As an avid snowboarder and sometimes skier, I frequently find myself upset on the slopes, or more specifically, in the lift lines and on the chairlifts. Because I ride primarily in Michigan, and almost exclusively on weekends and holidays, I’ve grown accustomed to long lift lines. I understand that this is an unavoidable phenomenon unless I’d be willing to pay significantly more than the usual $35 to $50 on a lift ticket for Michigan slopes. Which I’m not. I’ll drop $70 to ride in Utah, or Colorado, or British Columbia, or Nevada, but those mountains are much bigger than our hills – so much bigger that the quality of a day’s ride dominates the price differential.

But what really chaps my ass is people who fall off the chairlift – either while getting on, or while disembarking. I’ve been snowboarding and skiing for 15 years – and to my knowledge, I’ve never fallen off a chairlift. When people do this, it causes the Lifty to stop the chair. Sometimes this happens 2 or 3 times on one ascent. These people cause net negative externalities to their fellow mountain-goers, and because they don’t bear the full burden of these costs, I speculate that the incidence of “people falling off chairlifts, or failing to properly load/unload” happens far more often than it would if they were forced to pay a penalty for their actions. So I would propose a Pigouvian tax of sorts, or, if you prefer, an asshole tax.

Now, since most ski areas are privately owned and operated (with a few exceptions), I realize that this isn’t really a “tax,” per se, but I think the principal is the same. And it doesn’t even have to be a monetary penalty – although this came up in discussion with my friend B-rad this past weekend, who advocated among other things, forefeiture of one’s lift pass, or a milder penalty for small children of perhaps $5 or $10. I would propose that the offenders be sent to the back of the line – which is often long. Are the lines long enough to make people think twice about paying attention while the chair sweeps under their asses? I don’t know, but at the very least, it would provide a modicum of retributive justice for all the curmudgeonly skiers and riders, like myself.

As my friend B-rad would say: The man is keeping me down.
As my father would say: The system is not set up for me to get ahead.

I was supposed to attend a New Employee Orientation in Los Angeles, the first week in March, and since I’d already be out there, I was going to tag a few days of skiing/snowboarding on the tail end of the trip, probably at Bear Mountain about an hour out of L.A., but maybe back to Tahoe. I was trying to figure out where to go, and coordinate with B-rad if he wanted to meet me out there. And then I was notified that the class would be postponed due to lack of participation. Until June. There is no skiing in June.

At least, that’s what I thought. Then I found out about the Palmer Snowfield, which is chairlift accessible year-round. I’d heard stories that Blackcomb Mountain in British Columbia was occasionally open during the summer – but I had no idea there was any June-September snow this side of the Equator. Sure, Portillo, Chile is very high on my list of places I’d like to shred. But the money I’d spend on airfare alone (about $1700) would pay for a two-week tour through the Rockies/Tetons, where I could hit Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a handful of Colorado resorts.

The Timberline Lodge looks nice. And besides, Memorial Day is just another redneck-budweiser-and-marlboros holiday, anyways. At least in Michigan it is.

I’d rather be snowboarding.

DRM discussions are always a hoot. I was inspired by a recent post by Smilerz, who had been on sabbatical or something recently, which also references this piece at The Economist.

What is the price I’d pay for [insert album of choice]? It is a positive number, but less than the current retail price. I can’t put a number on it for certain – but by a quick estimation, maybe one-half. Some albums, I simply can’t acquire otherwise – so I buy them, like Mississippi John Hurt. But there are other albums that are hard to find, like a complete discography for H.I.M., although I could piece-meal it at Amazon. It also doesn’t “hurt” (no pun intended) that MJH only cost about $6. I also download alot of music that I’ve never before heard – and because it’s legally unreturnable, I’m less than willing to pay for music that I might not like; I’d be more willing to speculate for a more reasonable price. People are generally more inclined to buy (and hence reduce the effects of a “free rider” problem) when the prices are viewed as reasonable or fair.

Then there are the DRM nightmares – like when three years ago, I spent about $40 to purchase the Zone 2 DVD of Matthieu Kassovitz’ La Haine, which is being re-realeased in Zone 1 format, in April. I would later find out that the Zone 2 DVD (n.b., it was also not available in VHS) would not play in American DVD players. It could be played, three times, on my Laptop – after which it would self-destruct; well, actually it would reprogram my laptop to only work with Zone 2. So I spent $40 on a DVD that was absolutely unobtainable, which, for all intents and purposes was unplayable once I received it. So I did what anyone would do: I downloaded it from a P2P network. Sure, I can’t use the subtitles, but I can watch it whenever I want.

The biggest concern, and Smilerz doesn’t touch on it in his post, is that we’re being forced to subsidize an archaic distribution model that simply doesn’t work that well.

There has to be a median somewhere. Downloading music from P2P networks is expensive. Sometimes it takes a loooong time, especially if you’re after something rare. Sometimes what you get isn’t what you wanted, it’s mislabeled. And then there is the risk of viruses, adware, etc. All of these inconveniences represent real costs that P2P users are willing to deal with, because they perceive the sum total of these costs to be less burdensome than the $18 price tag on a CD at the local F.Y.E. In short, there is a price people would happily pay for fast, reliable downloads of the same file-type they can get on a CD. It is probably somewhere between the theoretical construct of inconvenience costs, and the retail price of a CD – because people generally are willing to pay a premium for a premium product. Fast, reliable downloads would be a premium over their P2P counterparts. What’s holding this progress back is record companies bent on maintaining what’s left of their oligopolistic control of consumers.

N.B., I’ve just purchased the Five Victims, Four Graves‘s E.P., after listening to some of their tracks on their myspace page. Some people want the album now, it’s not qualitatively different from the hardcover/paperback price discrepancy in print publishing.