Ok. Generally I avoid off-color language, but I've got yet another rant to get off my chest. And while it's mostly off-topic for this blog, I promise to connect the dots...
So there I was, walking the dogs home from work. I crossed the Fremont bridge, then down the block to the one major intersection I need to cross, just in time for the walk sign.
But there are cars stopped right in the middle of the crosswalk, underneath the red light. And not just the crosswalk--there were fully 3 cars stopped on the intersection side of the the crosswalk, blocking cross traffic.
The guy parked squarely across the crosswalk shrugged and looked pretty embarrassed as our pack went around behind him. And then I had to walk up between the cars back to the crosswalk, along side some asswipe who had her head totally inside the car doing something or other that apparently was more important than driving or obeying traffic rules.
I rapped on her window as I walked by, and she let out a terrified shriek. Then she started yelliing at me. I was listening to the radio, and really didn't care what she had to say, so I hollered "you're in the middle of the intersection." She rolled down her window to yell something more at me, so I hollered back at her, "you're in the middle of the f**king intersection!" And continued on into the neighborhood.
Now, I'm usually a very calm, even-tempered guy. You never hear me say things like that. But assholes who think they need to make it through the next light at the expense of everybody who happens to be going the other direction really piss me off.
Don't get me wrong--I've been caught unexpectedly in the intersection when the cars ahead didn't move as much as I thought they would. And when this happens, I'm very embarrassed, and hyper-aware of everything around me, trying to get out of the way of any pedestrians or other cars I've unintentionally blocked. This woman received my moment of wrath because she was startled that I was even there, and couldn't care less that her selfishness is the kind of thing that causes gridlock and endless traffic jams.
So how does that relate to our topics of open source, computers, business, and economics? A couple ways.
First, there's the obvious parallel to network congestion. If you're on a DSL connection, incoming and outgoing traffic have to alternate over the same pair of wires. If you flood the entire connection one way, the other way starts to suffer. For example, if you're uploading a huge file over a network connection, it can greatly decrease your download speed, much more than you might expect. By keeping your traffic in either direction slightly under the maximum rate, the other direction can continue to flow freely. But if you max out one direction, the other direction suddenly can't get through, just like lame drivers who block the intersection because they're too impatient to wait for the next light.
The other point is about selfishness. Ayn Rand wrote some quite influential books. I read both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as a teenager, and they make a very persuasive case that people acting in their own self-interest can help the greater good. This is much of the justification for our current financial system, the whole idea of trickle-down economics that suggest if you do what's in your interest, you'll make lots of money and create jobs for others.
But gridlock provides a great counterpoint to this--the selfishness of a couple people who enter the intersection with no where to go can lead to stopping the cross-traffic, which could well be hundreds of other people. The actions of one person trying to get ahead can come at a cost to hundreds of others. The actions and profits of the big businesses that dominate our economy have come at the expense of the rest of us. One relevant economic phrase related to this is the tragedy of the commons.
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