I like to complain

I still like to complain, but...

2008-08-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

I used to think that I would have a separate blog for each of my separate interests. It turns out that was unrealistic, so now I have one uniblog called Everything's Dynamic. I've exported all of the posts from I like to complain over there, but the comments did not survive the move. Nevertheless, there are still on I like to complain ad infinitum, and the posts with comments contain links back to the original post.

Health Care

2007-12-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

One of the main reasons the American health care system is messed up is the link between employer and health care. For most Americans, health care is subsidized by their employer, and as a result most people don't understand how much their care really costs. This leads to frivolous health care expenditures and a lack of responsibility among consumers...they're not paying [entirely] for it, so why should they worry about the cost? The link between ones employer and health care is basically the unintended consequence of government-imposed wage controls during the 1940s/1950s. Companies couldn't raise wages, so they began offering health care as an incentive to employees, essentially paying their employees with a currency of health care. Also, while individuals have to pay taxes on income used to purchase health care, companies don't. This ends up being a corporate tax loophole that companies can bury otherwise taxable income with.

Another problem with the current system is that certain health care expenditures shouldn't be considered "insurance." We don't have grocery insurance, because we know we need groceries. Likewise, we know we're going to need a certain amount of basic health care--there's no getting around it. Administering such basic health care through an insurance company or through the government is just unnecessary bureaucracy; it won't magically make the health care any cheaper, but it will add layers of administrative cost.

So if I were put in charge of solving health care, here's what I'd do:

Break the link between a person's employer and their health care, which could be done in part by making all health care expenditures by individuals tax-deductible. This would take away the tax incentive that companies have to pay their employees with health care.
I might consider making each individual purchase health care on the open market, just like how car insurance is mandated today. By making people think about how much health care really costs, they might think twice about getting the all-inclusive deluxe plan where all doctor visits and prescription visits are free (well, free at the point of purchase but paid for by high premiums). Additionally, people would be less likely to use insurance for routine doctor visits, which would likely lower administrative costs.
I think these reforms would help a lot, but it wouldn't result in a utopia where everyone gets all the health care they possible need for the lowest cost possible. For example, people whose income is such that they already pay little or no federal income tax won't be affected by changing the tax code to allow health care expenditures to be tax-deductible. For these people, I would support a government-funded voucher program where each qualified person gets, say, a $2,000 per year voucher with which to purchase both health insurance and other health care services not covered by insurance (such as routine doctor visits). If they don't use all the money, at the end of the year the leftover amount gets rolled over year after year in an account they own. This would put the participants in such a program in charge of their health care decisions and provide them an incentive to make wise choices.

And after all that, for the people still left out (for whatever reason), I would support keeping Medicaid, although I'm sure it could use some reforms and hopefully would be used by far fewer people.

Onion Prophesy

2007-07-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

This Onion article seems oddly prophetic:

Eco-littering, however, is just one of the ways the public is embracing the green idea. The growing popularity of flex-fuel cars, which can run on regular gasoline or the ethanol-hydrocarbon compound known as E85, means more people can enjoy old-fashioned Sunday joyrides and short drives to the neighborhood supermarket without fretting about wasting nonrenewable fuel. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs now save the trouble of turning off lights. And cleaner-burning fuels and sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar power are making the longtime dream of running household appliances at all hours a reality.

I already find myself thinking, "Oh, it's alright if I leave the lights on...I'm saving so much energy anyway." But if the cost (the holistic cost, which includes the price per unit of energy and the environmental effect of that energy) of energy decreases (note that the monetary cost may increase while the holistic cost decreases because the [perceived] environmental cost may decrease), people will probably consume more energy. What other incentive is there to conserve besides cost?

Food Alarmism

2007-03-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Chinese food is unhealthy. Hmmm...so I guess that would mean that people that eat a lot of Chinese food wouldn't live as long as people who didn't eat a lot of Chinese food. So, let's look at two countries with fairly similar economic systems, one where the average person probably eats Chinese food a couple times a month (at best), and one where the average person eats Chinese food just about every day (source: CIA Factbook):

UK life expectancy
total population: 78.54 years
male: 76.09 years
female: 81.13 years (2006 est.)

Hong Kong life expectancy
total population: 81.59 years
male: 78.9 years
female: 84.5 years (2006 est.)

Hmmm....

Capitalism: the Antithesis of Social Darwinism

2007-03-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the following comment in response to Julian Sanchez’s phrase “the progressive version of the intelligent design fallacy” got me all riled up, and I’ve already criticized it here.

If you want to make an evolutionary argument, you have to realize that the way evolution by random mutation works is by failure. Trial and error. Lots and lots of error. Millions of kids lives would be ruined, society would collapse, and a new society billions of years from now would have evolved the innate capacity to build properly functioning schools for their multi-tentacled offspring. Or something like that. Anyway, the point is that if you want progress you can find in the newspaper rather than in the fossil record, you need intelligence.

Julian was advocating for school choice (i.e. vouchers), so I assume that this commenter is an opponent of school choice, and probably of capitalism in general. Who knows...The point is, a lot of people commit the fallacy of associating capitalism with evolution, or more specifically, Social Darwinism.

What's the easiest (and intellectually laziest) way to attack a person advocating capitalism and free markets? Accuse him of supporting Social Darwinism. Of course, such an attack is misguided at best, and actually couldn’t be further from the truth.

In a market-based system, wealth is created through innovation. In evolution/Social Darwinism, wealth is transferred to the biggest bully. Sure, at any given instance, the competition between two businesses vying for the same thing (access to some resource or customer or money) might resemble an encounter between a snake and a mongoose, but the customer ends up winning in either case because the winner of the battle must do something (such as inventing a new product that makes life easier) to win the battle for the resource.

In fact, communism—the polar opposite of capitalism—more accurately resembles Social Darwinism; the lack of incentives for innovators results in a fixed amount of wealth being fought over instead of new wealth being created (through the innovation that capitalism so uniquely fosters). Carl Milsted sums it up nicely here:

Another notorious metaphor [to capitalism] is “Social Darwinism.” It implies a tougher fight for survival in a market system. Ironically, when traditional societies become more free market based, populations tend to explode, until parents realize that their children are likely to live long lives. As far as people are concerned, capitalism is anti-Darwinian. A good case could be made that our descendants will be stupider and less hearty because capitalism has made life too easy.

There is an evolutionary aspect to capitalism, but it applies to businesses, not the people they serve. Businesses that fail to provide good service do get weeded out by competition with better businesses. But the evolutionary process is not entirely Darwinian: businesses learn. Lamarkian evolution is the norm.

Anyway, the point is this: in a market-based school system, some schools would fail, while others would succeed. But just as the consumers win when Target matches Wal-Mart’s prices and provides a more comfortable and attractive shopping environment (while other competitors like K-mart fall by the wayside), the students and parents would win if schools were pitted against each other. Sure, some schools would be closed (i.e. go out of businesses), and (gasp!) some teachers would lose their jobs. But I want bad schools to close, and I want bad teachers to lose their jobs. After all, I’m not all that concerned about the schools and the teachers; I’m concerned about the students!

The Progressive Version of the Intelligent Design Fallacy

2007-03-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Julian Sanchez describes what he calls the "progressive version of the intelligent design fallacy" in this post. Here's the excerpt:

This is the progressive version of the intelligent design fallacy—the implicit belief that complex results must be consciously aimed at to be achieved...

The context that it's used in is to attack how opponents of school choice seem to operate on the presumption that central planning is required to produce a good product. I love the concept that Julian has coined, but I don’t love the term he’s given to it. I think it will lead to a lot of confusion and straw man arguments that conflate market-based systems and capitalism with evolution. For example, a commenter attacks Julian's verbiage with this comment:

If you want to make an evolutionary argument, you have to realize that the way evolution by random mutation works is by failure. Trial and error. Lots and lots of error. Millions of kids lives would be ruined, society would collapse, and a new society billions of years from now would have evolved the innate capacity to build properly functioning schools for their multi-tentacled offspring. Or something like that. Anyway, the point is that if you want progress you can find in the newspaper rather than in the fossil record, you need intelligence.

Nevermind the commenter’s conflation of evolution with market-based systems (see this post for my thoughts on that fallacy). What really freaks me out about this guy’s comment is that he seems to be willing to completely ignore the obvious evidence that markets work, and more specifically that people (in their current state of evolutionary existence) function optimally in market-based systems. It won’t take millions of years of evolution for people to adjust to a market-based school system, just as it won’t take millions of years of evolution for people to adjust to a market-based food distribution system (or any other subsystem of the overall capitalist/market-based economy). NEWSFLASH! We already have those systems! A market-based school system isn’t any different!

Yes, you need intelligence, but not from a central planning perspective. You need intelligence (insofar as being able to tell the difference between a failure and a success) at the level of the consumer, or in the case of school choice, the parent. And we already have that! Would anyone ever really suggest that people are so stupid that, without millions more years of evolution, they can’t tell the difference between a success and a failure?

Anyway, to avoid the confusion that Julian’s comment cause in this commenter, as well as to avoid the conflation of evolution (i.e. Social Darwinism) with capitalism, I’d like to suggest a new term to describe this fallacy that many people assume to be true. How about simply, the “central planner fallacy?”

School Choice

2007-03-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

This post was originally a comment in response to this post on AngryBlog, but I liked it so much I'm posting it here:

Potential reasons for opposition to school-choice:

1.) Public funding of religious schools
2.) An erosion of the sense of “community” that comes with geography-based schools
3.) Fear of treating children like commodities to be shuffled around to school after school to prove a political point

Point #1 is a valid concern, but as long as there’s nothing in the allocation formula regarding religion (or the lack thereof) I think that this concern goes away.

Point #2 is not a valid concern because it relies on the false assumption that geography-based schools have the potential to foster a greater sense of community than performance-based schools.

Point #3 is valid, but as Tim points out, it can’t get any worse than it already is. We’ve been carrying out the progressive experiment with education for a long time now, and inner-city kids are the victims of “progressive dogmatism.”

The progressive system isn’t working (and in fact isn’t all that progressive). It’s time to try something else.

Liberty Mutual's "Responsibility" Site

2007-03-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

After calling Liberty Mutual to ask about a bill, I decided to go online to pay it. The image/question on the right side of the page caught my attention. It asked, "Should the government regulate the use of trans fats in restaurants?"

My interest was piqued! "OF COURSE NOT!" I thought to myself, my rage at the recent action by the New York City city council to ban trans fats being quickly recalled. So I clicked on the image and found this site, which has a huge list of "yes/no" survey questions that have been featured in weeks past. Much to my surprise the questions actually address the concept of liberty/personal responsibility vs. government mandates rather directly.

Besides the trans fat question that's currently up, they also ask about motorcycle helmet laws, airport security, even whether people without children should have to pay "school taxes" (their words). In most cases, the survey respondents [predictably] err on the side of more government action (and less liberty). Most respondents think the government should ban trans fats, most think the government should have motorcycle helmet laws, most think the minimum driving age should be raised, etc. But the "yeses" don't usually win by very much, showing that there is a healthy amount of people that believe the government should stay out issues revolving around personal choice and responsibility.

Even better, the comments that those opposed to government action write tend to be along the lines of liberty and the government's taking of freedom. The do-gooders keep trying to bring the question back to whether helmets saves lives or whether trans fats are healthy, but the opposition doesn't fall for that straw man, instead recentering the debate to government action vs. individual liberty and personal responsibility.

Go to the site now and voice your opinion!

Good Strategy for Promoting Liberty

2006-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

I think Radley Balko is onto a great strategy to promote liberty. It's basically the same strategy non-libertarians (statists, alarmists, public healthists, public safetyists, etc.) have been using for years. The strategy? Focus on the personal victims of whatever evil you're trying to expose. Think about it...for smoking ban advocates, it's stories about the poor single-mom waitress who has lung cancer despite never smoking a day in her life after working at a restaurant (where smoking is allowed) for 30 years. For the MADD crowd, nothing's more effective than the infamous "Happy Birthday" commercials where a home video of a child's birthday party is shown while a narrator informs viewers that the child was killed by a drunk driver. For food safety alarmists, it's not the fact that 15 out of 300 million people got sick from eating bad spinach, it's that the old man is in critical condition at a local hospital after eating a salad.

Libertarians and free market advocates know they're right in the grand scheme of things. It's not even close. Look at things like global standards of living, then look at levels of economic, social, and press freedom. On the macro level, it's clear that greater liberty equals a better society for all. On the macro level, the few people who actually care enough to objectively consider the macro-level generally accept this idea.

But on the micro level, where most of the people (most of the voters!!) make their decisions, the non-libertarians dominate. When was the last time you saw a local (or even national) news story that focused on the abuse of power by government and/or how government hurts people's lives. Rarely. And if there is such a story, it's usually couched in terms that make the government's co-conspirators (such as a money-hungry corporation) look worse than the government. What's far more likely is a story about how some business or landlord is ripping people off, how someone died because of "gun violence," or some victim-laden story about the "digital divide" or the growing gap between rich and poor. And almost inevitably the stated or implied solution to such problems is more government action.

Anyway, back to the lecture at hand. "If it bleeds, it leads." That's the de facto axiom of news broadcasts. Why? Because people sympathize with personal stories. It doesn't even really matter what the story is; if there's a personal story with a likable person as a victim, it's perfect for the news.

And I think that libertarians are finally realizing this. Radley Balko is leading the charge at using personal stories to illustrate how government policies and government corruption can ruin the life of a real, actual person with a face and a name. Finally libertarians are understanding that what sells are personal stories on the micro level. You can talk all you want about how increased economic liberty will lead to a better society for all, but that point gets lost on most of the audience. What really gets people are real-world examples of individual victims.

Nice rant

2006-11-18T22:25:00.000-08:00

Mark Frauenfelder, the "small l libertarian" contributor to Boing Boing, has a nice rant about the incidental War on Allergy Sufferers, an unlikely child of the War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs:

For one thing, I'm one of those crazy (small l) libertarians who thinks drug laws, on the whole, hurt society more than they help society, so I don't like this law. It's a shame that some people ruin their lives and their families' lives by using meth and other drugs, but the innocent people killed by muggers who need money to buy expensive drugs, the enrichment of street gangs and organized crime rings that sell illegal drugs, the corruption of government officials who take bribes from smugglers, the people who are falsely arrested on trumped up drug charges, the people who are killed by crazed bounty hunters and police raiding the wrong houses, the seizure of property belonging to people who didn't know there were drugs on their property, and the imprisonment of non-violent drug users amount to a bigger problem, I think. I am in favor of abolishing all drug laws.

Well said.

New Market for the Liberty Dollar?

2006-10-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

I thought of something the other day. How might the recent ban on financial transactions for internet gambling affect using Liberty Dollars to pay for such services? After all, if the Liberty Dollar is not legal tender (PDF), can it really be covered under a ban on financial transactions? Isn't it just a fancy form of bartering?

Imagine...Liberty Dollars becoming the de facto standard currency for a fun activity that adults choose to participate in but that busybody politicians seek to prohibit...It's a perfect match!

Update

2006-10-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

In case anyone has looked at this blog in the past couple months, I'd like to provide three ~~reasons~~ excuses for the dearth of posts:

1.) I got married in July, and that took up a lot of time
2.) I got a puppy in August, and that took up a lot of time
3.) I got a new car in September, and that took up a lot of time

Es tut mir leid.

Promoting Corporate Success vs. Promoting Consumer Choice

2006-08-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

There are two ways to promote deregulation/privatization/marketization, which I'll refer to in this post simply as DPM. The first is to focus on the benefits to the economy, specifically the benefits that would come to "business." For example, someone might suggest that DPM will "be good for business," which to the average person that isn't already convince of the benefits of DPM sound like "allow big corporations that take advantage of the 'little guys' to make more money."

Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth, but that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the public's perception. It's frustrating, but it's true.

So what's the other way to promote DPM? By focusing on the increased choice ("consumer choice" is the most favorable way to phrase it) that will result from instituting DPM or, even better, never even enacting regulations in the first place. Tim Lee has done a great job of doing this in this op-ed, which argues against enacting legislation that would attempt to preserve "net neutrality."

Tim's op-ed sounds very positive to me. Even though he's arguing against the populist position (which says that we need net neutrality to maintain equal access to the internet), his argument comes off to me as slightly populist (i.e. it has popular appeal).

To sum up:

more profits = bad public perception
more consumer choice = good public perception

Both arguments are valide reasons for supporting DPM, but argument #2 won't instantly alienate half of the electorate.

Deregulation vs. Privatiziation vs. Marketization

2006-08-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

In general, libertarians (and some conservatives) favor reducing regulations. A term that was once popular but that now seems to carry negative connotations is "deregulation." For many, this term essentially means selling out to big corporate interests, usually at the expense of the public.

Whether such a perception is right or wrong is irrelevant--if people think that deregulation is bad, then it is bad.

An even nastier term than dergulation is "privatization." This term reeks of the corrupt sale of big Soviet industries to seedy businessmean and profiteers.

A better term (for now, at least) is marketization, which sounds better when it's used as a verb: "Energy rates would decrease if we were to marketize the power distribution system."

This term has two things going for it: (1) it hasn't been used a lot (at least recently) and (2) its root word is generally more positive and more accurately characterizes the goal of the concept.

"Deregulation" is inherently a negative word (with the prefix "de"), and simply "deregulating" something doesn't address what will happen to that something after it is no longer regulated.

"Privatiziation's" root word is "private," which connotes selfishness. Again, what will happen to something once it is "privatized?" Will those who had access to it in the past continue to have access to it in the future?

"Marketization's" root word, however, is "market." "Market" is the term that pretentious people use for "stores," as in, "I'm going to pick some celery up at the market." Plus, if something is "marketized," we know what the outcome will be. It will be transformed from its non-market state to a market state. That's all. Nothing to worry about.

But for me the post positive thing about "marketization" is that its root word implies consumer choice. What kind of "market" has only one option?

I'm sure there are technical differences between the three terms discussed above, but that doesn't really matter to me because I'm not an economist. And it doesn't really matter to a majority of Americans (who also aren't economists), because all that's important for them (and especially for the people trying to reach them!) is what they perceive.

Libertarians run some of the hottest "green" companies

2006-07-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Two well know libertarians, T.J. Rodgers and John Mackey, who participated in a famous debate about the social responsibility of businees with none other than Milton Friedman, run two of the hottest "green" companies--SunPower Corporation and Whole Foods, respectively. SunPower Corporation is a member of the Wired 40, where it is lauded for its "photovoltaic silicon [that] puts out 50 percent more juice per square inch." Whole Foods, of course, is the most successful chain of supermarkets offering "natural and organic"food.

See liberals? Libertarians are your friends.

Images from here.

I hope this guy's not a libertarian

2006-06-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

I found out about this from here.

Another reason to abolish the FDA

2006-06-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

From here:

The report, requested and funded by the Food and Drug Administration, lays out ways to help people manage their intake of calories from the growing number of meals prepared away from home, including at the nation's nearly 900,000 restaurants and other establishments that serve food.
...

The report encourages restaurants to shift the emphasis of their marketing to lower-calorie choices, and include more such options on menus. In addition, restaurants could jigger portion sizes and the variety of foods available in mixed dishes to reduce the overall number of calories taken in by diners.

What if a government agency "encouraged" media companies to show more "good news" and human interest stories, because, gee whiz, that stuff makes people feel better? What if a government agency recommended that atheists take a fresh look at Christianity, because Christians tend to be happier?

Such government intrusion into our media and our spirituality would be almost universally seen as wrong.

Why should it be any different with a government agency like the FDA? While the FDA and the healthists wear a public face of "serving the public good," it now seems like they're intentionally trying to usurp responsibility from individuals.

I don't want to be "encouraged" to eat more or less of anything, and I certainly don't want restaurants to be "urged" to serve smaller portions and more fruits and vegetables. 1.) Restaurants already serve a lot of fruits and vegetables...they're called salads! Almost every restaurant (including the Great Satan McDonald's) sells them. 2.) If you want a smaller portion, eat half of what you order and take the other half home.

Immigration Stupidness

2006-06-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

Cap on high-tech visas for 2007 already met

WASHINGTON - The government has already reached the limit on high-tech worker visas for 2007 even though the fiscal year does not start until Oct. 1, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Thursday.

High-tech companies said that underscores the need to increase the 65,000 annual cap on the popular H-1B visas used to bring in engineers, computer programmers and others.

Why do we have this stupid cap in the first place? Oh, that's right, to protect high-tech jobs for American scientists and engineers.

(1) I bet every immigrant working as a scientist or engineer creates >1 high tech jobs for some American (probably someone with a business degree, which we have too many of).

(2) There aren't enough American scientists and engineers the way it is...everyone's majoring in business!

There's talk of increasing the cap to 115,000. I'm sure all of those would be filled just as quickly. We should get rid of the cap entirely and let all the Indians, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Nigerian, etc. scientists and engineers come to America. With any luck, they'll stay here and create millions of new jobs with the technologies they invent and companies they found.

Republicans are scared of libertarians

2006-06-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

Sue Jeffers, who is a libertarian and is endorsed by the Minnesota LP, is prohibited from speaking at the Minnesota Republican Convention.

Bill Weld, a New York Republican endorsed by the New York LP, loses his party's endorsement.

Republicans in office at the federal level barely even bother to pay lip service to liberty anymore.

George Bush is touted for his big government conservatism.

Someone in Minneapolis gets it

2006-06-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he said. "The whole country seems to be going to the Soviet Union, I'll tell you that."

This comment was made by Minneapolis resident (and good honest American!) Gordon Anderson in regards to a proposal by Minneapolis City Council member Robert Lilligren that would make it illegal to walk down an alley on a block you (or someone you're visiting) don't live on.

This proposal is a classic government "solution." First, from a practical standpoint, it's unenforceable. Second, for the few instances it might be enforced, the only logical tactic of enforcement--asking someone where they live--is incredibly unconstitutional (4th Amendment). Are black people walking down alleys in southwest Minneapolis (which is predominantly white) going to be stopped and questioned (for their residency papers?!?!) by cops?

I found out about this story from this post at the Agitator.

Keeping the undesirables out by keeping prices high

2006-05-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

As I discoverd in this post at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Hercules, California is using eminent domain to keep Wal-Mart out of their precious city.

"It's the quality of living in Hercules that we're dealing with," said Steve Kirby, a Hercules resident since 1988. "One thing that we don't want is a regional-type business in there that brings in a lot of traffic."

In other words, we don't want anyone that doesn't fit the profile of our ideal citizen. In other words, we only want certain people to shop in our town....we don't want, ahem, those people in our city.

Sounds like Hercules has a Pleasantville complex.

Great libertarian quote

2006-05-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

"Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be the name of a store, not a government agency.

[corrected for punctuation and grammar from a post by Chris Marshall here]

Overkill

2006-05-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

Some kids pulled off a clever prank and made marijuana-laced muffins for their teachers.

Give 'em the chair!!!!

The FBI was involved? The prosecutor wants to give the kids 20 years in prison because "illegal drugs" were involved? 20 years? The kids aren't criminals now (yes their actions were criminal (because marijuana is currently illegal) and unethical (whether or not drugs should be illegal, tricking someone into taking them is wrong), but they're not *criminals*. But they'll probably become criminals if they go to prison. If nothing else, they won't be productive members of society (which they otherwise would be...I don't think they're going to spend the rest of their life tricking people into eating pot muffins).

Nerd Alert

2006-04-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

Libertarians are nerds.

This symbol used to represent liberty...

2006-04-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Boing Boing mentions how a protestor in France (presumably protesting the would-have-been repeal of a law that protects workers under 26 from getting fired; here's a good summary) looks like a famous painting by Eugene Delacroix entitled "Liberty Leading the People." Sure, the images look similar, but the spirit of the protest couldn't be more opposite than "liberty leading the people." Protesting to maintain the status quo which has left youth unempolyment in France at over 20% hardly smacks of liberty. Besides, the lady in the painting looks better than the lady in the photograph.