly after birth from defective lung cells, but it's a positive start to a very promising set of research.

I'm certainly not naive enough to think that cloning animals or humans is without ethical conundrums. Would clones have souls? Is it ethical to clone entire flocks of animals merely for food stocks or manual labor? Would cloning a human and forcing him to work be slavery? And of course, do all clones look like Jango Fett but shoot like Barney Fife? Could a single parent make a clone of themselves in lieu of having a child by another person, and would that clone be a child or a creepy freak killer with a head like the Burger King?

The thought of human cloning scares the bejeebus out of anti-abortionists, mainly because it changes the discussion on the magical act of conception. And who wouldn't be freaked out by a fully-functioning clone of themselves - bearing in mind that a clone who was born as an infant would likely turn into a different person if we are to believe that environment shapes personality more than heredity.

What if we could clone ourselves, accelerate the clone's life cycle to the age we wanted to be, then transfer consciousness into the clone? Would that be murder or would we consider a cloned body without a lifetime of environmental stimuli an actual person or mere genetic property?

Cloning is a fantastic concept rife with horrible potential for abuse by the shuffling mass of stupidity that is humanity. I'm overjoyed that scientists are attempting to perfect the techniques. My only hope is that they consider the ethical questions - not just can we do this, but should we? And if the answer to the latter question is yes, how should we proceed? Give me your thoughts on cloning.

Labels: Science, Science-Fiction

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Today's Raging Douchebag award winner comes from the world of video games, specifically the running sore on my video game taint called Massively Multiplayer Online Games. I've written about MMOG's a good bit in the past, though the last few years has found me unable to manage much beyond incomprehensible rage at the whole medium. If ever there was a medium that had pissed away more potential and ruined more talented minds since the dawn of time, I cannot think of one. MMOG's have the capacity for fantastic, shared experiences and yet time after time we are given the same refried plate of game turd hyped with ever more disingenuous buzzwords to hide the basic principle that these games are the same grindy skinner boxes force fit into another tortured intellectual property. Today's Raging Douchebag is the purveyor of two such MMOG's, both of which frustrate with equal measures of the same rage-inducing affliction. The affliction for 2008 is Warhammer Online and the Raging Douchebag in question is Mark Jacobs, GM/VP/CEO of Mythic Entertainment, Inc.

I have in the past been guilty of giving Mark Jacobs a modicum of respect. After all, Mythic's first major release (after years of minor indie releases), Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC), was a blueprint for success in the MMOG industry. It took middleware tools like the Gamebryo graphics engine, melded with Mythic's in-house networking tools and created a real alternative MMOG to the reigning game of the day, Everquest (EQ). It was even fun at times. Its flaws were many, but in a time when it seemed nothing could challenge Everquest's grindtastic grip on the MMOG market, seeing an indie house challenge the likes of Sony Online Entertainment and last year's video game Raging Douchebag Brad McQuaid was refreshing. Adding a successful PVP aspect to the game pushed the genre forward. Yes, it eventually degenerated into a different sort of treadmill gameplay as EQ, and its PVE gameplay was never as good, it was still an alternative to endless planes raids with mouthy, arrogant cockmunchers. At least in DAoC, one could kill the mouthy fuckers if the opportunity presented itself.

The release of Warhammer Online should have been a triumph. After all, Mythic and Jacobs specifically had learned many lessons of building an RVR game from DAoC, how could they possibly repeat those mistakes? Quite easily. Though the Warhammer IP probably wasn't well-suited to a two-faction RVR game, they did somehow manage to make an entertaining game out of it... initially. As I've said before, once the player reaches level 20, the game goes to hell in a handbasket, as the player is sucked into the worst, most mundane grind in existence. Whether one chooses to do the same PVP scenario 100 times a night or the pedestrian PVE with its dearth of rewarding quests, or attempts to level based on the horribly scant RVR action going on, a-grinding you will go.

During the first few months of release, the game's problems were blindingly apparent. Open RVR needed much greater rewards to balance out the ease of use and guaranteed experience that scenarios provided. PVE was and is just plain boring, but high-level PVE was always a weak point of Mythic's games. Regardless of how good it was, competing with World of Warcraft on the PVE front is fruitless. The reigning champion just does it better and has four years of content over a just-released game. Quests just dried up post-20, and in like all other aspects of the game, the response from Mythic was myopic.

RvR doesn't reward enough? We'll give a measly 10-20% experience boost. Not enough quests? Here's some quests you can REPEAT, as if the repetition of content wasn't the problem. Nerfing scenario rewards? Can't do that, people are actually playing the scenarios as opposed to RVR. And the final straw, the final indignity? The end game, which is supposed to be a PVP, PLAYER-VS.-PLAYER experience, was predicated on a steep ward gear grind - a gear grind which required multiple PVE raids against an ever-escalating series of overpowered NPC's. The PVP endgame was cockblocked by PVE.

All of this can blamed on multiple designers, coders and producers at Mythic, so why name Mark Jacobs? I name Mark Jacobs because he's the guy in charge, and more importantly, he's the guy who insisted on repeating the idea that the game's problems, the problems the customers are continually complaining about, are not that significant. Yes, Mark, they are. The customer isn't always right, I will give you that. But when discussing MMOG's, one has to admit that they are SERVICES, and when a customer is not enjoying the given service, he stops paying for the service. The talk of the solutions to the game's problems reminded me all too much of last year's Raging Douchebag Brad McQuaid and his ridiculous Vision™. And then there was this.

The preceding link is a video of Paul Barnett, Warhammer's Creative Director, dressing down one of the head coders over a bug that slipped into the game's code. Now, this video was in jest, that much is obvious. When people responded negatively to the video, he posted another that allowed the coder to pie him in the face. Regardless of whether the dressing down was in jest or a thinly-veiled peen-waving by Mr. Burnett is irrelevant. The main point is that this type of behaviour is barely acceptable when running an Internet startup out of your fucking garage. On a multimillion dollar project that is floundering while its high-level creators are merrily fiddling their way to the bottom of the goddamn ocean, it is unprofessional to the extreme. I got the joke, it's just not very funny when I am paying money to be entertained - and am consequently, NOT BEING ENTERTAINED. As GM/CEO/whatever at Mythic, Mark Jacobs should have dickslapped every moron involved in the production of the first video and apologized to the paying customers, much less allowed a second video to be filmed. My sense of humor ends when my money gets pissed away. The fact that the ward gear kerfuffle announcement came one day after I had renewed my subscription only added to the stinging sense of being rear-ended.

For all the missteps, mishaps and repeated mistakes of Warhammer Online, I name Mark Jacobs the Raging Douchebag of Video Games for 2008. Fix the fucking game, Mark, kill the grind and we'll talk for 2009. The good news is I'm sure someone in the video game industry is waiting in the wings to be an even bigger douche than you've been this year.

Labels: Raging Douchebag Week, Video Games, Warhammer, Warhammer Online

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