America's Most Wanted

My twelve-year-old stepson is not from America, and I wanted to teach him the time-honored, American tradition of kids making a few bucks selling lemonade. We modified our approach a little bit and decided to sell smoothies and green tea which we had brought from Japan after the earthquake. Yesterday, we went to the store near our house, and we bought watermelon, peaches, mangos, orange juice, apple juice, whole milk, ice, cups, and three poster boards for signs.

The two of us woke up early this morning and made our signs along with my two-year-old daughter, who indicated that she wanted to help with the drink stand as well. (She didn't understand that she was supposed to color inside the bubble letters I had written and spread pink crayon all over the board. But that's okay.) After some experimentation around the middle of the day, we created the perfect fruit punch with whipped cream on top and, in the early afternoon, we headed down to the end of our street, where we'd sell iced tea for two dollars and smoothies for three.

Almost as soon as we got down there, my daughter said she was hungry and wanted to go home to eat something. It wasn't the best timing in the world, but these things happen with little kids. My twelve-year-old stepson is quite mature for his age and he's experienced a lot more than most twelve-year-olds, so I had no problem leaving him in charge of the drink stand while I went home to make my daughter some food. Plus, he was just at the end of our street, so if I wanted to check on him, I could just walk out into the street from my front door a bit and have a look. 

After my daughter finished eating and as we approached the end of our street where the drink stand was, I could see from afar that the sign was pulled up and put away, the cooler was shut with everything which we had so carefully arranged on the tray table put away, and my stepson was huddled up and sitting on the rail, staring out between his knees at the ocean. 

"What happened?" I asked when I got down there. I wondered if he had gotten discouraged that no one was buying his drinks or maybe that no one could understand his accent. Or maybe he was just lonely down there by himself. 

"The police told me to pack up and go home," he said. Or, more accurately I discovered after making a few phone calls, the town police swung by and wished him good luck, and then afterwards, "someone in brown" came by and made my stepson stop selling drinks at the end of our street, because this required a permit, and my stepson did not have a permit to sell drinks.

After hearing a little more from my stepson and talking to the town police, I discovered that the drink stand was on land under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts State Police. After attempting several times to contact the State Police, I reached only answering machines. Apparently, having someone on call on weekends is not in the Massachusetts budget (but breaking up lemonade stands is somehow cost-effective).

In what world is it acceptable to go around breaking up kids's drink stands? What are we teaching our children?

UPDATE 8/29/2011:

There has been some controversy over my assertion that it was the Massachusetts State Police that broke up my stepson's drink stand. I admit that I may have jumped to conclusions and apologize for my ignorance of Massachusetts state organizational structure and corresponding uniform color. I have amended the piece above accordingly. I wish to reiterate that I mean no ill will towards the Massachusetts State Police or law enforcement in general. This post is clearly not about demonizing any one police officer or policing entity.

Let me reiterate: this post is about how ridiculous - and how obviously ridiculous - it is that a twelve-year-old isn't allowed to sell green tea because it is in violation of some ill-conceived or ill-applied regulations.

Drug Policy: Engaging with Reality

In Japan, there is a widespread benign ignorance about the effects of recreational drug use on the human body.  I know only one person here who has tried a hardcore drug (by which I mean it doesn't pass the lunchbreak test), and he happens to be an extremely unique, strongwilled, powerful, and privileged individual.  Drugs (besides of course alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, nitrous, and until recently, both marijuana and mushrooms) are not a part of Japanese culture, and so if Japanese people do not dispassionately understand the physiological effects of crystal meth, who cares?  

However in America, a country saturated with recreational drug use, we suffer from a malignant almost willful ignorance on the part of parents and authority figures.  Our drug laws and programs designed to combat youth drug use, personal experimentation, and addiction are universally poor and self-defeating.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the easily-debunkable urban legends and boogieman stories disseminated through networks of parents and school officials engaging in discussions of mutual ignorance.  Like priests and nuns lecturing Catholic school students about sex, bureaucrats, PTA officials, and politicians not named Hunter S. Thompson should not be formulating drug policy or setting curricula.  This job should be the proper province of neuroscientists who understand the physiology of addiction, and illegal drugs should be scientifically reviewed and assessed by the chemists and clinical researchers at the FDA.

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A (Too?) Simple Solution to Financial Illiteracy

image courtesy of the New YorkerIn an editorial for the New Yorker, James Surowiecki suggests that the new consumer-protection agency's plans to "review and streamline" financial education initiatives is not enough:

We really need something more like a financial equivalent of drivers’ ed. There’s evidence that just improving basic calculation skills and inculcating a few key concepts could make a significant difference. One study of the few states that have mandated financial education in schools found that it had a surprisingly large impact on savings rates. And the Center for American Progress has found that, across the country, education and counselling by nonprofit organizations, like the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, have helped low-income families buy and hold onto homes, even during the housing bubble. The point isn’t to turn the average American into Warren Buffett but to help people avoid disasters and day-to-day choices that eat away at their bank accounts. The difference between knowing a little about your finances and knowing nothing can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime. And, as the past ten years have shown us, the cost to society can be far greater than that.

I agree with Mr. Surowiecki's premise, but "reviewing and streamlining financial education initiatives" sounds to me like hopeless wonkery, as though awareness of the existence of idiots is enough to end all our financial woes.  The simple solution I would offer is tough love in conjunction with access for the "worthy": contrary to the Bush Administration's noble goal to make everyone a home-owner, I suggest three things: (1) a focus on policy making it easier for more people to rent, because renting rules; (2) no home loans for morons; and (3) no more bank bailouts.

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Stop Ranting about Facebook Privacy Settings

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic recently posted an article, "Facebook Does Not Understand the Meaning of Privacy" as a response to recent comments made by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg vis-a-vis speculation that the company is selling user information to advertisers.  From Zuckerberg:

In the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information (sic). People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that's evolved over time.

The Atlantic rightly points out that Facebook updates, including the "news feed" section, were initially unpopular with its base of elitist Ivy League students trying to show-off for their selective group of peers.

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BrewDog: Anarchy in the U.K.

BrewDog's grassroots financial campaign: Equity for PunksScottish nonconformist beermaker, BrewDog, just released the world's strongest beer: at 32% alcohol content, Tactical Nuclear Penguin is almost as strong as whiskey and will sell for 30 pounds (about 49 dollars as of press time) per bottle.  Founded in 2007 by 24-year-old friends James Watt and Martin Dickie, BrewDog has been in business for less than three years, but those three years have been loud, boisterous, and whirling: nearly everything BrewDog has done in its short rise to greatness has been very public and very controversial.  From the company's website: "BrewDog is about breaking rules, taking risks, upsetting trends, unsettling institutions but first and foremost, great tasting beers." 

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A Response to Jonathan Chait

For years now, people far less libertarian than I have been recommending I read Ayn Rand.  While I admit I have no interest in reading her books, I know enough about the author to find her distasteful, iconoclastic, and hypocritical.  Libertarianism is an ideal which treasures self-governance - that is, personal responsibility for one's actions and the freedom to make really bad mistakes as well as the freedom to believe something stupid.  I was excited when I heard about Jonathan Chait's New Republic trashing of Rand, but after I read the article, I couldn't help but feel angry and offended.

Chait, like many, many political commentators from the left, assumes that libertarianism is a simple, unnuanced ideal, that libertarians are incapable of breaking with dogma, and, in general, are a group of elitists who seek to control the world via some sort of perceived innate ability to be better than everyone else at almost anything.  This is an absurd caricature.  Libertarianism is motivated by different factors for different people, despite the fact that Chait suggests it is a psychological disease resulting from abusive parents!

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