REASON POWER POLICY

An Appeal

2011-08-21T09:51:00.000-06:00

Maragret Lavinia Anderson.

Can you make your lectures available again? Free is nice, but I'll pay for them if I have to.

And yes, I am reading Practicing Democracy.

Right and wrong

2010-11-09T04:22:00.000-07:00

The following is from an email exchange between Robert and I regarding this article:

She's right to promote individual identity over stereotypes (whether or not the stereotypes apply statistically - individuals deserve to be treated as such).

Her primary failure is in the assumption that women are not or have not been drivers of the culture to the same extent that men have. She assumes that men have been giving it to women and women have been taking it since...well forever. The truth is that women are powerful shapers of culture, much more so than the feminist movement has ever acknowledged. Only in severely dysfunctional societies (and I mean societies that quickly disintegrate because they are genuinely not functional) have women altogether been subjugated in the way that the feminist movement has described. In all societies that function, and persist, women inevitably wield powerful influence. And they do so for the obvious reasons that they compose half the population and have a monopoly on certain highly prized abilities - that is, they have something valuable that the other half of the population wants badly.

I'm not an expert, but I think that you will find that even in cultures that are outwardly repressive of women it won't take more than an up close glance to see how women are exercising influence throughout the society.

The other side to the coin is that women are clever about their own interests. Clever enough to fool men and even to fool Gloria Steinem. Consequently, a great many repressive practices against women are actually enforced BY women. Look at genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa. I hear that this practice is perpetuated by mothers and grandmothers, not by men at all. Why is this the case? Well, it's obvious really. And it's the same for practices that are aimed at repressing men and are enforced by men (e.g. rules about when a man is allowed to marry). These practices safeguard the interests of those who enforce them. So, it's not MEN repressing WOMEN. Instead it's one group of people (say, matriarchs) repressing another, competing group (say, young women who are approaching sexual maturity).

So, to sum up: Gloria Steinem should take her own advice about lumping people into static groups. There are many kinds of men and many kinds of women in the world. They should be protected as individuals, with individual protections that don't vary according to what groups we might wish to lump them into. From that perspective feminism IS (or ought to be) dead, because it doesn't - can't - give protection to individuals when it assumes that men repress and women submit.

More on Saving and Investment

2010-09-01T11:54:00.000-06:00

This article is a much better exposition of some of the ideas I was trying to get at in my post titled Bad Investment.

Here's a related post by Eric Falkenstein that discusses how people and businesses behave when their performance on fundamental measures is not well correlated to their earnings.

Technology

2010-09-01T07:53:00.000-06:00

From the point of view of society, technology is the reason for doing science.

Bad Investment

2010-08-31T18:24:00.000-06:00

I kind of understand the reasons behind the dot-com bubble. The emergence of new, paradigm-shifting technology suggested that untold fortunes might be made by the fearless who got in on the ground floor. The real estate bubble is more mysterious.

Who really thought that housing prices were accurately reflecting a balance between the number of available units (supply) and the ability of consumers to pay (demand), circa January 2006? Or even a year earlier, for that matter. Even casual attention to the loan-making process during this time would suggest a problem with the direction of the investments that were being made. Hindsight is 20/20, but at the time I did decline to take on such a loan myself because it just all seemed so ridiculous (though I should have taken it, had I been a more rational actor).

I'm clearly no economist, but I think that the bubbles during the last halves of the last two decades must have a common cause. In both cases enormous investment was made on a basis of careless speculation bordering on willful self-injury. Why?

Some people talk about interest rates being artificially low and blame Greenspan and Bernanke. I'm no expert on that one, but I do wonder whether interest rates were low only because of the actions of the Fed. My suspicion is that low interest rates alone didn't cause all that bad investment, but that both the low interest rates and the bad investment were caused by a third factor.

I'm not quite sure how to phrase it, but doesn't it seem like there was an awful lot of capital that needed someplace to go during both of these booms? I've heard the phrase global savings glut bandied about, but I'm not sure exactly how to evaluate that. One thing seems sure: typical due diligence prior to investing was not being practiced in 1996 or in 2006. Is it simply that there were not enough quality investment opportunities available during these periods? Too much money chasing too few opportunities? That story seems to fit the facts, but I can't quite make sense of it.

Under what circumstance is there too much money ready to be invested? It's not the kind of thing I've heard debated, but I can imagine a world where saving is happening at a higher rate than is consumption. In that world, each saved dollar 'wishes' to be put to use producing, but most production is giving slim returns because demand is weak (e.g. most needs are already satisfied, so there's not a strong incentive to buy more). That doesn't sound like the USA we know and love, and whose savings rate has been negative in very recent memory. But it might be a description of the world when evaluated on net.

Don't look at me like I have data to support that argument, because I don't. But imagine how a world like the one I've described might behave. Because many, many people are choosing to postpone spending until a later date, there are many dollars available for investment. But they can't be profitably put to work building factories to make gadgets to sell to people, because people are saving instead of buying gadgets. So investment dollars are available cheap, chasing every opportunity to earn some kind of return. Consequently, interest rates fall (with or without Bernanke's say so). In such an environment risky investments that pay well look much more attractive than they usually do because investors are desperate. Investment schemes based on the promise of unproven new technology or the faulty hope of perennially rising home values almost make sense. Eventually this kind of bad investment gains a certain amount of respectability and even becomes an indispensable part of every portfolio, because no one wants to be left earning pennies on securities that give Treasury Bill-like returns while the stupid money (other banks, municipalities, and private investors) make relatively good returns and don't seem to be blowing up.

This story is so simple that it must be wrong. Please tell me how it's wrong.

But if we assume that it's right, what policy can fix it? Or should it be fixed?

What if the solution is for governments to tax and spend in order to forcibly lower the savings rate?

What if we believe that taxing and spending is the solution, but it turns out that taxing and spending in the US doesn't fix the problem because we don't save much anyway, and that the real savers are in China and India?

Discouraging Effort and Success

2010-08-12T18:54:00.000-06:00

Why do we tax labor? We know that any tax on an activity discourages people from engaging in that activity by reducing the rewards for doing it. So why do we tax hard work, production, and wise investment? Do we really want less of those things?

We need to fund our government (some claim), so we need to tax something. Why not tax behaviors that we want less of? Wouldn't that be killing two birds with one stone?

What would happen if we ditched all income taxes (including capital gains, and corporate income taxes) in favor of taxation levied exclusively against consumption? How would our society change?

I imagine a system wherein my income is not monitored by the government, but the total amount of my consumptive spending is instead. It's easy enough to do - just give up cash and require banks to report the amount of spending. As long as my consumptive spending total for the tax period stays below a legally established minimum, I pay no tax. But when my total rises above that level, I begin to pay tax out of each additional dollar spent. So if I don't spend much beyond the limit, the taxation I experience will be very low.

There are many advantages to such a system. For one, we'd stop punishing smart and hardworking people for being so productive. Every dollar they earn would be theirs to keep. This would include dollars earned for good investments (capital gains). Similarly, we'd stop punishing businesses for competence in producing and selling products and services to people who need them. When a highly successful business has to pay a large amount of income tax while its less successful competitor pays no tax (due to writing off business losses) the playing field is being unfairly tipped to reward poor performance! Not only that, but why tax production at all when production is what gives us the things we need and desire?

Also very important is the fact that taxing consumption, instead of labor, production, and investment, allows individuals to adjust their tax liability to fit their circumstances and desires. If I don't want to pay so much in taxes this year, I can reduce my consumption and pay less. And, I bear no penalty for working extra hard to earn additional money to fund my future, or my children's future.

Under this kind of system saving would be strongly incentivized. For those who wished to avoid taxation, saving and wise investment would be the safest harbor for their money. Everyone would be faced with compelling reasons to defer spending to a later date. Government subsidized retirement could become unnecessary for average Americans.

It's possible to take this idea to a more extreme level and suggest that leisure (time spent not producing or learning) could be taxed when it exceeded a certain minimum amount. This could spur the indolent and chronically unemployed (whether poor or wealthy) to return to productivity, lending their efforts to the improvement of society.

Undoubtedly there are many weaknesses in such a plan, and opportunities for clever gaming of the system. But that is no different from our current system for taxation.

Are there structural problems with this proposition?

Quote of the Day - Me

2010-07-22T22:10:00.000-06:00

'Human Dignity' seems like weak wording for the issue of who gets to summer in Provence and who gets to die of dysentery before reaching adulthood.

Look for me in the comments at http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-inequality.html

Quote of the Day - Popper

2010-07-03T12:26:00.000-06:00

"Institutions are like fortresses. They must be well designed and manned."

Overly Simplistic

2010-07-03T12:24:00.000-06:00

So, how would it change the nature of American government if every law came with a sunset clause, by default? In order to persist beyond, say, three years, they'd have to be re-adopted. I believe that the primary change would be to make governance more experimental and more fluid. Good thing? I don't know. I think most people are annoyed by the very slow pace of positive change in this country, but probably most are happy that the pace of negative change isn't any more rapid.

Would there be other significant unintended consequences? E.g. Regime uncertainty? Could those consequences be mitigated in some way?

Well-Off

2010-06-24T06:28:00.000-06:00

Many economists build a case against policies that are aimed at reducing inequality in income and wealth. Their argument rests on two premises:

Societies should seek to be maximally productive, because this is the best way to provide for the needs of the members of the society, and
There is a trade-off between equality and efficiency - policies that promote equality tend to reduce productivity.

I'm not convinced.

The first premise invokes Coase: well-defined property rights ensure that any redistribution (of wealth, property, or rights) that will increase societal welfare will happen through the mechanism of the market without the need for the intervention of the government - provided that transaction costs are negligible.

Transaction costs are rarely negligible, but even if we set that aside there is still a problem. Arnold Kling gives an example that illustrates the problem with Coase. Prof. Kling considers the case of a biker who needs to use a bike path that crosses private land. Here's my retelling: The biker is willing to pay a heavy toll (a large percentage of his total wealth) in order to be allowed to use the path, because he wants to reach the hospital where his father is dying to see his father one last time. If he doesn't use the path then he has to take a much longer route and will not reach the hospital in time. The landowner wants to exclude the biker from using the path because the landowner doesn't like to have strangers on his land. Let's assume essentially zero transaction costs - the biker carries a transponder that automatically computes and pays his toll (with his agreement), according to the rate the landowner has set. The landowner sets the toll at a level that compensates him for the unpleasantness he experiences at having strangers cross his land.

The problem is that the biker is very poor, and the landowner is very wealthy, and as a result, the price the landowner sets is much higher than what the biker can pay, even though the biker places a very high value on using the path. Under Coase, as long as the biker gets more value out of using the path than the landowner loses when the biker uses the path, then they should be able to agree on a price that compensates the landowner. Why doesn't that work in this case? Clearly, the biker places a very high intrinsic value on using the path - equal to a large percentage of his total wealth!

It doesn't work because the landowner and the biker value money, dollars, differently. Essentially the biker and the landowner are not using a common unit of exchange. You could say that the landowner sets the price in apples, but that the biker is paying in oranges. Or to highlight the difference in value, the landowner is setting the price in coal, but the biker must in diamonds.

There is a further, even more radical implication to all of this, and that is that when there are differences in wealth among the members of a society, transfers from the wealthy to the poor INCREASE net societal welfare. This is because when a dollar is taken from a wealthy man and given to a poor man, the loss of intrinsic value experienced by the rich man is less than the gain in intrinsic value experienced by the poor man. Prices don't clear the market because prices are not established in units of intrinsic value.

As far as premise number two, I haven't seen any good measures of the magnitude of that trade-off. Is it significant? Is it significant at some degrees of intervention, but not significant at others? If you know where i can see data that describe this relationship I would be very interested.

PostScript: None of this addresses the libertarian arguments against policies that are aimed at reducing inequality. Nor does it address the question of whether governments are needed to effect redistribution (when it is desirable), or whether non-coercive institutions and norms could be a more optimal solution than government.

The Point Of This Blog

2010-06-16T09:27:00.000-06:00

"Without new technologies, an economy might grow slowly. But without decent rules, an economy cannot even make use of the technologies that already exist."

-Sebastian Mallaby

Of mind control, paranoia, and secret government...

2010-04-02T06:38:00.011-06:00

...I can't even finish the title. Are you still reading this, or have I already driven you away?

Beginning in the 1950s, something strange began in the US. It involved experimentation with powerful chemical compounds that had the ability to alter behavior and brain function. Documentation shows it lasted through the 1960s and may continue to this day.

No, it's not the hippie era, but that's a good guess. I'm referring to MK-ULTRA, the covert CIA program that studied how people responded to LSD and other drugs, presumably to determine how the agency could make use of the chemicals in other secret CIA settings.

The implications are far-reaching, the fodder of conspiracy theorists and mind control authorities (nearly all of whom seem to have their own blog, book, and following).

It's a lot to weed through, but here's what is certain:

There really was a project named MK-ULTRA, and they really did do experimentation with dangerous drugs on unconsenting subjects.

To be honest, I was prepared to debunk the whole thing as ridiculous conjecture, but it isn't possible. Most of the documentation was destroyed in the 70s, but some it remains, and what it says doesn't bode well for the non-paranoid.

At least some of the research was applied to "unwitting subjects in normal life settings. It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKULTRA substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations." They freely admit that, regarding this controversial aspect, "No effective cover story appears to be available."

They weren't unaware of what might happen, but in paired sentences say that "possible sickness and attendant economic loss are inherent contingent effects of the testing" AND "that the program is not intended to harm test individuals." I guess hiding under the shelter of "intentions" is a fine justification.

At least one death is attributed to this program, that of Frank Olson, who was a specialist in biological warfare and had LSD slipped into his drink during a meeting with CIA personnel. Reading about that incident begins to sound like a Tom Clancy plot point, and the exact circumstances are difficult to find; so much of it is tangled up with speculation and wild leaps to bleak conclusions. That the CIA gave him LSD without his knowledge is documented. Under what circumstances he then fell from the 13th story window is not as clear.

Many people think that the program never ended. Its scope was certainly larger than the available papers describe.

In March 2010, the effects uncovered in this understated article give a better picture of the involuntary research. This is where I started to think that there are perhaps far more implications than I had considered.

What does it all mean? It's hard to add up all the facts, hard even to separate what we actually know from the ridiculous notions people are quick to invent.

On the other hand, knowing that something like this certainly existed, and that there is much we don't know, doesn't add to my confidence that government programs like this probably don't exist now, and that if they do they're tame little experiments that don't do anyone any harm.

It's nearly impossible to be a naive optimist anymore. But how much paranoia is appropriate?

Great links

2010-03-31T16:04:00.005-06:00

I am completely endeared by this Lego street art. Using Lego for minor city repair work is brilliant. Here at Dispatchwork.

This is the scariest jewelry I have ever seen. There must be a better way to dispose of old Barbie dolls. (But, yes, baby limb coatrack is worse. Gah.)

More than you ever wanted to know about the giant sea creature that is leaving people startled and horrified.

Think you have a great gadget idea? Sorry, the Japanese already thought of it.

And, finally, why are we so grossed out by this and not the cheese we normally eat?

Roots of Government

2010-03-22T20:21:00.000-06:00

Government is coercive. Concentrated application of force is what government is for.

I imagine two stories for how government arises. The first is government as the embodiment of the social contract, where the contract in question is not figurative or proverbial, but literal. According to this story, government is chartered through an agreement among parties to defer power to an enforcer. This is the process by which townships of the old west incorporated, and hired a mayor to attend to administer the activities of government and a sheriff to physically enforce law and order. The people of the town authorized the government explicitly, and explicitly agreed to be subject to the law and to the officers who carried it out. They further participated in government through town hall meetings and by bearing arms in the defense of the law as deputies.

This same kind of government can be found in clubs and private organizations, and in businesses. The fact that in this story government originates in an agreement among the parties to be governed should not obscure the fact that the government is adopted specifically for the purpose of exercising coercion over the governed. Consider the freelance labor crew who wishes to maximize their profit. They may choose to hire a foreman who is brutally forceful, in order to ensure that every member of the crew works hard and no one is allowed to free ride.

In the second story of the origin of government, government is imposed on local people from outside of their own community, and without their consent. This is the feudalistic story of government, where small farming villages are robbed repeatedly by regional bandits. Eventually the theft becomes routine, and competent leadership among the bandits leads to a sustainable level of pillaging that doesn't destroy the farmer's ability to continue producing each year. Full-fledged feudalism is justified as protection of the serf class by the bandits, who claim that the bandits of the next fiefdom over are far more brutal than they are. So, a social contract-like mantle legitimizes the theft and coercion.

In both of these stories, government exists for the purpose of exercising force.More particularly, it is for the purpose of imposing the will of a powerful coalition, who may be a majority or may simply be a sufficiently powerful elite, upon the rest of the society. The townsfolk impose law and morality upon the lawless and the eccentric, the crew of laborers impose hard work upon the lazy, and the bandits impose taxation upon the serfs. The difference is in what fraction of the population is represented by the government, and what fraction is victimized by it.

Pictures

2010-03-22T11:07:00.002-06:00

These were made by Rob

in a little program called SolidWorks

from scratch. I think they're amazing.

Map of Christianity

2010-03-22T10:57:00.002-06:00

Rob and I both loved this map of Christianity across the US, linked by Wehr in the World (with great discussion) from Floating Sheep (with more maps).

And the corresponding map of Europe:

I noted how much less diversity there is in Europe. Rob responded with this line of thinking:

You know, what you said about the Europe map showing less diversity supports the argument that the availability of religious choice in the US is part of the reason that religion has remained vital and satisfying to Americans while it hasn't for Europeans.

And that makes me wonder about the dynamics of religion in other parts of the world...Japan (low diversity, low interest in religion)...the middle east (high diversity mixed with religious violence maybe promotes interest in religion and in group identity)...Africa (see the middle east)...

I don't know much about religion in other parts of the world. I guess S. America is mostly Catholic? Are the native religions alive at all? How long has China been relatively irreligious? Probably since before the cultural revolution I'll bet. Otherwise the cultural revolution probably wouldn't have been possible. How do Indian Hindus feel about their religion? I just don't know.

I love how this man thinks.

Map bliss

2010-03-17T07:47:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I became interested in cartography. It's a natural extension of my love for geographic scribbles and fonts. As a result, I ended up with a rich list of links and maps.

Most of you are already frequent visitors to Strange Maps, and I wanted to share some of the other things I've found during my mapping splurge:

I love xkcd and just found this awesome map (click to enlarge):

VerySpatial, which, along with a few other sites, led me to this gem:

It must be seen in its original full size to be fully appreciated.

Cartastrophe. The name says it all. Fantastic.

The Map Room. It won my heart with this 8-bit map of New York

but there is so much more. Fascinating. I could sink hours into that site.

Geographic Travels is slightly different from the others listed here. More factual, less amusing, but also much more integrated with archaeology and history.

For finding good color schemes, I love kuler and ColorBrewer.

Some great forums over at CartoTalk and inspiration over at Making Maps.

How change happens

2010-03-12T18:30:00.004-07:00

It happens slowly, but it has a definite momentum.

And it first appears unrelated, but I don't believe it is. Childbirth in the US is changing.

First, the news that the maternal mortality rate in the US is rising dramatically. Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization as ‘‘the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes.’’

The US currently ranks 33rd out of 33 industrialized nations. The rate, which is measured in deaths per 100,000 births, rose from 17 in 2000 to 21 in 2005, and is still climbing.

A report commissioned by Amnesty International shows that in California, the maternal mortality rate in California has tripled in a decade, rising from 5.6 deaths per 100,000 to 16.9 per 100,000 in 2006 (these statistics are always a few years behind, so if the trend has continued, we can expect that the current rate has not improved and may be higher).

Why? The reasons range from hemorrhage to blood clots to "underlying heart disease," which is a surprise. I'm not sure if that essentially means lack of proper prenatal care, a health insurance coverage issue, or too many stops at McDonalds during pregnancy. Not sure how to explain that one. The report has not been officially released, though, so perhaps it will clarify these oddities. Others have suspected that the maternal mortality rate is correlated with the increase in cesarean sections in the US. Our most recent estimates place the c-section rate in this country around 33-37%, depending on which source you use. About one in three women have a cesarean instead of a vaginal birth. By any measure, that's far too high.

And then the quite sudden news about VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean), which had been officially decried by ACOG (American College of Ob-Gyns) as too risky for women who had an initial or a repeat cesarean, but VBACs are now being encouraged.

Many VBAC advocates have argued for years that vaginal births are safer for women than a repeat of the major abdominal surgery of a c-section, and all signs have shown that they were being ignored. Suddenly the NIH reviews the information and recommends VBACs.

I don't believe these two things are unrelated in their timing. Many women have been vying for change in childbirth in this country. So first we see evidence that our system hasn't been working as well as we had hoped, and immediately following that, we see adjustments being made with major implications for women everywhere (it follows that since more women are having/have had cesarean sections, more will be candidates for VBACs).

Change is (finally!) happening.

Balancing the bad news

2010-03-01T09:46:00.009-07:00

There has been a deluge of bad news lately (for example, how those poor penguins from that terribly depressing movie can't get a break).

Honestly, I can't stand the news. I see very little purpose in it. The news paints the world as a scary, dangerous, heartless place. Sometimes it is, but when I start paying too much attention to the media's view, I become terrified and introverted. What does one gain by reading headlines, finding out what terrible things have happened in the world? It's all bad, in my mind.

And that's why I'm grateful for the internet. The best stuff out there is completely unrelated to the news.

Do you love Popcorn? Here's a link to 79 versions of it, all mixed together in a single 12-minute-long masterpiece.

This blog, Music Machinery, is a new discovery, and I'm enjoying it. He's got some great graphs and visualizations. My personal favorite is this one, which shows loudness as a function of time (to track the crescendo) for Muse's song 'Take a Bow':

I love good data visualizations. Which is why I can't stand this one (not created by the same person):

I can't even figure this out. At first I thought it was graphing music playlist classifications across Europe, but evidently the cloud isn't supposed to evoke a geographical image at all. It's just a...cloud.

Rational Emotion

2010-02-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

This is my response to Jenn's post Dismissing Emotion.

There are two kinds of mental process, conscious and subconscious. We can report the logic of the conscious mind, but we can't observe or give an accounting of the logic of the subconscious. However, many people learn the skill of explaining their subconscious processing after the fact, "rationalizing" the conclusions they came to subconsciously. Doing this completes a feedback loop in which the rules the subconscious uses in its processing can be updated. Basically, the conscious mind can be used to discard the false premises the subconscious may have been relying on.The movie Memento illustrates the inverse of how this is supposed to work. Instead of reliably updating old information with new, our hero deliberately deceives himself.

What is emotion? It is the motive impulse, the thing that drives us to act. It is the expression of mental processing, the result of our thinking, where thinking includes conscious and subconscious mental processes.

The conventional wisdom is that it is a mistake to act on impulse/emotion. However, this is something of a misdiagnosis. It isn't that emotion is unreliable, it's that in new situations our thinking is not well-developed and can be mistaken in its conclusions. The conventional wisdom is correct that it's best to pause and take stock and to seek to understand the situation in new light so as to avoid mistakes. But emotion versus reason is a false dichotomy. Emotion flows from reason.

Turbine Cars

2010-02-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

Capstone Turbine is planning limited production of a plug-in hybrid, the CMT-380 that uses a small turbine engine to extend range. The car looks great, as it should because it's a basically just a Factory Five GTM with batteries, an electric motor, and a turbine powered generator to keep the batteries topped up on long trips.

My guess is that the weight of the batteries hurts handling and acceleration somewhat.However, I'm still really excited by this car because I'm persuaded that putting turbines in cars is a good thing.

Turbines have several advantages over piston-engines:

They are smaller and lighter-weight for a given horsepower.
They are much more efficient - more of the energy of the fuel can be turned into usable power.
They are much cleaner burning, producing less NOx because they can run a leaner (more oxygen rich) burn.
They are naturally flex-fuel. Though turbines are usually optimized for one particular fuel they are generally much less fuel sensitive than piston-engines, making flex-fuel designs easy to implement.
They are much more reliable than piston-engines.

For essentially these reasons, turbines are used to power some special purpose ground vehicles, like the M1 Abrams.

Here's another turbine diagram:

So if turbines are so great, why aren't they already being used in cars? They have two serious limitations that have made them impractical until now. The first is that turbines are not good at changing speed. They lose much of their efficiency advantage over piston engines if they are forced frequently change RPM. Also, they don't change speed very rapidly - after all they have a lot of rotating mass that doesn't want to slow down or speed up. The second limitation is that they are high cost.

The brilliant thing about using a turbine in a plug-in hybrid is that it solves the problem of changing RPM. The CMT-380 uses the turbine to spin a generator that charges the batteries when they get depleted. That way, the turbine can spin along at the one RPM where it is most efficient, regardless of how fast the car is moving.

The problem of cost can also be overcome but it depends on economies of scale, and possibly the regulatory environment. For example, tighter emissions requirements may give turbines an advantage over piston-engines. It's certainly the case that if turbines were widely adopted for automotive use that their price would come down somewhat.

Business Cycle

2010-02-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Systems with feedback loops can have complicated, difficult to predict behavior. However, there are three basic varieties of simple feedback loop, and understanding these three types can lend insight into the behavior of more complicated loops.

The first type is positive reinforcing. These loops runaway in one direction forever, until something in the system changes and the dynamic is allowed to breakdown. The classic example is the runaway population growth of bacteria in a petri dish.

The second type is balancing. This kind of loop is characterized by equilibrium among opposing forces. It takes effort to push these systems away from their natural equilibrium point, and they tend to fall back again once the effort stops. However, they can be complicated by having multiple points of equilibrium.

The third type of feedback loop is oscillating. This is essentially a special version of the balancing type of feedback loop. As with the balancing type there is a force and an opposing force, but in this case the opposing force has a delayed response. As a result the system swings from one extreme to another, like a pendulum, as the system is dominated first by one force and then by the other. Aviators may refer to this behavior as PIO - Pilot Induced Oscillation. If there is a delay between when the pilot gives an input to the control surfaces and when the aircraft responds then the pilot will tend to give too much input and then over-correct, sending the plane into a potentially fatal oscillation. In a way, the PIO acronym puts too much blame on the pilot as this problem is really a result of the system dynamics.

I think the business cycle is the result of an oscillating feedback loop in the economy. Not much of an insight really, except that it implies that there is something structurally wrong with the economic system. Left to its own devices, the system will keep exhibiting this behavior.

The story I was taught in high school economics was that the Fed had been established to interrupt this oscillating behavior, by anticipating it and correcting for it. I was told that the Fed had been enormously successful in that role. I'm not sure that was true.

Can there be a market solution for bubbles and the Business Cycle?

"Community, Identity, Stability"

2010-02-10T11:45:00.009-07:00

I am embarking on a beautiful journey.

I have committed to read at least 20 books related to dystopia before August 24th.

Dystopian (or post-apocalyptic, as they're often interchangeable) literature might be my favorite. I devoured and love and still talk about the books that introduced me to these dark and fascinating worlds.

1984. Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451. And, more recently, The Road.

I am delving into some lovely books, short-listed on my other blog here.

Four horsemen and an apocalypse

I am aware of several of you, beloved readers, who reject fiction outright as a waste of time and read nonfiction almost exclusively. Even still, I'll put it out there: if anyone has recommendations in this genre, I would love to hear them. The darker, the better, probably.

My favorite example is Wuthering Heights -- not dystopian, but certainly with darkness and misery to spare. I love that book because it seems to me a very real depiction of what might happen if two people who are in love and meant for one another are parted prematurely by death. What would the surviving person do? He would become a bitter and cruel man, spreading about the torment he feels to others until the day he dies, unhappily and unfulfilled. That makes sense to me. It's exaggerated, perhaps, but on the other hand, maybe not. (It's definitely more honest than that unspeakable series that geared up towards a final conflict only to end with a mild discussion between
parties, leaving all who were preparing for their inevitable deaths living (groan) happily ever after. A fantasy I cannot sink my teeth into.)

Anyone have something to add to my list? Or other related books to read?

Dismissing emotion

2010-02-08T14:42:00.009-07:00

Falkenblog brings up the argument that emotions are an unnecessary distraction to being human. To his credit, he refutes the argument, but I have to say that I'm getting very frustrated with the condemnation of emotion.

I cringe when I hear adults say that it isn't acceptable to cry. Sometimes, though, there is nothing more appropriate than crying, and if you don't, if you lock that away, you've misunderstood what it means to be human.

We feel deeply, and, at the risk of getting too flowery in my language, it is a magical part of living. When we are children, we felt things acutely, painfully, both joy and disappointment, gratification and longing. Everything was magnified. Who is happier than a child, when the child is content?

Falkenblog says, "little kids cry a lot, adults almost never (curiously, I currently am only tempted to tear up during movies)." At first I was angry. Why don't we cry more, as adults? What stops us?

And then I considered the role of media in bringing up emotions in us.

Robert and I have spent the past few weeks reading a book together aloud. It was a work of fiction. At a certain plot point, during which one of the characters met a sudden demise (and, in a sense, so did the plot, in my estimation), I felt a surge of feeling. I hadn't known how attached I'd grown to that character until that moment. And I loved that a mere work of fiction could cause me to feel something so strongly. For that reason alone I don't regret reading that book, though it was harrowing and ultimately disappointing.

I use fiction, music, and film to some extent as a safe arena for experiencing and dealing with powerful emotions. Part of me, I think, fears that bringing out the pure emotion I felt as a child and which is now tempered by adulthood will make me less functional. A little emotion, seeping through, helps with decision-making, as Falkenblog points out. A lot of it would probably cripple me, as much as a three-year-old throwing a monstrous fit, or distracted by utter fascination at a grasshopper.

But really, the reason for embracing emotion is because it makes living so rich. When we grow up and lose touch, we lose too much.

(Forgive my lack of organization with this, but it seemed fitting to leave a post addressing emotion a little bit irrational.)

Got To Save My Nickels and Dimes

2010-02-07T07:08:00.002-07:00

There are way too many courses on here that look fascinating... I fantasize about my daughters using content like this for entertainment instead of Barbie and other pop culture.

Vimeo

2010-02-07T07:06:00.002-07:00

Egypt / Lebanon Montage from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.

Social Welfare

2010-02-05T10:35:00.001-07:00

I’m puzzled about something, maybe you can help me out.

Economists sometimes talk about a concept that I am going to refer to as the level of social welfare. Basically this is how much utility, or satisfaction, the society is enjoying as a whole. Here’s a simple example: imagine a society that consists of just two people, Bob and Frank. Bob has a banana that he would like to sell to Frank. Bob is willing to sell the banana for any amount greater than $1. Frank is willing to buy the banana for any amount less than $2. Bob is a good negotiator, so they eventually agree on a price of $1.75.

In this example, the sale of the banana increases the wealth of both parties. Bob traded something he valued at $1 for $1.75, so he gained $.75 worth of value. Frank gave $1.75 for something that he valued at $2.00, so he gained $.25 worth of value. The level of social welfare in Frank and Bob’s society has increased by $1.00, because of the sale of the banana.

So the level of social welfare, as measured by economists, has to do with how much value people place on different items, and on how those items are distributed through the society. Moving goods and services from people who value them less to people who value them more will increase the total level of social welfare in the society. This is basic microeconomics.

The thing that bothers me is this: How much a person is said to value any particular good or service is measured in dollars. That is a relative measure, because it’s really comparing how much the person values the good or service against how much she values dollars.

And how much she values dollars depends on how many dollars she has.

Is this an objective way to measure the level of social welfare in a society? If I am very poor then this measure of social welfare under represents my preferences, needs, desires. Here’s a simple example: two starving men approach a baker who has one loaf of bread left to sell. The baker, having studied microeconomics, knows that the man who values the bread the most will be willing to pay the highest price. One of the starving men has $2 in his pocket, the other has $5. The baker sells the loaf for $5, confident that the man who offered only $2 wasn’t as hungry as the man who offered $5.

Obviously, the prices that the two men are willing to pay do not adequately reflect the value they would receive from the bread. This is a serious problem. It undermines the legitimacy of calculations of social welfare. It also undermines the legitimacy of the price mechanism as a welfare maximizing means of distributing goods and services.

Is there a legitimate, objective way to separate preferences or utility from ability to pay? Is there some way to put the preferences of the poor on equal footing with the preferences of the wealthy, at least for academic purposes?

New Yorker on China and Innovation

2010-02-02T20:01:00.007-07:00

My brother recently sent me an email responding to this article in the New Yorker. Here are a couple of his points.

"...government infusion of cash doesn't necessarily equate to technological breakthroughs or economical success in industry. In fact, when the government gets involved, ...money follows "success," and success can only be measured by preconceived norms. A company may be successful at coming up with a better version of a preexisting technology, because norms have been standardized with which to compare progress. But new ideas and innovations can have a harder time succeeding in an environment where business is competing for government dollars when the outcome is unclear or the technology is previously unknown. "Add as many mail coaches as you please, you will never get a railroad" is a great metaphor for the risk-averse Chinese philosophy pointed out in the article."

"Through taxation (and therefore, at some level, economic deprivation) and questionable living conditions (and therefore, at some level, quality of life deprivation), the Chinese citizens bear the brunt of the cash infused in the tech sector, and the gains made thereby. This is a radically different approach when compared to venture capitalism: in the latter, the contributors have the choice to participate.

"And that is basically what to me is at the heart of this article: the assumption that redistribution of wealth (in this case, to advance technologies) is for the greater good, when compared with the freedom to choose to participate, or to refrain from participation, according to the dictates of one's own conscience, of free market capitalism. I argue that the majority of technologies, advances, one could say "creature comforts" (I despise the term) that we enjoy today are the result of the latter."

I want to add that:

1) Government investment displaces private investment. This is for two reasons, the first being that private investors don't like to compete with institutional investors (this is the 'picking winners' problem - I don't want to invest in a company whose competitor is being financed and protected by the government), and the second being that the government dollars had to come from somewhere - specifically they came out of what would have been private spending and investment.

2) Though the author pretends to address the 'picking winners' problem, he actually doesn't. No matter how you slice it, government bureaucrats divvying out dollars is significantly different from the marketplace divvying out dollars. For one thing, the government is more likely to keep throwing good money after bad when an investment has failed to pay off (because the government doesn't risk insolvency by doing so, and because it's difficult to change a policy once it's been accepted and implemented). The market is quick to reallocate investment when it's clear that a risk has gone bad. Another difference is that the market will naturally fund MANY competing ventures, and the best ones will win. The government tends to choose a handful of firms to back, and then tries to ensure that the investment will pay off by using regulation to make sure THOSE firms win. So the survival of the fittest dynamic is lost. Finally, the market crowd sources problems by aggregating the intelligence gathering of MANY individuals, while the government must rely on relatively few experts to try to make decisions.

Job description

2010-02-02T13:10:00.003-07:00

I am a doula. My job is to take care of the emotional aspect of women while they labor and give birth, making sure that they feel safe and attended to and have their nonmedical needs met. Generally speaking, there are too few nurses in the hospital to guarantee personal attention to all childbearing women, and that -- having someone attend to them personally -- is why most women hire me, far more than wanting to get through childbirth without an epidural.

I am knee deep in my first Statistics class. Our first project was to conduct an informal survey on a topic of our choice, mostly to learn about bias and data analysis. I chose childbirth, since that is my field, and asked questions regarding how well-supported women felt during the birth of their first child, whether they had a doula present, and generally how they felt about the experience.

Nearly every person I surveyed responded with some variation of the same criticism: the medical staff was not kind enough, did not pay enough attention to the mother's emotional welfare, either by saying something inconsiderate or inappropriate or overlooking something that would have been nice (in one case, a nurse forgot to bring a sandwich to the mom, and she described it as the worst part of her unmedicated experience!).

It is understood, or at least should be, that when we enter a medical environment such as a hospital, our emotional health takes a backseat to our physical health. What matters the most is that we are alive and healthy, and secondarily (or even sometimes less) how we feel. Doctors and nurses are not required to be nice people or to get along swimmingly with their patients.

And yet we feel a great amount of betrayal when we are treated with less than sterling service. As if hospitals were akin to upscale shoe departments.

Now, I'm not saying that we should expect to be treated rudely. I wish it never happened, but it does, in every environment.

What I am wondering, though, is why so many feel free to hold nurses and doctors to this standard, and whether that means that it SHOULD be included in the service we receive when we seek medical care. No nurses have in their job description to treat their patients with impeccable emotional attention. But I think many of us expect it, get hurt or angry when we don't receive it, and still feel that it was their job to provide it, even though it isn't.

It seems apparent that emotional wellbeing is wrapped up with physical wellness, whether we rationalize it away or not. My question is, well, should it be included in the definition of health care? Should psychological care be a recognized aspect of medical care in every practice? Are we losing anything by continuing to go forward with this hit-but-mostly-miss way of treating patients, or is this a crucial element of health care that needs to be addressed differently?

Calculating Probabilities

2010-01-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

When it comes to religion I tend to use the 'three kinds of people" model. Roughly speaking, you're either a theist, an atheist, or an agnostic. Which of these three is the most defensible position? Which makes the most sense? Which is most consistent with science? What criteria should be used to evaluate your argument for your position on the question of whether there is a god?

I'm not sure that I know the best arguments for each of these three positions, but here's my best shot at evaluating them.

Theists have a problem when it comes to science. They're probably just never going to have anything like scientific evidence for their position. Depending on the particular brand of theism, it may be logically impossible for them to have evidence. For example, one form of theism says that god, being omnipotent and omniscient, can manipulate the universe such that his presence is simply not detectable by scientific means. If you're that kind of theist then it's no surprise to you that science isn't finding god. You're problem, then, is an epistemological one: how do you know that there is a god? Do you have some method for creating knowledge that is different from science? Or do you just choose to believe, even though you don't actually know?

Atheists also have a problem when it comes to science, and for exactly the same reason. The proposition that there is a god who can hide the evidence of his own existence is completely unscientific. It cannot be addressed by science. Atheists will tell you that the claim that there is a god is similar to the claim (without evidence) that there is a teapot in orbit. However, these claims are not similar. The god-claim is an attempted explanation of observed phenomena: there is a universe, there is life, there are sentient beings. The god-claim says these things are here because god made them. The teapot claim has no connection to observed phenomena. Atheists say that we can dismiss the teapot-claim because the probability that it is there is vanishingly small. Without evidence of the teapot, or a reason why it should be in orbit, this is absolutely correct. But we can't make the same argument against the existence of god because, 1) if the god-claim is true then we should expect to find no evidence of god (a weak point, but not able to be defeated), and 2) the god-claim explains things that are currently unexplained, or inadequately explained. Ultimately, the problem with the atheist position is also an epistemological one: how do you know there isn't a god?

Agnostics take the easy way out. They admit that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a god, but also admit that this doesn't mean that there actually isn't a god. As a result, agnosticism embraces a wide spectrum of people from near-believers to near-disbelievers.

So, a question for those of you who are theists: Do you admit that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a god? And if so, what method for creating knowledge have you used to discover that god exists?

A question for atheists: If you reject the proposition that there is a god, not because you can prove there is no god, but because you believe that it is highly improbable that there is a god, then how do you compute the probability that there is a god?

Agnostics get a pass.

Advice

2010-01-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

There must be a shortage of editors

2010-01-27T15:58:00.001-07:00

But it's a good thing, if you're easily entertained.

The perfect visual for your topic

I received this little gem in a newsletter:

I don't know how they found it, but they managed to procure just the right picture.

The best poorly-worded headline today

Judge asked to halt planting of genetically modified sugarbeet seeds in Oregon

If you insert a few commas, you get:

Judge, asked to halt planting of genetically modified sugarbeet, seeds in Oregon

which makes a lot more sense. (Doesn't make it any more newsworthy, though.)

These never get old

I believe this is Korean. I also believe that translators in foreign countries must let these through intentionally without correcting them so that we can enjoy them. After all, the spelling and punctuation are perfect.

On a different note, Robert may not allow me access to his blog if I keep this up. More serious posts are forthcoming. I hope you enjoyed these for now.

When Data Visualization Goes Wrong

2010-01-26T14:58:00.002-07:00

It's Jennifer again, and I'm happy to see a combination of two of my favorite things: creative visualizations, and fonts.

I love fonts. I am a font geek.

So I was very pleased to see a chart illustrating how much ink common fonts use relative to one another, here.

...That is, until I reached the end of the short article, beneath the pen graph: "Simple, understandable & clever."

Um, not exactly.

The chart uses clear plastic pens displaying varying levels of ink as a bar graph. Cute, yes. Clever, definitely. But not simple and not completely understandable. Unfortunately, the data visualization choice could at a glance be read as saying the exact opposite of what it intends. I loved it until I saw the problem. If you're going to go through the trouble of gathering and presenting information, shouldn't you try hard to make sure that misinterpretation of this sort is not likely to happen?

Do you see it? Do you agree with me?

It's a great day for links!

2010-01-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

This is Robert's wife, Jennifer, standing in for Robert today. He is very busy lately and doesn't want his poor blog to be neglected any longer. And though I'm finding his shoes far too large and eloquent, I shall attempt it regardless. So, begging your oversight for not being quite up to the usual standard, here is a small but worthwhile collection of links for your perusal:

Here's a great article over at Falkenblog with some interesting advice.

And some lovely and laughable pictures, respectively, at BLDG BLOG (naturally) and my favorite at Strange Maps.

Enjoy!

The Next Big Coordination Problem

2010-01-20T04:38:00.000-07:00

The costs of coordination are falling, rapidly. Our old models for how to organize and leverage the efforts of multiple people across disciplines are being outmoded.

The bureaucratic model has been universally adopted as the standard form for business organization because it has been highly successful. It's a model that has been under development for literally thousands of years. The bureaucratic model emphasizes command and control, and explicitly defines the rewards (payment) for participation. Within a bureaucracy each person has a specific role, and specific pay. The primary benefit of the bureaucratic model is that it manages the (traditionally high) costs of coordination involved in getting hundreds of people to work together on the same problem.

The wiki model, including the open source movement and crowdsourcing, seeks to revolutionize how people organize. The wiki model uses technology to lower the costs of coordination, making it practical to capture value from contributors who don't wish to join a bureaucracy, but do wish to contribute on their own terms. The wiki model lets contributors take on any role they wish. And, the wiki is efficient at capturing value in extremely small increments, one contribution at a time, as opposed to the bureaucratic model which requires the establishment of a formalized, contractual relationship before value can be captured.

A hallmark of the wiki model is a blurring of the distinction between professional and amateur contributors. For example, nearly all Wikipedia contributors are amateurs while Google utilizes both a large professional bureaucracy and the efforts of users to index the web. Unlike the bureaucratic model, in the wiki world people often contribute their effort for free.

This is a problem.

It's a problem because it means that there will not be enough contribution. Technology and the development of the wiki model have lowered the costs of coordination, but those costs still are far from zero. The most important costs of coordination have always been, and still are, the costs associated with transacting for value. The genius of the wiki model is that it captures the value of amateur (unpaid) contributions. But, it's not going to replace the bureaucratic model until it can also capture professional contribution, and this means getting payment to flow from users to contributors.

The revolution is not going to arrive until professional contribution can be bought and sold at the margin. The death knell of the bureaucratic model will be the development of a system that makes it easy to purchase discrete units of professional contribution, instead of having to hire professionals.

Walking Through Walls

2010-01-14T01:19:00.005-07:00

The following is an excerpt from an essay by Eyal Weizman on the unusual tactics used by the Israeli Defense Force during their 2002 invasion of Nablus (quote from Brig. General Aviv Kokhavi). Hat tip to the excellent BLDBLOG.

"This space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. Now, you can stretch the boundaries of your interpretation, but not in an unlimited fashion, after all, it must be bound by physics, as it contains buildings and alleys. The question is, how do you interpret the alley? Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, as a place to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through? This depends only on interpretation. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do.

This is why we opted for the methodology of moving through walls. . . . Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner. . . . Because it was the first time that this methodology was tested [at such a scale], during the operation itself we were learning how to adjust ourselves to the relevant urban space, and similarly, how to adjust the relevant urban space to our needs. . . . We took this microtactical practice [of moving through walls] and turned it into a method, and thanks to this method, we were able to interpret the whole space differently! . . ."

Trade Deficit Bad?

2010-01-13T12:41:00.002-07:00

As always, please explain to me where I’m getting it wrong.

The common argument, repeatedly endlessly by reporters and politicians, is that if we import more than we export then that’s bad. It’s bad for American workers because they’re going to lose their jobs if we don’t buy what they make. It’s bad for our long term prosperity because we’re sending all of our money to foreign countries. And it’s bad because it means we’re losing! We’re being outcompeted by our economic and military rivals, e.g. China.

It’s a pretty compelling argument, on the face of it. But there’s something confusing about the whole thing, something that doesn’t quite add up.

When I buy a shiny new Japanese-built car my dollars go to the manufacturer in Japan, and I get the car. But the manufacturer can’t use my dollars to buy things in Japan; the law says you can only use yen to buy things in Japan. So the manufacturer who built my new car has to either spend those dollars in the US, or trade them to someone else who wants to spend them in the US. Those dollars are claims against goods and services in the US – they have to come back to the US in order to be spent.

So every time I spend a dollar buying some imported good, that dollar goes to the foreign company that sold me their product. But eventually that same dollar comes back to the US to be spent on something here. It HAS to, there’s no other place for it to go. So how can we even have a trade deficit? Every dollar spent by Americans on imports eventually comes back as spending on domestic goods, services … or investment.

Investment is the thing that balances the trade deficit. Investment doesn’t show up in imports and exports (when I buy stock in a business, the business stays where it is), so it isn’t counted when computing the trade deficit. So, the reason that America has had a trade deficit with the rest of the world for decades is because Americans have been buying imports while the rest of the world has been buying ownership in America.

What does it mean that the rest of the world is buying ownership in America? Primarily it means two things: 1) Foreign investment in American companies, and 2) Foreign investment in US Federal debt. The rest of the world wants to invest in America because America is a good bet. American companies are enormously productive, and the American government doesn’t default on its loans.

Is it a bad thing that foreigners have been buying ownership in American business? No! American businesses use that investment to innovate and grow. Is it a bad thing that foreigners own US Federal debt? No! The US Treasury sells bonds according to policies that it believes are in the best interests of the US financial system and economy.

The primary effects of the trade deficit have been that Americans have enjoyed low prices for goods and services of all kinds, and have benefited from high levels of direct foreign investment. The real risk is that one day the trade deficit will go away as investment shifts from the increasingly regulation-bound US, to freer markets.

Creeping Anarchy

2010-01-12T19:46:00.002-07:00

I think it was my good friend Justin who recently pointed out to me that one Anarchist viewpoint is that societies are largely self-organizing -- and government is a sham. There's something interesting in this argument, though I am not yet ready to accept it in total. It's an empirical statement, and as such it's either right or wrong.

I DO think that our would be overlords are generally helpless to impose unpopular policies, thanks to our democratic institutions. And no matter how you poll it, healthcare reform is hugely unpopular.This recent AP News blurb documents the likely shedding of still more features from the planned healthcare legislation package. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean there is no meaningful healthcare reform left in either of the bills? Sure there's that thing about how the states should maybe do something about the lack of competition in the market for health insurance, but that doesn't count, especially compared against what was planned but has since gone missing: the public option, a requirement that large companies provide health insurance, regulation of insurance, elimination of the tax break on employer provided plans, meaningful provision of aid for the poor, any means for containing costs, and funding.

I think this all has to do with the fact that,

"...rules are hard to change (because they) reflect the values that are embedded in a culture."

Sound wisdom.

Productivity and Effects on Labor

2010-01-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

If productivity increases because of new technology, will demand for labor fall?

I think it's complicated. If the market for a particular product is saturated, (e.g. there is plenty of supply of toasters to meet demand) then an increase in productivity will mean that fewer people will be necessary to maintain the current level of production. Demand for labor to produce that product will fall if productivity increases.

But consider a product that is useful and valuable, but that is too expensive to produce. Because of the high price most people use some substitute product that is cheaper. E.g. mobile phones during the 1980s. New technology that increases productivity for this kind of product will drive an increase in demand for labor to produce the product, as the market for the product grows.

Paul Rako discusses how increases in productivity cause the value of the output of each worker to increase, thereby supporting higher wages. I think he's kind of right, but that the mechanism isn't direct. The price of labor depends less on the value of the output of a particular job title at a particular business, and more on the value of output of labor altogether for the entire economy. To look at it another way ask your self the question: What is the difference between high wages and a low cost of living? If I work in a factory making widgets, and management brings in new machinery that enables me to make more widgets every hour, do I get a raise? Probably not, especially if the new equipment is just as easy to operate as was the old equipment. On the other hand, if my favorite auto manufacturer is making nicer cars for less money today than it was five years ago, that's value that has raised my standard of living even though my productivity may not have changed in five years.

Intuitive Explanation of Who Pays the Tax

2010-01-08T12:46:00.007-07:00

Non-intuitive explanation

When a tax is levied against a transaction, both parties to the transaction end up bearing some of the burden of the tax. Whether the buyer or the seller pays more of the tax depends on who has the greater elasticity.

Intuitive explanation

If I want to buy a new boat, but the government just put a new luxury tax on boats, will the boat dealer be able to pass the tax along to me or will he be forced to eat the tax? It depends on who wants to do the deal the most. Of course the seller will do his best to pass the tax on to me, but if he’s desperate to sell boats, and so are his competitors who are also trying to sell me a boat, then he’ll lower his price to get me to buy – effectively eating the tax himself.

It doesn’t matter who officially pays the tax. For example, officially I pay my income tax. But in a tight labor market (when there are lots of jobs and companies are having a hard time finding enough employees), my employer might be the one who is effectively paying the tax. Let’s say that I’m working for a company during a time when employers are desperate to hire people, and the government increases the income tax. My current employer doesn’t automatically raise my salary to compensate me for the increased taxes, so he’s effectively forcing me to eat the tax. However, if another company offers me a position doing the same kind of work for more money, then I can either take the new job, or try to extract a raise out of my current employer. In that kind of market I can effectively force the cost of the tax onto either my old employer or my new employer, because they need me worse than I need them.

Lost Decade?

2010-01-07T10:46:00.003-07:00

I keep hearing reports that the 'naughts' have been a lost decade. Setting aside for a moment that ten years is an arbitrarily chosen length of time, with arbitrarily chosen starting points, I still can't really see a good justification for such a judgement. Have we really made no progress for ten years? Are we really no wealthier?

The blue area is the 'lost decade'. The boom and bust are clearly visible, however, by the measure of this graph we have continued to increase not just our wealth, but the rate of growth of our wealth throughout the past decade (notice how the trend line is bending upwards). But, let's cancel out the effects of population growth just to make sure.

OK, so the rate of growth of wealth on a per capita basis isn't increasing as much a it might have seemed from the previous graph, but wealth per capita is definitely going up. Lost decade? I just don't see it here.

In fairness, my numbers only go through July of 2009, so the graph might dip a bit more at the very end, but I haven't heard any news that the past 6 months have dramatically worse than the year prior, so we should still be in the general vicinity of the trend line.

This last graph shows again that the past ten years don't look remarkably different from any 10 year period since the 1950s. Substantial volatility in the per capita growth rate, but generally positive. Here's the source for my data for all three graphs.

Maybe these are not the right measures, or maybe there's something deceptive about these graphs. If so, please help me to understand why the past ten years have been a lost decade.

Intuitive Explanation of Comparative Advantage

2010-01-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to come up with intuitive explanations for as many important concepts that voters should know about as possible. Maybe you can help me? Here's one:

Comparative Advantage

Non-intuitive explanation

International trade provides big gains to countries by letting them specialize in what they do best. Imagine there are two countries and that they both need paper products and circuit boards. If one country is better at making paper products and the other is better at making circuit boards, then each country should specialize in the product that they are best at producing, and then trade. However, if one country is better than the other at making both paper products AND circuit boards, does that mean that the country with the advantage in both kinds of production should make both kinds of products, and not trade with the other country? No! The country with an advantage in both products should specialize in the higher value product, and then trade with the other country for the lower value product. That way, the country isn't wasting valuable resources making a low-value product when they could be using those resources to make a high-value product. This will actually benefit BOTH countries. Both countries will have more paper products and more circuit boards to consume than if they don't trade.

Intuitive explanation

A successful cosmetic surgeon wants to redesign her kitchen. Not only is she a top surgeon, commanding in excess of $200/hour (on average, with different rates for different services), but she is also a highly skilled interior designer. In fact, she can produce designs that are as good as what her local professional interior designer can do, and she can do it in less time than he can. He charges $75/hr, and it will take him 8 hours to produce a design for her kitchen. She can produce a design of similar quality in 4 hours. The surgeon is very devoted to her family, and is unwilling to use her spare time in a way that takes her away from them, so if she re-designed her kitchen herself, she'd have to take time off work to do it. Should she create the design herself, or pay the professional designer to do it?

If she does the work herself, she will lose $800 worth of time at her practice as a surgeon (4 hours creating the design multiplied by $200 per hour). If she hires the professional designer she will pay him $600 (8 hours creating the design multiplied by $75 per hour). Therefore, she should hire the professional designer and save $200. This option is better for her (she saves $200), it's better for the designer (he gets a commision he wouldn't get otherwise), and it's better for her patients who need surgery (she will be able to serve more patients).

I'm Sorry, Professor Caplan

2010-01-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

...but I had to laugh at this line in response to how it must come across to the average guy on the street:

"But think about how fun and enlightening cartoons about price controls and public choice would have been!"

In fairness, I agree with him. I just think you'd better take some pretty good visuals with you when you go into the pitch meeting.

Make the World Easier to Understand

2010-01-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

I think Bryan Caplan has a great idea here: Find intuitive explanations of complicated or technical concepts, so that more people can understand them. After all, you may enjoy feeling superior to your uneducated neighbors, but as voters they are setting policy for the community you live in.

Here's an example from the comments on Bryan's blog (my rephrasing):

Technical concept - Raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment for minimum wage earners.

Intuitive explanation - If I like bananas, but the government says that the grocery store has to charge $3 per banana, then I'm going to buy fewer bananas.Similarly, if I'm McDonald's and I want to hire cashiers, but the government says I have to pay them $20/hour, then I'm not going to hire as many cashiers (or open as many restaurants because they won't be as profitable).

I bet YOU can improve on this example.

And the Pursuit of Happiness

2010-01-05T19:35:00.001-07:00

Maira Kalman is wrapping up her year-long exploration of the roots of Americanism. If you haven't already seen what's she's done, this isn't a bad place to start.

Night Silence Desert

2010-01-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

This album remains high on my list of all time favorites. Mohammad Reza Shajarian is a very talented singer, and his partnership with Kayhan Kalhor only makes sense. Track 10 is the best.

Citizens of the World

2010-01-04T21:33:00.001-07:00

This is something I've wanted to blog about for a long time but haven't been able to put my thoughts in order. I might still not be there, but I'm going to give it a shot.

I love America. I'm proud to be part of this nation of immigrants and freedom, innovation and individuality, community and law. I'm an American. But I'm a human first.

I'm not a constitutional scholar so I can't speak to the intentions of the framers, but it seems inconsistent with the ideals that they encoded into the first law of the nation that the Constitution should apply to American government only within the boundaries of the States. Whatever the precedents may be, I believe that serving representatives of our government should be bound by the law of this land, wherever they are.

Here on American soil we don't believe in diluted ideals. We believe in and practice the freedom of discourse in a way that is not replicated in other western nations. We do not proscribe the wearing of the burkha in public universities. We protect the right of the Klan and of neo-Nazis to argue their misguided and hateful views, because we believe that no ideas are so dangerous that they can't be talked about. We applaud criticisms of our government, of our bigotries, and even of our traditions and culture, when such criticisms are levied with honest intent. And even when they aren't, we protect them.

On American soil we defend the right of all people, even non-citizens who are here illegally, to due process and equal access to the rule of law. We welcome far more immigrants than any other nation. We believe that YOU should reap the rewards of your hard work, and your creative ideas. We believe that every person, and especially every child, should have access to the best health care, and to a high quality education.

On American soil we hold our representatives in Congress to these ideals stubbornly, fiercely, and even foolishly at times. We believe in these ideals.

But outside the borders of the States we tolerate evil and cruel acts against humans, committed by our agents. We permit an abridgment of the rule of law. We condone the use of propaganda and misinformation, and the suppression of free discourse. We allow our tax dollars to support corrupt regimes. We lend our support to barbarous tyrants.

We do these things in our strategic interest. And in so doing we reveal a shallowness in our ideals that permits us to refuse to admit the humanity of persons who live far from us, and who are strangers to us. Yet they are the same people we welcome into our neighborhoods and our workplaces, our churches and schools, when they apply for the right to immigrate to the United States.

I don't propose a radical change to the law. I only propose that we extend the rightness of our laws to all of our actions, and to the actions of our government, wherever it is operating. I am an American, but I am a human first. What is right for the best and worst Americans is surely right for the best and worst of our neighbors abroad.

Emergence

2010-01-03T12:08:00.004-07:00

Like my good friend Justin, I'm looking for some advice on grad school. I'm currently in progress toward a Master's of Engineering in Systems Engineering, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the program. I want to pursue a PhD next, but I'm not sure what kind of program I want to enter or where I'd like to go to school.

My goals in pursuing a PhD are as follows, though not necessarily in this order:

Learn and grow and enjoy my studies.
Learn how to do, and actually do, meaningful research.
Meet more people who are both intellectual and practical - people who care about results as well as ideas.
Increase my career choices - this is not about money, it's about being able to do work that is meaningful and significant.

My primary interests are in the concept of emergence (how organization emerges from complexity), and in how to engineer emergence. That's very broad with applications ranging from public policy, to international development, to organizational management, to the design of transportation (or other) systems.

My question is, which programs at which schools are most likely to help me achieve my goals, and allow me to study and do research relating to the engineering of emergence? The way I see it, there are many kinds of programs that touch this concept at least tangentially, and any of those might work for me as long as I was given a measure of freedom to emphasize my interest. And there are a few programs that either directly approach the topic of emergence (for example, the Systems Science program at Portland State University), or provide tools that are pertinent (economics, probability, etc.).

Where I go to school matters for a lot of reasons, but most importantly because of the second two items on my bulleted list above. I want to work with high quality people and I want my degree to open doors for me. That said, there are some boundaries that I would like to stay within (though I'd consider going beyond them for the right program or the right school). Ideally I would like to stay in the western U.S., and I have a strong preference for the Pacific coast states. I'd also like to avoid the Los Angeles basin if at all possible (but I'd go there for the right program).

What insights do you have into schools, programs, and faculty that might be useful to me? What cautions can you provide about whether or not pursuing a PhD is likely to help me achieve my goals?

Rising Expenditure on Health Care

2009-12-31T12:20:00.002-07:00

Here's the source. Hat tip Greg Mankiw.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very sympathetic to this argument. When there's a disconnect between a person's use of a resource and their cost for using the resource, overuse is the likely result. It's the tragedy of the commons all over again.

However, this graph does not by itself prove that the rising cost of health care in the U.S. is caused by insured people running to the doctor every time they get a runny nose. It's probably a significant factor, but I doubt that it's the only one.

Personally, I would like to know more about the relative market power of health care providers and health insurers, by locale. These two kinds of entities are in competition for the money that is paid by workers and employers for health insurance. When an insurer and a provider agree on rates for services, one or the other may bring considerably more clout to the table, and thereby become the price maker, while the other is forced to accept slim margins.

For example, insurers need to be able to tell potential customers that they will be able to go to a nearby facility for treatment. If there is only one health care provider in the local area (which is the case where I live), then the insurer will have to deal with that provider. The insurer doesn't have the option of simply walking from the negotiation table should the health care provider demand high fees for services. The opposite is true in an area where only one insurer operates while there are many health care providers competing for business.

I think it's interesting that in all of the discussion over health care, politicians have successfully demonized the insurance companies with allegations of price gouging (made possible by politicians who have regulated most competition out of the market for insurance), but have made no attempt to similarly attack health care providers for price gouging. I previously linked to graphs like the one below that suggest that health care providers may very well be culpable. I guess voters tend to like their doctors more than they like their insurers.

Modularization of Systems

2009-12-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

1. Define the system requirements.

2. Select a system concept. A system concept is a well-developed description of how the system will achieve its function.

3. Map the system as a set of discrete functions.

4. Decide the level of modularity at the system level – which functions will be packaged together into one module, and which will singly form a module. Module designers may opt to further modularize below their level in the design, as expedient.

5. Define each module in terms of its inputs and outputs.

6. Define minimum performance requirements for each module.

7. Define all of the inter-module interfaces, and create an Interface Control Document (ICD) for each interface. Remember to include serviceability in interface design. Interfaces must be designed in accordance with the performance requirements for the associated modules.

8. Define the interfaces between the system and the external environment, including users/operators and other systems. These interfaces to the external environment may be modules in their own right.

9. Define limits for each module’s physical envelope (size and shape), thermal properties, electromagnetic properties, emittance/effluence, and resistance to environmental factors (moisture, vibration, dust, heat, exposure to radiant energy, bumps and rough handling, etc.)

Modularity

2009-12-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Modularity is a powerful concept. There’s more in it than is immediately visible.

In this very interesting paper, the authors argue that a poor understanding of the implications of modularity nearly killed IBM. IBM created a modular computer because the modularity made it easier for them to manage the design process. But IBM’s executives failed to recognize that a modular design makes it possible to experiment with many more system configurations, at low cost and with low risk. They didn’t leverage this advantage of modularity but their competitors did, and quickly found that there were many ‘flavors’ of IBM compatible PC that were possible and desirable.

The modularization of the design of the computer led to a rapid decentralization of the computer industry, and a corresponding increase in innovation and growth in market value. IBM lost market hegemony and nearly disappeared altogether as hundreds of new specialist firms sprang up, each producing modules rather than entire computer systems with unique architectures. No single firm has ever come near to the market dominance once enjoyed by IBM.

Modularization is made possible by the creation of standardized system architectures, with design rules and interface specifications. Standards are a first step toward modularization. Open standards and open system architectures make it easier and less risky to innovate. This opens the door to massive competition.

There is a tradeoff that modern technology companies face: Use proprietary standards and tightly-bound system architectures to avoid competition, or use open standards and modular designs to enable rapid innovation and free support from your competitors (in the form of their innovations that make your products more valuable), but risk being eaten alive. I think the obvious answer is that with complex systems the benefits of modularity and open standards are so great that the proprietary model is not viable in a competitive market. Even well-funded and powerful firms simply cannot compete in innovation and quality with the huge and dynamic markets that grow up around a good open architecture. That’s why Apple computers are now being built from IBM compatible parts.

I Don’t Know How I Lived Without It

2009-12-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I bought an expensive (for my budget) vacuum cleaner. My choice can be justified in sort of rational terms. I was tired of vacuums that didn’t work well, and wanted some particular features that I felt sure would ease the chore of vacuuming. Making the work easier would translate into more frequent vacuuming, and a pleasanter and more hygienic home. I also felt sure that buying higher quality would result in a longer service life with fewer repairs.

But my real reason for deciding to spend more money and get a ‘nicer’ vacuum was different from any of that. It made me feel good to be able to buy a product that represented a sort of utilitarian luxury. I enjoyed that the vacuum was well-designed, and that its injection-molded parts fit well. And it was more powerful and more effective than my previous vacuum, and was generally easier to use.

It wasn’t perfect. In fact there were things about it that were simply poorly thought out and didn’t work as intended, but I almost didn’t notice because I was so pleased to have purchased a quality vacuum. In retrospect I’m quite certain I could have gotten as much carpet-cleaning effectiveness, ease of use, and durability out of a cheaper machine.

The weird thing is that I don’t regret my decision at all. As a matter of fact I caught myself looking at newer, more expensive vacuums by the same manufacturer just the other day. I wanted to have the same experience of purchasing quality all over again.

We’re all familiar with the concept of conspicuous consumption and how people desire to signal their position in the tribe with cars, clothes, etc. But there is another kind of signaling that we do through our unseen consumption. These are the signals we send to ourselves that help us to feel that we are OK. Safe in our own hands.

The title of this post illustrates what it really means to us to be able to provide ourselves with luxuries. I feel so contented now with what I’ve been able to provide for myself that I don’t know how I lived without this feeling.

It is irrational, because I had the ability (and with it the security and the option) before I actually made the purchase. I should have already felt the benefit. And I did. I immensely enjoyed the process of shopping for my vacuum, even of looking for the best price possible. But I knew that if I decided against buying it that it would be because I couldn’t quite stretch that far, and that would tell me something about the limits of my resources, and my own exposure to the vagaries of chance.

Can’t we do better than that?

Hat tip to Eric Falkenstein for ideas about consumption and envy.

A New Era of Cooperation?

2009-12-27T12:05:00.001-07:00

The thing to do is to make it easy for people to contribute what they have to contribute. This is probably more important than providing an incentive because people have their own reasons for wanting to contribute.

DARPA's red balloon challenge was a study in how to recruit people. Not how to recruit them to your cause (anyone could have found the balloons, including people who hate MIT or any of the other organizations who competed in the challenge), but simply how to get them to contribute, by any means necessary. And how to out compete other groups who are trying to recruit these same people.

There is a tremendous amount of untapped human capital in the world. Some churches and charitable organizations thrive on directing this unused potential into good works and into spreading their message. Wikipedia, the open software movement, YouTube, and other examples illustrate that there is so much available human capital that it is literally being given away to groups that make it easy for people to contribute. In some cases the groups have incentivized contribution, but often the reasons for participation are private, known only to the contributor.

There are far too many people who have knowledge and ability that their current employers don't know how to put to use. Society would be greatly enriched if this potential could be made productive, but historically the costs of tapping it have been high. Today, technology compresses the globe into a single point where we all touch, and the costs are greatly reduced. But we lack the knowledge and institutions that could enable us to coordinate our efforts at low cost. The corporate bureaucratic model is a highly successful model for coordinating efforts in a world where the costs of coordination are necessarily high, but it took centuries to develop that model to its current incarnation, and it will take time and experimentation to learn how to most effectively leverage the internet.

A Market of Ideas
Is it possible that with the right model many more of us could be freelance engineers, researchers, programmers, editors, designers, advisers, writers...any profession that uses information as its coin? Shouldn't it be possible to build a sort of reverse eBay for projects, where money is auctioned off and the best contributor wins the auction? Maybe contributors don't submit completed work but instead provide a gist of what they can do, I don't know. There are difficulties to such a model, but mostly those difficulties are simply that we don't yet know what actually works. It's time to start figuring that out.

The Future of Labor

2009-12-24T06:30:00.001-07:00

In 1850 about 50% of Americans made their living as farmers or farm laborers. In 2000 it was about 1%. Increases in productivity can dramatically decrease the demand for labor in a particular part of the economy. This is all for the best, but it is difficult for the displaced laborers.

I haven't seen data to support it, but the conventional wisdom is that demand for unskilled labor is in steady decline. One story to illustrate this idea is that increased automation in factories eliminates unskilled positions, but may increase the number of skilled positions in the form of an expanded technical staff who develops and maintains the automation equipment. I think that story is at best an oversimplification of reality (e.g. increasing automation may mean that a factory doesn't eliminate jobs but trades skilled labor, like machinists, for unskilled labor in the form of machine operators who only need to push some buttons and measure parts), but even if it's accurate it doesn't tell us what's happening to the number of unskilled labor positions in the overall economy.

Productivity increases in an industry lower the cost of production for that industry, meaning that society can spend less on that industry's products. That's why I spend a smaller percentage of my income on food than did my grandfather, and why fewer people are working on farms today than were in 1850. As we've gotten to be better at producing food we have saturated demand. The US produces more food than it knows how to consume. You can just as easily blame farm worker displacement on the 'low' demand for food as on high farm worker productivity.

Interestingly, increases in farm worker productivity have lowered the costs of non-farm products as well, because all that displaced farm labor was freed up to be used to produce more valuable items like cars and houses. And now we're choking on too much supply of those items as well (due to increasing productivity), and workers are again being displaced.

As Arnold Kling puts it:

"...before you tell me that we are outsourcing to China, you should remember that (a) our manufacturing output has been increasing, even though the number of people working in that sector is declining; and (b) employment in China's manufacturing sector has been shrinking, also."

So what is the future of labor, skilled and unskilled? Continual displacement from one industry to another, and a falling cost of necessities and luxuries. These are near certainties. But what else? Will the unskilled be left behind? The unskilled will always earn less and be less productive than the skilled, but I don't see any evidence that they are simply being left without work. I do see that average, middle class people are spending more of their income on paying someone else to care for their lawns, to service their cars, and to clean and repair their homes.

One day cars will be rolling off of 'lights off' manufacturing lines, with only a handful of humans monitoring entire factories. I don't believe that we'll have high unemployment, or (more to the point) a human welfare crisis when that day arrives.

This Blew My Mind

2009-12-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from a fascinating article in Wired.

Dunbar tells the story of two labs that both ran into the same experimental problem: The proteins they were trying to measure were sticking to a filter, making it impossible to analyze the data. “One of the labs was full of people from different backgrounds,” Dunbar says. “They had biochemists and molecular biologists and geneticists and students in medical school.” The other lab, in contrast, was made up of E. coli experts. “They knew more about E. coli than anyone else, but that was what they knew,” he says. Dunbar watched how each of these labs dealt with their protein problem. The E. coli group took a brute-force approach, spending several weeks methodically testing various fixes. “It was extremely inefficient,” Dunbar says. “They eventually solved it, but they wasted a lot of valuable time.”

The diverse lab, in contrast, mulled the problem at a group meeting. None of the scientists were protein experts, so they began a wide-ranging discussion of possible solutions. At first, the conversation seemed rather useless. But then, as the chemists traded ideas with the biologists and the biologists bounced ideas off the med students, potential answers began to emerge. “After another 10 minutes of talking, the protein problem was solved,” Dunbar says. “They made it look easy.”

When Dunbar reviewed the transcripts of the meeting, he found that the intellectual mix generated a distinct type of interaction in which the scientists were forced to rely on metaphors and analogies to express themselves. (That’s because, unlike the E. coli group, the second lab lacked a specialized language that everyone could understand.) These abstractions proved essential for problem-solving, as they encouraged the scientists to reconsider their assumptions. Having to explain the problem to someone else forced them to think, if only for a moment, like an intellectual on the margins, filled with self-skepticism.

I think there is really something in the idea that reasoning by analogy, though potentially a logical mistake, can spur creative and new understanding. And I definitely agree that being forced to explain without reference to standard models helps to advance one's thinking.

Systems Engineering - A Description

2009-12-22T09:46:00.003-07:00

Systems Engineering is a structured approach to the development of complex, engineered systems.

The Whole System Approach

· Top-down design, optimizing for system effectiveness not necessarily component effectiveness.

o E.g. Metallic structures on spacecraft can magnify radiation hazards. Metal may be the best choice for the frame component, but may not be the best choice for the system.

· Design the right system.

· Systems design is inherently interdisciplinary. Systems Engineers must possess and cultivate broad technical knowledge.

· Manage subsystem interactions.

Project Management

· Manage cost, resource utilization, and scheduling constraints from an engineering standpoint.

· Collect voice of customer, communicate with stakeholders, manage and coordinate suppliers.

· Prepare and maintain a current Systems Engineering Management Plan (SEMP) as the primary controlling document for all system development activities.

The Iterative Design and Evaluation Method

· The Systems Engineering method is an iterative process by which a system concept is developed and refined with continual evaluation against requirements, until a completed and functional system design is produced that meets the goals established for the system.

The steps in the Systems Engineering method include:

1. Develop system performance and cost requirements.

2. Develop multiple system concepts that can satisfy most or all of the requirements.

3. Select a concept and begin the design/evaluation loop.

a. At the outset of the design/evaluation loop, the system concept has poor definition. Each pass through the loop increases the detail of the design.

b. Also, at the outset there are many risks and unknowns. As the detail is added to the design, frequent evaluation of the design through testing and simulation identifies problems that are then corrected in subsequent design iterations. In this way risk is diminished on each pass through the loop

c. The design/evaluation loop concludes when a system design that satisfies the performance and cost requirements is complete, and when all risks relevant to the design have been abated or effectively managed.

4. Produce and implement the system.

Risk Management

· Systems design carries risk inherently. Consequently, risk management is an important part of the Systems Engineering method.

· Some common systems risks are:

o Interdependencies between subsystems magnify effects of point failures.

o Complex system behavior may be difficult to model or predict (greater than the sum of its parts).

o System dynamics are strongly characterized by bottlenecks, load variations, and feedback loops.

o New failure modes arise due to novel design, new technology, or increased complexity.

Interface Design

· The Systems Engineer (or team) is wholly responsible for the specification and design of interfaces.

o Create and maintain current Interface Control Documents (ICDs) for all system interfaces.

· Interfaces carry material, information and energy between components. Interface types include:

o Mechanical

o Electrical

o Data

· Interfaces are loaded junctions exposed to hazards from more than one direction.

· Interfaces are sensitive to peak loads, and are natural bottlenecks that can limit system performance.

· Interfaces can be the source of unintended feedback loops.

· The more complex a system is the more critical interface design becomes.

UPDATE - Presentation available here.

Shirking Your Duty

2009-12-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Want to get out of jury duty but don't have a good enough excuse, and don't want to stoop to the lows of feigning racism or stupidity? There's an easier way.

Prosecutors bring cases because they believe they have compelling evidence of the defendant's guilt. Weak cases can always be abandoned, or left to fester until more evidence can be collected. Attorneys for the defense have a harder job because if a case is pressed it's sure to be a relatively strong one.

This asymmetry between the two sides is easily exploited by the clever would-not-be juror. Because prosecutors believe they have the stronger case, and the moral upper hand, they are more likely to accept any juror of average or greater intelligence who is free of bigotries that will make him overly sympathetic to the defendant. The counsel for the defense, by contrast, will often be hostile to jurors who are accomplished, rational, or overtly moral or responsible. After all, they are going to ask the jury to put themselves in the shoes of a person who has likely made some poor decisions and displayed bad behavior, whether or not they are actually guilty of the crime of which they are accused. Remember that the prosecutor will bring charges against easy targets, and a person who has a history being a screw-up is an easy target.

How does this help you get out of jury duty? Because the easiest way to be dismissed from the juror pool other than for cause (e.g. extreme bigotry) is to be dismissed by the counsel for the defense without cause. To accomplish this you should try to present yourself as logical, successful, free from the spots of a checkered past, and most crucially, sympathetic to the person of the prosecutor. When the attorney for the defense is speaking, you can act as bored as you actually feel, but when the prosecutor speaks you must feign rapt interest, smile frequently, and show involvement. A nearly sure way to be dismissed is to raise your hand and ask a question (rarely done by potential jurors during the selection process) that is sympathetic to something the prosecutor has just said. Ask the question with a sincere and upbeat tone.

In fairness, I've never tried to avoid jury duty, and have only been called once. I was disappointed to be dismissed by the defense attorney, but it was my own fault because I did the things I suggest here. I couldn't help it. I had just graduated from college (literally a week before), had landed a great job as a rocket body design engineer, and on top of all of that the female prosecutor was attractive and intelligent, and frankly interesting to listen to. The accused was a sullen young man of approximately my age who, it came out, had frequently made a public nuisance of himself in the past and was accused of doing so again. I don't know if he was guilty, but I probably wasn't very likely to be sympathetic to him and that was painfully obvious to his attorney.

I do hope that someday I can actually serve on a jury because I'm interested in the process and the concept, and because I want to participate in this important part of government. I don't know if I will, though. Do people like me ever get selected to serve on juries?

I'm Starting To Get It

2009-12-21T11:46:00.002-07:00

After considerably more reading, this is the way I'm understanding it. Let me know what I'm missing or getting wrong.

The key to Bayes’ theorem is that it makes explicit the relationship between two events, and the probability of one event given that the other event has occurred.

Here’s a simple example: Say you want to know if it rained last night, so you go outside and touch the grass to see if it’s wet. Before you touch the grass there is some probability that it rained during the night, maybe based on a forecast of 40% chance of rain. But after you touch the grass and feel that it is wet, there is a new (higher) probability that it rained. Bayes’ theorem gives you a way to calculate the new probability that it rained last night, given the evidence of wet grass.

You can’t conclude that it rained last night based on the fact that the grass is wet, because the sprinklers may have come on or it may just be dew. But if you know something about the relationship between the event of the grass being wet and the event of it having rained, then you can calculate how likely it is that rain is the cause of the wet grass (CORRECTION - that reference to 'cause' is objectionable, we're only discussing correlation). The real insight of Bayes’ theorem is that the likelihood that rain is the cause of the wet grass is related to the probability of the grass being wet when it hasn’t rained.

If you happen to know that there is a very low probability of the grass being wet in the morning after a night with no rain (maybe you don’t have sprinklers, and you live in a dry climate with very little dew), then wet grass is a strong indicator of rain. But if there is a high probability of the grass being wet on a morning after no rain, then wet grass is a very weak indicator of rain.

This is fairly intuitive, and so maybe it doesn’t seem very revolutionary. However, what Bayes’ theorem does is it makes this kind of reasoning explicit and calculable. Bayes’ theorem justifies this kind of reasoning by formally spelling out how and why it works. An understanding of Bayes’ theorem also helps one avoid mistakes of probabilistic reasoning, e.g. thinking that wet grass is a stronger indicator of rain than it really is.

A Call to (Bayesian) Missionaries

2009-12-20T10:09:00.005-07:00

Math is Tough

I need someone to show me the light.

I've tried, but I just can't seem to understand the far-reaching implications of Bayes' theorem. The more people I ask for help, the more I become convinced that 'Bayesian' is a synonym for 'inarticulate math-head'.

See, I want to understand why it matters. Why it's supposedly transformational.

Here's the example I have heard most frequently used to explain Bayes' theroem: Imagine there is a test to screen for a particular kind of cancer. When the test is administered to people who don't have the cancer, 99.5% of those screened will be correctly flagged as cancer-free (low false positive rate). When the test is administered to people who DO have the cancer, 99.9% of those screened will be correctly flagged as having the cancer (low false negative rate). In the general population, .01% of people have this cancer, so that would be about 30,000 people in the US!

Two questions: 1) Assuming the test is fairly cheap to administer, should this screening be done routinely for all people? 2) If I am flagged positive for having the cancer, what is the probability that I actually have the cancer?

The answer to question 2 is surprising, and that's why this example is used to promote Bayes' theorem. Using Bayes' theorem (I'll spare you the math) you find that if you're flagged as having the cancer, there is only about a 2% CORRECTION 16.7% chance that you actually have it. So the answer to question 1 is probably no, because getting a positive result still means you have a very low chance of actually having the cancer (instead the screening should probably only be done for people at high risk).

That seems like a pretty good example because it's easy to relate to and has a non-intuitive outcome. However, I think it must actually be a very poor example of the power of Bayes' theorem, because I can very easily work that same problem out with just standard probabilistic reasoning and get the same answer! You just divide the number of genuine positives (people who have the cancer who test positive for the cancer) by the number of total positives (false positives plus genuine positives) to get the likelihood that any particular positive result is a genuine positive result (the 2% result comes from the fact that the false positive rate is high relative to how rare the cancer is). It's simple, easy, and doesn't require Bayes' theorem.

But there are a lot of people who are excited about Bayes and his famous theorem, so there must be more to it than this example. So can someone please help me to understand?

Practical Economics

2009-12-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

I know that several of you are much more knowledgeable than I am on this topic, so consider these to be cries for help rather than pontifications. Even though I'm going to phrase them like pontifications.

It seems like one of the major things that holds Economics back is insufficient data. There are some big schisms in Economics, and I think they could be healed with better data. More to the point, I think that Economics could become MUCH more productive and more helpful in engineering a brighter tomorrow if Economists had enough high quality data.

So why don't we go collect that data?

The argument goes that it would be unethical to perform economic experiments on live populations. Utter nonsense. Our Congress has no such qualms.

Speaking of Congress, you'll notice that legislators do not presume to design aircraft carriers or information systems (though they do weigh in pretty heavily on requirements). So why are they designing our economic system? Wouldn't it be preferable if they farmed that work out to experts?

So what I'm proposing is the establishment of several special economic zones around the country. These would be the labs for economic research, and the schools for economic engineering. The policies in the special economic zones should be set according to the aims of research, but with the limitation of always trying to achieve desirable outcomes in terms of human welfare. I don't think that cramps the science mission too much. It would be desirable to choose economically troubled cities where experimentation has the highest probability of doing good, and where any negative outcomes can be conveniently blamed on the history of the place (sort of kidding about that last point).

The administrators of special economic zones should have wide freedoms to implement policies, without regard to federal or state law, so long as those policies were consistent with the research plan. Results should be carefully collected and reported. Standard measures should be collected and compared for all of the special economic zones, in addition to the data that is collected specifically for the local research plan.

In the interest of human welfare, policies that restrict emigration from the special economic zones should be prohibited. This is a necessary limit on the research objectives. If Keynesville experiences economic implosion, it's not humane to force the residents to suffer through that.

What are the most serious problems with such an idea? Could it ever be possible?

Occam's Razor

2009-12-16T05:57:00.001-07:00

Does it make any sense to have a preference for simpler explanations over more complicated explanations? Is there anything to Occam's Razor?

Yes, a little. There's more that can go wrong with a complicated explanation, or one that makes more assumptions, than a simpler explanation. Simply, when there are more elements to an explanation there is a greater possibility that one of them is inaccurate.

Is it useful or practical to invoke Occam's Razor? It is very useful for making guesses about explanations when you aren't heavily invested in actually being correct, and don't want to invest time and effort in evaluating the content of an explanation that you've already decided you don't like. It's sort of useful for dismissing extreme-case explanations where the number of assumed unknowns is very large (alternatively, you could just point out that there is uncertainty about all those unknowns - this requires you to make some kind of evaluation about the magnitude of the uncertainty rather than just using Occam's Razor as a sort of appeal to authority).

My point is simply that the more complicated explanation could be the more accurate one. Correctly invoked, Occam's Razor is a specific criticism about the content of an explanation. Incorrectly invoked, Occam's Razor is an intellectually lazy dismissal of an idea without addressing the content.

Generally speaking, it is probably better not to directly invoke Occam's Razor, but instead to simply be specific in your criticisms.

Pure, Unadulterated Awesomeness

2009-12-15T12:31:00.002-07:00

Go here.

In fairness, the visual areas are still distorted a bit (because one's mind tends to fill in the cracks, rather than subtracting them out of the areas). But that doesn't hurt my enthusiasm.

Freedom

2009-12-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

Scott Adams, in one of his weaker posts, claims that freedom is a zero sum game. OK, since it's Scott Adams, he might just be playing a joke on me (not me exactly, just incautious, literally-minded people). It's happened before.

In case he's serious though, I've prepared a short rebuttal: B.S.

In my opinion. the whole point of government, law, etc. is to EXPAND my usable freedom by limiting the freedoms to do things that have net deleterious effects on freedom.

Quick example: making murder illegal is a limit on freedom, but successfully preventing murder expands freedom far more than freedom has been limited by murder being illegal.

Systems Engineering

2009-12-13T07:10:00.005-07:00

The New Hampshire Business Review is reporting that the University of New Hampshire will begin offering a certificate in Software Systems Engineering. From the article:

“Engineers who are successful at this ‘big picture’ work are rare, yet the demand for these skills is high...”

I think this is exactly correct, and not just in software design. Systems Engineering is one of the few academic disciplines, and the only engineering discipline, that is moving toward greater generalism. The increasing depth of technological knowledge has driven specialization at an increasing rate, and at a heavy cost to technical breadth. Additionally, the increasing specialization has tended to drive natural-born generalists from the ranks of those who pursue engineering degrees. The result is a serious lack of interdisciplinary competence and large world view that is essential to the complex engineering projects that are driving civilization's next big developments. Think of the projects to re-engineer energy production, to redesign cities and transportation at a conceptual level, and even to engineer society and government for the improved welfare of all citizens (we desperately need Economists to start thinking of themselves as Engineers - specifically Systems Engineers - and not as Scientists).

The emergence of Systems Engineering is a direct and deliberate response to all of these trends. It got its start in the space program, but it has applications far beyond.

Addendum: The University of Illionis is offering a new Master of Science in Finacial Engineering degree through their Systems Engineering department. It's fascinating to me to see a university marrying its Business and Engineering departments in this way.

Appeal to Authority

2009-12-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

I've heard it argued that appeals to authority are not necessarily fallacies. For example, Gene Callahan argues that, "...appeals to authority are perfectly valid when the authorities in question are, in fact, true authorities... ." I think this is confused, and in fact wrong.

Let me be clear, I'm NOT talking about relying on the opinion of an authority for advice. I'm also NOT talking about pointing to evidence that other people have collected. I'm talking about putting forth the opinion of an authority in place of reasoning and evidence, in the course of argument.

Commonly, appeals to authority are recognized, not by the mention of an authority, but by the absence of presentation of that authority's reasoning and evidence. Note that a statement of the kind, "Einstein claimed _____, therefore _____ is true" is a fallacy even if Einstein is an expert on the subject. If you are persuaded by an argument that has been presented by an authority and think others will be as well, simply present that argument (duly credited, of course).

There is another, much more insidious form of appeal to authority. It is the inappropriate appeal to one's own authority. In a previous post I criticized Richard Dawkins for his sponsorship of Militant Atheism. My criticism of Dawkins was, and remains, that he is leaning on his status as a highly regarded Biologist to support his unscientific opinions about whether there is a god. Not only is Dawkins not an expert on the question of whether there is a god, but the question itself cannot be framed in scientific terms! To wrap the unscientific proposition Atheism in the mantle of Science is to discredit one's own authority as a reliable practitioner of science.

Dawkins doesn't present an argument or evidence that proves there is no god. He can't, because the proposition that there IS a god is logically non-falsifiable. Instead, he expects his audience to rely on his authority, and accept a conclusion that he has reached intuitively.

Personal Note

2009-12-11T11:58:00.001-07:00

For some reason the illustrious Harvard professor of Economics, Greg Mankiw, is starting to remind me of my brother, Jared. Maybe it has to do with surprising taste in music that he is both eager and reticent to admit?

Reading Faces

2009-12-10T15:29:00.001-07:00

Willl computers soon be able to read facial expressions better than humans can? I don’t think so.

· Our brains have evolved specifically to, among other things, recognize facial expressions.
· So far, we’re not very good at teaching computers to interpret anything much. Have you used an online translator lately? I would think that accurately translating meaning from one language to another is sort of similar to extracting meaning from facial expressions (tell me why I’m wrong about that one), and I’d further think that translation from one language to another is generally more deterministic than is reading facial expression.
· If a computer program is well understood, then it should be reasonably easy to fool. It might be as easy as simply using an extreme expression (say a really big smile) to swamp a computer program’s algorithms with false data. People have the advantage of being able to spontaneously create new rules and hypotheses to explain the facial expressions they observe, and are therefore more robust to this kind of deception.
· Many insights into interpretation of facial expression could be used by people as easily as by computers, so computers would only gain an advantage if an effective face-reading technique was discovered that plays to the abilities of computers, and against the abilities of humans. Currently I think most face-reading techniques play to human strengths.

To me, the real advantage would be if computers could tell us something about someone else that we can’t tell on our own (I’m considerably less interested in the idea that computers are simply cheaper per hour at reading faces than are live humans).

Why Positive Externalities Are Bad

2009-12-09T12:52:00.003-07:00

A.K.A. The Tragedy of the Commons

A negative externality is when someone who is doing some activity doesn't bear all of the costs of that activity. Instead, some or all of the costs are imposed on somebody else. This is bad not only because it's unfair, but also because it means that too much of that activity happens, like in the example from yesterday's post where gold mining in California was probably a net economic loss to the state. If the gold miners had to pay for the damage they were doing, they would have only mined the gold that they could get out without causing a lot of damage.

A positive externality is when someone who is doing some activity doesn't capture all of the benefit of that activity, and instead some of the benefit is captured by other people. It sounds like a good thing, like a service to society, right? Actually, positive externalities are also bad, because they mean that too little of that activity will happen.

In the digital age positive externalities are becoming much more noticeable, and having much more powerful effects on society. These effects are good! Google and Wikipedia (just two prominent examples) have provided enormous value to hundreds of millions of people. Though Google has made piles of money for its founders, it is still the case that the the value to society of Google's services is at least many times greater than all of the ad revenues the company has ever collected. How do I know that? Because I've already used Google more than 10 times this morning at no cost to myself, AND I didn't click on, or even notice, any ads. In fact I've hardly ever clicked on any Google ads. I am quite clearly free riding on Google's service, and have done so for years. Google is even subsidizing the wealthy, multinational corporation I work for by allowing my company to do research, for free, with its powerful tools.

So, why are positive externalities a bad thing? Oh right, because where positive externalities exist, not enough of a valuable activity is occurring. Can this be true? Do we really not have enough Google? Has society left money on the table in the form of investment that hasn't been made, but that could be making us all much, much better off?

Yes. Absolutely.

It's a hard thing to prove, because value that hasn't appeared is difficult to visualize, and even harder to quantify. but basic economics tells us that, yes, we are not getting an optimal amount of Google (and similar products/services). In fact, we are over-investing in something, maybe cars or houses or something, and under-investing in other things like information technology where it's hard to capture the benefit, and instead the benefit leaks out to the rest of society.

Just one quick example before this post gets long: Would the internet be what it is today if it hadn't been sponsored by the government? My guess is, no.

Why Externalities Are Bad

2009-12-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here's another story which, like the one about the hurricane and the ice sellers, belongs in an introductory microeconomics class.

After gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, we all know that there was an influx of prospectors to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The popular image is of solitary, rough-edged men kneeling in the shallows of mountain streams and panning for gold. There actually were many prospectors who fit this description, especially in the early days of the rush. However, once it became better established that there actually were large quantities of gold dispersed in the alluvium of the rivers, mining companies with the ability to outfit custom excavators and extractors moved into the gold fields. These companies with their mechanized equipment extracted gold much more efficiently than was possible by simpler means.

The equipment they used came in many varieties, but two kinds were particularly prominent due to their power and and effect on the landscape and rivers. The first of these, water cannons, were used to practice a kind of gold extraction know as "hydraulicking" in which sediments were blasted and washed into sluices where the gold would settle out. The second kind, dredgers, were used as platforms for processing large quantities of sediment in the alluvial plains at the base of the hills. Near Sacramento today there are still many places where you can see large fields full of lumpy hills of gravel and stones. These are the remnants of the work done by the dredgers.

All of this activity washed enormous quantities of sediment into the rivers that come down out the the Sierra Nevadas. For those of you not familiar with the physical geography of California, all of the drainage from those mountains comes into California's central valley. There is only one way out for all of that water, and that is through the San Joaquin Delta, into the San Francisco bay, and out to the Pacific. The sediments that were washed down from the hills dramatically impacted these waterways. One of the most noticeable effects was the great flood of 1850 that all but destroyed Sacramento. There is some argument about whether the flood was caused by the plug of sediments working its way through the river system, but it has been cited as a likely contributing factor. Another deleterious effect was the silting up of the San Francisco Bay. A considerable amount of usable area in the east bay was lost to infill from the sediments. Shipping lanes had to be dredged to keep them from becoming impassable. Less well documented, but doubtlessly significant, were the costs to wildlife in the affected wetlands.

It has been estimated that the economic damage to the San Francisco Bay alone was greater than the value of all of the gold that was extracted.

Economists call it an externality when the actions of one group cause consequences that are borne by others. The costs of the damage done downstream by the gold miners was real, but the miners were not held responsible for it. The result was that all of their efforts caused a net loss of wealth for California, even though they created wealth by extracting the gold.

The problem isn't that the miners wanted to extract the gold, or that they didn't care about what happened downstream (they may not have even known). The problem is that because they weren't forced to bear all of the costs associated with extracting the gold, they extracted too much gold, and used processes that were too costly - costly to others. If the miners had borne the costs, as well as the rewards, of their activity, they would have extracted less gold with cleaner processes, and the people of California as a whole would have reaped a net increase, instead of a loss, of wealth.

America's Competitive Edge

2009-12-06T13:44:00.002-07:00

How did America become and why does it remain a super power? Here some possible factors:

Large size - Basic economics tells us that there are huge advantages to be gained from specialization and trade. However, the magnitude of the advantage depends on the size of the market. For example, I can't specialize in making toilets if I live in a small village of population 100 and have no contact with the rest of the world. Why not? Because I won't have a large enough market to be able to sustain myself in that specialty. As a result, when someone does need a new toilet in my small isolated village, they will have to either produce it themselves, or hire someone in the village who has made toilets before to make one. Needless to say, quality will be low, and price will be high. America has at times been somewhat isolated from the rest of the world in trade terms. However, even during those times the US was a relatively large country with a large market for goods and services, and so it captured a large benefit from specialization within the market. I think this is also much of the explanation for the Soviet Union's ability to remain a super power for many decades during which it was economically isolated from the west.

Free Market Capitalism - There are a couple of important features of free market capitalism that I believe make a big difference to the amount of wealth that is produced within the society. First, the freedom to compete within the marketplace spurs innovation, both for market incumbents and for new entrants to the market. I feel this every day at work (I'm an engineer working for a manufacturing firm) as we are constantly seeking to improve our processes and products in order to remain viable within the market. Everyone in the company knows that standing still means we'll all be out of jobs in a very short time because our competitors will beat us in the market with better products at lower prices. The second part of free market capitalism that is important is that it rewards good ideas and good execution, and punishes bad ideas and bad execution. Inefficient firms die while efficient firms take market share. The image below illustrates how differently capitalism is viewed in much of the rest of the world. If free market capitalism really IS an important part of high productivity and high standard of living, then those who reject it are putting the gun to their own heads.

Regime Certainty - This is the opposite of regime uncertainty, where no one is sure if the law will be the same today as it is tomorrow, whether there will be civil war tomorrow, whether property rights will be respected tomorrow, etc. The US has been stable and secure, with mostly predictable application of the law, for decades. This matters! When there is regime uncertainty investment drops because the value of any investment is a value that will mature over time, and uncertainty about the future of something as basic as the law or property rights decreases the value of any and all investment. Look to sub-Saharan Africa for an example of what regime uncertainty does to growth. Of course, the concept of regime certainty also embraces the fact that America was not ravaged by two world wars during the 20th century.

Immigration - The US accepts more immigrants than does any other country in the world. The US is characterized by its immigrant population, including those of us whose ancestors came here prior to the 1930s, and now think of ourselves as 'typical' Americans. I think that it is the case that the US has been very successful at attracting the best minds and the most innovative people from around the globe, in part because of the benefits of free market capitalism and regime certainty. Innovative people are drawn to places where they will be free to innovate. Entrepreneurs are drawn to places with regime certainty. I think this is much of the explanation for why the US is such an innovative and entrepreneurial nation. Listen to Paul Graham's comments on immigrants starting businesses to get a better idea of what I mean.

Now I know that this list isn't exhaustive, but these are the main things that come to my mind when I puzzle about the US and its accomplishments and place in the world. What have I left out? Or better yet, what is wrong in my approach altogether to this question?

Cultural Differences

2009-12-05T22:27:00.001-07:00

A few weeks back I had a conversation with a coworker from Sweden about the differences in Swedish vs. American corporate culture. Notably, in Sweden there is a high value put on cooperation and consensus, and a lot of time and energy are spent trying to reach agreement. My coworker from Sweden contrasted this with his observation that in the American approach decisions are taken relatively quickly by managers, with or without agreement from their direct reports and colleagues. Inevitably this talk about how business is conducted in America reminded me of Dilbert, and of several particular Dilbert strips that I had read over the years.

However, I was quite surprised to learn that my Swedish colleague had never heard of Dilbert. Dilbert is such a large phenomenon in America, and so much American culture is exported to other countries particularly our culturally near neighbors in Europe, that it hadn't occurred to me that Dilbert would be unknown in Sweden.

I wonder why Dilbert hasn't found a foothold there. Could it be because it is difficult to effectively translate closely written comic strips into other languages? Or, are most popular American comic strips just so bad that there is no market for any American efforts in the field in other parts of the world? Or is it because of those differences in corporate culture between the US and Sweden? Maybe the jokes just don't work over there?

Here's one I like a lot, even if it isn't about corporate culture.

Picking Winners

2009-12-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I asked "How do you think the founders of Tesla feel about GM being propped up by the government?" Well, it turns out that Tesla can't complain too much. I guess I should have known.

I'm worried about the government funding companies, whether startups or established players, because government investment drives out private investment, and because the companies who receive support have a competitive advantage over the ones that don't. Why is this an important problem? Because the government doesn't know which companies are going to be enormously productive, and which ones won't. Just as an example, what if the government had propped up Ask Jeeves at the expense of Google? Of course I don't actually know what would have happened, but it's possible and maybe likely that Google would have been crushed or absorbed before it had a chance to bring so much value to so many people.

Econtalk has a great interview with Y-combinator partner Paul Graham. Graham says that government attempts to 'create the next Google' are doomed to failure because no one knows what the next Google is going to be like. By definition, the next big innovation is going to be something that is not currently understood well enough for the value to be obvious. It's ludicrous to me to think that government bureaucrats, no matter how competent, are going to be able to predict which companies are the future sources of important innovation, and which aren't.

Pirates of the Gulf of Aden

2009-12-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Imagine you’re the leader of a country, and another country wants to build a pipeline across your soil to get oil to the sea. Do let them do it for free, or do you demand a cut of the oil revenues? I’m betting that most of us would expect to get some piece of the action.

Now imagine that you’re the leader of a non-state entity that has de facto, though tenuous and extralegal, control of a body of water that happens to be an important trade route. If you demand payment for safe passage, are you more morally repugnant than is the government leader in the previous example? If so, why? Both are cases of rent-seeking, where a party tries to extract value without adding any value.

You might say that the leader of the country in the first example is within her legal rights under international law. This is a distinction between the two examples. However, some would argue that international law has a weak claim to legitimacy, since it has been crafted by powerful nations who have sought to codify their own interests.

You might argue that the leader of a country possesses standing to impose limits on regional activity, and that the leader of a pirate coalition does not. But, do the monarchies and dictatorships in the region of the horn of Africa truly have greater legitimacy than do the people who currently provide police and other public services within eastern Somalia?

OK, I’ll admit that the argument that international law legitimizes control of agreed borders, and that the pirate activity in the Gulf of Aden undermines the rule of law, is a compelling one. But how about rent-seeking? Is it any more desirable from a state actor than from pirates, assuming that either way it’s backed up with threat of force?

Yale Lectures

2009-12-02T07:52:00.001-07:00

Donald Kagan is an excellent lecturer. Though some might feel that he is not critical enough of western civilization, I think it's a bit ironic that a Yale professor of classical antiquities comes across as an outsider throwing stones at the academic establishment.

That's it. I'm Buying a Motorcycle.

2009-12-02T05:48:00.001-07:00

http://wehrintheworld.blogspot.com/2009/12/two-interesting-examples-of.html

The Hurricane and the Ice Sellers

2009-12-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already started listening, Russ Roberts has an excellent podcast called Econtalk. It features guests who discuss issues related to economics and policy from a variety of viewpoints.

In one podcast Russ and Mike Munger discuss price gouging, and illustrate the subject with a true story.

When Hurricane Fran came aground in the Carolinas more than 10 years ago, power and other services were knocked out in Raleigh, and transportation through the city was halted by fallen trees. The damage was so widespread that it was simply impossible to restore services to all residents of the city in the first few days after the storm.

A couple of entrepreneurial young men who lived outside the affected area realized that without power in the city, many people would be in need of ice. So they decided to take the day off work, rent a truck and some chain saws, loaded the truck full of ice and headed for Raleigh intent on cutting their way through the fallen trees until they reached the city center where the ice would command the highest price. The morning that they headed into Raleigh, emergency services still had not reached many residents of the city. The National Guard, the Red Cross, and others simply were not yet present.

It took several hours, but the men were able to clear a path into the city and when they found what seemed to them to be a likely spot, they started selling bags of ice at an elevated price. Many customers lined up.

But they weren't all happy customers, and someone called the police. Price gouging is illegal. The people who had been waiting in line to buy ice clapped as the men were handcuffed and taken to jail. Maybe they clapped because they assumed they would now be able to have access to the truck full of ice for free, but the truck and the ice were impounded, and the ice melted away uselessly.

Remember, this is happening in a city bereft of electricity. At the same time that these ice sellers are being arrested, local officials are making an impassioned plea to the federal government to PLEASE SEND ICE, as much as possible as SOON as possible.

Nobody wants to be taken advantage of, especially not in an emergency. That's why there are laws against price gouging. But do these laws make any sense?

Consider: During an emergency, valuable commodities are in short supply in the affected area. However, these same commodities are still available outside that area. What is needed is for people to transport the needed goods from the areas where they are plentiful to the area where people are suffering. We could rely on the good natures of our neighbors to do this for us, or we could rely on the government. OR we could rely on the profit motive, and this just might marshal more resources, more quickly than will the other options. Who made it to downtown Raleigh that day with a truck full of ice?

Don't forget, there are real costs associated with providing a good or service during an emergency. Maybe I care about the people who are stranded without services, but I can't just leave work and spend my own money on a truck, chainsaws, and ice. I've got responsibilities at home that may trump my desire to help.

And what IS price gouging anyway? Who can say what a fair price is for ice in a city without electricity? it cost something to get the ice there, so the price of the ice must be something higher than what it would normally be. The high price is what motivates someone to rent a truck and chainsaws and take the day off work. If enough people do that, the price of ice in Raleigh will come down because the supply will go up!

Isn't that the desired outcome?

The Jail Cell and the Gun

2009-11-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Government has grown so much during the past 100 years in part because it is taking on more and more roles. Essentially, society is using government, instead of other means or institutions, to do more of the things that society wants to do. There is a good reason for this, and that is that government is powerful and can get the job done, whatever the job is. However, as a Libertarian I am suspicious of this approach, and of the growth of the influence and power of government.

Society is using government to do more things because government is powerful. Why is government powerful? Because it has the legal use of force at its command. At the bottom of it, there is one major distinction between government and all other institutions: government has the force of a jail cell and a gun backing its policies. This power is what makes government able to perform many of the roles it is called upon to perform. This power makes it possible to apprehend criminals, to collect taxes, to settle disputes, and to conduct war. However, this power is also employed explicitly or implicitly in every governmental undertaking, no matter how liberally intentioned.

The purpose of democracy is to tame the power of government, precisely because government has the power of the jail cell and the gun. By making government accountable to at least a large percentage of the people (rather than a tiny group of elites), the odds are more favorable that individual people will be treated with fairness. This is a good system, but it may be due for an upgrade. Perhaps the next generation of democracy will limit government to functions those that need the power of the jail cell and the gun to back them up. Maybe our society can benefit from greater exploration of the use of nongovernmental institutions to accomplish many of society’s goals. What do you think?

Growth of Govt.

2009-11-25T11:43:00.002-07:00

Just a few quick graphs that illustrate how things have changed in a hundred years or so. How did we ever get by back then?

More info here.

China is Subsidizing America's Standard of Living

2009-11-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

Gary Becker does a good job summarizing the argument against trying to convince China to let the yuan fall against the dollar. Basically it goes like this: We want to buy Chinese goods, but Chinese goods can only be purchased with Chinese currency, so we give dollars to the Chinese central bank in exchange for yuan. But the Chinese government has this policy where they always give us more yuan than our dollars are really worth. So it's a good deal for us, and a bad deal for them. Why do they do that?

Even more relevant to Americans is the question, why is Obama trying to convince the Chinese to STOP doing that?

The comments on Becker's blog aren't working, but here's what I tried to post in reply:

Can it really be sheer foolishness on the parts of both the Chinese and American governments? What can their respective motives be?

In America there has been a long term advertising campaign against any trade deficit, and many American voters have been persuaded to embrace a cause (make imports more expensive) that is likely not in their own interest. Have unions and export businesses so completely captured trade policy in the US?

Is there a similar explanation for the Chinese policy?

Facing Fears

2009-11-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Brian Caplan discusses Exposure Therapy.

The exposure therapy approach to dealing with fears makes a lot of sense to me. As a matter of fact, I think people are wired to do this (to some extent) automatically. One example is dreaming repeatedly about a traumatic event. Another is obsession with a worry.

Political Spectrum

2009-11-23T15:45:00.001-07:00

In a high school political science class I was taught that the political spectrum extends from communism on the far left to fascism on the far right, with Democrats and Republicans more or less in the center. Even back then this seemed stupid to me because in practice both communism and fascism are most strongly characterized by the subjugation of the individual and the community to the state. I asked my teacher where anarchy fit into this spectrum and bizarrely he suggested that it should be even further out to the right, past fascism.

There are many ways to chart political systems and philosophies relative to one another. Why do so many people consider to use and reference the Left vs. Right model? What do ‘leftness’ and ‘rightness’ indicate? For example, was my teacher correct to place anarchy on the far right? And if so, what essential characteristic is common between fascism and anarchy so that they end up on the same end of the spectrum?

Numerous other methodologies have been suggested for depicting the relative similarities and differences between various political systems and philosophies. The Nolan chart, for example, puts economic freedom on one axis, and personal freedom on another. Useful, perhaps, for explaining the Libertarian worldview, but rather limited in its ability to describe other political philosophies in their own language. For example, where precisely would Progressives place themselves on such a chart? I suggest that they would be apt to claim that the chart needed to be redrawn with different axes, perhaps one of which would be rationality in policy.

How would you draw a chart of all political systems/philosophies? How many axes would you need to describe the most important characteristics of each system? Below are some suggestions for possible axes:

Practical regulation ßà Moral regulation

Coercive ßà Free to opt out

Provides many public goods (roads, schools, etc.) ßà Provides few public goods

Focus on individual rights ßà Focus on community rights

More regulation of business ßà Less regulation of business

More regulation of personal activity (what I do in private) ßà Less regulation of personal activity

More regulation (in total) ßà More freedom

Governmental powers highly consolidated ßà Governmental powers very distributed (checks and balances)

Government captive to the people (officials easily removed from office by popular demand) ßà People captive to the government (individuals easily killed or imprisoned by officials)

Others?

Our Interesting Relationship With the Gulf States

2009-11-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

The National is reporting that the strong US military presence in the Persian Gulf is acting as a disincentive to many gulf states to invest in defense, because these states believe that US interest in regional stability is all the defense they need.

The UAE is investing in America's THAAD missile defense system, and had previously suggested that a coalition of gulf states could fund a regional defense system. Apparently, some gulf states are hoping that US deployment of the sea-based Aegis system to defend carrier groups in the gulf will effectively protect their borders as well.

Components of "Smart"

2009-11-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

I think that "smart" is one of those terms that people believe they understand, but is in fact so poorly defined that it risks uselessness as a descriptor. IQ is better defined because it refers to a score received on a test (or actually one of several tests, so some serious ambiguity remains). However, there are questions about what is actually being measured by IQ testing, so practical usefulness is limited here as well.

Measurement may be a problem, but definition need not be. There's no need to continue conflating multiple different characteristics and abilities under the term "smart", or even "intelligent".

Knowledge - This is accessible stored information. It grows with experience and study, but different people have differing abilities to absorb and retain information. There is the additional complication that possessing existing knowledge makes it easier to add and retain new knowledge, because retention is tied to the ability to index new information to information that has already been assimilated.

Processing Routines - These are sets of sequential operations that have been "burned in" to the brain by repetitive use. They can be simple or complex. Examples range from calculating multiplication tables to riding a bike. As with knowledge, different people have different abilities to create, maintain, and use these routines.

Concept Synthesis - This is the creation of a substantively novel concept through the blending of two or more existing concepts. This is probably what is most often referred to as "creative thinking". It is genuinely creative. It is the ability to recognize that many elements together don't just form a group, they form a pattern.

Relational Analysis - This is closely related to the ideas of Knowledge and Concept Synthesis. It is the ability to find or create links between distinct concepts. It reinforces Knowledge retention by increasing indexing between pieces of information. It supports Concept Synthesis by suggesting which concepts may have useful synergies.

I'm sure there's more than this. What are some other ways of looking at what it is to be smart?

Out of the Office...

2009-11-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm in training out of town this week and I'm find it practically impossible to keep up with posts, so hopefully starting Saturday I can get back in the groove. Talk to you then.

Effect of Children on Happiness

2009-11-18T05:59:00.001-07:00

Interesting post by Brian Caplan. Seems much more intuitively correct than the other research he cites that suggests that children hurt overall happiness.

Benevolent Dictators

2009-11-17T20:54:00.002-07:00

I previously blogged about Musharraf Pervez, the former president of Pakistan who rose to power during a bloodless coup, and I presented his administration as possessing a mixture of conflicting traits. Was Musharraf a benevolent dictator, compelled by circumstances to impose martial law and suspend the judiciary? Or was he personally corrupt, and did he institute political reforms and combat corruption only because he was compelled to? To what extent do the policies of heads of state reflect their personal values?

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita argues compellingly that policies most closely reflect the nature and structure of political institutions, not the characters of politicians.

All political leaders achieve and maintain power through the help of a winning coalition. This is simply a group of people who together have sufficient power and influence to seize control of the political apparatus, either through legal or extralegal means. The term ‘dictator’ grossly oversimplifies the system of corruption and patronage that binds the winning coalition together. Robert Bolt characterized this relationship between a leader and his allies when he depicted Henry VIII as declaring, “…there are those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I am their lion.” The members of the winning coalition maintain the dictator in power because he dispenses patronage in the form of wealth, political appointment, and advantage in business.

It is just as true for democratically elected leaders as it is for dictators that they must appease the winning coalition that maintains them in power. The difference is in the composition of the winning coalition in democratic political systems vs. dictatorial political systems. Under feudalism the winning coalition consists of a group of regional war lords who control land and armies. Henry VIII’s winning coalition included reformation-minded clergy and an emerging merchant class, as well as the sons of the “blood-witted barons” of feudal times. In democratic societies, a winning coalition must include a large chunk of the voting population, so naturally the dynamics of that coalition are different from the dynamics of a coalition of a few powerful warlords.

In all cases, the Leader must provide patronage to the members of the winning coalition in order to retain their support. Under democracy this means broad-based programs of social welfare. Consequently, even the the most savage-minded politician must spend heavily on public programs if he wishes to retain office in a democratic system. Conversely, in political systems where power is concentrated into a small number of hands the Leader must spend heavily to pay off those few powerful people who constitute a winning coalition. In such systems even the most fair-minded politician must rule in corruption, or be deposed.

Don't forget: the people who succeed in politics are those who are willing to do what is necessary to succeed.

But are heads of state fully captured by their respective winning coalitions? What good then is it to be a president or a king? In truth, they are not fully captive. Leaders have a certain amount of political capital left over after they have paid off their coalition. It is the choices they make with this discretionary political capital that reveals their true nature. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos used their discretionary political capital to rob the public coffers, while Mao engaged in massive social experiments. Arguably, Mao did more harm to more people, but his motives were perhaps purer.

An example to summarize with: what made the difference between Leopold II's benevolent rule in Belgium and his murderous rule in the Congo? The political institutions in place in each country. In Belgium, Leopold instituted classically liberal policies because his winning coalition was very large and could only be kept content with broad spending on social programs. In the Congo Leopold's power base was very small, essentially just a handful of warlords exactly equivalent to the blood-witted barons of feudalism. Consequently, his administration there was suitably medieval.

Peak Uranium

2009-11-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post. Coal looks even more attractive than usual in light of the fact that uranium is currently being consumed faster than it is being dug out of the ground.

Philosophy of Identity and Daily Living

2009-11-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

This is something I once wrote up for my wife, in response to a particular situation she was dealing with. Though it was specific to that time, I think it's a pretty good representation of my general philosophy.

Daily Philosophy

My well-being is important
It is fair to share the load
I don't do my part well when:

I'm sick
I'm tired
I'm stressed out
I haven't addressed my daily needs (physical, social, mental, etc)

When I don't do my part well, my family suffers
If I don't address my daily needs, I can't do my part well
If I'm not happy, I can't do my part well
I'm not happy when:

I haven't addressed my daily needs
I have to hide myself instead of being myself
I'm living in a hostile environment

Not enough acceptance of who I really am
Not enough security
Too much work / too little rest

If I'm not happy then my family suffers, and so do I
When I'm not happy I can become happy by:

Addressing my daily needs
Being myself with someone who accepts me
Getting help with the hostile environment (help with work, listening to me talk about myself, etc)

Philosophy of Identity

My identity is permanent and unchangeable

I am the same me that I was as a child, and will be when I am old

My identity cannot be seen directly by anyone but me

I can choose to reveal myself or hide myself at will
Even when I reveal myself, others might not be able to see me

This is their limitation, not mine

My identity is divine

My identity is love
I know myself, because I know that I love

My actions are not part of my identity
My body is not part of my identity
My brain is part of my body, and is not part of my identity
My knowledge is not part of my identity
My skills are not part of my identity
My past is not part of my identity
My mistakes are not part of my identity
My accomplishments are not part of my identity
Other people's opinions are not part of my identity
What other people do to me does not change my identity

It can hurt me and make me want to hide, but I am still me no matter what

Other people often don't know who I am
Even people who know me well don't know everything about me
Some people say they love me, but I know that some of them don't really know who I am
Some people say they love me, but I know that they don't know themselves well, and don't really understand what love is
Some people say they love me, and they really do, but they only love the little part of me that I have shown to them
Some people say they love me, and I know that they do, but I don't know why they know who I am, because I never told them. But they just seem to know.
Some people who are close to me should love me, but don't have much love to give. When I think about it I might feel hurt, but I might also see that they are afraid and don't know much about their own identity.

Sunday Links

2009-11-15T12:05:00.001-07:00

Alex Tabarrok points to a man who paints himself invisible. (Marginal Revolution)

And speaking of optical illusions, tilt-shift photography continues to fascinate me. (Instant Shift)
And here. (Wehr in the World)

Scott Adams has a great post about turning advertising around. I really, really hope this takes the place of 'push' advertising. (Dilbert Blog)

This scares me... (Philip Greenspun)

All this discussion of health care spending makes now a really good time to think about the meaning of the large numbers that are being kicked around. (Wehr in the World)

My family plays a game a lot like this. Never thought that it could be useful for more than entertainment. (Wehr in the World)

In case you don't already know, NASA's Earth Observatory page has some striking photos and interesting information. Regularly updated. (Earth Observatory)

Replace Eminent Domain

2009-11-14T22:34:00.001-07:00

Let me preface this post by saying that the following ideas are not well thought through. This is my attempt at a creative solution to some of the problems of eminent domain, and I rely on you, dear reader, to help me see where I'm going wrong.

The use of eminent domain is justified by the argument that it is a practical necessity for the completion of certain kinds of land-intensive projects with value to the larger community. It is commonly used in highway construction projects, rezoning, and urban renewal.

Problems with eminent domain include that it can be abusive (especially due to ties between would-be developers and local government), that it is conceptually incompatible with property rights, that it introduces regime uncertainty, and that because it doesn't rely on market clearing prices (it doesn't have to because it is coercive) it is virtually guaranteed that there will be a mismatch between what is paid to a property owner whose land is condemned and the value of the land to that owner.

I have a pretty strong bias toward market solutions for problems, and so while thinking about eminent domain I wondered whether the concept of property rights can be reformulated in a way that makes eminent domain obsolete. Any such reformulation should accomplish two objectives:

1) It should use prices to clear the market. This matters because voluntary transactions that rely on the price mechanism (as opposed to coercive methods like eminent domain) guarantee that wealth is being created, not destroyed, by the accomplishment of the transaction. It also removes politicking and power from the equation.

2) It should eliminate the 'hold out' problem. The hold out problem is a problem of monopoly power - power held by property owners because their individual plots are EACH uniquely valuable to the project (whatever the project is - say a road building project). Hold outs are engaging in rent seeking behavior at a cost to everyone else in the community who could benefit from the project.

I propose that property rights could be reformulated along lines similar to partner ownership of a firm. Instead of individual, singly owned plots being the basis for property ownership, entire neighborhoods could be owned jointly with individual plots standing in for discrete shares. In this model, buying a house would be better characterized as becoming a partner in a neighborhood. Neighborhoods could be administered by professional managers, by committees, by elected representatives, or by whatever other means seemed right to the neighborhood partners.

In a world where property rights were so formulated, eminent domain may be considerably less necessary. Rather than needing to negotiate individually with plot owners, it would only be necessary to negotiate with the managers of each neighborhood. Neighborhoods may desire to compete for the 'business' of selling rights-of-way through their boundaries, or to attract value-enhancing development.

To most hobby economists (and real economists) it should be pretty obvious where I'm going with this. It's a pretty comprehensive change to the concept of real property ownership, and I'm sure it has problems, unintended consequences, and unrecognized complexities. I'd appreciate it if you'd take a few minutes to point them out to me!

Children are People

2009-11-14T08:23:00.002-07:00

This quote is from David Balan at Less Wrong:

" I've even heard parents go so far as to say things like: "it's not your room, it's the room inmy house that I allow you to live in." This attitude makes little sense on its own terms, as it suggests that parents would have no legitimate authority over, say, a famous child actor whose earnings paid for the house. Worse, it's a relatively minor manifestation of the broader notion that the child has a fundamentally lower status in the family just for being a child, that they deserve less weight in the family's utility function."

This really strikes a nerve in me. I remember as a teenager being told by my stepfather and mother that no one else (other adults with homes) would be willing to take me in and deal with me, so I should just be glad that they didn't throw me out. I knew that they couldn't legally turn me out on the street, but that fact wasn't much comfort.

Growing up, I accepted that children counted less than adults - I heard it so often opined that I didn't think to question it. When I look at my two daughters now, I am outraged by the notion.

Conscious and Subconscious

2009-11-13T10:16:00.001-07:00

The mind has two kinds of process: processes that we are directly aware of and can observe (conscious), and processes that we are not directly aware of and cannot observe (subconscious). The vast majority of the work that the mind does is invisible to us, or subconscious, but it can be observed indirectly.

The subconscious mind is very fast. Think of how quickly you blink if something suddenly moves near your face.

The conscious mind is slow.

The subconscious mind does parallel processing, and works with many variables simultaneously. After all, it has to coordinate complex motion in tens of muscles just so you can stand up.

The conscious mind does serial processing, and handles no more than a handful of variables at once.

Subconscious processes are automatic.

Conscious processes are deliberate.

The subconscious mind ‘speaks’ to the conscious mind through emotions. The best example I can think of for this is how I feel when I sense that I am being lied to. Usually I don’t even know right at first how I know that I’m being lied to. At first I just feel it. That’s my subconscious telling my conscious to look out.

The conscious mind ‘speaks’ to the subconscious through decision making – literally rewriting the programming that the subconscious is executing.

The subconscious mind runs according to a preexisting program (it’s not writing the logic as it goes, the logic is already there). However, this can get complicated, because one of the things the subconscious can be programmed to do is to look for insights and solutions to problems.

The conscious mind is writing its own program as it goes along.

The subconscious comes preloaded with software – but that software can be rewritten.

The conscious mind comes nearly without software, but it has the ability to start writing its own software immediately.

From these observations I suggest a model of the mind that describes the subconscious mind as procedural and operational, while the conscious mind is programming space. When I say that the subconscious is procedural, I mean that it follows a deterministic instruction set. When I say that it is operational, I mean that it is the part of the mind that is actually executing nearly all actions. I believe this is consistent with the work of Benjamin Libet.

Arguments For and Against Redistribution

2009-11-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

Arguments Against

It is unfair to take my property and give it to others
Is a disincentive to be productive due to marginal tax.
Is a disincentive to be productive due to free riding.
Hurts productivity by taking resources from the most productive people and giving them to the least productive people.
Reward merit – hard work, intelligence.

Arguments For

It's unfair to have so much inequality.
Increase the total value to society (taking a dollar from a rich person and giving it to a poor person hurts the rich person less than it helps the poor person, and so is a net gain to society).
Prevent/undo accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of the few.
Undo the effects of unequal starting points (born into wealth vs. born into poverty).
Increase market representation of the poor (democracy of capitalism – vote with your dollars for what goods and service should be produced. The rich have more votes.)
Don’t reward based on chance – birth circumstances, chance opportunity, the genetic lottery.

What is Redistribution of Wealth?

2009-11-12T06:36:00.001-07:00

It is:

The Farm Bill
The exercise of Eminent Domain
Progressive taxes
Regressive taxes
The building of highways
Subsidizing child care / schooling / college
Tariffs
Social Security
Medicare / Medicaid
Disaster relief
Patents and Copyright

and many, many other activities of government.

Heroes: Part II

2009-11-11T21:55:00.001-07:00

Sexual reproduction is a curious evolutionary adaptation. It reshuffles the genes of the current generation, guaranteeing that the next generation is similar to, but distinct from, its parents. Why do this? If a particular set of genes has been successful, why not reuse them as they are, rather than risking passing on a worse combination?

The answer is flexibility. The environment (and, indeed, the competitive environment) is not static, so a static genetic mix will not serve for long. The ideal system is one that passes nearly all of the most successful traits to the next generation, with a very small percentage of novelty thrown in. The novel genes are an insurance policy against change.

Societies use this strategy as well.

Conventionalists are society's standard gene load out - the tried and the true. Even Romantic Conventionalists, who oppose the prevailing the culture, are part of the standard genetic material. Because they pull directly against the tide of the society they prevent accelerating groupthink. They anchor the society against drift.

Fundamentalists are the novel genetic material. Their commitment to their ideas, rather than to society itself, means that they are forever moving in a completely independent direction. Sometimes they can be a cancer, like the thinkers who produced eugenics. Sometimes they can provide the adaptation that takes the society in a new evolutionary direction, as did the men who dreamed of a purer democracy, without royalty. Most often they are interesting, but harmless, with no strong effect on anyone but themselves (let me again refer you to Eric Falkenstein's brilliant post on how unusual ideas are one of the penalties of being intelligent).

Heroes

2009-11-11T11:30:00.001-07:00

Having heroes is a form of study. You can see it in the rooms of teenagers who have decorated their walls with posters of musicians, or other popular figures. The posters, quotes, and facts about the person of renown are used by the teenager to try to understand what it is in this person that has made him/her great. Teenagers emulate the behaviors, language, dress, political outlooks, etc. of their heroes because they are searching out the combination of qualities and actions that constitute greatness.

The process doesn’t end with the teenage years.

It may be a false dichotomy, but it seems to me that heroes get evaluated either in terms of popular reaction to their exploits (either epic or romantic), or less commonly, against an objective set of criteria established only in the mind of the devotee. The difference is significant. It tells us something, not about the hero, but about the person who is aspiring to heroism.

If my definition of heroism depends upon either embracing or bucking popular values, then I am a Conventionalist. I define myself entirely in relation to other people, and to the prevailing culture.

If my definition of heroism depends upon a set of principles and beliefs that I accept for their own sake, without dependence upon the opinion of my society, then I am a Fundamentalist. Ironically, many heroic figures may themselves be Fundamentalists, while gaining a vast following of Conventionalists who wish to emulate them.

It is my experience that there are very many more Conventionalists than Fundamentalists in the population, though it is not always easy to distinguish who is who. Fundamentalists often possess values that are largely in harmony with their culture. Romantic Conventionalists take positions in opposition to the prevailing culture, and so may appear Fundamentalist, but actually are not, because they define themselves relative to the culture, not based on independent values or beliefs.

Eric Falkenstein relates intelligence to having unusual ideas. This is a related but distinct concept.

Gandhi: Reverse Terrorist

2009-11-10T07:03:00.002-07:00

Listening to a free lecture from UC Berkeley this morning, I heard a definition for terrorism that included the idea that the victims of terrorism are not necessarily the targeted audience for the terrorist act. That got me thinking about Gandhi.

Gandhi was a reverse terrorist. He provoked acts of violence against himself to highlight the cruelty and injustice in colonial imperialism. His demonstrations were designed to provoke a reaction in his intended audience, which included citizens of the British empire as well as the people of India. Specifically, he provoked the moral outrage of the British people against their own methods and institutions in India. The British people soon found that they were unable to rest peacefully, knowing that their soldiers were beating and imprisoning an old man for such acts as boiling sea water to make salt.

William Vollman, in his book Rising Up and Rising Down argues that the revolutionary, the terrorist, and the practitioner of civil disobedience must give up outside commitments in favor of their cause. Gandhi clearly understood this.

Technical Difficulties

2009-11-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

My computer gave up the ghost. My posting will probably continue to be spotty for the next few days.

And Now for Something Completely Controversial

2009-11-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

The above picture is of a proxy marriage being conducted in Normandy.

Proxy marriages are illegal in all but five US states. To me the illegality of proxy marriages is symptomatic of a problem in our legal system. Other symptoms of the same problem are the bans on plural and homosexual marriage, the marriage tax penalty (and the former marriage tax advantage), non-recognition by some states of some marriages that were formalized in other states, and inconsistent laws about qualifications that must be met before marriage.

The civil right vs erosion of values debate over gay marriage is a good place to start because it's such a hot issue. My question is, why does it need to be an issue at all? If social conservatives don't want to be forced to recognize gay marriage as being on equal footing with hetero marriage, they shouldn't be! If gays wish to form marriages, they shouldn't be denied the right! Why is there a controversy here at all?

Well, the obvious answer is that there is a controversy because the state is involved. The state regulates marriage, and decides who gets to marry and who doesn't. Because of this, marriages are made official in a way that makes me accept your marriage. Hence the controversy over gay marriage.

But it is ridiculous. Few other contracts require state intervention. In most cases, if I wish to make an agreement with you, we need have nothing more than a "meeting of the minds" (that's a legal term that just means we both understood what we were agreeing to in the same way). Why is marriage different? What valid interest does the state possess that justifies regulating marriage at all?

At this point in the conversation people usually start talking about hospital visitation, protecting children, alimony in the case of divorce, and a whole host of related items. My answer to most of these is that having marriage formalized by the state doesn't actually make any difference. Take hospital visitation. Hospitals are free to form whatever visitation policies they like. They can base visitation on marriage, kinship, longstanding relationship, patient preference, or anything else that seems right. It's not actually a legal issue at all. So why should state regulation of marriage matter?

What about protection of children? The courts handle that as well as they are able with very little attention paid to the marital status of the couple who produced the children. Of course, this is the result of necessity as so many children are conceived extra-maritally. In any case, state regulation of marriage just isn't important to the issue.

Alimony? Similar to above. An award of alimony is typically dependent upon living circumstances, not matrimony. When the fact of marriage becomes involved it is only relevant as a means of showing that there had been an agreement between the two parties about who should be responsible for what. Such an agreement should certainly be able to be written and signed without the consent of the state, as is so common in business agreements.

So what interest does the state have in regulating marriage? I'm seriously asking, because I can't think of one.

So, what would happen if marriage was deregulated to the point where it was simply another private contract between individuals? What if everyone started treating marriage however seemed right to them? Would our culture unravel? Would more children be left uncared for? Would the county offices have to reduce staff?

I think the answer in all cases is 'no'. I think that what would happen is that religious marriages would become more religiously-oriented thanks to the omission of the state from the marriage. I think that secular marriages would largely remain a mixture of private and public elements, a mixture of personal commitment and legal contract. I think that it is likely that the legal contract part of marriage will be given more thought by those considering marriage, as they will no longer assume that the state has standardized it for them. The ease with which one leaves a marriage will depend on how the marriage contract was written, instead of depending on the particular social experiment being legally enforced in your state of residence (see 'types of divorce'). Care of children will still be enforced by courts in precisely the same way as now - without regard to marital status. Gays will marry. Social conservatives will refuse to countenance gay marriage. Both parties will be better off.

I've bounced this line of reasoning off of a few people with completely consistent results: No one likes it. But truly, I don't see what's not to like. If I'm overlooking something important I genuinely would appreciate having it pointed out to me.