Year: 2015

A Tale of Two Cities (in Santa Cruz, California, USA)

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , , ,

There is a Veterans Hall right in downtown Santa Cruz. It’s called “Veterans Memorial,”  says so on its facade. It’s next door to the US Post Office and across the street from a marble monument to those children of the county who participated in World War One or in World War Two.

Every Wednesday morning, a group of older men and a couple of women, wearing Veteran badges and holding up a Veteran flag as well as a US flag meet near the monument to sing songs. They don’t sing especially patriotic songs but rather goodies and oldies. This morning, they gave a beautiful rendition of “Lily Marlene.” One old guy volunteered that he was sorry no one there knew the words in German. (For those of you who get your culture from Twitters: “Lily Marlene” was a rare thing, a tube sung by both sides in the European theater during the second world war.) Mostly, usually, they sing “Home on the Range’” and the like.

Another old guy told me that the group is not allowed to meet inside the Veterans building when the weather is inclement without paying the county a fee. Veterans’ Memorial is not freely available to veterans. It’s a small group; they don’t seem prosperous. Perhaps the fee is the method used by the county to keep the homeless out. It’s true that the group of singers looks a little scruffy. Some are old men who don’t live with a woman. Some are down and out homeless. Some are veterans who are homeless.

The decidedly left-wing municipal council of the City of Santa Cruz uses all kinds of artifices to contain and corral the homeless population. It wouldn’t be surprising if the county did something similar. I don’t know that it does. It sounds credible though. I will look into it.

I am not saying there is no problem with the homeless concerning more than those who are homeless. I have spoken about it before. The methods used to deal with them just make me deeply uneasy from a constitutional standpoint. The latent hypocrisy also gets to me. More later.

Two days ago, there was a little ceremony in front of O’Neil’s  flagship store, also in downtown Santa Cruz, a block away. Yes, I mean that O’Neil, that genius of entrepreneurship, that hero of capitalism. (For those who read me from overseas: O’Neil is the brand of surfboards then, of beach apparel, you see on every beach in the world. There is actually a Mr O’Neil.) The ceremony was a  celebration of PACT. (“People for something or other.”)

PACT was celebrating  its first-year anniversary and changing its name to honor a former DA. There were representatives from the DA’s office, from the city police, a couple of social workers, others from various city departments, or county departments, almost all public employees taking paid time off work. I would venture that 90% of those who stopped there for more than one minute were on the public payroll or spouses of such. They were celebrating themselves.

PACT targets “nuisance crimes.” That’s mostly behavior of the homeless population. In its first year, a press release announced, PACT reduced “nuisance crimes” as follows:

“The program focused on 70 repeat offenders during its first year and results show a 70% decrease in arrests and citation recidivism rates. During that period, ambulance runs for those 70 DAP-focused offenders decreased 80%.”

I live downtown, in one of the areas targeted, I think. I did not notice any reduction in nuisances. How come I am not surprised that a new government program announces striking successes? The press release concludes that:

“The Santa Cruz City Council and County Board of Supervisors will be considering the expansion of PACT in their upcoming budget hearings in May and June.” (Bolding mine.)

So, I don’t want to sound persnickety and I am all for initiatives, trying new things where old methods don’t work. What I saw and read on that occasion though is not good enough. I need two more things.

First, I want to be told squarely that the methods used do not violate anyone’s constitutional rights. Even laws that have been on the book forever make me nervous. Anti-loitering laws for one. (Is any man in a conservative coat and tie ever accused of loitering when he is just waiting in the street for his friend?)

Second, to judge a publicly funded program, I always want more info than is provided here. I have no reason to doubt the PACT figures  (“70% reduction in…”) – however cherry-picked they may be. They are only performance measurements however. I want cost-benefit, input-output measurements. If a city program resulted in 100% reduction in litter on my street, I would be only guardedly happy. If I found out that my share of the real cost of this achievement was $10,000 annually, I am certain I would want to  find out about the cost of a 90% reduction in litter, and so on.

And, by the way, I want the real cost, all included, including pension funding going forward. Sometimes just asking that a bureaucracy calculate the costs of its actions and make them public is enough to alter its course. Sometimes, just demanding that it calculate those costs is enough.

Good government is largely about choosing. I want the  elements of choice to be divulged to me as a citizen and as a taxpayer. It’s not too much to ask, I think.

PS  Yes, I know, the city council was elected according to fair and clean elections. That’s not enough for me. I want it to do as little as possible on its own.

Freeware

Michelangelo Landgrave Liberty , , , , , , ,

Similar to Brandon I’ve began playing around with new statistical packages. Like many libertarian scholars I have my skepticism about the limits of what we can learn from number crunching. I think there is a place for statistical analysis in the social sciences, but it is definitely meant to be a tool, not an ends to itself, and should be complemented with additional methods.

Recently I’ve begun trying to find a Geographical Information Systems (GIS). I had initially intended to buy a copy of ArcGIS, one of the dominant GIS packages, until I looked at their pricing plans. A single license for the basic version costs $1,500 USD. I’m sad to say this price tag is not abnormal. STATA, one of the larger statistical packages, sells an annual licence for its bare bones version at $125 USD. SAS has its pro version going for $9,000 USD.

What is abnormal is that several freeware packages exist that provide comparable services. Are you an undergraduate student taking a class on univariate regression analysis? Download Gretl. It has a menu based system that is relatively easy for even the newest of users to play around with. If you’re looking to challenge yourself opt instead for R.

Likewise, for those who like me are on a budget, there exists several freeware alternatives for GIS systems such as GRASS and QGIS. I’m still learning GIS so I can’t comment on either package, but I will be sure to provide reviews once I’m comfortable with them.

If several freeware alternatives exist, why do retail versions remain dominant in the industry?

Part of the answer is that corporations and universities value the customer help hotline if their software starts to malfunction. Poor graduate students don’t have much money, but tend to have a surplus of free time to use trying to figure out why their software isn’t working. Corporations have the opposite constraints, they have infinitely more money than graduate students but have much stricter time constraints.

Surely that can’t explain it all though, can it? If what you are purchasing with retail packages is the customer hotline, why haven’t a group of entrepreneurial (and hungry) grad students set up a business where they provide dedicated IT support for freeware? Several attempts have been made by Linux enthusiasts to provide such services for corporations looking to replace their Microsoft OS systems, so the idea has surely been thought of before.

Another possible answer is that what these retail packages are selling is their community. STATA may not be so technically superior to Gretl, but the former’s community is larger than the latter. If you have a problem with Gretl you can’t easily find another user to help out outside of a few niche forums. Meanwhile you are sure to find a STATA compatriot just by walking down a social science college’s halls. I am not really convinced by this idea though. There is a value to joining an existing community, but in the long run people do move across networks. Consider Myspace, which less than a decade ago was the social network, until it was defeated by another social network. How much longer will STATA and ArcGIS last before its user base migrate to R and GRASS?

What do you all think? What other reasons might explain why pricey retail statistical packages remain dominant over comparable freeware alternatives?

From the Comments: What do progressives think of Hillary Clinton?

Brandon Christensen Politics , , , , , ,

This comes from Professor Terry:

I suspect I’m the only one around here that spends significant time on progressive blogs etc so let me tell you what it’s like over there….Progressives seem depressed but resigned. HRC will be the nominee. There are no other viable candidates. Sanders will be entertaining, O’Malley not so much….there’s no one on the sidelines. Prof. P’s [‘P’ is for ‘Pinocchio’ – bc] lust driven fantasy about Sen. Warren aside, no last minute candidacy from her.

Progressives take some solace in not having someone from the Republikan Klown Kar selecting Supreme Court nominees but that’s about it. Progressives take it for granted that the Democratic nominee will win the general election [they can read the electoral map and count]. They aspire to take back the senate but have no illusions about the House of Representatives so no significant new legislation will happen.

In my opinion scenario 3 is inevitable, I will dearly miss the Obama administration and it will happen sooner than I’ll like…

Thanks Dr A. This is excellent insight, and I am curious about the names of these progressive blogs. Who knows: some of them might even end up on NOL‘s vaunted blogroll. Professor Terry, by the way, teaches and researches up at a fancy business school in Toronto.

I still don’t have a solid definition of what ‘progressive’ means, though. It’s Left-wing. It’s anti-racist (or purportedly, anyway, as it can be argued that identity politics is itself racist, but I digress). Aside from those qualities, I don’t see much about it that is progressive. They are protectionists. They love big government except when they don’t. They are Democrats, or at least anti-GOP, but doesn’t necessarily approve of the Democratic leadership (especially when it works with Republicans). This leads me to suspect that progressivism is a political movement rather than ideological or intellectual one. This deduction, in turn, suggests to me that progressives are the US’s reactionaries (conservatives). I would be happy to change my tune about progressives once I get a solid definition of what they actually believe in, but again I don’t have one and reactionaries are usually defined by what they oppose (in this case Republicans) rather than what they stand for.

Anyway, NOL‘s blogroll – one of the best, if not the best blogroll out there in my humble opinion – has a bunch of Leftist group blogs on it, including: Angry Bear, Crooked Timber, Disorder of Things, Duck of Minerva, JHIBlog, Lawyers, Guns & Money, the RBC, Monkey Cage, and Mischiefs of Faction. None have coughed up a definition of ‘progressive’ yet, but Professor Terry has an open invitation to do just that here at NOL.

Every society needs its reactionaries, of course. It would just be nice of progressives to actually, honestly identify themselves as the reactionary party here (and as the Tories do in the UK), rather than deceive themselves by referring to their reactions as “progressive.” The Progressives of the 19th century (different bag of reactionaries than today’s progressives) did the exact same thing when they started calling themselves “liberals” in order to make their policies more palpable to the general voting public, and look how that turned out.

Liberty is what creates progress, not legislation. Just ask all of those progressives currently resigned to voting for HRC because she’s “better than the alternative.”

The Wicked Witch

Jacques Delacroix Politics , , , ,

Ordinary, rational Americans are watching with nervous disbelief the unfolding of the Clinton tragedy and low comedy combined. We all think the same thing: “Can’t last. Something is going to stop them. The Democratic Party will come to its senses eventually.” The columnist Peggy Noonan, who often comes up with original and credible analyses, said in last weekend’s issue of the Wall Street Journal that the Clintons are protected by their well-established corruption: Everyone already knows they are corrupt; there is nothing they do that will add measurably to this knowledge. This is an explanation that makes a sort of perverse sense. I dare not subscribe to it completely because it feels self-indulgent; this is a viewpoint few hard-line Republican partisans would dare publicize. It’s too good to be true! It’s too bad to be true!

Hillary Clinton, so far the only Democratic candidate to replace President Obama, is moving on slowly and apparently unperturbed. It matters not that she is a phony, so phony that she can’t even make her hand gestures match her words. She has told numerous lies, some of them transparent. She has lied on matters that could easily be verified, such as landing on a foreign airport under sniper fire. This kind of lie usually indicates mental imbalance; it’s fundamentally different from the ordinary CYA lie. Hillary Clinton failed to come through to protect her own subordinates and their CIA protectors in Libya. Then, she lied, covered up, and minimized the importance of their deaths. She gave constitutional Congressional authority the finger by destroying her email records. Reminder: This is something that never happens to anyone else that you or I know, right? Even the mid-level Obama IRS executive in charge of persecuting Obamanemies, she who took the Fifth Amendment, had the common decency to state that her emails were lost by mistake.

Hillary Clinton has teamed up with her husband in their family foundation to extract money from the most unlikely sources. The foundation pays out about 10% of what takes in. Its main outlays go to reward Clinton friends and facilitators and enablers, and also to help support the couple’s lavish life style. (This, although they don’t get paid a salary by the foundation; they use it it as an expense account.). The latest reports make it sound like the Clintons used Hillary’s term as Secretary of State to bring the US down to the level of your regular banana republic, where lavish gifts buy you influence for anything. “Lavish gifts ” go to the Clinton Foundation but they also include $500,000 speaking fees for Mr Clinton, for example, all in one single motion. I ask, how he can say anything worth half a million dollars when he is not even able to include the adultery and sexual abuses segments of his past?

When I mention”unlikely sources,” I mean, for example, the likes of the Algerian government, an oil and natural gas-ed state plutocracy. You would think that government would have plenty of worthy causes right at home in Algeria where the unemployment rate is “down to” about 10%. There are even better opportunities to spend Algerian oil money right south of the country, in the miserable Sahel countries. Why would it donate munificently to an ex-president’s foundation unless it were also because it was a current Sec. of State’s foundation? When his attention was drawn recently to such unseemly gifts, Mr Clinton’s only response was that there were no proofs, “no evidence.” How low can you get?

I worked out two scenarios about the future of the Clinton candidacy. Both are nightmare scenarios.

First, the upper reaches of the Democratic Party may be allowing things to take their course with Hillary in a sort of passive bait-and-switch. They let her gather attention on their party in the context of the 2016 presidential election and will persuade her to step down in time for a surprise candidate. That candidate is likely to be Elizabeth Warren. After all, she is a woman too; she is a Senator; she does not carry much baggage. The only significant piece of luggage is her identifying herself as American Indian, 1/16th or was it 1/32th? Democrat voters will easily forgive this whether it’s true or not because that was said to help her obtain an academic job she deserved anyway and that she might have been denied otherwise because she is a woman. Still with me? Besides, self-serving lies that are hard to contradict do not indicate mental imbalance, like an untruth about landing under sniper fire does, for example. Moreover, Ms Warren, unlike Ms Clinton, is a genuine leftist, not a pure opportunist. Besides, some centrist voters might be so relieved to be spared the walking Clinton debacle that they might become blind to Ms Warren’s small pimples. Nothing to lose there.

The second scenario implies that Democrat strategists know something ordinary, politically conscious people like me don’t know. It may just be that they are making the bet that nothing disgusting anyone will bring up or discuss will do any harm to Ms Clinton’s candidacy for president. Just take for granted a union vote of 80% for any Democratic presidential candidate, of 90% for African-Americans (98% for black union members), 65% for Latinos promised a quick path to citizenship for illegals (whom they think – wrongly – are mostly theirs). (All figures made up but entirely realistic.) Then, think of the millions of female voters, and potential female voters who rarely or never vote, who take no interest in politics, who don’t know anything except that the candidate is a woman. How unlikely is it that such people can be made to vote this one time? With the frame of mind I am imagining, it’s even probable that any attack on Ms Clinton, no matter how justified, even direct, open sale of favors will be viewed as bullying, as ganging up on the girl.

Many women, even literate women, actually think that it’s the turn of a woman to be president. The affirmative action fallacy that gave us the Obama presidency may just be about to be repeated.

It may be too late for rational people to do much of anything against the broader fallacy of phony identity politics. It seems to me that they can gnaw at its edge – this time – by tirelessly contradicting the now common false premise that Ms Clinton is well qualified for the job of president. Even ignoring her many failures, she did not achieve anything either as Senator or as Secretary of State, no legislation, no international agreement, no treaty, nothing. Unlike the current president, she was not even good at being elected. She got her Senate seat from the Democratic machine from a safe district where she ran essentially unopposed. Her appointment as Secretary of State was such an obvious debt repayment between Democrat factions that anyone but a Clinton would have been embarrassed.

The pessimist in me nourishes a further nightmare: There will be a time soon when I miss the Obama presidency.

Mundane work is morally praiseworthy

Rick Weber Liberty , , ,

Economists hold an important piece of wisdom that needs sharing: noble acts don’t occur in a vacuum. Mundane acts derive moral worth through their support of heroic acts. Even if they aren’t praised as heroes, everyone who is being productive should feel warm and fuzzy inside for their contributions.

Let’s put this bit of knowledge together with the “equimarginal principle” (EP). EP is an outcome of the intuitive idea of the Law of Diminishing Marginal Return: if you keep doing more of something, each extra bit yields smaller benefits. First slice of pizza: great. Second slice: good. Third slice: meh. Fourth slice: regret. EP gives us a rule to improve our life: cut back on pizza and drink more beer. Balance your choices so that the marginal net benefit is equal across all avenues. If it’s not, then cut back on those choices that yield relatively low benefit and do more of the things with high marginal benefit.

This applies on a societal level too. And to charity. What is the marginal value of an extra dollar invested in cause X? Cause Y? Take some money out of the low marginal benefit cause and shift it to the other. Cancer research is a worthy goal, but you can do more for the world by donating to a less saturated cause. I’m not saying nobody should research cancer. I’m only saying the marginal researcher could create more value in some other venue.

Back to my main point. The team that cures cancer will be lauded as heroes. But some of that praise belongs to the people who support them. The people who made their equipment made their project possible. So did the people who provided gasoline so they could drive to work. These people won’t get this praise, but recognition isn’t the root of morality.

These unsung heroes are making the world a better place. They allow the “real” heroes to pursue their comparative advantage. It’s not just those on the front lines who are making the world better. EP tells us that pursuing that praise isn’t always praiseworthy. You are short-changing your cause if you pooh-pooh support roles. And because of the nature of voluntary exchange, “support role” doesn’t have to be narrowly defined to “volunteer for your preferred cause.” Just by being productive in your usual life you are contributing something. It’s certainly praiseworthy to go further and donate to some cause, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that working for others (i.e. your customers) is virtuous in and of itself.

Contribute to society where you can contribute the most net benefit. Pursuing praise alone is not how you make the world a better place.

And don’t forget: you’re part of society too. So don’t be afraid to treat yourself!

Introducing John Milton: Republican and Poet (1608-1674)

Barry Stocker Liberty, Politics, Religion , , , , , ,

John Milton is one of the major figures in the history of English literature. His poetry, particularly but certainly not only his epic Paradise Lost, has conditioned all of English literature since his own time. He was also a major political writer and advocate of liberty.

In some ways his appeal has become a bit more limited with the decline of religion as a major part of life in Britain and other English speaking countries, but he is still read and has influence on the non-religious no less than the religious. He came from a time when political and literary activity in England (strictly speaking there was no Britain or Great Britain in terms of the legal state until 1707, before which there was a union of three kingdoms or states, England, Scotland and Ireland with no superseding state on top) and across Europe was very tied up with religion. Both of the greatest English political philosophers of the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, were centrally concerned with the relation of the state to religion. The last thinker I discussed, James Harrington, though not very religious in orientation, still discusses the Biblical ancient Jews in his political writing.

Milton was a Puritan in religion and a republican in politics. To say he was a Puritan is to say he was one of the more radical Protestants outside of the mainstream of the state church as it existed under English kings. Puritan was originally a pejorative label associating religious dissenters and radicals with joyless fanaticism. This might have been an accurate description of some Puritans, but not all and certainly not Milton. He travelled in Catholic Europe where he made friends and intellectual interlocutors. He advocated for the right to divorce, which had been no more recognised in Protestant England after the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century than in preceding Catholic England. His learning, including that of ancient pagan classics, was greater than normal for bigoted fanatics. Furthermore, his poetry shows great joy in the pleasure of words and imagination, traits uncharacteristic of the bigot whose greatest pleasure is to think of his enemy burning in hellfire.

Even the more joyless kind of Puritan often showed a spirit of equality in social life, democracy in church government, and the value of all honest work, along with a belief in enough education for children to at least study the Bible carefully and intelligently, which played a large role in the growth of liberty, commercial society and civil institutions in England. This was not an era where complete religious tolerance, or complete independence of the individual from the state, was at all mainstream and even the most tolerant states (the Netherlands being the best candidate) did not have complete equality between faiths or tolerance for open non-believers.  For the time, Milton was at the more tolerant end of the spectrum and so were many other Puritans, despite the forbidding associations of that term.

Milton lived through through the Civil War (1642-1651) between Crown and Parliament and was a strong supporter of Parliament as were Puritans in general, though Milton’s political views should also be seen in the light of his classical learning and respect for the republics of ancient Greece and Rome.

Parliament’s victory lead to the creation of an English republic known as the Commonwealth in 1649, and Milton’s advocacy of republicanism led to an appointment as Secretary of Foreign Tongues, an office which required him to compose correspondence with foreign governments in Latin and continue a defence of republicanism for a European audience. Milton continued in this post as the Commonwealth gave way to the Lord Protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, the most outstanding general of the parliamentary army. This was not an explicit repudiation of republicanism, but did reflect the difficulties of organising parliamentary government in a country used to monarchical governments.

Parliaments were very happy to offer Cromwell powers he was not ready to accept, and even the explicit title of king. Cromwell essentially served as an uncrowned king, making various experiments with parliamentary and military administration. Cromwell is sometimes portrayed as a religious fanatic and tyrant, but he restrained the intolerance of the most radical Puritans and was not religiously intolerant by the standards of the era. His tendency towards more militaristic and personal government reflected institutional failures rather than a plan for absolute personal power. He purged and selected parliaments, but all previous parliaments had presumed the subservience of MPs to monarchical domination and conformity to the state church.

Cromwell’s darkest reputation arose in Ireland, but tales of Cromwellian massacres of Irish Catholic civilians are now agreed by Irish historians to be highly exaggerated. What he was guilty of was completion of a long process of subordinating Ireland to England, and of removing power and landed property from the Catholic majority. Deplorable as this was, it was no more than the standard statecraft of the time. Cromwell did not establish an arbitrary violent despotism in England. He largely operated within the law and reformed the administration of the nation in an efficient and enduring way. He did not acquire spectacular wealth or establish a court of ostentatious luxury. Though Oliver Cromwell’s son Richard inherited the Lord Protectorship, Cromwell had not prepared the way for the dynastic rule of his family, and power returned to the previous royal family.

I have discussed Cromwell’s status as a figure in English history to show how a sincere republican like Milton could continue in his state position. There is no reason to think he did so for reasons of acquiring wealth or addiction to power. He remained true to his principles after the return of the monarchy, unlike many, and was in real danger of very serious legal consequences. Fortunately those who respected him in the new regime, after abandoning the old regime, intervened and Milton was able to live out his life peacefully though in rather simple style for one of the greater writers of the time.

Milton’s writings, along with the failed republican experiment and the Cromwellian administrative reforms, established the conditions for a second concealed republican revolution, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which under the pretence of restoring a traditional relation between monarchy and nation, in practice established a successful aristocratic-commercial republic under a monarch who could only act in co-operation with Parliament.

Next I will begin the investigation of Milton’s writings.

Dear Greeks:

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , ,

I hear you can’t pay your debts again. I am a little sorry but you brought it on yourselves. A few reminders.

Your country is a democracy. The way you got into this pickle is through the stupid, self-indulgent policies of those you elected. You did it again in your last election by bringing to power a bragging leftist party in the old Stalinist mold. What did you think they would do: Frighten the European Union, The International Monetary Fund (Number one stockholder the US), Germany, the world, into submission, into erasing your debt? Think!

The reason Germany is your principal creditor is that one of your previous governments begged Germany for help and it agreed to help. The Germans did not cram loan after loan down your throat; you asked. The big sillies thought you would be honorable and pay up as agreed. Do you care about your future reputation, your honor, your children’s future ability to walk in the world with their heads up? Here is a basic rule of politeness which is also a moral rule: When somebody gives you a hand, you don’t bite it viciously.

There are several reasons your government can’t pay its debts. One reason is that your political class is corrupt trough and through. Another is that you are reluctant to pay taxes the way normal people do in the European Union. Too many Greeks want to work and pretend-work for the government instead of doing real work. And your government still owns stuff no government anywhere should ever own because governments always make a mess of running them, resorts, among others.

Another reason why your government can’t pay its bills is that your country is genuinely poor for a European country. There too, you have a lot of explaining to do. For one thing, you have been living above your means for a long time, pretending you were more or less like Danes, or Germans. Well, the truth is that you are not, not even close; Danes and Germans are very productive; you are not. So, you should not have ever expected to work short weeks and to take long summer vacations, like Danes and Germans. Such privileges do not come automatically with membership in the Union, you know. You should look over the border on the despised neighbors, the Turks, instead. They don’t pretend to themselves that they are already rich; they go to work early and they close their shops late. Many of them work six days a weeks. Over the past ten years, the growth rates of their economy has left yours in the dust. Coincidence?

And you only make yourself even more scorned with your treatment of others. The real horrors that Nazi Germany inflicted on Greece more than 70 years ago are not much of an excuse anymore. A previous government of yours, an elected government, accepted reparations a long time ago. And, by the way, in 1945, Germany was much more devastated than Greece, and still in 1948. See where the Germans are now, and where you are? Any comment?

And do you ever wonder why the Estonians, in the stultifying Soviet prison for fitly years, never ask for new loans to pay back older loans? And how long anyway did you expect German workers to work until age 69 so your public servants could continue to retire at 63? Are you out of your minds?

One last thing: You are not exactly Classical Greece. Stop wrapping yourselves in Aristotle’s toga. Really study Socrates. He chose to die than cheat even a little. Neither he nor Aristotle was a whiner. That’s why they are still remembered and honored.

In the end, I wish you well. Everyone can unlearn bad habits and learn basic rationality, even late in life. I hope you soon leave that club where you don’t belong. I hope further that you can make your way back. Begin by getting up at 6 every morning. Also, learn the obvious: socialism does not work well for rich countries; it’s miserable for poor countries.

Why buy local?

Warren Gibson Economics, Links ,

I like my local Safeway grocery store a lot. (I can even get sardines at midnight.) But while I was enjoying my regular routine, appreciating the quality and variety of groceries, an annoying announcement came on over the sound system touting their “locally grown” produce section … more

Garbage could be beautiful

Rick Weber Economics , , , , , ,

And I don’t mean in the artistic sense, though that’s an option and one that sheds light on the larger question of what to do with garbage. I recently heard a podcast on garbage incineration; how it’s widespread in Europe as a way to generate electricity and reduce the need for landfills. The discussants were wondering why America doesn’t do more of that and concluded that progress was barred by a combination of NIMBYism and the fervor of recycling enthusiasts. Whether you agree with the producer of that segment or not, they are certainly correct that this industry is stagnant, and this rigidity results in plenty of unnecessary inefficiencies. But I think the real low hanging fruit is in waste collection.

The other day I saw a garbage truck and it struck me that the institution of “garbage day” is just a hold-over from the days before apps and algorithms were available to efficiently route garbage trucks to where they’re needed. For that matter, the trucks could be different; the service level could be different, and surely resources could be saved.

There are plenty of ways garbage could be picked up, and they could all coexist next to one another. Different towns and different neighborhoods

This sort of competition would be beautiful. The results would be better service, less room for corruption, clean trucks taking away your garbage when it’s necessary and saving resources* in the process. Rich neighborhoods would have sleek electric wagons grabbing their trash cans from the side of the garage in the middle of the night. In poor and rural neighborhoods something more like Uber would give the out-of-work construction worker a  way to pay for his truck.

The problems are surely due to regulations that limit innovation and competition. So, how could we open up this market? Debate and committees is the correct response, but it’s not the only one. “If I were a Silicon Valley millionaire,” I thought while driving past that truck, “I could change this, and probably make a buck doing it.”

So here’s the exciting part: A wealthy libertarian-type benefactor (or even a non-profit funded through a Kickstarter campaign (don’t forget to comment on this article!) could make a bet with the mayor of some city (which would need certain features to be a viable first candidate) that privatization would work. The bet goes like this:

  1. Pass legislation that opens up genuine competition in trash collection in one year.
  2. Private garbage companies spring into existence and do a better job at a better price (as determined by a study we will pay for by a consultant you will pick).
  3. If (2) does not happen, we will pick up the tab at your current provider for one year.

Obviously, our first hurdle is structuring the bet property to avoid problems like Waste Management from abusing their position. And that’s probably a big problem. But here’s the thing: if someone can figure this out, and motivate the right people to contribute, it will:

  1. Make it easier for an electorate/politicians to face the risk that something will go horribly wrong, and
  2. Create a profit opportunity for the (probably) tech billionaire backing this.

Opening up waste collection to competition allows for the possibility of the next Uber or AirBnB being in the garbage business. And for that matter, this betting approach might be used for other industries. For Uber to use this approach would be even easier. They would have to pay for a study on transportation in some city, and could offer to bet some lump sum to the city if competition doesn’t work.

*”Saving resources” has practically become a verbal tic with me. I use it as a synonym for the much less evocative “reducing costs.”

Musings About Statism and Cultural Production

Jacques Delacroix Culture , , ,

I have not fed this blog for a while. First, I am lazy. Second, I am finishing a serious writing endeavor. It’s entitled: “Indecent Stories for Decent Women: Poaching.” You can just imagine what it’s about. Third, I have a critical project in mind and I am not sure I want to dive into it. The problem is that I think it needs to be done and I don’t see who else can do it. Yet, I hesitate because it could easily consume weeks. The topic below.

I spend a lot of time watching  TV5, the international French language channel. I watch movies including old ones, some from countries other than France; I take in the news and also documentaries. In addition, I read a centrist French newspaper on-line pretty much every day. I look at Le Monde when needed although I detest that French version of the New York Times. I read novels in French haphasardly, according to what the tide brings in. Every so often, at completely unpredictable intervals, I find old to very old French classics at Logo, the excellent local used books store.

There are three recurrent shows I like on TV5. Plus, some of the network’s offerings from bilingual African countries are novel. I dislike pretty much everything else there. One might ask why I submit to this regime of daily torture. The answer is that  I am engaged in a mental parallel study of  cultures. There are millions of bilingual immigrants who could do the same but few have the leisure, or the mental equipment, or perhaps, the inclination to become involved in such an amorphous task. One problem I have is that I don’t know who else is interested in the results of my cogitations.

My astonishing dislike of contemporary French culture is my starting point, of course. My mind runs on two explanatory tracks about this. The first track, fairly anodyne, is simply that I am paying the price of age. I am sick of seeing the same mediocre movie over and over. This is not just about French culture: If I read another daily paper article about the dilemma of American middle-class women who are forced to chose between children and career, I will scream (scream like a girl, that is). This detestation applies especially hard to French culture however, I think. This is subjective, of course, but I believe French culture has accomplished just about nothing in thirty years. It has retreated concretely in several areas.

The second track is the potential relationship between statism and cultural production. France is a good example of a statist society where, at any one time, out of one hundred euros, sixty are in the hands of some government entity or other. I have the intuition that the French have been paying for their cradle-to-grave welfare state with tremendous cultural sterility.

Speaking of that second track, specifically, I have several concerns. First I don’t know if it has already been done extensively and the fact just escaped my attention. Second, I am not sure if anyone would care if the relationship I posit existed. Third, there is a possibility that my specific access to French cultural production gives me a bad sample of what’s really going on there.

I have dealt with these second track issues before. I will give the references soon.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Hokusai and the wave that swept the world
  2. Xenophobia in South Africa: Historical Legacies of Exclusion and Violence
  3. Death in Venice: Eighteenth Century Critiques of Republicanism
  4. 2 Fantastic Exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum
  5. Not All Libertarian Rightists/Leftists Are “Thick”: A Reminder
  6. What We Can Learn from Confederate Foreign Policy

From the Footnotes: Race, Nationality, and Empire

Brandon Christensen Culture , , , , , , , ,

We have more to say than space allows about ‘race’ and ‘community’ as an imperial organizing category, especially in the British Empire, and about complex transformations and incongruities in decolonization as plural, hierarchical fields of multiply ‘races’ and ‘communities’ were constituted into new nation-states. A return to the dictionaries shows that while definitions of ‘nation’ before World War II sometimes connected nations to states, they invariably defined nations as ‘races’ and made the connection to race, not state, primary. Challenges to this linkage of nation and race were available at the time, notably Renan’s 1882 lecture rejecting race, language, and territory as bases for nationality. This argument eventually became famous. But the dictionaries changed only after that crescendo of failure of nations seeing themselves as races destined to dominate empires, the global catastrophes following the German effort to found an Aryan Third Reich and the Japanese effort to build a Co-Prosperity Sphere with the Yamato race as nucleus. Benedict Anderson deserves credit for insisting upon annihilation of the shared descent definitions of nation, for insistence that the nation is first of all imagined, ideal, and realized in co-dependence with a state. Yet in this, we think, he is the theorist observing at dusk, theorizing the world-order of quiescent nation-states built decades before by the architects of a United Nations in the rubble of the Second World War – and theorizing them not as 20th-century contingencies but as a modern necessity. To Anderson, the disconnection of nation from race or descent group and its connection to the state was, ironically, not an historical development but something intrinsic to the nation. The fact of the Nazis notwithstanding, he found scholarship seeing any connection between nationalism and racism simply ‘basically mistaken’.

This from “Nation and Decolonization: Toward A New Anthropology of Nationalism” by John D Kelly and Martha Kaplan in Anthropological Theory (gated, unfortunately).

Some Quick Facts About Nepal

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , ,

Dr J suggested I post some thoughts on the recent, devastating earthquake in Nepal, but I don’t know if I have much to add. Over at Policy of Truth, one of Dr Khawaja’s friends was in Nepal when the quake happened and there are some photos that his friend was able to take. And a development economist has some good advice on giving to Nepal.

Instead, I’ll just break down some interesting tidbits about the country. I can’t do any better than Wikipedia (minus most of the links):

Nepal […] is a landlocked country located in South Asia. With an area of 147,181 square kilometres (56,827 sq mi) and a population of approximately 27 million, Nepal is the world’s 93rd largest country by land mass and the 41st most populous country. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People’s Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India. Nepal is separated from Bangladesh by the narrow Indian Siliguri Corridor and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Kathmandu is the nation’s capital and largest metropolis.

The mountainous north of Nepal has eight of the world’s ten tallest mountains, including the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest, called Sagarmāthā (सगरमाथा) in the Nepali language. More than 240 peaks over 20,000 ft (6,096 m) above sea level are located in Nepal. The southern Terai region is fertile and humid.

Hinduism is practiced by about 81.3% of Nepalis, the highest percentage of any country. Buddhism is linked historically with Nepal and is practiced by 9% of its people, followed by Islam at 4.4%, Kiratism 3.1%, Christianity 1.4%, and animism 0.4%. A large portion of the population, especially in the hill region, may identify themselves as both Hindu and Buddhist, which can be attributed to the syncretic nature of both faiths in Nepal.

A monarchy throughout most of its history, Nepal was ruled by the Shah dynasty of kings from 1768—when Prithvi Narayan Shah unified its many small kingdoms —until 2008. A decade-long Civil War involving the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), followed by weeks of mass protests by all major political parties, led to the 12-point agreement of 22 November 2005. The ensuing elections for the 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly on 28 May 2008 overwhelmingly favored the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a federal multiparty representative democratic republic. Despite continuing political challenges, this framework remains in place, with the 2nd Nepalese Constituent Assembly elected in 2013 in an effort to create a new constitution.

Nepal is a developing country with a low income economy, ranking 145th of 187 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2014. It continues to struggle with high levels of hunger and poverty. Despite these challenges, the country has been making steady progress, with the government making a commitment to graduate the nation from least developed country status by 2022.

Nepal’s GDP (PPP) per capita stands at about Intl$ 2,300 according to the World Bank, which is lower than Bangladesh and on par with Senegal (in west Africa), and Tanzania and South Sudan (both in east Africa). GDP (PPP) per capita is, of course, my favorite unit of measurement for comparing the health and wealth of societies.

I couldn’t find much information on ethnic groups, but the number of religions practiced, plus the number of languages spoken by significant portions of the population and coupled with the decade-long civil war between Maoists and monarchists, is enough to suggest – to me – that the country has no tradition of liberalism whatsoever, and will thus likely remain in poverty for a long, long time – despite the fact that a federal state has recently been implemented from the bottom up.

Ideas matter, though at the same time, the question of federalism versus liberalism seems a lot like the question about the chicken or the egg. If a Maoist insurgency and a reactionary monarchy can give way to a liberal federation in the middle of the Indian-Chinese border I’ll disavow learning altogether and take up the cloth in liberalism’s name!

I am hoping Dr Ranjan – a South Asian specialist – can jump in and provide us with some insight as well, but spring is a busy time for scholars.

Le émeutes de Baltimore en blanc et noir

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , ,

A Baltimore, un homme de vingt-cinq ans interpellé par la police en sort la colonne vertébrale brisée. Il en meure après quelques jours. L’interpellation elle-même était probablement illégale. (Aux Etats-Unis, la police doit avoir de bonnes raisons pour interpeller un citoyen vaquant à ses affaires. Il y a tout un code qui doit être respecté.)

Les résultats de l’enquête interne ne sont pas publiés dans les délais rapides que désire l’opinion publique. Des émeutes éclatent plusieurs soirs de suite, avec pillages et incendies volontaires.

La presse française ne rate pas une occasion de dire des conneries, parce que ses journalistes sont paresseux, et incultes, parce que, souvent, ils ne connaissent même pas l’Anglais. La victime est noire, les policiers interpellateurs sont blancs (ou pas d’ailleurs, on ne le sait toujours pas). Donc, pas de problème, c’est le même film qu’avant, le même depuis trente ans ou plus. Les policiers blancs, racistes bien sur, ont froidement assassiné un jeune noir innocent. Justice ne sera pas faite car “l’Establishment ” est blanc et également raciste, bien sur.

Dans ce cas-ci, la moitié des policiers de Baltimore sont noirs, le directeur de la police municipale est noir. La maire – à qui il aura appartenue d’appeller la garde nationale à la rescousse – est noire, plus de la moitiée de son conseil municipal est noire. La procureur d’état (de l’état du Maryland) chargée de l’affaire est noire. (Il s’agit de l’autorité chargée d’inculper ou pas.) La ministre fédérale de la Justice – qui n ‘a d’ailleurs pas prise directement sur ces évenements locaux – est noire, comme son prédecesseur , d’ailleurs. J’allais presque oublié, le Président des Etats Unis, qui ne perd pas une occasion non plus de réciter des insanités, est aussi noir.

Voici une généralisation valide pour remplacer les clichés usés de la presse française: Partout ou se passe des évènements lamentables, comme celui qu a couté la vie au jeune homme de Baltimore, on trouve un pouvoir installé appartenant fermement au parti Démocrate, le parti du président Obama. Baltimore est au mains des Démocrates depuis quarante ans sauf pour un interlude de quatre (4) ans.

The Two Ultimate Religions

Fred Foldvary Religion , ,

Religions provide ultimate visions of reality and values. They have different views about the reality of the divine, and about what is sacred, but for life on earth, what counts most is religious ideas about the reality of human beings and the value of human life.

The two basic concepts about human life are equality and supremacy. Either one believes that all human life is equally worthy, sacred, and important, or else one believes that the members and followers of one’s religion have supremacy over other human beings. Either one values all human beings as equally human, with equal rights to life and property, or else one values the members of one’s religion as superior, with superior rights to life and property.

Almost everyone believes that one’s own religion is the correct one. Some people may have doubts, but few believe that other religions are more true, otherwise they would convert, unless forbidden to do so. Religious egalitarians believe that even though their faith is the true one and the best of all religions, nevertheless the people of other faiths have an equal moral worth, and so their lives, property, and freedom are to be respected.

Religious supremacists believe that not only are their beliefs true, and their values correct, but also that holding their beliefs, or being descended from believers, entitles them to superiority in human worth, so that they are authorized, and even required, to forcibly convert others and, at the most extreme, take their property and lives.

The divide between egalitarians and supremacists cuts across all the major religions. People of all faiths have attacked, enslaved, killed, looted, and conquered those of other religions. Even when supremacy is not an explicit religious belief, when one group conquers and enslaves another, their members at least implicitly believe that they are superior, even if only because of their power.

There are also members of all faiths who believe that, however superior, true, and sacred are their own beliefs and values, those of other faiths are equally entitled to live according to their creeds. Whatever else their religion may say about others, they believe that all people are equally human and of equal human value.

This, then, is the great religious divide, which affects every person. Atheists too are part of this divide. The atheists chiefs of Communist parties believed in the superiority of their creed, and they conquered lands, killed opponents, and imposed their control over others. Extreme nationalists have had a supremacist nationalist belief in addition to other ideas, which formed their overall religion. Supremacism may be personal, ideological, and otherwise not associated with a theistic belief, but as a view of ultimate reality and values, it is a religion that is mixed in  with other ideas.

Human beings live in a mental as well as physical universe. In our mental universe, either we believe in human equality, or not. Egalitarianism and supremacism are, however, matters of degree. Some may be more mildly supremacist, letting those of other beliefs live, but subjecting them to higher taxes, tighter restrictions, and lacking the privileges of those of superior beliefs. In the relatively tolerant societies, people are allowed to practice their religions to some extent, but there are beliefs and values, even if not in a theistic creed, that are imposed on everyone. This is why throughout the world, governments have victimless crimes. They prohibit activities such as drug use and gambling, and they censor some words, ideas, and depictions.

One supremacist idea shared by most people is the moral worth of majorities relative to minorities. Most people in today’s world believe in the superiority of majorities. If a majority of voters believe that everyone should be taxed, restricted, and forced, this is, in their view, proper, because the majority has moral supremacy. Majoritarianism is a religion, as a belief and value.

Another supremacist view is that persons who have conquered land, and their heirs, when there are no other documented claimants or survivors, have a superior status. The egalitarian position is that all human beings have an equal right to the benefits of the land that nature provided. Equality does not require equality in possession, which is not possible, but an equal share of the economic benefit, as measured by what people are willing to pay to use land.

If we take human equality to its ultimate logical conclusion, each person has an equal natural right to live, work, own property, and completely direct his life, with no restriction or imposed cost on his peaceful and honest actions. Liberty and equality are complementary.

Very few people believe in complete human equality. But we should at least strive to achieve  equal rights for life and equal rules for property. Whatever else our creeds may say, we should have a minimal egalitarianism in law and policy, so that innocent people may live, own property, and be able to live, to a great extent, in accordance to their beliefs and values. If we can achieve minimal global egalitarianism, that would be a great achievement.

Note: this article also appears in http://www.progress.org