Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: Consumerism

  • Mystery of the Invisible Interest Charges

    I am paying my credit cards online.  The account management websites are especially slick–especially that for Chase bank.  Chase not only has the best website, they also keep policies and terms of service (along with updates!) on an easy-to-find tab. But on all the credit card websites, I have noticed how cleverly they hide the monthly assessment of fees from the main page. It  is often  hard to find interest rates and fee assessments, not to mention late fees. Of course, if they wanted to, these banks could easily put this information on the main account page.   But they don’t. Hmm, I wonder why.

    As one salesman said, buying is the pain. Owning is the pleasure.

    In other news, Citigroup has recently announced major financial difficulties.  The welfare of employees notwithstanding, this does not surprise me. I had the worst customer experience in my life with Citibank a few years ago.

    In other credit card/collection news,  I have a landline which I never use. I only use it to connect to DSL (it’s the AT&T tax, as I call it). I have an answering machine attached to it, and my mother is the only one who calls that number (it’s a long story).  I never use this phone, but I receive three computerized collection agency notices. These collection notices are not for me, but for any of a variety of names whose names I do not recognize.

    At first, I thought that these were simply calls about a person who used that last number. But over time, I’ve to the conclusion that either  1)someone at one point in time gave the same number for multiple identities or 2)companies are using the pretext of delinquent accounts to sell me something. Most of the time, I have to call the company up (and am put on hold!). If I just ignore the message, the computerized system will continue calling me over and over and over.

  • $2000 refunds for everybody.

    Brad Templeton has a crazy idea: raise the price of gasoline to $6/gallon, and give everybody a $2000 refund.

    As for me, I fill up with 10 gallons every two weeks. 260 x 6 = $1560 . Sounds like a good deal to me.

    Ancillary Benefits: Penalizing Illegal Immigrants

  • What we could do with more bandwidth?

    Om Malik on what people could do if they have 100 MBps bandwidth speed.  About two years ago I scoffed at a blogger who talked about the need for more bandwidth (in a post about network neutrality). Since that time, I downgraded my net connection from 10Mbps to 1.5, and I have to say, lately it’s been a real pain. Streaming video and audio doesn’t work as well and using bit torrent can be rather painful (although not awful).

    It is alarming to read the reports of how the U.S. is falling behind on average bandwidth penetration (although we shouldn’t dismiss the significance of consumer indifference as a cause of failure to upgrade). Nowadays, DSL is as competitive as dialup, and yet I still know several people who haven’t upgraded.  They have the choice, but they choose to do nothing.

    I’ve read reports about how AT&T and the other bells blew their huge government subsidy to build and deploy fiber optic cable.  This was a tragedy for taxpayers, but it points less to the evil nature of the telcos than the flimsy rationale for offering government subsidies for anything.

  • Advertising vs privacy

    Wow, I knew about the trick of replacing your hosts file on your PC to block out adware/spyware/malware traffic. But last time I installed Windows I never got around to doing it. After I came across this site about blocking parasites from your PC, I got around to doing it.

    Yes, it works (you should run the install script as admin and (if you’re on XP) set the DNS service to manual (it’s explained on the page). Not only does it work, but pages load really fast. See also this slashdot question: are ad servers slowing down the Internet?

    I actually don’t have a real problem with advertising on the web and I’ve found ad blockers to be more trouble than they’re worth. My beef is with doublecheck and other data aggregators that compile profiles about individuals. I’m also curious about which publications/web applications will be disabled as a result.

    Oops, it also blocks webservers you run on your machine.

    Annoyingly, it filters out google adsense as well. What a pain. Why do I say this? I’m trying to implement ads on various websites and want to be able to see the ads. Looks like I’m going to have to comment out a few things. I have a feeling it filters out website trackers and other things.

    Several other thoughts:

    1. When you block out third party adservers, you are also  blocking out a major source of revenue for independent bloggers. This basically means that sites which contract directly to show ads will be preferred (hello CNN, NYTIMES, etc).
    2. The reason I haven’t bothered with setting a safe hosts file is that I run as a nonadmin on my PC. That pretty much wipes away any chance of getting infected with spyware/malware. (I can download them; I just can’t run anything to hurt my system). Actually, now that I think of it, probably the most serious security risk is when I run as admin to install something. I need to remember to run AVG Antivirus on the .exe file before I install anything

    On a related matter, I lost my discount key/card at Kroger (which gives me discounts on groceries). They gave me a form to fill out along with my card, but then I never turned in the form! I’ve been using the card for a few weeks without problems.

  • The Student Debt Crisis and Self-Directed Learning for Free

    Mindy Fetterman and Barbara Hansen analyze debt burdens on younger generations.

    Although the percentage of people ages 22 to 29 with debt has declined, their total debt is up 10%, to an average $16,120 as of Aug. 1, compared with five years earlier, Experian’s analysis found. Every type of debt — from credit cards to college to personal loans — has risen.

    Student-loan balances rose 16% to an average of $14,379; revolving debt, including credit cards, surged 24% to $5,781; and total installment debt, including student and personal loans, rose 4% to $17,208. (Comparisons are adjusted for inflation.)

    The culprit is not profligate spending but rising educational costs:

    There’s a blame-the-victim attitude at work, too, says William Strauss, co-author of Millennials Rising, a 2000 book that identified the generation born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

    “There’s the common misconception that they have these debts because they’re buying iPods or cable TV,” Strauss says. “It’s not that. It’s student loans and housing.”

    What exactly is tougher about the financial challenges facing today’s young adults? Shireman of the Project on Student Debt points to:

    •Skyrocketing tuition. The average price of college has grown much faster than the rate of inflation. Average annual tuition at public four-year colleges and universities is $5,836 in 2006-07, up 268% from 1976-77, according to the U.S. Education Department and the National Center for Education Statistics. Private college tuition is up 248% to $22,218 a year.

    •Declining student grants. Though total federal student aid has grown sharply, so has the proportion of people in college. In 2004, 67% of high school graduates enrolled in college; in 1972, only 49% did. As a result, student grants cover only 39% of the costs of a four-year college today, compared with nearly 80% in the mid-1970s, the College Board says.

    •Soaring student-loan debt. Students have generally made up the gap between what colleges charge and what they can afford by borrowing. The percentage of students who borrowed for college jumped to 65% in 2000-01 from 34% in 1977, the National Center for Education Statistics says.

    And they use credit cards to help pay for books and other items. Half of all graduates in 2004 used credit cards for school expenses, the American Council on Education found.

    I had problems paying off my student load immediately after college, and it definitely forced me to change my career choices in my twenties. I couldn’t stay in graduate school (my student loans were private loans and nondeferable) and I couldn’t join Peace Corps until I paid them off.

    There are two problems here. First, private student loans are simple debts; there are no escape clauses for those doing charity work or staying in graduate school.  Students rarely realize this. When they are in college (or even in high school), they don’t appreciate the magnitude of the financial burden they are accepting.  Related to this is the fact that others are making your financial decisions for you; parents will happily push you to assume student debts so they won’t have to pay it themselves.  Actually, with government low interest debts,  it probably makes sense to defer these debts, but parents should assume some responsibility for  private loans; they can’t realistically expect their children to have the ability to pay $500 a month within the first 5 years out of college.

    Secondly, educational expenses have been rising–even ancillary costs like textbooks. Getting a college degree or graduate degree seemed like a good idea for your long term financial health. But students really should address the practical question: will the amount I am spending (or will be spending) on this degree truly pay off in the long run? Luckily, I had a graduate fellowship at Johns Hopkins, but several people assumed lots of student loans to pay for a premium graduate education. Trust me, Columbia or Harvard isn’t worth that much more than your average state-run graduate program.

    Students are used to seeking out brand name products, and choosing a college seems to be a byproduct of this decision-making process.  With brand names, you are willing to pay a premium for the imprimatur and the social acceptance. (This often happens in fields where it’s difficult to gauge quality).  But resisting the allure of the brand name (or at least trying to objectively assess the costs and benefits together) can often save you a lot of money and allow you to find an educational bargain in the process.

    I’ve long insisted that the 4 year degree needs to die. Many institutions are just not taking advantage of new technologies to reduce educational costs. Instead, every new technology becomes an excuse to keep tuition high.  Now that I am out of college and in the work world, I am constantly teaching myself new things–and constantly learning these things without having to pay a dime of tuition. Not that I have a problem with doing so; I would gladly pay the money (or even borrow the money) to pay for a skill I thought I needed. But so many low cost learning opportunities exist–hey, there’s this thing called the Internet;  they say it’s supposed to be great).

    What students need is not more college credits but help from a independent consultant to plan a self-learning curriculum that is affordable , yet effective. Right now, educators (and students) seem to feel that the only way to learn a trade is to enroll in a 2 or 4 year degree. But that is not true anymore. A few years ago, I enrolled in a graduate program at University of Texas for Instructional Technology. Fun, exciting program; I definitely benefited from it. I took two graduate courses and dropped out with an A and B. While taking these classes, I realized how little I needed to be in this graduate program to learn the things I was learning. In fact, it was almost more efficient to be learning these things on their own.

    This phenomenon is not always true. With technology fields, you want to see the tools or algorithms which experts use. Sometimes it just is too time-consuming to teach yourself these things. In programming for instance, it often takes a long time to set up a development or testing environment. It would help to have a school set these things up for you. On the hand, setting this environment up is not time-wasted; many developers struggle to learn everything at a very detailed level, and instructor-led courses can begin at a high level simplified view.

    Learners don’t need teachers or even classroom environment, but they do need learning sequences and plans for self-directed learning. Moreover, they usually also need a social setting where they can exchange ideas with other people trying to learn the same thing.

    (Incidentally, I’ve linked here before, but the Stingy Scholar is a good place to start for online learning resources).  

     

  • Let’s repeal special tax breaks, tariffs and subsidies for Corn Ethanol Farmers

    If I had one question to ask each presidential candidate, it would be this: “do you think the 54 cents per gallon tariff on cheaper imported ethanol should be eliminated? If not, can you explain to American taxpayers why the resulting higher prices for oil would be beneficial for them.

    I propose a policy generally of noninterference. Specifically, :

    1. eliminate the 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol
    2. eliminate the 51 cent per gallon subsidy for blending corn ethanol into gasoline
    3.  eliminate the mandate on production of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol fuel  2012.

    I don’t really have a proactive energy plan, except for raising CAFE standards and keeping fuel emission standards high.  And yes, continuing research on cellulosic ethanol. If we had more hybrid and electric cars on the road, this would really be less of a problem.

    Ever since I found out earlier this week that the US Congress mandated 54 cent tariffs on Brazilian ethanol fuel , I have been incensed. I’ve called my congressman complaining about the issue, and plan to call as many politicians about the issues. Congress has mandated through tariffs and quotas that the US produce a certain amount of ethanol in their fuel.

    Why is this bad, you ask? In short, it is raising the price of gasoline which all of us will have to pay! It is creating a massive government-supported industry that will inevitably fail. It will fail. Government-protected businesses always fail; the question always ends up being how much damage it will end up doing to the economy in the process.

    Here’s a collection of articles and evidence to support this thesis. Let me say right off I am a fiction writer, not an economist or energy expert. I know next to nothing about the science of producing fuel. But my firsthand experience living in Eastern Europe economies has helped me to see the damage down when governments try artificially propping up an industry. It always ends up costing the taxpayer money. I see a case where the American consumer is being screwed bigtime, and instead of blaming Congress for their idiotic politics, they are blaming oil companies.

    Current Legislation Being Considered

    • HR 559 Biofuels Security Act
    • Commentary by Colin A. Carter  about the history of legislation (May, 2007):
      • On Capitol Hill, the Senate is debating legislation that would further expand corn ethanol production. A 2005 law already mandates production of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, about 5% of the projected gasoline use at that time. These biofuel goals are propped up by a generous federal subsidy of 51 cents a gallon for blending ethanol into gasoline, and a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on most imported ethanol to help keep out cheap imports from Brazil. The proposed legislation is a prime example of throwing good money after a bad idea.

        President Bush has set a target of replacing 15% of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) over the next 10 years, which would require almost a fivefold increase in mandatory biofuel use, to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no feasible alternative. However, achieving the 15% goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40% of the world’s corn supply. This would do more than create mere market distortions; the irresistible pressure to divert corn from food to fuel would create unprecedented turmoil.

    The Brazil Ethanol Success Story

    • Ariel Cohen, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol costs 25 percent less to make than its U.S. corn counterpart. Despite the tariffs, the U.S. remained the primary destination for Brazilian ethanol in 2006. This was recognized by Senator Richard Lugar (R–IN), who welcomed the new U.S.–Brazilian cooperation as a move to improve the U.S. image in Latin America and increase energy security: “All possibilities for growth in bio-fuels production must be explored to decrease our ‘oil addiction.’”
    • James Surowiecki In the nineteen-seventies, Brazil embarked on a program to substitute sugar ethanol for oil. Today, every gallon of gas in Brazil is blended with at least twenty per cent of ethanol, and many cars run on ethanol alone, at half the price of gasoline.What’s stopping the U.S. from doing the same? In a word, politics. The favors granted to the sugar industry keep the price of domestic sugar so high that it’s not cost-effective to use it for ethanol. And the tariffs and quotas for imported sugar mean that no one can afford to import foreign sugar and turn it into ethanol, the way that oil refiners import crude from the Middle East to make gasoline. Americans now import eighty per cent less sugar than they did thirty years ago. So the prospects for a domestic-sugar ethanol industry are dim at best.
    • Adam Dean: By limiting market access for Brazilian ethanol producers, who would benefit from increased exports, the U.S. tariff also limits the subsequent benefits that would accrue to Brazilian sugar producers. Furthermore, since ethanol production in the United States is based on corn, the tariff also leads to a higher price of corn in the United States. This artificially inflated price is then passed on to Mexican consumers in the form of higher food prices.In these ways, it is the U.S. tariff on ethanol imports that may have caused higher tortilla prices in Mexico and slowed the growth of Brazilian ethanol production. If the United States were to eliminate its ethanol tariff, we would likely witness market changes that would greatly benefit everyone involved.
    • David Adams: Today, Brazil is the world’s largest producer of sugar and ethanol. Brazilian cars are also equipped with engines that can run on ethanol and gasoline, or any blend of the two. Known as “flex-fuel” cars, they have dazzled the market since their launch by Volkswagen in March 2003. Last month, they captured 66.7% of new car sales. All the major Brazilian car manufacturers now make them, including Ford Motor and General Motors . In Brazil ethanol, or “alcool” as it is called, costs only $2 at the pump, compared to $4 for a gasoline-ethanol blend (Brazil no longer sells regular unblended gasoline). And while ethanol-powered cars consume 25% to 30% more fuel per mile than gasoline cars, the average motorist can save about $820 a year by switching to ethanol.

    The Harms of Protecting an Industry

    • James Surowiecki: A recent study by Amani Elobeid and Simla Tokgoz, scientists at Iowa State University, projected that if the tariffs were removed, prices would fall by fourteen per cent and Americans would use almost three hundred million gallons more of ethanol.
    • Doug Koplow: Because the bulk of the subsidies — per-gallon payments, tax exemptions and tax credits — are tied to sales or output and output is increasing at double-digit rates of growth, the rate of subsidy growth is extremely high. Although there are proposals before Congress to create variable-rate subsidies that would decline as oil prices rise, the existing subsidies are still set at fixed rates. Production-linked subsidies distort product markets and trade more than any other form of support.Subsidies to value-adding factors, particularly for capital investments in new plants, are much smaller on a subsidy-equivalent basis than output-related subsidies, and many are provided under general programs. However, these government-intermediated loans and loan guarantees often shift the risk of default to the government body providing the assistance. In effect, a large number of communities have committed a significant amount of public money to the future of biofuels production. The amount of public capital used, the degree of risk being taken, and the implications in terms of future government dependence on the continuation of biofuels subsidies to keep their credit support from defaulting are all important issues to examine in greater depth.The report estimates that by the end of this decade, assuming continuation of current policies, annual support for ethanol will be in the range of $6.3 billion and $8.7 billion a year. Subsidies to biodiesel are also increasing at a rapid rate of growth in output, albeit from a lower base, and could rise to between $1.7 billion and $2.3 billion within two or three years.

    Archer Daniel Midland: Polluter

    • Sasha Lilley: Yet the enormous amounts of corn that ADM and other ethanol processors buy from Midwestern farmers wreak damage on the environment in a multiplicity of ways. Modern corn hybrids require more nitrogen fertilizer, herbicides, and insecticides than any other crop, while causing the most extensive erosion of top soil. Pesticide and fertilizer runoff from the vast expanses of corn in the U.S. prairies bleed into groundwater and rivers as far as the Gulf of Mexico. The nitrogen runoff flowing into the Mississippi River has fostered a vast bloom of dead algae in the Gulf that starves fish and other aquatic life of oxygen.To understand the hidden costs of corn-based ethanol requires factoring in “the huge, monstrous costs of cleaning up polluted water in the Mississippi River drainage basin and also trying to remedy the negative effects of poisoning the Gulf of Mexico,” says Tad Patzek of the University of California’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department.

    Why Corn Ethanol Generally Sucks

    • John McCain: Ethanol is a product that would not exist if Congress didn’t create an artificial market for it. No one would be willing to buy it. Yet thanks to agricultural subsidies and ethanol producer subsidies, it is now a very big business – tens of billions of dollars that have enriched a handful of corporate interests – primarily one big corporation, ADM. Ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase our energy independence, nothing to improve air quality. Let me repeat for emphasis; ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase energy independence and nothing to improve air quality. (idiotprogrammer comments: although McCain’s sentiment is right, he overlooks the difference between sugar ethanol which Brazil imports).

    How much Corn Farmers have been screwing us

    • Ben Liebermann This mandate comes on top of other pro-ethanol provisions, most notably a 51 cent per gallon tax credit. Other incentives include payments to corn farmers and subsidies for small ethanol producers. These add up to $5.1 billion to $6.8 billion per year—roughly $1.00 per gallon of ethanol.
    • Ariel Cohen: Ethanol from corn enjoys a 51 cent per gallon federal tax credit, while imported sugar cane ethanol is punished with an import duty of 54 cents per gallon and an ad valorem tariff of 2.5 percent. But Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) member states may export ethanol produced from at least 50 percent agricultural feedstock to the U.S. free of duty. If the local feedstock content is lower, limitations apply on the quantity of duty-free ethanol imports—the greater of 60 million gallons or 7 percent of the U.S. domestic ethanol market.
    •  Colin A. Carter on the economic impact:  Thus, it is no surprise that the price of corn has doubled in the last year — from $2 to $4 a bushel. We are already seeing upward pressure on food prices as the demand for ethanol boosts the demand for corn. Until the recent ethanol boom, more than 60% of the annual U.S. corn harvest was fed domestically to cattle, hogs and chickens or used in food or beverages. Thousands of food items contain corn or corn byproducts. In Mexico, where corn is a staple food, the price of tortillas has skyrocketed because U.S. corn has been diverted to ethanol production.

    Where Presidential Candidates Stand:

    E85 & US Distribution

    • Factcheck Analysis (by Emi Kolawole): It’s true that the U.S. has produced 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol, according to a July 2006 Department of Energy report. But, according to the CRS, total ethanol production accounts for “2.4 percent of gasoline consumption on an energy equivalent basis” even as ethanol production uses 20 percent of the nation’s corn supply. In addition, E85 represents only 1 percent of all ethanol consumption (the other 99 percent, according to a 2006 CRS report (PDF), goes toward fuel blends consisting of up to 10 percent ethanol, also called “gasohol”). With this in mind, a 50 percent increase in biorefinery capacity is merely a drop in the bucket when it comes to replacing the overwhelming amount of gasoline we consume. The CRS report outlines some of the existing barriers to expanded ethanol use:

      CRS: [B]arring a drastic realignment of U.S. field crop production patterns, corn-based ethanol’s potential as a petroleum import substitute appears to be limited by crop area constraints, among other factors.

      Those “other factors” include limits on ethanol distribution. Gasoline is currently distributed via pipeline. But ethanol, which is more corrosive than gasoline, would eat through the existing pipes, so ethanol is transported by truck or rail-car, an expensive alternative. The fuel pipes can be coated with epoxy or other materials to prevent corrosion, but that would merely be one of many fixes needed. Another problem with ethanol distribution is that the fuel would have to travel from the Midwest to the coastlines for refinement and distribution, whereas gasoline tends to go in the opposite direction. It is possible to fix this problem, but the solution would require additional investments in infrastructure. According to the CRS, modifications to remedy these problems “will likely be expensive, and could further increase ethanol transportation costs.”

    • Ethanol and Gas Stations: The Dirty Details: Why Oil Companies Don’t want Gas Stations to Carry E85 (fuel with 85% ethanol content) Ethanol : By Laura Meckler . (highly recommended)

    Among those trying to overcome obstacles to E85 are the domestic auto makers. They have built flex-fuel vehicles for years because doing so gives them “credits” in their efforts to meet federal fuel-economy standards. Without the credits, Ford and GM wouldn’t have met mileage goals for light trucks in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and would have owed fines. The mileage goals pose a bigger challenge to Detroit because of its heavy reliance on large, thirsty vehicles. Foreign makers generally haven’t resorted to building flex-fuel cars to meet the mileage goals.

    For Detroit, the credits applied even if the flex-fuel cars they built never actually burned ethanol. For a long time, the auto makers said little about ethanol, and many owners of flex-fuel cars didn’t know they had them. But when gasoline prices surged in 2005 and 2006, GM and Ford saw their flex-fuel cars as a way to counter their image as gas-guzzler makers.

    Other Resources

  • What does “Customary and Reasonable” Mean?

    I was reading an interesting discussion about US health care when I came across an important point:

    It is now routine for them to send letters to patients with itemized lists of costs for services and payments from insurance companies that don’t balance. At the end, they have an entry for “Total unreimbursed costs”. The letter looks like a bill. They even include a postage paid envelope to make it easier to send them a payment. The thing is, the letter isn’t a bill. It just shows the difference between normal costs and the price negotiated with the hospital by your insurer. The patient owes nothing! But hospitals are raking in millions with this scam.

    A major lab used to badger me with these letters every time anyone in my family had a blood test. I used to call my insurance company after each one, and get assured that I owed nothing. When I found out what the scam was, I called the lab and threatened to go to the State’s Attorney General. They stopped sending me the fake bills.

    I don’t know about the responsibilities of insurance companies, but the problem hinges upon what kind of medical care is “customary and reasonable.” Yes, Blue Cross may have to pay 80% of a surgery procedure, but that 80% applies only to the amount Blue Cross considers “customary and reasonable.” So if the procedure cost $1000, and Blue Cross decides that $200 is a “customary and reasonable” amount to charge for the procedure, they only need to compensate 80% of the $200 (not 80% of the $1000 bill).

    This is a perfect example about how organizational and accounting methods to control costs only end up hiding additional costs. Health care systems are inherently complex, and that makes it difficult for patients/consumers to make consumer decisions. This exception is so large that it essentially gives health care insurers arbitrary control over expenses; it also obfuscates the issue because the consumer doesn’t see the actual price/discount/”customary and reasonable” baseline at the time care is delivered.

    Kelly Montgomery adds:

    Insurance companies often pay claims based on the average cost of the procedure in your area. This is referred to as the “customary and reasonable” cost. Customary and reasonable cost varies from region to region and state to state.

    You can ask your insurance company how they arrived at the customary and reasonable cost for your procedure, ask other medical providers how much they charge for your procedure, and/or ask your doctor if your procedure differed from the norm in any way. For example, your doctor may have charged more because you required more attention than the average patient or experienced complications during the procedure.

    Sarah Max adds some advice:

    To be fair, healthcare providers aren’t always forthcoming about what they charge for their services. “Asking a doctor what they’ll charge ahead of time is like pulling teeth,” said CareCounsel’s Gelb.

    That’s exactly what patients need to do, said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a national health advocacy organization.

    “The culture of billing in healthcare is different from any other product,” he said. “People don’t ask about the cost of services and physicians don’t volunteer it. Patients are clueless.”

    His advice? “Find out from the physician what they’ll charge and ask the insurance company what they’re going to pay,” he said. “They may not tell you but you need to keep asking.”

    After the fact, patients should question both insurers and providers if there is a significant discrepancy between the cost of the service and the amount that is covered. Sherry recommends taking the diagnostic code for the procedure and calling other providers to get a sense of what the customary charge is for your area.

    If you think you have a case, appeal first to the insurer, then to the state department of insurance.

    “Even if you lose, the message will start to be heard,” said Sherry, who also recommends writing letters to elected officials and key executives at your insurance company.

    I just wrote an email to my insurer. I asked this question: How can I access information about how your company calculates UCR (“usual, customary, and reasonable”)fee determinations for medical procedures in my area? For example, if I knew I needed a particular procedure, how could I find out what blue cross considers to be UCR?

    Semi-related: 2 pieces on health care by Ezra Klein. Debunking the medical malpractice myth and a book review of a health care policy book

  • Hardware Update: Dell Axim X51v

    Well, I bought a Dell Axim X51. You may remember I used to have a Dell Axim X50, but my robbers took it from me . I already have a Nokia 770, and I somewhat enjoy it (especially the RSS reader, FBReader  and browser), but other things about it annoyed me. It was not easy to sync things with a Windows desktop, I couldn’t get the ssh shell to work (although honestly, I never got back with it), contacts didn’t import and I couldn’t sync my calendar.  I bought the Dell Axim mainly to test Pocket PC ebook readers, but also to use it as a portable skype phone whenever I am around wifi. That really excites me.

    I was floored by how nicely  Pocket Outlook works with contacts and schedule. Also, I really missed the password saver application (which I paid money for, but was well worth it). Nokia 770 just doesn’t have a mature application for that yet.  Sounds stupid, but I really needed that.

    The list price for the top of the line Dell PDA was $399. But then there are add ons.  You have to make sure you check all the Sales bundles on the startoff page. I found one which was incredible. So for $474 I got:

    1. bump up to 2 years warranty instead of 1
    2. free bluetooth keyboard
    3. 2 gig SD memory card
    4.  free video game
    5.  other things which I bought a la carte: pack of 3 styluses, Wifi Companion Software

    I am delighted at that bundle. (and by the way I bought a battery upgrade and a case at aximcases.com). I actually have leftover software licenses from my last Axim, so I expect to be able to get it up and running soon (it took several months for me to figure out my first Dell Axim).

    (I have yet to buy a bluetooth headset, which you need to use  skype. I forgot what I’m supposed to buy).

    Amazingly, the turnaround was less than 24 hours, but Dell could not give me an estimated delivery date before I made  the transaction. Funny, I can get one for a $10 book purchase on amazon, but not a $500 order on Dell. What’s wrong with that?

  • Things We need for mp3 players and podcasts.

    I finally got around to reinstalling the Creative mp3 management program for my Creative Zen Touch player. It actually works better than I remembered it.

    I’ve avoided touching itunes (except when helping my brother load mp3s). But here are two features I really need:

    1. Setting quotas and pruning options for content on the device
    2. Keeping a log of all the podcast files I’ve transferred at any given time to my device. (I frequently listen to something once and then delete the file, then forget what I’ve listened to).
    3. (On my mp3 player) there needs to be a way to exclude certain audio files from Random/Shuffle play. (I’ll be listening to a series of pop songs, then my mp3 player will play some techie podcast about Python or SAP solutions; it really spoils the mood).

    In my limited look at itunes, itunes seems structured around the idea of scarcity; i.e, you couldn’t possibly afford to buy enough mp3s to fill an entire audio player! How do mp3 management/syncing programs deal with the fact that PC probably has 100x the amount of mp3s that my portable players have room for?

    Solution to #2: Create a directory on your harddrive called “Best of Podcasts”. Do not put it inside your mp3 search path. When this directory comes to about 4 gigs, burn a DVD for archiving. There, that’s simple.

    Another solution (sort of): the device display should indicate whether the mp3 has previously been played.

    Yet another solution: Podcast producers should label their podcasts better. “Episode 001”, etc. I suspect that podcasters nowadays are much savvier about metadata than they used to be.

    (Btw, I’m not particularly fond of the Creative Zen Touch mp3 player, something popular in 2004 or so. It ain’t bad. But I look forward to the time I will need to explore the latest generation of media players.

  • Theft of Identity Issues: My Thoughts

    Hilarious This American Life episode about a woman who tries to get a wrong phone charge on MCI/Worldcom. It’s a real audio file, and you have to start listening at the 34:30 minute mark. The segment lasts for 20 minutes. Of course, Ira Glass treats the whole problem with a humorous light touch. There are several problems with the whole episode:

    • Telephone calls accomplish little because consumer can’t keep a record of what was said. On the other hand, companies do have recordings of what was said–and you better believe that they can go back to the original recording if they need to.
    • It is one thing for a company to report something incorrectly on a credit report. But the effort to get these charges reversed does involve company time and money. Accordingly, they will treat this task as bottom priority. I conclude that the consumer needs to live with a certain amount of errors on their credit report s; how much does genuine accuracy cost you in terms of inconvenience?
    • Someone needs to invent a form letter for disputing an incorrect charge. Ideally, it should be a form on a website.
    • I find it hard to believe that companies can’t close an account when they see that an account has run up to over (for example) $200. It’s easy for company billing systems to do this; the fact they cannot points to flaws in the company’s billing management system, not the general security of finances.
    • We need a way for companies to be penalized when they fail to correct these errors. Right now, there is no way to punish companies aside from not patronizing them anymore. But after a while, you run out of companies to patronize. I was a victim of theft of identity with ATT and Tmobile. After a while, I won’t have another phone company I can choose.

    Well, there’s always skype. See this excellent rundown by Peter Jacobson about Voice over IP services

  • Credits and Losses

    Random things:

    A Digg discussion on why women confuse men about courtship. The diggers actually have a lot of hilarious commentary; a lot of it is of the Captain Obvious variety. Interestingly, the original dugg article is shallow and doesn’t even cite the original research. This is another reason why meta-sites like digg ultimately fail; they reward articles not on the basis of quality but on whether people want to discuss it.

    Why companies burn you with false charges. Note that I made two longish comments there. My advice simply: Focus on limiting your expenditure of time solving these matters. Put all your demands/statements in writing. Anything conveyed through telephone is not legally binding. Be resigned to the fact that companies won’t do anything for you until you have successfully completed their fraud packet.

    Boingboing discusses how credit cards impose foreign transaction fees. Outrageous! I wonder what effect this has on online purchases.

    I have always been a big fan of Karen Carpenter. I’ve found some amazing things recently: Richard Carpenter answers fan’s questions about their legacy. Part One and Part Two. Here’s a wonderful BBC radio interview with the two of them when Karen were still alive, a beautiful 1974 performance of Close to You, and a classic duet/medley between Karen Carpenter and Ella Fitzgerald in 1980. In 1980, Ella was 63 and viewed as an old fogie (though she would be alive for 16 more years). Karen was 30; could she ever have imagined that in three years she would be dead and that Ella would be mourning Karen’s passing? Life: it is so fragile sometimes.

    This week has been a hard week for me. I had a personal loss (which I won’t go into here). In this frantic world it’s easy to forget the important things, how time changes everything, how people leave, circumstances change, and things you take for granted can so easily slip away. People cling to the illusion of control when in fact they sit at the mercy of fate and the vagaries of other people’s actions.

  • How to Buy Sneakers Not Made at a Sweatshop

    Last Saturday I went out shopping for sneakers. I badly needed a replacement and shopped at Shoe Carnival in the Westchase area of Houston. I have no special love for Shoe Carnival, but it is convenient and well-supplied, and I’ve been shopping there for over five years.

    This time, the manager accosted me and asked if I needed any help. I usually love being asked these bland open-ended questions by sales workers, so I started asking her about the footwear industry: the inventory turnover rate, the number of shoes in the store, things like that. She was not helpful at all (well, I thought, YOU were the one accosting ME). Then I asked what I considered to be a fairly important question: what did she know about labor standards at the factories where these tennis shoes were produced? She laughed at the question, and said she couldn’t provide that information.

    “Really?” I said. “Why not?”

    “And even if I did have that information,” she added, “I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

    That made me a little miffed. After thinking some more, I decided not to buy the pair of shoes I had in my hands and instead go home and do some Internet research.

    So I did that. I spent 30 minutes–30 minutes!–researching the topic. Here’s what I found:

    First, there exists an organization to police factories that produce sneakers. It’s called the Fair Labor Association. Looking over the website, I see that the organization is clearly inadequate. It only inspects a small number of factories, only a fraction of which are in China.

    Googling some more, I find an excellent report in Nov 2006 Business Week by Peter Dexter and Pete Engardio. They found that big Western companies have produced labor standards, but it’s typically been difficult to enforce or to monitor in China. Chinese workers are willing to work for less, not unionized and in China labor standards are rarely enforced. So even if Nike says they are “complying with local labor laws,” these laws are rarely enforced, so it’s hard to know how the workers are doing (Here’s a description of labor conditions at a typical Nike factory (probably out of date)).

    Based on Chinese government figures, the average manufacturing wage in China is 64 cents an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and demographer Judith Banister of Javelin Investments, a consulting firm in Beijing. That rate assumes a 40-hour week. In fact, 60- to 100-hour weeks are common in China, meaning that the real manufacturing wage is far less. Based on his own calculations from plant inspections, the veteran compliance manager estimates that employees at garment, electronics, and other export factories typically work more than 80 hours a week and make only 42 cents an hour.

    Here’s lengthy excerpts from an interview with the head of the Fair Labor Association Auret van Heerden. This explains why the problem is not simply outsourcing but bad processes for manufacturing and supply chain management:

    In China, the biggest issue facing the FLA is systemic underpayment of wages and excessive overtime in supplier factories. Why are these problems so prevalent?

    One is that the brands book and confirm orders really late. And they often change their orders after booking. The brands want to order later and they don’t want to hold product. Then you add price pressures into that and it is really tough for the supplier [to not overwork its workers].

    But the factory often doesn’t order the materials until too late and they are often delivered late [to the factory], too. The factory production layout is often a mess, so the supplier gets behind schedule and over budget even before they know it. Then they have to catch up. And to save money, they extend hours, but don’t pay overtime premiums. And the suppliers also lack proper training. The styles [of clothing and footwear] are becoming more complicated and are changing more frequently.

    What does this mean financially for the suppliers?

    Well, this means there are lots of reworks and quality problems and then there are lots of charge-backs [fees charged by the labels to the suppliers]. There are charge-backs for all kinds of things: If they are late with the product delivery, there is a charge-back. And if there are defects, there is one, too. And these guys [the suppliers] will do anything to avoid air freighting [which is much more expensive]. And these are not companies that can call up SAP and say we need the software to manage my production.

    Is there a solution that allows the supplier to get the job done without having to make its workers put in overtime?

    Well, they can add a second or third shift to avoid having to pay overtime. But that assumes the factory has accommodation for more workers and assumes there is transportation for them to get to the factory if they don’t live there.

    And then there are the worker themselves, who often want to make as much money as possible even it if means working overtime. A lot of activists will say just pay the workers a living wage [so they don’t have to do overtime]. But if you raise many of these Chinese workers’ wages 100%, they will still want to work on Sundays.

    To summarize: despite the publicly stated desire of Western companies to do auditing, local conditions and supply chain management make it very difficult for them to do so.

    Now let’s return to America at Shoe Carnival. What can you do? I consider myself an educated consumer; on the other hand, I don’t want to spend a lot more on shoes or have to be bothered to do exhaustive research every time I want to buy a pair of sneakers. And generally, I don’t subscribe to the politics of organized labor. But clothing manufacturing is one area where labor unions can make a difference….especially when the government is lax about enforcing labor rules. The great thing about the Internet is that you can learn about vendors and stores you’d never otherwise have access to. Here’s a few:

    I remain convinced that the American consumer can be motivated to support a company that uses good business practices. The hard part is making this information accessible and ensuring that this information is accurate. That means third party auditing and reasonable accommodations for differing labor standards in each country. The other hard part is making sure that companies with these good business practices still offer competitively-priced products. No one wants to pay 25-50% more just to have a good conscience.

    More than a hundred years ago Marx envisioned a “class consciousness” whereby workers in different countries would identify with working class people in other countries (transcending national borders). Now we have another social force transcending national borders: a “consumer consciousness” which uses Internet-collected information to empower the individual to vote for higher worker standards with their pocketbooks.

    Thanks to the Internet, consumers can avoid supporting deplorable factories and middle-men retailers who assume customers are not curious about such things.

  • Al Gore Speaking Tonight at Walmart!

    After requesting a book from my city library on Adorno, I discover to my satisfaction that one website has generous excerpts of Adorno’s theories–enough for me not to need the library book after all. Swell. Have you ever thought about how much human labor and fuel can be saved simply by having web access to certain kinds of text and information? This by itself should be a reason for publicly-funded libraries to stay on the cutting edge of technology and to point patrons towards freely available options.

    In an almost surreal juxtaposition, last night I was shopping at Walmart (long story) and while walking through the audio/video section I was treated to a 1 minute monologue by Al Gore promoting “An Inconvenient Truth.” I also heard this same promo a few weeks ago while renting videos at my local Blockbuster store. The store’s motives may simply have been commercial in nature, but isn’t it interesting how an issue like Global Warming can suddenly pass into the mainstream to the point where it is used to sell things?

    Occasionally bona fide intellectuals are tossed into the river of pop culture with often hilarious but salubrious results. (Susan Sontag on the Simpsons, George Soros on Republican campaign commercials, Stephen Hawking on Star Trek New Generation). Highbrow people love it because it provides the comforting illusion that intellectuals have influence; middlebrow people love it because it provides a lovable face for a package of complex and often subversive ideas.

  • Simpsons College Course: Television and the Culture Industry

    While perusing an essay about wiki and authorship, I came across a wild-looking college syllabus about an honors literature class devoted to the Simpsons TV show. And who said being a humanities scholar was tough?

    This includes a fascinating breakdown of themes and conflicts: struggles between individuals, Blind Faith, Consumerism and Marriage (plus many others).

    The Commodification Of Culture And Its Implications For The Television Industry: An Examination Of The Culture Industry Thesis by Brian Grant discusses mass media/pop culture in terms of the Frankfurt School (a weak spot in my intellectual background, btw). Curiously, much of the ideas from the Frankfurt school seemed to have an influence on Benkler’s book (especially Chapter 5 and Chapter 8). Benkler asserts that in the 20th century, cultural products (DVDs, books, CD’s) are produced and distributed by the “industrial model” whereas in the 21th century, the “folk art” model will prevail. (Here’s a generous excerpt about culture industries by Adorno) Enough of Benkler; now for the Brian Grant excerpt:

    This sets up a contradiction. Television is a cheap and readily available means of dissemination and propagation, at least in the Western World, and one characterized as necessary by most of its users. The range of channels and programmes and the wealth of information that is transmissible should guarantee a broad-based output, and such an output should cater, in some degree, for an audience as various as the population itself.

    Homogeneity in broadcasting is quite understandable where commercial television is concerned. Commercial television is largely supported by advertising, and therefore requires popularity; consistently the most popular shows are those aimed at a passive and uncritical audience. This state of affairs tallies with the pervasiveness of the capitalist ideology. Those aspects of the society’s culture here represented are familiar interpretations either of reality or of real issues. The programmes are soap operas, chat shows, gameshows, most sports events, sitcoms, certain films, TV films or dramas, and most children’s television. It is reasonable that representations of pop culture will be popular with audiences and advertisers alike.

    …

    In many senses the television, more so than other media, has the viewer as a cultural tourist. Technology has made possible the penetration of many varieties of culture into the mainstream, in concert with financial and cultural demands necessitating the importation of much of a channel’s schedule; there is undeniable closeness of cultures available at any time. We supplement our imports with evidence we obtain ourselves. In keeping with the broadcaster’s rationale, such information will be transmitted as pre-interpreted (or, for some, “pre-digested”), which is fundamental for popular acceptance. This induces preconceptions. Primarily, we are encouraged to judge other cultures on the terms of our interpreters, who must balance the expectations of the mini-capitalisms who support them with their own experience, and, more importantly, the evidence captured on camera. In effect we exalt ourselves. It is a triumph for our society to be able to report from outside itself and to comment on what it sees. Politically, such reportage represents the logical progression of broadcasting’s origins in militarism: television is a tool of the society used in pursuit of its own ideals. It is difficult to imagine it otherwise.

    Apparently Brian Grant has gathered a series of essays related to pop culture here. Here’s a fascinating essay by Louise Wood of how the concept of female beauty has evolved over the century:

    For the first two decades of the 20th century, many of the attitudes towards beauty associated with the 19th century remained. In Victorian society, it was considered a woman’s duty to make herself beautiful. In the early 20th century, this was coupled with the idea of “self-presentation” as enjoyable, expressive and creative. However, some of the more bizarre and painful “beauty aids” of the Victorian age continued to be marketed well into the 1920s. A particularly unpleasant example is “M.Trielty’s Nose Shaper”, described as a “metal object … held over the nose by straps buckled round the head and adjusted with screws.”

    One of the main elements of this century’s perception of beauty that sets it apart from the 19th century is the polarity of cosmetics. In the last century, cosmetics were frowned upon in society as the mark of a prostitute. The cosmetics industry grew from the roots of the manufacturing of theatre make-up by Helena Rubenstein and Max Factor, who adapted their products for everyday use.

    …

    The cosmetics and fashion industries are interdependent with the medium of advertising. Cynthia White points out that the turnabout in opinions on cosmetics is women’s magazines in the 1920s coincided with the increase of cosmetics advertising in the same publications. Advertising is often presumed to have little cultural value, but is a powerful way in which attitudes towards women and beauty are reinforced. The 20th century fascination with celebrities is a tool expertly used in the advertising industry. If a beautiful model, or more effectively a beautiful celebrity is used in an advertisement, the qualities associated with that person are transferred onto the product.

    Another major influence on this century’s attitudes towards beauty was the growth of the film industry. For the first half of the century, all the major beauty icons were film actresses. It was a medium that allowed women who would have previously been overlooked to shine. For instance, the 19th century aversion to redheads was still in place as late as the 20s. It was that black-and-white medium that allowed Clara Bow to be the exception. However, stars such as Bette Davis and Katherine Turner who could not be described as “conventionally beautiful” invariably came from middle or upper class backgrounds. Beauty was an essential attribute for a working class woman to become successful in Hollywood. This period was also the beginning of the ties between the film and fashion industries, which would continue for decades to come.

  • Benkler and Artistic Worthlessness

    I’ve been reading the fascinating analyis of the digital economy by Yochai Benkler. I’m reading it in preparation for a longish essay I’ve writing for teleread about literary collaboration in a digital age. There are lots of insights here and political analysis, but one thing curiously missing: how do artistically-minded individuals get food on the table and pay their rent? He has sidestepped the microeconomic questions in favor of describing why the peer production model is efficient on a macroeconomic level. All fine and dandy, but does he imply that artistic endeavors will never be monetized?

    Finally, the way networks establish value often fails when considering artistic output. Often it takes decades for the worth (or worthlessness) of an artwork to be apparent. He doesn’t really offer an explanation for this phenomenon, except to extol the openness of the folk art model. Yet artists are groomed to disregard economic signals and social expectations for the sake of preserving their artistic vision. Niche-based Long Tail artists may flout conventions in their effort to say what only they can say.

    Still it’s a fascinating analysis (and I expect to talk about it substantially in my essay). Here’s a nice Internet seminar on crookedtimber about the book. In another delightful coincidence, the deadline for submitting a paper to an MIT conference on digital collaboration is Jan 5. I may actually submit one.

  • A kind of Revenge

    There is a particularly loathsome TV commercial featuring the image of Audrey Hepburn trotting merrily away to a heavy metal song. It might have been cute once, but I even found nothing redeeming in simply pushing nostalgia buttons to make us salivate for consumer products.

    That was the first time. Now the commercial is blanketing the airwaves, and what initially seemed moderately cute now just seems so vulgar that it truly inspires feelings of revulsion. On a more positive note, now that the commercial has ended, I cannot even remember what product it was supposed to advertise.

    Ah, the price one pays for watching syndicated TV for free…