This afternoon, I listened to a concert of Celtic music on the radio. It included Celtic music from Brittany in western France. Nothing astonishing about it except this: The presentations and commentaries where all in a dialect of Chinese. You have to love California, sickbed of authenticity and cradle of creativity on a world scale.
A Better Way to San Jose
Today I’m going to pick on the California High Speed Rail (HSR) project. But that’s almost too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. So I’ll be brief and then propose a better alternative.
In case you don’t know, California voters passed an initiative in 2008 authorizing sales of bonds to finance a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles with branches to Sacramento on the north end and Anaheim on the south end. Ten billion in state bond funds were to be matched by Federal and private funds. The initiative also specified the running time and the fare to be charged. (How many voters, who might balk at tax increases, understand that bonds have to be paid back with interest using tax revenue?)
Sure as God made green apples, the budget estimates have skyrocketed, the project scope has shrunk, and completion dates have stretched far out over the horizon. In addition, citizens and local politicians along the route through the San Francisco Peninsula have risen up as one in response to the destruction and disruption that would accompany the construction and operation of the line through their back yards. These are people in places like Palo Alto, many of them wealthy, articulate, and well-connected. They appear to have succeeded in getting the Peninsula segment scaled down to a “blended system” where Caltrain and HSR trains share two tracks through most of the Peninsula rather than expanding to four tracks and wiping out hundreds of homes and businesses in the process. There will likely be an initiative on the November ballot to kill the whole project and polls favor its passage.
For the record, I’m a rail fan. I enjoy riding Caltrain to work, volunteering at the Western Railway Museum, and studying railroad history. I’m fascinated by construction projects and still hold a license to practice civil engineering. So if anything I should be biased in favor of the project but I hate it.
My alternative involves electric cars. I know, they’ve been a flop so far (Obamacars?), mainly because the usable energy per kilogram of gasoline is about 35 times that of a lithium-ion battery! A lot of smart people have been working on better energy storage devices and techniques with scant progress to date.
I propose that inductive pickup devices be added to electric cars and perhaps hybrids. Induction coils would be buried in roadways like Interstate 5, the main SF-LA freeway. This should make it easy to complete a long distance journey without stopping for a charge-up. You would leave the freeway fully charged, probably with enough energy to complete your trip on conventional roads.
The payment for energy could be combined with a toll charge. Tolls are a long overdue idea for roads like I-5 because they not only impose costs directly on beneficiaries but also because they enable congestion pricing – a toll that rises in times of heavy traffic and falls at other times. This idea has already been implemented on a few California roads but on a very limited scale. It has the potential to reduce congestion drastically, something carpool lanes have not accomplished.
A major advantage of this system over HSR is that it could be rolled out incrementally. As soon as a few thousand cars were equipped with pickup devices and a few hundred miles of roadway fitted with induction coils, the benefits would begin. In contrast, HSR won’t be much good until it’s completed all the way from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles. A good estimate for that time is: never. There’s a real chance that HSR will be abandoned after a lonely segment has been built through Central Valley farmland.
Another advantage of the roadway proposal is that cabling could be included with the induction coils for future automated operation. Under this longer-range scenario control of your car would be taken by an automated system soon after you entered I-5. You would be accelerated to 120 or 150 MPH and safely guided to your exit. This is not so far-fetched given that Google has been running driverless cars around city streets with great success, though perhaps not on freeways as yet.
Now let’s compare two ways of getting a family from San Jose to Disneyland as an example. First is high speed rail. You pack the family into the car and head for the downtown station, where you pay a hefty fee for five days’ parking. You buy tickets for all, get on your train, and arrive in Anaheim, or downtown LA if the Anaheim branch hasn’t been built. You rent a car and away you go. Cost? You figure it out, surely several hundred. Elapsed time, several hours in all.
I’ve already laid out the induction-drive car scenario. You come and go when and where you want at a much lower cost and close to the same elapsed time with automated operation.
So there you have it. Sure, the devil is in the details. I’ve given only the barest outline, and yet I guarantee you that no matter how solid a case might be built up for a proposal like mine and no matter how preposterous HSR is shown to be, some will not be swayed. I’m not thinking of those who are merely dazzled by renderings of sleek trains. I’m thinking of people ranging from busybodies to downright sociopaths who, to one degree or another, hate the freedom that comes with car ownership and want to herd people into public transportation. In such people we find the root of the HSR boondoggle and so many other social problems.
Chocolate for Thought
There is a pervasive feeling among thinking people that this country is not just facing a severe economic crisis but that we are losing something exceptional. That something is American exceptionalism precisely. Lech Walesa, the blue-collar hero of Polish freedom from communism put it well in a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal. There is only one of America and if it ceases being itself, the world is left in the dark, goes the thinking. It’s not reasonable to count on the debt-ridden government pension-sucking Europeans to hold up the flashlight. The fact is that several European countries are disappearing because they don’t make enough babies to replenish themselves. That’s the ultimate form of pessimism. (And no, this is not a racist statement, I am completely pleased with the fact that brown-skinned Mexicans and their children are keeping the American population growing. They make good immigrants. See my article on Mexican immigration, with Nikiforov, in the Summer 2009 issue of the Independent Review.)
Unfortunately, there is an innate humility among Americans which makes it difficult for them to think aloud about American exceptionalism. If there were not, twenty years of cultural relativism in the schools would make the very thought difficult to formulate: “Everybody is equal. We are not any better than those who suck their grandmothers’ brain – but only after they die, or than those who practice horrendous sexual mutilation on little girls, or than those who still practice slavery. Only American slavery was atrocious. Slavery in exotic locales is kind of nice, actually, if you look at it in its proper cultural context.”
One way to overcome this shyness and diffuse sense of equality in order better to grasp what we are losing is to consider Swiss exceptionalism about which no one gives a damn, not even the Swiss. It turns out that in the main respects, there is not one America, there are several. Switzerland is one. Continue reading
Around the Web
At Last, Some Bright Spots in Indian Country (if you can’t view it, just copy and past the title and Google it).
The enduring failure of democracy promotion abroad.
Borderlines. A blog about maps.
Secession, Small States, and Decentralization: A Rejoinder to Dr. Ayittey
Dr Ayittey has kindly responded to my rebuttal.
You can’t mix secession with decentralization of power; oranges and apples. Your statements that “Smaller states would be much better for Africa than the large ones in place” and “The more “Little Djiboutis” there are, the better” are ridiculous. At a time when small countries are coming together to form larger economic blocs – EU, AU, ASEAN, Mercosur, etc. – you recommend going in the other direction: The creation of more little states that are not economically viable. Would you recommend the break-up of the US into 50 little states? Check your own history.
The original US Constitution was inspired by the Iroquois Confederacy. Under that Constitution, the South elected to secede, which led to the Civil War (1861-1865). Why didn’t the US allow the South to secede? It would have led to GREATER decentralization of power.
Now, I want to let everybody know that this exchange is happening over Twitter, so be sure to take Dr. Ayittey’s response in stride and in context.
First up are his first and last statements: Continue reading
Scotland, the Sudan, and Federalism Done Right
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I have been blogging a lot lately on political decentralization and secession as tool for furthering this process. I am one of those people who thinks that Karl Marx had a lot of stuff right, even though he got some other important stuff very, very wrong. His prediction of the withering away of the state is something that I think will eventually come true, and I hope it does, too.
Anyway, I don’t mean to suggest, when I advocate secession as a way to further political decentralization, that every time secession does happen that it will turn out great. Just look at the US Civil War. Or we can look at what is going on in parts of the world today. Here is an excerpt from an Economist report on the latest developments between Sudan and South Sudan (what an incredibly dull name for a new country, by the way…): Continue reading
Pure Racism and Chinese Dining
There are several kinds of racism. The roots and the dynamics of racism are among the most interesting sociological issues. Here is a small but important fragment of the whole matter. The most common kind of racism involves three separate mental operations: 1 Assign an individual to a group; 2 Assign certain undesirable features of character or culture to the same group; 3 Assign these same undesirable characteristics to the individual because he belongs to the group.
The most pure form of common racism I know used to make me laugh. Of late, it has begun to annoy me. Here is a relevant story.
I pick up my wife at the airport after a short trip. We go out to celebrate our reunion. My wife wants to eat Chinese food. There is a Chinese restaurant near the airport where I have had excellent dinners in the past. It’s a large and old establishment with many Chinese customers. In fact, every time I have been there, I was with Chinese friends.
We sit down a little early. I don’t like the early bird menu, of course; I don’t like the regular menu either; the “specials” menu is not much more attractive. None of these menus corresponds well with my golden memory of the several original meals I have had there. I ask the waitress if there is a Chinese menu with different dishes than are on the English-language menu. “No,” she says. My wife and I order the less boring dishes from the main menu. Continue reading
African Political Structures: A Debate
I just hooked a big fish on the end of my line when I tweeted about my support for secession of Azawad to Dr. George Ayittey, an economist at American University and one of Africa’s leading lights of classical liberalism. I have a talent for ribbing people in just the right place at just the right time, and the following response I got from Dr. Ayittey confirms my magnificent talent (some may disagree with the label ‘talent’, but I digress).
In response to my support for Azawad, Dr. Ayittey tweeted the following: Continue reading
From the Comments: A Note on the Upcoming French Elections
Jacques Delacroix has belatedly responded (he’s retired!) to an inquiry about the upcoming French elections. Happening History posed the following question to Dr. Delacroix:
I found your post very interesting. One thing I found particularly interesting was your remarks on the French left. Since the presidential election is coming up soon, what do you think would happen to how the financial mess in Europe is being handled if the Socialist candidate were elected considering the major role France plays? How likely do you think it is that Hollande could win?
Dr J’s response deserves to be read by all: Continue reading
Chicago, Vienna and San Francisco
Co-editor Fred Foldvary has a great essay up on three schools of economic thought that deserves to be read by all. An excerpt:
The Vienna school emphasizes the dynamics of the economy, while the Chicago method is to apply self-interest and economizing in an equilibrium analysis. The San Francisco school uses both equilibrium and dynamics. The dynamic approach of change over time is used to show the advance of rent and lowering of wages as the margin of production moves to less productive land and as land speculation moves the margin out even further. Equilibrium shows that since market rent is based on the fixed supply of land and the demand to rent space, the tax on land not affecting the rent.
The San Francisco school agrees with the Vienna school that the spontaneous order of the free market best allocates goods to human desires. But the San Francisco school points out that if the ground rent is not tapped for public revenue, when taxes on other things finance civic works, then there is in effect a subsidy to land owners, which distorts the market.
The San Francisco school has a theory of the business cycle based on land values, which rise during a boom, when speculation carries land prices so high that investment gets choked off, resulting in a recession. But San Francisco has lacked a consensus on the role of central banking and money.
Check out the rest here.
I tend to pay attention whenever Dr. Foldvary writes, because he is the guy who wrote a book in 2007 accurately predicting the economic collapse of 2008. You can access the book for free here.
Coyotes: How Government Bureaucrats Think
In my area of central California coyotes recently attacked two small dogs that were romping around. Both dogs survived. The attack took part in a public park of some sort. The reaction of the rangers (How I hate this semi-heroic designation for cops in green uniforms!) :
We are going to enforce leash laws more strictly. The attack would not have happened if the dogs had been on leash.
Why not regulate coyote behavior while you are it? You might add to the list of forbidden things on the signs posted everywhere:
Coyote attacks on dogs not allowed.
Somewhere in the depths of the bloated California bureaucracy there might even be a subsidized artist to design a cute symbol signifying the same thing, for coyotes who can’t read. While we are at it, why not a sign in Spanish also?
There is another approach to all this: Dogs like to run around. In fact, most of them need to run around to be healthy. Dogs who run are happier than dogs who don’t.
Coyotes will eat anything, small dogs when they get a chance. It makes them happy. Dog owners know this. They are morally responsible for their dogs. They are the ones to decide what’s the greatest risk for their pet: unhappiness and a constricted life vs the risk of a very rare wild animal attack. Continue reading
Let’s Celebrate Loopholes
I’ve just finished my income tax return. (Have you finished yours?) Silly me, I do it myself using TurboTax – all 59 pages of my federal return plus 80 for California. I’ve got investment income, including partnerships and foreign stock dividends, two small businesses, social security and a pittance of wage income from San Jose State University. And a bunch of deductions and credits.
The whole process puts me in a foul mood, and my wife and even the cats know to steer clear till it’s done. One reason is obvious: the mind-numbing complexity, even with TurboTax. Even more galling is the humiliation and gross indecency of dropping my pants financially. This is the land of the free?
The New York Times had an interesting article in last Sunday’s Magazine, “What’s the Easiest Way to Cheat on Your Taxes?.” The article led off with the assertion: “If economists ran the tax system, there would be virtually no exemptions or loopholes.” To which I say, just a cotton-pickin’ minute! If I ran the tax system, and assuming I couldn’t set the rate at zero, exemptions and loopholes would stay and maybe even multiply.
How can I say this after belly-aching about the complexity of my return? Simple – the complexities provide me enough tax-cutting opportunities to outweigh the damage to myself, my wife and the cats. I’ll leave the details out just in case the gentle folk at the IRS read this humble blog.
Why do I do it myself? Partly because I don’t want to spend hundreds or maybe thousands on a professional preparer, but also because his interests would not align exactly with mine. His primary goal would be to cover his rear, especially with the IRS cracking down on professional preparers. My goal is to achieve the right mix of boldness and caution in claiming deductions and credits.
A good bit of ink has been spilled (and electrons) about “fair taxes” lately. It’s unfair, says the Community Organizer in the White House, that Warren Buffett’s average tax rate (or was it his marginal rate?) is lower than his secretary’s. Conveniently overlooked is the fact that his dividend income has already been taxed at the corporate level. As Gene Epstein showed recently in Barron’s, when you add in that corporate tax you get a much different story. The rich pay a substantially higher percentage of their income than most of us on this basis.
So what is a fair tax anyway? The same percentage for everyone? No exemptions, no deductions? Why is that any fairer than a head tax – a levy of so much per person? How about a regressive head tax, since poor people tend to use more government services than rich people?
What of two people earning the exact same income? Surely fairness demands that they pay the same tax – equality before the law and all that. But suppose Mr. A is a struggling young man with lots of debt, trying to start a family while Mr. B has inherited millions. Both earn the same income but is it fair that they pay the same tax? I leave it to you.
When you get right down to it, there just isn’t any such thing as a fair tax, simply because taxes are coercive exactions – theft, if you will.
Still why wouldn’t a flat tax with no deductions be at least a small improvement, as Steve Forbes and other conservatives advocate? The late Murray Rothbard demolished that idea in The Case Against the Flat Tax. Here’s his comment:
“The closing of ‘loopholes’ under a flat tax will mean a merciless and continuing search-and-destroy mission by which the government will root out and obliterate every little hideyhole in which many of us have been able to squirrel away a bit of our own earnings and are own property, and keep them safe from the ever-expanding maw of the federal government.”
I concur. Let’s celebrate all the loopholes, not just those that protect some of our own income, but any break for anybody at all.
A Good Society: The Coffee Proof
We still live in a good society. I keep forgetting this and life keeps reminding me.
I have a younger friend who graduated with honors and with a major in Philosophy. I liked him just for that. It sure beats a major in”Psychology,” or one in “Management.” Incidentally, I know that some of my readers know that I used to teach from a “Management Department.” My excuse is that I tried very hard never to teach whatever you think is “management” and that I pretty much succeeded overall. (This story will have digressions. It’s one of those days. Go with the flow.)
Anyway, my friend takes care of several coffee shops. He has become the owner’s right hand by din of being hard working and just plain reliable. Two things happened to him as a result. The first is political. My friend went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, where Stalinists communists are considered conservative. So, of course, he used to be kind of a left-winger. (That would be the honest kind, the kind that does not knowingly make false statements.) Nowadays, though, the closer the he gets to the books, to the actual accounting of the coffee shops, the more he moves to the political center. Who ever said philosophy is “useless?”
The other thing that happened to my friend through his work is that he became a coffee connoisseur. One day that he inquired about a present for me, I said, “ Surprise me with coffee.” He did. He brought me a small quantity of a variety I had never heard about. “How did you like it? “ he asked two days latter.
Well, I stopped lying – except in emergencies – at about the time I stopped lying to women. And, incidentally, there was never much reason to believe that I ever, ever deceived a single woman. Mostly, they listened to my lies smilingly because they liked the poetry of them.
At any rate, I replied to my friend that his gift coffee did not paint my particular town red. He had this superb response I have not been able to get out of my head for days now; he said that that particular coffee was “divisive.” I am so lucky! I live in a society so peaceful, so prosperous, so fulfilling that here, expensive coffee can be considered divisive!
A Few Good Debates
I have often thought that debating other people is just as good (if not better) for learning about other how other people think (and imagine things) as reading a book on a subject. In this spirit, I thought it’d be cool to point out some of the great debates I’ve had a pleasure of being a part of either though participation or simply as an observer.
Cato Unbound is by far the best place to go if you want to get a good, scholarly, but still colloquial, debate on a topic. This month’s lead essay is on ‘Bleeding Heart Libertarianism’ and features responses from a number of prominent academics. I highly recommend taking some time to read through the whole symposium.
Over at the blog Coordination Problem, economist Steve Horwitz takes a grad student (Daniel Kuehn) out for a beating in the proverbial woodshed in the ‘comments’ section.
Again in the ‘comments’ section, I take Jacques Delacroix to school on matters of foreign policy and the law.
And at MarginalRevolution, co-bloggers Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok go at it on banking institutions. Here is Part 1 (by TC), Part 2 (AT), Part 3 (TC), and Part 4 (AT).
All of these are tough reads with lots of top scholars debating big ideas (save for me, though Jacques is a world-renowned scholar on international trade and development), so you might want to come back to this post and click around a little bit at a time. All of the debates are highly, highly recommended.
Oh, and the Mises Institute has their new blog up and running (it’s very good): The Circle Bastiat
Ethnography of Liberalism: I
There used to be an academic discipline called “Ethnography.” It was an inherently humble endeavor, the description of others, of usually exotic, far away, little-known groups. I mean head-hunters of Borneo, and Pygmies from central Africa. Ethnography had little pretension to “explain” as does modern Anthropology for example. I am engaged in a continuous study of the Left. I am doing daily, indefatigable ethnography of that quaint but interesting tribe.
In spite of my public identity as a conservative, I am proud to say I have good entries into the liberal world of my small ultra-liberal and “progressive” town. I don’t know the liberal establishment and I think it does not know me, or it ignores me. I am in daily touch with the rank-and-file though. (I will not blow my cover by telling you how. You will have to take my word for it.) Because of my previous life in academia, I also know liberals. and even progressives, outside of my immediate area. I am talking of people with whom I have personal contacts at will, not National Public Radio.
Old-fashioned ethnographers used to exploit “native informants.” Those were local indigenous people who were willing to talk, trustworthy and who, the ethnographer had reasons to believe, were well-informed. Lately, I have been having short and long-distance conversations with a younger man, a very moderate liberal, a liberal-leaning centrist, you might say. I have known the man for a long time. He is intelligent, very hard-working and resourceful. He has even demonstrated an entrepreneurial bent. More importantly, I know him well enough to be sure that he prizes his personal credibility. My liberal friend is a valid native informant. I am not building a straw-man to burn later in triumph. Continue reading
