Busy time

My apologies for the lack of blogging—your humble Devil is stupidly busy with the day job (which is currently bleeding into being a night job too). I'll be back on it as soon as possible.

In the meantime, Charlotte Gore wrote a rather good post on why statism is like having to make tea for the entire office.

So in the office we use a collectivist method of solving the hot beverage allocation problem. In other words, we do brew rounds, or tea rounds. Rather than get your own drink when you want one, we must make a drink for everyone else in the office who wants one, and we take turns on a round robin basis.

I’ve been mulling on this pretty much all year, because I hate it. I really really hate it. I’m told I’m not really a ‘team player’—which is certainly true in respect of the brew rounds, but I’ve been doing my bit regardless for the sake of a peaceful life.

Today, however, I decided to put this question to the Internet: Is this the best way of solving the beverage allocation problem, or would it be better to switch to an individualist, ‘help yourself when you want one’ approach?

Here’s my argument in favour of the latter: Everyone requires and wants different quantities of tea and coffee through the day. Some will want just one or two cups, others (tea based lifeforms like me) will want one at least once an hour.

Under an individualist system, each person simply makes a drink for themselves when they need one—this means that supply always matches the demand exactly, and everyone’s happy.

My argument against the collectivist approach is nearly the opposite of this - supply does not match with demand, and because making a round of brews is a more onerous task than making a single brew, people tend to be less keen on doing their round when it’s their turn. The result is that supply does not meet the demand, because those with a higher demand for tea either have to do additional brew rounds when it’s not their turn, or wait until the person whose turn it is is ready to make one.

Do go and read the rest, whilst I burn my backlog of work and compose a long post about drug prohibition (which has been discussed a lot recently).

"Yes, yes," I hear you cry. "But haven't you done that subject to death?"

Well, I have made my feelings fairly clear on a number of occasions, yes: however, when I read utterly evil crap like this...

Taking drugs is a deliberate, flagrant, immoral act and those who partake in such actions should be severely punished. One role of government is to protect the individual’s liberty, but another is to protect the individual from themselves and others.

... I have to comment or else my head might pop.

Needless to say, I think that the author of the above comment is a total fucking cunt who should be beaten to death with his own cock.

But, as I say, I'll elaborate later...