Be careful what you wish for...

I was reading Newsweek this week, with yet another article about how the fall in oil prices is weakening the reigns of the Oil Tyrants -- particularly in Venezuela, Iran and Russia. Just under the surface was the common smugness, that bad leaders like Putin are now facing civil unrest, even riots, as their petro-states are exposed as having been built on sand.

Which leads me to think this through. The results are disquieting. I mean, what exactly do we expect will happen here? Yes, it's lovely to contemplate Putin being gone: he's a demogogue, effectively a dictator, and by no means an benign one. I think many Americans expect that, if he's weakened, that means a lovely, real, democratic government will kick him out and take over, and all will be friendly. And that's a pretty silly thing to expect.

Assuming the oil price stays low for at least another year, we're looking at *serious* civil unrest in Russia: major declines in GDP, ever more people out of work, general unhappiness with the government's perceived incompetence, leading to more protests and riots. There is no chance that the authorities will sit back and simply take that -- they've already begun putting out draconian laws to stamp down on it. As always, that won't actually stop the unrest, just push it under the surface to simmer.

And *that* leads all kinds of bad places. I see two likeliest options. One is that Putin keeps a lid on things, probably by making society ever more totalitarian again. The best way to do that is kick over a lot of anthills, even starting wars that keep the populace focused on outside threats and provide some economic focus. In other words, stoke the fires of nationalism ever-higher, a classic dictator's trick.

The disconcerting part is that that is probably the *less* dangerous option. The scarier one is revolution of some sort: the populace gets angry enough, the government blinks at the wrong moment, and it gets overthrown. From there, things can go almost anywhere. It would be possible that a genuinely smart and benign government would take over -- but honestly, I don't think the pieces are in place to make that likely. Rather, I suspect it's likelier that, as with so many revolutions, they would wind up simply replacing one dictator with another, more aggressive and somewhat less sane. (Or possibly with some band of revolutionary zealots: madmen in groups are often even more dangerous than individually.)

Hence, I recommend a bit of care with the schadenfreude. Putin may be a vicious piece of work, but there are significantly worse options out there, and considerably scarier people who could be holding Russia's nuclear button...

Be careful what you wish for...

I was reading Newsweek this week, with yet another article about how the fall in oil prices is weakening the reigns of the Oil Tyrants -- particularly in Venezuela, Iran and Russia. Just under the surface was the common smugness, that bad leaders like Putin are now facing civil unrest, even riots, as their petro-states are exposed as having been built on sand.

Which leads me to think this through. The results are disquieting. I mean, what exactly do we expect will happen here? Yes, it's lovely to contemplate Putin being gone: he's a demogogue, effectively a dictator, and by no means an benign one. I think many Americans expect that, if he's weakened, that means a lovely, real, democratic government will kick him out and take over, and all will be friendly. And that's a pretty silly thing to expect.

Assuming the oil price stays low for at least another year, we're looking at *serious* civil unrest in Russia: major declines in GDP, ever more people out of work, general unhappiness with the government's perceived incompetence, leading to more protests and riots. There is no chance that the authorities will sit back and simply take that -- they've already begun putting out draconian laws to stamp down on it. As always, that won't actually stop the unrest, just push it under the surface to simmer.

And *that* leads all kinds of bad places. I see two likeliest options. One is that Putin keeps a lid on things, probably by making society ever more totalitarian again. The best way to do that is kick over a lot of anthills, even starting wars that keep the populace focused on outside threats and provide some economic focus. In other words, stoke the fires of nationalism ever-higher, a classic dictator's trick.

The disconcerting part is that that is probably the *less* dangerous option. The scarier one is revolution of some sort: the populace gets angry enough, the government blinks at the wrong moment, and it gets overthrown. From there, things can go almost anywhere. It would be possible that a genuinely smart and benign government would take over -- but honestly, I don't think the pieces are in place to make that likely. Rather, I suspect it's likelier that, as with so many revolutions, they would wind up simply replacing one dictator with another, more aggressive and somewhat less sane. (Or possibly with some band of revolutionary zealots: madmen in groups are often even more dangerous than individually.)

Hence, I recommend a bit of care with the schadenfreude. Putin may be a vicious piece of work, but there are significantly worse options out there, and considerably scarier people who could be holding Russia's nuclear button...

Here we go again, on the budgetary roller-coaster...

As always, I'm a ways behind, so I don't know how much the news has gotten around -- probably quite a bit, but just in case:

The Society's President sent out an email yesterday, announcing (not really a big surprise) that the SCA has a budget problem. It's not really a single thing, more a confluence of many, but the result is a disconcerting $181k shortfall for this year, and a non-trivial $27k for next year even with some optimistic assumptions.

To their credit, they're not panicking this time around: they're asking for opinions on a basket of options, most of which I find completely uncontroversial. They did, of course, slip pay-to-play into that list, albeit disguised as

Examining the different membership participation options, with a short term "event pass" for new participants.

But at least this time they're not trying to ram that down everyone's throats as The Only Way.

The problem, of course, is that none of the listed options are going to help nearly enough -- they'll raise a few thousand here and there, but they're not going to plug a tens-of-thousands hole. (And I'm pretty sure that pay-to-play is long-term suicide for the club as we know it.) So I expect the old arguments to revive.

Which does lead me to wonder: can I coherently make the argument that the only way to fix the Society's budget issues is to decentralize, in less than ten eye-glazingly dense pages? I do think it's the case -- IMO, much of our budget problem, like many of our problems, comes from the SCA's excessive degree of centralization. But it's not a simple argument to make persuasively. Time to start doing some outlining...

Here we go again, on the budgetary roller-coaster...

As always, I'm a ways behind, so I don't know how much the news has gotten around -- probably quite a bit, but just in case:

The Society's President sent out an email yesterday, announcing (not really a big surprise) that the SCA has a budget problem. It's not really a single thing, more a confluence of many, but the result is a disconcerting $181k shortfall for this year, and a non-trivial $27k for next year even with some optimistic assumptions.

To their credit, they're not panicking this time around: they're asking for opinions on a basket of options, most of which I find completely uncontroversial. They did, of course, slip pay-to-play into that list, albeit disguised as

Examining the different membership participation options, with a short term "event pass" for new participants.

But at least this time they're not trying to ram that down everyone's throats as The Only Way.

The problem, of course, is that none of the listed options are going to help nearly enough -- they'll raise a few thousand here and there, but they're not going to plug a tens-of-thousands hole. (And I'm pretty sure that pay-to-play is long-term suicide for the club as we know it.) So I expect the old arguments to revive.

Which does lead me to wonder: can I coherently make the argument that the only way to fix the Society's budget issues is to decentralize, in less than ten eye-glazingly dense pages? I do think it's the case -- IMO, much of our budget problem, like many of our problems, comes from the SCA's excessive degree of centralization. But it's not a simple argument to make persuasively. Time to start doing some outlining...

Time to bring back Primero, I think

As part of today's Low Company meeting, I'll probably be teaching Primero (among other things). This is one of the most important card games of the Renaissance, and rather fun -- it's essentially the 16th century equivalent of Poker. I originally reconstructed it about six years ago, taught it for a while, got unhappy with my reconstruction and stopped. In the meantime, another reconstruction showed up, which has its own problems but which I believe (if I steal some of its ideas) fixes some of mine.

I've been dithering about that for years, unsure about how to balance the reconstructions, but I think it's simply time to trust my instincts, go with the notes I wrote down about five years ago, and try the newly hybridized reconstruction. So we'll play with at least English Primero today (possibly the Italian game if people want to try something a little more complex), and see how the new version does.

Assuming it seems to work, expect that to show up more often at events. If nothing else, I need to teach enough people the game to provide context, since I volunteered to teach elementary statistics based on Primero at etherial's event in the fall...

Time to bring back Primero, I think

As part of today's Low Company meeting, I'll probably be teaching Primero (among other things). This is one of the most important card games of the Renaissance, and rather fun -- it's essentially the 16th century equivalent of Poker. I originally reconstructed it about six years ago, taught it for a while, got unhappy with my reconstruction and stopped. In the meantime, another reconstruction showed up, which has its own problems but which I believe (if I steal some of its ideas) fixes some of mine.

I've been dithering about that for years, unsure about how to balance the reconstructions, but I think it's simply time to trust my instincts, go with the notes I wrote down about five years ago, and try the newly hybridized reconstruction. So we'll play with at least English Primero today (possibly the Italian game if people want to try something a little more complex), and see how the new version does.

Assuming it seems to work, expect that to show up more often at events. If nothing else, I need to teach enough people the game to provide context, since I volunteered to teach elementary statistics based on Primero at etherial's event in the fall...